At nearly every meeting, the Greensboro City Council discusses appointments to the various boards and commissions.

It’s the kind of job that is never finished, but to their credit city councilmembers do work on making appointments constantly, and as usual there are some interesting openings.

The Board of Adjustment (BOA) may sound boring, but is critically important to development in Greensboro. The decisions of the BOA are not appealed to the City Council, but to NC Superior Court, which adds some gravitas to the meetings. Also, if you live in a house that is more than a decade or two old, you may find that setbacks and other regulations regarding development have changed, so what seems like a simple home improvement requires approval from the BOA.

There is also an opening on the Greensboro Guilford County Tourism Development Authority, which has a boatload of money to spend every year. This is the board that helps determine how the hotel-motel tax money is spent. So if you’re interested in “heads in beds,” this may be the board for you.

A related commission, with a misleading name, is the War Memorial Commission. This commission offers advice on running the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, which hosts over 1,000 events a year. Members of the commission are encouraged to attend as many of those events as possible.

The Greensboro Historic Preservation Commission is charged with among other things keeping Greensboro’s historic districts historic.

But if you’re into power, the Greensboro Minimum Housing Commission is hard to beat. It can force landlords to fix up their property or the commission can have it repaired and send the bill to the landlord. The commission can also recommend that buildings to be demolished.

The Greensboro Criminal Justice Advisory Commission (GCJAC) is a pretty hot commission that looks into police and crime issues. But at a recent City Council meeting Councilmember Sharon Hightower complained that the chairman of this commission wasn’t diverse and said “we need a diverse chair.” So if you are not “diverse,” Hightower might try to block your appointment.

Greensboro has a tremendous number of parks, trails and recreation facilities that all come under the jurisdiction of the Parks and Recreation Commission.

One of the reasons that there are always so many openings is that, even if you have unique qualifications to be on a board that has an opening, you might not be appointed because the City Council likes to have an equal number of members from each of the five City Council districts. Since most of the boards and commissions have nine members, this is frustrating task.

The boards and commissions not mentioned that also have openings are:

Bryan Park Golf Commission

Community Sustainability Council

Greensboro Housing Authority

Guilford County/City Insurance Advisory Committee

Human Relations Commission

Planning Board

Redevelopment Commission

Solid Waste Management Commission

 

About