City Council - Special Meeting

Good evening, San Bernardino. We will start our meeting off with the Pledge of Allegiance. And I have a neighbor in the room that I haven't seen in a while. And his name is John Hillman. He's going to lead us in the pledge. United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Please be seated. Shall we call the roll? Yes, thank you, Chair. Casey Daly, Ward 1. Here. Scott Olsen, Ward 2.

Here.

Angela Torres, Ward 3.

Here.

Andy Garcia, Ward 5. Here. Ricky Van Johnson, Ward 6. Right. James Albert is absent. Timothy Prince, Mayor's appointee. He's here. And Leticia Briggs, Mayor's appointee.

Here.

And you have a quorum.

OK, we will acknowledge the presence of many from our community with great thanks. And we'll start off with our public comments. We'll start with Treasurer Ortiz. Is she in the room? Oh, OK. Dorothy Nevarez. I'm drinking a lot of this. Make sure the light's on.

There we go. Okay, thank you committee, planning committee. My name's Dorothy Nevarez, I'm with the fifth ward and is my ward here? Yes. There you are, sir. Okay, thank you, Andy. I just want to say thank you. I watched the May meeting and it was amazing. I took like a thousand notes. Of course, I didn't read them afterwards because I was confident. But I just want to say thank you because everything that you discussed, I really appreciated that you worked together for those of you that were here to really discuss each topic thoroughly and really consider each other. I really appreciate the collaboration and the teamwork. I am slowly seeing that on the dais and I'm hoping that there is communication and dialogue between you and your city council member. I will say Councilwoman Knoss has already sent out her community meeting letter and it has all of these things that are on it. So she's paying attention and she's putting it forward to the community ahead of time. I was hoping that there would be a lot more people from the Fifth Ward, but slow burn, it'll come eventually. People are basically sitting back and just watching and seeing what's going to happen. The only other thing that I wanted to talk about, I appreciate that you made a decision to say no to the McDonald's. And I love McDonald's, I grew up, I was the best dishwasher they had when I graduated high school over on Victorville. But my suggestion would be, since we're looking at a health type of wellness situation.

That's not this committee, that's the planning committee.

Oh, okay, pardon me. I got you guys mixed up then.

Okay, well you got one. I'll just throw it out there, Mr. Daly, yeah.

So for that committee, put in an El Pollo Loco because it's healthier, it just has much more of a benefit to the community as far as health wise. But everything else, I'm in approval of. Thank you.

Thank you for coming. Dolores Almstead?

All right, good evening. I see the charter committee is contemplating revising the charter to make the city a strong mayor city. One of the reasons that people voted for the change on the charter was due to the blatant, blatant corruption conducted by previous mayors in previous years. They had too much authority and too much strength. I do agree with dedicated staff for the mayor's office that is needed. Items on the agenda should go through the city manager for clarification and transparency. Everything going through the mayor's office again leads to corruption again. We've been there. We've done that. We don't need to go back to that. Mayor as the chief executive policy officer lessens transparency. Again, it opens it up. Granting mayor sole authority to nominate city manager, heck no. If you remember before our current city manager, the three previous city managers were the most corrupt they could find. It took the citizens coming out to get them to get rid of that last corrupt city manager. So we don't need the mayor to have that kind of strength. It should be the whole council should be looking at hiring a city manager, because the whole council has to deal with it, not just the mayor. And they are responsible to the citizens. Term limits, elections should be up to the citizens. And I know there are, I got this little graph, there are some cities that have term limits. I think it's the citizens. If they want to nominate somebody four or five times, then that is the citizen's responsibility, not the council's responsibility. Now, I do believe that the mayor needs a little bit more authority on some things. but not all this blanket authority that you have written here. That leads to corruption. Been there. We've done that. We don't want to go back to that. And that's my main thing right there. We don't need to go back to the strong mayor. We've been in corruption. We don't need to go back to that. And that's what most of your ideas come back to. It'll lead back to corruption again. And there are several cities that are larger than us. and they don't have a strong mayor, and they're larger than we are. So think about it. The council should be the ones making decisions here, not just one person. We already have that at the federal level. We don't need to do that here. Thank you.

Thank you. Next is John Hillman. Turn your light on there.

There we go, all right, okay. I just want to kind of express a problem I'm seeing in terms of this charter. When we made the change, it became a point of division. A lot of people weren't for it. I know we voted for it, but there was a lot of discussion about how, from one side or the other, how wrong the charter was. And I guess the only thing I would come to you tonight is to please ask you to have a spirit of unity And that is only gonna come through education. You're going to have to understand history. You're gonna have to have a complete understanding of what moral leadership is. And it's shocking me lately how few people really have a moral basis for any decision. They're going by their emotions. So my plea with you tonight is to be honest with each other. If you don't, you know, and I'm not talking about being aligned with the Democrat or Republican Party. I am talking about you personally. Do you really have a moral stance and a history so that you can make decisions that will create a unity for this city? It's a special city. And you people, thank you for your time. Okay? All right.

Thank you, Mr. Hillman. Omar Williams. Next will be James Smith.

Go ahead, Omar. Good evening, everyone. First of all, thank you for holding this meeting. In my opinion, I think the city charter meetings is probably the most important, if not next to the important meetings, right next to the city council meetings. Because the fact is, whatever happens within this city in terms of rules, regulations, or whatever, it has to go through the city charter first. And also the city council has to agree to see whatever amendments or potential amendments need to be placed on the ballot or placed on the charter. So with that in mind, Obviously, everyone knows where I stand on term limits. My proposal, three term limits. Each limit is four years. And most importantly, if possible, I would like to see it where if it's passed, that the past previous members, city council members or mayor, their time is counted. If we cannot do that for any reason, then I personally cannot support that. That's just me. I'm not saying that anyone else has to agree with it, but that's just where my stance is at. And I think that would be a benefit to the city. I think that would be beneficial to anyone that wants to run for office, but for some reason they can't simply because certain incumbents are holding certain seats hostage. And I know San Bernardino theoretically does not have a history of that, But I want to make it so that younger people can come in. We can have fresh ideas coming in every so often. And fresh ideas is not necessarily a bad thing. It challenges the old ideas and the new ideas. And if these ideas are good, we should be able to hold it up against a magnifying glass, test it, see if this is actually a good idea or not. Regardless of how you feel about any of these options on the agenda, it should be a situation where residents can make the final decision. And that's where I stand on things. Thank you. Thank you.

Mr. Smith. Jim Smith. Jim Smith. Jim Smith, it's your turn. And next will be Joe Salas.

Is it on? Red? Yes. Okay. Honorable Chairman, Tim Prince, and committee members, I want to congratulate you for what you've done. so far as far as looking at our city charter. I've been a member of the Arts and Historical Preservation Commission for many years, and that's a very important part of the history of San Bernardino. I graduated from San Bernardino High School many, many years ago, a proud graduate, And I was here when we were an all-America city. And that's when we had the old charter, which gave the authority to the mayor to make decisions. We've had strong mayors, we've had weak mayors, but the form of government has not worked in San Bernardino the last eight years. I think that's very indicative of what happened at our recent election, where two of the incumbents are not even in the runoff, And the third one is trailing the opposition in a runoff in November. We have to get behind people that want to make the positive changes for the city of San Bernardino. And I think the only way we can do it is looking at the charter and making some revisions that will give more authority to other people than the city council people. Right now, the mayor has no authority. The only authority she has is to veto. She only has one vote, and I think that doesn't work for the city of San Bernardino. I remember the glory days of San Bernardino. We need those to have those come back. I know that Treasurer Artes is working on a plan to move that forward and I think that's a very indicative of what we have to get in back to find a solution to the city of San Bernardino people are image. is one thing that concerns me very much. We need to change the image of San Bernardino so more people want to come to San Bernardino and make it a great all America city again. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your time, Mr. Smith. And next is Joe Salas. Joe Salas, fourth ward.

