AI-generated transcript of Medford City Council Ordinances and Rules Subcommittee 10-10-23

[Zac Bears]: Medford city council subcommittee on ordinances and rules meeting notice Tuesday, October 10th, 2023 at 6pm meeting is called to order. Mr. Clerk, please call the roll present three present, none absent. The meeting is called to order. There'll be a meeting of the Medford city council subcommittee on ordinances and rules on Tuesday, October 10th at 6pm. and the Medford City Council Chamber on the second floor of Medford City Hall and by Zoom. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the proposed budget ordinance, paper 22-494. The subcommittee has invited finance director Bob Dickinson to attend this meeting. For further information, aids and accommodations, contact the city clerk at 781-393-2425. Sincerely yours, Zach Baer, subcommittee chair. Hello, everyone. We are here today to talk about the budget ordinance, which we have been discussing since last fall, and we had two subcommittee meetings in the spring on February 7th and March 22nd. A quick summary of the ordinance is that it would move what is currently Chapter 2, Article 5 of the City Ordinances into its own new chapter, Chapter 3, called Finance. It would make no changes to existing sections that are currently in Chapter 2, Article 5, and it would add two new articles, Article, I believe it's Article, five is an annual budget process, and article six is a budget needs assessment. Mr. Clerk, if you could let me share my screen very quickly. Thank you. That's fine. Great, so folks can see here, this summary of changes is a memorandum I drew and provided to the clerk to provide to the subcommittee. The summary of changes here is what I just discussed. And the first four articles are existing articles, and this would make no change to those articles. The first article that is new is article five, and it would establish by ordinance an annual budget process. The intent of that is to outline a budget process for city funds that's transparent, responsibly paced and collaborative with clear expectations for all stakeholders and parties that encourages input from residents and ensures that the council and residents have comprehensive and accurate information regarding the budget and city finances. There's a definition section. And then the substance of the ordinance is that it would require quarterly financial reports and meetings, public meetings with the city council to discuss financial information. we would start preliminary budget meetings between January 15th and April 1st of each year, and certain information would be provided prior to those meetings. The city council would make recommendations to the mayor about the budget no later than April 15th. And then the mayor would submit a comprehensive proposal to the council no later than May 31st of each year, containing specific information that we can discuss in more detail later. Article six is annual budget needs assessments. And the purpose and intent here is to supplement and support the new budget process by providing a comprehensive and clear understanding of the short and long-term needs of the city's budget regarding operating and capital expenses and adjusting those analyses over time as projects are completed or as new issues come up. And it would require two annual reports, one on needs for annual operating expenses and one for capital expenses. For example, how much would it take to bring all of our capital assets, roads, sidewalks, public buildings, et cetera, up to a state of good repair. So that is a short summary of the ordinance. I'm going to stop sharing at this time before we get into the details to hear from my fellow Councilors and from the administration. Councilor Collins or say.

[Justin Tseng]: Councilor Tseng. I just wanted to thank you guys for welcoming me onto the subcommittee. It's my first meeting on the subcommittee, so I'm very excited to be here and very excited to tackle such an important ordinance. I've had the chance to review it in more depth this week, read back the meeting notes from the last few meetings on it. And there's nothing that's really, I think, jumps out at me in terms of anything that's abnormal. I think this is everything that we should be doing as a city. There is one question that I had for perhaps for you, Councilor Bears. I think it's question number, or it's number three under section 3-103, the preliminary budget meetings. And the last bullet point on that one, it says requested new staff programs or services. I was just wondering, is this requested new staff program or services after a preliminary process in the mayor's office or just from the department submitted to the mayor?

[Zac Bears]: Mr. Crafton. I think that's a great question. I think it's something we should discuss. and I think that's why we have the administration here as well. So I think it could be either, and I don't have a preference.

[Justin Tseng]: Great, I was, yeah, just wondering about intent, but that's the only thing that's really stood out for me. I'm excited to take this on. Thank you, Councilor Tseng, Councilor Collins.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you. I think my comments to start out with are not substantively different from what I've shared in previous subcommittee meetings on this topic. It's great to see this draft fleshed out, I think, over the two subcommittee meetings that we've had on this ordinance so far. We've gone from sort of the general concept and goals to incepting an outline collaboratively and now fleshing that out with detail. And I think what is exciting about this is, you know, to me, when you look at it, the big picture view, What this lays out is essentially a way of answering the questions that I think that as Councilors, we hear from residents all the time. And I'm thinking about this, especially this time of year, because of where we are in the year, talking to more residents all the time than ever. And the same questions come up over and over again. And to me, they orbit around Why is this not happening? Why does this happen at this pace? What is the plans for this? And this ordinance, I think, is a way of providing a solution for those questions that in our community for a long time, there haven't been satisfying answers. The residents haven't been able to get satisfying answers from watching our meetings. They haven't been able to get satisfying answers on the city website. This is a way of saying, okay, clearly there's a need for more daylight in specific ways on specific projects. Let's develop a process around that. So I'm excited to get into specifics, but in general, I think this is very aligned with the type of clarity that I see residents looking for.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Collins. Welcome Chief of Staff Nazarian or Director Dickinson to share your initial thoughts before we dive in.

