Kaitlyn G Woods<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMembers of the Elder Affairs Committee expressed concern that they didn\u2019t have a chance to vet candidates for open seats on the committee before the Town Council interviewed them at their March 16 meeting.<\/p>\n
Some of the applicants haven\u2019t attended meetings of the Committee, according to members, who said they would have liked an opportunity to ask the applicants about their interest in serving.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no problem with the Council approving appointments to the boards and committees, I just think applicants should have to go through the committee first to explain their interest before getting to the Council. Even re-appointments should have to come through the Committee first,\u201d member Dan Lekas said. \u201cWhat if someone puts something in for re-appointment and they haven\u2019t been to any of the meetings. There should be a protocol, and it should all start with the Committee.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former chairman Al Baldasaro said it\u2019s important the Committee has an opportunity to meet and interview applicants before they go before the Council.<\/p>\n
Members of the Elder Affairs Committee said they never received notification of the new applicants whom the Council interviewed at their March meetings and didn\u2019t have an opportunity to make a recommendation regarding whom they would like to see appointed to the open seats.<\/p>\n
The Council recently amended the policy related to board and committee appointments to require every position to be posted when terms expire in an effort to open the process to new people interested in serving the Town.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be great if more people could get involved,\u201d Town Council Chairman John Farrell said.<\/p>\n
When the Elder Affairs Committee raised concerns about the recent interviews of candidates they hadn\u2019t vetted themselves, Town Manager Kevin Smith said he explained to members they can still make recommendations to the Council and interview applicants.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the board wants to make a recommendation to the Council, they can do so, and the Council will take that under advisement,\u201d Smith said. \u201cGoing forward, when we get names submitted who are not already members of the committee, we\u2019ll provide those names to the committee so they can see who has applied and contact them to interview them themselves if they want to.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, nothing in the Town Charter states the board or committee has to interview people first and make recommendations to the Council. The responsibility of appointments is exclusively that of the Council, although the boards and committees are encouraged to make recommendations if they wish to do so, according to Smith.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe appoint or accept resignations, or don\u2019t appoint or accept a resignation,\u201d Farrell said, noting there is, however, a provision in the Charter that says each board and committee should come to the Council every year and provide an update on where they stand.<\/p>\n
Baldasaro told the Council if there were more applicants than open seats, he would step down to allow \u201cnew blood\u201d on the Committee.<\/p>\n
At the Elder Affairs Committee\u2019s March 17 meeting, Baldasaro told members it has been an honor serving with them and that he will remain available to assist them in any way possible moving forward.<\/p>\n
The Committee appointed Bonnie Roberts chairman and Susan Haussler vice chairman.<\/p>\n
At its March 16 meeting, the Town Council decided to investigate whether or not the Charter restricted the Council from appointing to the Elder Affairs Committee all applicants who wish to serve.<\/p>\n
When Smith looked at the original documents that established the Elder Affairs Committee, he found two different documents \u2013 the original resolution creating the Committee, and an adopted amendment.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeither speak to there being any alternates on the Committee, they just speak to full members,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Town Attorney recommended if we\u2019re having alternates, the resolution ought to be amended by the Council to include alternate positions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Additionally, Smith said the resolution could be amended to include more positions on the Committee.<\/p>\n
Although the Council would not be required to hold a public hearing on an amendment to the resolution, Smith said he would be surprised if the Council did not take public input on the matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One year later and the Town council still has no consistent policy when appointing new candidates to commission. It all seems up to the will of the council on any given day. The topic of appointments came up a year ago. The council still has yet to follow the policy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}