The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-01-08
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (12,776 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
At a work session held Wednesday, January 8, Portland City Council convened to discuss a posted proposal outlining a committee structure of six standing policy committees, several other standing committees, and one temporary work group, as required under charter reforms. Discussion covered the number of committees appropriate given staffing capacity in council operations and the clerk's office, with concerns raised about limited policy analyst support and the possibility of phasing in committees over time. Topics included whether committees should meet at a uniform frequency or vary based on workload, alternative groupings of bureaus and service areas including public safety, livability, parks and recreation, climate, and infrastructure, naming of a governance-related committee and its oversight role, the number of members appropriate per committee, and the use of chairs, vice chairs, or co-chairs. A legal question concerning quorum requirements and the implications of convening seven or more councilors together was addressed by a staff member, who also explained the concept of a committee of the whole under parliamentary procedure. The session concluded with an expressed intention to bring a committee membership proposal to the January 15 council meeting, potentially as a late agenda addition requiring nine councilors' agreement. No votes were reported in this session; further business is 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.
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1 I am calling to order this work session on Wednesday, January 8th at 1231. Welcome. We are meeting today with one agenda item which is a conversation amongst councilors around a proposal which is posted online for folks who are watching at home or who are here with us today about what our committee structure will be, one of the things that the new council is charged with doing under the charter reforms is creating a committee structure in order to carry out the policy work and the oversight work that we will take on. And this is our first group conversation about what that looks like. Folks should have that proposal available online if you don't have it in front of you. And what you'll see is a list of six standing policy committees. A few other standing committees and a temporary work group. The proposal was built around big policy questions. You'll see that it doesn't perfectly reflect the service areas at the city. It doesn't perfectly reflect any of the proposals that we've seen from other jurisdictions, but it tries to capture what the big policy questions are that we need to be discussing as a body. Given that that is a large chunk of the work that we'll be doing within committees. I also want to note that these don't have to be forever committees. We have the ability to create work groups or temporary committees, and we also have the ability as a body to change what our committees are as we move forward. I want to make a brief note about what's coming next after this conversation. And then we don't have presenters for this topic, so I'll throw out a few questions to my colleagues, to all of you, and hopefully we can have a bit of a conversation in a work session. We don't make decisions, but it's a time to start to air interests and either agreements or disagreements moving forward from here. The goal that I have as your council president is to bring forward a list of committee appointments, membership on committees to our next council meeting, which is next Wednesday. You'll note that we have missed the deadline for normal posting of an agenda item for that meeting. In order to have this conversation first, in the short amount of time we've had since first gathering as a body, we weren't able to have this conversation, create the membership list and then post it in time. So for the public who is watching, know that we may be adding an agenda item to that January 15th council meeting, which I will then be asking my colleagues here to sign off on as a late addition, which requires nine councilors to agree to add something to the agenda so that conversation will be coming. The reason that that happened is just because of the cadence of us being seated and trying to get this work done so that we could get input from all of our colleagues and also get to work quickly, because part of what we're under right now we know is that that tension around time, but also speed and making sure that we are ready to do the work that portlanders are hoping to have us take on as quickly as possible. I'm going to stop with a preamble there, and I do have a couple of questions, colleagues that I hope we can dig into today, the first of which is a question around the number of committees. And the more committees we have, the higher workload that is, in terms of number of committees, you each are on, the higher workload. That is for our staff in council operations and the clerk's office. The fewer committees we have, the more topics go into each committee and the harder it is to move quickly when new issues come up that we need to take on. And so I would love to hear folks thoughts. Maybe we just start there and I'll save my other questions. If anybody has strong opinions about that balance. This was, I would say, on the higher side of the middle in terms of number of committees, as we look at what some of our comparable cities do. But toward the middle lower than many others. I'd love to hear if anybody has strong thoughts, though, on that balance. Commissioner Clark.
2 Thank you, madam chair. Yes, I have strong thoughts about this. But first, I just want to say thank you for the work that you put in and listening to all of us and our input. And I'm really glad that you also consulted the gtac report in doing this. I think that's really important because they did consult at least 20 different cities. But I don't think that the report addressed staffing, and that is a major concern for me. We only have really two policy analysts technically, and you've given us nine committees, one being temporary. We don't have a legislative council. We don't have a legislative fiscal. We don't have a legislative research office. We don't have a full complement of what we need to do the work. And like I said, we only have two policy analysts. And the committee is also, as you mentioned, going to require support from the auditor's office. Every committee has to be staffed, I believe, by someone from the auditor's office on procedure, a backup and maybe even from bts. And I know some of us need help from bts. But that's a major concern for me. So I was going to recommend that at least we have a conversation around shaving this back some. And there are different ways to do that. To start with committees that are where the issues are top of mind for all of us, where we ran on these issues like homelessness, housing, public safety, and maybe even consider phasing in some of the others once we get our sea legs and get committees going. But that that phased approach might be something we could think about. But I did want to just put a stake in the ground that I'm really concerned that this is we don't have adequate support for, for the breadth of committees. Thank you.
3 Thank you for sharing that, councilor Kanal.
4 Thank you, madam president. Thank you to both you and the president for putting together this proposal and talking to everyone. I'll confine my comment to the question as much as I can here. I do think that having nine committees is going to be unworkable from a scheduling perspective, and I do will later propose two different changes. Suggest them to get it down to seven. Having to shoehorn nine committees into our schedules will specifically make it more challenging for us to have in district time, which I believe our constituents expect and deserve, and also having unpredictable schedules, which is more likely when there are more committees that have different and varying workloads, means less predictability for the public to engage in committee conversations where proposals are developed and honed prior to full council consideration. I'll also note that gtac recommended 5 to 8 committees, and they gave eight ideas in there, one of which is sort of a unique one, the committee of the whole, which doesn't necessarily have to meet as frequently, and I think might help with that idea as well, but I'll leave it at that for now.
5 Councilor Novick.
6 I like this list and the committees and the number of them, but I'm going to have some proposed modifications too. But one thing I would respond to, councilor Clark, is we're going to have to do the work, no matter how many committees we have. If you have fewer committees, you're just going to have to sweep the same work into a smaller number of committees. I think that having a wider, larger number of committees makes it easier for each of us to focus on the things we're particularly interested in. I do I am concerned about the, you know, the imposition on the clerk's office, and we do need to make sure that the clerk is able to staff all of these. But I'm in favor of a higher number of committees, and I think this looks good.
