City Council - Regular Meeting

So you'll be doing right now. Wait a second.

Grace, ask her if she wants to. So you can see everybody coming up to the mic, yeah.

Good evening everyone. For our deaf community if you need an interpreter please raise your hand. We have interpreters here for you. Thank you. With that, welcome, bienvenidos to our community meeting today. We are so incredibly grateful for all of you for being here today, spending your time with us. We do wanna go ahead and start with some ground rules. Please respect each other's opinions, please hold applause. and this is a limited public forum, so please only speak about the issues at hand, which means please do not talk about your campaigns or anything like that, or the pothole next door. Again, we're grateful to have you here, and we're also grateful for our city staff assisting us, Ms. Brenda and Jeremy in the back, as well as our public recs department and our IT department that were helping us move tables. We are very appreciative of all of you. I do want to introduce myself. I will be the moderator. My name is Melissa. I'm born and raised here in Palm Springs. And with me I have some really awesome folks from the city of Palm Springs as well. We have Dieter. George, Ginny, and Jason. We have worked together as a team to make sure that these meetings flow properly and things like that, make sure that we are getting the word out. So if you have any suggestions, let Ms. Brenda know in the back. Today we will have Council Member Grace Garner. Oh, and I also want to recognize David Reddy. Sorry. David Reddy is here, he is your district representative and we're grateful that he took time out of his day to be here with us. Our moderator today, she is in charge of us, can I say that? Rhonda Hart and Grace Gardner are our council members that work with us and this working group to go ahead and make these things happen. So today we have Grace Gardner. She will be sharing duties with myself about moderating. And Grace, can you please come up?

