I'm going to call the shaboying on a common council committee of the whole meeting to order Mary would you please call the roll here Here excused Here Not excused Here Not excused Not excused We have a quorum now let's all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, please Legions to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands One nation under God and indivisible with liberty and justice for all Next I will entertain a motion to approve the minutes from December 30th 2012 so move Did I say December? I should have said October October 30th of 2012. We have a motion in a second Any discussion all in favor Opposed chair votes aye Number five we have a public forum on an agenda items Limit of three minutes does anybody from the audience wish to be heard Does anybody from the audience wish to be heard? Does anybody from the audience wish to be heard? Chairman's comments have none at this time and Next on the agenda. We have a item is for discussion and possible recommendation of the common council Agenda item number seven council document number three dash one from November 19th 2012 communication number 12 dash 12 dash 13 Submitting a communication from older person Donahue Presenting a proposal for job responsibilities for the mayor of Sheboygan All the person Donahue do you want to come up and leave the discussion, please? Good evening all The format of our meeting With permission of a chairperson born is a little different tonight We're using microphones because we're Televising our meeting and What I am looking for in terms of what we're going to be doing in the next maybe half hour Is a discussion of the mayor's job duties and responsibilities? I believe all of you got the document that I had drafted It said a draft proposal not subject to open records disclosure. Well, it is subject and I Forgive me for not deleting that from my copy, but it really sets out what I think we're going to try to do today in a really informal Sort of different format than we're used to on the city council Again with chairman born's permission I'd like to have us just talk a bit about what it is we think the mayor's job duties and responsibilities are No need to press your button. No need to Stand up or whatever. We're just if you can imagine being seated around a big table We'd like to have that kind of discussion Outside of everybody's comfort zone maybe just a little but I'm hoping that it'll work the reason that in This came to my mind was that in the course since I've been elected to the council It's been pretty clear to me that although the chief administrative officers job duties and so forth have been discussed There hasn't been the mirror discussion of what it is. We would like the mayor to do The discussion tonight I think in order to be at all helpful needs to be in the abstract In other words, we could be talking about Mayor Bloomberg We could be talking about the mayor of Eau Claire or the mayor of Los Angeles, but we're talking about the mayor's position We're not talking about about anybody who's in the position or wants the position But just to flesh out what it is that we think a mayor in The city of Sheboygan with the chief administrative officers Positions such as we have it. What are the best and most important things that that mayor can be doing? Does that make sense? Feel okay If you don't nod and kind of say hey sounds good, then I get really insecure. Okay. I've got one thumb up Somebody's smiling okay So I I think that we can open the discussion and as I say maybe we could wrap it up because I know It's supper time. Maybe wrap it up around six o'clock what I'd like to finish with is if we do come to some consensus about the Items that I put on this particular job description is that we draft it up and sort of a Memorandum of understanding between the council and the mayor and That we forward it to the city council or to the common council It's at a meeting for final approval. Okay, makes sense All right, does everybody have a copy? I may actually made a couple of additional ones Okay We're studying or crying I See my introductory remarks. What do you think of those? I Indicate that the chief administrator Administrators position was passed by the council October of 2011 it was recently amended in our October 15th 2012 Bring copies of that if that comes to anything that we need But it was my sense that That there was not a there was not a discussion of the flipside, which is what we would like the mayor to do And I said although the mayor's job has changed since the CAO position was filled It's not ceremonial at this time. It's a full-time position whose hours will typically extend beyond a normal 40-hour week By statute the mayor is the city's chief executive officer with administrative Responsibility which is shared with elected and administrative officers or its missions independent appointed officials however from my perspective The mayor is the face of city government to those living Visiting doing business or relocating to Sheboygan. How is that for a premise? Excellent Other thoughts Go ahead. Just make sure you speak of the microphone Do you want to stand or Maybe be better to be seen at home with your stand Thank you, and I again I want to preface my comments by you know thanking Alderman Donahue I understand the premise of what she's coming from and I guess a couple things I would probably change and I know it's semantics But you know things like this semantics and sometimes be important, you know, I look at this more than of a Much less of a job description as I do more of a guiding principles or you know kind of a Again a guiding principles of how we'd like to see the interaction From the mayor because things have changed significantly over the last almost two years now July of 2011 so first off I think this should be more of a guiding principles more than a job description No more than a job description any of us have as as part of this body You know, I think many of the things inside of this are very well thought out And very pragmatic, you know, I think with the great department heads we have with the Chief administrative officer's position You know now more than ever the mayor and the council can be focused on the things that are important which are providing Vision and direction and setting policy for the city going forward and not getting involved in the day-to-day mundane operations of What? Department heads and the Chief Administrative Officer should be should be doing so those are my first comments, and I think many of this Deals with that Secondly, you know again because of some of the things we've done as a council in the last couple of years We've laid the groundwork Having a full-time mayor. I think you know a mayor's position can be a full-time position If that individual focuses on things like economic development You know meeting with business leaders meeting with community leaders meeting not just in the city but regionally and trying to build a Good corridor of economic development And then secondly, I think or excuse me finally You know again The the as Alderman Donahue indicated, you know the mayor's position is the face of the city So we want those people to conduct themselves professionally both inside of City Hall Outside of City Hall whether it's parades ribbon cuttings whatever the case may be we want them to conduct themselves with professionalism as the representative not only, you know this the Employees of City Hall, but of the 49,000 plus citizens we have in this community. So again, I look at this as more of a guiding principles and some You know 10 points to kind of live by Versus a job description, but I again I think those are just a couple of my thoughts As we look forward or as we look at this document. So thank you again for your work efforts I have something In this Mary Lynn you may be able to answer this or Steve in the part the first paragraph after the job Responsibilities you have by statute would some of those statutes be state statutes and local things that we've developed over the years as far as The mayor is the chief executive officer is that partly state statute and also local ordinances or Resolutions that we've had over the years I think it's a combination of both and it's a good question The statutory and Steve has been a chime in and correct me if I get this wrong The statutes are relatively limited in telling us what the mayor does There are certain statutory requirements and Steve actually pointed out to me Actually, can I just cannot if I stand here can you Should I fall on my sword now or later We've all been involved in discussions right where people sit around and they really get into things and they have discussions That's what I'm looking for tonight. So Steve in fact pointed out to me that the mayor has other additional statutory responsibilities which Include the ability to hire or to provide for unpaid security forces in the name of an emergency So there are statutory Requirements, I bet you did not know that mayor You did know that so If we all get drafted into the city guard, we'll know where that's coming from And then there are of course Daryl can help us out with that There are ordinances that provide the mayor's Responsibility in certain respects as well If in fact we come and I do agree with Don I think the idea of guiding principles or operating principles is is a better way for us to approach this because it has to come The mayor and the council need to agree on these things in order for it to be a working document There may be certain ordinance changes that might be required if you look at the budgeting Requirements in chapter 2 2-901 to 907, I believe There are some requirements for the mayor's participation in the budget process Those are things that again we need to look at particularly in terms of the chief administrative officers position Sometimes it's hard to go through and make sure that all of your ordinances are completely consistent and the CAO's position has only been in place for a fairly short period of time So I think those are things that we would probably need to to clear up to some extent Steve chime in Yes, thank you Marilyn I did talk about those provisions in the ordinances But I looked and the council has made amendments to those ordinances that reflect that basically the mayor has been removed from The executive budget preparation and it's indicated in the ordinance is now this chief administrative officer It's function to do that So those ordnance changes have been put in place already and that I know At least anecdotally in the last year was some cause for some confusion between The role of the mayor and the chief administrative officer So if we look at the guiding principles in terms of statutory duties, we may want to expand that a little bit and work in the actual Additional ones that that Steve had mentioned to me But the statutory duties or the statutory duties some of them can be delegated Clearly one of the issues we deal with is dealing with the budget and preparation of the budget So I think those are things that we're going to need to hash through probably in more detail because I think that's where some of our Concerns have arisen in the in the past few months I've got a couple more if I could continue Under essential duties number one The last sentence that says the mayor ensures the city ordinances