City Council - workshop

We are ready to get going.

All right. Are there any questions about the update agenda? Any questions about the formal agenda? Just housekeeping, so I know who to call on. Land acknowledgement tonight? All right. 7A is the resolution commending Stacy Flint.

I would like to read that.

All right. And we have item 14 a, which is the council policy direction and Natalie Roberta 14 B is the code change for animals. And that'll also be Roberta 14 C is the 26 budget amendment. Okay. And then 14 D is the proposed ballot initiative.

We can do that.

And then 14 E is the intergovernmental agreement with the county for the budget for the ballot initiative. And then we have a TDA meeting tonight as well. And there's one item on that one and it's authorizing moving property from TDA to the city for construction of a multimodal path from I-25 to grant.

You got it?

Okay. All right. Anything from you?

We do have three quick things. First, we have gotten a request from E470 would like to come and give just an update on activities at E470. We have identified that there looks like there could be space to accommodate a presentation on October 13th. I think they're hoping to touch base with y'all this fall. We did have somebody from E470 they presented last year similarly. A couple of another scheduling thing Adams county has reached out the Commissioners would like to schedule a joint dinner just a relationship building perspective and they identified two potential dates for that October 19 and October 26 then last you did get a recommendation from that active adult. advisory board. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Remaining Terry samba for appointment. So those are the three things for direction tonight.

HAB-Charlotte Pittsburg- Start with the first one. Any objection or the last one, I should say any objection to the appointment of the recommended person. HAB-Charlotte Pittsburg- All right, and then the two days. So I remember the dates of the county commissioners dinner was the 19th of the 26th of October. HAB-Charlotte Pittsburg- Their preference from Council.

As long as people want to schedule it, we can follow up an email. Okay. Are we okay scheduling it then?

We'll figure out a date later? And same with the 470?

We thought that the update meeting on October 13th, like the comedy, then I think that worked for their schedule.

Any objection? All right. Anything else, Tansy? Tammy?

I'll just mention that it looks like E470 and PARTERRE have come to terms on an agreement for the funding of the Quebec Street overpass. So that's good news. And we think that'll be going to the PARTERRE Special District Board on the 13th of this month. And so then once the developer signs and it goes to E470's board, it should be coming to City Council maybe September, early October. So that's good news. Great.

