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Neal Beets' Comments Regarding Councii Member Elect <br />Schroeder's Proposed Standing Rules of Procedure and <br />Council Meeting Schedule <br />I. Proposed Standing Rules of Procedure <br />A. General Comments. <br />Some of my comments are general in nature, applying to the entire <br />draft, so I sha.11 cover them first. As I'm sure the Council Member Elect <br />appreciates, his draft raises questions about "Wh�' we need some of <br />these proposed rules. My comments, and I suppose comments from <br />others, might be better focused if we knew why the Council Member Elect <br />feels each of the more significant rule changes is necessary. For <br />example, if we knew the underlying "pinch-point" or problem that each <br />proposed rule change is trying to address, we might be able to suggest <br />other possible options to resolve that problem that the Council Member <br />Elect may not have considered. Or we may be able to demonstrate that <br />perhaps the situation is not a problem after all. <br />In addi�ion, the Council Member Elect's proposal touches upon three <br />important concepts of local government: the nature of the Plan B form of <br />government in Minnesota., the purpose of City Council standing rules of <br />procedure, and a balanced budget. <br />1. Plan B Form of Governmen#. <br />I won't belabor the point, but the Plan B form of government <br />anticipates that the City Council shall make public policy while the City <br />Manager and Staff carry out those policies. Though the line between <br />creating policy and implementing policy can occasionally become fuzzy, <br />making policy plainly entails setting overall policy goals, purposes and a <br />budget for city government. Carrying out policy clearly entails deciding <br />who sha11 implement that policy and how. <br />Given this outline, I wonder whether some of the proposed standing <br />rules of procedure go beyond making policy and reflect Council <br />involvement in carrying out policy. For example, the rule declaring that <br />the Mayor shall allocate office spaGe seems to reflect an administrative <br />decision about which staff member shall occupy how much space and <br />where. Allocating specific office space seems like an administrative <br />function to me, not policy making. <br />