Metro Council/COO Retreat

Minutes

May 22, 2003

I.  Retreat Outcomes

The retreat's primary area of focus was on clarifying and coming to agreement on the major relationships within the organization that have changed as a result of the charter revision. The second area of focus was identifying the next steps in long range planning for the organization. Specific outcomes include:

•  Clarify the role of the council and individual councilor role

•  Clarify role of the Council President and relationship of councilors to that role

•  Clarify relationship between Council and COO and council relationships with staff

•  Identify the overall process the council would like to implement in long range planning and goal setting for the organization. Plan the steps to accomplish that process.

II.  Meeting Working Agreements

• Listen before you make up your mind.

• Consider all the information.

• Don't withdraw; stay engaged in the process.

• Share airtime.

• Surface any discomfort early, rather than waiting until you are really upset.

• Look for areas of agreement before voicing disagreement.

• Listen to understand rather than to respond.

• Recognize each others commitment.

• Be willing to move on once there is substantive agreement.

III. Role of the Council

• The Council's role is to set policy, goals, measurable objectives

and a process for COO to report back to Council on a regular basis about on-going progress toward the goals and objectives.

•  The Council confirms the hiring and firing of the COO. The entire Council has oversight responsibility for the COO. The COO hires, manages, and, if necessary, fires staff. The Council doesn't direct/manage staff.

•  The council confirms the hiring and firing of the attorney.

•  Council sets the direction and approves the budget

III.  Councilor Role

•  Representation of the public to the agency and the agency to the public

•  Act as ombudsman

•  Liaison on issues/projects, not departments collaboratively delegated on behalf of council. Delegation will be time limited and not interfere with the policy decisions of the council. The liaison role may include the councilor being the point person between staff and the council on a particular issue or project as well as a “reality check” for staff.

IV.  Role of the President

•  Sets meeting agendas

•  Presides over meetings

•  Appoints COO and attorney subject to council confirmation. The president will make every effort to work collaboratively with the council in this process.

•  Makes committee appointments subject to council confirmation

•  Proposes budget

•  Touch tone for COO on council direction, if uncertain, COO will contact council members directly

•  The chairperson may represent the board to outside parties in announcing board stated positions and in stating chair decisions and interpretations within the area delegated to her or him.

V.  Council Agenda Planning

•  Build annual calendar

•  Council sets agenda for future meetings. They do this by prioritizing issues and setting a time frame appropriate to each issue.

VI.  Role of COO

•  Carry out policies as limited by boundaries set by board

•  Identify needed new policies or policies needing modification

•  Organize when an activity should be raised to policy level

•  Set organizational culture

•  Assure impartiality, uniformity and professionalism of information provided to the council

•  Process monitor

•  Organizational accountability

VII.  Communication among council members

•  If there is an issue with a policy, make every effort to raise it within work session not at council meeting. No surprises.

•  Report/communicate in work sessions

•  Give each other "professional courtesy"...each of us should let the other Councilors know if something is likely to be in the media. (For the COO, this goes beyond the request of professional courtesy—the Council requires the COO to inform them if he believes that something might appear in the media.)

•   If a Councilor is going to speak in another Councilor's district, it is another act of professional courtesy to notify the district Councilor beforehand.

VIII.  Decision making

•  For informals, strive for consensus

•  Use a variety of meeting tools to check for consensus (summarize, five finger consensus, etc)

•  Raise concerns prior to formal meetings – heads up

IX.  Council/staff Relationships

•  General Principle: The entire Council has oversight responsibility for the COO. The COO hires, manages, and if necessary fires staff. The Council doesn't direct/manage staff.

•  If Council members have concerns about staff, (with what staff says or does,) they should take up those concerns with the COO; they should not go directly to the staff.

•  Council can go to staff for information as long as there's no budgetary or work schedule impact (We want to recognize that any request of staff diverts a resource - so use staff resources judiciously.) Give the staff member’s supervisor a heads-up when possible...especially if you will be using more than a minimum of staff time. Staff should go to the COO if they feel overburdened by Councilor requests. The COO will then take it up with the individual Councilor - another option is for the Council as a whole to discuss if they want to reallocate resources so that individual Councilors have more access to staff.

•  The COO should keep Council apprised of staff appearances representing Metro "outside the building".

X.  Vision For Metro

A. Council members were asked to consider their visions for the future of Metro. The following ideas were generated:

•  Tool for regional positioning

•  Work on credibility - “brand”

•  Capacity – create an organization that is nimble

•  More interdisciplinary

•  “Think tank”

•  Risk taking inside and outside - saying “yes”

•  Knowing when to say “no” and not losing what we are

•  Council is seen as effective policy body

•  Ask – can we do this well? Do we have the capacity?

•  Think about the region clarification – ask – what we are doing now. Self examination of current functions and best structure (MERC, Zoo, etc.)

•  Look at what makes sense regionally and work to make that happen proactively with partners

•  Seek opportunities in content areas (taxis, etc.)

•  Seek opportunities as process leader/convenor/problem solver

•  Customer perception – seen not just as regulator but as service provider (experts, problem solvers)

•  Have a clear answer to the question - Where do we want to go what do we want to be?

•  Identify the barriers to getting there? – (think beyond the current individuals)

•  Nurture sense of regional citizenship

•  Move from “we do it” to “who should do it”

•  Clarify the vision for governance in the region

B.  Options for next steps

•  Not a one time visioning or strategic planning process

•  Improve incrementally over time

•  Constantly scan where the opportunities are to move

•  Practice goal directed opportunism – recon – good positioning

•  Council to provide leadership in the process by developing a set of principles and overall vision

•  Question – How do we involve staff in this process appropriately?

•  Build a learning, thinking organization to follow lead of council

•  COO to develop options for a planning process for council discussion

XI.  Issue Bin

•  Revise code - COO position

•  MERC

•  Quasi judicial role which functions to council, which mandated

•  Role of council member as chair of committee

•  Committees - internal and external

•  Budget development process

•  JPACT

•  Current council staff function