Oversight Board Committee - Regular Meeting

K. Welcome, everyone. I would like to call this meeting to order. I have a statement to read on Zoom. This meeting will be recorded. The Zoom application will notify you that this meeting is being recorded. Please press continue on the Zoom application to stay in the meeting. Use the raise your hand feature in Zoom when you would like to speak on an item. Please unmute when called to speak and mute yourself when you are done speaking. Please lower your hand when you are finished speaking.

If you're calling in by phone, identify yourself by name before speaking on an item. Press 9 on your phone to raise or to lower your hand. Press 6 on the phone to unmute or mute yourself. Thank you very much. Do we have roll call?

Jardine?

Here.

Committee member Shahal?

Present.

And committee member Park? Here. Thank you.

Okay. Very good. We have one item on consent That is approval of the 03/30/2026 Governance and Ethics Committee special meeting minutes. Is there a motion?

Motion to approve. Second?

Second.

Okay. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Oh, do we need public comment on the minutes? Yeah. Sure. Is there any public comment online? Going online? Okay. Opposed? Abstain? Okay. Passes unanimously. Now we move on to public presentations. Is there any member of the public that would like to speak on a item that is not on the agenda? Please come forward.

Good evening, everyone. Anthony Becker here. Head on? Yeah. I think it is. Okay. Can hear me? Yeah. I can hear you. Okay. Anthony Becker here, a council member former council member for the city of Santa Clara. What I'm here for basically, it's not on the agenda. I ended up reading a little bit. I think it is on the agenda later on, and I'll get to that in a moment. But when you look at us compared to other cities and you kinda look at other council meetings through their YouTube channels, I I think our YouTube channel needs a little cleanup, needs a little, I think, tender loving care because it is a little disorganized.

But when you do go through our meetings and you do watch them, it is very hard to sometimes follow along, especially if you're not there present at the meeting or you're watching from afar. For example, the city of San Jose, I know Cupertino, they have a ticker during the entire meeting of council meetings, and it tells you exactly where they are on the agenda. I know that the city of Santa Clara, I think, experimented with this in 2019. Maybe you might remember council member Richard Hall. It was a very short period of time. They they tested it, and I know

that they had, like, a little crawly thing on the bottom, like, was on Fox News or CNN or something.

And that was very short lived. I know that takes a lot of effort, but if we can do just something where it shows where we are on the agenda, what's going on, because then it helps people out, especially seniors who really are like, hey. 09:00 is my bedtime. They're like, Anthony, did you ever do anything on council to fix that? And I said, well, I tried, and I think that this is probably the best place to bring that up here is at the governance and ethics committee.

And then secondly is is I'll get into it a little more, I think, when it gets to stuff on your guys' future agenda items where you guys have it out listing. And I have to split up that time, I think, is the zero thirty policy. I I know when I was on city council, I voted against that policy. I said, let's not change it. I know that there was times that there were people that came in that had some really either great ideas or really outrageous ideas.

There were people that I didn't honestly agree with, but I had to give them the as a public servant, I had to give them the opportunity to speak, to put something on the agenda, to bring it up, to to debate about it. And if the council sees it as a a good thing, then the council votes for it. If the council doesn't, the council doesn't vote for it. But the policy I saw when I was up there and I voted against it and the change was I felt it lacked the democracy. It lacked the the conversations that council member Parks talks about, more voice, more democracy, and putting things on the agenda shouldn't be just a hassle.

I know that there are people I disagree with. For example, the Kirk Vartan specifically would come to counsel and this committee saying that he we shouldn't be changing this because it takes away the voice. And I agree with him on that, and that's something that him and I actually agree on. So I hope that you guys take a look at this in the future and reconsider down the road that the zero thirty policy needs a little more openness and transparency and people able to talk. Thank you.

I tend to agree. I know we're not gonna take action, but perhaps you can talk to the city manager or staff on this. The VTA, they actually put the agenda item on every page of the packet so you know what item. It's just a little thing on the corner. So you could actually as you're scrolling through, you can see where you are.

Also, when you're watching these videos and we have four hour meetings and you just wanna get to item four, it's hard to find item four as you're scrolling through a video. I I know we have gotten to the point where we actually put council members' names as a banner on the on the bottom when they're speaking sometimes. So, certainly, we have the technology to do it. It would just be a matter of somehow putting a little icon on top when we're on a particular item. Any other member of the public like to speak?

Please raise your hand if you're online if you'd like to speak. There are no hands raised.

Okay. Very good. Now we can move to our agenda items. The first item on the agenda is a review and action on the governance and ethics committee work plan that's continued from March 30. I know I submitted a number of items on this plan.

I imagine staff has a presentation for the work plan. I'm trying to figure out logistically how we would go through the number of items that are listed here, whether maybe each member might wanna pick two or three that they're higher priority for them or prioritize them somehow because I don't think we have time to discuss every one of them in detail. So, staff.

Sure. Thank you, committee chair Jane, members of the committee, and members of the public. Kevan Grogan, city manager. Just as a brief introduction, as the chair Jane said, this item was on the last committee meeting agenda. We did not have time to get to it, so so we continued the item to today's special meeting.

In the in in between the last two meetings, we did send committee members an email and ask them, are there any additional items that you would like to discuss when we discuss the committee's work plan? Those items have been collected from two of the three committee members and are included in the staff report and the PowerPoint so we can discuss those. Additionally, as a part of this discussion, what we want to do is first talk about the items that are currently on the work plan for the meetings that we have for the remainder of the calendar year and also discuss any items that counsel would like to add. And there were some that have been noted at at previous meetings and then these. And so what we'll talk about today is a collection.

Recognize that we may need special meetings to do that. Recognize part of that discussion will be staff capacity, staff workload, and and just general time, and so that we can have that discussion. I think the other conversation and the reason why we're having this as a agendized item is that we would like committee support to add the items, and we need I do think in the history, there has not been total clarity on how things get added to the committee agenda. And so one committee member may say, I want to talk about this, agendize its staff. And then when staff doesn't agendize that, there's, well, why wasn't my item agendized?

And so what we have is a work plan that has been presented before the committee before. And then to amend that work plan and add items, we're looking for support from from the committee to do that. So with that, I'll turn the presentation over to Maria Lay, assistant to the city manager.

Thank you, city manager Brogan. So as background here on the slide, this is a continued item from our last meeting. On an annual basis, the committee would usually establishes their work plan at the first meeting of the calendar year. And as city manager mentioned, some of these items were carried over from your previous work plans that were approved. And, of course, there's some items that have been brought forth this evening or from for consideration by the committee.

Okay.

So here we have a proposed work plan table. We have today's meeting listing the items for considerations for this evening. We had a scheduled special meeting on April 30. And for that one, we have an item coming back to you that was continued for the discussion with the consultant for the review and recommendations for a ethics commission and also the ethics program along with proposed changes to the existing policies. That's a continued item where the consultant will return on April 30.

Staff also went ahead and added the review and approval of council policy zero forty two, which is the reconsideration of council action. We had heard from committee members that that was a policy that they would like to review. And staff also added a May special meeting, which we have to identify the date that works for the committee. Here, we put the review of council policy zero fifty five, meeting management protocol. City attorney had brought this forth, and this would be bringing it back for review.

In addition, we had added discuss and provide direction to staff on a council policy that would provide guidance on the scheduled start times and frequency of regular city council meetings. And third, process for scheduling special city council meetings and closed sessions and how that's pulled. For June and September and December, those are your regularly scheduled governance and ethics committee meetings. Here, we put a policy for review of policy limiting resolution matters outside of the jurisdiction of the city. And, obviously, there's only one item listed here where there's room for the committee to recommend other items to be heard on June.

September 14, we have review of additional text messaging retention applications. If you recall, this came to you, in 2025. Now that we have a new IT director, we have let him know to bring back additional applications for text message retention. We had presented the report with SMARSH with one application, and I believe the committee wanted to hear more additional application options for text message retention. And for the December meeting, we have review of the proposed comprehensive city council policies and procedure manual.

As you know, you have about 55 56 council policies, and the intent of this step is to really combine it into one comprehensive manual, not having 56 different policies that for those that need to review council policies.

And, Maria, just one second. On that item, that December item, I just wanna highlight that that is a very important but also significant workload item for us. It is not just taking your existing 55 policies and collapsing them into one document. Right? It is taking a holistic look of all your policies and weaving that into one comprehensive manual like many other cities have.

And as we're do as we're doing that work, other cities may have policies that we don't have, so we want to forward to take a look at those. We wanna analyze them. We wanna forward those, include those into that manual for your review and and input. And so there's a policy setting conversation that would need to follow that, as well as there are some policies that we have a running sort of tickler file on that we know have been a challenge that we need to grapple with, Some of which we we discuss on a periodic basis, like the zero five five policy and other things that come up, but there really hasn't been a holistic look at all of your council policies. And so I just wanna flag that that looks like, oh, that thing that we're talking about in December, but the workload to to get to that December meeting is quite significant.

I'll turn it back over to to Maria.

And on these, next two slides, we at the agenda posting date, we did ask committee members to submit any additional items for consideration for the work plan. This is a list of the items that were submitted by committee members. There were two items that were similar, which was review council policy zero thirty and zero forty two, so I did combine some of those into one line. But I can take the chair's comment whether we want to I can read this off, but give policies for under $50, city council meeting schedule, review council policy zero forty two, reconsideration of council action, review of council policy zero thirty, which is adding an item to the agenda, and developing a policy to defer items when there is a quorum but requires a unanimous vote. City council meeting agenda posting, improving our timeline in our TMAC, which is the tentative meeting agendas to publish packets before instead of Fridays, but possibly on Thursdays, a review of the PRA policy, ranked choice voting, adding additional funding for city commissioners to attend conferences, health care for council members, having travel budgets by district or by council member, increasing city council pay, hiring an ethics consultant to guide candidates for elections, fix the lobbyist's ordinance and reggie registrations, separate the mayor and council email account for the public and for council members to use for their requests, clarification of council member Behest, tracking of district level services and budgets, change policy on action minutes from commissions and committees, or require transcripts of meetings to be posted on Ledgestar, a clearer process for how commissions create their work plans, update the city code on HOA law bylaws to be approved by council, which was brought up by Keith Statenfield at a previous meeting, Formal standards for reappointments to boards and commissions, formalized when commissioner's absence can be excused or not excused.

Review of all policy changes since 2023, review of council part priorities since 2021, democracy and processes, in particular, zero thirty policy, AI policies, data retention schedules, and policies regarding response times to public outreach. So with that, that's the summary.

That is a lot. I'm trying to figure out how we can prioritize them or come up we can't do them all. I mean, even if we did a meeting a week, we'd just be able to finish this this list. So do any of my fellow members have suggestions for how they would like to approach this. My suggestion was to first ask staff what they thought were the most important things we should could be working on, and then maybe each member could suggest two or three and see how that goes.

We can always add these later in the year. I know in boards and commissions, there's been a problem where the work plan is decided, and then if somebody wants to add something later, it becomes difficult to do that. That's why we have our zero thirty process because we do our goal setting meeting. But goal setting meeting is supposed to be done at the beginning of the year before the budget process. But then afterwards, if something comes up that needs attention, we have the zero thirty process to add something that wasn't in goal setting.

So does staff have a recommendation? Or if you think any of these are important? And then there's always an issue of if you have an estimate of you know, when I was on audit committee, we had a huge list of things, and the auditor said, well, we estimate this can take three hundred hours. We estimate this gonna take a thousand hours. And so we were able to prioritize based on what the estimate was given that we only had three thousand hours budgeted for staff time a year for audit. So the manager, do you have any

Actually, be before

Okay. Member Park.

So I understand what chair Jane is saying. We don't have a lot of time. We have a lot of issues we'd like to talk over. And at some point, my problem has a lot to do with staff setting the agenda priorities. I mean, setting the agenda.

I mean, anyone that's taken political science one zero one knows the Noom Chomsky quote, which is the person that the if you have control of the agenda, you can control the outcomes. And I think largely that's what's been happening to this committee, governance and ethics, which is this is one of the most canceled and delayed meetings, committee meetings. Like, I was told that the marketing and economics committee meets monthly, and they meet monthly with public public subcommittees. And after not being held, not being heard for two years when we had council members, multiple council members, requesting, demanding that the marketing meeting be held, then all of a sudden, we have a change in regime, and we are getting monthly marketing and governance and and, sorry, and economics meetings, where whereas governance, the one that people claim to care about the most, is delayed and canceled. I think people have complained about this.

And it's not really about the work that we do. It's not really about the estimations of what you put on here. It's what you put on here. I mean, when I look at, you know, review of policy limiting resolution matters outside of jurisdiction of the city? It's outside the jurisdiction of the city. At some point, I don't think we need to talk about that. I think what this is I don't even know who brought this up. Like, at some point, I don't even wanna talk about this. When we talked about travel policy, that certainly was important. It affected me because, well, I still have things that aren't aren't paid out.

But that was not important when you look at the the body of work, the body of of issues that we had to address. Who's coming up with these? It doesn't make any sense that we have issues that I don't even wanna I I don't even wanna care I care care to talk about. You know, we have a review of proposed comprehensive city council policies and procedure manual. One of the reasons that we're here is because we of the way that we pick and choose what we decide to interpret and how.

I mean, the example is when we talk about mayoral proclamations and speaking at meetings, we we decided that, well, the mayor can speak at events because it's not prohibited by the charter, whereas council members cannot speak at an event because, well, there are no there is nothing in the charter that specifically allows this. And it's because executive staff has chosen to pick and choose what they like to interpret and interpret things in very inconsistent ways that we are having to put every single detail into an ordinance or a policy. This is ridiculous. But, you know and the fact that we put ordinances and policies together doesn't even give us what we ask for. Meaning we have a policy now which enables council members to be speak at events.

And since that policy was enacted, we've been disallowed from speaking at so many different events. And the one that I bring up the most is Christmas tree lighting. The year before we enacted the policy, council had a script. Every council member was allowed to speak. We enact the policy, and all of a sudden, last year, we have nobody speaking but the mayor. We had multiple and I can give you the dates. Council members, committee members complaining, we go to events, and we don't even know the mayoral proclamations that are being given. Sometimes the mayor is not there, and the proclamation is brought by somebody else. Where are these? You know, the the mayoral proclamation basically gave the mayor veto power over everything, powers that were not previously in the charter.

And this is the way that this executive staff decided to to interpret those. And I'm gonna blame this executive staff for the amount of work that that we've we've tried to put on here. Because, again, how we pick and choose what we interpret and then how we choose to interpret those things, that's very important. How it goes on the agenda is very important. But the thing that I disliked the most, the one that was most horrifying to me is we talked about things such as the charter review.

And we talked about them in-depth in this meeting where we talked about different tiers of charter changes, clarification, word changes, and then, you know, things that require change things just a little bit, and then major changes. And and we go to council, and it was completely all that discussion was for naught because it was a joint desk and counsel as a charter charter review for everything. Everything's on the table. I brought this up. This was not what it was supposed to be.

I'm gonna say at some point, the problem is not that we have all these items to do, though. The problem is, a, we have a lot of work ahead of us. We're not seriously we're we're not seriously scheduling that work. And we've got an executive staff, which is forcing us to put a lot of items on this agenda because they they choose they pick and choose what they'd like to interpret. And worse, they pick and choose what they, you know, what the responses will be, and they bring it to council in a way rest of council will support it.

This is not a good thing. I feel like I'm the only person crying here. I I was there. I was in the the meeting, the governance and ethics meeting. I believe that mayor Gilmore was the chair when the o 30 policy was changed. I know that Kirk Barton spoke against that policy too. And when I hear all the reasons why those policies were changed, these were not policies any no nobody asked for clarification on those policies. The o 30 policy was working. But executive staff decided, well, we wanna reinterpret the way the o 30 policy works. It's no longer you can put things onto an agenda.

You have to ask to be put some put something on the agenda. That's never how the city the city ran. That's never how that the o 30 policy was interpreted. And then they decided to put another gate in front of that by saying, and not only do you do we ask to put it on the agenda, you have to get somebody to sponsor that first. These are the kinds of things that are eating away, not not people speaking long.

People are speaking long because these are important things. But when we're speaking long about things we don't care about, like a review of policy limiting resolution matters outside jurisdiction of the city, that's what's wasting our time. When we're talking about travel policies and reimbursements, when we've got so many other things to to discuss and when we're forced to discuss these things detail by detail because executive staff will not will not interpret when they don't want to, and they will interpret when they do want to, to the point that now we have a couple requests for adjunct topics such as defining definition of a prevailing party. We should never have to talk about a rep what a prevailing party is. That should be understood.

