Committees for 2017

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Leslie Pool
Posts: 231
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2015 3:22 pm

Committees for 2017

Post by Leslie Pool »

Colleagues, MPT Tovo and CMs Kitchen, Garza, Houston and I would like to start a discussion about a major overhaul of the committee system. While some things about the system have worked, others haven't. We think a discussion about combining and eliminating some committees and changing the membership of the committees (including having the Mayor serve on some committees) would be helpful as we seek to make the system as helpful and efficient as possible. We'd like time on our Retreat agenda to discuss.

For example, CM Garza proposes eliminating the Public Utilities Committee that she chaired. She found that discussions at the Public Utilities committee duplicated the excellent work done at the commission level. I propose eliminating the committee I chaired – Open Space, Environment & Sustainability – for the same reasons. We have significant overlap with citizen boards and commissions so our work often was duplicative or repetitive.

Briefings that were heard in committees would shift to our Tuesday or Thursday meetings so the full Council has benefit of the information provided. This would free up and redirect time and resources.

We look forward to a robust discussion at our Retreat.
Please use this post to add your thoughts about reforming committees and what committees you'd like to serve on the next two years.

Here are the committees we sit on:

Council Committees: Current Chair, Vice Chair, Members
Audit & Finance: Tovo, Troxclair, Pool, Renteria
Austin Energy Oversight Committee: vacant, Pool, Committee of the Whole
Economic Opportunity: Troxclair, Houston, Casar, Pool
Health & Human Services: Houston, Tovo, Garza, Troxclair
Housing & Community Development: Renteria, Kitchen, Casar, vacant
Mobility: Kitchen, vacant, Garza, vacant
Open Space, Environment & Sustainability: Pool, Garza, vacant, Tovo
Planning & Neighborhoods: Casar, Renteria, vacant, Tovo
Public Safety: vacant, Casar, Houston, Pool
Public Utilities: Garza, vacant, Kitchen, Troxclair
......
Intergovernmental Committees: Current assignments
Balcones Canyonlands Coordinating Committee: Pool
CAMPO Policy Board: Garza, Kitchen, vacant
Cap Metro Board: Garza, Kitchen, Renteria
Firefighters Retirement Board: Adler
CAN Board: Houston, Renteria
CAPCOG Clean Air Council: Vacant
CAPCOG Executive Committee: Troxclair
CAPCOG General Assembly: Renteria
COAERS Board of Trustees: Pool
City/AISD/County Joint Committee: Houston, Tovo, Troxclair
Clean Air Force Board: Vacant
Lone Star Rail: Renteria
National League of Cities: Casar
Police Retirement Board: Tovo
TX CO River Floodplain Coalition: Vacant
Municipal League Board: Adler
Conference of Mayors: Adler
Downtown Austin Alliance: Adler
Pecan Street Project: Vacant
Hate Crimes Task Force: Casar, Houston, Pool
Regional Affordability Committee: Garza (chair), Kitchen, Troxclair
Psychiatric Services Stakeholder: Kitchen
Sobriety Working Group (new name - Sobriety Center Local Government Corporation): Tovo
Leslie Pool
Mayor Pro Tem
Council Member, District 7
Steve Adler
Posts: 533
Joined: Fri Jan 16, 2015 2:12 pm

Re: Committees for 2017

Post by Steve Adler »

Council Member Pool and Colleagues:

In preparation for Thursday’s workshop, I wanted to lay out some thoughts. First, I want to thank CM Pool for her posting and the work and interest she and her quorum are putting to this issue. Together with our new council colleagues, we should always be looking for ways to improve how we get our work done.

I’m looking forward to working together on our continued efforts to make the best use of everyone’s time. To that end, I remain committed to the iterative process for reforming the committee process. As we’ve also discussed, some of the original goals for adopting a committee process might be addressed by refining our council agenda process and how we conduct our council meetings.

When we voted unanimously to create the committee system in 2015, chief among our goals was to make the process more deliberative, proactive, and efficient, while allowing the public to weigh in on important policy decisions early enough in the process to have meaningful impact. I recall that the following were among the goals some or all of us identified:

1. Deliberative Process
2. Enable proactive focus on big issues (vs. reactive work)
3. Develop some substance expertise
4. Earlier Meaningful Public Engagement
5. Divide, Delegate and Handle (lessen individual CM load)
6. Facilitate staff work (and workload)
7. CMs get chance to chair efforts, building institutional leadership
8. CMs have a visible and direct city-wide responsibility/accountability (in addition to district responsibilities and accountabilities

We can still accomplish these goals by reforming the committee structure and process, as well as by taking a good look at the agenda process and meeting management.

CM Pool’s posting suggests we consider taking our existing committees and ending some and combining some others. I want to offer the possibility that we consider ad hoc, short-term, specific focus committees with memberships based on interest and availability. While the Audit & Finance Committee would have standing meetings and membership (per the Charter), most or all other committees might be fluid and organized around specific issues. Hypothetically, this could include:

Actual Application of Finance Tools to Bond Corridor Work to promote mixed income opportunities
Developing a Public Safety Five-Year Policy, Practice and Budget Plan
Housing Strategic Plan
Spirit of East Austin Initiative Implementation
Transportation Bond Implementation Oversight
Transportation Regional Strategic Plan
East Central Downtown Interrelated Elements (Convention Cntr expansion, Waller Creek, Homelessness and the ARCH, Innovation Zone, East (“Dirty”) Sixth Street, Palm School, MACC, etc)
New Business Plans for Utilities

Membership could be open to any and all CMs that express an interest and have the time.