Real quick, whoa, this is far away. I learned a debate, so speakers can, microphones can move. Okay, very quickly. And this is more necessarily to address what's on the agenda, but hey, Mr. Albert, how you doing? Good to see you. That the hesitancy, I watched your whole meeting from beginning to end last week. And everyone acts in a certain way. perspective, I should say, not acts, in whether some commissioners were more like, hey, we need to get this done and get this on the ballot for November. And then some others, and neither of these are incorrect or correct. It's just where your life experience brings you to. Or somewhere like, hey, let's, I don't like to use the term, kick down the road. Be more prudent and have a more august debate about what we're doing here, because it's a very serious matter. We're talking about the constitution of our city in all intents and purposes. We need a preamble in that Constitution. I think we got one. But let me give you some perspective on what happened in our city last week. And more ballots are coming in as we speak. I don't know when the election is going to be certified. But in the mayor's election, we had almost 25% of the people vote. when historically only about 17 or 18% of the people vote in our city. That is doubling the numbers of the people who vote in our city. In my ward alone, in the fourth ward, 33% of the residents of the fourth ward voted, when normally only about maybe 22%. In the first ward and second ward, congratulations to those residents. Normally those voter participation are lucky if they break the double digit ceiling that they've been at for the last 20 years since I've been paying attention. They doubled their participation. They're at 18 and 19% respectively between those. So what I'm telling you, the reason why I'm giving you those numbers is the residents, however they voted, are now paying attention to more to what City Hall is doing to them and their families and their businesses. A vote is the highest level of participation you can do. Because you're making a public declaration, I mean a private one, but one that will be reported publicly, that this is how you are voting. How am I doing on time? Okay, so you got, and Mr. Smith said it earlier, two out of the eight governing board members are not returning to the general election. So I think there is a serious, serious mandate for change. We always talk about mandates whenever our presidents get elected. And there was an overwhelming response that status quo is not what they want right now. So I think you guys have every area that you need to look at the election results, go on SB Voter, and look at what our fellow residents said and get that perspective. I want to add that to your scheme of how you make decisions on how quick you're going to put this on the ballot or if you're going to delay it a little bit. That's all I got. Thank you so much.

Mr. Salas, can I ask you a question? Yes. You've made a case for renewed or heightened interest of the public. Should those voters have the chance to vote on proposed charter changes in November?

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Just like when states amend the Constitution by whatever threshold that is legally required. Thank you.

Thank you. Next is Kimberly Calvin.

Good evening chair and all of you commissioners. I want to thank each of you for serving the city of San Bernardino. I know that it is not an easy feat, but I definitely do appreciate it. I also wanted to share my perspective of where we stand with our current charter. And I believe that we have yet to see our charter operate within the guidelines of which it was written. There are reasons why the charter hasn't been working and that's because the previous mayors needed allegiant council members on the diets in order to have their agenda to be carried out. Even if some good things did happen and were able to move our city forward underneath those decisions and those projects underneath their leadership. Well, that worked until council members turned on their indebted mayor. And Mayor John Valdivia supported and campaigned for Councilmember Ibarra, Figueroa, and Sanchez, of which they gave a yes vote for two and a half years, regardless if it was an item that was good for our city. Electeds in other cities didn't even believe that we had, they believed we had a strong mayor because that's the way it appeared, while we did not. And what we currently see in this election period is Mayor Tran is also trying to do the same thing with running a slate to ensure for forward votes to move any items she would like to place on the agenda. This will reflect as perceived as a strong mayor. The people of our great city are definitely now the true managers and so they are awakening and educating themselves on roles and policies. They are becoming more aware that they are supposed to hold the mayor and council accountable to us and this is yet to happen until now. We now have an opportunity to allow the charter to work while assessing any areas that the charter may reflect needing to be tweaked. All the constituents of our city are offered this opportunity because now you have somewhat leveled a playing field. But you can't do that if you're going to continue to have council members that, again, are indebted to the mayor and are there to carry out their agenda. That is why we should not run slates. We should allow the community to vote for without any pressure that this person is the best person for that seat. Once the council members then are able to get in office, then we're able to determine what, who is what and which is which. We've yet to have a full council that understood their role, and the mayor to understand their role, a city manager to understand their role, and allow this to play all the way out for us. Right now, you have really 16 years, eight years for each of the other ones, so there has been a culture that has been established within that councils and the entire dais. You should be wanting to watch to see what happens prior to making a knee-jerk action as we are tonight. Because you cannot say that you have the majority of the council that wasn't aligned with a particular mayor, put there by a particular mayor, and allowed to just be their independent selves. And I think that that is critical right now that we all should take the time to allow those when this election is completed to see how they operate and also to remind every council member and the mayor that no one has to sit there for the entire term. wants a community because they are awakening, sees that this council or particular council member or the mayor is not really listening to the community, then actions should be taking, whatever actions that the community has, they should take those and that would be in the area of then we recalling a council member. We don't have to wait four years to get rid of anyone. I would like for you to truly take this into consideration and I appreciate the time.

Thank you. Is there anybody that turned in a slip that I haven't called? Al Palazzo.

Do I hit the red button?

You're good.

Okay, I haven't prepared anything but I want to make it clear, we need a strong city manager with experience and expertise. Our past gave us problems because we didn't have people with the right knowledge on how to run a city. However, I'm not going to comment specifically on those items. We need to give a mayor some power. Because in my thinking, the mayor should be the face of the city and the leader that can unite the city council. This city council for decades has been divided, going back to Holcomb. We can't have that. The problem is we lack leaders. While we have a lot of leaders, and we have good leaders, But we do not put the people first. We have meetings and we invite people to come, but we are a unique city. Anybody who knows me, that I speak about development, about rebuilding. I've been doing this for 50 years. They want to rebrand this. I remember Ballard. I idolize him. City on the move. All American city. We can have a renaissance in this city, but we can't have it with putting all the responsibility on the city manager or a few people on the council, on the mayor. We're not building bridges and involving people in the community to the next level. If it takes one person at a time, one family at a time, we should be addressing how their lives can be made better. Okay, and we can, but it's because we don't have a mayor that has some more power. So I don't want people to kind of think it's not clear what I'm saying or get confused. We need a strong city manager, but we need a mayor who has some ability to get something done for the city. And that key role is to be the face of the city. You can't put all that responsibility on the city manager or the bureaucracy. I grew up in San Bernardino. I see this city. Years ago, they sent me to talk to Mr. Castle. He was on a committee for the downtown. And I was probably in my 20s, and he said, you know Al, when I drive home on Sierra Way, I want to cry. And I was stunned. A grown man, his age, he probably was 60. Well, that's how I feel now when I see my city. Because nothing has changed on Mount Vernon. And it can be changed. This small site should be built in the next few years. And I have a plan, but how can we do that if you have a council that's divided and nobody bringing them together and nobody reaching out to the people in the city?

Thank you very much, Al. Thank you for your passion for this city. OK, that brings us to our discussion item. As everyone knows, this is a special meeting. And we extra appreciate all of you that came out and those that made public comments.

Before we get started, I wanted to make a couple comments for the committee members.

No, I think we're going to start with the city manager, if he wishes to speak.

I'll be brief, but I'm more here for those of you that don't know me. I think I know most of you on the dais. I'm Eric Levitt. I'm the city manager. I've been here almost coming on a year at this point. It's interesting, I've heard a lot of talk about the mayor and the All-America City. It's interesting because I was a city manager in another city. We didn't become an All-America City, but we were the runner up for All-America City when I was there. So I understand and I think both forms of government can work in different ways. And I think they both have value. there's a lot there. I'm not here to really comment on that. I'm here more to answer questions. You received some things from the city attorney's office. I'm here more as a person to answer questions on things. I have a lot of personal philosophies, because I've worked only in council manager form of governments, just so you're aware. But in doing that, I've worked with a lot of different councils and mayors that were either appointed from within the council, that were elected directly. that had different levels of powers, so I've seen the advantages and disadvantages of each from my perspective, obviously. But I don't want to lecture to you, but more hear your feedback. I would say that I believe, and we can get information to you, but I believe if you missed the November election, because we are a very tight timeline for the November election, If you missed the November election, I believe there's one in 2027. I believe the primary might be a general state election. I'd have to double check that because it is the primary for the presidential. So I'm thinking that would probably meet that criteria, but we'd have to double check. There's a reason the state made a law that charters can only go to the voters in certain types of elections. You may or may not already know that.

You're pretty sure of that option for 2027?

I'm not. I can find that out though. I can find that out by tomorrow for sure.

So for purposes of tonight, we should assume that's not a possibility.

I wouldn't assume it is or isn't. I would put it in the neutral.

I appreciate you coming, Mr. City Manager, and I appreciate your objectivity and your thoughts.

Okay, and I'm more than happy to stay and answer any questions or have any dialogue as you're debating it.

