May 08, 2018 City Council on 2018-05-08 12:00 PM

Welcome everybody to this meeting of the Denton City Council. It is Tuesday May the 8th 2018. It is two or twelve, excuse me, twelve. We do have a quorum . Call this meeting to order. Go down through our agenda. The first item on the agenda is citizen comments on consent agenda items. Any citizen comments? Don't see any blue cards? Don't believe so? Request for clarification of agenda items listed on the agenda for May 8th 2018. Yes, Councilmember Briggs. I would like to pull E and F for a vote. I don't need a presentation, just an individual vote please. And I'll be recusing myself on individual consideration item D just so the public is aware. And then I have a question on consent agenda A. I know I see that we have a presentation today and this is listed, but I'm wondering if someone could point to where the breakdown on this specific ordinance occurred. Like where the responsibility lies in this issue. Hello, Karen Smith, purchasing manager. On that item what happened was the contract amount, if you read the ordinance that's attached there, sorry I apologize, the ordinance that attached, it said that it was a, the annual amount was three million and the three-year total was nine million. The actual contract that was submitted as backup was actually, it was four million and 12 million. So that's where the incident occurred was the ordinance was incorrect. The contract is correct and that is based on our total spend. Our total spend is 12 million over the three-year term. Is that, so is it the person, is it the writer of the ordinance that I'm just trying to figure out, I mean because I know we have a presentation and just to make sure that that's covered in our, in the future. When you say presentation you mean on this particular contract or what presentation? Which mentioned in our presentation for later today. Okay, all right. As a, as a, as an item I think. Just how the ordinance was developed and where the error occurred, you want that just kind of explained? Yes sir. Okay. I can discuss that now or do you want to save that for the, in the present, I mean if it's in the presentation. She does, she is going to talk about that. Okay good. Okay good. Thank you, I just wanted to make sure. All right good. Okay any other requests for clarification? Yes. Well not really an item but it is my last day today and I just wanted to tell everybody thanks. It's been a pleasure, also a pain, but mostly a pleasure and probably the most formative experience of my 36 years. So thank you so much, I really appreciate all of it. Well we'll probably have some words to say in concluding items so this will give us a chance to formulate them and decide exactly what we want to say. How do you spell pain? Thank you, I appreciate that, heads up. So yeah we'll address that in concluding items. Any other clarifications? All right, not seeing any then we'll move on to our next agenda item and so just to give you what the expectation is for the meeting. We have not ordered, which means you know out by about anywhere from 5 30 to 6 15 so just giving everybody sort of a encouragement in that way. Reminded me of a movie but I won't go into it. We'll go through our work session reports 3a. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding the contract administration audit findings and recommendations from Craw ford and Associates. Good afternoon, Brian Langley, deputy city manager. As you may recall we hired the firm of Crawford and Associates to do a contract administration audit a few months ago and so today we have Justin Kersey and Richard Rose here from Crawford and Associates to present their findings and go through their presentation and want to make sure I know which one. I know that she said that they already had it here. Do you know which one it is? It's under review but oh there it is okay. Council, Mr. Mayor, on behalf of Crawford and Associates we 'd like to thank you for the opportunity to come before you today to present our findings and recommendations of the results of our internal audit of the contract administration process. As deputy city manager Langley mentioned you guys hired us back in December to look at this particular area. This was an area that was a scope of your previous internal audit plan that you had adopted when your previous internal auditor was here before they left. We were then hired as kind of a stop gap in between that auditor leaving and hiring a new auditor to perform this particular project and review of this area to keep the ball rolling with that particular internal audit plan. Our objective was to obtain information and review records to determine whether or not any recommendations were warranted regarding the design of your current internal controls or policies and procedures regarding contract administration. A little introduction what we had is we received a contract master list from the city. This had approximately 868 contracts that were accounted for on their various types. Procurements for goods of services, leases, other debts, memorandums of understanding and local agreements those type as well as hedging agreements and other financing agreements. These range anywhere from zero dollars for a memorandum of understanding where there may not be any monetary exchange up to the possibility of 13 million dollars for a particular capital appreciation bonds contract that was on there as well as revenue generating contracts that can happen where the city's not paying out any money but they 're actually in turn receiving money. So a very wide array of contracts that are on the master list. What we did then was we obtained any city policies and procedures and in particular for this project we obtained the materials management and payment procedures manual and reviewed specific chapters within that manual that covered procurement style contracts. This essentially had very good documentation for procurements of goods or services from initiation to execution of the contract. However after that point in time for any monitoring of the terms of the contract through the close out process of the contract there really weren't a whole lot of policies procedures in place that anybody was able to provide to us concerning grants and contracts. So we were pretty well limited to just that one policies and procedures manual. Yeah and just we all see it but the presentation obviously is blanking in and out so if all of a sudden it just leaves us we've got our back up and we'll just follow along. So you're seeing it go off too? Well we're all looking at it like oh my gosh was this oh let's just acknowledge it so we can move on. Makes the guy nervous when he's up here and all of a sudden he sees the black go beside him it's kind of like oh what I do so it's good to know it's not me hopefully hopefully it's not something I'm doing up here. As well as receiving that master list we then came and met with an initial interview with the deputy city manager and the purchasing director to get some oversight of what the general idea was for what the city was wanting in this case and then as well got their perspective on contract administration and what any problems might have been any concerns that they might have had going into the project as well. It should also be noted that the new compliance officers positions that you have recently created those two individuals set in on those interviews with us as well and we discussed these issues with them on the front end as well. We then came on site and we conducted interviews with nine city departments and areas that you can see listed there on the screen just to get an understanding of the types of contracts that their department enters into and then what procedures they have from initiation through closeout including monitoring in the middle to get an idea of what they were doing even though there may not be policies and procedures around it but just know whether or not they're doing something on the front end already themselves. We then also had 15 other city departments that had previously been interviewed by the compliance department rather than us going back out and interviewing those departments since they'd already been through the interview process the compliance department had a very good list of questions that they had developed that were very in line with what we were asking in our interviews as well as far as types of contracts entered into what their processes are and so we then relied on their interview notes that they had and reviewed those for those 15 departments there that are listed. We then selected a sample of 62 contracts out of the 868 that were on the master list. Again as we mentioned before covered a wide array of different types of contracts so we tried to stratify our sample to ensure that we covered at least one pulled at least one contract of each of the different types as well as pulled one from each of the different city departments that were listed on the master list as well to try and make sure we got a good understanding of city-wide what's going on and tried to cover them all there. We then looked at those contracts for four main criteria proper authorization if they were a purchasing type contract we had good guidelines to follow there if they weren't we were looking more for the lines of if it looked like it was something that needed to go to council did it go to council is it properly signed properly executed we also looked to see if the legal department had approved it as to legal form. We then also reviewed to see if there was any proper documentation or monitoring of the city's responsibilities if they had a specific responsibility certain term that they needed to follow throughout the life of the contract is their documentation to show that the city what the department was doing that. We then also looked if there was any vendor specific responsibilities if they had to prove to the city that they were doing something in particular was their documentation that the city or the department have obtained that documentation from the particular vendor. Overall what we noted was that there really aren't any city-wide department level policies and procedures regarding contract administration or grants and you'll see that we bring grants up throughout this process as well. A couple of the contracts that we pulled made reference to the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations you'll hear it called 2 CFR 200 a lot of times. This is the federal regulations that cover any expenditures of federal funds that the city might receive and they're very specific on what what a recipient of federal funds has to do including having certain written policies and procedures in-house to cover the expense of those funds. But outside of that materials management payments procedures manual there really weren't any good policies and procedures that covered especially non-procurement style contracts and then from that monitoring process after the execution of the contract that monitoring through closeout there really weren't a whole lot of policies and procedures surrounding that is what we found. We also found that there was not a formal review or documentation process for that for that monitoring as we mentioned so that's that's something that in one of our recommendations we have provided for as well. What we also had and this goes back to a couple of the items we found two contracts within our sample one of them was the NAPA contract that was approved by ordinance 2016-172 as mentioned for the three million per year for three years not to exceed nine however the actual paper contract that was executed was executed for four million per year for not to exceed of 12 million and so as was mentioned there was some breakdown there as far as what was approved by the council versus what the actual contract was executed for. We also had one for DustRoll incorporated for milling services for the streets that was approved by ordinance 2015-221 this was for a not to exceed amount to 400,000 for over three years however that contract on the master list we received was listed at 1.3 million dollars for not to exceed. So real quick question on on the first one for sure the NAPA contract I think council member Briggs question was do we have an idea of was this a scrivener's error either in procurement or legal or somewhere where there's just there was just a mistake made as to the actual number is that do we do we have an idea of that? I think personally what the issue was was that it just the ordinance that got submitted was probably copy and pasted from the previous ordinance the previous contract that you had with NAPA was for three years three million a year and so I figured that more than likely whenever the new ordinance was created they just copy and paste it over and forgot to update those numbers for what came to the council. Fantastic thank you. On the dust roll as we mentioned it was listed on the master list at 1.3 million which to us indicated that the department had interpreted that to be four hundred thousand dollars a year every year for three years essentially. It should be noted with the dust roll contract it did not the actual expenditures for that contract from inception through let's see here I've got the exact numbers here through from August 2015 through February 23rd of 2018 were only three hundred and thirty four thousand dollars and so with the three-year contract if you went out to August of 2018 which would be when that contract was up they'd be right on part to only hit the four hundred thousand dollar mark but it was noted that in the accounting software there were approximately five hundred ninety seven thousand dollars worth of PO incumbencies that were booked against that contract so it's very evident that it was interpreted that that contract was more than four hundred thousand dollars the way that everyone was looking at it and so whereas based on what we saw in the contract itself it was a total not to exceed a four hundred thousand dollars. Councilman Briggs you have a question? Well yeah I'm just trying to wrap my head around I think I understand what happened so the it's being billed as what it was understood as but not what it was intended to be. Correct. Okay and so are we gonna have is that coming back to us? I think you're probably okay at this point with that in particular because if they stay on pace with what they are on the expenditures for that contract they would not exceed the four hundred thousand so I think that one's okay it came down to the fact that