The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-09-08
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Governance Committee met on Monday, September 8, at 2:30 p.m., with roll call confirming attendance. Chair and vice chair remarks addressed a pending procurement process for a consultant to support council working relationships, noting no funding was currently identified and no contract award was being made; a proposal to temporarily suspend council committees until a strategic priority-setting process concluded was also introduced. The council president provided an update on committee structure discussions, describing differing views among councilors on whether and how to change the current structure, with further conversation expected later in the fall. A follow-up presentation from the Small Donor Elections program addressed data requests from a prior meeting, covering certification thresholds, match caps, and paid third-party fundraising practices; figures describing contribution thresholds and dollar amounts were stated inconsistently. A briefing followed on the Advisory Bodies Enhancement Project, outlining goals, timeline, and plans for a citywide review of advisory bodies, with further discussion planned for October. Finally, staff presented a draft table of contents for a Council Governance Handbook, intended as a non-binding reference document, with committee members offering feedback on topics such as executive-administrative collaboration, decorum, and structural clarity. Votes occurred during the session, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger.
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.
Procedural markers in this session
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0 To.
1 Oh, my god, it's awful here.
2 I'm very.
3 Used to be out of this. It's still my throat.
4 Oh, yeah.
5 It's like. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. I keep thinking like. Yeah, there we go. So. Oh, sure.
6 Do we have to say something?
7 Good afternoon everyone. I call the meeting of the governance committee to order. It is Monday, September 8th at 2:30 p.m. Diego, will you please call the roll?
8 Good afternoon. Clerk. Here. Pirtle-guiney. Here. Ryan. Here. Koyama Lane here.
9 Craig, will you please read the statement of conduct?
10 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. Agenda governance committee or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at the 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're a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
11 Thank you, craig, and thank you, diego. In today's meeting, the governance committee will hear some brief chair and vice chair remarks. Hear an update from the council president on our discussions that we've had around council committee structure. Receive a follow up presentation from the small donors elections to respond to data requests raised at the August 11th meeting. Get an update on the advisory bodies enhancement project and hear from staff regarding the council governance handbook. So we will now move into chair announcements. I wanted to focus on the update around having a consultant work with council. So as a reminder, in the in April of this year, the city was approached by hra, a consulting firm offering to work with the new council in support of improving working relationships and our governance practice. Because council wanted to ensure that there was an opportunity for open competition, a formal RFP or request for proposals was issued in June. That process has resulted in a single recommended organization to support council with this work, and the approximate cost of working with them is $100,000. Council at this point does not have funding identified for this cost, so no contract award is being made at this point. So assuming that in our constrained financial situation, there are no additional funds to be used for this purpose, I'm pausing my efforts and will consider maybe possibly reissuing the RFP at a later date. It is deeply disappointing this outcome. I appreciate and thank everyone who supported and participated in the process to make this resource available to council, and I do continue to believe that this work is work that we need to do as a council. You know, we will look for other ways to support that happening. And I have learned that when a procurement process is open, there are specific things you can say or not say. So that is all I can say at this point. When it closes, might be able to speak a bit more about that. And I know that there are. I have some colleagues that would like to share a bit. Vice chair Ryan will go next in giving remarks, but vice chair Ryan, before that, are you okay with because this is a committee, we can be a little informal with councilor Clark jumping in and sharing some thoughts. Okay, great.
12 Do you want me to go first?
13 If you're replying to what she just said? Sure. Well.
14 Thank you, chairwoman Koyama Lane, I I'm not sure how deeply you want to go into this. I just want to say that I'm really disappointed that we don't have something lined up already. I think, you know, when I was running for office, so many people asked me, how are 12 people going to do this repeatedly? And I said, well, we'll probably come up with a process for identifying our shared goals. We'll probably come up with a process for identifying our shared agendas so that we can, you know, move forward together. And then if that doesn't work, we're going to have to get some kind of what I call it, marriage counseling, which is just being a little cheeky, but some kind of help. And I feel like we really need that to help us move together, to pull together, to hopefully all move in the same direction to the extent that we can, but at least improve those relationships. So I'm I'm disappointed that we don't have something right now, and I think the public is waiting for us to to demonstrate that cohesion and that ability to move forward on behalf of the entire city. I think we're they're watching us. And I think it's incumbent on us to restore the public's faith in this new form of government that this this is going to work. We can make this work. So I know you said we don't have the resources. I'm certainly willing to take money out of my council budget to try to help pay for some sort of assistance like this, but I just wanted to to say that that I'm I'm sorry that we're we're not moving forward. Anyway, thank you for hearing me out. Thanks.
15 Thank you so much, councilor Clark. I echo everything you shared and agree with you and appreciate your perspective on this and how you continue to bring us back as a council to the importance of making sure that we are having the discussions needed to figure out where things align, how to move forward together. And with that, I will now hand things over for the vice chair. Remarks to vice chair Ryan.
16 Thank you, madam chair. I want to acknowledge that I also appreciate everything you just said, and I hope that we'll have further discussion on the logistics of this. So did you say that we're still it's still pending. It's still open. It's not closed.
17 It's not closed yet. And so we can't specifically say we can't say specifics about the different consultants that are or aren't still in the running.
18 And when you were so anyway, you responded that your office would pitch in. I think it would be helpful as we get closer to this on that will obviously be shared with all 12 offices. We make that decision, okay. All right. So I didn't know you were going to say that, but I really appreciate it. Councilor Clark, I really value the partnership that we have. And I really like that. You've opened up the beginning of the meeting for this dialog to bring a little bit of what we're talking about before we when we prepare for meetings to the dais. My thoughts over the last few weeks have been focused on committee structure, which should come as no surprise to anyone watching. Council has given so much thought to this question what is the appropriate time we should spend in council meetings, and what value do committees provide for us as we conduct our legislative responsibilities? I know we have committee meeting updates on the agenda up next. So I will tee up some of my thoughts for that with my candid comments at the beginning of the meeting. Since council started the discussion about council policy committees, I become more certain about the importance that our elected body spends the time necessary to get clarity on shared priorities. This work can only be done if we have time on the calendar, which is possible if we suspend committees. I don't see how we move forward unless we are working from the same sheet of music. My understanding is that the contract to have a consultant come on site to do this work with the council is on a reset. We just heard about that and may not occur, which makes my proposal for the strategic goal setting even more necessary. My proposal that I will bring forth at the next committee meeting. If I have enough sponsors, where we will talk about committee structure, is to suspend committee meetings until we do have a strategic priority setting. As a full council, once we have shared priorities, it will inform our decision making about the number and subjects of council committees. My proposed language before all the preambles gets down to this. Whereas role clarity between council, mayor and the city administrator is necessary to be efficient with our resources. And whereas Portland continues to experience complex challenges, and all city leaders need to be focused on delivering complex solutions for portlanders. And so now, therefore, be it resolved that the city council committees, including their duties, scope, subject matter, membership and leadership shall be suspended until January 7th, 2026 under the specific provision that before that date, the full council approves a guiding body of collective city council priorities. Key strategies to achieve priority outcomes and measurable targets to track and achieve those priorities. Our city needs leadership, focus and equal participation throughout the process. From the full city council, the city administrator's office and the mayor's office. This process will be managed by council operations on or before the 7th of January, 2026. And so I'm hoping that that's the conversation that we can also have next week, and that this will be active as one of the proposals that we're looking at. I really just think it's the best way for our city to move forward during a challenging time of change. And those are my intro comments. Thanks.
19 Thank you, vice chair Ryan diego, will you please read the first item?
20 Item one council president's update on committee structure discussions.
21 Thank you. So folks that have been following governance know that we had a couple sessions in August to talk about the cadence of our full council meetings and committee structure. I'd like to thank council president for having setting up those conversations. Also want to shout out your chief of staff, natalie sept, who really hustled to get those scheduled to make sure that we could have those conversations and thought that it would be good for us to have some time here in the governance committee to just hear a bit of a summary of how those went, where things are going. So we have an opportunity to hear from council president with just a bit of a update on those discussions around the council's committee structure, and then we can open it up for a brief discussion with committee members.
