City Council Work Session - Council Policies & Procedures   3/23/2021

Sorry.

So I'll call this meeting to order.

Ms.

Vice Mayor McGill.

Here.

Councillor Hill.

Here.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Mayor and Council, City staff has worked to develop revisions to the City Council's rules and procedures to provide clarity to expenditures of funds by the City Council.

We've attempted to make revisions that will meet the needs of the Council while also meeting all of the requirements of the state for public bodies.

Policies will be revised for staff expenditures but are different from those of the city council and these policies will be developed separately.

Specifically, staff has attempted to address how best for the city council members to utilize credit cards issued to counselors for payments for city reimbursements.

One of the most requested expenses is the need to be able to pay participants for certain meeting participation.

This policy begins to clarify authorized meetings and puts in a place a way to pay these participants for their time and effort.

This revised policy provides the procedures for pre-authorization by the council as a whole of certain expenditures for all of the counselors.

We've already received several suggestions for changes as well as some corrections to this document and would welcome your thoughts on additional changes from these discussions today.

Councilors, any

I mean, I can see there being benefit for the public if Ms.

We can certainly do that.

Ms.

All right, since this meeting has been scheduled specifically to deal with city councilor expenditures and credit cards, I'd like to start with the new proposed section three of your rules and procedures, which starts on page six of the PDF in the agenda materials.

Within this section, we're attempting to set out some parameters for City Council.

During the discussions that have emerged since February, at different points, you know, we didn't even realize that City Council didn't necessarily

know that it had its own budget for expenditures or even sort of where to look to find out how much that budget is.

You were generally aware that you had a strategic investment fund or initiative fund and that sort of thing, but you didn't realize that like a lot of city departments, or you didn't seem to realize that like a lot of city departments, you actually have budgeted funds to support council operations and to provide reimbursement for

so that you have a budget and in paragraph A1 we've listed a number of purchases and expenditures that public funds within city council's budget can be

used and expended for lawful purposes.

Because as,

As we've noted in all of discussions, as noted in the memo that I sent in February, and as is apparent from these proposed procedures, the fact that city council has a budget doesn't begin to address the issues associated with how city council as a whole decides how that money will be spent.

And so first of all, we have to help

As a staff, we have to help you all understand what are various lawful purchases that public funds can be expended for.

At different times, a number of you have said you didn't understand or nobody had ever told you whether or not certain types of purchases were authorized.

We're trying to address that in this policy.

Second of all, if they are authorized,

who can make those purchases and how do you do it?

And that's at the heart of what we're trying to do with this policy.

So if we're going to go through a list of expenditures that are authorized if city council as a body agrees that they should be expended for that purpose.

These things include, number one, charitable donations authorized by state statute, as we

saw during your recent process in which you desire to make a donation to the guns down organization.

There is a state statute that is pretty restrictive as to making charitable donations.

It requires that those have to go to organizations, not individuals, and it sets out a number of additional parameters.

But as long as the donation is authorized by that state statute, city council funds

approved by council as a body can be used to make those donations.

Okay, I have a question about that.

Back when we were having the climate change discussion and Pamela Boyce Sims, I asked her to come to the council meeting and she met with me individually and staff after the meeting and her compensation was $150.

Why wasn't that authorized?

Just because the entire council didn't vote on it or?

That transaction involved two potential things.

The documentation that was submitted said it was a charitable donation.

First of all, the entity wasn't specifically a Virginia entity.

And there wasn't enough information within the documentation to establish that that organization fell within the

parameters of the state statute.

Second of all, if it was a charitable donation, city council as a whole didn't vote to approve it.

If on the other hand, it was supposed to be a purchase of services, if you thought you were having consulting services and you thought you were paying for something that was necessary for a city council meeting, if it was a quid pro quo transaction,

action in which that that money was supposed to be compensation for services rendered.

That is something that could have could or could have fallen within the third subset on page six of these proposed regulation, which is a purchase of goods and services.

Normally those types of purchases, there is no established city council

procedure or resolution that authorizes individual counselors to go out and make purchases of goods and services.

So normally, if you want to set up a facilitator for a meeting, a consultant to address city council on a matter that you all would like that person's input or information from, it can be set up as a quid pro quo transaction

But again, city council as a whole has to have a discussion of how that type of purchase will be made.

Do you want the clerk of council to set it up?

Do you need all counselors to have input?

Or do you want to set up a procedure or a resolution or something that actually authorizes the mayor or an individual counselor to go ahead and do that type of transaction?

But right now,

you have no rules or procedures that address this and as a matter of law absent that sort of thing the only thing that any individual counselor has the ability to do particularly with a credit card is to obtain reimbursement for purchases that were made of things that are normally considered reimbursable expenses those things are

set out in paragraph A2 that starts on page six and carries over onto seven.

And those things are sort of things like travel expenses, dues for membership in organizations, home office supplies or paper that you need to support your work as a counselor.

We'll get into those details later, but unless and until you as a counselor

identify and grant authority to individual counselors to purchase goods and services.

Those things can be arranged as needed through the clerk of council or through the city manager through the city manager's office.

They are most of them are going to be small enough purchases that you're not going to have any sort of formal

you're not going to have to issue an invitation for bids, but even when something falls either within or below the small purchase procedures, state procurement requirements still always require that a certain amount of competition as may be practicable is always desirable.

So if there are... What's that amount?

Well, there's not a specific amount.

It's just anytime you are spending public money for goods or services,

You really should be thinking about are there multiple people who would like the same opportunity to provide these services to you or to sell you these goods?

And if so, even if you don't have to do a formal transaction, whether it's an invitation for bids or going out for multiple quotes, is it possible to undertake a certain amount

of competition.

Now, in the circumstance you were talking about, it may be that this person that you wanted to engage had a fairly unique set of qualifications or perspective or that sort of thing.

And that really may have, it may not have made sense to have a competitive process for that.

And it was a small amount of money, but still it's something that as a practical matter, as a legal matter,

and unless there's a council procedure that authorizes individual counselors to do that it should have gone either through your decentralized buyer who is the clerk of council or through the city manager and second particularly in cases where you may be engaging someone locally to do something there may be other people locally that would like a chance to for that same opportunity and so

Two questions.

Yes, but to be more precise, the city council as a whole can say any city councilor can go out and purchase services.

Any city councilor can decide they want to pay somebody

to come speak to city council on a particular topic.

And if that city councilor does that, your policy can establish the spending limit.

Right, as long as it fits within those parameters and that's essentially what you'd be doing with that type of policy is saying in advance, you know, we don't need each other to, we agree in advance that this type of expenditure is per se something that we agree is for the

is for council business as a whole, and here's the spending limit if an individual counselor goes out and decides to do this, and any other parameters.

So again, it's one thing if you're talking about goods and services.

If, let's say, once COVID expires and you are back to possibly wanting to have meals in connection with your meetings,

You know, do you as individual counselors really want the ability to make those arrangements yourselves, or is that something that you want to leave to the clerk and the city manager?

If you want to be able to do that yourselves, even if the expenditures for a particular meeting fall under the limit in which some formal procurement procedure would be required, you still should decide amongst yourselves whether or not even an individual counselor

arranging for those meal services, which is essentially catering or what have you, whether you want to allow people to compete, whether you want to set up a pool of people that you would rotate among, you know, some amount of, you know, competition for that opportunity

is contemplated, even if it, in the grand scheme of things, is a relatively small amount of money.

So yes, it can be set up that way.

As Mr. Boyles announced, compensation to individuals serving on a public body actually can, but it has to be authorized by city council as a whole, and it has to be a group

that is officially performing some sort of advisory function or function for city council.

So for example, state law and some local ordinances authorize members of certain boards and commissions to receive stipends like the planning commission or someone else.

In other situations, if you're setting up an advisory group that

is someone like the hack or something like that.

You're setting that up as a group.

You have to not only authorize the group itself, but you have to specifically authorize compensation to be paid to those members and the amount of that compensation.

And then once city council as a whole does that, then you can leave to the clerk of council or the city manager

how those payments get made, or you might even allow them to decide case by case, depending on the particular individual who's a member of that group, what form of payment best suits that person.

It could be a city check, it could be what they call cash equivalent, which is the gift cards that are discussed, or some other form of payment.

But that can be done.

Within those groups, can counsel establish criteria?

Or is it saying that if we're going to indicate that we're going to provide some kind of stipend to one participant, that we have to provide all participants?

Or are there some criteria that we could set up

I think you could set up some criteria like any other decision that you make as a whole.

Your decisions have to have some rational basis.

But let's say you are setting up some sort of a group that would have a mixture of city staff people.

You might have a paid consultant, but you also want to

Mary Pinkston, Juandiego Wade, Ph.D.

: Pay individual city residents for their participation, either because they have input that you'd like to receive or because you just believe that that like consultants, they should be paid for their time.

You can authorize that and maybe your criteria specify that those people could receive compensation, but for example, city staff members wouldn't receive extra participation

Could you set up parameters that say like if somebody made less than $50,000 that anybody who

I think you could, as long as there's, you know, a rational basis for doing that and it's to facilitate city council receiving something in return.

It may be, you know, valued input from a person who knows a neighborhood particularly well or who has personal experiences that

Okay, because that's helpful because I think

The Imagine and Adjust Seville group, that group has city staff, some professionals from the community and city, you know, city community members who I think input is their lived experience and that expertise that comes from there is vital.

So

Because I did not think that I could just offer a certain person a gift card, I offered all the non-city staff members the gift card.

And I have my whole sheet that was created when this first started with the balance and that I've been keeping track.

And there's a way to track when it was created and when the information was put in it.

And then I think the next group that came up that I gave gift cards to was when we were in the process of having the initial meetings for the Buck Squad.

And that was the first time I've had to do that electronically because with those two groups because of the pandemic.

The other time this year that I gave gift cards was when we put the group together for Crescent Halls and we have floor captains in the building because it was the beginning of the pandemic and we were trying to get the community to get tested.

that community get tested.

