City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. I guess we'll get underway here. We do have a quorum in these hot summer months. That's always a good thing. Why don't we do the Pledge of Allegiance? And Leticia, would you like to lead?

Sure. Ready? And begin.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic liberty and justice for all.

Please be seated. We have absent Scott Olson and Andy Garcia. They both called with I assume Mr. Garcia gave you a reason for the absence.

He just said that he was not going to be able to make it today.

Okay. We will list that as an absence and Scott's is an excused absence because he informed me of some family circumstances. So why don't we start with comments from committee members? James, you want to start?

No comments at this time.

Ricky. Thank you. Good evening. And I had an opportunity while I was browsing through YouTube to come upon a A nice developed film, I don't know what to call it, documentary, whatever. The title of it is, From McDonald's Birthplace to Historic Bankruptcy, The Rise and Fall of San Bernardino, California. Paul McAllister put it together. 40 minutes, it delved into the history of San Bernardino, talked about the founding, talked about the Mormons, and it gave up some historic names. Jefferson Hunt was one of the ones I know that they mentioned, as well as many others. Talked about how the Inland Center and the Central City Mall had... was competing for one another and caused the demise of downtown San Bernardino. Discussed Santa Fe closing, Kaisers, Norton, all those dynamics leading up into the bankruptcy and even briefly discussed the charter and how it had directors reporting to the city manager as well as the mayor those challenges that was based in the charter but it's a good just a good perspective that Paul McAllister presented Once again, the title, From McDonald's Birthplace to Historic Bankruptcy, the Rise and Fall of San Bernardino, California. And even went into bakers and McDonald's being formed here as well as Taco Bell. That's all I have.

No comments. I'm just hoping for cooler weather.

Calmer heads and cooler weather is always good.

Good evening, everyone. I'm happy to see that you guys are here. And yes, I agree. It's too hot. We need to cool down. So I thank you guys for coming. I have right now at this moment, no comments. Thank you.

you very much good evening everybody uh no comments from me other than apologies for uh missing the last couple of meetings but i'm happy to be back and looking forward to our conversation okay well that leaves me i guess um i have um i appreciate ricky's uh comments about

about that good piece on San Bernardino and I think that we need to remember that there were so many good decades, I don't say good days, I say good decades in San Bernardino where we were the city on the move, the model of the Inland Empire, the most successful city by some measures at least, under our historic charter. And if you read the presentation that's attached to our materials today from the charter committee that wrote the current charter it expressly took the approach of best practices from a state or national point of view and expressly ignored the current charter in terms of guidance on how to make the new charter they didn't give any deference to what had worked well for so many decades instead they took guidance from what other cities do whether they're like San Bernardino or not and they did give some preference to cities that had some characteristics in common with San Bernardino but what a proud history this city has and what a shame that our current charter didn't utilize the good aspects of our historic charter and start from there in revising the very much needed revisions and changes that should have been done probably much sooner than 2016, which is 10 years ago. That's when our new charter was written. So I think that's kind of instructive to us that we need to look at what worked at that for those many years and see if we can improve the current charter by restoring some provisions while not going back to the strong mayor form of government and not repeating mistakes from the past. Also, I just wanted to comment, we charter committee members received a memo from Mr. Lampe, which I greatly appreciate, explaining why we hadn't received a promised legal memo from the city attorney. And as we recognized last month, Mr. Maldonado has taken the title of city attorney. He's from the same firm in Riverside. but has recently been promoted to be the city attorney. And we had a discussion with him about his attendance, and he pledged to us to be here today. Mr. Lampe's memo said that he would not be here today, but it didn't offer a reason why he's not here today. And I don't fault Mr. Lampe for that. I assume the city attorney would have told us if there was a reason why he's not here today. at least a reason that would convince us that he had something else more important to do. As you know, the city attorney wrote an unsolicited opinion letter in June, the day before our Charter Review Committee meeting. Why was it the day before? I don't know. I don't think that's fair to committee members who were facing a a set of important decisions with a short time frame and deadline. But more disturbingly, that memo didn't cite a single statute or case, which is the ammunition that lawyers have for their opinions. Our opinions are great. We all have opinions, right? What makes a lawyer's opinion special is when we cite a state law or a case where a court of appeal has published a decision explaining the law or making new law. His opinion had no support, no legal support, and would have been rejected out of hand in a courtroom. No responsible attorney would write such an opinion knowing the effects that it would delay change for two years without solid authority, without thorough research. Because some of the members of this committee are not used to dealing with attorneys, I think they believe they were bound by that opinion. And as a result, the voters will not have the opportunity to make charter changes on the November ballot, as they had the opportunity 10 years ago in adopting the current charter, who's ironically November of 2016. So at the last meeting, I requested specifically that the city attorney provide authority, either statutory or case law, for his opinion. He said he would. And I further asked that he do so promptly so that the letter could be properly reviewed by the committee members and vetted. There's always the opportunity to seek other legal opinions, to do legal research on our own. If he really had an objective basis for his opinion and he had already done the research to back up such a conclusion, it would have been easy to provide that memo. He had four weeks and he is still unable to provide it. From my point of view as a lawyer, conflicts of interest are always important to consider. The city attorney and his Riverside law firm have a vested interest in the status quo in this city, as that Riverside firm receives millions of dollars of your taxpayer money to serve as city attorney in this city. Respecting citizen commissions and the public's right to vote on issues intended to improve government in San Bernardino, does not appear to be a priority with the city attorney. So we will wait to see if we promptly receive an opinion or whether he can at least write a memo withdrawing his opinion as unsupported by state law or precedent. So with that, we will go on to public comments. Let's see what's on your mind. Do we have any... I don't have any speaker slips. Do we have any members of the public that wish to speak? We appreciate you being here anyway, and we're going to talk about making some changes to our agenda that might allow some more opportunities for you to speak during the meeting, not just at the beginning. With that, we'll move on to the consent calendar. The minutes were distributed. Is there any changes or revisions? I'll just note my abstention. Fair enough. OK. Madam City Attorney, if you would agree to the procedure without objection, we'll just submit the minutes.

That's fine.

Okay, we'll move on to charter review committee agenda structure. We had some good materials presented by the city manager's representative.

Would you like to summarize those for the public? Sure. So at the previous meeting, the Charter Review Committee wanted to bring back some potential recommendations on how to restructure the agenda to enhance public comment. And so in reviewing that, we first looked at the rules and there are actual rules that govern the time limits at public meetings. So Resolution 2018-89 Rule 5 sets some specific time limits AT ALL PUBLIC MEETINGS. AT ALL PUBLIC MEETINGS. AT ALL PUBLIC MEETINGS. IT GENERALLY REFERENCES THE IT GENERALLY REFERENCES THE IT GENERALLY REFERENCES THE MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS, MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS, MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS, BUT THE BYLAWS FOR ALL THE BUT THE BYLAWS FOR ALL THE BUT THE BYLAWS FOR ALL THE BOARDS, COMMITTEES, AND BOARDS, COMMITTEES, AND BOARDS, COMMITTEES, AND COMMISSIONS APPLY THOSE RULES COMMISSIONS APPLY THOSE RULES COMMISSIONS APPLY THOSE RULES TO COMMITTEES. TO COMMITTEES. TO COMMITTEES. NOW, RULE 5 STATES THAT THE NOW, RULE 5 STATES PER MEETING IS NO MORE THAN THREE MINUTES. HOWEVER, THE RULES ALSO PROVIDE AN EXCLUSION THAT ALLOWS THE PRESIDING OFFICER, IN THIS CASE IT WOULD BE THE CHAIRPERSON, TO AMEND THE RULES AT THEIR DISCRETION. SO IN EFFECT, YOU CAN KIND OF STRUCTURE THE PUBLIC COMMENTS HOW YOU WANT TO DECIDE AS THE CHAIRPERSON. That's kind of it in a nutshell. And so what I did is I provided an example, which is the attachment number one in the staff report. And the way the rules kind of structure public comments is that you can have public comments for items on the agenda and a separate public comment section for items not on the agenda. AT MOST COUNCIL MEETINGS AND AT MOST COMMITTEE MEETINGS, THEY AT MOST COUNCIL MEETINGS AND AT MOST COMMITTEE MEETINGS, THEY JUST COMBINE THE TWO. JUST COMBINE THE TWO. JUST COMBINE THE TWO. YOU CAN HAVE PUBLIC COMMENTS FOR YOU CAN HAVE PUBLIC COMMENTS FOR YOU CAN HAVE PUBLIC COMMENTS FOR ITEMS ON AND OFF THE AGENDA. ITEMS ON AND OFF THE AGENDA. ITEMS ON AND OFF THE AGENDA. IF YOU WANT TO RESTRUCTURE THE IF YOU WANT TO RESTRUCTURE THE IF YOU WANT TO RESTRUCTURE THE WAY THE AGENDA DOES PUBLIC WAY THE AGENDA DOES PUBLIC WAY THE AGENDA DOES PUBLIC COMMENTS AND MAYBE PROVIDE SOME COMMENTS AND MAYBE PROVIDE SOME COMMENTS AND MAYBE PROVIDE SOME MORE FOC One potential way to go about it is you begin public comments for items on the agenda, and you can do it by agenda item. Some other cities do it like this. So for consent calendar, since consent calendar is just one big slate of agenda items, you'd only do public comments for the entire consent calendar as a whole. For here, that's generally just one item, the minutes. and then when you go to the discussion section you can before every discussion item is discussed by the committee you can call for public comments for that item and the chair has the discretion to have it three minutes more or less depending on what your beliefs are in terms of the length or complexity of what's going to be discussed and then if you want to have additional rounds of public comments for items that are not on the agenda I included that in this example towards the end, but before a new section called items for future agendas. And this way you can solicit public comments from the residents, anyone who's in attendance. And if they have an idea that kind of sparks some interest among the committee members that, hey, let's talk about that at the next meeting, Well, you get that public comment and then the next immediate section is a predetermined section for you to propose new items for future agendas. AND FOR THAT LAST SECTION JUST WANT TO KIND OF PROVIDE SOME PARAMETERS THERE. IT'S NOT FOR YOU TO DEBATE THE MERITS OF WHAT IS BEING PROPOSED BECAUSE THE ITEM ITSELF IS NOT AGENDIZED TO BE DISCUSSED. IT IS SIMPLY DO YOU WANT TO HEAR MORE ABOUT THAT AT THE NEXT MEETING AND THAT'S WHEN YOU WOULD DEBATE THE MERITS. IN THE CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS YOU HAVE THAT AS THE ITEMS TO BE CONSIDERED FOR FUTURE AGENDAS. and you may witness sometimes when the council tends to want to start debating and discussing the merits of the topic they have to be reminded that no this is heading into a discussion it's just whether or not you want this to come back and then you can debate the merits of it at the next meeting when it's actually on the agenda for discussion so that's kind of what i put together for this and if there's any other modifications you would like to make we can certainly incorporate those

Quick question. So would the chair determine how much time is allowed for items on the agenda, not on the agenda, and for items to come back later? Like right now, I believe you said we have a three minute rule. Yes. Could you allow two minutes for each one instead of three? Or you would determine that as the chair?