Thank you. All right, let's jump into briefings. We have a discussion on the ordinance amending the code to align with state law.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor, Pro Tem, Council Members, Adam Stevens, Deputy City Attorney. We are coming to you tonight for code changes to reflect a decision by the Colorado Supreme Court in People v. Camp and a joint case, actually, People v. Simons. Camp was a decision out of Westminster Municipal Court. Simons was a prosecution out of Aurora. In this case, the Colorado Supreme Court held that all municipalities in Colorado could not impose a penalty harsher than what state law provides for similar identical conduct. I have a previous to this decision and as is current, uh, in our current ordinance is that, uh, municipalities are allowed to punish, uh, code violations up to 364 days in jail or a fine up to 2,650. Current code in Thornton allows for a fine only provision, which is just the fine up to $2,650 or, uh, under Section one dash eight dash or parents a and then there is an incarceration of component under parents be which would be the 2650 fine plus 364 days in jail. Under this proposal that's before you tonight, we're going to add an amended sub C section, which is going to clarify that provisions of code violations that have identical or similar conduct that is prohibited by our code will fall into the same system that the state sets forth. The state sets forth a system for misdemeanors because in Colorado, municipalities can only punish misdemeanor-level behavior, not felonies. Felonies go to county court or district court, I should say. But that process is a Class 1 misdemeanor, Class 2 misdemeanor, and petty offenses. Class 1 misdemeanors, which are currently prohibited by the city code, include assault, harassment, carrying a concealed weapon, animal attack, cruelty to animal. This is now going to be all punishable by a fine up to $1,000 and 364 days incarceration. Behaviors or conduct that is punishable as a class two misdemeanors, which include theft and shoplifting, less than $1,000, malicious peeping, obstructing an officer, resisting arrest, vandalism between $300 and $1,000, an aggressive animal or examples that is punishable with a maximum fine of $750 and 120 days incarceration. And petty offenses, including theft or shoplifting with a value of less than $300, trespassing, fireworks, gambling, disorderly conduct, such as fighting in public and damaging property under $300, are all punishable by a maximum fine of $300 and 10 days incarceration in county jail. Current city code violations that do not have comparable state crime provisions will continue to be punished as provided in current city code. So, for example, offenses, the vast majority of non-criminal state equivalent cases are found under 1-8A, which is the fine only, which is noise, nuisance, curfew, no soliciting, smoking by minor. or in a premises possessing graffiti materials by a minor, animal at large, and nuisance accumulation or maintenance will continue to be punishable up to a fine of $2,650, but there is no incarceration. There are only a few. There are only a few offenses left that will include the the incarceration up to 300. And I mentioned those the ability to a bit of nuisance property which is a nuisance property code that the city passed just a few years ago. And then I threw in there just for I quite honestly didn't know this, but we apparently prohibit fraudulent schemes, fortune telling, which means that you are not allowed to give somebody's fortune upon receipt of money. You can do it for free, but if you charge somebody for it, that is punishable up to... That explains why we don't have any palm readers at the city. They didn't know this was coming. The reason I also brought this up... The other reason I brought that up is it does kind of open up to a larger conversation. I just want to advise you. I know that the judge was in front of you a couple weeks ago about and she previewed that this discussion was coming. There is a bigger need to look at chapter 34, which is our current criminal code to kind of revisit that and Internally, we had discussions that it made more sense to wait until the municipal court master plan and the consultant was in that process go through to find out and develop the viability of what the jurisdiction of the court is going to be, the resources of that court, and the policy decision that the council makes for how much authority the court will have. to have that discussion first and then create, so we have a framework of what the court can do, and then we will come back with a more robust re-figuring out of what crimes make what sense. And quite honestly, there are a fair amount of offenses that are currently in the books that, to my knowledge, really just don't get enforced very much anymore. And the question is whether we should even have them. like the fraudulent schemes of fortune telling. Those are all again policy decisions, but I think it made more sense to get this done first, just so that we have on our books currently when people are charged that they understand what the maximum penalties are. I will also note that when the camp decision came out last December, Our office prepared this document that's in your materials that basically went through the entire code and found each offense to make sure that we captured each state equivalent, which was quite a lot of work. But we did that. We provided it to the court, and the court provides in its advisements of defendants what the maximum penalties are. And furthermore, the prosecutors know not to ask for sentences beyond what we were able to do here. So this took a little bit of time, but we were in compliance with the Supreme Court decision from the get-go. The last thing I wanted, there was a couple other cleanup provisions. One, there was a state statute change that required us to handle the restitution matters within 63 days rather than 91 days, which is now changing. And there was an oddity under the state theft statute that says that municipalities cannot prosecute theft offenses above the value of $1,000. which was odd, considering that some years ago, the state increased the felony jurisdiction limit to $2,000. Part of the argument that municipalities had, and the reason that we were surprised by the camp decision, was we had a state statute that says, here's what municipal offenses are punishable by. And when the state redid their misdemeanor penalty provisions, they didn't change the that grant of authority, number one. And number two, everyone assumed that when the felony jurisdictional limit went up, again, 10 some years ago, that municipalities under their home rule authority could continue to prosecute up to the felony limit. That assumption isn't true anymore because of the camp decision. So it's an oddity, but we can't relitigate it. The Supreme Court has spoken and it was based on Colorado constitutional law. So that's the end of it. I'm happy to take any questions, but that's the completion of my present.

And this is on consent tonight.

Yes, it is on consent tonight. And I hope that there isn't an issue with it. And I'm happy to bring this back for a more robust discussion about criminal code penalties in the future.

Any questions, concerns? All right, I look forward to consent.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right, city attorney recruitment process planning.

Tricia's coming to the table. Amy Agredana and Shelly is also joining. So we've got the HRA team here. So you do have some upcoming decisions to make as a council in terms of city attorney recruitment. So we've just walked through um looked back at prior recruitment processes and looked at sort of the parts and pieces of that um before recommending a process to you we ultimately wanted some feedback to calibrate what roles the council wanted to have and how quickly you wanted to move through a recruitment process so some of these questions will help us to come back and recommend next steps that um will optimize the role that the council wants to play, what you want the staff to take. And then ultimately, some of these choices have some consequences in terms of process and time.

