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Regular City Council Meeting <br /> Monday,January 22,2024 <br /> Page 9 <br /> Commission meeting they can talk about suggestions from everyone and a possible <br /> rewording of at least the first sentence of that section to see if the Commission can <br /> come up with something that retains what Councilmember Strahan was talking <br /> about regarding the need for human rights to be uplifted as an important emphasis <br /> but without putting the Commission in the wrong role. He had a couple of ideas <br /> for language on that. <br /> Mayor Roe thought that process made sense. <br /> Councilmember Etten indicated several of his questions have been addressed and <br /> he appreciated that. He asked the Commission how the new language clarifies the <br /> Commission's concerns of incongruity between the Code language and the <br /> workplan. <br /> Commissioner Tidball explained the way the Commission wrote the scope gives <br /> them basically three different broad roles. The advising role, ambassador role, and <br /> advocacy role, at least the way it is written now,which was a neat pneumonic thing <br /> to do. Within those roles in any given year, there could be things that were in the <br /> old scope that the Commission might end up doing. There is a fair amount of <br /> language about evaluating City policies and programs,for instance. Something that <br /> appeared to him when he attended the meeting last May for all of the departments, <br /> was that it seemed to him they were already doing a lot of that work, actually have <br /> the expertise to do that work, but there may be sometimes where the City Council <br /> needs another opinion. Actually, sometimes it is better to have an opinion from <br /> folks that do not have an expertise in that and maybe sometimes in a workplan <br /> where the Commission needs to do evaluation of something and would get together <br /> and agree that is what is needed to be done. If it is written in the scope, if makes it <br /> look like the Commission has to do that all the time. It either looks like the <br /> Commission is not doing their duties or that is not something the Commission is <br /> really supposed to be doing,in that case,why is it in the scope. That was part of the <br /> notion of taking some of those specifics out. It is not that these are not important or <br /> might not be useful sometimes,just that it gives the Commission the flexibility to <br /> determine when they are useful and why they are useful. <br /> Councilmember Etten asked if there are other things that the Commission pulled <br /> out for that kind of reason. Are there are specific things that the Commission <br /> determined was not being done or not being done very often and felt strange to have <br /> outlined in the scope, so it was pulled out. <br /> Vice-Chair Becker thought it was specifically how it was outlined because she <br /> remembered her first or second Commission meeting, seeing the workplan, and <br /> saying to herself"where is evaluating and where is the Commission advising and <br /> engaging". Those three words to her was a disconnect. She thought engagement <br /> was a big word, that the Commission better be engaging or how are they even <br /> affected if the Commission is not engaging. She explained she did not even want to <br />