Oversight Board Committee - Regular Meeting

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This is the call to order for the 01/21/2026 meeting of the Charter Review Committee. Will staff please call the roll?

Holly Roberts. Here. Pat Nikolai. Bernard Tanzi. Mohamed Naved.

John

Brooks.

Here.

Joe Susinski. Eric Crutchlow.

Here.

Bert Field?

Here.

Steve Kelly?

Here.

Lauren Diamond? Here. Eric Jensen? Mark Mark Beckman?

Here.

Susan Peters? EF Quorum.

Thank you. Good evening. My name is Joe Susenski, and I am the vice chair of the charter review committee and will be chairing this meeting. On behalf of the committee, welcome to today's meeting. At this time, please turn off or mute all electronic devices, including cell phones that may interrupt the meeting.

Turn first to the general business items. Business item number one, approval of the 11/19/2025 charter review committee meeting minutes.

Thank you, mister vice chair. This first action to approve minutes is a standard item for you. The minutes were distributed in your agenda packet. These are, as you may recall, summary minutes as opposed to action minutes as opposed to verbatim minutes. If members have any suggested corrections or modifications, those can be proposed at that time.

If you weren't in attendance for this meeting, you can still vote even if, you weren't there if you believe that minutes accurately reflect what transpired at the meeting. It's also okay to abstain should you choose. And then after you solicit Mr. Vice Chair any comments, we do need to go to the public on this item too in case the public has any comments or suggestions. So I'll turn it back to you, Mr. Chair, for any input from your committee.

Gargans. Is there any questions on the meeting minutes from our last meeting on, I believe, twenty five October no. Excuse me. Nineteen November twenty twenty five. See no questions. I'd like to ask for public comment. Is there any public comment?

Right now, checking online for that, mister vice chair.

No hands raised. Pause. Wanda Buck, you're allowed to talk. He's on mute.

Okay. I don't know if this was the right time, but I just wanted to clear up. We had audio city audio problems last meeting when we talked, and I know Glenn was really trying to help back and forth with that. If this is the right time, I just wanna clarify that any opinions or thoughts I have are just from me. And if they overlap with other people who speak, it's a coincidence because it's not all the same.

You actually answered my one question that I had was ethics going to be addressed, and I thank you for that. And my only goal in observing you is that to follow, and that I want our community to be better. And, again, thank you for your work. That's it.

Thank you. I think everyone on the committee shares that goal. Is there any other public comment? No?

No other public comment.

Right. Recollection serves me. Do we need an invitation to a motion? So is there a motion to close this agenda item?

Yeah. To approve the minutes.

Approve the minutes. Excuse me.

So moved. Second.

Second. Alright. Staff, can you please take a roll call vote?

So I noticed that it was moved by member Kelly and seconded by member Beckman.

Holly Roberts? Yes. Oh, sorry. Pat Nikolay is not here. Bernard Tanzi? Not here. Mohammed Naveed? John Brooks? Joe Susinski?

Yes.

Eric Crutchlow?

Yes.

Bert Fields?

Yes.

Steve Kelly? Lauren Diamond? Eric Jensen? Mark Beckman? Yeah. And Susan Peters?

So, mister vice, here's that approved nine o with all members voting in attendance.

Thank you. I'll turn to agenda item number two. Report outs from ad hoc subcommittees and discussion of standardization of report out process. Staff, do you have a presentation?

Yes. We do. Thank you, vice chair. There was a lot of subcommittee activity between your last meeting in November and this meeting, and so looking forward to the report outs on that. Group one, group two, group three, group four, and group five, as listed here on this slide, were able to meet.

I'm going to introduce each group, and then there's assigned report out responsibilities for each group that will go through in sequence. First group one is power's structure of city government rules process for action. And the meetings that this group had since the last report out included a meeting on December 15, as described on this slide, a meeting on and a meeting on 01/14/2026 as presented on this slide. The report out was going to be done by member Jensen who is absent, And so I would suggest, mister chair, that we maybe skip this item to see if mister Jensen comes, you know, later in the meeting to report out. And, otherwise, I can endeavor to do a brief report out of the activities of of this group.

I'm go ahead and give the reports of

that group. Yeah. Very good. If you're ready to do that, by all means. I'm I'm sorry. Were you gonna do that yourself now, or are you or are you saying we weren't we're gonna skip and come back?

Oh, I was gonna ask you. No. I'm happy to do it.

Because we can skip and come back if you wanna wait for mister Jensen.

Forgive me there, mister Goggins, but I don't see much in terms of report out. I'm on to group two.

Yeah. No. The report out itself was is not summarized here on the on the slide. It was gonna be as presented by the, the the person we're actually reporting out. So let's wait, and then I can do a report out for group one at the end if Mr. Jensen doesn't come.

Agreed.

I will indicate for this group, as you know, and for the public that the where there were PowerPoint presentations, you know, given for this, for the different groups. Those PowerPoint presentations were attached, you know, to your materials and accordingly available to the public. So at least that aspect, you know, of the discussions was available. In addition, I believe in this case, there was a set of minutes, at least for the December 15 meeting, that were prepared by Mr. Jensen and uploaded and included in your packet.

And so even without a verbal report out, good amounts of information were provided to you and to the public as part of that. Okay. But let's wait and see if Mr. I might suggest if Mr. Jensen comes, and then we can endeavor to do an alternative report out if he doesn't.

Next slide. Group two is city council elections powers and conduct of meetings. There were two meetings held by this group both on December 8 and on January 20 as described, on this slide. Good attendance for both, and some good discussions. Secretary Crutchlow, was present at both these meetings, and we'll do a at least a verbal report out.

I do believe we had a PowerPoint for the 12/08/2025, you know, meeting, which was included in your packet And the 01/20/2026 meeting, we also had a PowerPoint presentation. It was not included in your packet because of the meeting just occurring, but it was distributed, with your materials, today and uploaded, after the fact and available to the public, now. So, I with that, I will, mister vice chair, you may wanna refer to mister Crutchlow for his verbal report up.

Crutchlow, would you be so kind just to give us your verbal report?

Of course, vice chair. So on December 8, we met the first time. Staffed by Sue Reuter gave a great presentation, basically introducing us to what we specifically had to review. So general review of all sections for improvement organization, heading, consistency, wording, legal compliance, bring category of employee listed into alignment with current practice, anticipated future needs, make some vague language more clear, make consistent with current applicable laws. And the sections that we specifically reviewed were the seven zero two city council members compensation.

Staff explained about salary commission and how they meet every other year. And the discussion revolved around whether salary is sufficient given the duties that are involved. And so we we had several things. I don't try to put too much on all the minutes, but if any of the group members here would like to add to that, please do so at any time. Just let me know if you wanna add a comment or clarification.

We went over section seven zero seven, the city council's regular meetings, how many they should have. We were talking about the fact that it was listed out, like, once a month or twice a month, these kinds of things. And one of our thoughts was, look. Let's just say over a period of a year, let's say it was 24. So if one month they said, like, we're not gonna have any meetings. Like, when they normally take off, that's fine. But overall, they should total up to 24. So looking at it from an annual perspective rather than per month perspective. Seven ten had to do with quorum. And what is a quorum and how does it count for voting and such.

There's only, like, two or three sentences in that whole section, but it was not clear exactly what some of this really could be and could be interpreted in different ways. So we'll come back with some, you know, thoughts about that. And then the city council proceedings, when we talk about people wanting to know more about ethics and such like that, there was some discussion regarding how council members should treat each other and such, especially within the guidance of what is already there. So you have Robert's rules of order. You have the new one, which is Rosenberg, I believe.

And they both have some comments in there about how they should treat each other and such, and we wanted to expand upon that and make recommendations later regarding that. Power to lease, sell, or convey city property, that's section seven fourteen. And then section eight zero seven prohibition against council man manic interference. In other words, it's people like the city manager control and have people reporting to them, but city council members can't come in and all of a sudden saying, I want you to hire this person. I want you to do this or whatever.

That's not something that they can do. So just making sure we clarify that or add to it. So, again, it was very much of an introductory to what we were responsible for. We had some discussion. Steve or Mark, did you wanna add anything to that first meeting on December 8 for Holly?

No? No.

Councilmanic interference. We're gonna make T shirts and give it out to everyone. Steve, did you wanna add something? Your mic's not on.

Think we made it abundantly clear that we wanted to look at what other cities were doing, what their salaries were, what their compensation was. I I think it'd be helpful to know what our closest neighbor, Sunnyvale, is doing, and that'll help us fine tune things.

Yeah. I think since there is a salary commission that does set it, the the key was, also, there's wording in there at in one point of talk salary and when the other like, within a paragraph, it says compensation. Why using two different terms, what does that mean? Do they do we want to envision that the salary commission should be allowed to vote on benefits like medical or pensions or things like that? So that's where some of the topics of discussion, nothing that we were ready to recommend in any way, shape, or form.

K. That was December 8. Last night, we met, and it was just Mark, Steve, and Glenn Gooding running the meeting there, pretty much giving us a feedback about here are all the things that we wanna see. And one of the things that he brought up that I thought was very interesting was the idea and it's he's gonna show it tonight, so I won't go too much into it. But that the entire charter is kind of a even though it's short, it winds up having pieces of a particular topic in one section, and all of a sudden, somewhere else, there's like an addendum to it.

And this makes it very confusing. You would think, like, if I have a particular topic, it should all be in one section, but it you actually have to go searching around. So it looks like it has evolved into kind of a cobweb of things that were put together that it's very hard to ensure that you cover all your bases. So one of them is a proposal to clean that up, and we discussed that quite a bit about what would go on. And there was a presentation. So I'll leave that to Glenn, you're gonna go over that tonight? Okay. So I will leave that to him to do that. Did a very good job. I think it it has a lot of interesting ideas.

Part of the challenges we saw is like, okay. How do you make sure that when it comes time for people to vote on it, they understand what's being changed, and they don't feel like so much stuff is happening that they're not comfortable with it? So that was probably one of the biggest topics that that we had regarding that is making it making sure that people understood why this was being done and that it really wasn't by itself changing the charter. It's, like, two parts to this. Cleaning it up, making sure that it's all put together right, then we add the other components that we're saying that should be changed.

The one thing I just wanted to point out was that the the biggest concern is all the changes. We we thought it would be better to present the completed project and then offer to voters hyperlinks so they can see what was changed.

Yeah. So the other thing in relation to that is as we do these meetings and we're talking about all these different topics and such, how do we have a continuity of the work that we're talking about? How do we create, like, internal documents that we're just literally taking notes and trying to make sure that, you know, we we every time that we meet, that we have something that represents what we had discussed previously so we don't forget it all. And this is goes beyond minutes. Minutes really is very limited in in what it does.

But when we're getting into the different specifics, we really do wanna remember, you know, what was happening last and some of the things that were proposed. So we had a discussion about that that we wanna you know, what what's the best way to do that? And then how to bring up all these ideas for consideration by the group in case, let's say, somebody didn't attend the meeting, how would they see these things? Somebody's remote, how do we share it? So we left that in staff's good hands to make sure that we're not violating Brown Act or anything like that.

But we wanna figure out a way that makes sense so that we have a continuity of the ideas in writing, not just in our heads. Compensation versus salary, we talked already about that a little bit. That topic came up again. You know, do we wanna enable the salary commission some more latitude to consider those kinds of things? Let's see.

Seven zero seven. That was the number number of meetings that the council had to have a year, and I brought that up before. So we were thinking again along the lines of we don't care about how many times they meet per month. Let's make it on a year because right now, if you look at how often city council meets, they I think they meet a little more than 24 times a year, but we wanna have at least a minimum. Quorum, being specific when somebody does a recusal and absentees in meetings, you know, what the the protocols are.

Staff has already come up with some protocols that are outside of the charter. And, Glenn, maybe you wanna elaborate a little bit about what what what those protocols are that you're doing so that, you know, as we discussed it, we thought, oh, we had to put this in the charter. He said, no. This is already taken care of in this other area that that you've been bringing out. I'm sorry. The the meeting and the the the so you have, like, a another set of this is how you conduct a meeting, and

it's not Oh, yes. In the charter. Thank you. Yeah. One of the the matters that each group's going to wrestle with, I don't think struggle with, is and that we think about in our presenting these, you know, topics to you is what belongs in the charter, what level of detail, and what kinds of things are better off left to the the city council and staff to implement through either ordinances that typically get codified within the city code or other rules and pop and policies.

And so in this particular area, we were discussing the some details of meeting management, you know, protocols. And some charters actually do go into a lot of detail about this, and you might see that in various charters that that are different from ours. The Santa Clara charter, I think, is the right balance of of general descriptions of what the rules are with an appropriate level of delegation to the city council and staff to implement those rules with policies. And meeting management protocols and the details of how items are taken up and the votes that are required and the and the the order in which, you know, matters are taken up and when public input is provided is typically and appropriately, we think, something that's left to implementation by code or policy. What I mentioned in this context was, in fact, we had just recently developed a set of updated meeting management protocols that are based on Rosenberg's as opposed to Robert's rules of order, which is what the city you know, the council had been using previously in order to get at all of those details.

