The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-10-06
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (19,267 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Governance Committee met on Monday, October 6, 2025, with roll call confirming attendance and a later joinder by the Vice Chair. The session opened with acknowledgment of recent citywide events and remarks on strategic planning and budget-related community engagement. The body then received an update on the Advisory Bodies Enhancement Project, covering a proposed classification system for the city's 92 identified advisory bodies, data on service-area distribution and body types, and a set of proposed citywide practices spanning creation, meetings, relationship to city leadership, periodic review, dissolution, recruitment, composition, diversity tracking, service eligibility, and support resources. Discussion addressed sunset provisions, consolidated recruitment scheduling, applicant-to-seat ratios, and clarity of body purpose, with input from committee members and a visiting councilor describing related experience. Two members of the public offered testimony referencing past advisory-body service and recommendations for standardization and volunteer support. The committee then reviewed a draft council policy process flowchart intended for the governance handbook, discussing a proposed resource-request/staff-authorization step, concerns about prioritization, political influence perceptions, and comparisons to other cities' legislative processes, including Minneapolis. No vote outcomes were described in this portion of the transcript; where votes occurred, they would be recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting adjourned with plans to continue discussion at the next meeting on October 20th.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 Good morning. I call the governance committee to order. It is Monday, October 6th at 2:32 p.m. Diana, will you please call the roll?
1 Good afternoon. Clark, here. Dunphy here. Pirtle-guiney here. Ryan.
2 Koyama Lane here. Craig, will you please read the statement of conduct?
3 Welcome to this meeting of the governance committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at w-w-w. Governance agenda governance committee, or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In-person testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise, your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order. Disruptive conduct such as shouting. Refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying. State your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
4 Thank you. In today's meeting, the governance committee will hear about the city wide practices recommended by the advisory advisory bodies enhancement project. Listen to public testimony about advisory bodies and the recommended citywide practices, and then finally discuss a potential policy process flowchart recommendation to improve coordination between council and the city administration on policy development. All right. Now we'll move into chair and vice chair announcements. I first want to acknowledge the events over this weekend that have had a significant impact on our city. I am so proud of us as a community. We're staying together, staying strong, exercising our first amendment rights, and showing what Portland is really about. Thank everyone for your efforts and just reminding the community, everyone, to continue to show up for each other and the city that we love with resolve and a commitment to peace. Also on September 30th, the city administrator and chief engagement officer, amanda garcia snell, provided a follow up on recommendations to the city administration from gtac. Also known as the government transition advisory committee. Of those recommendations, I'd like to highlight two key areas city wide strategic planning and community engagement in the city's new budget process on city wide strategic planning. I'd like to mention to my fellow councilors that council visioning and shared goals will be necessary to shape city wide strategic planning. I know that this has come up many times from different colleagues and also on community engagement in the budget process. I'm excited for the city's plan in supporting communication and engagement in this next budget process. So I hope that community engagement will be baked into the creation of the mayor's proposed budget, and that the budget presented to council will include how community engagement will be incorporated and has been incorporated, and how it will be built into the budget before it's presented to us as council. I don't see vice chair Ryan on our meeting yet. I think he might be joining us a little bit later. And so, diana, will you please read the first two items together?
5 Sure. Item one advisory bodies enhancement project update item two, advisory bodies enhancement project. Public testimony.
6 Thank you. Colleagues, I'm excited to welcome back amanda garcia snell and julia meyer to the governance committee. Today, amanda and julia provided an update on the advisory bodies enhancement project at our September 8th meeting. They've since released the third project update. If you haven't gone to see the website for the updates, it's great. There's a ton of information on there. Today. They will present on some of the city wide practices recommended in the project updates, and we'll also have an opportunity to hear from one of our colleagues I think is going to join us. Another councilor Also hear from the public, and then we'll have some time to discuss as a committee. All right. Over to you, amanda and julia. Great.
7 Thank you. Good afternoon. Councilors. For the record, I'm amanda garcia snell, chief engagement officer. Thank you for having us back to the governance committee for this opportunity to share a bit more detail with you about the advisory bodies enhancement project and to hear from community as well. Again, I'd like to extend appreciation for my colleagues, julia and ocean and all other staff and community members and councilors who have supported this project. Today, we're here to share the latest on the advisory bodies, enhancement project and initiative and set of deliverables that as you mentioned. Chair Koyama Lane, that we began with your approval this past spring. Although we provide regular updates on our webpage and share those with you all and the rest of council, key staff and community, we really want to use today's presentation to build on that foundation and provide a bit more detail about the areas of improvement and proposed city wide practices, and the upcoming additional opportunities for community input and feedback. Everything we're about to share reflects the thoughtful input we've received from staff, community members, and each of you and some other councilors to date, but more hopefully is coming. I'd also like to add that this project is about more than streamlining. It's really about strengthening our advisory bodies so that they're more equitable, impactful, and aligned with the city's governance structure. We're creating a system that better supports community members who serve, improves transparency, and ensures that advisory bodies are meaningful spaces for civic participation. We look forward to walking you through our progress, sharing what's ahead, and then continuing this important conversation with you all and others. And with that, I'll hand it over to julia.
8 Thanks, amanda, and thank you, chair Koyama Lane and councilors for inviting us back. It's good to be here. And, chair, and reflecting on your opening remarks, I was busing into the office this morning and it's a beautiful day, and I was thinking about all of the images that folks have been sharing about the beauty of our city recently. And, you know, I'm like, there is so much going on, and I want to come and talk to you about advisory bodies. But I do think part of the beauty of Portland is how engaged portlanders are, how many folks are involved in neighborhood groups and community based organizations who volunteer their time to help the city do its work. So I think it is also an expression of the beauty of the city. And we're just trying to create a system that is supportive of those portlanders. So thank you for the opportunity to be here. My presentation is about 25 minutes. I'll leave it up to you if you want to ask questions along the way or hold them. You know, I will say this work has sort of started and stopped over the years. City council passed a couple of resolutions in 2017 recognizing the need for a more comprehensive citywide approach to advisory bodies. Some of that happened. We have a common application form. There's a centralized recruiting website. We collect conflict of interest disclosures, but some of it didn't happen. There was the initial annual report on the advisory body program in 2019. And then really in 2020, that work stalled, I think, largely due to the COVID 19 pandemic and probably some other issues. So we're really picking it back up for the reasons that amanda shared. And just really look to you and your leadership to keep this momentum going. Next slide, please. Councilor. Clark, I want to thank you for your question. When we were here last month about what does success look like? And we think it's having an advisory body program that fits our new form of government, including district based representation. There's a shared understanding about why we have them, that we have practices that are equity centered and standardized across advisory bodies, and that all of our bodies address goals and needs of the city, and that people serving have meaningful experiences, and that portlanders know how to find and engage with their work. Next slide please. So an important part of this project is standardization of practices across advisory bodies. But to do that, we had to define what we mean by an advisory body. That may seem like an easy question, but it was a little bit more complicated when we started to dive into it. So we're proposing a classification system for advisory bodies, and that for bodies defined by this classification system, that they would follow whatever new practices we establish for advisory bodies, there's a pretty big distinction between types of advisory bodies at the city. There are those that the city doesn't have sole authority to modify or dissolve their functions or bodies, and those which the city does have that authority. And you can see the types of bodies that the city doesn't necessarily have sole authority over. Those are bodies in our charter ballot measure, oversight bodies, bodies that fulfill state or federal law, required functions, intergovernmental bodies and court mandated bodies, and then the distinction of those for which you do are ongoing and the time or action limited ones. Did you.
9 Want is it okay for councilor Clark to know?
10 Yeah, of course. Please.
11 Thank you. On that page at the bottom, you have a graphic. And I was just trying to understand the colors and how they correspond to the abcs. Can you help me with that? It looks like the light shaded ones are maybe the abcs for which the city has sole authority. Or is that just.
12 Councilor Clark, are you on the next slide?
13 Yes.
14 Okay. I think that the colors have no meaning. Okay. And so in a couple of slides I will show you what I think you're asking about.
15 Okay. I just because I was going to be very shocked that we have so few abcs that the city has sole authority for that. There are. But maybe you will get to that.
16 I will get to it in about two minutes. Sorry. No, it's a great question and I think it's the next question after you do a classification system is now we classify them. And so in our most recent report we have a list of all existing advisory bodies by these classes and subclasses. But I'll get to kind of the percentages in a moment. And I will say our next step in classifying is to begin to separate those within council's legislative authority from those within the mayor's executive authority, as another way to look at the types of advisory bodies. So the city does have other types of bodies that we're kind of excluding from this work. Those are bodies comprised solely of city employees, bodies that are more informal sounding boards that could be a one off or short series of engagement with a community. We're also not talking about interagency bodies, where maybe one of you is the sole representative, and then time or action limited bodies that are exempt from public meetings law. So that is sort of the whole universe, but we're really talking about the ones that you see in this classification system. So next slide please. In this classification system we are showing 92 advisory bodies to councilor Clark's point. I think these colors don't don't mean anything underneath. So don't pay attention to them as part of this project, the service areas are reviewing and assessing their existing advisory bodies, which thank you to our service area liaisons who have really been putting in a lot of work. And part of the goal of an assessment of advisory bodies is to come up with an accurate inventory of the bodies that we have. So this 92 number might seem larger than than what you've seen recently. And that's for a couple reasons. So we are including inactive bodies that still exist on paper at the city. We are also including a handful of prosper Portland bodies. And it includes bodies that convene only periodically, something like the independent district commission that only convenes after every us census. We still have it on paper, even though it isn't up and running right now. The city, unfortunately, really hasn't kept good track of the number of advisory bodies over time, so I don't have good comparison data to share with you. But at least now we know how many we have right now. And our next step is we are collecting member lists for all of these bodies. And we currently have the member lists from 53 of the bodies, which translate to exactly 530 members. So I think we're probably going to end up somewhere with 800 ish folks serving on the city's advisory bodies. Next slide. We're almost here questioning councilor Clark. So these are the existing advisory bodies by service area or office. That's where they sit in the city's organizational chart. It tends to be where the staffing of the advisory advisory body comes from. The vast majority of the city's advisory bodies are in the four service areas. Almost 90%. We have 40% in community and economic development, 22% in public works, 17% in public safety, 10% in city ops, and then the remainder are in the mayor and city administrator's office. The office of the chief financial officer, and the auditor's office. Next slide please. And this is councilor Clark's question. These are the advisory bodies by type. So, councilor, to your question, the 41%, the biggest chunk, the 41%, that's ongoing advisory bodies within the city's sole authority, plus the 22%, the next biggest, biggest pie piece, which is time or action limited advisory bodies also within the city's sole authority. So all of this small pie pieces, those collectively make up the ones that the city doesn't have sole discretion over. And you can see they're pretty equally allocated amongst the subclasses, but in entirety, they would only be 37% are the ones that are councilor Clark. Outside of the city's sole authority to modify or dissolve. Does that answer that question? Maybe before I move on. Okay.
