At its April meeting, Fort Thomas city council approved 13 municipal orders reappointing various members of the city’s Planning Commission, Board of Adjustment and Design Review Board.
The move was part of an effort by City Administrator Matt Kremer and council to fix an ongoing problem regarding reappointments of board and commission members. Ideally board members’ terms of office should be staggered so that the boards have a mix of both new and experienced members.
In Fort Thomas, due to confusion, missed reappointment deadlines and similar issues, over the years, timing of reappointments has been off. The situation has led to large groups of members up for reappointment all at once.
Kremer worked out a plan to help stagger the appointments and streamline a process that has caused confusion on the council for many years. He mapped out all the board members’ terms of office and reappointed them for varying time periods. He had some members reappointed for one year and others for two, three, or four years so that their current terms would expire at different times.
“Thirteen appointments in one month should not happen,” Kremer said. “And the reason for that has been years of not having them spaced out properly. So that’s why I made a spreadsheet just to show counsel that this is the last time we’re going to have anything like this. We have the new legislation spaced out. So the max you should have for any board should be two people a year.”
Going forward, members’ reappointments will return to the stated terms of office (usually three years), but those terms will be staggered.
Council member Adam Blau thanked Kremer for the work he’d put into the project.
“I just really want to thank you and Tim [Schneider], and whoever helped you with getting all this done and getting it organized,” Blau said. “For me, personally, what everybody keeps telling me is to trust the process, and they see me get frustrated or annoyed with how things are on council. That’s been because of stuff like this. It shouldn’t be happening…It was not being done, ordinances not correctly followed, and it’s gotten out of line.”
Mayor Eric Haas affirmed Blau’s sentiment.
“It has been an issue that has been ongoing for three mayors and four city managers,” Haas said. “Our reappointment process has been in chaos for that long…It’s not easy to keep up, and because of that, it was always falling through the cracks.”
Kremer said he added new procedures to ensure that no future reappointments will be missed, and that the mayor and council had time to make informed decisions on reappointments and appointments to the boards and commissions.
“I’ll be notified 90 days out with the intent for us to be able for the mayor to choose his appointment within the next 30 to 60 days,” Kremer said. “And that should give council 30 days to know who we’re appointing…With this new procedure, we will be able to space these boards out, so this should not happen again.”
