Seattle City Council Governance and Education Committee 12/1/21

Good afternoon.

The December 1st 2021 Governance and Education Committee special meeting will come to order.

I'm Lorena Gonzalez, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Juarez?

Here.

Council Member Sawant?

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Chair Gonzalez?

Here.

That's three present and two absent.

Thank you so much.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is now adopted.

We will now move to public comment.

At this time, we will open the remote public comment period.

While it remains our strong intent to have public comment regularly included on future meeting agendas, the City Council does reserve the right to end or eliminate these public comment periods at any point if we deem that this system is being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently.

and effectively.

I'll moderate today's public comment period in the following manner.

The public comment period is scheduled to be 20 minutes with each speaker being allotted two minutes to address the council.

I'll call on each speaker in the order in which they registered on the council's website.

If you haven't yet registered but would like to, you can sign up before the end of this public comment period by going to city council's webpage and the link webpage, which is seattle.gov forward slash council.

The link is also listed on today's committee's agenda.

Once I call your name, staff will unmute your microphone.

You will hear the automatic prompt if you have been unmuted.

After you hear that automatic prompt, please press star six so we can hear you.

You must press star six in order to unmute yourself.

Please begin by stating your name, the item you are addressing, and remember, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda.

During your public comment, you will hear a chime, and that chime is notice that there is 10 seconds left of the two minutes that were provided to you.

Please listen for that chime and be mindful in wrapping up your comments.

If you do not wrap up your comments at the end of your time allotted, your microphone will be muted.

Once you've completed your public comment, please disconnect from the line and you can continue following this meeting on Seattle Channel or one of the listening options listed on the agenda.

Public comment period is now open.

We'll begin with the first speaker on the list, and the first speaker is David Haynes.

Welcome.

Thank you, David Haynes.

This Resolution 32029 should be rejected out of principle.

It was introduced after Council lost election, who now wants to change the rules for public comment and shorten Council Workweek to accommodate a four-day weekend.

If City Council staff doesn't like to work for the people, they should find another line of work.

This City Council has been abusing the electronic meetings for entirely too long, with no accountability when Council steps away from meetings, never to be seen by the people because you're hiding behind a computer screen.

This Council has never opened a Council chamber, further cheating our democracy, yet everyone else has to go back to work.

This democracy is not councils and their staff alone.

It's the people's democracy.

And you're further limiting access to our democracy with this resolution that was introduced by a rejected politician, further taking it out on our democracy, who shouldn't be allowed to change the entire way council does business, especially after the people rose up against the council.

Yet we are witnessing nonstop efforts to further undermine our democracy, our safety and the community in a spiteful, disingenuous, ignoble manner.

It's evident council is conspiring to silent and censor public future comment and manipulate the true democracy that's being denied by this council's agenda.

We need a rule of law that you're not allowed to completely change the rules for our city council in between a lame duck council.

that was rejected by the people who are still being backstabbed by the Council.

This resolution allows Council to sleep in on Mondays, show up late on Tuesdays, and be done by early Friday.

Basically, Council has proposed working three and a half days a week with allowance to silence more public comment.

Shame on the City Council's leaders for supporting this privileged hypocrisy and treasonous backstab on our democracy.

Maybe we need a law that government staff and politicians remain sober.

They don't get upset having to do work on weekends under the influence or show up hungover on Monday morning waiting to come in later or next day like bums.

Stop conspiring to manipulate the.

IT, I don't have any other registrants on my list.

Can you please confirm that there isn't anyone waiting in the waiting room?

Affirmative, there are no more public comment registrants.

All right.

Thank you so much.

With that being said, we will now close out the period of public comment and move to other items of business on our agenda.

Colleagues, today we only have one item of business on the agenda.

I will ask that the clerk please read item one into the record.

Agenda item one, resolution 32029, a resolution adopting general rules The Seattle City Council is superseding resolution 31920 for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much.

Colleagues, I have invited all council members to attend this committee meeting today for the purpose of engaging you in our biannual regular process to amend the council rules.

I want to make just a few introductory remarks on this item and then I'll turn it over to City Clerk Monica Martinez-Simmons and others who are going to provide an overview of today's briefing.

Our city clerk will be joined by Elizabeth Atkinson, who is the deputy director for the office of the city clerk.

And she will be joined by Esther Handy, our central staff director, who will facilitate a briefing on this matter as well.

Today, we will be briefed on proposed amendments to the council rules that have been recommended by a staff-level working group with input from council member offices.

We will also discuss other proposals for potential amendments and changes that have not yet been brought forward as formal amendments.

All council members, again, all council members are invited to the Governance and Education Committee meeting scheduled for next week on December 8th at 2 o'clock p.m.

As a reminder, members of the committee will take action on any proposed amendments and the underlying resolution to adopt changes to the council rules at that December 8th meeting of this committee.

the resolution will be considered by the full council at our December 13th city council meeting at 2 o'clock p.m.

This year, of course, more than most, we have several substantial proposed changes to the council rules, and it is my hope and goal for today's committee meeting that we walk away with some substantive feedback from you about how you would like to see the council rules changed for the better via this resolution.

I do want to encourage all of you to be vocal in providing your feedback and opinions as we go through the docket of items associated with the proposed amendments to the council rules.

Now I'm going to hand it over to our city clerk, Monica Martinez-Simmons, to kick us off.

And you are muted, Madam Clerk.

Thank you.

President and good afternoon Council Members and colleagues.

As stated, joining me for the presentation today are member representatives of the Council Rules Review Working Group.

as stated, Elizabeth Atkinson, Deputy Director for the Office of the City Clerk, and Esther Handy, Director of Council Central Staff.

The full Council Rules Working Group is comprised of the Council President's designee, L.A.

Cody Ryder, Deputy City Clerks Emilia Sanchez, Jodi Schwinn, and Linda Barone, as well as Assistant City Attorney Gary Smith and Code Reviser Brandon Easlep.

The full working group convened between September and November of 2021 to review proposed changes to the rules and to prepare recommendations for consideration by the City Council.

Today, our abbreviated team, if you will, will provide a summary, again, as stated, of the working group review process.

and highlight the proposed changes and also review the process for any amendments that may be requested by the City Council members moving forward.

Proposals, there are some proposals that have not yet been incorporated into the proposed resolution as we believe as a working group that they warrant further discussion and deliberation by the City Council.

That process again will be reviewed by Director Handy.

The public comment period, just to note, that public comment period that has been in effect will be running through December 11th.

And any written public comment that has been received by our office is distributed to the city council upon receipt.

So you will be receiving that as that comes in through the 11th.

Again, please feel free to ask any questions or seek clarification as we're making a presentation of these items.

just your full engagement.

Please share your direct feedback and opinions with us.

That will better inform how we can develop further recommendations that are coming from the council.

So we encourage that.

At this time, I'll go ahead and turn the time over to Elizabeth, and then Elizabeth will be followed by Director Handy.

Thank you, Council President.

Liz?

Thank you, Monica, and good afternoon, council members.

As a brief overview again of our timeline and process, this is our biennial review of the council rules, which is prescribed in the rules themselves.

And so 2021 was the next year to go through this cycle.

We started off in September with the working group reviewing proposed amendments that had been collected over the past two years for potential addressing through this cycle and brought forward a resolution that incorporated a number of these ideas.

and introduced to the City Council on November 15th.

As Monica mentioned, this is when we also opened up the public comment period which will continue through December 11th and include the opportunity to submit written comments and also to attend three meetings and provide public comment.

At the Governance and Education Committee, we will have today's briefing on December 1st and discussion on this item, and then a meeting on December 8th, which is when we would expect to hear amendments and then also consider final recommendations and plan to have this on the December 13th meeting before the full council for potential adoption at that time.

Included in the resolution that has been presented, excuse me, are a number of proposed amendments on a number of subjects.

And those subjects in general include such topics as the ability to host hybrid public meetings in the future.

And those are meetings where there would be both a virtual aspect as well as an in-person aspect to them.

And so those items are generally included into the rules.

It also includes some items that clarify sponsorship of legislation and amendments thereto.

It also proposes some changes to committee membership, participation, and rules, clarifying rights and powers of committee members and non-committee members in our committee structure that we adopt every two years.

It makes a few proposed amendments to our parliamentary procedures regarding a few of the motions that we use on a regular basis, as well as updates us to the next edition of Robert's Rules of Order.

And it also includes a few technical and clarifying language changes.

addressing cross references and terms of use that we felt could use some clarification.

So that's a general overview of the proposed amendments that have been introduced in the resolution at this point, and I will hand it over to Director Handy to go through those proposed amendments in more detail with you and bring up the policy considerations.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, committee members.

Esther Handy, director of your council central staff.

I will walk through the 14 changes that are in the resolution in front of you.

If you want to pull the memo up, we'll give a visual both for the public and council members as we walk through these.

I can also share my screen if that is easier.

She'll probably just need it.

couple of seconds to pull the right screen.

No problem.

She does so.

