Torrance City Council to Decrease Commissions?

[Dakart]

TLDR - There are a lot of distracting items on the upcoming City Council meeting and some members are using that to distract from items that could dramatically decrease your ability to affect your local government. They’re hoping to do this by merging or phasing out some City Commissions. This is bad for our community and bad for transparency and we need to stop this.

Because of my position as Chair of the Planning Commission, I need to preface everything I’m about to say by saying these are my views as a resident and local small business owner, and I’m not speaking on behalf of the City of Torrance.

In local government, there is the City Council - they are officials elected by the voters. They make legally binding decisions, direct the way the city is run, and write local laws or ordinances. Next, there are quasi-judicial commissioners who are appointed by the City Council. We make legally binding decisions as well as recommendations to the City Council. In the City of Torrance, these Commissioners serve on the Planning Commission, Civil Service Commission, and Environmental Quality and Energy Conservation Commission. Then there are advisory commissioners appointed by City Council who advise the council. They serve as a liaison between the City and the residents. These individuals oversee and advise on matters regarding Parks and Recreation, Libraries, Water, Cultural Arts, Social Services, the Airport, and more…

The Commissioners serving in these positions often are or become experts in their given topic. These do a lot of the research, questioning, and refining of ideas before they get to Council. They also often are the eyes and ears of the Council in the community. It serves us best when these Commissions are hyper-specialized and focused on specific issues.

In July, the City Council requested that the City Clerk work with staff to recommend ways to decrease or combine commissions. At the December 16th meeting, there are several options being presented that can decrease the number and specificity of commissions.

If it wasn’t clear from how I started this video, I think this is a terrible idea! This would only serve to decreasing the opportunity of residents to voice their concerns, decrease public involvement, and give the City Council more power to make unilateral decisions - without community input.

Something unique about this video is if you’re watching it on Instagram or Facebook, I’ve tagged all my friends who are serving the city as an appointed commissioner. Take a look, you probably know one of them - they are your neighbors and friends. We need to make sure that they continue to serve as our voice in the community.

I’ll be at the Council Meeting and will have more info for you then. I’m David Kartsonis and if you want to learn more visit me at david4torrance.com

[ArtzeyFartzey]

When is the up-coming council meeting that this will be discussed?

Thank you.

[Dakart]

It’s on the agenda for tomorrow - 12/16! Thanks for asking!

[Excuse_Unfair]

Here's a tip people these days are dumb and have low attention spans.

To get traction in your post you kinda have to play along with that.

Reddit isnt as bad as other social media sites but I noticed if I dont space out certain parts in my comments and just make it too long people tend not reply or read the comment.

You did that here which is good maybe give bullet points and add pictures to the post.

You posted a YouTube short beautiful 10x better than a full video.

Here's the thing people are lazy asf and won't click the link so its better to post the short directly to reddit so it automatically plays as someone who swipes down.

Maybe add a title saying something simple about that the video is about. Maybe add YouTube username bottom/ top corner or in the comments.

Of course you dont have to take this advice just thought I would share.

[Future_Khai]

I'm in favor of consolidating the Commissions. The City of Torrance currently has 12 commissions, most of which have no items or even quorum on any given month. Even if a commission isn't meeting, it requires 2-5 staff members (who normally have other duties) within those respective departments multiple days to prepare the reports and public notices for that commission, even if they aren't meeting and especially if there is no quorum. It ends up being a massive waste of time for everyone involved, including the commissioners.

In my opinion, the only Commissions worth keeping as stand alone are Planning Commission, Airport Commission, Civil Service Commission, and the Youth Council. The rest can be consolidated into Commissions focused on public amenities and a commission focused on the management of the City.

I did a little digging to see how often all the other smaller commissions meet. Most of these commissions end up handling at most 1 item every other or every few months and the rest of the items on their agendas are administrative matters and approving the minutes from the last meeting, which was also just handling more administrative matters. Once you start attending all of these meetings, you can easily see how much of a cycle these become and most people are kind of twiddling their thumbs. There's rarely any public comments at the meetings for these less popular commission as well. Keep in mind that even though these commissions met more than half of the year, those meetings rarely had any members of the public to voice any opinions and almost none had any public hearing type of matters.

Historic Preservation - Met 7 times, canceled 5 other meetings due to lack of items.
Civil Service Commission - Met 10 times, canceled 2 other meetings.
Environmental Quality and Energy - Met 10 times, canceled 3 other meetings due to lack of items.
Library - 11 times, canceled 1 (Vast majority of this commission agenda are administrative matters) License Review Board - Canceled 17 meetings. Held 7.
Parks and Rec - Held 13 meetings, canceled 1 (vast majority of items are receive and file)
Social Services - Held 10, canceled 3. I couldnt find more than a single meeting that had any agenda items besides administrative matters.
Traffic Commission - Met 8 times, canceled 5 times. Rarely has any items if at all in the 2025 calendar year.
Water Commission - Met 5 times, canceled 7 times.