Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

GOOD EVENING, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, COLLEAGUES, WELCOME TO THE MAY CHARTER REVIEW COMMITTEE MEETING. MY NAME IS TIM PRINCE, YOUR CHAIR, AND WHY DON'T WE START OFF WITH THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE. SCOTT, WOULD YOU LEAD US IN THE PLEDGE? to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all I was at a meeting earlier today and they also put a comma after one nation but I have to always remind people my mother was a English teacher so there's no comma after one nation it's a phrase one nation under God right Oh, I guess that's not part of charter business, but we could put it in the charter. Shall we call the roll?

Present. Present.

Present.

He's here. And I understand we did hear from Mr. Daly, so his absence is excused, but we did not hear from Mr. Albert.

I will triple check my emails and let you know after the meeting. All right.

Well, that brings us to our comments. Since I wasn't here to welcome him last month, I want to welcome our new member, Andy. Did you tell a little bit about yourself last month?

I did not. I just kind of thanked everybody for welcoming me to the board.

Why don't you do that, and if you have any other comments, we'll start with you.

All right. Well, my name is Andy Garcia. I'm fairly new to the city of San Bernardino, but I grew up locally here in the Internet Empire. And again, like I think I said last month, I'm just excited for the opportunity, grateful for the opportunity, and look forward to serving as much as I can. And as far as comments, with Memorial Day being just this past Monday, and with Law Enforcement Memorial being on May 15th, I just want to take a moment to thank not only all the heroes that have given this ultimate sacrifice for this great country, but also thank their family, friends, and loved ones for everything they have done.

Thank you.

Go right ahead. No, it's the little man with the microphone.

Good evening, everybody, and thank you for being here this evening. I, too, want to thank everybody that has served our country. Their patriotism is much appreciated. And I also want to remind everyone to get out to vote. Voting is, what, next Tuesday? Next Tuesday. So be sure to get out and vote. And again, thank you for being here.

OK, Angela.

Hello, good evening. My name is Angela Torres. I'm a third ward committee member. I've been with you guys for a while, and so I'm happy to see everyone here. I also want to thank everyone that is joining us, whether it's live or in person. Also, I want to thank those that served our country. As a matter of fact, Andy said it, not only do we have to thank the military, but also our forces that we have out there, the police and fire. So they really go out of their way to make the effort to make our country. So I thank them as well. Thank you. That's it.

Yeah. My name is Scott Olson and I'm a resident of the second ward. Lifetime resident of San Bernardino, grew up on the north end. I'm really looking at the goals going forward for me. One of the things that I am very strongly feel about is the right of the residents to elect their leadership. I support. Elected positions being returned to the city clerk, the city attorney, and based on my experience working in community affairs with the water department and the board of directors of multiple water departments, I would like to see the San Bernardino separate the water department and have it be an elected board as well. So I'm all about letting the people have the elected business. I'm not big about letting my City council person picked the mayor or why are they picking water board members? Water board is something completely separate. So that's just me about everything. Memorial Day was a good day. I hope all of you enjoyed it for what it was supposed to be about is remembering those who died defending our country. And that, not about the burgers and the beer and everything else, though that, welcome to what everybody does. I really want to see this charter commission start focusing on getting things done. It became very appointment when we had that debacle that was loud and clear on February 2nd. we had met this at the charter committee in over a year and we have city council making massive proposals we've got to work on things uh some of them are simple others to me the mandate from uh the people that spoke at city council was they want us as a charter to work on some of the stuff connected to the mayor. And it wasn't what they were proposing without us getting a chance to review it. So that's still big for in my mind. And that's why I'm here. I'm here because you know what? I don't care how good you write something. You can always fine tune it and help make it better. And that's really why we were here. If we're here, we don't want to do something. Why are we here? That's how I feel. So anyway, that's me.

AND I'LL JUST SAY THAT OUR CITY HALL LOOKED BEAUTIFUL FOR MEMORIAL DAY. THEY HAD NOT ONLY THE FLAG DRAPED OVER THE FRONT OF THAT MAJESTIC BUILDING, BUT ALSO THE WINDOWS WERE ALL LIT UP IN RED, WHITE, OR RED AND BLUE AT LEAST. AND I'LL TELL YOU, THE BEAUTY AND FUNCTIONALITY OF THAT BUILDING IS SOMETHING I BROUGHT TO THE COUNCIL'S ATTENTION A FEW YEARS BACK. Nobody seemed to know that that building was designed by Cesar Pelli, a world famous architect who's built some of the tallest buildings in the world at the time, including on Manhattan Island. And none of those buildings had fallen down by an earthquake, so it's time for our city council to get back to business. And it's time for us to, as Scott said, do our job. Our job is not to sit and discuss idly what we're doing and what could be better. Our, our job is to make proposals and I'd like to see us, um, put that underway tonight. Um, we have work to do, uh, because this city is not in good shape. Um, the city has not been well managed. The city has been identified as the dirtiest city, the poorest city. Um, that doesn't reflect well on the city charter and, um, I think just some minor adjustments can make a huge difference. And that's what I hope we can talk about tonight. And I thank our staff for the input on that. And I'm looking forward to further discussions in that regard. I apologize for missing last month. I was visiting one of our states for the first time, Alaska. So now I've seen almost all of our states. And it was beautiful, I'll tell you. But a lot of melted snow. and not much glaciers to see anymore. It's amazing the differences that climate change is causing every day in our world. Okay, with that, why don't we see if there's any comments from our valued members of the public. We're glad you're here, but if you're here and say something, that's even better. Just state your name and where you're from and whatever you have. You've got three minutes.

Hello, everyone. My name is Omar Williams, and I'm running for city council in the first ward. This is my first time speaking in front of you guys. I came to not the last one, but there was one maybe a few months ago. I don't recall when, but I'm glad that the city charter meeting is happening, and I wanted to make a proposal. Term limits. I wanted to see what the process is, to see about getting term limits realistically on November's ballot. My proposal is city council members serve either uh, each term four years, uh, two terms total. I am willing to adjust it to 12 years, making it three terms. I am open to that as well. I'm also willing to do the same thing for the mayor. Each term for years, uh, two terms or three terms that will be retroactive. That will be in a situation where past city council members, past mayors who have served in the past and for whatever reason they want to run again, that that number will be applied to their past experiences. This way, we can avoid a situation that we're currently seeing right now with one particular city council member serving longer than necessary, in my opinion. This way, anyone who does serve, they serve their set amount of years, and then that opens up the floor to other people who wants to run. And this, in my opinion, gives more options to other people who wants to run that gives the voters an option for more other candidates. And we can encourage a situation where younger candidates can run if they so choose. And I would like for that to be a standalone issue, not where it's lumped in with other issues or any other topics or situations, just as its own particular issue. So that's all I have to say. I'm willing to do whatever it takes, so I'm here. Any options or advice, I'm here. Thank you.

Thank you. And maybe we'll take that topic up under item three, improving the city council manager form of government. So that brings us to our consent calendar involving approval of our minutes. Is there any problem or changes with the minutes? Move to approve. Do I have a second? I second. Any discussion? All in favor? Say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Okay. I have to abstain because I wasn't here. So I think unfortunately that means it's not enough votes, but if I'm not here, I don't really should, it's not my responsibility. It's not a responsible thing to vote on something that I really wasn't here for, so.

I imagine our city attorney's representative will tell us that you don't have to abstain, but if that's your choice, you may.

You don't have to abstain, but also if it's a four to one with one abstaining, I mean, if it's a four to zero with one abstaining, it still passes.

Yeah, I don't care if it passes or not. Just because I'm not here, I'm not comfortable saying I approve of something that I didn't witness.

Okay, I think that's four to one, so we will- SUBMIT THE MINUTES AS APPROVED. AND THAT BRINGS US TO THE ROLE POWERS AND DUTIES OF THE MAYOR. AND WE'VE HAD A CONCISE AND GOOD ANALYSIS FROM OUR CITY MANAGER REPRESENTATIVE. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUMMARIZE THAT FOR THE PUBLIC?

YES, I'D BE HAPPY TO. THANK YOU, CHAIR. We began this topic in March 25th of 2026, and that staff report focused on how the role of the mayor changed after the adoption of the new charter post-2017. And what I tried to do in that staff report was just show a comparison for the committee of the roles, powers, and duties of the mayor pre-charter change and post-charter change. In April, and at that meeting, we discussed some various amendments that the committee would like to discuss further. And so at the April meeting, I brought back some of those amendments in a conceptual format for discussion. Those three amendments were, one, a charter amendment that provides the mayor with sole discretion for nominating the position of city manager for the mayor and city council to consider. and some brief analysis about how that would work operationally. The second amendment would provide the mayor with a formal vote on all legislative matters in the same manner as the city council member and some staff analysis about how that would work operationally. And then the final was a charter amendment that would provide additional detail on the role, powers, and duties of the mayor and some analysis about how that would happen operationally. And so the committee discussed those. They provided staff some additional direction. And for this meeting, the committee asked me to research into the roles, powers, and the mayors, but specifically how other mayors are elected statewide and what their voting powers are statewide. And so in my research, I found a very useful study by the Rose Institute, state and local government at Claremont McKenna College. And it provided some really useful statistics. And this is a survey of city managers. And some of the information I provided specifically, the survey said that of the 483 incorporated cities, 38% of those cities directly elected their mayor, so 183, while the remaining 62%, about 300, have mayors appointed or rotated by the city council. And there are some other data points. There seem to point to some correlation between the direct election of a mayor and the population size, rising from 26% for smaller cities, 41% for medium-sized cities, 55% for large cities, and the largest cities in the state, it seemed to suggest that all of those cities directly elected their mayors. And then in regards to the voting powers, the survey also gave some interesting information. It suggested that the legislative and administrative powers of mayors throughout California That it's rare for a city to provide some administrative or legislative powers directly for their mayor. There are five cities right now that have what you would constitute as a strong mayor system. Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Fresno, Oakland. There may be some outliers. And that there are some cities that operate in a hybrid setting. For the directly elected mayors, they often give power such as acting as the chief administrative officer or executive officer, drafting and managing the municipal budget, hiring, firing department heads, including the police chief, nominating the city manager for city council approval, which is proposal that you all discussed and then voting vetoing legislation I also found that the hybrid mayor is something unique to charter cities as the general law cities cannot create that hybrid mayor structure so provided some analysis based on the questions that the committee had and hopefully that survey is helpful

