Recent changes to how the Santa Clara Valley Transportation
Authority’s board members are appointed are aimed to provide more
knowledgeable and experienced board members to represent the
smaller cities, like Morgan Hill and Gilroy.
Recent changes to how the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s board members are appointed are aimed to provide more knowledgeable and experienced board members to represent the smaller cities, like Morgan Hill and Gilroy.
Board member Greg Sellers led the change, which was voted on and approved May 1.
There are 12 voting seats on the VTA’s board of directors, split up by city. San Jose, the biggest city in Santa Clara County, has five seats. The smaller cities are split up into three groups, with Morgan Hill, Gilroy and Milpitas making up one group. Each group has one voting member and two county officials fill the remaining two seats.
Seats have been filled by city officials within a group deciding who would be the next representative, rotating on a city-by-city basis each year.
The county seats don’t rotate, and therefore county representatives generally have longer tenure than the rest of the members. San Jose also doesn’t have rotating seats.
Sellers, who’s serving his second year on the VTA board, said this system doesn’t serve the smaller cities well. Not only do smaller cities not have the infrastructure that San Jose and Santa Clara County – staff to review documents, for instance – but without longer-serving members, their representation on the board is at a serious handicap.
County Supervisor Don Gage, former mayor of Gilroy, agreed.
“It’s a handicap to (the board’s) progress,” he said. “Newer members don’t understand the history of things and tend to ask a lot of questions. You have to educate them, the meetings are longer. We get the business done, but it’s not always pleasant.”
One change that the board couldn’t come to agreement on is how the small cities would be grouped. There seemed to be consensus on Morgan Hill and Gilroy being their own group, due to South County’s distinctiveness compared to the rest of the county and also in light of San Martin’s possible incorporation. But the board couldn’t reach consensus on how other cities, like Los Altos Hills, should be grouped.
Sellers said he was disappointed that the other board members didn’t take his concerns regarding the city distribution among the board seriously.
“It was discouraging to me that some of our northern cities were not more understanding,” Sellers said.
Sellers said that North County cities might be bigger for now, but that South County has consistently been the fastest-growing region of Santa Clara County.
