CC Minutes - 09/23/09 Process Session

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past year and she felt the response had been a little slow. Kristie Hammitt, Executive Director of the Central Services Department, stated that the Municipal Court had worked through a lot of these issues and had some systems in place. She said they had conducted training for the judges that could be beneficial to the councilors. Mayor Piercy said it would be good to be reminded of basic things such as getting down on the floor if a situation looked threatening. Mr. Poling remembered that the council used to always take a break during its Monday evening meetings. He did not think it would be unusual to call for a break. Topic: Consulting with Council before Authorizing a Public Opinion Poll Mr. Brown stated that they served as City Councilors and as the Urban Renewal Agency and had fiduciary responsibilities associated with this. He felt the council should have been consulted about the survey that the Urban Renewal Agency had authorized. He noted that the survey had cost $25,000. He was not concerned so much about the cost as he was that the council had not been informed. He had learned of it from a co- worker. Ms. Ortiz disagreed. She said there had been approximately a dozen polls conducted since she had begun her tenure on the City Council. She believed it was an effective way to conduct outreach. She did not want to become involved with the process at that level of detail. She had not seen the executives stray very greatly from the direction they were given. Mr. Pryor considered this to be about the interface between policy and operations. He believed that conducting a poll was a part of operations and the council was a policy body. He agreed that the council should be informed if the City or the Urban Renewal Agency had an interaction with the public, but he did not want to be involved in the design of it. Mr. Clark agreed with Mr. Pryor. He would want to know about a poll before it was administered. He recalled that he had learned from the local newspaper about one. He added his observation that sometimes subtleties drove questions in a survey. He believed it was important to clearly understand what outcome was desired before engaging in this type of outreach. Mr. Zelenka thought it was good to conduct polls. He was not in favor of requiring the council to approve of surveys, but he wanted to be able to discuss the policy. Mr. Brown did not want to micromanage the process. He believed that there had been policy implications in the Urban Renewal Agency poll and that policy implications should require council discussion. He thought the questions might have been a little different had a couple of the councilors participated in it. Ms. Taylor agreed that the council should be aware of such a survey before it happened. She expressed MINUTES—City Council September 23, 2009 Page 6