The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-06-23
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Governance Committee met on Monday, June 23, 2025, at 2:30 p.m., with roll call establishing attendance before proceeding through a three-item agenda. The committee first considered a proposed appointment to the Civil Service Board, hearing background on the board's structure, its three labor/management/public perspective seats, the types of cases it hears, and the nominee's professional history and approach to neutrality; a motion was made and seconded to forward the appointment to full Council with a recommendation to confirm, discussion followed regarding concerns about the appointment process, and a vote occurred with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger. The second item covered governance practices, including updates on a consultant solicitation process, criteria for evaluating proposals, cost considerations, an ongoing citywide review of advisory bodies expected to conclude around October, questions about presiding officer succession rules under charter and code, concerns about a six-member councilor caucus and public meetings law, a legislation-tracking pilot tool, an Austin-style public message board (deemed potentially inconsistent with Oregon public meetings law), and discussion of short-, medium-, and long-term governance priorities. The third item was a debrief on the recently completed budget process, featuring reflections on engagement, timing, and process improvements, with comments from city finance staff. The meeting adjourned with the next session scheduled for July 7.
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0 Good afternoon. I call the small but mighty meeting of the governance committee to order. It's Monday, June 23rd, 2025 at 2:30 p.m. Exactly keelan. Will you please call the roll? Pirtle-guiney here. Ryan. Clark.
1 Clark is here.
2 Dunphy. Koyama Lane here. Ashley, will you please read the statement of conduct?
3 Welcome to the 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 over calling 311 information and engaging with this committee can be found on this link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to meeting in person. Testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals must 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 deliberation 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 might take a short recess or reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered when testifying and state your name for the record. If. If you're a lobbyist, identify your organization. You represent virtual testifiers. Show unmute themselves when the clerk calls their name. Thank you.
4 Thank you so much. So today we will hear a proposed appointment to the civil civil service board. Alfonso more to share some updates relevant to this governance committee. Create some space for discussion about our priorities and operations. Have a discussion about the budget season, our reflections and learning through this process. Keelan. Will you please read the first item? Appoint alfonso moore as commissioner.
5 Of the civil service board for a term to expire in June of 2028.
6 Great. And we have alfonso moore with us online. Is that correct or no. Here in person? Okay. Wonderful. So we're considering an appointment for the commissioner of the civil service board. Welcome, alfonso moore, joining today. Would you like a chance to introduce yourself?
7 Yeah. My name is alfonso moore. I'm a resident of Portland, have been born here. I was employed actually at the city of Portland from 2005 through 2017. I worked in human resources. Right now I'm an employee labor relations manager, and I work for the city of Beaverton.
8 Wonderful colleagues. This is our chance to have any discussion. From what I saw, we don't have anyone signed up to testify. Do we have any questions? Comments?
9 Maybe we could just get a little background on the commission itself.
10 Kelly, why don't you take it?
11 Good afternoon council. My name is kelly hess, and I'm a labor relations analyst with the city of Portland. I am here today to speak to alfonso moore's appointment to the civil service board, which is a charter mandated function of Portland city governance. This appointment seeks to fill a long standing vacancy that has existed since the expiration of mary strahan preston's appointment in April of 2024. The board consists of three members, appointed by the mayor and confirmed by council to hear civil service appointed employee appeals related to disciplinary or classification actions. Each of the three members represents a distinct perspective to inform their decision making. The perspective of labor, the perspective of management, and the perspective of the general public. Today's appointee, alfonso moore, represents the perspective of the public alfonso brings with him over two decades of public service experience with a deep commitment to fostering positive, collaborative workplace environments.
12 Great. Thank you so much.
13 Can I ask a question? Do you mind giving us some examples of the kinds of cases that come before the board?
14 I do, yeah. So ann marie kevorkian, maddie, labor relations, there are three different types of cases that come before the civil service board. The first is civil service classification reviews. So that is if an employee seeks a reclassification of their position and it is denied, they have the right to go through the civil service board to have the board hear their their complaint. There's a set of criteria that is probably best. Discussed and researched through our human resources. Administrative rule 3.15, which outlines the various criteria that the civil service board employs to make their decisions. So that's number one classification reviews. Number two is for disciplinary actions for non probationary civil service employees that are seeking an appeal of a suspension or termination disciplinary action. And I would say it's important to note that typically our represented staff across the city would be covered through a grievance procedure. And this would typically fall to non-represented classifications or those that are that don't have a grievance process. And the third would be for appeals on testing. So we have a limited number of classifications in the city that have some sort of testing process, particularly in the fire service. And if there is concern about the outcome of testing, that would also go through civil service. And those are the three examples.
15 Do you mind if I ask one more? And just roughly how often does the commission meet?
16 The commission is expected to meet quarterly. However, there's been a great deal of delay in how often they meet since the COVID period, so I would say they meet at least annually to check in as a board. Or maybe we might get lucky every six months, but they hear approximately, I would say, 1 to 2 cases per year, with some years being more and some years being none at all. It's very, very dependent on what's happening, I would say, in the city.
17 Okay. Go ahead.
18 Thank you so much for being here today and for applying for this position and being willing to put your yourself out here. I'm looking at your background that we have, and it looks like you have a lot of experience in these areas. It's the work that you're doing now, but that most of your experience is on the management side of the work. And this is our public position. This is the position that I assume is meant to be neutral, where you have one person representing labor and one management. Can you speak to how you would approach cases before the civil service board, specifically in that that neutral public representing seat?
19 Sure. I would understand in my role that it's basically to look at, you know, the complaints based on the merit what has happened. I do that and I have done that in my current role and previous ones. I would say the only time that I look at myself and even my current role as being part of management is during bargaining. Beyond that, if I'm dealing with regular day to day issues, conflict resolution, etc, I take a neutral approach to that with employees and management. And so it's a situation where I'm always trying to get to, you know, the crux of the issue. You know, how can we resolve it? If I find fault with management, I will say that if I find fault with the employee, I will say that too. I've had situations where both sides have not been happy with me as a result of that, so I don't have a problem, you know, expressing that neutrality, we, you know, believe that. And that's our role. And to do that because that garners trust with employees as well. So they don't look at me as just being pro management. So they will talk with me about things within the workplace, looking for me to resolve them as well. So going into this role, it would simply be an understanding this position to and, you know, it's community based that I would be looking at from the perspective of has the city done everything that it should have done, you know, when this complaint is being brought forward. And so looking at that as maybe the admin rules following those, what's been past practice, but having that lens. And so again, although I've worked here in the past, I know some people here not a lot. It's been eight years. I would still know that my role would be to be neutral and objective.
20 Thank you, I appreciate that.
21 Are you able to tell us a little bit about the hr roles that you had when you worked in the city of Portland?
22 Sure. I was a senior analyst in the recruitment division, which is now, I guess, talent acquisition initially. So I did recruit for various bureaus at the city of Portland at the time, and then I was promoted to an hr business partner. So I was part of the insight team. So some of the bureau's areas within the city that I was an hr business partner was human resources hr business partner for city council at one point. So mayor's office councilors a lot less at the time. And then let's see also, transportation was where I was at when I left to go to the city of Beaverton housing bureau omrf, just to name a few. So a lot of the city at the time and so worked with management, senior leadership, as well as with employees to as a business partner. Different work because that was more employee relations related. So dealing with workplace issues and conflict. When I was a senior analyst, it was more recruiting. So recruiting for positions within the city organization as a whole with various departments. So work was different. But I enjoyed both when I was here. And I will say too, as a senior analyst, there was an employee who did reach out to the civil service board, complained about the city's process. I believe it was in regards to recruitment. I actually had the experience of being brought forward to the board being asked questions by that employee for probably like 45 minutes about process, what I did or didn't do. So I have an understanding of it from that perspective as well. So I want to just put that out there to you to.