there was encumbrances ahead of time that were that exceeded that four hundred thousand dollar mark but in the management's response they've they make reference to the fact that they have have shut that down if you will to make sure they don't exceed that four hundred thousand and then they're actually going out the city's actually going back out for bid for that particular contract service this this year. Go ahead. And so on these observations that this this is two that that you've mentioned out of the 62 that you pulled and so are these the only two that you found any issues with? There were the only two that we had you know definitive issues with there were some others that that were you know had kind of monitoring type issues with that might have you know not I can't say that they weren't in compliance with anything because we don't have any policies and procedures in the city to say what the department should have done. There are a couple that if there were guidelines that said hey you need to be you as the department need to be monitoring this contract for vendor performance or for city performance within this contract then there there could have possibly been some slight issues of not documenting it properly but without having any policies and procedures it was hard for us to say hey you did this one incorrectly or you didn't monitor this right because there was no guidance that said this is how you should do it. Thank you. So and I guess this is a question for legal on the first one the NAPA contract or for you guys if you know. Okay. So the ordinance was the three million nine million when it was presented to council was the discussion the four million twelve million or was it in other words my point is that's a big difference and so at what point when we say what is it called not pro- tunk or I can't remember what it is it's supposed to be sort of to correct an ministerial or a scrivener kind of error if if the backup if the ordinance was just incorrect but all the presentation reflected what it should have been I get that but if it was just somehow so I don't recall that particular one do we know does anybody on staff know how that I guess I would like to understand that before I necessarily vote on a non-pro-tunk adjustment to that you know do we need to maybe go back and if the presentation was just the three million nine million that that's what I want to make sure of or if the backup did say that that's assuming that this was on an individual consideration item it might have been on a consent agenda and so you probably wouldn't have seen it but I just want to throw that out there sure okay presentation was made yeah probably would have been caught during the presentation so you're saying it's most likely on a consent agenda and that was okay all right if somebody could maybe do some because that we're going to vote on that uh in in the regular the special called session if I could just get a little update on that prior to that I'd appreciate that yeah we did not go back and review the video to know if it was but the actual ordinance that was on the agenda was just the three million okay for nine million so yeah I appreciate that you may proceed all right oh did you have a question council member well now we'll move into our recommendations section of our report essentially we have eight recommendations overall the first one is for the city to develop and implement formal policies and procedures concerning contract management this is considered a best practice process those policies and procedures should address a lot of things but the main things that we highlighted that they should address are the roles and responsibilities of all employees involved in the contract process that's initiation through close out so that that will be the department that is requesting the contract and starting those services clear up through purchasing if they're involved legal if they're involved the compliance department if they're involved in monitoring some sort of of terms of the contract as well through through the closeout binding authority you have good policies procedures surrounding procurement contracts for binding authority within your materials management and payment procedures manual however for non procurement type contracts there's not a lot of policies and procedures that state who has that authority at what levels they have that authority to to enter into those and so we would recommend addressing that record keeping essentially what documentation needs to be kept for each contract and where that information should be kept some of that may be addressed in one of our later recommendations and one of the management responses as well regarding a tracking system but having policies procedures to let everybody know where that stuff needs to needs to go will be helpful as well as contract templates where these should be held where they should be stored and maintained and then also how often they should be updated is that an annual type basis that they should be reviewed and updated or more often than that or it could even be less often than that our second recommendation is to implement formal policy procedures regarding federal awards in order to ensure compliance with the us code of federal regulations part 200 as i mentioned that you'll hear referenced as to cfr 200 a lot of times they're very specific in those code of federal regulations on what needs to be in written policies and procedures the four main areas that we've highlighted and told the city about our cash management policies as well as time and effort reporting policies for any payroll that's paid with federal funds if that's if that's a possibility with the city policies on allowable costs and then also sub recipient monitoring if the city receives federal funds that they pass on to a subrecipient there's certain levels of subrecipient monitoring that the city has to to comply with to ensure that that sub recipient is spending the money the way it was intended to be spent there is some risk involved with those of course if you don't don't meet the cfr it could lose lead to possible loss of future funding and could even lead in some extreme cases to having to repay back federal funding back to the federal government so that's a pretty big area do you have a question mayor pro tem so we have several areas where we receive federal funding i'm thinking of cvdg and of course our roads get quite a bit of federal funding so are you saying that the contracts that were executed that incorporate federal funding sources are not in compliance with 200 cfr or to to cfr 200 no what we're saying essentially is that several of the contracts we pulled actually made reference to to c fr 200 when we uh inquired of city departments if these contracts were indeed funded with federal dollars the response that we were given were no those particular contracts weren't it was some general language within it so we didn't have any contracts in particular that had that were funded that we reviewed right not to say that the city doesn't but that we reviewed we did not see any that were truly funded with federal dollars from what we were told but whether essentially if you're receiving federal dollars which the city is and has enough to qualify as a single audit uh uh auditee uh you have to have the cfr says you have to have these policies and procedures in place and so through our work on the contract side when we saw that reference to 2 cfr 200 that then opened up the door to us to ask about grants policies and procedures as well and when we were meant when we were told that there really wasn't any grants policies and procedures we felt in our best it was in our best interest to let the city know that hey because of the fact that you could have other contracts that have this as many federal dollars as you're getting i'm sure that some of them are being expended through contract process you know you probably need to get these policies and procedures in place well i guess i'm kind of confused because when we have our audit finance committee review of our internal audit which is annual i know that i think it was last year the year before they talked about you know that there are some classification problems with how we were classifying federal money versus our local monies so i guess why wouldn't they have caught that because it's a type of just broad-based audit i mean that that comes down to i don't know what their particular audit procedures are what they're doing i would think that if there is not any grants policies and procedures i would think that they would notice that but i i mean i you know i can't testify to what they were they clearly pulled out you know the federal portion of the our our funding i guess that's just something to consider for our next year's external audit are you talking about the caffer audit is that the one that brown portio does is that is that the this capper audit yeah yeah i mean as part of doing their especially the single audit part of that i mean the test work that they would have to do i mean they have to get comfortable with that and so i would assume that they're not seeing policies and procedures they're probably getting a good understanding of the internal controls based on talking with those direct people that are involved in those funds but uh like i said when we asked we just did not receive any particular policies procedures surrounding grants it doesn't mean they don't exist we just they were never provided to us if they did exist okay thank you the third recommendation that we have is for updating the purchasing policies and procedures to be in compliance with 2 cfr 200 chapter 317 through 326 this is a little different from the previous recommendation in that there's specific language within these chapters for procurement contracts with federal funds that state that there's certain items that need to be integrated into your in-house purchasing policies and procedures so you have good purchasing policy procedures there's just some certain there's just some language within those chapters that needs to be integrated into that procedure manually that you already have whereas the previous recommendation was to essentially developed a broad-based grants and contracts policies and procedures recommendation number four is to implement a routine training process regarding contract administration essentially this training should cover the roles and responsibilities of the individual departments that are initiating contracts as well as covering the roles and responsibilities of those more broad departments such as purchasing legal department compliance department so that those outside departments know what those other departments are doing in our interview process we had multiple times where different departments mentioned to us that there was confusion amongst them as far as what the legal department might be doing when they're approving a legal a contract legal form some departments thought they were looking at that contract as to a business decision side on whether or not it was a good contract or not which was not the case when legal was reviewing it they're just reviewing it to legal form they're not looking at it from the business side aspect of it so that training would basically be provided to everybody just so that they know exactly what the roles and responsibilities are once those policies and procedures have been developed and implemented recommendation number five we recommend recommend excuse me a city implement a review process to ensure that all contracts approved by the city council ordinance are executed at the same amount this is based on that Napa contract and those dust off dust roll contracts just to ensure that when something is approved with a certain amount in the ordinance that the actual paper contract is executed for that same dollar amount recommendation number six we recommend that the city implement a routine review of the contract administration process of all city departments to ensure that the best practice of proper documentation of review monitoring and compliance of all significant materials material contract terms this gets into probably where the contract the compliance department will come into play a lot with this this will basically be kind of a annual review of those outside departments to ensure that if they're supposed to be obtaining documentation of vendor performance or documenting city compliance of certain terms with the contract that they are in in fact obtaining those and keeping those records in their office recommendation number seven is to implement a system i.e. a software spreadsheet something along those lines for tracking all city contracts that includes some detailed information about it i believe from talking with staff that this process is already well on its way for them to develop a i believe they're going to go with the software to track all contracts going future going forward into the mayor pro tem has a question so i guess this was your most surprising recommendation for me so where are all of the contracts and the terms kept currently right now it's an excel spreadsheet that had those 868 contracts on it so do i mean it's a master file somewhere that i guess management has access to it that's yes i think it was saved on one of the shared drives they found the original file that we had only had 500 and something originally and then when the compliance department started their review going out and interviewing departments that list quickly grew to the 868 so does does that spreadsheet have things like the not to exceed amounts and it does uh it not for every contract some of it is inconsistent some of it doesn't include dollar amounts some of it it can 't some of them are are certain hedging agreements and other things that are you know uh not public information and so they didn't provide those in the spreadsheet which is good right if it's from an executive session and not public information but it was just inconsistencies within the information that was in that spreadsheet so essentially the software program would create some type of uniformity right okay right this this uh spreadsheet that he's referencing um cassiogdon and um we hope to put that together uh last fall after we created the compliance function and it was extremely decentralized so what you're seeing right now is basically a starting point in a work plan for that uh that group now after you get your presentation today but it's just uh we will be centralizing it we've got a little bit of money