City pursues new rules for boards

Georgetown city staff and council members are working to streamline rules for city boards and commissions, consolidating existing boards to ensure each has specific tasks and purposes to work toward.

City Secretary Robyn Densmore gave an update on the process — which includes adjusting the verbiage in Chapter 2.36 of the city’s Code of Ordinances — during an October 11 council workshop.

The city is working to remove select things hard-written into the code in order to make rules “more broad and applicable to all boards and commissions as a whole,” Ms. Densmore said.

Theprocessof adjustingrequirements— as well as evaluating whether some boards and commissions should be dissolved or combined with others — began earlier this year at an April 12 workshop.

“Our goal throughout this process has been how we can make our boards and commissions as efficient as possible,” Ms. Densmore said.

Boards, commissions and committees are required to meet once a month, according to the existing code. A proposed adjustment would allow an individual group to determine how often they meet, unless otherwise stated by state law.

“Some [groups] would meet as needed, some would meet once a year, quarterly, monthly or even bi-monthly,” Ms. Densmore said. “As we know, we have to have [Planning & Zoning] meetings twice a month based on rules of the state and to meet those requirements, but some boards would meet as needed.”

The city may also change the start date for appointed board, commission and committee members to October 1. Members currently begin their duties on May 1. The change would shift application dates for people interested in serving these groups to June and would align with the start of each fiscal year.

Consolidation boards

Another adjustment would remove boards written into city code that are obsolete, Ms. Densmore said. These include the Housing Enforcing Official and Boards of Housing Appeals, the General Government and Finance Advisory Board, the CVB Advisory Board and the Georgetown Hospital Authority.

To mitigate redundancy, according to the city, boards can be consolidated and adjusted as follows:

• The Youth Advisory Board would shift to informal status

• Duties of the CVB Board would shift to an internal administrative processes

• The ADA Advisory Board would be rolled into Building Standards Commission • Commission on Aging and the Georgetown Transportation Advisory Board would roll into Planning and Zoning Commission

• The Rivery TIRZ would be combined with the Wolf Lakes TIRZ

• Williams Drive TIRZ would be combined with the Triangle TIRZ

•GEDCOandGTECwouldshifttohaving the same members

• Planning and Zoning Commission and the Zoning Board of Adjustment would shift to having the same members

• The General Government and Finance Board would shift to a subcommittee of the Council

• Unified Development Code Advisory Commission will be reviewed after the current UDC update is completed and duties would possibly roll into Planning and Zoning in the future During the October 11 meeting, Ms. Densmore asked council members for guidance. She asked if the groups no longer needed should hold meetings through the end of their current terms, which is in February of next year, or if they should be dissolved or consolidated sooner.

City council advised staff to end inactive boards sooner rather than later.

“I would be a fan of ending boards sooner if they’re going to sunset,” District 1 Council Member Jake French said. “My biggest request … I want to make sure we’re doing a good job of notifying people of what’s going on. I just want to make sure, whether that’s the board liaisons or whoever, we’re communicating to these people so they’re not blocking off time in their schedule to sit for a board or commission that’s either going away or that has meetings being canceled.”

Reassigning members

Ms. Densmore said members of the boards, commissions and committees no longer being used would be given “top priority” when applying to participate on other boards in the future.

“We obviously picked those people originally because they had something to offer, so we would just try to find them a new home on a different board,” she said.

Information about boards, commissions and committees in Georgetown is available online at https://government. georgetown.org/boards-and-commissions.