City Council and Authorities Concurrent - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to a special meeting of the Santa Clara City Council. I'd like to call the meeting to order. Confirmation of a quorum. Assistant City Clerk.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Confirming quorum.

Thank you. We have one item on closed session. City Attorney, would you like to read that?

Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor. One item, conference with legal counsel regarding existing litigation. It's Gutierrez Sanchez Sr. versus the City of Santa Clara and the Santa Clara Stadium Authority at all with the case as identified on the agenda. Thank you, Mayor.

All right. Do we have any public comment on the closed session item? No? Anyone in the audience on the closed session item? No, seeing none, we are going to adjourn to closed session.

In Sparacino.

In Sparacino, okay. In Sparacino, and we'll be back here at 6.30 p.m. for the special city council meeting. Thank you. All right. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the special Santa Clara City Council meeting. I'd like to call the meeting to order. Could you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and remain standing for our statement of values? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

As we gather, we humbly seek blessings upon this meeting. May we act with strength, courage, and will to perform our obligations and duties to our people with justice to all. Let us seek wisdom so that we may act in the best interest of our people, our neighbors, and our country. All this we ask so we may serve our community with fairness and respect, putting their needs before all. Thank you. Please be seated.

Roll call, city clerk.

Councilmember Shahal.

Present.

Councilmember Hardy. Present. Councilmember Park. Councilmember Jane.

Here.

Councilmember Cox. Here. Vice Mayor Gonzalez. Here. And Mayor Gilmore.

Here.

The Statement of Behavioral Standards. The City of Santa Clara has adopted a code of ethics and values and behavioral standards for public meetings to promote and maintain the highest levels of conduct. This includes mutual respect, robust discussion, and allowing city business to be done in an efficient and consistent manner. please note that as a presiding officer the mayor's direction and process matters of process and decorum should be followed and that use of the gavel indicates all conversations must conclude and everyone in attendance should come to order and attention welcome and thank you for your participation

Good evening and welcome everyone. For today's meeting, the Council is back in person and is conducting its meeting in a hybrid manner. The public is welcome to attend in person and the City continues to use a Zoom feature to allow participation from your home or office. Members of the public can still join via the link and or call into the Zoom meeting phone number shown on the screen now. If you would like to speak on an agenda item, please raise your hands on the Zoom application or press star nine on your phone. Please only raise your hand while the item you're seeking to speak on is presented. Staff will enter your name or the last four digits of your phone number, and I will call on you to speak. As a friendly reminder, members of the public have two minutes to speak on an agenda item. Prior to each agenda item, staff will lower your hand to ensure members of the public are seeking to speak on the appropriate agenda item. So now we'll move along to the council meeting. Uh, we have a report out of closed session. Do we have one city attorney?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just that council met on item one as listed on the agenda conference with legal counsel regarding existing litigation. However, there was no reportable action.

Thank you. Okay. We have one item on our agenda this evening. It's item number two, presentation of the Charter Review Committee Charter Project 2026 Final Report to Council, including the Charter Review Committee's recommendation for placement of a comprehensive charter update measure on the November 2026 ballot and possible direction by the City Council on the next steps. City Attorney, are you taking the lead on this?

I am, Madam Mayor, thank you.

And this is a continuation of our last Tuesday study session.

We've got the PowerPoint to queue up here, and I'll wait for that, and then we'll get going. Good evening, Madam Mayor, council members. Glenn Guggen, city attorney, appearing before you again tonight to continue and complete presentation of the Charter Review Committee's recommendation that a comprehensive update of the city charter be considered for placement on the November 2026 ballot. I've been the lead staff person supporting the CRC and the charter project, but I've had a lot of help, not only within my office, but really across the organization, especially from those departments responsible for implementing the charter's many operational terms and obligations. And we've got a number of those representatives from professional staff here tonight to provide support and assist in answering questions that you might have. Once again, we also have representatives from the Charter Review Committee itself here tonight. probably both keeping an eye on me and available to answer any questions that you might have that might be relevant to their perspective and their really very valuable input on this. Among this group, we have representatives from every one of the six ad hoc subcommittee working groups. You'll remember these were the groups that were really the engine of this project, meeting in the aggregate 28 times on their assigned charter sections. On the ninth, June 9th, you will recall, I presented at some spellbinding length on the origins of the charter project, its purpose as expressed in the CRC bylaws that were adopted by the council back on September 16th, 2025, to frame and initiate this project, the process that the CRC went through to get to the recommendation, you'll remember there were a lot of components to that, and then of course the results of the process. We talked about the general aspects of the results, the reorganization of the charter into sections that were more logical, had better titles, with sections and subsections also added. And that reorganization, you will recall, since it was substantial and not necessarily part of the original project, was presented in a report to council back in April, just to make sure you understood the progress and the kinds of things that were being contemplated. We also talked about the various charter-wide conventions that had been implied. A number of those I won't list. One of the more important ones was the creation of capitalized defined terms in order to help with comprehension of the charter. Again, one of the goals of the whole project, improved understandability and access. And we started and got a decent way through a review of the CRC's proposed section by section updates. Getting through the proposed changes for the sections assigned to group one, you'll remember the powers and structure of city government sections. Group two, city council, elections powers and conduct of meetings and halfway through group three senior officials duties and qualifications you'll remember we ended with the chief of police and the city clerk duties and obligations and i noted um as after we described that that both of those sitting elected officials were engaged and and provided input and and were supportive of the proposed changes in those areas So tonight, we are picking up where we left off, slide 30, we're more than halfway through, and I encourage you as we go through this to follow along as you see fit, but we've provided, you'll recall, a number of kind of tools in order, because there's so much to this, for you to get your mitts around it. You've got the detailed report, and I think you've got another copy of that set of documents here if you want to make reference to it. You've got the detailed report that summarizes all the things I'm presenting to you, in greater detail still, and you've also got both a clean version of the proposed changes and an underlying strikeout version of the proposed changes. Those are helpful in their own right, but they're also, as I think has been pointed out, annotated, article by article, section by section, not every section, but a lot of them, with annotations that describe the proposed changes in some instances, identify laws or policies that were used for reference in developing the proposed changes, and for the more significant changes, the groups, the ad hoc subcommittee groups and or the CRC's thought process that went into the development and the recommendation. What kind of things were balanced? Why did they end up where they ended up? So please feel free to use that as a reference tool along with the full CRC summary report that includes all of those recommendations, which again has been distributed to you again. So with that introduction, I'm gonna jump ahead here to slide 30. can relive the glory of June 9th here. And here's where we left off. OK. This first section, the section's titled Structure of Government, but it's really more the administrative aspects of the government, the senior officials and the structure of the administration of city government. Maybe that title should be changed. But essentially what this part of the proposal does is it takes parts of old article, Roman numeral VIII, that talked about the city manager ordinances and meetings, why all that was put together in an article escaped us a little bit. And it combines that with the senior official positions in old article Roman numeral nine. Not the elected ones, those of you remember were included in the elected officials section that we've already gone through, but all the appointed ones, and both appointed by the city council and appointed by the city manager, and it combines them here, kind of in this one article. And there aren't, in summary, not really dramatic changes here, but it really aggregates and frames kind of the administrative organization of government and the roles and responsibilities of the various senior officials that oversee it. So this first section, general sections, was added and updated to describe the city organization by departments, right, the city's organized and broken down into departments. As determined by the city council, you all decide what departments there are and how many positions there are, and so how those departments in effect are populated. It also refers to the administrative code that was kind of off somewhere else and that was combined now in this section, which in effect implements the details of those departments. There's a lot of sections in our city code that talk about the various departments, their roles and responsibilities, the people who oversee them. This charter update now contemplates explicitly that that administrative code be updated from time to time. If you look at those sections, they are very much out of line with how things operate. I'll give you the example of the city attorney section, how it describes the organization of my department I don't think is how it's been structured for 20 plus years. Certainly not how it's structured now. So the charter, while it can't fix all that itself, does contemplate updating that administrative code from time to time so that it keeps up with how things are actually operating. The city manager is also appropriately designated as the head of the administrative branch and the operations. And then the city council appointed officials, the city manager, city attorney, and city attorney are all outlined in that category. There's a city manager section now that, again, was elsewhere and kind of on its own with a lot more detail than probably it needed. These sections have been consolidated and updated to better reflect the duties and to align better with each department head's duties. For example, the city manager was assigned a duty to produce a report to present to council when, in fact, it was the finance director who was responsible for producing that financial support in consultations with the city manager. So things like that have been adjusted so that the provisions that are in the charter that are assigned to the different officials all work together. There's also a provision added for the city manager exercising their professional judgment to make recommendations and take actions to assure high quality performance of services, compliance with contracts and compliance with the city code. Previous language in this section used to say, instead of that, that the city manager had the authority to make investigations into the affairs of the city and its various departments and contracts. What does that mean? Not really clear, kind of an old fashioned notion. He in theory could do that, but the crux of his responsibility is to make sure that those departments are functioning the way that they should be.

So that language has been revised to reflect that.

Finally, there was outdated language regarding the city manager's appointment and the process for removal for cause. It had a public process of notice and statement of for cause. Those are really outdated provisions. The appointment and the removal process in modern city government is all defined by contract. Those provisions are in the city council's discretion for the city manager's removal as you see fit. And so that provision, really a multi-line paragraph has been deleted, instead with a reference to appointment and removal as determined in accordance with the contract. City attorney provision. With me as its stakeholder, but with input from my group, also is updated with a couple of important provisions. One, to give the authority to the city attorney to initiate legal proceedings. There was a provision that had the city attorney and the office defending the city and its employees in a variety of ways. Those have been updated, but the addition of the city attorney being able to initiate litigation, of course, in consultation with the city manager and subject to the approval of the city council, has now been added as an important duty. Also, The provision has been modified so that the city attorney is proposed to be the appointing authority in consultation with the city manager for legal professionals within their office. You hire, you appoint the city attorney to run the, to be your legal advisor and to be the head of the city attorney's department. who's hired and how they're hired and advanced is something unique that's not really something that the city manager oversees and so that provision is provided for the city attorney that you appoint and oversee to have that appointment authority. Additional language for when a conflict exists that city attorney can refer matters to outside attorney agencies or of course if that's just needed because of workflow or specialty requirements. There is a provision in here that had required years of experience for the city attorney. It was four years of experience. That, of course, is absurdly low, probably for any city, but particularly for a city of this complexity. That provision could be deleted, but since the original framers thought to include it there was a thought that at least that should be increased from four to seven years that's probably also low it may be even absurdly low but a provision was added so that the City Council could create such other qualifications commensurate with the demands of the position so charter now says at least seven years but with additional conditions that the City Council would develop and of course that would be HR assisting with the development of that with the specs for that position and in the hiring process. It doesn't go into that level of detail. The city auditor position was also updated. Most importantly probably to add provisions for the auditor not just to do financial audits but to do performance audits. That is a very typical and modern role of a city auditor. It's the role that this current city auditor performs as contemplated by the city code. They do that per an annual work plan. This is not in the charter now, not even the reference to the performance audits, but now it is, to be done per an annual work plan that the auditor develops in their professional discretion, but with the required approval from the city audit committee. to be implemented or overseen by the city auditor with the requirement that they conduct themselves in accordance with all applicable professional and ethical standards. This received input from both finance department and our existing, not formally appointed by the council city auditor, but the actual person fulfilling that role and that ability for the council to assign duties to an existing employee as opposed to appoint that person is still preserved there. But the thought amongst both the stakeholder providing input and ultimately the CRC and their recommendation is to strike a balance. This auditor is supposed to conduct themselves in an independent way, the way they develop their report and report it out, but with appropriate oversight of the City Audit Committee in approving their program for these performance audits. The next series of sections talk about the positions that are at least the ones that are listed in the charter. It doesn't list all the various department heads, but these were the key departments that the charter created. They remain in many respects the key departments, no offense to others, for the operations of the city. And these sections have also been updated The director of finance has updated terms to expand their duties to make sure that they're also the one responsible for financial oversight of various city enterprises. The changes align with other changes for the city's financial reporting and budget process. His roles and duties now connect with the update of the fiscal sections within the charter as well. It designates the finance director as the city treasurer. That's an important title for financings and other circumstances where you don't know who your city treasurer is. The charter now clearly designates the finance director as providing that role. And it adds a very important role of the finance director for oversight of the city's purchasing system, including applicable professional standards to how they conduct themselves. So it really just kind of rounds out that position and updates it. A fair number of these things were in the city code. Now, not all of them, but the key aspects of that are incorporated into the city charter. Public works director also redrafted with better language to reflect the current duties, including, which was left out there, oversight of the public works procurement, a very important responsibility of the public works director. Not all of it's done with city forces any longer. Probably a lot more of it was done with city forces back in the day when this charter was adopted. With his ability to serve as the, with their ability to serve as or appoint the city engineer. Right now in the most common structure is for a city engineer to be a separate official, but the public works director can serve in that role as well. The fire chief also really begged for modernization. It was one of those provisions that was very much out of line of what a modern fire service is. Back in the 50s and for a good number of years thereafter, the fire department really was firefighters only. And now, as most of you know, their primary responsibility in many cases is emergency medical response. They also have mutual aid functions, hazmat response, and those things are added, right? Subject to the approval of the city council as additional modern roles and functions of the fire chief and of the fire department. That gets us through group three, the senior officials and structure of the administrative branch of the government, and gets us to group four. which you may recall, is the group that was assigned the boards and commissions sections of the charter. A good number of, an article and a good number of sections are dedicated to that, and we're gonna go through that as well for you. The updates, again, mostly confirming in these general sections regarding the boards and commissions lists and now creates a defined term for those boards and commissions that are chartered boards and commissions. and the city council created boards and commissions, with the charter created ones having, as it does now, very specific terms for the composition and their powers and duties, thought important enough by the framers of this, not proposed to be changed now, but with city council ability to create whatever boards and commissions they think are necessary and appropriate to provide additional service to the city, with a lot more flexibility there, because you don't know what the needs are gonna be of that particular group, and it doesn't necessarily need to be constrained by every aspect of the Charter. As you remember, as we presented in another section, the Charter now adds a full set of sections in the Boards of Commission section regarding the salary setting commission that already exists and was referenced in the compensation section of the elected officials provisions, but now that talks about how that compensation is set, but refers to this section for how the salary setting commission is comprised and what their specific roles and functions are. We reviewed that earlier, so I'm not going to go over that again, but just wanted to point out that that was an addition that both this group and the other group working on that supported as part of the reorganization effort. This next section is interesting, but it really confirms what the existing rules are in the charter regarding this issue. It's the qualifications to be on a chartered board or commission. Under the existing charter and as proposed, chartered board members have to be both residents of Santa Clara and qualified electors, which means registered voters and which means a citizen of the United States. There's been a trend in various jurisdictions to change that and have that be different. We're a charter city. We can decide what the qualifications are going to be for that. And in fact, the board of library trustees, and we'll talk about them in a minute when we get to the specific boards and commissions, proposed at least for their group to expand the representation opportunities for folks that weren't necessarily qualified electors but were residents of the community, another important group that they serve. Ultimately this group decided that it would retain the requirement for the chartered board members to be both residents and qualified electors with Really the thought that consistency with the chartered boards and commissions were kind of an elevated status. It was good idea to have it be consistent from one chartered board and commission to the other. And they also... recognized that while maybe chartered boards and commissions couldn't have people who are mere residents, that the other city council created boards and commissions could have people that were residents. And so there were many other opportunities for residents who weren't necessarily qualified electors or citizens to participate. And so they ended up maintaining that requirement, but pointing out and embracing the idea that residents could participate in the other groups. The appointment and removal process for boards and commissions was also discussed, but with some modifications, the existing concepts were retained. Full city council would have the discretion to appoint or remove in their sole discretion members of boards and commissions, but because of concerns about how that process might work, there was a recommendation for this group that the city council should be required to adopt policies for this to occur in an orderly and transparent manner. A lot of discussion around different things, hey, it should work this way, it should work that way, it should have this or that. Ultimately, the group decided, as a lot of groups did, that that level of detail was beyond what a typical charter would include. It might be beyond even the bandwidth of this particular group. And so while it was important to be addressed, it was provided to be addressed by council policy, not within the charter itself. Continuing on with again a number of the rules of general application term limits The Charter now codifies the existing practice for allowing two four-year terms for the Board of Commission but with council flexibility to change this for the council created your boards and commissions again, you'll see a pattern here and Interesting to note that this requirement has been assumed and is included in all the Board and Commission packets, but it is not adopted anywhere by formal policy or ordinance. And so this takes what's thought to be a logical rule and makes it clear in the charter that that is the rule, that for at least these four or five now designated chartered boards and commissions that you have two four-year terms, in effect a lifetime term limit as one of the conditions that applies to you. You'll recall we talked about vacancies. There were provisions for how vacancies got filled that weren't very detailed. They now are better. But they didn't define what a vacancy was. For Borden's commissions, as opposed to creating a whole separate set of rules, it now cross-references that set of rules that was created for the city council. With one minor difference, the rule for a certain number of excused absences, if you remember, for city council people was five, right, in a row. uh... boards and commissions and this wasn't changed it's three you know uh... consecutive absences they have fewer meetings and so fewer excused absences is more significant uh... there was a suggestion that's now included in here by at least the parks and rec commission uh... and uh... i think uh... seconded by the planning commission for some guidance on what an excused absence is you know and what that policy is so again The charter is not that detailed kind of document, but it sets the framework for rules and policies that are important. That is now referenced here for the city council to develop a policy for what constitutes an excused absence. And I think that's important to the extent it could result in somebody losing their position, either as an elected official or on a board and commission, that there be some grounding in the charter for a reference to a policy, even if it doesn't make that policy itself. Oops. Bill 1, more conduct of meetings. There was some old language here that wasn't drafted very well. It's now drafted better. It clarifies the Brown Act and whatever city council rules are adopted that they choose to apply to boards and commissions now do apply. It eliminates a provision that appeared to allow boards and commissions, any one of them, to go into closed session based on a determination of the need to go into closed session. That's not how it works. They can't do that. And that provision has now been deleted. And the Brown Act clearly applies There probably is only maybe one board or commission that could even find a lawful basis to go into closed session. That would be civil service, you know, commission. And so this provision was one of those examples of, you know, a provision in the charter that didn't align, you know, with either best practices or applicable law, and that's now been removed and replaced. also clarifies actions of boards and commissions require a majority vote of the authorized number of members you remember this was also done with respect to city council that that what the quorum standard was and what the vote standard was the thought was even though that can be modified as the council might decide with respect to boards and commissions consistency was important you know throughout the organization and so that standard was recommended really affirming In less clear language what the existing standard was but that's something that could be changed if the council so decided Now those are the general provisions the specific provisions Composition in powers of the various chartered boards and commissions and For the Planning Commission, and first of all, I want to commend all the boards and commissions that were involved in this. They all heard preliminary presentations from my office about the charter project, giving them a heads up that they're identified stakeholder. They met in a couple cases multiple times to grapple with this and to look at their sections and to develop recommendations. and they designated people to come in and speak to this group you know about what their their positions were at least in the case of planning and and the board of library trustees i was their designee de facto in order to present the parks and rec you know input but They really did engage and provided good input here, as did the staff liaisons. For planning commission, there is update to their powers and duties, again, based on staff and commission input, with additional references that they thought were important and did clearly are things that they're involved in, with a reference to their role in advanced planning, policymaking, in environmental impact analysis and action, and in soliciting public input. So those are now memorialized at a charter level as things that the Planning Commission should do. This next one, they also added a provision that requires for City Council due consideration of Planning Commission actions. thought to be reasonable and supported by the group and the CRC. There was another specific provision proposed that ultimately didn't end up getting supported and isn't part of the recommendation, but wanted to share with you to kind of let you in on what the thought process was for a lot of these things. There was a fair amount of discussion around a proposed addition for a provision with respect to Planning Commission decisions that the City Council would need to if they were going to disagree with the Planning Commission on appeal only be able to do that by supermajority vote in other words five you know votes to overturn that The group thought about that, thought about how that might be received, thought about what was appropriate for this project and what wasn't, and ultimately decided that was really a bridge too far. Due consideration was reasonable and is included. And they were... Also, I guess consoled by the fact, because there was some sympathy for it, by our office's confirmation that if the planning commission or anybody making a recommendation to the city council wanted to designate one of their members to go in front of the city council and represent their position, they could do that. So it's not like their recommendation just comes up here without any explanation or advocacy. They could actually have a designated person to do that. So I think they ended up in a good place on balance there. Parks and Recreation updates and duties was also based on Planning Commission, I'm sorry, Parks and Rec Commission and staff input. It adds a provision for their review of master plans. They already review the budget, but now master plans are required to be presented to them. It also narrows some of the language suggesting more direct involvement that really makes sense for them. It's an advisory body. In some of the planning and supervising of recreational programs and of soliciting input and cooperation with the school districts, that's not something they really can do as a convened body. Staff does that. They provide advice on the policies for those things, but they don't do those things themselves. Parks and Rec Commission themselves said hey we're advisory body let's get this more managed so it describes accurately what we what we do board of library trustees was one of the more interesting assignments for this project at least in this article because of how out of alignment the modern function of the Board of Library Trustees had gotten relative to what the charter said. Back when this charter was adopted, and probably for a good number of years after that, the Board of Library Trustees in effect ran the library system. They were, as opposed to the city council, the group that made the policies and improved the budget and chose the librarian and a variety of different things. And that's just not how they function now. And so they themselves were supportive of revising the charter to better recognize their functionality. At the same time, because of that history and because they had continued to perform a larger than typical board and commission function relative to the library system they also wanted to retain some elements of that and so what they proposed and a couple of here are related to that couple of aren't they did want to increase their membership from five to seven members they're involved in a lot of community activities and they thought to avoid being spread thin, having that additional membership was important. That's not out of line at all with other groups, and so that was supported by the CRC. They also proposed to eliminate the qualified elector requirement, at least for their board and commission, and we talked about that already. Again, desire for inclusiveness and broader participation that ultimately wasn't included in the CRC's recommendation. The outdated administrative duties with respect to the library system were deleted, but authority was retained to approve the city librarian, but now clearly with a process that's administered by the city manager's office, so they need to be included in that and they get approval rights over that. They in fact approved as the charter also then required your current librarian. And also input and approval rights over certain library-specific policies, like materials collection and materials disqualification and conduct within the library that's unique to spaces there. They now continue to have some administrative approval rights of some of those key elements. That, on balance, while they didn't get every word of what they proposed, was also supported by the CRC, particularly in light of their historical standing to even administer the library system. So I think the Board of Library Trustees is supportive of that. Jonathan Evans, their president, came and presented to the group And again, appreciate all of the involvement by all these folks. Okay, group five. civil service rules. I'm very grateful to have the support of Chief Assistant City Attorney Sue Reuter on this element of this. It's also her area of expertise, so I'm that much more grateful for her wisdom. I'm gonna give myself a break and you a break from me and ask Sue to come up to present these next few slides on the group five's work. I also will point out that This role in presenting to you tonight is my way of recognizing this day as Sue's 10th anniversary for her starting work with the city. This very day marks 10 years of Sue's service to the city. And what does she get? She gets to talk to you in a presentation. I'll hopefully do better than that. But I appreciate Sue.

