is april 21st it's 11 a.m and let us begin with introductions to my left stephen libby council research barry stephopoulos office of general counsel brian parks council auditor's office kim taylor council auditor good morning chris miller at large group five ron salem group two at large good morning raw areas district 11 white gate district two and we have uh council member diamond that's here just walked in and george and george you want to call yourself in council member diamond thank you rory diamond district 13 the beaches okay do we have any public comment cards uh let's give them two minutes it looks like vinnie vinnie berry or barnes barone please come forward sir you have two minutes if you'd state your name and your address or say it it's on file sure my name is vincent barone b-a-r-o-n-e 1-2-1-3-2 weatherwood estate strive west jacksonville florida 3-2-2-2-3 um i'm here today to talk about um form number 904 901 and the on the uh jacksonville today uh february 3rd 2026 talking about how the council based on what the doge reports has has skimed 200 million dollars from the taxpayers of jacksonville okay i think that needs to stop and i'm putting the council on notice if i say this right it's section 42 uh uh section 42 uh of the constitution uh constitution 1983 florida state law does not allow you guys that protects you guys from the it basically takes your insurance money and it takes your insurance immunity off because i'm not looking for the insurance companies i'm looking for the peoples that are supposed to be offered our fiduciaries to be able to make sure we don't get robbed everybody talks about the east side the east side is 70 years naked why because there's a there's a hole in the system and the hole in the system is the money never goes that way and the reason why it doesn't go that way is because they don't know how to work with the they my opinion they don't work with the city they always try to think they have a better idea well if you don't put um affordable housings like in spending 40 million dollars to build 10 homes you know i didn't do enough drugs in the 80s to remember that i would ever do something like that when you talk about we don't have housing you don't have housing there because you don't have responsible enough people to understand those numbers don't match up in the poorer neighborhoods they stay poor it's because the money like i said the money flows out of it because you don't work with sorry you you're not working with the with the communities like jacksport that has billions of dollars to help keep the money in the community they just drive through it mr brum thank you your time is up thank you thank you you're welcome mr nooney you have two minutes hello i am john philanthropic jelly roll good boy resiliency nooney otro tres cinco seis bascom road jacksville florida three two two one six i'm in city council district four cpac three school board district three uh now here's a shout out rd the real doge ron davis 600 wbob you know doge are waterways you know you want to you know uh governor de santis james upmeyer blazingolia you know pardon nooney 2024 0107 2024 0325 you know legislation is the dialogue of the community and you know right now you know uh you want to save some money you know open our waterways now i'm wearing my fwc hat you know it's a play off the fish and wildlife commission you know it's the state of florida and you know it also has a whole bunch of other acronyms that could be applicable you know when it comes to this doge stuff you know fishing with council fishing with congress you know we just had um you know fishing with coglianese our resiliency thing now uh i want to make these part of the permanent record i'm only down to 30 seconds but this is the tourist development council meeting agenda april 16th you know here is you know the ethics commission ethics is gone and here's how i was reflected in the minutes public comment dr freiberg asked for public comment mr nooney provided public comment that's it 16 seconds here's true the true commission again how you reflected in the minutes and you know uh public comment john nooney and cody marks that's it that is how and that's why we need to doge our waterways thank you mr nooney okay moving on to the agenda telehealth i think we have some positive news on telehealth uh yeah very slowly the lawyers have got us some drafts and so um we still have to i still need to read through them and and pepper them with some follow-up questions i'm candidly i'm annoyed with how long it's taken uh but we should hopefully everybody get a draft that's a public document if people want to see it as a draft it is what it is um i don't think it's been i don't think it's been handed to anybody so i don't have anything um as a public document maybe the chair does i i have seen it and i have provided some feedback to the lawyers okay on just a few points that i thought could be strengthened yeah understood i just want to be clear because people care about public documents and they should i don't have one so there's no public document for me to give anybody but as soon as we have one i'll share it i think it will be wrapped up here very soon and uh clearly by the meeting two weeks from now we will have it in front and be able to release it to everybody right adopt it and then release it absolutely yep okay thanks sir uh update on the two percent lapse miss taylor through the chair to the committee um no update really we have not had any requests from any departments um to restore their funding and as i've stated we're going to wrap up doge by the end of june and if there are any requests on the two percent lapse after that it will go to the finance committee so there is a a venue for those to go to okay why don't we move to the bailey group sherry sabrina and