Springfield City Council — January 10, 2022

0:04 now aj are you ready to go yes i am thank you i noticed how you suddenly indicated that for us i'm going to call the springfield city council work session to order uh with roll call mayor van gorden here councillors pitts here mo here bradley here stair here woodrow here and patinary counselor pictionary is excused for the evening um we have two items tonight the first one let me interject i've lost my video i have my audio and i'm afraid to push anything to try and find my video so i just want to alert you that i'm here but i can't see anything so we can hear you okay yeah i can uh we we

0:50 can see you too we'll work on your on your video well thank you for going it's going to be a night of adventures so please just be patient um if we have uh first items library advisory board presentation on library fines with emily david and clyde miller from the advisory board um so i will turn it over to you emily and then we can go from there all right thank you very much good evening mayor and counselors um i'd like to introduce clyde miller who is the immediate past chair of our library advisory board and we're here to talk about library fines on overdue overdue materials this evening and i just want to give a little background in that since

1:36 the library closed in march of 2020 because of the coronavirus we've not been charging library fines because of all the logistical and financial hardships that people have been facing and this is something that a lot of libraries and around oregon and across the country haven't been been adopting as just a part of their regular process is eliminating library fines and the library advisory board would like to see our library adopt this as a as a practice as well so clyde will present the library the library board's perspective on this and then we'd love to hear your questions and comments and um and guidance on how to move forward so i'll let clyde take

2:21 it away hello everybody i hope you can all hear me okay i'm clyde miller i was the chair of the library advisory board until my term ended last week and while i'm here representing myself i'm also representing the rest of the board and our community and i know we have a few other members in attendance so i just want to say thank you to them um and now i'm going to share my screen okay you go right you get ready and leonard what was your question you got your hands up

3:08 hey thanks um i i really don't have any questions until clyde gets through this presentation thanks okay i'll lower my i'll lower my hand all right very good merrily did you have a question before we got got started not until after the presentation thank you okay so i think clyde you want us to save all the questions till the end correct that would be ideal yes okay very good okay we're turning it over to you take us away thank you so much i i do have a fair amount to go through but i will try to go quickly yes we as the library advisory board recommend that our library go fine free you can all see the presentation correct

3:53 okay all right so first of all i want to start from a baseline i expect that you understand this but just to make sure we're all on the same page this is a shortened version of the five fundamental characteristics of a public library that the goal is to create equitable access and resources and basic information services for all the residents of our community so fines for overdue items are historically common however they actually undermine the library's purpose and i want to explore how so that we can have a full conversation about it firstly there is the issue of equity this quote here is from a longer quote from an article in forbes about the

4:39 burbank public library and while late fee may seem very minor to many of the people like here in this zoom it's not true for everyone in our community and speaking to emily david the library director she told of a patron who said they had to balance paying a fine against groceries for their family and given uh some of the the poverty level uh and the people living below the poverty level in our community that sort of makes it inequitable directly related to that library patrons who cannot pay a fine are denied access and much less likely to patronize the library this is backed up by various studies and is true anecdotally if the library's mission is to provide access to all the members of our community i believe that this is a failure in that mission

5:26 there's also additional issues the loss of material studies have shown that fines lead to materials not being returned these physical items have a very real material cost us as community members and taxpayers there's also the loss of availability even when materials are eventually returned fees make them come back slower not faster so those materials are unavailable to other patrons that would otherwise like to use them and finally fees create sort of an antagonistic relationship between the library and its patrons knowing that you're being fined for being a day late or your child misplacing a book when they're honest mistakes or or not doesn't make anyone feel good the feelings matter in this because it can create a barrier for the library's mission in a report from the treasurer from the city of san francisco and justifying

6:12 their decision to go find free they quoted a patron i would support eliminating overdue fines because when i owe money to the library i do not feel comfortable using the resources of the library it creates a sense of unbelonging and i think that there's plenty of anecdotal evidence locally to support that general sentiment uh and you might be thinking what about the money and i want to acknowledge this money's tight and anything that affects the budget is worth consideration however i think you'll see that the cost of keeping fines isn't actually worth it a library card costs 95 a year to access library services if somebody doesn't live in springfield that is a fair price attributed to the value of our library we pay taxes for the library which covers our 95 dollars this includes the

6:57 building it's scheduled hours material services and staff assessing fines is functionally double dipping and charging patrons for services they've already paid for [Music] in regards to money in fiscal year 20 the monetary value of fines was only just over eight thousand dollars uh the library was not open during the fourth quarter of the pandemic so extrapolating it would have been about eleven thousand dollars uh earned the budget as it was done prior to covert expected about twelve thousand dollars this amount this amount in fines accounted for only 0.4 percent of our library's budget uh per our library director a low estimate of staff time spent dealing with patron fines is 10 hours a week conservatively yearly that's about one

7:43 quarter of one full-time staff position dedicated to dealing with fines uh there's also an actual cost in terms of staff time to work with patrons who've been assessed to find but there's also an emotional cost patrons expecting to be able to use services but being unable to can lead them to feeling frustrated and having negative interactions and this is our library staff it's not everyone but it's just a lot of the staff i just want to point that out to humanize them and as a side note in doing research on our library they're statistically understaffed if you look at our population and tax base in comparison to other libraries in oregon there are fewer of them so they're doing a lot with less than just about everyone

