 the Sheboygan Common Council Committee of the Whole Meeting of Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012 to order. Madam City Clerk, would you call the roll? Kellinger? Here. Oren? Here. Carlson? Excuse me. Decker? Here. Donahue? Here. Hammond? Here. Heidemann? Here. Cot? Here. Lissard? Here. Wundewski? Here. Maddochek? Here. Racler? Here. Ben Akron? Excuse me. Vanderweal? Excuse me. And Versey? Excuse me. Eleven present. I hope we could stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag 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. We are on television tonight, so we will need our microphones. Number four on the agenda is approval of the minutes from the March 14, 2012 meeting. Motion to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second to approve the meetings from Wednesday, March 14. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye. Number five, we have a public forum on any agenda items. Anybody wish to be speak? I think the only member of the public is March tonight. Okay, we'll move on. Chairman's comments, I have none at this time. And then we have items for discussion only. Number seven, Aldermanic Orientation and Refresher. A, Function duties of the Committee of the Whole. I'll be making some comments along with Attorney Steve McLean and I'll have Attorney McLean go first, please. The only thing I can say about the function of the Committee of the Whole, it's covered by ordinance. Committee of the Whole says meetings of the Committee of the Whole shall be held only as needed for budget deliberations and for the discussion of other important issues as determined by the Chairman. That's historically the Committee of the Whole was met sort of on call. I think in the way, way old days, used to meet every Monday or every other Monday opposite the council meetings, but was determined that too many meetings and so it was cut back to sort of on call as needed basis and that's the way it has been functioning for quite a while. And if there are items you want to have discussed, Committee of the Whole, you need to talk to the Chair and get a meeting set up and get it on the agenda. That's all I've got. Thank you. I have just a few comments. I want to get into my Chairman's expectations and protocols. Over the years in various capacities, both with the City, when I had my business, state organizations, local organizations, I always served on a lot of committees, chaired a few committees, and I always found that at the beginning of a business year for whatever committee that was, that if the Chairman had set up some expectations to what he expected from his committee members that generally the Committee functioned very well and got accomplished what it was supposed to. So I've made it a practice with the committees I've chaired with the City to set up some protocols and I just want to go over a few of them with you briefly. Some of them are just housekeeping things, of course. If at all possible, if you could arrive 10 minutes before the start of the meeting, if you're unable to attend a meeting, it would be late if you could call the City Clerk's Office or my cell phone number, which you all should have. Please remember that the Committee of the Whole needs a minimum of nine older persons for a quorum to conduct city business and I really would appreciate it if we didn't have any unexcused absences. I also would appreciate it if cell phones and other electronic devices that are not pertinent to the operation of the meeting would be turned off and kept out of sight. I also would appreciate it if all the older persons would come to the meetings, prepared to be an active participant by having read all of the documents and materials prior to the meeting. I think one of the purposes of the Committee of the Whole is to have as many people in on the discussion as possible and please be prepared to be an active participant in all discussions. Another housekeeping thing, some Chairman have handled this differently since I've been a member of the Common Council. Some Chairman have chose not to vote at all on issues. That was their choice. My policy will be that I, if there's any roll call votes, that I will vote last on any roll calls. If you wish to speak, please press your button. Most of the time will be on television. Please acknowledge the Chairman. Each older person will be allowed to speak three times in any agenda item. A full discussion of each agenda item will take place with no time limit within reason. Most meetings will not exceed two hours in length. I know previously there were some complaints when we had some Chairman that the meetings were too rushed and there wasn't a full airing of the issues and I tended to agree with that at the time. However, you know, I don't want the meetings to be really dragged out, but I do want to have a full discussion and tell everybody's heard on the issues. The Mayor is not a member of the Committee of the Whole. The Mayor is welcome to attend the meetings and will be seated in the public seating area. The Mayor may speak at the Chairman's discretion. And then for maximum transparencies for the City of Sheboygan, I will attempt to have all of the Committee of Whole meetings televised on Channel 95 or 990. And a public forum will be held for each Committee of the Whole meeting with the exception of when we go into closed session for any agenda item with a time limit of three minutes per person with no time extensions. No prior registration is required. Those wishing to speak will be called up from the audience by the Chairman. And I'm hopeful with these expectations and protocols that we will have a successful year with the Committee of the Whole and I look forward to working with all of you. Thank you. We're going to move agenda item up and go into closed session very shortly. But first, I wanted Steve to give his part of the presentation of what a Committee, what a Committee of, I'm sorry, what a closed session is and whatever he wants to talk to us in that regard. Steve? Most of you are aware. City as a governmental body is subject to the open meeting law and the public records law of the State of Wisconsin, which means under the open meeting law, every meeting of a governmental body must be preceded by public notice and with limited exceptions, all business of a governmental body needs to be conducted in open session. That's the State law. The Council is a governmental body. Each of the committees of the Council are governmental bodies. So whenever you hold a meeting, you've got to follow the open meeting law, which requires public notice in advance. Generally, the law is 24 hours advance notice and it has to be disseminated and we've got bulletin board in City Hall and several places throughout the city where notices are posted. News media is advised. There is an exception under the statute for holding meetings within less than 24 hours. Basically, it's an emergency type exception. If you couldn't have anticipated for whatever reason and need to call an emergency session, generally, then you have to give at least two hours advance notice. There's no definition as to what good cause is for that shorter period, the two hour period, but generally, I'm contacted as to whether or not you can meet in a shorter time period than 24 hours notice and I'll provide advice to the Chair or whatever as to whether or not it's appropriate. A meeting is defined as the convening of members of the governmental body for the purpose of exercising the responsibilities, authority, powers, duties delegated to or vested in the body. Reason that's important is a lot of times you may be with a group of other aldermen and you're not the dawn on you that this may constitute a meeting under the open meeting law. Where this often arises is where there are meetings of other governmental bodies such as county board meeting or something like that and there's some topic of interest to the city or to the city council and you find that there's a number of alderman attending the meeting. Now if there's at least a quorum there at least a majority is presumed to be enough to trigger the open meeting law. If you could have anticipated that those members were going to be there, a notice should be put out in advance again 24 hours at least in advance that you may be attending this meeting of another governmental body and you're just there for observation or whatever and that you're not going to take any governmental action or any action as part of that. That's called a bad key notice after a case involving a guy named bad key. As far as closed session getting to that again the presumption is that all the business should be in open session unless there's you fit within a specific exemption for closed session even if you can fit into a specific exemption for closed session doesn't require you to go into closed session. The presumption is always there that an open meeting is good closed sessions are only if necessary and for instance one of the exemptions for going into closed session is on the agenda tonight under the exemption in subsection 1e for the purpose of deliberating the purchase of public property where competitive and or bargaining reasons require a closed session that's the purpose of the closed session tonight. As far as liability under the open meeting law if as an alderman or committee member you are in attendance at an illegal open meeting or illegal public meeting you can be held personally liable and find between I think it's $50 and $200 if the attorney general or the district attorney would bring a an action saying you attended an illegal