- Well, I'll go ahead and talk to order this meeting of the Committee on Council Processes for Thursday,
- July 23rd. Yeah, I'll just do introductions around the table. Starting to moderate. Courtney Daly, City
- Council. Isabel DeMott-Smith, Chair. Obie Stosser, Co-Chair, Reading. Jennifer Crossley, Clerk's Office.
- All right, thank you.
- We have our agenda today is that we'll first have any updates from committee members or the office of
- clerk. Then we will talk about legislation regarding enforcement conditions that council member Stossberg
- has prepared regarding the transportation commission and the environmental commission. And we will have
- a public comment on those items before we vote. Then we'll just touch base briefly on incentive agendas.
- which we agreed last time that we would not address until later this year or next year. And then we
- will use the remainder of the time to continue our review of Title II, and we will have public comment
- on that as well. Any concerns about the agenda to add?
- Then we can move on. Are there any updates from members of the committee? Kota Crossley, do you have
- any updates? Since you all had your last meeting back in May, I believe, we have gone through boards
- and commission training for both staff liaisons as well as the first round of training for members of
- various boards and commissions.
- I was hoping that we would have a little bit more turnout for our members of origin commission training.
- I think because of summertime, we offered both a couple of dates, both in person and virtual options.
- And I don't think that a lot of people were able to attend. So we are trying to look at to see like
- if we, some other dates that we can arrange after the school year as kicked off so we can get more people
- to attend.
- So other than that, that's pretty much it. I know after here, I'm planning on going to the HBC meeting
- to observe some of the things that have been happening there. But other than that, that's it. Okay.
- Thank you very much. You're welcome. Okay. Well, then we can move on to legislation in regard to a couple
- of our commissions. Awesome. Thank you.
- I do want to make clear that this is a draft and it doesn't say draft on anywhere, but it also doesn't
- have a number on it. So that's probably maybe assumed. And so there are a couple of things that I wanted
- to be sure to mention that are kind of like in the works. I was hoping to actually have this for first
- regain this last week, but first of all, I was told that we had more legislation that ended up happening
- for our agenda last week, but also,
- Once they started sending the stuff to people for feedback, it was like, oh, I do have things to say
- about that. Oh, I do have things to say about that. So this is really technically like the third draft
- of this at this point. So the first thing that I wanted to recognize is the last whereas clause that
- mentioned the Novak report. And there's some stars there.
- because I needed additional information and a link in citation because the lead ups lead upsides no
- back report was actually broken. And so that is now like I have that link now and I just haven't like
- updated all of that. So that just needs some slight amending. Thank you to for possibly for helping
- out with some of that feedback in terms of the no back report of trust us like
- Addressing this issue. And so I wanted to go to the original report itself to get the exact language
- that it says in there. So that's going to be That's for both commission. No, that's for the environmental
- commission in terms of reducing seats that have long standing vacancies. So the Novak report recommends
- that And so I was going to kind of try to pull out exactly where the Novak report says that and put
- the link into the Novak report and
- like mirror, whatever, that language, the mail record report actually says in the warehouse clause.
- And so I have to look that up and do that. Any questions about that one? Council Member Beethon-Smith,
- when she read the draft, noted like in number four of the appointments and I'm in section one, which
- I didn't change that number four,
- But Board of Public Works is not in capital. And so I was like, oh, do we want to change some of these,
- we could call them sturdiness type errors to fix capitals or not because none of that stuff was changing
- before. And so I guess that's kind of an outstanding question is do we want to do that? Was there a
- reason why we didn't do that? Was it just like overlooked last time that Board of Public Works is usually
- capitalized?
- I guess what I was thinking is I was looking elsewhere in city code to see if these like plant direction,
- public transportation corporations, which ones were capitalized and border public works is the one.
- The only one I found that is capitalized elsewhere in the code. Okay. So we might as well fix it. Okay.
- That was my view, but I think it's a big deal. Do you know why border public works is capitalized but
- the other things aren't in code? Okay.
- Cause that's like weird to me that they're capitalized. And then it's kind of like, Oh, look, they're
- turning out and just walked in and maybe we can ask them. Maybe it's in state court. The others should
- not. I don't know. Absolutely. Well, I'm not the chair. So we have a council interim attorney, Larry,
- joining us.
- Yes. So the question, Larry, that you can think about while you're getting your jump out is we're looking
- at the Board of Commission. We're men's that I've worked on. And the current language has Board of Public
- Works lowercase, but elsewhere in code, it is capital. And other things are not capital, but elsewhere
- in code and are also not capital here. And the question is like,
- Should we make Board of Public Works capital to make it the same as the rest of the code? And why is
- Board of Public Works the only thing that's capital-related? That's a good question. Why does he only
- say capital-related? I don't know if there's a legal reason for it. It is obviously a statutory board,
- as you kind of just mentioned. I think, you know, just writing convention is that if you're talking
- about a very specific board, then it's probably not. So in this case, Board of Public Works, because
- it's the Bloomington Board of Public Works, so you know what the public works are that's
- referred to, there's no board, therefore it gets capitalized. So why is planned commission not capitalized?
- It should be. I mean, that's what I would say. OK. I would argue. Because also these would be,
- end up being, in legal drafting, I would capitalize them if they're defined words. And since these have
- their own individual sections of code, I would consider these defined terms. So the planning commission,
- again, is very specific to the buildings and planning commission, advisory commission for planning.
- So therefore, I would agree.
- I think I should have that one. That would be fine. So you would say then also capitalize like council
- for community accessibility and public transportation corporation. Right. Board. Yes. And, okay.
- All right. I'll go through that. No. If there was some generic reference to types of boards or,
- you know, that I don't know what it is. Oh, the land commission is capitalized elsewhere. Okay.
- All right. I'll go through it. And so like common council should be capitalized to them.
- Okay. Because what do you mean this? Yeah. Yeah. It's not every. Yeah, exactly. All right. I will go
- through and I will amend all that. So in terms of the actual changes that we're going to make to the
- Transportation Commission, in terms of shifting in one of those seats, so to remind people, there are
- currently four appointed seats from the community, two of them,
- are actually, and this is written, the exact wording is written in the whereas clause. Two members,
- one by the mayor and one by the council, and a preference for those appointments will be given to board
- members, employees, or other formal volunteers with MCCSC, especially as involved in Safe Routes to
- School, et cetera, and members of community organizations dedicated to serving marginalized groups,
- especially safety marginalized transportation users.