and state laws are observed and enforced and that all city Officers and employees discharge their duties That to me could possibly cause a conflict with the chief administrative officer because if the mayor is enforcing or directing employees to me that could cause a problem and not knowing ultimately where the buck stops and I guess under this form of government that they were under right now at The end of the day the chief administrative officer is where the buck stops and Department heads have to have a clear line of authority as to who at the end of the day is their boss So I'm just somewhat concerned about that language and that one right there any Comments feedback on that Don. Thank you. I think You know some of that was addressed when we put the chief administrative officers position in the reporting responsibilities We're pretty clearly delineated as part of that exercise So, you know, I to your point I might be counter Counter to what we've put in other documents You know where the department heads report to the chief administrative officer and that's I think pretty clearly delineated I didn't bring my statute book and perhaps I can go get it In a minute, but I believe that is language taken from the it is statutes as far as the mayor's authority So it And I think it's important You're not looking at doing a charter ordinance where you're Changing The statutory authority the mayor. I don't believe I think you just want to provide some sort of guide aid so that We have an efficient efficiently operating government But those are statutory responsibilities of the mayor So in the way from my perspective, but I'd be interested in what you all think that is done Simply because we have created a chief administrative officer position and given that position the responsibility for Supervising department heads Developing budgets with department heads and so forth does not mean that the mayor is an absent figure and does nothing with respect to that The idea is that there is some delegation of power through the creation of the CAO job position the chief administrative officer job position and The mayor can't just say all I'm going to do is Recruit businesses for the South Pier.  So the mayor's position by statute really does require the sort of overall position Just as the president of the United States Has the overall authority to make sure that the laws of the country are followed and so forth that authority is delegated That's my at least that would be an analogy Oh, I would say that I don't think the council has the authority to delegate the mayoral authority I think that's up to the mayor if he wants to delegate his authority to someone that's up to him If it's a statutory duty that he's the mayor's got the council can't Dictate that someone else has that authority instead of the mayor But certainly we've created a chief administrative officer position. I think the intent of this is to And chief administrative officer is not provided for by statute. So that's That's the conundrum is fitting the chief administrative officer position into a statutory framework We're it just references mayors and I think this is a good good helpful tool to have the discussion on how that Position fits within the framework bingo.  I guess just for clarity for the people in the public when you say Statutory versus ordinance. You're saying state state statutes say that so We as a body as a common council, which I served on many years don't have the authority to change state statutes Don't we wish though sometimes Sometimes you don't want exactly all right. It is state statutes Thank you, mr. Chair just to clarify that though state statutes outline a lot of various different duties and responsibilities not only for The mayors but for other positions, but there is a concept of home rule that allows us as a body to You know do certain things outside the or maybe you can explain that home rule a little bit Because it's it's not as cut and dry as that the state says this and we can't change it That's where charter ordinance has come into play the the council has statutory home rule authority and by charter ordinance can change Provisions and statutes that relate to local our local operation, but that requires two-thirds vote requires Transfer referendum by the electorate Was not my understanding that the intent here was to Change the statutory authority of the mayor, but rather to Try it within the context of the statutes and our ordinances to Get some sort of sense of as to what the mayor is doing versus what the chief administrative officer is doing in the administration Agreed. I just wanted to make sure it was clear How that works? Thank you. All right, and we're kind of getting at the heart of Again the relationship between the chief administrative officer's duties and the mayor's statutory and duties Conferred upon him at this point by the city before we get bogged down in legal ease I Don't mind that typically but but for tonight if we could just go on to number two one of the mayor's most important jobs And I want your feedback on this is supporting and facilitating economic growth within the city The mayor actively works with economic development Organizations in the city and counties such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Sheboygan Economic Development Corporation Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation as well as other local state national organizations to attract new businesses And good jobs to the city the mayor is an active and enthusiastic Representative for the city's best interests What do you think? sound good additions corrections Don thank you. I'll throw my two cents in again I mean, I think that's one of the most critical positions or one of the most critical functions of a of a full-time mayor Is to be the champion of economic development? Or very least you know part of the economic development process you know in understanding and Having good relationships with the business community with the stakeholders EDC's whatever the case may be I mean I think you know, that's a very powerful You know job responsibility, okay other thoughts it's kind of a no-brainer, but I I think for us to say it out loud and I think all of our mayors have acted in this respect But to say it out loud and to bring it into sharp relief. I think is important I put it as number two right after statutory duties because like Don. I think that When people can sit down and say I met with the mayor it means something And it is a position of that kind of power that Makes people excited to To be a part of a structure that can encourage economic development if that makes sense Okay, without a lot of feedback. I'm going to move right along the mayor is the city's goodwill ambassador and face of city government Spend the mayor spends significant time meeting with citizens addressing constituent questions Attends and participates in community activities Which enhance the visibility and economic well-being of the city again kind of a no-brainer, but what do you think I? Would I would have a comment on that if nobody else does and that would be The mayor is the goodwill ambassador in the face of city government Face of city government, I think a couple times since mr. Amorio has been chief administrative officers He's had to speak in on the benefit on behalf of the city with some I don't know if you want a column unfortunate situations that we've had I remember the incident with the DPW driver I think mr. Amorio was the you might say the the PR person or the lead spokesman for the city So I think there has to be a delineation in that regard of who's the Who's the voice of the city in those types of things Alderman Hammond and again? This is you know, I know this isn't a statutory power of the mayor's position When we created the CAO's position public information officer was one of the duties that was put under that Now again, you know face of the city could be construed in many many different ways You know is that parades and ribbon cuttings and you know or is it in the event of tragedies and you know those types of things that? You know and ideally in those types of situations as tragic as they are, you know All hands would be on deck for that one It wouldn't just be you know one person standing behind a podium But it is true. Yes, Cory. I guess I disagree a little bit. I think in the in the face of the tragedy I think that this Institutes want to see the mayor and what he has to say and they I think they've elected him to To be the mayor and they want to know How he's gonna lead us and I look at the same as through our employment at the Sheriff's Department You know We have people that talk of different news releases and such but when the tragedies strikes I think they want to know what the sheriff is going to do to do it And I think that's the same as far as the mayor's rule and we could look at the And that that is an excellent point. We could look at the CAO job description because as Don indicated the I think it's the last Specific job duty is for the CAO to act as the public information officer for the city Which would typically tend to be your spokesperson. So we may want to take a look at that As we as we go along The mayor is the voice of city government with respect to legislative matters at regional and state levels Including but not limiting to testifying as needing as needed at state Level and working in a cooperative manner with other local units of government Comments, I would have I don't want to do all the conversation here, but somebody's got to you people are Disappointed the voice of city government with respect to legislative matters at the regional state local level I would presume if if the mayor was going to have that responsibility That the position on a piece of state legislation or whatever What what he would be testifying What he would be testifying would be the will of the council after consulting with the council for example If there's a particular bill in the legislative session It has to be I would think that the mayor's testimony at those state meetings would have to be the consensus of the council of which Way we want to go on a particular piece of legislation Maybe that's taken for granted and what you're seeing here, but I think You understand what I'm saying I do What do you all think is has there been I'm trying to remember back in the last Administrations has there been much legislative advocacy from the local to the state level? Do you think it's a good idea? Dave I guess just to weigh in a little bit I To I somewhat agree with with Alderman Borner and somewhat disagreeing that I think you're right There's going to be certain instances where the mayor would be the Representative of the Sheboygan Common Council representing a certain function or a certain Viewpoint or advocating for a certain agenda However, I also think there's going to be times and I can't think of one myself either but there there could be times where he is advocating for a Personally elected agenda again, we all hate the term But at the end of the day we are all elected politicians and we all run under a an agenda or a set of Ideas that we all put out for the public to let them know these are the the stances and the stands we have on certain issues So I think that really could go either way I mean it could be the mayor representing the city