Oversight Board Committee - Regular Meeting

on that.

The recommendation might be on the... Oh, they couldn't hear us from... Now they can extra hear us.

That section...

Not be included in the ultimate recommendation to the group right that's an important stakeholder and if there's some resistance or opposition to those provisions that that's likely to be something that. Our office recommends and ultimately group five you know recommends you know be excluded from the comprehensive recommendation. Keeping our fingers crossed, hoping that, you know, that that will break, you know, a different direction. We'll at least do, obviously, formatting changes and renumbering so that that section plugs in right the way, you know, where it should and the rest of it. But some of those substantive changes to align current practice with what the charter says, because they were misaligned, won't, are potentially not going to be part of the ultimate recommendations. So those were quick presentations on one, three, and five. Mr. Chair, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask if any of the members of groups one, three, or five wanted to supplement that report out as part of the report out to the group today.

I see none.

Very good. Next slide is the kind of the transition to the much more substantive and detailed report outs that were, that's the focus of tonight's meeting, uh, from groups two, four, and six, uh, the, the language really for all groups, uh, you know, but particularly for two, four, and six has been developed over multiple meetings, including stakeholder input, you know, as you all know, um, There has also been, throughout this process, report outs monthly to the full CRC that were designed to keep the CRC and the public aware of the issues that were being discussed at the subcommittee level. And the presentation tonight for Groups 2, 4, and 6 is really a... culmination of those efforts with a few caveats on certain issues that I'll identify and members of the group may identify as we go through this. But the culmination of the efforts to solicit the full CRC input and direction, the idea is that after that exercise, if the CRC is comfortable with one or more of these groups reporting out in this comprehensive way. The direction would be to finalize those terms, you know, and bring it back ultimately to this group when you all meet for your final, you know, recommendation to the city council. So tonight is intended to be the next step on the path towards some of the subcommittee groups reaching the final recommendation to be included in this group's larger recommendation. Currently, we're working on identifying another meeting for the CRC group in early June. And we'll talk later about how that aligns with the schedule that we're developing with the city council. We may be able to present at least in a workshop format to the city council as early as June 9th. And we've actually got a space reserved on the June 9th agenda. So we'll talk about that later. There are still issues, as any of you have seen, particularly the ones who are reading this extra carefully, and I thank you all for that. There are still, I'm sure, issues with grammar and typos and consistency and cross-references and formatting. All of that's still under internal review by our office, and I think by any of you, because I'm getting a lot of good Um, you know, corrections, uh, from folks either just separately, um, in email communications or at the subcommittee meetings. So please don't think, even though this is a substantial report out, Hey, tell me what you think that, that, that process isn't ongoing and won't be, um, ongoing up until the point where we, the, the, the language is presented to the city council. So with that, any question on the nature of what's happening tonight with groups two, four and six before I dive in, deputized by all the groups to lead the presentation starting with group two? Very good, thank you, Mr. Chair. So group two, we have a motion it was assigned the sections of the charter dealing with the city council, elections, powers, and conduct of meetings. Unfortunately, as you all know, somewhat awkwardly conduct of meetings, because conduct of meetings was really divided in the charter. between groups one and groups two, and that's all coming together. Group two met a number of times, one, two, three, four, five, six meetings, most recently May 7th, and stakeholder input at various times throughout those meetings was received from the city clerk's office, recently from the chief of police that I passed along, and from the city manager's office. But the city clerk really being kind of at the forefront of those sections, given the nature of those sections. Um, so on this next slide, um, let me back up a little bit, um, to, to characterize kind of how, what these changes are and how they're being presented. Um, you all, um, received, um, and, um, it's also been uplaid uploaded to this, um, item in the, uh, on the agenda and therefore available to the public. I'm sorry, library's closing, so Mr. Chair, we're going to have to end this meeting a little early. No, I've been assured, thank you, by library staff that we have a special dispensation. Yeah, no motions to adjourn. Don't be that excited. But this draft that I'm holding up here is a... a draft that both identifies all the different committees, you know, in the first, you know, sheet with the names of the folks involved, you know, and the responsibilities has a color coded, right, version of all the different sections. So you all are reminded and the public can see, you know, how the charter was broken up and how it was assigned. And then ultimately a clean version, right, of what's being, you know, proposed and recommended. You all have an underlying strikeout version. Ultimately, an underlying strikeout version, once this is in more final form, will of course be made available to the public as well. But right now, the underlying strikeout version has a lot of annotations in it and kind of internal comments that we want to get out of that or resolve before that version as well is presented to the public. But no matter what, the public has at least this version, the working draft, the clean working draft version of the document. And I'm going to be referring to that tonight in order to... highlight, you know, the proposed changes that are being made in the various sections. If you have a clean version of the charter or the underlying strikeout version, which was also sent to you, you know, electronically, you could also, you know, look at that, but we're less focusing tonight on every word, right? The subcommittee is focused on every word than we are, you know, on a comfort level with the, you know, the, the changes that, um, I've at least identified from my curation of this that are more substantive. In other words, level two, level three, and potentially even level four changes with the rest of it thought to be in the level one category. That's just cleanup of language and corrections and other types of things. The things that are being highlighted in the presentation tonight really are intended to be both a roadmap of, in general, you know, the work that was done and the review that was done, but really a focus on things that might be considered level two, you know, or level three changes. And we can talk about that as we go. Could you give us one sec to talk about kind of a technical issue? We're trying to make sure that... that what's being said is being properly captured and recorded, both for Brown Act reasons and to have an appropriate record of this. So, Mr. Chair, if you can indulge me just for a minute's break to talk about what's going right and what's not going right. Thank you. There's attempts to give me notes here and apprise me of things that I'm so locked in on. Apparently I'm not paying any attention to at all. We did have issues with the Zoom communication and recording of the early parts of the meeting. Mr. Chair, the option is to start over, but I think we can recreate based on our lived experience, what happened in the early parts of that meeting. And I'm comfortable proceeding that way both for Brown Act and for other purposes, if you are.

That sounds great, especially because right now we're getting to the meat and potatoes.

Yes, this is really the really heart of it anyway. So if things weren't working now, then we would need to recess and sort that out before we proceeded. So appreciate that. So with that kind of elaborate introduction to things, diving into the group two report out and members of group two are of course, Mr. Kelly, Mr. Beckman, Mr. Crutchlow, Ms. Roberts and Ms. Peters all here and welcome of course to supplement anything that I say on these particular issues. And Mr. Chair, I think it might make sense to have questions asked for people who have questions about each item. because it might be hard to save all the questions to the end as we move through these items. But for public input purposes, I would recommend that we wait till the end of the presentation for any kind of public comment or questions there might be about the group twos work. So first, Yeah, for the levels, the level one, two, three, four. Don't letter them now after I've invested in numbers. If you really want to throw me, then start lettering the levels. Yeah, and for purposes of your microphone, if you notice, you've got to push on the button on the top for it to turn green in order for you to be heard. Mr. Beckman, I appreciate that. My intent was to actually have that marked on the presentation even now. I just wasn't able to get there. And so... the, I think level one and two probably doesn't need to be, you know, marked, you know, now, but if anyone identifies an issue, and I'll try to highlight that as well, based on discussions with the group, a level three and certainly a level four, you know, issue as part of the discussions, I think that's worth highlighting and discussing with the group. One and two, we might allow to be curated and ultimately, you know, presented and resolved with this group's final recommendation. But that would be my suggestion is we, if people want to chime in and identify levels three and four, it would be a good time to do that. So the first issue to present, and again, there's a lot of wording, right? And more minor issues, you know, than this, but, you know, for the larger groups consumption questions and direction. First issue is voter approval for disposal or change of use of certain city parkland. As you'll all remember, there's a provision that was approved by the voters, I'm forgetting now, 2016 or 2018, and embedded in the charter as section 714.1 that essentially said that if the city was going to dispose of really in any way for a period of time, 180 days or longer, or change the use for 180 days or longer of any parkland in the city. And there was a definition of that, you know, with reference to a document where the city inventories, you know, it's parkland. That in fact, such thing would be subject to a vote of the electorate. and could only be approved with a two thirds vote of the electorate. That's what that measure said. Strictly interpreted, that could prevent some ancillary uses that staff, Parks and Rec, and the Planning Commission has identified as not necessarily adverse to park uses and really ought not to require a vote of the people. And so input that we actually received as much from planning commission and parks and rec from staff on this particular section was suggesting that there be a provision added to allow what have been referred to as secondary uses that do not materially impact underlying park uses if they're approved by two thirds vote of the council, right? Which you'll remember is means five votes. And if any revenues generated from such uses are in fact kept and reserved and only used for parks and recreation purposes. And so we got that general feedback from both planning commission and parks and rec I drafted some language, you know, to respond, you know, to that feedback. There's a few examples of that, of the type of use they'd have in mind, but the one you'll remember that we've identified before is use for telecommunications facilities. Parks are frequently, you know, located in areas that... if in fact there's some telecommunications facilities installed there either on rooftops of the facilities or on the the boundaries of those facilities in fact that would be useful you know for the connectivity you know within the city and could also generate some revenue you know that might be used again to maintain either that park or other or other parks um um Other uses were envisioned and talked about at Parks and Rec as well. In addition to that, that I'm not recalling offhand, but that is the thought. And so that language is included and the group was generally, group two was generally supportive, you know, of having something like that in there. On the one hand. On the other hand, it is also recognized that this is a voter-approved measure, that the parks in Santa Clara are near and dear to everybody's heart and want to be preserved. And so this language could be considered, depending upon how you look at it, and it would ultimately be good to get even council's take on this, a level three change. Is it the kind of thing that... you want to include right in the comprehensive, you know, proposal, or is it the kind of thing that you should pull out, right. And, and evaluate whether or not it's even worth it, right. To have it be its own measure because separate measures are expensive. They could cost as much as, and I'm getting final numbers from the city clerk on this couple. It could be as much as a couple hundred thousand dollars, right. For a citywide, you know, measure. And is this change, you know, worth it if people aren't comfortable including it in the overall impact. you know, recommendation. And so that was one of the things that was talked about if any of the group wants to add their blusher perspective on on that, and then maybe folks who aren't members of the group, you know, can ask, you know, questions about it.

