MINUTES OF THE METRO' S TRANSITION ADVISORY TASK FORCE MEETING
January 30, 2002
Room 370 A & B
Members Present: Jeff Condit (Chair), Jeff Alden (Vice Chair), Gary Blackmer, Rob Drake, Rick Gustafson, Judie Hammerstad, Larry Hilderbrand, Ted Kyle, Don McClave, Rick Gustafson, Matt Hennessee
Members Absent: Felicia Trader, Michael Jordan
Others Present: Auditor Dow, Councilor Bragdon, Presiding Officer Hosticka, Councilor Atherton, Councilor Burkholder
1. Chair Jeff Condit convened the Metro Transition Advisory Task Force meeting at 3:16 p.m.
2. Consideration of the minutes of the January 23, 2002 Metro Transition Advisory Task Force meeting.
Motion: Jeff Alden moved adoption of the January 23, 2002 Metro Transition Advisory Task Force Meeting.
Second: Ted Kyle seconded the motion.
Larry Hilderbrand noted his name was misspelled on the agenda.
Vote: The vote was 8 aye/ 0 nay/ 0 abstain. The motion passed as amended.
3. Deliberations regarding recommendations
Chair Condit noted a list of discussion items (a copy of which may be found in the meeting record). He said that the Task Force had reached consensus on many of the items. He recommended proceeding with the list, he would then take the list back and prepare a final report, get input from the Task Force prior to a final presentation before Council.
1. Roles and Authority of Council President vis-à-vis the Council.
A. President’s authority to set the agenda "subject to general rules established by a council adopted ordinance".
Chair Condit said the question was whether to recommend a specific adopted procedure to provide an opportunity for councilors to compel items to be put on the agenda. He thought there was general consensus that there ought to be some way of doing that.
Rob Drake suggested that if 2 to 3 councilors requested an item be placed on the agenda, it would be reasonable to place that item on the agenda. He assumed that it would still be left to the Council President to put it on the agenda where he or she wanted. He said in his city if a councilor wanted to put something on the agenda they could. He doubted that he would ever say no because they would bring it up anyway. He thought it didn't go very far in producing a working relationship by barring an item.
Larry Hilderbrand asked if this precluded one person asking to have an item on the agenda?
Mr. Drake said he thought two or more councilors were a good general rule. If someone wanted to bring up something they could do it under councilor communication or have a citizen introduce it. In terms of cooperation, he thought it was best to set some guidelines. He thought a request by two councilors was reasonable.
Judie Hammerstad added that if they were going to have a session concerning a particular item, she liked to know that there was an interest of more than one person. If there were two or more councilors requesting an item, it usually meant the level of interest was high enough that it was worth talking about.
Chair Condit suggested having some rule where two could compel an agenda item.
B. The President's authority to appoint "all members of the committees, commissions and boards…"
Chair Condit indicated this issue had been clarified legally by Dan Cooper, General Counsel. He said that the intent of this was not to prevent the council from requiring confirmation if the council thought that confirmation was necessary. With that clarification, Chair Condit thought there was no need to make a recommendation on the President's authority to appoint.
Mr. Hilderbrand asked if confirmation would be based on individual cases? If so, he suggested a bylaw identifying which committee members should be confirmed by the council.
Chair Condit said they could make such a recommendation.
Ms. Hammerstad said she thought they should make a recommendation that council confirmed all members because it made those volunteers who were serving feel more important. It was not necessarily for the protection of the council as much as needing an open process.
Mr. Drake concurred with Ms. Hammerstad. It gave the public and council an opportunity to disagree as well as providing a balance. Balance was a word used a lot in their discussions.
Chair Condit said he had not objection to that recommendation.
C. The Council and President's respective roles in the selection and confirmation processes for hiring the Chief Operating Officer and Metro Attorney.
Chair Condit explained that the charter provided that President appointed subject to consent of the Council. It was unclear what kind of a role the rest of the Council should have in the hiring process. He felt the Task Force had a clear and unanimous recommendation that the Council should have a role at the beginning in the process for hiring and termination of the COO.
