Thread by @RANGEMedia4all

Alright, the will of the people has been heard. Check back right here at 1:30, where we'll be live tweeting the meeting (though if it goes past three I'll probably have to dip)

https://twitter.com/RANGEMedia4all/status/1816511005184376943

The meeting hasn't started yet, but it's busier than usual. And, I was told as I was getting walked up, they've gotten a new security service.

The four Spokane City Council Members have arrived in a gaggle. An interesting little note, Hank Bynaker a non voting member representing Airway Heights, is wearing a Trump/Vance shirt. At a lot of public meetings, you can't wear political expressions while speaking.

We've done the pledge, the agenda has been approved and we're on to public expressions. "Typically, we do not allow comments on agenda items," French said, but he's going to allow it anyways. Weird that you can't comment on stuff up for a vote...

Four people submitted written expressions

Dan Brown, CAC Chair
Linda Carroll, CAC member
Brandon H
Rose Noble, Visit Spokane

Looks like French may have wiggled a bit on his original hardline position: he said when we get to the CEO item, he'll be proposing a CAC committee member participate in an advisory capacity. Zack Zappone proposed this last week and was shut down: rangemedia.co/sta-ceo-french…

Erik Lowe is up testifying first. Here's his testimony:

Aaron Crandall is up now. He says he's a father of 6 and a Spokane resident. He's explored countless cities, and loves being in cities with high quality public transportation. "Every single one of our kids doesn't want to drive a car," he said.

Crandall said his kids are looking to move to walkable cities, and when they get their chance to move, "I'm going to help them pack." He said Spokane is building on his grandparents' model, not his grandkids' model. "It take 5+ years to build a serious improvement," he said.

He wants them to pick their CEO carefully with the intent of increased pedestrian access and a capability to plan for big projects that could transform the city.

"Budgets are a statement of an organization's values," he said. He wants a candidate who can collab with City Hall and plan for permanent infrastructure. Crandall doesn't want Spokane to lose generations of our youth to "more humanist cities."

Sarah Rose is up now. She's a third generation Spokanite. She said if STA was solely funded by ridership money, she wouldn't have a problem with the board solely making the decision, but because it's funded by taxpayers, she wants public involvement in the decision.

"If STA were truly a business," she said, employees & board members would want board members involved in scandals to step down. Rose says that CEOs serve as public faces to organizations, just as police chiefs do, speaking to Pam Haley's comments about their being no correlation

"STA provides transit for up to half a million people in the city as well as visitors," Rose said. She thinks it's "frankly kind of shady" to have a decision impacting so many be decided by only four people.

Dream is up now. They said the proposed process puts the future of the region "in the hands of four people with no public input and no labor representation." They think this shows disrespect for the voters and riders

"Why should be surprised that they continue to disregard the people most affected by their decision?" Dream said. "Without the people of the PTBA, there's no money for you to spend." They referenced this article: rangemedia.co/war-maneuver-s…

Dream says the board has showed a lack of understanding that the transit system is a public service. They want a member of the public at large, a member of the CAC and a labor representative added to the search committee

Kenneth Malone from Spokane is here. "Of the people, by the people, and for the people," he said. "The public deserves a seat at the table." He finds it "disconcerting" that certain members of the board feel public involvement is "an unbearable inconvenience."

Malone wants to see the next CEO be "a real leader who isn't afraid to speak to the people." He said the next CEO has an important job and will need to be "a fighter, an innovator and a problem solver."

Anyone unwilling to engage with the public or labor in the hiring process, Malone said, is not qualified for the job. That ends public expression.

Brandon Rapez-Betty is honoring James Norfolk, a building maintenance specialist who is retiring. Rapez-Betty said Norfolk has been here for over two decades and served his last day in July. "Enjoy your time at the lake, Jim, no one deserves it more."

Marc Walker, Mike Hogue and Wendy Woodard, three coach operators, were employee recognition award winners for this quarter. They're also celebrating years of service awards for people who have hit 5 years at STA.

Two employees just hit 15 years at STA, and another two employees just hit 25 years with STA. Very cool!

Onto the consent agenda. It's been unanimously approved.

Which gets us to the CEO task force conversation!! Buckle up :)

French has a proposal that was not discussed at the Board Operations committee and wants to give context. He says back in 2002, when they were starting to restructure, they brought in someone from Avista to be "an agent of change."

After that CEO, Meyer was hired from a local search, and has been with the agency for 19 years, French said. Back then, they were searching for someone from the business industry to push for growth. "We've made some pretty significant advancements," he said.

