If 90% of success in life is based on simply being present, how much of that is due to virtual attendance? 50%? 40%? This question arises in the context of the Norwich Selectboard, whose members, for no reason at all, have stopped attending board meetings in person since the town meeting in early March.
As our colleague Patrick Adrian reported last weekend, only Selectboard Chair Pam Smith and board member Priscilla Vincent have regularly attended meetings in person at Tracy Hall for more than three months. Vice Chair Mary Layton, board members Roger Arnold and Marcia Calloway, and Town Manager Brennan Duffy have only participated virtually, which is permitted under Vermont law.
During the pandemic, many municipalities held online-only meetings, but most have since moved away from that system. Norwich follows a hybrid meeting format where the public can attend either in person or via Zoom, as do the Hartford Selectboard and Lebanon City Council.
This makes a lot of sense, as it is a practical way to involve citizens in the affairs of the city by giving them another opportunity to voice their opinions. And for board members who travel or whose family commitments occasionally conflict with meetings, it is an acceptable solution. But as some Norwich residents pointed out, this is no way for an official body to conduct its business on a regular basis.
Smith and Vincent agree. “While I cannot compel them to attend in person,” Smith wrote to his fellow board members last month, “I can urge all Selectboard members and the Town Manager to return to in-person attendance at all Selectboard meetings held in Tracy Hall, and I am doing so.”
Vincent told Adrian she feared the virtual option could become the new norm. “I don’t think we should be conducting city business this way,” she said. “It changes the way we interact with each other and the public.”
That sounds right to us. As the pandemic has subsided, many companies and other institutions have concluded that while some tasks lend themselves well to virtual handling, many collaborative endeavors are far more productive when those involved are together in the same room. Not only is the chance of misunderstandings minimized, but face-to-face dynamics quite often lead to unexpected results that would not be achieved if employees were isolated in virtual silos. Informal conversations outside of formal meetings can also be a rich source of good ideas.
And we believe that attending official meetings of public bodies in person shows respect to the voters who elected them. That includes Duffy, the city manager, who should definitely be there to fulfill his legal role in city government.
Since Arnold, Calloway, Layton and Duffy did not respond to the reporter’s messages seeking comment, one can only speculate about the reasons for their decision to attend in absentia.
In this contentious age and in the contentious city of Norwich, some Selectboard members are certainly loath to put up with excessive public criticism when attending meetings in person. But that is par for the course for elected officials, especially those who serve at the local level; there are meeting rules in place to keep such interactions within acceptable limits.
An alternative explanation is that the missing board members simply cannot bear to be in the same room with their two colleagues – for personal, managerial or political reasons. If there are such serious differences of opinion, it would be difficult to mitigate them without actually meeting.
Resident Chris Katucki deserves the last word here. “It’s really valuable when the board members meet in the same room with the city manager,” he wrote in an email. “That only happens twice a month. I don’t understand why they don’t do that and wish someone would explain it to me.”
