Springfield City Council — October 18, 2021

0:03 when you are an educator all right i'm going to call the uh the work session of the springfield city council to order with roll call mayor van gorden here councillors pitts here oh here broadly here here woodrow here and pissionary yes ma'am i'm here all right we have one item for the work session tonight which is council operating policies and procedures with nancy and mary bridget and i think mary bridget is going to take the majority of this good evening mayor and council i'm here tonight to talk with you about your operating policies and procedures

0:48 um we have a lot of time for this discussion tonight but the idea is to just really give the council some time to talk about how they do their business and ask questions so i i have this powerpoint to try and slow myself down because i will have a tendency to go too fast so hopefully um this will work and aj is sharing her screen can you see that okay yes okay fabulous okay um and then uh that will help me if i tried to share my screen i wouldn't be able to see you and i wouldn't be able to see if you had any questions so um we're going to try and go through it this way but if you need me to stop or anything just shout out or raise your hand and i'll do my best to make sure i see

1:35 so uh turning toward um the item tonight there were several items in your packet the ais and then a council briefing memorandum the actual rules were attached and then a copy of this powerpoint just to give you some idea of the topics we're going to cover the discussion kind of intent and purpose for this evening is to be able to have our regular review of the council operating policies and procedure as required by our charter then an opportunity for counselors to ask questions or discuss amongst yourself how you all do business or if there are particular areas that you've always kind of wondered about and then provide guidance to staff about potential changes or future topics where you'd like more discussion

2:20 um looking at the charter requirements and looking at the um slide that starts cancel operating policies and procedures i'm going to apologize momentarily this is not going to go away so bear with me while i fix in the background no problem this happens to me all the time now with the new the new word um so operating policies and procedures uh i will tell you i am in and out of these things quite often and it's always that i come across something that i'm like oh yeah i forgot about that or oh yeah that's how we do that so if you're newer

3:05 to the council or not you still have questions please feel free like you can ask um this isn't something that you have to feel like you should know all the answers to so i want people to feel like they can definitely bring up um questions or concerns that they have about these the other thing that's sort of interesting to me about the operating policies and procedures is that springfield's like almost every other community in the charter it will say you need to have rules and you need to look at them regularly but there's no guidance about what needs to be in them it should be what they should look like and that can create um i think uncertainty but also i think it's really meant to have these rules work for each individual community so they all look a little different and as i've been working on this i looked at other

3:50 communities and our every community there's a lot of variety every community is a little different but there's also some commonalities you'll see but it's really meant to be a working document where you can look up how we should do our business the other thing that these operating policies do is they sort of provide this connective tissue between the charter the statutes and the rules and so you know you've heard me say before your charters kind of like the constitution the municipal codes like your statutes these are sort of like your administrative roles or your department policies so there'll be more in the weeds but they will definitely loop back to those higher requirements so you can kind of figure out oh yeah that's why we do that because we're required by law to do x so most of the rules have to cancel meetings so this is the first topic i

4:36 wanted to talk about tonight i was trying to think how to frame this part of the discussion and i guess i would just say as you know council meetings have really changed in the last few months much more than we ever anticipated they would be so we have our remote format as you know we've been doing this for just about a year and a half in the time that we've been remote um staff has upgraded technology in council chambers with the idea that we would go back to a hybrid environment where you might still be in council chambers be able to take testimony remotely so we have that technology um that's in chambers now but just

5:23 really haven't had the opportunity to give it a lot of work um the other thing that happened is that the statute or i'm sorry the legislature passed a statute where they are now requiring communities to make best efforts to allow for remote testimony at council meetings policy behind this is to leverage technology to increase public participation so what that really means is if you have a council meeting in your in person but you have the opportunity where you take testimony from folks business from the audience public hearings then you need to be able to also have the electronic method to do that so um that's the new statute we'll be complying with that statute because of

6:09 the technology um and really i think moving forward to think about our meetings now you know not snapping back to the way they were but really moving forward to kind of a new way to communicate with folks and so i was just wondering if folks had questions about remote meetings or thinking about how we want to shift to this hybrid or some opportunity for discussion there counselor woodrow yes my question is um if we have if we're back in person meetings and we also have the electronic um connection how do we prioritize or how do we how do we um deal with both the combination of people in in person filling out cards

6:54 and people saying online that they want to testify how does how does that listing how do we make that fair and so is your so i'm understanding the question is it kind of like what's the sequencing do we take folks in the chambers first and then remotely or vice versa or combination thereof right i think i'm trying to think of um how to make it as simple as possible so that it's not complicated okay how how do we make sure that we have everybody covered but it's in a way that they understand it too because we it would be difficult to go back to my way i think it'd be difficult to keep going back and forth between online and in person because not only would that be complicated for us to be complicated for the public so if there was a simple way to

7:40 um set it up where maybe the in-person people testify first and the online people have that amount of time to sign up so that then we immediately go to the online people and and work our way through it gives them time while other people are in person are testifying to to sign up um i was thinking something like something something that's simple that everybody understands and it does and there's not a lot of questions or not a lot of complexity okay but something that's consistent yes okay all right corey so my question is really not necessarily about public participation but it's

8:27 about whether there's either anything in the statute or whether we can chat about um continuing to broadcast the meetings so i know before like the work sessions were public but not a lot of people would come to them now because they're broadcast a lot of folks are more engaged and come to even the work sessions and then even more folks are coming on the regular to the public meetings and so my question is will we have the technology to continue to both broadcast the meetings live and to then record them and have them available for people to watch after as we've been able to do so you're saying you're asking when you say broadcast you mean like like we do right now where someone could log in and observe the meeting from home yes if you

9:12 all are sitting in chambers on the dice there yeah yes yeah again i can confirm that i think so but i can confirm that so i'm getting down a little into the weeds i'm sure but this whole bit about i mean i i don't mind anybody coming to talk to our meetings at all i welcome it that's fine no matter where they're you know no matter what they're trying to say or or not say and even if the same thing said for weeks and weeks it doesn't matter it's fine but what matters to me is that i want to know who i'm talking to who's talking to me okay this whole thing with uh well i'm just a community member i it doesn't get

9:57 it with me in a sense that okay they're not even saying what community so what person is not a community member and you know and frankly i'm voted in office by the citizens of springfield and if someone is calling and they're a citizen of eugene they're definitely not going to have near the weight in my mind or my decision-making process than someone i answer to so this this whole loose-ended thing it's great we want to get people to access but um to give a blank check and just let people call and say whatever they feel like and then try to influence us with every way they want to and they're not even not even living here or a citizen of springfield doesn't make any sense to me at all so you know for it's difficult for me to

10:43 pay any attention at all to someone that wants to declare themselves a community member other than the fact that okay what community who are they uh it's frustrating obviously you can tell so um i'd love for them to call in but i'd love to know who i'm talking to okay even though you know i think all the council members and staff want to be present if there's a certain situation where we can but we can be virtual uh is that still an option to where let's say i

11:28 couldn't make it in time but i was able to hop on my computer or phone uh would that still be an option for counselors or staff to still appear remotely is that correct yes all right i think so i think what i'm gonna do is i'll take the questions on the meeting and i might ask someone from the city manager's office to pop up because they know more about this technology than i do and this will help us figure out what we need to get rolling for you guys when we do start to do more hybrid meetings mary bridget i am popped up you probably can't see me on your screen oh okay and i can answer counselor broadly's question this is nancy newton sorry i didn't identify myself faux pas there um so counselor bradley we will still have

12:13 the ability to record the meetings and post them online as we do now so that will not go away um and then as far as the ability for counselors um to um appear online you know i think i certainly we would have the ability to support that um from a technology perspective um and i my my hope would be um to use this as a tool at least for staff so that maybe i could send a say a department director had to be there for a particular item i could send them home they could you know have dinner or whatever and then i could you know text them when their item is coming up and it

12:59 could be a time saver um certainly for the staff in the future so i think you know it'll be a little wonky as we fir as we start to work it through um but i think it's really up to you as council and i think it um you know if i may opine i it's difficult to recruit um council members and it's a difficult job and so anything that we can do as a city to make it easier for you to connect um i think is for the better thanks mayor van gorden um counselor pictionary is raising a uh a very interesting question and i think that what we need to do is we need to

13:45 consider whether we are going to allow both the in-person and remote people not to identify themselves when they speak in the meeting now so far we've been pretty lucky in that the people who are speaking anonymously in these remote meetings have had fairly benign things to say i think the uh the the most uh the the the most um i guess um the the most severe thing that i've heard from somebody who didn't identify themselves we're talking about a a neighbor in the washburn district but i can easily see that being abused by members of the

14:32 community i mean if there were some sort of vendetta that a neighbor was conducting then he could certainly enlist members of the community all to speak anonymously against a neighbor and it seems like a bad precedent to say i um if we're not going to allow the people who are speaking in person not to identify themselves and i suspect we're not going to then i think that joe is right that we should probably require everyone to identify themselves as forward okay um counselor pictionary did you want to respond to that or did you have a different issue no i i have a hand up on us another issue but yes um that's thank

15:18 you leonard and and it just it's just for that i think it actually has been abused a little bit and i started you know if it's predictable it's preventable and if it's hedging that direction now i can see it going full-blown if we don't we don't cut it off the past now and i again i i honor the people and respect the people coming in it takes guts but but part of those taking guts and being forthright to us as a council is that them being forthright completely and and so letting us know that they are a citizen this is who i am this is i'm a citizen of the springfield and i want to be heard those are the people i'm going to be paying attention to and totally completely focused but i think that has been hedged a little bit leonard like you mentioned not not grossly but i think it's going that direction and it's