I remember that day, Sue. It was a great day.

I hope it's a good thing.

I met you before you worked for the city on a case, so.

Yeah, no, it's 10 years. And then you were here. Yeah, 10 years in-house. Yes. Many years before that as well, as you know.

Yes, congratulations.

Thank you, thank you. Okay, so Group 5, the subcommittee met early, they met often. And we wanted to make sure that that subcommittee's work was done early, so that gave us time to speak with, in a meet and confer fashion, all of the bargaining units relating to the proposed changes to these sections. The sections span three articles of the current charter. Article 10, the portions relating to the Civil Service Commission, all of Article 11, which is the civil service system, and the retirement provisions in Article 12. So those numbers, that numbering has changed a little bit with the reorganization proposed throughout the entirety of the charter. And what we're gonna go through tonight is the original proposals to the bargaining units, the modifications that were made as a result of the back and forth, the meet and confer with the bargaining units, where we are now on the language, And hopefully as we go through, you'll see that there were some substantive changes, some non-substantive changes. And before I start in on each of these sections, I do want to give some Thanks, truly a genuine thanks to a few different groups. The first is the representative of all the bargaining units. We met on 12 occasions over the course of the last few months. So when I say we had robust meet and confer, I really mean it. It was a big process. Sometimes we met individually when the bargaining units asked for that. Sometimes we met in a large group with all of the representatives there. They were participatory. They were engaged. They provided meaningful feedback. So they really do deserve sort of a thanks from us. The second group of city staff that I want to thank is the Human Resources Department that helped to facilitate all of this and also attended those meetings, answered questions when the questions were directed to them. So that was very supportive and very helpful. And of course, the most important group is Group 5 Subcommittee, some of whom are here tonight, who really did work hard on this language. So let's get started. The first of the sections is current section 1010 and 1011, both of which deal with the Civil Service Commission. As you heard, there are general provisions that apply to all of the charter commissions. Those would equally apply to the Civil Service Commission. However, they don't make any substantive changes since the Civil Service Commission already is required to be a five-member body with qualified electors and so on. Some of the things that we're proposing in these two sections go to organization, they go to readability. If a member of the public, a layman, would read that, they would actually be able to understand what it is that the Civil Service Commission does and what role it plays in the system as a whole. We also wanted to make an express reference to conflict of interest rules. So conflict of interest rules apply anyway, right, as a function of state law. But we wanted to make sure that it was in the charter so that somebody who was perhaps applying for the Civil Service Commission would understand that they had to comply with these state law rules, that they would be required to file a Form 700, things like that. The most substantive change that we made is one that I think is important to all the membership of all of the bargaining units, and that's a change to the language relating to discrimination. So our current charter, because of the age of the charter and the outdated language, it only referenced I think it was race and religion as the two things that you shouldn't discriminate based on. But in today's day and age, our list of protected characteristics is much longer than that. And it's really important for us to respect all of those different protected characteristics. So we took out the specific reference to race and religion, and we put in that it should be done in a non-discriminatory manner. And that will allow us to address all of the different protected characteristics as well as any future additional protected characteristics that are either provided by the state legislature or by the courts. The next section goes into Article 11, which is the actual civil service system itself. There's a prefatory section, Article 1100, which sort of seeks to set up the merit-based nature of the civil service system. The only changes to that, again, non-substantive in nature. We just wanted to mirror that language with the purpose language in the civil service commission section because they serve the same function, right? Just make sure that language is consistent throughout. So just so that there's no potential for questions. The next section, 1101, this was the one that had the most sort of substantive changes that were proposed. What this section does is it defines unclassified positions. Okay, so the idea is you have all of the employees of the city, and everybody, all of these employees, oh, pardon me, all of these employees are classified employees, okay? But what you do is you accept from this specific categories of employees to be unclassified employees, and everybody else that's remaining is classified. So it's really important that you define who you are specifically accepting properly, right? Or else you're gonna have confusion within who's classified and who's unclassified. That list of categories of employees that are specifically excluded from the classified system is an old list. It's the original list that was created when this section was first written. And so what we tried to do was propose an update to this, to modernize it, to have it be more reflective of the government structure, the organizational structure that we have now. But as you would expect, those changes were, they were worrisome to a lot of the units. They were concerned about unintended consequences. They were concerned about whether or not that would in some way affect the classified nature of their positions, the positions that they represented. So as a result of a lot of the back and forth about this section in particular, we proposed a lot of modified language. We took out language that we were proposing that we thought was creating the most heartburn for people. We put in language, we proposed language such as making sure that the classified and unclassified pay plans were frozen as of the date of the election. so that they wouldn't have concerns that if there was a classified position, a change in a definition would make that position unclassified. So we tried to propose a lot of these types of things in order to allay any concerns that the bargaining unit representatives might have about the proposed language. Ultimately, we were not able to get consensus or assent from the bargaining units as to the proposed changes to the section. So what we ultimately proposed was to revert back to the original or current charter language for this particular section. And I'm happy to report that based on the reversion in this section as well as the next 1102, which we'll discuss in just a minute, as a result of the agreement to sort of keep the original or current charter language for these two sections, so far we've heard back from three of the bargaining units that they would agree to the proposed changes to the remainder of the section, so the Civil Service Commission section as well as a couple of sections in Article 11. they would be okay with the changes proposed there, as long as 1101 and 1102 were in their original charter language state. So, so far we've received three. I'm hopeful that we're gonna receive more, but it was done a little bit, this last portion of it was done a little bit in a condensed timeline, so I know that the bargaining units are working through getting approval of this language from their attorneys and that sort of thing, underway and could take a little bit of time, but they're working on it. And again, like I said, I'm hopeful that we'll have consensus fairly soon. The next section is old section 1102. So what this section related to was the right of reversion. So as I'm sure you're aware, public employees, after they pass their probationary period, they get vested in their position. They have classified right. That means you basically have a property right in your position. And so as a result of that, when somebody gets promoted, voluntarily takes a position in the unclassified service, they're leaving their classified position, they're leaving those classified rights. Currently, our charter allows for that person who's been promoted out of the classified service to retain indefinitely their classified rights. So to the extent they are removed from that unclassified position, they have the right to revert back to their classified position. And that sometimes is referred to as bumping rights. You may have heard that because they can bump back to their old position. So that's what our current charter said. And so during this process, what we did was we proposed a two-year limitation on that. So to allow for some sort of guardrails in this right of reversion process. And that inclusion of the two-year limitation period was again troubling for a number of the bargaining units, and they pushed back on it. And we were ultimately not able to get any resolution, even if we increased the time period to five years, even if we did those kinds of things, we were not able to get that agreement. So again, what we ultimately did was proposed, okay, we just won't change the charter language for this particular section, since it didn't appear like we were going to get a cent from the bargaining units there. And like I said as a result of these two sections sort of being eliminated from the discussion It does appear that the bargaining units are coming around to the proposed language.

I

The last section, section 1107, that is the prohibitions. It basically talks about actions taken either by city employees or by applicants to violate some portion of these civil service regulations and that that would constitute the basis for a criminal charge of misdemeanor. And so the original language had specific reference to one year in jail, $1,000, which is the state law for a misdemeanor. So what we did was we basically just referenced state law as opposed to what the actual provision is, just in case state law changes, because we don't know if it will or not. And we also updated some of the cross references in that section so fairly non substantive kind of changes to that and that's that's basically it, those are the Those are the changes at this point to these two these two articles relating to the classified service. So here's a summary of where we are at with regard to meeting with the bargaining units. So like I said, we started the process in January of 2025. We've met about 12 times. Significant progress has been made. Significant revisions have gone back and forth. um we have concurrence at this point from three of the bargaining units we will continue efforts this is although this is the second study session there are additional action items right that that the council will have to take in this matter i am hopeful that by your next action on this on this issue we will actually have concurrence from all of the units and we'll be able to provide you with the final language what's in your packet is not just so you know that what's in your packet is not the final language right that is the language that reflects the original proposals As we've mentioned before in the materials, we don't recommend moving forward without concurrence from the bargaining units. First of all, there's a potential for bringing some vulnerability, vulnerability to challenge, in the event you do move forward without concurrence on any of these particular sections. And we also understand that due to the nature of these sections, it could negatively impact the success of the charter project as a whole, right? And so as a result of that, we would say to the extent we have a little bit of time to continue our efforts to get concurrence, we should do so. If we are unable to obtain that by the deadlines, we should likely not include the proposed red lines to these sections. And we will, of course, keep you updated as these discussions continue.

Thank you, Sue.

Thank you, Sue. group to, in particular, recognize the need to start this process early. We did start it early. I think there was a yeoman's effort to try to get across the finish line. Some of the more significant things that we are hoping to accomplish didn't get accomplished, but still some valuable updates. And like we said, we'll keep you apprised. Hopefully that can be resolved even as early as this week, so at least some of the proposed changes can be incorporated into the project. Last group, and definitely not the least because of a number of really important provisions in this area of the charter, group six, fiscal administration and procurement sections. Number of provisions here divided really between finance and procurement. As I mentioned, we've got finance and procurement professionals here to answer your questions. If you've got any, so we'll spin through this and get to the end. The first set of sections in this fiscal section related to budget preparation, old Section 1301 and now some new sections in new Article 8. Really important addition here is language added to allow for the current biennial budget process. Technically, we were out of compliance with what our charter contemplated as our budgeting process. The biennial budget process works, is a good process, not everybody uses it, but it's become a best practice for us with alternating, as you know, operating in capital budget approvals. So these revisions now allow for that, but they don't require it, right? It's possible we might revert to a different budgeting process, but we definitely want the charter, as you know, as a framework for how our government should operate, allowing for the things that we do that make sense. The budget contents section was also updated. There was a number of sections deleted that had outdated budget elements, including no longer used terms for the budget reserves. There were provisions also that even listed and required the creation of a petty cash fund, an entire whole section related to petty cash. Maybe back in the 50s, the petty cash fund was a more significant element of the budget. It's not now, and so the whole section dedicated to that as part of this process was deleted. So much better language using modern nomenclature is now included in what's required in the budget contents. While the outdated references to the kind of reserves that were required have been eliminated, it's important that the proposed update retains the requirement for reserve accounts to cover future operational and capital needs. But it doesn't do this with a specific number of accounts. It basically says... You need to provide for reserves in accordance with city council policies based upon a recommendation from the city manager and the finance director regarding best practices and available funds. That's how reserve accounts are determined. You look to your professional people, What can we afford? Available funds, right? What's the standard that we should aspire to? You need to have that. That's a best practice. But to define that with specificity in the charter doesn't make sense because those things evolve over time. The group spent quite a bit of discussion around this because of general concern I know that you all share for making sure there's adequate funding for future operational and capital needs. and both operational reserves in the event who knows what happens, right, COVID, any number of different things, and capital reserves for things that we know are gonna happen, right? There's gonna be maintenance, there's gonna be replacement requirements, all that was discussed. And there was a consideration for creating designated accounts with amounts and percentages, but ultimately with input from the finance director and consideration of the group, again, it was decided you should prefer, require that those things be maintained, but again, it's the charter. Don't have the specific terms for that included in the charter. Leave that to a professional recommendation in city council policy. A number of other changes were made to the budget implementation and amendment sections. These are really largely reflective of how this works already, but with clearer language, again, using modern finance nomenclature so everybody understands what we're talking about. So this first section clarifies which budget amendments require city council approval versus which can be administrated by the city manager. Things that involve transfers from one fund to another or from one department to another or an account for another, those are amendments that require council approval because they were appropriated for a particular purpose. But transfers within those particular funds, right below the line of what you approve. are things that are part of the city manager's administrative you know role and function so that's now more clearly defined so that when anybody looks at it when you look at it the public looks at it it's more clear what is what what's what you know in terms of approval level An additional provision, which actually is new, and again, all this is very much with the input of your finance director, who himself came twice to this group and presented to this group on these things to explain how our budgeting system worked and why these changes made sense. There's now a provision that's included in a number of different charters and policies that we found, including, I believe, Sunnyvale's, that allows for carry forward of funds In other words, no new city council approval is required for an approved capital improvement project, which is a multi-year project, or a multi-year contract. When those commitments are made, those monies are dedicated to that purpose. This now eliminates the need to come back to the council to approve that when that original approval was already made. Ken can explain that here if there's questions about what the thought was here. The proposed update retains the requirement for council level amendments to be approved by five votes, but adds a provision for four vote approvals where the funds are not needed for their original purpose, there are project savings, or where the council is allocating new revenues. You guys will see a lot of things come back to you, right, with five votes on them now that are this kind of thing. The thought was, If you're not, in effect, changing an original decision, which could be justification for a supermajority vote, but instead you're reacting to monies being made available that are available as if it were a budget approval in the first place, which is only four votes, that only a four vote requirement would apply to that. So again, Ken will be here to be the best person to answer questions about that. Next section, purchases of goods and services. That was really just cleanup language in there. As I pointed out before, this is now explicitly a finance director function to oversee the system for centralized purchasing, and these provisions and changes preserves that. Okay, this next slide and this next discussion is really one of the more important proposals from a professional staff perspective that you will all recall was really identified as one of the targets of this charter update right from the very beginning, right? What kind of things might be talked about? What kind of things might be proposed? Well, it was this, this section was given as kind of the textbook example for that. And there's two primary reasons for that, as you all know, because you see a lot of these approvals on your agendas. The threshold for a formal bid process and approval by the city council for a public works project or for the use of city forces to implement a public works project is $1,000. That might have been a significant, meaningful number back in the early 50s, probably was. It's really not any longer, and there's really no equivalent number like that that you can find in any city of any size that limits it to that. And you'll notice that you probably get 20 to 30, maybe more sometimes each year of the use of city forces. I think even last meeting you might have had one that was the SVP's installation of dark fiber for $1,169, there was probably a few hundred dollars of staff time that went into all of the work from SVP and the city attorney's office and city manager's office and city clerk's office to get that before you with really no meaningful added value for city council approval at that level of project, right? For city council approval of contracts, the threshold's $250,000 in ordinance. So really kind of out of alignment with what makes sense and how much this city has grown and the value of the projects that the city does. The other thing that was conspicuously missing from the existing structure was the ability for the city to avail itself of alternative procurement mechanisms. And we'll talk about that a little bit more. I'll keep it in summary form here and leave more detail for the for question and answer period. But I think as you all know, the way our charter is currently designed, the only public works procurement that is contemplated is what's called design, bid, build, right? And an award of that project to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder. That is a great tried and true mechanism for a lot of standard public works projects, but not for all of them, particularly where there's complex design features involved. And most cities, including even general law cities, have provisions now for design build and other types of alternative procurement mechanisms. Or waivers, right, where there's not of a formal bid process when there's just not very many contractors that do that work, and that happens frequently, or at least from time to time for SVP. And looking at this section with input from Public Works, with input from SVP, what's come out and what's before you is these elements. A proposal to replace outdated rules containing very low $1,000 thresholds for formal bidding and city council approval of contracts or use of city forces and no provision for alternative considered best value or design build type procurement processes. The approach to this that's recommended that's in the draft of the charter update is called option A, the recommended option, which proposes a public works procurement process to be implemented by ordinance. with certain prescribed best practice guidelines. The section itself outlines those. There's about six or seven things that go into what the ordinance needs to say. The default will continue to be award to the lowest bidder with all of the other different protections on how that bid process will work. But there's also provision for where appropriate findings are made for sole source and for alternative procurement mechanisms implemented by ordinance. There's no dollar limit included in the charter itself with the idea being that the charter's not the right place to establish the dollar limit. That should be established by ordinance. In fact, there might be adverse reaction to a dollar limit if it's increased above $1,000. So the thought was take that, have the city define for itself what a major versus a minor contract is for purposes of council approval level and for purposes of when formal bid process is required and implement that by ordinance. Again, procurement alternatives allowed, including sole source limited best value contracts or other alternatives adopted as part of a citywide program determined to be the best interest in the city. Can't be done willy-nilly. There's going to be a requirement for an ordinance to be developed that will have provisions in here to make sure there's not conflict of interest issues, inappropriate steering of contracts. There's still a competitive process. It's just now one that allows different procurement mechanisms. And another kind of bugaboo for the definition of public works, what's public works and what's maintenance or repair? Our charter language has a very narrow definition of what that is that frequently has very minor improvement projects, having to go to formal bid processes where that doesn't make sense. This now is a little more expansive to allow exemptions for minor interior improvements or for equipment, either bidding as part of a public works project or installation where the public work really is the installation that's not necessarily a public work. And different, still competitive procurement mechanisms can be applied. We wrestle with that all the time with people asking us, our office, how to interpret these things. I selfishly want to have a better understanding of what that means, both in the charter and through an implementing ordinance. And so now this contemplates that. So that's a very significant proposal. As a result of how significant this proposal is, even though I think a lot of people don't think it's necessarily controversial given how common it is, it is identified as a level three proposal for you. If you remember, level threes are ones that are either in a sensitive area or that are so substantive that they are considered to be a potential significant change to the charter. Unlike a number of the other kind of level three proposals, and we'll summarize those at the end, this is one that staff views as potentially so valuable to the organization that it might actually warrant a separate ballot measure. And so we'll talk about that at the end when you start to coalesce and ask questions and deliberate on this. Important but less important probably in the grand scheme are some of the changes to this section. The audit requirements section eliminates language suggesting that each employee gets audited. There's kind of bizarre language about how each individual employee's financial affairs gets audited. That's not what happens. It's the overall evaluation of the city's financial accounting and flows. And so, again, it modernizes the language to describe what actually goes on. It imposes generally accepted auditing and accounting principles applicable to government agencies. It didn't have a clear standard for how that should occur. And it provides for reporting out of the results through the city's audit committee up to the city council. That's considered a best practice structure. It's our existing structure. The charter now contemplates that. These changes really are more alignment of how things should be and are currently now being done with better language, again, to use current terms. The process still is, and now more clearly, an independent CPA is hired to perform this function. There's an annual audit of the city's finances and then that's discussed and presented publicly both to the audit committee and then ultimately the city council. All those elements are still improved, just better described with some better, clearer standards. This next section, special rules for utility expenditures and revenues, there was a section in there that had very specific and not really entirely inclusive categories of things that utility revenues could be used on. As you all know and are familiar with at least, utilities are an enterprise. and the rates that are charged and what monies can be used for are kind of need to be managed in that way because you're not allowed to charge you know more than the cost of providing the service and so the accounting for that is important the accounting description in the Charter really wasn't accurate and too restrictive and so that's now been eliminated and it replaces to a reference you know to maintenance of all of these things as required by law So it now references now much more robust areas of law that didn't exist maybe when this charter provision was originally adopted because it's come outdated. It also updates language for the 5% transfer to the general fund to make clear that those monies not only are transferred to the general fund but can be used for general fund purposes, however you guys decide, as approved by the city council. I know there's been talk here at the council level and the public and even at the charter review level of, hey, why don't we make that 6%? Why don't we make that 8%? All those are potentially very good ideas, but beyond the scope of this project, right? If you're going to make that significant financial proposal, that could be something that's referred to a charter review committee and proposed for a ballot measure, but was viewed by this group as something that would require quite a bit more analysis than the project really contemplated.

And so that was not looked at and recommended to you as part of the project.

