The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-06-09
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Portland City Council Governance Committee met on Monday, June 9, 2025, convening at 2:32 p.m., with roll call and a statement of conduct read into the record. The agenda covered five items: approval of minutes spanning February 10 through March 31, 2025 by unanimous consent; a discussion of a visual "how a bill becomes a law" map intended to simplify the policy drafting, filing, and referral process, during which questions were raised about how emergency ordinances, code amendments, and committee bypass provisions should be depicted, along with plans to develop a simpler public-facing version and a more detailed internal checklist; consideration of legislative sponsorship terminology, including discussion of adding "lead sponsor" and "co-sponsor" designations to the council's e-Council system, questions about ethics and public meetings law implications of multiple co-sponsors, and clarification of existing rules on who may speak first on an item; discussion of tools for tracking legislation, including an internal spreadsheet model, a possible per-committee preview of upcoming topics, and a proposed pilot approach; and an open governance agenda discussion covering committee structure and number, meeting frequency, bureau oversight roles, council decorum and culture, joint committee session logistics, statement-of-conduct language, and processes for items that become inactive over time. Votes, where they occurred, are recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting adjourned with the next session scheduled for June 23, 2025 at 2:30 p.m.
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0 All right. Good afternoon. I called the governance meeting to order. It is Monday, June 9th, 2025 at 2:32 p.m. Keelan. Will you please call the roll? Pirtle-guiney here.
1 Ryan Clark here. Dunphy, here.
2 Koyama Lane here. Ashley, will you please read the statement of conduct?
3 Welcome to the meeting of the government's committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at. Agenda governance committee or by calling 311. Information on engaging with 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 might testify for three minutes unless the chair testifies 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 we if you cause 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. Additional. 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 you're a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
Procedural episode · turns 4–12
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4 Thank you. Keelan and ashley. So colleagues, today we have a few things on our agenda. We will explore a map of how an item comes before council, how an idea comes before council, kind of a how a bill becomes a law. And then we will also talk about different types of legislation, sponsors. We'll also discuss methods for tracking council actions. And then we'll also build continue to build our list of future agenda items for the governance committee. I acknowledge that we have been all budget very focused in the budget, and some of this work has been a little delayed. We also have had conversations about doing some, having some time as a council to have some sort of a retreat and do some of that foundational work. And so acknowledging that some of these things have have been delayed a bit and they are doesn't mean they're not important. So we'll be talking about them today, and you all will have a chance to throw around different ideas for future agendas. I know we've done this a few times and in different settings, and sometimes those items change. And so there might be some that we were thinking we really need to discuss and now we don't. Or there might be new things that have come up. All right. Keelan, will you please read item one?
5 This is the minutes approval for February 10th through March 31st, 2025.
6 Great. And no official motion is needed for this. So will you please read the next item?
7 Yeah. And then just to clarify for the minutes approval, this is an item that we're going to bring once a month to reflect the minutes from the previous month. And as long as there's no objection, they're just approved by unanimous consent.
8 Any objections? No. Great. Thank you, thank you.
9 Item two discussion on how a bill becomes a law.
10 Great. So, colleagues, what you have before you are a couple things. One is a policy drafting and filing process. So this should also be available to those online. And this is something that the council president and clerk's office and council operations have worked really hard on. And what we've heard from some colleagues is that having this in a more simplified visual manner might be helpful to counselors, to staff, and maybe also to the public. So my staff has put together a map that looks like this. It is. Inspired by one that we found that the state legislature has that is a little bit a little bit cuter. We can maybe add some graphics in a later on. I don't know if this one is also online, but just having a really clear picture with arrows of how an idea becomes a law at the city level, especially as we are embarking on setting up this new form of government. So you might have gotten the chance to look over this. I know I made sure to at least give it to council president last week. And you know, there are only four of us here today. Councilor Ryan can't be with us. We will make sure to catch him up and also make sure at our next meeting that he has a chance to add in different topics that he would like for future agendas as well. I'm wondering, with just the four of us, if we're up for just trying to have a conversation without hand-raising and just kind of discussing this, does that seem like something we'd like to embark on? Yes. Okay. All right. So what do you think?
11 Can I ask a question? Yeah. There's a little box underneath the arrows around committee that says emergency ordinances and ordinances amending code go straight to full council. Is that saying that there are some emergency ordinances and ordinances amending code that go straight to full council? Is that specifying that resolutions wouldn't go straight to full council? Is that saying that emergency ordinances would always go straight to full council? I'm trying to figure out if that's what part of the work that we do that's capturing.
12 Okay. Is it okay if I bring up my policy staffer who spent a lot of time on this? Jennifer, do you feel comfortable coming up here? Okay. I asked you to be in here. I didn't realize that you might need to come. Come answer questions to. This is her. This is her work. Perfect.
13 Jennifer, thank you for putting this together. I want to make sure before we start discussing whether we like it or not or what changes we would need, that I understand what it's actually saying in that piece of it. I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure what we were trying to capture in our process there, because it read to me like it could be capturing a few different ideas.
14 It tried to. Oops, sorry. For the record, my name is jennifer park. It is trying to make a visualization of what the chapter code. Chapter 3.02 specifically 020 council agenda sort of outlines in more legalese. So it's really a direct visual interpretation of code.
15 Great. So jennifer, that's you pulled that exactly from code.
16 Yes.
17 With a little arrows.
18 So okay.
19 It's not clear.
20 I think I think where I'm getting hung up is that emergency ordinances I think where I'm getting hung up is that anything can go to committee or bypass committee. And usually when we bypass committee, it's because we've either had briefings or a work session on it. It's been through something else before it goes to council, but it still comes from the same places. It comes from councilor Mayor, auditor and then is referred through the president. So I think where that's causing confusion for me is it looks like there's certain things that just are brought into existence and go straight to full council, and maybe it needs to be connected to these other arrows that go, that come out of councilor Mayor, auditor, president and then go down to that. Yeah. Jamie, you're following my lack of words here.
21 No, I hear it. Yeah. Because in this circumstance or the way that this reads, you know, my the fair wages policy that we, we reinstated would have gone straight to a full council instead of a committee because it amends code.
22 And that's not.
23 What that's not what.
24 We do. But I think there is a line. Could it could and there's a line that comes down. There's a line that doesn't go to committee, which is what I think jennifer was trying to capture here, that there are things that don't go to committee, that comes out of the lines from councilor or president, where a referral instead of committee is a referral to full council. And usually those things have a little stop in a briefing or a work session first, though presumably they don't have to. And then they go on to council instead of having a little stop in a committee first. So I just think we may want to clarify that somehow.
25 Would you want to add language about how typically councilors would get a briefing?
26 So yeah, I think we need to add the arrows in at the beginning and then add language that says typically these these agenda items would go through a work session, or counselors would have technical briefings on them before coming to full council, something like that.
27 Okay. And so what I'm seeing my.
28 Colleagues, I don't.
29 Want to.
30 I don't want to dominate this part of the conversation.
31 Go ahead.
32 This top line here, doesn't this imply that a councilor Can send something directly to a committee or directly to the full council, but it has to usually go through the president right for assignment?
33 It does go through me for assignment. But what happens is when you submit something, you essentially direct me as to where to assign it. Whereas if the mayor or auditor submits something they can request, but I can overrule that request with a councilor, our code doesn't allow me to overrule that. I just send it on to wherever. You said. There have been a few times where I've gone back to people and said, I think your request doesn't make sense for these reasons, but unless you give me permission to change it, I don't change it. Yeah. So I think that's why the arrow goes both ways. But you're also, as a councilor, allowed to not make a specific direction, in which case it's just to the president's. Yeah, choice.
34 Councilor Dunphy, I'm wondering if right here this part that says councilors can designate a committee if that would make sense, to pull that out and have that showing and then say. And then the other part, if a councilor Does not indicate a preference, the item will go to the council president to assign. Yeah, yeah.
35 It does feel like this, this box, it kind of feels like the arrow should just be on the other side.
36 Yeah. We need to go into that box.
37 Yeah. Like it's a split between like, because it is a well, it's not even a split because it actually already has this. It's just it's sort of a call out that emergency ordinances can go.
38 And it's not just emergency ordinances and ordinances amending code. I think that our resolutions can also. So we might just not specify which agenda items, but we could say agenda items more broadly may go straight to full council and generally go through a work session or have briefings first.
39 I mean, if we're trying to make a really easy flow chart, I mean, every, every part of this requires an additional sentence or two, right? So I almost would just for the sake of making it clearer for people in the public, I feel like we could just get rid of this box entirely, because it already clearly shows that documents either go into this flow or they go through the president, and then they make either a committee or a full council like that is the.
40 That's true. That does go both ways.
41 So it already does that. And honestly it's also kind of like that.
42 So maybe what we need is on the bottom line here that currently doesn't have a description. We need a description on the bottom line that says agenda items may bypass committee. And typically councilors will receive briefings or hold a work session on those items before they come to full council. But the word typically allows for the fact that they don't have to, but that that is currently our practice.
43 Can you explain why we wouldn't explain the ways it would bypass a committee?
44 I think partially because we have every single part of this requires some additional line. I mean, I think it is worth noting that what you said, for example, that councilors can designate, but the mayor has to go through you. We don't have a call out line in there saying the mayor must go through the president. We don't have a line saying the mayor must go through the auditor, though it does kind of imply that I think every part of these, if we're just trying to make as simple of a document as possible, I think we could do that without it. I don't think clarity is bad by any stretch. I just want I'm just trying to think of for the purposes of not having a thousand little call out sentences.
45 Would it make sense to have that part about if we if we do keep it? I'm also open to striking it. The agenda items may bypass the committee. Should we even just have that separately, like in a corner in red?
46 I mean, we could, but it also already does that, right? We have this little intersection to the right of the word president, where it's either a left off to committee or a right off to the full council.
