Board of Aldermen - Special Meeting

Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

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.

All right, we will call Albert Dean. Present. Albert Freese. Present. I'm going to turn.

Here.

I'm going to Bill. Here. I'm going to Lewis. Here. Can I get a motion to approve of tonight's agenda? So moved. Can I have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Going on to new business, a discussion with Scott Reddington, Senior Management Consultant, LenderGov, for a goal setting retreat strategic plan.

And Sam, this is Steve, and I just want to introduce Scott here, right here. You're kind of over the phone, but that way we'll introduce you to him virtually. Okay, yeah, sounds great. All right, he's passing out a document, and I'll give you a copy of that. Great, I appreciate it.

Sure. So I don't have any business cards from LeaderGov. These are called RAT cards. That's a rack car. Well, they go in those racks, you know, in the hotel that has all the brochures for tourism. It's that same site. So on one side, it sort of lists what our company does, and on the other side, you have my contact information there, as well as my colleague. And I also want to share with you, because I'm going to reference it in my remarks, an article that appeared last year in the MML monthly magazine that goes to all Missouri municipal leads members about how city councils can be effective. And I want to talk a little bit about this as a part of my remarks. I co-authored this with my LeaderGov colleague, Bill Stark, whose name is also on this brochure. So LeaderGov is not in the business of doing executive recruitments. We're not in the business of providing interim managers. But we do work exclusively with local governments. to do the kind of soft skills leadership training and retreats and goal setting and identifying performance outcomes for cities, succession planning, 360 assessments and coaching, but exclusively to cities and counties in the United States. And we've worked all over the United States. For my part, I've spent almost 10 years in local government in Missouri and about Twice that in Illinois, and I've also worked overseas in India for local governments, and at the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia. So I've spent more than 44 years, good grief, in local government before I retired two years ago from being the city manager in Decatur, Illinois. So the article I gave you that was in the Missouri Municipal League magazine, also was the topic of a presentation that Bill and I gave at the annual conference at WML that was at St. Charles last year. I think this year the annual conference is going to be down at the lake. It's a pretty good conference, especially for people who are just part-time or maybe new to the business of being an elected official. The essence of the article, I don't want you to read it when we're talking here, but take it home and read it at your leisure. But the essence of the article is that there's lots of things that members of an elected body like yours are expected to do and what their citizens expect. And from our experience working all over the country and based on a lot of other data that's available from the National Civic League and other places, there's three things that stand out as the most important things for will judge your effectiveness. Now you might think, well, as long as I get the work done, and then we do the five year plan, and we pave those streets, and then the water's clean to drink, or whatever it is, that they're gonna say that's fine. Well, not exactly. Which might not seem fair, but life's not fair. And there's three things that citizens, more than anything else, will say that you're effective if you do these three things. One of them is if you have a strategic plan or some kind of a document that in writing sets forth what your goals and objectives are beyond just your land use goals. I mean, lots of communities have a comp plan. Some states require comp plans by law. Even if you don't, you need to have one every 10 years to get grants. That's a land use document. A strategic plan is a document that really reflects what the governing body and other elements of the community that you bring into the process, how you see years from now of all the different competing priorities that you that they come before you what are the top four or five or six whatever you decide and what's your strategy in manageable achievable steps to reach those goals it's I just think it's really incredibly incredibly important to do that as a manager I've discovered it elected officials so you know there's five or six or seven or nine whatever it is and And they often have five, six or seven or nine different ideas about what the priorities of the city should be. And so to make sure that everybody's moving in the same direction, you do a planning session like this. And maybe you only got about 70 percent of what you think is important in that planning document. But that's that's compromise. That's how decisions are made in local government. And so when an item comes up that's part of the 30% that maybe you weren't as keen about, you say, well, I was a part of that planning process, and I buy into that. So I'm gonna let, I'll vote for the thing that really is something really important to Alderman Lewis, because when it comes time to one of the things that I wanted, I'm gonna expect his support as well. That's how consensus is built, and it's much easier, I think, to get things through the review process, especially if it's controversial. I can't tell you how many times as a city manager, I'd be at a council meeting, and the councilman would say, or an alderman would say, Mr. Wrighton, why is this on our agenda? Well, councilman, it's item three in your strategic plan. Oh, yeah, that's right. And we agreed to that, and we voted on that, and we adopted that. And that is, I think, a very effective way of making sure that as much as possible, it doesn't mean that you eliminate disagreement. Disagreement happens. That's local government. but it gets us more on the same page and we're all moving in the same direction a little bit. And that's one item that citizens will determine whether or not you're effective. Even if they might not totally agree with everything in your strategic plan, well, they said what their plan was and they're gonna follow it and they're doing it. Okay, I might not agree with it, but they're doing what they said they're gonna do. The second thing that's in that article is, clarifying the roles of the appointed officials and the elected officials. Sometimes appointed officials think that they're entitled to tell the elected officials what their job is. Well, that's not their job. Their job is to execute what the elected officials want to do in strategic planning. Sometimes elected officials don't fully appreciate the staff and don't let them exercise their expertise and do the basic work of operating things. Understanding those roles is really important because if there's public fighting between staff and elected officials, the citizens see that as dysfunctional and they'll think that you're not effective. And the third thing is how city council meetings or automatic meetings are run. If there's bad behavior at council meetings, that can really be perceived as ineffective. And if you don't think that that's out there, I encourage you to Google dysfunctional city council meetings and There's some really awful stuff going on in the city council chambers and automatic chambers and county commission chambers in this country. If that's not what's happening here, then that's going to be good. But those are the three things. And so one of those things is the topic of this session that I've discussed with Steve. So we facilitate those. It's not just, let me tell you how the process works. The agreement that Steve distributed to you talks about this a little bit, but I want to maybe go into a little bit more detail. Basically, what this engagement is, is if you approve this, if this agreement is approved, is the first step, after you set a date and all the meeting logistics are taken care of, is for me to talk with each of you one-on-one, probably over the phone or a Zoom call or something like that, so that I can Sort of lay out the parameters of the meeting. I can understand some of get an early idea of what some of your objectives are some of your ideas about where the city should be going in in the long term. This is not a, it's not a discussion about how the public works department installs to driveway culverts. This is a much more 10,000 foot altitude kind of where's what's the direction of the city and by having a conversation with each of you in advance, I get a better idea of what. what's really important to you and what some of your priorities are ahead of this. And then we have the actual retreat. And then after the retreat is over, then within about 10 days to two weeks, I send you a written report that is something that you can make modifications to if you like and something that we recommend. You don't have to do it. Missouri law doesn't require it, but is to vote on it, to approve it. It's simply a way of saying, yes, we officially endorse this kind of a function. And then pledge to, it doesn't mean that you can't deviate from it. You're not breaking any laws by deviating from it. Sometimes things come up, but at least it's a roadmap. It's a roadmap that you've agreed on for how to get from point A to point B and steps along the way. Although this engagement with the City of Ashland doesn't include it, some cities have said to us, well, we'd like you to, after this is in place and the governing body has adopted it, we'd like you to come back and work with our staff and provide periodic updates to the administrator and to the elected officials about how we're making progress on these things. Sometimes they want an outside entity just to sort of monitor and make sure that, okay, we agreed that This outcome after the first 12 months or six months or 18 months would be achieved. How are we doing on that? How's that being counted? Is somebody else working on disagreement or calculating these quantifiable outcomes, performance measures, whatever? That's not involved with this, but sometimes we do that depending on what the city or county is looking for. So again, I'll conclude by saying, As a city manager, I have found this extremely helpful for me because when the council says, this is what our priorities are, it's much easier for me to direct staff. And it's also easier to say, no, we're not doing that because it's not one of council's five priority areas or whatever. And so it becomes really a useful tool for making sure that the operations of municipal government are efficient moving forward. My guess is that in your own jobs, you may have had versions of this kind of strategic planning. And hopefully you've seen some successes like that. So I'll stop and see what kinds of questions that you might have about the process and what we're trying to do. At the end of the day, we just want to help you be more effective and improve governance and action.