23 And to clarify, there are two active members. And so this will make three. And is that the maximum amount? Is that how many are there.
24 Total of three.
25 Total of three. Always. Okay.
26 And yes there are two active members.
27 That you're looking at me because I'm trying to decide if I have an additional question or not, I apologize, I guess I'm wondering if you can share with us. If you have, you've done a lot of public service. It looks like your whole career has been in public service. But have you served outside of a professional role on a board like this before, or been involved in some of these other decision making processes outside of the outside of your your work position?
28 Not on a board. I have participated in community events and I've just done that as a citizen of Portland. I'm going to actually participate in good in the hood event that's coming up as well. So I have a history of doing that. But from a professional level, no, it's pretty much been in part based on my profession as a hr professional.
29 Great. Thank you.
30 Yeah. Without seeing any hands up, I would entertain a motion.
31 Madam chair, I move the appointment of alphonso moore for commissioner of the civil service board to be sent to the full council with a recommendation that the appointment be confirmed.
32 Great.
33 May I have a second?
34 Sorry. Second?
35 Yes.
36 The motion has been moved by councilor Clark and seconded by councilor Pirtle-guiney. Is there any discussion?
37 Thank you for your willingness to serve.
38 Thank you.
39 Go ahead. Hey, I want to be careful.
40 How I say this because you seem immensely qualified for this and like you will take a very fair look as you're doing this work. And I appreciate that. So I just want to note that my comments are not about you specifically, but about the process. And I need to say on the record that it's a little bit concerning to me that on a board where we have specifically a labor position, a management position, and a neutral position that the mayor is recommending to us, somebody whose professional background has all been in management, having identified individuals to serve on boards like this before that are in the labor space. I know how critical these neutral positions are, and I know how much work goes into trying to find somebody who can really carry that neutral space. And I believe from your answer to my question that you can, but I just need to state on the record that I'm very concerned with the mayor's judgment in bringing us forward a nominee with the management background for a neutral position. And I think that we need to continue to have conversations with the mayor's office about the vetting that he does for these appointments. I think we need to continue to have conversations about what we, as council, do to make sure that we are. Making it clear what our expectations are. I will absolutely support alfonso's nomination moving forward today, but I have a lot of concerns about the process here.
41 Thank you for sharing. Will the clerk please call the roll?
42 Pirtle-guiney?
43 I Clark,
44 I.
45 Koyama Lane I.
46 The report is passed the full council with a recommendation to be confirmed.
47 Thank you.
48 All right. Thank you.
49 All right. Keelan, will you please read the next item?
50 I'm sorry. Item two. Governance practices policy agenda committee and council. Transparency and accountability.
51 Great. So, colleagues, I wanted to earmark this time to center the big picture of this governance committee. Share some updates with you all. Also makes more space for discussion about our shared priorities. All right, so I wanted to give a couple updates. The first is on the idea of us working with a consultant, and wanted to just give an update to our process. So as a reminder, following our full council work session, council president and I worked with the city attorney, attorney, and procurement to determine how best to proceed. We were advised to offer an open, competitive solicitation for anyone interested in working with our group here at council. As council was informed at the start of the solicitation, the solicitation closes today. So in the next two weeks, an evaluation panel representing g. Tech city, human resources city operation vice chair Ryan and my office will review and rate those proposals to identify the top response. And then following that formal scope of work and timeline, will will create will decide how to move forward. And I'm excited to pick this back up again and wanted to see if either of you want to jump in about any questions or comments specifically around that topic.
52 To begin.
53 Responses we did. That was my.
54 Question was how many responses.
55 We have? We got quite a few responses. Yeah, I, I do. From what I heard, I think there was. A it was left out somehow when posting that we're not there's not a dollar amount tied to this. So I think folks might be less interested when they realize that. But there were folks that I think quite a few at least asked for. You can request the information, so ask for more information. And I think there are a few responses to look at at least, so we'll give an update.
56 I was going to ask on the cost side, because we don't have money set aside for this. And we do have one group that has said that they would do it for free to us. I guess I would say, are you going to be creating proposals based on the substance of the proposal and then talking about cost of proposal and potentially bringing an ask to council for funding for this, or are you going to be waiting proposals, including criteria around cost?
57 That is a great question. It seems to make sense to pull out the cost piece and think about what folks are offering to do with us, but then also let folks know that we have not set money aside for this. And so I would I would say if there are consultants that want to pull their application because of that, that would make sense. But that first to look at what they're offering, what do you both think in terms of that?
58 I think I'm open to looking at looking having you look at the proposals in a cost neutral way. But I do think that we either need to be clear with folks pretty quickly that we don't have money to pay for something, or we need to be clear with our fellow councilors pretty quickly that there might be an ask to find money.
59 Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So I just asked for a little update, and we don't know the exact exact number of applications because things don't close until end of day today. And that one of the criteria is to be rated as cost. So it's separate from the other.
60 So that is one of the rating criteria.
61 Yeah.
62 But it can be kept separate from some of the other criteria.
63 Okay.
64 Can you can you tell us about some of the criteria that you're using.
65 Oh goodness.
66 I mean.
67 Yeah I can.
68 We can talk about our preferences I guess. I don't think that there's very many consultants out there that have worked with a brand new form of government. I'll bet you.
69 Yeah, I'm going to invite my chief of staff to come in. She's she said, do you want me to come in? She. Mary lee will be working on doing the scoring with kezia wanner from council. Councilor ryan's office. But she can shed a little bit more, more light on this process. Yeah. I think these are all great questions.
70 I think that when you look at them, the experience that they have is important. The breadth of experience. I don't know if there's letters of support or testimonials that come with this application or that would be interesting to hear feedback from others that have used them.
71 Yeah.
72 Yeah, there she is.
73 Come on up. Introduce yourself for the record, please.
74 Hello.
75 Mary lee, chief of staff for Tiffany Koyama Lane.
76 Great. So there was a question a little bit about what are the different types of criteria that will be used. Do you know about this? Are we able to give any input.
77 So following the work session the council had and there was a good discussion and a lot of questions raised, we worked with city attorney and with city procurement to develop a scope of work. So most of the evaluation will have to do with that scope of work, as well as having the ability to have worked with public bodies in this kind of supportive work in general. So we're looking for people who have experience doing that. We're looking for people who have the ability to meet the scope of work, which is some of what we talked about in the general work session with the council. And then earlier, as you were talking, the cost is one factor, and we will be open to who the best consultants to do the work that we need to have done will be, and then cost will be taken into consideration. The rating panel will bring a recommendation back to, I believe, governance first and then back to full council.
78 Okay.
79 Mary, can I can you just tell us a little bit more about the scope of work? It's been a few weeks since we had that conversation.
80 Sure. We and we gave you a preliminary scope from one of the potential contractors that we had been talking with, the ability to set some basic parameters of engagement with each other. The some of the pieces councilor Clark, that you have been working on in terms of how do we conduct ourselves both with each other and also with members of the public and members of the city staff who come to engage with us on policy and other issues? The ability to improve the way the council is functioning in their meetings, particularly the committee meetings, the ability to try to set some common understanding of where it's not strategic planning in any way, but some common understanding of, for instance, revenue. One of the things that there is a lot of revenue, things that are issues that are coming for the council currently and in the future, how do we think about that collaboratively and collectively in a way that's effective in terms of governance? So those are some examples.
81 Can you I'm going to be facetious here, but can you can you just add skills in marriage counseling?
82 Well.
83 I believe with.
84 12 of us we're looking for family counseling.