Finance and tax authority, these sections are a little wonky, but again, important. The update now replaces outdated language, which inaccurately summarizes a state law with a new statement of broad authority, as we are seeking, right, as a charter city, to impose taxes, fees, and assessments in issued debt subject to state law requirements. There's a lot more laws now that apply to this and govern this than there were back when this was originally adopted, especially regarding revenue bonds. There's about four or five sections on how revenue bonds operate and can be issued. The And these provisions have created some impediments to your folks advising on financings that required issue. Really, they got there, but it required a lot more structuring in the issuance of certificates of participation as opposed to revenue bonds because how this was drafted. They really don't contain super-substantive, you know, guidelines of things that are dangerous, right? You should never do that. It's really just old fashioned language. And it's now replaced with simpler language that was approved with input from our bond council and special finance council to be more modern. This section retains but clarifies the existing limit on bonded indebtedness to 15% of the total assessed value of city real and personal property, so no substantive change there. And it retains express rights and requirements for voter approval of taxes, fees, debt, where required by law, and the voter approval of any financing ownership of an interest in nuclear power. I think we talked about this last when we presented this. There may be reasons to change that. but that was literally identified as potentially radioactive issue and so that was not proposed as anything anyone, this group was interested in tendering. A couple concluding remarks and then the CRC recommendation. We've gone through the charter somewhat painfully, section by section, pretty comprehensively, but not discussing every change. There's changes from the beginning to the end. We couldn't possibly present all that to you. tried to make sure that you were able to see that in vivid detail with the documents that were included, not only this presentation, not only the final report, but both underlined strikeout annotated versions of the charter itself and a clean version of the charter itself. And leading up to this recommendation, I just want to say it really was an extraordinary project and something I was kind of honored to be part of. It was very much of a group effort. City Council, with a recommendation of Governance Committee, kicked off this project some number of months ago. Very thoughtful composition and recruitment process for your 13-member CRC group that really dedicated countless hours to this project, meeting multiple times in various presentations and in working groups. Professional staff input was elaborate, especially city manager's office, city clerk, finance department, human resources, public works, and SVP. Again, as the groups most involved in implementing these aspects of the charter and most knowledgeable about how that would work. Very thoughtful input from boards and commissions and their staff liaisons. as Sue described, labor group engagement and input. And I left out thanks the last time to my executive legal assistant, Courtney Mohamedy, who was really extraordinary, both in helping staff those CRC meetings and putting together all these different materials for us. So there's still some work in kind of scrubbing the project as we described before with development of making sure the cross-references are right, that the formatting is right, that words aren't in the wrong order, that all the defined terms are right. So there's still some refinement here. But it's a substantially completed document for your review and consideration. And now with this recommendation. that from the CRC that council proceed to consider and then proceed with a comprehensive update for consideration by the voters at the November 2026 election to include all level one and level two changes And such level three changes as the council feels comfortable will be supported by the community. Again, consistent with the original structure. The idea is not to necessarily shy away from things that in the top to bottom review made sense, right, and warranted, you know, updating consideration, but also to be realistic about those things. If they're so substantive or in a sensitive area, no matter how logical, you might consider not including them, but you also might consider including them. The level three changes that I've identified here under consideration include, you'll recall, modifications to measure R to allow secondary uses of park property, provided that there's no adverse impact to the underlying park use. There's five affirmative votes of the city council that determines that, and all revenues, if any revenues are generated from that use, dedicated to park purposes. The proposed deletion of a published notice in public bid opportunity on sale of city property above $500, that's very outdated. It's hard to imagine how that would work. Most of our real property transactions are heavily negotiated for, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars. There's a lot of public requirements, as you know, under the Surplus Lands Act and otherwise for notice on how that happens. Those decisions would be made at a city council meeting. The idea that before we could consummate that sale, it would need to be published and noticed and that members of the public would be able to bid on that project really is out of alignment with how a city operates and functions kind of in a modern setting. But it's level three, right? Because there was a provision that was in there that other people, even though there doesn't appear to be value for it and it appears to be an anachronism, could be something that you go like, wait a minute, that's something the public might have an interest in. The increased qualifications for the chief of police to in effect the equivalent of a lieutenant position plus two years experience, thought to be logical, and changes to make that the chief of police, as the code currently contemplates, the head of the police department, but adding a provision that they were also obligated to provide kind of advice to the city council and the city manager on matters of law enforcement and public safety, really intended to professionalize that office in a way that's aligned with really what the operations of that office have been, including its qualifications at that level for the past 30 plus years. But it's the chief of police. That's a hot-button issue here. And so do you touch that at all? Do you consider that to be level three and beyond? Even level four, potentially, because there are discussions about the residency and whether that makes sense or could be relaxed in order to make sure you've got a broader pool of applicants, because not many of our officers live in the city of Santa Clara. So all those things were discussed, but clearly recognized as at least level three, and maybe if you add other things onto it, kind of level four. And of course, the public risk procurement that we just talked about. Logical, used a lot of different places, but substantive, right? So maybe that's something that's a level three. And then finally, as Sue pointed out, the civil service rules update. To the extent there's a complete alignment with the labor groups on that, I think it drops out of the level three category. If not, it may be a no-go and maybe more than level three, but again, identified as one of those higher sensitivity, significant issues for you to think about. So that is the total of the recommendation. There's other considerations that were identified in your report before you reach that that are certainly things to think about. The election cost, it cost money to put measures on the ballot. Per the city clerk's most recent numbers from the ROV, Norrin confirmed this is still somewhere between $250,000 and $300,000 a measure. We're still thinking for the cost for that.

That is correct. However, we have requested an update because they did update their fee schedule.

Very good. So we're waiting for that. That's what the most recent information is. That's a factor, right? Particularly if you're contemplating putting an extra measure on as opposed to just one comprehensive measure. You have to think about, you remember there's a lot of parts to this, what goes on the ballot. There's the ballot question that would still need to be created. There's the city attorney's impartial analysis. There's the ballot argument, and the city council can designate someone to make that argument. You can, but you're not legally required to include the full text of the proposed update. It became unimaginable to the group, especially when there was a reorganization of it, to actually put an underlying strikeout version of the charter in front of the voters. As it turns out, you legally do not need to do that as long as you have a link to the proposed change itself. And so that's kind of what would be recommended as part of this with a website that provides all of the proposed changes and more FAQs to describe how that works. clearly recognized because of the comprehensive nature of this that there's a need for public education as you know you can't campaign for a measure like this but you can provide information mailers or have public forums and again have a very well populated and informed website to support this and as mentioned in the report and i'll mention to you now again there's additional work required if this measure passes there's a lot of city documents and city code that references the old charter sections that would all need to be updated There's also a number of provisions in this updated charter that call for ordinances to implement some of the new elements or policies to adopt it by the city council. Did think about that and there's a provision in there that pending the creation of those things, there's a provision that says what rules apply, but there would be more work to be done in order to implement all this. So definitely something for you to think about.

So. When would that all have to be done, Glen?

Mayor, because we thought about that provision that allows a set of rules to be adopted that to apply in the meantime, city council would have some discretion about how the timing to implement that. I think there'd be it.

I meant just for putting something on the ballot for November. Oh. Like we're meeting tonight. Yes. What's the hard stop for a decision to be made?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. We're even into that now on here. The last date, in recognition of council recess, right, starting on July 15th, and in recognition of the need to get whatever you're gonna do to the register of voters by August 7th, that's the last day, really your last day to make a definitive decision would be July 14th. So that's- July 14th.

July 14th. That's what you said. One four. Yeah, July 14th.

Tonight, next step, council questions. City staff's here, CRC's here. Obviously public testimony is important. Council deliberation and direction, depending upon where you end up tonight. Future meeting dates, Mayor, to your point, include CRC, if there's an assignment to them, is gonna meet in their last formally scheduled regular meeting on June 17th. We've been trying to, with the city manager's support, who's been super supportive throughout this project, to look at additional meetings for you if you need, as we might expect, to grapple with this further. There's some time on the June 23rd meeting before the regular meeting that's been identified with a potential agenda slot on July 7th, again, if additional work needs to be done. And Mayor, as I pointed out, council to proceed must take final action by July 14th for submittal to the ROV.

by August 7th.

So we're at the questions phase. I've got some additional information and slides potentially on alternative procurement mechanisms and design build if the questions go that way. And so here to field questions as you see fit.

Thank you. We're going to thank you very much for the very lengthy presentation. Lengthy project, Mayor.

Appreciate your patience.

Yeah, one of my questions is, is how do you summarize what you just said and put it on a ballot and make people understand that? That's going to be my question.

Yeah, 75 words, Mayor. That's all I need.

Yeah, with for all that. Okay. Council Member Hardy.

You can do that in 75 words. I'm impressed. I had just a few quick questions. I'm really hoping that the council, if we are going to do this, can approve the Level 1 and Level 2 and that you did such a good job of delineating out the Level 3, which is maybe where our the bulk of what we discussed tonight should be. So I wanted to make certain I understood that it's in there as four years for the city attorney and you're just saying just to change that to seven years minimum I wanted to make certain I was clear on that. Also, I remember reading something about the city attorney versus the district attorney that if the district attorney didn't take up something that the city attorney could. I wanted to make certain I was clear on that. There was a list of the chartered and other council created commissions. I didn't see that in your your presentation, but I wanted to make certain I was really clear because we're talking about a lot about excused absences and what does that mean and that wasn't called out and my understanding is that's something council is supposed to determine. that I want to make certain I was clear on that. I loved that we talked about the qualified elector for Planning Commission and Civil Service because they do 700 forms. To me, that's really obvious. But BOLT, which I had not heard that term until I read this report, the Board of Library Trustees, for a lot of people, where English is the second language. I think it is very important that we have as much representation on that library trustee board as possible. So I very much would support not having them be requiring a qualified elector. I will just say that because I think that is so helpful to have more voices on there. You did answer my question because I had asked about the timing for our deadline, but the procurement by Public Works, so I want to make certain I'm really clear that that would The changes you are suggesting would allow us to go to design build. I will say that we have done the design build on the water treatment plant which we own with San Jose and it has made all the difference in our ability to speed up the process and do and it actually helped us with our litigation possibilities and our requirements of who was responsible for what. That that is something that I was not I would not have thought of beforehand when we had something break right before we went to turn it on and And that sped up that process and I think helping the electorate understand if we're going to go to that. I think it would be excellent I Thought your term about the radioactive nuclear operation was frankly hilarious but There, I did read up, there are a lot of changes that might come down because of the changes in technology and the state is now contemplating a change in state law. of having a chemical engineering background and specifically some nuclear, I just wanted to understand that if state law changed, even though we would leave this in our charter, would we have that possibility of adapting to state law if it did change because of the monumental changes in technology, I will say it. I don't know also if it's possible for us to have a straw poll and asking, does everyone feel comfortable with a one and two type changes? Do we want to go to a ballot? I just wonder, are we able to kind of pull the council so we know where our hot button issues are? And then we have five of our level threes. if we're able to have a discussion about each one of those before we do it overall. I wanna just make certain I understand the process because I think you haven't done this for decades and it is overdue and I appreciate the city attorney taking on this big challenge. So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Cox.

Thank you, City Attorney, and thank you to the Charter Review Commission. I am sure our questions are going to make you crazy tonight, having done this and been in the weeds. What is second nature to you now is new to us, so I'm asking for your forgiveness in advance. So I want to state my first understanding, and I think this was brought up at the council meeting last week. Again, we were proposed a charter review as intention to modernize correct issues that we saw, and we do see ourselves going into what will be some controversial issues here. So I want to fundamentally, you know, know when we're talking about issues that are sensitive to the public, it's going to be important to understand how we kind of skipped a lot of the public input on this process and brought it directly before council. And I am needing to understand a little bit about what's left in the process because I don't think we're at a point where we can make recommendations really tonight or go back for another round of this. So we're essentially agreeing on things as they are or denying them. So I guess that would be a question. I want to understand what criteria though you guys did use when you determined how to include things that you knew would be controversial and what was deferred. And then if we bring it to the ballot, how should voters distinguish between those things? Again, we talked a little bit about implementation, and you answered that question for me last week. There are several things that talk about council adopting and creating ordinances, so I don't know if there's going to be a timeframe on that. I think that's what the mayor was asking as well. A lot of ambiguous terms. I think, like you said, 18 things are deferred for definition later, and so I need to know or I'd like to know if there's timeframes on that. one of the questions i had and i really agree with council member hardy here i do hope that we focus on the the things that need to be focused on and we can get past the one and two for the sake of everyone but what limits exist the the city manager is now allowed in this to reallocate funds within departments but i don't see a threshold on that so are there going to be limits on that authority and will there be a dollar amount or a percentage that allows distribution from one budgetary category to another The document includes a proposed structural change that gives you the independent oversight on hiring, which totally makes sense. But I did read in the annotations that there's unresolved conflict with Labor Group 9. So I want to know, is it appropriate or wise to put a provision before the voters in November that could immediately generate litigation there? It annotates several unresolved matters with regards to appointment authority. So going into that, I'd like to understand what issues remained outstanding between either city staff, the police chief, anything like that. As much as we can speak about that, I'd hate to just say that we're agreeing to things without knowing that there's still potentially conflict out there. We've talked a lot about duties that are resulting in higher levels of responsibility. Is there any compensation change that's going to go along with these refined duties that we're presenting to the staff? Again, the question that we had just about public notice. I was wondering, it seems pretty easy to give pre-notice about building and stuff. Why are we taking that out when it seems kind of like low-hanging fruit? And then in general... I'm sorry, could I ask? Oh, of course.

Public notice about what?

So this was, and it was one of the hot-button issues up there, that we have removed advance notice of ordinance readings, I believe. I got you. Yeah. And then I think in general, one of the things that's concerning to me about this, and this will kind of frame my last question here, there are a lot of items that are going to need kind of interpretation or definition. But I see that the Charter Review Committee declined to recommend an independent ethics structure because it said it probably wasn't doable. And I understand that with our history, that's true. But we're coming up now on a lot of things that are going to say who determines whether conduct constitutes misconduct or moral turpitude or, you know, secondary uses need defined, definition of minor needs defined. And so... You know, one of the problems with this is the charter, which should govern our city, points back to our ethics commission, and that's a circular accountability right there. And so I would like the charter to define what we do instead of, you know, a smaller majority dictating how we will put ethical definitions on things that impact our voters. Like I said, when we talk about the bidding threshold, we have to define what is minor now and what is major. And in a city that does billion-dollar deals, it's easy to say that a $500,000 contract or a million-dollar contract is minor then, and then that's a huge amount of transparency lost from a bidding process. I'm reminded that in 2000, we did take this to voters, and I think that the suggested threshold then was $50,000, and that was denied. So I just want to be smart about... putting a lot of responsibility back onto the council or other commissions that are going to say, put definitions on all of these things without them going transparently before, especially when we lack an ethics commission right now. In general, yeah, I just, I want to say I absolutely support modernization. I thank you for this work. I can't believe, you know, it had to be grueling. Again, what gives me pause is not about what's written. I think that's fantastic. I think there is a lot unwritten right now. And I do believe that as much as we can, we have the responsibility to make sure that we bring transparency to the voters in this. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Jane.

Yeah, thank you for the Commission for all of your hard work on this and of course city staff. As Councilmember Hardy said, the definition of excused absences is ill-defined because i know there are some commissions that automatically excuse anybody for any reason the council seems to do the same thing so there doesn't seem to be really any accountability especially when we have provisions for removal for absences and then i wasn't clear about what you said that You know, the Planning Commission had suggested that if one of their decisions were appealed to Council, it would require a supermajority. But then you mentioned that they could designate a representative to come to the Council to ‑‑ I think Planning Commissioners come to Council meetings representing themselves routinely. So I didn't understand what you meant by the Planning Commission would designate somebody to come speak for the whole commission and then in terms of approving the bolt library trustees approving a librarian did you mean that they had veto power do they participate in the hiring and then how does confidentiality maintain because the library trustees is a public commission that has to meet in public. So I wanted to understand how the confidentiality is maintained. In terms of the bumping rights that Assistant Attorney Reuter mentioned Clearly that has to go into a separate ballot measure. That's way too controversial to put into this. The question that I had was, as Councilmember Cox mentioned, moving money from one account to another. So would it require like five votes to pull money from reserves? And then this council set aside $20 million for City Hall. It was not to move it to Agnews. It was for City Hall. Now that that money has been set aside, can the city manager just spend that money at will? Or does that have to come to the council for approval? bidding mechanisms, I think it has to go in this charter. I think that we're way out of date to be committed to only design, bid, build. You know, I sit on the board of the VTA and we have looked at design build, progressive design build, target price, paying share, gain share, EPC. We've looked at all kinds of bidding mechanisms. The current charter language really ties our hands in terms of what we can do and how fast we can move. Design, bid, build means that you have to have 100% design before you go out to bid and that doesn't account for any complicated projects that might have uncertainty and we actually had this problem with the tunneling part of the BART extension where when we wanted to go to a fixed price bid, nobody wanted to bid on it. The project is too uncertain. So we didn't get bids. So we really need to upgrade that. It's absolutely essential that we do this. I did have a question. So, you know, we'd have to create another ordinance for procurement. So after this charter passes, this measure passes, how much time do we have to create that ordinance? Or are we in some sort of limbo zone there? Or we just maintain the DBB until we pass that ordinance? Then another thing that NCPA does is they sign five-year maintenance contracts. These are open-ended contracts where you say we have approved this contractor because they have the qualifications to say inspect our turbines. but we we don't have a project right now but if something happens with our turbines we want to not have to go through a whole bidding process to fix that turbine we want to just take an existing approved contract where we've determined uh the the compensation rates you know what we pay for the principal engineer what we pay for a backhoe what we pay for other things and just go and have that set for five years and then we just exercise that contract. So I don't know if that is covered by this. And then, you know, One of the things that happened with the infrastructure bond was that it was pretty clear that we needed to have unanimous support of the City Council and the City Manager had proposed a $600 million infrastructure bond given that we had a billion dollars of unfunded liabilities of deferred maintenance and what happened was at the last minute the Mayor Gilmore and Council Member Watanabe decided to change that to $400 million at the very last minute, and it was problematic. So I do believe that we have to get unanimous support of the Council, but again, you know, I don't really want to be held hostage. So in terms of ethics, I know this was discussed extensively by the committee and it said group four discussed extensively the pros and cons to proposing for inclusion in the charter provision for a requirement of an ethics commission. They ultimately decided and the full CRC concurred that while this could be suggested as a level four idea for future CRC, they were not going to recommend at this time as part of the charter project. Their decision was based, among other things, on the following. This is a matter currently discussed at the City Council Governance and Ethics Committee, including possible terms for a formal commission and its alternatives. The inclusion in this Charter Amendment would present challenges and would, in effect, propose to decide the issue before full analysis is complete. inquiry was made regarding chula vista which has a board of ethics but is not mentioned or required in the city charter and so definitely i do not want to put in an ethics commission as the full crc unanimously approved the the charter does have a provision in there and it says that the

That means your time's up.

Yeah, it's a silver alert or something. Okay. So it says that the council members shall conduct themselves in a professional and courteous manner. So that is in the charter. So and then we do have our guidance, behavioral standards for the charter that, you know, council members will come to meetings prepared and will act in a courteous manner. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to always happen. But those are my questions. Thank you.

Council member Chauhal.

Thank you mayor. Thank you city attorney for the presentation and thank you to all the CRC members. all the staff and the public who came to attend those meetings. I started my first duties as a charter review committee member basically in 2011 for city of Santa Clara. And I know how much it takes to put all this and this was a wholesale revision of our charter. I'm glad you all made the groups and then consolidated everything. And even the consolidation itself is a problem right now where we end up what we want to put on the agenda. So I know some of my colleagues picked up some of the issues. I won't repeat those. But some of the questions I have, we are talking about the term limits for the commissioners. So are we making it all across the commissions, various commissions, or on one commission? Just like council has divided into two terms for the council and two terms for the mayor. So what if a commissioner moves from one commission to other, are there any term limits for that? I'm finding out. You mentioned library administrative approvals. So if they approve anything, are there any checks and balances, let's say somebody doesn't like the approval, would the dissenting party come back to the council for appealing of those decisions? What's the process for that? Civil services, we talked about non-discriminatory clauses. My suggestion would be why don't we follow the state laws on that because state laws keep updating on non-discrimination categories and different things. Why don't we follow that categories basically? Consensus about classified, non-classified, unclassified. assistant city attorney, am I right, or deputy, mentioned that we are waiting for feedback from various bargaining units on that. So that will come back. So we cannot make any decision today basically on that. Finance procurement, I know design and build is one aspect which we need to work on definitely. You mentioned that we are planning to have carry-forward funds, no council approvals. But I'm worried we can have a capital investment, basically slide 40, for the capital improvement funds. I'm worried like sometimes we don't use the funds. We should put a time bar on that. Let's say if you don't use the fund for four years, why should they be carried forward for unforeseen number of years? We are wasting the money by holding that money into those capital improvement funds. So we should put a time bar on that. If they're not used for X number of years, we should use it for different purposes basically, move it to a different purpose. I saw some of the clauses like we are talking about defined number like 250K for minor major projects. I would ‑‑ if we use a number like 250K, we should put a clause linked to recognize state inflation indexes to that because that way we don't have that in perpetuity, but that amount is locked. Whereas inflation in 10, 20 years may be high, that amount may be minuscule compared to what today. So wherever we are trying to put any defined number, we should put that just like our business license tax. We put a number in that. But that number is like $45 per employee, but the number is changed every year according to the inflationary condition with an index. So if we are using a whole number, we should put that clause into that. Slide number 41, Section 604.2. I think that's a typo. I didn't find that. You mentioned two. Let me go back to that slide. On the top, you mentioned old section 1310 and new section 802.2.3 and 602.4. I think 602.4 is a typo, but that can be fixed. But I didn't find the relevant clauses on that. You caught most of those, but not every one of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just maybe, and I didn't find 802. 2.4 also, basically. I was looking for what clause you are mentioning, but I didn't even find 802.4 also. So that may be missing something. Nuclear power issues, like are we trying to bar city to even get a nuclear power? Because DOE is working on a modular nuclear plants, which are, as mentioned by my colleagues over here, that technology-wise, they're very advanced and very safe compared to where we were 20, 30 years or 50 years back. So are we trying to bar even buying a nuclear? In case California allows nuclear plants down the line, Are we barring the city to even buying the electricity from nuclear power plants? And if it is financing only or owning a plant, are we barring that within the city geographical limits or anywhere in the country or anywhere in the state? I'm a little bit concerned about this because of the technology advancement. So we need to have I think due diligence before we put this thing on the ballot. Like, it can be problematic if the technology advances so much so well, and then a common resident like me don't understand it and say, oh, no, no, it's very dangerous. So I'm a little bit concerned about that. My other concern was about use of AI. We are not touching that. That's a very hot button issue. So we didn't touch that at all, but I just wanted if we can incorporate something of that thing. Moving money within the, we are giving powers to the city manager that if money has been allocated to particular fund, he can move money anywhere within that fund, basically, within different categories of that fund. So right now, I know we do across the funds, we have to have a super majority of the council for approving that. So I think we should put a limit on this one too, that if you're moving from one project to other project, X amount of dollars above that X should come back to the council or just to keep checks and balances on the powers of the city manager or administration that should be incorporated. Anyway, we can incorporate that. I'll just take an example that may be good or bad. We allocated some funds into the land use fund, basically. If it is $20 million, does that mean the city manager can make a decision of buying a land piece of $20 million without a council approval? Those checks and balances, I want to see what checks and balances we can incorporate into the wording of those. So those are my comments. Thank you very much. And questions. Thanks.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Gonzalez.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. A lot of the questions that I had have been asked, but as far as the And I want to thank the Charter Review Committee. I know this is a big lift. You know, all of you took a large, really intense period of time here the last six to nine months to get this done. So thank you for that. As staff, imparted on our CRC some of the issues that we've seen. I think as far as trying to be more, I won't say efficient, but just have better tools before us, it seems that the recommendations for Level 1 and Level 2, it would be great if we had some motion to get those taken care of and then try to address the Level 3, as Councilwoman Hardy mentioned. As far as the level three, are there any, I mean, they've been highlighted here, but for staff to really, and the city to be able to move forward You know, we're a very innovative city. We have a lot of things going on. I think the design build is one of the functions that I've seen on school district side that has really worked to kind of hold costs down with limited funds and really kind of maintain hold the hold the line as far as changers are concerned so that's something that I think it seems like there's some consensus on that so hopefully we can get something on that but as far as the other four level three are there any that the staff is like this is something that we really need to push forward and it sounds like we would prefer to have more than one initiative especially if we deal with any level threes if that's something that that um the city and it's a council decision but something that the city looks to have more than one initiative and um would it be something that um would be is more than one initiative really going to be too much for staff to handle let's see if we wanted to do all five level level threes and the level ones level twos together so just just a question as far as time for staff as we look towards basically less about a month to get these things uh you know agreed on thank you um councilmember park yeah