16:03 you know it seems like it's being kind of chiseled away over the last several months and and it keeps going that way we have more and more community member people speaking as opposed to once in a while so it's going that direction and and then uh the other part that i was going to mention a different subject but what uh counselor pitts had mentioned too is hedged on is that the um i'm an old-fashioned i think you muted yourself yes i was trying to improve your point right in the middle of saying i'm an old-fashioned person i was trying to lower my hand at the same time and i turn the mic off right okay so so uh going right to with what uh counselor pitch was saying is that

16:48 i never thought i would hear myself and i think even sean would be shocked with this statement is that i don't i don't think i would have i couldn't envision myself saying hey you know what this zoom platform has been working quite well it has made my council life easier it allows me i i know if you guys realize this but i do quite a bit of traveling and it has made my life easier to to do travel and then i can stop in the middle of my travel and say okay this is my meeting and i'm going to be there and it doesn't matter where i'm at and and i can be fully engaged now there's times where i'm completely out of cell range but very rarely but i would like to see this continue i'd like to just see it as a as a per

17:34 meeting option and and go from there um okay so uh yeah i'm going to jump in here about the hybrid uh option and then we'll go we'll go to corey um i think i'm really for counselors in particular um i think i'm open to pursuing that you know kind of a hybrid option and give people you know we used to have a language where you could call in in the operating procedures so instead sort of replace it with language where you know where people can participate through zoom you know as long as you know in general um and then we just as a group i think it's really important that we're gonna go into this and it's gonna feel awkward and clunky and right we just have to be willing and able to sort of revisit

18:19 where we're at in any given moment um and then talk about how to make some adjustments because i'm not sure we're gonna get it perfect but i think the idea of being flexible enough that where we can have the meeting where a counselor is on the road and he can call in or a staff person can per you know give their five-minute item you know from the comfort of their own home i think that makes a lot of sense for the future um and then steve i don't know how to turn the yellow hand on by the way but so i'll just use this one i don't know if anybody remembers enough we have always been counselors i've always been able to attend meetings by telephone comfortable we've done that for years so yeah so we're continuing on with that and

19:05 only going virtual now um i just wasn't first i'm gonna say to counselor pictionary i feel you it's hard to do like the hand and the the microphone and all those things there's probably a keyboard shortcut i'm never going to learn that um so i just want to loop back to us i really appreciate us digging into um what it means for folks to identify themselves because i think that i just want to i just want to kind of clarify and everybody can jump on me if they want to i think that we decided that we don't need to know people's addresses because that was where it started that folks were like we don't want to share

19:50 address that feels really like exposing so we're like fine we really just need to know that you know where you live and if you're in springfield it's helpful to know the ward because the council listens so we went that and then it's gotten pushed to where people don't want to use their name at all um and i think that it's still i don't have strong feelings that i don't need to know somebody's full name and address but it's helpful to have at least that we have a community packed where somebody's like you know even if they're using my name is cookie smith or whatever and i'm in ward whatever so that we know how to do follow-up and the other thing that i think is for me is just to really continue to share with folks that there are lots of ways to share with the

20:35 council that you don't have to come to a public meeting so if someone feels that coming to a public meeting is super exposing they can send an email you can send an email to aj who will then forward it on to us and so there's lots of ways for folks to share their voices that don't mean coming to a public meeting if that feels really you know somehow it feels uncomfortable exposing so um i just wanted to just for for me i just wanted to reiterate that so that we're like oh historically we sort of made these steps to make it more accessible and then as i think both counselors stare and council fishery were saying it feels like it's going to a place that's like that wasn't the intent um and now there's this potential to to create risk on the other side

21:30 i figured out the hand um hey it only took six months um a couple things one as far as we when we look back historically people have come in to testify in person it's very hard to stand there at the podium and say that they're anonymous when they're standing there physically to testify so i think if we look at if we look at where that came from and then move it into the electronic era i think we i think we can expect the same uh the same thing is we expect to know who the person is and uh and identify you know if they want to identify area or whatever um and and i and i i i was thinking the

22:16 same way that corey was thinking in the sense that there isn't it isn't just public testimony that people can come to us with they can send an email to the entire council they can send an email to their individual counselor or as corey cory mentioned and aj did it not too long ago uh to pass along something that somebody has given to her um for the council to be aware of so i think there's different ways for people to get information to us questions concerns um if they are concerned in a privacy uh situation there's different ways to get information to us rather than being in the public uh arena and i will say that i know to a person on this council and the mayor and the city manager that

23:01 each one of us individually is dedicated enough to to respond to however somebody wants to get in touch with us so they don't if they don't feel comfortable publicly in front of the camera or in to in person or whatever they can get information to us and we you know we we are just as dedicated to that as we are to any in-person testimony um and i think the other um i've lost track with the other one oh the hybrid um it wasn't too long ago that we had a financial dictionary committee where a couple of us were on line at the same time that the meeting was being held in the library meeting room that seemed to work well um and as has been mentioned there were times when we haven't been able to get

23:46 there and we've been on been on the phone uh in in past in the past so i think a hybrid mode um as joe said it makes it easier especially if if i'm working late or if i'm working and i'm pushing to try to make travel time just to get into counsel sometimes it might it may end up being a lot easier for me to to get on to log online so i think a hybrid is actually in some ways going to be make it easier um when we when we run up against those situations so i would i would think hybrid would be it would be good to establish a hybrid way of of doing it

24:34 corey okay i have two pieces on this i also am for being as accessible as possible and i just want to and i probably don't have to say this to staff because you all are already in this world hybrid meetings are hard and the more flexible we are the more opportunities there are to sort of introduce kind of inequities and challenges and um it's hard to facilitate a hybrid meeting and to make sure that everybody is getting hurt so i think if we're going to lean in that direction which i think we should we just have to give ourselves space and i think that nancy newton said that you know it's going to be clunky and it might mean that we don't the meetings don't run as quickly or it's going to take us more time and maybe maybe no not to pick on anybody but we

25:19 don't cram three meetings into one night or you know just there might be some things you need to do to make space to do it right and well um because i just uh personally because i have had to do them i mean hybrid meetings are hard and it's hard to figure out who's paying attention and who's not and what's happening and where people are coming from and who's got their sound on and who's in person so i just want to say that and then i just want to loop back so there's a piece that i didn't say and i i realized that we are sort of sort of talking around it when we talk about um you know how people testify and how people get engaged and i know that counselor pitts has talked a lot about what it what it means to create a welcoming space and and what it means when you know there are certain voices that are taking up a lot of space even though they have lots to say

26:04 and then we've had some pushback from people saying well it doesn't feel safe so i'm not using my name and i just want to like hold on to that there's a big difference between safety and comfort and it's not a public meeting is not necessarily in government particularly you know our main purpose is not necessarily to be a comfortable place i mean it's it's hard work and we talk about hard stuff and some people don't like to be in public and all of those things and so when things feel uncomfortable a lot of us start to say well this feels unsafe to me because i don't know what's going to happen and it's not necessarily unsafe it's just uncomfortable and

26:49 part of the reason that we have the city link program is because people don't always understand what's happening in a public meeting and they don't understand you know can i say it here do i speak at this public hearing do i speak at this public thing so the fact that we don't necessarily folks don't necessarily know when and how doesn't make it unsafe it may make it clunky but we try to hold some grace and some understanding for that so i just wanted to just say that out loud because i think we're kind of talking around that and how do we actually create a really vibrant engaging meetings doesn't necessarily mean that everybody is going to feel comfortable that's all for now so it looks like we've kind of gone through and back and forth on that on the the remote meeting format and i just want to add two more things in mary bridget then

27:35 you can see if you've got anything else that you want to have us kind of dive into okay um one of them is that i think when we talk about the language for the hybrid meeting we really do want to kind of promote over communication here so especially if we're going to be super flexible you know we we definitely need to have people either like texting me or texting aj saying hey i can't make it i'm dialing in so we can keep a account for everybody i don't know that that needs to be sort of codified in the rules but i think it's valuable to say um the second thing that i think is kind of important in all of this is really if we can talk about like probably the last year and a half we've really put a lot of these meetings up on youtube and maybe this is direct we don't have to codify this maybe this is

28:20 just direction for nancy to pursue um we want to is practice i think we want to keep doing that and filling out that you know have that be our sort of operating procedure that when we when instead of having in-depth minutes right that we're meeting that requirement to keep records by essentially making that video available to everybody as soon as we can and to me that really means that ideally we want to get to a point where we're just streaming it live to youtube because it will just be it would just be easier for aj if she didn't have to upload it and so i i don't know how much of that would need to be sort of put in the procedures versus hey we want to work we want to work towards that point but um i really think the place we got to be is we've got to be storing our records in video format

29:06 okay um joe so um on top of what you just said mayor van gorden um i you know over the last several months since march of 2020 um we have involved staff in a ton of things and changing up things and trying to punt where we can and i and we have to and we've been doing that um i'm concerned that you know just what you just mentioned uh just a few seconds ago sean is that we're saying okay well now go ahead and upload that to youtube and then a few months ago we said okay well we need to put these links on the site and then a few months before that we had we need to do this we need to do that and in my head i can't recollect

29:53 verbatim but in my head it appears or sounds as though we've been adding a bunch of stuff for staff to now make these adjustments in the famous words of due to covet so where i mean where i mean are is her cup full or is it is it been lessened with her duties because she's she doesn't have to be there but i think she's been there many times i'm just concerned about um with staff what are we dumping on them or is someone going to be astute enough to say okay time out this is we're going to start we're going to start things are going to start dropping off if we have to continue this direction

30:38 and and we need to look at we need to look at what's what's dropping off okay i just i mean i just want to i mean hopefully someone is paying attention that i would hope that neil is i would hope that nancy is and i would hope that amy is going to bark up if it's hitting her but we need to as a counselor i need i think we should be cognizant of what we are bequeathing to everybody around us nancy do you want to jump in here uh you're on you and you have your hand up i know i did the double whammy oh my goodness so i did that just so everybody could feel good about any mistakes they made previously um you know that's a really good question uh counselor questionary and i