we've got slides ready correct okay good morning it's great to see you all again uh today we actually have a very short presentation that we will review with you today i'll steal this we're going to talk about some of the subsidiaries and agencies that are a part of your plan that are technically not city of jacksonville employees um it is important to remember that the that we have been asked to consider the implications but not make a determination as to whether or not they are um are eligible for the coverage under your plan there are three subsidiaries or entities that are currently covered all three of them do have a contract in place with the city of jacksonville which we've been able to review and also had our legal department be able to review those entities include uh first coast work site or excuse me workforce development consortium northeast florida regional council and jacksonville housing authority we've also included behind the name of each of these entities of the approximate number of employees that are enrolled in your health insurance program from each of the entities and you can see that there's approximately 250 employees that are added to the city of jacksonville benefit program from these three entities so as we reviews these we wanted to take a quick peek at a few very important topics related to these entities first of all the legal and compliance considerations uh number one eligibility and participation does need to align with erisa rules irs rules and also aca reporting requirements so we did take a look at some of the information related to each of those and we'll have some more detailed information in a couple of slides here on those also important to remember that the city ultimately bears the responsibility for any claims that are incurred by the members that are under these even though they are not your employees and so that does put some financial risk associated with high cost claimants that might be in these particular pools of individuals and then lastly by being included in the city's benefit program it is important to note that these smaller entities are being being benefited financially because if they were to go out and look for coverage out in the marketplace on their own as a smaller group or mid-sized group entity they we would expect the premiums that they would be paying the administrative fees if they were to move into a self-funded program to be more than what that is happening within the city of jacksonville so those are some important considerations we did want to just give you a brief overview of each of the three entities which coverages they're being offered and a little bit of information related to the contracts that are current currently or agreements that are currently in place with these entities so first of all the first coast workforce development consortium this one you can see we just pulled the information from their website that outlines who they are and what they do and they have had an agreement with the city of jacksonville for benefits since 1999 it was renewed in 2018 and as mentioned there are about 100 employees that are currently participating in the health insurance plan on this particular from this particular consortium they their benefits you can see those listed on the screen as well this this this is you know pretty much a standard list of benefits that are being offered to the city of jacksonville employees as well next up we have the northeast florida regional council this group is a smaller group of people there's only about 20 employees that are under this uh the agreement in this particular case was also renewed in 2018 but the agreement the amendment that we had to review did not have the original date listed on it so we did make note of that this in group of entity or this entity is also offering basically the same list of benefits that the first one did um with the exception of it feels like there's something different no i think it's exactly the same the last group however does have a little bit different um list of benefits that are available this is the jacksonville housing authority and they have had an agreement in place since 2001 and it was renewed in 2017 this is the largest of the three entities there's about 130 employees and not only do they um participate in your core products but they also participate in your deferred compensation plan uh we uh particularly don't know the rules related to deferred comp so it would be advisable that you review those as far as that is that piece is concerned with outside counsel as well when you say deferred compensation i assume pension yes and when it when the pension converted to a 401k style they converted to that as well i would assume so yes i see brian nodding his head okay all right so as mentioned one of the important things that we reviewed and took a look at was federal guidelines as far as having these entities as a part of your programs as far as your benefit programs are concerned there are two things that we very specifically needed to outline the first one being erisa the employee retirement income security act of 1974 this is a law that um basically is there to um provide some additional protections um for pro for different benefit programs um however as a government entity city of jacksonville is not subject to erisa you actually can't be an erisa plan because you are a government entity so we'll talk a little bit more on the next couple pages that is one of the most important pieces and things that we've discovered as we've reviewed this that needs to be further reviewed in order to determine whether or not you are in compliance with your non-erisa status for these in these particular entities the other one is whether or not your plan is a miwa um which is a multiple employer welfare arrangement i will mention