Committee Meeting

Let me know when you're ready.

Okay. Uh we'll convene this uh recommendations committee. Um, we have an hour and a half set for this meeting. At our last meeting, I'm trying to get my bearings. I just sat down. We had homework. Um, I had the benefits.

I had cell phones.

We had cell phones. Britney, I can't remember which one you

I brought my homework last week and assigned to you all to come.

That's right. Yep. Yep. So, where would you like to begin?

Let's start with Britney's instead of introducing something new. Does that sound okay? Does that make sense?

Because you wanted feedback. This is thorough. And I was like, you know what? I read this and I was like, I'm going to say I think we should do this and not that.

Here's the challenge, I think. So, you pulled together. Here's what everybody does, right? Here is a possible policy recommendation. I did not disagree with any of the possible policy recommendations, but they're not detailed for obvious reasons since you wanted feedback. I think um

I hope the brackets were apparent too where it was just like blank space, right? Where you know like dollar amount to be determined.

Correct. I think the best step forward for this if did you have a chance to go through it and like see like the policy recommendations

I ran through it so long ago I'm trying to remember what I thought

it's almost to me like a work session topic where the policy recommendation is that we have preapproved um events including these and then let the rest of council chime in if they feel that there's others that we haven't put in the bucket like I think we should add more detail and then let them flesh out the rest

because it feels like it's a policy discussion and I don't think we want to get too far into policy like completely written out recommendations

without of this type

that are really sort of they're opinion based

like should it be 500 should it be a thousand should the bucket be 2,000 I completely agree with the bucket but I also don't have an opinion I'm not free to travel and go to events and go to conferences.

So I also don't have any relative experience even with experience on council to have a well-informed or reasonable you know.

Yeah. So that that's I did but I none of them I disagreed with one word in one of them and I'll find it. Uh and it was like a tiny little thing. Um and I think it was on the whether it's local or or I'll find it but there was just one like well that depends on whether it's local or if you have to travel to it. Mhm.

The only addition I would make to your recommendations is any out of town travel should have some kind of pre-approval

Sure.

element, don't you think?

Oh, yeah.

And that's for everybody's comfort and safety and all that more so than I'm not concerned that anybody's traveling somewhere for a a junket that's not important.

Yeah. um you know we h we have to we have to figure out um we talked a little bit about this last week like what the work product is that we're bringing back to our colleagues um sort of working backwards from there. Um so absolutely I mean all of this is still up for grabs. Neither of you are shrinking violets. You do not need my permission to be as candid as you'd like uh with me. But just for good measure, I will affirm that I am not personally wed to any of this either. Um, so you do not have to be delegate. Well, we I mean we could rip this apart and, you know, start from scratch. Um, you know, this we just need somewhere to start with all of this,

right? All of this we just need a starting point for us, a starting point to bring back to our colleagues. Um, so I mean all of this to me is still up for discussion. The second point on the first page, I put the whole thing in brackets because we didn't quite land on what the approval mechanism is. Does everything listed in this come to all seven of us for approval? You know, is it only above a certain threshold? Morrisville does over 500. Um, so I went even broader than out of state travel. I said any of this, you know, I mean the affordable housing conference that I think three of us are going to next month for 275 uh registration fee.

Does that come before seven of us? You know, I think it's fellow Lori and I are going, you know, if according to the policy we draft, would we come in a work session and say we'd like to attend this conference at at X price and all of us approve it or do we want to set a threshold? Do we want to distinguish between local and out of state? So, I mean, I I like I said, I didn't even take a stab at that one. I said, "Does everything come before council?"

To me, logically, remember we discussed this logically, there's an awareness component. Here's my bucket, and for awareness, here's how I'm spending my bucket. If it's under a certain amount

and or on the preapproved list, anything that doesn't meet those conditions then needs council approval.

I'm with you.

Right. I think that's kind of where we landed when we were discussing it.

So, say that again for us, Council Member Co. Johnson. you're thinking because I'm going to take notes here for us.

Pre-approved list.

You know what? Before I do that,

sorry, I'll go back and say we had talked about last week that maybe for these policies in particular, we would come to our colleagues with a slide deck

and for each of them, we would have a possible policy recommendation. So, you know, all travel, training, and meal expenses are paid by individual county members are capped at maximum dollar amount for each fiscal year, right? And then underneath it, we would have growth cons alternatives. Um, that's up for grabs, too. We can decide to present this to our colleagues entirely differently. I mean, maybe we want just a possible policy recommendation, but it's got a lot of blank spaces in it, almost like math lip style, right?

That's somewhat what I

here's the framework, but we need you to f we collectively need to fill in all of the blanks. I do like the I do like the idea of bringing our collective three-person recommended policy and then perhaps take each element and put it on a separate slide just to discuss those and see if they want those elements adjusted.

Yeah.

So, because there's going to be some things they're going to go, "Yeah, $500, that makes perfect sense." And then there's going to be other things like, "Well, this should be on the pre-approved list or this shouldn't." Um, but I think I I' I've

we want to recommend, but we don't want to go too far

down the road, so to speak.

So,

do you think should we come up with an actual full recommended policy and then work with the full council

on the details?

I think we should come up as close as we can to that. Um what I'm after hearing this conversation what I would be wary of is when you go for approval of council if the number is so low then you invite political

opposition to get involved uh let's say for instance somebody's anti-affordable housing you want to go to that affordable housing con I'm going to vote against it every time

you know if I'm anti-affordable housing

and so that shouldn't happen

if if it's reasonable and it's on the pre-approved list.

Yeah. So that threshold that that allowable threshold,

but at the same time, the public should know what we're doing with their tax dollars.

Yes. And that's the reporting mechanism.

Yeah. So there's the awareness element bucket of money up to this amount and then there's the needs council approval part of it. Um could we go through these one by one tonight and see how far we get and what we do?

Sure.

Okay.

So my understanding is we have a slot for tomorrow's work session

before we go there.

Yes.

I want to know what we want to talk about at that. Do we want any information from the full council at that

or do you want to just briefly talk about

hey I'm doing research on this Britain's doing research on that. accuracies.