Real quick, Glenn. It's on. With respect to the languages, I'm mindful that you said earlier you don't want to get into the individual language.

Oh, well, we can if you want to talk about that.

No, I actually don't. Just for purposes of the rest of the presentations, for things like secondary uses, in quotes, material impact, any but not all, is your expectation that when the final language is presented, those will be defined terms? That's not the question I'm going to ask. I was just hoping that as you go through what looks to be like a term of art, whether or not you intend or the committee likely intends to define it or not.

And we talked about that in this case. I think the conclusion was it would be hard to define that and it would require a lot of detail, you know, even to think about that. But I think the thinking was and how I thought about constructing the language was that the city council would need to make that determination. Right. And if they wanted to adopt policies around that, they could adopt policies around that.

Sorry, I'm not also reading that. I can't tell what's added. Thank you, Glenn.

I just had a question. I forgot if we got this.

I might want to suggest people to be like a rock and roll singer and get your mouth right up to the mic because I don't think that it'll pick you up better if you put your...

Okay, now can you hear me?

That sounds much better, yeah.

Okay, I can't. Okay. Okay. I can't recall if we discussed this or not, but why was Eulostack and the Santa Clara Youth Soccer Park called out specifically?

I don't know. I think I have a thought about that. Those were considered so cherished that they wanted to be called out by name. Yeah, I think those might have been the assets that the folks who initiated that were most interested in, but they are also ones, it's a little redundant, that were on that list, right? That was also referred to in the language. If anybody else was there at the time or involved in that initiative, maybe you could add some additional information, right? I'm sorry, that's not picking up very well.

Sorry, I believe they were talking about making a parking lot for the 49ers a few years ago.

Okay, so U Sports Park definitely, I think, was, of course, a controversial asset, right, that had been proposed for some alternative use. Eulostack, I'm not sure, I don't think the 49ers were at that. I think that was probably because it was such a beloved asset and no one wanted, you know, the idea of housing on it, right, or something else in order to compromise. One of the few, right, semi-natural, you know, parklands that were in the area. I know members of the council will remember, you know, and be able to, you know, appreciate that. And again, maybe we'll be resistant to, you know, making modifications, you know, to this at all.

I'm not sure how much, can you guys hear me? Okay. Yes. Our city voted pretty strong on measure J going back. It was a pretty strong vote to save our parks. And I think the city spoke pretty clearly on that. So anything that we do to possibly amend those uses, I'm for, but we need to understand that the residents have already spoken. and they don't want to lose a park. And, you know, I mean, heck, I was one of four people who sued the NFL. And of course we lost, you know, 14 attorneys to one. There's not a good chance. But I want to make sure we keep the parks near the top. And I am open to hearing any proposal that could possibly align with our current uses. But I don't really think we need to go to a vote again because the residents have spoken pretty strongly about that already.

Yeah, definitely some sensitivity there. So again, as you guys have seen, we're both trying to, as we go through this, be politically sensitive and be respectful on the one hand. And on the other hand, don't completely shy away from things if there's potentially a modification that would be reasonable and might be well-received.

Okay. Glenn, do you want me to chime in on a couple of these things?

Just by all means, member, group two member.

Granted, we only had a partial group. Regarding the parks, we didn't want to do anything with parks and we agreed that we should keep it to a two-thirds vote. That way, any changes with any park would be required to be put in front of the voters and we could discuss the merits and then obviously if for some reason we have a better location to relocate a park, whatever it is, the voters get to choose and it's still gonna require a two thirds vote. Do you want me to go on to the other topics?

No, I think we should take them up one at a time. And yes, to be clear, this proposal does not change the core of this at all. No one's suggesting any primary disposition or change of use of a park should not be presented to the voters and require a two thirds vote. It really is just these minor secondary uses that wouldn't have an impact on underlying park uses. That's under consideration. And again, it doesn't need to be the recommendation of the CRC for whatever reason the full CRC believes is appropriate.

Yeah, the language that you put in, I thought, very well reflected it. I mean, you say that are secondary to all and will not result in any material adverse impact on any underlying parks and recreational uses. So it's clear the original primary intent of the property being a park will not be impacted. If it is, there is no, we don't go forward. That's right.

Yep. Again, with, and with the super majority vote of the city council required, you know, and the requirement that any revenues be used for park uses. Again, that doesn't mean, It's a great idea or that, you know, this group needs to support it. But there was thought put into, you know, making sure it was just a clarification, really more than anything, kind of a clarification with some protections around, you know, any city council action that wouldn't go to a vote.

So just real quick, following up on Bert's point as well, I think it's because we use terms like materially adverse without defining them that's going to create a political sensitivity who, if the city council sits down and says, no, it's not materially adverse, that's a five to two vote, that's it, right? There's no review period built into it. So I feel like it's a level three.

Mm-hmm.

And if the material concept bothers either this group or the council on theory, you could just say any adverse use, right? So there's concepts and there's wording changes, right? Testing both with this group because ultimately CRC is going to decide each element of this. So Mr. Chair to go on, if I might, qualified requirements for the elected chief of police or qualification requirements for elected chief of police. This came in kind of late because we haven't had a chance to, I didn't have a chance to talk about it, you know, with the chief and did have some informal exchanges with our existing chief, you know, as well about that, you know, for his input. boy, we're starting off with a couple hot button ones, right? Parks and the chief of police. But the thought here was that, you know, the existing language for the qualifications of the chief of police, first of all, was in the wrong place, right? It was in the Steven Pfaff- Senior officials, you know, section and it needed to be moved into the elected officials section and and and so it's here now in new section to a 1.2 but if you remember the existing language was what the elected chief of police did was to keep the peace. I'm sorry, I'm on a completely different one. Let's not take both of those third rails up tonight. But the existing qualifications of the chief of police was the minimum qualifications for a sheriff within the state. And those qualifications are in the government code. And there's a range of things based upon both years of experience and or their education. But the bottom line was with a certain number of years of experience in a high school education, that would be enough of, you know, qualification to be our chief of police. And I think a lot of people think or thought including members of group two, that that really wasn't in alignment with what the expectation would be for what the chief of police would be, the experience that the chief of police would have. And based on conversations with those who know this kind of thing, the belief is that going back at least 30 years with our various elected chiefs of police, Every one of them has at least been a lieutenant with a couple years of experience. Not every one of them actually got the certificate, right, that is talked about in the proposed language here. It refers to a post-management certificate, which aligns with being a lieutenant with two years experience. Not everybody necessarily had the certificate, and there's some lag, I understand, in the processing of that certificate. but really everyone, including Chief Nikolai, had this qualification when they were elected to that position and over the last 30 years. So again, hot button issue potentially, but a belief from that group that, that this was a reasonable upgrade of what the expectation would be for the chief of police and might even take pressure off people saying, oh, we should have an appointed chief, right? Because the chief of police doesn't even need to be qualified at all. So no one's messing with the appointed versus elected chief, but there was a discussion about whether or not the qualifications could reasonably be increased. And so that's the thought there. Any number of the members could add additional thoughts to that. I'll be quiet.

