Jamestown City Council Public Safety Committee meeting (September 21, 2026)
A local law to abolish the City of Jamestown’s Strategic Planning and Partnership Commission has been tabled until October.
The City Council Public Safety Committee tabled the law until its October 5 committee meeting to allow for further discussion.
City Council Ward 2 Democratic candidate Jason Sample, speaking at privilege of the floor, stated he felt the proposed law by City Administration may have overstepped its powers as the City Code says the Strategic Planning and Partnership Commission’s duties are to consider, develop and make recommendations for strategic initiatives to the City Council and other organizations within the Greater Jamestown area.
He said the Commission is to be used by City Council for their purpose as stated by the City Charter, “The legislative power, policy making, long-term, and strategic planning functions of the city are vested for the City Council. My question is just simply: Why would the mayor want to have a role in deciding how the city council functions. These are two separate branches of government. I have great respect for the mayor’s office. I think it’s obviously something that needs to be used for the function of the city. But for the function of the city council, it’s entirely the city council’s role to determine how they do strategic planning, and it is your obligation to do strategic planning.”
Sample suggested the Public Safety Committee consider tabling the local law until the beginning of 2027.
The Strategic Planning and Partnership Commission last met in February 2020 and has been dormant for the past six years.
Council President Regina Brackman said she was good with giving more time to look at the local law and deciding whether to, instead, revive the Commission. She also expressed concerned that taking on additional work would be a hardship for City staff and departments based on time and resources.
Public Safety Chair Jeremy Engquist said he found it troubling that the Commission has been dormant for so long, but would be willing to table it to October for discussion with a potential vote on the law in November, “And, in the meantime use that time to ask Dr. (Lillian) Ney or Marie Carrubba or some other former members of the commission, you know how you know how to work. The thing is, I’m guessing that the people on it does Kevin Whitaker even know he’s on this Commission? Does you know the president of the hospital or Kris Sellstrom? These are people that have been hired within the last six years. Probably don’t even know this exists, and what would their take be on resurrecting this thing?”
Mayor Kim Ecklund said the Commission had “petered out” due to low attendance and the fact that the Commission is only advisory in nature when it comes to recommendations it can make to City Council. She said the suggestion to abolish it now is due to other proposed changes to the City Code being made and the cost for changes is exponential, “In a year and a half ago, it felt like we were doing charter changes every week, every month, and the cost became really high. So, (City Clerk) Jen (Williams) had asked that this year that we try to control charter changes and do them and lump them together.”
Ecklund said Council will be seeing additional changes coming through over the next month or so including changing the due date for previous year’s financial statements from April to September as well as better defining what a sub-compact car is when it comes to parking enforcement.
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