meeting a couple ways to avoid liability if that would be if you're an illegal meeting or if you're participate in an illegal closed session of a meeting. One way to avoid that is as to closed sessions if you are concerned that it might be an illegal closed session if you vote no and vote not to go into the closed session generally you won't be found personally liable for the violation of the open meeting law or there's case law that if you rely on advice of your local council who's providing advice and is has that role to provide advice as to whether or not you're in compliance with the open meeting law and you follow that advice generally generally you won't be sued and or be found personally liable for a violation of the open meeting law. But I think as far as the closed sessions one other aspect closed sessions are intentionally designed as closed sessions the the idea is that the items you're going to discuss there are confidential and need to stay confidential they're not to be disseminated to the public. That ties into one of the sections in our ethics code dealing with confidential information. Basically it says and this finds all city employees and city officials no city official or employee shall without proper legal authorization disclose confidential information concerning the property government or affairs of the city nor shall he use such information to advance the financial or other private interest of himself or others. So it's ethics violation for you to disclose confidential information to others and I know there has been been allegations back and forth over the years individual circumstances about whether or not there have been violations of the open meeting law or the confidentiality provisions but it's it's an important obligation on your part if it is I know it's a concern you want to do the public business and to the extent possible those things are done in open session but there are legitimate reasons and the state recognizes that for local governmental bodies to go into closed session and those things need to stay closed question is how long do they are they confidential generally when the the purpose for the closed session and the person rationale for the confidentiality no longer exist then generally it's no longer confidential and therefore could be disclosed again I guess if anyone has a specific issue on that or question as to should they disclose something that was discussed in a in a closed meeting I'd appreciate the phone call or some conversation with you before you decided to make the decision to release that information publicly um I think that's uh Steve one thing you if you could touch on a little more specifically we have five standing committees and I if you would go over uh the importance of avoiding walking quorums what is a walking quorum and what entails why do you have to be careful about that okay again a meeting is a as I said defined as the convening of members of the governmental body for purpose of exercising responsibilities authorities powers duties delegated to invest in the body if you're you go to the ball game with some colleagues that who are also alderman and you start talking about uh city business uh theoretically you're engaging in governmental business uh so there's a a purpose test on whether or not you've got a meeting or not and there's there's a number test if you and a and a fellow alderman you're talking uh shop and you're talking about issues come before the city uh you're definitely discussing city business but it's not an open meeting because it's just two of you and you're not basically you're not a quorum of uh anybody now uh sometimes we run into issues where you got three member committees uh we just did away with the risk management committee but that was one where there's three alderman on the committee uh argument that discussion between the between two of the three uh over items that are uh germane to that committee would constitute a a meeting that would have to be noticed uh that's about as far out as you go usually most of the standing committees are five members so if you've got three alderman talking about subject that is uh germane to that committee and you haven't noticed that as a meeting you should cease discussing that business and uh because you may trigger the open meeting law perhaps inadvertently but still uh it can be there uh then to make things even more convoluted there's a case that says even if you don't have what's let's say you don't have a majority of the alderman together talking shop um but you've got a few and let's say the vote requires uh say to uh alter the budget requires a two-thirds vote and that's 11 members if you've got six members meeting and talking about budget issues and how to how to change the budget or how to prevent altering the budget or whatever that's what's called a negative quorum if you there's enough members there that could stop the action of the parent body in other words by voting no when you need two-thirds to to adopt something that can constitute illegal meetings as well if it's not noticed um I don't know how much we want me to go into this before we get into the closed session I think that's I think that's fine thanks attorney McLean uh for those that are watching on television we're going to be going into closed session for a few minutes but we will be going back on television after the closed session uh president Hammond would you like to make the motion to go into closed session absolutely um thank you mr chair motion to convene in closed session on the exemption provided in section 19.85 subsection 1 subsection e wisconsin statutes for the purpose of deliberating the uh the purchasing of public property we're competitive in bargaining reasons require a closed session we have a motion in a second to go into closed session can we do this on all eyes or we need a real call real call please bell under hi boran i'll vote last decker all right donahue hi Hammond hi hitamon hi kath hi lasard hi londusky manachuk hi racer hi and boran hi 11 eyes we now are in closed session we'll give uh the television people just a couple minutes to turn off the cameras and i believe chat tele is under number seven item b is the role of the mayor's office and we'll be hearing from our mayor mary terry van akron mary iran i just i just threw a life saver in my mouth too as i was walking um i wanted to talk a little bit tonight about the role between you as the council and me as the mayor you know each mayor has his own little way of doing things and uh i appreciate what what we did here tonight with bringing stuff to you you guys the 16 of you are the ones that make the decisions it's not the mayor it's not the staff and we've got to keep you informed and this is what the whole meeting tonight was before we get too much further down the road and and we need to have um your guidance on whether this is something we should be spending our money or spending our time on uh we could go long ways and then come back to you and and have you stop the whole plan um this way like we did tonight i think is it is appropriate that we got to keep you in the loop and that's that's my major goal in the next year that i'm here is to keep you guys informed and keep these things way ahead that you know before the public there's nothing worse as an alderman than to get a phone call at home and say hey i heard on the street that something's happening on the north side what's going on and you guys don't know it but it's been discussed you know in other places uh in as city uh staff or whatever um or between the chamber and and us and you're not being kept in that loop so it's my my intentions is to keep you involved more and more than you probably have been in in the past and and have you making those decisions with with our guidance and i be your liaison between gym and the fire department and the rest of the departments um to keep you informed and and keep you updated on those things as mayor i'm i'm on the uh plan commission and the transit commission so i'll be serving as as a partner on some of the commissions with you um but again my my major goal is that we all work together and continue to to get the information because as as alderman you need that information to make the the right decisions right or wrong um we're going to do that and and the political sides as we talked just a few minutes ago there's a lot of political sides besides just bottom line and we you know together you and i are going to face those political sides um department heads and other people aren't elected we're the ones that are going to get the phone calls about any political decisions or any policy decisions and i think that's what we're going to do is make the policy decisions make the long term goals in policy um and then have the department heads and and gym fill out and go out and um do those policies and follow those procedures and that's our that's our our main role is to set it and then not micromanage what they do i think we stick we we want them to stay out of the political and the policy side and we then gotta give them some some leeway and and trust that they can go out and do those things so that's what i'm looking for my door's always open i've uh talked to all of you all already and and if you have any problems don't don't uh don't hesitate to stop in give me a call you all have my cell phone number um give me a call at any time if you have any questions about anything and um we can work it out together anybody have any questions mayor on the uh commissions or committees uh i know i i'll be serving with you