I'd like to say of the two items that I just taught, well, now the chief and then the parkland, both were heavily voted on by the residents. And I'm not sure which one actually got a higher percentage of successful votes, was it chief or parkland, but I think our city, again, speaks strongly. And the fact that we're the only city with an elected chief of police is kind of cool. And I think when something is perfect, you don't need to fix it. So Mr. Nikolai, do you have any input on this or am I being out of step asking you?

No, not at all. And I've talked to Glenn and I've talked to the current chief about this. And we both agree that it's not necessarily a bad thing to have the management certificate listed there. It would not be that huge of a change to the process. and it would give, again, more gravitas to the position when you had that management requirement. What I discussed with Glenn, and again, this is a Group 3 topic that's not being brought here today, is if we're going to do this on this end, then we also need to update on the other end the chief's roles and responsibilities to make sure they're commensurate with being a department head. And I know we've started that process already, and... it seems to me that these two things could work hand in hand. So if you make it a more structured position with needing a management certificate, well then your department head status, it should be clearer. So I think they go hand in hand.

You know, our conversation in the committee was quite lengthy on it and Um, no one complains about, you know, someone actually having management experience of officers. Um, you know, what our, our biggest concern when we put, uh, when we added this requirement was that it reduces the pool of potential candidates that could be there since it's a requirement that they also be living in the city. Um, but we believe that, uh, it, The idea that someone could be elected with no management experience of officers, we would rather risk a small pool than having someone with no experience being in that position.

I have some concerns about it. I believe it's a good move, but my concern, again, is a small pool of applicants. And should there be no applicants with the required requirements, what do we do? Do we appoint a chief of police? It's not even clear. I'm very concerned about it, actually. How many people are actually able to run for this position?

So that's one thing that we discussed in the group, which I'd like to address with former police.

Let me finish. So there's the problem of the size of the pool, but at the same time, if you increase the scope of the position, then we could be subject to some future chief of police who is not capable, even with that, We may have a choice between zero or one or zero or zero. And I feel that we have to be very careful with expanding the scope of the chief of police, while at the same time reducing the pool. That's all I had.

Okay. So we did take that up and there was discussion about requiring the chief of police to be a resident of Santa Clara at the time he takes his oath of office, which means a lot of the people that would be in the potential pool may not be living here, but they're working here. They're on the force. And we thought, should we allow these individuals that are officers to have the option to run for chief police as long as they take up residency before they take their oath of office? So that's something we left for the group to decide and also we thought if we thought it was a hot button issue that it could be a one off. In other words, it could be separate from the charter. But if Pat could chime in on it, do you think it would be okay for the existing force to move to the city rather than currently live here and run?

I don't think you can do that with the election law. I think you have to be a registered, you have to be in the city to run for elected position, but it's not that hard. And just this prior election where Corey won the election, there was a captain who moved into the city with the intent to run for chief, rented the house and moved into the city. They ultimately decided not to run and they opted not to. but it's not that hard if you decide I wanna be the chief to move into the city and have the requirement of being a resident. The other thing is a lot of times we focus on Santa Clara only, but there are dozens of police departments around us with management level personnel And I'm frankly shocked that a San Jose captain or a deputy chief has not moved into the city and run for office. I'm shocked that that hasn't happened yet. But it's just the way that the process is. So I think you have to be a resident of the city to run. I don't think you can run for office if you're not a resident of the city.

PB, Jorge Boone & Actually not. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm not sure you're right because this issue was looked at and and resolved otherwise down in Chula Vista with respect to the elected city attorney. PB, Jorge Boone & There was not a requirement for residency in the first place. And I believe the research was done to conclude that that was permissible. They ultimately changed the rule and required residency. And I think that definitely would be required for city council people and mayor, but I think there may be some exception for that with respect to professional positions. But if I might... I think if I could summarize, this issue was taken up and it was an important issue. But the ultimate conclusion of this group is this is at a minimum a level three. And if residency was introduced, it's a level four. There's a lot of very complex, nuanced things to think and talk about with respect to this. And so while it was a good discussion and I'm happy to have engaged in it, I want to make sure, and I think I'm accurately reflecting the group two's conclusion that everyone recognized that at a minimum, this was a level three. And if you introduced residency level four, uh, truly lightning rod kind of issue as, as sensible as it all sounds right to us just talking about, of course they should be more qualified and yes, they've all been qualified, you know, for a bunch of years. Can't we do at least this thing? It might just be too hot, you know, to handle. So I think I'm accurately reflecting the, the, the sentiment of that group. And, um, the sentiment of this entire group when these types of issues have been presented. No one wants the larger project to be distracted from right or way down or undermined by including an issue as part of the overall recommendation that's in such a sensitive area. So, I'm an easy one chair continuing on. I, I, I hope, I hope our pace picks up because that was, those were, were definitely the two hardest ones. And it will, I think it, I think it gets easier. Let's see this next one. City council challenges to qualifications of elected officials and I like to think this is an easy one. There was language in the charter that said that the city has the ability to judge the qualifications of elected officials. And when I asked the group what that meant or what did they think about that, everyone responded back and go, what does that mean? And I couldn't tell them what it meant. And so... the thought was to give some meaning to that, that the city council didn't necessarily judge the qualifications of people, but that individuals for elected offices, but they would have, and there are provisions under state law, either as an individual person or as a council, to challenge somebody's qualifications under state law proceedings. And so rather than just having councils in probably a very political arena just get to vote to decide whether somebody's qualified or not, the concept was to tie that into state law and have that be a process that the council would need to pursue under state law. So that was the thinking there and was the recommendation of the group.

Just for clarity, it is actually 302.3.

New section is, I mean, the new section?

Yes.

Sorry, that's wrong. 302.3? Yeah, so there's two parts to this, Member Beckman. One of it is them judging the outcome of elections. The other one is judging the qualifications of elected officials. One of them is in 201.3 and the other one's in a different section. So you might be, like I do, frequently conflating those two. Okay, yeah, very good. I think we'll get to that. I think that's part of this too.

Real quick, Glenn. With respect to the qualifications, can the electorate challenge those qualifications prior or rather during the election? Or if an unqualified person is elected, then is the proper time?

