Meeting Minutes
May 10, 2005
Attendees: Faith Klareich (FK), Doug Beard (DB), Carl Henn (CH), Alicia Hosmer (AH), Gerald Leighton (JL), Tolulope Odunlami (TO), Geoff Sanders (GS), Jaskaran Singh (JS) and Nate Wall (NW)
Absent: None.
Also Present: Prospective Commissioners Clark Reed and Ted Reuther
Agenda:
1. Welcome, News and Agenda Review
2. Prospective Commissioner Introductions
3. Review and Approval of 4/12 Meeting Minutes
CH moves, JL seconds to adopt minutes. Minutes approved.
4. New Council Liaison & Meeting with City Manager
FK mentioned that, as people had likely seen in The Gazette, John Hall would not be seeking re-election to the Council later this year. FK has asked John Hall for his recommendations on a replacement Council Liaison; this is an area of consideration for the evaluation of the new candidates for Councilmembers.
For a meeting with the City Manager, it was decided that NW should attempt to get him on the schedule for the July or August meeting: if this is possible, then the EC will determine the appropriate agenda for that meeting. Some ideas were raising cross-cutting themes fro the environmental summit (traffic and SWM), perhaps having a regular (annual?) forum with outside experts, etc.
At this point in the meeting, Harry Thomas (President of Twinbrook Citizen’s Association and possible candidate for City Council) came in and invited the EC to TCA’s stream cleanup on May 21st.
5. Planning Vacancies
The EC is interested in voicing an opinion on the filling of vacancies within the Planning Department (Chief of Planning, Planner III, and Chief of Town Center Redevelopment are all open). This could be accomplished through video-taping the interviews, receiving transcripts, or having an attendee of the interviews (possibly Jim Wasilak?) report status back to EC.
6. Tree Paper
For presentation to Mayor & Council on June 20th, FK suggests that she covers the main points, and that at least two other Commissioners be present to expand on points and answer questions.
JL wants to know who is invited to the worksession, specifically: will College Gardens be allowed to attend? NW explained that M&C worksessions did not have any opportunity for comments from public, thus College Gardens residents could attend, and could submit a memo / phone call beforehand explaining their position, but would not have an opportunity for comment unless specifically called upon by the M&C.
Discussion on the process of creating the final tree management report, and discussed how compromises were made in the EC’s original position to allow for acceptance by City staff and ultimate implementation. AH suggested that the EC (perhaps the issue paper sub-group) come up with a “Lessons Learned” regarding this position paper, to include things like whether and how to keep stakeholders (College Gardens, Parks Advisory Board, City Staff) involved in the process, or whether EC should hear information from all groups then come to their own consensus opinion.
7. Commission Size and Vacancies / Concept of Sub-Groups or Committees
There are many different activities / events that the EC would like to coordinate / participate in, but are limited by the number of people available to whom to spread out the work. FK spoke with City Clerk about expanding the number of EC Commissioners or adding “alternates”: since the EC is set up by law, any change to composition would require change in law. Also, only the Board of Appeals has an alternate (and only 3 members), so there really isn’t a similar precedent for what the EC would like to do. Need to keep this in mind when determining how the EC would like to proceed.
The EC charter mentions the creation of a “Roster of Experts” – the EC had attempted to create such a list in the past, but had difficulty populating this list with people of appropriate backgrounds. Thus perhaps this concept of the Roster of Experts could be changed into working groups, specializing on particular issues and thus expediting the role of the EC. Members of these working groups would not be appointed by Mayor & Council (they would be appointed by the EC itself), thus would not receive a formal vote, but could still attend all meetings (as all meetings are public), and participate as appropriate. Whether this is called a working group, committee or sub-committee, etc. remains to be decided.
Suggested working groups include:
Energy Efficiency / High-Performance Buildings
Water Quality / Watersheds / Stormwater Management / Stream Restoration
Education / Outreach (both to the public, as well as liaising within the City)
Issue Papers
The goal is that at least one full Commissioner would sit on each of these working groups, and that these groups would be expected to independently organize to determine their goals and progress towards them. This would be done outside of the regularly scheduled EC meetings, and the entire EC would hear progress reports as necessary.
8. Other Issues
CH mentioned that the issue paper sub-group is soliciting ideas from Commissioners.
9. Wrap-up and Adjourn