47 So councilor Dunphy, showing that the bottom line, if you see the committee thing as a little there's almost a box around the words under committee. The bottom line there, if you look back to president, there's actually a split in the arrows, one that goes up to committee and one that goes down and around the committee. And that that bottom line is actually where these words probably belong, but that we might need to change those words to add more clarity.
48 Yeah. Okay.
49 Sorry.
50 Yeah. Yeah.
51 So to your.
52 Paper no no no that makes sense. I'm just going to hold it up. So then this this arrow here to explain how connected it is to the emergency ordinance box. And are there ways besides an emergency ordinance or or amending a code that you can bypass committee. Are there other ways?
53 Anything.
54 Can you you want me to read you?
55 The code.
56 The code? Oh yeah.
57 Sure.
58 Yeah. What does the code say about this?
59 Well, specifically speaking to that box, emergency ordinances and ordinances, amending council rules generally will be assigned to the full council without committee consideration. Resolutions, reports and items for the 9/12 agenda may be assigned to the full council without committee consideration.
60 So really, I mean, for the purposes of this, it is like the question is whether or not something does go to a committee. And this is sort of deciding for us like the, the, the standard path is like somebody writes a bill, it gets routed for a vote. And that routing question is, does it go to the council or does it go to committee. And that's sort of also the newest weird novel. Part of our government is that we don't have committees. So I think I like that, that this is really sort of calling out and clearly showing sort of the different routes within a committee and the different options. When something goes to a committee, if something fails, it can go somewhere else, things like that. How something could come out of committee and then also just demonstrating that. And also there is a path that doesn't include committees.
61 I would note that there are sometimes emergency ordinances that do go to committee. In the finance committee today, there were a few things, I believe, on the agenda that are emergency ordinances, because they will need to go into effect more quickly, but they did have time to go through committee first. So I hope that whatever our final wording is doesn't I don't want the if this is a document that's supposed to be public facing, I don't want to confuse the public that emergency ordinances wouldn't ever go to committee. I want I want to make sure that we leave enough space there.
62 What's the what is the hope for this document as a, as a like the final home for this or what are we going to hope to do with this.
63 That it is something that's available to the public similar to this and also to give to some some councilors and staff who have been still asking the question, but what's the process? And we point to this, and I think that some of the words this maybe feels intimidating or not clear in some way. And so having a simplified, clear pathway and then in addition, the next step of what I'd like my office to work on is some sort of a sheet that's a checklist that then councilors can use to think, okay, when I have submitted something, have I checked all the boxes of the things I need to do and the and the people that it needs to run through? So just creating some more tools for clarity.
64 So I feel like for me that feels like two very different documents, because I think if we are going to have something that is public facing, that is for, you know, joe schmo, who doesn't understand how a bill becomes a law or how something becomes a bill, I think we should have something that is as clean and as simple and as visual as possible, with as few caveats in there. And then also for the purposes of, you know, new staff in my office have one that is that next level. It says if this, then that, if this, then here. These are the people who need to check boxes. But I think starting with a with a really strong and the most simple and a very intentionally visual component of it, like this is really, I think, going to be helpful for the public to be able to see.
65 Sort of simplifying.
66 This, I think even simplifying this a little bit more and then overlay. Yeah. Something to be able to like for the nerds who want to dive a little deeper and be like, okay, what is a committee referral mean? And where do these committee chairs and all these things like, great, we can have that information. But I think but for my daughter, who is doing a project in the seventh grade about what the legislative branch does, something like this would be really helpful. Just super simple. Honestly, I think even getting rid of like some of the extra little. Explainers in general and trying to go as, as clean as we could. And then make other information more available, you know, if nerds want to go deeper like I do.
67 I also am going to put you on the spot, councilor Dunphy. But there is a hope that maybe someone who's an artist who is great at drawing might be interested in doing some little sketches to go along with it, because I think for students, but also for, for adults, the visual pieces is lovely, if you might be interested. I've seen your sketches. I see some right there. Yeah.
68 Doodling all the time. Yeah, absolutely. I think that I think that I think that there is a I was a graphic design major before I realized I hated taking on clients, and I switched to political science from there. There is definitely a skill set that graphic designers have that some of us policy nerds don't have. That's like the third time I've called somebody a nerd in this meeting. I apologize. The general public. That thing, it's not a bad thing at all. I'm wearing a darth vader belt buckle today, for god's sake. So. But I think that. Yeah, I think if we can get as a group, move this in the right direction and get things where we, you know, want, I would be happy to take on some additional responsibility of trying to make it something visually appealing.
69 I do think just as I looked at this document and at the original document. There's a lot in the middle on the original document that I think is really important for council offices to understand in terms of the processes that we need to go through between the box that says sponsor and then the arrows that imply referral, that either go through the president or bypass the president on your new sheet. And it felt like there was a piece in the middle here. That is the middle part of this sheet that was left off. And for the visual, for the public, they probably don't need that, right? They don't need to hear what do you have to do as it's drafted and who has to review it? And what does it mean for an item to be complete? And what do you have to do to get it referred? But for whatever version goes to offices, if you're trying to create a new version for council offices, it does need to have those things. And maybe that comes in your checklist. Maybe it's a broader version of this. Maybe we do still need the old version. I don't really care what form it takes, but I do want to make sure that we have an easy way for folks inside and really for the public who wants to take that next step. Also, to be able to see all of the steps that something has to go through so that people understand how much you have to back up to submit something before it can be heard. Right. I would hate to have a member of the public look at this. Say, that's really simple. Give us an idea to submit and say we want this to be implemented six weeks from now and not understand that getting something through council really very rarely happens in six weeks.
70 Jennifer.
71 Sorry.
72 I, I hear that and what I'm hearing, and I agree is that this first one should be the goal should be clean, simple, easy to follow, easy to digest. And then also the next. And then we can think about how deep we need to go in other areas, and especially the piece of when a staff or an elected is thinking is my ordinance or resolution complete, that they also have something else they can look at to really make sure they understand. They understand the process. Would that be looking at what we have here? Council president? Would it be the drafting council review and item complete? Is that kind of the section that you're thinking that we need to focus on and make sure that that's really laid out clearly?
73 Exactly. That's where those either that checklist or something more specific comes in. The other thing that isn't contemplated on the new sheet that we tried to contemplate on the old one, but it added, I think a lot of complexity to the old one is the policy ideation. If something is coming out of committee discussions, because our committees can have broad policy discussions just like we're having right now. And sometimes in this case it's coming up with a document. But sometimes that leads to an ordinance or resolution coming forward. And we had tried to capture on the original sheet. What is the process if an idea comes not from a constituent, but from a conversation in a committee? And how does that move through the process a little bit differently? Because then you have a committee discussion at the front end, and maybe we don't need to capture that. Maybe we just all know that that idea can come from anything, including a committee discussion. But originally there had been some conversations that the timelines might look a little bit different if that came out of a committee discussion, because there had already been some pre-work done. The concept itself and what was possible and what wasn't. So on the more complicated version, I think we just need to return to the question of whether whether we need to list that or whether that's just assumed. And it actually did nothing but add complication to this original version, and we don't need to list it at all.
74 What do you think, councilor Clark? Councilor Dunphy about? In addition to constituent, adding other ways that ideas can come like constituent or committee works, work or committee discussion.
75 I think it's a good idea. I think as long as councilor Dunphy is going to illustrate things, it might be helpful to approach this in a different way, to have a little figurine that says, so you want to pass a law. Step one, step two, step three, step four. Which is really more maybe for the public, but also for some of us. But I could just see your illustration. And really for the lowest common denominator here, just exactly what do I do now? How do I do it. Because this is this is all all information is here. It's just a little cerebral. The other thing that I would be helpful just to contemplate at very, very least, is the timeline, you know, to set people's expectations. I think council president was sort of talking about how rare, I mean, how long it takes to get something to council to give people some idea of really how long it takes. But I, I'm sort of enchanted by the idea of councilor Dunphy doing doing some illustrations for the least of us.
76 All right.
77 I'm in. That sounds fine.
78 You've left our colleague enchanted.
79 Councilor.
80 All right.
81 Do you think a timeline makes sense to be separate from these? Or when we finish this, even doing a copy of it and then adding possible timeline?
82 I like. I like councilor Humphrey's idea of keeping things as simple as possible. So you could have an overlay overlay.
83 Add more detail, add more layer. I'd be pretty straightforward. I did want to ask jennifer, though. While you were researching this, did you notice anything that you think from a like a policy perspective we need to fix in this system? I mean, I, for example, think we still have some work to do around the council review section. I still find it concerning that we are outsourcing review to another government of impacts of our policies, but not all other governments. And I'm just wondering if there's anything else in this situation that you think we should be looking at before we start thinking about my doodles.
84 I guess I would just say, like looking closely at what the code actually says. So when you guys were talking about like what skips and when it does what it says versus what the practices are, that's that would be my only.
85 Have we have you seen somewhere where our practice is so far has been violating our, our code or has been outside of the spirit of it, or are we sort of still trending in the right direction?
86 Yeah. No, I don't think that there's anything egregious happening. I think it's just as you're iterating. Sure. Keeping going back to the source.
87 Okay.
88 All right. Do we have any other thoughts?
89 No.
90 I just want to reiterate the gratitude, jennifer, for putting this together and giving us a place to start on the conversation. Thank you.
91 Great. Thank you. I think we have some some good next steps and even voluntold someone to help out help with the art. So I think we're heading in the right direction.
92 Absolutely.
93 Keelan can you read the next item please?
94 Item three legislation sponsor sponsorship.
95 All right. Another thing that has come up before from councilors and brought to me as the chair of governance is there a way to specify when submitting resolutions and ordinance whether councilors are either chief sponsors or co-sponsors? I know this there's been a little bit of I've talked to the council clerk a bit about this. I know as someone coming into this more as a political outsider, I didn't quite realize that those can have different meanings, meanings in different places, different jurisdictions. And so I'm interested in what you all think about that. And keelan do you want to kind of give a little bit of an update? I know we've had some emails back and forth, to be honest. Sometimes I'm a little bit confused. I know some of this might even be like a coding thing, getting our our website to look a certain way, but do you want to kind of tell them what you've told me so far?
