 Are you ready? I'm locked. I'm waiting on you. I'm locked and loaded. All right, I will call this meeting to order. Please, we're going to start with a roll call. Ballinger. Here. Bitter. Here. Oran. Here. Carlson. Here. Damro. Here. Donahue. Here. Drawn. Here. Hammond. Here. Kydeman. Here. Herman. Jose. Here. Poth. Here. Lissard. Here. Here. 14 present. All right, we do have a quorum. Please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the fight of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Looks like it. If we could use our microphones tonight, we are being recorded. If not live, I didn't ask. But it's one of the two, so it is live. So please use your microphones. I see approval of the minutes on the agenda, but there is nothing attached. So we will move on public forum. Anybody here for public forum tonight? If not, we'll move on to 2.1. Charter ordinance number 1-15-16 by all the persons Carlson and Bellinger. In ordinance, being subject to the home rule provisions of section 66.0101 of the Wisconsin statutes to reduce the number of all the persons in the city of Sheboygan from 16 to 10 by the 2017-2018 council year. Mr. Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Carlson. For discussion purposes, I'll move to approve. Second. Right. I have a motion and a second under discussion. Mr. Hammond. Thank you again. I guess I will kick this off. We've talked several times about going to smaller size councils, and the one concern I have and continue to have about going from 16 to 12, 16 to 10, 16 to 8. I understand the logistics of 10 because we have 10 supervisory districts, and I'm fine with that. It's how we're going to deal with the committee structure. I know personally, being finance chair and president, that comes with six or seven other committee assignments. I guess my question would be, how are we going to deal with five standing committees with 10 all the persons and making sure that we have the quorum issue figured out and can get the work done that needs to be done, notwithstanding all of the other committee assignments that council folks are on, whether it's architectural review, city planning, so on and so forth. So I guess that's a question. And if we can solve that, I guess I'd be a lot more amicable to looking at going from 16 to 10, but that's a lot of workload for 10 folks. So I guess that's kind of where I'm at at this point. OK, thank you. All the person down here. Thank you. I would speak in favor of this. I think it's long overdue. 16 people is just way too many for a city this size. I think reducing it to 10 following the county supervisory districts makes sense, because we won't need to redraw lines or redistrict. And then when the county does redistrict after 2020, we can just fit within those supervisory districts. I think Alderman Hammond brings a good point forward with respect to committee work. And I've been thinking about this. And one of the things that we have not done in any thorough and innovative way is look at how we do business. We've had five standing committees forever. A lot of these committees do a whole lot of administrative work that really could be done with staff. And if it impinged on people's personal rights, if it was a denial of a license or denial of a sex offender waiver or whatever, those things could come to committee. But when you think of all the things we do that really staff should do, and we can be the reviewing legislative body instead of the administrative body, I think that works. The good thing about this, although I would be one of the people in district four who would have to run again real quick, but I think we have lots of time from the time we passed this ordinance to figure it out. And I really think we could, let's just look at how we do business. I think we can be more efficient. I think that we can do business in the kind of way that we expect all other segments of society these days to do is to look at what you're doing, look at how you're doing it and see if you can do it better. And I just really think that we can do it and that we should really take a stab at this. I just think it's a great idea and I thank you for bringing it forward. Thank you. At this point I'm just gonna interject real quick. I'll keep it brief. This was a concern of mine as well as Alderman Bellinger's. We've had some preliminary discussions on this. My intent would be after passing this we would put it in the hands of strategic fiscal planning to come up with the committee structure to study it and put some work behind it as Alderman, all the Roman Donahue has stated. A couple ideas that come to mind right away are combining some of our standing committees. If you look at some other cities such as Green Bay, Stevens Point, public safety and law and licensing are actually combined. I've seen combinations of public safety and public works. We could combine salaries and grievances and finance together. There's quite a few things that we can do. I think that's definitely something that is feasible within the next year as she stated. At this point I would defer to Alderperson Boren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. About a year ago, Alderperson Cotthin, I brought in a similar resolution or ordinance change. And with the intent at that time, first of all, I wouldn't have brought it forward if I didn't favor going to 10 Alderman. I do favor that. However, I'm not gonna support going into this before we know exactly what the committee structure is going to be, what committees we're gonna combine, committees that we can maybe possibly do away with and give that to staff. Another thing, I think the mayor is gonna have to decide how many standing committees Alderman are gonna have to be on. I think the time is probably over where Alderman are gonna be able to be on one standing committee. And I think this should all be done ahead of time and come back with a package if strategic fiscal wants to do it fine, whatever. With input from the mayor and maybe the chief administrative officer, but I'm not gonna vote for going to 10 Alderman until I know if I decide to run again, not only for the one year term coming up, but possibly another term after that, I wanna know in advance what my responsibilities are going to be. And I don't wanna vote on doing it tonight. And then, well, we're gonna figure it out later. I don't think that's the way it should work. I think we should be presented with a complete package and then go from there. Thank you. Thank you. All other person can. Thank you, chairman. I am going to support your charter ordinance. I, of course, was a favor. Thank you. You're welcome. One out of three. I actually would have supported the eight. But yeah, I will support the 10. I feel that if we were actually at more committees, we'd be a little bit more informed and would make informed decisions. So thank you. Thank you. Anything else from the floor? All other person, Hammond? Thank you again. Again, I don't object to going to 10 just for the record. I guess question for attorney Adams. Is it possible for something from your office to put together a list