Okay. Thank you so much, Melissa. Welcome everyone. Feliz dia de independencia de Mexico, de Mexico, which is also happy, happy independent state of Mexico. Happy Hispanic heritage month. Um, All right, so we're gonna start out with a little bit of an understanding of city government, how things work, because we wanted to make sure that everyone is kind of on the same page of what our responsibilities are as a city, and the form of government that we have. What I'm going to share with you and read to you is also on our website. If you want a fuller version of it, check it out on the website. I'm not going to read it to you every single line, but I am going to go through the main points. In Palm Springs, we have a charter city. Cities through the Constitution are allowed to be charter cities, That gives us the power to make and enforce all ordinances and resolutions with respect to municipal affairs Just means that we have a little bit more ability to do the things that we want as a city We also use a council manager form of government That's the most common type of government that you see in California which means that the elected City Council sets the policy through budget ordinances and resolutions and And then a city manager who's hired by the council carries out those policies and runs the day to day operations. The city staff report to the city manager and the city manager reports to the city council. So the city council has the authority to hire one employee and that's the city manager. In larger cities, which is like San Francisco, places like that, San Diego, that's where you see the strong mayor form of government where the mayor acts in a similar regard as a city manager. So Palm Springs has five voting districts. Each district elects one council member voted on by the residents residing in that district to serve a four-year term. And each of us has an equal vote. So even when one of us is mayor, we still only have the same amount of voting power on the dais. The mayor and the mayor pro tem are on a rotate set on a rotating basis based on district number. So when we first moved to districts we started off with District 3 as the first mayor. That's because at the time council member Jeff Kors had the most seniority on council and then we rotated from there. So the mayor, as I said, has one vote, just like every other council member, and the role of the mayor is to run the council meetings and to act as a spokesperson for the city and the council. The mayor in Palm Springs does have the legal authority to call a special meeting of the council at any time. And I want to just pause there because since we're here to talk about the mayor and the mayor form of government here in Palm Springs, this is how it is currently. What we want to hear from all of you is, is this something that you like? Would you like to see it differently? There's a lot of different variations on this. There are folks who say that they want a directly elected mayor that has the same powers of our current mayor. There are people who say they want a directly elected mayor with different powers. There are people who want a different rotation or want the council to decide who the mayor should be each time. There's a lot of different options that are available to us, and we want to hear your opinion on those options. Or if you have questions about it, You can go ahead and share those questions with us as well. And this is really an opportunity for us to hear from all of you as residents. And there's not a right or wrong answer to any of this. It's just to help inform us as we move forward. A little bit more about our history and how we got here. The city was incorporated in 1938 with a seven-member city council. And each council each council member was elected to a ward. So they basically had a district system when the city was first incorporated. And then the council members among themselves decided who would serve as mayor. In 1958, a newly elected council member, Mary Carlin, joined a citizens group and advocated for at-large citywide elections. So it's kind of interesting history is a little bit repeating itself here. And in that citywide election, voters approved a measure to abolish the ward system in favor of at-large elections. In 1982, Palm Springs residents voted to directly elect their mayor. And the city council at that time was reduced from seven members to five members, and those five members included the mayor. In 1994 is when we moved to a charter city, which allowed us a lot more flexibility, as I said in the beginning. And then in 2018 was when Palm Springs was threatened with a lawsuit under the California Voting Rights Act. And in response, that's when the council moved to our current system of district elections with a rotational mayor. In March of 2026, the city received a notice of intent from citizens for an elected mayor to circulate a voter initiated initiative measure that would create a directly elected at-large mayor. So when we heard about that, we thought, all right, there needs to be some more discussion among residents about this system, and we would rather that we have as much information as we can and really dig into this topic, before just moving to a vote. Because as we've learned through this, there are so many different opinions. And it also helps to inform the group, citizens for an elected mayor as well, so that they have a better understanding before they put money and time into making a change too. The ad hoc committee is myself and council member Rhonda Hart, and then we each appointed three folks to join the mayoral position working group, and their task is to host meetings like this and gather public input to define the role of mayor, identify logistical and operational factors that would be involved, to find out what the community prefers, which could be, again, multiple options, to evaluate the viability of a ballot measure, to conduct a California Voting Rights Act compliance assessment, which means working with our legal team to determine what legally the city can do, and then report all of that back to the city council. They may come back with a unified recommendation, they may come back with multiple viewpoints, and that's okay, that's all part of this process. So if you want More information on this. The website is Palm Springs CA dot gov forward slash M P F A Q. Before we get into hearing from all of you does anyone have any questions on what was just presented. Any clarification needed. Oh, and our city clerk Brenda Pree actually has handouts of the document that I was just reading from. Yes. Yeah, the potential output could be multiple recommendations. Obviously, it would be great if we could have a consensus, but that might not be possible. We're hearing a lot of different viewpoints. But this is the second meeting that we're having. The first meeting had a quite the crowd. This is a smaller crowd, which is fine. So we'll see kind of how the rest of the meetings pan out. And the working group at that point, too, after the last meeting can say, hey, we really think we need another meeting. Or we want to change the format of the meeting. There's lots of options here. But the biggest point is that we're trying to gather as much information as we can from the community and really do our due diligence before we make any big decisions. Because If we were to, keeping the status quo is not really a big decision, but changing it is. And so we don't want to do that without proper feedback from the community. All right. So, oh, go ahead, Ed. Do we have a mic? I don't think we do.

Anyways.

Okay Sure, so the basically the concern is that there's The information is a little bit inconsistent depending on where you're getting it from so and we will work on that and figure out how to make sure that It's easy enough to find everywhere. So thank you for flagging that I Okay, yeah, we'll make sure that this is all very clearly on the website, on Engage Pump Springs, and then we'll look at it through the app as well. I'm not sure that we thought about the app, so we'll look at the app specifically. All right, so I think we have some comments. Do you want to do it?

Okay.

Before we start public comment, I do want to remind you that you can share your opinion on a sticky note and put it on keep, change, or other ideas. Please go ahead and let us know. We want to make sure. Also, if you would like to give a public comment, Jason is running around right now giving out public comment cards, and we will be calling you in order. So for our first comment public comment. Oh yes. And you have three minutes. Sorry. And we have timekeepers that will tell you how much time you have 30 seconds a minute and your time is up. For our first public comment we have Ed Duby followed by Juanita Gardner. Thank you. For your public comment, if you can please come to the mic so that we can all hear you. Thank you.

I would prefer not to go first because I was under the impression that we would have like 10 minutes to talk on this from at least two members of the working group said they were looking for people for 10 minutes. I need to.