Yeah, I think we had said that this probably is going to require more work before we take it to them. I mean, we can offer the briefest of of summaries to say this is all in the mix, but I believe council member Con Johnson is prepared to come tomorrow to gauge our colleagues interest in having a resident commission do this work, do the do the compensation and allowances work? Yeah, I have a note on my calendar to create some slides.

Yeah, I was gonna ask Jenny.

We we're up. It's up to us to do everything. Yes.

So, um I will introduce it uh in my I will talk about benefits. Uh you have that information. The public should have that information

of what I've researched and what staff has researched. The only question I have left for our HR rep who's uh on vacation is does council have anything that staff doesn't have, which I think the answer is no, but I need her to tell me. And

then um what other differences um do we know about other than what we have? So, we have a great chart and I tried to pull out insurance stuff which has cost associated with it.

Um, but anyway, I know I've jumped off topic now we're on this topic.

No, I think this actually this is I think maybe the easier to tackle tonight. So, I think we should actually maybe do this, but we'll delve into this. So if I had a slide or I I think a slide on this, a slide on this and then um say, you know, we're going to create a policy, you know, or yeah, and uh let me know if you have any concerns because that's where we're going just because we don't want to go down a road. and even a single slide that says let's discuss a commission to study and recommend

sure

salary and b you know and benefits for council or something like that.

So I'm sorry

I was going to say I think Ashley um did she was out of the office but yet took time to look at this and say um that

that this chart is comprehensive.

Yes. Okay. Yeah, she approved the chart. It was all the updated chart was all everything.

Okay.

Then I'm kind of kind of done. So now we just need to create a policy. If we if I bring this up to the rest of the council and all four of the remaining ones say we don't want a health policy.

You already have.

Yeah. So I'm sorry.

I know. But what if they take it away? Want to take it away.

So you have a policy statement that says essentially what is reflected in the

Yes. Okay. But but if the four want to take it away, that's when I want to hear it because we have a policy and this is what it's in.

So yeah,

so what is the exact language of that policy?

It's very short.

Yes.

Putting you on the spot.

I will just pull it right up from the website.

Feel free to read if you know the number 117. All town of care elected officials are allowed to participate in the group health and dental insurance that is offered to all regular employees during their ten years as elected official. The cost of this coverage shall be the same as the cost to um be the same as the cost applicable to any full-time/regular employee. Any cost of dependent coverage shall normally be paid through payroll deduction on a pre-tax basis or arrangements can be made with a finance department to pay for coverage by another method.

And when did that take effect? Like 2007 or something.

Uh take effect 2007.

Yeah, I remember that

there was some sort of amendment. So 2010 was the last time it was updated.

Okay. And so effectively, mayor, you're proposing we're asking if we want any changes to that policy.

So one of the bullet points we're supposed to look at is benefits, which includes what the council gets. And I'll say we have policy 117. We've researched it.

You know, we basically get nothing that's nothing more than staff gets. We get less than what staff gets. Here's a chart. Yes.

Now,

do you want to change the policy um kind of thing

or eliminate the policy

and that would address that one

and they're making a recommendation and if and I'll just I'll be frank. If a commission of citizens decides we don't need health insurance if we need it, we can reject that recommendation if we deem it inappropriate. I currently have health insurance, but I probably would feel very differently if I got laid off tomorrow and did not have

health insurance for the fifth time in my life.

It's a hardship I don't wish on anyone

and I just can't imagine that any reasonable group of citizens would grudge us health insurance.

Also, another alternative is we dictate the purview of the committee and by statute benefits are not compensation. compensation is salary and allowances. So we could also confine them to only that and then use our authority to set our own policy and treat benefits separately. I mean that's just you know that's

that's another way to do it.

That sounds pretty reasonable. And benefits are pretty complicated too. Um I've worked as a marketer to payers and insurers. It's the only reason I have a working knowledge of them. Mhm.

Um they can be beasts if you don't know much about them.

Mhm.

Okay. So when I have that slot tomorrow, I will have a couple of slides. I guess I I'll be glad to work on them.

Yeah.

Unless if you could give me a template or something.

We can send a template. Yeah, we would need um

tomorrow or Thursday or tomorrow? Tuesday.

Tomorrow is today's Monday. Um, I can send out the template to the group and then yeah, we would need the slides. I would say earlier the better, but I think at least by 2 p.m.

Are we dividing up the slides or

Well, I was going to do the benefit stuff.

Okay. that I had and it'll mostly be cut and paste and try to make it pretty on a slide and so it should take a lot of

because I would think you know the policy 117 language and then basically this chart

say here's policy we have here's the research we did

we're headed down the road to confirming the policy or or make changes if you want

or say we as a group feel it's important that the citizen commission that we're

going to discuss us to make recommendations for our compensation move forward. But note that there that benefits would not be included in that discussion.

Okay.

I think that sounds like kind of

health benefit.

Well, no benefits aren't

compens. So compensation is salary and allowances. So I mean your paycheck and then everything else is benefits and our policy defines benefits as medical and dental.

So it's really a salary and allowances compensation commission that we're looking to convene

unless we want benefits to be their purview, but that is up to us.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah. Let's ask the council.

All right. So I'm doing that slide.

Can you do that slide for me so I don't have to slide that what we just discussed? That was on my homework to make that one slide.

Benefits the

the compensation.

The resident committee.

Do we want a resident committee?

Yeah. I mean we can just ask the question. We don't even necessarily need a slide.

Okay.

We always have slides so it'll be a little weird. So I'll basically say compensation define it. Do we want a resident committee?

What else do you want on that slide?

I mean that's the big question.

The detail that so the full council is aware of the fact that we cannot change

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

the policy until the new budget's adopted. And it'll also help publicize that so that folks in the community know that we're not just

dragging our feet

dragging our feet on it that we're not in a position to do that this time. Thank you.

Adopted. So, okay. What else

I think the benefits.

Okay. This

Okay. Okay.

All right. I've got compensation and benefits.

Yeah. Because I think this is the pulse check we want to do before we

start going too far down any one path is yeah get some feedback from the entire body tomorrow.

