Covid-19 coronavirus: Record on-line views for historic virtual council meeting

Mayor Kirsten Wise conducting her council's first virtual meeting, with councillors video-conferencing from isolation bubbles at home. Photo/ Doug Laing

The Napier City Council's first meeting in the virtual world of the Covid-19 lockdown has attracted record interest with Facebook streaming, both live and post-meeting, reaching more than 7000 views in less than 24 hours.

The "extraordinary" meeting started at 10am on Thursday, taking close to five hours, and according to the Facebook figures had attracted almost 7300 views by midday on Good Friday.

The most for any previous since the council began live-streaming meetings around-the-table was about 5900 for the November meeting, the first as Mayor for Wise and after winning at the Local Elections which ended on October 12.

The Hawke's Bay Regional Council meeting held on Wednesday had attracted about 6600 views by midday Friday. The Hastings District Council's first meeting since the lockdown is on April 23.

The Napier meeting, with Mayor Wise in her office and 12 councillors with a variety of actual and virtual backdrops in the isolation bubbles of their homes around the city, lasted almost five hours, with a break of less than 15 minutes at midday and another of about 20 minutes before entering the public-excluded phase at 2pm.

Several staff were also linked from offices in the emergency response centre or their homes.

The meeting opened with reports explaining the Council's lockdown welfare response plan, with a focus on vulnerable sectors, and planning for the recovery, in three stages including from 18 months afterwards..

Manager community strategies Natasha Mackie said the city response integrated with regional and national responses.

The vulnerable sectors in focus were those aged over 70 years, those with health issues, youth, and the homeless.

Agencies and volunteers had stepped-up to ensure that most of the known homeless had emergency accommodation and had other needs met, Mackie said. "Our main aim is that no one falls through the gaps."

An "Outbound" team of 18, which she said includes three volunteer councillors, was helping with the day-to-day work of checks on the vulnerable communities.

Discussing economic recovery, Council senior policy planner Catherine Reaburn said part of the planning would include reviewing council capital works programmes, trying to remove "roadblocks" which could impede recovery, in particular that small to medium sized businesses but also to keep "local" contractors engaged.

Fifth-term councillor Keith Price, maintaining the tradition of wearing a tie and jacket to the meetings but conceding to Hawke's Bay Today later that sitting in his lounge he was also wearing rugby shorts and was without socks or shoes, said that despite the duration the meeting went well.

Also facing a similar virtual meeting lasting more than hour immediately after the Council link and asked if such meetings might become normal post-crisis, he said: "Well who knows. A lot of things will change. It might seem bad now, but I think some good will eventually come out of it."