22 Thank you, chair Koyama Lane. So as the chair mentioned, we had a number of conversations in early August about the future of our committee work on council, and it was very clear in those conversations to me that a lot of our colleagues felt like what we're doing now isn't working. What was not as clear is whether there was consensus on what we should be doing instead. And there were a number of proposals brought forward. There was a lot of discussion about whether some of the internal work, the governance and finance work should be done in committees or by the body as a whole. There was a lot of conversation about how we group different policy areas together, and I think part of what I heard, very frankly, is similar to what I heard in January from our colleagues, which is that everybody wants there to be fewer committees, but nobody wants to give up the work that they think needs to be done in its own space. And now, because differently from in January, we have folks who are guiding conversations as committee chairs and are in the middle of the agendas that they put forward for the year. There's a little bit of hesitancy of of shifting that work. So I heard a number of our colleagues say, yes, we want to make a change. I heard a number of our colleagues say, no, this isn't the right time for our for a change. And I also heard, as councilor Ryan, you spoke to today, a few people say, why do we have committees at all? And I think that the reality is, while we have a council with a lot of shared goals and a lot of shared ideas of where we need to head for our city, we don't yet have a lot of shared agendas on how to get there, and in order to. Create committees that align with an agenda, there would be a lot of work that needs to happen that I'm not sure we can get consensus on, at least in the short term. So we will continue the conversation around committees. But I wanted to air here today that we may not land on a change. We may still, I think there's more conversation to be had, but in the way that moving to weekly committee meetings felt after the initial conversation like it was likely a given. We just had details to work out. I don't think in our committee discussion we're in that same place where there's a given outcome. I think there are still a lot of possibilities on the table. I do want to note that that doesn't mean that these committees are set in stone forever. Our code allows, as council president, for me to bring forward a proposal for committee leadership at any point. And in doing so, I could consider bringing forward changes in the future. Our code allows for any councilor to bring forward a proposal on committee structure, as councilor Dunphy did at any point and at the beginning of the new year, when we restart our work to some extent, we have council leadership elections. Again, we reconsider how we do our work. There will also be, I think, a natural pause where this conversation will come back up the next few council meetings, just given other things that are coming in on those agendas, won't be the right time to take this up, because I do think that this is something where we need to make sure that we have space on the agenda to really consider whether we want to move forward with a change or not. So I'm not planning on bringing this back to our next two council meetings, but toward the end of the month or in early October, I'll make sure that it does get back on the council agenda so that we can continue that conversation that we started and decide again. I think that there's three paths at this point. Do we stay where we are for now, knowing that this will if it doesn't come back up naturally between now and the beginning of the new year, we'll have a natural point for it to come back up. Do we move in the direction that councilor Ryan has proposed and take a break from committees? I think we need to have a conversation about how that fits in with the direction that the voters gave us in approving the new charter, but I think there are conversations to be had still there. Or do we move forward with a new committee structure? And while I do think that we heard from a majority of council that they want to see changes, I don't know that we heard from a majority of council coming together around what those changes should be. So is there the ability to come together around a single proposal for a change or not?
23 Thank you for that summary and for sharing what folks can expect for when this will be taken up again. Vice chair Ryan.
24 Yeah.
25 Thank you so much, chair, and thank you, council president. I just want to say for the record, I'm I'm not a supporter of no committees. I just said that a temporary suspension suspension, it's different. So we can get focused on priorities for the reality of what our city is facing. And then from there, I trust we can have committees that are relevant and have impact after that level setting action that I think leadership should be going through right at this moment, and action from the committees that is currently in motion could could be moved into the full council. So there's no reason for the suspension of action. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I don't like currently is we're adding more meetings. We've added council meetings now every week, and then we're going to keep it as so as it is status quo. And that jeopardizes what I think was the main reason why a lot of people voted yes on charter reform, which is to see that representatives out in the district more often. So there's only so many hours in a day, and we're jeopardizing our our in service work out in the communities where we should be listening to actually be relevant to the crises that are currently taking place on our streets.
26 Councilor clerk.
27 Thank you, madam chair. Just really briefly, I appreciate your thinking. I think I largely agree with you, and I was the person who was hoping to suspend everything for a while, and I want to just say to councilor Ryan that, you know, we we have the holidays coming up as well, and we're only looking at maybe one committee meeting, my committee meeting in one meeting in November and one meeting in December. So there's not a lot of meetings coming up. We have a lot of work to do. We are preprogramed. We have some pretty important issues, particularly after the November, I mean, the September special session results or non results. So I'm just wondering if you would entertain. I mean I'm happy to air your proposal. I'm not sure I support it. I, I'm willing to have a dialog about it, but I'm wondering if we could have a parallel process so that we don't have to give up the preprogramed. I mean, we're pretty programed in tni. We we have a huge subject area and really important issues coming up. So I don't want to give that up. But I'm just wondering, is there a way to do a parallel process, to carve out time to do what you want to do, given that we're really not going to have that many committee meetings later in the fall, going into the winter. Just food for thought.
28 Okay.
29 But I appreciate your thinking.
30 Of course, if that was a question. And I think those could also be preprogramed those could also be put into the larger council with your leadership in the council meeting. Just if you would consider that thought.
31 Okay.
32 Go ahead, councilor Pirtle-guiney.
33 Thank you. Chair. I just want to mention that councilor Ryan, I very much agree with you that part of this reform was to ensure we have time in district. And I share your concern about the amount of time that we are under the current schedule, needing to be scheduled at the dais. I think councilor Clark raised the point that her committee won't be meeting at every available time slot over the coming months, and if we do move forward without a change to committees, but with the added council meetings, first of all, I am optimistic that the change to the number of council meetings won't expand. Our council time at the dais significantly. I think it may a little bit, but I hope what it does is allows us to stick to our timelines a little better, be more strategic about when things come to the calendar because we have more options and and our meetings in a more timely manner so that we have that time on on Wednesday afternoons rather than running very, very late to get other work done. And so that we're not as reliant, though I think there will be some months when we are, but so we're not as reliant on those Thursday times for council meetings. I also, if we move forward with the current schedule, will be asking other chairs like councilor Clark has offered that she will be to make sure that they are intentional about when they schedule committee committee meetings, and that we don't meet unless we have important work to tackle. I think for some committees, there's a lot of work coming up, and for other committees there are some pre-planned, slower periods of time. But I do want to make sure that in my role as council president, I'm doing everything I can to give us the time and space to be working with constituents, both in district and also working on constituent concerns, some of which happens in district and some of which happens with our partners in the administration trying to problem solve. I think those are both really important things that we do.
34 Putting myself in the queue here, I appreciate how council president clearly kind of explained a few buckets or paths forward, the keeping things, how they are and knowing that at the end of this calendar year, there will be a natural time for us to reevaluate committees to taking a break from committees. As councilor Ryan has talked about finding a time to reset, find some direction as a full council, and then three being open to redoing. Resetting the committees as we see them are as they are. I wonder if three can almost be broken into three and four where there's a full redo, reset and also keeping committees mostly how they are, but figuring out if there are some tweaks, some small things that can be changed. I mentioned this in our full council discussions about this. We'll see how this plays out. But now that we are meeting, we're about to start meeting weekly in council meetings, but twice a month in committee meetings. I'm wondering if there's going to be a bottleneck, if it will be hard to get things through committees because that cadence is a little bit off. We'll see how that works out. And some of my same concerns remain with just having eight committees. A lot of time where we're not in district. As much as we'd like a challenge for us to really fully track all of the committees as councilors and for the public, and also the workload that it puts on staff. And I believe I'm in a similar place to councilor Clark where I'm open to what you're proposing. Vice chair Ryan, and a piece that makes me interested in it is that it does seem to almost combine with this conversation around working with a consultant, or just having these conversation about where are we going as a full council and what are our shared priorities and goals. So you know that that's going to little. Bit. Appreciate this conversation. And it's we'll continue it. All right. Seeing no hands, can you please read the next item.
35 Item two small donor elections follow up.
36 All right. Thank you so much to the team from the small donors elections program and the Portland elections elections commission for coming back to us here at governance to follow up on questions that were raised by councilors during our August 11th meeting. Ordinance 2020 5-3 ten was sent to full council by this committee at the last meeting and will be heard at an upcoming full council meeting. S the number of number one rankings each candidate received in the election. And that is the data that the Portland elections commission most focused on when asking, as they do after every election, whether all of the numbers in the program design continue to be up to date and aligned with how elections really work. And what you see is, well, I'll also say the orange dots are candidates who won. And then the purple lines show tiers one, two and three thresholds. And what you can see here is, well, one first thing is that you can notice that a lot of the dots are right around the 250 and 750 line. Anyone who started to get within shooting distance of 250, you know, either pretty much made it the distance. And the same thing with 750. So no one's really hovering around 600. If they got to 600, they tried for 750. But the main thing that the Portland elections commission, you know, saw this time and also the last two election cycles is that there is no clean line you can draw across this where everyone above that made a really respectable showing in the election results, and everyone below that did not right. If there were such a place, that would be a wonderful spot to put a certification threshold. But the truth is, is that there are people who are significantly below the the certification threshold of 250. That made a fairly respectable showing. And there are even candidates in who made it to 750 donors who received significantly fewer votes, sometimes less than 1% of votes. So there's no spot. You can draw a line where you aren't either, including people who received very few votes, or excluding people who received a very respectable number of votes. Ultimately, the Portland elections commission decided not to recommend changing the 250 threshold for now, because 2024 was such a unique election cycle, with almost all open seats, a huge number of candidates, it was very overwhelming and fatiguing to donors, and it created a very unusual fundraising climate. So they decided they wanted to see the data from the 2026 election, which, fingers crossed, will be a more typical election cycle. And based on that revisit, this question. Is 250 the right threshold for certification for council candidates? All right.
37 Can vice chair Ryan ask a question before you head to the next slide?
38 Thank you. That that makes sense that they that they want more data in your conversation. What I haven't heard yet, which is I think really important is that there was no primary in 2024, but there was in 2020 and in 22 in the matching gift program. So I still think it's too low. 250 for what doesn't have a primary. So it's just one vote right in the general. So what was that conversation like when you distinguished between the previous elections, which had a primary where that's why I brought it up as a fact check, because in 2020, those that data with my name with different numbers would have been more relevant to where what you were talking about because it was a primary and then you had the general which you raised money again for that. So why why is it that we aren't just what was the conversation like when they brought up the fact that there was no primary in 2024?
39 Are you talking about when it came to the auditor's cap? Are you talking about the 250 certification?
40 I'm talking about the 250, but I'm talking about the fact that I haven't yet heard from you, that what was unique about 2024 also is that there was no primary. Yes. And so because there was no primary, I remember when I signed up, I was surprised that the ceiling wasn't raised because the ceiling in 2020, in 2022 was 250. I would not ceiling sorry, the floor, the floor. And but there was a primary and then there was another one for the general.