7 Councilor dunfee.
8 Thank you, madam president. I'm wondering if you could explain in this outline what is your envisioned? What do you envision as the role of the president and vice president as it pertains to committee leadership? And I also just want to note that I think that doing some very quick math, nine committees, plus a president and a vice president leaves one of our colleagues without a chairmanship in some capacity. It makes it 11 leadership roles out of a 12 person body, so that I have some concerns. But I'm interested to know what your thoughts are in terms of your participation. And I guess the role of within that. Yeah.
9 So we have not fully fleshed out what committee membership will look like. I wanted to make sure to have this conversation first. Obviously, folks have talked about things that they're interested in throughout the campaign and in the months since then. So I think I have some ideas of what people might be interested in and how that might fit together, but we haven't fleshed it all out. My hope is that as we flesh out the details, the president and vice president could, could serve on, but would not lead policy committees. Probably fewer fewer policy committees than other members, but wouldn't have gavels in policy committees. I think that there could be a role in leadership on some of the standing committees, though. I also think that it's important on governance and accountability to have some balance to the leadership of the president and vice president there as well. So I think those are important questions to be mulling over. And I you are right. With more committees, there are more gavels. And you reach a point where most but not everybody has a gavel. And there are certainly some some dynamics there that we need to take into account. There are other leadership opportunities as well, that we'll be talking about at the council meeting when we talk about positions within committees. But I think that's an important piece of the puzzle here. I councilor Green, thank you.
10 And I just want to acknowledge I got this pretty late. That means you were working pretty late. And that means I was working pretty late because I saw it and read it. So for anyone paying attention, we're at work and we're we're into business. I you know, my comments on it. As I look at the standing policy committees, it's hard for me to imagine dropping one of those. I am sort of I'm very sensitive to this idea of capacity limitations and making sure that we leave time for district days, but I think as I look at the six standing committees, all of these seem urgent to me in different ways. Some of them are really highly acute, you know, sort of triage type of areas and others are longer term sort of economic issues that the decisions may not have immediate ramifications, but they will have long term ramifications. And we want to have those be be in place. So I'm very interested to hear from my colleagues who have ideas on how to kind of modify this to bring back some capacity. So I'm pretty open to that one idea. I have just sort of off the cuff for the standing committees is it might be the case that those don't need to meet as frequently. There may be a cadence area that gives us back some capacity while keeping their importance. And so I'll just kind of leave it at that. Thanks.
11 Councilor Green, I think that's certainly an important part of the conversation. And my second question, actually, to all of you, is whether folks had strong opinions about if committees, committees met with the same frequency and had the same level of workload, or if people are comfortable with committees meeting at different frequencies, I think it makes sense to me that we would start with a common frequency, but that that might change as committees get into the work and have an understanding of what their workload looks like. But I want to make sure that that's something that you all are comfortable with, and I think you touched on that. So I'll just float that out there as well. Councilor Smith, thank you, madam president.
12 I was looking at this and thinking that we should possibly make our committee system very similar to the dca model, where we have six committees and we have a chair and a vice chair for each committee. And the first committee would be budget and finance, which would include the budget, the revenue office of financial services, small donor business operations, fire and police, disability and retirement, and Portland police. And the second one would be city operations committee, which would to have a chair and a vice chair, and it would include asset management, fleet and facilities, human resources, integrated security, 311 program, procurement, special projects and opportunities, and technology services. The third one would be community and economic development committee, and you would have a chair and a vice chair, and under that would be development services permitting, planning and sustainability. Portland housing bureau, prosper Portland the fourth would be community and public safety committee, which would include the community safety division, emergency communication, emergency management, Portland fire and rescue, 311 neighborhood association, and civic life. And the fifth would be parks and recreation committee, which would include parks and recreation, the Portland children's levy, special appropriations, spectator venues and the arts, and the last committee would be the public works committee, which would include environmental services, transportation, and water. Thank you. And I can actually send you send you something so everyone can see what those committees are and how they're laid out.
13 Thank you for that feedback. And I think that is it's a very different direction I built these around. What are the policy questions we might want to ask as opposed to how does this structure within the executive branch of our city look? And in part, that was because with a new mayor, I don't know if those are static service areas or not. And I don't say that to frighten anybody or foreshadow anything. I haven't had any conversations to that end. But as councils and as mayors change, there could be different directions that things move. So I didn't want to set the precedent of needing to align. But certainly if we decide that those are the ways that we want to have policy conversations, there are benefits to alignment. Yeah. And I appreciate you putting that forward. Thank you, councilor Zimmerman.
14 Thanks. Generally, I think the document is really strong. You know, on page 12 of the gtac, it does actually talk about some staffing and that the current model only could fulfill four. And so I know for me, front of mind will be that part of the staffing discussion is that I think committees do need additional staff. I think it was it was understaffed in terms of the council operations, not our not our district staff, not our personal staff, but the committee staff. I do think that's something to consider. I agree with councilor Clark. In that sense, I feel really strongly about the question you posed that not all committees need to meet in the same frequency. I think that the year and the regular cycle presents times when certain committees, their workload will be higher and they should be higher. What I look to is the chairperson of each of these committees to be the most influential in deciding what is the right rhythm for each committee. They're going to be the closest and the most informed on that, and that should be in close coordination with with your office and with council operations. So I would support any, any chair who believes we shouldn't do everything just because it says we should do everything. Do it because you have work to get done that matters. So that's important. I do one of the things that kind of jumps jumps off here a little bit, and it kind of goes with what councilor Smith was mentioning. I think about public works and some of the areas that I would say in this community I have not felt have been aligned. And in other cities that I've worked. Right. You've got somebody responsible essentially for all of the city operations that happen outside of city hall. Right? The things you see and the things you might call public works and others who are in charge of all the internal services like hr and lawyers and finance, public works in that if I'm using it in that sense, is one of those areas where I have felt for a long time. Not only did both hands not know what the city was doing, but every every appendage was lost because nothing seemed to be aligned. And so is that transportation and infrastructure here, or is there a way in which we might combine? And then my last comment, I actually think that the temporary oversight, the transition oversight, I don't think it needs to be a separate committee. I think it is the governance committee that you've got. I think that's what makes makes sense there. I don't love the term accountability in that governance. One, if it has a role of accountability over the committees. I just curious what words matter. And this one leads me to what is its role. And then the other the finance and investment. I would just propose that perhaps finance and operations oversight would be a way. And the reason I use that term is, I think the way we're talking about this is finance and an ability to have a budget to actual conversation throughout the year. And being very clear that this body, the entire body is the budget committee. And we're talking about a council committee that is quite closely connected, but it is a different role. This is a lot to put together. I feel like you've heard a lot of people. So overall I'm supportive and I and I know that you're going to be tweaking things after this conversation. So thank you, madam president.