31:24 have been talking to our clerk about workload i'm always concerned about workload with with all of the city staff and in all departments because we're just we're at the lowest staffing level we have been since i think 2010. um i'd have to go back and check that but it's low trust me on this um if if we were to do um written minutes and then also video that would be pretty time intensive i think um video is probably easier from a from a standpoint of you kind of push and go but um it has right now as we're doing it we might want to look at um how people can

32:09 access the information because right now it's just the full video it may require a little bit of um technology to index by subject and and i i don't want to go too far off the rails because you can i've seen this in different cities where it's very meticulously you can go on the agenda click it it will take you exactly to that point um and you can do that it just is a ton of money and you also have to make sure it's always maintained that's one of those systems that once you put it in you got to make sure it's always working so that people can can the links work so it's something we're talking about and it actually on mirror was something i was going to suggest that we talked about so thank you for bringing

32:55 is up kind of like isn't that kind of like planting bamboo yes but bamboo is great as a timber substitute not just not no disparaging on timber wait forget it anyway um so i think i think the i think what joe's bringing up is probably a pretty good point which is just i think we're all open to as we navigate these new waters right to think about like where we want to go is we want to be a little bit seamless and we're in for for nancy uh you know that means that i think we're just open to making any sort of adjustment neces you know is needed to make it as easy on aj as possible um so if that means you know she clicks a button and it live streams automatically i'm good with that if that means we got to invest in more technology we can do that too

33:41 um all right murray bridget is there joe sorry it's a perfect segue into i think that we're talking about this whole technology thing is that maybe we need to bring that saucepan call the uh website closer up towards the burners you know what i'm saying it's been kind of dead in the background and i know it's not because it's being ignored but it's not being i don't think it's it man i may be wrong but i'm just saying just bring that saucepan forward and get it to bubbling quick update um we do have a committee that's working on that um um it's a it's a big project because we have a large web page with um a lot of

34:26 links i know that our network page needs help um and so we will be really really um selecting a vendor to do that through a competitive process um so we have to first identify all of the areas that they need to work on for a scope of work for them to then price out and quote quote the city on i totally get that and i appreciate that but and kind of working backwards forward on the website is that sometimes website developers can be said what do we need to do and then create an rfp based on what a qualified or a well-known website builder can say hey this is really where you need to go with this website and instead of the

35:12 non-professionals trying to build an rfp that don't know what they really need to do and i'm not saying our staff no i i think we have uh really qualified people working on this it's just a matter of uh the depth and breadth of it um but yeah i will i will move that up a burner on my cold burner stove okay mary bridget dude is there any other subject about the remote format we need to dig into i feel like we've gotten uh sent a lot of content about what we think we want towards you but i don't know if we missed something off of your notes are you ready to go on to the next topic um i think what i'd like to do is just make sure i want to recap a little bit and then i can provide some information

35:57 about some of the things and then we can move forward so looking first at the issue of um folks coming in and identifying themselves if they're going to address the public i think that's really helpful conversation particularly for staff to have you know because we often follow your lead at a meeting and i think had sort of the same feelings about oh community member do we take this testimony what do we do here so i think to know that the council is also looking to try and be welcoming to folks but also keep sort of the sideboards on that this is a council meeting where people come in and address the council um and we need to have some idea who you are is helpful to have our rules now state that you would say

36:44 your name and then also if you don't feel comfortable using your address you can say your ward or if you live outside of the area and i think the address thing wasn't meant to be um unwelcoming i think it was just really antiquated actually and it was good opportunity to update it so um that's the state of the rules now it sounds like we can kind of keep that and then sort of keeping with this idea of what council woodrow was talking about of having folks who are in the room and folks are remotely being on a level playing field right it sort of makes sense you couldn't have someone in the room uh say they're just a community member even if they gave you their name it's not like we you know go verify that against their id or anything but it gives us something with the speaking card and we probably want the same

37:29 expectation for folks who are appearing remotely so i think that seemed that seems to make sense and we can move forward with that and then the idea with the technology is we'll be able to appear remotely that includes council and staff and and the community i do think for council and staff it'll be something to think about being since these meetings i think council rally brought a good point that they're going to be hard just because they're going to be new and it's a lot of um just extra process to go through it's really incumbent on us then to try and be mindful about you know giving notification ahead of time hey i'm going to be remote tonight or my staff's going to be remote for this item because still here for three minutes or whatever just so the folks who are running the meeting

38:14 have some idea what they're coming up against so they can run it effectively which i think would be helpful um and that it still would be broadcast in a way that people could observe the meeting from their home which totally is consistent with the statute so that'll make sense i think the one part i would like some feedback on would be you know we're going to shift to this more remote kind of long-term remote format it's an idea that actually nancy had about providing guidelines to the public for how to testify and this is sort of related to um what council broadly was talking about in terms of hey there's lots of ways you can communicate with us and if we're really being not just transparent

38:59 but real clear with people that there's a lot you know you can email you can send something in you can appear you can write a letter or whatever all the ways that they can communicate with us and then particularly if you're going to communicate remotely there are a few extra steps to be aware of the legislature does a good job of kind of setting out like hey this is how this goes and i know we have some information with script and we have some permission on our agenda but it i'd like some feedback if you think we need to be thinking about how to communicate with the public as we shift into this new kind of meeting um kind of over and above what we typically would do so people feel comfortable about the new process and sort of having some extra communication out to folks if you have any thoughts on that

39:54 i do have thoughts on that um i think yes and um the communications person in me is thinking um i mean if i was if i was in the audience and i was like somebody who's writing an article i think that there's an opportunity for us to um not just tell our story but i'm sure that the county is thinking about this and other folks are thinking about this and so there might be a way that somebody might be interested in saying here's how things have changed here's all the ways that you can participate so there's a way for us to maybe do some pitching and tell that story of you know the ways that we're doing this adjusting um so that it's not just we put it we slap it on our website but that maybe there are some you know we we sort of go we chat on some some you know some podcasts or we just sort of talk

40:40 about all of those things i think it's a way and i'm happy to help and i'm volunteering sean because i know sean loves to go and talk to people about things but i think there's a lot of things that we can do to to get that word out and to just make a concerted effort as opposed to just just issuing a press release around it okay that's helpful early uh yes i was thinking of along a similar along the same lines the expectations of someone who who participates and that is when we were in chambers when we were in person we had staff there to immediately say can so and so can you help this person with this problem or with this issue and and i i haven't quite seen how that has

41:26 eased its way into the remote situation where if we have somebody that testifies with the concern that they have on their street or in their ward or whatever and it and maybe it involves dpw or maybe it involves um something else how do we know who's who's available that we can say can you help with this can you can you get in touch with this person and help with how how do we do that online how do we do that remotely okay yeah that's a great point you know i think when we all used to be in the room together you would see like the mayor would point at somebody and you'd see them go out and talk and you knew oh okay that's moving forward but now it's right it's often you'd like no idea if they ever right never talk to them we don't even know we don't even know what staff is here so

42:12 right yeah okay that makes sense and then um i can i'll make a note of that because i think that's a good point and that kind of goes to this idea of a hybrid meeting having a challenge right and making sure that you're kind of covering all the bases and whereas you would be able to more easily do that in person um and then i think that um also it sounds like their discussion about you know not just the idea that we broadcast our public meetings right because they're public and people should be able to come in and view and see them but then how do we memorialize right what happened at these meetings because in addition to the public participation which is key the other thing that happens at meetings is the council does a lot of business you know like we get i mean and we

42:57 really need you know contracts approved decisions made stuff move forward so how do we keep track of that in a way that we can go back and use but also is not this antiquated or maybe duplicative so that's what it's what i'm hearing anyways is there a way maybe we move toward some kind of um minutes that's not necessarily a written minute but that is a video but can that also be accessible to people to try and figure out what is it that you did at the meeting does that sound kind of like what you're talking about okay all right okay um and then just sort of looping that to the website in terms of that's often the place where people first look to where to go what do i do and what can we do to

43:43 make that a little more user friendly and acknowledging that we have some work to do there um okay um one last point on meetings and kind of this new structure so if you look at our operating policies now those really contemplate an in-person meeting right let's talk about like requests to speak cards i think you know um if you could have like a sign or a flag or whatever and so we're still going to need that but i think also going to need to have some kind of rules that acknowledge and deal with a hybrid structure you know testifying remotely how this process works i think what i'd like to propose it's a little premature to do that before we've had a chance to have a few of these meetings so it may be in a few months i

44:28 come to you and say look i think what may work are some temporary rules you know or maybe a statement from the council of you know intent you know some kind of resolution or statement that says we're shifting to this um we're going to do our best to make sure it works this way and here's how we're going to approach this for now and then we can codify it later i just think we're in a place right now where we wouldn't we might do something that we don't end up doesn't actually work in practice so in addition to the all kind of the lessons we've learned in these 18 months i think it's going to be getting in with that new technology and seeing how it works so if that works for you that's probably going to be my recommendation to you that let's just hold for now we might do a placeholder and then see really what we can do to make these meetings as sort of welcoming and effective as we can

45:13 i think that works for us um and i think i think the other piece is sort of acknowledging that our operating procedures have gone through probably 3 000 revisions and knowing that is you know that as you sort of structure them you know i'm open to you up updating languages and taking a little bit of um administrative oversight to sort of clean up the structure so it's not it doesn't read like hey we always thought about an in-person meeting and by the way the state's making us do this but instead sort of is is more thoughtful in that way okay yeah i can look at that definitely okay great all right we're ready to truck along first one done that's a lot i mean you know it's a big change so it's worth uh having that discussion in that time to be able to talk about it

