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Date: 2/15/2023
NORTHAMPTON — During the City Council meeting on Feb. 2, City Council President Jim Nash reported that he and Council Vice President Karen Foster began pondering the idea of hybrid City Council meetings in the future.
Background
Back in July, former Gov. Charlie Baker extended the state’s Open Meeting Law emergency provisions to March 31 of this year. The provisions, borne out of the coronavirus pandemic, allow public bodies to continue spearheading meetings remotely without a quorum of the public body physically present.
Back in July, Reminder Publishing reported on reactions from city officials about Baker’s decision to extend for another eight months.
At that time, Nash told Reminder Publishing that he and the council are big proponents of a hybrid/remote model within the city.
“First and foremost, the level of participation by the public, the ability of people to be involved, has been expanded,” said Nash. “That’s very evident to us that that was an aspect we very much wanted to maintain.”
While some committees have conducted meetings through a hybrid mechanism, the majority of meetings from the city’s larger municipal bodies, like City Council, have remained remote in Northampton thanks to the help of Northampton Open Media and their YouTube page. The overall consensus, Nash said, is a hybrid format could work in the future.
“The other piece is, for the council we have now, if we did not have this expansion, at least three councilors would have challenges to being part of council,” said Nash, at the time. “The remote option has expanded who can consider being on council.”
Nash also added that the City Council will most likely not consider going back to a full in-person model, where the only way for the public to interact is by standing at a podium. “We’re not going back to that willingly,” said Nash.
City Council
With those remote provisions most likely expiring at the end of March, and no indication of an extension, Northampton is considering that hybrid option.
“One of things that we are talking about doing is…having our two March council meetings be in a hybrid format so we can work out some of the details before it’s imposed upon us,” said Nash.
To prepare for a possible shift to hybrid, Nash said he visited one of the Easthampton City Council meetings to see how they operate under this format.
According to Nash, the Northampton City Council may want to implement some of the provisions Easthampton uses during their hybrid meetings. For example, Nash said they require at least five councilors present in the room while the other can be remote.
Additionally, the council’s Committee on City Services met on Feb. 6 to briefly discuss the hybrid potential further.
During the meeting, the members of the committee agreed that they would investigate different locations throughout the city to see where a hybrid council meeting is viable.
“We know there are some people who don’t have access to the technology or knowledge to get onto Zoom and participate in a meeting,” said Foster.
The council will talk about this issue further in their next council meeting on Feb. 16.