8:28 else i just want to point that out all right so staff perspective hostile interactions with patrons affect staff and their service patrons often have to explain difficult situations like being in the hospital or having a loved one pass away in order to get their fines waived uh this puts unnecessary pressure sort of on the staff to make a judgment call on people's hardship and it may put the patron in an awkward position if they feel they have to justify why they can't pay a fine these quotes are here because i really want you to have to hear directly from the staff and see how the tone has shifted during our temporary stay and we don't have any hard numbers on this but anecdotally per the director having a hostile interaction with the patron over

9:13 fines can affect a staff person for the rest of the day and make them wary of interacting with that patron in the future if the stress of a bad interaction can affect performance by 10 over the course of a year like i also want to think about what that costs in terms of hours it's also possible and again no anecdotal evidence but it could result in someone quitting and if if we consider that as something that may have happened in the past even if it was never directly stated you also have to consider the loss of productivity of not having that staff member of having to retrain somebody just a possible consideration and this is all on top of how their happiness affects how they act interact with that patron in the future or with other patrons

10:03 all right there is an argument that could be made for keeping fines as a way of encouraging personal responsibility and to benefit the moral growth of our community and i want to address that as well in considering personal responsibility libraries have been utilizing late fees for years yet even in 1983 a published study showed that there's virtually no change in overdue rates between fine and fine free libraries it doesn't bring materials back faster libraries can still suspend privileges without at the added penalty of a fine and fines are punitive responses and negative reinforcement negative reinforcements are actually far less an effective uh far less effective in creating behavioral change it also results in building a negative

10:48 relationship with the library and we might ask then well what is the library's responsibility sarah houghton the director of the san rafael public library stated that it's not the library's role to teach responsibility to any age group the library's role is to encourage lifelong learning exploration and innovation when i think about what i want to see for our library for our community that is what i want to see all right um so removing fines might seem like a significant shift in how our library operates but this idea and acting upon it is not new nor is it some big city idea and i want to go over why in considering

11:33 the purpose of a library the goal is that the service is used it's not to make money directly or indirectly but to provide a valuable service and make our community more welcoming going fine free creates a cycle of positive reinforcement that serves that purpose and after chicago removed their fines they saw a significant uptick in patrons renewing their library cards which is a pretty solid indicator and this is not an isolated example other libraries report a lot of similar findings so that would not be an outlier also i want to point out that we are not alone in this this is a list of the other libraries in oregon

12:19 that have gone fine free already and there's a second slide of them it was much more than i expected uh this it's a real cross section the other libraries that have done it rural and urban large and small wealthy and not so wealthy this is just to point out that not uncharted waters and find free libraries represent 50 of all public libraries in the state and that trend is only going upward so the library advisory board which i'm here as a representative of has come up with a policy that we believe balances the needs of the community with the needs of the city and the needs of our library that should have been provided with you but uh here are some of the big takeaways i'll add a little bit just for

13:05 clarity for each of the three renewals each renewal is three weeks but there are no automatic renewals on held books this is to encourage patrons to return popular items in a timely fashion after a book has come due there's a 30-day grace period when it can be returned with no fine or not like nothing to worry about and we are also going to try to make this i'm proposing that this policy be transparent very clearly stated to all patrons and we say that library privileges should be reinstated in a reasonable fashion reasonable means this if the material is returned in good condition prior to removal from the catalog

13:50 uh good if it's returned in good condition after the removal from the catalog then that means they'll return the material and pay a fee for the processing if it's a good quality replacement they will uh also pay the reinstatement fee or they'll be paying repay replacement cost and processing fee all of the fees that i just mentioned would be to cover the library's actual costs they aren't fines or punishments and finally there will be a conscience jar uh that we'd recommend putting at the front that's so that if anyone wants to teach responsibility for part of the family or to assuage their guilt they're welcome to do so

14:38 so uh in conclusion libraries provide access the core mission of the springfield public library is to provide access and materials to all the members of our community fines prevent access and have costs fines are inherently inequitable and having and assessing fines costs our library and materials lost and plenty of staff time way more than is earned in fines even if we don't get those items back the math is still in favor of not having fines there's also the hidden costs on our library staff's morale and reduced patronage so it is this board's recommendation that we go find free i believe that we have developed a plan and policy to address patrons who act in bad faith or patrons who destroy material or lose material

15:24 it's very much a margin texts our materials and saves the city money um and saves the sanity of library staff um we also think it's good pr and the right thing to do and credit where credit is due these are some of the references that i mentioned throughout i also want to credit the the library board and the subcommittee on going fine free so thank you very much for your time i am ready for any questions you might have let me start off by saying i like this i think uh i think it's a good way to go

16:11 i'm in favor of doing this um i have just a couple comments i made as i read through the material um our initial lending time is 21 days is that for everything or is there a shorter time for the for the most current books uh emily i may have to ask you to verify that but i believe that is for all books they're only like other materials they might have shorter time so there is the new books are two weeks and then all other books and then there's some specialty materials like video games that are one week right yeah so so where so my my question came in with the automatic renewals i can i honestly admit that i'm old

