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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2020-06-17 Council Appointed Officers Committee Summary Minutes Council Appointed Officers Committee FINAL MINUTES Page 1 of 20 Special Meeting June 17, 2020 The City Council Appointed Officers Committee met on this date via virtual teleconference at 6:38 P.M. Participating Remotely: Cormack, Filseth, Kniss Absent: Oral Communications None. Agenda Items 1. Discussion and Direction Regarding the Council Appointed Officers (CAO) 2020 Annual Evaluation Process. Chair Kniss relayed that this was a discussion on evaluating three of the Council Appointed Officers (CAO). In the past the City used a process that was brought by a contractor named Deb Figone; the Council Appointed Officer’s Committee (Committee) recommended continuing with that type of process. Michelle Fitzer, MRG introduced herself. She was a recently retired City Manager with the City of Pinole, which was a full-service city. Regarding the CAO evaluation process, she heard feedback of a less cumbersome, more streamlined process. Before she discussed the process she wanted to address some key discussion points, such as the desired outcome of the evaluation process, this year in particular, considering the environment; she wanted to know at what point in the calendar year the Council wanted to have discussions with each of the CAO’s and then she wanted to work backward in the timeline. Chair Kniss wanted to go back to Oral Communication before the Action Item continued. Nelly Baumb, Deputy City Clerk asked if there were any public speakers but there were none. Ms. Fitzer continued by suggesting discussion of the desired outcome, and FINAL MINUTES Page 2 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 then discussion of the timeline with MRG. Chair Kniss interjected that since she had been on the Council, they had gone about CAO evaluations a few different ways. One way was to do an evaluation which involved numbers, and then have a discussion with the full Council as to what the actual numbers might mean. A second way might be called casual, which was a conversation of what had been going on with each of the CAO’s, which might be less precise, but more comfortable. A third way was a mix of the two together. She inquired of the Director of Human Resources and said it was helpful to know where the Council had been before, and then to have a discussion as to where they were headed. Ms. Fitzer knew there were different survey methodologies used, so she offered some of those methods in the Staff Report. One way was modeled after the evaluation categories, which was used in 2019. Another method was to use the Executive Competencies that were adopted. She wanted to gather a larger framework regarding the following: the desired outcome; the meaning of the evaluation process; whether a stricter process was desired; and was there a need for more dialogue, considering the unusual circumstances the City was in at present; and did the Council want to focus on more timely issues and less structure, or did they prefer the structure and want to incorporate both. Chair Kniss remarked that if there was no numeric scale used it was sometimes difficult because the Council frequently based salaries and other types of dollar amounts on that. Council Member Cormack felt that since Council Member Filseth had been on Council longer, she wanted to hear his remarks first. Council Member Filseth questioned what part of the attachment the Committee was discussing. Chair Kniss remarked that the attachment was a bit too long. Council Member Cormack heard two questions regarding timeframe and process and wanted confirmation that Staff was looking for answers on both of those. Ms. Fitzer said yes. Council Member Cormack was surprised at the length of time between when the process began and when it ended, also the delay in terms of compensation. She did not consider this a best practice and wanted to understand from Staff if there was some reason for the long delay. FINAL MINUTES Page 3 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 Chair Kniss explained the process was that the Council frequently began discussions of evaluations in June, then there was the Council Summer Break, which extended things, then Deb Figone gathered feedback, which took some time and lastly, it was difficult to find a time to meet. The timeline was primarily driven by the calendar, not by what they hoped would be the outcome. There were times when the Council did not meet until October or November before they got to discussion of what they suggested to Deb Figone, after that she had to put the information into some kind of evaluation form. Then the Council decided on the CAO compensation and lastly met with each of the four CAO’s to give them their evaluation. Council Member Filseth agreed and said it did seem like they got late in the year before they completed the process and the compensation was retroactive to the beginning of the Fiscal Year (FY). Council Member Cormack had a point, plus given the global pandemic, he asked his Colleagues if they wanted to delay the process. He felt the Council should continue like normal. Council Member Cormack replied that the schedule was on the Council and the City Clerk and if the Committee needed to schedule those Tuesday meetings now, she wanted to. She personally did not find it acceptable that the process took