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Attorney and manager set expectations for council contacts with staff and use of committees
Summary
The attorney reviewed when council members should contact staff directly, the city manager's responsibility for administration and constraints on council involvement in personnel and contract negotiations; staff suggested cohort meetings to focus council engagement.
City Attorney Lisa and City Manager Alan Steger urged council members to route administrative requests through the city manager while reserving direct staff contact for simple inquiries. "If your intent truly is just an inquiry and it's a relatively simple answer, feel free to ask," Steger said, adding that he will ask staff to involve the manager if a request requires research or judgment.
Why it matters: The guidance aims to protect staff from being put on the spot and to preserve the city manager's role as the city's chief administrator. Lisa warned that repeated direct intervention by council members can undermine administrative processes and create stress for employees who must reconcile the council member's informal direction with the manager's instructions.
Lisa reviewed common examples: council members may meet with citizens and ask staff factual questions, may serve as subject-matter liaisons for committees, and may participate in working groups. But she said negotiating contracts and handling personnel matters properly belong to the city manager and to HR. She recommended creating governance policies to clarify when the mayor or a small working group should handle ministerial tasks versus when full-council motions are appropriate.
Practical steps discussed included: - Cohort meetings: Steger proposed small, focused one-on-one or two-on-one meetings to concentrate council attention on specific objective categories and reduce repetitive outreach. - Committee rules: Attorney reviewed that standing committees are permanent and ad hoc committees should be time-limited and generally open to the public.
Discussion vs. decision: The council did not adopt new rules at the briefing. Steger said he will propose an approach for cohort meetings and that staff will work to standardize how requests that require significant staff time are escalated.
Ending: Steger emphasized that clearer communication protocols will reduce staff burden and suggested the council identify which members will form cohorts for specific objective areas.
