Evaluation will resume this month on proposal to consolidate and eliminate some boards and commissions

Discussions about a proposal from Council Member Ryan Alter to revamp the city’s citizen advisory boards are set to continue.

In a City Council Message Board post on Wednesday, Alter provided an update on his December resolution (which Council unanimously approved) directing a review of the city’s boards and commissions, task forces, council corporations and intergovernmental bodies.

“As a part of the Council direction, we also asked for feedback from our staff and the public, including those boards and commissions that are affected,” Alter wrote in the post. “With much of this feedback now received, I would like to offer a narrower set of recommendations for consideration at the Feb. 19 Audit and Finance Committee meeting.” The Audit and Finance Committee is made up of Council members, unlike the advisory boards and commissions the resolution addresses, which are made up of citizens.

Alter noted in his recent message board post that his resolution was a part of Council’s good governance efforts from the prior year. His December resolution emphasizes that there are currently more than 90 citizen boards, commissions, task forces and advisory councils. Originally, the resolution suggested the city consider consolidating or dissolving 36 of these based on inactive status, changing community needs and overlapping areas of focus. Several boards and commissions have experienced persistent attendance and quorum challenges that worsened during the pandemic.

The resolution pulled some of its recommendations from a 2014 report by the (now defunct) Board and Commission Transition Task Force, which the Council commissioned to audit the city’s citizen advisory bodies. It also directed the city manager to return with recommendations by the Audit and Finance Committee meeting in February, and to develop an associated City Code amendment, a website and a regular sunset review process of governance bodies.

By comparison, Austin City Council members each typically serve on several committees of Council or intergovernmental/regional boards. Council members undergo a more streamlined version of what Alter is proposing at the start of each year, when they reassign themselves to committees and advisory groups. In January of this year, several committees were redesigned to cover more area (there is now a Council Climate, Water, Environment and Parks Committee), reauthorized, or, in the case of some intergovernmental bodies, determined to no longer require a Council representative. However, citizen advisory groups provide more specialized expertise and in-depth focus on their issue areas.

What changes are being considered?

Alter’s now-updated proposal lists 26 recommendations. Ten of these involve removing governing bodies that are currently inactive (per the city clerk’s office).

With these recommendations, several more groups (the Small Area Planning, Comprehensive Plan, and Codes and Ordinances joint committees) would also be removed, with their areas of focus listed as the Planning Commission’s responsibility. The Planning Commission would also incorporate the Bond Oversight Commission via a merger. The revamped Planning Commission would focus primarily on planning, code amendments and capital planning. Zoning would be reassigned from the Planning Commission to the Zoning and Platting Commission, which would have an updated jurisdiction to include zoning citywide.

Other recommended mergers include the combination of the Pedestrian Advisory Council, the Bicycle Advisory Council, and the Urban Transportation Commission into a new Urban Mobility Commission. The South Central Waterfront Advisory Board, the Tourism Commission, and the current Downtown Commission would merge into an updated Downtown Commission. The Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission, Economic Prosperity Commission, and Minority/Women-Owned and Small Business Enterprise Procurement Program Advisory Committee would make up a new Economic Opportunity Commission.

Additionally, professional or residency membership requirements could potentially be reevaluated for the Airport Advisory Commission.

“Our boards and commissions need updating. They are (a) valuable part of civic engagement, and how the Council gets information, but some are outdated and others overlap,” Alter told the Austin Monitor.

“We started a process with some ideas of what these reforms might look like, and heard feedback from the public about those ideas. With that feedback in mind, we have put forward an updated list of proposals that I look forward to discussing at next week’s Audit and Finance Committee hearing.”

Alter’s updated proposal seems to incorporate pushback from the Resource Management Commission, which recently voted to recommend against the proposal that they merge with the Zero Waste Advisory Commission. This merger is not listed in the latest version of the recommendations.

The updates do not address concerns raised by the Urban Transportation Commission about merging with two non-city-affiliated task forces. Members of both the RMC and the UTC argued that their merger recommendations would require members to focus on a much broader scope of issues with less expertise.

Alter told the Monitor he planned to consider feedback from the RMC and UTC before making any final recommendations.

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