Why So Many City Committee Vacancies?

February 22, 2019 9:05 am

I don’t think its for lack of people applying. It’s because the mayor doesn’t appoint people who have applied. One of the things the Task Force on City Government is looking at is reducing the number of committees. Unfortunately, they thing that is a solution partially because of all the city committee vacancies.

Initial Open Records Request on City Committee Vacancies

I made this open records request for Progressive Dane last June:

On behalf of Progressive Dane, please let us know:
1) How many total pending applications you have for city committees, commissions or boards? i.e. how many people have applied for a position they were not yet been appointed to.
2) How many pending applications you have for each committee, commission or board?
3) How long do you keep an application active?
4) How many applications for committees, commissions and boards have been rejected in the past year and which committee commission or board that application was rejected for.

We are not asking for the names of anyone. Just the numbers.

Any questions, please let us know!
Brenda Konkel, Co-Chair, Chair of Elections Committee
Martha Kemble, Treasurer

They fulfilled the request on July 17th, a month later. Unfortunately, that was about a week after my brother died. I wasn’t really into working on this kind of stuff at the moment. At the time they told me the following:

Attached are the records that fall within the terms of your open records request. No records have been withheld.

Most people, when applying to serve on a city committee, commission or board, indicate an interest in multiple committees. When an applicant is appointed, we keep all of their committee interests on file.

1) 445 people have applied to serve on multiple city committees, commissions or boards – a number of these applicants have been appointed to at least one of the committees in which they expressed an interest.
2) Attached, please find the breakdown by committee, commission or board. This list includes non-city committees, commissions and boards to which the Mayor makes at least one appointment.
3) We typically keep applications active indefinitely, however we did recently do a purge of applications from applicants not currently serving who had applied prior to 2011.
4) We do not reject applicants. Although someone may not be appointed immediately, we do keep their applications on file.
5) Some committees require the appointment of individuals with specific expertise or who represent a specific group.

Please note, the Mayor strives to accommodate as many interested residents as possible while balancing numerous factors such as race, ethnicity, geographic diversity, gender, experience, expertise and age.

Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Enis T Ragland
Deputy Mayor/Records Custodian

At that time, the sent me this attachment.

Second Open Records Request

I never did anything with that open records request. However, during one of the many discussions I participated in with the Task Force on the Structure of City Government, they were discussing the city vacancies. I dragged out the email response and informed them what I had found. That prompted me to do a second records request.

On February 11th I sent this email:

Could I get a current report with the same information as my request last July?
Any questions, let me know!
Brenda

Yesterday I got this response

Attached is the response to your open records request of February 11, 2019. No records have been withheld.

Please feel free to contact me if you have questions.

Enis Ragland
Deputy Mayor/Records Custodian

And this attachment.

Committee Vacancies vs Applicants

So, if you compare the number of current vacancies and the people who applied to be on committees, you get this:

