9. Well, we can get going. We got 10? Oh, KC's out. Council Member Crosby is here. We were just checking on a quorum. Everything's good. Everything's good. Take a deep breath. We're here this morning for a meeting of the council committee of the whole. And our agenda this morning is to discuss an ongoing consideration related to council rules, revisions to council rules, and adjustments to our standing committees and other business as it may emerge. We have a two-hour meeting scheduled. The Corridors Committee is scheduled to meet here at 11. So, yeah, Council Member Myers. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think if we open up with Mr. Temple, Jewett from Pacifica Cities, I think his segue into Council Member Lane's piece and then into my piece will be a really strong addition. So, Mr. Jewett, Temple, if you'll just introduce yourself so our viewing audience will have context for your remarks. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm Temple Jewett. I'm the general counsel for the Kentucky League Cities. Sorry, it surprised me. I got up here earlier than I thought I was going to be. So, getting my thoughts together. I think what Council Member Myers had asked that I do is basically come up and sort of summarize some of the comments that I made at a retreat that took place in the council at the Tate's Creek Golf Course last year. And my role there was to essentially review the LFUCG charter and to give my perspective based on somebody who has the opportunity to see a lot of different forms of government and how they operate and compare them and see if there were similarities or differences that I saw that I thought could be improved upon. I made several comments as a result of my review of the charter, but two seem to have and generate the most interest. And they're interrelated. And one of them was that there seemed to be a lot of overlap in the urban county form of government that's been created here between the executive function and the legislative function, which is something that you don't necessarily see in most other mayor council forms of government across the state, and that seemed to generate a lot of interest. There are things like the mayor being able to introduce legislation, that a lot of the things that the council is doing, the mayor presiding over those council functions, and a lot of things that the council is dealing with on a day-to-day basis smack much more of an administrative type or executive-type function that you would see in the normal scheme of things. So that seemed to be something that was of great interest. The other thing that seemed to peak interest was the fact that the process for how you go about meeting and making decisions, voting to put things on the docket as opposed to taking them off or passing them over, which I think goes back to the interrelationship between the executive and the legislative branch, that there is, since the mayor has the responsibility for putting together the agenda, I think when I look at the structure, the work session becomes a session that a lot of the substantive discussions and a lot of the action seems to take place. That's something that I see that's a lot different than what we would normally see around the state. Those were my comments, and again, I think those are generated some interest, some good discussion at the retreat, and if that's essentially... If you could speak to your observation of the number of members we have on our standing committees, that would be helpful, too, I think. Well, just in terms of, in general, you don't normally have, I mean, 15 people on a council in the state of Kentucky is a pretty large group. Obviously, Lexington and Louisville are unique in that respect. You normally have a much smaller group. Just to have two-thirds of a group on a single committee, I think just from general standards would seem to be a large group, and, you know, the committee process obviously is designed to spread that work around so that everyone isn't always having to be there for all the information gathering purpose, and in some respects, having that large a group on a committee seems to be somewhat counterproductive, my opinion on that, based on what I've seen. If there's anything else, I'll be happy to... Questions? Any questions for Mr. Hewitt from council members? No? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Okay, we move into the agenda then. First on the agenda is Council Member Lane. Thank you, Vice Mayor. We're going to have an overhead presentation on this, and I just want to make a short comment before we start the presentation. Traditionally, the Urban County Council has traditionally and unnecessarily formally approved certain matters in the forms of resolutions, and today, the purpose of my presentation is to summarize the benefits of modifying this approval process, and what I've tried to do is to get input from other council members and the Intergovernmental Committee, for example, and from the executive officers of the government. So that being said, I'd like to start with our first sheet here, and I've entitled this presentation, Best Practices, Recommendations for Enhanced Legislative Efficiency for Lexington-Fayette-Urban County Government, and I believe this would pretty much apply to the entire presentation today, although I've meant it strictly for this part of my presentation. And the goals of the best practices would be to reduce our legislative cost, to accelerate the timelines for legislative actions, to improve transparency with the public, to enhance collaboration between the legislative and executive branches of government. And I would like just to maybe add a comment there, as I think we have had some overlapping of the duties, as Mr. Hewitt just mentioned, and I think this portion of the program would show how we could give a little bit more separation between those duties between the legislative branch and the mayor's office. Okay, we go to the next sheet, please. I just wanted to give you an idea. In fiscal 2009, that would be July 1, 2008, through June 30, 2009, there were 243 ordinances docketed and 847 resolutions docketed for a total of 1,090. And based on a review of the resolutions docketed, it's the opinion from our legal department that approximately 600 of those resolutions were not necessary. And as I mentioned in the opening statement, they were categorized as traditionally done, but unnecessarily or formally approved, they did not have to be formally approved by the council. So if we were to do that, that would be a reduction of approximately 600 resolutions. And just to give you sort of an overall picture, we tried to do sort of a cost for each docketed item to run it through the administrative process, and I'll give you more detail in a minute, but a ballpark estimate is around $279 in administrative cost per docketed resolution. And then the advertising, and this is the actual cost, is $102 per each item advertised. So that's about $381 per docketed item. And I would mention that many of the resolutions that are put on to the docket are for something for free or a $50 contribution, $150 contribution, but you can see that if it costs, if the value of the item on the resolution is less than $381, we effectively have spent more money than we've received from a gift. Can we go to the next page, please? Okay. If we were to reduce 600 resolutions, I think that would increase the efficiency of government and save an estimated $335,000 annually in actual cost and administrative hours. Some of the staff time savings would be reallocated to preparing communications from the mayor, but overall the savings of time would be substantial. And as I mentioned, we would not have $102 for each item that we docket to advertise in the paper, so that would be an actual cash savings. During fiscal 2009, an average of approximately 45 new docket items were added to each council meeting agenda. So that means that at each council meeting we had the reading of first readings of around 45 items, and then a second reading of 45 items, which is 90 reads per meeting. And that also takes time away from the conduct of the meeting, communicating with the public, debating issues at the council meeting, so to me this diminishes the effectiveness of our council meeting. Next page, please. If the number of docketed resolutions and ordinances is reduced by eliminating about 600 resolutions the council has traditionally and unnecessarily approved, the average number of new ordinances and resolutions will be reduced to approximately 20 per council meeting. So that would, based on 40 new docket items per month, and if we have eight committees as currently recommended, that would average about five new business items per council meeting. That would average about five new business items per month to review and report out in a committee format. Eliminating the traditionally and unnecessarily approved resolutions will be possible with the passage of two resolutions amending Section 3.101 of the council rules. These rules were initially adopted on March 9, 1979. Due to the efficiencies achieved, I believe that the council could refer action items to the docket and request a first read at a council meeting in lieu of having work sessions after reviewing this information. This would allow important issues, resolutions, and ordinances to be discussed at the council meeting and eliminate the administrative costs associated with work sessions. And next sheet, please. This shows, this was prepared by the, I'm not sure, I think it was the mayor's office and reviewed by legal, as I understand it. But this is what happens when a blue sheet item goes through the process. And I don't want to go into a lot of detail on this, but essentially the director of a department may initiate it, the commissioner over that department would approve it, and then it would go into the senior advisor of the mayor's office. It would be logged in. It has a legal review, budget review, may have HR review. And as you can see, it's a long, complicated process. If you'll look at the next page, please, this is our estimated cost per docketed item. And we've based these estimates on approximate amount of time that would be involved on each docketed item and allocated a cost to it based on the estimated time provided by the people on this list to look at a docketed item and review the information, whatever meetings are involved. And the value of the time is based on using $100,000 for salaries and benefits for executive officers of the government and $60,000 for an administrative person, plus that includes their benefits. And as I said, this is, I think we've been conservative on these cost estimates, but it does give you an idea as these docketed items go through the process, the total cost to the government. There's two pages of this, if you go to the second page, please. And then at the very bottom of the list there, you'll notice advertised approved docketed items. Items that are approved by council are then advertised in the local paper. And that's an actual, that cost was determined by dividing the number of resolutions that were passed by the amount of the cost for advertising those items. Okay. Could we go to the next page, please? All right. The current council rules were established on March 9, 1979. Since that time, and if you have to think about this a minute, because it's really amazing, we now have desktop computers and local area networks, which have now become standard operating equipment for business and government. We have cellular phones, text messaging, and voicemail are commonplace everywhere. Email is available to transmit digital data and correspondence. The council meetings are now covered on GTV3, which covers all of our meetings. And the dockets and ordinances are published in digital format on the government's website, lexingtonky.gov. And the meetings are also available to be digitally streamed from the website. So with regard to, you know, accountability and transparency, you can see, compared to when the council rules were set in March of 1979, that a lot of technology has taken place. And I would say we should congratulate our local government, because I think we have extremely good technology available to make all the information available to taxpayers and citizens if they need information. So my line here is that I think our urban county government is operating in the 21st century, but many of our rules pertaining to day-to-day operations are vestiges of the 20th century, and we need to move those rules into the 21st century. So one of those moves would be to use higher technology and more effective and cost-efficient best management practices to present this information and to move legislation through. And in other words, I think the council needs to reduce unneeded paperwork, processes and meetings, and the technology that's already in place is substantially, will substantially reduce cost, improve transparency for election citizens, taxpayers and employees. Now, that is a summary of my presentation regarding this. There are also copies of the resolutions that would allow us to eliminate docketing all of this and getting, receiving communications from the mayor. Both of these resolutions were reviewed on two occasions that I can recall, and I believe they've incorporated most of the changes that the council has requested. However, I think this would be a good time to open this discussion up to see if there are any questions on the ordinances or changes that you feel are necessary. Council Member Beard. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Lange, let me ask you a question. Has there been any commitment by the various people who touched this legislation from one point or another that they're going to lower staff to do so? Because if they do not lower staff, all we're going to do is raise the per-item activity costs, and you're spreading them over fewer people, or the same amount of people, rather. The cost accounting in here is fuzzy in my mind. Unless we're going to be able to actually recognize the savings, we've just gone through an exercise. Okay. Well, first off, as you may be aware, you know, we have not laid off any personnel from the urban county government, but we have reduced our number of people by attrition and, you know, consolidation of work functions. For example, I know in the council clerk office, I think they had three employees, and one of their employees retired, and I believe they have not been replaced this time. So, you know, we already have affected cost savings. So this would perhaps allow, as time goes by, if we have other attrition or retirements or resignations or whatever, if we're running a lot more efficiently, we could consolidate some of the work functions. And then there are other things that the government needs to be doing. So rather than processing paperwork, I'd rather be, you know, focusing on maybe things that are more productive. So I'm not suggesting, and I didn't suggest in my presentation, that we're going to save all that money. But, for example, I believe the advertising alone is like $89,000. I understand that. But that's a big one, and that's a hard dollar. It exits this building and goes up the street. I'm sorry, would you repeat that? On the advertising piece, it exits this building, the money does, and goes up the street three blocks. Okay. Well, I mean, I'm not, that's not the primary reason. It just happens to be one of the benefits of reducing the docketed items. The other, there are a couple of other benefits that are intangible. And let me give you just a couple of examples here. Let's suppose that under these guidelines that we have a construction project underway and a change order is required. We've been running those change orders through the council. Under this provision, if the change order were not more than 10 percent of the price of the project, or not more than $25,000, and there was a contingency light item budgeted for that, that those could be done unilaterally. Well, obviously time and construction is a major cost factor. So being able to make those changes on an expedited basis are good. This also allows the mayor, for example, if we've authorized, you know, roadway work and we have to have, you know, easements or acquire property, if that's budgeted and been approved by council, those documents can be signed without, you know, coming back, you know, through the council. And those are a couple of examples where construction is involved, where we would perhaps save a substantial amount of money. And those are very hard to quantify. What we're essentially doing is improving the productivity and efficiency of the overall administrative section of the government and reducing costs at the same time. I wholeheartedly agree with you. I know when I first was presented with seeing $50, for instance, for donation to paint park benches, I kind of shook my head. It was a council item. And I agree with all this. It was just the presentation part to the public that this was going to be hard dollar savings. I just thought that was a little bit, as you pointed out, we won't recognize all that. That won't drop to the bottom line, in other words. We've already downed the government already. And I think there will be another benefit, too, like part of the savings is every time we have a meeting and we're reading these docketed resolutions, it may take 30 minutes or an hour sometimes to read all of that. We'll have the top management of the government, the informal council there, attorneys. We have the GTV3 personnel, security. Those costs are being amortized over each of those resolutions. Because we've got to pay all those people to be here. So if we can shorten the meeting times or eliminate meetings, then we have made another major gain for the government. And I think another big benefit is that at the meetings, instead of reading docketed resolutions, we can debate issues more, have more input from council members, more open discussion, particularly at our council meetings in the evenings. So I think that's another plus. Are there any questions on the resolutions? Everybody's had copies. I said these have come around several times. But we have two of our top attorneys in the urban county government with us today. Put a lot of time in it, and I appreciate your effort on that. And I think I should also thank my aide, Scott Seymour, who also is very helpful. Anyway, with that being said, Mr. Chairman. We've got some others lined up for questions or comments that may be directed to your wisdom. Mr. Lane. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I think this is very good. I helped on the work group that looked at this for months and months. It brings Lexington into the 21st century. And my only concern with it is that I think there's software that is critical that it is in place, before these go into effect. And I agree whether or not there's, I think there will be a lot of person power saved, and the commissioners and directors that carry around the blue sheets. Another example of how it will save money is if we've approved computers, there's been an RFP, it goes out, it gets blue sheeted, by the time it goes through the whole process, the computers that we have ordered are now half as much money and twice as fast, because it takes so long to get through the process. And that's just one example. Our council clerk and Mr. Blevins, our county clerk, they're responsible for making sure that everything gets done appropriately and timely, and that the documents are where they need to be. So I'd like to ask some questions about the software implementation. So if we were to pass this today, which I would be all in favor of, I would like to make it effective by a date that that software can be implemented, because I think that that is a very critical piece of this. Can you speak to that? I would like to say that with the cost estimate of savings that Council Member Lane was speaking about, $335,000, if you take the $80,000 off to purchase the software, that that would still be leaving the savings of about $255,000. So yes, it would be the best method for me, I mean, for this government to move toward most efficient and effective. How quickly do you think the software could be implemented so that you would be able to handle all these steps? Effectively. In order to implement it, it's going to be at least six months out, six to eight months, because it's a huge process to set up the software. Of course, you still have to follow through with the RFP, and then once the software is accepted, then you have to write in all of the modules and create the workflow, So you're saying it would take about six months? I would say six to eight months, and no less than that. Eight months would probably be a better estimate. Do you see this being doable without the software? No, not in my opinion. And that is, if we have it on an electronic process, then you're going to alleviate that extra paper fray. Can you talk a little bit about the software? Basically, the software would set in place two different workflows, one for the current existing administrative review process, and the other would be what is deemed as would come through the communications from the mayor's office. And those two workflows would be set up to where they go through the same approval process, and it's all transparent on the software, and therefore you can keep up with everything. That leaves no issues at hand as to where anything is in the process of who's going to approve it next or where it is or where the record is or anything. That's in a nutshell of what. Mr. Blevins, do you have any comments on that? Could you come to the mic? I'm sorry, I can't hear you. I was just saying that, sorry, that Susan's the lead on this. I'm not up on all the details of the software. From the point of view of a former council member, it sounds like the transparency and accountability aspects are primarily what you're going to get out of the software, in addition to helping the workflow. It's going to automate things and not allow a communication from the mayor that you might need to see or want to see not to happen, if you see what I'm saying. Okay. So I think this is a really good move for us to make, but I really think that, because I have done a lot of research into the software and how other communities do it, and I do not think that it is going, I think this is going to provide us with more transparency, better access, less work for everybody, make our council meetings more accessible. Who wants to sit here at a council meeting through the reading of all these resolutions and, you know, then come up and have public comment? So I think it would give us a whole lot more time to interact with the public and get public input and more time for us to engage in meaningful debate. However, I think the, I absolutely believe and know from the bottom of my heart that the implementation of the software must be in place for this to be transparent and to work. So I will support this with a date further out so the software can be implemented. Thank you. Councillor Gordon. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I had a couple of comments and then a question for probably Logan or Commissioner Askew or Ms. George. The first one is that I wanted first to thank Councilmember James. Initially she was the person who had the vision of this, I believe, and showed the leadership that she had. She showed the leadership to get this going. And I know it was quite some time ago. And sometimes things have to go through a process that is sometimes ugly and difficult, but arrives at a good conclusion. And then I wanted to also thank Councilmember Myers and Councilmember Lane for their big parts in this and for dogging it so thank you very much. And then a comment about in case anyone is watching at this earlier than usual hour and is worried that they don't have a computer, just a reminder that our libraries are full of computers. There are still a few people in our community who don't have access to computers except through the library, but that's how they could access all of this. And then my other, my question is either for Glenda or Commissioner Askew about, it's on page three of the resolution, which Councilmember Lane and Councilmember Myers brought. The resolution for the amending the rules, the short draft, and then the resolution for the amendment of the resolution. It talks about rules and procedures and it talks about what would not require action by the Council on page three. Commissioner Askew, I just wanted for clarity purposes on page three, it says the following actions shall not require action by the Urban County Council. It's kind of a two-part question, number one, is this it? If something doesn't fit into here, then it requires action by the Council. And then on item B, it's a short, okay, some people still haven't located the document. It's an eight and a half by 11 resolution. So this is item B in section 3.101. And it says making permanent and probationary appointments except for employee reclassification