So it seems like the idea that we would do this on a Saturday, we would meet in the morning, break for lunch, and

We can meet after lunch, so this is going to be a pretty full day on Saturday is that what you are recommending no true no to retreats are exactly alike and we try to customize it to what you all need, but what you've described Mr freeze is pretty close to what. What normally happens, we need for breakfast and needed a place where you can get you know food to serve there and then we work through the morning. Take a break for lunch and then a couple hours in the afternoon, I have found that. The mind can only absorb what the seek will endure. And so by about mid-afternoon or so, people have had enough. And so it's time to wrap it up. And so in that much time, we can do some of the long-range planning. We can do some of the assessment of strengths and weaknesses that I think underlies that. Have a couple of exercises where you guys set your own priorities, projects that are up on the wall. and so forth. We can do all of that within that time frame. Did I answer the question? Yeah. So you're saying about five hours? Five to six hours, yeah, depending on how long the break is. Whatever the announced time of the break is, it's going to be about 20% more than that.

And then what would be the result of that after the afternoon event? And Scott knows kind of what you're looking at. Then we'll put together a resolution to bring back to the council meeting. And then you can resolve that those will be your goals. And again, you're not bound to do those. There's not expenditure to that. But that way, then we have goals and objectives. So as Scott said, you have something to go by. So when the staff or the public looks and says, why are you doing that? Well, because you've got a resolution that has identified those as your goals. What is Ashland's fiscal year, Steve?

It's May 1st.

May to April.

May 1st, and so we've missed that. But it's not uncommon for a city to do one of these things right before, not right before the beginning of the fiscal year, but before the staff starts to put together the budget. Because assembling the budget takes months, oftentimes, and it should start with, okay, what is it that the city commission wants, or the board of aldermen, the elected, what is it that we should, we start with that as we build the budget. But it can still be used as you put together the budget for the period at the beginning of May 1, 2027.

You had mentioned Saturday, and I know some councilmen have talked about it because it has something to do with the staff. The staff would be okay with that because they'll get comp time from your job. You don't necessarily get comp time. So what we'd like to do is do what's convenient for you and make sure it works for the staff then. So if you prefer to do it on a weekday, we can do it, or a Saturday would work fine as well. I've seen it done both ways, and Saturdays work fine if that's what you'd like to do.

And could we, other than just the council and staff for the city, could we also invite a chamber member, a liaison from the chamber, somebody from Rady, somebody from Southern Movement Economic, Ashland Betterment, can we invite those people also to be part of the planning?

Yes. Those entities help us as far as growing. The answer to your question is yes. The more expansive answer is that revised statutes in Missouri on a topic like this, on a retreat like this, aren't going to let you close the meeting anyway. It's going to be an open meeting under Missouri law anyway, and so you can't keep anybody away. But of course, what you're saying is there are certain people who we think are going to be partners in whatever goals are developed. Why not let them be there and hear how the how the sausage is made, if you will, or even participate and bring some of their own expertise to it. I think that it's important, since absolutely the answer is yes, and based on some of your priorities, you're gonna have a far better idea than I do about which of those people that you wanna bring. The only caveat that I would offer is that if the expectation is that these people are all gonna make speeches, then that's gonna throw off the time a little bit. We might want to set some parameters about that. Not because we don't want to have their input, of course we do. But we want to make sure, at the end of the day, this is your strategic plan, and the primary actors are going to be you.

Yeah, you don't want somebody to come in and hijack the meeting from you. But I don't think the members that we invite that you're talking about would do that. Although you might have to be careful if there are some other members that come in that might come that would attempt to do that. But then the mayor can handle that.

One of the questions I frequently get when we're setting these up is, what about the senior staff, the department heads that Steve works with? And they're a great resource when it comes to the technical features of delivery, and maybe there's some things that you want to do that they say, well, we understand why we all want to do that, but it's not going to be as easy as they think, and you want to hear that. But at the same time, that too has a caveat in my experience, because at the end of the day, deciding what the policy is is your responsibility. It's their responsibility, once you've decided the policy direction, to help you find a way to get there, given their department expertise, and we want to rely on them for that. And maybe they can provide recommendations and ideas, but at the end of the day, it's your decision. And that's my job as a facilitator, just to make sure that those fences are observed and that if somebody gets too far down a tangent or talking about something that's a pet peeve, but not really on point to achieving your objectives. And I say, okay, let's park that for now and come back to this. And I think that facilitators like, there's lots of us out there who have served for too many years as local government managers. We don't have a dog in the hunt in Ashland. But we know how local government works. You can call the power company and they might give you a facilitator, and they're gonna know basic facilitation, but they're not gonna know the ins and outs of local government. So that's why I think that this is why we have a lot of folks calling us for this kind of service.

Can you help explain a little bit in the morning during the process we begin to work, what kind of things we'll do or what you'll do to begin to get the council working towards those goals and objectives?