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85 A little bit.
86 And I have just done some brainstorming in different conversations I've had about how to make sure if and when we do this, that we are being careful about quorum and making sure that if we are doing anything related to city business, that even if we are working with a consultant, that we're doing it, we're noticing it properly and have also thought through a few different situations that when we get to the point, if we're going to move forward with a group that we can talk about, does it make sense for counselors in different districts to do some work? Does it make sense for us to split and do split in half and have two districts working together and two others, just to make sure that we're being extra careful there? And we have our city attorney here. Is there anything? I'm hoping that we could even have an attorney in the room, as we're doing, if we end up doing some sort of a retreat, doing more of the interpersonal work. Robert robert taylor, would you like to share anything with us about what you're thinking about if, if and if we move forward with this, things that we'll need to be aware of. Any thoughts about my ideas? If we end up wanting to be extra careful and maybe do some work by district.
87 I actually already agreed to come to the retreat, didn't you?
88 Hi. Thank you. Robert taylor, city attorney I think I think all of the discussions that that you have talked about are, are, are vital for the new council to have. I think that there are some parameters around the public meetings that we have to be careful with. If it's if it's purely a retreat to deal with interpersonal relationships, I think there is authority to do that outside of a public meeting, anytime it's more substantive. Talking about the structure of committees or or other more substantive issues, I think then you have to be concerned about public meetings issues, and there's ways to structure that with work sessions and the like. So I think there are ways to accomplish what you would like to accomplish, while also being mindful of the of the state law around public meetings.
89 Great. Well, any decisions we're making in this area will make sure to be consulting you. And as we as the conversation of decorum comes up, it's really interesting to me to have a lot of different conversations about routes. We can go around this, and I do see this as one way to come up with some more informal agreements and have had great conversations, including with terri harris, about some of the pros and cons to different, different ways to have agreements or rules. And. Yeah, it's interesting because I'm realizing if we do put something in writing decorum wise, pass it, have it be a part of our official rules. We also should probably then think about what are what are consequences if rules are broken and what are we going to decide about that. And so I'm realizing there's it does trigger a few different things. And do think even though if you're making some interpersonal agreements, if those can't be actually or the plan isn't that they're enforced, I could still see some value to hearing from each other and coming up with some some agreements as a starting place where we can at least check in and say, hey, we did try to agree to this. I understand that there might be different opinions about that, but that's a hope that the decorum conversation could continue a bit in this space.
90 Councilor if I could also add, once we know who the consultant is, that will be working with, we've had several members of gtac once they heard about this effort, who reached out and wanted to both remind us or inform us that there have been a lot of recommendations about council governance that have yet to be taken up and yet to be considered, and they're hoping to be a collaborator in this process. Of course, under full open meeting law, those, those kinds of things. So they have very kindly offered to connect up with us. And whoever we decided the consultant will be to make sure that we're not losing any of that important work that hasn't had yet had a chance to move forward. So that is another exciting piece about this.
91 Yeah. Thank you for adding that. Any other conversation or questions?
92 I just have a comment. Once the group decides on which group we're going to use, I hope that we as council members also have some input at that point on what we'd like to see accomplished, what our personal goals might be, or what our priorities might be for. For that effort.
93 Absolutely, absolutely.
94 That makes sense. Regardless of whoever we choose to move forward with, that makes a lot of sense. Individual check ins, maybe even check ins by district. I think coming up with some goals of where folks want to land. And some of those will be different between different councilors, but some also might be surprisingly very similar to. Great. Thank you so much. So another area I wanted to give updates on are the process of the different advisory bodies. That's something that is important to a lot of us in this committee. And so it was shared at a past council meeting that our chief engagement officer is working on a city wide effort to assess all the city's advisory boards, commissions, committees. Councilor Ryan and I have met with amanda garcia snell to review the work plan, objectives, action steps and timeline, external and internal working groups are being created to review the type of bodies currently in existence. Their purpose, life cycle, composition, volunteer experience, expectations, as well as recommendations for future actions. And I know that this officer is also has someone on staff focusing on this. And so it it's been interesting to see this process and hear about the different bodies. I think it's been there. There are a lot of them. And so just bringing them all together and having them in one place and trying to make sure we have the information about how they're different and similar. And councilor Canal is very interested in these and has agreed to be someone on council who's part of the internal work group. So we have that coming together. Different folks internally working on this and giving some input about the different bodies. Final report and recommendations are expected around October of this year, and that is to take advantage of any budget implications as a result. And so it could make sense if we'd like, we can invite councilor Kanal to come and give us updates from time to time at governance meetings in the future, but also just wanted to give a little update with where things are at. And is mary still in the room just in case? I know she took the meeting last. Okay, just in case there are more. Any follow up questions about this that you might have answers to?
95 Go ahead.
96 So I was under the impression, thinking back long ago when we had this conversation, that one of our goals was to shrink the number and, and given this new form of government to that might really lend itself to shrinking the number of advisory committees we have, that sort of thing. So that was one of my understandings we were going to do. I also have a related question, not specifically to committees, but I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what civic life does. The individuals that are in that it's not a bureau or department, but whatever we call it, I, I've got some feedback from people in the community that have approached them, and I'm just not clear exactly what their function is at this point.
97 Mary, would you be willing to talk a little bit about the last check in that you had with amanda and where things were at? And I remember hearing that the goal was to streamline these and make sure that they were these different advisory bodies were really respecting volunteers time and that there wasn't duplication. I think coming out of that might mean that we do have less advisory bodies, but that the goal is really to make sure that there's some sort of streamlining and assessment. And I think also, I mean, I was hearing there were about 300, I think was the largest number. And I think through actually looking at these, we're at a number of closer to in the 70s.
98 Yeah. Mary lee. Chief of staff for councilor Koyama Lane. There is a very well thought out plan to both assess what's happening now, type and categorize. Some people say I have an advisory body, some people say I have a council, some people say I have a committee to try to get some consistency. And when a situation calls for some advice from someone, how do we approach that? So each one of us, each one, each entity is not doing it in their own way. And that there's consistency about terms, there's consistency about focus, there's consistency for authority. And looking at where there's duplication within. I'm sorry, underneath the dca and in that service area, if there's application can there be consolidation. And as councilor said there's already as a result of this work starting have been some discussions about how do we consolidate, how do we sunset does every committee, you know, serve until the end of time or is there work to be done. It's done well and then we thank each other and go away. So those are some of the conversations that are being had. And I the staff person working on this is julia meyer, who those of you know, did a staff tac and a number of these. Looking at the big picture, how do we look for efficiencies? How do we work better in collaboration with the community? So I'm quite sure that we're going to achieve some results here.
99 That sounds great. Thank you mary. So can I expect, madam chair, that we're going to get a report back that lists what all these are by bureau or service area? Because I'm just thinking today in the tni committee, we heard about a citizens advisory committee on the transportation plan. And I know there's it would just be great to see what those are by bureau or service area. Yeah.
100 That's absolutely part of the project.
101 Terrific. That sounds great.
102 And some of that actually is available. I can share that with you under the advisory bodies program website. There is a complete list now that you can see up there. Yeah, I can absolutely send that to you. And it's helpful I had you can. You can see it by there are a few different categories. And I did ask in one of our meetings for there to be some separation about the different types of advisory bodies. Some report to council, some are appointed by the mayor. And so there was openness to that and that would be added. But we can absolutely share that. Councilor pirtle-guiney. I.
