City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you very much for waiting very patiently. It's been 25 minutes.

So we will now be reporting out for a more closed session. Your City Council is returning from closed session and providing the following report. What do you do, Your Honor?

Yeah, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council, at this point in time, we have not concluded our closed session items. So at this point in time, there is no reportable action, but we will continue.

Go back into closed session as soon as we finish the open session item and at that point in time We'll report out after that concludes Thank you Well, welcome to your City of Paterson City Council special meeting September 2nd 2026 7 p.m public meeting guidelines City of Paterson City Council meetings are conducted in person at City Hall Council Chambers. As a courtesy and technology permitting, members of the public may participate virtually. However, the City cannot guarantee that the public access or teleconference and translating technology will be uninterrupted, and technical difficulties may occur from time to time. Members of the public may participate in the meetings in person or via teleconference call. The meetings will be televised or available for public viewing on Comcast Cable Channel 7 on the following days, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. To access the written translation during the meeting, click the link. Para acceder a la traducción escrita durante esta reunión, pueden agregar esta línea de internet. Choose a language and click Attend. Elija un idioma. Use the headset on the phone for audio and read the transcript for your device. In compliance with the American Disability Act, if you need special assistance to participate in this meeting, please contact the city clerk. Notifications 40 hours prior to the meeting will be available to the city to make reasonable arrangements to ensure accessibility of this meeting. The City Council agenda and supporting public documents are available for viewing in the City Hall, Administration Department. Now we will call this meeting to order.

Can we please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Moving to number three. Are there any statements of conflict from any of the council members?

None.

And your mayor pro temp has none. Moving on to item number four. We will now take a public comments. Because this is a special meeting, comments must concern to the matter listed of tonight's agenda. The appointment of members to the censure rules committee. Tonight, the council is not deciding whether misconduct occurred and is not voting on censure. You may comment on this appointment process, the qualifications, or impartially of potential committee members. Another matter is reasonably related to the item, 5.1. Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak. To use the translator, we'll receive up to six minutes. When the timer sounds, please finish your sentence so we can hear from everyone. You may state your name and city for the record if you wish. But identifying yourself is optional. Please address your remarks to the council as a whole. Council members will listen and will not debate speakers during public comments. If you're here in person, please approach the podium when you're called. If you're participating by Zoom, Use the raise hand feature. If you're participating by telephone, press the star nine. Madam Speaker, please call, if anybody, to the stand, if anyone's going to come and speak.

Thank you.

This is a new process, and there's a little bit of confusion even going through this packet that we were reading this evening. My question is, a week and a half ago, the council decided to move this forward to censure. Is that correct? Is anything tonight negate that where you are starting this process over?

So so I typically don't answer during a public comment But I want to answer some questions that maybe it will help other people when they come up so All that has happened has been given The mayor's been provided with notice of censure that initiates. That's the very beginning of this process in fact Beginning of that process I It has the ability to result in nothing. It has the ability to go to, in three other forms of what's considered discipline, admonishment, written reprimand, or censure. So there's four options, one of them being that they decide that it shouldn't move forward, and three other kind of differing levels of potential discipline. At this point in time, there's no determination as to what it would be, if anything, and so it's just notice that the process has commenced, and that's what we're going through now, and that's what's on the agenda, which is to appoint members of the rule committee, which when I do a little bit of a presentation, I'll go over where that's at in steps.

Okay, so they're going to vote tonight then on the three?

On just who would be on the Rules Committee, the three members of the Rules Committee.

Okay, so then the statement that went out on September 1st still stands that the mayor is not being accused of any kind of criminal activity?

That's correct. He had not been accused of, nor was there any investigation related to criminal activity. Everything that's involved is civil in nature.

Okay. And then he cannot be removed through this process?

He cannot be removed from this process.

That's all I had. There was quite a discussion as to what exactly this was for. So thank you for clearing that up.

