Go ahead and call the meeting to order for a while now. Um, and we will just get right into the work session which is on the balanced decision process. You do have to be welcome. Welcome McKe here. Bingham here. Nicholls also here. Uh, Friedick present. Lantern here. Excellent. Uh well, mayor, um I'm looking forward to introduce you to Jim Proer. Uh he was first brought to my attention. Uh I I was talking with Kendra over lunch as you know, I like to try and get together and hear from different folks. And when I was talking with her, I was I was talking about things that she's seeing in different cities and how they go through their decision-m process because uh I I was recognizing that sometimes I found myself guilty of bringing things to you that maybe were not the best use of your time. And then also sometimes we we landed on some things that maybe it was too early in the process. Uh like like it needed to to cook a little bit more before we brought it to you. Uh and and so as I was I was just processing it with her, I was like, "What have you seen in other cities? Do how do you see other cities do it?" And she uh introduced me to the balanced decision process that you had before you. Uh, and so I read through that and I was like, "Oh, this this is thoughtprovoking is is really kind of raising some of the issues." And so then I reached out to Jim and I said, "Hey, would you be willing to come and talk with me about this?" And so we talked and and I think it's good for us to talk through his framework for him to share. He's a a very experienced uh retirement city administrator and has also worked in other roles with elers and some stuff. So, he's been a a great consultant uh to city staffs and councils, and I'll let him share more about his his resume. Uh but when I met with him, I was like, I I think this would be helpful for us. And so, the plan is for Jim to walk through this uh with the council and and with the directors. Uh and then after we get some guidance on how you're thinking about and feeling it. So, uh then he's going to come back next Wednesday. Uh and then we're going to be having a session with uh key staff that are bringing products to use so that then whatever we conclude is the way that we want to do things. Then we're communicating that to staff so that we have a shared understanding of how we want to. So that's the plan for today and the why and to Jim. Sure. Thanks. And just uh a few things to start with. I'm not going to spend much time talking about myself because it's pretty boring. I mean you to the extent you have interest we can talk about it later and some of it may come up in our discussion. The second thing is it's really important we manage expectations from the beginning. Uh I am not particularly comfortable talking about stuff in theory. I don't do that real well. Uh but I what I do especially with this process and several others is help people get things done. Uh when I first started working in this general area, I interviewed a lot of elected officials and staff and I asked them uh really what they wanted to get done that they couldn't get done and then what are the barriers to getting that done and that's how this evolved was really talking to people and helping them solve problems. This is primarily used. This is primarily used I'm going to say almost exclusively used and presented as part of an effort to work with teens to get things done. Uh particularly either to help take advantage of opportunities let's say development opportunity or public improvements that are critical uh or to to solve problems. So this has been used in terms of preparing disaster recovery efforts uh redevelopment efforts after disasters and big ones. Um so that's what we that's how this is focused and it's so that that's what we want to accomplish and really make this useful. It's helpful if if we start off with just talking to you and asking you uh to tell me and tell share with others what are some examples of projects you've seen and it could be other communities that maybe haven't moved along haven't got done uh or opportunities that you'd like to see uh your community or other communities want want to address. So that gives me a better framework of how this can be used in your community. So if that's okay, we can start off with that and however you want to kick that off. Wants to start us off. First one question was like in any any situation. I mean this just helps me make this more less theoretical and more practical. Well, I'm just going to say off the top of my head, I don't I' I've only been a council member since January. Um, so I guess I would have to put a little bit of thought into that question. I could just come up with that off the top of my head. Okay. I've been a council member since 2020 and I'm in the same boat. So it's not just the newness. I feel like you had a pretty effective tenure. Uh, most of the things that we have wanted to have happen, we've been able to do. Maybe it hasn't had the outcome that we would have wanted. Um, I think the best example I can think of there is there was a big push that I was trying to make and Natalie helped with and several others went along with uh in updating our PUD um standards and how we try to use the PUD to incentivize retention of open space and identifying specific public benefits that we would acknowledge as being valuable so that we avoid giving people credit for things they would have had to do anyway and not really get anything of value to the city's vision. So we adopted all those uh guidances I think in like 2022 2023 and haven't really seen any applications come in taking advantage of them. So we we put a lot of work in haven't really seen an outcome that we've had a development come through that's actually done those things we wanted them to do. So I think for me that's the biggest frustration that I've had in my time. That's good. That's actually one of the more common areas is is land use and and dealing with that. So that's certainly a good application. If I could build on the land use one, uh, as I'm a relatively newcomer here, you know, a year and some change, uh, but, um, it's pretty evident to me that there's been some some false starts in the the 30 corridor in terms of potential development in which there there was got some traction. Something happened like way long before I think it was called the Senenix development probably almost 20 years ago. uh and then that kind of fell apart and then there's been some other efforts and so um we do have that on our strategic plan this year to try and give some attention to that but um I think that's indicative of a frustration for the community at large at not being able to attract or secure commercial uh development. Uh so so trying to diversify our tax base. We we've had some good industrial wins. Uh but uh you know I think Dominoes is our first great somebody's going to serve something other than beer or gas. Uh and um and so trying to provide diverse opportunities despite best efforts. Uh and that I I know that's been frustrating as I've talked to residents uh and it's been frustrating as as I've talked to staff of how do we do that economic development component better when staff is stretched uh the market is capricious developers are focused and not on that good it's another great [Music] you know, other cities, um, maybe not in a positive way, but I've seen some struggles of like Dayton has, I feel like, gone back and forth on like road a road alignment and some land use issues that seems to be really frustrating them. Um, just watching from the outside. Um, another land use one that just has maybe not gone as well for a neighboring city. One that sticks out for me is is the partnership between us and the county or lack thereof. Um we don't seem to think we are getting any help with traffic, those kind of things. forward thinking as far as planning. It's more of a build it and then maybe we'll do something from the county goes on. If there's something there, that would be great. It would be nice to be able to put the horse before the cart, so to speak, as that's going on. And and I think that ties into a lot of the commercial and industrial side of stuff. What are we going to do? And even the residential side up on the 30 corridor and then 101 and stuff just the the build it and then Henipin County might do something about it 10 years later is is frustrating. So, and we don't I don't know any of us that speak very highly of the county, which we should probably maybe start changing them, but that's going to take a little while for me to do that. But, it's just it's it's it's frustrating not being able to do that. And we can go all the way down to, you know, the legislature doing what they're or talking about what they're wanting to try to do. That council used to be a entity that was based solely off of sewer and water and now we're building light rail and other things too. It just that that support and and guidance from outside entities that seem to have a lot more control over what we do than what we like to have control. That makes sense. It does. And I would say that you just hit on something that a lot of people miss and that is the work that government does. First of all, you're in the you're in the quality of life business. That's what the business you're in. Uh and really to to build that, you really need to make sure that you're working off of a a relationship basis, not transactional. And too often you miss that. This business is relationship. It's a relationship with your with the people in your community with developers and and you know that's that's really important as well. That's how you get development is is really develop relationships and better understand what their needs are. So that's important. Anybody else? I guess I would I would just kind of um mirror Dean's comments. I think uh one thing that's been frustrating for me is seeing the uh top-down management coming from uh the Met Council, half of whom don't even know where we are or they've never been here. And they're telling Corkran that they know better than we do what Corkran wants and needs. and uh it just seems as though uh any concerns just kind of go go to the wind a bit. So I agree with Dean and I share his frustrations and not only in my council if I could add on that the state legislature. Yeah. Good. Multi-jurisdictional. I mean to expound on that it it feels like so many of our partners when we don't have the authority but it requires as you allude to relationship some of our neighbors have resources that we just don't have access to and so when they step up and they break open the checkbook in ways that we can't then they're able to manipulate the system to their advantage and then that sets a new precedent that that's the expectation with some of our partners. So, we'll do that if you