Life after COVID: ‘Can you hear me?’ Local government forced to evolve in pandemic era – HollandSentinel.com

With COVID-19 forcing local city council and township board meetings online, technology problems have become the norm.Zoom

HOLLAND The Laketown Township Board of Trustees was in the midst of a roll-call foravote to approve the township's much-discussed budget for the next fiscal year includingdoubling the township's operating millage when they discovered a township trustee had disappeared from the Zoom meeting.

"Where's Jim Delaney?" asked Supervisor Linda Howell.

"He took off," responded a member of the public watching on Zoom.

The meeting was put on hold while a member of the public, also on Zoom, who had Delaney's cellphone number, called him.

Eventually, another board member, township Clerk Michelle Sall, managed to get Delaney on speaker phone so he could cast his vote on the township's $2.8 million budget through her Zoom connection.

The Laketown Township Board of Trustees meets over Zoom Wednesday, March 10, to approve the 2021-22 township budget.Carolyn Muyskens/Sentinel Staff

That made two of them. A second township trustee had already been relegated to voting via the township manager's cellphoneon speaker mode,after he lost connection earlier in the meeting.

With COVID-19 forcing local city council and township board meetings online, technology problems have become the norm, from the familiar refrains, "Can you hear me?" and "You're muted," to the off-kilter recitals of the Pledge of Allegiance which has proved impossible to say in unison over Zoom.

For that reason, and others, most local government representatives in the Holland area have been eager to get back to meeting in person when they can do so safely.

But some of the innovations forced by the COVID-19 pandemic may stick around, offering more ways for the public to access local government.

When stay-at-home orders were in effect in spring 2020, Holland City Council chose to keep meeting in person in city council chambers, where council members are distanced from each other.

Rather than bar in-person access to the meetings, which could be considered a violation of the Open Meetings Act, council strongly encouraged the public to view the meetings online and created a "virtual public comment" method an email address solely for public comment, publiccomment@cityofholland.com so that the public could still address the council without attending in person.

The city has long provided the public with remote access to its meetings through live broadcasts, available on Holland's public-access Holland Cable TV channel and on the city's YouTube page.

Mayor Nathan Bocks said he plans to keep the public comment email around after the pandemic ends.

It's provided another method for the public to communicate with council and make their concerns heard to the community, too public comments received this way are posted to the city's meeting portal along with other public documents.

And it may be less intimidating to some to write down their concerns than it would be to come to a council meeting, stand at the podium in front of nine council members and speak up.

For issues that generate a lot of public interest, the council gets dozens even hundreds of public comments sent to the email.

Jenn Manninen, left, and Jill DeJonge sit outside Holland City Hall Wednesday, Aug. 19, prior to the Holland City Council voting on an anti-discrimation ordinance.Brian Vernellis/Sentinel Staff

Maintaining public access to the business of local government during a pandemic is a difficult balancing act.

Challenges for the city of Holland over the past year included managing the crowds of residents who wanted to weigh in on a controversial expansion of the city's anti-discrimination protections in a new non-discrimination ordinance. Among the new protected classes were sexual orientation and gender identity a move which some Hollanders said threatened their religious freedom, while others, people who identify as LGBT and their friends and family, said the protections were necessary to make Holland a welcoming place for them.

At those meetings, and others where the council chambers has been unable to accommodate all of the members of the public who wanted to attend, the city organized a queue outside city hall for those waiting to speak to the council during public comment. Audio of the meeting was broadcast outside to those in line so they could follow what was happening.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services' orders in Novemberdid not exempt local government meetings from the restrictions on gathering. Thatforced city council to move to Zoom and, as soon as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced a relaxation of gathering rules in March, city council moved to meet in person again.

Other local municipalities went all virtual, and stayed that way, from the start. The city of Saugatuck, for example, shifted to Zoom meetings in the spring and has continued to meet virtually.

The Saugatuck City Council meets Wednesday to declare a local state of emergency, enabling the group to continue to meet remotely.Carolyn Muyskens/Sentinel Staff

This has led to an increase in public participation in meetings, with Zoom council meetings regularly drawing 30 to40 people to watch the council conduct business.

For Saugatuck, which has a small city hall, Mayor Mark Bekken called a special meeting over Zoom of the council to declare a state of emergency in the city to be able to continue meeting over Zoom after the Open Meetings Act authority to meet remotely expired April 1.

Case counts were still too high in the West Michigan area for the council to deem it safe to meet in person, and the council approved the local state of emergency unanimously.

In Ottawa County, the county board of commissioners extended a local state of emergency for the whole county, enabling all local government bodies to continue to meet remotely, if they choose to.

Holland Township had been gearing up to meet in person in April for the first time since budget deliberations in September, but once Ottawa County made it possible to meet virtually, the board decided to stay on Zoom for the month of April, due to the current rise in COVID-19 cases in West Michigan.

Holland Township first moved to an audioconferencing system in spring2020, before switching to the Zoom platform in the fall.

"There was a learning curve for each of those," said Holland Township Manager Steve Bulthuis, "but I think all parties involved, the board members, staff, as well as the public have all adapted to it very well and have all done their parts to continue to make the meetings participative and more efficient."

Bulthuis said he's received feedback from citizens that say it's more convenient to tune into a board meeting from a computer at home than make the drive to the township offices.

But what is convenient for technologically-savvy residents may be a barrier to access for other, older residents who do not have internet accessor arenot familiar enough with using a computer to join, Bulthuis worries.

Members of the Park Township Board of Trustees meet over Zoom Thursday, Dec. 10.

The Park Township Board of Trustees, by contrast, has adopted a hybrid model that allows board members and the public the choice to attend in person or to tune into the meetings over Zoom. A television screen set up in the board room, facing the other board members, displays the faces of the board members who are participating remotely.

Technology issues persist with this approach, and ultimately, most elected officials who have spoken up about the matter have said that meeting in person is better for getting the business of the township done, efficiently and transparently.

Without a local state of emergency in place due to COVID-19, local boards and councils will no longer legally be able to meet over Zoom.

But Park Township is expanding public's options to accessto its meetings, thanks to a proposal from Clerk Skip Keeter.

In years past, the Park Township Board of Trustees had discussed the idea of installing a camera systemto record meetings and make the videos available online but had rejected the idea. The township a decade ago had posted videos of its proceedings, but stopped the practice when it seemed little-used and costly.

Brought back to the boardlast month by Keeter, this time the idea was met with enthusiasm. On Thursday, the board approved an $8,000 investment in a camera system for the board room.

"The public has expressed some concerns about transparency, and by making recordings of themeetings available we should be able to answer their questions," Keeter said. "There's no light like sunlight, so if you shed light on everythingyou do and you're sharing it with the public, it should take away some ofthe qualms people have about our process with township government."

Though Keeter did not attribute the idea to the pandemic, the timing of the move lines up wellwithgathering restrictions still in place, even for government meetings,and rising COVID-19 cases in West Michigan.

"I can't tell you how much I hate Zoom meetings," Keeter said."I don't think COVIDnecessarily sped up the process, but I think it was moreresponding to our residents."

Contact reporter Carolyn Muyskens at cmuyskens@hollandsentinel.com and follow her on Twitter at @cjmuyskens.

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Published11:06 am UTC Apr. 10, 2021Updated8:29 pm UTC Apr. 10, 2021

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Life after COVID: 'Can you hear me?' Local government forced to evolve in pandemic era - HollandSentinel.com