Oversight Board Committee - Regular Meeting

That's my cue. Okay. This meeting will be recorded. The Zoom application will notify you that this meeting is being recorded. Please press continue on the Zoom application to stay in the meeting. Use the raise your hand feature in Zoom when you would like to speak on an item and to also lower your hand when you're finished speaking. Please unmute when called to speak and mute yourself when you are done speaking. If you're calling in by phone, identify yourself by name before speaking on an item. Press star nine on your phone to raise and lower your hand. and press star six if you are participating by phone to unmute. This is the call to the order for the May 27th meeting of the Charter Review Committee. Will staff please call the roll?

Holly Roberts. Pat Nicolai.

Here.

Bernard Tanzi. Mohammad Naveed. John Brooks?

Here.

Joe Susinski?

Here.

Eric Crutchlow?

Here.

Burt Field?

Here.

Steve Kelly?

Here.

Lauren Diamond? Here. Eric Jensen?

Here.

Mark Beckman? Susan Peters? Here. Thank you.

Excellent. Good evening. My name is Pat Nicolai, and I'm the chair of the Charter Review Committee. 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. So we'll get started with our agenda and item number one of general business is report outs as needed from the following ad hoc subcommittees and possible action on recommendations from groups 1, 3, 4, and 5. And all six are listed. Staff.

Mr. Chair, I just need to confirm with our remote participant. Mr. Jensen, can you please confirm that you posted your notice 24 hours, the agenda 24 hours ahead of time, that you're in a publicly accessible location and there's nobody over the age of 18 with you?

Yes, that's right. I'm also on the second floor of a public space and there's no one up here with me.

Thank you.

Very good. Mr. Chair, thank you. We're going to dive right into it tonight because, as you know, we've got a lot to get done. Do we need to do the minutes from last meeting? We don't have minutes prepared yet for the last meeting. Yes, that's part of the diving right in. With one comment and also now noting for the record. Oh, Member Brooks was here when you called roll. noting that things are just getting better and better for this group. There is in fact coffee and cookies today for you and any members of the public who might wanna partake of that. At your next meeting, I'll try to do better still that we have Courtney to thank for actually arranging that for all of us. And depending upon how late we go, the coffee and or cookies might become more and more necessary. So, Do we have this up? Diving into this item number one, the report outs. We do have all of the groups listed, Mr. Chair, but as is indicated on the report, and as you know, we're going to focus on the groups that have not reported out in detail yet with the hope of getting, you know, direction from this committee to proceed with finalizing, you know, those sections for those groups with the idea that, you know, ultimately all of those sections would be assembled and be part of your recommendation to the city council as one of the culminations of this work effort. So first slide. Here's our groups color coded as you know that I like. Next slide. Just a little bit of background here on how we got to the subcommittee recommendations, both for you and the public. As you know, the language for the various sections was developed over multiple meetings, including depending upon the committee with significant stakeholder input. The report outs then from the ad hoc subcommittees occurred to the full CRC on a monthly basis. This was designed to keep the CRC in the loop on all the various ad hoc subcommittee activities and the public aware of the issues that were being discussed. The presentations tonight from Group 1, 3, 4, and 5, led, as I've been deputized, you know, by me with supplemental comments, and by Chief Assistant City Attorney Sue Reuter with respect to Group 5, with supplemental comments from any of the group members as they deem necessary or appropriate, is going to be the the order of business for tonight. And then ultimately the direction will be sought from you tonight to bring back final versions at a future CRC meeting. As you'll see, we're targeting June 3rd now. I know that doesn't work for everybody, but hopefully it will work for the vast majority of you in order to take the next step towards the CRC's action on a recommendation to the city council. currently scheduled in our first meeting with the city council on June 9th in a workshop format. Again, these drafts are still not perfect. They're still being scrubbed in a variety of different ways. Language, grammar, typos, consistency, formatting, all still under review by the CAO. And a few of you who are paying close attention to it have offered and hopefully will continue to offer things that you catch as we go through the actual wording of the document. So with that, We'll go to group one. Group one was assigned the sections relating to the power and structure of city government and rules and process for action. This group has met a number of times as indicated here with the most recent follow-up meeting just this past Monday, a remote attended at least by members, Nikolai and Navid who are available to meet and engage on some of the relatively minor changes that were made to some of the existing sections, but with a few significant changes in some other sections. that we'll talk about as part of the presentation. There are a number of stakeholders for this group, but really we're primarily the city clerk and the assistant city clerk, given the nature of these sections and the city attorney's office. Of course, me and a number of the members of my group provided input. Next slide, please. One of the things that we thought was appropriate was the addition of a preamble, really to kind of set the stage, you know, and the mood and the gravitas, if you will, for this charter and what it means. And so I'll read it to you. It's now been proposed with this exact language. We, the people of the city of Santa Clara, pursuant to our authority under the laws of the state of California, hereby adopt this charter to be the rules for the governance and operation of our city in an open, fair, and effective manner. That is the idea. and hopefully both in its existing form and we hope enhanced by some of the recommendations and language that you've developed and added will be that much more of that kind of document. So the preamble is presented in those words. The next important section that was talked about were the foundational terms. And that's currently now article one in the draft of the document. I will note too for you that we've at least circulated it here and it's available for any public member who might come here, an actual underlying strikeout version of the charter that you can refer to now, that's going to be uploaded and then distributed for advanced public input before your final action on the third. But right now we've got it here in-house But the sections that I'm referring to now are Article 1 in that document. They were Articles Roman numeral 1 through Roman numeral 5, and it's now new Article 1. And the first few sections we're going to talk about are Sections 100 through 105. In effect, what we've done now in these sections is replaced a lot of and update a lot of the very formal language with familiar language throughout the example in section 100. that you can see now it's a fairly simple section. It's just the name, the incorporation of the city status. The last section that we've deleted that we placed with simple language said, now existing and known as the city of Santa Clara shall remain and continue to be a municipal body politic and corporate as at present in name, in fact, and in law. Right, that's fancy talk, but it really doesn't mean anything. And so our replaced section gives much more common terms and language that we think will be more familiar to and easier for reviewers of this document to understand. The next item here is the deletion of old article three, the succession sections in the existing charter. Those are sections 300 through 305. Those have now been replaced. There are a number of paragraphs that really were designed to, when the city initially adopted its charter to say, hey, all the laws and rules and contracts that were in place before we adopted this charter are all now, are still in place looking back, but going forward, the rules have changed. It doesn't need to be four separate paragraphs dealing with those things in great detail. So we've now replaced all of those sections, again, with the objective of trying to delete sections where we can with a single sentence and phrase in new section 104, which essentially does that same thing. So that's one of the things to clean up these initial sections that's being proposed by group one. This next one's important. And again, all of this is a little wonky, but in new section 102.2, there is language that is now a much more emphatic statement of the city's charter authority. And really the most important sentence added at the end is, Thank you. that the city has all authority under the constitution of state of California, this law or other laws applicable to charter cities and such general power shall include without limitation, the full power and authority to make it enforce all laws and regulations with respect to municipal affairs. As you'll remember from our earlier presentation and kind of at the crux of this, the benefit of being a charter city is that in certain areas of governance, the local jurisdiction can make its own rules. And one of our objectives is to make as emphatic a statement of that that's as unassailable as possible with respect to all these various municipal affairs. And so this section, now makes that much more emphatic of a statement regarding the core authority of the city to rule itself on terms and conditions that it sees fit, that the voters approve with the charter and that consistent with the charter, the city council makes in their enactment of ordinances and policies. Continuing on the next slide, the foundational terms, there were... Throughout the document, a number of changes made to the charter by voter approval. And the thought was both from an organizational standpoint and to facilitate any future amendment of the charter that the voters might initiate that we would aggregate those provisions in one section. And so that is now done. as proposed in section 102.3, where a number of voter approved limitations on the city's charter authority were included. The first of these is the 102.3A, which relates to the disposal of public utilities. That language is largely kept intact but with some clarifying modifications to allow for internal transfers and dispositions of property no longer needed for utility purposes. Based upon how that language was drafted, the pretty clear intent of it is to prevent the city from actually without a two thirds vote of the electorate actually getting out of the utility business. In other words, transferring its utility operations to a third party. The one I bet people were most concerned about when this was adopted was the city actually maybe selling its electric utility to PG&E. This wouldn't allow that to happen without a two-thirds vote. Clearly, nobody wants that to happen. But The idea that the utility might be able to, for example, create a separate legal entity that the city controls to operate one of those utilities for risk management purposes, or to the extent that the city utility, let's use Silicon Valley Power as an example, might have property or equipment that they want to sell and dispose of that they no longer need. that's not a transfer of the utility itself in the way that this statute contemplates, but to make it clear that that's something that would be allowed, there's a provision that's added that in effect allows those, such a disposition to occur as long as the city council makes a finding that it's no longer necessary for public utility use. So, that proposed a revision is included in section 102.3A. The next highlighted revision is an existing section that talks about the council manager form of government. All that it said before these changes is that the city, the municipal government of the city shall be a council manager form of government. Most people have a general sense of what that means, but actually some people have a general sense of what that means. Most people almost certainly don't. And again, with the objective of this charter to be an informative document, to communicate to people kind of the nature and operations of city government. There's proposed changes here that now make it very clear what a city council or a council manager form of government is. And it says where the city council is responsible for city lawmaking and major policy decisions and a professional manager appointed by and serving at the pleasure of the city council is responsible for implementing council policy and managing day-to-day operations. And this charter sets forth the basic terms for how this form of government is structured and will operate within the city. So that tells you what it is, right? The council makes the major decisions, they appoint a city manager who implements those decisions. And of course, there's a lot more detail in that, but I at least thought it was appropriate and group one agreed to expand on that. A few other wonky things in here. And again, a lot of these sections are a little bit wonky. Again, they're the foundational terms of the charter. There's now a new language to make clear that the effective date of a charter update is once the, if in fact this update is approved, that the vote in favor of it has been certified and the copy of the amended charter is actually filed with the Secretary of State. That's now in section 104. And then a section that introduces one of the important conventions, the charter-wide conventions for this project, Section 105 sets up the idea that there's gonna be definitions and capitalized terms for the charter that are on a list in the end. And so in order to have common understanding and consistency, one of the important exercises of this project was to standardize those definitions and in effect, have them all in one place.

Next page.

And Mr. Chair, of course, people can ask questions as we go along, if they have any questions, but I'm also comfortable with you waiting to the end and we can take them up after each section is presented. The next assigned a section for the group one was the section regarding elected officials. And we're now getting into a couple of the sections in the charter that given their subject matter were split amongst a number of groups. Group one had some of these articles, group two had some of it, group three had other parts of it. It was a little clunky in getting it all assembled, but we think it now makes quite a bit more sense and is a lot better organized. But group one did have a few sections in the elected officials section. It's now article two. It was old article, Roman numeral six, section 600. And the couple of important things to highlight is we've now added new section 200 to clearly state in one place, which positions in the city are elected. with now an important definitional distinction for district council members and a cross-reference to Article 3 regarding the process for election and interim appointments. There's a number of places throughout the charter that the groups that worked in these areas will remember where the reference was made to city council members, but it said excluding the mayor, because the mayor is also a city council person. This change now makes it clear that there is such a thing as a district council person. And in some cases, rules that apply just to them and not to the mayor now can use that term, right? So there's no clunky confusion about, even though the mayor is a council person, when it's just a term or condition related to district council person, that's district council members that's now been clarified. In addition, there's also now clarifying language regarding the ability to hold one office and run for another. This doesn't change things in the charter as it stands, but it just makes them a little bit more clear and it updates the language that was there that predated the creation of districts and district council members. If you hold one elected office, for example, city council person, and you wanted to run for mayor, or if you were the mayor, and in the middle of the year term, you wanted to run instead to be a district council person. That is allowed under the terms of this charter and still allowed with the revisions and the updates. However, under the existing charter and now clarified, if you are an existing city council person, you are not allowed during your term to run for another city council seat. that used to be a concept that was potentially more meaningful back when all the city council people ran at large, right? And in fact, there was no district relationship for you. And so if another council seat became available, the existing charter said you couldn't run for that. Now that's kind of a practical unlikelihood given that since you need to live in a district in order to run for that office and hold that office, if another district seat became available, to qualify to run for that seat, you would need to have a different, you would need to in fact move and qualify to that district in order to be able to run. You can't do that, right? You would forfeit one office in order to be able to run for that office. So this language now in effect says, even though it's a practical impossibility that you can't do that. You cannot be a district council person holding a seat and run for a different district council seat while you're holding that seat. So that language has been updated as well. Again, consistent with what the language said before. Okay. City elections, article three, old section 600.1 and now new section 301. This maintains the concept of a regular election. That's the language that's used in the charter. but ultimately it defines a regular election as a general election or a general city election. That's the term that's commonly used in state law. And to the extent our elections are largely run under state law because they're consolidated with statewide elections and run by the registrar of voters, having a definitional structure that aligns with what the state elections code uses as their definitional structure is a good idea. And that's now been done. If it's not a regular election or a general election, everything else is a special election and it still maintains the current city structure for elections, which is there's no primary election. There is only a election in November for general elections for all offices. So again, mostly cleanup there for group one in this area. Next page, city council meetings and actions. Article four, it was old section 808 regarding ordinances and new section 403, special rules for ordinances. This is another section that was somewhat incongruously broken up in one section and another, and we've now reorganized it in a way that we think makes more sense. These are the items that were taken up by group one. Language has now been added to explain what an ordinance is, again, using this A fair number of people know what an ordinance is, but frankly, most people don't. And so before we make rules about ordinances, this charter now adds a section that explains what an ordinance is and uses modern language to explain what's maintained as a two-step process for introducing and adopting an ordinance. And all this is set forth in section 403.1. These updated sections also retain the general rule for ordinance adoption, where ordinances again, which are usually significant city council actions and frequently are approvals of zoning or modifications to the city code. So the idea is the general course for that, it should happen at a regular meeting. This maintains that requirement, but adds a provision for adoption of ordinances at a special meeting if the city council finds an urgent necessity with five affirmative votes for doing that at that special meeting. So in general, ordinances, significant actions or law changes are supposed to occur at a regular meeting, but if there is an urgency to have it happen otherwise, there's now provision for that. as long as a finding has been made. And that's in revised section 403.1, the last sentence of 403.1. In this area, there's also simplified and updated language regarding repeal and amendment.

