Bethany council wrangles over protocol

Bethany Beach Town Council members adopted their new protocol manual in February, with new Council Member Tracy Mulligan emphasizing that his positive vote was cast on the guarantee of a near-future review of some things he felt needed to be added to the manual. That review finally came at the council’s April 16 workshop.

The crux of many of Mulligan’s proposed additions: to document unwritten traditions that the council — or at least this council — has come to practice, as a way to help new council members, and even members of the public, to understand how the town government works.

But Mulligan faced opposition from the bulk of the council on many of the proposals. They frequently faulted the notions as too much information and too much detail to add to a document that has already has gone beyond the original concept, at some 56 pages in length.

The finished manual, as adopted in February, has been reviewed by the University of Delaware’s Institute for Public Administration — the state’s leading authority on local government — and got a glowing review as a helpful work and a unique document within the state, according to council members. They were loathe to change it or find major faults in it.

While Mulligan favored delineating specific duties to be handled by the town council members, mayor and town manager, most of the council members said they felt the specifics were an unnecessary complication, or worse.

“I think those things should be left up to the officials at the time,” Mayor Carol Olmstead opined, noting that the general duties of each of the officials was less specifically recorded in the town charter and code.

Weekly briefings raise concerns

Mulligan particularly objected to the lack of documentation on one current council practice: “It has been the unwritten policy of two members of the council to meet weekly with the town manager,” he said, referring to the mayor and to Vice-Mayor Tony McClenny.

He cited a lack of regular reports on those meetings from those officials to other council members, at least of late — something to which Olmstead pleaded guilty.

But Town Manager Cliff Graviet interjected that after six years in his position and three different sets of mayors and councils, his experience was that they’d all handled their interaction with the town manager differently, and that each town council should decide whether it felt such meetings were needed or appropriate. It was not really something that needed to be documented, he said.

The council’s other new member, Steve Wode, said he agreed there was a problem with the weekly meetings between the top two elected officials and the town manager.

“Is this something where you’re talking about the work of the week ahead, or are you dealing with potential (council agenda) items?” he asked. He said he felt much of what would be appropriate for council members to discuss two-on-one with the town manager would better be handled in an e-mail from the town manager to all the council members.

But Graviet said he also found the meetings helpful in his work, with the mayor and vice-mayor reporting to him about issues they’d seen or heard about on their own. “It works. It’s not cumbersome,” he said, responding to the suggestion that his day was being interrupted by the weekly briefing.

McClenny said that he found the system, and the council’s agreement to the practice to be an improvement, after having been told by a previous mayor that if Councilman McClenny wanted to speak to the town manager, he should make a request of the mayor and the mayor would set an appointment for him.

Graviet emphasized his open-door policy for all of the council members and he said that part of the reason the weekly briefing had been set up was in response to a feeling from some in the town previously that the town manager was running the town without oversight. The briefing allowed him to keep the mayor informed and the mayor to inform the council, he said, and in a better way than the monthly report he gives at their council meetings.

Wode, however, said he favored Mulligan’s suggestion that the briefing rotate its attendees between all members of the council so as to keep all fully informed and ready to take charge of any issue should that be needed. He also said he’d prefer to have the meetings better documented, to help council members and citizens alike understand how council’s agenda items might be generated in such a briefing.

But they were in the minority, with Council Members Lew Killmer and Jerry Dorfman also supporting the continued presence of the mayor and vice mayor at a weekly meeting, as well as a lack of need to document the practice in the procedural manual. Olmstead said she would make a greater effort to inform council members after the briefings, though.

The council did agree unanimously (Wayne Fuller absent) that each council should determine how it wanted to handle such briefing during its reorganizational phase after each September’s elections.

Mayoral, council responsibilities discussed

Speaking specifically to the role of the mayor, Mulligan said he wanted to avoid piling all of the responsibilities of the elected government onto the mayor. He sought to document ways in which other council members could take the lead on certain issues and thus share the burden of the job and keep the town more pro-active, he said.

But again most of the council members said they felt the change was unnecessary and unnecessarily complicating. Killmer said he felt the bulk of the duties of the town’s officials fell on the mayor not because of design but out of a natural tendency for the public and other municipal and state officials to go to the mayor as the representative of the town.

Olmstead agreed that the job is a lot of work but said she felt the mayor needed to be the town’s contact-person, just because it was something that all towns shared. She said she hoped all the council members would continue to be involved on a variety of issues.

McClenny said he felt there would be better ways to ensure the mayor didn’t take on too much of a lead role over the other council members. “If I don’t like the way you’re doing something, I’m going to tell you. If I don’t like it after that, next time I’ll choose a different mayor,” he said.

Also getting a thumbs-down from the council was Mulligan’s suggestion that the town detail specific meetings at which the mayor’s attendance was expected, ranging from council meetings and workshops to the semi-monthly Sussex County Association of Towns (SCAT) meetings.

Killmer said he felt the requirement was too specific, while Olmstead said the person selected as the mayor should be someone who is able to understand that they should attend those meetings, rather than making a documented requirement.

More documentation good in some areas

Council members did agree to minor changes recommended by Mulligan, including a reference to a Web site where more information on the Freedom of Information Act can be obtained. They also ironed out agreement over taking committee requests to a council meeting, saying that formal requests for council input or approval of continued work on an issue should be documented on council meeting agendas.

“I couldn’t figure out where everything was coming from,” Wode reiterated about some agenda items in the past. He said he hoped a better system — preferably also utilizing the town Web site to provide council and committee agendas and minutes — would allow citizens to be able to track the origins of an issue without the need to call the town office or a council member.

Council members reaffirmed their decision not to permit the use of speakerphones during meetings and not to disseminate unapproved drafts of meeting minutes — something some citizens had requested as a way to be better informed in a more timely manner, rather than waiting for minutes approval a month or more after the original meeting. On the latter issue, they cited concerns about mistakes and misunderstandings that could only be corrected review and approval.

They also agreed to pass on to Town Solicitor Terence Jaywork some additional language on FOIA that Mulligan said he felt provided more balance on the subject of council members meeting and discussing issues outside of official functions.

“I’d prefer to err on the side of caution,” McClenny countered, favoring Jaywork’s original language in the manual. But the council agreed that it wouldn’t hurt to see if Jaywork was amenable to Mulligan’s recommended sections on not allowing FOIA to stifle discussion at the outset of a project.

On that subject, Wode said he continued to be concerned about council members attending committee meetings and participating in ensuing discussion. Graviet replied that he believed a majority of local communities chose to deal with that issue by simply having no committees at all. He said council members were also town citizens and should not have their right to speak inhibited by their service.

But Olmstead noted the concern as one that had been voiced before, by former Council Member Harold Steele. She said she herself believed that the town was best served by informed council members, who perhaps should not be so much a part of the decision-making process or declare their opinions at the committee level.

In the minor areas in which Mulligan’s suggestions were greeted well by the council majority, they agreed to look into adding that information to the finished council protocol manual. But the next major revision is likely not to come until October, once the next council and its officers have taken their seats.