do it like so and so does it. Well, we don't we don't have the tax flexibility to do that. We can't just rebuild the county road that comes through here as some of our neighbors have and and you know, so the county said, "Well, we'll do that if you pay this." We can't pay that and it's not even our road. Uh but but some of our neighbors have and then as as we were talking about like the Met Council influence uh MPCA like it goes through so many so many partners that um in many cases as council management said they've never even been here. So like the MPCA came out here and they were shocked. What do you mean you have dirt roads? Uh this is 2000 this was in 2024. Yes, we do. uh and and that that means that we have to govern different. We have to be stewards different. Uh and we need to partner with you different. And it does it's not as simple as just throwing money at it. Um and I I do want to push back on you. You say that that it needs to be relationship and not transactional. The bulk of my observation here with our developers is it's absolutely transactional. Well, I'm not saying that it that it isn't, but you have to start at least from my my experience and the work that we've done both in cities but also in elders is to help communities get development and get development done. And one of the changes we made is that relationship base. So, uh, I won't get into a lot of detail here because we don't have the time, but one of the things we do is encourage communities, uh, to really start in a very early process and invite developers in and with their some background and just let them talk about what they need. And I'm so surprised that you get developers, very high quality developers that'll share that. You don't have to charge anything. You have to provide them some information, but they'll share that. So, let's get into this unless anybody else wants to want to add something. Um, and and I would just say that this the the issue of um that that you're talking about especially on that development end uh just a quick story uh and I only get four stories. So, uh Jay will have to keep track and after that you can put the uh you can uh have the chief put tasers on me. first story. So I get to um executive director of central line council of governments which is the med council for the Charlotte region which is a pretty big region and they had never developed a regional growth plan to do just what you talked about. what are the what are the road systems going to be not not just in the the region our greater Charlotte region which was pretty diverse but we had to also uh according to this grant going to South Carolina as well and your mayor will tell you South Carolina and North Carolina very different uh very different politically and even communities Charlotte I mean Charlotte was like the Minneapolis I mean uh they thought themselves to be very very progressive and you have right next to them communities that are very conservative and they had dirt roads and and very different uh very different population base and we had to develop a regional growth plan that had brought all these communities together. The first time we went out and started talking to communities, there was a lot of fish shaking at me and and others on our on our team. But we ended up being able to within two years across two states and about uh 78 communities and I can't name 16 counties uh developing a regional growth framework that looked at where the roads were going to grow, where jobs were going to go, where housing to support those jobs were going to be, what the uh what the economic framework was going to be for that. um where where the utility systems infrastructure was going to be. We got that done within two years with broad-based agreement and that plan is still being implemented today and we did it using this type of process with a board with with a very diverse board uh coming on board and helping us achieve that. So that's positive but it takes it takes a discipline. I'm again to manage expectations. I'm not going to tell you anything you don't know already. What I am going to do is provide a framework for how you make decisions that'll allow you to do two things and this is critically important. Um if you'll allow me and two most important things you manage and that need to be managed are time and risk. And the time is elapsed time and just the finite time. So you only have let's start with finite time. You only have so much time as council members and as staff to work on issues. And what what you want to do is to make sure that you're working on the most important things. What you think are the most important. Not what he thinks, not what I think, not what somebody else thinks, but what you think. There are things you have to do like pass a budget, do some uh zoning actions, but you know what? It's up to it's up to your staff to say, "Here's the implications. If you don't get that done, if you don't get it on time, but if you don't want to do it, he can't make you do it." Why? You're elected. You're elected because people trust your judgment. He's not elected. I'm not like. So, uh, it's your job. And I want to communicate a sense of importance on that. Um, you have to be in charge and Jay respects that. Your staff respects that. You have to respect it. You have to understand that it's your job and you got to manage your time. Got to manage your time. You only have so much time to do this and still live a life. Um, so it's important. elapse time. Time kills all good ideas, projects, and if you wait too long to get things done, it's too late. So, another second story before I get tased is uh I was first city manager in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, community of about 150,000 within two years after getting there and changing a form of government, changing the staff structure altogether. We had um the fifth worst natural disaster in US history at the time and that was in 2008. Within two years after I got there, we had over 10,000 10,000 parcels were flooded. um over 2,000 homes of workforce housing were uh were impacted and many of those people were never going to be able to get back home their homes. They had a very good flood management plan to a point but we were 12 feet above that point in terms of flood law at 12 feet. So we were the the workforce housing in the basically the whole downtown was flooded. Businesses Quaker Oaks, General Mills, others getting ready to move out because they needed to have that workforce and they saw that workforce going away. They saw the infrastructure necessary to support that going away. We had over $500 million of damage to city facilities. Every city building was impacted in some way and they saw no hope for for recovery. That wasn't going to happen. Uh so we knew we had to develop a flood management plan that projected a future that people could live in that community and businesses could come back. We used this approach and we were able to get a um flood management plan that was the basis for a redevelopment plan. We had that done in four months working with the Army Corps of Engineers, the public works person here. How easy it is is it to work with the Army Corps of Engineers. Four months and they gave us an award for it. We got him to award because we got it done so quickly. The last time counts. We had to have we had we had to have community support for this too. So we had to work with the community. So the last time for development and a lot of things last time. This process is is recognized that that risk there's two types of risk. There's a risk you're going to make the wrong decision. Not supported by the public where it just doesn't work. Not supported by the public means that it's going to be harder to implement. The other risk is that you just make the wrong decision. Um, one of the mistakes that is often made, and we'll talk about this, is for elected officials to weigh in too early in the decision making process. When you do that, what happens? you're not going to be as open to getting what will certainly be conflicting information as time goes along because there's no decision you're going to make with the hill beings where there's going to be all advantages and no disadvantages. Most of the important decisions you make are going to be featherweighted between advantages and disadvantages. And to the extent that again you have a process that is really quite transparent and that the public sees you doing this and they see that you're weighing this go back to you were elected because what? Because people trust you and they trust your journey. If they see you exercising that, if they see you exercising that, they're going to be more likely to to let you use that trust and make that decision. So, that's critical. Risk of making a wrong decision and the the risk of really not not weighing all sides of the issue in a very transparent way. So, that's what this process is focusing. Now, keep that in mind as we walk through it because that's critical. Let me stop for a second. Questions? any push back on anything I said. All right. So, what we do is basically look at three different phases of making a decision. First of all is the process. How are you going to make your decision? What information you are you going to use are you going to need? And here's where your staff comes into play. They're gonna they're going to throw something out there based upon their experience and what they understand. They're going to give you that here's the process we're going to use for our decision. That's going to change. That's going to change based on your input. You're going to say no, we want more of this and less of that. Um there we're we'll even talk about this later, but even with the timeline to get you that information. So you don't again at the early stages, you want to just talk about how are we going to make this decision? What information are we are we going to need? And your staff is going to provide some of that. uh some of that information for you, but you're going to look at it, you're going to say, "Yeah, that's good, or we need more of this or that." And that may change over the course of time. What we want to avoid, and this has never happened in courtroom, but what we want to avoid is getting to the end of a decision, and I've worked with a lot of communities uh that have asked me to come in after repeated problems with getting to the end of a decision-m process and then saying then somebody coming in saying, "Yeah, but we really need to hear about this." No, it's your job and their job to get it that out early on so that as you think about those issues, excuse me, they can prepare them and and again that's going to evolve. That's going to be an iterative process. But you don't want to wait till the end and throw out a bomb at the end saying well I didn't think