I used to hurry a lot, I used to worry a lot, I used to stay out till the break of day. Oh, they didn't get it It was a hard time I quit it I just couldn't carry on that way Oh, I feel some damage I know it's true Thank you. guitar solo Thank you. committee. Before we get started, is there kind of the order of the agenda items is kind of scattered? It looks like maybe there's some other, some board issues that could come right after the other board issues. Does anyone have an objection to maybe taking the citizens advocate dispute resolution training, either doing that first or last. Okay, we'll move that agenda item three. We're going to move that down and get to that after we deal with the other boards and commission items. For anybody in the audience waiting on that particular item, you may want to, I don't know, you can go back to your office and maybe come back a little bit later or stick around, either one. The first item that's on the agenda for today is sponsored by Councilmember Beard, and it's the Oath of Office on pages 1 through 8 of our packet. Councilmember Beard, is there anything that you'd like to say in advance to us discussing – I think the Law Department is here to discuss this as well. You know, we attempted to do this quickly initially to kind of get out in front of all the other activities that we kind of sensed were going to be coming, whether they be state auditors' recommendations. And many of the boards and commissions have gone forward with their own approach. Not all of them, for instance, the library board always had an oath. They had an oath long before any of the problems arose, not only there, but even the airport board situation. And, you know, we can continue. It's going to have to be somewhat vanilla, in my opinion, so that it can cover all situations rather than trying to go through and as many boards and commissions as we have and customize the oath for each one of them. And for that matter, if they already have an oath, it's more of a psychological process to get people to understand the level of importance of what being on a board or commission is. And it doesn't, well, it's legally binding to an extent because you know if they have taken the oath, you know that they have understood the level of importance and the severity of consequences if they were not to follow ethical guidelines. And we have that, we have the ethics situation also with ethics training. So I'd like to turn it back over to whomever may wish to speak on this subject. And I don't know if the law department is ready to talk at all about this. Well, it's my intention that since the memo is in our packet from the law department, I will have Glenda speak. I just wanted to give you or members of the committee an opportunity to say about the work. Council Member Blues, were you on the committee? Did you have something to add? I was not on the committee, but I... I saw you kind of raise your hand. I do have a... Please go ahead and offer any comments. My thing, I'd just like to suggest that I think the oath can be, even though it would necessarily be generic, it can be effective. I think it really is important that people who are appointed to and accept appointments to boards and commissions, you know, have an expectation that they are obligated to attend meetings, to prepare, to participate. And even, of course, it's especially appropriate with reference to tonight's training session to be trained to be members of boards. Some boards more important in that regard than others. I do have a suggestion, if and when we get down to the actual oath itself. Hold on just a minute. And there are a lot of we can everybody may be whispering, but I think everybody's whispering louder to cover up other whispering. And so it's kind of hard to hear other council members. If there's any sidebar conversations, if you maybe could go out in the caucus room or out in the hallway, it's just kind of difficult to hear right now. I'm sorry. It's just we can't hear. Sorry, Councilmember Luce. And it is important to hear what I have to say. I know. I do have just a suggestion that the two paragraphs of the oath be reversed. Under three, yes. Thanks, Paul. Okay. Glenda? Starting with the most important thing. And then I do have a question, and maybe Glenda will address this when she comes up, and that is, what is the penalty for violating an oath? And if there is such a penalty, who determines whether the oath has been violated and so forth? I realize that an oath should not be simply window dressing, but I assume that there's not some dire penalty at stake in failure to uphold the oath in all circumstances. Thank you. Well, if you look at paragraph one of the draft ordinance, if you don't take the oath within the 30 days, then you're removed from office. And if for some reason you violate the oath, depending on the circumstances, that could be grounds for removal from the board or commission as well. And then in terms of switching the two paragraphs, I don't have a problem with that. If you want me to switch them around, I can do that. Okay. Did you want to say anything else about the ordinance at all? That's not particularly addressing any questions from council members, but just overall? Okay. No, this was just done based on the comments that you all made at the last meeting. I went back and took another stab at coming up with some language that would be acceptable to the committee. Okay, thank you. And committee members, if you'd like to speak, just hit your button. I do see Council Member Henson, but otherwise just hit your button to speak. Go ahead. Thank you, Chair. Glenda, I have one question about the boards and the commissions that are classified as special districts. Okay. Do they have to comply with this ordinance as well? No, they would not. Okay, so they are not included. Right, so the airport board, the health department, the human rights commission, parking authority, Lex Tran, housing authority, and the library board of trustees would not be included. Do they have something similar that they attend or? The Library Board of Trustees and the Ag Extension Board are required by state statute to take an oath, but those are the only two that are considered special districts that are required to do that. Okay. Thank you. Does anyone else have questions? No questions. All right. Any course of action, Council Member Beard, from today? Thank you. I believe I would like to move that we take this forward to the council. We've got a motion by Council Member Baird and a second by Council Member Tom Blues to move the ordinance related to oath of office for certain boards, agencies, and commissions forward to the full council. Is there any discussion? Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. I did have some questions about the training that hopefully our council clerk can answer or someone. I was just curious as to how often the trainings would be offered and would they be, it would be arranged and administered by the council clerk. You're talking about the board and commission training that's scheduled to start tonight? Well, this says that you will attend. In Section 1, Paragraph 3. Section 1, Paragraph 3. I will attend trainings offered relating to members of boards and commissions. Well, there's actually a, we're actually starting tonight, And board and commission members will receive training on how to be, what you need to do to be on a board, open records, open meetings, and fiscal responsibility. I think there were 17 boards and commissions that were invited to attend that tonight. And we intend to provide it online. So after tonight, board and commission members will be able to log into a system and watch it. But it will be live tonight. And I think we have 100. We have 100 that are coming this evening. We also have the ability to do four of these a year live. Sorry about that. We have the ability to do four a year live person training. We also can do this on the web and invite those that are perhaps out of sequence or would like to refresh to visit that. When will the oaths be given? Well, we wouldn't do the oaths until after this ordinance has passed, So we couldn't do that until after the council passed the ordinance. So it would depend on how long that takes to get this. Because it says you have to complete this within 30 days, so that's something that the council clerk would arrange? Right, because the ordinance says you can either do it verbally or you can do it by affidavit. But you just need to do it within 30 days. And complete the training as well? The training is not within the 30 days. It's just saying that you're promising that you're going to do the training, but you don't have to do that within 30 days. You just have to do the oath within 30 days. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Feigl. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to add a little bit to that. I think that when we were talking about including this in this ordinance, including the training in the ordinance, This was prior to this new training program that's being offered, I believe. I think the new training program that starts tonight, is this not new? Yeah, I don't think that's ever been done before. So this actually was just a suggestion that we do some type of training, and that preceded what's going to start tonight. So I think tonight actually works very well into this. but within the 30 days we had also said they had to complete the training or take the oath within 30 days of appointment, if I'm not mistaken, because we said it couldn't be retroactive. So this was, we put this together thinking in terms of new appointments, I believe. So that's just to respond to those two questions. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Feigl. There's a motion and a second on the floor. Is there any further discussion? We'll take a vote then. All in favor of moving the ordinance forward to council, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? It's unanimous. Thank you very much. Thank you for the committee on that work. And we'll do we need to disband that committee? Are you all working on something different after that? I think probably we'll probably be working somewhat on the wording of the oath in of itself. Okay. You know, with a lot of guidance from law. Okay. And a lot of guidance given to law, just to be fair. Okay. Okay. We'll look forward to hearing back on that. Thank you. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is the Ethics Act Financial Disclosure for Board and Commission. And Council Member Myers, I guess you, are you going to couple this with the Boards and Commission's reporting immediately following? Yes, ma'am. Actually, if you would like to go ahead and do the Board of Commission reporting first. Okay. That's fine. We can do that. Sure. Okay. Is it Commissioner or Glenda that will be? I think it's going to be, it's either going to be Shay or Anna. Oh, okay. Okay. Take your time. Shay's going to come up in just a second. And for committee members, that's pages 39 through 41, or anybody that's watching from home following along on the packet. What page should you say? 39. Okay. Okay, I'll just more or less give you an update of what the memo says. I'm not sure if everyone's had a chance to review it. But essentially, the council requested that certain information be provided online for everyone to be able to see it. And we've made some progress, not as much progress as I would like to stand up here and say, we've made, but you also have a screenshot. If you turn to, I guess it's page 41, there's an example on the top of boards and commission listings. Our first step was to get a listing of all the boards and commissions because not everyone even knows all of the ones we have. The first step was to identify what either KRS or Code of Ordinance created the board or commission, and that is listed for the citizen or the person who's interested to see there. If it's KRS, they can link directly to it, which gives them all the information they need about the board. Unfortunately, our Code of Ordinances is not able to link directly to a chapter, and so you have to type in that information at the Code of Ordinance link that's provided at the top of the page. This is the first step in satisfying the request of what's the purpose of the board or the mission, what's the makeup, and those sorts of details that were requested. Our next phase will be where you click on the board information, and we will spell it out for the citizen in a more understandable way, but right now they can access it with just a simple click of the button. Let me see what else. The other request was for minutes to be posted. Some of our boards are already posting minutes online, and for those, we have a link to those boards to get to their minutes. the Planning Commission, Citizens with Disabilities, I think, and maybe a few others have their own websites where their minutes are. Some of the boards are still creating their websites as well, such as the tree board. Yes, some boards will have individual websites. So we will simply link to them as we're doing right now. And by the end of the year, what we will do is have, when you click on the screenshot here, if you were to click on Address Enforcement Administrative Hearing Board, it would take you to a different page that would have all of the information on the board, and then it would have any available minutes. We are going to rely on the staff that's assigned to each board to update those minutes. Any boards that do not have urban county government staff assigned to them, which there are a handful or so of those, would send the minutes directly to the mayor's office, and we would put those on the site. But it's just going to take a little bit of time to train all the internal folks on how to actually do that content management of the site. But our goal is to get that done by the end of the year. Other questions on the memo? That's for Myers. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Rabel, I think – well, let me ask you this question first. Are these boards and commissions required to provide the government with their minutes and with their annual reports, and in some cases a final report if the board of commission is going to have a finite charter? Well, that's two separate questions, and hopefully Logan or Glenda is listening to this. but under the Open Meetings and Open Records Act, every board and commission is required to maintain their minutes. There's a custodian of the records, but they're not required to send them to us necessarily. But if someone were to call our office or call them directly, they have to provide within a reasonable amount of time a copy of the minutes. So there is the requirement to maintain minutes, but there is not the requirement of all the 100 boards to send them to some central location. When we first started talking about this a long time ago, we originally thought, well, they can all just send them to the mayor's office. But if you're thinking about all the boards we have, that's an awful lot of paperwork on a monthly basis and sometimes even more often, which is why we're going to try to rely on the staff assistance to the boards to take the responsibility to update their own board information online, as opposed to one person in the mayor's office having other duties as assigned. Now, the other question was, we did talk about having an annual report, this committee having an annual report from all the boards. And the major intent of that, if I recall, was to determine whether or not boards were meeting because we wanted to make sure they were still necessary or if they were having problems with quorums, membership, anything like that. The council passed an ordinance or a resolution asking for the minutes to be posted online. I cannot remember what the specific language was as it related to an annual report, but what I remember that we recommended to you all was that the mayor's office would send a letter to all of the boards and commissions and ask for a short memo, essentially a report of their activities from the previous year, how many times they met, and if they didn't meet, why, and a recommendation on whether or not there needed to be any changes to the board. and we're going to have those letters out later this fall with a due date by the end of January, and we would bring forward those reports to this committee at the February meeting. That's my recollection. Okay, that's fantastic, actually, because that's really above and beyond what we, I think, intended. What we were talking about was if they had an annual report, that we would get that annual report published on the web. But I think it's great that you're going the extra distance to ask them to just give you kind of a short synopsis of what they did the previous year. I'm not aware of any board actually having an annual report in the way that we probably think of them for nonprofit boards. I've never seen one before. If they have one, we'll certainly make that available and request that they send that in with their little short. We'll probably create like a template kind of deal of questions to answer. but I'm not aware of them actually having annual reports. Okay. Well, I appreciate what you're doing there to ask, you know, to create that template and have them provide that synopsis because that's really what we're looking for. So if they don't have an annual report, that will suffice. So that's great. Okay. And I guess it does make more sense to have your staff person handle that rather than, we kind of envisioned, I think, that all going to the webmaster, but it's still the same difference whether it's somebody in the mayor's office So the webmaster being inundated with monthly minutes for 100 people. The way our new website, which now is no longer new, it's been up for a little while, but the intent of it is to be what's called content management, which means individuals besides the webmaster can be trained on putting information in and not having to send it to one person and wait for that person to get it up. So we will train the individual staff members for all the different boards. And a lot of them are, I mean, they all are urban county government employees, how to log in, post a PDF under their site, and then citizens would have access to that. I'm not sure what our capacity level will be. I don't know if there's like a critical point of no more minutes because we can't handle it. But I would envision that we would have as many minutes as possible going back at least, you know, a calendar year and then information. One of the things that we'll have on the site is contact information for the individual boards. So under the open records rules, if you need information for that board, you would contact that custodian of records and he or she would get it to the individual. That's the way it's handled right now. Okay. And just so you know, those requests do not come to us very often. But perhaps in this day and age with the interest in boards and commissions, people will start asking for those more often. Okay. Thank you very much. Council Member Blues is next on the list. Thank you, Madam Chair. With regard to archiving minutes, I think it is important that boards and commissions submit their minutes to a central location, that they should come to the government because at least we can reasonably reliably predict that the government's going to stay and continue on. But boards and commissions, you know, change. The attendance can vary. Officers change. materials could get lost. And it does seem to me that if we, that since we have electronic capacity for, you know, for storage, and since minutes can be so important to serve as a kind of institutional memory, that we might well want to require that, not necessarily to submit records on a monthly basis but perhaps annually to be, if not always put on a website, but to be archived and accessible. You look. I was just looking back at Logan to see if he had any thoughts about that. He doesn't have any thoughts about that. I see that he doesn't, yes. Well, I understand what you're saying. I mean, on the one hand, by having them on the website, as we're going to be doing shortly, that will archive them electronically. But I think your intent is saying that they would be submitted to a central location, such as the mayor's office. we would have hard copies of them perhaps and file them away with information that we already have on the boards or keep it in an electronic file? I think an electronic file would be, you know, would be best. Okay. Well, then I don't think we... I have a little info from Department of Law. They have mentioned that even if we required minutes to be sent in to us, we would still maintain those in accordance with our records retention policy. And I'm not well versed in that, but there is some cutoff where those would probably be destroyed at some point. After five or six years or so. Our records experts back here are going to debate that one. But without having to change any kind of ordinance or resolution that you all have already done, how about when we send out the letter to the boards and commissions this fall asking them for their report, that we ask them for copies of their minutes from the previous year? Would that suffice? I think that's a very good idea. Okay. Hopefully they're not like huge, massive things, but we'll find out. Well, But the point is really that they do provide a record, and I've been now to enough board meetings to know that sometimes the only memory that exists is that of somebody who's been on the board for the last eight or nine years. Right. So it can really be a major help. And with reference to open records requests, I think it's much better to have those minutes in place reliably rather than somewhere where you may not be able to find them. They may have been erased, somebody who signed from the board, and so forth. Okay. We will add that to the request this fall. I appreciate that. Thank you. Council Member Feigl. Just to kind of add to what Council Member Blues was talking about, we kind of had this discussion in a previous meeting. One of the workshops that I took as a new council member, they told us that minutes should be taken of every meeting, even if it's just a small committee meeting on discussing the Christmas parade. I mean, any group of people who gets together to do business for the city is supposedly to be taking minutes. And I'm not sure, number one, that all of them realize that. And number two, I think what I would like to see is some accountability from the city to ensure that those minutes are being taken in compliance with the law. And if it doesn't go to a single point, then I'm not sure there's anybody checking to make sure that those minutes are being taken. I would agree with your observation. And I do think that having the minutes both provided on an annual basis to us, but also on a regular basis updated online by the staff liaison to the board and or through the mayor's office for those boards that don't have a staff person, we will be able to see who's posting and who's not posting. and we will be able to contact the board chair or the staff person and say, why don't you have your minutes and have some type of, you know, communication back and forth. And if we find out that they're not taking minutes, that's a good coaching opportunity, I guess you would say. But I do think having them on the website is going to be a good reminder for boards and commissions that may not be taking minutes that they are supposed to be taking minutes. Glenda, do you all know if when boards and commissions get their training, not the training we're doing tonight, but any kind of information they get, like the planning commission or so forth, is there instructions to them about taking minutes? How does