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.