to you that you are actually not able to have a miwa you do not meet the requirements for a miwa so there is not a miwa in place at this point in time so um that's that's kind of a non-issue at this point in time either but in looking at the erisa portion of things this is where we do find that we need to we recommend spending a little bit more time to ensure that you're in compliance with your non-erisa status so erisa as mentioned it exempts government plans and uh the important thing here is you want to make sure that the all of the entities that are being covered under the plan meet that same status otherwise it puts your plan in jeopardy of not of of being exempt from that law uh and that's the screen in front of you kind of talks a little bit about uh what what how you are defined as a government entity a couple of things i will mention uh on here that i think are important they uh the very last portion of that kind of second paragraph there in order to ensure that you are exempt from a erisa you want to make sure that all of the entities are are going to be essentially a government in order to be able to qualify and continue to qualify as a non-erisa plan so that's where we really kind of need to recommend that you get some legal advice uh to determine and make sure that these programs are are going to meet that qualification so there are a few things listed on this screen that we recommend that you review for each of the three entities to make a final determination as to whether or not they are going to be part of considered a government plan or a part uh qualify as a non-erisa portion of your group so first of all you need to review the degree the government controls the inter entities operations and finances if there's little to no in uh operation overview from the government then that could disqualify the entities from be being non-erisa whether the entity is supported by public funds if the funds for supporting that are coming from out from other sources that could also disqualify whether the entity was created by some sort of statute we don't have the information available to verify that and so that's an important piece to take away as well and then if the employees are considered public employees under the law and lastly government ownership interest in the entity and the public nature and purpose for its functions so i think it's really important as you as we move forward that we really look at the entities and how they were created so our recommendation as far as next steps is to have either internal legal counsel or an external erisa attorney take a look at the details for these three entities to ensure whether or not they do meet the qualifications to be exempt under under erisa as a government plan to ensure that you are still being in compliance with that that piece of the law um we also are recommending that um that all of all of the contracts be reviewed by the the the entity or the the legal team if i'm sure they have for the internal legal team but also if you do have an external erisa um attorney review these we would encourage you to have those reviewed as well so the ultimate thing that i guess that we want to ensure uh you are aware of is that there are some risks that you are taking if you um do do have these people these entities included in your plan and to help make sure that you mitigate that risk we would make sure we would recommend that you do a few things specifically and to help ensure that you've got the these these pieces covered so first of all tracking the experience separately by the entities to help ensure that you do know what is happening within those groups of individuals as far as their health is concerned make sure that there's very clear funding uh amounts that are outlined for these entities um the including the contributions that the employees are paying and that you that both you and the entities understand what those those fundings are and then also have any have policies and procedures in place regarding reserves and what would happen as far as reserves are concerned if these entities were to leave at some point in time um i will just personally mention i had a self-funded government entity that had an entity leave and it was a little bit chaotic to know uh because they had not spelled it out on the front end what was going to happen with reserve amounts uh that had been set aside to pay for high claimants what was going to happen with even stop-loss reimbursements for people that had been under that prior plan things of that sort you want to make sure that you have those outlined very clearly and then um continue to have a written agreement to ensure that everything is outlined for you and then lastly make sure that all of the entities are meeting the requirements of hipaa and that they are going through hipaa training and things of that sort if they are being given any information related to the benefit package uh and details about personal health information that might be being disclosed to them because ultimately that is a city of jacksonville thing that will need to be met um and we do recommend that there is reporting to the various stakeholders as well all right any questions about any of that that you'd like to bring forward well i'm sure we'll have some questions but i wanted to first go um to the auditors because they did some research yes over the last 24 hours on these entities and agreements and whether um these issues are listed in those agreements and are they compliant etc i don't know if that's miss taylor or mr parks to the chair i'll go ahead and kind of tackle it now getting into a risk of compliance or something like that i would defer to legal ultimately and i will mention as as they did we did an audit back in 2015 basically and we noted that there were these three what we would