Starting a few weeks ago, the Planning Board has resumed recording its meetings and sharing them online once they conclude. Specifically, they are available on the Livingston Township, NJ, YouTube page; the latest one was uploaded a little over an hour after the meeting had concluded. The meetings had previously been livestreamed since the start of the COVID pandemic in March of 2020 until the start of 2023.
While we wish that the meetings were once again shared live, as they occurred, this is still a good step toward equitable access, and we applaud the town for taking the action. We felt it was wrong to take this away from residents at the start of this year for no reason, and we are pleased to see that mistake rectified in relatively short order. Since the Township Council worked to improve the Town Hall’s recording setup for its meetings, and since the Planning Board meets within the same room, doing so could not have been easier.
Now, residents who wish to know exactly how the latest discussion concerning a housing complex that will bring hundreds of new units to town unfolded can do so from home (of course, they can also read about it in the paper). This is crucial for those who are physically unable to attend in person, or simply do not feel comfortable doing so. Nobody has to miss out on a meeting if they are sick or otherwise unable to attend. There are elderly residents who cannot make it to meetings in person, but can now watch them, for example. If people are out of town or at work during a meeting, it is there to be viewed when they have the opportunity to do so.
In addition to the Planning Board meetings, the YouTube page also shares the Council meetings. Those meetings are livestreamed, and may be additionally viewed on the township’s Facebook page as the meeting occurs. The Zoning Board still meets via Zoom, and while we wish that recordings were available after the meeting, as they had been for the past roughly three years, equitable access is not an issue, as long as people can virtually “attend” on time. We hope, when that Board returns to in-person meetings, it will follow similar procedures to the Council and Planning Board. The Livingston Public Schools Board of Education meetings, it is worth noting, were the first to return in-person; that Board has been meeting in a hybrid format and continues to livestream meetings to the Livingston Public Schools Facebook page.
So, in all, of the four regular public board meetings that occur in town, we now have two that are held in person while livestreamed; one held solely on Zoom; and another held in person, with the recording posted after it ends. Livestreaming all of these meetings should be the ultimate goal, but we have been pleased at the progress we have seen in recent weeks.