Thank you very much for the presentation and the work that's put in, but I do share a lot of the concerns of my fellow council members. I mean, is it wise to put about measure that could have legal challenges? Again, when this was brought up before governance and ethics, we did talk about level one, level two, and level three, and I will repeat it. Level one was clarification, not changing functioning of the city, just to clean up language. because we really want Level 1s to pass. And Level 2, changing a little, non-controversial. And we were going to avoid Level 3s, controversial items, because each item in Level 3 would potentially have its own ballot measure. And this is, again, from the May 1st, 2025 Governance and Ethics meeting. When this was brought before Council, it was changed. Everything was on the table, and that's not what we had discussed. Again, if you go back to the May 1st, 2025 Governance and Ethics Committee meeting, you'll see that this is what we had discussed. And we saw recently how zoning updates removed the requirements for political signage and these kinds of things. I know that City Attorney has made, I think, errant recommendations to Governance and Ethics Committee about redundant language that wasn't redundant. These kinds of small changes that have large effects downstream, I really think we should have spent a little bit more time with. And again, What else is outstanding? I think that Councilmember Cox asked about this, very concerned about real issues, which is we should not agree to things without knowing what all the issues are. And why was there no public outreach? I mean, why was the public outreach to the people? And this is something that the City used to have one or two workshops prior to coming before Council. I mean, residents helped determine the priority. um not just staff working with the committee i mean literally that's what the word democracy means it's the common people rule um and for such a large and important topic i mean you've possibly made this one of the most important considerations in in recent history Right. People are concerned about timing and deadlines on council. And this is not something that we should be concerned about. We should have had plenty of time to discuss these issues. We should have plenty of time to say, well, this is not something that is going to be easily passed by a ballot measure and therefore probably shouldn't be brought up. We talked about a lot of issues. I mean, when slides 36 and 37 on this is what we talked about and this is what we decided, we decided to revert the language. Why did we spend so much time on changes that we were not going to make? I mean, I think at some point the history of the items that we discussed is interesting, but for the limited time that we have here, it's more interesting to know what are the issues before us. Right now, I feel we are being pushed to make a decision. mean again we have concerns about deadlines we have concerns about and you talked about it last time so i had it in my notes i knew that august 7th was the deadline for the rov i knew that we need to get something before i wrote down july 15th we said july 14th here Right. You talk about requires the city attorneys and parcel analysis. And my concern is, I mean, when I talk about when we look at the city attorney and the amount, this has been the I think the biggest project, the city attorney. I'd like to know how much time you've spent on this project, both inside meetings and outside of meetings preparing for this. At some point, I'm concerned about this impartial analysis. And full-text updates, I think that the public deserves a full-text update. And when you recommend that we simply have a link, I don't think that's sufficient. I think that people need to see things side by side, because then they'll see all the things that were removed. I mean, we talk about... You know, why remove the consequences for unexcused absences? I mean, they used to be in there, but there's strikethroughs on them. Why remove consequences for council members dealing with city employment? I mean, employment of or removal of an employee. Why remove those consequences? Right. And we have... like police chief qualifications. They're based on sheriff qualifications. But as somebody else mentioned, if we refer to qualifications or text outside of the charter, that can change. We discussed this in governance and ethics, and we said, well, we could choose to at that time be in sync with the changes that the state or the county made, or we could choose not to do that. But I'm thinking, why don't we make that explicit? Because explicit is much better than implicit when it comes to qualifications and rules, right? But we talk about qualifications for duties, but we don't talk about, I mean, it's not logical to talk about the duties if we don't have qualifications or requirements for that duty. And we're talking about qualifications only. We're not talking requirements or actually what's required there. If qualifications for a duty are absent, it's not logical to talk about the duties. And if the qualifications for a position are not required, why do we have that position? I mean, we talk about the police chief, and the police chief is supposed to be a lieutenant and is posted officer. And I believe, when I looked at the sheriff's site, that's required there, too. I mean, it sounds like lieutenant is a really high position because it's a management group, but it's the lowest—it's the lowest position in the management group. And I think that recent memory, most of the people that have become police chief have not been in that position for more than a year, let alone two years. But it's hard to tell if the requirements in the document are two years as a posted officer, which I think that's a minimum, or if it's two years as a lieutenant, which is not clear. We looked at where we add—these were not supposed to be controversial, but we are adding a lot of requirements—sorry, a lot of capabilities and powers where they did not previously exist. when we talk about the mayor, and now the mayor can do a lot of things without having to justify what they're doing. I remember in the 2025, the October 30th meeting, where the city attorney basically said, well, the charter allows the mayor to do this. Relatively straightforward, allows the mayor to make changes, prevents the mayor from But the charter had none of that language, and now it looks like we're adding this kind of language in. I want to know what kind of slippery slope we're doing by adding—giving additional powers where they were not before, when this was supposed to be a clarification. I feel that we are adding so many different things. We go from qualifications for office duties, budget purchase of goods, public works, including bidding, audit requirements, design, build, and financial requirements that seem to be targeted to specific council members. I mean, they always say that good lies have a little bit of truth in them, and great lies have a lot of truth in them. And I feel that we are conflating, we are putting so many things into this budget because there is something for everyone here. There's something for everyone on this city council, but we are at the same time passing a lot of things that we should not be considering for a ballot measure. The fact that you brought this forward, and I'm looking at the city attorney, you brought this forward as level one, level two only, and then changed it so we can talk about everything. You've made a really short, a really small project into a huge project, not put the appropriate time in, try to push this in front of us as quickly as possible, not have the public input. I'm really concerned about the things that are here. When we talk about definitions, the things that we've talked about in governance and ethics that we're missing, we're all about definitions. How you chose to define what a prevailing party is because that was absent, and now you're telling us, oh, we should move forward without these kinds of definitions in place, makes me very, very, very uncomfortable. So I'd like to know why we skip the public input I would like to know why all those things that I'd like to know why we're considering Controversial items when when that's not what we discussed that we were going to do in governance and ethics Thank you Councilmember Jane you had something else Yeah, I was thrown off by the buzzer so there was

a lot of discussion about some of these level three changes. And I'm hearing that I would like some of those level three changes to come as separate ballot measures because I don't want to jeopardize the probability that a level one and level two version of the charter amendment will pass. But then I'm also hearing that some of those things would require a lot of research. So I'm trying to understand which ones would need a lot of research or discussion to bring forward as separate ballot measures. One is the bumping rights. The other thing might be the data center utility tax or nuclear power. And of course, The procurement, I think a lot of time was spent on procurement and what would it take to just carve that out as a separate ballot measure to make it so that the level one and level two changes are the only ones left in this version of the charter update. um and then i had some questions about the police i had sent these questions in earlier what if how many officers currently reside in the city of santa clara and out of how many total sworn officers that means that those are the people that are eligible to run and then what if either no one is qualified to run or there's a resignation How is that position filled? Is there a special election? Is there an appointment? And then how many cities currently elect their chief of police? And then are there any responsibilities outlined for the Chief of Police? Are there mandatory regular reports of the State of the Police Department? Are there any goals defined for the Chief of Police and who would define those goals? And then what involvement does the Chief have in creating and maintaining the budget? And it wasn't really clear in the current update in terms of promotions and firings what the chief of police's responsibility is there. I think in the past it was really the city manager that did all of that with sort of advisement by the chief of police, but it's not clear what we're putting in this current charter. Those are my questions, thank you.

Thank you. So I just want to make some comments and I do have some questions. They're probably at a higher level as opposed to some of the the others. But I do appreciate the extensive work that the Charter Review Committee has had to deal with that. It was a big heavy load that you took on and it was a big bite out of this charter. Wow, it's hard for me to even go through all your recommendations. So thank you so much for all the hard work that you put in there. It's really a significant effort to review and modernize our city charter that I've read so many times and tried to interpret. Of course, I have my own interpretation, but sometimes it doesn't align with others, but yes. I do support the reasonable cleanup, modernization, clarification, and improved organization of the Charter. I think that is important. However, I believe it's important that we distinguish between the technical cleanup and the modernization and the substantive governance and policy changes that shift the authority, discretion, and the voter protections. So the city charter functions as our constitution framework. constitutional framework. So any significant transfer of authority from the charter to future ordinances or future councils deserves really careful public discussion and a clear voter understanding. And so I'm not sure when you talked about how this would be presented to the voters that it would be very clear if they have to go to a website. Some of our voters are not able to go to websites. But anyways, that's something that may come later. But if we're asking our voters to approve a comprehensive charter update, how do we ensure that they clearly understand which provisions are constitutional protections versus issues that will later be determined by ordinance or future council action. Because I think there's a significant number of issues in the proposal that would require future council actions. So will the average resident be able to read the updated charter and clearly understand how major city powers are exercised? At what point does the charter stop functioning as a clear statement of voter protection and become primarily a framework for future policy decisions by ordinance? And I know, I think it was mentioned earlier, I didn't see a timeline to have those multiple ordinances in place. So what would happen in the meantime? And what principles should guide what remains in the charter versus what is delegated to future ordinances? Historically, Santa Clara's charter has contained direct voter protections and operational limitations. Is it the proposed framework shifting too much direction into future council policy decisions? And you can see a theme that I have here that you know, decisions are being framed for the future. And if procurement authority is broadened, what are the corresponding accountability, transparency, audit, and disclosure protections embedded? Because I didn't see where they would be embedded in the charter, and maybe they're in the existing charter that could be embedded.

Mayor, I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

If procurement authority is broadened, as you had mentioned, design, build, you know, whatever, you're recommending, where is the corresponding accountability to that process, transparency, audit and disclosure processes embedded in the charter? So you can do it one way, but where's the balance there? And if the voters approve the broad design build or best value authority, I think you were calling it, Are there going to be specific protections that remain in the charter to be able to let the public know that we're being accountable? Are voters being asked to approve future procurement frameworks that have not yet been written? So when we go to the voters and ask them to approve these procurement processes, but without a framework, How do we explain that? In a city that has experienced significant public debate over governance and transparency issues, how do we ensure that modernization doesn't unintentionally reduce our public confidence or voter oversight? And on the, I think, shouldn't major governance changes be separated from technical cleanup so voters can really truly evaluate significant policy shifts independently? Regarding the parkland, because we had Measure R that passed with nearly 90% approval for protection of parklands, How do we preserve the voter expectations if we're asking them to change that status and allow secondary uses? Because I don't see how those secondary uses are defined. I think that's a very sensitive one. So I understand that many of these recommendations are intended to improve administrative efficiencies and provide staff with greater flexibility. However, my responsibility is to evaluate these policies through the lens of the public. And my primary question is not whether a provision makes administration easier. but whether it preserves transparency, accountability, and the protections that residents expect from a very clear city charter. So those are my questions, Glen. And I think that's it for the questions. So tell me how you want to handle this. There's a lot of comments and some questions as well.

Yeah, Madam Mayor, I think I'm ready with some help from my colleagues to respond. Okay. To most of these.

Maybe I'll, you know what, maybe I'll go to the public for a minute and let's do that first because I don't want to forget that.

Happy to get a break and maybe additional questions will come from that.

Okay, thank you. All right, so we're going to go to the public now. Would any member of the public? We'll start here in the audience. Would any member of the public like to speak on this issue? If so, please come forward.

As a member of the public. My name's Eric Crutchlow. I'm on the committee, I'm on the planning commission, so on and so forth. I think the one observation I have after hearing your comments and questions is something that we've all been talking about. Number one, I didn't see a lot of people show up at the Charter Review Committee. I wish we had more public input, for sure. And we tried to do our best as we saw it tasked to us to do that job. But what I see here and some of the questions that I'm hearing, it already just shows that there is a great need for public discord and making sure that they understand what's going on. Like what you had said, Mayor, before about just the technical changes alone probably are worth the ones that are easiest to do, the least amount of debate. And I think that should probably be a separate measure all unto itself because it makes a lot of sense and I think it's easy to grasp. but then when you look at everything else that is coming up, making sure that people understand what's going on I think is going to be the challenge. It is worth the challenge to do and try and strive for. I do feel we've put a lot of effort and time into it, but that is going to be the significant part of this because as you speak about the different things that you're responsible for, Mayor, Efficiency is one that we were also looking for as well, feeling that all the red tape that was going on and such was not helping make it efficient. But of course, you have to balance that against, hey, I have to know what's going on and making sure that things aren't happening outside my knowledge because I represent the public. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. Hello, my name's Howard. I'm the hot dog dude. I'm basically here because I talked to Glenn last meeting. He was really telling me a lot of work these guys did. It was pretty cool stuff. Now, I don't got a dog in the hunt because I don't live in Santa Clara. I just have a business. So still yet, any decision you guys make does affect me. As we know what I'm going through right now with some decisions that were made, that affected me. So I hope you guys really look hard into this. And there's a lot of ethical problems in this city, which would be nice if you guys really did get a real ethical committee together, really go after some of it and take care of it. But I gotta say, you guys, thank you for your work. I'm really surprised because I do show up at different meetings and I don't see people involved. I don't know how you get them involved. It's their money you're dealing with. So people really need to get involved. But again, thank you. And I have nothing more to say. You guys know what I feel. Thank you, bye-bye.

Thank you, Howard, thank you.

And look, before zeros.

I know. All right, thank you. Anyone else here in the audience? Okay, online we have Chris. Go ahead, Chris. Go ahead, Chris. You're muted. There you go. I got it. Thanks so much.

Yeah, thank you very much. And, you know, I want to agree with Mayor Gilmour and also Councilmember Park with regard to being really cautious and possibly slowing this down. I have, I guess, two very narrow comments I listened to last week as well. And I think the recommendation of requiring Elections to fill vacancies to have to be either in one of the statewide elections that happens every two years is is potentially going to put a real handcuff on people so i'd like to have that at least kind of revisited. Because you could theoretically have a situation where there's a vacancy in mayor that happens right after the deadline for filing in a presidential year and you wouldn't be able to fill that by vote. Until the primary of a gubernatorial year more than a year and a half later, of course, it could be filled by appointment, but if for some reason you don't want to do that I don't think it's wise to lock yourself in. So to you know, possibly be able to think about that, I think, is valuable and then I you know, with regard to what could happen, I think the level one changes to identify those to put those on the ballot this year. will leave a legacy of great city unanimity you know close to unanimity it'll pass huge then take the rest and plan to put that on for February 2028 it's really not that long from now it would give a year for all of these wonderful potential changes to be out in the public arena to be able to be discussed it's not disrespectful to the charter review committee I'm a charter review alumnus from a couple decades ago I have great respect for the folks who did the work but I would just suggest and invite all of you to that you know we need to slow down and then the the last comment is with regard to possibly having non-electors appointed to commissions you want to talk that's not a level one two or three that's a level five and so there's so many ways of task forces and advisory groups and city librarian can bring people together please I wouldn't touch that let's not create opportunities for people to organize against the good work so thank you thank you Chris uh Wanda go ahead Wanda

You're muted. Unmute yourself, please. Wanda. Hello, Wanda. There you go.

I did it twice. I'm sorry. There you go. Welcome. Well, thank you, Mayor and Council. I think it's a lofty goal and a good goal to clean up our charter. I really appreciate all the time and effort from staff and the people in the committee and you now listening to all of this um i went to several of the meetings quite frankly there was so much going on it was a little hard to follow and keep track of and i of course mentioned ethics and um I respect that in order to pass this, to clean it up the charter, at least that part of it, that it is necessary to not put controversial issues in. We did, I believe the council at one time agreed to an ethics commission. And I don't think it's the public that has a problem with the ethic commission. I believe it's the council that does. And I understand why. And it's okay not to have it in there, but I just, it's not the public that's debating about that. We'd love to have an ethics commission, I think overall, and it wouldn't need to be defined. But basically, you know, once again, it's too much work and too little time. And I think we do need to narrow it down has been suggested. And that's it. Thank you. Thank you, Wanda.

I don't see anyone else. Do you, City Clerk? Okay. So that's it for public comment. Councillor Jane, you have your light on. Hello?

Yeah. I just wanted to say that it is unfortunate that we have So few members of the public attending these and including Attending the CRC meetings and this meeting, you know, I see only four people attending I'd like to understand how the staff is proposing to do outreach for this given that we can't actually advocate for this as a city. But I'm trying to figure out how we can move forward. Maybe it could be done before the actual ballot measure is decided on and put on the ballot. But there is a prohibition for how much this measure could be sold to the public. So I'm struggling with that. Thank you.

All right. City Attorney, are you ready to?

I am, Madam Mayor.

answer all the questions to the best of your ability. As best as I can. As best you can today, and if not, we'll continue to our next meeting whenever this pops up.

I can see maybe some continuing discussions on this. I'm going to take them in order, Madam Mayor, and maybe there's some aggregation we can do, and there will be some assistance I'll enlist, certainly from the Director of Finance and City Manager, And then to the extent there's some questions around design build and public works, and I've got a couple of backslides too that I might share to kind of explain that a little bit more, because I think that's an important issue for all of you to understand. Member Hardy, it was some time ago, so you might need to help me on this question. You talked, your first question was about the four to seven year minimum, and I think you observed something about that, but the question about it was?

Question about it is did you feel like seven years was enough if because it's that a minimum and then there was the language about the city attorney I Got that one during the investigation if the DA did get that one but four to seven, I mean, yeah, is it enough?

You know arguably not the This issue was grappled with down in Chula Vista with respect to the elected city attorney where the standard was seven years and they proposed to increase it to 10. And that's a whole different dynamic, right, because it's What's the voter requirement and what do they get to decide amongst and setting that minimum? The thought was four was clearly too low, I think, from the group and that to go significantly higher might artificially limit the pool of candidates. There might be someone who's been a lawyer for seven years who's got all sorts of other extraordinary government-related and management experience. that could make them a great candidate and by adding the provision that says explicitly with such other qualifications the city council may impose. I think that was the thought and I'm getting nods from the CRC representatives here in coming up with that recommendation. The district attorney versus the city attorney responsibilities. you're right there is a provision for that it specifically relates to enforcement of violations of the charter there was a provision in the city attorney's duties that had the city attorney enforcing you know violations of the charter that was proposed for deletion because of how close i am to those people who might be the subjects of alleged violations of the charter right if it's going to be anybody More likely than not, it's going to be a city council person or a senior official. I've probably advised them in all of their duties and or rely on them for my employment. So the idea that I would be an independent prosecutor under that circumstance is really unrealistic. And so the thought was, and the best practice, I think, is... or violations of the charter, the district attorney is identified as kind of the first potential source of prosecution for that. And to the extent that the district attorney either had a conflict themselves or declined, which is entirely possible. District attorneys don't want to get into this business all the time of prosecuting these types of things. The city attorney wouldn't then prosecute, but instead would facilitate the designation and the hiring of an outside counsel who would be deputized to enforce that. So still keeping the city attorney out of it, giving the inherent conflicts, but going through that process in order to get the right qualified person involved in that, if such a thing could arise. And hopefully, obviously, it wouldn't. Excused absences, you talked about that and a couple of others asked about that too. This, the proposed update doesn't change the number of excused absences. That was talked about, but it was considered as good a number as any and it actually roughly aligned with the equivalent general law, city standard for that number of absences within 60 days, so it was an equivalent standard. What I think that was done, and was very much supported. And there's a number of changes like this that were recommended. Hey, this thing is missing. We're having a problem with that from an operational standpoint. It's too nuanced and complicated to develop a mechanism for that in the charter, and it probably doesn't belong in the charter. But gosh darn it, we need it. So let's at least have the charter contemplate that. And this is an example of that, that a policy for excused absences is kind of being begged for. And so the charter now contemplates the city council making a policy of that, both for their purposes and for boards and commission purposes. There would be some clear understanding of what an excused absence is or isn't and how that determination is made. Because again, there is a potential consequence, right? That could result, depending upon the number of vacancies, the number of absences in you forfeiting your office. So having a standard for that and not just having it be something that happens automatically, I think was identified kind of as a gap that was missing and called for. Qualified elector. That was really more of a comment than anything else, how you thought maybe for certain boards and commissions it made sense, but that potentially for a library, given how they serve people, it could be reasonable to consider residency. I certainly understand that, and that's within council prerogative, right, as to how you want to proceed with that. That's certainly something they asked for. But you heard the reasons why, what the thinking was behind the group, you know, for consistency, particularly for the charter, you know, level groups. And I think a public speaker made a comment, you know, is that, could that, if you propose to change that, be an elevated issue, you know, in the community? And I don't know whether it would be or not. I know that is something that's done elsewhere. Again, my most recent experience is Chula Vista. They included that, allowing residency for every one but one. I think they kept their charter. They have a standing charter review commission down there. They kept the qualified elector status for that. But they allowed residency for all the rest. And down in Chula Vista, it wasn't an issue. It was improved along with all the other comprehensive updates. So it depends on your appetite for it and what you think the community perception of that would be as to whether or not you wanna go down that path. You asked about procurement, and you gave an example of Water Authority application of that for their complicated projects. A fair point, and we'll get to a few slides on that to talk about how that application might be beneficial for the city of Santa Clara. Talked about changes in technology. If the state law changes, could we change? I think we were talking about nuclear power in that instance. And that really isn't how it would work. I think somebody else asked about the nuclear power issue as well. And this isn't anyone proposing to add or change or anything. That provision is already in the charter. It says that the city currently is prohibited from financing an ownership interest or a partial ownership interest in a nuclear power plant. And the thought was, even though that may be a desirable thing, it wasn't anything that SVP identified as something they really needed to do now. And rather than change something like that that clearly meant a lot to people at one time, the thought was not to change that. Could the city with that provision in there buy power from a nuclear power plant? I think the answer is yes. That's not the same thing as owning an interest in a power plant. You're buying power from them. But do some of... current SVPs, power purchase agreements, actually have them buying an interest in the facility being constructed? Yeah, it does sometimes, right? So it wouldn't prohibit it, but it could limit it, you know, depending upon the structure. And again, but ultimately the thought from SVP as the stakeholder on this, do we need this now, was, you know, we don't. There's other things that, you know, that we can do that potentially could give us access to nuclear power, even with that provision input. You talked about straw poll. I think you were talking amongst all of you. Certainly a reasonable way to, we always talk about eating the elephant, right, one bite at a time. If there was consensus support for level one, level two changes, that could be something that you could potentially as a procedural matter, you know, approve to focus on level three, that would be up for all of you in deciding how you want to deliberate, you know, on this process. Because I think a couple of comments are, it's a lot, right? And it is a lot. You know, that's a fair, you know, observation. Any comp, shoot, I skipped ahead. Member Cox, your questions. You talked about a public process and skipping a public process or suggesting that maybe there was a public process that was skipped. And a number of people made comments about what the public process was for this. I guess I would tender to you the public process was you creating a 13-member committee representative of the public across the various districts to take this project on, a good cross-section. And the 10 and on this Wednesday 11th meeting held in public with some news coverage about this project going on also was exposing this project to the public. The fact that a lot of people didn't engage with it might be, even though it's a really important project, it's not a sexy one, right? It's really wonky in a lot of ways, and it's not necessarily the kind of thing that would engender as important as it is public interest. Similar to when you get budgets in front of you, and they're $1.7 billion budgets, and there's really not that much, frequently, public input on that. Sometimes the big something weighty things aren't the kind of things that attract the public. an excuse for it, good, bad, or otherwise. But I think there was a significant public process. It just didn't engender a lot of support or a lot of interest. The other element of this is in recognition of that, I think as pointed out by one of the members, is that doesn't relieve this project of the responsibility to make sure the people understand what's going in front of them. In fact, it probably elevates that responsibility. It wasn't tracked step by step by 50 people in the public providing comments. constantly throughout. And so what's presented to the public, what can be done in order to socialize the issues that more people are aware of, it is important. And one of the slides suggested that information mailers could be sent out. You're right, you can't campaign for it. It couldn't say, vote for this. But a mailer that says, hey, this is going on your ballot, go to the website because there's a lot of really good information there, and potentially public forums that could be populated by, these guys are, again, gluttons for punishment, by members of this committee because they're not done yet with this. As the representatives of the project and fielding questions for people in public locations prior to the vote is something that absolutely could be done. So I think that gets at that a little bit of that concern. Criteria to distinguish what was controversial, you asked about that.

