ANTIGO — Last week, the Antigo city council passed a motion to allow its members to vote remotely at meetings. It was vetoed Monday by Mayor Terry Brand, a move which he stated at a Finance, Personnel and Legislative Committee meeting Wednesday night he had made in order to allow more planning regarding precisely how to implement the change.
“I vetoed that decision for now, and that’s the main reason: the process is not as complete as I think it needs to be, so we have some time to address all those things,” Brand said.
Following the meeting, however, Brand said that he likely will not rescind his veto of the motion, which would allow council members to vote for up to four meetings per year via video conferencing applications like Zoom while not actually present at city hall.
“I’m totally against the concept of aldermen not being present, and that’s what doesn’t come up in their motion,” Brand said. “Their motion is to be able to vote remotely, but at the same time, that allows them to be absent from the community for extended periods of time — up to five months, plus a few weeks. It just doesn’t make sense to get elected to then not be here. And that’s the part they miss. They don’t want to talk about that part of it.”
Seventh Ward Alderman Glenn Bugni said he will place a motion to override Brand’s veto on the common council agenda April 10, which will require two-thirds of the council’s support in order to succeed. Prior to this announcement, Bugni made a request for Brand to withdraw his veto, which the mayor declined.
“This was a vote on March 13, previous notice, and it was a two-thirds vote of those in attendance. I know it’s the right of the mayor to do that, but when you override that, the will of the council, to me, wants it done. And we have some things that we have to work through. And it’s unfortunate that we can’t start it on the April 10 meeting. But at least I have put it on the agenda — unless Mayor Brand chooses to withdraw. He has time to reconsider doing that,” Bugni said.
Third Ward Alderman Tim Kassis, who along with Bugni has been a vocal supporter of the change, said he believes that Bugni’s motion to override Brand’s veto has enough support to pass April 10, just as the original motion did.
“I’m somewhat baffled by that veto,” said Kassis, who was unable to vote at meetings he appeared at through Zoom on several occasions this winter while he was vacationing in Florida. “We had a lot of support at our council meeting too in support of the Zoom meetings, and it’s unfortunate because our mayor is saying he doesn’t want us to vote and represent our constituents at meetings.”
City of Antigo Information and Technology Director AJ Jansen, who has coordinated efforts which have allowed council members to appear (but not vote) at meetings during the past few months via Zoom, did speak about several issues that needed to be addressed before remote voting could begin.
One of the largest short-term issues, he said, involved roll call voting: when physically present at city hall, each council member uses a handheld device that allows for votes to be cast and then quickly displayed simultaneously, which will not immediately be possible for members voting remotely.
“The texting a vote in to me isn’t a clean way of doing it,” Jansen said. “I would assume we would go to a verbal, kind of a round robin style how you did it before the button pushing. That’s just something to take into consideration.”
“Potentially with multiple Zoom attendees, even a verbal, just a yay or nay voting, should probably occur one at a time just so everybody’s aware, just so whoever’s taking minutes can hear everybody’s vote and not just guess. Because if you’ve got three people coming in remotely, you’re going to overlap.”
Though others at the meeting agreed that this “round robin” style of voting would be acceptable for now, Brand expressed doubts, suggesting that, because it would allow other council members to know how other of their peers had voted, it was unfair.
“The conflict is, if three people are remote and voting on Zoom, and we vote on this machine, how do you mesh the two together to show a result at the same time?” he said. “Timing’s critical. With our current voting system, nobody sees how anybody voted until everybody sees how everybody voted.”
Jansen said the council would also have to make decisions about public access to the meetings.
“Do we make the Zoom link available to the public for citizen attendance virtually?” he said. “And if we do, do they sign up for public comment? That’s all obviously possible, but that’s just not my decision to make. And if we’re going to be having a citizen virtual attendance, then do we livestream to Youtube right away so that people who don’t want to actually attend via Zoom can at least watch it live?
“There’s a lot of ways to get the job done. You can see that throughout. Our research has showed that as we’ve reached out to other communities…there’s a lot of different ways to do things. It’s really down to the individual council members and how you want it to be.”
Whether remote voting will be re-approved by the council at all, though, at the moment remains in question.
“I don’t ever see them ironing out all the details,” Brand said. “They want to just keep it as vague as possible so they can do whatever they want. I would only rescind the veto if they addressed all my concerns, and they don’t even know all my concerns with it yet. So there’s a pretty slim chance of that happening.”
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