IN A 7-4 VOTE City Council members decided to disallow the use of social media during meetings: no Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat or Pinterest. Council members’ emails sent during their public meetings are subject to a variety of rules, as well. We want to commend Council’s seven members who voted to make sure discussions during public meetings by public officials are public. Council members had a variety of reasons for supporting the ban on the use of social media during public meetings. Two of the most compelling were that not everyone can multi-task well and Council members should, frankly, be paying close attention to the meeting details before them. Another was that it is possible Council members could inadvertently violate the state’s Open Meetings Act statute by deliberating on social media.

We can appreciate the desire of the Council members who voted in favor of allowing the use of social media to use it to expand discussions to even more people. This is why newspaper reporters across the country Live Tweet government meetings. While Council members might feel obligated to engage in social media conversations during Council meetings—to answer constituent questions, for example—we believe it’s best that deliberation and even the sharing of information be done around the Council table.

We do encourage Council members to beef up their own use of social media to disseminate information outside of meetings. Council members without websites, Facebook pages and/or Twitter accounts are shirking their electronic responsibilities in this day and age. To be sure, the city’s IT department could be of infinitely more service to Council members in the effort to broaden and deepen citizen engagement.  At the moment, unlike in cities across the county, ours does nothing to help Council members send out constituent communications including email blasts and regular newsletters. This needs to change.

We commend Council members who have established social media accounts and who use them regularly to pass along information, such as the days, times and places of public meetings. These are part-time positions and these Council members go above and beyond to keep constituents in the know.

Likewise, we believe it’s time for the City Administrator to use social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to communicate with and to solicit honest feedback from city residents.