about this. Now there's some ways to do that. First of all, it's really important this again. And I don't know your community at all and I don't pretend to know it. But there are people in the community that are going to second guess you and that's not a bad thing, but they're going to second guess you. They're going to be sometimes the they're the the naysayers. Sometimes they're supporters, but they're going to they're going to give you feedback. And you're going to get feedback a lot of different ways. It's very important to listen to that feedback. Even if you think their questions are are irrelevant, you got to share those and you got to give staff a chance and whoever else you're working with a chance to evaluate that and get information back. You can't hide that. You can't you can't just say we aren't going to look at that because what you want to be able to show is that you've you've uncovered all the rocks. You've looked at things that may be a problem or an issue. You want to you want to make sure that you've seen that. And this this this often comes up that you'll look at questions or or provide information that seems to be contrary to what you want to accomplish. Getting that out on the surface is important because you know what? People aren't idiots out there. They're going to know if you haven't looked at those issues. They're going to know that. And if you wait and just say, "We hope nobody will bring that up." That's going to be a problem for you later on. So, you don't want to do that. You want to get it out to the service and and have your staff prepare information to help you examine those issues that are brought up. So, that's process. That process is very important. Um and again the process get involved over the course of the time but you got to start with a skeleton of what that'll be and then continue to say is this a process issue or a policy issue. So then you get into the policy discussion and that's looking at the information that's been provided based upon what you've asked for and and again you may ask for more you may ask for you may say you know we don't need more of this we need more of that information. Um, and again, in some cases, you're going to want to see input from the public, and there's a separate uh separate discussion. We get into in some detail about systematic ways to do that. The the discussion I had earlier about the flood management plan. Um, very controversial. People lost their homes. They weren't going to be able to return to their homes. businesses, small businesses lost their livelihood and weren't and and that livelihood could not be reestablished without homes nearby or their business could not I mean this was and these were these were not billionaires, millionaires, even thousands. I mean, these were people living paycheck to paycheck, yet we needed to make sure that they were involved and see saw what we were doing and really participated and a lot of times sometimes just emotionally letting us know what baggage they were carrying and what they would this had to be supported by the public. In other parts of the country where they don't do this, they have to do they have to go through this three or four or five times before they get a works. Not in theater office hours. We had their support. I'm not saying everybody supported it, but it was enough support so that the elected officials could continue to this day to implement that plan. So getting the public involved in a genuine and authentic way is really important. But there's other things. You may have off-site experts u but your staff can coordinate all they can give you that information. You have to make sure that as you go through that policy discussion it's as thorough as each of you individually think it needs to be and collectively uh and that's on you and it's not on them. It's not up to them to decide whether uh you should be satisfied. you have to be uh satisfied with that because at the end of the day you have to make the decision and you got to stick with it and you're not going to stick with it if you're not satisfied. So you have to you have to be um comfortable sharing your concerns. Again you're electing people that's your judgment. Okay. Can I ask you to speak one thing? So, so, uh, you know, as as we're different people and and in some cases, what brings people to elected office might might be different reasons. So, consequently, what's going to be satisfying to one person may not be satisfying to another. So, can you speak to the the instances in which uh there's there's a barrier to satisfaction because we've got potentially a majority that that is moving in a direction that doesn't make me feel satisfied. Yeah, that's that's a perfect question and ultimately that's as you because you have to you have to work as a body as a team and that's up to you to decide that. Um so that if one person is asking and this is often the case that there may be one person that wants something and the resources just aren't available to get that done. I mean there's just not enough money or time to be able to get that done. The rest of you have to look at that and say is that reasonable are we going to allow that to happen to that is to go ahead with the decision without keeping somebody satisfied or not. You have to decide as a body and you should be very deliberate about that discussion and that puts a lot of a lot of pressure on you and on this guy over there on the mayor. But you got to do that. I mean it's just it's a discussion that you have to have and it's it's it's important that you feel comfortable disagreeing in an agreeable way. You just have to get comfortable. And sometimes that's tough for people. We've even brought in psychologists to help with that, to help you manage that in some cases on on critical issues because remember time's important. And and if somebody has a real concern that can be addressed, you've got to all make a decision whether or not that's going to undermine the overall effort uh and your the ability to have a decision that sticks because the public is watching. You know, this If the decision you make isn't supported by the public, that's what happens. There's either forced elective elected turnover um or a decision that just isn't generally supported. And forced elective elected turnover isn't a good thing either. Why? And I've seen council members say this. Well, we're going to make this decision and if the public doesn't support it, I don't care. You know, we're going to get it done. If I lose if I lose my position, then so be it. No, that doesn't work. I mean, that's just a coward's way out because at the end of the day, if somebody gets unelected, then that could certainly uh cause that decision to be upset and not and then what happens, and I've been we've been called in more often than I'd like to count. um where that happens and then revisiting that important decision has to wait has to wait a couple years till things calm down until people kind of let that pass. Um or you can't. So I I just wanted to my my question wasn't directly we we've got great collaboration my time here that but I came from a community in which the reason I got the job was exactly what you were talking about a decision had failed to meet referendum a couple times council uh decided to move forward and the the city still is very divided about it. It was it was a major investment in infrastructure. It was a controversial decision and and it continues to be a a problem for for followon staffs and follow on electives because uh it the the community felt very strongly about it uh and and the council was able to get a majority consensus that contradicted that and that's and and and that's the that's the decision you need to make. I mean you need to make that decision whether or not you've got enough public support to avoid that type of problem. And you you each of you have got a a different lens on that population within your community and you've got to listen to it and you got to understand that you're going to hear from different people and different things and that's okay. Uh you you want that to happen. That conflict is a good thing. It's resolving conflict inappropriately is a bad thing. But conflict is great because that that really gives you the uh the the substance to really thoroughly discuss an issue and uh to work out those those issues. Again, it's important to remember that most important decisions you make are rarely rarely all advantages or most advantages and very few disadvantages. almost always that feather way of balance. They're just always and I and I just have to say one more thing about that and that is I can't tell you how many times elected officials have made decisions and me or the team thinks oh wow that's the wrong decision. But you know what? We pride ourselves on understanding first of all that you're elected. And we pride ourselves on making those decisions work. And more often than I care to admit, in retrospect, the decision the council made me that I thought was so wrong, they were right and I was wrong. You know, that's because we we're we're not as grounded as you are in the community. And I'm not saying that to make us look better um or to make you look good. It's just a matter of fact that that's your job. It's your job to make those decisions and uh because because you have that that bank of trust within your community and we want you to understand that but also to build on that trust. And how do you build on that trust is to really be thorough in your review and understanding of what concerns may be that you have that other council members may have that your constituents may have. So that's really important. So I I guess what are your thoughts on looking I think there's also a a caretaker role of the community um by the council members and when you talk about being grounded and I guess an example that comes to mind um you know our our city and we're we're not on this topic now but in the in the history you know of paving gravel roads in the community and um you know there's at at one time a consensus that it's better if you know if it can be done across the board but we have to get incrementally. So there's a general consensus, but as soon as it comes to one person's road, everybody's against it. And you only hear from the community members that are that are pushing back on it. And so when they're looking at decisions that they say, "Okay, I know long-term this is for the good of the community, either fiscally or um whatever the other factors are, whether that's zoning or what whatever that however that plays out. um you know being rooted in that community and being responsible but also sometimes knowing that the right answer isn't either the community members are not well informed or don't understand the implications on the more global scale and I