City Council - Special Meeting

good morning the time is now 10 a.m and i will call the september 11 special city council meeting to order madam clerk roll call please all council members present thank you council member bartel will you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance place your right hand over your heart ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it I think we'll also just take a brief moment of silence in remembrance of all those fallen on September 11. Thank you. Madam Clerk, please read the notice regarding public comments on agenda and non-agenda

We'll now proceed with public comments on all agenda and non-agenda items. Please note that members of the public will still have an opportunity to comment on agenda items under current business later in the meeting provided they do not comment on those items at this time.

Thank you. Seeing no other comments, we'll now move on to current business, confirmation of the acceptance of the certification of the Orange County Registrar of Voters.

Any other speakers? OK, we will now move on to current business. Does any council member need a staff report on item number one? Are there any questions or comments from council members?

Yes, I have a bunch of questions to ask of our clerk, but maybe, do we have somebody online that's serving as our vendor to run the election?

Okay, and just so I understand correctly, 44 years is the last time that the City of Newport Beach conducted an election of their own?

Yeah, so polling places have changed over the years. Polling places used to be every precinct, and then recently the state legislature changed it to vote centers. So anyone in Orange County can vote at any vote center. If I live in Newport Beach but happen to work in Fullerton, I can vote for everyone in that vote center. that's kind of where this is leading with all these questions that um and i appreciate hopefully the patience of my council to answer these questions about the process of an election because i would say being in public policy sector for three decades i would say over two-thir

Do we know what the ballot will look like when it's mailed? Will it look similar to the one that the county uses or will Newport Beach have its own specific look to it?

Okay, and can you identify yourself and what what you what what organization you represent or what company or your Yes, sorry.

And can you tell us how many elections you've run separately from being a city clerk, but in the capacity of this consulting firm you serve on or your your the company that you represent?

And those in your clerk capacity were city-specific or were they working with the registrar voters? Okay. And then can you tell me the recent ones that you've done, what some specific elections you've worked on?

And they just run separate schedules and say like a primary and general election that the statewide does. It's kind of like how LA used to be where they had their mayoral race during a different time than those elections.

Got it. Got it. Okay. So basically as your capacity as a consultant, you've done several and then you plan on doing several more of this cycle.

Okay, okay, thank you. So, and if you wanna chime in to some of these questions that I'm asking city staff of, feel free to. So polling place locations open, which are now called vote centers, open for the county on the 24th of October for select locations, and all locations open on the 31st of October Will Newport Beach be conducting polling place locations in separate locations, or will they partner with the county on vote centers and hold stations next to those stations?

So a voter can't vote in person in the Newport Beach election?

They can't go to a polling place and vote in person. So it's like Oregon. Oregon is mail only. There's no polling places. They're all mailed. When is the mailing date of our election going to be?

You have the plan created or is that still in the process?

So every voter in Newport Beach will receive their ballot sometime right around October 5th, which this candidate guide highlights. But Newport Beach's ballot for these three initiatives, a separate ballot will be mailed out on October 19th or by October 19th. Okay, so you will have one ballot a significant amount of time longer than you'll have a second ballot.

And what day will you be mailing that information out?

And is that standard language that you'll be using, or will you create your own language for this?

But I mean, as far as the language in the document that you'll be sending out, is this going to be kind of templated off other elections that you've run or other elections?

When you say unique, is that never been done or has it been done before?

So you as a consultant or a city clerk have never done this before in this accelerated time frame?

Okay. As far as the military and overseas ballot, the requirement is September 19th as provided in the guidebook. And you're saying you think you can have that done by the 18th?

And then you obtain that data from the registrar voters? And then there's also a provision that if a military member comes back in that window of time, that allows them to vote in person How do we plan on accommodating that? Because there's a rule in the law that allows for a service member to return back home and then that ballot is eliminated and then they get to use a new ballot that they get handed to on spot. How do we accommodate that request?

