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Staff to strike COVID‑era email inclusion language from board meeting public participation guidelines
Summary
Administration recommended removing language in the board public participation guidelines that said written emails would be included in the board packet — a COVID‑era practice no longer in use — and presented the deletion to the committee for transparency; staff said procedures (not policies) anchor the guideline and no board vote is required.
District staff proposed removing language from the public participation guidelines that reflected pandemic‑era written public comment procedures. The change would strike wording that said e‑mailed correspondence would be included in the board packet; staff said the district no longer accepts public comment via email in that manner and the language is obsolete.
Mary (staff) explained the language was adopted during virtual meetings to allow written public comment when in‑person testimony was not possible. She said the guideline is a procedure anchored to a policy and that procedures do not require board votes, but the administration brought the change to the committee for transparency. "This was never intended to be an ongoing thing," Mary said of the COVID‑era written comment process.
Committee members thanked staff for the clarification and had no objections. The committee did not take a vote; staff will remove the obsolete language from the public participation guidelines and publish the corrected procedure.