in the budget for a contract management software and it's uh basically they're building this from the ground up all right our final recommendation uh is just to implement a formal process uh for the legal department uh to notify all departments when contract templates need to be updated due to due to change in legal language um just to make sure everybody's on board all those departments know in case uh they happen to have contract templates that are that are currently being stored out at a third location uh just that they make sure that uh those get into legal whenever it needs to be updated overall management agreed with all of our recommendations that we had they then provided a timeline for the biggest items on that recommendation list for instance the implementation of software they're estimating spring of 2018 the annual contract review by the compliance department as well starting in the spring of 2018 adoption of contract administration policies and procedures the preliminary timeline is for this summer updating of the materials management and payment procedures manual in the fall of 2018 adoption of the grants and federal funding policies and procedures coming in the winter later this year and then the contract and grant training program starting next year which is the obvious order for that one being last due to the fact that you need to have those policies and procedures in place before you can start those training programs overall just a little perspective while it was noted that there are no centralized policies procedures regarding contract administration it did appear from our interviews that most departments were doing something on the monitoring side and and review they all seemed very eager to get involved in the process and to make changes where need be and to help help this process along and so i don't think there's a big problem overall in in the environment regarding contract administration i think it's just more of a a byproduct of being a little decentralized as was mentioned a minute ago and and bringing that into a more centralized process going forward i think will help immensely with the contract administration process yeah questions comments council member brigid you have a question i do have a question about the adoption of grants and federal funding policies and procedures in the winter of 2018 does that mean that we should hold off on any approvals of federal funds until those are are in place i don't know that's necessarily that you need to hold off on it i think you're probably okay with it i think that anytime those are being expended that even if these policies procedures aren't necessarily formal ized yet and adopted by the council i think it's good to make sure that they are in compliance with those guidelines for the most part i think you will be it's this is just more of a a formal process of just putting pen to paper you know if you will and having having those adopted so okay thank you okay any other questions comments seeing that thank you very much appreciate it appreciate your presentation and your work we'll move on to our next agenda item which is agenda item 3b which is receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding the city's compliance and procurement program and initiatives is this is this going into deeper dive then after this okay all right okay so if that thing starts blinking faster it's gonna yeah are you guys okay with it being the way it is or i mean blinking on and off or do you all want if it starts going a lot faster it might start sending us into a trance okay all right yeah let's just turn it off until i'm not sure i because we have we have your presentation in the in the back up and if we're gonna turn it off do what do what okay okay yeah yeah but we'll go ahead and proceed okay go ahead council member will the people watching be able to see or will it not be on their screen it'll be on their okay it'll be off okay yeah yeah it's included though in the backup that's i think posted on the on the website under the city council meetings yeah we'll try to get it back on okay okay good afternoon i'm cassie ogden director of procurement and compliance um so you just heard all of the issues that we're dealing with for contract administration so i'm here to tell you what we're doing to fix it um so i have a brief presentation but um it's very important as as it deals with every department in the city so as you just heard we um we're a new department that we were just formed at the beginning of this fiscal year it includes myself and jamey lindsey is our compliance officer she's right over here so it's the two of us as well as the purchasing staff and then the distribution center together we make up compliance and procurement um the the intention was to um to bring them together to follow the contracts through the entire life cycle so from the solicitation initiation phase all the way through project closeout monitoring all of that um we've historically done a good job in our procurement of goods and services and making sure that we're in compliance with policies and regulations we have not as you heard earlier not done a great job in our monitoring and our closeout um processes so that's where compliance department comes in so our major responsibilities include mitigating and managing risks especially when it comes to contracts um ensuring business practices and employees are complying with policies procedures and applicable applicable regulations improving oversight and procedures for contract administration which i'll talk about in more detail in a minute and then we um recently just drafted and implemented and we're working on the training program for the new um ethics policy so for for contracts as you heard the former city city auditor identified contract administration as one of the top five risks to the city so you all hired Crawford back in December to complete the audit and we just heard their report and recommendations so before the compliance department was formed we actually did not have a comprehensive list of all of the contracts the city has they're housed in various different solutions so the ordinance in the contract are housed in laser fish the city secretary maintains um the some of the contracts are tracked through the accounting software as far as the the expenditures but we didn't have an overall comprehensive list so that was one of our undertakings was creating that list and just trying to get our arms around how many contracts the city actually has and as as you heard earlier we have over 800 so the the number at the time was 868 but of course as you approve more contracts that number grows every every week. Councilmember Briggs has a question. And so is this with the the history of the city like nothing has been um formed until this point? We we have um I'm sorry for the contract list? Well for you for your department for the compliance because you these are really big responsibilities and so I'm just wondering you know where they you know fell before you got here. So we have um a compliance specialist in the legal department and then we also have a compliance specialist in HR so it's been over the years it's been very decentralized each department was responsible for ensuring that they were in compliance with the policies and procedures and so we're trying to standardize that process and bringing our group in um just to make sure as the as the city grows we're not we're not functioning as a small town city anymore we're we're large and we need to you know um make sure that we're in compliance with those contracts. Okay thank you. Um so as Justin mentioned earlier we actually started before um Crawford started their interviews we started Jamie and I sat down with each department and started conducting interviews to go over all of the contracts that they had current talk about some of the issues that they were having see where the breakdown was and and just learn about learn about the process and familiarize ourselves with with it so we quickly identified some inconsistencies um and some some issues there's inconsistencies in contract templates what we found was the departments would um you know have have the old contract that they were working off of and pull that one up and use it and then they were sending it to legal to review and expecting legal to to make sure that it was in compliance and up to date and so there was miscommunication between what templates were being used um there was confusion as you heard about roles and responsibilities who was doing what is legal reviewing to legal form or is legal reviewing for business need um is it a good deal for the city those types of things and then just the lack of centralized document storage so laser fish retains all of our records to meet our record retention requirements but it doesn't have um the a lot of the reporting aspect that contracts is helpful in contract administration so um we we have the solicitation documents housed in one area of laser fish and then the ordinances and contracts house in a separate area so they're not married together to be able to see the entire picture so this is really the the key to um all the questions that you were asking earlier about the NAPA contract and things like that so right now we're actually performing a risk assessment of all of our current contracts um obviously with 800 and only two employees it's a big job but we are we're trying to take our time and make sure that we're assessing the risk and what contracts we need to be um monitoring more closely what what are going to what um what benefits it provides to the cities and those types of things um so we have been working with tech services to find a contract management solution um we purchased we did purchase a cloud based system so um it actually integrates with JD Edwards our accounting software to better track our expenditures notify of upcoming dates and deadlines for contracts um we currently are in the beginning stages of implementation so we just purchased the software solution we're trying to um our plan is to implement in several phases so right now phase one we're working on standardizing all of our templates because the the contract solution will um house all of our templates and they will be locked down to where only legal can um edit or make changes to those templates so we don't have any clauses that are not approved and verified by legal and then um we're going to work on new contracts as they come so the first phase will be adopting those templates into the software housing everything making sure that we have it all centralized and then working on new contracts the second phase will come as we try to retrofit the existing contracts to the current to the current software solution um so our solution is going to track the expenditures and so we can avoid some of the um issues that you just saw with the dust draw contracts where the open P.O.s were overstated versus what was approved for council um part of that is an education issue on our on our end is educating our employees on you know contract administration and management but we would it the it will also allow us to track the not to exceed amounts the solution that we've chosen is because it integrates with our JD Edwards software it's it has a dashboard feel and it's very customizable so the departments will actually be able to customize to see only the contracts that they need to be tracking so because that's part of the issue right now is looking at the master list it's over 800 contracts it's very time consuming to sort through and it's very it's very manual um the contracts will also be routed through the correct workflows so the correct people are seeing and approving um and it's going through that approval process correctly um we've also um started in August before the compliance department was formed in order to address some of those issues with the the um the ordinance and the contracts not matching two things that we've done we've we've implemented a checklist for all of our agenda items that go through purchasing so myself and the purchasing manager we separately review the items and um we have a checklist that we use when we're reviewing so we review the contracts and then also the ordinance to make sure that those are matching we've also backed up the um the approval dates for the items going to council for your approval um to make sure that we have plenty of time to review because a lot of what was happening is the deadlines were um coming up very quickly and not everyone had was had adequate time to review so those are two things that we've already implemented in order to address that that issue going forward um we have we are developing oh sorry oh no you could council member gregory has a question yes so on mitigation strategies one of the things that you said and i didn't want to interrupt your flow was the issue of um whether legal's responsibility is to review the contract for legal form and protection of the city or uh to determine the best business deal for the city and at one time we were talking about the internal auditor having a role regarding uh the best business deal for the city but as i think about it i wonder if if that has to be done in some type of cooperative arrangement because lawyers may not know and auditors may not know some of the the best arrangements for um a concrete contract or a contract for purchasing a power those those require some specialized knowledge technical knowledge uh in in those trades or in those areas so how do you have in your solutions something that will address that that the need for um collaboration yes i actually do it's my next bullet we can't see it yes great questions um no we we do we are developing an additional um review process not just for compliance but in conjunction with legal as well as in conjunction with compliance so jamie and myself as well as the legal staff we have been what we we've just implemented it's very very new but we've been meeting with the departments as contracts come through um purchasing that are over two million dollars we're sitting down with the departments and discussing what do you what what's the intention of this contract what do you need to get out of this contract we take that information we review it we've just we've been discussing it it's very collaborative we're still um learning how to to do it correctly and but we're using we're looking at it from a contract best practices standpoint um and then the departments are making sure that um that they have what they need as far as what the