Claremont council members adopted a new, although past-practiced, “norm” on Tuesday evening, setting term limits for commission and committee positions appointed by city council.

Following the city’s 2015 Priorities Workshop held on February 7, Councilmembers Larry Schroeder and Corey Calaycay were given the task of creating verbiage reflecting the imposed term limits and guidelines. The decision on whether or not to make it a policy was left to the council as a whole.

The new wording dictates that each commissioner and council-appointed committee member can serve a total of eight years. At the conclusion of the eight years, commissioners and committee members are no longer eligible to serve on any other committee or commission.

“This has just been a past practice that the city council has done,” explained City Manger Tony Ramos. “You actually don’t have an adopted policy.”

“This has never been memorialized in any written form. You can choose to adopt it as a norm, or a policy, or you can ask me to write a resolution and bring this back for you—that’s your call,” he added. “However you policymakers want to set this in motion is truly up to you.”

After much discussion, council unanimously agreed to add the newly-written guideline as a “norm” to the City of Claremont Best Practices handbook, foregoing it as a policy at this time.

Other provisions were added to the guidelines and a more complete story on term limits will appear in next week’s edition of the COURIER.

Council approved city staff recommendation that several parks have picnic areas expanded.

El Barrio Park will get a designated picnic area with a maximum capacity of 49 persons, through council’s approval of allocating $15,000 from the Park Dedication Fund for construction. The addition of the picnic area will, for the first time, allow park users to reserve the wading pool for private parties.

A few picnic areas will be combined at Cahuilla Park to allow for up to 149 people to gather for private parties. Prior to council’s approval, the areas could not be reserved by two separate parties due to their close proximity to one another.

Larkin Park will lose a picnic area due to infrequent use. The area will be converted to a passive use space.

—Angela Bailey

news@claremont-courier.com