16:57 school and i used to love to walk into the library and walk down the stacks and just have whatever might pop out at me or look interesting if we renew somebody for automatically three times for 21 days we end up with 84 days worth of somebody potentially having the book um and i'm proposing the possibility of being having the automatic renewals just be two weeks instead of three um only on only from that standpoint of possibly getting that book back into circulation quicker um that's the only yes uh that is actually addressed in the policy if there is a hold on it because it is a welded item the automatic renewals don't happen

17:43 i i understand with the hold but if it's not but it's just it's just the idea of having a book off the shelf for that length of time that nobody else has access to some of them some like i said i used to walk the stacks so there might there might be a book that would pop out of me that wouldn't be there if somebody has it for that length of time so that's um that's and and i will be making an honest confession maya culpa when automatic you knows come through it allows me to be lazy in getting a book back so that's part of the rationale i'm coming from it's from my own my own negligence in that regard um and the other the other comment that i had was i saw on the the prepared material

18:28 that with the um explain the policy of no fines and the only thing that i thought of and i saw it in your presentation adding to that just the line that says that there could be uh loss of privileges or there could there that there was a consequence that that ex expected accountability um it doesn't have to be a 10-point list but just so somebody realizes that even if there's no fines there could be consequences if a book doesn't come back in so that's you know i would just so it's the transparency again so that people recognize the whole the whole process and it's in front of them in both in both ways

19:14 but otherwise i think it's a great idea i i like the idea like the approach and um um and i totally appreciate not having to make the library staff have to confront somebody on fines so yeah that's that was my comments um yeah i am absolutely in support of this and um as someone who uses the library and my spouse uses the library a lot i know how much um she has appreciated those automatic renewals and you already explained the part that if there is a hold and a book is really popular then you're not left waiting for it because you don't get the automatic renewal so um i appreciate the presentation i know this is not the first time that we have

20:00 broached this subject because i can remember hearing us talk about it before i was on council so i'm just i'm fine with it just the way it is and i am in support of it leonard well first of all i'd like to applaud marylee's embrace of the personal accountability piece of this um that's very nice um also i uh wanted to um just ask so let's say on the 21 days elapse and then the 30 days um go by and i still haven't returned the book at that point you're going to suspend my privileges so do do i get a text do i get an email what what happens at that point so the majority of our communications go

20:47 via email if possible um so you would get an email and then we would send a follow-up letter as well if the book still wasn't returned just to make sure that you had gotten the communication okay yeah yeah well well what i'm thinking is you know talk about an unpleasant interaction with the library customer if they just forgot that they that they borrowed the book in the first place and then they didn't get any further notification bang they're suspended i it you know provided that they're given some sort of notice that they they need to return the book or they're they're suspended i i think this whole program is a really good thing i i definitely approve thank you we do try and have as many

21:33 touch points as possible with the the patrons but we do also remind them that their account is their responsibility hey y'all uh a couple of things so i mean it personally if the library board decides that this is what they want to do i'm going to support it however i per you know i know we saw a list of the cities in oregon that have done it that's cool but all the data that when the cities that were mentioned were cities that have multiple libraries and resources so i'm not sure to me that doesn't back up the reasoning so if you all want to do it fine too uh

22:20 i i i i understand extenuating circumstances but you know i think personal accountability is something that is lacking in a lot of people and if we allow people to continue to be lackadaisical or to really do what they want it's taking advantage of us or you all i should say and uh it also doesn't send a great message uh but then also you know and this is me i might be reaching but just based on some of the the things that have gone down in springfield i can really see people coming in and personally checking out books that deal with race or gender or sexuality

23:07 and not returning them in acts of protest and i mean it's a shame that we have to think like this but i mean this is the reality unfortunately and so uh like i said if you also have to do it i'm i mean i support it i just don't know if the information provided to me it doesn't really support uh the reasoning uh especially when you compare springfield to san francisco and chicago that have multiple resources we don't have that many resources and you know there might be a place that has 20 books but if we only have one that could really potentially affect somebody's ability to do something for a paper or do some type of research or try to get educated about

23:53 a certain thing and i would just hate for that to happen because somebody is either petty or somewhat lackadaisical and so i just hope that there's a way to kind of i mean i think it's impossible to figure out whether people are being you know what or just being you know or they just forget or they have external circumstances but i don't know like it's i i hope that people are courteous enough to return things if they are physically able to do so but it to me it seems like no fines could potentially reinforce that i do what the hell i want and i know you're not going to come for me so i don't know

24:39 right steve i'm i'm fighting this i'm old school i remember when i checked books out and it was going to be fine out there after two weeks i got that book back it was a driving force for me and so uh i think that was important uh i'm i'm not i i don't i don't agree with a lot of arguments you have but i'm not gonna go against whatever the group was i'll go with you guys but i have these visions of a check book being checked out and ending up in somebody else's library and it's gone so that's what i appear that's it thank you merril lee um are you do you have something else or is your hands just left out i had one more comment