96 Yeah, absolutely. I know there's been some interest in the field on documents that is the introduced by we have tended to use that field to represent both introduced, introduced by and sponsors of items. So we are we have asked the web developers that we work with what could be possible to expand that field, to look at different ways to represent who is introducing or sponsoring an item. So yeah, that's that's kind of what we know right now. And we're kind of waiting to get some information. The team is very busy. So they tend to bring forward features and updates to the system in what they call sprints. So normally if we want to have a change we have to get onto the sprint schedule and they come forward at regular intervals. So yeah, it's just kind of a timing thing.
97 And in the meantime is what I'm hearing from you correct that there is a section where councilors can also just note in there, if they would like it, to say chief sponsor co-sponsors. And it can be added.
98 Oh yeah, absolutely. It can be added into findings for ordinances or whereas clauses for resolutions. It can also be included in the introductory section of impact statements for reports, ordinances and resolutions. So yeah, there's lots of different places where that information can be included.
99 Great. And colleagues, councilor Kanal is here hoping to join our conversation. Yeah. If you'd like to come up and sit with us, maybe you want to start with it. Sounds like you have some thoughts about this.
100 Thank you. Yes.
101 Councilor.
102 For the.
103 Record, yeah.
104 City councilor, district two. It's been a while since I've done this. And let me start by saying I too am enchanted by councilor Dunphy and all my colleagues on city council. Yeah, I think I'm hoping that a simple solution to this can be reached, which just simply has two tiers effectively of sponsor and co-sponsor or whatever naming convention would be clear on that. I think it is very helpful to have multiple sponsors be an option for when two councilors work together on a document and developing it, and then separately to have other councilors who may have had a smaller role in its development or simply want to lend their support. I think those of you who are more familiar with the legislature are familiar with bills that may have proposed bills that may have 20 or 30 co-sponsors on it. We obviously don't have that many councilors, but the idea of allowing for other sponsors to or other councilors to show their sponsorship, I think that's particularly important for items that might be declarations of values. We've had a couple of those already in our term around, for example, mlk day in the second meeting, but also the core values resolution or things like that. I can see some of those very values oriented ones being important to have that option as well. But even on some of the ones, the social housing resolution had four different councilors, I believe on it, and two of them very clearly did a lot of the work on it. And I'm very happy to be one of the other two on it. And I think having that distinction, I'm not sure that there needs to be broader tiers or more tiers than two, but that option and in the e council context, having two fields separate from each other, one being the existing introduced by and one being effectively a copy paste to that with a different name on. It seems sufficient to me, but I will leave it there. Thanks.
105 Feel free to jump in with thoughts.
106 I mean, I agree, I don't think we need to go too much further into that. I don't think we need a second or a third line for chief sponsors. I think it's very I mean, anyone who has ever worked in legislation in any capacity knows that there is a significant amount of just labor involved in bringing anything forward. Even the simplest idea requires somebody to champion it through every step of this process. And I do think that in certain circumstances, you know, I also try to I, I believe that success is best shared. And so I look for co-sponsors anytime I'm introducing something. But. It is sometimes nice for the public to understand, like who is actually the driver of this? It's nice for the media. You know, there was a couple of times where I was added as a co-sponsor, but admittedly I did very little other than show my support and had some awkward interactions with the media being like, I have not, in fact been in those conversations, so I don't know the latest details. And having to say that is embarrassing. So I do think it's important that we have a separate line to demonstrate co-sponsors. I think that co-sponsors are really important. I think it's a demonstration of values for anything that we're seeing. And I think that I personally also look at legislation that has more than one sponsor on it a little more seriously, whether or not that's how it's supposed to work, as I do. So I think that's right. I think adding an additional line in e councilor would be great.
107 I'll just add.
108 As council president, there have been a number of times where I need to reach out to whoever the leads are on a resolution or ordinance to talk about scheduling when it comes forward, if something can wait or not, what the implications are and what that means about what else it needs to be on the agenda with things like that. And there have been a few times where I've had to look at something and say, I think these are my colleagues who are leading on it, and we're a small enough body that I can go to everybody and ask them, that's fine. It doesn't take a lot of time, but to just have that be very obvious there for our leadership in this body, for the press. As councilor Dunphy mentioned, for the public who have questions and possibly suggestions for amendments to know who the leads are, I think is a great idea. Whether we call them sponsors and co-sponsors or chief sponsors and regular sponsors or whatever the terminology is. I don't really have a strong preference on.
109 Yeah.
110 Best friends, club.
111 Champions, friends of the champions. I'll be your friend, councilor.
112 Yeah.
113 Okay.
114 So currently there's a section that says introduced by. And then that's where the first sponsor and co-sponsor there after are added. Does it say currently chief sponsor anywhere. No it doesn't okay. Robert taylor, would you be willing to tell us any of your thoughts if you have questions? Another question for you is should we have is there a maximum of co-sponsors? Is there anything around quorum for that? Or can we all 12 co-sponsor something?
115 Robert taylor city attorney good question. On the first question about chief sponsors versus co-sponsors, I think you can do that however you would like to do it. And whether the current system accommodates what you want or whether you need to change the system, it sounds like those conversations are happening. You know, for the purposes of the public meetings law, you cannot deliberate on a policy outside of a public meeting. I could imagine a scenario where you are just adding your name in the system. As a co-sponsor. You haven't had any deliberations with anybody, but you're just I'm adding my name to this, and I, I think that that is possible. I do I do worry about how it looks to the public and how it might look to the ethics commission, if we have eight people signed on as sponsors and co-sponsors of something that hasn't even seen a public meeting yet. So I think it's possible to do it legally. I think if you in fact start doing that a lot, it's going to raise a lot of questions. And I, I think it prudence might dictate that you avoid that.
116 I ask you a question. So robert, how is that any different than what the legislature does though? I mean, they introduce a bill and now have 25 sponsors or.
117 They exempted themselves. Right.
118 Well.
119 Yes, under the public meetings law, the local jurisdictions like Portland are bound by certain rules that the legislature is not bound by. That is a source of immense and constant frustration for a municipal lawyer. But that is the fact of life.
120 But your concern is how it might look ethically if we had, you know, more than six sponsors.
121 Right, right. And so there is a, there's a, there's a process in the law, for example, where anybody can file a complaint alleging a violation of the public meetings law. And then there's a whole process for handling that complaint, and anybody can file it, file a complaint as is their right. So I could imagine a scenario where we have eight co-sponsors on a piece of legislation, and somebody just files a complaint based on that and says, look, you've got more than a quorum signed on to this. Clearly, they've been talking about it. If they all agree on it. And then we'd have to deal with that complaint.
122 Taylor brings up an.
123 Interesting point that I hadn't thought about, which is if we are going to have places to add different types of sponsors, we probably ought to consider whether we want people to be able to add themselves as a sponsor to a resolution or ordinance that has been filed by one of our colleagues on our own, on the back end of the council, or whether we only want sponsors to be able to be added by the people who submitted the original ordinance or resolution. Yeah. If can you add yourself without talking to the chief or the introducer or whatever? The nomenclature we're using is.
124 Can the council clerk tell us what has been the practice so far?
125 Sorry, will you repeat the question?
126 Could I log in right now to e council? Find something that I have reading for the first time, and add myself as a co-sponsor?
127 I.
128 Without checking in with the with the person who.
129 If he's been made an editor, does that make a difference in the answer to your question?
130 Right. If you're if you have the council author role and you are added to the item, you are able to go in and make edits to the item.
131 Including editing, sponsorship.
132 Yes.
133 But if you've not been made an author, if you've not been given that authority, which is only given to people who the folks introducing it add or somebody in your office adds, then you can't do that, right?
134 That's practice. Seems to be you talk to the original authors.
135 Yeah.
136 I mean, you can imagine how much fun you can.
137 Have, right?
138 Especially if there is maybe not a very hard rule, but it is also best practice to try and stay six and under in terms of co-sponsoring. If something hasn't been heard publicly. So there could be challenges there.
139 Robert, is there any under robert's rules? Under your rules? Are there is there any difference or authority or power that is associated with being the author or introducer of a piece of legislation, as opposed to any other member of the council did that? Does that come with a right? Does that come with powers that someone might be bestowing upon themselves or something?
140 The only thing that comes to mind, I believe, under the council rules that you've adopted for yourself is there's a rule that says the sponsor of the of the of the legislation gets to speak first on the item or the chair of the committee. So there is that sort of ownership that gives you the right to speak first on something that you've introduced.
141 Councilor Kanal do you have something at as well?
142 I believe that.
143 If a motion is divided, the person who introduces the motion can determine which of the two parts goes in which order under robert's rules. And there's a couple little things of that nature, but I will verify that before anything else.
144 What councilor Kanal says is true. I think it's a different situation.
145 It's who moves the item as.
146 Opposed to.
147 Moves it, not. Who it's who made the motion, not who brought the original item. Right?
148 Okay. So where we're at is we will hear back about logistically how this could be if and how this could be changed easily in the system. But it sounds like what I'm hearing, tell me if I'm wrong, that we are interested in having some clarity on two tiers. There's not there are not strong feelings about what those names are. So if it's okay with all of you, maybe I will. If I'm allowed to. Robert, talk to other councilors outside of here about what? What names they would like. Can I do that?
149 Might be more appropriate in a work session?
150 Okay.
151 Maybe we just decide then two tiers or we'll ask them to come to governance. Yeah.
152 Chair, I'd like to add one more thing before we move away from this topic. It is also our practice in the council clerk's office when we are reviewing items for administrative completeness is to ensure that everybody who is listed as introducing the item has approved the item. So that may be something to consider when you're thinking about the rules around this particular topic. We consider every each councilor That introduces an item to be kind of like sponsoring the item and to need to approve it.
