Agenda - Council - 03/11/1997 - Laserfiche WebLink

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I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I PC, CASE #: 5 CONSIDER POSSIBLE CHANGES TO COUNCIL MEETING MINUTE TAKING By: Linda Waite Smith, Administrative Services Manager Background: In the past, minutes of the City Council meetings were sometimes not available until several weeks after the meeting. The City Council requested, in January 1997, that staff find a way to provide the minutes for each meeting in the agenda packet for the next meeting. To date, we have been able 'to remain current. The challenge now will be to continue to deliver the minutes in. a timely manner, given the fluctuation in workload requirements. The following actions will help us achieve that goal. 1. Ensure that minute preparation remains a top priority for the Recording Secretary and take the necessary steps to provide her with the time needed to do the job. In the past, her understanding has been that she should work on minutes as time allows. 2. Hire a minute taking service when the Recording Secretary has a conflicting time demand such as coordinating an election. h~ Jan'um¥ I distributed an analysis of the cost of having a contract service take minutes for the actual Council. meetings held in 1996. My calculations assumed that City staff would continue to t~ake minutes fbr Personnel, Finance and Road & Bridge committee meetings. When. the Recording Secretary is absent, we hire Timesavers minute taking service which charges by the amount of time spent at the meeting and the number of pages of minutes. If 'i",(mr:r;avers had done the minutes for the first Council meeting each month in 1996, it would have cost $2,891.50; minutes for the second meeting of each month would have cost $1,974.00. The charge for taking minutes at all Council meetings would have been $4,865.50. Timesavers experiences more turnover in staff thari the City does, therefore there is better continuity if the Recording Secretary takes the meeting minutes. It is one of the Recording Secretary's assignments to extract all staff directives from her meeting notes and distribute them the day after 'he Council meeting. This process would be slowed by several days if she had to wait for 'the minutes. Alternatively, we would have to pay extra to have the contract service extract staff directives. Theoretically, we could assign one of the other clerical staff members to take minutes in the Recording Secretary's absence. This either requires us to pay overtime or grant compensatory time or leaves the office short of staff during the day if we just reassign someone to work part of their normal hours during the evening. 3. The detail of Council meeting minutes could be curtailed so that writing the minutes takes less time.