So we would need the county of Orange to help facilitate that for us, which we are kind of looking at some documents that they've sent us in the past. That says they would have trouble doing so, but we don't quite know that answer because we haven't asked them yet as to what they can or cannot do. Is that correct?

Okay. But it can't be at the same location as the ones the County has.

Okay. Let me shift gears a little bit to ballots in a foreign language. So there's a section 203 of the Voting Rights Act that counties with 10,000 or more, 5% of the total voting age citizens have to have a ballot translated. And Orange County has identified three of those languages. How does that play into Newport Beach on an election like this? Do we have to use the county rule, or since we're a municipality, we can forego translation in any type of language of either election materials or ballots based on a voter's requested language?

I'm sorry, I interrupted you. Could you proceed? Sorry.

Okay. Yeah, so would that apply, does translation need to apply to arguments for and against as well? You know, so if the county or if the city wishes to provide some arguments against the initiatives? Do those, are those translated as well?

Okay. Switching gears to new registered voters, so the requirement is 15 days before the election was, and that's October 19th, that newly registered voters have the ability register, but 14 days prior an election day, they can vote conditionally. So the state of California does allow same day voter registration. How does a new registered or newly a new citizen of Newport Beach get that ballot in either of those windows, you know, 15 days or 14 days prior to election day? And then how do we handle those conditional ballots? Do you feel confident that you can administer that? You know, we have

Can you just remind me again what day we think the vote center will be open?

So there's select voting centers open in Orange County on the 24th, and then all are open on the 31st. So we'll kind of mirror the all that the county has. Let me switch gears here to how many days after the election day will ballots be counted? So the state says if you have a postmark, the rules now even change to greater, I think it was five recently, but now it's seven. So up to October, I'm sorry, November 10th, state of california allows for ballots to be counted up to that date as long as they have a postmark does newport beach look to deviate from that process or will that still allow p

OKAY. AND A FEW OF THESE QUESTIONS LOOK LIKE I GOT ANSWERED. BALLOTS WILL BE RECEIVED ON WHAT DAY WE GOT THAT ANSWER. MILITARY, GOOD. OKAY. WHAT ABOUT CURING? HOW ARE WE, WHO IS HANDLING THE CURING PROCESS OF THE BALLOTS THAT COME IN THAT DON'T MATCH OUR STAFF? The County of Orange has the staff dedicated to reviewing signatures of every mailed in ballot, every single ballot that gets dropped off without an identifier. So if I come into a vote center and vote with a machine, that process is pretty more simplified. But if I mail in a ballot, if I hand in a ballot, or if I put one in a Dropbox,

How many bodies do you think you need to perform these tasks?

There's a date of December 3rd that the register of voters requires that the date of certification occurs. Do you think that your staff can accommodate that date or are we changing the date?

That's not a requirement? You just have to have it done by the 3rd? Or do we have a requirement date?

And I asked Lena, but I think it was before you jumped on the call here, what does happen to those Newport Beach ballots that get dropped off at county drop boxes?

What example can you give me that the county has dealt with that before?

THAT IS THE DATA THAT YOU NEED FROM THE REGISTRAR OF VOTERS TO MATCH EVERY SINGLE SIGNATURE, CORRECT? CORRECT. IS THAT DATABASE TEND TO BE RELEASED TO CITIES WITH EASE, OR DOES THAT REQUIRE SOME TYPE OF CONFIDENCE THAT SENSITIVE DATA IS PROTECTED? WHAT IS THE DATA? What's the rule there as far as them? They're giving us all of Newport Beach's database of every signature that they have on file in order to verify that the ballots submitted are correct ballots.

Will Newport beach have our own drop boxes throughout the city?

So you can drop at City Hall, you can drop off at a vote center, and how many of those do you think we'll have?

Do you know the locations of the county's Dropbox locations? Do you know the location of the county's Dropbox locations?

Okay. Okay. Lena, have you conducted a statewide or sorry, a citywide special like this?

