City Council - Regular Meeting

Wausau City Council Chambers, you are at our town hall, town hall we haven't had in a while. So we're going to run a town hall on discussion here about what the city administrator form of government looks like. It's the first time we've had a town hall in a long time. The format tonight, I'll introduce our guests and They will give a short presentation, and we'll open up the microphones for comments and questions. We have our traditional podium up front. You can come up and speak. If you need assistance, I've got a portable microphone I can bring out to you. So again, thank you for being here. There's a well-known line in public service if you want to study political science. At the normal level, you look to the Kennedy School at Harvard. That reputation is earned, but if you want to understand how Wisconsin cities actually work, how a budget is built, how council and staff stay aligned, and how professional administration supports elected leadership, you look to the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. For more than 50 years, UW Oshkosh's Master of Public Administration program has been the principal training ground for municipal professionals in this state. Its graduates serve as city's administrators, village administrators, department directors, and local officials in communities large and small. In our field, that's not a footnote, that's a pipeline. Our guest this evening is Dr. Michael Ford, and he has been at the center of that work. He is Professor of Public Administration at UW Oshkosh, the EAA C.R. Meyer Endowed Professor, and founding director of the Whitburn Center for Governance and Policy Research. He previously directed the MPA program He has published widely on municipal governance and local management. He has also done the job on the other side of the table. He served on the Oshkosh Common Council and the Oshkosh Plan Commission. Just talked about a little plan commission we had here tonight before this meeting. That combination matters tonight. Dr. Ford is not here to sell a particular ordinance. He is here because he studies how Wisconsin cities organize themselves. He has taught the people who run them And he has served as an elected official. He can help us separate two things that too often get mixed together. First is the city administrator model, which keeps an elected mayor in a policy setting council. And the other is a city manager form, which changes the charter more substantially. So our purpose here this evening is information and dialogue. No vote will be taken. I asked Dr. Ford to moderate so that residents, staff, and council members can hear the same set of facts and ask direct questions. Along with Dr. Ford tonight is Jay Shambo. And Jay is a current city administrator or village administrator and he'll have a piece of the presentation as well tonight. So please join me in welcoming Dr. Michael Ford.

