i would like to see that these minutes are very good thank you very much for writing up these minutes and for the things that were discussed in india during the commission a sunday council meeting where they discuss this on tuesday the ability to send in written testimony twenty four hours before that leaves us with essentially twenty hours to not even twenty hours less than twenty hours if we're looking at strictly business to put in some response concerned because sometimes i see that as being something that could have been a part of his i find the timing of it very same items of information that has been shared with us before and both from the console minutes chairs minutes as well as what troy shared with us before and it gave us a little indication of a differentiation of tasks between our committee and his special committee which duplication of effort in creating the blue ribbon committee and as such i don't think it would be necessary or efficient or prudent based on his own statements to forward such a special i sent my my written that he has something that's a little bit more than what he had said to us because the stipulation that without them there would have been lovely information for us to have which is not stated to correspond it's a place i still need to watch what was exactly said there but that's indicative to me that she knows a little bit more about what he wants and that we didn't receive it in the letter that we got something which i find worrying is well known to the point though all the more reason to have him here you know the castle members and council members and will this salt that are not an observation i made to somebody last week was either for or works wonderfully if we all want to you know if we want to muck it up tasks and items that we're going to be investigating and as long as we're very clear and transparent with what those tasks are in the way which that investigation will be twenty recommendations we can cut out all of that kind of other stuff and i think  john this is an excellent question that we want to hold ourself well above of those kinds of possible suggestions of us being political by which are quite frankly i don't get paid a dime so i don't see how they'd be very political informing them about the reports that they were available to them that we would be available to them to discuss it there you know their request that letters still forthcoming but but that's  that's where we are as far as i understand those reports were delivered and so that they are in you know in the hands of the council members the mayor's office because it took a site so that they notice that on the budget committee a committee agenda report the and you get into more they can has your system of government as a topic from this court and and at this point do we want to talk about or do we want to hear hear from brent's this friday so at their committee meetings if you're interested that that's a big topic that they'll be discussing secondly regarding you know your concerns that you had about the values i think if you watch the discussion that happened a lot of it was process oriented so there was no discussion on the form of government and you know i spoke with counselors here about it lent and he said you know he has no form that he has in mind  he did he would have shared it with you and i think part of it is he doesn't want to sway any process so he didn't really want to say and say hey look into these forms because his thing that he said on the floor is he doesn't know what's the form that's why they were swarming these committees you know the special committee and also asking the cost government to look into it and update on the special committee why say it was a big discussion on process you know is kind of a matter of jurisdictional issues so they actually sent it to committee to discuss further so there's a question of you know what's going to happen with this with the timing of this special committee because it was sent to the policy intergovernmental affairs committee to discuss further they need to decide whether we can form this special committee because there is some issues of having non members part of this committee and so we need to figure out process and how we're going to figure that out so consequently you know the timeframe for this special committee is kind of in limbo we don't really know what the timing is and i think hopefully within the next step the next meeting which i understand will be at the first meeting of november they'll be able to really form up with this committee is go in the past with i think hopefully the passage out of the committee but then it has to go back to the full council so i'm thinking it may not be even formed until december they say in the resume it says they have one hundred eighty days to look at that issue but you know one hundred eighty to be from december really puts you at a point where you know it's going to be a tight time frame so i think the work of the cost government if you in my mind if you can get started on this issue i think you're the ones that are going to be on the forefront in really understanding what's going on but i think we're not able to tell you at this point what the delineation of roles are i think we can say we have an idea but really it's up to the nine members of the policy intergovernmental affairs committee to really decide that now that it's in the committee we've got it we introduced a measure but you know again it's up to the committee to ultimately decide so you know we would like to give you more information but that's all we have at this point i think you'd be unfair to give you an sway you information that we don't know is concrete because you might sit down on the path that then what it you know there's something different will happen out of that what the committee decides so that's kind of the updated this point we really don't have much more information we thought we would be kind of going along on a path where we could start appointing members to the special committee and then you could