25:25 that was um one one of them was in response to to leonard went yes we get we get notifications three days before it's due we get an email that tells us that the book is coming due so there's lots of email exchange when you've borrowed a book um for anybody that's that's got their emails set up with the library which happens when you get a library card so um uh if you haven't if you have an email so they there is there's lots of communication that goes back and forth between the library and the patreon when they have when they have a book so it does you know um i appreciate um damian's comments um what i would like to add into that is that

26:10 that could be a situation that would occur but i don't think we need to address it at the moment i think we just need to be aware in case it does um you know it and i think that um if you look at the list of libraries oregon libraries they're not largest libraries they're small and they're community libraries so i don't i don't see it as being a as the majority of those towns having multiple uh resources in libraries majority of them are small public libraries similar to ours um so in that regard but i i i can see damian's point and i can see him i can see the concern like i said i would rather i would rather do what we're doing now and if that becomes an issue address it when it becomes an issue

26:56 rather than rather than trying to predict it beforehand because it may not happen damien did you have something else yes uh and excuse my ignorance and not having a a a library card i'm a bad springfield citizen however other alternate ways that people are alerted because you know thinking about the digital divide and what if people don't have access to email uh how will they be alerted is that even something that has been considered or do you all have something in place to make that happen yeah so people that don't have emails associated with their account get letters in the mail and then um you know at times with with

27:43 problem accounts we do have to call people directly that takes more staff time so that's kind of the last resort so um depending on how the account is set up uh your preference as far as email or snail mail you you get alerts and with regards to um the comment as far as the the studies you know i thought about that too counselor pits as far as you know a lot of the studies come from big cities but the big cities are the ones that have the resources and the time to put money into big studies and so we rely on you know their expertise and and funding resources to get that sort of information as well

28:30 and and frankly if somebody wants to take a book from the library i don't think fines are going to stop them we get people that take books from the library now um and if they really don't want some you know want something to be gone it's you know unfortunately we've got a uh alarm system in place and try and you know catch people when they do but it does happen leonard yeah just real quick i uh damien referred to a cultural divide and i think the big cultural divide that we're facing is not between people who email and snail mail i think it's between people who email and who text and the something that we might think about adopting at some point in the future is just texting people who don't have an

29:16 email that's active clyde did you have anything else yeah i wanted to just address when you're talking about the digital divide that's actually one of the reasons that i feel like the removing fines is actually uh works in favor of like like trying to flatten that divide because if people are not getting or seeing the notifications and they are more likely to incur fines and so in some ways people who are less tech savvy or less connected are more likely to be harmed by fines so removing fines actually becomes a benefit in that particular regard thank you um emily do we need to take leonard did you have something else okay emily do we need to take formal

30:01 action or is just simply us kind of head nodding this what you needed i believe it's just uh you know we're searching for the guidance from council on what direction to go as to whether to um adopt um the no fines or reinstate so um i have heard it seems like you have a head nod to go ahead and go forward and do um in in to implement uh a fine free library um i think based on the questions back and forth as you sort of get more experience i don't know if you want to fit fit it into a memo or if you just want to put into um one of the other times you you're in front of council is just kind of get keep us updated about how it's

30:46 going and the questions about you know things that we're learning along the way okay well thank you very much we really appreciate your time thank you both of you um have a great evening all right next item is mary bridget and she is talking to us about the council vacancy charter amendment uh good evening mayor and council i'm here before the council again to continue our discussion about changing the process for how the uh council fills vacancies for elected positions this is a follow-up from our september conversation the materials in your packet i don't have a powerpoint tonight i just wanted to get input from the council

31:32 about a few points in the materials talked about if the council wants to look at having some more formal process about appointing an interim counselor or mayor and or if the council wants to potentially put a charter amendment before the voters to change the timing for the election there's also some additional information about the process for each of those items and then included in the packet um information from what the city of medford does that's an example of a community that has more process around appointing an interim counselor or mayor and then corvallis interestingly enough just passed a charter amendment about filling vacancies so i thought that might be interesting for you to see

32:17 a sort of the opposite issue that springfield was dealing with and that they had in their charter special elections for any vacancy happened to have i think it was three vacancies that were either in short succession or overlapping and decided to move the other direction and do appointments for councillors keeping the special elections for um the mayor um one thing that's a little different about corvallis is they elect by ward so i'm a little different there um i'm happy to either frame up the conversation a little more or just hear your input and then try and move forward however would work best for you steve i understand that we can implement a process that maybe we don't have don't

33:02 have to have a charter amendment but it's just as good as a chart amendment i i would like to go that direction to to just save us an election cost of election so you're talking about perhaps looking at some process around making the appointment that's a little more formal so the public understands what that process would be well it's got it's got to be accepted by the public but i don't think do we not have to go so far as to put it in the chart or can it be in in our codes so it's just just like that yeah information about the appointment could definitely be in your code or in your operating policies if you wanted to change the timing of the election that would have to be a charter amendment oh okay um anyway that's i'd like to do that if we can okay

33:47 merrily uh my first the first question i asked myself as i was reading through the material was what are we trying to fix is there something there that we're trying to fix um setting aside last year entirely last year was so unique and so different and probably something that will never happen again in the same coincidental steps that it did for another 150 years i mean it just it just lined up the way it did very uniquely but as i read through the material i like the possibility of framing