and otherwise any adjustment to compensation of any existing employee not provided by ordinance. So just to understand what this means. I think what it means is that when an employee comes in as a probationary employee, they would not require approval. And then six months later when they move to permanent, they also wouldn't require approval? That is correct. And they would no longer be included in the Council's purview? That's correct. Okay. And by the way, Councilman Gordon, on that issue it would also require an ordinance change because currently the only reason the Council approves now is because there's an ordinance that requires it. And it might be helpful to get Mr. Jewett's perspective on this because in other cities the Council's not approved. And in our case the reason that this was even discussed in the group, and I think you left out when you were thanking folks for their hard work, I will tell you that Councilmembers Feigl and Wallace work pretty hard on this also. But in our particular case, when we hire somebody, as you know, we have to follow the process in the state statute. You know, the civil service provisions. And so there are a lot of requirements that we have to follow in order to hire someone. And so you have a civil service commission that is also involved in approving lists and the advertising and all of that kind of thing. So like bids, you have a process that's mandated by another set of legal requirements. And so really all you're doing is putting your final stamp of approval at the end of that process. But if you want to hear from Mr. Jewett, he can tell you about what other cities do. But yes, that would be, it would require an ordinance change also. Okay. Thank you. And would you mind, I mean, I would presume Council would just receive a list. That's correct. And that is one of the other things that I think I mentioned at the retreat. I know these aren't novel ideas. I'm going to try to take credit for them. Y'all have been working on this stuff for a while. But that was also something I noticed when I looked through the way you're conducting matters. Most cities with the mayor council form of government, that is a separate function. And the executive makes the appointment, does the hiring and the firing. There is some right of a council in the non-elected officer position to have the ability to say no. But they don't actually make the appointment. So I would agree wholeheartedly with what Logan said about that separation of function. Thank you. One of the reasons that we have these resolutions is because at the very top of each you'll see the notation. Items listed that do not require follow-up documents to the council clerk and items that require follow-up documents to the council clerk. The reason that that distinction was made, and this came out of, I believe, intergovernmental committee, if I recall correctly, the last time this was reviewed, there was an issue about the software and the impact of these rules changes on the council clerk's office. With respect to the matters on the smaller sheet, there would be no documents that would be required to be deposited in the council clerk's office. So if the council were to go ahead and adopt this smaller, it would have no impact on the clerk's office in terms of paperwork. On the other hand, on the larger sheet, the items that do impact the council clerk's office, all of those documents would have to be housed in the council clerk's office. And Susan would have to handle and index these documents, which she's currently doing now. So that's the reason you have the two different documents. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I know that many of the council's efforts in the past have gone into this. Just a couple of questions. One, Logan, can you address the last page of the large document? Councilman Lane referenced under H, the execution of change orders or contracts, less than 10 percent or 25,000. He also said in there as long as there's a contingency line item budgeted. Well, I may have misspoken, Mr. Stennett. But that was my understanding. In other words, when the project is budgeted, there would be a contingency line item. Maybe that needs to be a modification. Do you know offhand? If the money is not budgeted, then they wouldn't be able to expend it in any event. But we can, if you want that clarifying language, that's not a problem. Well, in other words, they could decrease the budget on the overall project in order to compensate for a change order and make it a lesser quality of a product or make a cut somewhere else. You're right. Okay. And let me, so I'm clear, what is it that we're doing on H? We're saying that as long as there is a. We're saying as long as the money is budgeted as a contingency or within budget that was approved by council, then the change order can be implemented. The number of change orders could be requested per project, because I can see a way around this, is I can get $10,000, $20,000 to get up to what I need to get this project done. So, I mean, is there a way to modify the number of change orders to keep under that threshold radar of council? Well, it seems that if we're budgeted, it's budgeted and we're within budget, that's going to be a judgment call, I think. Well, but at the same time, we'd like to come in under budget. I don't want to see a contract out there and know what the budget is and just issue the change orders just to suck up that money. Well, one other thought is, as I understand it, and here again, any time one of these items comes up, it's going to be in the communication from the mayor. So any item that's under communications from the mayor, any council member could have that brought up for discussion and we could refer it to committee. So it's not like there's going to be no discussion of that item. So it's really no different than if we sent through a docketed item and we discussed it there, versus we get a report from the mayor on it. And two, it's not read once again on Thursday night. So, you know, we talk about technology helping us, but we're actually taking away layers of transparency through our local media by this process. And also, I mean, not everyone has a computer. I know Council Member Gordon pointed out we can go to the library, but still, there are senior citizens that don't have access to it. They can't get to the library. So it's going to be up to the people elected here to either catch it or it's going to move on and nothing's going to be done about it. And a lot of times the public is smarter than you may give them credit, and they do watch, whether it be on TV or read a newspaper or listen on Thursday nights. But if you go to our website, I mean, I'm very impressed with the quality of our website. And I took time to go over and look at it in detail before making the presentation today. It is extremely user friendly. The communications from the mayor are right in there with all the docketed items. And I think if anybody had interest, they would be able to get that information without much trouble. Let me, just to address one issue, that was not discussed, Council Member Stennett, on how many times there could be a change order that I recall. I'm pretty sure that was not discussed. And I will tell you what was changed on here was the language on the 10 percent of the original contract price. When this was first drafted, it was 10 percent of the contract price. So if the contract price went up, that 10 percent would go up. So you're back to the original contract, and that's the safeguard there. You could limit the number of change orders that someone could bring without council approval, and that's certainly easy to do. As part of this, though, one thing that I think would be important, again, it might be helpful for Temple to tell you what other cities do as far as contract approval. Because I think, well, he can kind of address that in terms of contracts where the money is budgeted and what other cities do in terms of approving contracts within the budget. But I think it would be helpful to get his perspective. I've got another question before we get there. You mentioned on the work of the county or council clerk, that her work would not actually increase based on this change, but actually stay the same. That is correct. In other words, the documents, and I'll let Susan speak to that, but the documents on the smaller of the two, those would not be documents that she would have to. But she's already doing that now, so it would actually decrease the documents. Well, it would decrease the number of documents because she would not be processing resolutions, that actual document. Susan is the person, the custodian of all the official records of the urban county government. And so when we generate a contract, when we generate some of these other documents, the deeds, all that is handled by her office. So she would be required on these things that are approved. The difference would be that instead of the council approving these documents on a Thursday night, or on the Friday or after that meeting, Susan would be able to go ahead and process the paperwork. If you all allowed for this to pass, those documents would be deposited in her office as soon as they were approved. In other words, you wouldn't wait until a council meeting. Alternatively, they would go to her office. So instead of waiting until a Friday after a Thursday night second reading, she would get it as soon as it was approved. Let me give you an example. Currently, bids go directly onto the docket now. We'll have information whether it was the lowest bidder and that kind of thing. But anyway, Susan has the original bid documents plus the awarded bid, which constitutes the contract. And sometimes there's another document, too, another contract that kind of ties them together. She would have all of that information in her office. That information finalized on a Friday after a Thursday night council meeting, after it's done, when Brian and his group went through the process and approved the bid. If it was not subject to council approval, all of those documents would go to Susan's office as soon as they were ready to be processed. We wouldn't wait until after a council action. Does that make sense? We're trying to figure out where $80,000 of software is needed at this point if we're already doing that work now. Yeah, I don't know enough about the software. I can't really speak to that. Where this change causes the additional need for software today. Where the change is, is currently all of the items that come before you all go through the blue sheet process. The majority of the items do. There are a few that do not go through the blue sheet process. That would be changed. The items that would be alleviated and not go through the blue sheet process, there would need to be some tracking method in place in order to keep up with those. And that is my goal to reach with the software. If you don't have the software, another avenue would have to be, and I think this would have to be put in place as well. I mean, just it would have to be in order to track this. Currently you have an administrative review process that follows through all the blue sheets. You're going to have to set up another workflow, whether it's manual, by paper, by another administrative review process, for the items that are going to be alleviated by this other resolution. I think one of the things will be is in the tracking and the fact that there will be less paper process. So let me understand this. You're saying that now you don't have this software. The only time you record it or start tracking it is once it's approved on Thursday night. That's correct. So help me understand. Once the administrative process is complete, why not just start your tracking then? Just wait as you do now until it's approved either by this council or by the administration, the mayor, and then start tracking it then. How is the software going to change that? The way I'm looking at this is that, and I don't know how that the administration is planning on doing the approval process for things that are going to be changed. For example, change orders or anything that would not have to go through the process per this resolution. I don't know how that, I mean, they're talking about having a communications from the mayor report. Wouldn't that just come on Thursday nights and then you would get it all at the same time as you do now on Fridays? I just don't see that changing that much for you. Where's the software need for $80,000 to be spent to track something