The Orange County Commissioners are apparently considering a proposal from the County Manager to reduce the number of citizen advisory boards and commissions. This may not be a bad idea since the county has over 70 such advisory groups.
Until last week I was a member of the Human Services Advisory Commission (HSAC) which I think is likely to be disappear - transferring its responsibilities to various existing boards, such as, the OPC mental health board, the DSS board, etc. I think eliminating HSAC will not have a detrimental effect because the advice of this group was not taken very seriously, anyway.
However, I do wonder if the elimination of some of the other boards and commissions might cause problems.
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What's the point?
Is this a cost-saving measure? Or an attempt to streamline and improve efficiency? Or...?
Besides streamlining, improved efficiency, and cost savings, I'm
hopeful this evaluation of Advisory Board effectivness will result in the Commissioners making better use of citizen input. On December 4, 2009 and February 19, 2010 the commissioners held mini-retreats on this topic. Click here and here for the respective agendas. Unfortunately, and unlike most commissioner agendas, these two do not include on-line links for the background materials made available to the commissioners. However, the minutes from the Dec 4 mini-retreat are available online.
Commissioners' Feb 19 work session on advisory boards
here's the link to the online minutes.