CivicLex will present Boards and Commissions report

In Tuesday’s General Government and Planning (GGP) Committee, CivicLex’s Deputy Director Kit Anderson will present an overview of our work evaluating  Lexington’s Boards and Commissions and recommending ways to improve them.

In April of 2024, CivicLex and CivStart were hired by LFUCG through an RFP process to conduct a comprehensive review of Lexington’s Boards and Commissions. Lexington’s 67 Boards and Commissions are volunteer bodies that provide oversight of departments and organizations, recommend legislative actions to Council, and make some legal decisions.

To better understand Lexington’s Boards and Commissions, Anderson, Lilly Bramley, CivicLex’s Project Specialist, and Nick Lyell of CivStart undertook wide ranging research and evaluation processes, including attending meetings, surveying members and LFUCG staff, public engagement pop-up events, student focus groups,  interviewing peer cities, and more.

Through this evaluation process, CivicLex surfaced several findings:

• Representation gaps: Board membership doesn’t fully reflect Lexington, with notable disparities in Council District representation, age, housing status, and education level.

• Limited public awareness & accessibility: Many boards lack clear public meeting schedules, and most Lexington residents don’t know they exist.

• Operational challenges: Some boards lack clarity on their roles and struggle with recruitment.

CivicLex and CivStart are making 14 recommendations on how to improve Boards and Commissions in the areas of representation, functionality, accessibility, and transparency.

Representation:

• Reduce logistical barriers to joining Boards and Commissions by choosing more convenient meeting spaces and times, and potentially providing stipends for service and childcare for some meetings.

• Make joining a Board or Commission less intimidating by working to reduce perceptions of political bias, providing more educational services about what it means to be on a Board or Commission, and potentially implementing a buddy/mentor system for new members.

• Evaluate the use of seat designations. Many Boards and Commissions require a certain number of seats to be held by a specific demographic of person, sometimes based on the field they work in, or some other trait. A further evaluation should be done on a board-by-board basis to see if this strategy is working as intended.

• Streamline and daylight the appointment process by reviewing the current application and potentially adding term limits to seats.

• Invest in training new members through required onboarding and digital literacy training.

Functionality:

• Maintain a comprehensive Boards and Commissions Calendar that shows all upcoming Board and Commission meetings and links to meeting materials and other information.

• Increase the overall effectiveness of Boards and Commissions meetings through tighter and better-planned agendas, increased participation from members, and establishing stronger connections between Boards and Council.

• Strengthen staff capacity to support Boards and Commissions by assigning staff as contact points for Boards and Commissions, onboarding those staff members on work of their assigned Board or Commission, and increasing technical support for staff.

Accessibility:

• Improve the experience of attending meetings for members of the public by providing friendlier seating options for the public, having clear signage for where the meeting is located in a building, and including dedicated public comment periods.

• Increase public awareness and understanding of Boards and Commissions through social media materials, social events for members of the public to learn more about serving, and more.

Transparency:

• Clarify the purpose and structure of Boards and Commissions, as many bodies do not have clear guidelines and responsibilities.

• Improve public records document retention and transparency.

• Increase understanding of who is on Boards by sharing applicant and membership demographics.

• Facilitate knowledge sharing between Boards through shared training sessions, membership cohorts across different but related bodies, and peer learning groups.

The General Government and Planning (GGP) Committee will meet on Tuesday, March 4th at 1pm in Council Chambers. You can attend in-person or watch live on LexTV.

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Disclosure: CivicLex is an independent nonprofit that reports on local government and civic issues in Lexington. We also collaborate with civic institutions to make public participation more meaningful and rewarding - both are core to our mission.

This report was produced through a contract with the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government (LFUCG) as part of an open RFP process to evaluate the effectiveness of the city’s Boards and Commissions. While LFUCG provided input on the feasibility of the report’s recommendations, it had no editorial input on the findings. CivicLex does not receive ongoing funding from LFUCG.

As with all our work, our reporting is governed by strict editorial policies to ensure independence, and funding relationships do not influence our coverage. You can learn more about our funding and editorial policies here. If you have questions about this report, feel free to reach out at richard@civiclex.org.