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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCC Minutes - 01/10/07 Process Session M I N U T E S Eugene City Council Process Session Bascom-Tykeson Room—Eugene Public Library th 100 West 10 Avenue January 10, 2007 5:30 p.m. COUNCILORS PRESENT: Jennifer Solomon, Bonny Bettman, Mike Clark, Alan Zelenka, Andrea Ortiz, George Poling, Betty Taylor. ABSENT: Chris Pryor EXECUTIVE STAFF PRESENT: Dennis Taylor, Angel Jones, Jim Carlson, Susan Muir, Randy Groves, Lauren Chouinard, Kurt Corey, Bob Lehner, Renée Grube. City Council Process Session Mayor Kitty Piercy convened the Process Session of the Eugene City Council. She introduced Betsy Shepard, who was the facilitator for the meeting. Mary Walston and Beth Forrest of the City Manager's Office were present as support staff. Ms. Shepard reviewed the suggested “norms” for the meeting: ? Listen with respect—no interrupting, no talking over, disagree agreeably ? No personal attacks ? Try things on for size ? Stay on task ? Value differences ? Be open and honest ? Look for opportunities to agree ? Strive for consensus 1. Council Operating Agreements ? A Review and History Council, Public, and Government Affairs Manager Mary Walston provided a brief history of the council operating agreements with the aid of a PowerPoint presentation. She had reviewed the archives and found the council operating agreements from 1985 and after. She noted that many of the issues that the council addressed in the late 1980s, including placing items on a council agenda, staff assistance for councilors, state and federal lobbying, and reimbursement procedures, were similar to the topics the council addressed MINUTES—City Council January 10, 2007 Page 1 Process Session at current process sessions. She underscored that over the years the focus of the agreements had not changed very much. Ms. Walston related that the public hearing process had evolved over the years to include time limits. She noted that the Public Forum was created in 1997. Ms. Walston stated that she had an archive of old council process agendas that were available for council review. Ms. Taylor asked why the three-minute time limit had been imposed. Ms. Walston replied that the Wednesday sessions used to have a two-hour limit and the very first item had been the Items from the Mayor and Council. She said this item would sometimes take as long as 45 minutes; so, in order to control that portion of the meeting, the council voted in a time limit. 2. Future Council Meeting Schedules: Work Sessions, Council Meetings, Workshops, Etc. Ms. Shepard said the first issue had to do with timing and any issues councilors wished to bring up related to timing and schedule. Ms. Ortiz had an item that did not relate to schedules. She recalled the discussion the council had regarding the councilor notification of issues. She wanted to be told in advance of press reports on large issues in the community. She said it was hard to advocate for the City and to assure citizens that staff members were doing their jobs when one did not know what was going on. City Manager Taylor said any time there was contact between staff and the media, staff tried to provide the information through the council newsletter and regular memoranda. He asked what sorts of events she wished further notification for. Ms. Ortiz replied that she would want advanced notification when staff members were arrested, when someone was shot by the police, or when high ranking personnel were fired for reasons the press considered newsworthy. In response to a question from City Manager Taylor, Ms. Ortiz clarified that she was referring specifically to fire personnel who were fired. She wanted to be able to say to people that the City did not certain types of behavior. She felt the councilors should know the behaviors for which personnel were being fired. City Manager Taylor stressed that this was a delicate issue because many of the things that would be part of a disciplinary action were part of a personnel record that was between the individual and his or her supervisor, and was therefore not releasable. He stated that it would take a determination by the District Attorney or an Oregon Court of Law to make the records available. Ms. Taylor agreed that councilors should be apprized of anything that would hit the newspapers. She thought that not only should the councilors receive a message, but there should be staff follow-up to ensure they received the message. She related that she had first heard about a large real estate deal in the downtown area by reading the paper. She believed if something was going to attract interest, all nine elected officials should know about it. City Manager Taylor responded that in the example she cited he had sent all councilors and the Mayor a memorandum either by fax or by courier before there was a press contact and MINUTES—City Council January 10, 2007 Page 2 Process Session then staff had also sent a memorandum to the council and Mayor that there had been a press contact. Ms. Taylor said she wanted a follow-up phone call to ensure that she had received the memoranda. Mayor Piercy said the media piece sent by staff was good but it did not call out something that staff thought the councilors might be asked about. She thought it would be beneficial to identify issues that were likely to be of interest in the community. Ms. Solomon thought City Manager Taylor and staff had