34:35 a 45 to 60 day period of filling a vacancy with an appointment um i'm not exactly how sure how that would line up but framing in a more formal way the timing that would be involved as to okay we've received the we've received the resignation or the the filling of the loss of the person in the in the seat um so how soon do we have to get a call out for applications um and at what point do we stop that call and we you know go to interviews away and so the time frame for that how that how that would occur to the to the time frame of where the appointment is is made i would like to see that um and in the process of setting up something like that having a uh time frame in council

35:22 for people to give their comments on on what they think about that that give a public comment opportunity so it's setting up a time frame and having a public have an opportunity to make a public comment in regards to setting getting that time frame or getting that system set up um along with um the other the other section of public comment at the time that we receive applications or have a list of people who have put themselves in for a candidate for a potential seat then there's an opportunity for public comment after that for the not necessarily

36:10 i i i'm not exactly sure how to explain it but just the opportunity for the there's an opportunity in the council meeting for people to come in and make their comments on we had this time when we felt you know we had that time period in the council and i think that's a good idea to have that time period in the council meeting for people to be able to make comments prior to our voting and making the appointment [Music] okay can i ask a clarifying question so the opportunity for the public to comment on the process the council selects are on the potential candidates for both the process now if we if we decide to go to set up a time frame give the public an opportunity to say yes we think that time frame is logical no we think that

36:55 time frame it doesn't won't work however if i give them an opportunity to speak now give them a a time and counsel now to place their opinion at the time when there might be a next vacancy next time then follow a similar process that we did this time of having an opportunity for people to speak up in council um and provide public comment on the any candidate that offers an application understood thank you did that clarified yeah okay and before i go to steve mary bridget i had a sort of a clarifying question about the packet you had 45 days um was the the process that got us to um counselor pitts um is your opinion that could that that we

37:42 could go faster than that as a choice or are you saying that's pretty much as fast as we could go with an appointment process um i think that's probably as fast as you could go we had only been already been dealing with vacancy issues before so i think the council was already sort of primed to be talking about that issue um i think 45 days is as fast as you could go i can tell you what i've learned from other jurisdictions bend has 30 days they feel like that's way too short other jurisdictions i've seen 60 and 90 so just to give your perspective on time okay perfect uh steve uh marylee's suggestion uh i i like it as far as councils are concerned but what about replacing a mayor

38:27 that would be different do you think it should be quite a bit different yeah the mayor um position could be different for example corvallis left you know you could see what they did they left their same process and then had a different process for the mayor one thing that this council could do is if you decide you want to have more process around making the appointment for an interim uh you could then have a pr and it's let's say it's the mayor you know you can sort of anticipate if a person who is amongst the council is selected to be the interim mayor that creates a vacancy right in whatever ward that is and then you could develop that process at the outset to to kind of have the whole process laid out for the public so

39:12 they sort of understand what would happen um or you could just have a different process for the mayor altogether leonard so um i i'm thinking back on the uh the process of uh selecting um i by by the way for what it's worth i thought the appointment of counselor bits worked very well um i i i have no complaints with that product that that part of the process at all back um last year when we were talking about the mayoral vacancy we did um allow a certain period for public comment and i think to an extent it actually aggravated the public's opinion of the process because in a lot of cases they thought that they had

39:57 voiced their opinion and then it was disregarded so i'm um i i'm a little bit i'm a little bit ambivalent about this at this point i i i think that there is certainly an argument to be made that counselor vacancies could be um appointed by the council i i think for the mayoral vacancy there is um a a strong argument to be made that it's such an appoint such an important part of the um of the city government that it should be subject to a special election that's where i'm at right now

40:47 i guess for me like i think about a time period you know maybe if uh the person you know resigns and and the remaining seat has more than two years maybe you know that can go towards an election but i mean any shorter i mean if the people decided they want to do it then great but to be honest one thing that i saw was that there were people who if they had somebody in this position that they liked or that agreed with them wholeheartedly they probably wouldn't be upset about it uh to um somebody who went through the application process like i stayed within the boxes and then it wasn't until after the fact when i saw the other applications that i decided to

41:32 and i was kind of coaxed to potentially email my resume to people but i didn't attach it and so i think we need to have very clear guidelines even with you know this ties into the boards and commissions if you have a space then be able to you know bob line up front keep it simple and cut it off versus adding more uh or we we really lay out okay hey this is what you know resume cover letter or will you say hey you got this space you fill it out you know summarize which i mean it's not a skill that a lot of people i have anymore honestly uh then three i think one thing that we do need to think about as demographics change or as you have different types of demographics who end up running for these positions or holding these

42:17 positions regardless of how they get it you'll be surprised at how many people might be here for a year year and a half and will leave the city and so we do need to start considering that because you know as ages decrease and people aren't as set or they end up not staying here because i mean honestly it's not all that all that easy for some of us uh i think we do need to prepare uh you know really think about that where even though this was an anomaly it could potentially become normal that people will run for office panels staying here and do the job family or just being burnt out or

43:02 mental health reasons decide to either resign or end up moving and so i do think we need to be cognizant of that corey thank you um so i appreciate what counselor pitt said the last piece particularly about just understanding that the world is shifting so when we say it was an anomaly i mean i think we can just look around at neighboring communities we can look around throughout oregon and see that it's not as much of an anomaly and things could change in five or ten years but right now you know people are moving around and we're in that sort of that that period um the other thing that i want to say is i do think that the the council process

