Police and Fire Commission met to discuss timeline and next steps for hiring the next police chief. Here’s what they had to say.
Spoiler Alert – there are no specifics. Here’s the audio for the meeting at noon yesterday.
And a brief recap.
NOTE: Kevin Gundlach is appearing by phone, but it is not noticed on the agenda
The meeting was to set up a process and timeline for the police chief hire. They say that only Fabiola Hamden has the experience of hiring a new police chief. Everyone else joined after Koval was hired.
WHAT DOES THE MAYOR’S OFFICE WANT?
Enermuoh-Trammel Enermuoh-Trammel says she met with the mayor and Deputy Mayor Cam McLay to brainstorm and find out what types of resources are available to the commission. She says other members of the commission were also invited to meet with her. They are invited to update the members of the committee.
Trent Jackson asks who has met with the mayor, he says he just met with her now. Jacquelyn Boggess indicates she also met with the mayor. Kevin Gundlach also met with the mayor and had a “similar discussion”
Enermuoh-Trammel says that for her meeting they talked a little bit about the mayor’s office role in this. The mayor wanted to make perfectly clear that this is the PFC’s process and while they may have ideas and opinions it is the PRC’s process to own. They do, however, want to work with the PFC. HR is at their committee’s disposal. That is why they had someone from HR at the last meeting to entertain questions, she thought they were going to get a presentation. They can invite HR back if that is needed. Enermuoh-Trammel recommends they invite Harper Donohue. They deputy also indicated that they might have some input on a search firm, if they have an interest in a search firm. The commission has received emails and communications with respect to other companies that would like to be considered. The mayor also offered up that through her work in her past life she is connected with Mayor’s across the country and to the extent that they want to broaden their search and tap into different municipalities, looking at how they handled the process or tapping into their talent base. She has the connections and would be willing to make the connections for the committee. They also mentioned Herman Goldstein as someone who might be able to she some insight and light for us, because he is considered the godfather of community policing and has done a lot of consulting work and he is offering up his services to guide us. She also thinks that Fabiola mentioned that they talked to him in the past. She has to return an email about if they want to have his guidance. She also says that there is a tool that they can tap into which is the local voices network, they assist and facilitate discussions. They record the discussions for community organizations and then correlate and aggregate the data and provide you the analytics. It sums up and tells you a story about the input. She isn’t clear if there is a cost. Boggess says she knows about it. They will need to get more information on the parameters and what it is used for and what types of confidentiality agreement we need to have. The mayor also wanted them to know that funds could be available to them if needed, she won’t say the number out loud because she doesn’t want to have to commit them to anything that they have not fully investigated or committed to. They discussed figuring out a way to partner with HR and use a consultant to reduce costs overall. To capitalize on HR expertise and search firm expertise and marry them in a way that saves costs. The mayor also mentioned that the public is hungry to know what the process will look like and the sooner they can articulate what the process will look like it would be beneficial for every body. Now that they have decided the Acting Police Chief they want to make sure they are working with him, to have him out in the community continuing to do the great work the Madison Police Department does. Cam will be available to them and will try to attend the meetings when he can. They would like to be copied on any press releases that they send out to amplify any message they wish to get out into the universe.
MPPOA’s INTEREST?
They also mentioned that the MPPOA (she says she is assuming that is a union), she asks Kevin if he knows what MPPOA is and he says “I think that is the Madison Police Union, they are not affiliated with the South Central Federation of Labor, so I don’t.” It was mentioned that they have a strong interest in where we go with this and they want to make sure that as we think about the stakeholders and community influences that we want to bring to the table that we make sure they are included as part of the process. And making sure that we are working with the people in the police department in terms of what the process should look like.
BACK TO THE MAYOR
They will make city facilities available to them if they want to outreach to the community. They can help coordinate and structure what that would look like. She says that they had a conversation that if they are going to do the public commentary and inviting public feedback that we NOT close it out to the community but that we move it out into the community. She doesn’t know what that will end up looking like. Enermuoh-Trammel suggests there is more than one session that hits each corner of the city. That was her meeting and invites other members to say if they discussed anything else with the mayor.