Thank you very much. That was far too kind, but I appreciate it. How's everybody doing this evening? Good. Well, first off, thank you very much for coming. It's a big deal. It's no joke to be exploring your form of government. It affects every one of you. It affects your businesses in town. It affects all your taxpayers. So really appreciate you being here to learn. the mayor introduced, but just really quickly, as he mentioned, I've certainly been an academic for 13 years, but always been a practitioner as well. Learned a lot about local governance, serving as an elected official for four years on the city of Oshkosh Common Council. And the city of Oshkosh does have a city manager model. As I was explaining to the mayor before, I served six years in the plan commission prior to that. I maintain that was harder than serving on the city council. Once I got off the city council, I swear I was done with elected office, but now I'm currently serving on the Oshkosh area school board, so diving into all of that. So I spend a lot of time in and around local government, and prior to academia, I had a career in state policy, doing lobbying and other types of work. So I've always been in this space. This type of work, like what I'm doing tonight, and just to be clear, don't get compensated for this or anything, just here, because I think it's important that communities have all the facts before they explore making a decision like this. The past few years, worked and given similar talks to De Pere, Stevens Point, Nina, Beaver Dam. You can read all of those bullet points there. I think it's important to note, if you look at that list there, you have places like De Pere that did make a change to a city manager model. You have places like Stevens Point that went through a similar process and decided they didn't want to. So as the mayor stated, the plan here is not to try to sell you anything, but to just have you armed with some basic facts so that you can have a productive discussion. Hence my first question here, what's the best form of local government? Well, that's a really, really trick question. So one that works for you all, so one that works for your community. I tend to look at it as one that's understood. making sure that your council members, your department heads, your community members understand how the government works, how you get things done, how you get things put on the agenda, how you get policies passed, etc. That may seem really simple, but oftentimes role confusion occurs in local government, and that's how things don't get done. Sometimes it's even worse than that. Economic development doesn't occur because the developer comes to town. They feel like there's not there's not clear professional leadership. And that's a struggle. You want to form a government that's accepted. So it has to be something that the people want. It has to be desired. So like I said, the goals for today is to walk through the logic of professional local management. I won't get too professorial on you, I promise. Share some data on the lay of the land in Wisconsin, what cities are using this form of government, share some basic fiscal data, go through the logistics of making a change, and then turn it over to Jay so you can hear from someone who's done the job and is currently doing the job as an interim in Janesville and then spent some time in West Bend. Was that nine years, you said? As the city administrator there, which is a city of 33,000, and also was a county administrator in Calumet County. So I think that's the most sophisticated graphic you're gonna see tonight. I was not an arts major. But just real quickly, the basic logic of professional management. When I say professional management, it's not to imply that your mayor is not a professional. I'm referring very specifically to the idea of having someone who is an administrator or a manager who's hired by an elected body, a common council, or a village board to oversee the day-to-day operations of local government. So there's, I believe Woodrow Wilson said it, politics decides and administration does. The whole logic behind it is that you want somebody who has the skill set to oversee a complex organization like a large municipality. So the goal is to insulate the day to day administration of government from some of the political whims of the day that can derail the business of government. Under this form, a legislative body of elected officials, they hire and they oversee a professional administrator to run the day to day operations of government. The administrator serves at the pleasure of that legislative body. They pass policies. They provide direction to the administrator. So that role of the council becomes really, really important. Not that it isn't in every form of government, but ultimately, you know, when I served at the city of Oshkosh, we talked about the rule of fours. I know you have, is it 12? We have 11. We have 11 council members. So I guess that would be the rule of sixes. But it becomes really, really important for a council to have the ability to provide majority opinion, majority direction to an administrator so that policies can be enacted and direction be taken. I'll keep rolling here. One of the most common questions we get is, what's the difference between a city manager and a city administrator? Well, Chapter 64 is the city manager model. And if you go look at Wisconsin state statutes, it's really, really specific about what that means. Right now, I believe there's 12 cities in the state of Wisconsin that have a Chapter 64 model with a city manager. It's kind of the legacy model. There is some flexibility in it, but structurally it looks a little different than an administrator model, mostly involving police and fire. Under a city manager model, police and fire are reporting to the city manager under a ordinance model, which I think is more of what you are all interested in from what I've picked up. The mayor would continue to have the authority there. So that goes to that second discussion, the ordinance model. This is the model that most Wisconsin cities use. They establish a position via an ordinance. You can do that either by modifying the charter ordinance or a simple ordinance, and I'll go into some simpler detail about how you do that later on. But establishing a position this way gives you some more flexibility so you can tailor the specifics of the administrator position to your unique needs. I do want to point out that some municipalities have had discussions about the idea of a director of operations. That's something that's very different. That's hiring someone who's reporting directly to the mayor who's hired, fired, supervised just by that mayoral position. When we talk about changing the actual form to an administrator model, it's the council as a whole who retains that authority over the administrator. So just to give you an idea of a sample structure of what this looks like in practice, you'll note that the mayor and the common council, and if you were to pursue a change like this, the idea would be that you could retain an elected mayor, but they would become a voting member of the council as well, but continue to run the meetings and have other duties as specified in your ordinance and your policies. But the mayor and the common council remain at the top of the org chart. The buck stops with them. But the city administrator becomes the chief administrative officer. So they're overseeing the day-to-day operations of your department heads. Now I know that your municipal structure is going to look a little different than what I'm showing here, but hopefully this example makes sense. Obviously the Police and Fire Commission is maintained. Is there a library board here in Wausau? No, you have a county one. So you can ignore that. Some basic data here, and excuse me, I'm a professor so I can't help myself, but one of the questions we often get or I often get when people call me is, what is with this exotic form of city administrator? Well, there's 190 cities in Wisconsin, and last I checked, and this was on Friday, 129 have an administrator or a manager. So it really is the dominant form of local government in Wisconsin. Of those 129, 117 have a city administrator via the ordinance model, while 12 have a city manager. Now, Wausau, as you know, is a second-class city, and that's not meant to be a derogatory term. That's a classification the state gives based on your population and what statutes apply to you. But there's 15 of them in Wisconsin, and 10 of them have an administrator or a city manager, and five do not. And that table there shows the second-class cities, the population, and the form of government. If you'll note right at the top there, Appleton's an interesting case, right up the road from where I live. I would say that they're probably the shining example of a municipality that has not had much discussion about moving to an administrator. They've had elected mayors forever and they seem pretty dang happy with it. I would argue that Green Bay and Madison are a little bit of different animals being larger municipalities. La Crosse is an interesting case. They have an elected mayor, but they've been having this same discussion pretty in depth for the past few years and are currently, is there an ordinance sitting on the table right now? Yeah, they certainly, they have an ordinance right now that they're considering. And then obviously you here in Wausau. Looking at populations, just to give you an idea of where you sit compared to other municipalities, You see your city manager cities, those Chapter 64, they tend to be a little bit larger. So, yeah, they're your Oshkoshes, your Janesville municipalities of 60,000, 70,000, but there's a couple smaller ones tucked in there as well, but average population just under 32,000. You'll note your mayoral-led cities have average population of 26,000, but I'll show in the next slide. Next slide. That's skewed a little bit because obviously Milwaukee and Madison, they have elected mayors and they're very large municipalities drive that average up. Your administrative led cities tend to be a little bit smaller. But again, I think the next slide is probably more interesting for you on that front. So on the right side there, you see the population distribution of cities with a mayoral form. I think the big thing to take away there is that it's a lot of very, very small municipalities. That's that tall bar. On the left so a lot of small municipalities that maybe don't offer a full array of municipal services Maybe have less of a management challenge Tend to go with an elected mayor now to be fair There's also a lot of small municipalities that have have an administrator many of those will have a joint administrator and clerk position So Rachel if you need more job duties, there's plenty of places out there that might want you But I think the important takeaway here is that there are a lot of mid-sized cities that look and feel a lot like Wausau that have moved to this administrative model. So you wouldn't be alone. Now, who does what? And this is a bit of a loaded question, because I can't keep stressing enough that if this was something that your elected body and your community decided to pursue, you'd have a lot of flexibility in what you want the responsibilities of an administrator to be and how you'd want to balance those responsibilities between the administrator and the mayor and the council. SO THIS IS A BIT GENERIC, BUT THAT LIST YOU SEE THERE, THE COUNCIL IS GOING TO BE IN CHARGE WITH ALL THE POLITICAL AND POLICY DECISIONS. SO SETTING THOSE ORGANIZATIONAL LEVEL GOALS. SERVING AS THAT BRIDGE BETWEEN RESIDENTS AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT. SO A LOT OF THAT CONSTITUENCY WORK, WHICH IS SO IMPORTANT. DECIDING THE SIZE AND SCOPE OF SERVICES TO BE PROVIDED. PROGRAM CREATION, APPROVING THE BUDGET, APPROVING LEGISLATION. And perhaps most important under this model, evaluating the administrator. That becomes, I would say, the single most important task of a city council when they're operating under this form. Making sure that you're setting clear goals, clear direction for your administrator and then holding them accountable for meeting those goals. And when I say direction, an example of that might be come budget season. For example, when I was serving on the Oshkosh Council, we might start off by saying that, hey, we're in the budget season. We cannot afford to have any increase to the property tax levy. We're going to direct the city manager to bring us three different options. What would a budget look like where we have a flat levy? What would it look like if we reduced by 3%? What would it look like if we increased by 3%? So while it might be the city manager that's actually doing that work, presenting us with the options, it's ultimately the council that's giving the direction but what our expectations are because we're the ones that have to vote on it and have to live with it, have to explain that to our constituents. The administrator is generally in charge of managing, hiring, overseeing, evaluating, firing staff, so that HR function, making sure the resources are being deployed across the organization so they can meet their strategic goals, reporting on those goals, developing the budgets, and ultimately implementing. So going back to that quote I said at the beginning, politics decides, administration does. So the administrator is the one doing the day-to-day work under the philosophy that they have the management experience and training to do it in an efficient and effective manner. Big question, is it anti-democratic? I used to say that's a trick question, but that's not a trick question. That's a really important question because the reality is it does change the way accountability works in local government. You don't have the ability as a resident to vote out a city administrator. That's ultimately the council. You can vote out a council member, but you don't have the direct ability, that direct line to vote in or out an administrator. So that democratic accountability function is served by the council. And the council obviously continues to be directly elected by residents. And if you choose to keep a full-time mayor, that mayor continues to be directly elected by residents. The council has one single employee. the administrator. Like I said before, I find that that gives a lot of focus to the council, forces them to work together, forces them to provide clear direction and have mechanisms for clear accountability for that single employee. When successful, that council is able to give clear direction expectations and hold that administrator accountable. And turnover does occur, and I know Jay can speak to this, but the average tenure of an administrator in Wisconsin is somewhere around around seven years. It absolutely happens where you can have an issue where turnover in the council, they're dissatisfied with the administrator and just like residents can get dissatisfied with the mayor, they put new council members in and they make a change. Sorry, I thought I was getting a fact check there. All right, good. Like I said, you have flexibility in keeping a mayor that's elected by the public or council president. That's someone who's presiding over council meetings, will continue to have those ceremonial duties and other duties that are determined in ordinance or policy. So often that can be continuing to appoint members to boards and commissions and other things as you decide to put in policy. Now this is an ugly slide. This is what I tell my students never to do. But the good news here is you don't have to read this. There are copies of this in the back. This is City of, not Beaverdam, the City of Dodgeville just adopted an ordinance to hire their first city administrator. And I have just again a model ordinance there so you can take a look at that of what that can look like. And I would argue that their ordinance is a pretty typical ordinance for hiring and creating a city administrator position. AND I WON'T GO TOO FAR INTO THE DETAILS HERE, BUT AS YOU SEE UNDER THEIR DUTIES, IT'S REALLY CLEAR THAT POLICY DIRECTION COMES FROM THE MAYOR AND THE COMMON COUNCIL, AND IT SPELLS OUT PRETTY SPECIFICALLY WHAT THEIR DAY-TO-DAY RESPONSIBILITIES ARE IN TERMS OF ADMINISTRATING, GOVERNMENT, BUDGETING AND FINANCE, HUMAN RESOURCES, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT. and then the catch-all of other duties. As you know, things change rapidly. It's very, very important that you have that flexibility