To the editor:

This winter I found out the Saranac Lake Board of Trustees was holding its public meetings online over a videoconferencing service. They weren’t well publicized, and joining them was difficult because the links to the meetings were buried on the village’s website. Still, once I learned how to find the links, I was able to attend more meetings in a couple of months than I had been able to make in the five years before.

Unfortunately, one of the online meetings was hacked, and the online meetings were immediately discontinued. Now meetings are held in the town hall auditorium, which is large enough to allow social distancing. I attended a recent meeting there. Between the face masks, the big echoing room and the lack of adequate mics, I missed at least a third of the conversation. It was less than optimal for those of us in the audience, not to mention many of our discomfort with being in a closed space with dozens of people.

Dear trustees: Please reinstitute the practice of holding your public meetings online. This could be done simultaneously with holding in-person meetings for your constituents who prefer that. Trustees could bring their laptops and join the Zoom meeting so all could be seen and heard by everyone. The security challenges are easily solved and shouldn’t prevent you from using the service.

In this day and age, voters want and need full accessibility to their elected officials. By requiring people to attend meetings in person, you are limiting village residents’ ability to participate in our democracy.

Calli Shelton

Saranac Lake