And because I know that this is a unique process, again, I want to state, usually I have a habit of I never talk until everybody's finished. But just on opportunities where we can provide some clarity that might help other people with their comments, you know, hopefully that was helpful.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Hi, Mark Dizon, City of Paterson. So first and foremost, I want to clarify that I haven't decided who to support for mayor. I'm still making my decision based on the platform presented during the campaign period. Tonight, I'm addressing the process of the censure. My concern is that there have been communication gaps, especially regarding the controversial topic that can be politically divisive. Delayed communication to the community has led to many speculations. As residents of Patterson, we deserve timely information about the censure. Since this censure was announced, questions came to my mind. Why did Council Member Jack recuse herself? From outside looking in, being new, I would think she would have a clear lens to make fair decisions. Secondly, I'm curious why Council Member Hernandez is included in approving the censure, considering she's running against the mayor. Is there a logical reason why she can't recuse herself? Why hasn't the mayor provided the information he claimed he would when he made that statement yesterday? Both Mayor Clauzel and Councilmember Hernandez are our neighbors who deserve fair treatment and not to have their reputations tarnished due to lack of information shared with the community. Lastly, if legally information cannot be shared publicly until yesterday, how is it shared with the Patterson Irrigator and some information shared by neighbors in Apricot Watch? This suggests there may not be any legal obstacles to sharing information. I hope the communication process in the city improves. Information should not be limited to a select few, but should be accessible to the entire community. If sharing to a few is a direction, it opens up the possibility for information to be filtered and spun to fit someone's agenda. Thank you.

Anyone?

Is this just statement time? Are we also allowed to include questions? It sounded like we could.

You can include questions, I mean, depending on the nature.

I am just going to repeat my statement from yesterday, but mainly because yesterday's was just during the general public comment, and there wasn't actually anything regarding the censure, but I do want it documented with the censure, what I have to say. Okay, so I want everyone to listen carefully as I explain something. So let's say that someone that you know and love is convicted of murder. Convicted, not accused. Convicted of murder. You may have only had positive and loving interactions with this murderer. And this person being convicted of murder doesn't change the interactions that you have had with them, just as much as your interactions with the murderer does not change the validity of the interactions with their victim. You may think that the murderer is a good person, but I can guarantee that the victim's family knows that the murderer is not a good person. Both things can be true. All that to say, just because a murderer didn't murder you or your family doesn't mean that they aren't a murderer. Now, I'm not saying that any of you are murderers, and I would certainly hope that none of you are murderers, but that's an extreme example to prove a point that just because someone hasn't been a certain way with you doesn't mean that they aren't that way with other people. With that being said, I'd also like to say that this can be applied to everyone. There are people sitting in this room that would take a bullet for me. There are also people sitting in this room that would pull the trigger if given the opportunity. So this can be relevant about any one of us. I would like to quickly focus on the elephant in the room regarding our mayor. I personally have seen multiple sides of him. I've seen him as kind and I've seen him as a monster. I've seen him calm and I've seen him irate and livid. If an independent investigator has found that he violated policy, I urge you to believe it because I personally can tell you multiple stories of him violating policy, but I was not asked or interviewed and that's likely because I'm not city staff and there'd be no reason to interview me. But my heart is broken for his victims because I unfortunately know a small glimpse of the fear that they are going through, but unlike them, my livelihood and my career is not at stake. Lastly I want to encourage all victims to stay strong and to not let intimidation of any kind shake you I also want to encourage the deciding bodies in this situation to believe the victims and to take this as seriously as it is Because our city cannot afford another lawsuit I'm also familiar with how to engage in a recall if that is necessary since this doesn't actually affect any his um position um and then i do have a question so it sounded as though first of all i'm a little bit confused why the mayor could make a statement about the recall when none of the rest of you were allowed to do that he was just allowed to do whatever he wanted last night after so that was a little concerning but also his statements implied that he hasn't been given any information and then he followed up with he was interviewed and he cooperated so i'm concerned with how he hasn't been given information and you yet he participated in an interview, which means he must know something. He must know some kinds of questions or answers. So I just feel like he's putting out false information that's getting the community riled up to want to defend him. And they don't even know what this is about. So I'm 15 seconds over. Thank you.

