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04/07/2020 04:30 PMAs the COVID-19 crisis continues to stretch on, the Town of Clinton is investigating ways to hold public hearings while maintaining social distancing guidelines.
For the past month, almost all board and commission meetings have been canceled except for the biweekly town council meetings. In order to observe the orders from the state and the town that prohibit large gatherings of people, the town has also been forced to cancel previously scheduled public hearings.
The town is now considering ways to host virtual public hearings. The annual public hearing for the proposed budget, a hearing originally scheduled for April, has been postponed until Wednesday, May 6.
At a Town Council meeting on April 1—which was held with the council members all in separate locations using the videoconferencing app Zoom—Town Manager Karl Kilduff said that the town is looking into different methods of holding the hearings virtually.
The question, according to Kilduff, is which platform is best for the meeting. Kilduff said that Zoom has a 100-person capacity for a meeting. Recently, a different municipality in Connecticut held a hearing via Zoom, but organizers had to frequently ask people to leave the conference call to make sure the 100-person limit wasn’t exceeded, according to Kilduff.
With people being asked to stay home due to the virus, Kilduff speculated there could be an increased audience for public hearings that cover big ticket items that the town, and that the town should be prepared for such an increase. Other apps may have larger audience capacities, he said.
How to Zoom
There has been no decision made at press time about how the public hearings will be carried out. Town officials have stated that more information will be provided to the public on the town website and Facebook page on how to access public hearings. However, the Harbor News decided a rudimentary walk-through on how the meetings might work could be helpful to readers who have never used the technology.
There can be subtle differences between teleconference apps, but many operate in ways that are similar. The apps can be found online on websites and in app stores, and many are free to use, with some charging monthly fees for upgrades. They allow participants to view and listen to speakers remotely. The apps provide two-way video and audio connections, though each user can opt, in some cases, to use only the audio function, and sometimes users can mute their microphones so that people can’t hear them, or other household noises, during the call.
Meetings are generally run by a host who might have the option to mute people, to allow for one speaker to be heard at a time. Headphones that attach or pair with a computer or smartphone can be useful to filter out background noise to ensure the speaker is heard.
To access a meeting, the host sometimes has the option of posting or emailing a link to a virtual conference room that will go live at a specific time and date. For example, on April 1 the Town Council had a public hearing scheduled at 8 a.m. Members of the public were able to “attend” the meeting by clicking on a link that was posted on the website on the agenda for that day’s meeting. There were also instructions posted for people who wished to call into the meeting using their telephone. At the conclusion of a call, viewers can exit by hitting the end call button or hanging up their phone.
The budget public hearing, scheduled at this time for May 6, is not the only high-profile public hearing that may use this technology. The Planning & Zoning Commission had a public hearing scheduled for April 6 that has since been canceled. As part of that hearing, the public was set to hear more information on an application to put apartments in a building on the Unilever property.
One reason virtual public hearing could be useful for the Planning & Zoning Commission, in particular, is because of the time constraints in which applications must be processed.
The commission has 35 days from the opening of a public hearing to close the public hearing, and 65 days following the closure of a public hearing to render a decision. However, applicants have 65 days of possible extensions that can be requested at any time.
The application to build 41 apartments in an old office building on the former Unilever property was opened in February and was continued to April, so that questions about traffic, and other questions, could be answered. The arrival of the new coronovirus Connecticut prompted the town’s land use office to ask applicants to use some of their extension days to postpone their hearings so the PZC could postpone meeting in person.
Consultant planner John Guszkowski said: “The applicant granted the town an extension of the hearing until May, which will largely complete any of the statutorily allowed extensions. However, Governor Lamont issued an executive order about 10 days ago [Executive Order 7I, section 19] that allow the municipality or the applicant to add an additional 90 days of procedural extensions for any part of the application receipt, hearing, or deliberation process. I would anticipate that if the social-distancing order is not lifted by the end of April, [the PZC] will seek to migrate the public hearing to a virtual space.” As with the budget hearing, no formal plans have been laid yet for how the planning and zoning meetings will be held.