Sure, yes. Real quick to clarify for the folks at home, a special meeting by the city council still has to be publicly noticed So there won't be a surprise special meeting in which an urgent ordinance is adopted.

That's a great point, and I appreciate that. So two points on that. Number one, and I didn't go into this in detail, because I'm trying to get through this quicker, that your member ordinances have to approved in a two-step process, right? They have to go at one meeting, a regular meeting with first reading and introduction, and then they can't be adopted until they go to a second meeting. And so no matter what, there will be two publicly noticed meetings for the adoption of any ordinance. And yes, the special meeting, although the notice requirements are shorter, 24 hours instead of 72, there is a public notice and that meeting happens and is open to the public. Yeah, so it's not trying to have something happen in secret or outside of the public eye. Yeah, I appreciate that point. Again, spinning through a couple of other of the changes regarding the effective date of ordinances, the ability to adopt emergency ordinances, codification of ordinances and adoption of uniform rules that the city occasionally can do, particularly when it's making rules regarding building code. There's like a standard building code that you might adopt and incorporate into your code. All of those are that that language is updated The city clerk was required to keep three physical copies of all these ordinances and any incorporated code. No one really comes in for that. It's actually a burden to produce these things and particularly the code itself, which is this thick to have three copies of it. They still have to have one copy of that available to people. And the hope is there won't be a rush all of a sudden on people trying to get hold of these physical copies. Most importantly, with our attempt to modernize requirements and include those in the charter, we're now required to actually, and we do this already, but we're now affirmatively required in the charter to have all of this information available and posted on the city's website. So we maintain the physical, we retain the physical copy requirement for the city clerk, we reduce the number of copies, you know, to facilitate her administration of that obligation. And we now require that to be all be posted on the city's website. This last item here talks about the posting and publication of ordinances. And the existing city, the charter section on this was kind of strangely out of alignment with what the common best practice is, although it did align somewhat with what the general law requirement was. When you adopt an ordinance, again, a significant act that has extra procedural adoption requirements, in our current charter, it required that to be posted and published in a newspaper three days before adoption. the way that the timing of that works for posting in a newspaper, you might be posting and making it, proposing that the... the people be aware of an adoption of the ordinance before that ordinance has even been approved on first reading. So it kind of puts the notice to the public out ahead of even the action itself. More standard charters and how it works, for example, where I was in Chula Vista is, Of course, there's a lot of notice in public meetings to get to the adoption of the ordinance in the first place, but that after it's adopted, you're required to publish it in the newspaper to make sure people know if they didn't notice already that this has happened. And that happens within the 30-day referendum period so that if someone wanted to challenge that adoption of the ordinance, they would be given adequate notice and the opportunity to be able to do that. So this really converts these proposals, converts an advanced notice publication requirement to a once it's adopted notice requirement. And again, adds to the newspaper publication requirement, the obligation to post that notice on the city's website. So that in fact, the way most people access information is now mandated by the charter. Next slide. Again, some wonky stuff here. I appreciated the patience of this group in working through some of these things. There's a requirement in the charter for employee performance bonds. It's not really very clear as to what those are. And there's a lot of extra language about how that works. In effect, the employee performance bond relates to certain positions that handle employees sensitive information and have professional duties and potentially adverse consequences if they mishandle their duties. For example, city clerks are required to post bonds.

Is the city engineer required to post a bond as well? Do you know, Sue?

Yeah, there's a few different positions that are required to post bonds. This updates and aligns these provisions with state law requirements. with state law applying in the absence of city council adopting a policy as to how this works. Finally, the miscellaneous and legal provisions section. A lot of people refer to this as boilerplate. Lawyers are typically offended by that. How dare people call this boilerplate? This is some of the most important stuff in a contract. It is actually some important stuff in the charter as well. So I'll spin through these sections because a number of them have been updated and a number of so-called boilerplate provisions have been added to the charter. This was old article, Roman numeral 18, and it's now new article nine. In general, There's been some updates and clarifications to the existing language. For example, in Section 900, mandatory and permissive language. Section 901, regarding legal actions against the city. Section 903, severability. An old Section 912, oaths of office, which hasn't been moved yet into this section of the charter because we didn't know what the section number was going to be. But we'll do that when the full version comes back to you. All of that language has been updated and improved. The violations and enforcement section has also been updated and we think in important ways. This is new section 902.1. And the way it read before the changes was simply that a violation of the charter was a misdemeanor punishable by a thousand dollar, up to a thousand dollar fine or one year in jail. It didn't say whether there was discretion to prosecute enforcement. It didn't suggest that violations could be prosecuted as anything less than a misdemeanor, for example, an infraction for a lesser offense. And it didn't actually say who was responsible for prosecuting the charter in the event of violations. that there is a violation of the charter, people typically look to the city attorney, right? To enforce the provisions of the charter. And in fact, there's provision for that, but to the extent that a member of the council or another member of a city employee may be the one who have violated that provision, More likely than not, my office would have a conflict of interest with respect to that enforcement and would need to refer it either to the district attorney or some other independent prosecutorial authority in order to make that happen. So the way the charter currently read, it was a misdemeanor or nothing and didn't say who the prosecutor was, but the expectation was that it would need to be the city attorney. The proposed changes now instead offer the possibility of a violation of the charter being a misdemeanor or an infraction. This is a little different than how this was presented to group one. We were looking at the statement of six months in jail or an $1,000 fine. I'm sorry, it was a year in jail or $1,000 in fine. In fact, the current rules under state law is six months in jail and $1,000 fine, one, the other, or both. And so instead of trying to set our own rules as to what the penalties would be for a misdemeanor or an infraction, this revised language now says, hey, in accordance with state law, when state law establishes under the penal code what those violations would be, you look to state law. And so we think it's, M-Group- more clear now that violation of the Charter is potentially a serious thing, but that it can be not a misdemeanor and it's clear who the prosecuting authority is we've also added clear language consistent now with the vacancy. you know provisions that we talked about in an earlier meeting that in fact if an elected official is convicted of a misdemeanor for violating of the charter that would in effect constitute misconduct in office that would result in their forfeiture of their office and so there are some edges now put around it too um and some appropriate discretion applied to it so that we think it's something that when people look at it they can understand you know how it will work if in fact there is a there is a violation um already talked on the next slide about the district yes please could you explain the difference between a misdemeanor and an infraction yes i can but you know who can do that even better um Chief Nikolai. Chief Nikolai. Or my chief assistant city attorney Sue Reuter.

Sure. So misdemeanors. Okay. So under the penal code, there are generally two types of criminal violations, right? You've got felonies and you've got misdemeanors. Misdemeanors are generally... up to one year in jail, and that would be county jail, and up to a fine of $1,000. Felonies are above that. There are certain... Violations that are considered wobblers, they can be either felonies or misdemeanors. Infractions are essentially like parking tickets. They are a violation, they carry a penalty, but they don't carry any possibility of jail time, and the penalties are capped under state law as a much lower level.

Oh, maybe what I read was wrong.

Yeah. This is Eric Johnson. Can I ask a question?

Yeah, sorry. We just saw your hand raised. Thanks, Eric.

I understand the difference between misdemeanor and felonies here, but how is that applicable to violations of the charter?

The application to violations of the charter would be as the section has now been revised, that in the discretion of whoever is prosecuting a particular offense, based on their determination of the severity of defense, that a matter could be prosecuted either as a misdemeanor viewed as a more serious offense or as an infraction. And so the current, draft only contemplates misdemeanors, usually in the discretion of a prosecutor that can mean they can prosecute it as an infraction, but now it explicitly says, based on the severity of the offense, It can be prosecuted as one or another. Frequently, things are initiated as misdemeanors, and depending upon the prosecution or additional information or evidence that might be found, it might be reduced to an infraction. But all of that, Eric, is determined in the discretion of the prosecutor as to severity.

Thank you. I'm just trying to understand what sort of violations of this charter would warrant prosecutions.

That is a great question. And that question would be answered by the prosecuting authority in their evaluation of the severity. So what in theory, a exercise might be to go through the entire charter and decide what things are, if you violated it were a misdemeanor offense or a mere infraction, that would be quite an exercise. And so I did not propose that for this group, Instead, again, we added language that allowed the charter to be prosecuted if it were to be prosecuted as a prosecuting authority might determine in their discretion. And they have ethical responsibilities and, of course, standards that they have to comply with in evaluating any type of case that's presented to them before they proceed.

Thank you. I was just a little concerned about creating a tool for political factions to punish each other. That's my major concern here.

That is a legitimate concern and is one that and we inherited as a project because the existing charter contemplates violations being prosecuted as misdemeanors. It would probably be viewed in a different way if we were to propose that there not be any consequence like that for violation of the charter, because potentially a violation of the charter is a significant thing for example, a failure of an elected official to or an action of an elected official to interfere with the administrative conduct of the city manager. In other words, councilmanic interference was the kind of thing that previously in the charter was listed as something that would automatically result in that removal of that particular elected official from office. And if a group of council members majority voted in favor of such an action, all of them could be removed from office. So there are already built in pretty severe consequences for certain things that are viewed as very bad actions. This doesn't have a specific reference to any particular outcome for any particular violation. Instead, again, it maintains the range of potential outcomes in the discretion of the prosecuting authority.

Thank you. I missed this meeting. It was Monday. But I would just like to make sure that the decision makers who have the discretion to make these recommendations and also the court at which it's heard are free from any political influence.

Yeah, and that's... In this world, in society, there's no guarantees of that, of course, and a lot of people have different perspectives about how prosecutions occur. The idea is that there will be checks and balances in any system like that where a prosecutor has to, that matter needs to be referred to a prosecutor, the prosecutor needs to exercise their discretion and ultimately anything like this would be overseen by a reviewing court. And so there is a certain amount of faith required in our judicial and our criminal judicial system in order to recognize this provision as something that will be handled appropriately. So Mr. Chair, moving on, if I might.

Just real quick, Glenn, that excellent piece of legalese you mentioned was councilmanic, C-O-U-N-C-I-L-M-A-N-I-C, if anybody wants to look that up at all.

Yes, councilmanic interference. That word no longer is in the charter. That and forthwith were removed. Chief Assistant City Attorney Reuter asked if the word notwithstanding was still in the charter. And I can't make any promises that notwithstanding has been removed in every case or thereof. I think there's still a few thereofs. So moving on here, one of the additional sections at the end, again, the publication of legal notice updates, it maintains a newspaper publication requirement, but with some updated language in that to align with state law where legal notices are required. but it does require additional electronic notice now where legal notices are required in accordance with the city policy. And the language says based on latest technologies to maximize the reach of those notices to those expressing interest or likely to be impacted. So there was an expression in a variety of the groups of wanting to make sure that as part of the transparency effort here and as part of the desire to plug into obvious technological advancements and how we communicate with people. We can't entirely abandon the maybe somewhat old fashioned newspaper publication because that is how some people get their information, but we can augment that with electronic notice requirements. And that's what that section updated section 904.2 does. Other provisions here, when a charter requires a city council ordinance or policy, as you may recall, a number of the sections now require ordinances or already did, but require ordinances or require policies in order to implement that section. If in fact that hasn't been done, this boilerplate section, if you will, um talks about what happens right there's an if there's an existing local law or if there's a state law that would apply in that area pending the full adoption of that ordinance those laws would apply one important example of this if if this project proceeds including that is uh the update to the public works you know section that you'll recall contemplated implementation of some basic guidelines by ordinance. That could take a while to do. If it's not done by the time the charter is adopted, and in effect, the existing laws or state laws would apply to that until that implementing ordinance was adopted. And this section now plugs that gap. There's a provision that allows the city clerk and gives the city clerk authority to make minor corrections if those are approved as to form by the city attorney and ratified by the city council. There's bound to be a misreference to a section. There's bound to be a word that maybe was if, but should have been of, there's going to be there, no matter how careful we are, there could be things like that, that are where things are improperly cross-referenced. If that in fact happens, we're not stuck with the vote of the people to fix in effect typos. It can now be implemented because the charter itself contemplates that those corrections can be made. And of course there's a massive definitions section because we have a lot of capitalized defined terms now that is still under construction, but the. The place for that is now built in at the end of this article nine. And when the final version of it comes back to you, we will either be done or substantially done with that definition section, smiling at Courtney, because she's the one who's taken the first cut at trying to find all of those and make sure they're properly defined. Mr. Chair, really back to you. If any of the members of group one want to make supplemental comments to my already maybe exhaustive, exhausting summary of the group one's recommendation, now would be a good time for that. We can then take additional questions from the full CRC, public input, and then ultimately direction from the CRC as to how they want to proceed with the group one recommendation. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I actually had one question. When you were talking about the elections and we defined general election, it reminded me, and I looked back at the vacancies in council, it says in the vacancy on the council, if they can't pick somebody, it'll be an election, but it says at the next scheduled general election.

Yeah, and the language is, and I'm sorry, in a, in a later slide, it may or may not be listed in that slide. The proposal was to actually replace that language with the next statewide election. So if in fact there is, the definition of a general election is actually a November election every two years and even number of years The idea of the group was to make sure you didn't necessarily need to wait for that if in fact there was a consolidated election at some other time. didn't want to have just a standalone special election because of the cost of that but if there's another available election that would be the one that would be the next one that would be the fourth with you know next available election so sorry this this version was supposed to reflect that and the version that comes back will reflect that instead of the next general election it's the next statewide consolidated election perfect any other questions

none very thorough Glenn.

And then. I think breaking this up for public comment if anyone has public comment now to because that I think we're going to try to again eat this elephant one group at a time, you know this time and get direction from the. The full CRC on whether to proceed with that these changes as presented in their substantial for.

There anybody online would like to make a comment.

There's no hands raised.

Excellent. Marco, did you want to make a comment? No public comments. Any other comments from the group? If not, maybe we could make a motion to accept the changes as proposed. Maybe somebody?

Accept the changes.

We have a motion and a second to approve the changes for the group one items. Any discussion on the motion? If none, can we do a roll call vote?

Holly Roberts?

Yes.

Pat Nikolai?

Yes.

Muhammad Naveed? Yes. John Brooks?

Yes.

Joseph Cincy?

Yes.

Eric Crutchlow?

Yes.

Burt Field?

Yes.

Steve Kelly? Yes. Lauren Diamond. Yes. Eric Jensen. Yes. Mark Beckman is not here. And Susan Peters. Yes. Also Bernard Tansy is absent. Thank you.