So then those individuals, I think it was five gift cards for the floor captains in that building, which is something I had done before, so I did not think that was a problem.

So those are the incidents, I think, this year, those three things that I have purchased and used the gift cards for.

And so I am interested in understanding this policy's

One, I would like to know, is there an amount that council can approve?

We talked about this in 2019, Heather, if you remember when you and Cassie led the discussion of, is there a set amount that counselors out of our budget can be allocated?

And if we have to go over that amount, then we have to come back to for the pool or ask another counselor if they're not using their funding, can we use their funding or whatever?

That was the discussion then.

So something like that.

And if someone else needs to purchase these gift cards to give the people, then that's fine.

I think in the CRHA incident, I brought them.

I actually wouldn't physically pick those ones up, even though it was getting out of the pandemic.

I think they were Kroger's gift card.

I gave them to Kathleen at the Housing Authority, and she signed off on them.

And

So just in situations like that, I just hope that

the council finds value in figuring out how can those type of things happen.

And everyone might not agree with the reason.

Like I brought Pamela to town.

Pamela had been working in the community before, which is how I knew her, but she is no longer here.

But if you look around during the conversations related to climate change, there is not really an equity basis.

And there is a difference between what is perceived as fair and just climate change.

And so that is what I brought her here to talk about.

And we did not have that, even with the nonprofit organizations and our staff.

And so

Maybe the three counselors would say, oh, that's value, but I would like to be able to have that conversation, whether three or two other people find value in that or not, because they may not.

So I think there's several points here, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk through all of this with all of you, because it

You know, to date, we have been talking about some relatively small expenditures, but the legal issues behind this stuff are fairly big ones.

So the takeaways here are absolutely city council as a group can decide to do all of these things that we've been talking about since February.

City council as a group can also decide that within certain limits, an individual councilor

can make a decision to bring someone like that particular consultant here to address city council.

It was services that you felt would benefit city council as a whole on a topic that is of interest to city council.

So if council wants to, it could authorize individual councilors within certain spending limits to arrange for that type of transaction.

I would strongly recommend that to keep the lines open that when you arrange those services, if you use your credit card, you make sure that there is a documented city council approval.

If there's not a documented city council approval, then you might want to consider

You know, bringing something forward for the group to discuss or asking the city manager or your decentralized buyer to arrange for those goods and services.

And then it's clear that, you know, how that whole thing is being set up.

Second of all, when you're talking about making payments to members of

a group for attendance at particular meetings.

One of the things that Councillor Snook's questions last night underscored is on the one hand, you have to make sure that the group itself is authorized by City Council because that's under the law.

In order for them to receive public funds, they have to be an official advisory.

On the other hand, once they get established as an official advisory group and they are supported either principally or wholly by public funds, you know, that triggers FOIA requirements.

So as you know, once it's an official group of city council and that's underscored by the fact that they receive public funds for, you know, some or all of them do,

then that's going to bring that group within the purview of FOIA.

And that's not a big deal, but it just means that an unofficial group that's just advisory to one city councilor or to a couple of city councilor, that's not a public body that has to comply with public meeting requirements and that sort of thing.

They're not supported by public funds.

They're not designated by city council.

So you have a little more

personal and political leeway when they're not supported by funds or adopted as an official advisory group.

But if you want them to be supported by public funds, then they have to be an official group.

And that will trigger the more structured FOIA open meeting requirements.

You mentioned the, sorry, the lump sum piece.

We still have restrictions within that lump sum.

Right.

So let's go back to the charitable donations.

The state statute that authorizes charitable donations

in my opinion would not allow you all to just say every individual counselor can have $10,000 a year to donate to the charitable causes of his or her preference.

I think that all of you as a group have to make decisions about charitable donations and those donations have to go to groups that are within the structure of

that state statute that we worked with in talking about the Guns Down organization.

So I don't believe that you as individual counselors can just make gifts or donations to individual people as a charitable gesture or even for charitable purposes.

That's one thing that has to be done by council as a whole.

What I do agree is that if you're purchasing goods or services, you can adopt a policy

That's right.

Like if each of us had like $1,000 a year that we could use in a budget line item of saying we can we have up to $1,000 a year that we can individually pay somebody for professional services that are towards counsel for the benefit of counsel as a whole.

That's right, independent contractor status.

So, you know, normally that'll be supported by some sort of invoice, which the mayor did provide for those

that presentation back in October.

The documentation was there.

It's just that when the documentation came in, it didn't say for goods and services.

So, you know, you've got to- Well, she just had asked for that.

If I just said I needed to pay you 1099 or whatever, then we've been able to do that.

It's just that because we do money to charities all the time and never, and then there's enough time between when I turned in the receipts for us to reverse that transaction

Karen Hollweg, Right.

Karen Hollweg, But if counsel as a whole had a policy that said an individual counselor can make that type of purchase within certain limits.

Karen Hollweg, You would have had the ability to and you now would have had you now have the knowledge to know what you know that.

Karen Hollweg, Regardless of whether there seems like there should be a practical difference or distinction between the two you now know that there's a legal difference between.

a charitable donation and a contract for services.

To make things more complicated, the state code restricts what you can donate money to an organization for, but state law actually encourages you to allow certain charitable or religious institutions to compete for contracts.

So what you can pay somebody to do under a service contract is more liberal than what you can just donate money to them to do.

and I think that all comes back to this notion of public funds need to be expended for authorized purchases and you as a council determine what those authorized services are that you may need and who can provide them.

But services can be provided by individuals as well as organizations.

Charitable donations under that state law can only go to organizations.

So I think to recap on page six, as a general rule, if you're making charitable donations, you want to compensate people on a public body that city council as a whole has approved, or you're making purchases of goods or services for a city council meeting, the best course of action is to allow those expenditures to be arranged and paid for either by Ms.

Thomas or the city manager's office, but

Once they're authorized by city council as a whole, one way or another, by an individual vote at a public meeting or by a policy, it would not be problematic for an individual counselor to make a purchase of goods or services or a gift card purchase to compensate somebody on a board with individual credit card.

but it would be recommended that that be done through Ms.

Thomas or Mr. Boyles because it's a lot safer and clearer if your individual credit cards are simply used for reimbursable expenditures or expenses.

So if you wanna turn over to page seven of the proposed policy, that's where we talk about the types of things that the state code

specifically says in addition to the compensation that you're paid each year to be city councilors, even though everybody understands that you probably don't get paid nearly enough for all of the meetings and the work that you have to do, but

The compensation itself is restricted by state law, as you know.

But state law allows, in addition to your compensation, that you be reimbursed for expenses that you incur in order to perform the duties that are expected of you.

The clerk of counsel can always arrange for certain office supplies that you all might need at home, whether that's paper or pens or thumb drives to respond to FOIA requests, whatever that might be, the clerk of counsel can always arrange it.

But it's also fine if you all make that purchase and submit a reimbursement request.

Originally, the notion of giving individual counselors a credit card

was to sort of free up or free up some of your time from having to do that paperwork.

You could use that credit card to purchase that thing, whether it's an item or a meal or a travel expense, without having to go through the reimbursement paperwork.

And as long as the receipts and the documentation that you submit

document that it's a legitimate reimbursable expense, that credit card actually makes it easier for all of you to do that if that's the way that you choose to go.

So the issue that's teed up on the credit card usage that has been placed front and center since February is what's the difference between a reimbursable expense

and something like purchasing gift cards for the group.

And right now, the only expenditure that is authorized by law for an individual counselor to make without having to ask anybody else is what I'm calling in this discussion draft procedure, what I'm calling a reimbursable.

So you all should

Have a look at that and let me know if you still don't understand the distinction between goods and services that are being provided to council as a whole or to someone other than a city councilor versus goods or services

that are purchased because a city councilor individually needs them in order to do his or her job.

And if the purchase of a service is for city council as a whole, that's an expenditure, that's not a reimbursable.

Reimbursable are for things that city councilors as individuals need in order to carry out their elected duties.

And I think that...

If there's any of these things you would like to talk about, I'm happy to do that.

But we tried to make it clear as we could in here that that is the distinction.

Reimbursables are things that you individually need.

So I have about this section, which is really limited.

And so just, I just wrote down some examples.

That's not a council as a whole, but so these are, so in terms of the

travel.

I mean, usually when you're out traveling, you are by yourself.

But there have been times where, like the pilgrimage, Wes and I were together.

And so I think there's one time where I purchased his food and mine.

there is the meals or refreshments for individual counselors only while meeting with one or more constituents.

Is this saying that we are not allowed to buy food for constituents?

Something that came up before was when I was on the mall doing a walking meeting and one of our homeless citizens came up to me and was thirsty.

I brought them a water and that was a big issue.

And then another time,

I purchased popsicles on a hot day and handed out to people by the DSS entrance and I did talk to them because by then they wanted to know whether I had a conversation and so in terms of home office supplies

I usually order what I need.

We've had conversations about whether I have been taking up too much of staff time and the clerk and our former city attorney were both in that conversation.

And so I disagreed with that, but I do want to make sure that we're not adding

to what I may need to ask them for if I need something.

Also, I usually don't buy my paper.

I usually come down there and get paper.

I hold it up at the camera when I'm walking out when I do that so everybody know how many reams I received.

And this is something that I've been doing since, you know, I think at least

since Mike Murphy was interim.

So if that is a problem getting

copy paper out the city manager's office because it's just been cheap.

I've assumed that it's cheaper that they buy it in person.

When Sacagawea descendants came, I did use my credit card for their flight information.

Ms.

Thomas, if you remember that, for some reason, the car that we had did not go through, and I was in the office there, and I paid for that.

I guess it could have waited a day, but I don't understand why that would have been an issue.

and when I went to the sister city which is to France the credit card did not work and I needed money because I'm you know in a whole nother place and Yates Noble who was the sister city chair at the time she was in the bank with me because there was this big thing that I attempted to get cash when there are no cash advances allowed

But it wasn't an easy transaction to figure out on the city's end what those issues were.

