Economic Matters Committee - Regular Meeting

We are in June, it's the 4th, and it is 6.37 p.m. Starting off with our roll call. Alderman Brooke Schandlmeier. Here. Okay, Alderman Frank Thorpe. Present. Myself, Alderman Smith-Brown is also present. Moving forward, we have here the approval of the agenda. Is there a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Okay, any second? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Great, thank you. We have the approval of the minutes. Moving forward. Okay, second? Second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Thank you. Today on the agenda we have our first piece of legislation, CA 126, updating requirements for publication of the Charter and Code of the City of Annapolis. Is there any questions regarding this piece of legislation, which is removing outdated provisions of the city's charter, rewriting requirements for compiling and publishing the charter in the code of the city of Annapolis, allowing for publishing paper or electronic versions of the charter and code of the city of Annapolis, and generally related to the codification of charter amendments and ordinances? Any thoughts on this piece of legislation? All right, well, looking at the legislation, I know we had the amendment coming from Alderman Savage. Maybe we can either show support or no action for this amendment and even on the main piece of legislation to bring it back on the floor. I did have a question for the assistance, yes, city manager, deputy. So for the legislation, How many days remaining do we have before this has to be brought to the floor? And that's one of the things I do want to speak, just in a large scope of things, when we're looking at our legislation, seeing how many days till that 90 is up before we may have to ask for an extension.

That is actually a question for Ms. Reuter.

Great, yes.

Cynthia Reuter, Legislative Analyst for the Office of Law. You hit the 90-day deadline on June 8th.

Okay, so we are nearing that in four days. I know we had a lot going on within those days. So maybe we can make some movement on this legislation. The only piece that I think about is Alderman Savage's amendment does talk about ensuring that there is at least one printed copy of the charter and code here. And I don't see why that wouldn't be important for us to have at least one printed copy, though are there any concerns or hindrances that would lead us to not believe that? And do you mind just giving an overview of how this currently works and why this change from the mayor's office is necessary?

I'll start backwards. The change from the mayor's office is necessary just to modernize the language of the charter. And the subscription that we have with Munichode automatically gives us certain amount of paper copies of the code. And really what it is, is like a bigger book. And then they'll send supplements every, I think it's every year. Don't quote me on that. It could be every six months, but it might be every year. And so we'll just supplement the book. So we get a paper paper copy regardless we actually get up to six i believe so we'll send a paper copy over to anne arnold county office of law we'll send it to the state archives courthouse can't remember where else we send it to but it comes with our subscription so there's no additional cost or anything like that that's associated with it so this is no problem for the office of law um to have to maintain a physical copy of the code

Okay, so with that being said then, is there any reason why we couldn't have all of those copies held onto by the city?

I mean, I guess there isn't anything that is preventing us from holding on to it, but Anne Arundel County will send us their code. So it sort of is that reciprocal so that they have access to it over in their office of law if they need it. And then just having in the courthouse, they have the public library over there so that it's accessible by members of the public. And I think that's also the reason why we send it to State Archives too.

I see, so this is, it's something that's already being done regardless if we host or have it here or not. I take it we can always find it somewhere, it's just the city will not have it here at the- We do have a physical copy in the Office of Law already.

So we have one copy downstairs already and then the others are sent out from us to the other locations when there's updates.

Right. Though the change to the legislation is to strike out that there's at least one copy. So what I'm sharing is if that strikeout were to remain, it's to say, okay, we don't necessarily need to include it in the legislation because it can be accessible at the county level as well or at the state level. So we don't necessarily have to require that we have it here.

Since it's already part of our subscription, I guess, theoretically speaking, if it no longer is part of our subscription, then that could potentially pose an issue. But not having the language in the charter is not going to change the practice that we've always had, which is having that physical copy.

My amendment was that it added that back in.

Exactly. And that's my, so the question really is coming from why was it taken out to begin with? If it's something we already have, why do we have to, or why was it suggested that we may remove it or we should remove it?

so without sort of speaking on behalf of the mayor i think the mindset was because this is already also accessible online that there wasn't it would have been an extra cost to maintain those physical copies and so he is aware that it isn't an extra cost and he is he doesn't have an issue with the amendment or or maintaining those physical copies but the mindset was how much extra cost was it going to be for the physical copies when it's already accessible online

All right. Um, do you mind sharing a little of the difference between Alderman Savage's amendment and what was originally, uh, provided in the code? Uh, it's obviously one, two, three, their eye, two eyes and three. So, um, What does this breakdown do as opposed to what we currently had in the code? I think it makes clear sense, but just so that we can understand why would we not just say keep it in the code as it is now versus what we see here?

