Council sets in-person meetings

CHENEY — The City Council took steps at their June 8 meeting to resume holding its regular meetings in-person.

Like all other legislative bodies, Cheney’s City Council has been holding its twice-monthly meetings remotely via Zoom due to Gov. Jay Inslee’s March, 2020 declaration of a state of emergency due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Part of that proclamation prohibited in-person meetings and waived and suspended a number of laws and rules established by the Public Records Act.

Inslee has since announced the state will effectively re-open on June 30, and provided some guidelines for conducting in-person meetings under certain conditions following coronavirus health and safety protocols. City officials concluded the existing Council Chambers were too small and would not meet those requirements, so after searching around, have decided to hold the next two regular meetings on June 22 and July 13 — and a June 15 special meeting — at the multipurpose room in the Wren Pierson Community Center.

To do this, the council needed to first pass an ordinance amending the city’s municipal code, inserting language to allow meetings to be held at “other locations established by Resolution of the City Council.” Councilman Ryan Gaard questioned what would happen if for some reason the Wren Pierson or another location proved inadequate.

“What if there was a last-minute change because all of a sudden a lot of people wanted to attend and the location wouldn’t work?” Gaard asked. “Would we then move it online? Would we try to accommodate to a larger location, and is there an amount of time that you have to give people warning before that could change?”

City attorney Stanley Schwartz responded that the state’s laws required jurisdictions to establish set times and locations for regular meetings by using ordinances, bylaws or resolutions. In inserting the new language allowing for other locations for its regular council meetings, the city using a resolution to provide “reasonable notice.”

“In this instance, we are using a resolution to establish notice because we don’t really know if this is going to be a rolling meeting, similar to what the ordinance provides for,” Schwartz said. “I think that’s consistent with the Open Public Meetings Act.”

Schwartz added that if a meeting needed to be canceled or moved, that it could be done through a special meeting notice, which carries a 24-hour prior notice.

“But that’s not what we’re doing here,” he added.

Councilman Paul Schmidt asked since only the next two meetings were mentioned in the ordinance if that meant the meeting of July 27 would be in the Council Chambers. City Administrator Mark Schuller said specific guidance from the Governor’s office wasn’t available yet on how that would work, but that the council could re-assess its move after the next two meetings.

“The hopes would be to move back to Council Chambers, but we just don’t know that yet,” Schuller added.

The council held all three readings and unanimously approved final passage of the ordinance changing code language regarding council meeting locations. It then passed the resolution establishing the next two meetings at the Wren Pierson building.

In a June 10 email, Schuller said those two meetings would actually by “hybrid” meetings, using both the in-person and Zoom format. The meeting would be recorded via Zoom, allowing for it to be obtained through a public records request.

“We are still putting the details together, but as it stands right now, we will require masks to be worn by anyone attending the council meeting at the Wren and will socially distance in the larger space,” Schuller said. “We look forward to safely returning to in-person meetings, but respect the fact that not everyone is ready to resume person to person contact at this time and wish to allow for as much participation as possible.”

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].