Maybe I'll just start with the first one, which is fairly straightforward, which, as Elizabeth mentioned, addresses hybrid and in-person meetings.

So there are a set of changes in the rules that allow for virtual alternatives for public comment, essentially removes language that pertains to in-person only references to council meetings.

The proposed changes in the base resolution do not require the council to offer virtual alternatives to public comment, but rather makes it permissive, creating flexibility for the council as you begin envisioning what council deliberations will look like in a post-COVID or the next phase of COVID world.

We can go to the next page.

The second set of changes relate to sponsorship, and it clarifies the role of a sponsor on legislation and amendments.

The first adds language so that legislation does not require a sponsor to be introduced.

So occasionally the council gets a bill that is necessary for the continuity of city business, but not necessarily a bill that is championed by an individual member of the council.

This allows the council president to introduce and keep that bill moving.

The second, and Lee, if we could go to page two when you get a chance, adds language that before introduction, co-sponsors who are added outside of open meetings shall not exceed the quorum of the committee.

So if there are five members of the committee with a quorum of three, three sponsors may be added pre-introduction, and the rest should be added post-introduction in open session.

Director Handy, can you just pause for a minute?

I think Lee is having some delay issues.

Um, so she was having a hard time.

Got it.

He's a little behind you, um, not intentionally, but I think there were some, um, some, some lag issues on her end.

I think she is caught up now.

B, can you confirm that you are able to hear us in real time?

Looks like she's still struggling with the scrolling here.

We may need you to share your screen, Esther.

I know that's not.

Ideal.

Let's see.

It looks like we're close.

Right there, V, if you can hear, that's right where we're at.

And then if you can adjust your screen, it's looking a little.

There we go.

There we go.

Are you on number?

We're on number three.

Is that right?

Yeah.

I just mentioned the sponsorship.

I'll go to committee membership if there are no questions.

We'll take questions at the end, so why don't you go ahead and finish your presentation and then we'll circle back and take questions.

Great.

So the third category regards committee membership and participation.

This says that only council members who are designated members of the committee or who are serving as the alternate may sponsor legislation or amendments before the committee.

So when a bill comes for introduction, any council member may sponsor that bill to get it introduced to the council.

Once it has been referred to a committee, only committee members may sponsor amendments.

There has been some questions and a little bit of confusion from council members about what does it mean to sponsor legislation after introduction.

The working group is working on a sort of a technical cleanup amendment that we'd like to offer forward there to clear up any confusion.

This is really about somebody who is not on a committee may offer an amendment.

You need somebody on the committee to sponsor it when it is in committee discussion.

Um, I think that that's the highlights of number three.

Um, number four says that, um, oh, sorry, if you were in that same section, um, too far, too far.

Perfect.

Right there.

Um, uh, allows, uh, right now committees have, um, five, most standing committees have five members and an alternate.

This changes the appointment of the alternate from mandatory to permissive.

So as new committees are created in the next year, they may have alternates assigned to them, but they may not be required to.

In the case where there are five committee members in a quorum of three, part of the discussion was that you could have two members absence and still a quorum there.

So an alternate might not be necessary on the larger committees.

Number five clarifies that a committee member must be absent from an entire meeting for the alternate to attend the meeting as a member with full voting rights.

The intention here is really to clarify who is a voting member in a single committee meeting, both for the record of who was present and who was voted, and for council members who are working with constituents, there is some confusion about If I attend a portion of the meeting, do I have a right to vote on that bill as I'm acting as the alternate or just for discussion that the standing committee member steps in?

So really trying to have a cleaner set of standards around when the alternate participates and may vote at a meeting.

Number six adopts rules for the select budget committee that were established this year and moves them into the permanent council rules.

It says that budget amendments that meet the established deadline on the annual budget committee schedule will be published on the appropriate meeting agenda.

And those that do not walk on amendment must be circulated by 5 p.m.

the preceding business day in order to be considered by the Budget Committee.

This is a standard practice that we think has worked well this year.

It has helped central staff sort of manage the volume of amendments and has enabled the public to have an opportunity to view those amendments before discussion.

So it's taking a current practice and adopting it into permanent form.

Number seven, establishes the finance committee as a standard, as a standing committee.

This is really a cleanup.

A finance committee is required in our charter.

It is the council's practice to have one, but this just puts it into our council rules.

And number eight is a technical change to include a cross-reference that's necessary.

This next section is about parliamentary procedure.

Upstates our references from the 11th to the 12th edition of Robert's Rules of Order to reflect that we are using the current edition.

Makes a clarification on, currently it reads that the chair makes a decision when a point of order is brought forward.

This change 10 allows the chair to make that decision or to submit that to the committee or the body to make a decision by majority vote.

So it doesn't change what a point of order is, but gives the option for the chair to make that decision or to allow the body to.

Number 11 clarifies the timeline for which take from the table motion may be used.

So if a motion is laid from the table, it may be taken back from the table in that meeting or the subsequent meeting, but not later.

And finally, 12 in parliamentary procedure clarifies how an abstention counts towards voting to reflect the council's current practice.

So if there is a committee of five members, two of them vote in favor, one of them votes against, two of them abstain, The vote and record for that vote is two in favor, one opposed to abstain, and the motion passes.

Essentially, the abstentions do not count towards the final tally in the vote.

Again, this is the current practice, but was not clarified in the rules.

And then the last couple here, number 13 and 14, are technical and clarifying language changes.

The first clarifies the difference between a divided vote and a divided report.

The vote is the vote that is taken.

A report is a report that is written to go along with the agenda to represent a minority opinion.

In council's history, a divided report was a required item to go along with divided votes.

Several years ago, it was changed to be optional.

It's our understanding that hasn't been used in quite a few years.

And so council members may have interest in removing this entirely from the rules or revisiting this practice.

The clarifying amendment here just updates the language between vote and report.

And finally, motions to hold to a certain time or hold indefinitely have been amended to use the word postpone.

That is often a language that is used on the dais and more clearly defines that the intention is to bring it back, but at a future time.

So those are the 14 items that the work group has considered and recommended and are included in the base resolution.

Both myself and the clerks are happy to take questions on those.

I recommend we do that and then move to a couple of more substantive policy discussions.

Agreed.

So I think this is a good place for us to stop.

The 14 items that Director Handy has just briefed us on are all included in the base resolution.

Obviously, they're still subject to amendment and further change.

But colleagues, this is an opportunity for you to ask any questions of the staff work group.

and to express any concerns or interest in bringing forth potential amendments.

I do also want to note for the record that we were joined by Councilmember Mosqueda, Herbold, and Morales.

And I'm going to go ahead and open it up now to folks who might want to ask questions.

I do see that Councilmember Herbold has raised her hand.

Please.

Thank you.

I have a couple questions, but first one that comes to mind relates.

to a couple of the issues around sponsorship of legislation and as it relates specifically to the allowance for a quorum of committee members to sponsor legislation pre-introduction.

Given that quorum is a majority of council members, I'm struggling to understand how how that would be permissive under OPMA and why it wouldn't be, why the limitation on sponsorship pre-introduction would not be limited to under quorum.

Yes.

I was just searching the technical language of the resolution to clarify if it is no more than quorum or if it is up to quorum.

Let me just take a look at that and get back to you, unless Monica or Elizabeth, you know the answer to that.

It works for me.

And Madam Chair, if I could ask my other question related specifically to sponsorship.

Just a minute.

Simmons, did you have something to add in response to that?

You are muted.

We're in the same situation.

It would be important for us to review the specific language before following up with Councilmember Herbold.

Yeah, I do want to, before you move on to the next question, Councilmember Herbold, I also want to echo concerns about that.

Part of the reason why we constructed committees the way we did was because we wanted to avoid inadvertent violations of the Open Public Meetings Act and I think allowing a majority, i.e. a quorum of committee council members to sponsor a piece of legislation in advance of the committee meeting and out of open session would run afoul of the Open Public Meetings Act.

So to the extent that the revisions to the resolution council rules would allow for that to happen or designate that that could happen, I think we need to revisit that, clean it up and make sure that we are not opening that door once again.

Yeah.

Thank you.

And that the language reads shall not exceed a quorum.

So we'll revisit that issue and make sure that we're in line or say, you know, less than a quorum.

Yeah, to address that issue.

Thank you.

All right.

Yeah, shall not exceed a quorum means you can get to quorum, but not have more than the quorum.

I'm thinking that that was probably just an oversight in nomenclature.

So we will need to bring forward a technical amendment to correct for that and to account for the fact that it cannot be a quorum or in excess of a quorum.

Council Member Herbold, please.

So much.

And then my other question relates to the issue of who can sponsor legislation.

I appreciate, Director Handy, that you flagged the issue of what it means to sponsor legislation post-introduction.

We think that might mean either an amendment to the legislation or a substitute, which is technically an amendment, but it could be considered legislation.

But just want to just clarify that The ability to sponsor legislation in the proposed rules is a power that only committee members seem to have.

