##VIDEO ID:xAz3SApemr0## communed of the County Board of Commissioners special meeting today Friday November 1st of 2024 and if we'd stand for the Pledge of Allegiance please I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all as we begin today are there any changes or adjustments to our agenda any adjustments or changes uh Madam chair make a motion to approve the agenda thank you commissioner Mills is there support I'll support that thank you commissioner white we have a motion and support to approve the agenda as written all in favor I I opposed motion carries we're going to move on to our public comment period at this time um at this time the public is welcomed to address the County Board on any matter of County concern and when invited to speak please note the following guidelines please speak into the microphone for clarity sign the public comment sheet and state your name address and the topic you're addressing today you can speak respectfully for up to 5 minutes but this time may be shortened if members of the public and there are many who wish to speak because our public comment period is 30 minutes in its entirety public comments reserved for the board to hear your views it's not a time for debate and at the board's discretion the board may agree to schedule matters addressed during public comment on a current or future board agenda all discussions must be respectful in nature and must be directed at the board not at other members of the public are there members of the public that wish to speak this morning good morning Mr Carl good morning for you and uh that the county is able to uh accumulate the information that has been shared so well by uh James JY in his time I do want to say my appreciation for James worked with him U consistently through the um budget advisory committee over the last year he was a a great resource and he did a fine job of responding to to the requests of the board and u i i just it's very heartbreaking to have lost him and for waking to hear how he left us and and the sadness that that left me sorry for rambling so much I didn't come expecting to speak but U I want to thank you all for your service and uh carry on in this these next months uh as you have uh a a very challenging time ahead thank you thank you so much are there any other members of the public that wish to speak this morning have Commissioners received any comments to read all right we will close our public comment period and move on to our primary agenda item the purpose of today's special meeting is to address the resignation of Cook County Administrator James yorki and as the commissioner staff and and our immediate Community is aware the recent death of his wife has created immediate and ongoing responsibilities for him in Kansas City resulting in the need for James to submit his resignation we have a couple of tasks today to accept James resignation both with regret and sorrow and to determine a forward direction to fill his position by mid January to fit the time frame of the recent appointment we made for our interim admin administrator Rowan Watkins who so graciously stepped up to assist us during this really challenging time the last time our County faced this need to fill an administrative position was over four years ago we utilized the services of DDA which include um included at that time speaking with board members and staff to get feedback on the kind of person we were looking for as an organization they put together an extensive profile including the job description and posted it for a full month and they worked with AMC who already I've been in contact with and a variety of other groups in their Nationwide Network in a short bit Allison plumber I'm going to ask you to provide us with some more details about what DDA might provide us then we can decide if we'd like DDA to provide us with a proposal and potentially a contract to review at our next board meeting which is on November 12th but let's get to our first and painful task the resignation before I entertain a motion I'd like to publicly thank James for the development of our Capital Improvement plan which we've started and that will lead us forward into the future to have more efficient and costeffective Facilities than before he brought us through the strategic planning process so we can engage in continuous Improvement as an organization and encourage and value high performance and provide greater value to the taxpayers of Cook County James also helped us make certain that employee pay and benefits are aligned with the market so we can attract and retain top quality staff to provide the best possible service to our residents and then he helped us as we established our HRA he helped us to get the talent and the focus needed to provide housing that our community has spoken to for decades even as he leaves his position and as he Mourns the loss of his wife he's asked for people to donate any Memorial contributions to ham Hamilton habitat providing affordable living one house at a time here in our community we thank you James for your leadership and commitment to our community and given that um I'd entertain a motion to accept James resignation mam chair I'll make the motion to to accept the resignation of James Yori thank you commissioner Mills is there support I'll support that thank you commissioner white we have a motion and support any further discussion all in favor I I opposed motion carries unanimously now for our next task to chart a path forward and I'm going to ask Alan Allison plumber to come forward forward to talk about details from a conversation that you had with Pat Melvin who works for DDA David drown and Associates thank you so much good morning good morning the Sun is bright I can't get away from the Clare today that it's kind of nice to have this onbody all right let's see so yesterday morning um I was able to get uh I was able to connect with uh Patrick Melvin who's with human resources with DDA um in connecting with them as DDA as commissioner Sullivan uh just mentioned that we utilize them for the last process in our recruitment selection for our County Administrator which subsequently that's how James was hired um so let me just provide you kind of a rundown on what those Services look like as this will be a new process for most of us I think commissioner Mills I think you were um serving and commissioner storle were um uh serving during the last process so this may be familiar or a refresher um so before I get to kind of a a summary of the recruitment process there were some other kind of points that Pat we'll call him Pat that's what he goes by um wanted to just provide um in overall information so it is a tough job market we've seen that just in our other recruitment efforts but they are