City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, thank you. All right, good evening. I am going to call to order the regular meeting of the City Council for May 26, 2026. Please call the roll.

Council Member Adler. Here. Council Member Joynette.

Present.

Council Member Feroz.

Here.

Vice Mayor Rubio. Here. And Mayor Armstrong.

Here. All right, at this time, I'd like the audience to please rise, and we have Adit Gotham from Troop 236, who will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right. Thank you, Adit. All right. Next item, please.

Item number three, announcements. 3.1, changes and additions to the agenda. There are none this evening. If you wish to speak under public comment or regarding an agenda item, please fill out a speaker card located in the back of the room and bring it up to the city clerk.

Okay, this time I'm gonna open up public comment. Public comment is permitted to address the City Council on any non-agenda item related to the business of the City Council. You can speak on items that are on the consent calendar, including a request to pull an item from the consent calendar and the reason why you wish to pull the item or items. Please note that the decision to remove the item from the consent calendar is strictly at the discretion of the City Council. You may speak on requests for future agenda items, and you may speak on items that are not on the agenda but are within the City Council's jurisdiction. Please be reminded that while the City ensures the First Amendment rights of its citizens, we do not accept nor endorse any offensive or hateful comments made during our meetings. The City celebrates the diversity of our community, and we strive to be a welcoming and open community for all. If you wish to speak under public comment or regarding an agenda item, please fill out a speaker card located in the back of the room and submit it to the city clerk. While we encourage your comments, unfortunately, state law prevents the city council from discussing items that are not on the meeting agenda. The city council does take them very seriously, however, and if appropriate, staff will follow up. Speakers will have up to three minutes when called upon. Do we have any speaker cards?

We do. Our first speaker this evening is Soha Dalla.

Okay. Evening.

Hello. Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Saj and I'm a seventh grade student at Gale Ranch Middle School. I've lived in this community for 13 years and I'm grateful to call San Ramon my home. Today I'm honored to speak on behalf of BAPS Charities, an organization I'm proud to volunteer with. I'm also joined today by my family. BAPS Charities is a global nonprofit focused on community service, education, health and wellness, environmental care, and humanitarian relief. Across the United States, BAPS has established over 100 centers over more than 25 years. BAPS Charities has been serving communities here in the Bay Area through volunteer-driven initiatives. As a youth volunteer, I've had the opportunity to take part in activities such as food drives, blood donation campaigns, community cleanups, and environmental initiatives. These experiences have taught me the value of compassion, teamwork, and giving back to the community. What makes BAPS Charity truly special is that it's powered by volunteers of all ages, youth, families, and seniors who come together with the spirit of selfless service. One of our signature initiatives is the annual BAPS Charities Walkathon, a nationwide event that brings together tens of thousands of participants across more than 100 locations. Over the years, these walkathons have supported important causes in health, education, civic engagement, and environmental protection. Here in the Bay Area, BAPS Charities has organized events that support local schools, hospitals, public organizations, and environmental programs. helping strengthen the communities we call home. For me, volunteer with the BAPS Charities is more than just service. It's a learning on how small acts of kindness can make a big difference. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to share a little bit about BAPS Charities and the work it continues to do in our communities.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Thanks for your work. All right.

Next speaker, please. Next, we have Jerna.

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Jernadalia, and I'm currently a student at California High School and a volunteer with BAPS Charities. Building on what was shared earlier, I'd like to highlight the exciting initiative coming up this year. In 2026, BAPS Charities will be hosting four walkathons across the Bay Area, and we are especially excited that one of them is in the Tri-Valley area at Don Biddle Park in Dublin on Saturday, June 6th. These walkathons are part of an effort to bring the community together around health, service, and unity while supporting them for a meaningful case. This year, we are proud to partner with Save the Bay, an organization dedicated to protecting and restoring the San Francisco Bay Area for future generations. The walkathon is more than just an event. It is a community gathering open to the public where families, youths, seniors, and local leaders come together for a shared purpose and to make a positive impact. We warmly invite everyone in the community to join us for this event. We would also be honored to have the mayor and the fellow city council members to also attend and walk with us. We have shared in a formal invite with the officers via email and feel free to reach out with us. Um, if you have any questions or request any additional information, thank you again for your time and your service to the community.

All right. And thank you for your service. Okay. Next speaker, please.

Sue Bach. Sue.

once again good evening mayor armstrong and city council members i want to premise that the following is a condensed version of catherine grace's op-ed in the local news for the tri-valley damville san ramon paper the problem climate impacts close to home California has endured 46 extreme weather events since 1980 and the Tri-Valley region is increasingly vulnerable from the 2020 wildfire evacuations to a 2023 flood that displaced 13 households. Residents are feeling it financially too. Home insurance premiums in high risk Danville zones skyrocketed from $1,500 in 2015 to over $12,500 in 2025. Statewide, seven heat events alone caused nearly 460 deaths and $7.7 billion in economic damage between 2013 and 2022. The proposed solution Make Polluters Pay Superfund, rather than continuing to burden taxpayers, the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act would require fossil fuel companies, which knowingly concealed their role in the climate crisis, to fund the damage they caused. Money would flow to cities like Danville and San Ramon for wildfire resilience, infrastructure repair, clean energy, and emergency services with at least 40% reserved for the most vulnerable communities. The upside, jobs and local benefits. The act could generate hundreds of thousands of jobs statewide in construction, clean energy, and climate resilience, while also funding electric buses and building electrification priorities already in both cities adopted climate action plans. The call to action. residents are urged to share the message attend city council meetings contact local or state legislatures and support local resolutions back in the bill thank you very much all right thank you sue all right next speaker please olu ol moldy moly

My name is Olu Uduwole. I'm a resident on Gale Ranch, 101 Coriander Court. I think this will be my second time I've ever come in here to voice my frustration. My frustration specifically is to the geological hazard abatement district. Unfortunately, I missed the meeting earlier on because I messed up in terms of the timing. And I want to address this specifically to you, Mayor Armstrong, and also the city manager, to really address the issue of the pond or the fountain between Crow Canyon Road and Dorothy Road. I've been a resident here for almost 40 years. I'm the original owner of my place and I'm still there. That pond, I can count on the end how many times it's operated within a year. And yet, we continue to pay the taxes. It goes up every year. except for this year that says the budget remains the same as last year. So mayor, I expect you and the city council members to have a conversation with the geological district. What's going on in there? I don't mind to pay the taxes, I'll gladly pay the taxes, but it's gotta operate. It affects the property values in that area. And yet when you come on Bollinger Canyon, the one just right around the corner operates all the time. What's going on? That needs to be addressed. I got frustrated. That's why I decided that I want to attend the meeting tonight. Unfortunately, I missed the GHAD meeting, which preceded yours. So I expect... all of you or some of you to address that issue very quickly. I don't mind paying the taxes. This time around, they sent me a note that the tax to owe you some change from last year. Okay, that's good. But what is the issue for you not operating?

That's what I want to understand.

And it just rubs me to the core that we're doing everything as residents and citizens of this place, and we're not really getting the benefit of what we are paying for. Please address that issue very quickly. That's all I have to say. That's why I decided to stay to address you, Major Armstrong. Please do something. I've had a series of excuses that, oh, there's been vandalism and other stuff. But the one on Bollinger Cayo that is new,

operates all the time what vandalism is taking place in there that that cannot be fixed okay all right thank you okay all right and city manager we can you we can get his name and we can provide him the information i have my my card if you want to give me a call if you want to take the card it is not part of the geologic hazard abatement district but i will yeah i'll i'll clarify that thank you all right thank you next speaker please there are no more speaker cards and we did not receive any written public comment Okay. All right. Then I'm going to close public comment and we're going to move on to item five, which is the consent calendar. Does any council member wish to pull any of the consent items? Okay. Seeing none, can I get a motion? I move the motion for approving consent calendar.

I'll second that.

Okay. Motion by... uh council member varos second by vice mayor rubio for item consent items five one through five twelve Okay, motion passes 50 unanimously. We'll move on now to item. 6 no, we have no special presentations, no deferred consent items store on to item 8.1. Which is. Resolution number 2026-066, adopting the fiscal year 26-27 operating and capital budget, establishing an appropriations limit, and authorizing carryover project appropriations. And we will have a staff report by Yulia Elbow. And good evening, Yulia. We've had considerable discussion on the budget so far already this year. So we started back in February. We've had

different workshops we've approved fee resolutions we've talked about our revenues we've talked about our expenditures we've seen our preliminary budget and here we are tonight so what do we got yes good evening uh Mayor Armstrong member of the council member of the public so today we are presenting the proposed 26-27 fiscal fiscal year 26-27 budget that's as you said been discussed during previous several meetings uh in a lot of details both revenue expenditures um how the budget was developed so the budget was developed as been discussed previously based on the projected actuals for fiscal year 26. That was probably the main difference between the approach that's been taken this year. It was not based on the previous year budget, but what the departments felt would be their actual expenditures and revenues at the end of the year. The fiscal year 27 budget continues to show structural deficit that is alleviated by the use of one time money measure and receipts. As a city, we're going to continue work on the resiliency framework, and that work is going to continue after the adoption of the budget during the several months later, as long as it takes, so we can get to the point when the city is not going to be relying on the measure and revenue as much as it is right now. The main point of the current presentation is to look at the summaries for the all funds, for the general fund, the calculation of the reserves for the fiscal year 27, calculations of the gain appropriation limit, and to adopt the resolution approving the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. It's been a long process of developing a budget that started mid February meeting with the departments. when we talked about the main approaches and why we're looking at the different ways of developing a budget. We've talked a lot about the structural deficit and why it is present. It's because of the growth of the expenditures to provide the services at the current level is outpassing the growth of the revenues. And departments were very cooperative in looking at their operations and see trying to find the resources of how to meet the expectations of growing their expenditures at the much lower pace than it's been historically present. Then at the month of April, we had two workshops, and then we continued to present revenue and expenditure details in May, and today is like a culmination of this whole process where we presented the whole budget at once. If you look at all of the operational funds of the city, which is about 70 of them altogether, The total revenues are expected to be about $158 million. And the main categories of those funds could be split in several portions. It's a general fund, which is accounting for almost 55% of all operations of the city on the revenue side, special revenue funds, debt service, capital projects, and internal service funds. On the expenditure side, again, general fund is the largest expenditure, which is about 56.9%. And the total expenditures among all of the funds are $115.7 million. Across all of the funds, the net increase is estimated to be $7.5 million, from which general fund increase is about $1 million. and again we're going to mention the structural deficit that's been part of the developing this budget and the reason we talk about this is we want to show how heavily our city relies on measure n if you look at our revenues Overall, the revenue is about $85.4 million, from which almost $15 million, $14.9 million is Measure N. Without the use of Measure N, the city is going to be in a deficit about almost $14 million. However, receipt of this one-time money allowing us to have a balanced budget and have net increase to our fund balance of about $1 billion at the end of the year. The city continues to rely heavily on also not only revenues and expenditures that we operate in general fund, but also on transfers in and out. Those transfers in and out are both supporting revenue in supporting general fund to some degrees like transfers in from special zones, but also significant portion of the transfers out supporting other funds. And one of them is a Dorothy Valley fund. which is that transfer is also part of the calculations according to the existing policy of the reserves for the city and that transfer out in fiscal year 27 is going to be about five million dollars and altogether transfers out to doherty valley fund to capital project funds and others is 7.4 million dollars of use of the resources of general fund We want to talk definitely about the reserve calculations for the general fund. And even though we are adopting budget for twenty seven, I wanted to show the change in the reserve, a bottom line for the between the fiscal year twenty six and twenty seven. The expected fund balance at the end of the fiscal year twenty six is going to be about thirty eight thirty one point eight million dollars. which brings the expected reserve over the target by $4.3 million. And it is about 41.7% comparing to the target of 36%. Going into fiscal year 27, with the growth of expenditures, and some use of larger use of the general fund to support Dorothy Valley fund expenditures, The expected excess of a target is 3.3 million, and the total of the expected reserves is going to be 40%, which is still above the target of 36%. the next item that we want to discuss today is the adoption of the gain appropriation limit a little bit of the history of what this limit is the gain appropriation limit began as a ballot initiative by the california voters in 1979 and the main purpose of this legislative was to limit how much governments are expanding on their day-to-day operations By law, every city is required to adopt a resolution to approve the appropriation limit based on the actual appropriations from 1979, which are adjusted by city population growth ratio and California per capita cost of living ratio. And those calculations are growing year over year. The rates by which these calculations are adjusted are published every year on May 1st by the Department of Finance. The legislation also specifies the particular categories of revenues that are categorized as appropriations subject to limitations. The other portion of this legislation is that if the revenues exceed the appropriation limit, the excess funds must be either refunded to the taxpayers or directed towards very specific purposes. When we look at the calculations for the fiscal year 27, again, for the city of San Ramon, the limit is 114.4 million, and the revenue subject to appropriations is $56.3 million, which brings the city of San Ramon being under appropriation, living by $58.1 million. and the slide that I wanted to demonstrate um as well is to show that that's not just the case for current here we were in this position of having our appropriation uh subject to limitation be being almost like below 50 percent of the allowable appropriation limit which is very strong position With this, I will basically come into the end of my presentation, which is about asking city council to review proposed budget and adopt the fiscal year 26-27 budget as presented, establish the appropriation limit as required by the state, and authorize the carryover of unspent capital project appropriations into fiscal year 26-27. And the next, the following steps that are going to follow the adoption of this budget are going to be discussion of the resiliency framework, which will be bringing to your attention in the following couple of months. Okay. Yeah, that's the end of my presentation. Thanks, Julia.

You know, we we don't talk much about the Gann appropriation limits because we're we have such a strong position there. But but it is something we have to go through. I'm just curious how we compare to other cities around us with respect to the Gann appropriation limit.

looking at the other cities almost everybody surrounding us are in also strong position that position may be not as high as ours ours the definite we are literally below 50 which is not very common but majority of the cities are also below the limitation

Okay.

All right. Thank you.

All right. Do we have any questions for Yulia? Just a quick question. Thank you, Yulia, for the presentation. You mentioned resiliency framework. I know we're not going to get into it now, but just for the general acknowledgement, what likely topics would be covered?

The main topic is, of course, how to reach the balanced budget without the use of Measure N, how to rely on it less and less. And we're going to be discussing many of the policies, including the reserve policy, the purchasing policy, and many others that CC operates. We're going to be talking about the operations of each of the departments, where can we find savings, how we can generate additional revenues. and um the main purpose is to build the framework where we're going to be generating more of the surplus of measure in and developing a policies of how that surplus is going to be used to support the city's operation going forward

just want to thank you on the staff because i know it's you know first you have to in order to ask the right question you have to understand where we're at and so working backwards it's it's a difficult job and so this will enable us to better address through the resiliency discussions and the year to come this this fiscal year to come how can we close the gap and not be reliant on measure so it's painful i know for everybody to hear it but it's really easy too just to look at the bottom line and say oh, there's the mistake, there's the error, and let's just cut everything. But I'm glad that we're taking a pragmatic approach, an intelligent approach to this. And the most painful thing is to actually say, hey, here's the problem. We know what the problem is, and here's what we're going to do to fix it.

Acknowledge it. And thank you. Exactly. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Matt.

All right. Other questions? Down here, Council Member Adler, do you have any?

on the finance question and our approach looking down the road so that we start this journey knowing our destination and taking steps along the way to make mid-course corrections so that we get where we want to be. I mean, that's half the battle, I think, having a proper goal. So I applaud you and the whole Jennifer for taking that approach.

Thank you.

Well, Councilmember Ros. Thank you, Julia. I got most of my answers in all previous sessions. I have one question regarding this on page number. Anyway, this proposed budget all funds this one.

Okay.

So I see. yeah that one yes so on the debt service funds i see expenditure 5.1 that makes sense that's uh interest that we might be paying right and then what is this revenue 3.5 uh the revenues are departmental charges so every payroll when we when every yes every two weeks when we process payroll portion of the um

that service is being paid through the charges to the departments it's similar to um the approach that we have when we pay our um opec obligation patient obligation funds so each department we calculate how much we're going to pay at the end of the year how how much of the uh principal interest is going to be paid during the year. And based on the formulas developed, what's the percentage that's being charged to the departments? And we bring this revenue. So to the very heavy extent, it becomes the expenditure to general fund because majority of the peer personnel costs are in general fund, even though some of them are in different funds, but the biggest portion is a general fund.

Just to make sure I understood, right? So 3.5 million is the amount that we collect from our employees for their OPEB?

It's not from the employees. It's a charge that's part of the city's expense, but it's being processed through the payroll. It's like a mechanism to make it smooth, this transition, to make it smooth.

so um so it means that departments are funding our debt obligations okay that's why it is going into revenue that we are receiving it as part of him i think sounds good and um is um i know that always the hot topic is how we can get that gap closed right we went from nine to six point six and then our expenditure but then our revenues are at three do we have um Are we, I would say, do we have all the tools, staff, do you have all those tools that you need to figure out how we can get that gap close as much as possible so that we can avoid the case shape in future?

I think these are going to be our discussions in the coming months when we're going to be talking about what resources we have, where we can bring, where we can generate additional revenue, where we can lower our expenditures or take some other approaches.

Okay. Future policies and discussions, then we should be able to come out with that. Okay. Those are my questions. Thank you.

Bless you.

I just have one kind of a really broad question, but I think it would be really beneficial for all of us to just get a sense of things. And as we start to grow as a community, we have more people living here and I'm assuming more people buying and shopping here in San Ramon. And hopefully therein also sparking more interest in businesses doing business here in San Ramon with that higher density kind of downtown core happening. Do you anticipate that that will help us in that framework in terms of closing that deficit should we, when nine years out, when Measure N sunsets?