WELL, I APPRECIATE THAT. THE COMMUNITY HAS RECENTLY SPOKEN VERY LOUDLY IN FAVOR OF THE ROLE OF THE MAYOR WHEN SOME MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL WERE TRYING TO ELIMINATE OR LESSEN THE MAYOR'S ROLE. I REALLY CAN'T RECALL SEEING MORE PEOPLE PACKING A COUNCIL IT WAS CLEAR HOW THE COMMUNITY FELT. I ALSO CAN'T REMEMBER A TIME WHERE THERE WAS OVER 100 PUBLIC COMMENTS IN FAVOR OF SOMETHING AND ONLY ONE OPPOSED. SO I DON'T THINK THERE'S ANY DOUBT THAT WE'RE IN THE MAJORITY FOR LARGER CITIES IN WANTING A DIRECTLY ELECTED MAYOR. AND I ALSO THINK THAT ALONG WITH YOU HEARD A STRONG SENTIMENT THAT PEOPLE WANT ACCOUNTABILITY IN THE MAYOR'S OFFICE. THEY FEEL LIKE THEIR ABILITY TO VOTE FOR A MAYOR IS VERY IMPORTANT BECAUSE THEY EXPECT THINGS OF THE MAYOR AND WE ONLY GET TO VOTE ON ONE MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL AND SO YOU CAN'T REALLY FORM AN EXPECTATION based on your vote there, maybe some good constituent service, maybe voting on the right side of things, but it's the accountability factor with the mayor. And that's been a prominent part of San Bernardino history. You've had strong mayors, not all good mayors, fortunately not all bad mayors, my personal opinion is that you've had a lot of challenges on the city council just people that maybe don't have the highest ethics and certainly don't have the ability to unify come together find common ground and that's been consistent almost my entire life i remember as a young youngster that we had some pretty good city councils off and on but in my entire adult life every single city council has been very challenged and You look around outside this building. You don't have to walk a block to see the effects of that so I think we need to heed the the public's cry and I think we need to go out to the public with a proposal to strengthen the mayor and here's what I would propose The mayor needs to be able to directly place items on the agenda The mayor needs to have a staff So that the mayor can be informed and confident in the mayor's policy role. Currently, the mayor has a very minimal staff, basically one full time person and a little bit of extra help. That doesn't allow the mayor to keep track of what's going on in the city, to be in touch with constituents, to serve the city and to be well prepared FOR COUNCIL MEETINGS. ALSO, I THINK THAT WE WANT TO KEEP THE MAYOR OUT OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTION BECAUSE I THINK THAT WAS A MAJOR IMPETUS OF THE PREVIOUS CHARTER CHANGE AND I THINK WE NEED TO RESPECT THAT. THE MAYOR IN THE OLD DAYS COULD OVERRULE THE CITY MANAGER, COULD DIRECTLY APPOINT DEPARTMENT HEADS, COULD INVOLVE HIM OR HERSELF IN DAILY OPERATIONS OF THE CITY. WE'RE NOT ENABLED TO DO THAT BY THE CURRENT CHARTER. OUR COMMITTEE DOESN'T HAVE THAT POWER TO CHANGE A FORM OF GOVERNMENT. SO WE NEED TO STAY AWAY FROM THAT. BUT THERE'S A LOT WE CAN DO TO STRENGTHEN THE MAYOR'S ROLE WITHOUT ADMINISTRATIVE POWERS. AND I WOULD SUGGEST REQUIRING THE CITY MANAGER TO SUBMIT QUARTERLY IMPLEMENTATION REPORTS ON POLICY GOALS. THE MAYOR SHOULD BE A CHIEF EXECUTIVE POLICY OFFICER. That language is used in other city charters in California so that the mayor is not just a person who sits there and votes occasionally on certain items. The mayor needs to have a leadership role in the council, not just running the meeting, but in the successful days of this city, you knew where the mayor stood on things. And if you were a member of the council, you had an incentive for unity because if the mayor didn't have four votes to support policy agenda there was a hell of a price to pay And you needed to be sure of yourself if you were going to disagree with your fellow council members or your mayor. Right now, there's no incentive that people just do whatever they want without consequence. And people vote with their buddy on the council. There's no incentive. VOTING FOR SAN BERNARDINO. THERE'S NO AGENDA APPROVED BY THE CITIZENS. IT'S JUST WHOEVER HAPPENS TO BE ON THE COUNCIL AND WHOEVER HAPPENS TO SIT IN THE MAYOR'S OFFICE. SO I THINK THAT LEADERSHIP ROLE SHOULD BE PUT IN THE CHARTER. AND THEN I WOULD SAY THE MAYOR SHOULD RECOMMEND THE APPOINTMENT AND REMOVAL OF THE CITY a mayor doesn't have a relationship with the city manager if those two roles are in disalignment we know nothing's going to get done so it should it should still require a city council majority vote to hire a city manager but it should be the mayor out there Like Mayor Patrick Morris did, he hired the former city manager of Reno, who I think most people would agree was the most competent city manager we've had in recent memory. And he recruited this person, he brought this person to San Bernardino, Charles McNeely, And Charles McNeely was a top level city manager and got some things done, including almost getting the Carousel Mall redeveloped. But then the Great Depression or Great Recession came along. So that would strengthen instead of just being another vote for a city manager, the mayor would get to propose a city manager to his or her fellow colleagues on the council. And then finally, I would say that the mayor should be able to veto specific budget items. This is a principle of government that's worked pretty well in recent years. It would save us money. It would make sure that the mayor's policy agendas are respected and give the mayor a greater role in policymaking. managing the money and keeping us within our means. So I would propose that we commit those ideas to writing. I'd like to see us call a special meeting, and I'd like to see us aim towards getting this on the ballot in November.

I second that.

Can you go into more detail on the last topic that you made regarding the right to veto?

Well, perhaps we should have the city manager weigh in on that since you probably know a lot more about the budget process than I do. But my thought is that if there's a particular expenditure in the city's hundreds of millions of dollar budget, instead of just being able to say yay or nay with the rest of the council, it should be a line item VETO THAT EXISTS IN PLENTY OF CITIES THROUGHOUT THE STATE.

I WOULD HAVE TO RESEARCH A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT HOW THAT WOULD OPERATE, HOW THAT WOULD FUNCTION OPERATIONALLY IN THE CITY. I DO KNOW THAT THE MAYOR DOES NOT HAVE A VOTE ON THE BUDGET ITEM. IT'S A COUNCIL DISCUSSION AND SHE DOES NOT HAVE A VOTE SO IT'S THE COUNCIL. SHE DOES HAVE A VETO POWER. AT THE MOMENT, THE MAYOR CAN, SHE CAN CAST A TIE BREAKING VOTE And she also has a veto power. She can exercise a veto when council action is approved by fewer than five members. But in terms of your proposal, I'd have to research a little bit more to give you more detail, and I can do that.

So basically, instead of just being able to veto the entire budget, which is probably pretty easy to override if the council feels strongly, the mayor would be able to veto specific items. And maybe that item would align with priorities that the mayor has articulated and give the mayor additional influence in building the budget and being able to contain expenses. A lot of our charter was crafted in response to bankruptcy. And I'm not sure how fair that was because I really don't think the city charter had much to do with the bankruptcy. But I think there's that sentiment, and we need to respect that, FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY IS A TOP PRIORITY. IF THE MAYOR CAN VETO THINGS AND HAS THE MANDATE TO DO THAT, WHY NOT?

I LIKE THE IDEA OF HAVING THE MAYOR How do I say? You were mentioning about having the mayor, having the city manager do the day-to-day operations. But I do feel that the mayor needs to have some kind of input in regards to selecting the city manager and the department heads because they all will be working together. in some fashion. So I'd like to see that possibility to be input into the charter when we start making our recommendations. I understand her not being responsible for the day to day operations. That would be something the city manager would be responsible for. But as far as the appointment,

and firing of department heads and the city manager position himself or him or herself i want her to be a part him or her whichever mayor we have to be a part of that i think it's probably going a little far to involve the mayor directly in department head hirings and firings because that the city manager former government requires that the city manager is in charge AND I THINK THAT THERE WILL BE MORE DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE MAYOR AND THE CITY MANAGER WHEN THE CITY MANAGER MAKES THOSE DECISIONS IF WE MAKE THESE CHANGES. BUT I WOULD STOP SHORT OF ALLOWING THE MAYOR TO GO OUT AND RECRUIT A FINANCE DIRECTOR, GO OUT AND RECRUIT A PLANNING DIRECTOR, ET CETERA. THE MAYOR SHOULD HAVE DIALOGUE WITH THE CITY MANAGER. THE GOALS HOPEFULLY WILL BE CLEAR ESPECIALLY WITH OUR CHANGES. let the city manager make that decision yeah they're the trained professionals they they can they can hire all the staff i would like to see the city clerk eventually be an elected official again but i think maybe that's probably too much to bite off with the short time frame we have i'm trying to prioritize how we can get this city off life support and and get some changes for november I think people are really plugged into city government and politics right now. So I think we really need to strike while the iron's hot. We have the mandate from the people and from the city council that actually voted on putting changes on the ballot. So I think the time is right.

So you're wanting to put something on the ballot for this November?

Yes. MY THOUGHT WOULD BE IF WE JUST MEET ONCE A MONTH, WE PROBABLY DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME. BUT IF WE HAD A SPECIAL MEETING TO GO OVER THE PROPOSED LANGUAGE AND THEN WE IMMEDIATELY HAD A PUBLIC MEETING TO GET PUBLIC INPUT AND THEN CAME BACK AND FINALIZED IT, I THINK WE CAN DO IT.

WHAT WOULD BE THE DEADLINE FOR THAT? WOULDN'T THAT BE ABOUT 60 DAYS OUT?

Of course, the election date is November 3rd. The final ballot items need to be in place by the first week of August. So that leaves us with June and July to get our specific proposal, get it out to the public and go to the city council who have the final say on whether it goes on the ballot. So I realize it's an aggressive proposal and I realize there's a chance that the city council won't put the proposal on the ballot, but I think it's our job to at least give the city council the option to do that, to get the public input behind us to do that. And I think if we put the, The term limits on the ballot, that might help get council approval since at least one of the council members has stated a preference in that regard. And I do think that, well, we better save that for item four.

I like to provide a clarification regarding the timeline. So the first week of August is the last date to file the adopted resolution with the county clerk. But the resolution would need to be adopted by council before then, which would be sometime in June or July.

Yeah, so I think we're looking, when I say 60 days, I was being real generous. I think we're closer to the 40 to 45 days.