think that's one of the things where I see a lot of decision-m really become challenging when you're on a microcosm the right answer is being immediately like responsive to your constituents but it's the wrong answer for 30 years from now well and that gets to That gets to the the basic issue two of just the NIMI not in my backyard type and that's where you just have to have a very uh sophisticated um public engagement uh effort and the public engagement is hard hard work but it's it it it's important to really use that to manage your time and manage your risk. You need to do that. So we use that when I mentioned that earlier in uh in north North South Carolina that that regional growth plan we use that and again we get that done in two years. We got that flood management plan done in four months with thousands of people participating thousands participating in public engagement and I will tell you a lot of people had disadvantages and they saw those and they were able to express those. I mean, again, we had I can't tell you how many meetings that I went to that we've just had my hair flat. But I will also tell you that sometimes after that, if you allow people to do that, I still remember to this day, I remember one woman really coming after us because we had we hadn't allowed her to rebuild her house yet. She and she had some just sad stories, you know, that was her home for generation after generation. just a screen bar air flat walking out and I'm feeling terrible. Um because we're letting people down. This this was weeks after the plug. She came and I she came up to me and she put her arm around me and said, "I hope you didn't take that personal." Uh and what that told me was, you know, two things. First of all, that outlet was very important. um just allowing that to happen. But also later on we would have people that would come up and say we do not agree with the decision but we're not going to fight it. And they would use different words. But why? Why? Because they saw they were heard. The participation plan we use allowed people to see I mean we would write down here's what they thought was wrong with what we were doing and we'd respond to it. But we couldn't always satisfy. I mean there were there were some people we you know addressed but you allow people to see them. So getting back to your point very typical I mean there we're going to have that problem and to the extent that you can recognize it early on and develop a system to gather information so that you can use that incorporated. It's a big mistake. Again I had one council member in that same community that would his motto was ready fire aim. just get things done. And the problem with that is that would be great if you got the right thing done, but if you didn't aim the right way, you would have to redo a decision. And again, more often than not, we would have been called in as consultants to solve that problem where a decision didn't work, wasn't able to be sustained, and then they they still had that problem or opportunity that they wanted to take advantage of. So do it right. Do it right. Take the time. Take the pain because it is painful. This is not easy stuff, but we do do it right. So that decision process again, that's where all the information is in. And then you spend time really thoroughly debating it. I mean, you you do not want to leave a stone and turn there. You want to make sure that that's very transparent. People see you uh doing that uh and you make a decision. Again, the the the mayor that that I worked with in Richmond uh in was a mayor that we really struggled to get along when we first started working together. But it didn't take too long to realize that he was probably one of the best mayors I've ever worked with. Why Kersh would wait until the end of the decision? Uh and he would then say and he'd listen to everybody, the public, and he'd listen to other council members at at the decision uh meeting, and he'd say, "Here's what I heard some of the advantages to doing this. Here's the disadvantages, and now here's what I'm going to do." And I can't tell you how many people would come up afterward and say, "Well, thanks. At least you heard us." Because he was able to do that so well. And uh I I realized he was risk management for me because at that point in time he made it clear it was his decision and the council's decision not not the staff's decision and that's important too. So that's that's the basic process. We we walk through it in more detail. Watch our time here. But um so in in the detail here in that in that first yellow phase process discussion, you're just going to identify those decision components and information requirements. And again, this you may when you first start looking this, you want to map this out. You want to start talking about what do we what what information we want. Here's where, for example, you're going to say, you know, we we we want to do some public engagement. And there may be different ways to do that. Maybe just sending something out in a newsletter or having a a uh public meeting about it. We we recommend on, you know, the the kind of high-end version of that is a set of really three phases of public engagement. The first phase is just saying and and this is important just to think about this in your head of what the framework is. The first phase is just to think about what how would we frame up this opportunity or problem we're trying to resolve and you put it out there to the public and you're providing other background information. And one of the things you provide is chronology of here's efforts in the past or background in this information, other efforts to try to solve this or just history of a piece of land or maybe some goals that you have. But what the most important thing is to say here's how we see it. And then you ask people for feedback. You ask for people to provide their comments, questions or concerns. uh and we take that information uh and reframe what that problem or opportunity is. We reframe it from their perspective, not certainly not some outside experts. U one of the biggest mistakes we make um and I've seen make is looking at how I would present something or some planning firm or some other consultant. No, you've got to do it and not even from your perspective. you got to do it from their perspective, what you're hearing from the public. So that gets filtered, I shouldn't say filtered, it just gets condensed and you look at and you say, "Yeah, that seems to capture what we've heard." Um, and by the way, at those first meetings, you invite the people that are most critical. Um, and again, I don't mean that in a negative way, but you want people to who really think about these things and are likely to throw out opposing viewpoints because you want to get that in there, but you want to get full spectrum of people from the community to give you that feedback. And then you want to frame it from their perspective. And then then you take a look at the second phase is really looking at what are the uh what are the options to solve that problem or take advantage of the opportunity. And again, what you do is prepare some information that looks at what are the advantages and disadvantages of each of those different options. And again, you're going to ask the public to give you their feedback on the advantages and disadvantages. They're going to provide uh or provide some other options. They're going to give you that information and and again you're going to take it and distill it and feed it back to you and get it back to the uh get it back to the public with at that point in time you're also going to be taking a look at from your perspective that is the elected officials you're elected because people trust your judgment what are what seems to be the best way to solve this problem can I ask question so so this as as I'm just processing these you're talking to this makes it clear for elected officials and staff. We also have appointed officials. So, so we we have some commissions which which uh some of the feedback that you're talking about uh there's been decisions to create opportunities for the public to provide the feedback to those commissions and then the commissions to provide their input and understanding of that feedback to the elected body. Um and and one one of the concerns that I heard sometimes is is if they go to the commission and they provide their feedback and then the commission provides input and then they come back to the elected body. Um are are we what what purpose does the commission serve then? Like like the commission is is supposed to help become more efficient uh to to provide those touch points. And to your point, we also want to provide lots of opportunities for that feedback. And so this is my question. Then what role does the commission have? Yeah. So, so for example, like a public hearing, you have a public hearing for a commission and then they come and then the public reps provide the same feedback to the council again and it's almost like a second public hearing. Uh is that's not the most efficient way to make decisions. No, but some some of that is unavoidable. Some of it's written into legislation, others, uh, to the extent that it's possible, you want to train your boards and commissions on some of those decisions. Some of those decisions, let them do that and have them manage that public sedation cost. But on the big ones and you have to decide what the big ones are when the ones that are going to be controversial that again you you got to I want you to tattoo the managing time and risk inside your eyelids because that's what it's about. You've got to look in what's what's the potential risk here? I mean, is this something that could potentially develop on this? And you've got to figure that out because you're elected and you've got to decide, you know, on this one, we're okay with allowing the rectory advisory commission or some others to to to manage that process. Um, and you may you may decision and then change it later on. That's okay. But but you can't do it all because you just don't have the time to do it all. You got to decide which issue you're going to address. Sometimes you're going to want to do that. Sometimes duplication is just unavoidable on voting issues, unavoidable. But to the extent that they're doing their job, they're going to say, "Here's what we considered. Here's the advantages and disadvantages." And to the extent that you can get them trained in those areas and and just have help have have some help walking through that process a couple of times, you're going to get a much cleaner transcript um uh of of the information that's important. People are going to see that you you looked at those issues. Are they still going to are they still going to come to the meeting and and let you know what they feel? Sure. They