It's really, I would say it's a bifold process because yes, on one hand, you're getting more of the revenues because of the growth in maybe shopping activity or property tax revenues or some other sources. But on another hand, with the growth of the population, you also usually experience growth in your expenditures because of the service calls that you receive, service to the streets, to the lights, to everything else. So a lot of calculations need to be done to answer your questions.

I know it's complicated and that's kind of the tricky part of like, how do we factor all of that in? Granted, you know, we've had we've kind of established inadvertently some funds on the side through recent developments that we've approved that will bring additional money in to help with those offset some of those costs. So that will be something that should help buffer, serve as a buffer, right, to close that gap in terms of, you know, additional costs that will incur as a city with a greater demand for the population, right?

Yes.

And so, yeah, so I just had a general question about that, but I do want to say also commend you both of you equally for the work you've done. I mean, it was I know it was not easy. I mean, having to go back and do such a deep dove on something that thankfully was caught and addressed effectively. And I'm really glad to see the first year out that with Measure N, we were able to effectively close that deficit. And now we can at least start to pivot on focusing how do we close that deficit going forward without Measure N. So thank you so much. I appreciate it.

All right. Any other questions?

Because I think you indicated that the goal was to generate more from the measure and money that we have. Is that a goal that once we get this money, are we able to, as we, you know, obviously we're using a lot of it to pay the deficit all, but hopefully as we look better down the road, are we going to be able to?

uh maybe uh have through investments or whatever grow that money a little bit more the ultimate goal is to develop um process where we're not going to be as reliant on measure ends so then we can have more of the access excess of the measure and money left every year

But that money doesn't just stay.

No, of course not. Everything that the city possesses as liquid assets, it's in investments.

Are we able to do something with that money a little bit and generate more money from the money? I mean, through investments?

We're going to be bringing investment report, I think, next meeting, right, Jennifer?

yeah so any unused money would be invested and uh be as earning um based on our current investment policy uh but if council were to use it they could use it it would be considered one-time funds um so we would need to find one-time uses for that money But in essence, if we are reducing our use, our dependence on Measure N, then every year we should have kind of an additional Measure N cushion every year. And so part of going through the policy discussion is to make sure that we are being intentional about where we are allocating those additional city resources so that as soon as they become free, we're not making quick offhand decisions. We are intentional and we have a plan ahead of time. Being prudent.

Yeah. Thank you. All right. I see another question down here. Anyone else? All right. Hearing no other questions, I am going to then open up public comment on this item. And I'm sure we got some speakers. Who's our first speaker?

Johannes Tillehan.

All right.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, city manager, and everyone. Mayor, let me start with you. At the last meeting, you said, please have a look at the financials. I'm not sure if you remember, but I took you up on that challenge. But not only did I look it up on that, I went back through the 10 years of audited financial statements, and I want to share what I found. First, let's give credit where credit is due. The work happening on this budget for this year uh israel the fiscal resiliency framework the two percent expenditure growth target the four percent revenue growth target the 10-year forecast this reflects the council and staff that have already acknowledged the structure issue and are working on them day to day the city is well run i don't have much to say on that congratulations to the team that's not my question tonight my question is about the future and the trends underneath the budget i looked at the seven year balance sheet indicating use uh indicators using the city's own audited financial reports from fiscal year 2016 through fiscal year 2025. five of those seven five of those seven moved in the wrong direction over the decade a few examples worth sharing The total asset to total liability ratio. This compares everything the city owns to everything it owes. In fiscal year 2016, the ratio was 8.72. By 2025, it was 3.83. Nine consecutive years of decline. The city remains solvent, but the cushion has thinned year over year. Number two, financial assets to total liability. This compares the city's liquid assets, the ones that can be converted to cash quickly, to its total obligation. When this number is above one, the city has enough liquid resources to cover its liability. In fiscal 2023, the ratio dropped below 1.0 for the first time. It remains below 1.0 through fiscal year 2025 at 0.93. I'll go through. In debt to revenues, this shows whether the city has more financial assets than debt of the other around. The city ran a net surplus position of seven straight years through 22, and 23 marked the first appearance of a net debt on the books. These are not crisis number. The city is not in immediate direction, but improvement for position of stress is not the same of underlying strengths. And the trends are running underneath the operating budget where the most residents do not see them. My question for the council is this. As 27 budget moves forward and as the July 14 long-term plan, two more seconds, framework including the balance sheet trains, not only the opening definite conversation, the measure and conversation is well understood. The balance sheet conversation, So I just want to bring this to your attention, look at it from a real management point of view, and put it into perspective when you look at everything. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

There are no more speaker cards. We did receive written public comment from Pranav and Diane and Brian Swanson, which are before you and in the red binder in the back of the room. All right.

I acknowledge receiving those electronically and written form. Okay. Uh, then I'm going to close public comment and, uh, back to council now for, uh, how we want to move forward on this, uh, final comments, uh, before we, uh, move for a vote. Yeah.

Um, first of all, thank you. Thanks staff. Um, for all your great work thanks julia for a great presentation i i really like the format that we did like revenues expenditure then putting together so that we as a council got more time to ask the questions also digest this huge budget uh into all that information so thanks for making this and thanks to all department heads you know like we were like at nine expenditure at nine percent but then we got it down to 6.6 and then we are trying to get close to i know we still have that gap right from three percent revenues so that's all everyone's mind is how we can reduce that gap so as um city manager already suggested that the major uh that can move the needle is measures but I don't think we have option to get any new measures at this point only one thing I would say that we need to see how we can with current measure n how we can close that gap that's very important and how we can continuously save so that I would like to see the debt service especially the 5.1 million that we are paying We need to see how we can reduce. I'm definitely looking forward for our reserve policy. Maybe that's one place where we may be able to see how we can use some of that money to reduce this debt service expenditure. And coming to revenues, we definitely want to see how we can increase. I may not say that overnight we can grow from 1 to 10. but we need to figure out how we can get there if it means that we need to reach out to our community members reach out to business communities and also our non-profits our nations we need to reach out to them and see how they can they may have some suggestions or some support So because we need to bring more business to our city. So I would like to see that we move in that direction, focusing on revenue. For me, expenditures already, as our staff department heads, as well as city manager, you guys are doing the best. We don't want to cut to the bones where we'll lose all the quality, high quality that services that we are providing. So at this point, I would rather focus on how we can build more revenues. Meanwhile, definitely we want to have a keen eye on our expenditures. But yeah, so once again, thank you very much for all your great work.

All right.

Thank you. Other council member comments?

Anyone?

Okay.

Questioner Ruby, anything?

I mean, I think we kind of talked about it in the previous conversations, a lot of the stuff that we're talking about right now. But of course, as was mentioned as well today, again, you know, we're going to really look in this resiliency framework. We're going to really look at how do we make the money we do have available grow. And that's something that everybody should be doing. I mean, everybody at every level of government. So it will be... you know, something that we need to flesh out, obviously. But like I said, you know, I mean, it was, you know, it is at least reassuring that we've closed the deficit in year one, because that is a huge thing. And to have some surplus money left is important. So it's showing a positive sign, I'm saying, that we're starting off on the right direction. And we're going to have to put, of course, some of those checks and balances along the way to make sure we continue to refine that and be more efficient as we move along so that eventually we can get to that goal that the Council Member Burroughs was talking about. So, thank you. And thank you. All right.

And yeah, I'll just say, as we've been talking about tonight and talking about for several weeks now, a couple of months now, you know, we this cost of living and the inflation and everything else and is really impacting our expenditures and those expenditures continue to outpace the revenues. And that's what we're dealing with here. But I do want to say it's a great job by our finance department. Great job by all the departments to come up with this budget for this year. We've got a balanced budget and While we still have a structural deficit, the measurement is covering it for now. And our reserve is in good shape. I'm pleased with that. We're well over our 36% policy. And as I said at the last minute, I'd like to move quickly on this financial resiliency framework. It sounds like we've got a plan to get that on the calendar and and make that happen. And then also, you know, just this whole idea of, you know, focusing long term, let's not just react to things, you know, but we'll review that reserve policy, review different revenue options, how we might be able to be more efficient or reduce some of the expenditures. Uh, but as, uh, council member Rose said, we don't want to, we don't want to reduce services. Our community has come to expect a high level of service. And, uh, uh, we, we had to cut some things, uh, back prior to measure. And we've been able to restore some of those items. Uh, but we don't, we don't have to be doing deep cuts where we've cut pretty deep already. And, uh, we've got to, you know, uh, uh don't have a large staff to do the great work that we're doing and that so i commend the staff for all that they do but anyway great job i look forward to voting in favor of tonight's resolution approving the budget and with that can i get a motion i move the motion i'll second oh okay we've got a motion by uh council member rose second by vice mayor rubio to adopt the resolution 2026-066 adopting fiscal year 2627 operating a capital budget establishing an appropriations limit and authorizing carryover project appropriations any further discussion on this item okay again please vote thank you All right, motion passes unanimously. Thank you, Yulia. Thank you, Finance Department, all the departments for your hard work in getting this year's budget across the finish line. Now we're going to move on to new business. First item is regarding resolution number 2026-067, authorizing the execution of a memorandum of understanding between the City of San Ramon and the Service Employees International Union Local 1021. have a staff report by Megan.

Good evening.

Evening.

Okay, let's see if I can finally get this to go without Lisa's help. Okay, thank you. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the Council. I am very excited to be presenting to you tonight resolution number 2026067, which is our proposed Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU, with the Service Employees International Union Local 1021, or SEIU. So as some background, there are two represented labor groups here at the City of San Ramon. SEIU is one of those groups. They currently represent a total of 55 employees in the positions of maintenance technician, maintenance specialist, maintenance coordinator, and electrician. Our current MOU with SEIU was for a four-year term and set to expire on June 30th of this year. And so based on that knowledge and with the direction of the council, we began meeting with representatives of SEIU earlier this year and successfully reached a tentative agreement on a new MOU on May 20th last week, which was ratified by SEIU membership. So some of the key highlights of the terms of that new MOU are that we have a proposed four-year term. So this new contract would run from July 1st, 2026 through June 30th of 2030. Of course, we discussed compensation. And so as part of this contract, the salary ranges for the salary and just for those job positions I just outlined would increase by 3% on July 1 of each year of the contract. So with the first increase would come this July 1 in about a month or so. We also negotiated the creation of a commercial driver's license differential pay. And what that will allow the city to do is ensure that we have those specialized drivers to assist with city operations. And we can ensure that we won't have any gaps in that delivery. As part of that, we also agreed that a differential pay that had been previously negotiated for the shop coordinator position will expire when the current incumbent leaves that position. additionally we clarified the city's safety shoe program which is a program by which the city ensures that our maintenance folks have the right safety boots for the work they do we discussed the alternate work schedule program and fine-tuned some of the terms of that program and agreed to the schedules that would be acceptable for both parties And then, as is the case with any document that lives for a four-year period, there's inevitable cleanup. Often ours are dealing with CalPERS compliance or legal updates, language that we thought was clear when we signed the MOU but turns out not to be so clear, and then some other minor non-economic issues. So the fiscal impact of this new MOU, the estimated cost of the total contracts that's over the four year term is just over $860,000. The first year costs that's coming up in this upcoming fiscal year is just over $150,000. And that cost has already been incorporated into the budget that was presented to you this evening. And then I've also outlined in subsequent years, the additional costs that will come with this contract. Any questions on that?

All right. Very good. Thank you, Megan. Any questions on the contract?

Okay.

So thanks for the presentation. Did we ever had to increase a pay less than 3%?

Did we? I'm sorry.

Did we ever had an incident like where we paid less than 3% in past?

To my knowledge, I don't believe we've cumulatively... I can't speak.

Megan. No, I can't see it.

No, we can't see it. Can someone in the audience please say cumulatively? Over the course of a contract term, I don't believe we've had anything lower than 3%. There may have been with the POA contract, there was one year where it was 2%, but it balanced out over the remainder of the contract term.

Okay.

We've also had years where there were elements of the contract that were left up to the market. But in a time of increasing fiscal kind of, we want more fiscal clarity. We didn't want to leave it up to kind of, let's see what happens with CPI or a market survey. So this also allows us to kind of all know what we're walking into over the next four years.

That's a major benefit.

Yes.

For sure. Yeah. That's not my question. Thank you.

Who's the Jedi master that negotiated 3%?

You know what?

No one understands how... You're just presenting the results, but if people really understood how it takes to negotiate with labor unions in a short time, I really... There's some trickery going on. I'm just...

First of all, it's a team effort. SEIU is an incredible partner at the table. I would say that this is, knock on wood, but we have just incredible partners across the table. Everyone was really motivated to reach a contract before the end of the current contract. We were really running at full steam from the jump. It was an incredible process for both parties.

I have to learn. Thank you. Thank you, Megan.

Thank you.

All right. We'll have time for comments in a moment. Let's get questions out of the way. Any questions?

Is the four-year term, is that a kind of a standard period of time for a contract of this sort?

You know, it really depends. I would say that four years is frequently the goal with a contract like this, but in kind of times of Financial uncertainty, sometimes there's two-year contracts, three-year contracts. So four years is always a goal of these types of negotiations.

Yeah, you don't want to keep coming back every other year to do that. Exactly. Thank you. Good job to everybody involved. Thank you.

All right, Vice Mayor Rubio, questions?

Well, not necessarily a question, but if you want me to hold off on.

Yeah, let's just handle questions now. We'll get public comment, then we'll go for comments. Okay. Any final questions from council? All right. Then I'm going to open up public comment on this item. And do we have any speaker cards?

There are no speaker cards and no written public comment has been received.

Okay. I'm going to close public comment. And now we're back to comments on the item. Let me start with you, Vice Mayor Rubio.

So I just want to, yes, also commend you on the work that all of you did. I know SEIU 10 to 1 is a very savvy, smart union. They know what they're doing as well. So the fact that you were able to really come to this agreement is a reflection of the professionalism that both of you exercised. And so I just want to thank you for that. And of course, thank them as well for the hard work they put into it.

Yes, absolutely. There's a lot of trust on both sides.

Yes, very much so.

Okay. Other final comments? Thank you. for making this happen and thanks to both sides. Congratulations to both sides because this helps us to have a clarity for our next four years rather than keep on coming back and fighting over all those basics again. So yeah, hopefully our finance director is okay with that as she's working hard on how to close the gap while I'm seeing that there is increase in the

expenditure going to 800k so as accumulative but um i'm sure she is keeping an eye on that one so thanks thanks staff all right any other final comments i'll also say uh congratulations to all the parties involved in the negotiation i do i agree i think it provides clarity i think it provides predictability it'll help us for those next four years as we kind of work through some of these budget challenges we've been talking about tonight so thank you very much and at this time can i get a motion to adopt resolution 2026-067 authorizing execution of the memorandum of understanding between the city of san ramon and seiu local 1021. so move second okay motion by vice maruvio second by council member of rose Okay, motion passes unanimously. Thank you, Megan. Good job tonight.

Thank you.

All right. Now we're going to move on to item 9.2. This is a review and discussion of the use of flagpoles and display of flags policy. Council approved under Resolution 2021-066. So we are to provide direction to staff and we have our

assistant city manager it is weird to be on this side i like that side all right good evening good evening mayor vice mayor members of the council uh we are here today to review and discuss the city's flagged policy as reviewed by the policy committee So the original flag policy was adopted back in 2021 and had not been reviewed since then. It did establish guidelines for flags that are authorized to fly on city-owned flag poles and flag stands, are half staff protocols, conditions under which commemorative flags may be requested to be flown, as well as the prohibitions of the flags representing political, religious, for-profit, or foreign entities. So in April of 2026, the City Council directed a review of the policy by the Policy Committee, and the rest of the presentation will be a summary of the updates and proposals from the Policy Committee. So on my right-hand side, your right-hand side, is a snapshot of the policy. So in summary, the first one is really just clarification that it's the State of California flag in addition to the U.S. The five flags that were originally recognized will stay in addition to item number six, which is commemorative flags of the United States, State of California, and the city of San Ramon. So, you know, the flag for 250 is a commemorative flag of the United States, so that would fall now with this change. Another recommendation from the policy committee was strengthening the policy in language and clarification regarding the half staff protocol as well as flag etiquette to include that the half staff would be an adherence to federal or state orders. On the second page of the policy, there was a clarification of adding simple majority. While there's no legal definition between simple majority and majority, they just wanted that clarification. So they're not going to super majority, just simple majority. So there'd be three members of the council. We also made clarification that any flag requests would be presented under new business on the agenda, so not the consent calendar, so we clarified that. Another change was limiting commemorative flag displays to no more than two flags at a time. And then the last two would be adding the commemorative flagpole can be used for nationally or state designated awareness and heritage months, including but not limited to. So for examples, American Heart Month, Women's History Month, Asian Pacific American Heritage, Pride Month, and those are just examples. So of course, council, we could add, we can remove, that is just kind of where the starting point. And then again, adding the simple majority at the last piece of it. So there were two common themes that kept coming up with the discussion of the policy committee that we are bringing forward to the council for a full discussion. One of the options was an ongoing authorization. So essentially when a flag request was approved, it would then be approved in perpetuity. And so it wouldn't come back to the council unless a council member requested for a reconsideration of that flag. So this process would provide long term consistency of so avoiding the annual renewals of a flag request. However, it could limit public input or review because once it becomes goes to the city council, it won't be heard again until a council reconsiders that flag. other option was an annual approval uh so this is where um kind of how the council would approve your annual liaison appointment so every january a list would come before the city council of all the commemorative flags the council wishes to fly for the calendar year and so that uh that list would get reviewed on an annual basis It also was discussed, well, what happens if you have an ad hoc? What if a flag comes up throughout the year that you want to fly? And the committee decided that at that time it would be treated as an ad hoc basis and the flag request would still come before the city council and then it would discuss amongst the annual that was presented as well as this new flag. um and so with that it's uh you're reviewing the flag every year um so it's you know ongoing um but that way you're not doing a one-off every time so the next step for the council this evening is going to be revising either revising the policy with revisions that are determined by the full city council or maintaining the current policy as it stands And you have any questions for me or the committee members, which is comprised of vice mayor Rubio and council members right now.