contract actually says because a lot of times what we found is you know those contracts are very lengthy and nobody's reading the whole thing so um we have part of what jamie and i have done is we take the contracts and we're developing a list of all the city's responsibilities as well as the responsibilities of the vendor and that way we can give that information to the departments and then from a from an audit standpoint contract administration and monitoring standpoint we can come back and review that in the midst of those in those probably at the milestone deadline so like 20 percent of the contract 50 percent 70 percent we can review that information to make sure that those departments are actually um meeting their obligations as well as the vendors meeting the obligations so we're trying to be very collaborative because i we have a very wide variety of things that we do at the city and we're not versed in all of them yes council member hussman yes thank you you you raise a good question uh raise a good point uh regarding contracts in this i don 't know if you answered but do we draft those from scratch ourselves majority of the time do we ask the individuals to provide us a contract that we would then mark up what is what's a first draft contract it really depends um most of our uh purchasing contracts anything that we're proc uring we have some pretty standard templates that we use that legal is already reviewed and um but if there's something new or we had one the other day that we have never purchased something like that before we asked the vendor for the contract and legal marked it up and reviewed it and we negotiate that way but yes most for most of the purchasing templates we we have everything lined out and it's pretty standard we've already we use our own contract and and so understanding that better is it something where you start from scratch and pull in so you already have the language do you pull it in or do you go grab the last one and modify from there well and that's what we found a lot of departments were doing is they would go find the last one and modify but like if there was something that came through the legislature that we needed to include in the contracts now um that that information wasn't being included and it's causing it was causing an additional layer of work for legal so if we can have all of the templates already available in the contract management solution um that way they've already been reviewed and just like what crofford had already mentioned about the annual review of by legal to make sure the contract templates are up to date that can easily it's it's much easier to do that within the software and it also provides an audit trail that they have they have reviewed the template and we have the last the latest and greatest version okay yeah so that would be my ass that i mean because it's as simple as if you go into the document and you right click properties go down and look you can see the history where it kind of originated i'd really like to see us go to where we we start off with a blank template or whatever the software does and then you drag it in so you start off with a brand new document that is then you can grab the wording and pull it in but to grab a ready-made document and then modify it seems like it it becomes problematic versus each time someone has to put eyes on this particular paragraph that talks about duties responsibilities understanding the language has been reviewed by legal and it's static but at least you're having to take a function and make a on purpose look at this language versus hey here's here's a contract i'm going to modify it or you know assume that that legals have the latest update i think and then it also just keeps from that metadata if you will getting you know kind of down the road i mean again that that's kind of problematic if you look at it and it's been you know several different iterations or hey this just came from you know 98 i mean all that stuff we just think would be cleaner just to have a brand new document each time and we actually to address that we actually have the ability to do both within our contract management software so we will have our standard templates still but then each clause will be individual so if we need to modify and drag in start from scratch essentially a new contract the the users will have the ability to do that as well excellent thank you councilmember greg ory and part of the answer to councilmember hudspeth's first question it seems to me on a couple of occasions in the last year or two and i think this has been for single source vendors they presented us with their contract and they weren't too interested in our legal department's modifications to it is my memory serving me correctly that does happen on occasions and usually we keep on negotiating with them to get the terms that we find favorable in addition to certain terms we have to put in those contracts because we are a governmental entity thank you okay so um additionally we are going to come back for your consideration on policies and procedures specifically for our non-procurement contracts um it it will depend on the type of contracts that the non-procurement we have several memorandums of understandings we have le ases we have you know revenue generating so but we will come back to you um i believe this summer with some policies and procedures for your adoption so um we completed our department interviews we we interviewed every department within the city and we we did gain valuable knowledge about how the department monitors and administers their contracts as well as the needs of their departments um jamey and i recently completed a six-week training program through the ethics and compliance initiative to become leadership professionals in ethics and compliance and this training really provided us a lot of valuable resources and tools that has helped us implement the new um ethics policy for all employees um and as i mentioned earlier we just purchased a contract management software so we are working through the implementation of that um we assisted crofford and associates associates with their audit as well as the um ethics policy that you just adopted in april some of the things that we've done with procurement um we have implemented a new conflict of interest disclosure process and evaluation team diversity standards for formal solicitations i talked a little bit about this back in april as part of the ethics policy adoption we put some language in there um to make sure that um the employees are aware um are have the i'm sorry must disclose any um conflicts of interest before sitting before being members of a evaluation team for formal solicitations and then legal and purchasing staff recently completed training on alternative delivery methods with an outside attorney and um i know that crofford mentioned training for contract administration we recently hosted a contract administration training we invited all departments to attend we had 40 attendees from several different departments including parks utilities fire purchasing staff was present um and we learned we were trained on monitoring contracts and basically everything from notice to proceed to close out best practices it was a two-day training and it was very informative and helpful we've also recently reorganized the distribution center to include the dme staff and trying to create efficiencies and cross-training opportunities so some of our upcoming initiatives that we are we're going to be rolling out in the next few months um we are evaluating the the procurement card program to reflect best practices allow for cross-training opportunities we're trying to standardize that process and enhance the auditing and reporting functions um we will be facilitating the annual ethics training for all employees as part of the ethics policy that you adopted in or that we adopted in apr il there's an annual training requirement so compliance staff will be facilitating that training and then we will also be bringing back to you the um revisions for the procurement manual that crofford and associates mentioned earlier we need to include language for the grants to ensure compliance and then as well as just update the last update we had was in 2015 so it's it's been several years needs to be update to updated to reflect our current policies practices and procedures as well as we've gotten some feedback from departments that it needs to be simplified to be easier to understand um and for the reader for the end user and with that that is i am finished with my presentation if you have any questions for me questions comments yes councilmember breaks so we learned that there's i think 868 um contracts yes and um the the last people did took 62 random samples i guess and you are on number you're going through each one individually so what we have are as part of our work plan that we started um that we adopted when we first started was we're going to try to hit each department annually so we will not be reviewing every single contract every time but we will hit every department so we'll just like croff ord and associates they took a sampling of contracts we'll do that with each department so that we hit each department our goal is to be able to review every single contract every two years okay thank you okay any other questions comments all right thank you very much appreciate it we'll move on to our next agenda item which is 3c receive a report from staff and the dentin parks foundation a whole discussion give staff direction regarding one the implementation of recommendations related to review of the relationship between the parks foundation city of dentin and two potential options for future partnership opportunities between the foundation and city good afternoon again brian langley deputy city manager uh did want to spend a few minutes with you today talking about the status of the parks foundation review some of the conversations we've been having with the the foundation recently before i begin the presentation i want to take a moment to uh introduce tim smith president of the foundation molly tampke the executive director appreciate molly and tim being here today and tim's also indicated that he'd be happy to answer any questions that the council may have as we go along through the process and i know the screen's not working but we do have this presentation in your backup and i will kind of go through this over the next few slides so just some of the elements i wanted to cover today would be the key aspects of the review findings that came out a few months ago what is our action to date and some of the next steps we see in the future and then discuss a recent foundation request and what type of direction the council wants to provide on that on a short term and long term basis so as you may recall the the overall review provided several conclusions and recommendations in particular there's some of the overarching elements were that the city did not have a policy on how it was to conduct business with the foundation that was an overriding concern there was also concern about blurred lines between city staff and foundation it wasn't clear who the roles and responsibilities or what the roles and responsibilities were for each entity and so that was something that needed to be clarified and then city staff had supported the foundation in several different capacities but the details of that work really wasn't measured wasn't really tracked very carefully on the city's part and it really wasn't explicitly authorized by the agreement or by council so those are some things that we needed to correct moving forward the recommendations were in four categories of areas and i 'll cover those briefly with you with accounting for youth sports association fees city operations the foundation operations and then the agreement and clarification of boundaries so in terms of accounting for youth sport associations the recommendation from bkd and the ganaway law firm was that payment should be remitted for field enhancements per their agreement or we should develop a new agreement to outline what those responsibilities would be we've completed that task back in february the city council approved ordinance 18-246 that did a number of things it established rules for signage on ball fields that was the primary reason that we presented that to you it also ratified the field utilization agreements with these youth sports associations from 2018 and created a future agreement going forward and we removed the five dollar per participant fee that was included in that agreement in the past and then in april of 2018 the foundation voted to transfer those fees to the city when the time was appropriate based on our discussions moving forward i think this is the first time i've done a presentation on powerpoint not actually had the powerpoint here it's a tool not a crutch right okay all right right i'm trying watching the body language so right so in terms of the city operations the recommendation was to implement a code of conduct policy completing annual conflict of interest disclosure established procedures for receipt and donation expenditure of the donations we did as you know complete this we approved the council approved a city ethics policy for employees on april 17th and the council adopted its own ethics ordinance on may 1st just last week conflict of interest disclosures are required to be now part of any formal solicitation that we do and the donations and related expenses are kept in our park's record keeping software so that's been completed as well in terms of the foundation operations there were several recommendations very similar implement controls for cash handling and procurement developed a conflict of interest and code of conduct policy implement more timely entry of financial transactions within one to two weeks was the recommendation and set up a procedure to ensure recording and tracking of pledges that are made for different projects and then entering in all the addresses of vendors to identify potential conflicts of interest the foundation has been working on that and back on april 26 they formally approved their new donor accounting conflict of interest and code of conduct policies those policies were attached in your your backup and they 've also approved a policy to enter financial transactions within three days of receipt of those those monies so the agreement with the foundation and clarification of bounties again this this last area that the audit or review focused on was really to