- And so it's one of those seats that then was being shifted. Now, originally if the mayor said that she
- would prefer that the council, and we at the last meeting were like, we'll take the council seat from
- that and that'll be fine. And the four of us agreed to that. And the mayor initially was like, yeah,
- if that's on three, that she still gets another appointment, a general appointment, but then she changed
- her mind and decided that she would like to keep the NCCSC appointment and that was fine with her. And so,
- this one. And it has the superintendent of MCCSE recommending up to three applicants to the mayor. And
- I could be up to three in there because I originally had three to mirror the CCA recommendation. But
- Superintendent Winston said that she really
- had one person in terms of her cabinet that she would generally recommend for that and so wanted a little
- bit more flexibility in language so that she didn't have to, like it wasn't required for her to do three.
- And so I put in the R2 requirement for that, but otherwise no residency requirements just by merit of
- their employment. And so that leaves three appointments for common council.
- I didn't particularly change. I don't think at all what's listed as number seven. Yeah, I don't think
- I changed that at all. We can go down to the red line. Oh, I kind of switched numbers. I didn't change
- the content of that. I just switched from numbering around with it.
- to still keep the preference for appointments to those experiencing experienced by using forms of travel
- other than personal vehicles as their primary member of transportation. And then I kept the third person
- as a preference for appointment as being a member of the community organization dedicated to serving
- marginalized groups, especially safety and personalized transportation users.
- And so that language is basically taken directly from the original language that was grouped in with
- the MCCSE appointment or those two appointments. Yeah, so that is what I did with this. And so the other
- considerations that people have brought up to me have been, there was a concern cited by the current
- chair of transportation
- commission sitting over there as a member of the public today about the idea of instead of just shifting
- one of those seats to a more specifically assigned seat to do that, but then also expand the commission
- size to potentially 11 to allow more resident appointments still. I floated that.
- through Andrew Seymour and the administration, and neither of them were interested in that. They have
- concerns about filling the seats. And I don't know if, Claire Crossley, if your role with boards and
- commissions has a take on that. And the other thing that I also wanted to know was that right now all
- of these terms for these folks expire at the same time. So all four of these,
- So for CMCCSCC, you know, it was by itself, but then these other three resident appointments all expire
- at the same time. And whether there was merit in staggering those exploration dates. And so that was
- also mentioned by Commissioner Boland. Director Seaborg also said that he didn't think that that was
- necessary, but I was interested in Fort Crosley's opinion on that as well. And he also, again, on that.
- So those are the two outstanding things. I'll stay up for discussion and consideration to make sure
- to bring before you guys about transportation. Don't everybody talk at once. No, I was just laughing. Sorry.
- Currently, all of the seats aspire to set times up. Yeah. The resident appointments, too. And when I
- look at other permissions, some of them do that and some of them don't, I think. And it might depend
- on how many, I'll say, of those appointments there are. Because even if those three residents' seats,
- like even if all three of them go off at the same time, there's six other people
- that are on the commission that wouldn't necessarily hold off at the same time. So what does it say?
- So terms, it says, members appointed from the membership of the public transportation corporation board,
- land commission, board of public works, and common council shall serve a term or extensive of the term
- on the body. Okay, I see. So that would probably be
- different term and dates for those possibly. Right. So right now, if we look, we have Rick Poppock,
- who's appointed by the Board of Public Works, and he does not have an expiration date. We have John
- Connell, who has an expiration date of March of 2027 as the BTC. That, of course, will be a shift pretty
- soon, I expect.
- And then we have three council seats that are all 131-27. And then we have Councilmember Flaherty, who's
- the end of this term currently. So he's three. Right. And then Leslie Davis, who is appointed by the
- mayor from the CCA and her term might also end on 131-27. And then Sasha,
- whose full name I'm trying to pronounce, which also expires 2037. And so that's the second fair seat.
- So that's the seat that's actually gonna transition to the same CCS, is the M2. And then we have the
- planning commission seat, which expires right now in May of 2027. I wonder what it is.
- When did that expire in May of 2027? My guess is that it was counted in May of 25. I think that that's
- what I remember is when that actually got appointed because, yeah, just in terms of when that actually
- happened. So, okay, and because the appointee from the Planning Commission is not on the Planning Commission,
- it's the Constituent General. Correct.
- I don't know, I'll look over at the Committee for Community Accessibility, or the Council for Community
- Accessibility, which Leslie Davis is on from there, and she doesn't have an entity. And that committee
- doesn't. Okay. That's more of an open,
- I think that's the one where you can literally visit like 3 towns and become a member. So, and you're
- on there for a while until a person. Is the law or no longer wishes to be a participant. Is on the board
- of public works. No, he's I guess we're normally in 2 years as well.
- and the Board of Public Works, they don't have end dates either. Oh, interesting. If I can, with respect
- to what Councilmember Stossberg was saying with the staggering, I know I've read the Novak report and
- it's mentioned a few different times,
- overall their general, like, consensus of expiration dates that they do think that it would be helpful
- to stab her. Because in essence, for example, if everybody is ending on 27 or at the end of 24,
- January 31st, 2027, and there's some crazy major revolt, and everybody just has to go away.
- then the business of the commission doesn't happen because you don't have anybody. I guess instead,
- if you do have some type of staggered terms, you don't have to do everything all at once. Because I
- know with interview committees, if you have a lot of people that don't, like if you have to fill all
- of these spaces, that's a lot of interview time and scheduling to get people in and to fill those seats.
- and to have to wait to another regular session to vote on approval and things as well. So I think that's
- something to keep in mind. I think it would be helpful to ask. Yeah. So Larry, in terms of that, should
- I add like a new section three ordinance then that specifically addresses the term lines?
- Yeah, there's a paragraph in the work in the COVID system. Yeah. So I'll just give, let's see, numbers
- depended from, or always. So I may have to modify the same way because the MCC, I see numbers depended from
- So I will need to modify the terms here, which is section C in 2.02-100 to address the terms, to address
- the MCCSC site expiration, and to stagger
- three council seats. So I'll just have two. It's like, I'll have two of them that maybe have one year
- terms and then one that has a two year term. And then after such time, then the single year terms go
- to two year terms. Yeah. That makes sense. Or should I do us like one three year term and then. I've
- seen that. Two year term. Well, there are better practices matter.