Very good. Appreciate that, Mr. Chair. I'll now continue with the group three presentation, which will be a little shorter, I think. Group three, as you will recall, and those of you on group three know well, relates to provisions in the charter regarding senior officials and their duties and qualifications. A lot of meetings amongst this group, including on Monday night with a remote meeting attended by members Sosinski, Nicolai and Kelly, and there throughout this process. We've had a good amount of stakeholder input from the city manager, from the chief of police, including at one of those meetings from the POA president, the finance director, the public works director, the city attorney, because there's a city attorney section two, fire chief, the city clerk, and the assistant city clerk. So all of, in effect, the professional people with interests at stake, you know, in the that the duties and obligations of these various sections were given an opportunity to weigh in at the ad hoc subcommittee. The summary of recommended changes. The first one is the chief of police powers and duties. And this is the one I know that's inspired the most interest in discussions, both at the ad hoc subcommittee level and at the CRC level. And this is old section 906 and new section 202.3. And in the language that's in front of you, maybe the most important change is language has been added to make it clear that the chief of police is the head of the police department. This is currently the language that's in the city's ordinance, but it is not language that's in the charter itself. And the group, And a lot of the stakeholders thought it was really important to establish that as a practical matter and as a reasonable expectation of the voters when they vote for a chief of police, the expectation is that's the head of your police department. And so the addition of that to the charter, I think is probably not particularly controversial. There is also a provision added that in a recent iteration of this that added to the city managers, I'm sorry, the chief of police duties, the obligation to update and advise the city council and the city manager on matters relating to public safety and law enforcement, right? On the one hand, chief of police needs to run the police department. And on the other hand, the police department isn't in an island, right? The city council needs to understand how law enforcement works. City manager needs to understand and work with the chief of police. And so that is a proposed addition that I believe the existing chief of police and we'll see about this past chief of police was comfortable with adding. As a lot of you know, and particularly those on the subcommittee, there's been a lot of attempt to develop language that's mutually agreeable, at least to the current city manager, and the chief of police as stakeholders with an interest in knowledge about this subject in order to clarify their relationship on matters, particularly relating to appointment of both command staff and frontline officers in the department and disciplinary matters. the way the charter is currently drafted, the city manager really has appointment authority and disciplinary authority, but the city manager's office and the chief of police office work together in managing those things with a lot of deference to the chief of police and how he administers those issues, similar to how other department heads operate. But there is a significant interest as was expressed by the stakeholders and others, including your chair and this chief of having that be increased to give the elected chief of police even more authorities in these areas. And that was not something based on these discussions that at least between the existing chief and the existing city manager, they were able to work out to their mutual satisfaction. And so as a result, the language in front of you doesn't endeavor to resolve that. There's no language in that area. That doesn't mean that's what this group needs to do. And you could propose to go further than that, but, This of course is a very sensitive area, right? With a lot of public interest and sensitivity around the elected chief, right? What do those duties mean? You don't wanna compromise the elected chief. on the one hand, and on the other hand, it's reasonable to ask for checks and balances around the chief. So this section here, recognize that while these changes make sense, the ones that are presented to you, this could be such a sensitive area that even this proposal, either by itself or without further changes, could make any changes in this area challenging for the city council to advance. And so that's, Chair, this might be one worth taking up maybe even on its own, unless you want me to keep going and to come back to it or people have questions about this.

I just have one question and maybe You've had several discussions, obviously, with the chief and the city manager. And I know coming up further is going to be discussions on the city attorney's office and your ability to hire unclassified attorneys because of their specialized need. My question is, does the city manager totally disagree with the fact that upper management of the police department would be a similar situation maybe the chief would have a better understanding of what makes a good assistant chief command staff. And what is the difference? Because again, I know for other department heads, the city manager can hire and fire the department head. So he has that ultimate authority. He doesn't with you.

Right, he does not with me, right? I'm separately appointed, that's right.

And so he doesn't with the chief either. where does he see the differentiation between those two groups or has he not discussed that at all?

Yeah, I don't want to speak for him, but I can at least relay my sense of his perspective there. I think he recognizes and part of the discussions he was having with the existing chief was that The chief, particularly with respect to command staff and senior officers ought to have appointment authority, but also ought to consult with the city manager in connection with that, because those are sensitive positions that potentially have impact on law enforcement and risk management right throughout the city, which even though the chief is primarily responsible for city manager, you know, has a role, you know, an interest in that as well. So I think he was comfortable with some version of that. And when we get to the city attorney's position, you'll see the way I drafted that to try to be sensitive to that as well is to give the city attorney appointment authority with respect to legal professionals, right? The ones that in your equivalent that the chief would have special knowledge about in a particular area, but also in consultation with the city manager with non-legal professionals, which there are some, right, that are, or assistants or administrative staff still being appointed by the city manager. And so there's a version of that. It's not necessarily apples and apples, but that's what you'll see when we get to the city attorney section.

Question on that. And that'd be considered a safeguard collaboration of the two.

Yeah, I think so. And again, that was that a part of the discussions that you heard reported out, right. That the subcommittee heard and that you've heard reported out publicly because while there are private conversations, of course, around any number of the, these things, the ultimate decisions, you know, need to be tendered to and made, you know, in public, um, a lot of the discussions around that issue are, hey, what authority ought the elected chief of police have and what reasonable guidelines or safeguards could be put in place? And so part of that concept was this consultation concept, right? for example, in the chair's example, the potential chief of police being given some paramount authority with respect to some or all of their staff, but in consultation with the city manager, right? And what that means is hard to define and probably shouldn't and can't be defined at a charter level, but it's certainly... suggests and requires that there needs to be some interaction and mutual consideration in the making of those decisions.

So I have concerns. Thank you.

Professional malformation.

My concern is with both of those hypotheticals, Glenn, that you proposed. With respect to running the city attorney's office, I think you do know more about who, in terms of assistance and paralegals and the like, you have a better understanding of who ought to be hired and how to best run that group. I think it's more true even for the police department. I think we elect a chief of police to run the police department, Well, part of that is hiring and determining the hiring qualifications, who to be hired as officers from the top to the bottom. So I would, I'm not comfortable with the languages currently drafted. I don't know if this is the right forum to have a debate over that, or if this is a classification question.

No, I think this is exactly the forum, right? To have that discussion. And I will tell you just to be clear, the language as drafted doesn't decide that issue, right? The language as drafted makes the chief of police, the department head, but what that means in practice isn't specified. And so there would continue to be an ongoing discussion, again, not entirely resolved by this exercise, if in fact you didn't go that extra step to say how that was intended to work. So if this group wanted to suggest something more than what's drafted, that would be within the group's prerogative. Again, with the caveat that all of this is going to be highly scrutinized and debated with the possibility that it might be something that would need to be taken out of the larger project if there can't be ultimately the council, a council consensus on what they're comfortable with putting in front of the voters. And so I'm not trying to make recommendations to you that assume anything about how this council will proceed, right? And decides that in order to, in a manner that would prevent you from, you know, making your recommendation. But again, we're all trying to be practical, you know, with this. And so I do have to point that out is, in making your recommendation, it's worth, you know, considering ultimately, you know, what's feasible, what's reasonable and what you feel comfortable recommending and standing behind, and then just be pragmatic about, you know, making sure that that it might be something that needs to be severable right from the rest of the recommendation.

I acknowledge the risk that may indeed become severable depending on the language we leave here today with. As for suggested language currently under the city manager's duty, appoint and remove subject to the civil service provisions of this charter, all officers and employees of the city. I think it does leave an exception otherwise provided by this charter. And I think this would be an opportunity under section 202.3 to put that the chief of police is responsible for appointing and removing subject to the civil service provisions of this charter, all peace officers and other employees of the police department.

I'm of the, this is Eric Jensen, I'm of the opposite view. My feeling is the difference between the chief of police and the city attorney is that the city attorney, if Glenn does the terrible jobs, he can be fired or shown the rubber room and we can choose from a large pool of other city attorneys. If in the future we have a police chief who is not doing his job, there are no recourses for four years. And then after those four years, we may not actually get another choice. So it's difficult. It's difficult. In good times, we have a capable chief of police. It all makes sense. But we may not have that in the future. And that's my concern with expanding the powers of the chief of police at this time.

So those are excellent suggestions, Chair. I appreciate them. I guess what I would ask to you, Glenn, one, what is the rules for recalling an elected official in the city of Santa Clara? And the second, is there an ombudsman or inspector general within the police department that would be responsible for monitoring misconduct by the chief or any of his appointed officers?

Wow, that's quite a question.

But he's a lawyer.

Yeah. Yeah. Sue, did you want to take the part of that or ask the chief to at least the internal?

So as Chief Nicolai could probably explain better than me, the police department has internal, essentially an internal watchdog function, right? It's generally known as internal affairs. It's got some, it's professional standards that are in our department, but it's the same function as... what you would know as internal affairs. So that function is intended to function independently of the administration so that it can provide an appropriate watchdog function. And so in terms of what you were asking about, that's generally the process by which there would be that kind of disciplinary kind of oversight. And in terms of an ombudsman, we don't have that because under public employment processes, disciplinary appeals go through a skelly process.

Oh, sorry.

Sorry. For public employee, disciplinary process has a very sort of specific set of procedures that we follow, and it allows for an internal departmental appeal process before you get to, for example, a civil service commission hearing or something of that nature. And so that process allows for the employee who is being disciplined to have representation through their union in that process. So while we don't have like a designated ombudsman who would handle employees who would wanna challenge, for example, a disciplinary action. We do have other processes in place and those processes are lightly outlined in the charter and more detailed outlined in the other documents that we have like the civil service

Thank you. And real quick, Glenn, before I forget, Eric, my share your concern with respect to a malign chief. I echo that concern in terms of, well, what if you have a malign city manager? who is able essentially to split the department from, or sever the head of the department from the actual running of the police department. So then the elected official we chose to run the police department is now cut off from doing so. So that's my other concern. But Glenn, I'd love to hear from you about recall.

Okay, can I chime in? And I just wanna make this clear to Glen. I think most residents want to see the city manager and the police chief work collaboratively together and that when there is an issue that they discuss it. And then obviously we go through economic cycles. even though no one wants to see staffing cuts, that they work collaboratively together to discuss personnel because of economic cashflow issues. We go through these economic cycles every eight to 12 years, and we want them to work together. So I think there needs to be language in there that specifies there is some sort of, relationship between them and how they worked it out and the fine tuning, I guess that's up to you, Glenn, but I think residents want to see that there is personnel that works together, even though staffing day-to-day operations would be something that the police chief would handle.

CoB, Gerrit Slatter. yeah i'm appreciate all those comments again i'm at your disposal and direction, I will just say sorry as a technical matter, I think I switched the. CoB, Gerrit Slatter. references to the who who was on the different group meetings so you're you're all nice to not call me on that I described the group one. group as the group three group and and and vice versa um and so I I might ask chief if there's anyone from the group three which um that um would would ask for comments on that but let me first answer at least in broad brush you know terms the the recall rules I don't know them in any great detail um and the city clerk is, or the assistant city clerk is really the right person who knows the elections code as to how it works. But in effect, what needs to happen in broad brush terms is that there needs to be a recall petition that is circulated and that requires a certain number of signatures in order to get a recall matter on the ballot The number of signatures required is a percentage of the population, you know, of the city. We just had a recall effort that did not end up, you know, proceeding. Do you remember what the number of signatures that were required for that? Was it in the 60s?

And I'm sorry, I'm just not remembering. The only one you had in the 60s was Bezo. He got recalled.

No, I'm not talking about the vote. I'm talking about the number of signatures that are required in order to qualify a petition. Yeah, so I'm forgetting what that is, but it's a percentage of the population, right, as the first step. And then there's a number of different filing kind of a notice requirements that need to happen within a certain period of time in order to get their recall kind of on the ballot. And I think the current structure is that that needs to go on a general election as opposed to in a special election, but it's a cumbersome process, but it is a process and it can happen. It's not without precedent, particularly if a particular egregious example of conduct occurs, that is a process that can happen.

And another process is what happened recently with the sheriff where district attorney prosecuted her civilly. And as a result of her conviction, she was forced to leave office, but she got around that by retiring early.

No, that is right. Yeah. So if someone commits a crime, right, whether there's a recall or not, and they are convicted of that crime, that is a certain level of misconduct. And our charter has that, you know, those provisions built in, as we've discussed in the vacancy section. That is also something that could result in the removal of any elected official from office, including the chief of police, where they commit such egregious conduct. Yeah.

Lauren, did you want to chime in?

Yeah, I just had a question for Joe. You mentioned that you had some issues with the languages drafted. What particularly in this language was troubling to you? Because looking at it from my perspective, it's very high level. I don't see anything that's really tipping it in one way or the other, so...

Sure, and thank you for the question. When reading it in concert with the city manager role, where it gives them the authority to appoint and remove all, it's page, charter 35, section 501.1 city manager. It gives the city manager the ability to appoint and remove all officers and employees. So read together, that's what gives me pause is that under the language as drafted, it would give the right appointment and remove to the city manager.

Got it. Thank you.

Yeah, and I don't disagree with that. I mean, I think that's the current state of things. I think that the current chief or others might debate that, right, in looking at other, you know, you know, provisions and some, you know, viewed as inherent rights, right, of an elected official, you know, to engage in that, you know, capacity. But that is the without an affirmative statement with respect to that, an argument can still be made that the city manager retains that authority with respect to appointment. Yeah, it does, it leaves it unresolved. The language as proposed establishes the city, the chief of police as the department head gives some pretty good language around what that means, but doesn't go so far as to resolve that particular issue unless additional language was included.

You didn't get to the exception, but you would have to. It's still definitely arguable.

Can I point out that this is probably quite similar to the powers of the elected city clerk, in that the city clerk does not appoint any of the people below him currently. In any case, I'm happy with the language of this drafting.

So Glenn, given the sensitivity of this issue, my concern is that the city council is going to just not want to engage with this, or it's going to just derail everything. What do you have advice on how we should proceed?

You're welcome.

Glenn. Thank you for interrupting that because I wasn't prepared to answer that. So please remember Kelly.

So I'm reading this. I would assume that anybody that the city manager would try to remove would still have their protections under the union, correct?