17 Vice chair Ryan is hoping to jump in.
18 Yeah. Just to bring that question to a further illustration. So I just came from the Portland children's levy allocation committee meeting, and that was a committee formed and advisory board through a ballot initiative. It's a restricted account, not a designated account. So it has its own financial firewall. Since the money's come in for a direct purpose. So does that come under what where would that land.
19 That is in your ballot measure oversight body? It's the 7% in this pie that's shown in what looks like a gray to me.
20 So they're a different animal then. Okay, 100%.
21 And that's actually a really good example. There's other there's other bodies. They tend to be oversight bodies of ballot measures that had money attached to them. Right. Levies or bonds. And part of the ballot measure was we are going to create an oversight body. So it's required by the ballot measure that the portlanders voted on. So that's what we're including. Children's levy, arts access, housing.
22 The tricky part with that is that some have funding that come from the taxpayers connected to that actual initiative, and some were mandated through the action of the ballot measure that's supposed to come from our operations. Okay. Thanks.
23 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Next slide please. So in addition to creating an accurate inventory, the service areas are also assessing the existing advisory bodies to identify any that are inactive which are already in this list. And we can tell you which ones are inactive if you're curious ones that might be outdated or redundant, ones that might be able to have sunset clauses even though they're created to be ongoing or permanent, and then to come back with any recommended changes to their existing advisory bodies. That review and assessment has already shown some early areas of improvement. They're listed on this slide. I won't go through them, but the findings from the assessment, as well as all of the service area recommended recommended changes will be shared later this calendar year. And I think what we're finding is there are opportunities for improvement in the system that we have, and we're trying to create citywide practices that are responsive to the areas of improvement that folks are experiencing on the ground. Next slide please. So the proposed citywide practices cover a pretty wide range. They're all listed here. They can be read in full in the status update number three that is linked on the bottom of the slide. All drafts have been released and are available for feedback. I want to make a couple notes before we get into them. Gesundheit. The first is that establishing and managing practices of advisory bodies requires action by both the legislative branch and the executive branch. So the adoption of this breadth of new policies and practices, we're envisioning as a three legged stool that will have city code, administrative rules and council procedures. So it's there's a lot going on. But I want to talk about the universe of what we're envisioning, regardless of where it falls in that three legged stool. So you understand kind of you understand it holistically. And the other thing I would note, and this is based on some community feedback we've already received, is this range of practices includes very internal things, things to make our work more efficient inside the city, and things that are more impactful to community members who've applied or may want to serve on an advisory body. And I'm also just going to talk about all of them, because I think they're important, but recognize it really does represent policies and practices that will have different adoption mechanisms across both branches of government, and practices that may impact community members more and less. Next slide please. So amanda spoke to this. So I won't really go into it. And I went into it last month. We've had so much good input into this work already. We have a couple community input sessions later this week and early next week as well. I mainly want to thank all the portlanders who apply and serve on advisory bodies. I've worked with many of them I have served myself. You know, it's really such an asset to the city, and their continued feedback in this work has been amazing. I also want to thank council, particularly this committee, for providing the leadership to keep this project going. Next slide please. So this is a high level overview of the draft purpose statement for advisory bodies. It comes from looking at the purpose statements of our individual advisory bodies, and a lot of comments that I've heard from this council from the dais. As you've appointed members to advisory bodies or considered the creation of new advisory bodies. And the idea is that our bodies really do a range of things. We have, again, a diversity of bodies. So it's hard to say that every body does the same thing, but there's a range of what they do, including increasing accountability and government actions, improving our policies and operations, enhancing public trust and legitimacy, promoting inclusive and collaborative governance, strengthening civic engagement and representation, and advancing racial justice and equity at the city. Next slide please. So this set of practices is about what we call the whole life cycle of an advisory body, and it covers how they're created to how they're dissolved and for creation, what we really want is greater consistency in how advisory bodies are created at the city. And so we're proposing a creation form for all advisory bodies that includes a set of elements that are listed in the status update, but they're meant to be those elements beyond the advisory bodies. Member memberships authority to change. Right. So it's what you want to set. If you created an advisory body that is not going to be amended later by the members of the body, we're also proposing that the engagement officer review any proposed new body for creation, just to ensure, again, it's not duplicative or conflicting with an existing body and to anticipate ongoing impacts to the city, like financial cost and for bylaws. We want to amend the template that we have so that it's more aligned with the creation legislation, creation form of a body, and that the creation form includes the items that the body cannot change, where the bylaws includes the items that the body can and that they're meant to travel together for an advisory body, for meetings in order to align with the city's core value of transparency, we are proposing that advisory body meetings be open to the public. So that includes things like notice public attendance and having written meetings or some recording of the advisory bodies meetings. The next one is about relationship to city leadership, and this is obviously something for you all to ponder. As a council. I will say that advisory bodies often want earlier and more engagement with city leadership. I think from both branches of government, and also clear expectations about what that relationship could be or will be. You know, we have some recommendations, including that council could designate a council committee as the primary liaison to each advisory body. That abc reports could be submitted to both the mayor and the designated council body. Again, whether that's a council committee or the full council. And then really finding proactive opportunities offered by leadership for advisory bodies to give advice. And so I think for for council bodies that could be invited, testimony from advisory bodies that could be notifying advisory bodies of upcoming decisions or discussion items that relate to that advisory body. Scope of work. For periodic review, we're proposing that the engagement officer review 25% of the city's advisory bodies every year on a four year cycle. So basically every four years, each advisory body would be assessed. It's basically what we're doing right now, except instead of having to do all of them at one moment because it hasn't been done, we have a methodology going forward that they're all done on a rolling basis, and then whatever is found during that annual review and assessment would come to council and the mayor with any recommendations as well as the findings. For dissolution. I think this also just is about being consistent. So, you know, figuring out if we if you all create an advisory body by ordinance, it should be dissolved by ordinance. If you create one by resolution, you can dissolve it by resolution. And also being clearer when we create bodies, does it have a date that it's going to end or an action when it will conclude, and making sure that we're tracking those things and dissolving them automatically if that time or that event occurs, maybe I'll just pause there before I move to the next bucket to see if there's any questions. Comments on the life cycle.
24 Yeah, a question with regard to creation. You said sort of checking in with you all ahead of time before we move forward with creating a resolution to create a new advisory body to make sure it doesn't overlap or isn't too similar, do you envision? Expanding the scope of existing advisory bodies in a sort of systematic way? I mean, I don't know, a police oversight board. Suddenly, they also now have to oversee drone footage from the police. Right. Feels like a specific sort of thing, but it's relatively aligned with it. What would you envision the intention of telling members of existing bodies and new bodies? This is the scope for now, and we may expand it in other ways. Or do you think it would be? Better to have certain clearer, more defined roles that are tighter and narrower so that there isn't that overlap or need for expansion? That was kind of a muddled question, but get what I'm kind of going for it.
25 Go ahead.
26 Yeah. A couple of things. First, is that a consistent problem that I've heard from advisory bodies and I've seen firsthand, is a lack of clarity about purpose. Sure. So I don't think being more muddled about purpose during creation is helpful. That doesn't mean that the scope of an advisory body can't change over time based on the needs of the city. And I think it's less about maybe the creation where I would probably promote greater clarity of purpose. And it's more about, again, creating practices like periodic review of existing bodies that allows us as a city to assess whether bodies are continuing to meet the need. You know, it's the same need or goal that we thought at the outset, or that there is a new city need or a goal that we want to take into consideration and consider changing the scope. But the change of the scope should also come with clarity. Does that answer the question?
27 I mean, yes it is. It's a tough hypothetical that I'm sort of throwing at you, but I'm also just envisioning I think it's on the one hand, I think it's nonsense for us to have 300 different advisory bodies where it's very, you know, tiny and niche, and these things live forever because we don't put an expiration date. And I've seen that. I've seen that happen. Right. Blue ribbon commissions and other things like that. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to just have something so generic that it's a, you know, PBOT advisory committee. And then anything that is transportation related suddenly gets thrown into that bucket. So it's a careful balance. But I'm interested to know, you know, are you do you envision this being retroactive also? I mean, do you think setting some of those parameters around existing, going back and redefining what a body, what a certain advisory body is and maybe what it isn't, or maybe even getting rid of some of the ones proactively as we scope them.