of Sheboygan in the Sheboygan Common Council's decision at a state level or Further or it could be him advocating for a specific, you know Politically motivated agenda however you would like to term that again I think it's important that we consider this on the abstract and the macro level But I do think that again it could go either way So I really don't think we should try to limit that because I again I think we all are elected to represent our the people that voted us the people that elected us to these positions and I Like to think that they have elected us based on the agenda based on our stances towards the certain topics and issues that we've Expressed so I think that his advocacy or his or her advocacy of any issues Could certainly be in representation of us, but it could be in representation of his own agenda as well The comments done You know I would take a little bit of issue as the mayor is a representative of the 49,000 people I would hope that that individual would not be going to Madison or Washington advocating their own views over the views of Or the wishes of The body for which that individual represents. I understand we all have our our own agendas to some extent but again in the capacity of this Representing city the voice of city government with respect it should be What the will of the of the constituency or in this is Alderman born the the collective thoughts of the of this body would be now if they want to go to Madison if Don wants to go to Madison and and You know advocate for something that that's fine But I wouldn't do it as a representative of the president of the Schwodingham and Council I'll be doing is Don Hammond, so I think they're that that semantics is important there. Well, I think this brings up a good issue first of all because Some fairly nasty things have been done to local governments at the state level And Whether you agree or disagree with that It is interesting that we have done relatively little legislative advocacy Assuming that that might happen Would you all be comfortable with an amendment to this? that basically Says that when the mayor is speaking as the voice of city government It is done with the consensus or with the advice and counsel of the or consent of the city council Or of the common council Because what David is saying is we all have our first amendment rights to go down and talk about what we you know What we believe in and and so forth, but if the mayor or frankly if any of us would be going down to testify for the common council If we were speaking as that voice, we'd want to make sure that at least a majority of the common council agrees with us Is that What do you think David thanks Again, I can't actually think of a time that this has come to play or that I can consider I'm just Again, I think I think It's it states that the mayor is the voice of city government in Respect to the legislative matters and so on and so forth and and I think it does give the ability of the mayor's office to Advocate for the mayor's office. That's what he's elected to do. You know when when we talk about You know advocating for the the city of Sheboygan for the 49,000 people that live here He was elected by those same people. So I do think He or she in that office should have the ability to advocate for that office That's what he was elected here. She was elected to do and I think that's important. Like I said, I can't think of a time Or an instance that would call for that I think most of the instances that would call for The mayor or city officials to go and advocate whether it be funding for street repair or different road projects or whatever the case may be I think everybody in this room would probably be advocating all in the same direction But I do think it is the ability of the elected office of the mayor to advocate for the elected office of the mayor Thoughts feedback Clean Thank you all the run born. I guess I see one way to address this, you know, I see it if this is Strictly a job description with essential duties and responsibilities by saying that the mayor is this It's sort of saying that nobody else is that you know, you're I Kind of like the idea of rather than call these job duties and responsibilities and so forth More Alderman Hammond's comment that these are kind of guiding principles that well, you know Asperationally, you know, the mayor is the Goodwill ambassador, but we're not saying that Okay, he's the Goodwill ambassador, but no one else is A Goodwill ambassador for the city or no one else is the face of the city council or that or the city government that I'm concerned by the Kind of the deafness of the job description sort of a statement that by saying that this is the mayor's job That therefore it's not anybody else's it's it is the mayor's as opposed to more illustrative type of Responsibilities or aspirations or guiding principles. I think It's less prone to mischief from the standpoint of the mayor saying no it says in here that I'm the Goodwill ambassador Or I'm the face of the city and not you And likewise it avoids the mischief of Member of the public who's disgruntled with the mayor saying well it says in your job description that you had to do this and You had somebody else do it or something like that Keep it to guiding principles, that's just my comment and observation and Steve I think we'll circle back to that at the very end Because I think Don's points were that is an excellent point And I want to hear what folks think about calling these guiding principles as opposed to you know Job responsibilities or whatever But just going back to number four Don Two quick comments first off and I think Dave this might just be semantics So correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the position of the mayor just like you know My position is to advocate for the six thousand issue Constituents in my district the mayor's position is not to advocate for the mayor's office as to mayor advocate for the forty nine 9,000 plus people we have in the light of streets or whatever the issue is So I think it was just semantics, but you know I don't think any of us think that the mayor's position should be advocating strongly for the mayor's office should be advocating for the 49,000 plus constituents, but to Steve's point a little bit I think we also have to be careful with this to an extent that every mayor every all the person brings a different skill set to the table and whether and again We can look back in history at the mayors and councils and and some have had stronger financial backgrounds and others some have had better You know boardroom acumen than others some of them better You know What's the greeters if you will? You know good faces of the of the city In some haven't So I think we also want to be careful that we don't pigeonhole this and set up a mayor Or a council for failure by saying you know you're you're the face of the city You're the public face when that's really not their strength and maybe that's the strength of someone else Maybe that's the strength of the council president or the strength of Pick somebody Where the mayor's strength might be more on behind-the-scenes kinds of things So it's a Steve's point. I think we want to be careful that we don't that we recognize that mayors have different personalities and that The smart ones will look around that the team they have assembled Recognize their weaknesses and bring those people on that can help them You know fill those weaknesses with strengths. So good Let me rework the language a little bit on for that would Indicate that when the mayor is speaking as the voice of the city there needs to be some Advice and consent from the council and you all take a look at it And if we're not comfortable with it, we can keep working on that in the interest of moving along The mayor does deliver an annual state of the city address to the council the mayor's vision for the city is a key element of the address and Sets out the hopes and expectations for the mayor the Common Council and all elements of city government to make sure that Sheboygan is a great place to live and raise a family Now again, this is aspirational There and just speaking to Don's points. There may be some mayors who have stronger Writing skills or speaking skills or whatever But my question to you if we were looking at guiding principles with this state of the city address Reflect those kinds of issues values statements and so forth sound good sound not so good Okay, I think that's what I'm gonna call on Scott Well at the end where it says a great place to live and raise a family I would maybe add also to run a business How about a great place to live and work? It's not everybody runs a business, but we all work Does that sound good? All right Number six is there's a little more meat on the bones here The mayor provides input and cooperates with the CAO department heads and alder persons in developing the city's annual budget What do you all think? remember that the The hold on just a second. What's getting passed around right now is the essential duties and responsibilities of the chief Administrative officer. This is as amended on October 15th, 2012 and You'll notice that number one says develop and implement an annual budget under the direction of the Common Council with input from the mayor My number six reflects that more or less and I Think we all need to be comfortable with the fact that the CAO According to the job description Does develop and implement the annual budget? Let's just talk about develop because implement is is more administrative develops the annual budget under the direction of the council with input from the mayor and We're saying in our guiding principles that the mayor provides input and cooperates with the CAO department heads and alder persons in developing the city's annual budget to me these Guiding principles in this job description kind of move together They fit together well, but I would appreciate your input Would you have anything on this thing that you work? You work pretty closely with the C chief administrative officer and the mayor What's been the history? Yeah, I would I think the I don't have a problem other than the department heads. I'd probably You know strike that portion of it You know if we're keeping this kind of at the 30,000 foot level, you know, it's kind of a guiding principle You know because the the council Will dictate or or not dictate with your phrase that we'll put together goals and objectives for and then it's a CAO's responsibility to get that down to the department heads and roll all that up. So maybe more of an administrative change than than anything but Again, I'm going back to my original that you know, this body along with the mayor mayor's office should be Eventually getting to the point where it's you know setting vision direction and policy not you know going to DPW and saying Whatever to fire and saying whatever and that's what the chief administrative officer's job is to do is to take those budgets and roll them up under the Guidelines we've provided other thoughts Okay, do you have something all of them? I do and I completely agree with over and I'm in that I think it's important that we set those goals and objectives and and that the chief administrator then rolls out You know and implements those I think that's the you know something that we've struggled with