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Mr. Bowerman said he believed the City Council should be working like a board of directors, providing broad policy and not micro-managing, and expecting them to deal with questions such as the social and economic implications of big boxes which tends to be getting into the micro-managing level. To some extent, he said, it was appropriate for the council to give that complex question to another entity to deal with, but his motion expressed his belief that taking on the assignment exceeded MCED's capacity, given its timeline. He said the City Council deserves a thoughtful response from the committee on why it does not think the big box analysis can be done within its timeline and how the committee thinks the study might be done. Ms. Rygas said she thought the model of referring more complex issues to committees made sense. She summarized the reason MCED did not take on the issue as being that the committee was almost at the end of its timeframe and was hardly done with its original task. She agreed that the committee should not take on the question, but also agreed that the City Council should not have to deal with it by themselves. Mr. Kahle said he thought there were three issues on the table: 1. Should MCED take on the big box issue? He said the committee had voted a unanimous no. 2. Should the City Council have kept it for themselves? 3. If not the City Council, then who? Ms. Pierce said she believed the City Council had asked staffto take on the issue, and asked Mr. Coyle if staff had in fact responded to it. Mr. Coyle said staff work had been distributed to the City Council. He said there is a resource issue, and to go further at either staff or committee level will take program dollars. Mr. Forbes arrived at the meeting at 1:25 p.m. Ms. Fifield noted that the staff report on the issue read as if the only basis for evaluating a big box application was whether it was zoned properly, and she said that was why the City Council and community were saying we need broader thinking and policy about how big boxes fit into the broader strategy of the community, and we don't know what that strategy is. She said zoning evaluation won't deal with broader policy and strategy. It was the kind of analysis the City Council would have asked the committee to do, and it would be reasonable for the committee to do, but it does not have the time. She said she thought the thoughtful statement back to the City Council would be that the committee does understand that the community needs an overall policy and strategy to address the big box question, but that the committee does not have the time frame to do it. Mr. Korth asked if committee members had any willingness to offer to continue to study the big box issue after the report is due. He said the main problem of taking the issue on seemed to be timing, that it was an important issue for the City Council, and that he would be willing to address the issue if the committee had the time to deal with it. Ms. Pierce said she thought part of the dilemma was that the committee was given a certain amount of resource from ECONorthwest, and that resource was timed to come to an end at the end of the committee's charge, so if the City Council wanted the committee to continue, there would have to be some level of resource to do that. Ms. Smith suggested that in the committee's report to the City Council, it include a section on other issues, such as the big box issue, that warrant further study and suggestions on how to handle those. MINUTES--Mayor's Committee on Economic Development June 14, 2004 Page 3