So with that, I'll give the floor to Tricia. That's good. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council. Wanted to talk to you a little bit tonight about two main pieces of the city attorney recruitment. The first part is the acting process. There is an executive session scheduled immediately following this to talk about details, candidates, things like that. And so we're trying to just from the public setting talk about the process. We will then go into those next two bullets and talk about whether or not what your options are for actually using an executive search firm and then looking at, as Tansy said, the candidate recruitment and evaluation options. And we're going to tag team this.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council. I'm Amy Agredano. I'm one of the senior HR analysts here. And I had the privilege of helping you all through the city attorney recruitment process last time, as some of you might have known. And so I get the privilege of doing it again. And so I'm just going to kind of walk through high level some questions and hopefully we can get a path forward so that we can get a great candidate candidates in here. and find our next city attorney. So as far as the acting process, like Tricia mentioned, we are going to go into executive session directly following this. So we will give you a lot more details for that. But just kind of a timeline on July 24th, I did email all of the attorneys here at the city and said, hey, if you're interested in being the acting city attorney, please email me your resume and cover letter by August 5th. That deadline has come and gone. And so we will talk about number of candidates, who those are in the executive session. Following that, you guys do have the option of doing interviews. That is an optional process. You can do that. You could also decide that you don't want to go through that and just pick someone. Once you make your decision, you will then officially appoint that person into the acting assignment August 25th.

And I'll add in here, I believe that Tansy sent out or city manager's office sent out, maybe it was a calendar, you know, trying to schedule if there was any dates that maybe the majority could make if you wanted to do interviews. But I would actually leave before we get to the next slide, if there was any discussion that you guys had or any questions you had regarding whether or not you wanted to do interviews. Just from a process standpoint, That's from Council.

We've always done interviews in the past, even for interim positions. We okay with that approach still? Yes, it is beneficial for us to go through that.

So you do, time is pretty limited to get this done ahead of August 25th. You do have the results of that we got from the survey. There wasn't a clear consensus date that emerged there.

Go ahead, Chris. For those that missed the opportunity to vote to maybe help settle this, there's four outstanding. If you're one of the four, is it appropriate to say? Do you have a preference?

Well, and I even wonder, because when I pulled it up, it said pick one. And I actually went in and picked second one after the fact, but I don't know that everybody did that.

So I emailed that option. So I assume this might happen without clarity, but perhaps the four that didn't have a preference can help steer us in one direction.

Well, and looking at the dates in particular, the 20th actually is, we have an event that night.

The awards.

Yep. So that date doesn't work.

The 18th. I have two of us that day. Which date? On the 15th. On the 15th.

Are you going to do tallies? I'm just trying to, we have a bunch of things on the 15th. Yeah. So I'm trying to get rid of the ones that don't work at all right now. So if there's any dates that do not work, please let me know. Other than the 15th and the 20th.

Thursdays don't work.

Thursdays don't work at all?

Yeah.

Well, and that would be this Thursday anyway. All right, so that leaves us the 15th, the 17th, or the 22nd.

I can't do the 17th, but I could do the 15th or the 22nd.

Okay. The 15th is out. The 22nd.

I can do the 22nd.

What time would it be? The 22nd. There's two options. We could do in the morning or the afternoon.

Afternoon.

Afternoon?

Yeah. Yep.

Does that work for everybody?

All right, the afternoon of the 22nd. That means we have a quick turnaround. We'll have to make a decision that day so that we can do the appointment on the 25th.

So this is kind of an outline of some recent appointee processes that you have done. So there is a formal solicitation for executive search firms request for qualifications. We will talk about your preference for that in a moment. Active city council involvement in the search firm selection and development of the position profile. We will also talk about that in a moment. You get to decide how much participation you would like, if any, for employees, members of the public. And then a similar process. So past appointee recruitments have taken about six to eight months just to kind of set that expectation.

of how long this process will take total.