There's a lot of different tools in our toolbox, and deciding exactly which ones may depend a little bit on what comes out of the interviews, what kind of feedback you all give me when I have one-on-one conversations with you. If I'm starting to hear a repeating theme about a particular project, or about a planning initiative, or an intergovernmental agreement, or something like that, then maybe we give that some special focus. But absent those sorts of things, There's a visioning exercise that I'd like to take people through about how you visualize what the community looks like five years, ten years from now. There's what I call a mini SWOT. SWOT is an acronym that means Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It's been around a long time. To do full SWOT can take a whole day. I don't want to do that. It's tedious. When you think about your economic development objectives, when you think about some of your land use objectives, particularly because you're a growing community along a major transportation corridor. Identifying your strengths and the opportunities you have is oftentimes what translates into economic development strategies. Often, the best way to get economic development is to build on what you already have. The employers that are already here, or the assets you have that could be made attractive to an employer, whether an existing one or a prospective one, rather than to tilt at windmills, if you will, at something that's never gonna be the right match for Ashley. Identify those strengths and those opportunities, as well as some weaknesses, perhaps, and then you craft some of your ideas around that. We have a couple of small group exercises where just two or three or four people exchange some ideas and respond to some questions that we have and work back out. And those are intended to also provide the raw material along with what comes from the retreat. Put it up on the wall and at one point I'll ask you to give you some stickers or markers or whatever. You woke up and independently identify your priorities, and then, so it becomes a group process. And then we discuss those, and sometimes there's amazing unanimity in the governing body about where you should all be going, what the top three, four, or five priority categories are. Sometimes there isn't, and we have to walk through that. So those are some of the ways that we proceed.

Yeah, building on what we have is really important. Ashland isn't unique that that's one of a kind, but we are, we are different than a lot of places, you know, and you all know, because of our location. And one city I was in, they, they, they were objecting because they didn't have any coast. They didn't have any beach. Well, you know, if you don't have any beach, you just don't have any beach. You have to take advantage of what you've got. We've got mountains. Don't regret they don't have. beaches, take advantage of the mountains. And so what do we have that we can take advantage of? I think that would be an important thing. And one of the things that the members of like Ready and Southern Boone County Economic Development have been talking to me about. So that would be an important thing for us to talk about, I think, as well.

And it has to be realistic. It has to be realistic and practical. It can't be pie in the sky stuff. I was doing a retreat once for a town called Milledgeville, Georgia. Anybody ever heard of that? It's right in the center of Georgia. Before the Civil War, it was actually the capital of the state of Georgia. Atlanta wasn't. And I think that they have moved it back and forth in the early, early years from Savannah to Augusta. And as the state grew, they planted out Milledgeville as a planned capital. And it was only after the Civil War and Sherman had burned everything else anyway that they moved it to Atlanta. And so I'm down there working with these folks in Milledgeville and asking them, what is it? that you would like to see. It would be a hard goal maybe, but it's achievable. And this guy says, I want the capital back. Ain't going to happen. The capital's not moving out of Atlanta. That's not a practical goal. We need to get to something that is practical, that even if it takes several years, and the first step is this, the next step is this, then we can get there. Maybe it's a stretch, but it's an achievable stretch. A reasonable person would say, yes, we work hard and we do these things, we can get there. There is no path ever to getting the state capital out of Atlanta. So it has to be a practical goal. And that's something that I'll monitor. But it's also a thing that I think that once we're all into it, we self-monitor it a little bit and say, Mayor, you know that's never going to happen or whatever. Well, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

I was going to say, just in terms of scheduling, if a Saturday works, we'll go out and begin to look at what works, and we'll get back to you for some time when that will work. Are we kind of looking at Saturday? Is that what would work okay for you all? Nope. Okay.

I'll just tell you right now, I think most of you already know, We should use this building. We should keep our expenses low as possible to show that we're good fiscal stewards. We have lots of rate increases that we should have had last couple years. I read your article in the paper. We have more coming up, especially if you want to, I don't know how many of you have done a five-year forecast with that water master plan, but water rates will have to go up significantly if you want to do even half of what's in that water master plan. So I'd like to do just a couple hours here. I'd like to use Steve as our facilitator. You have decades of experience. You probably have been in at least a half a dozen of these types of meetings. I just think I would all be a good steward. It would also be easier for all of our stakeholders that Dorese just mentioned to show up here, because most of them are in the area. Some of the people are probably in Columbia, but most of everybody else, Izzy and the ABC folks and Barrett you know, all those folks could be easier to show up here. And again, I think, you know, I think part of our goal plan, we're going to be constrained big time in our funding, you know. So, you know, we could have a lot of good goals and stuff and, you know, and, you know, to be a critic, you know, some, you know, City of Columbia does this, they do retreats, they go down to old Kinderhook and go down for a couple days and they do a big plan and, of course, they get criticized for all that. And so, yeah, that's where I sit. I don't know. I definitely, a Saturday, I know you say for employees, they'll get back in calm time, but I think most employees would rather have it for Saturdays than around the week when, you know, when the families and their spouses are possibly working. But that's just where I sit and feel, and I feel like I'm a municipal nerd. I watch a lot of different cities. I've seen some of the, city councils you talk about, happy that here in Columbia, the ones I'm most connected to, don't have those types of issues.

But that's where I sit. Well, I addressed two things on that that you mentioned, and those are good points, and there are two sides to those stories. One of the reasons why you don't usually have the city manager or the city administrator be the facilitator is because what happens is on Monday or whatever, you go back to being the city administrator and so then you have to do things one of the things about having the out-of-town facilitator is he can do what needs to be done and then he leaves he's gone on Monday and so he's not here to deal with it every day so that allows him to a great deal of freedom to do what needs to do because they say he doesn't know don't know the city or know what to do and that's one of the reasons you get an outside facilitator rather than having somebody like like Leslie or me doing it.

That's the reason here. I would say that first of all that where it's held and which day of the week is totally the discretion of the City Council, of course. What I'm here to argue for is the value of a planning session like this And where you have it and which day is your discretion, because you want to get the most people there who could dedicate to it. I think that I have found it always more effective to not do it as a part of another meeting. You need to sort of separate, at least mentally, the day-to-day work that the council does from this kind of forward thinking. It's just a different thought process entirely. trained as a facilitator. But once I had a mayor say, well, Scott, you're trained to do this. Why don't you be the facilitator? And I foolishly did it. And I realized that I can be the city manager at the retreat, or I can be the facilitator, but I can't do both. Because the city manager has a role. He's the head of the staff and is in a key position to be able to say, here's what we can mobilize with this. This is something we can put together for this. And because he knows the organization, The facilitator has to facilitate, and so I think that having the same person, you can find a different facilitator. Certainly, there's other qualified people out there to do it, but I don't recommend that you have the same, that the administrator do it, which is not to speak at all about Steve's skills. He's a very skilled guy. Maybe I could do that sometime for another city. Yes, you can do it for another city, but not the one that you're also serving as the administrator for. That's just my two cents.

Second thing I wanted to mention is about the cost of that. And I think we had had in your brochure it said $3,000. And that's just not for the session. It has a bunch of other things. Can you maybe explain the different things that you will do as part of this then?

Well, I touched on that earlier, that it'll include the advance. telephone calls with each of you individually and prepping for that. And then the actual day of the retreat, and then putting together a report that I'll submit to Steve that he can work with the mayor to put on the agenda. So it really is those three parts. And it's not an hourly rate, it's a fixed fee. So if it takes a lot more time, then that's the way it goes.

