Above: This week, meetings that usually take place in the Town House Hearing Room or other public facilities will be run by video/audio conference calls accessible to the public (to hear/view, not participate in).
Based on the current guidelines for social distancing, the Town is limiting meetings to those considered critical by the boards/committees (either by topic or time sensitivity.) Below are the meetings currently scheduled, along with my selected highlights from the agendas.
Be aware that changes to the meeting schedule are known to happen throughout the week. For an updated list of meetings, visit the town website.
Monday, April 6, 2020
- Trails Committee Meeting, 6:30 pm @ Virtual Meeting* (agenda) Agenda Highlights: Trail use during COVID-19 health crisis; Explore opportunity to submit proposal to Choate fund Recreation Grant; Central Mass Regional Planning Commission – Interactive Online Regional Trails Map Opportunity; Status of Earth Day; Bay Circuit Trail Reconstruction Project Postponed; Spring trails clean-up, how to manage amid the health crisis; Review Master Plan topic areas related to trails; 2020 project planning & 5-Year Plan
Tuesday, April 7, 2020
- Board of Selectmen Meeting, 6:30 pm @ Virtual Meeting* (agenda with packet) Agenda Highlights: State Senator and Representative Legislative Update; Interview for ZBA Alternate; Discuss date for postponed Annual Town Meeting; Update on Covid-19 impact; Discuss meetings of Town boards/committees during State of Emergency; Public Comment
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
- Southborough School Committee, 6:30 pm @ Virtual Meeting – not available live** (agenda) Agenda Highlights: COVID-19 Health Situation, NSBORO-CONNECT 2.0, April Vacation Discussion, Neary School Improvement Plan Update; 2nd Readings of policies on Disposition of Executive Session Minutes and Conflict of interest
*The Town intends to make each of its meetings available for viewing/listening via streaming live (and saved) video and audio on YouTube. But there is the caveat that there could be technical glitches that force them to take backup actions:
No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time, via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so, despite best efforts, we will post on Southborough’s website an audio or video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting.
**The School Committees’ meeting will be made available to view via Southborough Access Media. But it won’t be streamed live. A recording will be broadcast eventually on Verizon-37 and Charter-192. Click here to see this week’s schedule with rebroadcast times. It will also be made available through SAM’s YouTube channel.
Be careful I’m using this product zoom. All your data is going through China and it’s being streamed by the communist Chinese government. So they say anyhow. It was confirmed by Zoom. I would be cautious.
Careful with Zoom? Absolutely. The company and its CEO have lied repeatedly.
Here’s a compendium of problems: https://www.cnet.com/news/zoom-every-security-issue-uncovered-in-the-video-chat-app/
You should assume that anything on Zoom may be made public and act accordingly.
Find details on Zoom’s connection to China at https://finance.yahoo.com/news/zoom-admits-calls-were-mistakenly-123356776.html. Mike’s claim that “all your data is going through China” is exaggerated (and not what Zoom admitted to), but at least some encryption keys are going to China, and that’s plenty worrisome.
One more thing: The iPhone/iPad Zoom app doesn’t have much privacy granularity. If you grant it access to your photos, it takes Read/Write access, and you don’t get the ability to limit that access to times the app is actually running.