in an ordinance where a council can have more expectations, new expectations, new directives that they can give to a city administrator or manager. Now, another approach is West Allis, which is very interesting. If anyone's familiar with West Allis, it's a suburb of Milwaukee, but it's a large suburb. uh... they also have a city administrator model but i would argue they have one of the models that uh... is is probably goes to the other side in terms of maintaining a lot of power with the mayor. They maintain a full-time elected mayor that has clear policy guidance on division of responsibilities. So what they did is they have an ordinance that's fairly vague, but they have a policy manual that they passed as a council that's really, really specific in different areas about what the duties of the mayor are compared to the city administrator. So for example, in West Allis, the mayor actually comes up with that first draft of the budget and presents it to the council. They're relying on the expertise of the administrator to help develop it, but it's ultimately the mayor that's delivering it. And I also have copies of what that policy manual looks like in West Allis in the back there so you can take a look at it because it goes through about a dozen different areas, how those divisions of duties look. And the reason that's so important is that one of the ways that this form of government gets derailed is if there's role confusion. You don't want to have an administrator that doesn't know where their responsibilities stop and start or a council that doesn't know where their responsibilities stop and start. That's when people start stepping on each other's toes and things aren't getting done. I will say that the new city manager in Oshkosh is Rebecca Grill, who was the city administrator in West Allis. So I was actually in a meeting with her today and we were discussing this model and she thought it worked really well for West Allis. And again, I share this as an example of how much flexibility you have as a community and as a council in setting up an ordinance the way you want it to be. Really quickly, is it political? No. And that's really, really important. An administrator shouldn't have a political sign in their lawn, They shouldn't be telling you who they're voting for. They shouldn't be picking favorites on the council. That's a sign of an administrator that, frankly, you don't want to have. There's a professional body called the International City and County Management Association that has a really clear code of ethics. There's a Wisconsin branch of this called the Wisconsin Council. a city and county management association that actually helps enforce this stuff. It's a pretty tight-knit community. And part of those code of ethics is making clear that when you serve in this position as an administrator, you're an at-will employee. So the council retains the ability to get rid of you basically anytime they want to. YOUR SALARY IS GOING TO BE SET BY THE MAYOR AND THE COUNCIL. YOU'RE THERE TO PROVIDE POLICY ALTERNATIVES, ANALYSIS, RECOMMENDATIONS. YOU'RE THERE TO FRAME ISSUES, GIVE YOUR BEST ADVICE, BUT THAT ULTIMATE AUTHORITY FOR POLICY MAKING IS RETAINED BY THE MAYOR AND THE COMMON COUNCIL. As an aside here, one of the really cool things about the professional management community that frankly I underappreciated until I really got involved in it is there are so many professional connections there that once you get a city administrator, when issues come up, you have people that are a phone call away that have dealt with it all across the state of Wisconsin. So we have those 127 managers and administrators where they all go to the same conferences, they all talk to each other, they all share information, they all share employees. IT'S AN ASSET. WHAT ABOUT THE FINANCES? NOW, I ALWAYS SHARE THIS WITH A CAUTION, BECAUSE EVERY COMMUNITY IS DIFFERENT, BUT THIS IS A QUESTION THAT ALWAYS COMES UP, SO I WANTED TO RUN THE DATA THERE. SO HERE, I'M JUST USING DATA FROM THE WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE TO JUST LOOK ON AVERAGE what are the fiscal differences between communities that have an administrator versus communities that have a strong mayor? And you'll see that they look a lot alike. Your professionally managed communities have overall lower total expenditures per capita. And if you look at why, why, just breaking down the data, they do spend more on police, but they tend to be more efficient on general government operational spending so that's more the spending at city hall is lower per capita and that's that that middle there and the orange is the administrators slash managers and the blue is general government spending now note though on the other side of that that coin your mayoral led cities PER CAPITA GET MORE SHARED REVENUE. SOME OF THAT IS DRIVEN BY THE OUTLIERS, YOUR MILWAUKEE AND MADISON THAT GET A LOT OF SHARED REVENUE, BUT I WANT TO MAKE SURE OF BEING TRANSPARENT WITH THE DATA. AND THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT COIN IS THE TOTAL TAX BURDEN IS SLIGHTLY HIGHER PER CAPITA FOR YOUR ADMINISTRATIVE-LED CITIES COMPARED TO YOUR MAYORAL-LED CITIES. AND THIS IS ALL PUBLIC INFORMATION IF YOU'RE INTERESTED IN THE DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE WEBSITE. YOU CAN CHECK THAT OUT FOR YOURSELF IF YOU'RE A NERD LIKE ME. what about the people serving under these forms of government? So part of my academic duties is I regularly do surveys of city councils and city administrators and mayors about their governing dynamics. So what you're looking at there are a series of statements from a survey we did, I believe this was done two years ago, so keep that in mind, asking folks on a scale of one to five, one, you strongly disagree, five, you strongly agree, What are your perceptions of what you're seeing in your local government? Compared to you know, if you're serving under an administrator or if you're serving on a City Council that's led by a strong mayor And the big takeaway here, and that little star just shows that there's a statistically significant difference, is that council members serving under administrator form tend to have overall better group dynamics, more likely to have a strong strategic plan that they say they're utilizing, more likely to say they have clear measures of performance indicators, And perhaps most importantly, more likely to say they view the executive as a partner in the governing process. Now, I think that's fairly obvious because they're hiring that person. Again, no offense to the mayor, but the council didn't hire you. Now, if you were hired by the council, presumably they want you there and they're going to view you as a partner. And again, always happy to share the source data on all this if anyone has questions. Going into human resources, so this was another survey that was part of that project where we were surveying administrators, managers, that's on the left side there under administrator, and then strong mayors on the non-administrator side. Same scale, one to five, one being strongly disagree, five being strongly agree. Trying to figure out How are you getting good employees? Do you feel like you're empowered as a chief executive or as a chief administrator? And the two big things or the three big things I bolded there is where there was a difference. City administrators were more likely to say that they felt they had the opportunity to reward employees that they supervise. On the other side of that coin, your mayors were more likely to say that culture and work-life balance were a barrier to hiring people. And that also played out in the administrative data where you had more turnover in mayoral-led cities when it came to department heads and rank-and-file staff. And that's a pretty consistent finding nationally. And I do think that just speaks to some of the volatility you can sometimes see, especially in ideologically diverse communities where every four years you might have a new EXECUTIVE THAT HAS A VERY DIFFERENT POLITICAL BEND, AND THEY'RE GOING TO BRING IN THEIR OWN PEOPLE. AS AN ASIDE, I CAN JUST TELL YOU PERSONALLY, YOU KNOW, WE GRADUATE 30, 40 MASTERS OF PUBLIC ADMIN GRADUATES EVERY YEAR, AND GENERALLY THEY GO WORK UNDER THIS FORM OF GOVERNMENT FOR THAT STABILITY, BECAUSE THEY DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO MOVE THEIR FAMILIES MORE THAN ONCE. COSTS IN RECRUITMENT, AND THIS IS ONE AREA WHERE JAY CAN CERTAINLY TALK MORE THAN I CAN, BECAUSE THAT'S SOMETHING HE DOES ON THE SIDE AS WELL. But it's going to depend on the experience and size of municipality. There's obviously a cost, and that's obviously a very important part of the conversation. I can tell you a city like Wausau is going to be attractive because you're a full-service community, you offer an array of services, you're a large community, you've got a lot going on here. So you're probably looking at the higher end of this scale. I do, though, think it's important to note that it's not only reasonable, it should be expected that when you hire an administrator that you gain some efficiencies And I would argue if I was a council member, I would expect these positions to fund themselves based on those efficiencies. And that's a totally reasonable thing for a council to build in to any type of change in government form. And you can say that's lip service, but keep in mind that final budget approval is always going to go to the council as a whole. It's really up to the council to have the floor to do to make that happen if this type of change does occur. Questions that occur during the recruitment and things to consider, and maybe this is put in the cart before the horse, but when you're trying to get a high quality administrator, they're going to look at stability. Stability on the council, stability in the community, stability within the organization. People that are moving for these type of positions, they want to go someplace they got some staying power and can make a difference. Organizational buy-in and council buy-in and public perception, again, hugely important, like I started off with. This only really works as a great system if it's something that people understand and people want. I promised you no more charts, but here's one more chart. These are linkages, and this is all research supported stuff, but just to give you a really, really, really brief idea of when it works really well, you've got a high functioning governance team, or you have a council that has a strong group dynamic where they're minimizing that relationship conflict, that ideological conflict that can derail a governing body. Because think about it, if you're spending all of your time fighting ideological battles or fighting personal battles, you're not giving direction to your administrator or your mayor. You're not executing policies. You're not translating the values of your community into policy changes and directions. So when a council has good group dynamics, they tend to have better deliberations. Those deliberations can translate into good policy guidance for your chief executive or administrator, whether they're elected or hired. And then it's the administrative side. They've got to implement these things. And then the counsel at the end becomes really important again because It's up to them to make sure the outcomes are being reached. If those outcomes aren't being reached, they have to make a change, hold that administrator accountable. I always compare it to a giant game of telephone. If you ever played that as a kid, how does a giant game of telephone get derailed? Well, sometimes people want to derail it. Sometimes there's background noise. Sometimes people mispronounce things so it's not clear. It's a process where it's not the easiest thing in the world, but again, when it works and you can get a clear message to that person who knows how to implement and run a local government, it's a really powerful thing for meeting the needs of your community. Once again, how it gets to rail, does that role confusion if it's not spelled out clearly? There was a municipality in Wisconsin. I won't name them. I will name them. What the heck? Beaver Dam. They made the mistake of hiring an administrator before they had an ordinance, and that was a recipe for a lot of confusion because there was no clear role definition at the beginning. I did some work with them, and they eventually got to the point where they fixed it, but they had to make a change in their administrator position, and it was difficult. So, again, really important you do the work and the education on the front end FIGURE OUT IF THIS IS SOMETHING YOU WANT TO DO, AND IF YOU DO WANT TO DO IT, MAKE SURE YOU DO IT RIGHT. YES, CERTAINLY, NONSUBSTANTIVE COUNCIL CONFLICT CAN DERAIL ANY GOVERNING BODY. CONFLICT IS ALWAYS A GOOD THING. IT'S IMPORTANT. THERE'S A REASON WE HAVE, YOU SAID 11 COUNCIL MEMBERS? THERE'S A REASON YOU HAVE 11 COUNCIL MEMBERS. THEY'RE ALL REPRESENTING DIVERSE CONSTITUENCIES. YOU WANT TO HAVE ALL THOSE CONSTITUENCIES AT THE TABLE, AND CONFLICT IS THE HEART OF THEM GETTING, YOU KNOW, getting to a consensus, or at least a majority opinion. But if that conflict is not substantive, it just grinds everything to a halt. And then you can also have an administrator that operates as a council member and gets involved in politics. And that can be incredibly damaging as well. And that's a sign that that's probably an administrator you don't want anymore. So is it right for you? Again, I'll keep hammering the point home. It's not for every municipality. Things to think about. your culture, your tradition, likelihood of public acceptance. Cities that do tend to move in this direction, and there's more doing it in Wisconsin right now. I think one of the reasons more communities are doing it in Wisconsin right now is because we are living in a very politically divided moment. And the idea of having some steady nonpartisan leadership running the day-to-day operations of government has become attractive to a lot of communities. Communities that are struggling with attracting employees, struggling to implement government reforms, struggling with a lot of conflict on their governing boards, and yeah, politically divided communities and ones growing in complexity tend to be moving in this direction. But again, no model is a panacea. So let's say you actually want to make a change. This is all detailed in state statute. I know I saw a social media comment the other day about communities trying to sneak this through. This is not something you can sneak through. There's a very clear process in state statute to make this happen. And I have a handout out there that details all of this. It has links to it in state statute, how you go about it if you wanted to. But modifying your charter ordinance, that takes a two-thirds vote of the council. If the council was to do that, and change their charter ordinance. The public would have 60 days to collect signatures to trigger a referendum. The community can do it directly. They can file a petition with enough signatures that triggers either a council vote or a referendum. Or a council could have a vote to hold a binding referendum and let the community take that vote on its own. State law did change, so you can't do a non-binding referendum anymore, which I understand City of Wausau did about 12 years ago or so. State law doesn't allow that anymore. You could just do a simple ordinance change. So there you're not modifying the charter ordinance. The big difference there being it doesn't require a two-thirds vote. I tend to worry about that. If you go back to the point I keep making about public understanding and public acceptance, wouldn't be a great thing to have this pass with a 6-5 vote. It wouldn't help you with hiring, wouldn't necessarily help you with community acceptance. So I think that's the reason you tend to have municipalities go for the charter ordinance change with the two-thirds vote to really signal this is something we understand and want as opposed to the simple ordinance change. That's my email. You can ask, you know, we'll have opportunities to ask questions tonight for any of these factual things I brought up. Hopefully that wasn't too boring. But I'll turn it over to Jay, who's actually done the job, not as an elected official, but as an administrator, to talk a little bit about his experience. We're just going to change the slide deck here. But thank you for listening. You want to introduce yourself while she's doing that, Jay? Don't want dead air. I can certainly do that.