103 Really appreciate this update, and I think that there's a lot we can do to make sure that we are being careful. Also, as council, when we're asked to create new advisory bodies and boards, that we're clear about whether these are permanent or temporary bodies, I think some of what seems to have happened at the city is that we had some temporary oversight needs that we didn't create as temporary bodies. I can't believe I'm saying this because I am usually all about making sure council has our space and our say on things, but I do want to make sure that we don't overstep in our interactions with the executive branch here, because it seems like we have a very strong role in deciding whether to create these bodies or not, but that we do need to listen to the executive branch on whether they are adding value to their work or not. Because even if it's not advising us and adding value to our work, it may be that it's community input that they need.
104 Thank you for that. And I just shared via teams and I can also send it via email. There's a lovely spreadsheet that breaks down these different committees by service area, city operation. Yeah by the different service areas. And that is available to the public. It is the advisory bodies inventory April 2025.
105 Councilor. If you'd like, we can also share the work scope of work and the timeline that has been shared with us with the committee members, if that be of interest.
106 Yeah, I'm and I'm making a little list of we can send a follow up email with a few of these things so we can add the scope of work. Great. Any other discussion about either of those topics? All right. So another thing I as chair of governance I people just will throw certain things my way. Like what about this or this as an issue. So one thing that was brought up was chairing council in the absence of both council president and myself. So the question of what happens came up recently when both council president and I had a hard stop at the end, towards the end of a meeting, and the meeting was quite not ready to adjourn. After that meeting, we I dug a little deeper with our governance mvp, terry harris of gtac and also the city attorney, and discovered that there's a little bit of what could be perceived as misalignment between the charter and code. But ultimately, the charter allows us to operate under the rules we adopt in code. So I can I have hard copies for you all. The code section 3.0204. Current code says if no councilor in attendance served as president or vice president, the councilor from the same district as the president, whose last name is first in alphabetical order. That's what code says. So this is this is the rule we will operate under until a point at which we want to discuss a new approach and bring an ordinance to update our own rules in code. Yeah. Just bringing this forward. So basically the charter says that we will come up with our own rule. This is what we had decided in code. There was a concern. Do those things. Clash with each other or. I think city city attorney robert taylor gave his opinion. But would you like to share it here also?
107 Yes. Thank you. Robert taylor, city attorney. The charter says that the council president will preside. And then in the absence of the president, the vice president will preside. And then if the president and vice president both are absent, then council will select who will preside over the meeting. And then the charter also allows council to set their own rules of procedure. And under that authority, to set your own rules of procedure, you have a rule that says if the president and vice president both are absent, then you have a set of defaults. The first default is the person who most recently served as the president. If they're not here, then it's the person who most recently served as a vice president. If they're not there, then the third default is as the chair read. It is the member from the same district as the president, who last name is first in alphabetical order. The purpose behind council having a rule that essentially just sets a default. It's so that a meeting can proceed smoothly. If the president and vice president have to step out of the meeting. Under the previous form of government, there was a similar default rule where it the last default, I believe, was. The commissioner who was assigned the lowest commission number back when we used to assign commission numbers. So it I think the concern I have heard expressed with that final default is that it just seems a little arbitrary, a little random, because the previous two defaults are defaulting to somebody who previously served as the president, or a person who previously served as vice president, so that there's a rationale for that, in that it assures that the person who will be the presiding over the meeting has some experience in that capacity, and also that people had previously elected to serve in those roles. But if there is no such person on the council, it is necessary to have some sort of a default rule or not. I mean, you don't have to have that rule. You could just leave it up to council having kind of an ad hoc vote during the meeting to try to pick who's going to run the meeting. The you could change that rule if you're not. If you don't like exactly how that works, you could always change that to find other some other sort of default to help make sure the meeting runs smoothly.
108 You know.
109 One of the things that you said is whether these two things are are in conflict. And it seems to me that they're not in conflict, because in code, what we've done is just predetermined. This piece that says we shall select one from our number, we've predetermined how we do that. So I don't think there's any conflict or any reason to change it, unless folks can think of something that is less arbitrary than the same district, first in alphabetical order. But I do have a question that I think gets to how often in the future this will actually be an issue. And I'm wondering, mr. Taylor in for a where it says that the first default would be the councilor, who most recently served as president. Do you take that to mean who most who was the previous the most recent previous president, meaning the immediate past president? Or do you take that to mean whoever around the dais was the most recent president? So if, for example, nobody else around the dais had served as president in the previous term or the term before that, but three terms before the person who was president is somebody who is at the dais that they would chair the meeting. And I'm asking this, and I know it sounds a little bit silly, but if we imagine a future a few years from now where we've had a few people in the roles of president and vice president, then even if we have an election where there is a wholesale change of who is at the dais, voters are very unhappy and vote out a lot of different people. The chances that we have somebody who at some point has served as president or vice president seems like it would be relatively high.
110 That's a great question.
111 Can you clarify the question being answered?
112 Does mr. Taylor think that most recently, as in the councilor, who most recently served as president? And then it says if no councilor in attendance, served as president, the councilor who most recently served as vice president. I'm wondering if mr. Taylor reads that to mean immediate past president and vice president, or any past president and any past vice president. I'll just I'll say because in b it says if no councilor in attendance served as president. I had thought that it meant at any time, not immediate past, which would mean that it would very rarely, once we get a few years from now happen, that we would ever get to number c in the future.
113 Great question. So the way I read for a and b and c together in context, I would say for a applies to the councilor who most recently served as president. And so it would be the immediate past president. And if they're not available, then the another person who most recently served. So it would be all of the immediate past presidents, you would go through that order. And then if none of those folks are available, then the, the councilor who most recently served as vice president. So that would be all the available vice presidents in descending order. And then if you exhaust that, then it would get to the default. And for c. So I think you're correct that as this council has a little more experience in, in electing other officers than that bench will be will be deeper to choose from. Yeah.
114 Yeah I think I agree. But let me just ask. This doesn't go back to a former form of government, for example, Dan Ryan or councilor Novick may have been at some point the council president in a previous era or vice president.
115 Were you asked about that before we were both gone? We did ask if this applied to the commission form of government.
116 The interpretation was that it.
117 Didn't okay.
118 Because those were commissioners. And specifically says councilor.
119 Correct.
120 Gotcha. Excellent. Okay. So did you want to say some more? So I like this default to the alphabetical order because we did it. It was easy. It worked. I, I don't want us to get whatever's going on that we have to interrupt it to then have a decision on who's going to be council president at that moment, which anything could happen. So I liked having a very clear default. Just to be clear.
121 And I hear what council president is saying, which is that in not too long of time, we likely won't get to see that often. It's good to have a backup. So to summarize at you believe that we're not in misalignment between charter and code, that these because they're not in conflict. It is fine to keep it how it is.
122 Yeah. Thank you. I do not believe that we're in misalignment. As the council president summarized, the charter says council can select who serves as the presiding officer. When the president and vice president aren't there, you can set your own rules per the charter, and under your rules, you have selected to follow this default process so that your meetings can continue smoothly.
123 Okay.
124 Thank you. You can stay up here because I'm probably going to ask you for this next one. Also, the next thing on the list was to let vice chair Ryan give some input on governance topics. Vice chair Ryan was unable to attend our last governance meeting and was hoping to be here, but had a last minute family emergency and I wanted to give some time for him to get to share his input on governance topics. We all went around and did that and unfortunately he can't be here. But I did tell him I would still bring forward what he wanted to talk about, and he really wants to talk about the idea of there being a six person caucus. And, you know, I love councilor Ryan a lot because I'm talking about myself here. But he let's see, I'm hopefully hoping I capture this. And if his chief of staff would like to come up and clarify anything. Kezia, you are more than welcome. We've had conversations around this and one piece is kind of the is this good for culture and how it feels for there to be a group of six meeting, and we've talked a lot about that. But then he's also brought up worries about if it having a caucus of six meeting breaks, any quorum laws and the concerns around that. And is there anything else you'd like to add? You can also pass. I don't want to put you on the spot. Keshia. Welcome. Feel free to introduce yourself.
