BY JOSH DAVISNorth Country This Week

CANTON– Attending Canton town board meetings remotely via Zoom may soon be a thing of the past, following discussion at the Feb. 12 monthly meeting. 

Canton began hosting its town meetings via Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic to allow community members and board members to meet from home, a decision made by many local municipalities during that time. 

Since then, the board has encountered difficulties with the platform including unreliable connectivity, inaccurate closed captioning, and disorderly participation from the public. 

Town council members also cited waning public use of the video platform in more recent years, noting that most who wish to attend now choose to do so in person. 

The town board encountered a real-time example of the system’s unreliability Wednesday night when a community member was unable to log in to the meeting and had to instead speak with the board via telephone to have his matter considered.  

Deputy Town Supervisor John Taillon noted that he has also experienced problems accessing the meeting remotely while traveling. 

Councilman Jim Smith also voiced his frustration with the platform, noting that the automatically-generated closed captioning of the meeting is not an accurate record of what is being said.

Smith pointed to a particular incident when the captions, which are generated through artificial intelligence and voice recognition, erroneously displayed profanity rather than the councilman’s actual statements. 

Smith added that he would be less inclined to speak at meetings if the video stream continues with the current closed captioning system.

 The host of a Zoom meeting has the ability to disable the captions by adjusting a setting in the program. 

The board also questioned whether to allow public comment through Zoom. 

Councilman Randy Brown noted that the board had to disallow public input through the video platform after a meeting was inundated with obscene imagery during an early Zoom session. 

“We got bombed,” Brown said.

Brown said that even if the board stopped airing meetings over Zoom, community members would still have access to audio-only recordings of the council’s proceedings. 

The board took no official action on the matter. 

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