Livingston’s Zoning Board will move its meetings to in-person only, beginning Tuesday, September 12.
After holding its public sessions online through Zoom for three years, the Zoning Board will now meet at the Livingston Municipal and Police Building, 357 South Livingston Avenue. Conference sessions that precede the public hearings will take place inside the Municipal Building’s executive conference room.
This makes the Zoning Board the final governing entity in Livingston to return to in-person meetings.
The governing body first discussed a tentative September return to in-person at a June Zoning Board meeting. The decision comes after the public health emergency for COVID was lifted in May.
Unlike its government counterparts, the Zoning Board will “probably not” be recording its meetings, and it will not be livestreamed, either, according to Catherine Maddrey, Livingston’s planning coordinator.
But a set plan is not finalized yet. Maddrey said that if hearings will be recorded, they will not be uploaded to YouTube until “a few days” after the meeting date. The Zoning Board’s decision on meeting access will be determined prior to the September hearing, Maddrey said.
Residents had previously ex pressed frustration at the township’s limited accessibility to public meetings. The Town Council meets in-person with a regular session livestreamed on Facebook. The public conference session of the meeting is not available online.After the meeting is livestreamed, the recorded version is immediately available on the Livingston Township Facebook page.
The Planning Board meets in-person and uploads its recorded sessions to the township’s YouTube page hours after the meeting is adjourned.
Currently, Livingston’s Board of Education is the only town agency that livestreams the entirety of its public sessions on Zoom and Facebook, which can be accessed immediately afterwards on the Livingston Public Schools Facebook page.