on transit but like the plan commission you actually chair that one right i actually chair the plan commission and then transit i think we vote for a chairman on the transit committee but i actually chair the plan commission thank you any other questions for the mayor thank you mayor thank you next we have uh under agenda item seven c the role of the chief administrative officer our ceo gememorial let me just read it yeah sure i did no uh time's up okay i'm gonna do everything that the mayor's not doing so i gotta somebody's gotta pick up the rest of the stuff you know one of the responsibilities develop and implement a budget uh that's my responsibility and probably in a few weeks at our next meeting um we've gone through a budget cycle very early this year and i'll be presenting the ups and the downs the goods and the bads from that so we can look at that expense i take a little peek at revenue because we get the majority of our revenue at the end of the year from the state so uh that's coming up in the next couple weeks also from that to look a little further out two three and five year plan and step off that current plan that we have so the city's really never had a strategic plan if you will uh but we're going to be putting one together this year uh one of the other things that drives that primarily drives that is is it and what are we going to do for systems uh within uh in technology within the city so we've got uh we've chartered dave augustin who's the it manager uh through finance committee meetings to go off and look at each department look at what their needs are what they do how they do it why they do it what data do we share and get all of that stuff together get it on a flow chart and then we can sit down and make some decisions and say okay what's the path we need to take what are the resources what are the costs and we'll have that done later on uh this year so that we can all take a look at that and from a strategic standpoint decide where we want to go and then based on that put together some numbers from a budgetary standpoint uh to see what that'll take us uh one of the other things is succession planning uh again for critical areas department heads or other key people in the organization we really haven't had succession planning so we've got to develop that and get key people in place so that they have the ability to train under these other people who are close to retirement um another good thing is to establish um guidelines and procedures to help facilitate communications between the city and our citizens and I think we've taken one of the first steps this year in developing on our website uh with the help of Dave and Chad uh to put a complaints uh log out there where we actually log in complaints from citizens all the persons anybody who has complaints either direct the citizen to go to the website and log it in themselves you can do it for them we'll be happy to do it here but once we do that we then record the the process that it goes through so Chad and Dave will then review these every morning we'll sign them to the appropriate departments the departments will have uh which is normal and customary 10 working days to respond to the customer issue complaint so that we have a track of the complaints that came in how we responded and where they satisfied uh we haven't had that before a lot of things fall through the cracks but uh we're getting a lot better now because we have one repository for all of this information um I act as the public information officer in case there's and I didn't really know what that meant so it's like we have an outbreak of mad cow disease I'm the representative that talks to the rest of the world about what's happening in the city so um any of those kinds of things I am responsible for I also have fiduciary responsibility uh to uh with the library and the transit system only because they're using tax levy dollars from the city so I make sure that I attend the meetings um and make sure that they're spending their money appropriately and within their budget also involved with Chad and with Don uh SCEDC takes up a lot of our time but again extremely important to the city and the county for developing new business leads and new business development and job creation also one of my primary roles as in today is to make sure that I consult with the mayor and the council to make sure that as these emerging issues come up that we fully explain those to make sure everybody understands and then based on those decisions carry that that message forward so that's kind of a nutshell what I do any questions for Mr. Modio Jim I've got one I I'd like you to comment on about I think it's about two weeks ago now the county took a very key vote uh to proceed with the 9-11 combined dispatch what is going to be the next hoops we have to go through and how are you going to be involved in that um at the mayor's direction he asked uh chief Domagowski to set a meeting up at least with the city side so that we could strategize and look at you know what our offer would be based on where we ended up uh from a cost standpoint and then with everybody's blessing propose that to the county yeah I wasn't sure if it was the third tomorrow friday good thanks for the update any other questions thank you okay my door's always open anytime call now we'll uh go down to item d and that is uh board docs and all romantic email system and uh our presenter is our it manager Dave Augustine still got a screen okay thank you council members thank you mr. chairman um Dave Augustine your Dave Augustine your it manager and where I take care of obviously the it department but I'm sure not if you know also the tv station wsc s so that reports to me as well so we're working with both things um what I have is a little handout that I emailed you all which I just wanted to go through and what it is just a simple user guide that you'll have I just wanted to go through I know what's going on this out there should come back now it's our wireless signal it's got to go around the corner it was cut off there it comes okay um I'd like to start out with board docs and board docs was implemented because one of the goals I was given is to with another team to go paperless as much as we can because in printing out all the council packets for every meeting what were we spending about 18 000 a year just on paper and labor so that's why we researched and went to the solution called board docs first of all um if you ever need any technical assistance with accessing our systems you can contact our it help desk at 3370 or you can just email me once you access the system as well again we use board docs right now it's our tool we use for our official record for city council meetings agendas in minutes basically to get to it you can go to this link which is in your handout or you can get to it from the city website when you go to meetings and agendas just to bring up an example as far as board docs this is what it will look like so we'll have a history of meetings out there so you can go back any time to it and then say you want to look at previous one you can look at it will come up and there it is here's where you'll have the option to either you can view the agenda if you want to view it online or you can print it out if you'd like yourself and when you click on printing there it is you basically have three details you can do a uh just a simple agenda you have the you have the detail agenda or just the current item that you're on and then you can print it out to get your own summary thing that you can bring to council meetings or you'll be able to follow along online as you'll see then what we also do is um clerk richards also puts in in the minutes of you know everything what the minutes are as well as in how everybody voted so that way everybody can go back and look at that as well which is what you saw in the current agenda item so she'll go back in and put it in it'll be how everybody voted or roll call as far as that goes pretty straightforward pretty easy to use like i said all the steps are basically right in here in this handout that you have for board docs okay any questions on board docs the next item we'll bring up is accessing your city email from outside what you can do is go to our main city website which is www.cityofsheboygan.info on there then there is a link called employee logon which should be right here simply click on it and then it will bring you to a sign on screen or then you should have been given your user id and password the key to remember here is when you enter there's a domain name and that's just sheboygan so it's s-h-e-b-o-y-g-a-n followed by this slash and then your username and then your password and then if i could type right now you gotta use sheboygan spelled right i never got any in typing so there we go and it brings you right in your email and this is your city email as far as that goes and then if you have your functions like i said if you want to email anybody in the city or if you have to email me for any reason you can the address book is right there that you can do a search on as far as that goes dave back when we started uh the city the city email system i under my favorites i have a topic it just says city emails and i go directly to the sign in without having to go to the city's website it makes it a little quicker correct i think you helped me set that up at that correct yes but it is a little quicker that way yeah if what you can do is when you go to that link you can copy that page right there and then make it a favorite senior minute explorer so that way you don't