Temple held meetings remotely early in the pandemic, but stopped when meetings returned to the in-person venue of the town hall.
However, resuming in-person meetings had a side effect.
“After having remote meetings for so long, when we stopped, all of a sudden there were all these people asking how they could tune into meetings from their homes,” Community Advisory Committee Chair Christine Robidoux said. “We had an increase in attendance at the remote meetings, so when we stopped doing that, those people sort of disappeared again.”
Therefore, Temple has put out a request for proposals for streaming town meetings, with a deadline of Jan. 31 and the hope of implementing the change in the new year. The change would ideally be paid for with funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, according to Robidoux.
When ARPA funding was announced, the town – led by Robidoux – held a survey for residents to rank what they wanted the money to be spent on. Streaming town meetings was overwhelmingly the top priority for many residents, she said.
The process of trying to make it happen is more complicated, said Robidoux.
“We kind of struggled a bit to find the right fit,” Robidoux said.
The initial intention was to set up streaming without any outside help, but it turned out to be difficult, particularly given the limitations of the historical town hall. So the Select Board issued the request for proposals, in the hopes that professional help with allow them to “do it right,” as Robidoux put it.
The project is in very early stages as the town awaits proposals. Robidoux said that they intend to start simple, with a streaming-only option, but hope to upgrade to include interactive capability as well as the ability to record and archive meetings.
Robidoux said that ultimately, the goal is to make sure that everybody who wants to be involved in town happenings can do so.
“We want to encourage people to participate and to listen in and to find out what’s going on,” she said.