The Findlay City Rules and Organization Committee on Jan. 9 recommended a slate of two-year committee assignments and forwarded the list to the full city council for approval after a review of member preferences, schedule conflicts and committee-load balance.

President pro tem Nicole Coleman was cited early in the meeting as the official who set up the rules committee, and committee members worked from a draft spreadsheet that reflected councilors’ stated first and second preferences. Committee members discussed following written rules — which say strategic planning should be comprised of the chairs of the four main standing committees — versus recent practice of sometimes naming five members to the strategic planning panel.

The committee worked through assignments for the four major committees — finance; planning and zoning; streets, sidewalks and parking; and water and sewer — and then reviewed representation for external boards including the Blanchard River Water Partnership, the airport board and the Hancock Regional Planning Commission. On water and sewer, one committee member warned that those assignments are consequential: “in the next two years, honestly, water and sewer is gonna be pricing the biggest decisions we’re gonna make financially,” a point the group raised while balancing workload and expertise across members.

Committee members also discussed lower-frequency bodies such as the traffic commission, tax incentive review council and a utility termination appeals board. The group clarified that street designation is an as-needed panel (used when a new public street is named) and that some boards typically meet only quarterly or less frequently.

After final adjustments and a review of overall committee loads to avoid overburdening individual members, a committee member moved to forward the draft as the committee’s recommendation to city council; another member seconded. Speaker 4 moved “to submit this as our recommendation to city council for approval of committee assignments,” and Speaker 5 seconded. The committee took a voice vote; several members said “aye,” and the chair announced the motion passed. The transcript records the result as the committee forwarding the recommendation to council by voice vote.

Next steps: staff will retype the final assignment sheets, circulate them to council members, and the full council is expected to consider the committee’s recommendation at the next council meeting. The committee also noted that any formal rule changes (for example, to the composition of strategic planning) would be reviewed separately by the rules committee before being presented to council.

Quotes used in this article come from the committee transcript. Where speakers in the transcript are not associated with a full name and role, quotes are attributed to their speaker number as recorded in the transcript (e.g., Speaker 4).