so long. She also noted that if the Committee had the ability to set the timeline, including requiring that all seven Council Members be present for the Closed Session, she did not see why the Committee could not set that timeline. Chair Kniss thought that was good and wanted to start there. She inquired of her Colleagues as to whether all seven Council Members needed to be present to decide on the evaluations and the raises. Council Member Filseth said yes. Council Member Cormack said yes and added that the conversation was an important part of the process. Chair Kniss noted that because there was no outlined schedule on Tuesday’s, there was a need to set something in place with all the Council Members ahead of time, letting them know they needed to be available every Tuesday night; there was nothing in place for when the Council needed to complete the CAO evaluations. The Committee was able to pass an intention saying the Council must meet on Tuesday nights. Council Member Cormack remarked that another possibility was to hold the CAO evaluations on the fourth Monday. FINAL MINUTES Page 4 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 Chair Kniss said absolutely. Council Member Filseth said that was a possibility, as long as a Council meeting was not scheduled then. Council Member Cormack was anxious to get the evaluations on the schedule. It concerned her that it took so long last year and did not think it was fair to Staff. Chair Kniss added that it concerned all involved, almost every year. She concurred and said if the Committee decided now which Tuesdays were available in August and September then the Committee could attempt to set a schedule now. Council Member Cormack inquired if the Chair could work with the Clerk on that. Chair Kniss wanted to look to the Human Resources (HR) Director first. Rumi Portillo, Director of Human Resources wanted to provide input on the design of the process, as that had a lot to do with the length of the process; it was handled in a two-part process. She recalled the first year she was on Staff, that January, the process did not complete until the beginning of the next calendar year. She understood the performance was on a FY timeframe, which ended in June; there was a process kick-off in the Spring, but the actual evaluation portion did not begin until after the FY ended. As a result, some of the process was discussed over the Council Recess, which made schedules difficult. During that time there were survey’s and feedback collected from the Council Members during the July timeframe. Then, either on a parallel or sequential path, there were 360 Evaluations, which were evaluations that went out to Staff. Next, there was a discussion around performance where the Council Members made some consensus on where each CAO landed. Once performance was talked about and settled, then there was a compensation component, so the Committee came back together to review surveys of comparable cities, discussion of salary comparisons and there was discussion on what the percentages needed to be. She understood the direction to the consultant was to have a bifurcated process, to not conflate the performance with the compensation discussions. There were two discreet parts, given the performance, the 360 Evaluations, the feedback and the one-on-ones, which was when each CAO met with the full Council. Due to all of the scheduling issues, this process did not usually conclude until late Fall. Then the compensation portion came in. She wanted to remind everyone that as part of the Budget process, the CAO’s were not receiving a compensation adjustment, so this portion was not going to be part of the cycle for this year. There was going to be a focused discussion on FINAL MINUTES Page 5 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 performance this year, only. Chair Kniss added that made a huge difference because salaries, which in some years had taken extraordinary amounts of time due to comparisons with other cities, were not happening this year. Ms. Portillo continued that another decision point was how much time was going to be allotted for the “look-back” and how relevant that was because a lot of the prior process was what the expectations were, how were the expectations met, what the workplan was, etc. “Look-back” meant to look back on the whole FY and she questioned how significant that was, given all the changes in February and March 2020. She reiterated the question of a need to go back and see if all the performance targets were met in accordance with what set out a year ago. Another option was the “Look- forward,” recovery and all the new things that presented themselves. Ms. Fitzer remarked that was what she was trying to get at regarding the desired outcome for this year. Moving forward, the unusual circumstances needed to be considered, which framed the conversation about the process. She wanted to understand the Council’s desired outcome because if it was to have an informed discussion about the current environment, how Council was responding and how Council wanted them to respond, then Council survey documents might not be as important this year. The survey documents were lengthy and there were two options, which was what made them lengthy. If the Council did not want to go over survey documents, then those steps could be taken out. A possibility was for her to have interviews with each of the Council Members, one-on-one, and each