I don't want to rush these changes. I want to make sure that we research and make sure that what we're presenting is what we are comfortable and solid with. I think we need to have more than one meeting with the community for those that are not able to make the one meeting that we may be able to have between now and the submission date. I think the changes that we're hoping to make are going to be long term. And I don't want to rush that. That's not something that I think we need to just push through just to have something on the ballot. Those are just my thoughts. I don't want to rush this.

I AGREE. MR. PRINCE, YOU MADE SOME REAL GOOD POINTS AND I THINK THERE'S SOME REALLY GOOD POINTS FOR DISCUSSION. BUT YES, ONE MEETING WITH THE COMMUNITY FOR DISCUSSION FOR SOMETHING THAT'S THIS IMPORTANT FOR THE CITY, I DON'T THINK WOULD BE ENOUGH. LIKE I SAID, YOU MADE SOME REALLY GOOD POINTS AND I WOULD LIKE TO SEE THEM GET INTO PAPER. BUT I THINK WE HAVE TO DO THE RIGHT WAY.

I THINK THE PROBLEM IS THAT IF WE DON'T DO IT IN NOVEMBER, WE HAVE TO WAIT TWO YEARS. And I just don't think this city can survive too much longer.

I think if we take that leap of faith, we might succeed in something. It'll at least put ourselves a step forward to our goal.

Yeah. Yeah. I think your point's well taken, though. I think more than one public meeting would be wise, but we just need to do it on an accelerated schedule. I think if we had a plan to get the council approval by the second meeting in July, we would still have the council's ability to set a special meeting if there's a problem with it. So the council would still have time to act, and I think staff would still have time to get it done. to the elections office by the first week of August. So if we set mid-July as our goal to have it not only ready to go to the council, but reasons why the council should adopt it, which probably puts us back another week or two. But I think we can utilize the month of June to get that done, have maybe two, three public meetings

AND I JUST WANT TO ADD THAT THE FIRST MEETING IN JULY IS CANCELED BY THE CITY COUNCIL. SO THERE WILL ONLY BE ONE MEETING IN JULY.

RECALL THAT THE 100 PLUS PEOPLE TURNED OUT FOR A SPECIAL MEETING OF THE COUNCIL. SO THE COUNCIL HAS ALREADY SHOWN WILLINGNESS TO CALL A SPECIAL MEETING FOR THE CHARTER. AND THEY COULD CERTAINLY DO THAT HERE. ESPECIALLY IF THERE'S ONLY ONE MEETING IN JULY. I know that the mayor is interested in the changes. I know that there are council members that are interested. I don't have a feel on whether we have a council majority at this point, but I think we've got everybody's attention and interest. Just the attendance at some of our charter meetings, I think, says a lot. I remember when they were rewriting our entire city charter and throwing out the historic city charter, they didn't have three people in the audience sometimes. So I just think the interest is there, and it may not be there in two years. People may be so depressed and debilitated that it's too late to save a city.

I don't want to throw something together just to have it out there. that we haven't thoroughly vetted and researched and made proper outreach to the community just to turn around and have to do cleanup for the 2028 election. And that's what I feel that we may be doing if we rush this.

I don't think that these changes are so complex that that it needs to go through a two-year process. They're pretty modest changes, and they're changes that have worked in other cities. So really, the biggest challenge is for a couple of us to sit down and hash out the language and discuss that. I mean, we've spent half a year now almost talking about Changes and what we think we want to do what our priorities are and I think it's time to do the work And I totally agree.

I don't think it's a two-year process But I also don't think it's a 30-day process An unfortunate just bad timing in my opinion if this was you know December and if we're looking for the following year's election I think I'll be give plenty of time to to do something like this So I understand it's not gonna take the entire two years but but rushing it in the next 30 45 days is

Well, I don't think we need to make a final decision tonight. If I could have your support to call a special meeting and show the public that we're willing to do extra, that we're willing to go the extra mile and at least consider this. And let's see what kind of language we can come up with. I'll be happy to take the laboring or on the on the items that I've proposed and make sure we have the city hall's input and maybe some other expert input before I bring, I'm not gonna, I'm an attorney. I don't do second rate work because the work I do is important and the work for this city is important. So I'm not gonna give you something half baked, but if we come in two weeks and you're not satisfied, You know, we don't have to go further down the path, but I think to just continue to meet once a month and pretend that the city's not on fire, I mean, literally the city's on fire. We had another building on D Street burn up last week.

I've been contemplating with a lot of decisions for a while. There has been no movement whatsoever. I think it's time for us to Shake the ground, make the move, and get things done. Period. I'm in management, and I can tell you sometimes when you're complacent in certain things, nothing gets done. So you have to roll. You have to make it move. If you do not figure out how to make it move, it's going to sit there, pile up. it will not get anywhere and I think that's the number one problem we have there's so many thoughts to what should we do but nothing gets done and I think it's time these people deserve things to get happening right away not to just sit back and relax and take our time I don't know if we're gonna survive in two years really it's getting worse so if someone doesn't step up and just does what is needed then i don't know right there it's gonna be hard it's really hard it's hard right now can you imagine two years from now I don't know what's gonna happen. And I pray to God that we don't go under again. And that's why we're trying to refrain ourselves from making the same mistake over and over and over. We need to come to a complete halt, reanalyze everything, take out the weight, add on weight if we need to, whatever is necessary to get it done. I'm a firm believer in that.

And I have to say, it's kind of remarkable that there's five of us with extensive experience within our city and outside our city. And I haven't heard one contrary comment about any of the proposals. I think we're all on the same page. I think we all know what needs to be done in the city. It's just a question is, are we going to wait two years to do it? And I just... we lose good people every month it seems like that they just get tired and they move away or businesses close or burn up or i mean the city council is okay with just waiting a couple more years to see if the litigation ends on the carousel mall and i'm thinking you can't find somebody to bond around the problems that you think you have and get that mall developed they there's nothing happening the city hall sits there They put pretty lights in the windows now, but they don't have a practical solution to reopen it. And if we just keep going without making some adjustments in our governing style, we're inviting that to continue for two more years.

So again, I do agree with you that something's got to get done. And I do agree that just sitting around and pushing it down month to month is not enough. So I'm all for having a special meeting and sitting down and doing it. I'm just not on board on it's got to get done. If it gets done, that'd be amazing and great. um but it's not one of those i don't want to be forced i don't know the community should be forced to to just forcing it in into selection if it gets done i think we will do an amazing job so i'm open to to discussing it but i would like to see more than one meeting for the community to come in and hear and be able to discuss

I agree with both of those points fully. So may I have a motion to proceed?

I'd like to speak. I've been patiently waiting for you to speak. Okay. From my perspective, I look at the communities around us. I look at Highland. Penny Lightburn is the mayor. Trust me, she can get things done. She doesn't have the issues we have in San Maria. I look at Mayor Robertson. When I worked in Rialto with the water board, we interacted. Trust me, if Mayor Robertson needed to get something done, she did it. Tim, sorry, but we all know Aquanetta Warren, if she wants something done, she's going to get it done. And same thing with Mayor Leon in Ontario. I'm looking at all of these cities around us, and we say we want to go like, if you want to talk of that group of cities I listed, when it comes to political anything, Redlands is at the bottom of the heap with what they can do politically. They're like a wet noodle in this county. Okay, look at all the growth in all of these cities, and while these cities have grown since we got our new charter, We're like, not even sure if the city's going to survive. And we had a charter. Now we voted it out, but realized that charter had 42 pages. We said it didn't work, so what did we do? We chopped it down to 12 pages. An employee at McDonald's who wants to clean the bathrooms has clearer and more instructions on how to do the bathroom than we do to be the mayor in the city. Yeah, it's that bad. You look at Valdivia's mayor, like him or hate him, he had one way of doing it. Look at Tran, like her or hate her, they are two totally different individuals. Half the city says one did it wrong, half the city said the other one did it wrong. You cannot have a functioning city if you don't have clarity that starts at the top in the mayor's office. Accountability is huge as well. The problem with the mayor, and you look at both sides of the coin, IS THAT THERE WAS NOT ENOUGH CLARITY TO RAIN JOHN IN WITH WHAT HE WAS DOING AND NOT ENOUGH CLARITY FOR TRAN TO GET COMFORTABLE WITH WHAT SHE CAN DO. NOW, DO WE NEED TO DO IT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE? I AGREE WITH TIM. WE PLAYED AROUND WITH THIS THING ON THIS COMMITTEE FOR YEARS AND DONE NOTHING. OKAY? AT SOME POINT IN TIME, NOTHING ISN'T CUTTING IT. That's why I said in my opening comments, if you're not here to work towards positive change in this city, why are you here? Now, we don't have to agree on all of this stuff. One thing you brought up that I never heard and I love it, line item veto from the mayor on the budget, I love it. Because this city has had so much money trouble, why would you not give a line item veto? We don't have to solve every problem with the mayor. in two months but we need to start a framework that puts the mayor's office in a position where at least we have a consistency of knowing what the mayor cannot and cannot do because clarity simply does not exist and as a charter committee after february 2nd whether you like it or not the city made it loud and clear that what's going on with the mayor is not to be tolerated i'm not here to sit and go if i have to meet two times a month from now until we get this passed i'm willing to do the time for it because that's what we're going to take to make this city better And if we can't put something on the ballot after what happened on February 2nd, we gotta look at ourselves and go, what are we doing? And I think all of you wanna move forward and do things. I'm not worried about it right, because right now there's literally no clarity for the mayor. It's a guessing game. We don't need that. So even we can get two good, three good solid things, Tim is 100% right. I agree with him, and trust me, anybody knows the two of us, we're not always on the same page, okay? We need to show the city that we're not just sitting here farting around once a month, like we've been doing. Okay, so we need to come up with two or three good solid items that we're comfortable with to give the mayor more tools. And if we have to go back in two years and revisit it and fine tune it, that's why we're here on this committee. That's why I'm here. I literally was on this committee before. I came two or three times and I literally said this is a waste of my time. They're doing nothing. They're just playing games and they don't want to get anything done. I walked. I literally blew off my commission. Because I was so blown away by how little motivation they had to do anything positive for this city. Thankfully, I'm listening to you guys and it's a welcome change. Roll up our sleeves, let's see what we can do. Let's give the mayor, regardless who that mayor is, because we may have a different mayor. I don't want to have a third mayor confused with another third way of doing things where half the city says you're great and half the city says you need to go to jail. I mean, that's literally how it's been for the last two mayoral terms since this charter came into play. We gotta give them something to work with because the city council, they need something. I don't care if we do a couple main points, but we gotta do something.

