Tuolumne Supervisors Decrease Number Of Meetings
Sonora, CA – Tuolumne County Supervisors have voted to drop one of its monthly meetings.
Instead of three meetings every month there will now be two, beginning April 8th. In early 2021, the board increased the meetings to three. The board cited things like COVID, improving transparency and trying to cut down on meeting times by moving property issue-related items to that third meeting.
The board also noted that the new recommendation came out of its recent board workshop, as earlier reported here. The main concern voiced was staff capacity. District 4 Supervisor Kathleen Haff stated, “Staff spends a tremendous amount of time working on board agenda items then appearing in person when their item comes up and sometimes, they’re in the board chambers for quite a long time besides all the prep work that they’ve done. So, I’m in favor of this (change to two meetings) because we need to do what we can for our staffs’ capacity.”
District 5 Supervisor Jaron Brandon brought up concerns surrounding efficiency, “I don’t see a plan on the other side of how we’re planning to, as a body, be more efficient. Reducing it to two meetings, is that necessarily going to create that efficiency, or is it potentially going to create a bottleneck?” He added, “What I would like to see is a reduction of these meetings down to two be paired with something that is helping us move along with items somewhat faster.” Those could include time limits for items to be discussed.
Just the three board meetings alone added up to 288 hours for staff, according to Board Chair Anaiah Kirk. In the end, all approved going back to two meetings a month except for Brandon who abstained, asking for meeting procedures to be addressed.
