This Post is from Lafayette City Councilor Chris Cameron.
I just wanted to take an opportunity to show support for the youth of the Lafayette community and, in particular, those who have volunteered for what is/was our Youth Advisory Committee. The Daily Camera covered the issue today and quite aptly described the dilemma we now face with the failure of ballot measure 2B. In a nutshell, City Council had asked for the ability to make exceptions, by ordinance, to qualifications for advisory board members. This was prompted by and particularly important for our youth advisors because one requirement to participate on boards is to be a registered voter. Due to age, youth are not eligible to be registered voters. From my Monday morning quarterback position, it might have been wise of us to ask specifically for an exemption for minors applying to the Youth Advisory Committee. I won’t try to interpret what “the voters meant…” but I do wonder if the results would have been different if our request had been more specific.
But that isn’t the point of my post today. I concur with Councilor Phillips’ assessment that what is important is having an avenue to discover and address the needs of the youth in our community. What that process will be is in question right now, but what should not be under debate is the very real concern that exists for the youngest members of our community. I agree with committee member Laperle’s assessment that Council wants youth input. I offer my commitment to taking our youth seriously.
I see no difficulty in understanding the “difference between adults and minors,” but also see no reason to inflate the disparity, either. What is important is that all the members of our community are getting their needs met as much as possible with the available resources. Whether a 15-year-old is concerned about recycling, a 6-year-old thinks we need more parks or a 47-year-old has questions about traffic, it is important that we listen. When Council needs input on key issues, it is sensible to gather information from the “experts.” Who better to advise us on the needs of seniors, Latinos, or youth, than the people themselves?
We have to keep in mind that advisory groups are just that, advisory. Ultimately, Council has to take their input and decide whether the interests of the Youth (or Seniors, or Open Space, etc.) align with the goals of the city. Should an advisory board’s proposal not match what Council believes is right for the city, Council has an obligation to overrule that recommendation.
Today I offer my support and appreciation both for the youth of Lafayette and for all those volunteers who sit on advisory boards in the city. Our boards, commissions, and committees are an incredible support system that enable us to do our jobs well for the people of Lafayette.
Sincerely,
Chris Cameron
Lafayette City Councilor
The Lafayette News also covered this issue today.
What's up, readers? Is this unintended consequence or did voters feel minors shouldn't be on Boards? I think Councilor Cameron may be onto something with the notion that a more specific ballot issue may have been successful. I think anyone interested enough to ask to serve on an advisory Board should be allowed to, or at least be given the chance to be nominated and/or appointed.
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6 comments:
Coverage of 2B has been accurate but not entitrely complete for anyone who hasn't been paying very close attention.
I take responsibility for suggesting essentially the same open-ended exemption that the council carried forward to the ballot. However, it is significant that the city's staff initially proposed to eliminate the elector requirement altogether. The Charter Amendment Review Committee recommended the exemption, but staff then pressed the council to forget about exemptions and just eliminate the elector requirement altogether. The theory is that voters see "exemption" as a red flag, but deleting an entire "obsolete" section of code will avoid this reading on the ballot title.
Maybe the staff was correct and 2B failed because council, in my opinion wisely, opted to ask the voters for an exemption. I, for one, prefer the current result to the possibility that being a registered elector would have absolutely no bearing on qualification for city boards. While the Youth Advisory Commission is a lingering issue, the outcome on 2B at least showed that voters hesitate to stray from the elector requirement just as city leaders did when they opted to ask for an exemption rather than deletion of the relevant Charter language. Though city staff could be correct that putting an exemption on the ballot stacks the cards against success at the polls, I give the council credit for respecting the Charter and attempting to modernize the document rather than sterilize it.
Another aspect that has never been covered in the public debate on 2B is that our very own neighbor that just created a home rule charter has an exemption similar to that proposed by 2B. The difference in Louisville is that the Charter was looked at as a whole over the course of numerous meetings.
The lack of trust that apparently defined 2B's downfall in Lafayette is not the only possible dynamic. Unfortunately, the public in Lafayette has had little else to go on given the haste with which two sets of Charter amendments have now been tacked on to the ballot.
I trust that the youth of Lafayette will have a voice at City Hall. I also believe the attention the group has inadvertently recieved by being in the middle of this issue has only reinforced the existence of a healthy civic spirit in our community.
Did the voters understand 2B? (The Lafayette News said NO to 2B). Did the voters say NO because they could not accept an advisory board composed of minors placed at the same level as that composed of adults? Did the voters say NO because 2B allowed non-residents to serve on city advisory boards? Or did they say NO because they did not trust the city council to exercise the new authority 2B would grant it?
My guess is that it is all of the above. A sixty percent NO vote including the vote NO position of the Lafayette News would support that. Since we don't conduct exit polls, we will never know. It is quite self serving to suggest the voters did not understand or this was just about the Youth Advisory Board. This city council needs to recognize and think about the answer to these questions.
The city has mechanisms to form adhoc advisory groups. The Dog Park Task Force is a recent example and during the drought there was a citizens advisory board created. So there are ways to have various groups of interested volunteers have a voice at city hall.
We should be clear about one thing. Suggesting that the current Youth Advisory Board is composed of "experts" is a real stretch. I would invite readers to review the minutes of its past meetings. In our city we have professional educators, city department heads, public safety officials, parent organizations, and non-profit agencies working with our youth every day. They clearly have the expertise and experience to provide valuable insight and recommendations. Many of our advisoy boards work with other agencies as well. The city council is highly dependent on the staff work of experts. We should not cloud the difference between input and expert advice. Being a member of an advisory board does not elevate one's status to "expert".
