What is the Technical Oversight Panel?

What is the Technical Oversight Panel?  Is it a committee or a panel?  This matters to everyone.
A committee is a group that works by consensus. They vote on motions and the majority wins. The voice of the minority is not heard outside of the committee. A panel works as a team and their work includes all voices.

The Technical Oversight Panel, or TOP for short, has six experts in different fields. The Technical Oversight Panel is operating as a committee. When they vote as a committee the non-experts always out number the expert in any given field.  Why?  The name "Technical Oversight Panel" indicates it should be a panel of peers so that the public and the decision makers hear from each relevant expert.

Here is a story that demonstrates the problem.   Only one expert on the panel knows about integrating different technologies to get innovation.  The vote was 5 against this 1.

"New wastewater bid doesn’t trigger an ‘option 6’" Oak Bay News

    Oak Bay Mayor Nils Jensen. “The purpose of putting a wide range of people on a committee is to have that wholesome discussion … it undermines the whole idea of committee work.”

    “We assembled this group of expert advice to give us expert advice,” agreed Director David Screech, View Royal mayor, adding it’s “completely out of line and insulting to our Technical Oversight Panel. Are we going to hear that every time someone doesn’t like a recommendation?”

Is is OK to allow this?  The public is paying for a Panel of Experts.  Why can't we hear what the expert on integration had to say about this rejected solution?  Why did the experts in the traditional, non-innovative, solutions get to out vote this expert's information from reaching us?
We may get to know the answer thanks to Director Atwell who got that request approved by CALWMC.  But the answer will be too late for the public engagement and the answer will be a special case instead of the status quo.
There are many other similar times TOP member's expert opinion as been suppressed by the committee structure.  You just had to attend any TOP meeting to see this happen. Other examples include topics such as integration of other waste stream, leading standards from Europe on calculating sewage flows, gasification, just to name a few.

The public is paying for a Panel of Experts but we got a committee to suppress the individual experts.

For reference here is the link to the terms of reference for the TOP link