At a recent village of Mamaroneck Board of Trustees meeting, the board voted to extend the term for volunteer members of the village’s boards and commissions.
According to village Manager Richard Slingerland the discussion to increase the terms for volunteers to from one year to a year and a half took about five months to finalize.
Slingerland told the Review that there was some concern about what constituted a full year’s term, in the case of a volunteer board member resigning or moving away halfway into their term. The person appointed to fill the position would serve out the remainder of the term. However, even if the appointed person only served three months to complete the term, the village considered those three months as a full term.
“The board felt that they wanted to change the code and accommodate involvement from positive and contributing members [of boards and commissions] so they wouldn’t be penalized for filling in [for members who had left their positions],” Slingerland said. With the amendment to the code, the village will no longer count the filled-in time toward the set two-term limit for volunteers.
At the meeting, Democratic trustees David Finch, Illissa Miller and Leon Potok voted in favor of the amendment to the village code to change term lengths, while Mayor Norman Rosenblum, and Trustee Louis Santoro, both Republicans, voted against it.
“It’s not that [this amendment] is detrimental for the village of Mamaroneck, I just think it worked for many years for the one-year [term],” Rosenblum said.
Potok recommended that the amendment go in to effect on Nov. 30, 2016.