And for a lawyer, for the city attorney to say, oh, we need more clarification there. And but before we get that clarification, let's just vote on this anyway. This is the problem here. I'm gonna I'm gonna demand that we have monthly meetings till we get on track. I would like to not I would like to vote to not have all of these issues on here. Right? Presentation by consultant for ethics commission or ethics program, we're kind of being railroaded here. These aren't the topics that are important to the city, but it happens to be important to the people that come to this meeting and show up at this meeting. Nobody's ever talked to me about ethics commission outside of this meeting. Nobody.

And inside this meeting, it's one person. Maybe two. Tom Shanks ever decides to show up again. But you ask me, why do we have so much work ahead of us? Well, it's the way this exec executive staff is driving, managing managing other staff and talking to this committee. You tell us about we have so many things that we need to do. You're forcing us to talk about these things one by one by one by one by one. I don't wanna have the items the item for June 1. I don't necessarily wanna have the the item for September 14. There's a huge gap between June and September.

I would like to go to regular meetings, and I wanna make sure that they aren't canceled. I would like to go to regular meetings just like marketing and economics. Like, we have a Super Bowl. We had a Super Bowl. We have FIFA.

But I'm gonna say that governance and ethics every year is at least as important as Super Bowl and FIFA. You're telling me that they're not. Every time you cancel a meeting or delay the meeting, review a proposed comprehensive city council policies, the only reason we need that review is because we no longer know how executive staff interprets things that we have run, how the city has been running for years, right? Half the things I put on here are because now we have to be now we have to be explicit in how we decide things. And it's because I I feel like we're being railroaded by this executive staff.

When this executive staff lets some things through and and closes the gate on others, it's a problem with executive staff. It's not a problem with the agenda. It's not a problem with the items that we're bringing forward. It's a problem with executive staff forcing us to bring bring forward items that we shouldn't have to consider and then putting items on the agenda that we don't need. So before you go to estimations, I wanna go through I would like to go through why we need some of these things. I'd like to have explanations. I'd like to give tell the public why we need to have some of these things that other people thought, isn't this isn't this well known? Well, it should be well known, but this executive set staff decides to not understand what this means. This is the problem.

Okay. We can go through this proposed work plan. I think that's important to do, but I'm gonna disagree with you very strongly in a number of your points. First, we had two meetings that went till 3AM on the ceasefire. That is something San Jose decided they're not gonna take on anymore.

That is limiting resolution matters outside the jurisdiction of the city. So it's very important, and I totally support a discussion about what is appropriate for the city to be weighing in on because it can take a lot of time. The zero thirty pro policy, I was very supportive of the change. The I submitted probably more zero thirties than anybody else on this committee. But when I saw zero thirties coming through that were censures by disgruntled people that had no basis for a censure, and I thought that there should be some way to restrict spurious like, we have PRAs.

One of my items on the list was how do we put some limit on people writing, you know, PRA requests with misspellings, with just false information that are far too general. They're not on a specific topic. They're like every every text between these two council members. That's ridiculous. And so I would like to have some sort of discussion about what is appropriate to put on the agenda.

The zero thirty thing look. If somebody has a great argument, they should be able to convince one council member to sponsor that. I don't see that that would be a problem. The policy of sort of requiring you to talk to the city staff about your zero thirty is never in there as they have veto power over what you're doing. You can still put an item as a zero thirty on the agenda, and we did it, you know, without any discussion with the city manager as a result of public presentation at the a couple of council meetings ago.

But the point of it is if you discuss it with the staff, you get some idea as to, you know, how much time it's gonna take, resources it's gonna take, budget it's gonna take, all of that. So it's the the city staff does not have veto power over the council. The council is the ultimate authority. We can do whatever the heck we want as long as it's legal, of course, and that's why we're in governance and ethics. But my point is that I think it's very appropriate to talk about what items we can agendize that make sense for the city to weigh in on to say, we're not gonna discuss, you know, ceasefires or we're not gonna discuss, you know, impeachments or whatever.

We're not gonna discuss things that don't make any sense for the city. We have no control over those as a city. I think it's very important, and I want it to be on here. So I would like to go to member Chahal for his opinions.

Thank you, chair. Yeah. So, you know, we did come up with some policies, and we on the way, we found out that there are some issues with those, basically. Right? And one clearing example is the zero three zero, which have been pointed out by multiple occasions that we need to review it.

Like, what we can do to make sure we our residents can participate democratically into it. So that's an important one. I would if you want me to rank those things. Recently, we had that reconsideration issue. I agree with the customer park when the reconsideration itself was not clear what method and especially when we had a clear email sort of clear email from the drafter of the policy, basically, that how the reconsideration should be taken, and still we went for the vote.

That that is is a priority. I think we should look at the zero four two policy on priority. Some of the other things like, even I'm a little bit worried about whatever zero three zero council has approved, they are in a backbench. Like, they're I don't think when they are coming into the council review for that matter. One thing I can point out, like, I I know the council agenda is heavy, but when we agreed for a zero thirty, I think we wait for, like, a month or three meetings or something.

It should be brought forward. Like, bring that up up ADAs. I don't request much of the zero thirties anyway, but whatever I requested, I think ADA one, it's not come up. And as for my discussion with the city manager, staff has pretty good idea of what it is. They already did the homework of what the other cities are doing.

So even for a policy which zero thirty is approved by the council, we should put a time stamp on that that, okay, we will bring this forward by whatever time frame the council thinks is important, we should bring forward that. And I agree with council member Park's notion that marketing committee was never called into action for multiple years despite I was not on that committee, but I have witnesses who mentioned that to me that they were not even asked to hold a meeting on that because of one reason or the other. And here it is. Our marketing committee is meeting, like, anything with multiple meetings and with the support of the staff, not that they're meeting all by themselves, with the support of the staff. So there are some real issues which we need to sort this out, basically.

I I'm looking at one of the update on the HOA bylaws, which was requested by Keith Statonfield, former planning commission chair on 01/11/2022. So that is like, if we did not handle that since 2022, we are in 2026 right now, that's something it fell into the crack, not only cracks, but almost lost, basically. So that's one thing. Other thing I would say is AI policies. Like, we are talking about how to make our videos user friendly so that they can see where that particular agenda item starts.

And AI can really, really help us out. AI policies and AI can add efficiencies to these aspects. I found out recently that cities are hiring AI officers into their city employment, basically, and there's there's a reason for it. Like, AIs can be very useful for PRAs. Like, PRA, as council member Jane mentioned.

So that can be very beneficial. So we should look into that on priority, basically. And then lack of process and clarifications about the city processes. Like, we have lost on those that we should be looking at. I know we are taking that thing in December about the comprehensive city council policies and procedure manual. I think we I'm not sure whether we are the only ones we're lacking in the process or we are the most council which cannot deliberate in a proper way in a particular thing. But if we can have our process processes and procedures well documented,

that

can take care of lot of these issues, basically. So those are some of the fixing lobbyist ordinance, basically, that we already have that, but we have we need to add some more teeth to it. And those are I think those are low hanging fruit, and we can work on it pretty fast, basically. So not that we if we have 28 of these, I think some of them can be combined into one process, and the staff can get their feedback on those and bring it to governance. And I think it can be a little bit faster process on that.

Those are my 2¢ on that. And and I I also wanna point out one more. Item number six, city council meeting agenda. I did request city manager. I'd not only city our current city manager, even previous city manager, that we are ready to postpone a meeting.

Let's say if we meetings to be held on seventh, let's hold it on fourteenth if there is no meeting on fourteenth. But let's post the agenda well in time so that all the council member it's a part time council, and the agendas are so big. Sometime I go up to like, even up to Tuesday, even up to Sunday night and Monday night. So if the agendas are posted late and you have something on the weekend, you're you're everybody is busy. So I think council members and even the public needs some more time to have those things.

So agenda posting well on time is very critical and can can solve a lot of issues. So how can we make that work? I know I discussed with city manager about it that even if we have to postpone a meeting to next meeting so that we can streamline this thing, hypothetically giving staff that, okay, the meeting is not on fourth fourteenth, but it's on seventh. How we can do that? A gap of five days or something.

So that can be really helpful. At least to me, that's very important because if you want to do justice reading the agenda and you don't have to rush through it, it it is beneficial for that. Those are the things I think, yeah, very important. Hey. Member Park, can I go

to the city manager, or you have some?

Yeah. Just one clarification. K. Meaning, we talk about special meetings, but a lot of these, if we discuss them in order, will will resolve the other the other issues. Like, if we talk about I mean, we discussed it last time. This is a part time council. At some point, it's not about pay. I think maybe we need to go to full time council. Chair Jane mentioned that we went we had 41 meetings last year, which is more than three meetings per month, more than three meetings per month. I recall fifteen years ago, I used to come I went to every single council meeting from about 2008 to about 2016, almost every single one.

I missed a handful. Same thing with Planning Commission. And we used to post the addendas on the previous Tuesday. I used to come here every every meeting with Van Langston, with my neighbors, with people from Sunnyvale, Gernigans. No.

God rest their souls. And we had to get something we had to get things in by Tuesday, the previous Tuesday, because that's when the meeting agendas were posted. Then we started going into this until, you know, the previous Thursday or the previous Friday because we wanted no we wanted nobody from the public to be able to respond to these. And I think that this is kind of where it all started. It started with removing the ability for the public to review the city council meeting. Everyone's you know, the staff knows what they wanna do. Maybe the city council knows what they wanna do, but the public certainly doesn't. And right now, not everyone on council knows either. I think this is a problem we need to fix. And we don't fix this by simply saying, let's have more special meetings.

We need to have more scheduled meetings. I am I'm also gonna say, look through my notes. Fifteen years ago, we didn't have as many items as we do today. And the items that we had, not all of them were contentious. We had one contentious item, one big item, and a lot of small items. I think we need to look at what the agenda, what agenda management looks like. I've you know, we'd have a mayor who the first thing that that she did when when we got elected in 2020 was say, well, we have an incompetent council that does not know how to manage meetings, and that's why the meetings are going long. The meetings aren't going long because we don't know how to be be in meetings. The meetings are going long because the first time in history we're having discussions. We're having discussions.

I mean, it's really easy to have a short meeting if everyone has agreed on in advance what they're gonna what they're gonna vote on. These are the things that we should be looking at. We should be looking at how do we get a full time council? Not because of the pay. Like, we can limit it to AMI. AMI is the definition of affordability. It's the the affordability index. That's not a lot of money, supposedly. But I wanna make sure that nobody on this council has an excuse to not answer residents' complaints, to not go to meetings, to not go to events, to not and, you know, this is this is what the problem is. The other problem, I I'm gonna, again, disagree with chair Jane.

I don't think the chair understands what democracy is. The public should not need should not need a sponsor to talk about an issue. Like, now, when when chair Jain is on the council and he thinks everything's going well, he needs to remember that the reason that we need democracy is when things aren't going well. When we have a corrupt council, when we have a corrupt city, and you can't find a sponsor. But the fact that we need a sponsor and then beyond that, we need a majority of council to agree just to put it an item on the agenda, not even discuss it, that doesn't make any sense.

And I think that we need to start looking not not as the council members of the city. We need to start looking at ourselves and start looking at the policies from the point of the oppressed. And if you cannot do that, then we have no point. We have no business setting policies if we cannot see the policies from the point of view of the people who are oppressed. I talk about Skokie, Illinois.

The city manager doesn't even know about that. But I'm gonna say the reason that we have freedom of speech, the reason that we have these policies is to protect the people who are being oppressed. Does it mean that the majority gets annoyed? Sure, it does. But when you find yourself minority, on and you should think about what it means to be on the minority, then you will understand why we have these policies that give voice to the people who are not part of the majority.

And if we have no understanding of this, then what's the point of having a council? Like, this is why we should have a full time council, so that people who are underrepresented on council, people who rent, single parents, people who have multiple jobs, people who aren't making it here. So those people can be on council, and they can set the policies from a different perspective. But when we only have business owners and people who are retired or independently wealthy, homeowners on council, we're never gonna get those kind of policies. But worse, we're never gonna get that kind of thinking.

Thank you.

I'll let the city manager make some comments, and then we're gonna move on with this discussion.

And, Jane, we also have a hand raised when you're you're ready.

K. We're not ready to go to the public. We're still doing our discussions.

Okay. Thank you, Chair Jane and committee members. That's a lot to unpack. Think the honest answer is starting by saying I will not be able to sufficiently unpack it in my comments that I'm about to make, but I I I would like to say a few things.

One,

this organization had a $1,700,000,000 organization with multiple enterprises, multiple lines of businesses, the council sitting as various agencies. It's a lot of work. We also run a high vacancy rate. We also while some may feel that it it's an excuse, the reality is we sit here in a year where Santa Clara is doing something that no city has ever done before, and that's putting on a successful and safe Super Bowl and World Cup. Now I know that members in the community and, frankly, members and staff say it's a distraction.

Maybe it it has great benefits, but it's a distraction from all the work we need to do and services we need to provide for the citizens. And I've said to this council before, you take out Super Bowl, you take out FIFA, you take out all the initiatives and improvement desires. We as a executive team can spend three years just making this a better, more smooth, more tech savvy, more well run organization. The the reality is the the mounting pressures to do the work and move the organization forward at every level is tremendous here. And if we're honest with ourselves, San to Clara is at a deficit.

We're at a deficit of staff. We're at a deficit of tech resources. We are at a deficit based on the the pent up workload and the desires and conflicting desires of our elected leaders. And so we are collectively navigating the work that needs to be done the best way we can. With regard to the council workload, as we were sitting here, I pulled up our agenda tickler file, which we started a few years ago and you all get a copy of.

The amount of business that you need to address as a city council on a daily basis is significant. We frankly don't have enough time. Right? We are having a special meeting tomorrow night because the regular meeting the night before was frankly all carryover items that we weren't able to get to in all the prior meetings. Right?

I think we had two or three things, maybe four things that were left over from prior meetings, sometimes a couple meetings prior. Right? Your executive staff meet twice a week to do agenda management, every Monday and every Wednesday. I have a standing meeting with not just the senior leadership team, but anyone that has an agenda item going in the next one to two weeks. We meet every Monday at 09:00. We go through the agenda items. It's a living and breathing tug and pull. Okay. This can't go. Where is this item?

Where is that item? And then we meet on Wednesday for our senior leadership team meeting to talk about other general things going on with the city, but spend a lot of time on agenda management. So the fact and on top of that, we will have council meetings where there are we have we struggle to get through two items. Right? And I think we've all talked about that there's a benefit to be getting the the regular meetings at seven, right, because the public can't attend.

It's at a it's at a point that fits for the that's fitting for the public. But it's also at a point where when you begin at seven and you sometimes have an hour and hour and a half of special orders of business, we're not beginning anything substantial until 08:00. And then you pull a couple items from consent, you have one, two contentious items in a public hearing and public comment. We're sometimes at midnight, and we're on the first item of general business. And so I don't necessarily disagree with the comments around there's not enough time and we need more meetings.

I I think we've had those conversations, but I do want the public and the and the committee to know that your staff works very hard at at managing and navigating the items that that come before you. And the reality is sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong, and sometimes the items are just too big. Right? When I started with the city over three years just over three years ago or or getting to be three years, you went into double digits with your consent items. We've tried not to do that. Right? This is also a city that would put huge items on consent that would have almost zero discussion. And we've we've stopped that because we, you know, we've tried to say, hey. You know what? This is a big item.

It necessitates the discussion. Now there are times where something has to go, and we do think that there's relatively relative a cons a consensus, and it's put on consent. At times, it'll be pulled. Sometimes, it won't. Right? But that's us trying to navigate your business calendar. I think a large discussion can be had around having the agendas posted sooner. Right? I don't want to go down that rabbit hole too much because I I I wanna bring us back to the management of the workload here. But know that they're not published on Thursday because we're not trying.

Right? There there are a number of items even today to publish your agenda for next Tuesday that are still going through through review at various levels. Right? My my one zero one council prep meetings begin tomorrow morning at 10AM. There are a number of staff reports in important business items, not because someone wasn't doing their job, not because someone wasn't paying attention or they were sitting on it.

Literally, it just has taken that long to get the business done that the city manager hasn't even seen the item at this point. Right? And so that's a longer conversation, but I just wanna say that just because I I know that there are frustrations about that, and it goes all around. I wanna touch on a couple other points, and then I I want to go to how I think we should process through this. I think frustrations and comments have been made around the economic development and marketing committee and how that committee juxtaposed to this committee is meeting on a monthly basis and has subcommittee.

What I know about that process, right, is when I started here three years ago, it's like, hey. We wanna have an economic development marketing committee. We used to have one. And what did I say to council? We don't have the staff to support that body.

Right? And we hadn't had the staff, and so now we have a part time staff member that is supporting that commission as well that committee as well as we what did we do? We established a new position in economic the Santa Clara's first economic development director who actually supports that committee. But important to note, that committee was really set up and established, or their work program for this year was aligned to the twenty twenty six major events, and they're meeting at a at a very fast clip because they have tasks and events that they're planning and putting on. If I juxtapose the staff support that that committee has or any committee, this committee has more staff and more senior staff assigned to it than any committee in the city.

