Rolling Hills adopts SB 707 policy for telephonic and internet disruptions during meetings

The Rolling Hills City Council voted May 28 to adopt Resolution No. 1411, a new policy required by SB 707 that sets out steps the city must take if telephonic or Internet two‑way participation is disrupted during a public meeting.

City staff explained that, during a disruption, staff must announce the disruption to those present, call for a recess, and have up to one hour of good‑faith efforts to restore two‑way remote communication. If those efforts fail, the council has three options when reconvening: adjourn the meeting, extend the recess to allow further remediation, or continue the open session after adopting a roll‑call finding that good‑faith efforts were made and the public interest in continuing outweighs remote access.

City Clerk (Speaker 5) told the council that the city had experienced one livestream incident in the past four years and that staff records hard copies of meetings on‑site to preserve the public record. “We check in periodically on YouTube to see, is it going out? Is it live? Is it there? Can we actually verify that?” staff said.

Council members asked how staff would verify an individual remote participant’s connection problems versus a system outage and discussed required redundancies such as UPS backups and cabling upgrades. Staff committed to returning with itemized costs for equipment changes needed to meet SB 707 requirements by the June meeting.

The council adopted the resolution by voice vote; the clerk recorded those in favor as 'Aye.' The resolution formalizes the city’s procedure for dealing with participation disruptions and provides council options if remote access cannot be restored within the statutory timeframe.

Next steps: staff will quantify SB 707 compliance costs and return with recommended purchases and any required supplemental budget requests.