The Haines Borough Assembly decided unanimously Tuesday to give ad hoc advisory committees clearer direction by formalizing them through resolutions.

The assembly will need to pass a resolution for each ad hoc group defining its purpose, timeline and goals. Unlike long-term advisory committees that deal with broad topics, like ports and harbors, ad hoc groups are formed by the assembly to work on specific tasks as needed.

There are currently four such groups with a fifth on its way: the Solid Waste Working Group, Waterfront Aesthetics Group, Commercial Fishing Advisory Group, Housing Working Group and the soon-to-be Lutak Dock Project Group. Currently the groups don’t receive written directions when they’re formed.

“I think it’s important that the community be aware of what the defined, articulated task or goal is for any of our ad hoc groups,” said assembly member Debra Schnabel, who made the motion to give the groups formal direction. “I think it’s a very good tool for all of us in the community to know why a committee is being formed, what is its purpose and also (if it’s) in perpetuity versus if its work should be completed by a certain date.”

Solid Waste Working Group member Tom Morphet spoke in favor of the idea. “We on the Solid Waste Working Group spent weeks on that: ‘What the heck are we doing here, anyway?’ So (putting) that in writing, I think, is critical,” he said.

Schnabel’s motion arose from a discussion about the Lutak Dock Design Working Group, a staff advisory group that met once, in private, in January to discuss the phase 3 design for the Lutak Dock renovation project.

Borough Mayor Douglas Olerud proposed making the group a public ad hoc advisory group to the assembly, rather than a staff advisory body that officials say wasn’t required by law to meet publicly.

Olerud also suggested changing the name and expanding the scope and membership of the dock group. Currently it comprises the Mayor, harbormaster, public facilities director, a planning commissioner, a port and harbor committee member and a representative each from Alaska Marine Lines and Delta Western.

The group was created in December to help borough harbormaster Shawn Bell and manager Annette Kreitzer refine the conceptual design for phase 3 of the Lutak Dock. As an ad hoc advisory committee it would be one of three groups that can make recommendations to the assembly regarding the dock project. The other two groups are the Port and Harbor Advisory Committee and the Planning Commission.

From now on, borough officials said, the dock group will meet in public and will follow the Alaska Open Meetings Act (OMA). The assembly decided to wait until it votes on a resolution defining the Lutak Dock Project Group before scheduling the new group’s first meeting.

Some community members have raised concerns that the design group violated state law when it met without public notice or an agenda in January. Borough manager Annette Kreitzer said that the Alaska Open Meetings Act didn’t apply because the group was advising borough staff rather than the assembly.

The OMA explicitly doesn’t apply to “staff meetings or other gatherings of the employees of a public entity,” but it does apply to “government bodies…with the authority to advise or make recommendations” to a public entity. Neither the statute nor various state guidelines for how to interpret it explicitly distinguish between bodies that advise staff and those that advise legislators.

“I’m not sure that the court has taken up this specific question before,” said local government specialist Lynn Kenealy at the Alaska Division of Community and Regional Affairs. “If Haines was calling me, I would tend to lean in the direction of complying (i.e., holding public meetings), but I would really want a lawyer to say they actually had to comply,” Kenealy said.

Borough attorney Brooks Chandler declined to comment.