125 Thank you. Keziah warner councilor Dan ryan's chief of staff. And so we talked a bit about this before he was out today. And I think that he also had that conversation with you. Council vice president. So I think you're capturing most of it. But what what councilor Ryan was concerned about and wanted to have claire, the clarification around was how there is the caucusing, the interplay between committee quorums and full council quorum. So getting crystal clear on how the interplay is and where the boundaries are with those bodies. So I think that that just goes a little bit deeper than what you were saying.
126 Thank you so much for clarifying.
127 You bet.
128 On the on the question of, of whether that the caucus is good, good for the council, bad for the council, what the impact on the culture. That's for other people to talk about and decide the on the legal question. So we have a 12 member council, seven members. Is a quorum fewer than a quorum can can meet without violating the law? There's two challenges to that. The first is under the serial meeting and intermediary concept under the law. If any one of those six then talks to a seventh member of council and sort of includes them into that deliberation, then you may have a problem under the public meetings law. So that's a something to be aware of. And then the other thing is, if any of the six members also constitute a quorum of a committee and they are talking about items that will come before the committee for deliberation or decision, that's another thing to be mindful of, because the quorum requirements apply to committees and they also apply to the full council.
129 Thank you.
130 Kezia, would you like to do you have any follow ups or any anything else?
131 I think that that was primary on his mind when we discussed what he wanted to bring forward today. He may have had some other things if he were here, but he's not so.
132 And we can make time. If he would like to talk more about this on another committee meeting.
133 Great.
134 Thank you.
135 Can I ask? So I just want to go back to your second point. If any of the six constitute a quorum of a policy committee, what was the second part of that? If they're talking about something that's going on in the policy committee, anything, any topic related to the topic, to the policy committee, that that's a no, no or.
136 Yes, that that would be a problem. So if it's a if, let's say, three of the members of a six person caucus, if those three members constitute a quorum of a particular committee and there is a, an item before that committee or the subject matter of that committee, and those three are talking about that. Item that is within the subject matter of the subject matter jurisdiction of the committee. That would be a problem. It would it would be the same problem if just those three, three members who are quorum of a committee, go meet in private and talk about how they are going to craft some policy that's going to come before that committee.
137 And how would you ever know?
138 The well, under the public meetings law, there's a grievance procedure. That any member of the public can file a grievance, and then the public body has to respond. So there is that built in process to try to identify where that might be occurring.
139 So what I'm hearing is the biggest challenges things to focus on would be serial. The serial meetings. So beyond the six if something a deliberation is then talked about with a seventh person and then also any indication of talking about something that's specific to committee work. If there's a quorum of a committee there, and would this be the same concern about so be for any group of six meeting or any group of six having conversations, even one on one passing them through?
140 Correct? Correct. Yes.
141 Is it possible to hear from you where the cities where things are at with the house bill that initiated serial quorum, where things stand? Do we know anything about that?
142 Great question. I haven't, I haven't I know that there is discussion in the legislature about potential changes to that. As I sit here right now, I'm not sure exactly where that's at in the legislature, but I think there have been some productive conversations around that.
143 I had.
144 Last I heard, and things change quickly this time of year in Salem. But last I heard, this was something that was likely going to be tabled until February. While I while I'm here, can I ask a question of mr. Taylor? I want to make sure I understand this committee piece of it, because the chances are that any group of six councilors would make up a quorum of some committees is pretty high. The way that we've distributed ourselves around committees. If conversations were had. The way that the public records law is currently written, I'm trying to differentiate. Or maybe there's not differentiation between three different potential scenarios. One being you're talking broadly about a topic that is covered by a committee that three people sit on. You make up a quorum of a five person committee, but you're not talking about a specific proposal, though anything could become a proposal. Is that a problem? The second is there is a proposal being brought to committee that's being discussed. That seems more straightforward, like it would be a problem, but just looking for confirmation there. The third is you have something that has already come out of committee and is coming to full council. Would that be a problem?
145 Good questions. I think if it's something that's already already passed through the committee and the committee's already made their recommendation, then I think those three members of the committee talking about it is less of a concern, provided, however, anything can get referred back to that committee for them to do future work on. So I think I would still want to be careful there. Certainly if it is an item pending in front of the committee, that is something that a quorum of that committee should really be discussing in an open public meeting and not behind closed doors. I think that the other category you mentioned is, you know, if we're just talking generally about public safety around the water cooler, that probably doesn't violate the public meetings law. But certainly the more concrete and specific you get on on that type of topic, if that is the purview of your committee, then you want to be more careful about it.
146 Thank you, I appreciate that.
147 Thank you. All right. Ready to move to the next topic?
148 Could I just say.
149 Before we move on, we all got a chance to thank each other for raising different concerns and issues we wanted governance to address. And I just want to offer that same gratitude to our colleague, councilor Ryan. I know this is a hard thing to bring up because it does involve current actions of some of our colleagues, but I appreciate his willingness to still step up and share something that he has concerns about. And I hope that as we figure out the governance agenda moving forward, we can have some conversations about how we use caucuses in a way that is helpful and productive for moving things forward and elevating issues in council, but in a way that doesn't bump up against some of those rules that mr. Taylor was talking about.
150 Thank you.
151 All right. So I have shared via email, we had talked in a recent governance meeting about tracking legislation and different possibilities of ways to do that. Councilor Clark and I both talked about piloting an option, and so I sent it to you. I see you have it up in someone from my staff, sent it in the governance committee agenda, and I shared it with, did you all get that? Get it? Keelan okay. And, ashley, if we want to put that up, remember this is a draft. We're just piloting it. But we had talked about some ideas of how to have a shared legislation tracker. So yeah, piloting it and that the end goal would be that this is something that could be could live maybe on the governance web page, that it's something that the public could see and it could be a way that we could see what's what's coming, what's scheduled. And we just like to open the floor to discussion about what you see about this draft, what you think about it, what might be missing or confusing, how might this be implemented? How could it support our effective collaboration? And I'm open. Don't worry about hurting anyone's feelings. I want to hear genuine feedback and thoughts.
152 I'm happy.
153 To jump in.
154 Please do.
155 I think that for committee this is really helpful as an internal document for us to see. What are you thinking in terms of scheduling farther out, that we might not have seen these things that say reschedule or on hold, knowing as chair what your thoughts are on things that haven't moved forward, what is on hold because it may not move forward. And what are you planning on getting back on the schedule? I think as a as a committee tool, I really like this for our tracking for full council, I hope that we get to a place where we are talking about something that has a little more connectivity on the back end, so that we can actually follow items from when they are first submitted through being assigned to a committee, going to council, bumping back if they need to, and something that is a little more integrated to our other work on the website than a google doc. I think there's a lot of tools out there that work really well that are based on. We have a really good tool that's based on agendas and being able to see everything that happened in a certain agenda. I think there's a lot of other tools out there that are based on the piece of legislation itself, if you will, or the presentation itself. That could be really helpful for tracking ordinances and resolutions. So I think there's I think this is really helpful for a committee need. I don't know that this gets us where we want to go for council as a whole, and the ability to track ordinances and resolutions, those specific discrete pieces of legislation, if you will, as they move through the system. But as a committee member, I love seeing this. To understand more about where you're headed with the committee.
