With plans of a city-county merger progressing at full speed, Durham officials now have a rough sketch of who will draft the merger proposal.
Durham city council members and county commissioners voted Monday night to create a 40-person merger commission whose membership will be "roughly consistent" with demographics of the county with respect to race, gender and residence within city limits.
A committee composed of five city council members and three county commissioners will select from an open pool of applicants.
The decision disregards Durham mayor Nick Tennyson and commission chair MaryAnn Black's initial proposal that 26 of the seats be filled with representatives from various community organizations.
Last night, the proposal was hardly mentioned; instead, commissioners and council members stressed the importance of inclusiveness in the selection process.
"It's very important that this be an open-ended process," said city council member Thomas Stith, echoing sentiments voiced by many of his colleagues. "I'm very much in favor of allowing anyone who wants to apply."
Council member Floyd McKissick said he believes that people with leadership expertise, like Chancellor of North Carolina Central University Julius Chambers and Duke President Nan Keohane would have the best perspective for drafting the final proposal, but agreed that the Tennyson plan "would just lead to more divisiveness and bickering."
Only one board member challenged the idea of the merger commission itself. City council member Pamela Blyth proposed that city council members and county commissioners themselves be charged with engineering the merger proposal, but the idea was squashed when her motion did not even receive a second.
"It's clear to me that what we as elected officials need to do is to put a proposal before the people," Blyth said, "not some group of citizens appointed by us through some political process."
Representatives supported the idea of using census information to guide the commission's composition almost overwhelmingly, though McKissick warned that those guidelines should not be followed too strictly.
"In terms of this demographic profile, I'd like to know that we'll use this only as a guidepost-I'd like to know this is not ingrained in stone," McKissick said. "I don't want to see us too wedded to demographics."
Over several members' protests that a 40-person commission would be unwieldy, the representatives approved the proposed size.
The corollary issue of commission alternates was also considered during the two-hour meeting Monday evening.
The commission's five alternates must attend 80 percent of the meetings-as often as regular commission members.
The board set Feb. 22 as the application deadline.
The applications, which will be advertised in local papers and made available on the Internet, are open to any Durham County resident.
County commissioners Joe Bowser and Becky Heron worried that the deadline was too soon. "We're pushing ourselves hard, and I'm not sure why, other than to get this thing on the ballot in November," Bowser said.
As one of two citizens who addressed the board just prior to the meeting's adjournment, Lavonia Allison lambasted the board for hurrying to accept applications before formulating selection criteria. "You all are rushing and you all are creating a serious discomfort," Allison said.
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