In Plymouth, during their first meeting after the town election, the Committee of Precinct Chairs, or COPC, discuss the concept of a virtual town meeting as proposed by Town Moderator Steven Triffletti.
The COPC is a group that consists of the chairmen of each of the town’s 15 precincts. The Select Board approved the Moderator’s Virtual Town Meeting plan to be held August 10th. The first vote at that meeting will be whether or not to even hold a virtual town meeting.
As the COPC began their meeting last Thursday Moderator Triffletti asked to speak first and issued this warning:
“If, in fact, we vote not to have a virtual meeting, it will be continued another 30 days to September 8th. So I didn’t want anyone to misunderstand that the outdoor meeting was an option.”
Option or not, the discussion concerned that subject even before the meeting convened. Precinct 10 Chair Allen Costello told WATD about the vote at his precinct meeting earlier in the week:
“It was unanimously voted to decline the vote for virtual town meeting. And we had a second motion and vote to explore an open air town meeting format and that passed unanimously.
Precinct 3, Chairman Bill Keohan says his group voted to send a recommendation to the Moderator:
“… please consider a hybrid town meeting where you have Zoom for people that feel comfortable zooming, or are at risk. Another format would be going to a football field and following social protocol for a football field town meeting.”
Betsy Hall talked about the vote at her precinct meeting:
“Precinct 12 had five members who say that under no circumstances would they attend any in-person meeting.”
Alan Costello is outgoing Chair of the COPC. Reorganization resulted in Kathryn Holmes as Chair and Michael Landers as Vice Chair.
