Community Board 7’s chair and district manager made a surprise announcement last week that the organization’s 11 committees will be consolidated after a history of poor attendance and ineffectiveness. As part of the shift, committees will be required to conduct additional reporting to the district manager, and members who miss several meetings will be reprimanded.

“You who are chairing committees and you who are sitting on committees are falling down on the job,” said Nora Feury, Board chair, during the Feb. 15 full-Board meeting.  “You promised to come to all the committee meetings, and that is not happening.”

The shake-up consolidates the Board’s 11 committees into seven, which roughly break down to: economic development and long range planning, housing and land use, human services and health, parks and cultural affairs, personnel and law, public safety and transportation, and sanitation and environmental protection. Each committee will maintain a chair, and many will now have co-chairs.

Committee chairs will be required to send their agendas 10 days in advance of their monthly meetings to Rita Kessler, the Board’s district manager.

Many Board members agree with Feury and Kessler, who orchestrated the changes, that the committees aren’t currently working. “There are only a handful of people that are involved in the committees,” said Gregory Faulkner, a Board member. “We’re looking to do things differently, and I think that’s healthy.”

Committees are supposed to convene monthly with local agencies and other community stakeholders to discuss local issues, and suggest motions to bring before the full board.  Last week’s meeting, which had no committee-sponsored motions, was a strong indication that the committees aren’t functioning, according to Feury. The session also lacked a quorum.

While open to change, many Board members felt slighted that they had no input on the decision. “This came as a total surprise,” said Andrew Laiosa, a Board member. “Questions about this were never raised. The people who are affected by this were just told about it.”

Laiosa wished the matter had been proposed before the Executive Committee, which monitors attendance and conducts other administrative duties. Others questioned whether the changes violate the Board’s bylaws, where the committees are stipulated.

“I think there are some constitutional issues here,” Faulkner said.

Kessler said the rearrangement was within the rules since no committees were eliminated. The Board will try out the new configuration for this spring, adding new members when they are selected in the coming months, Feury said.

Some Board members questioned whether lumping together committees would help in attendance. “Part of the problem is the community board facilities are inadequate for more than one committee to meet at once,” said Don Bluestone, a Board member, about the Board’s cramped Bedford Park office. Kessler said during the meeting that committees could assemble off-site, though that practice has not been encouraged in the past.

Members debated whether a uniform date and time for committee meetings might help attendance. Bluestone also suggested that chairs, including him, should do a better job of calling members after they missed a meeting.

Laiosa thinks more should be done to increase the accessibility of the District Service Cabinet meetings, where city agencies discuss service delivery with the district manager.  Kessler suggested that chairs should form their committee agendas from issues raised at the meetings, but as they are held during the day, many members can’t attend them.

“Seventy-five percent of the Board’s agenda comes from that,” said Laiosa, who thinks the meetings are poorly advertised. “If that’s such an important thing, wouldn’t we want to make it more publicly accessible?”

Despite some reservations, most members were open to the committee experiment. “It’s a first step,” Faulkner said.

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Two new parks personnel introduced themselves during the Board meeting. Keisha Garnes is the new district manager for Community Board 7 parks. Kathleen Walker is the new director of the St. James Recreation Center, which is now undergoing a major renovation of its facilities.