[Adam Hurtubise]: You're good.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you. There we go. Thank you. So appreciate the opportunity to speak to the council, the subcommittee this evening on this issue regarding this proposed budget ordinance. Finance Director Dickinson and I have had an opportunity to meet on this proposed ordinance. We've taken the time to go through it at both a high level and both at a level where we were kind of scratching the surface on a lot of issues, but it's a really in-depth budget ordinance proposal. So much so that I think we would classify it as highly prescriptive. In that prescriptive nature, we don't feel like the city has the means to actually execute on an ordinance to this degree, or even a quarter of the first section that was laid out based on a variety of factors. If it's implemented, we believe, I believe specifically that the city would be set up to fail. I hate to share that with you because I wish that wasn't the case, but there's a tremendous amount that's being asked of the city in this proposal that is not achievable in the short term, and is extremely challenging even in the long term in some cases. So one of the first questions that I think we both had was, where did this proposal come from? Where did this budget ordinance draft come from? Because we're not aware of any in other cities and towns, we haven't done an exhaustive search of any sort, but we're not aware of any to this degree. So we're curious, you know, if there's a model that's out there that might even help us try to understand how to achieve these things. Obviously, no city and town is alike in their systems. And unfortunately, there are a number of systems that have to be updated and upgraded over the course of the past couple of decades for Medford, which are actually straining our ability to be able to provide and succeed if such an ordinance were to be implemented.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, where it came from is the meetings that we've had up to this point. We kind of put out a framework in February. We fleshed out that framework somewhat in March, and then based on the motions and resolutions, I filled that out and submitted it to the subcommittee and to you guys. So that's where it came from. It's not really I mean, I won't say that there's not any crib notes from different communities on pieces of it, but it's not based on a, on a model. It's not like copied from any other community, but it's based on kind of the preferences of the council and the subcommittee specifically.

[Nina Nazarian]: understood. Yeah, and then that that's, you know, in some part, I was almost hoping to see a model that existed somewhere else so that we could contact that community and ask them questions and see what their systems are and see how they actually execute these things. The systems that are likely to hinder or I expect would hinder the city's ability to be able to execute on even a quarter of some of the things that are outlined in this ordinance, especially just even focusing on the first part, are not just finance systems. When we talked it through, they include IT systems, they include HR systems, they include payroll systems. So there's a number of different areas that Medford is trying to work towards resolving that would need to be resolved to truly, in my opinion, and this is a back of the envelope kind of comment about a quarter, but to implement a quarter of these, in a reasonable timeline. So that's just, I think I defer to you if you have any other.

[Zac Bears]: I guess my question is, is which quarter? Like, are there specific, is it the quarterly meetings or the preliminary meetings or that we have submit recommendations by April? I guess I'm just wondering what, where, what piece of this is where it falls down. Cause if it's specific data outlined in the reporting requests, I think that's one element of it, but really the intent here is more procedural. I think if you note, on page seven. It basically says, if we can't produce these reports, please let us know what resources you would need to produce the reports. So the intent here is not to do the unachievable tomorrow, but to make the, you know, reasonable, achievable in a reasonable amount of time. Um, so, you know, certainly there's no intent to say tomorrow you must produce all of these data, especially if the systems aren't there. But it really is more about getting to a process, I think, you know, for me, and then I'll defer to my fellow Councilors in just one second. Um, what you just said is why we need the ordinance. what are all of the systems and resources that we need to put in place to even get to a point where we can have a process that's really fleshed out so we know our needs and how to get there. And I think, you know, speaking for myself, I won't speak for the subcommittee or for the full council, what those resources are and how quickly we can get them, totally open to discussion and putting stuff in here that says, hey, If we determine that a piece of this is not doable, we'll let you know what we think we need to do it and how long we think it'll take for us to get the resources to make it possible.

[Nina Nazarian]: If I may. Thank you. I think I understand the basis and the intent to collect information and to be a part of the discussion. I'm not, really don't have any issue with any of that. I have significant concerns with putting a proposed ordinance into place that is largely unachievable with the idea that the city would then report on which items it couldn't take up. That to me sounds like an opportunity to basically a future council may take issue with those issues, right? We don't know how a future council would view it. This council may be understanding because it was part of the implementation, hypothetically, but a future council may turn to the city and say, it's completely unreasonable that you can't provide these things when full well, it was known to the council that existed several years prior, but now it's five years later. these comments from this meeting get lost because, you know, it's a recording and no one's reviewing the minutes and the records because history is only as good as we make the time to actually read up on it. So, we're happy, I think we have some specific targeted comments that could at least provide some basis for the high-level comments that we wanted to make as an initial starting place, but having a highly prescriptive budget ordinance that doesn't appear, and I commend you, truly, I do. It sounds to me like this was drafted by one at least member of this subcommittee, and that's tremendous, because not having that knowledge and being able to draft something like this is my hat's off because I don't wear hats often, but if I did metaphorically, I really truly believe that this is impressive. But it is also probably one of its kind. It is something I've never seen a city or town execute on. It is asking for us to go from zero to 100. all at once, and, or, if not at once, to identify, let's say metaphorically, the 98, 97, 95, 90 things we can't do, and for how long, versus putting something in that's hopefully more in line with the progress we've made over the last several years, and expands on that to a measurable degree that's actually attainable, because that would be my recommendation. at a high level. And then future councils, future subcommittees could always review and continue to push the boundaries to get further along, to get to the ultimate goal. There's no reason why this subcommittee and or the city council couldn't keep these notes for a future point and make sure that it's passed down through the city clerk's office so that it's inherited by future councils as the guiding principles to what the City Council is looking to achieve, but to instead put in measurable, attainable goals at this point in time.

