SANGER – City leaders are considering an update to the city code which may help streamline future development projects.
At the June 4 city council meeting, Community Development Director Joshua Goggins introduced an ordinance to reduce the numbers of seats on the planning commission from seven to five. Under the proposed commission restructure, a legal quorum would require three members instead of four, reducing the probability of meeting cancellations.
“When projects are delayed due to the inability to vote on items, it costs money, delays projects and it really hurts our city’s ability to facilitate projects, in my opinion,” said Goggins during the item’s presentation.
The modification aims to address longtime challenges of establishing a quorum and moving projects forward in a timely manner. The ordinance also aims to establish an automatic retirement for commissioners if they have four consecutive, unexcused absences.
The council only gave direction on the ordinance, ultimately agreeing to the proposed five-member commission, but sought additional information on potential term lengths. Based on the council’s feedback, aspects of the ordinance will be adjusted and it will be reintroduced at a future meeting.
The proposed ordinance originally aimed to establish what Goggins referred to as a “district-centric model,” which would allow each council member to nominate a commission member, rather than only the mayor making nominations for council approval. Under this model, planning commission terms would run concurrently with those of the council.
For most members of the council, this approach to nominations raised an uncomfortable possibility for bias within the commission.
“You’re losing the impartialness, because it’s going to appear to the public that now my appointment is going to be loyal to what I think is right,” said Mayor Pro Tem Daniel Martinez in his comments. “Hypothetically, my appointee works for my campaign to get me reelected so that they could stick another term on the planning commission … so that’s where you’re losing me,” he added.
City Attorney Shannon Chaffin then clarified that under the district-centric model, the nominations would not be limited to a council member’s district, and would instead be citywide. Chaffin explained that the intent was to help the mayor search for candidates, and the concurrent terms were intended to make commissioners’ terms easier to keep track of alongside the council.
In their respective comments, councilmembers Michael Montelongo and Dolores Melendez still agreed with Martinez’s assessment, saying that while they agreed with the reduction of planning commission seats for the sake of efficiency, they were not in favor of council member nominations and concurrent terms.
Mayor Frank Gonzalez offered a slightly different perspective, arguing that by opening up nominations to council members, it could cast a wider net for members and prevent one district from being better represented than others. However, he also recognized that past attempts at council member nominations have resulted in challenges finding qualified and willing candidates from each district.
With these points raised, the council ultimately agreed with the five-member planning commission, and to continue the past practice of the mayor nominating members subject to a council vote. A point that still raised some questions at the end of the discussion was the appropriate term length for commissioners.
Earlier in the discussion, Melendez had suggested three years, serving as a middle ground between the two-year mayoral terms and four years for council members. However, Chaffin later told the council that it is wise to stagger terms to keep some experienced members on the commission, and that this is easier to do with an even number of years to better align with the mayor’s term.
Chaffin used the examples of four-year terms for experienced members and two years for newcomers, or two years for experienced members and one year for newcomers. He told the council that he would work with Goggins to create different scenarios to present at a future meeting, which will help the council determine the most practical term ranges.
With this feedback given, the council ended favorably on reducing the planning commission’s size, and will await the ordinance’s reintroduction with more solidified term guidelines. Councilmember Esmeralda Hurtado was absent.