So as far as the executive search firm selection process, you have four different options that we have identified. The first one is to do kind of starting from scratch. So doing an RFQ, request for qualifications. And then if you decide to go that route, those firms that put in can either be evaluated by human resources or you all could decide to do that yourselves and interview the firms to see if they are a good fit for you. You could also, the next option would be to utilize recent informal proposals. And so recently with some of the more executive level recruitments, the city has used SGR firm to do that. And they also did a request for qualifications for that process. And so you could utilize those instead of having to go out from scratch. You could say, we want to see what the city has already done because they did it recently. We would like to review those. Or again, you could have human resources, review those and pick a company to do that. Building off of that, you could say, you know, we want to utilize the ones that the city recently obtained, but You know, I know in the past you all have mentioned, hey, we've heard of this firm that did a recent recruitment for another city. We've heard good things about them and we want them to be included in that group of requests for qualifications. And so if you would like to do that, it's kind of a hybrid of the first two. We are more than welcome to do that. We can reach out and get information from them to add them into the firms that you could select. And then the fourth option is you could decide to just not use an executive search firm. And you could just have human resources post the position, kind of like we did recently for police chief. And so we would source candidates. We would post it on our website. you know, our regular page that we source candidates for all of our positions from. And that is an option as well. So I'm going to pause there. Any thoughts?

I just want to clarify here that under the city's purchasing policies, given the amount of these contracts, request for qualifications isn't required, but you could do one. So that's the difference between informal proposals and a formal RFQ.

We've always used for these positions because they report directly to the council. It's a little different than the chief reporting to the city manager. We've always used recruiting firms. I mean, I would be comfortable with one or two, option one or option two, the RFQ process or utilizing the informal proposals we already have.

Yeah, I would go wherever we used last time.

So that second option, since we're comfortable with those firms already? Is there objection to that?

All right. Would you like to evaluate those firms yourselves, or would you like HR to evaluate those and then report back for a final determination?

It would be great if you could make a recommendation to us. You're looking at them, because we did the city attorney several years ago, which may be a little different than the city manager, but they may have similar qualifications.

And so just for clarification, I think Part of this was utilizing the executive search firms that the city manager's office has recently identified. But I think I may have heard you actually include the search firms that we've used for other appointee recruitments as well.

If those are still valid, I don't know how much time has to pass for them to be considered valid.

We can cross-compare those. Okay.

It may be too late. I mean, too much time has passed.

The other option that you all have and that you can decide on is how much you would like the executive search firm to do. So there are several options with that. You can have the executive search firm source candidates only, and they can just, right, put it out there, reach out to people, get that interest, give a list of candidates, or you can kind of have them, which we've done in the past, walk you all through the entire process from beginning to end. Any thoughts on that?

Is there a significant cost difference from how much their internet is?

And if you'd like, we could bring that. If you all didn't want to make a decision right now about that, we could get the cost difference. And when we present the firms to you guys, you could make that decision then. I think that would be helpful. That would be helpful. That would be significant. I may have got to use the decision. Yeah. We can find that information out and include that as part of our presentation. Perfect. So then steps to consider with the recruitment and evaluation. So the first is the development of the position profile. So what is going to go out to help source the candidates? If you hire, which it sounds like you're going to do, if you hire the search firm, they tend to do this for you. And that is, I think, a great option. They come with a lot of experience to do that. And so we can get you all the 2021 information if you would like to see kind of the brochure that we did the last time. Just to help kind of, you know, jumpstart your brains as far as what we're looking for. You can also get some additional feedback. So if you were thinking, you know, as the search firm is creating this position profile, if you want staff or other feedback. If you would like facilitated meetings, I know some of the search firms have done that in the past as far as meeting with each of you individually or as a group to find out what are you looking for, what are your things that you would really like to have in your ideal candidate. Again, that individual interviews or we can create some kind of that company can create some kind of an online survey so that instead of having to have a meeting one on one. They could create some kind of a survey that you all could fill out and to say this is what my ideal candidate looks like these are the strengths and weaknesses currently facing the city attorney's office. And so we don't need a decision on that right now, just some things to think about as we move through this. Again, things to think about as we start to move through this as well is the interview process and who all you would like to have interview or what process we've done, right? It's varied greatly as we've done these appointee positions, right? So would you like stakeholder panels and representation? We've had some citizen representative interview groups in the past. We haven't for every recruitment. We've had it for some. The employees, you could do some kind of an employee interview panel. I do want to share that I received some feedback recently that from employees in the city attorney's office that they really appreciated that they got that opportunity last time to just do a meet and greet and share their feedback. And so that was very much appreciated. We also did last time with the city attorney recruitment, we did do a public meet and greet. Um, with council, we did it at the double tree, um, and it was open to the public. If any members of the public did want to come and meet the candidates, it was a very informal, um, evening, uh, event. We had, you know, some, some drinks and life snacks and people could come and just kind of get to know people on a much more informal process, not a, you know, sitting down and kind of grilling back and forth. So those are some options that you absolutely can consider as we go through the process. And once we pick a search firm, they'll help walk us through that process as well. And then just some additional process expectations. The previous recruitment, recruitments did limit candidates to those practicing Colorado attorneys. So they do need to have a Colorado license to practice law. And so that is just something to consider. I believe that is in the charter, in the charter. Just something to keep in mind. It's not as much of a nationwide search as maybe some other searches that we've done.

