Residents ask Floral Park board to broadcast village meetings

Rebecca Klar

Residents are asking the Floral Park village board to consider letting videos taken by Just The Facts Media be broadcast to residents.

The request was laid out in a letter written by Nadia Holubnyczyj-Ortiz, a resident and president of the Hillcrest Civic Association, who read it aloud at Tuesday’s board meeting.

Holubnyczyj-Ortiz will also send the letter to the village mayors of South Floral Park, Bellerose and Stewart Manor.

The broadcasting would come at no charge, Holubnyczyj-Ortiz said.

The videos are already recorded by Felix Procacci, who posts them on the website JustTheFactsMedia.com and the corresponding YouTube channel. 

To broadcast them on TV, Procacci would send his videos to Four Village Studio, a government access television facility that produces community interest programming.

Four Village Studios has two channels for the public to watch, one through Optimum, that began airing in 1998, and one through Fios, that began airing in 2008.

The intent would be to better inform and educate the public, especially those who cannot make it regularly to meetings, Holubnyczyj-Ortiz said.

Procacci said he films local government meetings to bring more awareness to the public.

He said that broadcasting would allow residents to watch on a regular basis, which he said is important.

He said attending only one or two meetings is like only watching one episode of a soap opera – it doesn’t give the full story.

“People have to be reminded every day that your local government are not really working for you,” Procacci said. “They’re working for themselves.”

If enough people watch and are engaged, it can change election results, Procacci said, adding that that scares many elected officials.

Mayor Dominick Longobardi said Procacci has been taping meetings since he has been mayor, and he is grateful for that.

Longobardi said there have been ongoing talks with the studio and there are formatting issues, but he is open to the idea if it is possibile.

Procacci said he would like his platform to be used to help candidates run issue-based campaigns.

He said he’d want it to be a way for candidates to advertise free of charge.

“If you take the money out of an election you have the issues,” Procacci said. “That’s what I want people to run on, the issues and not how much you raise.”

He said his goal is to create a space where people can be confident that they’re hearing the truth.

“This is the raw data,” Procacci said. “You decide how you vote.”

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