Ms. Hammerstad thought it was a good idea to have the staff involved in the development of the job description of the COO. She thought it was also a good idea to have the staff involved in the screening committee for the COO. She recommended that the council also be involved in the interviewing and selection process.
Chair Condit suggested that the council is fully involved in selection of the COO, it was not just a President's function. They recommended that staff have a role in the initial interview and screening process.
Ted Kyle gave an example of a recent hiring in Clackamas County which involved both citizens and staff together in that screening process. It was a blend of carefully selected individuals. In the end, the Commission made the final decision. He thought it was an interesting blend.
Mr. Hilderbrand said he was concerned that this diluted the President’s authority. He thought it was appropriate to go through that kind of screening process but was unsure that the Council should be that much involved in the selection itself. He said the Council President was given the authority to make the decision with confirmation by the Council.
Mr. Drake said it would seem to him that the Council could say no by not concurring. He asked what happened if down the line the Council hadn't been involved in the hiring and something came out that they didn't know about but in fact the applicant had been up front about with the Council President. He gave an example of a city manager that had been convicted of a crime. The council did not know about his background. Had they hired him knowing the background, later they might have had to explain why they hired him. Their out was terminating the individual because they didn't know about his background. His concern was if the Council was not involved in any aspect of the hiring and something came out later it might disadvantage the Council.
Chair Condit agreed. He thought the check and balance was preserved by the way they set up the structure for both hiring and firing. The Council President may have the strongest voice but if the Council who could get dissatisfied with someone didn't participate in the process, it could create a problem for the manager and for the President.
Don McClave agreed as well. He noted a meeting where they had discussed the need for the Council to agree on the firing of COO and the Metro Attorney. He suggested limiting Council involvement to those two positions. He thought these two positions were key and different from other agency positions.
Mr. Hilderbrand said the working relationship between the Council President and the COO had to be close. The Council effectively hiring someone that the Council President didn't get along with could be a problem.
Chair Condit said that couldn't happen because the Council President was ultimately the one who had to make the recommendation to the Council. The Council couldn't appoint someone over the Council President's objection and visa versa.
Mr. McClave said the Council President ultimately made the recommendation but if the Council was not involved in the process then you could get into tenuous situations.
Ms. Hammerstad said there was another advantage to Council involvement in hiring. You had established a powerful relation if you were involved in hiring someone. When you come on to a council where you hadn't hired the person it was never as close as it was when you had been involved in the hiring. The ownership that the council had in being an integral part of that was important.
Mr. Drake said you stick your proverbial neck out when they were your hire.
Ms. Hammerstad said Mr. Hilderbrand’s concern was an extremely important point. You certainly would want the Council President to have a core relationship with the COO.
Mr. Hilderbrand said he never thought the council shouldn't be involved in the process just in the final selection.
Gary Blackmer said this conversation began with Ms. Hammerstad bringing up an issue of employee involvement. He suggested a strong recommendation about employee involvement along with Council involvement. He thought they should consider employee involvement but that they must consider council involvement. In terms of how recommendations were worded, he suggested a couple of tiers of things the Task Force thought were good ideas and things they thought the Council needed to do.
Mr. Drake suggested the word “encourage”. He gave an example of a hiring process at his city. He said even though the final choice was his, he felt the involvement of others was important as this was some one they were going to have to serve with. They needed to see if that person along with all of the talent could also be a productive member of the family. He thought there was some value in recommending additional involvement. He wouldn't require it because the contract would be between the Council and the COO although you wanted to be sure this person interacted well with citizens. He reminded the Task Force that if you were elected, you worked for the citizens. The citizens couldn't hire the COO but the Council could hire him or her.
Chair Condit said he was thinking about having input from department directors and other staff in the winnowing down process not in the decision process. The decision process had to be between the Council President and the Council. He thought it was crucial that the council be involved in the process right up until the President made the final decision. He thought it would be useful to have staff involved in the winnowing down process.
Mr. Blackmer said it was ultimately a personnel issue. You couldn't always talk about personnel matters in an open public meeting. You would need to winnow it down to a small group where you could talk confidentially about strengths and weaknesses.