if you get it the same way you do now? It's approved differently. And that shouldn't affect you. I guess the thing that I'm concerned with is that the retrieval of the documents of not knowing. Everything has an administrative review number right now. So we know where it has been and where it is in the process. There's not going to be that tracking method on the documents that are going to be coming through the change. Does that not make sense? Why can't we just add everything with an administrative number as we do now? Why would that have to change? Can I help? There are two pieces to this puzzle. The first piece is workflow. There is a workflow that is associated with the blue sheet process today. It ends up being managed by a bunch of us, the council office. It's for those items that don't require council approval, but nevertheless must be shown through the mayor's report. I forget how you all are phrasing it, but the mayor's communications. You're going to want to ensure that that occurs and you're going to need to know where they are in the process. So you can have software to support that workflow or you can have the mayor's office do it manually somehow. The key, though, I want you to remember, Kevin, is that you can't, you don't have an assurance that's going to appear to you unless you know it's in a workflow somewhere along the way. Otherwise you're counting on it to appear out of the sky at the mayor's office at some point. Citizens won't know where it is, all those kinds of things. So I see it as a workflow management process, but also a transparency process. I see we're already managing the workflow process via the blue sheet, so it can be the same type of process with the same It's not going to come to council, it's just going to go straight through their admin side. I think it's workable. I just think it needs to be fleshed out more is my point. It can go either way. I think she's trying to help us all manage the workflow with software instead of with blue sheets. I understand. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Do you want to speak to this issue, Mr. Lane? My thought is that we need to move forward with these ordinances. And once we approve these ordinances, and I feel they would be appropriate to have a team with the council and the administration to work out a process that maintains the transparency, the flow and all that, and hopefully everybody would be happy with the system that we have. But to try to do all that today, I think we need to go into steps on this. We need to approach the ordinances and then we could resolve the methodology for storing the information. Vice Mayor. Excuse me, sir. I'd like to go back if it's okay, because I think what Temple might say about what other cities are doing in terms of contracts might kind of put this in perspective. Because I know what we're talking about here is a significant change to the way urban county government has been doing business for a long time. And I think it would be helpful to get a perspective on what other cities are doing, because I think we have, we're probably doing, we're certainly doing a lot more than other cities are in terms of what has to be approved and what doesn't have to be approved by the council. So if it's okay, Vice Mayor, Temple kind of addressed that briefly. Well, just to confirm essentially that that is the case, I think in most, what I find in most mayor council forms of government is that the approval process for contracts is done more on the front end where they set the general parameters of the contract, make it clear to the executive what the council is looking for in terms of contractual arrangements, budget the money for the contract. Once that step is done and that general approval is made in the concept of having the contract, then it shifts over to the executive to essentially carry it out. And it would be a rare instance where you have that contract actually coming back for approval of the document essentially to the council. If that's helpful. I've got a question. What about, okay, that's the document itself, right? But what about as the process is carried forward, the change order authorization? Is there an authorization of a certain percentage perhaps that other councils approve or percentage growth is what I'm saying? Yeah, I don't have an answer to that. I don't know the answer to that. I think generally it's going to depend on how it's handled on the front end. I think in some respects there may be people that are anticipating that and giving that authority on the front end perhaps to deal with that. I think the discussion can be done on a case-by-case and probably is in many instances, depending on the size and scope of the project that we're dealing with. With second-class cities that are probably spending a lot more money than the fifth-class cities, there may be a bit of a different process in that. But generally speaking, it is typically a front-end discussion and a generalized type of approach to where you're setting the parameters and then handing it out. Okay. I don't want to occupy too much of the questions here. As it relates to that, my point of view on this after three years on the council is that the increase in costs on some of our contracts has encouraged the level of inspection. And if that is not available to us, then where do those checks occur? And in smaller municipalities where there's less work engaged, less activities, less contracts, there may be a process that is available to the council members. Anyhow, just to posit that, you said you don't really know how that? I was going to say a lot of it, Vice Mayor Gray, is going to be dealt with, I think, in the budgeting process. I mean, when you get down to a budgeted amount or an approved amount for the contract, if you're talking about major changes and change orders, that's where you're going to have to come back to the council and get additional appropriations to deal with that. So a lot of that is done in the budget process. So if you've got a million dollars, you're saying if we budget a million dollars for a project and there's a change order for $200,000, then that would need to come back to the council for authorization, because we only budgeted a million. If it's a solid number, yes. I would say in some cases there may be a percentage. Let's go back to the council members who are asking to speak. Council Member Myers, then Feigl, then Beard. Commissioner Askew, can you come up for just a second? I've got a couple of questions for him. The other thing I would say is if you look at the second page of our council rules, the bottom paragraph in the second, I guess the bottom statement in the second paragraph says the core staff shall provide, maintain and update as necessary the files of the various council members, excuse me, and committee records as appropriate, utilizing the best available technology, such as electronic imaging, archiving, to the extent feasible to maximize storage capacity and accessibility of the records to the public. The council administrator shall be responsible for. I think that when you look at the fact that the council clerk is under the council office, that this would also speak to what that office should do. And I think it further verifies that we need to use the highest and best technology uses to get this job done. Logan, if you could stand by just a second. Susan, if you could come up for just a second. I think there's one thing that may have been missed in the conversation about what your workload would require in terms of efficiencies. Currently you're scanning a lot of these documents, correct? And the software would allow you to not have to do that. The imaging process would be done by the software. Could you speak to that efficiency? That is correct. Everything would be scanned on the front end on this software. And so that would allow us to be able to deal with things quicker after the fact. To that note, I would also like to speak to as far as comparisons between us and other cities and the magnitude of our documents compared to smaller cities. Smaller cities, they don't have as many documents that go through their legislative process as we do. Now Louisville does. And Louisville does have the software in place that manages their legislation. So to compare it from apples to apples, I just wanted to let you all know that the one city in the state that we could really seriously compare our process to, they already have in place this software process. Okay. And then one more thing, because I'm going to run out of time here and I've got to get Logan up. You've also, if you are able to implement this software, then you've committed to not, to leave the vacancy that you have open, open, right? Right. We have currently have a vacancy and have had since July of 2009. And we are committed to implementing this software and we are managing right now. But if the process changes, then without the software implementation, we would need to definitely fill that spot and see possibly how it works. I mean, as far as the scanning goes and everything, it's going to create a lot more, a different process and more work. Okay. So if we don't fill that position, then in effect the salary savings pays for the software anyway? I'm close to that. Okay. Certainly in a year or two, two years. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Askew? Quick, my time is almost out. The first question I have, I'm going to put to you and then when my time is up you can answer that question. And that is, can you explain the difference between these two documents and is it an either or or do we do both of them? Is one of them predicated on the software? If we get the software, we do one of these. If we don't, we do the other. So that we understand. I can't speak to the software issue. I know that when we were intergovernmental. Hold on a second. I have one other question I want to ask you and then I want you to answer this question when my time is up. Okay. The question I have is on the short document. Right. The piece that Council Member Gordon asked about under B on the hiring piece. Yes. I understand that with the civil service system in place that the law dictates how that's done. But the unclassified positions are the ones that I would have concern about and wonder if we couldn't amend this so that the unclassified would still be blue sheeted and that the classified civil service would not be. You can amend it any way you wish to amend it. Sure. That would be fine if you want to do the unclassified. We can exclude the unclassified. I would like to make that motion to amend to do that. Second. Motion and second to amend. Is there a discussion related to that motion? Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Myers, for making that motion. I was going to make a similar one, but I would like to exclude B altogether. But given that, I think I will support that, but I will come back and ask for B to be removed because there's too many things we've debated on over the years that need to come back still before us and people need to see. So thank you, sir. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. Vote electronically, please. Thank you. Okay. And then, Commissioner, if you could answer the two separate documents and do we need both of them and what's the difference? If you all recall back in August after the group that worked on this, Council Members Feigl and Wallace, James, we were working on this, it was actually in one document initially. And you recall when the document came out in August, all of this was combined into one document. When we met at Intergovernmental, the issue of the impact on the council clerk's office was discussed. And we went down, Council Member James chaired the meeting, we went down each item and tried to figure out what was going on. And we tried to determine would this change generate a document that would have to be placed in Susan's office. And so we separated the two resolutions out. The smaller of the two documents, those items, if they were just handled administratively without council action, there would be no resolution for the council clerk to process. So there would be nothing to, for her, no paperwork at all, because all of these items do not generate documents that are official documents to the city that her office is required to maintain. On the other hand, these are documents, these contracts and other matters where the original document, once executed, needs to be stored in Susan's office. So that's the difference. So I don't know that it really is a software issue as much as it was trying to determine what has to be processed by Susan's office and what doesn't. And so that's how we separated those out. Okay. Council Members Beard and Lawless have already spoken on this issue. Council Member Martin has not. So I'll come back to you. Okay. Council Member Martin and Beard and Lawless. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I have had some sidebar conversations with Glenda George and I think my comments have been taken care of. I'm trying to address particularly some logistical issues, particularly the item G in the longer list, extensions of grants previously approved by council, and then we've got a class of grants that won't require approval of council. The logistical issue is those grants that don't require approval of council as it's currently written would have to be approved to be extended. And so I'm going to let legal take care of sort of that logistical gap and maybe try to address that. But to get that fixed, that's all I have. Thank you. Next, Council Member Beard and Lawless. And Council Member Myers has asked me to remind everyone that we are trying to get through by 11 o'clock, at least through item number two on here as well. Council Member Beard. You know, I'm dealing with three generations of resolutions here. resolutions here and split into two different stacks. Is there any provision or have we forgotten about the confirmation of commissioners and senior advisors and who whether the council will still have purview over those that is that in here though? There's documentation that does not, there's briefing sheets in here that does not mention that. It's not mentioned because and I'm going off the top of my head here but I believe the confirmation of commissioners as a charter is provided for in the charter and we have gone ahead even though the charter doesn't have senior advisors you are doing senior advisors confirmation as well so you all still have to approve those appointments. Well I agree but is it confusing at all to us or the public the fact that it is not spelt out in this. Right they are they are unclassified positions and not classified so. Well but we don't we don't have a confirmation hearing for all the unclassified. That's correct. So I don't see I mean if you wanted to we could put something in here Councilmember Beir that specifically excludes the folks over whom you are required to confirm their appointment. I think it I think it needs to speak to it one way or the other. Okay that's I mean we can certainly add that but I mean you can't take that that again that I believe is a matter of confirmation of commissioners and so there's nothing we could do in the rules that would change that. I mean the charter would govern but I'll be happy if you want us to put that in we'll put that in. Well I personally would but I'd be glad to hear from my colleagues on the subject whether that is important to them as it may be to me. Council can we come back to that? That'll be fine thank you. Okay thanks Councilmember Beir. Councilmember Lawless then Stannett. Thank you on Logan or somebody. Let me just Miss George just told me that commissioners and senior advisors are not permanent or probationary employees so I don't Councilmember Beir so I don't think that those would actually be covered by this rule but again you couldn't adopt a rule that would be contrary to the charter anyway so just to clarify that. Okay on item B acceptance on the big document acceptance of bids which bids have been solicited in accordance with the purchasing procedures. One of the things that has concerned me over the last 14 months or years I've been on council it's hard to tell these days is that often we see sole source or only one bidder or non low bid would we be able to in some way be informed of those and be able to have some say in those? Sure if you wanted to exclude those we could do that and I seem to recall some discussion about that before let me ask Miss George. We did but I don't see it in here. Yeah I recall us talking about it I brought it up so so and non low. That was actually in Councilmember Lawless in one of the earlier versions but it's my understanding it got taken out during one that's what Miss George is telling me I don't recall but I do remember that we excluded sole source if there was a single bid or if it was not the lowest bid. So could we put that back in here? Sure. The other thing is execution of contracts and amount not to exceed $24,999 on C but D is where I have some heartburn and that is execution of professional service contracts as defined blah blah blah blah and professional services contracts in amounts of $25,000 or more shall be approved by Council. If it is $24,999 would I think there needs to be something in there that says if there's more than one contract with a particular contractor and so that maybe a contractor doesn't get five $24,999 contracts without council approval or knowledge. Okay. We might just add in the aggregate. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Stennett. Is she gonna make a motion to those? Yeah I'll make a motion to add in the aggregate to D. Huh? In D? Can we clarify the motion please? Okay. On D, the council would not have to approve professional service contracts in amounts not to exceed $24,999 as budgeted professional services funds for a division in the aggregate. Would that be where that would go Councilmember Martin? I would probably put it after exceed in two places. One is in amounts not to exceed in the aggregate $24,999 and then I would also add a professional service contracts in amounts in the aggregate of $25,000 or more shall not be approved. Shall be approved. Shall be. And I think we would want to add with a single vendor. I mean we can get that language. I know what you want. Yes. We can get that for you. That won't be a problem. Okay. So that's my motion of a single vendor. There's a motion by Councilmember Lawless, second by Councilmember Gordon. Is there any discussion? Councilmember James. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Logan, would that also include sole source? So single bidder as well as sole source as well as non-low? Because we had that discussion about sole source providers as well. We have not. Now when you get to professional service contracts and we really need Brian Markham here because I don't know how every division deals with professional service contracts. In law we send out an RFP and folks will submit proposals and say what different areas of legal work they're willing to do and at what rate a committee meets we have an approved list. So depending upon what we need we will select from that list. So we do have an RFP process but I don't know how everybody else, you know, for instance I don't know how we do engineers, I don't know how we do appraisers, I don't know, I'm just not sure how that works on professional services contracts. And I think that's why we, I think that's why we ended up pulling it before and Glenda, not if you remember, but we had that long discussion about sole source versus single bidder and there was some confusion about our purchasing process with sole source providers. So I don't know if that, if it's not included today it needs to at least be looked at, you know, moving forward. Well one thing that the, this will do with the amendment that Councilmember Lawless is talking about, if you have one vendor and they're, they have a contract in the aggregate of $24,999, excuse me, $25,000 or more, then you're probably going to have to approve it anyway. So if you want to add the, I'm sorry. But if they're a sole source we don't, like I think Andrew's point is if they're a sole source provider we don't, you can, they can go back and what we found in other contracts is that they go back, we approve a sole source provider and then someone goes back and extends and pays more just like we saw with the recycling bins downtown. We approved a certain amount of money as a council to be spent on those but because it was a sole source provider solid waste could go back and order $70,000 more. Yeah, Councilmember Crosby, I don't know that that was a professional service contract. See, we're talking about, I mean what we've done, what we've done on the bids, if that was bid, if it's a good where we sent out a request for bids and I don't know how that was done. I'm talking about professional services like an architect or... I understand, I know that's what I understand is, but I'm saying is would it be consistent with if it was a, if it was, I mean why would we add with a single bid or... We could, we could, we could add that. I, again, I, we probably need to get... Logan, Brian has arrived. What's he doing back there? You're sending a beacon light out for help, right? Well, sorry, I guess you'll have to enlighten me on the discussion, so. Okay, yeah, give him the context. Logan, thank you. The amendment that's on the floor is to say a single vendor, that amount of money in any one year has to be approved by the council. Okay. And Council Member Crosby has asked a question about a sole source on a professional service contract. Yeah. Okay, you want to restate your question? I guess, you know, I just heard the tail end of what he was saying that, you know, professional services is one thing and then a commodity driven purchase is another thing, so. It wasn't my question. Okay. Another council member had the floor, I believe, but. There's a motion and we got a second. We're in discussion now on that motion and it relates to the ceiling threshold of $24,000. Which this only applies to professional services. This only applies to engineering, architectural services, and things of that nature. Consulting services. Yeah, consulting services that fall under the CAO policy. So this this has nothing to do with commodity purchases. Council Member Lawless. If I might shed some light, I should have done them in reverse order. B and C probably need the bids with sole source or non-low added and D is about professional services contracts that don't, that for a single vendor can't be, have 10 in 10 different departments for $24,999. That's without our knowledge. Does that help anybody? If you want to talk about B, we can talk about B. We have a motion on the floor. Are you trying to, it's what you're doing, I think what I'm interpreting, Council Member Lawless's comments is clarifying what she intended with the motion. Okay. But can you, can you speak to that? Do you have adequate information, Brian, to speak to that? Well, I don't know what the motion was. Okay. The way I interpreted is that the threshold of $24,999 is designed to address a single vendor, professional services vendor, and that it is not designed to go beyond $24,999. In other words, through amendments, contract change orders, that sort of thing, where hypothetically it could go from $24,999 to $200,000. Is that correct, Council Member Lawless? Or that the same vendor could get a professional services contract, several, for $24,000 in different divisions or whatever without it going through an RFP or council knowledge. Well, the question that I would have to that is, you should differentiate between service, probably, and not vendor. Because a vendor may have an expertise in one area, and then we do a totally different type of service for another different type of project. So it should probably be service driven. Well, I guess my concern with the service driven, if I may, is that it seems that, again, they are, there aren't RFPs, they can be given to anybody, and they may, some of them seem to have a lot of different skill sets. And so if that's the direction that we want to go, then obviously we have to change the way we're tracking these things to go by vendor tracking. And as soon as you get to that span, and that's okay, we can do it that way. It's, you know, it's just, it's different than the way that it's been done because it's really been a project driven process that is separate from a vendor driven process. So we can we can manage it in that way, it's just we're gonna have to set up a little bit. And this is only in the CAO policy. Yeah, so we can do that, I mean, we can track. Councilmember Crosby, we're still speaking to the issue, to the motion. To D, yes, that's right. I would agree with Councilmember Lawless on that change because right now it's not consistent within divisions on how they're utilizing professional services and the way that they are going about getting the professional services. And it's difficult for us to get information on