UPDATE ON COMMISSION MERGER ISSUE 4/14-24
April 16, 2024
by Elaine Roberts Musser
Finally the City of Davis commission merger issue is being brought back to some of the affected commissions for their feedback. Unfortunately city staff and some of the City Councilmembers are acting as if their terribly flawed plans for merged commissions are a done deal.
For example, last week the city began recruiting members for two of the proposed merged commissions (Fiscal Commission; Transportation Commission). And, this Wednesday, the first of an expected series of hearings will be held at the Utility Commission, to review a mission statement drafted by the City Council Subcommittee (Vaitla; Chapman) for the new Finance Commission that would be created by combining Utilities Commission with the Finance and Budget Commission. The Utilities Commission staff report states that it is seeking feedback on the proposed scope of work for what it calls the “newly created commissions.”
These commissions have not been “newly created,” as the full City Council only approved them in concept last January. It did not provide final approval in the form of official council resolutions and, in some cases, new city ordinances, that are needed to actually implement such mergers.
- The actual motion that was approved by the City Council “task(s) the subcommittee with continuing work on reviewing and revising the authorizing resolutions of each Commission…(with) bringing information back to the full Council for final review and approvals.”
- That same evening City Manager Mike Webb advised the City Council: “… ultimately …
none of it becomes official until the City Council adopts updated authorizing resolutions.”
The proposal to merge commissions is still extremely flawed:
Disparate skill sets - Merging two commissions will require an incredibly steep if not impossible learning curve for commissioners to become well-versed in disparate commission missions.
More difficulty recruiting applicants - Because applicants for the proposed merged commission need expertise in both commission missions and meetings are apt to run long to cover all the ground required, it will be difficult to recruit citizens to serve on the merged commissions.
Time constraints - The agendas of commissions are often quite full. A merging of two commissions will result in half as much time spent on critical issues and much longer meetings.
Proposed scope inadequate, vague and unclear - The proposed scoping statements appearing in the city’s press release and staff reports for the new Finance Commission and Transportation Commission omit many functions of existing commissions and has been simplified so much that they are vague and unclear. The draft mission statements for the other commissions remain secret as of now.
ONCE AGAIN, PLEASE VOICE YOUR CONCERNS ABOUT THIS TERRIBLE MERGER PLAN TO CITY OFFICIALS. MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD THROUGH EMAILS TO THE FULL COUNCIL ([email protected]rg), AT COMMISSION MEETINGS (the Utilities Commission meets Wednesday, April 17, in the City Council chambers conference room), PUBLIC COMMENT AT CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS (next meeting is April
23) AND LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (to the Davis Enterprise, Davisite, and Davis Vanguard).
https://www.davisenterprise.com/news/tree-commission-unable-to-discuss-merger-no-quorum-present/article_d1275c68-096b-11ef-997a-6fc47885ab0e.html
The Davis Tree Commission was scheduled to give input on the proposed scope of the Climate and Environmental Justice Commission on Wednesday but was unable to hold a meeting due to failure to achieve quorum.
Three of six commissioners were in attendance including Chair Jim Cramer, Vice-Chair John Reuter and Ann Daniel. After waiting 15 minutes as per Brown Act rules, the meeting was called off.
City Clerk Zoe Mirabile was at the meeting...
Posted by: Civil Discourse | May 04, 2024 at 12:33 PM
I am a tree commissioner who was not able to attend. I would like to note the following facts left out of the enterprise article.
- in a 1 and a half year period were the city council has been considering ending the tree commission, they chose a 2 hour window where the tree commission could discuss the end of the tree commission.
- the tree commission has been specifically prohibited from discussing the end to the commission at any other time.
- no member of city council attended the tree commission to have dialog about the demise of the tree commission.
- no member of city council has attended a tree commission meeting in over a year and a half.
- the tree commission is missing members thus making it harder to have a quorum because the council has declined to appoint new members.
Posted by: Colin Walsh | May 06, 2024 at 09:55 AM
Here's my theory: this aren't mergers, these are called mergers, but are actually commissionicides. Troublesome and pesky commissions are 'merged' in order to make them go away. Oldest trick in the bureaucratic book.
Posted by: Alan C. Miller | May 06, 2024 at 11:54 PM
"Commission staff report states that it is seeking feedback on the proposed scope of work for what it calls the “newly created commissions."
The above should be changed to "scope of woke", because so of these new commission names seems painfully woke, to a degree where it's difficult to tell what the hell the commission is for unless you are fluent in 'woke' dialect.
Posted by: Alan C. Miller | May 06, 2024 at 11:58 PM
Alan, I would contend that the new commissions are not woke at all. they are wrapped in Woke language, but if you carefully ready the new scope of work for the commissions the commissions have not just been merged, they have been gutted of vast areas of topics commissions can consult the council on. It looks like the new commissions will be exceptionally limited in their roles woke or otherwise.
Posted by: Colin Walsh | May 07, 2024 at 05:53 PM