City Council - meeting_joint_regular

We're going to call today's meeting of the Rules that Open Government Committee to order, and we'll start with roll call.

Candelas? Here. Dwan?

Here.

Foley, absent. Kamei?

Here.

Cohen? Here. Ravikorm?

Okay, we start with the agenda review for next week's council meeting, September 15th. We have a 9.30 closed session, 1.30 regular session, and a canceled evening session. And consent starts on page 6. and continues on pages seven, eight, and nine. Section three, we have a moratorium related to detention and custodial facilities on private property, council focus area annual report, and a unsheltered homelessness work plan update. Section 5, the item will be deferred to September 29th. Section 8, our multifamily housing incentive for project on Stevens Creek. And two items on land use consent and one item on the glider project on the regular land use item 10.2. Do we have public comment? Yes. There's also an ad sheet just as mentioned that too.

Yes, before we go to public comment, as a reminder, speakers must comply with the city's code of conduct for public meetings. Please direct comments to the body, limit remarks to the agenda item, and observe the time limit. Conduct that materially disrupts the meeting or interferes with others' ability to participate may result in muting or removal as authorized by law. Brian?

thank you i just wanted to bring oh just slipped off the machine i just wanted to bring up i put a sent in an email and i'm going to keep coming to point out that i did do that because there's no responses to them which i not criticizing just bringing that up and i spelled out some of the things i was concerned about in the agenda i thought it was pretty well put together but i just want to make sure it's not on this one it's actually taped to the bottom of the or connected to one of the bottom things because I incorporated all of this stuff from this agenda on one email, thank you.

Back to the committee.

Okay, do we have any comments or motion on this week's, next week's agenda? All right, let's vote. And that motion carries 4-0. And we're going to now do our first review of the council agenda for September 22nd, 9.30 closed session, 1.30 regular session. I don't do this very often, but I happen to notice a typo in the first ceremonial item with just Rhonda's name. It needs an A at the end. Consent starts on page five and continues on pages six and seven. Section three, we have our summer IGR report and the open audit recommendation status and the employee turnover audit report. Section six, our annual report for stormwater management. Item 8.1 is being dropped. 8.2 is our consolidated annual performance and evaluation report. No items on land use. Do we have any public comment?

No public comment.

Back to the committee.

Move for approval. Second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. The motion carries 4-0. And now we're on to our consent calendar. We have three items on consent. Do we have public comment?

Brian?

Again, just to bring up, I did discuss some of the consent calendar issues in this email I sent, and I just wanted to have you guys, you guys, I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, look at it. And what would really be helpful, if you could give us direction on how you want us to write emails, do we send an email in for each particular topic, or do we send one in to know that at least it's gonna get looked at? I know people do look at them, but I just wanna make it easier for your staff, thank you.

Back to the committee. All right.

We have a motion and a second on the consent calendar, so let's vote. And that motion carries 5-0. We have Vice Mayor Foley here in attendance now. And we are on to our rules committee review, item C1, memo Councilmember Ortiz is here to introduce, along with myself, Councilmember Campos, Councilmember Condeles, and Councilmember Casey, so we'll let Councilmember Ortiz kick it off.

Hello, Rules Committee. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me. I also want to thank you and Councilmember Condeles for signing on to this memo, along with Councilmembers Casey and Campos. I have to say it looks pretty nice on the memo to have all the C council members signed on. I'm calling it the four Cs. The intent of this memo is simple, to give our residents confidence that their city government operates with the highest standard of transparency and that they can trust the people they elected to represent them. When we make big decisions about development, public resources, infrastructure, or neighborhoods, residents should be able to trust that we have access to all the information we need and that we can share as much of it with them as legally possible. We recognize that there can be legitimate, proprietary, confidential, or sensitive information involved in these projects. And this memo respects that. We're simply saying those protections should come through the law in appropriate city processes, not private agreements that could limit our ability to be transparent with the public and those who have elected us. Our residents deserve openness from their elected leaders and they deserve to know we will provide as much information as possible when we're making decisions on their behalf. Thank you all for consideration of this memo.

Okay, let's start with public comment and then come back for discussion.

Starting with in person, Brian.

I would agree with that too, and I think that's true for, in all situations, any kind of public communication that's done on city time, no matter even if it's embarrassing or not, if legal and ethical needs to be brought forward to the public. Because personally, I trust everybody there, but I'm not really that bright of a person at times. And I think, and if you read what people say on the, comment sections and I know that's a lot of it's just keyboard warrior kind of stuff but there really is a distrust for the government and I think that's not a very healthy thing for our society it really is not and people take advantage of that too so I think it's important the more transparent you are it's harder to take something back than it is to release it up front thank you moving to virtual speakers Jordan than it is to release it up front.

