The chairs of the Newton City Council met Monday to discuss if Zoom is a secure enough platform for council meetings and whether AI transcripts or summary notes are the best way to convey information to Newton residents.
“The meeting format is the way to go,” said Ward 8 Councilor-at-Large David Kalis. “It is very important for the community to know who is there. It is a lot more of a community effort, and people feel more welcome than when you’re in the webinar format. I’m willing to live with the Zoom bombing, as unpleasant as they are. It’s a real public square-type format.”
The main issue with Zoom has been the rise of “Zoom bombings,” which are when members of the public intentionally disrupt the meeting, causing it to end prematurely. For Ward 7 Councilor Lisle Baker, filtering out these interruptions and protecting the sanctity of council meetings are his top priorities.
“I am not a fan of using Zoom,” Baker said. “I’m prepared to move my committee to the extent that I can, to the webinar format, because I think the public interest is in having people hear and see what is said. That is really much more important than knowing who else is on the call, so I’m not a fan of Zoom.”
Newton’s city clerk, Drew Willison, suggested the clerk’s office monitor the number of people coming to meetings over the next month. This data can then be used to help guide the council going forward.
“I’m wondering if the clerk’s office could keep track over the next month of how many members of the public come into our meetings,” Willison said. “We could pick the meetings that we want more people to be part of, and those meetings can be Zooms. But if we could get some data from the clerk’s office about how many people are actually coming in, that might be useful.”
The lack of clerk’s office staff was also discussed, as well as new staff who are still learning the office’s protocols for writing meeting reports. The current standard practice of the council is to post recorded meetings alongside an audio recording, explained Willison.
Ward 7 Councilor-at-Large Becky Walker Grossman expressed concerns about changing the current system and including a written transcript.
“I don’t love the idea of having to capture the mood, tone, and context of an individual counselor’s comment,” Grossman said. “And I would just also add on top of it, particularly in this time of transition with so many new members of our staff coming in, there is definitely a learning curve and a fair amount of variability.”
Ward 5 Councilor-at-Large Brittany Hume Charm suggested a compromise between the new and old systems.
“One compromise could be to have the meeting notes offer timestamps in the videos of when certain docket items were addressed,” Charm said. “So that they’re easy to find in the video.”
Ward 3 Councilor-at-Large Andrea Kelley highlighted that Newton residents are the ones requesting more information from the council, not just city officials.
“It’s not just councilors who are looking for this information, as many of us have been hearing at office hours and talking to constituents, it’s residents who would like to see who said what,” Kelley said. “There’s a lot to be said for having a written record of a committee report, which is basically a summary of notes.”
Ward 1 Councilor-at-Large Alison Leary offered a solution based on Newton Mayor Marc Laredo’s approach to transparency.
“It would be really great to make things easier to find on the city’s web page,” Leary said. “I’m just thinking of our prior mayor’s newsletter and our current mayor’s newsletter. Those are very well received.”
Click Here For The Original Source.