done a great job of letting the council know of what potential questions might come up as a result of media contacts. She was not willing to ask staff to call the councilors individually to make sure the councilors had read their emails. She said at some point the councilors had to take some responsibility for doing this. Ms. Bettman called this an ongoing problem. She thought the media list was “so generalized that it was difficult to discern” the difference between a larger issue and a smaller issue. She had been frustrated when running into people on boards and commissions, people in neighborhood groups, and people in the business community who have “all kinds of information.” She asserted that though they were told there were things that were not okay to share with councilors, she ran into people “who have vast knowledge of details” and who expressed surprise that she did not know what they knew. She said it “was a paradigm here” that the information was not completely flowing. She recalled that Jim Johnson called councilors about major issues during his tenure as city manager. Ms. Ortiz said she was just asking for something more than the current practice. She felt staff did a good job with the emails and newsletters, but she wanted to know when something critical happened that might garner a lot of community interest in a negative way. City Manager Taylor responded that it was difficult to know what issues would rise to a critical level. Mr. Zelenka said he did not read the newspaper until the end of the day. He thought that if something was newsworthy the council should be notified of it in advance. City Manager Taylor responded that this was the current procedure as the councilors were issued an email every night that said what media contacts had occurred. He cited an example from earlier in the day and the email that had been generated as a result of the press contact. Mayor Piercy thought the email should include more information. Ms. Taylor reiterated that she had found out the City Manager secured the option to buy downtown property from the newspaper. City Manager Taylor reiterated that staff had sent a memorandum by courier and fax to everyone and had included the information in the Thursday packet. Ms. Taylor underscored that she wanted to have a follow-up call to make sure she received the information. She noted that when the recent staff changes occurred, the councilors received phone calls about it. Ms. Ortiz said she was trying to encourage the process. She cited the example of a recent police shooting and commented that it would have been good to know something about the situation. Ms. Shepard asked if the councilors meant they wanted to expand the details and then have a phone call. Ms. Ortiz responded that this would have been beneficial in the case of the shooting. MINUTES—City Council January 10, 2007 Page 3 Process Session Ms. Bettman said the way to look at it was that the elected officials were the public face of the City. She averred that when approached with an issue, if a councilor did not know how to respond it did not look good. She thought it was a “no-brainer” that the council should have been notified immediately regarding the shooting. City Manager Taylor stated that if the councilors had questions they should call him. He was available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He underscored that the councilors had his cell phone number, his email address, his office number, and his home phone number. Ms. Shepard asked if the council had issues on council meeting schedules. Ms. Bettman stated that she had two small issues. She wished to emphasize that she did not want to add any more evening meetings. The other item Ms. Bettman wished to bring up was the desire to have an inventory of motions after meetings, what the motions were and how the votes fell, so that councilors could check to ensure things were recorded correctly and also to use as a quick reference. Ms. Walston requested clarification on whether Ms. Bettman meant major motions or all motions, including procedural motions, friendly amendments, and so on. Ms. Bettman responded that friendly amendments could be significant. Ms. Walston noted that with the advent of the Webcast, staff could review the meeting itself to check anything that was not readily understood. Ms. Taylor agreed that knowing who voted would be helpful. She also did not want an increase in evening meetings. She said as councilors, they should attend as many cultural and civic events in the evenings as possible. Additionally, she noted that the Wednesday work sessions had been reduced to 90 minutes at former Councilor Gary Papé’s request. She wondered if the council should shift back to two-hour meetings for those work sessions. Mayor Piercy stated that now that half of the councilors had jobs during the day, it was important to strike a balance. Ms. Ortiz supported the idea of having a summary of votes. She added that she had changed her schedule to work around the council schedule. She said the balance of work, children, and being a councilor was a challenge. Mr. Poling stated that Council Coordinator Lynda Rose had done a good job of writing the council summaries. He agreed that a summary of votes would be beneficial, but he thought it should include any specific directions made to the City Manager over the course of the meeting. Ms. Bettman also wanted to reduce the number of process sessions in which the