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Future BCC Meeting Status (In Person vs. Virtual)
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The City has been working on how board, commission, and committee (BCC) meetings will continue as the situation with the pandemic improves. We have heard from a number of you - some eager to resume in-person meetings and others just as eager to continue meeting virtually.
For the time-being, we are asking that all BCC’s continue to meet virtually. We have made some excellent strides improving certain aspects of our BCC meetings process and would like to maintain and build upon those improvements. With that in mind, City leadership has developed the following plan:
1. All BCC’s will continue meeting virtually through the end of August. IT is working on updating the registration system so that in-person registrants no longer need to fill out a paper registration form. Improvements to the registration system are anticipated to be completed by August 9. More details on what will change, and how this impacts BCC staff and the public will be shared in the coming weeks.
2. Beginning September 1, 2021, BCC’s default meeting method will be to continue meeting virtually, unless specific steps are taken. BCC’s can choose to change their default method from virtual to in-person by obtaining approval from the Mayor and Common Council leadership. The members of the body will need to vote on whether they want to request to switch their default method to in-person meetings prior to asking for approval. This vote will need to occur at least a month before the first in-person meeting. Please contact Laila D’Costa (ldcosta@cityofmadison.com <mailto:ldcosta@cityofmadison.com>) to facilitate requests.
3. Once a default method is established, the body should continue regularly meeting that way. This will help avoid any misunderstandings from the public about how to attend meetings of that body. If a BCC needs to change their meeting method from their default method, they should update the location of that meeting occurrence in the Legistar calendar at least two weeks - preferably a month - in advance.
NOTE: Once in-person meetings are allowed - they must be held in buildings open to the public - so, for the time-being, that means BCC meetings cannot be held in the City-County building (CCB) or the Madison Municipal building (MMB).