Chapel Hill’s Town Council is Trying to Decide What to Do With the Town’s Many Volunteer Advisory Boards

At a September work session, Susan Brown, director of strategic communications for the Town of Chapel Hill, estimated that town staff spends $10,000 worth of time each month preparing materials for the town’s boards—even though it’s not clear what purpose many of the boards serve. 

“I’m sorry,” town council member Paris Miller-Foushee interrupted. “Did you say $10,000?”

Now, Chapel Hill’s council members are deciding if the volunteer advisory bodies add value to the town’s government or if the boards and commissions are irredeemable, resource-sucking pits of obsolescence. While mostly everyone in the town government recognizes problems with the current structure, no one is quite sure how to fix them.

What is an advisory board?

Most municipalities have some form of citizen advisory boards.

In Chapel Hill, these roughly 20 advisory bodies are pitched as forums for citizens to participate in government voluntarily by giving feedback to the town on specific topics—from development design to stormwater management utility—without having to run for office. Anyone who lives in the town can apply to serve on a board, and council members vote to appoint the members.

Chapel Hill, like most small municipalities, uses a council-manager form of government. It operates a lot like a business—the council, elected by the people, is like a board of trustees, and the mayor is the chair. The council appoints a town manager, who serves as a nonpolitical CEO of the town. Because the manager is responsible for hiring and firing town staff, the staff is relatively insulated from the politics of the town council. If shareholders—that is, voters—aren’t getting the return on investment that they want, they can vote out the council and mayor but cannot, say, directly fire the director of transit.

Part of the problem with boards and commissions is that they don’t clearly fit into that structure. 

“I am, to this day, not totally clear what the delineation is between the Stormwater Management Utility Advisory Board and the stormwater staff,” said then-council member (and current mayor) Jess Anderson at a November meeting. 

In certain situations, boards have helped fill gaps that the town staff apparatus needed more time to address.

Brown cited the Justice in Action Committee as an example. The committee was created in the early 2000s, originally to provide recommendations on renaming Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (then called Airport Road). After that, it shifted its focus to “the substantive issues of race, economics, social justice, and power.” 

But a lot has changed in the town since then. 

“We have a DEI office, we have a language justice plan, and numerous other large- and small-scale efforts around racial, economic, and social justice,” said Brown. “And in recent years, the committee has struggled with finding a clear charge and meaningful meeting content.” 

So at the end of 2023, the council decided to dissolve that committee.

Some other committees may be getting the ax, too, although staff prefer to use the more diplomatic verb “sunset.”

Why are boards on the agenda now?

Last year, the council asked the staff to look at the effectiveness of the town’s boards. At several recent meetings, staff members have come back with a series of evaluations, noting that many boards lack a clear purpose or often don’t have the quorum necessary to make decisions. Brown and her team have provided recommendations, including delineating board missions, introducing training for members, and standardizing board sizes, schedules, and scope.

Brown used the Library Advisory Board, formerly known as the Library Board of Trustees, as an example of a successful change.

“Some members thought that it had a governance, fiduciary, or oversight role,” said Brown. “Others thought of it more as a volunteer nonprofit board that conceived of programs and services …. Because of these different understandings of roles and charges, there was a lot of frustration and confusion.” 

Miller-Foushee pushed for a more aggressive reevaluation. 

“I don’t want to be married to boards and commissions for the sake of being married to boards and commissions,” she said. 

The council members are familiar with the intricacies of boards because nearly all of them served on boards before they ran for council. In recent years, especially, candidates have pointed to that experience as an authentic demonstration of interest in town government. 

Council member Camille Berry, who did not previously serve on a town board, questioned that experience as a credential.

“We have folks in the media … saying, ‘Here are your candidates, but have they served on an advisory board?’ I did not,” Berry said. “But I certainly serve this community.” 

Who serves on boards?

To some council members, board membership is part of the problem. In Chapel Hill especially, many of the most politically involved folks are old, white homeowners.

It’s hard to imagine a lower-income full-time worker choosing to attend a six p.m. board meeting, especially if they have kids at home. The town has made some real efforts—in 2018, the council approved funds for childcare and transportation assistance in an attempt to increase diversity. But there’s still a lot of work ahead.

“Our boards … don’t work for our diverse community. They’re not the right way to get community input,” said council member Karen Stegman at the November meeting. “We need to find another way to get that input and not pretend that’s what [boards are].” 

The staff and council have also started looking at the application process.

“The current process is not intuitive or easy to use,” said Brown in March. “The current process carries a fairly high administrative burden for staff. And the current application and appointment processes were not designed to create a diverse field of candidates.”

How can the council and boards shift to a policy focus?

With the ongoing process of rewriting the town’s land use management ordinance, the council has been trying to reorient its focus to policy. Council members hope to bring that vision to any future iterations of boards as well. 

“2024 has been the year of trying to figure out how do we get into that policy lane and really stay there? And how do we also fulfill our commitment to the community as sometimes a little bit of an oversight board?” said Mayor Anderson at the March meeting. 

But that reorientation may take a lot of legwork. Former council member Tai Huynh, speaking in his last month on the board, was perhaps the most candid in his assessment. 

“The outcome that I really wanted from [boards] was them gone,” said Huynh, citing his own experience on the housing board. “Even the deep-dive discussions that [the housing board] had I don’t think ever really made it to council. And at the end of the day, we didn’t really know what we were talking about.”

The conversation at the council table has been generally amiable—it’s not exactly a nuclear topic. But staff cannot make much change without the blessing of the nine council members, who all seem to have slightly different priorities. 

“I’m trying to get y’all to tell us what you want so we can try and bring it back to you,” Brown said to the council in November. 

In March, the council agreed to discuss the issue further at a later work session.

Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at chase@indyweek.com. Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.