Editorial | Reinstate citizen advisory boards
A new council member’s bid to reinstate defunct advisory boards got a tepid reception from her fellow board members Wednesday.
Councilmember Rachel Kaduk, elected to the Cape Coral City Council as part of a clean-sweep wave in November, brought the matter back to the table saying boards and committees — which invite public input — would be a good way to repair the city’s reputation.
With a number of issues — from said previous elimination of all non-mandated advisory boards to the redevelopment of Jaycee Park and the Yacht Club in the face of public outcry — we would agree that it would not hurt to buff the city’s rep when it comes to public input.
That said, the city does do what is required.
There is an hour allowed for general public comment at meetings and specific time for such for measures that legally require it before Council votes.
The city accepts e-comments from those who cannot attend meetings and the emails of council members are readily available to anyone who wishes to provide input directly.
City staff reaches out via stakeholder groups it establishes and council members — particularly the newly elected — have begun holding individual town halls to meet directly with residents.
This is all to the good.
But it does not address the issue Ms. Kaduk brought forward: In June of 2023, Cape Coral City Council eliminated five of its appointed advisory boards and changed its Youth Council to a fact-finding panel.
With a 5-3 vote, the then-Council eliminated the city’s Golf Course Advisory Board, Nuisance Abatement Board, Waterway Advisory Board, Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and the Cape Competes Advisory Board.
Council in fact, eliminated all of the city’s citizen advisory panels that are not mandated by law, save one, the South Cape Community Redevelopment Board with all three of the “old” members of Council — Mayor John Gunter and council members Bill Steinke and Keith Long -voting in favor.
Council also eliminated the Budget Review Committee in September of 2023 as well as the board whose efforts helped decide how tax dollars earmarked for the Cape’s historic downtown were spent — a formality as Council, had, without notice, terminated all five members of that board en route to assuming their duties as state statute requires that Community Redevelopment Agencies have a board though not necessarily a board separate from the local government that sponsored the creation of the agency.
While we understood the argument of the Council majority that the members of advisory boards and panels are not elected and that the only direct representatives of the people are the eight officials sitting on the City Council dais, we did not support Council’s actions then.
We do not support those decisions now.
Ms. Kaduk is correct in her premise that advisory boards and similar committees are a different form of public input than all of the aforementioned ways residents, property owners and businesses can communicate with Council.
Advisory boards and committees are panels appointed by Council based on qualifications set by ordinance. In other words, the intention is that individuals with expertise and/or skin in the game serve independently — key word here. Advisory boards evaluate issues, for example city staff’s tendered budget, and provide its collective findings and opinions.
Council, of course, then weighs such recommendations — another key word — in light of other input and its own expertise and accepts or rejects as it sees fit.
Which Council, in the past, has done, particularly with the defunct budget review committee which long spawned both criticism of expanding taxes and expenditures and Council candidates in possibly equal measure.
A couple of things.
Despite the disingenuous contention that these boards weren’t “eliminated” but merely converted to “stakeholder groups,” the advisory boards are gone.
As shared at Wednesday’s Cape Coral City Council workshop, stakeholder groups are not independent entities, their makeup is at staff discretion, meetings need not be noticed or public and even Council does not get regular updates as to what and how “input” is being provided behind the curtain.
Are stakeholder groups a bad thing?
They are not.
The city’s Business & Industry Roundtable Series, designed to “provide an opportunity for open and honest conversations about how the City can help small business owners,” is a success story.
Props to City Manager Mike Ilczyszyn and city staff.
Kudos, though, to Councilmember Kaduk who understands the nuances of public input in its various forms and her bid to bring transparency to a process that became opaque at best when Council eliminated or reconfigured boards mandated to work in the Sunshine.
We urge her to stay on task on this one.
And we urge Council to follow her lead.
Breeze editorial