Commission debates advisory board overhaul: terms, residency and sunshine law

City staff presented a draft ordinance to consolidate advisory boards and committees into a single code article and to standardize rules on membership, meetings, training and duties. Commissioners spent the special‑meeting session probing residency requirements, whether boards should have fixed terms or serve at the pleasure of the commission, and which advisory bodies should remain or be sunsetted.

City Attorney Elizabeth summarized the proposal and the legal constraints around sunshine and ethics requirements. She said the draft requires some training and recordkeeping and that staff would keep an ethics acknowledgment on file. Commissioners asked staff to require proof of training and to set a clear onboarding process. "There is a form from the county and it does indicate how they took the course as well," Elizabeth said, noting staff keeps training acknowledgments.

Debate covered several recurring subjects: whether the electric utility advisory board and finance advisory board should be continued (several commissioners urged keeping them), whether the education task force should stay a non‑sunshine task force or become an advisory board, and whether boards should be required to meet monthly versus bi‑monthly. Vice Mayor Sarah Maliga and others argued for clearer residency or local business‑presence rules to ensure boards reflect residents and downtown businesses; others cautioned that blanket rules could reduce available volunteer candidates.

Commissioners asked staff to return a revised draft that incorporates clearer duties for each board, timelines to fill vacancies, mandatory proof of ethics/sunshine training, and a process (spreadsheet or pre‑agenda marking) for routing proposed ordinances to relevant advisory boards for input before formal drafting was completed.