Chair Condit said that was one of the problems with getting citizens involved early on. A lot of times candidates were working some place else and at least in the initial stages before they were finalists might express concern about information getting back to their employer. You had to be careful about how the process worked.
D. The President’s authority to remove the COO “with concurrence of the Council".
Chair Condit said this worked the same way as the selection process. Obviously, the Council President couldn't remove someone without Council concurrence and Council couldn't do this without concurrence from the Council President. He thought there was no need to make a recommendation on this issue. The Council should be involved early on in that process so the final decision was not a messy one.
Mr. Blackmer asked about the Metro Attorney?
Chair Condit said he thought it was the same thing.
Mr. Blackmer suggested making sure that the wording was clear as the Task Force understood the charter. He noted that there had been quite a bit of discussion about trying to interpret the charter language. It would be good to clarify and indicate how the Task Force interpreted the charter.
Chair Condit concurred with that suggestion.
Ms. Hammerstad said in the minutes of the last meeting there was a discussion of evaluation. She indicated that "evaluation" was not on the Issue List. The role of the Council President and Council concerning evaluation needed to be included. If you were ever going to fire someone you should have a paper trail and you wanted to be sure you maximize that performance. There was a suggestion of a semi-annual review. She felt this was a very good idea. People needed to know where they stood. She felt this was an important part of the hiring/firing process.
Chair Condit asked if there were objection to at least a semi-annual review of the COO?
Ms. Hammerstad clarified that there should be an annual formal evaluation and a semi-annual review. This also involved the setting of goals and measurements.
Mr. Drake indicated he did not know what the agency required concerning reviews but he felt it should be consistent with that. He was concerned about doing a semi-annual review if they didn't expect this of the rest of the agency. There should be consistency.
Chair Condit suggested once a year for contract issues such as getting a raise but possibly semi-annually for benchmarking. He found personally that a semi-annual review was very helpful. He found out about issues that needed to be taken care of before they became life threatening.
Mr. Drake said they required a review but it was not formal. He thought a semi-annual review was a good idea.
Chair Condit said they could recommend twice annually subject to Council approval. A good COO was going to negotiate contractual issues.
Mr. Kyle said, having participated in the twice a year review of a city manager, he felt it was very effective. Their city manager sought the review and made sure it happened. They used the same forms in both reviews but only dealt with contract issues once a year. The feedback of how things were going and how things were working was important. He noted that it was also advertised and citizens could send their comments into the City Attorney. The attorney gathered those up and shared them with the council with the proper confidences guaranteed. People felt that when that review was up that they had a way of getting their thoughts into the system and these still could be dealt with properly and confidentially. He supported the twice-a-year review.
Chair Condit said another thing that had been discussed was an annual review of the transition process.
Mr. McClave said he had brought this up. He didn't think it was necessary to have a statute but transition assessments shouldn't be just annually. He suggested a review on a weekly or monthly basis for at least the first year or two.
Mr. Alden suggested there be an ongoing review.
Chair Condit said he thought it helped if you recommended a schedule. It forced people to think about it.
Mr. McClave said he would recommend review frequently no just annually or semi-annually.
Ms. Hammerstad asked who would do that review?
Chair Condit said he thought the COO, Council President, and the Council should do the review particularly about staff issues. They had also concurred with the discussion about how the organization should change and what a changed organization should look like. The question they should be asking was, were we getting there?
Mr. McClave said you were going down a river that no one had navigated before, it was useful to stop and make sure everyone agreed on the structure.
Chair Condit suggested that at least the department directors should be involved.
Mr. Hilderbrand said that should be in the recommendation.
Chair Condit suggested skipping # 2 & 3, moving to #4 on the list and then coming back later to #2 & 3.
4. Role and authority of the COO
Chair Condit said they had looked at the ICMA model ordinance. The consensus was that the COO ought to have all of the authorities listed. He suggested taking the model ordinance and modifying it, the Metro Council adopt recommending specific powers and authorities for the COO.
