Fiscal Note
No additional City appropriation required.
Title
Directing City staff to explore and/or pursue specified changes to the City of Madison Board, Committee, and Commission System.
Body
WHEREAS, the Task Force on Government Structure (TFOGS) was established in 2017 to consider issues related to the powers and duties of the City’s Common Council, Mayor’s Office, and Boards, Commissions, and Committees (BCCs), and made recommendations in a final report in November of 2019; and
WHEREAS the Final Report of the Task Force on Government Structure concluded “the BCC structure itself serves as another impediment to full resident participation and representation” and made recommendations that included eliminating or combining some BCCs, and
WHEREAS, a TFOGS Implementation Work Group met 2020-2023 to carry out TFOGS recommendation, and the Common Council Executive Committee took over this work from the Work Group in 2023, and has guided the establishment of clear goals, analysis methods, and recommendations for changes to the BCC system, and
WHEREAS, recommendations for changes to the BCC system include, among others, combining the Economic Development Committee and the Vending Oversight Committee, potentially combining numerous awards processes within a single committee, potentially transferring responsibilities of the Joint Campus Area Committee from the City to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and potentially transferring responsibilities of the City County Schools Collaborative Committee to the Madison Metropolitan School District, and
WHEREAS, final determinations on each of these recommendations requires more detailed planning before finalizing a recommendation;
NOW THEREFORE, the Common Council directs City staff to develop an ordinance to create a single new committee that merges the duties of the Vending Oversight Committee and the Economic Development Committee and replaces these two existing committees. The ordinance should include a proposal for how to merge existing duties of the two committees, and may include transferring some responsibilities from a committee to staff, as appropriate and should be developed with input from the two committees and returned to the Council for consideration to adopt no later than August 31, 2025.
The Common Council further directs City staff to explore the possibility of the following changes to the BCC system and making a recommendation back to the Common Council no later than August 31, 2025.
1) Transferring responsibilities for the Joint Campus Area Committee to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
2) Transferring responsibilities for the City, County, Schools Collaborative Committee to the Madison Metropolitan School District.
3) Combining multiple civil rights-focused awards processes within a single committee.