Now, I recently called the bank because I was trying to buy gift cards and not since this happened, but before.

And it didn't go through.

And I guess maybe the Bank of America

1-800 number was much better than the previous 1-800 number.

So I did get right through with someone and was assisted.

But those are the type of things that don't seem like they fit in either.

It doesn't count as an expenditure because it's not the entire council.

It isn't a reimbursable because it's more than just for me.

So let me try to go through them one by one.

For the situation where you are taking a ream of paper and using it for yourself, I think that is an example of goods or services that the city purchases and for official use and certainly your use of that paper is official city business.

And so there's no reason why you or any other city councilor can't come in and use a ream of paper

that the clerk of council or the city manager's office has purchased for city business.

There's no reason you can't come in and use that paper.

And that actually simplifies things a lot.

Instead of you using a credit card to go expand separate funds for that, you're using something that the city has purchased in bulk, and that's an efficient transaction.

So there's unless

you know you're just in a bond for some reason you can't you can't get paper when you need it from City Hall that's a perfectly appropriate use of city resources.

On the Sacagawea travel expenses what I would say again is that

Assuming that city council as a whole had said, yes, we think we should agree to pay these travel expenses.

And that wasn't something that you just went out and sort of made a decision about on your own.

Assuming that city council said, yes, we would like to cover the costs for these descendants to come here and give us their input and information, then

That is a type of purchase that would be authorized by city council as a whole.

And once that's done, the fact that, you know, Ms.

Thomas's card or a different city card didn't work.

And so you volunteered the use of the credit card issued to you individually.

That was fine because you'll have documentation of the transaction and you would have documentation that city council as a whole had approved of it.

All the boxes are checked and that would have been a good expenditure.

For the credit card, the problems you're having while traveling on city business, I think that if you would all would like to build into this type of policy, sort of a

an emergency provision to deal with that very situation, there's no reason why you couldn't have a provision that would have the city manager be able to authorize some sort of wiring of money or the use of somebody else's credit card for something or, you know, to provide some support to a counselor who's traveling on city business but who's having trouble

with their city issued credit card.

That seems to be something reasonable to build into a policy.

And again, it's travel on city business, it's city business, it's sister city business that council as a whole has endorsed.

And the issue there wasn't whether the expenditure was authorized

It was simply that a counselor who was on that sort of business was having trouble with the card they've been issued.

Finally, on the meal issue, the example you gave was having a meal with another city counselor.

So one city council used their credit card to pay for a meal for another city councilor while the two city councilors were on city business.

Again, if

if meals while on city business are a reimbursable expense, then assuming that you're within whatever per diem amounts may apply, that isn't a problem.

One city councilor was paying for the meals of another city councilor while both of them were on public business.

The other issue, which is whether or not a city councilor can pay for

somebody else's meal, a third party's meal is an issue that Counselor Snook pointed out.

And it has over the years been the topic of some discussion.

And the question is, what documentation should be submitted along with that type of credit card purchase?

So should a city councilor identify the person

whose meal it was.

I mean, do you want to know whether the other person was a constituent or do you want to know whether that other person is the representative of some consulting services company that is, you know, the purpose of that meal is to try and persuade you as an individual counselor that you should

use their consulting services on a regular basis.

So it can matter who that other person is.

When you ask a question like, can you purchase a bottle of water for a homeless person?

You know, that type of question makes me not enjoy being an attorney because

You know, who wants to say that someone can't purchase a bottle of water for a homeless person?

I don't want to say that.

But what I'm trying to do here is, again, because several of you have said, gosh, I really didn't know what the rules were.

I'm trying to share with you what the legal rules are to facilitate you all having a discussion about how you do the things

that you are trying to do, and is there a way to do those lawfully?

So on that particular topic, certainly refreshments or meals for a counselor himself or herself are authorized as reimbursables.

But if the distinction between reimbursables and something else is whether it's for a counselor or for some third party,

then technically that type of purchase may not be authorized.

But each of you as counselors need to meet regularly with constituents and need to talk regularly with people from various aspects, you know, various portions of the community.

And so I think that city councilors as a whole, you as a group should have a discussion about

what those particular parameters are and whether or not within certain limits you want to establish an expense account and identify buying a meal for a third party as being up to a certain limit, something that each of you is authorized to do or

Maybe the limit isn't a total amount per year, but maybe there's a limit on the dollar amount of the purchase for any individual third party.

But, you know, what's important here is that all of you reach some consensus on what type of expenses are reasonably necessary for you all to fulfill your individual duties and that there just be some agreement on that so that

Ms.

Robertson, one of the questions that I had asked, and you took it in a slightly different direction, maybe I wasn't sort of clear about the point that I was making, I interpret one of the other rules, it was not part of the memo that you sent, but I was looking back at some earlier, maybe it's an earlier version of the same thing, I'm not sure, that suggested that if I go and have lunch with a constituent,

that I have to say why it is I'm having lunch with the constituent.

And I interpreted the rule as meaning that I had to say who the constituent was with whom I was having lunch, even if I didn't buy them their meal, just a sort of further proof of the fact that there was, in fact, a legitimate public issue there.

Is that not the policy that applies to city officials?

Chris Cullinan, are you on the call?

Good afternoon, Madam Mayor, members of council.

I just noted this to Ms.

Robertson in the chat directly, but one of the other around this meals issue is the issue of an audit either by the city's auditors or the IRS.

The IRS has various circulars which spell out what are appropriate quote-unquote business expenses and

And so the documentation of with whom you're dining and the purpose not only meets a lot of things Ms.

So, I mean, one of the points that I had tried to make a couple different times in some of the communications we've had recently is that I think that the city council ought to be subject to the same rules as everybody else in city government that we shouldn't have except, I mean, there may be some atypical example that I'm not thinking of, but that as a general proposition, we ought not to have different rules

than the rules that apply to everybody else.

And so, for example, in terms of office supplies and so on, if other city employees who work from home are permitted to take office supplies from city hall, then we should be permitted to do so as well.

If we are having business meals charged to the city charge card,

We ought to have the same rules that apply to all other city employees as well.

So I think that would be a little bit difficult because the city employees are not doing what we've been elected to do.

So that is...

If they are out, I mean, before the pandemic, which I was never home, that means that from the time I started working until it was time for me to come fall in a shower and try to get in the bed, I was working.

And so if I have a meal,

at that time, then sometimes we have them in the meetings.

Sometimes if I don't want to eat what is offered by the staff is ordered or whatever, I will get something else.

There have been times, Heather, as you know, that I have purchased both of our meals or drinks.

And so for like planning commission meetings, stuff like that, if the

One time we went out to dinner with Dr. Richardson or lunch or whatever it was, and I paid for all three of us.

Now I typically had for me, because all of this was ending up in the paper, and I didn't want people names blasted all over.

that long as I put the reason that that wasn't sufficient.

But I think if people know that your name has to be on here too, then they can decide.

But if they end up not wanting food, then I think that we should be able to just put what we were out doing.

I don't understand why.

And again, this is things that has been happening where you turn your receipts in every month and they have been printed.

So that is a conversation that I'm interested in us having a deeper dive and just hope that this isn't about one person because at some point you all will want to do some things and to

be restricted is not going to probably feel

And then the other question I had while thinking about it, because like the get your healthy on with the mayor, I usually get donations for the shoes and shirts for other participants.

I did buy my shoes because I thought that having a developer buy shoes was going to be a bigger issue, but it turned out that no matter what you do, that would be the case.

So they spend

probably about 5,000 or more dollars per year, the two years that we did it, the pandemic interrupted that.

If they wanted to, like if we, the city couldn't give gift cards and someone was willing to donate so that, because they thought that giving gift cards were important, I would like for me to continue to do it.

Is that possible for someone to donate to

the city specifically for an individual counselor to be able to give the gift cards if council does not vote this way?

Or would they have to purchase the gift cards and then just give them to me to give out?

So I think there's layers of questions there.

So as the mayor,

One of the specific things that is unique to your role is the need for you to fulfill, you know, some public relations, some, you know, ceremonial duties to sort of speak for council in connection with a lot of community events.

So for something such as participating in

you know a prominent local event that's promoting health and wellness that is something that you know a couple years ago when you you made purchases for yourself those those things it's my understanding everyone sort of regarded them as being legitimate expenses for you as to

I think that as to outside donations, there's probably lots of ways that could be facilitated.

Whether or not those donations need to come specifically to the city, I don't know.

Maybe it would be possible to set up some sort of arrangements where support

support could go directly to the participants.

So there are a number of, for example, charitable walks or runs where people are allowed to line up donors for the charitable cause itself.

Maybe there's a way to set things up so that the donations can go to the participants to enable them to participate in something that

is in turn helping a local charity.

I think any individual can always offer a gift to another individual.

So a prominent local business person could certainly agree to give a gift to

directly to someone who's participating in that event or just sponsor that person.

So there's a number of ways if you work with staff in our office ahead of time, we can figure out how to set things up.

You all also need to always have in the back of your minds the sorts of things that you have to disclose on your statements of economic interest.

Those include gifts that you receive as individuals in excess of certain specified amounts.

So when setting things up, just ask questions.

And Chris Cullinan and I, if we

If given the chance to help you on the front end of things, we'll do our best to help you do what you're trying to do and to set it up in a way that can be defended.

Continuing on on page

and at the bottom of page seven of eight pages and the top of page eight, there's a list of prohibited expenses, expenditures.

This list of prohibited expenditures, I would anticipate, certainly Mr. Cullinan and I would recommend that this list of prohibited expenditures along the lines of Councillor Snook's comments a moment ago,

would be shared by city councilors and employees alike for the most part.