call at the time kind of external agencies there there are reasons that they do kind of come up through the city of jacksonville with the history and some of them actually date back to 1977 is actually when they first started being on our health plan and so we had some research and when we were not self-insured but we bought basically premiums for each employee there were like it was sort of known and it was kind of less risky maybe once we went self-insured we raised some questions as we were doing that audit is are they paying basically the fair share and stuff like that and at the time based on the claim stuff they were but since rates have not changed since 2015 that is probably a little bit more out of whack today um so the history is and that's i mean they kind of went through it though i can't say on the compliance i do know that they've tracked stuff at you know based on the different entities because we were able to look at rolled up numbers when we did that audit to compare the analysis so um i would think when it went to council though in 2017 to be approved for those new agreements that ogc hopefully looked at all those compliance things but i i can't clearly answer that question at this time mary can you know i don't know if this is a sean granite question i suspect but anything that you can add to that uh to the chair so i think you're correct that's who i was going to follow up with just to say to see what the history was with respect to our office's involvement and review there may have been an outside attorney that was engaged to look at it at the time of the renewals the last one being in 2018 as was indicated during the presentation but i'm happy to follow up on the ogc side to ascertain what kind of review and um items were considered when those renewals came up and are we in compliance with the various provisions that they've they've mentioned here we'll do um auditors are we tracking any of these um their expenditures of their of these individual employees within this to know if we're um our office is not directly tracking this but i will kind of point out there's a reason also why and in the contracts themselves they state they the agreements with those entities it says they have to it's the same rate as what the rates would be for anybody on the city's plan they can't be different so that's how the agreements were set up um we did the original audit had the finding that was when the prior administration went through they decided to go ahead and execute the agreements and stuff like that to continue on the practice to your knowledge nothing's been done since 2017 there's not been an update in the agreements again i i would want to be cautious i would have to reach out to employee benefits to see what they're actively tracking with this um and we can do that okay okay can i mention i i want to go to the group um um so there i know for example and i'll take northeast florida uh what we provide uh as i recall about three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars to support them um and every year we have it's been a struggle at times but i think we have it does that include so they're under our health insurance plan and that three hundred and and i uh that three seventy five is quote our share of the various counties but we're paying for the health insurance for those employees does anyone know if that's factored into what the what the city of jacksonville contributes versus the other counties i think at that point you may need to talk to beth pay yeah because i i think that amount has kind of stayed flat and might be done slightly different from for us to begin with so whether or not in the discussions we've had i would say is it's not been directly done there but i would defer to them okay go ahead and miss pain is here i i yeah i've seen her um let me go to mr arias all right thank you chair um so yes there are obviously three entities here one of them is the one you just mentioned with 20 employees or so um my question i guess uh to mr parks would be uh you mentioned how these entities are not paying their fair share based off of what coj employees are paying are coj employees paying uh the updated rate or has nobody been updated since 2017 is that what i gathered yeah that's that's the whole issue when we kind of talk during the budget during the summer is the rates have not changed i think i believe it's either 1-1-2015 or 1-1-2016 when the city went self-insured the rates have not changed for the employee or employer since that time and so that's why we've had contributions from the general fund or we've had other funding sources to help cover cost got it all right and through the chair and to the chair do we plan on taking action on this because i mean it's 11 years now we're taking money from the general fund and now at this point it's not even about our own city employees but also we're covering the cost for other people that don't belong that are not part of the coj network i guess um so when are we going to have the conversation to update these rates is my question to you or to whoever wants to answer that well as as we went through the i guess you're you're pointing to me we went through the budget process if you recall we subsidized the health insurance plan with i believe it was 23 million dollars to make it whole and the reserve account had been depleted as well and as i recall we put in five million dollars of general fund money um as a sort of a stopgap for that and i as i recall we sent a letter to the state saying we have our our reserve of 372 90 million dollars that we would use if we got into a bind on our health insurance um i i personally think these contracts need to be looked at it's been eight seven eight years and determine if if they're applicable today as what they were seven or eight years