With the city manager, you have the city attorney, you have the assistant city manager, you have the assistant city attorney, and you have a assistant to the city manager that are both assigned full time positions assigned to this body. This body has more support than any other commissioner or committee in the city assigned to. But we we deal and grapple with with with big things. You know, I don't want to go sort of point by point on some of the the the things that were said. I do think that there is an appropriate time and a response to some of those because I I disagree with with some of the character characterizations.

But I I would say that myself and executive staff work to support this organization and in this body. And there are times where there are professional disagreements. Right? It's not personal. It's the nature of it's the nature of the work we do. Right? Staff is there to make a recommendation. It's a committee or the council's decision to accept that right to to accept that recommendation. With regard to the items that are on the current work plan. So, Maria, if you'll go to slide three, there was a request to talk through these.

What I will say, and I said earlier, is we need a clear a clear and a cleaner process for how things get agenda. How do things get agenda to this body? Either come directly from staff or they come from the from the majority of the body, the vote of the body. Right? And so these items here, we we know what we're talking about today, but let let's talk about the second item. Right? So today, the first item, work plan. It's routinely on your agenda. There's desires to do more and potentially faster, and so that's why we're talking about this item. I think very clear.

And and staff put it on the agenda, and it's a it's a periodically recurring item. Item two for tonight, council policy on establishing annual performance review process for council appointee. That's the city manager, and that's the city attorney. That came up because of the performance review processes. I wasn't I was not in those conversations, but I know that there was a direction provided to schedule that and have a policy. And so I won't be in that item tonight, but you have the assistant city attorney and the HR director. So that's why this committee is talking about that. At a special meeting on April 30, why are we talking about ethics? Well, we all know that was a grand jury recommendation. Both the council and this committee provided direction.

A consultant has been doing work. We're coming back in the next phase of that. I know some committee members may disagree with that, but it's on there because it was directed. And staff is do work working to bring you analysis and and option. Item two, review and approval of amendments to council policy 46 reconsideration of council action. Why is that here? Because we had an item on the city council agenda, and the council said, hey, you know what? We need to talk about this. Let's direct it to governance, and so it's here. I think that's totally legitimate to be on your work plan and and to be here, not something that's staffed inappropriately.

Why in May are we talking about council policy zero five five, meeting management protocols? It was a prior existing item. There were some follow-up things attached to that in meeting management. I think we talk tonight, and we frequently talk about how we manage council meetings. And so I think that's an appropriate item that the the committee knows is on the work plan and and coming back. The second item on the May meeting, discuss and provide direction to staff on council policy on guidance for meeting start times and frequency. We just talked about that, and we frequently talk about that. Right? We had, I I think, the number is 42 meetings last year. I haven't verified that, but that's what I've heard.

You know, it it's came up. I can't recall at this moment how it got added to the work plan, but I think this committee has talked about it several times. And so we're we're coming to talk about that. Process for scheduling special council meetings and closed sessions. Why is that here? Now that's a staff item. I I put that one on the agenda. Why? Because staff received a number of concerns and complaints from council about how special meetings were being scheduled. There were there were concerns that staff was prioritizing other council members and scheduling meetings.

For example, the mayor could attend, but other council members could not. I communicated with staff. I didn't think that that was the case. But what did we do? We established a protocol for how staff will schedule those meetings and what is the polling process. And since it's been raised as such an issue, we thought we'd bring it to you. Right? There is no council policy on that right now, but we did establish a protocol, which I think is appropriate for a internal protocol on how to manage processes. And we just want to inform you of that because I know concerns have been raised by council members. On June 1, why is that meeting here?

Policy on limiting matters outside the jurisdiction. I think council member Jane has spoke to that item. I know that item has been talked about. I've had a number of council members mention that item to me. We periodically have things where the council is asked to take positions on things outside of the subject matter jurisdiction. It's a policy that other cities have. Right? That is coming forward as a policy option for you to discuss. Now if the majority of the committee wants to say in this work plan, hey. You know what? We don't want to talk about that. That's fine. We'll take it off the list. Right? But that's why that's on there.

Policy regarding text message retention, that was a prior item. It is an ongoing issue. I think that there were questions on how staff could better manage our electronic devices. You know that we have a new IT director. Honestly, why that item has been delayed is they've been focused on cybersecurity and protection of our of Santa Clara and our data ahead of Super Bowl and

ahead of FIFA.

And I know council knows more about that than we're able to talk about publicly, but your IT department has been laser focused on on some items which which calls for a delay there. And then the last item, a comprehensive review. I mean, I think that's clear. Yes. That's put on by staff, but we're talking about so many policies, and they're coming up individual individually that taking a holistic look.

It's something I that I've had experience with developing in in other cities. It is a very involved process. That is not a one meeting item. Frankly, that item alone may take, you know, half a dozen, if not a dozen meetings next year just to go through and and to get to a document that the the committee may be ready to forward to the council. So as I look through the items that were that were submitted, I do think one of the ways to plow through these items would be anything that is policy related that the committee does not feel is an urgent matter that we must discuss right now or in the work plan between now and December, right, whether in a special meeting or a planned meeting, we push to the larger comprehensive review.

So that that when I looked at these 28 items, right, I circled everything that was pop you know, counsel policy procedure related. Let's toss that in the comprehensive policy review. We'll take a look at the policy when we bring bring it to you, and then those policy adjustments or changes can be dictated then. That's sort of one recommendation that I would like to offer to the board on on how to process through these. I'll also say in looking at these 28 items, staff did not prepare for this meeting and do analysis on these items.

Right? We we purely ask you, hey. What are your ideas to talk about? And so we have not dedicated time to analyzing these 28 items. When I took a look at them, the next side there was another category of items where that are budget related. We're about to have a budget process. Right? And so more funding for commissioners to attend conferences, right, council travel budgets per district, Think track district level budgets and services. Right? Budget related.

I would actually proffer that you push those items to the the council budgeting process. And then there are a couple items here that, on some level, don't fit within the committee's purview. Or, I guess, said differently, the committee may be able to recommend that something happens, but not even the council has the authority to change. And so those are, to me, things that relate to your salary setting commission, increased council member pay, health care for council members. Right?

Those are things that I think an individual council member can write a email memo to the salary setting commission chair and say, hey. I think this should be put on your agenda. I do think that, you know, potentially the committee could subject to the city attorney telling me I'm I'm over my skis. Right? The committee could make a recommendation to to the salary setting commission to to take a look at an item, but neither you nor the council have the ability to change those items.

And so do we spend a lot of time on those items, or do we simply refer to the body that that has that authority and that meets with staff and that can direct staff to do analysis on that topic? And I I think for health care, that item was something the salary setting commission looked at last year. They made a decision to not provide that. You know, staff makes no no no opinion on that. I just know that concept went to them, and for various reasons, they said no.

So I think that there are a list of those items where you could either not take up because the body and the council doesn't have the purview to act on them, or you could simply do a referral. And some of those items, like a full time council, likely involve the charter change. Right? Or does involve it. That one certainly does, and and there may be others.

Right? You have a charter review committee going on now. Now the council said, and I think committee member Park said, this year's process was supposed to be things that are not controversial. Some of these things may you know, like a full time council may be controversial. So if the council's direction was to not have any controversial things in the charter review process this year, then either the item is dead unless, as a committee, you wanna proffer to counsel that, hey.

Let's direct the charter review committee process to take a look at making a full time counsel and come up with that recommendation. Or I I do believe there's a way for the council to not have a charter review committee and put something on the ballot. And so those items can be talked about, but I don't know that they are a unless the governance committee wanted to uplift an item and say, hey. You know what? A majority of us would like to have that item considered or potentially put on the November 26 ballot.

Do you talk about it right now? Right? Or do you put it off to later? Because I know that the council said no controversial items. So, potentially, there's a conversation around that tonight, and the majority of the committee decides where those items go.

And then there are a number of operational items here that certainly the committee can talk about, but, you know, with enough time to provide the committee with information, my recommendation would be that there's not policy around council policy around it, but instead update you on staff policies and practices. And I know that there are some challenges with or concerns around email and council constituency outreach, and Araceli Azevedo, assistant to the city manager, is leading a process certainly related to improving our constituent council support processes. I I will say that we can talk about that item for a long time, and I won't do that now. But I I would say we all agree that the process can be improved. I've I've talked about that with individual council members.

We are also in an heading up to election season. The number of items that we are getting has had a market has increased significantly because, you know, it happens in the lead up to election years, generally, I know in this city and and in every city. Also, we appear to have council members engaging on multiple council members engaging on the same issues and how we communicate to that. I think council knows that one of the things that I've asked staff to do is to develop a process where we are updating the entire council on a periodic basis of all the council constituent issues that we are addressing and to copy every be begin to start copying every council member on everything so that you see the totality of what we're we're working on. And so we're we're working on some internal tracking systems, and we we have personnel that is starting in the mayor and council office that will begin to implement a new system.

And so there there there's work going into certainly improving that process. So why don't I stop there? I have notes to sort of mention other things. I did want to say, for example, the council o thirty request for the ADA item, that is on the tickler file for May 5 to come back to you to come back to council. I know that there are concerns of, hey.

That's you know, that was two months ago, maybe even three months ago that it was first referred. There was work that the department needed to do, and there was council business items that that took precedent on bringing bringing that item forward. So those things happen. Thank you.

Hey. Very good. Yeah. I have zero thirties from 2021 that have not been acting. You know, the 2022 convention parking, you know, took this long, but I get it.

We had COVID, and we had budget deficits, and we had lots of other things to sidetrack us. And, you know, this is not just the ethics committee. This is the governance committee. This committee is responsible for trying to figure out how to make the city meetings run more smoothly and also just the city to operate more smoothly. So and that's why I think it is within our purview to look at budgets or budgets and agendas for some of our boards and commissions.

I don't believe that we have a policy for how we set the travel budgets for each of our boards and commissions. And so it's important for us to figure that out and support that. I think what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take a vote on each item that is currently on the upcoming agenda because I think we have a differing opinion about whether these are important to discuss. And then we can we can so there's gonna be multiple votes for each of these meetings. And oh, we yeah.

Let's go to the public. Thank you. Okay. Is there any member of the public that would wish to comment?

We have online Dan Andrzek. Please unmute yourself.

Hi, all. Thank you for letting me talk. I wanna touch on the o 30. For the last ten years, I've been working, obviously, in the downtown. And I've heard from many citizens that that both council and management is disconnected from the goals, some of the goals of the citizens, not some, but a lot.

And the o three o tool, I think, is a connector from counsel to what matters to these citizens. And by doing what you did, you put up another wall, and I think that's that's unfortunate. To Seth's point, I think there has been you know, and and I witnessed that night, spurious o three o's. But a majority, of what we've seen coming out of citizens. And I Yeah. You know, wanna take a sidebar here. I think there's a a perception, if not

a

reality, that anytime a citizen comes in that it's like a, oh, no. Here we go. But there's some incredible ideas that come out of

the

citizenry. I'm gonna name a couple of urban, you know, urban planners that we we selected for the downtown, form based code. We got tremendous pushback. And and not only pushback, but folks on council did not know what that was, until it was brought forward. The fact that city hall hadn't moved, that it was falling in, the courthouse discovering, a majority of of the population that wants a downtown.

That was our our first for the 0 three 0. So there's a lot of of information that citizens provide through this mechanism that you need to hear. And I I just think that that, you know, this this change hurts that. I mean, our group knows how to work this, because we've had ten years, but the guy off the street doesn't. You know, he didn't know what to do and and and the process on how to do that.

So I'd be curious to understand how make that easier for them with this extra barrier. So there are ways to vet these furious o three o's. I mean, you know, you guys are smart folks. But I I definitely advocate that we revert back to the o three o policy that you have that that's worked for for so long before this change. Thank you.

Thank you, Dan. Any yeah. Please come forward.

Time being donated to me from my husband, Abel, and Saskia online.

Ready.

Hey. So I'll try to get to this as quick as I can. Councilman Park, I think what you're trying to say earlier is it's called gatekeeping. I know from experience here in the city of Santa Clara even before the current staff, there was times where things were delayed. We had a former city manager that consistently delayed things, made sure we didn't have priority setting sessions, and then that led to certain issue other issues. You know, when we talk about council member Jay Park, you mentioned it, a monthly meeting. Yes. We should have a monthly meeting for this. And the reason why I say that is because this this committee has a lot to catch up on. And the reason why is because, specifically, the grand jury said this committee was not meeting.

How timely is that? At the same time, we had economic development meetings. Tonight, there was another economic development meeting right before this one over at the library, I think it was. So consistently, there has been a pattern. It is gatekeeping. I agree with you, council member Park. I don't agree with you a 100%, but I know that there is something in the city that there is a thumb on this city that is consistently happening. So when you talk about canceled meetings and everything, that's what the grand jury talked about was where's all the meetings at? And then here we are having to have all these meetings in an ethics commission, yada yada yada. No.

It comes down to some of the things that are on your list right now. We need an ethics consultant, period. We didn't have one in the twenty eighteen election, twenty twenty two election, twenty twenty election, twenty twenty four election. None of these elections had an ethics consultant, and people got away with what I call murder in those elections. And I think all of you know that. Councilmember Chahal, you were there. Councilmember Park and Jane, you were both there too. So when it comes down to priorities in 2021, those are delayed. Where was the CVRA apology letter that was delayed consistently? What about the dark money violation?

Things that are really kinda hidden in the corner and forgotten about. I I mean, we talked about also I mentioned at the last meeting, which you should be adding onto your list, councilmanic interference. This is governance and ethics, stuff that the grand jury talked about. We have we have councilmanic interference. The govern the the economic development meetings, They're being delayed.

And then as soon as I'm off of it and council member Park's off of it, now the meetings start happening again. What a coincidence that is. Again, there's a thumb on this city. But, you know, the mayor initiated an investigation into close into the city manager's complaints without the permission of the council. That's councilmanic interference, and that's something you guys should be taking up here at this at this forum or the city council. I mean, we're talking about public trust. Right? Reconsideration policy, I'll get into that at the next meeting because I saw that was on your next agenda. But the zero thirty policy, more voice more more voice. I mean, if we don't agree with it, you don't agree with it.

If you don't like it, you vote against it. Give the people the opportunity to come. I mean, we keep kicking things down the road all the time. I got on this city council with so much I wanted to get done, and I realized the red tape of government is so true. They delay everything you can if you don't especially if somebody in power doesn't want does not want it to happen.

So for example, downtown, you know, we had your committee, council member Jane, which was about the stadium in Newark. People that didn't want it made sure these things don't happen, and it consistently is is showing itself today and as I stand here. And then, again, you know, I had I had people coming to me from the senior advisory commission and telling me about they wanna be able to communicate with people. They want people they wanna have their own email addresses. I agree with them.

That's something we should have been working on years ago, and it, again, got kicked down the road. Same thing with council member email addresses. Something that says district six council member or district6@SantaClaraCA.gov, mayor@SantaClaraCA.gov. So then when that person turns out or expires or is gone, they transfer that over. Just like I said about a ticker. These are little tiny things that don't take up a lot of time and can consistently be done. But when we talk about there's so much logjam, there's so much behind. Yes. And that was purpose. That was done on purpose.

When I got in this council, there were so many things from councilmanic interference. Remember council member Charle where we tried to have the discussion about the CVRA, and then it was delayed. And we found out the city attorney and the mayor were, I believe, purposely delaying it when we try to have an investigation. Silence. It's consistently this pattern, and you guys have authority to do things. But when we look at this long list, these are delays. These are things that when I was on the for on the city council when I first got elected. I mean, it's long term, and government is snail pace. And I noticed that a lot of people say that you have more power when you're on these committees or you're on your elected office. No.

You don't. Sometimes your hands are tied, and at times, my hands are tied. But, again, going back to, you know, you have a list of things I think you guys can do. It's a lot, but it's digestible. You need to have more meetings. Because if the civil grand jury sat there and said to you guys that and said to me and all of us that we don't have these governance and ethics committee meetings, And then somebody was like, well, we were trying to have them. And it just seems to me it's a setup. It's consistently a setup for all three of you, for when I was up there and any others because someone in this city has a thumb on it. And I understand staff. I know where you guys stand, but please be more independent.

Give the city council more of more more chances because I know that maybe some of you are scared of what you might do. So I totally understand that situation because I've been there. And lastly, you know, get as I say, get the ticker on there. And, you know, we also have a thing where we're branching ourselves in, and I'm gonna try to finish. I have, like, five seconds, but I'm gonna try to finish this.

We start meetings at seven, and what they do is they try to the mayor tries to conclude the meeting at midnight. There was councils that went until 02:00 in the morning, 03:00 in the morning when we got a stadium, and this is exactly why you three people over here didn't want a stadium in the first place. So the stadium takes up a lot of our time, and what you guys are doing is you're realizing that the stadium does take up that time, and it takes away from all of the things that you need to get done. So when we talk about, oh, let's end the meeting at twelve. No.