evaluate that relationship periodically it had been a long time since there have been an evaluation of that and so to do that on a periodic basis was a recommendation we agree with develop an agreement which sits out very clearly what the understanding is between the foundation and the city all the roles and responsibilities of each party makes it make sure expectations are met develop policies and procedures around the city and foundation of who's going to do what what those tracking mechanisms are going to be what the reporting is going to be back between each entity and between the city council and define how the roi or other metrics would be used to measure success and define a reporting mechanism for the executive director of the foundation back to the city of how that was going to that flow of information that communication how that was going to be done so that really is the remaining piece that we have from the review the major piece all of this is is in process we're really looking to see what type of future agreement there would be between the foundation and the city to determine how we would go forward on on really addressing all of these different recommendations so we did resume discussions with the parks foundation in march 2018 there's several items that we've identified that are need to be addressed in the short term to move forward the foundation has requested several items and there's a letter in your backup as an exhibit which details some of the requests that they've identified they requested to allow the foundation to act as a pass-through agency for the youth sports association enhancement fees and as i mentioned to you those those fees that were collected between january to march would be transferred back to the city they 've also requested an agreement to accept and donate funds for the youth summer scholarships allow the foundation to continue acting as a pass-through agency for several seasonal events that we have in in the city cinco de mayo juneteenth etc and they're also asking for three-way agreements to be entered into for donations so this would mean donor wants to come forward they'd like to enter into a donation to the parks foundation in exchange the parks foundation would give that to the city and the city would guarantee that it would be used for a particular purpose and so they're entertaining some of those particular arrangements and once they want to some direction of how to proceed with those and you know one of the other things that we've identified is the office space for the executive director currently we're providing that office space we we don't have an agreement with with the foundation but we need some direction on a short-term basis of how to move forward with that. Mayor, while you're talking on those recommendations the the sub bullet points regarding pass-through funds one of the things that i noticed that was not there is it appears without me doing any deep dive at all that there are some that the parks foundation has also been serving as a pass-through for funds for some of the groups that operate for example out of the senior center the the woodworking club and those kinds of things that collect money and then they use it to buy replacement parts when that when a machine breaks or something like that has that been addressed anywhere does it need to be addressed or i mean shouldn't we get it all done at the same time or is has the city come up with a different way to handle that type of issue well our recommendation would be to consider it all at one time if that was going to be something that the council did want to participate with if that be part of an agreement i think which what i've understood is some of those smaller organizations just don't have a lot of work organization a lot of structure a lot of they don't have 501 c3 they don't have a 501 3c status it's they have some difficulties with tracking those funds and handling those affairs and so they've used the foundation for that purpose but my preference would be if if the council wants to move forward with that that we try to address it in the agreement well i would hope so because because i know that you know one of the issues for those folks is you know they need to have a place to park the money until they need to uh buy bandsaws or whatever equipment they need and nobody wants to give their social security number to open that a bank account so so they can use the the parks foundation uh funding mechanism as a passer and it's convenient it's a 501 c3 and if somebody donates a piece of equipment uh it's easy to uh for them to get tanks uh you know a credit for that if they if they want to so um again i don't know any of the details of how those things work but it may be necessary to talk with the parks department or with the uh manager over there at the senior center and see if any of the other recreation centers have some similar uh clubs or programs that they might need assistance with okay i'm going to continue on just a couple more slides to go um the foundation as indicated in their letter also has some plans to discuss future donations to the city related to eureka project i think that was one of the things that came up through the review their current funds on hand according to the foundation have to be spent on new equipment or expansion of that park so that would be an opportunity for us to look at that to see how we would want to do that going forward and they'd like to confer with the city and work with the council on figuring out what that would be long term in the future the foundation has requested that we explore some other areas including administrative support for the executive director office space as i mentioned before developing guidelines for gifting monies for specific park improvements or projects establishing a system for measuring the park foundation impact i think is something they'd like to work with us on defining lines of communication roles responsibility for each organization and they'll be part of an agreement and then finally any future or retroactive pay for the executive director position is something they've also requested some feedback on so uh on slide 10 if you're following along on the presentation some additional considerations that we have beyond what the uh the parks foundation has asked is that the city purchasing policies will be followed regardless of the source of funds so i think that was a question that came up during the review regardless of what monies that we receive either from a donation or through our own city park system we're going to follow our city purchasing rules and so that's something just to be clear about going forward that would need to be part of an agreement the staff also need to fully fully explore all those pass-through arrangements that we were just talking about i think there's some that we know about others that perhaps we don't know as much about so we'd really want to work with the foundation to understand all of those roles and responsibilities and issues that are involved and clearly describe that in the agreement if an agreement was to be brought forward administrative support will need to be clearly defined for both entities so it's it's clear and expectations are met from both parties this is not just about the city but but the foundation knows what what kind of agreement we would get into with them and what we would be providing and if other services beyond administration are saw in other words parks maintenance staff going out and doing work on a particular project or going out and helping with one particular function or another that that would be explicitly authorized in an agreement or a supplement to that agreement if there was a special project that were to come up so okay on this slide 10 yes so i guess from just an accounting standpoint how much time will it cost and hours of staff time is going to take in order to solidify the pass-through agreements delineate expectations and formal policies establish a mechanism for determining what true ROI is and then providing administrative support i don't know i think until i had those conversations i couldn't give you an exact answer i think it's something some of those are things i think we could do fairly quickly to try to determine what are the pass-through arrangements really what our involvement needs to be in that some of those may be very limited involvement if none there would have to be some type of policy though something written in place on the side so that would go through our legal or go through parks department or something right we have to try to draft something run it through legal bring it back have a work session with council talk about that so it would take some time okay some hours of staff time and then regarding the pass- through for instance with the youth sports association fees who is administering that right now i thought it was parks no so the um it's a very little bit of a convoluted arrangement in the past is that you had the youth sports associations that charged a five dollar fee that was sent into the foundation the youth sports associations would vote on what they wanted that money to be spent on then the foundation would send that to the city remember that so that was kind of in the past we 've taken that piece out of our agreements going forward so really not a lot of time being spent on our our end right now administering that so with respect to the sports association fees i guess everything that is being paid now goes straight to the sports associations and they may be paying that to the foundation but we're not a part of that agreement right right so and there's no more five dollar fee we don't have it in our agreement with them okay they may be charging that to their members but we're not a party of it okay i think i i think i understand is that okay okay final slide this is i wish you could see it it's great um it's uh it's uh really seeking direction from the council on all these issues um really trying to see is there an interest from the council's point of view of proceeding with developing an agreement um focused on some of the short-term issues that i've identified with you the youth summer scholarships office space for the executive director of the pass-through organizations that we talked about three-way agreements for donations do you have an interest in us developing such an agreement working with the foundation to develop that and then long term are you looking to have us begin working on looking at a long-term agreement to address all the administrative support pay for the executive director donation guidelines so forth all the things that i've outlined for you so that's what i had for you today again two two really parts to this one just give you an update on where we are and implementing all the rep review recommendations that were made several months to you several months ago and then the second piece is talking to you about the ask from the foundation and trying to get some direction of where you want to go from here so that's my presentation be happy to stand for any questions or help with any discussion that i can um i forgot to ask you about the youth summer scholarships so who's administrating the youth summer scholarships now um right now we are tracking those to see what the applications are for those and um if that's not provided through the foundation or some funding is not provided through the foundation we'll look at trying to provide that in our own budget potentially maybe bringing back something to the council to consider for what that cost might be and remind me that last year's was how much is like 15 i'm looking at laura to see about 15 000 per year i'm getting yes yes on that so essentially that would just come out of our supplemental budget what or we could try to fund it with the existing budget we had we had some salary savings or something like that okay and then the other question i had was regarding the costs i guess i kind of asked that before but i don't know if you might have this specific part of it when you say administrative support what what does that constitute because that was a big part of the audit was that it was a lot of administrative support is what it seemed like or a lot of support in general so what are we talking about when you say administrative support well i think it could be a lot of things i think um again that's one of the things we'd like to do is if the council wants to proceed with an arrangement that we'd sit down and specifically ask what is it that you're asking for what do you need what are we willing to provide i think it's basic kinds of office support that would be there the use of copy machines use of phones office space might need some time to time someone to help use a meeting space make copies some of those kinds of things i'm not really sure we have a good definition of what that would be i think it 's pretty low impact is what we're considering it to be i think the other things about that we talked about in the in the review was using staff to help with a particular project the park maintenance staff is an example i see that is not that's not the administrative support side of it i see that is more project support that would come back to the council and have a specific authorization to track that administrative support would just really be assisting the executive director with maybe day-to-day duties well i don't know how feasible this is but it's hard to make any type of recommendation without understanding what the cost is to the city in terms of personnel time i mean from my perspective it seems like quite a bit of personnel time to support the operations and not to mention to actually solidify the agreements so i guess without additional information i wouldn't really i couldn't go forward with that without knowing so that's my so i've asked this this question every time we've met and i don't know that i've gotten an answer yet that i can fully process and my understanding is that the parks board functioned autonomous for the city for a period of time and then 2014 ish kind of a meeting of the minds working together going forward i just don't understand why they can't function separate and designate dollars to specific projects because just in the review and investigation if you will it highlights the fact that we cannot force so the ordinance that was dated february 7th we can't force them the ordinance says hey we get to look at your books whenever we want the fact of the matter is that's not true if they don't want us to look at it they can