43:49 worked well and fine and one of the things that was different that we we also we sort of screwed around around the process that we have for mayor is who who gets to uh who gets to be considered to be mayor and that was a lot of the feedback that was happening is that it was selected from somebody who was on the council as opposed to being similar to the council or the council process where people could apply um so i think that that's that's where it it it pushes against what's the most democratic process and i hear what councilor pitts was saying about you know wanting it to be really clear but then i also as someone who ran for office i mean it's it's an inherently political process

44:35 and so the idea of appointment and the idea of running are a bit different in terms of what it what it takes and what is um what is asked and so i think for me having giving the opportunity for people to be able to you know send their resume or reach out or do interviews or things gives that makes it a little bit more democratic to me and that people get to weigh in they get to find out who these candidates are so i think those are those are a couple of the things for me as i that we just still haven't gotten to in terms of who gets to be considered if there's an opening for mayor is it only someone from the council or can someone apply for it because i think that's where we had a little bit of a breakdown

45:21 around that um and then there was something else i was gonna say and i totally forgot what it was um but those were the those were the big pieces around that i think it's just thinking about that just just a couple things i i i shy away from special elections but i understand what cory's saying in regards to expanding the opera the options for mayor the only caution i have with that is um i looked at everything that the mayor is involved with and responsible for and how much of a guiding factor the mayor is

46:07 for everything that comes up and we find as counselors how much time we spend just on preparing as a counselor and we could double or triple that in the same you know in the in the seat of the mayor and i just have a caution of bringing somebody in cold that has not been part of the process that's where that's where i become comfortable pulling somebody in from council uh knowing that the for the first election in the biennium is gonna put that person up for re-election or up for election so it's not like we're pointing uh somebody that's going to be in there for the next 10 years without the possibility of an election but i just

46:52 it's it it falls into that anomaly if we were if someone from the community at large were selected to go into the mayor position that has not had exposure to city processes city deadlines uh the ais and all the different parts um and then comes in cold i i'm not sure how long somebody would last when they had to brief themselves on everything that's going on and on top of making decisions having constant contact from the community constant emails and phone calls and i just that's why i'm comfortable having it come from council and if somebody's interested in becoming mayor then get out there and campaign for it and get yourself on the ballot in the next election but i just the transition is hard enough when you're

47:38 having to make a replacement then when then making a replacement with somebody who's absolutely cold when it comes to um what happens in in everything that we have to get done and all the legal parameters that we have to follow i mean because we have to fall in line with everything that has been established for us to do in a certain way so i just i don't know knows i'm completely negative i just have a real caution when it comes to pulling somebody in that has not been involved or exposed in the processes that we have to that we have to follow okay so let's try to separate this and let uh right because we have i think two tracks that are sort of developing and i'm

48:23 looking at mary bridges to keep me honest here we have a sort of a council track that's sort of easier to get our arms around i think and we can kind of get you know sort of checked off the list and then probably some stuff about uh a mayor vacancy that we have to sort of hash out so i'm looking for head nods and i'm telling and i'm going to tell you what i think i hear right i hear people thought the council process went pretty well not from a process perspective and it also brought got a standing so you know got us a good outcome too um and i hear that having some sort of basic pieces in the operating in the operating rooms are our operating procedures around how about you know hey we need to let

49:08 the public comment about the actual procedure we need to adopt an actual procedure and then solicit you know public input um about those about those uh about potential candidates before we decide and understanding that it's probably gonna be minimum 45 days maybe as high as like 60 or 65 days are is that a is that accurate are people comfortable with that do they want maybe more process written down than that and then we'll come back to the mayor's stuff i think it's going to be a little bit harder i just want to make sure we're continuing to kind of move the ball here

49:53 i'm seeing head nods okay so do people want more processed than that because if we if we tell mary bridget to put that into the operating procedures essentially what we're going to be doing is simply saying that a future council whether it's us or anybody else will you know kind of write the actual details of the procedure but it must sort of check off certain boxes one of them is you have to hold a public hearing right like one of them is you've got to have an application um and one of them is you have to hold get public input before you vote and if people are good with that then we can okay good okay switch switching to the i think switching to the mayor topic so

50:41 leonard why don't you go and then we'll figure out and see where we're at well thanks john i i want to thank councillor rodley for bringing up the issue of um whether the field would be open to the to the full gamut of the springfield electorate because i think that it actually served to create the impression during the uh during the the mayoral vacancy that we were sort of pulling the ladder up after us that there were by limiting the field to our counselors i think we were creating the impression that we felt like we were all the government that this kind that this city needs which created well rightly or wrongly it

51:26 created the impression that we were that we pretty much um felt that no one outside of the field of city councillors was capable of stepping in as mayor and i don't i don't think that that was what any of us felt but it certainly created that impression and so i feel like the i i in other words i think what counselor rodley is saying is true that we should widen the field uh in order to incorporate the possibility of an outside candidate there there are candidates um in the in the city of springfield that have been mayors that have been mayors for

