How the La Palma City Council reduced regular meetings in 2020, repeatedly declined video-livestreaming proposals, and implemented video after SB 707 required two-way remote public access in 2026.
Last updated: September 2026
Public meetings are where residents get to address their government on the record. La Palma cut its regular meetings in half in 2020 and never restored them, then declined or did not advance video-livestreaming proposals over the next three years — while other Orange County cities, including ones with comparable budgets, did so routinely. SB 707 required two-way remote public access. La Palma chose video as its implementation method, and even then delayed its own promised start date without advance notice.
Every entry below is drawn from the public record — council resolutions, the City's own statements, and independent reporting. Tap any entry to expand it. Documented marks a claim drawn directly from a primary record, an official's own statement, or a cited investigation.
Citing the COVID-19 emergency, the City Council adopts Resolution 2020-29, cutting regular council meetings in half — from the twice-monthly schedule the city had maintained throughout its history to once per month. The City's own later announcement admits the change was made “in an effort to conduct City business during the COVID-19 pandemic” and “has become current practice.” The City did not subsequently restore the twice-monthly schedule. The result: the public's regular opportunities to address its government on the record were permanently cut from roughly 24 per year to 12 — and in practice fewer, as the single July meeting is routinely cancelled.
Councilmember Janet Keo Conklin urges the council to consider video livestreaming of public meetings — “We're not in the stone age,” she says. Councilmembers Nitesh Patel, Mark Waldman, and Debbie Baker oppose it.
The council rejects even a proposal by Councilmember Goodman to have staff merely research streaming options without committing any city funds. Patel acknowledges the city has elderly residents, but says he thinks “there is enough information out there that gets out to them.” Smaller Orange County cities comparable to La Palma in size — including Villa Park, Stanton, and Los Alamitos — already offered video livestreaming of their public meetings at the time.
Voice of OC's published account of the February 7 meeting adds detail the agenda item alone doesn't capture. Before the council took up audio improvements, Councilmembers Janet Keo Conklin and Marshall Goodman first offered a substitute motion asking staff to research the cost of improving both audio quality and adding video livestreaming. That broader motion failed on a council majority vote.
Only after the video-research option was rejected did the council vote 3-2 to research audio-quality improvements alone — with Keo Conklin and Goodman voting against that narrower motion, having wanted the broader one to pass instead. Councilmember Mark Waldman explained his opposition to video by citing “grandstanding” at a prior council that had considered it: “some people come in to hear themselves speak... they just want to come and perform.” La Palma resident Bonnie Knartzer, then 75, told the paper she didn't understand the reluctance: “I do have a hearing problem of sorts... why not just add one extra step?”
A Voice of OC / Chapman University investigation grades all 34 Orange County cities on public meeting accessibility. Every city received an A or B except La Palma and Rancho Santa Margarita, the only two cities in the county without video livestreaming at the time.
Each receives a D.
A First Amendment Coalition legal fellow says the lack of virtual access “keeps residents in the dark.” Then-Councilmember Nitesh Patel told Voice of OC his concerns centered on cost, infrastructure, and how the city would implement it, adding that other cities that already streamed video were larger than La Palma.
The same council approves roughly $80,000 in IT upgrades for City Hall — Microsoft Office, a new phone system — while continuing to claim the city cannot afford video streaming. Cities with comparable budgets (Stanton, Los Alamitos) had been streaming for years. Asked about the differing expenditures, Councilmember Waldman responded: on the record, “It's different stuff.”
At the council's December 10 meeting, Councilmember Janet Keo Conklin proposes adding video directly — “I propose we now look into [adding] audio and visual,” she says — pointing to Census data showing roughly one in five La Palma residents are of retirement age, and telling Voice of OC afterward that she hoped to bring a proposal forward for greater transparency and accountability. No colleague seconds a further push, and the council instead adopts, 4-1, a “Code of Conduct” requiring two council members' consent to place any item on the public agenda.
The pattern repeats at the January 14 meeting, where Keo Conklin's motion to direct staff to add video dies again for lack of a second. “So they don't want accountability or transparency. What is wrong with video streaming?” she says afterward.
Mayor Waldman had separately told Voice of OC he saw no reason to change course: “I don't see the need for it,” he said, adding that few people listen to the audio stream anyway, though he'd “be all for it” if residents really wanted it — he just didn't “see the point.” Councilmembers Debbie Baker and Nitesh Patel did not respond to the same reporter's questions. When Keo Conklin presses the question “what are we hiding?” at the dais, the mayor declares a five-minute recess.
Voice of OC revisits the story after the council's April 1, 2025 meeting, confirming Keo Conklin's January 14 motion had died for lack of a second from any other member. Keo Conklin tells the paper her position hasn't changed: “My core value is transparency and accountability,” citing moments during staff presentations when online viewers couldn't see items projected onto the chamber screen, and adding that she has nothing to hide.
Mayor Waldman again saw no need to change course: “We speak and test our votes verbally,” he said, arguing video wouldn't increase transparency. Nitesh Patel pointed to cost: “The cost is exorbitant,” he said, adding, “When we bring something that is $100,000 or $150,000 to implement, people are going to scream at us and yell at us, saying, ‘Well, that's too expensive.’” Councilmembers Vikesh Patel and Debbie Baker did not respond to the reporter's requests for comment.
Resident Robert Carruth — a local watchdog since 2010 — asked why the city continued to lag behind its neighbors: “Why are we not doing what every other city except for Rancho Santa Margarita does, including small cities like Los Alamitos, Villa Park and Stanton?” Samuel Stone, a public administration professor at Fullerton College, offered outside context on the pattern: “Just doing the minimum is not always what everybody wants or expects.”
Governor Newsom signs SB 707 on October 3, 2025, the state's rewrite of the Brown Act. Effective July 1, 2026, the law mandates two-way remote public participation at meetings of covered legislative bodies, including La Palma's City Council — removing the council's discretion over whether to offer remote access at all, though the law leaves the specific method (video or two-way telephonic) to each agency.
The council had known about SB 707's requirements since October 3, 2025, when the law was signed, and knew the deadline for compliance was July 1, 2026. It waited another six months — until its April 7, 2026 meeting — before directing staff to research and implement a solution.
Only now — with the SB 707 deadline approaching — does the council unanimously direct staff to implement video, after Voice of OC had reported that every other Orange County city — all 32 of the others — already offered video livestreaming while La Palma provided audio only. The staff report accompanying the item tells the council that state lawmakers are expected to eventually require video statewide regardless of SB 707.
The city contracts with Western Audio Visual — a vendor and target date Voice of OC later confirmed — projecting the system will be running by August 2026. The sequence suggests the change was driven by the new state requirement rather than a shift in the council's own position: after three years in which the majority repeatedly refused residents' requests to add video, SB 707 required two-way remote public access, and only then did La Palma choose video as its implementation method.
Mayor Patel — who as a councilmember opposed or declined to support the idea in 2023, 2024, and 2025 — now calls video livestreaming “a great thing to do.”
One day before the council's regular August 4 meeting, the City posts on its official Facebook page that the video livestreaming system it says the council approved on June 2, 2026 will not be ready as promised. Citing “equipment delays” — with no further detail offered — the post states the City now anticipates video streaming will not begin until the October 6, 2026 meeting, pushing back by at least two months the August 2026 target reported when the council directed staff to pursue the system in April.
The disclosure arrives not as a proactive announcement timed for advance public notice, but as a same-week social media post the day before the very meeting residents might otherwise have expected to be the first livestreamed session. The revised implementation schedule moved the City's target for video access to October 6, 2026.
Cited above, at the point in the timeline each supports.