That is absolutely right. on the discipline side of things, right, as opposed to the appointment side of things. And there's protections on the appointment side as well, both under the city's general civil service rules and under POBAR, right, which are special rules that apply to police officers. There's a lot of due process and protections built into any employees with some enhanced rights and privileges of police officers to not be treated in violation of their rights and interests in their position. whether the disciplinary authority is the chief of police or the city manager, either one of them would need to abide by those rules. Nothing about allocating responsibility in any of those areas between one or the other or in consultation with one or the other would change those underlying rules. And no one of the professional people engaged with this issue have suggested otherwise. Yeah, it would need to work that way.

483, back to the wolves with Lauren here. Maybe a similar question is if we took the language from your office. And just simply switched. Unclassified employees lawyers and staff into and change to sworn employees. Where you say subject to City Council approval of positions and funding and in consultation with the city manager act as the appointed authority for sworn employees in the police department.

uh that's yep and if that's the you know the consensus of a majority of the group i could certainly draft you know something like that i guess i want to put that in context with lauren's question of is that doable that is draftable um because i can draft anything I can draft anything.

Everything's draftable.

Everything is draftable. Well, you know, some better than others, right? But, and then a lighter version of that, I guess, not to have this be a recommendation from me, but just, you know, to make sure the group understands, you know, different maybe levels of recommendation. You know, could be a provision that, think along the lines of what member diamond was suggesting, you know, that in the, um, you know, in the implementation of, or in their exercise of their duties as the department head, right. That, um, um, and in, in, in, as an obligation to the city manager, right. Those parties, you know, shell, you know, consult and, you know, and cooperate, in connection with the appointment or discipline of employees of the police department. So there could be a mutual consult, a consultation obligation added either in addition to or in lieu of the concept that the chief just entered.

I have a different question about this. And if we were not a charter city, What does state law say about the situation like this? How does it, does it deal with it at all?

I can actually answer a little bit because like the closest example to elected police chief as an elected sheriff, a county sheriff. And if you look at counties, they are the same way as cities are. There are some that are charter counties and some that are general law counties. And I was trying to search general law counties and it's mind boggling trying to read something. But if you go to charter counties, you can actually read their charter. And basically what it says is, is that, you know, there's the county officers, district attorney and sheriff are elected and that all county officers are in In layman's terms, they're in charge of their department and can do whatever they want in their own department. I forwarded it to Glenn. It's much more formal than that, but basically the department heads are in charge of their departments.

Yeah, and that's right. I think the thing that is not as explicit there is it doesn't talk about the sheriff, right? It says a variety of different county officers are department heads, and then it says department heads have these authority. And it doesn't, in the same way that our charter does have... paramount appointment authority for the head county officer, like for the head city manager.

This is more of a division, though, at a county level, which makes sense. How about Chula Vista?

Chula Vista has an appointed chief and the the language with respect to department heads versus the city manager. The city manager has manifest appointment authority. And there's deference, right? Like there ought to be to any department head, probably particularly the chief of police, right? Given the unique nature of that. And particularly to the city attorney, right? Given the nature of that. But ultimately they are the city attorney The city manager remains the appointing authority.

Okay, so let's say the city manager and the chief of police really butt heads. Does the city council have any ability to get in the middle of that?

Not directly, no. And again, it's different when you have the city manager appointing the chief of police, because even if there's deference, if they don't get along to a significant, the city manager can terminate the chief of police. They might not do that cavalierly and ought not to do that cavalierly, but they would have the authority to do that.

Would the city council then say, could they say, hey, listen, this is really, what you're doing is wrong. And bottom line, if you wanna continue on this path,

we're going to look at coming after you for they could communicate that to the city manager in their review of the city manager's performance but they would not have the ability to hire or fire the chief of police no no i understand that but they have they can fire the city manager that would be a matter of their yeah if the if the city council didn't like the way that the city manager was handling you know, any department head, you know, aside from the chief of police, that would probably be part of their performance review that could result in the termination of the city manager.

Would that kind of cover, you know, there is an ultimate other authority that would be able to say, hey, listen, this is not right what you guys are doing and this is how we're going to step in.

No, for me, that's inadequate. I mean, there would be a great deal of butting of heads At the point that the city council, I think, would be willing to intervene. I think there's a lot of trouble the city manager could cause if they were so inclined without rising to the level of that. And I think it would be destructive for the morale and the discipline of the police department if they got caught in between situations. a butting of heads of the city manager and the chief of police.

I'm going to go to the Glenn rule and say, okay, are we solving a problem that is actually there or not? And Glenn, I'm actually going to ask you and the chair of that question, if I may. Are we solving a problem that is really not there?

Well, I can't.

Maybe this is something that we can move forward with at our next meeting, and then we can just table it for now. We have had some discussions. Maybe we get the city manager and the chief of police in a room in a week. come back crossing our fingers that we can have something resolved at the next meeting.

May I suggest one thing? So Glenn, you don't have to answer your own question there. You probably, it's not a great question for you, but maybe given the amount of discussions we've had here, we can agree at least that like, yeah, this is probably a level four. Yeah.

That's my suggestion as well, that maybe we figure out how to separate this from everything else. Cause that's my big concern is that this is just going to derail our, all of our other work. And I don't want that.

It's a level for them. I agree. It's a hot button topic that if we can't get the involved parties to agree, it could take the whole thing. I agree 100%. Okay.

Yeah. So what I might do, and I appreciate the need to move on. We've got quite a bit to talk about tonight.

When we come back, if you could just explain how you envision, if there's a disagreement between the city manager and the police chief, how they could come in front of the council to get a resolution, that's it.

I, what I, what I might do, Mr. Chair, for when this, if in fact there's no action or direction, you know, tonight, I can draft a couple of options for the group to look at of actual language that are different degrees of resolution. And then if there's not a group, you know, agreement on any one of those, you know, you can, you can proceed accordingly. But I think we probably used... It's an important issue. I'm glad you're all engaging it in the thoughtful way that you are, but we probably need to keep going.

Any formal agreement on level four?

I think I would maybe have you, when the language comes back, take that action at the next meeting. Yeah.

Yeah.

So city clerk powers and duties, very interesting subject. And again, another one that with less controversy, at least less high profile controversy, you know, had some kind of built in uncertainties to it. This existing elected city clerk and appointed assistant city clerk in input that uh group three got directly you know from them and then in some subsequent discussions have come up and and input they've provided me have come up with something that they're both comfortable with that i think is also exist uh you know consistent with existing you know practices you know between them so it it has that value and so on this slide um the city clerk powers and duties is old section 903 it's new section 202.4 um that reflects in the charter the current allocation of duties between the city clerk elected and the assistant city clerk appointed by the city manager. It kind of affirms and strengthens language that the city clerk's primary duty is to serve as the city's elections official, to administer elections and related duties under state and local laws. It adds the duty of the of the elected city clerk to consult with the assistant city clerk, who is in fact, you know, the professional and certified in city clerk duties and with the assistant city clerk's concurrence, authorize the assistant city clerk to assist with their duties. This happens already. And again, this is just now reflected in the charter to avoid any uncertainty there. The assistant city clerk will continue to perform typical city clerk day-to-day duties to support city council meetings and maintain city records, et cetera. There's a few other things listed there. And then it adds a provision that the assistant city clerk suggested and that the current elected city clerk agreed to that in the absence of the city clerk to assure continuity of city operations and compliance with laws, the assistant city clerk in effect can perform those duties. And so it allocates the duties, It requires some consultation by the elected city clerk with the assistant city clerk. It provides for... In effect, the assistant city clerk assisting the city clerk. If in fact the city clerk wants that assistance and if the city clerk isn't available or able to perform those functions, the assistant city clerk is authorized to step in. So I think it's a good thoughtful allocation of duties between the two of them. And it is consistent with current practices, but with some clarity added.

Glenn, I have one question on that. Yes. So, and I think this is covered in another part of the charter, but if the city clerk is actually up for election themselves, how that's handled, and I just want to make sure how this is written, it doesn't conflict with that, that it says they have administrative authority over all city elections.

Yeah, that's a great point. It does say in accordance with the terms of this charter, you're remembering correctly that we do have a provision in there that says the assistant city clerk serves in place of the city clerk with respect to matters relating to the city clerk's election. So I think it ties together because of the reference to consistent with the terms of the charter. Yeah, but that's a great point. So if no questions there, The next section is, the slide talks about just some general structure of government sections, and then it gets into the senior officials that are actually appointed by the city council. The old article eight and Roman numeral nine is now new article five, again, with some reorganization and consolidation of things and a thing that we think makes much more sense. there are general sections added and updated to describe the city organization by departments as determined by the city council the city council ultimately has authority over what departments there are right and how those are funded and how many positions there are it includes provisions that exist in the charter referencing an administrative code there really isn't any such thing as an administrative code per se but within the city code there are a series of chapters that implement the terms and conditions of the charter regarding both the referenced departments and other departments that are allowed to be created by the city council. So that ties in. It affirms that the city manager is the head of operations of the city organization with the city manager, city attorney, and city auditor to be appointed by the city council. So there's a really good prefatory language that sets up that clear structure of government. With respect to the city manager, a number of their sections are now consolidated and updated to better reflect their duties and to align with other department head duties. With the added provisions for exercising professional judgment to make recommendations and take actions to assure high quality performance of services, compliance with contracts, and with the city code. So it enhances a reference to the things that the city manager is expected to do. There is some outdated language regarding the city manager appointment and the process for removal for a cause. Those provisions have been deleted. There's an elaborate provision for advanced notice, and hearing if in fact the city manager is gonna be terminated for a cause. None of that is really practical and applied in most contexts and the relationship between the city council and their appointed officials is determined by contract. And so that provision isn't really meaningful to kind of an outdated concept in the city charter. So that's been deleted. And so those are the provisions regarding the city manager, the provisions regarding the city attorney, those provisions have been updated to give authority to initiate legal proceedings subject to city council approval and in consultation with the city manager. Right now, it just describes the city attorney as being able to appear in city matters, but City Attorney needs to initiate litigation, you know, sometimes. And when we have the opportunity, almost always we go in and get direction from the City Council in order to initiate those proceedings. But sometimes we need to initiate in order to preserve, you know, remedies or statute of limitations, in which case we need to go back and get the City Council to ratify that. So this now gives the city authority subject to approval of the city council, the ability to actually initiate litigation. It also has, for the chief's reference, the city attorney acting as the appointing authority in consultation with the city manager for professional legal staff in the office. So that is included there for the city attorney. And then where conflicts exist, there's a provision that's added to refer matters that allows the city attorney to refer matters to outside attorneys or agencies as appropriate. There was discussions about the required years of experience. It was only four years of experience. We all agreed that that was absurdly low. There's a concern of raising it too much and reducing the pool of applicants for the position. So kind of a moderate increase of four years to seven was proposed with the addition of such other qualifications that the city council may impose. commensurate with the demands of the position, you will unlikely see a advertisement for the position of city attorney that says, you know, minimum seven years, you know, required, it will probably ask for more than that. And the charter doesn't limit you to that. It allows it. It's expressly contemplates that the city council be able to add more to that.

Glad when you came up from Chula Vista, how many years did you have? As a,

Lawyer, when I came up here, I had already 88, 35 years of experience and about 25 of those were in municipal law. Barely made it. And again, not to say anything about me or my qualifications for it, that any city attorney position is a demanding position. The city attorney position here is one of the more demanding positions probably in municipal law. And so the idea that there would be additional expectations and requirements is notable. The city auditor position was pretty bare bones. The provisions have been added now to reflect the duties of the auditor for both financial and performance audits, but per an annual work plan that the auditor develops in their professional discretion with required approval from the city audit committee, that is a current standard for auditors in their profession to get at least approval from the city audit committee. However, this plan is to be implemented or overseen by the city auditor. They might do some of these audits themselves, but more often than not, they're gonna hire an outside professional. So it contemplates that with the requirement that they conduct themselves in accordance with all applicable professional and ethical standards. I wanna note that this language was recently updated with further input from the city auditor. So I would ask and apologize to group three. There'd been some back and forth with the city auditor and I just got some recommended changes from them today that are reflected in the document that was presented and circulated to you. But it's generally consistent with the concepts that the group three proposed. And so if any of you have any issues with that drafting, please let me know. We also got input from the finance director on the appropriate nature of that role. The next and final slide for group three in the structure of government section are the positions that are appointed by the city manager. In effect, other than the chief of police, the elected city clerk and the city attorney and the city auditor, all other department head positions and technically all other positions, but there's a lot of delegation and authority are actually the responsibility of the city manager. And this proposed charter update doesn't change that. because that's considered to be a pretty fundamental city council manager kind of structure of government, you know, set of authority for the city manager. The appointed, not every department is listed and I'm not proposing to list every department and department head that would add another 10 or 12. All right, Mr. Chair, you know, probably department heads that we need to talk about. There's no need for that in the charter. But there also was a desire since these are core departments, you know, with with core responsibilities, not to delete, you know, those sections that were in there. And so instead, that we those were reviewed with each of those directors with with some suggested updates for them to make the duties and obligations more consistent with what they actually do, including with some reference to the administrative code, right? Those provisions as reflected in the city code. And so the director of finance has updated outdated terms, expands the duty to cover city enterprises, not just utilities as his responsibility, for example, to oversee management of the convention center. although that's under contract, he's got responsibility for oversight of that. It aligns their duties with the changes to the city's financial reporting and the budget process in other sections that you've already heard about. It has the city, the finance director designated as the city's treasurer. A lot of financings or other circumstances where the city engages in business, They ask for the approval of the city treasurer. You want there to be no misunderstanding as to who the city's treasurer is. And so it's the director of finance now explicitly by charter that makes them the city's treasurer. And we can now point to that. And it applies, oh, it also adds oversight of the city's purchasing system. A very traditional and important role for the finance director is to oversee procurement activities, excluding public works. We'll talk about that in a sec. And so that are, those are updated roles and functions for the director of finance with input from the director of finance. Public works director has also been updated to reflect their current duties, including oversight of the city public works procurement process with the ability to serve as or appoint the city engineer. Currently those are two different positions. The public works director can be the city engineer themselves as long as they're certified. And again, this is all consistent with existing practices. Finally, the fire chief, his duties have been updated to expand the duties to reflect a modern all risk fire service to include emergency medical response and other functions approved and funded by the city council. For example, hazmat regulation and response, mutual aid and rescue operations. So those are all kind of modernized provisions, I do have to have a conversation with Chief Assistant Reuter about these positions to make sure no additional engagement with labor unions might be required. These are changes that are consistent with what their duties are contemplated in the city code, but there are some nuances to that that we'll have to discuss before that language gets finalized. So those changes were also worked through and presented to group three with their support. So subject to review regarding potential need to engage with labor groups, Those proposed changes are presented and subject to, of course, additional work on some language regarding the chief of police responsibilities. Those changes are presented. I would now solicit a chair through the chair, any supplemental comments from group three members, additional questions from the full CRC, public input, and then direction to staff in accordance with the will of the majority of the CRC.

