City Attorney Chris Greisl smiled when he referred to the group as the “committee on committees.”  The formal name is the Fishers City Council Committee Task Force.

It all began at a recent city council retreat when a proposal was raised to form a council rules committee.  Some legal research found that the city has no formal, written rules on how council committees are to work.

The only council committee meeting on a regular basis is the Finance Committee.  A Nonprofit Committee meets a few times a year during budget time to allocate available city funds for local tax exempt organizations.  There have been other temporary committees, such as one that studied the I-69 corridor development.

But none of those committees were formally created with written rules of the road.  That led to the council task force, consisting of council members Selina Stoller, Cecilia Coble, John Weingardt and Crystal Neumann.

Greisl provided the city ordinances for several cities in Central Indiana on how they run their council committee systems.  He suggested each member of the task force review those examples and provide the city attorney with guidance on how to draft a proposed set of rules for the Fishers Council

Council President Stoller said she would prefer a minimum amount of structure and wants flexibility in any set of ordinances.  Councilor Neumann said the Noblesville Council ordinances are very detailed is not sure how that would work for Fishers.

The next step is City Attorney Greisl reviewing the comments from the task force and providing a draft ordinance proposal for task force consideration at the next meeting.  The task force is to submit a full report to the full council at the August regular council meeting.