Mr. Drake said he had not reviewed the ordinance before today. He asked about executing contracts. He assumed the full council would authorize the COO who directed the attorney to draft the contract. The COO and staff would then execute the contract.
Ms. Hammerstad asked if that was only up to a certain dollar amount?
Mr. Drake said that was his second question, what level did a contract have to be adopted? It varied with the city or county.
Chair Condit said that authority should be with the COO.
Mr. McClave said the related piece was what was the dollar amount where there was no review and it didn't have to go to council?
Chair Condit said he did a lot of that kind of work, the DAS rule was $75,000 and below.
Mr. McClave said there was a system at Tri-Met which worked well. Anything that was less than $75,000 was published in the consent agenda. Any board member could question the consent agenda and it could be brought back for approval if there was issue with the contract.
Mr. Blackmer asked if they weren't approving it, was it were part of the consent agenda?
Mr. McClave said yes, when the consent agenda came up for approval. Information was provided before the meeting, if anyone had a question it could be dealt with before the meeting.
Chair Condit said some city charters required council approval of all of the bills. He felt this was a waste of time. He felt providing a list of contracts to the council would be appropriate.
Mr. McClave said Tom Walsh has started this procedure at Tri-Met. It was a great defuser of problems. If there was issue with one contract, it was a way of flagging it without getting the board into discussing every contract.
Mr. Hilderbrand asked if you weren't delaying the signing of the contract?
Mr. McClave said there was a certain level of contract that was not on the consent agenda. Things that might be subject to bid process were on the consent agenda. There would be no discussion of them but they would be on the agenda before they were executed.
Chair Condit said, from a workability standpoint, he would be more in favor of a notice than requiring council approval.
Mr. Kyle said it depended upon what kind of contract. A construction contract came to council for an award decision, and then all of the execution was ministerial, after the fact. For a consultant or property agreement it was pretty well done and the council didn't have to do anything.
Chair Condit agreed, there were some categories that shouldn't go to council.
Mr. Kyle asked, weren't these issues generally dealt with in local contract review board rules?
Chair Condit said he was more inclined to recommend that they establish levels.
Ms. Hammerstad thought they might already have this established.
Councilor Bragdon said the amount the council would consider on contractual issues was $50,000 or more.
Ms. Hammerstad said then this discussion was a waste of time.
Mr. Drake asked if there was an automatic check and balance with the auditor's office being independent? Did she sign off currently on agenda bills or expenditures or was it after the fact?
Ms. Dow asked for clarification on the question.
Mr. Drake said, in terms of checks and balances, they each had their limits of what they could spend without council authority. Did the auditor review or sign off on any financial transaction that went forward?
Ms Dow said she did not sign off on it at all unless it was within the area she was auditing. She said under Metro's current procedure, all contracts had to go through the legal department.
Dan Cooper, General Counsel, explained the current process for contracts. The Executive, under the current charter, had the power to execute contracts. The Council exercised oversight in the front end of the budget process every year where they saw all of the proposed contracts proposed for the next year's budget. They had opportunity to give guidance to staff at that point. The Council had full control of the appeals process on any questions over awards, competitive bidding, and was also the one that made the decisions on competitive bidding and RFP processes. The lower the dollar amount, the less competitive bidding and the less opportunity the council had for information. The larger the contract, the greater the council information. Anything that crossed a budget year ended up in front of the council. Anything that would have an impact on a future budget was subject to Council approval or if it was something that was at a low enough level and they were told about it, they could conclude that it was OK to proceed.
Chair Condit said if they gave the COO authority subject to public contract rules adopted by the Council that would take care of that problem and there would be some on going oversight to that process.
Mr. Drake agreed, he didn’t want to micromanage. He didn't think that was what the council needed to do or wanted to do.
Mr. Hilderbrand asked about buying and selling of public property and if there was a limit.
Chair Condit said he had to go back to the ICMA form but he thought it said that the COO had the authority to buy and sell property subject to approval of the Council. He explained, typically how this worked was that the council made the decision then the COO had the ability to follow up with it.
Mr. Hilderbrand noted that this wasn't addressed and should be.
