The The End I'm out. Thank you. Thank you. The End The End The End Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We'll be right back. Thank you. The quarterly committee of the whole, November 17. The first item on the agenda is the part-time attorney for council, and Council Member Scotchfield has to place that on the agenda. Thank you, Vice Mayor. This is an issue that's come up since I've been on council several times, and I know I've spoken with several of you about it. I don't necessarily have a plan today as far as moving forward because I guess we need to have council to give what they want as we move forward. Just to give you, you know, I've had HR give me some information about some of the pay grades. I don't know if you all want that. I guess tell me what you want to know, whether you think this is a good idea, what you want to use them for. I can be persuaded either way so this is more of council has said this many many times so I thought I'd bring it up again and officially bring it up so let me know what your thoughts are okay thank you Councilmember Gibbs thank you Vice Mayor Councilmember Scotchia I'm relatively new I don't remember this being discussed since I've been on here so if you give me some background on it I'd appreciate you approving why you're interested in this. We have a law department, and so why do we have to augment it? I just don't have any idea. Not have to, but possibly. And I understand. I think it has come up in several of the link committees' discussion regarding certain issues, whether it be zoning, whether it be advising council on issues doing our research for us. I think there's been discussion in the past and prior to you we've had other committee of the whole meetings where it's been discussed and we work back and forth some in favor some not in favor i think there's some issues and i can't remember exactly what was said but i know with with legal counsel that we have through law department, they have a dual role representing other areas as well. And I know that there's been concern that there was some conflict or that we weren't getting information. Okay. Vice President, is it okay for me, I've got three minutes left, is it okay to continue the dialogue like that? Yeah, I think since we're in the committee of the whole there has to be some dialogue back and forth. We'll be flexible on the time. Okay, so if we had a part-time lawyer, they would represent exclusively us, but we wouldn't go to law for anything anymore? I don't think that would be the case, because in some issues, if we had an ordinance that needed to be drafted, I don't know that necessarily in all situations this attorney would handle those type of things. I think there's some issues, especially when we do go through zoning, and that's kind of come up more often. We need someone to advise us on what we're capable of doing as a council. You understand this stuff a lot better than I do, Jenny, because you're a lawyer. What if we end up with conflicting advice from our lawyer and their lawyer? I'm sorry? What if there's conflicting advice from the council? And I think that's some of the concern, is that we have felt sometimes that an opinion we've been given from the law department doesn't necessarily apply. I mean, that's what lawyers do. They argue their sides. Well, thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And I had some of the same questions that Council Member Gibbs expressed. As far as part-time, that's not necessarily a person here in the building, but just having access to an attorney to be able to maybe ask questions and get some clarity. We currently have money set aside in the council budget for legal that we do not use, I think, because we don't have somebody right at that point to go to to get opinions or get their legal advice from. So it's kind of more of a – it would take longer to get that response using those funds, I think. And so having someone here, and the last time that it came up in the Committee of the Whole, I think, is when we were discussing hiring the part-time financial. Yeah. And we kind of put it on hold at that discussion because we wanted to see how that also played out. And so that would be the concern about... So, yes, we wouldn't hire someone out. We'd hire somebody that was ours part-time. Okay. I guess my question and what I would be interested in is maybe retaining somebody that we could call and have access to and just get billed for billable hours and maybe see how that works to see if, just because, you know, I don't think it's a, and this is just my opinion, that we have enough concerns or enough issues to have a person in-house that they would just be sitting idly by until something came up. You know, I don't think that's, you know, the best use of funds. But if we had access to somebody we could call as a resource, ask questions to, and just kind of, you know, Sometimes you, I would like conflicting opinions. You know, if law here said this and then I had somebody else to bump it off of, then it would help me come to a landing place on an idea or an issue. So I'm interested in that. I think if we had access to an attorney that we could possibly get billed from is how I would visualize having a part-time attorney or access to one. I mean, if that's an option. Thank you. Councilmember Akers. