Aug 17, 2019 City Council on 2019-08-17 8:30 AM (Planning Session)

Call this meeting of the City Council into order. We do have a quorum. It's Saturday, August 17, 2019, about 8.59 a.m. This is our annual council retreat planning session. We only have one agenda item, and that is, and I'm not going to read the whole caption. Item 1A is holder of the retreat discussion facilitated by Accenture S.O.W. We give direction and priorities concerning the following, city service and infrastructure, streets, parks, finance, budget, etc., as represented there on the agenda item. So I will turn it over. Well, this is going to be very different than our last retreat. We did the personality inventory and talked about this pretty much in nuts and bolts, I think, kind of retreat. So there's some goals for this year and also some talk about some processes and procedures for meetings and staff and things such as that. So I'll turn it over to Stephen, right? Sure. Yep, absolutely. Thanks. Good morning, everybody. This is a great setting. I don't think I've ever necessarily done a retreat on the top of a huge building looking out, so that's kind of fun. I think I introduced you all to my colleague, Chris Newport, so we'll kind of be tag teaming today. I want to go through just a couple of things at the start to kind of lay out sort of our kind of level set our expectations for the day and some things that we found to be helpful in terms of doing these kinds of retreats. By all means, you should feel free to interrupt ask questions. We want this to be obviously interactive, there's going to be a little bit of us talking at you, but pretty brief. Obviously, the intention here is this is your all's retreat, not our retreat. We're here to facilitate you all hopefully accomplishing the things that you want to get done today. So, as we as we talked with Todd and actually in the interviews that I did with all of you, it was pretty clear that there were a couple of key objectives that you wanted to try to accomplish today. So, the three that we that we really sort of settled on was first of all was to do a review of the progress that the city and you all have made it on the priorities that he said last year, right, that's always a good thing to do if you've set priorities, it's always good to take a take a moment and say, Hey, how do we do on that and I know you did a think Todd you gave a thing in April, kind of a mid kind of a mid course deal so part of what we'll do today is kind of go over that. And obviously people, there's some facts that will be shared but obviously I think it would be great also to think about your impressions of how you thought that went from a leadership standpoint, in terms of achieving those objectives. The other thing we want to accomplish today is to actually set the objectives for the coming 12 months for the next year. So, it's always good that there are things maybe that didn't get accomplished that you wanted to or obviously things have changed and new priorities might have evolved to kind of set those priorities for the coming year. And then the third thing that obviously came through really strongly in the conversations that I have with with all of you, as well as, I can't remember if the council members know we also did a like sort of a big focus group with all the department directors, while I was out here. And to be clear that that folks feel like it would be really great as coming out of this retreat is to is to sort of set up a shared set of guidelines, maybe some new processes about how to engage more effectively, both as a council and between council and staff. And so, again, all of my interviews with each of you you all you all said like yeah, we're probably we are not necessarily operating and sort of the effectiveness model that we would like, and it would be good to try to see if we can't come together as a group and lay out some new ideas about how to move forward. So those are the things we're trying to accomplish today, is that sort of make sense to everybody any questions about that concerns about those things. It's always good to be in a, only a seven hour period not have eight things you're trying to get done so we try to narrow it down to three. I want to just kind of quickly kind of go through kind of how we envision the day proceeding you've got in your packets. We've actually caught up. The minutes. I don't I don't know that will hold it precisely to those you know those minutes, but in sort of a flow of the day is we want to spend a little bit of time. After I get done talking about the agenda is talking a little bit about kind of the principles that we want to have guiding this time that we spend together. Our experience has been that making sure that everyone's clear about kind of, how do we want to make the day operate and the day function, and as facilitators, the things that we know we're sort of on the hook for helping you all stay accountable to in terms of following those guiding principles. A lot of times people think ah we don't need to spend time on that, but because we all we all know how to do it. Our experience has been that you got to lay those things out so I'm going to talk a little bit about that. This is the look they're going to do a little bit of part of us sort of talking at you, and it's just to share some reflections and impressions that that we got from talking to all of you. Doing some observation of council meetings, looking at some data that Rachel and her team help pull together. So just to give you some impressions of how we see the sort of effectiveness of how you all are operating so there's not you're not going to see in that recommendations from us it's just impressions to kind of sort of set the sort of set the groundwork for the day, which is in the morning is to sort of talk about this notion of and we were talking with Todd yesterday he's like really you guys use the word pain points. We're actually very intentional about that word in the sense that, because we don't want to imply that there's something that what you're doing is right or wrong errands here to make sure that we're whether we're doing something is legally right or wrong but, but it, it was pretty clear in the discussions that we had with all of you, that there are some things in the way that you all work that may or may not be right or wrong but they're painful. They're not getting you to where you want to be so that's actually a very intentional use of that term. The other thing is is that what we want to do is spend some time is talk about what seems to be some of the most critical, maybe if you want to use the word most painful pain points that you are experiencing, and particularly ones that you think are keeping you from being a more effective set of leaders and a governance, people who are responsible for the governance of city government. So we'll talk a little bit about those, and then we want to spend the bulk of the morning though, having you all talk about okay, what's maybe a path forward, how might we operate differently as a council and between council and staff to actually, you know, maybe reduce some of that pain and those pain points but more importantly, work more effectively as a government as the folks who the staff and the city look up to in terms of leading the city. So the hope is that before we get to lunch, you'll actually sort of have come to shared understanding about how some ways we can move forward. The, the vision here is that we're not necessarily, even though legally you could make you could actually vote the council could actually vote on things today are thinking is that you wouldn't necessarily take formal votes today but that you would come out of here with a pretty clear idea, and that the idea is that there would be, I think we're talking about like maybe even as soon as August 27 some things might kind of come forward to the council for formal action at a formal council meeting. So that's, that's kind of the vision for the morning. Then moving into the afternoon is to shift ideally into that conversation about the priorities. So, staff Todd and staff are going to talk a little bit about presenting and recapping and there's a lot of detail in your packet about what's the progress that's been made. So far, in terms of those, those eight priorities that you said, and then we'll facilitate you through a process of trying to identify okay what are the priorities we want to have going forward. And obviously you're in the midst of budget conversation so that may help inform the budget decisions that you're going to be making shortly, but the idea again would be that in the afternoon you would come out with a shared understanding of what those priorities are so similar to what you accomplished last year, that's that's sort of the objective. And then we'll just, you know, before we actually conclude, we'll kind of just do a quick wrap up of making sure we all understand kind of what are the commitments and what are the next steps. So you can see we're obviously we will take a break mid morning, we'll take a break for lunch, we'll take a mid mid afternoon break and then we'll adjourn. The intention is to adjourn no later than four so any questions about the agenda. All make sense. Okay. Okay, so these are a set of principles that I tend to use whenever I'm working with almost any group quite frankly but particularly with city councils I work with county boards with governing bodies, when we're doing in kind of a retreat session. So I just want to run the plan is I just want to run through these real quick and get your questions reactions so forth, but ultimately we want to come to a place where you all feel like it if you want to add some, we can we can add some to this, but the idea is that we want to come to a place where everyone's kind of hands on the table supporting that these are the things that we're going to use to kind of hold all of us accountable for trying to sort of follow these these guiding principles so a couple things so one is, obviously you may have noticed this is obviously different from how you sit at a council meeting. We very intentionally had all of the executive team here around the table. You know, did you odd even odd even so to speak. And so that, that's my intention which means that the, this is not simply only the council that would be talking, doing the talking, we would encourage everyone that's around the table to be weighing in and there obviously may come times when as facilitators we may say, hey, we just want to get the council's perspective on this because it's it's something that is relevant, maybe just to their role as council members, and we'll try to when those moments, if those happen, will be clear about that but the assumption is is you're at the table you're participating. The second notion is not only when you're at the table you're participating. Our, our expectation our understanding is is that you're present. And I know we live in an age where we can stay in contact with all kinds of things going on as facilitators, it's really helpful to know that if you're, if you are in your seat, you're in the conversation, sort of all end of the conversation. So what we tend to do is make a suggestion is that people put away their phones put away their devices, when they're at the table. If you need to respond to a text from somebody or whatever. You don't even need to leave the room, we would just ask you to step away from the table, and that just helps us know that we don't have to worry about, well, geez, is john, are you, did he hear what I said, because I, you know, his hands down here. I was picking on you since you didn't have any devices in your hand. So, that's sort of a principle that we offer up to you and so we're going to ask you in a moment if you're, if you're willing to kind of live with that idea. The third is, obviously as much as we can try to stay focused on the topic at hand. Obviously, things in the public sector, don't fall into nice neat clean boxes so it's not that you, you know, sometimes it's important to draw on an additional perspective or additional idea, so we're not going to try to cut that off, but there may come times where we feel like the conversation may be straying away from the topic that we were agreeing to talk about one of the things we can do is we can kind of add on a parking lot kind of say hey great hey john can I keep picking on you because you're right there. Hey, that sounds really interesting, seems like an additional thing from what we're talking about can we capture it and come back to that later. So we would just sort of ask you all to be comfortable with that, because we're not trying to say it's unimportant, it's just not. It's not focused on that thing that we're talking about now. So we want to, we want to seek your permission to kind of use that strategy. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of talking amongst each other. And so we would just encourage you that when you do so, obviously be candid I don't think any of you have any issues about being candid. I think obviously, maintaining a level of respect in terms of that dialogue, and then as much as we can be concise, and we will try to help move the conversation along from time to time. But if we can all sort of live within that notion of trying to be concise that would be great and by the way, that goes for us as well. If you feel like we're droning on it's like, Steve, let's go can we can we can we move on so we are, we have to live by these principles that we all do. So, the next thing is obviously there may be a lot of different ideas a lot of different perspectives a lot of different opinions about how, how we ought to work more effectively as a group, as well as the priorities we want to set. We would just encourage you obviously that when you hear something that may be different from your point of view. First, you know really try to be open to that person's perspective that idea, and if you have questions about it you know, ask questions of clarification, make sure you understand what they're saying, you may still come out at the end and disagree with them that's that's fine. We're not asking for everybody to have unanimity of opinion, but just we'd encourage you to do that. And then obviously as I mentioned we'll have designated breaks when we do that we'll let you know how much time we're planning for the break so if you could honor that back on that time, that would be fantastic. And then obviously, we're, this is a little different mode 364 days out of the year you guys do your own thing and you don't have anybody else sort of facilitating your conversation. So we would at least ask between now and four o'clock if you can trust us to begin not only keep you on track in terms of the agenda but kind of work with these guiding principles. If you have any questions about any of these. It all makes sense. So before I ask you to say whether you will agree with or not I want to throw out an idea that I tend to use with a lot of groups, you may or may not work for you. And it's a way that for us in particular as facilitators to try to understand where the group is in terms of supporting an idea without taking a formal vote. We've called it we call it fist to five. Some of you may have seen similar things. It's not all that complicated but I think it's worth sort of going through and it's a way to kind of test for consensus. So again we were, we check this out with Aaron we've made clear this is this would if when we call for a fist to five it is not a formal vote. It's a way for us to see from everybody to what degree are you supportive of an idea that's on the table. So we're going to use this fist to five in just a moment to test for your support for those guiding principles that I just laid out. So the way it works is pretty simple when if someone has an idea that they want to see if there's consensus around it might be us, it could be one of you, you'd say hey I want to see if we've got consensus around this idea. What we'll do is facilitators say great. First of all, make sure make sure everybody understands what the idea is. So if people have questions to clarification they should ask. But then we want to do is say using the fingers on one hand, let us know what's your what's your personal level of support for that idea. And this is we just kind of given some words to the five it you know whatever you're sort of thinking about it may be a little different, but the way to think about it you know five absolutely while the enthusiastic totally support it for is, yeah, you know, I definitely support it I like that idea. Three is well, I'll definitely support it's not my first choice not my preferred option but I'm definitely on board at a three, the twos and the ones in the fist are really at a level where you're like you know I'm not there yet I don't, I'm not ready to support that. And the deal is is that if you're at that level where you're below a three as facilitators we're going to say, Okay, john you're at a two. What would it take to get you to a three. Right. So the idea here is you can't, you're just not saying I'm going to one or I'm going to two, you got to offer up us a way to make that that proposal better, at least for you, and then we'll go okay john suggested that x, we should write only in blue, that'll make him happy. How does everybody else feel about that would do another fist to five that we maybe we lose somebody and and ideally it's, it's a way that a lot of times people say, God, this seems kind of all mechanical. The reason why we use it is a lot of times people here, or we want to get to consensus and what they immediately think that means is a lot of long conversations. And it doesn't mean there aren't good conversations but this is a way to kind of say, Okay, we've been talking about this for a while, let's see if we're actually at consensus sometimes there's just a lot of conversation when you actually find everybody's at a three or higher I call it there's a lot of violent agreement. And it keeps dragging things on so we like to use this as a way to try to understand is there actually consensus with it. So anyway, though, the one thing is for when you have group dynamics, it's important that there may come a point where you have one or two folks who we just can't get them to a three, and that's, that's okay. And so what we'll do in that case is we'll acknowledge that we don't seem to be able to get to consensus on this issue, but that the emerging idea that has the most level of support is X, sorry we're going to use red pens, you know instead of blue pens. And we're just saying that that appears to be the thing that the idea on the table that has the most support. It's not at consensus as it's defined here, but it's the most level support, and it enables us to move forward. So if you need to take formal action if there might be something that somebody says well we need to pass a resolution on that or whatever, then that can come at a later point, you can decide, okay, we're going to take what was what seemed to be the idea with the highest level support that could come forward at a council meeting later and you can take a formal vote and majority wins. Again, our goal today is to try to not do a thing where we do a sort of majority wins vote it's to more use this to kind of, again, see if we can find things that have the greatest level of support and ultimately ideally everybody at a three or higher. So that's a lot of me talking. Okay, so first I want to go back, I want to use the fist to five, just to test it out see if it'll work for you guys. If looking at these retreat principles, and this is for everybody again not just council members, what's your level of support for using these principles as a way to govern the time together today. Okay. Great. Okay, cool. And other I forgot to ask, are there, is there any other kind of ground rules or guiding principles that you want to propose that we have these work, and if we get through if we get to a point and people want to suggest some other ones that's great. Great. Thank you very much. I know that was a lot of me talking very quickly but we think it's really important. So we're going to keep these up here and in my kind of scratchy handwriting you've also got them in your packet, and the fist of five stuff is also in your packet so we'll kind of keep them up so that they're available if you want to visually see them but they're also right there. Okay, so, so next we're going to just move through again a little bit more of me talking and then we'll bring an end to a lot of that and get to where you guys talk so. So here's the headline. Well, let me take a step back. It's always a bit risky when we do this, because we are tourists, like literally and figuratively. We are not from Denton, we are not here all the time. I came in had it basically spent a day and a half two days with you all reviewed some things online and what have you. Chris at least is from Texas so you have a Minnesotan tourist but at least he's from Houston so you know, hold your Houston jokes, at least temporarily but he's at least of your state. And so, whenever we do this, I always want to couch it in that respect, which is, these are the impressions that we have. Now, we've talked to staff we've looked at some data. These are our impressions, and you all might say that is not your impression or I have a different interpretation. Absolutely. So, again, I just want to couch it in that regard. But we think it's, it may be helpful because we've been tourists in lots of places. We've been with a lot of local governments. And again, Chris has worked in the city of Houston he's chief of staff to the mayor there a couple mayors. So he's seen a lot and in a large city government thing I've worked with various size of city and county boards and all those kinds of things so. So while we may be tourists to Denton I think it's a relatively informed perspective. And here's the headline that we would share with you. You all are amazing public service, every single one of you. And interestingly, when I talked to each of you individually about the others, you actually admire in everybody else that passion, that commitment to public service. It's really interesting and also by the way, all the department directors share it too. They think as individuals, you guys are bringing everything you can. And for council members on what's supposed to be a part time basis you're bringing, you got, in some cases other jobs you have to go to and things like that. So you have all this passion this dedication to making denton a better place on an individual level. And the headline is is collectively, you are on an unsustainable path. And every, not every one of you use that word unsustainable but you use some variation there of saying, I am burned out on a personal level on a professional level. This is consuming so much of my time. I'm worried, or people are literally saying to me, we're going to lose staff. We actually had one department director reference the idea that that this person has people in that department, who, in a sense are saying, I don't want to get promoted any higher in this department because it might mean I have to be in the council chambers making presentations that that is almost a trade off that they're willing to make relative to what it means to be engaged at this governing level. By the way, you're not the only place I've ever heard that so I'm not trying to say, I'm not trying to cite that Sarah knows that the work in Austin I heard in Austin, you've heard in Houston. So I don't hold that up as like you're the only place we've ever heard somebody say that, but that's a telling thing when staff feel like I love this work that I do I want to, I want to rise in the organization but geez I don't know if I want to get up above this level. But the other thing is is that again from watching a lot of the agenda, reading the agendas and looking at things is that part of the unsustainability is your, your, you spend a lot of time down in the weeds and your and and senior level staff is having to spend a lot of time down in the weeds. When you were elected and you were appointed and you are serving in positions where the idea is we want you thinking about the big issues and how do we move this community forward and how do we think and work collaboratively to develop new strategies to move things forward as opposed to being really really deep down in the weeds. And again, it's always tricky to understand. Well what's in the wheat what's policy versus operations and that no one's ever come up with a perfect definition of that I'm just telling you the impression that we have from looking at what we see other city councils, wanting to wrestle with doesn't mean that they don't ever get down in the weeds so this is not that, again this is not a, you are bad and they are good. It's that it's a tension, it feels to us like there's a bit more of that happening here that's going to produce a level of unsustainability. And then the last piece is, I want to be really careful about this. We have not done any polling we have not gone out and talk to average Joe citizen, my worry for you our worry for you is that if you continue down this path you will begin to lose public trust and support as a governing body individually, you may still keep getting votes. So, this is back to the I want to make this distinction about individually. You guys are you're hearing from constituents you're hearing from staff you're doing a great job whatever. My worry for you is that collectively if you can't figure out a more sustainable path, you may begin to lose the support of you as a governing body for leading this, the city. I don't know what how that would manifest, it's, it's impossible to sort of measure and a metric. You all don't do for example community survey like a lot of communities do so we don't know the degree to which they sort of trust and support. Oh, you do do it. We do. Oh, I'm sorry I apologize. So I, so as a metric that could be something that that you that you look at that that again you may start to see as a collective. It slips so again, I don't want to be overly dooms and glooms. Most of these things are based on the things that I heard individually from you all in my conversations with you is just a worry that it's unsustainable so let me just talk a little bit about some of these things and then I want to feel free to, you know, push back on me, ask questions of clarification. So, some of this will be repetitive what I just said. Again, when we talk to folks and talking about what do you think about the folks on council the folks on staff. What, what do you think about them sort of as people is, again, there's a lot of affirmation of what you all are trying to do as individuals, they see your, your dedication, no one is no one is accusing any of you guys are checking out. I think again the notion is is that all of that passion and that energy often leads to really strong emotions, people wanting to talk about things really intently. And so that can result in, as you all know better than we do, very long meetings and lots of meetings. And so there's that is a piece of the unsustainability that we would worry about. The second piece is, there was lots of things from, again, everybody we talked to that the last couple of years have been a really move in the right direction in terms of the responsiveness of staff to council. Again, we weren't here before but a lot of people cited things from a couple years ago where council members felt like they asked for things no one, nothing ever happened. The staff wasn't responsive the staff wasn't interning good things. There was definitely a sense from a lot of folks like that we've we've righted that ship, and that we're seeing good responsiveness from staff in terms of things that council wants. Now there's a there's a almost a downside to that success which is, it has fueled people saying great, I want more of that this is great it used to be if I made a request of something, nothing happens, something gets done great I want more of that. And so obviously, and there's some data that was provided in your packet that that the amount of requests that have happened is really on the rise and that's consuming a lot of staff time which, again, staff is here to serve the community serve council, represents an opportunity cost. It's something it's time that that some of your most seasoned experienced, and quite frankly highest paid individuals are spending time on these things when they could be doing perhaps more valuable things to serve the community. Third piece is that you all govern in an age of unprecedented. I don't know what you want to call it ability of the public to weigh in, communicate with you that that you know we never have seen right it's just been growing every day, and there's incredible power in that right there is a way to stay in the pulse of that. The tricky thing is is a lot of times our institutions aren't have especially our public institutions aren't adapting fast enough to that, or as they do they're they're trying to wrestle with how to do that. And so what we heard from you all and and and saw was that that that can produce back to that notion of sort of the in the weeds, a lot more focus and energy of the leadership on very individual constituent issues and having to solve that. And that can be aware on staff particularly senior staff, and how that's done. And I think the other thing that's compounded that social media has right is there are there are no filters, people can say what they want, and it's very public. It's seen by things by by department heads by frontline staff. And so that can often lead to additional frustration and mistrust when the language that's used, or maybe before it was just written on a complaint card. That's out there, that that that that can be very demoralizing for staff and so how you all can more effectively govern in that age is something that you may want to talk about today to try to figure out how do we do that, social media is not going to go away we're not talking about censorship, but how do you how do you more effectively deal with that as a leadership body. And the other thing too that again this is our impression you may have a different one is that you've you had these priorities even you know yeah there was a strategic plan, and it looked like from looking at the agenda items and the things that are put forward. It looks like there could be much better alignment between the things that you spend your time on as a governing body in alignment with those, those priorities that you all laid out as sort of things you want to focus on so again this is not that you're doing things wrong it just looks to us from a from an outsider's perspective, that there could be stronger alignment between where you spend your time and energy to those things that you've articulated as the priority so that you can really wrestle with these priorities that you picked weren't easy ones, I mean, addressing the challenge of reducing if not ending homelessness. That's not a that's not at all we can just crank that out in the staff report. That's not the thing that you really want to wrestle with there's other things that you've put on there and probably some additional things that you'd like to put on there that really are going to require you to have as much time and attention on those issues. And then, I also thought it was interesting in this came up a lot particularly with the talking to department directors, a lot of value in the notion of before you have your meetings to understand are there issues or the questions that council has that, that they would like to know about before they actually get to the meeting. So, people have a lot of respect for that concept, and think it's great. I think the issue that was cited was there's so many meetings. The turnaround time between when stuff goes out and when the meeting is makes it almost impossible to, you know, adequately answer those questions in a timely enough manner for council members to get it and make use of it at the council meetings there. And then some people's minds there's maybe even concerned like is it is it actually being used you know I ran to get these questions answered, but then the same question gets answered in the council meeting so so again it's something where I think people, again, like the idea of putting council members in the best possible most informed position to be effective at council meetings, but again it's this unsustainability of the frequency of meetings is causing a problem. So that's a lot of me talking at you guys. So, just want to see, do these impressions that we have. Do these ring true are these completely different from how you see things. So this is sort of the Steve top talking and you guys start talking. Yeah, Jesse. And, oh, by the way, let me ask you a question. I tend as you call people by first names but I don't mean it as a disrespectful piece, are you all is, are people comfortable fistified with me using first names, I'm happy to divert to council member and so great okay cool thanks Jesse. So I'm being a little presumptuous and being the first to speak on the topic. I'm doing it for a reason I, I'm the new guy. I've had the outsiders perspective for a long time. I just want to say that I think I never really thought about the staff perspective, and the way that we, the staff would answer some of the questions I answered in my interview with you and the way that I kind of think about these things. But I think that the way you've summarized this is very incisive. I think it cuts to right to the heart of some of our challenges as a group as a governing body so that's all I want to say at this point as the person with the kind of the outsiders perspective, who was trying to get this job, and now have it. This jobs I think with my perspective. I think also our constituents, I think this is a size of look at how we work. Okay. Yeah. A lot of comments on the specific data that was shared is just the appropriate time to do that, or do you mean like the numerical data. Yeah, so we're going to get to that in just a minute. But if you have an overall impression we then if you want to share that now but we're going to actually pull up the data and I think it'll be a, that'll be more useful to do it at that moment. So, okay. Yeah. Is that okay. Okay, great. No, we're definitely going to give you guys enough time to kind of talk about that. Absolutely. Other reactions to yes them. Yeah, so I was, you know, concerned about this analysis, I appreciated seeing it in advance. My concern in a nutshell. It comes down to, you know, we have an org chart that shows the hierarchy in our city government, and at the very top is the public. And so I feel like in the, the part of the, you haven't gotten to that yet but I know that that this is coming from that, that shows how individual council members are doing and who is creating the biggest pain points. I feel that the Keely and myself, who are doing the most forward, at least according, according to this, as far as emails go, you know, forwarding concerns of public to staff, also asking for staff reports and in work sessions. I feel like, like we are being singled out for doing democracy I would put it, that's how I would put it. And so, that said, you know, of course you know I'm, it's important to have a good working relationship and staff with staff the government can't run without it. And I want to, to find how to make that more functional. But I feel like the democracy aspect of what we do, and the bureaucratic aspect are being put it, pitted against each other, maybe I should say bureaucratic but the, you know, working with staff. And we work with staff, so that we can better serve the public staff is here to better serve the public. And that in a nutshell is my response, and I'd also be curious to know the issue about staff leaving quality staff are leaving. You know that, you know, implies that, you know, because of all the in the weeds, the questions we're asking, I haven't seen you know I'm thinking of people who have prominent people who have left recently to go move on to other jobs that they seemed happy to go to and that seemed like a step up so I know that some people have left, because they haven't done a good job. So, yeah, let me let me just clarify on that point, I actually said you're at risk of it. So I didn't. So if you heard me say something different I apologize. I'm not responding to what what you're in out your spoken analysis of it but on this slide, and actually hearing you speak that that great that's great, but you can see how in this slide absolutely appears that way. Yeah, no, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. And I think on the other thing is, and again, we should have other folks respond is, I think too I think it is this issue about it's the collective impact of all of all the requests and whatever is that's the that's the unsustainability piece that I'm just telling you what I heard is, is that I didn't hear people so much as sort of site about individual things, it was more of that you take this on the collective. And from at least from the staff standpoint, that, that it feels like wow, we can, it feels overwhelming. And, and so I definitely want to be clear that I didn't hear anybody say, who are they to ask these questions, so it was, it was definitely not the notion of. They should, they're asking the wrong questions, I heard it much more in terms of the volume and the pace, and the expectation of turnaround. That was what I was hearing the pushback on so so but I'm glad you shared your reactions that so yeah, Paul and I think there's room to come at this from a couple of different directions, to the extent that it's really productive constituent service, and it's a good thing. And I think you can say, all right, you know, can we organize for this activity and resource. And one of the charts show that like all of these hours and like, you know, I totally hear the narrative, but it ended up to like, I think it was two and a half people like, maybe that's a good use of two and a half people if you can figure out, you know, way to organize for it, but on the other hand, to the extent that it seems to counsel like a free good. And so like it's like a bottomless you know cornucopia. Well, that's just not reality, you know, we all get the idea that, for instance, there's only so much money, we could probably think of exactly the same amount of good stuff. He does today, again, but you don't have twice as much money so you also don't have, you know, an infinite amount of time so you know that may come down to just smart, smart ways of budgeting and having feedback mechanism so you know, here's how much we have to make sure you use it on the best things. I'd like to kind of clarify that state because I think even they have had the same initial impression. I'll break down the data we're collecting, there's a there's a rationale for the data we're collecting that is, I want to know how fast we get back to people. You know, I mean I expect that we get back to council members in two or three days with their questions as an answered and I break it down into. I'm not worried about that. In fact, we're, I would. I'm hoping we leave today with, you know, kind of pushing people more towards the engaged denton app, and really moving that forward and I've also got a team looking at setting up a resolution center, where we can actually track the same data Rachel's tracking and, and that sort of thing. I'm not worried about the day to day questions stuff I mean that's that's why we're here. I'm worried though with the policy or a process in place. You know, in terms of how we deal with these requests for is ours and works, which workshops, that sort of thing because we have several thousand hours stranded. That's been spent putting in material together that the majority of you aren't interested in. And we need to, we need to understand what's, how do we optimally use people's time. It wouldn't do any, it wouldn't matter if I added to two people, two and a half people back because they're still going straight into the management team the directors the folks that like that to get the answers. So, I think that if we leave today saying look it's okay that it takes three or four days to get back on something that's fine. And I want to make a real distinguish my distinction here I feel like that's why we're here is to track down those questions and answer those constituent concerns. I think the council needs to put some kind of a policy in place or some kind of agreement in place, how we deal with is our requests and workshop requests because the way it's currently working right now with the concluding items and we'll talk about this in a little while. There seems to be a tacit assumption that, you know, not somebody not speaking up as affirmation that we're moving forward, and then on the flip side we do a council members who are disappointed upset that their things aren't moving forward so that just from a process perspective I think that's really our goal. So let's break let's break it down into the questions versus the process for is ours and workshops, very different thing. And I don't think anyone said that people were leaving, because of the council I think that you know I want to be sure that that's clarified again. It's just a concern that are we going to burn out staff, we don't get some of our processes put in place was just a simple observation from them and I think something that probably came from several folks at this table, quite frankly, so, so be sure that we're putting some clarification there and that people aren't defensive about being attacked but I need to know how our staff's performing. When I started here. It's the first week on the job, I heard nothing more I heard complaint after complaint about things, you know, not getting responded to for sometimes months or years. So, that's the that's the context for that data. And not to not to attack anyone just to show that, hey, we track everything that comes in very seriously. I have a lot of comments about things that I think we're going to talk about later. Okay, just about this one here. Sure, the slide. Oh, sure. Yeah. Because I've been here for a while through different, and it seems like this process of can you please forward your questions to staff before the meeting came up as a request from staff. And so now it's like well, now it's like well it's time consuming and you're not using it so what do we do, so I'm. I mean it's like well are we going back to the full circle where we just don't even ask them anymore like I just don't understand, you know, this situation. Yeah, again, what I heard was people like the idea, so I don't think anyone's saying abandon the idea I think it's, it's when when it's compounded with how frequently you all are meeting, and the variety of all the agenda items, I think it's, it's becomes the volume of it and how to do it effectively and so forth and so on. So that, so I guess I definitely, I did not hear anybody say, well, let's, let's, let's go back to the way it was where there were no pre meeting questions. I heard it just different. And can I just add a comment, because for them, like I completely understand the time consuming pressure of answering questions, but it also is the same for counsel. When we have all these packets, all these information, and we have to learn that information and just the same amount of time. So, I don't want that to be forgotten. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And several of you talked about it can all again it's back to that unsustainability the volume of it the pace of it whatever for you all I mean this is supposed to be a part time way to serve your community. And that's what I'm saying, but I mean, but you all because of this, it is consuming a lot of your, of your lives and your time to try to do it as effectively as you can. Absolutely, I would reiterate staff very much appreciate knowing what's going to be asked. Absolutely. And one of the things that could come out of the day is maybe we back up when you get your job in your packets, maybe we change that. So we're here today to work through issues, not attack anything, but we need to be able to bring, you know, some communication between the directors and the council together to say, Hey, maybe that means you get back in a day or two earlier. So we can we can adjust and pivot but staff very much appreciates those of you who take the time to give them a heads up there's nothing worse than being at the podium getting caught flat footed. And none of you would appreciate it and so they very much appreciate you taking the time to do that. I definitely support the idea of having there be like a couple more days in the week, like, you know, maybe a nine day week to specific question of, you know, the utility of the questions before I find it super helpful. But just to kind of give an insight into like, you know, my reaction to the responses. Yes, sometimes it's true that like, you know, it comes very close to the meeting start and there's only so much time. What can you do? But I tried it that just didn't use it. If I have asked a question, it gets a response and it's totally satisfactory that I feel like, wow, I don't need to ask that question. Then I won't doesn't mean you know that that that was a good use of the answer. But if it was asked and answered, and I still ask it in the meeting. Because, first of all, I intended to ask it. That's, you know, my letters always. These are the things I tend to ask. So sometimes it's because I think that's a that's an important answer. I hope the public gets to hear it. Or sometimes, you know, it's not a satisfactory answer to, you know, doesn't settle it for me. And I want to have a discussion about it. So, you know, all those cases are useful in my eyes. Sure, absolutely. You can use them everyone. Yeah, Chris. Well, I think we're conflating several different issues here. I think and I'll have to get more clarification from the city manager. But what I what I mean, when we talk about promoting democracy, these requests could be made up of several things. Obviously, nobody has an issue with council members emailing staff to say, Hey, we got an agenda item coming up. What does this mean? But then those others you operate them into constituent services. In other words, somebody's contacted you with a concern and you simply forward that on to staff to have somebody respond to review and respond. The other one is when there's a lot of staff time and you'll have to tell me if there is or not. But it seems like sometimes there could be about policy discussions or policy desires that have not come before the council yet. And so that's the thing that I mean, I don't know about what staff's doing with your quest. But for me, it's like I would hate for staff to be spending a lot of time on issues that are more of a policy discussion when the council as a whole has not given staff direction to move in that direction. I don't know what the breakdown is. And I really I don't care about it. But I don't want us to conflate that what you're saying is that all requests from council are bad. I don't think anybody's saying any requests from council are bad. I think we're trying to distinguish between what are ones that are appropriately staff driven and then what are ones that are really more decisions for the council to give staff direction on. What is this policy? And is this policy something that a majority of this body is saying, hey, we want to move, move in that direction. So that that's that those are my takes on it. I don't think anybody's arguing constituent services. And I don't think anybody's arguing the other but I would hate for staff to be spending a lot of time researching policy decisions that council has not given as a body any direction. And I've given I've given Tony and Sarah and Mario all the authority to make those calls. If there's if it's a policy decision that should be going to the larger council to intervene, we'll talk about it. But we're very careful with making sure that we're working on things that the majority of the city council once worked on. And, you know, in policy, so if there's things that they delegate to committees, if they're, you know, something like that, that's fine. But there's been things where we've had a couple of instances where things have come into committee that the council said no to. We've had to politely say, look, we got the feedback from and there's four or five that didn't want us working on this. Let's move on. So I think there just needs to be again agreement today how we're going to handle these types of issues and make sure that staff in particular is kept out of political battles. That's my bigger concern is if there's already been a policy discussion, we've been given direction. Then our obligation for all of us is to make sure that staff doesn't get caught in political crosshairs. Gerard. Yeah. And so at home, I normally go by a world dictator. Feel free to work that in our drawer, whichever works. So a couple of things. I think the synopsis is is spot on. I think I would ask for you at the end of the day or at the end of whatever phase it is, I think there's a problem with it. So disagreements are one thing but to then drill down further to say, our motives are generally the same. Right, but oftentimes, a lot of discussion happens because if the disagreement happens, then the motive is questioned right it's if I don't want to spend $400,000 to on the homeless shelter. That doesn't mean ergo I'm against solving homelessness that just means. And so I think some of those things elicit a lot of back and forth because I don't want to be characterized as such. I didn't have to speak up to say, No, I just disagree. I think there's a better way to do it right so I think that kind of as you pick up on that terminology or listen for that. I would ask for a, a agreement or some sort of. Here's what I found. Here's what I heard throughout the day because it'll happen. Right. And then secondly, I'd like to add a bullet at the end of the day kind of along in these lines. Public messaging, I don't think that staff's job, I don't think that's the city's job, I think that's my job right so when you talk about what the public should know what the public should be aware of first everything we do is public and then two is that my job my Facebook my Twitter my Instagram my city meetings, you know, is that after the meetings is that me walking in chambers, I believe so. I don't believe it's the city's job to help me disseminate my individual takeaways to the public. That's my job to do that and my job to make myself available my side job to get my email address out there business cards, whatever that is. And so I'd like to understand what the group collectively thinks, and, and, and come up with some sort of policy or some kind of practice around those those things because I think that there's that's that's called for often it's mentioned a ton. And heck, if you can come up with a if you can have us agree on a definition of public that'd be great because everything we do is public right if I get a speeding ticket, that's public, you know, you know, it's just, it's everything we do is that so I don't really understand that a ton it gets used a lot. And I respect it, I just don't know what it means to different people. I think those kind of phases though but it's it's not the city's job to do my job which is be out networking, sharing disseminating information. Deb and then Jesse and then Paul, yes, I want to address two things that have come up on one of the question of the issue of the in the weeds questions, you know all the questioning detailed questions about, including about things that were counsel has already given direction one way. And for me, I'm a professional researcher, and I can't vote yes or no on something, unless, especially that involves spending other people's money and a lot of it. Unless I know certain amount of detail. So, otherwise I'll have to vote no on something that I might otherwise have voted yes to. So, had I known all the details. So, if you know my access to staff to be able to get certain kinds of questions answered, even if they might seem to be questions that are driven by you know for instance, I had had just to use as an example you know a number of questions about, about the parks and budgeting of the organic plan at DNA. I had a lot of questions mostly just, you know, wanting to understand it. And it's a budget item we're voting on. And I was trying to understand, you know, why are we doing this instead of that well you know are we buying all these you know products from this one. This guru dirt doctor guy you know what what's going on here. I understand it could feel like kind of a bump you know bombardment. You know, and it's, it could be that there could be a point of a point reach where I suddenly have an aha moment where I realized okay now I understand everything. But, you know, until I'm at that point I'm going to have to say I can't, I can't be okay with that. Now, that doesn't might not change the direction that councils given giving, but it will, it does change the way I affect the way that I make my own decisions and the direction I get. Secondly, I just wanted to suggest to mention. So I reached out to you because I saw that there was the research was done in the folder backup for today on what other city councils are doing. So I reached out to Greg Kassar from Austin City Council. He presented, but I just wanted to share the way they do things there, and what he said he said, can you hold, hold that because I think we're going to get into the more that process stuff so hold that for a moment if you don't mind, that would be great. I think the conversation right now just kind of impressions or, you know, reactions to kind of what we shared because then I think what we want to do is take the conversation into kind of where Todd suggesting which is, let's look at some of these processes and let's figure out can we, can we come up with a way that moves us in a more effective direction for everybody. We'll get to her on that perfect that'd be great. So I can't remember exactly I think it would Jesse and then john and then Paul. Because in my background and what I hear from constituencies when you don't have a process you have potential for abuse, and by that I don't mean intentional abuse, I mean. When we talk about transparency. The sure the public can get ahold of our emails if they want them right they can request them. But do we want the impression in the public that if I reach out to my council person on Facebook, or in the email, my pocket gets fixed faster than somebody else's, or because I have a relationship with, I don't think anybody at this table would want that to be the impression. But when you don't have a process that can be the impression. The impression to be that because the city manager likes me better or likes my issue better. I get my is ours back faster, or they don't just go into a holding pattern, they get right to the top of the queue. And I don't think anybody wants that to be the process to be the impression. But that's what happens when you don't have a process when everything's ad hoc when everything's based on relationships and how quickly you can get to things with no set rules in place. And I can tell you that I hear that impression from, from the public if you're in the right Facebook groups if you talk to the right people if you have the right people on speed dial. Then your issue is going to get addressed faster or your policy position is going to be advanced in a different way, or, or whatever. And if it's true or not it doesn't particularly matter. That's the impression that we can foment with the public if you don't have a process that's equal, even handed, and the same for everybody to follow. Well first I want to say this issue of George speeding tickets seems to come up a lot. I actually want to come back here. I just didn't, I just didn't know what you're referring to and I'd like to understand your point about that it's not staff's job to promote, you know, or points of view like what, what, what is that referring to like. Where do you see that yeah I just didn't understand what you're. And so I think there's times when I think we as a council could do a better job, touching, getting responses, because I don't know the response rate is for our surveys but I bet you it's probably 1% or something like that. And then we can harvest that information, or solicit that information, and it has a, I want to help Paul because Paul reached out to me directly versus I got this email in my junk box. John. I do think that's what stayed up here is very very close. There's always room for tweaks. I've been probably been engaged with the city, longer than, than most I've been, you know, my first city engagement gun for council is a member of the public was in 96 have served on the boards and started serving on boards in 2001. So I get a little bit more of a feel for work, how it all works, and what I'm what I've seen lately and it's a, it's a cycle thing I've seen it back in that right around 2000 period and now we're kind of getting back into that again is quite often the questions that are being asked at council meetings. Or, well, I've got that in a couple of slides. Which, to me means, you didn't go through the backup in a proper way before asking questions on the email questions. I think for me it's gotten to we've got so many questions coming in that it's staff is sending them out to us an hour before the meeting starts, which used to be plenty of time but now there's not enough time to get through all those it really isn't any benefit to us to have them answered in that way it's just more of a benefit for staff to know what questions are going to be asked during the meeting. On top of that, on the informal staff reports. I know they're online, I don't know exactly where they're at but that's some information that would be good for us to have because there's a lot of asked an answer. We weren't on, I see a lot of ISR is coming, being recycled in our Friday reports that it's the same one coming back out which means that the questions already been asked. The information is already been put out there so it's just a matter of gaining that knowledge and, you know, in there is a, a learning curve on council as well. Everyone has a little bit longer, you know, a little bit different learning curve is to get how much do you retain from what we went through during the budget session is to when things come forward to approve the funds. And then you're questioning it, but we've already approved it as a budget item. So, if you were, if you keep up with what all was there. I think it can help out a whole lot on keeping that time down and the number of questions that need to be asked. Any other reflections reactions to can just this broad summary because I what I, the plan is to kind of move off of our impressions of you all and get to the point, kind of what several of you said is great so let's let's look at some of these. And how might we strengthen clarify, maybe it's just simply a matter of clarification of process of what we want to do going forward. And so, if you guys are comfortable unless anyone else wants to share the reactions what I was going to do is go to the next set of things which is sort of looking at some of these individual quote pain points and again, we don't ever need to use that word again if that if that's problematic, but these these different items. And again, there's a little bit of data to share you all obviously have your impressions will kind of kind of drill down a little bit more specifically if people are comfortable with moving that direction. So, so this is our attempt at trying to capture kind of what we heard are these sort of big groupings of things so I really want to be, I want to say this one more time. This is not us saying you're doing this wrong. It's just these are the things that we heard you all and staff say, geez, if we could get more clarity cleaner process, so forth, we could do these things more effectively. One was that several of you, as well as staff just talked about the volume of time that council meetings work sessions all of that takes up again council members said it to us staff said to us that there's just and so that's a combination both of the number of meetings both of the meetings. Okay. Another one was the lot of people wanted to see improvement in how the agenda gets set and so that's just not just at the for the council meetings but the work session items and so forth and so on. A lot of people felt frustration that their things aren't getting on or people had frustrations like wow the list of things is so lengthy that we're asked to give high, medium low priority. So again, people said that people are in search of a more effective process at deciding what's on the agenda. Some people talked a little bit about that the actual behavior and decorum at meetings could be better. So, maybe an opportunity to talk about that. Then the other thing was, again, several you already have been talking about this morning sort of these, the information requests. So how can we do that so that's everything from the pre meeting things to the concluding items request a lot I think there's a lot of energy around like let's, let's get clear about what that is because it doesn't feel like it's working either particularly well for council or for staff. And then there was a couple other things that that also came up maybe not as strongly as those four, but just the work sessions themselves like what are we trying to accomplish in the work sessions. There was a little bit of things around that again that preparation for council meetings like these can I get stuff in in far enough in advance. Is it useful. A couple of you again wasn't a lot but several people talked about council committees like what are we really doing with those what's the degree to which are those groups really tasked with bringing things forward to the council for full action. Are they are they recycling things that the council feels like it took action on so some clarity around that. Again this didn't come up really strongly but the notion of how do we get how do we engage the public really effectively throughout you were just talking about other you know could we be using more surveys or what have you. So again, wasn't I would not say it was in terms of the intensity or the number of people raising that but that came up a little bit. And then this other piece around a little bit of the tension about how do we handle those constituent requests for service. Right. So what's the, what's the, is there a greater clarity more effective practice we can have that when a council member rightfully hears from a constituent. Hey, there's a pothole on my street. You're my elected representative, can you make sure something happens about it. What do we do with that. And again, people looking for things for some clarity moving forward about how to handle that. So I just want to just go through a little bit of some of this data and I think, Keely This is the point where don't let me go past things that you want to ask questions about. I don't want to go past things font is really small, but it is what it is. So this was looking at the other various large cities in Texas, looking at number of work sessions length of work sessions number of regular meetings length of those meetings and what sort of things and looking at that relative to the population. So, I'm not going to, I'm not going to read any of that to you but I think the bottom line notion is, is that Denton relative to the average is exceptional. You're exceptional in this regard. Yes, there was a comment about trying to understand the data and I think the work was maybe it might have been might have been misrepresented. So I need to understand this data when you call the cities who gave this information. Actually, our office was prepared this spreadsheet for the council and Elaine, or Lani's in the back is one of the two office staff who worked on it. But what we were doing is that we were going through the amount of time. That's that's available online the online videos, and how much was spent in work session closed sessions we kind of combine that together. And then we also looked at start time for the regular meetings or special call meetings which we combined into one. And then until they were actually concluded. So that that was more or less how we went down by the meeting by meeting we also counted the number of meetings each month, and knowing that even though council may have any fact if I could sure I'm sorry. What I mean is how did we collect the information from the comparative cities. So you want to say you didn't contact staff and you went simply to their versions. Okay, just like ours, ours we can we can actually go and actually determine how much time was spent from the work session started to the end of the work. And that's how we did based upon accessing each city's website pulling up their video recorded work session and council meetings, and so forth. And we were surprised by the results because I think that most of you, the same as myself in our office. We didn't really realize exactly how many hours we were spending. Yeah, it was us having to compile the data that made us go Wow, you know, we do spend a lot of time in meetings as well as these other cities. And that's, you know, I don't think any of you really knew the exact number, or at least the approximate number that we spent in meetings, and that's what this exercise was done. So just to drill down specifically into one Councilmember Arbiter brought up the city of Austin. So what you're saying is, I heard, I heard, I heard her things talking about the practice not about the data, not about the numbers. Yes, I think that's going to come up in just a second. On page 22. Okay, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'm not questioning. Okay. Okay, good. Well, it's helpful to know exactly how we compile. Yep. Yep. Yep. Thanks. Yeah. And I'll just say, we're not there. But I'm going to make a, I'm concerned about a third party analysis, without having the substantive information to support that right so if if I said Steve said, you know, that, that's a problem. Just for what it's worth. My preference is firsthand data, or at least advanced knowledge that some third hands coming, so that I can, you know, have my opportunity right yeah so again this was prepared by city staff. Yep. Okay, great. Yeah, Paul. Yeah, I guess it depends what kind of what question you're answering and I totally get the, you know, the distribution and then we're on like the tail. So I get that story but, you know, one, one question would be what is normally done. The other question would be what is best practices, and to answer what is best practices. You want to know what cities are known to be outstandingly productive and responsive and viewed well by their citizens, and see what do they do. So, by the fact that we're on one end of the distribution I know I'll grant that whoever you pick is going to have a difference, you know, different practices, but, but like I don't assume just because everybody does this that that their citizens think wow our government's great. Right, absolutely. Again, and I think the idea here was this is just pure facts about it's just literally counting minutes and hours right and it's, and again I would agree that I don't think that there is an idea, no, none of us would, we would never claim the optimal amount of time you should be spending is 4.2 that you know, I think it's just more of seeing the, like you said the distribution, which is, if I could say a little more about that, I would, you know, in the absence of, of other information, I would take it at least for a conversational starting point. You know, the expertise of staff who probably know something about what other municipal governments do like who is who is great at this. And then see what their practices are. So, you know, I don't, I didn't say that to dismiss this information just as a way to focus it. Any other Yes, just because the city has a short meeting, it doesn't mean they're doing something better or good. Right. I will just say that we've had many consultants and many outsiders coming into the city that have viewed us in discussions on our boards and committees and said we do it right that we're doing a really great job because we care, and we want to talk about things and we want to discuss them. So I mean, some people may think into the weeds and talking and really understanding something is negative. For me, I think it's really great and it shows that we want to make sure we understand a concept or an issue before we vote on it or put it out to the citizens. And I wouldn't disagree with anything you said again I think I think this is what I heard from you all and staff was, we meet a lot. The staff went and said, This is what it adds up to be. And I agree with you, I don't know that that's, that that's a wrong number or a right number. It's a lot, it's an outlier relative to other cities and we could argue that they're not spending enough time so I think it's my advice that I always do around this issue and what adds up with every governing body is, I think it's more for you all to say for you all to make a collective decision. Does this, does this feel like a number that we can that we can live with going forward like in other words, if you come back a year from now and say great, we spent the same amount of time, then then that's the right decision for Denton. I think this was just to give you a sense of where are you on on a curve that doesn't necessarily mean that one end of the curve is good or bad. I think what I tend to say in my advice to governing boards is, if you, the degree to which you can be intentional and the amount of time you want to invest in your meetings, then at least, and I'm not saying like you have a budget and you, you know, call the gavel because you ran out of minutes, at least gives you a sense of, do you all as a group feel like what's what's the number you want to aspire to be at least in that range so Jesse and then Chris. I think that point though because just like you can't say, well the city with the best city council must be the one that has a two hour meeting. You also can't say the city with the most engaged and most comprehensive and what engaged city council and boards are the one that has the 24 hour meeting. So, the, I'm glad to hear you say that the perfect answer is what's right for us. Yep. What I think is more important than I mean the length is the data is important because it's a little bit shocking when you look at it and I think some of our constituents will be a little shocked to see. We talked just this last week about how time is money that we're paying staff to be present for each of these meetings that we pay staff to record each of these meetings, and it becomes burdensome for us, and for our constituents, and when they want to find their, their issue if they want to see all the issues that are on an agenda. It's burdensome for them to follow along, we know we know we have people who watch these things at home, and they're having to go about their business to our constituents don't have time to keep up with us I think the more important thing is, besides just the sheer volume of time we spend on city council. It's the quality of it. And I'm concerned that one informs the other, we spend a lot of time relitigating things that we've already gotten policy direction on we spend a lot of time talking about earlier stranded staff time well they're stranded council time to stuff that we weren't ever going to move forward on something we just spend time talking about it and spinning our wheels. And, you know, a few weeks back, a month or two back we had a 17 hour meeting. We were going to do the autopsy on that 17 hour meeting. Part of it is 100% the business of the council we did some zoning cases, we had some important public input. There was no way to speed through that that needed to happen exactly the way that unfolded. But a good chunk of that also was an agenda, packed full of things that we have talked about many many many times in the past before I was here. And you know what we're going to have agenda items on those things again. We're not having quality conversations that move towards resolution. We're just spinning our wheels, and we're setting ourselves up for another 17 hour meeting in a few weeks, and another one after that. Chris. Yeah, I just was going to echo Jesse said and I agree with you, Keely that the shortest meeting doesn't mean the most effectiveness, and the longest meeting doesn't mean most effectiveness so the time is just data. What we have to ask ourselves is that time being spent efficiently and effectively? That's really the question. I mean, I don't think anybody at this table would say we've got to limit our time just for time's sake. Not at all. I think it's a matter of our conversations, our deliberations, effective, efficient, detailed to where we have enough information. I mean, you know, Councilmember Armitage, you talked about you being a professional researcher and I totally and that helps me understand because I know you asked a question when the Fire Chief was up there you said tell me what I don't know. And that sort of caught me by surprise because I'm thinking, okay, but hearing what you just said I understand the context of that question. In other words, the importance of understanding as much as you human possibly can to know about an issue that we're deciding. I totally get that. I totally get that I have no issue with that. I think sometimes what happened for me the frustration in the meeting is, we all share our opinions about a particular issue, policy, respect everybody's opinion whether it agrees with mine or not. What I don't think and what I think is ineffective is when we try to engage other council members in some sort of form of debate, where we're trying to you to persuade or we have to counter an argument they said and, and, you know, we're all pretty strong minded people on the council. We all have our opinions and we have our justifications and our rationales for those and they're all. I respect those. I think what happens is is when we start getting into the crosstalk of somebody will respond and then somebody else will respond and it becomes a debate about something that we're already pretty clear on where each individual council member stands. And it really get to me that's not that effective. If as long as it's not providing additional information that will help someone who maybe needs additional information, come to because I remember in one of the issues we have we're talking about a parking lot on Lincoln Fry and I mentioned something and you'd said you weren't aware of that totally get that I mean you know information is important to be able to make a right decision. It's just how do you communicate that, and then once we're at a point to making a decision. There's a lot of things that are said I don't agree with but I'm not going to engage because it's not, it's not my purview everybody's entitled to their, to their policy and to the rationale for that policy decision so I think it's the effectiveness of the time it's not the time itself. Yeah, yeah, I think we just wanted, we just wanted to get I think is the staff work prepared this data we just wanted to share it with you, because it was something that you all wrap several of you reference was about amount of time here's some data. So I just want to keep rolling along if we could just because we want to make sure we get some time this morning we can actually talk about, are there some ideas some process changes or whatever you want to make going forward. So this is just also about the just the total number of public meetings, and the hours. And again, I'll just stipulate I think everybody would say which is, there's not a right or wrong number of these meetings or right or wrong number of hours and more hour you obviously zero is too few 14,000 is probably too many. It's more just to give you all data just so you can understand the collective summation of all these things to clarify those are community meetings right that doesn't include council meetings or public engagement efforts that staff is having reaching out to the community on a construction project, or some other major initiative in the city so separate from a counselor border Commission meeting. This is the next sort of piece of Oh, do you have a question on that last one. Okay, so I'm sorry I apologize I mean, just a comment, because part of what this council and previous councils did and the reason why the staff that's currently here is here is because they show a commitment to community engagement. Yep. And that was a priority. And we have an update to almost every plan that we have in the city, because we're so far behind. This is a process, and I, I don't know why it's here. I mean if there's an issue a staff has issues with because I feel like all of these are kind of pain points and so with this slide being in here I felt kind of like, this isn't, you know, this is something we agreed to do because it's something extremely important to reach out to our citizens. So this was a little unclear why it was in here as a pain point. And I'll speak. I mean, one of the criticisms I heard when I first started was, Lillian Miller kept getting thrown at me. So they'll all know what, what that means but just in terms of getting out in the public ahead of problems meeting with the, you know, meeting with folks trying to temper expectations and set expectations for what it's like to live through a capital project or, you know, what we're going to be doing somewhere just to try and knock as many of those as possible but it's just, it's just information we collect a for the council, really for my review quite frankly just to show the emphasis that we're putting on staff time but I think the reason it was in there it's the cumulative effect of, we're trying to redirect so many so much of our efforts into these public meetings and making sure we're getting out there that it's why I'm concerned with having a more definitive feedback loop from council on how we're spending time, you know, on ISRs and workshops that sort of thing. As I said earlier, we, we are trying everything we can to redirect as much time out to the public as possible but it's not really something that, it's not a pain point in my mind, it was just a piece of information. Just to follow up on that because I do, all of these public meetings I share constantly, I push all the constituents to them for information so that those questions and requests are less frequent. It was just that there was this broader notion of the collective amount of time and this is a contributor to it, not that it's a good or a bad contributor to it. And Todd's super nice and staff's super nice, they won't say it, but the fact of the matter is, I mean that's, you talk about efficiencies, it's okay to, if there's an elephant in the room you pet it, these things are poorly attended more often than not. I mean, we had a packed house for the recent developers meeting because they're bought in, you have a packed house for some other events that we do, but I went to the Mockingbird Street reconstruction at the Civic Center, and it was me, 10 staff members, and it was me, residents, and that's, I mean, I think if you averaged out the number of people that go to these meetings, it's 10 on average, and so I think it's just, again, if that's what we want to do, that's what we want to do as a group, I get it, but at the same time, they're not well attended, and we have town halls that we work hard to do that are sparsely attended. Right, you know, but you do it because you think it needs to be done, but at the same time, that goes into the matrix to say, if I'm taking Susie that works in parks away from her family that night, or she can't go to a PTA meeting, or she can't go to her kids play for a meeting with eight residents, is that okay? And on the whole, maybe the answer is yes or no. I don't know, but it's a fair concern and a fair question, and staff's just too nice to say it, but I personally feel that. If I'm asking them to go somewhere and do something, I run that math, and that's just, you know, I'm a little that way. I think every local government struggles with this, by the way, I mean, I think it's because we all believe in community engagement and we were trying to do things virtually and that helps but you know, it's, it's definitely something so I want to keep us moving along if that's all right just because I want to make sure we get to, I think part of what we want to try to get to this morning is to say like, okay, what are the things that there's some consensus around changing in terms of our practices. So, the, the next piece was just was data on the total volume of council requests. So again I believe there's that some of this data, similar to this was shared a while back is that am I getting that right Todd. No, I think this is the first time that it's okay right okay this data, and again this this is going to get into the question about is ours and