Yeah.

Do we want to talk about anything else as far as pulse check? Are we getting rid of allowances?

I don't think so. I think we asked that would be part of the compensation and allowances discussion if we want to have a citizen. We said that's answered by a citizen committee. But if not, then we got to answer that.

Then we got to have that question.

So I I think just posing that question is going to lead

or we let a a commission of citizens make that decision because it's going to be unwelcome by some and welcomed by others if we make the decision to pivot to straight salary and and eliminate those.

I think that is probably also a decision to ask a a resident committee to make.

Yeah. I think just posing the question tomorrow will allow us with the rest of council to think aloud about what this would look like and what questions they would answer for us. Um, but I mean what it'll really tell us is if the full council does not want to pursue a resident committee, then it's back on us to get as detailed as we're we're attempting to be now with

But so we just we sort of need to know

we need direction.

Yes. is our direction to then start doing the work of forming the committee and figuring that out or are we not going to go that route and it's our work to then come up with the the skeleton of a policy

because we could get feedback too. We could go that route where we choose to do the work come up with a recommendation in our group

council can then weigh in come up with a sample recommendation like a full recommendation and then get citizen feedback. We have plenty plenty of time since we can't make the change until

next May or so.

The committee formation is going to be a big deal.

Yeah.

Um when and how needs to be answered.

I think that's something we should talk about tomorrow, right? You know, I mean, if if people

are interested in that idea, I think we should do some of that thinking aloud tomorrow. But how I mean it could sound great in theory and then we could you know brainstorm a little bit about the implementation and

and it's been done in different ways too. Sometimes the mayor you know appoints people on a committee. Sometimes it's one from each board that we already have that exist. I mean there's it could be a net new not previously involved with the town board. Then how do you select it? Who does the appointment? That would be a way of let each board designate a member to be on the committee. That's how they did have to choose

that you don't have to choose. Yes, you that's how we did the carry 150

each of the advisory boards as I recall. That's how I ended up on it. I was chosen for me the ISAB.

We have eight.

That's plenty. You don't want to go much.

Well, we need an uneven number.

Well, we're about to do another board, aren't we? Of course, that won't be in time.

Probably. Yeah, probably won't be any time. That's probably your not going through another recruitment with interviews. That's a two-month process.

So, thinking about that as well.

To me, if you get a committee that has a four four on the decision, the decision is a fail.

It's like a motion to approve, you don't have enough to approve, so it fails. Yeah.

So, eight is fine.

Okay. You've got more experience there. I trust you on that. All right. So, tomorrow I will come with slides. There will be a compensation slide. Um, do you want me to recommend

the board and get the feedback from the council or just leave it wide open?

I say wide open.

I'll admit I'm ambivalent myself. I I see the pros and cons to it and so I I'm genuinely curious.

I verbally recommend that that's how we approach it. Okay.

It's the most nonpartisan way to do it I can think of because the boards are so so diverse.

And then if we let the board themselves elect someone instead of us

we could even go so far as we don't choose somebody from the board. The board chooses somebody.

I like that.

So, you know, that'll give us a good I believe diversity of thought on that.

Yeah.

On that committee. No, I mean that that addresses one of my biggest concerns was uh the appointment process, you know, I mean, if you're if you're trying to get as impartial as possible, the process also has to be as impartial as possible. That I think sounds like one good way to get as close as possible.

Yeah.

And Jenny, remind me when the boards start their new year.

They start um October will be their first meeting. And you do have board, so they would be okay. So we Okay, we will ask them to when they convene in October to designate.

Yeah, I was looking for your first council meeting. We might just want to have some aligned around the words and you're only going to miss two board. It depends how soon you want them to be. I I do sorry J didn't I do think um um you can talk through it tomorrow and tell us like what to send out but what what happened with 150 is the staff sent it out to the boards with wordage from council about the charge and um that stuff you may want to sign off at your council meeting you know just to like have it more official people can tune in watch conversations do some research so

that would be the October the 8th.

Okay.

And we have onboarding new members too. We don't want to in the same meeting or immediately after the new people's come to the table, ask the table to pick somebody because those new members are unfamiliar too. So I think probably even waiting till early next year, you know, maybe December, January, I think makes a little bit of sense.

So we can have this discussion tomorrow.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a great point to make in front of the council.

Yeah.

Because some might be in a real burden.

Let's do this now.

Remember,

yeah, we can't approve it till we approve the budget, which is

Well, I need to jump in.

Okay.

Um because I've done additional research. Um and our charter actually has different language than the state statute.

Um so I will read it out loud. It's section 3.7. Um it says the council may fix its own compensation and the compensation of the mayor and any other elected officials. Adjustments in the compensation of the mayor and any other elected officers may be made effective as such time as the council may direct, but the salary of elected officers shall not be reduced during the current term of office unless he shall agree there too. Um, so there's wording in here that it says the mayor and any other elected officers. At least for the mayor, you could adjust for sure you could adjust the mayor's compensation at any time you would like other than reducing it or reducing it with the mayor's consent.

So, so what I'm hearing is you can't reduce it and you only raise it.

Well, unless you say yes.

This sounds like an old policy.

Well, this is our chart. So, this comes from the state legislature

because we used to appoint mayors.

Yeah. And it's probably a relic of olden times, but it is in the current carry charter. And so, it's worded just a little bit differently than the state law is worded.

What supersedes what, the state law or

the charter?

Well, that's an interesting question.

Um,

you need to go to code canons for this.

Well, I don't think they'll give you the answer. Um it's sort of an it depends but um the statutes themselves say you can use both and you can choose which one you want to go with

really.

Yes. When there when there's kind of two ways of doing something the statute says one way and your local your local law which is what this is. This is a carry only local law as a different way of doing things. Then you can choose the way you want to go. So, I would say it's not the Coast Cannon article that you found that's based on the state law, but different people have different things in their charters. And so, ours is slightly different.

And so, I think there's a little more wiggle room if you wanted to consider reducing for sure the mayor's um compensation during the year, but also potentially your own

reduce or increase, right? If you just change, but not decrease mayor, specifically the mayor. Well, the salary of elected officers, I would say actually you probably can't reduce anyone's salary during the current term

unless they agree.