- as long as we end up staggering in the end. Yeah, I think for staggering, what I would suggest is not,
- so the reference in the code section in that subsection C, right, say that the first term of each appointment
- would be the following, you can use the table or whatever. I guess we have to do that is repeat, and
- thereafter, shall comply with the terms. Okay, but we can hear it. There are staggers if you have that.
- Okay. You don't have to enter the code.
- All right. All right. All right, I will look at that. OK, we just, OK, and what about the commission
- size expanding to 11 as opposed to leaving it at nine and just moving, making the MCCSCC separate? Does
- anybody have strong feelings?
- I don't. I mean, I like the change that we're making to the MCCSE seat, since we have trouble filling
- it, or hopefully this will now make it possible. But I think having the 11, I think it's a good padding,
- but that's just my guess. I'll do it having the nine. I'm bumping it up to the 11 to make room for the
- MCCSE seat. Am I understanding it correctly?
- Well, yeah. I mean, so there are nine people on it right now. Right. And then adding two more seats.
- And adding two more seats and having 11 total seats. Right. And so maybe it's actually easier to go
- back and say right now there are four people who are being appointed from the community. And that would
- go to three people being appointed from the community because one would be a designated MCC STC. Right.
- So instead of cutting
- the four down to three, it would be increasing the four to five from the community. And then adding
- the MCCSCC onto that to still have, yeah, to still kind of make lots of space for freshmen input. That
- was my long, what I was trying to say. Yeah. That was an eloquent way of saying we're still
- giving the community representation. I mean, is that something that we might ask the whole transportation
- commission to weigh in on? Or, I don't know, that's kind of awkward. Maybe it should be the decision
- that comes from
- For us, as to how many people would not have been put down and how likely we think it'll be
- to get applicants. Yeah. I think that that's what, you know, Andrew Seaborg was concerned about filling
- those seats and writing those, but it doesn't always work well to just add more people. Fairly, do you
- have any thoughts on that as somebody who handles applicants to boards of commission?
- The only, I'm always concerned about like when you're expanding, like for corn issues, like that would
- be the biggest thing because in essence, like that's why we're looking at trying to convince environmental
- because of corn issues. So my only hesitation is like in the future, are you all setting yourselves up for
- you're trying to expand it to have more community involvement, which is great. And of course that's
- what we want. But at the same time, are we setting ourselves up in which you might run into quorum issues
- down the line. And so that's the only thing that I would say that we should really be mindful of is
- making sure
- that we don't do that because we could be in another year, six months from now, coming back going, and
- second thought, we might have to take these seats back down. Yeah, I guess I share that. Are you thinking
- to implement the MCCS's seat?
- February 1st of next year so that we're not kicking anything out. Yeah, we're not kicking anything out.
- It says that in the current section four, which will be on section five. Transportation efficiency changes
- will take effect on January 31st unless C3, oh, I need to alter that too. So this should be changed to C.
- because now that's not a council seat, that's a mayor's seat. So yeah, they will take place when that
- seat expires unless if vacates briars with it and that just would be good. What did you say about the
- nine versus 11?
- I think that there was always the intention to have someone from MCC on it as one of the papers are
- online. So I don't see that as being necessary. And we could always wait and see what happens and see
- how many, you know, are there any on that committee? Yes.
- in January and if there are just a buffer of applicants that seem to all be very qualified and diverse.
- One of the things that was mentioned through this is that language of using forms of travel other than
- personal motor vehicles that it tends to just
- end up being very bike focused as opposed to, you know, any of the other pieces of transportation that
- are not motor vehicle. And so it's, you know, making sure that, um, I mean, when we, when we did the
- interviews for these seats, we had a lot of applicants and they were really good and really broad and
- we had a hard time narrowing it down. Yeah. So I, I don't know if that was just a business because it
- was a new formation. Right.
- Or if we'll still have that same enthusiasm, but if we do, I mean, we wouldn't have a hard time. Yeah.
- So yeah, I guess that's what I would say is maybe we should just wait and see what happens. And then
- we can make adjustments as needed. I feel like it would be a better look to adjust it up when we know
- there's a lot of need then to adjust it up now on a maybe and then have to adjust it down later.
- And you all were actually, Team B, which was a former committee member on, I think they did a really
- good job in trying to make sure that different modes of transportation was represented and that instead
- of just picking all the cars or all bicycle or all pedestrian. And so parents, there was a nice diverse
- trying to ensure that all avenues of modes of transportation were vetting. And I do wonder about this
- new number eight in terms of preference for appointment to be a member of a community organization dedicated
- to serving marginalized groups because we don't have somebody like that right now. And that was like,
- I wonder if we're going to have to
- do some deliberate reach out for outreach to organizations that fit that profile. I mean, I think it's
- good to keep it. The Office of the Mayor indicated that they wanted to keep that qualification in terms
- of it being important to have that kind of representation. I just wonder if we're gonna have some more
- deliberate outreach to make that happen.
- and also just as a member of a community organization, doesn't have to be an employee. All right, any
- other last words? Okay, cool. Moving on to the environmental commission piece is a little bit simpler.
- It has reduced it from, it's currently 12 members
- six appointed by council, six appointed by the mayor. Currently, there are eight members, five appointed
- by council, and three by the mayor. My proposal moves it to nine members, five appointed by council,
- so none of the current folks who are on it would lose their seats, and then four appointed by the mayor.
- That would still leave one vacant seat on that commission. The mayor and her,
- message back to me preferred to move it to eight people to keep appointments and even split at four
- and four between the mayor and council. I don't really want to do that because there's currently five
- council appointments and I don't want to eliminate any of them. I don't think that that's right. And
- so I am fine with keeping it five and four. I would also, you know, wanted to keep it five and five
- to keep it even. I'm not sure how much it matters and I feel like every other
- For a commission that we have is an odd number for voting purposes. So I would advocate keeping that
- as five and four. And then I also realized when I was looking through some of those details, if it was
- seated right now, that there are term expiration dates there that are different. And so I was wondering,
- and this might be a question for either
- Do I need to specify which seats are going to be eliminated in this at all so that I can make sure of,
- like, yeah, I do. Okay. So I will need to add that. And I'll say eliminated or changed because I can't
- remember which seats are vacant right now. I have a feeling that like seat M1 is vacant.