workshops, the number of, you know, and I, and I track the response of this in particular we're back we're using it to try to create benchmarks for Senate resolution center so nothing, nothing bad or evil here, but it does become on the right was more concerning to me as the manager is. There's three or 4000 out staff hours that essentially, it seems to us people are disinterested on the council and that was spent, and that needs, we just need to talk to what we work on. Yeah, so do you want to explain so in other words, the number on the right, right, are you want to just explain, we track the, we track the number of council requested informal staff reports so throughout through the first 10 months of the year we've had 112. We've, we've, we've completed 103 of them into in total I'm sorry staff generated 103 as well so there's been 215 is ours and distributed 62% of the council requested is ours so 62% at 112. Basically, we're not used at all. They weren't necessarily used in terms of as an agenda. Right, and we work when, when we in the practical application for this is when right now I feel like our priorities need to be on public safety staffing that sort of thing. We need to know what the council is interested in having us work on because these are stranded staff hours that could have been put to helping solve some other problem. Let's say two things, you know, kind of from the opposite ends of this issue. On the one hand, similar to like, like answers to questions before meetings so they don't, you know, don't end up asking if you settle an issue that I am sorry that that's not stranded I mean, you did, you know, a service by selling the issue. And, you know, and it's one of the few ways that kind of individual council members can, you know, express a priority and have it seen by others and there's no action on it. I mean that that's what needed to be addressed. On the other hand, I, you know, we live in reality, resources are fine. If the right answer is, we actually only have resources to do x hours on is ours, and we need to give each council member, a budget and when you make a request to get an estimate back, you know, and tick down your budget, I mean, you know, that's a reality. Yeah, so, Paul mentioned one thing that I was going to mention and that is that there are a number of things. I asked questions that I've asked, is it possible to do x. Well here get a response you know from legal. No, it's not possible because there's such and such a lot. Well, that's valuable to me. And that has saved possible time in a meeting from, you know, me asking. Now, if I have a quick follow up question about that then I'll have a follow up question. And there could be a lot of productive, you know, it can help me also do my job better as a council person because there's a lot of what we do. It doesn't get hashed out at meetings you know this constituent has a problem is there anything that city council can do about that. That doesn't have to do with is ours but that's something that staff is spending time on, you know, help helping me know how to do my job better or what, you know, doesn't fall under or who can take care of that. So, another thing I wanted to mention just kind of throw out there. I was looking at this, the list of actual the list of outstanding remaining strategy session topics you know I was looking over the, the ones that I requested. You know some of them have been somewhere in the translation from, you know my making that request sometimes oral a lot of times orally to that, that getting written down it sometimes it comes off on paper is much bigger than the actual question that I was asking and other I'm simply really just asking a yes or no question is this possible or saying can we have a resolution on this, you know, so, you know, I could, I could list a number of examples, but all that is to say, you know, if we had individual meetings with staff members, heads of departments on a regular basis, like they, like they do in other cities. That could do a lot to save those staff reports coming in, requests for staff reports, but obviously that's still staff time. It's just staff time spent in meetings with individual council members. Okay. I'm just going to clarify is this one sheet we're looking at informal staff reports only. Is this ISRs only? No, it includes email requests that come in, not email requests leading up to a council meeting but any other email requests that comes in, as well as it come during council meetings, including concluding items for work sessions, informal staff reports and information. Yeah, and so that's, that's a lot. So when you think of it just being an informal staff report, which adds 12 hours or whatever. This seems like a ton, right. And I think the, the next, the next page and I'm not saying I'm not discrediting all the time and stuff that goes into it, but this just isn't informal staff reports. That's one request per elected official I assume includes all of those things as well. And so this is the, this is where I wanted to discuss information because it's just a question of clarification. Yeah, so we're on the city council request data. We're on a different page. Yeah, yeah, because she was just asking I just figured since she was referred reference. So, when you asked, is this just ISRs, are you talking about the right hand column, because I see requests received total responses. It's broken out into ISR. So I'm assuming that where it says ISR, that is an informal staff report. Okay, and then the rest are okay, I just want to figure out what it all included. Right. And that's why I'm trying to understand what the answer was. And so for me for an informal staff reports, those, I heard the city manager, Mr. Hellman say you know what stranded information, the ones that I request and receive, I don't consider it stranded information because I absorb it, and in the process that we have. That's the first step that we asked for. Right. And then, if it doesn't satisfy our question, then we ask for work session. Right. And so that's the process and if that process is too much, we need to change it. Like, if that that has been historically what we do. And if that's if that staff report answers our questions and we're completely good with the information. It's not wasted. It just saves us a work session. So that I just wanted to say that for for that part of it. When. And I guess I'll wait for the next slide. Sorry, because they're, they're related. And I think I want to address that because you're sort of making my point. And that is, if it is going to be put on a work session list and never get called. We need to understand if there's four or five of you that are interested in taking action on something, because there are some of these staff reports taking 100 staff hours, you know, more. There was one resource more than that. And we're, I completely understand. I think to Deb's point, if some of these ISRs are way more than what has been asked for, you made that point during the budget discussion last week. How did this thing grow like that? We just need to know more specifically than what you want. And what tends to happen with the ISRs is at the end of the meeting, you guys are tired, you're stressed, you're wanting to get home. And, you know, so I think I think what I would ask in those cases then just be more specific about what you want, because I also want staff, you know, spend all this time on things you didn't really need. So it's just an observation, because I have, since this issue has been brought up, withdrawn several. I mean, I have personally made it a point not to ask for so many things. And so I think that within the last, I guess, I don't know if a year or six months. I feel like they probably have declined. I don't know. And then when we talk for sure. Yeah, right. So my concern here with with this right here, the total request, and I'm going to talk here because I have 345. And it goes back to a comment earlier, Councilmember Davis made something about the process or, you know, Facebook post or something like that. So I'm just going to talk to you a little bit, and I'm going to take the liberty to do this because I think it's really important that most of these aren't requests. They're just questions. Some of them, and I don't know the answer to like why are people living in a boarded up house, like, I don't know that, but it's about questions. So I'm going to forward that on. Also, resident business owners reach out to me. Staff has broken something of theirs and not going to fix it. And I feel like, you know what, I think that's something we need to look at. So I'm going to forward that on. These are public safety issues. People are almost wrecking because they can't see a light and these requests. They're probably three emails of the same thing. So when I see that I have 345, I start getting really defensive because a lot of these are because certain processes weren't in place. Certain public safety issues are at stake, and I'm going to keep sending them because I'm going to keep doing my job. So, I mean, I feel like maybe 45 of these have to do with the loop in 35. You know, there are other requests that I send that have to do with TextDot, with Atmos, with Frontier. I don't know what else to do with those, but to send them on. I see 345 and I see Def2. You know who took a lot of those for District 3? Me. You know, so, I mean, I'm not going to sit here and feel bad for this. I'm just not going to. You know, I want to clarify. I opened up by saying you shouldn't. And if you're internalizing it that way, that's not the intention. However, if we don't track when a request comes in, when it was responded to, how quickly it was responded to, how do I know what to fix? So, there's nothing negative here on the request. I don't have any beef at all with the request. I eventually want to get something put in place where we drive people to more of a resolution so it can be tracked, but I don't believe in qualitative judgments on staff. You know, either we know that they're closing out requests within a reasonable amount of time or they're not, and that's all we're doing here is tracking it. These response times, I'll give you the practical application. We've got one department we're making changes in because they're not closing. They're not getting back to Rachel. They're not closing out requests. I want to know it. And I don't manage on people's opinions. You know, we want data. And so, so this is that's the whole purpose and tracking that it's not there's no shaming here. It's just simply this is who's, you know, request and when you ask us for something you get an answer. So that's simple. Jesse and then. So, first I have another comment from before but I want to respond to what Councilmember Briggs said. First, just to clarify my comments. It was all about perception. And I think somewhere in my comment I said, the truth doesn't particularly matter, but the perception the truth is the perception, and there is a perception in certain quarters that if you have access, your problem gets addressed whether you are one of 10 emails or one of one email. And that comment was not addressed to any particular council member. That's just kind of a fact on the ground that people feel like, if you have access to a council member, you have access to getting your problem fixed. And when you don't have a process that is staff directed rather than council directed, then that's just going to continue and that's just going to get bigger. The only way to get their problems fixed is to call up their council member, and they get moved to the head of the queue and that's not fair to other people, it's not fair to the council members time. It's not fair to the staff's time that they're responsive to council requests and not citizen requests. And to my, the comment I was going to make already, which was about staff time and ISRs and all that kind of thing. I think we all, what I'm hearing is agreement that we need a process that is respectful of staff's time, but also gets us the answers that we need, and that we don't always need an ISR. Maybe that sounds like a process that doesn't include raising your hand and saying, I want an ISR, and then one is automatically generated because a single council member has requested it. Sometimes the council member doesn't really need an ISR, they need an email back. Sometimes the, like you said, there's not an appetite from the rest of the council to address the issue. But to council member Meltzer and Briggs point, sometimes the only way, if you have an important policy conversation that has to be had, the only way for an individual council member to get that forward is the process we have right now. I don't think it's efficient. I don't think it's working. I think it's obviously caused some pain points from both perspectives. Some council members I think feel like they throw something out there in a staff report. It sounds really important to them, but now we're not talking about it. It just died at a staff report. It never went to a work session. Other council members, like myself, will sit through a work session and feel like, why, why are we here? How did, whose decision was it? Why did we make this a work session item when it was really a series of emails? Part of that problem, I think, is we have to work under TOMA. I can't go to my fellow council members and say, is this important to you? Is this important to you? Is this important to you? So I hope in our process, we talk about an open meeting time where we can, as a group, decide what the priorities are and move forward with them. Because with TOMA, that's the only way we can do it. >> Okay, Deb, and then I want to suggest a process thing for us right now. So go ahead, Deb. >> Yeah. So I have, one thing I found very helpful that has happened a couple times, a few times, that I think would be a good standard rule is that a couple times after making a request for either a staff report or a work session or just a question, sometimes the city manager or assistant to the city manager will come back to me and say, just to clarify, to follow up, that usually, or at least to my knowledge, that has only happened when there was a concern or a question about what specifically did you mean. I think that if that's done every time, that would ultimately save time because sometimes when we think we understand a request, I'll just use one example, this lynching memorial, all I had asked for was for the city to issue, it was a staff report or, although it would have to be a work session for us to decide on this, issue a resolution in support of a lynching memorial on the square. But it's proceeded here in the description summary with the question, can a lynching memorial be located on the square? I hadn't asked that, you know, that was not a question I had asked because I know, I know that it's possible, but I know the details about who's in charge of that area and whatnot. So that's something that, you know, I'm glad I've had the opportunity to qualify that now, but obviously that, you know, we can't do that in public. So that if that was done in private with quick, quick phone call follow up meeting for everything, I think that would end up saving a lot of staff time in the long run. And then, and secondly, traffic engineering, I think they have a great model, and they meet with each, I assume each of us, once a month, we have monthly meetings with traffic engineering, standing meetings, and so that what I do is I save up. Each council member has a standing meeting. I just want to clarify. I believe so, yeah. What they do, I can answer that. They do make those meetings available to council members if they want to know just because there is so much activity happening in and around the community. And so, it's really up to the council member if they want to be able to make that. So, if they've made those arrangements on a regular basis to meet on the next day for an hour or so, it's available, staff will make that time, but again, it's between the council members. Okay, so I just wanted to clarify. Yeah, so, and thank you. So, I mean, there have been a couple times where, you know, we had a conflict and then we said, oh, we'll just wait till the next one. But I tend to unless there's something particularly pressing and time sensitive, I kind of save up a number of issues that I've been getting from the public, and then I bring them forward. And, and so then we're spending an hour in a meeting, instead of a lot of time writing something. And that is extremely helpful. So, I think also, and finally, thirdly, as far as time pressing, the time pressing nature of certain requests. I don't feel that request is time sensitive unless I state the state that in writing, or in in a concluding remarks. So that might be something that could also help to ease the pressure on staff if we kind of adopted a model and so that just being Deb's way of doing things, you know, assume that you can take the time you need to do this, unless I stated time sensitive, including if you'd rather follow this up with a quick phone call. So, so let me let me make a process suggestion we've been sitting for a long time. I think Chris and I, I think if we if we can take a 10 minute break, I think we can come back with kind of a way for the rest that Chris not me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And here's my here's my impression. First of all, first of all, you're having a great conversation. So first of all, I mean, I'm not trying to just to patch on the back. You're having a very honest candid respectful conversation you're staying focused on the topic so you're living up to all the ground rules so that's great. And what I think what's coming out is, is I think that you all have certain tools at your disposal have had, and they're getting used in all kinds of different ways. Sometimes with clarity sometimes without sometimes things are being interpreted as, oh, that's an ISR and council members just had a question and and they're but they're putting put into certain buckets and things are being counted in different ways. And so I think there's absolutely a really straightforward path forward where council members can get things that the constituents are saying to them, forwarded onto the staff so that they can do it with people can get policy questions put on the table, I think it's I think there's a really path forward and if you give us a little bit of a break I think we can kind of structure a conversation where I think coming out of this, you'll feel like yeah, that's, if that's how I understand this is going to work. I think there's a solution there that right, I think it's people are going to get what they need out of this moving forward so if we could take what time you got time. So, let's take 10 minutes 15 minutes 15 minute break so whatever your timepiece says 15 minutes, I'm going to go I'm going to go on mute here we're going to go on mute so we can talk handily and get get the resolution, if you can be back in your seats in 15 minutes that would be great restrooms by the way which we didn't announce women's rooms are through that door, men's room are through that door. And there's obviously still refreshments. Great, thank y'all back from our break at 1059 on August 17 2019 meeting of density Council in their annual Council retreat. Now we'll proceed back through the agenda. Great. Thank you. Yeah, so I said this notion that people are expressing are expressing that, like, they don't have access, unless they have access to a council member who doesn't have access to a council member. To my knowledge, it's only a question john that go to the bottom of the pile. My point wasn't that people don't have access my point was the perception is if you have special access to you get preferential treatment, I think everybody knows you can go on the website and click one button and email everybody. But I, and my larger point was, if the perception exists now, and it does, and it's not addressed through equal application even in the process as the potential to get worse, kind of like when we talk about the Council and staff burnout. Doesn't really matter what the level is now if it's there, and it's not addressed, it will be bigger later on. Okay. If you don't mind me intervening because I want to see if we can get some stuff done before lunch. So here's, here's a way, given the conversation. And again, it's our attempt to try to formulate what we're hearing into something concrete. If it doesn't resonate with you by all means, speak up. So, what I, what we heard was there were sort of three buckets of the types of council requests that that you all are dealing with. And we're trying to use non sort of bureaucratic language, but it's around sort of the purpose behind them so I want to test this out first is, so one was, and I think you were particularly strong about this voice is sometimes I am, I get requests, things from my constituents, I'm passing those along in my as my, what I believe is my responsibility as a council member to be a conduit to the thing obviously Jesse you, you've raised concerns about, well, how does that get maybe perceived or whatever but neither of you is right or wrong that both of those things, those things are true but that's that's a type of thing that's happening. The second is, is sometimes it sounds as though council members saying, look, I'm struggling with something here I'm seeking clarification so that could be even like the pre meeting questions that go forward could also be something that gets just raised at a council meeting clarification around something. And so I'm expecting what I, what I expect is a probably a relatively quick, relatively sort of factual short answer back. And then the third is I think a deeper request which is, I think there's something for we as a council to wrestle with there's some policy consideration there's something deeper here that if we're going to do so, or even if we want to consider the question of whether it makes sense to do so, there's some deeper research that needs to take place, so that either individual council members or even the council as a whole can make an informed decision about whether this is something to sort of proverbially put on the table. So, so I just want to test out. Are there any other types of requests that wouldn't be encapsulated in there. Number one and number two is, could you envision sort of classifying a request as being in one of those three things so this I'm actually asking council members first this is that these three buckets kind of get at what it's all right john I'm standing. I think if you could infuse the timing of it right, I'm going to come to that I'm going to come to that in just a second so this is just about the purpose I'm going to get to exactly where I think you're headed in just a second. Awesome. So do I get to use world dictator, like, you know, Kim Jong Un and Kim Jong something. So, but in other words, I'm going to we're going to get to sort of what beyond just the purpose of the request what else we want to look for that council members are we these three buckets for right now. I think we need to, because I think sometimes there's back and forth between staff staff and council members about if something's going on in other words there's some kind of debate that could happen in other words, well you should be doing this or you're not doing enough of this. You're not doing enough of this. I don't know where that falls in one of those, you're coming you're coming right, just like his thing, I'm getting right to that I just want to I want to I want to say that the, I guess what I'm looking for is this is about the intention of the request from the council member. So, so, okay. So here's what a way to think about as a process is that when a council member is making a request of staff. We would want a way, whatever that looks like it maybe it's online it's a form, whatever it is that clarifies what is the purpose of that request what, in other words, let us know is it a B or C. Number one, number two, what exactly let's clarify what exactly is that specific intention that I'm asking, or the action that I'm expecting. So, I'm passing this, this. I'm just going to use a simple example, there's a pothole that a constituent is reported to me, I'm passing this along that the expectation is you would say, I'm just passing this along, I don't need to know anything more about it, I'm expecting it will be funneled into all the other pothole requests. Right, right. And so, so that the notion is is that that the staff would have an expectation, and the expectation beyond council that when you do these, you're saying, this is what I'm expecting back or not. Right. And then draw this is your point, and the timeliness and Deb you made this point, how quickly I'm expecting something to happen. I'm putting this on the table I think we there's really we should do some deep research. This is something that could happen sick within the next six months, or this is super you know, I need to know we're getting ready to have a council discussion on this topic, I like clarification on this specific thing, I need to know this, ideally in the next five days and again to your point earlier there's a finite resource it's got to be balanced, but there's that that the council member. But let me just take a step back. I've watched enough of the tapes of your, of your meetings. And this is not a criticism of you. It is, I think some of you acknowledge these questions get put out there. People are tired or whatever it gets dutifully noted Todd and Rachel dutifully noted, and these, these things aren't at that moment asked. Because again people are tired I want to go home I want to see my family. I would really like to ask three follow up questions of Deb's request but let's let's just move on or I don't know how quickly she wants it. So, the idea is is that the expectation is when council members make a request whether it's be email, or at a meeting or whatever, that they would just have to answer these questions. What, which bucket is it. What exactly am I looking for. And then third what's the timeliness, and then to Chris is your thing. One of the next things we got to talk about is okay. The request has been submitted. What are some of the considerations so number one Krista your point, what's the ability or expectation of staff to go back to that requester to get clarity about okay. It was late, I want to make sure I understand that this is how I heard you say it. Did we get that right, you know, or it sounds like you just want a simple, quick answer. You don't want a big deep research thing is did I get that right, so that there would be an ill ability and expectation of how to do that. Another thing we got to think about is okay into what degree are these being tracked so. Achilles over there. This notion of okay are these being counted are they counted against me are they going to be, are they going to be reported is it going to be visible, or is this, do I have a notion that again Todd has expressed. He feels like he needs to keep track of this stuff for all probably as much as legal reasons but also accountability reasons to his staff. You all as council members be like, Whoa, wait a second. Okay, I get that but I don't necessarily want these things added up or reported because it may. The perception may be that I'm a bad person because my volume is high. So I think part of what we need to get resolution on is maybe there are different expectations about Todd needs to do things that he needs to do. Council members need to know like, okay, certain kinds of things. That's just part of the nature of the of doing business. So, anyway, so, so reactions to this or questions about this yet. Form would be extremely helpful a form with checkboxes and with both can staff eyes and counsel eyes on the making on the makeup of that form. Last one about visibility, you know, we're public government bodies right maybe as that with maybe something on the form. They could be, you know, potential confidential confidentiality issue or, you know, something like that. Where, you know, we could check it and it might not meet automatically gets more confidential but it would show you know that this is very sensitive you know if there's kind of a, yeah, a possible whistleblower issue or you've got some someone's sent something that has their, you know, detailed billing information in it. Got it. Yeah, so I think that's it. I think there's a slightly different thing. I was thinking here which, and I just don't know the answer to this but I think some of you talked about a little bit, which is the degree to which it is important for all council members to see the, the database, if you will, you were talking about having sort of a tracking, you call it a response. A response resolution center with the degree to which first council members but obviously we're not trying to, you know, shield the public from anything that they're entitled to see. But the notion is is that some of you mentioned like it felt like there, I've seen things that feel like maybe that has been asked before or not. And so, another idea would be the degree to which these things are visible in a sort of proactive way beyond just that notion that absolutely the public should be entitled to see whatever they're entitled to see. Both because we represent the public right. Yeah, things that are available to counsel to all council members should also be available to the public and less confidential. Okay, yeah, right. Yeah, so I want to, I want to kind of merge the time issue, I believe it to be a time issue, okay, and I, and I hope we leave with a better path forward to mitigate that. But in that kind of lens, seeking clarification in the middle of a work session, right. Fair thing to do. Yeah, but if it's, hey, it's coming on a pre on upcoming slide. Then, you know, there's there's a time component there that's lost, or it's, hey, I thought about it in advance, but I didn't want to ask it in advance. I wanted to ask it in this forum is a time component to it. So that's where I see those that information coming in the middle of that request. Coming in the middle of a meeting middle of an action item. How then do you mitigate that, you know, especially if it's especially if someone says, I thought about it. I just didn't want to give it to you early. Yeah, because I just don't know that you get the same detailed data back. And I'll just tell you my process, I try to get everything in on Sunday night. If I don't, if I, there's Tuesday, one hour for me, there's emails, I say. And so if I don't get it back, I understand that that's on me. I didn't, I didn't manage my time well enough to get it done. Or if I get it back and I haven't had time to review it, I'll either ask what to be printed, or I'll pull it up and as the individual item is called. So it's item B that I have the questions. I hadn't reviewed it, but I'll review it during the staff presentation, etc. kind of, because it's one or two questions, each right thing, let's say, and so you have time to review it just before and so okay, here's my question. Here's the answer. Is it sufficient? Yes or no. So that's really where I'm going time. I absolutely agree with this, but in the middle of a work session, you can't fill out a form. And so there has staff has to be empowered to say, you know, if it's a work session, we'll circle back with you, right? If there's nothing to vote on here, then I want to have a process where staff says, okay, we'll get back to you, but move on. Or if it's something we have to vote on. Yeah, then I seek input from my peers on how to manage that if I mean, because that's the time component. Right? Yeah. So, so yeah, so I think that is the sort of the in meeting seeking because there's a there's an item on the agenda that may be calling to a vote. And so how do people get that information that they need to make the decision. Right. So I get that I think hold that just a little bit because I think that's going to get back to the in meeting dynamics. I wanted just to see if we could get resolution on this notion where again what we're hearing from staff is how do we what's a better way to move forward for these things that are fully expected to be dealt with after a meeting. So, but we should come back to that point because there I think there's a thing about for you all as council members within a meeting. How do you want to process those kinds of information needs. But I'm just I'm just focusing on the things where it's a there's a post being expectation. Yeah, Chris. Well, I think it's important in this conversation, because I think it's, you know, the numbers, the different types. I get that. But I think also what's critically important is the content. I mean, I've seen emails that have assumed things that weren't correct. I've seen posts where people have made comments about staff negatively. And so I think that's sort of something I think we need to at least I just want to put it out there. Because it's one thing to ask for something. Hey, are we changing a policy or procedure. It's another to ask, are we changing a policy procedure that hurts people. So that's I mean, so I think the content is just as important as this process. Great. So so what I hear you saying in that is, is that we would set as a guiding principle for staff, whether it's through a form or whatever, that in the formulation of their specific question, or the action that they're expected, that that we exercise caution in the language that we use to do this is to make it as objective. Right. As, as sort of fact based editorial comment, as we can, because, because the notion is, is that, first of all, it's probably going to improve the likelihood that the staff will be energized to ask answer that question if it doesn't feel like it's coming with, whether it's intended or not, whether it's feeling like it's, it's, it's directed at them, when it actually made the intention may have been not directed at them. It's just a question. Right. Seeking data. Yeah, yeah. So I think that's good. And so for example, back to this notion, sorry that we have flipping back and forth. Back to this. So this is a question that I don't know though you can you can kind of write a super specific rule on. But what I would suggest to you as a norm is that staff, and ideally, if it was really sensitive, it would need to be Todd, because I think you're asking a lot of staff lower down the organization to say, we need to almost come back and rephrase the question right so you just gave an example of well, you could ask it this way or you could ask it this way which is loaded. If this, we sort of empower the staff to come back and say well council members so and so, what I hear you asking is this, it is I get that right, and that they can kind of turn the request in collaboration with the council member into a more objective request than a loaded request. So, so, I think if you set as a norm that staff can feel like they can come back and, again, not to put the proverbial words in the council members mouth, but to get the request as solid as it can be that that could be a good principle that you move forward with this form that that form becomes almost collaborative between that rather than just a, we throw it over the transom with whatever language. In that moment, we generated and worse, and you're stuck with that language you, Deb, you even cited the language that was used to characterize something that you would ask for didn't feel exactly right and, but now it's, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, that's the way it's recorded. If you actually allowed for a little bit of this to get back and forth one it would get back to the notion of, oh, let me make sure Todd you talked about this. Let me make sure I understand exactly what you're looking for, so that we don't spend a lot of time doing something that you're not interested, and then we get to your point Chris about saying, let's get the language solid. So I think if you set as a principle to this to the creation of these requests that that's up that that should be an expected part for a council member that they might, if the staff feels like they need greater clarity, or cleaning up the language that that could come back to that and that's not intended as disrespect to the council member. If you guys have reactions that Jesse and then Deb. It's kind of tied up with what you're talking about but also I don't know if it belongs on the board's own bullet or not or if it's it's wrapped up and everything else but I think one of the considerations is management discretion. That, okay. You know we have a city manager, we pay him good money. Good money to to manage a highly professional staff subject matter experts, and there are times I think where, and there's a flip side to this I'll get to in a second but I think there. I think the management needs the ability to say, man, thanks for sending me that that is an engaged in app request all day long. That is, that does not need to come to the city manager and his top level staff that is, that's something that could have been reported through the app, all the way up to, you know what council member I'm glad you brought that up that needs to be on our very next work session, that's something we've got to do and I think that's part of the role of management is is gatekeeping some of that information, and I think that we as council members get to assume that everything we send in goes to the top of the queue. I don't think we do. I don't think we think every email deserves a place at the top of the queue but we just, we think some of our emails do. And we forget sometimes that it's not our call as individual council members to send something to the top of the queue. There was a good example before of a time where that something had been broken, that is a, that is a council member escalation situation that that makes a lot of sense for a council member escalate that to the top of the city manager's cube but at the same time, the city manager has to be able to respond to that in the way he thinks is appropriate. And with the appropriate amount of resources, the appropriate amount of response. The downside to that is there still has to be a process better than the one we have now for council members to to exercise our discretion as a group, not as individuals, but as a group to say, this item deserves an ISR this item deserves a work session and whatever it is, we are not satisfied with management response, we as a group need further response, not an individual and I think the expectation has to be set that council. We don't manage the city. We manage the city manager as a group, and not as individuals. So, so on that right, so I tried to use non non bureaucratic language right, what I hear you saying is talking about this third bucket right where there is a desire on the part of council members to go to take deeper right you're not just routing as constituent request, you're not just getting a kind of a straightforward question answered. You're actually raising a broader policy question that needs more looking at. And what I hear you saying is that request absolutely can be made but to what degree do we both have management discretion, as well as part of bringing it in front of the collective body to try to understand resources are skip are finite. If we have this many requests how do how do we in collaboration with the city manager figure out which ones do we do first or how quickly or what have you might might might clarify. Yeah yeah absolutely I think that's part of it. Okay, most of our conversation, most of the requests that we're talking about. I don't think ultimately result in a policy conversation. I think most of the requests that I'm thinking about the ones I've sent myself. Okay, to Todd or Mario or anybody, you know somebody's asking about their stop sign, somebody's asking about their pop hole. Okay. Somewhere in between those things. Yeah. Somewhere in between those things kind of to the mayor's point earlier is a, I heard a bad thing and what are you doing to fix it, not a service request, a, I have a complaint about something the city is doing. And I want to know how you're fixing it. And then as council members, we will sometimes take the information to the mayor's other point that that we hear at face value. And the next thing you know that shows up as the city manager needs to pivot the staff to address an issue that may or may not be based in fact, that may be based in a lack of information. And so somewhere in between your bullets of types of council requests there is the, I don't know what to call the council escalation. It's beyond a request. It's not really a request for service. It's a everybody stop what you're doing there's a crisis and I've decided that it's a crisis. Got it, and, or my constituents have told me, it's a crisis, however you want to frame it. The mayor has to have, I think, discretion to say, I'm sorry, that is not well taken that yeah so to my suggestion on that and go to Devin and Keely is, is that the response would be, I hear what you're saying. I don't hear that as a, as a council request that fits into one of the three buckets that we said that how we're going to manage with a form or whatever. This feels like something you should raise at the council meeting to see whether or not there's a collective sense that this is something that should be done right in other words it's not just an individual constituent service request you're trying to deal with. It's not just trying to get some facts, you know some some truly facts answered, or it's not this deeper thing. To sort of say it either doesn't fit into one of these or here's how we're going to handle when it fits into one of these, particularly around this notion of bringing the full body, some degree of managing the resources to address that so Deb, Keely and then Paul. In person meetings can be really effective when you get to the point where at that top bullet point, yeah, it could be it could be in person right yeah and I would I would almost say, you know, once you get to the point where if you're asking Okay, is this what you meant and you say no not really I meant this is that what you meant. At that point, sit down and have the conversation right also as far as people potentially being offended. You know, I worry a lot about whether especially if I have a question for somebody, and it comes back and I don't feel like they answered my question. I'm not mad, but I, I worry about how am I going to do it so I tried to put in lots of heart emojis and things and I never do that without meaning it but it's my way of saying, you can't see my face here, but I'm generally appreciative and this is just me. All that stuff is easier in person and what I learned from, you know, talking to Austin City Council member is that they do a lot more meeting in person to handle these kinds of issues with individual council members in their teams they each have four paid staff, you know, and they get a, you know, 70 something thousand salary so we don't have that right. But, you know, at least, you know, yes time is spent, but a lot less time and a lot less stress I would think, then, when everything is written down and things are being misinterpreted so number two about the policy issues. So I'm a policy person, you know, we're, we're a legislative body. But of course I understand that if policies are going to be changed. We have this current body that we need consensus for it. However, you know, we have elections every year. And so you know we have staff, staff is much more of a constant than elected officials are. So, you know, I can ask, I ask policy questions sometimes no detailed policy questions, either about existing policies I would like changed, or I think maybe would like changed, or a new policy, I would like to have our to repeal a current policy, that I probably don't have the numbers and that's knowing I definitely don't have the numbers. Now a council, but next year. If I'm still here. And if you know when things change and people turn that that that the numbers could change. So, and so it's a matter of women so it's a matter of what I understand why are we talking about elections. Okay, Chris, this is fine. It's a matter of I see it as I'm planting the seeds. Okay, because I want to learn so that if I'm still here, sure. That, that, that I can be ready. And if I'm not if somebody else is in my seat, if they want this. Sure, right. And again, and I don't try to cut you off. But in other words, I think we're saying is absolutely this is creating an avenue for for any council member to put on the table, the ability for, again, with management discretion and all that we have to work through all this little more detail is to for that that question to get put on the table and have some research done around that. Yeah, and now when they're in search of that's not what was said. Chris I Chris, I just wanted to, I just wanted to summarize what I what I believe we were trying to get at so yes but I want to move to Keely I just want to, I want to move us on so unless you've got a. I just just really quickly. Okay. When there's not consensus on council for it, then I understand it's less time sensitive the time is less pressing so I think that should be considered. Right. In other words, it might still be in the proverbial queue, but there's an understanding that there wasn't, I mean, this is back to me, as you said it before, there's a there's a finite resource, there's, there's always going to be more demand than there is supply. Right. And so I think we're trying to do is try to figure out if we can come up with a way. First of all, to distinguish that some things ought to be looked at differently and then there's these others that I think maybe the sort of the sore spot that we've got to sort of figure out what's the right way forward. So, kind of move to Keely and then Paul Okay, cool. Aaron, do you have a legal comment or if you don't, that's okay but I just, I just, he raised his hand so okay. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thanks. It's not a legal issue but it's something related to that. Okay, let me let me let me let me go to Keely Paul and then to Aaron. Yep. So I'm okay with this, I understand the different requests. Yep. Part of my, my concern right now is that if we're dividing those up and I am completely in favor of tracking their request status and dividing those up and clarify what requests are what that's extremely important. And I, I will just say that I have a concern, as Councilmember Davis mentioned about using the engaged didn't have I have, I do that, and I refer a lot of people but I'm getting some not so good feedback about it. And so, I don't feel comfortable just passing it off at the moment until that process is something I feel confident in. Yeah. And so on, just as an example, we were talking about policy discussion some of the things well emails that we get as council members so in my district, several different trash cans were getting skipped over and over again and I kept getting different emails and so I once I got a certain amount of emails I knew well there's a bigger problem. So, that actually turned into a budget discussion for software routing, you know, rather than a policy discussion I mean so there are there, there are very helpful things that can come from, from emails and request, when, when you look at it and not just kind of pass individual emails off to engage didn't. If you use them as a collective whole because, you know, there's, there's a lot of things that were solved by city staff by looking at the emails and getting to the root of the problem. Absolutely, and I absolutely and I think that being able to either on your own spot trends, or as things like 311 systems and engaged in things where you can actually look at it from a data standpoint, absolutely I mean that's that's sort of part of your responsibility, as well as the staff says, do we see some emerging trends. Paul and then Eric. Yeah, we're still still relevant question but it came up but time sensitive things, perceived by council member, you know the sort of drop everything. Question, there actually is under Toma, no way to say, do we all agree that we should do something quickly. Things have been posted meetings that the quickest path is a staff report because then it's at least seen by everyone. If there's a need, maybe just be obvious to staff. If someone wants it to be a work session that then gets discussed in a posted open meeting, someone can then after seeing a staff report request that. And the decision on what items go even get prioritized into work sessions. That's once a quarter. So, there's no time sensitive fast path to see if there's a consensus, just, I don't know if there's a need but just to the extent I think that exists, it doesn't exist. Eric, I just wanted to let the council know in case they're not aware that I to get these types of council requests, these are your legal status requests. And so, a lot of this, I'm, I can follow the same process. In addition, about a quarter to a third of the account that requested the city manager guests also have a legal component so we're involved in that. The different the difference is going to be, and maybe we can consider this as we go forward is some requests that are made may carry a liability component against the city. And I know that is done with the best of intentions. So, you know the response from me may be something you may not want to hear or may not resolve the person's particular problem, you know, and I'll just use an example, somebody who didn't like their day in court, then contacts a council member, you know, or they're upset that they're being charged in court and they haven't had their trial yet. So, it's very, we have to care carefully. Well, let's do it and carefully to make sure that we don't inadvertently get involved in that case. And so there's some things that I have to come out and I look at it from a liability perspective, but for the most part, we do this, these things as well, separately. Jesse and then I want to Jesse Chris and then Todd I want to get have you guys, not that other staff can't but just to kind of see how is this comporting with kind of where you're, hopefully, you'd like to see things, kind of get to Jesse. So from the beginning of this part of the discussion I think that you encapsulated the three types of council requests really well, but I think what I'm hearing is what I was trying to get to earlier. There's a fourth type, there is a, there is a, I'm not saying you should write up there I'm saying we should all acknowledge that it doesn't belong on the board got council direction and staff gets, I think, directed to do things directed to give information. And I think we as a council need to, I think we need to acknowledge and have the expectation. If these are the three types of requests, then that's how it works that we pass along information that we pass along a constituent request that we seek clarification, request policy related information and research, not that our requests are going to generate a specific action on the behalf of the city staff that our requests are going to automatically become a work session item Hey I sent 13 emails Why is this not a work session that I mean even just in the conversation since we've, since the last time I spoke I've heard this kind of item referred to implicitly as, you know, I want something to happen as an individual council member. How does that happen, how do I make that happen. And I think we have to understand that that needs to move off of the types of council requests, and back into the. Here's what we do with information here's how we generate consensus over even needing to address the issue, got it. And an expectation that I think the city manager is allowed to say, No, you're. Thank you for that. It stops there. We're not going further until three others want to come forward. Got it. Yes, I just wanted to capture their different color or whatever to acknowledge that that it's a, it's not a bucket but it's, it's maybe something that that Todd or whoever gets. Yeah, Chris. Yeah, so what I heard just recently, just a few minutes ago, was that requests are being made with the full knowledge that there might not be a consensus or there might not be an interest for Council to plant seeds for an upcoming election. We can't even get through what we've got now to deal with city business today. I'm not sure where those requests fit in, but I don't think those requests should be part of it once there's the determination that there's not the consensus on Council, because I was quite frankly surprised to hear that because that's that's what we're trying to deal with something that we're not charged with, we got to take care of city business today and if there's there's an assurance that I'm not going to get the consensus then. Right. So, so what I've heard in this conversation is that there's a lot of motivations that might be behind this third bucket. Okay. And so I think part of what we need to talk about next is, and I think Todd you may want to weigh in is, is, so how, how does the city's manager the staff respond to the myriad of things that may come under this, whatever the intention behind it is, so that, a, it can, he can manage the limit you know the scarcity of resources and B, he can ensure that the full council feels like they've got some way to kind of weigh in or what have you on that so anyway, I don't need to put you on the spot. I just wanted to sort of, if we're getting somewhat closer to sort of getting some clarity for you and your staff moving forward about how to how to deal with council request. Yeah, I think the day to day request, you know, and I will acknowledge engaged in it's probably not exactly where we need it to be. You know, but I'd still, I'm still going to continue moving forward to it to a tool that the council and staff feels confident to drive a lot of the request there's huge value for us knowing if we've got problems out in the field right now and, especially if there's safety issues or whatever so I just don't feel like the request for the most part as much of an issue. Again, I've tried to explain I use that as a management tool. Yeah, the on the research stuff the ISR requests. I mean my position right now is we, we, we work for the council as a whole. If there's a majority of council that want us researching and working towards policy issues where they're all day every day. And I think, and I think that that that is the process that probably deserves a little bit more vetting up by council with the ISRs and policy if we're wanting to potentially change a policy request. What I don't want is for staff to ever be feel like they're in the middle of a political game, because that that is just not where staff belongs ever we are neutral objective, and we do the will of the majority of the council and I think that is the part that needs to be vetted out a little bit more what does that process look like, where's that input from, you know, the other six maybe that aren't making that request that this is worthy of our time, and I'm pretty much. I regret not pulling these apart because I think it may be squashed the whole conversation together but I, I really, I really want that to be the focus focal point, because the staff quite frankly does not. While it while they're, while it's getting way better it was the plan I have the courage to stand up and say hey, you know this is something we just don't know how to handle or know. Sometimes from a contextual I think sometimes context is hard over the email and I know the staff's happy to do that when they can accommodate it if we can just get in and out of there and 20 or 30 minutes, we're happy to do that it saves a memo everybody's happy. But it's that process on the is our work session requests. Yeah, and, and we've got a slide. Should we pull up the connection you kind of thought through and sort of wanted to put a straw person on the table on how to deal with that in a sense that third but what I'm just going to call for. I know we have the ISR acronym and whatever for purposes of the day just if we could stick with these buckets and what we call we may rename it an ISR or whatever but I think that might be helpful. And just so counseling, we're going to continue building better processes on the day to day stuff we need to know that this is the, I think, the issue where, you know that there's probably some frustration with with the management team employees overall is, how do we, how do we know what the count what a majority of the council feels is worthy of a work session that you know they want to have time and ISR being put together on there are some ISR is taking 2550 100 100 plus hours, and they sit there. I think that was really, that's what you heard from the directors, it's, it's kind of a complete that and that is the concern is there's just not enough time in the day to, you know, put, put hours into this and you staff time take them away from their jobs where the day to day stuff where we've got lots of process things that have to be fixed still for things that are just not of interest to the majority and concluding items doesn't give anybody, any of the council members really the opportunity to say you know what, I want to learn more about that or is this something that we're interested in. Because it's just it's just one of those things that's thrown out there and I think that is there a better way to deal with that, you know, do we want one suggestion up there was if there's more than you know their organizations that if there's a research paper that takes more than two or three hours to complete the majority of the council needs to weigh in is this a use of our time. You could schedule work you just could go with your monthly work sessions there's, there's all sorts of ways this could be handled to where we're getting we're getting the rest of the rest of the folks on council to weigh in on that, and how we're using staff time and again and Paul you had a suggestion to you, you could give every council member a quote budget of hours so that even, even if you didn't get enough votes to get the majority, every council member felt like well, I can at least there's a I can, I at least have some access to this, even if I can't get three other people to go along right so that's another another another sort of an amendment to this idea but let me just make sure everyone understands this and then I think it's probably worked in sort of having a conversation. Right so the idea is is the staff would sort of inventory of these things coming in and again for, I know we use the ISR language but I think it probably really more falls into these kinds of things right there's, there's some in depth things here it's not just trying to get a little bit of clarification or, you know, a fact answer. It's a pretty in depth thing might even, you said, might even require some legal research, you know, behind it and so forth and so on. And that there would be some threshold, Todd's put on here to doesn't have to be to some threshold that says if it exceeds that amount. It would kind of go into a, for lack of a better word a pool of things that that Todd would bring forward at a work session and say, here's the current thing here's the current possible things we could go spend time on and we've done a rough estimate and across this threshold. What we staff are looking for clarity from the collective council is which of these do you want us to go spend time on, and it needs, it needs for to, you know, to make it, you know, make it from the pool into the to do list. Again, Paul that you could add a thing where, and also council members say okay, I didn't get four vote mind and get four votes. I'd like to exercise one of my, I'm picking a number, my, my three that I get per quarter or whatever. I'm going to go over there because I understand I'm using that and I now have to left or something again I'm playing with numbers but that could be another way to do that. I don't like this suggestion. That's some kind of question that can't be solved by their, their equivalent of engaged in, because they have one. Yep. Then, the council member, and their team meet with an individual staff person that is always granted even if there's just one person who wants that information and I think that's critical. Then, then, if there are a certain number, I forget three or four they've got I think a 10 member council, people who sign and it's, it's signed, I don't know how and where and how public it is. But it's signed to say that they're interested in have in having that discussion, then it goes forward to the work session. What I don't like in is the idea of our access to information being cut off by they're not being enough consensus to me that's, it's scary and I understand that the time management issue, I mean, that that's an issue. Some of us might want more information than others some of us already know that information, but I don't think that council member elected officials access to, to objective information should ever be cut off. And I'll say that as, as, as for me, as far as the question of and I of course I completely understand staff don't want to get caught up in the middle of some political battle you know when I have a question about, you know, policy issue that, you know, hot, hot topic something I'm interested in might not have consensus on council for instance, you know legalization of, of marijuana not arresting first you know small, small a statement on the Confederate monument that I don't think this council will ever, you know, maybe I'm wrong but but want to bring forward to the work session, but, you know, I, if I have a question about that I really just want the information, I'm not saying I want you to weigh in on your personal opinion, it's just information. Right, so Deb, I think, I think that the kinds of things feel like they would fall into that second pocket where staff would say, Oh, great, you're just trying to get clarification on what this is, it doesn't require in depth sort of research or whatever I think what I believe there's, we haven't tested for an emerging consensus absolutely council members should be able to do that. If you know if it's, if it's not going to cross some threshold of a lot of staff time staff I think is eager to do that as well as like again, I keep pointing Achille I know other people have, but you know as long as as well as handling very trans almost transactional service requests. Well, I think just responding to what you said, you know, and the examples I gave the statement on the Confederate monument sure that would just be seeking clarification. Yeah, we could do that right there are numbers, but you know any kind of question that involves, you know, work from from legal about, or what have other cities done right that I think would fall right that's that's what I mean that's deeper and that is and that is a lot of work. Right. So I hear you. So what I hear you saying is, is, you would want to and I think I'm going to go Paul next where I'm going but that's okay good is I think is how, how can we construct a process that preserves the ability of people of council members who may not be able to get a majority to endorse it, is there some way that there's still some ability to get have staff pursue that so I hear that's that's a strongly held thing that you've got that you want to however we move forward. However we move forward, you would like to see. And I keep, I keep saying to Paul, like, the budget idea and I don't understand that's the right way to do it but you also want to see that I still own that contribution. Okay. Yeah, other stuff. So, so, if you recall a year ago, we're having a very similar conversation. The only kind of request we knew how to make was a request to work session. Right, right. And then we had too many work sessions. Yeah, we're going to do this. Yep. So it came. Two things came out of that one was some way to prioritize and came up with this, you know, the survey deal, but also the discussion then was not everything has to be a work session. Can some things just be is ours. I said that was meant to be the time saving thing. So all right now the bubble is moved down the Python. Now that's the thing. But, you know, so just go up in toward a solution, you know, I'll buy the idea that if you can handle less than two hours. And I don't care what you call it an ISR or whatever response you can give and that can an individual counselor can get it when you are asking for significant chunk of staff time, whether it's going to be an ISR or work session kind of hearing doesn't matter it's still significant chunk of staff time. Right. So I think what you're really saying is put that in the same process as work session prioritization. We may or may not like the current work session prioritization and, you know, probably good opportunity today to review, you know, whether we want to do it that way or some other way. But I think that, you know, we should just acknowledge it's the exact same problem as a year ago. We're just and maybe it's whether it's, you know, the time limited in person discussion or it's survey. It's how many are interested and then does this require a work session or just a report. Okay, great. Yeah. So I like what Paul just said about maybe we just kind of need to granulate a little further what we're actually asking for and kind of to Deb's point. I think that's really the issue that you're getting at is the difference between a request for information and work product that information is what we have to have absolutely 100 percent unfettered access to. I want to know what our budget is and solid waste and I want it yesterday because there's a problem that's different from I would like you to analyze solid waste and the rates of other cities, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We don't have and we're not entitled to unfettered access to staff's work product. We are entitled to information and there's a difference there. So, you know, when I want to bring I have a big policy thing that's important to me and I want to bring it forward. And so far, I'm the only one who cares about it and I want to know what other cities do and what all their statutes look like and all that stuff. That's on me. I've got to go do the research. I've got to go to the Municode Library and pour through the statutes and figure that out. I don't get to unless there's a consensus that that's a big thing to go forward. I don't get to tell the city attorney it's time to go research that for me. I've got to figure that out. That's work product. The one thing I would say missing from just ISR because I know we're going to get to the work session stuff. I'd be fine even if the city manager wanted to make it more than one hour to complete. But I think this is a good start. But I think also there needs to be the opportunity for the city manager to say at his discretion or his staff's discretion. However, you know what? That council member raised a good point. The whole council deserves an ISR on that. Oh, so in other words, in other words, assert like maybe there aren't four. I want to make sure there aren't four votes. But but in my professional opinion, because I'm you know, I came back from a conference and every city in the country has got to deal with this. And so I'm I'm actually going to elevate it. Right. Is that what you're saying? Right. And you'll hear me say the same thing when we get to work sessions. I think either consensus of four or the city manager or when we get to work sessions, the agenda committee, that it's either the whole the whole council or people that we have put in positions specifically for the purpose of making those kind of decisions. OK, direct. Yes, sir. So a couple of things. I want to highlight something. So Aaron says he and his staff, whatever combination of those research and stuff and staff, I'm assuming crunch those numbers down. Pair it down. I'm assuming the city manager looked it over. I attribute all that, let's say, round number seven hours to the amount of data about the meetings and time meetings, et cetera, et cetera, only to be refuted. In this meeting by individuals conversation. Right. And so I think that's the just of it. Right. Why did we if we're just going to ignore what's done, then why do it? Right. Or at least goes back to if there's elephant in the room, at least touch it. Hey, I understand staff did all this research, but I disagree. And here's why. Right. So at least you're on the record saying, hey, I acknowledge the hard work that went into this and I have a problem with it. And here's why. Right. So I think that's it's just do the time. You can't ignore the fact that all that work went into it. And then you just have a throw that out. You know. And so along those lines, I think if whatever methodology we go with, I need I think there needs to be some assurances that whatever the city manager equates it, if he says it's going to take two hours, we then then don't go say, well, it shouldn't take that long. Right. I mean, because you've got to trust the professional. Yes. Right. Right. And so I think that's important to work in. I think following up on what Councilmember Davis said, I think that's spot on. I mean, I think when you're asking outside of scope to ask and staff to go research and other councils, because we just had about a 20 minute conversation about how the data doesn't mean that it's a well run meeting. And I'm perpetually against comparison. So you won't ever see me line up with anything that lines up with comparisons are just too many variables. Right. You cannot replicate a succinct example. It is Denton, and there's nothing similar. You know, there's there's stuff that's has similar numbers, but not similar in makeup, etc. So there's that. I think the timing thing you touched on and I'll echo that nets, if we're going to meet with staff, and you think that meeting is going to go in perpetuity. That's a problem right there needs to be a succinct. And again, I yield that to the city manager but as me as a council member that if my request get backburnered because another council member is having an eight hour meeting with staff individually that that just kind of rubbed me the wrong way not say it happens just saying that that just in full transparency. And then, I think the process that you that's been laid out here does allow for the city manager to manage better right because if those requests are coming in through his kind of whatever portal. Then let's say you hire one person to kind of receive those parse through them, at least you're so, regardless of the number of requests that come in the top of the funnel, you're able to the output is managed, you know, and so I think that's important. I'll just say we were all really really good at what we do. And so I would just argue against any form, a template. Absolutely. Something typed up and word document that says here's the data we need, and each adult that's elected as a city council member can then type up an email because I can do it anyway right so this is when you just, you just need, what do you need in the email right. And so I don't want, I just, I just think we need to become minimalist and say I don't need to have to create a PDF that's able to be filled out. I don't need a paper, another piece of paper to fill out any of that is the email that says subject date, what you need, why you need it. Yep. Done. And if there's a specific flow of that it works well, only thing needs to be normalized is the title right so if you need to go search across it, it's, you know, blah blah blah, there's a form title that then allows staff to go back and research it and easily find it or the council member. Did I submit that you know that type thing. But other than that, I just just want to put it out there that I'm not for creating another layer of bureaucracy paperwork form to fill out that's that's nonsense. Let me see it's five to 12, and I don't want our lunch to get cold and all that kind of stuff so let me before we break for lunch, let me see if I can summarize a proposal that, again, I would, the expectation would be that Todd and staff would would clean it up and be more specific for you guys for formal, but then I want to sort of get it sort of use our fist to five to see if I, because I think there's an emerging consensus but I, I want to test that out. Okay. So, so, I'm gonna see if I can capture this in the proper order and specificity. Okay, so the first thing is, is a clear distinction of the types, this is just relating to council councils, asking staff to do to do something right. It's not about those it's not yet about what's on the agenda and things like that. So the first thing is is that there would be a clear set of buckets components types of requests that you're making. And we've come up with these three to distinguish the notion of passing on service requests, seeking more kind of factual clarification about something to help you and form your thinking from a deeper dive and we've sort of created as a threshold to, it's going to require more kinds of staff work to kind of to get back to the council member that the insight the data, the comparisons whatever that they're looking for. So, so that's sort of element number one. Number two is that, whether it's enough. There may be a template or whatever there's some commonly held expectation that the things that a council member would be expected to send to staff around that request or the following first of all, which, which, which one focus is a comport to as specifically as non judgmentally or whatever as objectively as possible question that you asked the question or you're clarifying the action that you're hoping to see happen. As a result, how quickly you're expecting a response from staff in terms of either moving something along or getting back with a report or whatever whatever that expectation is that that that would be an element of it, of what goes forward. So again, Jared you said yeah great just give us an email for an email template and we can all use that or, or maybe it's taught envision something grander that's more online or people could hand write it down as long as it comports to having these three elements. Once that request comes in the fall that here's the thing this is where I think we're going to get into making sure I get this clear. So first of all, is there is a, an expectation ability for the staff to come back to that council member. Over the phone, if there's some mechanism, an expectation that the staff wants to make sure that they really understand the request, they should be encouraged to do so. And with the desire that it obviously hopefully not be something that requires a two hour meeting to get what results in it should be pretty quick right to clean that up. The second is that I think Todd hasn't as a desire that is part of this there's some means of which that he can keep track of it as much as, in fact, primarily for accountability with his staff, as it is to generating reports or what have you. That third is obviously the work that you all do as council members is public work. And so, barring there not be a confidentiality issue, there is some ability to kind of have visibility on these things just to see, even if it's just to know what the subject heading is to kind of know what's all in the mix and taking place. And then, the other piece of is this I think is really at the core of the council the city manager council interaction so I think there's a couple of different elements so so number one is whether it's using the two hour threshold or what have you, is that the city manager could say, okay, this feels like something that because of how much time it's taking or maybe even the sensitivity of it, or whatever. I believe this needs to be elevated to the full council, so I can know that I'm getting the collective direction and as part of that Aaron to your point there's some consideration of liability to the city as part of that, that there's an expectation that the council members will trust his judgment or whoever sits in the city manager's chair judgment about how much time it's going to take so that there's not a debate of how can it possibly take your staff six hours to do that right that's the hope in this, in this process, and that even while when we hear back about how many council members may want to elevate it. He could still the council city manager could still use the discretion say I understand that it's only of interest to two of you. I think this is a point that's been well raised. I'm essentially, you know, using my own shit to make this a thing. And then the third piece which I haven't written up there is this notion of as an exploration of some way. In some limited way that council members who maybe can't get for votes on something have some ability, you know, with some constraints to get things, you know, looked at research or whatever, so that they feel like they can that they are, it's not purely the will of the majority. Any questions of clarification about what I just described to not arguments for against just want to understand that. Do people feel like I've captured. What's been put on the table in terms of, of just this thing of handling a press of Gerard and then one edition I asked the reverse of that last bullet where he can elevate where city manager and staff can reject something or point so if it's a if it's a text dot road. That's not a city issue, then contact text dot. This is a person, you know, I think he has the yeah I think yeah so I think there's some discretion about really strongly pushing back and saying this is literally out of scope. Yes, and I suppose if he were to push back strongly and all seven of you thought otherwise well that's that's a performance issue that you would work out with the city manager about in support nation or something like that right. Sure. Yes. Yep. Okay. Paul and end up. Yeah, just very nuts and bolts thing like how we might do this. In addition to the, maybe we each have a budget for like a long project. And in addition to the anything under two hours you say is two hours, you know, we'll respond to those. That once a quarter isn't probably enough to talk about them more like once a month, and that, you know, I sense that we might like to try a different way of doing the prioritization instead of serving. I'm just going to tee up this idea that in that once a month session. You know, anything can get on can get on the list for a, you know, basically for a work session, Paul, Paul, I'm really sorry, I just want to keep it to these information request things, I just want to say it is that trust me for one minute. Okay. All right. Okay. That anything get on that list for that work session. I'd give the requester one minute per item to just make the pitch allow one minute for anybody who wants to make a rebuttal why we shouldn't talk about it. Not a vote just indication of yes go further or not. That's it. Get through them all. And then all the ones that get a yes, then the discussion is FSR or work session. I'm sorry, formal staff report I just meant to that because I mean something that's more than two hours to staff time. Okay, I just this is new stuff so I'm just trying to capture what you're saying it's it was different from what we were working on so I wanted to make pitch. Okay, great. Okay, death. Yep. To be in, you know, other other council members and the public. Great. Thank you, because it's, you know, one in the same and I think it's important that the public know the kinds of issues that we're raising. As far as the kind of what's the city manager discretion, you know, obviously that city meant when when it comes to decisions involving staff because the city manager is in charge of all staff, except for city attorney and auditor, you know, and the few that are hired by council. If it's something that has to do with staff, I'll use this example, say, you know, if we say that, you know, raising, raising the raising the minimum wage for city employees, you know, that would be something where I would think that imagine that that would be that the city manager could say you know what I know you guys might not want to have a discussion about this but I want to put it on the table you can always voted down. But if it was something about something that's not directly about staff. That's where I might be a little more aware, and I'm not going to just say I'm not just saying no across the board to that idea, but I have to see more examples. It's not it's not not about you personally I'm always thinking about the big picture in terms of council, we're just filling temporary seats you know even so what what kind of infrastructure are we setting up here when we have different people come in. And what I would say is right I think you've got to, you've got to start with something and then I think you're going to iterate you're going to learn over it and, and, and every group of people whether they are performing arts group a sports team a governing body. If you're making feedback and debrief on how whatever it is you're doing is working like we've been trying to do a little bit today, you won't get better and you won't adapt right so I think you're right which is, you may you may find that some of the things you're agreeing to today, or at least, you know, testing consensus on that you're going to want to tweak as you go down the road, and I absolutely, I mean I think we're not trying to chisel and stone something a process that's going to live for the next 10 years. I'm just letting whether I want to agree. Yep, you know on this part today it's that the questions. Right. And again I think part of what I want to do is, unless there's any other Oh yeah, John. One other item that goes into this category, it's kind of the process that we've been using on our work sessions right now. Yep. We need to have policy and or procedure to remove items from the list. Okay, because we've, we've talked about this before that. Can we put it into just a general policy if there's not consensus it can drop off, or do we need to have a formal vote them at a future council session, what's going to be that process. And the city manager's ability to say that's already been asked and answered on that, you know, you just change one word in in what you're asking for on a report. And so we've already declined authority been declined in the past. So I'm going to put that under this sort of the tracking of the status so again I'm thinking about this bucket, which is part of that status could be this was put on. It was not not selected through whatever means. So we're, it's still there, but it's been acknowledged that it has been removed so that if someone says later like hey let's do this. It's there's sort of visibility on the notion that member we looked at that nine months ago or to your point, well maybe a previous council looked at it now it's a different group of people so maybe it should come back up but the notion is is that that I mean I think that's your vision is that you would have a history here that you could that the council whoever it is and if it's changed or whatever, could could reference back and go oh great well now we are going to move it up because circumstances or whatever so I just want to make sure I understand what you're asking for some kind of indication. Yes, I understand it's the types of council requests. Yep. And it's the post request consideration, as far as that slide there, yep, and then the city. Proposal proposal but the proposal that if it's going to take longer than two hours that we put it somewhere to be considered. So what I'm hearing is not on that is the budget issue about this council members get extra budget if they, there's not consensus because we haven't really talked about yes I'm going to first test the consensus without that piece. Right. See where we're at. And then I wanted to name it because I think it might be something that people want to have a good or bad idea just want to make it because we really haven't had any discussion on that or the proposition that was just brought up about the, you know, give a minute for each, the agenda right so I wanted to capture what Paul said on that but I, I, and I totally agree it's related. I just want to stick on this point with with this piece so I just want to make sure that we frame. Absolutely. Yeah, it's really important. So, again, I'm not going to go through it all again but basically what I'm, I want to get his fist to five and then we're going to break for lunch is on this notion of, as we described kind of a way to manage the intake, the processing, the prioritization, the whether or not staff's going to pursue it for these types of requests. So, if I get to get a sense of what people's level and so to your point for right now this initial proposal is, is to not necessarily have a component for individual council members, without a majority to, to, to get just I'm just talking about this group, I'm not talking about these that exceeds two hours at the moment, I'm saying, if you don't have four votes, it doesn't move forward with this deep policy research for votes. I meant in other words that that's part of the thing on the table. So what's your level of support for that concept as stated just there. One, four, five. Okay, great. So what would it take to move you up in terms of your level of support for it. What was there, I didn't see. We had a zero and one. Okay. And everybody else was fours and fives. So, I'm sorry. I just totally. So you're at a fist also zero. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you, Deb, for catching that part of the darkness of the room. So, so for those who are at one or fifths, are there other, are there additional things you would put forward to prove it that would raise you up to at least a three things out there ready or kind of waiting on it. So, so, but, so the one thing is what it for on this piece would it raise you to a three about having the ability to, if you didn't get four votes, you'd have a couple of you have some access to staff time, but, you know, based on actual resources. Yeah, I got it. Okay, but that would that would raise you that would that raise you to a three. Okay, great. And Deb and Keely does that I don't know if that particular thing with that raise you higher up. I'm sorry, can you, can you just that you have a process to get consensus and move things forward but that, in addition, there's some budget just like you have contingency funds, right, you have to get votes to put money on things, but you can decide what to do that $1,600. Right. So similarly, you know, you get X hours of staff time per quarter for, you know, your, your thing that you want to have investigated. If you get if you're not able to convince others to put it in the in the collective pool. Yep. That raise your support. I respectfully from for me that that wouldn't. That wouldn't be helpful to me in terms of for a salary for salary staff that's not be that's not punching the clock. You know, to me that's okay to itemize, but so, for me, it would be a matter of two things one. Make sure that no request for information, get denied I mean I see those, and I understand the distinction and appreciate between the seeking clarification and policy related research. But any amount of clarification and would involve research unless it's even if it's something you know you know maybe to go and look and send a link. Right. So, what I would like to see is, if staff is saying okay I don't want to spend more than two, two hours on or not I don't want or just I can't. Right. Yep. Then, at least, if there's a commitment that I will spend two hours on this. Once that clock runs out okay then I can't do anymore but I mean any question. If that's the issue, then you know if only two hours can be spent maximum, I say only two hours. But if that's the maximum, then okay, then I don't mind being told, you know, sorry, here's the information that I got for years when I found for you within two hours I didn't have time to do more. Yeah, I mean I think the idea is what's implied here is that, that when getting the request time ago, I think our staff can do something credible. We can get back to you with in about an hour's worth of time, we can get something credible back to you will it be, you know, will it be the, you know, and, and in that sense it wouldn't in that sense if he and his staff determination, it doesn't have to be elevated to the full council because it falls within that sort of two hour threshold thing that you've laid out so I think that's. No one's going to know to the precise minute and what have you but I think the idea is it back to what the core principle was, we trust the city manager's judgment about the degree to which he feels like his staff can do a credible job of responding to the request in within that two hour period, and there, you might, you might think otherwise but the part of this thing is that that's what you've hired him to do. You've hired him to oversee all this talented staff and manage those resources that he can expect about. So that's, so to your point, you would have that discussion and he'd say, we can't credibly do something on that big issue in two hours. So, it's got to go up to the full council and if the full council give me direction will go for it I mean, that's how I would imagine that that does that work for you. Yeah, or in another, another example something that has come up, you know request I made early on for about a code enforcement policy, you know, have code enforcement policy, you know, a response to that could be look, we don't have the time now to come up with the staff report on that but when we discuss the code enforcement budget. I mean, I, I feel like I've told something like this, you know, that's when, you know, maybe there could be a slide on this, or will. Or you know you can ask that can ask that question then. Yeah, so, as long as people aren't being denied it for information. So, I want to ask a question here, because I don't think that's what we're talking about here I don't think that in any of the proposals that have been made. There's nobody that said, somebody can submit a request. And it can be absolutely uncategorically ignored. Right. I think what I'm hearing is that you submit something, staff will take a look at it. You may give it an hour hour and a half and realize we can't do this in two hours we got to elevate it up. But what I, and so correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not hearing that you get a request. And if you, if you think it's going to take longer than two hours you just ignore it, and you don't get back with anything or you don't provide any kind of background. That's not what I'm hearing. Right, because I don't think I'm probably pretty positive that I don't think anybody on this council has made a request to staff, and it's been totally ignored. It's been nothing it's like, yeah, that's not that's not what we're saying here so customer market sounded like when you first started your comments was that I don't like this because I won't get anything back. I think what you'll get back is something that can be done within two hours to give it some kind of credibility. And if it can't be done within that it takes more. That's when it moves on it's not like it. Is that what I'm understanding or maybe you can provide some clarity. I think that I like where the, I like where the discussion is going and I, and I'll just, I'll just throw this out as an example. Nothing I'm favoring him but Paul does a good job in terms of coming in saying, I wanted this ISR here, or I wanted this action taken, we will have a conversation like, do you really need that, you know, you know, so and so is really busy. What, what, what, what are you trying to get answered and we will sort of discuss through. Yep. He does that frequently on issues that are concerned to him and it's like you know what I agree on that side, just give me this information I think I'll be okay and I think that. I think that request in the way that he negotiates and there are times where in those discussions, I'll go you know what, you have made a good point and I am going to do something change this policy where but I think that's really different than sending staff out, who has, you know, been to two community meetings this week and you know they've got tons of things going on, and they're trying to get all their emails out saying I need you to spend 10 hours on this. So, I think you're both kind of getting there, and that's kind of the, I think that's a better use of their time because at the end of the day. It's, what do we really need to, and what we're trying to, what are we trying to go because I've got to appreciate the fact that I'm throwing a lot of resources at non public safety right now, we're trying to, you know, work within the effective rate, and I need to use their time as wisely as I can. If we're talking about a policy issue or a lot of wanting tons of research. It would be nice to know if the council's interested in that. So, yeah, I think that's exactly what we're asking. Did you have anything you wanted to add that would help improve your support of kind of what we're trying to build here as a path forward. That we're going to, we're going to cover that right after lunch because I think you've got an idea about how do we get things on the agenda, so we that is not on the table as part of that so and right now I'm just looking at our charter I'm trying because their charter, from what I understood, designate what councils can and cannot get in the offices and duties of city manager and council and we try to follow that really closely. And I just was seeing, you know, what kind of information, because we've made it a distinguished between what is information and what is that you know so I'm just trying to get behind those definitions and figure out and I personally don't like the idea of everything getting a majority vote. Staff reports, council work sessions and because I feel like that's it's everything's predetermined that way, rather than having really good discussions and engagement with other council members. So that's why I held up my, my zero. Yep. But I guess I'm more of a three like I'm open because I understand the issue of the staff reports and the time that it takes and I'm willing to find a solution for that. I didn't know if the solution presented was when I was got it right so let me again I am worried about our, let's getting cold. So, Chris was sort of back there typing up something that we can do but I don't want to do it right now. I feel like there is a merging consensus on this, if you could give grace, give us the grace to let us take 30 minutes for lunch, you can either you know come back eat whatever. When we come back we're just going to kind of say here's what we think where we're at just kind of do one final thing. And then I think we need to move on and I think Paul where we want to move on to is this issue of how do we, how do you all want to decide. Whatever work session topics and things like that and I think you've got some great things to get us started that will incorporate into kind of a straw person to have that conversation started as well as Todd's thing so. I'm not comfortable that Chris I don't know if you need to sort of if we need to make a motion to recess or whatever adjourn for lunch at 1219 on August 17 2019. Great, thank you. All right, we're back from our lunch break. This meeting of the Dent City Council on August 17 2019 is 1254 we're moving through our agenda item, which is one a. So I'll turn it back over to facilitate. Great. Thank you all. Thanks for being back on time. Hopefully people got some nourishment, some hydration. So I want to just first just talk a little bit about how our plan is for the afternoon just so you can kind of envision how we're going to spend the next three plus hours. And then we'll just jump into it. So, what I'm going to do is, we've, we've taken a stab at, it's a little very similar to what we just been handwriting up here, kind of a slide that just tries to summarize I think where I believe I think the consensus is is comfortable at for today. On this issue of how to handle requests and Aaron and I were just talking during the break. I think he envisions that a similar kind of an approach for things that would be explicitly going to the city attorneys would would make sense, you know, obviously there, there may not be sort of service constituent requests necessarily that he would, there may not be many bucket one ideas but I think, as we, as you look at this, he just wanted to note that he felt like this, this would work on those as well so. So we'll go we'll go through that, just, we'll do a fist of five just to hopefully affirm that my reading of the room from at the right before lunch was on. Then we want to take up this issue about how to actually things get on get items for the work session agendas. Obviously a lot of interest in that. So we had some ideas from john and Paul about how to do that, Todd's got kind of a straw person that I think could work in component with that so we'll do the same kind of thing, kind of walk through a sort of hear the straw proposal, have people give suggestions calls sort of get to some point where we sort of summarize a proposal do a fist to five see if we've got some support for that as a process for moving forward on those things, see where we're at on that. Then, because we said one of our objectives or the other two objectives were to talk a little bit about how the FY 19 priorities went. We want to spend staff prepared a whole bunch of stuff in the packet, Todd I think wants to go through kind of high level, you know what, what got accomplished there, give an opportunity for council members to kind of reflect on the achievements around that, and then spend the rest of the time really talking about what do you all want the priorities to be for moving forward for that, not process priority not the process stuff anymore but the priorities for the community. And so we'll take you guys through a process you'll get that get get to experience Chris in the front of the room which may hopefully will be a welcome relief from hearing just my voice, sort of both having you all generate a bunch of ideas will kind of gather them up and kind of cluster them and then we'll take the plan would be to then take a break, while we're getting them organized, have you guys come back, my guess is there will be way more priorities than, than for example the eight that you had which is great because you have lots of great ideas. We take you through some process we probably use for those of you may have aversion to them I'm sorry but sort of some dots, give everybody some dots, see what if there are some things that emerge as kind of the ones the highest priority, and then talk as a collective group about for those ones that seem to be rising to the top. What exactly do you want to accomplish around that priority what would success is look like in that priority area. 12 months from now, not to get down into the details of how to get that done but more of what would what would you what would you feel would be success to the community around that particular priority. So that would be the rest of the afternoon will again, no decisions to be reached but I think it gives Todd, like, some pretty, hopefully some decent direction to then come back to you at a future council session and go. I believe these are the priorities that you said here's how we would, as a staff we would try to, if you will measure the success of those priorities and get you to take a formal vote on that at some future date, right. And then spend a couple minutes to kind of debrief the day and then get out of here before. So, yeah, what is the time of meeting and what does that fall. Yeah, so, so, thank you for asking that. So I'm going to give you my professional assessment around that topic for this group on today. I don't believe there is anything explicitly that this group, and I'm happy to be proven wrong but I don't believe that there are principles or processes that this group today could put in place that would directly speak to the shortening of meetings, it doesn't mean that means couldn't be shortened. Right. And so, once we do the thing about the agenda items, if you want to push back and say I've got some things that I'd like to put on the table, by all means. I want to try to be true to trying to achieve as many of the objectives as you all said we wanted to achieve today. So that's where I feel like, I don't know if we could efficiently get to a place where you could sort of have things that, that I think. People would agree to with enough specificity that would directly address the shortening of meeting times I think just first of all and having data about how long the meetings are maybe helpful and may help have create some self regulation that might take place. I think there's some additional things you could talk about. That's just my, my, my gut take on this. But if we can get through these first pieces, let's see where we're at. If we can. If the group wanted to we could carve out, you know, 1520 minutes to talk about that specific topic especially if people have specific proposals to do so. I don't know if that. I know we were twins earlier but you're a fist on that one. No, no, yeah, or your or is that solidarity or is that a fist on the fist. That's a problem with a fist to five because it can be interpreted different ways. But let's go ahead. Yes, I would almost advocate for stealing from the vision sensitive to the time, putting forth my, how do I get to three is stealing from vision time which is non direct impact to time of meetings, which is direct impact, and we have a referee here. Okay, so, so, will you, are you comfortable with the idea of if we do a quick test on this one that we just finished the morning with, go to the, I keep pointing at Paul it's not just your, I know it's not just your issue, the, the work session agenda things. Let's do a time check at that point see where we're at, and see if we want to let's carve out and my, my advice would be let's carve out a fixed amount of time to have that conversation. You work with that, or people come to the rest of y'all comfortable with that yeah Rachel. I mean, to their personal has this point. One of the things we talked to you about today, or you can draw. One of the things he brought, he just brought up and the priorities could impact the length of meetings, if we start to arrange the agendas around the priorities that are set forth and I know that's something that we talked to you about so I thought I might want to just throw in that linkage just to make sure that there's an awareness around some of the intentionality around why we had that agenda item for today's retreat. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So let's, let's see if it's a little bit of like chicken and the egg do you talk about the priorities first, or the way that the priorities drive the agenda. And so, let's, let's see if we can accomplish both. So, so if people are comfortable with that, we'll take this thing up on the board we'll talk about work session agenda items how they get on there. If you are at maybe have some specific if people have some specific proposals around how can how might we shorten the length of meetings, recognizing as we all did that there is no magic number for how long meetings ought to be and that shorter meetings or longer meetings at this point it's the quality of how we spend whatever time we do, as much as it is the total volume of time. Right. Okay. Everybody comfortable that. Cool. Okay, so here is, again, I'm this, I don't want to just repeat exactly what I said before, just super quick highlights the three, three request types. We're not going to have a form but there's going to be an expectation that you got to answer these three questions. What's the purpose of it. What is the action you're you're seeking, and how quickly do you are you expecting a response to that. Once that submitted expectation there's going to be a back and forth it might be in person and might be by email but the goal is for the staff to feel like they really understand what exactly it is that you're looking for. And so there's clarity so that, in a sense that can be tracked, so that Todd envisions a way to like I want to be able to manage this so that it's super clear right from the get go what we were supposed to do everybody, people have visibility on that both publicly and around the CMS, and then there's this, this, I would call it sort of negotiation discretion conversation that takes place is that for these deeper things so not just simply a request for basic information, not just handling a service request, a deeper thing that the staff would try to make a quick assessment like, does this cross that two hour threshold or not and if so, the vision would be that that the city manager would bring forward. We're going to compile that list of things and say to the full council. Here's the things in the past month that we've gotten. We feel like we need some clear guidance from the full council as to whether these are things you want us to go deep dive on, because they're, they're a bit weightier and more time consuming than, than the more simple request which by the way we're just knocking out. We've been knocking those out we're not waiting for a full council to be aware that we're just, we're knocking those those more straightforward things out, we're getting back to you, you can see what's going on with that. And that the in doing so, the council would say, they trust that that that's the assessment of the staff how long would take, there'd be some mechanism at a work session degree like Yep, go forward on those. Not so much on those, and that that the staff would have a way for things that didn't make it on the list to kind of sort of prioritize like well we think this is something that, hey, you know, either that'll really come up deeper. For example, that's something that we envision coming up when we do the parks report in three months from now can we incorporate it into that right or it might be, if you could, you know, if we could give us six months, you know that would be something that's probably more doable with the resources that we have. And that the, that I think that on the table there was, I picked up but I want to test this right now, a consensus that if there's some way to create some kind of mechanism, and I don't know that we need to get through the details of what it is today that council members that aren't able to get a majority of their colleagues to support that they have some mechanism within some constraint to get some of those research things done by staff. Again, within the reason and sort of the negotiation with the city manager. So, that's my understanding where I think there's a consensus but now you all are going to tell me whether I was my assessment was right. Is that a is that a five or a question. Okay, darn. Yeah, I don't, I don't remember hearing about what people thought about it for me mentioned that I know for myself, I will make my even if other people don't want that I will make my own form because it will help me communicate perfect. So, so here's what I would say is, I believe the staff will happily create a template or a form that they will make available to city managers but to George point, they will not require that you use the form as the means to answer those three questions. If that's convenient for you. Great. If you'd rather crank it out in the email as long as you know I got to answer questions one, two and three that that will be accepted in other words, nothing will get rejected because it didn't come in on the form. So that's for me personally that's great. I don't know how others feel. And then the other issue that clarify with requester if necessary. I personally would prefer that that always would happen. You know my sense is that when the mistakes get made it's because it's assumed that you know what the person is saying where I mean that's just miscommunication 101, where you're not wondering, what did they mean yeah, I think you know what they mean and also I'll mention something that hasn't come up. Keely and I, we have noticed that a lot of times, requests that Keely has made get listed as my requests and requests that I've made get listed as Keely's request and internal staff reports. Just something that we've noticed coming up and that would be something that could be taken care of. Yeah, just by going back to me. Yep. So, so what I would say is I'd say let's defer to the staff, if it's super clear right you know, but I think to your point if there's any doubt in the staff's mind that they want to make sure they understand what you meant. When you want it by that the, that the expectation is on staff to come back and get that clarified. I just want to make sure that, again I keep looking at Keely on these sort of, if Keely says, hey, I want to just let you know there's this pothole on the corner of the line. Right. Oh, I don't know I don't mean I don't I don't mean to minimize it no I'm saying or that there's a split that I'm sorry I shouldn't use you as the only example of someone who requests that so I apologize for that. So, Paul says, now sorry you know okay Jesse says, right, we've got this issue constituents raised this issue. Todd I think it's important. I don't need you to respond to me, I just want you to be aware of it. And if you could get back to the business owner, that would be great. To me like that's pretty clear, you know, and so, rather than having to set up, Todd, so, Jesse, did you mean by this, I'm just saying, that's why I put the if necessary if it's if it's on its surface, there's any lack of clarity that you should do it, but that may not be necessary for all requests. So that's why the if necessary, but I think we're, I think we're in violent agreement. And I think that if you felt like you needed to make sure that there was a back and forth that you would do so say could you please call me to clarify what this is. So I think I think this is consistent with what you're, what your intention is not to prolong it here too much but but there have been some times where, you know, I've gotten a report back and somebody has put in effort. And I'm not saying a lot of times but there have been some times it's just painful for me to know oh gosh that person wasted their time and all I was asking was this or that's not what I meant or that wasn't my request, you know that was absolutely. And I don't think this, I think this as we heard extensively today the staff doesn't want to do that either so I can imagine in anything where there's doubt, they're going to come back to you and kind of clarify any other questions of clarification. I'm generally in agreement that that summarizes what we've discussed. It occurs to me like, you meet almost every week, you have a standing concluding items. What if we had a standing, you know, these are the requests that bump up to the FSR level this week. And if we have, I don't know, you know, I advocated this idea but a specifically time limited thing if it's, go with me for a minute. You know, here's the six we got one minute for the requester to say what it is one minute if anyone wants a rebuttal, you know, a quick show of hands. And, you know, just clear them every week. And that way, you then know if your thing didn't get support, and you can exercise your, you know, budget discretion to, I don't know if you can handle like a couple of FSRs for council member per quarter, so that you know, you don't feel stuck. Yeah, so in other words I hear you that's that second bullet under city manager's discretion right is that that's you're you're saying, that's a way to process it right is a time and a place of how to process that notion of how do we get consensus. It's the thing where it says request requiring more than two hours staff time require consensus of council. Yeah, so perfect. Great. So I saw Todd's head sort of nodding that that's feels like it possibly a way to, to get it done. My advice is I don't know that you need to nail down exactly that specificity of exactly when but it sounds like better if we do, but okay. Okay. Okay. I'm just trying to get you guys through a lot of stuff today. So, I mean, that's, that's very detailed. So I mean, we can come back and discuss that, like we did with the priority system that we have currently so, yeah, I mean, trust me, I'm sure this council is going to want to be able to resolve that fairly quickly. Right. I think that will also help move meetings along and then we can decide what one of the concluding items, if anything. So yeah, I think we can. Yeah, I guess I think there's support for that. I just didn't want to get this specificity. Is it under concluding items or something else? Okay, cool. Anybody? Oh yeah, Jesse and then John. Mine's short. I think part of the issue when we talk about clarification, I think these should just all be in writing. I don't think there should be an oral I see Todd in the hall or I say something to keep concluding items that generates one of these requests concluding items is maybe a different thing. I think the expectation needs to be that they happen in writing. So I'm setting the parameters of my request. Yes, in my request and the clarification is necessary. It comes back because I didn't state it correctly. Well, we'll add that in. That was assumed, but it wasn't written up. They are in writing. I think the issue is it might be in a form. It could be in an email, but it is written out as opposed to yeah, I yelled it across the hall in the parking lot. I think that's where some of the confusion. Absolutely. Oh, I agree with you. I think this is to your point is you need to have something in writing that you can come back to the person. I want to make sure I understand this part of what you're asking. Okay, cool. John, I think you have the expectation that staff will clarify just them clarifying and getting down to what the actual question is will probably cut a lot of staff time out as well. Yeah, I think it's much more likely that those are going to end up in that less than two hours because it's right. People say, Oh, that's not what I did. I didn't I didn't mean that. I just meant this. Oh, great. Yeah, I can knock that out of the park. It doesn't even need to make it into that into that other way. Okay, Paul, I get the value of it. I think the hallway conversation. Are you also saying not to have concluding remarks be a way to provide because that has a slightly different function. It's also a similar sentence. You know, it also has the risk of miscommunication, for sure, because it's verbal. But it has a slightly different function, too, because, you know, it's a way to make a public statement. That's exactly what my issue of doing it during we use it to make a public statement. My constituents, I have made a request on the item we have discussed. Our job as counsel is you know what I made a request and staff and I blasted out on my Facebook or whatever. We use it as the last however many minutes of our meeting to push our agenda item. That's that's how we use it. Currently, we don't use it because that's the best possible time to tell Todd. We're concerned about issue X. We use it to bring attention to. I have requested this. What's wrong with that? Well, let me make a friendly amendment is if you do that, that's fine. I think what I would say. Great. Could you could you use the form or could you just send it to me in writing and we'll put we'll get it in the queue. I mean, I think that's I mean, that's a mechanically a way you can both express publicly what you've asked staff to do and in writing with as much clarity as possible, say to the staff, this is what I'm looking for. You have to clear an attention. Absolutely. And I think I think it's a it's a it shouldn't be much of an obligation on counsel to fire it off. In fact, you've maybe even written it out already in preparation of saying it. So then you can just sing it away. So yeah, sure. No, we're trying to shorten the meetings. I'm not trying to advocate. I'm not trying to have a hold the meeting thing thought all I'm saying is, is, I think there's an issue on the issue on the table is, how does a council member express a request to Todd for one of these items, and I think what we've said is we want that to be in writing. We also have it said, I could say that you could say to Todd in a, in a conversation, hey, this is what I'm thinking about. And I think I would say, great, could you put it in writing, so that I've got it. Someone might in a concluding item or in the conversation in a council meeting say something and I think what I think we're trying to create a norm is Todd would say, great, put it in writing, and I'll get it on the list. And so, I hear what you're saying which is if we if we create make concluding items when you inventory all your things, it will, it will, it has the risk of spiraling out control. No, no, it does. Yeah, I'm with you. It'll go 30 minutes one person so you can't. I mean, I think you're advocating in a normal scenario. Absolutely. In this scenario. So here's, here's what I would do is hold solidarity. We haven't said that's the only that you, that you should do it that way. I just, I want to get clear on the how the requests get made. And I hear you saying I, there's a, there's for some people there's an avenue of making that request that's valuable to them. And for others, they're worried about that becoming a time suck. So, when we get to the part of the thing about how do we keep their meetings being, you know, more, more timely. I think that's something then to put that on the table. If you're, if you're comfortable with that for right now. Okay, Paul. I think there are actually time limits expressed in Robert's Rules of Order. We never obey it. Well, that's, that's the thing. Yeah, let's let's talk about specifically in concluding remarks, right, you know, it doesn't bother me the slightest to be forced to be concise, you know, just requires putting some thought into it. So, so let's hold that for when we get to Gerard's topic about how to make times how to make meetings. Less, less likely. Okay, so, fifth to five tests consensus as we've described it sort of lays this out we sort of added the notion about in writing, so that it may there'll be a form available, we get that clarification. Where are you guys at that this would be, and may need to be formally adopted at a meeting, so there may be more detail to come from Todd and staff that this feels like a direction you want to use for moving forward on handling council requests. First of all, everybody not just council members. Yeah, yeah, as we've articulated here with a couple of these sort of very sort of new nuance just clarification. So, two, okay, or Rachel or yet. Okay. All right. Todd Ria, five, excellent, four, five, five, Sarah, three, five. Okay, you're our only sub two sub sub three person what would it take to get you to a three. Oh well no I assume when you're holding a to it meant that you weren't willing to move forward at this, at this, at this stage, because that was the threshold. Correct. So I'm sorry I was forgetting. That's okay. Great. Great. Awesome. Great job. Congratulations. No, that's good. I just wanted to be respectful of how we set this up. Okay, so now let's talk about how, how you all reach a decision about your work session topics, right, that's the thing that Paul's weighed in John's weighed in. Todd has a straw person to at least start the conversation. So if we could go. Yep. So this is the request for work session. So, oh yeah, Jesse, did you have a question, or can I can I just go over this real quick and then open the floor for conversation. So, I don't know Todd you want to kind of I mean I can, I can read that but you can lay it out kind of what you're thinking what you're thinking is about how you, how you'd like this to be moving forward. I know there's at least one that counselor doesn't like the monthly survey, which is okay, so I'm trying to give you guys some other things just to shoot at, and if there's different ideas with less know but, you know, we could certainly we could certainly put the workshop, workshop topics, you know, out out in public give people, I like Paul's idea a lot actually I don't want to steal his idea so that's kind of that's kind of where, where I was hiding is just put have a workshop, each, each month on this limited. Here's my pitch, is it moving forward or not, but we need to we need to have some way of connecting where the work goes, and if the council is not interested in it. You know, do we call down the list so we know how we can schedule these things and plan them out better or not. If we need to do that publicly. I'm fine with it. I like his idea a lot about pitching it and saying comes up or down. But just, I'm trying I'm trying to give you some other ideas in the survey which not everybody loves. Okay. So Jesse, and then Deb. Oh, you're a five. Sorry. You know, tell them a question. Yeah, it would be if we caption, the work session caption to actually say that there will be a decision, your rules procedure on your workshop meeting section provides that usually these are workshops are informational, unless you're posted agenda item indicates otherwise so we would put their consider, which was a go for or not and does do take a formal action that's the safest course that I've recommended the past and then continue to do so. Okay, just. So first, I want to say I agree with Achilles concerns on the, on the survey I'm not a big fan of the survey either but I, there's got to be a way to do it right like you had to come up with something. But I've also seen it weaponized I don't appreciate that. I don't think that's the intent of the survey. And so I don't want to give people that