The Soldotna City Council voted to amend municipal code 2.04.010 so that council members can attend more than six regular meetings by teleconference during an emergency disaster declaration. Amending code would also allow for telephonic attendance during special meetings. A disaster declaration was issued as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic by the city on March 19, 2020.
The original emergency declaration suspended restrictions on Council attendance by teleconference at special and regular meetings. The suspension regarding teleconference attendance by Council members was further extended on June 10th and again on January 13th and is set to expire on April 30th.
Vice Mayor Lisa Parker says that including the provisions in municipal code would allow for stability for regularly scheduled meetings to occur, “As you recall in March of 2020, when we temporarily suspended meeting in person, we enacted a resolution giving us this authority and we have twice had to extend that because the resolutions were expiring and our current resolution that allows us to attend telephonically or via zoom is set to expire on April 30th of 2021. Instead of continuing to do this by resolution, amending the code that would allow us when there is declared emergency to attend more than 6 meetings by teleconference.”
Soldotna City Clerk Shellie Saner says, “Additionally to that, it would remove special meetings from counting as one of the six. The reason for that is we know that special meetings can be called with very short notice as long as we meet noticing requirements. A lot of times, a council member may be out of town and may have already attended their six. We would not want a special meeting to be prohibitive for them.”
Ordinance 2021-007 unanimously passed and was enacted by city council.
