Meetings for Harrison Hot Springs Village Council will be both online and in person once again.
During the Oct. 18 meeting, council approved up to $6,000 from COVID-19 Restart Grant funding to not only to continue hosting council meetings at Memorial Hall but resume broadcasting council meetings electronically and prepare the space for any upcoming events produced by the Harrison Festival Society and Tourism Harrison River Valley.
In addition to labour, the $6,000 pays for secure storage for electronic equipment related to broadcasting meetings and the village’s Zoom subscription to allow for up to 500 participants per meeting.
Council has met at Memorial Hall rather than the usual since their June 1 meeting. The village’s first run at recording and archiving video of council meetings was on the May 4 meeting, which would be the last time they met in those chambers for the foreseeable future. Limited staff were present and councillors joined the meeting via conference call.
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A month after B.C. announced the second wave of COVID-19, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry issued an order on Nov. 19 to suspend all social gatherings and events. This prompted the council to later unanimously approve moving all council meetings to Zoom, where they would be broadcast in real time and later archived on the village’s YouTube channel.
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Since March 2020, the village had not made Memorial Hall available to any events with three exceptions: the provincial and federal elections and one memorial service in the summer of 2021 when indoor gathering restrictions were loosened for a time and months before the B.C. vaccine card program was put into effect.
Memorial Hall’s capacity is currently 175 people, 50 per cent of what capacity would be outside of the pandemic.
The next regular council meeting is scheduled for Nov. 1 at 7 p.m. at Memorial Hall.
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