41 Yeah. So after the 2022 elections, the Portland voters approved the charter amendments that changed how elections work, including eliminating the primary right and also taking council races from citywide to based on for districts. And so there was some conversation about whether or not to decrease the 250. Now that each councilor is focusing on only one quarter of the electorate. And ultimately they decided they wanted to see the data from 2020 before deciding, sorry, 2024 before deciding. But because the auditor's race, which can be a little bit of a sleepy race, two candidates in 2022 had raised 250 contributions. They felt even for a council candidate who is running in a quarter of the city, 250 should still be realistic for them. And so the main discussion was should we lower that threshold? The other discussion was should we require people to collect their 250 contributions inside of their district, which they decided no for now and then revisit after 2024, and then they decided again in 2024. They don't want to limit those donors to being inside the district, so that was the main conversation around revisiting the 250 threshold before the 2024 election cycle to accommodate the changes in the election cycle with the idea with the primary primary be gone, there was some hope that among, I think, the public, that this might shorten the election cycle, so that when you want to throw your hat in the ring for council, maybe you didn't have to throw your hat in the ring until the summer before the election or just the spring before the election, whereas in prior years, because there was a may primary, people were throwing their hat in the ring, more like the fall before 2024 was such an unusual cycle, and so crowded that people were really throwing their hat in the ring this summer before, which was even earlier than people were doing in the prior two election cycles for council races. So they wanted to see again. Once we get to 2026 and 2028, when does the election for council start in earnest in that election cycle? And that would help also inform, you know, if that's when that if people start running in earnest in March of the election year, that would also inform how many donors it would make sense to, to to get contributions from in order to hit a threshold. So they're still waiting for a more normal election cycle. Data on that.
42 Thank you. So the summary is no, we didn't have that conversation about raising the floor. In fact, it sounds like you had a conversation about lowering it perhaps. So I guess that's maybe why I get to give you some thoughts from the dais, which are different than anything maybe you heard in your committee. I'm surprised that there wasn't a conversation about increasing the floor to maybe three, 50 or 500, since there is only one election, and right now there's a lot of taxpayer money going out to many, many, many candidates. And again, everyone agrees with your assessment that it was a special election and we need more data. But I am surprised that there wasn't a conversation about actually increasing the floor as opposed to decreasing it.
43 Yeah, there was in 2024 discussion of increasing it, but not not prior to 2024. Okay. Yeah.
44 All right. I didn't hear that part. I heard the other. Thanks.
45 Great. So the next question we are here to answer. Oh we have a we have. Oh sorry. It looks like we have an old we have an old draft of the powerpoint that went on. Went to share. So I'm going to hand my computer over.
46 Is it possible for councilor Clerk to ask a question while that's being pulled up?
47 Yes.
48 Just a quick question on the chart of the certification threshold. The orange number represented the what percent? That's the what's the orange number again.
49 Orange meant that candidate won okay.
50 And that was a there the amount of the percentage of the votes that they received or.
51 Percentage of number one rankings.
52 Number one rankings. Okay. Thanks.
53 I think two more questions to look over. And we are at time. But we can go over a little bit okay.
54 Let's I just need a little pause while I actually I'll just need to take the computer. There's a chart on the next slide I wanted to share. Actually you know what I'm going to skip while danita gets the chart up to the last chart, which would the last page which doesn't have a chart on it. One of the questions was, did the Portland elections commission consider banning third party paid third party fundraising? And they actually discussed this over multiple meetings and unanimously decided not to recommend recommend such a ban for several reasons. One was a concern that the ban would not be effective. Third party fundraisers could easily change the terms of their contracts to function more like temp agencies, where there handing their staff over to campaigns to hire directly to technically work for the campaigns, not for the third party, but structurally nothing else would change. Another concern was that a ban creates enforcement difficulties for the city. It's hard for the city to know which exact services each vendor provided for a campaign, and whether each contribution a campaign submits. Its matchable was collected by the campaign or by a third party. A paid third party fundraiser. The other concern was that the ban is is not supported by the primary program principles, which is to give the public confidence that their government is working in everyone's best interest, not just in the interest of large campaign contributors. That canvassers collecting 5 to $350 contributions door to door doesn't undermine that public trust that their government is working for all portlanders. The final concern was that the ban could undercut program effectiveness. The program elections commission typically recommends restrictions apply to all candidates, whether or not they opt in to the program or not, and that any that restrictions inside the program that don't exist outside of the program could decrease program participation and therefore effectiveness. A ban on paid third party fundraising for all candidates would likely not survive constitutional scrutiny, and it's unclear whether a similar ban for only for participating candidates would survive constitutional scrutiny. Do you have any questions on that? Before I go to the third subject of the chart?
55 Yeah.
56 Vice chair Ryan, thanks.
57 So this is on the third party fundraising.
58 Okay.
59 Yeah. So I appreciate that your staff came back with an update, but I'm not sure that it captured my questions and concerns appropriately from last meeting. I remain concerned that there is an industry for paid lobbyists to go door to door, or paid solicitors to go door to door to fundraise for candidates, but they're not that transparent about the exact beneficiaries, beneficiaries of their efforts. When you pay a canvasser, they work for the candidate. When volunteers canvass for canvas, for candidates, clear to the voters who they're opening their door to, it's been confusing who you're opening your door to. For these individuals who are not clearly paid canvassers for a candidate or a volunteer for the candidate, but for a third party. Let me give you an example. So a person representing a climate organization who solicits donations for a cause as well as at the end, they say for the candidates they prefer. So these are public funds that that are going for candidates, not causes. But the pitch at the door is about causes. And so that's when I heard these stories when I was campaigning, that's what people were confused about, is they were listening to a cause and they thought, maybe it's this greenpeace at my door who's at my door. And then eventually, towards the end, it'd be like, well, these are the candidates that would benefit from this donation. And so to me, that seems really messy, susan. And was that a I assume that you had some longer conversations, maybe about this exact scenario?
60 There were conversations about the concept that an organization that believes in a particular has a particular value and goal. For example, clean air, that you know, that they raise money for candidates who support clean air. And there was not concern on the council, on the commission, that there's something problematic for democracy about people collectively coming together about a thing that they matter, that they care about, and trying to help candidates who support that same thing raise money, whether or not they're the the issue of whether or not the person who's donating understands who they're donating to was investigated by the program, and the outcome of that investigation was shared with the Portland elections commission, which is that a reporter had called through a number of someone's donors, and a lot of them said they don't remember donating to that candidate. And then when I sent each of those donors a copy of the form that goes with that donation with their own handwriting, writing in the candidate's name and asked them, is this your handwriting? And it does say that which candidate they're donating to and their own handwriting, or in some cases, they wrote a check out specifically to that campaign. Friends of whoever you know. Then they were they all said, yes, that is that is my handwriting. And okay, I do remember that now, you know. So ultimately, the program found that the donors were writing the candidates names down that they were donating to. So they did understand who they were donating to at the moment that they made the contribution. It's just it sounds like later they they had some fuzziness. And that's the thing that happens every single year in the program. We we always do spot checking of about 10% of contributions to make sure that they were real contributions. And we always get these sort of like false alarms where someone says, I never made that contribution, and then we have to start breaking it down. Okay. It says you made it by this credit card on this date, another person at your address made a similar contribution. And then they'll say, oh, that's right. We went to that event and this person asked us and we both gave. Now I remember it, you know, so it just sort of is a thing that the program deals with all the time is people later kind of being fuzzy about which contributions they made. But we we did definitely make sure that the contributions that came in through Portland clean air fund, that the people who made those contributions really did make those contributions and made it specifically to that candidate and knew it, at least at the time, that they made them.
61 Okay. Let me just well, first of all, the example that you use is interesting. I didn't know that was the name of the group, but that was a pretty smart name since I don't know anyone that would be against clean air. But what I think that people are scratching their head over is that these fundraising organizations are getting paid considerably more per donation than the donations are actually even worth. And so we're using public money in a way that I don't think was in the spirit of the law, in my opinion. And so I do think that this issue won't go away until we get better focus on when you talk about as a volunteer, it's one thing, but when you hear that they're paid canvassers and the money that they're getting paid comes from the taxpayers of Portland for the small donor campaign, I think we're starting to get outside of the scope of what people said they were voting for in terms of donations for candidates. That's that's. What I'm hearing.
62 Out there. Can I ask a clarifying question? So as you're concerned that the nonprofit sort of profited from the fundraising contracts, or is your concern that the canvassers pay? If we had all of the canvassers and what they were paid, and then we compared what they raised in private contributions, that the total amount raised in private contributions was less than the total amount that they were paid as canvassers.
63 I didn't totally track all that, but I will say this. I think people are concerned that the money was being used outside of the scope of just an exact campaign for a candidate, but instead it was for a canvasing lobby and they would get paid money from those candidates. And then those candidates chose to spend their campaign money, which is matched by the city on this mechanism, which is a pretty low rate of return. But I think for them, getting to the thresholds of two 5500 was more important than anything else. And they knew once they hit that, then they would benefit from spending their money in this manner.
64 Okay.
65 So it's it's it's clear as mud. And that's probably why people have been asking questions about it.
66 So the remedy you'd like to see is what's the outcome you'd like to see?
67 I think there needs to be more clarity that when someone goes door to door and they're a paid solicitor, like when my when a campaign manager, like my campaign manager is at the door, it's really clear the campaign's paying for that person to be at the door asking for that money. When you're a paid solicitor from a nonprofit organization for a specific lobby. I hope that's really that, I think, is where the transparency transparency gets fuzzy.