of the committees that require an older person to be on them versus those that we have an older person on that we just choose to have an older person on that makes, if that question makes sense. I know the five standing committees have to be older persons or three, if we combine them, however that works, but things like city planning, architecture, all those committees that we have older persons on, which ones are required to have one of us on, and which ones are, could we have that large members of the community part of, that stuff has to come back to council anyways, in most cases. So if somebody from yourself or Rose would be willing to do that for us, I think that would go a long way to helping us move this to other person Donnie's point. We have streamlined things, not as much as I'd like over the last couple of years, but we have done some things to start streamlining. We've passed off, for example, risk management and some of these other types of things have morphed into finance. We've given staff more leeway with respect to approving things, particularly with risk, approving expenditures under 15, all of those types of things. In order to get to this point where all the persons are legislating and not getting involved in the day-to-day administration, I'd like to see that continue as we go forward and this might be the impetus for doing that. So if your office would be willing to do that, Attorney Adams in the next week or two, we could get this on strategic fiscal very quickly and start having this conversation. So thank you. And with that being said, we'd be under a deadline because we'd have to have it figured out within a year. So that's kind of the impetus for this. This would force us to not drag our feet because I believe that wouldn't happen if we didn't do it now. All right, anything else from the floor? All other person, Belanger. Thank you, Chairman. When I was first elected, one of the first things I did was brought a resolution to reduce the size of the council. And at that time, the most logical thing would be to cut it in half. I sense of changed my opinion and I think 10 is the number to go with so it does match up with the county supervisor districts and that would make elections and the administration of such elections much easier, moving forward. I'm gonna support this. I'm one of the, I signed my name onto this resolution as well. So I'm certainly in favor of it. I think that if we were to pass this, it would give us certainly the impetus to look at the committee structure and take it seriously and move forward at the streamlining process. We've already instituted direct referrals and attending meetings remotely. We've approved that. So there's some other flexibilities and things in the procedural process that will I think allow this to be easier than it would have been in the past. So I understand Alderman-Born's concerns that he would like to have everything laid out and nice and neat in a package and look at it ahead of time. But I think if we were to delay this and wait for that, there's no impetus or urgency on doing that. And I think by passing this, there's enough time that we can go through and make some strategic, logical, and important decisions related to committee structure and I don't think that there would be a barrier to by passing this that I don't think the committee structure concern should be something that should preclude somebody from supporting this. Okay, thank you for your comments. Anything else from the floor? If not, I have a motion and all the person hand it. I apologize. I don't mean to monopolize this. I just have a legal question for Attorney Adams. With respect to if we were to pass this resolution and I think it's the mayor's discretion as to whether he wants to put it on the agenda. But delayed, so this gets passed tonight. We delay the vote at the council level until the second meeting in December, which gives the strategic physical planning committee a month to kind of ramp some things up and provide some structure. Is that doable? We would have to have this through, I'm sorry, through council before December for when people pull papers because they've gotta know how long their term is going to be. But we're not doing this till 17. Why would we need to do that, Mr. Chair? That's right, we did change it. Right, I mean you can delay it. It's not really changing anything other than the term of years. There is, the earlier you get it done, the better for a couple of reasons. One is so that when people are pulling the papers, they know what they're running for. The other is obviously the clerk's office needs some timeframe in order to do all the things that they do as far as elections as well. But it could be done this way. We wouldn't be violating any. Yeah, I believe you can still do it in December. I think the better, when this came, my advice was try to get it done in November yet because I think that's better, both because of the issue of people pulling papers already December 1st and for the clerk's office. But my conversations with the clerk's office suggest that because we're not dealing with changes in actual borders until a year down the line, they can deal with it. So we could pass tonight. The mayor could hold it on the committee or the council agenda until we've had a chance at least a strategic fiscal to meet and have a conversation about it. You could. Thank you. Great. Alderman Bitters. Going to Alderman Hammond's earlier request for Attorney Adams. As I read through the ordinances late last week, I counted five official committees that it's written into ordinance that require at least an Alderman. In some cases, it's having a blank on which one it was, but one of the committees requires all of the standing committee heads, but the official count would be five, as I saw it. And then there's other committees that the mayor appoints that have Alderman. Sustainable task force comes to mind, but it's not written anywhere in the ordinances, at least as I could find it. Thank you. I guess I would just add that. I mean, this does affect polling papers for 2016 because it would only be for one year term, so that could affect whether or not some members of this body would run. That's why I'm of the opinion that it should be passed before December 1st, but I'll leave it at that. All the person bellinger. Thank you, Chairman. This would be for Attorney Adams or for maybe Sue or something, but could at the time when you present the documents to the standing committees and the things that Alderman Hammond requested, could you at that same time provide a map of the Aldermatic districts right now versus what the county would have so we could see where we live and what that would look like? I'm sure that the city clerk's office has the maps for the city. They're also on the city website. County supervisory maps, I found them on the county website. They all go by wards, so the best way to compare is to look at what wards are in each and that's the difference, but I can certainly provide at least a list of wards. I don't have the software to create maps. Okay, thank you. All