And just wanting to just flag that we want to make sure that the intent is reflected in the legislation, the legislation changing the rules as well.

and would love to understand exactly what the intent is here.

Are we intending to limit the ability of non-council members from sponsoring legislation that would go to a committee that they do not serve on?

Thanks for the question.

The intention here is that any council member may sponsor any piece of legislation at introduction.

So if somebody would like to advance a piece of legislation for the Governance and Education Committee but is not in that committee, and maybe it is something they have worked on and authored, they may do that and be the sponsor at the point of introduction.

The intention here is once a bill is referred to a committee, it is the jurisdiction of the members of that committee to deliberate on and make a recommendation to the full council.

So the point at which it is in committee, only committee members may sponsor amendments and changes to that until it has left that committee and is back at full council.

Does that clarify?

It does, thank you, but I do as at least I'm doing sort of a plain reading of the language.

There's the question of that you that you flag director handy of what does it mean to as a to to introduce legislation in a committee after the IRC process?

But I also am flagging that the.

of the legislation seems to limit the sponsorship of legislation to committee members.

Thank you.

And it's our intention for the work group to offer a cleanup of that to remove the word legislation.

So it just reads amendment in that section to retain the intent I described.

Thank you.

And Director Handy, just to be really clear, the intent here is is sort of allowing council members to exercise their legislative authority, regardless of committee membership, but we're talking about the, I think we're talking about a temporal point.

So it's at the point of introduction and referral.

So if a council member who wasn't a member of the Governance and Education Committee wanted to introduce legislation that gave all public school students free ice cream.

They could do that, but once it's referred to the Governance and Education Committee, which they are no longer a member of, at that point, after that introduction referral, they would need to work with the chair as an author of either a striker bill or an amendment in order for those amendments to advance.

That is correct.

They may offer the idea of free ice cream to all.

It is that in the jurisdiction of the committee that oversees those rules and legislation to make a decision and recommendation on that idea.

Yeah.

And obviously, full council is always an opportunity for any council member, regardless of committee membership, to bring forward amendments that we try to encourage substantive policy issues to happen during committee.

Okay, great.

Council Member Grubel, anything else?

I have one other question, not about sponsorship, but about something that was covered in this initial portion of the briefing.

Is that okay?

Yeah, go ahead.

Thank you.

As it relates specifically to the intent to clarify, for the record, who is a voting member of a meeting in the case that there is a need for an alternate, I just want to confirm My understanding that these are rules that can be waived in individual circumstances.

I can imagine a sort of a brokered agreement of a regular committee member with an alternate for which a portion of the meeting each would attend and each would have voting rights during.

I understand that there is a desire to not put an alternate in a difficult position.

around the question of preparing for a meeting where they may or may not have full voting rights.

could see that that difficulty could be ameliorated in a situation where both the absent member and the alternate agree, and just want to make sure that that is confirmed that that would be possible with approval of the waiver rules.

Yes, that's my understanding.

And on the committee agenda today is an attachment appendix A that lists all of the non-suspendable rules for which that action is not allowed.

But the one you were describing, the role of the alternate, could be suspended with a motion.

And I'll just look to the clerks to correct me if I step astray on any of those.

You're on point, Esther.

There we go.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anything else, Councilmember Herbold?

Great.

Council Member Strauss, and then after Council Member Strauss will be Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Council President, Chair.

My question is regarding the ability to have legislation sponsored without a sponsor.

I don't know where I am at on this point, because I understand the need to have routine legislation that is for good governance.

Many times there's been legislation that has been written by the executive that I've put my name on because that's when it's transmitted somebody has to put their name on it when it comes to my committee I do so.

I just want to get a better understanding of why this is being considered now and if there are any parameters on it.

I guess I'll be forthright with my concern that if we allow this to occur without parameters that somebody can sponsor legislation without having to put their name on it.

That is not routine in governance.

So just looking for more information at this time.

Yeah, that's right.

I'm happy to defer either to the Council President or others on the line if you would like to weigh in here.

My understanding is that this would be used fairly rarely.

It would still require the decision of the Council President to introduce it.

So bills that come forward without a sponsor, you know, wouldn't automatically make it into the realm of council business, but that it is an option that council members have wanted to have where they have said, you know what, this is an important, a piece of city business, but not necessarily something that I'm championing for my district.

Councilmember Strauss, I appreciate the example you just gave where there are times you put your name on that anyway, but it is to address those circumstances.

And again, I think the main check on this would be the role of the council president who is making decisions about when a bill of any kind gets added to the introduction referral calendar.

I'll just add a little bit of texture to that.

It is rare.

The instances in which a piece of legislation would have no sponsor attached to it is very rare.

It is not unprecedented, however, as rare as it might be.

I'll give you an example of how this played out in real life for us last year, or I guess it was maybe this year, this year.

So we were asked in two different instances to consider legislation that would allow for a council member, a current council member, and the current mayor to receive reimbursement for legal fees related to recall petitions.

And in both those instances, we were unable to find a council member willing to sponsor those pieces of legislation being advanced by the executive and from a council member.

And as a result, we still needed to list it on the docket and have it introduced and referred and deliberated.

and having the flexibility from the council president's perspective to allow that governance legislation to advance without a sponsor was important.

And so I think making sure that we have reflected in the rules that this is allowable and institutionalizing the ability to be able to have the discretion to make that call, particularly in the circumstance in which a council member cannot be found to sponsor such legislation, I think is important.

Otherwise, the legislation cannot and will not advance even if it is technical in nature or necessary for the advancement of continuity of governance.

So that's a real life example of two pieces of legislation that we dealt with this reality just this year in 2021. So very rare.

I think those are the only two instances I can think of off the top of my head.

There might be others that I'm missing, but I would say that it's quite literally a small, small handful.

Thank you, Council President.

That is very helpful, and thank you, Director Handy.

Helpful context.

I can tell you that in its current form, I'm not comfortable with the language because it does not have enough parameters to describe what the both of you just described to us.

I will take some more time to reflect and digest this.

I don't know where I will land, but I can tell you that at start right now, I would need to, at minimum, see more parameters put on there to feel comfortable with it.

and just describing what you just said.

So I would say, um, you know, counselor Strauss, if you have specific parameters that you'd like to put on the table now, I would encourage you to, to daylight those now.

Um, and then secondly, I would say that, um, I would caution against being overly proscriptive in this particular area because I, I do think it is, incredibly rare, and I also think that the future president of the council needs to have some discretion in being able to accommodate what is a consensus body will in the moment.

And so it's hard to come up with particular proscriptions on this that would still sort of facilitate for legislation that needs to advance to actually advance.

The consequence of not having this rule in my mind is that then legislation that needs to be considered for the sake of governance cannot advance because it requires a sponsor.

And if we're unable to get a council member to agree to sponsor something in due course, then that falls on the council president to either sponsor it or to table the legislation indefinitely.

In other words, not introduce it.

Thank you, that's helpful.

Daylighting the parameters that I would hope to see, and apologies, I'd be happy to circle back with any of you later to dive deeper, but really the parameters I'm looking for are the base functioning of governments.

I don't know if there's a better way of saying what you just said, Council President, in these certain circumstances that occur from time to time but are not regularly used.

for the base function of either council or city government.

Not so different than payment of the bills, something to that degree.

What I am trying to avoid is legislation of policy that makes a policy or a law change within the city government that does not have a sponsorship attached to it.

So that's the problem I'm trying to solve for.

And I think the parameters that I'm looking for are for the base functions of good governance.

Can I ask a little bit about that?

So even in the instance in which there was no sponsors, the city council still deliberated, debated, considered, voted, and took action on legislation.

So what is the I want to make sure that it's clear that no sponsorship doesn't mean that there's going to be no action, no analysis, no deliberation, no debate.

It just literally means that there is not a council member partner or advocate for that legislation on the city council, but that does not uh, mean that the legislation will not receive due analysis, especially from our council central staff and from the law department?

Yes.

Sorry.

Is there something, how would you like me to respond?

I don't know.

Well, I'm hearing you equate no sponsorship with no process.

or a stalling of legislation.

And I just want to make clear that that is not the effect of the proposed rule change.

In other words, the fact that there is no sponsor does not does not equate to no process on the bill or a stalling of the bill.

And so I guess I'm I am not understanding.

Your I'm hearing that your concern is potentially around a concern that if there is no sponsor, then nothing happens with the bill, and therefore there is bad governance, and so I'm trying to get a better understanding of what your underlying concern is.

Thanks.

That is helpful.

I think that we might be talking a little bit past each other, so I'm happy to also take this conversation offline in the interest of the committee.

What I am saying, and I'll put it in the positive, is that I think that it is important that there is a council member's name on bills of legislation, no matter what that legislation is.

I think that that's important to me to hold accountability for what's contained within that legislation and to hold accountability with our colleagues.

whether or not we generated the legislation at all.

Hearing your and Director Handy's feedback of the need to process certain bills and ordinances for good governance that people don't want to put their name on, that I'm indicating my openness to continue that conversation, but where my starting point is is that I feel it is important for accountability regarding legislation and our colleagues that names are associated with bills.