- And so I don't really want to eliminate M1, because then we start M2, and that's just stupid. So I will
- figure that out, and then I will put that in. Larry, how am I going to put that in the section? So it's
- being replaced in its entirety with, and then how do I just describe that, like the seats will be
- Do I need? Do you know what I mean? I don't think I do. I'm sorry. Let me. So if right now we have,
- let me find it on board. You mean how do you add, sorry, how do you add the specific elimination of
- a particular seed onto the language of this? OK. Yeah. You're creating a new. I would create a new sentence.
- So it's the sketch that you have for everything. I'm sorry. My brain's stuck.
- Yeah, since you have this as an amendment to the language, then you would add a different clause to
- the ordinance just to say, you know, for clarity, the seat that's being eliminated is, it looks like
- N5 and N6 are vacant. And one is vacant. And C4. C4. Yeah, yeah. All right, so I will add a new section
- that clarifies which seats are being eliminated. Should I add a new whereas clause that says which seats
- are currently occupied as well?
- Yeah, if you want. I mean, the clarity of that's changeable. So as long as we've reasonably certain
- that that's going to be the case up until the time this is considered. And in preparation for this,
- I actually have been actually putting in something for ICS
- because there's a vacancy report that I can pull and onboard to show of all vacancies. However, it doesn't
- tell me specifically when that seat was vacated and I literally have to go in to every single seat.
- So I did. And so to put that into context, C4 has been vacant since May 21st of this year and one has
- been vacant since 1-21 of this year.
- M5. M1 has been vacant since when? Yep. M1 has been vacant since January 21st of 26. Okay. M5 has been
- vacant since 10-23-2024. Wow. 10-23-2024. And M6 has been vacant since 1-31-2026. 26. Oh, interesting.
- And the back of those, the M6 had also been vacant for a long time, I thought I saw. Yeah. And we still
- don't have any applicants for environmental commission, right? Yeah, because that's the other thing,
- is there are absolutely no applicants at all for that. And I did speak with, OK, so first of
- all, Transportation Commission is going to see
- Not quite this draft, I don't think, but maybe on Monday at their meeting. Yeah, that was next Monday.
- I told them that I would be there to discuss this with them. And I thought that Jacqueline Spannin was
- going to discuss it with the Environmental Commission last week. But I guess since there wasn't the
- proposal in front of her, she was told not to. I did.
- give back all the recall who's chair of environmental commission. And he thought that it was too bad
- because he values that commission so much, but also understands that there's been vacancies and a lack
- of vacancies. And the administration is supportive of the environmental commission as a staff.
- Yeah. I mean, they're having trouble making the forum. Although forum is based on how many people are
- appointed not have a seat. So yeah, that was the current legal department interpretation. The city legal
- department. So you have to go out and go to the environmental mission. I don't remember when that came over.
- It's a matter of time. Well, and I guess the other thing, the other indication that was given to me
- that it's council led, so maybe because I was out of town last week and could not attend that meeting,
- maybe if I could attend that meeting, then we could have discussed it then. I'm not sure. I was under
- the impression that it was going to be discussed.
- Maybe there since I have discussed it with the chair and with Jack, but that's not the way it wound
- up. And the EC meets every third Thursday at 6 p.m. That weekday? Some of the, they met last week. Yeah.
- Oh yeah, it's the third Thursday. Oh, right, it's July 1st.
- favor of this? I would not want to go down to 80. Yeah, I mean, the only other thing I'd say is to go
- up to 10, but like, everything else is fine. I think we need to keep it odd. Yeah. I feel like it's
- that way for a reason. Well, it's currently not an odd number, right? It's currently 12. Oh,
- that's true. Yeah.
- And so I'm not sure if that's ever like created issues. I'm not sure. Okay. Ask somebody why it was
- 12 to begin with. So it was one of the first commissions. So maybe that just didn't fit in. Yeah. I
- don't know. The other ones learned from then. Do you have thoughts on that at all? Honestly, odd is always
- better in terms of voting. I think like case in point, about a year plus ago, this committee decided
- to take down caps. They were at 12 and they're at nine. So that's also something like to be used for
- an example.
- Any other thoughts on this? I guess the other thing to ask right now is, I know that you put a vote
- on there. I'm not sure whether this is for us to vote on. There are several things that we
- have some amendments made to it before it's ready to go before council. I'm not sure if, I think what
- we did in May was essentially say, here, how do we write this and bring it to council under this like
- theoretical concept of what we're doing, right? And pretty sure that that's what we did in May, right?
- You want me to remember that part back? That's a long time ago.
- I'm pretty sure that's what we did because I was kind of like, okay, I'm going to work on this and I'm
- going to get it ready for the July 22nd meeting because that was what was mentally in my head. But then
- when I realized, okay, July 22nd, like that's not going to happen. And then there were several pieces
- that weren't necessarily disagreements, but were like faces that there could be discussion. And I thought,
- well, it's not going to be on the 22nd.
- at the meeting and we have this meeting on the 23rd, we may as well discuss it here and discuss some
- of these little details and that's fine. So I don't know at this point if you wanna say fix these things
- and bring it back to us as another draft in our August meeting and then we'll specifically vote and
- recommend it to the full council or if I get all of these things ironed out before that, then we should
- just go ahead and put it before the full council. That's up to you guys.
- feel like it necessarily doesn't come back to us directly before. Yeah, I think we discussed the changes.
- We're not going to surprise us with anything. If you do. I don't think so. I guess there's some unexpected
- surprise from any commission members in any way. Well, and I think if that happens, then we don't
- for council and you say, all right, we got to bring it back, even though we voted on it, because we
- can do that. I think. Yeah, we don't need to vote today. I think. Right. I think the same. And I mean,
- I could bring it before the full council and just be like, this is how we discussed it in CCP. Yeah.
- They saw it as a draft before I brought it to these bodies. And this is what happened in those days.
- And then there's like no action taken here today with regard to it, really. Let's go to public comment
- and revisit this. All right. Is there any member of the public who would like to make a comment on the
- proposed changes to the transportation commission and the advantage? Yeah, I was like, of course.
- Commissioner Boland. Would you like to come to the table so that you're on the video, please? Sure.
- Do we set up a tree or are you okay? I'll just look at my mark. Okay. You have three minutes.
