Board of Aldermen 08-09-2022 Page 14
my colleagues that it’s being abused by some members of the public and that the ability for us to create laws or rules
surrounding what can and can’t be said are and rightfully so in some cases restricted by the First Amendment and | agree
with that interpretation.
So where | am struggling with this is how do we balance giving access to the public in a way that is constructive where
they can come to us and speak to us constructively either for or against something or whatever their opinion may be and
do it in a way where they might not be able to get to this chamber for whatever reason. | feel like having that ability | think
is a good in general a good thing. | think we have two pieces of legislation this evening — one of which I’m a sponsor of
that might help us with that in the future that | think will likely get broad support from this Board. | think that there are other
things that can potentially be done technologically wise with Zoom that we haven't explored. | Know that there is the
ability to have it where you can mute almost everyone except for certain people. That technology exists. | don’t know if
we have to pay for it. | don’t know if that would be more of another cost but it’s out there.
| don’t know. | don’t know if we’ve explored it enough to just shut it off. | don’t know. I’m really struggling with it because |
err on the side of being with the public’s ability to access our Board. | think what | had initially said was out of anger for
what had happened at that Finance Committee by a certain member of the public. We can’t live our lives based on the
bad actions of certain people. | don’t Know where I’m going to vote on this tonight and those are my struggles.
Alderwoman Kelly
Thank you, President Wiltshire. | want to start by thanking you for bringing this forward. | think there have been multiple
issues with Zoom, especially in the recent months and | think it was good for us to talk about it as a Board. I've been
taking notes as we've been talking and the pieces of this from a problem standpoint that I'm concerned about our
decorum. We are all on the same page in terms of how we as a body works, but the decorum has definitely eroded and |
think that that needs to be addressed, especially when it comes to public comment.
The other concern that I've heard from others that I'm also concerned about is the funding and that that $11,000 is just
what they're doing now and that moderating a public forum is very different than moderating a group of people who have,
you know, know how to use Zoom and we are employees of the city. So | think that that is something that we need to talk
about. | think that the public forum is and more access is important. But there are technological things that need to
happen in order for that to be a safe environment for everybody.
| don't buy the tech issues. | agree with some of the things that have been said here. There's a ton of bells and whistles
with Zoom. There's a whole page that you can - I've been on with Congressman and we've made it so that people can,
you know, talk when we want them to talk and they're muted when not. So there are ways around this. I'm not an expert
so | think | would love some more information on how we fix that. Where | struggle and right now is that | think that part of
this is values and we've talked about this as a country for a long time. You know work has changed. It's not a butts and
seats anymore. People are working remotely from California to New Hampshire. COVID really did change the culture in
terms of how we work and being physically present isn't this like thing to a few says the only way that you can do the work
that you need to do. | know that | personally had to Zoom in multiple times and part of that was because | wanted to
protect everyone in this horseshoe. My son was unable to be vaccinated until one month ago. So | think through COVID
we've learned a lot about people's risk levels and how they feel in terms of, you know, their ability to want to come out,
whether they want to wear a mask, or not wear a mask. | think that your own risk level and the public’s risk level might be
different. | never would want someone to not be able to come because they're afraid.
| also agree with the comment that the fall could be very different. | don't think COVID is done with us as much as we
want to be done with it. So | would really hate to be in a position where we cut this off and then people feel like they can't
access, or they might want to come but they have COVID, or they're a high risk person who might be very concerned
about the levels at the time. So | really am struggling with this as well and a lot of people have said that. | think that there
are problems to fix but right now | don't feel comfortable just cutting it off.
Alderman Dowd
Speaking of the technical issues, there are a few things that concern me greatly. One is my FCC rule - anything televised
has a delay so that anything inappropriate can be cut out before it gets aired. Our Zoom is open to anybody even kids
and anything said, there's no delay, there's no cut, they hear everything that is said on Zoom. Lately we've had a number
of instances where things that have been said on Zoom that people shouldn't hear. We don't have a way to fix that right
now with any kind of delay. | use Zoom a lot and | don't know of any way to do it. So that bothers me.
The other thing that bothers me is that if we have an issue with Zoom, we can't have a meeting. Several times the
meetings have been delayed or almost canceled because we have an issue with Zoom. That's taking things away from