And so I think we might be speaking a little bit past each other, Council President and Chair of the committee.

So I want to just put that as my baseline that I do think it's important to have a name associated with ordinances.

Thank you.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Council Member Strauss?

No, thank you.

Okay.

Council Member Morales?

Thank you.

I think my question might relate a little bit to what Council Member Herbold was asking about.

Sorry.

I just want to make sure that a practice I have implemented or intended to implement in my committee is acceptable, which is that, for example, if BIA is coming before my committee, but the council member whose district that's in doesn't sit on my committee, I have, invited them to come and make the presentation, not necessarily to vote, but to be part of the discussion and present on their what's happening in their district.

Is there anything here that prevents that as long as they aren't actually voting?

No, the chair of the committee has the power to invite additional members of the council to attend a committee, the chair has the ability to recognize that committee member, that, sorry, non-committee member, that council member for discussion of any item at their committee.

Okay, so that, they could technically have maybe been the sponsor of that legislation But once it's in my committee, they become the author and somebody else is the sponsor.

And then that's the piece that is also sort of confusing me, to be honest.

That goes back to this issue of time.

So they could have legislation regarding a BIA in their district.

It would get referred to your committee where you now have jurisdiction.

You could invite them to attend and participate in that discussion.

If they wanted to make an amendment to the legislation at the committee level, they could offer that amendment, but they would need to request that you or another member of the committee are the sponsor of that amendment once it is in the jurisdiction of your committee.

Once your committee votes and moves it on to full council, that council member, again, has jurisdiction if they wanted to offer an amendment at full council.

OK.

OK.

Thank you.

Great.

OK.

Any other questions on the first 14?

Okay.

And then Council Member Herbold, I see that your hand is still up.

I'm assuming that's a holdover.

There we go.

Okay.

And then did want to have the record reflect that we were joined a few moments ago by Council Member Peterson as well.

Welcome.

Okay, let's go ahead and if there are no additional questions on the first 14 items, why don't we continue to go through the presentation and go through the next section, which have some more significant policy questions.

Great.

So V, if you wouldn't mind pulling that memo up again, starting on page four, I appreciate that.

So we have just briefed on 14 items in the resolution.

If council members would like any of those changed or removed, those would require an amendment.

These next items are not included in the base resolution.

So we will discuss them today.

And if council members would like to offer them as amendment, offer, would like to see the change, those would need to come forward with as amendments.

I am requesting that amendment requests come in by Friday at noon to give our team time to draft them and get them posted on the agenda for the public to review for discussion next Wednesday.

So the first of two policy issues that the work group discussed and has a recommendation but not a final recommendation on is a council meeting schedule.

Currently the city council meets as a full council on Mondays.

You have a council briefing at 9.30 in the morning and you take action as a full council at 2 p.m.

Standing committees typically follow on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Thursday is usually reserved as a time for council members to attend regional committee meetings.

The Mondays often result in last-minute work over the weekend to draft amendments and two kind of policy concerns about that discussed by the work group.

One is health and sustainability of Council staff, both council members, the aides in your office, and our central staff team, and limited time for public review of any amendments before that full council action on Monday.

So the work group looked at a few different options for alternate days and is putting forth for council consideration a Tuesday council meeting.

There are three alternatives outlined here.

The first would establish both of them, sorry, both alternative one and two have Monday mornings with no meetings, a council briefing at 2 p.m.

on Monday, and a full council meeting on Tuesday.

In alternative one, the full council would meet on Tuesday afternoon, and in alternative B, the full council would meet on Tuesday morning.

We think both of these options give more of a chance to use that Monday time for any final prep for committee meetings, that Monday afternoon briefing as an option to daylight action that is going to come before the council to sit for a day before either the next morning or the next afternoon full council action.

Under both these options, committee meetings would continue on Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

for the alternative where you have a full council meeting on Tuesday morning, the committee meeting would be in the afternoon.

And that would be the opposite for an afternoon meeting.

Two additional considerations to consider.

One is if the council meeting is moved to Tuesday, council members may want to consider amending the deadline for amendments for full council.

That deadline is currently two hours prior to the meeting.

you could amend that to be five o'clock on Monday, again, to give additional time for those amendments to be seen and understood before full council action.

And then there has been some discussion about where council briefing fits into this.

Should it be weekly?

Should it be less frequently?

should it be at the discretion of the council president.

So happy to have discussion or take questions on sort of any aspects of moving a council meeting from Monday to Tuesday.

Okay, let's take a pause on each one of these just to make sure we can have a full discussion here.

Okay.

I do see one hand raised, so we'll go ahead and call on Council Member Hurdle.

Thank you.

So as it relates to the alternatives that have been developed here, really appreciate your doing so, so we could see sort of in real life how this sort of a change on, as it relates to Monday meetings, might have an impact on standing committee meetings.

and with consideration of other regional committees, et cetera, and appreciate the consideration of the concerns that I raised.

And it might be helpful for the viewing public to talk a little bit about the concerns that I raised.

challenges that are created for the city clerk with a Monday full council meeting, because that is not a challenge that we want to replicate for standing committees in successfully dealing with it for full council.

But my question is, I'm just wondering that the alternatives that are provided for briefings and full council meetings and committee meeting times.

Does this assume, one, the current number of committee meetings, sorry, the current number of committees, first of all, and does it consider the current number of meetings that the existing number of committee have.

So some committees meet twice monthly, some meet one time a month, and we have a right now we have a particular number of committees and all of this may change in the new year.

Yes, my understanding is that the calendars that are attached that show alternative one and two are based on the number of committees we have today and how frequently they meet.

There currently isn't a Wednesday afternoon or a Friday afternoon committee on those calendars, and so those would likely be the sort of room for expansion if you were to have more committees next year or committees that met more frequently.

our recommendation from the work group would be to not use the Monday morning slot, but to use either that Wednesday afternoon or that Friday afternoon slot.

City Clerk Sibbins, do you have anything to add to that?

No, I think you covered it, Esther.

These were options that were reviewed with their deputy city clerks and the entire working group, just to make sure that we were offering something that is workable and doable.

I do want to note that the materials that were attached, so attachment two on the agenda sort of shows a schematic of and impact of these proposed changes, particularly as it relates to how it impacts staff in terms of preparation.

So attachment three also has some of that same information, so I would encourage you all to look at those documents as we're having this conversation as well.

Council Member Juarez, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First of all, thank you, Monica, Esther, and Elizabeth for meeting with us and our staff yesterday for almost an hour and going through your 12-page memo and the attachments.

I love attachments and charts.

and tables.

As you know, we will be submitting some amendments, and I'll be able to speak to them a little bit more coherently when we get them done.

But one of the things I would like to have as an option, if I may, Madam Chair, is I do agree with you that we need to, since we're in this Zoom posture now and looking at a screen and also having more time and not making staff work on Sundays to be prepared for Mondays, I would also be considering offering a third option in which we have council meetings on Tuesdays and hopefully or perhaps have council briefings every other Monday, whether it's 930 or two.

I had this talk with Esther, Monica, and Elizabeth yesterday.

My reasoning behind that is because as council members, we have access to so many social media platforms that the regular public doesn't, whether it's Twitter, Facebook, our own newsletters, the Seattle channel.

And so in light of where we're at now for how long we're going to be doing the city's government's business over a screen, I would like to talk and maybe if anyone else has any other comments, and I know Esther is going to help me out on this, about offering this third option.

I'd like to hear from my colleagues what they think about council briefing every other week in which we talk about what we've done, what we're gonna do and other issues that actually brief the public instead of having three hour morning meetings sometimes where we hear the same thing again at two.

And again, I'm not trying to be negative or disdainful of people that wanna have the same message over and over, but I also wanna be cognitive what the effect of being on a computer for seven, eight hours a day is for our health and trying to use our time the most efficiently, particularly for the viewing public, so we can do the government business as we've done.

And I think I can share this with you as well, Council President.

I feel bad that some of the newer council members that were elected never really had an opportunity to sit at the dais and have public comment and have that in-person experience of democracy, of people coming in.

being able to speak a public comment and doing this by zoom has obviously curtailed us a lot, but I think the mental health and the physical piece is really important.

Um, and I don't think, uh, I don't see any time in the near future where the state or the city is going to lift this, um, this occupational position we're in now where we're doing everything over over Zoom or or of our teams or whatever.

So if there's any if there's anyone has any comments about that, Madam President, I'd ask if you could maybe see if there's anyone has any comments about having council briefing every other week.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Council Member Juarez.

I I will provide some information on this, just sort of some some just sort of factual information for people to take into consideration as we're having this conversation.

And of course, I want to make sure that others have an opportunity to weigh in on a biweekly schedule of council briefings.

And I see that Council Member Peterson has his hand raised.

And I do want to having served as the council president for the last two years, just offer you all the benefit of some additional information that happens, I would say, a lot in the back of the house.