- Thank you. Steve Volner, Chair of the Commissioner Commission. Multiple thoughts. First of all, I just
- wanted to read article two, section A of the commission bylaws forum says, no action of the commission
- shall be official without approval
- by the majority of the full commission irrespective of their vacancies, unless otherwise specified in
- the Spokoe or Perlman's Bylaws. So we already have that. For a nine-member commission, it's an absolute
- five, but we don't have relative approval based on the number of actual occupancies. In other words,
- we debated that whether, in creating our Bylaw, whether we should be able to, if we only had seven members
- and only four,
- could approve it, and we decided against that in creating our dialogues. Now, I don't know if that is
- informative to other commissions or to the council as a whole, but I think it's instructive. I did suggest
- that we expand to 11 for a couple of reasons. At transportation, one is it was the consolidation of
- three commissions, all of which had some significance at one point or another.
- And there is an awful lot of work that the commission is being asked to consider. It's also one of the
- only commissions that is staffed by two different departments, depending on what we're talking about.
- We had to evolve a complex set of rules that I think may even be more complex than planning commission's
- rules, which they were raised on. If there were two more seats there before council and two mayoral,
- You can split them up in staggering terms. It shouldn't be too much more of a burden. But I think that
- the diversity of viewpoints would be good. Sasha Suturochko is the most recent appointee. We haven't
- really had much chance to work with her. But the commission as a whole has been in existence for just
- over a year. And it's taken most of that time just to figure out how it should work.
- But one thing I feel comfortable in saying as an individual member is that I think we will be on the
- whole slightly better off if we were 11 members. But I don't think it's the end of the world if we're
- not. But that's why I suggested it. I also strongly recommend staggering those seats. I don't think
- it's a good idea for everybody to, I mean, it makes it less predictable who's not gonna be there.
- Also the 11 means that there's a majority of seats that are appointed by Councilor Mayer as opposed
- to ex officio, which is not to say that, for example, Leslie Davis of the CCA is the de facto choice
- of CCA. She's an excellent representative, just that this would make it a majority of general citizens
- as opposed to
- people thereby did of an apartment firm and another commission. Again, these are not strong, really
- big problems, but you want to pitch those ideas. I do think that the day is a couple of 11 people. It's
- not likely MPO where there's 13 people and they have to expand off to at best to one side. We were able to have
- The the the room. We saw that. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments from. And I see my friends.
- All right, well, coming back to vote or no vote. What's the will of the committee? Our general approval and.
- indicate that we'd like to hear back if there are substantive major changes discussed? I think so.
- I think. I'm indifferent, honestly. I'll do whatever you two are interested in doing at this point.
- I don't have numbers to look at right now. I want to know if she might want to see it before it goes
- before the full council. I mean, I could also talk to her about it separately, because I don't know
- about her.
- In terms of the transportation commission changes that was going to back until after the first year
- anyway, and I don't think the EC has been the way that it has been for obviously quite a while I think
- that there's a rush.
- In any way, I also just don't want it lingering too long because things that like, you know, it's just
- like obnoxious not to be able to check themselves your checklist. But I don't even think we have a meeting
- schedule right now yet for this committee. So it also, you know, we're gonna meet again in three weeks.
- And so it's like, I'm a different, y'all just kind of want me to be on good. I was just thinking in
- terms of efficiency, like we don't need to keep, but you're right. Council member Zulek isn't here.
- And if, I mean, obviously, of course, I think that's why you specified that there are substantial changes
- obviously should come back to us. So I can see either way. I guess I don't have faith field any second
- way either. Maybe since council members are like, it's not here. And there doesn't seem to be a rush.
- Go ahead and write back to us.
- No, we're trying to schedule a meeting, you know, for a hospital now. Does that work for you? Oh yeah.
- Yeah. Well, I also like, you know, if you have too much string, then you just like wait until the string
- runs out before you do anything. I'm like, but hopefully just get it all done.
- Thank you very much. Super. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Our next item is just touching base on
- the consent agenda that we put a pin in last time and decided that we wanted to shelve that potential
- legislation to add consent agendas until next year.
- talk about maybe we could track legislation for the rest of this year and kind of see what legislation
- would fall under a consent agenda, whether there's any that is maybe controversial, like some people
- would put it on consent agenda, some people wouldn't. So but then attorney Allen cautioned us against
- like creating a Google Docs where we would keep track of things. So
- Do we want to have, how do we, do we want to keep track? Is that still beneficial? And if so, how do
- we do that? I'm stunned. Well, I mean, I think that any minutes would end up on consumption, right?
- Yeah, I would think so.
- one of the stuff is in the packet. Talking about not being able to remember May, I think in May it was
- like a list of possibilities that might go on consensual agenda, right? That's what I'm trying to remember.
- That's right, yeah, you're right. Well, the tricky part is legislation. We can put appointments on there,
- we can put minutes on there. Right, minutes can go on there, minutes can go on there. But appointments
- are sometimes faster. And that's when we can pull them out, right? Because we can pull anything out
- of the consent agenda.
- For the most part, appointments aren't. What's the point of being on such agendas to make things faster?
- I didn't want to pre-argue the consent agenda, because last time we said we're going to wait. But we
- also mentioned there is some kind of tracking. So that's why I wanted to talk about that. How would you
- to refresh or how would you like to keep track? Well, that's the thing. We're not allowed to have a
- Google Doc. So what if each of us just keep track individually? And so then if we can all acknowledge
- right now that most appointments would go on and minutes would go on, then all we're really individually
- keeping track of is pieces of legislation. So when we're reading through our agendas, we're going, oh,
- this looks like it should be easy enough to be on a consent agenda. And we're kind of taking note of
- that somewhere in whatever our own personal filing systems are with that kind of thing. And then maybe
- we're bringing that back to this meeting to compare. And I would then also think about assessing that
- before the meetings. And then going like, oh, okay, I thought that resolution whatever would be
- Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, and it turned out it wasn't. And then see how many times we're right or wrong.
- And if we just say, I will keep track of that to the best of my ability and take a little pinky promise
- here, then we're not sharing data that isn't appropriate and we could not discuss it.
- just a wrinkle in terms of the Google Doc thing. The real concern is just being able to edit it together
- in real time. And so one of the ways that even the public access counselor has knowledge that we can
- do this is to create essentially a way where if you all want to submit, we can build basically Google
- Form, just a really simple Google Form. And you could basically what to do is you're using staff to
- submit for each of you. It's like keeping your own records, except we'll keep a central record of it.