Okay, great. So you feel comfortable? Or do you? I probably shouldn't ask that question because I think that I probably know the answer. I want to ask the consultant, are you going to identify, indemnify the city and county against challenges from disenfranchised voters or candidates due to interference or confusion with the statewide and congressional election? So meaning, if this has the potential to confuse a voter, and somebody comes back and says I submitted at the wrong box, it didn't get collected in time, my vote didn't count, are you providing some protection against us with your cont

I'll ask the consultant, do you feel comfortable that this election in its accelerated timeframe and all the challenges that are required to get this done properly will not receive any challenge from anyone on either side? Or do you think that there's just, there's a bit of confusion when there's a countywide election occurring at the exact same time?

Is that community outreach done by you or is that done by us?

Okay, I think I went through my list. I don't know if I wrote it on other sides, but those were kind of my initial questions that more could come up here soon, but I appreciate you answering those questions.

Thank you. So just to go back a little bit, the reason that we're here is the judge has asked us to submit our voter information to the county. However, the county said they're not able to conduct this consolidated election. AT THAT POINT, SINCE WE AS A CITY HAVEN'T CONDUCTED AN ELECTION IN 40 PLUS YEARS, WE WENT OUT TO CONSULTANTS, AND THE CONSULTANTS, WE WERE ABLE TO FIND JESSICA, THANK YOU, WHO WAS ABLE TO GO FORWARD WITH THIS. IS THAT RIGHT?

Yeah, so we're doing the best that we can, and it's kind of, it's a new process for, it sounds like, Jessica or, you know, everybody, because it's not been done before in this timeframe. So that's concerning, but we are attempting to provide that election. Did the county indicate that if, for whatever reason, they could handle this if it were moved to the next available date prior to November 28th, but did they ever indicate that if it were a feasible other election that they could work with us on that? Did we ask that?

Right, for our process, but also for their process. Thank you, that's why we're doing this. And then one very, couple of really quick questions for Jessica. Do you know, kind of other than, I know that we're kind of having to work, we're working around our charter requirements, we're working around some election code issues, which I've heard mentioned, My specific question is how we handle training for poll workers at all of, especially since so many of them are volunteers, if they're asked questions and we, you know, even if we are able to have a table, do we have any kind of plan to educate

Oh, I just meant the people working at the normal county election poll workers.

Right, so I guess that's just my concern is that we, because it is such a short time frame, we're going to be kind of at the mercy of the published materials and there's a chance that some volunteer poll workers might not know the answers to those questions for voters. And I think on the one hand we should do what we can to mitigate that, but that's a concern to me that I don't know how we work around.

Thank you. That's all my questions. Councilmember Stapleton.

All right, so we got 53 days until November 3rd. The comment that Councilman, Councilmember Wagon made, it's not of our decision to make sure this is mail-in only, right? It's just within 53 days, we can't, what's the thought process behind that where we wouldn't have vote centers? Is it a cost thing? Like, what is the...

OK, I just want to make it clear that this is as a steward of safeguarding elections. I would much rather have all offers available for every voter in the city, but the reality is that just with 53 days and everything you just mentioned, the vote by mail is the only option that we have available with this short time. OK, alright. Well, hopefully if the county allows us putting a table in each one of these vote centers would be a huge opportunity. Thank you.

Councilmember grant. Thank you. I want to switch gears first a minute and maybe just address a couple questions to the city attorney I'm curious where we are in the appeal process as far as The court order the stay of the court order has been denied so that's why we're moving forward with what we're doing today Do we have anything else pending? For example, if we go ahead and have this election and then the appeal if we have a pending appeal or elaborate on that and it comes back with a different decision, what's the effect of that? Do we understand? Can you give us some clarification?

OK, so is it conceivable that we could have this election if we were to vote to move forward? And the judge didn't change that on Monday. It's conceivable that we could have this election on November 3, but it could somehow be invalidated later down the road due to further action? Is that what you're saying?

Okay, seeing no other speakers up here, we'll open it up for public comment. As a reminder, if you already spoke on this item, you're precluded from doing so now. Any speakers?