Any questions from the group? Hearing none, is there any member of the public that would like to comment on this issue? Excellent. Anybody like to make a motion? Maybe something similar to accepting all the proposed changes with the exception of the police chief language.

Motion to accept with what he said.

Officially, I'll second.

Was it Bert? Excellent. Any comments on the motion? Seeing none, roll call vote.

Holly Roberts.

Yes.

Nicolai.

Yes.

Bernard Tanzi's absent. Mohammad Naveed. John Brooks.

Yes.

Joe Sisinski.

Yes.

Eric Crutchlow.

Yes.

Bert Fields.

Yes.

Keith Kelly. Yes. Lauren Diamond. Yes. Eric Jensen.

Yes.

Mark Beckman's absent. And Susan Peters.

Yes.

Thank you.

We're just sailing through this.

Moving along. Mr. Chair, I will keep going. This one, it didn't feel like sailing there for a while, or at least the seas were roily. even if we were sailing. This next group four, boards, commissions, composition, powers and duties, a lot of good meetings amongst this group and a lot of stakeholder input from the planning commission, parks and rec commission, board of library trustees and their respective department liaisons and the city clerk's office on kind of the administration of some of the appointment for this group. And so the summary of their recommended changes on the next slide, There are some general provisions for chartered and city council created boards and commissions. The first of these changes that the group will remember is there's now a very clear definitive list of what are chartered and what our city council created boards and commissions with a lot of council flexibility on the city council created boards and commissions. Um, one of the groups that was added, uh, was the salary setting commission, um, which already existed, but didn't have its own place in the boards and commissions section. Um, and so the fact that the salary setting commission determines compensation for elected officials is preserved in the elected officials section, but it cross references the boards and commissions section where the salary setting commission has now been more specifically created and described in that for the actual composition of that group and how they go about their business. And that was already discussed in a different group. There is clarity that the conflict of interest gift rules applies per state and local law. That's a concept that's in there, but that is more specifically provided as a separate section, 600.6. This next item was a topic of substantial discussion amongst the group. over a couple of the meetings that was held. And that is the qualifications of boards and commission members. This is old section 1000, new section 600.3. The ultimate conclusion and recommendation of the group in deciding between qualified elector status and resident status, where a qualified elector is a resident of the city and a registered voter, which also requires citizenship. whereas a resident is a resident, but doesn't necessarily need to be a registered voter or an actual naturalized US citizen. The consensus of the group and the recommendation was that with respect to chartered boards and commissions, that both the qualified elector and resident requirement should continue to apply, but that with respect to city council, created boards and commissions, which there are many, in order to participate in those, you need only be a resident. That's consistent with the current requirements. And in effect was a recommendation of this committee to maintain that. We'll discuss that a little bit later when we get to the board of library trustees and their recommendation on that, but that's the recommendation of the group. For appointment and removal, old section 1002, new section 602.1, there was a recommendation to retain full city council discretion to appoint or remove. But in the interest of making sure that happens in a fair and reasonable way, there is now a requirement for the city council to adopt policies for this to occur in an orderly and transparent manner. that this is something the city clerk wants. It's been an issue of contention in the past. And the fact that the charter would say, hey, it needs to happen in this way and that a policy needs to be developed for that, but the city council will develop that policy was a logical, the group thought way in order to address an issue without trying to change things too much because it's an important element of city council discretion. Again, still in the general provisions on the next slide. Term limits, old section 1002, new section 602.2. Even though the charter doesn't provide this, the existing practice is similar to the rules applicable to at least the elected mayor and city council people, that there'll be a two, four-year term lifetime term limit on people serving on boards and commissions on any one border commission. But there'll be council flexibility to change this for council created commissions. Again, kind of consistent with the theme, the charter commissions are gonna be one way, but discretion on the city council to potentially change the rules for city council created commissions. The provision regarding vacancies, old section 1004 and new section 602.3 and 602.4 applies by cross-reference the same vacancy rules that you've already discussed and talked about for elected officials to appointed board and commission members. In other words, if any of these, the list of things in vacancy happened to you, including death, you would lose your position on a board or commission, with an exception that there is a different rule for non-excused absences It's actually a lesser requirement for board and commission, or I should say greater requirement. For a city council, it's five unexcused absences in a row. For the board or commission, it's three. They meet far less frequently. So a smaller number is recommended. It's not proposed to change that. It's proposed to kind of preserve that as an existing rule. conduct of meetings, the old section 1003, new section 603. There is a more clear application of the Brown Act and whatever city council rules that might be adopted with respect to boards and commissions conduct that is now built into the charter. There was a section in the charter that you'll recall that we reported out about and an earlier group four report out that had a provision that in effect would allow boards or commissions to go into closed session if they made a determination of the need for that, that is in violation of the Brown Act. And so that section that appeared to give them a charter-based ability to go into closed session has now been deleted. There really is probably only one potentially another board or commission that could go into closed session. That would be civil service commission given some personnel decisions that they might be called upon to make. And so that would be lawful, but if any one of them wanted to go in, it now needs to be explicitly in compliance with the Brown Act. And it also adds language to clarify that actions require a majority vote of the authorized member, authorized number of members. So if the border commission say planning commission is seven, this in effect requires that for any action to be taken by the planning commission or anyone with seven members on it, you would need four affirmative votes to act. Sometimes rules are made more lenient where, and this rule could be applied, but it has not been recommended that as long as a quorum of the group was present, a majority of the quorum could in fact act, that would in that circumstance allow three members of the planning commission to make a decision, but that's not been recommended. In fact, it's recommended that that be maintained for affirmative votes. I hear some rumblings from the chair of the planning commission. Oh, okay. So those are all the general sections. The next one goes into some of the specifics for the charter-based commissions with the exception of civil service, which Sue will address. The planning commission, and again, as was mentioned, all of these, groups were very much involved as prime stakeholders in reviewing these rules and providing input on these rules. For the Planning Commission, old sections 106 and 107 are now consolidated in new section 604.1. They've got some updated powers and duties based on both Planning Commission staff input and the commission's input. I could go through the list of those, but I won't in the interest of time. They're very traditional roles and functions of a planning commission consistent with what the current best practices are in general and consistent with some already existing enumerated roles and responsibilities for them in the city code. And so there's nothing particularly unique or novel there. There may be one. that's worth highlighting.

Last one about the supermajority.

Yes, thank you. Yes, we'll get to that one in a sec, but even just in the general list of them, the one that the group wanted to, that the planning commission wanted to emphasize is subparagraph five, solicitation and consideration of public input. it's kind of emphasized as something that the planning commission is supposed to do, right? And that's a natural part of what they do anyway, but they desired to elevate that to a charter responsibility in order to emphasize how that's just an important role and function for them, given the nature of what they do. Yes, this last one is interesting and important. What the planning commission proposed was, for city council deference to them with a super majority vote required to overturn a planning commission determinations that are appealed. So I'll read the entire section for you and maybe ask an existing member, not just member, but chair of the planning commission to add his thought process to this as to why that came out of the group. So this is what was requested and drafted. The city council in its consideration of any appeal of a lawful determination by the planning commission with respect to a project permit or approval, those are defined terms, shall give due consideration to the planning commission determination. The second sentence is the one that's potentially controversial and wasn't necessarily recommended by the group. It says any city council decision to overturn or materially modify such planning commission determination shall require five affirmative votes. Okay, this doesn't exist in the current structure. What instead exists is when the planning commission makes a decision, and I think the planning commission proposal was to have it even be broader than that, but the group in our discussions with group four narrowed it down to at least the limited circumstance of an appeal for this group's consideration. Normally the city council gets to evaluate what the planning commission recommendation is. It's called the Novo, right? As if they're making the decision for themselves with consideration of, but not a need to defer to write the planning commission decision. So in effect, the city council has a whole other public hearing. All of the discussions are, and the decision that went on at the planning commission level are presented in front of the council, but the council can do whatever they want, right? In their own lawful exercise of their discretion. This second sentence in brackets, any city council decision to overturn or materially modify such planning commission determination shall require five affirmative votes changes that. And in effect says, unless the city council can muster a super majority vote, right? To do something different than what the planning commission is recommending. the planning commission, you know, determination would stand. And so that's different. That's novel. The planning commission as a group, at least, you know, recommended that it could be viewed by a city council who's jealously guards right there, ultimate determination over policy decisions as being something they're not supportive of, but we're, not blinking at things of the input that we're getting and the recommendations from the stakeholders. So that is presented to the broader CRC for their consideration. And Mr. Chair, I might defer to any member of group four regarding thoughts on this, maybe particularly the current chair of the planning commission.

I'm not a member of group four, but give you an idea of why this came up. A lot of times when we've seen things getting appealed and they go to city council, there will be the regular presentation that we saw, but the discussion that we had in the planning commission doesn't necessarily get communicated in a way that we feel has the detail, the depth sometimes of what it should have so that it's a really totally informed, like why did the planning commission say no? And so there were, I think this came up mainly because to, you know, address that. You really need to, you know, have a communication and understanding of exactly what went on. And you don't always have the city council know everything that really did happen. It's summarized. So there was a feeling that, hey, we wanted them to take it more serious consideration. And there have been at times when members of the planning commission have shown up to city council because we were very concerned. I mean, I've even shown up saying, I really want you to understand. And I've had to basically say, by the way, I'm not representing the planning commission. I'm representing myself because we're not really allowed to do so that way. So the idea was we see more. than the city council and they don't necessarily see the entire conversation they had. And when things do get to that point where it is such a controversial item City Council Chambers, We go out of our way to really try and look at every angle and see if there's a way to resolve this and and I don't think the City Council. City Council Chambers, Again here's all that so that's That was the basis behind some of this is the idea was that we see more than the City Council, can you defer at least us in that that matter.

So for my part, I am on that subcommittee and I'll add that that's the exact same explanation he gave us. So I'm glad to see he's consistent with that. And I'll add that I think that argument makes sense. It holds water with me. If the extensive due diligence is being done while you're in the planning commission, then it stands to reason that, especially in the matter of an appeal, some extra deference goes to the planning commission to, when you're deciding to overturn that, especially as crowded and busy as the city council's calendar can become.

I'd like to chime in just as a former planning commissioner, having served eight years on the planning commission. The vast majority of the projects that we approved when I was on the planning commission, they were not overturned by the city council and while I didn't always agree with some of the decisions that the council made, they're the ones that had to run and be in front of the voters. And they are more worried about state laws, especially some of these housing laws that are putting pressure on the cities to build enough housing for the needs of Santa Clara residents. So while I'd like them to seriously consider our determination, I don't think requiring five affirmative votes to overturn something is prudent or necessary.

Just one item about that, if I may. I understand what you're saying. And if that was your experience on the planning commission, I understand that. We're pretty good at understanding, like right now, we have a very limited ability to do anything in terms of if we need more housing that we have to have it. We haven't really said, hey, we don't like the state saying this and we're not gonna do it regardless. We've had to, we know what the law was and we had to, you know, even we didn't like it, we had to vote and say, we agree with it. And I definitely voted in situations where I didn't like the way it was brought about, but the law is the law and we don't have a choice in that. Most of the time when this came up, it had more to do with other items than, housing regulations or things like that it was you know a variance that somebody wanted a setback that was different or somebody had you know a fencing issue or something like that that we really had to look at it very differently and see if we could solve it in any way possible so we we really go out of our way to to try and solve problems for the residents because that's who we serve but when it comes to like you know the other laws like that we really haven't had that kind of thing where we said, hey, we don't like California state law, and in some cases we don't, but we have to respect it as law.

I agree. And the only thing, I don't want to put more power in a non-elected body than the body that actually has to go in front of the voters and go through the gauntlet to be elected. That's why, even though I may not agree with some of their decisions, I don't think it's prudent to go from requiring four votes to five.

Just real quick, Glenn, with respect to the stuff you're talking about with state law. So it doesn't matter what the planning commission votes or how the appeal goes, it's gonna end up being what state law requires, right? There's no question of that.

Yeah, both planning commission and the city council would be given, hopefully, and I think we do a pretty good job of that in this situation, consistent advice from the city attorney's office regarding the extent to which they might be bound by state law for any particular decision that's being presented to them. And as... A couple of you have mentioned chair Crutchlow, particularly the house and member Kelly, you know, it's a lot of that's housing, you know, law preemption, which is exasperating, you know, to everybody. And it runs a little bit. And we talked about this when we first started talking about, right. What the value of being a charter city, you know, an authority over municipal affairs and a classic municipal affair is land use, right. Getting to decide locally what goes where and, the state has decided with some meaningful reason, right? Because some communities don't do their fair share at a local level to produce, you know, the necessary housing that they have made and that they've, it's been sustained by challenges to the law that they, as a matter of statewide concern, right? Where, and that's the exception to, you know, the ability of a charter city to make laws with respect to municipal affairs at this, the state successfully establishes even within a municipal affair area that they certain matter is of statewide concern. The state ends up getting preemptive authority over the local jurisdiction and affordable housing is one of those areas. And so planning commission stuck with that. or the community benefits from it, depending upon the perspective, you know, you might have, and the city council stuck with that. They both have to follow those laws. And so that wouldn't be a matter of tension between, you know, one or the other, I guess, in theory, if the Planning Commission started going rogue, you know, and was defying good advice from the city attorney's office and the city council needed to, you know, manage that, you know, on the appeal level, that might matter. so that's not really the area that i think you would see that in honestly the area lately i think that you've you've seen that in and i'm sorry if member kretzler mentioned this um and i'm being redundant um that has put the city council and the planning commission occasionally at odds is with the planning commission's um majority at least from time to time adverse perspective with respect to data centers And so frequently that, you know, more than once, right, a data center projects come in front of the planning commission and they may not support it. That could be appealed to the city council and the city council generally as a majority so far has been supportive of, you know, the, of, of, of data center development. And so it's issues like that, if I might, Member Crutchlow, that have come up and might be a source of Planning Commission angst about their positions and their recommendations getting deference. That's not the only example. I don't mean to act like this is about data centers, but that's my best recent example to be able to give you, Member Crutchlow, if I'm fair in saying that as a matter of division between planning commission and the city council.

