Despite COVID-19 driving everyone indoors, the City of Plant City has found a way to host a virtual commission meeting that will feature several presentations, public comment and, of course, the results of the group’s vote.
Hosting meetings in person simply cannot happen if the city wants to guarantee only 10 or fewer people will attend and abide by social distancing guidelines. It was faced with the choice of either finding an alternative method or forgoing meetings until this pandemic ends. It seemed reckless to wait with the future so uncertain, so City Manager Bill McDaniel tasked his staff with finding a method of holding virtual meetings instead.
“We’re using a technology called GoToWebinar to broadcast meetings,” McDaniel said. “A phone number and PIN will be provided for anyone who wants to be an audience member. We will also provide links to watch the meeting on your computer. You can also install an app on your tablet to join. If you use a computer or tablet, you will have access to some visual aids because we have two presentations Monday and you’ll be able to see them on your screen. If you call in, you’ll hear the audio.”
When city staff first began looking into finding a service to fit their needs, they hit a hurdle: how do we include public comment? Staff ended up building the operation from the ground up. The city has never had to do a virtual commission meeting before, so after going through a list of the “usual suspects,” it decided GoToWebinar would be best for its needs. It then developed a page on the website for the community to submit public comments prior to the commission meeting.
If you head to plantcitygov.com, you can submit your comments for the April 13 meeting up until 3 p.m. the day of commission.
Anything submitted after that time up until the 7:30 p.m. meeting will still be accepted, but it will only be included in the official record of the meeting. If you wish to call into the meeting, call 1-631-992-3221 and enter access code 917-780-830#. Live stream links will be on the city’s Facebook page and its YouTube channel. A link is also on the city’s website to register for the meeting via GoToWebinar.
The plan is for the city to continue to use this program for commission meetings for the duration of COVID-19. Once things have finally calmed down and it is safe to meet in person again, meetings will resume like normal at City Hall.
“Our team literally built this program from scratch in basically a little over a week,” McDaniel said. “We have tested it twice internally: a demo test and a load test with a bunch of people on to test how it would handle that. We trained ourselves on the features and a whole new system had to be created to include public comment. We had to basically write a script for the meeting. It’ll be different for sure, you’re missing all of your usual cues and indicators, so we are doing one-on-one training sessions with all of our commissioners so they are not seeing the technology for the first time Monday evening. I kind of liken it to you holding a meeting in a dark room and you can’t see what you normally see. We had to work around that and build the infrastructure from the ground up. I’m really proud of our team for being able to accomplish this in such a short period of time.”