[Massplanners] Guidance on Preparing Legal Ads/Remote Meeting Provisions

[Kristina Johnson]

Hello Planning Friends and Colleagues,

As you all know, the latest extension to allow for remote/hybrid meetings will sunset on March 31st.  While there is pending legislation to permanently codify the ability to hold remote and hybrid meeting, it's highly doubtful ( my personal glass half empty opinion) that anything will be signed into law prior to next month.

Because of the noticing requirement in Chapter 40A and the lack of local "newspapers in circulation", the deadline for submitting a legal ad for publication is often one month out. So for those of you who staff Boards that operate fully remote or hybrid, how have you been directed to structure your legal ads?

  1.  Hope for this best and assume that there will be action on remote meeting prior to March 31st . Although this puts you in jeopardy of having to re-advertise and notice if there are no provisions in place for remote or hybrid meetings .
  2.  A legal ad that has an "either fully-remote/hybrid or physical location"
  3.  Or the most conservative approach, having the legal ad state a physical location only for the meeting.  And then subsequent meetings after the initial opening of the public hearing can move back to fully-remote.

I hope by some "Festivus Miracle" that this email is rendered moot in the next week, and we don't have to be consumed with thinking about how to prepare a legal notice.

Kristina

Kristina Johnson, AICP
Director of Planning and Community Development
Town of Hudson, Massachusetts
978-562-2989
kjohnson at townofhudson.org<mailto:kjohnson at townofhudson.org>


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