Okay, thank you Christina. And I saw the city manager cringe when I promoted you prematurely earlier, but no, no, that's fine.

I'll just have to inform Scott Cole.

I got promoted again.

Yeah. Assistant city manager.

I missed it.

All right. Do we have any questions?

I don't have a question. I don't have a question, but is this time to make a comment regarding the actual language and the policy? Because I wanted to make an adjustment to the draft.

Let's cover the questions first with what was presented, and then I think we're going to get into discussions. No problem. Clarifications on language and that sort of thing. At least I hope that's the way we go. Questions?

I have one only, the small one, but it's a clarification question.

All right. Go ahead.

Okay.

So I just wanted to clarify really quick when we said no more than two flags per flagpole. Is that correct?

Yes, so two flags per the commemorative flagpole.

Okay, okay. I just want to make sure because, you know, if we have, say, one year we have another state or federal commemorative flag, it might be three, but one is going in front of the city hall and the other two would be in the commemorative flagpole. Does that make sense? Yes, I would. I don't know if we need a clarification in that, but it's something that just dawned on me. Does it say no more than two per flagpole?

It does. It says no more than two commemorative flags may be displayed at the same time, but it does not specify which flagpole. Yeah. However, it is under the commemorative flag display.

Exactly. I mean, like, I know what our intention was, but I'm wondering if maybe we... Clarify that? Yes. Okay. Yes, exactly.

And I guess I had the same question, but it sounds like it just got answered. I can see how you could have two flags displayed on the marquee because there's no particular order. It'll just rotate through. But on the flagpole, I don't understand. How would we display two flags on the commemorative flagpole and determine which flag goes above the other flag?

Those are very good questions, which the policy committee also raised those same questions. Um, I think at that time, depending on how it was decided, whether it's in perpetuity or the flag request is at that time, it would then be decided which flag was flown first and which flag was flown second. Um, or similar to how the council handled it at the last meeting where a flag is flown for X amount of days, and then the remainders for another flag, it would really be at the discretion of the city council.

Um, the, the decision, it was a former that we just talked about, which was, um, if there's say, there's 1, that's already there has been there for, like, I don't know, 5 years or something and someone else brings another flag and it's in the same month to avoid conflict. We had talked about, we had agreed that it's probably just best to put leave the. Original 1 at the top and the 1, the newer 1 comes 2nd at the bottom and that way there's no discussion about it. We don't have anyone saying, oh, you don't you don't care as much about my flag or something like that, you know, but it's just a policy so that we have a standardized process.

What's wrong with 2 weeks in the beginning and 2 weeks at the end.

Because that's why we have the two, no more than two. But that what you're saying is a separate issue. The specific question that the mayor had is which one goes on top and which one goes on the bottom because the policy that we proposed is you can raise up to two flags on the commemorative flagpole so his the mayor's question is specifically which one goes on the top and which one goes on the bottom right right right but the 15 days 15 days that you're talking about is not actually it's that's like a separate issue that that we're um separate from his question is what i'm saying it's not separate question i'm just i'm merely offering suggestion because we never settled it

At the at the policy hearing.

Yeah. And I, I, that was just a suggestion. Well, I, I'd welcome the continuation of this discussion when we get. To that that part, because I have some additional thoughts on what you have said. So, but other clarifying questions just on the presentation. That was my question action. So, okay.

question number one and number two for the city attorney about um you know is are there some advantages of one over the other I mean obviously if we take number one we don't we're not changing the policy but are there some advantages of maybe looking at it every year and um I don't know legally is there any any advantage of you know kind of setting our course every year on what we're doing

Well, the two options are basically a balancing act between two laudable council goals. The first being the public participation in the process and the second being efficiency. So you're kind of trying to balance between efficiency and public participation. If you want to lean more toward public participation, then you do each and every approval on an ad hoc basis.

But as far as what, I mean, we will get, somebody may come up to us and say, can you fly this flag? And is that something that the policy is going to, does it have to be done at the beginning of the year? I mean, are we going to set a policy at that time? Like, okay, if you're going to fly a flag, we need to do it early on so it's all worked out.

know beginning of the year maybe even before the beginning of the year i mean is that something that we should consider or well that is under consideration as we speak and and the council is free to set the policy at this time um okay so that that my understanding is that comes as part of ad hoc request yeah okay all right any other questions i think we all probably have some additional comments so we'll

If there's no questions, then I'm going to open up public comment. Who's our first speaker?

Gary Chapin.

All right, Gary.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, council members. My name is Gary Chapin, 47-year resident of San Ramon. Spent all my life in California somewhere. And I just want to speak tonight with regards to the fact that the California flag should be flown. The city of San Ramon flag should be flown. The United States flag should be the biggest one, bigger than we have now, flying out there, telling us who we are. We are Americans. I happen to be a Polish, Russian, Italian, German, Swedish American. Do I get to fly each of those flags on their holidays? What are the limitations? What I heard today, there's not much limitation on what can be flown. And I have a concern with that. And I would hope that the council would continue to look at what's allowed and what's not allowed. Because not everyone agrees with what's being flown out there. And so if that's the case, then why does someone get to fly a flag that they want to fly, and I can't fly what I want to fly on the flagpole? Because it's going to come up, and I think you better deal with it, and I think you better set a standard for what flag goes on top, goes on the bottom, or you're all going to pay the price for that one. So thank you so much for listening.

All right. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Anu Gupta.

Good evening. I'm Anuradha Gupta. I'm the president of PFLAG Danville San Ramon Valley and representing our PFLAG chapter and San Ramon Valley Diversity Coalition today. The LGBTQ community, their loved ones and allies advocated for the pride flag, which led to the commemorative flag policy of 2021. The policy review was initiated today because of the pride flag resolution. We are painfully aware that the LGBTQ community is the most vulnerable to being attacked. On May 12th, the America 250 flag and disability pride flag were adopted unanimously, the first commemorative flags to be approved since the original pride flag in 2021, which is great. The discussion on content neutrality begs the question, why would there be a council members vote against the pride flag in April and that same council members vote in favor of America 250 and disability pride flag in May? Regardless, we are so glad the draft policy will continue to celebrate patriotic milestones and the diversity of our beautiful community, and forever grateful to the people behind the 2021 policy, the LGBTQ community and allies who paved the way for this day of inclusion. It often takes the struggle and resilience of the underserved to support belongingness for all. This year showed us that the LGBTQ community will always be at the mercy of council members, unless the pride flag is explicitly included in the policy amendment, like it was mentioned. We appreciate the elected representatives who have supported us, and we can't afford to be politicized and marginalized. The draft policy enumerates a number of possible resolutions, but it fails to mention the very one at the heart of this, the pride flag, which until very recently was the only commemorative flag displayed. While we acknowledge that the list is not exclusive, it would seem to make basic sense that the only commemorative flag with any historical significance be included in this list. Respectfully, we do not support the draft policy until this change is added and we request this edit. We also request the pride flag be raised in perpetuity for future years without requiring a new harrowing approval each year. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Dan Frank.

Good evening. As a disabled person, it is wonderful to see the disability pride flag raised by the city. Thank you very much for acknowledging the extraordinary contributions made by disabled Americans. On Monday, May 18, the Islamic Center of San Diego suffered a horrific shooting that has become all too common in the United States. There's a direct through line between those killed in San Diego and the 13 murders of trans people so far in 2026. Both are historically marginalized groups and are subject to violence based on their historically marginalized status. Make no mistake, it is now the policy of the United States government to destroy the trans community. Many members of the LGBTQ plus community, specifically trans people, are in imminent danger. 32 trans people were murdered in 2024, 27, and 2025. The suicide rate of the LGBT group and trans community is three to four times higher than the national average. Pride 5 saves lives. It represents persistence, love, and freedom for all. It gives people who have been shunned by society and their own families a symbol that they are not alone. vilifying the pride flag is a very common trope has been around for decades and is very tired embarrassing and has reached meme letters of ridicule only weak and cowardly people attack marginalized groups it is un-american to do so San Ramon must continue to fly the Pride flag permanently every June, not because Mr. Juinet utilizes an obscure legalese in an attempt to remove the flag, but because it's a human thing to do. It's supported by the overwhelming majority of citizens of San Ramon and other cities throughout California. It is not a mystery why Mr. Juinet brought this proposal up just before Pride month was set to begin in the Bay Area. He could have done so in October, or February of this year, but he chose to do it right before Pride Month. If anybody thinks that's a coincidence, I have a bridge to sell you. On June 1st, the Pride flag, 5 o'clock, the Pride flag will be raised near City Hall in San Ramon, hopefully not for the last time. On June 6th, PFLAG is hosting an all-day celebration near the Danville Library from 10 to 4 p.m. and is open to all. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Next figure, please.

President Bensal?

Hi, my name is Risa Bunsell and this is Raya. I'm an 11 year old girl who goes to Bollinger Canyon Elementary and I'm standing here today because I want to support the LGBTQ plus community. I think it's important to have symbols to support this community and the flag is one. important symbol. I'm supporting and standing here today to ensure that the pride flag will be flying in the future also because I want my friends, family, neighbors, or everybody to feel safe and welcome to be themselves. I want people to be free. I want people to live freely and not thinking that they can't be themselves. um so this is why i stand here proudly today so that our pride flag shall continue to fly i'm saying i know that i'm saying um the same as many adults here but it's different when it's um the same words are coming from a child's mouth and point of view thank you all right thank you next speaker please yamini dex i'm sorry who is it yamini dex yamini hi

Good evening, San Ramon City Council. My name is Yamini Dixit, and I'm representing a local organization called Rewire Community. We have served the San Ramon area and sister cities for over 13 years in the gender justice and equity space, working with survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking. This violence sees no gender barriers. So we stand here as friends, neighbors, members, allies and advocates for all gender identities and sexual orientations. As it might be obvious, I speak specifically for the pride flag, as that's the one that has flown on the commemorative flagpole, as Anu also just mentioned. I'm sure you have heard this many times, and as Reza just said, that symbols matter. Every time this city has raised the pride flag, it has done more than honor the history, struggle, and triumphs of the LGBTQ plus community. It has declared to all of us that love is love. It gives a vital message of safety and dignity to a marginalized community. While I understand that we will have the pride flag raised this year, I also know that pausing and questioning such representation as we seem to be doing now with bringing this discussion in sends a painful message of exclusion. Reviewing policy is certainly very good governance, but I hope it is applied systematically across all city policies, and this one is not being singled out because of what it has stood for. Our city is at its best when every resident feels safe, seen, and celebrated, and if by vote we find that the raising of the pride flag is removed from or not mentioned explicitly and clearly in the policy, it would feel like Groundhog Day. like the day we stood here years ago asking for our leaders to be vocal supporters. This is a city that has supported our organization's work for over a decade, so we know you understand what it takes to build a thriving, diverse community. We urge you to stand by that value and ensure that the Progress Pride flag continues to be part of San Ramon's present and future as a testament to our collective commitment to equity and inclusion for all. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

There are no more speaker cards, but we did receive written public comment from Douglas Medlin, which is before you and in the red binder in the back of the room. All right.

I acknowledge receipt of that as well. All right. Then I'm going to close public comment. And now, uh, Any other questions for staff? But it's time for us to have a discussion, debate, however you want to call it, and then provide some direction to staff on how to move forward. We'd like to start off.

I just want to make amplifications to the draft if I can.

Sure.

Yeah. yeah did you want me to read do you want to read it through the red line that i wanted to include in the draft or do you want me to cite just to the just to the statute as long as we're clear at the end what it is that we're approving then no problem i'm fine no problem yeah yeah so this is related to what i what i brought up at the policy meeting related to religious flags and prop for-profit flags so uh bear with me because i'm going to read through it because i think it's important that we get it in the record um so uh basis and probate um prohibitions Because I believe the flag policy should emphasize what why we can't fly these flags Government speech the city's flag poles and flag stands serve as instruments of the city's official expression They are not open to the public as a forum for private speech All flags displayed on city-owned flag poles and flag stands represent the official sentiments of the city of San Ramon the city stand retains sole authority to determine which flags are displayed and Citation U.S. Constitution Amendment 1, California Constitution Article 1, Section 2. Religious organizations. Flags representing religious organizations shall not be displayed on city-owned flag poles or flag stands. The display of a religious organization's flag on government property constitutes a government preference of one religion over others and risks an unconstitutional establishment of religion. U.S. Constitution Amendment 1, Establishment Clause, California Constitution Article 1, Section 4. for-profit organizations. Flags representing for-profit or commercial organizations shall not be displayed on city-owned flag poles or flag stands. Display of a commercial entity's flag on city property implies city endorsement of that enterprise and may constitute an unlawful gift of public resources to a private party. California Constitution article... 16, Section 6, California Government Code, Section 1090. Political organizations. Flags representing political parties, political action committees, or other partisan political organizations shall not be displayed on city-owned flag poles or flag stands. Such displays would constitute use of public resources for partisan political purposes. California Government Code Section 8314, California Constitution Article 1, Section 2. Other nations. Flags of foreign nations shall not be displayed on city-owned flagpoles or flagstands as an expression of the city's official sentiments. The conduct of foreign relations is reserved to the federal and state government and is beyond the scope of our municipal authority. U.S. Constitution Article 1, Section 10, Article 2, Section 2. You may cross-check those sections as well, but...

um thank you yes um the the one that I would have a question on is uh California uh Constitution article 16 section 6 did you say I I have um also section 5 which was cited in in one of the seminal cases um LA versus Fox or versus LA um and and that one talks about um No making of an appropriation to pay from any public fund to aid any religious sect, church, creed, or sectarian purpose. You may also want to do that one. I am frankly not familiar with Section 6.

You know what? It was an annotated note inside related to it, but Section 5 is just as fine if that's... Or both. Or both is fine.

I can look up 6 now and then we'll see if they're... Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. That was it.

Okay, thank you, man. Yeah, I think we do have that language in our policy already. No, no, not the codes.

Not the codes. No, no, no. This was this was something. Sorry. I'm going to explain. I want to explain why.

Forgive me. I'm sorry. It's a difference. What's in there? I'll explain.

I'll explain. It's because it's because oftentimes we receive requests from citizens related to. flags which are spurned on from other requests why can't i fly this flag why can't i fly this flag right and the basis reason that we have generically is we can't fly it because it's religious we can't fly because it's a nation without understanding citation because we point to the flag policy we send it out to individuals but it just says we can't it says why we it doesn't explain why we can't i just want to amplify the reasons why we can't that's all

no i understand that yeah are are you saying you want the citations in the yes yes okay yeah that's what i didn't know yeah i want the citations in the policy beyond just why we can't fly it i want to know i want people to know why we can't fly i understand yeah are you asking um to have all that language written or just the the specifying california article 16 section sounds like five might be worthy as well section five and six just that robert

i'm asking yes i'm asking for that language to be put in okay okay specifying which code yeah and we can certainly check the citations um and you know with with council direction we can correct them if necessary yeah that's fine and one other item of clarification do you want them in as footnotes in the body parenthetical what do you

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you, the city manager. I forgot to mention in the beginning, in the first page of the flagpole policy, we have what the flag cities can fly, and we can't fly religious flags, but as a footnote annotation. Just to make it easier to read.

Yeah, yeah, no, no, absolutely.

Yeah, I don't want this to be like a biblical verse. I want this to read like... Citations. Citations, yeah. Gotcha. Okay.

All right. Other comments?

Thank you. Yep. Okay. First of all, thanks, Policy Committee, for working on this and bringing this to council table. So just to make sure I understand, Policy Committee recommends to fly the flag other than whatever the list is, right?

Well, specifically, the Policy Committee commented on the policy, not one specific flag. Not one specific flag, but right.

But we can fly the flag. We didn't talk about the flag. We didn't talk about any flag. Not any flag, but is that commemorative flagpole can be used to fly the flag? Is that clear from the policy committee?

What we discussed was that the commemorative flagpole will fly commemorative flags that are national and state but I you know I am going to propose a minor edit because I have to explain something later about what's happening with federal and state government right now with the current federal administration basically trying to wipe out all acknowledgement of people of any of these initiatives. So I'll have to explain some of that when I speak. But specifically, we just talked about revising and updating the current flag policy, not any specific flag.

Okay. Sounds good. Because I don't want to go back and tell why we should fly the flag. Okay. That's good. Thank you.

Right. Correct.

So I just want to walk through each of those. that's uh part of the discussion right so uh I see the option one approved commemorative flags remain approved until the council member requests a review now um option one and option two I'm looking at them definitely from our experience looks like uh this is getting um every time when we do with the current policy uh there is uh political awkwardness is coming up and it is also becoming a burden for council members to every time either add a flag or remove flag that's uh going to be a problem for us uh if he continues to use the same uh policy and the second thing is uh provide long-term consistency awards uh repeating annual but then uh again i'll come to that point uh But then on the option two, all commemorative flags reviewed and approved each January. So I think that's a better option from my perspective. The reason is we will approve all the flags start of the January so that we have a clarity on which one we are flying. And also the second point, council reviews all proposed flags for upcoming year. That's good that we can add that one. But then if anything that comes up, which in compliance with the policy, we should add that as part of our ad hoc part. I believe that's all there is.

