Part of my day job is being a land use attorney. This means that I often attend planning board/board of adjustment meetings to represent applicants, objectors and sometimes the board itself. By and large these meetings take place at night. Municipal governing bodies also hold most of their meetings in the evening.
These meetings are public, and the decisions made directly effect the residents of the municipality. Public attendance is, however, usually quite modest unless there is some particular application that becomes a cause celeb.
In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, stay-at-home orders, capacity limitations, and quarantines led may governmental bodies to hold their meetings partially or entirely virtually. Remote public meetings via Zoom or similar video-conferencing technology have become routine for land use meetings as we became familiar with the technology and how to adapt it to continuing to provide due process for all participants. Many meetings are held entirely by remote means while others are hybrid: some attend in person and some remotely.
I have discovered many advantages to remote meetings. For one thing, I can attend from home. The moment the meeting is over, I’m home — no hour-long drive. It makes it possible sometimes for a professional to attend multiple meetings in one night without travel time from one town to another. Also, it can be much easier to look up relevant ordinance sections and other pieces of information from your computer while participating in the meeting than it would ever be while sitting in a folding chair in the municipal meeting room. It can also benefit the members of the public who attend virtually — no need to arrange child care and drive to the municipal building, just attend from home while finishing dinner. Everyone can see exhibits that are displayed using screen sharing or were uploaded to the municipal website in advance of the meeting.
Now that Governor Murphy is suggesting that the public health emergency may be permitted to expire next month, we are facing the end of virtual public meetings. Most of the legal authorization to conduct public meetings remotely is premised upon one or more of the governor’s emergency declarations and will disappear as they expire.
As we go back to in-person meetings, I hope that towns and boards do what they can to preserve remote participation as a supplement to physical attendance. While board members, applicants, their attorneys and witnesses will almost certainly have to be physically present for public hearings, the option for remote attendance may result in greater citizen involvement, perhaps encouraging participation more often than when everyone just wants to tar and feather the applicant. Citizens should see their government at work and those who govern should know they are being watched.
Jay Bohn
May 17, 2021