CHAPIN, S.C. — Residents looking for past Chapin Town Council meetings on the town’s official Facebook page are coming up empty. The full run of meeting videos, which had stretched back several months, was gone from the page by this past weekend.
Mayor Bill Mitchell, who runs the account, has said he did not delete them. He says the meetings stream as Facebook Live videos and that the platform removes those on its own after 30 days. Mayor Pro Tem Ainslee Bost has noted that the Oct. 20 meeting is also missing, even though it falls inside that 30-day window, and she has questioned the mayor’s limits on public comments during the live streams.
Mitchell has said the videos were a courtesy rather than a legal duty, and that meeting minutes are posted on the town website. He gave mixed answers on whether copies were kept, and he has said the town does not plan to put the older meetings back up. The town may post future meetings on YouTube, he said.
State open-meetings law requires every public body to keep written minutes of its public meetings, covering the date, time and place, which members were present and the substance of what was discussed or decided. Those minutes are public records. The same law lets anyone attending a public meeting record it on video, as long as the recording does not interfere with the meeting, and it does not require a public body to supply the recording equipment.
The dispute is the latest strain for the Lexington County lakeside town, where council members and the mayor have clashed for months over hiring, legal advice and the Brighton development. Ryan Hicks has served as the town’s lawyer since September.
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