And Steve, just your point, I just want to say that, you know, I do respect your opinion. You make a very good point. I understand why you're adamant about like, hey, listen, I want to make sure we're not trying to make this too adversarial and want to make sure it's balanced and you're thinking it's, you know, working well as it is as it stands.

Steve, the other reply I'd make to your comment was because it's land use and the permanence of that is why I lean more towards the additional preparation and work done by the Planning Commission than by the City Council.

When I first got on the Planning Commission, I saw a large number of cities making it very difficult for projects to move forward. And there are gonna be times where the people on the planning commission say, no, we don't want it here. And the council will have to decide, is that reasonable? Is that what we really want? And if we put a barrier of a five to seven vote, it's going to be a hurdle that I don't think a lot of projects are going to be able to pass. And I think you can have a good debate. And if you get four votes, which can be a challenge. I went through a very challenging process just getting my ADU before we had our ADU requirements allowing just about everybody to have an ADU. At that time I was told I had an undersized lot, even though I met all the criteria. I think getting four votes, which I got, was a huge burden. So to increase it to five votes, I don't think it's prudent. And I think a lot of good projects will be turned down if we leave it at five.

So Mr. Chair, we could keep going.

I'm glad there's another topic that's controversial. Not just me.

You're not the only one. Or your favorite topic or not favorite.

The only thing I'm thinking of is we could poll the Charter Review Commission to see if they are in favor of four or five.

Yeah, there's one way to do this as opposed to polling maybe would be Um, either now or at the end of the item, when it's all considered, um, in, in places of motion to be made, whether to include, you know, the, the, the, I think there's probably consensus on, um, on appeals that do consideration to the planning commission. Maybe that's not even, maybe that's even more than the group wants to do, but it's the last sentence that probably, the one that's not potentially controversial, right? Because it would, specifically modify, you know, the authority of the city council with respect to planning commission decisions. And so potentially chair, you could either solicit a motion on whether to, from the group, from someone in a second as to whether or not to include that language, or it can be taken up with the entire item.

Okay. I guess we can hear the rest of the presentation of group four and figure it out afterwards.

Yeah, almost done. The Parks and Recreation Commission also met and provided really good input. There are some updated powers and duties from them based on both commission input and input from staff. That's contained in new section 604.2. They've kept the composition in place. and the proposed changes from them aren't really dramatic. They are based on a lot of provisions that are already existing in the city code, but are now elevated up to the charter level. And I'm looking at the language here to see if there's anything that I should highlight that adds there. They already have a provision that requires their input be solicited on the city's budget. This actually adds language that also requires their input be solicited on parks and recreation master plans or amendments to master plans. It also adds language to require that their input be given on any plans for citywide recreation programs. and citywide events. So these are things that already happen. They're important functions of the group. The current director of parks and rec was asked, you know, for his input on that to make sure it didn't go too far afield of what was considered reasonable. And so I think there's going to be general support and not really controversy about these changes. There, was a modification to interaction with school authorities. Again, that is emphasized as a important element of their function, particularly in light of the fact that a lot of schools have significant parks and recreation facilities. And so that element was maintained and enhanced because of the importance of coordination there. So that's the discussion for Parks and Rec. Finally, Board of Library Trustees, you had a pretty good report out of this. I'll provide it in summary. The Board of Library Trustees really leaned into this, as you'll recall, for important reasons, because as it was currently drafted and hadn't been how things worked for some number of years, the board of library trustees was in fact, as contemplated by the charter and probably was the case back in the fifties and thereafter for some period of time when the charter was first adopted, actually the board is responsible for the administration of the library system, right? Actually running the library. That doesn't happen anymore. It certainly doesn't happen here. It isn't considered a best practice. It's not something that the library board of trustees wants to do. But there were important things that were included in that that were powers and authorities they wanted to retain. And so based upon input from the board of library trustees and some really good discussions amongst the group that modified the request from the specific language requested from the Board of Library Trustees somewhat, these are the changes that were included. It's old sections 1012 and 1013. The new section is section 604.4. The Board of Library Trustees proposed and the group does support an increase of their membership from five to seven members. that's helpful for them in getting a quorum and it's helpful for them to have board and commissioners that can be ambassadors for them and go out into the community, help raise money, support library activities, et cetera. And so that was viewed as a reasonable request and supported by group four. They did propose, as I mentioned earlier, the elimination for their group at least of the qualified elector requirements. In other words, board of library trustees as a matter of their interest in inclusiveness wanted to allow for residents that weren't necessarily registered voters. The interest and desire of this group was for consistency amongst all the charter created boards and commissions. So they were not supportive of that. And they recognized though that there were a lot of opportunities based on city council created boards or commissions in various areas where residency was enough to qualify. And so in consideration of that, they are not recommending that particular request of the board of library trustees. As mentioned, the authority of the library board of trustees to administer the library has been eliminated, but they've retained significant authority to actually approve the city librarian, something they do now that they did with the most recent library that they think is important for them to be able to do that, and certain policies with some restrictions on that. And the language that you can look at, I won't go over it, in any great detail in general refers, allows them with input that also received after the fact from the library director gives them approval rights over policies regarding collection development, materials reconsideration, materials, lendering, patron conduct, use of meeting rooms and grounds, as long as any of that is in compliance with applicable law, right? They can't make rules about those things that violate the law or don't violate or run inconsistent with citywide facility operations requirements. So the authority for them to make recommendations on library master plan and on the library budget and on significant donations to the library with some good language in there have been preserved or enhanced. And the group with the language before you Group four supports those changes.

Kudos to the, I'm sorry, yeah, please. That we were gonna expand it to non-residents and maybe do a county thing so that we widen the pool of qualified applicants?

I'm sorry, are you asking if you could do that?

No, I thought that was part of our discussion in the group.

No, it was. I think we ended up taking it out. Okay.

Yeah, it is. I'm sorry if I didn't mention that discussion. I didn't think that was the recommendation of the group, but that is something that you certainly could do.

Previously, I thought we said you were going to talk about it in more detail later on. I thought it was more like it doesn't matter if the person's a citizen or not. They had to be a resident, but that's all they had to be.

A resident of Santa Clara.

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I didn't remember expanding.

That we were not going to expand it, that we were going to leave it. Yeah. So that it was consistent with everything else.

Thank you.

Maybe it was my wish that got overruled. Yeah.

but Sunnyvale thanks you for your example. Fine community, fine city. So Mr. Chair, committee, next steps for group four. If there's any supplemental comments from group four, if I didn't do an appropriate job of describing the considerations and the recommendation, please correct me or add on. If the full CRC has any additional questions now would be the time. Of course, we want to solicit public input and then staff would again be looking for direction from you on how to proceed with the recommendation and how to incorporate that into your final recommendation.

Excellent. Any questions and or comments from group four or the whole group? Once again, I see none. Any member of the public wish to comment on this?

There's no hands raised.

Excellent. Maybe somebody from, oh, oh.

Oh, ah.

Member Jensen, did you want to talk?

I see his hand.

Sorry, I lost connection and came back. I didn't have audio. I do now. I just wanted to point, I just want to have the audio returned. Thank you very much for that.

Excellent. It's almost public comment. Maybe somebody from group four would like to make a motion either including or not including the super majority vote.

I move to include the entirety for a roll call vote.

Second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion regarding the motion?

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, I want to make sure I understand that the recommendation was to include all the language, including the supermajority deference.

Yes. Any discussion on the motion?

Yeah, I am. Okay, I'm reluctant to do this, but I'm going to do it anyway, because I think it's the right thing to do. I was just thinking, you know, the problem we're trying to solve is that there is a communication issue between planning commission and the details they see and what the city council hears and what they have to decide on. And maybe one other way to deal with that might be to say the planning commission is allowed to designate a commissioner to represent the commission in their opinion to the city council for any appeal, which would have to be done. They would have to designate somebody regardless, not for a specific appeal, but in general, because of the timing. I think, what is it? An appeal you have to file within seven days or 14 days? Anyway, it was, it's something like that. So it happens very quickly and you can't like have wait for the next planning commission to say, I want to assign somebody that doesn't work. So I'm saying an alternative might be to really solve the problem directly would be allow the planning commission to say, we are going to designate somebody that if there is an appeal, they can attend the planning, the city council and explain or give further discussion as to why the decision was made the way they did. Maybe that's the better way than a super majority.

I agree. I think a lot of times when we had difference of opinion from the planning commission to the council, some of us would speak as a member of the public. And I think that would be more impactful to let the council know of our findings and why than to require the super majority.

I'll go ahead and withdraw that motion, if I may, and exclude this portion of the recommended language and otherwise move to advance the rest of the language, given member Crutchlow's sudden revelation.

I'll second that.

I'll put a substitute motion in then. Gotta remember, I know how to do this one.

You don't actually have to do that with a friendly amendment. If the maker of the motion and the second supports that, that motion can be the one that's submitted. You don't need a substitute motion.

Thank you. What I'm saying is, why not add it one way or the other?

I don't know all the contingencies associated with the new proposal on the floor. I would like Glenn to write them up as he suggested with the matter of the police chief's responsibilities such that we can review multiple different versions of this proposal with the next one.

I thought you were giving the chief of police the authority to represent the planning commission.

Well, okay.

Which would be some.

Oh yeah.

We can give it to the chief. Very challenging. You're the designated. So Mr.

Chair, if I might make a, make a comment about that. Appreciate member Cresslow's thoughts on that. I might say that the planning commission really already has that authority. If the planning commission makes a decision, on something that would be within your existing authority to designate somebody to represent the planning commission, you know, in front of the council with, you know, in an appeal. So that doesn't mean.

I've never heard that really been told to us in that way. And I will not, I will claim that I'm not the most expert person. Steve, did you ever hear something like that?

We were told we could speak to the council as a member of the public. That was my memory.

Yeah, so if I may parse that, unless the planning commission designated somebody to represent them.

We already have that capability.

The only authority that you would have if a member was intending to appear in front of the council would be as an individual. But that does not mean that you didn't have the authority to designate somebody to represent you. Those things are different, right? So in the absence of a designation of a person, a planning commissioner couldn't just go in front of the council and say, I represent the planning commission. You could only appear as a member of the public. And so I don't think you need that in the charter. I'd like to consult with Xander about that just to make sure I'm not missing something about that. But I don't think there's actually a thing that would prohibit that.

Do you have time to talk to him before the next meeting?

Yeah, I can definitely talk to him. So in theory, that could be something that's brought back. If the group... wanted to, it sounds like with a friendly amendment, support the city council deference concept, but without that last section, with the understanding that if it's necessary to add something for a provision be built in to have a planning commissioner, or the right of the planning commission to designate somebody, you know, to represent them in an appeal context, we can include that with the final language when it comes back. If I understood the dynamics between the group, and I think I did.

So what I'll do is I'll withdraw my substitute motion if you want to.

You're a lawyer, figure it out. So who is the, I'm sorry, who is the maker of the motion? So I might recommend it if I'm understanding correctly that you move the recommendation that the language be advanced as proposed, not including the last sentence, but subject to confirmation of authority or the addition of authority if it's absent for a planning commissioner designee to represent the commission in any appeal context.

That is correct. And Steve, I trust you are fully in favor of what Eric now proposes.

Having a designated representative from the Planning Commission would be impactful, and I would support that.

And then we can, if Xander says, no, there's no way to do that, whatever, you could come back and tell us, and then we could... Again, have the vote on.

Yeah, you definitely can do it if I add it to the charter. I just don't think it's necessary.

Perfect. As recommended, then that's what I move.

And was there a second? Sounds like the second agrees with that friendly amendment. Very good.

Excellent. So we have a motion. We have a second. Any more discussion? Hearing none, let's do a roll call vote.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes.

This is Eric. I didn't hear any prompt, but yes.

Yes.

A very good Mr. Chair that passes with that vote tally. You now get to stop hearing from me as we go to the next slide and you get to hear from Chief Assistant City Attorney, Sue Reuter, who's been really doing kind of yeoman's duty, trying to navigate some of the proposed changes to the civil service provisions and meet and confer discussions with the labor groups. I'm going to go get a cup of coffee and ask her to present to you on the next couple of slides.

All right, so with respect to group five civil service general rules for classified and unclassified employees, as well as the civil service commission and the retirement, the state retirement law section, the meetings are as listed. I have not met with group five subcommittee since January when the full CRC approved red lines to go out to bargaining units for meet and confer. So we can go to the next. Okay. So since that time, since January, we have had a really robust meet and confer process with all of the bargaining units. We've had 10 meetings with all the various units over the past two months, some individual, some group meetings. And we have Heard received verbal requests from all of the bargaining units for a variety of changes to the proposed language, and we have incorporated a lot of those requested changes into the new proposed language. and we're going to review sort of in general some of those proposed changes this evening. The bargaining units have stated that they continue to have some pretty significant concerns about some of the language. It is surprisingly not the language really that we had anticipated was going to be a problem. I have some doubts as to whether or not we'll be able to resolve those concerns that some of the bargaining units have. They've also requested additional time to review and evaluate the proposed language. which unfortunately we don't have that much of anymore. And so I will say that at this point, although we have some sort of, I would say the bargaining units are on a spectrum of assent from not assenting at all to essentially saying it's fine, it's not so bad. but none of them have provided any written statement of intent back to the city. So on any portion of the language. So there are three different articles that are implicated by this section. And while I'm sure we can all understand and as we go through, we'll see that some of the sections would be more potentially concerning than others. What is a little bit surprising is we haven't gotten any assent to any

portions of the changes, at least as of now.

So moving forward with the proposed language and next week is when I think we're intending to actually bring the sort of final versions of the red lines back. So you will see those next week. But at this point, I will say that moving forward with any proposed language that does not meet with a statement of assent or agreement from the bargaining units could create a lot of difficult issues that might sort of push this into the category four world. And we just don't want it this, you know, labor related issues to negatively affect the success of the entire charter project. So June 3rd, I understand is the date that we're looking for in terms of coming back with a full the full charter. So to the extent that concurrence from all the bargaining units is not achieved by that time, at that point, likely the recommendation that I would bring to you is to not include any changes to revert to the original charter language for these particular sections, except of course, for the non-substantive organizational changes that are being proposed.

So I'm sorry I missed most of that, but I do heartily approve of calling them categories. I think in terms of hurricanes, we have a better.