Please do. Okay, I think we can agree that we can all make opening comments. We didn't do it as part of the introduction, but rather than have Anybody dominate the debate, why don't we all agree that we'll make brief introductory comments? Mr. Chair? Yes. Can we hear from the city attorney's office before we get started? Well, I don't think it's appropriate to start out with a legal opinion. We've all read the memo. There's not a single case cited, and there's no statutes that dictate one way or the other. So certainly we will hear from the city attorney before we take any action, but I think it's important for us to know where we're starting. You know, some of us weren't here at the last meeting and some don't even haven't taken a position on this yet. So let's see where we are and then we can consider this action.

city attorney opinion mr chair i did see the whole meeting i wasn't here but i did see the meeting online um but again although i did see the letter that was sent from the city attorney's office with all due respect the public hasn't seen that letter as far as i am aware um so it'd be good if we can all be

uh engage with the information that we all have i disagree with you i don't think a city attorney should run a meeting or direct the course of a meeting if there's a point of legal error i'm sure it will be raised but i think this should be a process that's controlled by the public and the people that the leaders have appointed to serve the public and as i said we will certainly hear from the city attorney before we take any action

I'm sorry. Before we even have discussion, I do need to say a couple things before discussion happens. Okay. Thank you. So before we get started, I just want to make a couple statements and clarifications to all of you as the committee members. There are six proposals that are on the agenda, several of which are inconsistent with the council manager form of government. The council manager form of government is the explicit form of government for the city under the charter under section 200.

All right, that's your opinion, not supported by any case law. So I'm an attorney too. Okay. And your opinion will be considered. Absolutely. But it's not going to preclude this committee from having a discussion. Mr. Prince, this is disrespectful. Unless there's a point of order.

This is disrespectful to the city attorney's office, sir.

Sir, this city- You're an attorney. Hold on. Shouldn't you know better? Hold on. This city was plagued with a city attorney for 26 years that had a huge influence over policy matters and stuck his nose into items where he shouldn't have. And I'm not saying that our city attorney is trying to do that, but I just think it's proper decorum to start out with debate from the body. And then before we take action, we will hear the legal concerns and address them.

I do just want to say that I understand that you would like to discuss the matters, and I completely understand that. But the committee's purview is very explicitly stated in the charter and in the resolution that gave you your powers. It explicitly says that the Charter Review Committee is supposed to consider amendments that help enhance and clarify the council manager form of government. Nothing within that resolution and its resolution 2017-243 states that the committee's power or scope or purview is to identify and discuss amendments that are going to form a strong mayor form of government. That is completely outside of the committee's scope. So several of these proposals do go outside of the committee scope.

You don't have a single case that supports that point of view. That's your opinion.

That's not an opinion. The scope, resolution 2017-243.

I will call on the city attorney to make a comment at the appropriate time.

For this time, we're going to proceed with- Well, this would be the appropriate time because I'd like to make sure that you were staying within the scope of your job as the committee.

Your firm makes a lot of money at the expense of the taxpayers of this city. We know you have your vested interests and you've made your political slash legal opinion. You have no cases to support your opinion. So nothing that I have stated- We will hear from you before we take action.

Nothing that I have stated is my personal political opinion or anything of the sort. I'm here as legal counsel of the city. You're out of order. To be very clear. City attorney, you're out of order. That your role as the charter review committee is to ensure. You're out of order.

You're not the chair of this committee. Thank you.

Several of the proposals that are going on the agenda are outside of the committee's purview.

I'm going to ask you to leave this meeting.

Proposals C, D, and E are all outside of the committee's purview. Okay, I'm going to ask you to leave this meeting.

This is your final warning. You will give an opinion when it's sought from the chair of the meeting. That's the way it works.

Mr. Chair, it might be. You can disagree with the opinion, but it might be wise to at least let her give the opinion.

I've said four times we're going to give the city attorney her chance at length to state her opinion before we take action. What's not going to happen is the city attorney directing this meeting. All right. That happened before your time. Okay. For years and years while the city declined. That's not a way to run a meeting. That's not a democratic way to run a meeting. And I have a little experience in that regard because my father was city attorney for 28 years and he didn't run meetings. He didn't tell people what they could discuss. He made sure they had his opinion before they ruled. And the chair of the meeting would call on the city attorney and the city attorney would state their opinion. The times where we've gone away from that is the times that the council has made serious mistakes. We're not going to make those mistakes in this charter committee.

I appreciate the difference of opinion, but just to try to give everyone their say, and I think the State Attorney's Office want to do it. The other thing is I'm trying to find out that question about 2027. I might find it out before the end of the meeting. Appreciate that very much.

Okay, does anybody want to start the discussion? Hearing nobody, well. Yes. Ricky chimed in first.

Okay, Ricky, go for it. Well, good evening, everybody. First and foremost, thank you for coming. And I prepared some statements. Like I said, I wasn't at the last meeting, but I did watch it. So I know exactly what went forward that evening. So I'm going to say this. California has 483 incorporated cities, of which 435 use a council manager form of government. That's over 90% of the municipalities in California. This makes it far more common than the strong mayor system used only in a few major cities. like Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Fresno, and Oakland. San Bernardino is not a major city. The council manager system in California emerged during the progressive era in the early 1900s to combat corruption and promote professional nonpartisan municipal management. Reformers argued that cities could be improved by separating political leadership from administrative expertise, a principle that has shaped California municipal governments for over a century. The city of San Bernardino adopted the council manager form of government in 2016 with over 60% of the vote. We were definitely behind the time in adopting this form of government. The council manager government ensures that elected officials focus on policy and community representation while a professionally trained city manager handles administration and service delivery. This system is designed to promote efficiency, accountability, and professional management in local government. And it is the dominant form of municipal government across the state. With that in mind, let me talk about the proposed charter amendments. I have researched other city charters to see if these proposals were included in their government documents. I passed out information to everybody sitting here at the dais and members of the public have this as well. So I want to proceed and talk about some of these. point a mayor's office staff funding funding dedicated staff explicitly for the office of the mayor in the cities. I looked at they were cities of like population uh similar to San Bernardino as well as the same form of government. So out of these Approximately 14 cities, only two have this specified in the charter for these powers. In B, the agenda access, none of these 14 have it. No one, Modesto does have it. But in C, D, and E, none of these cities have what we are proposing today. And F, they talk about some of them have term limits, some of them don't have term limits. Some have two-year term limits for mayor, four-year term limits for mayor. Two terms, and some of them have four-year terms with serving three consecutive terms. Also, in number D, I put down some information in regards to that about The fact that we were probably under the misimpression that when we chose Charles McNeely that the mayor went out and got him personally, but we did use people to go out and look for people to qualify for that position, and he just happened to be one of those. And that information can be found online. Lori Sassoon was the assistant city manager at that time when that search went out. Let me close with this. I believe that we need to change. The change that we really need to look at is having an elected serving office for up to six months after they have been defeated. That's something that we really need to get rid of looking at that lame duck status. And I feel, as a committee, that is something that we should be looking to address. Thank you. Thank you, Ricky.

Who'd like to go next? I can go next. Okay, I was on this charter committee before. And I walked after three times because it was completely not focused on the charter. It was not trying to take care of the business of the city. It was just wasting time. My time is valuable. I'm sure all of you guys' time is valuable. Okay, I have talked and been involved in the campaigns of multiple individuals and with multiple candidates over the last six months, independent of what I do here. But you know what the most consistent thing I heard from everybody, regardless of what ward they're in, what party they're in, what ethnic group, they all said the charter was one of the biggest problems, from candidates all the way down to the voters. Now, when I got on this thing, my job was to work towards making things better. Why did we pick the mayor to first go over? Because it was chosen for us on February 2nd by the actions of some people who very poorly chose to do things the way they did them. The office of the mayor was called into challenge and then we were both told that she was just a figurehead. She had no power. She was just a smile and shake the kid's hands. Well, we have a charter that gives us some things, but you want to know something? I have one word why I got on this committee. I want to see what the mayor can and can't do clarified. And if in clarifying what she is and is not responsible for gives her a little bit more power, I have no problem with that. That's not a strong mayor form of government. That's called common sense. Okay, I want the same then with the city council and trust me, city manager, I've watched the parade of city managers before you. And anybody who wants to tell me the charter works in your favor is full of it. The charter was designed to create division and it did a wonderful job. Why? I'm an outcomes based person. I don't go with the garbage and with what people preach in me. I go with the outcomes. And the outcomes after 15 years are very obvious. I've listened to people tell me one time, mayor, you're wonderful, you did a great job. Then I watched another mayor do exactly the same thing the same way. You're horrible, we gotta get rid of you. I've heard the same thing said about different mayors. This is not about personalities up here. Yes, we learn from the personalities. This is about the office of the mayor and how it makes our city function at the top. The mayor is the executive, regardless of how much she does or does not have power. And lastly. My question and my challenge in this committee, I want to look at why is Fontana? Why is Rialto? Why is Ontario? Why is Rancho Cucamonga? Why is Highland? All of them, so much thriving, so much better than this. I'll tell you one thing, they're not stuck with the charter like we are. I'm not interested in a list that tells me they don't do it so you shouldn't do it. I'm interested in somebody who works with me how, and trust me, attorney, are any of the cities I mentioned a strong form of government or are they city manager? Then why is our charter restricting our mayor in a city form of government where there are no restrictions placed? Why do we have to have restrictions on the mayor's office while they all thrive and go ahead of us? Ten years ago, Fontana was half our size. Now they're getting ready to literally be considered the number one city in the county. They didn't do it by arguing, and they didn't do it with a city charter like we have. I don't even know if that, are they a general law or a city manager? Because if a general law city can give their mayor more power than our charter does, we have a problem. They're general law. They're general law.

