In Meeting on Zoom, Peninsula Planners Express Desire to Get Back to Work for the Community

Volunteer Board Grapples With How to Fill Vacant Seats

By Geoff Page

It is interesting to see the lengths people are going to today, in their efforts to establish a modicum of normalcy.  The reasons for this are varied.  For many it is a serious worry about money.  For some, who may not have a money worry, it is a chance to get back to making more money.  And some, like many celebrities out there in front of laptops, are starving for attention.

The volunteers on the Peninsula Community Planning Board want to resume their business, which has been on hold since their last meeting in February of this year.  While it may not be the motive for everyone, most of the sitting members expressed the same sentiment, a genuine concern that the work for the community the board normally does was not getting done.

The kick-off effort to restart their work, Thursday, June 18, was an on-line meeting much like the OB Planning Board and the Midway-Pacific Planning Group have held in the past few months.  The PCPB used a popular on-line meeting software called Zoom. The only agenda item was to discuss how to go forward with the PCPB.

The meeting went well.  There were approximately 21 people in attendance, a normal mixture of board members, community members, and government representatives. One Zoom feature allows the meeting coordinator to control everyone’s microphone, which surely could be abused, but is a useful tool in keeping people from talking over each other.

People could be seen on screen raising their hands and the moderator could recognize them one at a time in order.  Having a good moderator is obviously important.  Board member Korla Eaquinta handled this responsibility and the meeting was as orderly, if not more so, than a regular meeting.

There were some drawbacks this reporter experienced attending the meeting.  Each person appears in a small video and the monitor fills up with small video squares.  Everyone can see the participants unless a person turns off their video feed.  The problem was that there is only so much room, even on a large monitor.  It was not possible to see all the attendees.

Another drawback is that people need to possess or, have access to, decent computers and good internet connections.  And, people need to know how to navigate the meeting program.  There surely must be a compilation of goofs on You Tube showing people trying and failing miserably to make it work.

But, it is an honest effort on the PCPB’s part.  This group seems to want to get back to helping.  What some folks fear is that things are being slipped by during this shutdown and that some are taking advantage of the lack of oversight or enforcement of building codes.  This seems to be a legitimate worry considering things the city appears to be fast-tracking during all of this.

The PCPB has some challenges to overcome, in order to restart.  To begin with, the election that is held in March every year was cancelled and there were no meetings in March, April, or May. There are normally five open seats each year but this year there were two additional seats to fill. The former chair and vice chair resigned effective March 31. There is one year left on the former chair’s term and two years left on the former vice chair’s term.

Since the chair and first vice chair were gone, leadership fell to Brad Herrin, the second vice chair.  Herrin conducted the meeting calmly and professionally even during some unfounded criticisms. He began by explaining options he said came from Tait Galloway with the city Planning Department, one of which was to go dark for as long as it took.

Herrin explained that there was a requirement in Council Policy 600-24 that the board have a minimum of 12 members to be certified.  Because there were seven open seats during the March election that were not filled, there are only eight sitting board members now.  The eight represent a bare quorum of the normal 15 members.  All eight would have to attend every meeting as one absence would mean no quorum and no business could be conducted.

This means there were two pressures on the members now, one being a board below the required membership and one being this very tentative quorum.  Herrin suggested a solution, reseating the five board members, who were termed out in March, until the 2021 March election.  This would solve the two problems by bringing the membership to 13 members. It solved another problem in that board members are indemnified by the city but must attend a training session first.  The sessions aren’t being held but the termed-out members had all been through it.

Board member Mark Krencik suggested throwing the seven seats open to anyone who wanted to fill the short terms and appoint seven people. It was expressed that it might not be fair to let just anyone try for a seat when there were people who had showed an interest in being on the board by running for a seat.  There were 10 candidates running for the open seats in March.

Krencik then said reseating the five termed out members would probably make sense and then the remaining two seats could be filled by appointment to get to a full complement of 15 members.  This garnered immediate opposition from board members Mandy Havlik and Eva Schmitt who felt 13 members were enough and no new community members were needed.  For members of a community planning board, this opposition to more community involvement was very strange.  But, it didn’t stop with them.

