PRESCOTT – The City of Prescott is con solidating its number of committees that report to the city council from seven to four.

The council will have to act at coming meetings on the ordinance change that will set the committees as:

• Finance

• Parks and Public Works

• Health and Safety

• Personnel The Finance Committee is comprised of the mayor and full city council, while the other three committees are comprised of three alderpersons.

City Administrator Matt Wolf said at the city council meeting Monday, Oct. 10 that some items end up going to multiple committees now.

“Some of our committees have duplicated purposes. They’re kind of redundant,” he said.

The new committee structure will combine several committees from the current listing of Finance, Public Works, Health, Ordinance, Parks and Public Property, Personnel and License.

“The idea is we’d keep Finance. It meets once or twice a year for the budget mainly. Parks and Public Property would be combined with Public Works, and it would meet the third Monday of each month. They will definitely get larger agenda items," said Wolf. Individual ordinance would be taken up by a related committee, rather than having its own committee. License matters already have to go before the full council for review.

Council members were mostly supportive of the plan but had some questions.

“The one other issue I have is combining Parks and Public Works,” Mayor Rob Daugherty said. “That could make their agenda very, very, very, very long in the fu- ture. Having an hour-long meeting might fly out the window.”

He said the committee may have to meet more than once monthly.

“The chair of the committee needs to review the agenda ahead of time to see if this is doable in a reasonable amount of time or if we need to schedule another meeting at that time,” he said.

Alderperson Bailey Ruona chairs Parks now. She said, “I really don’t think it’s going to get unmanageable in terms of time. It still cuts down on the amount of meetings we have.”

Alderperson Thomas Oss raised the concern that less committees could allow a mayor more power by making committee appointments.

“I have one concern that’s more or less unintended consequences in the future. A future mayor could pack all three of those committees with sycophants, people that agree with him no matter what. That could disrupt the democratic process. Things could happen so fast the public doesn’t have time to react.”

Ruona pointed out, “It still has to come here for approval.”

The council decided informally to give the new committee structure a try. Wolf said stau would put together an ordinance, and the mayor will have to make new appointments to fill the committees.

“Let’s try it for a period of time and see how it works,” said Alderperson Maureen Otwell.