They are things that are just sort of universally standard in most public bodies' credit card policies and the ability to actually say to employees as well as anyone else who is using a city-issued credit card to clearly say

you cannot use a credit card to make these purchases and you can't even if you're not using a credit card these are purchases that are not authorized regardless of the form of payment.

Having a clear list of things is very important both for those of you who are trying to figure out how to comply with the rules but also to the city in the event that someone does intentionally misuse for example a credit card

Having a clear list of parameters that identify certain things as being expressly prohibited is at the center of the ability to recover reimbursement and to say to a credit card company, this is clearly not authorized by our credit card policy.

And so there are always going to be things that

that aren't entirely clear, but there are a number of things that need to be expressly clarified as being prohibited so that we have a policy that's enforceable and that you as individual counselors, particularly when using a credit card, have a clear understanding of what's allowed and what's not.

And so this list of items

So I have questions.

So a personal item would be a trip to the beauty salon.

a massage, a set of tires for your personal vehicle, things that are not reimbursables.

Reimbursables are things purchased for yourself but that are necessary for your official duties.

Personal items and services would include, unless you all make a policy decision otherwise, things that you purchase for other people.

So, because I was thinking, I mean, the only items that I think I purchased that I purchased like wipes, which I've been purchasing since I've been there because I wipe things off all the time, hand sanitizer, those things that's been on the list of things that I would purchase.

I had a

recurring order on the Amazon subscription for that stuff.

Gifts and donations to individuals, if we buy staff like lunch and flowers or something, does that count as a gift for birthdays, things like that?

Or Chip come in, have some flowers in his office, is that not allowed?

Those are questions that I had, donations.

This is an example, which it was, I think, mostly private funding, but rented out the theater for the Black Panther screening and had a discussion after that.

Would that count in the movies?

If you have, I know when I went to Florida, there was discussion about whether I was gonna rent a car, but I ended up just using,

like Lyft or something.

But if I had rented a car, could I purchase fuel for that car?

Ari talked about the only cash advance issue that I had.

And then, yeah, just this whole list, I guess it just wasn't clear just what

was authorized.

And, you know, I debated about this, but I finally submitted my receipts because I got the yellow fever vaccination to go to Africa and that was submitted and purchased.

So let's talk first about the two questions you raised regarding travel related expenses.

The reason vehicle fuel is in here is that generally if you use your own car on city travel or city business travel,

You can submit a mileage reimbursement request and that mileage reimbursement is how many cents per mile or dollars and cents per mile.

That's inclusive of everything.

So you couldn't submit a mileage reimbursement request and also separately submit charges for fuel.

However, if you're traveling on city business, let's say you're traveling to Chicago for a

meeting of the National League of Cities, and you're representing city council as mayor at that.

If you wanted to fly there, your airplane flight would be covered in that travel.

If you needed to rent a car once you got there to get from the airport to your hotel, that would be included.

And standard as part of most car rentals is the requirement that when you return it, it has to have a full tank of gas.

So that sort of thing would fall within the permitted category of travel and parking expenses for that arrangement.

But if you, for example, are just using your personal vehicle to make a trip to Richmond to go to a general assembly session, you could submit a reimbursement request based on IRS mileage which I think is something

like 56 cents per mile to get reimbursed for, you know, that that amount is calculated by the IRS to include wear and tear on your vehicle, gas, whatever costs are associated with that vehicle travel.

So we employees generally as well as city councilors would be prohibited from just putting fuel in their their personal vehicles.

or purchasing fuel to put in a city vehicle.

Some city employees use city-owned vehicles and generally they're required to fill those vehicles up with fuel from a city facility.

Relating to your vaccination, as a city councilor, the city

probably would not pay for sort of medical expenses generally unless you have city medical insurance as part of your service as a counselor.

But if you're planning a trip to Africa as part of the sister cities delegation and part and parcel of that is a need to have specific vaccinations before you go, then that is, in my opinion, a legitimate

reimbursable expense that you could either charge to your credit card or submit a reimbursement request asking the city to pay for that.

Employee gifts as a general rule, the city manager and the city manager's office has an employee recognition program.

And as a general rule, a

extra compensation or perks to city employees if they're paid for by city funds to probably be arranged through the city manager's office.

But as long as all of you as a group are on board with the occasional sort of, you know, de minimis expense, if you want to buy somebody some flowers or if you want to

to buy somebody a cake or something to thank them for extraordinary service.

As long as you as a council are okay with city council funds being used for that purpose, then that could fall within the category of an authorized purchase.

But as a general rule, an individual city councilor probably should not expand public funds

I just wanted to clarify because I asked Mr. Blair about this about a year ago.

There is a compensation consideration, though, if it's, I'm not sure how you define de minimis, but like if there is a significant, like if there is a gift card purchased for an employee, then there is some compensation paperwork that would have to be filled out.

I think that's correct.

Again, the city manager's office has a whole policy dedicated to employee recognitions and department heads and certainly department heads are supposed to follow that policy when they're making decisions about things.

So I think that again, sometimes that question depends on

whether the employee is someone who's required to file a disclosure form or a statement of economic interests like a department head or city manager versus a regular employee.

But again, the gifts in general, if an individual counselor wants to expend public funds, then

for that purpose, then counsel as a whole should be on board with it and counsel as a whole should talk with the city manager about whether or not that policy for employee recognition applies.

If individual counselors would like to spend their personal funds to do that sort of thing, then you probably should check in with either the city manager or the city attorney's office to

to confirm the city has a policy that talks about employees accepting gifts in excess of, you know, $25 or so.

State law, to the extent that it regulates the dollar amount of gifts is much larger.

It's like $100.

So whether or not something has to get reported as income is sort of a separate issue as to whether or not an employee

could accept something like a gift card versus a bouquet of flowers.

So could we set a policy that says as a council, we approve up to $50 per instance of in lieu for

for birthdays, grief, get well, for people who we directly manage.

You could, yes.

Just so that, you know, it's not so that we don't necessarily have to go as a whole group.

Hey, I just found out, you know, somebody lost their parent.

We want to send flowers now from council.

instead of having to wrangle everybody together, whichever counselor finds out about it first can say, okay, I've sent this from us if, you know, just taking care of it.

But we would need to set like a limit then for each instance and kind of give some parameters of when that would be okay.

Yes.

And then I think that the hand sanitizer, certainly since COVID hit, I don't know of anybody who wouldn't regard hand sanitizer as being necessary in connection with the duties of someone who has to regularly interact with other people and visit other places, so

unless your fellow counselors take issue with that type of thing.

Well, still, I mean, I'm a person who uses a lot of hand sanitizer.

I keep some on my desk.

And so I think

Is there any intent in determining what's reimbursable or however we want to think about this to treat

Overall, that analogy is very accurate.

It should be consistent with a business expense.

There may occasionally

something may occasionally arise that's unique to your service as an elected official, but for the most part, if something would be considered by a corporation or a business entity as a legitimate business expense, it's also going to be a legitimate use of public funds for you to charge that expense to your individual credit card or ask the city to reimburse it in connection with

Well, I mean, one example, just to contrast to something you said earlier, if you're about to go on a national television interview, perhaps some attention at a hair salon might be an appropriate expenditure of city funds so that you represent the city well.

And so when you said a moment ago that

to go into a beauty salon would be an example of something that might not be appropriate.

And I think that's why the word personal is used in the prohibited expense, but over in general, let's see here.

The term reimbursable is really not precise, but the word personal is used in the prohibited list to very specifically draw attention to the fact that there's a difference between things that you might need for your personal purposes versus things that

you may need for your professional purposes and your service as a city councilor.

So yes, if there's an important function, you may be able to justify that in a particular instance.

But as a general rule, Lloyd, if you want to go get your hair done before each and every city council meeting,

And then on page eight of eight, there's a paragraph B, let's see here, section three B three, starting on the bottom of page seven, no, I'm sorry, starting on the bottom of page eight, it's called oversight of city council expenditures.

One of the most difficult things about all these recent events is that

Not only that all of you individually and collectively didn't seem to have good information about what's allowed versus what's not allowed or even general guidelines, but also the fact that

People who report to you instead of you yourselves are in the position of having to question these things.

And none of us wants to be in that position.

We want you to have basic information and an understanding of what the legal rules are.

We want to encourage you to agree among yourselves as to how you should manage things that you have the discretion to manage.

And then

if you are watching your own expenditures and if you are you know all working in good faith in compliance with rules that you establish for yourselves there really should be included in a policy like that sort of a dispute resolution process that looks first to you all as a collective body to to

Maintain awareness of what is being expended from your own budget, but also to resolve any questions you have together as a group first, and only if you're not able to do that, and only in situations where, you know, council's failure to act may involve some sort of financial loss to the city in excess of a specified amount should your

Council staff or your city attorney's office or whoever feel like they have to take that dispute to a different place.

Nobody wants to do that.

But to date, because you all either weren't aware that you could be doing this or just haven't done it to date, that's put people in a very strange position

and also even among city staff ourselves, there's not real consensus about what to do in a given situation.

And so we are hoping that these provisions, which are intended to be sort of a process for resolving disputes, we're hoping that there at least

a starting point for some consensus among you, although we're certainly open to edits or changes that you may propose to make, but one of the things that we are recommending that you consider starting is to actually among yourselves begin reviewing your own expenditure reports from your own budget.

Any department head, the city manager himself, and any department head

reviews their department's expenditures on a monthly basis.

And before every major purchase, they check to see where their funds are available in their account before that purchase is made.

And among yourselves, supported by information provided through Ms.

Thomas and the city manager's office, we believe that it's not only a best practice, but a lot of

I think the only section we didn't cover was in the very beginning.

It was independent of expenses.

Let's go back to page five of eight.

We are also proposing a new section two.

As we mentioned in the council agenda memo, the recent discussions over credit card uses and expenditures in general have generated some discussions about some separate but somewhat related issues.

and one of those is the sort of nature of the relationship between city council and the city manager.