But they have an elected mayor.

And they have an elected mayor. Okay, you see, the more you look into the different cities and how they do things, they all have different ways of doing it. But none of them do it like us, and they're all more successful. So my looking at what we got here, I'm the first one to tell you, is this proposal that we have going here? Is this our final word? No, this is a starting point. You got to start somewhere, and so we go to a starting point, we come up with some ideas. We didn't say this is our goals and objective, this is where we're starting. So for a city attorney, why not help us start the process instead of putting an obstacle in front of our face first time we hit the floor running and try to do something? Because I'm going to tell you right now, I can respect the city attorney in their office. I also know Tim, and Tim will tell you I'm not one to, anybody who knows me knows Tim and I are not the kind of people who are in agreement. When Tim and I start agreeing, you better start listening because there's a reality there you better pay attention to. So please allow us as a committee to explore. And if they can do it, if it's something that, they can be successful in all these cities around us. Then I get a cherry picked list of a bunch of cities that nobody knows about, nobody pays attention, nobody cares. I'm involved, I'm actively involved. I can tell you, no I won't tell you because it's proprietary information. I've worked with half a dozen different mayors in the last ten years on all sorts of issues. One of them Tim didn't like, probably more than one. The one I'm trying to make is we need to learn from the success of the cities around us. Not cherry pick cities to say, they don't do it so we can't do it either. That's the wrong kind of thinking. When I was a drug and alcohol counselor and in the groups we called that stinking thinking. Okay, I'm not trying to be mean, but I'm not interested in what we can't do because they don't do it that way. No, I want to know what they do that's successful, and I want to incorporate it. I'm not interested in a strong mayor form of government. I haven't said that once in my comments. What I want is a mayor that knows what her job is and which is a city charter, I want the clarity for the city council so when they know what they can and can't do. I want the city manager, I don't want a parade of city managers because the lack of clarity drives them crazy. And they leave because they just can't handle it anymore. We got a professional over there, we pay him a lot of money. We need to get the charter so it works for him and allows him to work with the mayor and the city council. And I'm going on, so I'll quit. Mr. Daly, would you like to chime in?

Sure. So I've got to be honest. This last May charter committee happened to follow my birthday, and as much as I love San Bernardino, you don't get my birthday. So I am admittedly a bit confused after coming off of the April meeting, and even the meetings, all of the meetings prior to that, We have consistently talked about the need for robust, long-term public outreach to engage with the community, to educate the community on what the charter is and what the charter is not. I hear a lot of strong mayor thrown around, and I think that there's some fundamental misconceptions around strong mayor versus a council manager, Fontana council manager. elected mayor at large. Same thing with Ontario. And so my confusion really lies in that piece of it, when for however many months we've been meeting, whether it's February, March, April, all of us have been talking about the need for robust public outreach and education. And so you can imagine my surprise and confusion when I see this new agenda that says we're going to be pushing for stuff to go on the November election. That does not seem to give very much time, if any, frankly, for any level of meaningful, significant public outreach and feedback. There have been discussions about how we can give the mayor more of a role in policymaking. And that, frankly, is to give that position a vote. Now, how do you do that without avoiding an even number of votes? You either increase the number of words or you decrease the number of words. We should not be making these decisions in a vacuum. We should be having conversations with the community. So that's part where I'm starting from tonight is a confusion as to how in April we were fairly well aligned that we were gonna take a deliberative approach and then several of us were not here in May and then all of a sudden we're in this situation where it does kind of feel like this is being jammed down our throats to try to rush to get something on the November ballot. I do want to talk a little bit about outcomes because that was mentioned a second ago. And I appreciate Mr. Salas rattling off some statistics for us because there are some things the charter does and some things the charter does not. One of the things the charter does is dictate when elections are held. And in every year prior to the new charter being adopted, all of our elections were an odd number of years, okay? So this is when we're not voting for president and we're not voting for the governor, we would vote an odd number of years. That is when a lot of the corruption was taking place because you are going to have far less voters. we saw it year after year after year that's how we ended up with uh the city attorney being in office for a couple of decades because a very small number of people voted since the charter has changed we have seen an increase in voter turnout and and that is one of the primary functions of this charter it's not to get into politics That's what politics are for, right? If you don't like the people that are in office, you go vote them out. That's how this works. If you are an elected official, if you are the mayor and you aren't able to get a majority of the council on your side, you either work with them or you work to get them out. That's politics and that's how politics works, okay? The charter is not politics. The charter is the governing document of the city. It's the constitution of our city. And as I've said from the very beginning of these meetings, it ought not to be tinkered with, okay? Politics is politics. We don't need to insert more politics into the current charter that we have. And so I'm going to probably stop there for now, but I've got a whole lot more to say, so thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Daly.

Anybody else want to chime in now?

I'll just be really quick. I just wanted to welcome the community coming out here. And just to be clear, this is just a meeting. We asked for this special meeting to have dialogue with the community. That's what we're here for. I think that's the primary goal. We came up with ideas. We want to talk about it. We want the community to get involved. And that is the main reason for this meeting, okay? I was pretty clear at the last meeting that I do not want it to feel for it to be rushed. Couple months ago when city council tried to rush something on a ballot, hundreds of people from the community came out and spoke against it. So I feel the same way about this. I said it last time, I do not want to be rushed and rush something as important as this into a November ballot. I am open for dialogue though, because I think that's important to speak about it between us and the community. OK, so that's the main reason. But we'll get into a discussion and I have no problem discussing each item one at a time.

OK, appreciate that. Ms. Briggs.

Good evening. I'd like to say that, excuse me, based on my notes, I believe from last meeting, the date for the next election would be November 2028. And I think that would give us plenty of time for open discussion with the community, plenty of town hall meetings, plenty of time to truly educate the community and ourselves on what is best to do. Again, myself and another person up on the committee, we both felt the same way at the last meeting. I do understand the urgency to change. But I do feel that the outreach is very important. I am a bit concerned with some conversation between Mr. Prince and the attorney's office. I'd like clarification on what we can and cannot do. Is there case law that we can go look at to make sure that we are aligning with what we are allowed to do? Because if we have all this effort put into community outreach, all these special meetings, bringing everybody together, and we can't make any changes, it's all for nothing. So before we go any further, I'd like to know what can we and cannot do, or if that's something that the two of you need to discuss outside of the meeting.

That's where my concern lies. The city attorney did distribute a memo before the meeting. I saw that. And that certainly states the opinion, and we don't want to ignore that opinion. However, we can change what our proposal is. We can do a lot of things tonight, and we don't want to be directed by an attorney's opinion that's not – a person that the city council appointed to serve on this body. So we will consider that opinion before we act. But I can tell you, as an attorney, I'm very concerned. that you don't have any case law to support these opinions. So that's just the opinion of the writer. Mr. City Manager looks like he wants to chime in.

If I have your permission just for two points, because I did talk to this attorney prior to that memo going out, we had talked about it. So I think it's being made a little broader than at least the intent was. I think the intent, just so that the committee knows, the intent was more that the authorizing resolution, when the council sets up each commission, either through state law or through their own provisions, when the council sets up the commission, they have certain things in their resolution that they say the powers of the commission. And I think what his memo was intended to say is in their authorizing resolution, these are the limits in the authorizing resolution. So it's not really necessarily a statewide issue regarding the charter. It's more, this is what they authorized the commission back when they set up the commission. This is what they authorized the commission to discuss. I think that was more what the spirit was supposed to be of the memo. Just for clarity. And him and I had several discussions before it went out, just so you're aware. The second is I was wrong. The primary is not in 2027. It's in 2028. So I do believe that might be an eligible election the spring of 2028 also, in addition to the November 2028. SPRING OR SUMMER OF 2028.

WHAT'S YOUR FEELING, MR. CITY MANAGER, AS TO THE URGENCY OF CREATING A FUNCTIONAL CITY COUNCIL AND CITY COUNCIL MAYOR RELATIONSHIP? i i don't want you to weigh in on the particular proposals i know that's you're you're paid a lot of money but you're not paid to do that um my question is do you feel that two more years of what we've seen for the past eight years or longer in this city is going to make the hole that we're in currently so big that it's going to be harder for us to ever get out of it in our lifetimes

Well, I think that's a little bit of a dangerous question for me to answer. Because obviously I was hired to try to work with you as residents and work with the businesses to improve the community and work with the council. And that's what I'm trying to do, so I think whoever my bosses are, that's what I'm going to continue to do. So I'm going to sort of sidestep that question.

