Boards & Committees

[The first two items below, originally published in 2002, bear repeating, given some of the dialogue and debate which preceded the 2005 Election.]
Also see Civics 101.

About appointments to City Boards & Committees —
It doesn’t have to be experience vs politics
Recent controversy about appointments on the Farmer’s Market Committee has renewed concern that political payoffs are replacing merit in determining who should serve on the volunteer Boards and Committees. VersagiVoice readers have suggested I "look at the situation" then comment.

Well, I have begun looking, and I will be conducting some interviews, and I shall comment after I’ve studied the terrain. However, operating from decades as a management consultant I have some preliminary comments which will provide a bit of context for reporting whatever I find.

Think of City Government as a giant nonprofit association.
The City Commission is equivalent to an association’s Board of Directors. The City Administration is equivalent to paid association staff, including the CEO. The City’s volunteer boards and committees are equivalent to the committees in a nonprofit association. Those committees may or may not include a Board member (a City Commissioner) along with members of the association (citizens serving as volunteers). Whether called president or chairman of the board or managing director, the head of paid staff in a nonprofit association is the Chief Executive Officer, equivalent to Royal Oak’s City Manager.

In City Government as well as in nonprofit associations, the need is to find the right mix of new blood and experience. The new blood brings a fresh, not always right or wrong, perspective. The experience provides the institutional memory without which any organization operates erratically, based on ad hoc decisions.

In associations as well as in City Government, the danger in having nothing but old-timers running the show is not just that they become stale (a lot of old-timers remain progressive all their lives) but that they become a ruling clique. With the best of intentions, they begin to think of the committee or the board or the entire organization as their private club.

That sense of ownership is stronger, more troublesome, when the same people serve on multiple committees. The argument in favor of such cross-fertilization is that things go smoother because everybody knows where everyone else is coming from. The argument against is obvious: too few controlling too much.

"Political" appointments are not unknown in the nonprofit sector. Personal relationships will always have some impact on such decisions. The sense of injustice arises when an experienced volunteer is summarily replaced before his term has expired or when an obviously qualified candidate is arbitrarily ignored because of personal pique of some who serve on the City Commission's Appointments Committee. In the case of Royal Oak, both abuses seem to have occurred.

We’ll see where all this goes.
March 2002

Same Last Names on more than one committee
I've used "same last names" as a working tool because that enables one (a) to see who serves on multiple committees and (b) to examine the possible family relationships among the volunteers and between City officials and their kin. Of course, this first look doesn't show family relationships among people with different last names. A few preliminary observations:

About serving on multiple committees: It is possible to complain that when there are citizens hoping to be appointed to a body, multiple appointments are inherently unfair. On the other hand, selected multiple appointments may make sense because of the inter-relatedness of some committees.

About suspected unfair favoritism-- or blackballing: If, say, a City Commissioner's spouse or relative is appointed to a board or committee, such a suspicion may or may not be justified. (Spouses of Commissioners Hallock and Lanfear serve on a committee or two, as an example.) Especially if the spouse was civically active before an election, any unfairness may come from arbitrarily denying that spouse the right to continue to serve. Not quite as visible but equally important is the ability of the City Commission's self-staffed Appointments Committee to deny individuals a volunteer spot because of past personal or political pique.

About City Commissioners serving on so many Boards & Committees: It is not clear without considerable study why City Commissioners sit on so many volunteer committees. Are they there because (a) the City Charter mandates their presence; (b) the Commission passed a resolution appointing itself; or (c) the Commissioners simply want to keep control of everything which goes on -- or is even considered?

If you are interested or concerned, you can get the full list of appointments from the City Clerk's office. A list and description of the Boards & Committees is available on the City's website. Go to: www.ci.royal-oak.mi.us/clerk/boards.html.

In the meantime, Voice will plug along digging up as much factual information as we can to keep you informed.

April 2002

Tabulation of Volunteers

Civic appointments
don't have to be experience vs politics

Serving on more than one committee

Woodward Dream Cruise committee does good work.

What do the Library Board and the Parks & Recreation Advisory Board have in common? How do they differ?

ACORN serves as a transfer agency for charitable contributions, but some observers are uneasy.

City Manager meets with neighborhood leaders

Sitting in --
What do the Library Board and the Parks & Recreation Advisory Board have in common? How do they differ?
I have several times implied that nice individuals become less nice when they work as a group -- at the city commission High Table, for example. While it is true that groups develop a kind of corporate culture, those cultures can remain nice and still pursue the group's goals. As part of my self-assigned task of sitting in on city-established boards and committees, I recently visited the two groups named above.

In common, the two groups are made up mostly of dedicated volunteers, knowledgeable about and committed to their raison d'etre. Like individuals, though, the groups differ in personality. The Parks & Rec meeting I attended, devoted largely to athletic matters -- people, parks, fences, equipment -- was boisterous, with a lot of good-natured teasing and friendly, rambling small talk, even as they addressed their agenda items. In contrast, the Library Board meeting, devoted largely to the practical and financial considerations associated with the current renovation, was quiet, friendly but gently serious, and always focused.

Good groups, both. Watching them at work would serve as an antidote for the suspicions of those residents -- like the one at the city commission who insists on being informed of any relationship between future developers and the commissioner who suggested selling Normandy Oaks Golf course -- those residents who suspect secret deliberations and skullduggery when such citizen groups meet. -- FJV 30 June 2005

Sitting in --
Woodward Dream Cruise Committee
Hire these people for any special project!
Although no quorum was present, DPS Director Greg Rassell guided the discussion to tentative decisions about merchandise costs, parking, shuttles, restaurants, sponsors, event locations, bleachers availability. Quickly, the pluses and minuses were evaluated, accepted, rejected. Fast and friendly debate without rancor.

For Royal Oak, there's a little extra work this year, because some institutional memory has been lost by the unavailability of key Police Department participants. -- FJV 07 July 2005

Why this report about ACORN?
Most of the material in this report was drafted months ago, before all the current dialogue about the city’s budget became the major focus of public discourse and I temporarily discontinued my ACORN fact-finding. Then a handful of VersagiVoice readers separately brought up ACORN, most of them suspecting – or, at least, wondering – why yet another "off-the-books" financial entity is being considered, another place "to hide money." From the voters? From the city commission? -- FJV: Sep 2005 . [See]