15 Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. And when you talk about public works and ask the question, is that all together? I tell me more about what services within the city you are hoping to see all together there.
16 So I think there is a huge difference between parks planning and park operations, right? The maintenance of parks is something that I care a lot about, and it's similar to the maintenance of our streets. It's similar to where we advance and put bike lanes out. That to me is public works. Our sewers, our environmental services, that that kind of where we've got workers on the ground, so to speak, are day in and day out. Folks, I am not talking about because the way that this plan kind of has it out is that planning and urban canopy, and I'm assuming parks would kind of fall into that category. Does that mean that the planning for transportation does not fall in the transportation and infrastructure committee, or does it? So there's some I think some clarity will be helpful.
17 The way this is currently written, transportation would fall. Both the planning and the maintenance and operations in the transportation and infrastructure committee. This proposal does break up service areas to councilor Smith's point, but it does not break up bureaus. I tried to keep bureaus whole within one committee to allow oversight to run more smoothly, so the breaking up of, for example, parks maintenance and parks planning or transportation planning and transportation maintenance is something that I hadn't conceived of here. I think that's something we could have a more full conversation about planning versus maintenance. You're right. Very different functions, although that can sometimes make oversight of individual bureaus a little bit harder because you don't have the depth of knowledge of the work that's happening or the depth of relationship.
18 Thank you. And to I forgot one thing, if I may. Two things I, I think all bureaus should expect that they will appear in front of multiple committees. And, you know, councilor Kanal you talk often that public safety is not just police and fire, right? And I would actually say that public safety, I would be very much in favor of that committee being public safety and livability. I think about our presentations we got from pmo and Portland solutions, that whole team. I think about where Portland street response, I think about the types of things that kind of all go together. But neither of them would be good if they worked only in a silo. And I think that committee might have some innovative ways to have a complete conversation and not a siloed conversation. So I might add livability as a as a suggestion to that one as well. Thanks.
19 Thanks for that feedback. Councilor Avalos. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, councilor Dunphy. I did not see your hand there, I apologize.
20 No problem. I'll be as quick. Also, because I've already spoken, there are two sort of gaps that I don't see in this that I'd like to get your input on and see if I maybe am understanding this specifically. I see where parks fits. I don't see where recreation fits in my head. Thinking about recreation is both a community livability, but also public safety, and I think it needs to be called out in a more intentional way. I think it's emblematic of currently how the bureau operates, that parks are in the first position and rec is in the second position. But I think we need to have a broader conversation about that. To the same question of where do you envision, I see permitting is under housing and homelessness, but does that include business permitting? Does that include right of way changes? Like what? What would be the scope? Would that be the permitting bureau would report to that or and then my third nitpicky one is one that I suspect none of you will be surprised, but I would if it is an arts and economy. I just want to note that the music industry is ten times larger than all of the arts combined in the city, and I would love to see that called out in a particular way.
21 Councilor Dunphy. These descriptions were meant to give you all a flavor. They are not official descriptions that we would be adopting, but I did think it was important to give you all a sense of what types of things would fall within each committee, and music would certainly be a part of the arts and economy conversation. As you and I have talked about talking about our economy without talking about music is a big piece of the economy missing. I think you raise an important point around permitting, and my intent was to not split apart bureaus. So recreation would be part of the same committee as the parks, part of parks and recreation. But you're right, there are there are not clean lines. There are never clean lines. When we're talking about where to divide policy. And recreation is a perfect example of something that can be seen as part of public safety or as part of livability, or as part of what the fabric of our city looks like. And so that's an important piece there. The permitting bureau, though, I think is a very important question. And we need to consider more thoroughly where that falls and whether that is a bureau that we decide to split apart, because permitting touches so many other pieces, or whether we want to try to keep that bureau whole as well. Councilor Avalos.
22 All right. Well, first I will mention to a bit of councilor Zimmermann's point. When I was thinking about committees, I had considered the public safety committee to be public health and safety, to maybe cover a little bit of what you're saying. So I'm also down for maybe a name change or a scope change a bit on that, that committee. But my question is, well, first my comment is I like that these are around kind of our areas that we want to focus on and that aren't necessarily just copied directly to what the dca areas are. However, I'm curious if you felt there is a natural alignment of each dca within a specific committee. I mean, I'm hearing obviously there's going to be crossover, and we can expect that bureaus are going to go to different ones. But I was curious if that was at all part of your thinking of trying to give at least the dca some kind of direction, or even that is part of the intent. I just wanted to know how you felt the dca felt fit into the committee picture.
23 This wasn't built around dca, and in fact, if you look at the policy work, most dca would be split between multiple committees. That does mean that in terms of providing a single point of direction to a dca, there are a few different committees weighing in, though, as we seat ourselves on committees, likely there will be overlap there. And folks who have a common thread between them. I crafted this focused on the big picture policy conversations that I have heard from many of you. You want to have, and our service areas are built around what needs to move together within the bureaucracy of running a city. And sometimes those are two very different questions. So rather than trying to align with the bureaus that fit together to provide service, I tried to align around the big picture policy questions that I heard folks wanting to have.
24 Thank you. I appreciate that. And I think one other comment I'll say regarding frequency of committees, I agree, and I think there's a way to blend a little bit of what councilor Clark is saying of scaling it up. Right? I mean, I think, I think that the list is good. I in general am supportive of having that many committees. I think, unfortunately, the work is hard and the work is a lot. So we all know we're going to be busy, but I think there's a way for us to scale it up in a meaningful, slow way so we can catch up staffing and everything else. But I am supportive of that many committees. Just for the record, great.
