Every week between now and the November Election, the Vanguard will ask the District 2 Candidates (the only contested council election this year) one question. They are asked to limit their response to 350 words.
Question 3: What are your views on the changes and consolidation of commissions?
Linda Deos
I strongly believe in the vital role our commissions play in fostering public participation, transparency, and informed decision-making in our local government. Commissions provide residents with a platform to engage directly with key issues and contribute to shaping our community. As a former Utilities Commissioner and current Planning Commissioner, I have seen the impact commissions have on our City first-hand. The recent changes and consolidation of commissions in Davis raises concerns about how we balance the need for efficiency with ensuring robust public involvement.
I support the mission of why the commissions were changed, in the spirit of better serving the council and the city as a whole. With that, I believe the process that was done could have been more inclusive and transparent, garnering more input from current commissioners and from our residents as a whole. Davis is unique in that we have experts in nearly every field who can help inform our leaders in their decision-making process. First and foremost, we need to encourage public participation from our very informed and engaged citizenry.
If elected, I will work to promote a transparent and inclusive process for any potential future reforms, where the community’s input is not only valued but actively sought. I believe we can find a balance that preserves the strengths of our current system while also making improvements that benefit the community as a whole.
I’m hopeful that through collaboration and thoughtful planning, we can create a commission system that meets the evolving needs of Davis while maintaining robust public engagement. I will advocate for innovative solutions, such as forming new commissions or temporary committees to address emerging issues when needed. My goal is to ensure that Davis residents continue to have meaningful opportunities to contribute to local governance, with a system that is responsive, inclusive, and forward- thinking.
Dillan Horton
The commission merger appears to be an effort to further control commission discussions and recommendations in a process where the City Council already has the final say. Recent proposals go even further, proposing a broader veto power for the City Council on items a commission may place on its agenda.
This all started when commissioners and concerned residents, myself included, were frustrated about the lack of meaningful public input in the city’s policy development process and reached out to City Hall to have this addressed. In the aftermath, a council committee consisting of Mayor Chapman and Vice Mayor Vaitla took more than a year to consider the issue. During that time, they suspended commission recruitment, meaning that, eventually, some commissions couldn’t meet because they lacked a quorum. Despite the city’s reported efforts to engage with involved parties, the reality is that many commissioners expressed feeling sidelined, leading to a commission merger plan that did not reflect the insights and experiences of those most involved with city governance.
Commissions in Davis have a unique purpose advising the City Council on matters within their portfolio. They also serve as a bridge between the concerns of Davis residents and the elected City Council. We rob ourselves of the key benefits of our commissions if we try to make them a rubber stamp of the City Council. As Chair of the Police Accountability Commission, I am proud that we have used our time to further policy issues that matter to the community but likely would have been overlooked by the City Council alone. I made it clear in public comment that I thought this merger effort would further exacerbate concerns about City Hall’s openness to public input, and I’m sad to say that’s what has unfolded.
Davis’ commissions include well-educated experts in various fields. Ideally, we, the council and commissions, work together to propose or modify policies that best suit our collective interests. When the voices of commissioners—who represent diverse community perspectives—are disregarded, we risk making decisions that fail to serve the public effectively.
Victor Lagunes
We are incredibly lucky in Davis to have a wide range of expertise at our disposal, thanks in no small part to being a university town. One place where this benefit is clearly visible is our commissions, which have been an amazing resource that is critical to ongoing community outreach and engagement.
Understandably, the greater demands on peoples’ time that many of us experience lead to challenges with reaching quorums, and meetings under the Brown Act place limitations on open discussions with engaged residents around city issues. Additionally, council members have struggled to attend all of the commission meetings in addition to their obligations to Joint Powers boards, 2x2s, and other community events in their impacted schedules. This has resulted in uneven efficacy and consistency, as well as hampered communication with city staff across the commissions and limited public participation.
Councilmembers initiated the consolidation of our commissions to alleviate these problems and make commission work more efficient, and thus honor people’s work and time. Process matters, however, and some feel the shift was not well articulated or that enough time was given to properly provide feedback, while also raising concerns about the agenda-setting processes currently under discussion.
Commissions must continue to help expand public engagement by filtering advice and feedback upwards through a well-defined and transparent process to aid in decision-making. This is especially true as we progress with the city’s General Plan, where public input and participation on the newly aligned commission goals will be crucial.
I learned as President of DTA that it’s critical to gather input from members before making decisions that affect all, because teachers know best what is happening in their classrooms and on their school campuses. Additionally, this must be a multi-step process of outreach that goes beyond simply holding a meeting or conducting a survey. I believe we can balance our need for greater efficiency in our system of commissions while also ensuring that we retain the valuable input they provide and continuing to develop other avenues for public participation that are more accessible and authentic.
Victor wins this question with a B answer. I give the other two a C in my humble opinion. It’s Councilmember time but also staff time. Each meeting requires staff time in both preparing the materials for the meeting as well as attending these after hour gatherings. The burden of facilitating public participation in this community falls heavily on the staff. Reducing the number of commissions lessens the workload on the staff and frees up limited staff resources for other important endeavors. Is public participation valuable? yes, but so is staff time. It would be nice if people better recognized this aspect of the debate.
Ron’s concluding point is a good one. I personally am well removed from the era of my personal Commission participation, so I have no skin in the game. However, with that said, the problem as I saw it with the Commission reorganization/streamlining was not the concept, but rather the rollout/execution.
Metaphorically, it was a huge meal to swallow and digest, but the announcement of it and then the sudden rush to action caused a real digestion problem. If it had been rolled out in less of a rush to judgment manner, then the indigestion would have been largely avoided.
Of course it didn’t help matters when Vaitla/Chapman lied about meeting with all the Commission Chairs to discuss the concept and plan. That was a self-inflicted wound.
Ron
Yes it takes staff time, but then we have to ask “how are we going to include public input?” A key problem is that by the time an issue makes it way to a Council meeting, the matter is already well down the road for a decision and public input is more performative than informative. I’ve seen how the Commission process has evolved over the last decade to become less useful for collecting public input due to the limitations imposed on direct communication with public speakers. And perhaps that decline is what Council members have reacted to.
I think a more considerate reform would have had a more involved forum with commission chairs than what actually occurred. That process would have had Council members expressing what they felt was lacking. The silence was taken by many commission members to say “we don’t want you butting in.” That’s not a very constructive read of a lack of communication, nor does it instill public trust just when we need more of it.