45:59 and to get your feedback on how it feels from an elected position and trying to do these meetings so that's really good okay agenda setting more meeting stuff um agenda setting comes up sort of all the time with elected officials like in the public sort of like well how do things get on the agenda how does this happen because it just sort of seems to magically appear which as aj and nancy can tell you it's there's no magic to it's a lot of work to make should happen so um i just wanted to take a few minutes to talk to you about how agenda setting works according to your rules and what that process is like and to see if there's any discussion so agendas um are um done the city recorder aj does most of the um

46:45 i would say gatekeeping on the agenda items can be put on the agenda by the city manager by law or mandate you know think about things like with that like your annexation approving the budget all those kinds of things that just sort of move forward that you'll see regularly and periodically be on the agenda council leadership which is the mayor and the council president can place items on the agenda if they are for some reason not in consensus about something being on the agenda then a majority of the council can make a call about whether an item put forward by the mayor or the council president should go on the agenda an individual counselor can ask for something to be placed on the agenda or can get the majority of the council to agree that something should be placed on the agenda

47:30 and then there is an administrative meeting held with uh the mayor and council president and staff like city manager assistant city manager recorder and city attorney and that's where we go through the upcoming agenda maybe move some stuff around and then talk about other administrative items so that's sort of the the process for that um and then work sessions have a little more flexibility because you don't make you know you might provide direction or consensus out of a work session being like official action so those items generally could be a follow-up and the city manager will put it on the agenda or um a counselor or the mayor can do it as well so that's sort of agenda setting 101 i don't think i think we're pretty

48:15 consistent with other communities and how we look at agenda setting but just wanted to provide some time to talk about that and see if anyone had any questions steve uh on agenda review you have no idea how many times when we meet on on that friday at 1 30 and i see the proposed agenda on there there are things on there i have never heard of before i don't know where they come from i don't know anything about them so i i've talked to aj and she says it's okay to ask questions and yet and yet it makes me makes makes it awkward for me sometimes i want to be part of the discussion but but i don't i don't really know what we're talking about so i can't do that so that's yeah i think that brings up a really good point because often what comes on

49:00 the agenda is something like you know a counselor wouldn't even particularly have dealt with before like a certain annexation or contract review or something and then you guys are all kind of like what is this you know and so there is this sort of like undercurrent of all these operations that are moving with the city and then they rise to the agenda and i i think sometimes it puts the electives in a position of like okay now what am i doing what are you asking of me so it's a fair feeling i think i guess get more comfortable about asking questions and i'm getting there so maybe that will take care of it well and actually i really appreciate that you brought that up counselor mo because if it's you haven't you haven't you are considered what a lot of folks would say have a front row seat so if you're not

49:46 sure where it's coming from i think that speaks to what we were talking about earlier was like a lot of folks who come to the meetings have no idea what it what like they're coming because they care about something really passionately and then we're talking about you know this annexation or is this person gonna get this little piece of property or what's gonna happen at this intersection and so they're also like what is that um so i think that's i mean i think that's really fair and that that might be also an opportunity for us to educate that that the purpose of the the business meetings which is to do this business of the city which is not always as fun and flashy as big stuff leonard i i think counselor rodley is raising an excellent point and i i also um wonder if it might be a good

50:33 idea as councilor mo said um when there are items on the agenda that the public might not be informed about if it might be possible for us to have something along the lines of the mayor and the president of the council giving a preview on the website it might it might increase some civic engagement just to give a preview of say a minute and a half two minute thumbnail of what's coming up in the next in the next meeting and i know that you're both very capable and good communicators and i think it'd be a way of encouraging people to take part in these meetings joe well instead of volunteering other people's

51:19 volunteer time i'm gonna go a different direction is that that information is sent out religiously on time on thursdays and is available to the public now i don't know how much more it could be spoon fed but i think that the city is doing a fine job it's available on the website it is available to people that that ask for it um they put it out there so if someone is interested in what's going on the agenda all they got to do is click and see what the current agenda is all right steve and then leonard in my case of agenda review there are things on that agenda review that are not on our agenda

52:05 and they're for discussion but again i don't know anything about them now one thing i'm always very conscious about is i don't want to add time to staff to have to explain a bunch of things to me and yet i just don't want to do that so i try and i try and just make my way through it but some of those things i really don't know anything about okay so maybe we can separate the kind of issues here right because we've got two or three different issues here so on one hand right like one of the things that um that that there are and maybe you and i can take this away steve is like there's stuff that is just sort of follow-up questions that i've asked during the week that they're like some of that stuff's coming back up and so maybe you

52:50 know i can kind of talk about that one and you know maybe i'll get clearer uh about you know hey i had a meeting earlier this week i asked this question and then they then the staffs just sort of looping back um to get an answer so i think that's sort of one issue and then i think there's probably this other issue that is there's two ways about really to get get work on the agenda one of them is that that is sort of sort of workflow driven if you will right like annexations the budget right like the stuff that we have to do to run the apparatus of the city um come to the agenda naturally right we as elected officials don't really have to say hey put the budget on the agenda i promise you the finance folks will take care of that for for us and then there's a list of sort of other

53:36 activities or other issues that really rely on us for um to actually come back and say we and when we talk about policy and vision of the city really would love to talk about this and maybe mary bridget maybe when we talk in that section maybe we can kind of break those up and say hey like here's stuff that normally just flows to the council because you have to say yes to it and here's stuff and here's sort of examples of you know things that where it's a policy initiative that you want to have like the one i always say made you think about is like well you know damian's been a really big advocate about having a sister city right if we needed to have a work session for that that would be something that he would say hey i would love to have a work session about um but like so i think there's sort of two there there's sort of multiple there's

54:21 sort of multiple avenues on that piece right just understanding that there's a whole group of work that's just going to come to us naturally yeah okay um merely yes um i want i just wanted to comment on that um joe's comment about the fact that religiously every thursday that information goes out to the public on what's on the agenda and if i have if i wasn't assured before i've been assured over the last 12 to 18 months the people are paying attention to that because we've gotten emails we've gotten people show up to testify we've gotten a lot more participation from people paying attention to what's on that agenda when it comes out on thursday so

55:06 i think right now we do have a public that's that if they want to be involved or know what's going on and they're not sure what it's what it's about they're as they're calling and asking questions they're sending emails they're coming to testify so i i i'm okay at the moment i'm not seeing that it's broken yet okay leonard well allow me to explain why i think it might be a value to put something on the website and to supplement the agenda um i i'd like to offer today tonight's discussion as an example uh the item that was on the agenda was uh review of council policy and procedures

55:51 which to all appearances was going to be a fairly dry discussion and it actually turned into a very interesting discussion in my mind because we were considering things that would directly affect people's input into these meetings if you're going to be able to present testimony anonymously or not that to me is something that could spur people to attend a meeting i i think that if we could anticipate some of the issues that are going to be presented in these discussions then it might actually spur some civic engagement you know that brings up a good point it could be something that staff can think about when you're preparing materials particularly the ais which is that one

56:37 page intro you know instead instead of maybe summarizing what it is like think all right like what would be important to people to know what we're getting out of this meeting right or what you know what i mean like kind of some tales that people be like oh yeah i might want to know about that you're right so that's a good that's a nice point i think so i think the overall goal here is like right on one hand we want to just sort of make sure we underst we all agree about the physics of how to get things on the agenda because we've all been there where you're like i want iran or i want to talk about this actual issue and i want it needs to get agenda time and the other portion is just to sort of collectively look at it and go part of this is we want to streamline and simplify and make the material more accessible because that's going to make our lives easier and that's going to

57:22 make you know everybody's lives easier when you talk about the public consuming it i understand it's not going to happen in sort of um you know one shot and we're going to get there it's going to take a couple of iterations but i just want to recognize that like you know that that's kind of where we're working but that's kind of where we're working towards and then mayor just to follow up before we leave this issue so like for count individual counselors who are interested in a particular item being on the agenda probably best first steps would be to contact city manager or you and know that there is a regular process where these items get looked at to see what should go on the agenda yes so the bet pro probably my best recommendation would be to call either me or steve um and let us put on the right it

58:07 and let us put it on a gender review and talk about it got it okay and and all we yeah so that that's probably the the best first step and understand that then we'll sort out the schedule from there yeah yeah please call me nobody ever calls me so whatever i can do okay all right uh moving on from the meeting uh next issue i want to touch on is engaging with the media and with staff so this is another area that's covered in your operating policies and procedures and i i just called this council business because it's not really the meeting and it's not your boards and commissions it's sort of this area as elected officials of how and what's required of me if i'm

58:52 engaging with the media or staff so it's just a kind of a point of review so looking first at the media um you know the rules really set out mainly notification and then to be real clear when you're talking on your own behalf or the behalf of the council and those are kind of the two main things to be thinking about um and this is another area where the rules might be a little antiquated it talks about counselors calling press conferences which i i don't know that you guys are calling press conferences all the time but i do think you have contact with the media um and the rules uh state that the city manager and the mayor would like a heads up for that just so they can kind of be prepared or assist to um and then to be clear if you're putting forward a council position if

59:37 the council's taken a position on something or if this is just your own position to be clear about that and then recall this doesn't happen a lot but sometimes the council will be asked to sign a letter or present a letter on behalf of the whole council and just know that that will come to the whole council for a vote um so that kind of stuff would be if you're asked to have a position on particular political issue or some kind of issue we would bring that to you with some kind of draft response or a response that one of you wants to do and then have that if that's going to be a letter signed by springfield city council the mayor or an individual counselor may have um letters of support for particular issues um they get brought forward particularly to the mayor quite a bit and those just move forward on a process often at

1:00:23 agenda reviews when that gets handled and that's not too uncommon either so that's sort of engaging with the media sort of 101 and then staff there's not a lot of information in the operating policies about staff um you know the council appoints three employees the city manager the city attorney municipal judge so those people are your direct points you can contact them whenever you need to um the other staff you know technically work for the city manager and so all the rules say is to keep in mind resources and time when you're contacting staff and then i think the other part of it to think about is like how can we make sure that everyone that the kind of that loop gets closed and one of the best ways to do that is