25 Thank you. Councilor Morillo.
26 Thank you. I have now accrued a lot of comments just from listening to everyone, so apologies in advance if this is a little long. I, I definitely agree with the way that you guys wrote this up to mirror bigger policy proposals and like general policy focused areas, I think that's a really good way to do it. And there is going to just have to be different. Crossover from bureaus meeting with us. I have a few questions. I'm curious on if there's a sunset that you're envisioning for the temporary committees, like how long you think those will be active, to see either the additional workload that some councilors will take on, or how much less work they'll have on committees. And I do think that the transition oversight can maybe be put into the same governance and accountability. We can workshop the name, if that makes, if the accountability part is an issue for folks. So that's my first question is if there's a sunset for that, that you're envisioning, if it's going to be like three months or two months, whatever, I do share some of councilor Clark's concerns, having done work at the legislature. As far as the support that you receive from a legislative office or from a finance group that helps you put together your budget. Since we do have such limited staff, and I'm curious if we would be considering some sort of policy proposal or budget proposal to reconfigure some folks in, like the office of management and finance to mirror that function that happens at the legislature, or like they have the legislative analyst's for us, since we have so few available to us currently. That's another question I have. Hope you're writing this down. Sorry. I am also, I guess now I also have questions for some of the folks that brought up combining public safety and livability or like public safety and recreation. And I'm curious what you are seeing in that. I would actually be pretty concerned about combining public safety with livability, unless we define what livability is, because I think so often it actually just means criminalizing unhoused people who have done nothing but be poor in public. I do love or councilor Avalos idea of the public health and safety committee, because I think that that will allow us to have discussions about public safety in a much broader way. As far as looking into Portland street response, looking into environmental design, how we use our actual environment to address public safety, especially within the budget crisis that we are facing currently. So those are some comments and I guess some questions for you. And then maybe if councilor Zimmermann and councilor Dunphy want to clarify what they meant by combining some of those.
27 I don't think I got everything down, but I think I got a lot of it. I want to echo your concerns around staffing concerns in at the state level, there is a legislative fiscal office, a legislative council, legislative policy and research office, a number of other offices. And we have council operations, which is mighty but very small, with two policy analysts. And we are having a conversation about. Budgets and what we need for our offices. And we probably ought to have a conversation about what we need for our council support offices as well. They have seen this list. I think the impression that I was given is this is a lot for us, but we'll make it work if we need to. Is that I'm watching lori nod. This is a lot, but we'll make it work. But that's certainly a part of the conversation that we need to have. And, you know, we heard from one of our colleagues the work is the same. Even if the number of committees is smaller. And I think that that workload for our operations staff is equally high, even if the number of committees is smaller, and we need to make sure that we're getting the support that we need, and also that we are getting the support that will allow us to craft good policy for portlanders. So, yes, echo that concern, and I don't have a solution today for it, but I hope that that's part of what we talk about as a group, as we move forward and talk about the budget that we need to actually do, the work that portlanders have asked us to do. You asked a question to some of our colleagues, and I want to make sure they get a chance to answer that. We also have some folks who haven't spoken yet with their hands up. Can we move to folks who have not had a chance to talk yet, and then come back around to the conversation? Yeah, completely. Thank you. Perfect. Councilor Avalos, are you in the queue again or just didn't come down? Okay, councilor Ryan, thank you.
28 And thank you both president and vice president for this great work. It's a wonderful draft. And I also appreciate that we're doing a throat clearing session in public before we move forward next week. So I appreciate both of those things. Okay. First of all, I want to just comment on I thought when councilor Zimmerman said to look at the temporary transition committee with governance, I think that could be an elegant way of whittling down one. I also think eventually that committee could be more like quarterly as opposed to monthly. So some of these will have more urgency and more meetings than others. I took to heart at the beginning when you said we might have too many. My gut on this is that's the case. Capacity is real, and I want to make sure that we can start off managing expectations of those priorities. So with that, I'll just, you know, throw up some stuff. And in this throat clearing meeting that you can think about as we move forward next week, I think there are of the six that are in the standing committees here, I think there's four that are must haves, and I think those are homelessness, housing, public safety, arts, music. Did you hear that word? Music and economy? I also think parks on the rec side is a part of that. I will just always remind myself and others that I think that portland's currency, portland's economy, is about a place where people want to live and families have chosen to live in Portland because of arts, music and parks. So I really do think they're part of the economy. We're a top 25 city, not because of our fortune, five hundreds. It's because of the fact that it's a special place to live. And if we keep losing that and we keep seeing families leave, we're going to have revenue problems for a decade or more. So it's very urgent that we continue to focus on that. Now, I'm not dismissing, obviously, climate resilience planning, urban canopy or the other one, labor and workforce. My experience over here has been that those overarching concerns have come into the dialog actively in each of the big policies that we worked on in infrastructure. One example could be bull run or the filtration system. To me, that became a workforce issue and a climate resistant, a climate issue. And so it just happens to be probably housed in a different in transportation and infrastructure. But those two overarching items, they show up all the time in every committee. So it's just a thought to consider that it's not to dismiss them. It's just to say that we do have issues. Equity, of course, would be one of them that are just absolutely imperative with each of those committees. So that's why I put that out. Do I have anything else? I think in the budget season, that's an example where something's going to meet more frequently. That would have been last month all the way through June. It would meet a lot, and then it would be a little quiet for a few months. So the fourth is I think I alluded to this, but I hope to get feedback from city administrator jordan and mayor wilson on what they're seeing here as well. So we go into this with some collaborative spirit with the rest of the enterprises. The word that's being used. I think that's about it. Yeah. Thanks for listening to those draft comments. Back to you.
29 Thank you. Councilor Ryan. Councilor Green.
30 There are councilors that haven't spoken yet, so I'll just go after them. Okay?
31 It's me, councilor. Koyama Lane. Yeah.
32 I agree, I could echo what you just said, councilor Ryan, it feels nice to be able to talk about this all together. I know there have been different conversations, but it feels nice to all to discuss this together. I want to acknowledge that a lot of work has gone into this, and also name that councilor Clark and councilor Avalos have been really generous in sharing their notes and their thoughts about this. And it's really it's been helpful. And also, lori brocker has set aside time to help us think through things and do wordsmithing. So thank you for that. Something that I'm noticing and hearing is this concern about capacity for us and for our staff. I think that's very real and something something we need to keep discussing. And the within that is scheduling. I also heard a desire to protect in district time, and for that to be something that is prioritized. And I will say, as madam president and I have been talking, that is something that we oftentimes bring up, especially as in the first couple of months, there are going to be a lot of briefings and different things for us to get caught up on. But that is something that we continue to talk about, is how can that be a protected time for all of us? And also, madam president, I want to thank you because it's I'm going back to in December, when we were in my living room and just kind of brainstorming and sharing ideas, it's encouraging to see how far we've gone. And I know something that we continue to talk about is having flexibility and there being a sense of fluidity and being able to meet the needs of the moment of our city and our constituents and our priorities that we all ran on up here. So that's something that that I want to mention. And I'm hearing openness from, from folks to be flexible too. So that's helpful to think about. What is the frequency of meetings can be a little bit different. Maybe the size of each committee can be different. I love I love the idea of considering phasing in and scaling up committees. I also, I do tend to agree that we have a lot of work to do, and we can we can combine the committees, but that won't necessarily change how much work is to be done. Something that we've talked about is subcommittees. So I do think if we do some combining, it'll probably just mean that those committees break into subcommittees. Maybe that's something we discuss. Maybe that makes if we have subcommittees. I wonder if that lends nicely towards scaling up. So the committee gets started and then some of that subcommittee work can happen as we phase phase in different parts. So that's it.
