City commissioners grappled with how to let good people keep serving on city boards, and at the same time, get new people involved, at their worksession Thursday.
At issues is the building and trades board. According to city rules a person has to step down for two years after serving three terms. This board has been having trouble getting people and would like to reduce that to a one-year period of not being on the board.
This board is harder than some to fill because of how it is defined. It must have, for example, master plumbers, journeyman plumbers and so forth. There are only a few of those in town, so it makes it hard to get positions filled.
Other people feel that there should be no term limits since some people are very good at what they do, and they enjoy it a lot.
What the city is likely to do at their regular meeting next Tuesday, is reduce the waiting period to one year. People do have to be reappointed, and if no one can be found, they want to give the mayor the option of reappointing a person who may have served several consecutive positions.
Commissioner Dotty Smith likes the idea of limits because she wants to get more people involved in the business of the city.
Commissioner Patrick McDonald said the commission has to approve them each time anyway, so they could easily change members when terms expire, so there would not have to be a written limit.
The problem with the building and trades board is that they are beginning a process of reviewing city codes, which will take a good bit of time, and they need people familiar with the codes.
Building, planning and codes director Matt Rowland said they have had trouble getting a quorum at times.
Commissioners are likely to vote on the matter next Tuesday, and the consensus seemed to be letting people keep serving on a board if no one new was available. But they do want to still have some sort of term limit if there are other qualified people wanting to serve.
No comments:
Post a Comment