1:01:09 just start with the city manager and then have that person kind of cascade it from there about who who would have that information so um that's engaging with the media and staff just an opportunity to kind of talk about that and i don't know if anyone has any questions there nancy nancy darn it i didn't pass my technology test i got the hand but not the mute okay um i appreciate uh mary bridget bringing this forward and um i let me just preface this to say i am not a micromanager um and i nor do i really want to be like

1:01:55 that however this is an important distinction about triaging through the city city manager and one of the prime reasons is that you know you're all city councillors and i know you know we have relationships with you working great professional working relationships with you um but but you're never not a city councilor if that makes sense so when you're when you contact a staff member directly um they even if it's just an innocent question that you think it's oh you know this will take a couple minutes sometimes it takes um a lot more research than you might originally think um or you know if some some questions might make staff feel like oh does this does

1:02:40 this counselor want to go in this particular direction so just know that you know that's one reason that i ask that um you can triage for me because then i can ask you questions like okay so it sounds like you want this um you know tell me more about about this issue um and then i can assign it to uh usually a department director and they can get back to you um and i know that there's there's some flex in this like there's some really easy quick answers and i and i get that um but i on the more complicated issues um it's it's just easier for me to know um when counselor are engaging with staff because then i then we can track it

1:03:25 um and i can also make sure if it's something that um i personally need to follow up on with a council member or me maybe even bring to the full council in a work session um then i would know and and although our staff has great you know they're very professional they're very knowledgeable they might not have that instinct to know whether or not this is um an issue being brought forth by a single council member or if it's something that maybe should go before the full council for more information and they may not feel comfortable saying to you hey um you know counselor jones i i don't know if you know if i can do this you know so that's why i like to have that dialogue with with council members thank you

1:04:10 merrily one thing that i made a habit of when i first started gosh 11 years ago um was that if i had a conversation with a staff member in regards to something having to do with city business that was outside of a regular committee meeting or a liaison position or whatever but if it was just it was a gen it was a specific conversation but it was outside the the committees and meetings um is when i is i would either make a quick phone call or dash off a quick email to the city manager i did that with gino i'm doing that with nancy just saying hey i just had a conversation with so and so about such and such just to let you know um that we've had that i've had that

1:04:55 conversation and i just it doesn't it doesn't necessarily mean that it needs action on her part or the before that it needed action on gino's part it was just a matter of letting them know the conversation took place um and it should should the topic come up um in another conversation or another situation then the city manager is aware that there was a conversation similar to that or about that in another in another way with another individual but i just i don't know i just made it to habits because i figured the city manager is is the core is is the central focus of everything that happens underneath her and and so outs like said outside of meetings and that which which are taken care of in a different way

1:05:41 um if you have if you're engaging staff in regarding to something um that needs to be handled or needs to have uh questions answered i just i just out of courtesy let the city manager know that that conversation took place and that that helps keep her informed yeah and and we'll open it up for any any more comments but i think there's a good there there's a good uh reminder in both these sections one of them is to get really make sure we're all really clear when we're speaking for ourselves versus when we're speaking to the council for the council because i think that one always gets tricky especially on intergovernmental boards where where we should be representing is really where the council is even though you may be giving your sort of color commentary about you know your different

1:06:28 your different opinions because in those points you're sort of speaking for for the organization and the other pieces the single best thing you can do with constituent issues is actually go through nancy and that's that way you get an answer it gets troubleshot right like it's just over communicate to nancy um and it will go like in staff issues or questions or requests for information we'll go a ton easier does anybody have other comments before we move on to the next item no all right mary bridget keep up let's keep cruising along okay um this is just real quick a place holder um just to let you know you um helped me with a discussion on filling council vacancies sort of related to this kind of topic about how the council

1:07:13 does its business it's currently scheduled for i believe january 10th to come back to this council to evaluate again um and to build on that conversation and then you know spoiler alert i think some of the outcomes from this conversation too will probably be handled at the same time so i just wanted you to know that that's still moving forward and we're still working on bringing information to the council on that last uh substantive issue um that i wanted to talk and get feedback from the council on is boards and commissions so this is another key part of your operating policies and procedures does a couple things it sets out some basic rules for um boards and commissions also talks about your selection process liaisons joint meetings that kind of thing

1:07:59 and then the so that's all in your rules there the first topic i want to talk about is liaisons because this is also an area that traditionally can create confusion or um just kind of opportunities to for us to figure out if if we're kind of handling this the right way or approaching it the right way um generally a committee well as you know have a council liaison that's a counselor who is um connected to a particular board and commission such as the library advisory board or its commission and then that committee itself may have a liaison that is really their role to stay up on what council businesses deal with the council liaison and then the third person if we're thinking about this like as a stool or a third person would be the staff member

1:08:45 who provides administrative support for a particular committee each committee kind of is different depending on the makeup of the committee the aim of the committee um but we do have this liaison structure some meetings do talk about and counselor mo brought this up a few months ago having joint meetings with the council right now the rules are i think every two years joint meetings i think it's police advisory arts and library um and i actually don't know that the planning commission i looked this up because i was surprised as one of those but you certainly can have those joint meetings um so that's kind of a quick and dirty summary of liaisons and really looking for feedback from the council about how

1:09:30 this role works does it work what do you want to do is there something we can improve or just provide more information about opinion i guess you know when i think about all the the you know the there's no rules i play i think in some you know i i have a voice and i feel like i'm actually part of the commission and others i'm just there kind of you know feeling like big brother and a lot of the boards and commissions send people to excuse me the council meetings and so what's i guess my question is like as liaison i know the role is going to be different based on the the particular border

1:10:16 commission but it just seems that i think it seems archaic that you need to have a liaison or that that liaison needs to be at that meeting now once again thinking about equity and and and accessibility they're going to be some board meetings that councils aren't going to attend because of other things i know like i'm a historic commission and i told them it's like hey don't try to plan a meeting around me but if it's from eight to five i'm probably not going to be there and so i'm not circling my responsibilities but i'm not going to make those meetings uh but then other planning commissions sometimes i'm able to speak other times i'm not and it just doesn't seem to be a constant and so i don't know if there's a reason to have

1:11:01 a liaison actually at these meetings and i wonder could it be switched to just a simple email and it seems that a lot of times the liaison is not necessary with the chair it's with the staff person to me which kind of negates the role of the chair and so yeah i'm not sure i see a purpose of liaison for every single board being fiscally or virtually present but i do understand there should be some type of communication between the chair not the staff member and that board i mean and the councilman

1:11:47 all right uh joe thank you um speaking of being on multiple commissions and committees um i think damian has a good point in regards to i i i think the best suggestion would be for sean for you to kind of be a pollster and go down you know create have a list of all the committees and commissions we make appointments to and who's assigned to those as far as councils counselors and and reach out to them and ask them and maybe in concert with nancy or some staff and say okay where are we where are you at with this committee or commission and um do you think it's that a meeting with this committee or

1:12:33 commission is overdue um or at least an intro meeting with the members to the council i know that you know like that the the police advisory committee um is basically and i'm not even sure if it's even written but i thought it was supposed to be and i think mary b mentioned it's supposed to be meeting with council every two years um and i would be kind of willing to bet you that let's go back on the calendar and actually find out when the last one we met every two years and i think you'll find that it has been longer than that and i and and i know that the uh the police advisory committee in particular has had a lot of a lot of

1:13:19 interest you know duh and there's been this last meeting there's actually a showing of some frustration with the committee members themselves as to not meeting with the counselor not knowing when the council when they're going to be able to meet um how often we can meet and i mean there was even talk of saying even two years sounds too long um but there hasn't even been that meeting and correct me if from wrong somebody that um it's been several years since that particular committee has met with council so i guess we need to uh before issuing an edict saying okay these committees should be meeting with council what not well maybe we should check to see how good our system is first before we start laying out how it should go

1:14:06 we should lay out how how it should be made to go and then stick to it and not not let things fall off the map or radar so um just a couple of a couple of thoughts here and then i'll let i'll let cory go i think there's probably a good several points between where we're deeming a joe are making one of them is just strictly on appointments and i'm going to just sort of acknowledge that we set out a ton of committee appointments every year for for liaisons if your schedule if if your schedule changes right or that you're finding that date or that meeting or something's not working out i'm more than willing more than able to to change you out for another

1:14:52 uh another position so i think that's one thing is like a lot of us work right i understand we gotta work we gotta cover each other and if for some reason it's not working with your work schedule please let me know and i will find a different solution and then the second piece is i think it's up to us from uh to make some individual judgments based on what's going on with that committee about you know whether or not we have to make every every committee uh committee meeting i don't make every committee meeting that i'm assigned to but i sort of keep in contact with people to understand the flow of information and um kind of go from there and then i think to joe's point um that if people are comfortable right the way the the way the um the way the bylaws are written today is

1:15:37 that it's like got three people involved with getting these scheduled and i would prefer that if that what we did is sort of simplify that and just had had steve and i take responsibility as council leadership to get them scheduled and just sort of take you know a couple of steps out of it um and make life a little bit easier for us and to for the s fact question and i know there's some interest in when spec's gonna it s facts to meet with us it's it's going to be the first quarter of next year and we'll find time and that's something that accounts for pictionary's been working with me on yeah i'm sorry sean but in here we did talk about that and i failed to mention that with my last comments but i think we

1:16:22 should have uh counselor steer do a short video of when those when their meetings are i was joe's getting punchy now corey uh so i appreciate this conversation and i think we could talk about it deeper like like the other one because there's a lot of things that play here and i think that you know as councilor pitts pointed out there are there are different purposes so there are some sort of regional boards and things that we're on where we're there to represent springfield and we have a vote and it's like this this

