Remarks by Hans Buder
91 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 4
First of all, I actually completely agree with Nancy. Brandon, does the city do any power washing downtown? We don't.
Yeah, I think it would be interesting to have staff come back at some point with just a quick analysis of is there some way, what's the best way to get a contribution from the businesses? But to Nancy's point, have the efficiency of having the city do it. And then also, if we did add it to the budget, maybe think about like some offsets, some options for that so that it's not a budget buster.
My only comment was, you know, Wendy, we're trying to sort of thread an interesting needle here, but I think the thrust of the motion we made in the special meeting before this meeting was if you could, so instead of like approving the brochure, if you could basically I think that's kind of... I think that's kind of what we're going for here tonight. Does that make sense? And then you can go back and decide, hey, what should my brochure look like? And it might wind up looking very similar, and there may be some changes, but that's the idea.
Yeah, I have a quick slide that I think might might be helpful. And then we can go back to your slide in a second.
Yeah, I mean, so as As Wendy mentioned, one of the problems, just to frame this, that came up that Jeff did a great job of highlighting was that if we're going to have salary discussions with a potential, you know, with a potential candidate, it has to, those discussions have to occur even if it's a closed session, it has to occur on the date of a regular meeting. And so if We're aiming for December 8th as the date to approve a contract. If we wanted to provide any meaningful feedback on salary, other contract points, et cetera, that would have to happen at the month before November meeting,…
So I moved this to the 8th because of that. I also added a row, which was something we started to talk about in our last meeting, and the decision was to punt. But basically, this would start with the community meeting on Friday. And then my thought was it would be helpful for the council to like actually meet and just approve whatever the final brochure that Wendy sends out is. And maybe we could meet on, I think this is a Tuesday. Alessandra said she was available. And then maybe, you know, we open the recruitment as soon as you're able to turn it around, Wendy, right? Like what, based on…
I think it's option two. Yeah, my first column is her option two, I think.
But December 8th won't work because you have to publish the contract on the Wednesday before.
I think the disconnect is there are a lot of advantages to this schedule. The one thing that you give up is... You are basically outsourcing the salary negotiation. You create a range. You could even, in like October, provide more guidance on, you know, somebody with XYZ experience, we want to be in this part of the range. If we really like this candidate, we want to be in this part. You could do that in October in a closed session. Well, we could do that in November, right? Sure. Yeah, you could do it in November. Exactly. Whatever. But at the end of the day, you are outsourcing the…
Can I make a suggestion that maybe you just create another column with this proposal so that we can see it? Because I'm starting to get a little confused.
Yes. Can you just add the number of days in parentheses in the recruitment closes row? I think it's 27 days for the purple and 34 days for the option one.
It's 27 the same day we counted the 29, so if you keep it apples to apples.
The only thing I would say is It's basically a, you know, it's not terrible. I think it's actually like, the thing that I care the most about is having the two week period between the first and second round interviews so we can actually do some reference checks, which is preserved here. I do like the idea of having a longer open period for us to go and drum up candidates, because at the end of the day, you're only picking from the candidates that actually get into the pool. And so going to 27 days, to me, it's basically you're weighing, like full council weigh in on salary versus having an…
I wanted to raise one other point, which was, this discussion on 11-3, you will have narrowed the pool of candidates to three candidates. But it's not like you're actually getting feedback on the negotiation with a specific candidate. You just have three resumes in front of you that you just talk to somebody. And then in that meeting, I guess you say, hey, this is how much I would spend on this person. But you still have another interview left to go. And you haven't come into contact with reality in terms of negotiating with any person in that meeting. So I guess my only point is it's still a…
But like, what's your authority on relocation expenses, right? Or those kinds of things. But those are all, it's still a pretty general conversation on 11-3. And so maybe just have it in October and provide firmer guidance to the ad hoc.
September 4th is really about the candidate profile. September 4th? September 4th is really about the candidate profile and I think we've had given people an opportunity based on how this is agendized. I think we can make a decision here about that. I don't really don't want to have another conversation about this calendar.
Yeah, I did really quickly. I just wanted to flag that going back to the top of the schedule, there's a community meeting this Friday. We're about to give Wendy some feedback on a candidate profile here in open session. And then the community is going to provide feedback on a candidate profile. And so this notion of finalizing the brochure do we want to plug in a meeting for us to be able to just say, hey, we approve what you come back with on the brossure? It seems like that's an important step. I agree. Okay.
So that's actually a meeting, to be clear. Yes. Okay.
Yeah, I guess I would echo what was stated earlier about if we're trying to find somebody who's happy where they are and trying to pry them free and bring them here, you know, an extra five or ten thousand dollars might not be sufficient. Similarly, I think there's a reason when you look across companies, when you look across organizations and you see the CEO, et cetera, tend to have salaries that you're like, wow, that's really high compared to some of the other employees. that's not just because, that's not random, right? That's because people do recognize that that top person leadership…
I move to approve resolution 2026-07, that's 067, sorry.
So Wendy, you can get clarification from the rest of the council. I'll just speak for myself here. I think the goal, like when I was making my motion, the goal was basically to go back to the discussion that we had downstairs in closed session, where you first came to us and said, hey, what is the profile of the candidate that you want, that discussion we had in closed session, to basically have that discussion de novo in public session, not through the lens of the brochure that emerged out of that process, So having that on screen is probably unhelpful for the needle we're trying to thread…
Yeah, I'd echo a lot of Bob's comments. I think that I'm looking for an experienced, proven leader. I think... that's like my preference. So I'm, again, I'm open to having a variety of different types of candidates coming through the pool. But my preference would not be for on the job training in the top slot specifically experienced as a city administrator, I think would be really valuable. Um, We want somebody not only who has experience in that role, but somebody where we have verified that they were running a high performance organization or potentially built one. And while that somebody…
Do you have any questions? I do. So the documents that you gave us with the salary study provides what percentage above or below a certain position is relative to market median. I'm wondering if you average across all of the at-will employees, how far above or below market median is the entire classification of at-will employees?
Okay. And then similarly, I guess it's, you know, not what we're dealing with tonight, but where do the management and general classifications sit relative to market median?
So in layman's terms, our employees are paid roughly 10% are represented non-public safety employees are roughly 10% above market median, is that?