09/26/1977 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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M I NUT E S . EUGENE CITY COUNCIL September 26,1977 A special meeting of the City Council of the City of Eugene, Oregon was called to order by His Honor Mayor R. A. "Gus" Keller at 6:30 p.m. on September 26, 1977 at the Eugene Hotel, Empire Room, with the following council members present: Eric Haws, D. W. Hamel, Tom Williams, Ray Bradley, Jack Delay, Scott Lieuallen, Brian Obie~ and Betty Smith. I - City Council Assistants A memorandum containing the manager's recommendation and other in- formation had been distributed to the council members before the meeting. The manager noted that the memorandum put forth three alternatives. He stated there was broad general agreement on the need for assist- ance to the Council as the volume of business for the council had burgeoned with the growth of the city. The staff had developed three options: (A) Would provide increased assistance from the existing staff, with staff persons available to explore in-depth alternatives for the council before decisions were made. The manager's office and the departments would make more people available to provide better and more complete briefing papers and briefing sessions. (B) Would provide for appointment of a pool of aides e selected by the manager and assigned to councilors for a project. The administrative assistant would be available to attend meetings on request of councilors, to review problems, and to analyze policy alternatives put forth by the staff. (C) Would necessitate a charter amendment revising the section of the charter pertaining to appoint- ments by the manager of staff persons so that councilOrs could them- selves appoint assistants to be paid from public funds. Manager noted that in any of the options not much time would be saved for the council members. The focus of additional assistance to the council is to enable council members do a better job, to pro- vide better access to information. Under any of the options there would be a need to achieve co-ordination so as not to duplicate work or engender competition or conflict within the staff. The potential for conflict was greater in option (C) than in (A) or (B) . The manager stated that option (C) would be more difficult to handle as the potential for conflict was greater and it would be more costly. The manager stated that option (A) would be better probably as a first step. He recommended adopting option (A) , and then as need existed adopting option (B), making more people available to assist councilors on an optional basis. Mr. Delay presented a memo to the council which he had prepared. He stated that the idea of council assistants was proposed not because of dissatisfaction with the current council/manager form of govern- ment or dissatisfaction with the staff but to provide help for the e councilors in their individual duties. He stated that the council/ manager system was adopted to avoid patronage. In options (A) or (B) a problem would be presented in the councilors' dealing directly Special Meeting 9/26/77 - 1 ia,o