- this meeting of the committee on council processes to order for Monday, November 10th. We'll just do
- a roll call of committee members, council member Daley. Present. You'll hear that. We have no sound
- at the bottom right. The bottom right. Where are you seeing that volume? Down there in the blue box.
- The volume. The last one.
- Yeah, yeah. Just click that. We tried again. Present members of the city council staff.
- Thank you all for being here. First, look at the agenda. Is there any other any? The audio is now horrible.
- So can you not understand what we're saying?
- Your microphone especially was very soft. I couldn't hear really well. But when you were speaking up,
- I was able to hear better. I wonder if you hit sing the system. I think it's not supposed to be on the
- cellular system. Is this better? Can you hear us better?
- So is it worse now for me? It's good? That's better to me. Yes, it is better. Okay, good. All right.
- So any revisions to the agenda from committee members before we begin? Yes. I do think we should talk
- about our ability to actually meet during the day.
- because it has been clear that many of us have scheduling issues because of it. So I think we should
- have some level of discussion. Yeah, I was thinking that too, that we need to reconsider the meeting.
- I was told when I first got on this committee that we'd be meeting at night. Did I tell you that? No. Okay.
- I have seen the presentation said that there were three out of four of us who have full-time day jobs.
- So even coming into this, I was expecting not an interruption to the work day. I put that on the agenda.
- Thank you. We will talk about that. If it gets close to the end of the reading, just remind me.
- Any other adjustments to the agenda? All right. Moving on to old business, the city residency requirement
- for service on boards and commissions is something we've talked about extensively at the last meeting.
- I included a document here where I tried to summarize what we have learned from the research that
- council staff, that staff and deputy for crossing had worked on and just to try to narrow down what
- we might consider as far as membership from outside the city limits. So if you look on page two, there's
- a list of boards of mission we set
- Do not control city funds, do not thoroughly allow non-city residents, and are not limited by state
- code to only city resident management. So you'll see that there are 11 listed there, although there
- are some notes by a few of them. And then these are just my thoughts below where I thought these maybe
- would be appropriate to have.
- when we start membership from outside the city limits. But I watch, of course, discussion, discuss that
- with you all. So that is six. If we look at the updated research document that Christine Chang provided,
- thank you, at the end, she did add,
- A recommendation to look at I think there were four. I am lost. Yes, but actually, after we leave you
- this last time when I met with Jennifer work.
- Um, also we, we talked about, uh, especially the art commission that's actually with city fund. And,
- um, so that I did a little update on the research document as well. It's in red. I believe it's in the
- second page. Yeah. Of that research, the tribe of the Pacman. Yeah. So.
- That's in fact a recommendation from, I believe, the mayor's office from Julius. We talked about this.
- And initially, we talked about working on a Google form and then collect some information from some
- boards and commission regarding their
- Thoughts on whether they want to add an advisory seat or how they would like to proceed with this and
- I believe. Or possibly have some further information in regard to that. Yeah, so interesting for that.
- Julius and Christine and I sat down and talked about.
- these questions that we would send out to the staff liaisons to the four that were identified as potentially
- having the council, same council, the county advisory seats. So there were a list of questions that
- we sent out and I was a little, I was a little surprised at some of the responses that we had here.
- So I'll just share that with you all here. The first question that was asked to everybody was,
- Does your commission have city funds that you allocate to groups and organizations? A few majority of
- that was yes, as we have outlined here and as Christine outlined earlier, and then there was one response
- that was a no. Does the work and mission of your commission extend beyond into Monroe County,
- please explain. And so that one we had,
- questions or answers that were there. We had some of the yes, some no. In particular, the Tree Commission
- basically said that their duties is for trees in the city of Bloomington, so they were very much on
- par. But everything else had said, while we do focus primarily in Bloomington, however, the work that
- the commissions all have been doing,
- has been getting some interest from county people, and county people have been going to some of these
- events and meetings that are put on by some of these commissions. The next question is, should your
- commission focus only on the work within Bloomington? Again, one commission in particular, the Tree
- Commission, had mentioned that, again, their primarily role is just based within Bloomington, so they
- were inclined to say no.
- The other feedback that we received from this were similar, but basically explaining that, yes,
- they are, like the rules do say that they are supposed to be primarily focused in Bloomington. Again,
- they are starting to see some county feedback and some county interest from people.
- Should or could your commission benefit from having a county resident on an advisory seat? And I explained
- that the advisory seat would not have voting privileges and would only serve as an advisor to the commission.
- One said no, and the others said maybe, because that was a yes, no, or maybe.
- The next question would be, would you like for the Common Councils Committee on Council processes to
- consider adding a county advisory seat to your commission? And as you can imagine, since those were
- similar questions there, we got the same responses with one no and maybe there.
- Do you believe, because we had talked about in previous meetings, that maybe if we do add the advisory
- seats that we could possibly look at condensing some of the seats that are already on the boards and
- commissions. And so the question next was, do you believe that the number of seats for your commission
- should be reduced? We got no. And then we got a couple
- Maybe. Oh, actually, excuse me. We got majority no and one yes. The person that has said yes was the
- liaison for the environmental commission. And their feedback was currently at 12, which I believe is
- one of the largest commissions in the city. That was the environmental commission.
- Currently in 12, which I believe is one of the largest, this is not my worst, but the words of the liaison.
- I believe it's the largest commission in the city. I'm not sure how much should be reduced, but I have
- additional thoughts included in the next response. Because the next response was, is there any other
- feedback that you would find helpful that we could bring back to this particular committee? And here
- was that response.