the opportunity to miss you something like that. Unless you've got up here a whole lot better than the survey, the thing that I would kind of build into that though is kind of what we talked about with the last thing that there are some things that the city manager needs to be able to say that guys that's important that's why the city manager has a seat on the agenda committee city manager has people say this, this Tuesday is the day that we have to talk about this particular work session item. And in addition to that, so the discretion city manager, or the four or more at this, this fourth Tuesday meeting, where there's some other process, different from fourth Tuesday meeting, however it works. It's just got to be. It's got to be consensus and the consensus has to be based around a majority I think. But I don't know the best way to work this in there but I think we have to give some acknowledgement to our agenda committee in in this process there's a reason why we have an agenda committee and whether it's, they work out the things that happen in between the fourth Tuesday meetings, you know the. This one gets like the agenda committee has the same discretion as the city manager to bump something up to say no, this has got to go. We don't have time to wait for a consensus of the council to say, this is important. So that the agenda committee can decide this work session needs to happen at such and such a time. So, so I'm hearing a fourth Tuesday meeting work group whatever terminology to Aaron's point, whatever you have to do to be compliant with how that meeting is posted and so forth. And to do that. The notion is is that people would pitch their idea for a work session topic to the rest of the group in that conversation there could be stuff that was sent out ahead of time as well but the opportunity exists to make that pitch right capture that correctly. But it also included an equally time limited opportunity for rebuttal, because otherwise you get things that are like kind of framed as if your only responses for it or against it. And there can't be any reason why, you know, can kind of be awkward looking like, you know, resolution in favor of healthy puppies, you know, and you don't want to be like against healthy puppies, but you might say, it's not the business of council. So it's an opportunity to give her a bottle. So, very limited because you're just trying to you're not trying to resolve, you're just trying to go. This is just about making a decision whether it's going to be talked about or not, you don't want to talk too much about whether you're going to talk about it and the reason I would advocate for just, you know, clearing item on a standing clearing item on each council doesn't have to be that long because it's just the ones that have come up is because that's the gate to whether or not you exercise your minority right to get something done. So if you're going to wait a month to find out if you can even, you know, if you have your need to pursue it individually. It's a long time. So so that's why I would advocate for standing item before concluding remarks, or at the beginning rubber for standing. Okay, so wait a second. So that's so that's different. That's for Tuesday. Standing item each each meeting. Here's the ones that came up this week. Pitch rebuttal, yay nay. Okay, I want to make sure I'm understanding. I don't think it has to be a long item. I think it's like, it could be like, so this is about getting, I want to make sure I understand this. So at every meeting, you have the opportunity to pitch something to be added to the inventory of things to be considered for work session topics, but not to be, but not to be decided on at that moment. Yeah, it's exactly what you just said. And although I let me modify it just a little bit. I'm erasing the distinction between work session topics and full staff reports, because that's the same thing. It's just about whether it's just about the first cut is whether staff time goes into it. So you're saying this is just about work session items. I'm saying this is about anything that is more than two hours. So, these are the topics that have come up. Okay, yes no yes you know pitch counterpitch yes no yes no. And these are the ones that got a yes work session or staff report. Okay, so that that's back to what we just said. Because otherwise, because we've just pushed the bubble in the Python down a step work sessions used to be that the staff time thing that it became it's really the same thing. Staff time. Make sure I heard you correctly. What I heard you say was the gating decision weekly, currently using concluding items to express the desire for an ISR. Right. That's, that's generally how you currently do it. That's one way you can request an ISR. I might have confused matters by referring to concluding items. Okay. Yes, what you just said is true that that is one way. I'm just saying, just as we have that as a standing item. In a similar fashion, also the standing and just clear, whatever is big staff time requests have come up that are not an ISR. Right. In other words, they have to be there. Or consideration for these other other thoughts on this issue about how we should sort of resurrect your thing john right which is Well, however, it gets decided whether something's on or not, there's some mechanism. Right, that the list doesn't just keep growing that there's some mechanism in place to decide that again not that we're going to lose track of it that it was that it's stricken from history, but that it's no longer, or at least for the time being, no longer under consideration. Nice. But you should say you should say what you're, what you're after we've, we've decided not to move forward with it. What I just discussed is a live thing. We're not going to move forward or it doesn't. There's no less time than, you know, there's a record, but for it to come back up. So it's got to tee it up again. But when you all set work session topics you're sending them way and I mean potentially far in advance. Right. And that's, I mean, and then, and then you're, you're making adjustments, all mean it's a continual thing. I think the one worry would be is, if it's simply an up or down right at that moment and then it's gone. I think that's different from what you're saying which is, at some point there can come a time where we say that this is no longer in the, in the whatever the horizon of upcoming work session topics. It's not on that horizon, and then it we shade it gray or some, you know, something happens to it so that again it's not lost, but it's not coming up at, whether it's this fourth Tuesday meeting or whatever. We know we don't we're not revisiting in that for at least six months or something like that. Am I, I don't want to, I don't want to mistake what you're saying. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, just to comment on that because I'm looking at our remaining strategy work sessions and the ones that have my there's 14 with my name on it. 10 need to be off. They're completely done. Right, so this is back to your thing like like there's some mechanism to say, this is no longer relevant right and you're saying that there's one on here about a property that's been sold already so I mean it's like, you know, we need a mechanism. We did do that the last meeting, I thought we went through that was my understanding so correct me if I'm wrong. There's been some discussion from legal department somehow we need an ordinance to remove them from the list and I don't think we, I don't think we had an ordinance to put them on the list so I mean if, to me this is an informal list, people want to remove them off. So help me understand why we can't take these off. Well, one of the reasons is that we don't need an ordinance to do it. That was just one mechanism to do it. The, we can just simply do it in a work session as long as the caption is drafted for action. As far as withdrawing any council member can withdraw their request that the the issue that we've had is, if it's still on there and it's low priority. What mechanism does the council have to address that do they want to continue it as some of the council members have said, indefinitely to keep going and appear on the list, or do you want to just basically say, we don't want to, none of us have an interest in this item let's just take it off. And if that's what you, where you all are going. The mechanism would be to actually just have an action item as part of the work session, just say items 242837 through 50 off the list everybody in agreement. That's it. So you're saying that an individual council member, let's take Councilmember Briggs example she said she's got 10 on there that that are no longer valid request that she's willing to issue an email saying, hey, I formally request these be removed. She can do that without action from without taking up time in a work session to do that. Is that right. Yes. Okay. So, let's look at the list, you know, moving forward from here and see which ones we can pull off and then we'll see if that gets down to a little bit more manageable. Right. And so then, so going forward I just want to make sure we're capturing this correctly. So going forward though I want to touch base with Todd in particular, that you're still seeking going forward. There's some regular process by which people can, you know, and they may have made their pitch earlier as well but there's, there's some process for people to be heard on why they want this thing as a work session topic, which might something the action might be. Hmm, I don't know if we know enough let's direct the staff to go get some more to do more formal staff request right because to somebody's point I can't remember who it was, we don't want to have a 30 minute debate about whether it should be a work session topic, if you, if, if you could have a shorter debate with a little bit of staff research to back it up right. Like a curious example if there's those 68 that are listed are really 30, then we can set up a few, I think individual meetings there to do the quick pitch and say are you interested in this or not that would really help if everyone would remove them and make it not look so ominous that we could put a plan in place to kind of get through them to kind of building on Paul's suggestion we just build, maybe one agenda item in over the next few few meetings and say there's these four requests or workshops and get up or down until we work our way through the rest of them. Great. Okay, yeah. Oh yeah. One other thing is not everything that we get an ISR on needs a work session to move forward. Right. There are items that we get the informal staff report, and it could be the consensus is just to bring forward some policy that we can put in place. And again I think it will be back to that notion it seems like a big part of the solution moving forward is just clarity. Right, let's not assume an ISR means it's a work session item. Be specific, I think this is something worthy of work session item to your point, asking for a work session item that may not necessarily require an ISR but it could right and I think it's, it's that notion of getting super clear about, is it in this bucket and this bucket or only this bucket, so that then you and the Rachel and the team can kind of manage this and I think he really I really appreciate you sharing like wow I, I got a whole bunch on here that my name is associated with and they don't need to be there anymore so so even that sort of self regulation amongst council members to go, hey guys you can take 42 off that's mine issues mood so Dev and then Jesse, and then Gerard. One thing that I would appreciate would be if maybe on a weekly by weekly basis I don't know maybe monthly to to get a list like this with kind of checkboxes where we could check. Which of these do you want to remove, and then do you feel that there are any on here that have been miscategorized. I think those are generally on Friday reports. They go every Friday. No, no, I know but I mean like we're, in other words, soliciting so yes yes so we get this, but in a way that encourages council members to just check off. About boxes, so that I don't have, because in other words then it'll just be another email from Deb, you know to add to the listing, you can take this off this one really you know when I asked about like my questions about soccer for instance. They were just a number of issues for my having met with the one soccer league, and I was putting those questions out there, so I'm going to know desire to have a work session on that or even necessarily staff report. There's some that have been done already, so I could write a long email explaining that gorgeous if there was a form easier for staff to have to read less pros, and for me. I had a housekeeping easier for on both sides, we can get that out next week. Awesome. Jesse and enjoy. So, I like the idea of being able to give a very brief one minute pitch for here's why I think this ought to be because if you're going to send an email to the city manager to ask for a work session you're going to put some justification in there. Well, I have some anxiety about the idea of then opening it up to, and then they're going to be counterpoint because how do you decide who's going to make the counterpoint, there's going to be q amp a. I understand you clarification but the only way I think I could get behind that if there's very tight restriction on, because then it turns into a mini work session right on that item. So, I think it's got to be a time limit on the pitch, I think it's got to be a time limit on the question like a global time limit we will spend five minutes tops answering questions about whether it's really about healthy puppies are really about supporting the dog food industry or whatever the concerns are going to be. Yep. That's absolutely I think that's a discipline that you all that you would ask the mayor or whoever else is running the meeting to say, we're now at this portion let's do this, as we've agreed to one minute this I think is going to shriek them down. And I think this is. If you do not self regulate, you will, you will just keep on talking, and that's not a criticism of any you it's just, that's just the rational you know the human nature of this so I think that if you can self control on that. It'll go a long way towards you all feeling like you're being more effective with your time on on this really important question of what are things we want to deep dive at a work session Jesse and then point there. I think probably the better way to handle that than having a discussion in the meeting is to submit your request for a work session in writing with a paragraph what your minute would have been spent on. And then we get that ahead of time, and we have the information if we, if I don't understand your healthy puppy proposal, I will send you an email and I'll say Paul with the deal healthy puppies. If. So, no, I understand I have a couple things I want to say on that topic. I respectfully disagree with a portion of what the tone of location is there. I don't think we're quite as limited as all that, but that aside, if we have a general consensus and concern perception issue that we don't want to handle things that way, then that's, that's fine. If we still feel like we can do a lot of this offline, so that we can have a straight up a fist to five vote in your work session so you're not having a mini work session happen right there on each item. I just, I really am concerned that that standing item on each agenda is going to turn into another hour of whether we not, whether or not we even need to have certain policy discussions. Drive. Yeah, and so I'm good with the survey. And just so you don't you know and you can you can do a good quick search on didn't record Chronicle to to value self innovation, but what Councilmember Davis is talking about it each, it's become during each campaign. Instead of looking at council members votes what's up there. It's easier just to grab that list right you say well Gerard ranked saving the earth low, you know, and it's it's all kind of has an impetus but no instructor so that's kind of with the low hanging fruit that people have turned into a blunt force weapon. So, I found just use talking about it but either way, my point here I'm a two on this because this adds zero time to our meetings, right now, but now you're talking about adding time to our meetings what we're trying to go the opposite way, I am. And, and I'll point this out to you one minute pitch one minute rebuttal six minutes speak that's other six people that say talking round number seven minutes five items a day, five items a week that's 35 minutes at the end of every meeting that we're going to, and no one is going to stick to the one minute, absolutely zero. There's not a person in here that's going to tell you that, but don't buy it. John will John will take that back. John, we're going to clone, John will come in under, no one else will. And so I can't support that I mean it's just it's unsustainable goes right back to the same problem we have. And if you. So we have 67 items here seven minutes each one and 69 minutes divided by 60 to get you to our seven hours, 18 minutes to push through this list and even if you take off 10. It has to be something that's not going to be in the meetings that that or, because help me understand this here's my question. Yeah, here's how I get there. What is the difference in what couple of things. Because Tom may trigger Tom think one thing is, what's the stop a council member from understanding who's against their item who thinks this is a bad idea and saying, I need to talk to you about my idea. Because inevitably you get to you can talk to two people, three people, and inevitably if you can't find you and one other person agree, then that's a problem in and of itself but let's say you have to, then you have two other council members you go talk to individually that say, hey, I have a question, I want to save the earth, are you in, you know, and so either they are they are not, but it's so, but it doesn't make sense to open the door for people that agree with you to have more than one minute to say why they agree with you. Yeah, I thought so. That's a lot of energy there. I think, I think you just kind of built on Paul's idea with, you know, and what he's saying about self regulating. I mean if all seven of you give basically the mayor's mission to say we should get one minute, we're going to try to knock these out five a week we get one minute, each, and you cut us off and we're all okay with that we're giving him permission. Self-regulating it and I think it's the fairest way, honestly to work through this list. I don't know what else to do. You know, with this bit to let you let you guys have the pitch, I think if I think if you, if they, if you all agree to pull off as much as on here is that you kind of lost interest in the Achilles point. I don't know how many that leaves. And I think as long as everybody says this is we agreed this is how we're going to treat these items, and we're going to test this for the next year because we don't like the survey. Then, it's really you're giving each other the ability to enforce that rule Gerard, you just got to be okay when Chris says you've got your 60 seconds. Yes, no. So, and yes, yes, I'll just leave it there. Paul and then Deb. There's a higher level of self regulation that I've seen other organizations adopt and that is specifically laying out in your rules of procedure. What the limits on different types of debate shall be to include how long individual speakers have to make an initial opening and what the total time for the different types of debate maybe. You can so that is a type of mutual or self regulation that you could take you could present that as an ordinance revising your rules of procedure, you all vote on it you agree that's what the rules of the road are going to be. So instead of seven. It may be three minutes of total, total consideration time for any individual topic. And you can get even more specific to say that person cannot speak in support of the item, only those having an issue or clarification. So there are different, different ways you can go out and I would add to what my observation. My observation of all of you is that's when you get annoyed. When you get cut off. But if you voluntarily go and say we're going to, this is the process we're going to put in place and we're going to abide by it. It's not so offensive then, you know if that's enforced. But, I mean that's just my viewpoint you guys may disagree with me. First, we endorse a few things that have been said. Yeah, a minute for a minute against not seven. And the idea that we'd say it's for you've already had a minute for so that it's the other minute is for against I think is a good idea. We have a timer. And if Rosa would accept the task, you know, say, time, right, you know, that works, and entirely comfortable trusting the mayor as, as Todd said to say, your time's up. And I also support the idea that, instead of just pitching the name, you know, like the three words, you know when you submit it, your little paragraph. So maybe that'll help people take less time to pitch it. And then a little modification what I said earlier, if you call this item, this agenda item, new topics, and I would suggest that when the proposal go in with one of three things I propose that we either pick one that we have a full staff report formal report on, on X on healthy puppies, or we have a work session on healthy puppies, or we have an item for individual consideration, healthy puppies, maybe it's a resolution or something right there would be at the full council meeting right there would do it sort of jumped. Yeah, just go right to individual consideration if it's totally straightforward. This to your point john. But that's you know part of the caption. Okay, Deb, sorry. Yeah, so to think so once there's to go back to what this Chris was saying. Mechanism in Roberts rules that and actually I have never used the time limits parts of Roberts rules but there, but there is a mechanism in there. And so I think that would be instead of trying to make our own Roberts rules that we implement that I also I agree with and was kind of meant to bring up Rosa or somebody else somebody who's a staff person who's more of a Switzerland. You know, as opposed to, you know, somebody who gets a vote. So I think that I think that would be really helpful. I also want to say that you know how important it listening is to you obviously we can't force people to listen, but there are things we can do in our body language, you know, and I've heard from members of the public and I've seen it on videos too. And I see it in the room that some of us have more expressive body you know body language and facial movements and facial expressions than others. So, but to the extent that we can control that would be really helpful in at least giving the, the appearance of listening. I mean, you know, to burrow your brow okay but to go back fall back in the chair and then just to whisper to roll your eyes to the next person or to, like, like that all the time then that's a minute that's that's wasted. And then when you're not hearing and you're asked to telling someone well, why didn't you say that before well I said that you know we get some of this back and forth that can be just active listening can sometimes really save time to. So, so here's what I'm sorry was it anybody else. Oh yeah, Chris. Well, I want to respond to that. I think along with that is being on personal devices is being on personal devices during the meeting. So, if you're going to talk about that I would also include that as well. I do run the meeting so unless there's a timekeeper, I'm going to be the one that handles that because that's per the city charter. My only concern with this particular process isn't the process itself but it's the details. In other words, some people put in more requests than others for these kinds of issues that are going to be vetted. That's not good or bad that's just those are the facts, but I don't think that in each one of these council meetings like if one person has all five of those slots. I think we need to have a mechanism whereby there's there's parity, and that we don't give somebody not because the unintended consequences. There's a flood of these requests, and then they're all being heard by maybe just a minority of council members so I think there should be Hey, each council member gets maybe one or two each meeting, and that if there's not enough to fill that slot, then we move on, and that's what helps cover some of that time. I just think we need to be careful because that's what the survey tried to do was say how do we prioritize this among the council members. So, yeah, as far as, as far as listening and self regulation, I think that would go along with we had in concluding items we had a 12 minute concluding item a couple weeks ago. I'm just simply asking for help from the council members to move these meetings along, because I know I come out to look like the bad guy but I hear from many of you that it's like, what are you doing. Why is this going on so I know that's in this other area but you mentioned you mentioned the listening, and you mentioned these kind of facial expressions. I don't think any one of us are not guilty of that, all of us are guilty of that, including myself. So but I have a concern with this particular agenda item that if it becomes more used by certain council members other more than others, we need to find a pair to say okay well yeah, this is this is the rule, and if we got five that's great that we're not going to give five slots to one or two people consistently because, just like they said that the survey can get weaponized this process can get weaponized as well. Yep. I agree with the one per council member, I think that would be good every if it's a standing item on every work session, I think that would be good so that that way you know we can move through. Like I said, out of 14 there's 13 here that I found either go away or can be used somewhere else. So, I have one now on this list. And so and I have been, I think even talked to you about the survey and how, you know, I've not really been participating in that and so I will take any other form of discussion with this council on getting work session items out so that we can discuss them, rather than, you know, surveying them on the computer and so I'm in favor of this and I also am. I think that you know having one or two per council member is a good way to at least start, so that we can keep the meetings moving along and, you know, it doesn't get where one council member, if I have like five and I'm trying to get all my five and nobody is agreement with that then it feels like you know I walk away very defeated kind of situation. So it also prevents that scenario, where it's just constant, you know, defeat, and I heard this limit to as being not so much how many are on the list as new introduction of new ones. In other words, it was the idea that trying to rein in everybody from the notion of ominous, I'm going to slam eight new ones on the list right in other words you might you might have council members might have on the full inventory more than one or two. It's the it's the notion of how much can you add at each opportunity whenever that takes place to kind of both you have a time limit, as well as a number limit. Yeah, then I'm very confused, because my understanding is we've got a list of 68 we're going to basically pair down with drawing requests and then these are the ones we're going to work through first, as far as on this five per or whatever the details we do. Now there's going to be additional requests coming in from all different formats and that is, I hope it's not concluding items but maybe concluding items written requests, and that those will go on another queue that as we begin to process through these, then those will be taken off the queue put into this five or however many we have each week. So, that is not a place to generate the request, it's just a place to process the correct. Yeah, the generation of the request occurs through a variety of different of different avenues. Got it. Yeah, I think I think yeah, yeah, yeah, also talking about the live discussion that that's where that comes through, we can still have request but it also gives the council member, an option to look at their request whether they be timely or more important and say this is what I really want to bring to your attention. Yep. At this meeting, can we, you know, at this point, have a work session on it or something. Okay. Jesse then. So, one is kind of mechanical and we can work a little bit later but it sounds like we're actually talking about a maximum of seven items not we've talked kind of thrown out five hypothetically but everybody gets one. Not everybody's going to use their one every time but we're really talking about a maximum of seven, if we're going to be fair, let's say seven requests come in from seven different people or believe or what how are we land there. That's kind of what we're talking about. I still have to say I'm good with questions. I'm good with the one minute pitch, but a big back and forth. Yeah, huge, huge. And I'll just go ahead and say what I was holding off on earlier. That's not atoma violation for me to send Paul a question. It is, if I, if my intention is to generate a nose count of a quorum, then yes that is atoma violation but my question is, Paul, do you really like healthy puppies or not. That is not atoma violation, right, it's not atoma violation for me to ask him in the hallway about it. So I think that that elevator pitch paragraph should be sufficient for 99% of our questions if we have more of them, we can ask them. I don't even think we need the question in a to be completely frank with you. I think that should be the shortest agenda item we've got seven items yes or no we're moving them forward to work session, Paul and then time. Yeah, if it's seven and I'm comfortable with that. That's like that's like 15 minutes maybe 20 minutes because you get a little group process, which I think is palatable. To Mayor's point, I would, I would prefer that we have, you know, some significant work session item to just freaking clear out the backlog. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's coming. Yeah, this is for, you know, going to get some new one, you know, if you have one. Yeah, I mean, he's, he's got a bunch. Right in terms of the clearing. Well, you're just, just to clarify, you kill you refer to clearing out once that are like just dead don't belong in there. But I mean, I mean, a work session item to get them voted. So that's right, just working off new ones. Yeah. Okay. So, Todd, and then Aaron, but I just want to kind of comment on Jesse's point build up Gerard's earlier point, I just go back to if we, if we put X number on after we get it cleared out, or even as we're clearing them out that whoever wants to speak would be entitled to one minute. Rebuttal on that not everybody's gonna rebut, and it's a choice whether you choose to or not but if there's not consensus to move it forward you move forward but I think if the council will agree voluntarily that that's the limit they're going to set themselves. And for you, for each council you get one minute to rebut it. That's it. Well, I mean, not everybody's gonna do it. It's just trying to give you some ideas on how to self regulate, you know, but while still having the respect of the person asking for the workshop to have to make his or her pitch. As Chris said you can either do it per or you could say there's going to be a total of two minutes or whatever total for rebuttal and the mayor or whoever's chair in that meeting overseas that so I think there's, there's different things there, I would argue, trying to focus on that's that narrow a specific topic I don't know you need to do today because I think I believe there is absolute violent agreements that limit the pitch, have the pitch being writing ahead of time as clearly as possible, open to non violations of Toma regulations that can go on a one minute pitch if necessary at the meeting, some regulation, whether it's per person or in total about how much debate rebuttal there is, call the question, move on to the next one right and so I think there's, I think with that piece of it. I think there's a notion of, we want an inventory, so we can maintain it and see what's going on. But I think it's pretty clear, the notion of a survey as a means by which there's input is gathered is is for the time being moving forward is no longer going to be part of it, but I hear you definitely saying yeah we need the list I mean we need to know that, but we don't necessarily need to have a survey of it. I think that I like the notion of let's continue as we're doing that be as we shoot with all the information being present all that good stuff. I think that there's a desire on the part of some kind of a budget if you will or limit as to how many new ones you can put forward at each opportunity that there is to put forward so that it doesn't become voluminous. I don't know that you need to set today, exactly what that limit is but I believe there's, I think we agreed to it. Yeah, I heard one new per council member so we can put that forward and I would just say you may find that that may be too limiting. Maintaining the inventory, the ability to remove the items from the list both collectively and then as Keeley cited a way to do that on their own without having to do an ordinance. I think that I think that capturing so Aaron and then I'm going to kind of call the question and see if we've got a process for moving forward so because we only got about two hours. You said earlier and to address the concern that Gerard had about the time limits for the pitch debate the rebuttal. I don't think anybody's ever discussed. How many times can a council member ask a question of the person making the pitch, because that too can extend the time limit. They come coming back, question after question after question and you have those minutes start to add up. So there is has to be some consideration as to the number of questions or comments if they want to state their position and opposition of the, of the pitch that has been made. I think that that would also go a long way not just for these kind of items but your other agenda items as well. So you could again you could think of it as a time basis you can think of it as a number basis I mean I think, again I think there is violent agreement about, we need to tighten this thing up and I think you'll find a ways to make that work that are, you know, consistent with Robert's Rules of Order and so any other things to weigh in on this particular one. Very small procedural thing, we'll need to know by when each week they have to be submitted. Yep, in order to make the absolutely so that people have a chance to read it, and if necessary, you know, for it to be posted. Yep, all that kind of Yep, I'll figure that you guys will cover all that so yeah, john. One organization, a member of the, when we do vote. You have such time limits, however you want, but they happen to be three year, three, three minutes. Each speaker, 15 minutes total. Yep, the side that speaks for the side that speaks against when one of those sides quit speaking, you don't get back, get to go back to the other. So, if somebody gives their pitch for a minute, and nobody rebuts, then you immediately go to a vote, but otherwise all seven can weigh in, you cannot get back up there a second time, but all seven of us could potentially weigh in. Most likely it's going to be to refer. Again, I believe all of you and Gerard probably the most vocally believes in tightening this thing up from a time standpoint, I believe you all own that you all share it, I think there's a couple different ways I think you've all talked about it I think you've given some license to both how you might change the actual procedural things as well as the prerogative the chair to hold people to that. So I think, I think you, you'll work through exactly those mechanisms and I think you're going to be. I think Gerard you will be excited about how more efficient is it I just, I just, I trusted it so anything else folks want to add on this. Yes. So, so to get me from a two to a three, there's one nugget as staff is directing and it's simply this. If you're for it, you don't get to talk. Right. I mean just there's a prohibition to dogpile the pro pros. And, and so, if you're for it, you just hang out. Other than this, other than the one pitching. Correct. Yeah, there's no sense in hearing. So what, what, how do people feel about, I hear what you're saying. So how do people do that, Deb. If the person who makes the pitch is. So say I agree with the person who's made the pitch, and I agree with everything they've said, and I don't have anything else to add in favor that I consider essential. Then, I just simply wanted to be known I could, whatever system we have. And that's, you know, right now, it's just a matter of kind of saying, I agree with what they said, I try to do that whenever, you know, in a work session, so I can get my agreement registered. However, you know that there could be a reason that I feel is important again it's subjective it's up to this hasn't been said but this is another advantage of this, you know, this could also could, you know, Paul was saying this might, this will save the trees and I'm saying this will also help to slow down our growth in this area. Right. So, now remember this is simply about whether it's going to make it onto the work session. Exactly. This is not about whether you're in favor of the policy idea it is just about whether I think there's enough here for us to consider to put it on the work session and so I think. So here's my friendly plus enough of your idea I think I, I would, I would worry about making a requirement because there might be reasons, even you might have reasons where there is a one little nuance that you would want to add quote in support. And so I think that a way to do it is first of all you've got this time limit. So even if you are going to speak in support 60 seconds is all it's going to be anyway, but I think that there's also this notion of saying the intention is that unless you have something substantive to add to the question of whether it should be a work session item. You, you ought to just wait till the time is asked to say are you, are you a thumbs up or a thumbs down and leave it at that so you're still at two okay or is it a three, two. Okay, well, again, I want I want to move us forward because I do, I think you are very close to having a path forward. And I think to Todd's point, when you clean out this list, I think it's going to first of all feel a lot more manageable period. And so, I'm going to state a proposal we'll see where we get. And then I, as facilitator my strong suggestion is we move on to talking about priorities. Well actually we got to do your thing about other ways that we could shrink the time. Paul, anything else to add on this on this to clarify this proposal time for people to say I to like healthy puppies. Be short, you know, be shorter in your presentation. What's left of your minute. But again, I would say to be to be germane is it's not about whether you like healthy puppies it's whether I support this being a work session topic. I think I think this is where I think this is where the chair that has the presiding person has to say, I don't care whether you like the puppies or not. Yeah, I totally agree. So, and I'm in general, I think that I've watched your I've watched you guys, this is the issue you debate the issue when you're actually having the debate of whether it should be a work session item. And see, there we go. And I think if you just self regulate and be self disciplined about saying, I'm not going to debate the work session when it's really about whether it should be on the work session. I think this things will go like this. So, okay, so very quickly restating I think we I think we've got it pretty clearly. I don't know if you have something to pull up. I did, but I want to, I want to stick with our thing right. So there's an opportunity for people to add items for consideration to the work session. It, I think some of these are on here so that there needs to be though also the notion of some way of putting it in writing with a succinct description opportunity for people to, to weigh in on whether or not it. To make sure they understand it, or what have you. Right. Then from that is that there's also a limit, oh