Governance committee considers tiered process for council policy requests to city staff

Council staff and aides presented options Oct. 20 to the governance committee for a tiered process that would govern how council offices request staff time and administrative support for legislative work.

Aubrey Chen, a council aide, and Craig Cook, a council policy analyst, described a model that separates informal requests from formal legislative directives and major resolutions. The presentation drew on practices in Oregon cities—Salem’s one-hour threshold, Eugene’s two-hour rule and Minneapolis’s three-category model—and recommended a system that tracks informal requests, scopes legislative directives at the committee level, and reserves full council action for major programs or initiatives.

Under the suggested approach, informal or briefing requests would be handled by department heads and could be tracked by council operations. Legislative directives would be scoped (deliverables, timing, feasibility) with council operations’ assistance and approved at the committee level; more significant initiatives or resolutions would require full council approval and a feasibility review by administration before final action.

Proponents said the model would increase transparency about which requests require substantial staff resources and reduce ad-hoc demands on career staff. Craig Cook said the process could allow the administration to flag requests that exceed capacity or require a formal directive. The presenters and several councilors emphasized the need to preserve councilors’ constituent-service and oversight roles while avoiding excessive burdens on bureau staff.

Councilors raised practical concerns. Some members proposed raising the bar for what counts as a legislative directive or limiting the number of directives a single councilor may request annually to avoid overloading staff. Several councilors said the informal request category should preserve constituent-service functions and the council’s investigatory oversight; others recommended making timelines and expected turnaround times clear for legal and budget analyses. The presenters said the proposals would be included as recommendations in the council governance handbook rather than as immediate binding code changes, and staff indicated they would continue administrative consultations and return with revisions.

The committee did not adopt binding rules at the meeting; members asked staff to continue consultations with the administration and to return with refined language and operational details.