Local government boards resume in-person meetings but they don’t necessarily look like before

This month, local governing bodies across the state resumed in-person meetings after 58 weeks under a governor’s executive order allowing electronic meetings.

The order, which had lifted requirements of state law so that governing bodies could meet electronically due to COVID-19, expired on April 28 without renewal by Gov. Bill Lee.

In a spot check of governing bodies, Tennessee Coalition for Open Government found that some resumed physical meetings just as before the pandemic. Others resumed physical meetings but continued citizen-friendly measures that they were not doing before the pandemic — such as livestreaming more meetings and posting the video to YouTube.

Some resumed meeting in their regular meeting rooms but reduced the amount of public seating to allow for social distancing, citing guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control.

Only one of the governing bodies checked by TCOG, the Memphis City Council, resumed meeting in person but has not yet allowed the public to attend.

Mask requirements at public meetings

Mask requirements were more of a suggestion than a requirement for citizens for most governing body meetings checked by TCOG. One exception is the Nashville Metro Council, which asks that citizens wear masks at the meetings because the city itself is still under an indoor mask requirement.

In Germantown, the mayor opened a meeting in May by asking citizens to observe the seating in the chambers, which was arranged for social distancing. He said citizens who were fully vaccinated and felt comfortable with distancing should feel free to remove their masks if they wished. He also noted that the doors to the meeting room would be kept open for ventilation.

In Jackson, the administrative assistant for the city council, Sandy Maxwell, said all the seats were open in their meeting room and they are leaving it up to individuals on whether or not they want to wear masks and socially distance. “We have plenty of seating,” she said.

City council meetings in two smaller cities, Bristol and Alcoa, are likewise back to normal with no limits on seating or mask requirements for the public.

In Knoxville, the main assembly room for the city council and county commission has a reduced audience seating capacity of 110  with some of the regular seats taped off. The city asks that citizens who decline to wear a face mask sit in the balcony where an extra podium and microphone is available to address the council during public forums. In addition, the city added extra chairs in the back of the room on the main floor to accommodate for the seats that were marked off to allow for social distancing.

Public seating for governing body meetings

Most governing bodies indicated that seating, even if limited, still seemed to be adequate and that no members of the public have been turned away.

Only one city checked by TCOG, Morristown, has confronted any issues with seating. In Morristown, the city council has taken out six of the 12 benches for the audience. It limited seating on the benches to two people, reducing audience capacity from about 72 people (six per 12 benches) to 12 people. To accommodate the overflow members of the public, the city set up a separate room with a video stream of the meeting and allowed citizens to enter the actual meeting room to address the council.

However, at least a few citizens have complained because priority for the limited public seating in the council meeting room is given to staff members, not citizens. The city administrative assistant told TCOG that the city planned to offer more seating at its next meeting by not limiting how many could sit on one of the six benches, which should increase public capacity to as much as 36 people. She also said that discussions were ongoing in terms of when seating might be returned to normal.

The Chattanooga City Council has a notice on its website that seating for citizens will be limited due to COVID-19 and face coverings will be required.

In Nashville, chairs are spread out in the large convention center space and so far, no one has been turned away, said Elizabeth Waites, the clerk for the city. In addition, the convention center is validating parking so members of the public do not have to pay for parking, just as if they came to a meeting in the council chambers at the Metro Courthouse.

Waites said some of the city’s smaller meeting spaces that normally would be used by a committee or other city boards do not support social distancing guidelines so meeting times are more varied so everyone can use the larger rooms that accommodate more people. “We just have to look at scheduling more closely,” she said.

“It’s been a good transition,” Waites said, noting she expected the Metro Council to be back in its regular chambers in late June or July.

Memphis bars public from physical meeting

The only governing body in the spot check by TCOG that does not allow the public to come to the meetings is the Memphis City Council. A representative with Memphis said the city council members resumed in-person meetings on May 3 and met in their regular meeting space.

However, the city still bars members of the public from attending. Citizens can watch a live video of the meeting and can submit public comments in writing, which will be read during the meeting, a practice that began during the pandemic.

It was unclear when the city might start allowing members of the public to be physically present at the public meeting.

Lee Pope, the open records counsel for the state Office of Open Records, said he had received several inquires from governing bodies about limiting public seating at meetings to allow for social distancing. He said it would be permissible to place reasonable restrictions on public access to the meeting, like limiting seating, if it was necessary to maintain public health and safety.

“If you want to cover up some of the chairs, we think that’s OK,” Pope said.

But can you entirely bar the public, as in Memphis?

“That’s more difficult. We advise against a complete prohibition of allowing anyone at meetings… Generally speaking, a blanket prohibition is not going to be seen as reasonable,”  he said.

He said during the height of the COVID-19 epidemic and stay-at-home orders, a complete ban on the public from attending a physical meeting may have been OK with other accommodations, but not now “when we’re on the tail end and people are getting vaccinated.”

A message for Brooke Hyman, the chief of staff for the Memphis City Council, was not returned as of Friday.

Video of meetings

At least one governing body in the TCOG spot check has embraced some of the citizen-friendly measures put in place during the pandemic — the video streaming of meetings and availability of the videos on the web afterward.

In Jackson, not all committee meetings of the city council were livestreamed before the pandemic. As committees returned to in-person meetings, the budget committee questioned whether it should continue to video record the meetings.

Maxwell said that because the videos during the pandemic were placed on a YouTube channel, she could go back and see how many people had watched. “We didn’t realize how many people were going to the YouTube channel. We started looking at the clicks and were really pleased.”

A recent budget committee meeting had about 20 to 30 members watching the video. “For me, wow. I didn’t think that many people cared. That convinced (the budget committee) to continue to video record their meetings.”

Maxwell said she made another change during the pandemic. In the minutes of the meeting, she gives a link to the video online and the time marker for each discussion item so members of the public can go right to the portion of the meeting they are interested in.

The changes weren’t all about the pandemic, she said. The mayor had run in 2019 on a platform of transparency and wanted citizens to be able to see what their representatives said about issues they cared about, whether they agreed or not.

The city of Bristol was livestreaming its city council meetings before the pandemic using YouTube and a local cable channel.

John Luttrell, the community relations director, said this experience made it easier when the city council and other boards and commission starting meeting by Zoom under the governor’s executive order. The only challenge during the pandemic was when some members of the city council wanted to be in a physical location and others wanted to patch in remotely. The hybrid meeting required setting up large screens in the meeting room so each remote participant could be seen and setting up a number of microphones feeding into an audio board.

Luttrell said Bristol will continue livestreaming city council meetings, but not all the committees. That’s because of the number of staff needed to manage the video and the auditorium where the city council meets is the only meeting space set up with cameras and audio equipment. The auditorium has two fixed cameras, one which is focused on the guest podium and the other shooting the whole room, with a person manning each camera. A third person is on a video switcher and a member of the IT staff is manning a sound board.

Some city councils have livestreamed and recorded their meetings for years. For example, the Germantown Board of Aldermen meeting video is available on the city’s website going back more than 10 years.