Right? How matters are taken up, what how motions are presented, what kind of motions, you know, you can make, what do you do in the event of conflicts, How quorums are are counted? All of those types of things, we are recommending in our professional, you know, opinion and consistent with how this current charter works, which we think makes sense, is to have those things implemented by ordinance and policy and not presented in detail in the city charter. In fact, one of the things that was done down in Chula Vista, which had people thought too much detail about that, was actually to take that out, you know, and not have that be how that was handled. So appreciate that thoughtfulness on that.

We had good discussions around that point.

And that's gonna go out to all the different commissions and such, not just city council. Is that correct?

Yes. The meeting management protocols that I I'm describing were was adopted by resolution of the city council approximately seven months ago as a six month pilot program with the idea being that they would see how it went for them. And if it was adopted permanently, either in the form that it was originally adopted or with some modifications based on their experiences, that would also become a standard that would be pushed out to the various boards and commissions so that, in effect, there would be consistent procedures on how the different legislative bodies of the city take up items and deal with them. Each some boards and commissions are unique and might make their own rules, and that could be allowed as long as it's consistent with these meeting management protocols or otherwise approved by council. So it's designed to be kind of a uniform set of standards, but potentially customizable if circumstances warrant.

Thank you. So in addition to those proceedings, we also discussed ethics and such, not specifically like an ethics commission. But within the framework of of proceedings, you already have Rosenberg's rules and such and what Glenn was just, talking about. But the feeling was a need to also make sure that somehow the city council, when they or any commission, not making it personal, but talk to the topic and that people understand that, look, if something is going on and it's getting way too personal, there should be a point of order, and, you know, it should be driven back to the topic itself. So we wanted to kinda talk about that.

It's not, again, something that's settled, but it is part of, you know, dealing with, okay. How do you, a a body, work together to serve the community in the best way possible? So that is part of the topics that we brought up. Steve, did you wanna add something to that?

Yeah. Just that we wanted to have a process that would deescalate it and bring the commissioners or council members back on the topic that they were debating, not personal attacks.

Exactly. Mark, did you wanna no. Okay. And, yeah, we were gonna get some info on salaries from other towns and bring that information back so everybody understood what other towns are paying and such like that. And then Glenn went into a nice long explanation of the reorg of the charter, which is gonna come up tonight. And that's all I have. So, Steve or Mark, was there anything I missed? You heard me talk way too much. Okay. Thank you very much,

Jared. Thank you. Mike, can I bring up one question?

Go ahead.

Sorry. Was this in regards to the time when council member Park was talking about a person who was present in the audience, a business owner

that was not I'm not gonna go into detail.

Okay. I just

because it kinda talked about that.

I I did not specifically mention in

my report to the committee here. I really wanna keep that you know, keep it at we're not trying to go after somebody's specific action, but in general, how things should happen. And because I think we could look at a number of different occurrences. The goal is focus on the topic, not on the people. Do serve the community the best that you can. So

No. I I agree. It's just

So, mister vice chair, if I I might just add to that, the the there was a discussion around that point and the discussion similar to the one we just highlighted about what goes in the charter, right, as a very general statement of things and then what gets implemented, right, by different rules and policies. And so this committee charged me with a consensus around a concept to come back with a just a kind of a basic statement about council persons and any appointed board members, you know, responsibility, with rules implementing that general statement to be developed by, you know, the city council. So I'll come back with that For them, they'll percolate on that, and then, ultimately, that will come up to this group, you know, for your review and consideration.

I thank thank you, and thank you, mister Kushlow, for your coverage of the notes and to the rest of second group for contributing to that discussion.

Yeah. I'm sorry. But, Jeff, I could just add one more thing. Chief assistant city attorney, Rooter, did provide me with, some information in advance of that meeting regarding what other cities and, you know, jurisdictions do to pay folks. We're gonna I we didn't get that to the committee in time for them to dig into it, so we're gonna make sure that gets circulated to them for for your discussions at your next meeting.

Thank you. I will ask for a period of public comment. Each speaker will get two minutes. I think I may have seen one up there a moment ago.

And and, mister vice chair, there's could break this up as you want. It might be challenging to have public comment on each report out, but in your discretion, that certainly can happen because there was a fair amount, you know, discussed here. But in your in your discretion after each report out or at the end of the report out, you could solicit public comment. Thank you. Go ahead.

George, Lance, you can unmute yourself.

Yes. Hello. Can you hear me? Hello. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay. Yes. You guys are talking about some free speech issues here and kind of what your charter is gonna allow as speech, whether directed as a personal attack or so on. And, I believe I have a moment to speak here without interruption. So please restrain yourself. Restricting virtual public comments to silence unpopular speech is viewpoint discrimination. So if you silence me because you don't like what I'm saying, that is viewpoint discrimination is unconstitutional. You are unable to silence personal attacks. This meeting's public comment period is a limited public forum. In In such a forum, the city may impose reasonable time, place, and manner rules, but it may not engage in viewpoint discrimination, that settled law.

You cannot stop people from doing political criticism even if it is a personal towards one of you. Citizens have the right to criticize public officials, Jews, genocide, government policy, foreign governments, and political movements. New York Times versus Sullivan, the court said that you are allowed to question why such a large percentage of Jews run our banks and media. You cannot silence that speech. Citizens may may also speak about true historical criminal facts, like some of the false flags that the Jews have been responsible for concerning, and also public officials.

Truthful statements about council members' public records or criminal convictions or protected political speech may not be centered simply because they're embarrassing or harmful. You may, you know, you may sort of regulate people's conduct but not the content of their speech. That's Brandenburg versus Ohio. So people can use words you don't like. If it's the f word, you really can't stop it. If they say kaik, you cannot stop that. People don't like Jews for what they're doing in the world. They're allowed to express that on these public comments.

Thank you, mister Lance. Your time has expired, and we assure you that we will take a look at the relevant precedents and how we go move forward to this.

Thank you for your comment. Can I make one clarification? When I spoke about actions and how people deal with each other, I was speaking about specifically council members between each other. Nothing to do with the public. So if that was a misinterpretation, I wanna make sure it's it's clear. I'm talking about how council members deal with each other.

Thank you, mister Crushlow. Let the record reflect that mister Crushlow has clarified. He was referring to how the council conducts itself and not making any reflections on how members of the public may communicate. Now I think is there any further discussion amongst the committee on group two's reporting?

And noting no other hands raised on that item too. And my suggest again, vice chair, maybe we get all of that collectively at the end after all the reports out as opposed for each one.

Yeah. Let's try your way. Go ahead and proceed with the next one.

Next group is group three. The sections of the charter that were assigned relate to senior officials' duties and qualifications. There was one meeting held by that group on 01/12/2026 with member Nikolai, Diamond, and Tanzi, in attendance. I believe I've got that right. We also had the, the nice benefit of having, a relevant stakeholder to those, to at least some, of those sections.

It was city clerk, Bob O'Keefe, who gave a very helpful presentation about his perspective on the, the responsibilities of the elected city clerk versus the, appointed assistant city clerk, and member Diamond is gonna report out on that discussion. I'm happy to assist and supplement, as she deems appropriate.

Or, Diamond, go right ahead.

Yeah. Some of the mics are some of the mics are different. Mine, for example, is green, like, here on the bottom. Yours might need to be green up top.

Oh, it works when it's red up top.

Okay. So But

is that hot?

You may wanna pull the mic even closer to you. It might and it might not be that great of a mic.

Thank you.

How about now?

Okay. So starting over quickly, we did meet with Bob O'Keefe, is the city clerk, and we discussed the evolution of the city clerk position in the city and, how, particularly, we have we differentiate between the roles of the elected city clerk versus the assistant city clerk, which is a staff position. And so we talked about, you know, how we thought that should be handled in the charter. Our initial thought was that, we do need to update the charter to reflect that the elected position does have some very specific practices, I guess, that the that are very different from what the assistant city clerk does. We kind of discussed how we don't think that the assistant city clerk position should be part of the charter because it is staff.

It we don't think it falls under this section. So I don't know, Glenn, if you wanna add anything about the city clerk discussion.

Yeah. It really was an interesting discussion, and I appreciate mister O'Keefe's presentation. I think you summarized it well. The way that the charter is drafted, it appears to contemplate the ability of the city council to allocate some of the list of city clerk responsibilities to an appointed city employee and have the elected city clerk have, you know, a limited set of those duties. The way that has played out over the recent years is that the elected city clerk serves the function of the as the elections official and some other related kind of ceremonial duties, and the assistant city clerk handles the day to day kind of professional responsibilities of the city clerk.

This city clerk thinks that that actually makes sense, but that the the charter warrants some clarification of that. And so this committee is gonna be, once we get it drafted after input from the city clerk, is gonna be working on a version of that for further consideration and ultimately presentation to your group. So appreciate mister O'Keefe's engagement on that for sure.

Absolutely. So I think the bulk of our meeting was, focused on the city clerk position because, Bob O'Keefe was there. We did discuss the, chief of police position. We're gonna have future discussions with the current chief. Obviously, we have our former chief, is a member of that group, so he had some good insight for us.

And so we're we're gonna, you know, explore that in future meetings. And then similar to some of the other groups, I think we talked about how the charter kind of needs to be reorganized. We also noted that there's a lot of pieces in different places, and Glenn has suggested some reorganization, which I think we will get into later. There is some cleanup that needs to happen in a couple of the other positions, such as the city manager, and the city attorney, and also has some thoughts on that. So he will help us, get some best practices, in that language.

And then we just talked about some of the some more of the reorganization, in terms of how we wanna present this to the public. There's a lot of, you know, comments at the in the charter about when things were modified last. So we talked about, you know, is that can we just get rid of those? What's the best way to present this to the public? Again, as, mister Kotchlo talked about, how, you know, what how do we not overwhelm the public with this because it's gonna have so many changes. And when we look at just these drafts that we're just editing ourselves, crossing things out, it's it is overwhelming. So it's gonna be, I think, a big challenge for us to address. So and that was, I think, it.

Yeah. If I might just add a couple more comments. As we discussed with the group, the the stakeholders for a lot of these sections are the existing office holders. And so city manager is reviewing and will intend to either present to this group or provide me kind of his thoughts and comments on how his role and function is described. We actually went through and put up the these charter sections.

This is an example of where we actually already have dived in and done some drafting to kind of review at least our preliminary thoughts on the at least on the city manager position. City engineer and director of public works were also engaged in conversations with them. In addition to having the benefit of Pat's perspective as the former elected chief of police, The current elected chief of police also, of course, has an interest in this topic and some experience with it, and so he intends to share probably in person his experiences with this group, and ultimately, we'll get the benefit of that at this larger group as well. And so wanted to make sure that that you all know that we do have good professional kind of stakeholder representatives to give their thoughts about how things, you know, ought to be and and operate, and all of that will be factored in as part of any recommendation from any committee.

Thank you, missus Diamond, on behalf of group three. And thank you, mister Gugans, for contributing to that. I believe we can move on to the reporting out of group four.

Yes. Just as to introduce group four, board's commission boards and commissions composition powers and duties. They held a couple of meetings, first on 11/13/2025, and then on 12/15/2025 as described in some detail here in this slide. Mister Brooks, I believe you are the the the anointed report out.

I I am. But, unfortunately, I don't have the notes, the detailed notes, because I was traveling at at the time when I took on the role of reporting out. So I'll take your assistance any way you can give it. But we really were trying to define boards, commissions, and committees, which are in the current charter that they don't have any clear definition. And then as well as the response roles and responsibilities of the planning commission, the parks and recreation, and, really, the the board of library trustees was a big one. So I'll take any assistance you can give me from there.

Very good, mister Brooks. I do actually have a version of your printed notes. I might just pick out a couple of highlights for this if you'd like. Or if you'd like, maybe better still, I could give you the copy, and you could pick out.

So our meeting really revolved around defining the terms board commission committee. Legal took a look at the terms and made recommendations for the next meeting. Support adding into the charter removal for cause requirement. This should be a charter. Should we clearly define just cause in the charter. That was another term that can get confusing. Or in a municipal code. Four affirmative votes and terms should be in code needs for cause removal. Clean up the removal for cause, so clearly define that as well. Discuss the removal for cause provision.

And then formal ethics commission, does it belong in the charter? Joe thought yes. Want to ensure the council can't just change it on a whim. Bert, optics is important. I remember that, Bert. How it looks to the outside world is a has to be a good look optically. It it is a good look. Realistically, is this feasible given all the things we have to do? Opta, I agreed with Bert on on that one. That's what I said.

Optics is everything. So we already have a lot. It's something additional the right strategy at the time. So it's adding instead of trying to kinda remove the red tape in in the charter. We've had members of the public ask Glenn if they had an ethics commission and what they did down there. This could be more and that that was two I'm sorry. What city is again? City Of Chula Vista. Chula Vista. Yeah. So we we we had a lot of reference around the Chula Vista and Glenn's previous work. This could be a more political issue. Should we separate it out? Very substantive change to the charter. They want it in the charter itself without talking about what it means and what it looks like for Glenn.

A lot of work in the subsident add in to add it. We're gonna do other are we gonna do anything other than require city council to form it? We don't have time to flesh that out. We couldn't timely do this on that meeting. Survey other charters and ask about ethics committees as part of the charter.

