A meeting between Iowa City’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the city’s city council took a surprise turn — and became heated — Tuesday when Iowa City Mayor Bruce Teague suggested reworking and even dismantling the body in its current form.

The suggestion was spurred by Teague’s disagreement with the commission’s proposed budget — specifically, the $54,000 that would be dedicated to $1,000 monthly stipends for the group’s nine commissioners.

“Personally, I believe this council should really rethink and re-look at what our charge is for this commission,” he said. “And I also believe we need to figure out how we accomplish the goals: Is it through this commission? Or do we go back to the drawing board with the community to tell us?”

Teague later added he thinks the council needs to “start over.”

TRC Commissioner Clif Johnson asked Teague whether he was suggesting the group be dismantled.

“It could,” he responded.

Throughout the meeting, Teague argued with Mohamed Traore, the TRC’s chair, and the other commissioners in attendance over the TRC’s purpose and the proposed stipend. In the end, Traore led the other commissioners in calling on the council to pass its $357,000 budget, which would apply through the end of the year.

The TRC was created in September and tasked with working toward three goals: fact-finding, truth-telling and reconciliation related to racial inequity and, eventually, using the conversations to recommend policy changes to city council.

Most recently, the TRC and Human Rights Commission recommended the city council approve a Native American land acknowledgment statement that calls for “equity, restoration and reparations.”

The stipend was proposed by commissioners in large part because many say they’ve felt traumatized by the stories of racial inequity they’ve had to bear witness to. Many also say they feel a strain on their life outside the commission, which they dedicate multiple hours to a week.

Commissioners have said at past meetings that they put in too much work, which takes away from their life outside of the commission, like taking care of kids or doing other jobs.

Before the city council meeting, a revised budget proposal was sent to the Press-Citizen detailing a budget that increased by about $20,000 since the last city council meeting. The increase was largely due to a more detailed cost breakdown of a proposed facilitator position and a repositioning of funds from other budget proposals like a videographer, advertising and outreach toward the facilitator position, which was originally proposed for $30,000.

Traore detailed the changes and how the facilitator position takes up $200,000 of the proposed budget and would be contracted out of the city government to help the board operate, create programming, advertise and advise the TRC on issues. All of this work would be done, in large part, by the commissioners themselves at the moment in lieu of not having any dedicated staff besides Iowa City Equity Director Stefanie Bowers.

The revisions to the budget caught city councilors off guard and largely eliminated the council’s consideration of approving the budget at the formal meeting later in the evening when the discussion and possible action on the budget was unanimously deferred until the council’s next meeting on Sept. 9.

“Are we checking a box or are we serious?”

Throughout Tuesday’s meeting, Traore and the other commissioners criticized councilors for not attending the TRC’s meetings, but Traore thanked Councilor Laura Bergus, who he said is the only member who has attended one of the commission’s meetings. At the council’s July 27 meeting, Bergus was the only councilor to speak in support of a stipend.

“If you don’t even care about this commission as it stands,” Traore asked council members, “when you go back to the ‘drawing board,’ will you care about the next solution you come up with?”

TRC Commissioner Wangui Gathua said the city council needs to be more serious about addressing racial equity in Iowa City through the TRC.

“Are we checking a box or are we serious?,” she asked.

Commissioner Chastity Dillard said the council “set us up for failure” because the TRC doesn’t have as much support as other commissions — and that the ask for a stipend stems from that.

“You’re asking us to do a lot with no direction,” she said. “If you really care about it, you’re not showing it.”

“I’m not saying that we won’t pay some or we shouldn’t pay some,” Teague said, “but this broad umbrella that everyone should get paid? I am in full disagreement with that statement.”

Another exchange between the commission and the mayor opened up old wounds from last year, when multiple TRC commissioners resigned after intense conflict ensued.

Commissioner Eric Harris brought up previous comments from former TRC chair and Johnson County Supervisor Royceann Porter before her resignation from the commission. Harris called her comments, which he said included profanity and cursing, “morally bankrupt.”

Speaking to the five Black members of the commission, Teague jumped to Porter’s defense and said he was disappointed and embarrassed by the TRC, “as a Black person,” and how divisive everyone’s comments are. Teague called Porter “a pillar” and a “uniter” in the community.

Porter appeared before the council at its July 28 meeting and denounced the TRC’s proposed budget, including the proposed stipend. The soon-to-be chair of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors also told the councilors to “take back your power.”

No other councilors came close to suggesting the TRC be dismantled Tuesday, but many, including Susan Mims, Pauline Taylor and Janice Weiner, took issue with the proposed stipend and came up with other suggestions, like letting commissioners expense child care, food and travel costs.

Some commissioners pushed back, saying it would be just like the stipend they proposed.

Mayor Pro Tem Mazahir Salih extolled the virtues of volunteering to work on these commissions without pay multiple times, saying that she, too, was against a stipend.

Teague later walked back his own comments after other councilors seemed open to granting some of the TRC’s proposals and limiting the stipend.

In an interview with the Press-Citizen after the meeting, Teague said addressing these types of expenses would be an issue not just for the TRC, but for every commission in the city.

”I think my whole purpose is the goal of the TRC: I’m committed — and this council is committed … and, ultimately, whatever is required to meet that goal is what this council should consider,” he said.

Traore continually pushed back against city councilors during the meeting that compared the TRC to the city’s other commissions while also suggesting that the council should consider paying other commissions, too.

Traore said he never expected the council to approve their full stipend proposal, but still believes the TRC’s commissioners should get compensated in some form.

Harris and Johnson both said they would be open to ideas like paid child care, travel and food that was suggested by councilors, instead of a stipend.

“I’m not doing this for the pay,” Johnson said.

Traore said he wholeheartedly believes that a stipend should be included in the TRC’s budget, even if it has to be a lower amount.

“It is clear that it can be lower and should be lower if we bring in a facilitator,” he said. “There are commissioners that do have children and there are commissioners that have other things to do outside of these meetings.”

The TRC meets next on Thursday. Traore said the commission will use the meeting to get a more detailed budget proposal together and make more progress on the costs and job description of a facilitator.