hire an attorney and deny us access we can then decide to file a lawsuit and seek to get access but there's no way in this ordinance that it forces that to happen and i don't want to force that on them i want them to have the freedom to do what they want to do to be successful and so the question becomes again why what am i missing what can they not do without being connected to the city well i think it's a it's a question of what do you want their function to be and if they're just raising money and donating those monies for to the city for a specific purpose we can have a very simple agreement that would establish what that is if you want them to serve as other aspects of the community working through the pass-through agreements or working through other avenues those are ways to do that i know tim here is the president may be able to address that more specifically than i could but that would be my understanding of where they would be and if i could just under underline it just real quick yeah because i want to give mr smith a chance to answer that question because i think it's directly posed to the organization right and so i'm going to dovetail that with and i'm not going to read it because i can't find it right away but the the essence of it is this even in his letter it touches on exactly what my concern is in his letter he says hey we have x amount of dollars in our account we understand that there's a disagreement about how much money we're supposed to provide to the city but because our donations don't allow us or the people that donated the money do not allow us to pay that debt or it's not earmarked for that particular debt we can't give it to you and so here's it it highlights exactly what i'm saying there is a conflict of dollars and we and he tells us it's the it's the the the organization and nothing against him i loved him but it's it's the the tail wagging the dog saying we're not going to give you that money because whoever donated it said no and so in my mind we're paying for an office we're paying for an executive we're given assistance in numerous ways and you're telling me no i don't i mean that to me is a template for an argument from every organization we work with so if we proceed i need to understand that better so that's my question it's twofold it's what can't they do without us that what am i missing and then two help me understand how it's it's for those that following along the ordinance is february 7th 17th uh the it's titled obligation of foundation it's letter c it says a foundation will permit authorized officials of the city to review its books at any time and and that that doesn't happen so those are my concerns i want uh mr smith to have an opportunity to answer those questions that were i think more appropriately answered by the thank you thank you mayor city councilman um uh councilperson uh hudspeth so in regards to your first question it was uh in regards to demanding or i guess requesting for the books and there's nothing there's nothing in a legislative stance or some sort of process that we have to give we have to give you those books we have to abide by what you guys request i think i think the biggest uh delineation we made here is that in the past yes that has been the attitude that there was no process there was no agreed upon contract with us as a foundation and the city management that then is approved by you all as a governing body to say this is how we're going to do things that's the past i would encourage you to maybe look to the future and and really hear what brian is requesting i think i think i think mr langley is requesting that by giving a recommendation from this governing body for us to move forward into a long-term mou conversation we can then discuss about the request that's in that febru ary 7th ordinance that you're talking about those books shall be provided when we when we want and the long-term mou that we as a foundation come to an agreement with with the city that's approved by you guys boom we'll do it fine that's okay with us i think in the past they're just like we've already discussed from the bkd review those blurred lines there was nothing there that we had mutually agreed upon and i could definitely tell you that now coming in as the president's at president afterwards that a lot of times it was kind of an unsure of why are these books being requested why are we being asked why are we being probed and was more of a defensive measure rather than us wanting to be transparent does that make sense that's answer your question yes sir okay the second part you request you were discussing um just in regards to uh the the money's correct yes sir it's it's kind of a it's kind of a snapshot of what i perceive to be future problems in that eureka money yeah yeah it's like if a donor says it goes to this and there's some misunderstanding over here i i absolutely respect your position that hey we've got to honor those that are donating but it kind of to me demonstrates that not a lack of control but i don't have a better word to say a lack of control sorry to interrupt but yeah there's not a there's there's not a certain measure that you guys can say well we feel like it should be this way therefore it should be this way and i think that comes into the what i just talked about in the point prior which is before there was no agreed upon control relationship to have between each other um it felt more like it was a muscle flexing contest that that makes sense of of the city is saying that well that money is supposed to be ours and we're like well the ordinance that approved for that purchase of that equipment didn't say that we had to give that back and so now it's kind of uh well we don't really know if we have the the right to give that back part of what mr langley discussed was that we are willing to sit down and discuss what to do with that money we we know that right now as a board we haven't approved that money is supposed to be used for future equipment and expansion but until there is a there is a documentation saying that we need to repay the city and the city council puts an ordinance out there saying that we need to repay the city we as a foundation as stewards of a 501c3 cannot start writing checks and setting it out does and that's and that's not meant to say hey we don't want to give you the money it's us just saying that hey you probably should we probably should have had it in the ordinance to ship it in now let's just go ahead and do it that's not safe that's not good that's not good financial stewardship and underneath my tutelage i wouldn't agree to that but if we come to agreements with the city and city council approves of it and we take a look at it and there's definitely an amendment to that ordinance that we need to pay that back i mean i definitely think we'll definitely um consider it and probably move forward with it because that's something we've agreed to if i may just the first question yes yeah and then we got a couple other requesting so what am i missing what what does the partnership between the parks foundation and the city of forward that the park foundation can't do autonomous just hey you're free to move about the country great question would you agree that we're a 31 year old organization would you agree that the city of denton is different today than it was 31 years ago yes sir would you say it's probably larger with a higher population increase year over year yes sir would you probably say that our parks foundation our parks department our parks and recreation facilities are probably being stressed and used way more than they were 31 years ago agreed i would say that that us having a relationship with the city is more vital now than ever because if we operate autonomously from the city we are raising money for projects that we have no no quite understanding of whether or not it's needed in the city we're moving to and fro to you know somebody like an hoa come along and say hey we really want to build a new park in our in our neighborhood well maybe it's a the south side of town where it's just being developed in the last 15 20 years versus there's a park over in the southeast part of denton that really needs to be rehabbed and that's where the money could be used better if we're going at the standpoint of whoever comes to us and submits a grant application we'll consider it we'll approve it but if the resources in southeast didn't don't have that people down there in southeast don't have those resources to apply to us for that grant we don't know whether or not they need it the reason why we have a formal relationship with the city and why that's important is because the city in ergo you guys as you know the legislative body of the city can help point us towards the direction we need to be in fundraising money and allocating those funds that are given to us that's why the relationship is so important for us and on top of that with having you know an ex officio of the parks and rec department director being able to sit on the board and give us direction on a monthly basis of here's what you know city management's doing here's some new parks there's some new ideas here's some things that city council has mentioned that we want to work towards that honestly gives us that direction for where we want to go in the fundraise does that answer your question does that help you see why we think it's so important sure sure would you have anything against that not specifically there's some nuance but i'm gonna let i'm not gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna let everybody else get them in thank you yeah and and we've been going for about an hour and a half so i'm sure we'll probably take a break during this discussion so i don't want anybody to think i'm trying to to cut anything short but uh so yes councilmember gregory then mayor pro tem well i'm thinking about the importance it was about 30 years ago that a bunch of folks that live uh around netty schultz park just uh south of woodrow wilson elementary school wanted to see some improvements to that park they wanted to see a pathway around the park and wanted to see some new play structures and um they said they went to the parks department said let's do it and the parks department said it's not in the budget and it's not in the cip they said well we could probably raise some money to do that and they needed a place to to put that money and the parks foundation was a place in fact that might be part of the impetus for founding the parks foundation i'm not sure i was busy with with three young children at the house at the time but but so that's part of the importance of the park foundation it's it's when when citizens want to donate money to improve or enhance our park facilities that that can't be handled by the regular city budget it provides a um a tool to allow that to happen i'm a little confused because i think i heard you say mr hudspeth that we have a right to examine our books their books at any time i think that that was actually in our contract so and you said that doesn't happen but my memory is it did happen and and in fact i can't think of a time when we've asked for for information that we didn't get it so did i miss did it was there a time when we asked for information about the books and they refused to give it to us that's my understanding yes when did that happen well that was during the investigation eventually they turned them over yes but it was after some time and the records uh and they negotiated a date time frame versus what the scope originally asked that's that's me not going back and reading it to you verbatim but and so i'm certain someone will correct me where i'm wrong but that that was my understanding that one it took longer than anticipated whereas this says anytime and then two it was the scope was negotiated versus hey we'll take a later i remember that and i think part of the reason that it took some time is because there was some request for some checks and uh they were all electronic and they had to go back and it was actually going to be several thousand dollars to uh have the bank go back to their electronic records and print out those checks and i think in the discussions it was determined by the auditor that those were no that that really probably wasn't needed but i don't recall any uh refusal to return over records i think i think maybe discussion of do you really need that because it's going to cost several thousand dollars was maybe more of the discussion than we refused to do that but i may have a different memory than you mayor pro tem i had a different comment but i did want to clarify something so if i remember correctly from our meetings simone roister who's the accountant did refuse to speak with our investigators pursuant to their standard practices of what they were requesting and because of that refusal to speak with them on the terms that they requested they our people were not able to verify their accounting processes so we had to assume what the accounting processes were and especially we had to assume controls we didn't have any information about controls so i mean i guess you're both right but the reality is that i don't think it was a good faith participation in terms of an investigation as far as the accounting part of it one they did turn over checks they did you guys did do all of the books got that part but when it came to actually synthesizing the information and finding out what happened here and what happened there we were left blind so um that's my recollection of when we had the discussions but that wasn't going to be my comment or question i wanted to touch on what um council member hudsmith said because he wanted to know what i got from your question was what is it that the parks foundation can't do without the help of the city and i think did i get the question right and i think what i heard your response was basically we need a pipeline of information so that we know the best place to channel these donations too did i get that right that is part of it that is not all of it but that's part of i think that that councilman hudsmith was trying to get to but there there's more to it i could elaborate please um sure i would i guess we'll go ahead and address the element in the room which is probably the uh the funding for the executive director so uh we as a foundation um you know if you're talking about actually bringing in somebody who's a really good fundraiser you know during the during the times as we've released uh we we've begun full financial fundraising operations again