- Considering a merge with B costs may be beneficial, I think both commissions have turnover and quorum
- issues as the sum of the commissions is 26 seats. Having these merged may allow for less turnover quorum
- issues and be able to discuss overlapping topics. So again, that was something that we had talked about
- a few months ago about, and that was also in the NOVAC report to condense some of those
- the BCOS Commission on Sustainability and Environmental was talked about merging together. I know there's
- lots of thoughts there, but that's up to this committee, if you will, to handle that. But that was the
- feedback from that. Overall, the general consensus from this feedback related to adding county advisory
- seats is no, but maybe.
- Might not give us a lot to play around with here, but the idea is if we because there were questions
- of if we did add county advisory seats.
- that there was this potential that we would just add more seats. And the intention that I think we all
- three, myself, Julius and Christine had talked about is the answer is no. We're not trying to add more
- seats because we of course don't want to add quorum issues to anything or anybody and affect that in
- any type of way, but taking a seat that's already vacant on a commission and flipping that seat to a
- commission or a county advisory seat. So,
- That is the feedback that we have. And that's it. Thank you so much. A lot of legwork. So how
- many commissions responded or liaisons responded? There were three that were responding to us. Okay,
- which commissions were they? It was...
- That's the core that we identified. Yes. So we're the tree commissioner. Tree environmental. Yeah, the
- tree commission, I figured that really has to do with Bloomington. So that should be just Bloomington.
- I'd love to get feedback from Courtney and Sydney on what they think. Should other commissions be considered
- for having county members? That's just shorthand. I know that city people live in the county. Should
- other commissions be considered for that? How do you react to the information we just gained from that?
- I'm just wondering, have we, how would we feel about taking it directly to the commissions and letting
- them discuss individually and decide, you know, vote among their members? Do they want this? Do they
- think it would be beneficial? And let them come back to us with their findings. To all the commissions
- or just our commissioners?
- Is any of the ones that we're considering? And when you say we're considering, do you mean the four
- that staff pointed out or the six that I pointed out or some combination of? Yeah, I mean, I think if
- any that are not, well, I mean, what's the word I'm looking for?
- Sorry, it's been a day. Any that are not precluded specifically from having any county residents. So
- I guess maybe the six that we're looking at. I mean, I think we could, although eliminate, for example,
- the tree commission, because we established that's just Bloomington. I don't have a specific proposal
- list. I'm just talking in general right now, is that a route we would want to go in terms of gauging
- from them, the usefulness. Yeah. That doesn't make sense to me. I immediately don't mind. I do just
- want to push back a little bit on the Arts Commission, though, because the county doesn't have an Arts
- Commission. And I quite frankly don't think art has borders. So I would advocate that county residents
- should be able to be on the BAC.
- to expand that eligible for grants from the BAC. That's my take on it, especially because I think that
- we're a city, but we're located inside of Monroe County and we should take opportunities to not only
- collaborate with the governments, but collaborate with the residents as well. And I do think that Monroe
- County residents should feel that the city of Louisa is their partner, even if it's not their representative.
- So did you understand right that so you would be in favor of allowing kind of residents to serve, but
- also to apply for the grant? Yes.
- We could look at the list of six that, I mean, I don't even know if you all agree with my criteria.
- Do not control city funds, do not allow non-residents currently, not limited by state code. That gave
- us 11. And then I sorted out five of those for the reasons given in my document. What page are you looking
- at? I'm looking at page two of our,
- Okay. So I guess it would be helpful to hear from other committee members or other staff for office folks.
- There's a logical list that I came up with, if the criteria makes sense. So I do not have to be a suit
- on. Yeah, I think we should even expand it sooner. Like the Commission on the Status of Women and the
- Commission on the Status of Women. Okay, great. Great. Yeah, women.
- Hispanic and Latina affairs. Thank you. I think there's just some of those that already had like county
- appointments, for example, Martin Luther King birthday commissions. That one, I believe there's county,
- county government.
- I think I'm looking at the page 16 of our packet. I think the current qualification that we have in
- our code is county government. But then it says must be city residents. So I interpret that as the county
- government can appoint somebody, but that person has to be a resident of the city.
- I think that's, I can't remember. I can recall last summer I talked with Jennifer about this. We had
- a discussion that it's currently allowing. It honestly kind of leaves the door open because as it looks
- right now, when you look at it, you know how some seats will say MCC, which is Monroe County Commissioners
- or County Council,
- Listed and on board this one, even though, although that it, you know, code does state that. It calls
- for mineral county government. There's really no opponent body from county government that appoints.
- That's actually not what it says, not what you're saying. It says preference for appointment shall be
- given to persons belonging to dot, dot, dot Monroe County government. So I wouldn't classify that as
- Monroe County resident necessarily. It's a person who works for her. Right. But then the next step is
- that it must be a city resident. So it could be somebody who works for the county government. Right.
- But besides,
- must reside in the city. That's how I found out where I am. So must be city resident. It's in the general
- provision. If I remember correctly. So that's including all the commissions and boards and some of them
- listed on that general preparation. But other than that, there's also a separate provision under our
- code that's saying this commission itself
- show like have a preference for appointments under all these different categories. But yeah, so it depends.
- I think maybe back to the conversation regarding whether we should revise the general provision.
- And that's, I think, including in our discussion today. And honestly, the fixes that we probably did
- early this year with respect to
- I believe the Commission on Hispanic and Latina Affairs, earlier this year, we changed Title II to allow
- those to stay county residents. That's probably the intention that we probably should have did. Thinking
- back to Ma-Ma, we probably should have did that for this one too, to make it clear.
- Yeah, I think it needs to be clarified. Okay, so then I had the Wilmington Digital Underground Advisory
- Community. Now that, okay.
