Published: 6/7/2020 4:22:06 PM
Town officials tried to revamp the format for Henniker’s town meeting on Saturday to keep voters socially distant and safe during the current coronavirus pandemic. The new plan, as well as a quickly adopted Plan B, hit several snags.
“It did not go very well,” Moderator Cordell Johnston said. “We had a technology failure.”
The idea was to separate voters into groups of 10 and put them in different classrooms at the Henniker Community School. That part went well, but the virtual meeting system that was supposed to connect the voters to officials and allow for discourse did not cooperate. Most rooms had trouble seeing the video feed, and then many of them also began losing the audio feed.
“We had technology people running around the school, which is big. It’s sort of like a rabbit’s warren, so getting from the second floor to the ground floor and from one end of the school to the other is a long walk,” Johnston said. “So we got started about a half-hour late, and then we just had continuing problems with the technology. I was told part of the problem was that Google put out an update overnight, and I guess there was also a problem with the school’s wifi.”
At that point they adopted a plan to use the school’s intercom system, something that had been considered as an option before the meeting. Plan B, however, was no more successful than Plan A.
“So ultimately we ended up in the gymnasium just doing an old-fashioned, in-person town meeting,” Johnston said.
There were about 90 people at the meeting, and Johnston said most were wearing face masks and there was enough room in the gym to keep them socially distant.
“People seemed comfortable being in there, although generally not happy with the situation,” Johnston said.
The warrant for the meeting was long with 31 articles scheduled to be voted on, but in the end voters only weighed in on five articles due to the time taken up by the technology issues. All five of the items voted on were passed including a $5.63 million operating budget and upgrades to the sewage system, the water system and the library.
“There were some people who were very unhappy, as you can imagine, but most of the people who were there were very patient and understanding,” Johnston said. “The fact that everything passed says something, I think.”
That bucks a trend in the state that has seen voters wary of spending during the coronavirus pandemic.
The meeting was adjourned to July 15, although it’s unclear what that meeting might look like.
“We haven’t really talked about that yet,” Johnston said. “In part, we’re going to wait and see what happens with the governor’s emergency orders, but suffice it to say it will probably be a lower-tech approach than what we tried to do (on Saturday).”