Legal can update them next time. Joe, Bert, and myself had no interest in changing it as far as general qualifications. If you're going to serve the city, you're going to be a qualified elector. And that was another big topic that we tried to tack on who who what's a qualified elector. And then PC and ethics should maintain status and qualified elector. If you don't need to be a citizen, you need to be a resident and need to be registered to vote. So we got pretty heavy in the weeds as far as voting. Depends on how the city is run, and it should

be a

qualified elector. Some that some that should require qualified electors and charter, can we authorize what's the CC there for, Glenn? CC. Can we authorize charter committee? City council. Got it. Got it. Can we require apply residency requirement to commissions? It creates. Can we authorize the council to do it?

Get the clerk's office opinion, purely political. Let get a larger just group group discussion going on this topic. And first, on the next big meeting, could be lightning rod issue. Again, that was a topic that we were pretty deep in. CAO to confirm if other BCCs are residents required or qualified electors.

Boards and commission, we discussed how the CAO again, CAO, city attorney's office. Alright. We'll prepare, preservations for the three BCCs. Closed session, Joe. If we don't if we do an ethics commission and they're reviewing an action, can we even do that, get more information, and find out what we can do?

Do we remove it? And I said talk about we already talked about transparency earlier and the importance of transparency, especially when it comes around to closed sessions, and that was what that's what this topic was all about. Everyone was good with deleting it because it's more confusing if it's still there. Interest in Glenn's opinion on whether to delete or modify. Is there any daylight of what this might when this might happen? And then we went to ex official meeting member. Joe was okay removing. Bert streamlined whole character and made it cleaner and more efficient. I agree. We need a streamlined process.

There seems to be a lot of red tape in what we're how we currently process things. John will work with them to schedule the next meeting in mid to late January. Jen, send the notes and bullet points for talking points. To do list, better communication about something can be can be in person. Boards, commissions, and committee, again, that was a real highlight of our our conversation. And they get get the clerk's office and provide some thoughts and residency requirements. So get city librarian to come in.

Thank you, mister Brooks. Mister Guggins, anything to add?

Yes. Thank you, mister vice chair. Maybe just a couple of things. I was not able to staff that second meeting, so I wanna thank assistant city attorney, Jen Byers, you know, for filling in for me. I will be at your guys' next meeting.

I hear a lot of Gugans needs to report back to us on this, that, or the other thing, and so I I I promise to do that. I also appreciate it appears an expressed concern about overworking me, so thank you for that as well. Appreciate that sentiment. There's a lot going on with ethics, you know, commission analysis right now at the governance and ethics, you know, committee. The city actually hired an outside consultant to analyze our existing ethics documents and to present on one of the the either the dos and don'ts and the pros and cons of having an ethics commission and alternatives to having an ethics commission.

I won't do too much reporting out to this larger group on that, but I will definitely be in a position to dive into that with the subcommittee when when you're able to convene again so we can talk about that in greater detail. Thank you, mister chair.

Miss Gugans, as an aside, would it be possible to get this individual expert to come speak to us, or would that be not proper at this juncture?

Let me reflect on that. I I think she's been hired within a scope of work to to advise the government governance commission. I'm I'm a little hesitant to have dueling, you know, versions of of that analysis going on. So let me reflect on that, and I'll at least give the a full report out to the group the next time.

Thank you. We can move on now to the report out for group five. Seems to be reported by Beckman, Roberts, and David. Would one of you like to pick it up?

Ag team. Okay. We're very busy, and we met a lot. So good enough to help me with reading out the the notes because I've had a cold. Alright.

So for the first meeting on the on here, December 10, we met, and we began the red line process for our sections of the charter, proposed changes. Sue gave us proposed changes to review sections ten ten and ten eleven. So section ten ten is the civil service commission. Section ten eleven is the civil service commission powers and duties. One part that we went over a lot in the civil service commission was replacing the term qualified elector with, something else, as there needed to be further elaboration of the term as qualified elector.

It's just too broad. And that came back later in another meeting, which will be gone over. There was discussion regarding citizenship as a prerequisite. And, also, there was a there was a thought of having a glossary of terms in the current charter as there currently is not one. This may be a good idea for us to have it or for users people to have as a reference, because this would be a change in the city code, which is easier than changing the charter.

It would not have to be voted on, but just simply accepted by the city count. And then, yeah, there was, again, a lot of discussion about registered voter, visa holder, short discussion I'm still in section ten ten, but short discussion about the civil service rules. Those are harder to change as they have to be approved by the unions, the city council, etcetera. And then discussion of conflict of interest, financial, both commission member and their spouses, partners, per staff. City staff is there to rein in this type of thing, and the city employees should have been pretty good about accusing themselves if a conflict arises.

All of us felt that this is probably a nonissue, but it was good good and worth the discussion. Okay. And then regarding section ten eleven, which is the civil service commission powers and duties, There's an addition for the summary in this section calling out and clarifying that the appointment shall be classified employees. Proposed wording and clarifications of subsections. We're not changing the role.

We're just making the description clearer and clearer to the actual role and to protect the city from potential arm lawsuits, confusion. The charter is fairly antiquated in places, and we wanna have, language throughout that matches all the sections. Then there was discussion about a change of a job job description. These notes there's a lot of notes. Civil service commission has been pretty savvy with regards to settle what to setting or updating job descriptions, and those generally get approved by the city council.

What else? Verification of the applicant's employees to change from civil service to un or to classified for consistency with regards to both employee petitions and applications for positions. A little bit more about ten eleven, discussion about the sections structurally inappropriateness of the changes and referencing generally protected characteristics. Is this still valid, and is it called out elsewhere in the city's language? Actions taken yeah.

Action ten ten was discussed as noted with respect to qualified elector, proposed slight changes to the description with the addition of qualified elector or whatever terminology we can come up with to make it clearer or better. And then section ten eleven was discussed with the addition of a summary calling out and clarifying that the appointment shall be classified employees. And that's it for December 10. Any questions? Sue, could you add anything to that?

No. I think that was a very thorough report of the December 10 meeting.

Thank you.

A wonderful thank you, mister Roberts. I believe we mentioned one other person might want to join in on the report.

Yeah. Yes. There there will be two more, and I'll cover our January 5 meeting where we reviewed the the language. The language was took our comments and thoughts from the prior meeting, came back with revisions to the language. We reviewed them, had further discussion on them, and that being sections ten ten.

And part of the discussions were, you know, if you were to look at this, how the voters would look at section ten ten eleven, and then how the the what kind of checks and balances are in place for the jobs and the job descriptions. You know, there was you know, when you look at the pre or the current versus the proposed, the classifications that we were going through, you know, someone might say that there was an unclassified creep in the number of positions, but it's really the reality of these people are are currently unclassified. We're just calling them out. And so, you know, it it for for someone looking at it, it it may look like we have added a lot over time or or in this. And then we also had further discussion about unclassified as it relates to not full time workers and unclassified not full time workers.

You know, those are such things as lifeguards and parks and rec teachers and other people who, you know, are not permanent positions and don't fall you know, clearly don't fall under the the unclassified or, excuse me, the classified positions. Ultimately, we took the language of ten ten and ten eleven and agreed that it was acceptable for us to move on. Sue was going to act and look into next steps, that next step being either bringing it here for approval or then the next step of taking it to this to the stakeholders in the the civil service commission, such as unions and so on. So and I think and we we did do some preliminary work on the 11 section 1,100. And, again, our focus was on making making it clear and clarifying and adding anything that isn't, you know, isn't current or making it reflect current practice and, again, defining, expanding who is classified and unclassified.

There was some wording also that we were to clarify that the city manager is is appointing members of rather than the city or, excuse me, changing the wording to clarify that city manager is the appointing member of the city, not the city council with regards to dividing and separating any city department or divisions. There was some question about you know? Or there could be some misinterpretation of that that the council has greater authority there. Any recommendations or any changes would have to come through the city attorney.

That's it.

We'll be showing you up up on the screen what the proposed red lines are for your review and discussion. So this is all context for what you are about to see, so don't worry about that.

Okay. Thank you both. Was there anybody else who wanted to weigh in?

Yeah. Sure. This is Mohammad here. So we met on January 14 and extended our deliberations on the civil service articles. And in fact, there are different set of sections within the civil service articles.

There are 10 sections out of which we kind of spend most of the time on classified position, unclassified position, and reviewed the existing language that we had, provided more clarity in terms of the depth of the ownership and responsibilities that each of the elected members has, and also refined what are those roles are. So extensive analysis has been done. I'm sure once we have the details there, we can look into it. And at the same time, there is also a section within the article about having someone switch from classified position to unclassified position. So if you do that, then what are the rules that governs?

And there was not much clarity, but we kind of added more analysis and timelines in terms of the number of years and when they're going to come back. So those rules have been added next to that as well in the in the section. And we offered some recommendations about who's going to have some responsibility in defining the rules of unclassified positions, the city attorney and the city manager. So we kind of elaborated more and offered more analysis on that. So those sections have been summarized. So thank you. And thank you for Sue and Mark and Holly for kind of extending your support and working through that.

Thank you, group five, for the hold of group reporting. Mhmm. And I think we can now move on to group six.

We don't have a group six today. Oh, are you? Yeah.

I'm sorry. So next next slide is actually the consideration and input on the actual language. Yeah. So if we go to the next slide.

There you go.

So if you could put up the the left hand side of

To be clear, what are we we're not doing group six. What will we do?

So that we're gonna finish up the group five actions and then move on to group six.

Okay. Is that gonna be the same PowerPoint? Or for folks watching at home, we'll Yes.

It'll be it'll be on the same PowerPoint. What we're putting up on the screen now is the proposed red line language to the sections covered by group five that we were just discussing in the report out. And the the recommendation is once we present and explain these red lines and you you've had your discussion, that you take an action to approve these red lines for us to move forward with those so that we would have language that we can then take to the whole service commission, the unions, that sort of thing.

So

Those in the audience who don't speak lawyer, we're actually using blue line here. Strike through means delete, and underlying between other words means addition.

Thank you. Okay. So if we wanna start with section ten ten, as the as group five described, the the changes that are referenced there are are fairly minor. The the the primary change here is to make sure that compliance with applicable conflict of interest rules is called out in the charter for members of the Civil Service Commission. So really what we what we looked at was what do you currently have to do in order to become a member of the Civil Service Commission.

And so currently, the application process requires you to be a qualified elector of the city and not be an employee of the city and be able to certify that you don't have any financial conflicts of interest in serving in this position. So because civil service commissioners make decisions, final decisions relating to employment of of of civil servants, they there's a financial aspect, right, that number of the decisions that they can make, particularly when they act in their capacity as a board of review when they're hearing appeals from employees who are facing disciplinary or termination action. And so because of that, we have to make sure that there's no financial conflicts of interest between anybody who serves on the civil service commission and, you know, employees that may be covered by the actions of the civil service commission. And that's so that's the reason why we wanted to add that language to this section because those really are just the three requirements of what you things that you have to be able to do in order to serve on the civil service commission.

So quick question on that. You mentioned financial conflict of interest rules. Is it that narrow, or is it a broader

Well, in theory, there could be a general conflict of interest, a common law conflict of interest, not just financial on things like, for example, appointment of a salary setting commissioner. So, yes, in theory, there could be more than just financial conflicts of interest, but really in practice, you know, it's it's really gonna be a financial conflict of interest issue. And then the second the second section in article 10 here that we looked at was the section ten eleven, Civil Service Commission powers and duties. We've made a few more changes to this section. So this one thing that we were looking at, as you know, is making this more sort of readable as a as a a person who would just be an you know, a lay person reading it.

And we thought that it was it was sort of a little bit unclear that it didn't have a prefatory statement or paragraph. It just went straight into subsection a, so there was no sort of, like, introduction to that section. So we took what was old subsection a and essentially changed it to be kind of an introductory paragraph so that it's understood that this paragraph sort of gives you the purpose of the Civil Service Commission's powers and duty, which are to ensure that classified public service is accomplished for the good of that service solely upon merit and fitness as established by an appropriate test of qualifications without regard to part partisan politics and in a nondiscriminatory manner. So the the first section the first sentence that we are crossing out is the the the key there is the qualifications to provide qualified persons. So we added the appropriate test of qualifications to capture the meat of that first sentence.

And then we wanted to expand the protected characteristics that are referenced. So at the time that this was written, the protected characteristics were race, color, and religious belief. But as we know, that's much expanded at this point. So instead of having a whole paragraph that lists out all the protected characteristics that currently exist, we referenced a nondiscriminatory manner because that would be sort of more all encompassing of the various protected characteristics. And so then we added, in furtherance of this purpose, the civil service commission shall, and then we'll list out the powers and duties.

So that sentence makes clear that that first sort of now prefatory or in introductory paragraph is in fact a statement of the purpose of the Civil Service Commission. And then we move on to the powers and duties of the commission itself. So the first is to perform the functions and duties as required under the civil service rules and regulations. That that it that is what essentially the primary purpose of this commission is to perform all the various duties, whether it be looking at examinations, job descriptions, or or employee disciplinary appeals. All of those things as set forth in civil service rules and regulations is what this commission's primarily charged with.