1:17:07 public participatory thing which is important excuse me i also really want to support the volunteers who are you know part of our com our historical commission and you know i i get how they feel if they have a counselor like me who can't always make the b-pack meeting so i understand that too and their frustration and i think this comes back to like for our municipality and the work that counselors do and this is not in any way whining because we all signed up for it but it's like when you put in all of the public meetings that we're doing as just the council city meetings and then you add in the representation on those for

1:17:52 those those other important things you know a poverty and homelessness board and things like that where it's really important to have springfield representation from an elected and then you add in our committees and commissions and and things that we're doing as a city that's a lot and when you know when nancy was talking about how do we get people to run for council how do we get people who want to get involved you know you get people that hear about having to do all of that as a volunteer in 20 25 extra hours a week it can really be you know prohibitive and so i think we have to just really sort of and this could take forever it's like dig in to say what is the business of the city that we need elected officials to do where are they going to be most impactful because it's not just about

1:18:38 having people cover those committees i heard damian say you know where where can i like my i only have so much time in a day where can i be most useful with that where can i contribute and how can i like move the business of the city along or the business of the council along so i think that's part of it too is like is there a way to prioritize and to say what is the work that's important that we need to show up to do and why thanks mayor van gorden um i like councillor pictionary's idea of more joint meetings it doesn't mean that we have to let one commission or

1:19:23 one um [Music] body of the city monopolize an entire work session i think sometimes just 15 minutes with the council would probably do wonders for allowing people to feel like they're part of the process to feel that they're incorporated i i sense a remoteness on the part of people who are on certain uh commissions feeling that they're not really um having any input into the running of the city and i i think um if you put um the museum commission or the uh put the historic commission or the arts commission north planning commission in session with the council i think it

1:20:08 would work wonders toward increasing participation in those bodies um i i can't i can't say enough about how important they are as sort of a feeder for more to participation in the city as time goes on [Music] um yes though i agree with council stairs point i think it goes both ways you know yes we need to make the commissions and boards feel like they're part of something but on the flip side they need to do the same for us and i think different boards and commissions a lot of might have to be personalities or whatever but that's not always the case and so just like we need to give

1:20:53 people a reason to want to be a part of these and to want to reach out and feel confident reaching out to counselors they need to give us a reason to even want to you know support him and just being elected or appointed whatever isn't always enough uh and so i think he goes both ways how do you create a welcoming environment for a counselor on these boards or how do you say hey let's meet once a month or every two months and just talk but you don't need to be in this meeting for three hours um and i'm definitely not complaining enough i enjoy being in meetings where i get to learn something but at the same time it's hey you know i think that there are other

1:21:39 things that you know can be done to further the greatness of springfield other than being in meetings all the time especially when you don't have a voice you don't have a say and you're pretty much just listening uh i mean i i can watch him on my own or i can reach out to the chair and get a 10 minute update i don't need to be in a meeting for three hours and once again i repeat this is not me complaining i'm just reclaiming my time thank you thank you uh joe thank you sounds like a lot of complaining to me but it's all right um so just kidding damian um no i the only point i'm trying to make is i don't think we need to

1:22:25 over meet i don't think we need to meet and conduct regular business of the of those committees i think update meetings and um just filling the counseling is like okay well we've the last time we've met with you has been two years in the two years um this is what the committee has been involved in and this is what we've done and this is where we want to go just to give that that that particular down-to-earth update to council and then council can really at that point provide feedback to that committee as a whole as opposed to one counselor kind of guiding them along this whole time they can go and meet with the council accounts says hey that's great but let's let's see if you guys can put some more

1:23:10 effort into this area and then say see in a c in 18 months or see in a year or so in two years and that's what i think is what they're looking for they want to be able to feel so that they are valued but they also have marching orders saying okay what do we what are we supposed to do here so i you know it's just more communications needed and i think that it can be done periodically and i think that they would really respect meeting with all of us and that that would help um feel that their that their time is just as valuable as our time so i think we've got to get back to like coming out of 2020 right it's been back to regular sort of order and then going into 2022 we've got to get back on a regularly scheduled meeting with with these groups right so we'll start checking them off that's my commitment

1:23:56 is to try to get more people in when we think about uh when we think about 20 getting into the 2022 part of the year the other thing i would suggest is that maybe when we meet for um council goal setting is maybe we kind of look at this liaison issue because i hear a lot of questions about what a few other people do and i see some value in that maybe continuing to discuss it um personally look i'm comfortable with folks um look like adjusting where they are with meetings and if you need to step away because you've got a meeting that conflicts or you know for some reason you you just catch up with the chair you know every three months or you know adjust how you're interfacing with that committee in a way that makes sense because you

1:24:41 know these folks i'm comfortable with that um but i think diving into this a little bit more because how we show up to these sort of committee meetings is a way that we effectively do our work is really important all right mary bridget i'm doing kind of a time check we got four minutes to the next meeting um well i think what i can do is um i had one more topic i wanted to discuss was to think about selection process for boards and commissions just i'm going to plant the seed here and then if it's all right with you i think i might try and find more time after the council recess to discuss i i think we have more um council to give council more information about meetings the hybrid meetings and then perhaps even liaison rule

1:25:28 and then selection process for boards and commissions wanted to plan to see what the council to think about do you want to change the interview process do you want to interview everybody the way you still are for all your committees right now you can reappoint folks the mayor can say look i'm just going to bring this forward for reappointment for someone who's reapplying but otherwise you do interview people it's a pretty big time commitment for the council so even if you still interview people would you like to consider maybe structuring them a little differently just to be a little different for time so just something to think about i know where we'll go into the regular session here but i'll look for some additional time uh in january february to bring this back but it is another issue i'd like some feedback from the council on to see how the batch recruitment's working

1:26:13 and your feedback there so and also just to thank you for this discussion it's been really helpful all right perfect um any last minute comments before i adjourn us for two minutes and then we'll meet back in the same meeting all right we're joined at a work session we'll meet you in the other room which is actually the same room thank you i get confused

1:29:41 [Music] it'll just be another minute looks like we're still waiting on leonard there it is uh-huh i am all right aj are you still ready i am yes i'm going to call the springfield city council uh regular session to order with roll call mayor van gorden here councillor pitts here council ramon here council bradley here councillor stare here counselor woodrow here and counselor pictionary i'm here thank you all right please everybody join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the plague flag of the united states

1:30:28 of america and to the republic the republic for which thank you everybody as we begin our meeting tonight i would like to ask members of the audience who are joining us online to keep yourselves on mute until you are called on to provide public testimony there are two times this evening designated for public testimony and will be listed as public hearings and business from the audience on the agenda if you're joining us online with the tablet smartphone or computer and wish to speak during that time please use the raised hand feature when that agenda item is called when we call when we call

1:31:14 on you please state your name in award or general location for the record thank you uh first item please mayor the first item is the consent calendar that up to me yep okay i make a motion that we approve the consent count all right so we have a motion to approve the consent calendar um neil can you call the role please yes counselor pitts aye councillor mo yes councillor rodley yes counselor stare aye counselor woodrow yes and counselor pictionary all right

1:31:59 the motion passes six to zero next item please mayor the next item is public hearings you have three public hearings tonight public hearing number one is the fiscal year 22 supplemental budget one and appropriations transfer this is resolution number two a resolution adjusting resources and requirements in the following funds general street special revenue transient room tax community development building code fire local option levy police local option levy bond sinking development assessment capital development projects regional wastewater capital street capital sanitary sewer operations regional wastewater ambulance storm

1:32:45 drainage operations booth kelly regional fiber consortium insurance vehicle and equipment sdc administration and authorizing the transfer of the appropriations within the general fund from the city manager's office office operate operating expense to enter funds transfer expense and from contingency expense to enter from transfund transfer expense and from contingency expense to finance department operating expense and neil obringer is here for the staff report hi yeah good evening council and mayor as neil described this is the first supplemental budget of fy22 i'm happy to take any questions on the items included in the packet though i do want to point out that staff have

1:33:30 included funding in this supplemental for several of the arpa projects that nathan discussed with you all in the work session on september 13th um and then for the larger conversation on the more extensive artful list um there is an intention to come back for a more to come back to that list during work session later this fall so with that i'll um i'll ask that you hold a public hearing and then i'm happy to take any questions after that all right are there any questions before i open the public hearing well i do just a second hey we're going to uh forward some money for arpa projects and then harper comes in and we'll play them pay the budget back is that how that

1:34:15 works so we we currently have the arpa dollars um at least the first round uh currently in the bank but none of those dollars have been appropriated for spending and so the the action that you'll take tonight uh allows us to move some of those dollars into the operating budget so that we can move forward on those particular projects thank you for clearing that up all right i'm going to open the public hearing and then we'll see if anybody from the public wants to comment joe did you have a question before we got to the okay just a quick one thank you sorry um hey neil are any of those funds or does any of those expenditures have to do with the

1:35:00 street lighting project at all we do not have the the led street lighting project included that was um that was going to be one of the items that were going to be discussed as part of that larger conversation okay thank you all right then i'm going to open the public hearing um anybody from the public wishing to speak to this item please raise your hand and neil will invite you up mayor i'm not seeing any hands for this item uh neither am i um okay i'm gonna close the public hearing and see if there's any discussion from the council

1:35:46 all right steve we are ready i would like a a motion there be about resolution number two second all right so we have a motion and a second for resolution number two neil could you call the role please yes counselor pitts all right counselor mo yes counselor rodley yes counselor stare i counselor woodrow yes and counselor pictionary hey the motion passes 6-0 next item please next item is public hearings number two building master fees and charges this is resolution number three a resolution amending the springfield master fees and charges schedule to adjust building and safety fees sam

