- So to order, I am present. Who else is present? Council Member Siggins-Zurek, also present. Wonderful.
- Thank you for being present. You're present. I'm present, but I'm not. It's Dr. Conchmouth,
- District 1. Present? Present. Yes. Can you present? I'm here. She's here.
- Also, where I'm sure if they are present or not, but that's fine.
- All right, well, I have wondered if you're wondering about the commentaries of why we have to also say
- that we're physically good. Anyway, but so today, too. I am you suck and I am here. And hopefully at
- some point we'll be joined by a counselor rather than Dave Bravo.
- We have two agenda points. The thing that we planned to talk about, and thank you all for being here
- for this purpose, is we wanted to talk about the administrative needs of the council, particularly post-May
- 7th or whenever you become pumpkins. So thinking about that question,
- And that overlaps with the questions that our clerks sent around the wonderful sort of statement of
- processes, which is something I think we can think about and talk about, thinking about the overlap
- with the clerk's office. And then as we have time, we've finally got signed the documentation for Larry Allen,
- We're just waiting for the mayor needs to sign a conflict of interest form. So that's the last thing
- I have a call with her after this meeting so hopefully we can get that finalized and I suppose that
- that means they'll be sort of starting tomorrow issue or something like that, which is great.
- And so we should, what I'd like to talk about if we have time is to think about, I think we have a good
- sense of the, you know, keep council running elements of that job and the framework of the, you know,
- 15 to 20 hours a week. And we talk about the budget help and all of those things. But I think if we
- have time, it would be really nice for us also to think about some things that we'd like to, particularly
- because we got the very, very
- himself is to think of some things that we might charge this position with. And so thinking about, for
- example, whether it would be worth
- as a deliverable saying that we'd like some input on how to improve the processes for this position
- for the person who fills it in and thinking about some handover documentation or things of that nature.
- So I'm seeing that as a thought. So when we have time, we can, we can maybe just start a process of
- brainstorming that we can bring to the broader council over the next few days. And then we say,
- so with that, let's go to, or any other things you'd like to talk about while we're here.
- Well, I'll just add to that a little bit, because it might also be helpful, especially since Larry has
- a lot of experience doing budget, it might be helpful for him to work on some materials that might help
- us comprehend and process the budget and the sort of amount of expenses that will be coming up shortly.
- Any other things that we'd like to add to the agenda other than those two items?
- So you're talking about the council attorney position in terms of the workspace, and then your administrative
- duties. Yes, but other way around. Yeah, administrative duties, particularly with the pumpkinizing that's
- in the future. And then vis-a-vis also clerk. So how are we taking care of administration? Can you talk
- about the attorney first, then the administration, because that will actually direct some things that
- we can talk about from the clerk's perspective.
- I have no objection to that. Any objections to that? No? Okay, so let's do that then. So yeah, so my
- prompt really is this, is that if insofar as we have 20 hours a week of attorney support and we've continued
- to retain, as we talked about last week, the external counsel as well. That's 15 hours.
- If it's going to be 15 to 20 so 15 is like the base time that he can do up to 20 hours triggers anything
- so yeah so so we have a little bit a little bit extra which is which is also part of me thinking about
- this which is, you know, I think that there will be weeks where the things you know.
- prep for meetings, particularly if we have a thing that would require a lot of legal research or many
- counsel questions, or if we have new legislation. I know that many of us are thinking about different
- things that we're just waiting to have a lawyer to be able to introduce. I can imagine there'll be weeks
- where that time gets eaten up fairly quickly. Or we have long meetings and that time gets eaten up.
- But in the assumption that there's some excess time,
- what would you want this person to do? Because part of the agreement is that we basically are just paying
- him flat, like he's gonna be mindful of his time and reporting his time, et cetera, but you know, there's
- like, he's gonna do 15 hours a week, so, and up to 12. So what do we want to use that time for if there's
- additional things that we might need to use the role of? Well, I would like to ask,
- I'm sorry, can you repeat that? Whether the clerk's office will continue to put together the council
- patents with also our council president doing a lot of that work. Will that process continue or would
- the clerk's office need to divest itself of that work?
- we're going to end up talking about everything kind of in a big jumble. It's okay. I think part of the
- concern that I had moving into this space was looking at what your plan was for your office structure
- overall, because that does dictate what the clerk's office actually does and how compensation will be
- shifted to the clerk's office and or what responsibilities going forward.
- what we've already seen over the last few months is a bit of creep in terms of what things were handling.
- And this is also after having agreed with your previous staff members that we would help them out while
- they were in a transition period. So the answer is it depends in large part on kind of what you guys
- want to do moving forward. And I feel like a terrible jerk in saying it in those ways, but
- for the reason that we were very careful to just write an April guide for the end of your pumpkin period.
- I'm so sorry, you guys. I know, it's really just what it is. It's fine. It's fine. They seem to remember.
- It's terrible. I'm gonna make you like, well, put on your costumes before you go. Anyway, so I think
- that's one of the things. And honestly, the work that you will have to do goes far beyond the similar
- in the package.
