They had a 3+ hour long meeting Wednesday night. I recorded it while I was in another meeting. Lets take a look at what happened and they other recommendations the committee has made about boards, committees and commissions!
RECONSIDERATION OF PREVIOUS RECOMMENDATIONS
Honestly, I’m waiting for Abby Becker’s story to come out to find out what happened. I was chairing the Public Safety Review Committee in the room next door and joined 1.5 hours into the meeting and there just seemed to be a lot of anger in the room. Clearly a split committee. Channel 3 reported this:
- Madison task force pulls recommendation for downsizing council, can’t agree on future council size – Channel3000.com
Here’s the audio if you feel so inclined to subject yourself to the discussion. The audio quality in the beginning is brutal due to ambient noise in the room, they quickly get out the microphones and it is much better. I haven’t listened to the full thing, so I hope the quality is ok for the rest of it – I only clipped the beginning and end. Citichannel did NOT record the meeting, so this is probably the only full record of the contentious meeting.
OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS: Boards, Committees and Commissions
This is from the report of the City Attorney to the Common Council Executive Committee. These are the committee recommendations on the changes to the Board Committee and Commissions (BCCs) for the City of Madison:
Votes Related to Boards, Commission and Committees.
The TFOGS voted to approve the following recommendations related to BCC. Unless modified through future action, these would be included in the final report to the Council:
– Reorganize the BCC structure to increase accountability and require annual review of BCCs relevance and usefulness.
– Combine BCCs that work on the same or similar subject areas.
– Eliminate BCCs that have outlived their usefulness.
– Eliminate BCCs that perform work that would better be performed by staff or a nongovernment organization.
– Provide better clarity of purpose for BCCs either through ordinance amendments or otherwise.
– Provide better training for chairs, members, and staff on the role of each BCC and the rules and procedures for running an effective meeting and achieving a meaningful result.
– Change the time, place, rules, and procedures of BCC meetings to create a greater likelihood of achieving diversity in participation and representation.
– Explore alternative forums of resident participation that may or may not take the form of a traditional BCC, including greater use of technology.
-Employ a greater use of ad-hoc committees, with clearly defined mission, authorities, oversight, staffing and reporting requirements. Dissolve the ad-hoc committee once
it completed its task.
– Increase representation and participation by conducting impact analysis for city decisions to determine which residents will be most highly impacted by a decision and put processes in place to reach out to those residents.
– Consider alternatives to the current BCC member appointment process such as splitting up appointment responsibilities between the Mayor and Common Council.
–Create an Office of Resident Engagement and Neighborhood Support that would be responsible for, among other things, staffing, training, minutes/reporting for BCC meetings and for engaging residents on key issues coming before the City’s BCCs. As the City works towards the creation of ORENS, it should immediately create a BCC Administrative Services Team consisting of staff from the offices of the Common Council, Mayor, Human resources and City Clerk who are already involved with BCC support, and to be housed in the Common Council Office. The Team shall also be charged with developing systems for BCCs to use for resident participation in decision making and ensuring that prompt and direct feedback is given to issues about which residents have expressed interest.
-Appointments to the BCC:
Purposes: TFOGS urges the City to improve transparency, increase diversity of representation and have greater collaboration in the BCC appointment process.
Recommendation: In order to achieve the stated purposes, the Mayor shall nominate alders and others proposed for positions on the BCC (with the existing limited exceptions). Upon introduction of the nominations at the Common Council, the nominations shall be referred to the Common Council Executive Committee (CCEC). The CCEC shall promptly consider the nominations and either recommend approval, referral back to the Mayor’s office, or referral to the Mayor’s office with suggestions of possible new or different nominations. In making its recommendations, the CCEC shall consider, among other things, thepurposes set out above. The CCEC’s recommendations will then return to the Common Council for action.
Appropriate changes to the relevant Madison General Ordinances will be made to accomplish this recommendation, including establishing an outside time limit for action by the CCEC.
– The TFOGS believes a key component to increasing representation and resident engagement is to create a robust technology plan that will create new avenues for resident engagement. These include but would not be limited to 1) remote participation of BCC members and the public in BCC meetings, 2) notification or alerts of issues coming before BCCs, including the ability to follow items based on interest, impact, category, geography, etc., and to see how they are resolved;) 3) platforms on which to submit feedback to certain items under consideration, and 4) creation in one accessible place a display of the current and upcoming vacancies on BCC to facilitate the application process).