Um, so you could change and reduce the current. So again, as you pointed out, would we sort of be adding up

pay, you know, salary plus benefits to get to a number and as long as that number

so I don't have to hunt. Could you send me that in an email?

I want to put that on a slide

so everybody can see it.

Yeah. So I just I hate I always hate as an attorney to talk about absolutes and you can't.

So the citizen the citizen commission could do the work and if it's not a decrease to our total compensation we could adopt at any time. If it is a decrease to our total compensation, we'd have to adopt it as part of our fiscal year budget.

Well, it's actually even broader than that. It says during the current term of August. Mhm.

Well, so that would till the end of next year.

Next term runs through November

longer than that.

27. Yeah. Or December 27th.

So, let me do some more work and thinking on this in terms of the exact timing that we need to think about um for when the changes could be affected.

So, you're not there tomorrow or you are?

I am there tomorrow. Yes, I'll be there tomorrow because I'll probably be calling on you. I imagine if we go with a resident commission route, it would probably be hard to get it much sooner than budget time anyway. But that would be one consideration. If you make the determination that we could in fact change policy sooner rather than later, if expediency is more important than a commission's review, we could adjust it ourselves. It sounds like maybe very quickly if we wanted to. Um, but I imagine if we go the committee route, it would probably be tough to get their work done. Their recommendation is to us, again, it's just a recommendation. We still have to do something with that um to pass it much before spring.

And one of the recommendations is that information be clearly in our budget documentation anyways, what our salary compensation is. So,

yeah,

it needs to be it needs to be solidly part of the budget creation process anyways.

Yeah. So yeah realistically it's

so when we see how to say this when we create the committee assuming all this happens as we've discussed

we say okay each board nominated person but getting back to what Jenny said from the 150 we've got to give them a charge

and this committee is going to come up with that charge or we want to ask council that

we can ask council but I think then we finesse it.

Yeah, I think we would ask them the the broad charge, right? Like, does it include benefits? You know, is it just salary and allowance or is it benefits? But then I I think that's probably

enough for us to have our marching orders to figure out uh directions for the committee.

Okay. Look at us making progress and work for Lisa and probably Jenny. Sorry about that.

Okay, so anything else for tomorrow? If not, we can go back.

I think that's plenty for tomorrow.

Okay,

I think doing this peace meal actually makes a lot more sense than inundating the full council with every minutia of all of these policy changes. Okay. Well, then I'm just going to use this again as some scaffolding to um uh advance through the conversation, but you know, we can finesse the language of what's here, but we can scrap all together. we can plug some holes and add anything that's missing. But so I'll I'll start with I'll just go in the order that I presented it in. So uh the individual annual expense allocation I think we have broad agreement that we like this bucket idea even if we don't know what the the dollar amount should be. So, uh, I wrote again all the qualifiers, possible recommendation, right? That that should sound as, um, tenuous as possible because this is all up for, uh, discussion amongst our our whole, uh, council. But so, all travel, training, and meal expenses acrewed by individual council members are capped at a maximum dollar amount for each fiscal year. When that maximum is reached, any additional expenses are the personal responsibility of the council member and the dollar amount is to be determined.

And so, I mean, if we're still going through, you know, the slide deck idea, I can leave it just like that. Or do we want to come up with a dollar amount?

I think we need to recommend a dollar amount, but before we do, we probably want some history. I don't know hard how hard that would be to get Jenny Dina how hard that would be or like I don't know how many years do you want to go back?

Yeah.

And you know what maybe we'll

we got to go back and stop before co because co's a whole different thing.

So like three years.

Yeah. You know, I mean, there's going to be a lot of nuance here because, you know, another idea that I capture somewhere else in here is also are there exceptions that don't count towards your personal allocation? Um, you know, are there events that we just considered part of council's budgeted work and we'll all attend or we're all invited to and they don't count. And so depending or not, depending on which events qualify might determine how high that has to be.

Mhm. And I would make an argument that there's dissatisfaction with some spending habits in the past.

So past history isn't necessarily as applicable here as what we think reasonable thresholds should be for the future. would give us a discussion point though, you know, over that list. We probably shouldn't have done that and that one's okay. You know, that kind of thing is what I was thinking.

Um, I think setting a reasonable cap also makes us prioritize because it does send the message you can't do all the things unless you want to pay for it yourself. So

yeah,

I can't I could throw out $4 amounts right now and I I I'm confident that

individuals watching this would have a strong opinion on some of them and others find more appropriate. Do you know what I mean? Like I I think it almost doesn't matter what people spent in the past.

I I could see that argument, right? Where what determining what's appropriate now

and what are our peer communities? where like we see Morrisville has a $2,000 cap for example.

That seems reasonable. If I if I were to learn that Charlotte has a $6,000 cap, I would not feel that's a reasonable amount

and wouldn't consider it.

Does that make sense?

Let me give you an example. I actually spoke to a group that was coming here for an inner city visit

and I did it inside the gathering house and I started off saying inner city visits are important because the place we're standing in today came that idea came from an inner city visit.

Yeah.

As we were walking through a park, what is that? Can we go in there? This is really cool. We should add that to our park design. Mhm.

And that's how that came into play. Over the years, inner city visits have come up with a lot of those ideas. Inner city visits are important to me.

I don't know how much we've spent in inner city visits. Um, and

be nice to know

what did we pay versus what the Chamber of Commerce paid, for example.

Um, we could come up with like past inner city. I mean, that would be easier, but I just know coming up with lot of the last three years may be harder because that would okay

would be right on or telling you what the inner city visit's going to cost this year might actually be more because they change each year.

So, looking past may not matter if they choose to go somewhere different this year because it really depends what deal they get with the hotel. It's not a set amount.

Um,

okay. So we could come up, we could ask, we could find out from the chamber how

much they're thinking or around because they haven't published it.

I think they're thinking about going to the Atlanta area

and how much that would be and then kind of that would be your baseline.

They probably have a budget

that they work within.

