Cd’A Council using Zoom to keep meetings public

Coeur d’Alene City Council meetings are seldom empty venues. People show up at the library’s community room to give testimony, to accept an award, or simply out of civic duty or sheer curiosity.

But COVID-19 has curtailed face-to-face interaction.

“There are items that need to be taken care of,” City Clerk Renata McLeod said. “The business of the city still has to go on. We have to provide basic services to help our citizens, which means we need to conduct these meetings just as we normally would.”

Some city committee and commission meetings are on hold, but some city business must continue. Essential services must be provided. Ordinary decisions must still be made. These musts, by law, require public meetings.

“This is a first for us,” City Administrator Troy Tymensen said. “We’ve seldom even had a time when we haven’t had enough council members show up to hold a quorum, let alone cancel a meeting.”

General services that provide everything from clean water to clean parks must continue throughout the crisis. So the essential committees will continue on with their scheduled meetings, including tonight’s council meeting.

Gov. Little in March ordered no more than 10 people in a public place at any one time. While the community room is designed to hold as many as 207, the combination of social distancing, concern over violating the governor’s order and simple fear of a deadly coronavirus has forced these meetings into the virtual world.

“Based on the governor’s proclamation, we’re going to follow the law, which says we can still have a meeting, so long as you have some sort of telephonic connection,” McLeod said.

The City Council meeting’s physical space in the community room will be closed to the public. All participants will practice social distancing of at least six feet.

Public participants and some city staff will dial in through Zoom, a video-chatting program that can be installed on phones and computers to facilitate meetings. The app’s popularity has skyrocketed since the coronavirus crisis began, as homebound workers and schoolchildren alike have used it to remain connected.

Tonight’s meeting will still be aired live through the city’s usual venues on CDA TV, through YouTube and through the city’s Facebook page.