GUELPH – Technology upgrades to make Wellington County council meetings more accessible inside and outside the council chambers were suggested at the Sept. 30 meeting.
Council returned to an in-person format last month, after meeting almost entirely via Zoom and teleconference through the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the meeting, councillor Campbell Cork presented a notice of motion to make a virtual option permanent “in the name of openness and transparency.”
The motion asked for a staff report on making council and committee meetings accessible to the general public remotely “and that the system be capable of allowing staff and council members to participate in the meetings remotely.”
The motion will be discussed at the next council meeting on Oct. 28.
Sound system
Also during the meeting, councillor Mary Lloyd asked council to consider having a microphone system installed in the council chambers.
Lloyd noted she sits on a committee where three members wear hearing assistance devices.
“We suffer terribly trying to hear,” she stated.
“I did not know myself how much I was relying on being able to read lips, prior to getting a hearing device,” she stated.
Lloyd also noted the need to wear masks during meetings makes it “more difficult to hear things that are being said in this room by councillors around the table or presentations from staff.”
Councillor Allan Alls said he agrees “100 per cent” with the need for a sound system, even though a recent audio study of the council chambers indicated the acoustics in the room are adequate.
“Even in my own council chamber, which is not as big as this, we all use microphones,” stated Alls, who is mayor of the Town of Erin.