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I agree that this is a needed addition to the council. We have discussed it for many years. I've been supportive of it for many years. The law department, while they are instrumental in what we do every day, for sure, here, there have been times when I felt like they and it's true, they are beholden to the administration and they work for the mayor's office so sometimes it would be helpful to have outside counsel on retainer, I agree with Council Member Brown maybe a retainer or whatever, part time, call it what you will they don't have to be in the office but they could meet here or whatever, but the same discussion was had with our budget analysts we have a whole budgeting department, we have finance We have accounting, so why did we need our own budget analyst? And so it was the same discussion, and we were kind of debating between budget analyst and attorney, and we used to have an attorney for just counsel. So I support it, and there have been instances when we have disagreed with the law department, and so I think sometimes it would be helpful. Thank you. Council Member Evans. I think Councilmember Akers probably just covered everything I was going to say, so thanks for that. But yeah, just to reiterate that, perhaps to explain a little bit more for Councilmember Gibbs, that it's kind of like when you've got the Attorney General. The Attorney General represents the entire Commonwealth. It's not representing the General Assembly or just the Mayor's office. They're separate. So with our setup, I think there are some, as Council Member Aker said, just some inherent duties, perhaps, loyalties. And understanding that, I'm not saying that, but I'm sure it, for me, I've sent some awkward conversations periodically. and awkward situations have happened that just in the short time I've been here, but not that the law department is giving bad advice, but there is that thought of what would happen if we had someone who wasn't directly under the administration. And then quite frankly, I think the law department has a whole lot to cover and probably wouldn't mind not getting questions from us all the time. I don't know. But they've got their own actual legal work that they're doing for the city, but there's not someone that is here just for us. And I think the budget analyst is kind of a good explanation on what's been done and why it was done before. But, yeah, I mean, there were just little things here. Well, not so little at the time, but issues that just came up periodically that it would be good to have someone that was here for us and would not feel the need. But they'll still have some concerns because they would be working for all 15 of us, which is an issue that the law department has right now, but at least it would stay on the fifth floor, as opposed to having the administration involved when it perhaps doesn't need to be, and I'm not sure if it even does, but just the fact that it's the same people, just creating a sense of we have someone that is strictly there for us and would address our specific needs and not have to be concerned about what may or may not go over well with a different department. Thank you. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'd like to ask Commissioner Graham from Law Department a couple of questions. I don't know that we need to put her on the spot for anything, but this is general questions, basically. I don't recall, this topic has come up numerous times, but I don't recall since merged government that we've ever had a council attorney. Can you verify that? That's correct. There have been times that we've engaged David Enloe when we have a discipline hearing, because since we're doing the prosecution of that, we can't advise you all during that time. So those are the times. But there's never been a, quote, council attorney. And I think it's probably due to the charter. Rightly or wrongly, the drafters of the charter made the law department, the council for both the mayor and the urban county council. So we would probably not be in favor of this because we would view it as a violation of the charter. Well, I was wondering, that was my next question, was, you know, what kind of conflict we might have there. And I don't know that I've ever had a problem with the law department not doing something that I had asked for. we go through the right channels, and I know you've got expertise in several areas. One attorney or even a part-time attorney for this council might get pulled eight or ten different ways, and I really can't support that. And I say that, I think we still have some money in our legal budget. We also, all we need is eight votes if we want to hire any outside attorney. So we've already got that in the system, I think, in place. So I'm a little reluctant to add another layer onto our counsel. And I don't know that it would get abused, but I have a lot of confidence in our law department. And I think we've got eight votes is all you need to do a lot of things. and if we need to hire an outside attorney on a retainer and or for a particular item that we've gotten involved in. And I was trying to remember if we had done that before. It seemed like to me I think there's been an occasion where we might have hired an outside attorney. I believe maybe in 2010 there was a lot of activity surrounding various things, and I think a lot of folks hired different folks. I think that was probably on contract. It wasn't a permanent position. Yeah, and we have that right, and we can make a budget amendment if we need it, and I'm not sure what's in the budget for that. But anyway, that's kind of my feelings that I had I wanted to throw out there, that I'm really not supportive of hiring another part-time attorney, you know, where the council just has complete direction on it. Thank you. