The City of Marquette has more than 20 established boards, committees, and authorities. While some of these boards have statutory duties and authority, many are solely advisory in nature, intended to assist the City Commission in a specific topic area.

Conceptually, this relationship moves both ways, with the Commission requesting its advisory boards take up specific topics and do fact-finding on items of interest, while the advisory boards have the authority to adopt formal policy recommendations that may ultimately be presented to the Commission.

While this structure is simple enough, it only functions well if the advisory boards in question have distinct areas of focus and few vacancies. The Harbor Advisory Committee, Presque Isle Park Advisory Committee and Parks and Recreation Advisory Board are each charged with oversight of certain recreation activities in the city. In total, these boards have 27 seats, eight of which are currently vacant. Since the beginning of 2022, these three boards have canceled a total of 25 meetings.

At this juncture, staff would like the opportunity to review the structure of the City Commission’s network of advisory boards and committees, with a specific eye to these three boards, before possibly returning with a recommendation on how to best align resources to streamline the existing processes.