Colton City Council makes changes to commission application requirements

On Tuesday, August 20 Colton City Council amended the qualifications of the commissioners and appointment procedures application requirements.

“This item is on your agenda pursuant to city council direction from the April 16 council meeting earlier this year. City council provided direction to staff to amend the application for service on city commissions. The directed change was to add a section to the application soliciting information about whether or not an applicant has been convicted of a crime,” said City Manager Bill Smith.

“Subsequently we also had the suggestion to add the requirement that applicants be a registered voter. That is the ordinance that you have before you, which would amend your ordinance to include these two items as a requirement to be a commissioner. Today you could either approve these two items, neither of them, or provide alternate direction to staff,” continued Smith.

At the meeting, Councilmember Isaac T. Suchil provided direction to the proposed change; specifically regarding the topic of requiring a former elected to be on hold for a year or two before being allowed to join a commission in the city.

“I was recommending that we omit Section B of the ordinance, while we clean up the text. Does any other city in the area have this type of one or two year cooling off period for a former elected?” asked Councilmember Suchil.

The city attorney said they did research to determine if any other local jurisdictions require a cooling off period for a former elected to serve on a commission and no other cities in the area hold such requirement.

“What this does, is it keeps away a lot of people that have a lot of knowledge and experience on commissions. I think this keeps educated people who know what they are doing involved in our city,” concluded Suchil.

Ultimately, in a 5-0 vote, city council decided not to move forward with the ordinance, but approve the new draft commission application, as included in the staff report.

Moving forward, the commission application will still require applicants to be registered voters and now require applicants to provide five years of criminal history, instead of three. For more information, visit coltononline.com.