Board, Committee or Commission	Number of Seats	Number of Vacancies 2/22/19	Applicants on July 17, 2018	Applicants on February 11, 2018
Ad Hoc Landmarks Ordinance Review Committee	5
Administrative Review Board
Affirmative Action Commission	9	3	24	23
Alcohol License Review Committee	16	1	31	32
Allied Area Task Force	14	5
Bayview Foundation Board	1
Board of Health for Madison and Dane County	8	1	25	24
Board of Parks Commissioners	7		13	13
Board of Public Works	9	1	22	21
Board of Review	7	2	11	12
Building Code, Fire Code, Conveyance Code and Licensing Appeals Board	9		11	11
Capital Area Regional Planning Commission (CARPC)	4		4	4
Community Development Authority	7		13	18
CDA Housing Operations Subcommittee	2	2
City-County Homeless Issues Committee	10	3	13	14
City-County Liaison Committee	7
Committee on Aging	13	1	6	6
Committee on Employee Relations	9		3	2
Committee on Sweatfree Purchases	6	1	1	1
Committee on the Environment	9		21	19
Common Council	21
Common Council Executive Committee	8
Community Action for South Central Wisconsin	1		3	3
Community Development Block Grant	11	2	36	39
Community Development Division Conference Committee	6
Community Services Committee	10	2	31	36
Deferred Compensation Committee	7
Digital Technology Committee	9		18	18
Disability Rights Commission	13		13	14
Downtown Coordinating Committee	11		21	23
Early Childhood Care and Education Committee	9		21	22
Economic Development Committee	11	1	77	78
Education Committee	8	2
Emergency Management Planning Staff Team	10
Equal Opportunities Commission	13	3	41	42
Erlanger, Jeffry Clay, Civility in Public Discourse Awared Committee	5		1
Ethics Board	7	1	12	14
Executive Committee - Board of Health for Madison and Dane County	1
Facilities Programs and Fees Committee (Parks)	0
Finance Committee	7
Golf Subcommittee	7
Habitat Stewardship Subcommittee (Parks	5
Historic Preservation Plan Advisory Committee	13	1	5	5
Ho-Chunk Nation/City of Madison Joint Planning Committee	4
Housing Strategy Committee	9		10	10
Humanitarian Award Commission, Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr	8	2
Integrated Pest Management Policy Review Task Force	11	1
Joint Campus Area Committee	20
Lakes and Watershed Commission (Dane County)			4	3
Landlord and Tenant Issues Committee	8	3	30	32
Landmarks Commission	7	1	9	10
Madison Area Transportation Planning Board (MPO)	6		2	3
Madison Arts Commission	10		27	19
Madison Community Foundation	1		2	2
Madison Cultural Arts District Board	10	5
Madison Development Corporation Board of Directors	10		9	8
Madison Food Policy Council	23		47	48
Madison Housing Authority
Madison Police Department Policy and Procedure Review Ad Hoc Committee	15	2	9	12
Madison Library Board	9	0	25	23
Madison Central Business Improvement District (BID) Board	21	2	7	5
MATC Downtown Education Advisory Board	1
Monona Terrace Community Booking Event Assistance Advisory Board	5		?
Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center Board	14	1	1
Parks Long Range Planning Subcommittee	5		?
Personnel Board	5		3	3
Plan Commission	12	1	54	63
Police and Fire Commission	5		13	12
President's Work Group on Police and Community Relations	4
President's Work Group to Develop City-Wide Surveillance Equipment and Data Management Policies
Public Market Development Committee	15	3	9	9
Public Safety Communications Center Board (Dane County)	1
Public Safety Review Committee	10		26	26
Room Tax Commission	6
Sensitive Crimes Commission (Dane County)	1
Sister City Collaboration Committee	11		5	5
Solid Waste Advisory Committee	9		7	8
South Verona Road Advisory Committee (Fitchburg)	1
Specialized Transportation Commission (Dane County)
Street Use Staff Commission	12		n/a
Sustainable Madison Committee	18		50	53
Task Force on Equity in Music and Entertainment	11		4	4
Task Force on Structure of City Government	11		21	19
TIF Review Board	8		5	5
Transportation Commission	11		n/a	5
Transportation Policy and Planning Board	9		n/a	5
Triangle and Monona Bay Neighborhood Plan Ad Hoc Steering Committee	11	3	14	14
Truman Olson Selection Committee	5
Urban Design Commission	10	1	19	20
Urban Forestry Task Force	9		2	2
Vending Oversight Committee	10	3	11	10
Warner Park Community Recreation Center Advisory Subcommittee	10	4
Water Utility Board	8		2	2
Zoning Board of Appeals	7	1	17	18
Zoo Commission - Henry Vilas	2
TOTAL	774	65	932	957

Here’s a .csv file of the table.

Observations

First of all, I entered the data as I was given it or found it on legistar. It was just easier to make the chart for easy comparison. I did not add my interpretations anywhere.

There were 3 committees listed on the vacancy lists that were not in the legistar listing of vacancies. Oddly enough, they all start with “O”.
– Overture Center Foundation Board of Directors – 2 “applicants” in both requests
– Overture Community Advisory Board – 2 “applicants” in both requests
– Oscar Mayer Strategic Assessment Committees – 7 “applicants” in July, that committee has since ended its work.