that happen? And don't we send them the open records? I know just enough to be dangerous. We currently send board appointments, people who we've appointed to boards, a packet of information once they've been confirmed by the council, and Ana can tell you a little bit about that. After I receive the memos back from the council clerk's office that are noted with the confirmation date from the council when they've been approved, We take that information and we send a letter congratulating them either about their appointment or their reappointment, indicating their term expiration date. And we also include information on open meetings, open records, the information that we receive from the Attorney General's office. And it's a pretty significant packet of information to go through, which includes some details about what government meetings are, what government records are, how to retain those, what you should be doing. The details are included in that, are pretty specific. Those were updated in, I believe, July of 2008. So we're sending out the newest packet. It is also available as a link on our website on Boards and Commissions page. If you go to the bottom of the link, it will show you those. It will come up as a PDF. And so people can print those and review those at any time that they want to. And once they've received that, we include in that a signature page, which is a proof of receipt, that they have received that information, and that stays as a part of their permanent record here. Any other questions? Any more comments from Shea, Law? Commissioner. I wanted to mention one thing. Under the state open meetings law, all public agencies, and that's pretty broadly defined, are required to have minutes of actions taken at the meeting, and they are required to have those available no later than the next meeting date. In addition, they are required to have a schedule of their regular meetings. So just like we do, at the end of every year, the council passes an ordinance and says, these are all the meetings that we're going to have, including committee meetings. If you have a meeting other than that, then you have to do proper notification of the open meetings law. And this would apply to all the agencies we're talking about. So when Council Member Blues was asking about minutes and things and these kinds of things, how minutes get lost, that's not supposed to be happening under the open meetings law. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Thanks. All right. Any additional comments? Any action requested to the administration from this committee related to this item? Okay. Yes. Chairwoman James? Yes. One more comment if you don't mind. Sure, go ahead. This information that we're discussing right now related to open meetings and open records and those sorts of things, that is a focus of our training this evening. So we will be making it a point to talk with all of our board members and we've invited the directors, executive director types, so that they're aware of it and they can continue to work with their boards to make sure that they're following those rules. Okay. I have Just a quick little comment on the staff liaisons. How does it determine what boards and commissions receive those? Is it some kind of, is it based on the type of board or commission it is? I'm pretty sure that it's actually specified by ordinance. I think planning commission is always an easy one that comes to mind. I think it does actually say in there that staff will be provided by the Division of Planning. So is that correct? Administrative Hearing Board specifies that it comes from code enforcement. Right. The Rural Land Management specifies that it's the director of the PDR program. So it's pretty much specified by ordinance. I'm not aware of any other way of assigning people to the boards. Okay. And for the letter you're going to send out, can you copy either me or Paul or both of us on that? So as committee members related to this, we know what's going out. Sure. And also check the legislation that we passed previously about the request for minutes to see what it is that council authorized, if there's something you need additional from the Intergov before you send that out as far as the request for an annual report. If we didn't ask for that before, then maybe we should go ahead and pass an ordinance that makes it official to ask for any additional information. I'll check on that language. I think it was fairly general as it related to the annual report. Okay. But I'll take a look at it. Okay. I remember what the intent was at least, though. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Myers, are you ready to proceed with the next item? Okay. For anybody following along, we're looking pages 9 through 35, the financial disclosure, which has been worked on for quite a while. We're anxiously awaiting any updates. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. George, could you come up? And maybe Commissioner also? Part of what we're trying to accomplish here, it seems that it's going to take, according to the law department, some assistance from our state legislature. Could you, either of the two of you, talk about our current, the memo that you have in here, with the, our current draft ordinance? I guess. Is it page 9 you're looking at? 10, 910, but really specifically page 13. Okay. Some of the groups that we really wanted to get at are listed here on page 13. And I'll let Ms. George, if you want to explain. Okay, Commissioner. Why they think that they're exempt according to state law. If you look on page 13 at the bottom, where it's, well, I guess really let's start on page 12, where it talks about the state statute that enabled us to create a local ethics code. And it says that it applies to elected officials, appointed officials, employees, and then agencies created jointly with another governmental entity. And we haven't done the fourth one. So we're only talking about elected officials, appointed officials, and employees. When we get to looking at other boards and commissions, such as the Ag Extension Office, the Board of Health, the Parking Authority, the Housing Authority, the Airport Board, Human Rights Commission, the Transit Authority Board, and the Library Board of Trustees, those do not fit under KRS 65.003 sub 1. In addition to that, state law creates something called a special district, and that's what these entities fall under. So they are totally regulated by state law. So unless the General Assembly amends the statute allowing us to bring these boards and commissions in, regardless of what we do in terms of oaths or the Ethics Act, these boards are always going to be exempt because they are governed by state law. So your interpretation of the state law is that because they're under state law, we can't subject them to anything? Correct. Because we would need authority from the General Assembly in order to do that. If you could go back to number four, which you said that we haven't done, or agencies created jointly specified in the Code of Ethics. What would be an example of that? That's intending for us to adopt like a joint ethics code with somebody else, and we haven't done that. We're standalone. Our Code of Ethics only applies to us. We haven't done it jointly with like another county or another group. It only applies to elected officials, appointed officials and employees of the urban county government. and it doesn't apply to, like, Winchester or some other place. Okay. Help me understand that a little more, because it says, or agencies created. But the way you describe that, it sounds like you're saying ethics acts created. Well, but it's talking about local codes that would apply to agencies that are created jointly, and the entire statute is not set out here, and if you would like, we can get together and look at that later so you can see it in full. but we aren't operating with number four. Okay. So then do you want to go over any other changes in our current draft ordinance that you have here? Well, at the last meeting, there was a motion made by you, Council Member Myers, to amend the Ethics Act to require all boards and commissions created pursuant to Article 7 of the Charter and which require confirmation to be subject to the Ethics Act unless, and there's that last sentence in there, unless exempt by state law, that unless exempt by state law would exclude the ones that we have previously talked about. Right. Now, when I made that motion last time, that was a recommendation from you to make that motion. or to move in that direction. Right, but we had already previously said in our October 9, 2008 memo that you couldn't get to those, so we're still only talking about the ones that are specifically to the urban county government and not ones that are governed by state law. Right, I'm fine with that now. I understand that we're going to have to do something a little different to address these on page 13. Okay. I'm just going back to the all with the exemption of these eight, it looks like. So when you said that we would be better off putting everybody under there that we can put under there, with the exception of these eight, could you explain why you wanted to do it that way? Well, because before what we were looking at was trying to come up with a definition. We were trying to describe regulatory authority and trying to make all boards and commissions who had some type of regulatory authority fit under there. Or we were looking at the ability to expend public funds, and we were trying to decide who had the ability to expand public funds and what the dollar amount was going to be, and it was just too difficult to craft a definition that would be all-encompassing. So the other alternative was to either specifically list the boards and commissions that we wanted to apply to it or just make everybody subject to it. And if I could say historically, one of the reasons when we began this journey a long time ago that we wanted to go with an ordinance that did not specifically list was because then every time something new changes, you've got to go back and change your ordinance. Right. We all feel like that's probably not the best law to do it that way. So I guess if I could maybe open it up to the committee, is there any objection to the recommendation to include everyone with the exception of those that we can't include? And I guess in the same breath, I want to say that what I'd like also to do is make a motion that, we vote on here to send to the full council a motion to draft a resolution if the resolution would be the best way to do it to the state legislature to ask them for enabling legislation to add these eight that are currently exempted by state law. So whatever the best way to get at that, I want to do that also. Okay. So is that a resolution or do we just do a letter? We can do it by resolution. Okay. Okay. Would you mind holding that motion until we hear from a couple other committee members? Sure. Is it okay? Absolutely. Okay. Did you have more questions before? No, I think probably it's the best to open it up now to see if there's any question about adding everybody under there except for the exempted by state statute. Okay. Let's hear what everybody thinks. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Chair. I'm not sure when these items were put in committee, but I was thinking that in light of all of the things that have happened with frivolous spending, that that's why they ended up in committee. And so what we're seeing is that the boards that were actually charged with frivolous spending and so forth are not even included in this ordinance. So I guess Council Member Myers then by going to the state and requesting a change in the statute there, then that would address those issues. Right. I guess I just don't see the other commissions and boards as being as much of a problem as the special district boards. Okay. If I could respond. Thank you. We actually were out a little ahead of the curve on this. And when we first put this in the committee and tried to move in this direction, it was before any of these came out. So we weren't reactionary. We were actually trying to get out ahead of it. So I think that there's real value in light of now what we're seeing that we just put everybody under it, because there's really nothing onerous about the actual Ethics Act itself. And the financial disclosure where it would be applicable, the thing to remember is that you don't have to disclose amounts of money that you get from different sources. You just have to list those sources so everybody understands what they are. And back when the Ethics Act first came into existence, when they created those four by ordinance that were subject to the financial disclosure, everybody thought that you wouldn't be able to find anybody to serve on those boards and commissions once you did that. I think there was a clearinghouse on the Planning Commission at the time, probably because people didn't want people to know what their sources were. But once that was done, there hasn't been an issue getting people to serve on those boards and commissions since that time. So I think that historically we've seen that this isn't going to create a situation where all of a sudden it's going to be really difficult to find people to serve. And then I'll just stop there. Thank you. Council Member Crosby is next. I just have a question regarding the state statute KRS 65-003, Section 3. regarding these special districts. Do they not have, and I may have missed this, some kind of special ethics? Do they not follow something with the state currently or fall under something with their boards? I mean, does the state not have anything? I know that I've served on a state board, and I clearly had to fill out information, financial disclosures, and so forth when I served on state boards. So I guess my question is, is this not already in effect for the state on the state level? And if it's already in effect, then why wouldn't we just utilize what they're already doing? We don't know the answer to that question, but we will check it out. The other thing that occurs to me before we pass a resolution, particularly since the airport board, for instance, has been in contact with the state auditor, and they have adopted a number of the things that the state auditors requested them to do, it could very well be that they've already adopted some sort of ethic standards that their board members have to comply with. So it seems to me that we ought to check with those and see whether they have an ethics code in place. If they don't, and if they're not required by the state to comply with a certain code, then we could ask them to go ahead and comply with the code. And I don't know why they wouldn't go ahead and do it. I just think that would have been our first step to see if there would have been any type of code with the state. Clearly, these boards fall under the state, and we're trying to see if something can be enforced, if there's any type of violation because that's what we're interested in. If they're doing something that's wrong, how's it going to be enforced and who's going to enforce it? And if they fall under the state, then why aren't they being enforced at that level? Well, one thing to remember, and I want to go back to something Council Member Myers said in response to Council Member Henson's question. This actually has been a topic of discussion for over a year. And I know Council Member Myers has been very interested in this, and there's been a lot of discussion about who should it apply to. You see an editorial from the Herald-Eater when this was adopted in 94, when the state legislature required all local governments to adopt a local ethics code, that there were only four that were specifically included. But one thing that I want to go back to, we can look into that, But the point is that we were looking at all boards and commissions. That's what the original charge was, to look and see, you know, against whom could we apply a local ethics code. But I want to go back to something about the ethics code, which I want to make sure we don't lose sight of as we're discussing this. There are different components to the ethics code. You have a code of conduct as a part of it, but also the financial disclosure. As you recall, the last time we were discussing it, we talked about maybe applying the Code of Conduct to all, but not necessarily the financial disclosure. Or, if you did the financial disclosure, modify it in some fashion. I think I indicated at the time that I knew different cities did that. And KLC did a survey and submitted that information that's in the packet. I think I emailed it to you earlier. But I think it's worth discussing whether you really want financial disclosure statements filed by every single board and commission member. And that's what I heard you saying, that we might be moving in that direction. I'm not saying you can't do it. You certainly can. But if you'll notice, that's pretty rare among other cities in the state to do that. Usually they'll have a threshold or it'll only be certain agencies. But I think it's worth considering, even if you decide that the Code of Conduct needs to be applied to everyone. Well, I'm obviously going to support Council Member Myers, but I would also like to have that information before we... We will get that. Yes, just so we can see where these fall in relationship and how they fall with the state. We'll get that for you. You know, the one thing that is nice, I think at least with what we're trying to do, is it brings consistency across all the boards we deal with at a local level. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Myers, I think Commissioner Askew wants to ask you a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Ms. Carlsfield. Those are great points that you made, and I agree 100 percent with you. Commissioner, if you could go ahead and talk about, I know that you talked about the example from Hopkinsville from which you came. And actually, I like that idea. I think that we started out at one point with discussing the idea of the $5,000 threshold as far as the disclosure goes. Could you go to Hopkinsville? Can you kind of go through that? And, Ms. George, can you kind of come up to? This is on page 26 of your packet. This is part of the KLC information. What I see here is how I recall it when it was adopted back in 94. but you'll see that the Code of Ethics applies. Now this is the financial disclosure part. That's all this deals with. All elected city officials, same as here. All candidates for office, which I believe is the same as here, right? Anybody that's running for office has to file financial disclosure. Members of the Board of Ethics created by this chapter, that's the same here. That's one of the groups it has to file. And then it says, non-elected officers and employees of the city, and of any city agency who are authorized to make purchases of materials or services or award contracts, leases, or agreements involving the expenditure of more than $5,000. And so it was just decided that you would make application or financial statement, disclosure statement, if you were involved in that category and you had control over $5,000. Now, I believe, and Glenda can tell us more, but there are certain employees and officers of LFUCG that file financial disclosures statements. I file one. And I know the folks I believe purchasing file one, and I'm not sure who all in LFUCG right now, but I don't believe any of the agencies other than the ones specifically listed currently are required to file financial disclosure. And I believe that's the ethics, planning, board of adjustment, and things like that. There's one more. Okay, it's a committee we no longer have. If you want to address the ones that have to submit it in LFCCG. Sure. In Section 2513 of the Ethics Act, the following individuals are required to complete the financial disclosure as of today. It's the mayor, the county judge executive, members of the urban county council, the county clerk, county attorney, sheriff, coroner, surveyor, and constables, candidates for any of the offices that I just listed, members and chief executive officers of the board of adjustment, comprehensive plan update committee, which no longer exists, the ethics commission and the planning commission, commissioners, division directors, and employees holding the positions of buyers and buyer seniors for the urban county government. and then anybody who formerly occupied those positions, and you're required to fill out a statement of financial interest for one year after you leave office. Okay, so would that, if we adopted this as it's written for Hopkinsville, would that add that many people to the ranks within LFUCG? Let's see. Elected city officials are already included. Legislative and mayoral candidates would already be included. Members of the Board of Ethics created by this chapter, they're already included. Non-elected officers and employees of the city. Most of... And then it says, and any city agency... It wouldn't get that last part, or any city agency who are authorized to make purchases of materials and services or award contracts, leases or agreements involving expenditures of more than $5,000, we wouldn't get that last group. Ours is the buyers who are already included. So I don't know that it would really add anything if we adopted this language that's in the Hopkinsville coordinates. Okay. It may add a few, but not. One more thing to add. But we do have, you know, we are talking about adding additional boards and commissions, so we would have all of those. And I did ask Ana to get the list of all of the boards and commissions just to highlight some of the ones that would now be required to do the statement of financial interest if we don't include a dollar amount or make some kind of distinction. For example, the Arboretum Advisory Committee would be one, the Address Enforcement Administrative Hearing Board. Let me ask you a question real quick. Is that without the dollar amount? Yes, without the dollar amount. More than likely, some of these that are just advisory in nature would be included. Right, but we're talking about doing the $5,000. As long as we do the $5,000, it's going to exclude some of these that... that our urban county government created boards and commissions. Okay. So I guess if there's any more questions, if there are any more questions, Commissioner? Council Member Myers, the flip side of that is we don't know if you impose the 5,000 how many people it would encompass. We'd have to ask some of these agencies about that. See what I'm saying? And I don't want to muddy the water too much here, but if you said it was money they were getting from LFUCG as opposed to from all sources, that might make a difference to you. But I don't think we have any way of knowing if we impose the $5,000 threshold for financial disclosure on city agencies, how many folks that would encompass. We could probably find out. Now, this is talking about, will this encompass not only the board members, but will it also encompass the employees of those that, just like the clause that says, any city, no, I'm sorry, employees of the city, and then you drop down to that are authorized to make purchases of materials, services, or contracts, leases, agreements involving expenditure more than $5,000. If we adopted this, would that paragraph right there also extend to the agency's employees, or is it just going to talk about the board members? No, it would be officers and employees of the city and of any city agency. Okay. So I guess would it be prudent to wait and see how many people that is? I'm personally inclined to say that if we want people to adhere to an Ethics Act and a financial disclosure statement, then we want them to. And if it's 20 people or if it's 100 