Several years ago, when my eldest first began grade school, I attended a PTO meeting, looked around the table, and didn’t see a single parent of color among the six or seven people there. Since the school has a large non-white population, I wondered why there seemed to be little PTO participation from the wider community of parents, not just parents of color, but people from the larger community of parents from U of M’s North Campus Housing, folks from around the world. When it came time to rustle up volunteers for an upcoming event, I said I would stand in front of the school, if need be, and buttonhole parents as they dropped off their kids. I did just that, and found that most of the parents whom I approached were willing (if not always able).
I soon came to realize that the problem wasn’t a lack of interest on the part of the school’s parents, but that the long-time volunteer PTO parents were so busy keeping the PTO afloat, that reaching out to people other than those whom they knew was forever falling to the bottom of the to-do list. It happens in organizations and groups all the time. A few long-term volunteers do all the work and, when volunteers don’t just step forward, begin to believe no one is interested in helping them.
Well, I’m a problem-solver. I got a copy of the PTO bylaws and read the rules on PTO elections. I volunteered to Chair the PTO Nominating Committee (the first one formed in, literally, five years). Getting more people involved, I reasoned, would be as simple as following the bylaws and election rules. The bylaws called for the formation of a Nominating Committee to put together a slate of candidates. The project involved lots of elbow grease. The Nominating Committee collected names of potential PTO officers and members-at-large. In fact, I phoned over 300 parents over the course of a month to ask if they’d like to be involved in the PTO as officers or a members-at-large.
It was a great experience for me, personally. I spoke with a huge number of parents, and together with the other members of the Nominating Committee, put together a slate of candidates that, in effect, tripled the number of parents involved in PTO leadership, and drew in parents from the various communities of parents in the school. I did this, because I wanted to see a wider range of people have a voice at the table, and to have the PTO representative of the community at the school.
Not everyone was happy, though, with having to follow the bylaws, or with the fact that I had asked practically every parent in the school to participate—strangers to those who’d been involved for years.
It’s understandable, but isn’t a stranger just a friend you haven’t met before?
This same thing has happened in our city government. At a recent City Council meeting, as the Mayor prepared to read a list of his nominees to several boards and commissions, he chuckled and said to the Council, who would vote on his nominations, “Several of these names will be familiar to many of you.”
There are about 270 hard-working volunteers on the city’s boards and commissions. Some people have asked me whether I think the number of boards and commissions could be reduced. To be sure, past administrations have combined, created, and purged boards and commissions as the need arose. However, participation in city government should be a grassroots affair.
There are, however, a couple of things I’d do differently with respect to Mayoral appointments to boards and commissions: Let me elaborate.
1. Having individuals serve on multiple boards is not a practice I would continue unless there were a compelling reason to do so. Just like the PTO, it’s going to take elbow grease and a commitment to recruitment and reaching out to potential volunteers. I would like to see an annual open house for Ann Arbor folks interested in serving on the city’s many boards and commissions, just as the School Board does for its potential board candidates.
2. The appointment application process is relatively straight-forward. There’s an application form for Mayoral appointments (available online). I’ve spoken to many, many people who’ve submitted an application to serve on a board or commission, and heard nothing. Not a peep one way or the other. It’s crucial to make sure all applicants get treated respectfully.
3. Mayoral appointments are just that—made at the pleasure the Mayor and voted on by Council. I would like to see Council bring multiple recommendations to the table in addition to the Mayor’s, and to have deliberative, open discussions concerning Mayoral appointments. There are emails that were released to the public as a result of Freedom of Information Act requests made by citizens and various media outlets that show board and commission candidates questioned via email concerning how they would vote on particular issues. That kind of questioning, if pursued, must to be done openly.
4. I will, if elected, make bipartisan appointments to all of the city’s boards and commissions. I intend to encourage diverse points of view.
Citizen involvement is democracy, and can get messy. However, I believe increasing the transparency of the appointment process, along with the number, and expanding the diversity and viewpoints of folks involved on our boards and commissions is well worth the time and effort.
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