Thank you. Can I – I'm going to just suggest that we pause public comment for a minute and let me provide a little bit more information that I – tell me if you can't hear me. And let me provide a little bit more information as to how this goes. So let me go through how this process – what I'm going to describe here is the process that's very specific to this situation because – Public officials can get go through disciplinary proceedings for a myriad of different things This one just happens to emanate from an HR complaint. So let me go through We're hoping but by the end of the night to be able to produce a graphic that folks will be able to take home that will help them That will illustrate the process and hopefully make it more clear because I have gotten some emails from talking about feeling like the process is confusing. And so to the extent that we can, we want to make it as simple and digestible for the public as we can. So the first step in this is an employee complaint was received. That complaint went to HR. The HR HR then reviewed so that's the first step second step is HR then reviewed the complaint and Basis and on the basis of the things that were included in the complaint made a determination that a third party investigation was required in the law certain certain Allegations just automatically require that you have an investigated Then the next step after that is then a third party investigation was conducted. In this case it's by the law firm of Lieber Cassidy. Then the next step was that the third party investigator provided analysis and recommendation. THIS IS WHERE IT GETS TRICKY BECAUSE THIS EMINATES FROM FOLKS THAT ARE PUBLIC EMPLOYEES AND THEY HAVE CERTAIN PROTECTIONS AND RIGHTS, NOT ALL THE INFORMATION THAT'S ASSOCIATED WITH THIS, INCLUDING THE NAMES OF THE PEOPLE WHO MADE THESE COMPLAINTS, WILL BE ABLE TO BE MADE AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC. And so unlike other situations, in this situation, the public will never have available to it for public employee protection reasons under the law all of the information. But we are going to try to make as much of it available to you as we possibly can. So the next step is after that recommendation was received, then the council member submits a written request for censure. So in this case, by the vice mayor stepping in for the mayor under our handbooks, the notice of censure would automatically come from him in a written form. Once that notice of censure has been triggered, the process is that the council then selects three members of the rules committee, and that's what we're doing tonight. We did it before. There were some complaints that people thought that it should have been done in public. While we feel like it was legally supportable to do it the way that it was, in order to just eliminate any perception that things aren't being transparent, we decided to redo the vote and do it in public, and that's what we're here tonight to do. Again, once these three members are selected, the mayor will be personally served with the notice of censure. He, of course, has already been made aware of it. I think he kind of made that known at the meeting last night. And then part of it will set a date for the rules committee meeting. BEFORE THAT HAPPENS, HE HAS TO BE GIVEN A COPY OF THE REPORT THAT WOULD GO PUBLIC. THAT HAS TO BE AT LEAST 72 HOURS BEFORE THE RULES COMMITTEE MEETS. IT CAN BE MORE, MEANING He could have it for a week or maybe two weeks. I don't think we're going to try to go that long, but it could be more than 72 hours, but it can't be less than 72 hours. So we couldn't have a hearing tomorrow, as an example, right? So once that happens, after he's served, then the rules committee meeting will happen, and at that, the committee will evaluate the allegations, the investigative record, and the mayor will be able to give a response either verbally or in writing. Or no, or he doesn't have to respond if he doesn't want to. Following that, the Rules Committee will make a recommendation of whether or not to proceed with some form of discipline. It could be or not. So it could be nothing. It could be admonishment, which is verbal. It could be a written reprimand, which just takes the form of a resolution. Or it could be censure, which is considered to be the most serious from them. To be clear, none of these involve, and nor does the council have the ability to remove him from office. Probably the worst thing that they could do is take actions to, for instance, remove him from committees and things of that nature. So those would be examples of actions that they could take if they determined that he needed to be disciplined. But they couldn't strip him of his mayor role. He's elected at large. That can't happen. And they can't remove him from office, and they can't prohibit him from coming to meetings, and they can't take his per diem. So just there. At that point in time, once the Rules Committee has determined what they'll do and they've made a finding of how to proceed, I'm going to assume now, just for sake of argument, that they've made a finding that some form of discipline is appropriate, because otherwise it just stops at that point. So if you proceed to the next step, that's when you get to the council and they hold a public disciplinary hearing where members of the public, as well as the mayor, sit in front of the council, and be able to present each of their sides, including the investigative report, at least the public version of it, and then make a decision as to whether or not discipline is appropriate or not, and what level of discipline is appropriate. During that time, Again, I think I said already that the public would have the opportunity to comment so put there will be public involvement in that And then the council would ultimately vote to vote for Reprimand for admonishment or written reprimand at least three of the four count so all four council members are required to participate so at least three of the four would have to vote for written reprimand or admonishment for there to be that finding. For there be a finding of censure, all four of them would have to vote for it. And in the event that it's censure or written reprimand, in those cases there would be a resolution that would be adopted that would spell out exactly what he's being censured or reprimanded for. So I hope that at least in terms of process, and again, the hope is before the night that there's a graphic outline that you guys will be able to have access to because the goal is to make it available to the public. I'll work with the city manager to make sure that somewhere on the city's website first so folks can look at it if they want to. And then we'll figure out how to communicate where it's available. But that's the goal tonight. I'm trying to remember Candace's question. I'm trying to remember... Oh. Okay. So the question was, because I can't hear you on the... The question was how come the mayor was allowed to make a comment and the other council members are not allowed to make a comment. So... Every one of the council members is going to be acting effectively in the role like a judge of whether or not a reprimand or something could come before them. And they are not allowed to make comments that would prejudice them or would foreclose the opportunity to being open to hearing comments. mitigating evidence that he may offer or somebody else may offer or mitigating circumstances that say that it should be either no discipline or a lower level discipline, or on the flip side, that it should be censure, right? So because they act in a judicial role in making that determination, they are not allowed to make any comments. And to be very clear, they're under strict legal guidance to not make any comments on it because of the fact that it could either cause a conflict of interest or in the alternative, it could prejudice and create liability for the city. The flip side is the mayor is the one who's being accused. And so those same restrictions, since he doesn't determine his own fate, they do not pertain to him. And so hopefully that provides some clarity.