Let me try to make it a little easier. Is there an urgency for the city council and mayor to act in unity and to create a clear path forward? Or can we wait two years and things will be just the same?

Well, I think that what your question is could happen. I mean, I think Again, it's a little bit of a controversial question because that's a matter of perspective, how the council works. And I think when you get different people in the different council seats, or in the mayor's seat, or even in my seat, that always changes how people work together or not. And so I think, I think they do work, and sometimes you see what you see from the outside, and sometimes it's not necessarily the same when they're working together. But whether the city council will change or not change, and whether they're working well today or not working well today is all a matter of perspective, and that's what the elections are partially about. But I'm going to try to work with the eight bosses that I have. And I don't care who those eight bosses are. I'm going to try to work with them to pursue and move their objectives forward. And also, it's not just them. It's about the community. It's about the residents. It's about the businesses and trying to work with them, too, as well as the not-for-profits.

Well, I think what I've seen, and Ms. Torres, please interrupt me if you want to say anything because you didn't get a chance to speak. But what I've been observing in so many different forums and so many different contexts is a sense of urgency. That's the one thing that I think almost all of us agree with, that there is urgency. And the things aren't currently working. And I know there's some people that think just changing the office holders, as I've seen happen countless times, is going to suddenly correct the problem. I don't know why anybody wants to serve on this charter committee, with all very deserving respect to my colleagues, unless they think that there's a problem in the city and they want to try to change it. And as Mr. Hillman said, my neighbor from the opposite political perspective of me eloquently said, It's kind of a moral issue and we need unity in this city. So I don't know of anybody on this committee or otherwise that doesn't agree that we all want the best for San Bernardino. But some of us are just overlooking that things aren't working and they're not coming up with So we're in a tough spot here. We are within the bounds and limitations of a city manager council form of government with an elected mayor that leads the meetings. The proposal that's before us tonight is not designed to change that. I think, and I meant to ask the city manager when he was at the podium to comment on this. The biggest difference between strong mayor forms of government and city manager council forms of government is the mayor's involvement in administrative day-to-day operations of city hall. And as my good friend Dolores Armstead eloquently stated, that causes corruption. And I don't want to go back there. I'm the son of a city attorney that was the check and balance on that type of corruption in the day to day affairs of City Hall. I will not propose going back to having the mayor involved in day to day operations of City Hall. That's why we have a well. paid and staffed city manager that is trained to administer city hall we don't need a citizen doing that so please these comments about going back to a strong mayor former government with all due respect to my colleague the city attorney representative that that's just complete poppycock it's not true we're not going back to the corrupt days of city manager of of a city manager completely subservient to a strong mayor who's involved in hiring department heads, who's supervising them on a daily basis, telling them what they can and can't do. No, that's the strong mayor form of government. That's Mayor Daley in New York. That's all kinds of stuff. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about five modest adjustments to create a balance in our city charter. To say, yes, San Bernardino's glory days were based on a mayor that led the council. How can we get that leadership back? How can we get the accountability of the office back? Here's one example of what I've experienced in so many different forums. This happened to be on Nextdoor, an app that has neighbors from neighborhoods all over the city. And there was more than one discussion that could have repeated itself. I mean, they're all so similar. This one had 60 comments from citizens on it. And I won't read the whole thing, but this person's, and I don't mean to be political here. This is not about any politician. It's just where we are as a city. I just saw in the paper, Helen Tran got 59% of the votes to be made in. Where did all that come from? I can't believe she hasn't done anything for San Bernardino. We reelected our mayor with over 54% of the vote. People don't dislike the mayor, but they're frustrated because the mayor hasn't been able to accomplish anything. And that's because by anybody's objective account, it's a ceremonial mayor. It's a photo opportunity mayor position. Yes, the mayor can speak for the city, but it's the city council that makes all the decisions and the mayor doesn't even get a vote. And the mayor has no special role in selecting the city manager, but yet people are justifiably upset that the mayor hasn't been able to accomplish things. Well, why would you blame Mayor Tran? She didn't even get an extra vote to select a city manager. She has a vote. You're out of order, Councilman. Councilmember, you're out of order. The mayor does not have a special role in the selection of the city manager currently. Charles McNeely, by most people's accounts, was the best or one of the best city managers we've had in recent memory. That was Mayor Morris' selection. There may have been a committee of people that advised the mayor, and there should be a committee of people that advises the mayor. But the mayor was able to form a relationship with Charles McNeely and bring him from Reno, where he did wonderful things that made Reno come up from a marginal kind of dangerous city to the greatest little city in the world. I don't think they still are, but they did good under Charles McNeely. And we got him to San Bernardino because he wanted to work with Mayor Morris.

Point of order. I think you're rewriting history. That's not a point of order, sir. I didn't interrupt you. I'm just saying I think you're rewriting history. Point of clarification.

You're welcome to disagree with me, Mr. Johnson. But you're not welcome to interrupt with a feigned point of order. If the mayor can nominate the city manager, and that city manager shall only serve if the council approves and agrees, the public has every right to hold the mayor accountable because the mayor nominated the person that the council then approved. At that point, we have accountability. These five changes are all modest changes. The council is not removed from anything. The council is still the policy making body. So what this proposal is intended to do is create some balance. And to the point made by one of my colleagues, I think it was Mr. Daly, about going out to the public. We definitely want to go out to the public. Would we like to have longer to do that? Yes, we would like to have longer to do that, but waiting two years with what we've had for the last eight or 40, depending on your perspective, is not an option in my estimation. Madam City Attorney, do you have a point of order?

No, I would like to ask the Chair to call for a recess.

For what reason?

I think there needs to be a recess to consult with legal counsel.

Well, it's 7-10. Could you give me like ten minutes? I'm all of a sudden feeling like I need to go to the bathroom.

I remember a council meeting that was just like this. How about five minutes? Five minutes first. Is that okay with everybody? Okay, five minute recess. We hope the public can stay. Welcome back, everybody. We have the Honorable Mayor is present. And without objection, I'd like her to make some brief comments. Mayor Helen Tran.

Good evening, everyone. Mayor Helen Tran here. And I've been the mayor of this great city for three years and six months, who's counting. And I got re-elected, so I am going to have another four years after this year. It's been a tremendous honor. to serve the city and to serve in the current structure that it is, which is the council management form of government. The current charter has been this form of government since 2016, so it's 10 years and I'm glad that we are reviewing this because I believe a charter after very so often every 10 years should be reviewed and see how has it been governing the city. As a former professional staffer, and when this transition of a strong mayor to a council-managed former government, I completely agree and said, this makes sense. Industry standard and where we're going and how we should be more like other cities and so forth. But I have to tell you, Being your mayor, actual mayor, not as a former staffer, it's been a challenge. And I say that because the community of San Bernardino has high expectation of their mayor, your at-large mayor. And it has been very difficult to share that the mayor's current roles is not what the community believes it is. And so what's proposed here tonight, I don't disagree because it does not change the form of government. It's still a council manager form of government. But it gives your at-large mayor some sort of performative measure to hold the mayor accountable, an at-large mayor. And again, this goes to the voters because my sense is when I get out there in the community almost every day, actually every day, the sense is they want their mayor to be held accountable and to really perform in a sense. And so being able to have that sense of authority here by appointing a city manager who can then be presented to the council for a vote don't see an issue with that i think that really holds the mayor say hey look a mayor who's for the entire city can see what the needs of the city um and the fit what is the fit of the city so that's my comment just as someone who is a former professional i was the hr director and now as your mayor And having just giving you that experience, that's just my comment. So that's just me, and I just hope that is valuable to you to just be able to make a informed decision. Thank you.

Thank you much, Madam Mayor, and congratulations on your presumptive reelection. I believe Ms. Torres wanted to speak.

Good evening. I just want to thank you guys for coming. I am so happy to see a good volume of constituents here. I'm very proud to be here myself. I have been in this chair for a couple of years and I'm ready to make the change. I'm ready to see the difference. I do think that we need to stick with the protocol right now and we should only be discussing A, B, and F to make our time wise and be able to finish on time. So for the most part, I thank you guys for coming. This is what we need is more public attendance. We need public participation. We need to be united within ourselves. So in order for us to do that, we need your cooperation. Thank you.

Thank you.