[Kit Collins]: Councilor Collins. Thank you. I appreciate that. You know, I think we've had a, this is coming on the heels of a lot of great discussion that we've had about this ordinance already, so I'm really glad to get the perspective from the administration in real time. I think we have a lot of precedent this term for taking ordinances and then saying, you know, what is reasonable here and I think we have a lot of precedent this term for saying, you know, this particular piece makes sense, it is achievable, but not next year, maybe in five years, not next year, maybe next August. I think that that's something that, you know, for myself, certainly willing to contemplate in the context of this ordinance and, you know, based on experience with my fellow Councilors, I think that's something that the council in general is very amenable to discussing. I think at this point, my interest with the place in the conversation where we're at, before we get to that point of deciding what are we going to put a pin in, more or less indefinitely, is to try to drill down more on the specifics of what do we have to amend, massage, negotiate, look further into right now before we start deciding what should we really just put a pin in and table for future councils to look at and what can we potentially rephrase in the context of this ordinance so that it does uphold the intent of this ordinance but also is not something that will create more consternation than it will progress. Because of course, you know, speak for myself, but I know that it's a shared sentiment. That's absolutely not the goal. And I feel that what I'm hearing is, or part of what I'm hearing, and I think there's been a lot of great points raised, part of what I'm hearing is, like, obviously, there's no point in passing an ordinance that's completely undoable and unreasonable. And I think it's understandable that if such an ordinance on any topic were to pass, the worry is, what is this for? Is this just a political tool? And I don't think that the draft that we're looking at is purely rhetorical or purely to be used as a cudgel. But if there's, what I'm interested in is drilling down on the specific areas that raise those kind of red flags, whether it's, you know, I don't really know what this is driving at, or this doesn't feel like something we could do in a year or two, so that we can kind of make a list of what to specifically target and adjust and then have the conversation of, is this something that we phase in? Is this something that we rephrase so that it's more clear that, you know, for myself, all of the parts of this ordinance where we say, if this isn't, if this data doesn't exist, that's fine, just tell us why. I think that's meant in really in good faith and not as a way to say, explain yourself, but rather to say, what do we need? Yeah, we're working with really outdated systems here. Just information about what other communities are doing. Because I suspect that there are a lot of communities that have large portions of this type of procedure, and it's not an ordinance, because it's just the way that the budget gets done. So I think phrasing those sections in a way and proliferating that across the ordinance you know, to the extent that it's needed, so that it really is clear, this is a way for us to be in conversation about what's needed and what's needed to bring us forward. That's what I'm really interested in having at this stage in the conversation, which I think is still a, you know, this is the first time we're looking at a fully fleshed out draft. So clearly there's a lot of back and forth to be had here.

[Justin Tseng]: Thank you, Councilor Collins.

[Zac Bears]: Councilor Sagan.

