City Council - meeting_joint_regular

Santa Clara County
Wednesday, September 9, 2026Official site

The San Jose Rules and Open Government Committee reviewed upcoming council agendas, approved the consent calendar, and advanced a memo on council transparency regarding nondisclosure agreements.

About this meeting

Government Body
City Council
Meeting Type
City Council
Location
San Jose, CA
Meeting Date
September 9, 2026

Published excerpts

Only published remarks appear here. The full transcript is not published.

7 sections

5:42 – 7:01•Peter Ortiz

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,

9:28 – 9:57•Pam 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.

9:58 – 11:35•Peter Ortiz

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

11:36 – 12:10•Pam Foley

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?

12:10 – 12:24•Peter Ortiz

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.

12:24•Pam Foley

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

12:49•Pam Foley

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.

These excerpts are remarks by officials whose identity a person confirmed, from a transcript generated automatically from the official public meeting video and presented unedited. Accuracy may vary; view the original recording for reference.