HOLLIDAYSBURG — Blair County commissioners will keep conducting business meetings via telephone and video connections for another month, based on positions taken Tuesday by commissioners Laura Burke and Amy Webster.

In response to a proposal to resume in-person meetings beginning Monday, presented by commissioners Chairman Bruce Erb, Burke said she didn’t see any reason for “rushing to go back to in-person meetings.”

Burke pointed out that Blair County has yet to pass 14 days of being in the state’s green phase of COVID-19 related eased restrictions.

“I think we’re opening ourselves up to a risk we don’t need to take,” Burke said.

The commissioners, in April, started holding weekly business meetings via phone after the state imposed a stay-at-home order and restrictions to slow transmission of the coronavirus. So far, 55 cases have been confirmed in Blair County, which has 120,000 residents.

Since those initial meetings, commissioners have since expanded their communication means to include video communication, but some county personnel and the public are still accessing the meetings only by telephone.

“I think the video meetings have worked as well as the in-person meetings,” Burke said.

She also asked: “What efficiencies have we lost?”

In answering that question, Erb said: “Having meetings remotely is not nearly as conducive to give and take discussions that occur in public.”

Another problem, Erb said, has been technical.

Webster’s voice was softer than other voices during much of Tuesday’s weekly meeting that lasted more than an hour.

“I haven’t been able to hear you for some of this (conversation),” Erb told Webster.

“There’s some muffling of her voice,” said Controller A.C. Stickel.

With Erb and Burke divided, Erb called on Webster for a deciding position.

After stating that she would have the county’s internet technology staff look into her connection, Webster said she would agree with waiting until mid-July to resume in-person meetings.

County Administrator and Chief Clerk Nicole Hemminger advised commissioners that the county’s public meeting room, in the basement of the courthouse, remains set up to accommodate social distancing among those attending. She said the microphone used during the meeting by various presenters could be sanitized between uses.

A week ago, commissioners convened a board of elections meeting in the public meeting room.

Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 946-7456.