52:13 cities that are bigger than this and so i think that it creates the impression that we're a little bit arrogant by not having the uh the full um field of candidates um that the city could afford us all right thank you steve real quick uh damian made some comments about getting people in there that may not be here very long and and move on and and you know this is an important job being counselor mayor and when i approach that's a big deal and i'm going to be there for four years that's my commitment to everybody and and hopefully when we if we do some selection out there who we do who we select has that

52:58 in mind not somebody's want to be there temporary then then move on and so that now as far as mayor is concerned uh merrily mentioned two things one is uh i forget what it was but anyway we we still have we can still elect somebody go on the ballot elect somebody who has no experience at all as mayor put them in there that'll be pretty uncomfortable for the city but that can happen and so i hope it doesn't happen and but when we do select from the council we do know what we're getting i'm not suggesting that by the way but that mitigates it a little bit the boys there's somebody out there can throw up get on the ballot and win that election and and really mess the city up um and before i turn it back over to mary bridget i think there's a kind of an important

53:43 thread to pull on we all come at this from different roles i think when people sign up they are very much wanting to commit to being here for four years but the reality is right like i'm in the middle of my professional life um you know and there's people on the council that still work right something about your job family right everything sort of could change so i think it's probably gonna be normal that that we may see folks be like okay my job got transferred to i don't know peoria and i've got to follow with it so you know but everybody everybody starts with that plan to get here stay here for four years uh mary bridget just to follow up on the thread about the um

54:29 appointing a mayor a position if or how that should be different from a counselor one thing the council could do is it could also have the same process that requires um uh going out to the community public involvement all those things also apply to the mayor so there's it sort of checks the council to not have that option to just say no we only want to select from self-select from this group um but certainly people who are on the council could apply to be right the mayor and then like counselor woodrow was saying you know some of those factors like experience um or knowledge of the city you know could go into how you weigh that when you make

55:14 your decision but still would require and give the public the idea and the understanding that um even if you're not on the council you could put your hat in so to speak for mayor and that might be a way to get at the appointment in a way that doesn't have maybe two different sets of rules for mayors and council some that that might be one option um and marilyn do you want to make your comment yes yes thank you mary bridget that that makes that makes sense to me um i i that really does i um the possibilities there are possibilities so people out there like as best as been

55:59 mentioned have been mayors elsewhere have been involved in city government elsewhere um and and that would weigh into those uh applications and the interviews and and so that allows that to happen um that doesn't completely just confined the options to just the city council so i i'm fine with that that that sounds like you know corey brought it up to i think that's the way corey brought it up so um yeah no that makes sense to me so the only thing what i'm hearing is the only change between the council process and the mayor process we would require under sort of our operating rules is that the mayor process would be written in such a way that it no matter what would be sort of open for a broader

56:44 application but we would do the same thing where we like a future council would write a procedure write write what they're going to do have a public hearing about it adopt it have some sort of application require an application and then you know before they make a decision to explicitly take public uh take uh in-person public comment about it that's correct i think um the way i'm kind of visualizing it in my head would be you know the language would be something like when there's a vacancy of an elective office the following shall happen so it's elective whether it's council or mayor and then the nice thing about this is you can you can kind of fashion the process depending on the position and the specifics of the vacancy instead of having the sort of rote prescriptive

57:31 you know sets of hoops you got to jump through it could be something that kind of makes sense at that time that also has public involvement and vetting so to speak about them kind of weighing in like you know that does make sense or doesn't make sense yeah okay thanks um so i um i i wanted to take another um sort of another pass at this instead of instead of mandating an appointment by the council for for the mayoral vacancy what if we had a process where we determined on a case-by-case basis how the vacancy would be filled and i i think that we should always i mean my my instinct

58:16 is that we should always open up the field to include possible candidates from outside the council but i um i i do also um think that we should throw open the possibility of not making it a council appointment of having depending on how long the vacancy is going to exist for instance whether we should have an election or not that's all i've done i can just respond that in my research it looks like there is some flexibility about how and when a council makes an appointment for an interim person who may serve out the rest of the term or may excuse me run for election in that spot subsequently um but there there's not a lot of flexibility for our

59:01 council to say for example and maybe i'm not understanding correctly but like in this instance with this vacancy we should have a special election in this instance we're going to appoint somebody um it's usually um you know you can appoint somebody for a amount of time and then and then the successor runs for election so i'm not sure if maybe i'm not understanding you but i don't think we have that much flexibility no you you understood me perfectly um i um i wanted to find out whether it was possible to throw to throw the process open on a case-by-case basis yeah no it seems like what i'm seeing is that we don't have that flexibility the election um the timing of the election is really a more of a charter vote of the people kind of thing and that's that's where

59:46 you find that information well let me ask you this mary bridget is it possible to mandate an election after a certain um if if there's a certain amount of length of time left in the term yeah so you'll see that um you know some were sort of in line with a lot of other communities but some will say you know the election occurs at the next general biennium election or you might jump in to the next special election in may or in november or it may say uh what corvallis used to do is they said you have to have a special election and then they just had to call a special election and there's cost with that so there is flexibility there about how community wants to handle that the issue with springfield and that is that would be a charter