Now specifically looking at the adjudicatory capacity is section b, which is largely the same language that's currently in the charter, which is to act as a board of review, to hear petitions by classified employees and applicants for classified positions, to grant or deny such positions pursuant to the civil service rules and regulations, and to adopt and amend procedures for conducting hearings on such petitions. So this just makes clear that it's not simply putting on your your adjudicatory hat and hearing the petition. There's there's a little little bit more to it, and we wanna be clear on that. It I know this also is a good time to point out the fact that we're changing the term civil service to classified in these in in this context. And we're doing that because, as we'll see in the next article, we go through a discussion in those sections about the term classified versus unclassified employee.

And so we wanna make sure that we're staying sort of consistent with those terms as they're used throughout. So civil service is just sort of this general term that applies to all this city city positions. It applies to the system that we put into place many, many decades ago. It's not it's not really quite as clear as saying specifically classified employees. And the last section that we're that we're including here is act to appoint and remove members of the salary setting commission.

And this is important to add because in 2016, as one of the groups has already discussed, the charter charter review committee at that time made changes to charter section seven zero two, the compensation provision for mayor and council. And what they did was they said, okay. Well, instead of mayor and council setting their own salaries, we're gonna have a salary setting commission be created. And that salary setting commission is gonna be charged with setting the the salaries for mayor and council. And that that salary setting commission, we don't want mayor and council to appoint the people who are gonna set their own compensation. So we're gonna make sure that those people get appointed

by the civil service commission.

And all of that is set forth in section seven zero two in the council article relating to their compensation, but it never got updated in this section to say that the civil service commission is supposed to

act to appoint and remove salary setting commissions,

hence why we're adding it here. I think it might be a good idea to split up the discussion and questions between this article, article 10, and then article 11, which is coming next. So if we want chair, if you'd like to open it up to questions and discussion on these sections, that might be

Thank you. Are there any questions on this section?

This is ten ten?

Ten ten and ten eleven.

So I know there have been several mentions of qualified electors going to be redefined.

Yes. That's why it's highlighted here Right. In ten ten. There's and you'll see in the next article as well, there'll be some things that are highlighted to the extent that there is a decision by this committee to use the term registered voter or something else that, you know, that differs from qualified elector. We just wanna make sure that we're we make it consistent throughout the charter.

Why not just define what qualified elector means and reference things like, you know, they have to be meet the regulations that the state mandates or an elected official versus, okay, what the state mandates for commissioned appointed positions. And then what we specifically want to add to that because we could you could actually have more than one kind of qualified elector because I I'm like, in a commission, somebody that's appointed would have a different criteria than somebody who's elected. Right?

I I think I think the term qualified elector is one who is who has met the criteria to vote in a particular jurisdiction.

Well, what I understand from the state and, again, I'm not the lawyer, so you guys know better than I. But what I've read, it sounds like there's more requirements than just that. Although it kind of infers certain other requirements, but, you know, an elected position is one thing. And I'm just without getting into it too much, would it make sense to then somehow define it somewhere else saying, hey. Anytime we refer to this, it has to meet all the state requirements so we don't have to constantly change it. Right? Just like whatever the state changes their mind, we don't have to redo the charter per se. And then specifically, since we're a charter city, we do have these requirements since we can be more restrictive.

Vice chair, if I might comment on that. Great great points by member of Crutchlow. This this very topic is being taken up by group one because that's the group that is overseeing the sections that define what the criteria are for elected officials. It it should also be taken up to a certain derivative extent by the boards and commissions group to the extent they want to propose anything different than what that standard is. Ultimately, that will be a defined term that will be either consistent throughout in its usage or purposely different.

And so your point is good. That is a subject that's being taken up. I think the yellow here is intended to to highlight, as Ms. Reuter referred, as a placekeeper for getting at that just that issue.

Steph, I have one more question. This is an easy one. Since we're now using the language classified or unclassified, but we're still using the term civil service in the section headers, should we understand civil service to mean classified and unclassified employees?

In in this instance, the civil service commission, we're not saying that we want to change the name of the civil service commission. We just wanna make it clear within the definitions of what the civil service commission does that it is it its jurisdiction applies to classified employees.

Does that conclude? You all you wanted to do But

there there'll be another article if there if the if we're done with questions on these two sections, we'll move on to article 11. Jensen, do you have any

are there no other questions on ten ten and ten eleven? Alright. Moving on to

Article 11?

K.

Okay. Great. So article 11 is this is really, like, the meat of this group's work. And this article really encompasses how the classified versus unclassified civil service system is operated at a high level, of course. Right?

We're not getting into the details of what's in the civil service rules and regulations, but it does give a framework for how this system is meant to operate. So let's start with section 1,100. Again, we're clarifying that it's appointments and promotions in the classified service. Right? And, again, we're restating the fact that it's based on merit and fitness by competitive examination.

And, again, like we said with the Civil Service Commission, we wanna make reference to the provisions of the civil service rules and regulations because those do govern how those competitive examinations happen. They govern how appointments happen, and they govern how motion. So just to make clear that it's not there's not a there's not some other governing document that regulates how those things have to be done, we wanna make sure that we reference what that governing document is. The next section, section 11 o one, this is the section that defines what is classified and what is unclassified city employment. So generally speaking, how cities approach this is that you say, here are all of the specific definitions of positions that are unclassified.

And anything that doesn't fall within one of these positions is classified. So we start with a statement that the unclassified service is the following. So the first section is elective officers, which is what's in the current charter. And again, that's highlighted because I, you know, I have a feeling that there may be some changes throughout the charter to terms like elective officers. We may wanna say elected officials or something that's a little bit more user friendly.

Let's say user friendly to the layman. Oh, elect it's so that that that's only that's the purpose of that highlight. And what what was not what's not currently in the charter, what we thought was important to add is all members of boards, commissions, and committees, and, again, highlighted because that term boards, commissions, and commit committees maybe changed. I don't know. Subsidiary legislative body maybe.

I don't like that. Okay. So that's how that that's the purpose of that change. City manager, city attorney, city auditor are left unchanged as they are in the current charter. We, struck out city clerk because that's an elected officer, and so there's just no need to restate it.

The next section, it how it currently reads is the head of each department, including but not limited to the director of finance, public works and utilities, city engineer, chief of police, and and and chief of the fire department. We have we have a lot more department heads than that now, and it does it sort of doesn't make sense to just call those ones out. In addition, we have sub sort of subsidiary management positions below department heads because that's just how the organization has grown and evolved over the many decades since this was drafted. So now we're expanding from the head of the department or department director to include the assistant department head, deputy department head, and division managers. And I've also included their alternative titles for each of those because in our documents, in our job descriptions, in our in our job classification titles, sometimes they use different different titles, and I I didn't want it there to be confusion.

So I tried to capture all of the all of the applicable titles. And so that that's sort the last the last one is the executive assistant. So there are currently in the city, there are three executive assistants, mayor and council, city manager, and city attorney. Courtney is joining us today. And those those positions are unclassified.

They are you know, they have access to and and and are required to as part of their job deal with a great deal classified not classified in the employment sense, but confidential information, sensitive information, and that sort of thing. And and it's it's important to make sure that those folks are viewed as being within the management management position. And most most of these positions also have other, administrative positions that are classified positions that report. And so that that's the aim of expanding that section. And it's important to note that all of those positions are currently unclassified.

So this change does not actually result in any actual change to any positions in the city. It just makes sure that our charter properly reflects the business practices that we currently have. The next section is the former section seven where they talked about assistant department heads, assistant city attorney, and assistant city manager that I didn't feel was complete because we have, for example, deputy city attorneys and deputy city managers and division managers. Right? So there were it it just wasn't complete.

That's why it was expanded in the in the one above it in in in what was section six, and that now encompasses that what was previously section seven. What was previously section eight was included with the elective officers in the first section. So, again, that's not necessary.

So real quick. Right now, we're page two of what counts as an unclassified employee? Okay. Thank you.

Alright. The next section is the first area where we are going to see the language except as provided in an applicable memorandum of understanding. So just as a as a background, a memorandum of understanding is a collective it's what we in Santa Clara call our collective bargaining agreement. So a union agreement is termed generally in out in the world as a collective bargaining agreement. We titled them all as memorandum of understanding.

So this section provides that except as provided in some union collectively bargained agreement, persons who are employed on a temporary basis for less than full time or a special purpose, that's like a limited project type purpose, on an as needed basis, which is a temporary employee subject to certain CalPERS restrictions on a seasonal basis, like lifeguards and so on in the summer, or on intermittent service, or just generally, and as a cleanup provision, other nonpermanent appointment. So any of those types of folks do not get classified employee rights in the city. That's really what this what this provision provide. And, again, it's important to note that that is currently how we practice, that this does not you know, this change in language does not create any actual change to any positions in in city service. The the deleted language was very specific with regard to temporary or special purpose.

So the fact that we're saying for a period not to exceed six months in the in any one calendar year, that does not match what our current city practices are and have been historically either. And so one of like I said, one of the aims of this project is to ensure that the charter language and actual city practices match up. And so we wanna make sure that this type of language that's outdated and not actually applicable to current business practices is is taken out. The next section, the new section seven, again, states accept as pro oh, maybe I should go back and explain why we say except as provided in an applicable memorandum of understanding. Using that language allows for a union to take the opportunity to bargain something.

So with respect to temporary or as needed employees, there was a state law that was passed a couple of years ago that allows for as needed employees to join a union that would cover that job classification if it was full time, if that union wants to. So if there's an agreement between the temporary employees and the union that the union wants to represent them, then they would be will they would be able to do so. And so we wanna make sure that any kind of restrictions that we're placing on the employment within the charter also provides for memorandum of understanding at some future date should that become necessary. It hasn't come up for the city yet, but we want we don't wanna box ourselves in. Okay.

So, again, as we move to to the new number seven, except as provided in an applicable memorandum of understanding, persons employed to render professional scientific technical or expert services. We took out of an occasional and exceptional character because occasional work is already referenced in the last section above, right, the part time intermittent special purpose work. So we don't really need to do that. And and the second second part is the term occasional and exceptional character is not defined. And there nor nor could we locate any useful definition of that in other California laws.

So it it almost leaves it more confusing than if you took it out. And as we'll see, arguably, this is a little repetitive, but it's the original language of the charter, and I don't see that there's a harm in in keeping it. So we're we've proposed to just leave it the way that the way that it is. And it does use the term expert service, which is slightly broader than what we'll talk about in the new number eight next. And that's why we're keeping it.

Okay. So the new number eight is, again, except as provided in an applicable memorandum of understanding, persons employed in positions falling within the definitions of confidential, management, or professional employee as set forth in the employer employee relations resolution. So cities that have a civil service system have an employer employee relations resolution. That's a part of how you create your civil service system. Our EERR, as it's called, was adopted in 1972, but it is what we have, and we still have it, and it's still the controlling document.

And in that document, there are definitions of various types of employees. So I'm just gonna read you that that that document, by the way, the employer employee relations resolution along with the civil service rules and another resolution called the personnel and salary resolution. That's all available on the city's website and under the human resources tab. So if you have any curiosity about reading any of those documents, they're there on the city's website. So the confidential employee definition is an employee who is privy to decisions of city management affecting employer employee relations.

So anything that could affect labor relations is considered a confidential employee. And generally speaking, that's basically anybody in the HR department as well as Classified or unclassified or is confidential anything? Confidential, it does not in the definition of confidential, it does not distinguish between classified and unclassified. What we're saying is that we wanna use that definition in the charter to define a type of unclassified employee. So employees who are privy to decisions affecting labor relations.

The management employee definition is any employee having significant responsibilities for formulating and administering city policies, city policies and programs. So that's one part of it. The second part of it is any employee having the authority to exercise independent judgment and discretion not of a routine or clerical nature in evaluating and reporting on the work efforts of employees in recommending to hire, transfer, suspend, layoff, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees in weighing the economic impact of deploying or directing employees or in adjusting employees' grievances. That's really anybody in a management or supervisory position, right, would fall within that within that definition. And the last definition is the professional employee, and that is employees engaged in work requiring specialized knowledge and skills attained through completion of a recognized course of instruction, including, but not limited to, attorneys, physicians, registered nurses, engineers, architects, teachers, planners, and the various types of physical, chemical, and biological sciences.

And so all of those those three definitions are now proposed to be incorporated into the charter. Can we scroll back up? And proposed to be incorporated into the charter for a definition of one of the classes of unclassified employees. The new subsection nine is volunteers of the city. For some reason, previously in the charter, it was specifically volunteers in the police and fire department.

And we we obviously have volunteers in all kinds of departments, library, for example. So we just wanted to include all the volunteers. And then the new sub subsection 10 refers to additional modifications by action of the city council. So what we wanted to do was make it clear that it would be upon the recommendation of the city manager and the city attorney at the city council by ordinance, by adoption of an ordinance, may add new positions or classifications to the unclassified service or modify existing classified positions to move them into the unclassified service in accordance with all applicable laws, policies, and rules. We'll break this down a little bit.

So why is it important to say upon the recommendation of the city manager and the city attorney? The city manager is listed as the appointing authority of the city. Right? He is in charge of the class classification plan. And so that is a that's a job that's specifically given to the city manager.

So we don't want the city council to sort of get themselves into trouble in the councilmanic interference situation, for example, by saying, well, we want to create we wanna do this to this position, or we wanna we wanna reorganize this department ourselves when that is a job that is specifically given to the city manager under the charter. Similarly, the city attorney is tasked with drafting all the ordinances of the city. And so we don't want the city council to act by by ordinance when that ordinance was not drafted or recommended by the city attorney. Right? And then in terms of the actual action, so what the current charter says is that the city council by ordinance can divide or separate a department of the city into divisions and, by ordinance, can provide that the employees selected to be the head of that division will be in the unclassified service.