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Commissioner Graham, I was going to ask, kind of piggyback on what Council Member Fred Brown was asking. You all have a professional services agreement that hires or you have lots of different attorneys in different special areas that you all have to be able to contract with, right? That's correct. For areas of expertise like bankruptcy, tax, various things like that, we put out an RFQ about every couple of years and get a set list of attorneys that we can draw from if we need expertise in an area or have a conflict internally with representing somebody. So is that something that only would the law department is the only area that could contract or go into and contract with them? I just was thinking that when I was sitting here. I think, no, I think the council certainly has the power to contract with an outside attorney. I think our concern is with if there is conflicting legal advice, because you all actually have a defense if you're sued on reliance on legal advice. If you have multiple advisors, I think that's more difficult for you, and I think you may lose that defense. Okay. All right. I wanted to just clarify that because I was thinking if, from what Council Member James Brown had said, that perhaps to have one that we could just talk with or refer to if we needed to, But I just wanted to clarify how that purchase of service or professional agreement or whatever it's called that we had with them. So thank you, Commissioner. You know, I'm just going to sit back and listen to the conversation today and see where it goes because I don't really have an opinion yet. I've heard this conversation I don't know how many times, and it's been very interesting each time. So we'll see where it goes. but I appreciate the conversation. Thank you. Before I recognize Council Member James Brown, I would like to weigh in myself. I've also been around when we've had these conversations and I've typically been opposed to creating a position, but I do think it would be useful for this council to identify an external attorney who would be available on an hourly basis as we hire other attorneys if people have issues that they believe, for whatever reason, that they want outside counsel to give advice on, even though we have our own law department. I think there have been times when that would have been useful. I believe it's, as I understand it, that's within our purview. We have money in the budget for it. It's never been done since I've been on counsel. but I think that we should be more aware of that opportunity and avail ourselves of it when necessary. I just don't, personally, I don't feel comfortable either creating a halftime position or anything else and having an attorney, I think it's just an expense we don't have to kind of entail, given the very specific kinds of times when that would be useful. So that's my take on it. Council Member Brown, were you still in line? Okay. Council Member Bladsoe. Thank you. That's very kind. I'm just curious. The number of times that I have asked, the only time I've ever been frustrated is when I've wanted law to weigh in on things that end up being private matters. And essentially, they've come back and said, we don't want to rule on this because it's a neighborhood issue or it's a constituent issue, and I'm looking for advice for them, and you've not been willing to provide it for very good reasons. I would assume that still applies to outside counsel. We had them. That's an interesting question. If you were to hire an outside counsel, I think, who would be giving advice to you, they may have their own parameters about what they want to do as far as you conveying that advice to an outside party. Certain legal malpractice policies will cover broader things than others. And so probably the person that you would want to consult, you'd probably need to kind of discuss that with them and see how comfortable they would be with that. So it's always a question of the client. You know, you all are our clients, and we give you all advice. And that's part of the reason why we don't have to get a malpractice policy as a government. You know, if we were in private practice, we would have to do that. And I would assume if we hired outside counsel, they would have to have that. They would have to have malpractice insurance. And the question would be their comfort level on neighborhood associations and conveyance of advice and that kind of thing. Okay. That's what I was mostly curious about, just because I do ask a lot, hey, this is a situation. What do you think? Or can you give advice on this issue? And it's kind of like, no, we shouldn't be doing that. So I appreciate that conversation. And I think the retainer is an interesting idea. I'm in favor of more of that than I am hiring someone. But I will just mention, back to Council Member Evans' point, there are 15 of us. And if we ask one attorney on a couple of different issues the same question, I may not like the answer. You may not like the answer. And I think that the kind of advice we might be looking for, we're going to have a hard time finding a person to give