Keeping the Community Informed

By Colleen Gundlach
Photo by Savage Frieze

Do you have a question about what was discussed at last month’s virtual selectman’s meeting or what happened when the school board got together to discuss reopening the school? If so, Phylis Bernard is the person to ask. For the past couple of decades she has made video recordings of Norfolk’s municipal meetings, which she personally attended, at an average of four meetings a month. She doesn’t necessarily enjoy sitting through these endless meetings, but she says, “I do it so that people know what’s going on.”

 When she moved to Norfolk in 1984, Bernard began attending the meetings of the town’s boards and committees in order to get a good overall knowledge of her new place of residence. “I attended most of the meetings until I found that some of the meetings were not being conducted properly. Boards were having meetings that they didn’t post properly first, and they were denying me access to some meetings as well.” Between 1995 and 1998, she filed three separate complaints with the state’s Freedom of Information Commission (FOI)—against the Board of Finance, the Botelle School Building Committee and the Norfolk Town Center Consultant Selection Committee. The commission denied the complaints against the Board of Finance and the Building Committee, but cited the Consultant Selection Committee for failure to file a notice of their Nov. 15, 1995, meeting and failure to vote to convene in executive session. As a result, Tom Henneck of the FOI came to Norfolk and conducted an educational session on FOI standards for all board and commission members.

Frustrated by what she still felt to be a somewhat obstructed access to town meetings, Bernard discussed the matter with her friend Charlene LaVoie, who was then a community lawyer with the Shafeek Nader Trust in Winsted. LaVoie suggested that Bernard begin recording each meeting of Norfolk’s municipal groups. Eventually, Bernard met with Mike Flint of the public access television station based in Canaan. He supplied her with the equipment she needed, and she hasn’t stopped since.

It was rough going at first, she says. “I knew I was not welcome at the meetings with my camera. I was shaking like a leaf at my first few meetings, but I held my ground.” She had a hand truck on which she would load the heavy recording equipment to bring in and out of the meetings, and then she would take the recordings to the studio in Canaan for broadcast on the local cable public access channel. Soon town residents were looking forward to being able to watch the meetings from the comfort of their homes.

Bernard continues to attend municipal meetings, whether virtual or in person, but now, in addition to being broadcast on the cable channel, the recordings are uploaded to Vimeo.com where they are accessible to everyone. To be sure that the townspeople know where to find them, Bernard sends a group email to everyone on her huge email address list, which includes more than 75 area residents, giving them the name and date of the meeting and the link where they can go to watch it. She said she wants to be sure everyone has access if they want it.

Bernard says, “People contact me all the time to see some of the old stuff, and I can give it to them.” She has an archive of meetings from the past four years, and she is able to research and find a requested meeting. She has never been paid for recording the meetings or for supplying information from her archives, but says she enjoys knowing that people are able to see the inside workings of the town’s boards and commissions.

Since her retirement from her job as purchasing agent for Hotchkiss School in 2002, Bernard’s community service hasn’t been limited to recording meetings. Though not a resident at Meadowbrook, she is very active with the senior housing center’s “My Bears” project, where she die-cuts the fabric and sews up the outlines of the teddy bears for the Meadowbrook residents to stuff and personalize. The teddy bears are then donated to children at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital. The group also recently donated 50 bears to Camp Trinita in New Hartford, a mission of the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity, which provides ministry to area parishes, youth groups, prayer groups and religious education programs. She also sews with the Colebrook Crafters group, which creates handmade quilts for fund-raisers, and is currently working with this group on a quilt with cross-stitched designs on each square.

Norfolk residents who would like to receive email notification when Norfolk municipal meetings are posted to Vimeo should contact Phylis Bernard at phylis439@gmail.com. She will be happy to add you to the list.