So we get to see a lot of it, but those who don't serve in the role of council president may have not had an opportunity to sort of see the flow coming in and sort of what's required in terms of calendaring.

So I just would offer a couple of things.

One is that council briefing is oftentimes the last chance, particularly for those council members who don't sit on committees, to daylight concerns about legislation that might be subject to final council action at that next council meeting, in this case.

So in other words, 9.30 a.m.

tends to be the time when many council members especially those who don't sit on committees bring forward potential amendments or concerns about legislation that the council is then going to act on at two o'clock in that afternoon.

So my worry about eliminating or going to a biweekly council briefing schedule is that we still will be having weekly full council meetings and sort of how do you create a public process and a consistent channel, regular channel of communication that is compliant with the Open Public Meetings Act on emerging concerns or amendments that a council member may want to bring at a full council meeting.

And so there's There is that challenge.

Now I will admit that not every piece of legislation that is listed on every single full council meeting requires amendments and is sometimes perfunctory and and no one has additional amendments to make.

And so in that instance, it could be that we make council briefings discretionary and at the discretion of the council president.

And so if we see that the full council agenda is non-controversial, there's not gonna be any amendments, there are perfunctory items, then the council president could exercise his or her discretion to cancel the council briefing in light of the fact that we don't expect there to be a slew of last-minute amendments from non-committee members coming forward.

Otherwise, I just don't know how to provide the relief valve in compliance with the Open Public Meetings Act.

And so that's one sort of consideration that I would offer.

The other thing is that council briefing is typically the the space that is offered for executive sessions, many of which are last-minute requests by the city attorney's office.

They're also an opportunity for our Office of Intergovernmental Relations to make presentations.

Again, some of these things are predictable, but I would say that many of the executive sessions are and can be unpredictable and a little fast and furious.

So that's why I'm suggesting that if there is an inclination to go to a biweekly schedule, that as opposed to making that mandatory, we should consider making that at the discretion of the council president based on the council president's evaluation the week prior of whether or not a council briefing will be necessary that week.

So I think that would build in the flexibility that folks might be interested in looking for and sort of be realistic about staff constraints and some of the public health concerns that Council Member Juarez has flagged.

So I just wanted to offer that up as folks are sort of mulling over the concept of making council briefings biweekly or not.

I'm sorry, a lot of information.

I'm happy to also provide, I mean, we have like little sample sheets of how often we get executive sessions so that it's helpful to you all as council members, as you're thinking about the cadence of the work.

So Council Member Peterson, please.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

And thank you for inviting non-members of the committee to this committee.

I really appreciate it.

I love this stuff.

I love parliamentary procedure.

I'm embarrassed that I don't have my 12th edition yet.

I need to get that Robert's Rules of Order.

I know the clerk's gonna get on that case for that.

So I definitely support moving council meetings to Tuesdays.

I really appreciate the working group.

listening to input.

I think when council members were able to connect directly with each other and talk about, you know, the weekend, what were you doing this weekend?

Well, I worked all Sunday, you know, because I was getting ready for council briefing and such.

So I think that's a really good move in Oakland, California there on Tuesdays and had some experience with that there.

So thank you for putting those forward as options.

I don't have a strong feeling about the two different versions, but If nobody else puts forward an amendment, I'd be happy to do that when the time's right.

And picking up on the discussion from Council President Gonzalez, Council Member Juarez, I love the idea of making the council briefings, at least iteratively, change the shall to may.

So it may, at the discretion of the council president, have these council briefings.

And you might end up having them nine out of 10 times, but just changing it to may from shall could be helpful flexibility.

Thank you.

Thank you for that, Councilmember Peterson.

Councilmember Peterson, you mentioned you don't have a preference of whether it's in the morning or the afternoon slot on Tuesdays, but you like the Tuesday move.

Did I hear you say that correctly?

Yes.

I could see the benefit of having the council briefing Monday afternoon and the full council meeting Tuesday Afternoon because I'm worried if you have council full council in the morning it might you know run into the committee meeting whereas it's easier to Truncate the committee meeting perhaps, but I haven't thought through all the unintended consequences.

Yeah Okay, I can smell mosquito, please

Thank you, Council President.

I would just want to note I'd be interested in exploring with Collins as well going to Wednesday afternoon instead of Tuesday afternoon.

Just noting my interest in making sure that we have extra time for looking at potential amendments, and I recognize that we have to make sure that that's all scheduled around other committee meetings.

I would prefer to do Thursday, but I understand that there's a ton of regional committee meetings.

So in lieu of Thursday, we'd be interested in seeing if Wednesday afternoon was a possibility to give ourselves and central staff additional time to work on amendments and very much support doing a Monday optional briefing in the afternoon as well or around noon.

So that sounds like a fourth option potentially on Wednesday.

What I'm hearing very clearly, however, is that folks are on board with not having full council on Monday.

So now we are wrestling with Tuesday or Wednesday at this point.

I do wanna offer the clerks an opportunity to talk about a Wednesday option we did in our deliberation process consider.

Wednesday and what the impact of a Wednesday would look like.

And I know the answer to the question that I'm asking, so I won't answer it for myself.

I will look to the city clerks to provide the answer as to why Wednesday presented some difficulties.

Liz, do you want to go ahead and cover that, or we can come back to that after we chat a little bit more with the deputy city clerks?

Certainly, and this is for a Wednesday afternoon council meeting contemplation.

I think what I would say first off is that the rules committee itself actually looked at multiple dates and multiple times, and all of the other meetings that take place, as we've mentioned, not just our own committee schedule, which again will be reset at the beginning of next year, but also any sort of regional committees, also committees where, you know, the public might be pulled in one way or the direction, such as if a King County meeting was going on at the same time.

So I think a lot of those considerations were taken into place to come up with the idea of potential Tuesday afternoons, and that's where that became something that was one of the options that seemed to kind of fit all of the needs.

I do not recall anything specific that would hinder a Wednesday afternoon meeting.

So I do think that that one was still in the running, as they may say.

And I do think Thursdays, there was some concern there just being later in the week and also those regional committees for Thursdays.

So trying to stay away from Mondays, stay away from Thursdays.

And then I think Fridays, there was some thought that that might just be too late in the week to address this type of business.

So I would say, again, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, Tuesday seemed to be the preference just as far as the flow.

And then also looking ahead to getting items from committee onto an agenda for the next week.

So I think that's another consideration is how those committees and the work in committees gets on the next week's agenda.

So there really is a lot going on to kind of consider how it all works together to keep legislation moving through the process and to keep us being efficient.

So I think hopefully that's what I can offer at this point.

And then certainly we could contemplate putting together a schedule like we have for the Tuesday for a Wednesday afternoon and just have a visual representation.

I appreciate that.

I think, yeah, we can certainly generate that fourth option.

I would say that originally we had considered Wednesday.

My recollection from reviewing some of the correspondence on Wednesday was that it then presented a crunch.

towards getting legislation done, ready, finish, quality controlled, and ready for publishing for the Friday city council agenda.

So my My sense was from the deputy clerks that they felt that they might be getting compressed on the end of the timeline given deadlines for publishing publicly legislation that would be available to members of the public for their review and their comments.

If those concerns no longer exist, then I'd certainly be interested in seeing a schedule for Wednesday afternoon as well.

But my recollection of reviewing some of the notes from the staff work group is that the deputy city clerks in particular expressed some concerns about getting jammed towards the end of the week, especially since many of them would still be required to clerk other committee meetings throughout the week.

So that is a consideration.

And so I think that's why we landed on Tuesday to sort of give folks a little bit more wiggle room in terms of the deadlines associated with application of the agendas and referral of legislation.

Yes, understanding the interest for Wednesday as well.

We can flush it out a little bit more and confirm what you're sharing and what you've heard from our staff feedback.

But we can dig a little deeper and provide the pros and cons.

Okay.

Director Handy, any sort of insight on this from the central staff perspective?

Yeah, I just want to add two things.

One is I do think there are fewer, but I do think there are a couple of regional committees that meet on that Wednesday afternoon slot.

So I think our Wednesday discussion look more at the Wednesday morning option.

So I think if we flush out a calendar, we may want to look at that Wednesday morning.

And then just, I think from our perspective of the pace of moving kind of into full committee swing before full council, there's some trade-off there of kind of the capacity that's available from staff to prep for full council.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Council Member Strauss, please.

Thank you, Council President, Chair, Committee.

Just signaling, I'll be honest, I originally thought that Tuesday in the afternoon would be the best time for full council.

After reading this memo, well done on the memo, I am thinking that 9.30 in the morning on Tuesday is the best date.

So just signaling my preference for Monday at 2 p.m.

for council briefing, Tuesday morning 9.30 for full council and associating council briefing with full council meetings.

So if we have full council, We have council briefing.

If we don't have full council, we don't have council briefing.

That's about all.

Thanks, Chair.

So, Council Member Estraza, I'm hearing you say that you would you want council briefings to be mandatory every week or still discretionary?

I think the current practice is discretionary.

Is that correct?

The current practice is mandatory.