68 If you'd like to see disclosure, I'm a paid canvasser for for. This organization, and I'm.
69 Here supporting this candidate today. Like say that instead of I think people get exhausted like we are right now in this conversation. By the time that they get into that dialog at their door, they probably are like, okay, great, and it's over with. And they gave them $5. But the fact that the city is providing a payment for that organization to do that, that seems to go beyond the scope of just one candidate, I think is where it gets murky.
70 I will.
71 Say, peace comes to my door. I know who they are.
72 Yeah, I will say that. The Portland elections commission did discuss that exact issue of like, can we or should the city require third party fundraisers to follow a script that that includes certain information, etc. Ultimately, they decided not to go there, mainly because by and large, even when a campaign directly hires a someone to do door to door canvasing, it's really hard to ensure that they actually stick to the script that they're given. And it also is really hard for the city to know whether or not people are going off of script. So they did grapple with that question, but I'm happy to bring that back to them, to grapple with some more, if you'd like me to.
73 I think it's necessary based on this conversation. Sure. Yeah.
74 Councilor Clark.
75 Just really quickly, I know we're over time. Susan, on the chart on six. Can you just give a quick answer as to what the thinking was behind not going to the 500, having.
76 A okay. Oh, is the this is it the other chart.
77 Chart. It's on page six. I think.
78 You go forward okay. Yes. There you go. So just very quickly the chart in orange shows campaign in 2024, what the payments were to a particular candidate. Right. So basically once they hit 250 Portland donors, they immediately got almost 40,000. They got some payments in order to get them to the 40,000. And that's when they hit that match cap that was lowered from 100,000 due to underfunding. And then they had to go all the way to 750 donors before they got that next 40,000, right shortly before the election. Right. Green shows. Well, hey, if we actually made the match, the next tier between 1 and 2 at 500 Green shows that they would get that second bunch of money significantly sooner, but they'd ultimately get less money, because if you brought that threshold down to 500, then we did the math in about 12 ish, additional candidates would have hit that 500 threshold, then hit the 750 threshold. So that would cost the program more money. With a finite amount of money, the program would have had to lower those match caps, not down to 40%, but down to 35%. So ultimately, while that campaign would have gotten money sooner, they would have ultimately had less money total. Right. And the blue line shows that had the program been fully funded in 2024, as soon as they hit that 250 threshold, they would just continuously get matching payments until throughout the election cycle. Now, if this was a campaign that raised a lot of fives and tens and fifteens, if a campaign mostly raises $20 or more, you would actually see once they hit 100,000, they would have like had a short pause. Once they hit that cap before they got the next threshold. But it would be a very short pause as opposed to these long gaps. When the match caps were down to 40 $40,000. And so basically it's meant to show that we could add this threshold, this, this tier between 1 and 2 at 500. It would ultimately mean campaigns get less money if the program's underfunded. But the best way to like, eliminate this big gap problem is actually to provide the program with adequate funding, and then the problem just disappears.
79 Thank you so much for all of these great points and questions. Vice chair Ryan has one more quick comment, and then hopefully any of us can follow up with you about further questions.
80 I realize we got into a lot of details, and I think what I'm trying to really get you to understand, I realize I don't represent your average person on your commission, it sounds like, but it is something I hear often from people. There was a lack of transparency in the second party fundraising period, and if we don't have a better declaration of transparency going into the next one, I worry about the consequences the city will face. So I hope you take that seriously.
81 Yeah. What types of I mean other than the what the script they follow, would you like to see transparency in like the financials related to the third party fundraising?
82 I think your training needs to include very clear guidelines on if you choose to decide to spend taxpayers money on a lobby group to help you get your threshold, then be really clear about that.
83 Okay? Okay.
84 Make sense? Got it. Thanks.
85 All right. Thank you.
86 Councilor Clark. Did you?
87 I'm really glad vice chair Ryan brought up training, because I just did a training with you all and was also thinking that that is a great place to bring up things, even if there isn't an official ban. Talk about some of these squishy areas. Thank you so much for being with us today.
88 Thank you.
89 Diego, can you please read the next item?
90 Item three advisory bodies enhancement project briefing.
91 All right, colleagues, so we have a briefing on the advisory bodies enhancement project. This project will ensure that the city's advisory bodies will align with our new form of government, and that we have standard citywide practices. So as a reminder, this spring we heard a preview of the project. Since then, the project has progressed, publishing its most recent status update in late August. Today, we'll hear a brief overview of the project to reorient folks to the project's scope, scope, and approach, and we'll also have some time for questions and discussion. So this item does not require any action from us. Now, vice chair Ryan and I would like to schedule a longer discussion next month at governance, where we can dig in into the proposed citywide policy practices that will maybe come out of this. We anticipate project implementation to include both some code adopted by the full council and many practices put into administrative rules. So now I'm happy to hand it over to our presenters. Amanda garcia snell, the city's engagement officer, and julia meyer, who is managing the project. Thank you for being with us today.
92 Thank you. Good afternoon, councilors. And as vice president Koyama Lane mentioned, I'm amanda garcia snell. For the record, I wanted to just start by thanking you for allowing us this time on your agenda. We know you're busy and and we appreciate the opportunity to share with you the status of the advisory bodies enhancement project. I also want to extend my gratitude to all of you and to your fellow councilors, as well as community members and staff who, like us, have a genuine interest in seeing alignment and improvements related to this effort. As mentioned, we. I was here in the spring to to share with you a proposal which this committee approved and that launched the project without jinxing it. I am happy to say that we're on track to complete the project by the end of the calendar year, which we are very excited about. The advisory bodies enhancement project is a much needed opportunity to be thoughtful and intentional about all aspects of advisory bodies, and with that, I will turn it over to my colleague julia meyer, who will share more details about this work.
93 Thank you.
94 Amanda.
95 Chair Koyama Lane.
96 Vice chair. Ryan, councilors. For the record, my name is julia meyer. I use she her pronouns and I am thrilled to be the project manager for the advisory bodies enhancement project. The last time I was at governance was for the final report of the government transition advisory committee, I believe. So it's nice to be back with you. I have a short, probably a little bit less than ten minute presentation. And as the chair mentioned, we then have a little bit of time for questions and discussion. I want to do a note on vocabulary before I get into it. This project sometimes uses the term abcs, which is really meant to be all city appointed boards, committees, work groups, whatever they're called, commissions, etc. It's a term often used by other jurisdictions to be broader than the term advisory bodies, because not all quote unquote advisory bodies are advisory in nature. So I use them interchangeably. I don't love using acronyms in a public meeting, so I may use the term advisory bodies or abcs just for clarification. So as background, you know, charter reform raised questions about what a new form of government meant for advisory bodies. How are we going to think about the roles and responsibilities of bodies with two separate branches of government? And what kind of processes do we need to update now that we have charter reform? And I think that was really what led to this project. We tried to do some work before amanda got here, and I think ultimately it was decided, you know, let's wait until the city brings on its first engagement, officer, to really get this work up and running. Next slide please. So as amanda mentioned, she was last here in late spring to talk about this project in particular, went through kind of what the primary objectives were and got this committee's go ahead to start the project. The project goals are on this slide. They are to align the abc program with portland's new form of government, create a shared understanding of the goal and intent of advisory bodies, standardized equity centered practices for appointments, operations, and volunteer and staff experience. Promote better resourced and more empowered, meaningful and integrated advisory bodies. Ensure our existing bodies continue to address an identified need or goal of the city and ensure meaningful participation by those serving and expand the availability of information about abcs so portlanders know how to find and engage with their work. Next slide please. So we began this spring. In may, we developed the work plan and launched a project web page. In July and August, we produced the first two status updates. Those are written project reports that include all of the drafts of the work to date, as well as a feedback survey for folks to fill out to provide comment on the work. Also this summer, service areas are conducting a review and assessment of existing advisory bodies at the city. I'll come back to that in a couple of slides. And at the end of this month, we'll publish our third written status update that will include drafts of all of the proposed citywide practices for advisory bodies in October. As the chair mentioned, we hope to come back to you all and really dig in to what all of those proposed citywide practices are and get your feedback and input, and will also host two community input sessions. And we anticipate a final project report late October and the work to come to council for its consideration by the end of the year. We do think that the adoption of citywide practices will require a little bit of code adoption by the full council, and that many of the citywide practices can exist in administrative roles. Next slide please. So the proposed practices that we're creating are pretty broad. There is foundational work. So there's a citywide purpose statement for abcs at the city a new classification system. That's what are the types of bodies that we have at the city. There's a whole group on the life cycle of an abcs. So guidelines for how you create a new advisory body, guidelines for what goes in a advisory bodies bylaws and how they run their meetings. The relationship of advisory bodies to city leadership, including you all, providing for periodic review of existing advisory bodies and how we dissolve bodies. Then there's work on composition, which covers everything from recruitment to application, closure to administrative appointment, administrative appointment to council confirmation and the diversity of applicants and members. And the final bucket is all things service. So what we expect of those who serve, restrictions on those who cannot serve, and the supports that we provide to our members that serve. Next slide please. So. You know, this project started in the spring. Maybe it it formed a little bit after charter review. But really the need for city wide practices for advisory bodies has existed for a very long time at the city. And so we were fortunate to not have to begin this project from scratch this spring. And I want to share, you know, some of the inputs that have gone into the work to date. So first, the government transition