Council Member could share their individual desired outcomes, or she could have the one-on- ones and forego the survey. Chair Kniss thought that was an interesting idea. In light of Council Member Cormack’s comments, she wanted to discuss, when the Committee thought the process should be done so an end-date could be established, and the Committee could work backward to fill in the timeline. A frequent schedule problem in the past was Council vacation. She wanted to go to the Committee members about when they thought the process should be done and let that drive the discussion. Council Member Filseth commented that a lot of the surveying was done in July and August, when the Council was typically on break. Deb Figone had usually assimilated all the materials in the second half of August, and in principle, Council had usually wrapped up the assessment phase by the end of September, which was when the compensation phase began. It was hard to see the process move along faster if the Council was not present; if the FINAL MINUTES Page 6 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 Council was willing to work over the summer, then the process could get done. He wondered if the meetings were going to continue via Zoom because remote conversations were more easily managed. Chair Kniss commented that if the meetings were going to take place via Zoom, then they needed to plan differently. She wondered if the City Manager had any idea of where they would be in September or October. Ed Shikada, City Manager suspected that some form of Zoom would still be used, and even if the meetings were not entirely on Zoom, it still allowed the Council to have meetings that were otherwise not feasible. Council Member Cormack remarked that there was not a lot of ability to be socially distant at the dais. She really wanted timely feedback to the employees and hoped that was what was practiced for the non-CAO’s as well. She thought it could be expected for Council to fill out a survey this year, which was a useful tool, but she was not really thrilled about either one of the options presented and thought there was something from each of them that was missing. If the contractor had the first half of August to work on the CAO evaluations, then she suggested having the conversation on the last Monday in August 2020; she wanted to get that on the calendar. It was good to do a better job for the people that worked for the Council and she did not think delayed feedback was nearly as helpful. Chair Kniss was not sure if the process could be done by the end of August 2020 but she would be happy with the end of September too. She suggested the contractor interview the Council separately, in July 2020, while the Council was on Summer Break, to get a head start on the interviews. If this happened, the contractor would be in a different spot, as far as feedback went, which could take the timeline right to the week before Memorial Day Weekend. There were only three CAO’s to evaluate this year and she was willing to have her conversation with the contractor in July, depending on the type of tool that was decided on. Council Member Cormack remarked that the other thing not discussed was the Self Reflection, which was important. She remarked that Staff anticipated Council was on break but that was a good time to reflect on the past contributions and how things were going to move forward. Chair Kniss noted that when the Council took a break was when Staff also took a break. Council Member Cormack thought that was fair. Last year there were no Self Reflections when the survey was done; she asked if the Self Reflections were done with the combined answers of the survey. FINAL MINUTES Page 7 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 Chair Kniss said that was correct. Monique leConge Ziesenhenne, Assistant City Manager reminded the Committee that on a normal schedule, Tuesday’s were Finance and Policy & Services Committee meetings, and while the Committee was able to meet before a Council meeting, there may be challenges scheduling that. Ms. Portillo had input from one of the CAO’s regarding Self Evaluations and said the suggestion was August and September 2020, but July 2020 was difficult. Mr. Shikada remarked that it took time to put together the information for the Self Assessment and July was typically the time for that. Chair Kniss realized that Staff did need a break, which made it hard to be off the grid completely. Before they returned the discussion to the contractor, she asked if the Committee could have a tentative agreement about the schedule being done by mid-September 2020. Council Member Cormack commented that Council Member Filseth suggested the end of September 2020, and she was fine with that. Council Member Filseth said he was okay with the middle of September 2020. Chair Kniss suggested middle to the end of September 2020, with a deadline of September 30, 2020. Ms. Portillo worked on this process in other cities and kept close tabs with colleagues in other agencies and said it was not unusual to have a September timeframe for completion. Palo Alto’s process was the longest she had ever seen. Management (non-CAO) had a timeframe of September and their compensation was done in October, according to the Compensation Plan, so early fall was when that was done. Chair Kniss proposed mid-September as a goal and the deadline to be the end of September 2020. Council Member Cormack agreed