Mandatory.

I would lean towards mandatory, because then we can always not schedule one.

We can suspend the rules and not have one.

For me, let me get down to the problem that I'm trying to solve for here, which I think I heard you, Chair, state earlier, which is that if we have a full council meeting, it is important to have a council briefing associated with that full council so that members who are not on the committee in which the legislation was discussed will have an opportunity to hear about and provide feedback before entering into that meeting.

Yeah, I think that is an important consideration for folks to consider as we're mulling about a potential amendment in this area.

And my solution to that was to suggest that council briefings could be at the discretion of the council president, such that if we have a very slow full council meeting, i.e. nothing controversial, no amendments, everything simple, then the council president can, you know, make a determination on that Friday, for example, to cancel council briefing so that we're all using, you know, having the best use of our time and the best use of staff time so that would.

could in practice turn out to be biweekly council briefings, or it could in practice turn out to be exactly like it is now.

But I think what we're hearing from the discussion right now is that there is some interest in allowing for that discretion to be vested in the next council president to allow the next council president to make that call if and when appropriate.

Well said, Council President.

I look at during this last budget season, you canceled one of the full council meetings because there was nothing before us.

Associated council briefings should have been canceled as well.

You did a good job then and nothing there.

But also, during budget season, there's a fair amount of council briefings where we just don't have anything to report.

And I'm signaling my support of canceling those meetings.

While nothing says love like another meeting, That's true.

There's also extra love if it's a meeting about the meeting.

Here we are.

Here we are.

Thank you, Council President.

Yeah, of course.

Okay.

Any other comments, questions, concerns, preferences for options that council members would like to express?

I know Council Member Juarez in particular queued up the biweekly question, but do you want to make sure that In general, folks have an opportunity to opine on the options presented as it relates to the frequency and the date in which the council will do its business.

Council Member Herbold, please.

Thanks.

I just want to, before we get too excited about Wednesday afternoon, I want to thank Director Handy for referencing the fact that they're not as frequent, but there are at least three that I'm aware of regional committees that meet on Wednesday afternoon, RPC, Regional Water Committee, and WIRA 9. Again, they're not every other week or, you know, but there's still a consideration because we're expected to represent the city on those bodies.

And then as it relates to this question around regional committees generally, I'm wondering whether or not we've checked in with King County to see whether or not they too are considering any changes that we should be aware of in sort of doing the doing the game theory around impacts of potential changes that we're considering.

And lastly, I'm supportive of the, as it relates to the council briefings, potential change and shifting a shall to a may.

I think that seems like an elegant solution that accomplishes the goals that I've heard from folks here today.

And I just want to signal my support for that approach.

Thanks.

Great.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I do understand that King County currently meets on Tuesdays at 2 o'clock, so that's just point of information.

There, but but do you want to offer anybody from the staff work group if they have any additional information related to?

What King County might or may not be considering in terms of?

Of their meetings, Council President, we have not reached out to them.

Esther, I'm not sure if you've had any exchange with your colleagues at King County that I may be unaware of.

We have not.

It was originally actually a reason we ruled out Tuesday afternoon, but then decided that we thought that there, you know, was enough.

There are enough jurisdictions that have similar meeting times that it wouldn't be in conflict.

And but happy to, you know, have a more formal conversation with the county as you make a final kind of decision on this.

It's helpful.

Thanks so much, Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

I want to echo first of all what Councilmember Herbold just said.

I was late to this meeting because I had my own PSRC Economic Development District Board meeting on Wednesday, and we will only meet five times a year, but it's on a Wednesday afternoon, and it is an important issue to make sure we're participating in those conversations.

And then the other thing I wanted to signal my support for meeting on having Monday briefing and then Tuesday afternoon meetings.

I just I do feel like there's not enough time if we have briefing in the afternoon and then meet Tuesday morning for us to review amendments and really do due diligence if there's something that comes up during briefing before a Monday, Tuesday morning meeting.

So, just throwing my hat into the Tuesday afternoon camp.

Thank you so much, Council Member Morales.

Director Handy?

Yeah, I just wanted to clarify.

The King County Council meets at 1 PM on Tuesdays.

It's not a drastic difference, but there is a little bit of staggering.

And we talked about that in terms of if the public is commenting, could you do both in one day and track legislation?

So just a slight update to what I said previously.

Thanks so much.

Okay.

Um, well, I want to thank you all for the robust conversation on that particular, um, option.

I think, um, we have some sense of where folks want, um, want to head.

And, um, and Council Member Juarez, I was planning on bringing forward an amendment in this, in this area.

Happy to work on that together or, um, okay, great.

So our offices will connect and we'll make sure to advance something together that seems to be reflective of what I think we heard the collective will was.

So what I heard the collective will was, is that council briefings should go from a shall to a may.

And then we've got a little bit of negotiation to do or more thinking to do about a Tuesday afternoon full council versus a Wednesday morning, full council meeting.

So more to come on that, but our offices will work together on advancing something that might be acceptable to a majority of the council.

Okay, let's move to the next one.

One more issue discussed by the committee, again, not included in the resolution, but have some options for your discussion here, is regarding the electronic participation of council members, particularly at regular committee and full council meetings.

The rules as they currently stand limit electronic participation when we are not in a pandemic.

So I'll start by saying there are special rules in place right now due to the public health emergency that is enabling full electronic participation by council members.

Outside of that emergency, a council member who may be granted a leave of absence for a personal situation that includes family medical leave, paid parental leave, or paid family care leave.

In those circumstances, they may participate electronically at a regular meeting, a special meeting, or an emergency meeting.

Those are the only circumstances currently provided in the rules under which a council member could participate electronically at a regular meeting.

In the case of a special committee meeting, a vote of a majority of the council can also allow a council member to participate electronically, excuse me.

And the thinking here is that sometimes a special committee meeting is called on short notice or under special circumstances.

And so there are some slightly additional provisions for a special meeting.

And then for an emergency meeting, if it is not practical for council members to be in person in the case of a natural disaster of that kind, or by a vote of the majority of the council, somebody could participate electronically.

As council considers how it will operate after the current public health emergency, you all may want to consider amending the rules around electronic participation.

the couple of options we have laid out here for your consideration.

The first is to amend the council rules to make council member e-participation always allowable, as is kind of the practice under the emergency.

The second would be to make it allowable, granted at the discretion of the chair.

So add more flexibility to the rules, but have it be the council president or the committee chair that is ultimately sort of making a decision about how those committees are run.

Or you could make no change and choose to revisit these policies further in the future when you have a better sense of what a hybrid or return to in-person looks like for the city council.

Great, thank you, Director Handy.

Okay, let's open it up for conversation here.

I wanna signal that I'm supportive of option A, which would amend the council rules to make council member electronic participation always allowable.

And sort of the refrain that keeps running through my head as I consider this particular issue is, times are a changing and they continue to change and evolve.

And I think that I think that allowing council members to continue to participate electronically is a sort of common sense approach to how in-office work has evolved, not just for government, but also for the private sector.

And so I think it's important for us to reflect that in our workplace strategies.

This doesn't prevent people from coming into work or having a hybrid approach.

And I think that that is healthy for CCCCO, Rm 630 – Jack Scott Conference Room, Stage 4 we would be prepared and able to adapt should this rule be adopted and passed by the full council.

But I do think that it is a modernization of how we expect people to show up at the workplace.

And I will also acknowledge that there are many council members, there are several council members who are either you know, compromise themselves or have family members who are immunocompromised.

And this could be a a rule change that allows for those council members to make personal choices about the amount of exposure that they're willing to undertake as they are engaging in these public forums.

Nothing about this rule means that people won't be accessible or that they aren't engaging in good faith and proactively in their role as a council member.

And so I would encourage us to consider option A as a way to be reflective of how people are showing up in office work spaces currently.

And I think that that is going to go well into the future as well.

Any other council members have preferences here?

Council Member Herbold.

I totally appreciate, Madam President, your recognition that times are changing.

They have changed.

Our new normal isn't going to look like our old normal.

And I think there's a lot that is unknown about what that is going to look like.

I am interested in more flexibility than is currently provided for remote participation.

I'm interested in a hybrid approach.

I don't, I think, leaving it up to the chair to determine what the exceptions are.

may not meet the objective of creating more flexibility.

But I'm wondering whether or not we as a body could add more flexibility in a way that still meets that goal, but also creates a sort of common expectation for one another.

So I'm interested in sort of, Not to overuse the word hybrid, but a hybrid between options A and B.

OK.

Any thoughts from the staff or group on what a hybrid between A and B could look like?

From my perspective, I'm thinking there would be some parameters, possibly advance notice.

Always is kind of a big word, but some parameters that can be developed around that always.

Notification, I think, is the first thing that comes to my mind, so that preparation is in order.

and an advanced notice, I would say, just so that both Seattle Channel, both our tech team and obviously our city clerks know what they're going to be working with at an upcoming meeting.

It wouldn't just be, I won't, I'll be remote today.

But I think advanced notice is a good example.

