Eugene council changes how it recruits volunteers for city boards, commissions

The Eugene City Council Wednesday, Oct. 21, narrowly approved changes to how it fills city boards and commissions. 

The city has nine volunteer boards, committees and commissions that advise councilors and city staff on policy and certain operational issues. Under current rules, councilors choose members each year by voting for up to three applicants per open seat. 

Nonincumbents with four or more votes are invited to give the council a three-minute statement. Incumbents with five or more votes move straight to nomination. 

But councilors agreed the process, last reviewed by the council in 2023, has problems. Too few applicants are advancing to interviews because councilors are “all over the map with their votes when the applicant pool is large,” Councilor Eliza Kashinsky said. 

Some councilors also don’t use all three votes, which makes it harder for candidates to reach the threshold for an interview. As an example, Kashinsky pointed to the most recent recruitment to Eugene’s Planning Commission. More than two dozen people submitted applications, but only two candidates advanced to an interview, she said.

After debate, the council voted 4-3 to give councilors more votes as the applicant pool grows. Kashinsky and Councilors Matt Keating, Lyndsie Leech and Jennifer Yeh favored the motion. 

“Adding additional votes would make it more likely that candidates would get to that threshold,” Kashinsky said. “It would just mean that those who choose not to use all of their votes have a little bit less influence.”

For an open seat that receives between one to 10 applicants, councilors continue to get three votes. But councilors now get four votes for a seat with 11 to 20 applicants, five votes for an open seat with 21 to 30 applicants; and six votes for a seat with more than 31 applications. 

Councilor Randy Groves, Mike Clark and Alan Zelenka opposed the motion, supporting proposed alternatives instead. Councilor Greg Evans was absent. 

“If you just increase the number of selections, you still could end up in the same spot where you get a panoply of nobody getting enough votes,” Zelenka said.

There were concerns over the complexity of the rule change, but city staff assured councilors that it would not be difficult to implement. 

The discussion then turned to the interview process for the boards, commissions and committees.

Councilors voted 4-3 to direct city staff to research and get quotes for technology allowing candidates to provide a prerecorded video statement if they cannot appear in-person or over Zoom to make their three-minute interview statement.

The research is needed because the city currently lacks a way to securely process and store large video files, city recorder Katie LaSala said.

Kashinsky, Groves, Leech and Zelenka voted in favor of the cost-estimate directive. Yeh, Keating and Clark voted against the motion. 

Clark said he would oppose paying for prerecorded video technology when the city has already closed Wednesday work sessions to in-person public attendance because of the cost. Councilors appeared to agree they likely would drop the idea if the estimates came back high.

The council also voted 6-1 to spread candidate interviews over two work sessions instead of one meeting night. 

They also voted 6-1 to remove the randomization process for quasi-judicial land-use public hearings, meaning speakers who sign up to testify will now be called by stance (proponent, neutral or opponent) and in the order they signed up. Quasi-judidical hearings are administrative proceedings based on whether a land-use proposal aligns with application-specific criteria, including state and city law, and the evidence and arguments submitted to the city. 

Zelenka said the change will make it easier for opponents of proposed land-use changes to present convincing testimony for their side.

“For the opponents, we require it to be randomized, so you can’t make your case and present organized testimony, which makes it ad hoc ‘statement one, statement seven, statement four, statement five,’” Zelenka said. “That makes it, I think, blatantly unfair. Makes it harder to make your case.”

Two motions failed during Wednesday’s meeting. 

The first, a motion to reduce allotted speaking time for candidates to boards, commissions and committees from three minutes to 2 and a half minutes, failed 2-5. 

The second, proposed by Clark, was an attempt to change the appointment process to the city’s Budget Committee to provide that each councilor appoints one of the eight citizen members, instead of the current at-large process. It also failed 2-5.