- So that's the other question, which is, you have a whole host of administrative duties that are traditionally
- handled by your staff. Who's going to do that? And if you don't have a plan for that, because that's
- time alone, as far as we can piece together, based on previous staff members who've done that work,
- that's over 80 hours worth of work. So what do you want to work on?
- No, for a week. For averaging out the times that we spend on busy times, for example, Jack Hopkins,
- right, at Hopkins season, except a lot of times during recess where you're not spending, obviously,
- any time on packets. So it's taking up, on average, throughout the year, you might, if you're spending,
- you know, 40 hours total on Jack Hopkins, because, you know, for eight weeks, you're spending five hours
- with them. Honestly, it's more, I don't even really work down, but it's,
- Significant and it's on the very low edge of things. I've had to stay no more than like four hours.
- So most of them are like 15 minutes just because it's an error on the outside. You broke it down for
- reading, you broke it down through different categories. So looking at questions of communications,
- finances, budget, caps, memorandum, minutes, training, onboarding, packet materials, which is a good
- chunk of time, meetings for during reading.
- You do our notes and memorandum. For caps. For caps. Oh, for caps. Okay. Research, legislative work,
- attorney's support, committees, constituent meetings, accessibility. So all of those things come up.
- Constituent meetings? So can we talk about- We do a lot of your setup, but putting it on the website
- is some of that other stuff that has to be checked.
- And again, not all council members and both the same level of work at the end of the year. I'm not going
- to be disrespectful when I say that. No, absolutely. So that we sort of structure that, because the
- impact of it, understood, but then it was like, so now the question is sort of sorting, you know,
- sorting these things. And I think that there's two questions. There's a horizon question, which is,
- what are the things that make sense for the clerks to do just anyways? And there's an overlapping question
- of, does that have implications for pay and salary? That's a different conversation. But we're actually
- an important one. But at the first basis, the
- You know, there's the horizon question. So where are we trying to shift, which I think you also said
- already, which is what are some of the things that we imagine our office being? But then there's also
- then the questions that, okay, there are things like you talk about, like, okay, like posting for exigently
- maybe or something like that for, you know, which can be at this type of task or at this type of task.
- And so we could also think about certain controls around some of those things. So would it be useful
- maybe to go over
- Like, so I go over the list, like in a, like, sort of like systematic, like go over it one by one and
- talk about each of these things. Like how, what's the best way of. Well, I think there's, the timeline
- is important, right? So there's the immediate current situation that we're in. Yeah. And I mean, we,
- as in all of, you know, council member, and I think that the next is May 1st comes, May 8th comes, then what?
- That's timeline two. And then timeline three is what I think you're calling horizon, which is what actually
- makes sense. And we have, I mean, I know I have lots of thoughts on what makes sense, because having
- seen it in some institutional knowledge that's carried over for, I've been here now going from seven
- years in November. So that's three councils, two administrations, many council staff. So I think that
- there's lots of,
- solutions and remedies that we could suggest because we're kind of the content experts on the preparation
- and record keeping, retention schedule, all of those things that are statutory good, not the content
- experts on like flexways or whatever it means. So that's why I break it up into the three distinct timelines
- and then what that looks like.
- venture to add that we're actually talking about, not three, maybe four, because the real dynamic is
- we're going to be figuring on now, we're going to get May 7th, we're going to lose video and all staff
- support. What is the plan for May 7th through council recess, through what, July 22nd? Because realistically,
- you know, it's going to be completely solved and cured, in a general sense, not like your disease.
- Or a cousin. Or a cousin. You know, you're not me too. But you are my cousin. So that's where I'm kind
- of looking at and saying, hey, what is the plan moving forward? But again, I know I signed a broken
- record. I don't want to get into the space where we continue to do this work. And it becomes expected,
- especially looking at the way that we're seeing some of the downgrading and processors in our own spaces
- and trying to keep everything working.
- absolutely kind of. I want to make council. Did I say it? I want to make council great again. For example,
- we have had city staff members already reaching out to us because they rightfully should not be reaching
- out to even Aria who is
- council staff versus a fellow, you know what I mean? Like there's clear distinctions that like right
- now things are getting missed. And we're doing, it's working, but I think that the city staff is still
- confused right for this time. I think when the fall rolls back around and we'll have the capacity to
- do like the packets and everything, we were compiling them ahead of time. So I think it's kind of just
- the short term that really needs to be addressed because once that
- comes back around, I think a lot of the burdens being put on the clerk's office can sort of come back
- to us, especially if there's gonna be two fellows still. Right. And then in addition, by then we should
- have, I mean, at least one attorney for that, right? And I think that's great, but if they have a part-time
- staffer who's their attorney, the supervision, putting things on, proving any timesheets or write-ups
- that you need for staffing, those are things that you guys can't review. Yeah. And who's gonna do it
- because it really shouldn't
- Well, I can't. It's not my fault. But having a constant person and do all of that for an extended period
- of time does not seem sustainable, plus you tend to lose muscle memory. Yeah. Yeah. Time goes on for
- that sort of thing. OK. But then, so back to your initial list. If we were to put these into buckets,
- and then I'd love to hear what you all think about the things that are you putting back. I'll be back
- in the fall. Ari is the only one who's not back. Evan is also available over the summer.