28 Yeah, yeah.
29 So I'll start and chime in. So yes, the answer is yes. I think what we're what we're really thinking about is what are those criteria. What are those questions that we're asking in the creation of new bodies. And as we as we define that a little more and we get further down this process, we'll also be looking at existing bodies in that review process, if not sooner, to say, where are we a little fuzzy or where are we not even really answering these questions? And what are those conversations? So I think because the there is such a vast difference in what the various bodies do and what purpose they serve, I think that will look really it's going to be hard to bucket a little bit in the beginning. And then as we move forward and start to really ask those questions in advance, I think we'll see more clarity for each of the bodies. In your example, one of the things that I would offer is that I think, you know, we're not ever going to probably get to a place where one size is going to fit all for the creation. And so I think there are some things we can think about around, you know, is this a time limited subcommittee or is this so specific that we need to think about a different type of, you know, organizational structure, something like that? I mean, I think there's there's room to to have those conversations.
30 You know, I would just for my own $0.02, I think that having a default position where there is an expiration is actually probably great. And that we have to proactively say, and this body lives in perpetuity. And also I, I personally think that having a sore on your chart, you know, like I think it was 8% of the advisory bodies either report to the mayor's office or to the city administrator's office. I feel less worried about the city administrator, but I don't like it when an elected officials office is also responsible for something outside of the scope of what their office is typically. And I would sure love it if, as you are moving towards, you know, what the best practices are and what the bookends on what your program would be, that that these things do live in a bureau, that these things do have a responsibility not to an elected official, because we've seen over and over really good intended things that no bureau actually wants to own. And then it lives in the mayor's office, and then the mayor goes out of office, and now it's like, where does it live? That's how we got to film office at prosper Portland. I love having a film office. You know, like the history was a little complicated. So trying to to to limit our creativity I think is actually probably a good idea. So thank you.
31 Thank you. Councilor. Counselor Clark.
32 Thank you, madam vice president. Actually, I was going to say pretty much the same thing that councilor Dunphy said. I just think as a matter of course, you should have a sunset. I would just throw my weight behind a sunset all the time. I think it's going to be appropriate most of the time, and you can always reevaluate. Maria. But let's get the sunset in there. And then in the course of your annual review or evaluation of 25% of the committees, I really hope that this sounds really harsh, but that you remove the dead weight. Dead weight is probably not the right term. I can't think of, you know, those that are really no longer functional, no longer needed, that. I really thought a part of this process would be to let things sunset, and assertively so. I just want to throw my $0.02 in there to.
33 Thank you for. Thank you for that. And I'll just add that as part of the the assessment that we're still working on, service areas have started to think about recommendations for the advisory bodies within their, within their, under their umbrella. And so those conversations are continuing with, with the dcas and myself to really better understand what is the full breadth of those recommendations. And in some instances, that may look like dissolution or combining several bodies or things like that. So I think we will be coming back to you later or or sharing in whatever way you want. You know what those recommendations are really proposing.
34 Vice chair.
35 Yes. Thank you, vice chair. And also thank you, amanda and julia, as always, this is really wonderful to respond to what we're looking at. You've done a lot of work. I'm getting at looking at the abc one. Then it goes into the then it goes into life cycle abc. That's where we stopped. So I'm looking at both of those and I see the second bullet says improved city policies and operations. And I consider that to be the primary purpose. And so for me I put that as number one. I've voted no a couple times on people coming on. It happened too long ago where I asked somebody about the mission of the commission they were going on, and they couldn't answer the question, and I wondered why they were applying for this, and it felt like a rather political appointment, if you will, as opposed to somebody that was excited about serving this primary purpose. Call me old school, but I, I was a part of leading nonprofits where if your board and your staff wasn't constantly focused on your primary purpose, then you probably didn't need to meet. And so I just want to make sure I can lift that in oh so many ways. And then even in the life cycle, and I think you were getting at the word creation was getting at that. I, I think primary purpose and mission is language that people do understand, and I feel like it's missing there. And so that's the problems we're trying to solve. What we're trying to do is improve the services to portlanders. That's the deficit the city's been in, especially the last ten years, is our services to portlanders our primary purposes of what we're supposed to provide portlanders is not is not as satisfactory as it used to be. And so I can't think of a more important time that we get focused on that again. And I'm not completely seeing that kind of language here. And can you tell me if I'm missing something? And I'm used to new words that say the same things and.
36 I, you.
37 Know, that's what happens as you keep experiencing life. And maybe there's maybe the word creation is supposed to be saying that, but it's not working for me.
38 Yeah. I mean, I don't know if thank you, councilor.
39 For the question.
40 I think.
41 Two out of the three things you were saying feel like simple clarifications we could make.
42 And the third.
43 Maybe is as well. So we have our full status update, which is much longer than the powerpoint that we're going over today. We do have a set of elements we're proposing go in any creation form. And number three after name. And what kind of body is it? Is the body's purpose, powers, functions and responsibilities all stated with reasonable specificity. And maybe it's the body's purpose and mission, if that. You know, I don't think we were trying to exclude mission. We I was using the word purpose as a proxy, I think, for what you mean by mission.
44 Primary purpose, mission. Where's the word purpose in these two documents?
45 Page 15.
46 Of the.
47 Just talking about the two slides, I guess.
48 Oh it's not. Yeah.
49 It's in the deeper appendix.
50 Okay.
51 I don't want to waste our time with digging into that.
52 No, no, I.
53 Think that it could say the body's purpose and mission to.
54 Yeah,
55 Yeah.
56 As long as that's lifted. And then I'll pause on other questions because we haven't gotten to the composition yet. So thanks for.
57 When I think.
58 You're letting us ask questions.
59 Yeah.
60 Your question about. You know, applicants knowledge about the mission of a body is something we could get to in the composition section.
61 Yeah. If you're not feeling the passion around the content of the area that you're serving, then it just seems like it's not a good fit. And as you know, I always think that you can find people out there to represent that focus that are demographically represented everywhere. You just have to work sometimes harder to find them. So I've never been, as you know, julia, because we've known each other for a while. I don't believe in stereotyping a content area with a certain group of people, or that it's monolithic within that. So, you know, I just want to make sure we keep opening up to that type of creativity, which brings us more talent in primary purpose focus. Thanks.
62 Thank you. Yeah. Okay.
63 Let's go to the next slide. This is to councilor Ryan's point. This is about the composition of bodies. And it is recruitment all the way through confirmation I will say that composition of different bodies may work different ways. Right. Is it a council made body meant to advise council then that doesn't stop at mayoral appointment. Right. But I'm going to go over the situation that maybe is more common, which is mayoral appointment and council confirmation. Some of our goals here are to have more successful recruitments than the city currently has. That's both increasing the number, making sure we have enough applicants, but also making sure we have enough applicants with the skills, knowledge, perspectives and lived experiences that the city was looking for. We also want to make sure that the vetting process is well organized, and it's done in a way that the best nominations move forward. And finally, we want a consistent approach so that the city and the applicants know what's happening along the way and that we timely confirm appointments. So the first step here is this recruitment to application closure. I'm just going to highlight a couple of things that maybe I've seen come up in this calendar year is you can have a creation form creation legislation of advisory body that sets out certain qualifications. You know, we're looking for this type of profession or something else, but there may be things. Like certain perspectives or lived experiences the city is looking for beyond those qualifications that are written down in the creation form. And so because you have two branches needing to collaborate in appointment and confirmations, it may be healthy to discuss between the branches what you all are looking for beyond the qualifications and the creation form, so that before recruitment happens, folks know what they're looking for and then are vetting for those qualifications. We are also recommending that we move from ongoing recruitments to recruitments at fixed times per year. Right now, as you know, they come to you all the time. I think there's always something open, but considering I don't know if that's three times a year or four times a year, but doing kind of mass recruitments at once. Hey community, the city is looking for all these different things rather than doing it all the time. And we would probably have to make exceptions. If a body really needs a member to have quorum, and it's a decision making body, and the second step is application closure to appointment, that's when teams review score. Candidates maybe conduct interviews. The points I want to call out here. Really this is the time that once you have the qualifications that you're looking for, it's also where we can look at the diverse geographic representation of the folks with the qualifications, making sure you have a spectrum of views of the candidates that are moving forward. And then, as you know, the mayor chooses the appointments to recommend to you all for council confirmation. The final step is appointment to confirmation. And we've seen this happen in 2025 a lot. So I'm not sure we have very different recommendations from how you've been doing it. But the designated council committee to an advisory body would further vet mayoral appointments. There'd be an expectation that the appointees be present, which means they could be virtual. They could do a recording if they need be, but an expectation that they're available for that council committee so that folks can have a conversation with the appointees. The council committees act by recommending council confirm or refuse to confirm that council typically votes on the confirmation as a slate, but that we don't set the expectation that appointees are expected to appear again before the full council. We're recommending that appointments come to the full council on the consent agenda, and that confirmations of council would also be aligned to the fixed recruitment schedule, so that maybe we could get to more consolidated confirmations by council and not have them coming at you all the time. Recognizing again, there may have to be some that come off cycle and that also we would want to avoid any of those fixed times of confirmation during your budget season. And maybe I'll pause there. I don't know, councilor Ryan, if you had a question, the composition before we move on.
64 Go ahead, councilor Dunphy.
65 Thanks. I guess would the would the fixed time recruitment rather than a rolling recruitment? Would that be for our benefit in terms of scheduling, or do you think that there is currently a we're doing a disservice and getting less quality recruitment by having it on a rolling basis. Do you think that that will lead to better candidates applying, or do you think it will lead to better processes for us to get them appointed, or is it neither of those? And I'm totally off base.
