Conversation with Brian Amundsen Thursday May 16

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Conversation with Brian Amundsen Thursday May 16, 2019 from approximately 2:20 to 2:40 I initiated a call to Brian for the purpose of understanding his concerns as a result of both the Mayor and Commission Chair sharing they had received calls from him. I stated my purpose was to try and understand his concerns. He raised the issue of the minutes and his request that I send them to him which I had not done. I stated that the Chair had wanted to deal with the minutes and I understood she would be reaching out to him and I knew that she in fact had but their meeting did not occur. I apologized as I should have responded to let him know the chair was handling the issue and it would have been better to close the loop by letting him know that. He requested that I send him the word version of the minutes which I agreed to do as long as I copied the Chair. He thanked me and said goodbye. I asked if there was anything else and he then brought up the Council Workshop and his understanding that there was going to be a joint meeting initially but after reviewing the tape he understood that was not correct and in fact it would be the Executive Committee meeting with the council and wanted to know why it was just the Chair. I responded that he misunderstood, there was no joint meeting to talk about Chapter 4 but that in the future, there could be reason to have a joint meeting. He then offered the Chair did not represent the Commission, rather the Commission’s decision to which I countered that she was not there at the Commission’s request, rather, at my invitation as a function of Council direction and if he recalled, or watched the tape, I prepared the memo, made the presentation and when I turned to her she simply said – “what questions do you have” or some version of that. At no time did she make a presentation and in fact, I drove the agenda as the law had changed in the 22 months they had been working on Chapter 4 and there was never a 5 vote consensus. He brought up the Commission can bring stuff to the council which I did not debate, rather – told him that was not the situation at the recent workshop. I made the statement that the Chair wanted to go in a different direction to which he responded the bylaws and statute provide the guidance on that. I shared that in a conversation with the City Attorney, who also serves as the Commissions Attorney, the current statues and bylaws provide that the Secretary has a singular task – transmission of the annual report to the court and the remainder is discretionary and in fact the chair had significant latitude and discretion in running the commission. He clearly became agitated and asked (repeatedly and in a demanding manner) for the attorney to provide that, lectured me on the bylaws and repeated to his request and desire to see that documentation. I responded by information him that Mr. Riggs would in fact be at the meeting with further agitated (based on voice inflection and volume) demanding to know why, he was not on the agenda and why would he be there. I responded that he was there at my invitation as he was the City Attorney as well as the legal counsel to the Commission. This agitated him further and caused him to accuse me of several things from not knowing what I was doing to having a hidden agenda to being up to something and similar (it was a polite but emotional rant) and that he would be watching me and doing everything in his power to derail