My name's Jay Shambo. It's a pleasure to be with you this evening. Thanks, Mayor. Thanks, Dr. Ford. Appreciate the invite to be present and talk through a little bit about what practicing as a city administrator means in this business. My life's work has been in local government, all in Wisconsin. I spent 32 years working for counties, villages, and AND I'LL GET TO THE INNOVATIVE PUBLIC ADVISOR PIECE IN A SECOND, BUT THAT'S THE COMPANY I WORK FOR RIGHT NOW.

TELL ME WHEN TO CHANGE IT.

OH, SURE. GO AHEAD. YOU CAN TAKE ME TO THAT ONE. THERE'S YOU. THERE'S ME. SO I HAVE SPENT 32 YEARS WORKING IN THE WISCONSIN SYSTEM, ABOUT HALF MY CAREER IN COUNTY GOVERNMENT AND THEN HALF IN VILLAGE AND CITY. I HAVE RECENTLY DEPARTED FROM THE CITY OF WESTBEND. DR. FORD MENTIONED THAT I SERVED THERE FOR NINE BUDGETS, EIGHT AND A HALF YEARS. how I like to refer to it, because in administrator life, it really revolves around an annual budget in most instances. And I left to start my consulting career, which was the slide at the beginning. So IPA, or Innovative Public Advisors, is the firm that I and another partner who both are UW Oshkosh grads. My master's is from Oshkosh from 2003 to 2006. I started my educational, second educational journey through, before Dr. Ford, but through his school on the day that my twin daughters, our twin daughters turned one year old. And that was quite the journey back in the day. We had to go there in person on Saturdays. But it prompted this opportunity to serve local government at a higher level in city and county administration. So it's a pleasure to do so. There's also lots of, you know, acronym kind of things that THAT GO BEHIND ADMINISTRATORS AS THEY HAVE BEEN TENURED AND CONTINUE TO PURSUE EDUCATION. I AM A CREDENTIALED MANAGER THROUGH THE INTERNATIONAL CITY COUNTY MANAGERS ASSOCIATION. THERE'S ALSO A CPN CERTIFIED PUBLIC MANAGER THAT MANY MANAGERS COME TO YOU WITH. MY POINT IN BRINGING THAT ALL UP IS THAT YOU HAVE A HIGHLY QUALIFIED INTELLIGENT MAYOR IN MAYOR DINNY, BUT AS AN ADMINISTRATOR, SOMEBODY WHO'S PREPARED THEIR LIFE'S WORK That really is, in my opinion, the pinnacle for professional administration and for a community to strive for. Again, nothing against the mayor at all. And as you consider this change, I'm not shy about promoting professional administration as a preferred source of local government or preferred governance structure. Dr. Ford will be more even with that and that may be make a recommendation. Again, I'm not shy about saying that I think local governments just kind of work more cleanly and can progress more quickly with professional administration. So I'll stop with the commercial and move on to maybe the difference. And Dr. Ford talked through this. This is a generic Common Council USA and just list through the roles of the chief elected official in this kind of a session. I won't read them all to you. Dr. Ford did a great job of COVERING THAT BUT SOME OF THE CONCERN REGARDING MOVING TO A FULL-TIME CITY ADMINISTRATOR OR A FULL-TIME MANAGER IS THE LOSS OF CONTROL OR THE LOSS OF GOVERNANCE FROM THE COUNCIL AND I CONTEST THAT THAT'S ABSOLUTELY NOT THE CASE. THE COUNCIL AND THE MAYOR IN THIS INSTANCE WITH A CITY ADMINISTRATOR, IF YOU MOVE TO THAT FORM, THEY'RE ABSOLUTELY IN CONTROL. THEY SET THE MISSION, VISION, THEY EMPLOY THAT ADMINISTRATOR, AND THEY CAN UNEMPLOY THAT ADMINISTRATOR. IF THEY DON'T LIKE AN ADMINISTRATOR THAT WEARS BLACK SHIRTS, THEN THE COUNCIL CAN CHOOSE BY A VOTE TO DEPART FROM THAT INDIVIDUAL. LIKELY, THERE'S PROBABLY A BIGGER REASON THAN JUST THAT, BUT THE REALITY IS THAT THE COUNCIL WIELDS THAT KIND OF POWER. TYPICALLY, FROM A TWO-THIRDS VOTE, THEY CAN HIRE AND FIRE IF NEED BE OR IF CHOICE IS MADE. I agree that the life expectancy, I've worked in my 32 years for five different organizations. Some of that was my choice in moving on and moving up, so to speak, in different organizations throughout Wisconsin. But some of it is because a council has made a political choice to move on. And that happens in this profession, and it's a tough profession. It's a laudable one. But it's just real that the tenure of administrators can be brief. And you can accomplish a ton in a short period of time, in my opinion. Sure, thanks. Council Administrator, again, in this structure, this slide, this just shows that 2,500 populations or more, there is, the last slide had the 70% number on it, that there's 70% of the municipalities throughout the nation that are governed in this manner. The voters are on top, the governing body, the city council and mayor is next, and they have one employee. That's really key for organizations to understand that as they move to this kind of governance structure, they're not able to inform the city clerk as to the day-to-day operation of what she might be doing, or the person that's that's in the snowplow on how to plow a street. They have the employee of the administrator, and they oversee that individual, and they can go through that person to get to the other employees and to carry out their mission and vision. Conversely, the administrator serves as the go-between for the elected body, so that some of the noise in elected communities organizations where they have a chief elected official, a full-time chief elected official, things can be more political at times. And again, in my opinion, this kind of a structure, the council administrator structure, takes the politics out. Dr. Ford referred to politics and the does, right? The administrator does. That's what the governing body can do. They can set the mission vision and make their administrator dance to knock out those those directives in order to carry out the vision and get the work done. Thanks. Role of an administrator. I think the single most important item, policy item, that a council deals with on an annual basis is the budget. And that's the first bullet listed there, prepares the annual budget for the governing body's consideration. That doesn't mean the elected officials don't have a stake in the preparation of the budget. They do, but it's the responsibility of the, of the administrator to bring the budget forward. And the council then makes that decision to adopt it. They recruit and hire terminate government staff, specifically department heads. And in some instances, and Dr. Ford talked about this, the authority can be retained within the council structure where the administrator brings forward a recommendation for the appointment. So, so again, the, uh, The concern by some organizations moving to a full-time administrator that they lose authority, that doesn't have to be the case. It isn't necessarily the case. And I think what Wausau is really, if they're to consider a change, is to look for an administrator form, not necessarily the city manager, which is more rare in Wisconsin and does retain a little more of that authority. It serves as the chief administrative officer. So again, the go-between, if you will, between the city council and the staff. And the last bullet just talks about what we already did, already talked about carrying out of the policies of the governing body. Dr. Ford had a chart regarding the level two municipalities. This is just by population. I picked a handful of AND THEY'RE IN SEQUENCE, BUT THE NORTH OF 40,000 AND SOUTH OF 40,000 IN WISCONSIN, YOU CAN SEE THAT THERE'S A MIX FOR SURE, CITY ADMINISTRATOR, CITY MANAGER, A FEW FULL-TIME MAYORS. THE CITY OF NEW BERLIN AND FRANKLIN, THEY HAVE WHAT'S LISTED THERE AS A DIRECTOR OF ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES. DR. FORD MENTIONED THAT AS WELL, A DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS KIND OF POSITION, NOT A FULL-ON CITY MANAGER. or city administrator. I think the biggest difference is that those positions don't have the ability to hire and invoke change within their department heads, that they would be a peer to a public works director or a city clerk. They wouldn't be in charge of those individuals within their organization and be able to lead in a manner that is able to produce significant change. There are a few full-time mayors as well listed there. And obviously, Wausau is in that form of governance at this time. And then I would share the La Crosse comment as well, that they're working on moving off of the full-time heir into a full-time city administrator. They've been through similar kinds of discussion as Wausau has over the years, including a referendum that did not pass at the time. Now they're very seriously looking at moving to a full-time heir. I think that's my last slide. And I'll just close with the comment regarding cost and what if any kind of a payback there is for hiring a professional in this space. My opinion that that can be very easily overcome. For a community the size of Wausau, you'd be looking in the $200,000 range for a full-time salary. And that might sound like a really big number that's top of the chart for sure that Dr. Ford showed before, but the comparable municipalities in Wisconsin and throughout the nation are certainly supportive of that kind of a number. And I'll share a quick antidote regarding the payback of that, and then we'll get to the questions that I know the mayor is excited about. But in an instance where the connections that are made within an administrative office or relationships that have been established with elected LEADERS AT THE STATE LEVEL AND THE GRANT WRITING ABILITY OF A MUNICIPALITY AND A SKILL SET THAT AN ADMINISTRATOR CAN BRING, ONE $2 MILLION GRANT IN AN ORGANIZATION, AND THAT'S NOT THAT CRAZY TO THINK ABOUT, OBTAINING, CAN PAY FOR TEN YEARS OF THAT PROFESSIONAL ADMINISTRATION REALLY QUICKLY. SO I'LL LEAVE YOU WITH THAT AS A THOUGHT, AND I'M EXCITED TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE REGARDING PROFESSIONAL ADMINISTRATION.