- In theory, yeah. In theory, and Michael is, right? Yeah, Michael's definitely a machine coming back.
- I am not planning on being here physically, but we'll see. Right, TBD? TBD. Okay. Study abroad got canceled.
- Oh, I'm sorry. I was going to Brazil. Oh, sorry. Got canceled on four months after this. Would you like
- us to go on your set? Okay, so of the list that you brought up,
- where do you sort of view each of these things? Both we have the sort of timeline horizon, but then
- all the timeline, the few stages, but then there's also just the like type of functions, right? Because
- things like Jeff Hopkins, one, it's a slightly improved process now. A lot of the time socket of that
- has been taken away by digitizing some of the application elements and things like that. Courtney is
- also doing more than, I don't know,
- than what had been done in the past. But I'm interested in where would you put them in categories? There's
- a very big difference between constituent meetings. That's not mission critical whether a constituent
- meeting gets posted on the website versus that we make the Jack Hopkins process work and people get
- their money. It's like they're two different things.
- They are broken down. I would be happy to share some of the breakdown with you, which I think is more
- helpful than me, if I'm looking through the work we did. But I guess I'm still coming back to the question
- of if you have your attorney who's doing your 15 hours a week, and that's getting broken down where
- every council member correct me or do whatever you want to do.
- If every council member gets an hour with the attorney to go through their concerns or legal questions
- and everything else, and the rest is just dedicated legal work, all that other stuff still has to be
- done. Are you moving to a space where you want the first office to take over that role of being the
- super chief staff slash administrator or whatever you want to call it in character?
- remaining if it isn't really jam, council administrator, deputy clerk of council administration, this
- smells better in the evening stuff than I am hoping she jumps in under the moment. I like the ones that
- you came up with. Okay. Deputy clerk of council administration. That's good to me. But if that's something
- that he wants to, that's cool. We can start actually
- planning for our default position tends to be, what are we doing in 50 years in the office? So building
- for that, so we can have replicable processes as an office makes sense to me. But if you're really aiming
- toward rebuilding your current structure, in that case, I would say, we're going to back away and then
- it's all working out. Does that make that a lot longer than it needs to be from the meeting time?
- But I mean, I think the problem is that it seems to me the understanding among majority council members
- was once we get an apparent hire, that person is going to look at the structure of the office and the
- work done and have input into what happened. So it's impossible, even though we won't need the help,
- at least through the end of the summer. I don't think the three of us committee members can permit
- I think that's a great point. Let's put an action on the table and see and react to it. One way that
- we can address this is that we can hire, for example, if Michael, I'm talking to Michael later,
- this week about this question of being available in summer, so we could hire Michael in Ari's position
- after Ari goes off to become a lawyer, right? Is that the thoughts on, and giving Michael all this stuff
- to do, right? Is that, reactions to that? Is he graduating? No, he's just here all summer. Oh, just
- giving it to him for the summer.
- Is he available for full-time? Definitely full-time. Do we know who's available for full-time? No. Okay.
- He said he was available for more than what the current fellowship is. We're going to elaborate more
- on that. I think it would have to be 29 hours, right? Because otherwise it becomes a different job.
- I think there are like 14. I'm 29 hours. Because after acting 29, you have to get the legal health insurance.
- Yeah. I don't have that.
- So why is that a barrier when we have money in our budget? Yeah, and so that's what I'm asking. Is that
- the best solution? If we need a full-time person, let's get a full-time person. So that's the question
- on the table, right? So one reaction, yes. You have more options than just Michael. That would be great.
- I'm not trying to come through on him. But you also have a past researcher who just passed the bar.
- and got their work visa so they could actually work with a council. I think I'm meeting with Kristen
- on a Friday so I can talk to her. So you have other options. And I think that's a good sort of discussion
- about your evening council prep and stuff like that on Wednesdays. I would prioritize that.
- not just in the summer, but into the fall. If you're trying to prioritize where you have work and where
- you don't, you can do it personally, but for me, I hire Mary, I hire Christine, I have Michael do the
- meetings, and we talk to the clerk staff about filming gaps that you have there. That's what I would
- do, but I am one person in front of the clerk's office, and I know you guys have your other considerations.
- That seems reasonable to me. I'll tell you my other consideration, and then, I mean, I'm being open here,
- on my theory of change, which is, and I've said it from the beginning, which is, and I think Isabel
- and I have both said something along these lines that in the long run, it is better. Let me say it this
- way. It is better for the clerk to be more integrated into the things that council best
- I think it is. And I think that there are a lot of positive institutional outcomes to the clerks being
- allowed, being able, being powered to do many of the things that we are discussing. I think that's one
- of the things. And I think that there are a plethora of institutional benefits to that.