Yes. The resolution specifically states that the chairperson may amend the rules based on their own discretion, including the time limits.

And the committee, if the committee felt differently, they could make a motion to set the rules over the chair's decision?

Let me confirm with legal on that.

It's only as good as what you allow.

So once you set a time limit, like tonight, you could give everybody three minutes, three different times. But if we have a big meeting, could you reduce it? Can you change it?

Can reduce it or increase it?

Okay.

so our understanding is that the committee if they feel differently they could override the decision and just go back to the default but they couldn't just make a new decision because up to the chair to make the discretion for how the rules will change so the committee doesn't have the power to change the rules that power is vested into the chairperson but if the committee does want to take a make a formal motion and a vote to override the chair or just go back to the default

interesting okay mr. chair sure I've got an opinion I think I think generally speaking more public comment is good I think it I think it's kind of the part of the corner phone cornerstone foundation of public meetings is the opportunity for the public to comment I have seen examples over the years in San Bernardino and elsewhere where three minutes has been adjusted and that sometimes can create challenges. My opinion on it would be that we allow for public comment on the front end of the meeting for items not on the agenda, and then also allow for public comment on every one of the agendized items so that members, the four members here, for example, should they have an opinion or want to share something, they have an opportunity to do that at the time we're having that conversation. What I have seen, what I don't like, is when... You're like, public comment for things not on the agenda. Cool, right. Public comment for things on the agenda. And then a whole bunch of conversation happens, sometimes minutes or hours before you actually get to the item. And that, I feel, kind of loses the value of the public comment in that, you know, we're not talking about know we're not going to be talking about this item because it's last on the agenda for for a long time and am i going to really remember the public comments that happened at the beginning of the meeting as it relates to those and so my humble opinion is have the public comment allowed for items on the agenda at that time and then have item you know allow for public comment for items not on the agenda either at the front end or perhaps the back end. The front end, logically, is what I think I've seen a lot of agencies prefer, mostly because you all have taken time out of your day to come here, and if you have something to say, it would be courteous of us to allow you to say that at the front end of the meeting as opposed to waiting, not in this case, but in some cases, four or five, six hours for that item to be heard or for public comment to be at the end of the meeting. So those are my two cents and my observations.

I totally agree with Casey. Any other comments?

I agree with him as well. It could also be time consuming in certain areas where we just need to move on and make a decision. And the comments that override certain amount of minutes can linger on and we can stay on that subject forever. So I think there should be some limitations to it and basically hear them out up in front because I do agree they're here and let's I get all these comments in the beginning. I agree with that.

One little refinement to what Mr. Daly said would be I think it's also helpful when you move the comments on the agenda to the actual item that the public have the benefit of the city manager's presentation to orient them on the item and maybe learn some things that they didn't already know that might factor into their testimony to us so i would i would propose that we call for the public comments on agenda items after the staff report and before our discussion

That would, sorry, absolutely. Just to, that would kind of align with how, like when we're on planning commission, we have public hearings. Staff gives their presentation and then the chair, we're not doing public hearing here. I'm not suggesting that or we can't even do that. It's not allowed. But the point is, is that staff gets their presentation and the chair opens it up for public hearing. Then the, then opportunity for comment takes place. And then after public comment takes place and it comes back to the committee for discussion. So I think there's, precedent and alignment there.

Okay right now they have the three minutes for the public comments and then depending on the item and then sometimes the mayor over here like I said depending on the item she gives them like five, 10, 15 minutes. And what is with that? I'm wondering. Cause sometimes at the council meeting, she gives them like, you have like 10 minutes to talk, 15 minutes to talk. And I'm just wondering what's with that. Cause the other people only get three minutes and that's what I have to say.

That's at a public hearing you're talking about?

Well, no, I thought it was, I'm sorry, I thought that was at the council meeting.

At council meeting agenda items that are a public hearing, I think what you're saying is something I've noticed. I haven't noticed that on regular agenda items.

That's at the council. I think what she potentially may be referring to, though, is when, for instance, you want to bring in an expert to talk about a specific item, the decision makers may give them more time to speak than three minutes to go into detail some more.

SO TO PROVIDE SOME CONTEXT, ONE THING THAT YOU'VE PROBABLY SEEN AT QUITE A FEW RECENT COUNCIL MEETINGS ARE APPEALS, THOSE QUASI-JUDICIAL HEARINGS WHERE YOU HAVE A DEVELOPER OR A CODE ENFORCEMENT RED TAG SITUATION, AND PER THE RULES FOR THE QUASI-JUDICIAL HEARINGS, THE APPEALANT AND THE CITY OR IF IT'S TWO DEVELOPERS, YOU KNOW, EACH SIDE, THEY GET 15 MINUTES EACH. SO THAT'S WHERE YOU MIGHT HEAR THAT 15-MINUTE RULE. and then they get a five minute rebuttal. But typically at the council meetings, it's three minutes, unless it's a Spanish translation, then they get double the time.

I don't know if anybody goes back this far, but I remember when they were first implementing these changes with the Brown Act and so forth, that there was initially public comments at the city council meetings in connection with the agenda items, but there was also a cumulative limit on what one member of the public could... the time they could take because at the city council level there was a need to control one person's ability to keep everybody there all night um ricky's not laughing he had to do that so uh but i i just throw that out there i don't see the need for that in our context but certainly if we had a big crowd um we could I could propose such a limitation, a cumulative limitation, I think. We don't want somebody to come and comment on every item without having something interesting to say, just to hold us up.

Yeah, I think to that point, I think the layout of having public feedback on each discussion item is worthwhile when we do get a larger turnout and to be able to, as Casey pointed out, to really keep us kind of. in tune with what comments they're talking about as opposed to doing it all on the front end. I do like the current format of keeping the public comments for items listed and not listed on the agenda at the beginning for meetings where we're not going to get a big turnout. And the only thing that I would say is regarding the format laid out by the city manager's office, based on feedback that we received at the last meeting, I think it'd be worthwhile to have public comments for items not on the agenda, but also public comments in general, just to try to encourage feedback based on what we've discussed at this meeting. And hopefully you know influencing the outcome from there but i think restricting it at the end to only public comments for items not on the agenda might discourage people from providing that feedback based on their thoughts of the actual meeting i think what i'm hearing is a consensus uh would be um after um

After roll call, we could have public comments for items not on the agenda and then we could proceed with the consent calendar and allow the public to make comments on the consent calendar. and then in the discussion section for each agenda item after the staff report we could allow public comments again does that meet everybody's pleasure you know i i i think that works well but the last one where they got it highlighted in yellow

we probably because it's at the end you might want to change it to public comments for items for future agendas and limit it to one minute since they're only putting an idea out there and just limit that to one since we can't talk about it anyway it's just an item you know I think you need to discuss blah blah blah blah blah blah and that way it won't allow them to go into all kind of dialogue up there while they're trying to figure all that stuff out.

I have a question. Is it possible we can go case by case scenario depending on what's on the agenda?

THE CHAIRPERSON HAS THE FLEXIBILITY TO MODIFY THE THE CHAIRPERSON HAS THE FLEXIBILITY TO MODIFY THE THE CHAIRPERSON HAS THE FLEXIBILITY TO MODIFY THE RULES PER RESOLUTION 2018-89. RULES PER RESOLUTION 2018-89. RULES PER RESOLUTION 2018-89. SO IF THE CHAIRPERSON, I'M SO IF THE CHAIRPERSON, I'M SO IF THE CHAIRPERSON, I'M GOING TO KEEP ON REFERRING TO THAT. GOING TO KEEP ON REFERRING TO THAT.

GOING TO KEEP ON REFERRING TO THAT. SO IF YOU WANT TO GO ON A CASE SO IF YOU WANT TO GO ON A CASE SO IF YOU WANT TO GO ON A CASE BY CASE, YOU MIGHT HAVE A SET BY CASE, YOU MIGHT HAVE A SET BY CASE, YOU MIGHT

I'll say right now, I don't believe the meeting has the capability to do phone comments, because it would likely need to be through some sort of like Zoom or Teams sort of setup where it's already run through the meeting. The link is included on the agenda for people to be able to dial in. And it would likely have to get approved by the CM's office, because that would be like a policy change where you're now making the meeting able to be teleconferenced in a way that it isn't currently.

Angela, I think that could also be accomplished to the extent people are ready. I know we can accept public comment in written form prior to the meeting. So that might be a way to kind of address what you're suggesting.