- understand an argument that said that should not have county residents because that is an asset of the
- city and it's all located in city limits but we might have somebody who lives outside city limits for
- example they want somebody from MCCSC on it and they currently have somebody from the school district
- on it but if that person happens to live in the county then
- that would be a stumbling block, so. Which is what has happened with the Transportation Commission.
- The Transportation Commission had people from MCCSE apply because it calls for a seat, like a representative
- from MCCSE to be a part of it. But a couple of people have applied from MCCSE and unfortunately due
- to the qualifications of the person having to live inside city limits,
- Therefore, they were disqualified, for sure. But there is a part in code that talks about how seats,
- like a person could be, they could live, I think this actually pertains to city employees, but you can
- be a part of that, you can be seated on that particular commission because of your job.
- by virtue of your job. So could that be something that could be like for, like you just mentioned, for
- transportation commission, you know, that could be something that could be, they could be seated in
- that position. They can still live outside in the county, but because they work in MCCSE and because
- we are looking for MCCSE involvement,
- they shouldn't be penalized because they work in MCCSE, point blank period, right? Could we add something
- to the code? It just says, like, clarifies that, that it's to expand past study of blanks, or does anyone
- have the legal interpretation that it already has? You know, it's hard to tell. These provisions are
- spread out. Okay. They're like sprinkled.
- throughout the codes and I don't say that to be critical. It just happens over a period of time. So
- in your opinion, it would be beneficial to clarify in the code if that's the intention of the CAS.
- Thank you. And yeah, I think the CAS commission definitely could have.
- members it's my opinion um of course the staff wants us to sunset that mission anyway so we'll get to
- that uh my mental commission we did hear from them right who said that wait how so how did they respond
- to basically it was it was more like a maybe their biggest thing that they really want the committee
- to consider is condensing them with b-cost
- But what they were saying in their feedback is although they primarily function with, you know, Bloomington,
- you know, environmental, one of the lines that was said in their response back is, you know, environmental
- issues knows no boundaries when it comes to things. So, you know, they have an indirect impact on county,
- but a direct impact in cities.
- does have environmental condition. Yeah, if you look at their website, there is a resiliency committee
- that was formed recently. Okay. I would be in no pro, but if we were to open up
- environmental commission to the county that may be in the meantime, while we're trying to assess a potential
- merger between because of the environmental commission, that opening up the seats to county residents
- might be some of the core issues that they've been having. That would be my expectation just in terms
- of ripple effects that appointing county residents to the environmental commission would ease up some
- of the core requirements.
- but I have also 26 seats that are mined on a merger, but they do accomplish different things. And so
- I think we would have to be very, very deliberate in the context of a merger to identify what a new
- commission's responsibility is for. So the EC has 12 seats. So does that mean that the cost has 14 seats?
- It's a lot.
- And also in talking about the fusion board, there is a vacancy because that should have an appointment
- from the Monroe County commissioners. I've contacted their office several times to see if there is anybody
- who has been appointed by the board of commissioners and I still have heard no response.
- Mostly not. I would not be surprised to think on foreign issues if there's policy that is never been
- chosen. It's not their priority. The last one I had that we haven't talked about yet is the Farmers
- Market Advisory Council.
- which I think it kind of lends itself to having county members since I would say more people who live
- outside city limits participate as vendors. I would imagine as well. Yeah. Even the space it requires
- to have a farm. That would be a lovely view. So I would, I guess I would start by asking Arx about that
- so they can see it.
- And actually, I think the liaison and I have had a conversation about this before related to this. And
- I think there's confusion because again, this doesn't really, there's nothing in code that says, well,
- besides the general provision, but there's nothing specifically to their advisory council that says,
- anything that excludes county people. But I think their interpretation, and from our conversation with
- the liaison, is that farmers definitely live outside of the city. So that would be a no-brainer. That
- one's interesting. There's customers, wooden vendors, artists, and then vendors. How specific?
- What, yeah, so that there's finally on there for being city lights. That is their custom. There's also
- sorry. There's a possibility that people own property outside of city limits, but live inside of city
- limits for their residency.
- I asked you. So should we reach out to these six commissions? Well, maybe not caps, because we're going
- to have another conversation about caps later. To the commissions themselves, the other five,
- and ask them what they think about opening up to non-city residents who live in the county. And for
- transportation, we can be specific and say, well, we want somebody from CCSC. But those people don't
- live in city limits. Because I do like Courtney's idea of asking them.
- I mean, not just the liaisons. There's only six. We could individually go to those meetings and talk
- to the commissioners ourselves and just say like, Hey, not asking you for a formal vote or anything,
- but in your opinion, since we're here in person, do you, would you prefer this? Would you not prefer
- it? And we can kind of build consensus amongst the commissioners and better understand their personal
- points of view.
- If everyone's willing to do that, I'm happy to take to them. Sounds like a good idea. What are you saying
- for me? Yeah, I'd be fine with that. That's a good idea. I will. If it's.
- I guess I'll write with everyone. I can create a spreadsheet and share it with our council staff, just
- of the commissions that we're looking at, what time, what dates and times that they need so that we
- can look at, you know, our own schedules and divvy them up accordingly. And I'll send it to staff to
- send out if that works. Yeah, that's fine. Great. Thank you. Thank you.
- Yeah, it's pretty current. It's just like administrations generally sort of has attempt to add count
- of seats just because of
- added potential administrative burden from keeping track of who's a county resident, who isn't. And
- after my conversation with Christine and Jennifer, I talked about the four that were outlined by staff.