You should be going longer because in the old days I know the old council members used to go to the bar afterwards and and celebrate after their meetings. So don't see it as a norm. Don't let one person tell you that you can't conclude these meetings because you guys can, And this is all digestible, and I suggest you do it all and have monthly meetings. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else online?

We have Adam online. Adam, unmute yourself.

Good evening. Thank you. I just like to say, you know, it's it's sad to continue to see the list either, you know, stay the same or grow on this committee. I know it has not had the attention that it should have and, you know, has been stressed at council meetings by all the council members and the mayor about how ethics and transparency is a key cornerstone of Santa Clara politics. But, you know, people say a lot of things. It's all in the actions. Right? And it's how much energy and effort we put into this. I think, you know, perfection is the enemy of good. I mean, it's great to talk about this and study everything a thousand ways to Sunday.

But I think some of these things are, you know, simple discussions and, you know, a legal check and move forward. If, you know, if we were having these meetings on a regular basis, if there was some big outcry or issue, that was a result of one of these policy changes, then, you guys could rectify it and and recover quickly. So I I think, you know, trying to study everything down to the nitty gritty not only cost them cost the taxpayers and the city budget a a a huge amount of money, but also it results in something a lot of the residents don't want, or it's diminishing returns on the recovery of, you know, the travel policy. I mean, how much money are we talking about you you all saving by doing a travel travel policy update when we have, you know, much bigger issues like the stadium that consumes almost half of the city council's time. I mean, where should we put our efforts?

I mean so I I think we need to start. I'd ask staff and this committee to get going on some of these items, start crunching them off the list. Don't keep kicking the can down the road, and don't, you know, overthink the problem and reach out to the residents. Make sure, you know, you you guys are all putting your effort in the right in the right bucket. So, thank you. I'd like to see these meetings more, and I'll I'll try to attend when I can. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Adam. We actually tried to make with our travel policy, we tried to make it easier in terms of we added per diems. So council members had to go find all their receipts and everything, and they didn't get reimbursed if they lost a receipt. So I know staff already had per diems for a long time, and by adding that policy, we made life hopefully easier for staff and council members. Alright. So I had proposed that we

three more hands if you want. We have more hands.

Yes. Okay.

We have a iPhone guest. Can you state your name, please?

IPhone guest? Yes. This is Mary Grizzle. I'm the co chair for Reclaiming Our Downtown. I would I would like to agree with everything that Adam and Dan Adam Thompson said and Dan Underset. But I have a a a question for you guys. I was at an appointment earlier and couldn't come to the meeting. And so it was a medical appointment. And when I got home, I automatically went to the TV and put it on channel 15. And lo and behold, you're showing an, an old meeting, council meeting, and you're not showing this meeting.

So then I have to figure out a way of of getting on quickly. I'd like to know why it's not the meetings aren't being held live on channel fifteen. Because to me, this is a a really an an ethics problem. It should be on TV. Thank you.

Thank you, Mary. Anyone on in else online?

Yes. We have. Hold on a second. Noah McDonald.

Hello?

Oh, go ahead, Noah.

Oh, yeah. Hi. Yeah. I just wanted to say, yeah, my issue with the o three o process. You know, I'm new to all the city stuff, but I made a request about a month ago or so.

And my problem is essentially just that there's no requirement for the city to take any action at all when someone goes to council with a concern. So in my case, I was able to work with, council member Park to, who's very helpful in getting my concern, added to the agenda. But I also think it shouldn't be exactly a requirement to have to, you know, work with city council members, after going to the council meeting. I think showing up to the council meeting and, you know, with a concern should be enough to at least have it considered for the agenda then rather than it being just ignored. And I and I do agree with I think council member Jane said this that the the city shouldn't have to spend time on things that have nothing to do with the city at all because I know there's a lot of that that comes in.

People going to council with things that city can't do anything about and has nothing to do with the city itself. So I agree with that, but I do think that there should be some more clarity or at least at least if someone goes to the council, shows up to a meeting, takes a time out of their day, and, has a concern, at least hearing is this gonna be on the agenda anytime soon or not. So I guess that's that's, about it. Thank you.

Thank you, Noah. Anyone else? We

have Wanda Buck. Wanda, please unmute.

Hello. Hello. Time is all any of us have, and I really appreciate yours. And I think it's been broken down quite clearly that there aren't enough hours for everything that needs to be done, whether you're staff or council or mayor or a citizen, quite frankly. I do have one idea that I haven't heard too much about is that there are so many duties of this particular committee, and it probably applies elsewhere too where if perhaps some of it could be broken down or separated.

And just from that point alone related to ethics, if there was a different ethics committee, there would be a lot off the table. But there's other items on that plan where maybe the structure can be changed so that there's not so much for this committee to cover and also looking at other committees as well. So good luck, and thank you for your time.

Thank you, Wanda. Anyone else? You're welcome.

Now we have Kathy Kelsey.

Go ahead, Kathy. Hi.

This is Mark Kelsey. I'm speaking for Kathy and myself, and we wanna say we agree with both Dan Ondersack and Adam Thompson on the comments they made about the working through the as well as Mary Grizzle on the working through the items on this committee's agenda. It should be meeting frequently, and it should be getting to the issues on the agenda. And we particularly wanna support, and and agree with Mary's comment that this should be broadcast on channel fifteen. This is on Zoom.

It's on Facebook. The city clearly has the technical capabilities to put this video out in multiple formats, and not putting it on channel fifteen limits access, and we would strongly support that. Thank you.

K. Thank you. Anyone else?

There are no more hands raised.

K. City manager, do you want to comment on channel fifteen? Because we also have parks and rec meeting right at this time. So, you know, what meetings how do we decide which meeting should be on fifteen?

Sure. Let let let's address that. I do think and I'm looking to Maria who who knows. I think the only meetings that we televise regularly are city council and planning commission. Let's talk a little bit about that.

So the city of Santa Clara does not have our own staff to work the television production equipment here. We utilize contractors for that. Historically, that has been Santa Clara's operating method is to televise only the city council and the planning commission meetings. I will say that that is actually more typical in my experience than medium sized to small cities. Certainly, if the committee and the council ultimately decided to televise all or other meetings, it would be a cost implication, also a scheduling issue that we would need to work need to work through.

But do we have the technology? Yes. But we do not employ a permanent staff for that. And and so I will say, in my professional experience and in a a prior life, most council committees were pre COVID, not on any remote platform, and only in person. Right?

It really was after COVID that people started putting them online, and now you have state law that mandates that there needs to be a online participation form, is why cities like ours utilize Zoom. But televising council committee meetings Generally, here hasn't here hasn't happened. And in my experience, most cities our size are smaller do not do that. Now can you replay the Zoom feed on our government access channel? I think that technology is certainly possible, but I think what's being asked for is putting it on television.

I I will say, anecdotally, I think people have gravitated toward in person and Zoom because Zoom allows for participation whereas TV doesn't. But, certainly, it's a it's a policy and a financial decision, but the the committee and the council can consider that. I also would say that in in this city, we may have a challenge because we do not have the built infrastructure. In fact, the only two rooms that we can regularly televise from without a very expensive fly pack and mobile broadcasting equipment is the council chamber and the community room at the main library. And so, if we were televising, would we could only only use those two places.

And I think even when we're at the library, we need to bring in some specialized equipment. This is the only room the council chamber that Santa Clara has set up for television production equipment, and to add that in other places would not only be costly. The reality is at City Hall, we're very limited on our infrastructure. The Council Chamber is doubles as a council chamber in our largest conference room. It's frankly the only space at City Hall that we can fit more than 25 people comfortably in, and so it it it does double duty.

Well, like, for example, the stadium relations committee is at the Northside Library. Right? It seems like that would be an important one to be able to be broadcasting. And maybe we need to look at if we could since we have the central library, could we add some of our other libraries as conferencing locations where we could Zoom. The other thing it seems to me that we could do potentially is have a link on our Legistar for the Zoom or for the phone number so that in Legistar, people can just go there and click to be able to join the meeting online.

Because now I think you have to go to the find the agenda and then find the link in the agenda. So maybe that would just make it easier for people. Okay. We're back to the committee. Do we have any comments before we start? I propose that we go and actually vote on every one of these work plan issues individually to see if we want to move forward with those, and then we would proceed with the other items that came up from members. Not that these didn't come up from members either.

Comments? I've got comments.

Go ahead.

Again, rather than go through each of the items one by one, we need to start looking at what the priorities are. Like, I hear about the travel policy and how we made things easier for staff, but those weren't the things that were broken. You know, I paid a lot to I I got a lot of things that did weren't reimbursed, and I wasn't complaining. I don't understand why we're suggesting that we look at items that aren't broken. We should look at the things that actually make the process better.

I hear the city manager say things like, well, in my experience, and p and cities of this size and every time I hear about cities of this size, I think, what do you mean? Do you mean by size by population, or do you mean size by budget? Because holy cow, when I look at the budget, there is no reason why we couldn't we shouldn't be able to do anything that any other city does. And I'd like to know why we can't get this done. We have a general fund that's larger than the entire city budget for Cupertino.

I want to know why we can't get this done. When you tell us that we don't have the staff, we pay more in salaries and pensions than almost any other city. And how is it possible that we don't have the staff to support what other cities are getting done, including improvements and and up upgrades to their civic center? Yun, you said that council said that there were no controversial items in the charter review motion. I I don't know where that item I don't know where that was put in the motion for the charter review item.

I I recall very clearly objecting to the fact that there were no stipulations on what the charter could consider. And, again, I I was there. I got outvoted more often than any other council member on this council. And when you say, well, these are professional, I agree. These aren't professional. These aren't personal. I had this conversation where people said, well, you know, you keep bringing these back. I have never brought back a single item that I have been that I have lost unless it was a matter of democracy. And I'd like someone to I would like to challenge anyone on that. But I have lost so many, so many votes in council.

But to tell me that I, you know, whine and cry and bring them all back, I do not do that. I bring back the issues that I think are a big problem, especially when I roll off of council and have to be in the audience again. I think that we need to have a discussion. Like health care, we don't need to have a discussion in health care. Like, if we had a full time counsel, that discussion would take care of its would take care of itself.

Discussion of scheduling, that would take care of itself. There are a lot of things that would be that would go away if we took things in order, if we took things by precedent, we took things by this would solve this, would solve this, would solve this. But we don't. We spend so much time going after individual things that, in the large scheme of things, don't matter. They're not broken.

They aren't the things that people are complaining about. And we ignore the things that give the people voice because, well, we want more efficient meetings. Like, fact that we go until 01:00, 02:00, 03:00 in the morning sometimes is a matter of agenda management. And maybe that agenda management could be made easier if we were honest with ourselves and and we say that even from ten, twelve years ago, we have more issues to consider than the previous councils did. They never had to consider a stadium. They never had to to deal with the issues of the stadium. They never had to deal with all the lawsuits of a stadium. Maybe we should be honest with ourselves on why we are taking so much time. Because we refuse to do that, we're just gonna look at the individual items and never get through them. I think this is a bigger problem.

Like, it doesn't matter what we talk about when we talk about retention schedules for text messages because it's not going to work. We had this discussion. I made the motion, But we know what this is. It doesn't matter if we use SMARSHA or other tools because we can't ensure that elected officials use the right devices. I mean, we have a chair that will not use a city device for city work. And why is that? Is it for it's because it's inconvenient. And I think that these are the wrong reasons for why we are having discussed these. We had the city city attorney that said, well, we have mini policies that emphasize doing city business on city devices. Our current policy is that they should endeavor to keep city work on city devices.

You must use city devices for city communication. That is something you you can do. But regardless of what the policy says, people could use personal devices. Right? We talk about, you know, restricting access to applications on city devices, but that's not the problem.

The problem is, topic in front of you, we cannot ensure that people will not use their personal devices for communication. We cannot ensure that people will not lie about the personal communications they have. There's no way to do that. And as a result, talking about, at any length, about a text message retention policy is kind of I think that's important, but that's not not not even my top 50 because there's no way that to make that useful. It only keeps honest people honest.

And as we have seen, and as the city manager has acknowledged, people who wanna be dishonest will be dishonest. And no tool, no app, no text messaging policy is going to change that. I think councilmember Jane said there are lots of ways to go around this. And you you went to app dev, and the head of procurement says that he can put you can put all the laws to enforce to enforce ethics. And if it's not in you, then it's not gonna happen.

And, unfortunately, whether you believe that or not, whether you believe that previously, whether you believe that now, that's an absolute truth that we live with as a council every single day. So the fact that we're gonna go through these issues without prioritizing and seeing what the umbrella issues are, what the what the other issues are, the the things that I put on there were I wanna I wanna review every single policy that we put in place that removes democracy, removes voice from the council, from the people. Because what I have seen, I did a review of every single policy we we put in place, whether it was the speaking policies, whether it was our proclamation policies, whether every single one of them gave the mayor powers that did not exist previously. I'm gonna say every single time we we considered a change, that change, the outcome of that change was reduced popular voice, whether it was reduced ability from the council, which is we formalized the opinions of the executive staff saying, well, it's not in the charter, so you can't do this because it's not explicitly allowed. But we never we didn't use that symmetrically.

We never said, well, that also is true for the mayor. In fact, we had now I can pull up the governance and ethics committee here. We had the city attorney tell us, well, that's one of the powers as the mayor in the charter. And I literally read out loud in this committee meeting all of the powers of the the mayor. And I said, where is that in the charter?

Because I don't see it. And there was no explanation to me where that came from, and we just went forward again. And these are the kinds of things that when I go back through my notes, when I look back at the governance and ethics, when I these are the problems that I see. It says this council, this committee is being controlled by executive staff. And at some point, the fact that we have a committee chair that does not understand why we need freedom of speech, why we need the ability to put an item on the agenda, why we, not me, but why the public needs the ability to put an item on the agenda that counsel does not want to hear, that's a very important that's not just a very important tool.

It should be a right. I think that the public public members stated it very, very, very clearly, which is you should not, we should not have to get approval twice prior to being able to discuss an item, because it is possible that we have a corrupt council, a corrupt city that does not want to hear what we have to say. And to be honest, the fact that we have to hear what's on people's mind, even if it's unsavory, that's the cost of doing public service, because they're the public. And if you wanna say, I only wanna serve the public that I agree with, I only wanna serve a public that will give me efficient meetings, that's not what public service is. The fact that we have to have this discussion because we want efficiency over democratic voice doesn't make any sense to me.

You know? And I don't I don't understand this. Like, I'm supposed to be the engineer. I'm the I'm the scientist that never cared about politics. I never cared about any of this stuff. And to find myself the most ardent supporter of free speech and basic democracy is, like, it's blowing my mind. Right? But then I realized that the person that we have sitting as chair is an even more engineer than I am. I never consider myself an engineer, which is you read the reports, you believe the reports, and you make pronouncements based on the reports by the information in front of you. My first tenet as a scientist is if I see something that I don't understand, I question the reports, and we don't have enough of that.

We don't have enough of questioning the reports and wanting to hear what other people have to say, even if it's unsavory. I had a conversation with the city manager where the city manager said, you know, I've had a heard a lot of offensive things said in council. I've had a lot of offensive things said to my face. I don't go out and cry about it. What I do is I say, okay. How do we how do we keep this in the narrative so that we can have people have their voice and, you know, so the people are heard, but we don't escalate? By denying people voice, you're going to force an escalation. I think that we need to have these these discussions. Right? If people want to have censure and they wanna talk about censure at five meetings in a row, that kinda tells you something.

And to be honest, I want to hear, yeah. I mean, I wanna know that that's what's happening. I don't wanna go five year five months later and hear there's there's an explosion because we weren't warned what people wanted to talk about, because what people wanted to talk about was being suppressed. I never wanna hear that. You know, I made a comment because I am also a person of color, and I never really thought about that until I came on council.

But I have been reminded as a council member that I am a person of color so many times by other people of color that tell me, you know, you're my representative. You know, the fact that people use that to say, well, I'm offended. I'm gonna say every single time somebody uses my race, my background, my ethnicity, or their race, their background, their ethnicity, or their professional experience to put me on the back heel, my first question is, why is this happening? And right now, I'm gonna say, we're being played. We're so busy talking about individual items that we're not looking at the larger picture.

And the larger picture is every single time we put a policy forward, we lose ground. And people don't understand that because I don't care. I'm not here. I just wanna I just wanna do my climate work. I just wanna get stuff done. I just wanna build more housing. I just wanna get people fed. I think that's not enough. If you're not here to do the total work of the city, if you're not here to do the governance that the people require, then holy cow, you need to step off council. We don't need single issue candidates.