So, again, we think that that's a there's a little bit of overreach in that drafting with regard to what the council does versus what the city manager does. And there's a little bit of limitation in that in that it limits the city manager's ability to have divisions headed by unclassified folks, if it's only the head of a particular division, that would be an unclassified employee. So for like, we can take examples of, let's say, a management analyst in the city manager's office, for example. Right? That position, let's just say it didn't exist before.

If the city manager wanted to create the management analyst position, That's a position that ought to be unclassified. Right? Because they are they are preparing and implementing plans for programs. They are gonna be looking at financial decisions of the city. They're going to be privy to some confidential information on a number of occasions.

Right? So those kinds of employees ought to be unclassified. But in the way it's currently written, the only way a management analyst become unclassified is if there was a division created and that management analyst made the head of that division in the world where management analyst classification didn't already exist. But that that's a limitation that I think sort of negatively impacts organizational change going forward or could negatively impact or limit organizational change going forward. And so the the what we've what we're proposing here is to say the the city council can, again, still by ordinance, so it's not like they just make a motion and it happens.

Right? There's a a full ordinance approval process. The city council by ordinance can add positions and modify existing classified positions into the unclassified service. But it's important to note that it's with respect to all applicable laws, policies, and rules. So it keeps in place the checks and balances that are already built into our system.

To the to the extent that there is a classified position that the city manager wishes to make an unclassified unclassified position because let's say that the intent of the job is now changing to become more of a management position. In that instance, the changes to that job description would have to be met and conferred with the union that held that classified position. And then those changes would have to be approved by the civil service commission. And then those changes would have to be approved by the city council. So there's a there's a process.

And within that process and at every step, there's an ability for the stakeholders to have a voice in that process. And so we wanted to make sure that in this change, we specifically referenced compliance with the applicable laws, policies, and rules in the process that the city council undertakes to make those changes.

Okay. So it sounds like all those process steps talking to the union, etcetera, would happen or would be contained by applicable laws, policies, and rules? Yes. Okay. And does it then require I'm not sure upon requires both the city manager and the city attorney to advise the city council in order to carry out one of those acts?

That's right.

Okay. So both, not just city manager, but also the city? Alright. Thank you.

Let me scroll down. Thank you. Alright. And then the the last part of eleven o one is that the like I said, everything that isn't unclassified is is classified. Right? So we just wanna make it clear that the classified service is all positions not specifically designated in that section or by action of the city council consistent with that subsection that we were just discussing. Okay. Let's move on to actually, you know what? Because this is the big the big section. If you have questions or comments for me

Yes. Feel

like maybe changing the title of this section might make sense because it's, you know, bullet a. There's there's 10 bullets underneath all about unclassified, but the title is classified service. I know it's saying everything that's not listed is classified, but it's kind of confusing looking at it that way. I don't know. Maybe it's just me. But

That that's definitely a good comment. I would ask the group group five members to weigh in on on that comment.

Perhaps if we just called it classified and unclassified service.

Definitely don't call it delineating between classified and unclassified service.

That makes sense to me. That makes sense to me. If there's no other comments or questions with regard to eleven oh one, then we'll move on to eleven oh two. So this is the section that Mr. Naved was referencing earlier regarding appointments from the classified to the unclassified unclassified service.

So this section, how it currently reads, states that when an employee who is in a classified position gets promoted into a management or unclassified position, and they are subsequently removed from that unclassified position, they can revert back to their classified their classified role. And there really aren't any guardrails on that section. There's no time limitations or language relating to reasons for removal from the unclassified position or anything like that. And so from a just from a sort of a best practices kind of standpoint, we're proposing to include some new language in this section that provides some of those guardrails. And so what we say here is, know, making it clear that it's when a member in the unclassified service voluntarily accepts a promotion or appointment by the appointing authority, the city manager, to a position within the unclassified service.

And that that person then is subsequently removed from the unclassified position within two years of the appointment thereto. Then he has he or she has the right to revert back to their classified position just as it is currently granted that that right is currently granted under the charter. But we have included a an exception for if the removal from the unclassified position is for cause or in the situation in which the person resigns in lieu of termination. So in that in those instances, you would lose the right to revert back to your your classified position. So that that's the explanation for why we're making changes to this.

We have done some research on other city charters, and, frankly, they're kind of all over the place. The vast majority of city charters are actually silent. Maybe not vast majority, but a lot of the city charters are actually silent on this part as to the right of reversion. Perhaps they're in their civil service rules or somewhere else, but we weren't able to find any language in the city charter relating to a right of reversion in a in a lot of the city charters. The city charters that did include some of this language, like I said, are sort of all over the place.

Some of them have six months, some a year, some two years. Some have language that doesn't have a time period, but does include dismissal for cause, the exception for dismissal for cause. So there doesn't appear to be any sort of one standard that cities in California have adopted on this. But this is definitely something that we would be happy to engage with the unions on in terms of discussion of what they'd like to see with this section. Are there any questions about this section?

So if we could scroll down, the next the next time we have any changes is in the prohibitions. So basically, this section, the prohibition section says, don't lie to us when you're applying for a job with the city. That's that's the gist of this section. We're just updating this language to make it make it make more sense. So the language willfully or corruptly or corruptly is an entirely unnecessary word in in this.

A willful action is a willful action whether you intend it to be corrupt or not. So the if so no person shall willfully make a false statement or other type of markers or report regarding an application, a test, certification, or appointment pursuant to this article, article 11 of the charter, or commit fraud, again, relating to the the impartial execution of the provisions of this article. The term personnel provision is not used anywhere else. So we just didn't think it was people may wonder what is the personnel provisions. Does that include city managers' directives, you know, the employee handbook?

Does it include the civil service commission rules and regulations? So we wanted to make it clear that what we're talking about here is is false statements and fraud relating to the civil service provisions as they are set forth in this this article 11. Question. And on the second paragraph Oh.

Quick question, if I may. Uh-huh. There's also wins. Like, my mom used to say, tell the truth, but that doesn't mean you have to tell them everything. And it's like, yeah, ma. That doesn't sound like you're telling the truth. So when you say shall no person shall willfully make a false statement, is there anything there that needs to be there to say, okay. But if you withhold something, yeah, you're not lying, but you're also maybe maliciously withholding or something. Does that make sense?

Like So our real withholding or something along those lines.

I I get I get what you're saying. So our our the application process, right, has very specific questions. As you can imagine with regard to especially civil serve or the classified positions, it's all very precise and very specific and very standardized. And we need to do that because we need to ensure that when we do when we get the anonymous anonymized applications. It's all it's all very, very standard.

So there if there is information that was left off, It can either be because our application was not correct and didn't ask the right questions. Right? Or they willfully made a false statement. Let's say if there was a question relating to completion of an educational requirement. Right?

And the instead of providing both of the universities that somebody attended, they only provided one of the universities. We would view that as a false statement and a false report because they were not they failed to answer the question. And so and then we may actually look at that question and make sure that we had worded that absolutely perfectly. But with the exception of that, that's generally how we would how we would break that down. And so we we haven't proposed to include any additional language.

And it's important to note also that in terms of the standards that we use at different points application process or the standards that we use for discipline or termination of somebody after they're in an a civil service role, but based on information that we learn later, let's say, that is subject to the rules in the civil service rules and regulations. So we don't really that's the process for taking action with respect to classified positions. And so whenever we sort of add or change to something that's covered in the civil service rules, there's sort of we have to be extra careful with that. Then the next paragraph here, really the only substantive change here is to say that there's a general reference to misdemeanors as opposed to the specific statement that we're taking out. So at the time this was drafted and still to this day, a misdemeanor is punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000 and a term not exceeding one year in jail.

I that's based on state law. State law could change on what a misdemeanor is, and so we just thought that a general reference to state law misdemeanors would be more appropriate here. And so we also we also wanted to make it clear, like I said, because it's not just a question of a crime, a misdemeanor, but it's also depending on the vehicle by which this fraud came to light, it could have been a civil service commission disciplinary hearing, not necessarily a criminal action. Right? And so we wanted to make sure that the enforcement or the prohibition referenced not just the conviction, the criminal conviction, but also a finding by a civil service commission board review hearing that the employee had violated the provisions of article

11. Yes.

May ask what is the purpose of a list of things that you were not to do?

So Yes?

Mhmm.

An appointment is when when a person is a is appointed to a classified gets permanent appointment to a classified position by the appointing authority, which in this case is city manager. So when that when that happens, if a person is obtaining that through a false or fraudulent statement,

that's actionable by us.

In that in that situation, it would be with relation to let's say, I'm gonna try to think of an example. It would be for a classified position, and it would be a false statement by the app made by the applicant in the course of the application process, in the case of the hiring process or in this case, the case of the actual appointment. That's the after you you've completed your probationary period, and you obtain appointment, permanent appointments to that position. Okay. So the the sort of the hammer at the end of it is that should anybody be convicted of a misdemeanor for violation of of that article or be found by the civil service commission to have have violated those provisions, then that person shall be ineligible for a period of five years for employment with the city.

And if they are a current employee who was found to have done this, they are they are deemed to have forfeited their their position or employment with the city will be immediately terminated. That's and that's currently in the in the charter. Okay. Let's scroll down. And then we have no further changes.

That's the last change. We have no further changes to that that article or to the retirement system section in article 12. So I'm happy to take questions from the committee generally or specifically to any of these sections now that haven't previously been asked, and then I would suggest opening up.

There any other questions on group five, their report out analysis by staff? Thank you.

So, Mr. Chair, back to this slide, just to highlight kind of and I'm sorry, had to step out a couple of times on different things, kind of what's being asked of you today, I think, has been described. The work that group five is doing is on a little bit of an accelerated timeframe because of the need for any changes to this provision to go to a meet and confer process with all of the impacted labor groups, which is all of them, you know, for their input before this is finalized. And so Sue and this committee did a great job of meeting a lot, you know, and getting through, you know, these proposed revisions so we can be on the right timeline for this. And so what's being asked of the committee tonight is if you're comfortable proceeding to take action to approve in substantial form.

There might be other tweaks and changes, you know, that are made. The group five proposed modifications to the existing charter sections one hundred ten and one hundred eleven and Article 11 to allow for the initiation of meet and confer process with impacted labor groups. Sue and I are talking about the advisability and necessity of, if, in fact, you do direct us to proceed of actually going to to counsel as well and getting, you know, their buy in and comfort level with initiating, you know, that process. I don't think we've finally decided that yet, but we're probably on want to get to them, at least to report to them, if not get direction for them on on how to proceed. So this is an important initial step for this group to take with respect to to to kind of the first bit of language, you know, out of the gate.

And it would be appropriate to go to public comment if there is any on this particular item.

And I I I do wanna mention from a process perspective, after we do that, after we go to civil service and council and all the unions and everybody, there's a pretty good chance that we'll be coming back to you with sort of an explanation of what maybe some of the unions have requested that we make modifications to the proposed red lines or something like that. And so this is not going to be most likely will not be the sort of last time you see red lines to this to these sections. They'll they will after we go through our process, they will they will be coming back both to the subcommittee as well as the larger committee.

K. Thank you.

One last comment, if I might, vice chair, before you go to public comment, particularly in light of comments made by a previous speaker, you know, to an item. I want to talk about First Amendment right and how it applies to, you know, people speaking to this group. As horrible and offensive and shocking as some statements, you know, are that were made and might be made, this is a public forum, and there is a responsibility for us to respect First Amendment protected speech, even hateful speech. I do want to point out, and I think I can speak for all of you to say that is not aligned with the city's values. It's not aligned with this community's values.

And so listening to it and hearing it by bay your duty and responsibility because that's another value, right, of the community is free speech, but it doesn't suggest that you're aligned, you know, with any of those types of comments. This right of free speech is not unlimited, however, and if the comments being made do not relate to the topic at hand, and there is your topic, you know, at hand, Mr. Vice Chair will be within your prerogative to interrupt, you know, and redirect, you know, the speaker to make relevant statements. So just wanted to lay that groundwork in the event there are additional, you know, comments of that of ilk so that this group understands, you know, the the the environment and the rules that apply. Thank you, mister vice chair.

Thank you. I will now ask for a public comment. Each speaker gets two minutes. Please keep your statements relevant to what you see there on the slides, a possible action to approve in substantial form group five's proposed modifications.

Mister Clark Lance, you can speak.

Hello. And thank you for the speaker that laid out that big virtue signal comment. Sorry. I wasn't going to speak about anything that might ruffle your feathers. I was gonna say comment on this issue that we're talking about on the budget and commend the woman who was reviewing that because of her combination of kind of professionalism and and lighthearted sort of humor that made that process go really well. It was easy for the public to follow. Unfortunately, now I feel compelled to comment on the gentleman. I'm restricting diversity of thought. Your opinion of people's speech really doesn't matter. It's inappropriate for you to speak in front of others. And

Mister Lance, please keep your comments relevant to what you see there on the screen.

Okay. Just know that the community is wider than this gentleman's opinion of of of thought. Okay? So he doesn't speak for the whole community. The community is against genocide and against Jewish control of banks and media. Thank you.