Okay, we don't need to cut off discussion, but I would like to have a motion on the floor. May I have a motion to pursue the four items that I outlined and set a special meeting to consider those and some proposed language in two weeks?

What day are we looking at? Because I'm going to be out of town from the 3rd to the 12th of June.

I think after the 12th is fine. But why don't we consider the motion without a date certain, but just a time frame of two weeks.

Can I have a motion? I'll make the motion. And I'll second.

I'll second that, too. OK, now any further discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Shall we deal with the meeting date at the end of the meeting?

That's fine. You can discuss it now. I'll have to work with staff to see if some of the options that work for you, staff can work, the meeting room can work, the television folks can work. So there's some coordination I'll need to do on my side, but it would help to have maybe two to three dates that work for the committee.

Maybe target the week of June 15th. Either the 15th or 17th is fine with me. And we'll do it by, can we do that by email? To make sure everybody's available?

With me it would be text. I don't have email at the moment.

The week of the 15th?

That would be fine.

So we should look to avoid the 17th because that will be a council meeting date.

Oh, that's right. We don't want to step on their toes. Yeah, we definitely cannot meet when the council meets.

Would it be possible to do the week prior in case we do come up with something that day? I don't know if there will be enough time to put it on the agenda for the city council meeting the 17th.

I was going to clarify. So for the city council meeting for that second week in July, the deadline to get something on for that meeting is going to be June 17th.

And I can add some additional detail. The way that we prepare our city council meeting agendas is that staff prepare and submit their completed staff reports a little under a month in advance to give time for meaningful comments from the reviewers, for the city manager to review it, and then for the city clerk to have time to compile the entire agenda and post it. So we generally run a month ahead and far as preparing the items so that's when the city attorney's office said that for the july meeting um which would be the 15th we asked that staff reports be submitted um for review on june 17th so That's our standard. But if there is an item that the council would like to take up in a special meeting setting, that's a different scenario. Under the Brown Act, we need to post that agenda 24 hours in advance, and they can give direction to the city manager to do what he needs to do to prepare whatever agenda materials are available to them. In addition to that, the council members each have the opportunity at every meeting to request an item for future discussion. So they can propose to their colleagues that I would like us to vote on an item to come back for a complete discussion at a meeting. And they just need to let the city manager know normally a week before the agendas for the meeting date that, hey, I'd like to add an item to be discussed. An item for the committee to vote on to be discussed, please place it on the agenda. And that appears at the end of the agenda, which in the items to be considered. So those are kind of the three scenarios when which we could potentially have the item either start or appear. But in a general sense, if it's an item that staff is preparing, it needs to be submitted a month before.

so since this comes from a citizens committee and there's already been some preparation and dialogue with city manager staff i think it's probably reasonable to use the week ahead time frame and i i wouldn't rush us too much on the june the week of the June 15th, because we do need to have some time for Corey to look into the particular items, and then there might be some back and forth to get the language finalized. Maybe we could even get the city attorney's input within that time frame. So we'd have something not set in stone, of course, but at least something that we're becoming confident about for us to look at the week of the 15th.

And I just like to add a little bit of detail because the previous charter committee also came up with some potential charter amendments and they published them in a report. But the committee, the charter committee does not have the authority to directly place things on the ballot. Let's say, for example, you came to an agreement on specific charter amendment and language that you would like to see. The primary way that it would show up as a council action item for the council to vote on and be placed on the agenda is one of the council members would have to propose it to their colleagues for discussion and then they would vote on it. The second way is that the council members could call a special meeting to discuss a specific topic. Discuss that topic and then direct staff to come back and prepare the charter amendment on that topic So there's a little bit of a sequencing that we would have to do. It wouldn't be The committee has voted on a specific amendment and then it would appear on the agenda right thereafter. I

And currently, the mayor doesn't have the ability to put an item on the agenda, correct?

The mayor does not have the ability to place an item directly on the agenda.

I find that so ridiculous, but I've already said my piece. But I think it's realistic to expect that we'll get at least uh the council support but i think we need to all plan start planning on attending council meetings starting to educate the public and the council and let them know what's coming so i'll certainly volunteer for that effort and i hope you will too yeah real quick i have no problem going to my second ward city council person asking her to do xyz and i don't think she's going to disagree because her and i as far as we both have talked

about the need to you know get things moving she knows she understands and she'll if it takes a city council person to present it i will talk to her within the next 24 hours and find out when you guys think it's appropriate for her to do so i can't promise that she'll do what i say but she's pretty good at responding and to and reacting to things as far as when they come up okay

Anything else on the roles, powers, and duties of the mayor?

So do we want to set a tentative date for our special meeting?

Can we establish some kind of outline so that we can work around that?

Outline in terms of the?

Well, the special meeting you said would be sometime the week of June 15, correct?

Right.

And then those changes and everything would go to the July 15 meeting, correct? 17.

17 no 6 17. well i think the first step will be for us to meet a special meeting right which we can do june 17th so the wednesday before that would be june 10th and that's for us to discuss these four topics that mr prince brought up in detail and come up with some kind of see we come under some kind of general agreement on the four topics that does first step if i'm not back in town can i participate via zoom or something

I don't believe you can participate in the committee meeting via Zoom. I think there's some Brown Act requirements oftentimes, and I'll defer to the city attorney's office on this, specifically how it would work with committee meetings. But when council members participate in Zoom, they actually have to publish their location and be accessible to the public from wherever they are participating. So it may be the same situation if a member from the committee wants to participate in Zoom, and it might get a little bit tricky, but.

I believe that's correct. I would have to double check this to make sure that the committee has the power to do the teleconferencing or if it's going to be required to go through one of the alternative teleconferencing methods, which would only allow for just cause emergency or one of those options. But I will double check and then follow up with Corey.

You know what, don't worry. I'll drive up for the meeting. I'm just going to be in Carlsbad, so it's not that far.

Very cool.

Thank you. I just want to add some additional information only because we're balancing not only the committee's scheduling and process, but also the council members scheduling and agenda process as well as the deadlines for putting something on the ballot. And so for general staff report items for the June 17th meeting, they're actually already been submitted by staff, right? We asked that they submitted them on May 13th. I'm sorry, May 20th. And we'll be publishing the agenda for the June 17th meeting on Friday the 12th. So it can be out in advance because for regular meetings we need 72 hours in advance. So the publishing of the June 17th meeting will be on the 12th. And now let's say before that the committee comes to a consensus on language then one of the council members would either have to request the city manager put the preliminary vote to discuss the item on the June 17th meeting. And then at that meeting, that council member might say, I would like for the council to discuss a charter amendment X, Y, or Z at a future meeting. They would vote, and then that meeting, charter amendment would come back for discussion at the next meeting. Now, since that next meeting is canceled on July 1st, it would be at the next regular meeting on the 15th, unless that council member could get a majority of their fellow council members to have a special meeting in between those regular meeting dates. And then from there, we would have to concern ourselves with the ballot measure deadlines.

July 15th would be that final day to get something to provide the city clerk the exact form of the measure to appear on the ballot.

Let me ask you this. Is it possible it can be done?

Yes, it can be done. Most likely it would require the committee to act on specific language or an idea that they would like to see turned into charter language. And then one of the council members most likely would need to call a special meeting to discuss that. and then it would come back it might be able to be discussed and voted on in a special meeting for staff to get direction to actually prepare the charter amendment and then and then we could most likely hit the deadline so yes it's possible i'd have to kind of sit down and think through all the dates but it would require special meetings most likely just because of the agenda deadlines and the ballot measure deadlines yeah thank you okay

And we'll decide on meeting dates for the week of June 15th by email, or would you like to do that? Would you like to set something tentative now?

It would be helpful if those present could give their availabilities for June 15th, the Monday. I'm sorry.

Am I in June?

Yes, I am. June 15th, the Monday, June 16th, the Tuesday, or June 18th, the Thursday. And I avoid Wednesday because that's a council meeting and Friday because the staff is split. on 980, so half of the city staff are off on one Friday, the other half are on the other Friday.

And the council meets on June 17th? June 17th. So why don't we try for the 15th or 16th, and then we can go to the council meeting with the results of what we decide, if there's going to be a proposal, and we can start talking about it.

How do you guys feel about the 10th? I don't mind coming up.

For me, the sooner we get on top of this, the sooner we're going to take care of business. So myself.

I agree.

Once I get past the elections, a lot of the stuff I'm doing, which is next Tuesday, with the exception of the first Thursday of each month, which I have board member obligations for another organization, I will make myself available first day, first to get this. And if we need to make more days, I'm telling you right now, we need to get this done. And I'm willing to, whatever you guys can be comfortable with, the rest of you, I'm just going to say yes. Amen.

If the 10th works for everybody, like I said, I can make myself available. And that would give us at least a day or two to kind of play with whatever discussion we have on the 10th and make some changes if that's what we need to do or just a few modifications to what we're looking at. And then that gives us the following week to get everything finalized and to counsel and stuff. So I would recommend, I would suggest that we hold our special meeting Wednesday, June the 10th. Because it's a special meeting, can we change the time?

What day is the 10th, just so I know? It's a Wednesday. If it's a Wednesday, no problem.

Okay.

I'm just wondering if that gives Cory and myself and whoever else volunteers to work on this language enough time to get something through the city attorney's office.

So two things on that. Regular meetings, we have to set a time so the public is aware that we will regularly meet on a certain date. But special meetings, the time is more flexible and we have a shorter noticing requirement as minimum of 24 hours. Secondly, in regards to the staff work involved, if you look back at the previous charter amendments that were proposed by the committee and reflected and memorialized in their report, they were generally simple statements. One, for example, the charter committee recommends that all proposed city charter amendments be presented to the committee for review and input prior to consideration by the mayor and city council. That was the proposal. And so council then considers that proposal. And then if they want to adopt that proposal, then there's some additional staff work that has to be done to turn it into a ballot measure. And if it were to pass, then there's staff then have to take that language and operationalize it. And so I say that to say that your proposed charter amendments could be as simple as a statement like what I just read for the council to consider. And if the city attorney has anything to add on that.

You're saying we don't even need to refer to what particular provisions in the current charter are going to change? We just give kind of a directive of what we'd like to change?

yes that's that's how i understand it um is you would propose a charter change and then if the council were to agree with that then we would essentially work through how to operationalize it where it would be reflected in the charter it doesn't your amendment recommendation doesn't have to be extremely technical or specific

So in other words, we're looking at basically bullet points with a few clarifications for direction.

That's simple. Yes, it can be as simple as the amendment.