In paragraph 2A, we have noted that the city code currently and for a long time is contained

provisions that specifically state that a counselor who has a question or wants to request information can always do that through the city manager.

One of the specific duties of the city manager is to respond to requests from city councilor.

That's not to say that none of you can ask a question directly to a department head, particularly if it's one that doesn't involve a lot of time and resources.

but the city manager should be aware of most conversations and hopefully, you know, can himself be informed by the answers that people give to city councilors.

I think unless there's a different issue that came up, the things that have come up the past few months was asked of the city manager and the city attorney.

So I don't know how I'm not sure why that would have prompted

this change.

But a few minutes is so vague.

And leaving that up to staff discretion about what that few minutes, if it's someone that's OK with you asking them a question, then it's fine.

If it's someone who would prefer for you not to ask them a question, then that few minutes is three too long.

So that wording, I think,

is just it's just too vague and it's it's can be based on relationships and I'm not sure what was you know it well maybe I should ask what is the issue that prompted this and change and then

So let me take your first question first.

In paragraph A, this is an issue that comes up and has come up from time to time over the years, not just recently, but

I've been with the city for close to 20 years now and it's something that's always a struggle to achieve some balance in.

There are always going to be city councils who have individual counselors who are more active than others.

And the, you know, in general,

sending requests for information through the city manager's office keeps the city manager informed and allows the city manager to help modulate whether something needs to be addressed at his level or involves an issue that really is just an issue where somebody's seeking some basic information.

So for example, to use more recent events as an example,

The question as to what level of detail an individual counselor would like to have about specific budget matters versus the level of detail council as a whole should expect or that the city manager thinks the city council as a whole should receive as part of the general budget issue.

You know,

if there is a particular budget matter that in a given year everybody understands there's going to be a higher level of interest in having more detail, it would be better for the city manager and city council to deal with that up front instead of being into the budget process and having each of five different counselors saying, I would like this information, I would like that information.

It would be better overall

both for the department heads and the city manager and probably for council to plan ahead of time and say here's the level of detail we're going to expect in the submitted budget and that we need in order to make our decisions or if there's the well let me give another example then come back because there was another one so the other recent incident was a circumstance in which

a city councilor disagreed with an action taken by the city manager and the city manager's office then had a department head prepare a report that contained information but the individual councilor still did not trust the information that had come forward in that report and so I think that

but that, you know, the counselor didn't return to the city manager and say, look, I would like to see the backup information that went into the preparation of this presentation.

And I think that, you know, all of these things, you all are absolutely entitled as counselors who need to make

Policy Decisions, Strategy Decisions, Budget Decisions, you need information and you may not always all agree 100% on the level of information that you're comfortable with, but all of that information gathering and particularly when you want an in-depth investigation or report on something that is something that

It's the city manager's job, both by code and by the whole structure of the city charter.

It's his job to make sure you have that information.

And in general, instead of going directly to individual employees or department heads, when something is in the nature of an investigation or an inquiry that involves

a substantial amount of research, a substantial amount of data gathering to report back to you, a substantial deviation from the way that data is usually assembled and put together for you.

Overall, everybody's satisfaction will hopefully be increased by making sure that city council makes that request from the city manager and holds the city manager accountable for making sure

So I think the second scenario was the 300 or so employees that was laid off.

I don't even know the exact number because that wasn't even given accurately.

And I don't think that is something that I didn't go to anyone else, but the then new city manager, and then I asked questions publicly

But no one should have had to do extensive research to give us that accurate information.

If you're going to lay off that many people, then you should have that information at your fingertips.

And I would hope that this council or future council would want a city manager and staff that would be able to supply that information when asked.

And then I don't think the first one applied to me.

So I don't know.

Maybe I missed something.

But if it did, could you give me the example?

Well, I think more than one of you has expressed at some point in the last several months the desire for additional details relating, for example, to the police department budget.

And if we're all going to be honest, we've known for a really long time as a result of national events that

the public in general is going to be looking to city council to have an in-depth understanding of the police department's budget.

And so in an ideal world, instead of waiting until you're actually in the budget process and you have a budget

presentation that you may or may not be happy with in terms of the level of detail that it's supplying.

In an ideal world, knowing that that was an issue that's going to be coming forward, you all and the city manager would have had some forum in which you discussed with each other, how are we going to deal with this in the upcoming budget process?

Do we need to make changes to the budget document or to the information that's going to be presented to city council?

How do we do this?

And those conversations ideally would happen in advance, but it seems that, you know, for whatever reasons, and maybe it's unique to the difficult circumstances that the city has been going through the last three or four years, or for whatever circumstances,

whatever reasons that's not happening.

And so one or more of you individually says, well, I'd like to see this, this and this.

And that falls or fell, you know, outside the process in which the chief of police as part of the normal budget process had already put her budget together and delivered it to the budget office so that they can start putting materials together for the city managers.

consideration in the preparation of a proposed budget.

Everything would work so much more smoothly if that type of request, instead of coming individually after a document's put together, could have been something that was addressed more specifically, knowing that it was going to be a matter the public was going to be interested in and that city council was going to be interested in.

So I know that wasn't for me, but I do want to push back on that a little bit because some of these things, we have been in a very unique situation for the past few years, but these subject matter experts have been consistent no matter whether our top leaders

have been consistent on that.

And I don't think it should be placed on counsel who this document is clearly saying is not the experts and should be led by staff to guide a process that they are not the subject matter experts on.

And if there has been just a clear consensus on what the community expectations is, and this is where I keep going with that equity conversation, and do you understand what the community is asking for,

Staff should be bringing some of these to our attention based on what is a national trend, what is a local trend.

And especially when they are not new staff members, when they have been here a long time too.

Oh, and I agree with you there.

I totally agree with that.

My point is that you all shouldn't be in the position of having to make individual requests directly to a department head or an employee because you're not getting the information you need.

That expectation needs to be set, but you should expect certain things from the city manager's office, and you should expect that that should come forward.

And what

is paragraph A is saying, and we can remove that addition if you'd like to.

I mean, if having a guideline is less helpful than not having one, that's fine.

But the point is that for everything to work the way it's supposed to work, you all have to have expectations of the city manager's office.

And the city manager's office has to have expectations of department heads.

And

instead of reacting to circumstances, everybody needs to get back to a place where you're anticipating things and proactively taking care of things that can be foreseen.

And I think that some beneficial things are happening.

Certainly, it's good to have this conversation, but I don't disagree with what you said.

Susan C. But what I'm saying here is that in this proposed policy, we are trying to make it clear that none of you individually has to make a FOIA request.

You can make one if you want to individually, but you should never have to make a FOIA request to get information that you want that's Susan C. necessary for you all to have the discussions and to make the decisions you need to make as a city council and that relates to

how you're expending funds from your own budget.

It relates to other things as well.

But the point here is that whatever you need, you should feel free to get through the city manager's office.

And I know that Mr. Boyles certainly has no issues whatsoever with you reaching out to a department head to ask a question and get an information.

That's perfectly fine.

But if what you're

doing is seeking a more in-depth investigation or report of accountability on a particular topic, chances are you're going to get better results channeling that through the city manager's office in terms of a response that is really

Well, that was the intention because, you know, it seems like, you

I mean, there is a certain level, a certain lack of trust among a lot of people right now.

So what your existing policy says is that in the interest of efficient management, if council members seek answers from city staff, they should generally attempt to do so through the city manager.

And in any event, when asking questions of staff, council members should advise the city manager of the same.

That's what your current policy says.

Consistent with your comments that we shouldn't always have to go through the city manager just to get answers to a basic question.

You and the city manager both agree that's the case.

You should be able to ask and get answers to questions directly from staff that you need to do your work.

And so this edition was intended to

recognize that because you all properly have said you need to be able to seek out certain information.

But there has to be some collective understanding.

The line is not a hard line.

There's not an easy place to draw the line.

But in general, if you need information as a counselor, it's not going to take a lot of, you know,

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that department head or the city manager's office put together.

So there needs to be some flexibility here and you need to be able to reach out directly to people.

But even while acknowledging that it's Mr. Boyle's responsibility to make sure that all the people who report to him are getting all their work done on a day to day basis.

And there's just there's no hard line here, but you're all

Correct.

It's just making sure everybody, you know, is comfortable with what those arrangements are, understanding that there's no there's no hard line.

I know that before I was on council in the prior city manager at that time also had in some cases if a counselor was asking for something really involved.

they would ask them to also seek support from other counselors if it was going to be one of those heavier lifts because otherwise I think we all of us could could individually go through that.

And that that particular that particular reference is to

something that a very specific city manager adopted as being something that would make his life easier.

And it was at the time that originally developed out of circumstances where one particular council in particular had a very

a very detailed level of interest in a particular department's operations.

And it wasn't unusual to receive multiple lists of questions, like 20 to 30 questions at a time that required research and detailed responses.

And so that particular city manager developed an informal rule that said, at least a couple of you need to

both have the same level of interest in this information before we go through the process of putting all of this stuff together.

I think that that was one way to do it.

But I still think that, again, that that was never a rule that was reflected in city council's procedures.

So whether or not it was

adhered to universally at all times.

I don't know.

But the important thing is for the city manager and city council to work out among themselves how this relationship is going to work in terms of getting information that you need to do your business within reasonable expectations.

In paragraph 2C,

This paragraph is related to, you know, we already discussed this afternoon that there is absolutely a way, as long as it's endorsed by the full city council, to figure out how to pay people or some people for participation on city task forces or advisory groups.

What this

What the changes to this paragraph 2C are doing is saying that if an individual counselor chooses to convene a meeting and that meeting is going to require use of city resources, then that meeting has to be a meeting of a public body.

What that is saying is that in order for you to

use city funds to pay people for their service on that public body or to devote other city resources such as staff time or support to that meeting.

It should be a meeting of a city council committee, a city board or commission or a city council advisory body, somebody that

has been officially recognized by City Council.