Any questions, discussion?

Justin? I don't know if this is for me. It doesn't seem to be for you.

So make sure I understand this right. The charter says that a candidate has to have a license to practice law in Colorado. right okay and then um just i do think it would be very important to give the city attorney's staff opportunity to do a comprehensive interview of the candidates and make recommendations to the council and i also think it would be important for um the senior leadership team to have an opportunity to interview the candidates and make the recommendations of council so That's just kind of, I think those two are the most essential pieces and everything else I think could help, but those are the most important parts as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, no, I tend to agree with you. I think that'll be more as we get the firm in, they'll help us determine who is included in that, which groups, and if there's outside groups as well. We did some interviews, I think last time for the city managers with other cities, like other city managers or other attorneys would be good too, because they have to work with other cities besides ours. Sure.

I think our goal for tonight is just to get the information in front of you, get you thinking about it. And again, I think Amy used the word expectation. When we do something that's very extensive, has a lot of steps into it, those type of recruitments have tended to take somewhere between six and eight months. And so your acting appointee, really important that that person understands that they'll be in that role for that period of time.

I just have another follow-up question about the charter provision. So the way I correct me if I'm wrong, but certain states have mutual licensing agreements with their bars. So if they were from out of state and licensed in a state that Colorado recognizes they would be a candidate that we could consider, is that correct?

Yeah, typically the way they post is or be able to obtain a Colorado license within a set period of time, you know, when they start the job. So that way they can look at reciprocity of licenses, whether or not their license would be recognized or if they'd have to take a sometimes it's just an ethics exam and then get licensed in another state so sometimes they list it as Colorado license or able to obtain a Colorado license by the date of employment would the ability to obtain a Colorado license how does that interact with our charter language as long as the city attorney once appointed has to have a license to practice law okay all right yeah so I you know if we can consider that as well you know because it

may not be as broad as the city manager's position, but there are states where there's probably an easier pathway for them to become licensed in Colorado quickly.

Absolutely. Any other questions? All right. So we have an executive session to go into a little bit more detail and specifics. So I'm going to go ahead and call it to order the special meeting. Can I please get a roll call?

Mayor Coleman?

Here.

Council Member Pinto? Here. Thank you. We'll give them just a moment while we clear the room.

But before I ask for a motion to go into exec session, can we please get an overview of the purpose?

Yes. So as mentioned, the council asked for attorneys in our office to submit their resume of their interest in serving as the interim city attorney and that has been done so the purpose of the executive session would be to review those qualifications and determine if you'd like to interview the candidates are there any questions what would the motion be is there other stuff you want to remember that session yeah okay thank you and emotion and the motion would be to go into executive session pursuant to colorado revised statutes 2464024f I and G to discuss personnel matters and consider internal candidate materials that are protected from disclosure by Colorado Revised Statute section 24722043A Roman numeral 11 in relation to the interim city attorney position and to direct staff on who to interview for the position. And I get a motion as stated.

So moved.

Thank you. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Any opposed, please say no. Give us just a moment and we will switch the recording for the executive session.