I just think we should be open to that. I know there's tons of comments that we're not hearing. lot of people are not attending and so if they have the ability to do it in another format but get the job done as long as the comment has been disclosed i think it would be a wonderful thing for a lot of people they may not have to be here but they have their comments and they want to hear this from the comfort of their home or their mobile wherever even their work

So at the very front page of the agenda packet on the third arrow, it says written comments on any item must be sent to crcpubliccomments.sbcity.org by 4 p.m. the day of the scheduled meeting, but will not be read aloud. So there's already a mechanism in place to accept all the written comments. If someone wants to provide a comment in writing and they're not gonna be in attendance and the way that happens, they just send an email and then I would distribute those comments to all the committee members.

and i did not receive any comments for this meeting i have a question and speaking on that point why don't they read those comments aloud

I am not familiar with the underlying reasoning, but I can try and find out.

Because I know there's, I would like to know what some of these people are saying. You know, they distribute to the people that are sitting up here, but, you know, the audience or the viewing audience don't have access to those comments. And, you know, until after the meeting, of course, they said they put them in here. But it would be nice to have them at that time.

I'm speculating that there might be a concern about some abuse of some person sending in an email versus being in the presence with law enforcement and public record. And I don't know, maybe they just don't want to read them for that reason. But I understand you might not know the answer to this, but would just doing a teleconference option with a phone number to call in, would that be less of a expense and trouble administratively? maybe our current equipment already allows it, I don't know.

I'm not sure to what extent this room is specifically set up to handle a teleconference like public comment. I know at the mayor and city council meeting, they have additional equipment present to handle like the Zoom public comments, but I'm not familiar with all the specifications for this facility, this room. But that's something I can find out.

Yeah, if you could report back to us on the issue of just a teleconference versus teleconference and Zoom. Because I don't think any of us are looking to inconvenience the CM's office or spend a bunch of taxpayer money. But if it's easy enough to do, I think we should offer that.

Yeah. Just out of curiosity, I know up until a certain amount of time, a couple years ago, the city was actually publicizing council meetings and I think even commission meetings on their social media channels as well. Is that still a current practice? Because if so, or if not, I would definitely like to see that as a possible way to engage more people from the community that are not necessarily following our city website.

can follow up with our public information officer on what the policy is currently for exactly that i do know that these meetings are at the very least broadcasted on youtube they might not be for youtube live i think they get posted a couple days later but they are broadcasted live on the spectrum channel

Okay, just one other kind of clarifying question because I think we're close here. Are we comfortable with the three minutes? I mean, that's kind of my opinion is, you know, three minutes is generally the accepted time across the board. Obviously, you've got discretion if you want to grant more time, but I feel like three minutes is kind of a good place to land. I just wanted to throw that out there because that's the only thing we haven't really kind of talked through is that part of it just yet.

I think they give you five minutes at the school board, but it is a long time and it can lengthen the meeting.

So I think if there's an articulable expertise or need for more time, we can certainly grant that. I made a suggestion on a proposed change to the order. Does somebody want to make that a motion?

IF I JUST MAY GET SOME CLARIFICATION. YOU MENTIONED DOING PUBLIC COMMENTS FOR ITEMS NOT ON THE AGENDA RIGHT AFTER THE ROLL CALL. DID YOU WANT THAT TO BE AFTER THE ROLL CALL AND BEFORE THE COMMITTEE MEMBER'S MESSAGE OR DID YOU WANT THE PUBLIC COMMENTS TO COME AFTER THE ROLL CALL AND AFTER THE COMMITTEE MEMBER'S MESSAGE?

YEAH, I THINK PUBLIC COMMENTS FIRST WOULD BE GOOD. I think at the city council they do the committee member or council member comments at the end, so that's why I kind of left that issue. I guess that's a different issue, but I'm comfortable with that either way, having that there or at the end. Does somebody want to make that motion?

or an alternative motion? Sure. Let me just clarify so we're all on the same page. So public comment for items not on the agenda will take place before the commissioner comments. We will have comments available, public comment for each item that's on the agenda, limited to three minutes. And then we would have a one minute limit on public comment at the end of the meeting for potential items for future discussion. I think we should do that in one time. I'm sorry.

I was just going to say that I think it would be worthwhile to not make it exclusive at the end for just future items, but also to encourage feedback from attendees based on how the meeting went so we can gather that and potentially even influence if we're going to keep, for instance, item four, items for future agendas, use that to continue the flow of our conversation into the next meeting.

with a one limit minute minimum or maximum i don't have any issues with that i think it's the time really so they can cram it all into one minute let's do it so yes ma'am sorry um my only thought about that is just because people are limited to whatever set number whether it's three minutes or one minute per each item If you allow at the end for people to make comments on items that already have had public comment periods, people may try to do another public comment on the same item that they already gave a public comment about. So just something to be mindful of.

If they left the... If they left the topic of future agenda items and returned to an agenda item for the current meeting, I suppose we could interrupt the comment. But I don't see that being a problem. It's only a minute. It takes longer to fight with people about whether it's relevant.

And then for me, I say we have four constituents here. If they need more time and the subject of the matter is vital importance, I say allow if he can allow to speak another minute or two until it's resolved on a clear note.

I think that'd be the chair's discretion. So I think that's covered, Angela. Yeah. So I'm happy to make that motion. I'm happy to restate the motion so we're all clear on what is being moved here. And if I need to, I'm happy to make the motion that we... set future agendas for public comment to include public comment for items not on the agenda to take place at the beginning of the meeting after roll call before committee member comments to allow for public comments on each individual item that's on the agenda with a three minute maximum and to allow for public comment at the end of the meeting for items for future agendas to be limited to one minute maximum um the motion didn't include the feedback that we just agreed that i just proposed and agreed on i'll second his motion because that like

It would put us in the position of maybe we want to respond to their comment again. So I think opening the door is a little problematic.

Well, you don't necessarily need to respond directly if we're going to have the item number four at the end of all meetings to where we don't necessarily need to respond to them directly. But we're going to have that opportunity to propose something based on that feedback that we received to, you know, influence our direction going forward. but it's up to you all. I just wanted to provide that feedback. This is based on the feedback that we received at the last meeting, the importance of it being a two-way street in terms of communication.

And to clarify, is Mr. Daley's motion inclusive of the allowing public comments on each agenda item after the staff report? Yes, that was the implied intent. Okay. City manager's nodding his head, so he's got all that captured at all. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? I'll abstain. Okay, it's unanimous, one abstention. Hopefully that will give some better discussion and input. And now we're going on to an item about our meeting schedule. And I don't remember what the proposal was on that.

We was trying to, if we were going to have this city attorney here, we was trying to meet his schedule for that change. That was the only thing. But personally, I like the Wednesday meeting because it kind of fits into my schedule. The other days are kind of challenging for me.

Well, I do think it presents a challenge for the public. The public has a lot of meetings to keep track of just the city meetings alone and to change dates causes some confusion. So unless there's a good reason to change it, I think probably.

Can we get some feedback from city staff as to what they've heard since it?

Yeah, so just for some context, at the prior meeting, city attorney Albert Maldonado said that he has a reoccurring conflict this day and time. So he has to navigate that he chose to be at that meeting He said he wanted to be at that meeting But he couldn't commit to coming to every meeting and just for reference if you want to review that that is at the 40 minute 17 second timestamp on the YouTube video and so there was a need from several committee members who wanted to realign the committee's meetings to better align with city attorney Albert Maldonado's schedule and so Albert said that he has availability at the second Thursday of the month, beginning in November and going on forwards. He also has availability on the fourth Thursday of the month, but that would have to begin in January because otherwise due to the holidays in November and December, you would lose those meetings. He also has availability for a special meeting on Thursday, October 1st. So if you want to realign the committee's meeting schedule with the city attorneys for Albert Maldonado's, it would be recommended for the second Thursday of the month, beginning in November. But that's if this committee wants to go down that road.

So out of the 30 days of the month, we're offered two days, two evenings meeting the city attorney's calendar.

That is correct.

I was raised by a city attorney that wasn't that busy, but that's alright. Is there any further discussion or motion on this item?

It would be nice to have Mr. Maldonado here. However, I have confidence in the representation that we currently have. So I don't know how the others feel, but I would prefer not to change the meeting date. It aligns better with my schedule as well. And I am open to discussion as far as changing the date, but I do prefer to stay as we are currently.

And as I think you stated, he made the commitment to be here tonight, and he advised apparently you that he wasn't able to keep that commitment. I don't know if he or you wants to share any further detail on that.

So he, just for clarity, I'll read the transcript directly from the YouTube video. Albert Maldonado, starting at the 40-minute, 22-second mark, states... Sure, I have a reoccurring conflict meeting this day and time. So I have to navigate that. I chose to be here tonight. I want to be at this meeting. I can't commit to coming every meeting. I'd like to, if I can't, it's just I have that reoccurring conflict. If you would consider changing your meeting day and time to a day and time where I do not have a recurring conflict, I could commit that to the committee. But as of right now, I think it's going to have to be on a month-to-month basis when I could be here and when I could not. My intent is to be here as much as I can, but I just can't make that commitment for 100% of the time."

Okay, I'm not hearing any further discussion or motions. My only opinion is kind of echoing the rest of the committee. The fourth Wednesday is so far good for me. So I've got three other San Bernardino commissions that I sit on as well as a variety of other professional obligations. So the fourth Wednesday at this time is the best option for me at this point. Now, that's not saying much because I missed the last two meetings, so I realize I might have a little bit of a credibility issue there, but just full disclosure.