right, any other comments from the floor? Alderman Boren. Thank you. Attorney Adams, would you go over this business on the documents, the last section down there about the 60 days after passage and publication that goes into effect? Right, so because it's a charter ordinance, there is 60 days for people to basically come back in the city, get enough signatures and force it to a referendum. So it would not go into effect unless if those went through. So yeah, you're right, I missed that when we were having our discussion. You really do need to get it done in December because you've got to have the opportunity for people to take care of that. Then I was also wondering if there's a problem with some of these ancillary committees if there's a problem legally or even by appearance that if you have some of these ancillary committees and there's gonna be no Alderman potentially and no Alderman representation on those committees, is that gonna create a legal problem or an appearance problem where you're gonna have possibly citizen appointments voting on all this stuff? Yes, it's gonna have to come back to the county but that to me poses another problem. I know last year when Alderman Cotthin and I were considering this, I had a call from a couple constituents and they asked me, well, what are the standing committees are gonna be? Are they gonna be three Alderman and two citizens or what, I said, I don't know, we haven't worked that out yet. Well, I heard loud and clear that they didn't want non Alderman on there as voting members, that they wanted the Alderman to be the voting members because obviously we're running and we can be elected out of office and they don't like what we're doing. So that's another issue. There's a lot of issues and that's why I'm really concerned. Again, I favor 10 but I think we're putting the cart before the horse. I really think that this should be thought out with the mayor's input to just do it in a week or two. Another interesting thing I found out from Sue Richards, I guess because I've been the longest here and if I run again and I run again in 17, in my 10 years on the council, I will have had three different sets of constituents because I'll be moving into Don Hammond's district and Susie LaSarde's district if I run in 17. Welcome. I know you've got nice people over there but I'm just building up a rapport with my second set of constituents and again, so this, another issue and I think it's gonna be the same thing for Joe if he decides to run, he's been up here as long as I have and I'm not saying it's bad but you do build up a report with these people, they know who to call and then you're gonna have to meet a whole other set of constituents. So anyway, I'll vote for it. If we have a complete package and this is all laid out ahead of time but I'm not gonna support it tonight, there's too many questions, thank you. Well these seats can technically change ever two years when we have an election so I don't think that's a very strong argument for not supporting this. They can also change ever 10 years when there's a census. Once again, I mean, I don't think that's a very strong argument. In terms of the committee structure, we're going to talk about it. We've been talking about this for years. This is not the first time this has come up. This is gonna be the impetus to actually seriously look at our committee structure. When you look at any other city of comparable size, their councils are much smaller, their committee structures are a lot more aligned just because we've been doing it for the same way for 50 years doesn't mean we should continue doing it. We shouldn't, there's plenty of committees that we can streamline. Especially, I mean, we don't need to have committees just have committees and I feel like we are doing that right now. So anything else from the floor? If, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chuck, I just have a question about the 60 days. So somebody comes in in December, they take out papers for Alderman and we've passed this just prior to that. So 60 days in, people are running for the office, circulating papers and within that period, we're gonna hit the deadline for taking out papers. Isn't that gonna cause a problem if there was a petition to go to a vote? I mean, can we really set ourselves up for this to happen? Yeah, so legally you can do it, you could still pass this at the next council meeting, but you do have that particular problem where people may be pulling papers and not knowing whether it's going to be for a one or for a two year position. Is that proper? Legally it's okay, practically there are real issues with it. You get past the next council meeting and approving it, you now also run into the time frames for the elections. And so realistically delaying this in order for the strategic fiscal planning to deal with it, you now have run out of time and you'd have to postpone everything a year. Thank you. Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess I need some clarification on this timeline. So if we're going locked and loaded in 17, and we got 60 days from passing this, which would be November 16th, if we did put this through next week, that puts us in January, the 60 day window. So the uncertainty is already there during the polling paper time. This thing, again, technically doesn't take into effect until essentially the paper polling period of late 2016. I'm not sure why that creates this issue, other than the fact that people might be polling papers for a two year term when at the end of the day it ends up being a one year term. But with this document out there, they understand that that's a possibility and then that could happen. You know, I guess that whether we, if we did this and I just looked it up on my phone so I wasn't at, for those at home, you know, checking emails, the, that would be the 21st of December would be the second council meeting or the 7th of December, which would be the first. So 60 days from there would be a month, you know, the end of February. What difference does that 30 days make? You've got a primary election potentially in February. They have to have the ballots ready. Sure, but they can take out the papers and knowing whether it's a one or a two year, they're not gonna know that before that. Anyways, because January 16th, there's two different issues. The two different issues are first of all, whether people know that they're pulling one or two and you've correctly identified that as, you know, if people know, they just have to deal with it. You know, the other issue though is that there is a deadline for the ballots to be complete that the clerk's office has to meet and that's, I don't know the exact date that the city clerk would know that but I do know from my conversations with her that it is in January and the ballot would need to indicate whether it's a one or a two year term. So that's your problem with delaying this until, if you would not pass this until December, you now postpone this ordinance going into effect now into February and it's too late to have the ballots properly prepared for the primary