Since 2019, the Chapel Hill Town Council has been discussing the future of the town’s advisory boards. At tonight’s town council meeting, the council will consider disbanding certain advisory boards and commissions.

Here’s a little bit about the process and what we know so far, along with our thoughts (at the end.)

How many advisory boards are there?

Chapel Hill has 20-ish advisory boards and commissions. Over the years, the number of boards has increased, as we documented here.

How do advisory board terms work?

Advisory board members serve on a three-year-long cycle (and can be reappointed for another term–so people can serve on the same board for six years altogether.) Town Council members serve a four-year term. It is fairly common for advisory board terms to span across several election cycles.

Do other towns have fewer boards?

Yes. Apex has 9 boards. Hillsborough has 9 boards. Cary has 8 boards. 

What conversations have taken place so far in Chapel Hill?

  • In 2019, the town’s community connection strategy outlined a plan for measuring the “# and % of Town Boards and Commission positions filled by residents representing populations who have been historically disengaged or disconnected from the Town” in order to “Increase the diversity of residents engaged in Town processes and programs to fully reflect the composition of the community.”
  • In April 2023, the town published data on advisory board composition in an engagement survey. It showed that our town advisory boards are whiter, older, and more likely to be homeowners. Using data from the ACS, 33% of Chapel Hill residents are between 18-24; only 5% of advisory members are. Chapel Hill’s population is 11% over 65+; 36% of advisory board members are older than 65.

Makeup of boards

  • In June 2023, Council Members Berry, Huynh, Miller-Foushee, Parker, Ryan, and Stegman petitioned to assess the town’s advisory board and commissions. You can read the petition here.
  • In September 2023, in response to that petition, the Town Council held a work session where staff recommended providing boards with clear, focused policy charges and ensuring that board sizes and terms were standardized. They recommended that council consider combining some boards and assess the application and appointment processes. You can see the presentation here.
  • In November 2023, town council held a work session where staff made additional recommendations.
  • In March 2024, council received an update on the boards and commissions assessment process, and the mayor and Town Manager met with Board Chairs. You can see the update here.
  • In June 2024, a report was issued about boards and commissions. You can read the entire report here.

Wait, are you going to stop the timeline and give us highlights from the report?

Yep. The report is worth reading in full but the highlights are as follows:

  • Staff dedicate a significant amount of time to Boards and Commissions, beyond the monthly meetings. A conservative “back of the napkin” estimate is that the Town spends approximately $10,000 monthly/$120,000 annually on staff support for Boards and Commissions.  ($120K on staff time isn’t a huge amount of money by itself, but delaying a greenway project or an apartment building by a year or two to get through the advisory boards might make it $200-500K+ more expensive.)
  • Board and Commission members are often unclear about their roles and responsibilities, individually and collectively. In both the survey and in follow up meetings, many Board members indicated that they don’t always understand their roles individually or collectively, which leads to a feeling of lesser impact and importance. Members indicated that their Board’s charge is unclear and that they desired more specificity about expectations for their volunteer service.
  • The town’s current process for screening and appointing candidates is suboptimal. It carries an administrative burden for staff, and is not reflective of the town population.
  • Other towns are assessing their boards and commissions with stewardship, access, and equity in mind. They are finding many of the same issues, challenges, and inequities that Chapel Hill has found.
  • Many Boards were created to advance a priority that is now being staffed and funded by the Town.

Oh?

Boards are each assigned a council and staff liaison. They often replicate the work of staff, who are trained professionals in their fields. Their mandates can be large, and roles can be fuzzy, particularly for staff.

Are there other pain points?

It also makes our housing more expensive. In 2022, two affordable housing projects went through an expedited review process. It went well

Ok. Have any other meetings taken place on these advisory boards?

Yep. In September 2024, there was another council work session (slides) focusing on the following boards:

  • Community Policing Advisory Committee
  • Cultural Arts Commission
  • Environmental Sustainability Advisory Board
  • Housing Advisory Board
  • Human Services Advisory Board
  • Library Advisory Board
  • Parks, Greenways, and Recreation Commission
  • Stormwater Management Utility Advisory Board
  • Transportation and Connectivity Advisory Board

Which brings us to the meeting tonight. (Slides here)

The staff recommends that council considers enacting an ordinance to repeal sections of the Town code establishing certain advisory

boards and commissions, and considers consider adopting resolution to disband nine advisory boards created by resolution. 

Has there been feedback?

Yes. 16 people have written to council publicly; 15 of them against this change. We find it notable that none of the letters mention the tangible results of advisory board members’ efforts. They provided a lot of “support,” some claim that it is “certain” that the boards’ existence improved the town, but there’s no specific evidence of ways that  the “support” that individual members provided would not have occurred absent the formal trappings of an advisory committee. 

Staff have also made clear, in their presentation, that they highly value diverse community input, and Boards and Commissions are only one way to receive that. Across departments, Town staff indicate that they deeply value community input and perspective, as it aligns their work with the people they serve. They also indicate that Boards and Commissions are only one avenue to receiving that input. Staff liaisons regularly work with the DEI Office, the Community Connections Division, the Community Relations Manager, and the Strategic Communications Team in order to widen the scope of their community engagement efforts.

Are the 15 people who wrote to council and want to keep all of the advisory boards exactly as-is representative of the town’s population?

Ha! No. We looked them up. 7 of the 16 live on Lake Shore Drive (avg. home price on Zillow right now: $2.1 million), and 10/16 live in the Lake Forest neighborhood. 15 of the 16 list their race as White in the NC Voter Database. (The 16th was undesignated.) They are all homeowners. (Half the town rents.) They are not representative of the demographics of Chapel Hill, and as the engagement survey pointed out, are not part of any of the groups that the town has said they want to make an effort to reach.

Groups the town has said it would like to reach.

This is not the end of community involvement in Town of Chapel Hill matters

It’s great to live in a place where so many people care about their local government and are willing to get involved. That’s not going away. Everyone can still vote, email, speak at council meetings, take town surveys, petition the town. 

But we need to level the playing field. If we cannot achieve real community representation on the advisory boards – and we believe the town has really tried to do that – then they are simply a means for a tiny group of citizens to hoard staff time and town resources that belong to all of us. 

There are ways to have our cake and eat it, too. The town can expand existing community engagement options to include more inclusive but less costly activities and tools, like time-bound task forces, community pop-ups, and texting.  Other towns are experimenting with this. We dream of a day where instead of watching a 4 hour board meeting, we can just tell town council “LMFAO @ this proposal r u 4 real?” 

Melody Kramer contributed to this post specifically by making the graphic you see above. LOL FR.

Stephen Whitlow lives in Chapel Hill. Trained as an urban planner at DCRP, he works for a research, evaluation, and technical assistance firm and focuses on the areas of housing affordability, fair housing,...