BY ANDY GARDNER
North Country This Week

MASSENA -- The Village Board of Trustees is looking into videoconferencing future meetings and budget work sessions.

The board also applied recommended social distancing practices and kept their Tuesday, March 17 meeting short to take precautions against possibly spreading novel coronavirus.

"We purposely kept the meeting as brief as possible and conduct the necessary business ... pay the bills ... not have a gathering go on very long for the sake of social distancing," said Deputy Mayor Matt Lebire. "It was a very brief meeting. I think we were done in about 15 minutes. We tried to keep it short and sweet. We realized people want to get back and maintain their social distancing."

The Centers for Disease Control recommends people stay at least six feet apart in public, and to avoid groups of 10 or more people.

Lebire said they want people to still be able to participate in the process, should they choose.

"We need the transparency. It wouldn't be fair to ask people to shy away from coming to meetings and still conduct business," he said. "We just want to make sure not only can they see it, but engage in the appropriate parts as well.

"We hope to have some kind of announcement or information on that very soon."

At the Tuesday, March 17 board meeting, Lebire said they applied the CDC recommendations to both their table and the public gallery.

"We removed chairs so that each chair for where the public would sit were about five to six feet apart. At the main tables we sat every other seat rather than next to each other," Lebire said. "I had purposely requested the department heads not come to the meeting, they weren't needed."

Lebire ran the meeting because Mayor Tim Currier had a personal matter to attend to.