that. Or to give it in a satisfactory way. Or maybe to give it covering all bases, if you will. Because it is an opinion. and I think I may find someone that has one opinion and you might find a senator who has a completely different opinion. That has come up several times. So that's my hesitancy of getting, I don't know, a good opinion or maybe one that satisfies this group. Thanks. Okay, thank you. Council Member Brown, James Brown, and then I'll get Council Member Evans again. Yeah, thank you, Vice Mayor. I don't want to repeat what everybody else has been saying, but it sounds like we have the tools in place to kind of do what most of us are talking about. So is the next step, if it's fine with Council Member Scutchfield, is do we just identify a specific attorney that we retain and reach out to and do it as a billable hours type of thing? Is that what we do next? But I guess that's just what we have to answer as a council. But I also wanted to add that I think the law department here does an excellent job of being available and, I think, giving sound legal advice. I know they've been, every time I've reached out to them, I haven't got anything but the, you know, top-notch service. So I don't want them to think that, you know, that the job they do is a reflection of this conversation. I think we're just trying to be the best counsel that we can be and use every resource that we have at our fingertips to be that. So thank you. Thank you. Council Member Maloney. Thank you. The concern I have about who you're going to get as an attorney, and that's like when I go to a doctor, I go to a regular doctor, and each time if I've got something wrong with my heart, I go to a heart doctor. Now, who are you going to get to be an attorney with 15 council members? Do you have what you call a regular? I thought we have a regular lawyers to do all those kind of things. They may have somebody in real estate. They have somebody in personnel. They have somebody in all that. Now, we're sitting up here, 15 of us, and we're all going to have different things to talk about. We're going to have to have 15 different lawyers. is why I see it, because you need an expert, and you don't have an expert lawyer. You've got lawyers that are good in criminals. You've got lawyers good in business. I don't know how you're going to put this person in here. And first of all, I can't see anybody that would want to work with 15 bosses. I mean, that's my opinion. But I'm happy what we have. Now, we have had times, previous council, where all 15, the majority of the council supported, did not support what the administration would do. So we would hire outside recommendation for somebody who's an expert in that field. By us hiring a lawyer, defeats the whole purpose. You're going to go to the lawyer and say, we've got a problem, who do you want us to hire? So that's all this large is going to be good for, because he's not going to be able to hit the problems we have. So I'm not in favor of hiring anybody unless one body of this council or any future council has a problem with an issue. We will go out and recommend an RFP to find somebody who or who, or she or he is an expert in that. So I just don't want everybody, this is my opinion. I just don't think, I can't think of anybody that want to represent us unless we have an issue. So I can't support us hiring a lawyer right now. Thank you. Council Member Evans. Thank you, Vice Mayor. First of all, I think this is just discussion. because the fact that at least some of us have already said, yeah, we remember conversations and conversations have been had in the past. Clearly there have been situations that have come up. So I think the fact that it's being brought up doesn't mean, well, just inherently there seems to be something that has been felt over the years. But I think there are all kinds of different ways to do it. But I guess I want to clarify, I think perhaps what Council Member Bledsoe had brought up based on a comment that I said. If we were to have an attorney, that attorney would still represent the council as one body. So even if I came to that attorney and said, look, I want this done, or this is my opinion, and I want you to find legal research to support it, you came and said, well, I want the complete opposite. That attorney's job, or I think duty, would be to say, these are the options you have as a whole. these are the problems with this option, these are the problems with that option, but they're still representing the council as a whole. And I think that's a little different than me just individually going up there and wanting something. It's certainly something that they would factor in, but their ultimate opinion would still have to be what they would think is in the best interest of the council as a whole, or at least that's what I would want from that individual. And so even though there are 15 of us, it's still one body. And I've worked with boards, and yeah, there are certainly varying opinions. But I still knew that I worked for that one body, and I had to give an opinion based on how it would affect the entire council and not just one person. So I wanted to clarify that. But, you know, also, I mean, I just think, and this has kind of been my thought in various different aspects, that I think we underutilize the staff that we have. I think we could do a lot more, you know, research. We have one person, one aide per council member. But, you