That's in the policy.

That's in the policy.

Yeah. So we wouldn't say just to be very clear, option two does not mean flags approved in January is the end all be all for the year. We're not accepting any other. So at any point during the year, any individual council member can propose another flag to be flown if space is available.

awesome now uh yeah the option two definitely that will provide um a good oversight and also updates to the council see uh perpetuity is good and bad because at certain point if it goes uh some of the flags if they become uh obsolete then if council is not reviewing it every year they can be continuously we keep flying it right so that we don't want that to happen so i think um option two is sounds really good but few things i want to definitely add is uh on uh who is a requester they are supposed to provide the flag

The way the policy is written is the city provides the flag. The city purchases and gets the flag for the commemorative flagpole.

So I would say that better they provide the flag. Actually, that's part of government speech. We have to own the flag. So even if somebody were to say, hey, use this flag, we have to cut them a check. And we also want to make sure that we're standard with our sizes. I believe it's three by five or somewhere around in there. So we have to purchase the flag. And that would be another advantage of option two. We could purchase them all at the beginning of the year. and not do a mad scramble. That's why we have that two-week clause in there. We would like it two weeks before flying so we can scramble to get it. But if it's a very specific flag, then it might take a little bit longer.

okay so that's uh if that's what um we have to go through the pot like if we need to follow that process then that's okay and then um I like the two flags that we can fly only thing is we need to sort out which flag is going to be on top which flag is going to be on the bottom or as council member join it suggested can we do it two weeks once in two weeks but um One thing I like Council Member Rubio, sorry, Vice Mayor Rubio mentioned about whichever the flag first time got adopted, that can fly on the top and the following flags, whichever getting adopted, that can fly at the bottom. So that way we can have a consistency. So I think that's my feedback.

That's it. Thank you.

Right. Thank you.

yeah i i just um i don't know if we i guess we can we can vote for one or the other and then work these things out later right i mean as far as because the the city manager mentioned wanting to know what the flags are going to be flown at the beginning of the year but then you also said we could you know we could change if if a council member gets a request by a resident that they want to fly a certain flag, then we can take it up anytime, right? And right now it's not complicated because we don't really have that many flags to deal with, but it's possible at a later date we might have more flags and then we have to really figure out when we're going to fly each flag.

but uh do we so do we just need to we don't need to work all those details out right tonight do we that's what we're requesting is to update the policy and yeah we want we're not figuring out which one yeah just the policy i mean as far as one or two right is that what we're talking about no no well yes and no yes um basically we're only going over the policy not necessarily which flags i mean because that's going to be discussed. It's basically like right now we only have two flags that we have approved. If somebody wants to approve it later on, like say somebody wants another flag in three months from now before the new year, they can still follow the process. The city council member bringing it before as under matters initiated, and then it's brought before as a business item for consideration by the whole council. So that can still happen. It's an evolving thing, but the once a year approval is sort of a, our ability to go back and look at the whole list one time and just say hey is this still what we like or not is there something else we maybe failed to add and we want to add you know those kind of things so yeah i understand thank you all right and you wanted to provide some information federal Yeah, so as it turns out, I do want to clarify the comments that were made, I believe are valid. I mean, we've already approved the pride flag, the disability pride flag as well. I don't see why we wouldn't include that in there as part of the examples. I also think that given that this administration has removed all forms of recognition of diversity, equity, and inclusion, we can't strictly rely on state and national commemorative flags right now as we speak. So what I would propose, yes, we can keep that as an example of including, but I think we should add um language that also states as well as historically and commonly celebrated commemorative flags at various government buildings and municipalities that way it's clear that The state and national right now is not reflecting the historical practices, nor likely the future practices of what we would normally acknowledge. So we're under unique circumstances. And I think given that we have to sort of stipulate that language.

So you want that added in addition to the nationally and state designated awareness?

So after the sentence where you finish giving all the examples, I would like to add the Pride and Disability Pride Month flags because we have them already. And I want people to rest assured that we might as well acknowledge them there. And then after Heritage Month, at the very end, we can just do a comma, as well as historically and commonly celebrated commemorative flags at various government buildings and municipalities. meaning they're recognized by government entities here throughout California and other municipalities that we've seen. We have stipulated what is not acceptable through that California code that was just the Article 16, Section 5 and 6 that will provide some clarity on that, what's not included under that. So I don't think we need to worry about people having a misunderstanding. um so and as far as um i would like to add with um after that one statement uh may be displayed at the same time on the commemorative flagpole just to make it clear because you know we may not live we may not be around when someone needs clarity later this one this way it's clear that we're talking about no more than two on the commemorative flagpole um And then as far as which one goes above and below, I just feel this was just my personal opinion. I did not hear an objection during the meeting, but so it was my impression we were in agreement that the first flag requested would go on above and the second below. And the reason I say that is more out of respect for the people who brought the first flag forward. I wanna make sure that we respect people don't feel that they are being sort of a shoe to the side. This means a lot to people. This isn't just a flag. This is truly a lived experience. And I think people always underestimate that. They think it's just something like, I don't know, putting on the right clothes for the right day. That is not exactly what it means a lot more than that. There is a history to that. There are daily struggles behind all of that. And at the same time, celebrating triumphs and the things that we have accomplished together as a society. And I really think we need to understand that. And I'm happy to have a conversation with anyone who would like to have a greater discourse about that. But an alternative option, if just as far as that goes, I stated my preference, but an alternative option can also be that we rotate every year, just rotate them because there's two, you can just rotate them. That's the other option I have. But I do not agree with 15 days for each because that's actually undermining the whole point of a month. The whole point is that it's a month we're celebrating. We're not celebrating 15 days. So I think that that should be out of the question. That's all.

But we have other ways to, like the digital board, right? The marquee?

I just don't think that's a necessary option.

So how could you put two flags up on one pole?

You can't.

It looks ridiculous.

No, it doesn't.

It does.

That's an opinion.

That is an opinion. Yours is an opinion, too.

think okay it is an opinion all right i i have an opinion also and i go back to what the our public comment was about the two flags that will pay the price for that. Somebody's not going to feel that they're the winner. Somebody's going to feel like they're the loser, their flag, that they're not appropriately represented because the higher position typically in flag policy and flag etiquette designates a position that's higher and more important. And I, I don't care how you sell it as first come first served or however you want to say it. Uh, it creates confusion and it creates, uh, somebody will not be happy with that. And so I. I'm for just one flag at a time on the commemorative flagpole. I'd be okay with two on the, on the marquee. Uh, but just one flag on the commemorative flagpole. And probably if we're gonna go with a January decision point, or if that's the route we go to review those each year or an annual thing, then we determine that month, what is it gonna be? And maybe it is every other year. If there's two to be flown, we can decide how we do that. But I just see more problems, then benefit if we try to fly two flags. And that'll be an emotional discussion for somebody. I can tell right now.

I forgot to mention one thing. I'm so sorry. It has nothing to do with what you just said, by the way. It's just something I forgot to mention as it pertains to option one and two, and I wanted to make sure to state that so that we have each other's feedback on that, if that's okay.

Okay. Go ahead.

All right. um so for option one that was an option that was met that i mentioned during the policy committee meeting because it's something that i actually had learned the city of martinez does both the city council and the unified school district where they approve it one time in perpetuity until unless someone feels the need hey we need to change this pull it and change it. Now, if the next agenda item is going to be about efficiencies, that may be something to consider, but it's up to, you know, I'm just explaining sort of the rationale behind that. Now, the second option I am fine personally with either option. I mean, I, I think it's both work for, they both have advantages. Um, but I just wanted to give historical context about where option one came from and why. That was it.

All right. Well, any other let's, let's address these kind of 1 at a time. So we were talking to 2 flags on a bullet 1 time. Any other thoughts on that? And then yeah, so that's going to need some direction here.

Yeah, I understand your concern. Like, someone will feel bad that their flag is below the other flag. But then. it will it is same when we are going to fly 15 days someone flag and then whose first flag is flying first 15 days whose flag is flying second 15 days that is also going to hurt their emotions right and i don't know yeah so that will that will be also a problem but in this case as uh voicemail rubio mentioned that we are celebrating the whole month and when we put that in the policy we are very clear about that right so if someone is requesting us to fly the flag hey this is the policy that we are following and according to this policy this flag will be on the top and this flag will be at the bottom so it's part of the policy it's nothing that we are picking and choosing each individual flag at that moment. That way we are very clear on that one. So that way, even as city, we will be protected through the policy. So that's one reason that I would like to go with the option of flying two flags, whichever first comes on the top, whichever second comes next to it.

So, but I guess my question is when we have a workshop in January, which flag is first and which flag is second? Because we're going to prove it at the same time.

Let's say, for example, if we are approving, that's a really good question. Let's say if we are already flying pride flag, and then someone comes within that month, in the same month, I want to fly this specific flag. The first option will go to the one which we are already flying, which is, let's say, LGBTQ plus pride flag will be flying at the top. And if we approve the other flag, then that will go below that. So the ones which are already approved, they'll get the top residence. And in case if we get to a point where we say that, hey, this is a new. request came up and this month we got these two new flags in that case council will decide which will go up and which will go down that should be part of the policy it's up to council discretion i yeah i just think that's setting ourselves up for some problems that's that's just my opinion i i have seen this kind of thing before and

When you have it clear like that, when you start talking flag etiquette, there is no first come first serve if we're doing it at one time.

You can also rotate it, which was the other option I gave. Right. And then everybody has equal chance. There's no competition. Because if you're rotating it, then one year William flags on top and the next year the other one is. And it's equitable.

Well, each year you're going to be considering...

you know flags it's you know uh it's kind of fresh slate every year when we get there i have a suggestion i have a suggestion what if um with what the mayor was saying fly one flag but um you know as we talked about in the council uh sorry the policy committee meeting um recognizing nationally recognized flags flags that are typically flown each month of every year um and then for flags that come ad hoc that i'm sure somebody's going to come up some new holiday or some new something whatever um we could fly that on well not fly we could put that on the digital marquee during that month versus versus flying another flagpole but like the nationally the ones that are state recognized nationally recognized flags

know what about flying just those on recognizing those in january and flying them on their respective month um thank you for your suggestion by the way council member uh zhryna um even as it stands the number of flags that are are available to consider um it is not going to be every month or nearly every month where we're gonna have two flags. I mean, we're talking about maybe three months out of the year where that may happen. So the reality is, I don't think we're going to have this problem as much as we're talking about it. I think that, and also, again, we just mentioned that this is an expression of the council's It's a council, the city's voice, and the council is expressing the city's voice, the residents' voice. And if, God forbid, something happened in 10 years from now, which I hope they update their flag policy in 10 years, but the reality is something happens in 10 years, and it's the zeitgeist calls for something at that moment where we have to step up and do the right thing. then we'll think about that. But I think that the, in my humble opinion, I don't share the fears that have been conveyed at all. I just don't see that it's actually, it's not gonna happen. It's not even feasible, even if we wanted to come up with every possible thing under the stipulations we've issued.

Well, I just, yeah. I hear you. I just think our policy should be very clear and not left to interpretation or kind of big debate and discussion. When we get to a point where we're considering which flags to fly on which month, then it's just a quick... We can debate it at that time and make a decision and move on. But if we did ever have a situation where there's two flags at one time, there's not going to be a winning solution for everybody.

How about this? Instead of rotating every year, how about 15 days we rotate? I know it adds additional work for staff. Why don't we just rotate in 15 days?

one will go top one will go bottom then 15 is just rotated it's just rotation yeah i mean the thing is is that and that actually eliminates all together everybody has you know has a period to be on top and the bottom i really disagree with the 15 days for one flag and 15 days for the other because that's just undermining the whole purpose of we're celebrating a month a month out of the whole year for something that means profoundly something to people. It really means something. It's the struggle, the triumphs of people. And I know some people just want to dismiss that as something like, oh, it's just fabric. It's not fabric. And I think when we start to even consider that, it's a little insulting in my humble opinion, just as somebody who identifies with both flags that we've talked about so far, I find it insulting. And I speak as a person in group of that.

When I chaired the policy in 2021, when we got this policy, at that time, I thought we covered all the bases, but then now we are here, right? So I'm sure we will learn new things and we can always, as a council, we can come back and we can see something. If we learn, we can fix it. It's not like it's a done deal, right?

Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't hear you say two weeks for one and two weeks for the other. You were talking about Flip flipping them 2 flags and flipping them at 2 weeks. Yep.

Yep.

Oh, that and that's a different option.

Yeah, that's a 3rd option on how to handle that.

Okay, so all right. Well, I. Did you have a comment?

I just think we should, I mean, with the pride flag, it's been going on quite a while, and there's a tradition of June. And I think we should look at the tradition that's been established over time. And that because of that would get preference, I think, for the month of June. You know, so I think if there are certain times of the year that we traditionally do it, I think we're I think we make a stronger argument if there is a history of what's been done in flying particular flags, and that should be part of our policy.

Yeah, that's up to our discretion, right? So that is the council discretion. That's what it is already there, right? So we can say that, hey, June, we'll fly only one flag. That's up to us, yeah.

So I have a question. I want to see your answer to this question. Go ahead. What about the folks that... who genuinely, genuinely just want three flags, no other flag, because it feels like you're picking a side. What about those people?

If we have a policy that we can only have up to two flags at a time, that is the policy at the time.

You gave an answer to your question.

No, no, no. That's what I understood your question.

No, my question was if somebody wanted, you know, my question was if somebody wanted, somebody doesn't want any other flag to fly, but the city, the state, and the country flag.

Oh, okay.

Because the concern is that we're either leaving out people here or, you know, we're being, you know, we're offending people here, et cetera. What about the people that don't want to see other flags? Because there are those two.

I thought we had already moved forward on that conversation. So we want to again, going back and having that conversation again? No, no. I don't want to avoid it. We can't. You just skirted it right under the carpet. The policy committee, you guys, that is the first question I asked, right? Okay, with that, I want to actually move the motion.

Please well, I'm not done with you. Can't you guys are going back again?

We're not going back to Jeff.

He can call me.

I didn't make I didn't make a motion.

I didn't make 30 minutes again to order call to order call for a motion if you want, but we're still going to have discussion.

I'll call to the order uh sorry call to the motion but if I can if I can make a request um there's been a lot said tonight and in order to clarify the direction of Council I would request that we do a either a straw poll or get Council confirmation on each item that was mentioned in order to have clarity because I I'm not particularly clear if you were to make a motion to approve the policy with changes and everything added tonight, I'm not sure we have clarity on what those items are. So I would suggest mayor that we call for just a summary of each item. So we are clear as staff with a vote, a straw poll on each one. We don't have to do the polling on the computer, but we could do either show of hands or mayor, if you want to do a,

a call for each vote um that i would appreciate just so we're we're very clear as to what the changes are because right now i'm i'm not exactly 100 clear i'm not either but i i still want to get my comments out i mean because i i wanted to make a comment on this idea of listing specific uh months in the policy i i don't think that's a good idea either i think you should just leave it commemorative flagpole maybe use to recognize nationally and state designated awareness and heritage months. When you start saying including but not limited to, as we heard tonight, somebody is going to feel left out. And then you're going to start having a whole laundry list if you want to include everybody. And I would just say it's pretty clear when it says nationally and state designated awareness and heritage months. And then it's up to us to figure out

We have to add, Mayor, just so we don't forget, we have to add that as well as historically and commonly celebrated commemorative flags at various government buildings and municipalities because this federal administration has felt that somehow any talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion is a threat to them somehow. So we have to expand that right now because we cannot rely on the definition defined by this current federal administration.

But I don't understand why you say it's got to be at facilities because we're talking about the commemorative flag paragraph, not other facilities, just the flag.

It's just making clear what kind of flags we're talking about. That's all. So by saying historically and commonly, it's making it clear what we're referring to. And it's even clearer when we talk about the articles. If we include the Article 16, Section 5 and 6, it further refines that so people are clear about what's included and not included. That's all.

Yeah, well, I mean, not part over on that language, although I think adding other facilities might make it sound like it's going to be okay on the flagpoles in front of City Hall where that's not getting done.

No, not City Hall. It would be the commemorative. And I made sure to say government buildings and municipalities, which are cities.

And is that clarified in the state of California or nationally?

I would say probably we can say government buildings in the state of California. If we want to make sure we're consistent and staying in the spirit of California leading.

If I could just interject on that point, It is a bit vague, historically and commonly displayed at various California government buildings. At that point, then the council would be asked to either interpret it on an ad hoc basis as to whether or not it falls into that category, or the council can tonight decide to define that with a little more precision.

Well, historically, we obviously have, we now have two flags that have been historically approved, right? We also know that historically in the state of California, there are common flags that we can refer to within the state of California. Did you want a particular website or the state government, California state government website? it's not what i want it's what it's whether the council wants to make this decision on an ad hoc basis or whether you want to lend a little bit more guidance in the policy itself to me it is making it clear that we are referring to flags that we have historically and commonly seen in and it's intentionally broad because we also exclude have the exclusion factor so it's intentionally broad so that people are able to, you know, we are able to, but specifying that this is only in front of government, we're talking about government buildings in other cities, right? So the thing is, is that in California, so It's just making sure that we are not accidentally saying, you know, say something that's flown at a park, right? We're not talking about that. We're talking about structural buildings that are government supported. You know, these are flags that we see at organizations that are government entities, so as well as other cities. So, for example, the disability flag is not uncommon. There's other cities in Long Beach and as well as I know, Clayton has another one in April for autism awareness. So, you know, there's different things that different cities do, but we will decide every year which one we're comfortable with.