I just want to say that I think we're fine for right now, but I do see it being worthwhile to have him present here, especially when we're starting to get into the meat of the charter and talking about reforms to the charter, which probably is going to be in 2027. So if we can kind of get an idea, just continue the conversation about his availability in 2027, that would at least be worthwhile to me. And I think worthwhile to the charter committee.

have a question being it's the fourth week or the third week of the month we're getting ready for holidays where the dates are going to fall similar to the time frame so they will be changed either way correct yeah the committee would have to schedule um special meetings if you don't want let's say if this wednesday falls onto a holiday in november or december

then the meeting would not be able to proceed because staff would not be available but if the committee wants to schedule a special meeting to make up for that then that is certainly something you can do okay thank you do we need a motion to table this and and mr albert or anybody is free to bring it back in january or can we just move on motion to table

Do we have a second?

I'll second.

Okay, motion to table is not debatable, correct Madam City Attorney? Okay, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous, okay. And now we're continuing our discussion on public outreach plan.

So this is a continuation of the item from the previous meeting. So the staff report is just a reprint of the prior staff report. From the previous meeting, there was a consensus among the committee members to basically treat the PowerPoint outline topics as homework and to bring it back. Committee member Johnson emailed me a copy of his proposed bullet points of information. So I made sure that all the committee members have a copy of that, as well as members of the public up at the front table. And I believe at this point it would be for the committee to discuss and kind of come to a consensus on what the topic should be and what the information, the bullet point information should be for each topic for your informational PowerPoint.

Okay, and thank you to Mr. Johnson for his successful completion of the homework assignment.

I put it out there, I had to complete it.

Okay with the committee's consensus we can just I think just go through it point by point. THE FIRST WE STARTED TO TALK ABOUT LAST TIME, THE FIRST WE STARTED TO TALK ABOUT LAST TIME, THE FIRST WE STARTED TO TALK ABOUT LAST TIME, THE INTRODUCTION, CHARTER REVIEW INTRODUCTION, CHARTER REVIEW INTRODUCTION, CHARTER REVIEW COMMITTEE, WHAT IS THE CHARTER COMMITTEE, WHAT IS THE CHARTER COMMITTEE, WHAT IS THE CHARTER REVIEW COMMITTEE, ET CETERA?

REVIEW COMMITTEE, ET CETERA? REVIEW COMMITTEE, ET CETERA? AND CHAIR, IF I MAY, FOR THE AND CHAIR, IF I MAY, FOR THE AND CHAIR, IF I MAY, FOR THE FIRST TWO, LIKE, ROMAN NUMERAL FIRST TWO, LIKE, ROMAN NUMERAL FIRST TWO, LIKE, ROMAN NUMERAL SECTIONS, THOSE WERE WHAT YOU SECTIONS, THOSE everything under Roman numeral three then I would put together a draft PowerPoint for your review and approval based off what you discussed at the previous meeting for those first sections and what you agreed to as a as a committee at this meeting for all the later sections and then also for Roman numeral three letter A that was something that staff and the city attorney's office would provide

Is that, so for Roman numeral three, everything under Roman numeral three would be something that would be prepared by city staff?

so it'll be based off what this committee uh ultimately agrees to so the committee was going to decide what the important topics should be for the powerpoint and then what the bullet points of information the key points for every topic that you would want to cover in a powerpoint presentation in your outreach and then based off what you guys have decided as a committee is the approved list of information then i would put in the work to basically develop the PowerPoint and then I'd bring that back and then you can see whether or not it flows the way you want or if it's maybe too dense or not dense enough. Stuff along those lines. Understood.

i just have one more question sorry um so just to kind of dig into that a little bit so roman numeral three san marino city charter a form and structure b powers and duties of the council c powers and duties of the mayor so on forth those have are those up for our conversation or is that what we're going to

So everything from Roman numeral B, 3B on down, the committee requested for the city staff to complete A, the form and structure of the government. That's where we're going to bring back the characteristics of a council manager form of government versus the characteristics of a strong mayor form of government. Okay. Okay.

I'll stop now.

Would it be in that section under 3A? Is that where you're gonna emphasize what is the purview of this current Charter Review Committee?

purview the charter review committee would be under roman numeral one a two what is the purview of the charter review committee so an introduction of the charter review committee that's where you know you explain what your purpose is what your purview is and what you hope to accomplish just with your outreach just to be clear is that where we're going to where you're going to highlight that our charter committee is to focus on improving the council manager form of government primarily That I believe was part of the discussion and I believe there were some additional bullet points of information the committee wanted to also highlight in that section.

Did we have a section on the history of San Bernardino in terms of the initial charter adopted in 1905 and a sketch of how that was done and where we've gone from there in terms of major amendments?

That was not discussed or voted on at the last meeting on including a new section for that. So again, this is up to the committee to decide the topics, the structure. So it's not, and just to maybe be a little bit more clear, this is not something that should be developed by staff so that staff doesn't have an influence on what this committee is going to be proposing. So it is ultimately up to the charter review committee to decide the information they want and how they want to present it.

But I think probably an objective recitation of the basic history of the city would be something the staff could do without taking opinions on what was good and what was bad. I think the basic outline is something that's already on the city website and something that can be constructed. And I would propose putting it after 3A I guess I'll call it 3A1, which would become B, so that people understand how we got this charter and what the history of the city was before that.

If that's an addition that the committee wants to have into the committee's PowerPoint, that is something you can certainly do. It would be up to you as a body to vote and move in that direction.

Tim, I got a question. When should we, or will the committee have input as to city staff's presentation of 3A? And if so, when should we expect that timeline? Okay.

So when the PowerPoint comes back after the committee decides on the information, that would be filled out. That would also be included. That's what you asked the staff to bring back. And so then you could have that discussion there if you want to keep it, change it, modify it, but ultimately it's up to the committee.

Okay, do we have a consensus in terms of the presentation of a brief history of the city charter beginning in 1905 and how we adopted the current charter in 2016 and the major amendments along the way? I don't think we need every ballot measure that amended the charter, but if there was a significant change, which I don't, I can't recall any major overhauls but maybe there was one.

my mr chair um i think i think historical context is helpful um you know i think that um and as i was looking at the slides from gosh 2015 now i was reminded of a lot of stuff but i think providing historical context is important um and you know the the city functions now differently than it did you know, what is that? 120 some years ago. Um, and, and so I think there's, I think there's value to it. I think as I look at some of these slides from 2015, there does seem to be a fair amount. I know you might've taken some issue with how things were presented, but it does seem like there's a, I mean, we use, this was what was used in our public meetings. So I think there's a lot of really good information in here that's factual and that's accurate, um, that we could perhaps glean from, um, um, But I do think that there is, I think it's important to provide some of that historical context. I think that that's helpful. And the other thing I would just note, and I know you all looked at this last time when I wasn't here, but it just strikes me. If we look at the dates for when these meetings were taking place, November of 2015. So... to the importance of robust community engagement and outreach. This was these meetings were taking place an entire year before the actual election that took place to, you know, for the voters to decide. So I think that that should help us in our deliberations and discussions and thought about how we engage the public on this to recognize that this is a lengthy process and it should take some time to allow for that genuine and authentic public engagement.

Yeah, I agree that the scope of what we're looking into is a small fraction of what the 2015 inquiry was, but still, I think your point is very well taken, and we'll utilize that time.

Attorney Chair? Yes? I think if we utilize the history, talk about the history, we should lead with the history.

and then go into what we're doing after this is what the history of the charter and this is where we're going but i think some of the some of the agenda items help people understand the history if you talk about the original charter being a strong mayor form of government what does that mean? So the way I viewed it was some of these points are interesting and then we get to, well, how has San Bernardino dealt with these alternatives and how does the past influence our interpretation of what we've seen the last 10 years and where we go in the future?

Well, I think the key word that you said is try to keep it brief, right? Because I can easily see 120 years of history going into and diverging away from getting feedback about the charter to here's the historical analysis of it. What I would say to maybe bridge the divide is source reputable organizations that are involved in charter entities to identify what are the pros and cons of a council manager form of government, what are the pros and cons of other forms of government, and use that to try to come up with the best recommendations from both the community and advise us accordingly.

Well, that's kind of a different topic than the history. best practices is certainly something that the 2016 Charter Committee relied on heavily and I think it's certainly relevant, but I don't see that as relevant in looking at the history. San Bernardino is one of the most historical cities in Southern California. And where people don't understand where our history is really co-equal to Los Angeles and San Diego. We we may not have grown as fast as they have over the decades. But in terms of history, this city's history matters. So it's not to say that we're better than anybody else or that we shouldn't look at other people's experiences, but that's my criticism of the 2016 Charter Committee is they really didn't take a look at it from the inside, what's worked well in our current charter, what needs to be preserved for our city and our culture and our experience and our history. It was just, well, what do other cities do? Let's do like they do. So I think a lot of this is devoted to general practices, but we need to have one, as you say, fairly brief sketch of where we've been as a city, because I think all of us are proud of our history and it's just so unfair to blame the charter for the bankruptcy and say, well, that was always a bad charter and that's why we went bankrupt. And it took us a hundred years to go bankrupt. This is not fair.

I hear enough about the history, but I don't hear the future. And that right there concerns me. We're stuck on history, but what is aligned for the future? Ten years ago, things were totally different to what we're dealing with now. I think it's time that we kind of create something that's going to work, bring the history and the future together.

Yeah, if I could just add a couple of thoughts. I mean, I think the history of San Bernardino is one thing. The history of the charter of the city of San Bernardino is another thing. and i i think that there are distinctions right you know we can talk about the mormons and the spanish you know settlers and you know the tribe and i mean we could we have all sorts of amazing history for this for for this geographic area called san bernardino um i i would be I would be reluctant to try to take that and put it into a conversation about the charter. I think if we want to talk about the history of this charter of the city of San Bernardino, taking it back to the 1800s, I think that's reasonable. But I think if we're going to do that, then we can't. pretend that, you know, the reason the charter was changed in 2016 explicitly came from the bankruptcy process. So I'm all for talking about the history in totality. I just don't want to like skew it to like, you know, You know, back in the 1920s, things were going so great. And now we're going to jump forward to 2026. Right. I mean, there has to be an acknowledgement of why the charter was amended in 20. So why a new charter was adopted in 2016. And. and kind of work our way you know forward from there um because again i'm totally good with the whole you know historical charter and kind of how it was before and you know we regulated slaughterhouses and you know had prostitution districts and things like that that's all great um but i think we have to work our way up to the current and we can't work our way to the current without getting you know pre-bankruptcy charter charter change post-bankruptcy so that's That's just, you know, I'm all for it. I just, I want to be honest about what we're doing. If it's going to be a discussion on the history of the charter, let's do it. But let's be honest about the history of the charter. And I think we can save the history of San Bernardino for something more positive that's not necessarily embroiled into, you know, a discussion on the charter. That's my two cents.