Yeah, there is a process both during an election to challenge somebody's qualifications and after the election. Yep. Yep, if someone didn't have them to begin with or loses them or someone discovers they're not qualified throughout their entire tenure, either as a candidate running or holding office, there is a state-based legal mechanism for challenging somebody's qualifications. Yep. And the qualifications that would apply, of course, are the ones that we set forth in our charter, right? So it's not some other qualification that someone could say, hey, you're not this, you're not that. It's are you qualified under our charter, right? Any additional thoughts or questions about that? Okay, that went a little quicker. The next one, I think we'll go quick as well. Mayor's powers and duties. In the current charter, and again, this is one of the reasons for the desired reorganization, there's a fair, a decent list of the mayor's power duties in one section, but then there's other little things that the mayor is empowered to do that are kind of spread throughout PB, Jorge Boone. : You know the the the Charter and so let's the thought was let's put all those in one place, and so, and this next item old section 704.3 and others becomes new section to 2.1 and. what these revisions to is it gathers all the various mayor's powers kind of in one place. It doesn't really make substantive changes to those. It's really just there's a wording change here or there, but not really any meaningful substantive change to that. But one change that made sense to the group And to me, there was kind of an odd provision in... I'm gonna get to this section here too. There was an odd provision. Oh, I need to go to the underlying strikeout. In... in the charter that put a caveat on the mayor's ability to make recommendations to the city council on matters of policy and programs which require city council decision. And that section went on to say, provided that if they recommend any increase in the city budget, they have to find the funding source for that. And if they recommend any reduction in the city budget, they have to recommend specific cuts. That's not a thing that in this complex world we're in, that a mayor or a city council person, as a condition to them making any recommendation, could reasonably be asked to do, of course, that needs to be part of the discussion, right? And of course, ultimately, when the budget's decided, you know, everyone will... city manager would present you know and the finance director an analysis of that and a decision would need to be made but this appeared to require as a condition to anyone make a recommendation that they need to have sorted out kind of what the uh the funding you know where the money is going to come from or you know what the the cut would be and so the thought was That would be hard to enforce anyway and really isn't a practical condition on that. So the only real substantive change to this provision was to propose to eliminate that somewhat gratuitous kind of impractical condition on the mayor's ability to make a recommendation as a policy matter. The thought was as well, and we'll get to this in a minute, that when we created the list of what city council members had the ability to do, that of course the ability for them to make recommendations to the council and to staff about what policy changes there would be, that would be listed as one of their rights as well. There's nothing unique about the mayor's status, right? That only allows the mayor to make policy recommendations. Any city council person, including the mayor, would have that ability and they ought to be on the same par for that. So that was the thinking there, again, no real substantive changes to the mayors, but just getting rid of some kind of gratuitous anachronistic, why is that their language that really doesn't, the thinking was have any practical kind of value or reasonable restriction. Any questions or thoughts either from the members of group two or the rest of the CRC on that provision? The next section is city council powers and duties, old section 706, which really didn't have much to it, and new section 202.2, which really proposes to, just like the mayor had detailed powers and duties listed, that the city council and city council members ought to have some authority language in the charter that describes what their duties are as a group and describes what their duties are as individuals. And it really was intended to put context around what a city council's powers are, I'm in the charter right now just says all the city's powers are vested, you know, in the city council and instead this says, which includes of, you know, a list of of of the things that they Would do. And if you look at Its new section 202.2. There is a, in general, you know, section, and it talks about what these things are. None of it's particularly controversial, right? And in a lot of it, cross-references the various powers and things that they do throughout the charter. For example, certify elections. declare elected official vacancies and appoint elected officials to vacant positions. Appoint the city manager, the city attorney, and the city auditor. Again, with all cross references to where that happens. Appoint members of city boards and commissions. Adopt ordinances, resolutions, and policies. take actions on fiscal matters, the ability to conduct investigations and to subpoena witnesses in certain circumstances. And so it really is intended to communicate really to the to the public, right? What does the city council do, right? What things are they expected to do? And frankly, to people who might be candidates for that office. One specific thing it does, because there was a general provision that talked about very broad power of the city council to investigate people or subpoena witnesses that there was some concern, at least from my office, that that would be over-interpreted as something that they can do under any circumstance. This language, as revised, puts that in the context of the overall powers of the city council and in the context of where this power would apply, which is They could investigate and subpoena witnesses in personnel matters involving city council appointees. In other words, if they had an issue with the city attorney and thought that my conduct was inappropriate, they would have, because they appoint me, they would have the ability to investigate me and subpoena witnesses as part of their evaluation of my performance or in connection with discipline matters or otherwise. And they would be able to do that with the city manager as well. Since they don't appoint individual employees that the city manager appoints, they would not be able to investigate or subpoena people with respect to people they don't have authority over, right? So it's intended to put it in the right context of what their authority would relate to. And of course, they also make quasi-judicial decisions, both on permits and in other matters, and thereby it's very nature, right? They need to be able to investigate, you know, and subpoena witnesses in connection with that. There are broader authorities that city councils have under general laws in the city. For example, if they're gonna collect tax debts, right? You know, the city in general and potentially city council acting needs to be able to conduct investigations, really city staff would do it, but potentially with city council direction to evaluate whether or not someone is committing, you know, fraud and not paying, you know, transit occupancy taxes, right. And to subpoena witnesses in that context. So to the extent there's a state law, you know, a position that allows you to do that, that's also included in there, but it's not the way it was currently drafted their ability to do that under any old, you know, circumstance. And so the thought was, Hey, where things aren't clear, clarify them. And so the language in this section is, clarifies that my office thought in a way that gave the appropriate broad application to what that power would be. So That's one of the provisions of that otherwise long kind of new list of city council powers. The other thing that I think this group too thought was especially important was to talk about what individual council members powers were with some emphasis on their obligation to consider or just both solicit and give consideration to public input. to comply with ethics rules and to be professional and courteous to one another. I think a number of you have expressed to me and to each other that one of the things that motivated you to get involved with this project was observed behavior and conduct at the city council level that gave you some concern and the desire to, aside from all the rules that we have already, give some elevated grounding within the charter itself about what the expectations were for the conduct of elected officials in office. And so, yeah. At your request, I put together some of that language that's now in the list of 202.2 here that kind of gets at ethics and behavior issues in a way that didn't appear in the charter before. I'll read a couple of them. Item 202.2B4 states, conduct themselves in accordance with all applicable laws, including the provisions of this charter, the city code, and all adopted city policies. Number five, in the conduct of city business, place the interests of the city above their own personal interests. And item number six, in all interactions with each other, city staff and the public, conduct themselves in a professional and courteous manner. Again, there was a thought that To the extent there was a desire to emphasize that behavior and that conduct as something that is valued, that those concepts should be included if we're in any list of what the city council members' powers and duties were. And there's other more routine ones here that are listed, of course, attend and participate in meetings, give to do consideration to input from residents and businesses within the city, city staff, consultants, et cetera, and other stakeholders. Again, general, the kind of stuff that again would give we think the public and understanding of what the expectation is for council members and any candidate running, you know, for office of what the expectation was. And so that was the thought of group two. Hopefully I did it justice would ask if the group two members had any either supplement or contrary thoughts to how I described that item.

Glenn, Glenn, hate to poke humor at my city, but can we also put on a list, no book reviews? by people stepping in as being the person running our city. That was an embarrassment that I really can't get out of my mind, having someone attack a person who's helped our city publicly and make humor of it.

Yeah, I mean, and that's pretty specific, right? I think that anyone can probably give a variety of different examples of things they've observed, you know, that's not, that would be viewed as not appropriate. I think the professional and courteous, you know, language was intended to get at things, you know, like that. And of course the city's adopted, you know, pretty detailed policies that get at that in a variety of different ways too. So- I think that's captured.

I'm sure you, I just had to bring it up because it's been on my mind. I can't unsee what I've seen on that episode with Kirk. And I was really embarrassed for our city over those few minutes.

Yeah. And one of the things I know is different people have different views, right? About different people's behavior. One of the things I've been trying to do with this is obviously everyone's got their observed experience and their opinions about this, but to try to depersonalize it, right? It's not about any one person's conduct or what any one person said. It's really about what is the expectation, right? Of anyone's behavior in that circumstance with people being able to potentially give examples of anyone's individual behavior. But appreciate that. Again, everyone's got their own observed experiences with that. The idea is to capture a good principle and ground it in the charter so that it's a broad application.

And following up on what Bert said and yourself, these are what we expect. They are not qualifications. So the no reelection remains the remedy. There are we're not introducing a new one to a rude city council person.

That is right. I think that would be the idea that that would be actionable, right? Because it's listed in the charter is probably too much to ask. They're just intended to be kind of guidelines and expectations on behavior.

I was also going to mention one of the final ones is a self-policing option. Thank you. Or not an option, a requirement now that you know, if at any point in time a council member finds himself no longer qualified, they need to bring it to the council rather than the council having to discover it.

Yeah, that's a great example. Yeah. And that came from the group in the context of discussing vacancies, which we'll discuss in a little bit. How do you know about these things? How do you find out these things? And Yes, I think that's a good one. It's item seven, report to the city council the occurrence of any event listed in section blank. It hadn't had the full cross-reference yet of the charter, which may result in their disqualification for office by no later than 15 days after the date of such occurrence, right? So if you move out of the city, if you die, you need to report to the council That one of those things has happened. Yeah, we'll talk. But, you know, again, or, you know, or a conviction, right, of the kind of crime that we'll talk about when we get to the vacancies and stuff. Yeah, I appreciate you mentioning that that was a good, I thought that was a good addition to tie it into the vacancies. And again, the expectation that you're supposed to operate at a high level, right? And that if something happens that no longer makes you qualification problems, it's your first duty and obligation to apprise people of that. The last one here in city, I'm sorry.

