“The committee couldn’t come to consensus on the meaning of consensus.” This was an observer’s comment overheard after the most recent meeting of the POCD Housing Task Force.
Members of the task force spent approximately one hour – a full 2/3 of the one and a half hour meeting- discussing procedural matters. After considerable discussion, and a withdrawn motion, the task force postponed a vote on the procedure for coming to agreement on any given recommendation. There appeared to be a lack of agreement about how to come to agreement.
Should the task force strive for a general consensus among its members in which any recommendation would require a higher standard for agreement than may be the case with a simple vote? Or would a vote with a majority of one suffice? Or should the requirement be a 2/3 “supermajority?” Or a slightly smaller 60% majority?
What should be the denominator? All those present and voting? All those serving on the task force, whether present or not? What about ex-officio members? How many voting members are there on the task force?
These were among the questions that remained without definitive agreement.
A proposed rule regarding the frequency with which task force members might be allowed to speak also generated much discussion. When should someone be allowed to speak again – after 3 people have spoken, or after 4 have spoken? Toward the end of the meeting, the task force finally did adopt what they called a “3 after me” rule with 2 dissenting votes.
Early in the meeting, William Finger, the BET representative to the task force, cautioned members not to get “bogged down in procedural things.” He asked that the committee move on, saying that there were “more important things to talk about than how frequently people speak”.
His plea seemed to fall on deaf ears.
A half hour into the meeting, Nancy Brown, the task force chair, noting that too much time was being given to a discussion of how to come to agreement, repeated the plea that task force members move on with the agenda.
First Selectman Peter Tesei arrived around this time to address members of the task force. Indicating that he was puzzled by the task force’s inability to move beyond these procedural questions, he asked if this may not just be a way of avoiding the substantive issues. He too, asked that the task force move on and said he did not understand why getting a general consensus should be “such a big issue.” He said this was an ad hoc committee with no legal authority. The task force is advisory. Its recommendations, which could include a range of opinion, may or may not be accepted and acted on.
Tesei said all that is expected of task force members is to do relevant fact finding and come up with recommendations that follow-up on each of the housing action items in the Plan of Conservation and Development (POCD) that was approved last June by the RTM. If there is no general agreement that these are items worthy of consideration and that this is the way to proceed, then the task force “might as well pack up and go home.”
Brown concurred with Tesei, saying that the task at hand was to take up the POCD action items on housing.
Other members of the task force wanted to continue a discussion of procedures and move ahead with a vote that had just been taken off the table. The motion that was withdrawn called for a vote on what would constitute agreement. Some of these members felt that the task force had already done a considerable amount of substantive work and that the group now needed to agree on procedural matters.
Brown countered by saying “we have done very little,” and that in spite of the work that had been done, especially with regard to housing supply, there was still a “heck of a lot more that we have to do.”
This was the 7th meeting of the Housing Task Force since it first met on February 22 to receive marching orders from the First Selectman. At that time, Tesei and Brown asked task force members to familiarize themselves with the housing action items in the POCD as this document provides the basis for what the task force is to report on. Task force members were expected to have an initial report on the status of the POCD action items ready by the end of May, in time for the First Selectman, as chair of the Plan Implementation Committee, to give his first report to the RTM at its June meeting. This report will incorporate the information received from all four task forces.
Here it is the end of May, and the June meeting of the RTM is at hand. The First Selectman has received initial reports from all the POCD task forces, and will soon give his first report on the progress made to date in implementing the recommendations of the POCD.
Expected to provide a summary of the status of each of the housing action items in the POCD, the Housing Task Force at the end of May is in a position to report only that it has met seven times and that these action items are under discussion, and include in the report some kind of narrative of discussions held on various topics. Such narrative is bound to reflect little agreement.
At their initial meeting in February, the members of the task force seemed to agree with the First Selectman that one POCD action item that could be implemented right away was to begin working with our state legislators to change the median income in 8-30g of the state statutes, the affordable housing appeals procedure, from the state median to the area median. The state median income is too low to provide an incentive for developers to use the provisions of this statute for affordable housing in Greenwich. The Stamford-Norwalk Statistical Area median income, which is higher,would be more feasible.
But it is not clear that such agreement still exists. Any narrative of task force discussions on the subject will reveal that there are those members who would prefer the statute remain unworkable in Greenwich.
The inability to come to consensus on the meaning of consensus may be just a metaphor for a task force made up of members with very divergent agendas.