66 I think it's actually both.
67 Okay.
68 And I'll chime in. But yeah, the idea being is that if there is, if there's a clear sort of schedule to this, then community know what to expect. And as people express interest or as you know, staff are out in community and have an opportunity to talk about with folks where or you all or your staff, where there may be a connection that could be made of, you know, someone's expressing interest. Oh, hey, we have this advisory body. It just helps so that people know what to expect. They can they can be thinking about that. Community partners can get to know that schedule, share that with the service populations that they have. And so there's just a little more standardization to that. It also helps staff to know what to expect and to be able to plan how you know how to do that. I would add that if we go to this, you know, if this is the direction that we that we hear from you all and that we move towards, I believe we would still collect applications year round. So you could apply any time you were inspired to apply, but it would be more clear that the review of applications would happen during these recruitment periods. It's that is something that we did in the jurisdiction where I came from, and it seemed to be pretty helpful in terms of people knowing what to expect and staff as well, being able to plan around getting on committee and council agenda.
69 Anything I'm pondering if I want to add anything. I definitely think it's better for community. I mean, I can just I'm imagining these amazing city sort of communications where we can say, here's like 20 bodies. We're looking for folks like, do you just want to serve the city? And folks could even maybe have one online application and they could apply to multiple bodies. And, you know, we could work with community partners to disseminate the opportunities so much more easily. I actually am it may be hardest on staff, like, let's say your staff to multiple advisory bodies. Running recruitments is a lot. And so you're having more at once. I'm not going to say that that might not put a pressure on staff. We do hope that it is helpful for council so that you you're sort of have more consolidated time where you're doing confirmations, but also you would be maybe better positioned to evaluate trends in appointments or confirmations if they came to you. Not one person, one person, one person.
70 Vice chair Ryan. Yes.
71 Thank you, madam chair. So I can't think of anything more important than the composition of these bodies to really allow us to have success. So it's such a it's such a big deal. And when I had the opportunity to help recruit as a commissioner, it was something that I took very seriously. It was very fun to redo drac as one example and really increase the number of people of color serving on that, who also had lived experience in construction, manufacturing and architecture and all these amazing content areas that are needed when you're on the draft board. So two things can be true like that. So my priority regarding how we develop criteria for boards and commissions is to ensure that we have qualified individuals advising our city operations. I know we all want that. I will say that I want to make sure that we have a good cross-section of representation from the community in those groups. I think we all want that as well. Another priority is that we strive to depoliticize advisory bodies. This is when it gets a little more exciting. We should appoint people to advisory bodies who have reasonable objectivity. Recognizing everyone has biases. We need to have biases identified to understand what they are. Therefore, council can make an appointment with eyes wide open. To that point, I agree with the idea of adding some additional questions to the application process so that we understand bias and ensure transparency. Specifically, you mentioned these and I agree with ask whether the applicant is a registered lobbyist with both with either the profit or the nonprofit sector, whether an applicant or member of the applicant's household or the applicant's employer receives city funds or is applying for city funds. Those are the kind of transparency, that type of transparency, information that has not always been available. When we are asked to make an opinion on someone serving on a body. Thanks.
72 No, thank you, councilor Ryan, and you'll see this maybe towards the end of the presentation, there's adoption of the policies and practices, and then there's implementation, right. And getting all of our bodies into alignment with the new city wide practices. And part of that really early work is we have got to update all of these resources that we have for applicants, for members and for staff, and probably where I would start is the applicant side, right. Like what's in our application? What's in the conflict of interest disclosure form that you fill out with the application and the demographic survey that all travel somewhat together? Maybe not the demographic survey. Councilor Clark.
73 Thank you, madam vice president. I too, really like the consolidated recruitment. I think it's a great idea. It's streamlined, better for us, better for the public. So I strongly endorse that. And julia, to your comment about people just throughout the year submitting an interest form, I think that's a great idea. I think we did that when I was in the governor's office, and maybe you did too. Council president. We had just this giant notebook of people across the state that wanted to service in some way, shape or form. And then we referred to that compendium and look for people and tried to plug them in in the right places. And then there were other ways of doing it, too. But I think that's a great idea, because there are a lot of people out there that want to serve and don't have a particular issue or ax to grind or anything like that, that anyway, like that. I did want to ask you a question though. I'm looking on page 24 right above consolidate recruitments. You're suggesting that we begin vetting when there are enough applicants. Vetting does not begin until there are at least two applicants per seat. Do you want to say something, or can you say something about that? Your thinking behind that?
74 Yeah. It's interesting. Thanks for calling it out, councilor Clark. It's my understanding that currently a fair number of our recruitments are considered by the office of community and civic life to be unsuccessful, and I think that can be both inadequate numbers of applicants or inadequate qualifications, viewpoints. Some of the stuff that councilor Ryan was talking about, and it seems to me that, at least numerically, we probably should create a threshold. So if we're recruiting for one person and we get one applicant, do we now review and score them? You know, I don't know, right? If we're recruiting for ten people and we get ten applicants, do we start reviewing and scoring them? Right. So I think and I'm hoping that consolidated recruitment to your point helps community right. Know about the opportunity or we have this ongoing way right where folks are identifying themselves as being interested in serving that those numbers go up and we're not moving forward with vetting and bringing folks to you all for confirmation. When the applicant numbers were equal to the numbers of seats to be filled, I won't tell you if if twice as many applicants to seats is the right number, should it be three? I don't know, four. Right. Some really successful recruitments we've had recently. It's almost 10 to 1, but that's very rare at the city, very rare. So I think we should start with a threshold but make it relatively low. And if we start getting to the point we'll talk about how we get to kpis and stuff. But if we get to the point where we're constantly exceeding that, maybe we bump the threshold up.
75 Thank you.
76 Council president.
77 Thank you. And thank you both for being here. And I'll note that I need to leave in just a few minutes. And I apologize because I did want to hear the rest of the presentation, but I'll go back and watch it later. I just wanted to note in this portion how grateful I am that you're thinking about how we can bring forward the opportunity both for people to think about. Are you looking to serve on a particular board or commission, or are you looking to serve and you're open to ideas? Hearing that, there's that idea of maybe you just put in interest, and we do a combination of open applications and some recruitment. If we have somebody who looks like they're a good fit, I think will help us get the right people. And I also think it will help us, as you pointed out, with better monitoring from the council perspective, the trends coming forward. Because while I want each candidate to be the absolute best candidate for each position, I also want us to be able to think about how the city is moving holistically and who is influencing that movement, not just on a board by board, commission by commission level, but also holistically across a service area. And I think that this, combined with that committee vetting process, will allow us to do that. I do want to make sure I think having more applicants generally a good thing. But if we do have people who are expressing interest and we're doing a little bit of the matchmaking also, and that recruitment, I want to make sure that we don't get so tied to a ratio of applicants to positions that we miss the opportunity to move forward with somebody who we have in that recruitment process, if they are truly the right person for the position, and if we're trying to batch our recruitment processes and have recruitment periods, I would hate to have us holding on to the name of somebody who expressed an interest in serving generally, who we think would be a great fit for a board or commission. But because we haven't gotten other applicants, we wait to move them forward and then have a hole on a board when we could have had a great person there. So I don't know how we set that kpi, but also allow for flexibility in the way that you're bringing things forward. But I would just encourage us to both hold ourselves to a high standard, but also move when we have the right person.
78 I think we could strike that balance. Yeah, your point's a good one. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. So if we could go to the next slide, maybe I won't dwell here too long. This is the final part of composition, which is how we increase the diversity of our applicants, our members and those we retain as members. So some components that might be new here is we want to collect, collect and track the demographic data of our members. We currently do not do that. We only collect the demographics of applicants, but we have no idea how that's translating into the membership pools. We can target recruitment, certainly, if we find that areas of our community are underrepresented, we want to reduce barriers to folks serving to kind of councilor Ryan's point, ensuring a spectrum of views on the advisory bodies, pressing issues and a diversity of skills, knowledge and lived experiences. Certainly promoting diverse geographic representation. And then to the council presidents comment a moment ago, having council oversee these metrics over time so that you can do some evaluation and course correction if it's needed. Next slide please. So this is the final bucket of practices is all things related to service. The expectations we have of those who serve, those who are restricted from serving, and the supports that we provide for those who serve. I won't go through all of these expectations, maybe to call out some things that are new. We would like to expand the set of onboarding trainings provided to members. And right now, if folks are familiar, they're provided. It's an online training. You watch a video and then you take a quiz. We'd like to provide them a little bit more engaging of virtual and in-person trainings, which again, one of the things I like about fixed recruitment schedules is we could actually onboard folks across different advisory bodies at the same time, which right now folks don't get to interact with other advisory body members that much. Something else that's new here is we are proposing that members sign a participation agreement. I've seen these in other jurisdictions. We'd have to obviously make one that fits the city of Portland, but it's saying, yes, I understand the expectations of me as a member. I thought, councilor I wanted to say something. Should I go on? Okay. I'm just.
79 Really curious all the time.
80 This is.
81 Can I is it okay if I just flag. We have about 14 or 15 minutes and we still have a couple. We have a couple people here for public testimony and councilor Kanal. Also, I know we've been able to ask questions along the way, which has been awesome, I think, which will help us get through. But just wanted to do a time check.