You enumerate the powers of the mayor and then you go on to list the powers of the council members. Many of the items under the council members are about conduct. Do these itemized lists also refer to the mayor?

Yeah, that's a great point.

Any limitations on the council members applied to the mayor?

Yeah, that's a really, I appreciate that point. There's a number of places in the charter that talks about

Glenn, did we not talk about that, about the mayor is one of the council members?

Right, that's what I was just going to say. But not in this context, it doesn't. In other places, especially with respect to elections and qualifications, it talks about that. That's a really good point.

I mean, if you simply just said individual council members and mayor.

Yeah, including the mayor. I think that's a very good point. It was not intended not to apply. And so I think that is a good suggestion if the rest of the group thinks so.

Can I bring up something? What if somebody, there's a requirement, they have to be a resident of the city to run for office, and they do live in the city, but they choose to live outside of the city while still paying rent in the city. So they could live in Gilroy maybe and commute in, but they're paying rent. Is there a time limit? that they're allowed to be basically not a resident of the city that they're elected to be in. Yeah, that's – I don't think that's for this – that's this group's – Oh, no, that's just – I'm going to bring it up because what if somebody did get elected, but then they chose to live in Gilroy?

So I think we'll talk about that when Group 1 comes back, right? I don't think that's in this one. The concept of what – how residency is defined and who oversees residency – is a group one area. Briefly, though, just to answer your question and put it in context. Glenn, you have enough on the plate. I'm just bringing it up just for conversation. Yeah, it's defined by state law and administered in the election process by the registrar of voters and the city clerk. What residency means isn't as clear as you think it might be. And we can dive into that a little bit deeper when group one comes back and that issue is addressed head on.

Fantastic. Thank you.

Yeah. And, but that would be if you, for example, moved, right? First of all, you need to qualify in the first place, but then if you move, this would be an example of something that would result in your office being vacant and you being disqualified for office. And if you move, you'd have to report that, you know, out. If in fact you moved in a way that qualified, that disqualified you for residency. There's a last one here, bullet on the slide 15, councilmanic interference, that fancy term that in effect restricts the individual council people from taking on administrative functions, things that they're not authorized to do, things that the city manager does in his administration of the city. The language around that is included here and it's still prohibited with some additional language that if in fact the city council attempts to do something as a group by ordinance or resolution, that any such action would be void. For example, if the city council tried to appoint the director of finance, they are not authorized to do that. They only appoint the city manager the city attorney and the city auditor. And if they attempted by resolution to appoint the director of finance, that action would be void. And so there's language in there that makes that clear by operation of law. But there is a section in there that was pulled out and will be taken up, I think, better by group one when we get to that regarding violations of the charter. There is a provision in the existing councilmanic interference section existing and now renumbered 202.2 that talks about any member who violates this or who votes for a resolution or ordinance is guilty of a misdemeanor and it will be removed. So there are absolutely instances where a council person violation of the provisions of the charter might result in their removal we're taking all of that and putting it in a general section as opposed to having it be, if you violate this section, you could be removed. Or if you violate that section, the idea is to take that up, you know, as a general matter, as opposed to have it embedded in individual things. And so when the group one reports out and that comes back, you'll see how that's handled, but it's not gone. It's just now being moved and put into a broader context. Okay. It does get a little easier here. There's still a lot to talk about with group two, welcoming member Crutchlow to the group at 728 after finishing his planning commission meeting. Thank you, sir. Yeah, not nearly as fast as anyone thought, right? So the next section on now page 16 of the PowerPoint. You may not have gotten it. Do you have a PowerPoint? No, those are the attached ones. Now on page 16 of the PowerPoint. term limits. Old section 600 and now new sections 203.2 A and B has added language that clarifies the term limits are lifetime term limits. It really it doesn't change it, right? That is what it says, but it says it much more clearly, you know, now than it did before. Notably, and again, I think even more clearly, service in one office, not counting as service in another office. In other words, if you were a city council person, you know, for two terms, you could still run for chief of police if you had a a management certificate or whatever, however we end up, you know, on that, you know, or a council person, right? I mean, the council person had served two year terms as a council person or the mayor, vice versa. They could then run for mayor or council, you know, vice versa. So that's made, that's the existing standard for that, but made that much more clear. And then also notably and not proposed for any change, because that would be a pretty significant, a hot button change. There are no term limits in the charter on the elected chief of police or the elected city clerk. I am not proposing any such thing that would be a very meaningful change. In theory, that could be a level four thing if someone thinks that term limits should apply. But for me, and again, clarifying what the charter says, doesn't say it anywhere. Now, it just doesn't impose it It's now going to say, hey, there's no term limits for these two positions to make it crystal clear. Any questions or comments from the group about those changes? I think they really are just clarifying in that case with some better wording and not as fussy of wording. The next section, compensation, old section 906, now new sections 201.2 and 604.5. You'll all recall, particularly group two members, that the salary and benefits for elected officials is determined by a salary setting commission. And all of that is contained in an elections section. It's now proposed that the details of the salary setting commission now be moved to the boards and commissions section. Salary setting commission is clearly a charter created a board and commission. So all of its terms and conditions have now been moved logically to that. But there's some – and we're going to jump around here a little bit to get to that. But one of the substantive aspects of that that was talked about that's just vague in the charter but is being interpreted and implemented by the Salary Setting Commission in a way that ought to be not made vague in the charter is – what kind of benefits is included in the total compensation of these elected officials? The language is, like I said, is currently vague. It's now very clear that salary and benefits is together constitutes total compensation for elected officials. And per the current practice and the understanding of the salary setting commission, even though they have not decided to provide any health benefits at this time to those part-time positions, but per current practice, there is the possibility of paying the mayor, council, or the city clerk health benefits, and they would qualify as well if they stayed in the position long enough for retire benefits under CalPERS. Our CalPERS plan potentially provides retirement benefits to people in this position. Not a huge benefit, right, because they don't get paid that much, but based upon what they're paid, you know, and the number of years of experience, if they stay in that position for five years or more, they could also vest, you know, in CalPERS. So These revisions now make it very clear that total compensation includes this, a schedule for actual salary that can be paid to them that can only increase by 10% every two years, every, sorry, 10% every two years, because they only meet every two years. And so in effect capped at 5%, you know, a year on any increase to their salary. And they may, even though they haven't yet, evaluate whether or not they could get health benefits. The health benefit is limited to standard health benefits, right? Medical, dental, and vision. But it also makes very clear that because they're part-time positions, they cannot, if in fact they ever get paid that health benefit, they cannot convert that health benefit to cash, right? This is intended not to be additional money to them. It's intended to be a health benefit if it's ultimately determined that they would get that. And so if you look at all the language now in section 604.5, I think that's the right reference. It's Article 6, which is all the various boards and commissions. You will see that there is now a salary setting commission at the very end, and it takes some of the language that was in Section 906, but puts it in the format of a of all the other boards and commissions. The first section is the composition and appointment, right? Which is already determined. It doesn't change that. The next one just describes what their powers are and it talks and it makes clear now that the health benefit is one that can be provided, but that it can't be convertible to cash, but it understands that the, that the benefits again for the part-time positions are limited to that. It does not limit those benefits to the chief of police, who is the head of the department, right, at a minimum. And so in effect, the chief of police is entitled to whatever benefits might be the salary setting commission would determine or commensurate with the chief of police position. So these limits are only intended to apply and have been interpreted to apply only with respect to the part-time positions. It does not purport to limit anything that's currently available to the salary setting commission in order for their compensation paid to the chief of police. So for me, it's really more clarification of how things work already. The charter language was much vaguer, you know, that it should have been in that regard. And so that was the intent. And I think it's accomplished pretty well. Any questions or issues with compensation?

Just a note that the old section 906 and new section 201.2, I think are incorrect. I think that's related to the chief of police. The old section should be 702.

I'm sorry, for compensation?