Welcome. It'll be the end of that. Thank you. Is there any further public comment?

See none. Else?

I'm sorry? Okay. Alright. Thank you. With that, I think we need a motion Motion to close public hearing? No. First, we gotta do the possible action. I mean,

probably It's a it's not a formal public hearing. You don't need a motion to close public hearing. Appreciate your planning commission, bona fides, though, member Kelly. And so does the current chair.

So motion then to take the possible action to approve in substantial form group five's proposed modifications to existing charter sections ten ten, ten eleven, and article 11 will allow for initiation of meet and confer process with impacted labor groups and other stakeholders. Second.

And I will I will just note that includes a modification to section 11 o one title for classified and unclassified service.

Duly noted. Thank you. I believe you had a second. Please take a a roll call for a staff.

Alright. Who made the motion?

Who is the original motion maker?

Vice chair. Vice

chair? Oh oh oh, you chair you moved. Okay. With second by Kelly.

Holly Roberts? Yes. Mohamed Naveed? John Brooks?

Yes.

Joe Cisinski?

Yes.

Eric Crutchlow?

Yes.

Bert Fields?

Yes.

Steve Kelly?

Yes.

Lauren Diamond? Yes. Eric Jensen? Yes. Mark big Begman?

Beckman. Yes.

Beckman. I'm sorry.

I had to write the first down.

Thank you, Steph. That was a very good presentation.

So with that, we'll move on to the third item of the amendment, the agenda.

Yeah. I'm gonna go to group six, mister vice chair, after just to report out briefly for that group. And then I think we can go to back to group one, as well. Mister Jensen has kindly deputized me to do a report out, you know, on that, which as soon as I find my notes here in in the shuffle of things in front of me, I'll be able to do. But at least that with respect to group six, group six, very important group, fiscal administration and per and procurement.

There's not been a group meeting yet, although I know they're they endeavored, you know, to put a meeting, together. It didn't come together. But I wanted to let the broader group know that our staff has had preliminary meetings with finance department and public works staff who are the professional stakeholders, you know, with respect to this, the these articles and sections. The there's been keen interest from the finance department to update provisions in the fiscal section to match current budgeting and and actual and best practices. There is also keen interest from the public works department to look at public work thresholds and standards and to add authority to utilize design build type procurement practices.

And so as soon as this group, you know, gets together, they'll they'll have a lot of good input from professional staff on thoughts about modifications that that could be made. I'm gonna propose that the group six members, those that are in attendance, maybe get together after this meeting with with me and with with Courtney, and we'll try to identify a a available time slot that are being gobbled up pretty good by your active group one through five brothers and sisters, but we'll find time to get you going as well on that. So wanted to at least offer that for the for the group. Then if you give me just one sec here To group one. Group one, as is indicated, is the power and structure of city government rules process for action group.

They've had a couple of very productive meetings since your last report out. They actually met in November as well, but that was reported out at your November meeting. They've since met on December 15 as indicated here and on January 14 as indicated. And like I said, I've been deputized to do the report out. Thanks in no small part to mister Jensen's forward thinking on preparation of minutes in a more formal way than maybe some other groups have, and I'm gonna, translate some of, you know, his work into a proposed template for report outs that the other groups, I think, can use, which will both facilitate note taking and, I think, improve transparency because I know this group, you know, cares about that.

But, at least, for group one, the report out, and I will say that, the December were included, you know, in your packet and were available to the public. We did do put together a version of those. And from those minutes, I'll just present some some highlights, actually, back to member Crutchlow's point and my reference about qualified elector and what that means. Member Kelly identified that issue himself. It's it's both a term of art and kind of an obscure, you know, term, and so we think we can do better with language in that even if we have to also include qualified elector language, you know, in order to tie in with the with the state law in that case.

Discussion was made of section four zero one that talked about disposal of a public utility and and the importance and value of distinguishing between disposal of the public utility itself and of public utility property. The public utility owns property. There's other rules about disposition of property. This charter provision pretty clearly is intended to get actually at the disposition of the utility itself as opposed to property, so adding some clarity there. We thought it would be valuable to explain what a council manager form of government is.

That's a very meaningful phrase, and it describes the overall structure of our government. But currently, the charter just says we're gonna have a council manager form of government. We thought it would be valuable at least a sentence, you know, or two in order to actually give a better idea of what that means. Section 600 was discussed. It has a lot of provisions regarding city council people and the required qualifications and terms and other things.

The the and it the staff thinks, and I think the committee agreed that that needs quite a bit of work to both organize the section better, potentially move things to other sections where they make more sense, and to clarify some some terms that are there. Section eight zero eight was discussed and others relating to ordinance adoption and publication with the idea that there needs to be some simplification of that language and use of layman's terms in under in order to better explain the adoption of the ordinance process and how that relates to and the timing of publication, you know, of the ordinance. All those things were discussed. And there was a general observation about kind of the old fashioned nature of how ordinances are published and how legal notices are provided, not necessarily to do away with those old fashioned forms of publishing, you know, in in a newspaper, but to augment that with the requirement of providing some appropriate digital or electronic, you know, notice to to folks when publication of ordinances and legal notices are required. We're still working on the language, you know, for that because we don't wanna freeze in time how we refer to things now that seem modern because twenty years from now, those things might not be modern, you know, anymore.

And so but at least wanting to capture that concept that, you know, the the expectations, you know, and and the requirements of notifying people would be more than simply, you know, newspaper publication and posting in physical locations. So I I think that captures pretty well, member Jensen, some of your comments and notes from that meeting. I also have comments on the January 14 meeting that I can provide as well if you wanna wait maybe to hear the universe, or you interject whenever you want. I'm doing a great job. Okay.

Very good. Thank you. So January 14, the group met, and and we're really, again, benefited greatly from the attendance of elected city clerk Bob O'Keefe because we started to drill down a little bit into some of these section 600 terms, including particularly at this meeting, the provision that requires council members and the mayor to be residents of the city thirty days or the district not just the city, but if in fact they're running for a district election, the district in which they live or they're they're proposing to run thirty days prior to the date for filing of their papers. A lot of questions come up around that, like what constitutes residency. Right?

When do you need to prove up, you know, that thirty day residency? What if it changes, you know, between before thirty or, you know, after, you know, thirty days? And it was really helpful, and we mapped it out on the board, right, what the the actual filing process was using the twenty twenty six election as an example, starting from the date that the residency requirement, you know, would it tie to, which in this case is 07/07/2026, all the way through to the last date of when papers must be filed, which is August 7, and there's some interim steps in there. And the city clerk is responsible for kind of administering this and validating the the the residency requirement. The current language really largely defers for what constitutes a qualified elector and and a resident to the registrar of voters.

And I think that's a pretty standard, you know, process throughout the state for most city clerks. They're not deciding themselves whether a person's a qualified elector because the registrar of voters has all that information. And in fact, the registrar of voters for most small cities, not every small city, runs, you know, the election. And so there's a lot of both the duties clearly by the city clerk, but getting a lot of their core information, you know, from the registrar. In addition, again, residency is usually based on the information that's that that is provided to the city clerk by people that they swear to but isn't necessarily validated, and, again, getting the information from the clerk regarding their their registration status.

If the residency matches, right, they're both registered to vote, and they're registered to vote in the right place. Our city clerk, and I should say our assistant city clerk on her own had said, I think we should do better than that and at least get some documentation from people prior to when they file their papers that shows that they're residents. In other words, I'm not just gonna rely on what the registrar of voters tells me. I'm gonna ask them to produce a couple of documents, right, that shows, you know, their residency. The thing that wasn't aligned, however, and we've we're working with they're working with us and with the elected city clerk to align that for this upcoming election, is all of their validation process with the actual July 7 date.

The the validation of residency was happening after that fact at a different moment in the per in the in the candidacy, and the documents that were being obtained didn't necessarily relate back to that July 7 date. And so the problem really wasn't in the language of the charter itself. That rule is a fairly standard rule, and different people sometimes propose making it longer than that. But the law is pretty clear under the constitution that you can't require, you know, longer terms of residency or you violate provisions of the constitution regarding people's ability to run for office. But the administration of that wasn't really aligned in order to validate residency app as of that date.

And so with this city clerk working with the assistant city clerk in our office, that process is gonna be improved for this very election. What's missing, we think, in the charter, though, is a reference to the the city clerk's administration of that of that thirty day residency requirement in accordance with rules approved by the city council. And so that's gonna end up being a proposed revision to that section by consensus of that group along with a variety of other proposed, you know, revisions and changes. So that was a lot of the January meeting, and it was really illuminated by elected city clerk O'Keefe being there. I also presented because a lot of the sections in this group's jurisdiction, you know, if you will, were oddly titled, seemingly in the wrong place, logically broken up and, you know, and reorganized.

I also presented as part of this last committee meeting a discussion to them along the lines of what you're going to hear in greater detail from me tonight about a proposed comprehensive reorganization of the charter. And so there was a good discussion amongst the members of the group about the pros and cons of that but again, you'll have on a larger scale here, and I'll save the details of that for when we get to that item. Secretary Jensen, I'll refer back to you to see if you wanted to add anything to that report out.

I think you did an excellent job and very thorough. Thank you. Thank you.

So I don't think any action or further input's required on those report outs. I do want to, at the for the end of this item, though, again, keying off some of the work that secretary Jensen did talk about in the next slide, standardization of a report out process. We want to be helpful and make this easy for all the people reporting out both to gather your notes, you know, and in in effect have a format for for presenting your notes as a document that gets shared with the public and gets included within a packet and as a, you know, guidepost for your committee to, you know, get aligned on what an appropriate report out would be. And so what we've done very preliminarily, and we used it, and I'm sorry. I'm just kind of showing it here to you, and we're going to distribute we've got copies here, for anyone who's here in the public, and we'll upload this, as a post agenda material item, so the public can see what we're proposing to use.

It's a, in effect, subcommittee meeting minutes template. And, we've already gone through the process, thank you, Courtney, of creating a customized version of this for each subcommittee, should you choose to use it, that, identifies the name of the subcommittee at the top, has a meeting date, when the meeting started, when it was adjourned, a roll call of who was in attendance, who from staff was attending, if there's any outside stakeholder that it's been called to present to you. It would give you a place to identify that outside stakeholder, and then, it would allow you to present notes, or or to take notes on what staff presentation there is, what committee discussions occurred, and then what what next steps, you know, the committee, has agreed to. Again, in summary form, at least for note taking, you know, purposes, and then whoever is assigned the responsibility of reporting out, you know, could be as detailed as they think is necessary and appropriate in order to communicate to this larger group where the subagpany was at and if appropriate and desired to solicit input from the from the group. So with this template, secretary would take notes, you know, either in writing or using this.

We're we're we're gonna create a fillable PDF, right, for this as well and circulate to the group if someone wants to be taking notes, you know, right on the document. And I just described what the what the using this template, what would be included in that. The the then the next recommended step would be to provide draft notes to the subcommittee members for comment. Right? Secretary takes notes, circulates them amongst the subcommittee.

If anybody has any comments to that, those can be incorporated in the discretion of the secretary, and then those minutes would be finalized and, again, included in the next CRC packet to assist with the group's report out. So we think we're, again, trying to be helpful. We know this isn't something you do all the time. We wanna encourage, you know, transparency and consistency, right, amongst you on how different things are reported out. The other thing that was talked about that that I just wanted to make a point of with all of you, and we've, I think, made this point to at least a few of the subcommittees that I've been attending, and I think you did as well with with group five.

The actual draft language that we are working on, we're not intending to be circulated before it's finalized and presented to the larger group. Right? Drafts are really works in progress. There's things that could go back and forth. And so publicizing that prematurely and getting people either wild up or excited or commenting on something that's still a work in progress, we think, would probably be more of a distraction, you know, than helpful.

We're trying to figure out how to, if if it's necessary for the functionality of the subcommittees to at least give you access, you know, to drafts without turning them into public documents prematurely. And but we think that, again, the report outs at this stage are are appropriate. And then, again, when the when the language is ready, the actual language will be presented and included, ideally, more in advance, you know, the next time for full public awareness and input, you know, in circulation. And so interested in your input on on this process, and we'll certainly take that into account, particularly if you have comments or proposed changes on the template. Otherwise, we'll just proceed, mister vice chair, with deploying what I described, you know, to everybody, hopefully, in a manner that's useful to you in your future report outs at meetings.

Thank you. Turn it back over to you.

Thank you, mister Googans. Next and last item we have on the agenda is a staff presentation and solicitation of committee input regarding, number one, charter wide language organization conventions. Number two, benchmarking with other charter cities. Number three, proposed standards for grouping proposed charter modifications within levels. Number four, process for drafting and review of charter modifications. And five, project timeline and possible need for additional meetings. I will turn that over to you, Glenn, if you have a presentation.

I do. Sorry. You're hearing a lot from me as usual. But some good stuff to talk about here and do really appreciate the detail and of of Sue's presentation in getting that actual language in front of you and getting your guys' approval of it. The first topic listed here, and we're going to might defer a couple of them to your to your next meeting because we're getting into the, you know, two and a half hours of this, and we we might benefit from being a little further along with some aspects of the presentation.