What was the criteria for it?

I don't know if there was a specific criteria so much as there was awareness of these folks who are representative from the community of the kinds of things that have been controversial in this community. For example, anything in and around the chief of police. Anything in and around a measure that had previously been approved by the public.

and i'm sorry city attorney mayor may i ask a counter question right now or would you like to wait till the end as well because you'll just put your light up at the end i will yeah go ahead um i i think i should uh specify i was not asking on how you ranked the questions but how you determined what wants to even bring forward what was to even Right. Why did we choose to, what issues were present to bring up parkland? Oh, okay. That's what I'm talking about. You have four or five key issues. Why were they so important that they needed to be put into the charter discussion?

And I guess why so important? I guess in that, I'll just speak to that example. That was an issue brought up by both uh... by the planning commission kind of independent because they had had projects come before them that were proposing park you know uses and um... measure are was identified as an impediment to their ability to do that right so that's an example of of you know what one of the origins of that process and i think parks and recreation may have been tendered to them because a planning commission had identified and obviously parks and recreation was is the key stakeholder right and a steward for overseeing parks and recreation so they were asked hey planning commission's proposing this the charter review you know committee's looking at everything in the charter right from top to bottom this is something that's been proposed and considered what do you think and their thought was that seems okay to me right in the way that you you know So that's the origin of that particular one. Each one might have a different story, but really a lot of it was a product of the fact that it was a beginning-to-end review, and if there was a stakeholder that had an issue with that or identified a gap with that, or there was a CRC member who said, this is something I care about that I want to talk about, they ended up as part of the discussion, no end of consideration. and then tried to be ranked, is this A so controversial that it elevates to this point? Or is it so much that we couldn't possibly get around it? It's beyond the scope of this. Could that be something that's evaluated in the future?

So that's, I think, a fairly accurate description of the process.

The things that are deferred to later in timeline, I think that that's been asked a couple times. And the answer to that is for any of these, there's not a specific timeline as to when it needs to get done. There is a provision in the charter that says what rules apply while that's pending to be completed. i think the one that most folks would identify again from a professional staff standpoint anyway that would be desirable to get in place as soon as possible if you decide to proceed with it would be the public works you know procurement update process and i would suggest if the council supported putting on that ballot staff would probably start putting together you know a framework for what that might that ordinance might look like there are kind of best practices for what goes into something like that and potentially have that ready, right, if the ballot measure was approved, to have that be something that the council engaged in, you know, sooner rather than later. So that's the thought on that. City Manager allocations from one category to another and the idea that maybe there would be dollar limits imposed on that, there's a handful of questions kind of in and around some of those finance areas. I'm gonna kick that over to the City Manager with support probably from Finance Director and to the extent Finance Director kept a list of some of the other ones too, you can knock those off while you come to the podium, I could use the break.

Why don't I start with those? There were a number of questions along that line. First, let me take it high level and if there's anything detailed, we'll turn to the finance director. There were a number of questions around moving money from one fund to another, moving money from one department to another, or one CIP project to another. Probably best to step up on the balcony as we talk about this. Typically, what you would see is the city council sets the budget, they hold the city manager accountable for the budget, the city manager holds department heads accountable, and then department heads hold division managers accountable. Classic high-level structure. Our current charter language is probably the best example of vagueness in this category, as you can find. What it essentially says is that the city council show appropriate to several departments, not all departments, offices and agencies for their respective objects and purposes and does not define what objects and purposes are. Extremely vague. So let's just break that down. What's currently been interpreted as prohibited is, or requiring council approval, moving money from one fund to another. That is not proposed to change. What is currently interpreted as requiring council approval is moving money from one CIP project to another, not proposed to change. what is currently articulated as For council approval is moving money among departments. So from the police department to the Parks and Rec Department currently we bring those to council not proposed to change Actually, nothing really is actually proposed to change for our normal operations what has currently been interpreted for I think almost 10 years or even longer based on how vague the charter is, is that the city manager has the authority to move money amongst various line items within the department. And so that is how we operate now. That is not proposed to change. The charter provides some definition to provide clarity for that. So classic example is let's say a department has money in their contracts budget and money in their supplies budget. And they actually haven't used all the money in their supplies budget, but they need a little bit more for contracts. That doesn't come to council right now. You would get you know, at a $1.7 million budget, it take up its own section on the city council agenda. And so this current language is proposed to clarify that, right? It maintains council approval from project to project, from fund to fund, from department to department, but within department city manager approval, which is currently how we operate. There are also some questions around the council approved $20 million for City Hall, right? Can the city manager just expend that money?

No.

All the expenditures we just talked about and those expenditures follow all of our normal purchasing procurement and contracting rules. Anything over $250,000, even if it's appropriated, has to come to the city council, right? And then we have procurement as well as purchasing rules around how many bids are obtained and how those processes flow. Irrespective of if the money is appropriated, we still have to follow those. And so there's really no significant change with the language that's proposed. It's frankly just providing some clarity for administration. And I'll turn it over to the finance director for any additional info.

Thank you, city manager. Good evening, honorable mayor, city council, Ken Lee, director of finance. The city manager provided a very thorough explanation on the broad interpretation of the charter. I just want to add, you know, within the finance department, we're charged with implementing that and accounting for that with all the city departments. We are a governed by governmental fund accounting, and so we organize our accounting system by funds, by departments, and then even below that, a vast amount of detail for tracking purposes, details, activities, grants. And so currently we bring forward to you changes in appropriations at the department level within a fund. and that aligns with our governmental accounting practices. That's based on the interpretation of staff and our city attorney for our existing charter. The revised charter outlines clarity in those cases, as the city manager mentioned, within a department budget. For example, in the fire department, if they needed additional supplies for medical response and they had savings in another line item. Historically and administratively, that's been carried out and implemented in different ways. About 10 years ago, there were memos from departments to the city manager that required internal review and approval of those kind of line item changes. But as far as what we bring forward to the city council, that's not changed with the revised language. It's interpreted as the department's offices and agencies for those things and purposes named. within the budget, and you've seen that actually in our last council meeting. Our appropriations schedule at the department and fund level were like 30 pages long, and included in that were capital projects. The other clarification I would also add, there are funds that aren't appointed or allocated to departments, namely like our cemetery fund. We operate a cemetery enterprise. In there, there's line items for salaries, for benefits, for supplies, materials. We interpret that as within that fund, within those line items, that's where the appropriation level is set. And then also within capital projects, the current language does not speak to capital projects, but we've had different interpretations in the PAC for the sake of conservatism and full transparency. We've brought capital project carryovers and capital project changes to the city council You see in the budget adoption almost $500 million of carryovers to make sure that the council reviews, the public gets to see those changes and reappropriates those funds. And about eight to 10 years ago, that practice wasn't there. Our year-end report was about two pages long. And so in an effort to interpret and create practices that are consistent and transparent to the public, we brought those. very many appropriations to the council. And so with these changes, that is not proposed. With regards to a couple other comments and areas, there were questions around Civic Center. I think the city manager explained it. Just within our capital budget, we do provide a description of the project, the purpose of the project. We try to hold to that. And to the extent that changes drastically, we bring those forward to the city council for reallocations. There was a question around contracts and the example for turbine contracts, having contracts available when there's an emergency five-year process. That's exactly what we brought forward within the last month. We had an emergency repair at our DVR substation. And we had one contract in place. But given who had replaced it, the defects that were found, it resulted in an emergency repair that required us to look at other vendors. We brought forward to the city council three approved vendors for turbine maintenance in any of our turbines. We did a public procurement. Those are five year contracts based on historical spend a lot of money. But but you're right, like we as as the council member mentioned bring forward on a regular basis multiple qualified vendors for specific purposes on an as needed basis so that we do have that bench available and ready to go when needed let's see i think that was it within finance i don't know when you have others that might have taken down but if i missed any happy to answer any other

Thank you, City Manager and Director Lee. Continuing on here, I'm still on Member Cox's questions. One of your questions where we left off was the appointment authority for city attorney's office with an annotation that said still subject to review by the labor group. That annotation, I'm sorry, didn't catch up to the reality, which is they have reviewed and approved that and are comfortable. As it applies to the Unit 9 people, it was not proposed to be different for the one employee that my office has but hasn't yet filled, who's a 578 employee, a legal administrative assistant. That person would continue to be appointed by the city manager and overseen by the city manager. I think you had talked about the conflict between the city manager and the chief of police regarding certain duties that were at issue. And I guess I wouldn't call it as a conflict so much as a disagreement between them as to who should have ultimate appointment authority. and or disciplinary authority. There are provisions in the charter that talk about the city manager as being the appointing authority. And there's also an elected chief of police who says, I'm the head of my department and I should be the appointing authority. And so reasonable disagreement there that as one of the objectives of this group, of this project you know again even if it's in a sensitive area hey where there's things that aren't clear and can be resolved let's try to resolve them and so there was an effort to try to resolve that with language you know proposed ultimately they weren't able to agree on that but they remained in agreement on the changes that are you know being proposed with the clear expression of the representation that the city manager is the head you know of the of the department which was not a provision provided in the charter yet it was provided by ordinance i'm sorry what did i say sorry city manager well that was a that's a blunder the uh the chief of police is the head of the you know of the police department um and so that's now clearly you know provided um and so they did agree on those things um you you asked about Is there any compensation change with added duties for some of the positions? And I guess for most of them, I don't think they're added duties. I think they're memorialized as to what their existing duties are. So there isn't any proposed additional compensation as a result of that. The idea of the chief of police being the head of the department is already expressed in the city code. And it was something, in fact, I think that salary setting commission looked at. How do we pay this person a professional salary when their duties aren't even professional duties? And the addition of that to the charter actually helps with that and assigns appropriate duties to reflect that this is a professional position. It's not a ceremonial position. It's someone who runs the police department. I think there was an attempt to get alignment there. But the other provisions, I don't think there's materially added duties, per se, so much as reflecting, again, what those folks currently do. If you've got a specific example for me, I'm happy to look at that if I've missed that. I don't. work closely enough in hr that i know that if things are added to people's job descriptions it gives them almost legal right to go back to hr and say does that change my salary great yeah and and so these were you know the uh aside from the civil service provisions that sue talked to you about you know in some detail these other proposed changes where they implicated that were also tendered to the labor groups you know for their review yeah and the city attorney, again, authority as well with ultimate concurrence from the group nine on that. You talked about the removal of advance notice of ordinance readings and I think there's a little bit of a misunderstanding of what was actually changed there. What was proposed for elimination is a newspaper publication of the ordinance. In fact, the full ordinance is never published in the newspaper. It's usually just a summary and that's the legal requirement and you refer to a website for people that review it or a physical copy of it is available in the clerk's office. And so that's the thing that was removed and I think the point was That is not a likely place where people are getting information about it. Ordinances are approved in a public two-step process, right? First reading, as you know, comes before the council in a notice public meeting. Then there's second reading adoption in a notice public meeting. All of that information is available on the city's website with actually the full ordinance, you know, both attached to that item. And in addition, one of the things, again, with folks talking about transparency, that this group proposed as an enhancement to the legal notices generally is a provision, even though it's not specific about that, to develop a policy to add an additional notice using the latest technologies, an electronic notice to people who have either requested that notice or are gonna be impacted by the particular issue at hand. So the city already, where there's projects involved, under both city policy and state law provides actually mail notice, you know, to people who are going to be impacted within a certain radius. This now contemplates potentially even doing better than that, you know, using, you know, modern technology. So you're right. A thing was removed, right, but kind of an old thing, you know, with the replacement of some new things. But it's a fair question and was observed by others as well. the independent ethics structure not doable as determined by the CRC. And I think the idea of an ethics commission wasn't viewed as not doable. It was the idea of deciding whether or not the ethics commission was automatically a good idea and or including actual terms and conditions for what an ethics commission would look like was considered to be too big of a project given that it was a top to bottom review of all the elements of the charter for a number of reasons including the ones that are reflected in the annotation that member jane kind of read earlier they that the observation was there already was a process and evaluation that was going on on the governance committee, both to look at options for ethics commission and whether or not that was the right solution to city ethics issues. And so the idea that this charter project would go, you have to have an ethics commission while that was going on, with that being a complicated question, And different people can view it differently, right? You could disagree and go, no, we really want that. But that was the thought process kind of at the CRC level, including with some meaningful input from folks who had some experience even with the grand jury and the origins of that as a referral to the city to look into the ethics commission. I think there was a consensus that, yes, that's an important issue to be discussed, but that CRC wasn't in a position to decide that in a definitive way. Um. define major versus minor in the procurement context, right? That is something that as proposed is left to the city council to determine by ordinance. I think the idea that that would be determined by ordinance as opposed to a number being thrown out there that might not be the right number was important, particularly with your point, and I think this was even noted in one of the annotations, right, to explain the history of it and was evaluated. that a seemingly modest increase proposal right back in 2000 from $1,000 to $50,000 actually was struck down. And so numbers like that can be kind of galvanizing in negative ways, because they look like much larger numbers than they really are. And so again, the thought was to not do it that way. And we'll get to this when we talk about design build an alternative procurement a little bit more substantively later with some additional slides the thought was instead outline to provide guidelines not just okay it's going to come later by ordinance but provide guidelines as to what would be included in that ordinance and then have the city council develop that process which would be a public process, right? Ordinances are adopted in public, you know, with discussions. It could be even input, however you decided to go about doing that. But at a minimum, first reading, second reading, and adoption, and probably a lot of work to get along, you know, along the way. So that was the thought process, you know, there with that. There is an alternative that's not recommended, the so-called option B, that actually does include a specific dollar amount. The proposed dollar amount is $250,000, aligned with the city manager authority currently to do other types of contracts, also aligned with other jurisdictions that use that as a benchmark. Other jurisdictions actually use significantly higher benchmarks to including city.

I'm sorry. I did not mean to be laborious on that I probably inarticulately expressed my point was again there It was one example of multiple ambiguous terms that again without an ethics commission or a body governing how some of this goes it seems to leave us again and Just a statement with no weightedness our current government governance and ethics committee are largely politically aligned And so it makes it very challenging to put anything in front of a body and feel like it's going to be representative of a larger group. And so it was just an example in light of the ethics consideration. I may have misunderstood the question. Yeah, I probably didn't do a very good job.

And gave more of a technical response than you intended.

Yeah, and I know you're going to talk about that later.

Major, minor would be defined by the full council, not any committee in whatever implementing ordinance, as proposed. Sure. I think that gets through your questions, Member Cox. Member Jain, you talked about excused absences, and I think I touched on that. You talked about the Planning Commission recommendation. That was not recommended by the CRC, but for potential supermajority override, right? But that's not included, and you were talking about, hey, Planning Commission people and other people do come and speak to the council, but they only are representing themselves, right? And they can do that. But the Planning Commission can also, or any board and commission could also say, this is our recommendation, or this is our determination. Not only am I gonna make that determination, but I am going to officially designate a representative of the Planning Commission to come and speak to you as a representative of the Planning Commission. not on their own behalf. So the idea was, hey, maybe a way of getting due consideration without necessarily requiring a supermajority override is to implement that on a more regular basis. And they asked and we advised that, in fact, they could do that. But that if person did come before the council as a member of that board or commission without being officially designated to serve in that role it would be their ethical obligation to say I don't represent the Planning Commission and I'm just representing myself I think you talked about some of the finance stuff already, questions that you asked. You expressed support for alternative procurement mechanisms. We'll talk about that more. Ordinance for procurement, how much time, getting to work right away, we talked about that. That probably would be something that, if in fact that was put on the ballot, that staff, because of the value that's attached to that, would probably start on it in advance so that got presented to you sooner rather than later. And I think a couple of your other contracts or questions were answered as well. You talked about unanimous support of the council. It's not legally required. Is there value in that, right, for the council putting something on the ballot where you're all unified in support of it? Absolutely there is, but it's not legally required. That's really for you all to sort out amongst yourselves. what you're comfortable with. You talked about ethics commission, I think we've already talked about that quite a bit in quoting the annotation that you quoted that accurately and that does describe the thought process that both the group four and ultimately the CRC employed in order to reach the conclusion and recommendation that they did. I did want to point out that there are some provisions that were proposed for the council that do touch on the ethics issue ranging from a symbolic preamble at the beginning of the charter to specific city council duties and obligations that was kind of viewed as a missing thing that includes things like and which are in the applicable state laws that are in your you know your ethics you know and values you know behavior policies but aren't in the charter you know per se uh provisions for council people putting the interests of the city above their own for them being professional and courtesy you know courteous in their in their interactions with each other so that wasn't ignored um uh it was recognized as something and and proposed by a number of the the folks and saying hey we maybe we're not going to do an ethics commission but That is a matter of interest. And so here are different ways that we can at least insert that into the discussions. Member Chihal. Excuse me. Yeah, sure. Mayor. Go ahead.

All right. I had asked a question about approval of the librarian. Does the Bolt have veto power over the librarian? Do they participate in the hiring process? What is the confidentiality around that?

Yeah, sorry, I don't know why I missed that one. Oh, you could have raised that later. I'm in your first round of questions. It wasn't your first round, okay. Oh, I see it here, sorry, I did skip that. They would have veto power as it's currently proposed. The city manager with HR obviously would administer that hiring process, but could and probably would involve, given that Bolt would have approval rights over that librarian, kind of Bolt in that process. And so that's how that's set up. Confidentiality probably has been managed before and would need to be managed with that, with them of course being duty bound to conduct themselves in an appropriate way and not reveal personnel issues.

but it would have to be the full commission and then you have a closed session because you want to avoid Brown Act?

Is that how that works? Yeah, that would be legally possible. Or it could be an ad hoc subcommittee that would be assigned that would manage the confidential aspects of it or be involved in the interview process and could make a public recommendation to the full board, just like you all make your decisions ultimately. So the different ways to approach that, I'm not sure how it was approached most recently. Pardon? They've met in closed session before. So that would be another example of a board or commission that could lawfully meet in closed session. Okay, thank you. Sorry for skipping that. Member Chihal, term limits for commissioners. You asked the question, is it for all the commissions or just for one? It's just for one, right? So if a person was on the planning commission for two terms, right, they couldn't be on the planning commission any further. But they could be on the Board of Library Trustees or any of the other ones. You exhaust your term with respect to the commission of the, you know, with the year, with the terms on it.

not for all of them.

So that's how that would work. Does that answer that question?

The only issue was because if you're trying to encourage more people to be on commissions, we don't want that person to serve on planning commission two times, then go to park and rec commission, then go to civil services commission. That's why I was trying to expand that template.

