Item 2A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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solidified the application. Mr. Pryor wanted to ensure that applications were made available as widely as possible and commended the current display ads in the newspaper. He suggested that parent-teacher site councils could also be used to spread the word and stressed the importance of making the application process easier. He said the on-line process could be critical to realizing that goal. He thought the council should fine-tune the existing process to make the recruitment effort as broad as possible. Mr. Zelenka spoke to the recruitment process, calling for more and different outreach. He noted the narrow demographics of City boards and commissions but acknowledged it was difficult to secure more diversity when applicants were self-selected and some areas of the community were more inclined to apply than residents of other areas. However, he did not want to change that because he did not think it could be changed. Mr. Zelenka liked the idea of having people making short presentations. He did not get much value from the questions currently being asked. He thought all candidates should appear at the same meeting. However, that required more homework on the part of both the council and the applicants. He suggested that the council could require a resume or the City could provide a one-page form for applicants to complete that served the same function. Mr. Zelenka thought the council needed to notify applicants more quickly in regard to whether they had been selected. Mr. Zelenka spoke of the council’s interaction with its boards and commissions, suggesting that the current level of interaction was unsatisfactory. He proposed that the council might want to schedule regular quarterly half- hour work sessions with all its boards and commissions, as well as require more regular written reports. Mr. Poling determined from Ms. Ortiz that her remarks about the criteria had been focused on the application forms and her concerns about redundancy, but she envisioned the same type of voting process the council currently employed. Mr. Poling suggested the council could modify the questions on the application forms but he did not envision a significant change in the current preliminary screening process. He supported the idea of a three- to five-minute applicant presentation but did not think the council should vote on the applicants that same evening. He wanted more time to think about the applicants and perhaps compare notes with other councilors before making a decision at the next meeting. Mr. Poling agreed with Mr. Zelenka that the time for making a decision needed to be shortened. He agreed with Ms. Solomon’s recommendation for a July 1 start date for all terms, particularly for Budget Committee members, pointing out that in the current system, they were “thrown right into the fray.” He also concurred with Ms. Solomon’s suggestion that the terms of current boards and commissions members could be extended to accommodate the change. Mr. Zelenka thought July 1 was a logical start date but he was somewhat concerned about the timing of the date given its proximity to the budget process. He suggested that the selection process could occur in a compressed period after or before the budget process. Mr. Zelenka also liked the idea of a Citizens Academy, and endorsed the idea of resurrecting the CIC. He thought the CIC had helped to secure “more and better” citizen involvement from those not generally involved in government affairs, which was something the City and every government agency struggled with. He suggested that “throwing some smart people” from a perspective different than that of the bureaucracy or the council at the problem could be useful. MINUTES—City Council June 8, 2009 Page 6