are. And that's good. I mean, that's just part of the process. And and you know that that can I just take what you just said and try to feed it back to what I think Jay's concern was what is the purpose of the second round of feedback I think one of the points of value having gone through that process on the resident side in the past is when the residents give input to the planning commission for example I guess the parks commission to potentially ideally that commission is going to work to transmute that feedback into specific policy recommendations and edits to the resolution to the plan proposals for the council to try to put in place when we make our decision. And if we only did it at the council level, you don't have that extra several weeks of modification and revision for staff to go back and review what else could we do here. I think getting that feedback early is still valuable even if we end up getting the same feedback again because ideally the plan itself has changed somewhat to accommodate it at least in cases where that's possible. I I think I think it's really helpful what Jim's saying there too is is is differentiating the types of decisions that we're making like like if that happens with every decision then we really we really are duplicating. I I appreciate what you're saying in terms of giving time to respond uh so that we can come up with better information to address concerns, potential alternative resolutions to to to consider before we get to the decision point. So process-wise, that makes sense. Uh but if we do that for everything then you know there might be another way like like I know that the the last community I came from uh the parks and recreation commission essentially felt like they they really weren't value at it and eventually it was it was uh dissolved because uh it would come back over and over again to the council. So uh if that's what's going to happen anyways like okay they didn't make a decision now and then it's going to come back three weeks later for council decision. to Jim's point like being efficient use of the time differentiating from what you're saying like okay they've prepped the field now we're ready for decision and so we're getting some more feedback got better more more devol evolved and enhanced information to make the decision that comes together for the decision point what I was experiencing was it happened over here then we had the same decision over again it got tabled until they brought it back again so so it wasn't efficient that that that was the heart of my question. Thank you. Just to kind of add to that a little bit as far as like different commissions and supplying information to the city but to the council. I feel like sometimes it ends up being the commission is pitted against the council and then the council becomes the bad guy because they don't agree with the decision that the commission has made. So, I don't know if there's a way to like help that process along with the communication because I I think two instances that it's happened where it's been pretty contentious and I don't know how how council can move around that. It's um maybe yeah, maybe there's no way to do it, but it does allow the the residents time to actually go to that first meeting and then also come to a second meeting, too. So it helps align with what you're talking about getting information out to the public so they can let it sink in a little bit. Yeah. And there's there's a I'm sorry I just minor things another benefit of having kind of might be a little bit uh duplicative but sometimes people can't make it to the first meeting or to the second meeting and so they want to be able to share their input on it and at least having multiple opportunities helps. Yeah. you know that there's another there's another issue here and speaks to what you're talking about. The first time people hear something about an issue is the first time they hear about it and it may be late in the process and you just have to recognize that. Uh you can you need to do the best you can to make sure people hear about it earlier. You have to recognize that that can help. But getting back to your point, there's a number of different strategies. I mean uh one thing that works again it's about time management is when especially if you can identify some of those issues where there's recurring conflict with the commission is to develop an opportunity to have a discussion with the commission and the council and just kind of uh and sometimes it's better if it's facilitated a little bit but it's about um just surfacing what the conflict is and then just identifying why that conflict occurs and what your expectation is. A lot of times it's just lack of information, lack of understanding of the expect lack of understanding of what the law says sometimes or how it fits into the bigger issue. You know, one of the problems that we run into and is just that sometimes people think there's infinite amount of money or time to uh to address some of the priorities that a recreation commission may have or a planning commission may have and and that just has to be addressed. I mean, you don't you don't want that to to fester for the reasons you mentioned. Does that help? Yeah. So um so in any case I mean again uh I think we can move on from dealing with boards commission but but that's a important issue to make them more efficient is really very very helpful. Uh and that's an investment of time that you have to decide whether it's necessary and you're able to make it. There's a way to do that. Um, so after you look at what information you need, you need to give staff the time to say here's here's the time and uh that it'll take to develop that or we may need some outside resources and then feed that back to you. Um, most of the time that's not going to be a big issue, but occasionally uh it is because they're going to take either more time, you have limited staff. I mean this small of communities require a lot more work and staff. The toughest work that I've ever done was in the first community I worked in that had just a very limited amount of staff. That's just tough to do because everybody's got to be so much smarter in their in a wider variety of areas and you just have limited time to work on. It is tough in smaller communities. Uh and you know what the expectation of the public isn't any different. They expect you to perform at the same level as somebody uh that has a resource in the city of Charlotte or the uh city of Minneapolis or or Maple uh Maple Grove. You know, that's just the way it is. And you have to understand that and uh give your staff an opportunity to say keep resources. you know that here's a time we're gonna and that may you you may want to say okay we can swim back on some of those things but don't do it to the extent that it sacrifices your ability to get information you need you need to make uh to make a a premium decision because you have to do that and then then you're going to review and approve the process and that should be pretty deliberate effort. The first few times you're going to do that is a pain in the butt. Um it's difficult. Um, but once you get through that a few times, it's not going to be so difficult. It just you just need to go through that. Uh, because otherwise again you can get to the end of the process and realize you don't have the information you need. So then you get into poly discussion. So now you've now they start staff starts to present you information and you know in a lot of cases because of time limitations they may say we've got 20 minutes here to present you this uh uh this phase of the information request requested and and you're going to take it and thoroughly thoroughly digest it. It may take a little bit more time than you thought, a little less time, but you're going to need to make sure that you're taking the time that you need to digest that information. Believe me, whatever delays that are caused there are inconsequential compared to making a decision without getting that discussion and without getting into understanding what that information is and making a decision later on. and then either having to go back circle back around because you you really didn't understand it. It wasn't wasn't as clear as you needed it. Um so that's really important or that you make the wrong decision uh because you you just rush through uh making that decision and then you realize that that's not a decision you could support going forward. So you need to uh have that and then you then you need to get into a discussion of the policy. How does the policy line up in your community with with the information that's been provided? And again, these are the discussions that need to be non-positional. You're not taking position anywhere up in the yellow or green segments about what you want your decision to be. you you really and this is hard to do. You really have to to make sure that you're not thinking about uh taking one side or the other. You may want to take both sides. That's good. But to the extent that you start to stake out of position too early, you're now can listen to the other side of the machine. So decision discussion phase, this is when you get at it and you really want to make sure that there's a thorough and a thorough and and very uncomfortable discussion. It should be uncomfortable for you at that point in time because you're going to hear views from different people and the reasons their their views and and that should be your debate time because whatever you're debating the community and other people are going to be thinking about those same things and you need to make sure that you're having that discussion that reflects reflects that community views, your concerns, uh your worries and just understanding that again that decision is going to be featherweighted. Um and you're making no decision is a decision too. Uh that's that's an important thing to understand. So that's that's it. Uh there's some on the back page there's some u some process rules and recommendations. I won't go through that in detail because we've covered most of it. But um you know I won't go get to uh making sure that uh number three you regularly scheduling a time review and update that process timeline is recommended. You're going to change that's going to change over the course of time. Um and and to the extent that you're working with the public uh in a public setting providing some updates uh just few minutes in the council meeting saying you know this is an important issue we've been working on u and here's where we are in that process. you know, we got this information, we we're be discussing it at these meetings. Um the the it's also five is also important. Sometimes you just need to take those big policy items and put them into smaller chunks. Um and that that seven we've