So I don't necessarily want to go line by line, but I'll start with like what is in Section A that's being proposed to be struck where it requires that there's the the codification and recodification ordinances no less than once every 10 years and permanently bound or loosely form. That's not only just archaic language, that's not something that we were following anyway, because it is so old, the language. So it's merely just updating the language to still require that, you know, ordinances be codified and things like that, but directed more towards having it accessible via the web. And then the amendment by Alderman Savage is just having at least one physical copy available in the Office of Law.

Okay now when we talk about the update it says be updated at least once each calendar year is there a specific year or time of the year that we often get those updates is because when we think about it let's say an update occurred a little bit later on after this was done when someone comes to see the the code, it wouldn't be updated according to that, at least from what we see here. So how do we ensure that they get the most updated version without it being strict to at least once every calendar, each calendar year?

so i i don't know how frequently they send out the physical supplements um but i do know that there's even sort of a bit of a delay when it is updated on municode online so there's always going to be somewhat of a delay you're not going to necessarily get the most up-to-date version of the code um unless maybe legislation's not passed for three months or something like that um i can't i can i'll shoot you an email i'll talk to karen steele in my office she knows um specifically how often they send the supplements i think it is once a year i just don't know at what point whether it's like at the change of the fiscal year if it's in december um they don't i don't believe that they send the the physical supplements more often than once a year though

So are there any questions from either older person who would like to speak on this amendment or legislation at all? No. Okay. I think one of the parts that does help, though, to be transparent is to have a clear date on its cover indicating the effective date. I think that would at least provide to the person receiving this that, hey, if this is and this was updated in February, you should expect that there may be a change or two. And you could always request to see those changes, I take it, or ask if there's a way to guide them through seeing those changes. So at least this amendment, as I see it, would be favorable for me. I think that this is an amendment we should move forward with and maybe on the floor or what have you, if there's any major changes necessary, we could always propose it then before the meeting. But it seems that this amendment is right in line with what we're looking for in providing access to any person who were seeking a printed copy and also with the legislation and all there's no main physical fiscal impact and it provides a definition of ordinance which we know hasn't been done there isn't any huge questions drawn from this so maybe seeing that the deadline is coming soon we don't want to need necessarily ask for an extension but that information may be helpful for the remaining council members who aren't here don't know how much about it to maybe provide a later amendment So maybe we can hear from our council member a motion to have a favourable recommendation for both this amendment and this legislation. CA 126 is the legislation.

To offer a favourable recommendation on amendment 1.

Okay, is there a second? Second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Thank you.

I'd like to offer a favorable recommendation on CA 126 as amended.

Marvellous, is there a second? Second. Okay, all in favor of that? Aye. Thank you. Okay, thank you to the team for this. We do appreciate that. Okay, moving forward with the agenda. We have here oversight of the city's firing range. Thank you to Acting Chief Amy Maguiz, who's here with us today. This is 0626, oversight of the city's firing range for the purpose of allowing the police chief along with the mayor to approve who uses the city's police firing range located within the Annapolis Police Department. Welcome, thank you for all the work you do. Okay, yes, Alderman.

I would like to propose an amendment to move this forward with a favorable recommendation. As stated, I'll let Chief Mayes speak for herself, but she is very comfortable with the way it's written.

Okay, I know. If there's no question, but I know a part of the conversation for my last meeting was whether we would open up space for the police chief to designate someone in their stead if necessary, because it wasn't really clarified in the legislation. Did you have any thoughts on that? Do you feel that? Yeah, I won't even tell you. Do you feel anything? Just tell us. Do you have any thoughts on that piece?

Yes, Acting Chief Amy Meageth with Annapolis Police Department. When the chief is away or not available, then there is an acting chief who could act instead. Just as I'm acting chief now, but say I went out of town, someone would be acting chief. So there would be a designee. And these situations don't come up usually in a rush. You know, it's something planned, like even just this week, we got a request not necessarily to use our range unaccompanied, but another agency is asking our trainers to train them on something with the handguns. But they'll be shooting on our range as an outside police department. It's the Capitol Police, if you're interested in knowing. We have plenty of notice and we have paperwork that they fill out anyway for using the range and then the chief approves it. But in this case, the mayor approved the Capitol Police since this has not been finalized yet.