OK, so it's the former choice and not the latter.

What do you mean? Can you repeat that, Martin? Can you specify it?

First choice being deciding on an ad hoc basis as opposed to lending more precision at this point.

Yeah, I'd almost rather decide on an ad hoc basis. If there was some flag that we wanted to fly that maybe wasn't nationally or state approved but was historically done, I'd say, okay, we've got a policy. We can... On an ad hoc basis, consider an exception to that policy. And council member forwards it rather than having that vague language in there that.

I honestly don't know how it's vague because I specified specifically historically and commonly in a flag commemorative flags that have been displayed in front of California government buildings and other municipalities. How much more specific can I do?

Is that going back 100 years? Is it going back 50 years? Is it the last 10 years? Like for staff, we would need to understand what historically means.

and so that's where the over broad temporarily historical if we want to be so specific how about historically last two years is that or historically in the last 10 years well this is this is my point in whether you want to do it on an ad hoc basis or whether you want to lend specificity you don't have to make that decision at this point in time. You can leave the language as is, and then future councils will just decide what exactly that means as they make determinations on specific flags.

I do think it actually does need to be stated, Martin, because of the limitations of current administration that we have in our federal government. That page, I looked it up and right now, It says that this current administration removed their pride in Black Lives Matter flags from the U.S. government buildings. So, yes, we do need to specify that. I don't think there's an exception to it. I think under the current circumstances, we have to protect the most vulnerable people's rights. And we as a council are right now being asked to show the courage and the will

to speak up for those people and so i i think it's necessary i just think we're talking about mainly the the difference between the three flags in front and then that commemorative I mean, that's really the big difference here. We're really not talking about flying pride flag or any other flag in any place other than the commemorative. So I think we're kind of complicating things a little bit, aren't we? Because we have the three flag poles and those are the state and city and federal. And we're really just talking about putting other flags on the commemorative pole. So I don't think we really need to get any more complicated than that, do we?

No, it's just that we're not living in, we're living in atypical times and that language.

Things change if we have some government policy.

Then we can update the flag policy and remove it later.

Yeah, I'm not really that concerned about. How about this? Just so that we can move on. So how about this? Like we can, if the situation comes like that, then always council can make a decision on that, right? so in the end it is all council's discretion so i think whatever the current language that we have we can move forward and it clearly says it's council discretion so we can always come back if the things are coming to such an extent where it is putting that Okay, control that. Yeah. Yeah. We can come back and do that.

So, but the only thing that I do worry is, I mean, maybe the state might save us.

No, that's fine.

So if they designate it, because that might help us, but, um, but the reality is that right now, the national. at the national level, there's some really concerning things happening.

Yeah, when we really get into that kind of situation, we should be able to, the council should be able to fix it.

So can we just finish the point I was trying to make about, I think we can not list out specific months who we're gonna recognize because again, we're being exclusive in our ability to say, including but not limited to, we already heard it once that somebody felt that they were left out. And so I would just say, stop the sentence right there where it says, commemorative flagpole may be used to recognize nationally and state designated awareness and heritage months. very that that's something that we we deal with it on an ad hoc basis if if it's uh if there's a conflict we as a council can make an exception to the policy i agree no that's a good or you could just say something as simple including but not limited to those that have already been approved no no once again we are doing every year right so january so once we do it again yeah so that's that's what we do yes yeah so we don't need to mention that

So the commemorative flag may be used to recognize national as mayor said. We can stop there and remove that mayor.

Can we get the suggestions read into the record? that are being voted on line by line and then take the straw poll just to make sure that we address whatever particular issue, then move on to the next one and have clarity of council support. I'm not comfortable with nodding heads at this point. I'd rather have either a show of hands or some kind of roll call vote.

So we've talked about a lot of different points. well do you want to address the one that you're currently on uh i i did hear a suggestion about the commemorative flagpole line yeah can we get a consensus yes or no on just truncating the sentence as i indicated yes yes richard and truncating the sentence The commemorative flagpole, the line that says commemorative flagpole may be used to recognize nationally and state designated awareness and heritage months, period. It's a page four of four. Are you okay with that?

Okay. Okay. So that's first item. First item? First item. I heard at least three yeses.

That's fine.

Okay.

All yes.

Okay. And then the next item, let's talk about whether we want to do an annual review. Uh, at some point, let's say it's January, but do an annual review to determine for the year with the opportunity to. Council member nominated ad hoc throughout, you know, in the middle of the year if something. Comes up.

mayor i don't know if you want to do that one first or do you want to talk about the up higher above is the flags shall be dissipated at the same time on the uh commemorative flagpole there was um that clarity that i had to ask because the reason being is because we have to clarify that in order to better assess how whether option one or two would work better does that make sense

Uh, just say that again with the, which item you wanted was the part right here where. To fly to flag.

Yes. And it says 2 commemorative flags may shall be displayed at the same time on the commemorative. No more. Right? That whole sentence on the commemorative flag pole. It was adding that last those last 4 words. To clarify that we're talking. about the same poll um because otherwise it could be somebody could interpret it as we're talking about one at the commemorative flagpole and one in front um that goes under the state uh national or commemorative flags or city commemorative flags okay and so yeah so you have to clarify how would you you'd like it clarified then what language So the sentence reads, no more than two commemorative flags may be displayed at the same time on the commemorative flagpole. That's it, just those four words.

I'm good with that.

Okay, I'm good with that.

I'm good with that. On the commemorative flagpole. Okay. All right. Then back to how we want to do it. We want to do it. 1, 1, and done in perpetuity or do we want to. Have the ability to review on an annual basis. And have the give the opportunity for the public to comment on an annual basis back to your point. Council members. Why not? When does somebody get to say what they want to say. About it, and that would be an opportunity just for example.

Yeah. That's my option too.

same those reasons I I would prefer option two okay I also prefer option two that way it will be transparent it will be and also the good thing is in January if the new council member comes they'll get a chance to look at this policy they'll have a option to speak out their voice out their view viewpoint so some I like option two of all commemorative flags reviewed and approved each January

I agree. So we're good on that.

All right. What other points would you like clarity on?

Well, it's a speak now or forever, or at least until the next time you review this, hold your peace. So I would ask to go through each one of the additions that council members have thrown out tonight because we've heard a lot.

I think the other thing was talking about mayor, um, just to help out. It was, um, if there are two flags, uh, which one goes on top, which one doesn't, are we talking about, um, you know the first first come first serve stays on top and the second one at the bottom or rotating every other year or as by a council member of rose mentioned uh rotating after 15 days so that each one has time on at the top of the poll um what have you yeah that's good let's close this one out too so i i don't see that there's a first come first serve if we're doing it annually

uh I just it's it's we're doing it all at one time uh I and it doesn't sound like there's any appetite for doing just two weeks of one and just two weeks of the other uh perhaps what Councilmember Rose said of okay if we if we happen to have two for the same month maybe we do two weeks with one on top and flip them at a two-week interval

And also the sequence will be at the discretion of the council.

At the beginning of the year when we have the meeting.

When we have the initial meeting.

Okay. I don't want to pick nits here, but The overlap isn't necessarily going to be for the entire 30 days. So you might have one starting on August 15th to September 15th, and the other one being for the entire month of September, in which case you'd have an overlap of 15 days. Let's just say we rotate at the halfway point of the overlap.

I mean, are you opposed, anybody opposed if we just did every other year, just rotate it?

No, no, no. The thing is, here, the first point in the policy is that we are reviewing every year is going to be a fresh slate. So you cannot bring your previous years again into the review. So that means the memory is gone.

i i think what what the mayor i mean i'm sorry what the attorney was saying is is that what if for some reason the commemorative flag isn't a 30-day flag is that what you were saying yeah if the overlap isn't 30 days the overlap might be less than 30 days so we would just have it on top we would just rotate at the halfway point of the overlapping time period yeah that's is that fine good okay i just wanted to explain yeah yeah okay that's fine with me

i think i think as we do this we'll get feedback and we decide maybe what is the best policy we might modify it over time but i mean if you do it then you get you find out how it works right yeah yeah as i said like change it the next year if you need

2021, I thought that was the best policy we've written, done, but then we are here, right?

So what we can do is staff can take that direction and we can come up with language for the rotation. This policy will come back on consent once we make all the changes for council to make sure that everything is to your expectations. So we'll bring it back for final approval on consent. because there are a lot of changes and right now I don't want to publish something without the council giving a final blessing on it so I would say for this one number four um staff will come up with the language for rotational if there are two at the same time and then Council can approve that language um when we bring it back on consent all right does that sound sounds good do I do we yeah do you do you have what you need now i already got the head nod from christina it wouldn't be suggesting that if if i got the glare then i wouldn't be suggesting this but is that um do we have three or more council members saying okay with the rotational that works good i'm seeing four so right the rotational that we just stipulated meaning um at the 50 point percent point of time well i don't yeah and also i i we can do that i'm also trying to keep this clear because now we're having staff go out there and rotate flags and there's you know we'll write something um but also we're trying to minimize the um chances for either error or staffing issues or we can rotate and we can rotate with the annual review we'll have the flags

the date the duration so deep correct you from top bottom right all the variations so that way council signs off on it and then we can provide it to our public work staff who will be the ones raising and lowering the flag exactly so yeah thank you as clear as possible all right have we

we beat this horse dead enough i i just want to add if there's anything else um were there any other suggestions councilmember joy not you had the the footnotes and the citations do you still want that in there yeah please because again everything that we discussed up to right now i have um three yeses on the commemorative flagpole line truncation um five on the community uh adding the language on the community flagpole to that line um i had five nodding heads on option number two i saw four nodding heads on the rotational um language for the flags so for um if we could address uh council members way not your previous suggestions about the footnotes um do we have consensus on that just to make sure we're clear and i'd like to make clear on that that we're talking about the entire preamble um not just the footnote not just adding the right months correct

I believe, city manager, I believe we actually had consensus on the first item you mentioned, the truncation.

Yes, I did say that there was, I saw, I heard at least three yeses on the truncation.

I think we actually all said yes.

all five on truncating that that um maybe used to recognize nationally and state designated awareness heritage months period yeah right okay there was five from my understanding we were at five on everything that we discussed and then if if it is important that's just my summary i saw at least a majority but if you do want to go up and down the the dais and do a roll call for clarity um but that's just my my quick summary

I just want to make sure that, to my understanding, I think we voted unanimously on the items that you listed.

If that's the council's understanding. If it's the majority, it's important. Yes. Sorry. I didn't get my first answer question. That's okay. And I was just disrespected by Councilmember Rose. You, like, again, shut me up, but that's okay. But I want to understand, like, from your perspective, why does it matter who voted, if it passed, if it's a majority? I'm just curious.

It goes on the record. So we want to make sure the record's accurate. okay but but we he collected the votes but you you're answering for everybody i'm letting him lead but i'm also making sure that's clear but you just told him that everybody voted unanimously when that's not true okay then you can stipulate what you did not vote on if there's something i don't have to restipulate i already voted maybe let's just do uh a vote for me from here on out could i suggest that we just go up and down please

Mayor, or, however, you would like to lead up mayor since I, I just do the majority was sufficient, but, uh. If anyone wants for the record. We'll go down each item and and raise a hand.

Just say yes or no.

That's okay. Do we want to do that for future items? Or do you want me to go back and call the question for each?

I know I voted yes to everything. And if you want, we could just make your life easier that way.

I think anyway, the majority is voted. So it will come in the consent calendar. So let's move forward.

I think if you're okay, we'll just move on. So the information that Council Member Joy not suggested, do we have a vote on that?

Yes. Yes.

Okay. So I'm hearing a majority on that. Yeah. So I will. Okay. All right. And is there anything else?

to be added i think we covered everything those are the five things i i would only say uh council members right now if if there's something you feel you wasn't adequately

covered over you or didn't have a... No, I just didn't get an answer to a very sincere, simple question. What about the people like this gentleman over here that raised the question? What if some people just don't want anything up there? That's a very simple question. But it's okay if nobody wants to answer it.

That's fine. I did try to address that by saying when we have a workshop in January, they have the opportunity to weigh in and speak on the issues. But that's the only way I can address that. All right, we're ready to move on.

Yes, I believe we have again the 5 items just just to be clear. The commemorative flagpole line truncation, the adding the sentence of on the community flagpole commemorative flagpole. on the commemorative, sorry, I can't read my own writing here. Option number two, we will come up with a rotational flag policy and the language that Councilmember Joye-Knight stated.

No, Councilmember Vero stated.

I'm sorry, it's the language that Councilmember Joye-Knight stated at the beginning with the clarification of the sections for each of the flags for state, or I mean, sorry, the state sections that he cited.

oh oh oh sorry yes sorry and that's it those are the five um and then the rotation because you mentioned i was talking about the rotation that was council member the suggestion that um rotating midway for um in the month that was a suggestion by council member varos i i'm hearing rotation on the actual poll if there are two flags correct i'm not hearing another rotational vote No, we voted was say if they're both one month long at the midway point, we rotate them so that one is on top and then the other one's on the bottom. And then if for some reason there's a flag that say only two weeks long, then we would switch it midway of the two weeks because... We'll come up with some suggested language. That was the suggestion is what I'm saying. I just want to make sure that that's clear.

Okay.

Is that what you meant, Council Member Burroughs?

Yeah, I think Martin already clarified that. Right. He already suggested also, right?

And I believe that's what we voted on.

Yeah, that's right.

Right.

All right. We are going to move on now. We're going to move on to Item 9.3. This is a very appropriate one here. Consideration of amendments to City Council meeting rules, meeting end time, and closed session timing.

Hmm. I'm sorry.

Does anyone need to take a break before we discuss our meeting times?

Nope.

Okay. Okay.

All right.

Take a five-minute break. Reconvene at 930.

Circulation in the library.

Karen Hollweg, we're ready. On to 9.3 which is consideration of men, Mrs and also be rules meeting and timing close session timing. And our deputy city manager Christina Franco is up again, and we are to provide direction to you.

Thank you. Thank you. So, uh, the item before you tonight is the consideration of amendments to the city council meeting rules. Um, our current meeting procedures are set forth, uh, in resolution 2019 dash 097. Um, and right now are the city council is to adjourn at 11 PM. However, the council may extend that in 30 minute increments by majority vote. At the February 10th, 2026 council meeting under matters initiated council member Joanna brought a request to discuss moving the adjournment time to 10 PM with consensus from the city council. So the option tonight, there's two different options. There's the 10 p.m. meeting end time. That would require us to amend the rules of conduct to adjust the 10 p.m. time with the same extensions of 30 minutes with a majority vote. The city attorney or city clerk would be monitoring the time and then let the mayor know as the cutoff approaches. Items not reached by 10 p.m. would move to a follow-up process, which I'll go over later in the presentation. Some pros and cons I listed out in the staff report, and I listed them here in the presentation of just a predictable end time, improved transparency, reduced staff fatigue, and more focused discussion if it's limited to knowing it's going to be over at 10 PM. Some cons would be more frequent continuations, pushing agenda items to a future agenda, and kind of creating a congestion amongst items. Some of the unfinished business options, so if it was a 10 PM, and there were items that had not been heard, these are just some options to solicit discussion amongst the city council option a automatically continue items. So the items that were not heard would get deferred to the next meeting and would be heard at the top of the agenda. If it is a time sensitive item, it could call for a special meeting and those are 24 hour notices. So we could have that within the next week to 10 days and it wouldn't have to be the next council meeting. Option C would be prioritize or time box items. So that essentially would be saying, For item 8.1, we're spending 15 minutes, and that 15 minutes, if it hasn't been completed, it would get continued on to another meeting, or you're trying to keep your discussion as concise as possible to reach the time limit that was set by the council. Item D is the mayor adjusts the order of business. So depending on, you know, the different items, you know, making new business to be a 9.4 to be a 9.1, or the mayor would have the flexibility to renumber the agenda at the meeting if, you know, a certain item wants to be heard first and not at the 10pm, the late part of the And again, these are just options to solicit discussion amongst the city council. So option two is keep the current 11 PM end time. So no changes. The pros is just flexible, no procedural changes. And then the con would be it doesn't address the issues about the late night meetings that was brought forward by the council. With that in our staff report, I also included some time saving measures for the council to consider, such as limiting presentations and proclamations per meeting. So, essentially, it would be 1 or 2 presentations or proclamations per meeting. And so everyone, every other would be deferred. That could cause some congestion congestion or those months that we have. four to six proclamations, some may have to get deferred to a different month, or it could be on a quarterly basis. There could be just some creativity of how proclamations are recognized. The adjust the mayor and council member update. So at the end of the meeting where the mayor and council member give updates, it could be limited to verbal. So verbal for the report out on which you only receive stipends for. So all of the liaison meetings that the council attends, the verbal report out would only be for those meetings that you receive stipends. Another option would be to provide a written update of your activities from the last meeting, and those could be included in the agenda packet. Standardized staff presentation. So that would limit any staff presentation to be no more than 15 minutes long. And of course, there's always exceptions with the city manager approving those exceptions, depending on what it is. uh council debate limits uh that would be limiting the council debate to just three minutes per council member uh or whatever time frame the council decides but really limiting to ensure there's concise discussion about the item enhancing the consent calendar so just expanding what items can go to the consent calendar encouraging council pre-meeting briefings so this is the opportunity that council could either do a 2-2-1 or meeting with staff for Q&A to really answer those questions beforehand or if if council is asking those questions and staff can come better prepared to answer those questions or put it in a slide or make um you know more of a statement versus at the meeting we're having that dialogue back and forth so there's more clarity to beforehand in preparation And then last but not least, is consider an earlier start time for city council meetings, such as 6 p.m. So you could do a 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. or 6 p.m. and 11 p.m., but just giving you a little bit more flexibility that you could adjust the start time of a council meeting to earlier. And again, no rank. This is just to solicit feedback or discussion. Another piece that came up during the matters initiated was not only the end time to be 10 p.m., but also considering scheduling closed sessions prior to council meetings. Historically, we tend to schedule them after the fact and it can even be for a later night. So one of the benefits of scheduling before the meeting would be to allow the public to hear the report out at the meeting. You can always start a city council meeting later, just not sooner. And then if there is a time sensitive meeting, the closed session could run up till seven o'clock and then it could continue after the council meeting if those are time sensitive that need to be decided that night. So I know that was a lot of information, but I did put in a few options. Again, this is really just discussion amongst the council is a pilot program. So you could adopt the 10 p.m. target time for three to six months and see how it works out. uh option two would be keeping to kind of status quo the 11 pm but giving the mayor more of that time management um reordering enforcing time limits option three would be implement some of the time saving measures i went over either you know a few all one really just depending on uh the pleasure of the council or option four is to take no action maintain current rules and visit later if needed or option five whatever you decide tonight So questions.

