Victor Sanchez has had to rethink the way he approaches his job as an organizer with the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy now that Long Beach City Council meetings have evolved to meet the social distancing requirements imposed because of COVID-19.

He’s currently trying to push the council to enact protections for workers who were laid off during the economic shutdown, but instead of mobilizing them to show up at a Tuesday night meeting to share their stories with the council, he’s racing to make sure they know how to use the city’s e-comment function, and in some cases, that they have access to the internet.

“It kinda completely changes the game,” Sanchez said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended nearly every part of daily life and how elected officials interact with the public during meetings is no different. It’s led to a patchwork of plans for maintaining social distancing mandates while still allowing public input.

Long Beach, which completely closed its Civic Chambers to the public last month, has opted for an e-comment feature that allows members of the public to digitally submit their thoughts on items prior to the start of public meetings.

Instead of council members and the public getting to hear feedback on issues being voted on in real time, the council members have them printed out before or during the meeting while the public must wait until the next day when the meeting’s minutes are posted.

At the March 17 meeting, where the council voted to create an eviction moratorium ordinance, there were 24 pages of public comments submitted. How those people felt was not part of the public record until the day after the vote took place.

The e-comment feature has always been available but wasn’t widely used as speakers would typically go to meetings in person. Now, e-comments and email are the only ways to have their opinions included.

By contrast, Los Angeles initially used a tent out in front of its city hall that allowed speakers to weigh in remotely in real time before switching to a phone-in system that it’s utilized since last week. Other cities have used meeting apps like Zoom and other teleconferencing technology to allow the community to engage.

This week, Riverside even offered drive-up public comment before its vote on a proposed homeless and low-income housing project.

Sanchez is hopeful that Long Beach will switch to a system that allows residents’ actual voices to be heard. He said turning people out to council meetings is one of the more critical tools he has as an organizer because it shows the council that people care about the issue.

“Having peoples’ voice not be present, it takes away from transparency,” Sanchez said.

Long Beach City Clerk Monique De La Garza said that for the immediate future the city will likely continue with its e-comment system but that it has looked at the possibility of integrating other technology to allow for voters to better engage.

“We want to hear from the public. It’s just, how do we do that effectively?” she said. “Everyone is open to hearing any ideas and any possible solutions.”

There’s also some technological hurdles to overcome. De La Garza pointed to instances like Tuesday night’s Laguna Beach City Council meeting where someone accessed the Zoom video conference and inserted pornographic images and videos, causing the meeting to be paused and then ultimately restarted on another platform.

“We’re trying not to invite chaos into an already challenging situation,” De La Garza said.

The e-comments and emails are accepted up until about 15 minutes before the start of the meeting when they’re given to council members. They’re condensed into a single file for the public’s review the day after meetings when minutes are posted to the city’s meetings portal.

While public comments being submitted digitally has undoubtedly shortened meeting lengths, De La Garza said she was unsure how long the current system would stay in place if social distancing measures are extended even further into the future.

Phone-in comments have been used at smaller commission meetings in Long Beach, but those bodies typically deal with far fewer items than the council and draw less interest from the public.

“When you’re talking about a City Council meeting, we’re talking about a lot of calls,” she said. “How do you manage the volume of phone calls on the dozens of items that we have every week?”