156 That makes sense to me that what would be helpful for a committee might not directly relate to what might be helpful for the full council agendas. I can I hear that? I can share that internally. I hope for this is for collaboration also just for organization and just to see. Oh yeah. What what have we talked about? Especially as of right now, we have so many committees, it can be hard to keep everything in line and where things are at and what we've talked about. So just kind of the organizational piece and I will say for externally there is a hope that for the folks that are tracking the committee work, that there is a sense of that this can provide some transparency and that folks who are engaged are able to follow along and see what might be upcoming. Do you have any thoughts?
157 Sure. Just that I think it's helpful. Are you expecting every policy committee to do this?
158 Not necessarily. I mean, I it would be great to find something. I think for the public it's helpful if there is consistency. So if there's a way that we can come to agreement. Right now we have six committees or six policy and then the other two. So eight committees. Yeah I doubt we can get all eight to do this right away. But if we end up having a conversation and a change down the road where we have a smaller amount of committees, it would make sense to me if there's something similar.
159 I like it. I'm happy to do it for tni. And where would this be lodged?
160 I mean, it would make sense for the public and for ease that it be something that is on our web page. When you google governance committee, transportation and infrastructure at at the very least, it could just be a link to this. And I understand that. Yeah, having a google doc is not the fanciest. But in the meantime, until we have a way to share information easily on the website, I think it can take some time to get things on the website. I've talked to the council clerk about having to talk to people that that are programing the websites. In the meantime. I think having this somewhere, even if it's an attachment as a link.
161 Yeah, I think I think it's helpful. I think the public. Not just the public. I think we as a council have a really hard time tracking all the things that are going on in the different committees. So anything we can do to facilitate that, the onus is still on us to try to find it and, and, and pay attention to what's going on. Or our staff does that. So I think it's helpful. Thank you for doing it.
162 Yeah.
163 And would love to hear your input if when you're piloting this about how it works. And we can we can tweak it and share. I think it was helpful sharing this idea and having the conversation at a governance committee to talk about what is the purpose. And so I think to have some clarity, it's internal and then externally to have transparency. And then from that had folks who who care about governance and watch this reach out and share, I can jump into the next thing on my on my list. Austin city council has a very basic looking message board. I don't know if keelan and ashley, you can put that one up to. It's in the email I forwarded below the link below. The governance agenda and legislation tracker can also just go to austin council forum.org, and it almost looks like like the very first email I ever had, like compuserve. Like it's just very basic and it is a way for the city council to message each other and not worry as much about. Quorum, because it is all public. And so one of the thoughts when thinking about this was a way to share things and collaborate. And so it seemed like having a tracker would do some of that organizationally and there'd be room for collaboration, but that maybe it makes sense to have another public way for us to say, hey, who else has concerns? Here's the council agenda. If you just look through, you can see what the different councilors and their staff are posting on there, which is more like a way to really have that collaboration where you don't have to worry about the serial quorum. Yeah, would love to hear your thoughts. Are we able to share a screen and show their council message board? Yeah, it seems like a way to kind of go the next step. And there's a way through a tracker to kind of see what's what's upcoming. But this could go a little bit more in depth and allow folks the chance to collaborate.
164 Where you're at. You.
165 Yeah. Robert taylor, would you be interested in talking about would any of these would you have concerns about the tracker or the message board or comments about, would that help with some of the worries about serial quorum?
166 Robert taylor, city attorney, the austin model is interesting. I don't know that the Oregon public meetings law would accommodate that type of serial written communication between members outside of a public meeting. And in fact, all of your communications, all of your emails between each other, those are public records. Anybody can request those. And if as part of a public records request, it is revealed that seven members of council or a quorum of a committee were deliberating on a policy matter, the fact that they're public records and the fact that they're available to the public does not excuse the public meeting violation. And in fact, the existence of those public records showing the deliberations outside of a public meeting would be evidence that the public meeting law was violated. So I, I applaud austin for this. I think that's a great public transparency tool. But unfortunately, I don't think Oregon law accommodates that type of transparency.
167 Thank you for explaining. We can move to the next thing unless anyone has any comments or thoughts.
168 I'll just selfishly say that while I'm all for finding creative ways to have more transparency, as you know, we've talked about that being a priority of mine. I'm not disappointed that there won't be another place to track different incoming communications.
169 There.
170 And while thinking about transparency, we want to make sure that also yeah, it's not further complicating things. So making sure that if we choose certain tools that it's enhancing us being able to work together and being with transparency there too. All right. The next thing I was hoping for us to talk about is folks talked about different priorities. I hope you see. Some of these will be things that are on the actual tracker. Different things that you'd like us, you'd like us to focus on as a committee, but wanted to think specifically are going back to our priorities. If we were to think about a timeline for governance, what would we like to address in the next three months, six months, 12 months to support our new city council structure? So I'm really interested in building kind of a short and long range picture of our governance goals and priorities. It's I think it's really important. We are the ones laying the framework for this new form of government, and I want to make sure we're taking a proactive approach to this work that we're doing. We also will, you know, we have to react to different things that pop up, and we will deal with them at governance, but also thinking about being proactive, too. So we kind of have already begun this work as we addressed some of our baseline committee rules, and we have talked about some of our different priorities. But what else do we need and want to plan in order to maximize maximize our effectiveness as a new governing body? Yeah. And I also shared with you all just it was helpful, shared with me by terry harris, just a bunch of different links from seattle, baltimore, santa fe, sacramento, detroit, denver. It's helpful for me to look at some of these comparable city and council structures. I don't think there's one that's perfect. And actually, if you're willing to come up, terry and I'm so grateful for the research that you do for us and the support that you give us, but it is helpful to have members of who are formally on gtac who I can lean on some of their their suggestions and are willing to go through and do this work. Yeah. Is there anything you would like to point us? Point out to us as we look at some of these different examples from other cities and their councils, the thought is that we can look at some of them to build our three, six, 12 month timeline.
171 Sure, it's terry harris. I'm a former member of gtac. I don't have anything prepared. I'm not. Happy to help in any way possible. I provided that stuff to the committee chair, because I think it's good for you all to see what other cities are doing, and those are all quite typical. And the ones that I gave you have. Are similar to the governments that you're operating under. They're comprehensive, they're extensive. There are features that you might be interested in. And it's just I think at this point it's probably worth y'all flipping through some of them and taking a look as, as you know, I think you've been failed badly by the transition. You should have had a draft of one, like one of those ready to go on your first day, from which you could work and edit and change, but it would have been a big, comprehensive starting point. And since then, you've been trying to cobble together pieces of rules as things come up, which I think is just really hard to do, especially when you have other things to do. So it was in the spirit of here, take a look at this. And I'm happy again. I'm happy to help. I'm happy to walk you through it in any of them. I did the research on all of those except for detroit. I put detroit in there because detroit has some pretty good rules. And all of those jurisdictions have had their rules in place for a long time. They're pretty stable. They work. They're they all have committees. They all have like city managers, the stuff that you all need to work with. But again, happy to help however you need.
172 Thank you so much. Thanks for being here. If you'd like at some time to look through any of these. And if you'd like to share any hopes of priorities that we nail down in three months, six months or 12 months, feel free to share. Go ahead.