Thank you, Mr. Hart. Next public comment.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mosher. Are there any other speakers on this item? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, do we have anyone online who wishes to speak? OK, with that, bring it back up here, Councilmember Weber.

I literally feel like I am being forced to break certain laws in order to comply with other laws that were also broken. I cannot articulate how wrong all of this feels to be perfectly honest. WE ARE BEING ASKED TO MOVE INCREDIBLY FAST, SKIP STEPS, AND DO THINGS THAT WE'VE NEVER DONE BEFORE. I'M HEARING ABOUT A MAIL-IN ELECTION ONLY SEEMS INSANE TO ME. MY BIGGEST CONCERN IS OUR RESIDENTS. And I actually can agree that people have different opinions. I don't think that most people are following every single court filing or every single election deadline. And to receive another ballot in the mail

Yeah, I'll echo those comments. You know, not here to talk about court case decisions that weren't successful. I'm here to talk about the process that is in front of us. And I don't feel comfortable asking all of the questions that I asked that the city of Newport Beach can conduct an election with an accelerated timeframe. without disenfranchising just one, that's all, one vote. And if one person can't correctly vote in an election, an election that to me seems like we're skirting state law, maybe we're within the rules, but we're not quite within the rules. the usual course of business when

Are there other council members that wish to speak? Council Member Grant? Thank you.

So, first I would say, you know, we are absolutely dealing with very grave issues here. This is our city charter. It's like the Constitution of the United States. I mean, this is the most important thing that we deal with here on the dais, is making sure that we comply with our city charter. And these are very uncomfortable decisions for us, as well as the general public. I mean, and I understand everything that my colleagues have said. And I think, you know, I came in here, I also went through the election code. requirements that come from the county from the state federal requirements and ca

Blair, so I actually have more confidence in our ability to comply if we can legally hold an election, and that's a big if, and I'm hearing that from our city attorney, but let's just take that for granted that we could. I did actually get quite a bit of confidence from our consultant, Jessica Blair. I felt that her answers, this has been a thoughtful, mindful process for her working with city staff and that anything that was presented today, she is able to accommodate. That actually was a good process, and I appreciate Councilmember Wigand bringing all of that up, because I think, for me, I g

Thank you. A quick question about the consultants. Did we reach out to just one, or did we reach out to multiple consultants?

So we had three other consulting firms that said no, they couldn't do this.

So there was only one consultant that said this was possible. Okay. The other question is, Maybe for a state attorney. State election law doesn't allow us to have a standalone election on a general. Is that correct?

you know the judge impliedly you know said that those those uh provisions didn't apply but i think it's best to go in and get clarification of that that writ that's what it really meant so if we move forward with this uh the city will be in violation of state law that's my interpretation and in addition to our charter exactly so do we take on additional liability or something like that

thank you and then so we didn't make the agenda for uh tuesday's meeting under brown act for the county when would we then know from the county is it their next regular meeting on the 29th

a huge amount of questions about if we comply with one order, do we violate state law? What's that open this up for, for more liability, more issues? And knowing that the consultant is not willing to indemnify us on what we're moving forward or what they've agreed to, it's just more liability and more issues. So I'm having a lot of issues with this right now. Okay. And for the record, I think a couple of speakers did talk about that the Court of Appeals made a ruling. They just said that they're not going to stay it until they hear the actual arguments. Is that correct? That's right.

OK. Seeing no other requests to speak, are there any additional thoughts? Or if not, move through kind of the process in front of us. Step one is determine if the council wants to submit arguments against some or all of the initiatives. So I would need a motion on that.

Madam Mayor, I'll make a motion to deny all of these items on staff report.

Is there any way to bifurcate any of the components of the staff's recommendation, or is it just all?