council engaged. She thought three sessions were too much. She suggested they change the number to two or one per year. Ms. Taylor recommended that the council get rid of the extra Monday meeting dedicated to public hearing meetings. Ms. Solomon pointed out that the council had just instituted the public hearing meetings. MINUTES—City Council January 10, 2007 Page 4 Process Session City Manager Taylor recalled that the thinking behind the decision to try a night dedicated to public hearings had been that the council would hold those meetings for a year and then assess how well it was working. He noted that the Budget Committee session was beginning and the meeting devoted to public hearings had heretofore not been run concurrent with the budget meetings. Ms. Bettman recalled that the reason they changed the public hearing process to a separate Monday night meeting was that so many of the public hearings had been postponed and the council had experienced some “horrendous” meetings. She agreed that it was an extra night but it relieved some of the pressure the council previously experienced. Mr. Clark said in looking at what was best for the public, the change to more frequent shorter meetings seemed to be a prudent move. Mayor Piercy commented that people thanked her for holding a separate meeting for public hearings. She observed that several items had been brought up at the process session thus far but had not been resolved. Mr. Poling expressed a preference for having two process sessions. Mr. Clark commented that it would be better to hold the session in a month other than January because of the timing of the goal-setting retreat. Ms. Shepard asked for a show of thumbs up or thumbs down for having two process sessions instead of three. The council indicated its preference for two process sessions per year by a show of thumbs up. City Manager Taylor acknowledged Mr. Clark’s desire to hold the process session in a different month. He pointed out that he preferred to have the process session in January when there were new members on the council. Ms. Shepard asked the council to indicate its preference for when the next process session should convene. The council indicated its preference to bypass the process session planned for April and to hold the next process session in September. Ms. Bettman requested that the process sessions be held during work sessions if at all possible. Ms. Shepard ascertained from the council that there was majority support for this. Ms. Bettman noted that the council had not weighed in on her request to be provided with a summary of motions after a council meeting. City Manager Taylor asked how much of the friendly amendments Ms. Bettman wanted to capture. Ms. Bettman suggested that a motion be restated prior to a vote. Mr. Zelenka agreed that the genesis of a motion seemed important. City Manager Taylor observed that a friendly amendment was one elected official negotiating with another elected official. MINUTES—City Council January 10, 2007 Page 5 Process Session Ms. Bettman said as long as the friendly amendments were captured in the minutes, it was adequate given that the motion was what was voted upon. Mr. Clark felt it was important to document the nuances. He asked if there was ever difficulty with the Webcast. Ms. Walston responded that it was her understanding that the tapes and DVDs of meetings were available for two years. Mr. Poling reiterated his suggestion that the directions given by councilors to the City Manager be captured in the summary. Ms. Bettman averred that such directions were in the minutes. She asked Ms. Walston for clarification on the policy for keeping recordings of the meetings. Ms. Walston replied that minutes were a part of the permanent public record, the DVDs could be kept forever, in theory, but the previous technology had utilized videotapes and they had a shelf life of two years. Ms. Bettman felt the records should be kept in perpetuity. Ms. Shepard asked the council to finish up the issue of the post-meeting vote summary. Ms. Solomon asked if this would lead to an expectation of Ms. Rose to watch the Webcasts to recapture the motion and votes. Mr. Poling thought the summary would reduce Ms. Rose’s workload after council meetings. Ms. Solomon suggested that the Mayor say out loud who had voted in the affirmative and who had voted in opposition. Ms. Walston suggested having the Mayor restate the motion and to recite the votes. She said sometimes it was unclear what exactly was being voted on and, in the McNutt Room especially, it was not always readily apparent how the councilors had voted. Ms. Shepard observed that Ms. Rose was not present to provide input as to how this change could impact her work. City Manager Taylor felt that it would be a shorter version of the current summary that Ms. Rose generated. The Minutes Recorder interjected that hearing how the votes fell would be very beneficial to the minutes process. Mayor Piercy indicated she would state votes for the record. Ms. Bettman reiterated her preference to keep the record of votes into perpetuity. She stated that DVDs did not degrade. City Manager Taylor said he would look into storage for the DVDs. Mayor Piercy noted that Ms. Ortiz had brought up her desire to receive better notice about newsworthy items. She asked if the council should give a thumbs up regarding this. MINUTES—City Council January 10, 2007 Page 6 Process Session City Manager Taylor reiterated that