to the timeline and repeated her request to get the calendar of dates in by tomorrow, so the dates were on everyone’s calendar. She suggested the Chair and the Clerk work out the dates. Chair Kniss agreed but wanted Human Resources (HR) Director there as well because it was necessary to have certain people at these meetings. She suggested the HR Director, the City Clerk and the contractor be at the FINAL MINUTES Page 8 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 scheduling meeting, in order to bring the process together. Ms. Fitzer wanted to discuss the Task and Timeline Process document. Chair Kiss clarified the Committee was looking at the Performance Evaluation Process. Ms. Fitzer confirmed they were all looking at the CAO Evaluation Performance Process, which had timelines. She reviewed the timeline and said there would be two Closed Sessions in mid-September, which the Committee would work on. Today was the Process Meeting with the Subcommittee, then there was the interview with each of the CAO’s; she wanted to understand their desired outcome of the process so both the Council and the employees had a meaningful outcome of the process. Next was an interview with the Subcommittee and the consultant. In the handout there was mention of the Direct Report, Survey and Interviews. She wanted to confirm with the Subcommittee about whether this step was desired this year, which brought her back to the question of the desired outcome of the process. She heard relative to the prior year’s process, this was perceived as “somewhat helpful” and “somewhat challenging” for the Staff to complete but she was not sure why. Additionally, she wondered if the Council Members and the CAO’s were interested in receiving the direct feedback or did they want the department heads to focus on the current issues the City was facing. Council Member Cormack inquired if the contractor was referring to the Survey of the Self-Assessment. Ms. Fitzer clarified that she was referring to a Direct Report Survey as part of the 360 Evaluation. Council Member Cormack understood. Chair Kniss suggested page numbers be mentioned going forward, so everyone was on the same page. Ms. Fitzer clarified she was on the “2020 CAO Evaluation Process” page, about 1/3 of the way down. Council Member Cormack felt it was always good to ask and get feedback; if the Survey itself was problematic, she wanted to fix that aspect, rather than throw it out. She wanted to hear from Mr. Shikada and Ms. Minor as to whether they felt the process was useful in the past. Beth Minor, City Clerk remarked that due to a small department, her FINAL MINUTES Page 9 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 situation was different from the City Manager, as he has department heads. Overall, she thought the 360 Evaluation could be a good useful tool but due to COVID-19, people were working remotely a lot more. Regarding the Survey, filling it out was not a problem, as far as questions and responses went. Council Member Cormack said separating out COVID-19, she wanted to know how useful he found the Director Report Survey. Mr. Shikada remarked that generally, it was valuable. This particular year made things challenging, also the context of the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) made things a little difficult; the expectation that these evaluations were really on behalf of the City Council limited the value of the evaluations. He felt this was good to do periodically but not necessarily every year and among years, this was one he might skip. Council Member Cormack inquired if this evaluation was done last year. Mr. Shikada answered that last year he only had a six-month evaluation, so no, that was not done for him. Ms. Portillo interjected that the Committee discussed and made the decision, about two years ago that they would split up the offices and rotate the 360 Evaluation. This meant that two offices had a full 360 evaluation one year and then the other two the following year. She commented that there were some problems with the 360 Evaluation due to some personnel issues in each of the offices. For those reasons they had to be skipped a few years. Also, having a small number of Staff, along with some performance concerns made things problematic. Chair Kniss proposed 2020 was a year for the City Manager year because he has been in the position a whole year now, and then have the City Clerk and the City Attorney wait another year because they had theirs done more recently. Council Member Cormack said that worked for her. Council Member Filseth said yes. Chair Kniss confirmed the City Manager was to do the Self-Assessment this year, and the City Clerk and City Attorney can either add something else or sit this year out, not having them do the entire Self-Assessment. Ms. Portillo corrected that all CAO’s did the Self-Assessment, and just the City Manager would do the 360 Evaluation, which included all Department FINAL MINUTES Page 10 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 Heads, or maybe a sampling of Directors. Chair Kniss did not have strong feelings and thought it should be up to the City Manager. Mr. Shikada remarked that it should include all Department Heads. Chair Kniss confirmed that was what would be done. Council Member Cormack questioned if the CAO’s Survey looked like Council’s or was it different. Chair Kniss wanted clarification on whether she was asking about the 360 Evaluation. Council