Ordinance Providing for Remote Participation in Meetings of Public Bodies. On motion of Councilors Breadon and Louijeune, rule 12 was invoked to include Councilor Mejia as a co-sponsor.
Thank you, Councilor Fernandes. Anderson I could 04802.0482.0483 in docket 04842.2.80486 will remain in committee motions, orders and resolutions. Mr. Clark, please. 3.0545.0545. Councilors Brayden and Lucien offered the following ordinance, providing for remote participation in meetings of public bodies. The chair recognizes counsel. Braden. Counsel. Braden, do you have the floor? Thank you, Mr. President. I move to suspend the rules and to add counselor here. As an original co-sponsor, please. Counsel Braden six suspension of the rules and to add counsel me here as the third original co-sponsor seeing here no objections counsel me here is added to the third as the original co-sponsor counsel rating of the floor. Thank you. I offer this remote participation ordinance today as an amended refile of an issued an initiative led one year ago by our departing colleague, Senator Edwards. We're going to miss you, Governor Baker. And the legislature, as extensions of provisions for remote hearings and meetings by public bodies are set to expire within 80 days. And there are no law which will take state action to amend the open meeting law to allow for hybrid meetings for public from members of public bodies. It is it is within our ability to provide for remote participation for members of the public to observe the proceedings of public business, whether through livestream or for real time observation or via Zoom for public testimony. I want to acknowledge and appreciate the coalition of advocates who have kept this issue at the forefront, including the ACLU, Common Cause, Mass Public Interest Research Group, the Disability Law Group and the Boston Center for Independent Living. Remote Participation is not simply about safety or convenience in the midst of a pandemic, but about about maintaining equitable and meaningful access to public processes. We cannot simply retreat from pandemic provisions which have been in place for the past 25 months and are set to expire in less than three months. I want to express that I am less concerned. I am I am less concerned for the concerns preparedness for July 15th, but that but for what many of other public body bodies across the city, the zoning board of Appeals licensing and the BPA and more. We know this. We know from experience and talking all across our city that community participation in these public meetings increased during the pandemic was the opportunity for remote access. And I think that's something we need to continue. I believe that this is also timely and what's the budget season so that the council can engage in a conversation with property management and do it to identify city hall meeting spaces that need equipment investments for tech set out. We do not want implementation to be a burden for any particular city body and hope to engage their chairs to discuss capacity support then they need in order to standardize the practice by providing of providing for remote participation . I also want to appreciate the incredible work that our central staff does in supporting our city council, in doing their work and all through the tour, through the pandemic, they very quickly and efficiently pivoted to support us in doing remote hearings and meetings and is greatly appreciated. So this is about setting a standard for how we continue to engage people with disabilities, seniors, people with limited access to transportation, and people with work and family obligations who would otherwise be unable to attend a meeting in person. And I look forward to to advancing and to advancing this as in our city, working together. Thank you. Thank you, counsel. The chair recognizes Council on Inclusion Council agenda. You have the floor. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank Councilor Braden for keeping this issue alive and well. Thank you to Senator Edwards also for bringing this up. We know that this is more than just about convenience. It's it's about being very intentional in creating a democratic process that is accessible to more of our residents. We should always be thinking about how do we bring city hall out of city hall and bring it to people? And remote participation is one way that we can ensure that we've seen firsthand how remote participation, as Councilor Brayton mentioned, has boosted civic engagement at all levels throughout our city. And so we have a responsibility to to continue that and not to roll it away. Remote participation in meetings has been a key element in bringing down longstanding barriers to access who gets access to who in City Hall. And we know that access is transactional and it is important that we keep the doors. Even if there are virtual doors at City Hall open to our residents. It also allows a lot of our important constituencies to fully participate in the policymaking process. We're talking about people with disabilities. People of limited access to transportation are low income workers. And residents, seniors, people working multiple jobs and having to hustle just to survive. Maybe they can hop on to a zoom. And people who have family responsibilities, we also on the council have been very taken advantage of the fact that some parts of our process have been virtual, allowing us to multitask and attend multiple meetings at a time. You know, some of our virtual access still, there's a lot to build upon there, as Councilor Braden said. So staff is in an incredible job here of making it accessible and also ensuring that we maintain community space. But there are also different departments in the city that we have to work in partnership with them to increase how they're how they're allowing the public to access those virtual spaces, including the PDA, their important community functions that are turned off even in the virtual space that I think are important for a community gathering to really mimic what it's like to be in person. So I also want to thank the incredible advocates who have been working on this issue ACLU, Common Cause, Disability Law Center and others that were mentioned by Council. Braden We should really take what we've learned during the pandemic, which was, of course, an unfortunate continues to be an unfortunate event, but , you know, build on the strength that we were able to. And one of them is virtual participation, access to democracy, really bring it to the people. So thank you, Councilor Brady and I look forward to working with you and custom here on this on this effort. Thank you. Conclusion The chair recognizes counsel. Here, hear counsel. Here you have the floor. Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you to my colleagues, Counselor Bruton and Louisiana, for having me as a co-sponsor. And I also want to give a shout out to Senator Edwards. I remember when I first started working here, and one of the things that I was asked on the campaign trail is what would be my first hearing ? And I said, I'm going to do a hearing on public hearings, not really understanding kind of the fact of the matter is that most people really deeply want to be engaged but just didn't have access. And oftentimes we would host hearings at times that were inconvenient for people who were most impacted. So along the way, I made commitments about we're going to make it open and we're going to do all of this amazing work to make sure that the power of the people and the voices of the people are uplifted. And here we are. When we started working here in 2020, we were set to, you know, we had like 12 hearing orders in one session. Thank you to Jacob Blake for his leadership in that space. And then we had to go remote. COVID came and really created an opportunity for us to really show what is possible in terms of creating space for people to really participate. And I think that for us in that journey, we've learned that we can do this and we have an opportunity to continue to engage folks in this process. After we filed that hearing order. We went right into into the world of virtual reality, and we made it happen. And that experience was shocking to all of us. But we but it was also a teachable moment, because as soon as we made that transition to virtual events, we began to see a crowd of people who had never been engaged with the council before. We were able to meet people who otherwise wouldn't be able to be in direct community with the city, either because of language barriers, accessibility concerns, or simply just because they didn't have the time to come down to City Hall. Through this ordinance, we have an opportunity to keep the channels of communication open so that more voices and more people can be heard and centered in the process. As the Chair of the Committee on Government Accountability and Transparency and Accessibility. Part of my job is to ensure that people who have never been part of the process are centered in this work. I see this ordinance as a tool that can help us achieve those goals of accountability, transparency and accessibility. And this is our moment to create a gold standard for our community collaboration in the city of Boston. I look forward to the work and to collaborating alongside my colleagues. Thank you. Thank you. Counsel me here. Would anyone else like to speak on this matter? Would anyone else like to add their name as as a sponsor to this? Please add Councilor Bullock. Please add Councilor Ferdinand as Anderson, Counsel of Charity Council, Novara Councilor Baker. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please. With withdraw that one. Please add Councilor Murphy council overall and please at the chair. Dark at zero five, four or five will be somebody assigned to the Committee on Government Operations for the for the next docket, which is docket 0546. I would like to ask Counselor Edwards to to stay in here as the as the chair. Mr. Kirk, would you please read the docket number 0546.