1:36:31 kelly quattrocki is here for the staff report hi good evening mayor and council like neil said my name is sam kelly patriarchy i'm a finance analyst in the finance department uh i'm back again in front of you all with the final update to chapter six and fy 22 of the master fees and charges uh you originally saw these red lines back in april but then when it came to you all in may for adoption we had uh just missed a state department requirement deadline we pulled it out of that one and we're here in front of you all to meet that deadline and then for a final adoption um most of these fees fall from the normal cpi there's just a single difference in the mechanical fees section uh our building official looked back at revenues over the past 10 years or so and in 2015 when we changed the oregon standard model revenue dropped

1:37:16 significantly he has then since updated a lot of the fees to show greater than the 1.6 cpi but to bring our revenue back to that 2015 model and where we should be on track um at this point i'm just asking you all to hold the public hearing and then happy to answer questions or discuss this item further you know yes thank you um there's nothing you know it it it's bothersome to me that folks are in a position where they say hey we need to collect monies that we didn't collect in the past so to speak or back on track that that's bothersome but looking at those fees and i was reading them and reading them and all the lines and lines and multitudes of the fees and many of them have are based on per

1:38:03 thousand you know per square feet per 500 etc has anyone in your office or in planning modeled a typical home and then started adding those fees up in regards to how much it's bumping up meaning you know you have you know in itself it says well this one's 89 it's going to 113. sounds not a big deal it's four bucks um or i'm sorry it's 14 bucks and then you go to another one and this one's up seven but then you look at that and say well that's per thousand valuation and then you start multiplying it per thousand so you start to see how these are all compounding compounding

1:38:48 and it's it's a it's a hit and i don't know how um we expect our developers to absorb continually absorb these when this system that we got in place was like okay well we're going to just go with cpi cpi may not be reality i mean it is on a spreadsheet but it may not be applicable here to our area and especially for trying to increase our housing is that i i mean i get it the city needs to have dollars to run and i i mean i totally get that and the developers get that but what they don't get is how come it's it's costing so much per project when you have a business that is that is trying to to

1:39:33 a person trying to develop a small business and when just their transportation fee starts getting into six figures and their permits are into six figures and it's like wait a second i don't i i can't afford to build this so there it goes it goes to the wayside so we're not seeing anybody even get into the launch pad you know so i i i don't like the i don't like increasing the fees and i don't think i think we need to and i've said it before i think it's not fair on our developers to just continually hammer them in on every way they turn and expect them to continue to absorb that it's they're not made of gold but we do know that we have got to have

1:40:18 more homes of all sizes and i think our fee schedule is preventing that in a big way all right um leonard i um i appreciate uh counselor pictionary's comments i agree with some of them um i am i i am thinking that the cpi the way that it's projected right now is actually on the low side um from what i just read the projected cpi increase is going to be between once 1.6 and 2.8 percent i think the actual rate of inflation is going to be closer to the social security

1:41:03 increase that's great this year which is going to be 5.9 i i think if you're talking about the cpiu as the um as the standard for the increase in our taxes then we're actually probably shooting at the low end instead of the high end okay so are there any other questions before because we're kind of touching on the deliberation piece to it before we open the public hearing anybody have sort of questions about the presented material all right then we're going to go ahead and open the public hearing and if the public wants to speak to it please raise your hand and we'll bring you on up

1:41:49 mayor i am not seeing any hands for this item all right i'm going to close the public hearing and see if there's additional deliberations steve we're faced with the eternal dilemma costs are going up and we have we have to run the city therefore we have we've got so many codes and rules and stuff we keep adding and adding on i don't know how to do it i don't like it but we have to run the city so we have to assess these fees to keep going that's that's the back of life all right yo well i did see a sign of relief today the uh an eight foot number two and

1:42:34 better two by four is way down to three and a half dollars a piece i'm saying that satirically it was the same wood that that i was buying not very long ago for a buck and a half aboard it was as far as it was as expensive as nearly nine dollars of board just a couple months ago so that's what that's what developers have to deal with weeks we can assess fees steve all we want but if they're not building as you know there won't be any income and what are you talking about supply and demand out there that's right i know it that's right

1:43:25 all right steve i think you're up i make a motion that we adopt resolution wait a minute which one am i looking at uh adopt resolution number three is there a second second all right it's been moved and seconded that we adopt resolution number three uh neil could you call the roll please yes counselor pips all right counselor mo yes council radley yes councillor stare hi councilor woodrow yes encounter missionary

1:44:10 the motion passes uh five four one against next item please your third and final public hearing for this evening um the comcast comcast franchise agreement this is ordinance number one an ornix to extend the term of ordinance 6208 granting to comcast of oregon to ink a franchise for operation of a cable telecommunications system adopting a severability clause and providing an effective date this is a first reading with no action neil obringer and christina kraz are here for the staff report hello again uh this is again the the first reading of the ex for the extension of the cities franchise with comcast uh this would serve to extend

1:44:56 the current franchise through uh january 1 of 2023 so one year from the expiration of the current franchise staff will be bringing this item back to you again for adoption on november 1st we're happy to take any questions you might have christina krause is here as well and understands the the legal um uh details that uh are at play and with that i guess i'm happy to take any questions all right then i'm going to open the public hearing and anybody who wants to speak to this item please raise your hand

1:45:49 all right i don't see anybody um then i'm going to go and close the public hearing and this is first reading so it's no action required thank you thank you very much uh next item please excited mayor is business from the audience and as always if you'll raise your hand we'll put you in the queue okay mayor we have a hand up our first speaker is lauren williams and lauren you should be able to unmute your microphone on your side

1:46:42 hi can you all hear me we can't be great um my name is lauren williams and i live in ward 2. um this is specifically for chiefshire i saw a post showing that officer cesares had saved a beautiful great horned owl recently and it's wonderful to see that sort of tenderness and care for animals but it's not really addressing or making amends with any real level of sincerity on july 29th of last year officer cesares while working was recorded saying the following and before i read these quotes um

1:47:28 i would like to preemptively apologize for the profanity but i'm quoting from a body camera recording of a springfield public employee on city time he said the following quote i want that fat to go to jail referring to a black unity supporter end quote and i grabbed it and just chucked it back that stupid 12 year old took it right in the face and then laughed end quote chief sheer in all honesty if that were your wife or a child he laughed about hitting in the face would you feel good about no apology or amends just silence and then praise for saving an owl thank you i yield my time

1:48:23 mayor just looking i do not see any other hands at this time all right then i think we are ready to go on and move on from business from the audience oh looks like we had one more sneak in there okay let's um let me just pull that up real quick okay the next speaker is sj lore and sj you should be able to mute your microphone sorry let me just get back to you sj okay sj now you should be able to mute your microphone can you hear me yes yeah my name is sj and i'm in ward 4.

1:49:08 and i just wanted um it was super interesting to hear everybody speak about um how um the community members and residents of springfield address themselves at the beginning of this forum and i just wanted to point out that i don't think anyone is taking into consideration that not every member or resident who actually lives in the city of springfield is comfortable giving their name so i just want you guys to make sure that you are taking into consideration those who actually truthfully really do fear speaking to government officials for the city as well as fearing um the city of springfield's police

1:49:53 department um they do have a track record of harassing and being extremely unkind to put it lightly to people in our community so i do think that um you may want to reconsider um being extremely firm on names thankfully not addresses i think it was decided but i would just like to make it known that i don't think that it's necessarily appropriate for everyone to give their legal name and address so i just wanted to make that stated thank you very much thank you all right um i think we're ready to move on to council response if anybody wants to respond

1:50:54 sorry um still coming to grips with the technology here um i'd like to thank both of the commenters for their uh comments tonight um i i would like to address um sj lowers um comments about um the about individuals fearing to speak out in front of the council i i i lament that and i'm concerned about it and i would like to just ask that anyone who feels that they should not speak or cannot speak for whatever the reason um to the council without revealing your name to contact your counselor and your award individually and we would be happy to speak to you about your concerns um i

1:51:42 would like also just to find out more about the issues that are causing people to be afraid to speak out in public i i i suspect i know some of them but it's something that we should uh take as an ongoing concern as counselors thanks all right any other response before we go to steve i i listen i read that i hate that language i hate that language and uh i use it i wish other people didn't i hope they modify their behavior so that starts going away i know it's probably still going to happen and then the other part is as far as being a counselor for the people anybody wants to call me for anything anytime

1:52:27 email me please do and you'll be protected as far as i'm concerned thank you all right i think we're ready for the next item mayor the next item is business from the city council you have one under excuse me one item under business from the city council is a city manager wage ratification shame hurts is here for the staff report uh good evening mayor council um my name is james hurts i'm the hr director here at the city of springfield i'm here to request a motion to approve not approve adjusting the salary of the city manager by 5.53 effective july 1 2002 21. according to ms newton's employment contract city council shall give consideration to a wage adjustment on an annual basis ms

1:53:13 newton was hired on april 20th 2020 and this request represents the first consideration by council for a wage adjustment to her initial employment contract your packet includes an attachment with wage comparisons of city managers from similar size communities the 5.53 increase as proposed would move miss newton's salary to market average i will stop there and answer any questions that you might have all right steve i think we're ready for you i'd like to make a motion i'm actually glad to make this a motion to approve adjusting your salary to 5.53 second all right it's been moved and seconded

1:53:58 um neil could you call the role please yes councilor pitts aye councillor mo yes council radley yes councillor stare aye councillor woodrow yes and counselor pictionary all right the motion passes six to zero next item please any other business from the city council yes all right steve two or three i started to take some notes and i bring them up at this time and then my notes sometimes i can't read my writing but i'm going to work through it here okay i i asked previously about information wisdom the traffic and i had somebody from staff contact me and we

1:54:44 had a meeting coming up the next week so we'll be talking about that some more i also talked about the fast traffic on summit up here on the kelly butte uh it's like i said it's a curving street no sidewalk and lots of fast traffic i wish somebody would give me some ideas maybe we can address that last one i asked a few weeks ago if i get information on the police car crash i believe on centennial my questions that resulted in a polite plate they will have to ask the chief and that's okay if they have okay okay i'm trying to read my writing here and then and it's been silenced i haven't heard anything since then the