Compensation.

Old section 907. Thank you. The new section references are right though.

I think 201.2 is still wrong. I don't think that's, yeah.

Oh, for God's sakes.

Thanks.

Thank you.

ask another question i'm sorry um regarding this uh commission um if the commission can only raise salaries by five percent per year why bother with a commission and i mean it's really i believe these salaries for most of these positions are quite low um i don't believe the five percent a year is going to induce more people to run for city council but it looks like you are creating possibly, you know, highly paid salary positions, perhaps to the voter. So I'm not sure if it's worth including here, just because the number is so low.

Appreciate that. Good point.

maybe something more like 10%, but. I'm not suggesting we should make it higher. I'm just saying that if they're limited to 5% per year, and I think the city council members are only making a few thousand dollars a year. That's right. Why create a commission to simply give them a few dollars more every year?

Speak to that.

Yeah, very good, thank you.

So there already is a commission that exists now. So we're not creating a new commission, but we're trying to clarify some of the language. The previous language, it seemed to use the terms compensation and salary kind of interchangeable. And that was a bit confusing. So what we've tried to do here is to establish clearly what the commission can do. The limits are the same in terms of how much they can increased salary per year but we've clarified that if they so choose they could add health benefits um so that is something to give flexibility going forward in addition the limitations on some of these benefits are for part-time employees which which all of our you know, the city council and the mayor are, you know, we're not gonna decide if those are full-time, but it just clarifies that.

I think it does say here, the mayor, the chief of police, city clerk, and then you say under that, under number two, that the, Those salaries can increase by more than 10% per year. I believe I heard Glenn say that the Chief of Police compensation was set differently.

The Chief of Police benefits are not included in the benefit cap.

This 10% cap would also apply to Chief of Police?

I think it does, yeah. Speaks from experience. Yes. Yeah, so, I mean, the other thing, of course, about anything that would change salaries, you know, for elected officials is certainly nothing that they would include in an overall, you know, recommendation. It would look like they were trying to hide a raise for themselves, you know, in that. So I know you weren't suggesting to alter that, but that might be a third rail, you know, for, or, you know, a level four thing. If there was a suggestion, hey, maybe they should, PB, Jorge Boone, You know, be paid more or be full time or anything like that. I think that's a that that is a clear level for item in the context of this project. PB, Jorge Boone, Any other questions or comments. PB, Jorge Boone, From the the group about compensation and thank you member Peters you described that much better than I did on first presentation. Okay, moving on then if I might, Mr. Chair, the next item here is vacancies. One thing that, and this is something I noticed, there was some pretty detailed provisions that were tweaked a bit regarding how the council went about filling a vacancy, but it didn't define anywhere what a vacancy was. That I thought was a pretty significant material omission, you know, from the charter. A lot of charters have that pretty clearly specified. There's a pretty clear, with some variations that, and one of which we'll talk about for, you know, what that list includes. And so... I presented to this committee and this committee reviewed and suggested some modifications and ended up with, you know, what's before you today, adding some language to the vacancies section. It was old section 703, and now it's new section 205. Hopefully I got that one, those references right. And you can see here 205.1 says, what constitutes a vacancy? And it lists them. no longer meets the qualifications necessary to hold the position, right? There's those qualifications that are listed. You have to meet those throughout while you hold your office. This next one we spent some time on is convicted of either a felony or Any misdemeanor involving either moral turpitude, never been able to say that, or misconduct in office under applicable law. We talked a lot about what moral turpitude might mean or not mean. We just decided to refer to applicable law. There are some examples in applicable law. about the kinds of thing that constitute moral turpitude, and a lot of it's just kind of evil intent or dishonesty, you know, in the particular, you know, crime involved. But clearly, if it was a misdemeanor, that was this elevated kind, right, defined under state law to be moral turpitude, or misconduct in office, the idea if you're convicted of that, that would be enough, right, to in effect have you forfeit your office. There's a lot of discussion around that, but that's where the group ended up. If you're recalled from office, of course, by vote of the people, you lose, your office is vacant. If you resign, If you're sworn into another position, right, that is incompatible with this one. As soon as you're sworn into that second position, you also forfeit this position. So that's listed. If you're removed from office by some judicial procedure or state law proceeding, it could be any number of things. But of course, that constitutes a vacancy. Okay. This is one that existed already here and it was kind of the only one that existed is if for a mayor or council member, you're absent without approval of the city council for five consecutive convened regular meetings. Thank you. then that would also be a basis for you losing office. If you're judicially determined to be physically or mentally incompetent, or if you become personally disabled so as to be unable to perform your assigned duties as determined by an affirmative vote of at least five council members based on competent medical evidence. We did a little bit of tweaking of that to make sure that was fair. Or the last one, of course, if you die, which you must report immediately. So, different people could define, could describe, right, in different ways, what constitutes a vacancy the charter should say, right? So that there's no, you know, misunderstanding. And your poor lawyer who's being asked, you know, whether this results in disqualification or someone in office or not actually has a charter standard, you know, to refer to, which is a pretty conventional one with some fine tuning that I thought was thoughtful, you know, by the group. Any of the members want to talk about that vacancy list? The next section that was here already, but is now made a little bit more clear in terms of the process is how the city council might go about appointing somebody to fill a vacant seat. And the first step of that that we created is they really need to declare the position vacant. And once they find out that information, they have to do it within a certain period of time. And then from a certain period of time from them declaring the vacancy, they have the opportunity to fill that position by appointment. The current charter had 30 days. The thought was that might not be enough time. particularly with how political those things can get and the need to actually conduct a recruitment process, right? And an interview process and ultimately making a decision. It could take multiple meetings. I've gone through these. they are very challenging and they take multiple meetings. And so the idea that that could happen in 30 minutes, and frankly, even in the 45 minutes, that's 45 minutes, 30 days, or even the 45 days that's proposed could be pretty challenging. But the thought was, hey, there should be at least a reasonable amount of time, you know, in order for them to do that. So a fairly modest recommendation to increase that time to fill from declaration from 30 to 45 days. The other part of this that's potentially a discussion point, and Group 2 maybe can remind me of where we came out with this. I don't know if we came out definitively on it, but we had fun with the word forthwith. If, in fact, the council fails to make the appointment within that period of time, what the charter contemplates is holding an election for that position. You failed to appoint. So you have to, you can't just leave the position vacant, right? You've got to hold an election. But when do you hold that election? Well, the charter on its existing language says forthwith. I don't know what that means. You might argue that it's at the next election. you know, available election. You might say, no, you've got to call a special election because it says forthwith, kind of do it right away. I asked the city clerk what the recent experience has been with that. What she pointed out to me was that the last time that this occurred, they waited for the next general election, right? Is that forthwith? I don't think, you know, forthwith is defined. And so I would suggest that forthwith be defined because I don't know what forthwith really means. You could say at the next special election, you could say at the next general election, it's a balancing of interest, right? Special election potentially happens sooner, but special elections are very expensive. The general election might have you waiting, right? And so the position might be vacant for a long period of time, but more voters will usually come to general elections, right? And it would be a lot cheaper because it would be consolidated with another election. This is a little bit of a sensitive area. I'm not trying to be provocative by suggesting that it be resolved. I just see the word forthwith and I don't know what that means. And I don't want people fighting about, you know, when they have to call the election and what may be, you know, a highly charged, you know, sensitive political environment where someone's lost their office and now people are deciding you know, whether to appoint and if they don't appoint, you know, there needs to be another election. And so interested in if I'm the groups to recollection of if there was a consensus of where, of where you came out and obviously ultimately the CRC's input on that for when this comes back to you for final recommendation. You might get, get close to that. Yeah. And turn it on.

Um, so now I have a hot mic. Great. I think the key was, um, even closer.

Yep. I'm sorry. Cause it doesn't, if you get real close, it picks it up, but I'm not sure it picks it up very well. Yeah.

Can you hear me now?

I can.

I can be really loud without the mic too. So, all right, here we go. So I think the key was when is the next election? Because number one, we don't run elections. The ROV runs elections. Otherwise it's very costly for us. So the key is, okay, if we're close enough to an election coming up, let's just use that and live with it. And I think, Some of the dates we were talking about was like six months or things like that. Otherwise, it gets extremely expensive. So forthwith, you know, what I saw is definition. It depends. And the courts then come in and decide. And by the time you go to the courts, now you spent a ton of money. So we were trying to make it somewhat reasonable.