33 Thank you. Councilor. We have a number of folks who are in the queue to ask questions or make comments. Again, we also have a standing question that I'd like to return to first from councilor Morillo to councilors Zimmerman and Avalos. So let's take not Dunphy, I apologize. Let's take that question first, and then we'll go back to everyone who's in the queue. So I think the question posed and jump in. Yeah. Why don't you repeat that question?
34 I wanted to hear your analysis on why you wanted to combine for councilor Zimmerman, public safety and livability. And I heard you say public safety with recreation. I, I personally really liked councilor Avalos framing of it, public health and safety as a combination, because then I think that we can talk about environmental design as part of public safety. And that's something I'm personally very interested in. But I just wanted to hear what your thoughts were on on why you would combine those. Thank you.
35 I'll jump in real quick. Recreation. Specifically, I have seen how the teen force program and the after school program directly lead to reductions in violence and criminal justice involvement. I firmly believe that every dollar we spend in making after school activities for kids to go have a place to go will lead to $10 in public savings we don't have to do in the future. Also, district one has a disproportionately low number of community centers and a disproportionately high amount of youth violence. So I think it is an area that the district that as a district one representative, I will be wanting to try and increase those opportunities. But also more broadly, I think I'd like to see the bureau take a greater sense of ownership over that part, rather than it's not simply about swimming lessons, which are great. It is really about using built environments in order to create opportunities for specifically young people.
36 Thanks so much for that clarification. I totally agree with all of that. And I saw that echoed in my anti-hunger policy work as well. So I love that analysis. And I think that that, I mean, we can workshop the naming of the committees, but I think that that could definitely fall into public health and public safety as well. So yeah. Thank you.
37 Yeah. When I use the term livability, a lot of what councilor Dunphy just mentioned falls into that. So I was a little bit surprised when you, you thought I was referencing homeless cleanups only. So environmental design is exactly what I think the livability services have been doing. The, you know, the lighting that goes on that we heard about yesterday, some of the graffiti cleanup. So that's more the livability thing. I feel like the impact reduction that is part of Portland solutions kind of falls into the and then the shelter program is the homeless piece. But I kind of meant it more in the vein. I would love it for this committee to put some pressure on parks and rec for its footprint when it comes to recreation and its involvement with youth as an upstream kind of approach. And so for me, the term livability was quite an umbrella term, which takes me to my next thing as I look to the chairs of these to think, what is the thing that's not written here, but I think has actually a connective tissue to my committee. Right. And I think that that is one of the points of frustration that we've seen in our legislative bodies across the country. But also one of the ways that no one, no one can slide through only. Right. So I was using the term livability in, in a broad sense, from that perspective, I hear you and councilor Avalos on the health piece. I only have one concern, which is we have one public health authority in the community and that's the county. And so not to confuse it, but to compliment it is the only piece I would think about with respect to that, because we do need to be very clear that they hold the public health authority in statute. And I'll just stop there. Yeah.
38 Gotcha. Thank you so much for your clarification. I ask because everyone uses livability to mean something else, and I've heard it a lot with regards to unhoused people in our community. So thanks for clarifying that.
39 Councilor Green, let's go back to your comments.
40 Thank you. And I just really appreciate the iterative nature of this discussion. I want to bring us back, I think, to a higher level of abstraction for a second and go back to this question about alignment with service area or or bureaus and the like. And I see an obligation to think about a lot of joint committee work, like there will be some policy issues that come to play that say, well, this is actually going to require some cooperation between a couple different committee chairs to drive policy forward. And then I would think that might inform how we think about how the council president and vice president organize the flow of our work and help us be successful in that. And so I'll just give you an example. So I started my morning at the Sellwood community house because I was looking for a place to do my council days. You know, we don't have a budget for council offices. And so I thought, let's be let's be agile here in a really great discussion with the folks there. And I'm going to be doing my council days there. But while they while I was there, they took the time to, you know, to bring concerns to me because that's the whole point, right. And one of the things that they expressed was just enormous barriers and difficulty activating spaces, like it's extremely difficult. And you know this quite well. Councilor canal, you know, during the campaign, we organized a dodgeball fundraiser, and that was part of the point was to show how difficult it is to use a park that we already pay for and, and their and their argument was that, you know, we need we need places to activate upstream in our communities. So folks, so families and kids have a place to go. That to me is a perfect opportunity to do joint committee work that does touch on public safety. It does touch on recreation. It's also an interesting opportunity to touch on economics. Right. And so that's something that can't be siloed by nature. And that's something I see as an opportunity for us to work holistically with our different talents. I'll also say that just to the question of, you know, getting right with our words and being precise with our language, the governance and accountability, I agree that accountability is probably not the right term. I would propose governance and oversight, especially if we're going to think about rolling those to committees together, that transition oversight. That's temporary, because that does get very close to us having a space to work out what are our oversight gaps that maybe individual committees might, might have concerns on, and see if we can we can be clear on that. And then finally, I'll just say this, that when we think about trying to condense it, there's got to be a balancing here, because I could make the argument that all of this belongs under the economics committee, because all of it is about the economic structure of our political economy in the city. And that would be absurd. Right. So let's make sure that we moderate a little bit on that. And if we're thinking about opportunities to kind of like save capacity, you know, just from my experience in the utility world, like the ratepayer and rate setting work area of the transportation infrastructure, that won't need to happen on a very frequent basis like that is work that's quite periodic. And like at bonneville power, I mean, we set rates every two years, right? And it's like there's it doesn't happen every, every month. Right. So that's my piece on that. Thanks.
41 Thank you for all of those comments. I'm noting that we have 22 minutes left in this session. I don't want folks to be late to other meetings. And I think we have five people left to make comments.
