Has community involvement really come down to meetings via Skype and teleconferencing?

WEDNESDAY MORNING EDITORIAL — Has community involvement really come down to Skype?

Maybe, but not yet. At Tuesday’s City council meeting, members of the Kamloops Heritage Commission pleaded to be left separate and apart from the Community Arts Commission.

Since time immemorial or, at least, since citizen commissions were established, heritage and arts have been two distinct groups. But City staff decided it could solve a problem if it merged them.

The problem is that not enough people show up at commission meetings. The heritage group has had trouble for a long time getting quorums at its meetings.

So staff proposed to council that it and the arts commission be merged. On the surface, it seemed reasonable — a broader based and larger group would have a better chance at getting enough people to meetings to make decisions.

The heritage commission didn’t see it that way, for reasons we’ve gone into on previous occasions. Yesterday, members of the commission expressed confidence they’d be able to fill vacancies and get quorums.

It would help, they said, if members could Skype into meetings when they had to be out of town or absent for other reasons. Coun. Donovan Cavers, council’s rep on the commission, made a motion asking staff to look into the potential for making better use of technology for all City commissions.

His motion was defeated; fellow councillors thought sticking with the old-fashioned way of expecting people to actually show up at meetings was best, for now.

There are practical reasons, too, including making sure commission volunteers are properly equipped with computers and Skype passwords and the know-how.

And, really, despite this world of texting, emailing, teleconferencing and Skyping, we hopefully haven’t quite reached the point where face-to-face meetings are passé.

It’s coming, though. The day will come when civic commissions and committees simply dial in rather than show up. Maybe it will be the same for City councils.

That will be too bad, but Tuesday’s discussion was a reminder that it’s coming.