charter board does not have any members at present<\/a>, a situation that must be rectified as soon as possible, Council Solicitor Michael Gombar said.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s never easy to find good qualified candidates for all the boards and commissions and authorities that we have within the city,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we\u2019re trying to brainstorm as far as some other options or trying to think outside the box on how to see if we can find a way to get the charter board back up and running.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the first option, members of the ethics board would also serve on the charter board, handling the responsibilities of both.<\/p>\n
The second option would keep the two boards separate but remove the restriction on dual service, allowing an individual to sit on more than one body if qualified and willing.<\/p>\n
City Solicitor Fred Lachat said he supports eliminating the prohibition. He noted the idea was put to voters about a decade ago but failed, partly because residents misunderstood its intent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re struggling to find applicants, not just qualified people, but people aren\u2019t even sending in the applications,\u201d Lachat said. \u201cIt\u2019s a necessity, not something that is being done to kind of, you know, give too many people or certain individuals too much power.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some council members expressed reservations on a merger.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not sure I feel comfortable with merging the two, just because I feel like the lines can be blurred,\u201d Councilman Jaime Baez Jr. said.<\/p>\n
Councilman O. Christopher Miller said he believes the city should focus on educating residents before asking them to vote on a change.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just seems in a city where the population is increasing with the number of potential people that could serve on boards, we seem to be looking at the easier, softer way of solving this,\u201d Miller said. \u201cI wonder if it would make more sense, before we would go the route of the referendum, to actually invest some dollars in trying to educate people on what exactly is involved in serving on boards.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miller suggested outreach could attract more candidates.<\/p>\n
Councilwoman Vanessa Campos said additional time to plan could help.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince it is too late to get a voter referendum on the November (2025) ballot,\u201d she said, \u201ccouncil could take additional time to think about how it would like to address the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Council President Donna Reed suggested reinstating a former marketing committee to help recruit members. She also asked the administration to seek advice from Albright College\u2019s Center for Excellence in Local Government and from neighboring municipalities on how they maintain board rosters.<\/p>\n
Ideas for outreach included using the city\u2019s communication specialist, engaging community and business groups, and expanding email distribution lists to share board vacancies more widely.<\/p>\n
Baez also suggested using social media networking to spread the word.<\/p>\n
No decision was made on whether to pursue merging boards or remove the service restriction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Filling seats on Reading\u2019s vacant City Charter Board may require action from voters, City Council members said. Council,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,857,182,139,28,736,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-5485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-essential-reading","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-reg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}