Ms. Hammerstad said all of these things were subject to the approval of the council. The preparing and administering was the responsibility of the COO but the budget had to be passed by the council.
Chair Condit acknowledged that the ICMA was similar, the COO prepared and presented the budget, Council made the final decision. He said when he prepared the overview; he would put the specific duties, roles and authorities in that document.
Rick Gustafson said sometimes there was a practice to authorize the President to enter into certain contracts as opposed to the COO. He asked if this had been discussed.
Chair Condit said that was a good point. In most cities the city manager or chief executive was authorize to sign contracts because the major wasn't always around. However, at Metro the Council President will be full time.
Mr. Gustafson said there was an example at Metro, he noted a previous Executive Officer who had tried to execute a contract with Waste Management contending that no council approval was necessary based upon the authority they had. It seemed to him that the Task Force might want to make sure you tie together that authority within the council rather than allowing the COO to authorize contracts.
Chair Condit spoke to the authority of the COO as approved by the Council.
Mr. McClave suggested pushing the spending limit up as high as possible. The public interest was better protected if there was some avenue for scrutiny. He spoke to Tri-Met's contract policy. He thought $50,000 was a pretty low limit for an agency this size.
Mr. Blackmer said they had done an audit of professional technical contracts surveying other jurisdictions. He said there was a wide range of what contracts went to council. You needed to collectively draw a line somewhere and adjust for inflation.
Chair Condit suggested they delegate that authority to the COO subject to the approval of the Council.
Mr. Drake said he didn't want to tinker too much with the current situation if it was working well. He suggested letting the new council set the limit by ordinance to respond to the issue of timeliness. He suggested that with an in house auditor there were some inherent cross checks.
Chair Condit asked the Task Force introduce themselves to Mr. Matt Hennessee.
Mr. Hennessee introduced himself.
Chair Condit said they were in the process of going through an Issues List and trying to formulate a recommendation.
5. Transition process
A. Draft ordinance establishing the Office of the Chief Operating Officer (ICMA model?)
Chair Condit said this had been discussed.
B. COO recruitment and selection – what are the next steps and when should they occur? To what extent are the steps dependent on election results? Can and should a COO be hired before January 6, 2003? Should a "transition COO" be hired?
Chair Condit said they needed to talk about timing. There had been somewhat of a split on this issue. They all agreed that if they could get someone on board as close to January 6th as possible it would be better but that if that meant the council who was taking office at that time hadn't participated in that process then that was the more important consideration. If elections were determined in May, then they could get started right after the May election with the hiring processes. If they had a contested Council President race that went to November and or they had one incumbent's losing or had another contested race, it would be better to wait until those issues were decided before hiring. You could start some of the preliminary processes, but the decision about which you were going to interview and hire, needed to be with the 2003 councilors.
Ms. Hammerstad said the person who was going to be interviewed would want to know who they were working for.
Chair Condit said Ms. Hammerstad's comment about how important it was to have the council invested in the person they were selecting was the critical issue, particularly for the first COO.
Mr. Alden asked if he was right in assuming that unless they had three candidates for any race by March 12th, then all of the council and the Council President would be selected in the primary.
Mr. Cooper responded that was correct. If there were only two candidates unless there was a write in, the decision would be made in May.
Mr. Alden asked if there were three candidates for any position yet?
Chair Condit said not yet, let's hope for transition purposes that this happens.
Mr. Alden said they might know before the Task Force was done whether they would be able to complete the process.
Mr. Drake said that was his question, when was the Task Force going to finalize their recommendations?
Chair Condit said they were hoping to get this done by the end of February, first part of March so that other decisions could be made by the Council based on the Task Force recommendations.
Ms. Hammerstad suggested March 13th.
Mr. Alden asked what you would do if you had six positions determined in the May primary and one pending until November. Would they stop the whole process or was there a portion that could get completed.
Chair Condit thought it depended upon what happened. If everyone was decided but the Council President and the two candidates for Council President were current Metro Councilors, then he didn't think there was any reason to delay the process but his concern was that if one or the other of them was strongly in favor or against one of the candidates this could create some problems if they tried to make some key decision before that race was decided.