We're bringing it back to the public. Is anybody else would like to stand to the podium and address any additional comments? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, is anyone online?

We do have a comment. Alyssa, you can go ahead and unmute yourself.

Hi, this is Alyssa Homan, resident of Patterson. Can you hear me?

Yes, we could.

Hi. So I wanted to follow up on an issue I raised last night regarding the sensor rules committee. So tonight, this council is considering the appointment of the members to a committee that will evaluate a sensor proceeding involving Mayor Clausel. At the same time, Council Member Hernandez is a candidate for mayor, and Mayor Clauzel is her opponent in that election. So I understand that there are legal definitions of conflict of interest, and that not every situation that creates an appearance of bias necessarily constitutes a conflict, especially because the legal definition comes down to financial. My concern tonight is not simply whether something technically meets the legal definition of a financial conflict. My concern is ethics, impartiality, and public confidence in the process. Patterson's own council member handbook says that effective democratic government requires elected officials be independent, impartial and fair in their judgment and actions. It also says that members conduct must be above reproach and avoid even the appearance of impropriety. And that decision should be based on the merits rather than unrelated considerations. So I have a very simple question. How is it appropriate for a sitting council member who is directly running against the mayor to participate in a disciplinary process concerning that same mayor? Public trust doesn't depend solely on whether someone believes they personally can be impartial. It also depends on whether the process reasonably appears impartial to the public. If the rules were reversed, if Mayor Clausel were running against Councilmember Hernandez for mayor, and he were participating in a committee evaluating whether or not to censor her, I think many people would understandably question whether or not that was appropriate. And that's precisely why I believe the council should consider the appearance created by this arrangement. If there is no legal requirement for Council Member Hernandez to recuse herself, that may answer the question of what the law requires. However, the city's own handbook asks elected officials to hold themselves to a higher standard, independence, impartiality, fairness, and avoiding even the appearance of impropriety. Why should the council settle for the legal minimum when it has adopted a higher ethical standard for itself? Tonight, you have the opportunity to choose the more neutral option. I would ask that council member Hernandez not serve on this particular committee or that the council otherwise choose a process that removes this obvious appearance of political entanglement.