Yeah, and you could do that, but that's not what this language is. This language really memorializes what the current policy is, which is when you're two terms on one commission, you've exhausted your lifetime opportunity to serve on that commission, but not on any other. You asked about checks and balances for approval of policies from the library. The checks and balances really is kind of their interactions with the library director on what those policies might be. There currently isn't a provision for appeal of that policy to the city council. That was actually talked about, and there could be that, but that's not in the currently proposed language. They wanted to preserve some independent authority of those things because they have it now and didn't want to surrender that. You asked about discrimination, I think, state law in the civil service provisions. Could you remind me of what the brunt of that question was?

We kept the same language of the non-discrimination clause. I was trying to say, because they were talking about religion or other aspects why how you can be discriminated so state always come up with the classes of discrimination now so we can add that my my suggestion was we can add that into this clause that will follow the state guidelines on that yeah and there there probably is language in there for compliance with uh federal state law but um sue's coming up so i'll let her answer

The proposed language says it shall be administered in a non-discriminatory manner. It doesn't specify federal or state, but it's broad enough to encompass both. And we wanted to leave that broad such that to the extent there were any other rules or guidelines, for example, if there were state regulatory guidelines that were not state laws, we could still abide by those as well. Same thing with federal regulatory guidelines or agency regulatory guidelines. Those kinds of things, it's important for us to be able to comply with all of it. And so if we use a generalized term like non-discriminatory manner, it allows us to ensure that we comply with all of those different types of regulations.

Thank you.

and i may talk about this a little bit further we do have a although it's not developed formally yet a provision that's used in a number of places in accordance with applicable law which is which in its defined term when it's ultimately defined will be every federal state and local law or regulation that applies so in theory that could be referenced there but i understand her approach you know and how she did that councilman park do you have a question on this

I do. I mean, this executive staff has always told me that we don't like vagueness in our language because we want to be explicit. And now we're saying exactly what I've been arguing for before, which is having some interpretability is good because we can uh... make things on the fly and previously we've stated that if we want something done if we want to give people powers it must be explicitly stated if we want people to be disallowed from doing something we want that to be explicitly stated even the state is not very clear about this we had a cast bill that came before us came before the state and that we couldn't get any traction there at that what point do we determine what discrimination is and at some point not having things clearly defined as this executive staff tells me creates a problem for people who want to come in to complain where it's not there and we decide not to see it, or something is not there and we choose to see it. I mean, why are we bifurcating our requirements? Why are we bifurcating our values when we say that some things must be explicitly stated and other things should be left usefully vague?

We're not doing any of that. In this instance, I think I haven't had an opportunity to talk with Sue about this particular language. You're right, for me, clarity is the goal, and where a simple addition of a phrase can add clarity, non-discriminatory, and in accordance with all applicable law, which would include federal and state law, that probably would be a good addition. So we'll talk about that. Susan nodding, shouldn't be a problem for the groups either, so appreciate that observation. I think clarity is the goal.

But I think that what Attorney Reuter was talking about is regulations. I mean, it says regulatory guidelines that were not state laws, but we could still abide by them because of the vagueness. I think that was the point that Sue Reuter was making, and now you're telling me that that's not what we're doing.

I don't think that was the point that she was making. I think she was talking about regulations that were made by the federal or the state government, and so it would be all applicable laws.

Oh, but I'm pretty sure that it was we kept this vague because regular guy regulatory guidelines that were not state laws We could still abide by them. We could abide by anything that this discrimination and that kind of goes against what you just said Yeah, so so it would remove your your your provision for things that were not stated into law that could be considered discriminatory.

I think the point that you are making is clarity is valuable. I agree. I think clarity can be achieved. Sue hasn't been involved in every aspect of this in the definitional structure. It would be achieved by the phrase of applicable law and then applicable law as a defined term, including federal, state, laws, and the regulations and policies implemented consistent therewith that you need to comply with. And that will be in the defined term when it comes.

Understood and I think you just again missed my point that this was supposed to cover encompass regulatory guidelines that were not That were not Embedded into law and I I think that's what I heard so sorry I will let you go back and I will let you consider this I'm not going to belabor this And answer the questions thing yeah, I think I think that's right I

I think the capital project dollar question was answered by finance director if those monies weren't used, so I'm gonna keep going there. Member Chihal, you talked about the 250K. If we're gonna add a limit, adding an inflation factor, there's potentially some value of that. That also ends up being kind of a little niggling and hard to manage. If it's only gonna go up a little bit every year, you now need to calculate that amount, and so maybe some increase in blocks you know over time you know might be easier to manage but the point is a good one right one of the things that's challenging about adding a specific number is that number gets stale no matter what the number is and so the idea if you went that direction including a number to include something like that I think is a good one nuclear power we talked about I think enough to answer your questions. There is no provision in there regarding the geography of that, of where this power plant would be located. It could be anywhere. It's just financing of any interest in a nuclear power plant was prohibited by that language. You talked about use of AI as an involving issue. As you probably know, we've got AI policies underdeveloped at a staff level. The idea of including something like that with how that's evolving in the charter I think probably would be challenging and so probably wouldn't recommend that at this time because I'm not sure what we would say about it at a charter level. And then again, I think the answer that your budget questions I think were answered by Director Lee. Albert made some observations and then talked about design build being useful at the school district level. We'll talk about how it's gonna be useful at our level. and then you asked about any other level three change needed and how much extra work would go into preparing multiple ballot measures. I don't know if any of the other level three changes are needed. I think they could be considered desirable. I don't think any of them you know, adds an efficiency value that might justify the, you know, the $250,000, you know, plus, you know, price tag on adding that as a separate measure. Something for you to sort out, right, as you sort through the various level three items. But I think the CRC's, you know, recommendation reflects that. While it's up to you, the one that's clearly potentially valuable, if you decide even it needs to be split out, would be the procurement proposal. So I think that's the thought process there. We can get into that more when you get into deliberations. Member Park, you had a lot of observations including about changing the approach on level three. I think that ultimately the bylaws that were approved by you talked about different levels and the levels that were developed were consistent with the levels that were described and it wasn't suggested that level three things wouldn't be proposed. It was suggested that level three things may be considered desirable but would be identified as level three if they were in sensitive areas or were so substantive. And so I think what's come before you is consistent with the expressed purpose of the project and I think that's explained in the detailed report. We talked about the public process, why no public outreach. The 13-member group representing the public in all their public meetings was kind of the opportunity for public outreach here with the recognition that measures such as this will need more than that, right? It'll need an education program within appropriate limits, not spending money to advocate, but a public outreach program after the fact will be very important. City Attorney impartial analysis. I think the insinuation there was that I wouldn't be impartial in my preparation of that.

You just told us that in investigations of the council or investigations of things that the DA would decline or choose not to investigate that you had that concern there as well. So how could this be any different? This is just as close, just as tight, and you've actually spent a lot of time on this.

I absolutely did. I have an ethical duty for the preparation of the impartial analysis.

And yet you admit that there are some things that you question your own impartiality.

Absolutely. In different circumstances, for example, where I am hired or fired by the group that I would be prosecuting, I think that's a pretty obvious conflict of interest where I am actually describing a project to the public that no one is more familiar with than me and who has had a lot of experience writing impartial analysis. I think I could do that. But if you don't think I could, or upon reflection I don't think I could, you could decide to ask that somebody else prepare it.

Understood.

That is an option for you. Appreciate your sensitivity to that. On my behalf, I fully intend to equip myself in accordance with all my ethical responsibilities in all projects that I work on.

And in this case, the impartiality would not necessarily be to the people, to the council, to the people that are part of the project. It would be to the work that you are submitting to us. At some point, the question would be, how impartial would you be towards a recommendation that you are making to council? like I've seen even in governance and ethics, how you are very, very emotional about some of the things that you bring before governance and ethics. And I would be concerned that the things that you've spent even more time on as a charter review project would be, again, subject to that sort of emotional attachment.

Council Member Park, maybe we make it less personal. It's not personal. This is a professional.

This is a professional.

Yeah, I don't think I have any useful comment or response to that. So I'll keep going. Very good. You talked about full-text update in the printed ballot. That's certainly something that you could do. I don't think that would shed light, honestly. I think it would create more confusion, and particularly if you had both. It would also cost a lot more money on a per-page basis. That's ultimately what was the consensus of the CRC as well. You could decide differently. There's nothing that prevents you from putting a full ballot measure as many pages as you want before the public.

if you decided to proceed.

you commented about the mayor additional powers for the mayor without justification i don't i don't think that is part of the proposal i really didn't see any not that i'll be the mayor i won't but i really you probably would have kept quiet about it if you found them you're like oh another power but there really isn't another power um in in there so um i'm not sure how to respond to that the idea that there was something for everyone in this there was no communications with the council about this, no involvement with the council about this. You guys started the project. This was very consciously kept, and that's part of the challenge now, right, that we're coming in front of you. This is supposed to be, and these processes are supposed to be independent, with this group working, obviously with professional staff, because it was inherently a professional staff-driven project over time, and now it's all being presented to you. There was no, I assure you, either in my mind or in the CRC's deliberations on this, some notion that everyone needed something in it, and so I think that's a mischaracterization of the process.

I think that the comment wasn't about everything and for anyone. My comment was that the recommendations here are very broad and wide ranging, and by not limiting them to a certain area or not limiting them to a certain level,

that we have you know again one of the reasons why printing the entire text would be so long is because we're we are contemplating many many many different things that's a fair and appropriate remark it is a major proposal um and it's a substantial piece of work i appreciate your appreciation for that and this group kind of appreciates you know what's being presented before you so

Thank you for that.

Member Jane, you had another round, level three changes as separate ballot measures. I think we talked about that in enough detail.

Council Member Jane, your light's on. Was that from before?

I did have some comments because I'm getting the sense that the procurement needs to be a separate ballot measure and my question was really I had heard that some some changes like let's say increase of utility tax there's not enough time to do the research and outreach for that but do you think that there is enough effort having been put forward already on procurement that it could be its own ballot measure. Yeah, I do think that.

Could we have that at the end? Can you just finish answering all our questions before the new ones are piled on? Let's keep going. Thank you.

Appreciate that. I'll make a note of that. And again, that'll come up again in the presentation. That was the question I had asked. Yeah, thank you. And the short answer is yes, that work can be done as a separate measure. How many officers reside within the city? There is public information available on that. There's 153 sworn positions, approximately. It is known that nine of those live in the city. I don't know what ranks there are, nor do I know because it doesn't need to be a Santa Clara police officer to run for this. They just need to be a resident of the city. Nor do I know what other law enforcement officials run. I think one of the people who ran this last go around was a San Jose officer. And so it is, because of the residency requirement, a small pool. There was a fair amount of discussion about that with the idea of is residency legal required? Is that something that we could change to kind of increase the pool of people? That was very squarely put in a level four, you know, and level three, you know, times 11, you know, kind of context. That's it. They're fair questions. There's something worth, you know, thinking about or talking about potentially if the council decides to go down that path. but that was not a thing that this group could possibly get its mitts around beyond the scope of this project. If a person didn't qualify or resigned, the replacement of that position would work the same way that a vacancy in the city council seat would work. There would be a process to appoint that person. And if that person was appointed, there's a definition of the remaining term that they would serve, depending upon when they were appointed. And if there was no appointment, there's a provision for an election that would occur. just like for a council person the same rules would apply you know to the chief of police with the election as proposed in the revised language to be the next available statewide election so it could be a primary even though we don't have a primary it would be consolidated with the next available elections so that it isn't super expensive as a special election right on the one hand but happens as soon as possible in the next available consolidated election on the other hand That's part of the proposal for city council people and it would be the same for all elected officials.

Would that appointment have to comply? Would they have to have post? Do they have to be a city resident?

Whatever the qualifications, that would be in the charter for that position would also apply to the appointed position unless you change the charter to say otherwise. but as it currently applies for anyone elected or appointed to hold that position, those same minimum qualifications would apply.

So resident, okay.

Mayor, the supported level one and two, acknowledging that this is a lot, right, and figuring out how to work through it, emphasized important of communication to the voters agree. Issues later determined by city council action was a point that you made, which I think is a good one, and talking about the charter and what the nature of it. Every charter, by its nature, as you pointed out, is a constitution, and it doesn't, make all the rules, right? A substantial amount of the actual rules that the city makes, both to govern itself and its population. They all need to be consistent with the charter. But they're all made, as you know, Mayor, better than any of us, by ordinance, regulation, policy. And so this charter update doesn't change that. That's just the natural relationship between charters, which are general, and the policies that might implement them. And even without the charter contemplating a specific policy to implement them, you do that all the time right and staff proposes those things to you all the time and this and we do it just seemed like this one had a lot of to be determined later no it is to be determined but but there was quite a few of those so that's why i no i'm with you you're not wrong about that mayor but it is all of it's consistent with the terms of the charter right which is anything that implements the charter and so there is another body of work right that would need to be done but it that that does not misalign with how the charter is implemented anyway um the where there were things that were identified by this group that were they thought important enough to add to the charter but they didn't um beyond their scope to develop the detailed you know provisions within the charter itself because the charter's constitution it's not

I understand. I just don't know what my question was. Please. What will people know that they're voting on? Because there's a TBD, you know, like tons of those TBDs. There absolutely is a TBD.

We'll talk about the procurement.

So that's how do we communicate that when we don't even know what to tell them.

Yeah, I think, and it's not, again, not atypical. It is this, the charter's been changed with these things to be decided by the council later. City Manager, I think, has a comment, and then we can make it more specific, Mayor, when we talk about procurement because there actually is, the contents of what that ordinance would have in the charter proposed provision. It's not completely naked of what would need to be proposed.

I was concerned also about the transparency and the accountability, not just the content. A lot of my questions were about that other side of it. I understand the efficiency, but what about the other side of it for the public?

I appreciate that and let me just answer real quick and then turn to this. You're absolutely right, Mayor. The idea that any contemplated policy would also need to be made in public is one mitigating factor. A thing that's done that hasn't been recommended here in different circumstances is that there could be communicated a ordinance that the council was looking at that would define some of that stuff that could be communicated concurrently to put some additional parameters around it. Or you could include more specific parameters in what you're proposing. If you're worried that the people won't like the fact that you're just determining this other future thing, you could be more specific about that particular thing so that there would be more transparency in that regard. To the city manager.

Sure. Just want to reiterate, it is not atypical for a charter amendment process to be adopted with contemplated that you would adopt ordinances or other policies to implement it. And as the city attorney said, we do that all the time. I also want to remind us, in 2024, when we put Measure I on the ballot, you had a little bit of a similar conversation, which was, we know we're going to have an expenditure plan, we know the council will adopt that expenditure plan, and we're putting in the ballot language that the council will adopt that expenditure plan and how the council will adopt it, in that case, unanimous, but what you asked us to do is to bring forward that expenditure plan and put that in the public communication so the public knew what that expenditure plan would be, even though the expenditure plan wasn't in the ballot question and it was clear that the council adopted that separately. And so you could do that for some of these items at any of the level one or level twos that require additional implementation steps. If there's one or two that's particularly sensitive, you can give us direction to before the, whatever the November election date is, have that information available and out to the public so they can understand what that ordinance may look like.

I appreciate that. City Manager, I'm looking for where I wrote a couple of extra questions, and it's on the back of this document. The rules not written, hard to explain. I think we talked about that, Mayor. That was kind of the thrust of a number of your comments. How to make sure modernization doesn't reduce oversight. I don't think there's that element in it, Mayor. I get that concern. There is, again, as I pointed out, the added requirement for legal notices to potentially be more modernized by, again, a policy that you would adopt, because there wasn't a policy available there. But I don't think there's elements of it that reduce If you identify a specific one, obviously, I'd be cognizant of that and could respond to it better.

I can't identify specifically, but let's say you... We approve the design build, for instance, with no specific amounts of money or anything else. I mean, I don't know, is it an audited process? Is it publicly disclosed? Yeah, it's a great... I don't call them bidders, whatever the presenters present to the city. I mean, so... It doesn't look like we're doing backroom deals because we like this particular contractor. What is the other side of it if we're going to be efficient in how we do this? How are we going to tell the public, trust us? I think that's what I'm trying to say. Trust us and this is how we're going to build the trust there.

and fair fair comment out there there's a few elements in what the ordinance outlines and contemplates that get at that with competitive processes in different things a lot of that would go into the ordinance but i have a couple slides that will get at that

How do we, we want people to vote for this. So how are we gonna say, were we gonna say trust us later?

Or no, cause they won't. Appreciate that. It's a valid point, Mayor.

Well, I mean, if we're gonna put this out, we have to make it successful.

Yep, agreed. Agreed. Well, I've got some better answers to that when we actually dig into the specifics of it. The... and evaluate through the lens of the public. Madam Mayor, that was, and I'll speak for the CRC here, not only as representatives of the public, right? The lens of how the public will view things was very much front and center, both with the group analysis and the recommendation that was made. That's why certain things were identified as sensitive. That's why they did want some things but didn't recommend others. There was an attempt to be conscious of how the public would review and receive this. You're ultimately the decision maker about that as the person who decides, the group that decides what goes on the ballot. And if your sensitivities to that are different than the CRC's, they would recognize that it's ultimately for you all to decide what things create issues and what things might not. Mayor, I think that's the brunt of the questions. I did wanna ask staff to call up PowerPoint again, because I think it's worth digging in a little bit more to the design build concept.

Well, also, one thing that many council members brought up was the, and I looked everywhere and I couldn't find it, the level one items, the level two items, were they ever broken out anywhere? I didn't see it, did I miss it somewhere?

Yeah, Mayor, there's- Where are they? Appreciate that point that the, There isn't a line-by-line level one, level two, you know, analysis.

Well, there was a suggestion that, you know, do we want a clear level one? I don't even know what level one or level two is. And maybe we can get that so that it's very clear for us.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to talk over you. Level one and level two things are everything other than what's identified as level three.

Oh. So pretty much everything.

It's a lot, most of it is level one and level two. Now that doesn't mean you need to agree with that, right? And with the underlying strikeout, with the final report, with this presentation, the idea is to communicate to you about as much as what was proposed as possible. We can go over the definition of the levels if you want to, if you want to get a feel for that better.

I mean, I look at things at the higher level. I'm not digging into a lot of the stuff because I don't think that's our job. I think we're supposed to be here. But the way I judge these things is what brings, you know, more trust to our community or more transparency, if we're taking that away, if it's going to be less transparent to the public, then I'm not going to be in favor of it. Unless there's some guardrails around what we're doing. That's why I asked about the guardrails because if I'm going to support some of these things to make it more efficient, I want to make sure that there's protections. So, okay, so I'll have to look at everything but level three then. Okay.

Mayor, you review it as you choose.

I guess I appreciate that lens.

It's a valid one. And I think I've endeavored in my presentation this to highlight the things that could be viewed one way or the other. I understand I didn't talk about absolutely every change. And so there is a little bit of a, of, you know, a challenging communicating, you know, every aspect of this. I understand. Yeah. So, the, if we could, looks like everyone controls that. Jump ahead.

Council Member Park.

I have a comment. I mean, your definition of what a level one and level two is anything that's not a level three, that's just a tautology. At some point, you know, how do you determine what a level one and level two are? What are the differences between a level one and level two? How do you make these determinations? I think that's all very useful to have. And if, you know, as the mayor is talking about transparency and building trust, if we can't even get a definition of the, you know, the question that she directly asked, I don't see how that is a good start for transparency and trust.

Madam Mayor, Member Park, I might refer you to slide 13 of the presentation which specifies the levels.

Mayor, is it today's presentation or the one we had last Tuesday?

We have a copy, a paper copy of that. Either one of them, Mayor. I thought you had a copy of today's PowerPoint.

I'm looking. Presented to you. I don't see it, no.

In the report, if you've got the report, if you've got the report, Madam Mayor, it's also in the final report.

Oh, I didn't request papers, so I don't have one. Thank you, Nora. I have it now.

By sheer coincidence, Mayor, the levels are on page 13 of the PowerPoint and on level 3 of the final report. So if you want to read those, that is the definitions that were endeavored to be used and applied.

I was looking for like you're going to tell us specifically this change is one.

And, Mayor, I think they...

I don't know if I'll be able to figure it out.

Yeah, I gave you that. there is not a distinction on a section by section basis between level one and level two changes. If that's something that the council wants, that'd be a pretty substantial work effort, but I would do it if that's what the council needs in order to do it. So, design build is an alternative procurement uh... i think is again about the considered to be a really important aspect of this and maybe backing up and maybe i should have done this earlier even to explain to you all in the public i'm not sure your level of sophistication about this about what the difference you know is between designed to build you know in design build in this basic summary is intended to at least get at that. Design build is kind of the most commonly understood alternative procurement mechanism. There's a lot of them, right, that are, both hybrids of design-build or something else entirely. The proposed charter update really is intended to include all of those implemented by ordinance, Madam Mayor, with provisions in it. But this is just a basic explanation of the difference and what even design-build is. First of all, it's a mechanism that's used throughout the state, both by general law cities. There's even a provision for it in general law. General law cities actually have more ability to use this than we do, and many charter cities. It's different from conventional design-bid-build because you end up with a single contract between the owners, the city is the owner, and the design-build team, not a contract with the designer.

and then a contract with the contractor.

The team is usually chosen based upon the best value. In other words, you're used to this, qualifications, right, as opposed to cost. with qualifications and experience, the initial focus with costs and terms to be negotiated. If you choose a qualified team and you can't reach terms with them because you're not satisfied with how they're costing something or you just can't reach agreement on other things, you can move on to the next most qualified person. You could also conclude as part of this process that you know what, I'm just going to bid this low bid because this isn't working out. So it is a tool to engage with certain types of projects that lend themselves to this mechanism. The design and the construction may overlap, allowing preliminary project construction to begin sooner. With design-bid-build, it's designed, you bid it, and it's built sequentially. With design-build, You potentially, depending upon how you structure the contract, can have some elements of the project both designed and implemented while you work on other elements of design for the more substantial elements of the project. So a common, both a difference and an advantage. The designer contractor Collaboration can lead to innovative solutions, value engineering, and more efficient construction methods, improving project speed and quality. You have in this instance, as opposed to, and we'll talk about that in the next bullet point, instead of a designer and a contractor who have separate contracts and potentially divergent interests, pointing fingers at each other and saying one person didn't design it right, this person didn't construct it right, they're responsible for the change, or no, you're responsible for it. This is a team that is paid together and work together, potentially in a guaranteed maximum price contract to implement the project. And so that can result in all of those things. The responsibility for design errors, emissions, and coordination is shifted to the design-built entity, resulting in fewer disputes, finger-pointing, and change orders. Again, you're getting a team as opposed to potentially conflicting parties that are in a single contract with you. And then there's a coordinated design construction process that can generate cost certainty through a guaranteed maximum price contract. You don't always get the lowest price. But you get a frequently a guaranteed maximum price as part of your negotiations as opposed to a design, a contractor, a dispute, change orders, right, which can increase, you know, the price for certain types of contracts.