42 Councilor Kanal thank you. A couple process notes. I'll rush through really quick. I agree with councilor Clark about phasing things in. I agree with councilor Zimmerman and several others who believe that we should not require consistency across all the committees in their level of meetings. I think that this is an important topic, and I while I would really like to get this done on January 15th, if we're able to arrive at consensus, I tend to lean towards getting it right over, doing it fast if we need to, especially with only a short work session to actually discuss it. And then finally, on the process side, I'd like to just acknowledge that there are government transition advisory committee members here in the room and that they gave us these recommendations. We're grateful for them, and I'd like to see that when we engage with their recommendations, we start with that and put that in writing so that we have to indicate in these meetings why we're deviating and where we are, because I think that's the respectful thing to do to honor the trust placed in them by the council as an institution on the committees themselves, the I support transportation, infrastructure, housing and homelessness as it is. Those are also gtac recommendations. I support the existence of a public safety committee, and I imagine you're on the same page and the specific listed items were just some of them. But just to get on the record, I'd like to see the description explicitly include the Portland bureau of emergency management, the community board for police accountability, the safe blocks program, which is where environmental design comes into councilor Morillo points and cease fire. And I'd like to see the name change to community safety to reflect our approach as a council and not to pick on or split up parks any further. But the parks rangers program is something that I'd like to see discussed in that as well, when we often hear what kind of response people would like to see to certain types of events, and people describe it with words, but not naming an entity, what they're often describing is a parks ranger. From the perspective of reducing the overall committees I mentioned, I had two proposals on that. I agree with the first half of councilor Ryan's point about sort of mainstreaming the conversation around climate and sustainability. I did notice that your description sounds more like land use and climate together, and I think that might help to clarify. I also think economic and workforce development to me, our economy is strong when our laborers are strong and when our our represented workers, both private and public sector, are strong. So that that connects to me more. I don't have the answer to where some of these other things go. And I would like to see a committee of the whole for, for the sort of catch alls. And I think that doesn't count in the same way, because it doesn't have to meet as often. And a quick side note on that it may be the same amount of work for us if there are more or fewer committees. But from an administrative perspective, in terms of scheduling notice and things like that, there, you know, there are a few things where there is a complication when there are more committees. And this is true whether it's a council committee or an advisory committee or anything like that. The other thing is, and I agree in principle with councilor Zimmermann around combining the other two, the last two on the list. And so I think we should have a single committee, which I'd propose to be called good governance and charter implementation. I'd like to see it as a short term committee through the fall and extend it if we need to. I think its tasks should include working with gtac, ensuring the charter is being implemented, and providing other guidance on the creation of a council that's truly focused on policy, budget and oversight. And I'd like to specifically task it with giving a larger council rules proposal by October 1st to allow the full council to review it as a non emergency ordinance and have it take effect on or before January 1st. And that's, I think, the furthest out guardrail that we should have. I'll be proposing an amendment to the rules ordinance to sunset that short term patch ordinance by that for next week. I heard loud and clear the request for that. And I think the guardrail creates trust. I'd also like to empower it to do it faster as well. And then I'll also specifically mention here that all the things that are left out from this definition of those two committees and which aren't moved over to the other committee, which I'd like to see called investment and performance, which mirrors the gtac terminology as well, should either be a meeting of the committee chairs with council leadership, or just something that doesn't require committees. I'll specifically say appointments to advisory boards and commissions should not go through a committee. In my view, as the only person here who's worked as an advisory boards and commissions manager at the city, waiting five months to get a position filled because of how long it takes to do recruitment and all the other steps all the way through, it's not worth the time to do that, I don't think. And we can do it a lot faster. And then the last thing just to I think we should sunset this as well to help create what councilor Clark recommended, which is phasing. I think we should revisit this in some period of time, six months, a year, and see if maybe, maybe our concerns were not valid. Maybe we did still have in district time and we could add a committee. Maybe there's too many because we're not in district and also see the impact on the public because the number of committees will affect the scheduling, which affects the ability of regular portlanders to know when they can come and testify. Thanks.
43 Thank you, councilor, and thank you for bringing it back to the idea of making sure that we have consistency and predictability for portlanders. I think it's very important, even if we have different cadences for different committees throughout the year, that there be some consistency in when those committees are meeting within the week, at least, so that portlanders can follow along with what we're doing. Councilor Novick I need to violently, though, respectfully, disagree with councilor Ryan's suggestion that there doesn't need to be a committee specifically charged with dealing with climate issues.
44 The clean energy fund tax generates $200 million a year. That would be one of our biggest general fund bureaus. And what I have heard from people closely associated with PCEF is they have not gotten strategic direction from the council as to how to spend that money, consistent with the goals of PCEF or consistent with our climate action plan. They said that they've been largely reactive. First, they were reacting to requests for community grants, then they were reacting to demands from the bureaus. Once the city realized there was a lot of money there. So I think that there needs to be a committee where part of their mission is to look at how we spend, to make recommendations to how to spend that money in ways that reduce our emissions and also address the impact of climate change on communities of color and low income communities, and on helping those folks be part of the helping folks be part of the new Green energy economy. So actually, I would suggest a standalone climate and land use. Land use is closely associated committee, and I would suggest removing parks and putting parks in. I don't expect to win this argument, by the way, but putting parks in with the other infrastructure committees for two reasons. One, when I asked some of the PCEF related folks what weather, what kind of committee they wanted to be in, they said they should be, and they said, don't put it in with one of the infrastructure committees, because that will reinforce the temptation to use it as a piggy bank for whatever committee that is. And I think that's fair. Also, I feel compelled to recite former parks director jerry santner's argument that parks should be grouped with the other infrastructure committees and with the other infrastructure bureaus, because it parks has to interact with the infrastructure bureaus like they argue with transportation about trees. And there's big water reservoirs in parks. And she said that parks worked much better with the other infrastructure bureaus when they were under a commissioner in charge with one of them, like they work better with transportation. When jim francesconi was commissioner of parks and transportation, they worked better with. I forget who she said. When water and parks were under the same thing. I realize that gives a huge amount of work to the to the infrastructure committee if we add in parks. But I just wanted to make that point. Also, I just one other thing I wanted to note is that councilor Smith raised a number of topics fleet procurement three, one one, etc, which I don't see in any of the committees you've laid out. So just at some point, but I want to make sure that those are covered. Thank you.
45 Thank you, councilor Novick. I have many responses, but want to make sure we give these three minutes to our fellow councilors. Councilor Clark, go right ahead.