- One of which is that, just being frank, I think that it's a vehicle through which you could increase,
- you could arguably, justifiably, however else you want to say it, increase clerk pay, particularly of
- these types of clerks.
- of the chief ones while in possibly saving money. I actually think that there's a model in which you
- can shift some of these costs that we currently put on overtime, that we currently put on tech staff,
- that we end up bloating in the council budget that would perhaps make more sense passing to a clerk.
- It then also gives us more flexibility in terms of how we
- Use council and how we organize the council staff and what I mean by that not flexibility actually latitude,
- because I think that at the moment and all the conversations we're having about well we're going to
- hire an attorney and that person can decide, we actually don't have a lot of degrees of freedom. If,
- if already, you know,
- 80% of their job is spoken for and you make packets and you do this and you show up to meetings,
- you know, and I'm maybe over-generalizing the amount, but you see what I'm saying in terms of, you know,
- we don't give a person a lot of breathing room. And I think that that's also the learning curve for
- eligible people to be hired, which makes the job just really, really difficult. And so just to me, it
- makes a lot of sense to devolve a lot of that to the clerk.
- There's a side of me which says that I'd really like to use the silver lining of this moment to see
- like, what does it look like for more things go to the clerk and secure the reports back on, okay, well,
- yeah, this did result in us working more, this, you know, this stretches here and here and here are
- the pain points. And then, right, so that we actually start seeing, I don't know how, when else we'll
- be able to do that. So that's, I'm thinking out loud here, but just thinking about, you know,
- just how this all worked. I also will note that I think that, you know, there's been, it was just really
- unfortunate timing, right, when we lost our staff, because then you guys immediately went on break,
- and then, you know, there's been bereavement, another of these, like there's just been like, you know,
- totally unfortunate timing. However, I will note that the interface between clerk and our wonderful
- staff, I think has been a really, really strong, and I think a really positive point.
- correct me if you feel otherwise in front of them, please. The better that we knew how those processes
- are working, like now, like we have somebody comes in the universe, we're like, wait, who's doing this?
- And, you know, Oh, are you here? I didn't know you're here. Like, you know, like those types of things.
- But I just think that that interface also feels a lot more natural than the interface of like counsel attorney,
- I don't know, this is a lot more of a natural way to organize this side of the office than I think that
- we have otherwise. So again, just thinking out loud about sort of a lot of the benefits here. Yeah,
- I mean, I agree. I think that a lot of the administrative tasks, if we could move those to Clark's office
- and providing sufficient staffing for that office to do that,
- I think it makes sense. I think we would have to think about our fellows who are fellows for the council,
- not for the clerk, and maybe should gain more experience in legislation since we're a legislative branch.
- Yeah, that's a good point. And so take some of the administrative work maybe off of them. Maybe the
- ideal fellow experience isn't learning how to
- I actually will say like the title of my position is legislative policy research fellow right I feel
- like you know candidly right I
- I've done a little bit of that. I had to look up what a river was to determine whether the... Yes, exactly.
- I just said it was any continuously flowing body on water. But yes, so I've done things here and there.
- We can talk about this after this.
- Enough of that, I think, in my position. So I think that was actually something I was going to talk
- about before the end of the semester about the fall. But since that's being brought up now, I think
- that is something that I'd like to use more of the bulk of my time on. I 100% agree. I would like to
- use more of my time to write legislation. We want to use more of our time to maintain the records in
- a proper way.
- you know, future courts aren't inheriting boxes of rights, right? So I have a question for you.
- And honestly, except from the fiscal committee, because we were talking about salaries around the state,
- and I started looking at stuff today, I was looking at it there. And one of the things that they have
- is they have the nine council in their council budget, they've got the nine council members, they have
- a chief of staff,
- Formerly something something like their legislative whatever I don't remember it, but then they have
- three legislative phases. I talked to Susan up there. You talked to Susan? I think so. Yeah, she's amazing.
- But which is similar to an idea that I think Councilmember Boland had at one point and somebody else
- about dividing the work of three interns and putting it in an intern position.
- And that way each council member has an intern that they can go to and say blah, blah, blah. And like
- internship programs and fellows, and wondering whether or not they're actually differentiated in terms
- of their workload, because you're not really supposed to use them for work of a regular staff person.
- So to the question of legislative research, I mean, actually,
- meeting with the students who are working for the city, whether they're getting credit, but getting
- them the skills, the things they need to move forward in their education career, I think is enormously
- important. But I also think that you don't want all these, I mean, this is such a reactive environment
- because it's been like, we're like shoestring all the time, and so as a consequence, it's like
- Hey, look at what a river is, is like, like, like, like you want, you want there to be a real long-term.