Ms. Hammerstad said there was the other problem of the candidate wanting to know whom they would be working for.
Presiding Officer Hosticka said it seemed to him that the actual selection of the COO should wait until they knew who the Council President was. Some of the structural issues could be determined earlier in the process, in fact, that might even be better.
Chair Condit said he thought the structural decision should be made.
Mr. Drake agreed strongly with that and reiterated what he said in his email, they needed to move forward. He said the good news was that Pete Sandrock provided a lot of security and could continue as COO until another was hired. The COO needed a structure to take over. He suggested getting everything structurally done well in advance.
Chair Condit said he was not talking about delaying the structural changes, he was talking about the actual hiring process.
Mr. Blackmer put it in the concept of risk or opportunity. The idea that you could make a decision between November and January 6th on who that person would be and then it may take that person or two months to begin the position meant you wouldn't have someone on board until March. What was the cost to the organization for a couple months delay? You would have someone that could do the day to day operation of the agency.
Mr. McClave said going back to Chair Condit's earlier comment, if the Council President and all but one of the council members were elected in May, you could start the process in March. It would be much better if you had the COO on the payroll by December 1st. If you couldn't get someone on board early, he suggested hiring someone on an interim basis.
Mr. Hilderbrand said part of the approval of this ballot measure was to save money. If you put someone on board in December to do a job that Mike Burton was going to do until January 6th, you had duplicating payroll.
Mr. McClave said you would save money over many, many years.
Mr. Hilderbrand said as a voter, he expected to see savings when the new structure started.
Chair Condit said from a legal standpoint the COO couldn’t officially be appointed until after January 6th. They had to be appointed by the Council President and there won't be one until then. He summarized that they wanted to get the structure in place as soon as possible. If they could begin the selection process, they should begin this as soon as possible so someone could be on board by the change over date but if there was a significant chance that the council was going to be two to three people different and they won't know that until after the November election, then they had to delay at least the part of that process in terms of selecting the final candidate until after those councilors were elected.
Mr. Hilderbrand added, and had a chance to look at the candidates.
C. Should the COO be hired into a classified position or hired on contract?
Mr. Drake suggested that the range be set at some point in executing the contract so that the candidates would know what the range was. Also, there would be opportunity that if the council liked the candidate, they had some room for growth over time.
Chair Condit thought one of their recommendations should be, as part of the budget process, that there be a classification study done or an analysis of comparable positions' pay so there was room in the budget to make those decisions. This was a unique job but they would have to pay more than they were paying Mr. Burton. You always had to pay "real" administrators higher than you paid elected officials.
Mr. Hennessee agreed with the compensation study being done for the position, what were the other fringe benefit opportunities for that position?
Chair Condit said they had had a discussion on that, he would leave that up to negotiations. Some of the fringe benefits were mandated. The important thing was to have a good idea of how much they were likely to have to pay for the position.
Ms. Hammerstad said there was no comparable position.
Mr. Kyle said comp studies took time so the sooner they could start that the better.
Presiding Officer Hosticka said it seemed that severance clauses were important when hiring at this level. He thought the Task Force should give guidance on this if possible.
Chair Condit said he thought the consultant could help out. He suggested a well-crafted contract with a term limit and severance package was key. The Council had to have the ability to be able to make that decision.
Mr. Hennessee suggested that ICMA could give guidance in that area as well.
Chair Condit agreed, there were a lot of those kinds of contracts available. He thought that with this type of position they would be looking at a 6-month to one-year severance package was appropriate.
Mr. Alden said they should recommend a compensation study and include in that study the kinds of severance packages and clauses available.
Chair Condit suggested looking at what other perks were offered by other jurisdictions.
Mr. Drake said most city managers received a stipend and they drove their own vehicles. This got away from the issue of car compensation.
Mr. Kyle shared his experience using a company car. He thought a good consultant could give better advice than the Task Force on this issue.
Mr. Hennessee suggested, as part of the compensation package, attendance at the ICMA conferences or other on going learning that the agency wanted their executive to have. These issues should be part of the budget conversation.