[Justin Tseng]: Thanks. I think, I do recognize that we've made a lot of progress in this community when it comes to the creation of the budget. But I think over the last two years, this ordinance is coming from a place where those of us on the council and I'm sure other folks in the community have seen that there are still obstacles. And they're not obstacles that like this mayor said or anything, it's institutional obstacles from a long time ago to us doing our jobs fully. especially with regards to the city budget. And I think this draft, Councilor Bears talked about how It's kind of coming from notes from the February, March meetings, but there's also what he didn't acknowledge is there's a lot of this that we've been talking about just on the Council over the last year and a year and maybe nine months. And so it's not really these aren't random ideas. These are, you know, ideas that we've been talking about for a while and I think at the very least, it should be a starting point for a conversation in the future about now for what we do in the future with regards to the budget and how we craft that policy. I also really do believe that a budget ordinance should be a tool to move all of us in the right direction, to nudge us forward a little bit. We don't have to go to 100 if that's not feasible, but we should be aiming for an ambitious enough number that we can achieve, but does ensure that we move forward. I do hear the concerns about feasibility, and I think in that case, this draft is I think it's still really helpful because it gives us the ideal, it gives us the 100 as you mentioned, it's the measurement by which we can look at, we can write our future drafts and say, you know, this is the ideal, what can we do? What are the things that we can put in a draft that's still ambitious that is also achievable? And I do think that this draft also provides us with tools of accountability for all offices. And that element of things, I would want to see us carry over into a next draft as well. I think Councilor Collins made a great point that while we might be one of the first cities to have an ordinance in this specific form, that these policies, a lot of them are sprinkled in different cities ordinances. A lot of them are written policies from the mayoral office, just policies of the council. And so I think we need to do, as a growing city, as a modernizing city, we really should be I think, instituting a framework for us, a transparent framework for us by which we can make our budget. And I think that's something that I hear a lot from constituents, where there's like a little bit more mistrust in, I'm not even saying the administration, I'm saying mistrusting government in general, and the council in particular, actually, is the idea that we're not fully reviewing our budgets. And we're doing what we can to the best of our ability, but we do need more tools. And I think that is something like this is what will help us rebuild that trust with our constituents. And with that, I think we really have to, instead of maybe talking about the overall feasibility of this project, we really should focus on the details of what can be feasible and what is ambitious but doable and integrate that into a new draft.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you, Councilor Tseng. First, I just want to say I appreciate my draft being considered 100. I think it's at best B plus work. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And I understand it is comprehensive. And that word shows up quite a few times in the draft itself. I think number one, I agree with a lot of what everyone has said here. I think, you know, pieces and some definitions came from Holyoke's financial manual. Some stuff about the report came from Somerville's ordinances. Some stuff came from some Cambridge policies and ordinances and kind of slotted in. There's a definition from Cornell Law somewhere in here about state of good repair, right? So there's a lot of stuff that has slotted in here that does come from other places. I certainly won't take credit. that it is all natural and just, you know, a creation out of nowhere. But, you know, I think there's two pieces here. I hear you on the what is possible. And I think that's what we, eventually what is possible is what will happen. And I think some of this is when we talk about, you know, we don't see this in any of the other cities and towns in this way. To be frank, I think that's, at least from my perspective and what I'm advocating for, because I don't think any city and town in the Commonwealth is doing a particularly effective job on this issue. I think when we talk about what you were talking about, making incremental improvements over time and having this in the backroom as a goal, You know, I think that's why we have some of the mistrust. And again, it's not specific to an administration or a person or a staff. But the point here is that if 100 is our eventual goal, if that's where we want to end up and we think that this is some version of that. we need to say, what does 100 mean? You know, what does fully funding the city budget mean? What does having a fully comprehensive budget process that is what we want to do, what will it cost to restore everything to a state of good repair? If we don't have the goal, then we can't measure progress. All we can say is we invested this much in this this year, we invested this much in that this year, and we can message that we're doing things that are good, and I don't dispute that. I think there's a lot of good things that are happening. but it's very difficult to explain to a resident or quite frankly, to me, what is the end goal? What does, uh, you know, keeping all the roads in a state of good repair mean, how much money would that cost and how much time would it cost? And if the answer is, we don't know, I think we have to get to that. And then if the answer is we know, and it's a billion dollars and we just can't afford it, then we can say it's a billion dollars, but it, you know, I'm going off on a little bit of a bunch of tangents here, but really my intent here is to say, let's set a goal. Let's figure out what 100% completion looks like. And then let's implement a process that allows us to measure our progress to that goal. And I think that's true, not just of what the ordinance wants to measure, which is the actual budget and for operating capital expenses and what our goals are in those areas, but also for the ordinance itself. you know, what is, what does even the process of getting there look like? Um, and so, so that's really my, my intent here, uh, as one Councilor. Um, and from what I've heard from our budget discussions as a council and in the subcommittee around the specific ordinance, what, what does 100% look like? We don't have that answer. So all we can do is say, we're trying our best. We're making these improvements. you know, we're investing in these specific programs, but we can't say, you know, that we're, and maybe we can, I don't know, maybe some of this data does exist. We're 30% of our way towards fully funding the annual amount needed to maintain our roads per the pavement management plan, right? Like those are the kind of questions that we need to be able to answer. How much is the city spending every year to fix our roads versus how much does the report say we need to be spending every year to fix our roads and what's the difference? And then how are we going to make up that gap? And I think here as we talk about this, I think we should get into specifics. I'm really interested in your counter proposal or your specific points as to what is reasonable as a starting point from this document. What could we do this year? What could we do in two years? What would we need $5 million to completely revamp IT payroll and finance reporting system, so we can't do for 10 years, right? And then we can work out what we can do now and what we can do later. But I think it really is, to me, where I come from on this is that, you know, government should be saying, this is our goal point. And it should be setting measurable benchmarks on the way to achieving that goal, versus just saying, here are the improvements that we made this year. And I think that's where, that's the difference to me between kind of an annual iterative process that almost resets every year and long-term planning around a budget so that we can get to where people wanna be. So that's really, I hope in some way, an explanation of what I'm thinking. And I hope we can discuss it further so that we can get to something that we all agree is workable and that sets that long-term goal.

