Item 2C: Ratification of IGR Actions of April 23, 2008

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granting authority decide who had the better application. Her largest concern was that in a recent situation the council had been left out of the loop. Ms. Taylor reiterated that it would be sufficient to notify the council in cases where there were no matching funds in lieu of actually bringing an application to a council meeting. Ms. Taylor indicated she would like notification as soon as possible and for the CCIGR to meet more regularly. Ms. Wilson ascertained that the CCIGR’s directive on the grant application process was that grant applications requiring matching funds would continue to come before the CCIGR and that for all other grant applications, the council would receive notice from staff of the grant application; that the vote for grant applications did not need to be unanimous; that whenever possible the IGR would meet to discuss a grant application; and that for grants to the same granting authority, if approval is required and is given, that multiple city grants could be submitted. 4. Discuss Legislative Policies Document Ms. Wilson related that given the short legislative session it had been agreed that if she could not obtain direction from the council she should consult the Legislative Policies Document. She noted that bills were moving very fast with over 100 bills going through both legislative houses in 10 days. She also noted that Ms. Bettman had expressed concern at a recent council meeting that the document was too vague to be relied upon and could be misinterpreted. Ms. Wilson stated that since we actually give the document to our legislative delegation and tell them that it represents our legislative policies on a number of issues, we need to be sure what we want the document to represent. She went on to state that if the city wants it to mean something, then they needed to decide how it could be most meaningful. Ms. Wilson thought the document was onerous and difficult to go through and was not helpful if one was not a member of the city staff. She noted that the book was provided to the legislative delegation, but she did not think it was useful for them and that they were certainly not reading it. She wanted to know if the CCIGR had ideas on how to make it more useful, not only to our legislative delegation, but also to city staff and our community. Ms. Wilson said some things were clear, such as preemption of local authority, but that most of it was repetitive. Mayor Piercy commented that preemption of local authority was not something legislators were looking for, rather it was a reason something would be opposed, not as a reason of what we intended to do. Everyone agreed. Ms. Wilson thought the document could be set up so that it would say what the City wished to accomplish in the legislative session. She acknowledged that this would be a lot of work for city staff but felt that once this exercise had become part of the pattern, and she suggested that it be undertaken every two years, it would become easier to do this. She showed a suggested example of how this could look in an attachment with the heading Emergency Communications: Extension of the 9-1-1 Tax. She said it had been known that the 911 emergency communication tax was going to sunset. She related that they had asked staff to review the bill when it came out. She averred that in these cases, where we know something is going to come up during the session, we can develop an objective of what we want to do regarding the issue. She stated that it might be more helpful to place something like the attachment into the document. She thought instead of having a “long book,” the City could limit the document to those issues it really cared about. MINUTES—Council Committee on Intergovernmental Relations April 23, 2008 Page 4