OK so for folks who were at the last meeting we had a member of citizens for directly elected mayors speak about why they want a directly elected mayor. And we had another member of the public talking about why they like the rotational system. That was the first meeting. But the idea here is that we're really gathering feedback from all of you. That it's we're not trying to advocate one side or another be and especially because there's not just one side There's multiple sides. So that's part of why this is a switch So sorry if that was not not clear at So, thank you Juanita

So we'll have, sorry, that was loud. I'm not yelling at you, I promise. We'll have Juanita Garner and after Dawn Barrett. Thank you.

Okay, this is from the Elect Your Mayor website. I'm gonna give you a couple of quotes. The choice of our city's leadership belongs directly to its citizens. Help bring democracy to City Hall. Give power back to the people. These words were very carefully chosen. This implies that we didn't have free elections in Palm Springs. This is how you scare people into believing that they are being denied their rights. The reality is every council member was democratically elected by the residents of Palm Springs to lead our city. of them has one vote together they make policy for our city so no one is being denied the ability to elect their leaders having a rotating mayor has never caused a project that was voted on by the council to be stopped or paused because a council member took their turn at being mayor no one is in our state or federal government has ever been confused or unable to contact our mayor because of rotating mayors. When the fertility clinic was bombed, the acting mayor was out of town and the mayor pro tem, Naomi Soto, stepped up and did the job. The FBI was not confused. They worked with the mayor pro tem and assisted our fire and police departments without a problem. Continuity is not an issue. Our democracy is not in danger in our city government. The time and money being spent should be used to better the lives of our residents and not to create a position that is not needed.

Thank you. We will go ahead and have Don Barrett.

Thank you.

Uh, I had not intended to speak today, so this is a little bit disorganized, but I have talked about this. So, um, I'm in favor of continuing the current process, uh, and for a number of reasons. Uh, one is that by rotating the mayor responsibility through the districts, it gives the residents of those districts, the opportunity to learn how to run and manage a city. It can be a learning experience. Uh, and that's something that, that those sorts of resources are not equally distributed around the city. So if we have a district as we currently do that as majority minority, it makes it possible for those in the majority minority district. to begin to understand the processes of government and work through them. That's a primary reason for me. The other reason is that power within a city is not equally distributed. So that, again, a majority minority district is likely to be people who do not have resource, do not have access to all of the systems of power that provide whatever, provide all the opportunity to move forward and the skills to move forward. So if we want to give opportunity to those people, we need to have a voting, as we currently have, a district voting that does that. The moving to a district-wide elected mayor, that favors someone who has the resources to run a campaign. Even as small as Palm Springs is a campaign is not going to be a simple process It's going to take money and resources to get it there It's going to take not it's going to take knowledge by other people's other other civic leaders to promote that person and So it's not it's not an equal opportunity possibility so I'm concerned about the potential that having a district, having a citywide elected mayor will really reinforce it for some individuals who already have a lot of resources and influence and doesn't create the opportunity for a broader segment to have that. I'm looking at the notes I made, that's basically it. I prefer, it's a more democratic, more egalitarian system that we currently have than it would be to have a citywide elected person. The other concern is that once we institute a mayor, we have to institute a mayor's office, we have to have- Time's up. Finances for that, time's up. I didn't know I could talk that long. Thank you. Okay, thank you.

Our next speaker is Ed Duby. And if anybody else has a public comment, please fill out those yellow cards and April or Jason will go ahead and collect them. Thank you.

I'm sorry everybody. I really didn't know we were going to be that limited on what we were saying. So if I'm all over the place please bear with me. I'm going to try to extract what I think is the most relevant out of the things that I was going to say. First of all I'd like strongly to suggest that we have white boards that show what people have already given testimony. There's been lots of testimony already to the council directly. And the meeting at my cell, which unfortunately I haven't been able to sit and watch the whole thing. Okay. On the pros and cons that we've already testified to so that we're not repeating ourselves in the same thing over and over again. I'd like to know what has been said. I could extract from here what it would be new. One of the first things that I want to point out, and this is really more political theory. is that in the United States, we have a head of government and head of state. They're the same people. We don't separate out. We don't have the Queen of England and a council or whatever. We have that all parts are in the same government. And what I think that we're proposing here is that we have a directly elected mayor who I don't even know what their portfolio is going to be when they're going to be a talking head, but what government power they have. You're going to ask that a mayor controls the council when they have no legislative ability over the council and yet in this discussion we're not talking about what do we do, when do we move to a strongly elected mayor. If we were to set up an executive position, a true executive branch, It would be another story because we would have a check and balance being put into the system. And one of the main things that I don't want to see, we have a sheriff for the county that's now directly elected for 10 years. Are we talking term limits or anything like that? And at the same time, that sheriff tells us, tells the legislature, tells the governor that since he's directly elected, he's the one in charge. Okay, he doesn't have to report to the governor who's the head executive branch of the government. Anyway, I'll end at that because where's the time? What?