We don't need single issue electeds here. And more importantly, we need executive staff that understands the importance of democracy and people's voice to the point that the recommendation they put forward do not squash it. We need to have a basic understanding that our comfort level we gave up our comfort level as soon as we put our our names in the hat to be, you know, to to be candidates. We are not here because we wanna be comfortable. We're here because we got a job to do. And if your comfort level supersedes the job that you need to do, shouldn't be you shouldn't be doing that job. I mean, I look at the the issues that I want. Reconsideration policy. We shouldn't have to do that. There should be already an understanding of what this is.

But this executive staff tells me, well, I want to interpret it this way. We wouldn't have had to have changed the o 30 policy at all, except we had an executive staff that says, well, I want we choose to interpret it this way, and we can make it easier for you and have more efficient meetings and not hear unsavory items by having a policy that requires that people get approval before they ask counsel for approval, and then it requires a majority vote to talk about the issue. These are the problems here. The fact that we have all these other items that the city manager quite eloquently defended, well, this is why it's here, that's fine. I understand why it's there, but these aren't the items that are hurting the city.

These aren't the things that are broken. These aren't the thing I I didn't hear a single person on the public talking about, you know, review of council policy o five five. I think that the council management, the meeting management protocol, would be helped by a better you know, an idea of, well, what is the work in front of us? What is the fact that we have a part time council? What is that costing the city?

And then looking at, well, what is our budget? And instead of saying cities our size and talking about the population, I think that we should start saying cities our size and talking about the budget. Like, it is disingenuous to say that we're a small city. It is disingenuous to do that because, holy cow, I don't know a single city out there that requires half of a $1,700,000,000 budget. What are we doing with that money?

Not

much. I would request personal part. Like, if you can put forward, like, out of these items, what do you what is your priority item one, two, three, four so that we can finalize the agenda item today for that? Yeah. Yeah. I I know we are talking about objective Yeah.

Staff items or the items that the member Either one.

Like, if staff I'm okay with the staff item, but if customer park wants something priority from other item to be brought forward, I'm open to that discussion. Like, if if we want to bring that, let's talk about not subjective, but really concrete what we can

finalize today. And and to be honest, I thought what this item was going to be about was discussing these individual items, these these items here, kind of putting a higher priority in place. But we wasted all the time justifying the stuff that I said I didn't I didn't really care about talking about. And, again, it's not me. It's the rest rest of this. But gift policy for under $50, is that important? That's not what's hurting people right now. Like, oh my goodness. I can't believe that that kind of item is put put here. Like, I understand it. But maybe when we when this this is down to five items, we can discuss a $50 gift policy for under $50. Right now, if it's under $50, you you don't feel comfortable, make it easy on yourself. Just don't take it. Say, I'm sorry. I I can't accept this.

Or just go and do what we we do. We we tell people, this is what I received. Right? Meeting schedule. It's not about the meeting schedule. We need to look at what the work of council is, and we need to have some kind of staff that says, well, this is the kind of time it takes to get through council. I think city manager justified why staff is so overworked, why they have so many things to do. And I'm gonna say that goes everything that you said goes for council as well. And the fact that we have a part time council, the fact that a lot of people take their part time, the part time of part time council seriously, I think that's a problem. I'm part time too, but I know something, and I live to something that I think a lot of people that I talk to would understand.

There's there is no such thing as part time expectations from a council member. There are no such things as part time expectations. And if we don't respond like, I am part time. I am responding to more citizens' issues than I am told staff is responding to. This is a problem. Right? I have forwarded so many items that are sent to me. I forward them, and I got no response for months. The only time I got a response is I reminded executive staff, hey. There are a couple of items that, you know, I haven't got a response on.

And that's me, a council member. Right? And the reason that it's a problem for me is I only sent one or two emails. But the residents that were complaining, they sent four or five, six, in some cases, more than six. This is a problem. And in a lot of cases, I'm being told by the public, well, Councilmember Park, you're the only person that's responded. That breaks my heart. It makes me feel like maybe the other council members don't care. But I knew they'd I know they do care, right? But I think at some point, we are taking seriously the part time aspect of our part time job.

And I think that does not serve the public, and it's not serving the city. At some point, I would like the city executive staff, I'd like the management to look at agenda management, look at why are our meetings going so long? We spend so much time on this, and our meetings are still going long. At some point, maybe there's something else that you haven't been looking at, right? Maybe there's there's got to be a better way.

Instead of spending so much time polling, can you make this special meeting, this special meeting, this special meeting, maybe we should just make it formal and agendize the the meeting schedule that that the work requires. Instead of saying, well, let's let's see what we've done traditionally, let's look at meeting what the need is. Right? Because what I hear is, this is what we've done traditionally. Or even though that's what you've done traditionally, this is how we choose to reinterpret that.

I'm going to say, let's stop doing reinterpretations. Let's work with the process that we've had and fix the things that are hurting us. Instead, we are creating more things that make our lives easier but hurt the public. If I'm going to answer Committee Member Chahal's question, like the review of council policy o four two, reconsideration of council action, including adjunct topics such as definition of prevail, that shouldn't even be necessary. That should not even be necessary.

I cannot tell you how many lawyers and judges I've talked to that all agree, well, I can't say what I can't tell you what your city attorney is thinking, but seems pretty clear to me. And when I hear that, it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart. Review a council policy o 30, and we need to look at this like Can I

Yeah? Should we take that up? Number three? We shouldn't have to. No. We that's the past. Like, we've done with it. Like, we we were talking that even in the council meeting, we were talking about that it should go to the

Oh, no. No. No. No. But but we're we're beyond that now. We're we're at the point of corruption where people are saying, let's let this one through, and we'll we'll fix all the ones that come after that. That is absolutely a definition of corruption. So I guess we have to take this up. But if we can't correct past actions, then we're taking this up at the wrong time.

We will take that. I guess

we will. Okay. Council review policy o 30? We should. But there needs to be some some talk, not just of what the policy is itself and about, oh, these are the items these are the things that make the council's job easier. We need somebody. We need a lawyer. We need somebody from an ethics, somebody who understands ethics, not Tom Shanks, to say, this is what this policy looks like from the popular, from the pop from the peopular view, the popular view from the people.

I'm sorry. Through the chair. Just for clarification for a second and and the public. It was just said, okay. We would take that item up. Can we clarify what item we're talking about? And is the okay we will take that item up to council members saying

No. We have we have to agree as a body Yes. What we're gonna take on. It just first Taking his opinion. Member Park was saying we don't need to take that up. Now he's saying we should take it up.

So I'm saying we shouldn't have to.

I understand. I understand what you said. So the the point of it is that we need a process because we cannot talk about 28 items and still get to our agenda. This is why our meetings continually go over, and we don't get to all our agenda items. So we're not gonna be able to talk about all 28 of these, and I don't want to talk about all 28.

I want to come up with some sort of prioritization so that we can actually get to the other agenda items, which has also been deferred. And so I think I'm gonna propose I'm gonna continue with my original goal is we're gonna talk about staff's proposed work plan first. And then if you think that there are other things that are more important, vote down the things that staff has put on here. We can bring them back. You the fact that you're voting them down doesn't mean that that they're not important.

It just means that we won't discuss them on that date. That's what I'm trying to get to. So so that's how I'm gonna run this. So on April 13, which is today, we already have our our items. For April 30, we have the consultant coming in to discuss an ethics program.

This is, unfortunately, something that has become extremely politicized because it's something the grand jury recommended, and we need to see what other cities are doing. We need to hear from our consultant. I personally don't believe that our last consultant report was comprehensive. It was missing a lot of things. Like, for example, what I asked was, what cities our size have ethics programs?

And I think that should be key to informing us on that. I don't think that we can and I think the reconsideration of council action, which is what we just discussed. So those two items are on that agenda, and I'd like to have a discussion about whether those should be on that agenda, and then we'll take a vote. Any discussion?

I'm okay with that.

Okay. So we're gonna take a vote on this. All in favor of leaving those two items on the agenda for April 30? Aye. Opposed?

Aye. Aye.

K. Two to one. Now we'll move on to the next item, which is the May council meeting. We have a review of council policy o five five meeting management protocol. We have discuss and provide direction to staff on council policy that provides guidance on the scheduled start times and frequency of regular council meetings, and we have process for scheduling special city council meetings and closed sessions.

So those are the three items for that meeting. Is there a discussion? And then I forgot to go to the public on the previous one.

There are no hands raised online. Does anyone wanna speak? Discussion?

I have discussion.

Yeah. I would say yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm only trying to as far as the discussion gone, like, zero thirty is pretty challenging, and we need to bring that forward. So I wanna prioritize that onto that meeting, if possible. Okay.

Can staff explain in my opinion, I think that the process for scheduling the special meetings and closed sessions is challenging for staff. And then the number of council meetings that are on our calendar at the start of the year is something that's important to me because I think it's incredibly challenging for staff, and it would hopefully prevent our meetings from going so late in the evening because we won't be canceling meetings and postponing meetings. But, you know, we had 41 council meetings. That doesn't include all the committees that we're on. That doesn't include all the meetings that we spent on, you know, audit or on governance or on NERC or anything.

So on top of the 41 meetings, which often went till very late in the evening, we had council members who are part time, still had to go to all of those meetings. So I I think that's important for us to discuss. We probably don't have to discuss it until we create the calendar for next year where we vote on a calendar for council meetings. But can you describe meeting management protocol, what you're looking for there?

I can

unless staff wants to correct me, my understanding of that is that the current policy is in its month to month phase because it was supposed to be reviewed, you know, after a certain period of time. And so I think the intent is to bring it back to do that review because the policy itself called for it.

Okay. But is it a priority? Can we replace that with the zero thirty discussion?

Yes. I'm not requesting.

I mean, certainly, you can replace it with another item, zero thirty or otherwise. I think the the policy zero five five, it's also up to either one, the presiding officer, how those items will will be handled or a majority vote of the city council. I know you've sometime have done that when there's been a disagreement on how an item or a vote should occur for an item. We can certainly continue and deprioritize zero five five coming back to this body and put something else in its place. Okay.

Yes. Yep. As regards the scheduling, you know, I heard a lot of issues that staff is saying it's hard for them to schedule because of whatever 10 reasons, but I don't know what protocol are we following right now. I as a committee member, I would like to see what are the protocol we are face we have right now to schedule a meeting. Because being a part time me council member, if I have a my own office meeting or something, it becomes challenging for me also.

But I would like to see what staff has a pro what protocol they are facing right now that can be presented to the committee, and then we can trash it out. Like, what should be the guidelines for that, basically?

Sure. So how about this? With regard to that item, which is the council the staff's protocol on how to schedule special meetings, We can send that around to the committee. The committee can review it. And if you want to schedule a meeting to discuss that, we can have that discussion at your next meeting, and you can refer it to be agendized at a later date.

I will say that that process talks about or that protocol talks about the process. What it doesn't go into is the challenges with scheduling meetings, which is staff pulling and following up, council members not responding, right, realizing, okay, we gave three dates, we don't have a quorum for any of those dates, etcetera, right? There is a fairly involved process that staff goes through placing, sending you emails, sending you text messages, sending you calls. Right? Some council members are typically late to respond, which hampers.

And if they're late to respond and the meeting is scheduled, sometimes we can get a complaint of, hey. This was scheduled at at a time where I couldn't take couldn't be there. And we say, well, you received the request when everybody else did, and you didn't state your availability, and we had quorum, and so the meeting was scheduled. Right? And so we oftentimes receive those complaints. But I would say in looking at how the meetings have been scheduled, staff has appropriately went through the process. And, unfortunately, if a council member is prodded and sometimes there are phone calls or it's text, I've even said, hey. You know, staff is trying to schedule this meeting. Will you please reply? And they don't reply.

Sometimes we have to schedule it, and then it's at a time where that council member isn't there. And so right. That's not in the in in the in in the No.

I would like to see those challenges also in that report, what you're presenting to the committee. Like, that's the reason, like, we will find out. Like, if I'm busy whole day in my personal office, because I'm not a full time council member, and I have some compelling reasons to be in a three meetings at my office and I'm not even checking the city email till the late in the night or something, Like, it would be unjustice to for the staff to think that, oh, I was expecting Raj's email right back in one hour, two hour, three hours. So then we understand what's what's going on, basically. We need to understand the whole process, basically.

So what I'll do is I'll have staff amend the protocol document and have them add a discussion, probably in a separate memo, around some of the challenges we have with scheduling meetings. I I will say that, you know, it's not a, oh, you didn't respond within twenty four hours. Right? A timeline is giving. Several days are provided. And even oftentimes, staff counsel will come to or staff will come to me and say, hey. We're waiting on council member x. I know you have a meeting with them. Or when you see them, will you call them? Or, you know, will you call council member x because we've sent them x number of emails and text messages and phone calls, they still haven't responded.

So and then we get the complaint when the meeting is scheduled, and that same council member can't attend the meeting. So staff sometimes throw their hands up and says, it's not for not trying. Right? So but we'll articulate a little bit of that in the memo.

I think it's also important to understand how what our requirements are for how many council members need to be there because we had have an issue. If you have a vote that's gonna require five and you only have five council members, then you require a unanimous vote. So it becomes difficult, and planning commission has. I put that down as one of the items. And so we should have some sort of understanding at staff as to when it's okay to have one or two missing council members at a meeting.

So And especially in the special meeting because we are holding a special meeting for a particular agenda. And at that time, we will be knowing that whether we need five votes, minimum five votes, or whether we need the simple majority of the vote. So it would be a good aspect from the staff to, hey. This is special meeting, and we may need five votes for that.

Something like that. And that's the point of having quorum. Right? Is if you have quorum, you can have a meeting. Okay. Member Park.

Yeah. I was gonna say that is already decided. We shouldn't have to discuss, like, policy to defer items when there is a quorum but requires unanimous vote or requires n and n plus one council members up that. The quorum determines whether or not a meeting can be had, and quorum determines whether or not we can vote. And I think at some point, it is always the option of an applicant, of somebody in front of us to continue an item if they feel it's always that is not a a planning commission policy.

Maybe it's a planning commission policy, but it's not necessary. It's just a reminder. And I will tell everyone that I literally reminded everyone on the night right before the vote that we need five votes to pass this item, and it looks like I'm gonna disagree, so I would like to offer a compromise. Literally, I did that. Unfortunately, it happened at 02:00 in the morning, so nobody was listening. Right. Yeah. Oh, you heard me, but I don't think anyone really understood this. I was very I feel like one of the reasons that we shouldn't go to 01:00, 02:00 in the morning is because after 10PM, some of the council members should not be making decisions. But realistically, we always have the right quorum determines that.

Then to have the city attorney come to us and say, well, the people who are absent should have some say, oh my goodness. How is that how is that a reality? What I would like to see in the o 05/05 report is, like, how many of the response problems could be you know, are due to having a part time council? Like, if we had if we didn't have a part time council and I and I'll tell you, I am probably one of the people that responds, you know, the latest because I am getting my calendar together. I also know something that nobody seems to to acknowledge, which is my requests for meeting changes have never been granted.

I've always been overruled. When I've said, oh, I'd like to start the meeting at six instead of 05:30, I've been told time and time again, every single time I've done it, that, well, majority of council said that we're gonna meet at 05:30. So I've I've resorted to the only thing I can do. I put my family first. I put my daughter first, and I come late to the meetings. Right? But when you tell me that, oh, well, council members aren't responding, council members, I'm gonna say that's a bit disingenuous too. Because the reality is it goes to the majority, and there is a minority of people. We need to have more people who have children. We need to have people that have you know, that are that are in the the working class.

We need to have people who are single parents. We need to have people who are renters. We need to have more representation on council so that when those people require, when those people ask for some acknowledgment of their schedules, other people will have some empathy and give in. But we don't have that. We have a majority council, and we don't have any way that says, well, this council can't this council member cannot make it because of this, so that other people even have the chance of saying, well, maybe, oh, let's just go with that.

We don't have a response that says 05:30 unless somebody has you know, wants to meet later. We don't have responses like that. I think at some point, our communication is really bad. And trying to to market this as a problem of people not giving responses, you need to tell the entire story. And I'd like to know many of the response problems are due to having a part time council. I don't want it I don't want it now. We don't need it now. But I think that when we do get this back together, when we look at review of council policy 55, discuss and provide direction of staff count on council policy that provides guidance on scheduled start times and frequency of meetings and process for scheduling special city council meetings, these are all the same issue. These are all the same issue. And to break this out into three different items is one of the reasons why we've got something that looks full.

It's not actually full. And at some point, this shouldn't be discussed until we've had a report. We've had some kind of study session on what the actual problems are. Because you're telling us to break this up into parts and then decide, have an action on each one of these parts separately at the time that we've seen it for the first time. And this is this is not the way that we need to to run this. We need to start looking at this holistically and saying, what is the actual problem? And we'll realize that all of these problems, all of the issues you put on here, one, two, and three, all of them are related. And at some point, we need to start looking at them, that they're related. We start each try treating them like they're related, and we need to start taking this problem more seriously than break it out into items, divide and conquer, and come up with a bad policy because we decided to take it piecemeal.