All right. Very good. Thank you, Christina. All right. Questions for Christina. What's been presented? We're going to have plenty of time for discussion after public comment. So let's keep it to questions for now.

I have one question.

Go ahead.

By any chance, do we have how many of our meetings, let's say last eight meetings or like how many times we went above 11 p.m.?

That is a good question. I don't have that information off the top of your head, but that is something that we could probably pull within the next 10 minutes.

Yeah, I would say as they're pulling that information, we typically go to about 10 o'clock and that's with having maybe two items under new business. So that's been part of the You know, one of the reasons why we're taking a while to get to matters initiated, we have the regular business items that need to occur. I'm now stalling for time for them to look up the information, but we've been, you know, unofficially tracking and it's typically around 10 o'clock, if not later with our meetings.

And we've had two recently that have gone to midnight, essentially.

Two recently that have either gone to or just a little past midnight. Yeah. So we'll come up with that.

No worries. I think that's a good data point to add.

Doesn't that mean the GAD would be at like 530 if we did six, if we started early and

That would be preferable. I'm just thinking like, are we overreacting to something that is existing or not existing? Or is it like frequently we are getting into that situation? I just want to get that data point that gives me some idea on also if possible, within that is if possible, if we know like as city managers said, number of items. Like, is it because like, I want to understand, is it because two items, four items, what?

That will take a little bit more time, but that is definitely information that we can provide.

I can give you without, yes, we'll provide that information, but typically we have been only able to schedule two, maybe three new business items or unfinished business and new business combined, because we've been realizing anything beyond that is a guaranteed 11 or midnight.

and i don't want to classify you know we're we're reacting to the matters initiated um by council um we've you know we're bringing this forward because the the council asked us to oh yeah yeah i remember i i was part of the task but yeah only thing is why why i'm asking i need the data point so that it will help us right that's all that's all i definitely want to have this discussion for sure

all right so yeah so i see we got we got three problems right we got you know the the meeting end time uh just the meeting management how we run meetings and then what we want to do about closed session scheduling so other questions related to those issues

actually the previous slide i have one sorry okay go ahead no it wasn't a question it was a comment but i'm gonna wait till we're done all right so um the closed session this one the one with the closer oh yeah evaluate holding closed session so when we are going to hold the closed session is it going to be but still we'll say that the council meeting is going to be at seven o'clock or

Yeah, well, actually, you can also, um, council can start after closed session convenes. So it's not a hard stop for closed session. If I'm getting this correct with the city attorney, you have a published start time. You can start any time after that published start time. You just can't start before. So, if you have closed session at 6, and you're out at 630, you now have a half an hour break. If you have closed session at 6, and it takes until 730, then the council meeting starts at 730.

Yeah, but that will disrupt the community members who are coming here, right? Let's say, if they're coming here, they don't have any predictable time in that case. Right? So that will be a problem. That's a trade off.

Yeah, that would also evaluate depending on what is being brought forward to the closed session.

If it.

You know, is it a 2 hour conversation? Is it a 1 hour? And I think that would be also a discussion of that start time. So wouldn't always necessarily be 6, but how we publish our.

How we publish?

I would say between the mayor, the city manager, and the city clerk, it would then be decided kind of that start time. And so then that would be published. It would be 5.30, 6 o'clock to ensure that there was enough time for the council to deliberate.

So that means that will become unpredictable for council then?

The start time of closed session? Yeah.

Potentially.

Potentially.

Or, you know, if we know we're going to have, I mean, maybe staff can communicate with the council and just clarify that. Like if we know we're likely to have a five-hour meeting date evening, maybe clarify in advance before the packet is published, you know, confirm that everybody can attend an hour earlier that day. Is that possible?

Well, I think that's what we're proposing is the closed sessions before city council. Yes.

Yes. But I'm saying that would obviously change our start time, but I'm saying, rather than potentially creating a burden. For any 1 of the council members, every single Tuesday, starting at 6, I'm saying. Would it be possible to. basically start as needed. If we have a closed session, we know it's gonna lengthen the meeting and we're gonna have a very lengthy meeting. Just planning ahead and checking in with a council and saying, hey, does this work for you this Tuesday?

Yeah, unfortunately under the Brown Act, that would make it a special meeting if we didn't have it at the same time that we always do. And special meetings have their own restrictions.

Okay, that's what I wanted to clarify. Okay.

Anyway, we'll have a conversation on that once questions are done. Yeah. Okay. All right. Other questions down to my left?

I have my own ideas of what I'd like.

I've got some ideas, and I also want to make sure we get to hear Council Member Schreinert. You initiated this one, but do you want to speak now?

no i'll wait till we're done all right no more questions we're going to open up public comment do we have any speaker cards there are no speaker cards and no written public comment was received and i do have those statistics if you'd like okay let me close public comment and uh go ahead with the statistics since January we've had 10 meetings of the 10 meetings one ended at 8 30 because there was two reports on it the remainder of the meetings seven were at 10 or after and there were two after 11 o'clock um do you have the data for last year i just grabbed the data for this year i would have to look at every um i'd have to go through all the minutes i can take a look at that data also but i believe most meetings do usually end after 10.

Yeah, yeah, it's just be nice to get sort of a whole year to look at and see overall.

And would you like for that to include special? Well, I guess it no, not no special meetings, just the regular meetings. Yes, please look up that information right now for you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Okay. All right, good. Well, We've closed the public comments, so we're ready to discuss things. I would like to kind of start with you, Councilmember Joynette, since you brought this up, and just re-express your concerns or what you'd like to see out of this.

Yeah, no concerns, really. Thank you. primarily over the last year and a half, I've noticed just one, I'll talk about staff and I won't mention where staff lives for their protection, but some, some staff members drive very far and it's a very late day for them. That's number one. So empathetically, I'm thinking about the staff and their time. The second is the citizens that attend. Um, we have citizens, elderly citizens that attend and, um, Gary, you're 30 years old. What are you talking about? You're a young man over there. Um, know we have citizens who um who it gets long and it tires out and a lot of our agenda items they are equally weighted and to to have important agenda items new business items toward the end um really isn't a good uh we don't get a good participation from the public um and now that we're gonna have zoom uh i'd like you know the ability for predictability around how long you know discussions are so That's another reason why I wanted this was more predictability. It doesn't have to end at 10. It could end earlier. Every Saturday morning, I go back and I watch myself and I see how can I do better. I do this every Saturday after every meeting to find out where could I sharpen the pencil on the question, what staff report, what public comment, what was something that I didn't think about that I could think about the next time because that just makes us better. the intent here to when i say this peace and love is to make us better advocates for running a public meeting how we run a public meeting is is an expression of how we run a city and if we're efficient i'm not saying dismissive efficient in running a meeting and efficient with our time we can be better efficient with how we run the city and that is reflective so a lot of the examples that christina had gave and thank you were things that i i thought of the one aspect though and i want to be empathetic to council member varos because he does work outside like far so i don't know if six o'clock is going to be doable but i'm going to leave that for his for him to comment when when he comments i'll leave him for say that because i remember we had this conversation last year uh at the the very first time i attended the um council city council retreat um so and the other aspect of is the the last part really that um i want to say this just council call outs i think a lot of them are very long i think a lot of them could be um constricted to and i didn't think about the ones where you get a stipend but perhaps just you know things matters that affect the city affect the citizens um i've heard comments from from people myself as well i i i've learned uh no one cares what happened in the past if that doesn't really move the needle for the city right like attending a dinner it doesn't doesn't matter um so i want to be just a bit better at what we do at our craft that's all and if there are um ways for us to i think it'll help us prepare better i love the idea of having um maybe open office hours before to come in and to address questions etc that's a great idea because we do do that we do i i myself i run up to martin or the city manager like two five minutes before But imagine how much better we could be and with much more energy during the meeting with a fuller room if people know when an agenda item is going to happen, when it's going to come up and we understand. I'm talking like, hey, this should take estimate 20 minutes, like on presentation, not the Q&A from the council. but that's where my mind was thinking and that's why I brought it up was because I just I I myself find I find myself getting better and I think we should all try to achieve that as well professionally so because this is we are professionals here so um let's let's let's do better That's all, Mayor. Thank you.

All right. Well said. Thank you. All right. You kind of mentioned Council Member Perosa. I'd like to get your thoughts next on any topic.

Yeah, definitely.

Thanks.

Thanks, Council Member Joannet, for bringing this item. So I did have concerns about this. So there are two ways we can look at it, right? One way is the hours when we start and when we end. The other way we can see is, are we running this meeting efficiently for how many hours? Let's say if I start this meeting at 4 o'clock and I'll have till 11 o'clock, does it mean that the council will start doing that till 11 o'clock? Because we are sitting here and as a council, we are trying to do three important things. One is we are doing critical thinking, Another one is problem solving. Third is decision making. So we are making these three important things. And if we give unlimited time, that's not going to happen. We are not going to make any efficient decisions. So we need to be cognizant about how many hours we want to spend in a meeting, right? So that's very important. Now, I want to just walk through one by one just quickly.

Of the time saving measures?

Yes, yes. so uh when i'm looking at let's say limit limit presentation and proclamation per meeting that's pretty low hanging fruit right then adjust mayor and council member updates limit verbal or require written let's say for example if someone want to this is still my opinion please so if someone want to provide their verbal we can limit saying that two minutes or three minutes but if you want to give more information then submit that through the written So you can speak two minutes in the council and just like five of us, two minutes, 10 minutes there. But if you want to share more information, then you can always subject as a return. And then the next one is a standardized staff presentation, 15 minutes guideline that is possible, except when we go for the budgets and all those can be pretty. Now, the next one is council debate limits, two rounds, three minutes each. Now, this can create transparency issues within the community. Community can think that why you're not asking all the questions we are expecting or something they shared with us or whatever it is possible, right? So that can create transparency issues for me and for the community. That's, again, my take on that. Enhance consent calendar, expand eligible items. We need to be very careful with that. Consent calendar. Yes, I agree. We have all the information and council can pull out any time, but still we need to be a little bit careful again. That will also get into transparency issues. Then the next one is encourage council pre-meeting briefing for clarifying questions. So typically, whichever questions that at least from my previously, we used to ask the questions, but again, If we ask, let's say, I mean, I wish I can ask all the questions ahead, but then let's see if all council members ask all their questions and done behind, like then we come to this council meeting and we are all sitting here and making conversation, then it looks like an orchestrated council meeting.

I can actually make a suggestion on that one. I wouldn't say for every question, and that's not what we're suggesting, but there could be questions that if you do need a little bit more background, any questions that you ask of staff pre-meeting, during the meeting, you can also state, I had this question for staff prior to the meeting, here's the response. And then you get it on the record instead of back and forth. And then, well, we got to wait for Christina to get up from the chair in the back and walk up. I mean, we're not looking necessarily for minutes each meeting to shave off to be more efficient. We're also looking for seconds. So that could be an option.

That practice is already my expectation. My guess is that it is already there. I expect that council members, especially for example, right now, I wish I asked that question ahead, but then it just popped up. Sure. I agree with you that whatever the questions we can put forth, which can take a lot of time for digging it and all that, but one thing is how much we can shrink that, we need to be very careful. because otherwise it looks like already they made all their decisions behind the scenes.

yeah we're not suggesting that yeah so we're not suggesting all or majority just if it is a more involved question and you know ahead of time we appreciate the the discussion absolutely so council's getting feedback from the community if that is brought forward to the staff like to include in their presentation that could also be a time-saving measure too that will be versus just at the meeting where staff isn't able to prepare or have the information that is being requested

That's right, but let's be careful as much. Definitely. We would love to share those questions at that time, but. We need to be a little bit careful how much we are asking. Head of time and also a lot of these questions comes up during the conversation. So I want to make sure that we are be cognizant about it. So otherwise. When we send the questions and it's like, oh, already I sent a question which I already got the answer, then people are like, what do you mean? So whom you're talking, where you're talking, behind the doors, those questions keep coming up. So let's be a little bit careful on that. On consider earlier start of time for city council meeting, 6 p.m., again, including me, my commute, but a lot of our community members, they drive to South Bay for work. by the time they come it's pretty much late little late so 6 pm that that can be but that that is the biggest thing that can help us for sure so that we can make the meetings much earlier but then i can say that i would definitely from my point of view i can go till 6 30. if that helps right we can start with 6 30. so that's my side thing and uh what's the next item sorry

The closed session and then there was also for the 10 p.m. is something for the council to consider here, just some, you know, how you handle unfinished business.

Yeah. So prioritize our time box items, right? That's the mayor come and prioritize and all that, right? So doing that one, mayor will be spending around half an hour, one hour easily to do that one. So it is like added burden. for mayor and also to keep track who's speaking how much and all that, that will become a problem, right? And then mayor adjust order of business again, this will become a transparency issues within the community. People may be like, okay, why all the questions are not addressed? Why this is not brought up? You know, so those, that can be a problem. What else? Automatic, yeah, A, automatically continue item Like in two meetings back, we had a conversation where one of the item I said, Hey, can we, this looks not very important. Can we move to the next meeting? Right. So I requested that, but then if it is not a very like time sensitive

then that's always under the purview of the council and the council when you made that suggestion then said okay let's move forward this can be quick and i think it was another hour um but you know automatically continue items that still would be under the council's purview um it would say it's 10 o'clock then uh the council i think would have to vote to continue the items it wouldn't just be automatic martin yes they would have to vote on each item for continuation

Yeah. Okay. So it wouldn't take long at all.

Yeah. So we should be able to, I hopefully we won't be like, I have like 10 backlogs, like one or two items at the most one item at the max. Right. So it is not like we'll have 10 items too. That's, that's my, uh, at least from my experience now, uh, call a special meeting. Like for example, if it is something like as important as budget or something, then definitely we should call for special meeting. and uh what are the other items like i saw the closed session one right uh yes so the closed session my only concern is that if this start closed session at a specific time and if it goes till seven eight o'clock that means who is coming here or who is waiting to watch online they don't have a clue when the meeting will start so that will be a problem And if we flip the other side, we say that, hey, this item needs two hours. So come five o'clock, that will become a problem. Other side. Right. So for that, I think we should still keep the same way what we are doing, because what my observation all this year is people, once we get to the closest item, people leave, then we go into the meeting and then we come back and the report is done so that they don't get stuck here. that helps them, that's for the community that will be helpful.

If I could interject on that point. Yeah, sure. Another option might be to have a closed session beforehand, and then the council could always continue until after the adjournment of the open session. It would take some creative agendizing, but we could do it that way as well.

That's a good idea, actually. So that way we'll start the meeting. Let's say 630. Then we'll say that real meeting starts at 730. Is that we are going to publish that agenda or how that works?

The published agenda would still show the regular start time for the meeting so that we don't have to make the meeting a special meeting. Oh, yeah. Or the other option would be to have the closed session be a part of the regular agenda, which some cities also do. Then they hold their closed session, and they adjourn to their closed session, and then they come back and start the open meeting.

that that sounds good actually because if we can knock out the important ones so that let's say we can have a meeting we start with new business or important something that we want to finish it while the community is here we finish those items then we can go back to closed session and come back and continue with the remaining items that will be a good idea I think

yes and the city manager just reminded me too that we could do closed sessions as a special meeting at any time we wanted to on a different day on a different day or yeah different time of the day i think depending on the item there might be some items that have to be no so it could just be any okay okay that that that's a good option because typically home uh sorry again i don't want to add new question but how many closed sessions we have typically like in a year uh

uh less than five less than five yeah so i mean it really depends usually it's negotiations is a big piece um i would say less than five yeah and last but not least one thing i would definitely request is that when we have um these kind of council meetings regularly we need to be very we need to make sure that we don't put too many items especially let's say for example today budget we got very lucky it was done pretty fast but otherwise it can take very long time and when we have something like that kind of item adding all these many items can definitely a problem so we need i know i understand if it is time sensitive you don't have much option but if there is any scope which is not within the time sensitive for example in this case with the budget and then flagpole and all those things uh i would consider thinking about whether i need to add flagpole in this agenda at all Right.