ago um and yes they're paying the same premiums we're paying which is which clearly doesn't meet the cost and uh it's one thing for our employees we understand but these are quote outside entities yeah so i have two more follow-up questions to that mr chair um and this will be to the bailey group but um on the contract for these three entities i'm not saying any of them out just all three in general do we have to keep them in the same rate as city employees or because they're not part of our city employee network can we say hey you are going to pay this fare can we do that yes you can have different um amounts for the six years is that part of a through the chair is that part of a a new renewed contract with all three individual entities definitely need to negotiate that out or okay got it and then my second uh question last question for now would be um you mentioned 160 roughly employees or 250 employees all together between those three networks um do you have an estimated cost of what that looks like to our part like what are we paying what does that cost us i don't think we have that split out yet but but we will have what we meet in may and june i think we get close to that number okay because you know i'm looking at you know you mentioned one of the entities and it was like 375 this year in the budget i want to know what these 20 employees also equal so now it's 375 plus whatever it is so now we really have a true number of how much we're contributing to them and to everybody else so um i think we should definitely look at these contracts to be renewed even if we keep our coj employees at the current rate um but it's just something that honestly we shouldn't be covering this cost in my opinion thank you i mean it's got to be several million dollars to to cover the health insurance for these three entities it if you just took uh 250 times 10 grand i mean just as a rough estimate yeah that's good well and that's two and a half million dollars right there that's probably a little low of an estimate i i was trying to be on the conservative side as i probably approaches three million dollars that were that we're paying to support these groups and if i can add a little flavor if you go through the process and you decide they're supposed they should be part of your plan we would never recommend that you charge them back like actual planes and stuff there's a beauty to being part of a larger group that smooths the good years and the bad years and and puts everybody on one so we would never think that y'all would like just charge them for their dreams that would be a bad idea okay other questions well in summary i think what we need to do is is uh ask the office of general counsel to follow up with us in terms of compliance with erisa and all those things um happy to do so mr chair i would also just like to point out that the housing authority is part of it's an it's like an independent authority of the consolidated government so that is treated similarly to those other independent authorities that fall under our umbrella and and they were also in the pension plan the other two are not in the pension plan or the 401k plan as i heard i don't know the answer to that um that might be the case just because like i said they do fall kind of within the city the consolidated umbrella unlike the other two agencies the regional planning council is statutorily provided for um and so there is some obligation there with respect to membership within the regional planning council which all came up during the discussions of the budget item for the the city's contribution to that i'm not familiar with the other agencies so that's a little bit of an unknown as far as kind of the history on that and it's it's it's connection and um the city's obligations with respect to funding or contributing to that particular organization okay council member areas your record thank you chair and miss uh stefopoulos yeah you're right about that um jha they actually came up during the budget the other two didn't as part of the budget so that's why um i'm more focused on the other two than than jha just because jha is part of like you said an independent authority in a way yeah and you i don't know that you all look at their budget though um so the one that came up during the budget was the northeast florida regional planning council and there was a lot of discussion on that um but the housing authority is provided for under chapter 51a of our code and so they they were created under the authority of state statute to manage our the housing um the the various housing authority options that kind of fall under our umbrella for career source and the planning council we provide a lump sum of money to both of those entities we're not as familiar with the the first coast uh one the other one yeah you do the annual contribution and we'll look into whether or not there's an additional expense outside of that annual contribution for the the health care um that that they um tack on to uh but we're not as familiar with how it's set up with the other entity and so that's something i'll work on is pulling the contracts and seeing how that that particular entity operates i don't remember seeing career source or that name in the budget process auditors are are did we approve that a lump sum of money to them or are we just providing benefits to them uh to the chair i'm not aware of any lump sum like there's not a non-departmental contribution like we've had for the northeast florida planning council um it goes back in time we'll look to see if there's separate legislation um that has provided any in the past i can recall it many years ago but not as part of of this budget at all no sir and i know there are entities in the audience today from these three organizations we we are attempting to fact find at this