153 Do we actually need to have this be part of our rules and make our resolution, or is this something that we can come up with a definition and council president just sends it in an email to councilors as you sometimes give out information. Just clarifying.
154 It's more.
155 Like guidance, isn't it?
156 I want to try to draw a line here, and you all can tell me if it's a line that makes sense to you or not. I think if what we're doing is adding a different level on the website, and I'll note that I've had a number of conversations, both with our chair here and with the clerk's office, about the fact that once we get through our rules process, we're going to need a whole overhaul, probably of council. But in the meantime, we're doing the little fixes that we need to do in the meantime that can't wait. If what we're doing is one of those little fixes to allow for a sponsor or co-sponsor or sponsor or whatever it is section, I could send guidance out to our colleagues saying, we now have these two sections. Here's how I'll use those two levels differently. How the clerk will use those two levels differently. What you should expect in terms of the customs around what we do for each of them. And I think that we could probably just make a decision here on a change, and I could send out guidance. I think if we want those two things to be specifically, differently meaningful in a more technical way, right, as it relates to our rules and how we operate, we treat them differently, or we're codifying it in some other way, in other work that we do, or we want to say that sponsors have some power, but not other in a more formal way, that we probably ought to include this in whatever the next batch of rules is that we bring forward, not in code, but in those rules that are in resolution and go into our general operating rules.
157 When I've heard this brought up, it's less about rules. And anything being formally different. And it's a little bit more about credit. It's about what's the level of the people that are really put in the work, and then what's the level of the folks who are saying, I support this, but not necessarily do a lot of work in creating and revising?
158 And I think if we want to say something like up to x number of people can sponsor, that probably needs to go in our rules somewhere. But if we want to say we have both of these to allow for that credit. And by the way, you all should know that the folks at the on the top line, whatever we call that, are the ones who the clerk will look to get the thumbs up on any changes and who the council president will work with on any scheduling needs. I think that's guidance that doesn't need to go in rules. Does that sit correctly for folks?
159 Yeah.
160 Okay. So do we need anything else at this point it sounds like we can start with this just being general guidance. Can we just call them chief and then sponsors chief.
161 Yeah.
162 See we people do have ideas about it.
163 Is the phrase chief okay.
164 I have thought about that. And then I've also thought about chief of staff.
165 Chief of.
166 Police also. But I think knowing that I okay. Primary.
167 Principal sponsor and co-sponsors sponsor.
168 Yeah, I think I agree with that gut feeling. I think if it doesn't feel great, let's skip chief and I it gives me a little pause too. So what if it's just sponsors co-sponsors?
169 I think that's I think if I mean, I can imagine a scenario in which I want to share credit with, with council president on something because we both worked on it. And so we are both sponsors or another situation where I've done a lot of work and I want to bring other people along, and those are co-sponsors. So I don't know. Now we're losing it.
170 I know I think we're getting closer. What about primary sponsors or lead sponsors and then co-sponsors?
171 I like lead a lot more.
172 Lead sponsors, tier one, tier two co.
173 Sponsors like per. Yeah.
174 All right. Are you ready to move on.
175 Sure.
176 If it if it would help the committee the rule under 3.0204 0c1 says the committee chair or elected official submitting an item speaks first on the item. So that's the rule that gives preference to the person introducing it. And then there is a separate rule under d sub four where a motion with several elements may be divided. But the councilor who made the initial motion may designate which item is voted on first, just to address the issue that came up earlier.
177 Thank you. All right. Keelan, can you please read the next item?
178 Item four tracking legislation.
179 Great. I have to say these items today. This is more fun for me. This is what I pictured the governance committee being getting to really dig in and talk about different tools. All right. So something that has been brought up to me is ways that we can, as counselors, be sharing legislation. Things that have been submitted, maybe even things that are in the works for the purposes of increasing transparency and potential collaboration. Council president and I go to weekly meetings with the executive leadership team, where we see a tracker of upcoming things from the executive side and have gotten the question about what could that look like on a council side? Does this make sense? Is what potential challenges could you foresee? And my team has just put together a simple exhibit as a sample, but would love to hear thoughts from folks. From everyone, especially council president here who's doing a lot of the holding of where different things are coming from different councilors to think about what could make sense. So feel free to jump in.
180 So you're not talking about.
181 You're not talking about the big spreadsheet of what items are coming up. It is the big spreadsheet, the one that we look at.
182 Is that what you're modeling this after.
183 Is the modeled after that, there's a big spreadsheet that has everything that's been formally submitted. What is.
184 The committee's.
185 All been. So the administrative side has this spreadsheet that you've probably seen that comes from the chief's meeting, right? Yeah. Where they are tracking months out what they know they are going to bring to council. And what I have said to them literally more times than I have fingers on my hands at this point is if you know it is coming and you know what it is going to look like, file it, because once you file it, it comes to me for referral. I refer it, it then goes on the referral list and then the public can see it too, because right now they have this lovely spreadsheet that they all see but that the public doesn't see. And when I ask the clerk to create a referral list, it was to the end of eventually getting to something. I think kind of like chair Koyama Lane what you're looking for here, which is where is the spot where things that haven't been scheduled in committee yet, but that are complete, right? We know what the language is. Where can that sit? Where not just all of us, but portlanders can see it and start to decide, do they want to testify? What do they think? Do they want to weigh in? What committee is it going to go to, and where? Our committee chairs can say, gosh, I know there's all of these things coming that have been referred to my committee. Let me think a little bit further out about how I want these to come to committee and what I want the scheduling to look like, instead of the crunch that we often get to last minute. So I don't know, councilor If that's what your goal is with this or if your goal is something different, but that that's something that I know is really important to me. For us to get to is a place that the public can see these things. And the referral list has been my attempt to get us there with the tools that we have now. If this is something internal, then I might have different thoughts on it because we've had some push and pull on when people want the things they bring forward to be public internally. But I think as soon as we know what the language is on an item, folks should stop holding on to it behind the scenes and actually get it filed so that portlanders know what we're thinking about working on.
186 So when it comes to the spreadsheet that's generated by the administration, a lot of those things are are information. They're not there's no action or there's no language, so to speak. So leaving that open I think is okay. We don't there isn't any language. It's just we're having like, for example, today I met with the dca, dana paul to go over the agenda for tni committee out into the future. And some of that is on the spreadsheet that you're talking about, but they're mostly mostly information. There are a few things that, you know, people get nominated for particular position on a committee or commission, those kinds of things we might know ahead.
187 Today's spreadsheet, there was a new item added. That is, we're going to hear another eminent domain agenda item. Right.
188 And I know which one you're talking about.
189 This is one in your district actually. You're going to get a briefing on.
190 It.
191 But you're not going to get a briefing on it for months, probably because they're not planning on bringing it to council until September. They probably know exactly what the language is they'll be bringing to us. I've suggested that that should be submitted now, even if it sits on that referral list for three months, so that the public knows it's coming. Similarly, I would guess that we have counselors who have things that they know that they want to work on, some of which we know the language for already. Right? Some of which people have done the background on, and they could add some of which folks know they're going to do, but haven't done the background on. So that wouldn't show up yet because it's not ready to go on that list. So that's where I think part of what I would love to know is what level of done this list would have. Is it the same as those things that we want the public to see? Is it a preview that doesn't include the language but that says, hey everybody, here's what will be coming, but we don't have specifics yet. Or is it more of an internal document?
192 Thank you for all of this. I think this is helpful. No. And I mean, sometimes what comes out of this is what the next projects will also be. So to clarify, we already have a spreadsheet that looks similar to this that the executive branch uses to bring to the legislative leadership team each week. That goes out as far as possible. It does have our items at the top right that are filed in council.
193 The things that have been referred.
194 Referred, okay, already referred, and then it's all of their items that they plan to bring. And a lot of that is traffic control and scheduling and making sure that there'll be room for these items and asking, council president, which committee does this make sense to send this to? So originally, actually this form is intended. The idea was that it would be used internally for collaboration, and it would capture things that are not even necessarily ready for filing, but are ideas or research happening in order to support collaboration and transparency. And as we're talking, I can see that a document like that could be helpful, a tool like that, and then another one. That could be helpful internally and to the public can also maybe, maybe have more of the information when it's, it's ready to be filed. And I've also heard from counselors to be able to see what the lineup is for, when to expect it, on which full council agenda, which I don't know if that makes sense to put on there, because I think that's something that can really depend on how much public testimony there is. And so this one was more about internal supporting collaboration. But it could be a good start where the next step could be something that is more public facing. We could talk about what the differences would be, what what sounds more helpful. I'm also wondering if something is internal. It is. Everything's a public record, right? Someone could always record, record, request it. Now, what are all your thoughts as we think about maybe a few different options purposes?
195 I have two thoughts immediately. The first is I'm a I'm a policy wonk. And I came into this building with a spiral notebook filled with new ideas of things I wanted to pursue, literally, I 45, and discrete policy ideas that I'm hoping to accomplish before the end of my term knockwood. I would make. I mean, functionally, if I were to upload all 45 of those ideas in draft form, it would make the document useless, because who's who's to say whether Dunphy is talking about something that's going to be happening in a month or in six months, or in end of my term. Further, there's a there's a problem I really specifically am interested in trying to solve, and it's one that it's a culture one. It's that historically, when a proposal is heard by the city council, that proposal has been cooked, it has been shopped to our colleagues. We have found our our support. And almost certainly by the time we're hearing public testimony, 90% of the work is done. And maybe we'll futz with it on the margins. But the public has come to expect that we are talking about final proposals. But with the new form of government, with the increased mandate for input from the public and with these public meetings law, often the first time I can hear about proposals is when it's presented publicly, and the public doesn't know how to react to that yet. And I think the more transparent we are about process and early thinking, I do think that will have some benefit. I'm just thinking back to a couple of the specific policies, for example, not to not to pile on councilor Novick, but maybe if we had had a different process, he maybe wouldn't have introduced his his community music center amendment. But or maybe he would have and we wouldn't have had 50% of the testimony come in and desperately try to save something that was honestly just a proposal for colleagues to discuss. And I don't know how to solve that yet. This is overcoming 100 years of how things have done and been done in the city. But it is a challenge that I am seeing specifically, you know, additionally, my amendment around prosper Portland, I was eager to debate that with the with my colleagues about it in a public forum and hear from the public in meaningful ways. But the way that it was perceived by the public was this is the final product. And if we don't put everything on the line right now, everything we've worked for is lost. And that's that is a missed opportunity, I think, as well. And third, by by not having the public have access to understanding where we are in the process, it leaves room for people with bad intentions to misrepresent our, our policies. You know, I don't believe for a second that councilor Novick was anti-music and anti kids learning how to play instrument. It was a policy conversation that we should have had in this body, but it came off very aggressively by the public because they thought that they were fighting for their lives. So I don't know how to solve for that, but it is a thing that I think we will learn to get closer towards. And I think that maybe having a public facing legislative tracker of some sort may actually help us get there.
