A brief, but unusual, public hearing took place last Thursday in Utica, N.Y., in connection with a reduced budget for the city's street repair plan, from $5 million to $3 million.
The hearing, held via videoconference, showed Mayor Robert Palmieri, City Clerk Melissa Sciortino and Deputy City Clerk David Butler wearing face masks and spaced around a table in the Common Council chambers in City Hall.
Immortalized on the city's YouTube channel, the video meeting is brief — just over two minutes in length. During the meeting, Palmieri said the city clerk's office received no public comment, then closes the hearing.
Common Council President Michael Galime said the council had to go to remote meetings at the drop of a hat, following the closure of City Hall on March 16.
"In a few short weeks we've brought the members, city staff and the press together on live WebEx hosted meetings," Galime said in an email. "As of April 1st, we achieved live streaming of the meetings on YouTube Live for public real-time viewing."
Amid his praise for those involved for making the switch, Galime said enabling the public to watch the council proceedings was a priority.
Councilwoman Maria McNiel said Galime and Frank Mutolo with the city's information technology department have done a phenomenal job of getting information out to the public about meetings.
"With the times we're facing, I believe we're doing the absolute best we can with what we have," McNiel said.
Now the focus is working on passing legislation with live public hearings, Galime said. One option would be to have the public sign up to speak at the hearing using the city clerk's email, clerk@cityofutica.com.
"This may be achieved by 'dialing people in' for their remarks to the council; the requirement being a person is available during the specific time allotted per public notice," Galime said in an email.
Public notices for property hearings already have been tailored to send input to the city clerk's email since April 1, Galime said.
General public comment, which usually occupies 30 minutes of the council's time during regularly scheduled meetings at City Hall, has been waived due to executive order, Galime said. If the city masters the ability to provide live input during videoconference meetings, the council may address it, Galime said. For now, the council receives any communications directed to the clerk's email address.
McNiel said she's received comment from a good number of constituents since meetings are no longer held at City Hall. She said residents have seen meeting agendas published in the newspaper and reached out to her.
"They've contacted me to express their feelings, and I've shared the feelings with all of my colleagues," McNiel said.
It's been a change in how she's had to handle interpersonal communication, McNiel said.
"For me, it's harder because I'm more of a face-to-face kind of person so I can see how they're feeling," she said. "But I think between emails and people getting me on Facebook and people calling me personally, I've had more talks with people now than before all of this happened."
Galime echoed McNiel's comments. He said the agenda in the newspaper has garnered a large amount of response from the public to the council, an increase since the start of the state being put on pause.
©2020 Observer-Dispatch, Utica, N.Y. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