Member Cormack confirmed she was inquiring about the Direct Report Survey. Chair Kniss did not know the answer to that. Council Member Filseth commented that it was probably more complicated. Ms. Portillo understood it was different. She did not actually see the survey because it was the part the consultant handled, but believed it was attached. She understood the Council Survey was different than the Direct Report. In the City Manager’s case, the Direct Report included the Department Heads as well as City Manager Staff. Council Member Cormack commented that was appropriate. She had the Packet and did not see anything labeled as “Direct Report Survey.” Ms. Fitzer noted that the Council Survey was the only one included. Council Member Cormack thought it was hard to know if it was a good or bad idea without seeing it. Once the feedback was heard for the prior and proposed Survey, adjustments were probably going to need to be made. She did not want a lot of time spent on this, but survey design was important; she requested the contractor take a fresh look at it to ensure it was useful. Chair Kniss repeated that there were two decisions to be made: 1) the timeline; and 2) which CAO was going to have direct feedback (this was the City Manager this year.) Ms. Fitzer continued her presentation with line Item Five, which was CAO Self-Assessment. The Committee decided they were going to move forward with that, and each CAO was going to participate in a Self-Assessment. She FINAL MINUTES Page 11 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 mentioned Council input, which was if Council Members were interested in surveys for 2020; she thought this was important in the past. She reiterated this was a discussion of a timeline and wanted to work backward from the mid-September to fill in the timeline for the Council. Regarding the Council Survey’s, she was going to complete preliminary summary’s, and then the Closed Session items were to take place. Regarding the Tasks and Timelines, the outstanding question was whether there was to be a Council Survey, which she understood there would be. She was going to fill in the Timeline and re-submit that to the Committee. The Timeline was to include the Council dates for the Closed Sessions. Council Member Cormack said they lost audio for Ms. Fitzer after “suggest.” Ms. Fitzer continued that if the Council wanted to use the 2020 Survey, then all was concluded with regard to the “Task and Timeline.” Next, she suggested discussion of the Council Survey document. Council Member Cormack wanted to return to the Self-Assessment for a moment. She recalled there were different formats last year and wanted to know if that was necessary. She inquired if a consistent format was needed, did people need to report on the goals they set last time, did the Self- Assessment need to be in the format of whatever was melded with the survey’s; she wanted this to be a defined task. Ms. Fitzer recalled there were some guidelines for that. Chair Kniss confirmed there were definitely guidelines. Council Member Cormack did not see the guidelines in the Packet. Ms. Fitzer did not think they were in the Packet because they were for the CAO’s, but it could be provided. Ms. Portillo saw them in the Packet. Council Member Cormack noted she was working with the paper that was sent and it was not in there. She suggested sending her questions to Ms. Portillo to forward to the Contractor. Ms. Portillo noted the evaluation process provided a purpose and consideration of seven examples to cover. Chair Kniss relayed that CAO’s did a lot of introspection and there was a lot of feedback from the written survey. Council Member Cormack confirmed the Committee was now discussing the FINAL MINUTES Page 12 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 Council Survey. Chair Kniss established that was the reason the Committee needed to know where they were on the outline. Ms. Fitzer added that on her electronic packet it appeared to be Page 7 of 52. This was the first of two options, which was why the first was marked “A” and the second was marked “B”. This was the option based off the model the Council used in the past, which was based on previously identified evaluation categories; this was the model with the incorporated goals from the prior year’s evaluation. Option B was a newly developed survey that was similar but lengthier, which was based on the new executive competencies that the City adopted. She incorporated those competencies into a similar tool; the bottom question was what the Council wanted to use to evaluate. There was a lot of detail in the competency outline, which was why it was longer than the other one. The core question was which did the Council prefer because the original process was six Pages and the one based on the new Executive Competencies was nine Pages. She suggested discussing the content that was most relevant and most helpful, or a hybrid option with some modifications. Chair Kniss remarked that in the past, five to six Council Members (when there were nine Council Members) filled the survey out effectively, at least two did not fill it out at all and maybe one or two did a half-way job. She wished the survey this year was straightforward enough so that everyone took the survey. Next there was an argument about which numerical number should be used when assessing one of the CAO’s; the process got complicated when the Council got too