The South Haven City Council is being asked to amend an ordinance to help staff find more candidates to serve on local boards and committees.
At the council’s first meeting of the year on Monday, members were asked to update the city code of ordinances to allow for a single person to hold multiple municipal offices. City Manager Kate Hosier said the specific problem is a section of the ordinance that prohibits a planning commissioner from holding another office, in this case preventing a potential appointment to the Construction Board of Appeals.
However, council members were largely opposed to making changes. Mary Hosley said she appreciates the need for more people, but from her experience with the Planning Commission, such a move shouldn’t be made at this time.
“But what I’ve been seeing over the past several years, even when I applied several years ago, there were more applicants than there were positions, but the same people got reappointed, and that’s just not engaging in the community, and that’s what we said we wanted to do,” Hosley said.
Council member Letitia Wilkins said leaving the ordinance as is and taking a different approach could lead to more diversity of voices.
“I think that we need to consider other people besides the same few people that we just keep putting on the same committees over and over with the same agenda and the same views,” Wilkins said. “If we’re going to get something different, we have to use different people.”
Hosier said it can be extremely challenging to find residents qualified and willing to fill certain positions on boards. But council members appeared opposed to the proposal.
A formal motion to give the ordinance amendment a reading failed to get a second, and Mayor Annie Brown said the matter will get more discussion next meeting.
Also Monday, Brown and new council members Eddie Polk, Tom Capps, David Flack were sworn in following November’s election.