Jackson says they covered the same things you just talked about but also she mentioned that she wants to make sure that we have more than 2 community input sessions and the mayor’s office/City of Madison will provide them with the necessary resources to involve the African American, specifically African American committee, the Latinx and Native American community.
Gundlach says his session with the mayor was similar. They also talked about other ways to hear from the community and the mayor’s office was going to look at if there were other ways besides community listening sessions. He says sometimes people go to the sessions but doesn’t necessarily mean they are representative of the community at-large that may not be able to. They want to see if there are other venues that are working in other areas.
PUBLIC INPUT
Enermuoh-Trammel asks if that would be on-line or survey?
Gundlach says that is interesting, but other ways to get input. They didn’t even bring up social media. He says some neighborhood associations reflect their neighborhood, others don’t. Some people who come to listening sessions are quieter than others, and they want to get input from people who might not be as outspoken or have time to attend.
Enermuoh-Trammel suggests not just oral feedback or written feedback at the meeting if someone is not comfortable taking the stage and speaking in front of a large group of people.
Jenna Rousseau, staff for the PFC, says that in the past they had allowed written comments but maybe opening it up to social media might allow for more people to comment.
Gundlach says that some nonprofits work with certain populations to get input. The mayor asked what labor’s input would be, regular working people. He’d have to look into that, because that is a different role that he is in, but certainly other community organizations. He says it could be Centro Hispano or Urban League or who knows which ones, but is there a way they could get feedback as well for those who might not attend the sessions.
Enermuoh-Trammel says that would mean partnering with nonprofits or other organizations, giving them guidelines to work off of, to gather input for us, but we would not necessarily have to be there. That would be happening in tandem and separately from the 4 to 5 community sessions that we put together, is that what I am hearing.
Gundlach says this takes some more discussion. They’d have to talk about the role fo the city or the commission in talking with these organizations, which ones would we go to, would we have a survey questionnaire for social media or written. He says the question arose because there are just so many people who aren’t able to attend and those who attend there are people who don’t speak up as much, like in a classroom setting. What that looks like in detail they didn’t have those discussions.
Enermuoh-Trammel says that if they have ideas on how to operational this to work with community partners, they should let her know. She doesn’t know if those organizations would be willing to hold listening sessions. This might be important enough to them that they would be willing to partner with that. They might not have the bandwidth or staff or time to do it, but at the very least we could have a comment box available and they could have as survey to get feedback. She asks them to give some thought about what that might look like.
Gundlach says that they should have enough listening sessions so it reaches all parts of the city. The city is sort of North, East, South, West. They should be close to a bus line as well. Two may not be enough.
Enermuoh-Trammel says they also need to be mindful of that there is a great deal of interest and a a lot of people want to be heard so as we think about the many different ways we want to open up the process and be transparent and gather the intelligence that we need to do our job, we have to figure out a way to manage it as well. As we are thinking about all the great ideas we have to think about our schedules, our scribe, who will collect the information, if we’re not using the Local Voices Network, who will aggregate all of that for us. I know we are not going to have time to sort through 1000s and 1000s of comment and feedback to do the justice that has to be done to this process.
Gundlach asks if that is where city resources can assist. Enermuoh-Trammel says “don’t know”, they would have to ask. Gundlach says he thinks this is where they could ask. He thinks that is the kind of resources that are needed. When they do listening sessions for other things, like the grocery store on the south side, they have city staff that get assigned to that. To set them up, coordinate and getting feedback, back, analyzing it etc etc. So hopefully they can do the same thing for something like this.
Boggess says that her conversation was not much different than what she was hearing. Yours was more specific about structural support and funding. She says that one of the things that she talked to the mayor about was that when they get so much information, to include everyone’s voices, then what do we do with the input. That is the central questions. She will argue for figuring out how to do something that is substantive and something that makes this a deep listening. She doesn’t know what that looks like. We want the input, then the job is how to make that real listening and caring of that information.