Do you mind sharing from your perspective, how has this been difficult in any of the work that we are looking to have with someone coming into our firing range?

It's just harder to sometimes get a hold of the mayor and it's getting a hold of the mayor on something that's really, the mayor really doesn't have a stake in the game. We have our own policies governing the use of the range that we follow. The mayor doesn't have to follow our policies, but I think, I spoke to the mayor about being included. He was actually fine with, you know, if the legislation was taken out of the code, so the police department had control to have our own policy that governs the range, and that's what governs the use of the range. Looking at other the county code. There's nothing in the county code about the use of the county police department's range, but seeing as how this is in the code and we don't know why it necessarily was added to the code, we figured that it's just simpler to add the chief to the mix. I can sign off on the paperwork or whoever is there in my stead and it gets taken care of.

Okay, do we have any questions? There's one more point I will make before we move forward. I know there's an amendment on the floor. Excuse me, you said amendment, but I believe it was a motion to move forward with this with a powerful, positive recommendation and powerful recommendation. Did you, okay.

I found this legislation straightforward. I was honestly a little perplexed why we postponed it the 1st go around.

So, I think for this with you being our acting police chief, and technically, according to this legislation, it says only police chief and. Obviously, we're thinking, okay, yes, you are in that position. Would adding a police chief comma or active acting police chief provide that security to our law office? Would that provide security so that there wouldn't be any questions seeing that this is the case?

I don't think that there would be any issues with just keeping police chief in there. That covers the acting designation as well.

Okay, so just saying police chief does cover the active. Okay, well, if that is the case, it's on the record. We'll take on that motion that was put forth for positive recommendation, favorable recommendation.

I will second Alderman Thorpe's recommendation.

Okay, all in favor, thank you. Aye. All right.

Thank you.

Yes, indeed. Thank you. So we have the next piece of legislation on the agenda, which is updating the Standing Committee section of the City Code 0926. For clarity, this is the purpose of expanding the oversight authority of the Environmental Matters Committee to include certain environmentally related provisions of Title 17, buildings and construction, and Title 21, planning and zoning, requiring that proposed amendments to those provisions be referred to the Environmental Matters Committee. clarifying the matter should be considered by the rules and city government committee that's our committee updating the scope of the economic matters committee to reflect current technology and workforce matters establishing a procedure for automatic and discretionary committee referrals and generally reformatting and updating the standing committees section of the city code now looking at this legislation the only question that came about particularly for the sections, and I know this is a discussion with the law office as well, is how we can, and if maybe you have an idea, Assistant City Attorney, for the economic matters and also Alderman Schandemeier, how to reduce the amount of words and capture the same purpose that we're looking to provide as we look at the other parts of the other committees and other parts within this legislation, it's not as extensive. Is there a way to reduce the amount of words or direct people to where that information is? Or is this just a special case where this is necessary to detail it?

This legislation that Alderman Savage spearheaded along with the two of us, it's basically just updating language. If you don't update the code, you eventually get out of date with certain things that are regulating. Current code doesn't mention things like wireless communication. We've kind of intuitively referred that to the Economic Matters Committee. We've intuitively referred things to the Environmental Matters Committee. We've intuitively referred certain things to Rules and City Government, but when it's in that gray area, it's probably better to just get it explicitly written down. So...

I mean, I think another part of this here is it also helps distinguish between economic matters and finance committee, which sometimes people can sort of think that they overlap or there's so much similarity there. So having the more detailed explanation for economic matters, I think, gives people potentially a better idea of what actually falls under the purview of economic matters. Whereas, for example, we have public safety, you don't necessarily need to get into more specific language for public safety because that speaks for itself. Economic matters is not quite the same.

Okay. Right. And one of the questions that came about was the Market House and the regulation of City Dock and really where this came from. Do we even have a history or know of why this may be under economic matters or if it's implied it'll always go there, even if it wasn't included, just maybe any type of background on that?

That I'm not sure of when that got added into the code, but to answer sort of the second part of your question, yes, that would be like anything that needs to go to the council for consideration impacting Market House or CityDoc would be referred to economic matters.

Well, they are the two of the biggest economic drivers in the city.

