At its Sept. 22 meeting, the Gunnison City Council voted to initiate a formal notice and hearing process for the potential removal of two members of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission for alleged noncompliance.
At the Aug. 26 meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission, the commission voted 4-2 to adopt a Commission and Committee Member Charter presented to it by City Council, which approved this charter for all city commissions earlier in August.
Following the meeting, Julie Robinson and Travis Scheefer, the two members of the commission who voted against adopting the member charter, refused to sign, an action that brought the issue to the city council for consideration of how to address this alleged noncompliance.
The commission also failed to adopt a new set of board bylaws, which the City Council approved in early August at the Aug. 26 meeting, by a 3-3 tie vote.
Mayor Diego Plata introduced the item to the council, explaining that the council would consider the circumstances and decide what action to take, including initiating the notice and hearing process to potentially remove the commission members, requesting additional information, or taking some other action.
Councilor Loren Ahonen said that he had listened to the August commission meeting and that the issue was part of a “long conversation that we’ve been having for quite some time.”
He said there appeared to be “a fair bit of confusion from a variety of folks on the commission about a variety of topics,” including uncertainty among some members about what they were voting on.
“It was a bit of convoluted conversation from my view of watching it, and I think it relates to sort of a lack of understanding of what the goal and the intent of this process is, which has been relayed many times of transparency, consistency and all the pieces of the puzzle,” he said. “But there appeared to be, in my … visualizing, gaps in knowledge for some folks as to the stepwise procedure that was at hand and what was happening there.”
Mayor Pro Tem Marisela Ballesteros said that she agreed with Ahonen, adding, “There needs to be just some room where we can understand where the confusion is coming from, where the misunderstanding is coming from so that way alignment can happen because at the end of the day, I think the intent is teamwork so that way, in the public’s view, they’re not getting confused as to different messages being sent. So just teamwork and alignment and trying to find a way where people are empowered in this commission but also aligning with our charter. I think there needs to be a little bit more space to hear these misunderstandings.”
Councilor Audrey Zahradka said that it was “a little bit our responsibility to hear where the confusion is coming from and take that into account as well.”
Ahonen said that he perceived two levels of confusion at the commission meeting: confusion over differing interpretations of what adopting bylaws means, and confusion about what the commission was voting on.
He said that the meaning of adopting bylaws has also been discussed at the city council and that further clarification of the goals of the bylaws and the member charter may be needed in the future.
Ahonen said that some members of the planning commission seemed confused about what they were voting on, and there might not have been a full understanding of the process for adopting the member charter and bylaws versus choosing not to to sign or participate in the approved charter or bylaws.
“Having moved to accept something, you would need to choose to participate in it, and that is the next logical step,” he said. “It is perfectly acceptable if members of the commission don’t feel that that represents their needs moving forward or their interests; that is just fine. But understanding that a willful choice to not participate by signing a document you have approved is a willful choice to then not move forward.
“I think there’s an education process that maybe felt, for some members of the commission, like they didn’t understand procedurally what the member charter and the bylaws were, which is incumbent upon individuals to do their homework - some of the individuals on the commission seem to understand that, some don’t – and then, subsequently, to decide whether or not they would like to participate based on those.”
He said that there also appear to be misunderstandings of what “adopting procedure” means, which Ahonen said concerns how to run meetings but does not include commissions setting their own jurisdictions for what they hold authority over.
He added that he has heard commission members ask where in the town’s home rule charter the City Council is given the authority to make a member charter and bylaws.
Ahonen said that this power is included in the charter's prefatory synopsis, which states, “The power to create and control necessary Boards and Commissions is vested in the Council.”
Plata said that legal analysis was conducted on the proposed bylaws and member charter, including by outside legal experts. This analysis, he said, concluded that Section 3.17 of the home rule charter, which concerns boards and commissions and states that each board and commission “shall adopt its own rules of procedure for the conduct of its business,” does not give the planning commission “the role of instituting legislation.”
Plata asked what rules are currently in place regarding the commission regarding the bylaws that were not adopted, noting that Scheefer had asked him this question.
City Attorney Kathleen Fogo said that the prior adopted rules for all boards and commissions were rescinded by council in Resolution 10, Series 2026, which also included the member charter and new bylaws for city boards and commissions.
She said that this resolution, a code of conduct and rules of procedure adopted by the city council in 2025, and the member charter the planning commission adopted in August were the rules in effect for the commission at this point.
City Manager Amanda Wilson said that rescinding of previous bylaws was not an “assertion or interpretation” and was specifically stated in Resolution 10.
Ballesteros asked whether the council would need to initiate formal notice and hearing to hear from the members or whether it could request additional information.
Fogo said that process would be to send a letter and set a hearing date to give the two commission members who have not signed the charter an opportunity to speak with the city council.
Ballesteros said she would “like to hear from them, mainly because we are in a role of adopting and providing different resolutions and I think communication is a huge aspect of that, so any way that we can improve I would like to improve ‘cause, again I’ll say, our intent was not to create any diversion, again this is to have teamwork and alignment together and to empower those who are in this commission. … I want to see where we can be better with that.”
Fogo said that the council's initiating a removal-for-cause process would be an opportunity for the two commissioners to present their positions to the council. “It is not a process where it’s just a discussion back and forth or education or communication or training or things of that nature,” she said.
Zahradka asked why the action focused on the two commission members who refused to sign the charter and not on the three members who voted against the bylaws, which included Robinson and Scheefer along with Erik Iverson.
Ahonen explained that the issue was commission members being unwilling to sign the member charter adopted by the commission, not their dissenting votes against adopting it.
Councilor Matt Schwartz said that this situation is similar to what occurs when the council votes in a split, with the members who voted no still bound by the majority's decision.
Wilson said that the focus of this discussion was on the member charter but that there would be conversation with the commission on the bylaws, which it failed to adopt.
“That subject and that discussion is not over,” she said. “They didn’t pass the bylaws, and we need to reengage them in a conversation about why and how we could get to a point of adopting those or what changes etc. can we work through to get to a resolution on that.”
Plata then requested action from the council, with Schwartz moving to initiate the formal notice and hearing process, which Ballesteros seconded, and the motion was unanimously approved.
No one spoke during public comment regarding this issue during the meeting.
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