Now, in response to a question received by Councilor Snook regarding this provision, I sent out earlier this morning a clarification of that provision, sort of dividing up the response in terms of whether

she's a legal issue and one of the things that we've been through because of the opinions I've given you has established that in order to

Payne People on some of these public bodies, they have to be officially recognized as a city council body and city council has to approve compensation to be paid to them.

But there is no local ordinance that says a city councilor can't convene a focus group or two city councilors can't have a task force and ask for the use of

Kathy Galvin, Juandiego Wade, Ph.D.

: Staff time or city equipment or materials.

There is no city ordinance that prohibits that.

And so as long as you all as a group are on board with a certain level of the use of staff time or resource other city resources to support groups that they may be gathering at the request of an individual counselor or one or two counselors.

which aren't technically bodies sanctioned by council as a whole, then that that latter piece is there's no legal issue with with that type of arrangement, but the provisions in this paragraph that request that counselor convening that meaning to notify the city manager and the clerk of council and other counselors of that is simply

to make sure that you all are collectively as a body aware of what each of you individually is doing because all of you together supervise Ms.

Thomas and her staff and it's important to have an understanding of what each of you is individually asking of her and what each of you individually is expanding versus

And so this paragraph I got a lot of you know questions about but in the scenario that you just gave because this came up from Councilor Hill earlier well no this is 2021 so in 2020

and I think it's a conversation that council needs to figure out how to have.

So

When we had the Vibrant Communities, which was ABRT group, I had asked for Ms.

Thomas to sit in on the Imagine in Just Seville to make sure that we had adequate notes, accurate notes, so that if there was anybody who thought that they did not get something, like in that case, that very diverse, probably one of the more diverse groups ever,

in the city that I felt counselors had an issue because I convened the group versus that someone was looking at this process.

And Heather made a public statement that she did not feel heard during the meetings.

So I figure if there's a record this time, so we won't have to deal with that again, even though everybody was in the group and Heather talked regularly, that we could point back to notes.

So that's why I asked for the clerk's office to be present during this meeting to clear that up.

So then there was some conversations about me using too much of staff time.

So that was my first thought there.

The second thought there is that we were attempting to expand that office from one to then two, then the three people, because there were, and I at that time asked the council, what was the intention behind how we hired for the position?

because if counselors worked on projects then that was supposed to be something that we got assistance with and that is why the scope of that role changed.

And so it's in situations like that where I feel like I'm always defending or attempting to defend my actions when I am clear or had been clear with the council at the time about why I even asked for the assistance.

There were people in the group

who I'm sure can take notes and I rarely ask staff for anything, which is part of this.

I feel like it's kind of the double-edged sword, like what is she doing?

But I often feel like people will just say no, so we won't get anything done, but that's not how I operate and not what I signed up for to be here.

So I try to make sure that there's stuff to present without people shutting it down.

And then the other thing is to,

If someone is supposed to be able to help you with things, which I feel like, but I'm talking about myself, so of course I would feel like, is a very different situation than some former staff members.

Even that list that you were just talking about for a specific department, I have never sent anything like that, but I was just accused a month or so ago or two months ago of sending stuff right before a council meeting, which if I have questions, I'm going to send it, but I don't send anybody 20 questions because I don't have time.

up an email with 20 questions.

So I just feel like it's all based on just the relationship and how people feel about you instead of anything that is actually the case.

And I know it's hard to defend when if there are other people saying other things I don't even know.

And I don't even normally ask because I try not to bring people into messiness and I just deal with it.

But I just try to do things myself.

But I don't think it's fair for certain people to be able to ask.

or that if we have said that this is a part of your scope of work, that if we do ask, then there is a problem.

And so I know that may not be this conversation, but that is what I felt like when reading

The first one, I just thought that there's just not clear information.

And I understand I've said this to the counselors that they don't trust me.

I don't trust them.

So we clear on that.

But I have not lied.

You might not like what I said.

But if I say something, then I'm just not clear on when I have now become a liar.

Number B felt like it was like a gag order.

C, we go from, like if I set a meeting on Zoom and now like one of the participants in the Just Seville, imagine that Just Seville is a 19 year old person

just graduated from VCU.

I mean, I should be able to give her a gift card for her participation in a two and a half hour meeting without there being a big deal.

And if we were in public, if we checked the calendar and the meeting space was open and we wanted to buy some meals for a meeting,

than that.

I mean, I have taken snacks, cupcakes, oranges, things like that to the kids at school.

One time Max even picked up the stuff because I was so behind with everything and she brought them over and met me at Johnson.

Like it's that type of stuff.

And now you're saying if you use any

Any of this?

So the school, is it already counted as a public body, or I mean, a public open to a public meeting because other people are there?

I mean, it's just, I don't know, this just seems very restrictive when I don't understand

what, like all of these things are what certain people are requesting.

And even if they may not be the people that are generally requesting things, or even if I'm going out to seek advice when nobody has ever sought advice from certain groups of people before, that is what I know to do.

Those are the people that I want to hear from.

And so I don't understand why

There's a lot of rules.

I'm sorry, Ms.

Just before we get started on that conversation that you made a statement about council supervising clerk and the clerk staff.

And it's my understanding that I'm a direct report to council and that I supervise the staff.

So just to

So going back to the discussion draft policy in front of you, paragraph B is already in your policy.

That's not new.

Paragraph B directly relates to the general legal rule that individual counselors aren't

Authorized to make decisions in a vacuum themselves.

They are members of a local governing body and that local governing body as a general rule speaks and makes decisions and takes positions only through their votes.

And so paragraph B is specifically in your policy to try and help all members of city council

understand when they may be expressing individual opinions and positions versus when they are communicating positions and opinions of city council as a governing body.

But that's not new.

Yeah, and I think the

addition of the vote is related to sort of the struggle that counselors are having to try and sort through what is an individual undertaking versus what is a group undertaking.

And it's that vote, either a vote approving a policy or a vote approving an expenditure.

When you get to paragraph C, I can't say this enough.

If you are going to use city funds to pay somebody to serve on a group, that group has to be a public body.

It has to fit within the definition of a public body.

It has to be a board or commission established by council within an ordinance like the Planning Commission or the Human Rights Commission.

It has to be a committee of city council.

itself, or it has to be an advisory body sanctioned by city council.

And that has to be done by a vote establishing that group.

No, not to pay people in a group.

Whatever the examples we were.

We wanted to approve an amount.

Not to give gift cards to individuals.

There's two ways that people on groups, focus groups, whatever you want to call them, can get paid.

The city manager can establish a focus group to provide input on important city programs, that sort of thing.

Those people would be selected through some sort of criteria established in advance and there'd be a quid pro quo.

It's, you know, the ability to participate in that type of survey or information gathering, whatever.

The city manager can do that.

Individual city councilors cannot make a decision on their own to give

gift cards to people for serving on a group that that city councilor has assembled together, but which has not been approved by city council as a whole.

That is the core issue that has generated all of this controversy.

And it's a really important legal concept because this notion of what an individual councilor can do versus what

that individual counselor needs to work with city council as a whole to structure is the core issue.

Sometimes we're talking about little things, but this core legal issue is a much bigger issue than some of these smaller things we're talking about.

If city council would like to

establish a policy that gives individual counselors the ability to purchase goods or services like the consulting services that you brought to City Council last October.

City Council can, as a group, authorize individual counselors to make certain purchases themselves, certain purchases that aren't reimbursable expenditures.

and City Council can establish a dollar value for those purchases to be made.

It's purchasing authority.

It is not the authority to set up a group that's sanctioned as a public body to receive public funding.

That is something because there is a state statute that specifically says what advisory bodies

City Council is allowed to compensate.

Right.

So every month you would look at an expenditure report, you'd see how much money

was expended out of your city council budget as a whole during the preceding month, and you just monitor it.

If you had questions, you would ask each other those questions.

But that's always been possible.

It's always been possible, but everybody's been leaving that to city staff to do.

The other problem is we, on council, at least in the last year and three months,

I've been asking, I've asked, I started in January of 2020 asking, can I see a copy of what goes into the line item for city council budget?

And I've never seen one.

And I've been told that at one point that there was a line in there for travel expenses for city councilors and that we in the year 2019, probably 2019, 2020,

It had $20,000, $10,000 in it, and council wound up spending $20,000 during that time, or maybe I'm off by a year, but the point is, nobody was tending to the basic issue of whether we were spending what our budget allowed, and I've repeated the request a number of times and

and nobody seems to have been interested in getting us even a copy of what the current budget says.

I don't know what the proposal that the city manager has propounded says for what we're supposed to be spending money on.

Yeah, there's a distinction.

So if you all open up the proposed budget, I know you can find the page that talks about management and

Karen Hollweg, Very specifically, there's a section that I just want to say that while y'all looking Karen Hollweg, That that talks about the the budget for city council slash clerk of council and for the city council strategic initiatives.

Karen Hollweg, But when you're talking about expenditures, what happens when this, you know, money gets spent at the city, particularly when

a payment has to be made by the city itself.

So if those expenditures have to get coded into the city's accounting system.

And so I know that Ms.

Thomas or someone in accounting can print out a report of all of the expenditures that were deducted from the city council's budget over a certain period of time.

I didn't know that I should request from you I apologize I had requested it from a couple different city managers

probably a couple of different budget people.

I don't know.

Well, Ms.

Dang, didn't even know it.

I was talking to somebody today, and I want to put this out there, just for us all to remember, there's a certain level of organic

knowledge that happens and questions that happen by being in places.

And as the question comes up, you just ask the person there.

Pre-COVID, I was a couple of days a week down at City Hall in a spare office off the side.

Anytime a question would come up, I would, you know, Ms.

Thomas was right over there, or Ms.

Robertson was right over there, and I would ask them questions.

