14 May 2020

Zoom-In > Today's Early Morning Mesa City Council "Study Session": 3rd Time-Around Re-Treads

We have moved to a radically remote posture, leaving a lot of empty real-estate in City Hall and abandoning the final protections of the access-for-all digital perimeter. 
Council Study Session Meeting Notice
To decrease COVID-19 exposure, the City Council Chambers is closed, but public viewing and input on the items are available electronically. . . Members of the City Council will appear electronically for meetings, via a video conferencing platform, . .   
ZOOM, the virtual platform deployed by the Mesa City Council, has come under scrutiny over issues and concerns over privacy and security for city employees and their "work-from-home" contracts.
From a security perspective, the basics are critical - High on the list are concerns about misinformation, weaponized information and social engineering.
ASK > Who in Mesa City Hall is taking precautions ???


How to Keep the Party Crashers from Crashing Your Zoom Event ...

Mesa City Council Study Session Thu 14 May 2020 @ 07:30 a.m.

What? 
4 Presentations on the agenda with zero
records and no links and no attachments provided???

THAT'S BAD. SO BAD
a new low for Mesa City government 
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VIRTUAL TELECONFERENCE PLATFORM


Public participation will be available electronically.  

OK. Why create more obstacles to citizen participation in their own government to make public input even more difficult to provide?
There's definitely "a digital divide" when council meeting spaces are closed off to the public - not even one member of the public is permitted to enter the Lower Chambers?
Here are the published hurdles (and that's assuming your average citizen can afford all the hardware and software)
> If you want to provide a written comment or speak telephonically at the meeting, please submit an online comment card at least 1 hour prior to the start of the meeting.  

> If you want to speak at the meeting
  • you will need to indicate on the comment card that you would like to speak during the meeting, 
  • and you will need to call 888-788-0099 or 877-853-5247 (toll free) using meeting ID 5301232921 and following the prompts, prior to the start of the meeting.  
You will be able to listen to the meeting
  • and when the item you have indicated that you want to speak on is before Council, your line will be taken off mute 
  • and you will be given an opportunity to speak
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FIRST ITEM ON TODAY'S STUDY SESSION:
1 Review and discuss items on the agendas for the 
>> May 18, 2020 regular 
>> and Special Council meetings 
THERE ARE 35 ITEMS in the regular meeting! 

11 Contracts (Item 3)
  9 Resolutions (Item 4)
  6 Ordinances (Item 5) . . . .
  3 PUBLIC HEARINGS
+ 10 more items 


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Meeting Name:City CouncilAgenda status:Tentative
Meeting date/time:5/18/2020 5:45 PMMinutes status:Draft
Meeting location:Virtual Platform
Published agenda:Agenda AgendaPublished minutes:Not available
Meeting video:
Attachments: