The Aurora City Council recently approved a number of new members to the city’s administrative boards, and cultural and historical heritage boards.
Approval of Mayor Richard Irvin’s appointments completes about a six-month revamp of all the city’s boards and commissions, a move that included standardizing the more than 40 such bodies at the city.
The move started last summer when city staff presented aldermen with a plan to amend city code to make the boards have similar size, similar agendas and similar ways of handling public comment and other business.
City staff told aldermen the standardization would help them keep better track of all the boards, their memberships and how they get work done.
Under the new rules, most boards now have nine members, although some are 13 members, and some of the cultural and historical heritage boards, which often have specific event planning responsibilities, have more members.
Boards such as the Education Commission and the Youth Council require members from a certain number of institutions, so they still are bigger.
The changes reasserted that meetings for all the boards and commissions are public and subject to the Open Meetings Act. That not only means they must give public notice of the meeting time and place, they must take public comments.
Another change has said the appointments to the boards will be done quarterly.
While aldermen have been approving the changes during the past six months, this past week they approved a raft of appointments by Irvin to certain boards that completes their memberships.
Two of the bodies are administrative boards – the Fox Walk Overlay District Design Review Committee and the Public Art Commission – that actually have approval authority over certain items. Both boards have a role in downtown design and approving public art works.
While Irvin was tasked with appointing every member of the board, some were reappointments and some were new members.
On the FoxWalk Overlay District Design Review Committee, the new members were Fawn Clarke Peterson and Clara Diaz.
Peterson also was appointed as a new member of the Public Art Commission. Other appointees to the Art Commission were: Marc Straits; Michael Mancuso; Megan Paul; Rafael Blanco; Natasha Risma; and Bryan Joseph.
There also were appointments to fill the city’s cultural and historical heritage boards, such as the African American Heritage Advisory Board, the Hispanic Heritage Advisory Board, the Indian American Community Outreach Advisory Board and the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Commission.
The new appointments to the African-American Heritage Advisory Board were: Glenda Blakemore; Mark Dale Jr.; Deborah Goss Johnson; and Sandra Harrison.
Blanca Saavedra, Zayra Gonzalez, Karina Suarez-Darden, Melissa Sosa, Laura Ayala, Gil Rios and Rafael Martinez were the new appointees to the Hispanic Heritage Advisory Board.
The new appointees to the Indian American Community Outreach Advisory Board were: Kunal Majmundar; Sukanya Rangarajan; Sharon Garcia; Sunil Patel; Roopa Anjanappa; Nadia Kanhai; Leela Karumuri; and Sandeep Londhe.
Michael Sawdy, Jared Ploge and Michael Scott Collins were new appointees to the Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Commission.
