TO:Chairman Rick Westcott (Tulsa City Council District #2)
FROM: Mayor Dewey F. Bartlett Jr.
DATE:June 30, 2010
SUBJECT:Agenda Item Requests
As part of our mission to more efficiently manage City personnel time and resources, we need to adopt a new system that will allow our staff to address your concerns as well as their daily workload.
Under the current system, we are aware of Tuesday committee agenda items following the 4 p.m. posting on Fridays, giving us one working day (Monday) to prepare information and reports to address Council agenda items at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Tuesdays. In addition, we are often notified of amendments to the Tuesday committee agendas posted on Monday, giving us less than eight hours to prepare information and report items that have been added late. The short deadlines lead to haste and increase the risk for inaccuracies and wasted effort.
The Council often requests that staff appear at Council meetings to address the agenda items posted for discussion. At times, these topics are brought to you by your constituents and our staff is not always alerted or sufficiently informed of the issues in advance. In other cases, our staff has worked with citizens who are not satisfied with the resolution of a problem, so they contact Councilors. As Mayor and as a former Councilor, I respect your effort to quickly address their issues and concerns. I have the same goal for myself and for City staff.
It is difficult to achieve our goal of increased efficiency when staff members must abandon their work schedule and priorities for a day to accommodate the short Council agenda. The agenda items are sometimes vague in language and we must speculate on the information you want.
Please be advised that from this date, when the Council requests that a City staff member or Mayor’s staff member be present at a Council committee meeting to address an issue, we will need seven calendar days advance notice on those agenda items. We will always make exceptions for emergency issues that must be addressed within a certain time frame.
The seven calendar day notice must be provided to the appropriate Mayor’s Division Director or Department head by phone call and email. The Mayor’s Division Director or Department head may seek clarification from your staff during the week prior to their committee meeting presentation to ensure our report to Council addresses the concerns and questions. The Mayor’s Division Director or Department head will coordinate the response with the help of designated staff members.
This new procedure will provide us with sufficient time to notify or recruit City staff who are knowledgeable about the agenda topics or who can devote their attention and time to research and report on a Council agenda item. The seven day advance notice is essential in order to give staff more time to prepare reports for committee meetings and Thursday night Council meetings. It will also give staff the chance to manage their time better to schedule work on new requests with their normal duties and assignments.
In summary, unless it is an emergency, we must have seven days notice on all agenda items requiring discussion with Mayor or City staff, or reports. Per this request, we will anticipate notification of agenda items requesting a City staff response no later than the Tuesday one week prior to the meeting. If special Council meetings are posted, then the appropriate seven-day notice will also be our guide.
I appreciate the work that you do for the City of Tulsa and invite you to call me at anytime with your concerns, questions and ideas.
Best regards,
Dewey F. Bartlett Jr.
Mayor
CC: Tulsa City Council
Don Cannon, Council Administrator
Bill Roland, President, AFSCME Local No. 1180
Phil Evans, President, FOP Lodge No. 93
Stan May, President, IAFF Local No. 176
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