At our last meeting, Deputy Mayor Buxton asked to schedule an update to our Rules of Procedure. And presto, it is on the 7 July Agenda.
There have been a couple of dozen updates to our Council’s Rules of Procedure. The last was in November 2019 the meeting immediately after my election. Was I happy about it? I do not think I was. 😀
However, although I took it personally, I should not have felt ‘special’. The more I’ve looked at previous rule updates, the more I’ve noticed a theme. And over the past twenty five years the unspoken narrative seems to be:
‘The City is getting more complex, the situation is getting more dire, we’ve got a ton of stuff to get through, and we need to move things along faster.’
The net effect has been to provide less detail to the Council, give less the authority to the Council and give more to the Mayor, all things I vehemently oppose.
Council Manager Government was designed for seven equals. The ideal (swear to God) is people who are willing to utilise each person’s talents. It takes a lot to work well in this type of environment, but a lot of rules it does not need. Obviously, it takes a great deal of integrity, but it also takes something else: humility. We all get the same vote, no matter our level of expertise or experiences. We can choose to study, or not. We can choose to listen to one another, or not. No ‘rule’ can help with these things.
In this post, I’m not going to cover any rule changes. I’ve written about those elsewhere. Instead, I’m just going to review a few of our current rules to see how well we’re complying with the system as it stands.
Rule 5: Presiding Officer
“The Mayor shall preside at meetings of the Council, and be recognized as the head of the City for all ceremonial purposes. Â The Mayor shall have no regular administrative or executive duties.“
We could simply hire a professional meeting facilitator for a couple hundred bucks a month to run the meetings and dump all of this. That would take away all the temptation, competition and misunderstandings as to what ‘mayor’ does. It would be the single biggest improvement to our government in history. And nobody would go for it because down deep, a lot of people don’t want seven equals. They want to become “the good king.”
Rule 9: Agendas
In Des Moines, the Mayor sets the agenda. If he deletes an item, it’s supposed to be brought back at the next meeting. We have blown that off so many times, I’ve lost track. Three CMs can ask to have an item put on the agenda, but then there is the section near the end which is confusing:
Any Councilmember seeking to bring forward a new community event or project for consideration shall provide the details of the proposal to the City Clerk in written format, to include the estimated cost and staff time for the proposal.
The joke is, we need the City Manager’s permission to obtain any staff research or we need to first get another vote of the Council to authorise the research. So basically, the only ideas that move forward are ideas people already agree with.
Rule 10: Study Sessions
These were supposed to be monthly ‘informal discussions’. We have very few of these. First off, we rarely have them, second there is so little obvious regard for each other’s ideas there’s never any real ‘discussion’.
If that sounds harsh, I’ll just note that every other city at least occasionally holds another kind of meeting called a Retreat. A retreat does not have an agenda and does not conform to all the legal formalities of a ‘meeting’. It’s mostly a way for CMs to get to know one another. One would call it ‘team building’ in the corporate world. We have not held a retreat during my tenure. The seven of us have never been in a room without the City Manager and City Attorney also present. And note that we’re also the only Council in the area with no group photo on the wall.
Rule 11: City Manager
The City Manager is required to attend all City Council Meetings, which my colleagues have interpreted to mean that he can go so far as to attend his own performance review. He is supposed to keep the Council updated, but the rule has no required report or details. We are the only city I’m aware of where the City Manager chooses whether or not even to take questions.
Rule 14: Seating
The Mayor gets to choose where we sit. Seriously. We have a rule for that? Pina changed my seat three times. Just because.
Rule 17: Councilmember Interference
“Except for the purpose of inquiry, the Council and its members shall deal with the administrative branch solely through the City Manager and neither the Council nor any committee or member thereof shall give any orders to any subordinate of the City Manager, either publicly or privately; provided, however, that nothing herein shall be construed to prohibit the Council, while in open session, from fully and freely discussing with the City Manager anything pertaining to appointments and removals of City officers and employees and City affairs.”
Our City Manager interprets the rule to mean that neither he or staff are required to answer any inquiry from any Councilmember off the dais. He has gone so far as to state that the Council has no oversight role.
