A rare meeting will occur tonight of City Council’s Personnel Committee will take place to consider various appointments to two city boards and commissions. What makes this meeting interesting is that this is the first time that a City Council Committee will actually undertake discussion a full-throated discussion of board appointments.
Traditionally, these appointments have been done through an oral report of the committee that is presented, discussed and passed within minutes at a regular council meeting. This new process at least allows the Personnel Committee to have some familiarity with those that are being appointed to help make decisions for the committee.
A second interesting twist to tonight’s meeting is that there are three appointments to two boards and the approach for each of the boards shows a striking difference in the way certain officials are approaching their roles.
The Mayor has asked council to approve an appointment of an individual to the City’s Human Relations Commission. The Council President has asked council to approve two appointments to the Community Reinvestment Area Housing Council.
As shown below, the Mayor’s Request to appoint someone to the Human Relations Coummission, by any standard, is as unhelpful as one could get.
The remaining two appointments to the Housing Council is being brought forward to the Personnel Committee by the Council President, who provided much greater detail in his request:
In his request, Council President Rozell goes to great detail in discussing the role of the Housing Council, the individuals currently serving and some biographical information about those being considered. The Council President also goes into a discussion about how the decision was made, it is made clear that the online Board and Commission application process was consulted in bringing this decision in front of the City Council.
This publication has gone into great detail in the past about how our Board and Commissions process is broken. In fact, this publication touched on this topic in one of last month’s most popular editions of this newsletter:
What the different approaches taken by the Mayor and the Council President vividly demonstrate is that our current process is broken, not by the process itself, but by those who are there to lead and manage the process.
It is clear that the Council President takes the responsibility of council’s appointments to the Housing Council seriously; the information provided by him to the Personnel Committee along with the process he used to make the decision is clear, understanable and shows a duty of care and loyalty to the council and the community.
What is not clear is how seriously the Mayor takes her role in her responsibility of appointing members to various city boards and commissions. The Mayor has freely admitted in the past that she has no interest to use the online board interest form that she asked to be put on the city webiste, nor as she shown any interest in recruiting new residents for important roles on these board and commissions.
In other words, there is not a problem with our board and commissions process, it is that those that are entrusted to use the system, simply don’t. When individuals don’t use the governmental system entrusted to them to their highest and best use, residents become more frustrated with their local government and trust continues to erode.
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