According to the most recent information from the New Jersey Department of Taxation, Cape May County has $63 billion in aggregated true value of property. This in a county of less than 100,000 permanent residents and barely 251 square miles of land area. Where does that investment in the county come from? The major source is second homeowners in the island communities.
Just the stretch of land running from Sea Isle City to Stone Harbor Point shows a true value of property at over $23 billion, with a 2020 census count of only 7,000 permanent residents. The investment by those who do not live here year-round is staggering. Yet, it has become customary to act as though these individuals have no need for real access to the actions of municipal government.
There has been a recent uptick in the number of communities that provide remote access to governing body meetings via some form of real-time video. Often, that access lacks the kind of commitment from municipal officials to make it an experience worthy of participation.
Sound quality is frequently poor, not because of technology lapses, but due rather to governing body members and professional staff slouched back in their chairs with proximity to their microphones hardly a concern. Presentations are often made with visuals on tripods facing the council and no access for the remote viewer. Professionals and department heads seated in the audience are called on for comment during a critical phase of discussion on an agenda item and are allowed to provide that comment without going to a microphone, making their contribution inaudible to the remote viewer.
With remote access must come remote participation. The idea that those with millions of dollars invested in our county must show up in person in order to provide public comment on issues of importance to them is ludicrous and shows a misplaced sense of self-importance by the governing body.
What it adds up to is governing bodies can pat their own backs with the assurance that they are making deliberations available to those who are not physically present while in fact they lack the commitment to making the technology-assistant participation really work in a meaningful way.
Carry the argument to public meetings of boards beyond the governing body and the picture gets worse. Remote access to planning and zoning board meetings is important and needs to be part of a municipality’s commitment to transparency and outreach. There is good reason for the suspicion many have expressed that municipalities wait until the offseason for many of their more controversial decisions.
It is time for a real commitment to using today’s technology to open municipal government to permanent residents and those whose investment in our towns provides the tax dollars that make municipal government function.
Local government is not just about those who can vote.
Some rules for the road with respect to remote access and participation in meetings may seem obvious but they are listed because so often our municipalities do not follow them.
First, municipalities should provide remote video access to governing body and planning/zoning meetings.
Any resolutions to be voted on, along with supporting documents, including presentation visuals like site plans, should be available online for public access. It is not sufficient to make official documents available only after they have been voted on.
Access to meetings must include an ability for remote public comment at appropriate points in the agenda.
Governing bodies must severely limit the practice of adding items for action that were not part of the publicly posted agenda. It is sometimes necessary, but it cannot be a routine practice.
Individuals in the audience called on during deliberations cannot be allowed to answer from a seat where location makes their response inaudible. They must be called to respond at a microphone placed for that purpose.
Presentations at meetings must have displays accessible to the camera for remote access, as well as on tripods for governing body viewing.
Council members and other officials who regularly participate in meetings must develop a commitment to speak into their microphones. Governing body members must give up this notion that they are just talking to each other. The public has a right to hear their deliberations.
All video recordings of meetings must be posted and available for public viewing outside the normal timeframe of the meeting. An essential benefit of video recording of meetings is asynchronous access.
The technology is here. What is often lacking is a commitment to making transparency and public access an effective experience.
The argument that it would cost more to implement or improve remote access along the lines suggested here is a vacuous one. Millions are paid in taxes by property owners who deserve efficient access to the functioning of local government. The expense for such access is minimal and well within reach of multimillion–dollar budgets that seem to have no trouble finding money for less important ends.
All that is said here goes for county government, as well. Elected officials cannot continue to merely meet the minimal state requirements for open public meetings. Our circumstance as the state’s number one location for second homes demands we do more.
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From the Bible: Do unto others what you would have them do to you — Matthew 7:12
