Boulder City Council meetings will stay virtual for now

Deborah Swearingen, Daily Camera, Boulder, Colo.
·2 min read

Aug. 4—With rising coronavirus cases and increasing concern about the Delta variant, Boulder City Council meetings will remain fully virtual for the foreseeable future.

All City Council members in a discussion on Tuesday agreed it made sense to take a "wait and see" approach. It's an evolving situation, Mayor Pro Tem Junie Joseph said.

"Staying online for now is the best way to keep us safe and keep other people in the community safe as well," Joseph said. "Going into chambers is not for us. It's for the community. And if the community's not there, I wonder what is the value of sitting in that chair next to your name."

Further, City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde said the city is reconsidering its approach to in-person work for city staff members as well. In the past few weeks, she said 25 Boulder staff members have been exposed to COVID-19, though not all tested positive.

"We've been having increasing anxiety from staff about coming to work," Rivera-Vandermyde said on Tuesday.

New guidelines regarding masking mandates and other public health restrictions are forthcoming from Boulder County Public Health, and the City Council will have an update on the new circumstances on Aug. 17.

Initially, the City Council planned to return on July 13 with City Council members in person and the public participating online. However, that didn't happen due to a "critical failure" of the system that serves as the hub of technical operations in the Council chambers.

If and when the Council does return to chambers, Councilmember Mary Young said it should be when the council members can go maskless.

"If we are wearing masks at the dais, I would think that that is way less transparent ... than being in a Zoom call," she said. "So whatever we do, we should be there maskless. If we can't do it that way then there's really no point in doing it in 3D."

Ultimately, when in-person meetings of some sort return, the city has expressed its intent to introduce a hybrid system. This would include in-person public participation, both for those who are viewing and those who are speaking, as well as remote access for those who prefer to access meetings that way.