complicated. Council Member Filseth agreed. He said what would happen was the Council would attend the meeting, there would be however many surveys done and then there would be a discussion. Then as a group, they changed the numbers to whatever they agreed on in the group. The surveys were a starting point for the discussion that proceeded; the important thing that came out of the meeting was the discussion, as opposed to the Survey itself. The point that people were more likely to fill out shorter surveys was fundamentally valid and yet the value in this process ended up being the discussion. He thought whichever survey prompted better discussion needed to be thought about. Chair Kniss agreed. In the meetings, there was often debate amongst Council Members, trying to get their own points across. As much as she wanted a survey that had depth and meaning, if it was too long, it might not get completed. FINAL MINUTES Page 13 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 Council Member Cormack expected the first part of the survey to be an evaluation of the prior year’s goals and the second part of the survey to be organized in descending order, according to importance, having the most important item first; that did not happen in this draft of the Survey. A few of the titles suggested things that were not accurate, such as Public Relations; what was written in the example was not what was expected of any of the CAO’s. Regarding the order listed, she did not know why Technical Competence and Professional Development were together. She suggested Technical Competence first, listed after the Goals. Professional Development was important, but it was quite different from Technical Competence. She suggested a different order for each of the three roles, such as the example of the City Attorney. In the Council Relations for example, there were five categories with five options, which made 25 marks; in order to have the Survey be helpful as the beginning of the process, she wanted fewer choices at the beginning and then have listed what was not going well and what was going well. She also suggested the model of listing two to three things that went well, and two to three things did not go well. She liked the competency portion and suggested having that as part of two different sections, or having it be its own section. She did not want to lose the specifics of the first part but there were far too many sub-bullets for it to be meaningful. Next, the accuracy of the information and the numbers were not directionally helpful. It did not make sense to go further on this format or in this environment, but she was willing to have the Committee come back and look at a new draft. The CAO evaluations were important, and she wanted it to reflect the most important things, such as how people were doing, but she did not think the Committee was there yet. Chair Kniss suggested having Council Member Filseth and the Contractor get together and re-write the survey as they thought would be effective. This survey was going to be used for the next several years, so it was good to have someone’s input who was going to be around for a while to say what was good for them and see if it was going to work well for the others. Council Member Cormack relayed that since Council Member Filseth accepted the appointment of Ad Hoc Subcommittee, she was happy to accept the designation of Ad Hoc on the Council Survey for the CAO’s. Her principle was: shorter is better. Chair Kniss concurred because that had been the struggle over the past couple of years. Colleagues were able to complete a page or two, and then they got bored, or something happened, she was not sure. By the time the person was done, there was almost a no answer. If the survey was short, she thought it had a better chance of being completed. FINAL MINUTES Page 14 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 Council Member Cormack accepted the nomination. Chair Kniss repeated that the contractor and Council Member Cormack were to work on the survey. She wanted confirmation that the contractor was also going to meet with each Council Member individually. Ms. Fitzer said yes, whenever the Council Members were able to make themselves available. Chair Kniss thought that was going to work well because once the contractor did a one-on-one with Council and the survey was done, she was going to have a clearer picture of where the CAO Evaluations were headed. This year was going to be different, there was a brand new communication system, including meetings being held on Zoom. Ms. Portillo recalled from the prior process with the previous contractor, Deb Figone, there were issues getting the Survey’s completed and returned. As a result, in some cases, she walked Council Members through the Survey, so it was done in one step, rather than two. That was a delay point in the process; it sometimes added weeks to the process. There were good intentions by the Council Members, but they did not have an opportunity to complete the survey for whatever reason. Council Member Cormack wondered if it was possible for the contractor to keep the Chair informed of survey’s that were not returned. Chair Kniss acknowledged that the contractor did that every year. In the past she received calls from the contractor asking her to call certain Council Members to urge them to fill out the survey. Everyone promised to do it right away, so she called certain Council Members