have to go to the city website first definitely definitely again in the handout here again all the steps are and and i've got the circles where you would do things like here with the domain name where i got it for the domain name user enter you know like i said sheboygan your unique user id and then your password and then you have your emails any questions about accessing your email and you can do this from any computer at home or there's a public computer whatever along with the email subject we also have like i said cell phones and personal devices we now have the capability of setting up email on devices other than blackberries like iphone or androids so that is a function we can set up to as far as that goes i think most of that to a monitor but as far as one go to your email it goes to one um that's what i wanted to talk about as well where attorney mclean and i had talked about that because where this comes into then is a matter of what subject to public record ipads and iphones allows you to set up multiple email accounts and this is where it's going to be important so let's say you take your personal device that's where the access for open records come in if you can set up two email accounts like your own personal one and then your work email as long as they are kept separate your personal items are not subject to public records now the other addition to that is for city business you need to be using your city email account for private business you need to be using your personal email account say if you would use your personal email account for city business then that information becomes a matter of public record so that's something to think about before you set up or want to set something up on your personal devices i think the android does allow separate email accounts excuse me all of them racel could you use your microphone please thank you you can only send you can only have one set up at a time so when you hit your email it goes to whichever one you have primary you have to physically go into the settings and reset and reset it to a different one where the iphones you can have like i said multiple apps are different so that's one to keep in mind absolutely absolutely but this is something we didn't have before so i guess i'm experimenting with you because i know there's been some requests so to set it up just schedule some time with me and then we'll get it set up that's especially for alderman hammond as well so so any questions on cell phones or setting it up or getting your private okay as we'd also talked about as um mr. modio talked earlier i just wanted to go in you know as far as on the website here again too you'll have instructions as far as where people can submit their inquiries basically to the city where they can like i said the page will open up where they can just request for general information building code violations tall grass snow removal issues and then abandoned vehicles graffiti garbage or dog issues basically all they do is click on there and then they'll be able to fill out whichever and then what happens is is a email will come into the city that chad and myself get and then we'll take a look at it and then based on what the issue is we will assign it to the correct person so it's resolved quickly and then once they provide an answer we get an email back saying hey here's the answer we can review it to make sure everything's correct and then the response gets sent back out to the citizen so and it's been working pretty good i think right now we've got maybe five open issues that our people are working on right now and since we turned this up last november i think roughly we have about 120 inquiries or so that we've handled something like that so it's working you know pretty nice that people are getting you know followed back up to so i get looks like jim had said you can fill these out yourself or you can you know if citizens come to you or whatever you can refer to that as well to fill it out and it's not meant as you know passing the buck or anything what this is meant as you know like jim said so nothing falls through the cracks you know so you don't let's say somebody gives you a phone and message and you write it down and you forget about it this way if they submit it it's there it's tracked we can follow up with it and make sure that the right answer gets out so so far it's been working really well any questions okay the last one i have on here is our wireless network here at city hall we have what we call a public network where if you have your devices and you bring it up the network is actually called city hall public requires a password and you can get the password from either clerk's office or it for what the password is and then we'll get you that and that way then if you're here doing for whatever reason for meetings you have you know wireless here that you can get connected to the other thing you can do then is follow along and board docs online if you have a device that way as they're going through the agenda that's another use for it so that's pretty much what i had dave i've got a question for you and i can't remember if i talked to you about this or sue about this but when we actually have a council meeting and we're doing our voting with our clickers it goes up there on a one or a two one for yes two for no depending on when we do our clickers so it's not an alphabetical order or anything so i've heard from some constituents that watch on television that they can't see how their alderman are voting because if it would if it would be an alphabetical in other words if you had a yes column and a no column and it came up in an alphabetical order starting with alderman bellinger and then me for the yes column and then whoever voted no the people on television could follow that a lot closer to see how their older persons voted is that something in the software that can be done we'll have to make a i've looked at the software to see what we can do and when it's definitely going to be an involvement with their technical support to see if it's capability or i'm gonna have to come with up with another work around to help satisfy that request okay thanks no thank you no it's still there is an item for us to do okay thanks so alderman bellinger thank you chairman what is our legal responsibility as far as deleting emails i mean can we delete any of them or do we have to save them for a certain period of time or put them in you know with the open records law that's an excellent question you can delete emails no problem the reason why you want to use your city email to conduct city businesses is we archive all the emails that are sent and received so for public records when we get them we can pull them from that device or that storage area so we don't run into that problem otherwise if you use your personal email for city business then if you have you know services that don't archive those emails or whatever then as the keeper of those you're responsible to you know try and produce and that's why i encourage you or as a standard use your city email because then we can always retrieve it for archival purposes for open records request it's so much better under this system with having the city take care of the city emails because back before we went to this system a couple of years ago we had a an information request from one of the shabuigan press reporters when we were using our personal email accounts we had to email we had to send all of those emails to the shabuigan press and i think i think i sent like it must have been 70 or 80 of them and it's a nightmare so that going to the city system where they archive them and you use your your personal email account just for your personal emails and use the city you know we're not going to run into that anymore it's just been a god sent from that standpoint so if we ever do get an open request like i said we can take care of it and it to get them for you for the emails ottoman kath thank you chairman at some point should we clean up our emails like yes to eat the spam or the the agendas or the minutes yes you can do that whenever if you feel something you don't need to keep yes definitely delete it or usually what i do does the practice that i do is i use my inboxes for stuff to look at and i'll make subfolders if i'm going to keep them underneath the inbox and file them and then everything else i just delete and then when i get out i delete the deleted items i do not use like deleted items as a historical recall thing that's where i meant for that when you get out junk it's gone so if anybody wants a demo or that to see that by all means contact me and i can show you how to do that because i take after jim my door is always open as well so so the other attachment that you got in your email is a lot of you seen us but chad pelichak put together a cheat sheet as far as navigating on our website as far as what functions do what and like i said you can play with it a lot of it is like agendas and minutes where your employee signs on where you're also we know with our twitter feeds requests for info so a lot of these are on there as well as what i've already talked about but i've sent this along with you as well so you can reference it and city clerk just to comment when dave was talking about using the complaint form another value to that is that we are then drastically cutting down how many council documents we're running through to a committee i mean if you can send it through have them send it through you send it through it's getting directly handled perhaps by the department that needs to handle it rather