1:55:29 constituents are still emailing me and asking what i know i have to tell them nothing if there is some legal restraints on that information that's okay but i need to know that so thank you all right uh anybody else or merely yes um i just want to bring this up for people for the council to think about uh oftentimes we get emails sent from a person in the public who has a concern or wants something wants a response they're not exactly they're no don't necessarily contact somebody individually but they contact the whole council and the mayor city man everybody which i totally

1:56:16 understand because they want an answer and they're not sure how they're if if or how they're going to get one and so they contact everyone um it can be very complex in trying to respond if it's a specific issue in a specific ward or it's a specific specific issue with a certain um resource sometimes some counselors are more familiar with resources than others and and i'm i'm throwing this out there for everybody to just think about i don't have an answer but how do we come up with a system or a semi system of somebody in my ward say sends in a question and they send it to the whole council i i feel comfortable answering but it

1:57:02 can be very confusing if everybody answers so can we sift it down to you know in in that kind of a situation or maybe somebody who is familiar with that particular area be it public safety or be it uh transportation safety or something like maybe there's somebody on the council who's more familiar with with that kind of thing that we can that we can then say hey can you can you take this one because that's your that's your area that's where you have more knowledge i'm i'm just i'm trying to make something that comes can be confusing and complex a little bit more simple or easy for the public to understand um i don't want to i don't want people

1:57:47 who write in to and and get an answer from one person to think that the other five people are ignoring them um because maybe just the person that has the most knowledge is the one that answered or like i said common courtesy amongst amongst us just say hey i can handle this one i got it it's in my word i can i can take care of it um and you know like i said i'm just i'm just it can be complex and cause issues it can be it can cause confusion and um and the most what i want the most is to be able to respond and get taken get whatever the situation with the public with the person it wrote get it taken care of that's that's my end goal

1:58:32 so if there's a way as we think about it if there's a way to increase communication among the counselors as to how we might respond to somebody and make it simple and make and give them a contact person i think it might it might help so i i'm just throwing it out there for people to think about it it's just it's it's not an easy it's not i don't think it's an easy answer all right thank you i think it would be an interesting discussion to have um when when we get a little bit more into the integral setting just to kind of talk through through that for a minute because i know that last week like three of us worked on the same issue so

1:59:17 corey yeah and i don't want to go on with the discussion but just to throw into that i think when it's sent to all of us we it's been ingrained that that if we were to respond to all of us that that becomes a serial meeting and so it's one of those things it's like how do we communicate about that without creating without having mary bridget come around and be like stop it stop and stop stop it you're making a mess so well well if we individually respond if we don't group female but we individually respond then it's not essentially a serial meaning but it's still confusing yeah that's just it is it we're not letting each other know because we're communicating with the constituent all right mary bridget i'm going to i'm going to tag you in to help us uh for

2:00:04 just for this moment and then we can get into a larger discussion later about it yeah i think councilwood droves right if it's just you responding individually it wouldn't make a serial meeting and when you do reply all it always makes me nervous that you're going to look like you're starting to deliberate um when you're not and you're just trying to respond to a constituent you could always say that if you really feel like hey i need to respond to this constituent so they know you if you don't want to punt to the city manager or um say hey that if you're in this ward i'll let this counselor take the lead you could say something like well i i don't want to create a meeting issue here but we'll look at your issue and sort of give by yourself a little time and then email separately later would be one thing i would think about

2:00:50 but it is tricky for sure perfect thank you um damian yeah this is a random question or thought so sometimes when emails come in they're about something that is a lawsuit potentially and people want answers and you know we've been told not to respond but i'm you know thinking about city link and thinking about resources for citizens you know them responding and expecting answers can actually hurt the case in a lot of ways and so is there any and if they truly care about these citizens who follow these lawsuits i wonder is there a way for us to provide some type of document uh online that people can access

2:01:37 especially when they're asking specifically about something that may go to litigation or whatever now basic comments and things like that i mean hey bring it but you know i think a lot of the stuff that does come to us is asking specific questions about something that if we respond or if we you know take and they request action it can actually hurt the citizen and i don't think any of us want that regardless of the situation so yeah like a document uh how to i mean this isn't question anybody's intelligence but but still i mean it happens a lot so you're you're asking like instead of just being able to say no comment or i can't comment on that

2:02:22 because whatever if there's something that you could provide to constituents related to claims or something that at least would be something that would not be hurtful to the case and then would also respond no i'm uh not really i mean something kind of a how-to guide you know for citizens to be like hey i want to know information about this particular case and they and they realize that okay maybe i need to check this because i don't want to interfere in any shape or form and so maybe just a quick how-to guide to how to ask questions or how to not ask questions about something that may be a potential or an ongoing lawsuit because i think that'll save a lot of time and energy on their

2:03:07 behalf as well as ours and then it'll build trust because if we don't respond or say i'm in opposition you know people get upset and they think that we're brushing them off but we really want to see justice happen which means that we cannot come in and i don't think certain citizens really understand that yeah okay all right let me um let me think about that and figure out if there's some good things i can get back to you so you can have things to respond to people about or we could think of a response that staff could give to folks besides just no comment all right steve i'm just saying i've i've written to a couple of those and i specifically say right at the beginning this is not a council response this is sort of my my view and what you're saying and um it's just personal and

2:03:55 that's it yeah so all right so i think mary bridget if you can give us a little bit of help there long term it would i think it would be appreciated and i think you've given us a couple of templates um early on but like like everybody's been saying we shouldn't be responding to if if it's an active claim or litigation that mary bridget's tracking if anything we should be pointing them to mary bridget if they have questions yeah i don't touch anything like that joe well i agree with damien again but again what i want to ask all of you is that can you tell me when you know it may be litigation

2:04:43 every email we get could be litigation at some point basically speaking and do you think people shop around for counselors because anybody i guess would be easier for me to ask raise your hand if you have not seen that i mean it's it's it's one of those things where every single email i've seen is different than the previous one i mean there's there's such a wide variety and and merely i totally understand what you're saying but i don't know if that's an answerable ask i don't know if um i think what we've been doing has been working fairly well it's not perfect and having some some canned responses would be fine um i think we'll just basically put us where we're at today

2:05:28 anyway but i think all the counselors do their best to communicate with folks that are having questions i know i do i pester city manager's office all the time with different things that i that i come across but but i have to you know shout out to the council all of you are responsive i've seen it all of you put your heart into this you're a volunteer and and everybody does their best and i think that you know there's nothing wrong with continuing continually trying to improve how we do our work but there's times like this where again like you said is extremely complex and it just sometimes we i i think we do okay in that area and i'm not totally sure if there's much room to improve but but

2:06:14 there could be some tweaking but i wouldn't expect a huge overall that's for sure i wasn't thinking of an overhaul i was thinking of like sean said last week there were three responses to one particular individual that had a concern and i wanted to make sure that that's when that situation occurs that person doesn't isn't getting three different messages or getting three different approaches and so is there a way to simplify it for the person that has the problem not necessarily uh you know trying to to make you know confused big dramatic steps for all of us to take but maybe it's as simple as when you can't get in contact with someone ask them

2:06:59 have you heard from anyone else um you know and and if so you know what did they suggest or how can we work this together maybe it's something that simple but it's just like i said it can be very confusing for the person who has the problem if they hear from four different people and hear four different answers and yeah i agree i understand what you're saying but also was it stop does that step into the realm of of polling and become public record like that i don't know mary bridget is that the back side of polling or is or can can the citizens do polling and share that i don't know if it's polling so much i think it's that would be more when counselors are trying to figure out people's uh other counselors view on an

2:07:45 issue i think it's more about trying to figure out a consistent answer and and who which counselor should take the lead in responding or making sure that you know they close the loop on that and then the other counselors don't feel like they're not being responsive so i don't think you necessarily have a polling issue there it sounds more like a consistency issue with a little bit of public meeting stuff thrown in and yeah and actually little hindsight merely maybe if if we all get an email that says hey how come the city can't do this or can a city do this if the counselor decides that they want to respond they can respond to all and say i'll handle this and then go offline and talk with that person as soon as someone says i handle it then everybody else out of respect should just back off

2:08:31 yeah that's that's a response too yeah so right like we don't have to solve this tonight we just have to recognize that like as we get more conflict like more additional constituent outreach we just want to keep communicating with everybody to make sure that we're not uh that we're not just duplicating effort right that really i think the expectation would be the starting point is i would assume that if it was in your award you would be taking you know you would at least be the one that was starting to field that question i think that's a good starting ground rule does anybody i know we're kind of in a wandering discussion here so um does anybody have any other business from the council before before we keep going

2:09:17 all right next item please next item is any business from the city manager hey i did that right um just one quick item counselor um counselor mo you asked the question um regarding a crash with spd vehicle i just want to let you know that our police chief um andy shearer is following up on that he has asked one of his command staff to pull the records for that and be in contact with you i appreciate that and i can pass that on but eventually i would like to have some hard information to tell them so thank you okay that's all i have all right next item please

2:10:03 any business from the city attorney uh just a quick thank you for the discussion at the work session i'm gonna debrief and then probably come back to you with um specific feedback or next steps in particular areas so more to come on that and i just appreciate the conversation today well thank you very much we appreciate you tagging along with us as we had a wandering 90-minute conversation i was sure it wasn't going to take 90 minutes but you were right i know it's like the city attorneys love this stuff though this is our jam you know so we're happy all right before i join us remember we do have an executive session it is on a different link um so

2:10:48 it is scheduled to start as soon as we get over there do people need five minutes are they good just jump into the next one i'm seeing all right so we're saying in 7 4 i'm not starting until 7 47 [Laughter] we are adjourned thank you everybody see you in a few