When Meyer was hired, that was also done with a task force, French said, and it worked well, because she's been here for nearly two decades. He said when the same process was proposed at Board Ops, it wasn't because it was "risky" but because they'd already done it and it worked

French said the proposal for the hiring process wasn't done out of any desire to "control it" but to propose something tried and true that works. He said the task force is made up of representatives of the four primary stakeholders: spokane, spo val, the county, and small cities

French said they wanted to keep it small to avoid creating a quorum. He said the desire to engage the Citizen's Advisory Committee had never surfaced before because Meyer has been here 19 years, "but things change."

Still, he's stressing this is a board decision and they were elected to make these decisions. French doesn't like being compared to Mayor Lisa Brown's call to involve the public in police chief hiring because "that was her decision."

French has a new proposal to include a "pretty good cross-section" of the community in an advisory capacity. But he is *not* in favor of expanding the task force because "that's our job, we are elected to represent the community."

"Labor wasn't elected to do that, citizens weren't elected to do that," French said. But he's got a long list of people he wants to involve now in an advisory community: Rider/CAC Chair, STA LAbor, STA Management, Arc of Spokane, Visit Spokane, Downtown Spokane Partnership

Greater Spokane Incorporated, Spokane Valley Chamber, West Plains Chamber, WSDOT, SRTC and Building Owners and Managers Assoc. would make up an advisory committee.

French asked everyone to raise their hands if they were here for the last hiring process. No one did but him. He said Meyer had almost no bus ridership experience when she was hired and she's been here 19 years. He implied he knows best because the last search was successful

French said the voters want them to run STA like a business to appease voters who don't ride the bus. "we have to create a value structure so they'll continue to support it with their tax dollars."

He's opening the floor to comment. Kitty Klitzke is up first, she has a motion to amend the process. Since they're planning on hiring a consultant, she wants to ask the consultant to create a transparent hiring process.

Klitzke wants the national search firm to help them structure the process to include community interested groups in the process. She also wants the job description to go out to these groups for feedback, and thinks the consultant should do all that work.

Klitzke also wants community listening sessions, both at the top of the process and when they have top candidates. "I don't want to get too prescriptive," she said, because she wants the search firm to help with that process.

Zappone seconded Klitzke's motion, and they've moved to discuss. Megan Clark is trying to understand what's going on, Klitzke is explaining that she made a motion to ask the search firm to create a transparent, public and inclusive process with meetings open to the public.

French has just jumped in to try to explain what Clark's confusion is and what action they might have to take is. He says he doesn't think Klitzke's motion excludes his proposal, and they have to vote on his proposal first.

Klitzke said they would need to amend French's proposal because she wants to take "approve the job description," out of what's being voted on now.

Rhonda Bowers, labor representative, said she's concerned about approving the job description right now, because she'd like to see it be able to be flexible with public feedback, because that might inform what should be in the job description.

Bowers said when French was talking about the past, she got the feeling that he was blaming the problems of the past on a financial person, and the actual problems were "leadership and transparency," and she doesn't want Jim, the past guy, to be thrown under the rug.

French said he agreed Jim Plaster was not the problem. Meyer wants to offer an observation about the board approving the job description. In the current recommendation, only the four people in the task force would approve the job description.

Bowers wants there to be more input, not just having the description come down to four people. Meyer said that would delay the process because there's no meeting in August. French asked if they could schedule a special meeting over Zoom to talk job description.

Klitzke is wanting to preserve flexibility in the job description. French is proposing that they "task the task force with developing a timeline" to approve the job description. "I'd rather do it right than fast," French said. Klitzke agreed.

Klitzke wants Board Ops to get a draft job description done with a search firm asap, and then put that out for public comment.

French seems to agree with that. Dillon has a quick observation from being on the Mayor's Police Chief Search committee: he wants them to consider bringing the top 3-5 candidates to the board instead of the top 2-3.

Zappone wants to speak to the process of "what are we looking for in a CEO?" He wants to stress that they should ask the search firm to develop and help with a public input process. Klitzke said her motion is open to input.

Clark has a suggestion - at the end of the discussion, Klitzke just make a new motion. Klitzke said she's happy to. French has an alternative, they approve the first three lines of his recommendation, which would get the ball rolling without contradicting anything Klitzke pitched

Klitzke withdrew her motion (but is bringing it back later) and it seems like they're going to vote on the first three lines, which would approve the Board Ops committee members as the CEO task force.

Zappone wants to know if a motion agreeing to the first three lines would exclude community advisory members being added to the task force. French says he doesn't think so.

French says his version of community involvement task force wouldn't be the actual job search task force but an advisory group giving input to the full board. Zappone wants that group to be meeting with the task force

There's some confusion here about how all of this works, what Klitzke meant, what Zappone is asking, what French wants and how Roberts Rules of Orders work...they're untangling it now but I'll spare you the weeds

County Commissioner Josh Kerns is trying to make sure he's tracking. "Hypothetical - we get 20 applications, who reviews the applications in this scenario?" Klitzke said "the consultant." He wants to know if a community advisory committee would review applications.