196 But what that says to me is some of those conversations really need to take place in the community committee.
197 Sure.
198 First of all, not just plopped. I mean, this is the first time we've been through this budget process. So we're all learning 126 amendments, budget notes. It's kind of kind of crazy, but I keep looking at them thinking, that should go to a committee, and I'm guilty of that, too. This idea I had should just go to a committee first and get work done. And regarding this list, I think there's value to it, but a lot of I hope I'm not overstepping my bounds. But a lot of this happens informally. Like I'll ask a committee member, what do you think about that? Do you want to work on that? You know, is that something you want to pursue? That sounds great. And maybe eventually it ends up here? I don't know, I'd sure like to know what everybody else is doing. Sure. And I don't because I can't watch all the committees. I don't know what's going on or what. And I don't talk to everybody all the time, so that might be helpful if people are willing to, you know, put their ideas out there. So there may be some value to it.
199 Councilor can you help me understand when you said you have a bunch of ideas, if you were to put them all on this list, what were you saying there?
200 If.
201 If, for example, I took everything that was slightly more than a simple idea, you know, if I have a part of a policy, but it ends up being 40 different things that take up space on this document, plus everything everybody else is working on, plus all the stuff from the administration. Suddenly it's a 300 item long list, and at that point, people's eyes glaze over and it's no longer navigable. And it's, you know, you can keyword search, but it's not actually a very useful document if especially if it's filled with, you know, deranged rantings from me about policy ideas that I read about, you know, in college or something like that. If we it's basically I'm just worried that we would be oversharing and drowning too much, too much information to make it actually not useful.
202 So that raises the question at what? At what point do you put something on here? How much does it have to be developed? You know, I mean, and that's for everybody to decide.
203 Yeah. I mean, for example, I went on a podcast recently and talked about vacancy taxes. I keep hearing people saying, what about a vacancy tax? Well, I don't have a proposal around a vacancy tax, but I take the conversation very seriously, and I want to invite that conversation, but I don't have anything to respond to at this point. Would I put something in the legislative tracker at this point that says vacancy tax for the city of Portland and has no additional information? That's going to cause some panic, certainly, when in reality I'm just trying to get public input from people. And so I think that, yeah, trying to figure out what that line is, is really important.
204 So you go to a committee and say, hey, let's have a conversation about what this thing is.
205 Yeah, I.
206 Think that this.
207 Is I think about this and I'm hearing the discussion between my colleagues who at one point I thought were almost saying opposite things, but I think are coming together now on what you're saying, from what I'm hearing, at least a lot of what I'm hearing is we need more transparency. We need a better way for the public to know what is a concept for discussion and what is something someone is trying to move quickly. But I don't know that this document captures that. I think this has brought up a lot of need, but may not be the tool that actually gets to those needs because it doesn't help with letting the public know what's real or not. It doesn't help with, hey, I have this idea, it needs a discussion. I'm hoping the committee chair will put it on the agenda, not as a resolution or ordinance, but as a discussion before I develop anything. But you don't have anything quite perfect to add here yet, because it's not an item with a sponsor, and that maybe what we need to do are air more of the issues around how we identify things for each other and for the public. Before we figure out the right tool is. I don't mean to squash this.
208 Well, this seems like something internal, that.
209 This is.
210 More of an internal that I would I would like to know what you're thinking. I would like to know what you're working on. Are you are you coming forward with something that I need to know about? I'd be curious.
211 Well.
212 Is there also I mean, at that point, if we do have an internal facing document like that, which I again, I said earlier, I believe in co-sponsoring and sharing partners as much as possible and transparency. But also there maybe is a circumstance in which it makes sense for me to keep something very close to the vest, right, and not share on this document. Is there an obligation to have, you know, is it is it an expectation from our colleagues that we are sharing things x many days in advance? You know, I mean, ultimately in my head, I am I'm tracking this halfway between the, you know, I'm envisioning something somewhere between the existing system we have in council. And I really like the way that I mean, this is a little clunky. Aulis being the Oregon legislative information system, that is the bill trackers in Salem, where you can click on something and say, what action has been taken, what amendments have been proposed, what's the fiscal impact statement, and what are the public testimonies that people are talking about it? It's a lot of work to run. So I don't know that we want to do that. Also, the state legislature is time bound. And so it's sort of inherently changes some of the usefulness of that system. I mean, our our not being time bound makes it less useful, but I'm mostly just talking out loud now.
213 At this point.
214 Councilor Kanal did you want to come up?
215 Thank you, madam vice president. The only thing that I'd like to add to this conversation is there's an item on every full council agenda, which is a committee referral report that I think might be helpful connected to this, I think it would be helpful for the public to know, for example, in particular those that councilor Dunphy lovingly called nerds earlier, the ones who are aware of the 90 day rule to have a rough idea, for example, of the noise ordinance noise policy that that could be changing should that document be adopted and know roughly when it came through. So tracker would help with that, and I actually think could be displayed, or at least a summary version of it in that item three, which would cut down on this being a duplicative effort potentially to indicate where a document's at and where it's going, and also roughly when it might come to council, because obviously, as we all know, the document, I think it was April 8th that that document came out so people would know that by I believe July 6th is 90 days. So you can have a rough idea of when that document would come to council and that would also, I think, help with when an item might get to committee, things like that, especially as they are penciled in. And that might be a column worth considering. Is has it been penciled in for a date to the degree that a committee chairs might know it, or the council president in the case of the full council? But this this does seem like something that's helpful. I have no other comments on the style of it, but that transparency seems great. And I agree with councilor Dunphy about not having the expectation of filing everything as well, which I don't think anyone was specifically suggesting. But yeah.
216 Thank you, councilor Canal. It's nice to have you here, especially since our mvp, terry harris, is not here in the audience today. He might be watching online.
217 Can I just say that the more we talk about this, what comes up for me is just the importance of working with the committees. It's just do the work in your committee. Whoever is proposing whatever. And it seems like originally that was our goal, was to have a lot of work done in committee. Which sometimes is up in the air.
218 But this makes me wonder then, could it make sense to have some version of this for each committee? And there's two kind of types we're talking about. One is the throwing everything on there to encourage collaboration, and one is tracking what's been presented. Or I mean, it could even be what's about to be submitted.
219 I like that idea. I like the idea of if it's possible, committee chair somewhere list what's coming, coming attractions. You know, what topics, whatever it is, so that we get an idea. I don't know that every committee is prepared to do that or has an agenda out the next 4 or 5 months, but that would be really cool. I would really enjoy that.
220 I ask.
221 Our clerk.
222 A question. Yeah.
223 Keelan do we have a way right now of on each committees page? So if I'm looking at the governance committee page, it shows the agenda for this committee. And until you post the agenda for the next governance committee meeting, it will show the agenda for this committee. Is there a way down toward the bottom, like where you have the assigned documents to have a box that said, upcoming meetings where the committee chair could list, not necessarily each document that would be on the agenda, but topics that they wanted to cover. It wouldn't necessarily have everything, but it could give people a sense of what might be coming in the future. Is that possible under our current website format, or is that something that would be pretty difficult to do? I'm sorry to put you on the spot with this.
224 Yeah, I think I think it would be possible. I would I would want to talk more about what types of information you would want to include in that type of kind of notification about upcoming topics. But I yeah, I think that is something we could explore.
225 So that's another possibility as we think about how we track conversations. Councilor relate to the sentiment you shared, that you don't have time to watch every committee, but I think if we could see a few committee meetings out what some of the topics were, you would know when you wanted to pay attention to the agenda. When you wanted to talk to another chair, to be able to plan ahead.
226 I also do note that as of right now with our eight committees, that sounds like a daunting amount of work, but I will preview that. I will be introducing a resolution or ordinance in the near future to rethink our committee structure, and we'll look forward to this, this conversation and this body as well, because it's unworkable right now and it's a lot. And it's stressing all of our friends in the clerk's office out. So hopefully we will get towards a system that meets all of our needs and is a little bit simpler to administer.
227 I was hoping we'd get to that topic in the next issue on the committee's agenda today. I was just I'm hoping that you're not going to dictate what those are in your.
228 I have a proposal in mind and it's I'm bringing something fully baked for consideration. But I have no I have no, you know, if I want this to come to committee, I don't want it to go to full council.
229 Put it that way.
230 As you know, there are conversations to come around, how many committees we have and what those look like from some whispering councilor Clerk who is the chair of the transportation committee, and I am the chair of the governance committee. We're whispering, do we want to just try this for our own committees? Is there are there any concerns about that? One piece that I'm also thinking about is because our clerk team is so overworked right now, thinking about how this puts the work on our council office to be tracking that, rather than their having to be an in between. I think a goal would be that it could be nice to have an embedded in the website, but as a as a pilot, do we want to pilot this and are there any concerns about us doing that?
231 I think it's great.
232 And we can report back. Keelan do you have any thoughts about this as trying that out? Any tips or.
233 No, not really. I'm happy to, you know, have conversations about it and offer any assistance I can. I think piloting it and trying it out sounds like a great idea. Yeah.
