Board Members Present: Patrick Lanning, President; Sandra Bishop, Vice President; Mel Menegat, Dorothy Anderson.

Others Present: Randy Berggren, Jean Meyers, Debra Smith, Tom Buckhouse, Jim Wiley, Dick Helgeson, Roseannna McArthur, Jim Origliosso, and Krista Hince of the EWEB staff, and Ruth Atcherson, City of Eugene Minutes Recorder.

President Lanning called the Work Session of the Eugene Water & Electric Board (EWEB) to order at 6 p.m.

BOARD GOVERNANCE

• Staff/Board Working Relationships

General Manager Randy Berggren introduced the item. He referred Board members to the notes from the Board Governance retreat held in the previous summer, included in the packet from the EWEB meeting held on the second Tuesday of January.

Debra Smith, Assistant to the General Manager, said the issue before the Board was the question of how staff could be more interactive with the Board in the moment and was it "okay" for staff to be forthright with their ideas? She noted that the retreat scheduled for February 13 would include more Board/staff interaction.

Mr. Berggren remarked that staff was sometimes uncertain as to whether they could freely give their opinion or to hold it back.

Commissioner Anderson suggested that the other Board members refer back to the Bylaws adopted in 1990 and think on whether this was how the Board wanted to continue to run the utility. She stated that these Bylaws had changed drastically how EWEB had been run, which had been a hierarchical arrangement. She averred that the Board function should be that of setting forth policy that the General Manager should then carry out.

Commissioner Anderson recommended holding a discussion on re-instituting the rotation of Board officers as it had been according to a past Bylaw, changed at the request of Commissioner Bishop. In her opinion, the rotation provision had merit.

Mr. Berggren said staff was here to help the Board and to work with the Board to problem-solve and provide information. He related he had a ground rule with staff that gave them permission to freely help the Board but the onus was on the staff person to make him aware of Board contacts and issues. He explained that, predicated upon some of the events of 1990, the Bylaws had been changed to specify that an individual Board member could not direct staff to do work, but rather such directions should come from a Board majority. He commented that the position of the members of the Board as elected officials put them in a relationship such that staff were inclined to satisfy the requests or demands from the Board.

President Lanning observed that there had been times when individual Board members monopolized staff time, but that this had shifted and improved. He added that there were times when he was uncertain whether something raised at a Board meeting and moved forward was something that was an initiative pushed forward with the support of the whole Board. He thought this was an area in need of improvement. He said there were times the Board would request work be done to provide adequate information on an issue without realizing how much staff time such instructions would take. He recommended that staff be empowered to convey to the board concerns about how time was best used.

Mr. Berggren responded that he had not always been comfortable to express concerns about the amount of work. He commented that the Board had been "one of the healthiest" that he had worked with in terms of openness to disagreement, willingness to have a conversation about it, and willingness to work overtly to reestablish priorities.

Ms. Smith agreed, adding that the agenda management had been helpful in that the Board agreed upon the pursuance of an issue prior to the staff embarking on any work.

Vice President Bishop recommended crafting policy language that would guide staff in the interaction staff had with the Board. Mr. Berggren replied that policy development was scheduled for a future agenda and it was hoped that policy directives on how the Board/staff relationship worked and how staff functioned would result from this discussion.

Ms. Smith commented that the desire to please the Board was prevalent among staff.

Mr. Berggren emphasized the importance of ground rules for the Board. He remarked that a policy is a set of words that were written down. He added that it was his responsibility to bring staff concerns about Board/staff interactions before the Board.

Vice President Bishop thought Board members should be briefed on procedure prior to taking their seat on the Board.

Commissioner Anderson commented that there was a difference between consulting with staff and giving staff orders. She averred that staff should never be ordered by a Board member to do something against its technical judgement.

Mr. Berggren did not want to be so specific as to remove the discretion of the staff to respond to the Board. He recalled the policy put into place that dictated that a Board member could not ask a staff member to do more than two hours of work on an issue. He added that this policy had not been too-well honored.

Vice President Bishop declared that the President of the Board was the conduit for Board concerns and the General Manager was the conduit for staff concerns.

President Lanning agreed that the President played a role with the function of the Board in that he or she would monitor Board function and facilitate the best use of time. He related that he had occasionally heard Board members saying things to staff that could be personalized. He felt this created an atmosphere in which the staff members did not feel safe to communicate with the Board.

Commissioner Menegat commented that his contact for the staff/Board relationship was the General Manager. He said Mr. Berggren had directed him to the staff people best able to respond to his needs for information, adding that he had found staff to be very competent in bringing the necessary background information for Board discussion.

Mr. Berggren remarked that it was important for Board members to be able to ask questions about the basic functions of the utility. He averred that he and staff did not have an issue with a phone call to do so.

Ms. Smith felt the utility needed a good system in place to educate new Board members.

Vice President Bishop commended the work that Assistant Secretary Krista Hince did on the board notebooks. She conveyed her appreciation for Mr. Berggren's management style. She felt it represented the health of the organization that Mr. Berggren was able to support an open conversation between Board and staff.

Commissioner Anderson requested a draft list of conclusions drawn from the conversation. Ms. Smith assured her staff would compile a list. She added that she would try to draft a statement from the work.

GENERAL MANAGER'S GOALS FOR 2004

Mr. Berggren provided a brief synopsis how the evaluation of and the goal development process for the General Manager had transpired. He said one goal was to separate the strategic work from the budget work and to create a "discreet goal" for how organizational goal and strategy work was conducted. He listed two reasons for doing so: as a part of the Governance work the Board had indicated a desire to become more pro-actively involved in the creation of the organizational goals; and to accelerate the development of that work such that the goals and strategies were known in advance of the budget planning.

Mr. Berggren called attention to the operating initiatives, contained in an attachment entitled Eugene Water & Electric Board Operating Initiatives, and highlighted them. He said that, when looking at the areas of interest, management had found many that had been covered but there had not been a formal way of tracking them. The operating initiatives were intended to remedy this. He stated that he would report on them, with an additional "milestone," in that he would formulate an action plan for each of those initiatives by May 1.

Mr. Berggren stated that, in terms of the weight given to goals, they were similar with the exception of the financial goal which continued to have a higher weight attributed to it. He noted that some of the Operating Performance Measures (OPMs) had been modified along with some of the weights attributed to them. He cited the lost calls as an area in which the weight given to the OPMs had been increased. He called attention to a new operating initiative that had yet to have a target formulated for it, that of weighing the customer satisfaction with phone responses.

Mr. Berggren indicated that all of the information was contained in the meeting packets, including the current goals and strategies.

President Lanning ascertained that there were no questions from the Board. He commended the work that had gone into the General Manager's Goals.

Mr. Berggren circulated blank forms for the Commissioners to rate the OPMs and provide comments to aid in the General Manager's evaluation.

President Lanning closed the Work Session at 7:17 p.m.

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Assistant Secretary President