IRVINE : City May Eliminate Some Boards, Panels

Concerned that the city may have become top-heavy with commissions and committees, council members are considering lightening the load.

The 4-year-old Public Safety Commission, for example, might not survive beyond January.

The commission, which costs the city an estimated $87,000 a year in staff support, is one of about 15 of the city’s 67 committees, task forces and boards the City Council will consider abolishing to cut red tape and save money.

“I’ve never even heard of some of these committees,” Councilman Bill Vardoulis said Monday night while leafing through a 10-page list of advisory boards created during the city’s 19-year history.

The council met Monday in an informal session and delayed action until the subject is scheduled for a meeting. But the consensus was that the city can survive just fine even if more than a dozen of the committees don’t.

Endangered panels may be the Pelican Hills Road Monitoring Committee, the Design Review Committee for AT&SF; Railway Grade Separation Projects and the Peters Canyon Wash Open Space Spine Monitoring Committee.

In contrast to the city’s 67 assorted advisory boards, Santa Ana, with more than twice Irvine’s population, gets by with 11 and Anaheim has 13. Irvine’s advisory committees and commissions cost about $500,000 annually.

Also facing extinction is Irvine’s 2-year-old Citizens Advisory Committee on International Affairs, which was created by the previous City Council to offer advice on the city’s role in global affairs.

Most current council members say Irvine shouldn’t try to play roles on the global stage; they gave the international affairs committee a cold reception last month when it tried to persuade the council to boycott, at official city functions, coffee grown in El Salvador.

“I’m not real excited about (the committee),” Councilman Barry J. Hammond said. It would be fine to have the members meet as private individuals and then offer advice to the city, but the city shouldn’t be involved with international affairs, he said.

“Bye-bye,” Vardoulis said of the committee.

Not all of the cuts will come as a surprise to the boards themselves. Last month, Public Safety Commission members asked themselves whether they were serving a purpose. The question now has become an official item on its Thursday night agenda.

The commission was created to help formulate the city’s emergency preparedness plan. But commission members in the past have asked the Police Department for specialized reports that have taken a lot of staff time and at one point asked for transcripts of commission meetings rather than summary minutes, Police Chief Leo E. Peart said.

“I felt they were out of control,” Peart said.