to urge them. She bestowed that task to Council Member Cormack. Council Member Cormack thought that was a job for the Chair. Chair Kniss noted that since Council Member Cormack was going to work on the survey, it was good for her to follow up with Council Members on the survey as well. Council Member Cormack was happy to take that responsibility on. Ms. Portillo reiterated it was a significant issue, to the point where the FINAL MINUTES Page 15 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 Committee talked about whether the Survey was an obstacle and maybe a talk through was a better model. Council Member Cormack felt that if the survey was shortened it was able to be conducted as a conversation; it could be done on paper or online. She suggested setting deadlines for the Survey. Chair Kniss noted that Deb Figone did do a lot of the Survey’s online but there were usually one or two that were not going to do a Survey. Council Member Cormack and the contractor were going to work on the Survey, Council Member Cormack was going to assist with those reluctant to return the Survey’s. Now she wanted to discuss the timeline for August and September, 2020. She inquired about scheduling meetings. Ms. Fitzer said yes. Chair Kniss relayed that each CAO took a full night of meeting time. Council Member Filseth recalled that the City Clerk and the City Attorney were done in the same night and the City Manager needed his own meeting. Chair Kniss questioned whether the City Clerk and the City Attorney could be evaluated in the same night. Council Member Filseth recalled that was what was done in the past. Chair Kniss said no. Ms. Minor said yes, either the Clerk and the City Auditor, or the Clerk and the City Attorney were evaluated in the same night. The City Auditor and the City Clerk took about an hour and a half. Council Member Filseth suggested budgeting the time for one night each. Chair Kniss agreed and said there were only three and if the meeting ended early, the Council was able to go home early. Her perspective was this was each of the CAO’s opportunity to talk to the full Council, to say what has and has not gone well, to say where support was needed, etc. She recalled the City Manager Evaluation took four to five hours. Council Member Cormack agreed. FINAL MINUTES Page 16 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 Chair Kniss queried if her, the City Clerk and the Ms. Portillo could meet and set up the dates and wondered if three nights was going to be enough. Ms. Portillo thought there could be one spill-over night but designating one night for each CAO was a good goal. Chair Kniss was looking at the calendar for the end of August 2020 and said the last meeting in August was August 24, 2020. She suggested devoting August 24 & 25, 2020 to two of the CAO evaluation meetings, but she wanted input from the City Clerk first. Ms. Minor first wanted clarification that this was a discussion of scheduling each of the CAO’s before the full Council. Chair Kniss said yes. Ms. Minor remarked that due to there being five Monday’s in the month of August, it was possible to have extra meetings then. She suggested the extra meetings be on August 24, 25 & 31st, 2020 but thought that might also cut into Labor Day weekend. If that plan did not work, it was possible to do two meetings in August and then find another night later that worked for everyone. She suspected the meetings were going to take longer over Zoom. Chair Kniss inquired when Labor Day weekend was. Ms. Minor answered September 7, 2020. Chair Kniss inquired if that meant they decided on August 31st and September 1st, 2020. Ms. Minor repeated that the options were August 24th, 25th, 31st, or September 1st, 2020. Council Member Cormack recalled there were two sets of meetings, the one where the Council met with the contractor and then the subsequent meetings. Chair Kniss clarified, she meant before all the final meetings were had. Council Member Cormack said yes. FINAL MINUTES Page 17 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 Ms. Minor said, usually there were. Chair Kniss presumed that was in June before the Council went on Summer Break. Council Member Cormack said no, that was going to be after all the Survey’s were filled out and after the CAO’s completed their Self-Assessments. Chair Kniss recalled there was another meeting before the Surveys so discussion with the contractor was needed, next they discussed what the timeline was going to be, going forward. Ms. Portillo did not remember the extra meeting Chair Kniss mentioned. Ms. Minor did not recall that meeting either. She repeated the timeline: 1) surveys went out to the CAO’s; 2) a survey went to the City Council; 3) the contractor compiled all completed information gathered; 4) the Council met with the Contractor to go over each of the individual Evaluations; and 5) there was a Council meeting with each of CAO’s. Council Member Cormack clarified again that there were two sets of meetings. Chair Kniss stated this was two sets of meetings. She thought Council Member Cormack was thinking of some meeting at the beginning of August, instead of the meetings that was to take place on the 24th, 25th to 31st. Council Member Cormack inquired if the meetings at the end of August were: Closed Session one and Closed Session two. Ms. Minor thought there needed to be a few weeks between Closed Session one and Closed Session two because time was needed to