a little bit over the last couple years I it's a new function that we're doing and I think that's what's important Is that we lay out that vision we lay out those goals would lay up those objectives? Obviously again that the mayor and the mayor's office is an elected official He's gonna have his own opinion he or she will have his own opinion and and on those but at the same time We all do and then at the end of that When once we've set those goals and objectives, I think it's you know the role of the CAO to then you know You know Delineate those down to the the department heads and come up with the best solution that we can from that point on So no, I fully agree with this Thank you All right excellent The CAO I'm looking at seven is responsible for the supervision and work performance of the department heads the mayor may provide or We may want to rephrase that should or will provide Observations and feedback about such work performance at the request of the CAO I'll comment that it's okay. I mean it's kind of I would that'd be an expectation You know it from anybody in the roles that we're in if there's a performance issue or good or bad You know if we've got an outstanding performer that should be pointed out to The chief administrative officer and or the department head, you know our employees deserve the feedback both positive and negative I mean so I think that's Should go without saying What do you all think is the role of the mayor in terms of being involved with likely not Employees under under department heads, but interaction with department heads themselves this is this is a little fuzzy and So my question is Where do you think that we ought to go with that? All over the floor I Guess I look I think that he has a responsibility to Work with the department heads for the simple fact that I mean some of them I'm just pulling chat off the top of my head as far as economic development and different areas like that that he's gonna work closely with Or whether it's community problems with the police department, you know that they're working on and dressing Gateway neighborhood, you know working with them. So I guess I I think that there is a Expectation that he does have a good working relationship with them and a close relationship with them Notting heads yet Daryl and the yet I think in that position He wouldn't be able to give and put on the budget or give I mean even down to giving a state of the city address if he didn't have a good working relationship with the department head So I mean he's got him he or she has to be knowledgeable about the city Otherwise anything that comes out of their mouth may not be of value Can I delete at the request of the chief administrative officer based on what you all are saying that it's an inherent duty an inherent responsibility Just coming I think so and then I mean it's up to the chief administrative officer of what action They're gonna take whether it's good or bad or or none or come to council and say, you know Here's the the information I received from the mayor that the you know This department has not meeting expectations and we now need to look at some further action I mean it kind of works. It's a two-way street I'm thinking everybody's hopefully can cooperatively work together with it and hopefully we don't have a situation like that. Okay Perfect and that really segues now into number eight excuse me attorney McLean at something else comment I had provided to hold them down previously, but I guess I will issue with at the request of the chief administrative officer in this Provision and I think it's been sort of addressed. I think that The mayor should be able to provide observations and feedback about work performance It is discretion his or her discretion. I don't think you have to wait until chief administrative officer comes As you got any issues with and what I'm hearing tonight from folks is that not That it really is an important affirmative duty of the mayor to To understand what department heads are doing what departments are doing, you know, what? What's going on and so forth so? One other issue as it as it relates to departments Statutory authority of the mayor.  So you can't just by job description here Rule that out. That's a statutory authority of the mayor. So there's another provision for the police Chief to obey written written orders of the of the mayor and it doesn't provide for obeying written orders of the chief administrative officer. So those are things that While you the chief administrative officer position has job description any basically Manages the departments. You got to bear in mind that Statutorily the mayor still got Some authority over at least police and fire departments Perfect Jim it was Attorney McLean. It was my understanding that we had a discussion about that last year and It was my understanding that we changed we changed the change that the police chief and the fire chief We're going to report to the chief administrative officers. Now. Maybe that was in Everyday administrative things versus versus the power of the mayor versus the power that the mayor has in cases of city emergencies like Asking the governor to call out the national garg or whatever whatever those police powers So that's right. I believe you're correct all the more. I think the job description for chief administrative officers does say sort of Day-to-day reporting administratively police chief Chief of course and then there's also the layer of the police and fire commission, but but you got to bear in mind that That's in the context of the statutory authority of the mayor as well. Good. All right, so we'll do that Number eight the mayor can I'm just kind of going through this because we do want to keep moving along the mayor and the chief Administrative officer Understand and support the need for each to work cooperatively with the other to ensure that the best interests of the city are always of primary importance Should go without saying okay, but actually it is very good to say it and we're all comfortable with that. I think that that is Is a kind of a basic operating principle there? number nine is It is statutory of the mayor makes all required and necessary appointments to special and standing committees I Don't does anyone have any comment on on nine? I mean that's I would just ask are those are those city statutes or state statues that provide those powers Or both that's state law and our city ordinances follow state law All right, and number ten is of particular interest to me just because I do a lot of strategic planning for folks Sorry to interrupt, but just one qualification there most Most of our appointments the mayor has authority to make the appointments, but they're subject to approval of the common council And that doesn't really set anyone's hair on fire. I don't think so. We're good there Number ten the mayor provides input and cooperates with the chief administrative officer department heads and older persons To develop and implement short and long-term strategic plans for the city That's that again fits in with the chief administrative officers job duties Which is number two develop the the CAO is charged with developing short and long term Strategic plans for the city under the direction of the common council with input from the mayor So that this this particular guiding principle just makes it completely clear that these are shared responsibilities So what have we missed? Are there any are there any other guiding principles that we would like to see? The mayor's position to have Given the way we are structured Don, I mean I guess going back to some of the opening comments You know if you call it a job description, it's one thing you call it guiding principles I think we want to You know have a component, you know again no different if we were writing one for the common council president The committee the whole chair the attorney McLean's office, you know We would expect that office to conduct themselves again as a guiding principle with professionalism and a Level of decorum expected of that office and I think you know something to that effect should be part of this As far as you know again under the auspice of a guiding principle, okay? How you word that good luck Up to the wordsmith. I Are we all agreed that we should retitle this as guiding principles? I'm very comfortable with that and I think that really reflects much more what we're what we're getting at here And I do note Don's comments and I'll I'll work that in And then there were some changes that we did make which I will Will make Procedurally in I think this should be a Resolution I had I had termed it a memorandum of understanding. It might be a resolution regarding guiding principles I would be open to input or suggestions for those from those who would have a better sense of Just how to implement this in the best way If I could ask Steve a question Steve we have a document on the floor, which is that the document that I cited before 3.1 from November 19th. Would it be appropriate for all our person Donahue to I don't know if the word clean up clean up the document with our discussion tonight and then Bring it back to the council in two weeks or whatever the next meeting is what would be the appropriate? Follow-up on the discussion tonight. What's the appropriate thing to do? Well, I think you could do it a couple of different ways one would be perhaps to Request all the person Donahue to Clean it up and flesh it out based on the conversation and either bring it back to this body as committee of the whole for further discussion Or send something directly to the council, I guess I'm anticipating having another committee of the whole meeting in early February First or second week of February. I want to give the public works director a opportunity to present his Goals and objectives for his department that he went over with the public works department the other night It's very well done and I think it's important for the council to see that So if we would do something in the first or second week of February as far as a committee the whole would you be ready at that time sure? No problem So maybe what we could do if it's all right with you all our person Donahue is hold document 3.1 For your revisions and bring it back to this body the first or second week of February and then we can get that Sent to the council if that's the wish of the body for maybe the second week in February Is that satisfactory with the with the members of the committee All right, I'll make that motion to hold back it We have a motion in a second to hold document 3.1. I think we can do it all eyes on this one all in favor Opposed chair votes aye. Thank you very much all our person Donahue for your work on this so far Yeah, well, thank you all for participating in the discussion and much appreciated Mary you just put me down as abstaining Okay, we're going to move on to item number eight on the agenda Which is resolution number 121 dash 12 dash 13 by all our person all their person Hammond a resolution authorizing the Appropriate city officials to execute the combined dispatch intergovernmental cooperative agreement I'll call on you first Alderman Hammond maybe just to if there's some thank you Thank you as an order from the team that worked on this from the city and the county side and then I'll ask Attorney McLean to