46 Thank you, madam chair. Just really quickly back to the oversight issue. You we've talked a lot about oversight of the bureaus and in your principles, number one, you have the committees providing oversight to the bureaus. And yet we're also talking about oversight in the larger committee that we're talking about combining and reconfiguring. So I just want to throw that out there. And I think maybe we need to do more thinking about where that oversight function really lays.
47 I think it's important that each committee be able to do oversight within that policy area. And what I think I heard from some of our fellow councilors is that we might need a place where we have oversight around what is missing and what is not getting the attention that it deserves. But I do think that's a question. With that renaming proposal, how do we make sure that that difference is clear? Councilor Smith?
48 Thank you, madam president. Could we have the clerk put up a copy of your suggested committee so that people can see what we're talking about?
49 We can. We are at two minutes to the end of our scheduled meeting.
50 Yeah. And I know I'm late on this. And so the other piece is how many people are you suggesting to be on each of these committees? I didn't hear what that would look like.
51 We have. I didn't say that. And it's actually a great question. My assumption has been that we would have between 4 to 6 people on a committee. If you get three people on a committee, then we have some very difficult conversations about quorum of a committee and who is allowed to have conversations with whom. If you get seven people on a committee, you have a quorum. We need to be within those bounds. I think ideally, most committees would have 4 or 5 members, but there may be times where we need to have six in order to have all the representation we need on a committee to do the work.
52 Okay. And are you suggesting that we have vice chairs of these committees?
53 I believe committees could have a chair and a vice chair or co-chairs, depending on the need of the committee. And in fact, I was going to save this to talk about until we talk about membership. But I think it's actually important for us to establish the precedent that either co-chairs or a chair and a vice chair are acceptable. And because we are the first body in setting precedent, it's my intention to have some of our committees have chairs and vice chairs, and some have co-chairs in order to very assertively set the precedent that a council could create either structure. Thank you. Councilor Koyama Lane.
54 I want to name that having more committees does potentially allow for the different strengths of the councilors to shine through. With leadership. We'd have more opportunities for that. I think there are a ton of different strengths on this council, and I would love to see those shine through. And then to comment on the question about parks, which I have spent a lot of. I've had a lot of conversations recently to try to understand where different folks believe parks should live and why, and what's the history. What I've heard from quite a few community leaders who care a lot about PCEF is that they're pointing to the blue Green deal, which you can look up and want to make sure that whatever we choose will best facilitate working with that. Under that structure, the idea that we need to be thinking in an integrated, holistically way, not just thinking of our infrastructure as separate from climate. So I had a lot of conversations, and I did not get like one clear answer from a lot of the different community activists. But I did hear that pretty loud and clear that whatever can get us closer to thinking more holistically will be great.
55 We are at 131. Councilors Avalos and Zimmerman now. Canal can you each take one minute for your final remarks?
56 Speed round. Let's go. Community health and safety could be another way to rename that committee. I agree that not putting climate and infrastructure in the same bucket for the reasons councilor Novick said. I think governance and oversight is the right way to go about it. So just keeping that temporary, putting that temporary in governance, and then it could phase out if we're going to talk about gtac in our collaboration, let's remember that they end in March. So if we want more of their collaboration, we need to talk about if we need to ask them to stay on. And my main question and it's question and comment is around, can you remind me why the committees have to be less than quorum? I don't remember why that matters. And because part of my question is, is there a vision for how the chairs of each committee are going to be gathering and collaborating? Since we don't have a committee of the whole, I wasn't sure if there was a space where there's some coordination among the committees.
57 Okay, then I'm going to answer the piece very quickly about chairs, which is we don't have a current structure for that to happen in a in a committee type forum. And I'm hearing from a few people that that's important. And we need to think about committee number of committees there, because that either would need to be a public meeting, or it would need to be less than a quorum of our body.
58 And I guess that's what I'm asking, like, is it is it just that we, the committees are not? I thought the committees were public, so maybe I'm not.
59 The committees are. But to the point of a leadership of committees meeting together in some form, that would need to be its own committee. If it's more than quorum, which meets publicly, which then adds another committee to our work, which is why I hadn't created that.
60 I see what you're saying, but also, I guess I'm saying for any of the committees, they they all should not be at quorum, because why I, I want to check in with our council operations staff, but I think that there are some complications when we start getting large enough around how we interact between our committees and our council body as a whole.
61 Once you have seven people together, that's a council meeting.
62 You can have votes on other topics.
63 So if we have nine committees, we all get together as committee chairs. That's now a city council meeting. That's that's the quorum.
64 So why is that bad? Is that bad?
65 It should call us. That's what this is.
66 So let's have our final one minute from councilor Zimmermann and councilor Kanal. And while we do that, could we invite lori brocker up? No we won't. Robert was in the back and is gone. If robert taylor is listening, if he could come down here and give us a two minute explanation as we run over our meeting time, that would be helpful. Maybe somebody can send him a teams chat.
67 Councilor Zimmerman I'll start there, which is the fact that we don't have a city attorney sitting here, I think is a reason why we should go back to what was brought up earlier, that this council needs to have a council office, council attorney's office. This is inappropriate. Secondly, I think that, you know, vice president Koyama Lane, you bring up a really important point of balancing the activists and the perfect. And I think that's the difficulty of this, is that activists have the thing that they're charged with, with advancing, and we've got the body of all that work. And how do we find a good compromise and a good solution? So I hear you. It is. It's really it's going to be difficult. I'm a little cautious about the continued reliance on this term sunset. I think that it immediately lame ducks a lot of our work in a way that I don't think is appropriate. And so while I know in your comments councilor Kanal, you were you were giving me some illusion of some agreement there, I also want to just distinguish a little bit of difference there. I look at it as each year the president is going to have to name members of the committee in that resolution, and with that, you'd be naming committees. And so, at the very minimum, I look at this plan changing every 365 days or thereabout, and nothing ever stops us from passing another resolution or another ordinance to change midstream if we feel like there's something there. So terms sunset to me is an inappropriate, lame ducking. You know, generally what I haven't heard. There's been a few comments. And I hope, madam president, you'll really lean into this because I think this is important and problematic if we are combining oversight and governance and then getting it. Some comments have made me sound, made it sound like some members are not in favor of finance having a role here, because those are looked at as too similar. And I would say I think they are different here. And so I just want to reemphasize that. And my last piece is unless anything is egregiously different from this document, I plan to vote for what you bring. Meaning, I don't think that this is going to be perfect. I think there are a thousand things that cannot be written on this paper that are going to find their way into something, and we're going to have to use our decision making and best case, but that's okay. I think that's okay. And so like I said, unless there's something egregious here, I plan to support whatever you bring forward. So thank you.