than waiting for the three-week cycle that it goes through it cuts down on the meeting times so it's a really good tool definitely definitely any other questions the other thing i would like to bring up is mr chair when you talked about being on tv we also have if you want to add or whatever is we also now can stream to the internet live so people can actually watch the meeting on the internet live as we're going as well that can be accessed through our web page at wscs shabuigan dot com so we also stream live now into the internet for our city hall feed and our feed over at our studio at the u w so just thought i'd let you know that as well thank you next we have item e council policies and procedures rule of the city clerk's office city clerk sue richards koi is this going to be fast okay you have a packet on your desk that says city clerk's office and what i've done is i'll just briefly go through what's in there basically the first set is kind of a very general information about our office i've listed all of our staff members their emails the fact that we're open from eight to five every day monday through friday including the lunch hour and you already know that you can use your key fob to get into the building between seven a.m. and eight p.m. seven days a week in case you need to come up here use your desk for whatever reason um one of my suggestions would be and i didn't write it on here is to get to know your department heads and your managers familiarize yourself with their departments and what they do i've over the years i've heard from all the minutes say the ones that do that are much more knowledgeable on what the departments are doing so when it comes before the council you know what they're about so i would really recommend making an appointment with some of the department heads and the managers and just find out what they do um we already talked about the agendas need to be posted at least 24 hours prior to any meeting the council agenda when i finish it on board docs which is usually by friday before the council meeting i will always email you to your city email account and say that i've made it active on the website then you can access it over the weekend basically any board committee or commission of the city has to keep a record of all of their their actions in their meeting and they must be into my office so that i can distribute them within 96 hours of that meeting we struggle sometimes with following that but we need to do our best to get that in um this is a big one and it's very simple i have to have a deadline for getting council documents into me so that i can proceed to get them into board docs it's always five o'clock the wednesday prior to the council meeting with the exception of public protection and safety which meets on thursday or wednesday night rather so i take their documents early thursday morning if it's not there then then we move it to the next council meeting i just have to set some kind of draw a line in the sand somewhere and that seems to be working out i listed something on here as far as some of the things that we do in the clerk's office i'm not going to go through all of those one thing that i was talking with one of the gentlemen out at um wscs he did mention that when you're at a council meeting you do need to have your mic on you they have a trouble picking it up if you're like this talking and holding it and things so he asked me to just mention that okay next on the list is the business order uh business card order form it basically just shows you a couple of samples i used mine and i used gyms and you just need to fill this out if you want them if you don't think you need them let's not waste the money we do pay for the first 250 after that forever more you will be responsible for reordering your your business cards so get that to me if you desire those could i just make a point there so um i think most of you have gotten a business card for me the it says here the backside is optional one thing that my constituents have really appreciated is on the back of the card i list the eighth district and then the words i represent and for example word word 24 where they vote and then the other two words and uh the constituents that i'd give up my cards to are really appreciative of that especially now that the voting places have all changed so you might want to consider uh putting that on the second side it's entirely up to you but my constituents have really liked it and the cost is negligible it's like a couple three dollars extra for us to print the back so if you want to have it just put it on there that you would like to have it and we'll fill it in for you next sheet is just a total listing of um all of you your emails your home addresses and your phone numbers make note that on mary linds it is in the email address it's not don ah you it's don oh you if you could change that we'll send another one out later the next thing in your packet is something that the council passed last year and it's a just a good review especially for the new older persons it's generally used rules of order procedure and conduct for all meetings just review it it's just very basic how you should handle yourself how things are handled in a meeting just wanted to give everybody a copy of that the last thing um the new older person got the new older person's got this this is this book from the league of municipalities it's excellent it's called the handbook for wisconsin municipal officials it's on loan to you throughout your term um it's like a library thing i check them out and i want them back when you're not serving anymore so use these um for alderman that have been here before and haven't had this and want one i do have a few extras so if you would like those it'd be more than welcome to them and that's it thank you very much so any questions for the city clerk okay uh next we've got item number f legal authority overview for older persons open meetings public records quote of ethics and our city attorney steve mclean will be discussing this part of the meeting thank you mr chairman um passing out a handout that's i put together sort of an overview i won't cover all of this uh you guys have to give me some feedback as to how long you want to go i i'll stay as long as you want but uh first thing i'd like to talk about is some things that have been discussed and i would say i would say if we could be out of here attorney mclean by maybe 25 or 22 at the latest 2210 uh no that would that would be uh that would be nine okay uh one thing as far as emails uh this issue has has grown a lot in the last five years or so uh the importance of using your city email account for conducting city business uh you're a public as a public official you're an authority under the public records law you have custody of your records your records include your governmental emails uh so as alderman as chairman boran indicated uh prior to having the city email accounts you used your personal email account you needed to maintain those and not delete those because they were subject to uh requests for public records by uh anybody in the public uh and under the public records law uh anybody can make a request for any public records and uh you've got to provide them we've we've gotten a lot of requests especially uh very recently with the casino issue being hot and heavy there are there's a public interest group out there that's anti casino uh they've got a law firm who's been making has made two series of public records requests the most recent one was directed to all the alderman they they copied sent it to me but i forwarded it all to all the alderman for emails to and from alderman uh relating anything relating basically to the casino or the tribe or any uh any of the parties involved there that you might have uh so if you do your city business on the city email system the server maintains those and it saves you trouble and it's a lot uh more likely to comply with the open public records law where we can retrieve those uh and what i typically do is when we get those requests and they're directed to all the alderman i uh send them out to the alderman let them know that uh if it's all right with the alderman we will uh work with it to retrieve those uh off the server and we'll make those available uh pursuant to the law to whoever the requester is if you don't want us to do that and you want to dig out your own emails you certainly can but uh or if you want to review whatever gets released prior to um the the response going out let me know but uh at least from an email standpoint most of the public records requests anymore we get are for emails there's fewer and fewer requests for hard copies but uh anybody making a public records request if they're requesting records from you it can be email it can be hard copy whatever you are as i say you are the custodian of your records if you've got uh records anything council agendas things like that those are public records now the good news is a lot of the things that you acquire uh are also kept in the clerk's office or they're online uh or they're emails and we can retrieve those uh without you having to dig through those things but if you got personal correspondence when i say personal i mean city correspondence you send out letters to your constituents uh those those are uh business emails or letters and you need to maintain those and and we've got a city retention schedule established generally uh you need to keep hard copies of records or email copies of records for at least six years as i say we've got the server with the emails that we maintain