- I found power of the benefit of actually having a supervisory position in place where somebody has function,
- or has their ministry, or who's actually tracking their time appropriately and saying, Hey,
- council member, you've already gotten your five hours of work out of this intern. So you're going to
- need to have to wait. Yeah. The other thing, I mean, the other thing that I think a lot of us have were,
- you know, the,
- There's a time when our current, when our prior council attorney sent us all an email being like,
- I can't do, I can't remember what it was, ABC, because I'm working on X, Y, and Z. And I think most
- of us were like, oh, like unaware of what the whole, what the list was of X, Y, and Z. I was like,
- even me, I'm like, okay, half of these things I've never heard about.
- no idea why you're working on them. Like, I don't know the genesis of them, don't know what the output
- of them is going to be, no idea what the timeline is. And so again, like it shows that, you know,
- so much of, so we have a lot, a lot that we can do to improve the experience for everybody. And importantly,
- for council members, right? I mean, as much as, you know, I've been thinking an awful lot about,
- you know, about as much as,
- Like as much as it's been, I think for most people, they don't realize that all the stuff that you all
- are doing in the background, which is amazing. I think that's how it should be. Like in many ways, like,
- like it's good for things that run so smoothly that people don't even realize. But it's like the things
- that are making, like the reason why we're still talking about Hopewell.
- by and large is because council members have been inhibited to do our own jobs. We're not even getting
- answers to questions, which means that every meeting goes, you know what I'm saying? When it takes a
- really long time to get that support, and I think that we saw that in the past, we just didn't realize
- it as much. I think that the underlying structure is becoming a lot clearer around everyone.
- So again, to your point about transitioning what these positions look like, I think that the answer
- lies very heavily on what does more support from clerks look like. But I recognize that there's a two-prong
- element to that that I think makes the conversation more difficult. One is the question that I already
- put on the table, which is compensation.
- What makes that challenging, though, is that there's also things that are in code that belong to the
- clerk that we've taken as a counsel on as ourselves. So those, to me, exist in an interesting tension
- where it's like,
- local codes, local code primarily. So there's some very explicit things in Title II. I think there's
- some arguments going to be made about state code, which is that there's implicit statements about what's
- expected that the court would do. But I'm just saying there's things that are in our code. And so there's
- this question of what's devolution versus what's increased role
- But regardless, the baseline is current. So even if we're devolving all this stuff back to you, one
- assumes that your pay is set currently based on your current workload. And so, you know, so as the,
- and we have this weird dynamic where
- the elected clerk gets to set the salaries for clerk staff, but council has to approve it. So that's
- also a conversation that I think we need to figure out a way to have with our colleagues to figure out
- really to get some, if we're doing some devolution, passing more things onto the clerk, I think we wanna
- have a clear sense of what are those things that it's not this ad hoc arrangement, but it's really like
- no clerks do packets or whatever,
- of those things that are on the list. Like these are the things that belong to the clerk. And workflows
- between the council staff and clerk staff. Yes, exactly. The council attorney has to have this done
- by this day. Exactly. Exactly. And that's the opportunity that I think is not getting talked enough
- about is the opportunity of improvements in the efficiencies. I mean, the clerk staff, we could make
- everything
- not perfect, they're pretty damn near, you know, and prove the processes. So legal would legal, but
- your counsel attorneys would do the legal stuff. Project-based fellows and perhaps a legal researcher
- or whatever, if there's a restructure, whatever that may be, but then the maintenance of the records,
- which is a part function, is done properly and efficiently and done well. So for example,
- You know, we've had what I call light agendas for the past recent regular sessions. So when you have
- something that's going to be, you know, four items for first reading and resolutions, and then three
- items for second readings, and then maybe something into, like, you have to have that legal final eyes
- on it. And then our final eyes on it to compile and make sure that all those components are a puzzle
- that is properly put together and then distributed, which we have that.
- expertise on a variety of levels to the project management aspect of it. And current staff in particular
- are a big group of nerds. And we've really underlined that in the past month. Yeah, totally. And again,
- thank you so much for all of that. But OK, so that comes back to the question. So one proposal is keep
- somebody like Michael on.
- Try to bring back Christine as an example. Then you had one other element of it. And then continue to
- do some of the things, right? Is that a useful proposal? Can I add something on that too? So I might
- have heard that there's some hourly limits to Michael. Let's see him very specifically. So that could
- be however that position gets re-labeled, let's say,
- that position would be responsible for the meetings, which could be, you know, five hours, you know,
- so it's out of 14 hours, then the rest of that time could be constituent meeting support or constituent
- support generally. So there's inquiries that come to Chelsea at the front desk that we've been kind
- of handling sometimes because the goal is to help the member of the public. So it's, that could be,
- a way to really effectively improve the process that's currently happening. And if I can also say, I
- think you all probably agree that there's room for way more improvement in outreach for residents. And
- that's the thing you just can't, you not even can't do, you can't even think of, which was back in the
- process. We've got all this other stuff that they're doing. Exactly. Not just the council website. Yeah.
- I mean, that could, that needs improvement. Yeah.
- And all these background things that have been continuously put off since I've been hired could be addressed
- very systematically. Yeah. And, but good for like six councils down the road to continuously improve.
- Like it's not about this current situation. This is a really silver opportunity to make everything better.
