Commission cuts members

Columbia County's newest governing board might be its first to undergo a transformation at the request of the county commission.

At a meeting of the Columbia County Convention and Visitors Bureau board of directors on Wednesday, Chairman Barry Davis said the commission recently passed a resolution to reduce the number of voting members on committees and boards to seven.

The bureau has nine commission-appointed voting members, whose terms end Dec. 31.

Under the bureau's charter, the board is made up of nine voting members and receives input from several nonvoting ex-officio members. Board members include government leaders and private sector stakeholders such as hoteliers and restaurateurs.

Davis said that as a result, the bureau will have to amend its charter to remove two voting positions from the board, though he said the two positions would remain as nonvoting, ex-officio members.

He said the process of winnowing the number of board members would be done during its November and December meetings.

"(The board will) try to do this without offending anyone," he said.

Barry Smith, the county's director of Community and Leisure Services, who serves as an ex-officio member of the convention and visitors bureau board, stated in an e-mail that the commission's decision will reduce the size of all standing county committees with more than seven voting members.

As a result, boards and committees will not fill expiring terms, reducing size through attrition. Committees and boards will be comprised of seven members: one appointed by each district commissioner and three appointed by the commission chairman, Smith said.

Committee members will serve a term that expires when the term of the commissioner whom appointed the member expires.

It was the commission's wish "to reduce the size of boards and committees (and for terms of board members) to coincide with the (commission) terms of office and to allow them to appoint members during their specific term of office," Smith said.