Lexington council restores public comment via Zoom. But will it keep racist trolls out?
The public will be allowed to comment on city issues and speak to the Lexington council via Zoom starting at its work session on Dec. 1.
But to do so, citizens have to follow some rules:
- Any citizen wishing to comment must sign up at www.lexingtonky.gov/publiccomment no later than noon the day before the meeting.
- People can sign up to speak in the Zoom meeting or submit a written comment.
- People will be required to give their names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and the agenda item they wish to address.
- Speakers will be given three minutes.
Council clerk staff will call those interested in speaking to verify address and other information within 24 hours. That’s to ensure the person who has signed up to speak is legitimate. Clerk staff will try three times to contact the speaker via phone. If the potential speaker does not answer, they will not be verified.
People who are verified will get a link to the Zoom meeting about 15 minutes before the meeting begins. Only those who have been vetted will be called to speak.
Stacey Maynard, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council administrator, said verified people will be admitted into the Zoom meeting as attendees, which means their video feeds initially will not be turned on.
“We cannot control what’s in the background behind them,” Maynard said during a council meeting last week.
Those running the meeting can mute anyone if they make inappropriate remarks.
The council has been meeting via Zoom since the pandemic began in early March. It had allowed public comment via Zoom until racist trolls hijacked two different meetings — one in June and a second one in August.
The trolls infiltrated the meetings by posing as Lexington citizens who wanted to comment. They would often start to comment and then yell racist, misogynistic and homophobic slurs.
Those rogue actors were panelists in the Zoom meeting. That meant they could unmute themselves even after city officials muted them. Attendees in Zoom meetings do not have the ability to unmute, Maynard said.
Anyone who makes racist or inappropriate remarks can be banned from speaking at future meetings under the new rules.
All written comments will be submitted to the council and the mayor. Those written comments will be part of the permanent record.
The council allowed people to come to the city government center and give public comment via video in the council chamber for a short period of time this fall. But in-person public comment in the chamber was suspended earlier this month after Fayette County’s COVID-19 positive numbers climbed, triggering restrictions on the number of people gathered in one place.
This story was originally published November 25, 2020 at 11:04 AM.