Uh, 1, it seems like it should apply to council members and their staff members, not just the council members themselves. 2, I don't know if there's any way to apply this retroactively in any sense. Is there a way to. Figure out a way to release previous council members from previous or at least compile some kind of, uh. Database of that have previously been signed. And then, lastly, I'm not sure why it should only apply to council members. It seems like all the arguments in the memo should apply equally as well. To staff members and senior staff within the city. It feels like no 1 should be keeping information from anyone else in the city or from the public. And it would be unfortunate if a staff member was unable to talk to a council member about certain topics. Thank you.

Back to the committee.

Okay, I'm looking to see if we have any hands on this one. I don't see any hands raised. Do you wanna, oh, now I see a hand raised. Okay, go ahead, Vice Mayor Foley.

Yeah, I have some questions about this. And it's not the intent of the memo at all. It's, to me, I read this and I think, well, of course. So do we need policy that says this? Are there, are we concerned that there might be this, have this going on already? I've never been asked to sign an NDA, and I've, neither have my staff. So I'm just curious where it came from.

Great, no, thank you so much, and you're right. Some of this stuff seems kind of like common sense, but unfortunately common sense isn't always common. So the history of San Jose, to my knowledge and recollection, had only one incident as of recent history. That was the Google decision where several council members, the mayor, and actually senior staff signed on to an NDA. Now, that doesn't mean that, you know, they officially withheld information. My concern is perception. And sometimes on a lot of these projects, they're already contentious. To add something like an NDA, that just, it makes things that much harder to be able to explore actual bona fide qualified projects. And so what I just want to do is make sure that there's something on the books. And because around the country, you know, Franklin Township in Indiana, several municipalities in Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio, Alabama, specifically as it relates to data centers, they are asking council members to sign NDAs uh... in order to get the full picture of what's actually going on with this policy to suggest is that uh... there can be a process to have information confidential but it has to be you know bona fide and has to be uh... monitored to the city not be private agreement by a private entity i really appreciate that and and again it's not that i object to the intent of this at all i it

It's the way I conduct my business. I wouldn't even enter into an NDA. I know when Google was around, I wasn't here. But I believe the whole council had to sign the nondisclosure agreement as they were beginning the negotiations. But I wasn't here for that, so I don't know. Did you take into consideration the caller's request about chief of staff or staff members? And is there a reason that we might exclude them or include them?

This is essentially the beginning of the conversation. You know, I'm definitely open to suggestions. This is not something that, you know, is written in stone. Once we introduce this, this policy belongs to the body, and I'm open to suggestions.

Okay, great. Thank you. And Lee, does this need to go to workload analysis?

Yes, it would. We were actually just talking about timing. We can see if we can do it next week, because I know on the 23rd a number of you are out. So it'll either be next week or the following week on the 30th.

29th. Okay. 29th.

Oh, the 30th. Sorry. Coming back to rules on the 30th.

We're coming back to rules on the 30th. Yeah. Sorry. Okay. Good enough. All right. Then I don't know if it's been moved, but I will move approval subject to workload analysis. Second.

All right, I have a motion and a second, and I thank you for the question. I signed the memo, but like you, Vice Mayor, I've never been asked to sign a NDA, and I couldn't think of the circumstances which I would be, although there are times early in project development, I will just say, where you have somebody come and say, you know, we're still thinking things out. We're still trying to decide what kind of project we might want to do on a property, and this isn't necessarily ready for public consumption yet, and we do want to be able to have those those candid conversations about potential projects and how they might play out before they're even ready to be public. So I think it's important to make sure as we build a policy that it acknowledges that those conversations happen early on. But everything we do and approve as a council is public and is done in public and therefore subject to all of the public disclosure. That should always be the case once we get to a point at which things are actually being discussed, once there's a real project to be discussed. And as I often say to members of the public, they say, well, what did you know when? Well, people come and run things, all kinds of things by council offices. But once there's a project, typically there's then a public hearings and other things that happen where those projects are discussed. fully disclosed and I don't anticipate any process changing as a result of this. But it is, given that there's so much skepticism these days over the way we do business in government, it's reasonable to write down that we won't do this. So that's the reason I supported the memo. All right, given all that, I think that we're ready to vote. Okay, the motion carries 5-0. We're on to open forum.

Brian?

This is what really compelled me to come down here today. In two more days, it'll be 25 years. So I would like to just take a couple seconds to just be quiet. Too many, thank you, have a good day.

Back to the committee.

Decided to cut out but we are adjourned at 2.15.