Well, thank you so much for being here.

I'll call to order the special session of the Bloomington Common Council on what is the date today?

March 11th.

March 11th, 2026.

Call the role.

Councilmember Flaherty.

Stasberg?

Zulik?

Here.

Sorry.

Here.

Daily.

Here.

Rahlo?

Here.

Ref?

Here.

And Rosenbarger.

Here.

Okay, well, today the special session is a short one when then we'll transition into a deliberation session.

I'll be honest, we had ambitions, the uh the four of us at the um hiring committee to be able to before this meeting come to an agreement about what we wanted all of the job descriptions to look like and to have those for you.

But we did not come to an agreement about that.

Instead, um what we have today is a little bit of a um uh uh uh uh according to our charge.

Um we have four options of things that we can at least discuss whether we want to move those forward now so that they can inform um how we want to progress with the job descriptions.

Of course, we don't have to make a decision on that today, but um, but that's that that is what the committee is prepared to do today.

So um so uh what I'll we'll do here is just a very quick um very quick sort of update on on our last meeting um and then um and then we'll present the we've come up with four different options.

Um we'll present those options and then hopefully have just some some discussion.

And if we do come to an agreement, then that'll help us um move forward with crafting uh the job description.

So um I'll I'll start and then please uh council member Rollo and and uh Zulik, please feel free to jump in at any time.

Um the way that we see it is that we have um, as I said, four four possibilities.

The first one is obvious is the status quo, which is just keep things as they are.

We have three lines, keep them in those three lines.

You have uh uh lawyer administrator, a deputy lawyer administrator, and then some type of a legal researcher.

Um choice number two is the idea of separating the administrative functions from the legal functions.

Um of course there are some administrative functions that overlap with legal functions, like um, you know, preparing, for example, uh uh legislation.

Um but um but the main gist of choice two is to separate these two these two roles.

Um the question that that begs is where does that administrator then sit?

And the option that we're proposing is that that person would sit in the clerk's office.

So we could talk about what that would be called.

Um, but you could think of that as like a I don't know, council project manager, a chief clerk for council liaising, uh chief administrator, something like that.

Um that person would be in the clerk's office, and then we would maintain our two lawyers who would just be lawyers.

Um option three, please add to that.

Um one of the things that we discussed about just in terms of housing, one of well, housing someone who was previously a council staff in the clerk's office is there was a little bit of concern that we might lose some autonomy.

So I just want everyone to know that this is not a person that would be making decisions on behalf of council.

This is just a person that would be doing a lot of the labor that goes into creating a council meeting, whether that be packet preparation or like assisting with scheduling, those types of things.

So please don't interpret this as we're giving up something.

Thank you.

Um the third option was uh hybrid of option one and two, which is something along the lines of instead of having instead of having that third line be a legal, a full-time legal researcher, is turning that into two part-time roles.

Um of course a lot of extra work would be required to do that.

Um, one of whom would sit in the clerk's office with the role that we just um we just described, and another who would uh uh fulfill the duties of of a legal researcher with the other two positions staying more or less the same with a lightened administrative load.

Um and then our fourth option I I don't think any of us liked um, but it's sort of thinking about shifting um where the responsibilities within the status quo might lay, um, which is namely to put more of the administrative burden on the person who's currently the deputy.

Now this is has precedent, um, and then everybody else staying the same.

This does have precedent um prior with Dan Sherman when um and her name is escaping me, but we had uh uh uh a lawyer who was not yet a licensed attorney, who that's when we first had this um legal researcher job.

Um that job was then um upgraded when she got uh her license, um, and then that's how we ended up with a deputy attorney and a um and uh sort of chief attorney.

And so um so that would be the fourth idea, something like reshifting amongst amongst the the three positions that we already have, some of the roles and responsibilities in a way that you put more of the administration on the deputy than on the than on the lead legal person.

So those are the four four um ideas, anything that I'm missing.

Councilmember Rallo.

Uh yes, well, I have a different recollection.

Actually, um, and that is uh in you know, my opinion is a variation of the current uh scheme schemata of the council office.

Um my main concern is autonomy of the council office, and that I would like to keep uh our duties in-house.