- They will go on a read-only Google Doc, so it can't be edited together in real-time, so you can't basically
- have a deliberation through it. And then you can just access that every time a meeting. I would suggest
- posting and say, hey, let's just review what's been put on, what do we think, or when the time comes.
- It'll be in one central location. You all have contributed to it, but it's not a deliberation. It's
- not particularly receiving information until the public meeting. So a meeting's kind of what public
- access counselors said, which is you just can't edit it at the exact second.
- Okay. So it's a Google form. Yeah. And I create that very, very, very quickly because it would literally
- be just like, what escalation number, date discussed and about via, or like, you know, like what meaning
- it's on. And that's all we would really need to know for, for, for this purpose. Each of us would go
- in there and say, it's that agenda.
- Definitely not in session. And then have another space for after the meeting. I wasn't even thinking
- of it that complicated. That we could literally, like, if there's an item that we're like, oh, this
- item could be on the consent agenda, then we would go and fill out the form. This item could be on the
- consent agenda. And that's done. And then that would just generate a list that then we could discuss.
- But do we throw it out before or after the meeting? Because I think that's important.
- does things that may seem like, oh, that's easy. Like I said, got to fill in the consent agenda. But
- then after the meeting, you realize, oh, there were problems with that. And that shouldn't have gone
- poorly if it had been on the consent agenda. I think we fill it out before the meeting. But then when
- we discuss it as this sort of thing, then that rises. Because we should be able to remember these things,
- right? Like if we have slides in the form for ordinance number, title,
- or main topic or something like that, and dates, like meeting dates. That should give us enough of a
- prompt, because it's not like we're trying to remember things from a year and a half ago. It would just
- be like five months. Yeah. And we could even look at it before that, too, if we wanted to. I feel like,
- though, to play devil's advocate, now that we're doing
- discussion on first readings, we're muddying the waters now. We're saying, you know, first readings
- would be most likely where, you know, any legislation would go under the consent agenda. So now we're
- saying it's either going to go consent agenda or we're now going to discuss it. Like we now have these
- two very opposite directions we can take where we used to have neither of those options. So this might
- get a little confusing.
- Can we put a first reading of an ordinance on our consent agenda at its first reading? What it would
- be is it would be deemed a waiver of the rules and then have a unanimous consent. So essentially you'd
- be waiving your rules and procedure and then by unanimous consent. That's a little messy in the way
- that you have your structure. So I don't know that that would really be the way your computer would respond.
- Good advice is best practice. You could keep, I mean, we, I think it's not across the board. There's
- some comparisons out there. Some cities are very general, but they allow things. I pretend to have any
- board exists, resolutions, whatever, as long as- Yeah, that's a, another thing I have on our agenda
- today is that, just a reminder that Larry offered that comparison chart for December. Oh, okay, sorry.
- last meeting, you said, oh, staff and forward together comparison chart. Yeah, but we, um, I don't want
- you to recreate the video because we do some work has already been done on this. Yeah. So, yeah, I see
- what Courtney means about putting any legislation on a consent agenda.
- certain events or decisions were made about discussion. It also circum, I mean, this allows public comment.
- So that was my other question. Is there any comment on the consent agenda or public? I don't think so, right?
- Like there are certainly things that like the public doesn't have much on, but once again, I think once
- in a while you get somebody coming out with work or something random. I'll be upfront. I love, I'm in
- love with the idea of a consistent agenda, you know, to put some time down from our epic hours long
- meetings. I love the idea of one and I think we should try to make it work if we can.
- I'm just coming up. I think it's actually going to come down at the time. Because I think the things
- that take the time are the things that are going to take the time. To think about it practically, too,
- where the consent agenda would fall on the current agenda. It would likely fall on after the first public
- comment period. And so while, technically, consent agendas are not debatable in that way, because that's
- the whole purpose of the consent agenda, you could
- alter, you can make sure that your public comment rules allow for just explicitly comment on the agenda.
- Therefore, you do get feedback from members of the public during that first comment period. And I believe
- this should be on that council member, anyone council member, they were swayed by that to sort of ignore
- that. I think that's a very transparent kind of way to make it look like that. Yeah, I like that. Are
- you ready down that idea? Thank you.
- Do we think it's worthwhile to have a Google form with our thoughts on legislative or agenda items for
- the next few months that we think could go on in the session? I do. Yeah. All right. Larry, you said
- you couldn't easily create such a thing. Yes. Or Michael Harvey couldn't do it. It's created.
- Now, since this is going to be such a basic Google form like this, is it worth sharing with all counselors?
- Or do you want to keep it in terms of that kind of wider? I think I would keep it because I think it
- would generate more
- Questions and then serves them. I would really like it. That sounds fine. Ready? I was. Or do you do.
- I do. I think this is. Committee of lane for now. All right. I didn't have on our agenda. Public comment.
- On consent agendas. But since we could get into it in more detail than I expected, is there.
- to respond to that. All right, Mr. Goer. Hello. I hope I heard Larry correctly when he's talked about
- comment. I think I agree with the way to people share the public comment so that the council may move
- to take something off of some agenda, whether or not that's special public comment designed to be happened
- merely after the consent agenda is on the table.
- or you just use that first period over the public comment. I would think that one was elegant enough.
- Just make sure that the instructions say that people who are speaking over the public comment cannot
- speak to an item that's not on the agenda, but they may speak to an item that's not on the consent agenda.
- As long as that's at, we don't think you can do it. But otherwise, I'm a big fan of the consent agenda,
- and I'm so glad you all are thinking about doing it, and I agree.
- The perfect example of something that I was actually going to consent agenda was JAG grants. There's
- always a $20,000 JAG grant that we hear once a year or so, and it's never controversial, perfect example
- of that. If we had a consent agenda, we would make our meetings faster. That's how I used to have been
- back then. So please, yes, make your meetings faster. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comments?
- All right, let's move on to Title II review. Claire Crossley, am I able to share my screen?
- Are you able to? I'm going to make you a course, so you can do that. And you should be able to now.
- All right, thank you.
- after conflict of interest. So keeping this in there. So just in case people weren't here in May, we
- are doing Congress's review of Title II, which is part of our municipal code that is about the common council.
- We agreed that a lot of these items could be moved into a document that would become rules or procedure
- for the council. It would be an administrative document in the code itself. So anything on conflict
- of interest? We had talked about, I initially thought we should move this.