confident that they would be able to find qualified candidates the general process takes anywhere between three and four months uh start to end in that recruitment um if we do wish to proceed with DDA similar to the last time they would write up a proposal that would be available for review and then subsequently if we decided to proceed with them then that would then be a contract um and that there would be a cost of associated with that just like there was at the last time um they did want to mention reiterate DDA is the number one recruiter in Minnesota at this time Al so here's a kind of a high level overview of what the recruitment process would look like so uh to begin with DDA would come and talk with board members with staff it was it's their first goal to get feedback from us as to what they are looking for in the next County administ what kind of person personality skills um Etc which will allow them to create the profile of the individual that we are looking for then they gather that data that feedback and they compile and create that profile uh this includes information about the job so think we have our job description um and but they would also include information about our area what it is like to live in Cook County what are our services what are our local resources our our health our health system our schooling all of that to put kind of a wide uh kind of a wide level uh kind of picture a wide lens picture of what it would be to work and live here for those individuals then um so this would be about maybe 10 to 12 Pages it's pretty comprehensive the last proposal and profile um I found in I compass and that is pretty extensive it's pretty amazing work that they do um so then they would take uh the job the profile they would post post this for 4 weeks they do a lot of Outreach they have relationship uh kind of a a more built relationship with linked in that Pat explained that will allow them to identify and do actual kind of one-on-one personalized Outreach to candidates that they've identified that would be a good fit they also work with uh AMC and LMC they'll work with colleges universities I mean they have a pretty expansive Network that they will utilize to get the word out and to spread the posting um they'll call past applicants um even through reaching out to P applicants those individuals may no longer be interested but maybe they'll be like hey I know somebody else and so it's kind of that word of mouth so again their their network uh of resources is pretty expansive at the end of that four-week posting period they will uh have a list of perhaps maybe 8 to 10 candidates uh hopefully to proceed with um from those candidates they then have them do a personality index and then they also have them complete a video interview so I was like what is this video interview are we involved can you explain more so I I don't know if this was in place at the last time but basically it's like in a um interactive process over a computer like they have a system where they will um have questions and I think it's like the question pops up on the screen scre he said they have a minute to review it and think about their response and then a recording starts so they are literally doing an interview through this system and then at the end basically they have a video interview that DDA can then review and see like how are people interacting with this screen what's their body language how are they responding how thoughtful are they in their responses so think self-guided self-recorded then from the the person personality index and the video interviews they then narrow down the list to maybe three or four candidates for those candidates they then go to uh proceeding with background checks reference checks and they do a mental aptitude assessment uh DDA will then work with the board and maybe other staff whoever you would like involv to draft a list of questions to use for actual in-person interviews that's where then we will be able to interact with those potential three to four candidates uh we will schedule those in-person interviews again kind of choice of how you want to proceed with that uh interviews can be done with the board we can pull in other staff they've also seen uh kind of community meet and greets set up where they actually invite the public um to actually interact and ask the candidates questions so there's there's flexibility in how you want to proceed with kind of um meeting and uh introducing the various candidates and getting feedback from from multiple parties um and then just like any other recruitment process we do the interviews then a decision would potentially be made on the candidate that you would like to proceed with and then DDA will work with with us to create an agreement with that specified candidate and then ultimately we would look to approve to hire are there any questions for our HR Director Allison no I have none thank you I have none for that for you at all and that sounds like a very thorough process however I believe that this meeting this decision is premature to do any of this I believe we have an opportunity well first commissioner Johnson evidently isn't as important as the rest of us I believe this is disrespectful to be making such decisions to have such conversations without one of our elected officials here we don't really we have a very capable interim uh administrator at this moment in time this is an opportunity to really evaluate whether or not the administrative form of government for Cook County how has it worked we've had three now and I think we should take this opportunity to talk to the people that have worked underneath in administrative form of government I was uh informed that I I had heard at the beginning that uh administrative government would save us money has it I don't know I don't even know how you really figure that out but then what about other forms of government I am not suggesting that it comes back the burden goes completely onto the shoulders of the um Commissioners but there are other forms of govern of structures coordinator administrator I'm we need some sort of person that sees the big picture and is in charge of it but we are the ones that are in charge of everything and that person is an employee and that's how it needs to be and without commissioner Johnson here we can't even have a full conversation about we can't have a conversation about this because her voice carries I don't know how many people she represents but she is part of the County government and so without her here going forward Beyond accepting James's resignation seems like an exercise not futility but she needs to be part of this also so commissioner white just to clarify I don't think we're making a decision on at all regarding DDA today no but we