kind of tell you what what you know where things are going but unfortunately you know things don't always work out at council when you you know when things like this this is a big issue as you said and so i think in the members are taking this very seriously and how they would like to proceed through that's the normal process of the resolution like this it usually goes straight from the floor to a reading or is it usually debated in committee first and i research it we've shown that any special committees have always been asked on the floor but i think there was some question with corp console on how our rules are set up at this point on you know on how we should be you know what the mechanism should be to set this up so i think they wanted were looking at moving this resolution and skipping the policy committees for such an important issue is one of the things that heart of their discussion would you agree with that in part i think it just depends on which you know to me if you give you my personal opinion date they use that as the kind of a stalling tactic so if you don't like the idea you use that as the argument to stop the issue do you think that this is something that requires additional discussion no because i think the whole purpose is that we just want this to begin the study you want people to look start to look into the issue because at a certain point you know you have to take a look at the timings if you're only going to give them a certain amount of time and it's not going to work out for this this council you know for it for this upcoming election then there is no sense of urgency but then when you is no sense of urgency then people don't get things done you know within a certain period of time so you know i think you can look at it through both ways in terms of you know how we should proceed from that is a model you know there's several models that you can look at it you know there's sometimes depending on what type of special committee you know there are the members there were some that members could appoint their own you know as such sometimes it's a split mirrored ministration appointment but the stated that i think that was his intent but that was just the way the resolution was was set up a rope a recognition right right right but i think that was it was based on a standard boilerplate language jeff would you mind sharing with us that research that you did concerning  one concerning the processes by which the chairman is the one who selects everybody for a special preview of the situations in which that occurred as opposed to situation with special committees where the chairman and the counsel selected those members you said that there is a research that you guys did would you mind sharing that with us well i think past there is a couple and out no specifics but there were two that used to call blue ribbon commissions you know what in my in my research and the one that stands out most that i can remember off the top of my head is the ho that he was he so he was appointing so you know and then looking at some of our the things that we kind of saw that come in but again it just depends on what you want to do it depends on how fast you want to move i've seen it you know in many ways that you would like this commission to look at to say you'd like the commission to look at a new structure of the executive branch of the government ok cool that's a very baud scope outside i think the purview of this group but i guess i'd like to get a menu or bullet points of you know these are the specific tasks or you know determine what we do want to put on our plate for this next period you know because if you're saying well look at it ok cool it's this monster status camorra going to sit here and go i don't think we're going to be effective in change it because his deficiencies we have a hard time identifying what those distances are he said right right yeah the language in the resolution said that there were no deficiencies or that they point out no specific deficiencies in the language in the resolution did say that he wanted it that he would sit in it because that was one of the questions we know are you going to decide and and he said but i will bring it back to you so that you can see what the slate is he also said that he also invited all of the members to submit names to him of potential people to be on the special committee and they didn't have to mr lee be in their district he said i'm not looking for just district people i'm looking for people who you think can actually serve the public you know the best way possible and he also said that he was hoping to have two to three council numbers on that committee as goading members but also have remaining council members as non voting just as a side he's dealing with the recent injection wells with with that western region because there needs to be some support on that issue regarding how we're going to move forward because the court rulings are very affects everyone in the united concerns that we talked about earlier about the creation of the special committee and the way nature with it would work either alongside us or with us in proposing that report and have a suggestion for that but i'd like to know your thoughts on it f were not going to get a robust amount of the nation number county council and that's putting it lightly i think but but what we have to work with today's you know i think i think we should hedge our bets and choose a direction that we can go in that will be productive whether we get and if we you know and like i said earlier to me it feels like the push for a manager council or you know recommendations of for the manager council forms of government and the kinds of efficiencies that that might create  is trying to identify a solution for a problem which is fine in fact even in the latter and you've made reference to it i hated it said the resolution does not identify specific issues with the current county government structure and does not provide a draft charter meant so they are saying there are problems nobody's saying