- I don't know about the disconnect between those six and the four, but there are a few like individual
- sort of, what's the term I'm looking for? Other reasons behind it's like being against
- County seats on these boards and commissions. I guess I could just go through them just so you guys
- could have a context of where the administration's kind of been from. The BAC for one, it's mostly because
- of the city dollars. Just city funding goes to city residents, sort of the logic there. Just not seeing
- a benefit of county representation. And the Environmental Commission is essentially
- what the liaison sort of already said. They're already here to dig, already to keep staffed. I think,
- I didn't specifically mention this, but I think that the administration is open to emerging those as
- well. I know that's an argument about the decision. Okay, yeah. And then the Tree Commission was mostly,
- I think just, they were already recommended to be disbanded by Novak. So sort of the Novak's report.
- Is that wrong? That's what I was told. Oh, maybe they were talking about. I know that misunderstood
- some things. Maybe they were talking about merging it. They said it was all environmental stuff, so
- I don't remember. Well, OK, I believe that's in there. Our conversation was a while ago, and I think
- I looked at it afterward, but I don't know. I can't remember that.
- Anyway, I'm not sure if that gives any additional context, but just sort of the administrative burden
- is sort of a staking point of a general opposition, but just something to keep in mind that we're adding
- these. That was all for me. Okay. I have to respond to that. I would not say that an administrative
- burden is a worthwhile reason to not do something.
- Yeah, that's all I have. Like, that's not a compelling argument for me. I think it's just the notion
- of changing things, if not a major benefit, is sort of where the administrative burden is a hurdle.
- I think the benefit is clear. This is about representation. Right. But just in general of saying, for
- instance, the Art Commission, that there's an additional con of the
- city funds going to city residents is sort of the intention behind that. Okay, that's harder.
- The administrative burden I wanted to check is Jennifer because I mean you're the one who does a lot
- of that administrative work and onboard and all that. And that's my job. So yeah, so
- it's nothing different than I'm doing now where we look at the application and see whether or not you
- keep track of it by way of looking at the application and making sure that this person that is getting
- there would be a county seat period. That doesn't
- take long in that. Again, I know this is a new position here, but I think that's my state where I would
- be able to look at that and see who would be. It's not burdensome upon me because it's already what
- I'm doing. It's what I pre-do for all of the interview committees when it comes to making sure before
- they start to think about
- interview on somebody if they even qualify first and foremost to be seated on that before we get to
- that process. So that's something that I think. In that case, who is the concern for the administrative
- or referring to that, if not Jennifer? I mean, it's sort of just
- general, I mean, it's sort of my position as well. I now have to consider, or I guess, if there were
- council seats, never mind, there would be generosity, but it just sort of introduces inconsistencies
- as general. What it is, like having a city resident based requirement is helpful. We don't have that
- now. It's already not consistent. I suppose that's true. It's just the general anxiety towards it.
- Yes. I just, I had a question because I knew it's in clarification. You said it was your job as well.
- But I think, uh, Jennifer's job was different because she's supposed to be saving all of our boards
- and commissions and all the appointments in the entire process. Is that a duplicated job that you also
- have? Because if so, that's maybe not what was intended. Oh, yeah, sorry. Oh, okay. I, I was genuinely
- like, whoa, really?
- And if that's the case, then I want to shut this down. Okay. I got really excited. Sorry. I didn't make
- it. And one other aspect is, uh, I think the liaison mentioned it in Jennifer's survey, but, um, a reduction
- to the environmental commission, I think they would also be in favor of producing those seats. And there
- are some others, the emissions that have a lot of seats. I know that, um,
- If you're interested in hearing them, the CBBG has, I think, 18 mayoral seats to fill, which is kind
- of a lot. So while you're looking at things, that's something to look at as far as 22. It's 22. Yeah,
- more than I know. Yeah, that's kind of a lot as well. Not to belabor the question, but wasn't there
- going to be an integration into the onboarding application
- I was like on my bulletin sort of thing. Yeah, that's a conversation that I T yes. Yes. Yes, it should
- because I know the deputy mayor made it very clear when we last spoke. I want to say early in the fall
- when it came down to making the changes in onboard because the people haven't seen onboard is changing.
- But one of the biggest things
- I think as to why this conversation has opened up to begin with county seats is making sure that we
- eliminate the mistake before the mistake even happens by having that integration of my Bloomington be
- integrated in the application process. And that will, you put in your address and it will tell you if
- you're then out of city limits. So that administrative burden could be. Exactly, that's eliminated.
- Which we're now waiting on IT for their next
- round of onboard updates to ensure that that gets in so that again that eliminates the burden with airports
- with you know taking that away from actually people. Okay so let's go to public comment. Is there any
- public comment on the city residency requirement for worse conditions? Well just for a brief
- Thank you very briefly. I think I would also share a straight concern. Unless you can hear me.
- Can you hear? I'm happy where I am. I'm just trying to be short. Very grateful. Hello everyone. It's
- good to see you.
- I understand administrative concerns, rightfully, I say, particularly Klosberg these days, given what's
- faced by all the local governments now and in the future, but that's real, and all of the events, amen,
- forever. I think you're on to something here, and I think importantly, you're in the sort of frontiers.
- I'm thinking now specifically what's on the table as far as the meetings, by the way. I think you're
- on the frontiers.
- what will make local government more effective over time. This is one element of it, but it's
- this collaborative look at membership of boards and commissions is one part of this. And I think the
- learning is very important. I would say one that occurs to me only relating to this topic is, you know,
- as membership may adjust somewhat on the cross jurisdictional measures, you then suggest who's in the room
- for these boards and commissions, or who should be in the boards and who should be in the room. That,
- I would say briefly again, in the last way, goes back to the limits, limitations, and flaws in the original
- framing of the Nomad Board, which did not talk beyond maybe how many they should be aboard the commission,
- what are they for, and relay the participation citizenship.