They may I'm unaware of what they have and what's public. Yeah.

You know, for people to have. So um but we could come up with the amount and maybe look at last year's too as just two numbers of like inner city visits. I think it it would be a lot to pull three years worth of stuff just to maybe not

I don't want to create a ton of work. I'm just trying to get

that would be on finance staff. It wouldn't be me. So that's why I'm really hesitant.

Let me make get some clarity from both of you. In my head, registration fees and travel expenses are two different buckets.

I think in my mind, this is one bucket. We've got we've got a bucket to budget personally. And you know, to your point, your day job doesn't allow you to do a lot of travel um for council work. Correct me if I'm wrong. That's what I I've heard you say. Um and so your bucket might be a few things here or there when you can,

right? One inner city trip in four years, for example. I think that's the only council travel I've done.

Um, but I do it because I'm at large and Harold, you can attest to this. We we are all over the place. um if this bucket when I was doing some of the research on allowances I was like well people think my car allowance is absurd but I put a fair number of miles on my car driving for council and I know this because I don't drive it otherwise

I drive it to the courthouse once in a while for my volunteer stuff otherwise almost all the miles on my car are

council miles um and it's the real ex The real travel for me is zipping around the 60 square miles that carry is it two

60

60 point something yeah

be boopping around carry um and it's this bucket I in my head I envisioned it a you needed to register I just paid for my North Carolina um Coalition on Aging registration I just didn't even want to

deal with all of this so I just paid get it out of my pocket,

right? But that is a local event, but that is,

you know, really a council thing. Um, and so that's where I I'm getting a little confused in my head when we're talking about travel and events like really what is that bucket? Is that all not at town hall meetings?

Yeah. I

is that the definition which I'm perfectly fine with. I just want to

I mean what I wrote is all travel, training, and meal expenses. And I mean because I called this whole thing travel training and meals. To me that was like the biggest bucket. But if those three words are either not inclusive enough or too restrictive we can be more specific. But to me, this is a bucket of um yes, all of the expenses that the town might pay for in the execution of our duties. This is not mileage reimbursement. We are not talking about travel. We're not talking about our car allowance, right? That's compensation. That's a fixed amount. Um, we're talking about attending a local conference with a registration fee or uh there was the carrying place GABA. Um, and I even, you know, when we get down to there, if we get there tonight, we might need a couple of meetings to to go through this because it's dense. Uh, you know,

there's also going to be a difference if the town is a sponsor and they've purchased a table and we with staff are offered a seat at an already purchased sponsorship table versus a standalone event that maybe only the atlarges are invited to, for example, um, and the town isn't a sponsor. So, you would each need an individual ticket, but

all of that is your personal bucket. So you have X dollars a year to allocate and you get to decide do you want to maybe spend twothirds of it on a inner city trip or do you nickel and dime it all year long because you're doing a table here and a thing there and a occasional gala and a conference when you can make it to. But that all of those expenses we would be tallying towards a personal maximum beyond which we would then be free to continue attending at our own personal expense.

Do you feel do you both feel that that is the spirit in which most people want to see us reform our policy? Like that would

I think that

for me

they want to know and they want to know the pre-approved list. what what things are you going to,

you know? I'm not like going to a pickle ball tournament in Atlanta. That has nothing to do with anything.

Yeah. But

and I just I think the gray area is tough for us because now the onus is on each of us as seven individuals to decide what feels appropriate because we don't have policy that is this specific. So again, just to get back to the affordable housing conference next month, Bella and I said, and I you know what, I won't speak for Bella. Uh but I said I am attending this in the execution of my duties. If not for being on council, I would not be attending this conference, but I feel that what I will learn there is appropriate for this role. And so to me, I said, "Yes, please, town staff, purchase my

registration to the conference." Mayor Prom Bush elected to pay for her own registration. And again, I do not want to put words in her mouth either because she should be able to offer her own rationale. But let's just say hypothetically her rationale is

I'm not certain. We don't have a policy.

I'm just to to be safe, I'm going to pay for it myself. I think she's attending in uh uh in executing her duties and that she really shouldn't have to pay out of pocket the way anybody in any ordinary job would not pay out of pocket for attending a conference that is part of their job responsibilities and yes an industry conference. Um but I don't blame her for making I made one decision she made the other. both are defensible because we don't have a policy that tells us which one is the the right choice. And so I think this gives us that opportunity to say with a reporting mechanism, right, that it's going to come it's to the public and to one another. we know where our dollars are being spent, but that if it is in the execution of our duties, if it is in the pursuit of our council work, that we have the ability to have that paid.

Well, and I would add another layer to that.

If you go to these conferences or wherever you go on tax dollars, you should report. If I was in the corporate world, if I went to something, I have to come back and tell what I learned or what I saw, what I experienced.

It could be a paragraph,

it could be a couple of pages. It could be anything.

Key takeaways.

Yeah. Uh but I think that should be part of it. Explain to the public why you use their tax dollars to do this.

Um and if you can't do that, probably shouldn't go.

Yeah, I agree. I agree.

And you know to your point too mayor you know if you have a passion project or you know a passion issue and you want to attend all of the conferences on that issue to the ex you know at the expense of attending something else that is up to you to allocate your dollars how you see fit

with all of these other mechanisms in place approval of our colleagues and reporting back to both the public and the council.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because it's not a free-for-all. It has to be relevant to your council duties.

So, what do you think we need to get to a dollar amount to recommend to council because 2,000 and 6,000 or whatever that difference was is pretty large

or smaller. Don't know.

Yeah.

Where we get that number. I mean, I think that's fair.

Don't have an opinion. I don't I I you get up I think we could easily go too high.

Um and there's other there's a couple other questions I think that are associated in here. Um the only thing I you know association memberships for example that's probably one of the larger council expenses I have

and I'm talking like the NCO NCCOA like that's just a an association that you know there's a membership not talking about partisan associations or partisan organizations

add membership and subscription to this it says because it says travel training and meal should it say

well and I don't know I don't know if that should be a part of that if I'm an individual member.

That's an interesting question because I'm a member of the Wake County Mayors.