Yes, the more simple we make it and the more basic we make it, the more it gives you guys the ability to work within the boundaries and then it also gives the freedom to the city council would be my understanding of what you're saying.

Yes, they would have the ability to amend it and give staff direction about how they would like it proposed and so on.

Yeah, because one thing I want to say, and you brought this up with this thing here, is all of us are appointed by the city council member who chose us. And I will tell you as an appointed member, I will never be so bold as to say that I should have control over what my elected officials should do. I'm here at her leisure. to serve at her things. I'm not here to tell the city council what to do. I'm here to work within a process. I'm here to make suggestions so that we give them, you know, because a lot of times things come up and city council, they're like grabbing at things just like we are. And if they have a direction from us that lets them know where we're coming from, they can agree with us or disagree with us, tell us to go back to it. That's the way it works. But we've got to get started before we can get to that process.

So you're saying that the June 10th timeframe would probably work?

um the the june time frame yeah it could work okay um i don't want to say definitively because i'd like to sit down with staff and see about timing but as far as scheduling a meeting on that day i don't see anything from the city council that conflicts i'll need to check on room reservations and staff availability okay so we want to set a target date of june 10th and somebody said maybe a little earlier

Why don't we make it a proposal and I'll second it.

And sorry to interrupt, at the moment I have three dates that you proposed, the 10th, the 15th, or the 16th. 10th is the earliest.

Does somebody need to meet earlier than 6 PM on the 10th?

6 PM is great.

Why don't we use June 10th at 6 PM as a tentative date with staff's ability to adjust that based on availability and concerns of other committee members, but not later than June 16th. How's that?

Wonderful. I second it.

Yes. I think we can do that by consensus, or do you think we should vote on that?

I think a vote would be good. Yes, to set a special meeting date tentatively of the 10th and giving staff alternative dates to poll the committee of the 15th and the 16th.

Mr. Olsen has made a motion to set a special meeting on the 10th at 6 PM or other time before the 16th. Do I have a second? I'll second. All in favor? Aye. And opposed? OK. I think this city is seeing some unity here.

That's correct. That's what we need.

That's great. Okay, next on our agenda is improving the council manager form of government. which I think kind of overlaps with the previous item, but that's okay.

Yeah, I'm going to start out with this one. Omar, I really appreciate you coming up with it, because when I came up here before all of you before, I said I do not support term limits based on the fact of how they've been abused and how they're set up to where we're literally starting to clock all over again. And like with the county, there are people that should have termed out, they got the residents to vote for it, now they're on there for another 12 to 16 years because of it. Omar gave me something exactly what I was looking for. If we're going to do term limits, let's be real, let's be honest and make them retroactive. If there's a legal body and he can get the city to review or Tim wants to review as a chair, I say let's take a look at it. and because term limits is simple you either agree with it or you don't it's a 15 20 minute discussion it's a basically explain what it is and then we present it to the city council we could get this done in one meeting and honestly i think based on february 2nd that was one of the two out of the three we're hitting that was the third one and term limits i can tell you from my involvement is an 80 20 issue and if any of you don't know what that means 80 support and 20 don't i would love to put something like that before the And I really like Tim's idea. We can put them together. They put the last one together with city council when they tried to rush it. But we got a lot more time than they had to try to pass the thing through on February 2nd. If they can do it for February 2nd, the city council could do it for us here if we're going to do it for real. So for me, I'm very much, I like the idea if you can be retroactive on term limits for improving the way things go with the city and the whole elected process, go for it.

Anybody have any different feelings on the term limits issue? We probably need to get a legal analysis of whether we can make it retroactive. Did you have an idea of a three-term limit in mind, Mr. Olsen?

I like three term simply because we have a bunch of people coming up to going to be on third term and supervisors have done three terms four years since as long as I can remember and I don't mind the example of being three terms is not my issue my issue is that you get the voters to rubber stamp multiple So you get somebody who serves 12 years, then they get 16 years. So we literally have supervisors who got the residents to vote for them to serve for 28 years. That's not how it should work. Now if you make a retroactive, we've got several people who are running this time in office. They've already done two years, including my own council person. Half the city council will term out after this election, go a little bit longer for some of them who get in two years. I love the idea because our big problem is we don't want to have it to where we have city council like in the first term who are going to be here for literally decades if they get elected again. Now, after 12 years, enough said. If you can't move on to the next office, thank you for your service, and we'll give you a nice little pin or whatever. We don't need people who make a career out of working over and over again for city council. Tim, your statistics were wonderful. We've only had a handful of people who've even gone to 12 years. Most of them go eight, and they're like, out of here. So I think canonizing it that way just backs up the history in this city with the exception of one individual. You know, nothing personal, but I like if we can make it retroactive, we're being real. If we can't make it retroactive, what's the point? We're not being real.

Yeah, 12 years is a long time to wait to see any results from a new charter provision.

Actually, every four years you get to see the results because if you don't do well, like the last people, the three people in the last election, all three of them are new. The city can speak when it wants to.

But if a council member already has a decade of service in and we're not making this retroactive, it could be 12 years from now with nothing changed.

That's my point, thank you.

Right, so- I think that term limits, a lot of people have mixed feelings about them. Experience is generally a good thing. But I'm being kind of selfish about it. I think that you're going to get some votes for a charter amendment that includes a term limit. There's probably going to be a lot of things tossed around. People that don't like the current mayor are going to probably go against our charter PROPOSAL, BUT IF YOU THROW TERM LIMITS IN THERE, THEY MIGHT, IT MIGHT CREATE SOME SYNERGY. AND SOME PEOPLE THAT ARE ON THE FENCE MIGHT VOTE FOR IT. BECAUSE I THINK GENERALLY THE POPULATION, LIKE YOU SAID, I'M NOT SURE IT'S 80%, BUT I THINK PEOPLE ARE FRIENDLY WITH TERM LIMITS.

WE HAVE FOUR CURRENT CITY COUNCIL PERSON WHO ARE ON RECORD VOTING FOR TERM LIMITS ALREADY. SO IF THEY WANT TO CHANGE THEIR MIND JUST BECAUSE WE MAKE IT RETROACTIVE, LET THE PUBLIC SEE THAT ONE. WE'LL SEE HOW LONG THEY LAST.

I agree on the three term. I really do. I just think that every year they should all get analyzed just like they do in employment. You know, you have your annual review. Let's check out what you have done in a year time and see if that kind of shakes the ground to see if you will continue on with another year. That's where I'm kind of wondering if they continually get voted on or they continue with their term and they've done nothing, it's just a lost cause.

and that is something that we could do as a charter is put that in the charter correct me if i'm wrong and the charter rules as far as having having each city council member give like a presentation as far as the annual review as far as what they've done in their district and of course they're going to speak you know all the goods they've done but it'll give the opportunity for the community to come out and and question how much they've done so that's that's those are the kind of things that we could do here as a committee we could include that into the chart into the rules i believe that needs to be done seriously

I see both sides. I see setting term limits, but I also feel that the community is voting these people into office. So it's up to them to vote somebody new if they're not happy with what's going on in their ward or in their city. So the power is in the people. And if they exercise their power, they can get rid of these elected officials that they don't want in office by voting them out. And again, though, I do see a need for term limits. So I'm kind of on the fence about this. i just feel strongly that if the community is not happy with their council person or their mayor when it's election time vote use use your power make your voices heard that's what it's all about so that's that's my stand on it

and i highly um agree with you as far as that i think we do need more people engaging in our city trying to figure it out you know stop with the nonsense let's get to the core of the problem let's try to make a move so we can get some movement done some changes i mean i've been here going on 20 years, and out of the 20 years that I've been here, I've seen very little. Very discouraged. I'm also a business owner. I've had to go outside of my city to open up my business because I don't feel confident that my business is going to survive here. I had to go all the way to Orange County, pay double, triple the rent, which is unethical because we have everything here. We just don't know how to manage it.

I feel like the two beautiful ladies on either side of me in that personally, I'm kind of right on the fence on term limits. It's not a clear issue for me, but I think the thing that tips the scale here is we have a huge apathy problem in the city of San Bernardino. We have a low turnout rate. And there are incumbents that have a fundraising advantage. So it's easy for them to raise enough money to send out the mailers and to keep themselves in office. And yet, most of the complaints that I hear are about the council members that have been in there the longest. So you're kind of offsetting the incumbent's advantage, which any political scientist will tell you is the first point of analysis on any election is who's the incumbent and how much of an advantage do they have over any challenger? So it equalizes that. It makes up for some of the apathy. And I just think the citizens of San Bernardino so desperately want change that this is another factor in favor of change. It's going to. It's going to force some change. And we have people as young as 14 years old that are attending the council meetings now. It'll encourage younger people. It'll add to the vibrancy. I think it's the right time for term limits in San Bernardino.

And I'll just provide one note because you mentioned regarding the retroactive nature of it. So we wouldn't be able to have it apply retroactively. The government code explicitly states that any term limits would be in effect from that point onward.

Oh, that's in the government code and it applies to charter cities?

Yes, it applies to charter cities.

I'd like to see that government code because I've heard a lot of different things discussed and, you know, there are groups that have come up with and you say this is in the government code and I hear this a lot and then I see a group come up and they know the code and there's a loophole. If there's one thing I've learned in politics, there are loopholes. So I would like for all of us before we would make a decision, because I know personally, and I'm a lot more politically involved at many more levels than most people realize with the people I deal with, we'd really have to verify that that's exactly what the government code says, because if that's the case, term limits are a joke and they're pointless. Which is my original point. But I think that there probably is a loophole and it's just a matter of knowing how to word it, how to say it, and how to look at it. And I honestly believe that if it went through legal review, if we have a good solid group that came up with this, because I know some groups, they're way ahead of the local governments and local city attorneys. They do circles around them. I know an attorney I've worked with that sued the state of California 13 times during COVID and won 11 out of 13 and everybody said he had no chance. So when I retire, I'm moving to Missouri, the show me state. And I've lived that for quite a few years in politics.

If you would like to know the code section, it's government code 36502. And there's also an attorney general opinion on the same matter. That opinion is number 11-401. But we can also do some additional research into it to see if there is a loophole for it.

Yeah, the point I would think is that this is a matter of self-governance for charter cities, and why should the state legislature be dictating an issue like this? This is a core type of principle that should be in the charter that the citizens should decide. So if we could focus on the issue of does it apply to charter cities, I would appreciate that, and I do appreciate the prompt legal input on this. If we could have a A VERY BRIEF MEMO ON THE ISSUE SO THAT IF WE NEED TO TAKE THAT OFF THE TABLE, WE AT LEAST HAVE THAT IN WRITING. BUT OTHERWISE, DO I HAVE A MOTION TO INCLUDE A TERM LIMIT OF THREE TERMS FOR THE MAYOR AND COUNCIL ALONG WITH OUR OTHER PROPOSED CHANGES?