Thank you.

Could you please help us, Doug?

Yeah, so I think it was kind of alluded in the comment, too. So our office has done a legal analysis of this, and there is no legal conflict of interest here. In fact, there's a specific, so the government code section 82030B2 specifically excludes from income salary reimbursements for expenses or PDMs that are received from government agencies. So there's what we call the elected officials exemption. So that's the specific government code section. As it relates to participation, particularly as it relates to the censure proceeding, all four council members are required to produce. So even if we determined that you had a conflict, that there was a conflict of interest, and we did what we do in other cities, which is okay. If you have a conflict, we need to have enough requisite participants to be able to decide a matter. You go and... draw straws or toothpicks or whatever. She would wind up just drawing her own toothpick because of the fact that, can everybody hear me? You'd wind up drawing your own toothpick because you ultimately have to have all four members of the council participating. And beyond that, I would be, as the city's legal counsel, I'd be reluctant to change the process while we're in the middle of it, just because I think that that might also give the appearance that we're changing the rules. So that would give me some concern, right? So hopefully that addresses the question or issue.

Can I make a comment? Yep. Okay, so I want to make it very clear as well as as

Doug was mentioning this process has been going on for a while.

So there has been multiple meetings that we have had with HR and Council regarding this issue that Council Member Jack has not been here for. So as it might seem easy to just take one out and plop another one in, it's not the case. We want to be fair and reasonable to all parties. And there's a lot of meetings that she has not been a part of that's very important in making any determination. So as the timing is not ideal, that we are in an election that does not take away from doing the right thing and following the policy. So unfortunately, this is the situation we're in. And therefore, that's one of the reasons Council Member Jacks had to recuse herself is because she doesn't have all the information. So it's very important.

Can you hear me? All right. I do really appreciate your comment tonight. I would want to say that, yes, I am seated. The very first time we met, the right thing to do was because I was not previewed to all the documents that was involved in the proceeding. So I needed time to read it. to dissect it, to ask questions, to both the legal counsel, the investigators, everyone that is involved. It would be impartial of me to just jump in, making a determination or making a decision without reading the document. So that was the reason why The recuser or the abstain was there because it won't be fair. But going forward, I've been reading all the document, making sure the process is followed, making sure I'm following all the rules and I'm reading and understanding and asking Lego all the questions so that I can make an informed decisions. I just want you to know it's not that I know I'm seated, but there's a lot of documents that I have to go through to make sure that I'm following the right process. All right. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Jack.

I just want to go ahead and clarify the timeline. Doug, if you can reiterate why it's not a conflict of interest, and could you clarify the timeline of the investigation, if you can. If you can't, that's fine. But I decided to run, I would say, maybe even a month ago because of a lot of things. So that's all my answer. That's all I'm going to say right now. I don't want to say anything that is privy to us, but I want him to reiterate and clarify why it's not a conflict of interest and the timeline. Thank you for your comments and your concerns.

So I'm going to give a range rather than a specific date.

So let's just say that this has been going on for somewhere between four and seven months.

So it would be in that range that the process has been going on. And in terms of the conflict analysis, it starts with the question of whether or not it's speculative that that Councilmember Hernandez would win. It's not a foregone conclusion that she would win. It's up to the voters at the end of the day. And so in order to have it be a conflict, it has to be a little bit more concrete than just the she might win. Then there's the component that even if she did win and you use that income, you have the government code that has a specific exclusion for that being counted as a conflict. So even if you said, okay, she's going to make more money as mayor than she would make as a council member, there's a specific exclusion for that income in the government code. And I gave you guys the code section so you can look it up yourself and feel supported in that area. And then third, and probably the most importantly, ultimately I have to have every single council member up here participate. It's just the legal requirements that we have in our handbook that it requires a two-thirds vote, and I have to have at least enough people participate. So that's four of the five because it's two-thirds of the entire council, not the people who are allowed to participate. So in order to be able to even have a vote up or down on anything, well, I guess just on censure, then I would have to have her participate. So they wouldn't even be able to consider Centra as an option if she wasn't participating. On a side note, it looks like the flow chart has been, we got the final version of it, and so I think we'll be printing it and putting it in the back in the room within like the next 15 to 20 minutes.