Thank you, Dr. Ford and Jay. Appreciate you coming to the great city of Wausau.

Oh, absolutely.

You're traveled here today. This is an opportunity for public to, if you'd like to ask a specific question or if you have a particular comment, You can arm wrestle for position, but if you want to come up to the podium, or if you'd like, I can bring the microphone around to you.

There's no way we were that clear.

Who wants to be first? Yes, sir. Give us your name. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. You commented what it costs in the annual $200,000 for the salary. So things go south and you want to end the relationship. What are those costs?

Typically, administrators are hired with an employment agreement. And within an employment agreement, there is a cost to depart from an administrator in most instances. I would say six months of an annual salary is average. It can be as little as four months or as high as nine months. Now, that's not the norm and that's not the expectation when you enter into an agreement with or an arrangement with an administrator. It's just the professional protection for that individual if they were asked to leave for wearing a black shirt. If they did something wrong. For a cause, absolutely, sir. There would be no payment at that point.

That typically gets brought up as someone points to that anecdotal such-and-such city, and we have some of those cities and villages around here where they've had some turmoil. But they've got rid of their administrator, and they're still in a wreck. So some of that is not the function of the administrator. It's a function of the governing body.

Certainly due diligence is important when you're negotiating that employment agreement.

Ken in the back, you got a question?

Could you explain again the difference between the city manager and the city administrator?

Yeah, so it's called Chapter 64 city. That just refers to the part of the state statute. That's where the city manager, that's the city manager form. The city manager becomes the chief executive officer, which right now the mayor is the chief executive officer. The biggest operational difference is that the police and fire are under direct supervision of the city manager. AS OPPOSED TO BEING UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF THE MAYOR AS THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER. SO WHEN YOU GO WITH THE ORDINANCE MODEL, YOU'RE TECHNICALLY HIRING A CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER, AND THE MAYOR RETAINS THAT CEO ROLE. SO IT ALSO COMES IN SOME OF THE LOGISTICS OF THINGS TO SIGN, MEMBERSHIP ORGANIZATIONS, THAT TYPE OF STUFF.

SO THE CITY MANAGER IS THE TOP JOB. CORRECT. AND IN THE OTHER, THE CITY ADMINISTRATOR KIND OF IS responsible to the mayor and the council?

Well, the city manager is still responsible to the mayor and city council. They're just, again, slightly different roles. But go ahead, Jay.

The only other thing I would add, sir, is that I think in most instances, the city manager, as Dr. Ford mentioned, is the chief CEO, chief executive officer, so it's more of the face, the presence within the community, and has some authority to appoint boards, commissions, and committee members, where the administrator typically doesn't, that authority is retained by the mayor and the council. AND QUITE FRANKLY, AS SOMEBODY WHO SERVED IN ROLES ACROSS THE STATE AND CURRENTLY SERVING IN INTERIM ROLES, THAT'S, TO ME, THAT WAS NEVER A BIG DEAL, TO BE ABLE TO APPOINT THE COMMITTEES AND BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS. I WOULD MUCH RATHER, BECAUSE THAT, IN MY OPINION, IS MORE OF A POLITICAL DECISION THAT SHOULD BE RETAINED BY THE MAYOR AND THE COMMISSION. SO I THINK The administrator, it shouldn't be viewed as a 1A or a B kind of model, in my opinion. It's absolutely an A model and would serve you well.

But both the manager model or the administrator model, there's still a mayor and a council involved.

Correct. There's flexibility in that. So just to give you an example, the risk of making it even more confusing. So like city of Oshkosh, city manager model. Under the state statute, there is no elected mayor, but the city of Oshkosh decided that we want it. There's a line in the state statute that says you can make changes as you see fit. So the city of Oshkosh has an elected mayor. Janesville does not. Correct? Correct.

So then who leads the council meetings? The city manager?

No, council president who's chosen by the council.

Just a brief question. I'm curious how many of our 11 council members are present here this evening?

We do have one. We do have. Bruce Trueblood is here tonight. Thanks for coming, Bruce.

Yes, thank you, Bruce.

We noticed this for a possible quorum. This is also being broadcast via our public access, and it will be available on YouTube, which we've encouraged them all to take a look at.

No, I appreciate that question.

I will share your disappointment.

The question being, why aren't they here?

I don't know. I don't want to speculate. I can only hope that they would take the time to write, to learn about it. It's good that this is being recorded and that they'll have access to the information because I know I sound like a broken record, but the most important thing to do is actually engage, I think, and learn about the pros and cons so that council can make an educated decision.

Are you finding out with the administrator this is actually bringing down our costs, that they're finding ways to save us money on our taxes and so on? You know, you're talking about where their wage is giving us a great benefit. Is that the trend and the benefit to this? Yeah, go ahead, Jay.

I don't know that the data would show that it's bringing taxes down. And one of the slides Dr. Ford showed, Indicated that you paid more for maybe police and fire in administrator form of governance What I would contest is that you you see this as far as economic development opportunities Grants that are obtained and overall positive movement within communities that are led by professional administrators Again there Yes, that's where I'm going. Are there bad actors in the city administrator form? Sure. Those are far and few between, and they get appropriately weeded out. The really good administrators that are the good actors get stuff done, and their communities really progress and progress quickly.

I mean, it's a clumsy analogy that I've heard, but, right, it's like an airplane pilot. Do you want someone who just, you get lucky, you find someone on the plane who happens to know how to fly it, and you pick them? Or do you want to hire someone that knows how to fly the plane? Where are you going to get the better result, right?