what those problems are what i will what i'd like to help with of the government and and so how do we establish a metric or baseline to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness or the effectiveness of the current structure of government then if you're looking at a baseline what would you even compare it to would you compare it to another strong mayor form of government or would you compare it to what's being considered some form of the many forms the manager county council style so i think where we're safe is identifying history is and taking course where we try to identify where the problems are and we you know and we do not have to you know it's not incumbent on us to propose solutions it's a nice thing that we should do and we should as often as we can but but we don't have to i report can say these are problems you know and we are you know skeptical whether or not the changes being proposed are likely to be proposed is going to be an appropriate solution do that's a decision we can make is a board personally i wouldn't want to hit you know like i said i don't frankly have the time to put into this that some of the previous chairs have had  in i think to do that we really need to at this point choose a focus and be disciplined and keeping in that focus because there's probably going to be a lot of things that come up especially in a hot issue like this where they say well this is another problem this is you know it's going to be all over the place so we need it we need to be disciplined and just just choosing our path and taking it going along with that i was speaking with with mr vick during the convention that he would like that kind of idea from us and something he wanted specifically or that he mentioned specifically was the need for public testimony or public hearings very interested in us perhaps creating avenues through which we could be secretly testable apart from when we difficult to ask we're all volunteers i don't know i have it's difficult for me to find time but that's one of the things that he mentioned specifically as being something that he wanted included in any investigation of the coliseum council manager system in you know you can schedule additional meetings i don't think as far as i know that you know some bores have prescribed you know meeting schedules you know minimum once a monster minimum having a quorum that sort of thing if it was a process where we're just gathering in testimony would we need quote we want to post something of course so that we get people there yes what would you would need a quorum unless the under remind the commissioners that your ability to meet in the same room together outside of a very we've noticed a meeting session is somewhat constrained by my sunshine law limitations but the formation of a temporary interim interactive investigative group that allows more than two commissioners be in the same place at the same time conducting the  business let me ask is does that still apply if it in this case there's something going on and we're encouraged to show up but it's not planned it's not you know r s v p their attendance you know it's not it's just said it would be great to be there to promote the board or to do you know to be there all support i would suggest that if if well it kind of depends if you were invited that you can all go well you know today might just be yes my recommendation would probably be to since you don't have this commission does not have another meeting second that in order to variation he decide now which one or two people want to go anybody else can provide written testimony and we can do as we say i think that was something i'm not sure i wasn't here last year but i know when there is the issue about whether or not to retain the  did have a couple of people attend t report and more of a suggestion of an alternative to the special committee if it gets bogged down in the policy and intergovernmental affairs committee which it is we'd be more than happy to invite any and all representatives that might quite wants to our meetings and have them participate in and sharing their expertise or their knowledge any council member is always welcome to come to our and participate in that regard as well i see no reason for them to be for there to be two committees pledge to get out there participate and help us out in this body especially when we don't have a specific delineation of tasks in our investigation so that's what i would suggest that if it's going to take too long to go through the council well we already have about that does those kinds of things they can come here and sit with us there's the the solution side the problem side does anybody have a problem with focusing on one rather than the other i think those are the writings of the ward off we don't need we don't need to go to what our recommendations could always be to increase trust between the county council and the mayor's office that's what i mean that's a recommendation for just about anything that you with nothing you know i think i think perhaps one of the reasons is when you read the some of the sources that might light uses the national association of counties one that he uses probably in a number of the different correspondence that agree and some of those you know there are i mean this resolution is he's pretty you can read it and even though it says that it does it the term and how come it may or may not be  you know pretty well has an opinion stated in the resolution but you know there are other ways and they probably would have worked harder changes perhaps that the mayor form of government could become more efficient you know with require a wholesale change i mean there's a there's  that some of the some of the research i was able to do in the last month suggests that the larger states prefer you know to deep in to more towards the mayor strong mayor form of government smaller you city you know cities tend to gravitate to the other way but it's i think it's i don't i'm not comfortable assuming that it's just the population size is the reason