I just have to say in the video, they talked about the red light district as well.

Just saying, there were some wild things in the original charter that, you know, there was some wild stuff in there.

You know, I'm not sure if the historic charter had a provision for a citizens' committee to look at the charter on a periodic basis like the current charter does, and that's certainly one positive improvement of the new charter. I would certainly never make the argument that there weren't very necessary changes to be made in 2016. I think we all agree on that. There was problems. And there was very strong personalities that had served a long time in place that exacerbated those problems. And the charter had not been updated and was not prepared to deal with those challenges. So I think, again, I agree with Mr. Daley that we need to objectively review that information and not get derailed in our efforts for the future because I think in order to have a bright future, first you study the past, you see what's your experience, what's in the present day and the needs, and then you spend your emphasis and discussion on the future.

Could I also say one other thing? As I was going through these slides from 2015, if you go on to page 16 of the agenda, one of the preliminary recommendations, and I know this is kind of a current thing that is being discussed, preliminary recommendation, mayor remains elected at large but with the same voting privileges as the common council members. And then there were some changes around that. And then the mayor and common council function as one governing body with one voice. And that was actually a preliminary recommendation that came from the charter committee back then. And we encountered the same issue around the eight votes versus the seven votes versus the nine votes. But just as to just... I don't want to say defend, but the charter committee looked at a lot of stuff. And we were actually, as a committee, very much in favor of giving the mayor a vote. That was what we heard at large from the community. The sentiment at the time was, hey, the mayor is the only position that's elected at large. They should get a vote. And we supported it. It was the council members themselves who shot that down because they weren't prepared to reduce the number of awards from seven to six or go from seven to eight. um which you know again that that issue hasn't gone away and it's still very viable and very real but you know just as a you know just a point of clarity this this was a recommendation that initially came from us was to give the mayor a full-time you know the full-time mayor a full vote along with the rest of the council colleagues um tim if i may um on uh

3D1, I just want to clarify, says one, appoint and suspend or remove all city employees and appoint administrative officers under the powers of the city manager. And I just want to correct the record that it's remove city department heads, not all city employees. So I don't want to create an at-will city here. Good point, yeah.

Okay, I don't see the need for a vote. I think we have a consensus on input to the city manager's office, but maybe somebody else feels differently.

And I just want to get clarification. So the committee wants a slide on the historical context of the city charter. And you would like that slide to be specifically where? just so I have that on the record.

Mr. Johnson suggested the beginning and then my comment was that if you look at some of the items in Roman numeral one and two, they help you understand the issues that were dealt with in the old charter and changing to the new charter. So I think it should be in Section 3 after A, talking about the form and structure of the government, what was San Bernardino's history and experience?

You're saying before, in between city charter basics and San Bernardino city charter? Yes.

I'm saying after 3A, after 3A, the form and structure of government, you'd have a new 3B. That would be history of San Bernardino Charter.

Would you be open to having that history of the charter live in city charter basics A and add a 4? So charter cities, what is the charter, differences between, differences between, and then perhaps there have the kind of historical context of the different charters that San Bernardino has had before we get to Roman numeral three?

Well, whatever the committee's consensus is is fine with me, but my thought would, the next section is form and structure of the government, and that's kind of, The case study of the change that was made from strong mayor to council manager, but correct me if I'm wrong, city manager, I think that that's what 3A would discuss.

Yeah, 3A would discuss the characteristics of the council manager form of government versus that of a strong mayor. So you'd have the option of either providing the historical context before, or you provide basically the definition of what these two concepts are, and then the historical context of San Bernardino City Charter after that. So however you want to do it.

To me, it's like telling the story of America without... without citizens having a detailed understanding in the municipal context of you know what what are some of the other government options throughout the world uh... communism socialism talking about democracy is great if you're fear well-versed in that but uh... and most americans are i think but most samarino city residents if you took a poll what form of government do we have in San Bernardino? I think a vast majority would not be able to tell you council manager form of government. Some of them might be locked in the past of strong mayor and some of them might not have any answer at all. It's just not something that comes up at the At the break room or the coffee house, it's not on people's minds. They need a little bit of prompting and education, I think, before they understand the interesting points of our history and the changes we've made.

So maybe we have... And I'll be honest, it's confusing when we're saying 3 and 3A because I'm looking at Roman numerals and I'm also seeing numbers too and letters in between the two of them. But perhaps in the section, the section titled San Bernardino City Charter, we have a new A, and that new A is the historical context, the history of the Charter of San Bernardino before we get into the form and structure.

As we pretty much highlight it.

And that's certainly an option. And I would just say when you see a PowerPoint and then actually you start like you hear a PowerPoint presentation or when you create a PowerPoint presentation and you start rehearsing in your mind, you naturally are going to reorder the presentation because what you thought WHEN YOU FIRST CREATE IT VERSUS WHEN YOU START REHEARSING IT, YOU WHEN YOU FIRST CREATE IT VERSUS WHEN YOU START REHEARSING IT, YOU WHEN YOU FIRST CREATE IT VERSUS WHEN YOU START REHEARSING IT, YOU MIGHT SAY, I'M GOING TO REVERSE MIGHT SAY, I'M GOING TO REVERSE MIGHT SAY, I'M GOING TO REVERSE THESE TWO SLIDES. THESE TWO SLIDES. THESE TWO SLIDES. I WOULDN'T GET TOO HUNG UP ON I WOULDN'T GET TOO HUNG UP ON I WOULDN'T GET TOO HUNG UP ON EXACTLY WHERE IT GOES RIGHT NOW.

EXACTLY WHERE IT GOES RIGHT NOW. EXACTLY WHERE IT GOES RIGHT NOW. IT'S NOT LOCKED IN STONE. IT'S NOT LOCKED IN STONE. IT'S NOT LOCKED IN STONE I think that would be the best way to do it.

Well, you know, it kind of makes sense because now that you think about it, because it says San Bernardino City Charter, then you can go into the history of the San Bernardino City Charter before you can start engaging about how we're going to, the structure of the existing one and how, you know, so it kind of makes sense.

okay yeah should we proceed with item B under the current numbering scheme the powers and duties of the City Council and just for my clarification I it would seem to me

that powers and duties of the city council um powers and duty of the mayor powers and duties of the city manager and on down is already uh articulated in the current charter um and so it would again just it would seem to me that those pieces of the presentation would be informed and populated by what's actually in the charter to avoid any subjectivity or opinions or anything like that it's like you know we can point to the section in the charter that says these are the powers and duties of the council and then like that is what is presented is like these are the powers and duties you know chapter and verse from this section in this section in this section through the chair sure you know i'm i'm not all that intelligent

But, you know, the document I presented is really cut and paste from the city charter. So it's, you know, I didn't, I might have stopped, you know, because it was long, but all of it is cut and paste.

See, you did your homework and now we can skip ahead on a couple of things.

I think under 3B, we should also highlight the role of the pro tem as well, serving in the mayor's absence as well.

And I only put three points because that was just the three in there. We can add more or subtract. It depends on what we want to talk about during the PowerPoint presentation.

Yeah, I mean, I think my opinion is I think that what's listed in there is a great start. And, you know, maybe that can be something that we start with. Again, I feel like the objectivity of pulling it directly from the charter gives us kind of that insulation of, you know, avoiding any, you know, opinions and things like that. And it's just, you know, just the facts, ma'am.

okay so we could add that to this section right for the duties of the mayor i would like to see that included i'm sorry uh under uh see the powers and duties of the mayor i'd like to have some identification or some parameters regarding their pro temp and i believe it is in the existing charter

Just to clarify, do you want that under B or C? B deals with the council. I think it's more appropriate under B, the council.

I don't see that as really an important point because I don't know of any realistic alternatives. I mean, isn't that the way everybody does it? There's different ways to select the mayor pro tem, but you usually have a member of the council doing it. And I don't know whether that's something that council should decide or the voters need to put in a charter, but it's gonna be a member of the council either way.

It's already in the charter. That's not the question. The question is whether we should add it to, if it's worthwhile, to adding it to the presentation to give the public that full picture of what happens just in the case that the mayor is not present or incapable of serving, that there is that continuity of leadership.

Which is very informative.

I mean, I don't know of an alternative. Every city has a member of the council that serves as a mayor pro tem. So, I mean, I guess your point is that there's different ways to select the mayor pro tem from the council.

Again, my point is, let me just clarify, what I'm suggesting is already in the charter. I'm not suggesting anything that's different than the charter. I'm just suggesting that we add the language specifically about the existence of the mayor pro tem and their responsibilities under this present proposed presentation under 3B. That's all I'm suggesting.

I think it's more for an educational purpose than anything. It's already there. We're just reading it for better information being spread out to the community.

I hear you. I just I see our focus as explaining some of the alternatives. And I don't really see a realistic alternative that would be important for a city charter. There's a lot of interesting things about city hall. I guess I just don't see that as one of them. I know there's been controversy on the council from time to time that Ricky could probably speak to of who's to serve as mayor pro tem. Ricky's done it. But that's kind of an internal baseball in my mind. We all know that the vice president takes over for the president on the national scene. And I think we all, if we even think about it, we all know that a member of the council takes over for the mayor. What's the alternative?

