Transcript
Date: Wednesday, July 30th, 2025
Chair: Deputy Mayor Harry Steinmetz
Call to Order and Roll Call
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: Okay, all right. If I can have your attention, we’ll call the Wednesday, July 30th, 2025 meeting of the Citizens Advisory Board to order at this point. The first item—well, I guess we should take roll. So we’ll just go around the table. Go ahead.
Susan White: Susan White.
Jeffy Richards: Jeffy Richards.
Eddie: Eddie.
Traci: Traci.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: And I’m Harry Steinmetz. I heard from Gene, but he’s not here yet. He may be here later in a few minutes.
The second order of business—I appreciate everybody coming. I’m glad it got in everybody’s calendar. I apologize that the agenda and the minutes did not get out sooner. They did go out by email today to everybody. That won’t happen again, and they’ll be about a week in advance of the meetings.
Approval of Minutes
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: The first item of business on the agenda is the approval of minutes from the June meeting. Is there a motion?
Susan White: So moved.
Victoria Andrews: Second.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: Okay, so Susan White made the motion, Victoria Andrews seconded it. Has everybody had a chance to at least peruse them? Any discussion?
[No discussion]Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: Calling the question. All those in favor raise your hand.
[All in favor]Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: All opposed? Nobody opposed. Passes unanimously.
Clarification on Council Liaison Voting Status
Council Member: Question. Did we clarify whether the council liaison positions were actually part of the committee or not? I know different subcommittees in the past—some of them the council members were simply liaisons, but according to current code, some of them are actually members of the committee. So I wanted to be clear about this one.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: I would defer to council and our staff. So the question is whether—do Gene and I vote? Are we voting members?
City Attorney Tara Vaughan: I think I’ll have to get back to you on that.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: We’ve not been voting over the course of the last year, and we haven’t adopted the new draft ordinance yet, but we’ve simply been liaisons.
Council Member: But there was a question on whether you would be chair though, but still not a voting member but still chair.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: Meeting facilitator and chair have the same function at that point, which is very common in strong mayor cities. A strong mayor presides but does not vote, which is not the case here. The mayor in this city—a council manager city—does vote.
Council Member: But you’re pretty strong.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: Yes, I’ll look into that. I’ll try to speak loud, but yes, I will look into that before the next meeting and maybe if we need to clear it up in the ordinance, I can also put it in there.
Draft Ordinance Presentation
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: The minutes have been approved, and the second item on today’s agenda is the presentation of the draft ordinance which was passed under first reading and is going to second reading at the next city council meeting on September 11th.
City Attorney Vaughan: We do have a PowerPoint on that. I apologize to the council members—they will have seen this last week, but it was worth going over again. It’s just kind of a brief overview of the draft ordinance.
A little bit of background—you guys probably already know this, but the new structure of this committee was created in order to not only best utilize you as members but to reduce the overall number of committees that we have and the needs for staffing those committees.
[Vaughan explains the organizational structure change from separate committees to subcommittees under the Citizens Advisory Board]
The structure is 12 neighborhood seats and 11 at-large seats. As for the subcommittees, I believe you guys talked about this at the last meeting—three would be a good minimum number and nine would be an acceptable maximum. That way you can maintain efficiency but still get things done.
As for terms, I think this was also already discussed, but we’ll start initially with two and four-year terms so that not everybody is terming out at the same time. We’re going to try to get as close to a 50/50 split on that as we can. After that, it will just be four-year terms forever more. It is already part of the code that you can serve two consecutive terms before you have to remain off of a committee for two years and then you could reapply.
As written now, there would be no term limit for subcommittees. It’s just whatever your term is for the CAB would be the limiting factor for subcommittees.
Discussion on Subcommittee Term Limits
Eddie: My question is it says here no term limits for subcommittees. So you’re saying they can serve four years and eight years and 16 years?
City Attorney Vaughan: Nobody can serve 16 years. What’s going to happen is your subcommittee membership will be from the CAB. So there are term limits on the CAB which will necessarily put a term limit on the subcommittees.
Council Member: It’s just a drafting issue. Certainly if you’re not on the CAB, you can’t be on a subcommittee. But if we can go back to that slide, that’s not what it says. It’s very nebulous.
City Attorney Vaughan: If the council would like, you can obviously change the language, but the intention is that term limits as a CAB member is automatically going to limit your time on a subcommittee.