Thank you very much, Doug, for clarifying this process. Does anybody else online have any additional questions? Madam Clerk?

We do have a couple. Angela, you can go ahead and unmute yourself.

Good evening. Angela Bodis, Patterson resident. It's been mentioned several times that this process has been going on for over a few months. Four months was a timeline mention. In that time, why was there no consideration given to how this would be presented to the public? This has been just very obtuse. Like there's no information coming from the city on what you're allowed to say or when you're allowed to say it or what this procedure is or what the process is. There has been no communication with the public on what is going on. And I think that given that it's been going on for four months or more, that some thought somewhere should have been given to how are we going to explain what's going on to the public? It's very, I'm very disappointed. very disappointed in the transparency, very disappointed in the perception that this gives of whether or not you guys know what the process is and whether you know what's going on. If you can't explain to the public what is happening, how am I to have confidence that what you are doing is correct? I think that you need to not only take a moment and figure out who's voting and who's on what committee, but also How are you explaining this to the public? Because that step has been completely skipped. And I am not the only one who goes, what is this process? What is going to happen? What can happen? Nobody freaking knows. Nobody knows. Please, before we continue to next steps, take a minute and figure out what the timeline is and how we are proceeding with this, because we are not involved out here in the public, but this is our council and our city, and we deserve to have that information. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Angela, for your comment. I do understand your concern. And it has been going on for between four to seven months. But at this point, to my understanding, it was just certain allegations. And we could not move any forward until we had an investigator and followed the right process through our policy handbook. Given the circumstances, this is where we're at. And I understand your frustration as well. This is a new process for us. It's hard to navigate for us at this point. But hopefully we could get through there. And if we have any additional comments... Doug, if you could help us out.

The only thing I'll say is part of it is it deals with HR personnel issues, and so that creates certain limitations on what we should do. So I think I stated it earlier, so I'll kind of just leave it at that.

Thank you. Madam Clerk, is anybody else online?

We do have another comment. Mercedes, you can go ahead and unmute yourself.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we could.

I just wanted to say to everybody, I want to say first and foremost, thank you to everybody who's addressing this issue right now. I know it's not one that makes everybody comfortable. And I know that it seems to raise a lot of questions, perceptions, things like that. But I wanna make sure that, I just wanted to say that I understand that this is a very complicated matter. It's not easy, especially when it's a city council person and staff personnel, and there's many things that come into play, including potentially union representation and things like that. I think the most important thing is that everybody was made aware, somebody was made aware that this was an issue that was happening. It's now being addressed as a community. You know, I've been looking at the council member handbook just to understand a little bit more how this process goes. Fortunately, I do have background from my employment where I understand the way investigations can sometimes take time because you wanna do due diligence. with past years of some of the issues that happened within our city, how they were being addressed, how they were being communicated with the community demanding that we had answers, that we remove people immediately and a number of other things. I want to say that I know this is not easy for you guys, but I applaud you guys for taking the time to do due diligence, to do a proper investigation, to bring in the right people as needed. and to make sure that you're sharing information as soon as possible. Again, it's very easy for us to sit back and criticize things or bring things up, but I think it's also important to understand the way everything works. With that being said, as I become familiar with Patterson Council Member Handbook or others become familiar with it, if there was changes that we wanted to make or even you as a city council person wanted to make a change so that in the future, if you are in a situation like this, there is a clear path to understand how somebody could be either asked to not be part of the vote or bring other council people in. Just to have a clearer path, again, I know these are situations that you're not facing all the time. So when something like this happens, it has to be handled in a certain manner. But it's definitely, I feel important that as a community, if we feel there's a change that needs to be made or something that needs to be drawn up in that council book, that there's input provided. And I don't know if that's just the attorney and some of the staff people, or attorney, staff, and city council. But at the end of the day, I know it's not an easy situation. I know you have to protect the staff members within the city. You have to do proper diligence. And I just want to say thank you to you guys. Again, it's not an easy position to be in. It's easy to be misconstrued, but it's also important for us as a community to understand that there is processes in place and that those need to be followed whether we like them or not. Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

There are no other comments.