know, we've all talked about how they get strapped down with just the daily ins and outs. And I think there's a lot more legal research we could even perhaps help the law department out with or say, you know, yeah, that's what's for the city, but we would like someone to look at it this way. I think there are just different aspects that we could take that perhaps we haven't had the ability to. to really go down and explore because we know the law department is strapped in doing what they do, but I think there's a lot of legal research that perhaps we haven't utilized. And the one incident that comes to the top of my head about where I honestly wish we'd had our own private counsel was when a council member claimed that there was an illegal meeting going on. And we could not get a straight answer from the law department. And I think, in my opinion, there was a clear answer. And then the administration got involved. I don't think the administration needed to get involved. I mean, I understand how it happened, but it's things like that that you just never know. And I much rather would have preferred having an attorney that was there just for us so we could hash that out, as opposed to having to get the administration involved on something that had nothing to do with them. It was all about how we were acting as a body. So that's a specific instance, and it might happen once in a blue moon, but it happened. Thank you. Council Member Plowman. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I mean, since obviously I'm relatively new, I still have not experienced a situation where we would all need legal counsel outside of our own law. I guess my question is, we do have the money set aside, correct? And we also, it will take eight of us. Is that correct? Like, I could not go with my individual situation where I felt I needed to reach out. I could not tap into that by myself. I would have to take that to all 15 of us and eight of those folks would say. But it could not be on an individual basis. I could not go to you all and say, I would like to bring legal counsel from outside, and that would come out of that pool of funds. And I think that's the biggest concern about having, there's a difference between having someone on retainer that's available to be called. there's obviously then you have somebody that's on staff and then the third which is the one you're talking about it's it would be essentially because a lot of the issues that we would have going on we would want a fairly quick answer to you know some of the council members responded to my aid's question about what what are some of the things you'd want that part-time attorney to do and and Some of the things were zone change, obviously. I've said that before. Parliamentary procedure helping us with the particular running of the meetings. There were issues. Hold on. I can pull it up. I'm forgetting now. Issues regarding planning and zoning, zone changes, litigation issues, possible HR issues. as well as working on things in committee that are in subcommittee that might have legal connotations. Robert rules, legal research. I know I have some things that I need to have legal research, and I'm fortunate because I can do some of it myself, and so can my aide because she's also licensed. But there's something to be said about somebody that specializes in the type of things that we're dealing with. And I would say right now the way it stands to go to council and say I need money for this, that's next to impossible to get the kind of results we would want. Having somebody on retainer very well might work. My issue with that would be is that person isn't just ours. they also work for whoever else they have clientele coming in. And so we might not be a priority on their list. And hourly rates can escalate very, very, I mean, very quickly. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Henson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I just thought I would weigh in. Everybody's made really good points. And I appreciate Council Member Scotchfield for bringing this up because, and being an attorney, sometimes maybe she sees things that we wouldn't see. But just to hire a person, just to have them here if we need them, I don't think is a good thing to do. I think if we had someone on retainer, I think I would be okay with that. Our law department, most of the time, I mean, I have disagreed because I didn't get the answers I wanted, but that's not to say that they're not right, but they do an excellent job. So, and then I had the same question as Councilmember Bloment about how would, if we put an attorney on retainer, how would we decide what issue we would hire that person? So, and I think we need multiple attorneys to pull from if we were going to do that because of the expertise. So I'm not really in favor of having a person here on staff part-time, even though it is part-time. But I just wanted to share my thoughts. And thank you. It's been a good conversation. Thank you. Council Member Akers. I was just curious. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Have we ever used the legal funds in the council budget? We have. When was that? Like, you know, do you want to weigh in there? Council Member Stenet seems to know. Yeah, we've actually used them six times since I've been here. First time was over the water company takeover. The council had their own attorney. Four disciplinary hearings for police, we had our own attorney. And then we had an event. The last was 2009. We had an investigation by a council member, and the council elected to hire their own attorney because it was against the city mayor. So we have utilized it, but it's always been on a case basis, not on a retainer, not on a carte blanche, but if there was a specific item, then we would go out and hire somebody. But that came before the full body took eight votes. Was an RFP involved as well? It was a resolution to hire that person. Oh, okay. So you all selected them. But the law department also helped us in selecting that person out in the community, and the council agreed. Based on expertise and that stuff, I guess. For the police hearings, they did. For the water company, it was a little different, and then for the council, internal investigation was a little different. So I guess some of the discussion up here is what if, because I think that's when I would want to hire outside counsel or use outside counsel, is if we don't agree with the law department on an issue. And so what happens if we hired someone and they came up with opposite research that you all would find, case law, then what happens, Janet? I don't know if it's ever happened. I don't know if you've experienced it in state government. I'm just trying to think through what it would look like. That's an interesting question. I think the question would be, I'd almost need to know what the situation was before I can tell you how it would affect you all. For example, like what I was saying, there are suits related to your all's immunity as council members. You have legislative immunity for certain acts and qualified immunity. And like I was saying, there are defenses to those about the reliance upon legal advice. The question I have, I guess, on this is you have a charter that says this is your official document, the law for this jurisdiction that says the law department is your counsel. So I don't know how if another attorney that you hire gave you legal advice and we're giving you opposite advice, I don't know how a court would come out on that. So they gave dissenting opinion. I mean, yeah, so what do we do then? Take it to court and battle it? You know, I mean, yeah. I can see how this could get complicated. Yeah, it is a little complicated. But I see the benefit. I see a lot of sides. Okay, thank you. Thank you. There is nobody else signed up. I don't know, Council Member Scotchfield, if you want to take this further. I mean, I get a sense that there's not... Yeah, I mean, I guess I want to get an idea. So I'll make a motion only so that we can determine if we're moving in that direction. So I'm going to make a motion that... I guess, do we make... You can make a motion, and we would have to then... It's a motion to place it for a vote. and i don't know i mean i don't i'm not ready to make that motion though but i do want to know if we want to move forward with more information with a potential yeah i mean and and i don't know if we can take a straw vote and hear whether we want to move forward with me trying to develop a job description or or if we want to pursue having someone on retainer or nothing Sorry to butt in, but maybe give us three options. You know, hire somebody part-time, the retainer idea. Actually, there's another idea of, like, hire people as we have in the past, those six times that Kevin talked about, or nothing at all. Those are the four options. Is that right? Yeah, and one way to pursue that would be to rely on our committee structure and put this into general government for further discussion and clarification. And I would just, not as chair, but as a participant, I would say I would not want to spend a whole lot of time going forward if there's not a general sentiment that this is something that eventually we want to do. So does that make sense as a way to proceed? Council Member Maloney. Well, the third option, do nothing at all, I think we're doing what we're doing now. That's what I understand. Nothing at all means what we're capable of doing now, going back to what Council Member Stenet said, if we have an issue, the council can vote to hire. So really it just comes down to if you want to hire part-time lawyers, what it sounds like. Okay. So, Council Member Scutchfield, would one way to handle this be that you at the next work session make a motion to put it into general gov and we can have a more extended conversation about this okay unless there's any objection that's how we'll proceed thank you for bringing this forward the next item is the boards and commissions website councilman scotchfield i'm back again Sorry, this is something that we had in committee, and we did know that they were working. Melissa and Lauren have been working on getting our boards and commissions updated on the website so that it's quick and simple. I had requested through committee that they give us quarterly reports until the website was up and running, and we would review it again. They have put together a quick little presentation on how the website for boards and commissions works. And then I will make a motion to take the report out of theirs if you all believe that the access and the information you get from the website is sufficient. So, Lauren, Melissa? Hi, thanks for having us. So we're just going to walk you through what the new application looks like that's on the website. It's up. It's live. It's been up since the 27th of