By Colin Killian, Public Communications Director
In this week's episode of "What's Up, College Station?" Marketing Coordinator Grace Hallowell and Deputy City Secretary Ian Whittenton discuss the importance of City committees, boards, and commissions, how they function, and how to volunteer for one of these invaluable advisory groups. The deadline to apply is Friday, Dec. 27.
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If you have a suggestion for a future topic or interview, email me at ckillian@cstx.gov.
TRANSCRIPT EXCERPTS
Grace Hallowell:
What's up College Station? I'm Grace Hollowell, and today I'm joined by Deputy City Secretary Ian Whittenton. Hi Ian.
We are here to talk about our citizen boards, committees and commissions. We talked about this last year and it is an important aspect of our city that gets our community involved and lets them be a part of how we do things in the city. So to start things off, let's give an overview about what these boards, committees, and commissions are.
Ian Whittenton:
Boards, committees and commissions are a way for the citizens to interface with their local government. Obviously we have staff that are paid employees and then we have citizens that we need to provide input. We have various committees, boards, and commissions to serve on and some of those have qualifications and some of them we're just looking for people who are generally interested in that type of topic. We have internal boards and commissions, and those are ones that are created by the City of College Station and we make appointments to those. Those are entirely internal appointments, meaning that the council appoints all those people.
And then we have external meeting bodies, for example, the library board is an external body where we partner with the city of Bryan and we make some appointments and they make some appointments and hopefully the community comes together and we make the best decisions for our local libraries.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes, it is an important way to get involved in the city that you live and be a part of those decisions. We are currently accepting applications for certain boards and committees that are looking for members. So let's talk about if you're thinking about getting involved, what you need to do to start serving on them.
Ian Whittenton:
Well, if you want to start serving, I would say head to our website. Take a look, find some bodies that you are interested in, and then read the openings and the qualifications for those openings. Sometimes there's no qualifications and sometimes there are specific qualifications, for example, we are looking for somebody with real estate experience or land experience or somebody who's in the bicycling community or a pedestrian. I always encourage people to just apply. If you're interested and you feel like, "Well, that feels like me." Don't feel like you're under qualified for something, take a shot at it. We need applicants from all walks of life and I would encourage you to go apply.
So head over to our website, take a look at those. When you're applying, you can actually apply for more than one meeting body at a time. So maybe make yourself a list of things that you would like to serve on. We try to make the application process easy where you can go in and select multiple meeting bodies and apply for those bodies.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. What is the time commitment for these? I know it's different based on each one.
Ian Whittenton:
That's a great question. So when you're looking at these meeting bodies, on their pages, we have the frequency of meeting. Most meeting bodies don't meet more than once a month. A few of them meet more than once a month, and some only meet, let's say quarterly. The time commitment is something you want to be aware of as well, not just the frequency of meeting, but how long the meetings last. A lot of meetings only last about an hour and a half, but some meetings last as long as four or five hours. And for somebody to be able to take four hours away from their normal life, if they have children, or if they have somebody they're taking care of, or if they have a job and they have to take time off in the middle of their day, five hours a week, every other week can be taxing. So you want to be aware of the time commitment up front.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. And when is the applications, when are they due?
Ian Whittenton:
We close our regular applications on December 27th, this year at 5:00, so you'll want to apply before then. If you have any questions, you'll want to get in there and then email us. The city is closed next week, but if you email the city secretary's office, somebody will forward your email and you will get a response.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. And then you can always message us on social media too and we'll get that to the right person. Don't be afraid to ask questions, that's what we're here for. We will always have an answer. There's no such thing as stupid questions or silly questions. You definitely want to be informed and have all the information if you want to serve on these committees and boards.
Ian Whittenton:
Yeah, definitely reach out. Definitely reach out if you're interested, if you have any doubts, if you have any questions. Sometimes people come up and they say, "Oh, I had this question." And I said, "Man, I wish you had reached out because we could have cleared that up for you. You could have applied or you should have applied."
Grace Hallowell:
Right, so definitely reach out to us, get involved. One more time, where can people find out more?
Ian Whittenton:
Go to our website cstx.gov and there is a committee's, boards and commissions link on the page. Should be on the banner on the front page and just start your journey from there.
Grace Hallowell:
All right, well, thank you so much for joining me today.
Ian Whittenton:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
About the Blogger
Colin Killian has been with the City of College Station since 2010 after serving 23 years as the associate media relations director for the Texas A&M Athletics Department. He has also worked as a reporter and editor for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times and Lewisville News. A native of Hobbs, N.M., Killian graduated from Texas Tech with a bachelor’s degree in journalism/political science.
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