- So I think you're at the cusp of many things here. And I think as you think about the membership side,
- it goes back to what's already on your agenda. As you think about whether it's this only part of the
- roles and purges of the both of our tools already such thing, think about how has this done well on
- the ground in effect by the boards and commission themselves. And if you're changing membership, you
- add some questions in the equation of how to make that all work. That's part of the fact. Thank you.
- Any other public comment? Christopher. Mr. Angie. Isabel, hi. Good afternoon. I just want to take a
- look at the administrative aspect of this just a little bit.
- I think we wanna make sure it's a privilege to be like a resident of the city. And going back to the
- Novak report, I just wanna say that we have to have the lens of making boards and commissions much easier
- as far as filling positions and getting the feedback. So overall, we're sort of looking this kind of
- with a scalpel and not with a overview of how we're sort of looking at them. So allowing county residents in,
- is I think it's great, especially if you can do that with the county government and having the county
- fill in those positions, then it feels like a real community government, which I think should be the
- goal. And a lot of these that kind of transcend boundaries, which some of them make it much easier to
- do that than others like the status of women and children, et cetera.
- But if we're going to do that for all these sort of different ones of adding the county component,
- it becomes, I think, a little bit difficult. But, you know, just to take that in mind that we're I'm
- hoping that the council processes moves the board and commission to something much more manageable and
- easier for both the council and the maize harvest to get input. Because if you're not getting input
- from these boards and commissions, what are we getting?
- We're looking at a facade of public engagement, not real public engagement. And ultimately, at the end
- of the day, I want public engagement with our elected officials in these boards and commissions. So
- I just want to pipe in on that. Thank you for your work today. Great meeting. And I am having a little
- audio difficulty. It's a little bit muffled. Is it live or Memorex? It sounds very like a phone booth.
- So anyway, I can hear Council Member Daley very well, by the way.
- Thank you very well to Mr. MG. Thank you. But in contrast, House member daily is very quiet.
- There we go. We bumped around. Okay. So we have still on the agenda. It's already one eight. I wonder
- if we can.
- Do item 2B and then maybe skip some new business after that. Do the discussion with first reading. Is
- that okay? So moving the residency requirements and city code to a different section. I proposed,
- Page 27, 28, I mean, it's very simple. Basically move almost everything in 2.08.1020 to section 2.12.00.
- And I didn't do that list with council staff, so I don't know if there's some legal reason that we can't
- do it. But really everything except for section one,
- And section 13 under this executive branch general provisions is about boards of commissions, not about
- the executive branch as such. So I'm eager to hear feedback on this proposed change. I do want to reach
- out, of course, to the mayor's office. I don't want the mayor to think that we're taking things away
- from her office.
- but I wanted to run it by the committee first. Definitely number 13 we need to work on because that
- includes budgetary information, but all departments and divisions need to prepare annual budgets. But
- I am not familiar with an actual practice or some commissions preparing annual budgets. Maybe I just
- don't know about it, but that's something we can find too.
- Like the only board of commissioner that I can think of is the CIV, but that's not necessarily what
- we're talking about. Any thoughts on this? I guess functionally, like what is the effect that this is
- meant to have, or is it just shortening? Oh, well,
- The so the effect is that it moves it to the chapter that's entitled boards commissions and households,
- because it's all information that's relevant to boards commissions and councils. Councils is kind of
- a weird thing. I don't mean it's a common council. Do we, I think, maybe we have one resident advising
- body that's a solution. I don't know.
- That's a weird thing. But I wasn't suggesting to change that. I just want to put those general visions
- at the start of the section where most of our viewers and commissions are described. That was the point.
- Fine with me? Yeah, I've perceived this as just a general cleanup. I didn't have any objections to it.
- It seemed just cleaning up to me. I didn't think there was anything groundbreaking or alarming in here.
- Okay, good. And Lisa, from a legal perspective, do you think this... I mean, I will reach out to the
- Mayor's office before we... And I can speak with the legal department as well to see if there's any
- reaction of concern and response to this. I think it makes sense to include this in the section on boards
- and commissions. It may make it more
- may make the public more aware of these requirements, too. Unless you know to look in the executive
- branch where you necessarily know that all of these residents requirements exist. Yeah, it's not just
- residency. I mean, a selection of officers, forum, majority folks, vacancies. Yeah. OK, so I guess for
- the next step, I'll reach out to the dedicate mayor.
- And Lisa, contact the legal department. Go from there. Okay, next, as I mentioned, I think I would like
- to postpone discussion of legislation first reading because we have some new business that we wanted
- to get to. Courtney, is that okay with you? All right, so let's go.
- I do want to do the first reading stuff, but we can do it next month. And it's a priority for staff
- too, because it's an area that I think would benefit from, from delay greater clarity and having the
- ability to have some discussion, et cetera, first reading, I think would be beneficial for staff too.
- Well, then that's segue to the updates from. Sure.
- this as an opportunity really to start a conversation about greater efficiency, some steps that we can
- take on a staff level that would enhance the productivity and efficiency. Largely, this is driven at
- this point by recent changes in state law and federal law that will be occurring going forward.
- The state law changes took effect fairly recently regarding live transmission of meetings,
- archived copies, changes to notice requirements. You may or may not be aware of the specifics of that,
- but all those steps add to the two-page list of steps that staff go through in supporting and organizing
- The public meetings that there was a two page document that just for your awareness that was a packet
- a couple of years ago for that purpose. And of course, the staff monitor compliance with with all those
- various stops that the new federal accessibility laws will take effect in April of twenty, twenty six.
- We are allocating significant staff time to those issues now as our other city departments. We spend
- some portion of time almost every day in updating our website, working on documents, communicating with
- other city departments such as ITS. ITS and the city have contracted with an accessibility consultant
- who will be and has been advising the city with respect to policies. I'm told that there will
- be a recommendation from the city consultant this month with respect to policies that the city would
- consider going forward.