those uh so you don't need to worry about that you can delete your own version uh off off your device or whatever as long as we're maintaining the copies on the server Dave may i have permission to speak just want to follow protocol i want to be thrown out one thing i just wanted to bring you guys up to also is our process when we do receive open records request what'll happen is we'll get the records request and then i contact sir richards attorney mclean and jim a modio to make sure that yes we should fulfill this request to make sure it meets all the criteria and then we work on a request and send it out so that's our process as well internally to make this happen so i just wanted to bring that to you well so you're familiar with the process that does go on so and at least to my knowledge all the emails that you gather in your search have they come to my office before they go out correct i look through everyone to see if there are some sometimes there are confidential things that don't do not have to be released and if there are uh sometimes for instance there's attorney client privilege if uh if there's some communication between you and our office uh that may be uh privilege from being released as a public record because it's uh falls under the attorney client privilege or uh some confidentiality provision so so far it's been bearable we and the angel of pain lawsuit as far as emails it took me two weeks to go through emails in response to that wasn't an open records request that was a discovery request they can get a lot more stuff through a discovery request but i diligently go through all those and make sure that if there's anything needs to be redacted it's redacted or if it doesn't need to be disclosed hold back on it but okay enough about the public records and and emails getting back to my outline i won't go into the city laws and so forth there there's a statutory but the authority of the council is covered under the statutes the mayor and the older persons are the council so it's not just the older persons that are the common council the mayor is included at your powers very broad except as elsewhere in the statute specifically provided the council shall have the management and control of the city property finances highways navigable waters and the public services and shall have power to act for the government and good order of the city for its commercial benefit and for the health safety and welfare of the public very broad so except as elsewhere in the statutes provided you have authority over the running of the city parliamentary procedure the city uses roberts rules of order although there are a couple of nuances that the city has adopted over the years that are contained in our municipal code for instance one is on suspension of the rules under roberts rules of order you can request suspension of the rules not suspension of the rules where you have acted on an agenda item and at the next council meeting you want to rescind that that vote rescission under roberts rules you can do that at the next council meeting under our ordinances you can only reconsideration there we go you can only do a reconsideration at at the current meeting so you can't reconsider at a subsequent meeting what you have to do is let's say you adopt a particular resolution at the between then and the next meeting you think better of it what you're going to have to do is bring get something back on the agenda seeking to repeal what you just enacted if you don't catch it at at the current meeting but primarily roberts rules of order apply covered meetings the mayor only votes in the event of a tie the mayor has veto power in shabuigan we have a charter ordinance that authorizes the mayor to do a line item budget veto that's not true in every city but the mayor can line item veto budget items any veto by the mayor and and frankly i don't recall mayor vetoing anything in the last 24 years but that's certainly theoretically possible but any veto by the mayor has to happen within five or six days comes back to the council and the council gets the right to override the veto similar to what you see in the state or federal legislature one thing that i came to mind when we were discussing closed sessions issue often arises as as an alderman am i entitled to my entitled to have the right to be in a particular closed session of a particular meeting the answer is if it's if it's a council meeting or a committee of the council alderman have the absolute right to be in a closed session even if you're not a member of that committee but it does not give you the right for instance the redevelopment authority the library board transit commission water utility number of others those are not committees of the council those are separate bodies and alderman does not have an entitlement to be in a closed session of those meetings that doesn't mean the membership might not allow you to be in there but you don't have entitlement to be there but if you're not a member of the finance committee and their finance committee is having a closed session and you're interested in being there as an alderman you've got the right to be there without getting permission of the chair or the rest of the committee quorum for the council as a council is two-thirds not a majority but all other committees and things it's a majority there's one exception to that that encountered yesterday and I'd forgotten about it was the board of it's now the board of marina parks and forestry by ordinance it's a now a 10 member body and by ordinance a quorum is five and that was a recent change where prior to adding the marina membership it was just the board of parks and forestry there were eight members and by ordinance we had allowed for four being a quorum and I think historically that must have arose because at one time they had trouble getting the quorum of the board of parks and forestry so typically in a 10 member committee you would need six as a majority but by ordinance we allow five votes confirmation of appointments have to be by the eyes and nays in other words roll call votes same with adoption of measures levying taxes appropriating dispersing money or creating any liability or charge against city or city funds there are certain items that require more than a majority vote and I've got a whole list of them that I keep where special votes are required one I mentioned a minute ago to amend a budget to adopt the budget is a majority vote to amend the budget requires a two-thirds vote to suspend the rules so getting getting at before as far as difference between our ordinances and robert's rules of order robert's rules of order you need a two-thirds vote to suspend the rules our ordinance requires three quarters so that's 12 as opposed to 11 the quirkiest one I've seen is for confirmation of appointments to the redevelopment authority the statutes require a four-fifths vote that's the only one that I've ever seen that is you know more than three quarters agendas your your chair of a particular committee agendas need to be fairly specific under the open meeting law you note on tonight's agenda there's a there's a chair's comments that's on the fringe you see that on the council meetings too mayors comments really if you know what you're going to be talking about what those comments deal with that should be on the agenda that you're going to talk about x y and z you know it's probably get by with the mayor's comments or chair's comments if it's fairly innocuous but if you're getting into something hot and heavy that the public really is interested in and you think would want to know in advance so that they could be there you should be more specific in your listings on your agendas enactment legislation you've got ordinances and resolutions basically and ordinances you've got two types you've got charter ordinances that are basically amend the city's charter the city's charter is composed of the general charter law which is in the statutes that lists number of things that uh municipalities cities can do when you amend that charter for instance the as I mentioned the the mayor's line item veto on the budget that took a charter ordinance and that was different than the statutory requirements for for budgets it's not in conflict the statutes don't address it so it's not in conflict with the state law you can't adopt an ordinance or a resolution that's in conflict with state law but anything that's not addressed by state law is really fair game as far as the city goes as far as legislation a charter ordinance doesn't go into effect for 60 days and gives the citizens an opportunity to call for a referendum if they do get sufficient signatures for a referendum it goes to a vote and it's not effective until the the vote takes place a regular ordinance goes in our municipal code of ordinances which is this black book here it used to be in the old days when we were flushed with money all the alderman had a copy of this on their desks now good news is that it's online it's on the city website all this is there you have to go through a couple generations to find it but there's a an icon for municipal codes click that then you hit a the line on on there that says the municipal code corporation or something to that effect who codifies our ordinances the zoning code is harder to find but it is it is on the city's website as well what I did today to find it was I typed in in the search box zoning and it came up under zoning and there was a reference to the city's zoning code and you click on that and it brings up the city's zoning code the zoning code is not in this