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City council members (from right, top row) Marc Maxwell, Gale Roberts, Freddie Taylor, (bottom row) John Sellers, Doug Moore and Harold Nash experiment Friday with Zoom to hold city council meetings. Screenshot by Taylor Nye
The Sulphur Springs city council has been testing out the Zoom application in the hopes of continuing to hold city council meetings while undergoing shutdown during COVID-19.
On Friday, members of the city council gathered on the Zoom application along with City Secretary Gale Roberts, City Manager Marc Maxwell and the News-Telegram to test out the application and troubleshoot technological issues related to holding a virtual meeting, Maxwell said.
Mayor John Sellers joined from the lobby of City National Bank, where he used the public wifi previously installed by the city as part of the grant from the Rudy Bruner foundation for Urban Excellence. Other council members joined from their homes and businesses.
“I feel invaded upon,” council member Rev. Harold Nash joked.
The council debated using a system where the public could call the council chambers phone directly to weigh in on the issues but discovered it might be impractical due to a 15- to 20-second delay between real life and broadcasting as well as the fact multiple citizens might want to call in, yet the council chambers contains only one phone.
Roberts helped to instruct the council members how to use YouTube’s chat function, and the council members discovered they and anyone else could sign in with their Gmail accounts to chat during the meeting.
The council stated they found the Zoom tool useful and resolved to explore it more in the future in case it was necessary to hold city council meetings virtually.