election in February. So we have to be sure that that ballot deadline is after January 16th. Yeah, from talking to Sue Richards, we're okay with the time if you pass this at your next meeting, but that's it. That's also a conversation I had with the city clerk just before this meeting. Okay. Alderman Boren. Just one more legal question. Being that this is a charter ordinance, if we vote on this affirmatively Monday night, that doesn't that lie over? Or doesn't it lie over if it's a charter ordinance? Wouldn't we be voting on it a final vote on it? Or would it automatically lie over and we wouldn't be voting on it until the second meeting in December? You can make your final vote on it. It's now at its second reading because this was not a direct referral. Any other comments from the floor? Alderman Wolff. Thank you, Chair. I guess I just have a couple of things. I understand the spirit of the reducing it to 10, and I think that there's some very good concepts to that. I am concerned, though, overall because we don't have the details and I've heard it from several older persons that this has been talked about for many, many years. I even remember it in the past when I was part of the council. The concern that I have is that here we are at the 12th hour and we don't have details. We don't have the structure. We don't know quite what's gonna happen, how it's gonna happen, and it's going to affect a lot of things. Are we making decisions because we're trying to get something done before the end of the year? Do we have an agenda? What's, how is this going to affect? What if we were to vote on the concept of 10 and we put out there a year that this coming year, we actually basically get the structure, the committees straightened out, organized, and then that way people voting in the future would know what they're up for. Thank you. Alderman Hammond. Thank you. I'd like to make an amendment to this. I would amend going from 16 to 10 by the 2017-2018 council year to the 2018-2019 council year. That would give us, to Chuck's point, that timeline goes away. Nice. And it would be December 1st of 2016 where we'd have to worry about some of that stuff. And... I just want to make sure that you're clear. You're putting out one year or two years? I would be putting out one more year. Okay, because you said 18, 19, but okay. About 17, 18 now, council year, so I was putting out the 18. A is 16, 17, so A would change for, you would basically forward each date one year. Correct, correct. Second? I'm sorry, you already said that. So that would give us, I think that solves, I think that solves a lot of some of the challenges we have of getting it through without the structure being put in place, but also gets the wheels in motion to have this conversation and now it's on the book. So I would propose that amendment. I believe it's been seconded. Thank you. On the amendment, Alderman Borne. I would offer a friendly amendment to that, and that would be that we would get a report back from the strategic fiscal planning committee by the first council meeting in March of 16. Do you accept that? That is a administrative point now. I would suspect we'd have something done well before that because the mayor is gonna start thinking ahead for committees and stuff like that. Does the second approve of that? Yes. All right, anything else on the amendment? If not, we will be voting on the amendment. Anyone unclear as to what the amendment is? It's pushing everything back one year. All right. I'll call the roll. Yes. Okay, Bellinger. Aye. Bitteres. Aye. Borne. Aye. Carlson. Aye. Damro. Aye. Donahue. Aye. Drawn. Aye. Hammond. Aye. Heidemann. Aye. Herman. Aye. Jose. Aye. Pap. Vanderheel. Aye. Wolfe. Aye. Thirteen ayes. All right, now on the document as amended. Any other discussion? If not, I would call the roll. Bellinger. Aye. Bitteres. Aye. Borne. Aye. Carlson. Aye. Damro. Aye. Donahue. Aye. Drawn. Aye. Hammond. Aye. Heidemann. Aye. Herman. Aye. Jose. Aye. Besard. Aye. Thiel. Aye. Vanderheel. Aye. Wolfe. Aye. Forty-nine. All right. Motion passes. Moving on to 2.2. General Ordinance number 33-15-16 by other persons. Carlson and Bellinger and Ordinance re-establishing the salary schedule for the office of all the person commencing in council year 2017 through 2018. Open it up to the floor. All other person Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would move to approve for discussion purposes. Second. I have a motion and a second to approve under discussion. All other person Donahue. So I'm just interested in your rationale. Yes. I've been on the council for, I think, this is my fifth year. I've brought this up in a more than one budget discussion. I think we're overpaid for what we do. If you look at some other city municipalities, there are some that pay less than us. There are some that pay more than us. I know we live in a city, but however, and there's a lot of services provided for the tax dollars that we do expend. However, I believe we have put it to the taxpayers in terms of the wheel tax just recently, the garbage tax before that. The city was just re-evaluated, not that that had anything to do with us. I mean, that was a mandate by the state. I think this is a show of good faith to our taxpayers just to reduce our salaries by $600. I don't think it's too much to ask. All other person Boren. Thank you. First of all, I don't think I'm underpaid for the amount of time that I put into this job. I do put a lot of time into it. For example, I think getting ready for salary and grievance today alone with that volume of documents was at least an hour and a half. So I myself do not think I'm underpaid. Am I looking for more? No. Also, I think there was an analogy in the paper by somebody that because of the garbage fee passed and the wheel tax passed that somehow we should make a contribution. Well, the last time I checked, all 16 of us live in the city and we're already making the contribution. I made that quote. Oh, was it you? Okay, well, whoever made it. We're already making the contribution because we all live in the city. Over the next 10 years, I've got two vehicles gonna cost me 400 bucks. The garbage fee, I've made my contribution there and I continue to make it and it may get renewed, so I'll be making it again. So we're already making that contribution. So I think for the people that are working hard in this job and putting in the time, I don't think we're overpaid at all. But I'm not looking for more money, but I think it should stay the way it is so I'm gonna vote against the pay decrease. I'll hold them down to you. Well, I just react to this. If you're gonna change the salary, I think it should be either to reduce it substantially. I think the school board, for example, is paid. They might be up to $2,000 a year now, I'm not sure. Or pay a lot more. I mean, you can go to those extremes. $600 is apparently some effort to recompense the populace for the bad things we've done to them. I disagree. The tax levy rate in this city has hardly budged in 10 years. Now, think of anything else in the world that has stayed at a level that certainly the county