Some members of Murrysville council were sitting in the audience Wednesday night, in full observance of the recommended social distancing protocols.

When they meet next, they’ll be sitting even farther apart, but neither they nor the public will need to worry about social distancing unless someone else is sitting too close to their computer.

Council members voted unanimously to begin holding meetings through the digital meeting service Zoom, which municipal technology manager Mike Hiler referred to as “Skype on steroids for our purposes.”

“We can run it off of our CGI machine, and we can broadcast it through Channel 19 and stream it, just like we do now, so people can watch at home,” Hiler said. “We could use it at any of our meetings, planning commission, those sorts of things.”

Anyone wishing to address council will be able to email municipal Chief Administrator Jim Morrison beforehand, “so that when we schedule the meeting, we can email those contacts and log them in before the meeting starts,” Hiler said.

Morrison said information on accessing meetings using Zoom — available online at Zoom.us — will be posted to Murrysville.com.

“This helps us with the provisions of the Sunshine Act,” Morrison said.

Councilwoman Jamie Lee Korns said, for residents without reliable internet access, Zoom provides a number to call and listen in on meetings.

“Everybody should have a way to connect to it if they need to,” Hiler said.

The switch to digitized council meetings comes on the heels of council approving a state-of-emergency declaration for the municipality, a move that towns and counties throughout the state have made amid the spread of the coronavirus.

Mayor Regis Synan said the declaration “covers as much as we can possibly cover. That doesn’t mean it won’t change tomorrow or the next day. This has been kind of a moving target.

“But I think it covers things very well now for what we need to do,” Synan said.

Council’s next regular meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. April 1.

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