people, the issue doesn't change with the number of people that it involves. So I'm not that concerned with how many more people that's going to create that we have to get this information from. If you wanted to restrict this only to city agency board members, you can do that. I don't. I guess I'm looking for input from that. I don't think I would do that. I don't think I would limit it to that. I think I would, if they have employees that are expending more than $5,000, I think I would include them, too. If many members aren't in agreement with that, they're not. I just don't know how many folks we're talking about, but that's, I mean, we can try to find that out. We have Council Member Baird and then Council Member Lawless. Well, thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I don't see what the end game is with all of this. I don't see what we have gained by these disclosures. Who is going to review, I mean, what actually happens after the disclosure if, and for what reason is this being disclosed? And maybe Council Member Myers can tell me a little bit about that. I just don't see where we're going or why we're going there, to tell you the truth. You can respond. Thank you. I guess I would look at that and say that for the same reason that the state decided that all those folks that are – for the same reason the state decided that local cities had to come up with another ethics ordinance and this financial disclosure statement, they allowed the local governments to determine who was subjected to it to some degree. But the same reason that the state realized that that needed to be put in place, I think was because of bop chop and a whole lot of things that happened back then. We see similarly the things going on right now that are causing great concern. Again, we were out in front of that. We started this process before we began to read in the newspaper all the things that are going on. But I think the bottom line is it's important for taxpayers to understand who's spending their money. It's that simple. And I think if we limit this to the $5,000 threshold being applied to city funds going to those agencies, then I think we're back in our purview and not casting our net a little too far than what we should. But taxpaying citizens ought to know who's controlling and spending their money and what their connections are out there as they do that. And, you know, I'm not going to defend it any further than that. I think that's the simple fact that the bottom line is they ought to know who's spending their money, what their relationships are as they do that. I guess, and if we might have a conversation, a little out of protocol. So you list the source of income. You don't list the amount, however, just the source of income. So you could be receiving $5,100 or $50,000, and there's no way of knowing or measuring. And it's not knowing that that is real fuzzy in my mind about who reviews it, who looks at it, asks questions about it, and how does that process work. I mean, there's no sense in just doing this just to be doing it unless there is some teeth to it and then there's a process behind it to review. I mean, I've been filling these things out when I was a director. I was filling them out. And it's pretty benign as far as I'm concerned. It's not invasive as far as I'm concerned because I just put the name of the company. I did consulting work at that point on the side. bank consulting, and I didn't have to say what the amount was, what the level of involvement was, or whether I was an officer of that company or a shareholder or on and on. I think actually if you look at that form, you do have to list if you're an officer or a shareholder in a company. You have to list, if you reach that threshold of dollar amount, you have to list it, and you also have to list how you're getting it from that entity, too. You don't have to list the dollar amount, but if you're a shareholder as opposed to a partner in a company, all that is on that form to disclose. And I think that, you know, when we start looking at promoting directors, when we start looking at putting people on boards and commissions, when we start looking at some of these committees that look at who would be awarded a contract, I think it's very important to know if you're receiving monies from that industry, for example, or from certainly if you were going to get money from that company, if you had some kind of relationship financially with that company, you would not be, you shouldn't be eligible to serve on that kind of a committee that would make the decision on who gets the contract. But also, you know, if we're going to promote somebody inside of government that's going to have a say over contract letting and leases and service awards and things, we ought to know what their background is in terms of their relationships. And the same way goes if you're serving on a board for a commission or if you're an employee of one of these agencies and we're giving you money and then you're letting contracts to people. So we need to know that and make decisions based on that information. Well, you know, I wouldn't argue with you about the letting of contracts. That part of it I understand. As Director of Economic Development, I had no authority to do anything. I'm still filling out these forms. Well, that won't change. I mean, the Director of Economic Development is filling it out now, and they always will. But that's always been a bother to me as to why and what kind of mechanism was behind who was going to review. How was anybody going to know unless they really waded through thousands of pages of disclosure to find out anything? Let me. Madam Chair. Yes, I need to. Yes. Excuse me just one second. Okay. Councilman Beard has raised a good point. I just confirmed when Susan gets the, Susan Lamb receives these financial disclosure statements, what her office does is they confirm that it has been, every question has been answered, that it's been properly signed and notarized, and then it's been filed timely. And then she files it. She is not reviewing any of the information in there. Now, that information is available if somebody wants to inspect it. Now, I don't know that many people go and review those forms, but if somebody fails to file, then there's a procedure that's followed to get them to get it filed, and the Ethics Commission can become involved if need be. Well, I'd like to say with that, too, I think this is correct, and Susan, you can tell me if I'm wrong, but those are available for public information, so at any point anyone can request that. And when you fill it out, it might not be relevant, but during the course of the year, it could become relevant depending on what's happening on the, say, for instance, corridors committee. If you're hiring someone to do something, it may be appropriate at that time to then pull the record. So it's not that one-time shot. But I think it's point well taken that maybe a review process should be talked about, or at least some kind of filing process should be talked about for reference, how are those easily referenced, and we make sure that those are, we have some sort of system for reference, because I've pulled them at times, but I know it's not something that people regularly do. Let me, I want to mention one other thing, because Council Member Beard raised this issue too. Depending upon the type of income that you're receiving, there are different thresholds. For earned income, it's $500. Let me see. If you have an interest, some sort of a business interest, where you have a 10% or greater ownership, and you've earned $5,000 or more, I don't know that I've said that quite right. It's $5,000 or 10% of an ownership interest in the business. Whichever is less, you're required to disclose that. And then there's things about debts and stuff like that that you have to disclose. But that information is also in that grid that I gave you. And if you look at the heading, it will talk about a lot of other cities. The 500 is pretty low where we are if you look at compared to other cities. but it will talk about earned income, debts, those kinds of things, and how other cities have established those thresholds. Council Member Lawless. I'm a little bit confused. Council Member Myers, are you suggesting that any nonprofit that receives money from the city do this? Is that what we're talking about? With the caveat of a $5,000 threshold. That would... I think you're just talking about boards and commissions, not our partner agencies. Right. Is that your question? Yes. So you're not talking about partner agencies? No. Okay, thank you. Council Member Feigl? Thank you, Chair. I'm a little curious, too, as to it appears that this applies to employees as well as appointed positions by the Council. Is that correct? So are there not? It's not all employees of the government, but it's employees that fit into that category. Okay. Are there not already safeguards in place for employees who might be making a decision on purchasing? Are there not already safeguards in place for that? If you are a buyer in the Division of Purchasing, you do fill out the Statement of Financial Interest. If you are the purchasing coordinator in a department or division of the government, you're not filling out the statement of financial interest. So it doesn't include all employees. All employees are subject to everything in the Ethics Act except for the financial disclosure, unless you're a division director or commissioner or buyer or one of the other categories that I've listed. So, for example, our purchasing coordinator does not fill out a statement of financial interest. for the Department of Law. Okay, thank you. Can I ask for a clarification on that? The purchasing coordinator works directly with the purchasing department. They're not making purchases that are just at will. They are pre-approved purchases from that person that would have taken the financial disclosure. Right, and we're going through the urban county government process for purchasing things, but I didn't want you to think, Council Member Feigl, that all purchasing coordinators are required to fill out a statement of financial interest because that's not correct. Are your questions answered, Council Member? Okay. Council Member Myers, you're next on the list. Luna, could you, just to clarify that, when you compared this language right here for Hopkinsville And then the list that currently under LFUCG employees, it's not – it didn't sound like it was going to add probably anybody, or will it? Elected city officials. I mean, it's going to add all of the boards and commissions that we're talking about, but. I mean, specifically LVCG employees. No. Not the way it's currently written, no. Okay. I just wanted that clarification made. Any other questions related to this? Did you have anything else to add, Glenda? Okay. Councilman Myers, do you have any thoughts of how we proceed from here? Well, Commissioner? I wanted to just add one thing. and we do have purchasing coordinators in every division and department, and they do work closely with purchasing. But, for instance, in the law department, if our purchasing coordinator wants to make a purchase of something, there has to be approval. I've got to still approve it, but they're actually doing the ordering off. If it's office supplies, it's office state contract and those kinds of things. Now, I believe every other division and department does the same thing, but you do have people out there that are actually involved with the ordering, that if you decided that you, even though there might have to be somebody else, approve it and they're putting it together, then yes, it would be, it's conceivable that depending upon how it was drafted, that you might have the purchasing coordinators included. Do you see that as a positive or negative, or are you just giving us information? I'm giving you information. Okay. I think it's up