Sure. Through the chair. Yes. Committee member Park, I was not gonna answer that question. I I don't think I'm capable of of answering that question. I'm not sure anybody is. What I would say is your statement that staff and executive staff has never considered your concerns is absolutely false. Frankly, the me the reason why we're meeting most of the time starting at 05:30 is because we were meeting at five and you met with me and said, hey, I have a concern. I can't make that on a regular basis. And so actually in our meetings, we try not to start at 05:00.

I can't remember the last time we started a meeting at 05:00. In fact, we start the meetings at 06:00. The reality is based on the regular meeting schedule, there is not enough time to get the business done if we don't begin at 05:30. We can look at the tickler file right now. We need to have closed sessions, study sessions, and between six to 07:00, there's not enough time. Oftentimes,

an hour and

a half is not enough time. I'll actually say in your question about how many of these issues relate to having a part time council. The reason why I can't answer that question is because I think that we could be more efficient on items. For example, if we talk think about this item that we're on right now that we've been on for two hours and twelve minutes, staff scheduled this meeting for three hours because we had two items to get to, and we're barely starting to get through decision making on the first item. Right?

I don't think the issues are a part time counsel versus a full time counsel for all the issues. Maybe that's a a piece of it. And, certainly, as a policy matter, the committee and the council can take that up. But the council and the committee's ability to process through items and get to a decision point is a challenge. And certainly, it is something that we need to address.

I don't think that we can address that right now. Then the comment about us or staff piece milling and dividing and conquering, we're talking about items that the committee members brought up and items that are on your work plan, many of which I can only see maybe one, two items that staff put on. And I've even said the one item that staff put on, we can take off and give you an off agenda memo. These are items that you guys have directed. It is not staff's piecemealing and taking items one, two, three, four to divide and conquer.

Taking our direction from you. And so I'll turn the meeting back over to the chair. I and staff will help facilitate your decision making process, but I will remind you that you have another item. And it looks like if history of the judge, we could spend another hour or two hours just getting through the sign.

I agree. I have not stopped anyone from speaking even when public speakers went long because, you know, member Chahal accuse member Park accuses me of not knowing how democracy works and trying to suppress people from speaking. This meeting has gone long because member Park has had full time to speak his mind, and we're, again, not gonna be able to get to the performance review part of this meeting because this item has taken this long. So the fact that, you know, it looks like there's three items on there or it looks like even if there's one, we would just we're like an attic. We would just consume all the space available until we're full.

You know? So alright. So member Chahal has recommended that we replace council policy o five five with zero thirty discussion. That's that's my suggestion. As per Is there a discussion on that? Alright. I'll second it.

I was we didn't go to the public either.

No.

So I'd like to address some things. I mean, people say, well, we need to start at 05:30 because of the workload ahead of us. Exactly. Like, discussing all the items in total, that's what we should be doing. When you when the city manager tells me that, well, we didn't piecemeal these things. These were the items these were the items that the committee suggested. In other cases, you've said, well, we put these together because we felt that there was some synergy or they're they go together. And that's exactly what meeting management is about. It's putting items that are related together so we can have a single discussion and not two. And and and I'm like, I'm I am surprised well, actually, not surprised.

There's a word for this. It's called typical, which is when people complain, well, we are starting meetings late at 06:00 instead of 05:30, and that's the reason that we're having, you know, we're having problems. And we're not looking at, well, what are the number of issues in front of us that could be solved if we had more meetings, if we had, you know, a a better work plan with the ad schedules, you know, known in advance to complain about the issue as it is and not consider how how it could be based on the input that I've given. That's exactly why I talk so long, Because I feel that no matter what I say, I'm not actually being heard. And the reason that I say that is I come up with ideas that we should consider these in total.

And what I hear is, well, when we separate these and, again, you've asked for these in in separate parts, and we brought them together in separate parts. And, well, we've got meetings that started at 06:00 or 05:30 instead of five. It's like, you know, it costs $10. I don't have $10. Well, here's $2 or here's $5. How how does that help? And the short answer is, I guess it helps, but doesn't help a lot. I think that to characterize the issues the way that they've been characterized misses the entire point of the complaint. And the meetings, again, aren't about the time. The time is for the meeting, and the meetings used to be about robust discussion.

I think that when we've when we trade robust discussion for efficiency, we're not gonna have a very good society. Like, I understand we've got a council here that this is a part time council. And that's why I think we need a little bit more representation from people who are hurting from the policies, you know, that that it negatively affects them so that they can fight for them better. Maybe if we had our meetings at the library. Maybe if we you know, I would give up my time if we could have our meetings at the library and have more people, you know, come.

I would do that. But I want a commitment from staff that we're gonna be treated with the respect that governance and ethics deserves. If If we're gonna be pigeonholed and say, well, we're just gonna have one meeting per quarter, and we've got all these work items, but we're gonna discuss gift policy for under $50 and, you know, review of council policy o five five and review of policy limiting resolution matter on matters outside jurisdictional seat. Those are items that we can put on, look at, remind the public we can't actually do anything about that, and we can have a a a speaking session. Like, these are small things that we shouldn't have to consider, and yet these are the things we're talking about.

We're forced to talk about because these are the things that we have to consider on the proposed work plan. At some point, there are so many other things here that we need to talk about. And one of them is I wanna replace all of the May TBD. We're have the o 30 discussion. Maybe the o 30 discussion should be taken along with the o 42 discussion because they're related, and we're talking about an ethics committee right before that. So maybe it'll keep ethics in people's minds as we talk about the o 30 process. But the the entire May TBD should be a study session on this is how council works. This is how the meetings are scheduled. Maybe this is not enough. We need a we report on this is the the number of meetings that we've had previously.

These are items we got through. These are items we didn't get through. To say that, well, we scheduled an hour because, well, an hour should be enough for for an item, I don't think you you were there when, as the public member suggested, we were there at 03:00 in the morning because people talked about a development that affected their their neighborhood for four hours. Like, I don't think anyone wanted to be there four hours. But you know what's worse?

The public that came there on their own time. They weren't getting paid to be there. The public that came there on their own time and stayed the four hours to have counsel ignore them, that's not what they asked for. And at some point, if we're gonna ignore people because, well, I wanna get home, doesn't affect me, these are exactly why we need to have a discussion above what's happening here. And we need to have these policies not voted on majority of council, but we need to have study sessions, and we need to get the public involved. Like, I already know. I can predict almost every single vote that comes up in council. I can tell you what the vote will be. And in some cases, I can tell you exactly who's going to vote for and against it. These aren't the kinds of games that I want to play.

I wanna have the kinds of of representation that get the public involved so that the public's voice, the public's voice, they're not elected, can be heard above the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven people who are on council. We had somebody in on I believe it was Mr. Onderschek. Onderschek basically say that, you know, there are a lot of people out there that are very smart. I'm gonna say from a council perspective, even from a staff perspective, there are people in the public who are much smarter than anybody on council, anybody on a committee.

I have learned so much from public members as a council member and as as a resident. I'm gonna say I've also learned a lot from council members from public members even when it comes to hearing staff recommendations. I've heard it for years. To not acknowledge what the public knows, to not acknowledge what the public wants, and to think that we have more knowledge or more power or more say than they do, that's exactly the wrong kind of representation. Now that's exactly why we need policies like the o 30 policy changed.

And that's exactly why we need staff to understand that you're gonna have you're gonna put things in front of council, and council's gonna vote on them. But holy cow. If we can't show how the public input mattered and the policies that you put forward, we're gonna have a bigger problem in the future. Like, I would like to have a discussion on all of these things. But when we are being pigeonholed into, well, this is the way it is based on what's happening today, that's not the discussion I want.

We need to look larger than that. We need to start thinking about what do the people need in this time where they're not they're not being heard? Downtown is an issue that's symptomatic of the larger problem. The fact that we've got a public member here who's come in front of us several times with an O-thirty, that cannot be done because nobody on council wants to sponsor or vote for it, that's problematic. And the fact that the reason that executive staff gave me for wanting to do that is, well, we don't wanna have people saying unsavory things in council in a meeting in public.

When I hear committee members and other council members telling me, well, we don't want to waste our time with hearing things that we don't wanna hear, this backs to me of repression. And, it's not for us on council to say this. It's for the people who are being repressed to come to us and complain about it. And that's what they've done, and what we're trying to do is ignore them. Like, I understand. We wanna talk about compensation for the executive, but I'm actually happy. I'm okay with the we give them the, whatever, the 3% raise because we didn't do a review. I'm okay with that. Is it a broken process? It's a broken process.

But the other things that we need to consider are so much more important and so much more hurtful than getting other stuff done on time that we have a we have an alternate process for. And I'd like to hear the the public.

We will go to the public on this. We do have a motion on the floor. So come forward, please.

So for on the April 30 and the May TBD, presentation by consultant for review recommendations for the ethics commission and ethics program. I mean, to me, it just seems like we're take yeah. It's for the grand jury recommended it, but it's one person that the the grand jury to talk about it and one person that keeps telling you to do it. So why is one person continually having influence over the city, staff, and council. So it's like, you gotta kinda put checks and balances, and I think that right there is one of them.

And that's kinda disturbing to know that I mean, I wish one of you guys had the power to go say, hey. I want you to do this. And then some, you know, organization or entity comes out and says, hey. We we're gonna do exactly what council member Jane said. So that's exactly what I see. Number two, review amendments for council party zero forty two. That again, I'll get into that another time. Review of policy zero five five, meeting management. I mean, all these things are kind of interconnected if you ask me. Because, you know, going back to the ethics commission, we really need an ethics consultant.

There's an election coming up. Still don't have one. We should have one in the last elections. You go back again, you know, as I said, they're all interconnected, and I'm trying to hurry up here. We have discussion about you know, because the term Brown Act, for example, discussion into process for scheduling the council meetings and closed sessions. Well, we are accused of Brown Act violations when we try to terminate certain individuals out of the city, and that became a big issue. And then it's all is staff taking sides? Are people taking sides? No. That was the policy as it was.

And because someone didn't like it, they want that policy changed, or they want it more transparent. Well, we were transparent. And it goes back to, you know, we're so worried about possible Brown Act violations being committed when we're ignoring the actual Brown Act violations being committed. And then, again, you know, going back to purposely oh, purposely not respond meeting management, and I'll get this as fast as I can, council member Jane. Meeting management, we had this issue when I was on the council. It was consistently a problem. Sometimes we'd have items on the agenda, and then mayors say, oh, we're gonna kick it to the next next meeting. Oh, we do we don't have enough time for this. And it keeps getting kicked down the road. And then, also, we have a report or something that comes out where the mayor, this council can't just finish meetings.

Why is that? That's a setup. That is a setup that all of us fall fell into, and consistently, it keeps happening. So when we talk about meeting management, it's kind of a loop. You have to keep considering the loop that maybe there is a problem with meeting management, that maybe we're putting wrong agenda items on there, or maybe we're just kicking items down the road so then it makes you look like you're a bad bad leader. But, again, the it's it's not the meeting management is, I think, also about a chair who controls the situation and a chair that influences it. And this is the problem. And I think you guys do a good job here. Again, this is a robust discussion. You guys need to have these discussions.

And if the grand jury said you guys didn't have these meetings, this is time to catch up. And because they're taking two, three hours, four hours, that's democracy. That's robust conversation. And, you know, if people can't deal with that, then maybe they shouldn't be on the council. They shouldn't be involved in public service because that is what public service is about, is donating your time, about sacrificing your time, and giving it to the people because you are a public servant, and you serve the people. So meeting management, it's all connected in those. And I just wanna make sure that, you know, you guys follow through on these things on those two items.

Thank you.

You can add more.

Okay. So we now have a motion on the floor. We can vote on that motion. Any other comments?

Clarity of motion again, please.

Clari of the motion is to replace item number one with a discussion of council policy zero thirty and then keep the other two items on the agenda, which is basically scheduling meetings, like when the meeting should happen, how we decide whether a special meeting can happen, all of that.

You know, I requested staff to give us some process they are following right now and the challenges they are facing. Should we take a poll that when we have that report and we can take

that up? We should

have a faster Yeah. Absolutely.

They should making They should have a report to us By that about what it takes to schedule a meeting, how difficult it is. We should discuss, you know, the charter says two meetings a month, and that's all the charter says. And I think the council or the staff has just put on our calendar two meetings a month as the scheduled meetings. But since we're having 41 meetings,

the

charter doesn't say we couldn't have more than two a month, but, you know, we need to have that discussion.

And other other question was other suggestion was because all these three items, as mentioned by customer Park, they're sort of related to each other. We take up them altogether when we take that next or

Well, the meeting management protocol is really, I think, how the meeting

is run. Right? Okay. So that's you're segregating it to be just the council chambers when how the meeting

is. Exactly.

Not how the it's being scheduled.

That's right.

So I'm taking it in totality that if we have a special meeting That's fine. I'm okay with that.

Okay. So that that is the motion. Any other comments? Okay.

Yeah. I have Go ahead. So the first thing is I think that all of these are related. Like, I understand. One is about the process of performing the meeting as it as much as it is a performance, but the other one's 100% are related.

The scheduling I mean, unless executive staff wants to say, well, because the charter doesn't explicitly state that you can have more than two meetings, we're gonna disallow that. Like, it's ridiculous how much I have to think into what what staff can and cannot say. I often go to a meeting. I often ask questions because, well, I have an opinion, two opinions on what what staff could say, and I just wanna hear what opinion they're going with so that I I can see which way which way the wind is blowing. But I think we should get a report and maybe a study session.

These these items are important enough that instead of just having actions that we vote on, we need study sessions on some of this, and the public should be involved. Like, the public is the one that's affected most by us having a bad meeting policy. You know, I wanna see a schedule for monthly meetings. I'd like to see what that looks like and a possibility of having those meetings at the library so that people can be involved. I'd like to have work work study.

You know, I'd like to have work groups where people can talk about the o 30 so that it's not just people on the committee making these decisions and people on the council making decisions, because the O-thirty 100% affects the public. But we don't have these things. The committee meetings are miniature council meetings, and we need to start treating them with the respect that they deserve, because we're just hurting the public by making decisions without context, by making decisions without study. You know, I would like to see, you know, encapsulating the issues, coming back with the with the report. You know, I would like to see, you know, all this stuff, the PRA request restrictions on spurious PRA request.

I I wanna talk about what restrictions means before we we consider something like this on on an but right now, we're gonna have a review of the o 30 process. I think that the o 30 process should be considered, at the same time that we have something like the 42. Because at some point, I would like to see if staff understands how these are related, how reconsiderations and public voice, how we look at these in totality, not one by one, so that we don't run into an issue where this seems to work in this case, but it doesn't seem to work in this case, but we've already approved a different policy. Like, at some point, we need something overall, and my request is that we have, you know, a talk about democracy and processes, in particular, the review of the O30 policy, but a democracy in all processes, because I don't think that this committee and our council understands what democracy and our processes actually means. And if we're without if we're not gonna have a study group, we're not gonna invite the public to weigh in on this, I I don't think that we should be making decisions.

So so council member

through the chair. Yes.

Go ahead. My only suggestion is you think that holding this meeting at a central library will take into account that we are inviting public for a discussion. If that's the case, I'll fully support you. Let's hold this meeting at Central Library and finish off zero three zero over there.

Yeah. I'm I'd I'd want to know. Like, I would like to see what staff thinks about monthly meetings because, you know, trying to solve this by by treating as business as usual and, you know, blaming council members for not being able to agree on a on a time to schedule or by talking long at meetings, I

think that's absolutely the wrong thing. I'm I'm trying to go for a solution. Like, if we if that's the solution, I will ask the staff if we can hold the next meet whatever.

Yeah. Because I I'd like to know

A meeting. But but

the larger question is, how do we get more public involvement? How do we have more how do we how do we do we address all the work that we bring up, not just schedule the work that we have, try to fit them into the meetings that we schedule? Yeah. Like, there those are two different two different ways to address this.

I fully agree with you, and we have been struggling for that part for long, long time. Like, how this council chamber is almost empty even when we have some major budget decision, major decision about multimillion dollar. This council chamber is almost empty. Unless until there is some controversial item, then it this will be a full council chamber. So we, as a council member, as a history tells me, we are struggling with taking feedback from the residents.

And if there is a a silver bullet, which we can evolve, like, this is the way we can involve our residents, I will be 100% with you. And that's the reason I propose. Like, if you think that more residents will come to accounts meeting at central library, I will be happy to take that suggestion and ask the staff to

To to the chair.

Yes.

A couple things. One, there is already a existing zero thirty from council member Gonzales about holding city council meetings in alternative locations. That is scheduled to come back to you. I I don't have the the the date, but it's on the tickler file. I know staff has written a report or is writing a report that will come back to you as a body because that was a zero thirty that was brought up by the council member, voted on by council staff directed to do work.