the councilors could not be privy to information regarding the dismissal of an employee by law. Ms. Ortiz stressed that her intent was that councilors be provided some advance notice of an item that was newsworthy. Mr. Chouinard stated, regarding the one situation pertaining to a dismissal in the Fire Department, reporters had called City Hall and staff had refused to discuss it, as per the law. The complainant in that incident then went to the press and did not communicate her intent to do so to the City. Ms. Ortiz asked how she was supposed to deal with the community when such issues arose. She acknowl- edged that hiring and firing was not her purview. Mr. Clark averred that the differentiation of what should rise to the level of a phone call was whether it was a front page news story versus an event that might fall onto lesser pages of the newspaper. Mr. Chouinard said he did not know how to fix a situation in which the City could not speak on a personnel issue but the media found someone outside the City organization who was willing to speak on it. City Manager Taylor asked for further clarification. He said when someone was hurt or killed as a result of police action the council was notified. He noted that he received a report from Fire Chief Groves on structure fires and wondered if the council wished to have this information as well. Ms. Ortiz stressed that she was asking to be briefed in advance of items that would cause repercussions in the community. She said there was a threshold and she believed that staff knew what it was. She indicated that she would like to know whenever shots were fired. Ms. Bettman commented that she had “resigned [herself] to the fact [she] was not getting any information.” She felt any time a reporter called City Hall for comment the council should be made aware of it. She said one of the reasons the City Manager was the head of the organization was that he had discretionary judgment. She thought it would be better for the City Manager to err on the side of caution when it came to what to bring to the attention of the councilors. Ms. Taylor concurred. She echoed the statements of Ms. Bettman and Ms. Ortiz. Mr. Clark called it an issue of political judgment. He said if something was politically sensitive it was more likely to be politically controversial. Mayor Piercy did not want people to start “stirring” on why the elected officials were not responding; she wanted to try to get out in front of issues in order to provide a “calming comment” or words to convey that they knew what was happening and were working on it. City Manager Taylor stated that it took him approximately three hours to give everyone a call. Mayor Piercy responded that he should call her and she would call the council officers, Ms. Ortiz and Mr. Pryor, and they could initiate calls to the others. MINUTES—City Council January 10, 2007 Page 7 Process Session City Manager Taylor surmised that the council would prefer a call over an email in the face of a critical event. Ms. Taylor suggested that if the City Manager sent an email, that the email should require a response in order to confirm that councilors had read the email. Ms. Shepard ascertained that the councilors felt their concerns had been heard and that there would be work to improve that. Ms. Shepard called for a break at 7:53 p.m. The meeting reconvened after ten minutes. Mayor Piercy remarked that Ms. Taylor had suggested a return to two-hour work sessions on Wednesdays. Ms. Shepard called for thumbs up or thumbs down on the suggestion for a longer Wednesday work session. The council majority gave it thumbs down. 3. Parliamentary Issues Ms. Shepard asked what issues the councilors wished to address. Ms. Taylor commented that on a couple of occasions she had sent an intended motion out in advance and another councilor had sent a similar motion. She felt that she had then not been allowed to make her motion. She said the most recent instance of this had to do with the transportation maintenance funding. Mayor Piercy remarked that she was unaware that a motion sent in advance would be considered first. Ms. Bettman observed that it was a courtesy to the other councilors to send a motion in advance, but she did not know if there had been a discussion of what chronological order the motions would be presented in. Ms. Solomon agreed that councilors send motions in advance as a courtesy, but she did not believe that was a guarantee that a motion would be presented or would be presented in the order it had been submitted. She thought that after discussion if there were four motions that could be potentially placed on the table and after the discussion it became clear that the majority felt one was the right motion over the other three, then it was somewhat of a waste of time to consider three motions that lacked support just because of the order in which they were submitted. Ms. Bettman noted that a councilor had the right to have a motion be heard. Ms. Taylor asserted that according to Robert’s Rules, one could make an amendment to an amendment. Mr. Clark observed that it was sometimes challenging for the Mayor to track the queue, especially when a motion was made and then an amendment was made. Mayor Piercy agreed that when there was a queue to speak to a motion and an amendment was made, it was sometimes difficult to discern who was going to speak to what. MINUTES—City Council January 10, 2007 Page 8 Process Session Ms. Shepard