OK, well. Mr. Chair, I haven't spoken yet. OK. Before I think we get into the items, I'd like to first, as a committee, and certainly after my comments, I would like to really hash out whether we want to move forward with recommending something for the November 2026 ballot or waiting till 2028, preferably November 2028, when we have the highest voter turnout from the city. I think this is prime time for community engagement, which we haven't, we've talked about, but we actually haven't implemented a plan to go about that. And I'm not sure if the city manager is still here, but I definitely wanted to get some more input as to, especially since it's budget season right now. I know Mr. Hodges talked about it at the April meeting that there's been some differentiating between a two year budget plan versus an annual budget plan. I wouldn't have wanted to get more information about that. But I think first, as I would encourage the chair to really talk about and get buy-in from the committee as to whether we should, again, put this on the November 2026 ballot or more prudently wait till November 2028 when we have more turnout, higher turnout for the people of San Bernardino after also robust community engagement from our charter committee. And also considering as well, as I already mentioned, that we're gonna have two new council members as well and how that changes some of the dynamics that we need to talk further about.

Thank you. So Mr. Albert, you, and I know you probably had good cause, missed the last meeting and the vote at that time was not final, but it was a vote to proceed forward to this special meeting for discussions about putting it on the November ballot. So since you weren't here, you could make a motion to table these items for consideration of the 2028 ballot, and we would take it up again at our next regular meeting. If you would like to make that motion to decide that issue first, you could certainly do that.

Certainly. I would love to move that to that we delay any decision for recommendation until the November 2028 election, thereby and also encourage a community engagement plan to begin as soon as possible.

Is there a second to that motion?

I'll second.

I'll second. Okay. I think Mr. Daly chimed in first. The three people who weren't present at the last meeting have made a motion and second to reverse course in a sense of waiting until 2028. So we can have some further debate just on that motion without going into the substance but we can debate whether we want to wait two more years before we get this in front of the voters. The voters who pay the taxes, the voters who have considered the charter, who have expressed very strong opinions when they've come to council meetings, overflowing the council chambers into the lobby of the library on all these forums online. I don't think any of those people want to wait two years. But if that's your motion, that's your motion. Is there any further discussion?

Yeah, I've got some discussion. I think you brought up a great point there, Mr. Prince. The reason that so many people showed up, not only was it because their support of the mayor, but it was the sense that this was getting jammed down their throats. And I feel like that's what's happening right now. It feels like this is being jammed down our throats when there's really No urgency, right? If you want to look at it through a political lens, we know that the mayor is going to have at least two new council members sitting on that dais. So from a political standpoint about being able to lead the council and provide unity to the council, again, like I said in my opening comments, the politics of the city are working. Right? You know, you don't like somebody, you vote them out. And if the mayor has a, you know, preferred folks that she wants to work with, that's what the political system is for. This is above that. And so I do think it's – we owe it to those said taxpayers to give them an opportunity to be educated on what the charter does and does not do. And I think it's – frankly, irresponsible for us as a committee to try to jam down not even really vetted at all discussions on these ideas after one meeting when at least three of us weren't here. So I'll leave it at that for now.

I got a comment. Sure. I get offended when you make comments about the three people who are not here doing things. I think that just brings about a negative atmosphere for this committee and those type of comments should not be stated like that because they do a disservice to the people that we represent as well as i believe the community that's just my no offense attended mr johnson

It's just frustrating that the public attended at the last meeting. We spoke about it at length. We had a lengthy debate. And now the three people that weren't here feel differently. But that wasn't meant as a personal slight. And I assume you all had good reasons why you weren't here. I'm just assuming that. Anyway, I think Mr. Daly's comment was very instructive. Mr. Daly is appointed by Councilman Teddy Sanchez. And the special meeting of the city council that he raised in February was orchestrated by Teddy Sanchez, our first ward councilman, who was not reelected. now there were that was the meeting where people overflowed the chambers and into the lobby and The problem that every person, all the comments were on one side. There was 114 comments, I believe. Point of order, sir. Against one. What's your point of order?

This has nothing to do with the agenda. You're giving your personal opinion now. I'm directly responding to a- You're giving your personal opinion, and you didn't give the city attorney a chance to give what you call her personal opinion.

That's not a point of order objection. Pressure comments have no relevance to the motion on the table.

Okay, it's directly responding to Mr. Daly. So the point I'm making is that the people at that council meeting were frustrated by the particular proposal of Mr. Sanchez. There was nobody that commented that said we shouldn't look at amending our charter. And this charter committee was reenacted because of that meeting. And the objection was that Teddy Sanchez had not submitted his proposals to this body. So that spurred the entire council into action. I think the vote was unanimous that this committee should be reenacted. It was never our intent to go dark for two years or a year and a half. But that's what the city manager at the time decided. And so we have restarted our debate and efforts. And to say that we haven't thoroughly discussed all of these proposals is false. We have had... Extensive staff reports. We have had extensive discussions, not just in the last three months, but for the last three years that I've served on this committee. So I understand there's a time pressure and I'm sensitive to that and I wish we didn't have that. But we discussed that at the last meeting. We decided within the limited time we have, we're going to do our best to go out to the public. But we've already had a lot of public input. And to disregard the comments here, the comments at our last three months of meetings, I think is unfair. The public wants change. So I would ask you to vote this motion down and let's continue our debate. Is there any further discussion, Scott?

Yeah, I would like to say something. I came on this charter committee and left it because it was obvious nothing was getting done. They didn't want to do anything. And I challenge the people who have been around Casey, you've been on this committee member since its inception. Name one substantive change that you have proposed and gotten through this thing that actually affects the city charter in the seven years. After I'm done speaking please, I don't need to be interrupted. Here's a simple reality. We have a problem with the charter. We have a bunch of people who know there's a problem with the charter. And you know what tonight is, man? We need to shut it down. We need to vote to do nothing, which I understand when I was not here a week or two ago, that's exactly what the vote was. I came here to get something done. I came here to make an honest, real effort at going through the issues. And if I can get it done by 2026, Great. If I can't get it done by 2026, hey, I still want to give an honest answer. And what we're voting on right now is to just, oh, let's just kind of put it aside and not get to it. Casey, I'll tell you one flat out thing, and I'm in the same boat. Depending on how the election goes, I was appointed by Sondra. I had a discussion. I was ready to leave this committee this week. But Sondra said, no, Scott, we need you on there. We want you on there. I listen to my city council person. I have no idea who's going to win the election in November. I have no idea if they're going to want me on it. I'm not sure I want to be on it myself. But I'm willing to put my time and effort in here for positive change because I listened to the voters. I listened to the people of San Bernardino on February 2nd. And then they didn't say, let's sit back and vote to do nothing and wait until 2028. How many years are we going to wait to actually do anything? Because you know what? The mayor has four years to do a job more. I want to have her ability to do this city better than she had already. I want to clarify her thing. But I have my colleagues here who want to vote. Well, let's put it off to 2020. You know what? That's a vote called I don't want to do anything. And for me, I will never support doing nothing. If we can get it by 2026, awesome. If we can't, I'm here every month. I'm not here every four years or whatever to review this charter. I'm here every month. And if I'm not talking about the charter, you know what my number one frustration is today? We're talking about the mayor and what we're going to do. I have a list of all the cities who don't do what we do, so we can't do it. You know what I want? I want a list here for me. If you're going to give me a copy of something, give me a copy of what the charter says the mayor is currently doing, and then we can discuss it and say it works or it doesn't work. Yes, I know we have it in the book, but nobody here, how many of you in the audience have read the city charter or even know where to go to get it? I'm impressed, that's high, because I would bet you in the public, 90% of the public hasn't read the charter. 50% of them, they don't even know what the charter is, and we want to go to them and ask how to fix it. If I want to know how to fix the charter, I'm going to go to the mayor, because she has to live it. If I don't know how to fix the charter, I'm going to go to the city manager, because he has to live it. I'm not going to go to the guy on the corner who's never read the charter and doesn't have a clue. That's what we're trying to promote here in this charter committee, and I'm going to say a big no. And if I offend somebody, that's just too bad. Welcome to politics. If you're not offending somebody in politics, you're not doing your job. Thank you.

Sir. Like I mentioned earlier, for me personally, it's not that I'm trying to kick it down the line and down to 2028. I want to have good discussion and give the community an opportunity to be engaged and It was mentioned that the communities had plenty of time to engagement. We just had this meeting last week or two weeks ago. There has been no opportunity for the community to actually engage in what we're proposing. I was okay. I was all for having this special meeting because I wanted to talk about this. But I'm not going to be pressured into voting for something. in a hurry and just jam it down our throats and our community's throats. We have to have the communication between our community. I'm all for having the communication. And like I mentioned last time, if we could get it in 2026, that'd be great. But nobody should be pressured and we shouldn't be rushing into this.