September. We kind of decided it was time to upgrade from our old program, which was called Term Tracker by General Code. And it was all internal. A few of us only had access to it. Everything was paper application processing, which was a little time-consuming. We had to manually input the information in over a couple of different things. And so it took us a little while, and sometimes things would come out differently over different things and spreadsheets and things like that. The reporting was pretty limited. We couldn't exactly print a report that you guys wanted to see. And it was kind of a little bit inefficient for the absolute number of boards that we have and members. So we looked through a lot of different things. We worked with IT to find a good solution. And we went with the Granicus boards and commissions. We're already currently using Granicus for the meetings and reporting that we do through council. So we really liked what they had to offer. And one of the things that we liked involved the web-based access for both us and for applicants. The applications can be done online. We can still do paper, but online is great. We can make the applications board-specific without changing anything for the applicants at all. Nobody even knows they're board-specific. They just come up that way when they apply. The applicants have the ability to add attachments, and we do as well internally, so we can keep all of the oaths and everything all in one place, which is really nice. It links the applicant's e-mail directly to our automatic notices, so the boards can send out a mass note if they want. We can send out a mass note. We let them know when their terms are expiring and all of that good stuff, and it's very easy to do. And there are extensive reporting options, including demographics and things like that, that we can get to very easily. So Lauren's going to walk you through the navigation a little bit. It's kind of small on the screen, so everyone has a printout of what's up there. I believe everybody had the printout, but the navigation is a lot more simple compared to what it used to be. It's just simply going to the LexingtonKY.gov website, and there's two ways you can search for boards and commissions. When it comes up, there are several things listed. As you can see, it's circled. You can click Government, and that will take you to the boards and commissions. Or you can scroll all the way down to the page where you see where the mayor's office is all the way down, and you can click it there. And another option to get to it is just typing in and searching boards, and it will come up. So it's very simple. Once you get to that page under government, you'll see at the top it says boards and commissions, which will also link you over to this side on the right-hand side of the screen where you have the option to apply. So that's where the members would go to apply. And then it also has a list of all the boards. And each board, if you click on a specific board, will have information regarding that particular board. There we go. This is, once you click on a particular board, this is what you'll see. So this is what you all will have access to. You have the options to see the board members and the vacancies. and just the information regarding board meetings, the description of the board. So this is really good for you guys to see what's going on with your boards. As you can see in the example, you can see the vacancies. That's probably not up to date because it's an old clip shop. But also it gives people opportunity on the right-hand side to e-mail us, and that goes directly to Melissa and I or other ways to contact us. It's really just a click of a button more so and a lot more streamlined than it used to be. As far as the benefits, we have increased transparency, less mistakes. We have ease of access. As you can see, it just clicks buttons and it's automatically sent to us. We have the option to customize the applications as needed, and we can customize it to particular boards. So if we need to add a particular question for a particular board, we can do that. Immediate updates. This is nice. when we go in and update a member being appointed or resigned or whatever it may be, it automatically updates onto the website. So it's not going three different directions and trying to keep everything in sync. We have consistent presentation, streamlined archives, where we can archive boards, members, whatnot. and it's just a lot more efficient for everybody. Yeah, so this is a current snapshot of our boards and commissions, and this is all accessible to you all online. We have 73 active boards and commissions. 