So, okay, well, there aren't really any questions that would keep us from moving forward with this. I know that there was, for this legislation, no major impact, of course, for fiscally. And if there are no questions regarding this, I say we move forward with... Okay, so we do have, it's not included on this agenda. Okay, so... Let's look at Amendment 1 first from Alderman Huntley. This is striking lines 11 through 16 and inserting the following. So we have here finance committee which shall review the operating budget and present the budget to the city council along with any recommendations city council by a date specified annually by by council resolution instead of not later than the second monday in may okay and then we have the other piece there the financial advisory commission which shall review the operating budget and make recommendations to the city council by a date specified annually by council resolution instead of the second monday in may I don't see any issues with that amendment. There may be, but yes.

No, Mr. Chairman, I don't think there's any issues. The reason for it is what we learned this year was if we could move the budget process earlier that would provide a smoother effort. So what this does is it deletes the firm date that was set in code and allows us to include in the resolution that's passed for the schedule these dates.

I say we move forward with a favorable recommendation for this and it also gives the say to the council and all and I think that's important because the council shifts so you know there's different membership that may be different I do think putting it in line especially with this past budget process with what we feel is best is great is there a motion then to move forward with a positive or favorable recommendation for amendment one from Alderman Huntley

I offer a second.

Okay, thank you. All in favor of that? Aye. Thank you. So the second amendment from Mayor Littman, we have here on page six in line nine, insert however each ordinance or resolution shall be referred to no more than two city council committees. Yes, Alderman Shannon Meyer.

So I'm not going to put too many words in the mayor's mouth, but I know this was something that he had brought up on the campaign trail, and it is inspired by the infamous resolution around the authority to redevelop the old gas station and public works site where that went to four committees and that's hours and hours of staff members time where they basically had to repeat the same thing over and over and over again that has a lot of time that has a lot of money and it it's time that staff can be doing other things i think this is a pretty nice streamline

Okay. Alderman, do you have any questions or thoughts on this? I'll go after.

I totally agree with Alderman Shandemeyer.

Well, maybe from the, I can get some say from the law officer, maybe even our assistant city manager. I know that not all council members agree with this, seeing that it is limiting. And I think, you know, per the council, if they feel that it should go to another committee and this piece, let's say three instead of two, it would limit us in doing so.

I think that the intention here is, as Alderman Schandemeier said, to kind of focus the staff time. And the thing that I will point out here is that it doesn't preclude the council from having joint committee meetings. So let's say for the sake of argument, we think that for this particular piece of legislation, there really are several different committees who potentially sort of have a piece of that and may want to hear about it. The way that I read the intent here was to incentivize things like a joint committee meetings, again, to focus that time and effort. I also think that, and this is just me speaking on a personal level, if we have a piece of legislation that's referred to a lot of different committees, either we need to seriously wrestle with is that legislation right-sized or at what point do we get to the point where it really is the committee of the whole, the council as a whole, should be discussing it rather than breaking it apart and talking about it in individual committee meetings. And so I think that in some sense, This particular provision, I think, helps kind of push that conversation along of when is something sort of overly complicated or it is sufficiently complicated by its nature. The Council should be talking about it as a whole, not in these piecemeal parts.

So the legislation from last term that I think really inspired and highlighted the need for this was, as I stated earlier, it was the Resiliency Authority. That was the word I was looking for. It was the Resiliency Authority lease to redevelop the Spa Road site. And that legislation was referred to economic matters where it had one meeting, rules in city government where it had three meetings, housing and human welfare where it had two meetings, and the Environmental Matters Committee where it had two meetings. that was a week's worth of staff time where they were repeating pretty much the same thing i was part of three of those committees and i could probably count on one hand the amount of different things that the staff members said that were different to each body and that adds up and that's time that staff could be out helping our constituents helping our city And I understand wanting to make sure every committee can do its due diligence, but by encouraging these joint meetings, it does help everybody get a lot more efficient and it helps our staff better use their expertise to guide the most people as possible and then get back to doing their job of helping Annapolis.

It seems as if the consensus may be to keep this in here. There's no, there's no limitations that would be bound by the city council at any point. If we go forward with this idea of joint committee meetings now, how often does that happen? Or is this something that is easily done? Like what you should share a little bit about that process of how that works for anyone who may be questioning.

I've seen it happen here in the city a handful of times. It has not been typical practice here. In other jurisdictions, it is more common to have those, particularly if there are topics. Obviously, it always depends on what the committee structure is, how much overlap there is between committees. So that differs jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But I know, for example, in my last job, you know, Health and Human Services was so broad, there were three different committees that we interacted with, and they pretty regularly held joint committee sessions because they had stuff, we had stuff that hit more than one.