to you to decide whether you want to, you know, and really, to be honest with you, it's probably would be better to have somebody from purchasing tell you because I don't, you know, their involvement with the purchasing coordinators and how that works, I don't understand all the ins and outs of that. Okay. Can I make a suggestion to the committee? And I don't know if law can give their feedback as well. but it looks like you can vary these amounts. So if we wanted to do this, you could set an amount that had to do with purchasing versus set an amount that had to do with money going outside of government to an awarded entity. So I think we could keep that in mind if that were something that we wanted to consider. Right, and that's exactly what this spreadsheet does. If you look across the top from the first page of it, you know, there's different categories. applies to those with disbursement over, source of income amount, real property, business interest, creditor. So there are different categories, and yes, we could do that. When Ms. George is free. Did you have another question for Linda? So if we were to look at this legislation or this language here for Hopkinsville, under that second list here, and we were to incorporate that in the proposed ordinance that you have here, is that going to take a lot of rewording? Well, this is what I would like to do, if that's what we're considering, because this is just a synopsis that was prepared by the Kentucky League of Cities. So I'd at least like to be able to see the actual Hopkinsville ordinance to see what it says, and then we can go from there and make a decision about whether or not that's language we want to include and who it would apply to rather than just going by a summary that we received from someone else. Because I have not looked at this language in the Hopkinsville ordinance to see what it actually says. Okay. Then I would ask that you do that. And then also ask that you include, are there any other changes that you need to make to the proposed ordinance then? Everybody's in right now except for those that are exempted by state law, right? Correct. The way that it's drafted currently. The way it's currently drafted, right. Okay. So I would ask them that you just look at Hopkinsville's ordinance, look at that language, and see if you want to make an adjustment based on what they have in theirs, and then I guess bring that back one more time. We're getting there. Madam Chair, may I make a suggestion? I think it would be helpful, because I know Councilman Myers has worked on this a long time, and we've been working with him. it might be a good idea to maybe have two or three folks and let's get a draft ready before it comes back. It might be a little easier if we, you know, can have some discussions prior to the next meeting. That sounds like a good idea. So we'll have Council Member Myers. Is there another? Council Member Feigl? Anybody else? Okay. And Beard. Okay. They love to work together, all three of them. So we'll have them work with you, Glenda. Okay. I think it's the same group that's working on the oath. Yeah. Okay, we've been doing great together. So, okay, well, I appreciate that, Madam Chair, and we'll work together with the Law Department to bring back a draft and then go from there. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Oh, thank you, Madam Chair. One other thing, could you look at, based on what Council Member Crosby said, can you look at what the state requires of those eight that are exempt? Yes, I have that down to do that. Okay. And then bring something back, and can you bring that to the work group also? Yes, I can do that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I believe next on the list would be the boards and commissions with nominating bodies, sponsored by Council Member Crosby. Crosby. You want to give us a little bit of an intro background on it? Yes, thank you, Councilmember James. Back a few weeks ago, we had a discussion in one of our work sessions regarding the Ethics Commission and the various groups that nominate to the Commission, and it turned into a broader discussion about the different boards and commissions that we have and the fact that we have special interest groups who have the ability to nominate to our boards and commissions, and so we took the discussion further and hence made a motion to bring it to this committee as to whether or not we even should have special groups that make nominations to the mayor and why not the mayor can't pick his nominees by charter as he's provided to and bring forth those nominees. And we as a legislative body have the ability to vote these nominees up and down. And it's not really just directed at the Ethics Commission. That's one that sticks out. There are several other boards that also have groups. I know that they have listed a few on here, but right now I'm actually working on a vacant property review commission task force, and that's another committee that has some special groups that make nominations to the mayor. And what we're hearing, I think, based on at least my experience, is that sometimes when you have some of these groups that there might be one or two people, for instance, an executive director or somebody who controls who comes forward to the mayor, and then what we're hearing in some cases from the mayor's office is that they have trouble getting nominations from these groups. So I just thought maybe it might be a good time that we discuss this and see where it leads us. When I was looking through what was brought forward to us and the questions that were answered, those weren't really questions that I asked. My question was more of a broader question as to whether or not we even had to have really groups that we know nothing about making nominations to the mayor and why he can't just pick, and then we have the up-down vote on these different commissions and committees. So that was more my question. I'd be happy, even though the administration answered some questions, they weren't really the questions that I had asked, but we can either discuss this today or we can defer it. It's really up to this body. Thank you. Shea, if you don't mind, we do have a memo in our packet for anybody that's following along, pages 42 through 43. Do you want to respond, I guess, first to Councilman Cosby and then why you chose these questions if they weren't what she asked? You should ask Paul Schoeniger, who's sitting next to you. He sent them to us. Actually, I did. But that's okay. Okay. Your question, I don't remember what your question was other than just all I have is that you referred the ethics commission to counsel in all boards for. All groups. All groups. That make nominations to boards and commissions. For discussion. For discussion. and basically, and I guess at this point, I don't feel like we can even have a discussion on it based on the information that we have before us today. So I guess maybe we probably need to clarify with the administration what exactly we're looking for and then bring it back. Sure. Now, what I have prepared, took the time to prepare here, was the questions that Mr. Schoeniger sent to me, and I guess those were questions he felt maybe he, I don't want to speak for him, were things that he thought were important to the discussion. But what information would be helpful from your perspective, Councilman? Well, I would say, first, there are more boards than what you all have listed here. Yeah, we just gave examples. That have that. And then secondly, I mean, we can discuss this today. I have no problem with it. and stating my position on how I feel about this and what type of interaction there is between the mayor and the nominating bodies, I think we're all pretty clear on that. I guess this was just not what I had asked to bring forward. Can you, Council Member Crosby, could you maybe at this, since we have the opportunity and all ears, maybe go ahead and talk about what it is that you would like the administration to present to us so then they just kind of get rid of the check-off list. I'd like to know their opinion as to whether or not they think that we need to have special groups making nominations to boards and commissions if they have to have. I see, and maybe law is a better person to ask this, but if they need to have special, I don't want to say special groups, if they need to have groups by ordinance making nominations to boards and commissions, or does the mayor have the authority to make appointments? And as a body, can we vote them up or down? Let me try to take a stab at that. First of all, again, I'm just answering the questions that I thought were needed for today. My understanding of what you had asked were just to refer all of the boards that had nominating bodies to this body for discussion, and we can bring forward to you a list of all of those boards. The way we've been operating, I mean, every time a board is created, even boards have been created since we've all been in office, the council passes an ordinance that says how the board will be made up. We all know that. And the wisdom of the council in the past has been to have certain groups out there recommend people to be on a board. and I would assume that is to make sure that whoever the mayor is at that time has as large of a pool to choose from and as diverse of a pool to choose from rather than just going to who he or she might know, I guess. So I can see it both sides. This is just my personal opinion. I think that if you look at the ordinances, the Ethics Commission, for example, I mean, I know sometimes we have a hard time getting some of the agencies to give us nominations, but I do think the intent is good in that they were trying, when the original ordinance was written, they were trying to make sure that there was a diverse representation throughout the community. I don't want to interrupt you. I'm not talking about the diversity on the boards. I think that the ordinances are very clear with some of these different boards and commissions on how the board makeup should be. For example, I'm just going to use, say, the vacant property commission because it's one we've been working on. You wouldn't want to just have some random boards. You would want to have somebody on that board who has background on actually what they're serving for. But do you need to have a special group who nominates one or two people when not everybody may belong to that group paying dues or whatever? For example, you might have, I'll just pull out, I don't want to pull out any group, but you may have some kind of association. you may have a group of neighborhoods where not every single neighborhood association belongs to that group, yet they're the ones responsible for providing a name to go forward to the mayor. Well, you can still have it, still lined out in the ordinance, that you have to have a neighborhood association president represented on this board. So we're not talking about the makeup of the actual committee, board, or commission. that's clear in the ordinance. The ordinance, what we're discussing here is the actual nominating groups that bring these names forward and whether or not we have to have them bringing the names forward, if that makes sense. The Ethics Commission, clearly you would want to have a certain makeup on the Ethics Commission. I would imagine you'd want attorneys and you'd want a very good cross-representation of the community representing us on that board or on that commission. But do you need to have five groups or five different or seven different nominating people or nominating groups that were put in there maybe 10, 12, 15 years ago that may not be representative of what our community is today or in 20 years? And I think that's what we run into with a lot of these commissions is that oftentimes when these ordinances are written, you put groups in where we can't get nominations because they're not active or we