68 Thank you. Councilor. Councilor canal.
69 Yeah, I think just I was going to speak to the sunset point, so I'm very glad that you brought it up. Councilor zimmermann I think being strategic and very limited on where to do it is where I it makes sense. I don't think we should put a lame ducking structure on everything we do. And I think as it relates to the feedback we got on the rules ordinance, that's where that comes up. I would be comfortable with a committee that exists in perpetuity or until I should sa, indefinitely, to discuss good governance and charter implementation, as long as we had an understanding that they were responsible for meeting the sunset clause that will be amended in to the rules patch ordinance that we discussed at the first reading on the second. And so that's all I was going to say there. And I again, think that these are the sorts of questions that require a little bit more time sometimes. And it's worth the time to get it right.
70 Thank you.
71 Robert taylor, could we invite you up? There has been a question about why having a committee that contains more than a quorum or a quorum or more of our body would be problematic. My understanding is that if we have a committee that is seven or more, we are now meeting not as a committee, but as council. And that could have implications about how we do our business and make decisions as we think about how policies flow through committees and to council. But I would love to have you speak to this so that we can make sure that our full body is on the same page.
72 Thank you, president pirtle-guiney. For the record, my name is robert taylor. You're correct that if you have seven members of this council together, that would constitute a quorum of the city council for purposes of transacting business. And so the advice is, if you're forming committees, be below that seven members so you don't have a quorum of the council meeting in one place. And, and, and taking action as the council in that capacity.
73 We have three people with hands up, I assume, with questions for mr. Taylor. Councilor Clark. No. Councilor Novick.
74 Mr. Taylor, I still have councilor Avalos question, which is who cares? I mean, okay, it has to be noticed as a council meeting, but as long as we all agree that we think of it as a committee and we're not, and they're not going to be making decisions for the council as a whole isn't just a matter of how it's noticed.
75 I think it's possible to do it that way. I mean, you would have if you could have all the chairs right here assembled and talking in a work session together, and that might be a possibility to do that. And, you know, as president pirtle-guiney noted at the opening of this work session, work sessions are an opportunity for a quorum of the council to get together and talk in public without taking any action. And so if the goal is to have, you know, we have eight chairs, for example, or eight chairs and co-chairs, perhaps you could convene them in a in a work session format and have that conversation publicly.
76 What about just having a committee that has seven members? We might have to notice the meetings as council meetings, but I assume that that's all you'd have to do.
77 I think you could. I think you can do that. I think there is a the there is a. You would be relying on the council to enforce its own rules regarding the authority of those seven members who are meeting, if those seven members do in fact meet and make a that is the council, that is a quorum of the council for purposes of taking action. Now, the council could impose a rule on them saying what they can and can't do. But that's that's why we have recommended to try to avoid convening seven members of the council for purposes of making decisions.
78 Could I put a finer point on that and have you give me a thumbs up, thumbs down of whether this is accurate? If we as a body created a committee that had seven members, those seven members then met, ostensibly as a committee. They could in fact take action as a council on things outside of the jurisdiction of that committee, without others realizing that might be happening, which I assume would not happen with this group of 12 people. But we are setting precedent for the future of our city, and that would be a precedent that we would be setting, which could allow that to happen in the future. Is that an accurate statement?
79 You have stated very well the concern that underlies that. Yes.
80 For the record, I get it now. Thanks.
81 Councilor Kanal. Did you have a question?
82 Yeah.
83 So and just to the potential exception to that might be because we've also asked a question about a committee of the whole and the ostensible exception there. And I want to ask this because gtac recommended it is that if all 12 of us are here anyway, then we would actually all be able to enforce our rules. Whereas if it was 7 to 11, then someone wouldn't necessarily be present. The committee wouldn't necessarily know. Is that correct or is there some is there no distinction as it relates to a committee of the whole? Legally?
84 I am so happy to get this question about the committee of the whole. This as a former parliamentarian in a previous life. I love this stuff. Let's do it. So under robert's rules of order, it has a great discussion of a committee of the whole. And the way that works is usually it. A committee of the whole applies to large organizations. So a couple, an organization with a couple of hundred members, and then it says for medium sized bodies, say 50 to 80, they would recommend what's called a quasi committee of the whole. And then for smaller bodies they recommend what's called informal consideration. The idea behind a committee of the whole for a large organization of 100 people is that in organizations like that, there are strict limitations on the time each member gets to speak. So you're limited in your time. You're there's very rigorous rules governing how that body deliberates as a body committee of the whole. If that body elects to go into a committee of the whole, those rigorous rules of limiting debate are relaxed. So then you can have a more informal conversation. But when you have a committee of the whole, a formal committee of the whole, there's some procedural steps, and you have to go into the committee of the whole and then come out of the committee of the whole, and you're adding a little bit more procedural difficulty. And that's why for a body, say, of 12 members, roberts recommends this informal consideration where you convene the rules of debate are relaxed. You're not you're not stuck to strict time limits. Anybody can make motions and do things. And really, that informal consideration, that's what you that's what you have. That's what you did on January 2nd. I think that's what you plan to do on January 15th, where the body meets, have the discussion, make the motions, do the council's business. So when people talk about a committee of the whole, I think for this 12 member body, they're really talking about you getting together as a group, having the discussion and doing business sort of informally. Thank you so much for that opportunity. I really appreciate it, robert.
85 I am glad that in calling you down on short notice or calling you up, I guess on short notice, we were able to provide you the opportunity to share that with us. Thank you all for taking the extra time so we could get through everybody's questions today. I will try not to let this be a habit, but I did think it was important to hear everyone's concerns. My intention though, I hear councilor Kanal saying we don't need to rush. My intention is still to try to bring a proposal to you. All that we can discuss and potentially vote on on January 15th around committee membership so that we can get our committees up and running by the beginning of February so that we can begin doing the business, which we need those committees for. So please expect to see that sometime between now and next Wednesday. I will be asking folks if we can get that done, if we can get your signatures to get it added as a late item to the agenda. With that, I will close today's work session. Thank you all for your time and thank you to the public for being here. So sorry about that.
86 Oh that's okay. Oh no problem, I didn't I got the chat right, but I know it's the same.