Each year, members of the Ripon City Council are assigned to various boards, commissions, committees and task forces.

Part of the purpose of that is to enhance the communication between elected leaders and staff at the early phase of the development of significant items affecting public policy.

“Typically, the assignment (to commissions, boards, and task forces) allows council members to serve with elected officials from other organizations to discuss important local and regional matters,” said City Administrator Kevin Werner in his report at the Dec. 14 Ripon City Council meeting.

Councilman Leo Zuber expressed a matter of concern.

“What if one or two (council members) assigned to a committee and a third (council member) shows up at that same meeting,” he asked.

His concern is the Brown Act, which is the open-meetings law for local governments and applies to all legislative bodies – all subcommittees and commissions created via formal action of the legislative body, in this case, must consist, outside of ad hoc advisory committees, less than a quorum.

Based on that, the five-member Ripon City Council is limited to two appointed committee members at any one meeting.

Zuber mentioned that the Chamber of Commerce Committee has two appointed council members. His concern is a third council member in attendance at the same meeting at 2 by 2 Committee.

“I would rather deal with this now instead of when it comes up,” he said.

Zuber brought this to the attention of staff on the resolution of “the roles and responsibilities for Ripon City Council committees” at the recent monthly session.

Council directed staff to continue working on more detail to this resolution before bringing it back the revised version.