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you very much for everyone's comments. That's certainly helpful context and I just want to clarify a couple of points. In general, I have had the pleasure of working in local government, my entire career and at this point that's somewhere above 15 years of experience. And so, I have come across a number of professionals, really, really capable and intelligent professionals in my career and I have the distinct honor of working with them, both in this community and in other communities that I've worked in. And I will say that Government has its inherent challenges, right? It's not like the public sector, where your stakeholders are entirely different, and the moving parts are entirely different. And while I'll never profess to truly understand the private sector, I can tell you there are sometimes, oftentimes, a lot more simpler scenarios. They're not subject to things that we're subject to, like the open meeting law. They're not subject to things like public records. And while I think those things are important for government, they add a completely different dynamic to how you do business. And how you do business significantly impacts the regulations we need to follow. And why is that relevant in this conversation? It's relevant because if no one's built something like this, and there are, In my experience, some highly capable professionals out there, including on our team that we work with every day. I think we're aiming to a place that may not be what is reasonable for government. I wish government was different. I work in government every single day to make government better. Because I, like you, agree, government needs to do better. But I also have been through the challenges and the reasons why there are obstacles and the circumstances around why certain things can't be built. I think this 100 is something we can't build. it's not a model I would recommend because it creates significant, it has the potential to create, and if implemented, it would create significant hardships for a number of our offices, including but not limited to our finance office. And I'm, again, happy to have that discussion, but I just wanted to clarify that there's, a model like, is, It's important to ask ourselves and look within to understand why there isn't a model out there like this. And I don't disagree in concept that it would be important for there to be models out there like this. But there are a number of challenges. I think the most relevant word in this document that resonates with what I'm saying is the word dynamic. It is an entirely dynamic process. Well, I don't expect anyone to have, in this room, unless I'm not aware, in civil engineering, you study statics and you study dynamics right after that. And dynamics is the movement of forces, essentially, and it's just a very challenging thing to produce when you are trying to dynamically address something where information is coming in and information has to go out, and there's a timing issue. And that is one of our, I think, initial comments, is the timing issue that's presented in this document is a significant challenge, because the timing in which the city receives information, reliable information, has the potential to significantly hinder our ability to produce good data for the council. Now, is it possible to Accelerate things a little bit. Yes, but I just don't think we can go from producing a budget document in May to producing a budget document in What would be the time frame that's outlined in this? ordinance there are a lot of moving parts and You know, I'll stop there Bob if you have any specific comments, I just There's a reason why we don't have a model out there like this and I just I just ask you to think that through a bit

[Bob Dickinson]: I mean, I guess what I would say in terms of a comment, still aren't good. These are always too short for me. You know, I feel like we want to get to 100, but like, it's 100 yards. We're on 10 right now. When I look to what you were saying about having needs assessment, what do we need to get the roads to the condition that we want, that I honestly don't know what resources we would need to be able to actually answer that question. In terms of what we've been discussing now, and I'm looking at my department and how you know, AP clerk, payroll clerk, they're fully, their jobs take up all their time. Then we have the assistant finance director who is, a lot of her time is taken up with things like cash receipts, stuff like that. And then I look at my time and the timeline that I kind of follow and that I'm, in working towards, there's limited resources to do this, to get ourselves to 100. I'm not sure we can get there, as Nina said. We can incrementally improve every year, and that's a good starting point to actually achieving most of what this document would request. So.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I appreciate that. Sorry, I'll go in just one second. I mean, I think the thing that sticks to me is, I think the only question that I know that everyone in the city wants answered is, what would it take? How much money would it take to put the roads in the condition that we want them, right? Like that's the, it's so fundamental a question to, to the role that I inhabit and that we inhabit, that it's like, we must be able to find an answer. And that's why I think it's essential to establish a process that gets us on the road. And to me, I think, I agree, we're not gonna go from the 10 yard line to the a hundred yard line, you know, well, you know, the zero yard line, but unless we.

[Bob Dickinson]: I'm bad at football, I'm bad at sports.

[Zac Bears]: You know, like we should find Patrick Mahomes, You know, it's, the question to me is, are we gaining two yards? Are we gaining 10 yards a year? How many yards can we gain a year? Do we think that it's only reasonable to ever get to the opposing 20 yard line to get to 80%, right? But like, let's figure out what that is. And if there is truly a barrier, if it is institutionally impossible because DLS makes it impossible or because state budget law makes it impossible, That's not an answer I'm unwilling to hear. It's just, trust me, I understand the boundaries of municipal government. We do not have the resources or authority that we should have to do our job the way that we need to do it. And to me, this is a question of this unlocks all the other boxes, right? If your office has the resources to start at least doing half of this or a quarter of this, We start to unlock other boxes around fixing roads, around school funding, around resources for the departments to do more work. And that's really the intent that I think, at least that's where I'd like to go with it. But I think if the answer is we can only make a yard a year, We have to figure out what an infusion of resources looks like to get us further down the line. Because it's just not sustainable, quite frankly, for me to tell everyone I don't know. We don't know. And what we're having the discussions and the answer is we don't have enough resources to know. If there are questions that are truly unanswerable that are so dynamic that we can't answer them, that's situational. And I think that's important. And there will be situations where that's just true. And I'm not a civil engineer, but we do build bridges. And they do take dynamic loads, right? They withstand earthquakes. And that's the kind of sustained, how can we build a system, build a bridge that's strong enough to handle an earthquake? That in a good year, it's humming. And in a bad year, we can explain to the public clearly because receipts are down, because we're in a recession, because we're having these problems, here's the things we're not gonna be able to make progress towards this year, and here's why. Those are the kinds of things, it's not to say that we need to know everything and have everything and have an answer in January that we can never have, but it's to say we're trying to build a system that gets us the best answers we can, and we're investing the resources in that system because, you know, if we have that financial information, if we're able to plan and forecast, if we're able to think in five and 10 and 20 year periods, I don't come from the private sector. I don't have any, if that's what this feels like, I don't know where it came from. Cause I don't have a, you know, I've never run a business. I managed it on profit finances and I've worked in government. Um, but, uh, you know, it's just, there's these questions that constantly I'm being asked and, um, It's very hard to explain to people that the answer is we don't know and we don't have the resources to find out. Um, I'm going to stop there. Sorry for my, my monologue, um, Councilors Collins and say, thanks.

