Help wanted: Members for county committees

MOUND CITY – Economic Development Director Jessica Hightower presented a plan to the Linn County Commissioners for filling open positions on county committees.

Hightower sent the commissioners a copy of a Linn County Committee application that was drawn up by staff and department heads so that commissioners would have a group of candidates to choose from when looking to fill a committee position.

In 2022, previous commissioner Rick James insisted that committee members have term limits. The commission adopted a policy letter to this effect on Nov. 28, 2022 before James left the commission.

The policy letter stated that committee member positions would be set up as staggered three-year terms and that members of any committee would be “term- limited” to two consecutive full terms in addition to any partial term that they had been appointed to fill out. Members may serve again but not consecutively.

This policy resulted in several long-term members being removed from committees and continues as more members will be removed in January.

Before the policy was passed, committee members were either reappointed or not reappointed by the commissioners when their terms were up. The new policy took the burden of removing unwanted committee members by commissioners; they are just automatically removed.

Hightower told the commissioners that several of the committees have openings and are going to have open spots due to the term limits that were implemented last year. She said that the staff who were in charge of these committees are having trouble trying to find people to fill those spots.

Hightower told the commissioners that the application would be available on the county website and Facebook for people who were interested in being on a committee. By developing a pool of candidates, the commissioners would not have to search out people to be on the committees.

The commissioners approved the letter and the plan for finding committee members.