I'm not going to criticize you. No, no, no. I will accept all criticism gladly. It's a bit of a balancing act of what we think would happen versus what we can guarantee. And part of the issue right now is We're, we're able to, like I mentioned earlier, do maybe two new business items, maybe three because we're going consistently to 10 o'clock, so it just for whatever reason, it feels like we're less and less able to handle more items depending on what they are. I'm also trying to balance it with you know a council doing matters initiated and with an expectation of getting to it at some point um so maybe the council understanding with matters initiated they may be three four or five months out um we haven't had that happen yet um actually we just started doing matters initiated three years ago so that's also relatively new but it is a bit of a balance we've been trying to keep the agendas to about 10 o'clock but for various reasons it goes over

Especially when we have an important discussion, that can just cost a lot of hours. And as I said, budget items and all those. So we need to be a little bit creative how to balance it out, reduce the number of items. I think that's pretty much right. I covered everything. OK, great. Thank you. Did we do public comment on this item?

Yes. There was no public comment.

We did?

There was no public comment.

Oh, okay. All right. But you did, yes. You opened it and closed it, yes. I just want to make sure I lost track. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Let me come down this way. Richard?

Yeah, I don't have a lot of. things to say other than it would be nice to start early and get home a little early. I think we do get, you know, it's a long night sometimes and, you know, if we can balance whether it's good for the public, you know, as Councilmember Varos mentioned, you know, people are commuting and so on, so maybe That could be a problem, but I mean, you indicated 630. I mean, I was thinking six, but if 630 is doable, then I would consider that. And to get out at 10, at least make it our goal would be nice. I think we're here pretty late sometimes. But that's really all I have to say.

Okay. All right. Thanks, Mayor Rubio.

okay so um i'll just kind of go through the list from here or if you want to put it up there it's up to you um so limit on presentations and proclamations per meeting i think the best way to deal sometimes maybe with proclamations is i hate to say it but um the council doesn't really need not like each one of us does not have to make a comment about a proclamation i mean that alone could save like 10 minutes right there you know so if we just kind of i mean i think we're sharing our gratitude in giving the proclamation i don't think we actually need to say anything um And then adjust mayor and council member updates now. So I agree on a time limit, but I think I would aim more for four minutes. I find two to three to be very restrictive. I think four minutes is decent. We can survive that. And also I would encourage if we could put some language to say, hey, stick to reporting things that are key, have key relevancy specifically to San Ramon. I know I sit on other boards and there's a lot of stuff I don't report on because it has nothing to do with San Ramon. So I stick to reporting what impacts directly San Ramon so the residents are aware of that. And that's what I would like to see us kind of stick to when we do reports is the relevancy and key information to the community. And that could include an event that's coming up as well, right? But it's something important that the community should know, basically. And then I don't believe in council debate limits. I think if the staff knows, anticipates that we're gonna have a robust discussion about something, limit the number of items we have on the agenda. That's how you handle that, because we can't cut corners on that. Enhanced consent calendar items. Again, I share the concerns that council member Vero's had. I wouldn't want people to feel that we're sweeping things under the rug and just approving it without actual deliberation. So I'm hesitant to go that route. And encourage council pre-meeting briefings with Claire. Absolutely. If we have a question that we know we're going to ask and it's something that we can get an answer to in advance, why not? You know, I mean, ask, but definitely I would report that out in the statement and say, I inquired about this, here's my understanding and what I gathered and explain that so that there's full disclosure on that, right? um and then uh consider earlier start time i think 6 30 if that works for a council member rose that certainly works for me 6 30 but if we go to 6 30 i'm kind of wondering if we should end at 10 30 technically and then allow at one extension to 11 p.m should it be required right for a net total of four and a half hour meetings right um and then next slide sorry the unfinished business unfinished business um so i think um I think a good strategy was one that was just mentioned that if it's something that we know is going to require a lot more time, it may be a good idea just for us to have those meetings, those more robust meetings be a special separate meeting so that we're not sort of absorbing. I mean, I know we've had items like on a financial budget stuff where we're talking about it for an hour, straight, you know, and so maybe, you know, kind of balancing, of course, our agenda, like the city manager said, it's kind of an art, but refining that, making sure we're not overloaded. Or if we really do need the time, we don't want council to feel like we have to rush because we have four more items on the agenda to consider. So maybe it should be a special meeting. Um, I'm concerned about automatically continuing items only because we can get really backlogged. And I don't want that to happen. What are time box? Can you define that?

Time box would be, you know, for the flag policy, you're limiting discussion, you know, the whole item should be from start to finish, take 30 minutes. And if it needs to take longer, then it gets continued or the council decides to go longer. But if you time box, that way, you know, each item should take this long and it just kind of keeps things concise.

We actually get questions from either outside agencies or even residents. They'll ask, what time do you think they'll discuss X, Y, and Z? And we just do not provide a time. We don't want people, you know, we don't want to be on the record of saying, oh, you know, you can show up at,

8 30 and you'll be fine and the meeting's over by 8 30. right so that would it would give them a general estimation of when something is coming up on the agenda so okay so um yeah i i i worry about that it's kind of like you don't want to commit yourself to something that may not be feasible and now we have a bunch of things getting rolled over into other meetings um and i also think um d could be confusing to people because some people may show up for a certain item and then next thing you know we change things i don't think that's a good idea um next is closed session closed session so um i like the idea of holding you know if we start at 6 30 you know We could allow, we could do it at the beginning and maybe strive to finish within 30 minutes, but if we feel it's going to be a one hour closed session, can we put on the agenda that the start time will be at 7.30 or is that going back into a special meeting? Mm-hmm.

that would make it a special meeting so we have to stick with the same starting time same start time which which we could do if we if we had the closed session after the opening of the regular meeting it would just be the first item as opposed to the last

Okay. Oh, okay. Okay. So we just started 6.30 and it becomes an item. Okay. And that's kind of same thing that we do with everything else anyway. We don't have a set time anyway on the other things, right?

Right. The disadvantage, though, would be that people would not know exactly when to show up for their item because they wouldn't know how long the closed session is going to take.

True, true. Or maybe could that be something that we go back into? Remember, we were supposed to have a workshop for policies and procedures. And maybe if we go into the beginning, if we do it in the beginning, we limit it to no more than one hour. If we need more time and say we finish our regular business earlier than expected, and we have until 1030, but we can extend by one half hour, 11 o'clock.

we can finish it then yes you can do it that way again we we would just have to make accommodations for that in the agenda okay and then um

Because one of the things I do worry sometimes with the closed session is just, you know, we've had a full, full meeting and then we have to make really hold really important conversations, you know, in closed session and just being tired is, is not, I think is not a good thing. Um, okay. Was that what, what else was it evaluated? Okay. So that was it. Um, Sorry, I'm just double checking my notes and making sure I don't forget, because I don't want to have to ask for my time back again, I apologize. I think that should do it. So yeah, the only thing is, yeah, because the stipend thing to me about going back to the report outs, the stipend thing, that seems a little... too restrictive for my preference because there may be something we actually heard in the committee that may be of benefit to the community, you know? So that's it. Thank you so much.

Okay, I guess over to me now, and we'll just go down a list like everybody else. So limit presentations and proclamations. I. I don't know that we want to limit it, but I do agree with vice mayor Rubio that we, we, as council members can limit our conversation on it and and maybe it's just. You know. the proclamation speaks for itself and thank you for your time. Maybe somebody's really got a burning comment. We'll offer that up, but it doesn't need to be all five because we probably all have the same sentiment anyway. Same thing for special presentations. I don't know that we all have to speak, but there may be depend upon the presentation we may all want to to make some comments but but i don't think we limit the number like we're only going to do one special presentation or one proclamation each meeting uh sometimes we've had two sometimes we've had three but a lot of times we have zero and uh and some of them are kind of time based depending upon the month that that proclamation is and that sort of thing so

Mayor, a clarification about the, in particular with the presentations, historically, you know, I'll pick out the fire district would do their annual presentation. And at one point it was the norm of thank you for your presentation. We, you know, Thank you for your service to the community. There wasn't a lot of questions back and forth about how many number... I'm not saying that this has happened, but for example, how many number of calls have you had? What's your budget like? The presentations are more for information rather than a back and forth. That's more of a new business item than an actual presentation.

Yeah, I agree.

We just want to also establish that norm with the people presenting because some of them have the expectation of, I'm going to present my information today thank you and go, but then they get a list of questions and they weren't necessarily prepared for questions.

Well, I was going to say we've had some presentations, for example, some say senior advisory committee or Arts advisory or something like that. And we, we start asking questions that they have a prepared report. They're, they're not the staff and we're really putting them on a spot is very uncomfortable for them. And I think we really should listen to their presentation, thank them for their, their service and their efforts and, and the content of their presentation, but, but not drill into them too hard because they happen to be the chair that year and. somebody helped them get a presentation, they're, they're nervous enough standing up there in the first place. And they don't have a lot of the answers that it's report out, we're asking, it's more of a report out than a back and forth. Right? Yeah. All right. So that's, that's that council member, Marin cast member updates, I, we need to do better with our reports. I think we're all in agreement on that we all just need to do better and truncate, you know, shorten them up. Keep it relevant to things that are really important to the city. We do talk about a lot of stuff. We probably talk about too many social events or fundraising events or community cultural events and things like that. It's not that we can't do that, but I think we need to do a better job kind of picking and choosing. Which ones we do and not, it's not a recap of our agenda for the past 2 weeks since the last council meeting because. I mean, honestly, some of us are doing 2 and 3 things a day and we don't need to talk about all that stuff. But I agree with vice for Rubio. I don't think we limit it to whatever you get a stipend for. There's a lot of activities. I think that that we attend that. There's probably something relevant. We ought to share with the community. There's not many people still around when we do those updates, but a lot of people do go back and they listen to, they watch the video and things like that. So, but I think we all need to discipline ourselves to try to figure out how to be a little more succinct in that.

and and mayor um you know the or require written uh some some communities have implemented um council report out spreadsheets where the council members will say i went to this meeting at this time here was the important topic or whatever we'd be more than happy to establish a spreadsheet for council where you can list all of your items and then use that list as like okay highlight

know a few items off that list and then that that list is entered into the record into the agenda as officially here are the items that you covered in between the two council meetings yeah i i'm not a big fan of written updates i mean it's to me it's more more preparation more work on the part of the council members to prepare uh for that report but but certainly it could be an optional thing perhaps but I don't think we want to direct a written update for council members. And then council debate. I'm not a big fan of council debate limits, two rounds, three minutes each or whatever format. I think we just, you know, we saw a good example of this just in the last item that we talked about. We kind of went back and forth and back and forth and around and But you know what? That's a healthy discussion too. It's making sausage, but at the same time, everybody has the opportunity to say what they want to say or rebut what somebody else has said or get their perspective out. And sometimes you don't get that in two rounds at three minutes each. so i'm i'm not a big fan of that uh enhanced consent calendar i've heard some objection to that tonight i think about the danville town council that they do almost everything on a consent calendar we happen to have a lot of residents who like the idea of transparency we all appear like the idea of transparency so uh maybe it's not so much enhanced but uh we had 12 items on consent tonight uh that was a lot of items uh so didn't get any comments during from the public on any of those items or request to pull it so you know i think i think we might have some room uh But most of the things that we do put on a regular agenda or new items or new business, most of those we do need to talk about. I agree. But I will say I've seen some things on consent that I really think probably shouldn't have been on consent. We probably should have had them highlighted because the community needs to hear about those things. Okay. Pre-meeting briefings for clarifying questions. We all need to do a better job, I think, or I need to do a better job of maybe asking questions ahead of time of the staff or the city manager. Often I do that, but as has been said, sometimes we want to make the point or to ensure that the public has the opportunity to hear whatever that answer is. So just because we happen to know it, doesn't mean we hold that information and we're ready to make a decision now sometimes it needs to be brought to light and everybody needs to hear that uh start time i'm all for earlier start time uh i'm all for six o'clock but i understand if we have a real constraint with a 6 30 but uh i'd even prefer to go early at six if we could what's what's the next item and for the reasons as stated staff time are the audience, the level of participation, the clarity of mind at the end of the day when we get to the important items. Automatically continue items. I would say whenever we get to the end time, we're close, we continue to do what we've been doing, which is we take a vote to continue for 30 minutes. Uh, or not, and we, we keep that in there to just say, nope, we're going to stop and we'll continue to the next meeting because we've reached the end time. Uh, I, I, I don't know that that's I don't think that's the right way to go personally. We call a special meeting. We have that ability. Now we can call a special meeting. So. I'm not sure we need to do anything different on that prioritizer or time box. Yeah, I guess I could do that. I guess a city manager could take a stab at that, but that is a lot of work. And then even if you do say 30 minutes or 60 minutes or whatever, the discussion will go the way the discussion goes, and it may be, uh we need to take the extra time to to discuss something even if it has been boxed so i i i i'm okay with that but i'm not i'm not really a big fan of that Uh, marriage or business, we can do that now. So, there's nothing new there if we really felt we needed adjust the order and move something up. We can. But again, as has been said, there's some people that come based. They look at the agenda order and they go, I'm not going to show up until I know these guys talk forever. So I'm not going to show up for an hour. And if we move that thing up 1st, they missed it and now we're going to hear about it. So. Uh, but there might be some items. I've seen this where it's important that we actually do accelerate an item and we have that ability right now.

Mayor, that scenario would be if we didn't expect a crowd for a particular item and we just happen to, you know, it's, I haven't experienced that here in San Ramon, but I've experienced it in other cities where it was like, wait a minute, we see the speaker cards being pulled. You may want to take that new business item that's at the end and move it to the top. And you make that statement. We know there's a lot of people here to comment on this. We're going to reorganize the agenda. As you stated, you have that ability now.

I've seen that done also.

Yeah, typically, we have a good idea. If we know there's going to be a lot of people, then we make sure that that's appropriately agendized.

Yeah, I'm okay with a closed session before council meetings. And if we don't get it done, then we'll then I'm okay with continuing it after the regular council meeting. The impact there is, you know, whoever's there for the closed session, If it's a negotiator or if it's a, let's say it's a personnel matter or something like that, we're impacting those people as well to them having to wait for our regular meeting to finish before we finish up. We only have a limited number of closed session items. I would say if the schedule, if travel schedule and everything else was possible, we'd do it ahead of time. Uh, but if not, then, uh, call a special meeting and knock it out.

And it's, it's few and far between, but there are some scenarios where if we have outside council, um, we are paying them by the hour. So, you know, having an outside, uh, council or somebody who's paid by the hour sitting in the audience for four hours, we're paying them for four hours. Yeah.

Yeah. And then, uh, and then as far as the, the end time. Yeah, I'm good with, if we can start earlier, then I'd say we put in kind of an end time instead of 11 o'clock, then it's going to be, we adjust it, and we do that 30-minute decision point starting at 10 o'clock or 10.30 or however we adjust the initial start time. But... I would say whatever we decide on, if we can come to some kind of an agreement tonight that we do it as a pilot for six months and see how it works out and then adjust it. So I'm okay.

we'll make some mix for logistics uh city attorney our municipal code right now states that our regular meetings start at 7 p.m um so to adjust that it would be an introduction of an ordinance adoption of an ordinance 30 days for it to go into effect so we're looking at august that a start time could change to 6 30 correct

All of the above correct.

And also, I should note some of the items that we're talking about. It could be muni code. It could be the meeting rules and procedures. It could be the rules and procedures that we're working on. It could be council norms. So many of the items that we've discussed live in different places. So tonight, what we're looking for is direction, and then we'll make sure that they land in the right places on the specific items

that council would like to address if any so all right so i mean i thought that was one of the proposals as a was a pilot and i'd i'd be okay with that but if it's too much administration then okay let's let's make it make whatever the change is change the ordinances change the policy change the whatever's and then if it doesn't work you can change it again yep may or may i add a Yeah, that was it for me.

Go ahead. So the only thing that the mayor brought up, and I thought it was a good point. So on these presentations that we get, these special presentations, whether it's a fire department or PD or any or, you know, our committees, but especially our committees, I feel like. if we do say something at best, maybe it should just be more like it's a small clarification if we have a recommendation. Does that make sense? Because the advisory committees to some degree, they need our instruction, our guidance, what we're looking for. And so I think that to some degree, it is that part of it, at least being able to maybe just make a, if we really feel that we have a, good idea and making a recommendation, maybe. So the special council, as the city manager mentioned, whether we have them here in the beginning and we don't finish and then we go at the end and have the close finish at the closed session at the end of the meeting even now if our meeting runs later they're sitting there waiting for us and we're paying for them so maybe something to consider is that if it's say you know i can think of some of the closed sessions we've had where we have extensive conversations with the special counsel and if we're paying them by the hour maybe should just be a special meeting closed session

and that way we're not having them just sitting there in the audience whether it's in the beginning or the tail end of the meeting nothing yeah okay so um as a council member it's my responsibility that i stick to the agenda item focus on my agenda item I'll focus and prepare ready and stick to that agenda item so that we can be cognizant as well as efficient. So as a council member, that's my responsibility, I feel. So that I, at the best, we will try to see that how we can make efficient decision rather than going into tangent. That's my responsibility. then the second thing is about the closed session if we start initially the problem is that at least i think is that people will be sitting here for public comment i would like to at least finish the public comment and if there's any top priority business items we should finish then we'll get into the closed session that way people who want to make a public comment they can finish it and they can move on rather than just waiting there for us to come back and all that that's on the and um the most important thing is how we can cut time for our city manager comments

I have cut them out last two times and I'm prepared to cut them out tonight. But actually, I know that's a bit of a joke, but what I update in our comments are on our event calendar. So I can also change that to not just do events, but items that I think are pertinent and maybe not do comments if there's nothing. I remember my predecessor hardly ever had comments, but I'm now extending the meeting by going off on the tangent.