definitely we hear this convers I mean and this is this is all very good it's very helpful but that means essentially we're going forward with an administrative government I want to talk about other options and we don't make any decisions today about this but commissioner h Johnson should be here too to hear all of this now and and to be part of this conversation our employees or at least the department heads need to be pulled in they are the ones who have worked on under the administrative form of government they are the ones that have firsthand knowledge of how it's worked for them and when we do our budget meeting I think that's on the 12th uh administrator Watkins has it set up for each department head to be available to us perfect time we'll kill two birds with one stone tell us while you're here and we're and telling us you're telling us about your department and budget what are your thoughts about having how it meant having an administrator and what are your ideas and We Gather from from everyone just because we're elected does not mean we have well answers but the people that work for this government are the ones that boots on the ground and those are the ones we need to listen to also so that said thank you Ellison that was pretty pretty impressive what that company does so I would agree with you commissioner um white that I think it's really important that all of us um have an opportunity to get feedback from other employees that we need to listen to our department heads and and again maybe I wasn't clear with we're we're not hiring DDA today there's no highlighting some areas that perhaps could be elim ated or some areas that could be added to it um I also have had a little conversation with some folks about um well maybe you should review different forms of government whether it be um you know the administration part or the um other part that I um looked up on AMC because when you want to have a question you go to AMC to see what they uh use for guidelines and so it's very clear here administrator has this role Ro the coordinator has this role so I you know I suggest that we all kind of look at that for sure um this will be my third participation in reviewing for folks I have to say DDA did a fabulous job and I especially uh commissioner Mills uh probably you were there to um enjoy the video part because you had a chance to see the person the questions were there and you could back it up if you needed to have another review or whatever so that part is um something that I think is a great offering from them so um you know also I think it's important um for the um department heads to have input for us to have input and what I have been trying to do is summarize all three of the last um administrators that we hired what were the good points about it what were some areas that could have been improved the next one you don't want to think about the next one you always want to say they'll be here for a long time and a lot of times as we see that doesn't happen so um I'm going to make my list of qualities and what I uh can remember from um all of that and and bring that to our November um meeting but um right I don't think we should act hastily um because Rowan has at least committed to this 12 weeks and we'll see according to that schedule it could be a ways out yet from that it kind of depends we're going into the holidays so I mean there's a lot of factors here but um I think um if we all just put down some points of you know what we appreciate in an administrative role and what we would like to see um uh around um the uh acting with the person and what we like to see that we would not want to see again so there's a lot of factors in that well I appreciate the fact that we have a couple board members who have that extensive history with the process I think getting a proposal from da DDA to bring to us um and then discussing different forms of government different options um I'm sure all of us were busy looking at AMC and looking for resources um since we got the news from James and so this um handout that I provided is a publication of AMC outlining um the different forms of government or different County government structures so we need to review that just so that you're aware about 75% of the counties in Minnesota do have a County Administrator um 14% have a county coordinator and then there's a few other uh un unusual types of um ways that County government run but I would suggest that you review the materials that we have and think about this process um and then Allison if um perhaps we should make a motion just for Allison to get a proposal from DDA so we have that for our discussion I think it's important we have some information when we meet on November 12th um thank you for doing that Allison uh I'd like to talk to our interim administrator Rohan Watkins and just see how things are going and um based on our conversation today kind of your reaction I'd say things are going well as could be expected under the circumstances um it's been busy I think what you've laid out for a timeline and the ability to have conversations uh makes a lot of sense um commissioner White made reference to the ability of staff to be available um on Monday we have our mat team meeting and so at that time is when I had intended to start the conversation about being available or having a representative available for uh budget discussions um if the board um if the board wishes to have that conversation as well as the conversation about the form of government um to me that that makes sense that our directors are going to be in the room um that they could speak to their experience with administrative form of government and the value they see see there all right well it's um great that the meeting is coming up so quickly and it gives them time to be thoughtful um about what they've seen over time and um kind of their recommendations that'll be important for all of us to hear all right thank you any other comments or remarks or questions I'd like to thank auditor powers for making this space available to us um with elections this room is tied up and um he made sure that we would have the time here to meet and gather and um provide video for the public so thank you for doing that and I'd like you to also um be aware that Jean Peterson has come as our assistant County attorney and to respond to any questions that we might have in a legal nature so thank you for being here welcome thank you all right with that um I'd entertain a motion to adjourn thank you commissioner stle is there support I'll support thank you commissioner white we have a motion in support anything further all in favor I I opposed motion carries we are a Jour thank you so much you can keep that if you want I don't like the shape of that P it's not