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It has been more than three years since Mountain View established a Public Safety Advisory Board, a committee that acts as a liaison between the community and police department.
Now it looks like the PSAB may not exist much longer, as the City Council is considering a recommendation to dissolve the advisory board at its Tuesday, Dec. 10 meeting.
The proposal to possibly sunset the board was first broached at a City Council meeting on Sept. 24. City Council member Lisa Matichak asked staff to evaluate the continuing relevance of the advisory body, given that there were three vacant seats on the seven-member board.
“I’d like us to be more informed about what’s happening,” Matichak said, referring to the advisory board and the Senior Advisory Committee, which also has several vacancies.
Matichak expressed particular concern that the PSAB no longer has a clear purpose. “I personally feel like it is straying from the original intention of it because they are struggling to come up with agenda items,” she said.
The PSAB was created in response to community unrest and calls for police reform following the murder of George Floyd. But despite a push for more accountability, the board was never intended to be an oversight committee that would investigate, monitor or audit the police department.
Instead, its main purpose has been to make recommendations on public safety issues – a mandate that it has largely fulfilled, according to the Dec. 10 council report.
Early on, board members were tasked to evaluate the city’s school resource officer program, an initiative that sparked community input about the role of cops on school campuses. As part of its work plan, the PSAB also examined potential biases in law enforcement encounters, like routine traffic stops and the use of police officers to respond to mental health crises.
The council report lays out these accomplishments but also notes that recent projects have not been as well defined.
“PSAB members have expressed interest in a wide range of potential projects, and it has not always been clear how these projects would be structured to have a clear scope of work with clear beneficial outcomes and be feasible,” the report said.
In some cases, members have advocated for changes to city policy or proposed new policies that are beyond the scope of the advisory board, the report said.
Staff also described the immense amount of time that was required to support the PSAB. Each meeting takes about 43 hours of preparation, not counting the hundreds of hours spent working on projects, the report said.
But it isn’t just staff struggling under the weight of the workload. It has been difficult for PSAB members to attend all of the meetings with absences increasing every year, according to the report. The vacancies on the board also makes it difficult to meet quorum if even one member is absent.
There was one submitted application for three available seats when the City Council discussed the issue at the Sept. 24 meeting.
Mayor Pat Showalter did not see it as a long-term problem, however. She pointed out that the vacancies were not necessarily related to whether PSAB should exist, but rather to extenuating circumstances. Showalter expressed a strong preference for recruitment to continue, pushing back on a suggestion to pause it.
Since September, several more community members have submitted applications to serve on PSAB, bringing the total number of applicants to five.
“PSAB members have expressed interest in a wide range of potential projects, and it has not always been clear how these projects would be structured to have a clear scope of work with clear beneficial outcomes and be feasible”
The staff work for us. Not the other way around. They need to figure out the scope of work and do it.