- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
Clearlake City Council considers whether to keep Zoom for public meeting comments
Despite their concerns about the “Zoom bombers” — three of whom disrupted the Jan. 18 council meeting to make racist and antisemitic comments — the council stopped short of taking staff’s recommendation to end Zoom comments by anyone outside of contractors or other city-approved users.
Instead, council members asked staff to research implementing tighter controls on Zoom, the virtual meeting platform that has become ubiquitous out of necessity since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020.
Gov. Gavin Newsom implemented emergency orders that rolled back Brown Act rules in 2020 in order to allow for elected officials to use Zoom to meet safely in response to concerns over health as the pandemic was taking shape.
City Manager Alan Flora outlined the temporary changes to the Brown Act and explained that the city didn’t use Zoom before then but staffers have continued to use it since because of its convenience for some community members.
Flora said the state’s emergency orders have been rolled back. One key example — governing board members are no longer allowed to attend via Zoom unless under specific circumstances.
City Clerk Melissa Swanson said the city began live streaming via Zoom in August 2020.
Swanson said a poll of Calfiornia’s city clerks found that 50 of 70 agencies reported experiencing Zoom bombing.
Of those, 42 agencies said they either no longer allow comments via Zoom or use it in very limited fashion for presenters and staff. Four others are considering discontinuing it.
City Attorney Ryan Jones said his firm, Jones and Mayer, works with a number of government jurisdictions, a lot of which he said are scaling back use of the platform due to Zoom bombers. He said nothing precludes people from commenting through email.
Flora said the city uses Zoom to record meetings and stream them to Youtube, which is a convenient way to get a recording. He suggested reserving commenting for consultants.
Councilmember Joyce Overton asked if they could still do a chat room with Zoom and use that function to filter out inappropriate comments. Flora said he doesn’t know if it’s common practice, and he didn’t want to put staff in the position of having to read comments and be seen as censoring people.
Councilmemember Dirk Slooten said it was important to be as open as possible while doing the people’s business, and he wasn’t in favor of shutting down Zoom comments over one incident.
Councilmember Russell Cremer said he liked Overton’s suggestion about a chat room, but that he never wanted to hear again what he heard on Jan. 18.
“It was obscene and beyond totally inappropriate as far as I'm concerned,” he said, explaining that his first thought was to eliminate Zoom commenting except for presenters and that he had no problem doing away with using Zoom for general public input.
Calling it “a really touchy subject,” Councilmember Russell Perdock said he was concerned about the anonymity Zoom affords. After the Jan. 18 meeting, he received calls from community members offended by the comments from the Zoom bombers.
He suggested implementing more control along the lines Overton suggested in order to take away the anonymity.
“We live in a world where trolls exist,” said Mayor David Claffey, who added that for him the bar has to be higher before they take away a very valuable tool for the community to access public comment.
He asked staff about limitations, and Swanson said the city can set up Zoom with registration and a pass code, which they don’t currently use, and work on getting tighter security.
Claffey asked about the ability to ban Internet addresses, which Jones said he wasn’t sure could be done unless the commenter had threatened the city and the city had a restraining order. Zoom bombing wouldn’t rise to that level.
Jones also noted that it’s a “voluntary ask” to request that people give their names and where they live, and no way to verify they are real, and attempts to verify them could be inappropriate for the city to pursue.
Perdock asked if it was all or nothing — allow Zoom commenting or not.
“Not necessarily,” said Jones.
Supervisor Bruno Sabatier said Senate Bill 1100 could be part of the discussion. That legislation, which the governor signed into in the summer of 2022 and became law in January 2023, amended the Brown Act to give guidance on how government bodies can handle members of the public who are disruptive at open meetings. They must be warned and then they can be removed from the meeting.
Sabatier said the county has a script to use when an individual is causing issues in a meeting.
He emphasized the platform’s value and urged them to set up mechanisms to continue to use it rather than taking it away from even one person who could be bed-bound and otherwise unable to participate in a public meeting.
Flora said that, based on some quick research during the meeting, it appeared that Zoom can be configured for more controls, and that a chat etiquette tool can ban certain words and phrases. He added that they will need to make sure that chat feature is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The council directed staff to do additional research in order to find ways to continue to allow Zoom comments.
Before reaching that consensus, they asked for public comment. There was none in the chambers and none on Zoom.
In other business, the council presented a proclamation in honor of February being Black History Month to Rick Mayor, president of the Lake County Chapter of the NAACP, and Chief Tim Hobbs gave the annual Clearlake Police Department report.
The council also held a special meeting two hours ahead of the regular meeting in which it considered, and ultimately denied, the Koi Nation’s appeal of a new subdivision approved by the Clearlake Planning Commission.
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