the strong mayor let's let's not look at it for the first little bit this is meat this is not our committee our committee will ultimately decide what we have in our report so feel free to scratch out cut or question whatever's in here this is these are my thoughts to move us forward it may be a little bit broader than what we're looking to do which was my intent so that we can cut down to the very specific items that we want to look at  would be helpful if i went through this with you guys you get really quickly ok so we start up oh i'm sorry help help me out by you know the suggesting like when you when you reach a point how we would measure absolutely discussing we're going to look at specifically two forms and stipulate that those primary form strong marriage as a council manager system along with the idea that there's a very large variation between these it's not one or the other there's a spectrum within that of different forms in which those kinds of things can occur and that statement is important because it would say that our recommendation would not be for one or the other but rather be somewhere in between most likely this itself i identified four different kind of archetypes of the things that we are looking out for the first is a full county manager system a full county manages the system has no elected mayor no elected executive branch and would essentially have the mare be a member of the council itself becomes the administrator is appointed by that council of a vote of five out of the nine members vote that can be different however you want to do it and that person holds a job as long as he can retain the sufficient number of votes within the county council the county council can choose fire and rehire at their whim at any point in time that council manager the council manager has full budgetary powers full appointment powers over department heads bilateral which is what we actually in the united states we have a tri system right with the judicial system blitz leaches branch of the executive branch this is moving more towards a parliamentary system which is more common in europe where you have representatives become the single body and those representatives and she's executive functions of a spectrum down from that is where the bear have an elected mayor with an appointed county manager by the council itself this would essentially be where we have an elected mayor manager or the managing director does not have that currently within our system which is an interesting point because they talk about doing the triggermen to change that to this very system in two thousand and twelve but we can talk about that debate when we get there and it was they didn't want to have council approval with it and then the last one is to to try i meant that changes the requirements for the county manager position essentially within the charter there are a stipulation of what are the requirements business space requirements or re for the company manager has currently i think it's five years of public administration experience with education at the graduate level so essentially a master's degree and business administration of public administration along with five years experience managing something or our current system the way that it is so that's kind of the different kind of systems that we look at we do have to define certain things and then we get into the meat which is the criteria on which we choose what that local government was first is a which is managers as we've had before them and see have they been fit that definition of what is professional i think by law they'd have to be the second they would then look at see would the county council be able to attract better candidates because that's essentially what they're saying they're saying we could find somebody better if we're going to change the council manager type of system is that a fair assumption so we check to see we do that by evaluating like jobs on  so i'm this is something that i don't know so we look at county manager type jobs of the county how much they're paid what kind of experience they have and understand what is that pool of people that's available and if we can find that that  council could find somebody better for the job than the mayor then that would be the basis on which we would say ok council manager form because the council can find somebody better essentially and h r problem is what we're looking at feeling within that also is the turnover question that stanford and brad mentioned earlier what's the potential turnover issues in switching the system right now it's pretty much slated with when the mayor is elected so we can have a different console manager every time we have a new year is that good is that bad what's the outcomes of that if we have a county manager it doesn't mean that there's not going to be turned over it just means a system of turnover will be different i found an article which i've referenced here which i also read it but it's a it's a resource that we have to so we have to evaluate defenestration turnover in some way so just looking at past historical company managers what were their credentials what was the trend over like that we have to figure out ok doesn't change any of those kinds of things so we eliminate completely the need to look at the demand for services because we assume that it will be the same under either former government i say i think that's a fair assumption that the demand for a skull to service it would change no matter what form of government  o the paper that i read theorized that if there's efficiency where it could be found is in this is in the new show and the only place where that would really show up is in property  office currently if we don't like our county administrator they just need to vote out the mayor and the mayor will sensually and with that change will come the new county mr so there's a direct line of accountability between the two and a council manager system that direct accountability is somewhat muddied because no matter how well or good or bad leave that