The time has come for the Princeton Planning Board to go hybrid for meetings

Dear Planet Princeton Editor,

Last May 2024, Ron Berlin went to the Town Council in-person and asked for the Princeton Planning Board to resume in-person meetings with a Zoom option – or a hybrid meeting. Mr. Berlin later submitted the statement he presented to Council to local news outlets.

A few weeks later in June of 2024, Planning Board Chair Louise Wilson wrote in response: “With substantial technical improvements that guarantee equity in the broadest sense – a truly level playing field – the Planning Board might one day transition to a hybrid meeting format provided it allows for every participant, in person or remote, to see and hear equally well, to be seen and be heard equally well, at every meeting.”

It’s now April 2025, the pandemic is over, technology has improved and I would like to respectfully ask the Princeton Planning Board to resume in-person meetings – with a Zoom component or what is now known as hybrid meetings.  

As Mr. Berlin well-noted over a year ago, in-person meetings allow the community (including the Planning Board) to take the temperature of the room, to see who shows up, and to interact face-to-face. The Zoom format has its benefits for anyone unable to attend, or too shy to speak in a large group or many other reasons, but the Zoom format is also very impersonal, and a loss for the community to gather and meet people who share a community interest, whether for or against. 

Princeton Council has in-person/Zoom hybrid meetings. I would also respectfully urge the Council to ask the Planning Board to follow their example and let the public back into the Planning Board meetings, in-person. It’s been too long. As Ms. Wilson said, “one day” the Planning Board would transition to hybrid meetings. That “one day” has surely come. 

Carolyn H. Robertson