Staff
Coronado is working to consolidate two of its commissions in effort to make the process of planning the city more efficient.
The Design Review Commission and the Planning Commission will ultimately be merged into one body. Neither is overladen with work, supporters say, and the move will save administrative hours for city staff. The Design Review Commission met 12 times in 2024, while the Planning Commission met only six times.
The Coronado City Council voted in Nov. 2024 to consolidate the two commissions, and it voted unanimously on April 1 on how it will move forward with the merger.
Currently, there are seven commissioners between each entity. The city will reach out to current commissioners to gauge their interest in serving on the consolidated commission, allowing for seven members at first and eventually reducing to five under natural attrition.
Both commissions have struggled to maintain full membership and to reach quorums during meetings, a problem that Coronado City Councilmember Carrie Downey said seems to be true of many of the city’s commissions and committees.
“The Planning Commission is codified to meet 24 times a year,” said Johanna Canlis, the city’s attorney. “But if there is not business to be brought forward, the meeting is canceled. So a person who joins the Planning Commission may initially be on board to attend 24 meetings a year, and then they slowly realize it might be five times a year, it might be six times a year, and then they just don’t expect to attend a meeting, so their calendar fills up with other obligations.”
By consolidating the work of both bodies, there will be more work to do, resulting in fewer canceled meetings.
Mayor John Duncan said that he hoped by consolidating the commissions, the resulting body would be more powerful, and thus more appealing. He said that, based on conversations with citizens who have served briefly and then left commissions, the consolidated body might be more appealing.
“They often feel like they’re not being useful enough, that there’s not enough to do,” Duncan said. “If it’s an important position with more power, they might be more willing to want to do it.”
Duncan asked whether it would be possible to assign alternates for the commission, in case a scheduling conflict arises and prohibits a quorum. He noted, for example, that councilmembers act as alternates for each other on various boards they serve on throughout the county. Canlas said she did not believe that was possible under the current law, but that she would look into it as an option.
Currently, the Design Review Commission has four of its five seats filled, while the Planning Commission has three of its five seats filled, with two current applicants. The former handles commercial and multi-family exterior design and signs as well as single-family residential floor area ration and roof decks for single-story homes.
The Planning Commission, which meets less frequently, oversees land use entitlements and variances, recommendations to subdivision maps and Coronado municipal code or General Plan amendments, major special use permits, and coastal development permits.
Rebecca King, the current chair of the Design Review Commission, said during public comment that she would prefer to keep the commissions separate. Though she acceded that establishing a quorum has been challenging at times, she worried that the workload would be too great for a five-commissioner body taking on the work of two separate entities.
King said that currently, their meetings average 30 to 60 minutes in length, though Councilmember Kelly Purvis, who formerly worked for the city, said she’s sat through some meetings that can be time intensive.
Purvis also noted that finding eligible members has been challenging in the past. Currently, the membership criteria for the Design Review Commission prefers, but does not require, that three members are professionals in a design field (architecture, landscaping, interior design) and that one member is a business owner within the community.
The council preferred to keep the preferred criteria in place, tweaking it slightly to prefer a retired business owner to avoid potential conflicts of interest.
Though the council discussed different ways to appoint five members to the consolidated commission, Downey suggested keeping all current members and, through attrition, eventually decreasing the number to five.
“The only reason I’m suggesting that is that we’re very good at postponing things from this dais,” she said. “It would be really nice if we could an item and finish it at the same time and move on, so staff isn’t constantly having to bring things back.”
The rest of the council agreed, although Councilmember Mark Fleming pointed out that, if one member leaves the commission as it transitions to five members, the possibility of split votes arises.
The vote did not make anything official: Rather, the council directed city staff at how it would like to proceed with appointments and consolidation. Staff will return with an ordinance that is based on the council’s recommendations and includes amendments to the city’s municipal code, as it contains references to the Design Review Commission.
The draft ordinance will come before the council for approval at a later meeting.