- Yeah. From A to Z quite honestly.
- So my proposal was that you hire Larry Allen, you look into hiring this team, you hire at least one
- of your fellow family members to support and you negotiate with the books office for all other duties,
- but you will have to make some changes in the way it's structured overall because there are things that
- the books office
- literally does not have permissions to do what the computer systems do. It's a minor thing, basically,
- but you guys will have to talk about it. I know you can't make a lot of these decisions as
- before, ultimately, but it may be worth setting aside that time to hash out the details in council meeting
- and say, this is what we propose, and this is what we work best and wrong. It's not gonna be worth it.
- There's some council members who like
- one aspect or versus another, I know this, but honestly. I think that's a really great, really great
- proposal. I mean, is your thought that, just out of curiosity, is your thought that we would hire Christine
- back in her original position?
- Well, at the time she was here, she was a temp legal researcher in part because she had her LLM, but
- she hadn't actually... Well, she was temp. She didn't have the full temp job. Honestly, I know you have
- the positions available to you, but you have two or three positions. You have a legal researcher position
- that you guys really want to explore how to do it. So she just has the bar? Yep. The legal research
- position does not require JB. No, no. It doesn't even require her. It's a focus on the law, right?
- Right. So it's a workaround. Yeah, it's a workaround. But it would change the whole approach because
- you would say, doing it that way, what you're talking about. Clear on what that way is. I think what
- the clerk is suggesting is that as a not saying go and do this, obviously, because it's not something
- we can just go and do, but it is saying hire this person as your deputy attorney.
- keep Larry Allen as your part-time lead attorney while you hire a lead attorney, and then have Michael
- as temp as your legal researcher. Well, I wonder if, we don't even know if Christine wants to come back.
- Correct, right. I wonder if Christine would be willing to have a job that is called temporary until
- we hire the lead attorney.
- Yeah. Yeah. Well, she might. Yeah. But also, whoever we hire, she didn't, wasn't it a majority council
- opinion that that person should be able to hire their deputies? Yeah, that's right. I mean, that would
- be more of a temporary. Well, that would be a reason to be temporary. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
- Yeah. But she may not be interested in that. She has JD now. She could go out and get a good job and
- have a job security about waiting for
- I'm happy to talk to her when I see her on Friday. I mean, I think she was very confident. She was great
- at onboarding me. She was very, very good at the work that she did and asked a lot of great questions
- when she was first coming on. I mean, I know that's getting into the weeds and everything, but there
- are lots of people who can play that role. They can advertise in that way. But I think the temporary
- dynamic of it
- especially when you're talking about people being able to choose their deputies isn't important because
- you didn't have that in the last time. Sometimes that can bring its own issues. I know I like being
- able to choose people. Yeah. I will also stand on Cook's side of that, especially working with Lisa
- and anyone new, is that having, like, I can't imagine a counsel attorney necessarily wanting to come
- with this new, highly specific, high-demand role
- with no mental health system, no institution or anything. Yeah, that is another thought. And definitely
- you can't hire at every return. Like that's a lot of legal aid. Yeah, we can. I mean, it is an interesting
- thought in the sense that if you have a good candidate within, I mean, basically what you would suggest
- this person do is apply for the lead attorney job and then we could go to counsel and say, well, if
- somebody applied,
- You don't have to be Christine, it could be anybody else, right? Who applies, we're like, look, this
- is a great person. We don't think that they're the right person for the lead attorney role, but we actually
- think they would be an excellent person for the seventh role. And so what we're asking is the authority
- to hire this person as such. We can have that conversation without even having to post the other role,
- I mean. Yeah, it's a big conversation.
- We have 17 minutes left. What else do we have to talk about? In terms of actions, I think it would be
- really helpful. I think this is an interesting way you're going to talk to Christina if she's interested
- in any way of working. Does she have a job currently? Because if she's interested in a temporal, I'm
- going to talk to Michael.
- I'm going to talk to Michael and get us to the same sense about his availability in long term. What
- would be very useful, I think, in two stages here. The list that you have, I think, would be very useful
- to separate and star things that you think are like
- make most sense with the things that you're like, these are the things that we're happy to own. These
- are the things that make sense for us to own. These are the things that we want to own that would even
- make our lives easier if we owned or something like that.
- Yeah. Well, I mean, that's fine, but let's see, but it's important if that's the position, right? If
- you're like, look, there's nothing that we want to do, then that changes the whole dynamic.
- If the conversation is like, look, there's something we want to do, but there's a broader conversation
- about structures and A and blah, blah, blah, that's a different conversation than actually
- don't want to do any of this stuff, right? So, so I think like being really, really clear about the
- things that you think naturally fit, because then we can have the conversation about, okay, like,
- you know, both of the temporary and the long-term, what needs to be covered here? Does that make sense?
