Lee County Board discusses reducing members

DIXON – Lee County Board members are considering thinning their ranks and have started debating what a change would look like.

County boards have the opportunity to reduce members every 10 years following the U.S. Census. Lee County went from 28 to 24 members a decade ago and introduced the topic of further reducing its size about 2 years ago.

The administrative services committee discussed the measure Monday, with members talking about keeping the status quo or reducing to 20, 16 or 14 members.

Committee member Bob Gibler said 24 members helps to meet attendance quorums for meetings because there usually are members absent. After looking back at the last 17 years, an average of 3.4 members have been absent from meetings, he said.

Member Jack Skrogstad said they should reduce the board to 14 and it would be a more involved group.

“With less people, I think we can get things done,” he said.

Committee Chairman Chris Norberg said they can do more with fewer people, and he’d like the number to be 16 members.

Just because they lower the number doesn’t mean there won’t be fewer active members, board member Jim Horstman said.

“I don’t think shrinking the size of the board in any way guarantees you that everyone who remains is going to be active,” Horstman said.

There also were concerns that reducing members would decrease the opportunity to have more diverse members, as most are older white men.

“By reducing the number of elected positions, it could frustrate efforts to expand the board in terms of age, gender and race,” Horstman said. “This is a very homogeneous group on our board now ... My gut feeling is that if you shrink the size of the board, the women and young people and other groups that want to get in are going to have less of an opportunity to do that.”

There also wouldn’t be much in financial savings of reducing membership, he added.

Lee County State’s Attorney Charlie Boonstra said members also should consider if the number is appropriate for the size of Lee County. For example, Winnebago County has a 20-member board and is much larger than Lee County.

The discussion was tabled to gather more input.