Thank you. I just wanted to leave food for thought. No taxation without representation. So when you do consider administrator versus control by voting in or out of a mayor we should consider we want to keep our control we don't want to give our voice away if we you know have concerns about how our city is run it is important to keep our own our vote of how we want things to you know flow through our community I just wanted to say that elections are important and keeping control is important. So when we do take all this good information and, you know, digest it, that we prayfully do the best decision for the years to come for WASA because WASA is a Wonderful place to live and we want the best for everyone that is living now in the town versus young people coming on that want to live here also. Plus we have to do heartfelt considerations for the taxes in this town because they are very high. I have a very modest house and no frills, and the taxes are high on my property plus the water. So we want people that govern us to take these things in consideration so it makes it a good place to live and always want to live in Wausau.

Thank you for those comments. I had an administrator share with me that they were able to change the bond rating. So a bond rating improvement or you lose a rank in your bond rating could be a half a point difference on a $70 million debt. It's real money.

Sure.

Question here.

You got a question? Yeah, I do. It's actually for you, Mayor, but... CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS, HAVE YOU EVER BROUGHT IT UP TO COUNCIL ABOUT THIS ADMINISTRATIVE POSITION? AND THE BUDGETS ARE COMING UP. DO WE HAVE IT IN THE BUDGET FOR NEXT YEAR?

WELL, THE NEXT STEP IS TO LOOK AT WHAT THE POTENTIAL ORDINANCE WOULD LOOK LIKE, AND WE DO HAVE, WE ARE LOOKING AT PUTTING SOMETHING IN THE BUDGET. VERY LIKELY, IT WOULD BE COMING TOWARD THE END OF NEXT YEAR, SO WE WOULD PHASE IT IN.

When I was looking at some of your slides earlier, when it concerned the fire and the police departments, they're underneath the fire police commission. They would not be under the auspices of the city administrator? Correct. All right. So then it would be what we have now? Correct. So the administrator is actually taking more of your snow removal, your...

Correct. No, I will say that... In policy, there are many municipalities that will delegate, decide to delegate that authority to the administrator in policy, but that's a choice that you make in your ordinance design or your policy design.

And as Mayor, you're going to the next question, I might just add that in an administrator form of governance, even if the police chief and the fire chief are governed and hired and fired by the Police and Fire Commission, the full-time administrator is going to treat those two individuals like department heads, work with them on their department head team, be in budget meetings with them, assist them with HR, internal hirings, and any concerns that they have. They would work very collaboratively together, even if they're not under direct oversight by the administrator.

Frankly, they have to if you look at the percentage of municipal budgets that go to public safety. It would be impossible for them not to be working together.

Wausau has had a long tradition. We have a very robust police and fire commission, and you really want that separation. So there is currently, as the mayor, I write the performance review and I direct them police chief, fire chief, but ultimately they're hired and fired by the police and fire commission. They do all the interviews. And so there's that buffer. So you don't have, and it'd be similar with the administrator, you don't have a mayor that comes in and gets in a fight with the police chief. Next thing you know, they're out. So that I think is an important piece. They separate the political. We even have in the ordinance that the police and fire commission has to be made up of, it can't be more than three people on a particular political party. So there's consideration to keeping politics out of police and fire. Thank you. Bruce, I'll get you next.

On your question of the police and fire, a lot of that is statutory. I'm a former fire chief, deputy chief. I've worked for three different municipal organizations. And cities are regulated through those state statutes having to do with police and fire. That being said, what they said was entirely accurate. Your budget, your goals, your objectives, and how the police and fire chief operate within the municipal structure are then controlled. It isn't like the police and fire chief have their own old fiefdom, trust me. But even the negotiation process for police and fire wages is entirely different. The one thing I wanted to mention tonight, over the years I have really wished that Wausau would embrace an administrator type government. I've worked for many different organizations. I was hired by the city of Wausau in 2000 out of Illinois. It's okay, I'm not a Bears fan. And I was hired out of Illinois to come in and build a paramedic program for the city of Wausau. And it was a wonderful marriage between Wausau and me for the four years. And I built that program, and like administrator, once it was built, boom, I went somewhere else. But what I learned when I worked for WASA is that the strong mayor form of government is really inefficient. And it was inefficient when I worked for the city of Moline, Illinois also. And the reason that it's inefficient is the job description for mayor, besides the statutes that they have to be a citizen, they have to be a certain age, The only job description for a mayor is you have to get one more vote than your opponent. No offense. And we've been blessed with some really good mayors. But they are not trained to run 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollar organizations. They aren't trained to understand what resources are out there. They aren't necessarily trained how to build a great team among the elected officials and the department heads. And the thing that I noticed in Wausau when I worked here is there were a lot of department heads and other people playing their own little games because the mayor couldn't really get a hold of that. The beauty of an administrative government, and I've worked for several, is that the administrator helps the council formulate their vision and their goals. And then the beauty for the council is they can give that direction to the administrator and say, this is what we want. They don't get involved in the daily stuff. If you as a constituent call your representative and say, hey, my street wasn't plowed, they call the administrator. And the administrator not only can fix it, but also can get back to you very quickly. And in cities with a strong mayor, a lot of times what happens is then that council person goes to the department head and everything gets messed up. My experience with administrators has been stellar. To be honest, as a department head, I loved it. I knew who my boss was. My boss knew what the council wanted and worked to implement that. Administrators, in my experience, have been much better at making sure that the budget reflects the priorities of the elected officials in the city. It isn't this big wrestling match between special interest groups. The administrator understands what's going on in your area. So you don't have two or three council people getting together and recruiting some others to push a pet project. You have an administrator that says to them, okay, here's what we have, here's what we can do, here's how we move the city forward. And that's the final thing that I loved about working for administrators. They have a vision and they can work with your elected officials to achieve a vision that could not be achieved just with the council and the mayor. And for that reason, there's nothing I would rather see in Wausau than to move to an administrator type government because you do not give up your control at all. You maintain that control. In fact, you've now got an employee that you could put a lot of pressure on. You don't have eight or 10 department heads that are kind of scurrying. You have one place that the council and the mayor go to. So I couldn't recommend it more. I've worked for a lot of them and it's made my job much easier and it made it easier for me to achieve for the citizens.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is going to sound perhaps condescending after that. I would encourage just not to assign motives to members of the council who are not here after thought. I can think of four who actually work this evening. and one who had a family emergency earlier with an ill mother. So I would encourage us to give them that benefit of the doubt. I am here because I wanted to learn. I'm sure they will take the opportunity when they have the chance, and I'm sure some of them would have been here had they had the opportunity. I think we currently have a very strong, very good council, so I would encourage us to give them that benefit of the doubt.

Thank you, Bruce. Thank you. Hey, if you're out there watching. Everybody say hi. Yes, ma'am.

We've had administrators here, I heard, several years ago. I don't know how many years ago. But the fact is that they only lasted for two years. And we have a strong city council that has a mind of their own. I haven't been involved in politics or anything very, very long. And I really came to the meetings to see what it was all about. And I saw that there was... A headstrong council. And how are you going to handle a headstrong council when you, you know, when America has to fight them all the time? And it's embarrassing for me because I don't like politics found in things that, you know, in my little city because I love my city. I've lived here all my life. And I don't like what's going on and how we have to fight for every little thing we want to accomplish in this world. So...

No, it's mostly low. Mostly low.

Do you want to bite on that? I'll jump in with that, sure. And from somebody who's worked for elected bodies throughout their career, ma'am, you just do it. So your question was how do you handle a headstrong council or a dysfunctional council or an angry council or a really collaborative council? The answer to all of those questions are you work within the form of government that's given you and the elected officials change occasionally. Sometimes they change more quickly. But in an instance where you have a full-time administrator, that administrator knows very clearly who their bosses are. And it's not easy to have 12 bosses, but it's real and they sign up for that. So how you do that is you just do it and you listen to the collective. So if there's a strong, and some of you said, It's so-and-so. But if there's a strong member, you don't work for that strong member. You work for the collective or the majority of that council.

I'll add to that. I guess it's not paid, so I don't know if it's consulting work. But some of the work we do at UWO is I joke that I'm a marriage counselor for dysfunctional city councils and school boards. And one of the things that I find remarkable is that you break it down. It's 11 people that all care about their community. They ran for a reason. It can be incredibly disarming. I think, to get council members into a space where they can find that common ground. And one of the reasons that I do find the professional management so interesting is that unifying effect of having that single employee and that clear path to getting something done that can have remarkably unifying effect and create some strange coalitions on a governing board that can heal some of those challenges. Because if you have 11 people they get really frustrated because they can't get something done. They all have something they're passionate about, but they don't know how to get something done. And it can't be 11 people with their own single opinion independently calling an apartment head asking something to happen. But there's a clear path when you do have a professional administrator. It's that we need to find six people to agree to give clear direction in a strategic plan, in a resolution, in something to make sure that this is going to get done. And that can be, it can take some time, but I think that's why in some of that data I showed, you do see some positive impacts on group dynamics on governing boards once you have a professional administrator.