Glenn, during your earlier perusal of the various charter cities in California, did you come across a time period or an average time period after which they appointed or waited?

I did not benchmark this, but we certainly could. Or if I did benchmark it, I'm not remembering what the outcome of that was. Courtney might benchmark it right now while we're waiting, if you're asking. And that would be fair, again, for any of this, right? If the group's you know, I'm not sure about it. One of the things, if you said, hey, if I only had this additional information, I can be sure about it, that, you know, part of the direction could staff would be, hey, when you bring this back, bring back benchmarking, right, on what this item would be. Please don't give us too much to do, but that would be a reasonable one.

Is that it?

Um, yeah, so, um, the, I would need the city clerk to comment on that. As you know, we don't hold primaries here, right? We only hold, you know, the, the, a general election. Um, we only hold the, the general election, which is November, you know, elections. And so, um, potentially there would be savings in consolidating with a primary election. If there was one that was going to be held. Yeah. Yeah.

I'd like to point out that I found an old pile of mail ballot for mosquito abatement. So that was an election apparently. And I didn't know about it. So I'm not sure if that qualifies as a- Or I'm sorry, for what?

For mosquito abatement? Mosquito abatement. Yeah, I think that was a smaller election within your vector zone.

Yeah. I had no, I had no idea.

Yeah. So if you could, we could build in language that suggests that the, the election be held at the next mosquito abatement election as a fun quirk for our charter. But yes, there, there, it, that could have been aligned with one, but I'm, Chair, your question's a good one, right? Is if there would be some value in consolidating with a primary, then that would be both something that the public would be more likely to participate in, right? As opposed to a special, which could be any number of different times. And could happen sooner, right, than a November election. That might be worth looking at if we're going to define, right, the next available general election, which could include, you know, a primary if in fact that's a general election. I could check with the city clerk on that.

I feel like we discussed this though. Didn't we suggest as soon as practical also? That seems familiar. To the extent practical? No, as soon as practical. Oh, as soon as practical.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think we did in a different context. I think in this one, that wouldn't help me much more than forthwith because what does practical mean? Yeah. No, but I'm... No, I get the thinking. We may have talked about that. And I may have said, oh yeah, that's good at the time. But I don't think, and as I'm thinking about it now, that that's as helpful as being a little bit more specific with it.

I'm looking it up and California has a government code 36512. And it's saying 60 days. And I don't know if this is something that it's applicable to charter or for those cities that do not have a charter, but I'll just refer to you to take a look at that. That would be maybe a suggestion that they have to do within 60 days, in which case I think that means millions of dollars.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think you could even conduct an election in 60 days. But Courtney is, in fact, benchmarking as we speak. And maybe by the end of the meeting, we'll have benchmarking on it. But it sounds like there's a desire for some a little bit more definition around that. It is a meaningful thing. And again, there's a balancing of interest, right? Speed and getting an elected person in as soon as possible versus... practicality, you know, and, you know, the costs of things, because elections are expensive, particularly if it ends up being if it's a citywide one, right, a council person election, if it's replacing a council seat, isn't actually that, you know, expensive by comparison, but a special district election, you know, you know, still could be.

So to save you some time to follow up specialization with my own, it's 60 days to appoint or call a special election. If you fail to appoint after 60 days, you have to call the election.

Yeah, so that is a general law city rule for how they set up their appointment process. They're more generous. We only had 30 days. We're now proposing 45. Apparently general law cities allow 60. But then if you don't appoint, you have to call a special election, right? And then the process for calling a special election takes some time. And the city clerk would have to speak to that.

They were saying here also, the city council calls a special election. The special election should be held on the next regularly established election date, not less than 114 days. How they figured that out, I don't know. From the call of the special election, a person elected to fill the vacancy holds it for the unexpired term.

The unexpired term. Yeah, we've got language like that for unexpired term, right? So anything we come up with will be better than forthwith. Glenn, could I suggest we strike that term from our charter? The word forthwith was unanimously agreed would be stricken from the charter. Fantastic. Great job. There's still a couple of thereofs in there, though, that I'm working on trying to get out, but sometimes thereof is useful. Okay, so I'm perceiving a little bit of consensus to come back with some additional, some desire to pin that down further, but not necessarily just general election. And so when that comes back, we can do some work on that. City elections generally now, the... I still have a lot to talk about. Old section 700, new section 300, language added to clarify the relationship between local and state law. This is just some good cleanup language. I'm sorry, I'm bragging on this with the guard with, but... There's not really much to talk about here. The group spent some time looking at that language. I wanted to be very clear since we are a charter city and theory could run our own elections. Really very few cities run their own elections, right? You coordinate with the registrar of voters and your registrar voter kind of runs your election with your local law, kind of requirements and your candidate filings being administered by your local city clerk. This didn't have, our existing language didn't have how those two offices worked together very clear. It's now crystal clear as a result of this revised language. And we consulted with the city clerks about how that should work. Going on to page 18, summary of recommended changes continued still. The administration and determination of election outcomes. Remember back when we talked about that one earlier, right? With respect to determination of qualifications. This one I think makes clear what their city council's role is in determination of election outcomes. Previous language said they shall judge election outcomes. They don't judge election outcomes, right? That's all run by the registrar of voters. The registrar of voters counts the votes and determines who wins. What the city council does as in language that's, or in a process that's pretty well defined by state laws, they certify the election. And so this now is revised to reflect that. the city council will acquit themselves by certifying the election, but will not substitute their own, you know, determination of what the election outcome is, you know, for the city, for the ROVs outcome. It also includes, again, clarification of the relationship between the registrar voters And the clerk with the addition of language, the city clerk is the elections official, right? But the city clerk, the elected city clerk is the elections official officially under the charter. No one's proposing to change that. But this usually an elected city clerk isn't an elections professional, right? They're not experts in running elections. They could develop that expertise. but that's not a common criteria. So while the city clerk is an elections official and the one we have now takes that responsibility very seriously and works with the city clerk and make sure things are being done correctly, he or she would materially rely on the professional city clerk to assist with the administration of those requirements. And so this sets up that and clarifies how all of that works. It also says that the senior appointed clerk, the person who's not elected, in connection with any election matter that relates to the city clerk being elected, who, as you might imagine, might have a conflict if they're administering their own elections, that the appointed city clerk takes responsibility for that in that instance. And so that's now explicitly provided. Um, any questions about that language or those concepts? Um, city council members elected by districts, um, old section 700.1, new section 803. Um, really this is largely cleanup. Um, the this language came from the court order that administered, you know, this district election. So we didn't want to mess with it too much, but it included a provision in there that required the voters of each district to nominate and elect their candidate. The voters don't, you know, collectively nominate anyone. We don't have a primary election that's done by, you know, 20 people who signed up, you know, petitions. So that language really was confusing and inaccurate. So we deleted the word nominate in that. And that's really the most substantive change, you know, in that section. Redistricting is something that's mentioned, but very lightly in this charter. And so when it comes time to redistrict, there really isn't any guidance about how that should work. We're actually coming up on a time to redistrict. Redistricting is mandated under federal and state law, I believe, every 10 years once the decennial census information is made available. And there's a time period by which you have to evaluate based on new census information of how many people and a variety of different live in different parts of your city, and you need to go through a redistricting process. Our charter didn't speak to that at all. Most charters do, some in great detail. And the thought here was to not go too far with this, because it could be a very controversial thing, but at least provide for some process and a requirement that a city council would adopt an ordinance and policies in order to implement what is soon to be a material requirement. And I'm member chair being interrupted by one of your colleagues. Yeah, of course.

I think the city council members elected by district is 303, not 803.

Oh, thank you.