Yeah.

So is there anything legally that needs to be cleaned up? Like the state had some new law and doesn't match the charter. Was anything in there that had to be cleaned up because of other

Yeah, I mean, there are a few things that we think are essentially not viable because of changes in the law over time. But I don't think that the existence of that language makes a properly done decision are not viable, right? So to the extent that the city has to, so let's take an example. One of the examples is that in the definition of the civil service system and the merit principle, it talks about not discriminating on the basis of race and religion. As we all know, there are a whole lot more protected categories than just race and religion, right? And so we had proposed language to use a more generic term in a non-discriminatory manner, such that it would capture all the things that, all the categories, right, of protected characteristics. would the fact that the charter language doesn't refer to gender as a protected characteristic, would that create some sort of liability for the city? And the answer is no, so long as the city's functions properly protect gender as a protected characteristic, right? Your answer is a good one. I mean, your question is a good one. And the answer to it is yes, there are things in the charter as written that don't align with existing law, but I think there are operational ways around the potential pitfalls of that. And I think the city is already doing what it needs to do to ensure that. It would be ideal if we could change that language. That would be great. That's the aim. But if we don't, I don't think it's necessarily fatal to operations. So let's talk about some of the things that during the course of all of these meetings and emails and things like that that we had with the various bargaining units, the things that we were willing to offer, and to the extent that we are going to let you see what this new language is at the end of all of the work next week, even if we don't recommend that you adopt that language, we will let you see it. So I'm just going to summarize some of it for you. So like I said, with the civil service section, the merit principle, that would be in section seven. I haven't memorized the new numbers. Okay, 700. So in the civil service sections, which are back in the 600s, there is a definition under the Civil Service Commission that sort of provides what the purpose of the Civil Service Commission is relative to the civil service system, the merit principle. And so the bargaining units wanted us to mirror the section 700 definition of the civil service system and merit principle with the language that we had proposed under the civil service commissions section which is logical it makes sense um and so we were absolutely willing to do to do that and so we agreed to modify the language under 1100 to mirror what was in section 1010. The next section is 701. This is the big one. This is the one that defines classified and unclassified service. So this was unsurprisingly the subject of most of the discussion that we had with the bargaining units. So there was a little bit of reorganization of some of the sections, non-substantive reorganization of some of the subsections within 701. The first real substantive change that we were willing to make was an express statement that the positions that exist as categorized as either classified, unclassified, or as needed, as of the date of the election, November 3rd, would remain so designated. So no one had to worry that by passage of this language, classified folks were gonna become unclassified or unclassified were gonna become classified. None of those sorts of changes were gonna occur. If you are classified on November 3rd, you are going to be classified and we're not gonna take that away from you. Sort of, yes, yeah, yeah. And so the remainder of the changes we wanted to make clear were in order to essentially solve many decades of classification of employees in a manner in which it didn't specifically meet the letter of the charter, right?

We wanted to fix that problem.

And so we wanted to change the definitions in the charter to better align with what's currently in the unclassified schedule. And what's in the unclassified schedule is going to remain in the unclassified schedule because of the new language that we were willing to provide to the bargaining units saying, we're not gonna change your classifications, right? So as we went through it, some of them were fairly easy. They didn't have really any kind of issues, but some became a little bit difficult. So there was under... new subsection six discussion related to part-time folks, right? So everybody in this, so remember the fundamental basis of a classification plan differentiation is that in public service, everybody is classified except for the people who you are specifically picking out as unclassified, right? So one of the categories that is kind of universally removed from the classification bucket are folks who are not permanent employees. So if you're part-time, temporary, seasonal, lifeguards, summer camp folks, those folks do not get vested rights. In the education context, it would be considered tenure. You don't get those kinds of job protections if you fall within one of those categories. And so the language used to be very specific. Well, I suppose the language still is very specific. It's only folks who are employed for a temporary or special purpose for a period not to exceed six months in any one calendar year. and we have folks who are temporary or part-time who work for more than six months in a year, right? They may not be working full-time, but they're working for more than six months. It's just not written in a way that makes it clear that it's really subject to essentially CalPERS restrictions on what a part-time person can do, right? And so we tried to make it a little bit more detailed by adding categories of non-permanent or part-time employees. Some of the bargaining, actually, I think it's just one or two of the bargaining units had some concerns because there are in the city, essentially a handful of employees who are permanent part-time employees. And so they are 20 to 30 hours per week employees, but they have permanent rights, they are in a bargaining unit, and they have job protections. And so they wanted to make sure that the folks who are in those positions and those positions remain protected. And so they, despite the addition of the language that says this position is going to be on the classified list, they wanted some additional changes, which we were willing to make. So we added language to say all non-permanent persons employed in these various types of positions. occasional or temporary employments. And we deleted one of the subcategories as well. One of the issues that we ran into, and that is really one of the big issues that remains outstanding is what's listed here as subsection seven and eight. So the first one is professional, scientific, technical or expert service of an occasional or exceptional character. At this point, we are proposing to delete that language entirely because it's creating some confusion and there's now some overlap with what we have in new subsection eight, which is the definitions of confidential management and professional employee as those definitions are set forth in the employer employee relations resolution that's on the city's website. And it's a resolution that's adopted by council. It's from the 1970s. It's when our bargaining units were first sort of created. And that resolution is essentially the labor relations resolution. It tells you how we do our relationships, our communication with the various bargaining units and what rights they have and the processes that they use. So what we had originally said was we were going to just reference these definitions that are in the employer employee relations resolution. The bargaining units didn't like that. They didn't want to have reference to an external document. And they also didn't want to have reference to a document that could be changed by resolution of the city council. They wanted to have those definitions. If we were going to use those definitions, they wanted those definitions to be, voted on by the voters. We're okay with that, because if we're referencing something, we have to be willing to stand behind that definition anyway. I was okay with doing that. The fundamental problem that we are having still, which may end up scuttling the whole issue, is that there is a question as to whether or not certain professional employees should be considered unclassified. So the definition currently 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 scientists. That's the definition of one of the categories of professional employees. And it's our position that those persons should not be classified. They should be unclassified employees. They are very often engaged in work that is related to effectuation of a policy decision. They have access to and work with a great deal of confidential information. They're just... the nature of their job is not one that fits squarely within the conception of classified employment. And you think about I can take attorneys as a good example because that's the one that I'm most familiar with. But if you take, for example, a situation in which you give an attorney classified appeal rights in a disciplinary matter, that becomes enormously difficult to do because it is by definition going to be wrapped up in a lot of confidential attorney-client privilege communication. It's going to be wrapped up in a lot of work product privilege. All the, so from a practical perspective would be extremely difficult to implement a normal civil service rules kind of process when you're talking about people who are in very sort of confidential or like touchy positions, right? And so that ultimately this provision may be the thing that creates the problem. But I will tell you that with the language in the charter as it currently is, Including these definitions would be really helpful because unfortunately our unclassified pay plan includes a lot of positions like, for example, my position or like deputy city attorney, right, that don't don't sort of by the letter of the charter as it currently is, they don't sort of, they haven't checked all the boxes, right? And so we're going to have to do a bunch of work to fix those things in the event that the language is not, you know, we don't come to a concurrence with the bargaining units over it. So the next area that we were willing to make changes was in, I guess it's 10, subsection 10, upon the recommendation of the city manager and city attorney, the city council by ordinance may add new positions to the unclassified service or modify existing positions in accordance with applicable laws and so on. So we took out the recommendation of the city manager and city attorney. And we also took out the modification of existing positions such that now it is the city council by ordinance may add a new position to the unclassified service. If such a position satisfies any of the categories of unclassified service described in the eight, one through eight above. So that sort of puts a little bit of guardrails, right? The city council can't just go off and start creating new positions and adding them to the unclassified service. They do substantively have to fall within one of the other categories, but it does provide the process by which those new positions can be created, which would be by city council, by ordinance. And it... takes away the requirement at the end of that section that really is the problem for us organizationally, which is that it requires us to take a department, separate it into divisions, and then the unclassified person has to be the head of that newly created division. which is just not a modern organizational practice, right? And so, and especially not for a city that is as sort of forward-looking and has as heavy a workload as the city of Santa Clara does, right? We don't have a handful of policy matters that we're trying to implement at any time. We have a bucket full. right and so when you have things like that going on you need to have a lot of folks who are able to do that kind of policy work and forcing every single one of those people to be the head of a division doesn't make any sense right um so currently as the as the language reads we have sort of given addressed a lot of the concerns from the bargaining units relating to who's actually making the decision and relating to what is the scope of what the position is that can be created by ordinance. But there is still some language that we feel like it's important, really the heart of it for us organizationally, that's important to delete from the charter or at least try to, which again may end up being a problem that results in lack of agreement with the bargaining. And then the next big one was in section 702, which is appointments from the classified to unclassified service. So that's promotions from the classified service into management. And what this section does is it codifies the property right that a person has, an employee has in the classified position. So once they promote, voluntarily into the unclassified position, then they can, if they get removed from their unclassified position, they can revert back to their classified job because that property right is not taken away by virtue of them promoting into the management position. What we had proposed was that there'd be some sort of temporal cap on how long a person can have that right. So to the extent you promote into the unclassified service, currently as it's written, there is an unlimited right of reversion. So you could be in your management position for 20 years. and then for whatever reason, maybe even voluntarily demote back to your classified position 20 years later. And that could in theory result in some organizational difficulty, right? Because if all of the positions are filled, in theory, you can bump the most junior person out, right? That's why it's called bumping rights, because it bumps and then it creates that waterfall effect. Well, I haven't seen it happen. it is a theoretical possibility, right? And so when we had first proposed the language, we proposed the two-year time period. So you promote into your management position, and then you have two years in which your classified job is essentially still protected by that property right, and you can go back. But after two years, your property right goes away. so that in the event you are removed, you'll be removed from city service, not just removed from your management position. Unsurprisingly, that was something that the bargaining units did not like, and we anticipated that. So we were fine with striking that. So currently, as it stands, the language does have that unlimited right of reversion, but we are keeping in additional language that we put in that said, unless the officer or employee is dismissed from the unclassified city service for cause or resigns in lieu of termination. So we didn't have that before. So to the extent that we were dismissing an unclassified employee for cause, we had to essentially dismiss them twice, right? And then go through the whole civil service commission appeal process from the classified dismissal. So that at least allows us to avoid that part of extra work and credit to the bargaining units. They all understood that it was not necessarily a reasonable position to take to require us to go through that process in a for cause.

Sue's brilliant, and this is a lot of good information and detail, but since there's not an agreement necessarily in all this language, as opposed to identifying things that they agreed with, that more likely than not, this group will be supportive of as well. Could you focus in the remaining sections on things that are source of disagreement, if any, then all of this is likely to come back, you know, anywhere.

So we didn't really have any other disagreements. Really the main ones were the use of the definitions for management, professional, and confidential employees. And the issue is, even if we took that out, Right, so we've had these discussions. Even if we took that out and just reverted to the existing language, the problem then becomes the occasional and exceptional character language, right? Which is in your... seven subsection seven right that that's really the issue if if it didn't have the occasional and exceptional character language in there we wouldn't have have had to go through this this process but it does and the bargaining units are not willing to agree to the deletion of that language by And so that puts us in a position where it's like we can't win on either side, right? And unfortunately, I think that's really gonna be the biggest sticking point. And without it, it negates the benefit to a lot of the positions that we were hoping .

So that's sort of where we are. So I would ask if there's any questions about that, Mr. Chair, to tender those now. And I guess I'd turn it back to Sue for what her recommendation is on how to proceed, whether or not, for example, there's enough that there's agreement on that it's worth proceeding or whether or not, because it sounds like there's a lot of agreement on a lot of elements to this or whether or not you're recommending we don't proceed at all unless we can achieve some concurrence on that one item. So maybe questions first, Mr. Chair, and then ultimately to Suda as to how she would parse that issue I just raised and tendered to her.

Excellent. Any questions? It's getting late. I didn't expect any. Any member of the public? Excellent.

Yeah, it's a good question. And I will tell you that while I think based on the comments that we've received during these meetings, most of the bargaining units wouldn't have really much of an issue with a number of these sections that we tend to be in agreement about. They have number one, not actually stated that they agree. And number two, to the extent there are issues that they feel strongly about, that they don't feel are being addressed properly in this, every single section in here will not be agreed to. So I don't think that it's going to be as easy as saying, okay, well, so far we're all okay with section 1010. Maybe that's just the part that'll go forward. I just don't think that we're going to get even to that unless we get to a resolution globally on the whole thing. And the chances of that happening within the next week are low.

So it sounds like group five lucked out and has nothing to do.

I have a comment on 709.1. I don't understand what that says. We appreciate some clarification.

Okay. So we're not actually proposing, and we haven't proposed at all, any modifications to the existing charter language for the state public retirement law, except for some definitions. So non-substantive changes. So under state law, there is the public employees retirement law. There's a section of state law that is called the Pearl. And so what this section does is it allows the city to do whatever it has to do in order to effectuate and keep in position the retirement program that's governed by the Pearl. And there's no changes that we are intending to make to that. The retirement system is the retirement system. So to the extent that there's a question about the termination of a contract. So the terms of the city's version of the contract CalPERS, the retirement system, the specific terms, like the percentage of the contribution for the employee and the employer, the exact calculation or equation that's used to determine what the benefits are going to be. Those kinds of things, as well as a bunch of other like documentary record keeping, that kind of stuff is subject to this agreement that the city has with the state with CalPERS. And in theory, that agreement can be changed and it has been changed a couple of times when there has been some sort of big C change in the state law, right? Then the state will say, okay, we have to amend this contract because now we have these new things that we have to make sure that we all include. I think the last time that really happened was when PEPRA came into existence. And so then everybody had to update their contracts when the public employees oh gosh, Pension Reform Act went into place in 2013. And so there's language in this section that says, hey, look, you can't terminate your contract with PERS unless the voters tell you to terminate your contract with PERS, right? And there's no need to change that. And the city's not gonna, terminate the contract with Perth anyway, but that's sort of where what this section is intended.

So Mr. Chair, I think what staff will do if it's consistent with consensus, since there's not actual language for you to act on, yet if you give us direction to come back with, if in fact there is a viable form of modifications at the next meeting that will be presented to you, including a recommendation and input from the labor groups on that issue, which professional staff is recommending without that, we would not recommend you proceeding. And so we'll come back with the actual language and a recommendation as to whether there is a level of agreement reached on the language presented to justify you all making a recommendation to proceed. So I don't think we need, if there's consensus on that, since there's not actual language, that's what we'll do at your next and then final meeting. Sounds great. Description would be very good.

