Town Board tightens Zoom access, extends BESS moratorium 6 months

By THANE GRAUEL

Tightening scrutiny of who is admitted to Town Board Zoom meetings was on Tuesday’s agenda, but before the item was taken up, a “Zoombomber” busted into the livestream for an encore appearance.

The Town Board’s Aug. 5 meeting was disrupted when someone on the Zoom call began streaming a pornographic video. That was the second time over the summer such an incident occurred at a town meeting.

On Tuesday, local attorney John Nathan went to the podium some 20 minutes into the meeting to discuss the need to identify what litigation in particular was to be discussed before the board convenes into any executive session, which he said has not been customary in Pound Ridge but is required by state open meeting laws.

Then Zoombomber made an encore, streaming a pornographic video with sound, which played over the monitors in the Town House meeting room.

“Oh, here we go ...” Supervisor Kevin Hansan said.

“I’m going to take this personally,” Nathan joked before taking his seat again. He was speaking at the last meeting when it got Zoombombed.

Town Clerk Erin Trostle silenced the sound and moved the hacker to the virtual waiting room to stop the video. While August meeting’s disruption appeared to shock some viewers, Tuesday’s interruption appeared to be taken almost in stride, with some headshaking and jokes.

The meeting resumed within a minute.

Trostle’s request on the agenda was to tighten access to the online meetings.

“Currently, a Zoom link for each Town Board meeting is posted on the website calendar,” she wrote in a memo to board members. “While there is a virtual waiting room, it has been my practice to admit everyone who enters the waiting room to the meeting. Going forward, I would like to add a passcode feature and to require anyone wishing to participate via Zoom to register in advance in order to receive the passcode. The Vimeo livestream would still allow anyone to view the meeting remotely.”

There was some discussion, and assurances that the process could be tweaked as needed. The item passed unanimously.

The Town Board also voted unanimously for a six-month extension of its moratorium on large-scale battery energy storage systems, or BESS, while permanent rules are being worked out.

The board also voted unanimously to make The Recorder the town’s newspaper of record, for placement of legal notices. The Journal News had been the paper of record since The Record Review shut down in January 2024.

“Having had a paid circulation since September 13, 2025, The Recorder now meets the statutory definition of a newspaper,” Trostle wrote in a memo to board members.