Scott Myers: City taking extraordinary measures to keep meetings public

To The Daily Sun,

I would like to address a letter written by Ms. Jane LaRoche in the Thursday, May 7 edition of The Laconia Daily Sun regarding a recent Planning Board meeting where she raises a concern about not being able to contribute to their meetings and states that “The public should be able to attend the meetings via Zoom.” I would like to use this as an opportunity to remind/update the public as to how the city of Laconia is conducting public meetings in order to ensure openness and public participation in these trying times.

The city, for years now, posts all of their public meeting agendas on the city website and the majority of these agendas also contain links to the background information that boards/commissions/councils receive in their agenda packets. The goal is to provide as much information as possible. In addition to the website posting, all agendas are linked to the city’s e-newsletter, Laconia Links, that goes out to thousands of e-mail addresses every Friday afternoon.

Since March, the city has conducted public meetings in a revised manner through emergency orders issued by the Governor’s Office. These orders were issued to allow municipalities to conduct business in light of the fact that public gatherings need to be of less than 10 people, which would be a significant challenge under normal meeting procedures.

City meeting agendas begin with the statement “Due to the COVID-19 crisis and in accordance with Governor Sununu’s Emergency Order #12 and Executive Order 2020-04 this meeting is to be conducted electronically. The public has access to listen and participate in this meeting by using the following link.” The link brings people to the Zoom meeting and we provide the password. We also provide a “Listen Only” telephone number for those who choose to listen but not speak.

We are also “live streaming” meetings on YouTube so people can opt to view the meeting if they choose. We also provide an emergency telephone number and e-mail so we can be notified in real-time if the Zoom meeting is not functioning properly and therefore public participation is not possible. Under that situation, we are required to suspend the meeting until the Zoom issue can be fixed. If we cannot fix it, the meeting must be ended.

In addition to this information being contained on all agendas, the board chair reads all of this into the record and provides links, passwords and telephone numbers at the beginning of every meeting. So far, the city has had very good viewership and participation via these electronic means. If anyone has any questions on how to access agendas or meetings, please contact my office at 527-1270 for assistance.

I encourage all Laconia residents to stay safe, stay informed and stay involved.

Scott Myers

Laconia City Manager