CAN WE MAKE IT PENDING LEGAL REVIEW?

WELL, LET'S JUST LEAVE IT AS TERM LIMITS AND WE WILL DECIDE JUNE 10TH, HOPEFULLY, BASED ON LEGAL INPUT WHETHER WE SHOULD INCLUDE RETROACTIVITY.

THAT'S JUST TO CLARIFY, JUST TO BE ABLE TO DISCUSS IT.

WELL, IT WOULD BE TO COME BACK WITH PROPOSED LANGUAGE and then we can fine tune it whether we want to make it retroactive.

I'm on the same way I think as a lot of us up here. It's one of those double-edged swords. It could be a really good thing. There's some local cities around us that have had city council members sitting there for a long time and the cities are thriving and then it could also have a negative effect where YOU HAVE THE WRONG PERSON IN THAT SEAT AND NOTHING'S GETTING YOU HAVE THE WRONG PERSON IN THAT SEAT AND NOTHING'S GETTING YOU HAVE THE WRONG PERSON IN THAT SEAT AND NOTHING'S GETTING DONE SO IT COULD WORK BOTH WAYS SO IT COULD WORK BOTH WAYS SO IT COULD WORK BOTH WAYS SO IT'S ONE OF THOSE THINGS THAT I'M SO IT'S ONE OF THOSE THINGS THAT I'M SO IT'S ONE OF THOSE THINGS THAT I'M ALSO ALSO ALSO ON THE FENCE ON THAT ONE IT'S NOT A ON THE FENCE ON THAT ONE IT'S NOT A ON THE FENCE ON THAT ONE IT'S NOT A CLEAR CUT FOR ME AND NOBODY WATCHING

I HAVE TROUBLE THINKING OF A GOOD EXAMPLE OF A COUNCIL MEMBER THAT SERVED MORE THAN 12 YEARS THAT WOULD BE ONE OF OUR CHERISHED PARTS OF CURRENT HISTORY OR EVEN LONGER-TERM HISTORY. WE'VE HAD SOME GOOD COUNCIL MEMBERS GOING WAY BACK. BUT I DON'T THINK SERVING MORE THAN 12 YEARS HAS BEEN A BIG PART OF THAT.

I AGREE. THERE'S TURN LIMITS ON THE COUNTY SUPERVISORS, ON ASSEMBLY MEMBERS. THERE'S TURN LIMITS THERE. AND THEY MAKE IT WORK.

Corey. A couple of things to add. As far as language, it would be under the purview of the committee members to propose language, amended language, and then staff would essentially memorialize that language And then it would be available for the council members to then take VR minutes is normally how we would do it in a motion. The committee passed a motion stating X or Y charter amendment proposal. And like I had mentioned, Much of the charter as it is right now is in very plain language, and it would be added in a similar fashion. And then I'd also want you guys want you committee members to reference the March 25th meeting of this year. We discussed term limits. I provided an updated report from. a 20 june 2022 and november 2022 report where we discussed term limits i provided a table that shows the various specifically charter cities that have term limits the size of the city the term limit for the mayor the city council in a key detail and then i also provided some research on local cities that have term limits Menefee, Paris, and Hemet. Menefee and Paris actually outline their term limits in the municipal code. And very simply, for example, in Paris it says, no person shall be elected or appointed to more than three terms as an elected official in the city of Paris. And then it goes on to describe how you were to calculate the number of terms and give some details. That's just an example of how you could frame a charter amendment by stating it and then providing some qualifications or some additional description, depending on the type of a charter amendment. But the committee members would come up with that language. Staff can help provide input on it. Hopefully that's helpful.

OK, well. Does anybody have any comments on the particular language? Does the Paris example seem appropriate?

I DON'T AGREE WITH THAT LANGUAGE BECAUSE THAT'S JUST A THREE TERM LIMITS FOR THE ENTIRE CITY, NO MATTER THE SEAT. SO EVEN IF WE WENT BACK, BECAUSE I'M WITH YOU AS FAR AS GETTING AN ELECTED CITY CLERK, THAT WOULD PROHIBIT ANY PERSON THAT RAN A SEVEN CITY CLERK SEAT FOR, SAY, EIGHT YEARS, AND THEN RAN FOR CITY COUNCIL ON THE FOUR-YEAR MARK. SO I WOULD BE MORE IN FAVOR IF WE DID GO TO THE TERM LIMIT TIED TO A POSITION, NOT JUST TO THE CITY.

Yeah, I agree on that one. If it's an elected official for city council or the mayor's office, absolutely. But when it comes to city clerk, and Tim sits here, I can tell you, we would have hated to have lost his father after 12 years. That would not have helped the city at all. So if we do go back to an elected city attorney, an elected city clerk, now, For the Water Board, if you change it over to an elected position, it's no longer under the city's control. The Water Board becomes a totally independent agency, not subject to city politics. That's my reason for, so it's a little bit different with that that I want to clarify because right now, The water board is an appointed position just like to here. It's a six year term, it's a little bit different, but they're still appointed and they're at the leisure of the mayor and the council. So we gotta be careful with how we word languages because we do things a little bit differently in San Bernardino sometimes.

That's for sure. Okay, so we'll come up with some language applying to the mayor and city council. Okay. Did we vote on that yet?

I don't think so.

I think I got a motion. I'm not sure.

I'll do a motion.

I think so. We motioned that.

Yeah. Did I get a second on that? Second. OK. Any further discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? All right.

My apologies. Who made the motion? And specifically that was to add a discussion on a term limits charter amendment to the special meeting on either the 10th or the 15th or the 16th.

And to add the proposed language with our other proposals. So it would be a fifth?

Yes. Yes. It would be the, actually I have, it would be the sixth proposal.

For the mayor and for the council. Okay.

It would be the sixth proposal, just to clarify. Okay. And just so I have it correct, mayor staff, mayor place an item on the agenda, mayor as the chief executive policy officer, mayor recommends the appointment of the city manager, mayor vetoes a budget line item, and then term limits for the mayor and city council.

Right.

Thank you.

I had included the placing the item on the agenda under the role as chief executive policy officer, but that's semantics. We can handle that. Okay.

Anything else on improvement of the council manager form of government?

All right, that brings us to the public outreach efforts. There's been some discussion from Andy in terms of the need for two or three meetings. Perhaps one or more of those could be online. I'd personally like to see at least one in-person meeting. What are your thoughts?

Speaking for myself, I don't like online.

I'm old school. I want to be in person. I want to be able for people to see me. And I don't know. Just when I see somebody in person, I just kind of read them. And I need to be comfortable with that person and the information that they're delivering. And I'm not knocking the online. I do plenty of online meetings. But I personally prefer in person. But if we could have one of each, I would definitely support that. I agree with that one.

I guess the concern with having more than one in-person meeting is the limited time frame and the facilities. I know that puts staff to a lot of trouble in terms of securing a location. If we're going to have more than one, we might want to think about an area other than downtown. reaching out to the public a little more. But to me, the online option does that too.

And who would be moderating these meetings? Would we be answering questions? Or Tim, as our chairperson, would he be answering questions from the community? Or how is this going to be handled? Who's speaking for us?

Should be a facilitator, no?

Is that somebody from the city? I know you had mentioned something about the hearing officer.

Consultant.

Well, you had mentioned something about the hearing officer. But you also said that that person does parking citations. So how familiar are they going to be with answering questions regarding our charter?

Just to clarify, are we talking about general outreach workshops and meetings to discuss the city charter as it is and educate the public similar to what was done in 2015? Or are we referencing a meeting specific to the charter amendments that you would like to discuss and propose for the 2026 ballot?

WELL, I THINK AT THIS POINT, SINCE WE ARE IN A TIME CRUNCH, THESE COMMUNITY MEETINGS WILL BE SPECIFICALLY FOR WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO, TO THESE CHANGES. I KNOW LAST MONTH WE SPOKE ABOUT HAVING COMMUNITY MEETINGS REGARDING ANY FUTURE CHANGES TO THE CHARTER, BUT I THINK THAT WOULD HAVE TO BE KIND OF PUT ON THE BACK BURNER FOR NOW IF WE'RE TRYING TO, IF OUR GOAL IS TO PUT SOMETHING ON THE BALLOT IN NOVEMBER.

I'd have to go back and discuss that with city manager and staff about how we would approach that. My gut tells me that it may be better to utilize your special meeting as a community workshop to discuss these charter amendments and invite folks to come down and speak on them and get more educated. I think for something a little bit more expansive, we would need a lot more lead time We would need to see if we could obtain resources from the city manager's office or provided by the council a small budget for a facilitator What they did in 2014 as I outlined in my report was just a little bit more expansive It was a number of meetings. It had a long format It was more like a town hall workshop setting but for this targeted effort I would Lean towards using your special meeting as the place to educate the public on these potential amendments Would that be on camera? Yes, we could have the special meetings in the same manner that we have our regular meetings, just depending on scheduling. And I can work with staff to have them televised on the local television channel and recorded and posted on YouTube.

I think that would be a great way.

I'm probably going to be the fly in the wind with this one. If I want to know how to improve things with the mayor, I'm going to sit down with the mayor who's done the job and ask him, what are the strengths and the weaknesses that you are experiencing? Okay, here's the thing is, I work with the public all the time on campaigns. It's a part of what I do. It's a part of what I train people to do. And half the people in this city don't even know what a charter is. Right. We're literally at the point in this city where half of the people here, we say we'd like to talk about the charter and what's the charter, is it somewhere, they have no clue. 90% of the people in this city have never read the charter and have no idea what its contents are. Every single time we have a meeting here, we have a public meeting. Anybody can come into this meeting at any time, ask any questions they want from the podium with their three minute speech. They can make their comments. They can do it at city council. Here's my problem when you start talking about having public meetings. Then we hire a consultant who wants buckets of money. And when you hire a consultant for a government agency, I know working for government agencies, this is exactly what they do. They hire a government person to promote a predetermined idea where it allows the elected officials to hide behind the consultant and say, gee, the consultant is the expert and they said I need to do this when it was a city council person who had voted or the board member of the water board. It goes both ways. they voted to hire this person because they the person was hired knowing they had to do it i was at all the last charter proposal meetings and here's what they do they hire a consultant company and they have facilitators they put you all at a table and you pay buku bucks for this this ain't cheap to have it done and every table has an assigned facilitator the job of the facilitator is to steer and i was at these committees so i i literally had to rebut the person Steer them towards the desired outcome that the people who did the charter wanted. It was a dog and pony show. I do not support, I will not recommend anybody hiring consultants. If we want to interact with the public, we just open it up and tell them they're welcome to come here and listen and say what they want. We don't have to have a whole big drawn out thing, because quite honestly, if you look at the way the law is written, I do not represent and cannot speak for this committee. I am legally not allowed to do so outside of this forum. I can speak on my own personal things. Anybody who knows me, as I open my mouth, I have no problem with it. But for us as a committee, I cannot go to the public and speak as a committee because I'm forbidden to do so. So exactly how are we going to do public meetings with the requirements that we have to follow the law and or we hire somebody who's a consultant. Who's going to want to do a predetermined outcome?

