Our View: Cloquet needs city hall to be open

It’s time for Cloquet to reopen City Hall and resume in-person council meetings.

City Hall is set up well for social distancing. The lobby area is spacious, and could easily accommodate crowd-control lines and ropes to keep citizens safely spaced. And the staff is generally secure behind the partitions and service windows. With proper safety protocol, we feel City Hall can open safely.

Residents need to pay their utilities, get permits, and conduct other business with the city in person. Reopening will reduce the burden of dealing with city issues while protecting city workers from the lingering health hazards of the pandemic. It’s about time.

And we’re not complaining about meetings broadcast electronically — we’ve noticed the public has engaged in meetings far more often than they did when the council met in person, so we’d like to continue to have the meeting available live via Zoom. That should not be too difficult since the meetings are already livestreamed on the city’s website and taped for later play on CAT-7 (which is managed by the Pine Knot News). Frankly, we’d like to see council meetings live on CAT-7, as well. But at least the city should keep the current options for increased public participation.

As increased vaccinations get us closer to a new normal, we believe government functions better when its leaders meet together in one room — safely, of course. And as schools, churches, and other gatherings are allowed under safe conditions, we feel it’s time for the Cloquet City Council to resume meeting in person as well.

The pandemic has certainly taken its toll on our community. And we appreciate the response of our leaders in keeping the pandemic from getting out of control. But the time is ripe for reopening City Hall. We hope city leaders agree.