actually go over the document and maybe have chief administrative officer Amorio go over the financial implications of this for the city and I also like to touch on a few with your permission a few of the components of the Document that I think might be important to note outside of this, but yeah, I mean this has been a Obviously many of you guys know 40 years in the coming Hopefully we don't have another shared service that takes another 40 years to get to But we've had you know as you know we started working on this in October of 2011 and in addition to this there were a lot of other things going on and as Well documented started off with a lunch between Adam and I and I'm not sure we either one of us knew what we were getting into when we decided to do that but You know throughout that period of time You know certainly from our side Jim Amorio the joint chiefs Herman and and Dumbagoski Adam Payne from the county inspector Brooke Bauer the county sheriff And most recently Jeff Rousseau the that pronounced all right It's a new inspector Jim Rousseau the new inspector Our incoming inspector all of those guys had a a lot of hand in this we've had a lot of meetings and Most recently attorney McLean and attorney Busing from the county again During our Christmas holiday got together to hammer out the final details of this so I Can't even imagine can't even count how many meetings we've had in the back and forth and it's close to happening It's not going to happen so on and so forth So I really really like to thank those people and anybody else involved in setting up meetings or whatever the case may be Because it was it was it was quite a labor and but we're here And we've got a intergovernmental agreement together, and I was shocked. It was only five pages So thanks Steve we're keeping it under under a novel Just a couple points. I'd like to point out as part of this There's going to be the creation of an advisory committee and that advisory committee is going to be a working Committee comprised of some individuals from the sheriff's department our police department and and also other law enforcement and presumably some representatives of the fire community as well in developing protocols developing standard operating procedures and Starting the process of doing the things necessary to combine a dispatch center right now We're targeting December of 2015 which seems like an eternity But realistically by the time we get architectural drawings You know contractors contracts and in the building and of course all the training that needs to go on will be right up there and Pushing up against that in a heartbeat. So I'm very excited that we got to this point and I think many of those people Gary Maples is probably one of them Who've been working on this for decades are very happy to so I'll turn it over to Steve to go through the rest But I just wanted to point out those two are our key components to this the advisory committee and also the December 31st deadline Steve thank you, Mr. Chairman And thank you all and I think one thing that's important to point out is in the purpose section of the agreement Little of the section sets out what what's happening or what the proposal is to happen It says this agreement is intended to effectuate the transfer of dispatch services currently operated by the city to the county Such that the county will then maintain and operate dispatch services for the city as well as for all other local units of government within Cheboyton County, you know discussion over the years. There's been various permutations of How how are you going to combine things? Well, that's the purpose here it the combining is basically for The county to take over all the dispatch services From the city so that they they will be providing services uniformly throughout entire Cheboyton County Right now the county provides dispatch services for everybody in the county except the city So that's the main purpose of the agreement and that's that's really a How the agreement is structured is how do you get to that end? The the term of the agreement in Section 3 is it remains in force and effect until such time as the county has Dispatch the city and dispatch responsibilities have been fully integrated by the county into the countywide dispatch center And the city's made its financial contribution to the county pursuant to paragraph 7 so While later on the the goal is and it's written as a goal and not a contractual deadline the goal is for the county to take over the dispatch operation by the end of 2015 may happen sooner may happen a little later, but that's That's the object and until such time as that happens the agreement remains in effect under the authority Entered into under the intergovernmental cooperation statutes the state of Wisconsin as well as all other states have Statutes that really encourage and promote intergovernmental cooperation Normally as a city governmental body, we're usually duking it out with other forms of government, especially the towns, but the statutes really try to encourage and promote intergovernmental cooperation and provide for broad powers of governmental bodies to contract with one another and Basically as long as it's not Illegal to do the state encourages governmental bodies to cooperate under sub five services to be provided by the county as I say the Concept is the county takes over the dispatch operations the issue arose as to what happens with the city dispatchers currently and that's certainly a Big concern of the existing dispatchers Are they going to be losing their jobs? Well the bottom of the page The county agrees that during the term of the agreement It will be will give primary consideration in the hiring of its new employees for dispatch operations From the pool of currently employed and qualified city dispatch personnel so long as such personnel are willing to accept such positions So there's it's not Binding on the county that the county has to hire all our existing city dispatchers, but They have agreed to give primary consideration to those folks when they're hiring the new dispatchers Section sex services to be provided by the city basically talks about city cooperating with the county transitioning the process and Also agreeing to provide a dispatch a backup dispatch location Right now it's contemplated in the agreement that it be that at the for a police station But it could be at such other location as the parties may agree To house a backup dispatch system that will be geographically separate from the dispatch center at the county's law enforcement center Attorney McLean, I think I'll have mr. Amorio take maybe number seven and Seven a and b as far as the financial and the implications and how we're going to come up with the money so Mr. Amorio if you'd like to step up to the podium and cover those and then I'll have you take over on the rest of it again I'm turning the clean Thank You chair What this means to the city is the city at the point that the facility is built either by March 30th March 31st of 2015 or within 90 days after the facility is constructed the city Would go out and borrow two and a half million dollars in order to pay for the construction of the facility at the county What that means to the taxpayer is currently taxpayers are paying On the order of one point two million dollars in total levy between city and county combined separate dispatch When this takes effect Even though the city has to borrow two and a half million dollars over a ten-year period It would effectively reduce the one point two million dollars to roughly nine hundred thousand dollars for the first ten years and Then after years eleven through twenty the savings to the city would be roughly six hundred thousand dollars to its tax What that means for individuals that would have a home with an equalized value of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars You currently pay roughly seventy five dollars for separate dispatch today Once the dispatch is combined in the first ten years That's seventy five dollars would drop to fifty seven dollars on an annual basis and then in years eleven through twenty It would drop to roughly thirty eight dollars. So it's almost a fifty percent savings and from a county perspective The county currently pays seventeen dollars on that same hundred and fifty thousand dollar equalized value home and Would pay after that thirty seven dollars, which is almost double So the city's rate gets almost cut in half the county's rate almost doubles but it spreads the combined cost of dispatch to all taxpayers in the county equally and Did you do you have a copy of that of be there just the annual ongoing operational and maintenance costs? You know how many personnel we're going to have that basically I I think we all have a copy of this But maybe for the benefit of the people at home The dispatch salaries are sure good. Oh, yeah The total estimated operational costs for the first years two million one hundred and fifty thousand dollars It's broken up into twenty four dispatchers for one million six hundred and fifty thousand Manager for that center of about ninety nine thousand with benefits Four supervisors in that center that would cover twenty four seven on shifts about three hundred and twelve thousand and maintenance costs of roughly ninety thousand We believe that there's probably going to be some synergies there And we believe the ongoing estimated cost would hopefully be less than that once the facility is up and operational probably After the first 12 to 15 months Just a thank you just a quick comment on the annual ongoing in operation. I think it's important to note that Once this thing goes through an attorney McLean, please correct me We don't have a whole lot of input and say over there This is just an initial estimate of what the ongoing operational costs are The county is going to be fully In charge of that facility and they'll dictate the manning and the operation operational level of that facility so Again, I don't want people to take that because it could be dependent how the county decides to run it could be higher It could be lower versus is just an original estimate of what that's going to look like Yeah, that that sentence right after the the two point one million dollar Might must I think is what you're talking about Alderman Hammond. It says upon fully Upon becoming fully operational all ongoing costs will be borne by the county County shall be fully responsible for the ongoing costs regardless of whether the costs end up being more or less than Estimated this is something we have we discussed at length in the conversations that we've had Any questions for mr. Ramonio? Alderman Ali Wendalski. I have one quick one about part a Or it says initial cost that it's estimated to cost two million five hundred thousand dollars And that the city will pay that what happens if the cost is over that amount That's all the city pays is two and a half million dollars whether it's under or over We have cost estimates initially that we reviewed as a as a group and the cost estimates were around two and a half million dollars That's what we agreed to thank you Alderman Lewandowski any other questions for mr. Amodio Thank You Jim Steve if you want to carry on with the rest of the agreement, please sure before I do that just one observation on the the city's capital contribution