No, I don't think we need a consultant at this stage. What I had in mind was a meeting where we share with the public what we've discussed here in terms of the history of the city, where we are, where we're coming from in terms of some of the problems, maybe break the meeting into three sections where we have some feedback on whether the The people that attend the meeting are on the same page as where we are, which I kind of expect they will be. And then go into the proposals that we have to improve things and solicit their feedback. I think the overall purpose is to start planting the seeds in the minds of the public of the work we've done. and how we feel we can improve things. We're getting their feedback that might lead to some adjustments in what we're proposing, or maybe it'll convince us to just drop it in entirety. But I think it gives us credibility going forward to the council to say we've made the effort to reach out to the citizens. I think one of the meetings could be here if that's most convenient, or it could be in the library or... any other downtown facility and we should have another meeting or two that's either online or in different neighborhoods and kind of repeat the format. They just did that for the water rate increase and they didn't get very good turnout unfortunately, but I think our issue is a little more sexy and popular than theirs. So hopefully we'll get some meaningful feedback and You know, we could take turns on leading that meeting or we could share within the meeting between us. If you want me to start off and give the introduction, I'm happy to. And then we could assign speakers to present the changes and direct the feedback from the audience. We could have predetermined limits like they do at the city council of three minutes if it gets out of hand. But I think that gives us kind of a... a quick and easy format to get public input and plant seeds in the public to make sure that this has support going forward.

So when we decide whether it's going to be June 10 or whatever date that we have our special meeting, When that's posted and put on the public city's website, can we also have a special meeting public forum slash public forum so that the community knows that it is? I mean, they know that this is an open meeting. But when it's a special meeting, let them know that they're all invited to attend. I mean, I don't know how we can get more people to come to our meeting.

I THINK ALL WE CAN DO IS ADVERTISE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE AND PROMOTE THE MEETING, WHETHER IT'S THE CITY'S WEBSITE, SOCIAL MEDIA SITES, AND JUST TRY TO INVITE THE COMMUNITY OUT TO THAT JUNE 10TH OR JUNE 15TH MEETING.

I'M GOING TO TELL YOU, I WAS PART OR I'M STILL PART OF THE GPAC COMMISSION.

WE DID HIRE A CONSULTANT. ANGELA.

WE DID HIRE A CONSULTANT BACK THEN. IT DID HELP TREMENDOUSLY. NOW, WE HAD A LOT MORE TIME TO ACTUALLY take care of the whole general plan. So, but I gotta tell you, the community engagement was awesome. was awesome it was more than what i imagine i expected and so that facilitator whoever that person was they opened up a channel to attract all the constituents all the voters to make a difference in their community now i don't know but we have a small community here at the moment i don't know how else to create a better volume small but mighty Yeah, yeah. So we need to think of strategies that are gonna open up that actual timeframe that we're gonna need from them. So whether it's gonna be televised, we're gonna do it private, someone needs to facilitate it.

Here's the thing, what I would like to see, and it's just to test the waters. Why wouldn't we have a situation and work it out with the city within the parameters that we are allowed to do? Why don't we first just push to get more people to come to this meeting and see what the opening is? Because we got enough city, I've seen these seats filled with certain meetings. Because one of the problems we have with commissions, first of all, people have no idea what a commission is. They have no motivation to come to it unless they're on the inside paying attention to things. I know because I've been to a lot of commissions because I've been involved and I hear this and do this and do that. I would love to see it because we're sitting here and we're actually in good shape as a commission. There are some commissions like the downtown advisory board. They haven't they're like us. They hadn't met in a year. And there are some commissions that don't even have enough members coming in to where they can get done what they want. I would love to see promoting the idea of being involved in commissions and coming and being, I would spend an extra half hour, 45 minutes if we had people who'd come and really honestly voice their opinions. But when we have less than a dozen people showing up, now, it's great to have the people here. I'm glad I'm not looking at empty seats. But if we can't get people to come to this meeting, we're gonna try to figure out a way to get everybody involved and give us their feedback. They've got three minutes to get feedback every single month. so i i don't have a problem with it but as a as a committee we are in our infancy with trying to get things done and we're barely starting with what we're going to propose to the public and we want to promote ourselves i'm not even sure what we're promoting other than this fact that yeah there's a commission and yeah we're working with a charter and saying what is the charter that's really half the population doesn't even know what a charter is so we are so far down in the spectrum of what people know in the city and what they want to get involved with I say if we're going to start, start at the bottom and just try to get people to come to this meeting. We can have a meeting and have a bunch of people there and have a facilitator. And I can tell you I've been to a bunch of those meetings, not just here but in other communities as well. And it's a whole lot of work that we can get done right here in the chamber if we can get people here.

Well, we've got a meeting tentatively June 10th, and our next regular meeting would be June 24th. My feeling is if we need another special meeting in the middle, we can do that. Hopefully we won't. But if we do, that's fine with me. And then why don't we have, as a special format for our June 24th meeting, have a community workshop at the outset. And we all make efforts to invite our contacts in the community and ask the city manager to promote that on the website and so forth as a community workshop at the charter committee meeting on June 24th.

I think that's a great idea. Hold them both here.

And then ask the... our great city managers representative to come up with a couple other proposals um for for meetings shortly after the 24th keeping in mind we have a deadline the middle of the next month so we want to try to finalize those uh june 10th to have a second and third meeting maybe and it would be nice

It would be nice if the city would help us introduce our charter to the public somehow. Actually, that's a good idea.

I like that.

Yes. Introduce it. Say, this is the charter review for San Bernardino. These are the committee members. This is what we do. This is, you know, just explain it to them because they're unsure. I can tell you that Channel 3 on Spectrum, is it? Channel 3, that comes out. These meetings come out and they see me and I'm like, oh my God.

There's a city council meeting next week, correct?

So they're getting out there, you know?

City council meeting next week. So I think it would be good for one of our city council members to promote once we get the finalized date of June 10th and invite the community out to the June 10th meeting. I think we start there. We have to start with one thing at a time.

Well, the June 10th, we're kind of talking about language and finalizing a proposal that we then take out to the public. So I think that would be a little bit premature on the 10th, but If we have that in place for the 24th, that's when we get our input.

But the community could still, I would still like to see a community here on the June 10th, because they're going to hear us talk about it. And in return, they can give us ideas or give us their feedback on what we're discussing. So I just started giving them ideas as far as what we're looking at doing.

Yeah, I like what Angela said, because it really goes to the core of the point I'm trying to make here is, if we're going to have where we're going to reach out to the public, the first thing is to reach out to the public that there is a charter. And this is the current contents of the charter, make copies available for everybody who attends. And say, as a charter committee, we have to go through and review this and recommend improvements. I have no problem starting there, but to try and convince the public like we've done in the past that we need to go this direction and we need to go that direction, we're going into the weeds big time. And if all we're doing is presenting what's already performed, we could say, hey, we're working on term limits or we're working on trying to make it so the mayor can do a better job with what she has in the charter. I have no problem with that one. My problem is that so often when you start getting into this, it starts becoming a sales pitch. I'm not interested in trying to sell anybody something one way or the other. And when I have a lot of people that I deal with, They don't even know who their city council person is. They don't know the name of the mayor. What's a charter? They think charter is something they went fishing on for their birthday tent five years ago. That's the level of knowledge. So if we want to start at the basics to just informing them that we have a charter and what the charter is about and what it does, I have absolutely no problem with information based, as long as it's what already exists. And that's as far as, now if they want to tell us they think this sucks or this is not good enough or whatever they want to say, I'm willing to listen to anybody. I've been doing it for 20 years. But we have to have a defined starting point. And she just gave it to us. I like that. I love to argue, but when somebody gives me something good, I run with it. Thank you. So.

I wouldn't recommend having staff do an introduction of where we've been with the city charter, what the city charter is, and kind of give the introduction. I think that needs to come either from the mayor or...

invite the mayor or any city council person to join us?

These are all people that are interested in the outcome. I think one of us should do it, or maybe the mayor should do it, but I wouldn't recommend having staff welcome people to a meeting. This is a top-level policy decision for the community, so we want to have either the mayor or one of us do it, I think.

I vote Tim Prince.

I knew I shouldn't have opened my mouth.

Well, you know, I have been kind of at the dinner table hearing about city charter issues since I was a boy. So I can give a brief historical perspective and summarize where we've been and we can go from there.

And you have three minutes.

Right. No, I think we should keep it short. I don't think it should be long and drawn out. But people need to understand that the charters like the Constitution, it's a governing document, and they should know what we had when we were the All-America City and why we changed it and some of the adjustments that we've made.

made in the past. And I think maybe a video kind of thing would be great on that channel three channel that I don't even know why people watch it, but if they're watching it, let's take advantage of it. That's something that you guys provide to the public. So why not incorporate it?

I have no problem with inviting the mayor or the city council here with it. And they have the power and the ability to speak on how they feel they're elected to do so. So it would give us a little bit more leeway. And one of the things is if you can't get city council interested in coming and joining you on something like that, if you can't get city council, who else are you going to get?

I feel like the city council is too directly invested. I think it helps us to have gone out to the community as part of our work and then go to the city council and say here's what we've been discussing in public meetings, here's our community input, and here's what the public and we as the people appointed to do the public's work are recommending. And that's the time for the council to weigh in. Not to shape the process based on their personal interests. I think that's the great thing about all of us is we don't have a stake in this. We're all trying to do the best we can for the community without personal interest considerations. And that's the way the charter committee did it. We've got to take a lesson because they got a pretty difficult charter revision throughout the whole charter and brought in, as Scott said, 12 pages. And it passed. And a lot of that was the moment in time. We were bankrupt and we were on the national news and we felt like we needed to change, make big changes. But I think the recipe worked and I think we should try to stay within that general framework. They weren't taking suggestions from the people that were going to BE AFFECTED BY THE CHANGES. THEY WERE TAKING THEIR WORK AS A CHARTER COMMITTEE AND THEY DID AN EXTENSIVE PUBLIC OUTREACH. I THINK THEY HAD FIVE MEETINGS OR SO. PLUS THEIR MEETINGS WERE PUBLIC. SO MAYBE WE COULD START INVITING PARTICIPATION ON JUNE 10TH TO MAKE SURE WE HAVE INPUT KEEPING US ON TRACK AND THEN HAVE A COMMUNITY workshop at our meeting on the 24th. Does that sound?

