San Juan County staff report multiple advisory board vacancies; council seeks targeted outreach

County staff briefed the council on longstanding and recent vacancies across multiple advisory boards and commissions and asked for council assistance in outreach and candidate identification.

Key points: staff said the Building Advisory Council currently has nine vacancies and the Fair Board has six (three at-large); the Planning Commission has five open seats split between islands. Veterans Advisory Board terms were noted as two-year terms that generate turnover and institutional knowledge loss; staff and council discussed whether some term durations are statutorily fixed and which can be standardized. Staff asked councilmembers to highlight potential community candidates and said staff will issue island-specific press releases and follow up with targeted outreach.

Council response: several councilmembers said term lengths appear mismatched across boards and asked staff to return with recommendations on standardizing durations where legally possible. Councilmembers also discussed the difficulty some bodies (for example, Park and Rec) have maintaining quorums and requested clarity on statutory constraints for certain boards; staff agreed to verify which terms are statutorily determined and which are locally set.

Next steps: staff will continue quarterly tracking of vacancies, provide rosters and statutory references where applicable, and work with individual councilmembers to recruit island-representative applicants. No formal appointments were made at the meeting.