Council Study Session

MINUTES OF THE GILBERT TOWN COUNCIL, IN SPECIAL MEETING FOR A STUDY SESSION, TUESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2023, AT 5:00 P.M., MUNICIPAL BUILDING I, COUNCIL CHAMBERS, 50 E. CIVIC CENTER DRIVE, GILBERT, ARIZONA COUNCIL PRESENT: Mayor Brigette Peterson, Vice Mayor Kathy Tilque, Councilmembers Scott Anderson, Chuck Bongiovanni, Bobbi Buchli, Yung Koprowski, and Jim Torgeson COUNCIL ABSENT: None. STAFF PRESENT: Town Manager Patrick Banger (attended virtually), Town Attorney Chris Payne, Town Clerk Chaveli Herrera, Deputy Clerk Judy Martinez, and Management and Budget Director Kelly Pfost CALL TO ORDER OF SPECIAL MEETING Mayor Peterson called the meeting to order at 5:02 p.m. AGENDA ITEM 1. Discussion and presentation on updated financial policies. Management and Budget Director Pfost said the financial policies were generally reviewed annually and updated as needed. She said during the Special Meeting on May 8, 2023, Town policies were reviewed, and the Council gave direction to repeal two stand-alone policies to be added to the financial policies. She discussed the two Polices; Policy No. 2010-02: Council Support Costs and Policy No. 2019-02: Appraisal Policy then summarized the recommended changes. She said the Council Support Costs were updated to include a Town-issued cell phone and removed the option for a $100 monthly stipend for elected officials to use their own phone and said the change was due to security concerns and better compliance with public records requests. She discussed the Appraisal for Purchase and Sale of Real Property and said the appraisal threshold was increased to $25,000 max value on parcels for exemption of an appraisal, and said the change was due to inflation and increased value of property. She discussed other areas of recommended changes to the financial policy which included an increase to the approval threshold amount for the Office of Management and Budget Director to $50,000 and the Town Manager to $100,000 for Contingency and Budget Adjustment Approvals, and an increase of the Interfund Loan and Economic Development Reserve expenditure thresholds to $100,000. She said the recommendation was due to inflation and was in line with the Town Manager’s authority to approve contracts up to $100,000. She discussed the Repair and Replacement Funding section of the policy in regard to Information Technology Equipment and said it was streamlined to provide similar information to the other subsections. She said the last area was Grants and the Department Director approval for accepting grants was increased to $100,000. She said the change would not include any Federally funded grants or any on-going costs, and added those grants would still need Council approval regardless of the grant amount. She said this change would reduce administrative burden and make it easier for departments to apply and receive smaller grants. She asked the Council for their feedback and direction and said the updated Financial Policies would be brought back to the Council for adoption at the Regular Council Meeting on September 19, 2023. Vice Mayor Tilque said the presentation appeared to capture everything discussed and said she needed some time to read through the language. She asked if she found something that needed to be changed, if that would be included in the final policy that would be brought forward for approval. Director Pfost confirmed and said to reach out to her with any questions or changes. Mayor Peterson said the Council Support Cost policy stated the use of Town pool vehicles for local or out of area travel and asked if the Town had pool vehicles. Director Pfost confirmed that the Town had two pool vehicles available at Municipal Building I and said the Council could contact staff if they were interested in using the vehicles. Mayor Peterson thanked Director Pfost for the presentation and said she would read through the document and get in touch with her with any questions. 2. Discussion on further defining conflict of interests for public body members related to conducting business with the Town. Councilmember Bongiovanni spoke of his professional and educational background in social work and business and said it made him look at ethics more “black and white” than others. He said as a businessperson he understood following rules to protect business and community, and as a social worker he believed in blaming the system before blaming the person. He said if there were faults in the system they needed to be repaired, and if after the repair of the system the behavior continued, then the blame would be on the person. He said the State and Town policies had loopholes which created situations where Councilmembers could follow the rules and State Statutes, receive a contract from the Town and have the appearance of impropriety. He said that was wrong and he did not want anyone following the rules to be questioned. He said he believed the Town’s policy needed to be stronger than the State to prevent these situations from happening. He suggested adding language that stated a sitting Councilmember who owned more than 20% of a business could not do business directly with the Town. He said there should be some discussion on allowing subcontracting and said he was interested to hear the opinions of his fellow Councilmembers. Councilmember Torgeson spoke about an experience regarding prior accusations made against him by a resident. He said he did not do business with the Town because it would look bad. He said the optics needed to be as such that there was so much transparency that one could not be accused of doing something improperly and would give people the confidence that there was no self- dealing or self-interest with the people who represent them. He said it did not need to be punitive but needed to be something where people knew and trusted their elected officials were not self-dealing in some way. He said there needed to be something substantial enough to create trust, then if they found something they believed was beyond that level that there would be a mechanism to deal with it. He said there was not a necessity in digging further than what Councilmember