- So, so- Why the other person needs to be covered? Exactly. Because, because that's the other thing,
- because, because even as- We don't expect you to take things without adequate resources. Right. But,
- but, but that's a tiered question. It's like,
- It's like, what are the things that make sense to exist in the Kirk's office long-term? I think question
- one. Question two, what are the things that you're happy to do now? The answer is already on the list,
- all of these things. But then the question then is, what's the best approach to that? Is the best approach
- that we go and hire a temporary person who their job is to do those things? Or is the best approach
- that we figure out some type of a structural adjustment so that it works for you all of the current
- existence now, just realistically,
- I don't, there's only really one mechanism to doing the structural adjustment and that's outside of
- our hands. Like we couldn't, like that would be, that would require the mayor to involve themselves
- and do a bonus payment or something like that. Like the other mechanism is long-term pay changes, right?
- Or something like that. So anyways, my point is that you all have to come to some understanding about
- that so that we can, we can structurally start to have that conversation, right? And so we're looking at,
- I wrote down May 6th. I don't know where I got that. May 7th? What's May 7th? I think it's May 2nd,
- right? What do you all... May 1st, right? May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st.
- May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st.
- May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st. May 1st.
- on me first, like if you'll just throw up your hands and laugh, like what would we notice, right? Like
- what are things that would stop happening is essentially the question. And you know, trying to get that
- to as little as zero as possible. I mean, for like for Jack Hawkins, that was like the bulk of the work
- these past couple of weeks I would say. And I'm trying to work with Courtney to like preemptively compare
- materials and have stuff ready so that
- At least you guys have like stock to use or go off of. So if there's any other, I guess, situations
- like that, we could do the same thing. But once we talk to Michael, I mean, because we have the author,
- we can hire Michael, like we have the authority to do that within the structure. Yeah. Right. And so,
- so if that works, I think that's the natural.
- thing is to have Michael take essentially Aria's job for the summer, and then you would all hand over
- everything to Michael. How many hours? What's your job? 29. Is it minimum and maximum of 29,
- or up to 29? It's just up to 29. Are contracts done for your job? You know what, I can tell you about
- this tomorrow.
- Yeah, I'm responding to ours. No workplace that we haven't made an allocation of anything like that
- yet. Okay, so that's, I think, tasks in regards to this, yeah, for everyone. Great. So are we, like,
- are we going to have another meeting of this committee to hear back on those tasks, or? I think we need
- to, yes. Yeah. But in terms of the- So we can make sure it may work covered. Yeah. Michael has agreed
- to- Exactly, exactly.
- But now from the committee, are you all comfortable? If Michael is happy to work 29 hours, are you all
- comfortable with me working through our process to move on that? Yes. Okay. I don't think we need one.
- I'm just asking for consensus. Yeah, we've covered that multiple times just to make sure we're all on
- the same page. It's finally done.
- Okay. So the other question that I have for you all is, as we now bring Larry on board, are there certain
- things in any excess time that Larry has
- that we'd like to leverage and keeping in mind that it's a high salary, but what other things can we
- use Larry to do? Are there things that we'd like to say, by the end of this time, we love offing? Conflicting
- legal opinions on what council can and can't do legally. It would be nice
- to have rarity flush and work that out, especially in regards to. But that feels like a little bit,
- that feels like a little bit in the normal flow of work knowing. But I'm asking, and that's quite an
- important point because we also probably should think about how do we want, because we didn't have an
- answer to this when we were full-time.
- How do we test it? That's within the normal scope of things. How do we even test with that? Do we say
- spend time equally amongst council members? Do we want him to report each week on how he's spending
- time? I don't quite understand what Sidney was getting at.
- Like, there are things that we're not sure. Yeah. And I think we've got that answered. Are you talking
- about like, whether we can be involved with title 15 as an athlete?
- or, well, I'm more referring to what are our leverage points with regards to the budget process, but
- there have been multiple times where Councilor Rice has completely come up with a different legal opinion
- than existing precedent. I guess I'm just not rebelling some of those things. But even then, that's
- something that fits in, which I think is a very important thing to talk about as well, which is how
- do we even task a person who's part of time?
- how we want to deal with, you know, so that's a very valid thing that we need a lawyer for. Well, and
- then there's legislation. Some legislation is not urgent. Right. Some legislation may be urgent. I mean,
- if we find out that FLOC is not a safeguards, if we don't press them or whatever, we're going to want
- FLOC legislation. Right. And I think that there's also this question, though, of like, you know,
- In the past, we would say, and I think that's every council member's decision, one may feel more or
- less comfortable with.
- putting something forward before you have a full legal opinion on a thing. I mean, usually from my point
- of view, I'm like, you put a separate ability product on it because things may come up that you're,
- it'll actually be put in that way. Great, okay. That's why we put a set response on it, right? Like,
- I don't know, but I think others, and depending on the thing that you're working on, right? You might
- want a lot of specialness. Exactly, exactly. So, you know, so, but I think that's a hard question still.