173 I've looked at some of these before, but haven't had a chance to look at them all together since you send them sent them out. So I will certainly refresh the ones I've seen and look at the others. And thank you to mr. Harris for sending along this group. I think there's some good examples in here as we talk about short and medium term priorities. You and I had talked early on, I think soon after we were elected, about the fact that it was my hope that we, by the fall, would have a good sense of what collection of rules, not charter, not code, but the type of thing that you would put, not in an ordinance, but in a resolution. Perhaps we wanted to move forward so that we could make any updates to the code that we need to before the start of next year and have the start of a handbook, which is, I think, what we're looking at from these cities going into the next year, and that if we could get that done by fall, what I had hoped to do was to sit down with our clerk's office, to start to look at what we need to do to build out our website, to match our process. And I've said a few times that I've asked the clerk's office to update things on our web system that we need for short term, but that I knew there would be long term updates we would need to make, and I didn't want to ask for any of those until we were really clear on what our process would be of how things move through the system, so that we weren't asking for big overhauls more than once. So on our three month calendar, I would love to have at least this committee have a really clear picture of that. How a bill becomes a law for lack of a some lack of a better description, is the way things are moving through the system. What we want? At what point do we consider something no longer active, and what happens to it? Then? Can things move back and forth between committee and council at the direction of the council president or a committee chair? If something needs to go back to committee for more work, or do we need to vote it back? Just some of those pieces that we have at this point in operating procedure, we have started to develop norms. I know we like to say that we're doing this on the fly, but we actually aren't. I think we've established some pretty decent norms at this point. But are they the right ones, or are folks waiting to make changes to them? Because once we know if the norms we have are the right ones or not, obviously there will still be tweaking around the edges, but if we know the general direction we're moving in, we can start to talk about having that web system that makes it easier for the public to track what we're doing. That makes it easier for us to track what we're doing. That makes it clear where something is at in terms of its movement through the system, and when it is no longer active, that I would really like us to have, you know, before we're knee deep in the budget next year, or at least know what it will take to get so that if it's going to take some budgeted, some deeper budgeted efforts, we can put that in the budget for next year.
174 Thank you. I, I haven't had a chance to look at this stuff that you sent out. The is particularly the stuff that terry guided us to from other cities. That sounds really interesting. I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to do it. I think right at this moment, having just come off the budget while everything is still fresh in people's minds, that we should be evaluating the budget process and what changes we'd like to see for the next go around. Now, I don't know that those are things that we put in rules and or code or anything, but just that we as a governance committee, maybe solicit from our other council members as well. But some changes in the budget process and I just that to me seems the most immediate thing we should do because it's we just completed it and it's fresh. And I would say there that I think we all agree we need to get the budget earlier. There needs to be a lot more detail in the budget. I found the document almost useless. I was so excited I took it home, didn't really have that much information for me in it. So we need a lot more detail. We need it earlier. We need to have a more unified public process around the budget. You know, the outreach community engagement project or process. And more opportunities for public input or different opportunities for public input. I would even venture that we kick around the idea of councilors having a limited number of budget notes or a limited number of amendments. Just throw that out there. So budget issues, I would just say that I think since it's fresh, we need to do it right away. The other thing I would I'm hoping that we're going to have a conversation about the and maybe you're planning to have this in the full council council president, but we need to have more council meetings. And how are we going to structure that. We need to have fewer committees. Are we going to discuss that in this committee or where are we going to do that? Those are issues that, for me, are top of mind in terms of being more effective streamlining. Yeah. And then the website, I think it just I hear complaints all the time about our website, about timing issues. We don't give the public enough time to react to things. How we manage that. Maybe that's a discussion we need to have. Those are my thoughts right now.
175 Thank you. And it's kind of going into the next topic too. So we can just let them all kind of blend also. Yeah.
176 Could I yes please. On a couple.
177 Of the things that you said, there are things in motion and I just want to flag that we are working in my office to find time for a work session, to discuss proposals that our colleagues are bringing forward around committee and council time, and I hope that it's a conversation that actually can be even broader than just those proposals. But we're struggling with everybody's July schedules. Once we figure out a date in July that we can have enough people there for the discussion, we'll have a work session on that. I do know that councilor Zimmermann is chair of the finance committee, has asked our colleagues for feedback on the budget process and has started conversations with dca about how we can do things differently next time. So if this committee is going to take up that work, also, I would just encourage you, chair, to coordinate with the chair of that other committee to make sure that we're not duplicating efforts at best and inadvertently pulling us in opposite directions at worst.
178 So as councilor Zimmermann, asking all of us for just the just his committee members.
179 He. During the budget process, said a couple of times that he hoped to hear from people. And I believe when we voted on the budget, reiterated that he had hoped to hear back from people about their thoughts on the process. I also I want to follow up on this because I had a thought at one point that we did have a draft set of rules that our council operations team had put together before we were brought on, that the transition committee had gotten to look at, and I don't know if that was as comprehensive as these, but as we look at these rules, it might be worth taking a look at whatever was developed for us here in Portland. Also, just to see if we have something that fits within how things work at the state level here, how other cities work, our public records laws that we might be able to take some ideas from some of these other documents for, but have a starting place that is unique to Portland and oregon's needs also.
180 Yeah, that would be great. Is there someone to check in with to see if we can get those bumped to us?
181 We can.
182 Reach out to council operations and see. I don't remember the details, but I thought there had been something kicked around at one point.
183 That'd be great.
184 Okay, so what I'm hearing is in the next few months to really have time to work on the structure of committees, how we use them, what they are, when council meets, and to have more to build up our set of rules, including when bill becomes how a bill becomes a law, when something becomes inactive, how an item moves between council and committee. Was there anything else that you wanted to add as kind of those or those the most immediate or anything? Yeah.
185 I think in general, for me, it's those things that would be captured in a tracking system on the website. So potentially broader than the individual things I laid out, but things in that category.
186 And then I'll add at the six month point, would love for after we get some of those things decided about committees and our the cadence of our meetings to really manage public comment thoughts around how we're going to do that, what's our process going to be, is there anything that we need to decide? I know that's a conversation we've kind of dug into and it's tricky, but I think that would be a great thing. Great goal to have that by the end of the calendar year. So in six.
187 Months, just.
188 Generally when you say public comment.
189 Or just have it be figured out in our as a council, when there is public testimony, if you have it in committee, do you also have it in full council? Some of those like how the public interacts and. I know there are a lot of different thoughts to that. And I think that's going to be kind of a big one to dig into and decide. And I and I believe we've done some there's some norms around it already. Do you want to speak to that at all?
190 Yeah. There are some.
191 Norms around where and when people comment. And we did have some conversations early on about how if we were trying to have more public comment in committee, did we then have less in council? And what did that look like when we take on that conversation? I would love for our conversation to also look at how we prioritize people in public comment. So, for example, do we prioritize portlanders before people who care about an issue but don't live in Portland? Do we prioritize people who traveled from the east side of our city, not meaning just over the river, but meaning like the far edges of our city and perhaps have a harder time getting here over somebody who lives downtown a few blocks away. Do we prioritize somebody who had to take public transit to get here? Maybe we don't. Maybe that would be inappropriate in some of our colleagues minds. But I think there are questions we need to ask as we talk about accessibility. Similarly, if somebody is here every week testifying on every topic, with all due respect to mr. Harris, whose input I value very much, do we perhaps prioritize somebody who has not ever spoken at council before? And how do we track that? If so, in a way that is not overly cumbersome for our clerk's team. And it could be that we decide as we ask all of those questions, that it's first come, first serve and people sign up and that's okay. But I think there are some questions we need to ask about how we make sure that at those times where we can't hear from everybody, we are hearing from people who. Have the least other ways of accessing meetings.
192 Yeah, that's really helpful to hear you lay all that out. And I think those are great questions for us to talk about. And something that I've thought about, too, if someone has gotten to testify at the committee, are they prioritized for the full council or do we prioritize others? I think great, great things.
193 Share a hand.
194 And then the idea is that as we're building these rules, then we is it. Every year we would re adopt them at the end of the year. Can you refresh my memory on.