You're like 45 seconds in.

All right. One of the things that bothers me, we work very hard to be able to have that head of state role very equally and equitably shared. We are, without a doubt, on the leading edge of progressive theory. We are a brand, the national brand. I'm not going to be able to finish this, so thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have anyone else that would like to speak? Again, you don't have to go ahead and give public comment, but we really, really urge you to write down your thoughts on keep, change, or other ideas so that we can keep track of what your opinions are. Thank you.

I know we're a much smaller group, so if people have questions as well, we can answer questions. So the question is what do other cities in the valley do so it is largely a same the same system a rotational district system with some few exceptions the city of Coachella for instance is all directly at large and with a directly elected mayor that directly elected mayor has a two-year term and And so they run every two years. One example that's a little bit different as well is Desert Hot Springs. Desert Hot Springs moved to districts, but they're still doing a directly elected mayor, also with two-year term with a term limit. And I believe they're allowed a total of six years, so three terms for that mayor role. And that's a new system that they actually just initiated within the last election cycle, I believe. Yeah.

Yeah, so the city of Garden Grove has a

council manager form of government, which means that they have a city manager. That's where our current city manager was before this. And they also have a directly elected mayor. So usually in cities with council manager forms of government, the directly elected mayor is Basically the same as we have here in in Palm Springs where that person is The one who does the news and media they run the meetings They are they are at they are the figurehead for this city. So a lot of times when People want to meet they want to meet with the mayor so then that would be the person that the meeting would start with there are cities that have little extra things that they do. I don't know exactly the details of Garden Grove, but for instance, in the city of Coachella, that mayor is allowed to add items to the agenda at any time. So the mayor is the only person that can add something to the agenda without consulting the rest of council, right? So there's usually smaller things like that that the mayor has when you have a council manager form of government and a directly elected mayor.

One quick, we have two Zoom speakers. The first being Dominic Moonhart followed by Lori Allian.

We'll have Dominic go first.

Yes, we can hear you and you have three minutes.

All right, thank you. So I have a question on the seven wards system. Was there a mayor rotation during the seven wards or was it just sporadically chosen?

I'm sorry, Dominic, do you have a question or a public comment?

No, that was a question.

Okay. Yeah.

You're mic is on.

Yeah, they chose a microphone sound. Okay, so they chose amongst themselves.

Okay, thank you.

So, Laurie, do you have a question?

I don't have a question, I have a comment.

Oh, great. You have three minutes.

Thank you. I'm a little bit dismayed that we are revisiting this issue in that we, several years ago, went through a pretty tumultuous time and extensive public outreach and comment before we landed on the system that we have today. That was pretty recent and we really haven't had a chance to see how that compares with the directly elected mayor system. By all measures, in my opinion, it rocks. We are so much better off than we were when during the first seven decades of Palm Springs, we elected nothing but affluent white men and black as mayor. The system that we have now, I believe, represents what Palm Springs represents, which is equality and opportunity for all and a consensus form of governing. Some of the reasons given for having a direct elected mayor are almost frightening. The desire to keep one person, in our case it looks like it would be one elected affluent white male, in charge for a longer period of time so that they can accomplish more things is a little bit scary because our system is built upon the mayor and the council members and the people accomplishing things. The mayor should be turning things over to staff so that they can get the work done. It is also noted that we would have a better identity if we had a single mayor for a longer period of time. In response to that, I would point out to what I would call a competitive set of cities. Other cities that are trying to attract the same visitors and appeal to vacationers, and have a natural environment, cities like Monterey or Carmel or Santa Barbara or La Jolla would be a competitive set. And yet I would venture a guess that no one in this room could name the mayor of any one of those cities. It doesn't depend on a single mayor. What we stand for is a united consensus form of government where everybody has an equal opportunity. Recent mayors that we've had, including Grace Garner, 30 seconds, would in all likelihood statistically would never have been elected because they didn't meet the criteria of being a white Anglo male. And I think both of them, in addition to the current mayor, have done wonderful things for the city. And I would hate for them to not have the opportunity to do that or for other people not to have the opportunity to do the same thing. Thank you.

