Agenda Summary
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City Clerk submitting an amendment to the Rules of the City Council to accommodate remote participation and facilitate accessibility.
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Official Text
To the Honorable City Council:
I hereby convey to this Council three proposed amendments to the Rules of the City Council, as adopted on February 10, 2022.
The open meeting law requires that a quorum of a public body be in attendance at all times during a meeting of that body. The allowances for remote participation provide for circumstances in which a quorum of the City Council may not be present in the council chamber. Under those circumstances it is important that members who are participating remotely be easily and immediately identifiable as present or absent to determine whether a recess is necessary to re-establish quorum or for the meeting to proceed. When a member is on camera, their presence is obvious to their colleagues, the City Clerk, committee clerks, and the public which eliminates uncertainty and allows meetings to proceed uninterrupted when the presence of a quorum might otherwise be in question if they were not on camera.
Additionally, the City Council has made great strides in accessibility by implementing closed captioning for its meetings. Members of the public watching the livestream of the proceedings, or reviewing the recorded video after the fact, should expect to have the same understanding of the outcome of a vote as those who are physically present in the council chamber. For the captioning to reflect a councilor's vote, it must be clearly voiced directly into a microphone, and for the video to capture a councilor while they are speaking, they must be in their assigned seat.
For these reasons, I submit the following amendments to maintain the City Council's commitment to transparency and accessibility, and adherence to the open meeting law.
Rule 5. A majority of the entire membership shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business. A member parti...
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