Wanna cover the last group two and six language changes?

Yeah, this pretty quickly, Chief, and then I do want to get to the last direction from you on how to proceed with preparing the report. The The one of these is really just a language change, which will be up to the group next week to decide whether or not you wanna proceed anyway. This is one of those other sensitive areas in the chief of police category. You'll remember we presented with some support, the proposal that the qualifications for the chief of police might be modified to add the requirement for a post-management certificate. And with some issues and concerns around that, there is a modification to that that says have achieved the rank and have the experience necessary to qualify. In other words, you don't actually have to obtain the certificate to the extent there is a delay. You just need to be qualified to obtain the certificate as a criteria. And then potentially if that language is included, I think this last section may or may not be necessary. If the post-management certificate standard is no longer in effect, an equivalent standard shall apply. And so some modifications to kind of fine tune that, which will come back for the direction and your final recommendation. It need not be included given the sensitivity of the area, but that will be up to the group with a final recommendation. So that's one of the tweaks to the language. The second one, is important and I think it was touched on earlier when we were talking about the violations of the charter, what kind of violations of the charter, right? Could result in prosecution of someone. We've added some, And this was discussed with the group, with group one as well. We've added some things to the city council duties and obligations that aren't hard and fast standards, right? And the most obvious one for that is the conduct yourself in a professional and courteous manner with respect to everyone. In theory, And this would be an issue regardless of whether we updated the violations section or not. To the extent a violations of the charter could result in prosecution for as a misdemeanor or an infraction. If in fact, a prosecutor decided on a very subjective basis, and they wouldn't likely do this, but we don't necessarily want to create the appearance of that, that a council person was discourteous, right? That council person could be prosecuted and lose their office, right? That's not the intent of the addition of that, you know, provision. The intent maybe for some of them might be, but... The intent of the addition of that is really as a guideline and an aspirational thing, an expectation that the council people will conduct themselves in that matter. It's not intended to have that be something that the DA could prosecute and have them removed from office over. at least in my sense or understanding of it. And so the thought on potentially addressing that is to remove at least that one provision, the professional, the obligation to be professional and courteous out of the obligation and duty section and into its own, hey, and it's also the expectation that council people will conduct themselves in this manner. In effect, to take it out of a prosecutable offense and put it more in an expectation and a guideline category. So that change is proposed for your consideration. Sometimes as you look hard at elements that you're changing, even if you're not changing them in relationship to another element that you're adding, it could create a challenging juxtaposition of relationships. And it's not the intent, right? At least a professional staff to recommend the changes of those types of criteria as a prosecutable gotcha. And so that's one of the recommendations in this updated draft. And then finally, the city clerk, elected city clerk's been really good about reviewing a lot of these things, particularly in the elections area with a number of good suggestions. One of his that he pointed out as he was listening to the presentation on the 20th, where I had said with respect to the district elections process and the staggering of those elections, hey, if you remember that word nominate, I thought was superfluous, you know, and I proposed that it be deleted because the districts don't nominate people. We don't have a primary election. It's a nomination process, right? And then the district, I'm that that's only a subset 20 people or more right of qualified electors within that district. And so we don't need the word nominate in that context. Um, his point was, yeah, but we don't have the nomination by district requirement anywhere else. And so there's revisions that were proposed in that section that make it very clear that, um, that even if the word nominate is deleted in that one place, because it doesn't make sense, the requirement that, um, the anybody running for a district council office being nominated only by people that were residents within that district, that requirement is now built back in. And so we don't lose the inference or intent of that nomination section, but instead we put it where it belongs. And so those were the couple additional kind of wording changes that we included that were going back to groups two and six and available to answer any questions if there's any different thought about the appropriateness of any of those proposals.

Any questions? Any member of the public? Excellent. I guess we can move to item number two.

Yes, the item number two. Well, item number one in my defense, in our defense, was a pretty significant item with six subparts. And this one can be relatively quick, although it's important. And so appreciate your guys' patience with this item. The first slide is, and there's a couple elements to this, right? Process for creating the report. and then possible need for including potential formation of an ad hoc subcommittee to assist with, you know, presentation of the report and presentation to council and the possible need for an action on scheduling one or more additional meetings to complete the charter project work plan. This first slide is my really thought process on the proposed contents of the report. It's not intended to be, you know, the end all for what the report will contain. And there's a lot of sub categories to this, but did want at least to get my thought process about what the report to council would contain to this group before we proceed on how that report might be produced in the finalization of it. So here's listed proposed outline of the report. Of course, in the background section, the origins of the project, right? How we started, how we got here. An important, I think, point to emphasize is the project purpose, right? There's that built into the bylaws that we've tried to be true to, right? As we've gone along the path here, there might be some other elements or observations about the project purpose that the folks putting together the report might have a thought about, but at least the stated project purpose from the bylaws to remind the public and the council, about what what why we why we went through this odyssey um and then um important to talk about the process for the creation of the um i'm sorry the proposed update to the charter obviously the creation of the ad hoc subcommittees as the working groups was crucial and we want to talk about that with the why and how that was formed stakeholder input was an important element of the process so we want to talk about that There was a meaningful amount of benchmarking in a number of different areas, and we want to talk about the benchmarking. And then, of course, as part of the process, the report outs from the ad hoc subcommittees to the full CRC and the input and direction from the full CRC towards the development of the ultimate recommendation. So the process, I think, is an important thing to include. Of course, at the crux of this is the summary of the proposed changes. There's a lot of parts to this, the overall reorganization of the charter, the charter wide conventions and tools that were developed and haven't been overlaid yet completely and consistently, but will be right when the document is finalized for presentation. And then of course, the section by section changes and the summary of those changes with level two and three changes highlighted and level four ideas identified for future consideration. And so summary of the proposed changes, the outcome of that, the categorization of that, and any level four items identified as well. The next, I think important element of this is considerations for the council in placing whatever they might decide to place on the ballot. That would include discussions of one comprehensive measure versus one or more separate level three type measures that they might tender. The cost benefit analysis with respect to the proposed changes. really important discussion as they think about this comprehensive proposal to explain to them what the voters will see, because it's not the whole gigantic thing. It's really just a kind of a summary of it in the ballot question. Options for additional information and outreach, as we talked about, I want them to understand and hear that if what's in front of the voters is a simple summary thing, how can voters get more information and what the intent is to make sure the full underlined strikeout version of the document is available with FAQs on the city website, including potential options for additional information and outreach, right? We talked about potentially the CRC holding forums, right? Professional staff holding forums so that if an item's on the ballot, there's an avenue to explain to the public, to the press, to whomever, different elements of the details of the project and what the thought process was. And then of course, again, if the measure passes, the required next steps for implementation, as we all talked about, there's things that would need to be done, right? Policies and ordinances that are contemplated, references within the code would need to be updated. Wanna make sure they understand the full scope of what this means. It's not just putting the item on the ballot, but then it's implementing it both in terms of developing ordinances and policies and updating existing ordinances and policies to cross-reference now the newly organized and the newly renumbered, charter. And then of course, you know, the CRC, you know, recommendation, you know, the why, you know, and the how of that. And so that's the thought about what the contents of the report would be, how to present the charter itself. We've talked about the, and the thought again, out of my brain, you know, for your consideration and direction is that would present to the council to the public three charter documents right obviously the original charter an underlying strikeout version of the charter and a clean version of the charter as revised the clean version of the charter would be used as the primary presentation document but annotated with at an article level an overview of the contents and cross references to the old charter section provisions for each section, a summary of the changes with the levels of the proposed changes identified, certainly level two and level three changes. And then for key changes again, in the annotation, a summary of the thought process, right in the objectives that went into why any particular change was recommended. So again, this isn't the end of it, right? It's intended to be an outline, you know, and a guidance for how, when the full final document gets, you know, presented to you and acted on how we go from what that is to the report and to the presentation materials that will ultimately go in front of the city council. So, next proposed next steps, as we had talked about and is listed on the agenda as a possible action for you, form yet one more, the final ad hoc subcommittee to assist with the report preparation and presentation. Ultimately, or the city attorney's office would prepare a draft of the report and distribute it for committee input based on an approved guideline. And then Ideally the ad hoc subcommittee members would be available on June 9th or a subset of them, right? At least some representatives on June 9th for the initial workshop presentation of the project to the city council. And then as we go through the process, the secondary presentations to the council currently scheduled on the next slide for June 9th initially, then a special meeting dedicated to this project on June 15th. And then ultimately, unless there's an additional meeting scheduled, final consideration and adoption and action by the city council on July 14th. So we have on the calendar space on the June 9th, a meeting actually before the city council meeting, an hour and a half to introduce them to the city, the CRC's recommendation, a dedicated meeting on June 15th to take up and probably give us an opportunity to answer questions they might have and do a more formal presentation at that time. And then depending upon their action and presentation, the final meeting on July 14th, if not before. In order to do this, the charter review committee will need to meet at least once more. We're proposing a June 3rd meeting. We know some of you can't be there. A lot of you have provided, of course, a bunch of input and direction already. So that's not fatal to the project, but of course we'd want as many of you there as possible for that June 3rd meeting. This would be at a minimum, one more opportunity for the receipt of public stakeholder input. We would now have... fully revised charter put out to the public right in advance of that meeting once that's finalized so that everyone can not just hear us talk about it, but have it right and look at it as a way of them providing input. We think that's important. We would also be able to update you at that point on the status of the preparation of the council report. I promise you it won't be done by June 3rd, but The contents of it and hopefully some progress on it will be refined in order to report out. And then of course, we'd want the group at that point to go, okay, here are all the pieces. There was a couple of things that you directed us to look at and bring back above and beyond what you'd approved already for your direction. We'd want the final recommendation and action of the group at that time. And so that's item two as presented, feedback. on any of this with the understanding it's not intended to be final, but as a guideline and certainly volunteers, gluttons for punishment to serve on a report construction and assistance with presentation of all of this to the city council at various meetings. Back to you, Mr. Chair.

Excellent, does anybody have any questions and or comments or want to volunteer for the ad hoc subcommittee presentation?

If we volunteer, will it be Stan's Donuts?

I'm sorry, if you volunteer- Not that it's a bribe.

Will you what? Will you do what? Will you provide Stan's Donuts?

Oh, Stan's Donuts. Oh, okay. I thought you, I don't know. So when you first said that, I said, will we stay in zones? And I'm like, what? What does that mean? Absolutely, 100%. There will be Stan's Donuts galore. Yes, I agree. I agree with that.

I have a question. What do you expect the timeframe to be for that subcommittee? I guess at least through the July 14th. And my question is related to, you know, I possibly could do that, but I do have some travel, significant travel plan during that time where I could do things remotely. So Do you envision it is possible to do it remotely or not? So kind of some of those, what's required.

Yes, through the chair. It would be a true ad hoc subcommittee, right? The schedule could be made around the ad hoc subcommittee's schedule, which I know is challenging, but it would be that. And remote participation would be fine. Yeah, we understand there's... You've met so many times with so many things. The intent would be to make that as convenient and as accessible to as many of you as possible.

Yeah, volunteering.

Volunteer, volunteer, volunteer, volunteer.

It does need to be. I appreciate all that. It does need to be less than a majority. But if I might get that right down the hands, Mr. Chair, did I see Crutchlow, Mr. Member? It would probably be multiple dates. And I don't know yet. Honestly, I hate it because it might depend on who's all on it and what your availability is. So, Member Crutchlow, Sosinski, Chair, are you on?

I will be killed if I'm on other subcommittee.

Okay. Did we mention Stan's Donuts? Holly, Lauren, and Susan. Okay. Yes, all the... Really, the group five people?

Sounds like Holly wants to do all the presentations in front of council. Yes, I agree.

I now make Holly do all the presentations with Stan's Donuts. And you get all the Stan's Donuts you want.

Very good. This is a lot of, Mr. Chair, if I might, but a lot of people are kind of starting to take advantage of this in ways that I respect and will honor, you know, as much as I can for all the demands that we've put on you. So remember Crutchlow, Sosinski, Roberts, Diamond, and Peters, right? Is that the list? I think that's good, particularly since, you know, we'll schedule as best we can, but it might not be scheduled in a way that every one of you can make, you know, every one of these meetings. And obviously it's going to be driven by us getting at least a draft, you know, out to you, which is going to take some time. And so... I would ask for maybe motion, second, and action to form that subcommittee with that group to assist with this process, Mr. Chair.

Move to create the subcommittee for reporting out. Second.

Joe. All right, we have a motion and a second. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, we have a roll call vote.

Holly Roberts.

Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Susan Peters. Yes. Thank you.

Very good. Even the people who volunteered said voted. Yes, Mr. Chair. That's a good, that's a good sign. Is there just for roll call purposes? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It was, yeah. In the right. It was memorialized. Yeah. So we'll include in the motion. Yeah. The names of the folks, Mr. Chair and Chair, Is there, we're looking at June 3rd. Is there, I just wanted to poll availability for that to see if we've got, you know, a significant number of you. Just go around who's available.

John Brooks.

Yes.

Eric Crutchlow.

No.

Lauren Diamond. Yes. Burt Field.

Yes.

Eric Jensen.

Yes.

Steve Kelly?

Yes.

Mohamed, I think you told me no, correct? Okay. Pat, I have a yes from you. Susan, I have a yes from you already. Okay. Holly?

Yes.

And Joe?

Yes. Okay. That's good. I was worried about attendance. That's terrific. Thank you. So we'll proceed with that. Mr. Chair for that June 3rd meeting and obviously get the finalized draft, you know, out not only to you, you know, but to the public as many days in advance of that June 3rd meeting as possible. That's all we've got.

Excellent. Mr. Chair, there is public presentations.

We have to do public presentations.

Is there any member, I'll briefly make the statement. Is there any member of the public to make a public comment? Excellent. Any more staff or committee member comments? Yes. Seeing none. Nope.

Thank you very much, staff. You did a great job and thank you for all the hard work

work you've had to do to get this through yeah appreciate having sue by my side too uh but courtney as always uh doing yeoman's duty and both putting together materials for you helping run the meeting um keeping me moderately sane um and thank you for the cookies yes and i was actually feeding and watering out a coffee tonight yes thank you all right meeting is adjourned