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.