The Greensboro City Council has scheduled a special meeting for Tuesday, April 14 at 2 p.m. in cyberspace.
The City Council cancelled its regularly scheduled meeting for Tuesday, April 7 at the meeting on Tuesday, March 31, which had been postponed from March 17. At the March 31 meeting, the only action taken was to pass the consent agenda, which is made up of routine noncontroversial items that are all passed on one voice vote.
The items that required public hearings were all continued to the April 21 meeting and the current plan is to hold those public hearings electronically.
City Councilmember Marikay Abuzuaiter said that while the agenda for the April 14 meeting had not been released, her understanding was that it would be made up of noncontroversial items, to get those items taken care of before the April 21 meeting.
Abuzuaiter said she would not be attending the meeting in person. She added, “I’ve attended two electronic meetings today.” She said she was getting comfortable with the whole process and had used several different systems.
Abuzuaiter said that one reason for the special April 14 meeting was to work the kinks out of meeting electronically before the April 21 meeting, which has two rezoning requests that attracted large crowds of opponents to the Zoning Commission meetings.
The April 14 meeting will have a public comment period and the announcement comes with the following attachment:
“ELECTRONIC MEETING: Public Comment Procedures
“For the duration of the State of Emergency, and in accordance with North Carolina law which requires all municipal governing boards to provide at least one public comment period a month, the Greensboro City Council will implement the following procedures during the Public Comment portion of the April 14, 2020 agenda.
“• Public Comments must be received by Close of Business the day prior to the Electronic City Council meeting. Comments are to be submitted to virtualcomment@greensboro-nc.gov or by calling 336-373-3732 and should include the speaker’s first and last name, phone number, and email address (for staff follow-up as needed). Comments received by phone will not be transcribed verbatim, but will be categorized by topic. Comments will be summarized during the meeting and will posted at http://www.greensboro-nc.gov. The COG [City of Greensboro] understands the level of concern and passion during this unprecedented time; however, all submittals must be free of inappropriate language and submitted in a respectful manner.
“• Note: Any public comment, email or voicemail, received is subject to the public records law and will be made available to the media. These communications are not confidential.”