Reforming our committee process is just one piece of the puzzle. I hope we can be more deliberative and less reactive in the way we approach policy. Perhaps we could consider things like requiring agenda items to be posted for discussion for one or more meetings before the matter can be taken up for action and public hearings? We should look at ways to streamline meetings while preserving and protecting the parts of meetings that Austinites value and cherish.

I look forward to continuing the iterative process as we try new things and get better at what we do.
Mayor
Leslie Pool
Posts: 231
Joined: Mon Jan 12, 2015 3:22 pm

Re: Committees for 2017

Post by Leslie Pool »

Mayor, thank you! I expect our discussion of committees will be real fruitful Thursday. To move us forward on this item, and after we have worked through our thoughts about committees, I will propose that we independently list committees or projects we each want to be involved with and where we want to put our energies; that identification may itself show what efforts or committees should continue or begin, or not.

One reality I'd point to is that, by its very nature, an ad hoc committee's purpose may not yet be identified. We can't brainstorm everything that we imagine might come before us in the next 12 months, although we should certainly be open to forming an ad hoc committee when the need manifests. All of that is to say that continuing some (not all!) of the current committees may be necessary. I don't know this to be true, and it's ultimately up to us as a body, so I am simply laying that out there as a possibility.

Two additional items to consider:
1. Number of CMs per committee [minimum number for committee to make (4?); maximum number to serve (7?)]; the minimum number could serve as an indicator of which standing committees to continue, which ad hoc committees to form.
2. Frequency and length of meetings. As time passed over the last two years, many committee chairs pared the frequency of meetings down from monthly to every other month (give or take), and some worked to limit the meetings to two hours, max.

To the logistical end, I'm willing to continue to lead on this issue on behalf of the Council, including tracking which committees each of us want to serve on, and then preparing the ordinance amendments that will be needed. I would like to partner with someone the Interim City Manager may designate to work through all the details, if possible.

Thanks to all for your preparation for this discussion on Thursday.

Leslie
Leslie Pool
Mayor Pro Tem
Council Member, District 7
Steve Adler
Posts: 533
Joined: Fri Jan 16, 2015 2:12 pm

Re: Committees for 2017

Post by Steve Adler »

After hearing from some of our colleagues, and the all-too-brief conversation we had at the strategic workshop, it seems we should place on the 1/24 Council work session agenda some continued work on committees and meeting management. It’s also been suggested that we allow for public input before dissolving any committees or changing the structure significantly.

I’d suggest that we begin the conversation with the goals we’re trying to achieve. The following are the goals that I believe we worked from for our initial work and we could add/delete/change as is the will of the Council. Once we agree on the objectives, hopefully we can fashion the next iteration of our processes to try to best meet them.

1. Increase the time and logistic opportunities for council to study, deliberate on, and evolve concepts and proposals (with public and staff).
2. Encourage earlier and more meaningful public input.
3. Facilitate and help make more efficient staff work and their workload
4. Enable council’s proactive focus on big issues (vs. reactive work).
5. Develop some greater measure of substance expertise among individual council members.
6. Divide, delegate and assign the workload to a subpart of council to lessen individual CM load overall (as appropriate for some issues).


To these goals, I would suggest adding:

1. Make a better use of, and engage, the boards and commissions.
2. Lessen council member and staff time in meetings by discussing policy issues earlier in the process.
3. Focus on specific initiatives that council members want to work on (short or limited duration task force work).
4. Preserve the existing committees where there is continued interest: at least the Audit and Finance Committee (as required by Charter) and there appears to be interest in at least continuing the Mobility Committee.
5. All committees and task forces would have a clear statement of their purpose, issues to address, duration, and relationship to Council (e.g. bring info back re xyz)

In addition to the suggestions about committees that we should consider that have been posted on the bulletin board by CM Pool (and the colleagues she mentioned) and my earlier post, I would add consideration of the following matters related to meeting management (without limitation to adding additional ideas):

Meetings

-- Start council meetings earlier (9 or 9:30).
-- Set hard end time of 11 pm for all meetings except for continuation of public hearings.
-- Hold public hearings for hot button items on special called meetings that would typically be Wednesdays.
-- Designate one meeting per month as the non-ceremonial meeting (no invocation, live music, or procs) and direct large public hearings to that meeting, which would not have a cut off time.
-- Cut speaker signups for items once the item is taken up by council.
-- Allow only two people to donate time per speaker instead of four.
-- Institute standard hard breaks for lunch and dinner.
o Lunch break will be from 12:30 to 1:15 and dinner break for regular meetings starts with music/procs at 5:30 and ends at 7 pm. For meetings without music/procs, the dinner break runs from 6 to 7.

Agendas

-- Extend Agenda Posting to 8 days.
-- Set deadline for IFC submittal to draft agenda posting. IFC submittals must contain draft resolutions, not just posting language, in order to be posted.
-- Create a separate section on agendas called “Discussion Items,” and require that all IFCs be posted for discussion for at least one meeting prior to action being taken. (Routine fee waivers would not be subject to this requirement, and items that went through committees could also be excluded.)
-- Change the allotted time/speaker to 2 minutes (not three) whenever more than 20 speakers sign up. Limit to 1 minute per speaker after the first twenty speakers whenever more than 30 speakers signed up. A speaker in the first group can only get donated time from another person signed up in that first group. (The chair can make equitable and equivalent allowances when groups of speakers petition for a particular order or distribution of time and when there are more than two sides.)
-- Unlimited numbers of speakers when required by law. Otherwise, only the first 60 speakers signed up when the item is called are given a slot to speak.
-- Outside of the above, the applicant still will have five minutes to open and an opportunity to close.
Mayor
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