But the first topic I wanted to discuss with all of you is the this idea of charter language and organization conventions. We had a version of this at your last meeting, as you might remember, and, really, it's an important subject for a project like this. Right? What standard should we apply to to achieve the objective of making the charter more accessible and easier to understand? And this, of course, applies to all of you, right, because you're all working with different sections of the charter but with this same common theme in mind.

And this has been a particular focus of group one Given the nature of the the sections that group one's assigned, it kind of lends itself to some of these more fundamental organizational issues, but it really applies to all groups. And so that's why it's in in front of all of you, and we'll come back to you beyond just the presentation tonight. The issues being discussed for these conventions include, and some of these you've heard before, everyone's interested in eliminating legal jargon where possible and using layman's terms, although we may need legal terms where necessary as we discussed earlier tonight. For example, when we're referencing or relying on terms in state law that just are what they are, It it it might be helpful to add layman's terms, but you don't want to get rid of a term, right, that ties you into the applicable law that you're trying to incorporate. Or other other specialty areas, for example, public works procurement.

There's a lot of terms of art within the design build procurement framework that might be, you know, used and referenced. Again, they might be also explained, but we would still use those terms because they're commonly recognized, you know, within the industry. The other concept we talked about is the use the use of defined terms and and the groups that and and group one, in particular, again, because we drilled down into this since one of their sections is actual definitions, although there's not many in there. But I think there's agreement that it's desirable to have defined terms with the current preference to refer to the existence of defined terms in a paragraph at the beginning of the document, define the terms as they arise, right, the first time they appear, you know, in the charter, they might also be, you know, defined, but then for sure, and this is really the value, think, you know, a glossary of defined terms at the end of the document. This current document has a has, I think, four or five defined terms at the end of the document.

It's not gonna be a 100, but it's probably gonna be 20 or 30, right, you know, defined terms, you know, throughout the document, you know, again, as a reference point. And so that's a convention that we all we want you to think about as you go through, and and, yeah, any number of you have been good about saying, hey. I don't know what that term meets or you know? And and can we define that? The defined terms usually are, once they're defined, capitalized. Right? So it pops, you know, as a defined term. And in the beginning, it'll probably say something like, you know, capitalized terms, you know, in this charter shall have the definitions, you know, provided as summarized, you know, in a glossary at the end of the charter. Right? It'll say something like that.

But that's kind of a contract, you know, standard that we think is useful, again, in making this document more accessible easier to work with, both on the professional side and on the layman's side. There's also and and this was kind of a a evolution in and of itself. Right? The reference to I mean, a really old charterers probably just said he and him. But most charterers have since at least gone to, you know, his, her.

But even that's now viewed as antiquated, and most of the time, you can just use the title of the office that's being referred to. Right? There doesn't need to be a gender reference. If you're talking about the city manager, you say the city manager. If you're talking about the city council person, you say a city council person.

And so you'll see as we do our, you know, revisions and this unless this group ultimately suggests otherwise, because it'll be up to you using that generic kind of professionalized replacement of his, her, you know, references. And then finally, and we referred to this, and I'll get into this a little bit more after after this item, the reorganization of some articles and sections appears to make sense and appears to be something that could add value both for the professional users of the charter, right, the lawyers and the professional people who are interpreting it and the professional city people who are living by it in its updated, you know, form, but also for casual uses of the charter. Right? People who are just, hey. What is what what's this requirement in their interactions with the city?

This kind of reorganization would include more uniform numbering, revising article section headings as was even implemented, you know, tonight because some of them are incomplete or or obscure or don't even really accurately describe what what comes next, you know, in the sections themselves, and creating, we think, and section 600 is a really good example of this. It's got, like, eight paragraphs with a variety of different different subjects, creating titled subsections, right, again, so you can find things, you know, easier when you're looking for what the rule would be. Even with searchability now, you know, in AI, you know, searchability, having a document that's organized, you know, in a sensible way, we think adds a lot of value. But and there's an important but. Any reorganization that moves language from one place to another will change charter section references and may appear as if that section has been deleted even or, you know, or changed in substantively way more than it actually, you know, has been.

And that would be how it would appear, if what the voters end up seeing and acting on is an underlying strikeout version of the document. So even if this reorganization makes sense, we all should be cognizant of of kind of that as as being one of the pitfalls. And so this next slide, an item, and we're gonna switch over to document a that is available here and will be uploaded because I'm really not ask asking for final action from you tonight. I think this needs to sit with you and us, you know, for a little bit. But at the at the next meeting, we'll probably be and and after the public has a chance to look at it at the next meeting, we'll we'll be asking for more definitive direction, you know, from you on it.

What I've put together, and a couple of the the committees have had a glimpse of already, is a charter project proposed reorganization draft. A this is just a high level outline of it. If you could scroll down just kind of a little bit to show it for with the article one, essential terms, and we'll dive into this a little bit more. Article two, elected officials. Article three, conduct of elections. Article four, city council, actions and limitations. You'll notice here these are different than the some of the current article titles. Article five, organization of city government. Article six, appointed boards and commissions. That's the same.

Article seven, civil service. Article eight, fiscal administration, maybe, and finance. Article nine, public contracting, including franchises. If you remember, fiscal administration and public contracting were included in one before. And then article 10, some general provisions.

And so these next pages and, again, I'm gonna I'm gonna spin through it to give you a flavor of it, go into a little bit more detail about what in all in us looking at these sections as we dived into it and started seeing how disjointed some of these sections were and how they might benefit from your organization. This is kind of a fleshed out version of what we might have in mind. Article one, essential terms, has a number of existing articles and sections drawn from a variety of places in the charter. Interestingly, its own article is the name of the city, has its own article, what the city's name is. Usually, are, write up, a collection of sections, right, that deal with a similar topic, not just one topic.

Article two is boundaries. It's its own article, you know, a boundary section. But there's other ones, section 400, general grant of power, section 500, form of government, section seven zero six may be going here, A description of city council powers. All of those and and section 1,800, defined terms with only a sprinkling of defined terms. All of those for us looking at it as professionals used to working with policies and documents and codes and contracts like this, really makes sense to organize, we think, as a professional recommendation in this form as proposed here with section 100 being name, section one zero one being boundaries, one zero two being general powers of the of the city as a charter city.

Right? It's gonna be a broad statement of city authority as a charter city because we want as many of those powers as possible subject only to the limitations that we impose on ourselves. And so, section one zero two will be that form of statement. Section one zero three will be the description of us as a council manager form of government, but with a few more sentences explaining what that is. Section one zero four, and this is a fundamental thing, will talk about this charter in the context of other laws.

Right? It's enacted in accordance with the with the constitution. If it incorporate and and gives the power of the city to make laws with respect to municipal affairs. If there's conflict with the city law, we're gonna wanna say the charter governs wherever possible. And it's gonna say, hey.

You can make other ordinance and laws, city council, that are but only to the extent those are consistent with this charter. So it basically places this charter in the cosmos of other, applicable laws. And then as we talked about a defined terms section that's gonna say, hey. There's gonna be defined terms, and where you can find them other than throughout the document is at the end of the document. Similarly, article two, elections officials borrows from a lot of different sections, and we've divided these up because we thought it made sense the way the the charter was currently configured.

And and and I don't think it it it creates too much of a problem, but but we can address it if it does. Some of these sections are sections that are assigned to some submit subs some subcommittees, and others are assigned to other subcommittees. So there's gonna have to be ultimately be, if we go down this path, a melding of various sections. But the sections listed here, and, again, you've got a handout of this as well. I'm not gonna list every one of them, are a combination of sections regarding, the elected officials, the the mayor, city council, the city clerk, and the chief of police, and it puts them all where they're not now in effect in one place.

And so the reconfiguration of that would have a general section. Section 200 says, hey. Here are the city's elected officials. It lists them all. And then article or section two zero one would say, and here there we here are the required qualifications for those elected officials.

Some some of those requirements will be applicable to everyone. Some of those requirements will be unique to the mayor and council. Some of those requirements will be unique to the chief of police, and some of those requirements will be unique to the city clerk, you know, or not, but it will we'll decide, you know, what those are. And then the powers and duties of those various parties will be identified, again, all in one place, the mayor, council members, chief of police, city clerk. Most of that, we're not proposing to change, particularly with respect to the mayor, you know, and city council people, but with input, as we've already talked about, from the chief of police and with input, as we've already talked about, from the city clerk, those particular sections, which didn't which are really a little bit out of step with how those positions function right now, probably would be proposed to be updated.

Then, again, since we're talking about the elected officials, there'll be some of the terms, again, all gathered in one place as opposed to scattered in various sections that talk about how folks are elected, the fact that city council members are elected by district, term limits that apply, vacancies, which, by the way, isn't defined as it needs to be and will be defined in work with the ad hoc summit subcommittee group assigned to that, and then commencement of term, oath of office, and compensation. Again, borrowing from a variety of different articles and putting all that in one place and so on. Right? Article three, city elections, does similar work here as outlined here. I won't talk about every section there.

Article four does the same thing with city council actions and limitations. You can see these things are scattered throughout article four, article article seven, and article eight in kind of an incongruous way. Why there's meeting sec you know, city council meeting sections in article seven, and then it refers to meetings and ordinances and resolutions in article eight. Doesn't make sense to any of us kind of in looking at it. And when we talk to the groups about it, doesn't make particular sense, you know, to the ad hoc subcommittee groups.

And so here we think is a logical way of taking all of those and putting it all in one place as outlined here in the reconfigured sections with city council authority generally in effect to take all actions and make all policies of the city consistent with the terms of the charter and other applicable laws. And then how city council members meet, regular special meetings, rules for conduct of meetings that we talked about earlier, the kinds of forms of action that can be taken then would be another section, ordinance or resolution, and then limitations on their authorities and actions. There's a variety of different sections, again, sprinkled a little bit throughout the charter with odd numbering because when you add a rule like this, it finds a weird section, you know, number kind of in the middle of other sections where people kind of think it makes sense, and it just doesn't always, that talks about things that, in effect, council people can't do, council member member interference, or that the council can't do even as a collective body, sale of a public utility, sales of certain real property, transfer or change of use of parkland and and public space, and then the reserve powers of the electorate to engage in initiatives and referendums, right, which regardless of what the city council does, can have laws that are made by actions of the people.

So, again, we're thinking it makes sense. Organization of city government is similar. That used to be most of that used to be called the senior officials, and now it's outlined, you know, here, we think in a logical format combining all of these various sections with distinguishing between officers that are appointed by the city council. There's three. Officers appointed by the city manager.

There's multiple, although only really three of them are are provided in detail here. We're not proposing to change that even though it's a little incongruous, but at least to update what those terms are. And then in effect, and this will align with some of the sections and provisions that Sue described to you earlier regarding unclassified service, you know, the city manager's ability to appoint people and the city council's ability to restructure, you know, government under that, you know, proposed section. Article six is the appointed boards and commissions sec Policies there,

Glenn. Yeah. I'm wondering I'm having trouble holding on to this material. And since we have the handout, I wonder if you could sort of move through it a little more quickly, and then outside, we can figure it out.

Very good. I will I'll move even quicker. You do have the handout that was distributed to you, so you're holding this. Okay. Yeah. Very good. And so article six, again, boards and commissions. Article seven is civil service. I didn't have those detailed sections worked out because Sue was presenting on it. Article eight, fiscal administration.

Article nine, public contracting. Again, this document goes through details of what existing articles and sections are and then what the proposed reconfigured, you know, sections, you know, are for that. And so we want you to, you know, again, react to this to the extent you're even able to react to it tonight. But I just wanted to highlight, there's some pros with this, right, that I talked about. We think there is value added both for professional, you know, user and the the layman user.

The cons, you know, we talked about, will it look like such a dramatic thing has been done that people won't feel comfortable, you know, with it? And if in fact we go down this path and in fact we put the the proposal or requirement is that an underlying strikeout version of the document goes in front of people, boy, that's gonna be hard for people to understand. Right? And so a thought, if we go down this path, might be to put a clean version of the document, you know, in front of people. And as member Kelly, you know, suggested earlier and we discussed in that subcommittee, you know, make sure there's a link within that document, you know, that or or at least the URL, right, so that people can, you know, go to it that takes them to the city's website where there's be all sorts of information and details about what this charter amendment actually does, including underlying strikeout versions, right, of individual sections if people are gluttons for punishment, right, you know, for that.

So, there's ways to overcome, you know, the the the appearance, you know, of dramatic changes. There will actually be a fair amount of dramatic changes, but it could look pretty gnarly and and hard to grasp, you know, by the average voter unless we use some of these tools.

Agreed with that. I wonder, is there some way we could sort of put the idea in front of the city council with respect to we could do it this way, we could do it that way, and this might be easier on the voter?

Yeah. And we talk about that. I appreciate that. So once we get once we get input from this group and the thoughts about, you know, if the consensus of this group is that we do that, we may wanna gut check on this level of reorganization with the city council because the last thing, frankly and, you know, we wanna do with this project is go down a path that the city council is gonna look at and go, what are you doing? This is too much. This is too hard to understand. And I can present the logic for it. Right? This group can designate people who support it or who oppose it, right, to go present in front of the city council and then get their feedback. Are you do you have an appetite, you know, for this level of reorganization?