I know as we go out and inform the public of what this is all about, we're not going to be able to give them all the information. Because sometimes it can just be information overkill. Because we're going to more likely... I can see me doing a PowerPoint presentation, and I don't want to just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I just want to hit it and quit and move on and hit it and quit and move on. So we got to think about doing the presentation and all the information that you're going to give people. You can give them a handout with all the big pieces on it, but you still want to do the presentation. All you want to hit is the bullets and the highlights. And I think, you know, so those type of things we got to keep in our mindset as well.

I agree on that one.

And along those lines, I think one of the important points that we need to hit specifically is the current involvement of the mayor in nominating the city manager and other key officials which in my opinion and from many members of the public I've talked to is is a real crux of the current problem is you have a mayor who is held accountable by the voters if things don't go well but yet the mayor is only one of eight voices as to how to select the city manager and that the proposal that we discussed earlier this year was that the mayor have a role in the nomination to the city council of a person that the mayor has confidence in to put before the council and the council then decides whether this person should be the city manager or the other high-ranking official. So I think that should be discussed either in the the context of the council under item B or under C as something the mayor participates in but doesn't have the power currently to nominate could I maybe just add some thoughts so

Mr. Chair heard what she said, understood what she said. And I wonder if, so the structure of the current presentation or the current slides that we're looking at either by our straight A student, Mr. Johnson, or the rest of us who are just looking at the staff presentation. But where I'm going is we have kind of this is, right? Like these bullets are explaining the current state of affairs, the way it is right now. We can talk about the historical context on the front end, but this is how it is now. And I feel like, or I think that It's important for us to accurately present the current construct of the rules of the road as outlined by our city charter. I'm open to a section, A, B, C, D, F, G, H, I, or J, or whatever, that could perhaps look and start a forward-looking discussion on Potential things that could be tweaked and so, you know Putting it in the bucket of you know Changing the appointment of the city manager to have more to have the mayor have more of an influence, right? That's what you're talking about. And so to me No harm in talking about possibilities for tweaks and changes, but let's not blend the two together so that we can at least have a, again, we can have the conversation of how it is today, how it is right now. We can talk about how we got here, how it is today, but then... leave the what are some potential changes or tweaks to the end of this so that we can talk about the historical context. This is how we got here. This is what it is right now. Here are some potential things that we are looking at for consideration that we would like your input on. and that feels like a good flow and then we're we're not we're not like inserting possibilities that aren't actual things in the middle of you know this is this is what it is you know um because i i think that and i and i you know if we go you know as i looked at the again the old slides that was kind of how it was it was like this is some of the some of the stuff that is right now and here are some of the potential recommendations that the committee is considering that we would like your input on and i think that that's an effective way to do it so that then people get the history then they get the current they get this is how it is and here are some things that we're thinking about that we'd like your feedback on and then that way we can then we can decide what are those things that we want to include um and it it seems like that could be a nice flow so that's my two cents

You're batting 1,000 with me. I totally agree with that. I don't think this is the place for arguments for or against. I think we just need to put in there under all five of the proposals that we've discussed, we need to insert in our analysis what the current practice is or the current charter provision is. And I think that's particularly true for who currently nominates candidates. Answer, council with the mayor is one vote.

It would give us a chance to really then go into those ideas. How could we change it? Do we give the mayor a full vote? What are the ramifications of that? How is the city manager appointed? This is how it currently is. This is how it could be changed potentially. There could be others, but it'll create time and space for those discussions in the meeting rather than what I could see you know getting not being able to get through it if we're saying this is how it currently is but this is what we're thinking this is how it currently is but this is what we're thinking if we got through all of that and then say now we have the time to talk about some potential tweaks that the committee is recommending or at least considering I didn't I don't want to say recommending but you know considering at this point for further discussion I agree on that um the current charter

is right now up for revision. So times have changed once again. And so we know the history, we know what's going on now. Once again, I feel like the future needs to be added or the conditions of certain subjects will be touched according to the constituents wanting to change because it's all about change, period.

I'm kind of speculating that that was what was in Mr. Lampe's mind, but it's more up to our direction and guidance for that final piece. But I don't think Mr. Lampe's surprised that we feel this way. And I think that should be the Section 4 or I, whatever you want to call it. And that, I think, is... amongst, if not the most important part of our presentation, it's up there because we need to get that feedback and that's why we're doing this. Are we still on B or can we ask questions beyond B? Yeah, I'm hearing a consensus that we put how the city's top officers are selected into either 3B or 3C at the city manager's discretion for the best presentation and go on from there. Is that okay? Yeah, I had a question on C though, if I may.

Okay. Can you maybe can you advise me on on the mayor's authority on representing the city and intergovernmental relations? Do they as being mayor, do they become the de facto representative of the city at those meetings? Or is there it is a council have any input on that? Can you can you educate me on that?

While they're conferring, I think it would be fair to say that the current charter kind of continues the role of the mayor in that regard from the previous charter that the mayor is generally are representative to Omnitrans and other boards, unless there's more than one, then it would be the mayor and somebody else usually.

Yeah, I was just curious because I was interested in just kind of knowing how the whole operation works when, you know, that process is getting decided.

I think overall, I mean, it's not defined in the charter or in our code of exactly what the mayor's position as representative directly means. I think it's kind of commonly understood that they are kind of the representative for the city when they're in these sorts of partnership meetings or different things kind of representing the city's best interest. Obviously, I think the council as a whole, including the mayor, still have some sort of conversation and some sort of discussion, understanding of what that position is, but there's no explicitness of, okay, this is,

how far you can go in like your representations that make sense it does but can maybe you take a little bit more time to tell us how the current process currently works for not just intergovernment relations but how does the council choose who's going to be the representative on let's say the homeless partnership committee that kind of thing so for

EXTERNAL BOARDS COMMISSIONS AND COMMITTEES LIKE THE AIRPORT COMMISSIONS AND COMMITTEES LIKE THE AIRPORT COMMISSIONS AND COMMITTEES LIKE THE AIRPORT AUTHORITY OR THE IVDA. AUTHORITY OR THE IVDA. AUTHORITY OR THE IVDA. THOSE JOINT POWERS AUTHORITIES, THOSE JOINT POWERS AUTHORITIES, THOSE JOINT POWERS AUTHORITIES, THEY HAVE THEIR OWN BYLAWS THAT THEY HAVE THEIR OWN BYLAWS THAT THEY HAVE THEIR OWN BYLAWS THAT THE CITY HAS TO FOLLOW. THE CITY HAS TO FOLLOW. THE CITY HAS TO FOLLOW. SO FOR EXAMPLE, THE SAN BERNARD SO FOR EXAMPLE, THE SAN BERNARD SO FOR EXAMPLE, THE SAN BERNARD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT AU REQUIRE THE COUNCIL, THE LEGISLATIVE BODY TO VOTE ON WHO LEGISLATIVE BODY TO VOTE ON WHO LEGISLATIVE BODY TO VOTE ON WHO WILL BE THE MEMBERS. WILL BE THE MEMBERS. WILL BE THE MEMBERS. THAT'S ACTUALLY IN THEIR BYLAWS THAT'S ACTUALLY IN THEIR BYLAWS THAT'S ACTUALLY IN THEIR BYLAWS AND BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE CONTROL AND BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE CONTROL AND BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE CONTROL OVER THAT AGENCY, WE AGREE TO OVER THAT AGENCY, WE AGREE TO OVER THAT AGENCY, WE AGREE TO THEIR TERMS IN ORDER TO HAVE THEIR TERMS IN ORDER TO HAVE THEIR TERMS IN ORDER TO HAVE A SEAT, WE HAVE TO ABIDE BY A SEAT, WE HAVE TO ABIDE BY A SE by a vote of the legislative body the city charter actually defines what the legislative body is and that is the seven council members some other organizations may say that the mayor gets to appoint delegates and in that case because we want to be a member of that organization we have to follow their rules of how the appointments are made so in that case the mayor would have the power to appoint those members FOR THE AD HOC COMMITTEES. SO THESE ARE OUR OWN INTERNAL SO THESE ARE OUR OWN INTERNAL COMMITTEES. COMMITTEES. THE CITY CHARTER CURRENTLY GIVES THE CITY CHARTER CURRENTLY GIVES THAT POWER EXCLUSIVELY TO THE council ad hoc committees, but they cannot be more than three for quorum purposes. So depending on how the rules are for external agencies, we have to follow those rules. What our rules are under the city charter for like the ad hoc committees, like the homeless ad hoc committee, the mayor has the power there. So it just depends on what the external rules are.

And the internal ad hoc committees, is that defined more so in municipal code as is kind of silent on in the charter?

THE CITY CHARTER ACTUALLY DOES LIST THIS UNDER THE, I BELIEVE, THE POWERS AND DUTIES OF THE MAYOR. AND IT SAYS UNDER SECTION 303D, IT SAYS APPOINT THE MEMBERS AND OFFICERS OF COUNCIL COMMITTEES, COMMITTEES MADE UP WHOLLY OF LESS THAN MAJORITY OF THE CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS. THOSE ARE YOUR AD HOC COMMITTEES. AND PERFORM OTHER DUTIES AS SPECIFIED BY THE COUNCIL. SO THE MAYOR GETS THE EXCLUSIVE AUTHORITY TO APPOINT THOSE.

And then 303G, powers of the mayor, represent the city in intergovernmental relations and establish and maintain partnerships and regional leadership roles to advance the city's interest and may delegate such roles to other members of the city council. And I don't think any of our discussion has focused on those specific provisions, so I think we want to focus here on... What are the general provisions of the charter? And what are the current positions on the five proposals? And get feedback on those.

Yeah, the reason why I was asking is I just think it's an important part to identify the powers of the mayor and include that piece, right? Because it is an influential piece that oftentimes goes unnoticed.

