Mayor: Council needs more citizen input

The city’s new mayor, Christian Price, took a stand at his first city council last week, stating there needs to be more participation from citizen committees on how the council makes decisions.

Price, who served on the city’s Board of Adjustments, said during the June 5 meeting that many citizens who volunteer to serve on those boards feel underused.

At its meeting next Tuesday, the council will decide whether to create a task force to review the role of city boards, committees, commissions and task forces and to recommend possible revisions to a policy the council approved in 2009.

“As the person who proposed it (the task force), I’d like to get the stakeholders together. The public, the council, members of boards who all see something different and make this a lot better,” Price said Thursday.

The new mayor said he would like to see more vetting of the issues before they come to council. “I’d like to see them (committee members) participate in all facets.”

“For instance, if we are talking about a library, then P&Z needs to say how and where it will go and the parks, rec and library committee needs to say what it will contain so council doesn’t have to micromanage them,” he said.

Price said he would like to see each of the committees give a quarterly report, or, if there is an important issue, come before the council and give a report to explain how members came to their conclusion.

The Planning and Zoning Commission and Heritage District Citizens Advisory Committee are examples of standing citizen committees that use a council-sponsorship method for selection of their members.

The mayor and six council members each appoint a resident to serve on those committees. The appointments must be made within 90 days of the new council being sworn in. Committee members serve at the pleasure of their sponsoring council member, who can reappoint them or replace them.

In a similar fashion, council members can appoint citizens to task forces created for specific purposes, such as a group that recently made a recommendation to council on animal control.

Leon Potter, who like Price took his seat on the city council June 5, served on the Parks, Recreation and Libraries Advisory Committee last year.

Potter said there were instances when he felt as if the input of his committee didn’t matter to council members.

“There were a couple times I felt input was dismissed or put on the back burner,” he said.