- So I don't have anything specific to report with respect to that other than council's office in the
- city are working to meet that deadline. So all of this involves changes for staff and ultimately these
- will trickle down to council members as well as time progresses. I view this as an opportunity to
- to reconsider and improve different aspects of the office's operations. As I mentioned in my budget
- presentation to council, these new legal changes require more staff time in preparing and supporting
- meetings. We are interested in finding ways to decrease staff time
- on needing support and preparation so that we can increase time in our other tasks, such as legislation,
- preparation and review, revamping title to title 15 work, which is ongoing now as well. So as a group,
- we came up with some suggestions that you'll see in the document and the packet
- One suggestion is to reconsider council's committees. You had mentioned CAHPS, council member Piedmont-Smith.
- It struggled to meet quorum requirements and it in the past has required a significant amount of staff
- time. This would be
- potentially one committee to be reconsidered. Currently, there's a fiscal committee and a budget task
- force. Is there any opportunity to combine those two entities into one? Is that more efficient, both
- for council members and for staff, decreasing the duration of council meetings,
- as well as committing movements potentially. We've been researching and have researched the use of a
- consent agenda to potentially make meetings more efficient and using a consent agenda to adopt minutes,
- appointments to boards and commissions, certain first readings, and there may be opportunities to use
- the consent agenda in other areas too.
- First readings, if there's discussion and the opportunity for council members to ask questions during
- first readings, maybe that makes the second readings and the adoption process perhaps more efficient.
- Changes in the order of business going forward. Would there be an appetite for
- presenting council reports or hearing reports from other departments at the end of the meeting to save
- staff time. I'm not thinking just the council staff, but city staff potentially who maybe attend the
- meeting and wait for their portion for second readings. How would that save
- Staff time, most of the reports given to us are also by staff. You know, I'm thinking as much about
- the actual legislation. The second readings and because I think and and city consultants who may be
- like bond council. Really? Who may come at the beginning of the meeting and then.
- you know, sometimes it takes an hour to get through the reports before that really the legislation starts.
- So would there be any benefit in changing the order of that business? As of the way that council is
- currently structured, I would say definitely not just given the fact that we go until 11 p.m. sometimes
- and like I don't think it's
- number one, fair to ask staff to come back at that time. But also we have in the code, it's written
- in that if one council member motions to adjourn, there's a second at the meeting automatically ends.
- I don't think that pushing the council report to the end of it would be structurally effective. Okay,
- well, good.
- You should finish your presentation and then we can talk about those points. All right, and then please
- finish your presentation. The final suggestion right now is establishing deadlines for council member
- submissions of materials. That potentially could lead to fewer packet of data, which take on staff time.
- Currently, the city departments have a deadline before the meeting, which has worked really well for
- our office and reviewing and processing materials. It would be helpful to have a similar deadline or
- attempt to meet a deadline for council members. Again,
- I think accessibility will ultimately play a role once we receive recommendations. I think
- those recommendations will include, for example, suggested deadlines on when materials are submitted
- to council. I mean, one deadline that was thrown out was two weeks in advance of a meeting.
- Again, we don't have any recommendation from the city's consultant or ITS at this time. So there isn't
- a need for action on this point, but I think it would help us streamline the meeting process if there
- were certain points when council members could submit materials to staff
- to the meeting so that they can go inside with our normal packet addenda now. And then I wanted to highlight
- also that beginning in December for a period, we will go down to two full-time staff members probably
- through maybe February, March of next year.
- So we're hoping to start Jack Hopkins earlier this year, maybe even in January and get that underway
- before accessibility really kicks in. So our staff will be juggling workflow at the beginning of the
- year. And that also is kind of driving some of these recommendations to a desire to
- to make the office more productive and efficient and like that. OK, well, thank you for that report.
- So I'll open it up to committee members. What are your? So they already have some feedback on the change
- of the order of business reports and end of meeting. And I agree with what Sydney said, so we'll be
- happy there. What are the other reactions to the recommendations here? I love the consent agenda.
- Love it. Yeah, we've been, we have talked about that before. What one takes to agree with that? Oh,
- the county uses it and it works very well. Yeah, you know, I thought to consider using it
- and in a broader context than the county potentially. But to council members' point, I'd like to get
- to a day where we're not having meetings until 11 o'clock. My hope would be that maybe if we implement
- or start testing some of these changes,
- there wouldn't be reports starting even if they were at the end of the meeting, you know, at 10 o'clock
- at night. So some communities use consent agendas for reports as well. I don't know if that's something
- that interests council members or not, but maybe there are instances where reports to council could go into
- consent agenda. In terms of implementing it, it would require an amendment to Title II. Council would
- need to adopt that. The struggle that I see in the office is these new laws are requiring so much staff
- time in terms of meeting requirements that
- You know, it's a challenge to find time to work on Title II, for example, to work on Title XV or some
- of the other changes we talked about today. Really, the Bloomington Municipal Code needs attention.
- Are there other legal concerns?
- When you say that, you know, staff is as a full plate already, it's going to be down staff member for
- a period. I mean, you know, I can write an ordinance. I mean, I would just like, if we move ahead with
- consent agenda or, you know, discussion at first reading.
- I'm just wondering how much work that necessarily has to be for the council staff, because it could
- be when a must draft something, committee approves it, it goes forward. Or do you have legal concerns?
- Right now we're talking about consent agenda. I mean, are there legal concerns if we just change our
- code and say there's a consent agenda?
- I mean, I would be happy to do the extra research to see how other cities have done it in their real.
- And we've done that. I think I think the next step would be presenting some options. To to the committee
- for for your consideration, because there are different. You can do this a little bit, or you can open
- the door and and broadly write the code so that.