after the bkd report's been released uh you know we already have a hundred thousand dollar um donation that's coming to us for the iof cemetery that we 're working on and so having having a paid administrative staff uh that's that's that's they're helping us do that fundraising as a volunteer board is extremely important and so having a relationship with the city and them saying yes an investment into you as a foundation financially to be able to uh then go out and raise money that is more than what we're giving you in the way of support for your executive director is a good investment on our part because that's not money that we uh as a you know as a a tax collecting entity are having to use taxpayer money to fund instead so if you want to talk about the actual the kind of the more theoretical directional things yes the pipeline of information extremely important you want to get down to hard numbers having the financial support of our executive director has molly tampke's the only reason why eureka 2 and the fundraising for that existed and we can get muddy on the numbers we're here doing work sessions whenever we were going through the bkd report and different numbers could be looked at different ways but it was just up to right underneath half a million dollars that we raised the foundation that the city didn't have to expend that's that's a that's that's that's financial additive that we think that that relationship with the city means a lot to us a foundation a lot of the citizens of denton so i guess that brings me to my next point which is that frankly i don't think that there's actual accounting going on in terms of the cost to the city of the relationship um that was the problem at the beginning which is that we didn't know how much staff time was being expended we didn't know you know the true cost of the relationship we were given numbers that were inaccurate and represented a high roi on on the investment but in reality once we spent a hundred thousand dollars on accounting a full accounting audit what we discovered was that the city's position was a negative roi from a strictly financial standpoint and that was largely based on the fact that we expended so much staff time supporting the projects of the parks foundation and now with this presentation we're being told again that there's a significant amount of staff time we don't know what the amount is so i feel like we're at square one again which is basically the city supports the parks parks foundation at an unknown quantity unknown amount of money and we're supposed to hope that you know i guess we're only supposed to count the money that comes in from the donations and we're not supposed to count all of the time and effort that it takes taxpayer dollars to support the operations of parks foundation and i i'm still not hearing any type of acknowledgement of the negative roi or any type of acknowledgement of how much it will actually cost to support parks foundation because molly tam ki's salary is a very small part of the entire picture of the support that the city provides and we don't know what that number is so i just i mean i would like some acknowledgement at least that we had a negative roi uh i don't know if i'd go as far as acknowledging that because as a i'm a financial planner by trade i can slice and dice roi in a thousand different ways both positively and negatively if you take a you know statistics one-on-one you can spend numbers however you want to i feel like that in the bkb report some of the times will be heard you know negative roi numbers being thrown up there that's one way to look at it but there's a completely other way to look at it and it comes down to what numbers are you really looking at and how are you doing the calculations so i'll let that be that i can't give you exact numbers to tell you where we stand in that but i can say this i think it's a chicken and the egg conversation here that we're saying you know i think deputy city manager ryan langley is asking for we want a recommendation of going forward and actually having conversations with us the hard part is is that he won't give that unless you know the staff time that the commitment that's done there the staff commitment time that 's being put in is what's actually going to be drafting the mo you and the agreements on what is the actual calculation that the city council wants to see for roi how are we going to measure whether or not it is a positive or negative return on investment rather than what it has been in the past which is we'll dice it the positive way you dice it the negative way and we'll just chalk it up to agree to disagree there needs to be true measurables for this is how we're going to measure it this is how we're going to put together the return on investment there needs to be true controls of how much administrative support is going to be given uh whenever we strike whenever we strike a relationship so i think it's i think it's tough to say we don't want to spend time on doing that because we don't know how much they cost and because we're not sure whether or not you're going to provide that and in the end game honestly we want to be able to come back with an agreement with the city that city council can vote on decide whether or not they think it's going to be a good use of time at that point in time so yes it's a little bit more staff investment for a presentation but we feel like it would come to something that is going to be mutually beneficial can i i wanted to address one more thing not for you but thank you for that response um council member greg ory said something that you know regarding the origin of the parks foundation and how there was support for items that couldn't be handled by the regular city budget and i just want to state that that has to do with policy leadership of you know our group in general if if we want something in the budget for parks for instance like the iof cemetery fencing we will put it in the budget so i mean with a 1.2 billion dollar budget it's i don't know that that's accurate to say that it can't be handled by the regular city budget it's up to us to fund our parks properly so that's my only statement about that okay i've got i'm just got a couple of comments um i'm gonna go back to the request from mr langley uh i don't have a problem with the conversation i mean we expend staff time uh all the time on projects on things i mean when we're talking about negative rate of return we have a two million dollar budget for hot funds and year in and year out we ask how do we calculate a return on investment for the money that we provide to the denton festival foundation for the arts and jazz fest to this day after how many years has that program been around and that festival been here and we all see all the people but we don 't know exactly we can't say with certainty what is the amount of financial contribution to the city as compared to the not only the hard dollars spent for that that program but also the in kind and we do have an idea to measure the in kind contribution so i don't have a problem with the conversation i mean i think what is being asked is we recognize from the past from the historical context the shortfalls in how we approach their relationship uh and so all these questions that are being brought up about rate of return about what can you do that uh without the city that you can do with the city um if we're going to be willing to ask every organization that asks us for money that question i'm okay with that question i think it's a very valid question i mean what can you do um so i don't have i don't have a problem with a conversation of youth summer scholarships uh of office space for executive director that doesn't mean in the conversation that we're agreeing by giving direction to have the conversation doesn't mean that i'm saying well whatever you come up with i'm going to agree to it's a matter of let's have a conversation let's address the issues uh it will take some staff time because the things that i'm going to pose the question differently from yours council member hudspeth i'm going to say so what can the city do um with without the parks foundation we could assume all of the responsibilities that they've been assuming over the years albeit informally sort of with some blurred lines and some things that we need to clean up uh we can assume the youth summer scholarships we can assume the pass-through organization for youth sports and fees we can assume the pass-through and financial oversight organization for civic organizations and seasonal events sequel to mild juneteenth senior center advisory committee all those things we can set up in a a two-way donation agreement with people who want to to donate to the parks well number one if they want to donate they probably want to get a tax deduction and they can't do that if they donate directly to the city so we can do that so just as the implication is the parks foundation doesn't need the city in a formalized arrangement neither does the city need the parks foundation however there may be some limitations however there also will be additional expenses that will be required to manage and to monitor and to administrate those particular programs what those costs are i have no idea so uh i before for me to say i don't want to move forward without having a conversation on what would it look like sort of seems to me when you talk about the tail wagging the dog or the chicken before the egg or whatever how can i make a decision not to move forward when i don't know what everybody's willing to agree to based upon we don 't want to do it the same way we've done it i think everybody can agree to that whether you want to just cut it all off and and everybody go their separate ways or whether you want to try to forge a different arrangement i think it's clear nobody wants to do it the way we've done it and so i'm real open just to a conversation of how do we want to do it i've not perceived this work session at i mean unless there's a consensus here that nobody wants to move forward and we're sort of all done with this and we just sort of let the chips fall where they may i didn't perceive this conversation to be that conversation to me the conversation is what is the parks foundation asking for what is the policy makers willing to do so i'm okay my direction is i'm okay with having a conversation on the short term goals and i'm assuming that in those in that conversation that some of that financial commitment we can clearly define what our administrative role is i see no problem with being able to say we will do this but we won't do that and we do it all the time we do it all the time with a lot of different organizations so i'm okay with it i understand that there's some frustration and that there's some some angst about the process that we just went through it was a necessary process for the city folks let's let's make sure we understand where if and i'm not one i don't like placing responsibility or blame but who's ultimately responsible for the city maintaining the integrity of its agreements it's the city is ultimately responsible that doesn't mean the other parties don't have some bearing and responsibility but if if this thing got all out of whack we we have to be accountable to our responsibility in that so i'm real okay with saying okay i think it's been beneficial doesn't mean we have all the answers i think it's certainly worth exploring to see you know what can be developed moving forward given the information how many of you heard me say all contracts are scar tissue well i'm saying it again because all contracts are simply agreements where you've learned from previous mistakes missteps observations on how do we want to do it differently i see this no different we're gonna if we if the consensus of the council is to just have a conversation and come back with a plan jointly produced by the parks foundation board and city staff and make some recommendations we're going to have an opportunity to discuss specific proposals specific requests and the costs associated with that so i'm okay with a conversation about i mean so if i'm misunderstood unless i'm misunderstanding we're not agreeing to those specific points we're saying does the council even want to have a conversation with the parks foundation about those specific points am i correct in that yes sir that's what we're requesting direction on if you'd like us to go ahead and start working through that and then bring back a proposal for you to consider specifically on those deal points okay but i didn't want to do that without council understand direction before we of course of course and i think that's because the council has said hey you know before we embark on some direction let's make sure we we we've made the mistake of not doing that in the past and now we want to correct that right uh i'm sorry i took so much time um council member duff and then council member ryan and then council member hudson and i've been i've been sitting here to kind of trying to take all this in and and kind of understand the whole thing uh i i think one of the things that we need to do you know we need we need to recognize what has happened in the past but i think we need to put the past behind us and go forward and put i mean you know to me that parks foundation and the city working together is something that's a very very positive but we need to put that together so we have a total agreement and let's let the past go i want to make a correction uh my astute our astute legal council has corrected me a donation to a what was it uh local governmental entity to a donation to a local government entity is tax deducted is that correct right so if i'm still wrong it's the gentleman sitting next to me uh council member r yan thank you mayor um i think the first one of the first slides in the presentation talked about blurred lines i think that's what we really had and what we're talking about here is getting rid of those blurs and so i'm all for moving forward as far as how all the pieces come together that's something that when it comes back to us in a work session we can discuss further there the the definition of an roi how we're going to define that moving forward is very important can we have those blurred lines in the past we need to clarify that so we know what we're actually talking about um i'd like to and i don't know how difficult this would be at this point but at least in the future be seeing performers along with roi so we can see what they anticipate in the future as well as what has