April 2022 Council meeting
The Council leadership has met to assess COVID conditions in Anchorage, and has determined that we will hold the April meeting in person with remote accessibility. The SSC, AP, and Council meetings will span April 4-11, at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Anchorage, and the most recent draft of the schedule is posted on the Council’s eAgenda.
What to expect if you are attending remotely
To allow attendees to attend either in person or remotely, we will be broadcasting all three meetings via zoom, and will allow the public to testify either in person or virtually. We will use the eAgenda for public testimony signups exactly as we have done in virtual – with an additional checkbox to indicate whether each person is intending to testify in person or remotely. AP and Council members will all be participating in person, and staff are encouraged to present in person but in some cases may not be able to.
For those accessing the meeting remotely, it will be a little different than the virtual meeting experience. We are using a different platform – Zoom versus Adobe Connect – which hopefully will meet our needs but also be a little more intuitive for attendees. A primary difference is that we will not be using any cameras – so there will be no webcam in the meeting room, and you will only see presentations broadcast, as well as any motions. The meetings will continue to be recorded and available after the fact, but at least for the April 2022 meeting, as a download rather than live on YouTube.
What to expect if you are attending in person
In the meeting room, there will be a few changes from what you have been used to. First, we are moving entirely away from paper copies, and will continue to use our eAgenda for sharing documents, so you may want to bring your own phone, tablet, or laptop, although we will have some ipad reference stands available. The schedule purposely does not overlap the SSC and Council. With respect to COVID precautions, we strongly encourage all meeting attendees to wear masks. We have obtained a larger meeting space to allow some additional distancing around the table and in the audience, and we ask that you do not attend the meeting if you feel symptomatic (see CDC guidance), and if you test positive for COVID, please let us know so we can post an alert in the meeting room.
This is our first meeting using these hybrid (inperson and remote) procedures, and we ask that you be patient and flexible with us as we pilot and experiment. We are testing both what works and what is manageable, and will use that experience to gauge what is sustainable for the long-term, and whether we can offer all of these same options, for example, at our coastal Alaska meetings in future. We welcome your feedback at any time (npfmc.admin@noaa.gov).