of the two million five hundred thousand Mr. Amodio referred to Borrowing that over ten years and there have been some previous discussions and I think the shared service committee was talking about and had charts Kind of looking at that what the relative cost is over ten-year period and so forth, but the last sentence there Does not restrict the city to a ten-year borrowing it city shall obtain its contribution by whatever manner it deems appropriate So say in 2015 If that's when we need to do the borrowing and it's more Effective or or advantageous to the city to do the financing some other way we have the ability to do that We're not locked into necessarily borrowing the money over ten years Or what have you There's one reference to revenue transfer At the bottom of page 2 it's 7e to the extent that the city is receiving hard line 9-1-1 or other funding exclusively as a consequence of operating an emergency communications dispatch system City shall cooperate in transferring such funding to the county as county assumes the emergency communications dispatch functions from the city I'm not positive whether or not the city gets any funds currently, but if you look if you know on your monthly phone bill there there are charges on there for I don't know how they call them, but emergency services or something like that that Some of those funds go back to Communities I know at least I know for sure the county receives those dollars For the operation of 9-1-1 systems to the extent that the city is currently receiving any of those dollars as As we phase out and are no longer providing The 9-1-1 dispatch response system Any of those funds would would go to the county as opposed to staying with the city With respect to the backup dispatch center that was referenced previously item 7h Indicates that to the extent that there are heating electrical or similar costs associated with housing the backup system Such costs are borne by the city all other costs of equipping Maintaining manning and operating the backup dispatch center will be borne by the county 7 or excuse me section 8 on administration talks about the Combined dispatch communication center advisory committee that Alderman Hammond previously referenced Part of part of the job. Excuse me attorney McLean but part of that administration I would imagine is that after this is up and running if there are if there are problems If there are problems in the operation that would be the sounding board for any any issues that would come up in the early operation of the system it I think that's the idea that the If there are issues With the the transition so forth that would be addressed by that advisory committee Thank you and not just issues but again setting protocol, you know putting together a streamlined set of operating procedures The liaison committee for this will be the county's law committee as is indicated in there They'll be the ones charged so the advisory committee again is really charged with you dealing with because these are the The people in the know these they're charged with building the protocols bringing the team together Training, you know all those types of things the remaining provisions. I would Classify as boy or plate type of Any questions for attorney McLean Thank you chairman born. Is this going to be any agenda Monday? I presume it will be yeah I would imagine Mary would get that to suit him round it would be up for a vote on Monday, okay I will then save my thank you some comments for Monday Okay, Alderman Hammond. Thank you, mr. Chair. I would make a motion to approve second We have a motion in a second to approve document 4-4 any discussion We call the roll on this one Mary I I Motion carries Next meeting date as I talked about before we'll have a meeting Probably the second week of February I'll be in consultation with all the person Don't hear you on that. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn I have a motion and a second to adjourn all in favor Opposed chair votes. I take everyone


Good day everybody. You excited? So me and Jared are dressed up for date night in celebration of World AIDS Day. And to celebrate, we're going to do what a lot of couples like to do in their spare time, which is get tested for sexually transmitted infections. This is the first time that we're doing this together, though, at home. And we're only able to do this thanks to a company called Get Tested, who is coming to us in partnership on this video. Now Get Tested helps make the whole experience more private and more convenient by letting you do the STI checks at home, checking for chlamydia, trike, gonorrhea, herpes, simplex virus 2, of course, HIV, syphilis. Is that everything? Don't you think? So the way that the kit works is that there's one for females and one for males. So for the female test, I have a swab and I have blood collection. For the male, I got a urine and a blood test. Wash your hands with warm water for 30 seconds. Shake hands to get the blood flowing. We just wash, though. We shake. Am I left-handed or right-handed? Do you know? You're left-handed. Really? Huh? You think I'm left-handed? Oh, and you write weird. Oh, it's blood time, baby. You ready? Twist cap off. Oh, you gotta just press it. The needle will come out. You go first. No, same time. I'm scared. Did I do it? You're scared? Why can't we just do it? Okay, let's go. So they come with little band-aids in the package, too. The pricking didn't hurt that bad. It's not a competition, but if it were, who killed that shit?  No. And I bleed like an ox. So we're doing, I'm doing a swab collection test and you're doing... A swab collection test. No, you're doing a urine test. Because we're not sure about Jared's aim, though, we have a little failsafe. Because Lord knows I will not have the cowhide being pissed on. Where you going? I'm going to water it. You ready? You getting stage fright? In, insert, push, push. And now I am packaging this away to be sent off to the lab. And I'm finished. Just like that, guys. And now Jared pees into a bottle. I don't know if I can. You can do it, I believe in you. Should I turn it down? No. I love watching you pee. Get out of here. I do. It's so fascinating. Please stop watching. Stop. I can't do it. I'm trying. I love you. Okay, so while Jared's gone to go pee to recap, we did the blood test first and this has been sitting now out for 10 minutes. What we're going to do is we're going to take the card here and then as instructed without touching, you're going to tuck it right there like so. I'm going to take Jared's in the bag. Good job. So you want to syringe up until the second point. So you want to get enough pee to get to there. Oh, it's warm. It is over. It was easy. What part of that was easy? You struggle to bleed and you struggle to pee. Do you have any reasons to believe that these results will come back different than the ones you had three months ago?  No. This should be the same.  So unless... Excellent sex at that. Unless you... Yeah, no. And you just got tested in October.  I don't put her business out here, but a woman that I was with had gotten a UTI. Do you know I've had chlamydia before? I was tested positive for that in 2000, I would say 2013. And then I was treated like immediately for it. It sucked. It sucked.  My actual experience, the thing with chlamydia is that between 50 and 90% of women who have it have zero symptoms at all, which is the scary thing, you know? Every single time I go to get tested, I have to check that box, yes. Really? We don't have that checked. Well, they ask you, don't they ask, have you ever tested positive? Yeah, I think they ask you, but there's no box or anything. Like, we just... Whenever I got tested, it was like, I got in there and I was there like, so what are you here for today? And I was like, I want to get tested for STDs. Which one is the specificity or is there one that you had before? My thing always was like, I want to get tested for all of them.  What I liked about this is that it does everything one time for you. It is just that, you don't have to ask for that. And you can do it at home and they gave you backups for everything. So if you mess it up because you're not a doctor for some reason, there is like an extra swab you can use. For people who do this exercise and the results don't come back as expected. Do you think it would adjust or drastically change your relationship or just be something that you guys kind of tackle together? So the problem is, is that with these tests, it's so hard to pinpoint who gave what and where it came from. Especially we both. Because I'm pretty sure whatever we both and whatever comes positive is gonna be on both. It's not gonna be on just one. Let's handle it and let's move forward and how what are we gonna do in this dynamic to help make sure this is good? Make sure that we're still on track and is your trust broken? Is my trust broken and whether we fix it? That's the thing is you are really on it.  Like who instilled in you the importance of getting tested? Growing up in the church, even if I had sex one time, it was like God's gonna punish me. So I had sex one time, have you seen the movie Kids? Yeah. So where I'm at is like God's gonna punish me. Really something like that? So when I used to go get tested, it was because I was like expecting to have something. And as you've gotten older, you just do it now out of habit? I mean I haven't got tested in the last three months, four months. That's like pretty, most people, some people haven't gotten tested. They say one in three Americans have not been tested in the past That's scary. You need to get tested every three months. And the great thing is that it comes in like a really discreet box too. Like you remember how it came? Yeah, it came like a normal package. I told Jared when it was on the counter. I was like, I got us some gifts. And then we opened it slowly. And I waited until he did all the unboxing. And then he saw this and I was like, it's testing. It's not scary for me. It's something, I have nothing to hide. How important is safe sex for you? Safe sex is insanely important for me. I think it's more important than ever. Obviously as I've just become aware through brands I get tested, through my Trojan sponsorship, just how prevalent these things are that are out there. Your health matters to me. Yeah. Like I would never want to do anything to jeopardize you long term. And if we're making that decision, it's because we're doing it together, both having all the facts and information. Okay, maybe final words, about to go mail this off and get the peace of mind that we both deserve. But throughout this whole process, because I kind of dragged you into this whole thing with me. For World AIDS Day, it's for a great cause. What did you learn? I thought it was a crazy fact that there was 20 million new cases every year. And that's insane.   Get tested. Happy World AIDS Day. If we're not lovers or friends, then why are you here? As fellow sexual health advocates, it's so important to me that you guys are the example that helps to lead your communities.  So I wanna give away one get tested kit worth $199 and all you have to do to win is spread the message, which you were gonna do anyways, right? For complete contest rules and to find out more about the get tested kit, go down, shuh. It's not as sexy as you thought, is it?