In July, I believe there were 101 vacancies. I remember that because that was part of the reason that I talked to Progressive Dane about making the request. Now there are only 65 vacancies. So that is a huge improvement, but still an absurd number of vacancies. I suspect those vacancies were filled because election season was coming up and because I made the request back in July.

In July Enis indicated that there were 445 people who had applied to be on committees. This time he did not provide that information. Several had applied for more than one committee, which is why there was a total of 932 “applications” to fill the 101 seats on committees. With the last request, there were 957 “applications” to fill the 65 seats on the committees.

In July and February, there were more people applying for boards committees and commissions (932 or 957) than there are seats on Boards, Committees and Commissions (774). Obviously, some committees are more desirable and have more applicants than others.

I might be about 10 of the applications. For 10 years I’ve applied to be on committees, for 10 years, I’ve been passed over.

The only committees that appear to have vacancies and have no one desiring to fill those vacancies are:
– Allied Area Task Force – 5 vacancies and no residents wanting to fill them? (no longer meets)
– CDA Housing Operations Committee – 2 vacancies and no residents wanting to fill them? (no longer meets)
– Education Committee – 2 vacancies and no residents wanting to fill them? (they were trying to kill this committee)
– MLK Humanitarian Award – 2 vacancies and no residents wanting to fill them?
– Integrated Pest Management Policy Review Task Force – 1 vacancy and no residents wanting to fill it?
– Madison Cultural Arts District Board – 5 vacancies and no residents wanting to fill them? I believe this one is one of the “Overture” Committees that I listed above?
– Warner Park Community Recreation Center Advisory Subcommittee – 4 vacancies and no residents wanting to fill them?

Most of the committees you never heard of or seen in the “city week ahead” are where the mayor appoints one or two people to a committee, board or commission created by another entity.

Additional Committees

Also, I should note, there are many committees are listed by the clerk, but not in the chart. A couple of these might not be meeting any more, but here’s some others that I think are still meeting or have met relatively recently:

Eliminate Committees

One of the reasons I was interested in the vacancies is that people often site the many vacancies as the reasons why we need to eliminate committees. The Task Force on the Structure of Government has a committee looking at Boards, Committees and Commissions and wants to restructure and possibly eliminate some committees.

It should be noted that of the 95 committees listed in the first chart, the following are true.
– 9 are required by law (possible more)
– 13 are created by another entity and we just make appointments
– 3 don’t regularly meet and 2 more don’t every show up as meeting
– 9 are ad hoc committees and will go away when their work is done
– 3 are essentially staff meetings (possible more)

So, 59 of the committees are left to look if you want to eliminate committees, if you don’t count the ones I just listed above (3 are listed twice above). I went through two processes to eliminate committees in the past, and I can tell you, its not popular to suggest eliminating committees!

On the second list of committees, I’m a little perplexed . . . and amused. Amused for so many reasons. One is that the committee suggesting we should eliminate committees created 6 of the committees listed above!

I’m not actually convinced that the exercise of eliminating committees is needed. There are some minor tweaks that can be made here or there, but it’s an exercise futility.

I’m still perplexed about the second list above. I actually didn’t expect to find it or for it to be that long. I believe it is a list of committees that don’t show up in Legistar. I removed meetings that I thought were duplicative, but now I’m not sure I did it right. But that leads me to so many other questions. I think that is a subject of another blog post.

Conclusion

Anyways, I was really thrown off by the second list of committees above. Back to my point. There are only 7 committees that have vacancies that don’t have people to fill them, as far as I can tell. 2 of them no longer meet and they were trying to end another. There are only 774 seats available for people on committees and we have 957 “applications” of over 400 people who would like to serve. We don’t need to eliminate committees because we can’t fill the seats!

p.s. I dedicate this blog post to Justice Castaneda who really wants to eliminate committees! Thanks for the sandwich yesterday!

p.p.s. If you are inspired to serve on a committee, here’s the info.