Okay. Now, when we say refer to no more than two, would it then go to one of those committees and the ask with recommendation would be for another committee to just join them so it's not necessarily joint where it's being ran by both the committees it's joint where it's one committee and the other committee members are allowed or welcome to be there okay yes

So I think in practice, what happens when there's a joint committee is there's it's one committee as a lead, but both chairman provide respect to the other as co-chairing the meeting. So everybody has a voice. The other thing I would like to add to this discussion that hasn't been stated is is and I think speaking for the mayor, he has said that all committee meetings are open to all members. So. if somebody on the Rules Committee wants to attend an Economic Matters Committee, and I've done it on numerous occasions and received due respect, kind of as a visitor. I'm not a member. I don't have a vote. But I do get the opportunity to ask questions and discuss. So I don't think this legislation, with the myriad of options we've discussed just now, provide any limitation. And to Alderman Shandermeyer's point, You know, our time, the staff time, many meetings are in the evening. After working hours, they've already done a full day of work and they're answering the same questions. And, you know, and there's a couple people that are every one of them. So it's pretty straightforward, I think.

Okay, well, I'll accept any motion on this.

So moved to give, I guess we have to go amendments first.

Yes, we already moved forward with the amendment one, so just amendment two.

Yeah, I would put forward a favorable recommendation to amendment two that all amendments Ordinances and resolutions shall be referred to no more than two city council meetings.

All right, thank you, Alderman Thorpe. Second. Okay, Alderman Chairman, I second this. All in favor? Aye. Okay, I will abstain. We have here the legislation in all with these amendments put forth. Is there a motion on this?

I'd like to make a favorable recommendation to 0926 as amended.

Okay, second on that. Second. All right, all in favor? Aye. Thank you. So we shall move forward with the agenda. Another positive... Recommendation favorable from us. We have the final piece of legislation here, which is 01026, reducing the Human Relations Commission membership. Yes, Alderman Schanmeier.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Alderman Conte is the primary sponsor, and as we can see, she is not here, but I can actually speak to this. I had encouraged her to submit this because I actually thought this was going to go to the Housing and Human Welfare Committee. I was incorrect, but that's okay.

We get all of the jade.

So this came at the request of one of the members, Mr. Hurley, and it's basically The Human Relations Commission has not been able to achieve quorum for a very long time. They cannot do their very important goals, or very, they cannot do their important mission if they don't have a quorum. Right now, they only have five members sworn in. I don't know if we got any more in the pipeline, but even if they were sworn in tomorrow, they still wouldn't be at quorum. This lets them achieve quorum hypothetically tomorrow, if this were to pass through the city council like tonight, and they could get to work.

Okay. So were there any questions at all about this, okay? Any comments or concerns, anything at all?

No, I think the Human Relations Commission may be up to six or seven members now. So there have been a couple that have been under the new administration. There have been, I believe, two additional appointments, which under the current legislation of 15 wouldn't be meeting a quorum, but with this... changed legislation moving it down to nine i believe there would be a quorum so getting getting closer but still not there for the current configuration of the human relations commission so even optimistically if there was seven new members they still couldn't do their important work

All right. Well, let's just move forward with it. If there's no other thoughts, questions, concerns, what have you. Is there a motion on the floor? So moved. Okay. Second for that? Second. All right. All in favor of this?

Aye.

Aye.

Okay.

And for record keeping, that so moved was for a favorable recommendation. Yes, indeed. Favorable. It was implied, but I feel like clarity is important to government.

So I put it out there. All right. Well, that is... What we did today, that's the end of the agenda. Is there any comments for today's order, the good, the positive of today's order at all? Okay, well I know we have some guests that we'll be inviting for the next meeting. I do want to send out a question, if possible, to our county, interstate board of elections regarding this idea that 500,000 ballots were pretty much told to us that 500,000 ballots had to be tossed out and to see how many of our Annapolis residents were impacted by this. In this upcoming election, I'll tell you my neighbor, who's I believe more older than 85 years old, 80 or so years old, shared with me that she was one of the ones that had this ballot concern bring brought to her she was told she had to toss her ballot out she was a little confused by this and we don't know how many people out there may be confused by this thought that their ballot is not going to count the first time that they have to go or wait for another ballot to come in the mail to then drop it off of the ballot box so just to kind of throw that out there as we begin to look at other legislation regarding electoral reformation if there's nothing else for this is there a motion to adjourn All right. Is there a second to that?

Second.

Okay. This meeting has been adjourned at 7.11 p.m. Thank you.