point to determine exactly what what the city's responsibility is and and and maybe um well um do the representatives want to come to the podium at least introduce yourself i know beth payne is here from uh northeast florida the planning council can you say that again please why i don't know that it came through well oh i'm sorry uh the name is adena teodorescu and i'm the cao at the jacksonville housing authority okay good morning everyone i'm beth payne with the northeast florida regional council okay good morning i'm cheryl taylor with career source northeast florida and we do not receive any funds from the city of jacksonville other than the health insurance other than the health insurance correct okay just interesting to me okay are there are there other questions i think we've we've tasked the auditors and ogc to do some research um we'll come back in uh maybe in two weeks or if it takes longer and get a get an update on it and see where how we can move forward i don't see any other questions do y'all have a go ahead want to go through our timeline for sure please we've been through a lot with you guys but we wanted we know you want to finish at the end of june so we're um we want to show you that path for how we're gonna come back to you over the next couple months and finish some of the bigger items that we still have left is that a slide okay yes so um what we've been waiting for for some of the bigger things like the funding and the um and the contribution strategies is a little more data which we wanted to get data through at least march of this year because you want the newest plan data in order to make it the most accurate you have to trend out claims less far um the more current your data is so we're working feverish feverishly in the background now that we just got march data to get funding rates for you all and to develop contribution strategy recommendations including those that were based on salary tiers but now you mentioned that to us so we're going to bring that back to you and but most of our meetings probably both meetings in june we're going to need time because we're going to bring back the benchmarking the demographic analysis and then all these other things including the funding recommendations the contribution options and the stop loss estimation so we believe we can be done at the end of june but it'll be a little bit it'll be pretty busy the month of june because we're frantically trying to kind of put some of the stuff together that we just got the data so it sounds like you need one meeting in may and two meetings in june i'm not sure we will actually need a meeting in may because that's the month that we're actually going to be working with our actuaries to ensure that we have the funding recommendations ready to go for you and and kind of doing the the actual work behind the scenes to prepare for the june but i would anticipate we need both june meetings to be able to do that because i definitely want to bring the telehealth back so it sounds like we may have one meeting in may that y'all might not be involved in and then two meetings in june yeah we'll need both of those for sure and we'll skip one of the meetings in in may that sounds great if it if that sounds correct let me mention that council member carlucci joe carlucci has joined us i apologize for not calling you out earlier one last thing i do to want to mention the stop loss that we will present in june will be an estimation rather than firm numbers we actually normally have to have data through about september ish to be able to firm up those numbers which brings us long past your time as of the doge committee so we wanted to at least present you with some estimations that we'll be able to kind of give you an idea of what we should be looking for and then afterwards we can firm those up if needed okay i think one of the things that will be coming back to us i think it's important that right now everybody pays the same premium whether you make twenty five thousand dollars a year or or two hundred twenty five thousand dollars a year one of the things i've asked the bailey group to look at is some type of tiered approach that would uh increase the amount that higher paid people are or uh that are making those kind of dollars would pay a higher premium and how that would impact our our our costs clearly okay anybody else okay thank you thank you again for your time thank you let me move to uh comments from the committee council member diamond i know you have something yeah thank mr chair i'd like at the next meeting if we could cover the draft legislation on a oversight committee i've brought it up a bunch of times i do think that it needs to be done here um i think it's the perfect place to do it uh de-politicize kind of oversight and have a different uh future for it so um i just want to add that to the um to the agenda okay has that legislation been drafted yes mr chair if you'd like i can give the committee members copies today so you can take it back with you but there would be a few caveats for consideration and if you would like me to pass them out and go over them so you have that as food for thought before the next meeting i can do that it's it's whatever the pleasure of the committee is you have them with you now i do yes please i i mean we have some time i have some thoughts and i'm curious to what if my thoughts are consistent with council member diamonds uh mr chair just uh i wonder if it wouldn't make sense just to digest these things and then do it in two weeks okay just because it's uh i mean the whole bill yeah so if i could mr chair just to give you a brief rundown so we um i prepared this draft based on my um discussions with council member diamond um based on kind of his initial thoughts of what this committee would look like and um obviously to