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numerous requests that were taking longer than two hours to fulfill. He would notify a councilor if a request was likely to exceed two hours of work and the council could then bring that issue before the body to determine if it was appropriate to proceed. Mr. Zelenka pointed out there were numerous ways in which a councilor could request information from staff and there should be a master list of requests to assure that nothing was overlooked. Mr. Ruiz said the assistant city manager tracked requests that came into the city manager’s office and assured that responses were provided. He asked that any requests that were made via email also be copied to the assistant city manager. He said that the status of decisions and requests from past council meetings would be periodically reported to the council. He encouraged councilors to let staff know if there was no response to a request. Mr. Clark said he occasionally made requests of department executives and expected that if any of those exceeded the established guidelines that information would be conveyed to him by the city manager. Mr. Ruiz said he was supportive of councilors working directly with executives and trusted that executives could accurately determine whether a request conformed to the guidelines and discuss any concerns with councilors. Ms. Taylor was pleased that Mr. Ruiz encouraged communication between councilors and executives. She appreciated having the city manager’s office track decisions and requests and provide status reports. She did not like the two-hour rule and felt if a request took longer it should not be eliminated just for that reason. Ms. Bettman said that tracking decisions and requests was an improvement in service to the council. She said she had many requests for information because she perceived that agenda packets had less information and she only asked staff to pursue something that was already on the agenda or an issue in which the council was already interested. She objected to the quality of responses to issues raised during meetings or public forums as being to general. Mr. Poling hoped that executives understood that if an individual council’s request or direction crossed a boundary they could indicate to the councilor that the matter had to be referred to the city manager before a response would be provided. Topic: Raising issues/motions at meetings without adequate prior notice Mr. Poling said he was not concerned with motions that were made during a meeting that were related to the agenda items or motions that were time sensitive or in emergency situations. He was concerned with motions that had major repercussions in the community, such as purchase of the Amazon headwaters property, being sent out a few hours before a work session or motions that were made at the last minutes unrelated to an agenda topic. He felt there should be more than a few minutes or hours of notice, even if the issue had been discussed previously by the council. Ms. Taylor disagreed and felt that councilors should be able to make motions at any time. She said there were different types of motions and different reasons for publishing them in advance or for not providing advance notice. Mr. Clark felt it was an issue of fidelity to the agenda. He said the council agreed on a tentative working agenda and the issue was last minute changes to a previous agreement of the council that were done by one person. He said that was acceptable if the council wanted to grant the chair the ability to change the agenda on the fly, but that was not part of the agreement to date. He said another example was discussion of one agenda item going beyond its allotted time and thereby shortening the discussion of the next item. He MINUTES—Eugene City Council October 15, 2008 Page 7 Work Session