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Regular City Council Meeting Monday, October 26, 2009 Page 10 constituted voting, and further opined that members needed to have their votes re- corded openly and transparently to allow the public to react. Councilmember Ih- lan expressed her discomfort in changing rankings and questioned the purpose in numerous iterations during the process. Councilmember Ihlan further noted the difficulty she'd had in making meaningful value ranks based on category struc- tures, providing several examples that could only be ranked as having the highest priority (fire, police and public safety services based on a 24/7 emergency re- sponse schedule). Councilmember Ihlan also noted that this only provided for some tax supported services and programs, and did not represent the entire City budget or entire proposed levy, which should include the HRA levy. Council- member Ihlan expressed concern that, unless the ranking was completed across the entire budget, it was not representative of the entire budget and priorities. As another example, Councilmember Ihlan noted that, the category including path- ways and parking lots was too broad, with her ranking it as a " 3" but nor repre- sentative of her values since she considered pathways as a high priority, but low priority for parking lots. Mayor Klausing reminded Councilmembers that they had previously held a dis- cussion on the Open Meeting Law related to the ranking process and been assured that there were no issues. Mayor Klausing noted that discussions are held during regular business meetings, with the rankings available continually to the public, which should allow for the greatest transparency possible for the public's benefit. Mayor Klausing noted that, as the process gets into the final stages and before any final levy and budget adoption in December, the City Council would have the op- portunity to vote on the actual allocation of resources. Councilmember Pust clarified with Mr. Miller how the unallocated time and "other" categories were defined, and how to address those items. Councilmember Pust advised that, during her ranking process, if she didn't understand the line item, she had applied a ranking of " 2". Mr. Miller suggested that staff resolve that issue by eliminating the "other" cate- gory and allocating applicable dollars for that category back into the various pro- grams rather than as a separate item. Mr. Miller used the Police Department as an example, with impacts to dozens of people across dozens of programs and ser- vices, which needed to be included with similar categories in that department. Councilmember Pust suggested that staff remove the "other" from the list and ac- count for those line items in another way. Councilmember Pust opined that those items were too finite and unable to be defined and ranked as a congregate, without additional detail. Mr. Miller advised that the next iteration would be addressed as recommended.