And I had worked with Shelly on that. as to where that money might come from. So it doesn't take any more money that you've got. What happens is you have budgeted $30,000 for the change in City Hall and moving some things across the hall there. And we have a committee that's working on that. And those aren't going to cost that much. I think it will be maybe $15,000 or $20,000 or somewhere in there. And so what Shelly would do is bring back a budget amendment for you to take $3,000 out of that, which isn't going to be spent and put towards this. And then you would still have some money left over from the city hall effort. So I think when you do all of those three things together, you will come out spending less money than you originally budgeted for.

Yeah, we just wrote a big check. We have another big check down the road. We have lots of rate increases we're gonna have to be doing going forward as well too. So we're gonna be asking for our special area utility players, we're gonna be asking them to pay a lot more money. My bill looks to be about 25% higher than what it was previously. And we haven't even gotten into using a lot of irrigation water yet. I'm expecting to have a $600 plus utility bill by the end of summer. So, like I said, that's my thoughts.

Which is exactly why we need this planning session. Because of the Upcoming raises because of the things that have happened in the past, uh, which may not have happened if we had had a better plan, uh, rather than just, you know, I thought about going back to like, yes, mayor X. Yeah.

He said the new plant back then was going to be good for sure. Yeah.

And I don't want to get into 7000, you know, negatives like that. But, uh. You know, it's for years and years. I'm the old timer on this. I've been here 11 years now. You know, for so long, we've just been flying by the seat of our pants. You know, we just put the fires out as they happen. You know, and if you get a vacancy, then, you know, it's like you just punt. So I think it's an excellent idea to have the, long range strategic plan. We did that many, many times in public education that I was in. We did it on the state level when I worked for DESE. It's something that I think could be very, very valuable. And I do think we need an independent person leading it. Like he said, he doesn't have a dog in the fight. And he's got the expertise.

The nature of local government everywhere is that there's so many things that you're dealing with all the time that it's not uncommon to get taken down rabbit holes and tangents. And sometimes you just have to deal with those things. And so if there's a document that keeps you on focus, that keeps the eye on the prize, if you will, then that's really the role that this planning document serves. And that can translate into financial planning and more efficiencies because you're spending your limited resources where they're going to have the most impact.

One of the things we do is to try to make sure that we keep the expenses and resources up and down and keep it in the city. Is there a place that we could do it in the city rather than going out of town and then having like the lunch catered from here locally then rather than going out of town?

I can take care of my own breakfast and lunch, you know, out of my own pocket. You know, we have these great donuts and we can use, you know, I can go to Woody's for lunch if we need to take a break. But like I said, I'm not really interested in doing a Saturday for five, six hours as well, too. I think the timing falls a busy year for a lot of people. And I don't know if you'd be able to get something arranged to get it done in August, but I think this is one of three special meetings that we're looking at. Park's one that we're going to do a special meeting coming up that first week in August, I understand. And so it's a lot to kind of throw in all this work. It can be harder to do, but like I said, I can't do it during the weekday. But if you all can do it on a weekday, more power to you. I can't do it on a weekday.

I'm good with Saturdays.

My preference would be a weekday, too, if possible. But at the same time, along with my, I'm in an extremely busy time right now. So between now and September, I mean, I have several work trips coming up as well. And we're not wanting to do this. As you guys probably know, we're between, my kids are in clubs and sports, we do all kinds of stuff.

When you find a weekday that would work, what does that mean? Rick, you're okay with a weekday. Yeah, I'm open.

But how do you guys feel too? I'd love to hear you guys' input as well. We've heard from Mike and Sam's on the phone too.

I think this is one where I think Rick's right. I just think the city generally has gone down a path of we put out a lot of fires and we respond to this, we respond to that. If we had something like this, maybe to Rick's point, we wouldn't have built a water treatment plant that we're paying for still. We're still paying the bond on the old water treatment facility while we're also picking up a new water treatment facility. If we had this kind of long-term thinking, we may not be in a situation where we're paying two different bonds for wastewater treatment plants that we could be paying for just one, right? I think the city very much kind of responds to what's in our face instead of thinking long-term, and I don't think that's with a city that's growing at this rate that Ashland's growing, I don't think that's sustainable, because we're gonna be in a situation where we're gonna make another move, and it's gonna be like the wastewater treatment facility. That's just .

Sam? Sam?

I don't really wanna spend a whole lot of taxable dollars on this, but I do see the value in it. I feel like I need to bring up is the fact that other than Rick and Doris, the oldest tenured on this board is 13 or 14 months. So we're making a strategic plan for five or ten years from now. The likelihood of any of us being on this board 10 years from now is pretty low, I'd say. And we should say that this strategic plan doesn't change in just two years. But I do see the value. I do feel like we're always on our heels. But I also see that a lot of times that comes with city government.

To Oliver Turner's point, I think that I should also point out that I would say that cities that do this on a regular basis are doing it every other year because that's your election cycle. That's when you have changeovers in the decision-makers, in the elected officials, and so even if did it two years ago maybe it's just time to spend less time but still update it because it's a dynamic document and it should be if it's static for for 15 years it's probably not going to be effective because your priorities are going to change not just because the members of the elected body change but also because the demands change and so but that doesn't mean that you can't be forward-looking you just have to adjust it it's just like you have to adjust a roadmap as you're traveling on a trip sometimes to deal with the changed situation.

Sam, would you be okay with a Saturday visit or a weekday visit?

Well, I'm okay with a Saturday as long as those Missouri Tigers aren't at home. We take that into account. I mean, obviously,

We're working 100-hour weeks right now.

I would like to see my wife and kids at some point.

Yeah. Yeah, I totally understand. Usually, that's on Saturday. Yeah. But, you know, we all took an oath to do what's best fun and best required of me to be there on a Saturday.

As long as I can wear shorts and a T-shirt, I'll be just fine.

We'll let you wear a Mizzou hat.

But, yeah, Mizzou's at home. No, I ain't going to be there.

When I spoke to this, I'm not saying that I wouldn't come to the set. I just want you guys to know that, just like all of us, we're very busy. It's a busy season of life, so if we move forward with this, if we decide to do it, do what I can to participate. I do see the value as well. I think my big question, and this might be from my own lack of experience on this, is what, especially for our community, what kind of goals are we gonna set? And I know this is something we would obviously dig into in the session, but what And I see more value in the idea of maybe doing something every two years versus doing something now that's going to be static for a decade or that we're not going to revisit. And we'll kind of point to it sometimes and say, hey, this is something we're going to do or we want to do. But what kind of goals are typically for our community size for what we're trying to achieve?