advisory committee earlier this year recommended that the city review and reform its approach to advisory bodies. The recommendation was based in part on gtmc members experiences, but also they surveyed the staff and members of advisory committees at the city. And you hear a lot of common themes from members of advisory bodies, actually, and from staff as well. Some of the concerns are unclear. Objectives of advisory bodies, limited time to do their work, insufficient training and access to information, and unclear authority. Many survey respondents weren't even sure if city leadership paid attention to the recommendations of their advisory bodies. The city also has many available materials that inform this project, including the city's new charter, current and historic records and practices of the advisory bodies program and existing abc records and enabling legislation. The current council has shared a lot of perspectives from the dais this calendar year about advisory bodies. It tends to coincide with appointments that you have done, both as a full council and in committee, and when you have created new advisory bodies, it often creates a larger conversation about what the role of advisory bodies is. So I've gathered that information and it's informed the drafts in our work. City staff have invaluable knowledge about advisory bodies, so we hold monthly meetings with the staff liaisons to advisory bodies to give them project updates, and they provide feedback on the proposed city wide practices. We've done some peer city research in atlanta, austin, baltimore, boston, denver, fresno, minneapolis, sacramento, and san antonio. And we've also looked at local practices Multnomah county, Washington county and metro. Unfortunately, there aren't really standard best practices, either locally or across the country for advisory bodies. I think the best and most comprehensive model that I have found is from the city of minneapolis. And so we use that when relevant to developing our practices here. We also have an internal workgroup comprised of a council representative, councilor Canal amanda, as the engagement officer, a city attorney, a representative from the office of equity and human rights, and one representative from each of the four service areas. And then finally invited community feedback. As I mentioned earlier, we release monthly written status updates, and those are distributed through emails to past applicants to advisory bodies, whether they were invited to join an advisory body or not. A couple hundred community based organizations, publication in the rose city connection and city insider emails to all of you, your staff and staff, liaisons to advisory bodies. And we've included it in the city administrator's monthly report to council. And every time we do all of that distribution, we share a feedback form so folks can provide feedback via an online survey or email. Next slide please. So as I mentioned earlier, an important part of this project is the review and assessment of existing advisory bodies at the city. You know, I don't know if there's a right number of advisory bodies for the city to have, and that number may vary based on the perspectives and insights you need to do the work that's before you. But we do want to make sure that existing bodies are addressing needs and goals of the city, and that those serving are having meaningful experiences. And so this summer, the service areas are reviewing their existing bodies, and the purpose is to ensure an accurate inventory, assess the current support, such as staffing and resources, identify inactive, outdated or redundant abcs to consider sunset clauses for ongoing bodies that may not have a long term need, and to make any recommendations for change. So we will publish later this month. An updated inventory of abcs at the city by classification, service area and primary council body. For example, full council or a council committee like the governance committee. And then at the next report at the end of October, we will include the recommendations from the service areas for any changes to their existing advisory bodies. Next slide. And this is my last slide. I just want to share ways for folks to stay engaged with the project. We have a project web page. It is Portland.gov backslash advisory enhancement project. We have registration open for two community input sessions in October@Portland.gov backslash, civic backslash advisory groups backslash events. There's a general project email advisory bodies at Portland Oregon.gov. And we will always do project updates in the citywide newsletter which is rose city connection. And folks can sign up using the qr code or Portland gov backslash updates. And again our next status update will be released later this month, and we hope to come back to the governance committee in October to dig into the citywide practices. Next slide and thank you so much. That concludes our presentation.
97 Thank you so much for this presentation and for all your hard work. This is very, very exciting. I see councilor Clark has a question or comment.
98 I just want to say that I think this is really difficult work to comb through the vast array of advisory committees, and it's really a part of the culture change that we're going through in the changing governance. And I know that people that I've talked to at meetings I have in the community go, well, what about that that committee and that committee and what's happening? So I know there's a lot of interest, and I applaud your effort to provide some standardization across the board, particularly sunsets. I really appreciate that. And I'm just wondering, how are you going to measure success for yourself? How do you measure success on this? Is it the reduction in the number of advisory committees? Or how do you know that we've succeeded in this work?
99 Can I take it or.
100 Do you want me to?
101 Start on anything?
102 I appreciate the question and thank you. I agree, it's complex and I do think a lot of folks are interested and and ready to have this conversation. I do believe it's been going on for quite some time. So to me, I would measure success in relationship to the goals that I articulated. The goals aren't all going to happen in the next month. But so, you know, I don't want to be redundant, but I mean, I think one, we need an advisory body program that fits a mayor council form of government. Right? So we still have an advisory body program that was built for a commission form of government, and we haven't yet fully changed our practices. We've done council confirmation for existence of mayoral appointments, which is different, but we haven't done all of the transformation to adhere to a new form of government, which is not only mayor council, but it's also district based representation, for example. Right. So, you know, we don't have an application for advisory bodies that ask people what district they live in, right? So I think part of that is alignment with the new form of government. Two, I don't think we have a shared understanding of the purpose. Why do we have advisory bodies? I know that seems really basic, but what we don't have a statement like that at the city where you can all say as city leadership, this is why we have them, right? We this is what we believe the value of advisory bodies is, which creates shared expectation for the staff, for people who serve, and for those who are recipients of the advice about the meaning of it. So that's huge for me. Third is what you already referred to. Standardization is is a goal for me, right? We have really inconsistent practices across our advisory bodies. Almost as many as we have advisory bodies. So standardization, you know the number. I don't have a goal around the number because when I look at other jurisdictions, there's no magic number. There's no way to calculate what the perfect number of advisory bodies is for municipality. So to me, it's less about choosing a number, but it's about are the ones that we have advancing a goal, an outcome of the city need of the city? And are the people serving, having meaningful experiences that we do have to, I think, be able to say yes to. And then just being better communicators about the advisory body program to portlanders. Those are mine.
103 So, julie, I would just say thank you for that. The way you just articulated that needs to be written in here. You've got your goals, but you just, you know, were very clear in elucidating what what the outcome should be. And I think you can that was excellent. And I don't see that here when I read this. It's just boom, boom, boom. It'd be easier to really get your head around it. For an average person like me and other citizens. But thank you for that. I think it's very clear. And I'm again, I'm going to say I really appreciate the sunset clause concept.
104 Thank you.
105 Councilor councilor Pirtle-guiney.
106 Thank you. Chair. I'll reiterate to start what my colleague, councilor Clark said, which is gratitude for the work that you're doing. Having sat on advisory bodies, appointed people to advisory bodies and received reports from them all, I know that some of our advisory bodies are very used by council, right? We pay a lot of attention to what we get forward and some advisory bodies, it seems we rarely or never hear from again. So having a better understanding of the different roles and and understanding that sometimes the roles may be different is really important. You said you said in one of the slides that one of the foundational pieces of the work was coming up with a citywide purpose statement. And you mentioned to my colleague that we don't have a clear purpose statement yet. But I'm wondering, as you've started to develop that and as you've looked at the advisory bodies, is your sense so far that most of those bodies do align with a purpose statement that makes sense for where you are headed? Or is your sense that we will hear back from you in the final report that there are a whole lot of advisory bodies where we need to rethink their purpose, and there may be a lot of work to do to bring the work of the bodies in line with a more common purpose statement. I'm just trying to get a sense of what we should expect in terms of bodies of work that will need to take on after your report.
107 Okay. Thank you for the question, councilor. It's a good one. I have been thinking about this project on on two tracks that are definitely interrelated, but not the same. And the first is the development of the standardized citywide practices the councilor Clark was talking about. The second related track is the assessment of existing bodies. Right. They inform each other, but they're not entirely dependent on one another. So I have we've drafted a proposed purpose statement for advisory bodies at the city. It's in the supplemental document on the governance committee agenda page. That is mainly from things I've heard from you all from the diocese. This calendar year old council resolutions about advisory bodies and reading and understanding the individual purposes of individual bodies at the city. So there's that, right. It's sort of high level now. We also have probably a little bit less than 100 advisory bodies at the city that have their own creation or enabling legislation, often with their own purpose statements. So it's hard to write sort of a common purpose statement that fully captures the purposes of almost 100 bodies. So they're not meant to be a proxy for one another. The city wide purpose statement is meant to find the themes in why we have bodies that we have. So just that's kind of structurally where we're at. In terms of your question about individual bodies, I'm not sure I know. Right. So the the assessment of bodies is primarily happening within service areas, because the vast majority of the city's advisory bodies are in service areas. And so one of the questions that is out to bodies is exactly that. It does this individual body continue to meet an identified need or goal of the city? You know, and I do think it is likely that we will make changes to certain bodies as an outcome of this project. And I'd like to get to the point back to standardization, where every advisory body has creation or enabling legislation that has the same minimum elements in it, one of which is exactly that saying what is the goal or need of the city that this body is helping to advance? That was very long way around. I think that that's where we are now.
108 I appreciate that it sounds like more to come on this. Not a clear answer, but it is a part of the body of the work that you're taking on.