Rule 18: Parliamentary
Rules of order not specified by statute, ordinance, or resolution shall be governed by the most recent edition of Robert’s Rules of Order.
(a) Courtesy. Â Members of the Council, in the discussion, comments, or debate of any matter or issue, shall be courteous in their language and demeanor and shall not engage in derogatory remarks or insinuations in respect to any other member of the Council, or any member of the staff or the public, but shall at all times confine their remarks to those facts which are germane and relevant, as determined by the Presiding Officer, to the question or matter under discussion.
(b)Â Interruption. Â No member of the Council shall interrupt or argue with any other member while such member has the floor.
Who knew, right? 😀.Â
Rule 20: Order of Business
Before Public Comment, Pina started reading the following text out loud concerning public conduct and Mahoney continues to do so:
“Any person making personal, impertinent, or slanderous remarks, or who becomes boisterous, threatening, or personally abusive while addressing the Council, may be ordered to leave the meeting.”
No other city does that.
RULE 23
We have five standing committees: Economic Development. Transportation. Municipal Finance. Public Safety. Environment.
Stick with me.
The Economic Development Committee actually functions as a Planning Committee–which is zoning and land use. Other cities have a public planning commission, with… er… well… members of the public. We ended that in 2012. We have no ‘economic development’ committee per se.
The Municipal Facilities and Transportation Committees used to be combined. That is somewhat normal in other cities because the upshot is that these two functions cover capital spending (building, roads, etc.)
In practice, the MFC and EDC and TPC tend to get overlapping duplicate presentations. The MFC and EDC often have duplicate agendas concerning the Marina. And the MFC and TPC also get duplicates of anything ‘roads’.
So nothing ‘Marina’ gets studied or decided at the Committee level because there’s no single ‘authority’.
We’re also the only city with no Finance Committee–which controls the IT department (web site, meeting videos, etc.)
We should have a Marina Committee. We should have a Finance Committee. We should have a Public Planning Commission.
Rule 26: Ordinances
An ordinance is something that goes into the Municipal Code. It takes two ‘readings’ (votes) and thus two meetings. Rule 26 has a clause 26b that allows CMs to bypass the second reading and pass the thing in a single night. It was designed for emergencies.
What the City Manager almost always does is place that Motion 26b to bypass second reading on the agenda to enact the ordinance in one vote. That has become the default.
I always note no for the simple reason that most of the public only hears about issues at the first meeting. So their only practical chance to comment would be at the second meeting. There are almost no agenda items that can’t wait two weeks.
Rule 30: Advisory Boards
All statutory boards and commissions and Council citizen advisory bodies shall provide the Council with copies of minutes of all meetings.  Reports to the City Council shall be made during Administration Reports as needed to keep the Council apprised of the actions of the body. Not less than one time per year, the board, commission or citizen advisory body shall have a representative provide an update to the Council of the body’s activities.
In 1996, our web site clearly showed every member of every advisory committee, the minutes of every meeting at least quarterly.
In 2022, I doubt if anyone except the Mayor now knows the names of the members of all our advisory committees. They no longer keep minutes.
And some of these ‘advisory’ committees shift from ‘private’ to ‘public’ For example, the Police Chief’s advisory committee was ‘private’. But somehow I was removed from it by the Mayor in April and now it’s listed as a ‘public’ City advisory committee with a ‘liaison’. But there is no Council resolution authorising it, no members, no minutes. We’re flexible like that.
Rule 32: Complaints directly to a CM
When administrative policy or administrative performance complaints are made directly to individual Councilmembers, the Councilmember may then refer the matter directly to the City Manager for his/her view and/or action. Â The individual Councilmember may request to be informed of the action or response made to the complaint
The City Manager has failed to comply with this rule so many times I’ve lost count.
Rules 35, 36: Recordings
I’ve already written about this many times. It’s reason #327 why we need a Finance Committee, to provide some oversight over IT.
7/89, 7/90, 10/90, 11/90, 8/91, 10/91, 12/91, 4/92, 2/94, 3/94, 8/94, 6/95, 9/00, 5/03, 9/03, 8/04, 4/05, 5/06, 1/11, Res. 1140 4/12, Res. 1189 2/17, Res. 1356 2/18, Res. 1379 11/19, Res. 1409
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