SEQUIM — The City Council’s closed-door “team building” workshop on Jan. 23 produced a more productive council, Mayor Laura Dubois said Tuesday.
The session, held in the John Wayne Marina meeting room, wasn’t officially a meeting, City Attorney Craig Ritchie said beforehand.
Since no city business was conducted, the team-building wasn’t subject to the state open-meetings law and could be closed to the public, he said.
That was confirmed by Tim Ford, the state attorney general’s open government ombudsman.
“Even if there’s a majority of [council members] present, that would be true,” Ford said, cautioning that council members would have to watch what they said.
“So long as there is no action that relates to official business of the city, it’s not a meeting, and it wouldn’t fall under the Open Public Meetings Act.”
All council members ¬ — long-timers Bill Huizinga, Walt Schubert and Paul McHugh, and relative newcomers Susan Lorenzen, Ken Hays, Erik Erichsen and Dubois — attended, as well as interim City Manager Linda Herzog and Ritchie.
The four-hour workshop cost the city $2,000, since it was led by Richard Cushing, a facilitator from the Seattle human resources firm Waldron & Co.
New ground rules
Cushing’s report, released Tuesday, lists new ground rules for the council, such as “respectful discussion” and arriving at meetings prepared yet open-minded.
One of the best things that came out of the session, Dubois and Schubert agreed, was the council’s common desire to look forward instead of bicker about what’s been said and done before.
“We’ve had some personal jabs and making of assumptions about what other people wanted,” Dubois said.
From this point forward, “I think we’ll focus on the topic and not criticize each other.”
Cushing guided the council members by asking them to think of a time when they did find common ground on something.
Manager search
The members agreed that when they were searching last year for city manager candidates, they “all came together,” Dubois said.
“We whittled it down to four candidates; we were in agreement on a lot of things.”
But when the finalists came to town in early November, the council wasn’t able to negotiate an employment contract with any of them.
Later that month, Waldron brought in Herzog, then deputy manager of Mercer Island, to be Sequim’s interim city manager through Sept. 2.
A search for a permanent chief won’t start until later this year, Dubois said.
The city has agreed to pay Waldron $20,000 to recruit candidates for that post, but it first needs the firm to find a public works director, the mayor said.
The fee for that task is $18,000.
Meanwhile, Schubert shares Dubois’ hope for a more harmonious future.
The council members got to know one another better during the half-day workshop, he said, and “the more you know people, the more you respect them.”
“You see that they’ve been through some things that you can identify with,” Schubert said.
“We need to stop talking about the past.”
The newer council members have spent considerable time criticizing the veteran council members’ decisions, such as the one that led to giving City Manager Bill Elliott a $152,318 severance package when he was fired last May.
“The longer you’re in public life, the more you understand that you’re not going to make the best decision every time,” said Schubert, who at age 68 is in his ninth year on the council.
“We all have to own up . . . and say, ‘I’m sorry. I could have done better. I did the best I could at the time. Now, let’s move on.'”
Discussion on Monday
The City Council will discuss the team-building session on Monday during its 6 p.m. meeting in the Transit Center, 190 W. Cedar St.
Members will also talk about one of the follow-up items in Cushing’s report: a proposal to hold informal discussions just before the regular evening meetings.
These sessions would start at 5 p.m., an hour before the council’s meetings on the second and fourth Mondays of each month.
They would let the council question city staff about forthcoming topics and “could also be a venue for exploring new ideas,” Cushing wrote.
The meetings would be open, but audience members wouldn’t be allowed to comment on the topics.
“Anybody is welcome to sit and listen,” Dubois said.
“They can comment at 6:05,” she added, referring to the public-comment period that comes after the city manager’s report at the beginning of each regular 6 p.m. council meeting.
The council has yet to decide whether it will adopt the 5 p.m. study-session schedule.
Schubert, like Dubois, is in favor of them and added that a second public comment period comes toward the end of each evening meeting, after the new business items.
Schubert also said he hopes to end the marathon study sessions the council held throughout last year.
Those meetings, which started at 9 a.m. every other Monday, sometimes lasted three hours.
“Those were killer for me and for anybody who works,” Schubert said.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
