Posted on August 13, 2021 at 2:37 pm by Carol Tannenhauser
By Carol Tannenhauser
The emergency rule that allowed public meetings to take place virtually during the pandemic has expired, forcing community boards to meet in person. But with the Delta variant causing a new wave of COVID in the city, the local board is pushing back, saying it endangers their health.
Concerned about their ability to meet safely, 30 members of Community Board 7 have signed an open letter to Governor Cuomo, Lt. Governor Hochul, and members of the state legislature, asking that the right to meet virtually afforded to them during the pandemic be restored.
“Thanks to the State of Emergency declared by the Governor in March 2020, our Community Board, as well as as many other…government entities were able to continue to meet and conduct the public’s business using virtual platforms such as Zoom, Teams and WebEx,” the letter stated. “The lifting of the State of Emergency in June 2021 has for all practical purposes eliminated the ability of Community and other Boards to meet via virtual platforms….We respectfully urge the Legislature to adopt, and the Governor to sign into law, amendments to the Open Meetings Law that would restore the ability of Boards to meet using virtual platforms that accomodate public participation.”
Normally, the Community Board would have drafted a formal resolution — a non-binding recommendation — to accomplish its goal, but time ran out, said Board Member Richard Robbins. “We had an emergency full board meeting in early July before the executive order ended, at which many board members said they weren’t comfortable meeting in person. We talked about meeting outdoors but that idea got rejected. I proposed a resolution calling for an extension of the executive order, but by the time we started discussing it, too many members had left the meeting so we didn’t have a quorum.”
With Delta raging, community boards have no safe way to meet. An open letter signed by 30 @CB7Manhattan members (as we can’t legally meet to vote on a resolution) to once again allow Zoom meetings. https://t.co/J2JDjii4vj cc: @westsiderag
— Richard Robbins (@rich1) August 13, 2021
In addition to safety, the letter lauds the increased public participation that the virtual meetings engendered. “Indeed, several Community Boards have reported far greater numbers of public participants in virtual meetings than had ever attended in-person meetings prior to the Pandemic — at least one Community Board reported participation by over 1,300 members of the public in a virtual meeting in 2020.”
We are awaiting a response from the Governor’s office.
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