NEW ULM — In the era of COVID, everyone has to adapt to a new normal, even public meetings.

In a normal month, the City of New Ulm holds over a dozen council, commission, or board meetings. Most of these meetings are held in the City Hall Council Chambers. By law the public is allowed to attend all these meetings.

During a pandemic, the meetings need to continue, but gathering large groups into a single room is too great a risk, forcing New Ulm to get creative. Fortunately, technology has given the city a workaround.

By late March, the city transitioned to holding social distance meetings.

The Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and city council and District 88 School Board were the first to transition. Since then, public meetings have been held through teleconference or Zoom calls. Some council or board members will remain in the meeting room, as others phone in from a separate location.

City Manager Chris Dalton said the emergency declaration from Governor Tim Walz allows the city to conduct meetings through teleconference. Without the emergency declaration, the legality of holding meetings by teleconference is more challenging.

In Minnesota, any city councilor attending a city meeting remotely must be in a publically accessible area that is published in advance.

City IT Supervisor Nathan Beran said this is an issue other Minnesota communities have struggled with over the years. For instance, if a council member went on vacation during the winter, but still wanted to participate by teleconference, it is allowed but the public must be informed in advance. In theory, the public would also be allowed to attend the meeting at the second location.

“It would be like having two meeting areas,” Dalton said.

Walz’s emergency declaration allowed the city to get around this regulation by announcing at the start of the meeting some council members will be attending by phone.

State statute requires someone to be in the council chambers. Technically, none of the city councilors or commission members are required to be in the room. A single person from city staff is all that is needed; however, the city council decided by consensus that the council president or chairperson would also be on site. There is no standard for which council or commission members will attend the meeting in person and which telecommute. Recently, all five city council members have begun attending meetings in person.

New Ulm has limited the number of people in the room, but for public meetings that becomes a challenge, especially if members of the public wish to speak.

One simple solution was staggering seating in the city hall chamber. For public hearings with larger attendance, chairs were set up in the main lobby to keep individuals out of the room.

If the citizens were there for a particular issue, they would wait in the hallway and be invited into the chambers for comments. Agendas are adjusted to accommodate popular topics.

The city has not had any serious issues with members of the public being unable to attend. Beran said there was one issue with a person who wished to call into the meeting, but there was a miscommunication over the access code.

Beran said, in the beginning, it was difficult to set up meetings, but because everyone in the country was in the same situation, the city learned fast.

Most agencies had a pandemic as a potential scenario and plans were set up, but it came faster than expected.

“It was such a quick thing,” Beran said. “Suddenly, boom we’re closed and there wasn’t any early warning to prepare. A lot of cities were scrambling. It wasn’t obvious what the right solution was. There was a lot of trial and error.”

There were benefits to using Zoom over teleconference. Zoom was already popular with families communicating across long distances or with students. Some government entities adopted it.

Beran said Zoom works for public input meetings. The meeting allows people to raise their hands during the meeting and officials could unmute to hear comments. Citizens could send a text comment through Zoom if they did not want to speak.

The District 88 school board has also been able to adapt to a new method of holding meetings. “We adjusted fairly easily,” Superintendent Jeff Bertrang said.

The School Board already had access to technology needed to do meetings through Google meetups or other video conference technology.

“I think we were well prepared,” Bertrang said. The technology even allows presenters to deliver reports from off-site.

One unique obstacle for city council and school board is voting by phone. Every decision the council and board vote on is required to be a roll call vote. It is the only method to confirm how each member votes.

Like the city council, none of the school board members needs to be in the main meeting room, but a single person needs to be in the room to turn on the equipment.

Board members that do attend in person can easily socially distance due to the size of the room.

Bertrang acknowledges the system is working, but it’s not the same as having all the board together.

“We are missing the personal connection,” he said.

This new way of holding public meetings has been a learning experience for city governments and will likely change things going forward.

Dalton said when things go back to normal, the city will still considering going to a live-streaming approach for meetings.

During the pandemic, New Ulm Cable Access Television (NUCAT) has been able to broadcast most public meetings live on cable. Previously, NUCAT had recorded all city meetings to later air on the cable access channel, but since the pandemic, more of the meetings have aired live.

NUCAT Coordinator Steven Sherman said the city council meetings have always aired live as well as any meeting with an important topic of great public interest, but with lockdown, it is viewed as especially vital.

“The more live broadcasts, the fewer people in the room and overall it’s safer,” Sherman said.

The pandemic has made the NUCAT broadcasts of meetings more essential for the community and City Manager Dalton said there is interest in live-streaming the meetings for people to view even if they don’t have cable access.

Beran said during the last upgrades to the chamber, this type of scenario was not anticipated. A few changes are needed before live-streaming is available.

“We have a lot of capabilities for lives streaming but it about getting the right configuration,” Beran said.

It is still being determined where viewers will be able to livestream.

Sherman said YouTube will likely be the place the city live stream meetings. New Ulm does have a YouTube channel and many original NUCAT programs are on the channel.

One of the benefits to come out of this crisis is the ability of some government entities to work together.

Beran said IT Departments from other cities have been in communication since the start of the pandemic sharing information.

“I have great documentation on how they were putting solutions together to run these meetings,” he said. “It is a great thing about government. It is collaborative.”