Thank you. And we have our next speaker, James Gardner. Oh, I have it here. This?

Oh. Oh.

He wasn't sure if he was going to speak.

Oh, okay.

No worries.

Thank you.

Since there's so few speakers, I thought I should come up here.

I attended the first meeting and I left wondering why the working group hasn't said anything about what role the mayor would play All right, so what I was saying is having attended the first meeting I left wondering why I The working group didn't say anything about what the role of the mayor would play, other than it would be a full-time position. What would be the voting member of the city council? If so, how would that change the city manager role, if this was a voting member? From what I've heard is that the mayor role would be a figurehead, someone who just leads the monthly council meeting and does ribbon cuttings. Seems like a vanity project to me, a role for someone to fill someone's ego. It was also mentioned at that meeting by Rich that the cost of the mayor's salary and benefits would be around $88,000, and there wouldn't be a need for office space or additional staff. If there isn't a need for office space, where does the mayor work? Out of their home? Does the city provide them with a computer or phone? Does the mayor use their own devices? If no staff is needed, I'm assuming then that the mayor also manages their own calendar to track meetings and community events. Which led me to wonder, who would be able to run for mayor? Given the salary, a young person who's working a full-time job wouldn't be able to afford to give up their job for a four-year term as mayor. But a council member rotating in for a year can manage that for the year. meaning most likely a retired white person with money or a local business owner would be our candidate for mayor. We've seen that in Palm Springs before. It hasn't always been pretty. By having a rotating mayor, each district has their elected representative as the face of the city for one year, gives each council member an opportunity to better understand what's going on in their districts and throughout the city, making them better council members Since going to districts and a rotating mayor, the city has seen its first woman and Latino as mayor, not once but multiple times now. Also, at no time has the city project been delayed due to continuity of the mayor's role changing. No on electing a full-time mayor.

Thank you. Do we have other public comments? If not, we can go back to questions.

I know there were some other questions that folks had. Yes. So the question is about what exactly the mayor would do in a change system, in a different system. That's part of why we're having these meetings is to find out from all of you what you think that role should look like. And I heard from these other questions about what other Valley cities do and how do other council manager systems with directly elected mayors work. I think that's information that we can work with the working group to provide at a future meeting to help to facilitate that discussion as well. Yes.

How is this information given out to the community?

Obviously, District 5 is not all represented here.

And I'll give you an example. The other day, I was walking with my dog, and somebody was out in the parking lot blowing stuff away because it was trash with one of the kids staring hard. And I told him that she called the council member. He had no idea what district he lived in.

He had no idea who his council member was.

Sure, so we did advertise this on With media we put it on our website. We have distributed flyers all over the the community, I think this is our first meeting after that July meeting, and so obviously I think what we're seeing from this is that we need to do a little more outreach to remind people again that this is happening, probably another media blitz because we will have another meeting on September 24th, October 1st, October 16th, I believe, and then another one after that. So there's definitely a need to do some more outreach, I agree.

What was that? There were over 100 people at the first meeting.

Yeah, the first meeting had a lot of people, 84 people. But we will work on more continued outreach. Yes. Regarding the outreach, one of the concerns I've had ever since I saw

so many are not even in town and are kind of disconnected from what's going on so they're going to be missing and not being able to participate so that was one of my concerns one of the other things i wanted to ask about this how an at-large elected mayor impact the voices

So Paul, I think you're more giving comment if you want to come up and give a public comment. So I'm a little bit concerned. I know that there's lots of questions. We might want you to come up to the mic and give those questions because I'm realizing that we're recording and your voices in the audience might not actually be picked up for that recording. But just to paraphrase what Paul just said, is some folks who are here seasonally might not be here yet. They might be coming back, you know, closer to November. That's something, again, that the working group can keep in mind and host additional meetings if they feel they're not getting quite the feedback that they want. And then the other more public comment that he had was that what happens to the voices of the other council members if we have a directly elected mayor? And just a concern about those voices possibly being diluted, is that? Muted, diluted or muted, so that's it. Sir, can you come up to the mic? I'm sorry, I'm just very worried that we won't actually get to hear anyone.

