Supervisor Gerry Siller on new rules for attending pubic meetings via Zoom

Shelter Island Town Supervisor. Judy Card photo

There are rules for attending public meetings virtually.

The way the Town hosts public meetings will be changed through the use of zoom.

Participants had to request links to the Town website from the meeting clerk in the past. The State and County recommendation to have these video meetings be as close to in person meetings as possible was criticized.
The public was able to access all links at their convenience, they didn’t need anyone’s approval to attend the meeting, and they could. The workload was decreased after initial set up. It makes sense that meetings with publicly posted links are more likely to be bombed.

The biggest risk posed to the Town is the users that are not properly logging into their account and attending the meetings under generic names.

To help protect the integrity of public meetings and diminish the ability to disrupt them, meetings will have a waiting room where attendees must reveal their names and the host will be able to re-name them. To speed up the process, the attendees should display their first and last names.

All public attendees are asked to turn off their cameras and stay quiet during the meeting if they want to join the discussion. The public attendees are asked to learn the virtual hand raise to participate in the discussion.
The policy will be reviewed in order to enhance public participation.

Thank you for your help.