234 All right, we'll try it. Especially as we're still in budget and things are a bit in flux right now. And we will report back. Okay. Well, I noticed we were kind of tiptoeing into the next item. So keelan, can you read our last item, please?
235 Item five governance agenda discussion.
236 Great. So this is really what that what that is what that says. Just a discussion, a time open to all of us to discuss. What are items you'd like to see on tackled here, talked about here, brought to governance and just starting to make this list looking. I have a bunch of post-its on my office wall with different things that have come up, and sometimes those post-its come down because things aren't relevant anymore, or some of them are prioritized. So if each councilor Wants to talk about maybe their their top couple items that they're hoping we can talk about in governance, that would be great. And my team will be taking notes and feel free to go.
237 Well, since I started talking about it, I am interested in I would very much like to have some time on this agenda to discuss the proper alignment of our committees, both the number, the composition, the frequency of meeting. To make sure that we are not, you know, that we are rightsizing. I don't think we did anything wrong. I think we picked our committees at the beginning based off of what we knew we wanted to work on in these first 5 or 6 months. And we've done some great work so far, and I think it now is a good time to do some reflection on that. I would love to. Yeah. To have to call the bigger question and decide, is this the model? And maybe it is. Maybe the majority of our colleagues agree that eight committees is the right way, and the meeting frequencies are sufficient. I don't believe that's the case based off of informal conversations. Additionally, I would like to have some conversation about the council review. I. I continue to have concerns about mandating our economic impacts be reviewed by prosper Portland. I think that we have an economic development service area. We have talented staff there, and I think that we need to be making use of our staff, and I want to have a bigger conversation about.
238 It.
239 And that's all I can think of.
240 Well.
241 Did anyone. Yeah. Do we want to? We have about 1010 ish minutes for each councilor. So we will have some time. Do we want everyone to first just say their items or would you? Does anyone have questions for councilor Dunphy right now?
242 Well, I would like to if we can have a dialog here about the committees. And before you introduce your resolution or whatever you're going to introduce, can we have that conversation here and tease it out what all of our thoughts are?
243 Would it be helpful?
244 Would it be helpful for us to have a from blank conversation? Or would it be helpful for me to have something for us to react to? I think that like for example, this was really helpful for me. Like the chart that jennifer made was helpful for me to start thinking about this. Would it be helpful for us to have something to react to, or do you all want to just outline our thoughts and go from there?
245 Well.
246 I envision a piece of paper that has all eight on it and that we start scribbling from there. You know, start mixing and matching and see what evolves here. I certainly have my own thoughts about what should move where and who should do what, but I'd rather I don't want to react to yours. I want to start with a tabula rasa for our committee here. That would be my preference.
247 Okay.
248 And then I do have a list.
249 Okay. Can I.
250 Just note on the committee discussion that I know some folks see that as a standalone conversation, and some see it as very tied to the conversation about how often council meets. I think what the committees are is probably standalone, but the frequency of those two things and where we need to be doing the bulk of our work do interact. So I'll just note that councilor Kanal has submitted something for us to look at around frequency of committee or of council meetings, rather, which he directed straight to council. So as soon as we get through the budget and have a little space to have a work session, because I believe that will probably require more discussion than we can do in a full council meeting. As soon as we get through the budget and have room to add work sessions, which have been all taken up by budget so far, it is my intent to schedule us a work session to talk about that piece of it. So if you all have strong opinions about whether I hold on that until we've started a committee discussion here, or whether I should run with that, because that has to do with frequency of committee meetings, maybe, but not content of committees, which it sounds like is what we're talking about. I would just take any guidance from you all on how much you think those two conversations need to be aligned time wise, or whether they can, at least for now, be time timeline separate?
251 Or was it your intention to bring that here, to assign it to this committee?
252 Councilor Kanal directed it to full council and I can't overrule councilor Direction.
253 Oh, okay.
254 Yeah. So that's why. Because I think it needs some discussion before full council, because I think it'll take more time than we have in a council meeting. My intention is to find us a work session for it as soon as I can. But again, if you all have thoughts on how the timing of those two conversations come together, I just would appreciate any of those insights. Offline is fine too, if you haven't fully thought it through right now.
255 Well.
256 We obviously need to have more council meetings. I mean, I think that's it seems obvious to me, and maybe it is partly because of the budget that we feel that pressure.
257 The budget we also have had. I don't disagree with the sentiment around council meetings, and I think there's a conversation to have there. So I don't want what I'm about to say next to sound like I'm saying we shouldn't do that. But I do think we've had the pressure of the budget. We've had the pressure of the fact that the administration, as I understand it, held some things at the end of last year so that we could discuss them that have then been coming at us quickly the last few months. We also early on had a number of land use things that were taking that Thursday slot, so we didn't have the overflow time the way that in July and August I plan on using that Thursday overflow time very likely to help us get caught back up because we're behind right now. So we have had some specific additional pressures that I think will hopefully ease a little bit. But I also think it's a really important conversation for us to have anyway, not to derail committees just thinking about the interaction between those two things.
258 I think that is an important question, and it might make sense that we increase our council meetings. It I still I do believe it needs to be part of our conversation. Do we need more council meetings or more committee meetings? We hear over and over again, as you said, bulk of the work should happen in committees. How can we make sure that happens? Yeah, if we're not having committee meetings that often. Yeah. If we have less, then can we meet more often with our less committees. So I don't know, it seems like more yeah. It seems like those conversations will kind of interact with one another one another.
259 Sounds like maybe I schedule the work session as soon as I can. As I've planned to start the conversation on the committee on the council cadence. As you see the time in the schedule, you schedule the conversation here around committee makeup, and at some point that in between topic of committee cadence will naturally flow from both of those other two conversations and will just be a little bit nimble as we move forward with the conversations.
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260 And the frequency question could maybe move along with even just knowing the number of committees. If we even if we don't know exactly the makeup of them.
261 I get the impression, based off of informal conversations with my colleagues, that more time together as a group, as a city council, is, is vital to doing the work. And I think that when we land on a, on a, on a, on a, you know, a single decision for all of us to increase the frequency of meetings that that means inherently, we will be changing the number of committees and the number of committee meetings. And so I think that they are independent. I think talking about the content is important. And I think that's what this, this, this body should be really diving into. So. Yeah.
262 All right. Great. That was almost exactly ten minutes. Do we someone else want to talk about their top items. And I think councilor Kanal is also here for this item.
263 Okay.
264 Well I just was going to add, I think a question that I raised much earlier was what is oversight and have a conversation and maybe get some outside help on defining how we provide oversight to the bureaus. So that's an issue for me. And secondly, I had committees, committee structure, more council meetings and then decorum, which is less important. I think we're doing pretty well. But somebody asked me to draft a decorum thing, and I did, and it's just sitting there. So maybe that's a luxury item for later that these other things are more important. But I do think that at some point we need to figure out what our role is in terms of oversight of the bureaus.
265 Can you say more about the oversight of the bureaus?
266 Sure.
267 Well, obviously we don't manage anything. We're certainly sending out a lot of directions or a lot of directives through resolutions now, through the budget amendments and budget notes, asking bureaus to do things, sometimes with resources and sometimes without additional resources. But it seems like in the next year or so, given what we've put in the budget, that we should discuss, how do we hold? What's our role in holding them accountable? And even though, you know, we don't manage it and manage the bureaus, how do we do that?
268 Is that a conversation around roles? Also?
269 In part, yeah. What is our role? And because I think oversight is one of our jobs, but how do we how do we execute on that.
270 Yeah, I think that there is a fine line between oversight and executive authority. And I think we need to be very clear on what it is. I think. I think you're exactly right. I don't think it's unreasonable for us through policy and through the budget to say, and you shall do x, y, and z, and then to ask that bureau to come back and say, what is x, y, and z? I think that's an entirely different thing for us as a legislative body to, for example, not define success up front and then ask for things on a, on a on a micromanaging level. I don't think that it's necessarily reasonable for us to understand staffing levels at community centers. If we haven't previously said, and you shall have this level of staffing. And so I think it's incumbent on us to define what that is, and then also be really good about defining expectations up front in the policy conversation so that we can come back with that.
271 That's really helpful.
272 Councilor I think that's really good. And, you know, we're and as I've said several times in council meetings, where's the micromanagement part of this? You know, that we have to be really careful. We're not micromanaging that. We have clear expectations that have been articulated. So that's really good.
273 Part of it is also understanding how we give direction, right. Because having a conversation in a committee with the bureau about outcomes based on a directive that has been given through an ordinance, resolution or budget, right. We asked you to do x. How is that going? We created this new program. What are the outcomes? Seems very appropriate. But having a discussion in a committee that leads to well, we think you ought to x as a directive out of a discussion without an ordinance or a resolution feels highly inappropriate and like it's stepping on the toes of the job of the mayor so that. I think if when we start talking about this, we probably all have some of the same general ideas of where the lines are, but it may be worth having the conversation so that we can write it down and maybe get a memo from this committee to our colleagues saying, hey, there's not anything to vote on here, but we thought you ought to know that this is the direction governance hopes. You go and send that to the committee chairs.
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274 And I would hope that we could also ask for input and if not, assistance from management, from the city manager's office or to help us work through that.
275 You could.
276 Certainly ask the chair to invite whether it's the city administrator or some of the deputy city administrators to join us for that conversation.
277 And it's still early enough that, I mean, we're only, what, six months in that we're also still learning about the bureaus, about the plans that past councils have put into place for the bureaus. Yeah, we have a long way to go.
278 Councilor Clark, I have a question about the decorum piece, because this is something that I care about and am interested in and appreciate the work that you have put in in developing a draft and something that I heard from different colleagues was and maybe from public testimony as well, was that maybe this is not something that belongs in our rules, but is connected more to the retreat that I'm I'm hopeful that we will get to where a lot of that is more interpersonal agreements. What are your thoughts.
