Want to participate in the next city council meeting?

The Vancouver city council meeting on Monday looked very different from the norm.

Only one person was sitting in the council chambers at City Hall, to start. The rest of the participants — all six members of the council plus the mayor, the city manager and the city attorney — all called in to conduct the meeting via telephone. The remote meeting was an attempt to keep city business chugging along, albeit a scaled-back version, during the COVID-19 outbreak. It was broadcast on Clark/Vancouver television, as usual.

While City Hall is closed to the public, you can still participate in the next meeting on April 20, either by submitting written testimony or calling in (both require some planning on your part).

The council accepts remote testimony on the consent agenda items through:

Written comments, sent to amanda.delapena@cityofvancouver.us no later than 4 p.m. the day of the meeting, or;
Live testimony via telephone during the broadcast meeting. To register, visit https://www.cityofvancouver.us/citycouncil/webform/register-provide-remote-council-meeting-testimony or call the city manager’s office at 360-487-8605 (again, no later than 4 p.m.) As with a normal city council meeting, people offering public comments will be asked to submit their name for the record and keep their testimony shorter than three minutes.

Meetings will be held every other Monday for the duration of the novel coronavirus outbreak, instead of four Mondays a month.