109 Correct.
110 Thank you.
111 Yeah. Thank you.
112 Vice chair Ryan. Yes.
113 Thank you chair. Thank you. Julia. Amanda, good to see you. And I want to lift you, ocean, because you're the person that's been keeping this all together for multiple years that I know of. And I hope you feel seen. I also hope you feel supported, because I recall some meetings with you where you were hoping for this conversation to be formalized. So it's good to see you. You know, code cleanup was kind of rushed in the last at the end of the last council by staff on us. And I recall this one was one of the greatest examples of all of us saying, we have an opinion here. You can't just make us quickly vote on it. And it was because of the lack of standards, the lack, you know, you'd get a new assignment. Thank you. Mayor. Oh, this has how many advisory committees and oh, this one hasn't met for a while. This one's really active. This one's in code, but it's really not. You know, it was just all over the map. So I know that you're digging through many, many stories like that, and you know much more than I ever could, but I really appreciate that you're diving into it. And I'm glad that you stayed on to take on this assignment. I think your the question about success and I like the way you answered it. It was I would just offer that. I think it's like a lot of our code cleanup that we're doing in permitting. I think it's like, here's how it's like that. There's clutter and and that's true. And there's places where you don't need a code, but maybe you need an ad hoc committee and a task force for 3 to 6 months, which a lot of people say yes to that because they'd like it to end in a short period of time. So I hope that that that's part of this journey. And I also noticed this when supervising, if I can use that word, a bureau director, when you were a commissioner, how all over the map it was on people's life experiences, professional experiences, executive experiences on how to steward and actually know how to work with an advisory board. And that was really so noticeable to me within the first six months of how inconsistent that was. So I don't know what the internal training is like for our staff executives that that that have the opportunity to enhance the work by having these hardworking volunteers say yes to work with them. And but it was just fascinating on how some knew how to use it. And it reminded me of doing consulting with executive directors in the nonprofit space and how so many struggle with that part of their job managing up, if you will, to these bodies, and how to not make them a check the box or figureheads, but actually how they become strategic thinkers and enhance the work, just loosen it up a little bit to to have them show up for these meetings and really be seen and utilized in that, in that scope. So is there was there talk about how to do the training? All right. There you go. I didn't know that. But you're shaking your head good. You're nodding I mean.
114 I am shaking my head. Yes. You're right. And. One of the inconsistencies we have in our current practices practices is inconsistency of staffing. Right? So the the level of staff support is not the same for every advisory body, nor have we said what the expectation is of a staff of an advisory body. And as we're doing this work, we are working on what are the onboarding needs of our members? You know, what training do all advisory body members who come into the city need? Likewise, what's the parallel training that any staff of an advisory body needs and creating some base level of understanding about the support we expect out of the staff of an advisory body. So yes, there's sort of a list of trainings for staff that we're developing.
115 If I could try to frame it in one simple example, when you're when you're trained to know how to supervise and build teams, you have a lot of privilege in your in how you show up your agency to be that supervisor. When you bring in advisory boards, how do you respect the fact that you're managing up and not go into one of two camps, ignore them and and figure out how to move forward without them knowing that you ignored them or overreacting as they're thinking out loud in a meeting after a long day. And there's probably some nuggets in there. But maybe you don't need to get emotional and overreact to what just happened in that meeting. And so I just found it to be consistently. Confusing in how they were showing up in those roles, and I didn't feel like the city supported them in that, that quest. And they even found in evaluations that that was something that wasn't given enough attention in your review of our employees. So I just hope that when we do this, it really has a lot of internal system improvement work as well. Otherwise I think this will fall flat. And I know you don't want that. So thanks for agreeing to this. I look forward to hearing how that goes.
116 Yeah. Thank you councilor.
117 And I would just add that as part of this work, once we, you know, get through this phase of the foundational pieces and figuring out some of the assessment findings and all of those things, the shared practices really is, it's not just in the way that we're managing the bodies, but really like and the maintenance and development, but really how our how our staff learning about what are those shared practices and have the support that they need so that the community can have a meaningful experience. And so I think when we say shared practices, it's really the whole universe of the advisory bodies. Yeah, the idea would be that we would be able to create something that's more sustainable in that way, so that once we put in these new structures, then we can maintain them.
118 I think it's also in that category of we're used to when we go out in the public and there's some heated meetings, we expect that. But sometimes there's really a lot of great tension at some of your advisory meetings. And that doesn't mean, in fact, that's probably a good meeting. And so how can you see that as a positive meeting and glean what you can from that? And I think that sometimes we're trained to assume that was a bad meeting because there was some dissent or some pushback. And it's like, that's exactly what why we have these. So how can we lean into that? Yeah. Thanks.
119 Thank you so much for being here today for all of this work. I'm very excited to see this work continue to move forward. A next step is that in October, we will be able to use one of these meetings as a listening session for the advisory bodies enhancement project. So looking forward to working together. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, diego, can you please read the next item.
120 Item four council procedures handbook discussion.
121 Colleagues, today we have the opportunity to provide input on a draft table of contents for a Portland city council governance handbook. So many have expressed how helpful it would be if we collect and combine many of the different city practices and policies into a central document. My office has been collaborating with council operations to draft a Portland city council governance handbook. This handbook would serve not only as a reference for current and future councilors, but also increased transparency of council processes for our community. It's something that almost every other city has. I'd also like to emphasize that the intent is for this governance handbook to serve as a guide, not binding policy. Before I turn this over to our presenters today, I want to take a moment to appreciate and acknowledge the amazing work of aubrey chen on my team, as well as craig cook on council in council operations. This approach to working on governance issues collaboratively between council operations and council offices is new and is deeply rooted in my personal values of cooperation between and among all of us working in city hall for the community so deeply. Thank you for your amazing work. And now I will turn things over to craig cook and aubrey chen. Thank you.
122 Thank you, madam chair. Councilors. My name is craig cook. I'm a policy analyst and council operations. I use he him pronouns.
123 Awesome. And my name is aubrey chen. I use she her pronouns and I'm a council aide with the councilor Koyama Lane office.
124 Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak a little bit today about the council governance handbook process. We would see this as a tool, helpful tool for councilors, staff and the public. Also potentially helpful to orient new councilors. It's an informational reference guide for folks user friendly format for bringing together guidance from the charter code and other non-binding best practices and recommendations all together in one source for folks to use. The topics are based on council and staff input and draft topics were sent around on Friday afternoon to all councilors, including everyone on this committee but everyone on council as well. And we've also informed these draft topics based on input from council and staff conversations, as well as similar documents from peer cities and from the Oregon league of cities and other organizations. This is not a policy document. It doesn't introduce any new policies. It doesn't impose policies on council that have not been decided by council. It will evolve and change as a living document as council adopts new policies and procedures, the handbook will be updated and will live in council operations to continually inform the work of council. So as far as the timeline, we began initial research this summer, we are currently soliciting council input on topics that we'll cover. We'll take this feedback in the next couple of months to draft the handbook. We'll continue to request feedback throughout the fall from councilors, with the goal of initial publication of the document in December. As I said, continual updates will be ongoing as policies and procedures change. So one of the main, one of the main focuses of this handbook is to connect you all with resources to make your job easier. So everything from how to request briefings and presentations from city staff, how to solicit recommendations for the policy process, information on the budget process, and more. It's meant to be a comprehensive resource document. To that end, it will also include overview of council adjacent and support offices like council operations. The clerk, which sits within the auditor's office, as you know, and the city attorney's office and their roles and responsibilities and how and recommendations on how councilors and staff can best work with these offices to get policy, administrative, procedural, communications, legal and other support. So as an example of that, here is the scope of services provided by council operations. You likely are most familiar with committee staffing. So those of us who sit up here on the dais to support, but also working with you as committee leadership to set and file agenda items, organize presentations for committee, and also prepare committee staff summaries on legislative items that come out of committee and go before council. Council operations also provides administrative support. You're also likely familiar with your district admin, constituent services, and scheduling support provided by district. A couple other things provided by council operations that will be highlighted in this handbook include policy assistance. So council operations policy analysts like myself provide on request assistance with policy research analysis, development, drafting, proofing anything you can think of in the policy process and all communications is an important note. All communications on policy topics with council operations analysts are held in confidence in between your council office and council operations. They're not shared with other council offices, committee or council leadership, or the mayor and city administrator, unless otherwise requested by the councilor. Initiating the policy conversation. And then finally, the coordination work that council ops does. So communications, social media, website and listserv management. Scheduling of special meetings and tracking items as they're moving through council. This handbook will, as I said before, not be a document to introduce new policies, but we may identify through this process where there are gaps and places where we may you all may want to create policies. And so as you identify those, we're. Happy to draft them for council approval. And then they will eventually be included in the handbook. So as an example of that, several councilors have requested guidance or clarification on the process for field trips or off site meetings to conduct inspections and things like that. There's no currently existing council policy on that topic. So for right now, the handbook will include best practices from other jurisdictions. It will include recommendations from the city attorney, but it will not introduce a policy unless councilors decide that you want one. And then we're happy to draft one. How to provide input. So as I mentioned, the draft topic list was sent to you all on Friday. You may submit written input on the topic areas, either directly to aubry and I or to the council operations generic inbox at council operations at Portland, Oregon.gov by Monday, September 22nd. All of that written input that's provided to council operations, as I said previously, will be treated with discretion. It won't be attributed to any particular councilor or council office without your permission. And we do ask that at this time, you focus your feedback on the broad topic areas, whether there are topics you believe should be added or removed. And as I said, we'll come back later on for further input on the handbook itself. Thanks very much. Happy to take any questions and also very happy to hear your ideas.
125 Thank you so much for this presentation. That's helpful that today the what is most helpful is to focus on the broad topics covered under the table of contents, not under exactly what that content will be. That will be great to get feedback for us on topics, ones that we may be missed. And this is not a set in stone list. It says draft very largely on it. I'm not married to anything on here. If there are any councilors who have joined us to the for the government's governance committee, I don't see any. Feel free to approach the dais if you want to join the conversation and to councilors that are not able to join us this afternoon, but want to provide feedback echoing what craig just said, just reach out to craig and aubry directly. Send your feedback to the council operations email address now. I'd like to open up this agenda item for discussion. Councilor Clark, do you want to kick us off?