[Kit Collins]: Um, thank you. Appreciate those comments again. I'll keep saying that. I really appreciate your perspective and hearing it, you know, kind of in real time as we review this together. Um, I think so hearing this you know, obviously there's there's there's a lot to discuss about here we're going to meet on this, you know several more times many more times probably. To me, the only version of this model that i'm married to right now is there's a section that talks about setting up a reliable structure for the budget, the operating budget process every year and there's a section that talks about long term capital planning. Longer term needs structuring that. And all of those specifics within that, you know, obviously there are some that I feel an affinity to, or I'm like, wow, I really envisaged that, I feel passionate about that. But all the specifics within that, I'm, as one Councilor, I'm very eager to have conversations about, like, let's go line by line. How does that hit you? What do you think about that? Do the resources for this exist, that exist? I think in my mind, the model that I'm hoping we can iterate on here is not making minor tweaks to exactly what's on the page right now, but structure for the operating budget, structure for capital and long-term needs assessment. Of course, my fellow Councilors, feel free to disagree. But I feel like what I'm hearing, and it could be just because there's a lot to talk about, it sounds like most of the concern around this really feels out of reach, out of pocket, is around the the long-term capital assessments piece, kind of the second half of the ordinance. I'm not sure if that's true. But to me, you know, that sort of reinforces that I'd love to sort of drill down into the specifics, like in this meeting and later meetings, on what specifically and which part feels really unattainable. Because I think it's really good information for us if most of the friction seems to lie in the capital planning. Okay, good information. We can talk more about that. We can figure out what can be phased in, what we need more resources for, where are the places where we're like, we don't even know what more resources would do to this situation because we don't have the people power available to think about that because they're busy and we've never done it before. Because on the budget proposal side, I feel like I'm hearing a little bit less about the friction there and I think it's, I think in my scan of this before the meeting, I think where the value comes into this for me is it sets up that consistent schedule for us talking to the mayor's office and talking to department heads collaboratively throughout the first half of the year about what's going on and how it's going and what might be coming down the pike. And I think that this lays out, it doesn't even lay out the budget proposal coming earlier than May even. So just to state that as a point that I think we're not not on every point we're trying to shoot for the moon here. And I think Councilor Beres makes a great point that, you know, of course, a lot of these things are deeply constrained by actions by other agencies, by DLS, by the state. And where that's weighing heavy on your mind, you know, as one Councilor, you know, that's information that I really want to hear about in this process. Like, where are you constrained by factors entirely outside of this building? great data to have as we go and amend this. So just to say, you know, I think for going forward, I'll be really interested to just, you know, pour over this and try to get as specific as we can are where are the parts that we really do want to reimagine, where you see us reimagining what we currently have on the page, and where are the parts where we just need to go through and really talk about it and make sure that the language aligns with intent. Because I know it's very clear that, you know, the intent of bringing more transparency and more liability to the budget process, an existing priority for this administration. And so I'm really interested in seeing, you know, what can we, what do we reimagine, what do we amend, what do we just tweak, so that this is a document that gets towards that shared goal.

[Justin Tseng]: Um, yeah, I mean, I, I'll be brief. Um, I think we do share goals between our offices, I think there's a lot of cooperation that's already existing. Um, I think I'm, I like this draft, but I'm not married to it, I would be very interested to see what a counter proposal is that, you know, also I'm sure we'll tackle our common goals with the budget, with transparency, with, um, with cooperation. Um, so I, I guess I'd be interested to see a counter proposal if you guys have one or have one in the future. Um, but I am also very interested to know, you know, we spent a lot of this meeting talking about big picture, um, things about, um, you know, how do we get to the 100? Do we, do we do this? Well, do we do a budget ordinance at all? But, I think I would be curious as to, assuming that we are doing a budget ordinance, because I believe the appetite is still there on the council. What are the specifics of this that the administration is finding not feasible? Because that's something that we just wouldn't know from our position. And how do we address those problems in this draft? And how do we keep what we can? You know, what parts of this draft can we already do? And what parts of the draft do we need to find other ways to do? And so, yeah, so what's the counterproposal and what are the specifics of what we need to add?

[Nina Nazarian]: Thank you. Just one thing I will say is We spent, Bob and I spent a considerable amount of time going through what is essentially the first section, which would be for specificity would be, yeah, article five, the annual budget process. Once we got to the end of that, there was just so much to digest and frankly, we ran out of time. We spent a total of probably four hours in total discussing this. So we're very much, I'm not suggesting anyone said otherwise, but we've taken this very seriously and we appreciate the efforts that you've all made. And we're happy to continue to put the effort into this. We don't have a specific counter proposal, but we certainly could go back and think about that. And I don't want to speak for Bob, but I think we can, I mean, As with anyone, we have a number of different priorities in front of us, and we just would have to reprioritize this one to do so. But I think we all share the importance of the budget process. It's frankly one of the foundational aspects of our organization. We can go into specifics on some of these, but we're not prepared to speak to the other section regarding the needs assessment, because we really, after the four, I believe it was, plus hours, it might've been more than four hours, four and a half, but who's counting? Yeah, it was a while, and I was trying to do it in two different sittings so we could take, have a different lens on this. And I think we're prepared to provide some initial comments on the first article, the budget process at this point.