Bongiovanni discussed. Councilmember Anderson asked if the discussion was specific to the Council or Boards and Commissions members as well. Councilmember Bongiovanni said to start with the Council and then look at Boards and Commissions at a later date. Councilmember Anderson said he had received requests to reconvene the Subcommittee on Code of Ethics and said this topic could be discussed. Councilmember Buchli said she did not have a lot to say but it appeared that currently there was nothing wrong with any Councilmember doing business with the Town. She said she felt it was a conflict of interest and the policy could be better. Vice Mayor Tilque said she did not have a problem looking at the policy to develop some language, stating it did not give clear direction. She said State statute did acknowledge that there would likely be conflicts of interest for any elected official because they were involved in so many things, adding it was written that way to ensure transparency and disclosure. She said if they were looking at extending the policy to be more direct toward Councilmembers, they would need to be careful with how they worded it and looking out for unintended consequences, adding they needed to be cautious. She said they needed to have clear direction to move forward. Councilmember Torgeson said reconvening the Subcommittee to develop the language and then bringing it back for discussion at a Study Session was a good approach. Councilmember Bongiovanni stated he was in support of taking it back to the Subcommittee on Code of Ethics. He then spoke of appearance, stating the rules state you must recuse yourself from a vote and that was being done. He said there was a problem with a recusal of voting on an item and then receiving the contract, but then voting on the Town Budget. He advocated for recusal on the budget items also, stating that by voting on the budget, the Councilmember was essentially voting on something they got paid from. Councilmember Koprowski said she was supportive of continuous improvement and re-looking at policies. She spoke of training from the League of Arizona Cities and Towns and suggested to reach out to them for potential interest in enhancing their educational materials regarding the greater transparency that was being sought. She spoke in agreement with regard to the current measures in place for transparency and public reporting, then said they could look at what other agencies do and if they had more stringent policies. She said the conversation that evening was mostly related to financial interest and said it would be valuable to look at other potential conflicts of interest as well. Mayor Peterson said it was good to look at policies that were in place and said it would have been helpful to have staff look into it ahead of time to bring information to help with the discussion. She spoke of concerns with rolling this into the Boards and Commissions, especially with the new Public Works Advisory Board since it would limit the pool of candidates for Boards and Commissions and future Council seats if the policy was too strict. She spoke in agreement with Councilmember Anderson bringing the topic to the Subcommittee on Code of Ethics for discussion and then back to the Council. Vice Mayor Tilque said if they were going to take it back to the Subcommittee she wanted to recap the comments to ensure nothing was missed. She stated the policy would apply to the Council only, potentially with a 20% ownership of a business, recusal from budget and contract votes, check with League of Arizona Cities and Towns for available education materials, look at other municipalities and agencies, and to not only explore financial conflicts but other potential types of conflicts of interest as well. Councilmember Bongiovanni added to look at rules for directly getting contracts and rules for subcontracting, stating he saw direct contracting being more of an issue than subcontracting. Councilmember Torgeson said he would want some focus on disclosure, stating somebody could do something totally right yet it could be not quite as disclosed as the general public would expect. He said it was about eliminating the problem of perception. Councilmember Anderson asked if Town Attorney Payne had the direction he needed. Town Attorney Payne said he had the direction he needed to work with the Subcommittee. He added the difficulty would be vetting out the rules being recommended to make sure there were not unintended consequences and to understand that it would be going above and beyond what was required by law. He said the Council had the ability to adopt a policy that was more stringent than what State law required, but said understanding the flip side of what the penalty would be. He spoke of the Council’s limitations with being a general law town, adding it may be best to include it in the ethics policy. He said there was not much the Council could do if someone violated the policy, other than invalidating the contract, absent incorporating something into the Ethics Code. He noted the new Ethics Policy that was recently adopted currently stated a conflict of interest allegation went directly to the Attorney General and was not an ethics policy under the Town Code. He said if that was the direction the Council or Subcommittee wanted to go in, there would need to be a lot of reworking of the new ethics policy and trying to work that in. Councilmember Anderson stated he thought most communities would end up referring to the State law. Mayor Peterson agreed but said that was the good of Subcommittees, to look into those matters. ADJOURN Mayor Peterson adjourned the meeting at 5:27 p.m. ATTEST: ___________________________ ___________________________________ Brigette Peterson, Mayor Chaveli Herrera, Town Clerk CERTIFICATION I hereby certify that the foregoing minutes are a true and correct copy of the minutes of the Study Session of the Town Council of the Town of Gilbert held on the 1st day of August, 2023. I further certify that the meeting was duly called and held and that a quorum was present. Dated this __________ day of ______________, 2023. ___________________________________ Chaveli Herrera, Town Clerk