Cambria board wants more community input on vacancy

Whoever is the choice to replace Greg Sanders on Cambria’s services district board, the community should be more involved.

That was the top priority of directors meeting on the day before Thanksgiving to create a process for picking Sanders’ successor.

The board will interview applicants and hopes to choose a new director at a 10 a.m. meeting Monday, Dec. 4, at the Cambria Veterans Memorial Building. Applications are due by Dec. 1.

Board Vice President Harry Farmer said he wanted to “avoid what has happened in the past,” which he described as involving “a lack of discussion, a lack of considering a varied number of candidates, (and) a lack of public participation.”

To increase community involvement, the board adopted a process that will allow members of the public to submit questions for the candidates ahead of time, then make their own comments after applicants are introduced at the Dec. 4 meeting.

Qualifications

Directors spent some time at their Nov. 22 special meeting discussing what qualities they’d most like to see in a new board member.

“Open-minded,” “collaborative” and “cordial and respectful” were among the qualities directors agreed they’d like to see in a successful applicant.

“We have to stop attracting people to the meetings because they’re looking for the soap opera,” President Amanda Rice said.

Director Aaron Wharton suggested he would like to see applicants with a degree of institutional knowledge, while Rice suggested a background in public safety might be an advantage. Rice and Farmer both said they’d favor someone with an ability to understand and deal with budgets.

Director Jim Bahringer, however, said, “I don’t want a financial manager” and was more interested in considering “someone who believes in the good of this community.”

Bahringer also suggested that the board consider candidates who didn’t want to “go through a grilling” in order to serve. He specifically mentioned Steve Kniffen, who chairs the district’s Parks, Recreation and Open Space Commission and has been active in community activities ranging from blood drives to youth sports.

Kniffen, who ran an unsuccessful write-in campaign for the board in 2016, said he’d be willing to serve but would not go through the interview process.

Bahringer’s motion to consider Kniffen and other candidates not involved in formal interviews died for lack of a second.

The process

In selecting a new member, the board adopted the following process:

▪  Applicants will fill out a form that includes the answer to one question: “Why do you want to serve as a CCSD board director?”

▪  Community members are invited to suggest additional questions to board members, in person or via email at board@cambriacsd.org.

▪  Upon arriving at the meeting, applicants will be sequestered, with each in turn delivering a short introduction to the board. The order of the applicants’ statements will be selected at random.

▪  After all the candidates have introduced themselves, members of the public will be invited to comment.

▪  Each board member will then choose up to three candidates to advance to the next round, with any candidate receiving at least one vote advancing. (This was based on a suggestion by community member Christine Heinrichs, who said the Menlo Park Fire District had used this method to fill a seat on its board).

▪  The remaining candidates will once again be sequestered and called into the board room one at a time to answer questions. These questions will include three distilled from those suggested by the community — which will be made known to candidates ahead of time — as well as board members’ own questions. (Board members decided that one question will ask applicants they think Cambria should look like five or 10 years from now.)

▪  Directors will then take nominations and vote to select a new member.

Rate study

Rice and Bahringer will serve on an ad-hoc committee to oversee a rate study for water and sewer fees.

Heinrichs, during public comment, questioned the potential $68,000 cost of such a study.

Bahringer acknowledged that concern and said, “My focus is to make it as expeditious and inexpensive as possible. … I think that if the focus is on wastewater, we can reduce that cost.”

This story was originally published November 22, 2017 at 1:35 PM with the headline "Cambria board wants more community input on vacancy."