82 Yep, I will move along. If we go to the next slide. I won't go into the content of these each of these, but we are proposing standard practices for who is eligible to serve and who is restricted from serving in each of the areas on this screen. Residency, concurrent and consecutive service, familial relationships, elected officials, employees and candidates for office. There's different purposes behind different ones of these. Residency is about a certain connection. Connectedness to Portland, concurrent consecutive familial relationships is really about trying to diversify the portlanders and the experiences that we have on our advisory bodies, elected officials and employees is more about recognizing that the primary purpose of advisory bodies is community participation, not city staff and city elected officials. Participation and candidates for office is to address what I know you all have talked about at this dais before, and so have previous council councils to try to get to a point where we have consistency and shared expectations about who's eligible to serve. I will say we if we move forward with some of these restrictions, we would still propose that folks who are currently serving be able to continue their service through their current term. And when it become ineligible because we change the restrictions during their term of service. Next slide please. This is the final practice. This is just being consistent again with the supports that we provide to those who serve. I will say that while I think the city should have a menu of supports available, I don't believe that every advisory body or every member on a given advisory body requires the same level of supports, right? So it's about having a menu, making those easy to access by both the staff and the volunteers. But being flexible in our provision of these services. Next slide. So those were all of the practices that we just went over. And I will do one more slide here. Where do we go from here. So there's a lot on this slide. Like I mentioned the first issue is adopting the policies and practices. And we envision this again as this three legged stool of city code administrative rules and council procedures. We would like to come back to the governance committee at your December 8th meeting with the code, as well as just a sort of table of contents or outline of what would go in the administrative rules and council procedures. So you can see where everything lives, which I think would be helpful for you to consider the content of the code. We believe that immediately upon adoption of these policies and practices, any new advisory body should align with them. Then we want to come back. And there was a question about this earlier in the spring with what I call like a code cleanup. So all the reconciling with the new practices to what amanda was saying, implementing service area recommendations around combining existing bodies, all of that business, you all adopt the budget in the summer. We have a lot of resources that we need to update or create from scratch now for applicants, for members and for staff. And then we'd like to provide the first, if possible, in-person training and onboarding of advisory body members in the summer with the hope that by the fall of 26, all of our existing bodies are aligned with the new citywide practices. And then comes councilor Ryan continuous improvement, which I think we aren't in a great situation right now because we haven't had consistent data, but we have a lot of proposed practices in this work that will get us to that baseline. And then how can we have a facilitated conversation with all of you about what are the kpis that we want to measure, and how do we hold ourselves accountable to making progress? And I'll leave it there. Thank you.
83 That comes from those advisory boards. They'll be okay. Good. Thank you for putting that into the culture of the city of Portland.
84 And we'll just put on the very last slide as we're stepping away here so that folks can see the opportunities to engage that are coming.
85 Yeah, we do have two community input sessions this Thursday evening and next Tuesday. And folks can register online.
86 Great. Thank you so much. This is so exciting and has been great to see this move along. I know that we have a colleague who has come to share some of his thoughts. I would like to invite councilor Kanal up to the front, and then we will do public testimony right after that.
87 Is this esteemed person getting three minutes or.
88 Yeah.
89 We don't need to put the timer on this. We'll see.
90 Thank you, madam chair. Madam vice.
91 President and members of the governance committee. For the record, my name is Sameer canal. I'm a city councilor Representing district two, north and northeast Portland. I am also city council's designated representative to the internal working group on this process, which I believe is the fifth phase or version of this project. And I mentioned that because prior to my election to city council, I worked at the city's community safety division, now the public safety service area. I was the project manager for the city's police accountability commission, which was a time bound advisory body to the city council. I'll just say it's taking me back in time to be on this side of the dais looking at five people right now, on ones, even councilor Ryan, after doing that for a number of years and having worked in support of other mayoral advisory bodies and council advisory bodies, I was also a representative of the public safety service area to the fourth version of this project as well. I say all that to indicate I've been working in this area a long time, and I'm excited to see this progress, because although the fact that there have been so many versions could be considered a reason for despair, I'm actually quite hopeful, due primarily to the great work of the people who've just been presenting our chief engagement officer, amanda garcia snell and julian meyer, as well as ocean hazard, who's sitting back there. Julia in particular, has been a person who really is both an expert in and a supporter of community engagement at the city and someone who has built some of our most effective, neutral conduits of information from the public to decision makers. And so, while there's probably plenty of details we could talk about, or things left to adjust or adjust or discuss, on the whole, I'm strongly supportive of this project so far, both in terms of its direction and what's been achieved. I wanted to highlight a few things just to raise awareness. I do think it's important to to continue highlighting that there are many, many more advisory bodies at the city than the 92 that are in the scope of this project. I'm interested in all the work within the project, but also clarity, so that people understand that the other groups are something different, something separate from an abc within this scope. Second, I strongly support greater levels of engagement with city council and of course, the mayor. And that includes council designating either a council committee or a potential future committee of the whole as a liaison for each abc. I want to note that this will require having more support, specifically time in council committees. Speaking as a co-chair of the community and public safety committee specifically, we're running out of time. Most, most times just with the volume of issues, and we'd love to be able to give volunteers enough time for meaningful engagement at committee so that it's not just a box checking exercise. Did we bring you in once a year or something like that? One of the most important innovations is the four year cycle of review. This is similar to best practices for review, ranging from the biannual review of directives at the Portland police bureau all the way to the universal periodic review at the united nations for human rights. I would love to see council involvement in review of council created bodies, rather than just having the mayor's side do the review alone. But on the whole, I do strongly support this. And I think, relatedly, we should go further in limiting creation authority to just the mayor, council or city administrator to help with that. And finally, I want to make sure we're also thinking about volunteer wellness. This includes some obvious things that relate to some of the previous topics, like allowing for more than $500 in stipends per year, not going back to the same people for multiple volunteer roles, but expanding the pool. It includes that communication between the mayor and council, so that the folks that are appointed by the mayor for council confirmation are likely to be appointed and meet council's desired goals for the committee. But most of all, I want to highlight that some staff liaisons to abcs have been trying for a few years to get support from bhr for protections for volunteers, from conduct issues, and I want to bring that work back to the forefront. It's really important, and it would be very helpful to have bhr take more of a leadership role in it. And although I didn't prepare this, I did want to cosign everything, julia said in response to councilor Dunphy's question about scope of work and clarity at the time of creation or scope modification, I can speak more to the police oversight specific part of that offline, but I think in a general sense, clarity is so important by the creating authority. And relatedly, I also wanted to highlight the default sunset in the code. Ideally, I'd like to see something like a four year unless superseded by the individual body's creation document or authorization from mayor or council. So that's four years unless superseded as this is ongoing or some other length of time, potentially a shorter time as well. And so I'll leave it at that. I don't know if I hit three minutes councilor, but I will. Yeah, I'd be happy to to continue the discussion at any point. Of course. Thank you.
92 Thank you so much. Really appreciate you being here. Diana, do we have public testimony signed up today?
93 Yes, we have two people signed up. First is terry harris, followed by jose guerrero georgeson. You can both come up to the testimony table. And terry, you can start whenever you're ready.
94 Thanks for being here, both of you.
95 Okay. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity, as always, to testify. I have some general comments, some specific comments, some collateral comments, some of which I guess I will save for the listening sessions. But some of this is just for you all. This is really important work. It was part of the transition stuff that g-tech didn't really quite get to, and that the council is kind of getting to late. But although this has been sort of a low priority thing, I think the benefits of a healthy advisory body system are going to pay dividends into the future. And the report shows that. I think it talks about that. I have strong support for the nuts and bolts of the enhancements and restructuring. I appreciate the benefits of standardizations and best practices, and there are lots of room for that. However, I will say that with respect to the shared understanding and shared expectations. Some of that is going to be universal through the entire system, and some of it is going to be very specific to purpose. The purpose thing. If there's one emphasis that I could make, that would be it. The g-tech example, maybe jose will talk about it, but g-tech had a couple of different purposes and a couple of different. Reporting structures. And I think g-tech kind of would have had two different memberships if you addressed those two purposes at the same time. Anyway. I have some concerns with the recruitment and appointment parts, and I'm just going to blurt them out. You need to be careful that these abcs are not self-perpetuating. They need to serve the city's purpose and the purpose of the person who you're advising, person or entity that you're advising. If it's just the entity rolling over in picking its own members, that's not healthy. Beware too much policy staff involvement in the recruitment and supervision. Beware the lack of involvement by the specific person or entity being invited in the recruitment and selection. Beware over constraints on representation on the bodies or the reserved seats. Acknowledge that representation is multi-dimensional. So allow for flexibility in intersectional representation and allow for flexibility for deeper and broader expertise, especially in the policy, oversight and technical stuff. And the other three minutes, I'll give you some other time.
96 Thank you. Mr. Harris. I would love to follow up with you and hear the rest of your thoughts.
97 I bet.
98 Hello joey jordison he male pronouns. I'm from district one and first. I do also want to thank julia and amanda and ocean and the whole extended staff of the people that worked on this. This feels like we've needed this for a long time, and I'm finally seeing substantial work done on this so I could see hope of it being implemented, not just talked about. So I do appreciate that. As terry alluded, I previously served on g-tech as well. I was the last co-chair, so I'm sure you have seen you all before. I've been here talking about g-tech and we didn't spend too much time on this, but we did recommend that this work be done. So it is nice, even though g-tech is no longer around, to see that the work we've done didn't just die with us, that it continues to be worked on and talked about and improving the city because that's why we did it. Ultimately, we did that work because we wanted our city to be better. We did a lot of research about why we made this recommendation, but the biggest thing for us was our own experiences with what we heard from people in advisory bodies, including our own. We had people quit because they didn't understand the purpose, and they were always getting the runaround. And then they quit and they flat out said, I thought I was going to be able to help with this. And there's we can't. They're being told we're not allowed to talk about it at all. So because there was no clarity on purpose when they came in, we lost them. I heard from other advisory bodies, people like it feels like we just rubber stamp whatever comes our way, and there's no actual way for us to do anything good. The problem with that is you have people like me and terry who will be here no matter what. We go through these problems, but we put up with them and we move on, and you see us again in some other body or some other way of service. We're losing the people who do it for the first time, and then they're having those issues and they don't come back. And that's a problem, because then we have this silo of the same people always being the ones that are sharing their ideas. We need this to be standardized. All the recommendations that I'm seeing, I'm not going to go into details on which ones I like and which ones I don't. But having a standard, having clarity is going to help us keep a lot of different types of people doing this work, which is ultimately what is important. We want to have a lot of different viewpoints, a lot of different types of people, voices at the table. And we need to set up a system that makes people feel comfortable doing that, because think about it, the people coming in, sometimes our babies, they've never been involved in city anything, and they go on to become elected officials from doing this work at an advisory level at first. Thank you.
