Opinion: Council Must Retain Zoom Meeting Format

The Town Council’s recent decision to continue to conduct all council and committee meetings over Zoom expires at the end of the month and the council will take up the issue again at their meeting of September 27. Councilors Mandi Jo Hanneke (at large) and Evan Ross (District 4) are expected to once again argue that the council and its committees should meet only in person. Other town committees (i.e. those appointed by the town manager) will continue to meet via Zoom into October, until at least Indigenous People’s Day, and their meeting format moving forward will be determined by Town Manager Paul Bockelman

It is imperative that the Amherst Town Council continue to hold its meetings live via Zoom while the Delta variant continues to impact our community, and beyond. These meetings are protecting the health of our council and of the general public, while assuring the availability of gavel-to-gavel recordings of council discussions. Modern lifestyles were changing prior to COVID-19, so that more business of all kinds was conducted online, a trend that has been amplified by the pandemic. It is fair to expect a modern local government to offer robust electronic access to its proceedings.

Background To The Vote
At the council meeting of August 23, Hanneke and Ross argued that the pandemic is sufficiently under control that meeting in person is now safe according to the CDC and that meeting remotely is no longer necessary, that meeting remotely is less effective than meeting in person, and that meeting remotely is a significant inconvenience for committee chairs. Hanneke has also shockingly argued that the only reason people want remote meetings is because “they just don’t feel like getting in their car and driving down to town hall.” Hanneke was the only chair of a committee of the council, the Community Resources Committee (CRC), to insist after the August 23 council meeting, that the committee’s meetings be held only in person. That first in-person-only meeting was held on July 13 and included a public hearing on the rezoning of the lot behind CVS. It was not recorded but was attended by a few members of the public. Following their first in-person-only meeting, the CRC returned to meeting via Zoom. Hanneke explained that after further consideration, she realized that it was too confusing to have council committees meeting using different formats. (Note: Councilors George Ryan (District 3) and Pat DeAngelis (Disttict 2) were the only other councilors who voted at the August 23 meeting in support of returning to an in-person meeting format).

The Counter Argument
The counter argument to an in-person-only format is that some residents and some members of the council have underlying medical conditions that make gathering in a relatively small room an unacceptable risk during the current Delta variant surge. There are now 321 active cases of COVID-19 in Amherst, up from only four on September 1. In addition, mobility/accessibility issues prevent or make it difficult for some residents to attend meetings at town hall.

An additional benefit of  Zoom meetings is that they are all recorded, so meetings can be viewed in real time or after the fact. Although Amherst Media works extremely hard to broadcast town government meetings to the public, prior to Zoom, the only meetings that were recorded were the ones held in the Town Room of Town Hall, and those recordings were not always readily available. And that meant that the proceedings of the Community Resources Committee, which has played a critical role in shaping the slew of zoning amendments that have been recently rushed through the council, were only accessible to people who were able to attend in person at the mid-workday time of 2 p.m. on Tuesdays.

Zoom meetings have been widely acknowledged as a boon to democracy (see here, here, and here) and have been noted for increasing public participation and civic engagement. The Massachusetts Municipal Association has suggested that because remote meetings make government more accessible, that some form of remote participation should be retained permanently after the COVID pandemic is over. And some New England communities have already begun to permanently adopt some form of remote participation (see here, here, and here).

The council did briefly experiment with a hybrid form of meeting on June 21 in which a quorum of councilors and some members of the public met in person wearing masks at town hall while other councilors and residents were able to follow and participate in the proceedings over Zoom. That format appeared to be widely unpopular. Several observers noted that masked participants were difficult to understand and Council President Lynn Griesemer reported that hybrid meetings are especially challenging to manage and that they create considerably more work for the town IT staff. So there was little enthusiasm voiced for hybrid meetings when the Council voted to continue exclusively with Zoom until September 27.

An Embarrassment For Amherst
It is shameful , but sadly, no longer surprising, that some councilors would disparage members of the public and question their motivation simply because those residents are trying to overcome obstacles to their access to government process. It is embarrassing for Amherst that while other municipalities are improving resident access by embracing the lessons of the pandemic and moving government into the 21st century, some of our town officials are promoting a regressive path. 

The insistence that we now return to in-person-only meetings is disrespectful of residents and of democratic process. It is a move for less transparency in government. And it is noteworthy that those calling for a return to meeting exclusively in person have been the councilors least supportive of government transparency. As Chair of CRC and former Chair/Member of the Government, Organization and Legislation Committee (GOL), Hanneke holds considerable sway over half of the major Council subcommittees. Those committees  need to be on Zoom and recorded. Otherwise  they are essentially out of the public’s eye. .They are not covered by the Amherst Media contract, and generally not by the commercial media. It is very important that they not be shrouded in secrecy.

Returning to in-person-only meetings right now endangers the public and makes government less accessible.  A vote against continued remote access is a vote against public health, open government, and against democracy itself. 

When the council votes on September 27, the vote should not be to just extend Zoom meetings for another month or so until we get past the latest surge. The vote should be to permanently embrace robust, regular electronic  access.

I call on residents of Amherst to write to their councilors and demand that they do the right thing for their constituents and for democracy and permanently adopt remote access for government meetings as well as assuring  that a video record will be made of all such meetings. 

Art Keene is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at UMass, where he co-founded and co-directed two civic leadership programs. He is the managing editor of the Amherst Indy.