- several different things are permitted on the consent agenda. Just because that appears in the code,
- it doesn't mean that the consent agenda has to be used in every instance. Generally, the provisions
- can enable one council member, for example, to say, I really think we need discussion on that in first
- reading. I'd like to pull it out of the consent agenda.
- Well, I mean, I'm happy to take that off your plate. If you send me all the notes, I'm happy to come
- up with a couple different options and present it. Probably not at the December meeting, but maybe at
- the next one of the new year. Yeah, you know what you have. If you're willing and interested in this,
- it might be beneficial to sit down and walk through some of the research together.
- True, because we've accumulated a significant amount. So there are different decisions that we can make
- as to what seems sensible under the circumstances. OK, I will send you an email to set up a time to
- do that. All right, thank you, Sydney. So back to the
- You have an eye on time. We consider service council committees. I do think the fiscal committee and
- the budget task force, I was on the fiscal committee. I know Cindy was on the budget task force, but
- almost every meeting we were like, wait, is that something the budget task force does or is that something
- we're supposed to do? So I would be in favor of merging those. I'm not even sure if the budget task
- force was maybe just intended as a one year. I mean, they're both,
- Not a code, so yeah, I didn't get to go to many meetings. Just by the nature of how quickly if they
- were meeting, I just. But I would agree, I do think that as long as there's a representative from the
- mayor's office and the court's office, but. Yeah, it would be fine to work so. Yeah, for the fiscal
- committee.
- The membership is just council members, but our controller has been attending all the meetings, which
- I much appreciate. And I expect she would continue to do so. The deputy mayor has attended so. Yeah.
- It might be if we wanted to keep the goals of them separate. I know that one of them was focusing on
- like process and the other one
- Like the process of the budget compared to what I thought the council committee was doing was identifying
- budget priorities. Um, that may not be what happens, but it might be, if we were to merge, it might
- be helpful to identify. Hey, this meeting is for process and this meeting is for priorities. So that,
- you know, it's the same people working on the same thing and everyone has the same access to information, but.
- one time you're focusing on, hey, this is the process that we're working on versus these are our budget
- priorities. We will be starting on budget priorities of the December council deliberations session.
- Courtney, what are your thoughts given the staff recommendations?
- I mean, it was eye opening and I hear a lot of what was said. I think one concern that I have, I mean,
- I understand the concern about the timeline, especially with like addendums and stuff being thrown in
- constantly at the last minute. I know that's a lot of work. I don't see how that cannot be happening
- though, given the timeline of when we get our packets.
- So I don't know if we then want to revisit the idea of maybe when we're getting the packet information,
- because most council members are not reading their packets until Sunday night. Coming out on a Friday,
- we're not going to sit down on a Friday night or a Saturday night, most likely, and look at them. So
- probably Sunday evenings, Mondays are when most are looking at them. And then time to reach out to the
- interested parties, right? So then an addendum is or an adjustment, right? Amendment, the word I'm looking
- for is naturally going to happen very last minute. So then I think if we want to readjust those timelines,
- we need to look at the bigger timeline overall. I'd be interested in doing that. But just to point that
- out that I think that kind of goes along with that then.
- Is that mostly on resolutions that you're concerned like, we get the resolution on a Friday, and then
- we don't have time to read it till Sunday night or Monday and then it's on the Wednesday schedule, because
- for ordinances we should be looking at them. First reading. Exactly. You have time for the second reading.
- Sorry. Yeah.
- I think one of the things that takes up a lot of time at meetings is there are maybe questions asked
- that could have been answered prior to the presentation. And so I think it would be helpful if we came
- up with a way and expectation for council members that is like, hey, you should be only asking questions
- on this that sparked during the presentation where you were presented with a piece of information that
- was not in the reading. Other questions should be asked prior. I think that would save a lot of time
- if we could do something similar to the budget process where we're submitting questions for the person.
- I recognize that takes up a lot of time administratively during the day, perhaps. But we could also
- just be the expectation could be, hey, email the person at the bottom
- for the contact, ask your questions. Because that really is what takes up an exorbitant amount of time,
- not to mention there are multiple examples I can think of where questions have been asked where the
- person presenting could not give an answer because it either required a lot of numbers or just they
- didn't have access to the information. So giving an opportunity to ask questions in advance, I think
- would reduce meeting time and also
- give the presenters more of a clear expectation of what questions are going to be asked and be able
- to better prepare for the line of questioning the councils will go down. My, I'm sorry, sorry. I just
- want to say that those are not public. So if I ask questions, and I do often ask questions beforehand
- because I want the presenter to be ready to answer them,
- at the meeting or they often answered it beforehand. And I asked them even if I've already gotten the
- answer because I want the public to understand why I'm gonna vote a certain way. So they don't have
- that information that they don't understand the issue. So if there's some way we could make those Q
- and A's, those emails changes public, then that would help. And I do see we have about 10 minutes left
- of this meeting. Nine minutes. Yes. To maybe kind of build on both of those issues. Have you considered
- including the questions that council members have in their responses in the packet that's released?
- Similar to what you do with the budget hearings where you actually accumulate all the questions asked
- related to legislation and the answers and put them out.
- post them online, you do something similar during the budget hearing. And since you've got the first
- meeting, that would be the ideal time to like throw out a whole bunch of questions, get them answered
- and publish those in the packet. That would satisfy the concern about getting questions asked early
- and also satisfy your concern about making sure the public is aware of what questions you have. And
- then you guys also have other mechanisms for informing the public about why you vote somewhere and it
- doesn't have to be
- during the meeting, it can be afterward. Some of you have substacks, some of you have social media.