Well, maybe you can address this, Scott. Every community is a little bit different. But some of the things that frequently come out of sessions like this will be say, especially with suburban communities, they don't really have much of an original downtown area. So they'll create one, or they'll rehab their main street. Because in many communities, the central business district is not the hub of economic activity. But whether you like it or not, people judge the success of your community based on how the central business district looks. So it's frequently, that's a goal. Depending on what involvement you have in utilities, Bryce, you mentioned this too, thinking ahead about do we have the capacity to meet demand at this point based on our projections? If not, how do we get there? Another one might relate to public services, depending on the demographics of your community. I see this happening more and more. Are we making sure that maybe parts of our community, members of our community who haven't traditionally had access to certain services for whatever reason, how do we get them there? So these are the sorts of things that are These are not pie-in-the-sky objectives, they're oftentimes multi-year objectives to reach those sorts of things, but those are the types of, that's just three examples, there's many, many more. Those are the types of topics that frequently come up. And we take the time that's necessary because we need to identify specifically what in Ashland is a quantifiable performance objective that we can all agree on and wrap our arms around so we know how to get there. And that takes time to customize that and then, because it should be items then that Steve or whoever your permanent administrator is can translate that into a budget proposal and put dollars and cents to in a way that, you know, sensitive to what Mike is saying, you know, understands that what you aren't rolling into dough. So we have to plan for that too. These are all the considerations that, When you have everybody in the same room just focused on that long term, I think good things can come out of it. And those are some examples.

Yeah, and I appreciate that. And on both sides of this, where I do think that it could be beneficial for us to do something and change public perception of what we're doing in the city, especially with the tax dollars. But I'm also with Mike on that. I think we need to be mindful of how we're going to conduct this.

Well, back to your point, one of the things you were talking about, you were talking about Saturday, you might make yourself available. We would find a time to work for everybody. We'll find a time to work with everybody to find something to work to. We'd make it work for you. We'd get everybody to be there. It sounds to me like we were talking about maybe the majority of thinking Saturday in late August or early September, but something like that is what I'm hearing.

My second baby is due on September 5th. Before or after?

Before is probably perfect for him.

But what we'll do is we'll put out a calendar invite and we'll look at the calendar and make sure everybody's on board with that and make sure we're all available to do it. And then we'll get it all out to everybody. So we know we can have the location here in town. I know a couple places we could have it. Why not have it here? We could.

It's got the space. We've already got the video capability. I really think this should be recorded for people, citizens to watch. I know it's not normally done that way. But I'm big time transparency.

I'm sure most of you realize that by now. So we can look at that.

And costs as well. If you want, I'll buy you guys donuts so we can keep the cost low. Because the minimum it's going to cost to go get a hotel somewhere in Columbia, Peru, by the time you do five, six hours and rent their AV equipment, that's where they get you.

We could find some place here to do it, whether we do it here or some other venue here that would be inexpensive. It's sometimes good to get out of the chambers because then you're not thinking in terms of what you think of on a day-to-day basis in the chambers you were thinking of other things and you can think more expansively if you're not in the chambers sometimes it helps to get away a little bit but i'll tell you we'll find a place we'll find a place here or in town that is inexpensive that'll work for it we'll make some proposals for you give you some options for you to send that out to

the chamber or ready or something, would be willing to let us use their conference room, which would have video capability and all that.

When I was a bank manager, we never charged for it. I was thinking senior center. Senior center, the bank.

The school administration office, too.

Yeah, that's a good location. We do have options, right? Yeah, we have plenty of options. We can get around and see. get the data around a little bit, get everybody's opinion on dates and times and stuff. Just give me lots of notice.

Give me lots of notice. I'll accommodate you. Okay. I think we have enough to go by that we can get some options out there and see what everybody would agree to and get a little more specificity to that. Okay. Sounds good.

Thank you, sir. Mayor, thank you very much for having this extended discussion. Best of luck. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

So it'll be on a non-MU date when his wife is not in labor.

Yeah. Not in labor. And so September 4th will work just fine.

Much like Sam said with MU games, if my wife is giving birth to our child, I will not be there. Yeah, we got that. We'll make sure that doesn't happen.

All right.

So now we're going to go to, we were going to go to the closed session, but we're not going to go to the closed session. Is the board okay with that? Yes. All right, so now Mr. Hancock, it's your turn.

Okay, how's everybody doing? Doing well, sir. Good, thank you. I've been all over the state in the last three days, so I have a handout for you all. Thank you. With the loud line and some background material. You got one? I got one. Okay, yeah, I'll give one to the city. You got one? I'm gonna give one to this young lady here. So you get your scorecard and I'll give one to, what's your name? Okay, I've got an outline here. What basically we're going to do is to go over the results of the questionnaire, and the ultimate goal is to get a job description. Once we get a job description, then we'll proceed with the brochure, and I've got some samples. I could have made some copies, but... This is what we're doing for the city of Clinton right now. I think we've got someone over there. But you can look at that. So in a perfect world, by the way, do you have pictures and that sort of thing? Yes, we're collecting those for you. Okay, all right. So we get the job description. We come to agreement with that. And then we have that, and we can put that in the brochure, and then we're off to the races. And also in your packet is the schedule that you've seen before. And we're looking at, I think, August the 28th. I think it's time to advertise. So in fact, I've got a schedule here. approve the position profile, then we'll present the final job description and brochure. That's dependent upon when I get the pictures and the information. And then you come back and you get to approve one last time the brochure and the job description. So that's our goal, that's what we're moving towards. have a little sheet here we're going to review your comments on education experience salary range residency and then we have two other sections that the question here provided for us one is questions for interviews you know information uh the the other is the question for contracts What things and we can come back and do that at a later date, but our most immediate thing is to get the job description done. We are in Clinton right now, and there are deadlines the 24th, I think. Okay. So the next page, I gave you the schedule. The next page is everybody. And do we have another council member?

Yeah, he's on the phone.

Oh, oh, hi, Mr. Turner. How are you? And then are you a shorter council person? Yes, sir. Okay. All right. So we had six. So these are just everybody's comments and a lot of things. Now, the other thing that we did that I really enjoy doing this is that when I gave you that questionnaire, I showed some questions that we were going to ask the staff to fill out. It's really interesting as we get into this, what staff feels versus what's council. I don't know when you were getting into goal setting. I always like to have all of those parties there, staff and council, to talk about. So these are, I'm going to go through the summary, and then ultimately I've got a sample job description. I hope I've been running it. running around so much. I hope I got that. If not, I can. Yeah, I do. Okay. So all of you basically, you can see bachelor's or master's preferred. Remember, I sent out the job descriptions. Some of you referred to the job description. Master's could substitute with experience in bachelor's, master's preferred. So as a group, you're kind of all on the same page. Then These are the comments on experience from everybody, three years of some sort, five years minimum. The job description, five years experience, five years relevant experience. Five years, but three if it was a lateral at least. Now, this is what drives the job description. This is right out of your questionnaire. What's the three most important items that you you should be looking at when you evaluate this position. So on the next page, this is kind of interesting because every city is different. We put on the left, and you were supposed to pick your top three, what the mayor and council felt. And on the right was the city staff, what they came up with. And interesting enough, they're different than what you are. which I just think that's interesting. When I was in Clinton, for example, they were all on the same page. It was amazing that the staff was the same as the council. So you can see what your top three items were, which was, I call it finance experience. Budget management, revenue enhancement, general government, public management, paraphrasing, and experience in personnel and human resources. From the staff's standpoint, they felt that the top three were work experience in similar towns, planning, zoning, and land use experience, and experience in attracting new business. Some of you had that, but they were, you know, like one person. And then I put the comment here, strong infrastructure background.

