Virtual Public Hearing

Shouting matches, insults, curses upend Berne's Zoom meeting

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A controversial public hearing in Berne over a proposal to expand the town Planning Board from five to seven people and to allow convicted felon and ex-judge Thomas Spargo to serve on the Planning Board, devolved into an acrimonious shouting match filled with technological glitches, unmuted microphones, and Zoom-bombing before adjourned to another date.

The raucous and unruly video-conference debate featured insults between board members, confusion over who was speaking and ultimately a foreign language being typed on the screen