[Zac Bears]: Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Collins. Thank you guys. I appreciate the amount of time you spent on it. I think really, to me, there's a lot of detail in here around information we'd like to see if possible, but the bones of it actually, to me, are not that complicated. I think there's essentially at least, and I'll confine my discussion to this article five, since that's where we're at right now. It really is some sort of regular meeting with regular reporting. That's a fiscal update to the council. It's council meetings starting before a proposal is, meetings with the council on the budget starting before a proposal is issued to the council. a council vehicle, formal vehicle to make recommendations to the mayor, and then a comprehensive proposal back to us. Now there's pieces of that that are bigger than what we do now around revolving funds and grant funding and certainly things like that. But really, to me, that's what article five is. It's saying, here's the schedule by which we will report to you and meet with you to answer your questions between the times we are discussing a budget proposal. And then when can we start meeting? What is the timeline for the council to make recommendations? And then we'll discuss that the formal proposal after that, essentially just the council is involved in meetings before we receive a proposal. And I think if we could get somewhere down the road to that, you know, that would be great. And that's why I, you know, are we going to be able to get five-year lookbacks inflation adjusted? I'll help out if you want my help. But, you know, I have my own little version of it that I wish I had access to some government price deflators to adjust better. But, you know, it's, I get that there's pieces of this that are just like, you know, that are out of scope of what is possible given the resources that we have. You know, the intent here was not to My general approach to things is what would the best thing that we could do look like so that we know where we eventually want to go? And then what are the things that we can do now to get towards that goal? So that's just where I'm coming from on this. And I think that maybe is why we've been in this kind of higher level discussion, because I can understand if you're in the books every day saying, here's something I know I can do next year that I couldn't do this year, is probably more where you're where your mind's at because you're in it every day. So I get that completely. I think it really is to me, though, that that question of like, at least for for Article 5, that's what the bones of it are to me. It's what's a regular meeting and report that's reasonable for you to provide. What's the earliest that we could start meeting before we get a proposal to talk about helping shape that proposal? What's the time that you would like to receive our recommendations so you have time to consider them and bring them back to us? And then once all of that is done, making sure there's still ample time, ample being relative, I think this one says pretty much what happened this year, that the mayoral submitted proposal by May 31st, that we still have that month of June to iron things out. I maybe buried that a little bit. And I apologize for doing that.

[Nina Nazarian]: But that's why we're not at zero, because we agree on, you know, a timeline. We, as you know, have done, the finance team did a considerable job and the comms team did a considerable job this year delivering the budget much earlier than the mayor remembers in her history. So we appreciate at least, you know, that that I hope we can conclude we're not at zero. I don't believe we're at zero. 100 could be attainable. It could not be attainable. It might only be a 50-yard field. It might be a different 100-yard field. I don't know. But when we looked at this, I know I have pretty large eyes, but my eyes were even larger than they normally are. And I think Bob can attest to that.

[Zac Bears]: It's a five-course meal.

[Nina Nazarian]: It is, maybe 10. I like to eat, but I don't know how much. At some point, I get tired.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, yeah, you know, but you know, eventually, it'd be, you know, it's helpful. All of this would be incredibly helpful. Some of this would be incredibly helpful. And the bones of it versus the how much data can be provided and at what frequency, that's completely negotiable. And I, I personally completely understand it's based on staffing and systems.

[Nina Nazarian]: Would it, if I may, would it make sense for, I mean, if the subcommittee would like, we're happy to go through some initial comments. I also wonder if it makes sense because the framework that you've shared is framework we can take back and think about and try to come back to this subcommittee with more discussion points that might be relevant. So, you know, I defer to the committee, but, you know, I, how would you like to spend the resources of the time here? Your time is obviously important to us and we're happy to go either direction. I don't want to speak for you, but.

[Bob Dickinson]: No, I think, I think yes. to start coming back to the committee with specifics about this proposal and what we think is achievable, what we have achieved so far, like an outline of it. When I look at this, I have to say I'm looking at my department and the duties that we have, that we have to, the things that we have to do all year long, and when they occur, and how to fit this specific proposal into that timeline. That's one of the first things I did was to actually look at everything that's needed in this document and put it down and say, okay, we're talking in January, on January 15th, we need to have an awful lot of data that we probably don't have. because that's when the committee wants to start doing budget meetings. And then hammering out those details is to get a preliminary read on what we can achieve. That's really, the devil's always in the details. And I mean, that seems to me like to be a good way to proceed. I don't know how the committee feels.

[Zac Bears]: I'm gonna go to Councilor Collins and Councilor Saik.