I MEAN, FOR ME, I WOULD BE OKAY BIFURCATING OUT ONE OF THE ITEMS, BUT IT WOULD BE WITHIN SECTION E BECAUSE I'M HAPPY TO GO TO THE COUNTY AND ASK THEM FOR HELP, BUT BY THE TIME WE ACTUALLY GET THAT ANSWER, WE'RE EITHER HAVING TO COMMIT TO AN ELECTION THAT, TO ME, IS FILLED WITH POTENTIAL PROBLEM FROM to overseas voters, to military voters, to our own voters here in town. I mean, think about a brand new voter, somebody who's just registered to vote. This is very confusing to that, or to somebody who's a long-term voter. So I'm happy to bifurcate our items, and i would love the county to uh have

So just to clarify, yet again, we need to ask the judge if she wants us to violate state law and our charter provision in order to comply with her order. Separately, in order for this consultant, who's one of four that we asked and the only one who said she could do it even though she's never done it and doesn't know that it's ever been done successfully, we need the county's help. We can't do it without the county, correct? We won't have an answer to that. Potentially at all, but certainly not next Tuesday if they agree to hear it at all in front of the Board of Supervisors it won't be until

We start mailing ballots, and then the county either refuses to hear the request and or denies the request for any assistance, and therefore we're unable to complete the election. So now we have even more confusion with people who receive ballots for an election that's not actually able to proceed on November 3rd, correct?

I actually was going to say exactly that, just that I think then that puts further confusion on the statewide elections. So now somebody's getting a ballot twice, and then one of them's not counting. So we'd probably have to send out notification to send to that voter and say, sorry, we sent you this, but we're no longer, it's no longer happening.

So you send that notification, then you've set up a whole series of problems for the voter who votes in the statewide general election, who then thinks maybe that applies to that ballot too, and then they don't submit it. So now you've entirely disenfranchised an entire general election. I think we vote no on this.

Yeah, I'm with my council colleagues in solidarity on this issue when it comes to this, but to our city attorney's point, we've lost every step of the way thinking that we're doing the right thing here. At the end of the day, I'd be fully in favor of moving forward with this resolution and this process based on staff recommendations. And if for some reason the judge comes back and says differently on Monday that she won't allow us to go against state law and everything else, then we haven't mailed anything at that point and we can pull things back. But at this point, I feel like we've gone as

Okay. Well, we've got a lot of comments. We have a motion without a second.

Perhaps Madam Mayor, I can make an alternate motion that we continue this until Tuesday and reconvene at that point to have a little bit more clarification. I am very uncomfortable making an active decision to go against state law to comply with a court order that then puts us in an equal amount of issues and troubles with the state of California. And so unfortunately, I feel the clarity is just not there right now. And this has already been a tricky subject throughout all of it. And I don't want to violate our charter at the same time as violating state election law without a little bit more

I would second the motion to continue it.

So before we vote, I mean, we're talking about, as the consultant said, a scenario that is less than ideal, which I think we can agree is already a scenario under which we're operating. Once again, Mr. Harp, would you be comfortable with that?

Yeah, I was just going to appreciate what Mayor Pro Temblama suggested, but I just, I can't in good faith move forward with any type of election at this point in the state of the game. So we are doing ourselves a disservice to the residents of Newport Beach, registered voter residents of Newport Beach to push forward with any type of election. So I'll be voting no on that.

Council Member Grant. And I'm going to disagree. I think that I'm hearing from the city attorney that the safest approach is to move forward with the resolution that we have presented here today. We can be doing that in two different lanes. Sure, it costs us some money. We've already spent a lot of money. And sure, it's inconvenient for our staff and for us up here to be potentially violating some laws, if not other laws, court orders. But we certainly can move forward with... miss blair's recommendations we can get her started that shows a very good faith effort on our behalf when we go back

Thank you. I just wanted to continue shortly. I appreciate you making that very clear. I did have one question. I don't know that we've addressed. Are we positive that we cannot get on an earlier agenda, the next week's agenda for the county? I had understood that we had till a certain point today or maybe even a supplemental that could be, you know, is there absolutely no way that we're going to get on an earlier agenda? We have to wait for two county meetings?

Is there another county official that can put it on the agenda, or is it only the registrar?

So we can come from Bob page or our 5th district representative to be Katrina Foley and we reached out to Katrina Foley.