99 Thank you so, so much. Councilor did you want to ask anything else? Have any final comments?
100 Do you have any? Yeah. Please.
101 Before you leave. I just I think I heard one or both of you allude to the sunset idea. What do you think about councilor Connell's recommendation of four years? And I'll I'm not sure. Four years is exactly right, but do you have any thoughts about that?
102 I think it's a fine idea for a lot of abc's, but I think there are going to be some that you're going to want to have around as a tool for either your outreach and education to the community, or just a consistent advice. You know, there's pub, there's the climate commission, there's some of these things that you're just going to want around and sunsetting them and then re-upping them every four years may not make sense.
103 I think it only makes sense if it comes with a conversation because, like terry said, it's it's important to talk about why we have these advisory bodies and what purpose they serve and how long that purpose should be served for, because some might need to only be a couple years, some gtac was only a couple of years. I argue that it should have been maybe three and gone a year into this council to kind of help a little bit, but some might be you might want to set it as a ten year commission. It really depends on the work that they're doing. But having conversation should always be the the go to instead of just leaving nothing there.
104 Right? Your four year review will help with that. You can get a four year review. And then if the review comes in saying, you know, we had a sunset, this, I think that would be a signal.
105 That's a great point. Thank you both.
106 Councilor Dunphy.
107 Thank you. Not for you two gentlemen. You guys are great. I had a couple of brief thoughts about just sort of broadly that I want to flag out there. Specifically a restriction around elected, elected officials being on boards or political candidates for other office. I think that in general, that seems like a really good rule. But on my side of town, on district one, there are only so many people, and a lot of the times the folks who are going to be the ones who are most energetic about joining an advisory body, about filling potholes are also already a school board member or right, or are on the east Portland, or east Multnomah soil and water conservation district. That work isn't going to detract from their ability, but I shouldn't be on the planning commission. Right. And I also think that there are certain types of candidates that are running for certain types of office where the position of being a volunteer advisory body member actually serves as a campaign leverage point for them. And so I think trying to maybe put a little bit more of a narrow definition, professional elected officials or paid elected officials, maybe citywide elected officials or district wide things like where we could potentially not disqualify otherwise very qualified people. I take every opportunity I can in these, in this room to talk about making sure that district one has a seat at the table, but as I think terry was saying, I believe it was terry who said it, I don't want I don't I don't think that there should ever be a requirement that there's a district one representative on every board, but I am interested to understand how your team and how the city more broadly is actively trying to build the pool of members from east of I-205. I know for a fact, for example, some of my friends in district one are on nine different advisory bodies because there are just that few number of people in district one who are willing to stand up and raise their hand. So I'm really interested in ongoing recruitment efforts and how we are trying to build that pool and show people what that looks like. And to that end, in responding to what josie said, staff support for these individuals, treating them with the same sort of resources that an employee might have if they are dealing with an what would you know, what would be an hr complaint, for example, or harassment or public records and really driving home that they understand, hey, if you sign up for this, your emails suddenly might become a public record. And what all that entails. Those are my only last three just notes. Otherwise, I think this is phenomenal. And thank you guys for really driving this home. I was in city hall when commissioner Fish attempted to do some wrangling of the boards and commissions. It was a noble effort that didn't go nearly far enough and y'all are bringing it home. So thank you very much.
108 Thank you colleagues. Thank you to everyone that was here. Oh yeah. And councilor Ryan, go ahead.
109 Yes. It's real quick as we're continuing to improve this, what I found in my career is that often organizations don't resource the importance of governance boards and advisory commissions, and that it's responsible for the city's. Even when the council has policy that says they want to add a new one, that we follow through with what the resources look like for that. And so this body, old, new, I think, has a pattern of not thinking about that when we do policy. And I believe it should be part of the discipline. And I've experienced that a couple times of late, and I'm concerned about that. So I feel like we're adding to the problem if we're not resourcing a new commission that we ask the enterprise city to do. Thanks.
110 Thank you so much. This is very exciting. Thank you to the folks who came to come testify. Thank you to our colleague councilor Canal, who came and shared his thoughts and for volunteering to be in that group where you get to hear what some different staff members are saying from the different service areas. Thank you for volunteering your time. And yeah, it was great to hear your perspective. I, I heard you say, just to clarify what I heard you say too, is that it's important to have the entities specify what the length of time would be. And so that also connects with what I heard josie share, which is ongoing one week, ten years, but then have a possible default to a set amount of time if that's not specified. So a lot of great things to think about. And I just really appreciate amanda and julia how responsive you are and engaged you are, how you're letting councilors and the public engage with the the project. So just want to highlight that your email is advisory bodies at Portland Oregon.gov. And then also correct me if I don't get this correctly, that this Thursday and next Tuesday. So the ninth and the 14th, there will also be opportunities to provide feedback in the evening. You can register on the advisory body project website and that is a virtual way to give feedback. Did I get that right? Great. Thank you so much. Well, for our next item, I'm really excited about this one. Diana, can you please read this item?
111 Sure. Item three council policy process. Flowchart.
112 Great. I'll give craig some time to get on the other side of the dais. So we're continuing our series of updates on the council governance handbook. And today we have aubrey and craig ready to give a presentation on a potential option for policy formation. Explaining that and what I will propose, colleagues, if you're okay with this, because I do want council president to be part of the discussion. And I think it was important that we gave time for us to have discussion on the previous items, that we hear the presentation, and then we hold the discussion piece for our next governance meeting. So council president can be part of that. And also to help with our time. So this committee has previously heard several presentations with models of how councilors can develop policy ideas, and they can turn into legislation based on these models and feedback from council and city staff are amazing. Handbook team has created a potential policy process flowchart. The goal is to ensure that the policies passed by council are informed by both technical and professional expertise from city staff, as well as community engagement done by both council and city staff. And it's important for us to remember that these are recommendations, not requirements. They'll appear in a handbook as such, unless council decides to draft and pass a policy on this process. Today we'll hear from aubrey and craig on this policy flowchart. And then at our next meeting, we'll have the opportunity to dive in a little more deeply and ask questions, provide feedback. Once we hear some more feedback from other councilors as well that might want to send that in. And the next step is to also make sure we're working into the with the administrative side to create a workable process for both the city administration and for city council. So now I'm happy to hand it over to you to great.
113 Thank you so much. Council president or council vice president. For the record, aubrey chen, she her pronouns and I'm a council aide to vice president Koyama Lane office.
114 I'm craig cook he him pronouns and I'm a council policy analyst for council operations.
115 Great. So today we just want to take a quick moment to preview one of these components of the city council handbook. We'd like to walk through and share some of our intentions and our logic. Something we'd also like to do is just sort of share and preview the level of specificity, specificity that we're making recommendations at. As I know, the feedback from council has been to keep things at a very sort of top level before we jump too deeply, I do just want to provide a quick reminder. Please, please provide us with feedback. We provided the table of contents I want to believe on. Almost a month ago, September 5th, we closed the deadline for providing the written sort of feedback for that table of contents on the 22nd of of September. We're currently using the recommendations that we've received with that sort of draft table of contents to really shape the drafting process of that handbook, we're going to continue presenting different components of this to the governance committee. We welcome feedback. Please give us your your feedback. Please feel free to provide written input to council operations as well. So very briefly before I jump into the process diagram, something I wanted to found, our sort of discussion about is with the central idea of the principles of public policy. And this is something that I think that everyone here is going to be quite familiar with. But I think it's worth stating. For the record, good public policy is informed by is a collaborative effort. It's informed by technical and professional expertise from city staff. It's formed by community engagement collected from city staff and city council, and it also incorporates clear policy direction from city council. So with that, you know, sort of foundational statement in mind, I'd like to present a very simplified process diagram of our current city policy process. So again, something that state is this is very high level. I believe there are multiple very in-depth technical processes. And what we focus here are on the core components that compose our current process, something I'd also like to acknowledge is that council items may be brought forward by the mayor or city auditor, but this process is really focused on the council driven process. So everything that is coming from our council offices at the beginning, typically it starts with an issue identification. Then we move towards policy research and drafting. Something I'd like to take note of is every office does this differently. We engage with city administrative staff in different ways. We engage with technical staff in different ways. Right now, all of our offices are sort of pursuing this research phase and the different processes involved in different types of ways. After a proposal or a policy is sort of researched and drafted, typically it moves to technical review, where the city attorney, council clerk, budget office, and sometimes city administration is involved with the review of that proposal. It then goes through our policy referral process, which is codified in 3.02. And it's therefore referred to different committees and then proposed and presented eventually at a council meeting for final deliberation and vote. So something I'd like to take note of is the handbook is intended not only to outline current processes, but to also highlight some of the issues or challenges that we're facing with current processes. Before we move on to recommendations, something that we've heard from feedback through this process is that there are several challenges with the way things are right now on the city council side, something that we would like to acknowledge is that sometimes council staff or city or city council office staff are frustrated with the different processes for engaging and getting access to city professional and technical expertise. Right now there's a lot of different processes, like, are you allowed to email a staff member directly? How do I know I've reached out to the appropriate staff member? Is it okay to ask for maybe five, ten, 20, 30 hours of work? What are the appropriate processes for getting that access to that technical professional expertise? Something we'd also like to acknowledge is sort of this a broader concern about these processes and the fact that there may be a perception, a perception that some of these processes or some of the different approval processes in this process are denying or are being utilized to influence policy makers in terms of their respective policy decision from the city administrative staff side. We've also heard this frustration and or concern about having policy shaped by the professional and professional and technical expertise of staff, something we are keenly aware of is the unintended consequences of policy. And sometimes engaging with professional