Opinion: Should we triple council pay, let them have secret meetings and allow them to restructure boards?

The title of this column may sound a bit loaded, but that’s what is being discussed, according to Saturday’s Daily Camera story on some possible 2024 ballot measures that our city council is considering. My first reaction was, “Are you kidding?” The last thing we need is to reward poor performance, allow the council’s discussions to be even more concealed from public view and give them even more power.

When I was elected to the council in 1985, council members served as volunteers, with no pay at all. Looking back, it is my observation that almost all of the many people I served with in my 10 years on the council worked very hard, took their council job seriously, sacrificed their free time and worked to include the citizens in the decisions. It was more of a calling than a job. My impression was that most people felt humbled (to some extent, at least) to be granted the power and responsibility that the job creates and demands.

A critical improvement was when we created the Council Agenda Committee. Its primary role was to ensure that the agenda items covered all the relevant issues in an accessible way, focused on the important points and were of readable length. Council members (and citizens) could find the important information and be fully informed, and so provided useful input at council meetings. And people of moderate means and with limited free time could serve effectively as council members.

Unlike now, we never limited the number of citizens who could speak and even invited some. During “Citizen Participation,” everyone got three minutes, not two like now. Council members would ask questions, and dialogue if appropriate. Now, citizen participation comes across as a mere formality and citizen expertise is lost.

What apparently is being discussed is increasing council members’ pay by about three times — from the current $12,695 per year plus benefits to $35,120 for regular council members, and to $43,900 for the mayor (per the Camera story). It is my observation that paying people to perform this vital community function has not improved performance, quite the opposite. It has led to an inefficient process, less interest in what citizens have to say and more “sound-bite” based decisions. 

Some decisions are more complex now. But the solution is better organization and analysis of relevant information, so more people can participate effectively at whatever level their lives allow. I realize that many on the council claim a commitment to “increasing diversity” on the council. Leaving aside the lack of solid data to show that pay is the problem or the solution, I suspect that people are more put off by the problems with the current process than anything else. 

Boulder’s Charter Section 9 requires, “All meetings of the council or committees thereof shall be public.” The only exception is for a committee of two members to screen applications for city manager, attorney and judge, evaluate their performance, and recommend disciplinary actions as necessary. But any action requires a public meeting of the whole council. Additionally, state law considers serial meetings (sequential conversations between multiple council members) to be the same as if all the participants were meeting at the same time.

The only time the current rules were suspended, by citizen vote as required, was for three years for the council to discuss negotiating a new franchise agreement with Xcel. The only significant benefits in the final agreement were $13 million of undergrounding money (which had been denied non-franchise areas in apparent violation of the state law that requires equal treatment, and which the Legislature finally fixed), and some possible franchise exits at five-year intervals. None of this needed secret meetings to happen. 

Based on my ten years on the council and my observations thereafter, the council can operate just fine without closed-door meetings. All such meetings do is create more suspicion and mistrust.

As to the city’s boards and commissions, if current members of the council think that some alterations in terms, eligibility of members, or meeting schedules are required, they can discuss their ideas all they want at the council meetings. And if they come up with some changes that they think are really justified, they can put them on the ballot for the citizens to make the final decision. 

The only board and commission problems that I have observed have been created by the council’s “progressive” majority overloading them with their supporters. Maybe we need a charter amendment to require diversity of viewpoints. And not just on the boards and commissions.

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