Chair Condit suggested hiring a comp/class expert to do an analysis.
Mr. Hennessee said in the City Management Association, there were many county administrators, council's of government administrators that were very much like Metro. Metro was a different governing body but there were a variety of government administrators that were part of the ICM Association.
Mr. Hilderbrand expressed concern about salary issues.
Mr. McClave said part of the conversation was to look to see what the pay scale and benefits might be so that they could see what was going to have to be made to a Metro administrator.
Mr. Hennessee said a compensation study gave you guidance. The Council would then have to make a decision on what they were going to pay.
Chair Condit said the way it was structured, the councilor's salaries were not going to be effected by the decision, their salaries were not tied to the staffs' salaries. One of the benefits of doing a contract was they were not creating a situation where classified employees would expect to be paid at a comparable level, although a good analyst would look to see what was being paid at Metro in salaries.
Ms. Hammerstad spoke to recruiting their city planning director and the need to have a compensation study done. She suggested making sure that the salary was within the appropriate range because you wanted to have a good pool of applicants.
Mr. Blackmer said he and Larry Hilderbrand had had ongoing conversations about salaries. You got what you paid for and if you put a little more in the salary you could save a lot in the rest of the organization. Good leadership was worth paying for.
E. How should Metro management (Council and Executive Officer) communicate with the staff during the transition?
Chair Condit said this issue had been raised at the last meeting by staff. The recommendation was that they had some form of formal process so people were reassured about what was going on. It had been suggested that they designate an ombudsperson to communicate with staff about how things were going. He suggested the Task Force recommend having such a person and that that person be available to take phone calls about what was going on but also send out regular notices of what was happening in terms of decisions on the structure, selection process for the administrator and plans for after January 6, 2003.
Mr. Kyle suggested two things. He agreed with the recommendation. He said because of today's structure, the executive needed to play a role as well as the council so that people knew that both heads were saying the same thing and that the messages were clear about what had been decided and what was yet to be decided. He thought the more information the better, the sooner the better; the more frequent the better.
Mr. Hilderbrand suggested providing copies of the Task Force minutes to staff with an invitation for employees to communicate with Executive, Council or the Task Force.
Mr. Kyle said he thought both arms of the government needed to take action. He wasn't sure how to go about doing this.
Chair Condit suggested doing a staff survey three months into the transition to see how things were going.
Mr. Blackmer said he would give it more time. He suggested approaching it more slowly, he thought it would be too early at three months but suggested 6 months instead.
Mr. Hilderbrand said he thought they should leave it to Metro to determine.
Mr. Kyle said he would leave it as a suggestion not a recommendation. He thought six months was appropriate. He also suggested a notebook of all of the discussions for the new executive.
Mr. Hennessee said the concept of communication in the organization was very important. He thought this provided an opportunity for people to know what was going on as well as for people to give input into the process.
6. Other
A. Should the council reduce the number of subcommittees as a means of reducing administrative support requirements?
Chair Condit said his inclination was to recommend that the council take a serious look at subcommittees, at pairing those committees down. With each committee you had, you created a staffing requirements, expenses, etc. If the committees were not useful in helping the Council make a decision, they ought to get rid of them.
Mr. Blackmer expressed concerned from an accountability standpoint, he said, you had subcommittees that were made up of a quorum where a lot of decisions were being made and then rubber stamped at council. He thought that with this structure, by the time this came before the public, a decision had already been made and votes cast. The extra layer troubled him.
Mr. Hilderbrand said one of the reasons that they had that layer was to have public hearings and not all-council members could attend those public hearings.
Mr. Kyle said there was a number of processes that could work that didn't necessarily have to directly engage all of the council all of the time but didn't have to be a subcommittee either. From a public standpoint, there were a lot of other ways to get citizen involvement in the issues other than subcommittees. He thought subcommittees made sense for certain kinds of projects. The Council should have the ability to have a special subcommittee when it made sense but not just because it had always been done that way.
Chair Condit said he thought they were talking about standing committees. His experience had been the same, you had to go and make your pitch first to the Growth Management Committee and then to the Council. It was twice as much work.