I'm trying to think of others.

Esther or Liz, if there's any other thoughts in terms of a hybrid version of A and B.

I'll just add that Council Member Herbold to your comment about a set of shared expectations.

Right now there are criteria for paid family leave, you know, that are very specific.

You could add, you know, if out of town or if you have a health concern or you all could decide as a body of like What are the expectations around when you would prioritize being in person and when you would allow electronic participation?

And we could add a clause or two in that that like the current provision of family leave enables participation.

Some of that may be harder to verify, et cetera, but it would be in the spirit of we have a series of agreements of when we're trying to be in person and not.

That's the spirit of what I'm speaking here.

It's not to minimize flexibility, but just like the council rules do inherently for us, they are about creating our shared common expectations that, you know, it's not about verifying, but it's about us all sort of holding ourselves accountable to what we agreed to.

And it supports the structure of the meeting, the facilitation of the meeting process before, during, and after.

Yeah, I generally trust and know from experience of working with all of you and former council members that you all show up in good faith and are doing hard work all the time.

And so for me, this is really about how do we create a, I think instead of saying flexibility, it's more of predictability.

We do, we are sort of the face of the council, but behind us are a lot of folks who are doing really important back of the house work to facilitate our ability to do our committee work and meetings and otherwise.

And so for purposes of creating increase predictability for staffing resources and their expectations around what they need to do to prepare.

I think it's important for us to identify how we can create greater predictability in the environment that we're currently being asked to work in and that I think, as Council Member Gerbold mentioned, is not going to end anytime soon.

I do think that that puts me in the space of leaning towards some kind of notification requirements so that we're not engaging in a permission-based framework for elected officials, but more of a how do we acknowledge that people need flexibility based on whatever their personal needs are.

or medical needs might be.

And secondly, how do we do that in a way that will increase predictability for legislative staff who are going to be necessary for effectuation of governance?

And so maybe what we can consider is requiring that at the beginning of every quarter or every month, the specific council member must designate whether, must disclose publicly and to the city clerk's office whether they intend to conduct their city business remotely or in person so that we can have proper planning resources at the Legislative Department.

I don't have a strong feeling about sort of, you know, whether it's at the beginning of the month or for an entire quarter, but something for us to consider that might be a solution to the concerns you're expressing, Council Member Herbold.

All right.

Looks like I don't see any other hands raised.

Anything else on that one?

All right, let's um, let's keep keep going through because I know we're going to start losing some folks.

Yeah.

Great.

So this last section, maybe a little bit more quick.

We just wanted to daylight.

There were six additional rule ideas that were suggested by council members that the work group discussed, but chose not to advance in the resolution.

If council members would like to, any of these could be drafted into and moved as amendments.

Those ideas including allowing abstentions on resolutions at full council meetings, amending the rules of debate to include time limits, Reconsidering the role of committees so that if a bill does not receive a majority support in committee, it does not get advanced to full council.

Adding additional recess in April, similar to our summer recess.

Adding language that when multiple council members speak at the same time or when a council member speaks without recognition of the chair, the chair may declare that individual out of order or request their audio source to be muted.

And finally, one about where legislation is referred to, specifically that the council president will consider the preference of the committee chair in when and where that bill gets referred.

So happy to, you know, take questions on any of these or hear if there are other sort of amendments or ideas that council members are hoping to move.

Great.

Thank you, Director Hannity.

Council Member Strauss, I see that your hand is raised.

Thank you, Council President, Chair of the Committee.

I have a number of my proposals that did not move forward, so either this would be a good opportunity for you to share with me why this was not contained within this memo or contained within this draft, or if you need to meet with me separately in considering the time for other Council members, and I know that we're about to start losing folks.

Happy to meet with you to the side.

I see that some of my ideas were misinterpreted or we had some sort of miscommunication.

And so I want to kind of, if you could keep that on the screen, that would be helpful.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'm happy if there are any that are misinterpreted here.

I was happy to hear that and get that clarified.

I would say by and large, most of these felt like substantive policy changes.

And so if there is and many of our first 14 were more technical in nature, we tackled sort of the two in the section above where there seemed to be I will say that there are a and the one around being out of order, there are multiple rules that those touch.

And so if we want to tackle one, we might want to broaden the discussion to include a couple of other items that touch them.

That's very helpful.

So I should not read these as items you do not support.

Rather, these are items in which you believe the council members should bring forward if we are to discuss them.

Yes.

Or group members, do you have any different take on that?

No, I think you've hit it, Esther.

Yeah, we felt like this warranted further discussion and dialogue amongst the council members.

Yeah, because those are important items, critical items as everything that has been presented is, but these really warrant further discussion so that we have a better understanding as to what direction the council would like to move in specifically.

Very helpful.

Then maybe if we could scroll back up to number one, I can just provide you my feedback and where I think there was some confusion.

Number one, allowing abstentions.

I'm fine with this one.

It was not mine.

Number two, amending the rules of debate to establish a time limit, such as two to three minutes per council member on a single topic.

I think that this is a bit of a blunt description for what I was hoping to have a dynamic set of rules so that if you have, and it's not so different than public comment, if we are asking residents of the city of Seattle to keep their comments on bills to two minutes, understanding we as council members may have need to speak a little bit more than two minutes, we should still be able to summarize what we're saying within five minutes.

having the ability to respond to other council members who have problems or, you know, having those dynamic rules of debate will assist us in being able to have a cohesive and clear conversation in the public.

This is an amendment that I will be bringing.

Number three, reconsider the role of committees in advancing legislation.

such a such that if an item of legislation does not receive a majority support in the committee, it is not taken up at full council.

Currently, it is my understanding that a bill that receives a majority opposition vote and a minority support vote still advances out of the committee.

Uh, this challenges my understanding of what then the committee is is made for other than just a simple discussion.

If this is a situation where the majority of the committee does not believe that it is best for the legislation to advance, I think that the legislation needs to remain in committee until it is ready for full council.

Number four, adding another recess in April.

This entire paragraph, I would say, is flipped.

The most important part of this is establishing our sequence of work.

Least important is adding a recess in April.

It could be helpful.

I'm kind of agnostic on the recess aspect.

I'm going to take just a second to pause so that council members and colleagues, you can hear what I'm saying, because this is a description in number four does not do my proposal justice and that's not.

I'm not there's no fault being prescribed here just what going on.

What I have noticed working here at council is that we spread ourselves too thin in both committee and at full council to a degree that we are not able to review in committee legislation to the degree that we need to.

And then when that legislation leaves the committee, we do not have the time at full council to digest, understand, and have a well-founded positions at times on legislation coming out of other people's committees.

The way that the legislature, the state legislature solves for this is that during the legislative session, there is a period of time at the beginning of the session that is dedicated to work in committee.

If the bill is not passed out of by a date certain and moved to the full council agenda or that point to the rules committee or to the legislative floor, then the bill dies for that session so that when the legislature is able to consider all of the bills that have come out of all of the committees before final passage.

So again, this would allow for it.

You can think of it much like a budget session.

where the budget session allows for us to make special meetings to take up business that is time sensitive, such as this last budget season, we had a contract rezone that had to be passed.

This proposal that I'm going to bring forward will set up a legislative cycle for us to better spend our time to investigate, analyze, and understand the legislation before us by setting up a time just for committee, so that we are not spending necessarily time in council briefing or full council unnecessarily.

And then after date certain, those bills will be transferred to the full council, where we will then have a series of full council meetings, not so different than budget, where we will be able to have multiple meetings to better understand the legislation before us.

Speaking with Councilmember Herbold earlier today, we discussed the Councilmember Herbold and I had a different opinion on religious housing bonus, and rightfully so.

It's good.

But the way that our legislative schedule was set up, we did not at full council have the time to have that robust discussion.

And it led to us having multiple meetings on on this bill anyways.

So, my proposal here is to have the first period of time, let's call it a month, and I'll work with you with the work group committee to flush this out a month for committee.

you know, half month or a month for full council, and then we restart the cycle again.

In this, in item number four, the example of session one, you know, would last from January to April.

Session two, from May to August recess with a quick session for, you know, tidying up before we go into budget and then the budget session and much like with what we're doing right now is the cleanup right before the end of the year.

That was a lot and it was not included in this memo, so I will take a moment to take questions.

I would say I am supportive of item number five.

and have not formed an opinion on number six.

Thank you, Chair and Council President.

Thanks so much.

OK.

Any other comments or questions?

Again, these are items that the work group decided to not advance.

And so that doesn't mean that these items are Council members have the option to bring forward amendments.

Again, for those of you who are not members of the committee, I'm happy to, in the spirit of open discussion and conversation, I'm happy to sponsor your amendments if you are looking to be an author to a particular amendment, because I do want to make sure that we have a full discussion and debate on these issues.

And so in the spirit of that, I do want to continue to extend that offer to to those of you who are not committee members but are in attendance today.

Councilmember Herbold, please.

Thank you.