county manager does he's not directly chosen by the public but is instead as long as can you he can retain a sufficient number of votes within the council he would retain his position so there is no direct accountability between the two ways in which we can analyze this this is a difficult one and the the way that i saw it coming up with this is that we would look at it as w the county council manager system in our county well we county be argued as being as accountable as it currently is we can agree that we want accountability i think that's dia being that if we wanted to have a truly representative accountable county manager we would have representative council members because we do not have representative district elective council members i just before coming to this meeting had a chat with any material about this very issue he gave me precinct level the orders for our last election we can essentially test to see what the elections would have looked like if they were district voting as opposed to that large voting by looking at this information and by looking at this information we could then identify to see if our council is actually representative of the geographic locations or not if we find that the council is not representative of those geographic locations we could then ma assumption that the council has the body to choose a council manager would also not be representative of the different just geographic regions within the county and that's how we would test accountability it's a big part reasons why we use at large what we write and they were hard to argue against the main one being that our population is not evenly distributed between districts there are four thousand voters i they get one representative there is one thousand voters on the night and they get one representative and because of that district voting he sees as being inefficient because of that when you get smaller voting bodies for an equal part something that's a powerful reason that in order to make that even their office would have to redistrict everything they'd have to change all of the districts you have to do districts yes you have to have all of these different districts for it  identifying topics defining the scope of the work any discussion of pros and cons should cool to those issues as opposed to being nice and this understood and misinterpreted as  speaking with sandy about this he mentioned that because this is something he's thought about as well he's actually done some research so it might be useful to have sandy come in and talk to us i would like sixty cents but  idea that there would be savings by simply eliminating the mayor's office is not true that there are functions of the mayor that would have to be retained no matter what form of government we have and he'd be happy to help us out in identifying what those exact functions of government that currently reside in the marriage office would have to be retained or he could should be retained if we were to change either form of government which i think would be would help us out immensely in understanding potentially what those savings would be by changing that by it centrally eliminating or placing the executive powers into the county council as opposed to that so he say that he'd be more than happy to help us out that  that it's not as simple as the savings are just simple as eliminating the mayor's office that's not that's not what it is so to say that we're going to cut out seven billion dollars in salary spike eliminating the bears off this is completely untrue and would and that would be a very simple are metric is just how much savings there would be from moving into salaries and operation costs which our budget director can help us  is that the greater change there is to charter the more time that should be taken in debating and analyzing the problem so that parents see essentially is we have to understand how much change to the charter would be required to move from the bears office of the county matters office and the amounts of appropriate time debate and effort that would be taken up by all functions of government in correctly stating what that charter amendment would be so the mayor's office county council and the clerk's office can all help us with that and understand exactly how much change and cooperation council the tail measure corporation council specifically and that they would because the language in it has to be legally correct so in order to do that we do is we to analyze how much usually the volume of work is for charter amendments usually for me year to year during charter years because like every year we did look at what they would estimate as being the amount of work that they'd have to take and time frame that they'd have to take in doing this kind of charter meant which is a change from a strong marriage to a council manager and see if we have enough time to do it if we don't have enough time to do it then the suggestion would be to defer if we do have enough time to do it then we can do it for this upcoming two thousand and sixteen charter  as we think we can do my suggestion would be to focus on my preference would be two of his you know two or three of his subheadings and three might be a lot and then the other ones we can we can include in the report but not doing the best you know or not do as thorough investigation of such as right these are these are other considerations for our purposes we've decided to get into these specific  sort of there if there are ones that we can all agree on that we can could start investigating right now that we can just does that yet and if there are ones that you feel if we can patriotic event should we agree on then that would then we can begin work and then we could choose another topic at the next meeting there is three different levels of effort also in each of these you know some of these require much less level of effort than others do so require significant levels of effort so i think that should also be something that we consider i think ok well i think that once i'd like thinking of