One last comment. It is quite self serving to avoid the question of voter trust in its city government and point the finger at the way 2B was crafted. Clearly the voters sent city hall a message. Could the issue of trust be the major one?
I think the one clear message I am taking away from the vote is that ballot issues should be clear and very specific. On other ballot issues that have failed in the past we have seen that Colorado voters do not trust vague language open to interpretation. Even though I am a politician now, I won't always be one and I have no idea how future councils could interpret vague legislation and I am not comfortable with this either. I don't care what we call a group of volunteer youth that provides input on their needs to council, I just care that we get that input. I will not be so arrogant as to presume I am aware of all their needs, and this is the one group of Lafayette residents who in the past have gotten the least amount of attention. They are our future, and this councilor pledges to listen to their input!
Frank Phillips
In retrospect, the 2B vote probably was about the Youth Advisory Commission and an exemption broader than necessary to achieve that goal. I do believe that is how many voters could have ended up seeing it.
In that light, I understand that there may be some regret that 2B was not drafted purely to provide an exemption for the youth board.
However, the exemption that was sent to the voters was intended to resolve an issue with the Home Rule Charter. The issue is that credentials and experience not necessarily present in the ranks of electors may be important to the success of specific city boards. The Youth Advisory Commission is one example, but not the only example. The Charter Amendment Review Committee considered a variety of problems with the elector requirement; for example, the manner in which Certified Local Government status (with attendant benefits) can conflict with strict elector requirements under certain circumstances. As I alluded to in the post above, the City of Louisville accepts applications for technical committees (specifically the Building Code Board of Appeals) from experts who are not necessarily electors; it is worth noting that Louisville has not been taken over by the ranks of some undesirable element, despite the existence of an exemption in their board member requirements that is not specific to one board.
The lesson of 2B's failure is perhaps that the City Council's goals relative to youth may have been persuasive to voters, while a more general exemption was not. However, the goal of revising the Charter should be to address problems and conflicts with current Charter language in their totality.
And in that light, the problems with section 5.1 of the Lafayette Charter were not addressed in their totality in 2005, not in 2006, and will remain in the Charter until some process is devised to effectively gauge citizen input and communicate the worthiness of proposed amendments to the public.
I really appreciated the public debate over Charter amendments this year, but it did have the effect of magnifying the "trust" issue to an extreme. In the big picture, organic law, like a home rule charter or constitution, should deal with basic principles. If the Charter is so inflexible that it may require an exemption for every individual action taken by the council, then the document will become a hindrance first and then mere trivia as bolder and bolder mechanisms are devised to avoid the Charter.
While it really does not matter what the council wants to call a youth advisory panel, I think it is clear that voters in Lafayette do not regard section 5.1 as a mere hindrance or trivia. In fact, I would guess that it is fair to say the voters have paid attention to Charter questions because they regard the Charter to be important.
The "trust" issue could be taken in isolation, as nothing more than a critique of 2B. But if the public trust is such an issue, could it be that we're still scratching the surface on the Charter?
For example, the City of Boulder was recently embroiled in debate over whether to even allow executive sessions. Many in Boulder did not trust the council enough to consider executive session authority a worthy amendment to their Charter, which currently reads, "All meetings of the council or committees thereof shall be public." Suzi Ageton took veritable bullets for merely suggesting Boulderites should trust their council with executive sessions.
By contrast, while trust is apparently an issue in Lafayette, the City of Lafayette carries on with executive sessions regularly. Our Charter reads, "All regular and special meetings of the council shall be open to the public..." There is no substantial difference from Boulder's requirement of open meetings, and here the trust factor is far greater, in my opinion, than what was asked for in 2B.
So we have many possible "trust" issues in local government. Unfortunately, we are paying attention to little bits and pieces of the public trust in the Charter and missing other pieces entirely. In my humble opinion, that is the risk of fixing a foundational document with a microscope and a hammer.
There will always be trust issues with government. Appropriately so. But when a city (or other body) is functioning well, the trust issues do not grind the business of the city to a halt, but rather help to define and better the legislation and actions of the governmental body. I think that is what is happening in Lafayette.
Citizens with concerns (perhaps distrusting, perhaps just speaking up) come forward and through their input shape the direction of the decision. Sometimes this is a drastic change, sometimes just tweaking the process.
To say that 2B was the voice of distrust is to ignore the outcome of 2C, which was exactly the opposite. Even with the most liberal interpretation, one would have to say that the people trust the council with some things (2C) and not others (2B). A blanket interpretation of the level of trust the people of Lafayette have for the government is unjustified.
As others have said, there were no exit polls so we won't have an answer but I do believe there was difference in level of specificity that should be considered.
As far as expertise, I stand by my assertion that teens are the "experts" in what it is like to be a youth in Lafayette in 2006. Our paid staff and professional advisors can observe and compile information about our youth, but they aren't living their lives. What is the harm in hearing from our youth directly?
For that matter, why not value the input of everyone who speaks to council from their own experience? It only adds to the value of the information we get from the paid experts.
I'm having trouble seeing the correlation between 2B and 2C. 2B would have granted broad board and commission appointment power to city councils present and future. 2C just approved releasing a specific redevelopment project from the city's growth cap.
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