Back in 2019, some California cities had some level of teleconferencing or streaming public meetings, but they weren’t consistently used for public participation. The state’s Brown Act limited virtual participation under strict guidelines, cultivating a culture of having to be in the city chambers to participate.

Today, the assumption is that link will be easily accessible and remote participation is encouraged.

In large part, the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns in 2020 forced local governments to quickly implement and standardize remote meeting technology, making virtual access a norm rather than an exception.

“The pandemic definitely pushed the city (Pacific Grove) into online meetings,” said former Pacific Grove Mayor Bill Peake. “Of course we had television (meetings were televised), but it was different than streaming the meetings.”

In March 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued several executive orders that suspended many of the Brown Act requirements that pushed heavily for in-person interaction and allowed for board meetings to be conducted remotely. The acts were mostly emergency responses, but in September 2021 as many of the executive orders were set to expire and the pandemic carried on, the state Legislature passed Assembly Bill 361, Open meetings: state and local agencies: teleconferences.

Before 2020, teleconferencing was allowed, but under strict conditions like requiring public access at any physical location a council member was attending from. AB 361 temporarily removed those barriers during emergencies, making remote meetings more accessible, but still requiring agencies to provide ways for the public to observe and participate in real time.

On the Peninsula, cities such as Monterey, Pacific Grove and Seaside now stream their city council, town halls and other city meetings online through YouTube and allow public comment and participation through Zoom.

In some ways, allowing virtual participation has increased participation in municipal affairs and made the meetings more accessible for the public, according to officials.

“We have a lot of working community members that work outside of normal business day hours, so getting down here for public comment can be challenging for them,” said Dan Meewis, interim assistant city manager for Seaside. “It definitely enhanced our transparency as well as communication with the public.”Meanwhile, others have expressed a preference still for being in the council chambers and participating in person — using teleconferencing only as a backup.

“There are people who just prefer to participate in person,” said Monterey City Manager Hans Uslar. “The experience is different, you get a better sense for the chamber and the dynamics in person.”

Peake added that it’s a universal experience, one that was greatly missed at first when transitioning to online options for city meetings.

“There’s so much communication that occurs in person that you don’t get with just voice and video,” Peake said. “There’s body language, and emotions conveyed on a personal level that you miss.”

The freedom of having meetings available online did not come without its challenges.

Both residents and city officials faced technological barriers, difficulties using computers and issues setting up Wi-Fi.

With more public access came questions on how to maintain security and decorum during the meetings. Council meetings, which were already running three to four hours in some cities, could go until as late as 11 p.m. once teleconferencing was introduced, due to the high number of callers for specific agenda items.

“Sometimes you could get a lot of callers, and you’re not ready for it,” said Pacific Grove Mayor Nick Smith. “Giving everyone three minutes for comment with 20 to 30 callers could make an agenda item last hours with really late meetings lasting until midnight.”

During the height of the pandemic, cities across the state were plagued with “Zoom bombings,” people making racist comments and sharing pornographic images during the meetings.

“In the beginning, that luckily didn’t happen to us, but about two years ago when the Zoom-bombing happened all across the U.S., we had one or two evenings where we got hit really hard by far-right, fascist, racist people that called in,” Uslar said.

The interruptions continued into 2022 and 2023, most notably in Pacific Grove. Peake’s State of the City Address was interrupted shortly after it began in February 2023 when pornographic images were shown on the virtual feed.

“That was not fun. You get put in a precarious position where you want to allow public comment, but you’re not going to let that (the disruptions) continue,” Smith said. “You really don’t know who you’re talking to sometimes, so the anonymity of it can be challenging too.”

For a time, both the Seaside and Pacific Grove councils suspended their public comment portion of city council meetings.

“There were some really negative things being said at our council meetings, and we realized we had to eliminate Zoom and go back to in-person meetings,” Meewis said. “But we saw a decline in participation, we weren’t seeing that consistency. So once we were able to really develop a full-fledged policy that we could use in those situations, we brought it back and saw our participation rise again.”

Today, Monterey’s City Council does a countdown to allow everyone to raise their hand both in the chambers and online, and whoever is not in line after the countdown does not get to make a comment.

“The (countdown) process has definitely helped tackle those challenges, and we were very focused on finding options that would keep the Zoom option alive,” Uslar said.

Pacific Grove has a similar process to have people raise their hands before the public comment starts, helping the mayor set shorter time limits to keep the meetings at a reasonable time.

“Now I try to poll, and ask who wants to speak beforehand,” Smith said. “That typically helps me decide how much time to give everyone, so we have time to allow everyone to speak on every item they’d like.”