What are the responsibilities and expectations of the City Council liaison to Advisory Committees? Since I have been on the City Council it has been talked about a lot. When I first got on the council the feelings were a council member should attend their assigned Advisory Committees meetings once a quarter minimum.
When I was Mayor a few years ago I tried to promote more attendance from our Council Members, I also attended every Advisory Committee at least once to get a feel for each. I didn’t know what half the committees were doing or their goals for the year.
I brought back to the City Council a proposal that would require each Advisory Committee to be broadcast over channel 27 at least once each year so our citizens in Foster City would get to see what our Advisory Committees were doing and also hope it would spark more interest that maybe more Foster City residents would participate.
We also now have every Advisory Committee come to a City Council Meeting and give a report of their accomplishments for the prior year and their goals for the current year.
At the beginning of each year the new incoming Mayor appoints each Council Member with the Advisory Committees they will be attending. This list is then approved by the City Council. Each Advisory Committee has a City Council Member assigned to their committee.
Most of the Council Members attend the majority of the meetings. I try and attend every Advisory Committee meeting and only when I have a meeting conflict do I not attend.
The City Council’s role in the meeting is to listen and help with insight of what the council might want. We do not run the meeting nor try and guide the meetings. The Advisory Committees have a chairman from the membership and are appointed a city staff liaison to help organize and run each meeting.
These Advisory Committees are very important to the City Council, because they bring such a wide variety of information back to the City Council and also give the City Council a cross section of all the citizens in our city.
Please look at the Foster City Web page and see if there is an Advisory Committees that you may be interested in joining.
You may reach me at rcox@fostercity.org.
print 