Fair enough. Okay, anything else up to section D? The city manager is the chief executive officer and in charge of the day-to-day duties of managing city hall under policy set by the council. And that would not change, I don't think, but I think it's an important point that needs to be made.

just reiterate that i think uh we do need to clean up that language on one i know that is the current as the current city charter does uh as it's currently worded i do think that that is something that we need to fix that the city manager should not be able to remove all city employees unilaterally i do think that that would put us in some labor issues

But maybe Mr. Lampe can correct me. The new charter did take us away from a personnel commission with vested employee rights into much closer to... AT WILL EMPLOYMENT. AT WILL EMPLOYMENT.

THAT'S MY UNDERSTANDING FOR THAT'S MY UNDERSTANDING FOR THAT'S MY UNDERSTANDING FOR DEPARTMENT HEADS BUT NOT DEPARTMENT HEADS BUT NOT DEPARTMENT HEADS BUT NOT NECESSARILY FOR EMPLOYEES NECESSARILY FOR EMPLOYEES NECESSARILY FOR EMPLOYEES REPRESENTED BY BARGAINING UNITS.

REPRESENTED BY BARGAINING UNITS. REPRESENTED BY BARGAINING UNITS. SO IF I MAY JUST PROVIDE SOME SO IF I MAY JUST PROVIDE SOME SO IF I MAY JUST PROVIDE SOME CLARITY. CLARITY. CLARITY. WHAT COMMITTEE MEMBER JOHNSON WHAT COMMITTEE MEMBER JOHNSON WHAT COMMITTEE MEMBER JOHNSON PUT IS AN EX So if you were to change that to say, it only applies to directors, that would not be what the city charter says. The city charter specifically says all city employees but it's obviously governed by state law and federal law.

And just to finish the sentence, to finish the sentence there, it's except as otherwise provided by law, comma, the city charter, comma, or established personnel rules. So it's those established personnel rules where the covered employees live.

But didn't those change substantially? We don't have a personnel commission with...

the power that they used to wield the city does have personnel rules though that have been adopted and are basically what govern the conduct of city staff and whether or not they can be disciplined for breaking personnel rules so the city does have established personnel rules it does have a personnel commission and there are established procedures for uh terminating or reprimanding those employees who are considered classified employees those have essentially property rights I believe it is but they basically have due process rights and other rights as public employees and those are different than your exempt employees your at-will employees and those are not just department directors division managers depending on the department and the division some of them are at will some of the analysts in the city manager's office we're at will, so it's more than just directors who are at will.

If I may, and maybe I can make this request later, I would definitely love to hear maybe a report back from staff on this given that the high turnover within our staff has been a key issue of the council manager system not necessarily being fully functional. I for one would certainly be interested in a staff analysis on that for a future meeting.

There is a personnel committee. I'm on the personnel committee, and we do hear appeals and things like that from employees that, like you stated, that are represented by various unions that they've chosen among the ranks. And so I think that we need to keep that in there because, to me, it seems to provide a little bit more protection for the employee. by not removing it and stating that they do have established personnel rules and outside provided by the law.

Through the Chair.

Yes.

You know, like I said, I only put three bullets, but in some of these, it's going to be apparent that we put way more than three, just because of the nature of that position, you know, so.

Okay, shall we, with the understanding that the city manager can supplement that, as he sees fit, and we can review it next month. Can we go on to subsection E? Is that okay? Okay, city clerk. I think one... One important point to add here is that the city clerk is in charge of public records requests. That ends up being an important responsibility. I know we had some discussion about about returning to an elected city clerk position, but I don't think that was one of our five proposals. But since it's kind of on the table, maybe we should mention that and mention that that cities differ on how the city clerk is selected. I think the elected city attorney is kind of a rare formulation amongst cities, although the larger cities tend to elect their city attorney too. But city clerk, there's a lot more cities that elect a city clerk than the city attorney. And you can see how that is important because if you're supervised by the city manager, you're kind of operating within a corporate context with other departments. And when you're elected by the public and you get a request from the public, your first responsibility is to the public, not to the city manager. That's one of those provisions that I just don't understand why the committee wanted to take that on because literally if you go back in history, we just haven't had a bad city clerk. They're all this wonderful people. I mean, it's always been one of the most popular public servants in City Hall and it wasn't broken, so why did we fix it? I don't know. But it's not one of our five priorities, so I...

i think we should be limited in what we're presenting on other topics mr chair sure um just uh um two things one i think i think the custodian of record comment that you made certainly should be something that is is included i think back to ricky's point some of them are going to require more than just three and so i think i think it's certainly appropriate to expand some of those critical core functions so I'm perfectly fine with with having as many of these numbers in there as necessary to provide sufficient amount of information and then I and I would just note you know to your point about the clerk reporting to the city manager as I read this here we say Clerk shall be hired by a vote of the mayor and the entire council and may be removed by the mayor and entire council. So to me that puts the clerk outside of the direct authority and control of the city manager. That is correct. The city clerk does not report to the city manager. Okay. And that would be, if I'm, if I'm so bold to go down to the city attorney, same, same, but different. That is correct.

Okay. Whenever you see a budget adoption, the budget books actually show the hierarchy. And you'll see in the organizational chart of the city, you'll have the mayor and city council. And then under that, you'll have basically three columns. You have the city clerk, the city manager, and the city attorney as separate. And then under the city manager, that's when you have all the different departments. But the city clerk does not report to the city manager. The city attorney does not report to the city manager. They are separately appointed by the mayor and city council.

Through the chair. Yes. We're talking about the city charter. As far as the city attorney and city clerk, this is all the information that's in the city charter for those. So if we can't add any more to it, because that's all there is to it in the city charter for those positions.

Mr. Chair? I do think it'd be worthwhile. I understand that it's not in the city charter, but I guess it's under the municipal code. But I think it'd be important to highlight that the city clerk is the point of contact for campaign finance regulations and disclosures for context.

The manager is the city elections officer, and we contract with the registrar from the county to... perform some of the functions, but I think that should be mentioned as well.

Through the chair, I think we kind of deviate because the whole idea is to educate them on the city charter. So if we added those other provisions, we're outside of that thing, that role that we're talking about. We're educating the people on the city charter, not city charter and other, it's city charter. We're the city charter committee. We're not the city charter and other committee.

Correct, but I think it's important to go along with the idea that we've been addressing is that it's important to give people a snapshot as to where we currently are right now so that there's a broad understanding of what's currently at play here and what those roles entail. Even if it's not in the charter, I think it's just worthwhile information to know.

And it is in the charter, Section 505, City Clerk. And as Mr. Lampe correctly stated, it is the mayor and council that hire and fire. However, Section 505 exists within... Article 5, departments, services, officers, and employees, and the first section of Article 5 says the city manager, subject to the approval of the city council, may prescribe the functions of all departments, offices, agencies, etc. And the city manager provides direction, and I don't see the word supervision in there, but I... pretty sure that's part of the city manager's role with respect to all departments so yeah so I think it is part of the corporate structure and I'm not saying that we should make an argument whether that's good or bad but I think it should be pointed out that the historic charter had that as an elected role and that other cities have that as an elected role Just for context. Maybe we'll get input from the public and revisit that issue, because we did talk about it. I just don't think we prioritized it for the first round of changes.

if i may just put some clarity here section 502 direction by city manager it does say in there accept the offices of the council mayor city attorney and city clerk the library board of trustees and the water board which will be administered by their respective executive officers as provided for elsewhere in the charter but which shall in all other respects be governed by the policies applicable to all other departments offices and agencies so the city manager has direction over ALL THE OTHER DEPARTMENTS EXCEPT FOR THE OFFICES OF THE COUNCIL, MAYOR, CITY ATTORNEY, AND CITY CLERK, THE LIBRARY BOARD OF TRUSTEES, AND THE WATER BOARD.

OKAY. POINT TAKEN. HOWEVER, THEN WE GO BACK TO THE BUDGET. SO THE CITY CLERK DOESN'T GET TO SET HER OWN BUDGET, RIGHT?

so every department submits what their budget is the finance department and it's the city manager's budget so the city budget is established in the charter as the city manager's budget and it does state that it should be that all these other offices that THE CITY MANAGER DOES NOT HAVE DIRECTION OVER, THEY ARE STILL SUBJECT TO ALL THE OTHER RESPECTS TO BE GOVERNED BY THE POLICIES APPLICABLE TO ALL OTHER DEPARTMENTS, OFFICES, AND AGENCIES. SO THE CITY CLERK'S BUDGET IS GOING TO BE SET, WELL, TECHNICALLY, SO THE CITY MANAGER PROPOSES TO BUDGET, BUT ULTIMATELY IT'S THE COUNCIL THAT APPROVES THE BUDGET AND SETS THE BUDGET. SO AS PART OF THE BUDGET PROPOSAL, THE CITY MANAGER MAY

x amount of dollars for the city clerk's office but it's not the city manager who sets the budget it is the city council that sets the budget okay well i think we've given some guidance in terms of uh mentioning but not going into too much detail on these other issues so i appreciate the great discussion um do we need to say anything different about the city attorney I think probably along the same lines as the city clerk. Obviously, there's arguments both ways. If you have an attorney that is hired by the city council, you have an attorney that's operating within the corporate structure. If you have a city attorney elected by the people, you have kind of an independent attorney. theoretically independent attorney that should be following ethical rules but operating from an independent viewpoint rather than having to answer to the city council for a raise or a funding issue in their department. Well, the city attorney had to do that too, but the city attorney actually went to court at one point in the recent decades to establish some independence in that regard. The city council couldn't arbitrarily cut his budget. Anyway, that's too much detail for what we're doing. Don't get me started. Yeah. We're all learning things tonight.