be further fleshed out by this special committee during your discussion when the item is brought up on the agenda there's a few things that i'll just point out with respect to the draft legislation so you have these items to think about coming back to your next meeting so on starting on page two and what all this was drafted as an amendment to the city council rules um with respect to adding this as an additional standing committee of the city council which was the direction from council member diamond so starting on page two under rule 2.102 this is where we're adding the oversight committee as an additional committee of the council and in this section it talks about the charge of the committee which right now is a little bit leaner but there's a few items i just wanted to flag for you for a discussion at the next meeting so one of the items that council member diamond wanted to include in this provision was that the oversight committee would consider matters that relate to the staffing levels and funding for the office of inspector general and the ethics office of ethics compliance and oversight so with respect to the meeting schedule for this committee right now it's being proposed that they would that the oversight committee would be meeting once a month on the third wednesday of each month so you might want to consider whether this type this particular standing committee would receive legislation or not because if you do want it to receive legislation and it only meets once per month that's going to for the matters that would come through legislation to the committee that could delay the process for those items because it only meets once a month as currently proposed so one item to think about the other item that was included at the request of council member diamond was that this committee would also review audits and financial reports of the city and its independent agencies that is currently already in the charge for the finance committee so there would be some duplication there and it would just be a matter of whether or not you want to allow for that duplication do you want to you know potentially look at altering what the finance committee is looking at versus the oversight committee so we just put that on on your radar to to to be thinking about as we lean into going to the next meeting for this item to be thoroughly discussed sure absolutely and look i'm super easy going i would like to see an oversight committee so i'm not wedded to anything other than to try and do it right but my thought on this was that oversight committees tend to be kind of floating they tend to be up here they tend not to have a legislative function they have an investigatory type function and to review and to bring things to light when there's a problem so that uh the council president doesn't have to sit there and like create a whole new investigatory committee or assign something um in addition to that there's so many reports that we get um on all the different committees and i we're always in such a rush to get to the legislation for every standing committee that there really isn't a place just to think about hey are we does this make sense uh is this thoughtful are we doing are we following the law is this what the charter means and that's the idea is to take reports in and actually decide like for example all the waivers we do have to be reported issues with regards to uh you know council members conflicts sometimes have waivers and there's reports for that and we don't look at any of that single source contracts we don't look at that uh i mean we do officially look at it but there's never enough time so it just seems to me that there ought to be a place that focuses i'm saying this next to a former inspector general uh but but this is exactly the type of people who ought to be on that kind of committee thank you okay um council member areas all right thank you chair yeah i was going to ask when will they be meeting and mary you mentioned it will be first wednesday of the month whatever the case is um i would almost suggest two things one of two things either it meets um it doesn't look like this committee is going to be something that's going to be meeting for two hours at a time so maybe because we do have currently finance at one o'clock it could meet you know for 30 minutes right before finance every two weeks you know or it could be a floating committee similar to like the radio tower committee where um whenever there's anything coming up they just call an agenda for that um but that's just my suggestion that way because i mean like like you said if anything it might bog down the system and delay legislation if we have on wednesdays and and we miss that deadline so maybe it could be floating where it could be almost any week just as long as you know they meet for 30 minutes whatever the case is or right before finance my opinion thank you through the chair to council member arias so what you're what you're actually describing is more like a special committee such as this operates and i think it was council member diamond's intent that this be a consistent standing committee meets with a regular schedule because don't forget this committee will have to be staffed like any other standing committee legislative services research ogc council auditor's office and so there the consistency there is because it's a standing committee as currently proposed all right so then to my point then i think it makes sense for it to go right before finance whenever finances because to have it be done on a wednesday once a month um i it just might slow down the process so if it's up to you guys i mean i want to support this i just think that it should be more recurring it could be 30 minutes right before finance and if it requires more work then you know you guys could extend the