staff at a later stage of that research and drafting process may cause some potential unintended consequences. Another issue or point of friction that we've seen from the city administration city staff side is that one of capacity and prioritization. There's a natural sort of protectiveness over city staff time and resources, and there's a need for a process for prioritizing council requests. For example, I experience this in my previous position where sometimes one councilor would ask me for or ask for some expertise or knowledge. Another councilor would also ask for something. How was a staff member supposed to prioritize who to respond to first? Something that was also mentioned as one of the challenges of the current process is sometimes there isn't enough time provided for city staff to produce the reports and presentations and technical expertise, especially at committee, in order to provide that expertise at the level sort of required by by council. So with these challenges in mind, what we've done is sort of presented a proposed sort of recommendation, and this sort of outlines the type of recommendation we would like to bring forward in the council handbook. Our primary recommendation here is the implementation of a resource request or staff authorization step, a step where a councilor Could potentially share a policy idea with council operations to coordinate that sort of authorization and sort of capacity with city administration. Something we'd like to acknowledge is that this process would have to be negotiated between city council and the city administration to really determine how an issue should be prioritized, and also to give permission for subject matter experts to engage directly with city council. Again, the intent here is to provide a general recommendation. We'd like to not be overly prescriptive in what that process for gaining staff authorization or the process for requesting that resource. However, we'd like to acknowledge that this process or this step could be something that could address some of the challenges or frictions that we're seeing with the current policy process. I also also like to acknowledge that these recommendations, there's numerous other items for consideration when it comes to these different types of processes. Namely, we're currently in the midst of a new city administrator search, right? Whatever process that we determine, if council agrees that this is a recommendation they'd like to take, would have to be negotiated between the city administration and city council in order to come to an agreement that works for all parties. Something we would also like to address is the issue of ownership of policy proposals. Something that we'd like to do is make sure our process ensures that there is respect for ideas and process projects initiated by individual councilors. I think it's really important to make sure that if someone comes forward with an idea that they're getting the appropriate credit and that council operations can serve a function in that realm, something I'd also like to alert and flag is the need to develop working norms and communication practices for council and city staff. This is something where, under the old commission form of governance, it was quite clear that city staff ultimately reported to their respective commissioner in charge. This has changed under the charter process. City staff now report to. Of course, ultimately, the head of the city administration and the head of the executive and not to city councilors. What working norms and communication practices need to be changed in order to reflect that are something that we would draft, research and and propose as part of our recommendations. As for next steps, we are going to continue drafting content for the governance handbook, and we'll continue previewing different components of the handbook in this committee, our intent is to really present a draft form of this to the committee by the end of 2025. For us on our end, something we'd really like. Your feedback on is whether this level of specificity regarding recommendations is something you all are comfortable with. That's something that we're trying to navigate as we're drafting. How in depth would you like us to be? Thank you for your time. And I know we have a little bit of time, so I would love to offer this time for questions or discussion if you're if you're open to it.
116 Especially any technical questions or clarifications.
117 Let me just see if I understand this. Well, I think what you're suggesting is that if we want to introduce resolution or ordinance that we would go to council ops before we go to a bureau. Is that what you're suggesting?
118 I think the idea, yes, the idea would be that there would be an option for councilors to go to council ops to make that connection with the city administration, and that would be something, a process we would negotiate with the administrative side to ensure that staff time was respected on both sides.
119 So does that mean that if we put this policy in place, that we wouldn't be able to work directly with a bureau staff?
120 That not at all. And this is intended to actually facilitate that cooperation? Okay. This is an option. It wouldn't be a requirement. It's intended to make sure that folks are connected to the right people, and that folks have, you know, sort of appropriate levels of authorization from the city administration. I think one of the concerns that we've heard is that sometimes folks in the service areas are not always aware of the cooperation that's happening between councilors and staff and bureaus. And we just want to make sure that everyone is aware and appropriate level. We also recognize that that requires a certain level of discretion. And so the same level of discretion, you know, when councilors communicate with council ops, those communications are held privately between those offices. We would need to negotiate that process as well with the administrative side to ensure that those communications were also held in confidence.
121 It could be helpful also to provide like a sort of sample or an example. In this case, for example, let's say a councilor is interested in invasive species policy. Something that we could do is for the council to say, hey, council operations, I'm interested in invasive species policy. Who should I be talking to within the city administration? I think we may need about maybe, let's say, ten hours of time just to get a little updated on current policies and what's going on. Council operations could then work with the city administration, who would have better purview or better information on who within the city is working on invasive species policy, get in touch with them and then sort of provide the permission to say, yes, everyone who's working on this, you have the go ahead, two thumbs up. Work with the councilor to provide that information moving forward.
122 Thank you.
123 Go ahead, vice chair Ryan.
124 Yes, thank.
125 You chair.
126 I really appreciate working that you're working on this. It's very important. And you're formalizing something that we need to keep digging into. Clearly we're trying to develop legislative. We don't want to create more bottlenecks. We want we don't want to duplicate work. We don't want to be burdensome to the city bureaus. And there's frustrations all around, which are one because it's new and two, because it's new, and three because we're all trying to learn how to do this. So I think we should not beat ourselves up, but know that we want to keep getting better. And that's the tone I'm hearing right now. So thanks. You know, I'm a big advocate in learning from others. We have a lot of others to learn from in this space, and I wasn't sure if I heard a lot about that. We did have some intelligence that went to a city that has so many comparables to us right now, in many levels. That's minneapolis to me. And they went to meet with city and community leaders to find out best practices for their implementation of new government structures from a few years ago, and they are similarly structured now to us. No one was similarly structured to us just a year ago, but they are now. And one of their focus topics was how to move legislation in this similarly organized organization called the city of minneapolis. And they, like us, have a real commitment to public involvement in their legislative process, where the pinch points were, which you probably won't be surprised about, and they are for us now, are around how and when to involve operational departments in the process. So I do think that will constantly be something we have to keep learning about to ensure all parties are informed and involved in developing legislation. Minneapolis initiated legislative concept process. This process maps for council submitting their concepts to the administration and through the development of legislation and partnership with city departments and sponsoring councilors. Main points. For this process to be successful, we need staffing to manage that workflow. I know this is something that you're bringing to us to discuss, and it's critical to figure out where this responsibility lies. It seems like it would be most successful for a tight partnership between, as you were kind of mentioning, craig, the city administrator's office and council ops. So I think follow up question is, are you aware that the city of minneapolis would be a smart place to do some dialog with? And are you going to tell me you're already on that?
127 Thank you, councilor Ryan. The answer is yes. We looked at best practices from a number of cities, including minneapolis. We also looked at best practices from icma, which is the international. Please forgive me. I forget what the letter is always stand for. I think it's the international city managers association. Thank you. Thank you. In terms of their best practices and documents, we've looked at a number of the member cities and the different recommendations of handbooks and those documents as well.
128 So perhaps there could be some sharing of the who. It's always it's one thing to look at websites, but it's so much better when you get into dialog and get some of those folks on speed dial that have done that work. I do have one specific question in the presentation. Your slide challenges with current processes. Can you explain what is meant by the list by this listed as city council challenge? Quote, political influence. City council offices are concerned. City administrative leadership are denying access to professional expertise to influence policy makers.
129 Yes. Thank you for that clarifying question regarding political influence. What we've heard from some feedback is the concern or the perception that delays in getting access to subject matter experts are being sort of introduced as a way to influence the policymaking direction, so to speak. Again, I don't I cannot confirm this, but it is a perception that we are concerned about and are keenly aware of. It's the idea that we might slow down your access to a specific subject matter expert, because we don't necessarily agree with maybe a potential policy direction that a councilor is moving forward with.
130 Craig.
131 Do you anything to add to that?
132 Not from my perspective in council operations. I think that's a viewpoint that was shared in the council offices. And, you know, in a nonpartizan side of things, I think solutions wise. But we would look at this process potentially solving for would be, you know, being able to track a little bit better, some of the policy ideas that are coming forward from councilors and council operations, as an office that is solely dedicated to working on behalf of council, being able to ensure that those are being followed up on by the city administration.
133 Okay.
134 I think we'll have to keep noodling on this one. It's a really strong statement, and I just want to make sure we get to the bottom of what that actually means. Thanks.
135 Councilor Dunphy.
136 Thank you. You know, I'm struggling with this a little bit. Not yet. This chart. Thank you. Because it feels like it is trying to get to the root of solving some of what our dumbest problems in this building. But it feels like we're sort of introducing some of the dumbest solutions that the state legislature has. Specifically I you know, craig, you obviously are incredibly capable and have not I've not seen a single ball get dropped, but you don't work for me, and I can't direct you to do anything. And if I have a whole lot of, I don't know, urgency around a niche policy that is only happening in my district, and it's only my, you know, me giving a about it. I can't make you move it to the top of your list. Similarly, I don't know that you or anyone from council ops is in a position to pound their fist on a desk and demand that somebody from PBOT respond in a timely manner, in a way that an elected official or their staff can sort of pound their fist on a desk in a different way. So I worry about this. I think. I mean. I think we obviously need to do something in here to try and rationalize this and bring things in. But I also just want to be just be cautious that some of the biggest challenges I've seen, for example, specifically in Salem, is getting a draft back of policy that you, you know, you submitted your your legislative concept to and then getting language back and then spending the next six months trying to fix the language. So I think, you know, I don't have a specific request. I'm just voicing that I think that there's there's a little bit of trickiness and I think we're almost there. But I think councilor Ryan's right. I think we got to keep massaging this a little bit, because I think there are some spots where I could see. Delay, you know, or. Inertia getting in the way of policy.