Klitzke said she imagines more of an iterative process designed by the consultant, not her, where unqualified candidates are weeded out, then the board ops task force narrows it down to 3-5 and then the citizen CEO committee gives input and feedback after meeting candidates

Kerns is clarifying - if the citizen's committee comes in once applications are whittled down, why not just have a town hall at that point to allow everybody in the community to ask questions? Klitzke said she's happy to entertain that, but wants to defer to the consultant

Kerns wants to know, did the city put the job description for the Police chief out to the public? Klitzke said she didn't know. Dillon's chiming in. He said feedback from community town halls were incorporated into the job description by the consultant they hired.

After they got the full list of applicants, the committee of 20 people (labor reps, Dillon and Cathcart, nonprofits and action groups, college reps, small business owners, etc) interviewed the top 10 candidates.

Then, they made a recommendation for the top 4-5 candidates. Lisa Brown brought the top 4 to the public. Kerns asked, "Is this the same process for the fire chief?" Dillon said those two things weren't comparable because the fire hire was internal."

Dillon and Kerns are getting a little contentious here. Dillon thinks the police chief hire is a great model for how to do hiring with great input for a public organization. Kerns is pointing to lots of processes without public involvement.

However, the comparison I see, at least, between the police chief hiring process and the STA hiring process is that both processes are national searches.

"I think the key thing here is that at STA we're really trying to bring back some transparency and trust in the community," Zappone said. He saw the public process with the police chief helping to reset trust and transparency there and it could do the same for STA.

Klitzke said she's not trying to litigate any processes that other jurisdictions have done but she "wants the best process for STA." Wilkerson agreed. "we can compare ourselves to everybody or anybody," she said. "However we get to design our process specifically for STA."

Wilkerson said Meyer's long career in public transportation is amazing, but public transportation has changed significantly. "I really think if we're gonna hire a consultant and pay a consultant lets get our money out of that consultant."

"As commissioner French said, he's the only one here that's been through that process," Wilkerson said. So she'd like professional guidance from consultants to shepherd them through.

Hattenburg agrees with Klitzke and Wilkerson about hiring the consultant and trusting them to develop the process with employees and public halls. He did a similar process hiring a library director and it went really smoothly and they got a lot of compliments.

Bowers said it seems to her that the key thing coming up is "the questions that are asked and who gets to ask them." She also stressed if they need an interim CEO to give them time to get this right, that's what she wants.

Kerns is poking at Klitzke about the town hall processes and hiring Julie O'Berg so quickly. Zappone tried to call of point of order. Klitzke said that's beside the point, she's just trying to set up a process that works for STA.

Dillon wants them to move on from whataboutisms and said the reason the police chief just keeps coming up is because it was recent. He wants STA to take the opportunity to do a good process that works for them.

Pam Haley has a comment about hiring an interim, and typically if you hire an interim and then don't keep them permanent, they leave.

Klitzke is trying to remake her motion. 1. hire a search committee. 2. task force drafts a job description. 3. that goes out to the public for feedback. 4. the board has a special meeting to approve that. 5. they ask the search firm to create an inclusive, transparent process

6. ask the consultant to create an advisory committee with employee and ridership rep to advise the task force. 7. have meetings open to the public with the candidates. 8 then follow that process developed by the search firm.

Dan Dunne is trying to take a crack at this. He also has a motion. (Klitzke's didnt get a second so the floor is clean.)

The first three lines of French's motion + "he search task force, in collab with the recruiting consultant will produce; 1. the job description used for the search 2. recommend the composition of the CEO advisory committee 3. recommend the process at an August special meeting

Haley seconded Dunne's motion. Zappone says he has an amendment to the motion to ask the task force to bring a draft of the job description to the august meeting and ask the consultuant how best to get public feedback on it.

Wilkerson seconded Zappone's amendment. Dunne is trying to make Zappone's amendment more concise. Klitzke thanked Dunne for making it simple. Zappone wants to make sure the final job description isn't approved in August without public input

Dunne distilled the amendment down to just adding the word "draft" in front of job description. Wilkerson seconded the amendment. They're now voting on Zappone's amendment to Dunne's motion to ensure the first product is a draft job description with no action in Aug.

That was unanimously approved. Now onto Dunne's full motion, with Zappone's amendment in it. No more discussion. That was unanimously approved.

French has a comment. "Our CEO has been here 19 years," he said. He said the city has been through 7 police chiefs in the last 19 years using hiring processes with public input, and he just wanted to point that out.

But! A little win! The hiring process will have public input.

I'm leaving, sorry besties. Don't want to sit through the rest!

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