Council held lengthy talks earlier this month about a restructuring of several council committees, including a new place to stash ideas they’ll consider for future talks.
"Every two years, when we have elections, we also do a redo of the subcommittees,” said council President Sal Amato. "What I would like to do is change it up, just a bit.”
In early 2022 then-council members formalized what had been an informal series of committees, creating regular meeting times and memberships for each council members to take on several fields or topics that held their interest.
Newly created in 2022 was a public safety committee meant to increase communication and coordination between council, the public, and the town’s volunteer fire company, while previously existing committees included buildings and grounds, employee relations, finance, technology, and a communications committee, which has since overseen the implementation of several new social media channels and a town alert app to communicate with residents.
For 2024, "we have two types of committees that are going to be happening here. One are ongoing committees: these are standing, and remain in place, with fixed memberships, fixed objectives, that allow us to do a timely response to issues, and retain subject area knowledge over time,” Amato said.
Standing committees for 2024-25 will include employee relations, finance, and public safety, with possible membership changes based on whether any council members are interested, while the other three — buildings and grounds, technology and communications — will be replaced with ad-hoc committees to tackle topics or projects instead.
"If there’s an issue we want to look into, it allows us, as council, to say ‘Hey, you know what? We should put energy into that issue.’ It allows you to go away, and say what is the issue or problem you want to solve, bring it back to council, and discuss, and say ‘This is how we’re going to resource that issue’,” he said.
Along with the ad-hoc committees will be what Amato dubbed a "parking lot” — a public document where ideas or topics are stored, and council stored, and or residents can ask that they be added or addressed as time, energy and resources are available, or circumstances or conditions somehow change. To move an issue or topic out of the parking lot, "the owner, most likely a councilmember, will be responsible for developing a framing document, as a basis for discussion at a future council meeting,” Amato said.
"What I mean by the document is: what’s the problem you’re trying to solve? And what’s the benefit for doing that? Essentially, that’s the document — and, have we had a lot of residents coming up to complain about it?” he said.
Holding public discussion about a topic before bringing it off of the parking lot for council action, could be a way to get more residents involved in that topic, he added.
"We have 3,400 people out there. They have experience, and we might be able to draw on that experience, if we ask if anybody wants to get involved in this,” Amato said.
Councilwoman Sarah Whelan asked how the memberships of the standing committees and ad-hoc ones would be handled, and Amato said those selections will be made based on feedback from the other eight council members, with talks in upcoming meetings on a formal guidance document putting the processes and new structure in writing.
Councilwoman Anji Fazio asked how the town’s arts and cultural center — a borough-owned church and office building on Main Street that’s currently undergoing extensive renovations and upgrades — would be handled, and Amato said that’s also up for discussion, alongside other topics council may deem more urgent.
"One of the things that’s on our parking lot, is the issue of a single trash hauler. That was brought up a little while ago again, and we’ve been talking about it for years,” Amato said.
"Instead of saying ‘Hey Christine, go look into this,’ we could raise the issue at council. We all might say ‘That’s a good topic for the agenda, let’s do something,’ who would want to lead that discussion?” he said, referring to borough Manager Christine Hart, "then we discuss, as council, is that a high priority? Do we want to put resources into that?”
Councilwoman Wendy McClure added that she thought the trash hauler topic example was a strong one, since council members may have looked into the topic more deeply or more recently than Hart and her staff.
"We could do our own research, to keep the burden so much from Christine and her people, so we’re not reinventing the wheel, and if Christine’s already done some homework, we would ultimately get together and decide what our goals are for a single hauler, how does it affect the community, and the noise, and the price, and all of those things,” she said.
The rest of council then agreed to continue talks at future meetings, and junior councilman Braeden Bussman said he thought the plan "sounds like a great idea.” Amato then said he’d put the new suggested polices and procedures in a document for further discussion and approval.
North Wales borough council next meets at 7 p.m. on March 26 at the borough municipal building, 300 School Street; for more information visit www.NorthWalesBorough.org.
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