Why does The Hoover Channel exist?
The Hoover Channel’s logo includes the sun, a nod to sunshine in government.
The Short version:
We believe that federal, state, and local government should be transparent. The US Congress has CSpan. The Alabama Legislature has The Alabama Channel, a private entity not affiliated with the State of Alabama. The City of Hoover has us, The Hoover Channel, a private entity not affiliated with the City of Hoover. Government transparency is important because:
- Accountability: Transparency allows citizens to hold their government accountable for its actions, decisions, and use of public resources. When government information is freely available, citizens can easily see what their government is doing and why, which helps prevent corruption and misuse of public funds.
- Trust: Transparency is critical to building and maintaining trust between the government and its citizens. When the government is open and honest about its operations and decision-making processes, it helps to increase public trust in the government and its institutions.
- Participation: Transparency is essential to enabling citizen participation in government. When information is freely available, citizens can more easily engage in the democratic process, participate in public debate, and make informed decisions about the issues that affect their lives.
- Efficiency: Transparency can also help to improve government efficiency by allowing citizens and other stakeholders to provide feedback on government policies and practices. This feedback can help identify areas for improvement and help ensure that government resources are being used effectively.
Overall, local government transparency is essential for maintaining a healthy city and ensuring that the City of Hoover Administration and City Council is accountable to the people they serve.
The Hoover Channel will provide anyone who’s interested a quick way to view City Council meetings, look at previous Agendas and Council Packets, as well as look at Minutes form previous meetings. The Hoover Channel is not affiliated with the City of Hoover.
Most of the Hoover City Council regular meetings and work sessions are livestreamed on our Facebook page – www.facebook.com/thehooverchannel . The the full meeting, along with meeting highlights, links to the Agenda and Information Packet of the meeting (Work Sessions will have Agendas only) and links to the Hoover Sun coverage of the meeting (if meeting was covered) are available on our YouTube Channel – www.youtube.com/@thehooverchannel
The Long Version:
The Hoover Channel launched in 2023, but its roots go back many years, all the way back to 2013.
In July 2013, Hoover City Schools Board of Education voted 4-1 to eliminate the transportation of students via bus effective for the 2014-2015 school year. In other words, they eliminated buses, which made national news. The reason given was the it would save the district, which had been in a deficit budget for several years, $2.5 million dollars annually.
As you can imagine, many in the community, the stakeholders, were angry about this vote. Several people, including a retired Jefferson County teacher named Dan Fulton, rallied in support of bringing buses back. Their cause was not in vain, and the Board of Education rescinded their vote to eliminate buses in December 2013.
Mr. Fulton, who had stage 4 cancer, continued to attend Board of Education meetings as well as City of Hoover Council meetings. Although he wouldn’t speak at each meeting, he would record each meeting using a hand-held voice recorder. He would then upload the audio to his personal YouTube page. Today, Mr. Fulton’s audio recordings of Board of Education meetings and Council meetings can still be listened to. Mr. Fulton succumbed to cancer in 2017.
The year 2016 brought a whole new set of faces to the City of Hoover’s City Council. One reason for the change, according to then newly elected Councilor Mike Shaw was:
Transparency
Transparency also was a key factor, Shaw said. Current city leaders have worked hard for the city for many years, but for residents today, it’s not just the condition of the city that matters, he said.
“It’s also about how things are run and how things are done,” Shaw said. “People want to know what is going on behind the scenes … They didn’t see the full process from beginning to end and don’t know how decisions are made. People in office didn’t communicate that well.” Hoover Sun 9/29/2016
After Mr. Fulton’s death, some councilors discussed putting his name on a plaque on the podium used at Council meetings.
Thanks to the interest in Mr. Fulton’s recordings, Hoover City Schools launched their own YouTube channel in 2016 and began to stream and archive all Board of Education meetings.
The City of Hoover followed with their YouTube Channel in 2017, which streamed not only City Council meetings, but also Planning & Zoning meetings, as well as messages from the mayor. At one of the last meetings before his death, Mr. Fulton was recognized at the first streamed meeting.
It seemed Hoover and the administration was all in for transparency. The system being used for streaming meetings was basic at best, using an iPad for streaming the meetings. But it was a step in the right direction. The Council Chambers were closed for meetings for several months in late 2019 through September 2020 for remodeling.
Part of the remodeling budget included a completely new, state-of-the-art audio/video system, which included new HD cameras that were positioned in such a way that everything could be captured. The cost of the new system was over $300,000.00. All meetings now had the ability to be streamed in high quality. All meetings, including Council meetings, work sessions, Planning and Zoning Board meetings, and other board meetings were live streamed and archived on the City of Hoover’s YouTube Channel.
Then came the flood of October 2021. The aftermath of the flooding changed the administration’s and the Council’s view on transparency. Residents, unhappy with how the city was handling the damage caused by the flooding, began to speak at Council meetings during public participation. The comments were truthful and not always flattering.
In July 2022 Robin Schultz, the founder of The Hoover Channel, noticed that videos were missing from the city’s YouTube page while doing some research. This was mentioned to the Council at the first August 2022 Council meeting. The Council did not have a response for the missing videos.
The Hoover Sun began to investigate the issue and published a story on the lack of transparency by the City of Hoover. It was evident from the story that Council President John Lyda and City Attorney Phillip Corley were behind the taking down of the archived videos, as well as cutting the feed once Public Participation began at the meetings.
Some technical information: When you have a YouTube Channel, you have several options when it comes to content. Option 1 is to make some or all of your content Public. That means everyone who goes to the channel can search and view your videos. Option 2 is to make some or all of your content Private. That means that, although a visitor can see your YouTube Channel, they may not see all of the videos on the channel unless they have a direct link or password. This makes it “hidden” from public view. The video still exists, but not everyone can see it. Option 3 is to delete the video from the channel. Once it’s deleted, unless it’s uploaded again, it’s gone. In the case of a video that was livestreamed, it cannot be recovered.
Despite the Hoover Sun story, the videos that had been available on the City of Hoover’s YouTube page were still missing, with only the past 60 days being available. Schultz asked Hoover’s CIO about the missing videos and he directed Schultz to the City Clerk. Schultz asked the City Clerk if the videos had been made private or deleted. The response was “I don’t feel comfortable answering that”. The videos, as it turns out, had been deleted at the direction of someone other than the City Clerk or the CIO. Nobody will admit to giving that direction.
It was after the Hoover Sun story that Schultz came up with the idea for The Hoover Channel. Attendees to Council meetings were not prevented from bringing a camera to the meetings and recording them. But first, the missing videos. They needed to be found.
In January 2023 Schultz was able to locate a site that had archived all of the missing videos (the site specializes in archiving ALL internet content). Schultz spent the next month downloading all of the videos. The domain The Hoover Channel.com and .org were registered and the site was created. The Hoover Channel was also created on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube.
Next, Schultz uploaded each video that he recovered to the new The Hoover Channel YouTube Channel. Now the videos belonged to The Hoover Channel and would not be able to be deleted.
In February 2023 The Hoover Channel began to record Council meetings. The Hoover Sun published a story on this.
Investing into more equipment, The Hoover Channel began to livestream the meetings as well.
The Hoover Channel believes that transparency in government is crucial, and all records of government meetings, regardless of format, should be easily available to the citizens in perpetuity.
We have spent countless hours gathering all of the videos deleted by the City of Hoover, as well as the Agenda, Agenda Packets, and Council Minutes and will post them on this site and our YouTube channel for anyone to see.
In May 2024 The Hoover Channel was featured in an article in 1819News.
We will also maintain a presence on social media, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.