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Livermore City Council selected 19 members for its new General Plan Advisory Committee, following its final round of interviews earlier this month.
After initially receiving 48 applications from community members, the council previously selected 30 applicants to interview over the course of three different dates to determine who would make the best fits for the committee.
During a special workshop on Oct. 7 — after interviewing the last set of contenders — the council voted 4-1 to change the composition of the group from 15 members and four alternates to 20 regular members. Councilmember Bob Carling cast the only dissenting vote.
"We have too many good candidates and I think we'd be shortchanging the process if we didn't expand to include more people," Councilmember Gina Bonanno said, expressing support for changing the group's composition.
While Councilmember Brittni Kiick voted in favor of expanding the group, she said prior to the vote that her thoughts aligned more closely with Carling's as she believes smaller groups are more manageable.
After council took a half-hour break for each member to select their top candidates, the results showed that 19 applicants received three or more votes, which prompted the council to change the composition of the group again from 20 to 19 regular members to avoid another round of votes to get to 20. The council vote to stick with 19 total members passed unanimously.
The council directed staff to revise a resolution adopted by the council back in July to reflect the change to the group's composition.
Mayor Bob Woerner thanked everyone who applied for the committee, "We had a lot of good applicants and there will be other opportunities and I want to congratulate those that were selected to be on the committee and I believe we've got a very broad representative sample of people from our community and that I'm looking forward to a lot of good work," he said.
Among the 19 members chosen are, former Livermore mayor John Marchand, Unify Livermore CEO Asa Strout, Livermore Pride co-founder Tracy Kronzak, Tri-Valley Conservancy chair David Kent and former city councilmember and planning commissioner Steven Spedowfski.
The city's General Plan — a long-range policy document for growth, land use, sustainability and resource and open space conservation — is typically updated within 10-20 years. Livermore's current General Plan was adopted in 2004, approximately 17 years ago.
According to city staff, a comprehensive General Plan update is required due to the age of the current document and the data that supports it — such as traffic and environmental impact studies — as well as changes to external conditions such as market trends and regional and state policies. The City Council also cited updating the General Plan as one of its priorities back in March.
A complete recording of the City Council's Oct. 7 workshop is available here.