Robert? No, you finish.

Oh, yeah. Just that's for light side. And going back to that verbal and written, I'm okay with, but then we need to have a limit on that verbal. There are times I've seen where we went like 15 minutes, 10, 15 minutes. That's like with five people, five council members, each takes 15 minutes. That will be like almost one hour we'll be sitting here. So... I know vice mayor mentioned four minutes. That means five of us means 20 minutes. So we need to know that one. mean i can go in between like two i said two but you said four but then i can go with three minutes three minute verbal and anything that you want to share you can share written to the community well i i was just thinking that um you know it doesn't mean we have to use all four minutes it's just that's a cap you know yeah but um i'm sure there will be four minutes four minutes will go to six minutes but

It's just that it would be hard. Like even if I list it, for example, just listing like, for example, my last report, I literally didn't say any details because I didn't want to delay, but I have 15 events and meetings attended that I, I even if you you're now I have to resort to writing it. That is a huge toll, and so I'm just saying if we are gracious enough to give us four minutes if we have to. But I think for the most part it's really about us exercising sort of an under a common understanding and self discipline to make sure we're not. Giving unnecessary details. i'm sorry the timer has that ability to go to four minutes yeah yeah if you if you did want to help we can set the timer at four minutes yeah i'm fine with that i think we should be able to do that we can start that immediately yeah yeah mayor we'll test drive we'll test pilot it today no i'm kidding mayor we could share um the calendar that debbie shares the calendar that debbie prepares for us we can attach that to the staff report as well because it does have all the events

We could, but that's also an estimate of who might attend things.

No, that's all. The point I'm trying to make is that we don't do a good job of announcing some of these things and we come back after the fact. We tell people we went to such and such. Oh, I understand your point. Yeah, that's my point. Not in place of call-outs, not in place of reports. It's just something where people could look back and say... Ah, okay. Because the mayor's meeting, candidly, I stopped going to them because there's nothing that goes on over there except it's the same people that keep coming, and there's no public comment. If anything, it's the same motley crew. And why? And I get people who ask me, I didn't know that there was a mayor's conference. Can I go to those mayor's conferences? It'd be nice if people knew ahead of time. That's my point.

Okay. Yeah, I... I don't have a problem. Is there a way to publish?

We can do that under item 10, which is council matters initiated and report outs. We can just, as an attachment, put the council calendar of events as it's updated. I would like to share a written version. I'm not trying to sell it. but i will share it with the council about what it does look like um in terms of putting in what you attended okay because then it's it's almost a follow-up to that council calendar it's it's almost like saying i did attend this i attended that that's a whole nother issue is right if if

We talked about this during the council retreat, I think also, but if we sign up to attend something, then we ought to attend it. We ought to attend it on time. We ought to participate when it's time to participate, or if we don't have a role to participate.

we're just observing then we we fulfill that role i i would suggest the council upcoming calendar doesn't specify who is scheduled to go to what it's just yeah here are the items probably a better way and then you could do a follow-up of what was attended so But we can, again, a lot of these suggestions are going to live in different areas and we're going to look for, you know, concrete direction tonight. There are things that we can work on. I don't think we're going to get through everything tonight, but I do think we would need formal direction on the start time. I don't know if there's any other formal direction other than, I don't know, Christina, if you can think of any.

uh the start time would require an introduction ordinance which could be brought forward to the next meeting uh the end time would need to be updated in the resolution which can also be brought forward at the next meeting uh but i've is it 10 30 is it 10 11. i don't know if uh council's landed on a specific end time i don't think we did but i think you wanted to say something else no get to that no no the the quick thing i would love to see uh steve i would love to see

those reports if anything just so i know how it's written just so if i could if i could just educate myself and it's it's going to coach me to to give a better call out maybe there's something more succinct i could do i would love to see it if anything just to make me better um 10 o'clock

please unless it's up to them so is that a not a motion but can we do a poll on that one 6 30 to 10 o'clock can we can we start with the start time maybe oh the start time 6 30. I'm seeing multiple nodding heads for 6 30. are we okay so we're okay on 6 30. now the end I'm okay with it I mean I'm flexible I've earlier the better for me And then 10, uh, 10 o'clock now, again, uh, you know, it's it, uh, council can continue past 10, but then you need to start voting if you want to continue.

May I make a substitute motion for 1030?

Oh, I don't know if we're okay. Go ahead.

sorry i just think that we need the solid four hours i if there's gonna we're gonna if we don't need it we leave earlier that's simple as that but i i do worry um because typically we just talked about i think what what did you gather the information for last year by chance yes um so last year there were 22 meetings

There were five that ended between the hours of 8 and 9 p.m. There were five that ended between 9 and 10 p.m. There were six that ended between 10 and 11 p.m. There were three between 11 and 12 p.m. And there were three after 12 p.m. Yeah. So 12 of the 22 meetings were after 10.

That's why I'm saying, I'm like, I can't see how, and I don't mean to override, I'm sorry, Robert's motion, but I just don't see how the math in some of these right here looks like 12 of those 22 meetings would not finish by 10 o'clock.

If I could just say something, it's not because of the agenda items, it's because of I'll just say it. We put a lot of air in our conversation that is irrelevant to the topic. That's all I'm saying. I'm going to stop right there. You take what you want from that, but it's not the agenda items. I've been in, I've been in hairier situations where we've, we finished, you know, an under time and we came to resolution, but we look at something and we tend to just multiply and amplify it for no reason. I mean, I don't know if you guys watch the videos. I go back every morning. Saturday night, I watch it. It's there. So I'm just going to say that.

I tend to agree. But also, if we had it at 10... We can still extend by 30 minute, right?

But then, like, that's the thing. Are we going to just keep extending indefinitely? Or are we going to allow only 1 extension to extensions? That's kind of what I'm, I'm trying to when I said suggested 630 to 1030 with 1 extension allowed, meaning no later than 11 PM if there's special circumstances. Um, but, you know, and I wish we could start at 6, but we also have to be mindful that there are people who are, you know. Um, the council member of if if that's not feasible for him, I mean, obviously we don't want to put him under that constraint though.

I think the question here is when do you start voting on half-hour increments, at 10 or 10.30? Even if you were to put a limit of we can only do one extension, the council can override that at any time. It's more of a guideline than a solid rule. So I think that's the question at hand. Do you want to start at 10 or 10.30 with the half-hour extensions?

Okay. I'm fine with whatever you want. so yeah like we're only at three hours and 40 minutes right now right right yeah three hours so i'm doing the math okay so that would put us at about 10 10 in a meeting so we'd already have to ask for one extension so tonight it would have been one extension if it's at 10 30 if it was at 10 o'clock it'd be the second extension yeah but if you would have start 6 30 that means we would have been No, we'd be at 10.10 right now.

I think regardless of how the meeting's gone tonight, it's still when do you want to start voting on half-hour extensions, 10 or 10.30? There is no hard and fast rule where you can say at 10 o'clock we all stop talking and leave. You would still need a council vote.

So we can give a shot. Let's go with that, 10 o'clock to ask for the extension. And I agree with Council Member Joyner that if we as a council member take responsibility and be efficient i'm telling you most of this stuff we wouldn't have even had this conversation today the problem is when we are getting digressed and then talking irrelevant matters to the things that is not even relevant that's that's where always we get into this situation and then make sure please again be be conscious about council member updates that's another thing 15 20 minutes per that that is also hurting us so let's be efficient rather than even if you keep as I said the number of hours if you keep increasing it doesn't going to make you better problem solving or decision making it makes it more and more worse as you keep on extending so so uh sorry I'm starting to lose my voice here um so what's the pleasure of the council then for what time

I think I'm, I'm hearing 630 and 10. But, but there may be a Oh, no, I mean, it's fine.

If we're gonna if we're I'm, forgive me, if we're gonna be allowed to extend it if we need it. I mean, that's the question. Are we going to allow is there going to be a limit on the number of extensions to

i think you i mean technically you can't because you said it's kind of case by case pace basis it's more of a general guideline for the council but you would still need to vote to continue items you can't just cut the mics and say we have one extension we're going to 10 30 or 11 then after that cut the mics and go you would still need a council vote to continue the items you would still so it really is when do you want to start voting on extending 10 or 10 30. okay so i'm fine with either actually so i'm good with 10 o'clock am i seeing four three four or five nodding heads for ten sure okay so 10 bm so that would be the items that we would need to update for the ordinance i i think the rest of the items that you discussed if there's anything that you want to highlight um you know the the four minutes each i mean we we could put the clock up so you you it helps with time you can use your iphones it's whatever that doesn't need an ordinance update to say we're going to stick to four minutes it's more of a norms or um you know kind of a guidelines that we can put together eventually um as it's another item on the list to go through with the council but it's whatever else you want to agree to tonight or just leave it at that

What about the special counsel issue? Because I know that there's a couple of times a year where we have a special counsel that comes in and the meetings can go a while with them. And so I'm wondering if for those meetings, might it be for cost purposes as well as are us being clear minded and rested? Would it be better to just have those as special meetings?

We, we would, yes, we can just as a general practice, look at special meetings and pull the council. We just for time sensitive items, we would need council schedules to align. That's been a little bit of a challenge with the busy schedules is trying to fit everything in, but we would need if we do have a special meeting. uh we would put out um suggested dates and then ask council to kind of rearrange schedules to get to that closed session in particular i think most of them are time sensitive when we would use like an outside council right so we can we can start calling the council for that and then if need be if there's no times at work then we have to kick it to a regular council meeting on the special council meeting see uh we need to be very again very cognizant about it because

If we expect that there is going to be a meeting that can be a pretty long meeting, then let's reduce the number of items as much as possible. That's what we've been doing. Yeah. It's not like we just put together too much and then we ended up in special meetings. That also adds a lot of work for council, staff, like you have to all come here, sit here, and then community members, right? so if there is a scope that we can reduce it the the agenda for expecting this will be a long session then that is the best option i would consider that right okay okay so do we everything else is more policies and procedures that we can talk about yeah and internal management and we i think this discussion has been healthy for us to kind of hear each other out about

How we manage the time during a meeting and we can all probably do better and learn from this discussion. I know I've taken some things away, so I've appreciated this. Do you have what you need?

Yes, we have what we need. We'll work in some of the items. Okay.

All right. Then I, if you have what you need, then I'm going to close this item and we're going to move on to city manager.

No updates for this evening. I'll waive my time.

Would you set the timer?

Set the timer.

Nope. I'm good.

Oh, no, we're going to practice today. We're doing a pilot program.

All right. You really nothing, Stephen? Okay. Yeah, at this hour. All right. Let me start down here with Council Member Rejuaneta.

Yeah, I'll be quick. So I want to just congratulate Captain Tammy Williams. She's in the back over there on her promotion to Administrative Services Captain. Congratulations. um and just uh we had the traffics board meeting a nice update and i want to give a thank you to candace anderson supervisor candace anderson um we decided to add a vote to add a seventh bus route assume an extra bus route to monte vista during seventh period um The cost would have been about $600 per parent, per rider, but Supervisor Anderson had offered that the county would subsidize 50% of that. So I wanted just to thank the county and Supervisor Anderson for that. So for the parents, this next coming up school year, we're going to see a seventh period bus for Monta Vista High for the parents that live in San Ramon that send their kids there. uh i'm the new chair for uh traffics and um uh uh rachel heard from san juan valley unified school district as the vice chair so that's it okay all right thank you let me dial to council member adler i don't know i wrote a lot of stuff down i don't know if i could be that short um

Yeah, I did want to give a council member a swine and credit for graduating from leadership San Ramon Valley class, which I think is a great way to learn about our area. And I got to give kudos to my class of 2023. We did a three-peat, and we were able to get the best donation. And we had the best donation contest, although we split it with another class this year. I want to mention that the San Ramon Historic Foundation had a meeting, discussion of the successful sheep shearing event. Talked about, I think for a liability, wanted to get some seed belts for the tractors for the kids that are riding those. They really enjoy the event at Forest Home Farms and riding the tractor. And then upcoming, we are gonna have a continuation of the Friday Speaker Series at Forest Home Farms starting on June 26th. And there's gonna be a discussion of the, it's called Stories from San Ramon General Store. We're going to have a lady who was a professor talk about what it was like 100 years ago in San Ramon when we had our general store that started out as a stagecoach stop and ended up providing gasoline. So that shows you how long that was around. and we also had at the teen council had a discussion of e-bike and scooter safety we had officer stephen acasos who i wanted to add is was named officer of the year by by his peers he gave that report on safety and he has been the high school resource officer at cal high and he emphasized that students need training in e-bikes. And some of these bikes can go from zero to 60 in four seconds. So it's important that we get that training. Also on May 21st, I attended a ribbon cutting. None of us, a number of us did at the New Heritage Park. Alex Mehran was presiding, the president and CEO of Sunset Development. I really was impressed with that new park. I'm proud that we have that as a new park in our community. Vice Mayor Rubio also spoke at that event and welcomed everybody. And we also had recognized the designer of one of the structures there, the big little house that was designed by a couple artists. who did a great job and especially would be needed during our hot summer days. I also attended, also Council, Vice Mayor Rubio and I attended the Transportation Advisory Meeting. Major point of discussion was the radar sign installments on Doherty Road. There was a staff report. I was really impressed with PJ Schott talked about the radar sign. That was, I think, started by Mayor Hudson, started that in 2006. and we have about fifteen thousand dollars available for those signs uh which are better i mean compared to the uh speed bumps which cost about fifteen thousand dollars no actually thirty to fifty thousand dollars so it's a good way of trying to slow traffic in our city and uh also when of course a number of everybody was there at the memorial day uh had a wonderful moving memorial day program the mayor spoke and we had some dignitary spoke at a a colonel speak and this was all appropriate it was in front of our our beautiful soaring eagle liberty to honor the fallen our fall fallen service members so that was a great event and today i actually went to a driver's appreciation lunch for traffics in Concord. We recognize the bus drivers who drive our kids and sometimes they found kids who were sleeping and they had to get them where they needed to be. But that's what I did today and the last two weeks. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Vice Mayor Rubio. Oh, yeah, let's go to the council member of Rose. Sorry.

So attended art and advisory committee meeting the key items. We did review the Santa Moon Arts and Wind Festival update, which was verbal, but it was great to see how practically this beautiful event unfolded it was amazing event thanks to parks and community services department and everyone who are volunteers all our uh non-profit business community community whoever joined that event it was amazing event that took place thanks for that and uh then important another important thing is we have we started this third thursday arts and eats so uh please um please join that event and support. Let your people who are you know, please share that this is going to be definitely going to become one of the signature in future. I'm looking forward to make this as our signature event in our San Ramon. And then we reviewed our San Ramon five-year cultural arts and plan priority reviews please check the agenda so that you can get more details on that also as council member Adler mentioned we are along with the other council members attended Heritage Park open as well as attended our Memorial Day celebration once again thanks to our parks and Community Services Department for such an amazing event hosting in our community

so that's pretty much thank you all right thank you that's for rubio and we have four minutes before 11 o'clock that wait wait wait technically it's 10 57 now so no three minutes you're right

So on May 13th, I attended a LAFCO meeting, nothing pertinent directly to San Ramon, so I will move on. On May 13th, I also attended the Community Police Academy graduation along with the mayor and council member Joynette. We had a pretty impressive class. I will say it's probably one of the largest group of women graduates I think I've ever seen in this year around. And then let's see. And then on May 14th, I attended a 2026 economic outlook and membership meeting just basically covered the vision for San Ramon. Alex was there and a couple other folks who are, you know, just talking about the, sort of the vision they have for Simon Rowan, literally. We also had a professor from Berkeley talking about AI and robotics. And then on May 14th, I went to the Stanford Healthcare Tri-Valley Pleasanton Campus groundbreaking at 5555 West Las Positas. Just want to let the community know that there will be more healthcare facilities available to them. On May 16th, I attended the truck time along with Council member Adler and then on May 17th, I attended the military swearing in ceremony. I had to do a quick hello because I had two overlapping events that day, but I did and I think it started a little later than expected. So but I did take the time to say to congratulate each of the students, the young people who are going on to military school. And then I may 18th historic foundation was already covered by council member Adler May 21st county connection. I will just say in broad terms that we talked about the budget. The Clipper Bay pass amendment and talking about a pair of transit riders surveys. as well as a youth ride free rollout program, which will come back this summer. And then on May 21st, Transportation Advisory Committee was already mentioned by Council Member Adler, May 21st, Heritage Park. It was Roberto and Rosario, and I don't remember their last names, but they were from literally brought here to help with the design of that house from Miami, Florida. So this is a privately owned park. by um sunset development but it is open to the public right across from belmont village on may 23rd and 24th i attended the art and wind festival with many i think everybody was here there at some point or another and then may 24th memorial day program with everyone here as well thank you

John Potter, All right, I have 10 seconds. John Potter, So congratulations, not just to council members right up but also to glinda broadfoot and janice. John Potter, Keller from our HR department for leadership salmon valley and just say hello staffs all gone great job by. all the staff for parks and community services, our police department, our public works folks. What a phenomenal event was Artwin Festival and the Memorial Day celebration. Just two wonderful events. I attended a couple of other things, but I want to get to one matters initiated item, and that is we have a Planning Commission vacancy. Now that Max Zhang has been hired onto the city staff, And I'd like to put on the agenda a discussion about how we proceed with backfilling his vacancy at the soonest possible time.

I see three.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay. We will get that on a future agenda. All right. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. And with that meeting is adjourned. Thank you.