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126 Sure. Thank you, madam chair. A couple comments, maybe questions. Let me just riff a little bit. I wish we'd had something like this at onboarding where we just. Everything was on send and we didn't talk very much about procedures or process. So this is going to be really helpful for new councilors in the future and maybe for us as well. And it sounds like you have a you're developing a parallel piece where this will also be a piece for the public. Is that I heard you say that. Correct. And you're putting yourself in their shoes. How they understand, which makes me think it needs to be very simple. And I think I heard you say it's not prescriptive. It's just it's very, very simple, sort of like helpful hints for the council. I did have a couple comments. I think looking at the table of contents, I would just draw a cautionary line above executive and administrative collaboration. That's kind of a sensitive territory. And I'm wondering if you're also having the administration or city manager review this as well.
127 For the record, aubry chen pronouns council aid the answer is yes. We've reached out to the administrator's office, and we've also reached out to other city administrator, professional organizations and associations, as well as city administrators who do this work in other cities to get their feedback. Something that's really helpful here is just helping delineate and create best practices and norms, knowing that the executive and the legislative arms will need to collaborate in terms to sharing information, of sharing how things are running in respective districts or how certain departments are operating. I think we want to open up the dialog for some of the hopes of how collaboration could be without being overly prescriptive, knowing that a lot of this will have to be built in collaboration with the new city administrator.
128 And does that include the dca's? Are they reviewing this?
129 It would be up to their discretion.
130 So when it comes past executive and administrative collaboration, all the expectations and best practices under that, I think we need to be really sensitive about decorum, respect, how we couch all of that is going to be really sensitive, I guess, and careful. Let's see if I had any other comments, but I would just emphasize keep it simple, not prescriptive. And in terms of your the chart that showed the four different bubbles, you had administrative support by district. I don't know if this is on topic or not, but I think at some point we need to evaluate that role by district. I think everybody's working with administrative support differently, and that will be helpful to have that discussion. Maybe in, in this handbook or, or elsewhere. But those are my really high level. I don't have any real deep specifics. I'm glad you're looking at best practices and other cities, but just keep it simple and be sensitive. After executive administrative collaboration.
131 Thank you, councilor Clark, to your point about the district admin support, I don't think that necessarily reevaluating that would be a process of this handbook, but it could be one of those things that, as that procedure or policy is changed by council or council leadership, then it would later be incorporated into the handbook.
132 Councilor pirtle-guiney.
133 Thank you, chair, and thank you for bringing this forward on the agenda today. This is related to a lot of conversations that you and I had early on about the work of governance, and it's really great to see this moving. I appreciate craig and aubry, both of your work here. And I think having council operations ultimately own the final product is very appropriate and and the right place for us to hold this so that it outlasts any of our time in these seats. I agree with councilor Clark that there are some things at the end here where we need to be really careful. It sounds like this final document will be a combination of best practices and norms and procedures and policies, some of which council has weighed in on, some of which perhaps are the way we have started to do things that we haven't had a formal conversation about, but that have become accepted practice, and some of which perhaps council hasn't weighed in on at all. But their suggestions. And I want to make sure that as we look, especially at some of the the more politically sensitive topics listed here, that there's clarity around how each of the subsections comes to be. I don't think we need to label specifically this is a past policy. This is a a norm. This is just a suggestion. But I think that as we have further conversations, maybe we can air some of those things so that it's clear to councilors and to our staff where each of those pieces comes from. I just think that will help us as we move forward. I also just want to say on the record, as we're starting to discuss this, that I hope we can move eventually from just a handbook towards something that is really more of our our procedure manual, and that we start to think about a procedure manual as something that every time we I don't know how we want to describe what we do every two years, but maybe have a new group of people up here, maybe not, but restart the work to some extent. We review this and that. This is something that is hopefully not a living document, in that we're making changes all the time throughout the year because we need to have some consistency on how we operate our work as we move forward past this initial year, but that we do assume that every other year or two years, it's something we come back to make any changes to that we need to see, and then maybe even formally accept so that we're all recommitting every couple of years to the fact that these are our norms and our operating procedures. So thank you for getting us started, and I'm looking forward to providing my feedback, which I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to do over the weekend, but I will this week and to continuing through this committee to work on some of the details that are in here with you all.
134 Thank you, mr. President.
135 Vice chair Ryan.
136 Yes, thank you, chair. And thank you, aubrey, so much for you gave me some early updates on this and craig for the presentation today. This is definitely a resource document that I think all of us are like, wow, where was this when we needed it? So I'm so glad we're building this. And I think the word procedure manual is an adequate word that I think I was inserting here anyway, so I'm glad that came up. Thank you, council president. Looking at this, some of it was already handled by especially you, councilor Clark. Thank you. The word under the differences between legislative and executive authority in that category, I always find land use hearings to be kind of a separate thing. But was that implied under ordinances?
137 Land use decisions are covered under quasi quasi judicial, which is located, I believe, on the second page of the table of contents, whereas.
138 Quasi judicial. It's on there. Oh, it's on the next page. Okay. I think because my brain was going into the what are the different things we vote on and which has a first or second reading. That's probably why I was looking for it there. So great is executive committee on here. The reason I say that because I think a couple of things when I was new that caught me off guard was executive committee meetings and what that is all about. And so maybe that's a helpful edit to consider putting that in there. And the other is our igas in here, intergovernmental agreements definition.
139 I do not.
140 Have so many. And they really are a thing. And so I think that could be in the handbook as well.
141 We can definitely add both of those two sections or that into the draft.
142 And then in terms of I like that you explained executive and administrative collaboration, I think that's something that's really important for us to really dive into right now as we build this new form of government. And maybe for the record, so mayor is executive and administrative collaboration would be the city administrator and everybody else.
143 Yes, that is the intention of that. Okay.
144 I just wanted to make sure that I was following those definitions. And I really appreciate you bringing up, I think the best the the part that I had the most questions on were expectations and best practices. And I will just second that, keeping those high level and clear don't get too far in the weeds, but that's probably the part that I'll be diving in the most, just to make sure that they're not like, that's tough, because how do you explain those without anyway, good luck not being editorial when you're writing that part? That would be a hard assignment. Definitely can't use I for that. Okay, thanks. I'll say that.
145 Okay, great. I echo that that having explaining igas and then vice chair Ryan, were you talking about executive sessions explaining those? I think even just having a section it might be in here, but really explaining the different types of meetings would be great, especially for someone new to this. And even as I heard iga in her governmental agreement, I wondered about almost a would it be an index or with acronyms to explain acronyms? If that could make sense? I could see that being helpful. And if we're open to just kind of little more informally, not raising hands and just chatting, I also would love to just hear one thing I was going to ask council president is to explain maybe the difference of a procedure manual versus handbook. Is that something that this could turn into? Is that something that would be separate? Yeah, I know many of you have more experience kind of with some of the different terms.
146 I'm going to take having my mic on for a minute to say one other thing first, which is that as you are all talking about executive sessions right there, one of the things that I think we could include here is this is what a council meeting is. This is what a work session is. This is what an executive session is. This is what committee meetings are, and a little bit about what to expect in each. But I think that we should include that work session piece as well. And the different types of agenda items and actions that we have in each.
147 Can I just say something about that, please? It was a shock to me, not having been a city council follower.
148 That every council meeting is preceded by the opportunity for five people to speak, and I didn't know.
149 That that happened.
150 Yeah, you know that they're interesting little, you know, procedures like that that I wasn't aware of. And and that's not to say that in the future we can't change that or even include it for our committee meetings as well.
151 But those are the things that I figured out by just living them. And I also remember the first couple of months, a lot of things on the whiteboard, like, okay, so what are the different types of actions that can happen? And then, all right, let me let me understand its charter and then ordinance slash code and then kind of understanding the different umph behind each one. I think that would be great to have some of that explained if possible.
152 And maybe even a piece on robert's rules somewhere. I don't know, I didn't see it, but.
153 Where does.
154 That come into play? Sorry. We're on. You're stepping on your toes there.
155 But no, I the mic being on to step on everybody else.
156 I was thinking we could talk a little.
157 Bit, but two vice president and chair, to your question about a procedure manual versus a handbook, I think what I'm hearing right now is that this document is a bit of a what to expect, and that more public facing and explanatory for new councilors type of information. I think we also need and ideally it would all be in one place and this would flow into what I'm about to describe. And we wouldn't lose those first pieces, but we would add to it. Ideally, what I think of when I think of a set of procedures or a that type of handbook is here are the agreed upon things for how we operate here are either because they have become our norms, or because we have adopted them through resolutions. This is the way that we do things. And I think ultimately with a procedure manual, it's something that you probably do adopt as a body every year or every two years just to recommit to that being how you do things. I don't think you need to adopt everything in there individually, but that we would have that overview of how we do things. That's less about the public understanding and more about us agreeing to our systems again at the beginning of each year or every other year. So I think we start with, how do we do things? What's the public facing? And then eventually we can maybe get to that. We have enough agreed upon norms that we have a set of how we do things that we adopt every January or every other January.
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158 So as an example, your decision procedurally to limit vote explanations, for example, or limit the number of times somebody can speak or that kind of thing, those are more the second document that you're talking about, the norms, the procedures.