279 On that? It's not just limited to the way we talk to each other. It's also the way we talk to bureau staff or administrators or dcas and their staff. It's the way we also deal with our own staff. It's not just between us 12, but there's a real clear decorum issues when it comes to dealing with. Administrators, I believe on the dais, but that's a great idea that we can discuss that during if we ever get to this retreat and actually have some time dedicated to that, that might be the exactly the right place to do a decorum, and I don't I'm not wed to having things in the rules. You know, we talk a lot about guidance.
280 I'm wondering if it could make sense to and maybe robert taylor, you can chime in if this would be make sense or be strange, but to reference city code that is about conduct already for city employees. And if it would make sense for part of our rules to reference that council electeds and their staff should default to adopted code or rules, hr guidance.
281 Thank you. Robert taylor, city attorney I think you could you could do something like that. Just reference other rules that are in place. The challenge though, for you as members of council and elected officials is if a city staff person breaks one of those rules, there's a process to investigate it. There's a process to discipline that person and hold them accountable. If one of you breaks those rules under the charter, the only way that you're held accountable for that is by the council itself. So you if you break one of those rules, the hr manager can't fire you.
282 Yeah, right.
283 The bureau director can't fire you. You are accountable to yourselves as a body. And the charter contemplates that you will be a self-policing body so you can have whatever rule you want. You can reference whatever rule you want, but it's up to the body itself, to police the other members of the body.
284 That's really helpful, actually. And maybe in our decorum section we can discuss censorship.
285 And I think that's.
286 A really important conversation to have. Counselor Clark, when you first brought this up, you said, maybe we don't need that anymore. You think we're doing well. And I would contend that we're not, actually. And I've in the role that I hold as council president, been trying to figure out how and when I say things to our colleagues. And if I do it on the dais or off the dais and frankly, how and when I have the opportunity to say to all of us together, not on the dais in a council meeting, so that I don't embarrass anybody, though I'm going to say it here on the dais in a public meeting that I think we have a real culture problem. I think we have a real culture problem when we are the leaders of our city, we set the tone for how people treat each other in our city. My kids watch our council meetings and I don't like the example that they are getting for how people treat each other. And if I don't want my kids seeing that example, then I certainly don't think other portlanders should see us as the example for how people treat each other sometimes. So I think we very much need to have that conversation. And there are bodies that take very seriously the standards for how they regulate each other and themselves. I don't think we need a broad process for censorship right now. I think we're doing better than that, certainly better than a lot of other public bodies do. But I do think we need to have the conversation about what we expect from each other as it relates to each other, but to what you wrote down originally, also, as it relates to how we treat our staff at all levels. Right? I think there are clear lines that folks see between how you might treat a frontline staff and a political appointee, but we still owe everybody a level of respect, how we treat the public before us and how we treat our our staff on the second floor as well,
287 I that's I love that observation about your kids watching. I hadn't thought of that. I certainly have friends, but they're all mature watching who give me their opinions about things. But part of this problem I think that we're having is that and this is really, you know, hindsight being 2020 is that when we were doing onboarding, we had a lot of information thrown at us, and we never had enough time to really do the kinds of things. Now that councilor Koyama Lane is recommending through, you know, using an outside contractor to help us go back to when we were new, before we really knew each other very well and try to work on those relationships and work on that decorum, because we just launched into committees doing our own thing. And we don't we don't have a good councilor Counsel culture, nor do we have a set of shared goals. We you know, we don't have our own little strategic plan. We we're just all doing our own thing and our committees or wherever. And I don't know if we can, you know, turn back the clock, but hopefully we can spend some time with this consultant trying to work on some of those things. What how do we want to be seen? You know, and I think it's vital that we be seen as functional, at the very least, that we can get stuff done and that we do treat each other with respect because, like you said, not just your children, but a lot of people are watching. Is this new form of government going to work? You know, and I was asked continually on the campaign trail, how are 12 people going to do this? You know, and I would sort of flippantly say marriage counseling, you know, that's what we're going to need. And I think we're at that point where we definitely need some marriage counseling.
288 I really appreciate all of that, counselor Clark, and also from council president, I have felt similarly, and some of the words that were shared just really did remind me that a retreat is a right place to be. Talking about culture, tone, treating one another, expectations, how we want to be seen as a group, the type of examples we're setting. I think that's going to be a great opportunity for that. Talking about some some broad hopes and dreams for our council, I do want to clarify that any strategic planning or visioning that has to do more with where we're hoping to go as a whole city that shouldn't be part of this work. That work should be more daylit and should bring in different key players, but that we are missing that. We missed that in December, and I don't think it was anyone's fault. I think we were all really new and I tried to hint at it many times, but we had an elected our president and vice president yet, and I didn't feel like I could be bossy. But now I do. And even if there are people in the city that think this is silly to care about these things, I really appreciate that everyone up here is staying curious and open and understands that this is not fluff. This is the foundation for being functional and is incredibly important. So I think we start with this internal work and then we can work with mr. Taylor to think about what next steps can look like as we think about how we interact with the rest of the city staff and our own staff, and the best ways to formalize that if we're going to do that, great. Can we move to council president?
289 Sure. A couple of.
290 Things that I wrote down, I actually had written down conduct also. I think that. We have not had a conversation about whether we ever want to have a situation where multiple committees review an item before it goes to full council right now, because we don't have a policy there. If something could be appropriate in more than one committee. What I have done is noted when I refer it that we need to make sure that the chair of another committee gets a heads up as well. And if that comes from the administration, I direct them to do that. Otherwise, I am trying to run around and make sure that whoever, whichever counselor brought it forward does that. But it's casual, it's a heads up. And it may be that because of timing, we don't ever want things to have to go to multiple committees. But I think we should have that conversation beyond just me doing a bit of a makeshift heads up to folks. We might call it subsequent referrals, or there's a few ways you could describe that. I don't think that is critical quickly, but I think it's something we ought to get to at some point. We also, and this is a conversation that may be more appropriate for finance. But I think that if this committee has strong opinions because there's an overlap between finance and governance here, this committee ought to probably give its suggestions to the finance committee to come up with a policy. We haven't talked about what we do with proposals that have a significant cost. When we are in the middle of our fiscal year. And do we want to assume that we can when we have technical adjustment ordinances, come up with some funds, or do we want to say these can't get implemented until the budget and we're passing them as unfunded mandates in the meantime? Or do we want to hold those policies? Probably a conversation finance needs to have also, but I think it's worth just asking this committee because of the governance overlap, if we have any thoughts there. The other thing that we have not discussed yet in this space, though, chair, you and I have talked about, it, is what we do with policies that don't look like they're going to move forward. When you have a legislative body that has sessions at the end of a session, anything that didn't pass dies. We don't have sessions. We just continually do our work. So we have something, for example, on the assigned documents for this committee that's listed as last action three months ago. And our conversations have actually moved significantly from when we first discussed that item. And we're probably not ever going to move it if we continue to collect those items into perpetuity. Gosh, I don't want to be here five years from now. Looking at how long that list is. We do have an allowance that, for counselors, can pull something that wasn't passed by a committee to the full council. So things can't just go away immediately if a committee doesn't take action. But there probably ought to be a period of time after which something.
291 Rests in peace.
292 You know, I was looking to you because I knew you did not want the phrase dies, whatever we want to call it. Right? At what point is something no longer an active ordinance or resolution.
293 Policy graveyard?
294 Exactly. At what point is something no longer active? And how do we what happens at that point? Is there any notice to everybody? Right. Last chance to try to do something or does it just occur. And I think that's a conversation that we need to have before the graveyard gets too long. I'll stop there for now, but ask me again a few months from now. I've got a secondary list that's less important than these things.
295 Oh my goodness.
296 It could be something besides the graveyard too. We could submit. We could ask people to submit their ideas.
297 I think in.
298 The deep freeze.
299 It is no longer an active piece of an active ordinance or resolution.
300 An active club.
301 But when it's inactive, it has to disappear. Keelan can't keep track of everything for years that has become inactive. It has to go away.
302 Do you want to speak to this at all?
303 Keelan just to say that I agree there should be an expiration date on legislation that doesn't get taken up, and then we can archive it to the record so that it's available for the historical record.
304 Or we could retire. One of my staffers said, retire retirement. Okay.
305 I like.
306 Expiration dates. Like milk.
307 Yeah. Yeah, I pictured that too.
308 Every product has.
309 A shelf life.
310 I admit I was taking some notes when you first started council president. You were talking. Your first one was about when an item needs to go to maybe more than one committee.
311 Do we.
312 Have subsequent referrals or not? Because that would take too long and is what we're doing now, which is just a heads up to a chair who might also be interested in a topic. Enough.
313 I think it would take forever.
314 And I really appreciate the fact that you've been really flexible, you know, when it comes to items that could be transportation and then finance. I just as soon we get a little heads up and then it goes to finance because we don't have much time. I don't have any problem with that. It's hard to imagine what really would require an in-depth subsequent referral right now.
315 It might not, but right now what we're doing is just yeah, as council president who's referring things to committee, what I think we ought to do. And at some point, I'd love for this committee to have the conversation about if we need changes to that.
316 Or not.
317 I trust your judgment.
318 And I if we get to the point where we discuss less committees and can maybe have a smaller number of chairs, that can also be part of that discussion, maybe.
319 When we get to fewer committees, I would love to have the number of chairs where we could have chairs meeting.
320 Yes.
321 I would love to be able to have a committee chairs meeting.
322 Be supportive to you too. It would.
323 Be amazing.
324 I got a proposal for you.
325 Is there also in that? Have we talked about having joint committee sessions?
326 That was on my list.
327 I forgot to mention that. Yes.
328 Joint committees for the most part. There are a few exceptions to this. Put us at a quorum of council. As long as our committees have five people. So right now we have not had joint committee meetings because they would become a council meeting.
329 Okay.
330 Councilor canal and I are plotting one for either August 11th or August 12th. A combination of the transportation infrastructure and public safety. And we figured that if we have all the committee members there, it's just a work session. Do you have a problem with that?