Hello everybody, in this session we'll discuss the complexity of agreement. So agreement is a problem which is tackled by many communities in social choice theory distributed computing, theoretical computer science, and in this case it's a theoretical computer science approach on Bayesian agreement. So based the discussion on a paper published in the Symposium of the Theory of Computing in 2005 by Scott Aronson called the Complexity of Agreement. And it tackles the question of two Bayesian agents trying to agree and then you can compute how many bits of information they could share and also to reach an agreement and other problems of complexity theory in terms of either communication or time. So the basic idea is that the two Bayesians initially have the same prior, so maybe they're born with the same prior. And then they collect very different data like imagine that one Bayesian is going to live his life in one way, like the other Bayesian is going to live her life in a very different way. So they collect very different data and because of this they have different posterity. So if you ask them for instance what is the probability that France will win the next World Cup, then maybe they will disagree because they have access to different data. So they said different probabilities like maybe one is going to say you're 10% and the other is going to say you're 50%. So maybe just so that people who are not familiar with Bayesian language follow with us like some ways it's coming from another community. What do you mean by a prior? So when we say this Bayesian, she has a prior on the France winning the World Cup or she has a prior and then she changed her prior and then she has a posterior. So maybe like just like introduce this language to you. Yeah, sorry about this. So when you assume that an agent is Bayesian, so an agent is Bayesian if he or she follows the laws of probability to determine what to think. So it's like a fully probabilistic agent like we named Bayesian as probabilistic. And to apply the laws of probability, if you know what you should think after observing some data, you need to apply this equation called Bayes rule. And to apply Bayes rule, you need this prior. So the prior is what you would think before looking at the data. So it's really initially like the two agents agreed that France had like a 10% probability for instance of winning the next World Cup, like the World Cup in 2022, let's say. And then as they get, they collect more and more data for each piece of data essentially they're going to apply Bayes rule. So Bayes rule is going to, so it's an equation and it says how to compute what you should believe just after you've seen the data. And so this posterior distribution is like an update, it's a change compared to what you used to believe before looking at the data. So there's this like update rule called the Bayesian inference that's going to improve your belief in a sense now that you know the data. And so you can imagine that if, so let's call the two agents Alice and Bob. So if Alice sees no data or very few data or data that are unrelated to football, then maybe she's not going to change her prior a lot. And so after years and years of learning about mathematics and school stuff but not looking at football, she will conclude that France has a 10% probability of winning the next World Cup because that's what she used to believe. Maybe on the opposite side, like Bob has lived a very different life. Maybe he's followed football carefully or maybe not. And he's seen data about this football player called Mbappe and he's become very good. And he sees that Mbappe is improving year after year. And so now given that the data that he has seen, he's going to change his belief and he's going to say, well, actually now I believe that France has maybe a 50% probability of winning the next World Cup. He doesn't really decide to change, it's more like the laws of probabilities by applying the laws of probabilities, he comes with this conclusion. And so now imagine that Alice and Bob meet one another again. And now they are in disagreement, not because they were thinking in a bad way, but just because they were exposed to different kinds of data. And the question of Arman, actually a question that came back to Arman, I think it was 1981, I'm not sure, in the 80s I think. 76. 76 in the 70s. So Arman asked the question, will Alice and Bob agree if they get to communicate and if they try to agree on the probability that France will win the next World Cup? And Arman's answer is yes, they can agree. And he has a very simple protocol, which is just share all of the data. So Alice will tell everything to Bob. So also I'm assuming that the two basions are honest, like fully honest, and they also trust each other fully. And so if they share all of the data, like Alice knows everything that Bob has seen, Bob knows everything that Alice has seen. And so applying the laws of probability forces both of them to conclude to the posterior distribution once all of these data, the data of Bob and Alice, are known. And so they reach a conclusion. So Arman proved, and it's actually a very straightforward theorem, that two basions cannot agree to disagree if they had the same prior initially. But what Arman did not answer is, what if they had a huge amount of data?  And we cannot communicate all of this data, maybe because it takes too much time. If there are like two bytes to be transferred, maybe you cannot transfer this amount of data. And so Arman's question was like, suppose you have two agents that have learned from huge amounts of data. Maybe it's like even more than two bytes. Maybe it's like exabytes, exabytes, like huge amounts of data. Can they agree quickly without transferring most or even hardly any of this data? And the mind-blowing answer of Arman's is that, yes, they can agree efficiently. In fact, the amounts of bits of information they need to exchange is independent from the amount of data they collected. So even if you have two agents that collected as much data as the size of the universe, as opposed to two agents that collected like 10 bits of data, then the number of communication that you need to agree is going to be the same. Or it's going to be the same way. And this is really mind-blowing. When I discovered this, I did not believe it. I had to read the proof to be convinced. And then I had to re-read it to understand the proof. But yeah, it's one of these really remarkable events in computer science. And I think it has like, in terms of philosophy, it's like a philosophical question. If you think about this, it's like, can we have communication? Like, is communication, can communication be made efficient to agree on things? And here you have a very straightforward answer, like a very compelling answer. Or a bit of caveats, of course, because applying base rule is complicated in practice. But it's still a strong indication that if we at least try to be vision, then we can quickly agree. Yeah, maybe it deserves some more explanation on what it means exactly to agree, to disagree. It's something that humans often do during debate. Like, someone believes X, some other debater believes not X. And then they will discuss for some time and the outcome often ends up being, oh, so you believe X, I believe not X. Let's agree that we disagree on that question. But for Bayesian agents, it won't stop there. Bayesian agents will not stop at you believe X, I believe not X. And let's agree that we agree on that question. Because they do the thing called meta-updating. If you observe that a Bayesian agent believes something different than what you believe, it will update your beliefs. And it's something that we can also do in real life with humans. If you see a human that believes something different than you, it will push you to ask questions about what you actually believe. Are you correct? Is that person more correct than me? So if it's my professor at the university, I will most likely update my belief towards what he or she thinks. But if it's someone that has absolutely no credential or that I don't know at all, I might decide to a lot less update what I believe based on this. So when two Bayesian agents interact and know that both of them are high quality Bayesian agents, then they are forced to update towards one another. That's why it's not a regular, according to Bayesian agents, to agree to disagree with another Bayesian agent. Yeah, and one thing that you can discuss as well is the protocol, the debating protocol between two Bayesians who try to agree. Because it's not what you would recommend to debate in general. You tend to think of debates as something very sophisticated where you have to push arguments and reasons you believe and for the key data. But the protocol proposed by Hanson is funny how different it is from all of this. Essentially, Alice is going to say what she believes. Bob is going to listen to Alice and say, oh, I know that she believes this. And he's going to do the meta-updating you're talking about. He's going to apply this rule to update his beliefs. And then he's going to say what he believes. Then Alice is going to listen, update, and have a new belief. And she just says what she believes now. And you have this back and forth where everyone is just saying what they believe. And it sounds like a very bad advice for debating. You don't just say what you believe. It's just the problem has been stated in a formal enough way so that you can compute probabilities. And then you just send a sequence of bits about what the object is. And then you can choose the probability in a specific number. So you just give me your belief in a precise sequence and then a precise probability computation. And then I update mine. Yeah, but it is a good one. Usually we debate about things. And sometimes the debaters don't even know what they're debating about anymore because it's going into all sorts of directions. And it's useful to just make a concrete question. Like can we at least agree on what we're debating about? And choosing a probability I think is a very good way to just remove all the things that are not that important or confusing. And just say, well, let's bet on what's going to happen in two years or something like this. And what are the probabilities that you are going to put? And I think it can help to clarify a lot of the debates. But then I would recommend to do exactly what I would. I think it's useful to just like everyone says what he believes. But because we humans are not very good Bayesians and are very honest and not very fully trusting on one another. Anton's algorithm, communication protocol may not be very efficient for humans in practice, unfortunately. Yeah, maybe another thing I can discuss is the proof of the fact that the two Bayesians will quickly agree in this case. So like the exact proof, like it's quite technical and the paper is a bit hard to read. But the idea of the proof is actually very simple. So the reason why this works is you can imagine a third observer like Eve, for instance, who's like listening to the debate. And all she hears is like Ali saying your number and then Bob saying another number and Ali saying another number and so on. And let's assume that Eve knows nothing like let's consider like so it can be a fictitious if it's just for the sake of the proof. And Eve has the same prior and she has no data and she's just observed the debate. Now it turns out that there's a theorem in Bayesianism in probability theory that says that if if Alice knows strictly more than Eve, then