- It's like, what is the right way to task
- We don't know that with our full-time staff. So I'm just really worried about the part-time. And when
- I look at the hours of our external council for the PUD, they were spending all time. I mean,
- it was like, I spent two hours talking on the phone to council member Sunso. And I spent an hour and
- a half doing research for council member Sunso. And they'd call me and just tell me all this. And I'm
- sort of like, okay, great. I mean, that's what you should do because council members have equal access
- to you. But if we did that forever with this person,
- we would have spent lots and lots of money. I think it also depends on the person. Yes. Yes. I think
- the previous attorney that we had tended to repeat themselves and go on and on. Yes. Yes. Yes. But I
- actually mean our external person. I'm talking about the, right? And I just mean our external, the people
- that we just contracted with for the PD.
- Right. It exploded, but the amount of hours we thought it was going to be ended up being like three
- times that much money. And it's like, that's okay. Yeah. That's also like why I send them home halfway
- through the meal. I was like, I was like, okay, I was spending a lot of money. Please go home. There's
- two of you here. Like, you know, so, so, but I, but I think like, so, so what's the best way I'm doing
- this? Like how? Question. So is that contract done with that law firm? No, we're, we're retaining them
- in the case that we need
- a pinch hitter like that again. And so Larry's start date is when? I don't know. And so the mayor just
- says that she doesn't have the form that I'm waiting for. So as soon as you know, if you could let us
- know, because a lot of the new onboarding and training would probably come from us, from clerk staff
- in the sense of, well, quite honestly, like just even basics of the accessibility stuff that's happening.
- bringing them up to speed, I think that I'd be okay with doing some training. And the good thing is
- that there's like that institutional knowledge that Larry has from, you know, having been a city attorney
- and a deputy mayor. You don't have to do the long run. Yes. Yes. Yes.
- Question, since there's five minutes left, do we want to look at the schedule? We should, yeah.
- Thank you. Oh, and just, you know, with regard to the accessibility stuff, we still have some training
- materials that I put together last semester. Excellent. Excellent. So that stuff can kind of get transferred
- over. I can talk a little bit with that, but RITS, the program, has made updates to our Google Workspace.
- So if something was drafted months and months ago, it will need to be redone. OK, I'll take a look at
- a lot of the stuff that probably still applies.
- I'll have to look and see what updates there are. Could you all by chance do Thursday the 23rd? That
- is after the regular session. Is that okay? Yes, I can do that. What would thoughts be? So I was going
- to ask, because we've changed now the cadence of our scheduling meeting, what would thoughts be about
- doing it when we would have done scheduling meeting in the morning?
- I can't do it that afternoon, but Sophia didn't hear a little 30. I can make it work, but. You might
- have the most sunshiny, bright, good smelling version. Well, alternative than we could do.
- So it potentially would be, let's say, nine o'clock Thursday, April 23rd. Yeah. What time? I might have
- to join virtually, but I just think that might be a nicer time for everyone than doing it at nighttime.
- I guess somebody should check with him. Yeah, I can check with him. He did say that Thursdays were difficult.
- So did he say that? I think so. I thought he said Tuesday through Thursday.
- What are your, what is your, cause I'm out of town on the 21st and 22nd. So I could, I couldn't do,
- um, which is I'm going to be virtual on the 22nd for the council meeting, but, um, I could do maybe
- virtual on the 21st. Um, Oh, I can't. Okay. So didn't we just say,
- We could do the, you wanted the evening of the 23rd? Is that better? Does it make a difference? I don't
- know what date. Well, okay, but I can check with Dave, and then can I confirm with the clerk once I
- check with Dave? So are we happy, you guys are both available at the sort of 8.30 time for Thursday,
- and if that doesn't work, or we could do nine if that's more comfortable, but the 8.39 time on Thursday,
- and then you guys are there anyways, the 23rd or,
- we can do this time at 5.30 time, Thursday, 23rd. All those, all those scenes. I can't be there. I mean,
- if you have a rough sketch out of those things, I can be the watcher. Yeah. Okay. And I won't be here
- on it. I mean, when we hear it, it's, you know,
- that was when you're supposed to celebrate, but that's fine. Like I don't have to be here. So we'll
- look at both. I'll ask Dave and then we'll see which of those two times and with the bias for the morning.
- So you're right. Okey-dokey. Thank you all. I know it feels like we're making slow progress, but I think
- we're making a lot of progress on a thing that says that
- Yeah, but again, I feel like we're getting a lot of clarity on paths forward for us. I know this feels
- very meta, like a lot of these conversations, but I think they've been very helpful to help us make
- some decisions. Well, I want to express deep appreciation to Corporal Dunn and the deputies for creating
- this conference document that they self-passed. Yes, yes.
- Yeah, she really direct most of that. All I did, I said Colleen, Colleen, I don't want this. Yeah. And
- she made it happen. So you can thank me for asking for it. And we really thank her for doing it.
- We're so, so, so grateful. Because that would be very helpful. Of course, and we're forward to see what
- can be demonstrated for this. Yes. I understand. Thank you. Thank you both for, so we're so happy that
- you are here. Yeah, whatever I remember from that year ago. For sure. We were separated a year ago.
- That is 630.