City Council to Leverage Technology to Hold Upcoming Council Meetings Remotely – In light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the social distancing measures encouraged by federal, state, county, and municipal leaders, Williamsport City Council will hold their regular meeting on April 16, 2020 at 6:30 pm remotely rather than in person at Trade and Transit Centre. City Council will leverage the virtual meeting platform Zoom, which allows collaboration of groups remotely via video conferencing and dial-in technology. The public will be able to watch the council session live through streaming capabilities. Access to the live meeting can be found at the following locations:
Comments from the Public: Members of the public can comment on any issue facing the city at the end of the meetings following comments from City Council members and members of the Administration. Any member of the public wishing to comment at the end of City Council’s virtual meetings can send an email to publiccomment@cityofwilliamsport.org email messages will be read into the record by the City solicitor. Please review the policy below pertaining to the acceptance of emailed messages.
Policy for Public Comment During Remote Meetings:
- Public comments will only be accepted as emailed messages sent to publiccomment@cityofwilliamsport.org
- Emailed messages should be limited to 300 words – in keeping with the 3 minute rule for public speaking.
- Emailed messages should be addressed to the “President of Council” and should be related to the business of the City.
- The message should list the full name and address of the individual submitting the message.
- Messages will only be queued to be read into the record if sent between 6:00 PM EDT – 7:30 PM EDT on the evening of the Council Meeting as received by the City of Williamsport mail server. Message received outside of this time will not be read into the record and will be deleted.
- Each member of the public is limited to one message per meeting, the first message received during the set times listed above will be the message that is read into the record.
- The sender of the public comment message will receive an automatic reply from “Public Comment” with the following in the body of the message “Thank you for submitting your public comment message, the message has been received.” If the sender does not receive this automatic reply their message has not been received by the mail server.
- The City of Williamsport employs various technologies to secure its network, and cannot guarantee that an email message will not be blocked by our spam filter or other security technology. If the sender does not receive an automatic reply, the message may have been blocked and not delivered by the mail server. Should the public have a concern that their email message may be blocked, the City encourages members of the public to submit a test message prior to the meeting to check if an automatic reply is received. If an automatic reply is not received, the public should contact the City Clerk.
Failure to comply with the above-outlined rules shall deem the message non-compliant and will not be read into the record.