ESCANABA — A wishlist item for some Delta County residents, the return to Zoom access for county board of commissioners meetings, could be on the horizon.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom was introduced as a way to allow virtual attendance at meetings for members of the public that were uncomfortable or unable to attend in-person. While the pandemic was waning, a series of controversial decisions by the then-seated county board in early 2023 led to a spike in attendance at meetings and a flood of residents virtually attending, either as spectators or as active participants in public comment.

At the April 4, 2023 meeting, the board voted to eliminate broadcasting on Zoom and only broadcast meetings live on YouTube in a 3-2 split vote, with current commissioners Steve Viau and John Malnar dissenting. The vote came after a request for a stipend to IT Coordinator Brandon Couvillion, who was attending all county board meetings to manage the Zoom feed, was sent to the county’s finance committee. Instead of supporting the stipend, the finance committee recommended eliminating Zoom.

Couvillion publicly supported Zoom’s elimination at the April 4, 2023 meeting.

At the time of the decision, the seated board of commissioners raised concerns about accommodating residents who were disabled, as required under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Residents with disabilities were recommended to call the county’s ADA coordinator, Jack Smith, prior to meetings to arrange for comments to be phoned in at the appropriate time.

Despite neither virtual access through a platform like Zoom nor broadcasting of meetings being required under either the ADA or the Open Meetings Act, the decision was met with disapproval from many in the community, including some who saw the move as stifling the voice of individuals with mobility impairments.

While some of the currently-seated commissioners have openly supported a return to providing Zoom access, cost has remained an issue.

“I realize how expensive it is to implement Zoom fully as a board for everyone to participate in it and (all) that. My goal wasn’t to implement Zoom that way, where we got to cut $70,000-$80,000. I know that Zoom has a free plan and I know there are ways of getting people to dial in at the right time like in the beginning on comments on the agenda and once we make all our decisions (if) somebody wants to chime in on general public comment at the end,” said Commissioner Steve Viau.

According to Zoom’s website, a free plan would only allow up to 100 participants and for meetings to last only 40 minutes. Since the May recall election changed the makeup of the board, livestreamed meetings on YouTube have averaged about 2 hours in length. Viewership has gone down since the election, but each meeting is still garnering hundreds of views.

Zoom does not publicly display the cost of its “Enterprise” levels of service — the highest service levels offered, and possibly what would be required for the county — on its website. However, there are other service level options that could meet the county’s needs. For example, a “Business” level plan with the highest-level “Large Meetings” add-on would cost the county about $1,300 annually, allowing 1,000 participants and meetings to last up to 30 hours.

Since the county has not indicated it intends to stop live-streaming on YouTube — and even during times when Zoom was used, that stream was made available on the video hosting platform — it’s likely that many users who don’t intend to participate in public comment would continue to watch only on YouTube.

With the exact cost of providing Zoom unknown, the board discussed sending the question to the personnel committee for review. Commissioner Kelli Van Ginhoven, however, argued that the personnel committee did not have purview over the issue.

According to Van Ginhoven, Couvillion had informed her there was previously a computers committee that addressed IT issues. This committee was a true committee of the whole, in that it was composed of all of the county commissioners but the commissioners were not permitted to take actions at these meetings. Couvillion suggested to Van Ginhoven that the commissioners either reestablish the committee of the whole for that IT issues or consider creating a new committee that, like other county committees, had a subset of the board as members.

To address both issues, the board voted to hold a committee of the whole meeting to discuss Zoom’s reimplementation and the creation of a new IT committee that is not a committee of the whole. As of Thursday morning, that committee of the whole meeting had not been scheduled.