book that's a separate about 150 page document that the planners primarily have I've got a copy as well but it is online I just noted today though that there's not a table of contents for that so you got to scroll through a lot of text in order to find what you're looking for I guess my advice if you've got an issue with regarding zoning or for something for your constituents you should talk to the planning department and let them you know find the specific sections for you and bring it up and they can answer your questions the other set of ordinances that are not in this code book and that are not online are what we kept from being recodified at the request of the municipal code corporation last time we redid this book that dealt with personnel regulations those are in the former code book in what was chapter 29 so you'll hear me refer to the chapter 29 of the 1975 municipal code that is the personnel regulations number of things in there but they're not online and at some point that should be cleaned up and either transposed to the code book or rewritten or or done away with and made them as a resolution or something else but and we're getting to a point with the with the new budget repair bill and doing away with collective bargaining where our HR department is creating a new employee handbook there's a lot of different things in there than what's than the personnel sorts of things in our old code so now is probably we're getting to a good time to clean up our old personnel regulations in the code but if you got any questions as to what's in chapter 29 at any point let me know I've got a copy I maintain that HR's got a copy as well as far as your liability for your actions number one it's not in the outline but the issue has come up a couple of times about whether or not something you say on the council floor if you can be somebody can sue you for libel or slander general rule is statements you make on the council floor during council meeting are privileged and you can't be found libel for libel or slander you say those same things outside of the meeting that's you don't have that same privilege it's not to say it's necessarily actionable libel or slander but you've got fair amount of legislative protection on the council floor that doesn't mean you should get up and start making comments about your constituents or fellow citizens but you've got some protection as far as being personally sued for those sorts of things also there Wisconsin has very very strong protections indemnifications for public employees public officials and it is in the outline state law requires a municipality to pay any judgment for damages and costs entered against the municipal official or employee for acts performed within the scope of employment so as long as you're within the parameters of acting within the scope of your employment which is pretty broad it's unless you're engaged in some malicious type activity or intentional wrongdoing typically you're going to be within the scope of your employment as an alderman and if you're sued the city will handle the defense and you're not going to have to go out and hire your own attorney and so forth for defense of those things where you're acting within the scope of your employment site in other section there are municipal officials identified by the municipality for negligent acts taken within the scope of the employment supplies the most foreseeable actions taken by municipal officials in the scope of their employment however failure of an officer to give notice to the municipality as soon as reasonably possible of an action commenced against them can be a bar to recovery of the cost of the defending the action in other words if somebody sued you for actions you took in your capacity as an alderman and they just for whatever reason they didn't name the city and they didn't mention any other alderman they just named you and served you unless you need to bring that to the attention of the city and the city will handle the defense and so forth the city's got insurance and hire typically outside council and go from there but so general rule unless you're engaged in criminal behavior or malicious willful conduct you don't have to worry about because you're an alderman running out and talking to your insurance salesman and and ramping up your insurance coverage now that's maybe a good idea to do in general but you're not opening yourself up to a ton of personal exposure as an alderman as as a council member you will be addressing a lot of claims that are filed by your constituents people file claims against the city for all sorts of things you have to look at it i guess you can look at it anyway but my advice to you is as a representative of the city you need to review look at those things from the standpoint of the city and the city taxpayer typically anybody wanting to sue the city they generally have to file a claim it comes to the council gets referred now it'll get referred to the finance committee used to go to risk management we've done away with that committee go to finance finance will review the claims we've got city staff goes over these claims before the committee meets and makes a recommendation to the committee but my my request is that even though it's somebody from your district one of your constituents you're not their their representative on their claim you're representing the city and the city's purse yeah you can keep them advised as to what's going on but i guess i would caution you from wanting to bring your constituent into the committee and plead plead their case and so forth uh nothing legally prohibiting that but it it makes the process a lot more cumbersome typically if it goes through the process the committee makes a recommendation the council the council acts on all the claims uh either allow the claim pay the claim whatever they're asking for or to deny the claim if we deny it we send them a notice saying the council is denying your claim and if you want to sue the city you've got six months in which to do it that's that's the statute of limitations if you've served notice of disallowance properly on the constituents or on the claimants uh we get a lot of tripping falls on sidewalks that's probably the number one that i can think of number two are uh injuries to vehicles by snow plows uh a lot of those well i shouldn't say a lot but the fair number of those we pay because it's pretty obvious park car and there's big scrape right at the level of the snow plow uh we probably did something wrong there and a lot of those we will pay we don't pay a lot of tripping fall sidewalk type claims but that's again that's the policy decision that the council makes on those sorts of things and you're looking at it from the standpoint you need to look at it from the standpoint of the city overall and the city's taxpayers as to how liberal or conservative you want to be as far as pan claims uh liability claims as i mentioned we do have insurance through cities and villages mutual insurance company uh through them we uh we have some sort of special coverages one's an employment practices liability policy that covers us in the event of for instance an angela pain lawsuit where there's uh some uh allegation of employment discrimination uh but all our coverages we're not they're not first dollar coverages we're now we've gone up over the years on our self-insured retention i believe we're now up to 125 000 of self-insured retention so the first 125 000 of our costs whether it's defense costs or paying the claim is on the city nickel uh anything over and above that's more of the catastrophic type losses are covered by the insurance policies uh public official immunity got on page four again broad when performing discretionary acts three exceptions where there's no immunity if official employee conduct is malicious willful or intentional negligently performing a ministerial duty or if the official is aware of a danger that is of such quality that the public officer's duty to act becomes absolute certain and imperative now that last exception has come up in the last five years or so in a couple of lawsuits that have gone to the state supreme court uh dealing with uh not so much alderman but uh dealing with say police officers where there's been uh some major major weather condition traffic lights are out and the officer goes out and starts directing traffic at a particular intersection and arguably uh gives the wrong signals to the wrong cars or has two cars come and collide the issue is there they sue the city uh is the officer entitled to uh public uh official immunity city held uh not liable in those cases uh generally the courts are saying yeah they're not held liable those are discretionary type actions they're not purely ministerial ministerial duty the courts have defined very pretty narrowly as uh where it's some particular duty that is spelled out very specifically for a particular public official and on as to how to fill it and if you don't fill it according to that particular manner uh you can be held liable uh but typically uh a lot of things involve discretion and if it's discretionary typically the official will be uh there'll be no immunity now that uh we're out where that also comes up and where uh doesn't these these rules don't necessarily apply is it federal civil rights cases again this is mostly uh law enforcement excessive use of force type claims and we've we've had them um one thing with federal civil rights suits there's no cap on damages under under state law claims as i've got the top of page four there there are caps for municipality so that