Then we got into residence requirements.

Some of you, right now, I believe that you have, for everyone, if I pick this up, it's 10 miles outside the city, I think, for everyone. Although, I don't, anyway, whatever it is, some of you said city limits. And then some of you got into kind of jumping ahead, which really is a contractual situation. Move in, but you got six months or nine months to move in. We'll see that later. Now you can see I highlighted which ones are for interview and which ones are for contract. That long-term commitment, that's pretty hard to do. You never know when you get somebody. You know, you'd like for them to be a long-term commitment, but you as a value, all of you wanted a long-term commitment. Well, there was one that had two who wasn't. And then how many would you interview? I had one of those that I had personal interviews. We got into a discussion about that. The, what, if we get it, Good candidates. Enough candidates. Our hope, we will kind of filter now. You all can look at all of them. I mean, you know, let's not, you know, you can look at all of them. But I think you rely on us to try to get a good professional city management. So we're going to bring back to you six or eight is our hope. And then It's your decision which ones you want. That's your baby. And then I had the discussion with some of you that, in my opinion, two to three is the most that you want. And I shared this with you. They are not only trying to sell themselves, but you're trying to sell your community. That's why we've got a pretty brochure. There's tricks of the trade as far as, you know, you might have an hour that they go to tour, but their spouse, male or female, they're going to be interested in the community and they're going to want to know about the education, they want to know about the housing, all of that.

Because that's, if they're going to make a commitment, they want to know that. So you're selling the community. And we'll get into that on the interview. And then number four is contracts. And then I've got it somewhere.

I can share that. I'll get that to you, what the five traits are for the interview. I'll get that to you. I thought I printed it off. I could probably get it off my computer and give that to you all, what staff thought were the traits, but that's interviews and background checks. How visible? Those are the comments that you had for interview. You can read those. Yes to recruitment business, better communication with public, more public than previous. In between, better at transparency, better at social media. Anyway, that was kind of the comments on that. And then, do you want to change an agent or not? And some did, some didn't. but you had someone behind scenes, yes, to recruit new business, change if needed, in between, very key local leader, use all stakeholders to get the job done, focus on grants. Some of you had individual specific things that you were interested that you all, if you ever get into the discussion goal setting or whatever, you ought to hash that out. Some of you were really keen on new business. You know, I only get one, you know, person. Some of you think that grants are really important, not very many of you. But you can see those comments. And then salary range. Do you have any questions before I? You've got the piece of paper. You want to do it? You doing okay? You want to keep moving on? Go ahead. Okay, then we got into the salary range, and I'll show you what the proposed job description is, and you can look at that. But you've done an excellent job of doing the salary range thing. You had an outside consultant, and it went up this last time.

I think it was on the upper end.

So it's depending upon experience, obviously, what range. And I think it's down, I've got it here somewhere. I'll tell you what it is. But what I did, some of you made a comment. Some of you made a comment. One, and I thought it was an excellent idea, I just took the upper range and put 10% on that, you know, on the upper range. And I've done a little survey, if you want to know what other cities I've got that background information. As I communicated to you before, some of you, they aren't managers. Well, two things. One is salaries are going up significantly for professional city managers. Two is a lot of them are not moving, and we talked about that. You know why, housing. If I've got a 3% loan on the house and now I'm gonna go to 7% and not get the same quality house, that's the deal. And I told, I like to tell stories. We did the same situation as you all with the interim, I was the interim and I did the search And we only got two candidates. And because the council was dead on, no more than 100,000, and it was pushing it for that, this is St. James.

And when all said and done, I didn't have any candidates. You know, I had two people to interview.

One of them really didn't have city management, when either one of them did. And this lady, who was the ex-finance director of La Cruces, New Mexico. She'd been a fleet management person in the public works. You know, she, and I don't know how big, how big is La Cruces? Is it 107,000? So she was making $160,000. And she wanted to get, so she wanted, I said, you know, it's 100,000. You know why she wanted to come back? I told some of you this. She had a daughter who had an illness. She was married to a captain in Fort Leonard Wood and a little granddaughter. And she was in her upper 50s. She wanted to be within. So she took a $60,000 vaca to go to St. James. She's a workaholic. She's doing a great job in that community. The other thing is, and I would recommend this where you should advertise, and I think I've got that somewhere. I don't know if I put it in the sheet of paper, but I would recommend that we advertise in the Midwest, which is kind of in the range we work in, because we know a lot of people. Some people are in Illinois. I've got a guy in Nebraska. In fact, that's one of our advantages now. I guess our company has six former city managers. One in Nebraska, one in Illinois, the others are in Missouri. And so we know a lot of people. So I would say in your contract, you'll pay for the advertising. I just did Clinton, and it may go over a little bit over $1,000, but you should advertise in Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. That's the region. What about Arkansas? Well, we could. There aren't that many city managers in Arkansas. We could. I just never checked Arkansas. Yeah, we can add that.

If we're going to do all the border states, why not toss in the last one?

Yeah. Well, I'll tell you a secret. I'm Sixth generation Missourian. Yeah, yeah. But I don't tell anybody this. I was born in Arkansas. Sit here. Well, you know, yeah, we could do Arkansas. No problem. It's just I know people in Oklahoma because I was there. I know people in Nebraska. You know, but in an ad like Illinois Church's in the league, $45. Kansas charges $120. We got the ICMA, and that's the other one. I would highly recommend you advertise it. ICMA. That's the International City Management Association. That's because somebody may want to come home. And as I talked to you before, your strength is that you're close to Mizzou, and you're close to Jeff City. And so they may wanna come home. In fact, we just did the city of Trenton, and that person came from Chicago area back home, because they wanted to come home. You know, I had a daughter graduating from Mizzou. So we advertise there, there's a renegade city manager that I've paid the price to interview, it's called, called the American Association of American Executives and he's kind of a man again, you know, but he's got a good following and so I liked it. And then I'm looking, we've done, LinkedIn is not, we tried to do LinkedIn, LinkedIn has changed. There used to be another company called, I mean, it's an arm and a leg, they just nickel you to death, you know. Super expensive, that one. Pardon? It's expensive, that one. Super expensive. Yeah, it got too expensive. And the people that you get, you know, you'll get the, I'm not reflecting, but you'll get, you know, the cook over at McDonald's. Yeah, you get all the ladies. Yeah, you'll get, and from a recruiter's standpoint, oh, I come back and I told you we got 120, you know, through LinkedIn. but they nickel and dime you, and they didn't used to be that way two years ago. And then there's another company that's going the same route, but I'm gonna, our company's probably gonna join in. It was called GovJobs, and it advertises to all the government, and they're expensive for one, but I'm looking at, you know, because we're gonna get more searches in a way, you know, so we might do that. So do you have any questions on advertising? That's what I recommend. Where am I now?