I was going to say is to pay dues once a year.

That was

Does that come out of my bucket?

Um because if not, if I choose not to go there, then I would be one the only one out of the 12 that's not represented.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Nobody can take my place.

Well, and should your bucket be a little bit bigger because there's a handful of things that are unique to you that would be egg on her face and also problematic with the relationships to our peer communities if the mayor's not attending.

I mean, but let me ask, do you consider that membership discretionary or is that more or less required? I consider it almost required because you're if you're not there, you're not representing Carrie and based on what we're doing now.

Yeah.

I'm going there late.

Yes.

U because they're going to want to hear what I have to say

because I mean I wouldn't count that but the devil is going to be in these details

to figure that out. I will say when um we are invited as an organization um to be a member of things so not an individual we do have a like a organizational place where we

and then somebody's appointed to that

we pay the league we pay the league the UNCC school of government

um we pay the mayor's association but also the metro mayor's

um association about Yeah, because I think all of these are already approved through the budget process. You know, this is already part of the execution of the the council's support of the council's work that would not count individually.

And in my opinion, if you start dissecting that, then you're harming Carrie because we're not represented where we should be.

Yeah. So define, you know, we could have any and policies can have exclusions

excluding um memberships or invitations extended to us as a whole organization, not as an individual member.

Something like that

I think would help clarify that there was

say invitations because that gets like into the event or Yeah,

I would say organizational memberships. There you go.

Is probably how we refer to them now. And so like you said, you recently paid for the coalition of aging. If Michelle had a organizational membership, she could have paid out of that. And I don't know if yours

and we might if we get some clarity on this stuff, right? But in the meantime, you know, we're attending together just separately. You know, I just joined as an individual member, which is probably a good thing anyways.

Um but it doesn't represent Carrie as well as Carrie being a sponsor and a member. Yeah. And so that would come out of her bucket just like with Campo that comes out of transportation's bucket even though we do have um people on their board. So it's a little bit spread out more than probably you realize.

Well, how about this? Let's put a pin in it and let's because we're going to have a lot more of these questions I think as we go through that might help inform even just an intuition of what that dollar amount might be. Yeah. So let's keep that as a question in the forefront as we talk about the other dimensions.

Yeah. And just park one other question whether or not um surrogates can be allowed and what whether or not we're sharing are we pooling

right? Can

can you pull if not that's fine just I think we should answer that question because that's going to come up.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So then the next one we started this evening answering a little bit if every expense should be approved by the full council and mayor you argued no we probably don't want to nickel and dime one another that we should probably

you just think it becomes political when you or could become you don't want to create an ordinance or

yeah where you're just embiding

politics

so Morrisville set that threshold at 500 Right. Um, you know, Chapel Hill was really broad. It just says council members are free to choose which of any they want to attend. Um, and they don't have a a peer approval process

and they don't have a recommended or not a recommended pre-approved list.

No, I mean theirs is really broad. It says you choose if it's the professional meetings you wish to attend. Um so you know this is pretty closely related to the next one which is uh we would then still want uh that that regulating mechanism to know that then these dollars aren't being spent anywhere on anything and so that is the transparency part. So, you know, right now we said that these would be captured in consent consent agendas per procedure established by the clerk's office. And so, we will see that on Thursday night, the first iteration of what that looks like. Um, it's live now.

Yes.

Which, you know, uh, we can still iterate and refine over time. Um, so just to point out, if we set a dollar amount here, those purchases below that dollar amount are still being reported.

So it's not as if they get, you know, sort of lost in the ether that anything under 500 then nobody knows where it was spent. It's still reported. It's just it doesn't trigger a vote of seven.

Nope. So, do we want to pursue a a threshold? And now we have another subjective call. What is that threshold? I

mean 500 seems reasonable to me.

It depends on Well, I mean it does seem reasonable. However, it also depends on the allowance.

Oh, that's true.

I mean, if your allowance is 700

Yeah. Uh but if it's, you know, a bigger number like 2,000 like Morrisville or a bigger number,

500 being the total trip amount

or lodging meals, airfare, I think yes. Yeah, I think you know it being the execution of whatever it is you're asking for. So yes, I don't think for like if you're going on an inner city trip, you're going to break it in. you're not going to itemize it and ask for approval for accommodations that are over five and airfare that's under I think you're going to have to put that into the inner city total cost and ask for that

and without going too far in the weeds let's say I estimated it's $490 and we don't come before council it ends up being more just come back later and say hey it's more

or you got approval for $1,200 and it cost $1,622. Then what? Are you in trouble?

Yeah, I I I know that sounds silly, but

I Or you get an approved amount that you'll be reimbursed for and you're on your own. Like again, if if we're paying with our own cards,

you're talking about a reimbursement. Maybe we get approval for a reimbursement total and then if that amount that we spent ended up being different than what we we had approved and that we kept receipts for, you can request an amendment. Let's if $300 more and you think it's fair that you get that extra 300.

So maybe you maybe you got stuck there because of weather and it was of no through no fault of your own, for

example. I think this is less about the dollar amount that the expense is going to incur because remember it's going to count towards your allocation, right? So you're you're if you go over what you think it's going to cost, it's still counting towards your your overall bucket and you've used up more money and it could it was it's not necessarily a reimbursement because you could be asking our clerks to be purchasing these things for us. Uh you know to to be making arrangements or or executing council um uh conference registrations. Um, I think this is less about the dollar amount and more about uh uh what threshold do we need to buy in to just the value of what it is you want to do? Is it worthwhile? It's it's because it's expensive, you know, whatever. If it's 500, we're saying above 500, we need to it needs to be approved because we need to verify the value of what you're doing. Less so the dollar amount. It's more so

uh we want to know even if it's your own allocation, even if you know you're you're going to be counting it towards your own bucket, above this amount feels like a pretty big expense, we want to say, "Yeah, that feels like a valuable way for you to allocate your dollars. And then how the you know actual uh dollars and cents works out will be one reported in the reporting mechanism two counting towards your overall allocation that you're going to be capped at. So I don't think it matters so much exactly how much you spend more. So do we want a policy that we at some point say because it's going to cost this much money. We want to weigh in on whether that's valuable

or if you can reasonably expect your trip to be over $500, you need to first get council approval. Not for the

specific dollar amount.