I agree with Mr Garcia. Excuse me. Uh, this is something that involves the entire city, all of the community that is engaged and wants to make a difference. You need to read your charter. You need to voice your opinions. You need to tell us what you want from your mayor and from what you want from your elected officials. Now we had discussed also at prior meetings, uh, community forums, um, engagement, online sessions. And I think we were still discussing who would lead those forums, who would answer those questions. Is that something that we as a committee can answer? We're all going to answer with our own point of view. So we need somebody that can answer these questions with an unbiased opinion. We don't have a budget allotted to our committee. We can't hire somebody. We can't hire a consultant to answer the community questions. So how do we address those issues? I appreciate everybody's passion up here for how they feel about the direction that we're moving. Too fast, too slow. But the bottom line is, we're a committee, and we need to answer to the community. This is not our decision. This is not our... I don't even know what the word is that we need public engagement. And that's my biggest concern. I want as much public engagement as possible. We need to do what the will of the voters is. Again, that went back to the special meeting. when they tried to change the roles and everything. So you are engaged. You are paying attention. You are listening. And you need to continue doing that so we can take your input and make good decisions. This is our city's constitution. We can't make these changes without your help.

I agree, and that's why we have discussed a plan to get out into the public with, as Mr. Garcia insisted, more than one public forum. And we'll have to get that done before the middle of July. And it needs to get to the council by the second meeting in July, so we don't have a lot of time. But I think that the opportunity right now is unique because this city is hyper-focused on the mayor's role. I don't think any of us would dispute that. There's a lot of opinions, frustration, comments, and we have our taxpayers, our citizens engaged. And if we squander this opportunity to make these fine-tuning balance-type adjustments to our city charter, if we ignore the mayor's plea, if we ignore what we've heard from voters time after time, I don't think The voters are going to be happy. And again, our opinions, I think, are valuable, all of our opinions. But we're not the voters. And the end goal here is to have that debate with the public. to have an election, to have it on the ballot in November, so that the public can have forums, the League of Women Voters can have forums, I'm sure Mr. Albert will be involved in that, so that we can have this public debate. Do we need to do our due diligence before then to get the best proposal we can on the ballot? Yes. And that's what we've been doing. And to deny the public the chance to weigh in in November, I think would be a mistake. Call for the question, please. We will call for the question if there's no further discussion. All in favor? I do have a comment.

I have some things to say as well.

Well, it's the chair's call, and I wouldn't want to deny my... Colleague and friend, Mr. Johnson, the chance to weigh in.

Go ahead. Thank you, thank you. Just when I prepared this document with all these no's on it, it was not to say no to making a decision. It's to say that these cities are operating successfully without these ideas in the charter. Anaheim successful Riverside successful Irvine successful Fontana Ontario all these cities are operating successfully without these ideas embedded in the charter and the reason that they're operating successfully because the mayor and the council are working together to move those cities forward and that's why the only way that San Bernardino, in my opinion, is going to be successful in moving forward is that the mayor and the council operate in moving the city forward. I'm not opposed to changing the charter but I would like to change the charter for the betterment of the city. I served in the past on a charter that was unique in California. And so I'm adamant on trying not to make something unique again.

Let's keep the comments on the motion before us, which is whether to continue this for two years or whether we want to aim for the ballot in November.

Can I ask one more question? Is there anything on this list of ours that can be addressed at the city council as far as maybe item A, allowing more staff for the mayor's office, or item B, allowing her agenda access?

Are you asking me? Yes. OK. So your question is whether any of the proposals can be presented to council outside of a charter amendment.

Correct.

I can answer that, but I think we should stick to doing the vote first, and then we can come back to that question. I just want to keep a clear line of what we're doing.

So you can have two attorneys agree on something, right?

Okay, Tim. Mr. Olsen. I want to make a simple point here. We're here to get things done on the charter, and in a timely manner. And we are here to do it right. We all witnessed firsthand on February 2nd how you do it wrong, okay? It was done wrong. Now, I'm not even saying I agree or disagree with them. What time is it right now? It is 810. We're supposed to be discussing item A. This is a special meeting. It's all about A, B, and C, just like the other lady said. We haven't even gotten to A, and what are we doing? We're trying to vote to kill the whole thing. And yes, this vote will kill the whole thing, because we're voting to say, well, we can't handle it, so we're going to kind of play the same old game we've been playing for the last seven plus years, ten years, I don't care how many years it is, and we're going to vote to do nothing. I will never vote to do nothing. I mean, we're talking about we want to have, and by the way, it's not on the agenda, but I will answer it since it's mentioned. We want to have public forums. How can we have a public forum if we can't even get to A in the freaking meeting? If we can't get the first base in the discussion of what we're trying to do in a special meeting after two hours, because we spent all the time going around in circles like we've been doing, meeting after meeting, city council after city council. If you can't get to the meat of the issue sometime, if your only answer is, let's vote to put it off for another two years, that is not what this committee should be about. This committee has a responsibility, if we can get it done, Fine. Get it done. Put it on the ballot in 2026. The message from the voters was like, you don't need a committee or a bunch of people come to a town hall meeting to tell you what February 2nd meant. It's not too hard to figure out. It doesn't matter what politics you're a part of. The message is loud and clear. Somebody better get their butt in gear and do something. What was the problem? We had no meetings with the, this meeting didn't exist. So they said, let's get us together and we'll have this current committee mix. And now we're sitting there and we want to vote. Oh, let's vote to do nothing and just kind of postpone them because we know certain people aren't going to be here by November. Can you repeat the motion, please?

The motion, as I understand it, is to change our course to the 2028 ballot to basically to kill the motion to put this on the November 2026 ballot, which will end the special meeting.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think there was ever a motion to put this on the 2026 ballot. This special meeting was to discuss these items.

For the 2026 ballot, that's why it's a special meeting.

To discuss it, which we have not. All we have done is done a sales pitch to put all six items on the November ballot. We should have been discussing A, B, C, D, and E, and F this whole time, instead of just doing a big sales pitch on we have to put all six measures on the ballot in November.

Well, I mean, you're right in that there's really seven issues today. Okay. But I don't know why we wouldn't want to start at the issue that's a non-starter for certain members of this committee, apparently, that we shouldn't try for the 2026 ballot.

The motion right now on the floor is not to kill it and not do anything. It's just to not jam it down the community's throat in a matter of 20 days.

Well, no, it wouldn't preclude us at our next regular meeting from continuing a discussion for the 2028 ballot. But the motion would be to move in that direction rather than to try for the 2026 ballot.

Yes, that is the motion. We have a motion and a second on the floor.

Right. And if this fails, just to be clear, it doesn't mean anything's going to be recommended to the council to put on the ballot. It just means we're going to continue the discussion. Okay, any other comments, Mr. Albert?

Yeah, I just want to provide some clarity because I'm totally confused. I mean, if you really wanted to get this on the ballot, what I don't understand is how at our April meeting, we collectively, and I'm not sure if Mr. Garcia was there at the meeting, but we had a consensus that one, we opposed term limits, that we also agreed that we didn't want this to be on the 2026 ballot at that meeting, and then all of a sudden when three of us are out at the following meeting, we do a complete 180 to rush this and bring this to everyone's attention. I get the timelines. I get the deadlines that we got to meet. But it leaves committee members confused. It leaves the public confused. And when everyone's confused, we're never going to reach a good decision. So at the very least, I think that putting it on 2028 ballot, where most people come out and vote, we're going to get the best outcome for the betterment of the city. In my experience of the city of San Bernardino, I've LIVED HERE FOR OVER 26 YEARS, CHANGE HAS TYPICALLY MEANT GOING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION. AND I WANT TO START SAYING CHANGE GO IN THE POSITIVE DIRECTION AND TO DO THAT WE NEED TO MAKE BETTER CONSCIENTIOUS DECISIONS. AND I AGAIN REITERATE CASEY'S ORIGINAL CALL FOR THE MOTION.

JUST TO RESPOND TO YOUR MOTION UNLESS THERE'S SOMEBODY ELSE THAT WANTS TO SPEAK, THERE'S NOTHING IN THE MINUTES FROM THAT APRIL MEETING. THERE WAS NO MOTION MADE IN THAT APRIL MEETING. that in any way said, we're not going to do all we can in 2026. So that might have been your interpretation of a discussion, but it's not part of this body's meeting minutes or wasn't the subject of a motion. We had the discussion in May. We took public input at that time. We've had more public input tonight. So the first issue is whether we continue discussion. If you vote yes, we're not going to continue discussion tonight. We're going to put it off to 2028. If you vote no, we can continue the discussion about what, if anything, we want to put before the city council to then put it on the ballot. So keep in mind, this is just the first step.