“Lucky” Morrison, a one-year board member, filling the last year of a vacant seat and who was termed out in March, delivered a criticism that clearly demonstrated he had no knowledge of the planning board by-laws regarding how vacancies on a planning board are filled.  He spoke strongly against it saying it would look like the board was doing something nefarious by appointing members instead of waiting for an election.  It would look like some kind of exclusive club, he said.

Anyone with a smattering of experience with planning boards would know how vacancies are filled if they don’t occur close to a March election.  Morrison claims to have years of experience on the North Park Planning Board but showed he clearly knew nothing about the appointment process.

Simply put, vacancies are filled by candidates applying to the board and being appointed by a board-only vote.  This has happened many times in the years this reporter has observed the PCPB, it was how this reporter was first elected to a seat on the PCPB.  Morrison’s incorrect assessment of the situation received agreement and praise from other board members, sadly also illustrating a lack of knowledge as to how the board works.

Finally, when it seemed no one was going to correct Morrison, Krencik spoke up and explained the by-law provision for appointing members.  It was disappointing to see that only one out of eight sitting members and the five termed out members appeared to have a working knowledge of the planning board rules, or at least was willing to speak up.

It was during the discussion on a motion to reseat the five members when board member Don Sevrens, tried – in this reporter’s opinion – to stir up unnecessary controversy.  Sevrens was the member who sued the city and his fellow PCPB members last year causing a big disruption in the board’s business, not to mention causing anxiety among several members. He is a self-professed “parliamentarian” and he said his reading of the by-laws did not show a provision for the second vice chair to be in charge.  He said that absent by-law language on this they had to rely on Robert’s Rules of Order for guidance.  In Sevren’s expert opinion, this meant that succession fell to the board secretary.

Why he was making such a case now was not clear to anyone in the meeting except maybe Sevrens.  Herrin was only running things because it seemed logical that the second vice chair was there for just such a situation, departure of the chair and first vice chair.  It was interesting that the self-professed “parliamentarian” had nothing to say about the appointment discussion that was taking place. His point about leadership succession, at a time when there were much more pressing matters, rightfully fell on deaf ears.

Then, as if his first faux pas was not enough, Morrison launched into a criticism that he had also leveled at the past chair. Morrison seems to see conspiracies everywhere and criticized Herrin for not be completely open and transparent with everyone during the discussions with the city on how to proceed.  He went on for some minutes criticizing this alleged secrecy on the part of Herrin.

But, his balloon was quickly popped when Korla Eaquinta spoke up and said that Herrin had been very open in the communications with the sitting board members.  She had to remind Morrison that his term ended in March, which was why he was not included in the communications, he was not a board member.  This fact apparently had not occurred to Morrison judging by the look on his face.  Later, when everyone defended Herrin, Morrison went into another long spiel walking back his comments about Herrin, but it was not effective.

In the end, the board voted to reseat the five termed out members, which included both Morrison and Sevrens.  This will bring them to 13 members.  There will be a future discussion about filling the two empty seats once the dissenting board members are educated on the PCPB by-laws and the requirement to fill those seats. That is, assuming of course, that they do actually read the by-laws.

There will be another on-line meeting next month. The board will elect new officers at that time to get back to a full complement of officers. It will be advertised on the board website pcpb.net, and possible elsewhere.  The PCPB’s normal monthly meetings take place on the third Thursday of every month starting at 6:00 p.m.

Unfortunately, it appears that people will need good computers, a good internet connection, and an understanding of how everything works, in order to attend.  That is a factor that will limit public participation.  The PCPB normally meets in the Point Loma library in a large room.  It does seem possible to space out board members sufficiently to satisfy the distancing guideline and, combined with masks, even more so.  The audience is not usually very large so it seems the same could be applied there. Hopefully, the PCPB will consider this alternative to resuming business.