[Kit Collins]: Thank you, I appreciate that. Um, from from my part, I think, uh, potentially really productive way forward. I know Councilor Tseng mentioned a counter proposal. Your time is really valuable. I know you two are going to spend, you know, more hours on this as we continue to consider it. I think will be more helpful is if there's a way kind of probably what you just described, Director Dickinson, to go through this. And if there's a way that we can help your review be sort of centered around, not like the wordiness, but rather those fundamental questions of how early can we start talking about this? What would be a timeline for the council to get recommendations to the mayor, to give the mayor time to digest them and incorporate them? How early can we start meeting? Sort of those top level questions to get your input, your feedback on that, that we could then use to finesse the details in subsequent subcommittee meetings. And what you were just describing sounds very aligned with what I had in my head. I wouldn't want to task you with a comprehensive counterproposal, because I feel like maybe it's not that many people in City Hall that should be spending hours writing ordinances. And I think that the context that you bring to that with this is what we're already doing, and here's what everybody's already busy with, I think that'd be really helpful context for the, I think, parallel but other conversation of like, when is this reasonable to phase this in? we're amassing information about what you need to start doing the parts of this that we're not already doing. So I think for our subsequent subcommittee meetings, if we could start with getting into the details, getting your responses to that, getting some context around, this is why this feels reasonable, this is why this feels unreasonable, and here's why right now. To me, that feels like complete information for going through this section by section and having, you know, getting from the high level into what's actually laid out here.

[Justin Tseng]: Councilor Tseng. Yeah, I mentioned counterproposal because I just didn't know if you had one today, but I would agree with Councilor Collins that that would take up a lot of your time that I think I think what would work almost even better, in my opinion, is if we can use those questions and these points as a baseline for us to get comments and feedback and work off of that, like what you were proposing, I think that I would be very happy with that.

[Zac Bears]: Yeah, I mean, I, for one, would love to, I mean, my real question is, where does it fall apart, right? And it sounds like you've have several places where it's just not doable under current conditions. So, you know, I, for one, I'm interested in, you know, that analysis that you've already done. Again, I honestly apologize that you spent four hours going through it. Maybe we could have sat down and I could have given the spark notes pieces of it, you know, and maybe given a little bit more intent rather than just text. Yeah, so I'd be interested in an analysis you've done so far, you know, timing wise, what works, what doesn't, a comprehensive or complete counterproposal or, you know what I'm gonna call it, proposal, we'll just call it proposal, is not something that, you know, I think is necessary at this stage, but I would just be interested, like, Of those of that iterative process of going in that order. What is a reasonable timeline that you think on your end, or is there a piece in there that's just not possible to include it all you know those are the kinds of questions I'd be interested in hearing answers to And then we can work from there to try to get to something that feels doable now. And then also try to, a piece of this that I am somewhat attached to and figuring out some way to do it that doesn't make it feel like you, like it's a gotcha game is like, including something about where we want to go and how we're measuring how far we're getting there, you know, that's something that I am, I do think is important. That's just me speaking for myself. You know, I'm, my fellow councillors have their, their points. Okay. All right. Thanks. Thanks, Councilor Collins. Is there any motions on the floor at this time? Councilor Collins?

[Kit Collins]: I'd make a motion before I, since I hit snooze on my meeting alarm. If it's useful, I would put it in the form of a motion to request from staff, Director Dickinson, the administration in general, maybe a written context reactions to the ordinance so far to the end of having more specific discussion. Sorry, this is probably, this is gonna be more words than you need, Mr. Clerk, towards the end of getting into the details in our next subcommittee meeting. and getting your specific feedback on what's currently written and pushing the project forward from there.

[Adam Hurtubise]: We'll be able to parse this together. I have Councilor Collins moving a request from the Chief of Staff and the Finance Director for written response to the draft ordinance as proposed. Do you want it to be an amendment that's out there to be discussed at the next subcommittee on this topic?

[Zac Bears]: If you wouldn't mind an amendment from the Chair, just a very basic outline of what you think reasonable timing would be for the steps of the process as outlined. no more than an hour, if we can keep you guys to it, of what reasonable timing or reasonable timeline would look like for the budget process as discussed.

[Nina Nazarian]: And if I can just contribute, I realize it's a motion in progress. I think we can do our best, right? I do think that there's a dynamic component to all of this, but we're happy to take the motion that's presented here today and do our best to provide a reasonable use of resource time, but not additional than necessary. There's obviously a lot here. So we did go through this at a very high level at first, and then we went through it line by line more specifically, which took up the bulk of the time. And we really only got through, as I said, that first bulky section. So, you know, we're happy to do our best, but also kind of to do anything well, sometimes you have to spend a considerable amount of time. But I appreciate, you know, everyone's, you know, encouragement to do as, you know, as efficient a process as possible. And we're happy to do that because we want to use our time efficiently as well. So that's my only comment that we'll do our best. I think we kind of have to start peeling back the onion slowly to figure out where we're going to be. But I think based on today's discussion, the framework that was mentioned, VP Bears by you, the comments that were made by Councilor Tseng and Councilor Collins, I think we'll have a good opportunity for a good next discussion. That will hopefully, that I think that hopefully will be, that the subcommittee will hopefully feel is helpful.

[Zac Bears]: We have a motion on the floor, a motion to second it. I just have one question. What, when, you know, is mid November a reasonable time for us to follow up for a next meeting? Is that enough time?

[Nina Nazarian]: I think so. Okay, great.

[Zac Bears]: We'll, we'll work on that. On the motion of Councilor Collins, seconded by Councilor Tseng, as amended by myself.

[Nina Nazarian]: Can we just work on scheduling, by the way, for that meeting? Is it possible? Because I know, you know, we both have different things kind of on our calendars. Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

[Zac Bears]: All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. Motion to adjourn. Councilor Tseng seconded by Councilor Collins. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. Meeting is adjourned. Thank you.