Moscow City Councilors spent nearly an hour Tuesday night discussing the Paradise Path Task Force, splitting over whether it should be dissolved and its efforts relocated or granting it a volunteer commission status, and eventually deciding to give it one more year to see results.
Margaret Littlejohn, task force chairwoman, continued her appeal to councilors to have the group reformed as a commission Tuesday. Councilors Tom Lamar and Tim Brown favored the proposal. The remaining councilors pushed to dissolve the task force in favor of assigning its goals to an already-formed commission or creating a Paradise Path subcommittee.
The longevity of the task force was the crux of the discussion, with several councilors agreeing 19 years is too long under the very definition of a task force. A slowdown in attendance and recommendations coming from the task force also made several councilors question whether making a commission for Paradise Path actually would result in any change.
Littlejohn argued commissions for transportation and parks and recreation are already busy with various projects, while the task force has remained focused on Paradise Path, adding pathways are a value to the community that shouldn't be lost in the shuffle.
"We'd like to see a whole network of pathways all around Moscow," she said, "and I think we have some catching up to do and some planning for the future as Moscow continues to grow."
Task force member Judy Brown said asking a commission to take up Paradise Path underscores the importance of the trail and a desire to extend it further into the city. She said it neither fits transportation nor parks and recreation because of its broader focus.
Councilor Wayne Krauss questioned that focus as it reads in the task force's mission statement, which he said was revised in 2011 without the consent of the council. He blamed that on a lack of oversight by the council.
"You can't just go out and revise your mission statement to do what you've got to do without getting permission from the people who have to make those decisions," he said.
Lamar backs bigger role
Having spent nine years on the transportation commission, Lamar said he feels it is also taking longer than it has in the past to bring recommendations from the commission forward to the council. He said loading Paradise Path on its plate won't help. He said there is a perception Paradise Path just connects the Bill Chipman Palouse and Latah trails.
"This council has expressed much greater goals than connecting the Chipman Trail and Latah Trail," Lamar said, putting his support behind forming a Paradise Path commission. "I say, let's add more people to this and up our expectations, and let's move on."
Krauss invited Nancy Nelson, transportation commission chairwoman, to answer questions about the commission's ability to absorb the task force's responsibilities and offer a rebuttal to claims it also wasn't making great strides in providing recommendations to council.
Like Littlejohn's argument for the task force's loss of traction, Nelson said the commission is also waiting to see the results of the city's multimodal transportation plan, Moscow on the Move, to better understand where to focus its efforts. She said the commission has a more "global" focus that doesn't include Paradise Path or advocating for its expansion.
"It's not what we're charged with doing," Nelson said. "We're tasked with making policy change suggestions."
The commission has scaled back to one meeting per month, she said, and adding Paradise Path might require going back to two.
"If asked to do it, we would do it," she said.
On probation
Councilor Walter Steed proposed dissolving the task force and reassigning its members for a one-year trial to a subcommittee of the transportation commission that would focus only on Paradise Path.
Mayor Nancy Chaney wondered what the difference between the task force and Steed's proposed subcommittee would be.
Steed said the difference was oversight, because the task force doesn't currently report to any board.
Littlejohn said the task force reports to the Parks and Recreation Commission and also the Transportation Commission, but more as a courtesy to keep everyone updated.
When voting, the council split, with Chaney breaking the tie and voting down Steed's motion.
Krauss recommended preserving the task force's identity for one more year.
Steed put that in the form of a motion - with a condition that it provide progress reports every three months - that passed unanimously.
"We'll be your probation officer," Krauss joked.
Brandon Macz can be reached at (208) 883-4631, or by email to bmacz@dnews.com.