hasn't. We should, both the administrative and the legislative part of city government, I think has done a splendid job in the last 10 years under extremely trying circumstances. So if the $600 is just a, oh, you're bad. You've imposed this whale tax, you've imposed this garbage fee, and therefore you should be punished a little bit. I just don't buy it. So I think if you wanna do something dramatic in either direction, well, we can talk about that. But I personally am not gonna take the $600 as my penance for having kept the tax levy essentially the same over a decade for having reduced our city debt, for having reduced our department of public works from 120 to 80 people, from having kept the library levy absolutely flat for the last three years. I just don't have any apologies for that. So I'm voting against it. Thank you, Alderman Heidemann. Thank you, Chairman. The last time Alderman Decker, I don't know if everybody who's all here, he had submitted a resolution. We all went along with it because we had passed a star resolution at the time. So we said, well, everybody's taken a hit. Okay, so now we're gonna take another hit again. I guess my concern is not so much, I don't care. Take all my money. It doesn't bother me. But my concern is this is a fast track thing, Chairman. You seem to think that you can take everything go past committees. We have a salary and grievance committee. Don't you think this should have been sent to that committee first, as opposed to basically sure that it all gets done in a hurry just so we can get something done? I guess I take my responsibilities at that committee very, they're very important. And this is where I would have saw this. I would have thought this document would have went to that committee first, rather than right to the committee of the whole, so we could get it slammed, dunked and done. You're going around even with the next one. Again, that didn't go to salary and grievance either. What are you just trying to, now that the council's gonna get smaller, you're gonna be able to maneuver things faster and faster through city government. I guess I just have a problem with everything coming to the committee of the whole, then to the council and skipping the committee process, which is what we have. All right, thank you. Well, I guess last time I checked this is a committee. I mean, it's called committee of the whole. And it happens to be the committee that holds the entire body. So there's 16 of us here discussing a matter that affects every single one of us, or may not if we choose not to run. So sending it to salaries and grievances, I think didn't need to happen because usually salaries and grievances deals with salaries and grievances of city employees. We are the legislative body here. Committee of the whole consists of the entire body, so why not bring it here and have the discussion? So thank you. Alderman Herman. Thank you. Nobody becomes an alderman to make money. That's obvious. We do this because we love our city. We care about our city. We want to make it a better place to live, work and play. When I took out papers for this, I had no idea what the salary was and I could have carried this. With that said, I do believe that the salary should reflect the importance and the prestige of the job. And if you drop the salary too low, it's not going to reflect the importance and prestige of the job. Now, it was mentioned that the city wants to attract more quality experienced people for the council, which obviously makes sense. Well, if you drop the pay from 4,000 a year to 600, what type of quality experienced leadership are you going to get for that? I mean, up to an outsider looking in, we know better, we know that it's an important job Sally Smith or Tom Jones who's thinking about doing this is going to say, hey, well if they're dropping the pay from here to here, why should I bother with it? I mean, I'm very proud to be on this council and I would do it if the pay were $80 less. But in my personal financial situation, this job is keeping me afloat. I just lost two jobs in two months, so I can't afford to have my pay dropped. I mean, 15 other people here, they have wives, husbands, children, they have a home to take care of. They need as much money in their pocket as they can. I enjoy this job. It's like being a school teacher. You do it because you love it, not for the paycheck, but the pay should be in line with the prestige of the job. Thank you. All the first bellinger. Thank you, Chairman. A question for the attorney. Can we structure avatared pay scale where officers like president would make something different than the rest of the body? I believe you can. That would be a different ordinance, but I believe you can. Could I make an amendment to this? Indicating that? You can make any amendment you like. Okay, I would like to do that. Since being on the council, and more recently being vice president, I've seen how much work in time is involved. And for the president of the council, that position takes an inordinate amount of dedication, time, energy away from the family. There's things that people at home watching this on TV don't really understand or see day to day. There's issues that come up daily. There's phone calls when you're at work doing your regular job that you need immediate attention. You're running back and forth here. You're putting out fires. You're dealing with all sorts of things. And I would like to see the salary. I would make an amendment to increase the salary of the position of president to $5,000. And that would be it. I don't see any need for any other position to have any increase, but I would do that. All right, I have a motion on the floor. Is there a second? It's for discussion, I would second that. Under discussion. All the person happened. First off, thanks, John. But I want to, for the interest of disclosures, I did not, this had nothing to do with me. I just want, it is a lot of work, but for this discussion, obviously I will abstain. But again, I appreciate the recognition of the work that the position does. But again, just for discussion, I'm going to abstain, but I appreciate the nice thoughts. It had nothing to do with that. Alderman Boren. Thank you, Chairman. Alderman Bellinger, just for clarification, does that mean that the salary for the president goes from 4,600 up to 5,000? That's about a $400 increase? Yes. Thank you. Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This document came in as a companion document to the one we just talked about, and the year of implementation was meant to happen when we were electing everybody for a 10-person council, and everybody would be elected at once. Right now, you're implementing it halfway through that transition, if we follow that course. And I'm just wondering if an amendment might be necessary to keep these in line. I was going to mention that after this amendment, so but I do agree that we should implement it at the same time, otherwise things just might get tricky, so. But under the current amendment, any other discussion? Alderman Thiel. Thank you. I'm all in favor of taking a decrease, as long as I know that the money that we're giving back is going to something important. Right now we're just speaking on the amendment. Oh, we are. Yes, too. Well, it's going to tie into that. Okay. So I would, the president's spot is actually an elected position by us that we feel that we want to put you, obviously, with those responsibilities. You know what you're getting into. You don't have to accept to be president or run for it if you're nominated. I feel you're all in the same playing field. Yeah, Don, I know you do a ton of extra work. I know you do. But I just think this whole thing is giving something back to the city. And that's where it goes back to the dollar thing is I think if we're talking about giving back to the city as far as dollars, we need to see where that's going to go. A lot of times these dollars just go into, you know, things that I don't believe in and I'd like to see where dollars go. I think we need my belief now that we got a lot of things going on in the city as far as we got a road plan. We have all these other things going on as far as development and stuff. The next thing we really need to attack is I think putting more police force on. And I think we need to look at some of these dollars going to that. We have a serious issue. I think in the city of Sheboygan and we don't have enough people to take care of it. And if I know those dollars are going to get us more police officers that we need in the city to combat some of that stuff, I'm all in favor of it. Thank you. All right, thank you. Discussion on the amendment. All in favor of Jose. Just two comments. If the amendment passes to increase the one position to 5,000, then the other go down to 4,000 in effect. And assuming that the other, the previous charter ordinance we passed applies for 10 positions, it's less, my math is fuzzy. It's going to be $5,000 a year, which is a drop in a bucket. And I think it's just some grandstanding. So some people can look better about what they did to give back. $5,000 isn't going to do anything is my first comment. Second comment is unlike the post office, which continues to charge more money and provide less services, you're now in effect reducing the size of the council so people have to serve on more committees. And at the same time, reducing the compensation. So you're doing the reverse, you're now asking people to do more work for less money. Thank you. Under the amendment. If there is anything else I'd like to call the roll. Ballinger. Aye. Bitters. This is on the amendment. Yes. Aye. Born. Nay. Carlson. Aye. Aye. Yes. Damro. Aye. Donahue. No. Drawn. Aye. Hammond. Abstain. Heidemann. Nope. Herman. Nay. Jose. Nay. Ha. Nay. LaSard. Nay. Hill. Nay. Vanderheel. Nay. Wolfe. Nay. Five ayes and 11 noes. The amendment fails. Now the document as presented. I would just like to comment that there's many of us in this room, including myself, that sit on nonprofit boards outside of this body. And we do it for free. I spend a lot of time with a nonprofit board as well as many others. I'm not going to call out any names. But we do it for free because we feel it's something we should do. And the idea that I'm grandstanding up here to save $5,000 is quite offensive, actually. Once again, I think it's a show of good faith. I actually don't disagree with all the person Donahue. I mean, I think we should lower it even more. But I didn't have a, I didn't think this was going to pass anyways, which kind of counters us as a body and us in a democracy, in my opinion. We're sitting up here trying to keep more money for the amount of work that we do. It just, I see something fundamentally wrong with it. But once again, we have people all over the place sitting on nonprofit boards doing it for free that spend more time than people do within City Hall on city business. But I'm going to leave it at that. Thank you. Alderman Lissard. Yes, thank you. If we're, if this is going to take effect in two years, we're reducing the council from what we have to 10. Is that not a contribution to the budget right there? That's in addition to, yes. I'm not in favor of this. So I will be voting against it. And I think the savings, we all work hard at what we do. And I myself am on a nonprofit board and it's hard for that as well. But there's more accountability when we're in Alderman and there's more calls that happen. And I'm just not in favor of this at all. Thank you. You're welcome. Alderman Heidemann. Thank you, Chairman. You know, and you say that we look like we're gonna be, we want to keep the money for the job that we do. One of the things that I was the mayor in Sheepwagon Falls, I made, I mean, more money as an Alderman than it is a mayor in Sheepwagon Falls. But quite honestly, sir, you can put your check wherever you want. You can give all your entire salary to the general fund if you want to do that. If you really feel that bad, but the $4,600 that you make. Thank you. Any other discussion? Otherwise, the mayor did bring up an important part. So I would, in terms of the years, the 17 to 18, I think it should coincide with the previous document. So I would like to make that amendment that it would take effect in 18 and 19. Second. Would that be correct? Commencing in 2018. 2018. All right, I have a motion and a second to adjust the dates under the amendments. Any discussion? All right, it's voting on the amendment only. Oh, he voted on it. New one. Callinger. Aye. Bitter. Aye. Boren. Aye. Carlson. Aye. Damrell. Aye. Donahue. Aye. Drawn. Aye. Hammond. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. Herman. Pardon? Jose. Aye. Ha. No. Lissard. Aye. Thiel. Aye. Vanderweil. Aye. Wolfe. Aye. 15 ayes. All right, the amendment passes. Now we have the document as amended. Any other discussion? If not, I'd like to call the roll. Callinger. Aye. Bitter. Aye. Boren. Bill. Carlson. Aye. Damrell. Aye. Donahue. Aye. Hammond. No. Heidemann. No. Berman. Baird. Jose. Aye. Ha. No. Lissard. No. Thiel. No. Vanderweil. No. Wolfe. No. 5 ayes and 11 noes. All right, it does not pass. Moving on to 2.3, resolution number 93-15 by 16 by all other persons. Carlson and Bellinger, a resolution instructing the appropriate city officials to draft the necessary ordinances, resolutions, or regulations so as to eliminate the position of Chief Administrator Officer, the effect of August 23rd, 2016, and shift of various duties and responsibilities of the Chief Administrative Officer to the Mayor, Finance Director, and Comptroller, City Treasurer, all other person. Bellinger. Thank you, Chairman. I was approached by Alderman Carlson. He gave me a phone call and said he was going to be introducing this and wanted to know if I wanted to sign on to it, and I mentioned to him at that point in time that I had a communication that I was going to bring forth in December regarding looking at the potential to go to a city manager form of government rather than what we have right now, and in my discussion with Alderman Carlson, I agreed to sign on to this because my only intent was to have this body have a discussion on how we want to govern ourselves moving forward and how