Uniontown mayor denies accusation
Councilman accuses Fike of making threat A Uniontown councilman says the mayor threatened him and told him that he was not allowed to videotape council meetings.
Councilman Gary Gearing claims the incident took place in Fike’s office a couple hours before the July 7 council meeting. He said Fike called him into his office, told him he wasn’t allowed to continue recording the meetings and threatened to have him arrested if he did.
Mayor Ed Fike vehemently denied the accusation.
Gearing has been recording council meetings since shortly after he took office in January. He said he sends the recordings to California University of Pennsylvania’s television station, CUTV, for broadcasting.
“I said I would continue. He (the mayor) said it was council’s wishes and he runs the meetings. I said neither you nor council has the right to stop someone from recording the meetings,” Gearing said.
He said Fike told him that he asked an attorney and the attorney agreed with him.
“I said, “I’m bringing a camera’, he said he’d have me arrested and confiscate my camera,” Gearing said.
“I never threatened to have him arrested,” Fike said.
Fike said he wants council meetings recorded and broadcasted, but he doesn’t know if Gearing is recording the meetings for legitimate purposes.
“If it’s legitimate, it’s all well and good,” Fike said. “We want our transparency. We want our message to go out.”
Gearing said he recorded the July 7 meeting, but found it suspicious that the electric outlet where he usually plugs in his camera was not working. He said he used a different outlet.
“I’m trying to maintain open government. We’re definitely not an open government as far as the city goes and people have right to know what’s going on. It’s their city and the majority of them can’t make to a meeting. It’s a free service that’s being provided,” Gearing said.
Fike said he and Councilman Philip Michael have talked to Kingfish Worldwide Inc. of Uniontown about recording meetings and sending the tapes to CUTV, and the Fayette Chamber of Commerce has offered to do the recording beginning in October or November.
“We want it filmed. We want it to go out to the people,” Fike said. “There were no threats. I said we wanted it done professionally.”
“All we want to do is have someone who is professional and unbiased tape it,” Michael said, adding that having a professional record the meetings would eliminate the possibility of Gearing editing the recordings.
He said he hasn’t seen any of the meetings Gearing recorded aired on any TV channel transmitted by Atlantic Broadband, which provides cable TV service in the city.
Fike and Michael said the city used to pay to have council meetings recorded and aired on the Herald-Standard’s TV station, HSTV, while the station was in operation.
Michael said he would like to see recordings of the meetings posted on the Herald-Standard’s website.