Not all, but it can happen.

So it's considered a useful tool, not for all projects. For example, street construction, things that are mostly materials and the kinds of labor that you understand and not a lot of different site conditions. Design, bid, build is the most logical process and would continue to be used. But for complex design intensive projects, Like fire stations or electric utility projects, this type of mechanism and our alternative mechanism is considered to be highly desirable. There are potential drawbacks, but there are mitigations for those drawbacks. Since the project isn't fully designed at the outset, when the project team is chosen, there is some loss of control of that, but it can be mitigated with what are called bridging documents, right, preliminary designs, and a progressive design build process that allows you to go down the path and understand costs as you go. There's a potential administrative cost increase while staff comes up to speed with the process. We don't do design build here currently. We do have some folks with experience doing this, Director Mobeck, Mark Freitas, who's head of the Measure I project, they've each done these in different contexts and are familiar with this. It would take some development to come up to speed on it, so those issues can be mitigated. Increased cost due to award to other than the low bidder. That's absolutely possible, but with the benefits and offsetting value that was discussed, cost can still be a factor in the award or negotiated as part of the process with off-ramps, as was described. And then reports from a lot of industry experts and cities and public agencies that use this is that they've been successful with it in getting higher quality and expedited projects. Not always, it's not perfect, like no procurement mechanism, but it's considered valuable. Mayor, to your point, best value procurement subject to subjective and invite favoritism. The award is still competitive, you know, in this environment, just like any best value contract, right, where you're awarding based upon.

It's not the lowest bid.

But it's not the lowest bid. You're absolutely right. But it is, it doesn't mean there's not a process for selection and ranking, right, in accordance with the panel. And an ordinance, right, that could specify things even above and beyond that. So it's still competitive, and the implementing ordinance can include conflict of interest safeguards. There also has been expressed concerns that small or local contractors can't compete in this complicated process. That is potentially true, but it's usually not used for projects that are the kind that small or local contractors are involved in. Again, it's these larger, more sophisticated projects. Design-Bid-Build will still be used for most contracts, right, where potentially you know, the smaller or local contractors could bid. So we'll potentially talk about this if you'd like to. Mayor, I wanted to... refer back to the proposed ordinance, or the proposed charter language that outlines the elements that would go into an approving ordinance, because it gets at some of what you're talking about. City Council, and so this says, hey, if this is included, there'll need to be an ordinance, right, and it needs to include these types of provisions. City Council retaining approval rights over what it defines as a major project, based on factors such as construction cost, project value, or other relevant considerations with minor project contracts approved by the city manager. So you would decide that. You're right, the specific threshold isn't included, but the ordinance would need to define that. Competitive bid processes for all contracts with formal advertisement for bids and sealed bids required for all major contracts. So again, guidelines and protections built in. In general, except as provided below, the award of contracts to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder. What's provided below, Mayor, are the best value award options, but the standard will still be that. The ability to reject bids, I think that's pretty standard. Emergency authority to waive applicable competitive bid process requirements. You currently have that in the charter, it's just not worded very well. That concept would be preserved in the ordinance. The ability of the city to implement public works using city employees upon determination by the approving authority, which is the city council for major projects and the city manager for minor projects, that the work can be better performed and more economically by the city employees. That's the current standard, it just has a different threshold defined by major and minor contracts. Define terms, including definitions for maintenance, et cetera, and other things. And such other provisions, miscellaneous. And then there's a procurement alternative sections, Mayor, which is pretty broad in listing the kinds of procurement elements that would be, or the types of alternative procurement that potentially would be allowed. It's purposely intended to be broad. and it says the city's implementing ordinance for any such procurement alternative shall include standards for solicitation of value and selection of qualified contractors and no such exception or alternative process shall be applied to a public works unless it is part of a citywide policy or program approved by the city council by ordinance and the approving authority has determined that its application to the public works is in the best overall interest of the city. So it's not super detailed, but there are some pretty, you know, meaningful, you know, guidelines built into what would, the measure, right, that would be approved by the voters, ultimately the council's obligation to implement that. So.

Council Member Jane, you have your, is that from before?

I have a number of comments and questions.

All right, city attorney, is that it for your?

Yeah, for that, I guess I would ask or if any of the folks.

I think you've made your point that you really want to see this. So are you going to talk about anything else? Otherwise, I'm going to go for more questions. I think that's fine.

I'm looking at folks. Anything to add from your guys' standpoint? I didn't misstate anything in your perspective. Very good, Madam Mayor. Thanks.

City Manager? Otherwise, I'm going to Councilmember James.

I think we'll hit it during the Q&A. I want to articulate some other benefits of design, but we'll hit it during the Q&A.

We've heard a lot about that. Councilmember James?

Yeah, I sit on the VTA oversight committee for the $13 billion tunnel project. And I've looked at lots of different contracting methodologies. And the issue with design-bid-build is you have to have 100% design. and if you're in challenging conditions no one wants to bid on that so then you end up with maybe even a one bidder and you have to go re-bid it out so we're looking at 400 million dollars of infrastructure bonds we're looking at 450 million dollars of svp work and We need to move on these things quickly. We can't rely on antiquated procurement practices when there have been so much innovation in contracting methodologies. I mean, there's progressive design build, there's cost plus, which the federal government has now banned, but there's modified cost plus, there's um target price pain share gain share there's construction manager general contractor cmgc there's lots of other things we need to employ all of those to be able to get the best projects as quickly as we can to be stuck with and there's an urgency here we can't just wait until 2028 because we've got to build that transmission line we've got to build our substations we've got to build all this infrastructure so If there's no appetite to put this in the level one, level two, I'm proposing that we do a separate ballot measure for procurement to modify this. But then there was, there is actually less transparency when you go to design build and progressive design build. And the reason why you get less transparency is because you bid, you do RFQs, requests for qualifications. So you're just selecting people based on their ability to do the project. Then when they bid to you, you have meetings with the bidders, potential bidders, and they propose proprietary methods to implement the project that cannot be disclosed publicly. So all of these discussions are actually done with less transparency than design bid build, but it is a common way to get complicated projects done more quickly, and we have to move with speed. So the other thing, comment that I wanted to make was that earlier, I know we're talking about procurement right now, there was a comment that there's been very little outreach. And so we actually, the whole council got an email from Carolyn Shuck from the Sacramento Weekly They have published 10 articles on the Charter Review Committee since September 23rd, 2025. There was an article September 23rd, 2025, November 12th, November 21st, February 6th, April 3rd, April 7th, April 28th, May 27th, and June 8th, and then there's a blogger out there that's also publishing about the charter review so there has been a fair amount of publicity about this and as the city manager said it's just not sexy so we're not getting a lot of attention oh that was you sorry he doesn't want to be associated with okay and i don't blame him i probably shouldn't have said it that way okay So, it's unfortunate that we have such little participation from the public in this process. And, you know, we will do better. But, again, we're constrained by the perception of selling this. I know if we're going to put stuff on the web, we need to put the whole annotated strikeout version and the clean versions because the comments and annotations are valuable, particularly things around ethics. you know, why is there no discussion about an ethics commission? That's important to have in there. And that will provide transparency if anyone bothers to read it. But, you know, it's long. It's 74 pages. So if you put that in a booklet for the public, it's going to be expensive and probably very few people will read it. I like electronic stuff because I can search for things that I'm interested in. Paper doesn't Generally work for me in any case. It's gonna be a challenge.

Thank you Thank you, I'm gonna tip my hand a little bit and Explain kind of where I'm at on this I will say that Councilmember Jane alluded to something and I if I understand correctly right the ROV's rules that the more pages you have it it has to be translated and so that gets very very expensive for the city but I will say if we have links to something your translation can be any language almost here online and I will say that our online translators are so much better than they were five years ago. If someone I would like to see if someone wants to get a copy and a hard copy and cannot that we have some way to send that. But knowing how few people actually came to our charter review committee that tells me they're not as engaged or concerned as the rest of us are. And like I said, the majority of the people who've read the charter in the room at this point. So I think the links are the best way to go. I like that. I like the level one, level two, lumping that together, giving the clean version, giving the red line version with the annotations because I know I read all that and I thought that really, really helped to understand why. Out of the five things that are controversial, My understanding is the property over $500, that was only controversial because it wasn't in there, it was taking something out, it was a, quote, a change. And I can't even think of a size of property in the city that would be under 500. Even a outhouse or a telephone booth would not even, qualify there so So I think that I could feel very comfortable with the level 1 level 2 and and taking that property out the over 500 line I Do agree with councilmember Jane that the public works procurement is extremely important I would like to see it separate. I know that will cost us more but when we talk about cost We have, as was mentioned, $400 million in bond money that has been allocated to us to do our very best with. And if we allow ourselves to have a design build option and other good procurement options, this money will go further. And it will make a difference for our residents. And I think if we couch it in at the allow, and as I alluded to before about our water treatment plant, because you have one contractor, when we had a piece fail, there was no question about liability. It was on them and it was part of the contract and it did not cost us anything more. It cost us a bit of time but that was built into the contract and this was a positive And because of that, that dewatering facility will be online much faster than if we had gone with the old policy of design, build, build. And that's because San Jose is allowed to do that. And I want us to allow ourselves more options. So as I said, I am tipping my hand that I would be amenable to moving forward level one, level two and taking out that property number and then separately doing our public work procurement and helping our residents understand why this is important because we have got to rebuild our fire stations, We have got, we are rebuilding right now in phases our international swim center. We have these large, projects that we need to give ourselves as much as many tools as Possible to make those funds go as far as possible and to do that correctly for our residents is what we are tasked with So that's why I feel very strongly about that.

Thank you Thank You councillor Chahal Thank you, ma'am.

So I have some comments about the design build part. We are discussing basically a if we know we already have very few bids for our regular projects, so not that I'm trying to be in a negative sense, how can we ensure that when we move to design-build versus design-bid-build, we'll have a more number of contractors because now we are even squeezing the parameters that, oh, there will be very few bidders or companies or vendors who can do that design and build both at the same time. So we are squeezing the panel which can do that work. But at the same time, if we may have a broad ordinance, My idea would be we should have a great project estimate so that nobody is way outlier what we are thinking basically. Let's say we have to build a fire station, right, and our team thinks this cost for design, this is for the build, and total project cost is let's say $50 million. So we should have that number in our ordinance that, hey, this is the estimated cost. And if the design build process comes up close to that, well and good. But if it is outlier on that, of course we'll have to go and check out other bidders of design. I'm not trying to... do a way with design build, but I'm trying to see how we can save money as well as add a more efficient function to this one. So our ordinance, whatever guidelines we make, they have to be very, very clear. And why I'm saying this thing, because there should be some checks and balances into this process. it's not that single source oh only this this is the only vendor who can design and build but he's charging us 50 percent more than what our estimate is i won't recommend that we are trying to make it efficient but at the end of the day money is what is constrained within the cities within the municipalities so how we can make that process efficient and we have to define our ordinance what we do that so there should be some checks and balances on that

Thank you. Those are my comments. Those were just comments, right? Okay. All right. Those are all our comments. So tell us our next steps, please. And we have a slide. There's a slide. Okay.

We've done council questions. We've done public testimony. I think we're at the council deliberation and direction part of this. Member Hardy potentially made a suggestion for a path forward, at least in her view. I might ask a question of her about that. There is also listed as one of those, I'm sorry, I'll go back up. of one of the level three items was civil service rules subject to meet and confer provisions. To the extent that there is agreement on the modified version of what was presented to you, I think that falls out of a level three and then becomes something that's just really more of a level two update. So I'm wondering if your support

You're asking an individual council member if they support an item? Is that what you're doing?

No, Mayor.

I'm just trying to clarify. You're looking at Council Member Hardy and asking her about that. I'm just curious. Are you going to ask us individually?

It didn't mean anything inappropriate, Madam Mayor. No, no.

I didn't mean that. I'm trying to figure out. You're asking one council member about something. I just wanted to know next steps.

So I made a mistake with that. I guess the council was supportive of proceeding in the way that was described. I might suggest that just to point out that civil service rules falls out of level three. We heard you. And into level two. Yeah. So back to next steps, Madam Mayor. If you guys, depending upon what you might decide and what direction you might give. If there's things you want the CRC to do more work on or look into or come back with, CRC convenes again this Wednesday.

The way I see this, I don't know if everyone's ready to make a decision tonight. I think that they, at least the reps that were here, or maybe those online can listen, you know, at some point, they've heard our individual comments about, you know, there's some themes here for certain things, so I don't... Are you hoping that we... I guess I'd like a direction. A direction from a majority of the council. Is that what you're looking for? I'm not prepared to give you any direction to say I'm going to do this or that. Now that I know everything in here is one and two, I have to read it over again. Madam Mayor, I perfectly understand. So that's why I'm saying I'm not ready, but maybe they're ready, but I'm certainly not.

Maybe let me rephrase in light of that, Mayor. I didn't mean to be presumptuous. If a majority of the council was ready to direct staff how to proceed, then you could do that. And then if there is any modifications to what's been prepared for you that you would ask for, then staff, after communing with the CRC on this Wednesday, could bring back an updated version of that.

If a majority of you, or by consensus, would prefer

to just percolate, right, and think more about it. There is, getting to this next steps kind of section, there is bandwidth that's been set aside, thank you city manager, at the beginning of the June 23rd meeting from five to seven where, This could be taken up again. You could have further deliberations and potentially provide direction at that point. So either tonight, Mayor, if there's an appetite for direction, that'd be great. If there's not, the CRC can debrief and we could agendize this IM in effect again, but not with me exhausting you with another presentation, but with you all taking it up and asking further questions.

So, Vice Mayor Gonzales, let's see if there's anything that this majority wants to do.

Vice Mayor Gonzales. We'll see that appetite. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll make a motion to take the level one and level two. If that, if the civil service, if we can confer with our associations or unions and get an agreement there and bring that into level two, we can bring that as well.

motion to be for level one level two as well as uh civil service if that does come into level i mean level two i can second that with that understanding that uh the civil service the meet and confer would have to go through thank you all right uh councilman jane

We can vote on this or we can, I'm suggesting an amendment that we put the procurement in as a separate ballot measure.

That was the idea that I was going to make this motion and then a future motion.

Okay, that's fine.

Okay, I won't be supporting the motion. I'm not ready for that, so.

Yeah, I was going to say I don't think I'd support that motion either. I mean, I'd like to. We still have a little bit of time. We've got the CRC meeting on Wednesday. I mean, I'd like to see the potential downsides of especially the substantive level two changes. At some point, we don't know what the potential downsides are. I'd like some justification on why something is a level one or level two. There are some things that I read that I understand why you say it's level two, but I think it's a little bit deeper than that. I'd like to see another discussion at a regular council meeting, not on a Monday night. I mean, I told a lot of people about this meeting, but they told me they could not make it. It's a Monday night. What are we having? Why aren't we having this on a Tuesday? And the short answer is, well, it's a special meeting. And I think that at some point, the public deserves— I mean, whether we can have a public workshop, and I'd like to have that. Maybe we don't have time for that. And that tells me how late this is coming in front of council, which is if we don't even have time for public outreach. It's not about the deliberations, the CRC meetings. It was about, did we do public outreach about the conclusions? Did we have workshops with the public? Did we have meetings with the public about the conclusions about what we're going to bring to council? And the short answer is, I don't think we've done that. The fact that the city attorney thinks that the public outreach was the CRC, was the committee, I don't think that that's exactly—I think you misunderstand what public outreach is for the entire process. That's one part of the process, I agree, I understand that, but we need a lot more education on now that we've had these deliberations now that CRC has had 10 different meetings now that we've got you know a history of of what the CRC has done these are the final comments this is what we're bringing forward this is what you need to know and if you want to talk about this you know this is the time to do it you know not after the fact not after council has made the decision on this is what the ballot measure is so I will not be supporting this motion either thank you thank you councilmember Hardy

All right, lights off. All right, Council Member Chauhal.

I'm also in the same board. Like, I want to deliberate a little bit more myself on all the aspects, basically, because we got all the information in the last two meetings, and then gel with it, then find out where we stand. And I would say we should move this thing to our at least next meeting to finalize that. And other reason I'm doing this thing, because CRC as well as city attorney, city manager, everybody got some idea today from the council because it was last meeting was just one way communication but today at least you heard some things and it makes sense for you all to come up with something concrete and we all to decide something concrete and then make a decision at that time. Not today.

Thank you. Vice Mayor Gonzales.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So as far as the level, we've been able to look at this for a while. When you brought this back in, I think it was April or March, as far as some of the things that we were looking at, as far as the levels we're concerned, I understand we're not even, I won't even talk about the other item here at level three, but as far as level one, level two, when we look at our, and we've entrusted our community that we've, appointed to be a part of the CRC. We've given them a task. They came back with some suggestions here, and we were pegged with looking at this and seeing what we were comfortable with. Level one and level two, I would say, are low-hanging fruit. I mean, it's just kind of things that, you know, 50 year old 40 year old document and maybe some of that's been a touch here in the last 20 years but um something that we uh we know we need to um to resolve and i i i look at this from from my perspective as far as being on the school board you know we we had board policies that were from the 80s were out of compliance with CDE and other things, right? So this is a normal process. You have to have this normal look at our charters. Sometimes you delve in a little bit deeper. I think the CRC really did a good job as far as looking at what we can do and what the different levels are. And I'm for this. uh and trying to move us forward i understand there's there's communication there will be a lot of communication we're not going to put this on the ballot tomorrow right as long as you state the facts and and get that communication out to to the public they can look at it and and take a vote in november but i'm definitely in support of this especially the level one level twos uh councilmember cox

I just wanted to agree with Vice Mayor Gonzales there. I think that, again, this would have been an easier sell if you would have listed the ones, the twos within the specific groups and recommendations. I think it is asking the level of trust, because what we're saying here is if we agree to the motion, there are only one, two, three, four, five items that we're gonna come back and talk about. And this is a tremendous amount of content. I will, however, say for functionality, and again, in trusting a competent group of people, If this is what the Charter Committee was tagged to do, the level one and twos, then I would be comfortable voting on this now. I just want to confirm that our next step, if that was to pass, is to say that we are only going to be talking about Measure R, the deletion of the published notice and public bid opportunity, increased qualifications for the lieutenant, public works procurement and civil service rules. And then again, if the I'm sorry, the service commission, who meet and confer, doesn't go through, that's back on this agenda as well. Is that correct? Those are the five items that are not level one or level two. And again, I agree, it would have been great to have some understanding of what a level one was compared to a level two. I think that this is demonstration of how that strengthens a case. But I do think you guys have done good work on this and the level one, two was what the charter committee was set out to do.

So I am supportive. Thank you. Councilmember Hardy.

I will just say if I'm understanding the motion correctly that this is just to say we want to move forward with this idea that this is not putting anything in stone but that I know those of us who read through this very, very carefully that one and two situations I did not see major problems with and that we obviously need to have more discussion on some of the other ones but that's my understanding is that this motion is to just move the process forward. Thank you.

So what does it mean moving the process forward? Because there's a lot of holes in the level one and level two recommendations that are out there. There's a lot of missing information. So if this council is saying, yes, we're ready to put that on the ballot, then I'll oppose it. So what does it mean? Are you voting now to not talk about it anymore, as Councilmember Cox said? Is that what this means? I'm asking the motion people.

I'm saying that we can put this on the ballot today. Not today, but obviously we're going to put it before the public.

From my perspective, the CRC did their work. I just want to know what this means. You're ready to go. Put it on.

With level one and level two.

All right. Okay. Council Member Park.

That was my clarification. You're saying that you're okay with putting a ballot measure with all the level ones and level twos together? Okay. And I'm saying that, again, I would like to see, now that we've done a lot of input, now that we've got, I mean, we've got a presentation, we've asked a lot of questions, we had a lot of comments, just to kind of clean that up and present something that the public can speak on. Again, this was, I've asked people to come to this meeting. They could not come. I would like to discuss the cleaned up version of this presentation with only the things that we're discussing with a little bit clearer definitions of what a level 2 is, especially the level 2 that have substantive changes. I'd like to know what the downsides and what the concerns are with those, why they're considered substantive. And I'd like the public to be part of that at a regular meeting.

Okay, City Clerk, when you're ready.

So I think what I hear the motion on the floor to be is approving level 1 and 2 recommendations, adding civil service rules to level 2 if meet and confer approves. Is that correct?

If I can, to the mayor. Just to be clear, that is not an action to place it on the ballot. That is direction to staff to develop the items for you to make a decision to place it on the ballot. And that would occur at your July 14th meeting.

But it is accepting all the level one and level two. So it's accepting it. We're not even going to talk about it anymore. It's over. All we're going to talk about is the other separate items.

Mayor, I'm just clarifying what the action, what the proposed action is, is that it's direction to staff to prepare materials to bring back to you on the 14th. You will, I think like you always have discussions on the 14th around that, but it is clear direction for staff on how to proceed based on what you've been presented today.

And it's clear. All right. All right. Councilmember, everybody's putting their lights on again now. Okay. Let's go for another round. Councilmember Cox.

I agree that there needs to be transparency. We have one more meeting for this, right? And if everything is back for discussion again and this has a July 14th deadline, like there's no way we're going to get through this conversation again. I just I don't know how we can successfully manage a meeting right now with this coming forward without some progress made on it.