Why would we want to pay Kansas $120, or $120 to advertise there? I was going to say, I was just leaving Kansas off. Yeah, I'm fine with somebody coming from Arkansas. I'm not sure I can accept a Kansas. Well, let me tell you about Kansas.

There are some people in this room that I may have heard of. Those city manager types, you can pick one or two of them. KU master's program is one of the premier city manager schools in the nation. And there's a lot of, you know, and that's why, you know, you want to advertise in Kansas. I know your feeling. I'm a Mizzou grad, so I know what you're talking about. Okay, so anyway, we got in a salary.

We'll get that.

And then the rest is contracted. I think I've covered the main part. I guess something I just want to bring up with the board, I know most people said five years is what they want for experience. But I don't know, I just feel like, so if they have to have five years as city manager, I can see a situation where there's somebody who was successful in business or something like that, they're later in their career, they've made a pivot. And they have all this other experience. So if you have all this managerial experience in the private sector, but you've only been a city manager for two or three years, I think there's real value in private sector experience in bringing that. So I don't know that the current job description, five years as a city. Have you read it? Yeah. You're fast, Serge. I just don't know that.

You're right there. You're right there. That's what you've got to do. That's what I need right now. And if you notice, yeah, it says five years of increasing responsible municipal management, master's degree, business is preferred but not required. The candidate should have city administrator assistant of at least five years assistant. But then it says, which I would recommend you plug in there, municipal department director was significant overall what may be considered first position and then the following are what I got from all of you it's all Atkins have experience in municipal administration management put in budget finance that's a in some it's if you wouldn't believe it's getting really critical in the cities do you think city managers are making a lot, finance directors are making, you know, and a lot of them are retired and you can't find them, but put that in there because that's what you said. I mean, you said that's important. And then human resources, because that's what you said this week, and your staff didn't say that, which was running, but you and I know all the things that you deal with on personnel and stuff that that individual has to have a knowledge of working knowledge to deal with potential lawsuits and in that business development somebody had a specific comment on infrastructure and I added that and and and you didn't have this this council but the staff did that was one of the top three that they had was information on knowledge of planning and zoning material. So this is the proposed job description that I put together. Now's the time for you to pick apart that so we can keep moving. I did not have the benefits, so that's why it's in yellow. I didn't know what loggers were loggers. Anyway, I didn't know what, you know, vacay. And is it 11? It's now what? It's now six.

It's now six.

Is that one and a half percent payout?

Two, it's just one of the two.

Is it two?

It was one and a half, that's two. Yeah.

Which is good, that's good. Okay, so once you all give this direction, We're off to the races, and once Steve gives me those pictures, you might want to pass that around so that people can see.

So can we send you proposed changes to this, or should we talk about it now?

What I'd like to do, if you want to stay on track, I'd like for you guys to hash it out here and make any modifications. And so we can keep this thing moving. Because if I get this, then it's possible that my guy's really good and he's in Ohio. I get it to him and it'll be a week or two. He'll have a nice brochure for you. And then we'll hit that. Because we've got to advertise for at least four or five months.

So I guess my only thing is, to my point earlier, is just after the of at least five years, I would put in another sentence that says, significant private sector experience can substitute for up to three years, two, three years, whatever.

Or even after at least five years, but for significant private sector experience. Just something that references that. Can we get something outside the box, not a cookie, maybe not a whole split. Or related.

Where would you like we had in here? I know it talks about a municipal department. But you could add, well, you're gonna open it up to the other whole deal. And you can do whatever you want.

So I think the easiest way to do it is the candidate should have city administrator slash manager or assistant city administrator or manager experience of at least five years. And then, like you said, comma, significant or relevant private sector experience may be substituted in part. Okay.

And I'm going to tell you my personal opinion, you know, because that's what you're saying. So I'll write that down, and then you've got it. What did you say, relevant?

Yeah, relevant private sector experience may be substituted. Or may be considered. Or may be considered, yeah. May be considered. Relevant private sector experience may be considered. Private sector experience. Should we say considered or may substitute for? I mean, just like.

I think considered kind of keeps it generic enough. Is it?

The way it's considered.

May be considered.

Relevant private sector experience may be considered. Correct. Okay. I'm going to tell you my stories. You can take it for whatever it's worth. I mean, it's your city. I've seen situations. I went in interim in Fort Scott, Kansas, and there was a gentleman there that they hired from the private sector, the city manager for 12 years, did not have any of that experience. And one of the things that had occurred with that situation, and I can tell you another one, and you know, it's okay. It's just, and you can do it in the interview process. If you want to bring them in, you know, you guys can vote on who you want to bring in. So that person did a $3 million private interview their hotel because they had economic development funds. And he did it with a handshake, nothing in writing. It tore up the whole community. The community was split. They fired him with a big severance package. And then the community was, I'm digressing, but they were split. And then they brought in somebody who was a professional. which is, to your point, professional young man who was married to an assistant attorney general from Arkansas. He was from Oklahoma. I met him. I didn't do the search. Said everything that he wanted to, you know, just, I said, this guy's the real deal. He's got the background and stuff. So he comes in and he immediately is in bars chasing the women, chasing the men. They fired him, they went through three city managers in that time period. And then I came back and it was obvious we weren't gonna get anybody from the outside because of the controversy. So I worked with a gentleman in the private sector. They wanted me to help train and mentor that person. And he's doing a great job. I had a situation in St. James where And you find that, but you've got a good finance director, so this might not be relevant. But it's just different in the public versus from a finance standpoint. He did everything on an Excel spreadsheet, you know, no fun. You're in finance searching. Yeah, and anyway, it was a disaster. But you can interview anybody you want. And if you want to keep that door open, that's up to you. So if you want to add that, that's fine. So is everybody in agreement with that? I think so. Okay, we'll add that. Okay, and then that salary range goes from 93 to 140. I think your upper range right now is one, yeah, I added 10%. You know, so I added that just to get candidates. You know, and you may, like I said, you may get the city manager of Cincinnati, Ohio come in here because, you know. Anyway, so if that's okay, then we're off to the races.