With COVID, we've had to be much more intentional, and it's been much more difficult in trying to figure out where to ask, who to ask, and where to go for knowledge and information, not for anybody wanting to be lack of helping us,

But simply because you sit there and you're like, well, do I go to this person or this person or sometimes not even knowing something exists and not know where to ask.

So I just want to kind of I don't.

I know I did ask a city manager to about our budget at one point.

Um, and we've also had a lot of change and a lot of and we've also been focusing a lot on a pandemic.

Well, not that.

I think that's exactly right.

And actually, let me give another example, one that relates directly to you, Councilor McGill.

So in the not too distant past you, you were having

a conversation with a city staff member.

And at the end of that conversation, that staff member contacted me and said, City Councilor McGill wants me to undertake aggressive enforcement in this area as starting immediately.

And that that person felt no ability to say to you, here's what the issues are and but

You didn't mind that I called and had a conversation and said, you know, this is a bigger issue.

You know, when time permits, I'm happy to talk to you about, you know, what that particular topic.

But, you know, before we go rearranging a whole, you know, level of activity at the staff level, it would be important for you to understand what we're doing now and why.

and whether or not city council as a whole actually wants to change that up through amendments to ordinances or whatever.

So sometimes those conversations aren't really time intensive, but they can unintentionally lead to a lot of weird things because people don't feel empowered to say to even an individual counselor, wow, that's a pretty big request.

So I don't know, counselors, we've been at this for a really long time.

I am hoping that, you know, with whatever amendments you all may wish to make, counselor Snook, I did get your housekeeping amendments and, you know, edits for clarification, and those were

One request I would have is I noticed there was a couple of gender specific

I'm still not sure that I understand what paragraph 2c gets at.

I understand the need to have the city manager and other counselors and everybody else, the clerk of the council and everybody else sort of in the loop for certain things.

Obviously, if it's a question of managing workflow, if it's a question of demands on staff time, we don't want to have three different counselors all deciding, hey, I've got a great job for Kina, then all of a sudden she ends up being overburdened or for one of her other employees or

or for somebody else in the system.

And so, for example, when we were starting and when Councillor McGill and I were starting up our task force to talk about mental health crisis response, I made sure to discuss with the city manager.

First, it was Dr. Richardson and then it was John Blair.

sort of what we were doing, who we were expecting to involve and so on.

And while neither one of them sat there and said yes, no, yes, no to specific people, at least there was a sense within the broader administration of what we were doing, of what the likely demands were going to be on time and so on.

I completely understand that.

My concern is really a lawyerly nitpicky kind of a thing, which is the

the juxtaposition of the word meeting, which is a defined term in Virginia Code 2.2-3701.

Public body is a defined term in 2.2-3701.

But it sounds like we're purporting to use the word meeting in a way that actually doesn't truly track the meaning in 2.2-3701.

I saw Ms.

Robertson's comments in response, and I need to sort of process that a little bit, and I may have some other tweaks to it all.

But what I want to avoid, I want to make sure that the workflow and demands on staff time and so on, that those are legitimate concerns the council honors and doesn't transgress.

But I also don't want to inadvertently create a situation

where the sort of the informal advisory task force sorts of things become impossible, become suddenly governed by FOIA.

And I will tell you, at least although I read your comments, I haven't had a chance to process them fully, I think that there's some tweaking to that language that we can do that will solve that problem.

So one thing that might make it easier for the time being is to simplify.

And maybe it should just say that if a counselor chooses to convene a meeting that will require expenditure of any city funds, then the meeting must be a meeting of the public body.

Because the FOIA definition of meeting makes reference to the term public body.

So the really core

issue that we're trying to deal with here is whether or not public funds can be used to pay people who are attending meetings of bodies that are not public bodies established by city council.

So if we clean all that language up and just say if city councilor convenes a meeting that will involve the expenditure of any city funds,

I like that.

I think that's a good change.

What if we change meeting to event in paragraph D?

Gathering, maybe.

Yeah, it's not my intention to turn every gathering into a meeting, but we do want to make sure that if you're not all necessarily communicating with yourselves every day, that you're keeping Ms.

Thomas in particular.

are informed about what functions or gatherings you're attending.

And then if there is a critical mass that may require some sort of FOIA compliance, that lets Ms.

And that would solve a problem that Michael Payne and Sena Magill and I all kind of inadvertently got into a year ago when we all accepted the invitation of CADRE to go talk to them about sort of introducing ourselves to them after the election, not realizing that the fact that all three of us had done so triggered a FOIA response.

It had to be formally, I think it had to be formally declared a meeting or something and

which was certainly not our intent.

We were hoping it to be substantially more informal than that.

So that's a good point.

It also raises a slightly different issue which is that we often get invited to either through the clerk's office or through city government or individually to things like the Veterans Day celebration of the VFW hall or something like that.

and it's important for the city, I think, to have a representative at those kinds of things.

And it's important that someone, and Ms.

Thomas would be the logical person, might coordinate to make sure that somebody could in fact go without necessarily all four or five of us deciding we've got to go and then all of a sudden we've got problems.

My understanding was when there's passive

involvement that there isn't.

I've definitely gone to those, as you just described, events where we just are literally among the audience.

We might be acknowledged, but we don't say anything publicly.

It's just, it

If you guys individually keep Ms.

Thomas apprised of which of those you're going to, then you don't have to worry, you know, Ms.

Thomas can figure out, you know, a Veterans Day ceremony isn't going to implicate FOIA even if all five of you show up versus if Ms.

Thomas notices all of a sudden all five of you are about to go meet with cadre and the purpose of the meeting is to

have you express your opinions and positions, that raises a red flag.

So just keeping Ms.

And of course, the flip side to that is that there are a number of times, for example, I think the last time that I remember was the Dogwood Festival Memorial up at the

up at the flag on McIntyre in McIntyre Park, where it was noted that there were a couple of Board of Supervisors members there, but there was nobody from the city and that there should be somebody there.

And if we all communicate through Ms.

Right.

And then going briefly back up to paragraph C, if I make

that change that we talked about, then the other provision can also be modified that to just say that, you know, a counselor will keep the city manager, clerk and counsel and other counselors informed of, you know, any events or gatherings at which the counselor may wish to use, you know, other resources such as staff time.

Agree with that.

It's an information.

I'd... Without Ryan?

Just really to, you know, something like use of a city conference room really should just be as simple as keeping the clerk of council aware of your activities.

But if you go online and you reserve the room, there's a record of that then, and that's fine, but I think that where the need for, and maybe I should just take out reference to meeting spaces, but where the need for sort of

Management of resources comes into play is really more in relation to staff time and potentially the level of supplies, but it's really more the staff time.

And I think in COVID, it's more prominent because you haven't been able to just go reserve a room and do what you needed to do if you wanted to meet with staff.

But if we're not paying individuals during the meetings, then it's not going to be a public meeting, right?

Well, I think the notification would only come into play if you're requiring staff resources.

So if you need employees of a particular city office or you need Ms.

Thomas's or Ms.

Robinson's time associated with that,

And then aside from our own

And we would just be participants in that meeting.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I think another example, and this has been going on for years, not all of these things are recent examples, but the HAC.

Originally, the HAC was a smaller group.

It was formed to be advisory to city council.

Now it's a much larger group, which requires a substantial amount of resources from someone in NDS, often a department head.

So in terms of one thing I am interested in this is exploring is what does this specific counselor budget looks like?

Because I would like to not to have to ask y'all every time I would like to do something.

And then you all could review and if there's any issues that you then would say whatever.

I guess the $300 in law enforcement will be notified or we would just say that's fine.

I don't think I've done anything that is problematic or as I've given all the examples.

So there wasn't one thing besides the donation to Pamela, which is just how she requested the payment.

So

that's pretty clear on what would need to happen in the future, but I would like that if I wanted to bring in that person and I felt not that she was suitable and could contribute to a conversation and just not in that setting that I should be able to or any counselor in the future

and any of you all should be able to bring a person that you see that could add value to the conversation to the table.

And another thing that I'm thinking is like when the Peace Industry Buck Squad, when those meetings initially before they were brought to council,

We should be able to meet with groups to get things established and start building.

And clearly not everyone has the same vision and not everyone is creating things at the same pace.

So I don't want to be hindered by, because when I was reading this, that's what it felt like, a lot of no,

know, we all know what checks and balances, which again,

I have turned in all my stuff and tried to get everything that I've ever had to turn in as an employee when I asked for this stuff and created the sign in sheets and everything.

So no one had to tell me to do all of that.

I just did what I used to do in nonprofit when I worked in it.

And I think that's part of the problem here is being in direct service.

Are we before and understanding how this stuff looks?

and not knowing how to not be a part of it.

Is that part of this discussion that we are only like sitting in a council chambers voting on what is presented to us by staff or is there a space for innovation and for us to bring things to the table and kind of work through those

I know I see like four areas that still need to be kind of from my notes at least during our conversation.

There's we need to add in an emergency provision policy for travel when a counselor's on travel so that there is a clear chain of if something happens with the credit card

how a counselor who might be in another city or another country can access emergency funds adding to who and oh adding do we need to be adding who and why we are having lunch, dinner, coffee is there

Does that need to be added into this policy to write in that we're supposed to be adding that to make sure it's very clear?

My second note is we need a policy about staff appreciation with a dollar amount, the instances allowable and what positions those are.

Is that just our direct or is it direct and one down?

Then I have a policy about engaging specialists, Lisa, I keep blanking on the word you were using before.

When we have someone and the dollar amount and that we need to add in also in that policy, like a good faith effort to engage competition for the opportunity.

And then just making sure that the oversight is clear and how it is taking that oversight out of

People who are under us in the power structure.

And so that it's either the oversight is either done side by side or an entirely different entity.

I mean, those are just my notes on this as too far as where I'm coming up with where this can get changed around to start meeting to try to meet the needs that we're talking about within

I do want to add something.

Pre-COVID, there was a lot of coordination for meals and food for council meetings and whatnot.

Yeah, because that did take a lot.