So I think that piece you're already handling as a city council body. With regard to having this meeting elsewhere, I I'm agnostic on that. I I don't know that staff has an opinion. If the committee wants to meet elsewhere, you know, there are logistical issues and timing, and we can work that out. I I think tonight is a great example of I believe there is a meeting at the main library. I think there's a meeting in this room. I think there's a meeting in the Council Conference Room, and there's a meeting in the Sparacino Conference Room. Right? And so it's just a logistical thing. Right?

If we wanna have a meeting over there, I don't think staff is opposed to that at all. And and I'm certainly not. And there's been some insinuation or or just blanket statement that staff may be against monthly meetings or more meetings of this committee. I have no idea where that's coming from. This body has had a quarterly schedule, but in fact, we have had special meetings.

Tonight's an example of it. A meeting on April 30 is an example of another special meeting, and the meeting we're scheduling in in May is an example of another special meeting. So the insinuating that staff is against or not in favor of more meetings of this body, I don't think it's true. Same thing for council. I'm I don't know how many times tonight I've said we don't have enough time to get the business of the city council done in our in our in in the current format. The city council has had historically a process where you have two regular meetings and then you schedule special meetings. The city council or this committee has not changed that. You're talking about it. Right? You're you're actually talking about potentially having that discussion.

Totally great. So staff will support you through that process. If this bus body decides to make a recommendation to the council that we have more regular meetings or if the council has a different cadence process, staff is supportive of that. Of course, there may be a workload implication, but I think it's been said before, we we're already having 42 meetings a year. And I think I've said to council members and somewhere publicly that, you know, at some point, council members should just reserve Tuesdays.

Right? And and I've heard council members say that I just reserve Tuesdays not knowing if because, you know, there'll be a regular meeting twice, and then we may have a special meeting. Right? And so I don't think staff is opposed to more regular meetings or more meetings. I actually think the history of us having 42 plus meetings and having multiple special meetings with this committee articulates that. I I I actually don't know where that sentiment is coming from. But, certainly, if the body wants to discuss changing your policy, that's what we're talking about here.

Well, as the member of the public had mentioned, there was a time during budget deficits and COVID when we didn't have governance and ethics committee meetings, and the grand jury mentioned that because and so the reality of it is, you know, we do have a $1,600,000,000 budget, but we have had structural deficits for a long time. So how can we fix this problem? It sounds like a big number, but most of that is utilities. You know? The vast majority of it is utilities.

Our general operating budget's still 320,000,000. Right? So my point is that we either have to figure out how we can get more staff to support these meetings because, historically, we've been running structural deficits. So that's a that's a bigger problem. It's not something we address here.

But, certainly, historically, it's been a problem where we didn't have marketing meetings. We didn't have governance and ethics meetings, and the the excuse was we don't have budget. We don't have staff. So there's history there. It may not be true now, and we may be able to have, you know, meetings every two months or meetings every month.

I think fundamentally, what I see here is that just like our infrastructure bond, a lot of things were kicked down the road for years and years, and now we're playing catch up. We're playing catch up with the infrastructure bond. We're finally getting the swim center that should have been taken care of decades ago. And so we're just playing catch up. We're gonna have to have more meetings to just get through these items.

And in terms of the gift policy of $50, you know, I go to events. I go to the Giving Tree event, and they give me a little bag with, like, some pencils in it. It's like, yeah. I could turn it down, but, you know, they're kind of wanting to promote their their activity, and so I get a couple of pencils with their names on it. But I have to declare that. That is our policy. For decades, people have not been declaring things. I know people have been getting things. I know I've been at the swim center thing. Everyone got a T shirt.

The mayor got a T shirt. Council member Watanabe got a T shirt. I never heard anybody declare those things, So it's just a broken policy. And when you have policies that are not being enforced, they become weapons just like jaywalking. I'm glad we finally got rid of jaywalking. Became a weapon. So, anyway, we are now on the motion, and the motion is still, unless you've changed the motion, to have the zero thirty policy, then items two and three. And we're gonna take a vote now. All in favor? Aye.

Use by opposed? No. K. Passes two to one. Now on June 1, we have the review of policy limiting resolution matters outside the jurisdiction of the city.

I'm hugely in favor of this because I don't wanna repeat of those two council meetings that went late at night, but I think that what I'm hearing from member Park is that he wants a discussion of full time counsel. So I don't know if maybe we could take that on. It would be a study session. Again, I need to know if that's within the purview of this committee because the charter says certain things about council members, and the salary setting commission really has most of the control over council member compensation. We also need to have discussion of whether those things would apply after the council members term out and to new council members.

Those are warranted discussions. Through the chair.

I'm gonna refer that to Sue from the city attorney's office. And as she takes the mic, what I will say is the committee needs to discuss whether that's something you want to take on this year if it is a charter issue because I I do think your suggestion of replacing the item that was gonna be on June 1 for that item, June 1 is too late for that discussion to start. If there's a desire to do a effectuate a charter amendment and have that on the ballot for November. LipSue, will you articulate that?

Sure that there's too much more to say on that. That's that's correct. If if we're looking at a deadline of July, I think I think it's mid to late July, July 20 ish for the deadline to get things on the ballot. A discussion in June of anything that would be charter related would not allow for sufficient time to get it on the November ballot. Frankly, even talking about it now and giving it to the charter review committee for discussion for the for the November ballot, we're we're at a very difficult

sort of

point for that now.

I wasn't planning to put it on the

Okay.

I think we should have the discussion. I had this problem when we were doing redistricting. We were we weren't sure we were gonna get enough people to sign up to be on the redistricting committee, And so I wanted to pay people $50 for every meeting they attended, and there was a huge opposition for that. And there's a huge opposition in this community for increasing council pay even. They just say, you signed up for this.

You volunteered to be a council member. We don't need to pay you more. So I think there needs to be a big community discussion about this because I think if we just council voted to put on the charter, it would fail. So I'll put it on the ballot. It would fail.

So we do need to engage the public. We need to have some sort of survey. I don't think we can get it done by November, and the charter review committee was not tasked with controversial things. They were tasked for mostly cleanup and some, you know, moderately con controversial things. Anything that's truly controversial would be a separate ballot measure and might need another charter review committee because the charter review committee is already very busy. Okay. Discussion about the June 1 meeting.

So my point was if we had a larger discussion on the issues around the May TBD items, then full time counsel could be an input, a consideration. Right? But to talk about full time counsel by itself, that was never my intent. My question was, what would the effects be if we had if we put all the options on the table? Right? I mean, this is a big issue. It has budget implications. There are a lot of things. It would change the way that people ran for council. This is not something that I'm trying to ram through.

I think this could be something that we target for even the twenty twenty eight elections. But, again, my request that we take all the items in May TBD as a work study, as a study session, instead of for action, provide indirects and provide discuss and provide direction to staff on council policy that provides guidance on the scheduled startup. Oh my goodness. What a small piece of the problem that we're looking at. And then to immediately after that review it, sorry, process for scheduling special city council meetings and closed sessions.

Like, at some point, a study session that goes over all the issues with the issues with the that committee member Chahal requested, that would have been a better topic. And again, this was completely ignored. Right? And it was replaced with, well, a council member sorry, committee member Park wants to talk about a full time council. That was not I said we should consider this.

These should be things that we discuss as we talk about city governance. Because the most important thing that I'm hearing, even the complaints, are about scheduling, about this meeting, about so many different things. And I want to know things that are interesting that could help solve this. My point wasn't that we I mean, city manager was was stating, oh, we didn't do any of this. We didn't do that. We've been we've been trying to make big time for for meetings. We were never against having more more meetings. My request was 100%. What is the schedule for monthly meetings? My comment, which committee member Chahal agreed with, was how do we get the work done?

Not, you know, kick the stuff that doesn't fit in the the quarterly meetings down the down the road and some of them off a cliff never to be seen again. It was how do we get this work done? Like, we've we've got through the proposed work plan, and we see it through December, and none of the items that the council members brought in, very few, none of the items are are even considered on here, and we can do that. But I thought that that's what we're supposed to do. And by saying that we're just gonna have a June, September, December meeting, like, I I think this is exemplary of the problem that I'm stating, which is where's where was my comment for monthly meetings and meetings at potentially at the library to to drive engagement?

Where did that go? That went into, we were never against that. Well, you never proposed it either. And at some point, you you talk about the schedule that we have, and I'm I'm not looking at the schedule that we have. The schedule is made for the items. We don't try to fit the items into the schedule.

Sure. Let me address that, and I don't wanna keep going on and on. But committee member Park, you oftentimes address your comments at staff. You need to address them to your fellow committee members. It it is not it

it My committee members didn't make the comments.

No. But your you have articulated your position. It is up to your committee members and you to make a motion for your committee members to decide that. Right? It is it is not up for staff to say, oh, one committee member said, let's have meetings at the library, and staff to say, okay, let's do that. No. The process is for you to propose something to your fellow committee members, make a motion, your committee votes on that, and then that that's direction to staff. Or in this case, that that is a recommendation that would go to the go to the city council. Alright? Depending on the matter, this committee can decide to have their meetings elsewhere.

Specifically, with regard to the work plan items, the items that are on the April through December are the special meetings that have already been designated and your normal quarterly meetings, and we have been able to fit the existing work plan items in there. The other items you're talking about, you guys provided to us based on an email survey, so we're putting them before you for you to decide as a body if they get added to the work plan. If they get added to the work plan, we may need more meetings. But it would be inappropriate for staff to say, oh, one council member said that we're gonna add it to the work plan. As a you have to have a majority of the body decide to put something on the work plan.

That's what we've been trying to talk about now for two hours and forty nine minutes. And so it's not directing your comments at staff. It's it's talking to your colleagues and making your articulation of what you would like to have to your colleagues and then and or making a motion for that and seeing if your colleagues support you.

So council member Park, you know, you started out talking about, oh, if we had full time council, we wouldn't have to think about half of these things. And so you made this a huge priority. We wasted not not wasted. We spent, like city manager said, two hours and forty minutes basically talking about your issues. And you said, oh, well, none of the things I mean, I put most of these issues on here, and they were just sort of brainstorming ideas.

There it's not prioritized. Gift policy for 50 is not my number one topic. Okay? These are not prioritized. These are just brainstorming. And the and you said, oh, well, none of these items were on the on the city agenda. Well, that's not true. Number two, city council meeting schedule. Increased the number of calendar to city council meetings from two per month to three per month or 36 total. July and August split for break is inconsistent with other agencies.

Now that's a charter change because the charter says two meetings a month, and that's why we split it between July and August. And that would require a charter change, but my point is that you started saying full time counsel would solve almost all of these problems. And so we are, you know, acceding to your requests to talk about full time counsel, and now you're like, well, that's not important.

Oh, no. No. No. No. Let let me let me respond to that. Like, I suggested, that's true, that a full time council would address all these things. And the idea was to and but my my suggestion was address the work plan, address the meeting management, address the agendas, address special meetings altogether, and see how a full time council could help with that. And, again, that was ignored. I will, you know, I will acknowledge the city manager's complaint that, well, I should be talking to the to the committee members. But at some point, I think the committee members are in a catch 22 looking to staff.

They also say direction like, oh, yeah. We could do that. Because what this city city what this executive staff has done is they've made it very clear. Anytime they want they don't want things supported by counsel, they will say, oh, that will take a lot of staff time. Oh, that could take budget. Oh, that could that could be there could be some legal issues there. Oh, that could be a charter issue. I understand that. But to come forward with a study session, to bring all of these together, that is something that we 100% should be doing. And at some point, I think that city staff, like they do in council, would say, well, we have these options that we could do.

And, you know, when somebody suggests, I would like to see a schedule that shows monthly meetings. I would like to see what we can do about having meetings in public spaces up to to drive engagement. I think at some point, it you know, I think that committee members are looking to staff to say, well, that's something that we could do. I think that a fear that has been instilled in a lot of committee members and council as well is that, oh, we're impinging on time. Oh, we don't have this kind of thing. I think we need to start acting like a $1,700,000,000 city. People say, well, that's part of that SVP. And we, as council, rule on those too. Like, at some point, we need something. We need to address how the work gets done instead of looking at these these these issues individually.

And, if we're doing a work plan discussion and I'll read the topic. Review on action on the governance ethics and ethics committee work plan. I thought we would do something like a prioritization or a discussion of of these items. And to be honest, the the way that we're discussing this here and the way that we're kind of focusing on only the proposed work plan, that wasn't me. That was somebody on the committee that suggested that this is the way that we do that.

And this this really sets a bad precedent for how I think goal setting in council is going to go. Like, at some point, I think that priority setting and goal setting needs to be setting priority, setting goals. And if we're just having a list and seeing how those list how the items on the list fit into a schedule that we already have, that's not that's not going to work. Staff's already said that multiple times. I never suggested. I never ran full time counsel. In fact, full time as a as an issue that we need to discuss, I said that's an item that I would like to hear a report on. I literally said that. If you wanna see where I said that, I can repeat what I said.

Care about that. We are now at time, and we didn't get to the other items. Now the issue is that we all agree that the work the work plan is bigger than the scheduled meetings. We all agree that we'll probably need more meetings, and that's when those other items could fit in. But I need to and the other thing that I need to make clear is that the fact that we put something on the agenda can be a study session.

We start with staff presentation. We start with all of that. We don't actually have to take action on any of those things. We could defer action to a later meeting pending more information or anything. Any meeting can be a study session.

So okay. So I guess the question is we're now pretty much at time, and I don't wanna keep staff much later. We did add an hour to this meeting. It was clearly not enough. So I would like to and, you know, the text messaging issue is a very sticky issue.

I personally don't believe there's a good solution to that because people can always get around almost any technology. But the fact that we do have council members that have known to use signal very clearly using signal regularly. I don't know if they're still using signal. The fact that people delete text messages, and council members have admitted to deleting text messages. So I don't know what we're gonna do to increase the public's confidence in our council members when we know that there are council members doing these things.

Member Chahal. Yeah. My only request again is to council member Park. If you think there are priorities, you can let the committee know that these are the priority we wanna take up sooner out of all the 28 or even adding something so that we we committee can let the staff come back later on. Okay. This is feasible, not feasible. That's a different story. But I want your I am really trying to find a solution so that what are your priorities out of these 28 or even addition to that which we wanna take up sooner? I'll be more than happy to discuss that.

No. And I appreciate that. And I think that that was your request, like, twenty minutes ago. But then we had a reversion back to what we're gonna go with the regular the the initial process of going through the issues on the on the work plan that was printed. I I do understand that, and I and I was we were in the process of going through some of these items. But it was easier for me to just throw items out as this is not a high priority. We're gonna have a bucket that we'd like to discuss at some place sometime. But until these issues are the only items on the on the the list of issues to

to Because of the time constraint, we already gone through that. I would request, like, if we can pick up the instead of discussing each item, if we can pick up your priorities and committee can discuss, okay. Yes. This does make sense to take up up to June, December, or September on that priority, that will be good enough. Like, instead of talking all these 28, oh, this is good. This is not good. This is good. This is not good. What are our priorities, basically? Like No.

I had proposed at the very beginning that maybe a process would be for each member to discuss their top three or four priorities. And I did put that.

I did in it. Yeah.

Yeah. And and we did discuss that, and I don't know why you're saying we didn't. I had mentioned that from the beginning. But to move this process forward, I said, well, let's discuss what staff has recommended, and so we went through that. Now we will probably be scheduling extra meetings, and now maybe in the last few minutes that we have left, we can go around, and we can have each member mention their top three priorities that are not on the current work plan from staff.

Chair, I'm I'm so sorry to interrupt. I I do have one issue that was not in your packet

K.

That is related to your work plan and the scheduling, and I have been reminded to to bring this up to the committee. So you've I'm sure you've all heard of the passage of SB seven zero seven. It was went into effect in January, created a bunch of sweeping changes to the Brown Act. One of the requirements of SB seven zero seven is that the city council has to adopt a policy relating to disruptions of online service during the course

of a

meeting. And that policy has to be adopted by July 1. So council policies normally would come through governance and then go to go to city council. But because it's a policy that is required by SB seven zero seven for the city council to adopt, What we'd like to find out is whether the committee would be okay with us taking it directly to the city council, or would you like us to bring it through governance committee before it goes to city council?

Yeah. I personally think it should just go straight to council. It's basically state law. I mean, I was in a Peninsula Cities meeting. Someone was dialed in remote, and they just left the meeting.

And so we had to end our meeting because it was a notice location, and they public was not accessible to that location. We finally managed to get ahold of that person. They had gone to a different location. They restarted the meeting, but we had a, like, hour gap where we couldn't have a meeting. And so it's a huge issue with Brown Act, and I know that there are provisions in seven zero seven to allow for technology to fail and and things, but I think that's not controversial in my opinion.