159 And those decisions were based on robert's rules, which of course guides us if we don't have other rules that that guide us instead. But those are the types of things that we would adopt in that handbook eventually. And I think this is the right place to start. This is really important, and I hope that eventually we add enough of those other things that it becomes that procedural handbook, and I apologize. I'm getting a call from my kid. I'm going to step out for just a few minutes, but I'll be back.
160 Go for it. Did you want to say something, councilor Ryan?
161 Oh, thanks for legacy.
162 I want to also bring up because I think, councilor Clark, I heard you say you hope that some of this includes decorum and that I just want to bring up that there are different feelings about that on council. And I've already heard from some other councilors and I respect that. And I, I hear that when some of these like communication expectations with full council under executive and administrative collaboration, and then also some of the ones like working relationships between council and city staff, communication between councilors, city manager and staff that is dipping into the decorum area. And there are some different difference of opinions on council of if and how we should have something official. And so just want to say that this. I just want to name that and name that we could be as high level as possible and just, you know, it could even say that councilors are to create their own norms of how they work together. It could be as simple as pointing to citywide hr policies. But just want to name that. That is an area that we've touched on before and I do think is important and we've been pushed to talk about it. But I also see how it's tricky because I've had folks say, if you have policies around decorum, you also have to think about how to enforce them and if they're going to be enforced. And so I just want to say, I know this is a sticky area, and I don't have set ideas of exactly where this is going to go. And I'm very open to hearing where we're at as a, as a full council with that.
163 I really appreciate that. I agree with you. I think we should start out very high level, I mean, respect and and then go from there. Just really basically respect your fellow councilor. Tease that out some. But I don't think we can be prescriptive. It's more of a value statement about how we work together. And actually, madam chair, you're really the best at that. Given your background and your temperament, I think you're one of the best people to articulate that.
164 We are just we just touched on if and how decorum should be part of this.
165 And high level.
166 High level, that's kind of what we're thinking, that it's high level and acknowledging that folks are at different places on council, but that is this is something that has been brought up.
167 As we think about the handbook versus procedure manual. That feels like one of those things that helps to tip us into procedure manual, those things that we all need to say together. We agree that this is not just the the public explanation of what we do and what to expect, but the things that guide us in our work. And while I agree that high level is probably necessary, at least at this point, I think that bodies like ours have to frankly, mature before we can get to the point of holding ourselves to very specific procedures around decorum. We ad to have some basic principles to around how we show.
168 Up.
169 In these spaces.
170 I think with your under your leadership, we've slowly implemented a few things to take us in that direction as we've developed practice among the 12 of us. And I think you've done a great job in inching us forward in that direction. And and those changes that you've implemented seem to have taken. I mean, I think I think they're working. I'm not sure what the next one is, but I hope we can continue on that track to develop the that culture or commonality amongst us, whether it's timing or respect or whatever it is. But I think I think it's been working. Can I say one other thing? Just I don't I was going to say this just for closing, but I really want to thank you, madam chair, for taking this on. This work is all so foundational and so important. I'm reminded every time I come to this committee how important it is to establish these policies and procedures here, to air them, whether it's the advisory bodies or the way we communicate or the committees or whatever. This is such important work. I just really appreciate your leadership. I think we're we're doing a good job eight months in, we're, you know, we're kind of inching forward carefully, but I think it's working.
171 I think so, too. Thank you for saying that. And thank you. I have a great vice chair, and I think that this committee is I love coming to this committee. And I sometimes I notice when we're at the full council and some other councilors seem bored by governance topics. I'm like, well, our committee, everyone on our committee loves it. So did you want to hop in there, vice chair?
172 Oh yeah.
173 That was a wonderful conversation. Yeah. That's why most nonprofits always have two committees. And then the rest are ad hoc governance and finance, and then the rest are ad hoc based on what the mission is delivering in that any given operational year, perhaps I'm giving a little bit of an advertisement for the policy I mentioned earlier. I have a question about timeline. The last presentation, they were pretty clear about where they thought that was, how this was moving along. What do you see the procedure here with our timeline?
174 Sure. So I think we were looking at drafting in October and November with the idea of having a document by the end of the year.
175 I like that, craig. So the point is, we want to make sure by the time there could be, who knows, whatever. By the time we swear in a council, say, after the 2026 election, in the beginning of year 2027, that this is ready to use.
176 Absolutely. I think ideally we have something before then, but certainly having a final document by the beginning of 2027.
177 That just back.
178 To earlier comments like, of course we could. We're building everything as we were serving. So it wasn't ready when we got here. But this is something that we're is really is going to be really important and really help with onboarding. So thank you for taking this on. These are the kind of jobs that not everyone is skilled and gifted at seeing through. And I do think that the two of you seem perfect for this assignment, so I appreciate it.
179 Thank you.
180 And also just confirming and reiterating that it would continue to be a living document that's available online, but can be altered and council operations will own it and information can be added or removed as needed.
181 Absolutely. I think that's the intention, I think to the council president's point, if this were if there were to be a section that was specifically about approved procedures that council has voted on, that would just need to be we would come up with a cadence by which that was approved.
182 Colleagues, any more thoughts about these topic headers? Anything that you think should be included or possibly removed. And also you'll be able to we'll be able to provide feedback. Looking at the timeline in October and November. So continuing to draft and provide input. Any other thoughts about those? Great. Well, we were approved to go a little bit over, but we might be able to wrap up on time.
183 So testimony.
184 No. Yeah. Our next meeting is Monday, September 22nd. I can check with the clerk. Did we have any testimony signed up?
185 We did not as we just had four presentation agenda items.
186 Okay, great. So we have a couple topics that will be coming back up. At our last council meeting, there was discussion around how to use the consent agenda more efficiently. So I am hoping that we can bring up that topic at some point. At a governance committee meeting soon, and then following up on what we just heard about advisory bodies. There's talk about using the first meeting in October of governance as a listening session. They were saying that that is a next step. And then just additionally, a reminder to provide feedback about these topics that we just heard about in the handbook. Let them know by Monday, September 22nd about the headers. And they are open to hearing from us. And yes.
187 If we are going to solicit input in October, are you thinking that we would reach out to former gtmc members or neighborhood district coalitions, or how how are we going to reach out to the public for to comment on this? Would you.
188 Guys like to come back up? Is that okay?
189 I think we'd be open to the procedure by which this committee or council feels is most appropriate. We want this to be a document that is representative of y'all's wishes and values. And so former members, neighborhood district coalitions, those could all be on the table for providing feedback.
190 Great. I would recommend that we reach out to the district coalitions and other groups that pay attention to what we're doing and see if this is going to be helpful for them. If they if we can distribute some sort of a draft, I don't know, through the district coalitions or some other mechanism.
191 And this email council operations at Portland Oregon.gov. I know that is that for mostly councilors to provide input on the topics or is that for members of the public also.
192 We were envisioning at this time it would be councilors for the topics. It's a public email address. Certainly happy to take public input at any time. I think we want to, like I said, be intentional about how we're engaging with the public on this and get a little bit more direction from you all and exactly how you'd like us to do that.
193 Great. Well, it sounds like by September 22nd, councilors give feedback on the topics, and then we can continue to have conversations about meaningful ways to include the public in the drafting and continued input process in October and November. Did you want to say something?
194 I forgot I had two other.
195 Comments or questions under city hall bodies, roles and operations. What? What do you mean by structure of city hall? I started thinking about architectural renderings or something.
196 What does that mean?
197 Just as I come back to the dais, what I was thinking about is really sort of outlining the role of the clerk, how council operations sort of works in conjunction with city council, and really sort of outlining the different bodies and the different sort of parts of how city council works. Just as a personal anecdote, for example, I was, despite being a staffer for two years, very surprised about the existence of council operations and the fact that there was a body that was built to support and provide summaries of committees, for example, which was something that I'd never maybe personally, but it's something that I was unaware of and would have been very helpful for me. So when I say in this sorry, I'm stammering a little bit for the different council bodies and different parts, but we really wanted to outline are the different groups that really support and operate within city hall.
198 I think to the point of it being a resource for folks, kind of what those different bodies do, writing some role clarity, and also how councilors and councilor Staff can engage with those bodies.
199 So this is good. So when I listen to that, it sounds like the structure of city hall is a bigger picture category. And then there's council clerk, council operations, city auditor.
200 Right.
201 Those are I.
202 Think I'm confused on why it's parallel with all of those, but is it just part of the header of city hall bodies, roles and operations?
203 Yes, it is the broader category.
204 Maybe it just needs to be moved up with that. Otherwise I was like, what? What is how does that how do we speak to that specifically in a parallel construct? Okay. That's why we're having this meeting, right?
205 I see what you're saying below. Structure of city hall. All of those could be maybe indented under that umbrella. Yeah, yeah.
206 Now that I've listened to you, it sounded like it was a broader topic. And then when you're getting into the end expectations and best practices, I noticed that there's a lack of consistency at times with the word, the usage of the word expectations. So if you say expectations at the beginning of your header would, it's probably not necessary to say expectations of policy creation. It's like expectation best practices of city council meetings, committees, policy creation, mayor's budget. Otherwise I'm wondering why did you write? Why did we put expectations in front of mayor's budget in front of policy creation and staff reports, but not in front of the other ones? So it's just consistency that makes sense.
207 Thank you.
208 Well, we got through a lot today. Colleagues. Thank you so much. And with that I will I will now adjourn this meeting of the governance committee.