talked a lot about that um too often public engagement has translated into uh slick uh information pieces um that go out to the public and you that just doesn't work. I mean, people are um people understand when they're being fed something as opposed to being engaged with something. Uh and it's critical that you have a mindset that supports that. I can't tell you what to do. Um you're going to decide that. But I can tell you based upon our experience this when you when you follow this process the communities and that we've worked with on this issue there's only been one project that I really don't want to talk about this unless you force me to. one project that didn't get done uh that followed this this process and unfortunately it was with the chair of my board at Central Island Council was a development issue and he was a developer so in that community he was a developer keen in developing that community so it was really embarrassing for him but it didn't get done that was the only time out of dozens of others that that it didn't that the that the work invested in this didn't result in part being. So, let me stop there and allow an opportunity for you to ask questions if give me feedback about what makes sense and what doesn't make sense about this. That's one of the questions I've got for council and for staff. I'm I'm hoping that it makes sense why I'm asking the question and wanting to have the discussion. If not, I'd like to identify that like this came out of the blue J when we talking about this. I'd like to understand that too like if you if you feel like okay this wasn't didn't didn't scratch an itch or it's I wondered that to be honest. Okay. Um I I appreciate that. Um and and I guess part of it is just to be clear for us because I found myself guilty and it's not with everybody who's on this call of bringing things to council in which I'd have a council member saying why did you bring that to us and specifically the topic was the chairs and again that's one of your responsibilities is to say we we don't need to discuss that. you need to decide what's upon that eventful and go from there. So, so that that was an example for me. And then there's been a couple other examples in which uh like like maybe um we weren't ready to make the decision on that evening about the water tower that like like we still needed to to do some more work on it. And then we came back and we made a different decision that was made that night. Uh, and so those two stand out in my but they're but they're not exclusive. So that that's part of it is I want to make sure that I am clear that we are bringing you to Jim's point the decision. So, like like when I um when I bring this city council schedule to you, that's really an opportunity for you all to tell me like, "Yeah, we don't need to bring that or you need to add this like like as you're aware of things that are happening. Hey, I don't see this on here. Why why is that so late? Why is that so soon?" um that that that that becomes a strategic process document to make sure that we are timing things in terms of what you see as finite time. Is this the best use of your time risk? Hey, you know, for example, um the timing that we're going to talk tonight about the um peddlers, solicitors, and transient merchants, we're right on the cusp of the window in which that's going to be a really big deal. Mhm. Uh and and so with finite time, it's it's important. Uh it might have been more helpful for us to have had that discussion last month because as as the weather's gotten better, I know some of your neighborhoods have already been hit with solicitors and peddlers. Uh that wasn't true when it was colder. Um and so that would be an example of the timing that feedback from them. That's a really good insight. I I think I've always treated the advanced agenda review as more of a information sharing, not an opportunity for dialogue. So with that insight, I'll try to be a little bit more attentive to bringing up questions and concerns as part of that conversation. Thanks. And to to that I was just going to say I think what's super helpful too is just from my perspective because I used to be a staff person too. um that does like an impeccable job of pulling so much information together for the council. Sometimes council doesn't know what they don't know and so they could be potentially missing something that isn't even in the staff report. So I think helping looking at that that calendar and coming up with thought processes of what questions do I have about this? Like did we do something that is going to help us understand how this really does affect the community? I mean, one thing that comes to mind now that I've been listening to this whole conversation is our fire our fire services is going to be a huge contentious there's many people on both sides that are going to probably be coming out saying yes we want this no we don't want this we can't afford this yes we can um so I think this having this process in place and just thinking about how we already are trying to have as much conversation open dialogue because we already do do developers come in and have conversations with neighborhoods um meetings at at different locations in the city to help pull people in. Even doing that, we still haven't been able to get some things through. Like two really big things that could have come through to our community was two different industrial parks in two different areas. And there was so much push back from the community that no, we don't want this in our neighborhood. Even though all along it's been zoned that way, just makes it really difficult, I think, as council to make that decision. And what are we going to do? Well, this one question I have is the like how does this how do you see this framework working with an application that like a land use application when we're on a 60-day clock, right? Because I think that's a much I think it's a slightly different process. I think really the yellow groundwork is what we need to have set up in our code. Like that already needs to be what's guiding that so that we're not doing like we can't do that with the application coming in. We're not going to have the time to do that. But we should be able to have it previously identified. what information do we need from this type of land use application and we do that's what's required in our code so if there's something that's not working that means we need to fix our code I mean that's how I see but I don't I don't know I wanted your thoughts on that do you do you disagree with that no not at all I mean again just tying these issues together u that getting back to the development developer issue we see this in a lot of communities that are uh that have development applications turned down because strongly the opposition even though it fits all the criteria. Again, you got to manage risk and if you go ahead because it's in the it's in it's in it's it's in your comp plan and it seems to be the it's the right place but there's strong community opposition. What happens? I mean, if there's forced political turnover, then that's just a mess. I mean, you just don't want that. So you got to figure out you got to work backwards and say what do we have to do to address this. So some communities I mean it's uh what we've what we've done is work backwards to start looking at understanding why is there opposition to this. Um and a lot of times people don't understand that if you try to develop a community based upon all large lot single family development detached homes you you can't afford to service that. So you have to provide that model that information that provides that information to to the public and and educate people and that takes some time. You also have developer. You also want to work with developers who know how to work effectively with the public. But I also have to say and some of my best friends are developers, but um but you can't really put your role in their hands. So you've got to look at how do we how do we communicate and engage the public in a way about a development um that makes sure that there's a higher likelihood of success. And there's ways to do that. I mean, uh, again, getting back to North and South Carolina, that was a big issue there. But what we did is prevent present a framework that allowed the communities to see that they needed they needed jobs in those communities. They needed uh they needed tax base. And so we provided that basic information and understanding and then people could see where would those where is the best place to put those uh to to put the industry that we need and then where do we get housing close by? Sometimes that was workforce housing that fit the salaries of where those jobs were going to be and so people could see the the bigger picture. Is that going to stop the nimism? No, it's not. But it's going to provide a better framework so that when you make a decision, you may not get as much push back. But you you got to keep that managing risk in the back of your mind. The other side of the risk of not approving some of that development is is what you're not going to have a tax base to grow uh to grow your community. you're not you're going to one of the things we we also do is we look at a a financial plan over the long term for a community and we show that if you continue to build develop on large single family detached single family homes uh to the extent that some communities think they want that the tax rate to support that is going to be way up here and the only way to get it down is to look at a for more robust economic development framework that allows some industrial development, some office development, some commercial development. Uh so you got to look at that because the the uh the impact that it has on your services if you don't do that and just the the tax base just won't support it. So, I mean, that's a tough that's a that's a tough job to be able to do that, but we did that for a region in a very diverse area and we did it within two years. I mean, now we had a big chunk of money from the federal government to be able to accomplish that. So, I don't want to say we did that just on our own, but I want I want to build off what Natalie's talking about too. So, so different types of decisions, uh, some other communities do it, uh, how we process a little bit different. So, for example, a concept plan is is a really great way for council to become aware of potential development opportunity, those developers to come in and share their idea and get feedback so that they're not spending time or money to move in a direction. uh by putting those discussions on the regular agenda, we're pushing really important business later. Uh and and so like some cities, those are always work sessions once once a month. They've got a very predictable schedule. Uh another