meet with the contractor to go over all the evaluations, then a few weeks later, the evaluations came back to the CAO’s. Chair Kniss remembered the procedure began before the break but everyone else was remembering it began after the break. Ms. Minor said yes. Chair Kniss wondered if that meant the Council met some time in the middle FINAL MINUTES Page 18 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 of August. She had the tentative dates of August 24th, 25th, 31st, and August 1st, which were all consecutive Monday/Tuesday dates. Council Member Cormack wondered how many days were needed for the Closed Session one; she suggested two days, and four for Closed Session two. Ms. Minor said yes, that was when Council met with each of the CAO’s individually. Council Member Cormack wanted to know when in August 2020 Closed Session one was going to happen, which was the first circle back without the CAO’s. Ms. Fitzer wanted to consult prior years to match the dates. Chair Kniss guessed it was about the end of August. Ms. Fitzer thought the first meeting was the end of August, which would be August 24th and 25th for this calendar year. She wanted confirmation that the Council wanted these meetings to be separate from a regularly scheduled Council Meeting. Chair Kniss remarked that it was pretty hard not to but there were nights when they met for both, which was tough. Ms. Minor agreed that it was very difficult. She added that due to the holiday in September, there were usually Council meetings the three Monday’s after Labor Day. She remarked that if dates were moved to September, the calendar was such: September 7th was Labor Day; there were Council meetings on September 14th, 21st & 28th; and Policy and Services and Finance Committee’s met on the first three Tuesday’s of every month. It was needed to look at dates other than these for the meetings with the Council and the CAO’s. Chair Kniss wanted confirmation that September 22, 2020 was free. Ms. Minor confirmed yes. The other option was to meet on a Wednesday night. Chair Kniss did not have a strong preference and said she could meet on FINAL MINUTES Page 19 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 September 22 or 23, 2020. Council Member Cormack commented that the evaluations were so important that she did not want the Tuesday Standing Committee meetings to delay the evaluations. She was flexible with Policy and Services and remarked that the Finance Committee was often cancelled. She did not want those meetings to be a constraint, since those dates seemed like the right time to have the evaluations. It sounded like there was time in August 2020 for the Closed Session one, which she thought could be done in two days, or three. She thought the Chair could work off-line to get all the dates on everyone’s calendar. Chair Kniss said whatever was scheduled on September 22, 2020 could be cancelled and they could have an evaluation meeting instead. Ms. Minor had September 22 and 23, 2020 written down. Chair Kniss wanted to save those two dates and suggested her, the City Clerk and Ms. Portillo meet next week. Ms. Portillo said yes. Ms. Fitzer wanted to return the discussion to the interviews with the Council Subcommittee. She saw that as line three on the Task List and the Chair did recollect having an individual conversation with the previous contractor. On the Task List listed “initial interview: Council Subcommittee and Consultant to outline desired outcome of the process.” Chair Kniss wanted to know the date for that. Ms. Fitzer said no, it was listed as “to be determined.” She wanted clarification on whether the Subcommittee wanted to include that step this year and this was the time to have that conversation. Next, the Timeline went straight to the Direct Report Survey’s, the CAO Self-Assessment and then the Council Survey. Chair Kniss said no and recalled that they did come together again. Council Member Cormack was not on the Committee last year but thought the Council combined one and three. In terms of desired outcomes, hopefully the contractor had what she needed. FINAL MINUTES Page 20 of 20 Sp. Council Appointed Officer’s Committee Meeting Final Minutes: 06/17/2020 Ms. Fitzer understood what the Council Subcommittee was looking for but wanted to circle back to what the Chair’s point was earlier, that there were one-on-one conversations last year. She wanted confirmation from the Committee today that they were not interested in that. Chair Kniss thanked the contractor and wanted to know the official date the Council began their Summer Break. Ms. Minor said June 24, 2020. Chair Kniss inquired of her Colleagues about whether it was essential to meet in late June or early July 2020 as a Committee. Council Member Cormack said yes. Chair Kniss reiterated the action: the Committee decided on a number of dates, Council Member Cormack was going to work with the Contractor on the Survey and they agreed they wanted to be done with the process by the end of September 2020, at the latest. Decision Points: A. Goal of process completion by mid-September, with a deadline of September 30th; B. City Manager only, will have a 360 Report (Direct Report Surveys) for 2020; C. Council Appointed Officers will perform a self-assessment; D. Council Member Cormack will work with MRG to update the Evaluation Survey; and E. Each CAO will be evaluated in separate meetings. Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 5:27 P.M.