asked if there was council agreement on making amendments to an amendment. Ms. Solomon clarified that this could only be done once. Mayor Piercy said that in most cases she would honor motions that were submitted in advance, but she reserved the right to opt not to do so. Ms. Bettman understood that the council president would put the motion as crafted by staff on the table first and, in the course of the discussion, substitute motions or amendments could be placed on the table. Regarding an amendment to an amendment, she acknowledged that it was within the parameters of Robert’s Rules but she advised the council to be careful what it asked for. She said there had been many times when she wanted to amend an amendment, but it often made a complicated process even more “arcane and complicated.” She averred that it was hard for the public to track what the council was doing as it was. Mr. Zelenka concurred. He stated that having one issue to consider at a time it made it easier to track. Mayor Piercy asked if it was the council’s wish to continue with the current practice or to change the practice. Ms. Shepard ascertained by a show of thumbs up that the majority of the council wished to continue with the current practice. 4. Other Issues Mr. Clark asked what guidelines there were regarding how one councilor spoke regarding other councilors’ opinions and beliefs. Ms. Ortiz said the guiding rule was that one should treat others as they wanted to be treated. She viewed speaking badly about a councilor as she viewed speaking badly about any other person for any reason. Ms. Bettman averred that the councilors were more accountable to the public than to one another. She said one could not control the personalities of other people. She noted that when she was asked about the opinions or views of other councilors by a member of the press, she advised them that she did not speak for others. Mayor Piercy noted that she wanted to make two changes. She intended to read the Consent Calendar aloud at meetings because people in the audience, and especially the television audience, did not always know what was on it. Another change she intended to make was that she planned to ask the council president and vice president to consider placing on the agenda for discussion any bills from the Council Committee on Intergovernmental Relations (CCIGR) that had resulted in a 2:1 vote. She also wanted to discuss the council’s position and how to improve the meeting process. Ms. Bettman asserted that these were duties and responsibilities that the council officers had “heretofore not enjoyed.” She felt this should be formalized in the process agreement. She believed that the “enhancement” of the duties of the City Council officers was a “big discussion.” She said at present the council officers did not have the authority to block things or place items on the agenda. MINUTES—City Council January 10, 2007 Page 9 Process Session Mayor Piercy said she was looking at this as a way to place motions on the table and she wished to discuss any CCIGR bill on which there was a split vote. Ms. Bettman responded that the procedure, as it stood, had been for the councilors to take responsibility and review the bills and then, if they chose, they could call out a bill. She saw the change the Mayor was proposing as redundant and a layer of bureaucracy that was not needed. Mayor Piercy responded that it was fine to choose a different way of conducting the CCIGR work. From her perspective, she wanted to highlight the things that did not have the unanimous support of the CCIGR in order to see if it was the will of the council to discuss them further. She underscored that the direction for the City’s intergovernmental work should come from the whole council and not just from the CCIGR. Ms. Taylor concurred with Ms. Bettman. She thought the Mayor’s proposal would be time-consuming. She reiterated that it was up to the councilors to read the information from the CCIGR and to call out anything that merited further discussion. Ms. Walston related that the new Intergovernmental Relations Manager, Brenda Wilson, planned to provide a weekly newsletter to the council. Ms. Bettman thought the authority of the council officers should be discussed in the process session. She wanted to maintain the current process until there was another process session to discuss it. Mayor Piercy responded that she intended to meet with the council officers prior to meetings. She intended to ask them to bring forward bills that received a split vote in the CCIGR. She said it was up to them to say yes or no. Ms. Bettman asked if that was the only item Mayor Piercy would discuss with the council officers. Mayor Piercy replied that she wanted to meet with them regularly before council meetings. She said Mr. Pryor and Ms. Ortiz had expressed a desire to be more engaged in the ongoing process of the council. Ms. Bettman called this “pretty big.” Mayor Piercy disagreed. She said it was just people talking with each other and council officers trying to figure out how to reach out to the other councilors on an ongoing basis and to have more communication. Ms. Ortiz commented that she wanted to be more supportive of the Mayor and the council in her role as council president. The meeting adjourned at 7:40 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Dennis M. Taylor City Manager (Recorded by Ruth Atcherson) MINUTES—City Council January 10, 2007 Page 10 Process Session