Council Advances Commission Term Limits Despite Nearly 100 Vacant Seats

Pasadena’s City Council voted 5-3 on Monday, June 22, to advance new term limits for the city’s advisory boards and commissions — even though about 100 of the 277 seats are already vacant or expiring.

The ordinance amends Title 2 of the Pasadena Municipal Code to revise term limits and training for members of advisory boards, commissions, committees and the boards of city operating companies.

Councilmember Rick Cole offered the first-reading measure, with Councilmember Jason Lyon as its other leading backer.

Voting no with Mayor Victor Gordo were Councilmembers Steve Madison and Gene Masuda; the five yes votes came from Cole, Lyon, Vice Mayor Jess Rivas and Councilmembers Tyron Hampton and Justin Jones.

At the center of the debate sat a contradiction. Jana Stewart, a city staff member who works with the commissions, said about 100 council-appointed seats — 36% of the 277 total — are vacant or set to expire by June 30.

The overhaul’s backers focused on a different aspect, arguing that the city’s shortcomings also include allowing some appointees to serve “literal decades beyond the expiration of their terms,” as Lyon put it, without bringing in new people and fresh perspectives.

The two positions are less contradictory than they sound: staff counts a seat as needing to be filled the moment its term lapses, even when a holdover still occupies it.

Lyon said the measure reflects voters who approved council term limits by more than 80%, that it had returned to the council five times, and that a city of 150,000 has qualified residents willing to serve — he keeps a waiting list in his district. If members will not appoint commissioners, he said, the alternative is to abolish the commissions. Cole mocked the opposing logic, saying that by the same reasoning the council should scrap its own term limits for unopposed incumbents and let them “serve indefinitely.” “That’s the problem,” he said.

Gordo called the ordinance “a solution in search of a problem” and said the council itself is to blame for the empty seats, since members nominate their own appointees and still leave vacancies. “We’ve sort of met the enemy and it’s us,” he said, adding that he has had to “coerce and cajole” holdovers to stay on and preserve quorums. Madison, by his own count, tallied 54 members already ineligible for reappointment and 29 vacancies — about 80 seats to fill under existing rules — and said that proved the change unnecessary; Lyon dismissed the line as “a sort of cheap piece of rhetoric.” Hampton voted yes but said he would rather leave the rules alone, noting he already replaces commissioners as their terms expire.

Underlying the split was a question of why seats go unfilled.

Cole, a former commissioner, said the city ignores the work of its volunteer panels — pointing to a Human Relations Commission letter the council never acted on — and that qualified people can stop serving as a result of City Hall’s nonresponsiveness.

Members also were divided over who actually fills the seats. Jones said many working-class residents in his district want to serve but lack the time, while Madison warned the change could concentrate appointees in the wealthier sixth and seventh districts; Lyon noted that one of his own comes from the third.

Under the transition language discussed Monday, members already at their limit as of June 30 would leave by December 31, while all others would serve out their terms.

At Jones’ request, Cole added a one-year review of how the rules are working, seconded by Lyon.

The ordinance returns for a second reading before it can take effect.