To the recommendation from Councilmember Strauss, It's a very interesting, novel concept as it relates to a municipal legislative body, to my awareness.

And as he mentioned, we did discuss this earlier today.

I would be interested to know how we might accommodate the continuum of what is time-sensitive legislation.

And there are many different types of time-sensitive legislation.

There's the type of legislation that we need to vote on every week, right?

And then there are time-sensitive bills that are associated with need to act because of other external forces.

And I just, I would be interested to understand a little bit more about how we could accommodate that continuum of time-sensitive action on behalf of the full council.

I'm intrigued and interested about a proposal.

I'm wanting to speak to items five and six.

Item five for me came up recently and there may be, I appreciate the team meeting me and going over the rules that they were putting forward.

One piece I haven't gotten clarity about, though, relates to my request on item five.

For me, this came up when there was a situation where a council member was being identified as out of order by the chair, and that individual continued talking, and the chair stated that the intent, if the the activity continued, that the chair would request that the clerk turn off the mic.

And the response from the individual who was being called out of order was that that was not permitted.

And so my question really, as it relates to this, is what are the permitted tools for the chair to utilize when somebody is out of order?

I think that's a good question, but I think also more importantly, what are the tools available to the chair when the chair has determined that a member is out of order, but refuses to comply with the consequences of being found out of order?

In other words, continues to exhibit the out of order behavior.

Correct.

That was my intent.

The compliance piece, not just the like, can you get there or somebody to be out of order, but the compliance component.

Correct.

Anything in the existing rules that address this?

I am not particularly well-versed in those rules, so I was going to see City Clerk Simmons or Deputy Director Atkinson.

Do you know those off the tip of your tongue?

I should, and I don't have those right in front of me.

And Liz, you have those in front of you on any of your documentation.

I think we would have to review our points of order and how they are brought up specifically.

It's very specific on when you can raise a point of order, who can raise a point of order, and who would decide upon a point of order.

I believe, again, the point of what happens when someone continues to not be in compliance with the decision.

may not be addressed specifically.

So I think that that would be something that for sure we'd have to kind of review and kind of put them all in order to say, here's how this process would move forward.

I would make one just notice here, as you are considering how you could address this issue in the rules themselves, perhaps with an amendment too, is the idea about the audio source and just contemplating again, a hybrid situation, So not just our virtual meetings, but also when we're back in in-person and the muting of an audio source versus some other sort of compliance issue.

So definitely thinking ahead to the future when we get back into some sort of either all-in-person hybrid option is how do you want to address this?

How do you want to maintain decorum?

And in the end, I do believe that this was where we thought some of these items would be great to have further discussion, because they do flow together as far as how you want to proceed in your meetings with debate, and then also when you do have these out-of-order times, how do you want to handle them, and what tools can we build into the rules for you to address them appropriately?

And this is something that the working group can, you know, meet with our full working group and bring this back and just really kind of focus on more of that toolkit or that college graduated process if it's needed.

But I know this has been brought forward in the past and I'm not sure that we've really addressed it sufficiently in preparing the council members for these situations.

Thank you.

And just As a point of clarification or explanation, the reason why I propose what I did is there is a process for determining that a member of the public when testifying is out of order.

And there is a consequence if that person continues to fail to comply.

And the consequence is asking the clerk to turn off the audio.

That creates a situation, as Deputy Clerk Atkinson mentions, where you could have somebody still standing at the mic talking, even though the mic is turned off.

So this is an imperfect tool.

now, and it would be an imperfect tool moving forward, but I wanted to start the conversation somewhere on this.

But we appreciate that, and yes, that is a progressive process, and warnings are involved, and we can come together and develop some tools and determine whether or not maybe the tool is appropriate for the council rules or are less formal.

Either way, that would be up to the council.

Thank you.

And then, Madam President, can I speak to number six, too, please?

Yes, absolutely.

Please.

Fantastic.

This is another somewhat recent real-world situation that I reflected upon.

And this is a situation where a sponsor of legislation requests that legislation skip.

a committee and be assigned directly to full council.

I think that it would be great to consider that in cases when the committee chair is not the sponsor of that legislation, that the expectation be created for the process, the IRC process, that the president consider the preference of the committee chair If, just to check, right, that a council member who is proposing legislation that would ordinarily go into that committee to make sure that that committee chair agrees with that approach.

I think that creates an expectation that sort of minimizes undue pressure and influence on everybody involved when you have a sponsor of a piece of legislation who is creating a sense of urgency for that legislation to be heard.

I think there's a way to thread the needle on this one.

So I'd like for us, Council Member Herbold, our offices to have a little bit more conversation about this one.

I think in practice, the council president generally consults with and in some instances, not just takes their preference into consideration, but defers to their preference.

Um, so, but, but I want to make sure that we get that whatever the language is, and the rules is consistent with what the practice has has has has been so that we.

So that we are.

not, you know, not creating sort of the inadvertent unintended consequence of stonewalling legislation in its entirety because, you know, councilmembers still have the right to introduce legislation as part of their charter duties.

Um, so would love to have a conversation with you about sort of how we can get that language, um, uh, nailed down in a way that might be, um, you know, reflective of, of sort of the, the art that is, um, making decisions from the council presidency about referral with the benefit of having information and consultation with the chair responsible for that, um, committee work.

So I think there's a way for us to get there and hopefully we'll be able to do that over the next few days.

The other piece of this one, Council Member Herbold, that I'm intrigued by is the portion referring to substantive legislation not being referred directly to council when standing committee meetings are suspended during budget deliberations.

I had had a conversation with Director Handy about creating a process.

Now, the question is whether we want to put that process into the council rules or whether we just want to leave it as a policy.

But the policy that Director Handy and I discussed is that in the event a council member is interested in proposing substantive legislation during budget process in which all standing and regular standing and special committee meetings have been canceled, that the central staff director would need to obtain the written consent and permission from both the council president and the budget chair in order to allow for council central staff to either work on that legislation or green light the referral of that legislation to full council or anywhere else.

And part of what we were modeling that after was sort of similar to the process that we use in determining whether or not special meetings can be had of certain committees because of time-sensitive legislation.

So, for example, Councilmember Strauss had to have a couple of land-use meetings because of time-sensitive legislation.

The process that we used to greenlight that was consistent with what I'm talking about, getting the consent of the budget chair and the council president office in order for those committees to be able to to advance.

I don't know if that's something that you'd be interested in emulating in this space, or whether you prefer sort of your language more, or whether you would be comfortable in having that, if you and other council members would be comfortable having that exist in policy as opposed to the rules.

recognize if there's, use a bad analogy, more than one way to skin a cat.

We don't like skinning cats, but couldn't come up with another way to say it.

And yeah, I mean, my goal is the underlying objective, not a particular path for getting there.

So appreciate your good thinking on this.

And just before I stop talking about all of this, I want to just say, Madam President, I really appreciate your real-world experience over the last two years on helping us think about this for next year.

Very, very, very helpful.

My pleasure.

My pleasure.

Okay, colleagues, we're getting close to the end of our time here.

It's 3 59 p.m.

Are there any other questions or comments that folks would like to add to the record here before we adjourn?

Okay, Council Member Strauss, please.

Thank you, Council President, Chair of the Committee.

Can you remind us again the timeline and framework for bringing amendments forward?

I believe that the deadline is this Friday, but can you walk us through the process?

I know that at the beginning of the meeting, I heard that we will meet next week and have this out by the 13th, but if you could just give us a refresher, that would be helpful.

Yep, it's like you're reading my script, Councilmember Strauss.

I'm headed right there.

OK, so process wise again, thank you everybody for joining us.

As a reminder, the deadline to get amendment requests to central staff is noon.

That's 12 o'clock PM this Friday, December 3rd.

So we've got a couple days to work on this and we will take up the resolution and any proposed amendments during the December 8th special meeting of the Governance and Education Committee.

That's going to be at 2 o'clock p.m.

And the goal is to have final action on this resolution on Monday, December 13th at 2 o'clock p.m.

So again, even if you're on the fence with some of these amendments, I do want to encourage us to daylight those and bring them forward in the spirit of transparency and good debate.

And I am happy to be the sponsor of any amendments that non-committee members would like to bring forward, again, in the spirit of transparency and good discourse.

I may not be in favor of some of them, but I still want them to be discussed because I think that's appropriate to do for this next meeting.

And for those of you who want to continue to have conversations about your amendments and the effects and want to get the benefit of our real world experience of sitting in the council presidency for the last two years, happy to provide you all with that additional information and think through any potential consequences or benefits of advancing particular amendments.

With that being said, I do want to thank the staff work group, Monica, Esther, Elizabeth, Cody, and my office, and all of the deputy city clerks who have provided us the benefit of their guidance, and Gary Smith from the city attorney's office, for all of your good, hard work on this biennial process.

Really appreciate it.

And with that being said, if there's no further business to come before the committee, we will be adjourned.

Hearing no further business that concludes our meeting for today and our meeting is adjourned.

Thanks everyone.

See you soon.

Thank you Recording stopped