I guess the one last thing I would, so residency within the national is preferred and required within six months. Well, for one, is required, is repeated twice.

Well, and Mr. Attorney, correct my graphic. I did this pretty fast just about an hour ago. That's okay.

But the other thing, I think that, like you said, one of our benefits in Ashland is being so close to Jeff City into Columbia, and there might be somebody who wants to live on the outskirts of town. I think a lot of our staff doesn't live in town, so making the city administrator live within town, I don't know. How does everybody feel about that? I feel like as long as they're within a few miles of town, if they want to get five acres and have some chickens outside of town. Well, maybe 10 miles makes sense. I was thinking- Don't even be talking about them chickens.

Do not bring up chickens.

I didn't say rooster or turkey, Sam.

So here's what St. James did through experience. They had, there's big rivalry, and I don't know that you have that rivalry here in Ashland, but there's big rivalry between St. James and Rolla, okay? And they didn't have any, the housing was terrible in St. James. So that person went in to rob to live, okay? I mean, that's the worst case scenario. So the council was adamant. And so the way they solved it in there was they said within the school district because they felt that if that individual is in the school district with their kids or whatever, they have a sense of community. I'm not saying that's the answer, you've got a good point. But with your situation, you might have somebody that's got a house in Columbia or got a house in Joe City. But the reason why it's usually not done is that, and everybody's gotten away from property taxes, but if you ever got into a property tax election you know, where you're voting and you're putting a tax on your local and your city manager's out there and he doesn't have, he or she doesn't have to pay for it, it comes across pretty bad. That's why, and, well, state law, you know, they've modified, they've done away, they've modified the residence requirement, but I'm just sharing some thoughts. And I'm not trying to convince you, I'm just giving you the other side.

I like the school district idea. I don't mind the school district idea, but I will say that after Kyle left, I had a resident text me, maybe our next city administrator will live in town. And I'm like, so I'm like, wait a minute. So I called him up, I said, where do you think he lived at? Well, he didn't live in the city limits. Yes, he did.

Half of the people that live in Ashland don't live in the city of Arkansas, right? I mean, you live right outside. And technically, when I lived, like, I lived in, like, South, it's, like, half the time it comes up as a Hartsburg address when you put it in, like, Google Maps or, like, Apple Maps. So, like... So, I could live with the school district. I like the school district.

I mean, the school district is cool.

What do you think? It's pretty wide, too. I mean, it's a pretty wide room, so... And that's the biggest part of our, like, the tax issue, like, I mean, I could go both ways.

It seems like from my looking at following other city stuff, it's the overall majority for the city management administrators inside city limits. Directors is kind of 50-50. I know Columbia under John Glasscock wanted everybody to live inside all directors. They had problems filling the directors, and as soon as came on, he left that, and the next three directors hired were current ones who lived outside city limits. But 50% of the city of Columbia employees don't live in Columbia, which I think most, I know, Darlie, but well, most of you, I know, Leslie, you live in town, right? Yeah. And of course, Kyle did. He was one of Sam and I's neighbors. you know, directors, I'm fine being, you know, because they don't get paid quite as much, but I think at a $125,000 to $130,000 salary, that might be it. I think that's a pretty good buy-in. And if Amendment 5 passes, we won't have city property taxes in five years, though. Ain't that right? Yeah, your points will to... No, it's... Yeah, but it's income tax, not... Yes, but... That's not a topic. We'll get off that. We'll talk afterwards.

I heard you on the Missouri Times. City of Sedalia right now, and there's a lot of stuff going on in Missouri, you know, because it's up here, you know, and then it's coming down and anti-government stuff. And the city of Sedalia just had a, And one of the big issues was, and a friend of mine who was on our team, economic development, he was mayor of Sedalia, but everybody's living outside the city. And so one of the big issues was everybody, all the department directors are living outside the city, including the city managers living outside the city. So you can play it both ways. But anyway, I'm getting back to Greg. What do you think?

The insider? I'm just looking at past history. For this purpose of getting someone in to interview, I think we should probably keep it kind of like it reads within residency preferred and required within six months. we get someone in, and they're good, and they can't find a house in town, and they want to get two and a half acres, that comes back to the board, and we can waive that residency requirement after we've hired, if they're a good person.

Yeah, but then you've got to hire an attorney again to make a revision to their contract, right? Because it's a contractual issue. Because if you make this requirement, it's going to be in their contract, and then you're opening up their whole contract. You'd have to modify the contract.

Yeah.

Sam, what do you think? Sam? Did I lose you again? What's your thoughts, Sam, as far as city limits, school district? What's your thoughts? Can you repeat that? You broke up.

I would say that originally I wanted city limits. It makes sense for them to live in the city. But that's not going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back, in my opinion. If they're like, no, we found a house in Hartsburg, we found a place in Columbia, and it's our candidate, that's the one we want, I'm not going to be like, no, you can't have the job.

Okay. David? I think it's residency within the city limits preferred, and we'll consider it. Very close. Something along those lines.

I'm going to give you a little piece of information from personal experience, and that is every time I've been hired to be a city administrator or a city manager, I was somewhere else and came to that city. But when I come to that city, where would I want to live? Well, then I live in the city. You know, I'm not going to come to the city and look for someplace outside of the city. You're coming from someplace else, so you come in and live in that city. And that's what I've done in every place and never posed a problem.

I agree with you, but in this case, it could just be that they're buying a house right over the state line. Like I said, half of Ashland doesn't live in Ashland. They live on the outskirts of Ashland, right? At least that's how it feels. They don't live in Ashland. He can move into my neighborhood. I got a full house. There you go. All right, so let's just say state of the limits. All right. State of the limits?

Yeah. What? State of the limits? Leave it. And then on this... And I added that deal with the six months. You could extend it for a year or whatever.

I think we're going to have to give them a little extra time just with the housing market in Ashland. I said I think we probably have to give them a little extra time. A year.

Kyle's house is for sale still. Yeah. I hate to tell you what those three new houses in my neighborhood are for.

You still here? It's pending.

Kyle's house is pending?

Yeah.

Oh, is it pending now?

Well, good.

Oh, so all I've got is city limits. If there's any other modifications.

We can leave it with the, like, what was it, 30 days or 90 days? Six months. Six months. Okay.

We can leave it with that. Mr. Mayor, that's all I've got. I mean, I've got enough to take off. Okay. And we'll get back with you when we're ready to bring back the brochure. And we'll advertise it. Hopefully we can have that within the next week or so. And the job description. Well, this is the job description. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. We're going to adjourn.

All right. Thanks, sir. All right. Can I get a motion to adjourn? All in favor? Aye. Go home, everybody. Thanks, Sam.