WATTLE Range Council fully embraced modern- technology on Tuesday night when it held its first ever electronic meeting.
Wearing headphones, mayor Des Noll and chief executive Ben Gower oversaw proceedings from the council chambers with audio and video feeds coming in from 11 elected members and four senior staff.
They were in 14 remote locations such as offices and homes and the proceedings were live-streamed through a link on council’s website.
The video-conferencing technology had already been used by the council on two recent occasions for informal discussions about the draft 2020/21 budget, but the talks were not open to the public and were not live-streamed.
The extraordinary measures are a response to the protocols imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic which require social distancing and ban public gatherings.
The State Government recently gazetted changes to the Local Government Act to permit such electronic meetings and has been embraced by the 68 other councils across South Australia.
All the usual meeting routines of a Wattle Range Council meeting were followed such as the civic prayer and the acknowledgement of country.
All motions were accepted unanimously and no amendments were moved.
It was a shorter-than-usual agenda with no questions-on-notice, correspondence or notices-of-motion.
After two hours of debate, the routing business of the meeting finished before council moved into the annual review of confidential orders.
Mr Noll then announced the live-stream would end.
Speaking after the meeting, Mr Gower said there had been some minor technical hitches.
“The meeting went reasonably well,” Mr Gower said.
“After the public live-stream ended, we lost the link with some councillors.
“We took a 15-minute adjournment and the councillors were re-connected.
“The confidential talks lasted about 30 minutes.”