137 Thank you for that feedback, councilor Dunphy. Something I wanted to add is we recognize that concern. One of the issues that we've heard is whether, like if we have one councilor from district one asking for a priority or project something done in district one, and we have another councilor in district two who has another priority project in district two. Who should we prioritize or how should that how should that prioritization, how should that prioritization happen? And a very simple way, it's like, who should I respond to in that email first? That's something that we don't have clear guidance on how to do.
138 So I can follow up. I think, you know, to your point about, you know, council operations is not on any individual councilor Staff. You're correct. But we do work for all of you. And to that end, I think it is not unrealistic for councilors to ask, you know, how are those prioritization, prioritization decisions happening? So I think as we develop this further, being transparent about how that happens is really important. I also think to your point about absolutely acknowledged, that an elected official weighing in can cause action to happen more quickly. On the administrative side, I actually think that is one of the things that we potentially want to avoid have happening here. I think we want we want all of you to be served equally by the administrative side. And we don't want necessarily, you know, councilors who potentially are the loudest or may, you know, be able to influence process in that way to have more power over the decision making process. So that's one of the goals here. But I do hear your point there. I think finally, just to reiterate that this would be an option and the councilors would be able to plug into this sort of at any point of their drafting process. I think it's placed here on the chart as before, policy research and drafting. I can also totally see a world in which councilors have fully ready to go policy proposals and they say, hey, craig or claire or christopher, can you just help me run this by someone over there? And we can kind of work on it together? I already know what I want to do, but I want to make sure that, you know, it makes sense on the city side. So I think totally take all of your points there. And, you know, we'll be extra transparent as we move forward through this process.
139 I think the goal of getting all of our councilors treated equal is great, so long as I am treated the most equal.
140 Vice chair, go ahead.
141 Thank you. Chair I, I stumbled a bit because I'm thinking about that last interaction. It was was entertaining to say the least. I appreciate the comments about the loudest I think. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. I also think it's important to remember that when you run for office, which is a hard thing to do, and then you're elected, you're well aware that you're representing a lot of people. And so I think we have to be careful not to minimize that influence. I just had to bring attention to something because it's been bothering me lately. So let me geek out a bit on just structure stuff. That box is often empty over there. That box for those watching it, says mayor wilson. And it says michael jordan, city administrator. I'm not saying that the mayor and michael jordan have to be there all the time. What I'm saying is this now I have to really back this up, is that this committee could be under a certain area of the enterprise where a dca would care to either be here or have a high level representative be here. So this work is relational. We do relational work. I don't always agree with all my colleagues, but I respect them as humans and as humans. We have to keep talking about difficult things to get it right. And when we don't have the checks and balance of this meeting, include someone from the administrative operations. And again, in this new form of government, the mayor oversees the big enchilada. We were removed from that. And so when they're not included in these meetings, they miss out on some of the dialog that occurs. So I think there's a perception that we're coming at them when we're in a transparent public meeting talking about issues that the entire enterprise would care about. So I do want to lift that. I think we have a structural disconnect, again, because we're relationship people, we're humans, and we're not on social media all the time. We actually talk to each other still. And it would be helpful if, if we had that. So I've had this pet peeve for some time, and I thought it was an appropriate moment to lift it. Thank you.
142 Councilor Kanal I wanted to invite you up if you wanted to share a question or thoughts, you took the time to be here.
143 Thank you once again for the record. Sameer Kanal city council district two. Thank you for all the work you've both done. I first agree with councilor Clark's concern around the way in which this might create a new step in the process. I agree with everything that councilor Dunphy said. I don't even want to caveat it at all. And I think that last piece, I just wanted to expand on of, we often wonder sometimes about how the folks in here are treated relative to each other, but ultimately we're serving 600,000 people outside of here. And so I want to I the fact that someone else might not use the same particular tactic or strategy that that I do to advance a goal of serving my constituents in district two, should not mean that I lose that tool. And I think that's that's how I interpreted what was being said there. And the last piece, I really wanted to appreciate the comment around in the slides around political influence, I, I can confirm the perception. I'll say that much for myself. Personally, I have felt that way and I think that it's really valuable. I don't think I'm the only one who said it, but I think it's really valuable to daylight it. And I appreciate the honesty and and bluntness, which is I know something councilor Ryan talks about a lot. Let's just talk about the thing. And this is definitely a thing it's not. You had five things on the slide, and I think it's really important to get through all of those. And I'm concerned that a step that would thank you. I'm concerned that a step that would force us to display before something is ready. What it is that we're working on is going to only create unnecessary heartache for those who might not know how to interpret something that's vague enough to be at the bullet point level, and not yet at the text level, based off of what they think of a councilors goals or direction might be. So I just wanted to flag that as well. I understand that's an option though, so I appreciate it. Thank you, madam vice president.
144 I know we've kind of gone into discussion a little bit and I think that's okay. Council are council president will watch this and we can talk more about it later. I am wondering for my colleagues, if you believe that slide the challenges on slide five, if those seem representative of what you have experienced and what you've heard, I'll say, I'm in meetings with council president, with city administration, with the mayor, and I am hearing that these are our big concerns. And in this new form of government, it is different now because the city staff are under him. So from from what I understand. He could put in whatever process we want with our access to his staff. Right. And what I'm hearing is his him asking us to figure out what what process could there be, what who can do the traffic controlling. And so I, I think what I'm seeing here is an offer, an idea that council operations could serve that role a little bit, doing some of the traffic controlling. And I think if if we all agree that we do have some challenges, I encourage us all to think, to come back at our next meeting and think about what are some other options. And it might. I appreciated when craig brought up that, you know, this is a draft and I even wrote here, could there be a policy research and drafting if you can go to the next slide, step part one and part two that you can do some of that before, you know, engaging and asking for official support from the mayor's staff. And that is an option too. I guess you don't have to collaborate with the executive side for a new policy. You don't have to even get the mayor's support necessarily. But yeah, in my little draft here, I wrote before that light blue policy research and drafting part one, and then right after it, policy research and drafting part two. So yeah, I guess I just I, I welcome if you also see some of these challenges for us to come with some other ideas. And I think at our next meeting to a question I would have is if this came from research from other cities, what are some some different ways cities do this. And and if there are some other options we can look at. Councilor. Dunphy.
145 Well, that just occurred to me that as you were saying, exactly that, that there are two sort of specific things that I think council may actually be able to be really helpful with. First is my experience has been that people, especially very busy bureaucrats, are often better suited by reacting to something than to giving them a rough couple of bullet points and asking them to draft something from scratch. And similarly, I love not reinventing the wheel and finding out what the best practices are elsewhere. Do you think that that is sort of something that you are envisioning here within this light blue box, that prior to policy research and drafting that that you are sort of a clearinghouse not only between the as the venn diagram, between the, the, the political side and the administrative side, but also templates or good ideas or good examples of what is what currently exists out there or helping us get a first draft written so that the people who actually know how water works or whatever can can fix it. Is that sort of the vibe?
146 Thanks, councilor Duffy. Yes, absolutely. And that's a service that we are already happy to provide. We do sort of on demand policy research, development analysis, you know, as needed and as requested by council staff at any point of the process. So whether that's early on, midway through drafting or cleaning up at the end, we're happy to assist in any way.
147 And I would like to continue on to the citation component of this, which is to say, yes, we are happy to include all of the different sort of or many different types of options recommendations, as well as the corresponding cities models that we're pulling this information from. Great.
148 Can I just want to reemphasize what councilor Dunphy said, having a lot of experience in legislation and Salem, I ended up just having to do my own thing because you get stuff back from legislative council. No offense, legislative council, that really sucked. And so you'd have to rewrite it and go through all these different iterations to impress upon them. So I think if you if you have something that you can write yourself, the more you can flesh it out, the better, as opposed to asking somebody else to do it for you. But that's not always possible. I understand, and at some point, out of necessity, at least with the state agencies, you would eventually hear from them. You know, they're going to comment on what you're trying to do to them or with them or for them. But I ended up doing just a lot of it myself, which I can foresee that happening here as well.
149 Councilor Ryan.
150 Yeah. Thank you. There's a.
151 Final point on on this conversation. I do think we sometimes lean too much on Salem and not on other cities. This is local government. We're close to the operations. We bump around town, and people blame us for everything because it's it's the water, it's the sewers. It's the response times in Salem. They're up at a higher elevation, and their accountability is not the same thing as local government. So I really hope that we lean into best practices with other cities. And I think we to a fault, been trying to copy too much of the model from Salem. Thanks.
152 Thank you colleagues, I really appreciate all of your different perspectives. I look, I'm excited to discuss this some more and look at how other cities do this. I think right now we really are all figuring it out. And we have 12 people all doing something a little bit differently. I don't think that any of them are necessarily right or wrong, good or bad, and I think that we'll be able to to figure out kind of what some, some guidance might be. I will say there are times where I hear the executive side saying, oh, this councilor Didn't include us early enough, or this councilor is asking us to do too much. And I do sometimes think, well, but what is the expectation? What is the when do you want that to be included? And so I think we'll be able to figure out and strike some balance where we're providing some clarity. But it's also not too rigid. I appreciate that find that tightrope. I know that you all are very open to feedback, so please provide that. Be ready for our next meeting. And also tell your colleagues we're all in different districts. Tell them to watch this, look at this and provide their feedback. And then going back to talking about the advisory bodies. Make sure to also tell counselors to give feedback. Let your constituents know about the different ways that they can give feedback this week and next. And thank you so much. Our next meeting is Monday, October 20th. We will continue this conversation, and there are some other upcoming committee items that are in the works. All right, I want to get us out. Not too late. So I will adjourn this meeting of the governance committee. Thank you.