level of effort i think the ones that are the easiest that have the lowest local effort is one because that's mostly just a literature r job somebody that has trouble access could do it it's that simple it doesn't require even very many interviews with other bodies because we're not looking specifically if i were very generally between the two systems mentioned property property values everyone i haven't actually looked at this item which brings us to a different topic do we have to pledge it to purchase research articles journal articles purchase it legally first we need the articles yes picket you the exact articles and references so i can see the articles i can't share them because that's not part of my it's not part of my current job so after we have to get the information legally information to specific titles sources and everything roil you it's very hard to attract quality candidates because they know their lifespan is limited there and it's going to be not a fun job while they're in there so you know that's something else that plays into you know how you i'd be happy to do the the folding analysis and then i'll pass that along to whatever else is actually doing the other stuff ok so i thought i was missing i don't want to and this can be done through interviews you know and just discussing i mean we've got a lot of tools that are disposable are there any others that anybody folklores is there anyone that any of these that people felt are less important or more difficult i wouldn't want to see less important but not as important  so sandy will get back to me we'll see what he says about it and the other we conclude the other topic that i underline i really like it's the professionalism suspect of it  anybody i think i would start by looking at equivalent positions on maui so we look out manager system seattle marshalltown like mike like look at his position look at the requirements for that position and how much opposition is getting paid we don't compare that to what the county manager gets paid and if we see a huge discrepancy about our county managers getting paid a lot less that's indicative to us that you're not going to attract somebody of the same caliber when they can have a choice of going to some big hotel and getting paid x amount of dollars are being the county manager with all that comes with it being paid half the amount or whatever it is thing then going to i think the historical analysis of our county managers would be useful as well the argument being that because there are merrily appointed that they're not professional profession when i looked at this and i wrote it all down i looked at it it's doable we can do these especially with the help of people like dan and sandy and their support going through this analysis it has both what we're saying because we've widely engaged with these individuals and they're the people that you would go to anyway to answer a lot of these questions they've been told very willing to help very engaged in any discussion that i've had with them and i think that we can enjoy a very good relationship with  counties and see if there's a what the turnover difference is between a mayor and a city manager says something that some us take o city managers that if they do a good job they can be there for a long time which is i'm sure true there that some community were served on city council that the longest serving city manager fifty's the community didn't have the the city did not have a bank account the county to the county had a tax base and forty five years later you know the city is sitting on a big huge twenty five million dollars for the size of the city twenty five million dollars unfunded depreciation so if something broke you pay for it to cash in the interest reversed out interest it's not much but you could get three percent on the nelson and swara article is the actual journal article so the actual research that is for a lot of the findings in that make will report so in this report it has the stuff that garrett mentions about how even though the county manager system is the most common to forty three percent of all counties when you look at it by different population sizes it's not that higher populations sitting about council strong  government are more prominent and it goes into different reasons of why that is so often the biggest thing that they follow or one of the other alternatives that they found is that council manager systems tend to exist largely in the southwest because there are newer communities sink so just because there are newer communities and they didn't exist in the eight hundred seven eight hundred where a better system is pretty much all you had that's why they have those systems as opposed to the southwest and the northwest if you're newer communities and therefore they're going to use different forms and so it's just simply a matter of when the city was incorporated this is essentially what the answer is also that certain states stipulated that counties have to be all right but the last word there is an example analysis of the exact thing that we're doing so this is for a county in south carolina sol is very county and it is the exact report of they were asked the exact same question and this is the report that they made in i think it's two thousand and two or something like that but you can use that as a reference for how their report looks all right great yes so it i mean as you as you have time just educate yourself on this to be a topic that hopefully i can get council share white and here to talk about i will send those invitations off to everybody to hopefully get more responses long as we're moving forward today and have a direction where if we're going to be on track we can we can add to what we've got today depending on what you guys find a note going through the outlines go you to understand that if you do choose me as the chair well i think you know the important thing to consider this world and since people have lives we'll yeah things to do the reason we do this is you know we want to be civically minded