She'll appreciate that point. That's a that's something that we're, you know, thinking about and and and ultimately would heed your, you know, recommendation and direction on. So back to you, mister chair. That's as as much as I wanted to present on that to you tonight. And, again, it's a lot, and so happy to have you all sit with it because it it it and to have the public, you know, as we, you know, socialize this document and make it available to the public, look at it in the case, how many representatives of the public you might wanna make a comment on it, and then we can bring it back for action at your next meeting in in February.

Absolutely. I think, it's a very good idea. The difficulties of presenting it are definitely there, both to the voter and the city council. But, yeah, it would be helpful in the next meeting that we already give another proposed action or you described it earlier. We at least show it to the city council. I I think we should probably do that.

I would also suggest to, you know, one minor little technical thing. The section numbering, I think, can be confusing with the old charter. Let's say we go do it. I think we should just consider changing the numbering scheme so that it's very explicit that this is the new charter versus the old because there's gonna be overlap in numbers as it looks. Just a minor point, but I think, you know, I I agree with your sentiment and, you know, the fact that the city council needs to have a buy in.

Otherwise, we're spending a lot of time on things that they all of a sense are yet no way. I I I have no problem putting in the effort. I think none of us do, but I think, definitely, let's get their input.

Yeah. Appreciate that. Both points, really. And

And by the way, if you need our support, I mean, I'm happy as I'm sure any other member is here to go in front of city council and also support this stuff because I personally, I I do agree with you. There needs to be some housecleaning.

Yeah. I I just wanna suck, what Eric said. We should avoid any overlap between the numbering and the old one of the numbering.

And a comment on that, we definitely you know, it would be different, you know, and, again, we think, you know, consistent best practice, you know, numbering, and we'll get further input, you know, from that on people kind of in this business. But one thing

that goes a letter or a couple letters goes a long way. Everybody likes three letter acronyms, don't they? I want a letter and a number or something, but I mean

No. Absolutely appreciate that. And and also a couple of the tools that we talked about, right, to make this document more accessible and make the transition, you know, understandable is adding an index at the end of the charter, right, to instead of having the amendments after each section, another convention that we talked about is actually eliminating that, but having a series of indices at the end of the charter that says what the history is for each section, including a cross reference between old charter, you know, number this is now new charter number that. In addition, another body of work that we're prepared to take on would be, of course, there's a lot of city code sections and other documents that reference charter authority as their basis for enactment that we would need to go through, hopefully assisted with AI. The the the exercise of updating.

Right? We would probably do it if, in fact, you support this, the council supports this, the, you know, the community votes in favor of it. A implementing step would be us drafting a comprehensive city code update that changes all of the charter references in that to the new charter references. And it could could be done in well one fell swoop, and we would work with the with the the company that digitally and we talked to the city clerk about the assistant city clerk about this. She's gonna reach out reach out to them about what the best mechanism is for translating, you know, this new the this new version of the charter into the digitally available version of the charter on the Internet.

I was a little well, I think we should probably think about it in terms of what will the voter see, you know, in the actual preliminary voting documents. And, you know, if it's a marked up document, you know, under the old version, my assumption was it was going to be the charter marked up, which would be a challenging thing to begin with because we just looked through one. And if you were to look at, I don't know, like, 28 pages of markup, that would would leave me suspect that, you know, I'm not sure what I'm looking at as opposed to a clean document, you know, would be much more amenable to the average voter, those who would like to at least try to read it for general content. And then your 500 word explanation of what we've done, you know, and the council sign off as well, you know, that and ourselves that we recognize that, you know, and are asking for the public's trust that we've done our due diligence with a clean document. And, again, your point about referencing, you know, other things at the city website for those who want the deeper dive, keeping that idea of what the end is for the voter make more sense to me.

Or perhaps maybe a link on the city site to the marked up documents so they can compare for themselves.

What I would suggest is really kind of some of the philosophy that staff brought in initially to the group is, you know, we're not gonna try and do everything here in the committee. We're gonna have subcommittees and break it apart so that we can make it doable, get it done in a, quote, unquote, reasonable time, whatever that may be. But I think the same thing goes for how you present it. Right? If I'm gonna go and put this, let's say, a website, the beauty of that is saying, okay.

Look. Here is the big, you know, stuff. I'm gonna give you a summary of here's some of the things we do. If you wanna get into it, we can have you go through and see those specific items and you could do it in a, you know, logical step by step so you don't see, like, this one big markup document that's all crossed out. So that to me is like abstract art. And I I would go nuts. It's like, yeah. How do I even have a clue how to which way to vote on this? But I think, you know, the the tools are definitely there, and it's just something we need to think through a little bit. And I'm sure there's plenty of experts at the city that can help us do this to make sure that, you know, the voters have an ability to somehow consume it in a way that makes it easier.

And on you you know, the person that wants to go through that level of stuff, I wanna make it easy so they can do it.

And I appreciate all of these comments and their things we've we've talked about and and they're good ideas. I I do wanna add just one thought, and that is the state law prohibits, you know, cities from spending public money to endorse measures. Obviously, too, but but measures that they put put before the public. And so we can't go out and tell people to vote for this. But what you are allowed to do and what we would need to do in this case and what what we did successfully with Measure I, right, the infrastructure bond measure, was to have a very active city website that gets at some of the things you're talking about, a link if someone's really a glutton for put to punishment for the underlying strikeout document.

Right? FAQs that explain, you know, what the purpose of this group was, you know, and answer questions people might have. And then, mister Crutchlow, to your point, an in between thing that says, hey. This is what they used used to say here, and here's what the difference is. Right?

Highlighting some of those key differences. So it's a lot of work, but it's a big swing of the bat, right, to really do this from top to bottom. And I think it deserves that kind of just kind of sophisticated, accessible, you know, information on the on the website to describe it. So we can put in front of the public, again, if there's buy in from this, you know, at the council level, a clean version of the document, but not leaving people just with that, right, with all of the supplemental tools and information that we all think I I'm I'm gathering is is appropriate and necessary for this. Thank you, mister chair vice chair.

I had a question. What are we required to do by state law in regards to the voter guide? Are required to have the simply the new text of the charter, or are we required to have markup?

Yeah. That's that's what I think is the case, but we're gonna look at that. Which

one is the

I think it's the case that we can present a clean document, and we don't need to do the underlying strikeout. But we still have to finish the research on that in order to determine whether or not that that's allowed. It might be that we have to do both, right, so that at least there's a clean version if there's gonna be an underlying strikeout. But my group's researching that now, and we'll we'll report out on that when we come back to you at the next meeting.

Question. Our original approach, really changing format, would that be presented in the theme version? What's the distinction here then? We do the total re redo a format. We can do the clean. Why wouldn't we be able

Yeah. That's a great point, and and I I might say what you said a little bit differently. I don't know that we had an original approach to not change the format. Right? I I don't think that that decision had necessarily been been made.

But now with the idea of, know, a a pure restructuring, I think that that bakes that question. Right? Is there a version of this that we can do that keeps everything, if possible, but as much as everything, you know, in its current place and simply improve the language and just kind of leave the organization in in intact. And that is a 100% something that we can do. But do we wanna do and this is why I think it makes sense to go to the council and get their direction.

I'd rather not do both things as a as an exercise. I I it's I think it's worth choosing and then doing one or the other. Obviously, if the if you guys think and you wanna recommend this and, of course, if the council tells you, yeah, this

is what we want you

to do, we'll do that too. But I'd rather have us go down a single path because it's a it's it'd be a lot of work to to produce too. Oh, I'm sorry. Maybe I understood yeah. Misunderstood you.

I see what you're saying. So, yeah, that would be an option as well. Right? Even when we did this in Chula Vista, again, my most recent example, we did not do a massive reorganization of of the charter. We kept kind of existing mean, we did delete some stuff, and it did look like a crime scene, you know, from a underlying strikeout standpoint when it went in front of, you know, the the public, and they didn't seem to balk at that.

But it wasn't, you know, so certain vast sections of it were deleted, and a few of them were moved, but not quite as wholesale as what I'm, you know, proposing, you know, here. And the underlying strikeout, which I'll get to everybody that as good a example of what that underlying strikeout looked like. I might even have transmitted already. I think I actually did in an earlier transmission to you, but I'll transmit it again. That even if we didn't do the full reorganization, we could we could present it as a clean and as an underlying strikeout document.

The the issue with that, again, if the law allows us to present a clean document, presenting both increases the number of pages that's in front of everybody, and it increases the cost because the the registrar charges based on a a number of different factors, but including the number of pages that are in your actual measure. So cost is somewhat of a factor as well. We'll work on all those things. And when, again, when we come back to you at your next meeting, we'll have some of those answers, if not all of them.

Almost. We have to do public presentations. Are there any okay. So you you the levels thing is next?

There's more. I appreciate that input. And, again, we'll come back. I'm going to actually, these these things aren't necessary. I can table these to your next meeting. We've been here an awful long time, and you did done a lot of good work already. Unless there's an appetite for me to finish, these things can be done in about, fifteen, twenty minutes at your next meeting, and so we can trail. Oh, come on. The city council can go

to 01:00 in the morning, so can we.

I don't know if you speak for your brothers and sisters in that, but, you're right. I am used to doing that. Please do what you gotta do. We we're here for you, but, you know, we do have a bedtime. Yeah. Maybe I'll just quickly say I won't go over the I I will do it, if I might, just this update on benchmarking with other cities, and then we'll trail the the next couple of items to the next meeting. As you know, one of the things you talked about and that we talked about, you know, being useful as a tool is assembling charters, you know, from other jurisdictions. Thanks to Sue and some of you that have contributed to this and to Courtney. Courtney to George. Courtney, of course.

Courtney does all the work, really, in the end. We've got now on the Citi website 19, I think, of of city charters from throughout the state that are comparable to Santa Clara based on one or more of these criteria, right, that that were applied. Populations of between 100 to 200,000, operates a municipal electric utility. Right? Are there any unique aspects there, you know, that we wanna look at?

Home to a stadium, a neighbor city, right, a city within this you know, the within the South Bay, you know, or in the in the Bay Area generally. And, of course, I included city of Chula Vista. It doesn't necessarily fall, you know, those criteria. Population there is almost 300,000 now, but it is a recent example of a successful example of, right, of of this exercise that I was involved in. So that's on there as well.

If if any of you identify, you know, others or you wanna expand these criteria, we're certainly open to doing that, but wanted you to know that these have been gathered. They're actually on the charter committee's website now for not only you to access, but for the public to access as they monitor, you know, and provide input on this process going forward. Thank you, mister vice chair. I'll I'll save the next few to the next meeting, and now would be an appropriate time. I'm looking at our agenda.

So General public comment.

We'll we'll close that and defer till next meeting to Googan's proposed levels for types of

Yep.

Sure. We just need to invite public comment on this specific agenda item. Okay.

No. Go

ahead. Before we get there real quick, I would like to state that there has been a person that has made comments not directed to the topic already. And I would ask the vice chair to please enforce that their comments are pertinent to the topic that we are bringing up.

Very good. So we there there is yes. So if there is public input on this last item, the not the update on benchmarking, but on the the idea of a of a reorg, that would be appropriate to solicit public comment on that, mister Beister.

Hey. We will now ask for public comment. Each speaker gets two minutes, and please keep your comments relevant to the issue at hand.

We have anybody online that would like to give public comment?

On on this particular item, not general public presentations, but on this idea of the reorganize comprehensive reorganization of the charter. Right? Isn't that what you meant? Yeah.

There's no hands raised.

Thank you. Now

Still not part of the planning commission.

Is there any motion you would recommend we take with respect to the last agenda item? Or

No. I I've I've heard your input. We're gonna come back and answer some of those questions that you've got and then probably would want action one way or the other, either to support, you know, the the a reorganization proposal with a gut check from the city council, you know, or to go a different direction. So we'll we'll agendize that for discussion at that next meeting.

Thank you. Alright. That brings us to the end of the agenda. This now under a period for public presentations, are there any present for public presentations? I see none. Move to adjourn. Yeah. Let's move to adjourn.

Move to adjourn.

Yeah. There were we we checked just for the record, we checked online, and there's no one who's raised their hand to provide comment under public presentations, mister chair.

Thank you. Any staff have any comments for the committee?

No. Other than, well, maybe quickly preview of next meeting. You've got a number of subcommittees that are gonna meet. Right? So we're gonna have report outs again. You'll get the minutes from this meeting. We're gonna do potential action direction on proposed comprehensive reorganization of the charter and then some of the other items that we trailed for this item and anything else that Sue or Courtney thinks of that I forgot that we need to put in front of you.

Move to adjourn.

Almost. The one one last slide, February 18. Next meeting right here, City Council Chambers at 6PM. That's a proposed one. We can coordinate with Courtney on whether that's gonna work, but check your calendars. What was that date again, please? February 18. It's in your handout towards the end. And are there any committee members who wish to comment or report on a nonagendized item? I see none. With that, can I have a motion to adjourn? Move to adjourn. There's a second? Second. We have a motion and a second. You can

do this by consensus, mister chair. You don't need to do a roll call vote. Just all

Yeah. Okay. I I was kinda go with that. The charter review committee meeting is now adjourned at ten past 9PM.

And if I might ask if there are charter if there are subcommittee six members that wanna get together and and and look at calendars, that'd be great to get that on the calendar. I'm sorry. Yes. I do know we have our roster.