195 How what.
196 I had originally suggested was that we create a, a normal order of business where at the first meeting of the year when we elect or reelect leadership, we would also re adopt rules. And that would be an opportunity just to reaffirm, yes, this is how we want to operate. Or actually let's be intentional and make some changes. And if we did it at that first meeting every year, we would have consistency through the year. But we would also have that period of time where it's sometimes a little bit quieter. Over December, we know how much turnover we have after an election year to sit down and say, what is it that we want operations in our body to look like next year? And there might be some time to make tweaks if we've decided we need them over that period of time, and it would give us a regular cadence to just reviewing how we're working in a body that has sessions. You would do that normally you start a new session, you adopt your rules because we don't have sessions, which we've talked about when we talked about how ordinances and resolutions don't automatically go away. We have to figure out how they go away. This is one of those other things that we just don't have an automatic opener on, because we don't have sessions, but we could create a culture where we do have an automatic refresh.
197 I like.
198 That.
199 I.
200 Also like.
201 That.
202 Just being intentional.
203 Exactly.
204 Keelan do we need to read the last item that we've crept over into it a little bit?
205 Yes.
206 Let me bring it up here. Item three governance committee budget process debrief and learning.
207 I think it's it shows that things are connected. So it was only it was not too long ago that we finished our main budget process. But as councilor Clark was pointing out, we will be doing the fall bump soon and we'll before we know it next year. Next year's budget process begins soon and is just around the corner, especially as we're thinking about the public process and input. And so the intention behind this item is really just to open up time to intentionally reflect on the experience and service, of providing thinking about how the process next year can be different. Some things that can be carried over. And also I'm getting some clarity too. As councilor, chair of the finance committee, councilor Zimmerman is planning to take this up. It is seeming to me. I'd love to hear from you both. Like the bulk of this, the reflection and that work can be led by him in the finance committee, knowing that there'll be some other conversations, of course, that happen, but that seems to me that that makes the most sense to live there rather than governance. I have heard city administrator jordan interested in holding an after action session. I know that the budget director, barry, he's here with us today, has also invited all of the councilors via email to have one on one debriefs and to hear the feedback. I think there's definitely openness to that and just want to acknowledge that this is said this many times. This is the first time we went through this. I think that council president did an exceptional job shepherding us through this, and the budget office did great. And there are always ways that we can improve. And yeah, so opening up what we kind of touched on is just what are some things that are rising to the top around the budget, knowing that some of these conversations are being had, and also highlighting that mr. Berry had sent an email, I know I had missed the details that we could have one on one debriefs, but while things are fresh in our mind, it might be helpful to think about some of these things. Would you like to come up? And I know you made the effort to be here with us. This isn't meant to be a super deep discussion, most mostly just a moment to discuss any ideas and pieces of wisdom that that emerged from us. Yeah, great.
208 Thank you, madam chair. I have no prepared remarks or. But definitely appreciate the opportunity. For the record, jonas berry, dca budget finance and chief financial officer thank you for calling me budget director. The budget director is ruth levine. I get called plenty of names, and budget director is one of the ones I'm happy to accept as a as a misnaming. Agree. As we've said, I think before, this was sort of deeply unsatisfying process for everybody involved. As as we all learned a new a new alignment. I would flag we do have a good body of work to build from both work performed by gtac that helped inform sort of the initial attempts to improve the budget, particularly in the area of engagement and alignment to the new organization. There was a consultant report that was prepared in 2024 that aimed to provide some recommendations and guidance around how budget process might work under the new alignment. So we have that to continue to work from to. And then obviously, the intense experience that we all got over the last six months. I'm encouraged that many of the pieces of feedback that I've heard, including some here at the dais this afternoon, are absolutely consistent with what we've experienced from the budget office and from the cfo seat that I sit in and are on our radar. And so I just would would reiterate high value, I think, in performing those kind of after action discussions, including this one, I don't want to lose sight of the critical importance that there is one city budget that is the budget for portlanders. And so it's really easy, I think, in the process to get locked into to the process and to the steps and to sometimes the things that happen in this room or this building or the Portland building. But I think really emphasizing how do we engage portlanders? The last thing I'll say, and then happy to address any questions folks may have, is there is a objective by myself, by the budget office, by the administration, I think, supported by the city administrator and the mayor, where we evolved to what I've called sort of the holy grail of budgeting, which is we actually have a meaningful understanding of portlanders priorities. That's developed in conjunction with the community early in the process. And then we have a process to build a budget that reflects those priorities. And then when we get to April and may, in that holy grail scenario, it's a much easier discussion because we're just doing an assessment of did we meet those objectives under the old alignment? And I think we fell a little bit into this trap this year. Collectively, it's really easy to be tempted to make policy decisions in may in the moment when the budget is being heard. And so I would just really encourage us to continue to evolve and learn and practice so that we can be able to implement those policy priorities throughout the year and not just have the budget be reflective of those policies and not the other way around. Thank you for a few minutes to sit on my soapbox.
209 Thank you so much. It's great to hear from you. And thank you for being so gracious about me messing up your title, which is also going to change next week, right? Indeed. Okay, so you're going from do you want.
210 To.
211 Just simplify, just cfo, chief financial officer.
212 That'll be nice and easy.
213 Great.
214 Yeah. Any other thoughts about. Debriefing and learning? I would say I echo a lot of what chair Clark said about the. Budget process. I also do believe that, and there's a lot I mean for so for myself and many others, this is our first time going through this full process. And so I will not need as much hand-holding and will understand the different steps next time. I think some of that will just be easier by it not being the first. And I love hearing what you're saying about engaging portlanders, really thinking about what does it mean to have a meaningful understanding of portlanders priorities? I think that's that's great. And what I also hear echoed from a lot of folks is starting that engagement process now and thinking about how we we're doing engagement and our are having a longer runway leading up to things.
215 That's great.
216 Something about that. Thank you, madam chair. I think jonas would you might have been recommending is something like a conversation with Portland, where we actually go out, whether it's through our district associations or however we decide to do it, maybe to do some education around. This is what you're paying. This is where the money goes. These are the basics. And maybe take it from there. But I think we have a lot of education to do by just asking people what their priorities are. I don't I don't know that that's all we need to do, because they have to be balanced against the resources that we have. And maybe that's our job. But just a cautionary statement. I also feel like on this, the budget that we just went through, we're going to go through this, I mean, starting tomorrow, where we're really going from the frying pan into the fire with a discussion of a levy, because we have not had at least an adequate conversation about our property tax system generally, compression, what it means to go to the ballot with a parks levy, you know, the implications for the other levies that are out and about. The possible realignment of functions. We're just jumping right into a levy conversation without very much thought. I guess maybe that's a little rude, but they're much they're big implications for us going to the ballot on a levy not just for us, but for the other governments in the region. So it's really just another just another example where we're being put into a situation where we haven't had a lot of time to really evaluate something. And I think, you know, the budget was part of that our first time around. And now we're being asked to consider going to the ballot on a property tax levy. Just had to throw that out there a little frustration.
217 I think some of.
218 Those questions were things that I had hoped finance would take up. When we talked about this in the finance committee. So I, I hear you about the frustration. And if we need to make some changes to make sure that you get that information tomorrow, let's chat.
219 Any other final comments or thoughts about the budget process? Debrief and learning. I know it's only the three of us.
220 So well. I would just express my appreciation to you, madam chair, for your approach to this and your intention around this. I really appreciate the work that you put into it.
221 Thank you. Any final words? We'll make sure that councilors are reminded that they've had an invitation to give feedback. And thank you so much for your hard work.
222 Great.
223 Thank you. Look forward to improving as we move onward.
224 Wonderful. All right. Well, colleagues, our next meeting will be July 7th at 2:30 p.m. Thank you so much to everyone who showed up, participated today, tuned in. And with that, the meeting of the governance committee is adjourned.
225 Thanks.