The City Council seated the members of two newly created and reconfigured advisory bodies and began working through a long slate of annual board appointments during a special meeting July 28, filling more than a dozen seats through a ranked-choice process that council members acknowledged was difficult and that at times bogged down.
The evening's marquee action was the first appointment of members to the city's new Restorative Justice Commission, a body established to address harms to historically underserved communities of color. The council named seven members. Karen Gunn, Lainie Zepeda, Peta Lindsay and Jaenell Cowart were appointed to four-year terms, while Gina DeBaca, Hajar Muqtasid St. Claire and Willa Wells received two-year terms.
The council then filled seven seats on the consolidated Housing & Human Services Commission. Kevin Glover, Sadie Gill and Brett Morrow won four-year terms, and Michael Terranova and Jillian Gomez took two-year terms. Two seats reserved for affordable-housing program participants went to Jack White, who filled a seat set aside for a resident who was formerly unhoused, and Lydia Garcia, appointed by acclamation to a seat reserved for a participant 62 or older.
White's appointment came with a note of levity. He attended the meeting in person even though his name did not initially appear on the clerk's electronic ballot. As staff searched the roster, Mayor Caroline Torosis remarked that he was "here in the flesh." He was ultimately voted into the affordable-housing seat, and Torosis congratulated him afterward. "You stayed here the whole time," she said.
The appointments unfolded through a QR-code ranked-choice balloting system that repeatedly lagged as council members nominated candidates, some of whom were not on the printed lists. Councilmember Ellis Raskin paused the proceedings before the first vote to reflect on the exercise. "It's incredibly hard to rank humans against other humans in this kind of way," he said, noting that the council was drawing "some really fine distinctions" among a strong field. "Ranking people is hard."
Councilmember Barry Snell, who said he had missed a Saturday candidate session but watched a recording of it, praised those who spoke, calling them "really amazing candidates." Councilmember Dan Hall reminded colleagues that they were free to rank as they chose. "You don't have to vote for everyone who was nominated," he said. "You can rank whoever you want, as long as they were nominated." Torosis repeatedly asked staff to display results on screen, saying the council wanted "to make sure that everyone feels confident that this is a transparent process."
Ahead of the vote, the Committee for Racial Justice had urged the council to select particular applicants. For the Restorative Justice Commission, the group endorsed five people, three of whom — St. Claire, Gunn and Wells — were appointed. For the Housing & Human Services Commission, the committee backed Morrow and William Kozicki; Morrow was chosen and Kozicki was not. In a separate message, St. Claire had asked the council to weigh whether Restorative Justice applicants aligned with the formal apology to the Black community that the council issued in November 2022.
From the council's annual round of appointments to standing boards and commissions, only one seat was filled that night: the council named Bradley Ewing to the Planning Commission, filling a seat left by a departing commissioner. Because Ewing currently serves on the Recreation and Parks Commission, his move will create another vacancy for the council to fill.
Facing a lengthy agenda, the council voted to continue the remainder of the annual appointments — covering boards including the Airport Commission, Landmarks Commission, Architectural Review Board, Arts Commission and Recreation and Parks Commission — to its Sept. 8 meeting. Those bodies, unlike the three commissions filled that evening, already have seated members in place, so the seats did not need to be filled immediately.
Among the items held over was a closely watched Airport Commission seat that drew by far the largest volume of written public comment submitted for the meeting. More than a dozen residents wrote urging the council to reappoint incumbent Chair Diane Reynolds, praising her preparation and even-handed leadership as the city moves toward the airport's planned closure at the end of 2028. Others pressed the council to instead choose Dave Hopkins, a pilot and flight instructor, with several writers contending that current commissioners "have no aviation knowledge" and calling that a safety liability for the city.
Torosis thanked city staff for arranging the special meeting so the council would not have to reconvene the following day. "Thanks for working so hard," she said.