Right.

That's, yeah, thank you for bringing that up.

So do we want to include, so that's under that policy about engaging specialists, it's the dollar amount?

Or purchases of goods and services, so on page 6 under 3A

Three, I could create a subset that says an individual counselor may purchase goods or services for council related business subject to X amount of dollar limit and subject further to the requirement for a good faith effort to allow

Now, do we want to... I was just going to say, do we want to set that dollar amount as a yearly amount?

Yes.

or a yearly amount and a per instance amount.

And all I wanted to add is like, I just want to be aware.

I would like to be aware when those things are happening just as an awareness.

I mean, not that I have to give approval, but just, I think it's just helpful to understand like what each of us is pursuing and what groups we're looking to bring in.

I agree.

Number one, I want to know, certainly at the time that they're speaking, that they're there to be having been paid for it, or expecting to be paid or about to be paid.

I was a little bit taken aback when Pamela Boyce Sims

who apparently we were paying started telling us because of her work, the residents of Chester, Pennsylvania now know that they don't have to worry about their insulin because they just have to eat cilantro and turmeric or that they could dispense with their delivery of Coumadin by eating hawthorn tree leaves and tincture of ginkgo.

But traditional and indigenous and African people have always had to make their own medicine.

So what Pamela is saying and the work she is trying to do

is to help people in case of natural disasters because of climate change, that if they end up in a situation where they do not have access to a pharmaceutical, which is the same reason that Joni Freeman brought her here in the first place, which is why I met her.

And there was a group of Black women who met with her to talk about healing because of the health disparities in the community.

So in the future, just dig a little deeper.

and what are those natural healing, traditional healing methods?

So flippant about something instead of just asking questions because you clearly lack understanding in a lot of areas.

And so that wasn't to say that traditional medicine doesn't work.

It's saying there are circumstances, go research Katrina, that there are times when people do not have access to traditional pharmacies.

and what she actually said was that they could dispense with insulin or they could dispense with Coumadin, in fact, by going to these remedies, which I also researched.

I'm sorry, but we're getting off track here.

Yeah, we are.

That's true.

All I'm asking for is that in the future, if we're going to have speakers come that

And Pamela would have done that for free.

She met with staff for free.

I don't think that people should work for free.

I understand that she was on the agenda.

I would like for us to move on.

That we pay people all the time for whatever their, what we feel that there's expertise.

I'm not.

I just want to have an awareness that's happening so that we're not surprised when we learn about it after the fact.

That's all.

I'm just asking for awareness.

I'm happy to give the same awareness back.

I'm not trying.

It's just awareness.

I wish we could.

You met with people and you have not always shared it with us either.

So it's not just one person doing this.

And I wish you all would stop with that narrative too.

What kind of yearly dollar amount would we like?

Okay.

What is a comfortable dollar amount for policies about purchases of goods and services that do not require a vote of counsel that individual counselors on a yearly basis can utilize?

After that, you can

then you can go back to the standard process.

I don't care.

Whatever the number is, like 1,500.

This is purchases of goods or services.

It cannot include gift cards for meetings.

This is just about having people coming to inform council or

I go back to like, in most cases, we can just work through our centralized purchasing person, which is Keena, Ms.

Thomas.

Right.

To act on these things in many cases.

Robertson?

I'm just saying in general, outside of the $1,000 or also to any individuals, if we work through as a body and we have missed councils, our centralized purchasing person to procure a speaker to come, that doesn't have to fall into any limitations because the council as a body is supporting it and we're going through the proper procedures with our purchasing person.

But do we have a budget line item for it?

As I'm looking at the budget, which the city manager sent us, I don't see a line item for that.

Well, you don't necessarily need a line item in your budget.

But Ms.

Thomas, for example, if someone is engaged to be paid to come provide

Ms.

Thomas would charge the expense of that engagement, the expenditure to a certain accounting code.

So most likely, however, you've, for example, paid facilitators that you've engaged to help you with city council meetings, that expense would most likely be charged to the same accounting code as

you would pay a facilitator for a meeting.

And so, Ms.

Oh, I just wanted to say that this is actually the reason why the question came up at all before was because I was unsure what line item to code something to.

So it may be that as you authorize these things, like I don't know if anyone on this call can tell us when

when city councilor in the past has engaged a facilitator for one of its retreats, how does that expenditure get coded and what city expenditure account does that come out of?

There may not be anybody here who knows to answer that question, but if that's going to be something, we need to make sure that when that expense is made,

It's coded in a way so that it comes out of city council's departmental budget and is reflected in the reports that you would be reviewing.

And we just had this one item for that.

So I don't know.

I don't know if it's worth.

Because what I mean, that was that was a one time thing.

It was

you know a rare thing and again she would have done it for free I just what I need to know since I'm the person who most of this is geared towards is I would like to pay people with gift cards and how does that how do we do that and if we can't do it as counselors

and is there a way for us to approve an amount to be able to give people, Sena made the comment under a certain income a year that we can pay them for their time.

What does that look like?

And so that is what I'm more interested in because this one payment has only happened in that incident with the strategic plan facilitator, which that was a

We were in agreement about that.

We've had some Home to Hope stuff that was coded to Home to Hope that I was a part of.

And hopefully if we start stuff, because that's been a part of the conversation, we can continue to be a part of things.

And so that's the one thing that I'm probably most interested in.

in figuring out, because that one-time $150 payment to something is really just a small thing.

But this policy...

responds to that.

You can do it with authorization of council as a whole by a vote of city council at a public meeting if they are willing to make that public body of council as a whole, or you can look to the city manager's office to structure a scenario where the group is being set up to provide input on a specific program or

Natalie Oschrin, Director of the City Administration to set it up almost as if it were a procurement transaction.

Those people are being engaged through by the City Administration to provide specific services.

If it's set up that way, there needs to be criteria by which people are selected.

They're not just selected because they are your friend, but they are selected through some sort of process

You would either need to get city council to approve that group of people as providing some sort of advisory function to city council, not necessarily ongoing,

But it can be issue specific.

It could be a one time only.

It could be for a period of time in which you're collecting input and information from that group.

But it has to be city council sanctioned as an advisory group.

And that's clearly articulated, I think, in this policy.

I have another question.

OK.

So can the terms of the dollar amount, can we allocate a dollar amount for counselors that all counselors would then have to vote on

If you want to give public funds to individuals

No, I don't believe that's legally acceptable.

If you want to give council public funds to organizations, no, I don't think that's possible because there's a state code provision that specifically says that city council as a whole can only make donations to organizations that meet certain criteria.

So we helped you figure out how to do that for the guns down

training that happened recently.

We can help you figure that out in specific instances, but in my opinion, legally, individual counselors can't just be given a pot of money to go be donating to charitable organizations.

That's what I thought I was hearing, so I apologize.

I'm clearing it up.

Okay.

I'm asking that if counselors are given this pot of money, this allocation a year,

that they can then say, okay, of my $1,000, I would like to buy five gift cards.

That is then brought to council and council then says, votes on that.

But there, instead of this being this big pool of money, which is now what we do, we determine whether an alloc, if we find, at least three of us find value in this allocation.

What I'm asking for is there, if there can be an amount

that we can say is at my discretion, even though I know that the rest of the council has to vote so it doesn't become this whether there is at least three, two other people who agree in terms of this particular transaction.

So if we allocate the money just as if I could pay a nonprofit, is there a way for me to say I would like to spend, everyone knows there is a vote, but instead of the other counselors being able to say, well, we are, I agree with climate change, but I don't think that this person because of this, what statements they made in the past is someone I want to hear from.

So then we get into that type of thing.

It's by majority.

And I'm just trying to figure out how we work around that.

So if Sena brings somebody that I wouldn't necessarily pick, Sena should still be able to bring that person, whether I would pick that person or not.

And I'm just saying,

the same thing.

So as I understand where the conversation is, I said, yes, that is something that can be done.

It would be

a purchase of a service.

So if we're using Pamela Boyce Sims as an example, counsel as a whole could allow an individual counselor to choose to spend a certain amount of money every year to bring, to engage the services of an individual to give counsel input, information, opinions, recommendations, whatever it is.

It's a

she's a quid pro quo situation.

It's not just a counselor giving money away to individuals.

It's a quid pro quo.

The council as a whole gets recommendations, perspectives, insights, information, whatever it is, the council gets something in return for that money.

Yes, that can be a purchase of services that

Individual counselors have a specific amount of money every year to do.

So let me ask, maybe this will help.

The city manager still can't just give money away.

If the city manager decides, hey, let's have a program.

I think it's important while we are updating the comprehensive plan to have a series of public engagement set opportunities where we make sure that a certain segment of the city residents are able to attend and we can get input from those people.

Yes, the city manager can set that up.

But again, it has to be a quid pro quo situation that person would need to attend that public engagement session and provide the input that the city was looking for in return for that money.

And, you know, the city manager, yes, could could set it up that way.

But the city manager can't any more than an individual counselor just

Bicycles are considered vehicles, which means drivers must yield to them and provide at least three feet of safe passing distance, just as you would for another car.

When you park on the street, be sure to check for approaching bicyclists before opening your door.

When making a right-hand turn, don't cross in front of bicycles.

especially if you're crossing a bike lane.

Cyclists have to do their part too.

You must ride in the same direction as traffic and obey all traffic signals and signs.

On streets without bike lanes, you can ride in the center of the lane but allow faster traffic to pass by moving to the right if it's safe to do so.

Use hand signals and make eye contact with drivers to communicate.

Wear a helmet and reflective clothes to be more visible to others.

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If you see a teen or adult suddenly collapse, it's important to act fast.

Call 911 or ask someone else to.

Get directly over the victim and begin hands-only CPR.

Put the heel of one hand in the center of the chest, then put your other hand over the first.

Push on the chest at a rate of 100 to 120 compressions per minute, like the beat of Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees.

Push hard and fast until help arrives.

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