we want to represent the constituents of the city in the best possible manner. I don't have any real strong opinion of this particular document, but I want to have a discussion on all the options that are available, whether it be just go to the previous mayor's situation or the form of government that we had before, keep the city administrator like we're doing right now, go with the city manager, that's an option as well. I just want to have that discussion and have that out there and see which way we want to go. Quite frankly, I was not real positive about the city manager as far as having this body vote on it. I don't think anybody would want to do that without first going through a referendum, and the timing of that would have to be on the April election to have a referendum, so that's why I wanted to bring it forth in December and have the discussion and see if we wanted to put it on a referendum. But I think it's very important that we have this discussion. We've got administrator Imodio is going to be retiring in this next year, and then we're going to have a mayor election in the spring of 17. So I think the timing is perfect to have this discussion and see which way we think that we can best represent the citizens of the city. Thank you. Thank you. Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for I would move the file. Second. All right. I have a motion and multiple seconds to file under discussion. Mr. Mayor, did you chime in? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Oh, I'm sorry. He still has a phone. Go ahead, Mike. Mr. Chairman, Eldenburg was the former Alderman and sent out some minutes and some recommendations from a government structure committee that was held about five or six years ago. That committee's recommendations caused the council to adopt the current form of government which we have. And I was a member of that committee and voted for it. And now as mayor, I get to live with it. And I think it's a good way to go. I really feel that the structure that we have right now allows us, and it makes it more of a prerequisite, that we have to work with each other. The mayor in the past has been, had the prerogative to push this city in a certain direction. And now he's got to work with the president of the council and the administrator to make things happen. You have to, I think, be much more conciliatory and you have to sell your programs to the greater group rather than just pushing things around. My secretary, Mary, now, I'm the fifth mayor she's worked with. And when you have that kind of turnover in the mayor's job, I hope it's not going to happen in the future, but it causes the city to go in different directions. And that can cost us some money in the process because things are being done differently by each mayor that comes into that office. So I really think we have a good form of government. I enjoy working in the system that I'm in, and I hope that you'll file this and keep it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Alderman Hammond. Thank you. I guess to the mayor's point, that was part of the reason we brought the city administrator on board. Obviously, the history of it is well documented, and I don't want to necessarily rehash the history. But as the person that works the closest with that position, I will tell you it's an invaluable position. And in my opinion, professional management trumps management by popularity any time. Some argue that the cost savings, I would argue in the current position is saved or cost avoided well more than its salary currently is. Secondly, or excuse me, thirdly, our job is to provide division and direction for the organization, whether it's the mayor's office or us as a council. It's the chief administrative officer's job to implement that vision. When you go back to the silos where each department is running their own rides or with their own coconuts, you lack the ability to have a cohesive vision, or have that cohesive vision implemented. When I took over, that wasn't there, right? That department heads were all doing their own things. They weren't working together. They weren't talking together. Now they are. And you don't have to look any farther than our IT program to understand how that's worked. When I came on board, we had munis. And we had all these modules for munis we weren't even using, but we're paying for. And now they're slowly being implemented and they're working and they're talking together. And department heads are talking together about how they can do things better more efficiently and more effectively. That doesn't happen if you don't have an administrative person at the top that doesn't have to deal with the politics of things and worry about those types of things. Finally, and I think the mayor made this point. It allows for us to not only have an executive branch that's active and involved in the day to day stuff, but it also now gives the legislative branch an active and participatory voice. Because I can't be here every day. I mean, Bellinger can't be here every day. I spend about 20 hours a week on average in this, dealing with things that go on inside this building. But I can't be here every, all the time. So I think having that position makes a lot of sense. And again, it's almost like a checks and balances to what's going on to the mayor's point. We all have to work together and again, provide that vision and direction so that the staff has it. And then again, the city administrator implements it. So those are my comments. I appreciate the conversation and would be happy to have the conversation around a city manager to ferret that out and vet that out. But getting rid of the city administrator at this point just doesn't make any sense to me. Thank you. Thank you, all the person down here. Thank you. First of all, thank you Alderman Carlson for bringing this resolution forward, because I think it gives us an opportunity to think things through. Two, I'd like to give a shout out to two people, Elden Berg. Elden, you might be watching tonight and I hope you are. But I just wanna thank Elden for his thoughtfulness even in the time that he's not able to be here on the floor with us to send all the information out that he had sent and his continuing interest in all sorts of things that apply to the city and we're all richer for that. I was gonna give a shout out to Mayor Van der Steen, because I'm going to speak against the eliminating the city administrator position. I was gonna say I respect him so much for the work that he's done. But after his comments tonight, I have to tell you I respect him even more. So the opportunity or the vision that you have, Mike, for the city as a whole and everybody working together, I just really appreciate. I think we all in this room appreciate it and everybody who's watching and everybody here. And so I really, so a shout out to you. That being said, Alderman Hammond said everything I was going to say and probably a few things more. But I just wanna tell you this story because when I was thinking about this, it came to me. When we brought our second born home from the hospital, he