There will be many empty chairs at the local council meeting on Monday in the Grafrath meeting room.
The reason: Due to the catastrophe declared in Bavaria due to Corona, the council members meet in a hybrid meeting.
Grafrath - In Grafrath that means: Except for the mayor, all council members are connected from home.
It is the first hybrid session in the county in this form.
In July the municipal council decided to change the rules of procedure accordingly.
According to this, hybrid meetings are possible in the event of war and disaster in order to ensure that the committee is able to act.
Hybrid meetings have already been held in the district, for example in Eichenau.
Some of the council members were connected online there, but some also came into the meeting room.
And the technology?
Not so in Grafrath. There, the rules of procedure stipulate that the committee meets either entirely online or entirely in person. The fact that the council members are now sitting together on a PC or laptop instead of in the meeting room on Monday had been voted on beforehand, as Mayor Markus Kennerknecht reported when asked by the daily newspaper. "Of course there is no official decision, as the local council does not meet to clarify the issue." There was a majority in favor of the hybrid meeting. "We have made the decision for such cases," commented Kennerknecht on the current situation in the pandemic. Now the technology still has to work.
So on Monday only Kennerknecht, the secretary and invited guests such as architects are on site.
Listeners and the press are also allowed.
The council members' chairs remain empty.