Sounds good.

Reasonable. And in the meantime, staff will come back to us on getting staff's input in terms of the other meeting or two, whether they can be in different neighborhoods or whether they should be online, and we can make that decision on the 10th.

Do we have any kind of budget as a committee?

That's what I asked the last time. Yeah, we didn't get an answer yet. We didn't get an answer.

Do we have any kind of budget at all? Can we mail anything?

No, there's no specific budget for- I don't even think there's anything.

Is there even anything in the budget? What's the budget for the commissions? because what I hear is they barely have enough money to pay the staff to come here and hold a meeting.

Well, my time is part of my normal salary. So you have the time, the staff time of myself and the city attorney and other committees have those staff resources, but there aren't any specific budget line items for council committees, commissions, or boards outside of staff time.

Okay. And then when last meeting, we'd also discussed looking into see to what the water department about putting an insert in the water bills or something on the water bills. Did you have time to look into that yet?

Yes. And this is specific to a general outreach campaign not connected to this specific charter amendment that you guys are working on. Let me see here.

What page is that, Corey?

Package page 46. I DID LOOK INTO THAT. WE ESTIMATED THAT THERE WOULD BE APPROXIMATELY 48,000 INSERTS TO REACH ALL OF THE ACTIVE HOUSEHOLDS THAT ARE ON THE WATER, THE SAN BERNINO MUNICIPAL WATER DEPARTMENT'S ROLES RIGHT NOW, SO 48,000 ESTIMATED The total project would cost about $3,000, and that estimate is based on printing a questionnaire on 8 1⁄2 by 3.6 cut sheets in full color at around $2,500, almost $2,600, and then actually stuffing those printouts into the envelope would be around another $500 or so. around a little over $3,000 to send out a questionnaire to all of the households in the city.

Thank you.

I don't know if you guys are familiar with Captivate. Captivate is when you go to the gym and you see all the TVs up there everywhere and businesses, you have advertisements there. If the city of San Bernardino would... have a video, we can distribute it to local businesses to educate them. I think that would be another fabulous idea because they're at the gym looking at that screen. They don't even know what they're doing, but they're learning. they're learning, or you're sitting down in a lobby somewhere and you see all this advertisement, it's kind of catchy. So I think maybe we need to open up our horizons a little bit and start marketing on a different level. Maybe, you know, Mr. Olsen is right, we don't need to spend thousands of dollars for a consultant, but we do need someone to facilitate to actually coordinate all of this, where it's out there to the public, where we can get some feedback. Bad news goes like this, and good news, we need to start getting all of this moving, so we have more interaction, I feel personally.

Multimedia can be great. We used what's called geofencing for the water department where you literally, if you were inside the water department's boundaries and you hit certain stores and certain locations that the public frequented, you get within 100 feet, you get into the parking lot and also you get a pop-up on your cell phone. Now, that was fairly inexpensive, but realize the program that allowed the water department to do that was probably several hundred thousand dollars. So the problem with this is you're either gonna pay somebody who has a program that will do it or You have to have the ability. Now the water department's got a lot more finances in the city. Trust me, they got money for what they do. I know because I worked for them and I knew what the money was. We wanted to drop $100,000 on promotional items. It was just a matter of going to the manager and getting a sign off and going to the board and getting a vote. so there's a lot of things we can do the problem becomes how workable is it and who are you reaching and how is it going and put this way it sounds like an easy idea but as somebody who worked in public and i know how hard it worked and i had to work with the guy that did with the geo fencing it took us hours just to set up for a couple of stores and all that so what sounds really easy to do and there are a lot of great things we could do if we had the money man there i the stuff i've seen done But we don't have a budget here. So my thing is, that's why I said, let's start small with like what you said. And don't try to get the public to tell us how they want things done, cuz they don't even know who we are. First thing we gotta do is get them excited about the idea that we have a charter and we change a charter. We can change things in the city simply by changing how we set the policy is set for the mayor, city council, so on and so forth. So I love the idea of outreach, but only if it's defined. And I don't want to be the one defining it, because quite honestly, I'm not allowed to. So we've got to be careful. Electronic stuff is wonderful, but we have an experience where I was with an organization. We mailed out 2,000 emails on a specific event. We got the information back, 20 emails were opened and we got two responses and it cost us several thousand dollars. So the problem with electronic media is you have to have measurable results. Here, measurable results, how many people are sitting in the chair. It's pretty easy to see how interested people are by the number of chairs. So a lot of stuff, I want to focus on the nuts and bolts of the charter. AND WHAT WE CAN DO TO HELP THE MAYOR, YOU KNOW, AND SOMEWHERE DOWN THE LINE, IF THE CITY COUNCIL IS GOING TO WANT TO HELP THE MAYOR, THEN WE CAN HELP THE CITY COUNCIL. BUT OUTREACH, WITHOUT DEFINING WHAT IT IS, IT CAN BE A CAN OF WORMS.

Well, there's limits on what we can do in the realm of persuasion and campaigning. We can plant seeds, but we can't actively campaign. So that's where we need to start talking to our community members and civic leaders to start planting the seeds that this charter proposal is going to need a campaign for November. the message needs to get out there I think there's plenty of people that are willing to contribute to that effort I don't know how much money can be raised but this is not the forum to talk about that but we should all be thinking about that on how we're going to promote this once we've gotten our public input once we've gotten the council approval and put it on the ballot and at that point hopefully the city politicians will help us too so there's an education curve, that's for sure, but this is not the primary pulpit to persuade people. We're getting their input so that we have the benefit of their input and the credibility that we've made the effort, and then we're turning it over to the politicians and more community members helping persuade people to vote for it.

i can tell you that the city police department from san bernardino is all over instagram and facebook and they're putting pictures up there they're getting comments they're getting engagements now whether it costs us money or not that's a whole different ball game but we need to open up our horizons and see how we can get out there and see what results we're going to get out of it. Sitting here looking pretty is not going through. So we're going to have to think of some better strategies to try to attract all these people that is needed to make us grow, to make the city better, to stop all the nonsense that is going on. We need the community involvement drastically.

Yeah, I think if we're going to put something on Facebook, there are city Facebook pages that are available for public information. And we can come up with the idea we want. When we come up with the idea, it's got to go to them. It's got to go through processes. It's got to go through legal review. I was lucky in that the other lady I worked with had to do Facebook. because just to put a post i had to do a couple of posts for her when she went on vacation it took me four to eight hours just to get an approval on a facebook page with a generic stock picture and two or three sentences it had to be revised probably 15 to 16 times because it had to even in a little water department it had to go through to the The manager who had to go through to the attorney who had to go through. Okay, Facebook is wonderful. By the way, I've enjoyed not having it for a year. I went on Facebook, I went dark about a year ago and I'm loving it. That being said, Facebook can be a tool that we use within the city's established what they've already done. The PD has attorneys and professionals that run that Facebook page. And they constantly, I'm gonna tell you what, nothing goes on that Facebook page with about 20 eyes looking at it and approving it. And we're in the same boat. By the time we got approved to be on Facebook, we'd be looking at August or September. If we try to get a simple thing on there, because depending on how fast somebody looks at it and who approves it. One thing you learn about governments, there's a thing called bureaucracy and everybody has to get their fingers into it and if they don't, it's not a pretty sight.

But there's other Facebook pages and there's things that we can do.

As individuals, yes. Yes. But we cannot speak on behalf of the water, we can't use our own personal Facebook pages to speak on behalf of this committee. No. We can speak as individuals on how we feel about what this community is. When you start talking public outreach, you're talking about speaking on behalf of, and that's a huge difference. And you can get yourself with so much trouble so quick if you don't have somebody you're working with. I learned, because I had to work with a guy. My first boss was the former mayor of Loma Linda. Okay, and he, trust me, I learned a lot from him. My second boss was a city council person for Baldwin Park as the VP. and oh believe me when i started i had board members too that were said don't do this don't do that so we can do it but there's a process we have to follow we can't do it as individuals and that's where my concern is with us trying to go out and do things we've reached the eight o'clock hour and and i was just going to ask about that in the event that we have a lot of members from the community come to our next meeting when we want to make it more of a public forum

Can we extend our time in this room? And will any of the fellow commissioners have an issue with staying longer if we have a good turnout? Is there a time frame that we have to vacate by 8 o'clock?

No. That was a self-imposed deadline. We've had later meetings. I would just have to work with staff and the security from the building just to let them know just a time frame that we might be here. Yeah.

Would any of the commissioners have an objection to staying late? Should we have a lot of people from the community with questions?

If we get people from the community who are willing to get up and hit that microphone for three minutes, if we have five people, that's 15 minutes, give or take walk time. Because trust me, anybody who knows me over the last 20 years, I don't shy away from a microphone. I've been there, I know it. And if they're going to have to listen to me, then it's about time I had to listen to them. I have no problem with it. But realize if you get 10 people speaking, you're going to be here 30 minutes longer. If you get 20 people here speaking here, you're going to be here an hour longer. At this point, it's not really an issue. But the time factor becomes how many people want to speak the three minutes and how long that takes. The rest of it we can regulate ourselves depending on. That's Tim's job.

Well, let me summarize and tell me if you think we need to vote on this or whether we can just do it by consensus. What I'm hearing is that June 10th, we will have a special meeting and we will invite people from our contact list and try to get the word out informally that we'd like public participation and comments but it will be June 24th that we will have an actual public workshop as a first agenda item on our meeting and that that will be our formal effort to begin outreach to the public and that that will hopefully be the first of two or three meetings be determined by recommendations at our next meeting um anything else and do you think we should vote on that i think it would be good to have a consensus vote on that yes did i miss anything all right can i have a motion i make a motion okay leticia and angela seconded any further discussion all in favor say aye aye aye opposed okay With that, I think we're ready to adjourn. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you to my colleagues for all the good work tonight. I'm feeling some hope for the future of San Bernardino.

Me too. And I'll bring my pillow and my blanket. There you go.