Mr. Chair, can we recognize the city attorney, please?

is it on the issue of the timing yes okay um so the first point was in regards to the minutes from april the minutes from april do state the committee reached a general consensus that due to time constraints and a shared desire for highly deliberate comprehensive charter development process they will not seek amendments on the 2026 election ballot that's on page five of the agenda from april meeting Second point is that I just want to clarify for the staff exactly what we are voting on, because I've heard several different reiterations. So whoever posed the motion, can you please repeat that?

Yes, my motion would be to not put these recommendations on the ballot, but to be open to putting things on the ballot for 2028, not necessarily including these recommendations here listed.

And with all due respect to the city attorney, there was no discussion or objection raised by the city attorney when we set this special meeting or when we had our votes at the previous meeting to pursue the 2026 ballot. So that was a proper motion. It's now part of our minutes and it supersedes what was commented on from April where I wasn't present. So I can't say what happened or what didn't happen.

Thank you, Tim.

Anyway, we're all together tonight. Let's vote. All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Can we have a poll, please?

If the city manager would poll the members.

Yes, sir. Casey Daly, word one.

Yes.

Scott Olson, word two. No. Angela Torres, word three.

Yes.

Ward 4 is vacant. Andy Garcia, Ward 5? Yes. Ricky Van Johnson, Ward 6?

Yes.

James Albert, Ward 7? Yes. Mayor's appointee, Tim Prince? No. And Mayor's appointee, Leticia Briggs?

Yes.

The yeses have it, 6 to 1.

No, there were two votes here.

I'm sorry, six to two, my apologies.

Okay, well, can I have a motion to adjourn to our next regular meeting where we will continue the discussion for 2028?

Can we talk about whether we're going to have a meeting this month or can we delay it until July?

We have a regular meeting scheduled. I think it's set forth in the agenda of June 24th. You're proposing to go dark and meet in July? I'm fine with that.

Even though we voted to move everything to 2028, we still have a timeline we should be adhering to. And that includes community outreach, continuing our meetings as regularly scheduled. This was a special meeting out of the ordinary. So I think we should continue with our regular monthly meetings. We need to use 2027 wisely. to our community outreach, because if I'm not mistaken, elections in 2028 are in March, is that correct? So we still are on a bit of a timeframe, not as rushed as we were prior, but we still have a timeframe and dates that we need to be aware of. Just throwing it out there.

Yeah, absolutely. Can we get clarification on the deadlines? Because what I'd hate to have happen is we come back two weeks from now and we change our minds and try to rush something on the ballot for November.

Yeah, so when we come back, I can work with staff to get out to you a timeline for the 2028 election.

What I'm concerned about is that we come back in two weeks. If we have a meeting on June 24th and say, let's say two or three of us are not here and all of a sudden the winds change and they want to put these recommendations on the November 2026 ballot, could they do that?

So the timeline, so any resolution for a proposed measure would have to get to city council by July 15th. It has for that July 15th meeting, it has to go on the agenda for council by June 17th.

Hence why, again, I'm recommending that we go dark on June 24th and repeat our monthly meeting in July at the proposed time.

And again, if I may. Just because we're not going to rush it to 2026, some of these things I think are good items and should be up for discussion. So I don't want to wait three months, four months before we start discussing some of these. I think we should start with A and B at the next meeting, start discussing them in detail, get the community involved, and then go down the line with the rest of the items. I don't want to see this go down to here we are in March of 2028 and we just then start discussing these. Correct. Mr. Prince, he made a good list. These are some items that should be discussed, and the community should have input in them. So I recommend that at least two of these get put on the next agenda, and we start discussing them in detail.

The question is, though, is when should we have that next meeting?

Well, if your concern is that- If your concern is that if we decide to vote yes on one of these items, if we wait till the July meeting, it would not be enough time. So we would pretty much have to vote a yes on them on the June 24th meeting.

So again, the concern is that if we meet June 24th, let's say three of us are out, and again, the whims change, people want to change their minds, they could get this on the ballot in November 2026 and reverse what we just decided here. today so again i think that there's certainly enough time between here june 10th and our next meeting in late july to reassess get these items that that the chair wants to talk about to have a robust discussion about it but move forward with what we've decided here to 2028 that's why i don't think it's necessary to have a june 24th meeting and i'd just like to clarify that our agenda for the june 17th mayor and city council meeting will be published this friday

So it would be a very tight timeline.

If I may, I signed up to work on the charter committee on fixing and solving the issues. Now, if I don't get here and I can't get a vote, as what happened in April, that's on me. Each one of us in this committee has a responsibility to be here at a regularly scheduled meeting each month. And for us to sit there and say we're afraid that three people won't show up when they're going to reverse our decision, yeah, it happened already. Listen, if you didn't show up, I get it, he likes his birthday. My birthday was in April as well, okay? We all have issues, but we have a responsibility to be here once a month at a scheduled time so the public knows when we meet and how we meet. And to say, well, we got our way, so let's not meet the rest of the month, because somebody might vote to take it away from us.

No one's saying that.

Yes, you did. No. Yes, you did. The goal was to sabotage this meeting so that we could not vote on any charter changes for 2026. That's adorable. Congratulations, you're successful.

You're out of order, Mr. Daly. Sure, thanks. That's what we voted on.

You can tell me I'm wrong, but we just voted to kill anything and everything we can do for 2026. Just like we've been doing for how many years? This is exactly why certain people wanted to kill this charter committee, because they don't want the chance that somebody may have a different opinion. And they don't want the challenge. Me, I've been the underdog all my life in San Bernardino ever since the new charter came in. I don't mind a challenge. But I made a response, and I was about ready to give that responsibility up after the last campaign election. My city council person, no, I know I'm not going to be there in November. I can't tell you what's going to happen in the next year. But for now, I need you here because we need to work on things and get them done. So I come here and the next thing we're doing is voting. We might have people voting the wrong way, so let's not have the meeting. No, we have a meeting. It's our responsibility to be here. And if we're not here, we're reneging on that responsibility regardless of our vote. Period. I am tired of us trying to move forward on an issue, and we get caught up in these circular logic discussions, and at the end of the night, we have nothing done. We've been doing it for 10 years. It needs to end. If it's 2026, I'm for one. I will keep working on the issues this month, and if we get it in 2026, That would have been wonderful.

I agree to have this meeting if he would just quiet down and allow us to leave. I have no problem with this meeting next meeting. If I listen, I have the right to talk, Ricky.

I listened to you for how many years? Okay, I know there's a lot of frustration. And on that note, I'm going to say goodbye because I've said my piece and you can see who doesn't want to do it.

There's a lot of frustration in the city, but let's try to treat each other with respect even if we disagree. We know we're all in here because we care about the city. I'm frustrated, but I'm going to treat each of you with respect and let's all try to do that. So is there any further comments on whether we should cancel our regular June meeting?

For the record, I won't be here in the June meeting, so you guys do what you want. I'll be back in July.

Okay, thanks for the notice. If I may, Tim, again, one of the mistakes we made at the April meeting was calling the meeting to an end before we actually were transparent about some of our conflict in time. So I definitely would like to have this discussion so that we have meetings where everyone can be present and properly engage in the discussion. That's why we're having this conversation.

I agree with that, but I also agree with Mr. Olsen that we've all made a commitment, whether it's convenient or not, to be here. So let's not start getting into, I'm not coming to the next meeting. Let's cancel it. We're doing important work. Let's keep on schedule.

We made a commitment to have effective communication. Let's start there.

OK. Mr. City Manager, can you restate the motion on the floor? Well, no.

I don't remember voting.

Well, I thought there was a suggestion of- If you want a motion, Mr. Chair. I thought there was a suggestion of a motion to cancel our regular June meeting of June 24th.

You cannot cancel a meeting without a vote. We have not voted on it. It's that simple. Right, Mr.

Chair. Is there a motion to cancel the June meeting?

My motion would be to cancel the June 24th meeting and schedule it for the regularly scheduled time in July.

The second part is unnecessary. The issue is whether to cancel the regular June meeting. Is there a second to that?

I'll second it.

Okay, any further discussion? All in favor of canceling the regular June meeting say aye. Aye. And no. No. I think the no's have it. Can we do a roll call please?

Yes. Okay.

Casey Daly, Ward 1.

Yes.

Scott Olson, Ward 2.

No.

Angela Torres, Ward 3.

No.

Andy Garcia, Ward 5.

No.

Ricky Van Johnson, Ward 6.

No.

James Albert, Ward 7.

Yes.

Timothy Prince. No. Mayor's appointee. And Latisha Briggs, Mayor's appointee.

No.

Thank you all for your patience, and thank you for attending, ladies and gentlemen of the public, and we will see you on June 24th. Have a good night.