It it the policy that we have drafted for this purpose is is fairly straightforward, and it just gives sort of the step by step process of what happens if we have a Zoom outage Mhmm. Or something of that nature. And and what do we do in the meantime while we're trying to fix it? What happens if we are able to fix it? What happens if we're not able to fix it. Right. Just that kind of thing. Absolutely. And and that's what the state law requires us to adopt. So I'll take direction from from the committee as to how to proceed with that.

Any other comments? I I would say that, like, it's a state law which we have to follow anyway. So I would say bring it directly to the council. We already have an outplayed lot of other issues. So I said this.

So I'm gonna say I've had a discussion about this with with staff. And at some point, one of the reasons that I think we need a discussion prior to bring it to council is so that we know that the staff report has the issues in it that that affect the people. My worry right now is that there is a lack of understanding in staff on on what the issues of connectivity are so that any action items that would be brought forth in front of council would be incomplete. Any recommendations would be not as full as they could be. I mean, we've already had disruptions.

We've had disruptions where people called in to city staff. City staff understood that there were disruptions, and we continued with the meeting without any acknowledgment to council and acknowledgment to people out there. I suggested we could we could pause the meeting. We could wait. We at least we I'd like to be told that we're having a technical issue, that people can't see it on YouTube. I can't see it on something else. Like, some people don't wanna come to a meeting. They don't want to be on Zoom because they don't wanna have to identify themselves by logging in. Some people on television, they need television because they don't have the Internet service that allows them to use Zoom. Some people use an a service like television and then decide in the middle of the meeting to call in or to come down in in person.

And these are issues that seem to be not understood by the people that I was talking to. And my my statement was we are denying them access. And the comment to me was, well, we only have to provide Zoom and, you know, in person counsel. I'm thinking, yes. But if we've got other things advertised and those are the only ways that people know to get in, we should at least address failures in in those ways.

I mean, I I know when my grandmother was around, I bought her a phone, and she only knew one way to do things. And when that one way didn't work, she couldn't use the phone. And so I think it's very important that we understand that if we advertise different ways to access this meeting and one of those ways goes down, we we need to address that. If we're gonna go on with the meeting without correcting that issue technically because we've made a decision, I'd like that to be a decision that we make, not something that just happens because we didn't know about it. And these are the kinds of issues that I'd like to discuss and let people talk about so that by the time a referral actually goes to counsel, it contains all of the issues, all of the, you know, all of the nuances that affect real people.

But my concern is we bring it to council, and we're we're discussing in council, and somebody's gonna make the motion for a staff recommendation. And all of these discussions will be lost. That's my concern with simply going to counsel on even straightforward things, because access to a meeting may be straightforward, and it should be, but this is a bigger issue than people are willing to acknowledge. Because, again, I have gone to meetings. I have I have had to go to meetings.

I've had lost connection. I have been on council in the middle of Silicon Valley and not been able to call in. I've lost connection in the middle of the meeting. I've lost connection to middle of meeting when I was in in the now now Esperasino Conference Room. These are real issues, and we need to think about what does it mean when it happens to a resident.

Well, then by that analogy, everything should come through governance.

Oh, I'm gonna say that's what governance is for. At some point, we need a

place This has been discussed in great detail at the state level, and I get it. State the state level have made some bad policies. I think often in in terms of Brown Act, but I don't want everything to have to come through this committee. It's we can bring this to this committee if you want, but it's gonna be another two hour discussion, and we won't get to all these other items that we're supposed to be getting to.

So If I if I can and look at the assistant city attorney because we can't talk about this item too much because it's

not Mike.

We can't talk about this item too much because it's not agendized, but I do think the core policy is fairly straightforward. However, I think the item that council member Park is in part articulating is at least two things. One, when staff is aware that a method of connecting to the meeting has gone down to alert the council and the body of that so that there's awareness. I think that's one issue. There was a time where that staff was alerted during the meeting and a notification did not happen.

And I would say that our IT staff have been under the operational protocol of if there's an issue with there's a issue with TV or streaming, they continue to work on those and they don't sort of pause the meeting. We we really have only, in my experience, paused the meeting when Zoom went down because that's the remote participation vehicle. And so I think that is, frankly, the second item that council member Park is is addressing, you know, potentially a desire not just to pause the meeting when Zoom goes down, but to pause the meeting if, for example, streaming on YouTube or there's a problem with the cable TV channel. I don't necessarily think that that is if if those are the the two issues that it has to come to governance, I think that that issue can be talked about at the council meeting when it goes to council. And there may be a policy difference between the council members.

And, again, not not to not to get into the merits of of any of these items. I would just say that because there is a specific scope of a policy that is required under s b seven zero seven, Other issues of accessibility, which I don't discount at all, council member Park, but other issues of accessibility perhaps should be taken on their own as as a a a stand a stand alone item. And and this particular Zoom disruption policy would be one that we take in in the course of s b seven zero seven compliant.

That would be my recommendation. Bring it directly to council. So that's a motion.

There are question raised after that discussion about adding something that can always be brought back to the governance or to the council.

Now go to the public. Yes.

Motion. I would say, yeah. Just send it to the city council. Make it show it's an earlier enough time so then there is as council member Park Park is talking about the feedback, the, hey. We gotta fix this, you know, little tiny details like that. Maybe do it early, and then you can have the comeback of, okay. We have all the the fixes, and we can come back and maybe vote on it later words. Because, I mean, I agree with the the councilmember Ter Hall and councilmember Jay about maybe just going to the city council because it's state issue. But I also do agree with council member Park that there are a lot of issues that we do need to talk about with that. So it should just go that way, and then you have enough time for if he has to come back, then you can get all those notes put in there.

Thank you. Any other member of the public?

There are no hands raised online.

Okay. So we're gonna take a vote now unless you have a comment.

I'm sorry, councilor Jane. Can there's a hand raised now.

Okay. Go ahead.

Wanda?

I'm sorry. I'll be quick. I don't know if this is appropriate. But from a public point of view, and I do care about our city, and I know you guys do, the lengthy time of meetings discourages people and contentiousness and at both the council or with the staff or with the public discourages people. And it's time is is the issue I'm talking about so much tonight, and it's no wonder that things like the pool and downtown, which I'm very much for, just don't ever get accomplished.

So I hope you we have some new ways of looking at things out of all this work that you're doing. Thank you. Goodbye.

Thank you, Wanda. Anyone else?

We have Adam.

Alright. Adam?

Hi. Really quick. You know, I just I think, you know, making sure that we're efficient is really important. And doing that is having our staff reports prepared correctly and, you know, concisely. No.

And being as involved as I have been in working with staff, that's not always the case. I heard somebody say in the earlier in the day that there was there's a lot of knowledge that the community has and wants to offer a lot of times to partner and work with staff, and sometimes that's not always received. And sometimes they go in without, you know, a full deck of cards. And so I think I know when I'm making decisions and when I was running large projects and whatnot, having information at at you know, be concise and be accurate and complete is really important, and I would hope that maybe we strive to have more accurate reports for council so they can make better assumptions, better decisions, and less, maybe even less discussion. And then the last thing is I I just really think this needs to be a more you know, I hope more public people get involved because I think there are a lot of people who have been turned away from participating in in the city at multiple levels.

I mean, even down to just attending a council meeting because of, you know, some of the actions between council members, staff, and the, you know, the larger way things have been going in the city for many years. So I'm hoping you guys can really turn this around. So thank you. I heard a lot of good things, and, hopefully, we can start chewing off some of these action items, that we've all listed. So thank you.

Thank you, Adam. Anyone else?

No other hands are raised online.

Okay. So now we'll take a vote. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? No. Okay. Two to one. Alright. So we will have to defer the item, the performance review again.

I don't know how where we're gonna fit it into the schedule. Maybe we'll have to schedule a special meeting for that. It'll go into one of the special meetings because we've already decided what will be on our next two meetings. I don't think we made decisions about the other two meetings. We can then work on putting those in, filling in other items into those two meetings, and we will certainly have to schedule more meetings. But I think we have our agendas for thirtieth and May meetings. I think that concludes this meeting. Can yes, member Chao.

Instead of postponing that agenda item, it's to me, it's straightforward. Can we take another put a time on that and finish it off today? Otherwise, it will we'll keep compiling the agenda. I understand, but

we've already gone three hours. I can stay later. We have a council meeting tomorrow, so we have to consider staff when we if

if the staff is because staff is sitting

here, they'll sell to Sure. Yeah.

Let me address that. One, I will leave because it relates to me, and it wouldn't be appropriate for me to sit here for that item. I do think we have the acting HR director and the assistant city attorney that attended this meeting specifically for that item. Right? Sue is sort of do doing double duty. She's also sitting in for the city attorney who's in another meeting right now. So if they're willing, I think they both would be willing to stay for a couple more minutes then come back for another special meeting. So if the council is willing, I think staff is willing, and I will exit the room.

Okay. Then we will I suggest that.

Okay. So we'll take it take it up. I'm sure we have a staff presentation on this. I am going to pass out something to my fellow members and to staff. This is the NCPA schedule for their performance reviews.

So I sit on the executive committee of NCPA, and they have a very robust process with a timeline. Their process is driven through their HR department. One of the problems that I've seen here historically is no one owned this process. And so it kept getting kicked down the road. I believe there was also some political reasons for not doing it, but we haven't done a performance real thorough performance review with goals and feedback in probably five years.

I mean, I've been here five years. Don't think it was even done years before that. So I'm gonna pass this out to people. You can take a look at it. Okay.

We can go through staff's presentation, and then I'll discuss this schedule that NCPA has.

Good evening, committee members. Marco Mercado, the act acting director of human resources. The item before you is for consideration to present to city council a council policy with which to conduct performance appraisals and assessments of council appointees, specifically the city attorney and the city manager. And go to the next slide. So just as background, as, chair, Jane articulated, there really is no established process with regards to assessing the performance of, the council appointees.

And part of that is their like, in terms of ownership as to who owns process, whether it's HR, city attorney's office, city council. The purpose of the policy, it helps articulate what my what our understanding is of discussions from, closed session and city council with regards to putting a policy together. The policy is the intent is for it to be self executing with set timelines, the process, and kinda dictating what the process is and what the involvement is of city council, HR, city attorney's office. And it would allow for the predictability and, like, transparency in terms of the performance assessment and valuation and setting performance goals as part of that with regards to the council appointee. The main gist is that if a, no matter their time of hire, the waiting period for a council appointee will be, be the calendar year, January 1 to December 31.

The, idea is to use an outside facilitator. HR would own that process and, secure the an outside facilitator, for secure bids for it and then present to counsel and have them choose, in terms of which facilitator to use at any given time. As you can see there, this timeline is pretty much set that in January, once the facilitator, if already chosen or, would meet with individual counts with the city council and other identified staff members, to gather information on the performance appraisal and assessment of the council appointee. My rec my understanding is that there that would include a potential three sixty evaluation, which is why other identified staff members are included in the policy. And then, that would be in January where the facilitator would gather information.

In February, the facilitator would present that information to city council and to the council appointee at issue, in closed session and provide what, the results of their work or the information that they gathered. In March, city council would meet in closed session and appoint a subcommittee to meet with a council appointee and with authority to negotiate any compensation benefits or other modifications to their employment contract. In May, this would codify, what's currently in the, believe, in the contracts with the current council appointees where if the process is not completed, they would receive a 2% salary increase or CPI, whichever is applicable, CPI, whichever is lesser. But the idea would be that this in May, the subcommittee would present to the full council in closed session any recommendations with regards to changes in compensation or other modifications to the employment. In June, if there are if there are modifications to be made, then HR would present an open session to for approval of those changes, formal approval of those changes, which would then be effective.

Questions from members? Okay. Yes. I'll present this. I might as well.

So I personally don't like the idea of doing the performance reviews based on hiring date. I prefer to do them on calendar date or some fixed date because we can hire one facilitator to do both city attorney and city manager because we actually have a hard time finding a facilitator to do that. Now if all the cities are doing theirs at the end of the year, you have trouble trying to find a facilitator who could do that. Right? So we could keep with the schedule that you've you've suggested but shift to be, you know, in the spring instead of in the fall.

Now the NCPA schedule is that it's driven by HR. They actually have not hired an outside facilitator. They've all done it entirely with the executive committee and with the HR. So they will hire out for some compensation consultants, but the rest of it but what they do is it's HR and, you know, you can see here the leftmost column is the responsible party. So it starts with HR.

And on September 25, HR manager notifies general manager and general counsel that the performance planning and evaluation would commence in October. HR to initiate executive committee discussion of GM and GC annual review procedures and schedule. Schedule four additional special executive committee meetings between twelve five and 12:14. Remind EC of more meetings may be necessary. So that's a process that is pretty much set.

I don't know how other cities do this. Perhaps you've surveyed other cities around us, how they do their performance evaluations. But, you know, in NCPA, the general manager will and council will say what they did, you know, their their achievements, and they'll set set some example goals for the next year. We'll add to those goals, and then at the end of the year, we'll evaluate those goals during the the performance evaluation. And currently, we don't have a process for that.

So there is so I would like to see something far more formal that we have. I would like to see us add a three sixty evaluation. And my question is, do we have to budget for this? Do we have budget for for these consultants and the performance review process? We have to hire an outside compensation consultant in addition to a facilitator.

So we would need to allocate funding for the the facilitator and any additional consultants that you may want to assist with the process.

That

is something we would need to

add as part of the budget.

So that would go into this year's budget process if we wanted to move forward with this. Okay. Alright. So you have this schedule, and, you know, it concludes with, you know, a final compensation discussion. It wraps up in December, so they have a very fixed schedule for meetings.

I would like to establish something like this. I would like my fellow members to consider moving to a calendar schedule regardless of hiring and that we would true people up if they got hired in the I I've worked for companies when they did this. If you got hired in the second half of the year, you didn't get a performance. You didn't get a a merit increase. If you got hired in the first half of the year, then you would get a merit increase. That I've worked for companies that did that. So depends on when you get hired because you're tying it to if you got hired in September and you're gonna get an increase in December, it doesn't really make sense.

I I will just make one one comment with regard to what you were saying regarding the three sixty evaluation. The proposed policy language is pretty silent on the details of the performance appraisal process itself. It really just sets out a timeline and a framework for how the how that will work because we wanted to give counsel the flexibility to to do what they wanted with regard to the process, the substance of the process. I I would note that there is perhaps one portion of the policy that maybe we could add in if process for the substance of the performance appraisal is something you wanted to build in build in specifically. So what we have is the policy says the facilitator isn't it should be available to begin work in December.

And then the next is during the month of January, the facilitator will have interviews. We could build something in requiring a closed session with the facilitator in December to discuss, you know, the process for the evaluation itself. We did not put that in there, again, for flexibility purposes. But if you would like me like me to put that in there to reflect that, we can we can do that. But I I just wanted to Well, there's highlight that.

There's also the process of hiring the facilitator. Right? Because we had we put out bids, and we had, I think I can say this, we had two Mhmm. People that were interested, and then council had to select

We have that in November.

And so, yeah, the So I think that the question is we had an issue this time where we hadn't budgeted for a three sixty. I just wanna put in the the budget process. We have money there for a three sixty, and it's up to the council whether they wanna do that. I it's not clear that we have to do that every year, but periodically. I just want it to be in the budget. Any member, Chao?

Yep.

So thank you for presentation about our plan as well as getting the NCPA plan. I would suggest that, yes, fix a budget with three sixty included, and then council can decide in November when we select the facilitator whether they want three sixty or whether they want anything. But budgeting should be provided for that. That's good. And I propose that just like the NCPA, they have a specific date, the week of that.

So we don't have those dates, but we always have two meetings in a month. So I would suggest that in the second meeting or before in February or second meeting or before in March, second meeting or May, we specify it latest is by the second meeting of calendar meeting, which we specify in advance, not the special meeting we'll we hold on random basis, but the what we put on calendar way ahead of time that it should be done by the second meeting of each month, basically. I would suggest that that way, it is more precise. Everybody knows that this plan has to happen by the second week of second meeting of that month. That way it's good.

The only challenge with that could be that we could have special close or, excuse me, closed session items that are time sensitive, and that would take priority potentially over this, in which case we would need to consider a special closed session. So We can't discuss

local agency executive compensation related items in special meetings.

Okay. So then we would have to we will need a special closed session for any items that

are time

sensitive anyway. Correct. Yep. Because, generally, the closed sessions start at 05:30 or six, and then we go into open session at seven. So that may not give us enough time to cover this item as well as any times time time sensitive closed session items we may have. So just be mindful that we may still need to add additional special meetings for closed session items that are time sensitive.

That's fine. But I'm trying to solidify this road map that we should have by the second. If we can let's say we have a time in the first meeting, we can do that. But by second, it has to be completed by second so that we are there. Everybody's staff knows, HR knows, council knows that it will be this is the road map so that we everybody is clear that this is going to happen. That's my only suggestion.

So I think what I'm trying to understand is do we need to decide anything, or by consensus, we just agree that this is way we wanna do it, or does this have to come to council to vote on it?