I could also say one thing to that point is I grew up in Green Bay so I keep an eye on what's going on over there and they have similar issues and when I was a kid, You always have that one guy on the council, and that guy was Guy Zima. Does anyone remember Guy Zima? He wore it as a badge of honor that he was a disruptor. He got elected every time. I think he served for 20-plus years. That was him. But I will say, to Bruce's point, we've had some turnover here at City Hall. When I first got here, maybe I did... PICK SOME FIGHTS. AND IT BACKFIRED A LITTLE BIT ON ME. BUT WE DO HAVE FOUR NEW MEMBERS. WE HAVE NOT HAD A TERM THAT I CAN REMEMBER WHERE WE'VE HAD FOUR NEW MEMBERS ELECTED. IT'S USUALLY BEEN ONE OR TWO. And I think that helps. We've got some fresh perspective. We've got some people with some Robert's Rules of Order experience chairing meetings and helping us keep on track. One of the things that frustrated me the most is the meetings start to get dysfunctional. And we are getting better at following the Robert's Rules because Robert's Rules is not a weapon. Robert's Rules... is not to slow meetings down. It's to make it more efficient. You have one person recognized speaking at a time. And I think we've come a long way, and we are better today than we were two years ago.

BC Kowalski from the Lawsonian. Mayor, this comment is actually for you. I'm wondering why this came about right now. I know it's something that you've been talking about for a while, even while you were on the city council, but what prompted this to come up now? Are we going to expect to see some action on this idea of an administrator soon?

I HOPE SO. I'VE PUSHED THE ROPE A COUPLE OF TIMES AND DIDN'T DO IT CORRECTLY. SO THE FIRST TIME I TRIED TO PUT IT INTO THE BUDGET, AND I THOUGHT COUNCIL WOULD BITE ON THAT AND WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT, AND THEY DIDN'T. We've seen a series of mistakes made over the years that just led me to believe in looking at what other cities are doing. This is a potential good route. Does it fit Wausau? And if so, I think we deserve to air it out. So having a town hall and getting some input, getting some professionals in to talk about it, I think is a good start before we start talking And it's not going to be a surprise when council gets a look at it. So I think it's a good thing. I hope council agrees with me on that. And I think we've learned some good information. Looking at the crowd here tonight, I would just guess that people are interested. Why would you be here if you didn't think that there's something to this, either for or against? I appreciate you coming here for that.

IS IT COMING THROUGH THE BUDGET PROCESS, OR, LIKE, IS THIS SOMETHING YOU'RE GOING TO INTRODUCE?

SO TIMING, THAT'S A GOOD QUESTION, BECAUSE IN ORDER TO PUT IT IN FOR, SAY, SOMETIME NEXT YEAR, YOU WOULD HAVE TO PUT IT IN THE BUDGET. SO IF IT'S TIMED SO THAT WE CAN GET SOMETHING IN THE BUDGET, OTHERWISE, IF YOU WAIT, YOU NOW ARE IN A BUDGET MODIFICATION SCENARIO, AND THAT'S A WHOLE DIFFERENT, YOU KNOW, QUESTION, AND REQUIRES a budget modification, and now you're trying to find money that you didn't budget for prior. So I think it's important to put it in, and one of the things that we talked about in our budget process is can you put it in, say, starting in July? So you put half of it in for the 27 budget, and you can step into it that way.

Deb Hop.

I just have a question. I need to understand something. Oh, I hate this. I have a question that I need understanding for. Would an administrator actually overlook department heads? Or are the department heads still allowed to just fly on their own like they have been?

No, they would be under the direct supervision of an administrator.

So if there are questions about finances, the administrator could get on it right away instead of waiting four years or whatever?

Correct.

Okay. That's it. Thank you.

THERE'S BEEN DISCUSSION ABOUT AN AUDIT ON THE INFRASTRUCTURE COMMITTEE. I UNDERSTAND 2021 THERE WAS ALSO AN AUDIT AND RECOMMENDATIONS MADE NONE OF WHICH WERE FOLLOWED AND SO WE'RE IN A BIG MESS WITH OUR VEHICLES IN THE CITY. PART OF THIS HAS TO DO WITH THE DEPARTMENT HEADS AND We only way to get rid of a department head is with a vote of nine out of the eleven council members Which is eighty one percent of the council Which is ridiculous it should be six out of the eleven But the question also is if we're doing an audit would part of that audit deal with an administrator form of government or IS THAT TOTALLY SEPARATE?

I MIGHT HAVE TO LOOK TO BRUCE BACK HERE. HE'S TRYING TO PUT TOGETHER THAT RESOLUTION ON THE AUDIT. THE AUDIT IS A SEPARATE ISSUE, BUT THEY CERTAINLY COULD PUT THAT IN THEIR CONSIDERATION. I THINK THE AUDIT YOU WERE REFERRING TO WAS THE MOTOR POOL, THE MERCURY REPORT THAT WAS COMMISSIONED 2021, I THINK YOU'RE RIGHT. And they made some recommendations. They did adopt some of those recommendations, not all of them. The motor pool is still broken, and we're working. We need to get it whole. It's an internal service fund, and it should fund itself. And our goal is to have that funded within five years. Bruce, did you want to add something to that? No.

Some of us have been advocating a stepped-up degree of professionalism in City Hall for an extended period of time. A couple of years ago, I put a billboard out on the highway that said, wake up, Wausau, hire an administrator. We didn't do that. So my suggestion is we cut to the chase, move forward, don't wait another six months or 12 months or nine months, because every week that we fail to have enhanced professionalism in this building is not a step toward goodness in Wausau. One guy's input.

Thank you. Where are we at?

Okay, you might have only one current city council rep here, but you have two former city council members in the chamber tonight. This has been kicked around since 1999. I was elected in 1998 and re-elected for three additional terms and served till 2006. And we wrote in on a council of 12 with nine new members over a very large community project that the public said no to, which was, you remember, is the... THE CONVENTION CENTER. AND WHETHER OR NOT IT WAS A GOOD PROJECT, IT WASN'T FUNDED CORRECTLY, AND THAT'S WHY I COULDN'T SUPPORT IT, BUT 9 OUT OF 12 WERE NEW COUNCIL. WE SURELY COULD HAVE BENEFITED FROM HAVING AN ADMINISTRATOR IN PLACE SHORTLY AFTER, BECAUSE WE SURE DIDN'T KNOW WHAT WE WERE DOING. AND IF I COULD JUST, THERE'S SO MANY BENEFITS, I CAN'T EVEN START AS SOMEONE ELECTED ON A CITY COUNCIL TO HAVING A PROFESSIONAL ADMINISTRATOR, BUT I WILL JUST DO ONE. EVERY YEAR THE BUDGET CAME AROUND, AND I CAN'T REMEMBER WHAT OUR BUDGET WAS AT THE TIME I WAS ELECTED, 40 MILLION MAYBE, WE WOULD DICKER ABOUT $100,000. WE WOULD HAVE BUDGET MEETING AFTER BUDGET MEETING AFTER BUDGET MEETING. WE COULDN'T AFFECT ANY REAL CHANGE IN THE TAX BASE BECAUSE EVERYTHING WAS JUST THE WAY IT FLOWED FROM ONE BUDGET TO THE NEXT. SO AS AN ELECTED OFFICIAL, WE WOULD FIGHT OVER $100,000 THAT WE COULD PROBABLY, YOU KNOW, CONTAIN OR NOT CONTAIN. SO WHEN YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT AN ADMINISTRATOR, EFFICIENCY IS WHERE I WOULD GO. THAT'S THE NUMBER ONE. YOU KNOW, COUNCIL, BLESS THEIR HEART. They're all part-time, business owner, layperson, moms at home, but they're part-time. They don't know municipal governance and having an administrator as job, oh my gosh, I can't even start. It would have been great.

Thank you, Christine. David.

Thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you gentlemen for a very innovative presentation. One of your slides showed that the communities that had professional gentlemen in these positions and those that retained a mayor, and one of them I guess was Steven's point, that they considered it but decided not to. Do you have any information as to why they considered not to? I seem to recall that being in the news at the time. And then also, are there communities that have chosen to go to administrator and then went back toward a mayoral win? Thank you.

Good question. I mean, the simplest answer to Stephen's point was, and again, this is actually a very important point, especially with your mayor's support. I mean, bottom line is the mayor didn't want to do it. And I think their counsel, again, just my opinion wisely, didn't want to make it about an individual because I think that's a very bad way. to go about it, changing government forms specifically because you want to get rid of someone. That's not a healthy way to start out that process. So I think without that mayoral support, it's really, really difficult to make it happen, and that's what happened in Stevens Point. I don't know, Jay, if you can speak to the other item.