I have a comment having shown up sort of last minute to this meeting. I am concerned about what's going on and want to learn. And the premise of the meeting, the way this has been set up, it seems as though everybody was expected to have done their homework before showing up. There's been no prelude to say, here's what we talked about last time. Here are the pros of our current system and cons. Here are the potential pros and potential cons of a new system. So none of that was done. And so we're walking into this situation where we're really just like, okay, please give us comments or ask questions. And it's like, well, wait a minute, we need to step back and we need that baseline information. So that's going to be the case in future meetings, and I would say you need to include that as part of the posting that goes out beforehand. Also, I would say that you need to lay out the rules of the meeting much more clearly than what happened here, because people clearly came with lots to say, and they were limited. That may be a standard procedure in these meetings. I don't come to them very often, so you need to lay out those ground rules to say if you're going to come and talk, be prepared, keep your notes succinct. I think this could have been a much more successful meeting than it is turning out to be. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate that feedback. That's really helpful to set those ground rules ahead of time like in the flyers. And if you have a question if you. You can can you come to the mic though. Otherwise the recording won't pick it up.

My question is and we can just show this by a simple show of hands. How many people here are actually from District 5 where this is the town meeting so 2 4 6 8 10. I'll give the benefit of the doubt. Let's say 12 people are here. Registered voters for this district is close to 9,700 people, of which we have 12 people here at the town hall. How in any way is this representative of the general population? Thanks.

One of the things that we thought about and thinking about setting this meeting was there are numerous events happening tonight that are conflicting with this. And I think we would have had a better turnout probably if we hadn't done a better investigation. But tonight is Taste of Palm Springs. which is a huge, thousand people go to that. And the street fair, there's all sorts of other things that are happening in Palm Springs tonight. And so, pardon me?

Street fair's on Thursday. It's Wednesday.

It's not tonight? No. Oh, I thought that's why we were thinking about changing this. Wasn't there a conflict?

No.

Taste of Palm Springs. Yeah. Oh yeah. Street fairs tomorrow. Yeah. The taste of Palm Springs was why we were thinking about changing it. So, um, we did have, we did have a good turnout at the last meeting and I think it's important for us. We're listening. We are not putting any of our thoughts out. We were charged with just listening. not giving you pros and cons because we don't know what your pros and cons are so we are here listening those boards over there we hope before you leave you'll go and fill in some of your thoughts because we're keeping all of those and at the end of all these public hearings we will be going back through this testimony which we're recording at every session and we will be going through all of those to see exactly what we have. We have no control over the fact whether people are here or not. The city has tried really hard and the subcommittee has tried really hard of Ron and Grace to think of every possible way that we can advertise this. And so I'm sorry that we don't have more people here tonight, but maybe you can let your friends know, take one of our

Trustee fliers and make sure you get all your neighbors to the next one I would also like to add that all residents are welcome to all meetings, which obviously doesn't help tonight's turnout but you are welcome to come to any of the other following meetings if you want to hear what your fellow residents have to say if you want to give more input after you've heard here tonight, you are welcome to come to any and all of the meetings. We will also have an all-Spanish speaking meeting on the... October 1st. October 1st. And yeah, your input is important to us. We are listening. The input does help us with further meetings as well.

Any other questions? Yes. So what is the end process? I mean, is there one stage where we're all holding? Yep. So the question is, what is the end process? What's going to happen after the working group has done their listening sessions, which again, as we've discovered, might continue into November or even into the top of next year if they so feel. They would then get together. They would discuss all of the feedback that they received from the public over the course of all of these different meetings. They'll have some discussions with our city attorney about the current legal affairs because the legal landscape has been changing a lot. So our legal team is following closely on what we can and can't do on this issue. And then they would be compiling a report to give to city council. Once city council receives that, we would obviously put that on our council agenda Public would be welcome to to read that to come to that meeting to give maybe further comment on what the committee recommends And then we would act on Potentially act on the recommendation that that can this commission gives so they could say you know what we've heard a lot from the public we've heard from X a number of people and The majority of folks believe that we should have a directly elected mayor well then at that point the council would then have to consider a either moving to a directly elected mayor as a body which we're allowed to do because we're a charter city or we could say we want to put this on the ballot and we ourselves could put it on the ballot. They could come back and say you know what it's a real mixed bag. We just don't know. We can't say definitively one way or the other what folks think we could then decide well let's put it on the ballot for that reason. And we could also decide to take no action and then the group citizens for an elected mayor could on their own gather signatures and put it on the ballot themselves. So. think that's why this is a complicated process because there are so many different outcomes and and that is also why it's helpful to hear from folks and also to hear your criticisms right because now we know for the next meeting we would like to be able to you know show information about what's happening in the Coachella Valley you know what our other city manager forms of government with a directly elected mayor, what do they look like? There is the request to have some pros and cons again, which we had at the first meeting. So that's all really, really valuable information and can help us strengthen these meetings as they move forward.

