Remarks by Ron deHarte
79 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 2 of 4
That was corrected. Thank you. My bad. And you know I know better, so thank you.
So you're watching too many other city council meetings at other cities that have fist fights. We're a very polite city council, and in the time that we've had rotation, there has never been a challenge to that rotating system.
And Dominic, at the time when the decision was made, that was the system that the council chose. And that's pretty simple. There's no fisticuffs about it. That's what council presented. That's what council agreed to. And that's what council voted to approve was a rotating system.
Dominic, you want to pose those types of thoughts as questions. If you want to ask them now, it needs to be a question.
Okay. Very good. Thank you. All right. Okay, we're on to public comment now, and there's a timekeeper who has... Jack, you need your glasses because it's written on a card.
And Jack, you're up. Yeah, they're going to bring you a mic because we do need it for the recording.
Excellent. And we have two public commenters on Zoom. And Dominic, get this, your last name, Moon Hart. I got it. Dominic, you're the first up.
Excellent. Thank you. And the last public commenter, right? Yes. John Lano.
Thank you. All right. Thank you, John. Who does the wrap-up? Jenny? So this is the last in the series of meetings that are scheduled. So thank you for attending. And I just want to make sure that none of you go home with the impression that I was intentionally advocating. We've been very, very careful to not be put and not be in a position to advocate. And what I encourage you to do is watch the other videos, watch the other sessions. And the words I shared are the words you'll hear in those other sessions. So I invite you over a cup of tea in the morning to tune in to the city's Zoom channel…
Wow, George is efficient. Well, very, very good. So show of hands, who's from district three? This is three. All right, very good. We got a good showing of district three. How about district two? Only one half of you? I was gonna say, was there a split? All right, District 1. Anybody in District 1? Four? Oh, one district. Oh, OK. We got one over there. District 4. No district fours and district five. Oh wow, thanks for coming north. Wow, this is fantastic. So much appreciation to the working group and many thanks to you all for coming out and taking part in tonight's program. We're here to…
of the survey, okay. Somebody's gonna cover that better than me who has the answers. So you're gonna get information about the survey. I encourage you all to take the survey, because that's gonna be another really valuable tool that helps us reach beyond this room. Okay, that's what the purpose of the working group is. Council Member Garner and I are the advisors, but we're truly at arm's length of what the working group is doing, and we're doing our best to not influence the work that they're doing. Because we want it to be independent from the city council okay is is that where I stop…
So at the time the districts were put together, there was equal voter representation throughout the city. So around 5,500 voters in each district. Right now there's between 5,600, 5,700, 5,800 in each district.
I'll answer. Under a threat of a lawsuit under the California Voting Rights Act, the city acted to establish a minority majority district. And in that process the community was brought together and looked at ways that districts could be formed throughout the city and when Dieter introduced himself he talked about he he was I remember that now pivotal in one of the versions of the district maps now last question I know you're not going to advocate for your choice but why can't we ask you guys to tell us what you would prefer and why
Thank you. Next question. So we will have, you will have the opportunity for comment. We have a question over here.
I just don't want to answer if it's on one of their... They're assigned the question. So the reason why it came up is there was a citizen's initiative that was being brought forward to put the idea of a citywide elected mayor on the ballot. As that came forward, city council became engaged in the conversation. Part of that conversation was, assign council member Gardner and myself as a subcommittee, establish a working group, get feedback from the community at large so the community can share more information to city council. City council at the time, some of the council members didn't feel…
Sure, it's public record. There's a citizen's initiative, and you'll see information about that initiative at... I never remember the website. It's electyourmayor.com. What is it? Elect your mayor ps.Com has a lot of information about this group that drove this effort okay thank you I just pulled up the website Ron it actually says citizens for an elected mayor.Com that's And will you be here next week to remind me again?
Any other questions? Yes. I have a question. John.
Two good questions in there, which we didn't cover in the intro. Districts as we know them today, these five districts are not even part of a conversation to touch. They are not gonna change, that's not part of what this conversation's about. The districts will stay the same regardless of how this conversation ends. So the five districts as they've been designated will not change until the community and city council is engaged in a process of changing all those districts. What was number two? Yeah. Yeah, so it's not on the table because districts are not touched in this conversation. But…
What we hear from the community is there's a lot of support. Community members have support for the idea of a rotating mayor and and that's why city city council established this rotation in in 2018 2019 and they what we hear most frequently is support for the rotation because it brings representation and opportunity for representation from throughout the city and it brings opportunity for different ideas different viewpoints different leadership on this one year rotating basis the opposite side of the coin is as what you're sharing so we we hear both sides one year is not enough and and we…
So the city manager is like the CEO of the city. He's sort of like the president in our country. So the city manager, he or she, would be the one that oversees the day-to-day operations of our 650 employees.
And the city council, though. The five city council members today are responsible for supervising the city manager. So that's our job. Okay, makes sense. To manage that CEO.
Why did you do that? I think that was ancient times, though.
That's just in California, our next election, our next election opportunity is going to be March. It's an off year, so it's going to be March of 28.
No, nonpartisan. Do you know my friend Councilmember Jeffrey Bernstein? He tells me, this is my last question. This is my last question. 10 minutes later, 10 minutes later, we have another question. You're fine, you're fine. Thank you for your questions.
Sure, we're ready for a public comment now if we don't have any other questions. We don't want to have, we call that question creep. So we now are on public comment and we have yellow cards that are submitted by folks.