was in a little bassinet and our older son was about two and three quarters. And one day I had flanned my younger on my lap and Michael just kinda climbed up and he said, mom, I just want it to go back to the way that it used to be. And I think that sometimes in city government, particularly in Sheboygan, we just kinda want things to go back to the way that it used to be and we can't. For the reasons that Alderman Hammond said, we're a big municipal corporation. We have a multi-million dollar budget. It needs to be professionally and not politically managed. I think things are working really pretty swell at this point. And again, Alderman Carlson, I thank you for bringing this forward for us to talk about, but I need to vote against it. And I am certainly happy to think about a city manager position. I do think though that we're not ready to give up our mayor and probably we shouldn't. Thank you. And I originally intended on speaking before everyone else did, considering this is my document. So I'm going to take that chance right now. It would be kind of odd if I didn't speak on behalf of my own documents. So I first just want to thank the city administrator of Modeo for the work he has done. This was no reflection on him. He was the perfect candidate at the right place at the right time. He's done amazing things for the finances of this city. We all know that. Our debt level is lower than it has been in a very long time. I'm not going to throw out a bunch of numbers because it doesn't matter at this point. But Jim has done an awesome job, so this was not a reflection of his abilities. But with that being said, he has kind of righted the ship. He has put us in a good position, a better position than where we were at prior to his existence within the city. As cliche as it sounds, I believe in a representative of democracy. And that's why I brought this forward. We have mayors all across the United States that run a city. And that's why I brought this forward. But I kind of knew this was doomed to fail from the beginning, especially since there are lots of phone calls being made this weekend. So, but at this point I will defer to Alderman Boran. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with, I'm going to be voting no on this also. I agree with what Alderman Hammond said and Alderperson Donahue. I'm on my fourth mayor since I've been up here. And I can say that since Mike has been mayor with the job he's been doing, my blood pressure medication has been cut in half compared to some of the drama we've had with some other ones. I also think the position of Chief Administrative Officer has been excellent for the city of Sheboygan. I think Jim on balance has done an outstanding job. And I wish him well in his retirement. And I think we should continue with the position, no doubt. Thank you. All right, I have one more light on Alderperson Herman. Thank you. I have to echo Mike's sentiments. After thinking about this long and hard, I do believe the Chief Administrator's job should stay as is. You need to build a consensus and have a sounding board not only for Mike, but for President Hammond's point. It's good to have the Chief Hammond deal doing what he's doing. It's good to have an administrator, whether it's Jim or somebody else. Other cities in the state have gone to this format. I believe 42 cities have gone to this format in the last four years. If it's not broke, don't fix it. Things are working well as they are. Keep the Chief Administrator's job. Thank you. And just so everyone is clear, the motion on the floor is to file the document. So if you want to keep the things the way they are, you should vote yes, just to be clear here. Alderperson Bellinger. Thank you, Chairman. I'm going to be voting in favor of filing this as well. I'm glad we were able to have, however brief it has been, a discussion on how we want to move forward. I do think there are some merits of city manager and we can look at that further down the road or when we've got more time to look at that in depth. But prior to me becoming an alderman when the position of the city administrator was created, I thought at the time it was something that probably needed to be done, however hastily it appeared. But in seeing how things now in my four years on the council have transpired in working with the city administrator, I think the people that were part of that created a wonderful solution for the city. As President Hammond mentioned, there's checks and balances in place. It relieves some of the pressure off of his position. The mayor mentioned that the mayor's position needs to be more conciliatory and work in concert with the legislative and the administrative body. So I think what we've got is really working really well and that is a credit to the people, namely President Hammond, who was here when that was created and to Administrator Imodio for the outstanding job that he's done. So he's been a tremendous asset to the city and hopefully that he's got a nice, long, fruitful retirement and we're able to find somebody that is equally as capable to take his place. All right, thank you. Alderman Heidemann. Thank you, Chairman. I did spend time on the government structure committee and received a telephone call from Eldenburg and I indicated at that time that I would in no way be supporting getting rid of the administrative officer position because the gentleman that holds right now and the gentleman in the future, I'm not gonna be able to do the job. But in your document, it says there are questions about the future of the necessity. What are your questions, Alderman Carlson? What's the question, why would you wanna get rid of the city administrator? I think I stated my position already. I'd like to hear it again. I believe in a representative democracy where the figurehead is elected by the people. I mean, I think that's pretty straightforward, Joe. We have a mayor that's elected by the people. This was put into place to put that difference between having a mayor, having control of all the department heads and making a decision to improve the government in the city of Sheboygan. And I was on that committee and you wanted to eliminate that. I do, yes. Well, I think Jim does a great job. I wish you felt the same way. That's not what we're debating here today, so. Any other questions or comments from the floor? If not, I'd call the roll. What do we could explain what we're voting against? Filing the document. Point of order? Yes. Point of order, if to file it, you vote yes, or necessarily to kill it, you vote yes. To, if you want it to, if you wanna get rid of the city administrator, vote no. Is that clear for everybody? Yep. Bellinger. Aye. Bitters. Aye. Boran. Aye. Carlson. No. Damrell. Aye. Danyu. Aye. Kiedemann. Aye. Herman. No. Jose. Aye. Peth. Aye. Lassard. Aye. Thiel. Aye. Vanderwill. Aye. Wolfe. Aye. 13 ayes, three noes. All right, motion to file passes. With that being said, I'd entertain motion to adjourn. So moved, Mr. Chair. Second. Is both changes to it, yes. All right. Motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. For adjourned. Thank you.