Yes, Don.

Very short. There is too many people I think we're electing that we are electing a mayor in November. Okay, we, yeah, so we are not electing a mayor in November. In November, we have three districts that are up for election, District 1, District 2, and District 3. We do not have anything on the ballot regarding the mayor, to make that very clear. Thank you, Don. So the reason the reason for a pro con is we're looking for your all's opinion. We weren't looking for people to be advocating for one way or the other and choosing sides. And the reason is that it's not a clear one way or the other. That was why, but hearing from folks here and hearing that you want to have a little bit of a pro-con so that you can understand the issue better, then that's totally fine. The working group can take that information and figure out kind of how they want to do that. So the question is is it difficult to describe what a mayor the mayor position would look like It's because there's many different options and that is correct There are many different ways this could look but perhaps that's one thing that the the working group could do is present a five different options of what this could look like and again just ideas and that way people could have a little bit of something to go off of. I can understand that certainly certainly when we as a city move forward with different projects we usually present different scenarios and then people can kind of look at those things and say like this I don't like that. So that can be something that we do in these situations as well. So just for the record the the comment was to make sure that we also explain what the guardrails are Legally what we're allowed to do and what we're not answer you had a question. I Absolutely. So Council Member DeHart and I decided that we both wanted to be on the ad hoc committee, and so then we both decided we'd have a working group of six. I don't really know why we chose that number, but we would each select three. Can't speak for council member to heart. I can speak for myself only I I chose three members who lived in different districts and who I thought represented different people I'm not gonna tell you who I don't know. I don't I guess I can tell it doesn't matter I'm April is has been in in Palm Springs for about five years. She's a small business owner and Melissa grew up here and she is also by far the youngest member of the working group. It's true. And Dieter also grew up here. He's also, because I know how young she is. And Dieter also grew up here, and he was very active when we moved to district elections, which I thought would be valuable insight. One of them is in District 1, one is District 2, and the other is in District 5. So for me, it was about kind of making sure that we were really getting a variety of folks I also did intentionally choose younger folks because that's the demographic that I represent and I know that a lot of times younger folks are not represented in a lot of city business and I wanted to make sure that we heard across the span, and I think it worked because we have a pretty diverse group up here of people, and Ginny Foda is a former council member in this city, so she brings valuable experience from her time on the city council, and I believe both George and Jason were just very interested and had reached out not only to Ron about this, but to the other council members, and so I think that was part of Again, Ron can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that was part of why he chose the two of them as well. Yes, sir.

I'm new to Palm Springs, not even quite a year, so I'm learning and finding my way.

But what I'm experiencing here tonight is no one speaking for the other side or even asking questions suggesting that there's anybody from that perspective.

So being new, I don't know if your previous meeting with Noah

from citizens for an elected mayor coming and speaking up, and it just happens to be tonight that they're not. Yeah, so the question, okay. Lots of opinions. Keep your father under control. I know, I'm like, I did not tell my parents to come or tell them what to say, for the record. Yeah. Yes, so the question was just about the last meeting and folks who spoke up and who didn't. I do know that there are people who would like to see a directly elected mayor in this room. There are members of the citizens for an elected mayor in this room. Whether or not they choose to speak is up to them. We did have a, I think from my count it was, about 50-50 at the first meeting of people speaking for a directly elected mayor or for a rotational system. So it was pretty evenly divided. There was over 20 public comments given, and there were a lot of comments written down on the boards. And then there were some folks who said, I walked in thinking one way, and I walked out thinking a different way. And that was both sides, people who said they walked out wanting a directly elected mayor, but didn't when they walked in, and vice versa. So it was actually really very interesting.

