BUENA PARK : Vote to Cut Planning Panel Is Postponed

The City Council has postponed consideration of a plan to reduce the Planning Commission from seven to five members.

Council members had decided to reduce the commission last month, when four seats came up for renewal. Commissioner Brenda Miller said she was stepping down, but the other three commissioners wanted to keep their posts.

Rather than dismissing the sixth person to create a five-member panel, council members had considered creating an alternate position. They eventually discarded the idea as being too cumbersome.

At Monday’s Council meeting, Mayor Donald L. Bone stopped the vote that would have established a five-member commission and asked his colleagues to again consider adding an alternate slot.

“Originally, I was the one who came to the council with the idea of an alternate,” he said. “Frankly, I didn’t do a good job of presenting the issue at that time, and I didn’t do a good job of fighting for what I believe in.”

The council renewed the two-year terms of commissioners Larry Wieck and Robert Niccum (Commissioner Jack Mauller’s reappointment is still pending) but postponed voting on the ordinance that would restructure the commission until after the July 25 study session.

That law will have to be drafted again if the alternate slot is added, city attorney James L. Markman said. The council will have to consider the parameters of an alternate’s job and whether that position will have voting power.

The council acquiesced to Bone’s request, but Councilwoman Rhonda J. McCune noted that they originally considered the alternate “because it would be so hard to let someone go, not because of what’s best for the community.”