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Regular City Council Meeting Monday, January 8, 2024 Page 15 Mayor Roe asked in regard to remote participation, did the Council want further discussion on this at a future meeting or have staff bring some language back to the Council. Councilmember Strahan indicated she would like to know what other cities are doing in regard to this. Mayor Roe thought the question was if the City needed to have a rule on who can participate remotely and whether that includes people of the public.He did not think many people in the public are participating remotely anymore. City Attorney Tierney explained what she has heard, even nationally, is that a lot of councils are moving away from Zoom, non-scheduled testimony. One option some cities began with during the pandemic are now being reconsidered, which is if a person wants to testify by Zoom, the person can do that but would require a pre-registration so the City knows who that is so there is less of the concern about the unknown or surprise testimony. Mr. Trudgeon noted the Council does not have to do anything if the Council is not comfortable doing so. The last direction of the Council was not to allow Zoom participation. Staff can always use it for if a Councilmember is sick and wants to participate remotely or if the staff or consultants want to use it,the City still has the ability to do that. He noted the City is not required to provide Zoom participation for anybody. Mayor Roe thought at the conclusion of"the meeting", it was sort of a non-official action.There was not a vote taken by the City Council but more of an administrative decision which the Council tended to concur with subsequently individually and offline. Having this discussion is an important way to close the loop on that and make sure the Council is officially looped into the conversation. City Attorney Tierney indicated a point to make and it does not necessarily need to be in the Council's procedural rules or anything like that, but in the event that the City did have an individual with interest in presenting something before the City, and for any protected reasons, such as a disability, was not able to attend, the City would need to allow that by Zoom. She did not think it necessarily needed to be in the City Policy as it would certainly be an accommodation that would be expected if someone was entitled to be accommodated. Mayor Roe thought it may make sense to put something the rules and procedures to cover those instances and perhaps set in place an outline,if not specific procedure of what would be required of someone to sign up to do that. City Attorney Tierney thought it would be limited to individuals who have a case before the Council, in her line it is the quasi-judicial decisions that the Council is