Financial management, subsection G. My only question on this one, and hopefully Mr. Lampe can help clarify things. I asked Corey a few months back about number two regarding... staff's ability to do budgets on an annual basis versus every other year basis. Um, I understand if you might not have the complete answer for me tonight, but it would be nice to know whether, uh, item two, which copy and pasted from the city charter, uh, restricts us to doing, uh, budgets on an annual basis, um, through the, through the charter. My understanding from through Corey was that, um, the discretion has been at the city manager's discretion and that's changed in the last, since the modern charter has been enacted.

SO BIANNUAL BUDGETS ARE APPROPRIATE UNDER THE CURRENT CITY CHARTER. SO BACK UNDER 2022 CITY MANAGER ROB FIELD ADOPTED A BIANNUAL BUDGET. SO TECHNICALLY THAT WOULD FIT THE DEFINITION UNDER MY UNDERSTANDING THAT IT PROVIDES A FINANCIAL PLAN FOR THE ENSUING FISCAL YEAR. SO THE BIANNUAL BUDGET WILL BE FOR THE FOLLOWING TWO YEARS AND WHEN YOU DO THAT BUDGET PROCESS you do the first, you know, you have the budget adoption for the first year, then you do like a quarterly review or a mid-cycle review. And then when you go for the next fiscal year, it's kind of like a mid-year review at that point, because you adopted a two-year budget. So you'd still have like an adoption or an approval of the next fiscal year as you fall from what you originally planned.

Elections and terms. I think we need to add one of our five proposals here about term limits that certainly city charters can have term limits and ours doesn't.

Yes. Yes. I guess two things on that. So I'm all for that. I think it makes sense to have it as a section for discussion. I did think we were going to have kind of future things like items the committee is considering as, you know, again, not necessarily within the elections and terms, but kind of as a separate one after we get through this kind of the as is versus what we're thinking about. So just wanted to clarify that. The thing that I would like to see on this is the language that talks about when elections are held in San Bernardino, as even-year elections coinciding with gubernatorial and presidential elections. Okay. Because that was a key difference between the initial charter and the new one was alignment into national and statewide elections.

I think that was one of the provisions that had the greatest consensus on the charter change was that good improvement because turnout is skyrocketed. Yeah, almost double if not more sometimes.

Yeah. So that would be my only comment to perhaps, again, in the spirit of sometimes a couple sections, another bullet's needed type of thing. So maybe we could just add that from an education standpoint. This is when elections are held. Charter dictates that this is when they happen.

Another interesting issue I think maybe should at least be mentioned is the fact that our city has primary elections. A lot of our neighboring cities don't, and I don't think people realize that even in political circles, they don't understand how important that is. I know Mr. Albert gets it completely because he's an advocate of ranked choice voting, which is another forward-thinking alternative. But I think the fact that we have primaries is a lot better than cities that don't have anything at all, which allows all kinds of manipulation in... how many people of this ethnicity are running and how many people of this special interest are running, divide the vote, divide and conquer, all these games that are played. We take for granted we don't have that problem as bad in San Bernardino. So that's a strength of our charter.

If I may too, and I think there's a language somewhere else in the charter regarding recall elections, but I think it may be worthwhile to include that language in this section as well, if there is language pertaining to recall elections. Yeah, initiative, citizen referendum, and recall. Maybe we can create like a subsection under that for this purpose.

I don't think our charter has special provisions on recall. I think we default to state law, don't we?

Section 900.

Is that different than state law?

Yeah.

Right. But given that we are a chartered city, I'd certainly be interested in seeing how we can use our home rule status to make the recall process more fair.

Yeah, and it might should be mentioned in the historical charter had its own provisions on recall that were slightly different. than state law. Okay, well, it's eight o'clock. Okay, go ahead.

Where would we talk about the general plan and having one available and reviewed periodically. Is that something that we have the ability to input? I mean, I don't know where that would fall under what section or where it would go.

I imagine that would be a section where you would want to solicit input or feedback from your outreach when you go into the neighborhood association meetings to see what their ideas are for potential charter amendments. Because I don't believe anything about the general plan is actually in the city charter. So you wouldn't be able to add a slide in terms of educating the public about how the city charter governs the general plan.

Maybe we could politely request our city manager employee if he has time for our next meeting to give us a little idea of what other cities do in terms of mentioning the general plan in the charter.

so i can what i can do is i could provide this committee with city charters from other cities if you want to if you want to select basically a sample group of cities you want to maybe compare our charter with to other cities if this committee wants to come to some type of consensus on which cities you want to look at and that way i won't be accused of like cherry picking which city i'd look up if there's a certain sample group of cities that are maybe similar to San Bernardino that you believe are similar to San Bernardino or cities that you think that we should aspire to be or cities that may have experienced similar problems and see what their charters now say if assuming it's been amended if you want to create that like that sample group of cities then I can just pull those city charters and provide them to you and that way these are the cities that you want to look up LOOK AT AS YOUR SAMPLE GROUP, YOUR CONTROL GROUP TO COMPARE HOW WE DO BUSINESS VERSUS HOW THEY DO BUSINESS WITH THEIR CITY CHARTER. AND IT COULD VERY WELL BE POSSIBLE THAT SOME OF THOSE OTHER CITY CHARTERS DON'T HAVE, NONE OF THEM MIGHT HAVE ANY PROVISIONS ABOUT THE GENERAL PLAN AND THE ABSENCE OF THAT PROVISION COULD SPEAK JUST AS LOUDLY AS HAVING IT BECAUSE THERE'S A REASON WHY OTHER CITIES MAY NOT HAVE IT. SO THAT WOULD BE MY SUGGESTION.

Could we look at the same cities that are looked at for salaries? Would those be similar enough or are those just for financial purposes?

What I can do is I will ask HR or finance, probably HR, what they use for comparative cities. Now, not all of those cities may be charter cities. So I can provide you a list of maybe all the charter cities in the state of California, maybe some simple demographics like their population, poverty rate, know demographic data and then which cities we use for hr to do their their salary comparison comparisons and then from that if you want to select a sample group of five to ten cities to be the control group going forwards for any type of comparative analysis that way you have an established set of cities that everyone's fully aware of that has been selected no one's going to be accused of cherry picking where they're pulling data from because you as a committee came up with what the the study group is.

How about if we ask you to look at charter cities over 100,000 in the Inland Empire and a phone call to League of California Cities to see if they have a comparison already done that you could share with us like you've done on other topics, kind of a comparison chart or whatever they have, an article. so we don't put a lot of extra work on you, see what they have available.

I'll see what I can bring back.

think and I think we've we've kind of gotten some of that information already I'm certainly interested in getting more more feedback on that but I'd be more particularly interested in doing an assessment or analysis as to the strengths and weaknesses of a council manager forms of government and doing an internal analysis amongst our city to identify where are those areas that we're struggling on to potentially look at correcting

That is a request that I'd have to run by the city manager's office, the city manager.

I thought we were talking about just the general plan issue. Because we've done a fair amount of comparison on general terms already.

Yeah, no, I'm totally supportive of that. I just wanted to acknowledge that we have done that comparison, not necessarily specific to the general plan, about where other chartered cities are in this area. I just think it would be worthwhile to do a deeper analysis as to... what have these other city governments that are like ours, council manager forms of government, what has been their strengths and what has been their weaknesses in that form of government and using that to tie into our similarities and how we can identify those weaknesses and turn them into strengths.

I think that's probably the next agenda item for us is topics for future meetings. Maybe we could...

put your request under that that would be there where you'd want to put it for me to be brought back but if the request is for staff to do the analysis that is something that's run by the city manager just for some clarity or some transparency, that could kind of cross a line for city staff to provide an argument going one way or another. And my goal as a city staff member with this committee is to help facilitate the meetings, but I do not want to provide anything from an analysis that I'm going to have to do that may sway how you feel about the structure, how you feel about a proposed amendment, because Anything that comes from this charter review committee should come from the committee and it shouldn't come from staff. So staff, we should not be the ones who are influencing potential amendments. That's something I don't want to be a part of, to be perfectly honest.

Let me just provide some context and maybe those that served on the... Can I interrupt?

I think the city attorney is being very lenient with us, but this is not an agendized item. And I think... We've alerted the city manager to the potential issue. Why don't we just let him look into it a little preliminarily and then we'll bring it back next month and talk more about the details.

Absolutely. I just want to add one little bit of context, though, quickly. My understanding of the last Charter Review Committee did look into analysis from the National Civic League that does do some research on chartered governments. And if that is true, I'd certainly welcome that. you know, looking into their analysis as to what has been their research related to council manager forms of government. And from when we enacted the Modern Charter in 2016, have they provided any analysis or research since then to improve upon their understanding of the form of government?

I can bring back a third party's analysis. I have no problem doing that. I would just not be comfortable for me to provide the analysis because I don't want to have any influence in one way or another.

And maybe what Mr. Albert's talking about is more of a chart with alternatives rather than a persuasive argument either way. I don't know. But we can talk more about that next month. We'll have that on the agenda. Anything else we want to add to future agendas? Any comments from the public on future agendas? OK. Not seeing anybody, I do have one suggestion that in our current agenda, we We have a discussion and review of potential charter amendments. And there's a mention of mayor's office staff funding and agenda access and term limits, which are three of the five things. And we want to include all five. Notwithstanding the city attorney's opinion, we haven't taken any action on that. and we're still waiting for that. So in the meantime, it should be included on the agenda.

Tim, can you just clarify what you mean by that?

On discussion item five on this agenda, we have discussing and taking action on A, B, and C, as I mentioned. But there's five of them that we have previously decided to pursue. So we need to include all five. Oh, okay. Including the nomination issue. And we did kind of skip over item five, but I think in view of the hour, we should ask staff to stay any longer. We can continue that discussion next month with that objection. Do I have a motion to adjourn? All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Opposed.

I'll stay and talk some more with you, Ricky.

Thank you all again for coming. Thank you to staff. Thank you to all of you. Have a great night and stay cool.