[Massplanners] Virtual Executive Session

[Colleen Canning]

Re: Virtual Executive Session

Hi Planners,

I would like to hear about successful experiences holding fully virtual
executive session.

As I understand, to satisfy the letter of the law, a board must enter a
‘regular’ meeting and then the chair calls the meeting into executive
session. This appears to pose a challenge with the limitations of hosting a
zoom webinar/meeting.

For our typical meetings we have had success with zoom webinar as
‘panelists’ (board members, staff and applicants) are in view and
‘attendees’ (members of the public) are not in view and can only speak
after ‘raising hand’ and being called upon by the chair to be promoted to
‘panelist’. I imagine this is how many planning boards use Zoom.

In my ideal version of a virtual executive session, we'd host a zoom
webinar as typical and  then I’d manually remove all attendees when we
enter executive session. During executive session,  new attendees would be
in a virtual ‘ waiting room’ until a point at which executive session has
ended and then I’d authorize all attendees to join. Unfortunately, it
appears that zoom meeting (not zoom webinar) is the platform which allows
for a ‘waiting room’. Zoom meeting is great for informal meetings but
invites a level of chaos when hosting a public meeting. Zoom meeting does
not allow for a separate ‘attendee’ category as all who join can be seen on
camera and can speak without prior authorization.

Thank you for your responses!

Colleen Canning
Planning/Conservation Coordinator

*(413)-538-5030 X6127*
*ccanning at southhadleyma.gov* <ccanning at southhadleyma.gov>

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