I'm assuming with this motion and the second that it's taking level one and two with direction to get it ready for the ballot. Am I wrong?

You're not wrong.

I don't think I'm wrong. July 14th.

July 14th. I want staff to come back with the strikeout and the, you know, the red, the red strikeouts and the clear message as far as both documents in the charter for level ones and level twos. And the civil service of that gets into the meeting and confirm what works out with that. But as far as, I'm not sure what else staff is looking at doing, but that's kind of what my idea as far as getting it clear where you have two documents, this is the changes for level one and level two.

If I may.

So I think the motion that's on the table we've talked about and that's clear. It's direction to staff to proceed to prepare the necessary materials for you to act on July 14th. Also there based on the conversation has been the discussion and a few council members have have said that they might be interested in One of the level three is as a separate ballot question and that is the procurement item So based on tonight I'm assuming that we would need to come back to you in another meeting before the 14th to discuss that item in a little bit more detail to determine if you want us to bring that on the July 14th for you to act on. I think in the city attorney's presentation, he had June 23rd and we've allocated 5 to 7 o'clock, so that is before the regular meeting. and we've also taken a look at your business calendar and there is a july 7th date that we can have a discussion on on this as well but one of those dates i think we would need to come back on that separate ballot topic unless there was a motion made after this motion to direct us to do that to do that as well all right councilmember park

I mean, I hear Vice Mayor saying that, well, you wanted the clear documents for Level 1 and Level 2, and we can do that without accepting the Level 1s and Level 2s. At some point, if we've got an issue here, I think that telling the staff to prepare the documentation without accepting the Level 1 and Level 2 does the same thing. I understand that there is concern that this would take a while, but again, this tells me that this is—this item was brought to council very late. I understand that a number of changes that were made and at the time I was kind of hoping that it wouldn't be this big but as the city attorney said the charter review is looking at everything in the charter from top to bottom and that was not what was supposed to happen here. the fact that we spent a lot of time discussing a lot of time discussing a lot of things even the crc was discussing things that you know would not make it on the the uh as a ballot measure i think that that was kind of poor direction i think that we should have focused on and again i know what the level one and level twos were as we defined them and level two here now says uh some changes are substantive but not thought to be significant or made in sensitive areas so as to warrant consideration as possible separate ballot measures. And the short answer is I want to know why they're substantive. And at some point, I would like an analysis on what the drawbacks, on what the concerns are with just the items that we're looking at. We've had a number of questions. We've had a number of clarifications. To be honest, I look at my notes, and some of the clarifications don't even make a lot of sense. to me. But we need to look at this, and I think that before we accept the level 1s and level 2s, we can ask staff to move forward with level 1s and level 2s without accepting them. But I think it would be a good idea to give the public one more chance to be part of this discussion before we simply make a judgment on what the ballot measure should be. Again, I will not be supporting this, and I think that if people are looking at supporting this, bless you, but at the same time, this was brought to us as a much bigger project than it was. The fact that the city manager, every single time I talked to the city manager, was working on the city charter project was kind of a yellow flag, if not a red flag to me. And at some point, bringing it here was a very bad thing. I think we can do all the things that the Vice Mayor asked for, clarification, cleanup of the level one and level two of all the discussions that we've had here without accepting them for a ballot measure at this point. Once we get the cleanup, once we understand a little bit more of what the concerns and the drawbacks could be, if we have, maybe nobody else from the public comes on those days either, then it'll be very short. But I think that to simply move ahead is, not very responsible of us. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Jane.

Yeah, this charter has not been updated for decades. And, you know, we had we've had the charter review committee meeting at least 10 times as a whole, and then all the subcommittees. This know this council has done things that have you know languished for years and years like the isc like the infrastructure bond we're taking care of business and we need to take care of this we need to trust that the charter review committee and if you read all the comments and i hope that all the comments are going to be made available to the public You can see all the deliberations memorialized in those comments and you can see what was substantive and what was not. If you, I mean, post requirement for the chief of police, I don't know. Is that substantive? I don't know. It's very vague what is substantive, but I believe that the Level 1 and Level 2 changes are appropriate. You can see what the Level 3 are here. They were deemed to be controversial to some extent more controversial to some extent of course ethics commission was level four that was quite controversial uh changing a chief of police to appointed that again is a level four maybe a level five but the the point of it is that we have very little time this committee has met many many times for 9 months, I guess. So it's a lot of work went into this. It was a comprehensive charter review change to make it up to date to modern charters, modern general law cities. I don't see anything really controversial in the clean copy that I read so and then finally on the 14th we don't have to approve this we can actually amend it as long as it the city attorney says that it's not going to cause any legal issues but We amend motions all the time. We can amend it on the 14th if we have to but it's Unless it's a controversial thing that may not be legal. So That is my comment on that.

I just want to say that what's going out now. There's so many to be determined in there that I don't even know how we would go to the community and say hey support this because It basically says, there's some very simple ones and I get that. That's kind of what I expected in the charter review, but there are so many instances that say, this is how we're gonna change it, but we're bringing it to a future council for an ordinance. How in the world do you go out and support something like that when you cannot even tell the community what we're changing, how we're changing, and how it will affect them in the future? There's too many of those in this level one and level two, and I needed time to go through it. This is actually our first time talking about it. I didn't go to the meetings and I purposely stayed away. I didn't talk to my appointee. I wanted to see what was presented back. When I saw it, this is our first discussion and everyone is eager to get it going and I get that, but you have to be very careful that if you want the charter review ballot argument to pass, you have to be able to defend it. And so I don't think people up here are really looking at it with that lens that, what are you going to tell the public? And you're going to say, no, trust us. The next council is going to take care of it. Oh, really? What are the thresholds? What is it? Oh, no, trust us. The next council will take care of it. Those aren't good enough answers to get this to pass. So I'm hoping that people, I know you're going to vote for this and move it on, but I'm hoping that people will really consider what it takes to make a successful charter amendment. I've been through a few of these and you have to be very clear because if they think there's ambiguity, they think we're trying to hide something, there's no clear answers, people you say are not paying attention, they are paying attention. And unless, you know, we're very clear on what we're proposing, which I think we can be, but now, you know, people just want to move it ahead. Well, I think the haste in this, even though we have time, the haste is going to doom it. So I really think that we should I don't know what this motion is for, but whatever. I don't want to waste any more time talking. You know my position. I'm going to just not support it. Okay. But I do want to make some clarification. Okay. Vice Mayor Gonzales.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So July 14th we're going to have another we're basically going to be able to say yes or no as far as moving it forward. This is just directing staff to basically move forward, get this ready for us to make a decision there. whether we bring it back on the 23rd or on the 14th of July. But taking no action tonight, you know, leaves us almost in the same predicament as we started the night. You know, our CRC team definitely did a lot of work, spent nine months on this, at least 28 meetings in their ad hoc meetings and 10 other ones, you know, as a whole body. And if we don't Usually when I've sat on different boards, you have smaller groups to help with bylaws, help with those things to get things kind of started, get the ball rolling, and I think the CRC did a great job of doing that, and I think we're in a good position to just keep going with that. It doesn't mean that we're going to put it on the ballot tomorrow, but we are going to direct staff today, if it passes, to bring it back into position so we can move forward.

Council Member Park.

Yeah, I hear that. I mean, you know, taking no action tonight basically lives in the very, very start. No, like we're going to make a decision on this again in July regardless. By saying that we are accepting the level one and level twos now without a lot of discussions doesn't make any sense. I hear that we've had a lot of discussions. A lot of the subcommittee meetings were closed. There were closed discussions. There were closed sessions. And why were they closed sessions? I mean, nobody had access to those, not even the public. I think that's one of the reasons why when you read the—if you actually read the news stories, the news stories don't go into those things, because there was nothing to report on. Those discussions were private. The question is, why were those discussions private? Usually we have closed sessions because the material that we're talking about requires some privacy. But in this case, I don't understand. All of these things, all of these discussions should have been out in the open. This is the charter. This is what the discussion should have been. The fact that they were in private actually gives me a lot of concern. And when people say, well, we've had a lot of meetings that's been a long time, that's not the full story. I mean, we're talking about, you know, I mean, level one, if we feel the world has changed, we failed on level one. Level two, again, the world shouldn't change substantially based on level two. And at some point, we're having these discussions. Right? Why are we removing the guard against working for the city or holding office to be on civil service? Why are we removing that guard? Why are we removing the requirements for the mayor to provide justification or means for financial proposals? Why are we removing consequences for unexcused absences? Why are we removing consequences for, you know, asking people to be employed or be removed from employment from the city? I mean, these are the things that we really need to discuss. And again, Vice Mayor Gonzales, I hear what you're saying that, oh, we need to move forward. Getting the ball rolling as a final decision for putting on a ballot measure, those are two different things. Getting the ball rolling is giving direction to staff to come back, to give us a presentation with you know, with the red lines, with everything cleaned up, giving us more information about the pros, the consequences, the drawbacks of each one of the items with the context of these are the level ones, this is why they're level ones, these are the level twos, this is why they're level twos. But saying that you want to make a ballot measure decision now and we could potentially amend it later, that is a shoot, ready, aim. at some point we should make a ballot statement we should make a ballot measure motion when we believe that the items that are before us are clear thank you

Thank you. Council Member Cox. I forgot my question. I feel like I have no idea what we're voting on now. I need clarification on what the motion was because if we're essentially saying come back with a prettier version of this and we're still going to discuss it, I don't know if that truly is worth anyone's time and this drawn out conversation right now. I'd like clarification on that from the city manager what you understand this motion is.

Yeah, go ahead. And Madam Mayor, I'd like to say something, if I might, too. And I don't want to get in the way of council deciding how to proceed, but just a few observations. I think the process that this group went through was very deliberate. actually very public with those groups reporting out monthly to the full CRC in public. It was a lot and it happened over a long period of time. I would, in light of that and all the thoughtfulness that went into the process and the product, I would hate to have this group's support divided over the process now that you've heard it just two times. And so I'm actually both appreciative of- One and a half times. Yeah.

Yeah. One and a half. Last time you spent a lot of time. Don't disagree.

So I'm very appreciative of the folks that are comfortable with this and and supportive of it. And I think there's other support, you know, there too. It's just feeling like it's rushed. And so if there is a desire, either from folks who made the motion or the or the group anyway, to have this taken up again on the 23rd with Maybe some examples of level one versus level two change, right? Not everything characterized, but some examples of that. And the handful of the more substantive versions of the level twos that some of you have focused on, because you've looked at the annotations, highlighted as what those are. We would, and it's me, I say we, it's mostly me, I could help put that together and have that be presented to all of you again if that would result in greater comfort and potential broader support for going forward with a version of what's been tendered. And so I would also add, Mayor and Council, if I might appreciate the idea that Mayor Mrakas, This would come back on July 14. Mayor Mrakas, But. Mayor Mrakas, In my head July 14 really is everything's been approved. Mayor Mrakas, there's support for what's being brought back because there's a lot of extra work that goes into actually turning all of this. into a ballot question and all the different elements that need to be, that the clerk needs to work on in order to put this in front of you, including the costing and the budget allocation for it. And if there's not, again, it doesn't need to be unanimous, but if there's not a substantial amount of council support for that, to take an action tonight and then just have all of that come back on the 14th, wouldn't be as the same quality of process, I think, that this group went through in getting us here in the first place. And so I'm prepared to do the work if that's the desire of the the majority of the council to actually have another discussion on the 23rd. I think, as is proposed, there needs to be a little bit more of a discussion anyway about the potential standalone measure for procurement. And so council can proceed as they want, appreciate the support, understand some of the hesitance as well, given how substantial of a proposal this is. And I just wanted to share that with the group before you finalize those deliberations. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you, so councilmember Cox yes the maker of the motion to clarify the motion so that she would know What the motion means so could you repeat your motion again? I'm sorry or Nora. Would you like to repeat the motion?

Let's do it that way Direct staff to develop and prepare materials and return to the July 14 2026 council meeting to take action on level one and two recommendations for ballot measure placement for the November 3rd 2026 election

Including the civil service rules update to level 2 is subject to meet and confer resolutions Understand that so you're preparing us language that could potentially be on a ballot measure And I wanted to follow up to the mayor's point Whether we had the July 18th meteor prepared or not that there are 18 items that are going to be deferred to a later council those do not get resolved between now and then regardless do they

Not with this motion.

I don't think they can. They're all from former councils. Unless we change that completely, regardless, that is going to stand as the Charter Review Commission envisioned it. There are 18 deferrals to later councils that can't be resolved before July 17th. Correct?

You've used that 18 number, and I'm not exactly sure what the 18 are, but there are a meaningful number of policies or ordinances to be made. 18 actually surprises me a little bit, but we can talk about that. But the answer would be if in fact that number is right, right? Whatever that number is, if there are policies or ordinances that are contemplated, Those will not be developed between now and when you need to take action to put it on the ballot.

So to reiterate my point, we will, regardless, be taking action on a charter review adjustment that has items that need to be contemplated in the future. We cannot resolve that before we vote on it. Oh, I've made that more confusing. Good, OK. Yeah, I think that's right.

I think that's right. I can't imagine being able to draft, you know, those policies between now and July 14th. I'm sorry. Yeah.

No, I take that. I understand.

Yeah. So, so I guess you're identifying that as, as, as a defect, right. In the.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, um, and I think we made this point before in the city manager may, I mean, you're, you're, The idea that the charter itself, as was said before, is a document that begs for implementation because it doesn't have everything in it. And it contemplates, for example, an administrative code in its existing provisions that provide additional detail for all of the basic provisions that it's in it.

So you went through that city attorney already. So I think I'm with you.

I'm just the question's been asked, you know, again, as if and I wanted to make sure. that we're clear about that. That's kind of the nature of what a charter is. And so the idea that there's some additional ones, the 18 again surprises me, and that those won't be, but I'm not disagreeing with you. I don't know that you're wrong. I'm just, that sounds like a lot. And a lot of work for me. Your question is, is that, are all of those policies gonna be drafted No, because they wouldn't be drafted unless the charter was approved. And in fact, the voters say, we now want all of those things to be implemented. So that's how it's set up. And I don't think that's atypical for how it to be set up. But the answer to your question is, no, they will not be drafted between now and when you ask.

Okay.

I'm sorry, city manager, did I answer that? That's correct.

You're correct.

You did. He's correct. I think that there's another way to look at it, though. I think you can look at it one way and say, hey, these X number of things aren't defined and that's somehow a defect. I actually don't see it like that. And I think a number of municipalities don't see it like that. What you're essentially saying is, we're making a determination that specificity is not appropriate or shouldn't be required in the charter, right? The classic example is a financial threshold, right? Conditions may change. And what you're essentially saying is we will control the financial threshold through a implementing code or a subsequent action. So the fact that it's not in the charter is somewhat actually by design. And you also, I think, at times could run the risk of developing that implementation ordinance or code and then putting that out and saying, hey, look, here's what we would do. And then you could have the public say, but, okay, I'm okay with that, but I may not be okay with how it changes in the future. Right. And so I think what you're really making is a determination that these things are appropriate to be spelled out. These things are appropriate to be implemented via subsequent actions like you do frequently throughout the year.

All right. Councilmember Jane, Councilmember Park and then city clerk.

Yes, so I think the direction we're providing to staff with this motion is prepare a version that has level one and two as described by the committee and put that on the website. and put some words around it as to what this means so the public can understand what's coming forward. They can comment. Maybe we can create a public comment site for it. And that way, There's a lot of work that has to be done by staff to prepare something and having some clarity about what's going to be in it makes life a lot easier for staff and it's easier for the public to understand what's coming forward in a ballot measure. so that's all we're doing is providing more clarity to staff to get the public prepared for what the council is ultimately going to decide on but again at the last minute we can make some minor changes as amendments that's that's my perspective on this council member park

Again, I don't think this is about efficiency. I don't think this is about getting things out there. What you said about getting public input is exactly right. At some point, we need to give the public a chance to weigh in, a chance to give input, and based on their input, we, the council, should do something. Not at the last minute by amendments. If we're going to make amendments, we should make decisions before we've let the public say what it needs to say. and again i think what the city manager said that's not the problem at all it's not actually about i think that if the charter if the language required flexibility or vagueness you would put that into the changes you'd put that in description of the changes but those aren't there i think at some point if we needed cleanup if we needed you needed time to put flexibility into that language if you needed to show well these are the gaps and this is how we're going to do that that's what i want to see at the next meeting and i want to see this before the we decide that we set in stone that these are the level one, these are the amendments, these are the changes that we'd like to make. At some point, we need to know what we vote on to put on a ballot measure should be as close to what the suggested changes are. And at this point, I don't think we're there. I understand everything else, but right now voting on these are what we'd like to set in stone, and if we need to, we can amend that later, seems like the wrong way to do it. I think right now we should do exactly what the motion is. We should have staff prepare a report, put things on a website so that people can comment, let them comment, and then based on the comments afterwards when we reconvene, get a presentation of all the work that the staff has done, and then at that point make a decision of what should be on the The ballot measure or not, but to say today we just want to get things going This is about making a charter. This isn't something that's gonna happen every other year This is not something that's gonna happen, you know once every ten years and for us to rush this It doesn't make any sense to do that.

So I understand the motion I'm ready to vote and everyone's made their position very clear so city clerk when you're ready assistant city clerk, I I don't see it.

It's not completely fixed. Council Member Shahal.

No.

Council Member Hardy. Yes. Council Member Park.

No.

Council Member Jane. Yes. Council Member Cox. Yes.

Vice Mayor Gonzalez. Yes. Mayor Gilmore. No. And that passes four to three. Thank you all.

Yes, I would like to make a motion to put another measure on the ballot for the November election to cover the procurement methodologies in addition to design, bid, build.

Mayor.

I'll second that.

With that second, can I suggest a rewording, not a direction to put on the ballot, but a direction to staff to prepare the materials to put back?

But do we have to allocate money to fund the ballot or anything?

All of that will happen later.

Yeah, that'll have to happen later. But as I understand it, your recommendation is to... ask staff to prepare the materials for a standalone measure for the recommended language to update the Public Works Procurement Ordinance.

That is correct. The Public Works Procurement sections of the charter. Yeah. So there's a motion by Councillor James, seconded by Councillor LaGuardia.

Do you all want to talk? I just need to understand. If we vote on this, it removes it from the charter or it would later implement it as a voted on. I guess what I'm saying, it takes it off of a level four, it goes to ballot. If we take no action on it, we have to, if we deny this motion, it would have to be part of the charter consideration still then. I am having a hard time articulating things.

This one is not baked at all. I don't know what we're putting on the ballot.

It's a ballot measure for a charter change.

Well, this is ridiculous. I don't even know what it is. So there's a motion and a second to put this on the ballot. No, not on the ballot. Bring it back. Not on the ballot. No, it didn't say bring it back. It said motion.

No.

To put it on the ballot. There was a motion made to put it on the ballot and a second here to put it on the ballot.

As I understood, it was similar to the first motion. The first one, exactly. Is to prepare the materials to bring it back for council action. at which point you would decide whether or not to proceed to put it on the ballot.

All right. So with that in mind, everyone,

I'm not sure that we answered council member Cox's question and let me try and do that. This is currently a level three as designated in the staff report, which says that staff is essentially asking the council if you would like this as a separate ballot question. It was not included in your prior motion because that was for what staff presented as the level ones and twos. This motion would be direction to staff to prepare a separate ballot question that you would review and act on on July 14th. If you approve both of them on the ballot, what you would have is a comprehensive charter cleanup and a separate question about procurement.

This would not then be discussed publicly at our next meeting on the 23rd because we'd already taken action to, but this needs to be public. I understand that's what the vote does, but that would remove it from conversation at our next meeting.

So what I would say is as contemplated in that item, it would not, we would not schedule a meeting on either the 23rd or July 7th. If a council member would like additional discussion of this item to come back on either the 23rd or the 7th, then that can occur as well.

For it to come back?

For it to come back for additional discussion prior to July 14th. And then at that meeting, potentially a motion would be made to direct staff to bring it back on July 14th with the other item that you just approved. Correct. That is clear to staff. What I understand is the maker of the motion is amending the motion to include direction that staff bring back a discussion of this as a separate ballot question for further council consideration prior to direction to prepare the language.

So the motion's changed then to not put it on the ballot, to bring it back for discussion. Is that correct?

So, Mayor, I know you've said that a couple times. The motion said...

Listen, City Manager, what I heard was a motion to put it on the ballot and a second. Did it change? Yes. To what?

Did it change to what? If you'd like, I can... City Clerk. So direct staff to prepare materials, return for discussion. this is the only part I don't know, which meeting, July 23rd, I mean June 23rd, council meeting to take action for a separate ballot measure for charter amendment on the public works procurement section of the charter.

Yes. Let me clarify. The amended initial motion was to bring it back on July 14th. Then we had Councilmember Cox articulate, I don't think it's ready just to come back on July 14th. I think there needs to be another discussion prior to July 14th. That's what I thought you were saying is that you weren't ready for this item just to come back on July 14th and you thought there needed to be another public discussion on it. Then we had a very brief discussion on that. Additional discussion could occur on June 23rd or July 7th. At that meeting, the council could then provide direction to bring back potential language to be acted on, to put it on the ballot at the July 14th meeting.

As a separate ballot measure.

As a separate ballot measure.

And the second concurs.

This is just to bring it back to discuss. All right. All right. I'll support that. But because in its present condition, I wouldn't support the way it's written. But if we're going to discuss it more, then I'll support that.

And Mayor, I would only ask that unless council is specific on a date that you allow staff to determine whether it comes back on July 23rd or I'm sorry, on June 23rd or July 7th.

And I'm fine with that.

All right. We have a motion and a second. I have a lot of lights on. Do we still need to talk? Thank you. Do you still need to talk? All right, good. All right, city clerk.

Councilmember Schell? Yes. Councilmember Hardy? Yes. Councilmember Park?

Yes.

Council Member Jane.

Yes.

Council Member Cox. Yes. Vice Mayor Gonzalez. Yes. Mayor Gilmour.

Yes. That passes unanimously. This meeting's adjourned. Thank you all.