Madam Clerk, we will be closing now our public comments and moving to item five, our city staff report, section 5.1, discussion and action regarding appointments of the sanction rules committee members. Report, city staff, attorney one.

Yeah, Mayor and Council, I mean, what we're here tonight to do is to do the Rules Committee appointment. We're looking to place three members on this committee that would consider whether or not to forward to the full council for action any form of discipline involving Mayor Clauzel. Again, the Rules Committee role would be to ultimately decide whether or not to take any no action, recommend discipline just generally, or recommend a specific form of discipline, which would be either admonishment, written reprimand, or censure. Ultimately, the Rules Committee recommendation would be just that. It's not the final decision. That final decision would be made by the city council at a public hearing. During that time, as I said previously, Mayor Clauzel would be able to provide any kind of verbal or written statements that he wishes for the Rules Committee to consider in informing their decision and before they make it. And he must receive a copy of the public report at least 72 hours in advance of whenever that meeting would be held. In order to come up with a date, we're going to have to check with all of the council members and with Mayor Clausel to see when he's available because it doesn't do us any good to schedule a meeting that folks can't participate in. So with that I'm happy to answer any questions that you have again the action that we took in closed session We feel like was completely legally valid, but because there were some complaints And in a desire for transparency I think the city manager and I thought it was best and you know just in Consulting with a couple of you we thought it was best just to bring this item to the public so that it's done It's done in the public when with the public being able to provide any kind of input that they wanted as this decision was being made So with that, happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Do any council members have any questions? Do you have any questions, Council Member Jack?

No.

Any questions, Council Member Hernandez, regarding this? Your Mayor Pro Tem has no additional questions to this section matter of the staff report. Moving forward, do we have any public comments from our audience today? FROM THE PUBLIC? SEEING NONE, DO WE HAVE ANY PUBLIC COMMENTS ONLINE, MADAM CLERK?

JUST AS A REMINDER, IF YOU'RE JOINING US ON ZOOM AND WISH TO MAKE A COMMENT, PLEASE USE THE RIGHT-HAND FEATURE. IF YOU'RE CALLING IN BY PHONE, YOU MAY PRESS STAR 9. WE HAVE NO COMMENTS ONLINE, MAYOR.

Seeing no additional public comments or any additional comments online, we would close this public comment section now and we'll be moving on to address this. Do we have a motion to appoint Council Member Mora, Council Member Hernandez, and your Mayor Pro Tem to the Rules Committee to consider a written censure request? Agenda for Mayor Clauzel?

On motion.

Do we have a second? I will second that motion. We will conduct a roll call. Council Member Mora?

Aye.

Council Member Jack?

Aye.

Council Member Hernandez? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem votes aye. The motion passes with a 4-0 vote.

Moving to adjournment. So, no, we're going to move back to closed session.

Okay. Before we close, we'll be going back to closed session, and we'll be reporting back out after this.

Thank you.

Your City Council is returning from closed session and are providing the following report. Conference with legal counsel. Anticipated litigation. Significant exposure to litigation pursuant government code 54956.9 Quran D, Quran 2. Two potential matters. The first one is that the first anticipated litigation is there's no reportable action. On the second anticipated litigation item, by a vote of 3-0-1, Council Members Mora, Hernandez, and Mayor Pro Temp in favor, Council Member Jack Abstaining, have authorized the limited release of independent investigation report to Mayor Clausel, in which a third-party investigator investigated allegations raised by employees and council members against Mayor Clausel. including claims of intimidation and excessive involving himself in the city operational matters. The city council further directs that the city manager and the city attorney's office coordinate with the mayor so that he may view, but not copy, the reported person. And with that, we'll be closing. We'll be adjourning from our closed session.