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Regular meeting June 27, 2005 Ms. Brungardt hoped that the Council could come up with the proper methods of documenting the research and does commend the Mayor for taking a proactive approach. She just wants the documentation to be as full bodied as possible, so that the work doesn’t become less than it should. Ms. Welsch said that once the Council has decided which cities to take on, then Mayor Adams could write to the mayors of the surrounding communities advising them of what the Council will be doing and why. Mayor Adams said that he would. Ms. Welsch continued by saying that another recommendation of the Advisory Board for Economic Progress was that we set up a citizen committee to monitor and push forward the process of dealing with the surrounding communities. She hopes that after the Council does this work that this would be the next step in setting up that ongoing citizen advisory group. Mr. Sharpe commended the Mayor for this effort in bringing the Council together in working toward interfacing with their neighbors. He thinks that it is an excellent idea. He almost wanted to, as Mr. Wagner did, make a decision right now. He will be very happy to do this. In regards to Ms. Brungardt’s concerns about documentation, he suggests a standardized form of questions where we can record our answers or something along those lines. He can see something very positive coming out of working with other councils that are contiguous to our city. He thinks that this is very forward thinking on the Mayor’s part and congratulated him for bringing this forward to the Council. In providing examples of similar successful cooperative arrangements in the past, the Mayor recalled a instance when he and Mr. Ollendorff had met with the County Executive, Buzz Westfall, and the mayors of Wellston and Pagedale. They had worked out a compromise to deal with paving Ferguson, where the City would assist and help along with the County. This arrangement benefited all of us. The Mayor is looking for this to be more than a single project. He is looking for it being any number of things and he can’t tell the Council what those are since he does not know. This is what he is hoping individual Councilmembers can find out. Ms. Welsch said that we should all keep in mind that we may also learn something from the city managers and mayors of Clayton, Richmond Heights and Maplewood, because they have been going through the process of talking about sharing services. They are different cities than ours, but she thinks that they may have knowledge and perhaps through dealing with Clayton, we can learn what they have learned over the past four years. Ms. Brot said that when she and Mr. Wagner had gone to different cities researching the city manager succession process, they worked very well together. She would like to work with him on Olivette. When they did go, they had a set of questions used at each city. She asked the Mayor if he would be coming up with the questions. Mayor Adams said no, that this was totally open ended. Ms. Brot said that she doesn’t have the Page 23