don't know about the organizations because there may be two or three people who control who comes forward. And quite frankly, like on the flip side of what you said, the mayor picking, where's the fairness in that to the community at large? So I will stop there and allow feedback. I mean, we can operate either way. from the mayor's perspective. From one standpoint, it is helpful for us to have people bring forward recommendations. As you know, we have hundreds of people that we have to appoint. And so when there are situations where you do have a body that's been asked through ordinance to bring forward recommendations, it does simplify the process to us. I understand what you're saying, though. So I think what would have to happen is, is the council would have to look ordinance by ordinance and change, I mean, Belinda might disagree with me, but, you know, creating ordinance and amend each individual one to take away the nominating body if that was the will of the council. I'm not sure if you could just do a blanket take away. Yeah. This is similar to the process we went through back in, I think, March of 06. Not 06, I was not here in 06, I'm sorry. March of 078. Pretty sure it was 08. We did a review of all the boards and commissions. There were a number that we determined should be abolished for some reason or another. We brought that list forward. But with each of them, we had to determine how it was created, whether it was by ordinance, resolution, executive order, all of those sorts of things. And then we created individual ways of abolishing each and every one of those boards. and I believe there were a total of 27. So it took a fair amount of work to determine how it was created, what was the purpose, why it was no longer needed, and then the mechanism to abolish that. Well, I would just say to your point, too, it does not mean that people still cannot bring names forward to the mayor. Even if you say you need a neighborhood association president on there, you can still have a neighborhood association actually bring forward a certain president if they feel like they're qualified to represent their group, or you need a Parks Advisory Board member, you can still have a certain group bring somebody forward that they think may be a good nomination. It does not prevent any group from writing some kind of letter or making some kind of informal recommendation to the mayor for who they feel might be qualified. It also, I believe, takes out the fact that you're having to beg people to get these nominations, and in some cases on boards, very critical boards, where we need people to serve. I'm not sure if you have an answer for what I'm going to ask, but is your concern largely with the nominating bodies across the board or just ones that might no longer be relevant agencies, such as the OLLI group that's defunct? I think it's – I would have to say it's across the board. I think that there are several of us – I don't want to speak for my colleagues, but I have heard from various groups and even from some of my colleagues' aides, in fact, through the Vacant Property Commission that I've been working on. And we're going to be bringing something forward probably in the next week, and they are extremely excited about the fact that we have taken out the groups that nominate because they have had people approaching them saying how difficult it is for them to have the opportunity to serve because they can't get certain groups that they're involved in to bring forward their nomination to the mayor because it gets very political within the groups. So I think that I would have to say overall I have a problem with any group where it could become a political process within that group. We're looking for the best person qualified to serve, obviously, and it doesn't mean that these groups still cannot – we're not taking anything away from them. They can still bring names forward to the mayor. And that won't change. Council Member Feigl would like to speak. Thank you, Chair. And I certainly understand what you're trying to get at, but it's ironic that we just went through a pretty long process in trying to draft the Corridors Commission and what might make up the Corridors Commission. And we were very specific in terms of who would serve on that committee. And the intent there is to try to find someone to serve who serves a broader group of people or who represents a broader group of people where there can be communication with that group. Obviously, the entire neighborhood association can't serve on a corridors commission. But if they have one person serving on the corridors commission, then certainly we're hoping that that communication would go back and forth. And so you try to find someone to serve on these committees, I believe, who can represent a broader group. Now, if there are instances where they've not been able to find someone to serve or they haven't, just haven't followed through, then there should be some mechanism for opening those seats up then to the public. But I still believe that as we set up these committees, rather than to take just the general, open this up to the general public, I believe that we get a better representation of the community when we pull from a group of people who represent a larger group. Does that make sense? Yes, and I think that you still have, when you define the membership of your committee, you still have that. You can still have defined within who makes up your committee, who that is by ordinance. You just may not necessarily have that committee, that group, nominating a person, if that makes sense. So if it's the corridors committee, you may have a member of the Fayette County Neighborhood Development Council on there, but they're not necessarily making the nomination. So you're suggesting then that, I'm just trying to get at what your point is. I'm just suggesting that the mayor would pick a member of the Fayette County Neighborhood Development Council versus them making the nomination. Having them make the nomination. Yeah. Is that all you have? House Member Blues. I would just add that I think it would be a normal practice for the mayor to ask the organization in question. For example, one of the examples in our packet, the Masterson Station Advisory Board, Masterson Station Park Advisory Board, which is made up of stakeholders in the park and representatives from various neighborhoods, it would be logical, I think this has been done with the mayor's mayor asks the organization can you suggest somebody who might be a You know a candidate for for this not I Assume councilmember Crosby that this would not be a a problem in your in your view Yes, sir and Today I just also like to say I don't plan on making any formal motions today The only thing I would I plan on asking for today is possibly if the administration could get us a list of those boards and commissions that do have groups that do make nominations to those boards and commissions, if that's clear as mud. Do you understand what I'm saying? Like you said, where you went through the process of... Yes. In fact, we were supposed to have that today, and we didn't get it done in time. If we could just maybe get that and then we can mill over this maybe for the next month and possibly come up with something next time. I'm going to assume you mean a list of the first two examples. We gave three. The first one is where the mayor is given a number of nominees from a certain board, I mean, organization. The second is where the body actually picks the nominee and we don't have a choice. And then the third is where an entity is supposed to be represented, but then we could go get whoever we wanted from that group. So just the first two is the list you need. That's correct. Okay. We'll get that to you. Thank you. And then if it's okay with Council Member James, if we can get that, and I'll hold off on anything until next month if we could bring it back up next month for discussion. Thank you. Council Member Feigl, do you have more to say? I guess the only thing that, the only reason I would see us going through the leadership of an organization to get a nominee is so that that person would then be recognized as an official, someone official to represent that group. and that would really only be the only way that you could get that two-way communication that you're looking for, is for the person who's serving on your board to be the official representation for that group. Certainly there's no reason why the mayor couldn't just select someone that he knew that happened to be a part of the group, but I'm not sure you would get that communication that you're looking for, unless you still worked through the president of that organization to ensure that there was some opportunity for that input on their board meetings or, you know, some level of communication. So I think just having that official representation gives that position a little bit more clout. Thank you. I have a – oh, sorry. Well, I have a question for Shay or Ana. I'm not too sure. But do you have instances where, and you don't have to name specific agencies or anything or commissions, but where it's been an issue because a person was not nominated by that particular commission where, you know, something, it seemed to be an issue that that person didn't really represent or wasn't supported by that organization, and you kind of saw their mission, their vision a little bit different than the mission of the organization, and maybe organizations actually said, this is a problem, I wish it didn't exist this way. Can you think of anything? I'm not sure I completely understand your question. You're saying that, like, once a representative from that agency is on the board, then his or her actions aren't representative of that agency? Is that what you're saying? Well, yeah, not the nomination, though, but in the case where it's not a nominated position, but it's a representative of, if it said a council member needs to be a member of this, but we don't select that person from our group. It just is a person that decides. The mayor selects. Yeah, they decide to do it. The mayor, the council confirms, but they're not necessarily nominated by us. Right. And then once they're in that role, it's like, this might not be working out. That happens all the time. No, I'm just kidding. I know it's tough to say, but, yeah. That was tough to say, wasn't it? But just food for thought, because I'm trying to think why you wouldn't. Why would you not want an organization to nominate a person? And trying to think of going back and forth. I see kind of, Ana, did you almost get up? Well, and that's why I was saying earlier, there are situations where we do find it helpful to have an agency nominating to us. Because it's in their, I mean, if we're going to assume that the agency is a legitimate agency that should be represented on this board per ordinance, then we're going to assume that whoever they bring forward to us, you know, at least hopefully when they give us the three choices, that one of those three is someone that we feel comfortable bringing forward to you. Okay. I don't think we need a nomination for every single position because that just gets really – turns into an administrative nightmare, really, because someone's just going to constantly be tracking down nominations. Nominations can come in informally. We don't have to necessarily seek them, but any time a council member or people from the community call us and say, hey, there's such and such person, I'd like to be on this board, then we ask that person to fill out the information. We stick it in a file, and it says who their reference was, basically. I'm not sure if I'm directly answering your question. What Anna has to say. Hopefully she can do better. We have found there is a bit of an issue when a representing group brings forward the three nominations, and they don't provide – I have found that the representing group