OK. So do we know a deadline for that? Or I'm just curious. It was yesterday, 4 o'clock. It was yesterday at 4 o'clock. And is there any potential for a supplemental? I think we heard a discussion about that at some point.

YEAH, I GUESS I'M A BIT CONFUSED FOLLOWING ALONG HERE, BUT I'M FULLY SUPPORTIVE OF THE CITY ATTORNEY TO CONTINUE TO MOVE FORWARD IN THIS PROCESS, AND IF SOMETHING CHANGES ON MONDAY, WE CAN HAVE A SPECIAL MEETING AND GO BACK TO THIS. I DO THINK I DID HEAR A FIRST AND A SECOND FOR CONTINUING THIS. I'M NOT IN FAVOR OF CONTINUING THIS. I THINK IF WE WAIT UNTIL TUESDAY, IT'S GOING TO JUST PUT US IN A WORSE POSITION THAN WE ARE TODAY.

OKAY. LET'S GO AHEAD AND VOTE ON THE MOTION THAT IS ON THE TABLE BY SHOW OF HANDS, PLEASE.

We can vote with our screens and not by...

Wait, can I have a clarification? We're going to continue this vote to Tuesday at four, so we have a special meeting Tuesday at four? Is that what we're saying?

Is it possible to move that up if that's the motion? I can't, 4 o'clock is late.

Yeah, I'm not committed to a time. It just seemed appropriate for enough people to be able to get here, but what?

Okay, it looks like we are using our screens then.

Okay. And round and round we go. We, once again, do need a motion on, if we're going to, it sounds like, move these forward. Move the resolution recommended by staff forward. We need to determine if the council wants to submit arguments against some or all of the emissions.

I'll make that motion. I'll move to accept full staff recommendation on all matters.

Okay, I would bifurcate that piece of it. I just want to move forward with the resolution first and then talk about if there's going to be arguments for or against and who would vote for those. So, that would be my motion to take just that piece out and move forward with the resolution at this time.

So moving forward means that the consultant and staff will work to submit military and overseas ballots by Friday, which the deadline, the federal deadline is in statute. The federal deadline is Saturday, but we're going to try to shoot for Friday. And then the ballots will go out. Once those ballots go out, they've gone out. So just remember that.

Yes, I think those can be a separate motion because there might be differing opinions about that. But the motion to move forward as recommended by the city attorney's office and get further clarification on Monday, that's my proposal.

OK, we have a motion and a second. Does everybody understand the motion? OK, let's go ahead and vote.

Okay now we'll have to take the secondary piece regarding the arguments against some or all of the initiatives. Council Member Brandt did you want to tackle that as well? Are there any additional thoughts? Mayor Pro Tempolo.

Thank you. Okay. I am happy to move forward with, if we do go forward with this election, to at least have arguments and an impartial analysis. I think that it's very important for anyone to vote and having an idea of what both sides look like and analysis of the measure itself. I'd be happy to be involved as one of the authors on the arguments for all of the initiatives.

That's it. Madam Mayor, just a point of clarification. Sure. Can the arguments against said items include that there's potential for disenfranchising voters as far as the accelerated timeframe of the election not having enough votes to be counted or citizens that are voters their ability to be accounted for.

But I guess my question is, though, could it be added, what I mentioned about the accelerated election and the potential for disappointment?

Because that's an important piece to any type of argument that would the vote actually be counted? Would every single Newport Beach voter get their opportunity to vote in this election? And So if we had that argument created and it was challenged, what's the process for that? Is there an emergency court hearing that somebody has to challenge this accelerator? Again, the guidebook. Wait, wait, hold on one second. The guidebook specifically gives an opportunity to challenge arguments or challenge your ballot designation. So when I sought city council reelection, I said my specific title I wanted

Okay, Mayor Pro Tem, do you have an actual motion or amended motion?