there this request submitted writing in advance, one, one additional request per week so that there's self regulation there. When it comes time to consider them. There's a time constraint you get one minute to make your pitch. To the extent to which you are in support of it being on the work session, it should be succinct and only to that point, to the extent to which you are in rebuttal it is not about the issue it's about whether it should be on the item. So that should be nice and succinct. The notion is, is that I don't, I think, I think we're taking the monthly survey out. I think that there is a desire. I think there's a, I don't think we're going to get consensus on that I think there's a desire to maintain the list so everybody can see it and understand who submitted what and all that kind of stuff but I think that for the time being moving forward at least for now, the notion of a some kind of actual survey is is not under consideration. I think you missed. Your proposal can be for. Yep. Formal staff report work session topic or full agenda item for visual consideration. Yep. Recommend that all work session topics credit are outlined in an ISR first and then follow the product. Oh, that's once they actually if they get picked as a work session topic. Yeah, I mean I think there's an expectation that if it's going to be on the work session. There's some work that's done in advance by staff to prepare the issue. I think all the same though that the process would be very similar for staff report or, you know, the same process. We'll get this clean up and we're trying to do this literally on the fly in front of you in public. Okay. And then the notion is though is that you have this meeting by which you can again, maybe you say hey that one can be taken off. And you come to some deliberation about what are the things that are going to actually go on the work session. Yep. That started to mention that that I thought I understood up until that last comment about this is just like what we are talking about what we talked about for staff report process because it seemed to me as a very different. Yeah, no, I heard I heard what Paul said. I think it's when you come forward with an idea you might it might be at the same part of the meeting that you're either putting trying to put it added to this list, but you also might be saying no I'm actually talking. It doesn't need a work session. It's for a full agenda thing, or I'm actually asking for a staff report. I think if I could just give an example. I want a resolution for supporting the health of puppies. You don't need a staff report on it. You don't need a work session item on it. Just want people to be able to vote on this resolution. Right, so it goes on the list of new topics, and you get a minute to say, I think we should put this on the agenda as an as an item for individual considerations I think, right, and all the rest of the stuff is just about the work session, what goes on the work session, and I guess what confuses me about that is that then you are having a work session on it like it. What you're doing when you say should we move this forward is having a work session. Well, you're doing. That's like interesting but so it's, it's, it's everything we do is in a work session. It's a work session of what items to move forward on. Yeah, and so that, that just helps me to understand I just want to be sure I understood because because moving forward could be. I only say one more time, moving forward could mean dedicate staff resources to doing a full staff report, or it could mean, because there are more of those than there are work sessions. Could mean, you know, wonderful staff report, yes or no everybody could be no, this should be a work session topic. Yes or no everybody could be. Right. And so and so I, I hear you. What I want to do is, so I think you've expanded it a bit to include these other two things which is okay but I think what we've written up here is to look at the second of those things which is, how do we actually handle the work session agenda item request so I made my point several times so whatever. I think people understand people who work this process regularly know what I'm getting at. And that's fine. I mean, I appreciate you sharing that I don't know if I still understand because we spend. I don't know how much time talking about this process for informal staff reports and or formal staff reports of that if it's less than two hours that they'll do it. If it's greater than two hours it might be a budget process but now what I'm hearing is that in this selection criteria and work session that informal or formal staff reports are part of that when the truth is if you have an informal staff report to somebody's requesting, and we all say, your thumbs down, but they get nothing so I didn't say that I'm sorry, informal less than two hours, they just do a normal course of business. More staff time required. It really doesn't. I don't think it really matters to staff whether you're requesting it because you want to report because you want to work session it's still a dedication of a lot of staff time. Well, but if it's over two hours we had already decided that it would come before the council to decide if there's a work session on it. It's the same thing but I think when you say it, it sort of conflates the two issues because if it's greater than two hours, they're not issuing an informal staff report, they're coming before the council to say, do you want us to either put this on a work session, or do you want us to do X. So, well, I'm carving out an opportunity for a majority to agree, you know, to for consensus to agree that staff time should be put into developing a report, you may or may not want to work session on it. I mean, I just think that that sometimes that's the case. And when we write this up, I think, I think and I think there's actually violent agreement about saying, we're not, we, there's not just one way to address a council's members interest. Right, exactly. Okay, so, so what what's people's level of consensus but what is a survey what less was for a reason. Right. But again, I would I would I but I also I also believe, I also believe I don't think you have consensus at the moment for using the survey. I've been looking around the room at this, I'm not saying that there aren't people still in favor, I just don't think you're going to get to consensus. Your objective today is to try to have a consensus where everybody's at a three or higher. I think your, your chances are better if for the moment, you say, we're going to remove the notion of a formal survey that people submit, as opposed to quickly get to the ultimate goal which the survey had which is, let's get a shared understanding of what things are going to go on the work session agenda and what you're not. So, if. So, I'm going to just put this out there as we've described it here as a way to work through add to work through what things are going to go on the work session. What's your level of support for the, what we've described in the last few minutes. Five, three, two, three, three, four, key, I'm sorry I didn't. Yeah, sorry. Great. Jared anything you could add that you think we're hung up on the prohibition on speaker so we're at impact. Okay, I'm a staff you're saying they're okay. We'll go from there. Okay, great. I appreciate you acknowledging that you're not all the way there but you're willing to have us move forward so I appreciate that. Okay. Great job. This is tough stuff to work through this this is how you all spend your time collectively it's how you set the agenda. And to Rachel's point which I think we're going to pivot back to as we get to the end. One of the things we didn't talk about is, what, what's the criteria by which you all should be deciding what should be on the work session, and think this is a great segue into thinking about your priorities, because I think that, and this is incredibly hard for elected bodies particularly local government elected bodies, I work all over the country on this. It. Oh yeah, dry. I got to do my time. Thank you. I thank you know I was moving ahead because I was all you're going to move ahead. So, culture instructions. Yep, you did. I have my six things lined up. I love it. So these are these are proposals to reduce the amount of time you spend in meetings, correct, I'm going to give you something to react to beautiful. It's not about my reaction I'm getting on a plane and you know, it's about so okay so great so these are ideas for consideration. So my question to you before you do it. Are you open to the idea that we just hear those, and maybe just do a very quick fist to five on them after we've heard them, but not necessarily take a lot of time to debate, I'm just worried about trying to reach the other objective that I'm kind of on the hook to him for. Yes, that cool. All right, so, hit us with it hit us with your, your secret six. So, number one is no concluding items that they're public announcements for that phase of the meeting. So, because items would be emailed in going forward and writing that is reserved for upcoming items that won't get on the agenda that are in the community that we can disseminate information so that's one to work sessions. There's questions that come day of that can't be answered and I'm going to quote you were doing this on the fly that was your quote just a minute so we, if you're not okay with doing on the fly us is responsible for taxpayers shouldn't be okay with doing stuff on the fly. And so, no, if a question, the succinct way to say it is in work sessions, if there's no decision to be made and the question comes day of it's deferred to if the question from a council member. Yes, in other words, and the staff didn't have the time to respond to. Got it, then staff has the ability to defer that hey we're going to pump this item will bring it back, but, but if they could answer it. Yes, because they're incredibly smart and they've got, you know, they could say I can quote that statistic for you, they could do that right it's yes but I just go to your school if we don't want to do this on the fly. Yep, got it. And so then, third is speak against the item. If you're speaking, if you, and you're open at some point in your comments you say I'm speaking against item that should trigger some sort of time limit on okay on debate you can't say I'm going to not vote for this and then speak for eight hours on it. Got why you're not going to vote. Okay. And then, and that's equivalent in the it's cumulative in the legal world is what would be the objection. And then number four is everyone speaks before the second before their before a second opportunity to speak. That's in the Roberts rule that's just not enforced so I think we need to start enforcing that number five is our rules currently say motion second then discussion, we don't follow that format so I'm asking. For those that disagree with how we follow the rules are currently on the book to identify themselves. And then six. Again, goes to question so this and I mentioned this earlier so you're in a works, you're in a session in the council meeting. And there's a question on the fly. I think again we need to empower staff to be able to either one, not respond to speculate, or to say hey, we should have that in advance, I would have had a better answer for you I don't have an answer right now staff goes out of their way to try to make a decision right but I think we need to empower staff to say hey, you know, I just don't have enough time to get your quality answer if they can deliver a quality answer they should do so but that that Todd and his team feels like they can, and be in a safe space with respect to counsel to say, boy I hear you if I can get back to you within 48 hours or at the next meeting or what happened right, but in power, so if it's that meeting we have to vote and you didn't you, you know, avail yourself of the information. Okay. So, those are my six. Okay. So, so let's just do a quick. What does anybody have, and I'm going to enforce this, a clarifying question about any of the things that your art. So not whether you like it or not. And by the way a clarifying question is, how the heck could you think that that's not that's you sharing what you It's kind of a clarifying question because I just, I think that we talked about having a time limit for concluding items which would no matter what we do in that time we have that amount of time to do it. Right. Yeah, so so so Gerard what I think like what Keely's clarifying question was, it felt like we had just talked about that there with the previous conversation that that there would be imposed to the extent to which people are using concluding items as a way to put things on the agenda, future things. Right. Well, not about what we say, but there's a time limit that is going to be included in concluding items so that I don't know that I don't know that we there was consensus on that I'm not saying it wasn't talked about but I that was not part of that or that proposal we just testify. Well, no, no, I think what she's doing is, are you open to the notion of not just zero conclude no concluding items but a time limit on it. Is a time allotment allowed. I'm not remembering that discussion clearly, you have five minutes here in three minutes as you want to tell you the chair can enforce time limits, or that you can adopt your rules of procedure. I say, the chair runs everything. Yeah, I would personally don't say what I just we just want to get clear just want to get clear. So, hold that opinion, just want to john question the clarity on number two, are you saying that we postpone the work session if a question came up. Their answer would come back later so if you don't have a staff doesn't have a quality answer at the ready. Yes, we will get back to you versus forcing them to give you a bad answer or scramble and give you something that's not. I think that's kind of the way we do it already. That's okay. I think you're just, I think, again, so that he may just be saying great then let's just state that so that it's, it's clear and then staff understand that's a clarifying question. You brought it up, specifically talked about. There is a motion there's a second there's discussion for our work session items are speaking frequently not a motion that frequently our version of this five right. And so, would you be open to not just that kind of roberts was word way of doing time, but also it within the work session, you know, you got to wait till the presentations done to ask your questions you have a total of one minute to ask each question you can't take five minutes to filibuster, and then say, am I right at the end and make it a question. Are you open to those kind of things also are you just saying specifically Roberts rules border to the letter. Yeah, no, I'm open to that work session treating that different because there's not a vote but we're seeking consensus, but, but I would stipulate I guess just stipulated, the chair gets consensus so when when when at the concluding at the conclusion, I would say, I think we have consensus to proceed. I think we have consensus to not move forward, that there's a stipulated kind of. Yep, finding made at the end of each got it. Okay. Any other questions of clarification because what I'm going to do is part of our little agreement is, I'm just going to go through and just see to what extent is there, is there support for the, as you propose it, we're not going to always sorry on the, if you, if someone states opposition, or if they state a position, whether it be a work session, or whether it be in the meeting that once you state your position that your continued discussion, be limited to either clarifying questions, clarifying questions, instead of if someone has a different opinion, trying to respond to the points brought up by that different opinion so it's almost like once you stated your position. I mean to try to debate with people who are stating their position. That's probably one of the biggest time. Okay, I agree. Okay, great. So let's just see, we'll just get a group and by the way let's just from the council, this is these are all things directed at council so let's, let's just hear from the council on this. So, so, one idea is eliminating the concluding items item right from all the meetings or repurposing it to only be that at the end of the here's one minute at the end of the meeting that concluding items is that we have another place where you could have earlier in the mean where you could add things as we've been talking about but the concluding items is simply for proclamations and public notice or, you know, right. Okay, so fist to five on, no, no time limit on it but but in a more narrow discipline focus on what it's used for. Got it, and which does not preclude to your point the ability at a meeting to add something, but through some, it might be another part of the meeting it's just not at that at the end. So let's go quick on his on his proposal. Okay, so five, three fists, five, four, three. Okay. All right, so the notion is is that as a practice questions that are submitted on the day of the work session. Staff are unable to, you know, deliver a quality timely answer to it. The understanding would be staff could say I, we don't have an answer for you, we'll have to get back to you. If that means that the discussion of the work session needs to be table for some other time, it could be it but the staff are empowered to kind of, to, to say, to say, I'm sorry if I'd had more time I could answer it. Right, just to five on that one. Okay, what's your clarifying question. No, I think you're just a first of all we're not putting anything submitting and I think this is just, he's just trying to get a sense of can we start to start with that while we're doing it today great 5555 great. Okay, yeah so again you just feel strongly and maybe it was just restating the status quo. That's great. Nothing wrong with that. You express opposition, a you sort of declare that up front, and that there's some time limit. We don't have to set what that is the moment for how long you have to speak about your opposition, opposition or support. Or, or if you say I'm in support. Great, then, then, and I'm not, we don't, we're not going to decide today whether that's whatever number but that there is an understanding that there will be a time limit. Right, just to five on that idea. We're not specifying what the time is but it was, it would be understood and established that at some later date, when you, when you say, I'm in opposition great mayor would say great you have, you have two minutes. Let's hear what what's behind your opposition, right, would be the kind of the way that it would play. Yes. Yeah, you have a you have a time limited amount to state the reason behind your opposition. Yeah, or your support. Yes. Okay. Work sessions or work sessions, plus regular meetings. I envision it's regular meetings more than work sessions. But, but I think I think it's both. I mean, and you might have different and you might have different threshold different time limits for work sessions versus open mean great. Great, five, five, two, five, five, five, five. Okay. So it's, it's about your desire is, is that there's buy into living by what is actually the rule on the books. Yes. Okay. All right. Just five. Four. Okay. So again I think I think this is, I think this is just about saying, this is what it says we're supposed to do we're just not doing it. I'd like to see if we're bought into that. We are doing that. Okay. I mean, not everybody wants to talk all the time so you can't force everyone to talk. Right. So I mean, I believe that that looking and the questioning of who wants to talk is happening. It's just more people are speaking up, then everybody so I just, I, yeah, again, I don't I don't, I think this is just about trying to get a gauge of these may be some maybe some levers that will help speed up your meetings and you're just trying to get a sense of your flip chart. Okay, what is the square represent consensus ones that the ones that there was clearly you know that there were no fists in opposition to it. So I think I actually I think this one actually had I think we had, oh no we had we had we had we had we had one fist so this is, yeah, this is ones that were we had everybody was at least a three or higher is what he's circling. So, again, when I we weren't recording who was that one, but I think it's important to have some record I mean we're taking we're doing this for a reason. You know that there was one fist. So why don't you just know one one. Yep. This one I think had, I think this had like three or four, three or four. Great. Thanks. Thanks, Chris. That's good feedback to get three fists there, and a four, and another two five. Not that I'm counting. No, not that yeah. And then on this thing again I what I heard you say is, we have a policy that we need to have practice the discipline of Robert's Rules of Order about make a motion have a second then have discussion, just, you want to see that your colleagues are it to the extent to which the chair is enforcing that that everybody is bought into that. Yes, right. So, I mean, I think we're asking you to do like motherhood and apple pie but that had time limits built into what. Yeah, I think the time limit stuff was was up was kind of up in here. So I realized we're rushing through this, and I apologize that we're rushing through this. But we got to get to this other stuff or the voice Todd's going to throw me off the building so you're going to have more discussions on this. Right, exactly. That's why I'm going through this quick. Okay, so on this last one, anyone not supportive following rules of order Robert's Rules of Order. Everybody good with that kill you good. Yeah. I'm saying, I'm assuming you're all in favor of following Robert's Rules of Order particularly around this thing. Yeah. Yeah, right. No, this is right. This is that you are that you are saying, we, we as a collective have a consensus that we that we are in a sense empowering the chair to hold us all accountable for complying with Robert's Rules of Order particularly on this particular element. That's all you're saying I mean he had that power to start with. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Great. So I think we're good on that one. And then, oh that we just talked about the staff able to advise if they have to get back on it. I think that was that was that was sort of number two. Okay. Yeah. All right, I'm going to move us forward. All right. Do anybody need a break, because here, here's the time check, we have an hour and a half, I must object, I think you'd have support for time limits on concluding items, I think you should ask. Oh, as opposed to just no concluding. Okay, great. So, a revised proposal which is that we would still have concluding items but that there would be a clear but with a timeline established timeline. So what's people's level of support for that. 5553. Yep. Yeah, we're not specifying what that is. Okay, great. So there's a lot of support for that so that might be a stepping stone to this and getting rid of them all together. Okay, cool. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for reminding me repeatedly that I was not letting that guy that I didn't let that slip by. Okay, so here's the deal. We have an hour and a half. We can plow forward assume that people will get up and do whatever they need to do. Use the restroom or whatever but we're not taking a formal break. So I'm going to put a test on the table. Are people comfortable that this to five to that. Just, I just want to know. So you feel like we need a one minute bio break and how people feel about a one minute, just literally, everyone will stop talking there's nothing going on, just people comfortable with that we are, he's already gone so we're going to take a one minute bio break. And then when we come back, we will tell you what we're going to do on the priorities and we'll spend the rest of time on that. Cool. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to turn the floor over to Todd, just very quickly. Recap the progress that was made on the eight priorities that you identified a year ago today, or maybe not today but a year ago last last August. Unfortunately, we don't have time for a lot of discussion about the ins and the outs of that Todd's going to have a his per annual review, I think he plans on organizing it around a lot of these things so I think council members can definitely weigh in. If you have an absolute burning question of clarification I will take time for that but we just don't have the time to debate the ins and outs of each of these because we would, we would eat up all the time because we want to spend the bulk of the time talking about what your priorities are for the coming year. So, that I'll turn over to Todd. Yeah, and I'll just go over these in very broad strokes I mean obviously you've seen with our budget presentations recently and we're highlighting the goals that you set last year it's a real important process obviously because it will drive department directors work plans, my work plan, the budget proposals. So, this is really the meat of what we need from you is how do we focus our time in the next year as we're putting strategy and budget priorities together. Last year we had ended up with these eight goals that you all agreed to that this was worthy of our time and this is where I should be directing my time the staff's time. I gave you a mid year update in April, so I won't go into a lot of detail but generally our new pod program I think everybody's up to speed on that development code I know you've all lived that over the last year. It's ongoing so we you know we've got all the accomplishments what we've done with regards to all these priorities in your slide packets all happy to answer any questions, open space planning. Obviously we're all of these we're driving a lot of work sessions around. And this is really people ask how to work sessions come about, we either need feedback from you for strategic reasons for the business of the city, or we're driving work work sessions, because these are the goals you set for me. So that's how it all interrelates and this is the first thing you know once we get out of those work sessions that we fund in our from our, our annual budget and I made all these priority one that had to do with goals last year things that you agreed to, to move forward. And I think probably the one, the one area that we still budgeted, and you'll see it on Tuesday night, we have budgeted a little bit more money to update the 2030 master plan but on the downtown master plan. It's a little bit derailed this year we're still planning for pet three and four work, but the new streets are still under consideration and I think it got derailed a little bit for very positive reason and that's the valley program solid waste put together. There's a lot to it that we hadn't thought about a year ago in terms of cleaning up the dumpsters and providing just a different level of service so we pivoted a little bit. We are still continuing to get updated plans in the downtown area for it. We've got two of them that are looking at entire blocks of redevelopment so it's going to be important this next year that we continue marching down the path and probably bringing somebody in to lead us through an exercise of how do we want downtown to develop but I want to get it on the valley program and on the new streets. City facility pro planning you're up to speed on this we've, we've got a ton of our city facilities and design and various stages of construction that's one of the things that Sarah's taken on right away is to get these things on track keep them on track. The homelessness this drove my the main part of the budget recommendation for 19 and 20. Obviously with the MCOC partnership staff and I have taken two or three trips in the last year as well to visit other cities around the country just to learn from them. And we're not done here but we're just continuing continuing to take an iterative approach based upon the feedback I get from the majority of you. I'm not going to go into a whole lot more detail on the priorities unless you want me to but I will say one of the other the other thing that's related to this is I'm kind of scrapping the plans this year the strategic plan process that we had used, I don't feel like staff was necessarily building meaningful metrics around it. I don't think council was ever really bought into it. And I think furthermore it really needs to be that our strategic plan really needs to be built around the goals you set for us, as well as what we're measuring so Rachel and David Gaines are leading a team right now to kind of build out a new dashboard which I plan on putting right up on the front page somewhere that tracks our progress on the priorities you think are most important to the city. So there's an immediate accountability factor for all of us and the directors that these are the goals you set during this this day. Here's our reporting back to you on it and focusing the strategic planning on far fewer things, but far more meaningful things to you. And I guess that's all I really had unless there's other questions I really want to give you the opportunity to spend your time on where do you want our focus in this next year, is we're thinking about work sessions, policy updates, how we put the 2021 budget together, where do you want my time spent. So, Chris, I'll turn it over to you, or Steve. All right. So just quickly, Todd just said you all had any quick questions you had on these priorities, that's fine, we're just we're just not going to belabor it but otherwise we're going to pivot into generating your ideas for priorities for the coming year. Any burning questions you got for time. In part, is, you know, look at each of these and say, what's the next step down that path. In addition to, you know, totally other really new things. So in what we're about to ask you to do, you might want to take one of these and say the priority for the coming 12 months is to, without getting again down into the operational details saying, here's what's, here's what would be the next priority around that thing. And maybe it's simply implementation of the plan that we developed or whatever and that's that that would be fine. Yep. That I mean that would be consistent with kind of what we're what we're trying to do in this next piece. Okay, so, each of you, we're going to do an ideation session. So, each of you is being given round about 15 postings. What we'll ask you to do is write down one idea as a headline for what a candidate for the next fiscal year. A lot of details, this is meant to be a rapid fire brainstorming session, headline capture, capture only. And then what we'll do, we'll give you guys about 15 minutes to put one headline for a strategic priority idea on each posted note. 15 minutes to do that. Then what we'll do is, each of you can read out the headlines that you have, I'll collect those. We'll keep doing that and Steve is going to be clustering the ideas into kind of a rational framework. Does that make sense? How macro or micro do you want us to get an idea? So you only have 15, so it's sort of a self-regulation of what the altitude is, right? Like the way the priorities were expressed here, right? Pretty high level concepts. It's a tree canopy broad versus, we advise our treatment units in the following ways on micro. It's a super tactical action that you, one action that you would take in the course of the next fiscal year. I think that altitude is too low. World peace is too high. Having a tree canopy plan, that to me feels at a good altitude level as an example. And what we're doing is, we're inviting staff to participate in this as well. And we're giving the staff different color posted notes, just so that as we cluster it, just to see if there's differences. Not that we're, it's not weighting things higher or lower, but as we said before, we want everybody to participate in this piece. But we recognize council members have a unique responsibility in this. Okay. Did you say we could rewrite things that we don't think were accomplished from last time, or are we just going to move on to new? Do you want to see tree canopy projects 2.0? What more things would you like to see? Because some of that stuff isn't going to come back to us until October. If there's things that you want us to focus on in addition to what we're working on now? Like a natural progression of something that will be done in this fiscal year, if not already done already? Absolutely. Can I make an announcement? Sure. There's only 11 dogs left at the shelter today. That's correct. And you're taking three? No, that's you. I've already got four, senior. Did you get any of it? No. So think less about writing down a topic or an idea that is fully formed, fully hatched. You've anticipated all the implications of something. If the idea comes to your mind that this would be an attractive strategic priority for us to pursue, just get it down on the table. We're going to have a filtering exercise after the fact, so this isn't about constraining the brainstorming process. If an idea comes up, just get it on the table. Do we have to use all of our little things? It was a cap, but not a floor. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. What's the show? What are you doing? Today's clean-cut show. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. What are we doing? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right, let's take 60 more seconds to finish up your final thoughts. Okay. Okay. So we'll start. So the way we're going to do this, what I'd ask you to do, we'll read one at a time. So John, we'll start with you. If anyone else around the table has an idea that is more or less the same or very similar to the idea that someone just read out, if you just raise your hand, I'll come grab that and we'll post those together. You're going to hash out the details around the big ideas that you've captured on the post-its. That'll happen later, but this will just allow us to get the most distinct concepts up as efficiently as possible. So floor is yours. I'll start with development services, new offices. Okay. New offices for development services. All right. So go ahead. No, no, Tony, go to your. Yeah, Tony. Mobility. Okay. Any others on mobility. I have mobility, but it's with all my other stuff here. Okay. Well, let's just hold it separate then. Is that like a mobility plan or? Yeah, I think I'm thinking about more like new roadways, not existing roadways, but new roadways. I know we have a new mobility plan that we're working on. Okay. All right. It's a version of that more specific. Let's hold off on that one. That's a more specific idea. And if you don't, yeah, if you don't think it fit, if you think, if your thing is tangentially, don't, don't feel like we want to force it. So hold it back if you're. I have green infrastructure, which. I'd hold that different from mobile. I'd hold that different from mobility. But I'll go ahead and take it. Well, give me the cluster ones first before you. So you want green infrastructure, trees, drainage and development. I had drainage. Okay. Sarah, so I just my biggest one was set key theme areas to work in. And then I listed economic vitality, healthy environment, safe community, those kinds of things, just so that there's key themes to work within. And if we had those, it would make it a lot easier when we do meetings. So I hear this is similar to the point Rachel made earlier. I think just described the key issue. Right. But you had some that were clustered around with green infrastructure, right? Yeah, right, because I hear that's a process thing, right? It's like we should govern around key theme areas. Got it. Yeah. Okay. Agreed plan for Hillwood development. Okay. Anything else on Hillwood and what to do with that property? Are you talking about coal ranch? Yes. Todd. Solid waste service downtown at fry Street. Okay. Anybody else with solid waste? Commercial recycling. Yes. Those are those. I have compost zero waste. Hold that for my person. Yeah. Yeah, it feels different. So again, don't hear that it's not good. It's just we want to be careful that we don't end up with too many things that could be. Tell me yours is more of a drafting of the plan there, the zero waste plan. Go ahead. So I've got, I'm going to go ahead and stick two of mine together. Mine is, the big one is update the sustainable dent and plan. And under that I've got aggressive environmental incentives, commercial and residential. So kind of lives in the recycling and stuff, but I mean that more broadly. Okay. I have zero waste composting. Okay. I don't know if that also fits, but going natural organic in all the departments. Does that fit? No, I think that's citizen facing and yours is city facing. I'm very different from you all, but I have annexation strategy. All our non annexation agreements are up for consideration early next year. That's pretty important. Anybody else with annexation? Public space ideas for organizing expanded downtown visually. For example, water feature ramble. What's it going to look like? Okay. Anybody else on that topic? Good. Okay. I guess this one ties into what Sarah said. Implementing an improved mechanism to report progress on the priority areas that are established. Perfect. Citywide food waste plans. And then address Denton's food deserts that could go under mobility or with the food. We'll call it out separately. I mean, it's okay. It's okay for us to have a bunch. We're not going to try to at this stage drive combination. We're just going to do one from people at a time. Steve's clustering as we go. John, back to you. Update cost of service for parks. Is that parks? Yes. Update cost of service for parks specifically. Okay, so things to go in parks wouldn't be. That's what that is. That's distinct. Yep. Public transportation. Okay. Just give a little bit more. I think we've done a lot of work with the DCTA, but just the ongoing conversations on that funding. What does that say? DCTA converts routes to. Demand response. Demand response. Those are connected to it. Sports complex. It should be a fast connection. If it's not a quick connection that you're making, just hold it separate. Yeah, yeah. Finish the plans that we started like the open space, the parks, the treatment, the canopy and those things so we can, you know, finish them and then implement them. Got it. Okay. Identify timing and funding sources to achieve a 10-minute walk goal. I guess gift. Related? Yeah. You want me to close up to the issue? Yeah, let's hold that one. Hold that one for a second. Gerard? Yes, sir. Master plan loop around the city. Okay. You're talking about for cars or? Yes, sir. Oh, okay. Chris? Let's see, which one? We're going to try to get through all of them. I'm going to put these two together. I've got events/recreational facility, but then I'm going to go with both of these and it's an updated plan for our recreational facilities, either update, renovate and/or add. Okay. Todd? Police staffing assessment completed. Public safety. Including fire and water? Jesse? Comprehensive economic development plan. Okay. Wade? Comprehensive economic development plan. Yeah, revised target industry plan for higher wages and tax base. Aaron? We've got city building and employee security strategy or plan. Okay. What did he say? City building security strategy and plan. Oh, security? Building and employees. Building and employees. I have city hall redo. Yeah, that's a distinct concept, I think. Security would be an aspect of that, I assume, right? Maybe. Maybe. Paul? Which, what? Oh, it's up to me. Okay. All right. Okay. Complete city-wide bike/hike trail connectivity plan. Connect neighborhoods across 35 and university. Anybody else? All right. Was it a police issue? I'm not sure what it went with, Todd. We're conducting a police staffing assessment right now for you guys to think through. Okay. So this, I don't know if this would go with that or a different category, but Citizens Committee on Police Issues, Policies, Practices, Reforms. I don't know if that's -- Public safety related, but I think it's a distinct concept, but we got it. Rachel? Something totally separate? Yeah. We want to implement a more effective process to respond to council requests. Deb, do you have another one? Oh, yeah. Declared Denton a welcoming city for immigrants. Okay. Anybody else? Strategy for loss of franchise fees used for road maintenance. Yep. Anything else on legislative impact? This might be close. Financial health. Okay. Well then, so increasing