didn't ask the people that they've brought forward if they're interested. So by the time I've contacted them to say, your name has been brought forward as an nomination for the 123 Commission, are you interested in serving? I generally then go through what the board does, what the time commitment is, et cetera. At that point, they're like, nah, thanks, I don't think I'm interested. At that point, I have to kind of go back to the drawing board because I need three nominations in order to present that to the mayor per the ordinance. So there are times where out of the three, I may have one that's really interested, two that are not, we kind of have to go back and start over. So there is a significant amount of time that that often takes to get the process through to be able to bring a nomination forward. So are you thinking, if you were getting these applications in from council members, so if it were we need a council member to fill this spot, but it wasn't a nomination from the council, and you got 15 applications, how would you then select which 15, if it were three recommendations that were needed from the council, how would you select those three to take to the mayor? You really want us to answer that question? No, I don't. As a council? I don't. There are situations where there are positions for council members to be on a board, and we do have council members who come to us and say that they're interested. And so in that situation, let's say we have four council members that all want to be on a certain board. The mayor will look at the other boards that council member might already be on, if the council member has some, if it's in their district, if it's something they're interested in. If we want, for example, if it's a board of all men and one of the people happens to be a woman, that would be something we would take, one of the council members happens to be a woman, that would be something that we'd probably take into consideration. So it's the same as any other board nomination. It just happens to be council members in that situation. But we could take any other group, I guess, that has the third example here. You know, if it says you have to have an architect, well, we go to our list of architects we happen to know who have good reputations that we think are community-minded, and then we start calling down the list, basically. If we don't have nominations, informal nominations, or if an architect has not written to us asking to be on a certain board, then we have to start from square one and track down an architect. Okay. All right. This is really complicated. It is. It actually is. It's not as simple as it seems. Council Member Crosby has one last thing, I think. Well, yeah, just in response to Council Member Fiegel, and maybe a little bit to you and not so much, but I guess just going back to you are not taking out the ability of the mayor or the administration to work with these different organizations for recommendations. It may not be where you're soliciting them for the three recommendations, but you can still have the interaction with them if they feel like there's qualified people they can bring forward. That is not going away. And the ordinance will still define the membership of the committee. So that's not going away either. We're not changing, saying it's just going to be whoever serving. You will still have it clearly defined who will serve. The other thing I'd like to say is my guess in a lot of cases is when these nominations come forward from these groups is we probably don't know if it has been vetted through the entire organization or if it is a president who's picking three people or if it is an executive committee or if it's an at-large membership who has picked the best qualified candidates to come forward. we don't know how the candidates are being chosen to represent their organizations for membership on these boards. So I think that those are just some things we may want to think about over the next month, and if we could get the information from the administration. I know we have one more topic to go over, but then maybe we'll be able to have more discussion. Thank you. Are you clear of your charge? Clear of my charge. Thank you very much. Thanks, Jay. Our next issue is the Citizens Advocate Dispute Resolution Training. Council Member Lawless, this was something that you had asked Citizens Advocate to respond to, and you want to go over details? Well, I had already gotten that from her. I was told to refer to this committee because this is where the Citizens Advocate Subcommittee or whatever is. So that being said, I have grave concerns about the resolution training, mediation training for neighborhood leaders. And my concerns, and I applaud your efforts to think outside the box, but having been a mental health professional for many years, having done mediation myself, it's not a two-hour training. And it can be for neighborhood leaders to try to sit down and mediate disputes between two neighbors who are possibly angry can be pretty dangerous. And so I have grave concerns about this program. And since the council is responsible for the citizens advocate office, I feel like there's potentially great liability in doing this. So Ms. Beck had it in the presentation document that she presented at the Cal meeting, and it was budget time, and then we were on break. And I had asked her, I'd emailed her and said, you know, can I get more explanation on this? And she gave me, and then I gave her a call and told her that I had very serious concerns about it. So anyway, that's what I was bringing up to this committee, is I have very serious concerns, and I'd like to hear from you all. Councilmember Blues. Thank you, Madam Chair. I also have concerns about this, since it has no relationship, so far as I know, to the citizen's advocate's job description. And I would ask this question. Would this be done on a voluntary basis as a, in other words, as volunteer gestures in neighborhoods? Or would it be on the clock? Joan, would you like to respond? Let me back up and give a little background in history. I'd like to answer to the question, if you don't mind, please. I had intended that this would be on the clock. Now, understand that... Let me say then that, as I say, this is not part of the citizens' advocate's job description. I would assume that another citizens' advocate would not be obligated to this enterprise. So that is my concern, that this is not part of the citizens' advocate's job. And I have, I think I have objection to it being included as part of the job and authorized by the council as part of the job. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Council Member Blues. Did you, is there some part of the job description that you felt this was related to? If you can respond directly to that question, that would be great. Specifically, calling on the job description for the citizens advocate, I don't know that there's anything that requires the citizens advocate to do neighborhood outreach. Nonetheless, I have been asked by many council members, starting from my first day on the job here to assist neighborhoods in resolving disputes. And it has been only as a result of the process of those ongoing discussions with various people over the last six years that we struck upon the idea not of resolving neighborhood disputes, but of helping neighbors to resolve their disputes themselves by helping them to improve their communication skills. I want to be very clear that I'm not intending to offer mediation training. I certainly know that it takes much longer than two hours to become a trained mediator. Okay. Thank you. Hold it right there. Councilmember Baird. Thank you, Madam Chair. I, too, have concerns about being involved in this at all as far as the government is concerned. If, in fact, a dispute arises that is covered by ordinance or statute, the whole situation of mediation doesn't apply anyway. It has to be taken up in a court of law. Knowing how many of my neighborhood associations function, I can't imagine any of them wanting to get in the middle of any type of argument with any residents within their association. I just can't imagine they would unless they happen to know one of them personally and could do that. Give me an example of what a dispute might be. I guess that's one thing that might help. You know, we all, you all especially, I'm sure, receive calls often from a neighbor who wants the city to do something about something that's going on in their neighbor's property. And you find that there isn't a city division or department that actually has jurisdiction to intervene in this. So it's a private dispute between two neighbors. And I know that you all get calls about that kind of thing every day, because I do too. And the city government doesn't have an adequate way to address a lot of things. Nonetheless, oftentimes we'll find that, you know, a neighbor calls me because they've already been through code enforcement and building inspection and the police department and their council office, and nobody can help them get resolution with their neighbor. And, you know, it's really frustrating to those citizens that they think that their government isn't being responsive. The problem is that their government can't be responsive to all of those concerns. But oftentimes, those concerns have escalated over time because the neighbors haven't been able to talk to each other. They don't have a comfortable way to get into the conversation initially. And so it has escalated to the point where there's anger. So what I'm thinking of is that if we help our neighbors learn ways to begin a conversation about a problem before it escalates, that we will have given our neighbors effective tools to resolve some problems before they get out of hand. Thank you. I'm sorry, go ahead. Let me finish my thought here. Mediation is a legal term that has some force of law behind it. In other words, when a mediator, when they come to a final conclusion, the mediator has the power to at least attempt to enforce it. No. No. The mediator will forward an agreement to a court that can't order it. Well, okay. But that's how they do it. But again, I want to be clear. I'm not talking about mediation. If you look at the one thing. Sorry, can you hold just a moment? It's difficult to hear when there's conversations going on. If you can just watch the tone in the back of the room, it kind of echoes forward. Thank you. The way this came up at the work session a month or so ago was that there had been, I put a mention in my quarterly report about going to the Mayor's Neighborhood Leaders Forum. Joan, I don't mean to be rude, but we only have a few minutes left, and you're just kind of reiterating the things that we know already. The one-page sheet outlines what I had proposed to work with neighborhood leaders on, And those specific skills are how to set ground rules for a conversation, some effective listening techniques, how to identify core interests that are implicated in problems, and how to deal with emotions that come into the mix. Frankly, I don't see that helping people improve their communication skills is dangerous. Also, although I have been encouraged by council members individually and through the budget process and the council links, although I've been encouraged to do outreach to neighborhoods, if it is your consensus that you don't want me to do that outreach, I will certainly abide by the will of the council. I don't think, Joan, I don't think anyone's saying they don't want you to do outreach. They're saying they don't want this program necessarily is where I think the conversation is going. And we're going to be over our time. And we have three more speakers on here. I don't know of a recommendation as to how we move forward. We may have to come back. Do you want to make a quick motion that has something to do with the ongoing or the beginning or ending of the meeting?