- out of code and integral procedure, but I think it was persuasively argued last time that we should
- move it. So then we have several paragraphs after that that I think could be moved to rules of procedure
- because they are
- more procedural things like expressing dissent. Every member has the right to express dissent, okay,
- yes. That is part of our rules that is more specifically outlined for the current council, but that
- I think should go in the rules document. Stop me at any time. Violation of rules, same.
- personal privilege. Same. I didn't propose any changes to this.
- Any feedback on that? I wonder if this has ever been used. I was just wondering that. Uh-huh. So members
- can be removed. The council shall have the power to expel any of its members for violation of official
- duty, including gross neglect, that may declare the seat of any member vacant by reason of disability
- to perform official duties.
- impeachment in this case. So impeachment and then a special session, there'd be a trial. Please go to
- two thirds members, have it required. Okay, we'll move that in. Then we go to investigatory powers.
- So this is, I just,
- side of Indiana code here. I don't have, I think that should stay in. That's the important power. We
- don't use it that much, but I think that's good to know. Okay, to move on to article three. Minis.
- This is from Christine Chang. She made a note that adding committee member term language or with that
- of the rules of procedure. That's true. We don't have terms currently. To facilitate the transaction
- of business, the council may by resolution establish standing committees and define the duties
- and responsibilities of each committee.
- Such committees are established that presiding officer shall appoint at least three council members
- to each committee, observing the preference of each member as closely as possible, and shall appoint
- a chairperson regionally. Legislation and questions before the council may be referred for investigation
- and report to the standing committee, and the committees may investigate other areas within
- their jurisdiction. The council may create or abolish standing committees by adoption of steps in front
- of the president
- And so then the suggestion by Christina to put the terms. I just specify one year or two, you know,
- if it's more than that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, probably for two years or just in years. Currently, there are
- people like you. Aren't there some, though, that are, there are not many, but I said one or two that
- are appointed. There are appointments to boards or commissions
- which are different, right, or committees. Okay. What do you mean? Like, the main question, for example,
- there's concurrent. Oh, right, right, right, yeah. And the MPO is present. Those are not standard committees,
- okay. Those are good. So, let me also look at
- So I guess that, I think that that would belong in code if we wanted to explicitly say that. And I'm
- good with explicitly saying that committee membership is a default to a year term for the, I mean.
- So yeah, so I said add that here. This is the procedure list of things that should be included. So I
- did put that here. Unless we think it should stay together in code
- I mean, it's not much more detail, but could add to it. So it doesn't actually say that the duty of
- the president is to appoint members to committees under the duties of the president. Ah, yeah. True.
- It shouldn't be the duties of the president. And doesn't it say somewhere that that
- You could certainly add that. I feel like it says somewhere. President, what is that? Maybe it says
- it. I don't know anymore. We were just starting the committee session, so maybe. Yeah. Special committees
- provides for the president.
- So it's any three council members or the presiding officer of any form of special committee working
- for those. Right, and there I actually proposed to change presiding officer to council president. I
- think that's more specific. Presiding officers. Oh no, yeah. In a presiding, okay, it does say that
- in the presiding officer.
- Under yeah. Oh, I thought you meant in the previous section of code where Does anybody mind if we
- Change presiding officer to president here, council president. And then if we go back up here, if you
- add something about, yeah. You may just want to consider
- in terms of just, you're limiting it by naming the president specifically as long or really explicitly
- that you're limiting it to if the president is absent or in the case of it's a new year, the president
- hasn't been really likely to be providing officer to someone different than the president, then they
- would be limited in their powers to a plus. So it's long since it existed. Yes, I'm fine with that.
- I actually prefer that level of detail.
- I don't think it's, yeah. I don't think anybody should take advantage of the week when we don't have
- a precedent to try to point people out. Yeah, I think the most recent instance, just as an instance,
- is when there was the joint session of the county council and the city council, they formed
- a jail subcommittee on the spot.
- The president was an independent, the vice president was, and under the rules of the presiding officer,
- since the presiding officer was the head of the council, she was then able to appoint members to that
- subcommittee. Having those two, it would have had to either just provide a different mechanism
- for appointment. So if you're looking for a check and balance, it's just something to consider. If you
- want to have it by at least three members of council, you can vote to appoint somebody
- or the president, you know, something like that, or if you want to leave the president, or if we're
- trying to help. Well, does the matter in that case that you brought up, that in under duty, the vice
- president, it's the vice president shall assume the duties and responsibilities of president whenever
- the president acts, and there are otherwise people to act. So in that situation, we could argue that
- that's true. I mean, the president and officers is wrong in that. So then you're actually going to get
- to the two people.
- Right. Never. It could never be a person who's not president, vice president. Well, in the case that
- you cite, though, was the vice president really the presiding officer with it? I mean, for the council
- meeting, yes. OK, because that was a there was a quorum. It was a special meeting of the council. It
- wasn't a joint meeting, but basically the county council had their meeting.
- At the same time, the city council had to have a meeting. And they had to have a quorum. Yes. Well,
- what do you all think? Should we leave it as presiding officer? Sorry, I apologize to people on Zoom,
- but I keep scrolling. I hope you're not getting dizzy. I think then it does make sense to stick with
- presiding.
- standing committees meetings. Wait, let's go back to that for just a second. Yes. Because you were then
- going to add that to the president's responsibility. I did. Yes, but should it say something like as
- a regular presiding officer, we're not responsible for that. Right. Just to kind of match that language
- so that it's clear that some
- I mean, I said, like, as the regular presiding officer, I'm not sure if that's, or as maybe as presiding
- officer, the president shall make appointments to council standing committees. I was going to say to
- standing council committees. Yeah. I just said to council committees as described in, and then I'll
- get that recognized. Okay. Okay. So maybe standing committees.
- standing and special, right? The presiding officer also reports to specialty. Yeah, but it's specifically,
- oh, you actually did change over special, maybe it's changed regarding officer. Yeah, I need to change
- that back. I mean, we're reviewing things that I put in there a long time ago, so. Larry, is this under
- duties of precedent?
- Well, last sentence I added, who think this is? As presiding officer, the president shall make a point
- of us to council committees as described in paragraphs. Or maybe article three committee. Council committees.
