Solebury Zoom Meetings to Require Pre-Registration After Spam, Abuse

Solebury Township has endeavored to keep its public meetings as transparent and open to the public as possible, promptly posting meeting recordings to our website and allowing residents to attend and participate in meetings virtually whenever possible.

Unfortunately, a few bad actors have abused the live Zoom connection. While we have been able to block some of these spammers in accordance with our hybrid meetings policy, their tactics are becoming increasingly aggressive. Additional measures are needed to ensure that our virtual meetings are not hijacked by random internet trolls.

Beginning in February 2024, we will no longer publish Zoom login information on the open web. Instead, we are asking residents to pre-register when they wish to attend a meeting virtually. It’s a simple process: Just send an email to soleburytownship@soleburytwp.org and tell us the name of the committee and date of the meeting that you’d like to attend via Zoom. Please also include your name, email address and phone number, and we’ll promptly reply with the login information. If you are unable to email us, kindly call the Township at 215-297-5656, and we will provide you with the meeting information.

The deadline to register for an evening meeting is 3 p.m. on the day of the meeting, and 8 a.m. for morning meetings.

We know we can’t stop all the spam and are reluctant to add another step to online meeting participation. But we hope that this additional bit of friction will discourage virtual vandals and give our staff another tool to keep our meetings free from disruptions.