Well, the second part of your question, I don't know of any that have been in a city administrator and have gone back to a full-time mayor.

Yeah, the closest I can recall, I believe it was Chippewa Falls, went away from it for a little bit, and now they're back.

But even when they went away from it, I'm not sure they went to a full-time area. No. Yeah, they just went to a part-time area.

I do have a question. How are they going to decide this? Is it going to just be council that decides this? Is it going to be the voters? How would this be handled? That is my question.

Yeah, there's different options, and there's a handout out there that goes through those options over there by the police officer. Different things, right? The council can take a vote. the two-thirds majority to just make the change. Even if that happens, the voters have 60 days to file a petition, collect signatures, to force a referendum. The council could also make the decision to just vote to go directly to referendum, or the community could decide to collect signatures and force a referendum or a council vote. So there's different paths to it. What path you take is up to all of you. Thank you.

You're welcome.

How often do you guys notice that city administrators get replaced when either a new mayor or a new council gets elected in? And also, do you guys recommend either moving the mayor then to a part-time, no offense, to a part-time mayor? Or you'd mentioned even having cities without a mayor entirely. Are there benefits to that?

What do you think, Jay? It's a hard one, so I'll have to answer that one.

Well, regarding the change from a full-time or back to a part-time mayor, obviously that's a local decision. I will share there are very few instances in Wisconsin where there is a professional administrator for a municipality this size and commanding this kind of salary that also has a full-time mayor. Dr. Ford referred to West Allis. They do have that situation there that again. That's the exception not the rule So I think in most instances there there would be a part-time mayor for Beaver Dam For example went from a full-time strong mayor to a full-time administrator and then a part-time mayor Relatively recently. What was the other part of your question? I in Illinois really often. When there's a new mayor elected in Illinois, likely there's a new administrator shortly thereafter. Thankfully, and I say that some tongue in cheek, but it's real. In Wisconsin, we have really stable elected officials. I'm so thankful for the 11 folks that put their name on a ballot here and for the mayor. Typically lead any council meeting that I'm in attendance at with that. Thank you And I truly mean that and in full-time lifetime bureaucrats like myself Really appreciate people putting their name on a ballot and moving forward that that stability is real even in an instance where nine new people came You know Mike my guess is those those nine new individuals probably coalesced around a topic and and we're civil with each other and they provided stability for for administrators. So it's rare in Wisconsin that a new mayor or that a sweep of four to five council member change would result in an administrator, immediate administrator change.

Yeah, there's a lot of, I mean, one of the advantages you all would have is being one of the larger municipalities is you wouldn't be a stepping stone. A lot of the turnover I mentioned does occur, smaller municipalities. I've seen this with my students. They start in a small community. They do well. They move on to another community, that upward mobility that occurs. I mean, just to give an example that the city of Oshkosh, when I was there, our city manager retired, but that was after a 16-year period. So certainly when you're at the high end of that population and complexity structure, you should be getting a proven commodity that hopefully can navigate some of the political challenges that come with turnover on a council.

THE AVERAGE TENURE OF THE MAYORS FOR THE LAST THREE YEARS HAS ONLY BEEN FOUR YEARS. OR THE LAST THREE TERMS HAVE BEEN FOUR YEARS. SO WE'VE TURNED OVER MAYORS. WHO KNOWS WHAT HAPPENS IN 28. SO I'M THE THIRD MAYOR IN 12 YEARS. SO THERE'S TURNOVER. AND IF YOU GET SEVEN YEARS,

Yeah, and don't get me wrong. I mean, it can absolutely happen. I had a student of mine, a good friend, who was in Bemidji, Minnesota. I was there for nine years. There was a council vote, and he was gone. First meeting. It happens. But that, again, speaks to the fact that ultimately council and mayor retain that power. All right.

Which way? Okay.

Yeah, Eric Fonce with the WASA Daily Herald. I'm just curious, something unique about WASA is they elect all of their alder persons the same year rather than staggering two-year terms. And I'm wondering if there's some consideration for that, you know, as they maybe consider making this change towards stability, if there's something they should talk about with alder person terms.

Good question. Eric with a K. All right. Because there's a couple of varieties for that is to alternate, and they also have the at-large.

I can tell you when the city of De Pere made their change, this was I believe two summers ago, to go to a city manager model, they did take that opportunity to change some of their term structures as well. So, I mean, I think if you are taking a look at your charter ordinance and if that was something you desired, that seems like a normal, like might be a time to look at that. But like broken record here, ultimately that's a local decision.

Do city administrators typically have a contract for a set period of time or is it year to year or how is that structured?

THERE ARE A FEW MUNICIPALITIES THAT I KNOW OF THAT HAVE AN END TIME IN THEIR AGREEMENT. THAT'S, AGAIN, THE EXCEPTION, NOT THE RULE. THE INDEFINITE TERM ANNUALLY REOCCURRING IS MORE COMMON, THAT THEY WOULD JUST MOVE ON INDEFINITELY, AGAIN, WITH ANNUAL EVALUATIONS. AND SOME CONTRACTS ARE WRITTEN WITH A THREE-YEAR OR FIVE-YEAR SALARY STRUCTURE SO THAT THERE'S They limit the time that there's an uncomfortable conversation between the council, mayor, and the administrator, and they limit that to like once every three years or once every five years so that those salaries are set, similar to an elected official at the constitutional level in county government.

Well, thank you, everybody. We've got another one on the back. I will say I did get several e-mails this week after a lot of the news came out. We've got some mostly for but some against. So if you're so inclined, your city council member is still a good point of contact to let them know what you think.

There's some good examples were a city that had some larger debt issues hired the went to the administrative model and did very well and Getting a you know bringing the debt down faster than otherwise might have happened. I

I HAVEN'T LOOKED AT THAT. I CAN TELL YOU, JUST FROM WORKING WITH ADMINISTRATORS, THAT THAT WOULD BE SOMETHING THEY WOULD BE VERY CONCERNED ABOUT IF YOU WALKED INTO A HIGH DEBT SITUATION, BECAUSE THEN YOU'RE PAYING DEBT SERVICE AND YOU'RE TAKING A BIG CHUNK OUT OF YOUR OPERATING BUDGET EVERY YEAR, NOT PAYING FOR SERVICES THAT ARE IMMEDIATELY IMPACTING YOUR RESIDENCE. SO THAT WOULD CERTAINLY BE A TOP PRIORITY FOR ANY ADMINISTRATOR IF YOU DID HAVE A HIGH DEBT LOAD. BUT I HAVE NOT LOOKED AT THAT SPECIFICALLY.

I'm not sure about this, but I've heard that there's some employees within the city government that are kind of a protected class, that it's harder to get rid of people. Would that have to change, or what's our situation?

Well, there are some enumerated positions under the statute that have a different... And I believe it's the city engineer, the city assessor, the finance director, and the city attorney. The rest are at large at the discretion of the mayor.

Yeah, correct.

So to answer that, I don't know what the mechanism would be, but there are some that require nine alder members to agree. Yeah, go ahead.

I'm not sure, but the nine must be a local kind of issue here regarding your code.

It's a three-quarter majority.

Yeah. And then certainly police and fire, even after Act 10, retain collective bargaining rights, so that's a different ballgame as well.

Question out?

I didn't get my question answered.

Well, the... So the question, did you hear the question? The question is if there are several that fall under a different category. And as we saw here, police and fire would be the only in that category.

Yeah, statutorily, my understanding is the police and fire chief, police chief, fire chief would be the two that would be in that protective situation under the police and fire commission. The rest of those positions that I think you're both referring to are a local code that are requiring that higher bar for dismissal. Why an administrator would want to come in that situation? I mean, it's going to be a sought after job. Your community is great. and you will receive positive, well-qualified, several master's degree. In some instances, we receive applicants that have two and three master's degrees that they've accumulated over time of their tenure, and they'll still get a qualified applicant. It is, to Dr. Ford's point, a good time to look at everything within your code, just like we're talking about staggering terms of the council members. that might be a good time to look at that code regarding the hiring and firing of protected class, so to speak, department heads.

Which, again, would be logical because you're setting up a position where the administrator would have that authority to oversee your department heads and hire and fire. You wouldn't, yeah, presumably wouldn't want that.

Dr. Ford, Jay, thank you very much. Thank you. Let's give him a... Thank you. Feel free to call, email your council member.