LAKEPORT — After almost an hour of discussion, the county Board of Supervisors decided Tuesday to table a resolution to form a municipal advisory council for Middletown.
The advisory council would have the same boundaries as the South Lake County Fire Protection District, which encompasses not only Middletown proper, but Cobb, Anderson Springs and Hidden Valley Lake.
The majority of the area falls inside county District One, which is Supervisor Ed Robey”s district. Robey brought the issue before the board Tuesday.
A group of community members called the Middletown Area Town Hall (MATH) brought the idea to Robey as a constituent issue after deciding to bring it forward last month. The group had called itself the Middletown Area Council at its formation.
The group was co-founded by David Neft and John Peschon, who were both present at the meeting to advocate for the advisory council”s formation.
Peschon said the proposal was drafted in a manner almost identical to that of the Forestville Planning Association, an advisory council formed several years ago by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors.
He called the group a successful model. “People of Forestville that feel strongly for or against proposed solutions go to those meetings and state their opinions. The environment is less threatening (than a Board of Supervisors meeting) because they”re all neighbors. They all know each other.”
As it exists now, anyone interested in issues concerning the area may come to the meetings, said Robey.
The adoption of a resolution establishing MATH as a municipal advisory council would provide that the meetings would be subject to the Brown Act. In short, the act requires that in order to give the community at large the opportunity to be involved in decisions that would affect it, “the public”s business must be conducted in public,” said Robey.
Robey and MATH worked together with county counsel to draft the resolution for the board to consider Tuesday.
The resolution points out that California Government Code 31010 allows for the Board of Supervisors to establish a municipal advisory council for any unincorporated area wishing to have a forum for local people to be involved in matters that would affect their community.
A municipal advisory council would represent the Middletown community in offering advice to the board on matters of public health, safety, welfare, public works and planning.
Supervisor Gary Lewis expressed his wariness over the group”s formation. “Our experience with these advisory groups is that they become adversarial at times because they forget they”re advisory, and if you don”t follow their way, then they become adversarial groups, and it goes in the newspaper, and we”ve experienced this,” said Lewis.
He referred to the formation of the advisory commission for In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) in 2000.
“They gave us (the Board of Supervisors) advice, and we chose not to follow some of it, and boy, they hammered us really well,” said Lewis.
Robey pointed out Friday that the IHSS group was a state-mandated committee, and called it a “poor example” for Lewis to pick.
Lewis added Friday that the formation of a municipal advisory council for the Middletown area would not be a true representation of public opinion and would not set a good precedent for the growth in the rest of the county.
“I”d rather have 100 people in board chambers talking about pros and cons rather than having two or three people telling me they represent a community when they don”t,” said Lewis.
“If the Middletown advisory council is formed,” he continued, “every Middletown around the county is going to want to do the same thing, and then we”re never going to get anything done.”
How the advisory council for Middletown would be established was another point of contention among the supervisors and various community members.
The resolution proposed that the first MATH council members would be appointed by the Board of Supervisors, and that any successors to the original appointees would be elected according to standards provided in the Uniform District Election Law.
Neft stated that the council members “need to be an elected body, because everybody needs to know that there”s no angle, no conspiracy.”
He clarified that having elected council members would give the officials more credibility and accountability to the community they would represent.
Middletown resident Fletcher Thornton spoke up against the idea of elected council members. “Please, get rid of the election process,” he said, holding that MATH is closest to its community and knows its needs.
“We (MATH) can make those selections ourselves,” he said.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com.
