ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — St. Louis County Council Chairwoman Rita Days says the public may get to return to their county council meetings by June 1 at the latest.
Days said she and Councilman Mark Harder have met with county health department leaders to plan how to arrange the seating inside the council chambers to adhere to social distancing guidelines as well as ensure technology will still allow those who cannot attend to participate.
The council banned the public from attending meetings in-person due to pandemic concerns in April 2020. Now that more people are vaccinated, and numbers of hospitalizations are down, Days said it’s time for the council to return to in-person meetings.
“I think it's important not only to me, but I think it's important to my constituents,” she said. “They want to have a face-to-face with their council members and that's the only way to do it is if we have the meetings open for the public to come and participate.
“We've had challenges, sometimes with the technology. Some of them have been able to get on, some of them have not. Some of them had pictures on their screens at one time and some not, so I think the best way to do it is to just go back and to go into a controlled atmosphere when it comes to our open meetings.”
Days said the number of people who will be allowed to attend in-person will be limited to somewhere between 20 and 30 people to abide by social distancing guidelines, but there will be a registration system in place where residents can sign up to speak to the council online or they can call in to register, Days said.
There will be hand sanitizer outside the chambers along with temperature checks for those who want to attend, she added.
“We probably should have been working toward this and perhaps it would not be such a rush to get it done so quickly, but we didn't, and so we are just going to move forward with what we can,” she said. “I hope that the citizenry is patient with us as we move through this process.
“None of us have gone through the pandemics and the kinds of challenges that they have presented to us, so I’m hoping that they will be patient.”