who's being utilized within the different divisions. You may have the same person doing contracts in four or five different divisions because of a different skill set. And you might have one individual who might be making $200,000 from LFECG because of the way the process is. So I would agree with Councilmember Lawless. And I would also agree that when you're trying to get this information, it is extremely difficult because each division does handle it differently and differently within their budgets to even get that information. Councilmember Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I would say that we need to make a decision today on how we want this to read. But then after that, I think we need to put the purchasing process into a committee because to me it doesn't make sense that you have one division in government handling these things in one manner and another division handling it in another manner. The council need to set the policy and everybody needs to follow that policy. So maybe we can do that in a separate situation than trying to hammer all that out right now since the government's all over the place on that. So I'm in agreement with this motion. I'd like to see the motion passed and then we move forward with this legislation. I think if you say that anything over $25,000 would have to go through the RFP process, then we can manage that through our shop. It's just making that it's making that definitive line there because it sort of has had a area from $25,000 to $50,000 where it had to be reported out to council, which it may have not been being done by divisions and things like that. But if that is our line, then the process would be you have to do an RFP once we get to that point. With a vendor, I mean, that's the thing is once the vendor gets to $25,000 and they go for another project, then we're going to be doing an RFP. So as long as we know that's the line that we want to follow, then we can do it. We can manage that. Okay. Councilman Martin. Thank you. I think the intent of Councilmember Lawless' motion was to prevent anyone from sort of gaming the system, so to speak, is that if we had a professional service contract for a project that the administration would not be allowed to divide that contract for that project into two or three pieces in order to get it under this $25,000 threshold. And so I don't know if it's really our intent to change, and I ask this I guess in the form of question to my fellow council members, whether we're really trying to change the way they track it or whether we really just want for this language to read that it's in the aggregate per project. Because I think that's what really the intent is, to prevent the administration from gaming the system rather than to change our entire purchasing structure with this amendment this time. We can certainly do that, and I would support Councilmember George's motion to review this, but Meyers, excuse me, and it's too early. It's just too early. So I guess I would ask that if there was a friendly amendment to say that in the aggregate per project, would that follow what you're looking at? Well, I think that she's wanting something different. So you know the thing about is what you have to remember is that when we draw the line that's the line. So if we're working on a project that may be in one of your districts and suddenly there's a change that comes through for three or four thousand dollars to that, then you must realize once we draw the line then we have to go through an RFP process. So therefore what you're looking at now is you're looking at maybe it's the same vendor, maybe it's not the same vendor once you go through an RFP process. So you know that is a point of discussion that we need to have. If it's $3,000 that puts it over, is that really worth the city's time and energy to possibly change another to another vendor that may have, you know, have to do a whole nother set of findings and things like that to move forward with the project. But this motion is about whether the council has to approve professional service contracts. So it's a little different than the issue you're talking about, I think. And so for the purposes of us approving professional service contracts, if we've got a matter and we just say that, you know, anything related to that matter has to be aggregated, but if they're doing a different matter on a different project for a different department, whether that throws this vendor back to the council for any approvals, I don't think it's really within what we're talking about. I think we just want to prevent them from gaming the system. So I would, I guess I would ask that we amend, I make a motion that we amend this to, in the aggregate per project, to move. Okay, there's a motion and a second to amend the amendment proposed by Council Member Lawless. Is there discussion? Council Member Crosby. My question would be then, if we do it that way and they're still under the 24-999 and they were in different divisions, the way it's been amended, we still would not see that. And I guess they could still, the point would be, they could still have multiple professional service contracts within different divisions of LFECG making way above that, because they've got, it doesn't cover the fact that the same person could be technically making over $200,000 because they're doing a different thing because of a subset of specialties within different divisions and we don't know about it. And frankly, it's probably, it's happening now. Except that it comes through the mayor's, we're just trying, it would come through the mayor's communications. Anyway. Actually, they could cut a PO for $20,000 and it could be in parks for some design services on a park. The same company could have some design services in sanitary sewers or water quality for $22,000 also because of the professional limit, the threshold of $25,000 or less. So it could happen. And just to talk on your other point a little bit, if it's a 24-999 and you have that line, the $1,000 amendment, change order to that project would need to come back to council to be approved. So you see what I'm saying? That's going to be, that's going to create some more burden on your all's part just for additional things. So maybe we need to talk through what is the threshold limit because you don't want to derail a project and put it in a delay for $3,000 or $4,000. Well, I guess then my question would be, it seems to me that we have a process and I don't think we're going to be able to approve any of this today because it appears that we have a process that just isn't working. And even if we try to make these changes, it's still going to be consistent pretty much with what we're doing if we had that language. So, I mean, I guess my recommendation would be that we put this into, put the bidding process and the professional service contracts into intergovernmental committee and iron this out because we're not going to be able to approve this. I think there's, as written today, even with the amendment. So I'm not making a motion. I'm just suggesting that. Thanks. Wise observation. Okay, we're still, we're now speaking to, this is a discussion regarding the amendment to the amendment. Council Member Lawless. Yes. Could I have somebody over here? I can't. I have the same concerns as Council Member Crosby. It's not per project. It is per vendor. We don't, that doesn't mean it has to go to RFP. But it needs to be brought to council and it needs to be transparent. Because as I have been trying to gather information, it is extremely hard to find out who these professional service contracts are given to and what they do and where they do it and why they do it. And they're scattered. So that being said, for transparency on how our taxpayers dollars are spent and so that council knows what's going on, it, for me, it's not per project. It's not about RFP. It's about bringing it into the light of day and council knowing who is getting these contracts and what they're doing. Well, what if we generated a report monthly? That's not good enough? Well, I'm talking about PO's that are cut. Council Member Gord. Do you want to, I think we need to hear that, come back to it Brian. Okay. Council Member Gordon. Thank you, Vice Mayor. That was, well, my question was exactly to that point, which this is all kind of illuminating. And this is going to sound very pessimistic and non-trusting, which I'm not that kind of person usually, but I'm going to ask it in public. Then what kind of mechanism is in place to ensure that all of these make it on the list of communications? That's the first part of the question. And is there a mechanism built into the changes in the rules and the ordinance, etc., that will somewhere state that council has the authority to review on a case-by-case basis if they wish, and he did. I'm looking at Logan, but I mean these are sort of protective questions in a way, I guess you would say. The answer to your second question is, that's not a part of this. That's not in there, Council Member Gordon, that you look at bids on a case-by-case basis. If we chose. If you chose. I mean, well, I mean, we could. It's like we have the authority to do that anyway. Yes, I mean, if you wanted to amend this to require that, you could do that. Now, let me, if I can, as we've gotten into this purchasing issue, I want to remind, now Council Member Lawless and Feigl and James are aware of this. I don't. In fact, I might have put this in my memo last year. One of the things we're trying to do is to say, with respect to bids, that the council sets the parameters, the bidding procedures, and those kinds of things, and then you tell the administration and Brian Schaub to go out and follow those rules and do your work. We tried to find where the council had actually approved the bidding process. Susan looked. Brian looked. I think everybody assumed the council had approved at one time, but we never could find what was actually approved. Now, we're using a manual and we've been following the same process for years, but I think it's important as part of this discussion that you all actually approve that, and I know Brian has suggested there may be some changes that he would like to make. Currently, under that process, professional service contracts don't fall within the bidding process, and there is no legal requirement that that be done. I do think that it makes sense that we put professional service stuff under Brian and include it in whatever revisions he cares to make and present to you on the bidding process. Now, we do that in our shop, but I don't know what other divisions are doing, as I said earlier. So just something to keep in mind as you're looking at this. And then what you're saying is you go do the work, you follow this process, and then at that point, you're just seeing the culmination of the process. And if it's above a certain threshold, you have to approve it. If it's a single source, you would have to approve it. If it's not the low bid, you would have to approve it based on the amendments we're discussing. But otherwise, it's routine. The process is followed, and it gets done. All right. Are we ready to vote on the amendment to the amendment? The amendment to the amendment is numbered to item D, that it would be added to the language in the aggregate per project would be added. All in favor of that language being added, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. No. All right. The motion carries. Okay. Let's vote electronically. All right. Motion carries. So now that that's passed, we have voted on the amendment to the amendment. Is there further discussion on the amendment? Council Member Crosby. I don't know if this is appropriate on the amendment, but I would move that we remove from this document B, C, and D, and F, and then move forward with passing it without those items in it. That will be my first motion. All right. Just a point of order, Mr. Martin. I think we have to vote on the amendment first, and then we can remove it, I think. No, we voted on the amendment to the amendment. We haven't voted on the amendment yet. There is a motion, so we have to vote. Then we can vote to remove it. All right. Okay. If we're ready then to vote, is there any other discussion on the chair rules that the Board of Boarders accepted? Ready to vote on the amendment then? All in favor? That's an order. Would you please state the amendment? Amendment is then, okay, the first amendment was that the 24th, the language in the aggregate be added to item D after following the threshold of $24,999. Now, my interpretation of this would be that since we voted on the amendment to the amendment, the amendment to the amendment includes this as well as the added language per project. So, if you vote for this, you would be limiting the amendment to the amendment. Okay. Is that correct? Pardon? No, that wasn't part of my interpretation. That part goes in B, the sole provider and non-loan. All right. So, we're ready to vote on this. All in favor, please say aye. Could you restate what, are we voting on the original amendment? Yeah, your amendment. Okay, thank you. Well, well, we've already voted on the, yeah, add to the, in the aggregate per project. All in favor, please say aye or vote electronically aye and vote electronically aye. All right. The language, the motion passes. Okay. Now, Council Member Crosby. I make a motion that we remove from this document B, C, D, and F, and then to pass it with all the other language in it, just to remove those four items. So moved. Okay, I'll make that motion. Second. Council Member Crosby's motion is to remove items B, C, D, and F, and to pass that way. Now, Council Member Crosby, does this, would this incorporate, this motion incorporate a motion to move this discussion into InterGov or not? That was going to be my next motion, was to move not just the single, these single items, but the procurement process as well as the professional service contracts. I guess what was a little troubling to me is the fact that our clerk could not find where we actually passed anything in any given time regarding how we do our procurement process, and then also adding in the professional service contracts. And that would give us time to review and whatever changes Mr. Markham has, he could bring forward at that time. But naturally, it would, it would allow us to discuss these during that meeting. So, I'll amend my motion to include it all. And to including, to include removing these items and moving. Remove those items and to accept the document with these removed, and then to move the procurement process and professional services process into Intergovernmental Committee. I was just trying to break it down a little bit, so it wasn't such a big motion. All right. Council Member, all right, now we're speaking to this motion. Council Member Beard. I mean, Bill Blues. Y'all sit together and the first, and the name is alliteration, double, okay. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm simplifying to this motion, but it doesn't make much sense to me to move half the resolution forward and half the resolution back. I mean, we're just, you know, we're just making the process more difficult. So, it would seem to me reasonable, since we're talking about, you know, four paragraphs of the resolution, to send the entire thing back to InterGov. I would accept that as, I mean, I think some people just had some heartburn over those, but I mean, I agree with you. We're going to have to bring it back up anyway. So, I mean, I would accept that as a friendly amendment. I mean, there's no point in passing half the resolution. I'm going to make it. If my second would accept it. The motion was, who was your second? So, if Council Member McCord was the second, I would, yeah, Council Member Wallace. Council Member Blues, yes, sir. Council Member Crosby said she would accept as a friendly amendment, sending the entire resolution back to InterGov. And so, I would recommend that. Okay, so there's a friendly amendment. All right. Would you all allow for the chair to speak to this for just quickly? All right. There's a lot of sympathy, I think, on everyone's part to the motivations of this resolution. Over the three years that I've observed the purchasing process and our confirming process, the authorization process, I've observed that there's been a lot of sympathy for the authorization process. I think we've all seen episodes where we might look for improvement. But what Brian spoke to from a purely from keeping the wheels of the government functioning and moving and projects, you know, it's a serious issue to lower a threshold, purchasing threshold and discretionary authority on the part of managers. To make decisions. Now, you know, our review of these issues is important. But I think, you know, when we go so far with it that we calcify the process, then we really, really risk doing exactly what we all complain about, which is that government can't get anything done. So the reason that I'm sympathetic with moving these issues forward or the resolution forward myself, but withholding the discussion or moving the discussions on these items into intergovernment is that we can really dig into the symptoms and the issues, the merits and the demerits of these thresholds and let purchasing where the work gets done, help us understand where the benefits lie and where the challenges lie. So that we get what we intend, which is a functioning government and one that is accountable and transparent to our citizens. Okay. Thank you very much for allowing the chair to make a comment. Council Member. I'm not sure that we're calcifying the process of a process that we haven't even formally approved as a council. And I think that's why, I mean, I'm not even talking about necessarily these items specifically. We have a manual that we're going by that it's never formally been approved. And we're making, we're allowing bids to come through and we're making decisions, oftentimes multimillion dollar decisions based on something that has not formally been adopted by council. So naturally these things, and I don't see it changing while we're discussing this. We've been using the process. That process will continue so it won't necessarily slow anything down. But it will then give us the opportunity to look at it in committee to make sure that we are, that we have adopted, that we formally adopt something. So I don't think it necessarily calcifies or slows down what we're trying to do. Thank you. Okay, so I just want to make sure we've got a friendly amendment to move the entire resolution into intergov and you've accepted that in a, which takes the place of your amendment to remove BCD and F, right? Right. Okay. Council Member Lawless. I'd like to speak to the calcification issue. I think item B and D got confused. B was about just adding low bid and sole source. It had nothing to do with D, which is about multiple contracts of $24,999 given out in various ways without council ever knowing about it. And there's no RFP. They can give them to anybody they want. And I have many examples and because I've been digging and we don't need to go into that. But it is a problem. And I think for a transparent government, we need to know though. Well, if you want an example, how I kind of got started on this was, do you want me to talk about it or? I don't think now is probably. Okay, thank you. All right. Okay, we have a friendly amendment on the floor. Yeah. Excuse me one second. I'm a little unclear. We're trying, are we talking, when we said the resolution, are we talking about Council Member Blues? Are we talking about both of them? Because currently we have two. Are we just talking about this one that has the, it's just the long one and not this? This is the long document. Yes. Okay. All right. Well, Council Member James, you're speaking to the amendment, right? Yeah. The amendment is to put everything back into the committee? Yeah. Okay. I would not go along with that because I don't see where the other items that would move forward have anything to do with the items that would be placed into committee. I mean, if you could help me draw a connection between them to where they play off one another, I could see that. But I think in our government, we've all been part of many committees where pieces of things come forward and other things have to be dealt with separately at a later time or need more discussion. So I don't, this document has specific items, but each of those is subset differently because they are separate things to do. So at any point, we could pass one of these with just A or we could pass it with just E. We do one piece of legislation constantly and come back later and do things. So I don't think that we should send everything back. We've made pretty substantial movement and can add those four items at a later date. I just wouldn't, I don't know even if it's moving some forward and setting some back. I mean, it's all about the continuum of the conversation and how things move forward. Why would we send the other items back when there's nothing additional to discuss about those items? That's just my opinion. Council Member Gordon. I agree 100% with Council Member James. And so I move to amend the motion to, and to approve and not send back to committee items A, E, and G. Oops, wait a minute. I may have forgotten one. And H. And I'm fine with that as a friendly amendment. I mean, the problem is, I said, as when Dr. Please made his motion. I'm not so concerned about the other ones going forward. It was, I'm more concerned about B, C, D, and F. So whatever the council wishes is fine with me. I will accept going back to the original, that was the original motion. So I mean, I will accept going back to that if the council. So does, and does Council Member McCord, you good with that? Oh, it was the second time I've done it. Council Member Lawless, you good with that? I'm good with that. If we can also put that these things won't be implemented until the software is available. Council Member Gordon. May I comment on my motion? I don't intend for these to go forward separately. I think that it would be important that we approve them today to go forward. And then when everything else comes back, it'll be one resolution. One complete resolution. Okay. So your, so your motion was to move B, C, D, and F forward? A, to move A, E, G, and H. That's what you said, but I guess when you just made that other comment to move the whole thing forward and come back with one resolution. If we can move it as two resolutions, then let's move forward what I just moved. Or we can amend it, right? If we, once we discuss these. Yeah, let's get this straight. Because we're, we're on a path here, it looks like. And we got five minutes, four quarters going to take over. We can put on a resolution with A, D, G, and H of the long draft. And also add A, B, C, and D of the short one. And we can go ahead and move that one forward and you all can pass it. After you discuss B, C, D, and F, if you decide that you want to add those to the list, we would just go back later and amend the resolution and add those four. So there's no reason why we can't go ahead and move forward with a resolution approving the items that you all don't have an issue with. Okay. Council Member Lawless. And this would give the council clerk the ability to go on and put out an RFP for the software so that can get going? Well, I don't know that these need to be conditioned upon getting the software. We could go ahead and move forward with these things and get a procedure in place. And then later, if we get the software, we can just work that in. But we can work within our current system and do these things without the software. I don't believe we can. We can. Council Clerk. If you move, in my opinion, if you move forward with these, then we just need to have some workflow put in place that we can keep these transparent. I mean, that's the whole thing with software. It will make all of these issues that you have, it'll take care of everything. The whole point is efficiency and transparency. Well, can you make that a separate motion? So, could I add an amendment to? We've got an amendment. We've got an amendment to amend now. And that has been. Would you accept a friendly amendment that there be a? Okay, never mind. Council Member Beard. Council Member Blues. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I think maybe the parliamentarian can help out here. But I think that a friendly amendment means that what we're really voting on is sending the entire resolution back to InterGov, yes or no. Am I wrong on that? But there has not been a second. So we're still, it needs to be recorded. I don't think our recorder recorded it. There it is. Thank you for clarifying that. Council Member Beard, forgive me, Council Member Myers. Go ahead, Council Member Beard. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm a little confused about something. And I really perceive that I'm not the only one here at the horseshoe. Presented by the subcommittee were two resolutions, which were drawn up yesterday. And which were passed by the subcommittee. Over here, we have a long form and a short form of another set of resolutions that somewhat mirror, but not 100% mirror the subcommittee's resolutions. They did the same date. I have not had time because I didn't get this to walk in this venue right here to compare the two to see where there may be differences. So I think it's a moot point for us to be voting on anything until we know which, which root document we're dealing with. They're actually different documents. One of them relates to not bringing items forward to the council. The other one, I think, is Council Member Myers' presentation about restructuring the way we do work sessions. So it's actually two different things. So if you try to do a comparison, they're not. They aren't going to compare. But I mean, the question is, I guess, probably the same. Where do we go in restructuring government when we have two or three different ways to go about doing it? And in what sequence? Well, I think when we talked, and Council Member Myers, you can correct me if I'm wrong, we thought that going forward with this would be the first priority in eliminating the amount of things that would or would not come before the council, and then you could see how that would work in terms of restructuring work session as a whole. But in order to get a clear picture of what that's going to look like, we first wanted to say, well, here are the things you're not going to see anymore, and this is how it's going to reduce the amount of time that you all spend on the work session. And this is how it's going to reduce the amount of time that you all spend in meetings and whether or not there's even a necessity to have work session. And that's separate from these things. This is just eliminating the amount of paperwork that comes to you all. I don't know if that helps you or makes it worse. I'm sorry, you need to restate this necessity to have a work session. We didn't get to that part of it, and we're out of time, but that was part of Councilmember Meyers' presentation and the second set of documents that you received from the subcommittee. I surrender. I'm abstaining. While you're surrendering, would you be able to give us maybe another 10 minutes out of quarters? If Councilmember Feigl is not going to chair, I believe today. Well, I'm going to chair, and I have no problem with 10 minutes. I don't think I would like for it to go much longer than that because we have imposition on people from outside of government that are part of the Quarters Commission. Okay, all right. Thank you very much, and we'll go for another 10 minutes. All right, we have the friendly amendment by Councilmember Gorton, and Councilmember Lawless had seconded the amendment. Are you okay with? You're good with? No, Councilmember Lawless seconded Councilmember Crosby's original amendment, and we've got a friendly request from Councilmember Gorton. Do you accept that? All right, so is there any further discussion? Councilmember Gorton's friendly amendment, could you restate it? I don't know if it was friendly or not. It's an amendment to today. It would take out of the motion A, E, G, and H, and move those forward. Those seem to be non-controversial. It would move a portion of this forward that wouldn't have to go to committee. All right, if we're ready to vote, then all in favor, please. Okay, Councilmember Blues. What's the point of moving forward half a resolution? That's the question. Oh, if I might answer that. The point would be then these items don't go to committee for more. I mean, they seem to be non-controversial and have not stimulated any conversation. It would simply be that they don't get moved back into intergovernment. I understand that. But it seems to me that half a loaf, half a resolution is not going to do the job. So there's no real point in moving it forward until we're settled on all aspects of it. That's just my thought on this. I think loss answered that we could just simply add them as amendments once we have a chance to discuss them. So you can move forward the document that we don't have any issues with, and then just simply do an amendment to the resolution. We make amendments all the time to things. So I guess with Councilmember Gordon going back to her point is, it's just simply amending what we've already passed, which is something I think we do routinely. Councilmember Stennett and Councilmember Lane. I was just going to add that each item stands on its own individual merit and is its own item. So it's not a resolution of a whole. It's each individual item and its own change to the ordinance and its own item itself. So you can actually do a resolution for each item if you really wanted to. Thank you. Councilmember Lane. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I just, in closing, would like to remind Council that there are 800 resolutions per year submitted to the Urban County Government. And for each of those resolutions, there's a different set of factors. And we could sit here and come up with some factor, some issue for every one of the resolutions that comes up, because there's no way that this legislation can cover every unique situation. And my thought is we need to move the whole issue forward. And we can amend and address and improve this resolution as time goes by. But to try to work out every nuance, every detail, send it back into committee, I think is a waste of time and effort. And I would like to encourage Council to not put it back into committee and just move it forward. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Lane. All right. Councilmember Lawless. Quickly, I will support this because one of the things that moving it with those pieces being removed will allow the Council Clerk's Office to go on and send out an RFP on the software once we pass this. And then we can discuss the other items that give people heartburn and move forward with the RFP for the software. Councilmember Beard. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just want to get a clarification from Councilmember Lawless. Are you saying that until the software is implemented, we don't go forward with any of this? I think, yes, I think that that's going to be my next motion. So the idea is that if there are any glitches in getting it implemented, it might be sometime after January 1st, 2011? I don't think so. You don't? Susan? Eight months. I don't know. What month is it? I have said that I believe that we can implement. I think that we can implement it within six to eight months. I mean, I don't want to short sight ourselves. If we move forward, if you move forward with the changes in its entirety and say $335,000, as presented by Councilmember Lane, and you spend $80,000 to implement this software, I personally don't see where you can go wrong. You're still going to be saving $255,000. And that's on an annual basis. That cost will be saving. I don't argue with that, Susan. And I favor the software. But the way this has been couched by Councilmember Lawless is that we, if the software is not implemented, we're dead in the water until it is. We can't do any of the rest of this. If we move forward with the proposed resolution and IRFP software, we can have it implemented six to eight months. I mean, that's, I just, I can't short sight ourselves. And I don't expect you to, but I just want everybody to understand that we probably are going to cross, in my opinion, we're probably going to cross the January 1st deadline. Chair's, yeah, yeah, sorry. Okay, I'm going to honor Councilmember Beards as chair. I'm going to honor your limitation on us. We got four minutes. We're either going to get to vote in four minutes on this motion or not. Councilmember Blues. How can you issue an RFP when funds have not been budgeted? I'll just point of order real quick. This is not part of the motion regarding the software. The motion that I made does not include the software. I was trying not to point of order, but we can go ahead and vote on the motion. It has nothing to do with the software. I think Councilmember Lawless said that she would support it because they could then do an RFP, but the actual motion has nothing to do with the software. So I'll call the question. It's cut. The question's been called in a second. All in favor, please say aye. All opposed. All in favor of the motion to amend as expressed by Councilmember Gordon. Please indicate thus voting aye electronically. All right, motion passes. All right, Councilmember Myers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Susan, can you give me just a second? There's still a motion on the floor? There's still a motion on the floor. Okay. All right. Okay, I get the last minute. And the, excuse me, the motion on the floor was Councilmember Crosby's motion to remove items, no, to remove items B, C, D, and F and place those in inter-gov. That actually was not the motion. The motion was to remove item B, C, D, and F from the long resolution and then move procurement and professional services into intergovernmental, which would then, and by doing that, you would have discussion with B, C, D, and F during that process. Thank you for confirming. All right. Is there any discussion, further discussion on that? All in favor, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye electronically. All opposed, no. Two, three. Sorry. Motion passes. All right. All right. Councilmember Feigl. All right. Motion passes. All right. Looks like we're going to have to take up the other issues at another meeting. All right. All right. All right. Since quarters has to start now, let's pick this up and reschedule. Then we can have time maybe Thursday night for that discussion. Councilmember Myers. Yeah. Susan, can you come up to the mic for a second? I wanted to ask, there's a lot of talk about the software, so I wanted to ask Susan, if we voted today to move forward with the software package, could you get the RFP done and get the software rolled out by the time the council comes off its summer break? August would be very tough, but I could get it for you in September. I'm sorry. I just, I mean, with one short staff, I just. Okay. I don't want to commit to. Okay. So you have it run by September? Okay. I move that we, I don't know what language I choose, Logan, but I move that we move forward with the purchase of that software and implementation of it to be done by the end of September, 2010. Second. Motion and a second to move forward with the purchase and implementation of the software. Jeanette, you got the motion? Okay. Is there discussion? All right. We're, so. Councilman? I'm open-minded to the software, but I feel like voting in the software until we have our arms around the issue and evaluate all the options available to the government, that that's not necessarily a good idea. All right. Is there any further discussion of the. Yes. The. I would say that based on the fact that the council clerk has stated that if she gets the software implemented, that she will not fill that vacancy that she has. That vacancy will pay for the software in less than two years. So it doesn't matter any other savings that we incur that will provide an efficiency in her office. It will also pay for itself. That is the basis on which I want to move forward. All right. One more comment from. I have a question. I don't have a comment. I have a question. If, if we do allow the clerk to move forward with the RFP process, then, or can we change it to where she can move forward with the RFP process? Would we as a council still have to approve the expenditure? So I guess then we would still have a balance in place while we're gathering more information, but it would allow her to move forward so that we can, we can just have two parallel tracks going. She can be going on with the RFP process and we can be discussing the validity of whether or not we can implement it. But if we do decide we need to implement it, then we would already have the process. All right. Done. Is that okay? That's correct. So we could move on a dual path of moving forward. All in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying. Please state the motion. The motion is to move forward with the RFP process. With the intent on having the software implemented by the end of September 2009 or 2010. All right. All in favor of the motion as stated, please indicate by voting aye electronically or nay. Motion passes. Is there a motion to adjourn? Second. There's a motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. All opposed, no. Thank you all very much.