Agenda - 02-08-2000 - 3 - Laserfiche WebLink

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• ORANGE COUNTY STAFF PAPER CONSIDERATIONS IN POSSIBLE STRUCTURE OF BOCC STANDING COMMITTEES February 8, 2000 At their annual planning retreat on January 20, 2000, the Board of Commissioners discussed the concept of creating standing committees that under some circumstances would work with staff to examine issues and develop recommendations to the full board. The underlying interest of the Board would be to increase the efficiency with which the County Commissioners are able to deal with the heavy workload presented during the more than 50 meetings of the full board scheduled each year. The Manager was asked to develop some recommendations regarding a possible committee structure, which the Board can consider in conjunction with other proposals that Commissioners have developed or may subsequently bring to the table. It may be that some hybrid of the following concepts and those previously identified will lead to a structure that satisfies the Board's needs to more efficiently manage its workload. Whatever structure the Board may pursue, the Manager recommends that the following principles be observed: ■. Each task or issue dealt with by a committee should be undertaken upon specific direction or commissioning from the full Board that the committee should address that particular task or issue ■ Each committee should have two Commissioners, although the Board may wish to work out a back -up system where one or more additional Commissioners can serve on a rotational basis ■ Each committee should report back periodically to the full board on the tasks or issues it is working on using format and groundrules agreed to by the full board ■ Staff must assist the Board in ensuring that requirements of open meetings and public records laws are observed One approach to establishing committees would be to structure them along the lines of the major functional areas of Orange County government, as laid out in the County's budget ordinance and budget document. Some of the larger functional areas, either in percentage of the County budget or number of operational departments (e.g. Education and Human Services) could stand alone as BOCC committees, Issues in other smaller functional areas (e.g. Community Maintenance, General Administration, Taxation and Records) could be addressed in one BOCC committee combining several functional areas. There may be value in identifying five committees, with the expectation that each Commissioner would serve on two. Clearly, there could be more or fewer than five, if the BOCC determines 'a more effective and appropriate committee structure. In many cases, assignment of a task or issue to the appropriate committee would be fairly clear (e.g. a review of Adult Care Home issues would naturally fall to the Human Services Committee, as the issue involves the Department on Aging, Health, and DSS, which are all Human Service departments). In other cases, an issue might arguably be addressed by more than one committee (e.g. the Cost Efficient Facilities Initiative might be either an Education or General Operations committee issue). In such cases, as part of the "commissioning" process mentioned above, the Board would decide at the outset which committee should take the lead, and whether in the particular set of circumstances there should be collaboration on an issue between several BOCC committees.