(7/8) The Hamiltonban Board of Supervisors voted at their July meeting to continue to stream board meetings, in addition to allowing limited, in-person attendance of meetings, but had to turn down an offer to use another municipality's meeting room.
According to the board, Fairfield Borough had offered use of that borough's municipal meeting room to enable the Hamiltonban supervisors to allow more of the public to attend their meetings.
Supervisor Coleen Reamer made a motion to pursue the invitation offered by Fairfield, and to come to an agreement on how much Fairfield should be reimbursed for utility use.
However, Reamer's motion died from lack of a second when the supervisors decided they could not readily accept the offer because a legal advertisement had been placed, notifying the public that the meetings would be held in the township office for the remainder of the year.
Given social distancing requirements currently in place as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, in conjunction with the relatively small space at the town office where the meetings are held, no more than five members of the public can be permitted to physically attend. Thus far, most of the meetings attended under the present circumstances have been less than the maximum of five.
The board has been streaming township meetings via startmeeting.com, and the supervisors made the decision to continue to do so. The link to startmeeting.com specific to Hamiltonban can be found on the municipal website at hamiltonban.com. The streaming service charges the township $10 per month.
Also decided at the meeting was to employ the township garage for meetings or public hearings if a larger attendance was anticipated in excess of the limit of five.
The township meetings that have previously been streamed via startmeeting.com have not been of the best quality when it has come to audio, resulting in the board purchasing a directional microphone. Reamer said the directional microphone appears to have been the appropriate size for the room used for the meetings.
To further facilitate communications during the impact of the coronavirus, the board will also be purchasing a teleconference telephone to aid in multiple persons being able to talk to each other via phone at the same time. The cost is estimated at being a "few hundred dollars."