Exactly.

But for the expense itself

close to

Yeah. I mean, you know, if it's 100

75, I don't know if it's going to be that or not. I'll go ahead.

Yeah.

Or not, you know, and then and and then

you and then ultimately, like, for example, somebody like me,

I am not going to eat at at Subway three times a day. So, I won't have what the auditor would recommend as a receipt for $16 for dinner. Not. It's just not going to happen. So, if this policy could be comprehensive enough that I can go and get whatever vegetarian or seafood thing delights me that day, I I just get my $16. Like, here's a receipt. I did have dinner. It was in the course of executing my duties. What I would like is for the the for it to be kind of that clear where it's this is exactly what the town will pay for.

Wow.

And this is what they won't.

Yeah. And so and then the rest is on me. If I want to get fancy Nancy,

then I can pay for it.

And further in this document, we'll get to that kind of specificity of pdeiums and you know what qualifies as travel expenses. I mean, at a threshold of 500, we all know if it's out of state travel, you're triggering that immediately. You can barely get a single hotel room or a roundtrip uh airfare for $500. So, I mean, I think automatically If we were to set the threshold plus or minus $500, out of area travel is going to trigger it immediately.

And so I think it would come into play more or it, you know, again for like these more ordinary local conference registrations

like hosting conference status. We don't want if we don't want that $275 to have to come before all seven of us to give

the yay or nay. We just want it to count towards the allocation and be reported back to us in the reporting mechanism, but we don't need to take an official vote on it. That's sort of what the the benchmark is for.

Do you envision these over 500 expenses being approved as part of the consent agenda

the same way we would?

I would.

Right. I just I made that unless there's an issue which

we all read the consent agenda and if we have an issue with it

we can always ask for something to be pulled because I think that's a good mechanism to both show what we did spent and what we in intend to spend as well

or you know what we did spend and what we intend to do.

Yeah.

So it's I think it's

and and if we do a report that's perfect place to put it. You know, I went on this here's this is a staff report, council report on what they did.

And like I said, paragraph or whatever you want to say.

But this is really

Yeah.

I'm going to this conference because I believe blah blah blah.

So ask for like a brief justification, consent agenda or no?

If if it's over 500, you don't want a justification. Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, there's what could you possibly put on there that I wouldn't look at it and immediately know whether it's a what it is or not? Also, I can Google it.

Yeah.

If you're going to the

And to your point, if it's on consent agenda and it looks fishy or you don't know and you can't figure that out, then discussion.

Yeah. I mean, if there's something on there, sister city's trip or something, I know what that is. I know the purpose of that.

Does 500 feel rate? Too low, too high. That means every out of town visit is going to be triggered.

So,

I mean, it's just a matter of putting it on consent so everyone can see it.

Yeah.

And we're going to report it anyway.

Yeah. I mean, these are essentially the same policy. One is just before the expense occurs and one is after

after. Yeah.

So, two opportunities to keep a breast of what for us, our colleagues are doing and for the public, what their council members are doing

and what they're where they're spending it. Yeah, I think

and again consent would always give us the opportunity to pull up for discussion and take a vote.

Do we want every single overnight out of town to trigger it because 500 that's what will happen 750 a little bit more reason or you could have a night in hotel in airfare and three meals in Orlando might be a lot less bananas. 500's really low. You can't go anywhere even for an overnight.

Not even drive to let's say I drive to Charlotte and spend two night well maybe a night in a hotel with

some meals. Yeah, that's going to be close.

It just seems really

Yeah, especially if you're like in downtown or something. Yeah, I don't know what the number

and again we are just making a recommendation that the rest of council can disagree with anyway. So this is just sort of again, you know, a starting point. So maybe we say 750.

I would I would only bump it up just a little bit so that there's also a little bit more evergreenness to this policy.

Sure.

500 today is not going to be 500 in two years. We all know that.

Yeah.

And that brings me back to our meeting tomorrow night. How often should the policies we create be reviewed?

I ask that question of council.

I get to the policy. I'd be interested to see what everybody thinks.

That's Do you want me to put that on the slides? Do we want to know or is it too early?

And we'll offer that we review 143 after a new election each year at a council at a work session.

Perfect.

So that the new council

is that a practice or a policy?

I think we've done it two years in a row now.

So it's a practice. Yes,

that's how I know about it or I Yeah,

if there were thing other things routinely review

just a clarifying question my office.

Yes. Um, we would get a request from council to be signed up for something and then that's when it would trigger to go on consent is what you were thinking.

And the onus would be on us to tell you whether or not it's above or below the 750 threshold.

Because it would be two different Oh, wait. No,

we could think of that. I mean, yeah, it would be, "Hey, Jenny, I'm going to do this trip. it needs to go on consent for the next council agenda and it would be up to us to give you a little

blur

description of why we're doing it.

We would just take your email like that way it stays in your words and stuff like that if you had it

and it could go with

like right now your report online says what was spent and then

maybe it's not your words but maybe it's a copy and paste into that table we were making like

what has been requested and what has been spent.

Yes. and we would sign you up until the next day.

Yeah. Okay.

And probably the same document that the document like here's what's requested, we fill it out, here's the justification, then afterwards complete it um with we would complete it with what we spent, not you because it's

well you don't complete anything now and we would just take your receipts, your email to go from that.

Okay.

Yeah. We wouldn't want to involve a form.

Oh, got it. Okay.

Yeah.

So, I heard 500 750. I say we start we propose 7:50 to our colleagues and see what they say.

Maybe they think it's crazy and it's too late. I don't know.

Maybe they hate all this. We spent a lot of hours and they're like, "No."

Time check is 6:22.

Moving on.

Yeah. I think we just keep plugging and we'll see how far we get. I I had a feeling this was going to be meaty

and mine can wait

going to take us some time to get

there. There's a lot of unpacking unfortunately with the cell phone stuff because it bleeds into public records.