typically somebody files a claim for trip and fall state court action uh the maximum that can recover is $50,000 per claim uh there's three people that get injured and you can triple that but uh federal civil rights suits there's no cap on damages open meeting law we've talked about one thing we haven't talked about really much as well we talked a little bit about i guess uh walking quorums uh same rules apply on for instance emails or instant messaging if i guess i'd analogize it this way if if what you're doing via email is more like a conversation back and forth where you're discussing something and somebody's responding relatively quickly and you've you shotgun this out to all the other alderman and everybody's commenting back and forth and so it's like a discussion that's that's a meeting of the governmental body and that's improper uh it's a violation of the open meeting law if if it's more like where you send out an email to the other alderman not requesting a response but just for information hey this is coming up and you're not expecting and you don't get into this bantering back and forth so it's more like sending out a letter and maybe you get a response in a few days like you might with a letter that's not going to be likely held to be an illegal meeting because it's more like correspondence as opposed to conversational um any other questions about open meetings i'll go on to the ethics code i've got public records law here i won't go into that we've talked some about that especially as it relates to emails and things i would cite you site on the cover sheet there's a department of justice website that's very good on open records law and public records law there's a compliance manuals that the attorney general's office puts out on open records and public records that is very good and i give the site there on the cover sheet if you've got also as to any of this if you've got any questions on anything that relates to the city uh anything to do with legal issues give our office a call that's what we're there for we're just down the hall here unlike the clerk's office we do close over the noon hour but we're there our office open eight to five and if you got a question on a weekend needs an answer give me a call at home my number's in the phone book if you can find a phone book but we're we're there to assist you we i represent you as the council i don't represent i don't do private legal work i represent the city and that so my focus is you folks you got legal issues give us a call and the sooner the better so we can address them and and if you got questions about anything with respect to the city give us a call if you can't think of anybody else that's more appropriate to call in the city anyway getting to the ethics code we've got an ethics code it's in the ordinances it's in chapter two i'll step back a second as far as the code book the municipal code chapter two is the administration covers a lot of things that in your spare time if you've got you want to fall asleep look at the website chapter two is administration it has a lot of a lot of things in there that deal with procedures of the council how you how the council operates the agendas when the meetings are everything dealing with the administration of the city is in chapter two includes the various rules of the council and so forth are all in there also included in there is the ethics code and that section's two dash two sixty one two dash two seventy seven i'll say initially the city under the code adopts section nineteen point five nine also which is the code of ethics for local government officials by reference that's statutory code in addition we've got our local code that both of which address two major subject areas personal interests and financial interests financial interests obviously any interest which he would yield directly directly a monetary or other material benefit to you as an officer of the city or to any person employing or retaining the services of you or an employee personal interests is interest arising from blood or marriage relationships or close business or political associations whether or not any financial interest is involved this ties in also to abstentions a lot of times issues come up say liquor licensing and your spouse or your son or daughter has applied for liquor license uh you're acting capacities and all of them voting on the liquor licenses should you abstain from voting on granting your son or wife or whoever uh a liquor license my advice would be yes you should abstain from those sorts of things how you do that when uh when typically the liquor licenses come in their long long laundry list of them you can request a division of the question so that particular licenses could vote be voted on separately you could abstain from those and then act on you vote properly and all the others uh the the primary gist of the ethics code is to preclude you benefiting your family uh or or yourself personally or financially by uh by what you do as an alderman uh we council has by ordinance established an ethics board which is basically the same as the committee the whole it's all the members of the council chaired by the committee the whole chair uh law and licensing has been designated as a subcommittee of the ethics code if you have any issues that come up uh oftentimes you get invited to attend a dinner or some uh some meal is offered to you uh I guess the first question you should ask is are you and why am I being invited to this when I don't know these guys from adam uh is it because I'm an alderman and might this have you know something to do with what that they're going to become and looking to me as an alderman through the council for some permission to do something for instance uh I guess I'd recommend generally if you're getting invited because you're an alderman uh if you want to attend that function I would suggest you contact them say look uh I'd be happy to attend uh but I'd like to reimburse you for the reasonable cost of the meal and I'll pay you for it I don't want to create an appearance of a conflict of interest so I'll go and you know pay the reasonable cost of the meal or whatever uh but generally if it's a request then it's they're inviting the general public you don't have that same sort of ethical issue uh I know it's kind of funny we had a situation a number of years ago and chili's opened out in the deer trace shopping center and they were calling uh a bunch of alderman and city employees uh to come out the day before have a meal before they were open for business and the issue was whether attending there would be an ethics code violation happens that chili's is in the village of kohler not the city of shabuagan so it really wasn't an ethics issue uh I didn't go but uh if if I had it wouldn't have necessarily been an ethics violation but uh in the old days I don't know if they still do it marcus used to provide movie passes to all the alderman I don't know if you get that or not uh it's probably because we've kind of clamped down on that uh bill wangaman and I would qualify for the senior discount on friday afternoon you know generally these businesses and things are offering these things to you not because you're a great person but because there may be some benefit to them in the long term if they give you a special benefit such as free movie passes or something like that uh I'm not saying necessarily that that's a violation of the ethics code to accept those but I know personally I don't accept those uh you may get requests from some business people in town to attend a bucks game or something with them uh I guess you got to look at it are you know are your personal friends with this individual that's that's one scenario if you don't know them hardly at all but the they're inviting you likelihood is they're going to be looking for something from you in return uh as an alderman I guess my advice there again similar to the meal situation is if you want to go say you'd be happy to go but you pay the you know the face value the ticket or uh or decline to go uh when in doubt call our office we'll discuss it uh that uh if you follow our advice you get a little extra protection if you are sued you can say well geez uh Steve said it was okay uh but if if it's a big issue and you need a formal ethics opinion that's what the ethics board is there for uh may not be an ethics issue uh if you came up with uh in this regard with uh members of employees out of the wastewater treatment plant number of years ago question was whether or not they could borrow tools from the treatment plant to take home to work on their cars or something like that uh that was addressed by the ethics board through the law and licensing committee and the council basically said that's okay we'll allow that so that really takes away the ethics violation if the council as a policy says it's okay to do something then it and it's okay to do it uh I've talked about disclosure of confidential information I really talked about the section on gifts and favors I've kind of talked about that with meals and tickets and so forth um I'll stop there unless anybody's got questions any questions for attorney McLean okay I could spend hours on this you only you only went 20 minutes over to attorney McLean otherwise we would have been here until okay uh the next thing on the agenda is the next meeting date that'll that'll to be determined and I will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved they have a motion and a second to adjourn all in favor opposed chair votes aye we are adjourned thank you everybody thanks Steve