City Council to form two subcommittees

Meetings to provide face-to-face discusson for citizens

After the City Council's meeting in July, it appeared that the Council was scrapping the idea of standing subcommittees and re-establishing the traditional Committee of the Whole meetings on the last Monday of each month.

In August, however, concerns were raised about the Committee of the Whole not being formalized in City Code, so Council members Gary Kroesing and Bill Scribner were asked to work with City Administrator Joe Johnson to formalize the Committee of the Whole into the city's books.

What came out of a discussion between Kroesing and Johnson was something quite different.

The result: At the Sept. 9 Council meeting, the Council took some by surprise and briefly discussed another attempt to give citizens a face-to-face meeting with Council members outside of the regular Council meeting.

The Council voted 6-0 to form two subcommittees.

One committee will focus on utilities and street department issues; the other will encompass the other departments - library, police, parks, recreation and finance -- and policy issues of the city. The Council already has a budget committee.

The details and the regular meeting time of committee meetings are still being worked out, Johnson said on Monday, but the subcommittees will give citizens a chance to speak with city department supervisors and Council members.

"This is the public's opportunity to come in and voice the direction they want the city to go," Johnson said, "to tell their elected leaders this is where the city needs to go. I encourage them to take advantage of that."

The Council tried a "standing subcommittee" format from February to June. Under that format, department heads met with the mayor, the city council president and another Council member for 20-minute sessions. The department heads had a vote on those committees.

The subcommittee format will have three Council members on each of two committees, and the department heads and Johnson will be ex-officio members, meaning they do not have a vote but can offer input.

As with the earlier subcommittee effort, members of the public can raise issues with the Council members present and the city's department managers.

Subcommittees will not represent a quorum (four of the six Council members) of the City Council and will not comprise an official public meeting. Therefore, the city will not need to advertise the meetings in the Banner-Press legal notices.

By not having a quorum, the Council can allow broader discussion of the issues and citizens can have more time to talk about any concerns they have, Johnson said.

By including department supervisors, the Council members and the public will get more firsthand information about how the city's departments operate.

Johnson said he would get the word out about the time and date of the first subcommittee meetings later this month. The Council will need to schedule a regular time and date for the future so citizens can count on that meeting every month.

At the Sept. 9 meeting, Kroesing did not elaborate on why he was dropping his long-held support for the Committee of the Whole meeting.

"I laid it in front of Joe," Kroesing said. "We talked about it for a considerable amount of time. Let's go back in time (to subcommittees)."

Trowbridge and Kroesing have had heated discussions about the topic, especially at the July meeting.

Trowbridge said he appreciated Kroesing's efforts.

"I would say we have butted heads on this on several occasions, and with some velocity . . . It's nice to see it go in a positive direction," the mayor said.

Johnson also thanked Kroesing.

"It's really a joint effort to make this work. I really appreciate Gary's hard work on this," Johnson said.

Said Trowbridge: "That's how we measure success when we end up with a product that's better than what we had before."

The Committee of the Whole meeting had caused concern among some Council members because it is intended to be a discussion-only meeting with no official actions taken. Meanwhile, the meetings sometimes resulted in straw polls being formed in regard to issues before the Council.

Johnson had advised the Council that it risked being seen as taking actions outside of an official meeting.