- So you could use all the tools at your disposal rather than just relying on that one. And something
- else to consider. Yeah, thank you. I think we should go to public comment next. I'm sorry that it looks
- like we're not going to get to the code of conduct.
- Deputy Clerk Crosley, I'm sorry. It's done, so I'm good. Yeah. So let's go to open public comments.
- Any member want to comment on general concerns with this committee? I see a hand raised on the suit.
- This is across this question. This is the second public comment and the third and final. It's the final
- one. Final. We're almost at our time. Yeah, that's what I would have said.
- Good afternoon, everyone. Can you hear me? Yes. So in regards to using all tools at your disposal, in
- regards to transparency, timely transparency, I would recommend that not only do you include all materials
- in the packet, but also you explore the option of using like a Google Doc
- or something that's available in viewer mode, read-only mode to the public and that all council members
- could interact with so that in advance of the meeting, there would be an understanding of what discussion
- had occurred before the meeting in a transparent and in an open fashion. So that would also be helpful.
- I think explaining your votes afterwards
- There might be a time and a place for doing that, but I think it's going to be helpful for the public
- to understand and come to the table with the same information that, at least to the extent it's possible,
- that the council members do. So that would be my suggestion is to explore the use of, since you already
- have a Google Enterprise account, you could use a Google Doc or something and then provide that to the
- public in advance. Thank you.
- Thank you. Any other follow-up? Yes. Three very quick things. First, let me expand. This is off sideways
- a little bit. I'll expand what I may understand as you're concerned with council processes. This has
- to do with the movement of the council offices. I offer this just as a one-citizen feedback. As a citizen
- also was involved with the city of Bell in California when there was that
- Horrible thing, a lot of corrupt officials, not the example here, not talking about that part of it.
- But there was all these people went to jail for stealing a lot of public money. But I worked really
- in California cities then. One thing we did after the fact went down, the facilities and public meetings.
- And one of the things the public said was how the city hall had been so closed up. There were curtains
- over the windows, you can't get in, you couldn't see it. I was sadly reminded of that when I came looking
- for the council the other day.
- And I was on my wife's notification for a month and I've been up on everything. So I just went to the
- proper chair and we'll give counsel. I know you've got stories. I got the information I got from the
- person at the desk, and I'm paraphrasing horribly, was it effect their doubts. He couldn't explain exactly
- where this was, but it was kind of down that way. And because counselors don't commit much anyway, or
- something like that. So the messaging was horrible. That was not true.
- But the messaging from just a random member of the public, and then I went looking for it. I didn't
- even see where it was. I walked all over and back, looking for the damn scarp darn thing, excuse me.
- And it made me different now. This was a couple of weeks ago. So I would say, but this is a real story.
- I'm not making stuff up. And I wouldn't raise it, because I'm deeply concerned, personally, about your
- work. I'm just saying, I like the council, and I like the council to be seen for its importance. And
- it felt hidden.
- and diminished. I'm not saying it's real. That's all, that's all that. It's information. I'm not,
- you know, don't take it for granted. One person, media feedback. Second, boards and commissions related
- and back to the Novak and back to the work for the report itself and back to everything underway to
- carry out yada yada from the Novak and forward. I've been interested, I don't know if you can answer this now,
- I never quite understood the impacts of the work, some of the steps have been made, some of the relationships
- with council members, with security committees, that has done. I don't know what the impacts have been,
- really, and you may know this. I'm just saying, I'd love to know.
- Not that I probably couldn't talk to somebody to find out, but it's interesting. You're okay with something
- that's been done. What has it meant? What did you learn? What has the council learned? How is the input
- perhaps in some way, shape, or form by the committee's commissions and boards to council processes been
- impacted or should be impacted? And that touches on just about my, almost my final thing. It relates
- to what made me think about the Robert's versus Rosenberg's rule of order question.
- How can I do sit on one of these boards of commissions by way of that's not relevant directly, but.
- We only have a couple of minutes. I'm trying to say I'm curious about the skills preparation for liaisons
- and chairs about press proceeds and ways to involve run meetings and such. I will just say it's not.
- Lastly, I swear.
- Monroe, I mentioned this as an informational piece for you. Monroe County Health Equity Council, which
- I'm not gonna talk about now. You may or may not know what it is, and I put that right now on it. It's
- interesting. And there's a small grant from the Community Engagement Alliance, which is gonna support
- some of the work that's gonna happen through a O'Neill School capstone in service to the MCAC as a client.
- And I happen to write, I mentioned this as I,
- and actually I co-lead in the capstone and I wrote the proposal to CEA. So I've connected to it. And
- when we come in during that capstone in the spring, the students will be wanting to speak with some
- council members, probably, as well as county. We already have good letters of support for the proposal
- payment for the Board of Health from United Way Health and Community Housing. Yeah, it could be.
- So I'm done. I'm done. No, it's fine. I'm done. That's all. You have every right to do that and I agree.
- Thank you.
- So no other hands raised on zoom, right? Yeah. Um, scheduling the next meeting, I think it was probably
- out Courtney. We do. Oh, okay. His hand raised. Well, we, uh, really running out of time. I mean, I'll
- be quick is about our second Lisa's. I think the consent agenda is great. And if we can get very administrative,
- UDO changes that are typos, not having Jackie Scanlon present, I think would streamline the council
- and make them shorter meetings. I know the county council has a consent agenda, not that their meetings
- are shorter, but anyway, I think that'd be a step in the right direction. Thank you for your time. Okay,
- so in order to try to avoid a meeting during the day for December, did we already have one on the books,
- probably? I think we do, yeah. I think I will send out
- scheduling pool to work at work's office and meeting members and council staff. So we can try to get
- that to be after 5pm because it does seem that's that's become very difficult. So that's it. Thank you.