Uh so for the next one, we're basically already doing it. Jenny, would you rather this read that it's a little more specific that it captures sort of what we've landed on or is leaving it generic as like per policy established that we would report out what was on behalf of council? Yeah, I'm going generic.

Generic. Okay.

Okay. Well, look at that. Moving right along.

Okay. So then we get into travel and I broke it into local and out of town. I mean local I really just put these conference admissions. I personally couldn't think of something else that would fall into quote local travel because we talk about local meals separately. So this isn't even you know again being invited to the gallon or the chamber breakfast or whatever it might be. Um, this is just local travel. Could you think of what else would qualify besides attending a conference in the triangle? And this isn't training.

I would I wouldn't use the word conference because there's coalition lunchon and etc etc etc. Um, I would say something I would define local travel distinctly. For example, traveling to execute your duties outside of town hall within Wake and Chattam County, Wake Durham and Chadam, whatever. That is one kind of local and then that's probably going to be different than if I've got to go to Bunkham County or, you know, if we're far east or far west or something like that. So here, let's do this because this might be helpful because so that's local and then out of town.

And the different municipalities here had different definitions of what was out of town. Um, some had a mile radius, some just said distinguished essentially between overnight and not overnight travel. I mean, that kind of leaves it up to you. I mean, I'm sure some of us would go to Wilmington or Charlotte in a day, you know, and back. And so that is not local, but it's also not overnight.

Um, you know, so I mean, maybe this whole notion of local doesn't even really matter. I mean, we could practically just scrap local

conference admissions um not requiring an overnight stay.

Ah, I see what you're saying. Um because

you don't wear this. I don't know

if we look at so okay uh travel applies to any trip requiring an overnight stay. Expenses incurred in the course of traveling locally, eg mileage in a private vehicle are covered by council compensation and are not reimburseable. So just making clear that we're not talking about mileage reimbursement.

Okay. So we could maybe expand instead of just conference admissions, it would be conference and event or just something a little more catchall

and then

define what out of 10 means.

Yeah, let's just keep going because we'll get to training, we'll get to meals because I mean a lot of this is, you know, maybe even artificial categories we're creating. Maybe some of them get combined. So

can can I ask?

So I spoke at the chamber group in Buffford. Mhm.

Um, and I I could have stayed with my daughter.

I didn't charge for travel.

Mhm.

Um, and this would qualify if travel is what we're recommending.

Well,

because I didn't even consider that travel. I mean, if you didn't travel as on a

plane,

then you I mean, yeah, if you drove in your own vehicle and stayed with family, then you didn't incur any expenses for either the town to pay for or to be reimbured.

There's a hotel night in there and that comes out of my bucket

if you wanted to. Yeah.

Yeah. Mhm. And that would have so because the next one says allowable travel expenses either paid directly by the temp or submitted for reimbursement include registration, transport, lodging, meals.

And that was pretty standard language across the other municipalities.

That makes perfect sense. I I see what you're saying. So, let's let's let's keep going because we'll let all of the ideas maybe kind of percolate together. Well, we'll we'll do three minutes and then uh we'll pick up wherever we leave off tonight. So, then we get into pdeiums,

meal pdiums. Um, and we had talked about having council PDMs just mirror precisely what staff's perdems are. Um, so that is one way to go. Um, the other municipalities basically did that. So, Chapel Hill has actual meal cost with receipts. Durham went with this sort of complicated uh formula of $25 a day plus 15% tip, but it was different if it was overnight. Pittsboro just did the GSA predium, which I believe Lisa, you said is what the town staff is.

We do a PDM. I can't tell you if it's GSA or IRS or exactly where it comes from, but

um no receipts are necessary. Okay. It's just if you're traveling, and this is for overnight travel, so it's not, you

know, during kind of the workday travel, but if you're traveling overnight,

and so that requires a dinner and a breakfast, but maybe you're home by lunch, so you don't get the lunch, right? But you get a So, it all depends on what your travel schedule is. Um, and then we have a form that we fill out and you know, I was I qualify for a pdeium for one dinner and one breakfast. And those numbers are whatever they are. And that's the employee gets um gets paid that.

Okay.

Yeah. No receipts necessary. Makes it simple.

And so it sounds like our policy is like a lot of policies that I saw that first day and last day of travel

qualifies a little bit differently,

right? Depending on what time you leave, what time you get back. Yes.

Okay,

that's reasonable.

So I mean to me that's like a why reinvent the wheel for something particular to council when we have a staff policy. That sounds

and I believe that that is also one of the procedures that um staff is looking at as part of our work on the dashboard items.

And so if there's changes to that, you know, they could stay in line with each other, council and staff.

That'd be something that would be easy for you to send to us that language.

I can send you the current one, but again, I like I believe it's being worked on.

Okay.

Do you want to stop here? rather than start another one. It's 6:30 and I wouldn't mind going over except for

my meeting starts now. N completely gonna be late.

This this is good. I did not expect for us to get through this in a single meeting. I think we're likely when we reconvened and revisit this again. You know, maybe you've had time to sleep on it and it's like, oh, actually, you know, I'm thinking about this a little bit differently. So, we'll just

keep chipping away at this one. I'm gonna reread it, too, because I had our last conversation in my head and I

Yeah,

but we made really good progress because we're coming to our colleagues tomorrow with some

Yes. And if you'll just read the cell phone stuff because it it I got really hung up on public records.

You did. And you may not need to. It's really two separate questions.

And I would also volunteer that we have a very thorough public records policy that's not mentioned here. So,

and Oh, yeah. No, no policy. We have several different policies that also work in the solution.

Yeah,

tell me about those.

Completely understand that. But I think we as a council should discuss our responsibility in the public records process.

Yes. And I love doing this. Absolutely.

And so that people understand that we're not just lazy, right? that this really is it's a it's there's a lot to keep track of and we're pretty diligent about it, but I think there's

it was very difficult to divorce the two

things completely. There is a way to do it.

Yeah.

But we need to talk through the whole thing I think before we can get there.

Okay. Thank you. We'll reconvene next week. Same time, same station. Thank you.