So then being the new guy who did a block, I would implore those who might.

Sure. And there's also a lot of folks who I understand it's like, you're, you're not sure which one you want. So yeah, if, if any of you do want to speak on, on why you would like to see a directly elected mayor by all means, uh, yeah. Don't let my parents scare you with their passion.

Yes. Go ahead. Do you want us?

Yeah. Yeah, please, please. Thank you, David. I appreciate that.

I didn't want to call anyone out but Okay, hi Good evening.

My name is David Vignola. I am a district 5 resident. I've been in Palm Springs since 2018 of you do the math I am in favor of of a directly elected mayor i'm in favor of giving the residents of palm springs the choice to go to the ballot box and vote yes or no on having a directly elected mayor i think that this demonstrates that There are going to always be people that are not going to come to these meetings and voice their opinion, but they may voice their opinion at the ballot box. And I think it's important in a democracy that we allow the voters to vote on an issue. And if the majority of the voters of Palm Springs say, no, we do not want a directly elected mayor, so be it. But to deny the electorate the option to express their opinion at the ballot box to me is just not a democratic way of conducting business i think there's value in having a directly elected mayor because it provides continuity across years i feel that um having a rotational mayor that is in that position for one year and has to perhaps split their time between representing those constituents that elected them to that district seat and represent the voice of 44,000 Palm Springs residents is very difficult. Having a directly elected mayor that represents the entire city based on the vote of a majority of the people registered to vote in Palm Springs to me, is more democratic. And if you don't like what that mayor's doing, then you would, again, vote them out the next election. But to deny the majority of voters the option is just unfair and undemocratic, in my opinion. we can argue about the role of the mayor but let's first decide should there even be a directly elected mayor and then what's that person going to do perhaps they do nothing they don't have a vote on the council i can't see that what does that say 30 seconds oh um so i mean i think you know that's my opinion as a district 5 resident and i hope that helps you have some framework going forward. Thank you so much.

Oh yeah, we'll need that. Thank you.

Do we have any other public comment?

We are doing a survey but if you wanted to write written comments

You could certainly send them to the city clerk, and the city clerk would distribute them to the working group. But they are working on a survey that will be sent out to the entire community, because that was one thing that we wanted to make sure. There are folks who don't want to necessarily come to these meetings or speak at the meetings, but if you send a short five-minute survey, they'll fill it out. But yes, the city clerk would be the best person to email longer written comments to, and it would be distributed. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. The city clerk can be reached at city.clerk. No, city clerk. Cityclerk at palmspringca.gov. So you would email that email address, and then she would send it all to us. But you could also go on our Palm Springs website, palmspringca.gov, and her information is also listed there. But the easiest thing is cityclerk at palmspringca.gov.

Yes Sure Yeah, we can we could certainly add a comment box to the web page that has all this information on it We could do that.

Yep. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's actually a really good note Yes, Paul Can't hear you do you want to come

I thought it was really great how you started the last one. You opened it up with one speaker from one perspective and another from the other perspective. How did you get the comments started? I thought that was really good.

Okay so the comment is that at the last event there was someone who spoke with one opinion and someone who spoke with a different opinion and that that was helpful to get conversation going. So that will be noted and I'm sure the working group will implement that. All right. Any other questions or comments? If not, encourage you to write down any notes that you want here. If you would like, you can also email the city clerk or you can stick around and chat with any of us here as well. Thank you very much.

Also, other ideas can be not sure. That is still feedback for us and it's good to know if you aren't quite clear or don't have an opinion yet, that is still considered feedback and we're open to that too because that helps us Moving forward as well. Thank you for coming tonight We appreciate your time.

And again, please reach out to city clerk at Palm Springs CA doc up With your email suggestions and we will definitely get those again. Thank you for your time and happy Hispanic Heritage Month

Oh, yes, thank you so much.

I appreciate it. Thank you so much for your suggestions. Thank you. No, no, no, we need that.

Yeah, we meet every Monday.

Sorry to cut you off. We meet every Monday to talk about how the last meeting went and what we want to do moving forward. And so we're always kind of throwing around.