Do I have an actual motion? Yes. I sure do. Mr. Harp, we've received arguments for, is that correct? Or the initiatives? All right. So if we do not put arguments against or the impartial analysis, will the only thing be showing up on the ballots as arguments for? Okay. So then my motion would be to move forward with an impartial analysis and arguments against. And again, I'm happy to author those as well and use the previous ones that I had written. about a month ago.

I can second that and I'm also happy to have my name as be part of those impartial analysis and arguments.

So just to clarify, you already drafted them. Your motion is to use the same arguments with your name signed to them?

Does it need to be multiple council members?

A point of clarification. So, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, you're not interested in disclosing any additional information related to this election on the accelerated timeframe into those statements? and I guess I could see your, I play devil advocate here, on yours, we've already got them, we're already ready to go, there's no question that those can't be submitted. Say we alter those, and then some court basically says, well, that wasn't valid, and then we're throwing those out. I'm wondering if you could submit that includes the information that I'm bringing up and then use as a backup those ones that

And I agree with you, Council Member Weigand. If I could just grab some clarification. The reason why, and this is another interesting question, BECAUSE NORMALLY WE CRAFT THE ARGUMENTS UP HERE OURSELVES. THIS JUDGE HAS ORDERED THAT WE CRAFT THEM AND CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG, MR. ATTORNEY.

mr harper how does that affect our decisions today if we move forward we at least have these decisions and resolutions in place we could then potentially go back to the county and see if there's any way to get them i think we're just before the the 12 o'clock right yeah i mean you raise a good point but the orange county board of supervisors doesn't need to consider as part of the resolution you're adopting

So I guess my question is, what's the downside in us just moving forward?

Well, and at this point, we have an approved resolution that we can hopefully try to submit one last time for consideration for Tuesday's agenda. All we can do is try, but if we don't continue to move forward through the process, then we still have to answer to the judge on that piece, and we don't have something to present to county council.

Madam Mayor, just point of clarification. So there is a section in our agenda that says motion for reconsideration. So, you know, those that voted in the affirmative have an option to reconsider. But from what I'm hearing is there's a potential that military and overseas voters will not receive a ballot. There's potential.

Squaring things away means a potential that military and overseas voters do not get a ballot.

Council Member Morgan, I think the issue that is now being raised is the discrepancy between the information that we've received about whether or not we need approval from the County Board of Supervisors to have them give us supportive services in this election and Jessica's opinion that they should be able to give us information regardless of whether they adopt any kind of approval or support.

Correct. It's administrative approval from the registrar voters. But if they see that we have a potential to confuse their election, I think that there is a potential for problem.

OK. SO ONCE AGAIN, I DON'T KNOW THAT THERE'S HARM IN US CONTINUING TO MOVE FORWARD. WE ALREADY HAVE A RESOLUTION THAT'S BEEN ADOPTED AS COUNCILMEMBER WEIGAND MENTIONED AT THE END OF OUR AGENDA TODAY. WE HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR MOTIONS OF RECONSIDERATION. FIRST, WE'VE GOT TO GET THROUGH THE REST OF THIS. SO ONCE AGAIN, MAYOR POTAM, BLUM, ARE YOU WILLING TO AMEND YOUR MOTION TO ACCOMMODATE COUNCILMEMBER WEIGAND'S REQUEST?

I need quick clarification first, Mr. City Attorney. Because the arguments had already been approved based on the judge's orders, we had to confer with the plaintiff. So is that correct?

Okay, so even though I do agree with Councilmember Wygant that I would like to see more information on those, since we are literally skating on a knife's edge right now to remain compliant in multiple different arenas, I'm going to keep my motion as stated.

Okay, and then your second came from Council Member Weber who wanted to add her name to those arguments against. Are you okay with that in your motion?

I am, thank you. Madam Mayor, I would like to add my name as well.

Okay, so we have three council members whose names will be signed to those arguments against all three ballot initiatives. And we have a motion and a second. Let's go ahead and vote.

OK. Madam Clerk, please read the statement on motions for reconsideration.

Are there any motions for reconsideration? Hearing none, we are adjourned.