331 We'll have.
332 To ask mr. Taylor if he has a problem with that, but maybe we can follow up.
333 I think what we learned last week is if you have a work session of council and both councilor Koyama Lane and I are absent, councilor Kanal does have the gavel. You're here, but if you have a joint committee meeting, councilor Koyama Lane would be there.
334 So true.
335 We do need to figure that out though. And as we're rearranging committees, it probably changes how how that.
336 Well, we need an answer pretty soon because councilor Kanal and I are moving ahead. We don't want to waste time. And we and we've been thinking about this and thinking about this for weeks, if not months. And we want to have an experiment.
337 So I.
338 Think at one point someone and I don't remember who on our council it was, but someone contemplated that if there was a joint committee meeting, you would have the leadership from both committees and maybe the committee members who were most interested there, but not the whole committee. And that's how we would keep it from being a quorum of council. But I know that's not a great decision to have to make. As chair, we probably need to have this conversation with the attorneys, though, to figure out how best to do it.
339 We do. We have a maximum of counselors that can come be at our committee meetings, because.
340 Anybody can come watch.
341 They can come watch, but not necessarily be part of it. Okay. Trying to think if we put some some of the committee members at those chairs at the table. Yeah, we could it sounds like we can work with our attorneys to make sure this is talked about before August earlier, so you can do the planning.
342 Thank you.
343 I think it would be a lot more fun if we were all up here together.
344 Well, balance, fun and legal.
345 We also remember we've now twice used a committee time to have a council work session, and we could use one of your committee times to have a council work session on a topic.
346 And not everybody has to be there.
347 People can.
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348 Choose exactly okay.
349 That's an option.
350 Thank you so much for being with us. Still, councilor Kanal had a few things he would like to also share with us.
351 Thank you.
352 Yeah. So as it relates to the governance committee, and just to dovetail off of what was just said, my suggestion would be to look at the example previously set by the choice to make a couple of the meetings, full council work sessions. I think as it relates to governance, that's the best process going forward and would encourage you to use that option as often as possible going forward. As it relates to decorum, I think I agree with the council president about culture. I think part of this relates to oversight. It is difficult sometimes to maintain your equanimity when someone says something to you that you view as false or dishonest. But beyond that, I do think a self-regulation process that includes community agreements among each other is valid. This process, which I've done several times across the street with advisory body advisory bodies, involves coming to consensus around our commitments to one another. It's non-legislative. It also includes hard and fast rules. As a second part of the process. We do have some code already, which the council president has referenced in council as needed. I personally really liked many of the parts of counselor clark's proposal. I just don't think it was the right document type for what it was, and if maybe the parts of it were put into the right places, it would help with that functionality. I'll also add here that one of the things I think we need to talk about are items or words or terms that we view differently from each other, especially as it relates to our identities or what is racially coded or gender coded language. One really good example that I've seen is unprofessional or professional. That term. This is something we just need to work out together, how we deal with it. When there's different viewpoints on a statement. And I'd love to have a regular retreat on that too. I think quarterly or something makes sense as a one off is going to be helpful in a long sense, but maybe shorter ones more regularly. One related topic I'd love you to discuss is the statement of conduct that's read at the beginning of the meetings. I find the way that committee chairs and co-chairs, as well as the council president, engage with public testimony to be generally very good. However, there is this introductory statement on the top of every meeting, which I think is very blunt and sort of conveys a different message than the welcoming actuality of how we treat testimony. And that seems like a topic. I think, that this committee could discuss as it relates to sessions and items dying. I was thinking maybe a rolling one year from filing auto withdrawa. If the original sponsors don't just withdraw it or some sort of rolling timeline, if it hasn't gotten an action taken on it by committee. Broadly, I think a lot of this relates to scarcity of meeting time and what it does to our culture. When we're rushed, we behave differently. And I think having different ways of communicating across not only 12 different people up there, but obviously the mayor, the administrator, the folks who testify, we have personal, institutional and cultural differences in how we communicate. And I think scarcity creates is a problematic concept as it relates to the ways we communicate. And I've seen that with who has often asked for more time for their testimony. For example, I think you can see the patterns there. And so for that reason, and going back to the committee's conversation as well, I do want to bring back the conversation around the weekly council meetings ordinance. I do think that it is one conversation, along with the time allocated to committee and to some degree, the number of committees, but separate from which committees exist and who is on those committees. But having more council meetings will assist in that process. And the last thing I'll mention is, I think as it relates to work being done in committee for the seven currently councilors who are not on a given committee, the idea that there would be a deference paid to the conversation committee presupposes a sort of culture that doesn't exist in this council, which I think is a good thing because we're not a partizan group. I think if you're in a legislature, you can assume that the members of your party would say what you would say on that committee, and if you lose in committee, it's roughly proportional to that. We are not a partizan group. We have differences of opinion with each of the other 11 folks on there. And so I think there are limitations to what a committee is able to do that just don't exist in a legislature that has partizan membership. And so I don't know that that's a argument for or against any particular thing. It's just something that I haven't heard come up much and which has been sitting in the back of my mind as we talk about how we engage as seven people who are not on a given committee with the conversations that are coming forward. And it is a challenging and specific specifically, if you're not on a committee, care a great deal about, as I'm sure you've all experienced in the other committees, you're not on to be asked to be deferential to a conversation you weren't a part of, especially if you had something to add and couldn't make the meeting. I can't make all of these, but I'm happy to be with you today. And so I'm excited to have that part of the conversation be added when we when we have the conversation around committees, whether that's a in the same document or not, I don't know. But the ordinance as filed does not include anything about committees other than in the impact statement, a reference to that. There is an ongoing conversation, which I think is a valid conversation to have. Thanks.
353 If I can just respond to just one part. I think almost everything you said I completely agree with, and I actually the one thing I the closest to bristling at was the statement before the council that the that the clerk reads out loud, I do not want this body to have. We have no institutional. History with the with the previous council. You know we are well, with the exception of councilor Ryan, we are clean slate. But there is a long. There is a long history in this building of some extremely scary behavior that has happened from the public, that goes well beyond protest and goes well beyond the what is acceptable for a legislative process. And I have seen multiple mayors in this system struggle in the absence of a very clear, blunt and well-defined statement to be able to control the meeting. And I have seen the city suffer because of it. There was a period of over a year where almost every single, every single council meeting got shut down every single week. And they would either have to retreat to their offices or retreat to the Portland building at one point, or go entirely online. I think that you're right. We could look at the phrasing of it, certainly, and the tone. And there are there are multiple ways to say everything and still get ourselves legally covered. But I do think it is important that we set a tone of seriousness and consequences for violations of expectations, whatever that looks like. I don't really care, but.
354 I think we're in alignment.
355 To have that context.
356 Yeah, that context is helpful. I support looking at that wording, making sure that it is reflective of what we would like it to be conveying, and make sure that it is the right wording. And something I have thought about is maybe even just urging councilors for us to reflect on it as well, and make sure that we are following it as at least a baseline for something that a way that council president can refer back and talk to councilors about making sure we're following what we're asking of the public. Does anyone else want to respond?
357 I just go right ahead.
358 I really appreciate councilor Connell's using the community agreements and commitments to one another, which hopefully will come out of our retreat potentially. But I appreciate all of your your thoughts there. But that one really struck me. Also, I, I love to learn more about what you were talking about code and the words that are triggering or or inappropriate. That would be helpful. But thank you.
359 I also really appreciate the suggestion of community agreements, and I think that that's a you know, not everything should be in code. Similarly, not everything should be in rule. But we still need things written down. And I think that's a good space to use for some of those conversations. I would just note that the comments you made about committees are challenging for me, because if we are going to spend a lot of time in committee, we have to trust our colleagues and respect their work. Even if our voice wasn't in the room. And I find that we often spend a lot of time talking about how we think about things without actually proposing amendments to them, or talking about our history with a topic, without actually trying to persuade our colleagues to do something different. And at a certain point, we need to decide how we want to spend our time. And if we want to spend our time having our voice heard on everything, or if we want to spend our time getting done the work that we need to hear, and then being in district. And if we're going to spend time with committees, which I think we should, because they allow folks to develop deeper understandings of the work that happens in bureaus for that accountability work that councilor Clark talked about. They allow us to have deeper discussions than we sometimes have time for. With 12 people. We sometimes need to trust our colleagues. And while we're not a partizan body, we did a we vote on the makeup of committees as a body, and we do have committees that some more than others, but generally have a balance of opinions on them. Maybe not perfectly reflective of the balance on council, but a balance of opinions on them. And so I hope we can get to a point culturally where not everything but three quarters of what comes to council, out of committee are things that we can all feel good about. Where the conversation landed, and either we support it or we don't. But we know that the amendments that we would have brought were discussed, or we had time to propose them to our colleagues to bring. And we have participated in that pre-work. Otherwise, I'm not sure what we're doing wasting our time in the public's time with committees.
360 Quickly, we have one minute.
361 Oh.
362 I, I love the way you put that right on. Right on. Because we do have we take up a lot of time with explanations and that don't really lead to an amendment or a decision. And I've actually talked to a couple of our colleagues about the fact that they're still making campaign speeches in some cases, and that and they're aware of that, and they're trying not to, but that's another we're only six months into this, and we're moving from campaigning to governing now. And that's that's a part of that issue, I think.
363 Thank you. Both of you. And I also believe if we can lessen the number of committees that we have, it might be then easier for us and our staff to be following every committee. Well, right now it doesn't seem completely possible. You brought up all of my thoughts except one about making sure that we have some processes for how information is asked of and obtained from the executive branch. What does that flow look like? How do we get our questions answered? But how do we also make sure that city staff are not feeling too overwhelmed and like they're having many different electeds asking them questions, so just managing that flow and colleagues. Our next meeting will be June 23rd at the same time. 2:30 p.m. Thank you so much to everyone that participated today. Thank you. Councilor canal. The meeting of the governance committee is adjourned.