The Bainbridge city council will get a look at a revamped version of a proposal for a citizens advisory board for the Bainbridge Island Police Department at the council’s meeting Tuesday night.

In late July, the proposal for a citizen group of advisors for the police department went before the council but was pulled back for retooling.

At the time, city officials noted that only two other cities in the state — Seattle and Spokane — had police oversight groups, but Bainbridge was moving ahead with one even though the task force put together to examine such a setup for Bainbridge decided one wasn’t needed.

The city’s first attempt at fashioning a citizens advisory board was modeled after one in Lincoln, Nebraska, but that suggested setup drew questions from council members who wondered what the group could, and couldn’t, do.

The new version, however, is much different than the previous proposal, which envisioned a seven-member board that would review complaints about the police department that fall outside civil lawsuits or pending criminal matters.

The revised proposal is for a five-member board appointed by the city manager that would advise the police chief.

Board members will serve one-year terms and the board will meet four times a year.

Members must be graduates of the city’s citizen police academy in the last two years, be an island resident for at least three years, have no criminal convictions and “possess a strong character and be well respected members of the community,” according to the city.

Police Chief Matthew Hamner said the new proposal would create a committee that isn’t driven solely by complaints.

“It’s significantly different. It’s going to be a board that takes a holistic look at the department,” Hamner said.

And in some ways, it might be just what the doctor ordered.

“I compare it to getting a physical,” Hamner said, noting that a physician’s review of a patient includes everything from looking at blood pressure, sugar levels and heart rates, to blood work and more.

So instead of just reviewing complaints, Hamner said, the board would look at department policy, how policies are implemented, training, hiring practices, community outreach programs and other areas that define the health of the police department.

Hamner said the pool of potential board members would not be too small, despite the requirement that members must be graduates of the city’s citizen police academy.

“That’s not a problem at all,” he said.

Roughly 15 to 20 people graduate from the academy every year, Hamner said.

The notion of creating a citizens oversight group for the police department stretches back years, and gained steam in 2012 as the city faced a federal civil rights lawsuit spurred by the fatal police shooting of a mentally ill Bainbridge man in October 2010.

Earlier this year, the city formed a 10-member task force to examine the idea of creating an oversight commission. At the end of the task force’s review, all but one of the members said a commission wasn’t necessary.

City officials also expressed doubt that such a group was really needed or would be effective, and said it was “a significant stretch for the city of Bainbridge Island to justify a need for a police oversight group” because the volume and type of complaints the city receives don’t rise to the level seen in the cities that have oversight groups.

The new proposal for the advisory committee also includes a “dormancy clause.”

At the end of the board’s first year, the board will determine if the board is still necessary based on the condition of the police department.

If the group decides they are not needed, the board will go dormant until the city manager determines the board needs to be reactivated.

The Bainbridge council is expected to discuss the proposal for the advisory board at its meeting Tuesday, Sept. 23.

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. at city hall.