1:00:31 amendment and so that kind of starts that process okay well that that being the case i'm sort of gravitating toward what councilor pitts was suggesting was uh that i the way i understood what he was saying was that if there were say um over over two years remaining in the term um that that that would mandate an election and less than that it would be subject to an appointment i think that that's what happens under current law right now because because we hit the regular schedule election merely

1:01:25 just that the next election would occur and then in the biennium the next biennium election and i just wanted to comment that i think that's i think that is important because that's when you get the most voters you get the most public response and i think that's one of the reasons it's in the charter the way it is is because um special elections and and elections on the off year just don't get the response and if we're looking for public involvement if we're looking for a true read from the city that biennium election is is the best one and it's the one that's in the charter so i'm comfortable with sticking with the charter on that so um and i i would offer maybe one one small tweak that we might make that we followed in the past is that um and and

1:02:10 see if we can't get kind of wrap this up is that if i vaguely think i wish pish was here because he could tell us if if memory served correctly but i would be okay even going as far as you know following the same process as we had been written um but also if there was an active election going on right now guiding you know the few future councils away from uh appointing it so it would say something like hey if we were if we had an opening 60 days from you know a regularly scheduled election that we should just wait right because that's what you know that's what what we should do that makes sense and i don't know if it i don't know if the number's right i vaguely think most people use it like in the 60-day range yeah so that would that would be an example

1:02:56 i'm sorry i cut you off um did you have something else no go ahead okay so that's like somebody uh [Music] there's a vacancy created but their term is up quite short i mean it's not a long period of time so instead of this sort of long process of trying to appoint somebody where you kind of go through all this what you do instead is wait for the election to um happen and and let people just put in and run yeah yeah so so we right because what happened in 2020 was by far the most extreme end right it had moving parts because you had multiple terms involved well the other option that's the extreme end is that really short period which is you know hey look we're in flight something happens and we're gonna have that election in 60 days anyway and what

1:03:42 we probably want to do in that case is just simply wait have the election and appoint the winner yeah and i will um i can look into that and then the only thing i'm thinking about that is what the timing is for having to put yourself on the ballot how that works so let me um i can i'll continue to look at that but that makes sense okay and then we can we can have that conversation i know you've got a big edit coming up with a bunch of operating procedures so we can kind of go through the line by line is when when you kind of put all the virtual meeting things and uh you know other elements together because we're gonna end up having a big conversation about it okay steve just one thing whatever we do i'm a public input i want the public to be

1:04:27 able to okay to have a say in what we're doing it's really important i want to hear from them okay so it sounds like we've got good direction on the council side good direction on the mayor's side and i'm going to make sure that um so mary bridget maybe could you give us the like 90 000 foot okay um yes i can so what i am understanding is that the council is interested in looking at developing a process for the selection and appointment of an interim counselor or mayor that incorporates public input on the process and the potential candidates and that also

1:05:12 is not prescriptive where every vacancy is handled the same way but has some flexibility but does require the council to adopt a process publicly so it would have some public scrutiny most likely parts of that would be um you know public input the a standard application process maybe interviews uh committee or depending on how the council wants to fashion it for that particular vacancy that would also be the same for the mayor we might have a i don't know if safe harbor's the right word but we might have an exception for a vacancy that's created at the very end of someone's term so we can just use the already happening election process to elect somebody so we're not appointing someone and then having an election very short after

1:05:59 um does that sound right i think you got it okay i have two just real quick follow-up questions just to make sure um that would help me now um some communities require for nomin um require nominations for appointments that they want people who are interested not only to fill out the application and you know sort of put their name in there so to speak and i just didn't know what you guys thought of that um that would be the similar to getting on the ballot or we have yeah 25 signatures yeah yeah exactly but i don't know what you okay i thought it seemed to but i just i didn't want it i'm seeing okay i'm i'm good for not having to do those to get on the ballot so i know that's what i figured i was like that stuff i just wanted to make sure and then um are you in terms of time

1:06:47 limit is it is the council have an interest in saying to the council whatever council this is when this you know they've dealt with an expectancy hey you got to start this process with a certain amount of time within a certain amount of time or you have to get it done within a certain amount of time does that make sense like there are two time things you could do you could just say hey i don't care how you do it come up with a process do it in 60 days or 90 days or come up with a process and you need to start it within 45 days of the vacancy or sorry my vote would be to have it done by i mean i think that's what people are going to care the most about is like what what's the end result okay um yeah yeah good okay um if we're going if we would go done by i think we've gotta we've gotta

1:07:32 write it in a way that's more like 90 days um like most of us if we ever do do this again are going to want to get it done as soon as possible but i want to acknowledge you know if we had it happen over summer break or something like that you know there could be there could be a weird sort of setup there and it's the season you know because one of the things that happened when when john passed was so unexpected in april that uh fred came back in and filled he with previous accounts or he filled in for the rest of the year just not as a anything other than just a feeling um for the rest of the year and then the election occurred the following year so that that's in a unique situation too but that allows for that time frame the 90 days um

1:08:17 and some kind of blip that happens in the middle of it that can be taken by surprise got it okay okay perfect okay well i think that was our last item so thank you very much everybody have a good night we are adjourned thank you good night