example would be like uh the front end of our council meeting today is four presentations and it's informational. Uh in another world, those might be helpful work sessions because there there aren't a lot of decisions. Well, there aren't decisions that need to be made right now, but but it will drive decisions and then it it moves our our primary council meeting to more of a business meeting in which we're really we've given you the information, those first two phases. We've given you the things. Now, you get to spend your time working through the process of the decision. Um, and so, uh, last time we talked about that, and I I can appreciate our busy lives, that might not be preferable. it's hard to get those worked in. But in terms of efficiency, um acknowledging like Natalie's talking about, we have some things that were on the clock. And so like our second meetings are super heavy development. Uh but how those meetings would look would look different if we did a work session development to those things that were not in the decision phase yet versus the now we have to make decisions and this is heavy public engagement. Um, and some of some of those meetings because they're heavy, we've had a lot of discussion about things that we're not ready to make decisions about. And now it's late in the evening and we're having to make important decisions when we're, you know, we're we're 3 hours or two hours into into our meeting. So, so that's that's also part of why like, okay, how do we want to make decisions? To Jim's point, what are we making decisions about? Uh I thank you for the the latitude that you've given us. A lot of things our consent agenda looks a lot different than it did a year ago. So those things that that don't need a lot of discussion, we're trying to put those and then sometimes we discover like, oh, you want more discussion, it's very easy for us to pull it off the consent agenda and add that. And not all cities allow that. So I want to acknowledge and thank you for that because that has helped us be more efficient. Um but but the types of decisions that are on a clock elapse time versus finite time that that's a helpful point uh in terms of being respectful of time. Usually at work sessions too if that's a concept plan if there are people they're there just to listen and they wouldn't be allowed to speak. So that would shorten our time. We have a better way to disc more options more time to discuss whatever it is that that we're at the work session for. Um, and then it also only allows a specific amount of time. It's like it's going to be an hour. This is not going to drag on for two hours or two and a half hours like sometimes it potentially can. So, I would be in support of a work session even if it was just once a month in front of one of our meetings and think about ways to gather input from the public. if you could just ask them to if they have comments, questions or concern about what came up to write it down and then you could all look at it and decide what what you want to do. Getting back to Natalie's point again very important when you got that finite amount of time. You also need to look at the developer. Sometimes a developer is willing to say I'll ex they want to extend this if they can uh in order to in in order to get some more input because if it's going to go down in flames because there's so much public opposition you know there there should be some other options uh that you may want to provide if they if they're willing to do that in order to in order to address some of the concerns. Any other worries about this or concerns? Feel like the the best application is for non-rine decisions. So Jay to your point and to your point for things that we have to do repeatedly. We want standard work for that. Maybe we incorporate some of the ideas. That's true. But I think where this was really helpful is probably in cases where we're trying to make well like Bezos would say when you're going through a one-way door. uh this would be an appropriate tool to apply park master if we had this from the start that could have been would have been really helpful framework I think or the northeast guidelines right y at that scale y exactly and and it's come up like we we keep circling and hitting like I I think about the woodpecker that's we we keep hitting it uh in terms of code and zone but if if we were to to commit to a a a a enterprise soup to nuts uh outsource it or something like that like a deep dive into our code. if Natalie does great work, but but we're responding each time like like under duress. We're like, "Okay, this issue came up and they're trying to resolve this." Uh, and correct me if I'm wrong because I don't want to speak out of turn. I think uh if if we were to go back and and do a reook of our code, soup to nuts, and have somebody come and help us do that, that could help us be more efficient. I think Mark already did that. Is is that a fair statement? I hope um to to just reevaluate the code. I mean, yeah, I definitely think there's areas like there's portions of the code at this point like in our subdivision ordinance that's like good, that's not even what we're doing anymore because it doesn't make sense and it hasn't made sense for a while. So, I have to kind of like and I just haven't had a chance to update it. And and I want to validate like the work that Natalie does is incredible on it. uh and she's doesn't have enough hours in the day with all the other things like she's got how many 60-day on the clock things that are with her finite time. Um we we end up addressing those issues because they become a problem like she was saying it no longer applies and so that might that help might help us be more efficient as an example that that's something that doesn't doesn't have to be an unrine decision. Yeah. and and just that whole issue of development and permitting. I will tell you that's one of the most common issues we're dealing with these days because people are especially developers are frustrated with how long it takes to get things done but staff has got legal requirements. Um, and a lot of times, um, and and is this number three or four story? But I was just about I was getting my butt kicked in Cedar Rapids because developers had pretty much had their own way before they got to manage the former Horman and they were very dissatisfied how long things took. And I'm thinking, oh, they're always complaining, so what the heck? But, you know, my council members were really needling me about this and so I thought, well, we'll get it. And what we decided to do was look at how do we streamline this process? And so we actually brought the developers in to work with staff uh using a a facilitated process, a lean process. And what I found was there's a lot of stuff staff thinks we could have done differently. A lot of things working with developers that we were able to to achieve time savings and we just eliminated some steps. But some of it was council because they wanted some things. And so we brought that together, presented to the council, and we were able to uh to really uh begin to streamline some of that and reduce the amount of staff time it took to do the work because staff wants to once well, they have to comply with law and they have to meet your needs and expectations as well, but they have a lot of pressure from developers who want things yesterday. And so getting them to work together and help streamline was really very very helpful. And when the council had presentations from staff and elected officials, excuse me, staff and um developers, that that made a big difference because they saw we were on the same page. We're not enemies with with developers, but we have different obligations, a constituency. Yeah. Exactly. So, I I hope this was useful. feel free to ask Jay to give me a call or however you want to work this. But this is important stuff. It takes some time to really let it absorb, but I think you're on the right track. One of the things I want to encourage you to do is is I close up here is um I'm not a touchy feely guy, but mind your emotions on this. What makes you frustrated? What makes you upset? What irritates you in terms of making decisions now? What just isn't working? And just think about that. And then this will help um you know one of the most important things you're you're developing a lot of systems to get things done and that helps a lot but your consent agenda is a good example. How much can we put on the consent and then pull off it if we don't really need to do that and preserve time so that you're not just working on those urgent things. You want to work on the important things. What's the most what are the three four most important things we want to address? you're still going to have those urban things come up, but if you can begin to look at uh those important things and say, "Boy, can we get this one thing done this year or two things done and then use this process uh to to deal with those complex issues?" You're going to begin to see some some real results. And we've seen that with communities we've worked with, they they get results. It takes some time to get up to get that acceleration moving, but uh it it begins to work. Well, thank you. Thanks. Any other questions? That's me. Um, I hope you understand better now. I was I have been thinking about it and and really I want to be respectful of of your time. Make sure that we're bringing the things that you need. uh and and knowing that oh be respectful of steps because so many times I'm being guilty of having them focus on the wrong things. They're not getting you what you want, then we're moving in the wrong direction when I understand that better. Um last thing I want to say is just thank you. I I also in talking to my peers, I know that I get more facetime or at least your time with you than most of my peers have with other members. And and I they value that because then then I hear from you part of what Jim's process is talking about there, the feedback that I need to make sure that we're moving in the right direction. Those meetings are so critical for us to be able to do that. Uh so many times we're able to modify something that's on the agenda or or update something, provide information that maybe we didn't have before because of the meetings that we've had. You said, "Oh, well, I need this." Uh if we didn't do that and we're having that happen in the council chambers, now that we don't get to make that decision now, we it slows it down by another council meeting. So in terms of being efficient, your willingness to invest that time in me is helping us be a lot more effective and efficient in our meeting. So thank you. We have a two to four week udal loop. So you're right, giving getting that additional feedback early chunk. I'm wondering if part of your reason for having us have