LOCAL VOICES NETWORK (LVN)
Boggess shares her experience and understanding of the work they do. She was trained in the course. They only do 5-8 people at a time. It’s your neighbors or cousins or friends. One person puts a machine in the middle of the table. It’s not political at all and asks questions like “what is it like to live in Madison” and that is supposed to gather people’s perspective. You could tailor it a bit towards these questions, but it won’t be a question about “who do you think should be the next police chief” where people already have knee-jerk responses. She says the information goes online and you can click and hear what people have said. She says its small, but accessible to everyone to see what everyone else said.
Enermuoh-Trammel says she didn’t realize it was such a small scale.
Boggess says these are small sessions where you are sitting around with people you know, but it can be many groups and 500 people can be uploaded, but then everyone has contributed to the conversation.
Enermuoh-Trammel asks how they decide who can sit in the sessions. If we limit it to 200 how do we decide which 8 are in which session. Boggess says that she only had two contacts with them, you would need them to come and explain it, but its your friends, people you know. Or maybe all the teachers in your department. They can do a larger sample. It’s not the standard way that people shout each other down. This is hearing what people think more than like a survey would do.
Enermuoh-Trammel says her one concern is that they might create issues with who we capture with LVN and will a segment of the population who wanted to be a part of it be left out. We can’t have an infinite number of people involved, how do they address that? What do they do with people who are left out? They decide they need someone to come and present.
They chat more about how it would work. They will have them present on November 11th if they are available.
MORE CONVERSATION WITH HR?
Enermuoh-Trammel asks if they want HR to come back to talk to the committee to figure out what resources they can rely on them for. They ask Jenna Rousseau what her role would be. She says that in the past emails sent to Scott were just forwarded to the commission but she has a paralegal who could digest the comments and do that work. Maybe HR has someone who could do that and it would reduce costs for the PFC. An outside search firm might offer something like that. But part of that will be to understand what you are digesting.
Enermuoh-Trammel asks again if they want to invite HR or should an individual ask them and come back with information.
Jackson asks if they used a search firm in 2013. No one seems to know for sure. They said that all the applications went to Scott Herrick and he presented the information to the commission.
Enermuoh-Trammel asks again about if they want to invite HR? Boggess says that an individual conversation would be good so they can spend their time in the meeting talking to each other to get to a process.
Enermuoh-Trammel agrees to have the individual conversation.
HERMAN GOLDSTEIN?
They decide to have a discussion with him. They want to have it be organized conversation. The question is does he help with the process or inform the process. They decide to inform the process and they can talk to him later. They hope he would look at the process they come up with.
SEARCH FIRM
Apparently a few people have reached out already. Jackson says that one that put together the “nice” proposal they sent to Jenna. Cam (McLay) says he worked with them and he knows their process they went through to hire the Seattle Chief of Police and San Franscico Chief of Police. They come favorably recommended by him.
Rousseau says she has been contacted by three different companies. Her response has been that they haven’t determined what the process will be, they don’t know if they will be working with an outside search firm and they will let them know when the time comes.
- One sent a letter, her name is Sue Reisling, she signed as “Associate Vic Chancellor/Cheif of Police” for UW Madison from 1991 – 2016. She is local.
- Gary Peterson who I think is the individual Cam mentioned submitted an email to Rousseau and a proposal to Harper (Donohue), the HR Director, he is from California.
- Randy Gregeman (sp?) sent an email and he is from California. He is a senior consultant for Ralph Anderson and Associates.
Those are the three that reached out to her, if they indicated they are interested they might get more.
Boggess says that is an important to decide if they want to use a search firm. She says that in her world they do an RFP with specific ideas and structure and rather than getting all kinds of different kinds of search firms that do different ways. Does it ever happen that we write a few paragraphs about what we want, and seek those that match with their ideas.
Rousseau says they could work with the Finance Department similar to when they hired their firm as legal council. They could have an RFP process and the firms reply with their capabilities and the cost and then there is an interview process. They could do that. In this case they wouldn’t be required to competitively bid it. But they could decide to voluntarily go through the process. The downside would be the length of time. Boggess says she doesn’t want to voluntarily go through that process. She says they should put out what they want so they get 15 instead of 1500. Once you go down the road of RFP that puts you into the competitive bid.