whatever Alice says, Eve has to believe Alice like that. That's a very, again, it's very real theorem to think about it because like it's the argument from authority, you could say. And I guess it's a version of this. It does require a few assumptions, like instance, Alice and Eve, in this case, must be Bayesian. They must be honest and they must fully trust one another, which are put the next in practice in practice. But you have this theorem that says that from the laws of probability, if Alice has strictly more data than Eve and if they had the same prior, and if they know that they know all of this, like they at least knows that Eve knows that Alice has more data than Eve and so on, like Eve has to know that Alice knows that Eve knows and so on. And you should have all of this, then it's a theorem that whatever Alice says, Eve has to believe it. And in the case of the debate between Alice and Bob, when Alice says, well, I believe it's 10%, Eve knows strictly less than Alice at this point because we assume that she has a strictly less data. And so Alice, and so Eve must believe what Alice just said, so Eve must say, OK, so now I believe it's 10%. And now Bob comes in and Bob says, no, actually I believe it's 50% of the consent. It turns out that at this point, Eve knows strictly less than Bob because what Eve knows is no data and the first message that was communicated. So Eve only knows that Alice thinks initially that it's 10%, but Bob also knows it because Bob is listening to Alice as well. So Eve knows strictly less than Bob, so now she should believe whatever Bob says. So if the debate was like Alice said 10%, then Bob say 50%, then Eve first should believe 10% and then 50%, and so on. So then if Alice says 20%, then Eve should believe 20%, if Bob says 40%, then Eve should believe 40%, and so on. And so if you look at Eve's beliefs now, they're going to go back and forth, they're going to ping-pong. And there's another theorem that you can prove that says that a belief cannot oscillate too much. So like the sum of the squared of the variations of the belief must be smaller than the variance of the prior. You have this theorem that you can prove. And this shows that Eve cannot oscillate forever, like she was more like the expectation of her, but anyways, she cannot oscillate forever. So at some point she has to settle somewhere. And if Eve settles somewhere, it means that because she believes whatever Alice and Bob says, it means that Alice and Bob are essentially saying the same thing. And that's how you prove that Alice and Bob will agree. That was clear enough, but I think it's really cool that it's also like a relatively simple proof. I could explain it more or less. And it's very insightful, I think, it's very deep. Yeah, one point to note also about this, this move is that they don't talk about exact agreement, like having exactly the same beliefs. Because these codes in some situations still require an exponential amount of time, different to when we talked about complexity. But in the paper, it talks about a slightly changed definition of an agreement. So it considers what's delta epsilon agreement, which means agreeing with a distance of epsilon. So if the two Bayesian agents still disagree, at least that this agreement is within a very small difference of kilo epsilon and also the delta in there is that the protocol for agreement is not always sure to succeed. And there is a small delta probability that the agreement won't succeed. Yes, Madi? What? What? Yeah, so it's like epsilon delta agreement, like you want to agree up to epsilon with very high probability, but this probability of agreement can be made arbitrarily high. And epsilon can be made arbitrarily small. So it's like a new agreement, as close as you can get to agreement without being guaranteed to achieve it. I don't know if you want to add more things on the paper, but before we wrap it up, I wanted to go to how other communities talk about agreements, because they were close to the result. I also think it would be great to talk about federated learning and Byzantine resilience and distributed system in general. Yeah, so maybe before going to this, we can mention another result of the paper. Which is what happens if you have multiple agents or Alice, Bob, Charlie and so on. So if you have n agents and they get to communicate in some way, like maybe Alice can have a talk directly to Dave, like she has to go to Bob or whatever. Then I want to prove that in this case you can still achieve agreement, but it's going to take longer. Essentially, I'm skipping a few details, so it's not exactly what I'm going to say, but essentially you need to have n times more exchange of communication rounds than for the case where there are only two agents. And I don't know if you mentioned it, but essentially when there are two agents, the number of communication rounds you need to agree up to Epsilon is going to be one over Epsilon squared. So if you disagree about the world cup, if you disagree up to one person, for instance, then it means that the number of communication rounds that you need is roughly of the order of 100 squared. Which is a bit more than that, but essentially it's this. So that's 10000 and it means also that it's not going to be immediate either. You still need to go back and forth. So like agreement between patients still takes a little bit of time and it's not immediate. However, one thing that the paper does not answer, it's left as an open poem, is the question of whether there could be a more effective, more efficient communication scheme than the one of Aronson. Or maybe you can even prove that Aronson's scheme, and I think he proved that it could not be better than something. But yeah, so right now there's a gap like in our knowledge. Like we know that to get Epsilon agreement, you need to communicate at most one over Epsilon squared times. But we know that it's going to take at least log of one over Epsilon. That's the number of decimals you want to agree up. But we don't know the minimal number of communication rounds to which agreement and maybe you can still have an exponential speed up compared to Aronson's result. We don't know. Yes, Louis. So agreement in distributed computing. Yeah, so it's interesting that the paper mentioned this agreement when there are multiple agents and not all agents can communicate with all other agents. This is some cases that is very useful in practice when we have a distributed system with each part of the system making observations about the world. For example, we can think of the recommended systems in today's world with social medias that they are not controlled by one central server but they are absolutely distributed. All these servers have to implement some algorithms to make decisions in a coherent way with one another. So somehow this sort of argument problem has to be solved. And one thing we often discussed in this channel is also the concept of Byzantine resilience, which is when you are a distributed system and you can't trust fully all the parts of the system. How do you continue to do exactly what you want to do when you don't fail because of parts of the system that are working against you. And so this is not mentioned at all in the paper. And I expect that the solutions from this paper won't succeed at all in the case of Byzantines. So malicious and Bayesian is maybe not so perfect. Well yeah, so I think there's an interesting research we've done about Byzantine-Basian agreement or Byzantine-Basian learning in general. Maybe the last point is that there is the distributed community approach to consensus and agreements. And here there is like no inference, no updating of priors. It's mostly propositions and we want to agree on a value that was proposed. So typically the consensus statement is that at the end the value that was decided is a value that was proposed. So rarely you see like there are protocols where people update what they propose. But it's mostly about having a quorum or a quota or like a majority proposing the same thing and then reaching agreements because they propose the same thing. Now the third community that is also tackling agreement a lot is the community of game theory. Social choice theory, aggregating preferences, voting systems. You can think of voting systems as an approach that humanity invented to solve the problem of reaching consensus and agreeing. And also this is maybe another direction where the toolbox of Bayesian agreement can bring new interesting problems people could work on. I don't know if Lé wants to add something on this. Yeah, I think there's a lot to, like these are three different ways but with different constraints to tackle the problem of agreement. And all of them have interesting features and also like maybe you should combine the different features. Like some ideas from one side or like should be combined because like there's a more overarching problem. And so for instance if you take the case for social choice like for voting in general. One thing that we usually don't take into account when we're designing voting systems. And I've done research into this I know a little bit is that we usually assume for instance that the different agents know what they want. And if you enter like if you combine this with more of a Bayesian approach. But the problem in Bayesianism is that people have a guess about what they want or what they think about the world let's say. But they have uncertainty about this and this uncertainty can change depending on the amounts of data that they have. So for instance I think voting with uncertainty is an interesting research area. Another interesting research area would be to combine a Bayesian agreement with or Bayesian like agreement with distributed computing in the presence of Byzantines for instance. And this is close to machine learning to distribution machine learning or things like federated learning for instance. And also you can try to combine all three together for more fun. Okay maybe you can wrap up. Hopefully someone listening to this from either of the three communities could consider working on a problem in the intersection. Between strategy, proofness in game theory or Byzantine for tolerance and distributed computing and of course Bayesian agreement. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. See you in a week. See you. Bye. Stop.


Hi, this is Evanie, and here's a quick tutorial on how to make documents accessible to students and parents in various languages by using Google's built-in translation features. After you open your Google Doc, we're going to go to the top menu and choose Tools. Then you're going to scroll down and choose Translate Document. And the first thing that will happen is you will get a pop-up box that will allow you to make any changes to the title for your new translated document. Then you're going to choose a language. There are over 70 different languages available for translation. If you type in the first few letters of the language that you want to translate, it'll give you a quicker search. Then we tap Translate, and the new document will be generated. After your document is translated, I will give you a tip to go back and check the formatting of your document and make any adjustments, and then it is ready to share. Thanks for watching. Be sure to like, comment, or reply to one of our other videos or share the playlist below. Subscribe to our channel and enable notifications so that you don't miss out on the next episode.


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