the homestead exemption, would that be part of financial health? No. I'll take that one. Okay, you can take that one, but that's not the one I wanted to call out. Okay, sure. Once you -- City Hall West continue those conversations, it's just sitting there, we need to do something. Okay. John's got one on that. Sarah? Complete templates for facility management projects so that we have templates put in place, which we're working on, but we need to finish that for vertical projects. Okay. Troy? State City of Denton 2030 plans. So that's our forecast. Yep. John Newsom. Patiko with a lot of folks here. Hey, Sarah, the facility projects are those city facilities, right? City facilities. Yeah. Okay. City facilities are development of city facilities. Siri thinks they're talking to you. City facilities. That happens all the time. For city facilities. Okay. Yeah, I'm worried about that. Sure. Yeah. I'll take it. And by the way, the Denton 2030 plan, is that your comp plan? Yes. You have the comprehensive plan? Okay. Yes. I just want to make sure that it was not somebody -- Thank you. Okay. Is it my turn? No. We're on Chris. I've got to develop policy definition for affordable housing. Okay. Good. Affordable housing strategy. Yep. Okay. Todd? Complete the 2012 and '14 bond packages. Get that backlog done. Okay. Jesse. I'm going to go with historic preservation and appropriate infill incentives. Bingo. Okay. Everybody's calling on me. I thought you liked the idea. Is that a five? Aaron, do you have anything else? Pass. Okay. We're going to hear more and more of that, right? Go for it. Yeah. Pass? Yeah. Good. Commercial recycling. Okay. Rachel. Citywide customer service initiative. So I have one that goes with that. And then my other -- Let's see one. Give me that one. So one that goes with that is a revised utilities billing to be more effective and to be less harmful to low-income people. Okay. And then I've got my remaining three -- Is everybody else done? No. No. But those are all together? Yep. Let's get those three together whenever we come back on that. Okay. Go ahead. Down on the last one. Development code minor updates. We'll revise those. Does that clarify what the revival of the question is still left out there? Okay. Particular SROs. Yeah. Thanks, Don. Finish that. I have municipal utilities. We do have a management study that's required by charter that we're working on. It's coming to council soon with some recommendations. Okay. Yeah. It's water, wastewater, and electric. I might not go with that one. That's municipal utilities? Yeah. DME staffing analysis, the strategic plan. It's one of the recommendations. Correct. Yeah. Keely? I have three left, but I'm going to go ahead and offer the day center for homeless. What is it? A day center? For the homeless? Day center. How does that even go right there? The city manager has something, too. Oh, yeah. Thank you for going along. Thank you. Yeah. My last one. The city manager has something, too, but I'm going to go ahead and offer the day center for homeless, which is alternative funding mechanisms. That's right. Yes, sir. Establish pedestrian connection to Lake Louisville. Anybody else on that one? All right. Begin planning for fire station number nine. Do you have a different one? Same one. It's a fire station location assessment. Do you have any remaining after that? No. Okay. Jesse? I have one, if you could just stick it with economic development, because I don't want to call that one. I'll say it, but it can go with economic development. Investing the realized gains from past incentives into the ED fund. But my new one is aggressive investment in the capital replacement and streets funds. Okay. Still passing? Yes. He's exhausted. I mean, I get, too. Identify timing and funding sources to achieve 10 minute walk goal. Okay. Anybody else? I'm going to come up with a plan to address housing instability issues faced by tenants. Yep. Tony, you're done. Tony, you're done, right? Yes, sir. I'm done. I'm done. Okay. Anything else on homestead exemption? All right. Gerard? So it's a two-fold parks department, year-round child care, enhancing that, and then parents not out program. Okay. Any others similar to that? Chris? This just says development, economic, and fund via tax incentives. That's sort of what Jesse was talking about. Okay. Nothing similar to that. Jesse? Let's go with incentivize industrial consolidation/relocation. Okay. Annexation policy. No, no. You already did it. Register Denton's landmark trees. Okay. Eliminate city ordinances that criminalize homelessness, like Austin has done. Okay. Keely? I think you're next. That's the last one. Going natural organic in all the departments, not just the parks. Okay. Okay. Gerard, you're done? Done. Thank you. Todd's done. Jesse? Jesse? Jesse? Gerard, you're done? Done. Todd's done. Jesse? My last two are easy. Two-way streets. Let's just stick that under mobility. And the new one is downtown plan, criminalizing the downtown plan. Okay. And is the down -- because I think, Paul, you also had something about the downtown piece. Is that similar? Yeah. It's related. Okay. I just want to make sure that if we group together -- If there was another one tacked on, do it too. Well, I just got two left if you want to clarify. Strengthen countywide efforts to house and support chronically -- I'll just let Aaron. No. Yeah. It's you. Yes. You have the floor. Strengthen countywide efforts to house and support chronically homeless. And strengthen ESAP protection, specifically upland habitat. Okay. All right. I'm not familiar with ESAP. What's ESAP? Environmentally Sensitive Areas. Yeah. Okay. So it's environmental. Okay. So I've been trying to -- as we've been doing this, obviously trying to group them just at least some broad categories. So actually, if I -- as I read these, why don't you type these up? Yeah. I think that's going to be helpful because people kind of see it as we go. If we had more wall space, I'd have this -- I'd have sheets all over the wall, but we have the space we've got. And I can't get out of the camera angle, apparently. So let me read off the ones, the collections that I've sort of at least initially placed under mobility. So a couple of you had things about, okay, we -- let's actually implement the mobility plan. Right? So that would be one. Tell me when. Are you ready? Yep. Yep. And so one is around the mobility plan. So sort of I would say -- is it implement? Is it -- what would be -- I'm trying to -- or develop one. Complete it. Complete the revision of it. Complete revision of mobility plan. And then it looks like there's some things around -- obviously that would be a part of it is around enhancing public transit. Is that -- should that be -- does that feel like a distinctive enough one or would that just fall under its own? Okay. So enhance public transit. Again, we're not going to get down into the nitty-gritty details. Then there's this notion of a master plan loop around the city. So would that be part of -- is that part of the mobility plan? Again, I'm not trying to condense things if we shouldn't be. I just want to see -- I think that was -- Gerard, that was your -- I think we'll be discussing that. That's just future land to have kind of a quick around the city of Denton type. So it feels like it would be embedded as part of the mobility plan would be addressing that. Okay. So I think that's in with that. Then we've got investment in capital replacement streets funds. So that's literally about investing in street replacement. So I think that's a distinct one. One, traffic control improvements. So I guess that's like lighting and sequencing and things like that. Okay. And then you had a whole bunch that were around pedestrian and bicyclist connections, walkability. So I think call it enhance pedestrian and bike accessibility. Again, there's probably a better way to word it, but do you have a -- Just to add on to that, part of the mobility plan is a bicycle and pedestrian plan. So that's one aspect of the mobility plan. Yeah. So I think there were enough that were specifically around that. I think we'll call that one just out if that's okay for right now. And again, obviously, it will be part of the mobility plan. But -- and that was like the 10-minute walk goal I would put, obviously, as part of that. Not really. That more has to do with parkland. Oh, is it a 10-minute walk to parks? I was thinking like a 10-minute walk. Okay, got it. Okay, good. I've got recreation and parks down here. So good. And then two-way streets. So again, is that distinct? I can't remember who had that one. I can go with mobility plan. Part of the mobility plan. Okay. So basically, we've got, you know, the mobility plan, which has a couple different components, enhancing public transit, enhancing traffic control improvements or making traffic control improvements, bicycle pedestrian strategy or improvements, and then street replacement and improvement. So there's like five under the broad heading of mobility. Okay? So I'm going to move down to kind of recreation and parks. So the youth sports complex, I don't know if that's design it or build it or whatever, but we'll just have a heading for youth sports complex. Then implement the 10-minute walk goal or pursue the -- Well, basically like we have a goal, so then you've got to go to -- and we have an identified list of stuff you might want to -- Okay. Whatever. Then it's timing and identify the funding. So I'm going to just say move forward on 10-minute walk goal, just for purposes of today. Sure, sure. Update cost of service for parks programs? Complete. We need to complete. Oh, sorry. So complete -- sorry, I couldn't tell if it was -- someone had update and someone had complete, so I didn't know. So complete the cost of service for parks. Do a parks department year-round childcare and parent's night out, so that's kind of a specific thing you'd want to see the parks pursuing, right? Yes. Is that your -- that was yours, right? Yes. Okay. So the Southwest Ballet Service for -- Solid Waste. Oh, Solid Waste. Solid Waste, yeah. Okay, so Solid Waste Services for -- so is this -- like I have a category for downtown. Is that -- could it go under there? Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Which one do you need help on? Immunorship lessons. Oh, the year-round childcare and parent's night out. And then -- is there something about an event center, right? Is that separate from the sports complex? Yeah, I mean, that's mine. It would be separate. It's like a multipurpose, like music venues, maybe. So this is about actually moving forward on planning that out? Right. Is that the idea? Okay, so develop plans for a multi-use event center? Yes. Is that good enough for placeholder? Yes. Okay. All right. So I think we've got one, two, three, four, five or so around kind of parks, recreation stuff. Again, we may bring some other ones under it. So I'll move down here. Under -- downtown, I had -- there were three. So kind of -- I was -- I think, Paul, this was yours. Public space ideas for organizing expanded downtown, so enhancing kind of downtown. Yeah, if you think about, like, Sundance Square. Yep. If you've been there. Yep, got it. And then there's the downtown plan, right? So that's about implementing it, right? Because you guys just developed that? Completing the downtown plan. Completing it? Okay. Completing downtown plan. It's just sort of that broader topic that mine fits under. Got it. Okay. And then the solid waste ballet service for downtown would be a distinct one under downtown. So under health, there were two. So one is address food deserts, and another was develop a city-wide food waste plan. So I'll put that under the broad category of health for now. Then we had a bunch under environment. So let me see if I can -- so we had -- you had green infrastructure, right? A strategy to green up our infrastructure. And I think as part of that, we coupled with that the drainage improvements. Does that feel like a good coupling still? Does that work? A couple people had things about updating the sustainable dentin plan, right? So that would be -- yeah, Deb? The food waste issue, I mean, is definitely a health issue, but that could go in the environment. Right, yeah. And you might group health and environment together. I mean, I'm just trying to create things just to kind of create some buckets. And I'm not trying to prescribe that it's one or the other, but yep. Okay, so update sustainable dentin plan, which I -- there's a thing about aggressive environmental incentives. So is that -- would that be a component of the -- I would think it would be a component. -- component of the sustainable dentin plan? And then we've got register dentin's landmark trees. That's a distinct one. Is it commingled recycling? What's the -- Commercial. Oh, commercial. I would like the food strategy thing, if you want. That's okay. That's all right. Let's put that -- They're all under new solid waste activities. Got it. Okay. Commercial recycling plan. Yeah. And then the zero waste, I think someone said that's your -- do you have a zero waste policy or plan? No. So it could be, you know, develop a zero waste plan, right? For city of dentin? Yeah, well, I think she said municipal use, then citywide. So, right, it's -- and is -- okay. We'll set that separate. It could be part of sustainable dentin, possibly, right? But we'll keep it distinct, but those are two. Going natural, organic, in all departments? As far as chemical use. Yeah. Yeah. We're not going to make people eat all organic, but that would be a good thing. But it's the -- it's chemical. Just sprays. Yeah, sprays. Yep. And then -- okay, someone just said what ESA was. Environmentally sensitive areas. Great. So strengthen environmentally sensitive area protection. Specifically upland habitat. Okay. All right. So I think we got the environmental piece done. Then we got a couple under a heading of economic development, Chris. So develop a comprehensive economic development plan. Revise or update or what's -- I don't know. Is there one now? We're working on it. We're working on it. Okay. So finalize comprehensive economic development plan. Then it has economic development fund via tax incentives. So I don't know if we should hold that separate or if that would be part of the economic development plan. I had a similar post-it, and I think they're kind of separate. I think they might be component, but it's also a good subhead. Right. The plan may or may not call for that. Right. Is that the aggressive investment in economic development fund? Yeah. Okay. So call those out separately, right? So it's develop a funding strategy for the economic development plan. I mean, is that good enough for today to kind of combine those things? And then -- And the target industry's thing is that, too. Got it. It's the economic -- it's part of the economic development plan. The economic development plan. Yep, yep. And then what about the incentivized industrial consolidation relocation? Is that part of that, or I don't know whose that was. That one's me. I don't know what bucket you want to put it into. It's basically there's some things that are sitting in places we wouldn't have put them in if we had been deciding now. Oh, so it's kind of a land -- it's more of a land use, right? More land use. Okay. Yep. So I'm going to put that -- It's just a health issue. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And by the way, these buckets -- I mean, none of these things are exclusively in one. It's just a way to do this. Okay. And then the annexation strategy. So is that predominantly -- that's just about we need to update it or -- you had a phrase in front of it. It's just basically that we have -- I don't know how many thousands of acres that are covered under non-annexation agreements that are coming before council. They require a lot of staff time in advance to prepare for possible annexation or not. So the law has changed 2017 and 2019. So just trying to formulate a policy or strategy for the development services staff to follow. Okay. So it's basically -- it's address upcoming annexation issues or decisions. And I had to organize a militia and raid neighboring villages at night, which is really the same thing. Got it. Excellent. I'll put that nicely underneath that. Okay. So then I'm going to come back to that. We had a couple under the issue of safety. So fire station nine. And then I assume that is the fire station location study, is that the same as fire station nine or is it broader? It would include fire station nine. Okay. So maybe it's just a fire station location study including fire station nine. Okay. And then additional public safety staffing assessment. And then I think Deb, this was yours about citizen's committee on police issues. So is it about implement -- create a citizen's committee or is it -- I just didn't know if there was one already or not. No, there's not. Okay. Okay. So create a citizen's committee on police issues. Then let's have a category of homelessness. Stand by just a second. Sure. Yep. No problem. We were going to have you guys do this and go on like a 20-minute break. And he would -- I would do this. But we're adapting on the fly. So thanks for your tolerance for seeing the sausage making in person. Ready? So homelessness. So it looks like -- we grouped these together. The day center and the shelter gap. So is it basically -- so what would you like? So is shelter strategy or -- I mean, I'm not saying you don't have one, but -- A shelter strategy. I think focusing on -- Day center is different. Yeah. I think the words day center and gap, one or the other, but it's -- but the gaps are -- Day center isn't a housing strategy. Day center isn't shelter. Oh, okay. But a day center supplements the shelter because shelters are from like 6 to 8 in the morning. And so during the day, there's nothing. And is that -- that's the daytime shelter gap? Yeah. Okay. So why don't we just say address the daytime shelter gap, which the day center might be and would -- It's a popular -- Does that work? Again, you guys can separate these out later. I'm just trying to -- we're trying to get to a thing where we've got some that we can actually quote/vote on. Okay. Change city ordinances to decriminalize homelessness. Oops. Strengthen countywide efforts to house and support chronically homeless. So countywide homelessness strategy. And then again, we've got stuff on the day center, so that's already captured. Okay. Done, done, done. Okay. Now moving to -- okay. We've got -- so we've got some things around housing, development, land use. So revise the 2030 plans. That's your comp plan. Plan to address housing instability of tenants. We've got affordable housing strategy. Address historic preservation issues. There's the -- is it the Hillwood development? Right? So what's the -- what's the priority for 2020? Is it finalize it? I just don't know what -- We have a state mandate. We've got to be done by December 2020 to craft a design. Got it. So come up with a design for the Hillwood development. Yeah. And better said, it ties in mayor's -- there is -- calls it by name. It's Hunter Cole Ranch. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Hillwood's the developer. That's the property name. Okay. And then a piece of this was sort of incentivize industrial relocation. I think that was -- Jesse, I think that might have been yours, right? That's kind of its own thing. Separate from -- Implement minor updates to the development code. It should be. Because you're right. You're adopting the big changes. The homestead exemption, I don't know what that is. It's a tax. I mean, I know what it -- I didn't know what the -- what's the priority. The priority is that it hasn't been increased in years and years and years and years. And we're at the lowest. Got it. Okay. Increased homestead exemption. And that could go under affordable housing, housing issues. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. That's sort of a tech. Okay. Okay. Okay. And then utilities. So you just had municipal utilities. I don't know if there's something specific. Yeah, I think what we talked about was that we have a -- Oh, the staffing. -- management plan that's coming forward. And that's the -- is that the same as DME? Yes. Okay. So -- That includes water waste water and DME. Okay. So, yeah, what's the priority for 2020? To implement it? To complete it. To complete the management plan for DME. The utilities, water waste water. Got it. Sorry. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Then you had some things around, what I would call finances. So you've got to -- so -- oh, actually, under utilities put revised utilities billing practices. And then there's a couple here under financials. So you guys tell me what you think. So one is just the broad notion of financial health. That's not super specific. Focus on public-private nonprofit partnerships, alternative funding mechanisms. Yeah, that was mine. So what's the priority for 2020? Just to look at how we're doing those alternative funding mechanisms with our agreements. Okay. To fund all of those other things. Right. Exactly. Look at other ways to fund things. Fund money, right? Okay. And then -- so, again, part of that is sort of strategy for loss of franchise fees used for road maintenance. Is that sort of all -- I mean, I know that's a distinct thing, but we'll just add it separately to the list. You guys -- you can decide if it's too narrow or not. And then -- okay, I think the rest are -- okay. So the bond programs, right? That's a mix of things. So I think implement bond programs, right? I mean, assuming they get -- they pass, right? If this is passed, we just need to make sure they're cleaned out the next 12, 18 months. Okay. Oh, these are the old ones. Oh, sorry. So we're closing it out, right? Closing out old bond program. Got it. Sorry, I didn't notice the date. Then tell me when you're ready, Chris. Different category? Are we still on financial? Yeah, move to a different category. So call it -- call it facilities, I guess, for right now. So it's City Hall West. Redo. That's somewhat rogue. Renovation. I don't know what. City Hall West. New development services office. A city facility/space. So is there a -- do you need like a plan for city facilities? I thought that's what you guys -- I think some of the things that are up there kind of go to address that. Okay. In a broader category. All right. Somebody had to finish all the various plans that we had. So that's -- I feel like that's sort of generic. Emphasis on customer service. Organization-wide customer service. And then -- oh, complete facilities management. These are the templates for facilities management. Okay. Under facilities infrastructure. Okay, we've covered that one. Then we've got the implement council process for information requests. And then I think there's this aligned -- develop alignment of strategic priorities to budget, performance, measures, et cetera. Okay. All right. So process check here. So it's 330. We got a lot on the list. Again, we had a plan for this when we were going to have a break. So here's what we could do. We could simply share this with you and have you at a future work session do a prioritization piece. I mean, obviously, this list is too long. The other option is -- I don't even want to guess what it would take to print these things out. The other option is to have you guys sort of cool down for a second. He and I will take what he just wrote up there and get them on the flip charts and then give you dots. But it just means there's going to be a downtime where we're just going to have our backs to you guys and we're going to be writing furiously and you just get like five minutes to just chill. Does that work? And then we would just do a quick dot thing and we would just look at how the dots shaked out and you wouldn't make any decisions because we don't have time. Does that work? Okay. So, Chris, if you want to pull it up on the screen and then I'll just -- and we'll make sure that you guys have all the sticky dots. Did anybody feel like they shared something on a post-it note that we didn't itemize or collate under something? I just want to make sure we didn't miss anything. Okay. Can we just dot the post-it notes? Well, I was thinking about that. The issue is I think it would get so messy, I don't think we would be able to process where the actual dots are. So if you just give me a couple minutes, we can just go from this and have it as a list and then you can just put the dots to the right of it. So otherwise I would have said yes to that idea. All right, we're back in session at 338 on August the 17th, 2019, moving to our work session items before we start on our final leg of the meeting. Go ahead. Okay. Do we mark the main title or the individual -- No. Do the bullets. Okay. So don't put one on health. Okay. That -- and assume that it means everything underneath that. You got to -- we're going to get you down one level. Well, there's only 10 of the categories, so that would be letting you off the hook. Okay. Great. I'm glad you asked because we probably would have had a whole bunch of things on the top level category. Yeah, we'll just have counsel do this go-around. You can take center, you know, and probably get shot. All right. Exactly. Just practice practice. Okay. All right. I'm ready. Cool. I'm ready to go. Do we all have different colors? Yep. Same ones. Blue. No. So it'll be, in that sense, anonymous, but it's sheltered together. I think we should use Dippin' Dots. Ooh. Those are good. They are, aren't they? But they melt in this circumstance. Yeah, they would. But they are good. Okay, go ahead. You want to advance? And I'll do the last one. That's it? Oh, no. Oh, okay. Yep. Coal ranch. Did we get away with having coal ranch? What do you think? Put a restaurant on top of Pellet's Knob? Is that what you're saying? Is that what you're saying? I missed that. All right. All right. No, it's funny. We're actually -- go down to the street level. You're at about the same level on Bell. Well, let's say the intersection of Bell and University. You're at about the same level as you would be if you stood at the top of that hill down and looked at it from the other end of downtown. It's all the way back. It's just a much more gentle ride to this point. No, no, no. That's part of the reason why I have towers here is that's where we get elevations, in addition to being towers. Is that what you mean, though? Well, yeah. Like, whatever the thing is, we're supposed to be able to do that. So we'll have just enough time to put our dots in place. Yeah. The thing about that, you know, except spelled differently. Okay. Put our dots in place. I think it's supposed to be 100 Cool Ranch Doritos. Cool Ranch Doritos. Yeah, and if you guys -- if you want to, the things are up. We're almost -- we've just got one more thing to go through. So if you know where you want your dots to go -- I'm not spending my dots until I see the last -- That's fine. That's fair. That's fair. (laughter) What's P3? Private-Public Partnership. Oh, okay. I thought it was that thing you get at 7-Eleven where it's some nuts and cheese. (inaudible) I'm trying. Okay, go to the next one. (inaudible) I'm just going to call this -- yeah. (inaudible) You cannot touch other people's dots. That is definitely a violation of the -- (inaudible) And we can leave -- you know, we can leave these up, Chris. We can leave them up here or we can put them up, you know -- Or put them -- you can lay them flat, too. (inaudible) I'm going to call this -- (inaudible) Okay, they are all up. Okay. Thank you guys for your patience. (inaudible) Correct. That's correct. And ideally to the right of them so that they're -- we're not missing anything that looks like it's a bullet dot when it's actually one of your dots. (inaudible) Oh, that's -- that's down -- yeah, it's -- actually, it's down there. It's under financial management. Is the hunter coal? When I was typing that, I was like, is there ever a lot of coal here? (inaudible) Selling the mineral rights, too? Oh, it's not -- Yeah. There are claims on them already. Already, yeah. (inaudible) Can you horse trade? Wait, where did -- have you not placed yours yet? Oh, no, I placed one. Oh, okay. All right. We got to -- because we got to -- we got to wrap this up. So just make a decision. It's not -- this isn't binding. It's just to give you a sense of what your priorities are. (inaudible) Yeah, no, dot and return to your seat, yeah. And then we'll do -- we're just going to do a quick vote totaling, so to speak. Yeah, I think we've got it -- we'll use the write-up that we've got up on the -- on the -- on the PowerPoint. This was just for me to try to get it up on the flip charts as quickly as possible. (inaudible) And then we'll take responsibility for totaling all up and getting it done, or if Rachel wants to -- (inaudible) Yeah, yeah, perfect. (inaudible) Yeah, that's good. Oh, yep, sorry. (inaudible) So while -- while we're in this sort of voting thing -- so I'm doing work right now with Fairfax County, Virginia. So you all may have this as well, but it's -- obviously they have early voting. They had -- they had a primary early voting. And apparently it is in -- I think it's in Virginia statute that whoever is the -- the elections official has to -- this is in ancient law -- has to, when the polls open, stand forth and say, "The polls are now open." So, of course, it was only envisioned that there would be an election day, right? And so this -- the woman had to every day at the county headquarters, where the early voting could be submitted, had to stand forward in the lobby whether anyone was there or not and say, "The polls are now open for voting." So anyway, I love sort of these -- these things that were obviously there for a right reason, because you didn't want people to be secretive. It had to be announced that polls were open. And then she asked to say, "The polls are now closed." So even though you could still vote, but the poll -- the submission of them in that building was, you know, done for the day. Do we -- you got all of them up? Yeah, everybody wants more dots. Okay, so -- so unfortunately, we don't have -- we don't have time to discuss these today. So you guys can figure out another time to this. So let me just give you the -- why don't we sort of star or something? I'll just -- I'll just go through -- what I'm going to do is I'm just going to tell you which ones received two or more dots and how many they got. So complete the -- the mobility plan. That had five, so a lot of support for that. Investing in street replacement got two. So there were two under mobility that got more -- that got more than one. Under the downtown, complete the downtown plan got two. Under health, address food deserts got two. Under recreation and parks, the youth sports complex got two, as did the plan for a multi-use event complex. Under environment, there was only one that got more than one, which was the update, the sustainable dentin plan. Under economic development, there were two. Finalize the comprehensive economic development plan and develop a funding strategy to incentivize and create more economic development. Under safety, just the fire station location study got two. Under homelessness, a county-wide strategy or be part of a county-wide strategy around homelessness got three. City Hall West got a whopping five dots under facilities. And over here, under housing and development, another five-vote one was developing an affordable housing strategy. Three was for the Hunter Cole, C-O-L-E, ranch, doing what you need to do around that. And last but definitely not least was under financial management, look at how to create more public-private partnerships got three. So I don't know what the tally is, but it feels like there's maybe -- I was going to say about a dozen, about 15 got more than one. So that is what it is. It's a starting point, I think, to inform city manager and staff. You may not keep the headings. Those were just purposes for clustering. You may like to keep the headings. Obviously, there's a lot of other things that city government's going to be doing in a lot of different ways. But I think it's always great when a governing body can give to the senior executive and his or her staff some direction about what are those things that are most important. One of the things that I've talked with Todd and Rachel about is I think wherever you can, and I think you all did do some of this last year, for whichever priorities you end up solidifying, the degree to which you can clarify what is success going to look like over the 12 months from now is great. Because that way a year from now when you say, hey, this is -- it wasn't just that we did anything on this. We were -- we finalized it. We got approval on the plan. Whatever it is, I think that gives you an even stronger sense of accomplishment. Okay. So we have perfect five minutes. Awesome. So here's what I would like to do as kind of a closeout. I'd like -- we'll go around the room. I'll give you a second -- well, more than a second. I'll give you a minute to think about it. As I said earlier, so important when you're working in groups to debrief, give feedback, not just when things went bad, right? We always send -- oh, it was a screw up. Let's go do that. But as just a routine part of what you do, again, I will say that we heard several voices telling us, you have no idea what you're in for. Have you brought your helmet and your battle gear and whatever? I don't know what -- who they're talking about. You all did a fantastic job. You -- I won't pull it up, but you absolutely lived up to all the principles that we set forth. I think you wrestled with some challenging things that had some history, and I think we came to a place, and again, we'll type some stuff up that I think has the potential to really set you on a path. Ultimately, it's going to require you all to live up to that and be kind of respectfully or kind of mutually compliant with that. So my encouragement to you is as you do that, as you go forward, try to find opportunities to give each other and give yourselves collectively feedback on how you're doing, right? And that's not something that comes naturally to a lot of us, and I think some of you have heard me say this distinction. There is a big distinction between criticism and feedback. The definition is this. Criticism is something we share with people negatively when we actually don't really care whether or not they get better or not. We're just telling them that they didn't do whatever it is that we wanted. Feedback is something we give to people where sometimes it's good, sometimes we didn't like what they did, but it's given with the intention of helping them improve, not making them get better, helping them improve. So we do a lot, especially in the public sector, and we are the recipients in the public sector, of a lot of criticism because it's easy. We're an easy target. You all as elected officials, you all as staff are easy targets for criticism. Very rarely do I think you actually get the opportunity to receive what I would call feedback. And so my advice to you guys as you go forward is really try to think when I'm sharing something with somebody, am I delivering it really with the intention of their getting improving for themselves or is it just I don't like what's happening and I'm just going to let it fly as criticism? So I just offer that as a little bit of someone said be a therapist today or something like that, a little bit of advice. So in that spirit, here's what I'd like you to do. This is as much sort of feedback to us. If you could do two things, one, complete this sentence very quickly with one, maybe two words. So remember with that concise principle, for me, today has been blank. Whatever adjective or, again, two word phrase, for me today has been whatever, however you're feeling at this moment about today. And then the second thing is, so we'll go right around and just hear that really quick. And then we'll go back around and just say, just if you could give us feedback, and it's sort of also to you all collectively, what would have made today even better? However you think it is, you could have given it a one out of ten or a ten out of ten is one thing that you would have wished for today or that we could have done today that would have made this even better. I'm not saying that we're going to have you in a retreat next Saturday, but if you can imagine kind of getting together to do this work, one thing that you would have felt like would have made this even better. Okay. So we've been picking on John to start. So actually, Todd, why don't we start with you, put you on the spot. So for you, today has been fill in the blank. Okay. Jesse. Encouraging. Constructive. Refreshing. Helpful. All right. All right. That's fine. That's good. Do you want to weigh in or are you just going to keep on? That's good. All right. Good. I just want to make sure. Okay. Promising. Okay. Mixed. Okay. Enlightening. Okay. Yeah. Whatever the source would say, Bob, the same is enlightened, but there's another word I'm sure. Okay. Enlightening is good. That's all right. You can give Sarah props for that word. I like it. All right. Chris. Bob. She said mixed. Mixed. Okay. Great. All right. So now we're going to put you back on the spot and I'm going to go this way, which is one thing that is, again, as feedback to us and to yourselves, one thing that you would have said would have made this today even better. Gosh, I mean, I think it went about as good as it could have gone. Okay. That's fine. That's okay. Great drug. You know, I think it was fantastic. The only thing would have made it better if everyone would have corrected themselves and agreed with me. All right, Sarah. Breakfast burritos. Breakfast burritos. Okay. All right. Cupcakes. Cupcakes. All right. That's good. That's all right. Tony. I think a little bit more time on priorities and, but I think the time that we spent this morning was well served. Okay. Great. John. Okay, great. Yeah. Okay, great. Rachel. But kind of leave leaving today in terms of that what you mean I just want to make sure what you expect. Okay, great. Paul. Great. Excellent. That kind of kind of that's protein right that could be a form of protein. Jesse more time on priorities. Okay, great. And Todd. Fantastic. Well, we'll just speak for myself today for me it's been a real pleasure. Again, I love we work exclusively the public sector, a lot of people in our company work with big companies trying to make more money and whatever. We do this work because we love the fact that there are people like you step up every day to try to make your communities better so it's been a real pleasure. And my little thing for what have been wonderful to have more wall space for us to work on but such it is. Grace you get the closing word and then Mayor you get to adjourn us so I'd say congratulations number one this isn't easy it's not something that a lot of organizations do I think you are all very authentic and vulnerable today. And, and constructive. So, well done and thanks for letting us be a part of it. And I'm with the burrito crowd. I'm more of a taco guy than burritos but. Excellent. Thank you. Cool. Any other comments, questions, and just on the sort of the expectation so we've taken pictures whatever we'll get with Rachel and Todd about exactly kind of what gets typed up and whatever and they'll let you know exactly when that'll go but the notion is is, we'll do some all part to kind of try to summarize it but literally pass it over to you all to figure out exactly, you know, when you're going to bring it forward at what meetings and so forth and so on. So I just to kind of Rachel to kind of grant your wrist a little bit about what's going to come next. I don't know if Todd anything else you want to add on that front. No, I just appreciate everybody taking the Saturday it's important. You know that we got the feedback we did this morning I appreciate all of you working through it even though it kind of shortened up the priority thing that I just hope everybody kind of leaves today and reflects on, you know, the civility in this room and the fact that you don't always agree and what you just got accomplished and I think I'm hoping we can replicate this every Tuesday. Yeah, I think the priorities, we didn't have a whole lot of time for those but I think we're going to have time to work through those and work session. I think the most important thing is what we talked about this morning. Any other comments questions. Thank you Rachel and the rest of the other two concepts. Yes, absolutely. We will adjourn our meeting at four oh two p.m. Thank you. Congratulations.