Lynn: I have a point of clarification. Does that mean that no one from the community can be on the senior committee too in addition to the CAB members? Do you have to be a CAB member to be on the subcommittee?
City Attorney Vaughan: Yes, you won’t have any extra members.
Lynn: I read it this afternoon and that was really confusing to me. What I wondered is, does that mean where they say you can serve two consecutive terms then you have to remain off—is that not true for subcommittee members? But I guess it is since I’m a CAB member too. So that sentence is very confusing.
Traci: I cannot make this motion, but I would recommend it for somebody that can. I would recommend the motion to amend bullet number three to say term limits for subcommittees will be the same as the CAB.
[Motion made and seconded to clarify language]
City Attorney Vaughan: This is just simply the PowerPoint explaining it. This is not the ordinance itself. The term limits are already in the ordinance, but if it clarifies the PowerPoint, it can certainly be amended.
Council Member: Do we have a copy of the ordinance?
City Attorney Vaughan: Yes. It does currently read “subcommittees shall not have a term limit.”
[Discussion continues about the motion and clarification needed]
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: We have a motion and a second on the table. All in favor signify by saying aye.
All: Aye.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: All opposed? [None] Okay.
Are there any other questions or concerns about the draft ordinance?
Gene: Just for clarification now, we’re saying that because of the staggered terms, there will be members that can only serve six years and other members that can serve eight years. Correct?
City Attorney Vaughan: That’s how it’ll play out in the first round.
Gene: Just want to make sure everybody understands that.
Subcommittee Appointments
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: Subcommittee appointments is item number three. There is good news that everybody’s first choice was available. We did not have more than nine people saying they wanted to be on one committee.
Human Services: Lisa, Lynn, Karine, Victoria, and Mary Ellen
Senior Services: Susan, Randy, Barton, Eileen
Arts: Eddie, Rick, Bettina, Charlene, and Jeff
Lynn: I was also speaking for Mary Guiberson, who was a former human services member. Work kept her from coming tonight, but she had trouble getting your email. She definitely wants to be on it. What committee did she want to be on?
Lynn: Human services.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: Is there a motion to add two members to the human services committee—Diane Hoyer and Mary Guiberson?
Lynn: I move that we add to the human services subcommittee Diane Hoyer and Mary Guiberson.
Mary Ellen: Second.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: All those in favor say aye.
All: Aye.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: All opposed? Passes unanimously.
Traci: I’m just thrilled at these lists. I just want to say thank you for stepping up, and I am excited to see what comes out of them. These committees look so healthy. I am really excited to see what comes out of these committees.
Term Length Assignments
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: Now we’re going to determine who’s serving a four-year term and who’s serving a two-year term. We’re going to do it by committee so the committees are evenly divided, and then everybody that’s left will essentially pick out of a hat. That seemed to be the most random way to do it.
Jeff: What are you going to do?
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: Figure out who’s serving a two-year term and who’s serving a four-year term.
Jeff: It seems to me you’ve got, like in arts, Eddie’s one, Rick’s two, Bettina is three, Charlene’s four, and I’m five. Seems like that’s already settled.
Victoria: But that does not include those who have elected for whatever reason not to be on a subcommittee. They need to be treated differently if we’re going to do it that way.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: We can do that after we’re done with the subcommittees.
[Discussion continues about the assignment process]
Jeff: Counter proposal is that since we’ve already got them labeled, seat two is Lynn, seat four is Victoria on human services—they would be the two-year terms. Seat one is Lisa, seat three is Karine, seat five is Mary Ellen, and seat six is Diane and seven is Mary.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: So Diane would be a two-year term, Mary would be a four-year term.
[Motion made and passed to accept the term assignments as listed]
Neighborhood and At-Large Term Assignments
[The chair proceeds to draw terms for remaining neighborhood and at-large positions]
Final Term Assignments:
- Two-year terms: Charlene, second business slot, Marina Tenant, North Central, Justin Purle, Colleen, Victoria Andrews, Karine Anderson, Eileen Evans, Randy Richards, Lynn Cashman, Diane Hoyer
- Four-year terms: Eddie, Bettina, Pac Ridge, Lisa, Magdalina, Barton, Mary Guiberson, Mary Ellen, Rick Lok, Jeff Crompe, Susan White
Charlene: I saw your placard up. And then if I heard you correctly, I’m Charlene, I’m a two-year. You said the second business person would be a two-year. So that defeats the purpose of our staggering.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: We took the neighborhoods as a whole and tried to get a 50/50 split. We’re not trying to replace all of the neighborhoods and the business all at the same time. There is an even 50/50 split between two-year and four-year within the 12 neighborhoods.