Enermuoh-Trammel agrees. She wants to clarify with Fabiola about what they did in the past. Did they do that and if they didn’t what does she think are the pitfalls they need to think about. She agrees RFP process is not the way to go, but they want to tailor it so it fits their needs.
They need to decide if they want to use a search firm and how will they select that firm. She says its great they have three, but there has to be a process to compete for it. She thinks its an important enough decision that they need an expert to shepard the process. She is supportive of using a search firm, but she realizes they have a limited number of dollars they will be working with. They may not be able to get everything they want. They say they may pick from a menu of things. Enermuoh-Trammel says she asked Cam for a general number and it will be several thousands, approaching over $10,000 and maybe more than that. Jackson says that the quote from Peterson is $32,000-$50,000. Enermuoh-Trammel says that is the number she had and she didn’t want to articulate that out loud because she didn’t want to give anyone a heart attack. That would blow the budget of what they have been offered.
Boggess says that is why they need a very tailored, not-RFP saying this is what we want. Jackson says and getting pieces of what others can help us with us. Bogess says some search firms may not offer a menu.
Enermuoh-Trammel asks if they have consensus about if they will use a search firm. Rousseau says she is not sure they are ready to make that decision, that they are still in the stage of talking about it. Enermuoh-Trammel says what she thinks she is hearing that they want to go down that route, and they will have to put together what they want. Jackson says they should do that sooner. Boggess says that what they are saying is that they want to spend some of their time thinking about a search firm. They decide not to vote. They might change their mind after talking to HR and Fabiola. They agree to pursue the information they need.
Boggess says they need to think about what they are looking for in a search firm. Enermuoh-Trammel says they will start with what they did last time and add things that might be missing. Enermuoh-Trammel will talk with Fabby. They say in the last 20 years there have been two or three police chiefs hired (Koval, Wray, Willams). Enermuoh-Trammel will talk with Fabiola and Scott Herrick.
INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL HIRE
Jackson says that he had a conversation with a police captain who called him and he wants to remain anonymous, but he thinks that internally the police department is thinking that we are intending to look outside instead of outside and he wanted to make it known that even though Acting Chief Vic Wahl said he wasn’t interested, there are 2 or 3 internal candidates who will most likely be applying for the position.
They say that is fine, they haven’t done anything to signal they are hiring internal or external.
Rousseau says that in the past there was a two track process the PFC followed. First internally to see whether there were people interested and based on that response they broadened that to an outside, national process. It was a two-step thing. Enermuoh-Trammel says she personally has no interest in starting with an internal process because that will erode community trust, “right there”. She says they should open it up to everyone. If they start internally “the trust is shot”. Boggess says that only the trust, but then you have to say no to a group of people and start over. It’s better to have everyone in front of them and decide based on that. Enermuoh-Trammel says that they should dispel those feelings in their messaging, in a press release as they articulate the process. We have to recognize that we have talent in the police department and we have to consider them, but we are also equally interested in exploring talent outside of the community.
Jackson says that he said that it would be important to include a listening session with the police. Enermuoh-Trammel says she mentioned that earlier. Jackson says the union is doing a survey now to pull together and organize their thoughts. There’s more but that is basically it.
NEXT MEETING
Enermuoh-Trammel says for the next meeting Boggess will report by on LVN. Enermuoh-Trammel will report back from HR. Hopefully Fabiola will be there to talk about the search firm. Enermuoh-Trammel will report back on what she hears from Scott. Jackson asks about asking HR for places to hold listening sessions. In his mind it’s South side (Centro or Boys and Girls Club, Warner Park, Hilldale Mall area and East Towne and West Towne). He says that the sites should be started. Boggess says they have to have a process nailed down. (If you’re listening to the audio, the reaction is to a paper towel dispenser in the room suddenly dispensing a paper towel when nothing apparent was done to make it happen.) The next meeting they will take a deeper dive into what the process will look like, decide on engaging a search firm and what Fabiola and Scott have to say. And how many community sessions and where and then a timeline.
They don’t go into closed session and adjourn.