this conversation is so that you can set up the packets and staff's allocations appropriately. Should we have a discussion at some point about the packet content and if there's any feedback from people as to structurally what they would want to see different that would be super helpful. I I even and I proposed this a while ago and now granicus will make it easier for us to do. I don't like our agenda. I'd like I'd like to simplify our agenda but I don't want it to be my idea. I'd like you to think about how would be a better framework if you see other cities or even your own if you you all are in different types of businesses and other experiences h how can we make that agenda flow better um I'll just share the way that uh a city that I came from it's by department rather than new business old business the reason that makes it really helpful and easy is when we're putting the agenda together if there's nothing for uh for the public uh public works department and there's nothing on that line. But what happens right now is the the clerk's office is adjusting thing. What's coming up? What's coming up? The other thing that makes that easy when you do that is if it's the same if it's all item C are public works. If there's nothing there, you know there's no public works. But that's C on consent and it's C on the regular agenda. Could you give us give us like an example or a mock version of that just to take a look at? Absolutely. Um and that's just one idea. Yeah. Uh but I I I think there's ways that we can provide predictability and efficiency in our agenda building. Uh so that's that's another example. And anything else for me or the rest of the staff? I I I don't want it to be misunderstood that this is me passively aggressively complaining. That's not I I'm not complaining. I'm really striving to figure out like, okay, I I know that I'm trying to get better. If it's working, we don't need to fix it. But I want to raise the question to make sure I love Jim's example. If if we have a pinch point, somebody's thinking or feeling things like, "Oh, this really frustrates me." If we don't take the time to pause and talk about it, we're never going to uh address it until it becomes an issue. Since we're talking about this, I guess I would say it would be nice if we had a process for our meetings, not just with the order of the agenda, but how we accept and don't accept people that are talking because sometimes we just sort of get into a back and forth. Sometimes we say no, but I feel like sometimes we get into a back and forth with people and sometimes they're even still sitting in the audience. So, I feel like it would be good if we had something in writing that we could even post somewhere on the website. Believe we do. It's separate from that one. This is more specific to just what our meeting looks like and it explicitly states like council will have two options to write weigh in on this discussion for five minutes each. So we don't get into long drawn out conversations and then it keeps it more concise though our decisions can be more focused versus opinion based I feel sometimes I don't know if that would help expedite our meetings to make them more concise and shortened but having that in place might help us work through that and I don't know what that looks like but it could be something that we all advantage of expectations as well. Yeah. Or or maybe you go in rounds like that where like we do three minutes per person and if people have more to say after that we go back so there's like a time bucket. Yes. Right. I I will do some research on what other cities might be uh introducing for that sort of process and bring back some options for you to consider. Um, and anything else about that being to Jim's point, frustrated or super happy or I was excited for a chance to get better. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, that that that was the goal is is I want to raise the question and it might be we're good at this station. Uh, but I as I reflect on the last year, I see some examples that I don't feel good about what I was doing. And so I wanted to reflect that back to you and say like, okay, to Jim's point, are we bringing you the decisions that you feel like you need to make? Are we missing opportunities? Are we bringing things that are wasting your time? I guess what maybe one more thing to think about the two examples that you raised about problematic discussions we have to go back and repeat like the chairs and the logo on the water tower. I feel like some of those debates as I remember them were sort of almost values-based where you had can tankerous council members uh interested in not having public money spent on their comfort or not wanting to do you more than the bare minimum for certain things. And this is a different group now, different mixture of people at least. Um maybe a little bit of a discussion at some point when we have an open agenda around when do we and when do we not want to go above the bare minimum holistically as a city? Uh when when does it agree with our corporate ethos to do a little bit more than the bare minimum? And if we can align on that, maybe it makes it easier for staff to know what options to present. To build on that, I also want to say thank you for uh we changed our purchasing policy. So the to use a word canankerous person that was upset about uh the chairs, he legitimately said why are we why are you bringing like like I'm putting you're putting me in a bad position at the dis why didn't you just buy the chairs? That's what he said to me. And I was like, "Oh, well, because the policy didn't allow me to." And so then we had a conversation about a policy and what you're comfortable with. And then we changed our purchasing policy. And so now that wouldn't be necessary. Uh but under the existing policy, it was and and so so you know, now we've changed our purchasing policy and and lots of other policies. That was a helpful learning lesson for me uh so that we don't have potentially unhelpful values discussions at the dis because because I think at the end of the day even that person who didn't want to spend a lot of money agreed that's not a lot of money and even said why aren't we buying better chairs ironically uh um but uh that that was an unhelpful discussion and I recognized I put him in a bad decision or a bad position. And so that wasn't something that I needed to bring to council. So that wasn't wasn't helpful. And so that's an example like, okay, what decisions are we thinking about here? Um, and where are we having those discussions? Is this a this a work session discussion in which we're we're just kicking things around or is this a we're sharpening our pencils and getting ready to make a decision discussion that the public's going to respond differently to those two environments too like oh I was just pontificating uh versus it's time for us to buckle down just something too instead of you doing all that communication with us and then giving it back to I think I've said it many times if there's questions that question straight from Kevin. Dean, what are you thinking about this or Natalie? Jeremy, what are you thinking? Asking those questions like, "Oh, who's her biggest problem up there? I'm going to call Dean because he's the one that like this or something." You know what I mean? Just that open communication of not put everything on you to get back to them. Yeah, if there's a quick question, what are your thoughts? Send an email, call, leave a message, something to instead of everything having to go through you. I don't mind talking to you. I don't mind our time every Monday and stuff. I just if there's a quick hitter or something, if I've got something, I'll send a message just straight away and not even say it to you. Hey, this somebody has a concern about this. Bang, bang, bang. Same thing back and forth I think we should have related to any one of these folks pinging us as council or the mayor just hey what do you think about this and and I think that's we have I think I'm I'm definitely comfortable just want to make sure everybody is comfortable with I'm all about the the the only thing that I I ever ask is is because sometimes it will loop back residual effect and so I I think we do a really good job of of communicating with one other, you know, I think about a recent example in the last week in which somebody went to four different people trying to get a different answer and they didn't realize that we communicate. Well, I think part of it too is that Jay being it's nice having Jamie the central collection point of gathering your questions and your questions and your question is saying here are the questions because when I when I provide information I want to make sure you all have the same information as opposed to you know Michelle coming with oh Matt put together this whole packet of information and nobody else has a chance to see it before the meeting. Oh, I I so I appreciate Jay the the the the two points that we appreciate I appreciate Jay being the collection point is that he can assemble all of it and then it helps to guide what when we put our information together for you and it also ensures that we're not um that we're mindful of you know not not even skirting open meeting law unintentionally trying to impact decisions which is not not any of your goals or mine. It's just a matter of making sure that it keeps everything clear. So you guys will see usually I'll I'm happy to respond but I'll usually copy Jay and if appropriate the other council members in responding to you. So it's not at all trying I just want to make sure everyone's on the same page when we're communicating. I think it also gets helpful time management issue because if we have to write five or six different emails we can write one comprehensive email that touches everything that saves three hours depending on the topic or the complexity. So, so it might be helpful for your awareness. We we have a huddle here uh after I've been meeting with you and we sit down and we talk about here's the things that I've heard. Here's the things that I've learned. Here's the things that we need to be prepared from. And not just from council members, from from people in the community. here's we we we war game for lack of a better phrase or we prep for the for the council meeting so that we can provide the best responses and the best and that's why we keep sending updates as it's coming up like oh this came up need to add that you know so for like the ordinance we just added some visuals to it and occurred to me to add visuals until someone asked for it like oh yeah that would be really helpful to add visuals and so that's been an update to the to the new ordinance Well, thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You have to motion to adjurnn. I move to adjourn. Say I.