time i don't know yeah i'm sure my thought councilman arias is is it just wouldn't look at any legislation it wouldn't be an official committee where legislation had to go through that way it would never slow down the process it would be like a traditional oversight committee if you go to dc oversight committee isn't looking at legislation rules has routed around it to the substantive committees so it wouldn't hold anything up i did want to make it kind of a regular meeting standing committee that way people are like yeah that's something that ought to be looked at in oversight or oversight needs to have the authority to look at something to to drill down just because as we get a bigger more complicated city there's just it seems like there's something to look at every other week i mean look at how much we could do and doge if we wanted to yeah i personally and we've started a discussion but i think we need to continue it at our next meeting whether um it's a standing committee that meets regularly and the president drops issues into this committee uh as as well as some of these financial reporting things that you mentioned or it's just a committee that's out there that when there's an issue that issue is dropped into the committee and then it does meet i tend to agree with you i think some regular basis is what's needed in order to make it effective and not just me periodically when something comes up and that way there's a place for um the president of the council to drop issues into as things pop up whatever they may be whatever they may be so what i would suggest let's all take this and we will meet one time in may and we will have a discussion about this and we will also have a discussion about telehealth at that meeting and uh and then uh we'll come back in june with two meetings council member miller you're recognized thank you mr chair um i think this is a lot of a lot of good work and a lot of good thought and i i really like the idea of having a body that has um has the time and and does focus on some of the things that we don't always spend a lot of time as council members uh focusing on and uh and i must admit that's one of the things that always makes me wonder about you know what are the what are the great things that the auditors and the others the inspector general and the others that they've done that we really need to digest more and and what do we think of that and what do we want to do about those things to make our government more effective and efficient and so i like the work that has already gone into this obviously we need to tee this all up for whoever is the incoming president and make sure that's in sync and lined up with with his or her um thinking for the next year but but this gives that person a lot to think about and maybe some things they haven't um they haven't yet uh put time into so i i think there's there's goodness in all of this uh so thank you very much mr president yeah i think post doge there needs to be a a venue for these types of issues and and i think uh something that's more formal that's regular is probably the best way to go but we'll we'll discuss it in two weeks or or the next time we meet are there any other issues anybody wants to bring up mary's on the queue miss mary oh just a couple of other things um in speaking with miss taylor and mr parks there used to be an audit subcommittee i don't some of you may have been around when this existed i believe of the finance committee so we're going to pull their old charge and see if there's aspects of that that makes sense for this new committee that you're looking at creating um the other alternative that i just kind of thought of based on a comment from you mr chair with respect to um you know if you're looking to stray away from regular meetings but letting the president kind of send things to this committee they could almost look at it as like a permanent ad hoc committee because ad hoc committees are a special type of select committee that looks at a specific single type of subject that is convened when the president determines it's appropriate to convene such a committee so rather than being a standing committee there's different iterations of what this could look like so i think once we kind of narrow down with this group what the charge is and then we can kind of back into what is the frequency or how does it get in front of the committee and that kind of thing we can kind of look at what does it look like from that perspective as well and the the audit committee you mentioned is one that isn't there a committee miss taylor that once your audit comes back that there's two or three of us that get together and review that that's in my distant memory yes sir to the chair you have a good memory we usually had two or three members in the past and we would present the audits in more detail um also had more of a vehicle if there were any issues with the um not that we don't have that same vehicle with finance i know that i could we'd go to leadership in the finance group uh but just kind of keeping you more up to date on the external audit of our of our city's financials that are required to be done so uh it provided a good vehicle to go into more detail um so it's definitely something to consider or maybe we can pull some of the charge or what was done into the aspect that council member diamond is seeking i think that would be helpful when we bring this back exactly is that continued to meet uh miss taylor the audit committee through the chair no sir it has been a sporadic kind of thing it comes and goes depending on the different councils and and and and what's been done so it's not it's not been consistent over my time here but sporadic okay okay well let's let's bring that into the discussion as well anything else we stand adjourned he was ready to leave