The City Council will be meeting in person on July 28 with an audience of residents who wish to comment and observe for the first time since March 2020.
“This will be the first time the new council meets in person,” City Clerk Laura Swistak told The Daily News.
She was referring to the City Council elected in November 2020, including new Elizabeth Fuerte and Charlie Holder.
The state’s emergency order allowing virtual meetings for public bodies expires on Friday, July 23. After that date, the members of city and town councils and local boards and commissions are required to attend in person.
There was legislation before the General Assembly before it adjourned at the end of June that would have allowed cities and towns to continue conducting virtual public meetings until July 1, 2023. However, that bill did not pass.
Communities like Middletown and Portsmouth have set up technology and procedures that will allow observers to comment during public meetings, but Swistak said that will not be happening in Newport going forward.
“If you want to comment, you have to be present in person — no hybrid meetings,” she said.
The meetings still can be watched live on the city's website.
City Council members began meeting in person for a brief period in July 2020 after then Councilman Justin McLaughlin successfully sponsored a resolution calling for their return.
But not every council member was present for those meetings. Councilwoman Kathryn Leonard, for example, continued attending virtually.
At that time, no more than 15 people in total, including the seven council members, could be present in the council chamber. Besides the council, the others were usually just key staff like City Manager Joseph J. Nicholson Jr., City Solicitor Chris Behan and Swistak.
“I think the council members will be happy to be back in the chamber,” Nicholson said at the time. “There’s no substitution for personal contact.”
No one from the public was present so the personal contact was not what it was pre-pandemic.
The council returned to all virtual meetings in August 2020 as the pandemic again heated up and technical problems persisted with the hybrid of council members physically present and and at least one other member virtual.
Mayor Jeanne-Marie Napolitano has been an opponent of any continuation of virtual meetings, or hybrid meetings with some people present and others virtual.
She is concerned about the costs of telecommunicating between officials and the public during meetings over an extended time period.
For the technology needed for conducting hybrid meetings to be installed in City Hall, “it would probably run about $200,000,” Napolitano has said. In addition, a staff member would be needed to help to run and monitor a hybrid meeting, she said.
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