After months of cancelled meetings, the borough assembly’s Finance Committee met this week — their first meeting since June.
The Finance Committee is one of four assembly committees, each made up of three assembly members. The committees discuss and develop policy proposals before they reach the full assembly. Each committee is scheduled for a standing monthly meeting.
The committee’s string of cancelled meetings came as it had pending business on its agenda.
Almost a year ago, the full borough assembly voted to task the Finance Committee with discussing two big-ticket policy topics.
One was a possible severance tax, to tax raw materials like lumber and ore upon export from the borough. The severance tax topic, however, was moved to the Commerce Committee in October, when then-Commerce Committee chair Richard Clement expressed interest in the topic and found time on his committee’s agenda to take it up.
The other was discussion of borough land sales, which, like a severance tax, have been pitched as an avenue for boosting borough revenue. Borough land sales have still not been discussed by the Finance Committee, and remain on the agenda for next month’s meeting.
The responsibility for a committee’s agenda, and when meetings are cancelled, lies with the committee’s chairperson, borough clerk Mike Denker said.
“Around a week before the meeting, (borough) staff contacts the chair to ask if there’s a meeting and what the topics are,” said Denker. “Sometimes they just say no meeting — they may be getting info we don’t know or they may not tell us the reason.”
Finance Committee chair Mark Smith said his committee hadn’t been meeting because it didn’t have much to discuss. The severance tax issue, he said, he had left for the Commerce Committee. On land sales, he said the full assembly had “worked them as far as we could go.”
“There was no deliberate attempt to turn things off,” Smith said. “Things just burned out.”
Holding the monthly committee meetings, many say, is a key part of how the assembly legislates. “We summarize, we give both sides of an argument, and we’re able to hear from the public in a much less formal way than people going directly to the assembly,” said former assembly member Diana Lapham. “It’s an extremely valuable tool.”
Lapham also said that committee work was not limited to topics referred by the assembly. “We always had work,” Lapham said. “The assembly not directing you in something is a very small part of the committee.”
At Tuesday’s meeting, Smith introduced a new topic — discussion of what borough infrastructure should be prioritized amid rising maintenance costs. The topic has been a recurring theme amid an ongoing budget crunch. Smith said the meeting was a continuation of discussion held at the full assembly’s strategic planning session, and that Finance Committee meetings would continue as the borough’s budgeting season continued through the spring.
Other Finance Committee members said they did not know why seven months of meetings had been cancelled.
Committee member Kevin Forster said only that the chair was responsible for deciding whether to cancel meetings, and that he had not been given reasons for why the meetings had been cancelled.
Clement, who was on the committee until the October election, said he had been “a bit surprised” at the meeting cancellations.
“Our (assembly) meetings were going way too long — we were using them as discussion forums more than decision-making meetings,” Clement said. “Committees can take the complicated issues, thrash them out, then bring them back to the assembly with a way to move forward.”
The volume of cancelled finance meetings exceeds the other assembly committees, except for one.
In the last calendar year, the Commerce Committee has cancelled four meetings, and the Government Affairs and Services Committee has cancelled one.
The Personnel Committee, however, has cancelled seven. But unlike Finance, Personnel has had fewer outstanding topics on their list. Last spring, the committee was charged by the assembly with discussing borough manager and fire chief hiring. The committee discussed those topics in July and August meetings, and both positions were filled soon after.
“My committee is really directed by the manager,” Personnel Committee chair Gabe Thomas said. “I don’t usually meet unless (borough manager Alekka Fullerton) has something to meet about. She’s the personnel director. I don’t like to hold meetings just to hold meetings.”