Ms. Hammerstad said, in other local governments, those subcommittees were citizen committees such as the Park's board. This was where the recommendations came into the full council. She objected to having an elected person on the council advising themselves. If you put people on the council on the advisory committees you changed the structure of the advice. It might be less of a burden if you did some of those things in advisory committees. She agreed with Chair Condit's recommendation to a least look at the committee structure and look at other ways of getting the same amount of work done with fewer staff. She suggested that if you had a committee of the whole you should only have to come before council once.
Chair Condit said Mr. Blackmer’s point was well taken. If you had more than a quorum of the council serving on a subcommittee, then in fact you have a minority of the elected officials making a decision. He didn't think this was appropriate. He was leaning more towards getting rid of all committees.
Mr. Hilderbrand suggested just get rid of the standing committees and let the council act as a whole.
Presiding Officer Hosticka offered an observation. He suggested you might end up in the other way. One of the things the committees did at this point was give a smaller group of the council a sustained involvement in a policy issue over time and they tended to specialize in that area. He didn't think you were going to get away from specialization. If you didn't have committees, those that tended to have certain interests and expertise could tend to be the czar of that issue with nothing other than the council deferring to that person such as fish and wildlife habitat protection. Certain councilors would specialize in that area and the rest of the council would tend to defer to that person, that person would be the repository of all of that information. If it was not a committee, you could end up with a situation where it was not transparent and people had less input.
Mr. Hennessee said the recommendation to look at the issue was a good recommendation. What they were saying was that there was going to be a structural change in how Metro worked as a governmental unit, how public policy evolved. There would be many structural changes that would be necessary including adding an administrator who would guide the council through a lot of these processes.
Mr. Hilderbrand suggested that the Task Force says what they think, the council was perfectly capable of disagreeing. The Task Force was simply making recommendations.
Chair Condit said they should recommend getting rid of the standing committees and see how it worked. Then, if there was a need for a specialized committee, you put the committee together for that need.
Mr. Gustafson said there would be a fundamental change in the leadership structure. It was a challenge for the new Council President to come in and implement a new structure on the existing council membership. He liked the idea of getting rid of the committee structure. He agreed with Mr. Hilderbrand about stating a recommendation. The public process was not well served by the committee process. He gave some reasons why they had had committees historically. He noted you could have a public hearing without a quorum, you couldn't execute business but you could listen to the citizens.
Ms. Hammerstad reiterated without a quorum you couldn't make a decision but you could hold a public hearing.
Councilor Bragdon thought that the Task Force should suggested some other intermediate means of filtering. He thought it was important to have in depth conversations prior to having it come before full council on cable TV for the first time.
Chair Condit said, in his experience, you were always going to have members of the public body interested in different things. He suggested recommending abolishment of the standing committee structure and replacing it with work sessions or task forces that would go, do the work and then terminate.
Mr. Blackmer said he agreed, the city and county both had council informals or work sessions. He tended to go to these meetings rather than the formal meetings because there were more candid types of questions and answers. He thought it helped citizens because that was where the real questions came in.
Chair Condit said he foresaw each one of the recommendations coming with an explanation.
B. Should Metro employ professional outside assistance to assess the staffing requirements for the Council, Council President and COO?
Mr. Kyle said he didn’t think the Task Force had the answer to this issue.
Mr. Hilderbrand said he thought the Task Force should let the Council make that decision. He felt they would know better what they needed under the new structure.
Mr. Kyle felt once the Task Force talked about the functions, this issue would drop out.
Chair Condit said he had skipped that issue originally because he thought the discussion about some of the other issues would help resolve those needs.
5. Citizen Communications
There were none.
There being no further business to come before the Metro Transition Advisory Task, Chair Condit adjourned the meeting at 4:48 p.m.
Prepared by,
Chris Billington
Clerk of the Council
Attachments to the Public Record for the Meeting of January 30, 2002
The following have been included as part of the official public record:
Document Number | Document Date | Document Title | TO/FROM |
013002taft-01 1/22/02 Issue List - Draft 3 To: Jeff Condit, Chair
From: Pete Sandrock