happened in the past that's one additional item i did not see listed in here that i think would be important for us that's all council member husbeth thank you yeah so first tim thank you for your succinct answers i appreciate you i appreciate your service on p and z you're doing fantastic um regarding um my my questions i i received the answer communication is is important i think mayor pro tem is is absolutely right i think so start off at the beginning where everyone kind of left off sure let's let's explore options but i'll tell you for me to get there i need someone to succinctly give me a some kind of give me a picture give me a bar graph give me something tangible that says these five things you cannot do absent a relationship because the parks board existed from beginning of time till mid 2012 2014 without that relationship so how did they function before the relationship and now we're saying we can't if it's growth that's fine what does that look like what tangible differences are there when you come back with that with that conversation is going to be important to me office space is an absolute deal killer for me we have kdbg we have uh we have the welcome center and that opens the door for every entity out there to then say me too and then and so if that's the case what's the answer to tell them no and so that's that that to me is is absolutely now i i preface that with if we're talking stoke where we're spending 180 000 a year anyway okay you we can put office out there sure but to me i just think you gotta start to anticipate what we as elected officials you have i have to answer to i haven't had to have an answer for every organization that that is similar situated that would love to have an administrative assistant that dallas black film festival they're absolutely stretched to the max the uh the uh the um community market stretch to the max so everyone could benefit from that so let's take that let's take another look at that do we need as a city have we grown to where we need a liaison position that is available to those entities that they schedule time and work with sure i'm open to that so i'm not saying no it's not needed i'm saying we need to have a holistic look at it because i anticipate me twos at every decision we make and so i need a solid answer when i tell someone no why because the first if i were them first line i draws to this organization and say well you're doing it for them why not me and so we need to have an answer to that all right that's what i'm going to ask the question i'm tipping my hand in advance um and i think i think tim's spot on you can spend the numbers and so i i really want to have uh when when the deal comes back i i i'd like it to be more activity driven than numbers driven i i really think that's key it's just like we do with the cvb it's how many contacts do you have not so much did those bear fruit because there's no real control over that but it's what what activities we're providing 6 000 black and white copies 10 000 color copies a month and that's easy to calculate easy to do the math it's whole numbers i just think it needs to be that type approach versus hey i a perceived roi or a perceived lack thereof so yeah i think i think that's that's it for me i'm all for going forward but i really need it broken down to me in a way that that i can um see uh what it is we're accomplishing on on because again i i respect his answer tim's answer i respect that but as an individual person if they go hire an attorney even though you're the president they can tell you to pound sand they can tell us to pound sand and they're free to do whatever they want to do because that's an individual and that's the laws they're afforded and i don't want to i don't want to i don't want to i don't want to take that away from them and i don't want to be in a position where we're having to sue individual citizens i mean it's just a terrible position to be in and and and it's reality you can't get around that there's no instance where you can get around that you can work on it all day long i'm trying to tell you if it's an individual they have an individual right to not participate with that agreement and then you got to go to a court and figure that out and i don't want to be in the position going forward to having to sue people because we can avoid it now and just make decisions understanding we don't want to do that that's just it's not the business we're in uh and so i i absolutely understand the value absolutely want to move forward i'm absolutely not against the parks board i'm pro parks board and giving them freedom to do what they need to do and and and us come alongside of that and support that um but not be onerous not be kind of take that unfortunate big brother mentality but at the end of the day i have constituents they're going to ask me questions and if i can't answer those questions i'm not doing my job so can i get a clarification on uh councilman hospice points yeah i just want to make sure i understand something so it sounds like from what you've said you're okay with the conversation moving forward depending on what comes back from that conversation will determine your temperature on you know an official agreement or something like that yeah but with the office space that's that to me is succinct if they come back to me saying hey we recommend office space for them i'm gonna i'm an automatic number okay all right so yes you sure um i think uh i think that i think uh mayor watts definitely mentioned earlier that we had there's definitely been some uh some some bruised grapes this whole process and so i think there's a reason why i'm up here and why nobody else on the board is up here and the reason why is i've taken a very um efficient matter of fact stance to this whole entire process uh so i'll tell you this we are not here to be defensive we are here to uh begin negotiation and have conversation councilman hud spith and so when it comes to you know the we don't want to get to the point where we're suing suing citizens you know the reason why we want to have this we want to move forward in conversations because we don't want to get sued we we want to be able to have discussion as well and have have a defined pathway for us to be able to to provide the information that's needed so there's not that type of that type process so thank you for saying you'd be willing to support us for having to continue the conversation uh in regards to to office space um that is something that we uh we we're probably going to discuss and we're probably going to push for knowing your stance on it we're going to have we're going to have to have a different conversation i'm assuming um but if i could ask one clarifying thing about that would you draw any any difference between the parks foundation and our operations and what uh you know the the the didn't black film festival puts on or what uh you know i think you might have mentioned um a couple other organizations like ktb is probably a good one to point to that we're a lot like but i feel like i feel like you could easily point and say that while the black film festival arts and jazz um a couple other organizations they work in civic centers they work in civic spears they work they work at city property they don't necessarily work on city property the way that the parks foundation does and the way that we we are actually adding back to the city in a lot in a lot of different ways not saying that black film festival doesn't add back to the city in a cultural standpoint yeah way more than probably even what we do but we're actually adding physical uh physical additions that oh my gosh physical additions that that whenever you look at on a measurable scale you can see culture is hard to be measured if you'd agree to that so um understanding where you stand we'll definitely have that that consideration we'll have a conversation with the city about it where you stand and if i may and then yeah then mayor pro tem and then we're going to sort of wrap this up and it's just tim thank you very much and it's just because i want to be as open and honest as i can early right and so my thing is i need an answer for why we're not so much the office space well okay with office space but why why not stoke which is already bought and paid for in theory you know or why not why not city hall we're planning in zone where planning department is if there's an open desk there why not in one of the other locations that we're already spending money uh and i know it's i know it's at civic center and that building is ours i get it but but that's my that's what those can those can also i mean that can very much be part of the conversation sure yes absolutely i'm sorry mayor pro tem i 've council member gregory has been very patient thank you sir well you know council member briggs hasn't said anything yet probably needs to are you i'm sorry and she's cleaning it void what she's she 's an eating even folders right now so just a little coffee so she needs to finish drying yeah why don't you go ahead and when she's ready to okay to speak she'll she'll get my attention on slide 11 ask for direction and it says seeking direction from council and whether there's interest in proceeding with developing an agreement yes and so i add my yes to the the several yeses that you've already heard and there's another bullet point long-term seeking direction about whether there's an interest in developing an agreement for administrative staff support yes okay that was succinct yes mayor pro tem wasn't that council member well i didn't never see her go ahead i'm bathing in chai tea right now so okay i'll let you know in a minute so i'm getting that the direction is to move forward with the discussion i would just like to add that you know at least if we're gonna provide staff time and resources i think council member hud's with is right i have a favorite organization i'd love for the denton community market to get an administrator paid for executive director position and some staff support and copies also if they could help with marketing and the website as they have with the parks foundation that would be good i know they'd be willing to sign anything at all so i think that would probably be the case for dallas black or dent black film festival association i can think of a couple others so i mean if we're doing this let's do it and we're gonna fund all of our non-profits this way that's that's my thing i just want to be equitable you know if we're doing this everybody gets peace that's my my request my ask thank you okay council member r iggs so i'm i'm willing to to have the discussion but i appreciate everything that all the council members have said and in agreement would like to see some more specifics but i also i'm wondering dasf because they are kind of the same similar non-profit they give money directly back to the city for the animal shelter um just if we can have a little bit more on that organization and how that functions do they have an office space do we know we do work closely with them that's part of the presentation that i gave last week ktb dasf and the friends of the library we have relationships with them but we don't really have a formal agreement that establishes what they're going to do what we're going to do i've had a conversation with betty sherman recently we're gonna be starting that process of trying to develop that and bring that back to you so we could have that conversation i don't think there's a need for any resources to be expensed from the city from them based on what i'm seeing at this point but they do want to make sure that they have a good working relationship and understand that when funds are provided to us that they know what those funds are going to be used for i apologize i missed that oh that was not here that time yeah the last week um so i appreciate that um yeah so i'm i'm okay with with a conversation but i would like to see um more specifics and numbers as well in that okay thank you did you have some sure yeah specifics in what way the numbers are you talking just about roi you're specifically talking about could you just elaborate a little bit on that for our direction oh okay this the same as councilmember has been sent and mayor pro temba gary on the um yeah no no just the the exact same things that they've talked about yeah the support the administrative you know like more specifics there we can definitely do that okay uh sounds like you do you feel like you have adequate direction yes sir i think i do and we can explore that begin to put some deal terms together um i'll work with uh mr smith we'll come back to you with something that we think makes sense and and let you give us your your opinion on that all right and i think uh you sort of split the direction down into two parts short term long term we didn't talk much about the long term but i would just say i would think that the discussion should be comprehensive and but should also be bifurcated in that short term long term so if there's discussion then you can come back and if the city council wants to do one and not the other this council can decide how they want to handle that okay that makes sense sure absolutely yes yeah i just also would like to to bring up the fact that both of them mentioned the um administrative staff for other non-profits because we do and like i mentioned that the animal one um is that going to be a conversation where maybe we have somebody on staff that helps everyone instead of specifically hiring one individual for one organization i think we certainly can look at that i think it depends on the relationship it depends on the nature of what that entity is doing so kdb is an example that's been thrown out we have a lot of resources on staff um that we devote to that function we have office space we pay a lease we have several staff members that are devoted to that so that's very different than what we have for dasf who may not need much or if anything from us so i think i think they're probably case by case basis is the way i would probably look at it um as we bring back those agreements with kdb dasf friends of the library we can look at those and see if there is any support to give the council an option to weigh in on that okay certainly thank you okay that sounds like a reasonable direction we can do that all right thank you all for your patience appreciate it thank you for presentation thank my colleagues for the it's good input let's go ahead and take a five or ten minute break 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