NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The City of Hutchinson wants to ensure that membership on its boards and commissions is more diverse.
"Hutchinson has zero women on its planning commission, zero," said Mayor Jade Piros de Carvalho. "The planning commission is arguably the most powerful city commission. It has an outsized influence on how our community looks and feels. Planning commissions provide crucial community development direction for recommendations on zoning, subdivision regulations and other planning guidelines. Women's voices are needed in these decisions. I also want to point out that the reason Sara and I are on city council is because, you know the first thing we needed to do? We needed to know that there was an opening, so that we could file for election. That's my point. I want to point out that this is a larger problem. This is not confined to Hutchinson."
Piros de Carvalho doesn't believe the omission of women is intentional, but she believes they need to know positions are there in time to apply.
"I'm not arguing for quotas, which is what I always get accused of when I bring this up," Piros de Carvalho said. "It's not a quota thing. I'm not trying to force men to serve on boards that traditionally have a majority of women or force women to apply for power boards if they don't want to serve. We should pick the best person for the opening. What I'm asking from the council is that you join me in providing direction to staff to make commission appointment outreach a priority."
Human Relations Director Dave Sotelo told the council he's working on policy to change that.
"I think the most altering policy that I am hoping to recommend to council is, currently, if you look at all of our boards and commissions, the appointment date for boards and commissions is all over the map," Sotelo said. "Actually, this is from Ryan from planning who suggested the brilliant idea of making that process uniform."
In other words, the goal would be to give all of the underlying boards concurrent terms, so that people would know if you want to serve on a city board, those come in up in a given month, whatever the council would choose, but that it would be the same for the planning commission or the library board or any of the others. The mayor made clear that she doesn't want to do any more appointments until they get new policy written and implemented. Sotelo is hoping to have a proposal written by the council's next meeting May 17.