- I think you could do, I would say that or you could just also say, you know,
- The president shall be the presiding officer over common council meetings generally. I mean, you can
- do that either way. You're looking to define essentially presiding officer. I think that's used broadly
- and because they still have the language from the committee, the whole of the committee, there's different
- languages in there and there might be some worthwhile fighting up to the match with your general rules.
- Let's leave it as this for now. This is a first run through anyway. It was 5.5. It is. All right. We'll
- stop sharing. We didn't get too far.
- We free a little bit out. Yeah. We're off standing committees and furnace. Well, I also feel when I
- looked through this again, I started having, and we had some numbers of public comments on this after
- we discussed it last time. And so then I went back and looked at some of these things. It's like, oh,
- thinking about this in different ways now. So this was definitely quite a work in progress. Yeah. Is
- there any public comment on our review of Title II?
- I have a question, a clarifying question. Is there an opportunity? My comments would be items
- not specifically out of Virginia. Is there an opportunity for that? Why don't you just do it now? Well,
- I could agree, but you're right in the middle of something. I don't want to finish your business. If
- you're like me, I'll forget. Well, we have a few minutes left. Well, I can tell you what to do about
- it. I have one minute.
- So is there a public comment on the Title II review? Yes, I think so, right? Yes. Okay. We'll do two
- minutes considering we're almost out of time. Please go ahead. Steve Olin, I agree completely with what
- I said about the presiding officer. I think the word president and presiding are in the same room, so
- I'm not sure if it needs to be defined, but I just wanted to say that part. Also, you've just got to
- get to committee of the whole
- I don't know if the, where it was, where the council used to, the form itself and committee of the world
- by default. I don't know if that's still in code or not. I mean, if I, I'm the Vance Hussing here to
- try to put a stake into the heart of the committee of the world, which was all but abused by prior councils
- as the wrong way to handle
- legislative business. I do remember, and I'm not sure where it is in code, where the council would go
- first reading, create a whole second reading, whereas sending to a standing committee would give the
- committee two off weeks to consider making the default provision one month.
- I don't know if that's, I haven't had a chance to know if this is gonna be on the agenda today, but
- I just wanted, I can't say enough bad things about Committee of the Whole as a regular way of doing
- business. Whatever new methods you all have been developing this term are definitely better than the
- way we do Committee of the Whole. I'd love to say more about it in a few minutes. Thank you. Thank you.
- Any other comments on,
- Title II review. All right, I think the next steps are just to continue this review next time, right?
- Yes. So open public comment. Mr. Answer. Very briefly. Thank you, Paul. It's always a pleasure to see
- you and listen to your work. A couple of things, if I may. One, one of the things I do is teach for our meal.
- And there's a capstone going to be proposed. I'm talking, I talked to Gretchen now about this idea of
- a city-serving or neo-capstone to look at boards and commissions. Now the research questions in the
- city would be interested, it might form the basis of a capstone research project. And she was generally,
- I don't know what words are in her mouth, but she
- encouraged me and said that I should talk to Jennifer and Isabelle and suggested that anyway.
- And I said, yes, of course, I will be doing that. But I want to put it in your heads, others as well.
- The question capstones are a client-serving piece of work. I mean, the client has to identify what it
- wants to know. It's not just professors saying, let's look at this. So I mean, for this to happen, and
- it may happen this year, next year,
- O'Neill has its own issues right now. They're an old and progressive long story. But, so we'll see where
- we get to it, but I think it'll happen. I've done five capstones, three for Accelerated Indian, Accelerated
- Indian, one for Oprah and one for a recent woman cat. So we've done a number of these and I love capstone.
- So this is in the works, interesting. I think it ties into some of the boards and commissions related interest,
- that the committee and the council has expressed interest and work for it. So we'll look forward to
- being educated by y'all about what others might be actually, honestly, authentically useful. Second,
- the CAT, Monroe County Health Equity Council, which you may or may not know developed a great report
- from its first porch project, which there'll be more. Looking through here, the voices of all those
- may be brass,
- often less heard in the health industry discussions, follow-up discussions. That hasn't gone out very
- much. You have one copy. I'm going to pass a copy back today in your office, at your time, to the other
- members of the committee, because I think it's the first of what will be more porch parties. You can
- get out of here. And so I think I urge you to look at it. McKenna has promised
- We're just about to do some extensive fundraising, actually, which has benefits for the city and the
- county. So take a look. Lastly, the city I know no longer has a public stage of direction. I tracked
- this for some years for Mary Katherine Ahn and talked to everyone there, except the last human that
- said she was on board.
- trying to be backwards from there anymore. But so I, I know this and I, my understanding, which is the
- only way I understand it, there's no immediate interest in building that position. My interest is, and
- it ties back to your own conversations, I think about boards of commissions, membership, participation,
- it ties back to the conference plan, the conference plan of the city.
- in terms of its own language there about public engagement and participation. But nobody's,
- I'm not sure, paying attention right now. There's a gap that's happened in this arena. And it comes
- up in your own discussion. But it's not considered. So I'm saying, I think it'd be interesting at some
- point to take a look at this from here, from the council's point of view. That is your time. That's it.
- Oh, thank you. Thank you. Any other follow-up comments? All right. I'm sorry for a little past lecture,
- but we do need to schedule our next meeting. Is this still a good time for folks on Thursdays? That's
- the work. I don't know, schools about to start asking. One thing to remember is that you have
- budget you're starting to 7 feet, so 7 feet, the 19th, the 24th, and the 26th. Is that right? Do you
- want to do it just before the budget starts? I have a waste reduction district board meeting before.
- What are you doing in the middle of the 20th?
- Do we have regular session meetings on the 19th and the 26th? No. Those are on the 20th. Oh, it's Monday.
- Wednesday, Monday. So it's August 20th, okay, for? Yeah. I haven't put any of my schedule stickers to
- be on my calendar, so probably.
- Let's tentatively say August 20th from four to 530. Is that, I'm sorry. Caps has a meeting that day.
- We'll poop. And I have to be there. All right. Should we try it for another day of the week? Was there
- a reason why? Tuesdays.
- are typically good for me. So Claire Crossley, Tuesday the 18th at four. Let me see.
- tentatively I can check with clerk Bolvin and make sure like that would be a date so I can I can check
- with her and that's fine yeah let's let's shoot for that it's that work for make sure this room we can
- have a whole room is not a little bit yeah okay honestly I prefer at least we need some smaller rooms
- because it feels like we're building our
- All right. Let's answer that and we'll confirm. All right. We are here.