36 of those seats are vacant. We have 798 total. And we've kind of improved our vacant seats since August. As you can see, we used to have 129. So we have 34 applications being processed that won't necessarily fill all the vacant seats that we have because they're all board-specific. But our application pool has increased by about 50% since we went live, so we really feel like it's working. That's it. Anybody have questions? Great. Thank you very much. Very good presentation. Council members, questions, comments? Council Member Hanson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. How are we or are we addressing boards or commissions that are inactive? We have not had much of a discussion about inactive boards and commissions. I know that it's come up in council a lot for example, like the Town and Gown Commission. Correct. And we're just kind of waiting for people to kind of get in touch with us to see how everyone wants to move forward with those. We don't have a lot that are in limbo. We've got a lot that are inactive. And so there are just a couple that are hanging out there. Well, thank you for the work that you do. I know it's a lot to keep up with. Thank you. I see nobody else signed up to speak. I'll just add my own comment. I've been on six years, and there's almost always been a long and sometimes painful backlog. And so I applaud the work that you've done. I think this getting it online is going to make it even better, easier to access, so people really know what's going on. This is a big improvement, so thank you for that. Thank you for final comment. Yep, I'm going to make a motion that we no longer require the quarterly reports of the boards and commissions. Okay, is that in the – I think – So I will make that motion in committee. Thank you. Thank you all so much for putting it together. And I did just recently have to reapply for reappointment, and it is easy. I shared it on my Facebook page for council, and I know that several people were very interested. So it's a really great access to reach out to constituents, too. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. next item is a workplace violence active shooter presentation councilmember Massadi asked to place this in the cow and as I understand it this is a presentation that's being that has been made in a number of public venues and that it's not about security for this building or council but more generally about how to protect oneself and so I have a council member who's I was going to a council member Bledsoe thank you vice mayor and I understand that it's been made publicly and since there's a difference between made made publicly and made on live TV and I'm not comfortable with having it made on live TV so I'd like to have this conversation in the back where we can have it not on live TV. I'm happy to make a motion to that effect or ask for a... Thank you. I have a motion and a second to move this presentation to the caucus room. Discussion on the motion, Council Member Evans. Okay, I thought I understood you to say that whatever we're going to see, because I don't know, but whatever we're going to talk about is not, it is not specific to council or the government center, or it is? That's my understanding. Now, Officer Towery is here, I believe. Okay, well, I guess I would say if this is just about general workplace violence and active shooter, what anyone should do, I don't think we have any cause to go into a private or closed session or even offline to talk about something that should be. Just to clarify, we would not be going into closed session. Well, right, right. So my bad, yeah. We have typically had these meetings either out here or in caucus rooms, so this would be a motion to move it. I guess I need to know more about what is. Let me see if I can, if it's. Vice Mayor Kaye, I... Let me, before you weigh in, if I can, let me allow Officer Towery a brief, not the presentation at the moment, we're discussing whether to have it out here or to move to the caucus room, just briefly. We have done this presentation for a variety of organizations, federal government, state government, some internal local government, and then private businesses. Typically what we find that it does involve some particulars as far as policies and procedures, and there typically is much discussion about the specifics of that particular organization. There is. So I would envision that discussion being involved. Thank you. Council Member Evans, are you still up? I still have concerns about that. I mean, I'm not I still, even based on what he said, I'm still not convinced that it needs to be taken offline. Because if it's something that is given in public or given to businesses, it's information. It's given to particular organizations based on their policies and procedures. And again, I would envision that there would be some particulars as far as protocols that you may want to discuss. If our policies are written, they're public record. And I'm sorry, I'm just trying to, you know, I mean, we're talking about transparency. I don't, if they're in public, they're in public and we can't discuss it. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Plumman. Council Member Massadi had asked me to kind of pitch it tonight to make the introduction. So maybe after I make the introduction, you can get a better read. But I think that it's pretty general. and to your point, it's something you take out of the community and talk to a lot of organizations about just the overall. I would interject this. It's going to take some time to set things back up here because it is set in the caucus room. I didn't know that, but that's fine. So before you do the introduction, I think there's a motion on the floor and the question has been called. We'll vote electronically. All those in favor of the motion say aye and indicate electronically. All those opposed, no. And the motion, just to be clear, is to move this presentation to the caucus room. The word happens to be. It might not go in. That vote reflects passage, so we will move to the caucus room for this presentation. Thank you. We'll be right back. Thank you. Thank you. The End Thank you. The End Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.