[Discussion about business seat assignments and potential swapping]
Eddie: I can swap if needed.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: So Charlene, you can have a four-year term.
Charlene: I will take it.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: I will just swap those then.
Bettina: In the interest of clarification, can Tara list off the communities that we still are recruiting for?
City Attorney Vaughan: We are looking for a business owner, a marina tenant, someone from the North Central neighborhood, and somebody from Pack Ridge.
Gene: For the sake of clarity, can we make sure that when this comes to the council that the terms are clearly designated so that we have a historic document that says this is what it is?
City Attorney Vaughan: Yes, absolutely.
Future Meeting Schedule
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: The proposal for the upcoming meetings is no meeting in August. Generally the council only has one meeting in August and it’s just a bad month all the way around. So the next CAB meeting would be on September 24th. And then the rest of the year would be October 29th and then December 10th.
Victoria: Can you refresh us as to what our chief topic of discussion might be for the next meeting and what if anything we’ll get in advance of that?
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: At the September 24th meeting, there will be discussion of the city’s strategic plan, and Colleen may be involved in facilitating that discussion. We will have somebody available from the consulting firm that’s helping us put that together. Also, any subcommittee reports and a review of their work plans.
City Attorney Vaughan: We ask that the subcommittees meet between now and the September meeting and come up with their work plan for the next year, and then that will be reviewed with the CAB at that meeting.
Subcommittee Organization Discussion
Victoria: If nobody minds, I would love to break into our three groups and perhaps elect a chair, appoint a chair, talk about who would be willing to be a chair, so that when we leave, we can expect that we’re going to hear from somebody.
Eddie: I don’t know if any of you that are in the arts have had any experience with the art group before. There was an art group here. Don’t you think that those people would be the direction we want to go with that?
Susan: I honestly think to try to decide all this tonight—I would just assume we organize a meeting together for human services or senior services and then we can discuss. You’ve been on it right for a while. I haven’t for a long time. So I would like to kind of be brought up to speed.
Jeff: If you look at the arts commission, the arts commission was essentially decimated up until this point. So people are new to it. I like her idea to table it for tonight and then we can schedule wherever it is and the five of us can get together and make some of these decisions.
Victoria: Then who’s going to call that meeting of the arts people? Somebody needs to take charge tonight so we know what we’re doing.
Jeff: I think I was going to suggest let’s just exchange emails at this point and then we’ll see what date works for us.
City Attorney Vaughan: Is that something you could send out now that you have the emails? I think that’s a great idea.
[Discussion about coordinating initial subcommittee meetings]
Jeff: If Tara’s going to send out a list to each committee, I’m happy to send out the initial email to everybody suggesting looking for times to have a meeting sooner than later.
Eileen: I’ll do that for senior services.
Victoria: I will do it for human services.
City Attorney Vaughan: The subcommittee lists will be forthcoming.
October and December Meeting Plans
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: The proposal for the October meeting is any subcommittee reports if any, and then the 2026 work plan. What do we want to do? And then a review of the city’s website—tentative, subject to change looking out that far.
And then in December, again subcommittee reports and then revisiting the 2026 work plan.
Victoria: I know we’re on a biannual budget now, but is there any budget discussion necessary from or for us this year?
Mayor Buxton: Not that I’m aware of. We passed a biannual budget. There may be amendments that happen if the assumptions were off somehow, but they won’t be policy level.
Traci: I do think there might be one or two items where we’ll be looking for community input like animal control. There are a couple hot things that keep coming up in the community. So if there’s a consideration there, that’s a possibility we can bring to the agenda.
Adjournment
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: Does anybody else have anything for the good of the order? Seeing none, is there a motion?
Charlene: I move that we adjourn.
Barton: Second.
Deputy Mayor Steinmetz: All those in favor? Any opposed? Thank you. Great.
1This is a machine-generated transcript generated on the fly by Google/Youtube/AI. Accuracy totally not guaranteed. Provided only as a convenience and to help people with disabilities. Caveat lector!
1This is a machine-generated transcript generated on the fly by Google/Youtube/AI. Accuracy totally not guaranteed. Provided only as a convenience and to help people with disabilities. Caveat lector!