Yep. I couldn't find it under 803.

uh section 303 there was some i i tried to be as good as possible with this but um both typo possibilities and um me cutting and pasting from other you know sections so thank you for catching that At least I wasn't speaking incorrectly about redistricting. That's what I was worried that I was describing it wrong, but thank you for catching that. So the consensus of the group after a fair amount of discussion around this was, hey, it ought to go, something ought to be included in the charter that speaks to this, but not with any great specificity because what, how a redistricting commission is chosen, or I'm sorry, I jumped ahead. The thought was that there should be a redistricting process described and that consistent with both best practices and some independence of decision-making that a redistricting process should also include the requirement that a redistricting commission be created. It is not a requirement of state law or federal law that you have a redistricting commission. The city council could itself implement and make the ultimate decision on how district boundaries, you know, should be drawn. But most jurisdictions, including the one that I came from, as a very conscious matter of introducing an independent process, you know, to this so that the elected officials themselves, right, aren't deciding what the redistricting, you know, should be, appoint a redistricting commission. frequently in a very complicated manner in order to make sure that they truly are independent and not political. And then they go about the analysis required legally in order to make a recommendation and depending upon the local jurisdictions, you know, preference, the redistricting commission either can make that determination themselves with no input or oversight, you know, from the city council, they could make a recommendation to the city council and the city council could then make that determination or any number of things in between, right. That have their, the, the, the process, um, you know, being a recommendation, I'm in potential referral back. And so the thought from the group was we need a redistricting process. A redistricting commission is a good idea, but we will ultimately leave to the city council to make by policy, right? The details about how this redistricting commission operates. And I'll turn it back over to group two folks to make sure I described the thought process correctly on that. I'm seeing nods, Mr. Chair, so it looks like I described it fairly correctly.

Yep. So real quick, Glenn, as we've seen at the state and federal level, the time and process for redistricting is political expediency. I wonder if that's possible under the charter as it stands and if that's something we could avoid if we were to amend the charter to include this commission. And I'm, I'm sorry, the, the condition is, um, other than political expediency, what I'm, I'm, uh, I just meant there actually would be, you know, it is every 10 years, there will be a commission and the commission will make that recommendation to the city council.

Yeah, this does provide that it's, that it has to happen every 10 years. It's a mandatory process for, you know, every, every 10 years. Um, There are abilities to do it. I get what you're saying. So you're saying they can't just do it in between. Yeah, I hear that. I know there are abilities to do it. Other times when, for example, the boundaries of the city might be adjusted, right? And so that might alter populations. But yeah, we didn't, I don't think we talked about that at the group level to limit it from happening other than as necessary based on the mandatory, you know, redistricting or an actual change of boundaries. Not an unreasonable thought. Yeah. Which I'm not surprised at coming from you, Joe. I didn't mean to suggest that I was surprised that it was not an unreasonable thought.

I see more unreasonable when it's our material.

So that is something, if this group wants to refer back, could come back as an option when the full language comes back to you. Finishing up finally, I know this is grueling with the group two's recommendations. City council meetings and actions. Hopefully I've got my section references here correct. Old sections listed, new section 400 there. It was a minor change proposed here to add a flexibility for the requirement to hold two meetings a month. Um, to instead, uh, to at least allow one month to have only one meeting in the event that during the summer recess or around the holidays, only one meeting could be scheduled to at least allow that for to happen one month. Uh, this council, um, has way more than 24 meetings a year. They've the last few years have averaged 40 plus meetings a year. So I don't think people are being shortchanged, you know, with the number of meetings that are called for. Um, And then there's also a provision that clarifies that any action taken at a regular meeting can also be taken at a special meeting, except as required by the charter. There is a provision that group one will present that talks about whether or not ordinances can be adopted at a special meeting. I'll wait for that to be reported out when group one gets a chance to present. Procedures and requirements for action. the old sections 710, 712, and 713, and new sections 402.1, 2, and 3 provides a variety of different language changes, including clarifying the quorum requirements per existing rules and best practices that a quorum is a majority of the requirements the actual membership of the, shoot, I'm forgetting the language. The clarification is that for so long as the council is comprised of seven council members, that four city council members, and again, that includes the mayor, shall constitute a quorum and that the vacancy of one or more city council seats shall not alter the quorum requirement. In other words, if there's only six or if there's only five council people, because there's two vacancies, quorum does not become three. You still need four members to constitute the quorum. So that's a clarification and a standard quorum requirement. The procedures also clarify the senior appointed clerk's responsibilities to assist at meetings and keep the records of proceedings. That is not an elected city clerk function. This elected city clerk frequently comes to meeting and is supportive of and helpful at those meetings, but it's not one of his assigned duties. It's assigned to the senior appointed clerk and this reflects that. And then... There is a clarity added to the standard practice that four affirmative votes are required by the council to take any action unless a higher number is required, sometimes under law and under the charter five is required, but now that's clarified. The last section or group two that is being highlighted here anyway, is a provision that requires certain notice procedures and an opportunity for competing bids on the powers of the city to sell lease or convey property worth $500 or more. That's a pretty outdated number. It's a pretty outdated process. It would theoretically prevent the city even from selling fragments of property back to an adjacent property owner when we vacate a lease. It's kind of cumbersome. It's viewed as kind of unnecessary. And a lot of the terms... you know for major transactions are heavily negotiated over time the idea that you would negotiate potentially the sale of a significant city asset and then before you could consummate that sale you in effect need to make that property available to somebody else you know and consider alternative bids really really isn't practical and so the thought was this is kind of an our it's an archaic you know provision that can't really be fixed and the group recommended that it be deleted Now, that's not to say that people might go, wait a minute, what are you doing? We used to be able to have special notice for when you were selling property of over $500. So I'm not going to tell you that there might not be some perceived political sensitivity to that. But as a practical matter, as a best practice matter, that's really kind of an outdated provision. And so the ultimate conclusion and recommendation was to consider deleting you know, that section. So Mr. Chair, I'm done with at least group two. I know that took a long time. Group two was probably the heaviest of them in terms of the amount of, you know, issues that, and the variety of issues that they included or that they were assigned, you know, and had to take up. I would defer to any of the group two members if they wanted to supplement, you know, comment on or correct any of the presentation that they hopefully aren't regretting they deputized me to give.

I have a question. Because it's so timely, if we were to get rid of that one last section, How would that affect what happened about the discussion last night about possible purchase, purchase of Agnew and then trading land and stuff?

That provision wouldn't prevent the city from entering into an elaborate set of, you know, should the council approve, right? You know, going down that path. It wouldn't prevent the city from entering into negotiations and agreeing to a contract. But as a condition to close of any sale, it would have to say, hey, as a condition to close, we need to make this property available to somebody else. And the city could actually accept a bid for somebody else if they offered to pay 5% more. and kind of a strange thing to introduce to a complex negotiated transaction. Not that no comment on the decision made by the council last night, but that would be an unusual provision that could make it difficult to negotiate with a third party that we wanted to sell property to if in fact there was a lot of money that needed to be spent to get to a potential closing and you'd have to say, I'm sorry, there's a provision in my charter that now requires me to offer it to somebody else. We kind of undermine that negotiation. I would suggest, Mr. Chair, that based on what we talked about earlier, that if the public has any comments on this section, they should invite it to comment on the Group 2 recommendations. And then I might ask that this group you know, deliberate and give direction before we get into something else that might distract, you know, us on what they would like brought back, any potential changes or characterizations of things for when this comes back for final consideration.

Excellent idea. So first ask for a public comment. Is there any member of the public online that would like to comment?

There's no hands raised.

No hands raised. Okay, then we'll bring it back to the committee for discussion. Does anybody want to address any of the topics, clarify things, or give direction to staff to try to update stuff that we haven't already covered? Glenn, you are just so thorough.

So the couple of things that... that came up that might be included in any direction was whether or not there was a desire to include the option of modifying the qualifications for the chief of police. I think that was one of the hot button ones that people weren't sure about. And maybe I misperceived that maybe there was consensus to have that come back, you know, as part of the recommendation. The other one that I think there was a desire to have some more benchmarking on with a potential option was the the provision for which election, if there was a failed appointment, how we refine the language to redefine what forthwith means as to whether or not to give some time period or further definition around special versus general election based on benchmarking. So those were the couple that I thought weren't as clear and might need further direction. Susan?

The third one was the first discussion around the city parkland.

Oh, sorry, yes, and that one as well.

Yeah, I know that there was a comment to, if we include it, remove the word material and possibly say any adverse.

Yes. Yep, thank you. Those three.

The other item related to general elections, you were going to get clarification on.

a primary, whether that's included or not. Right. I'm sorry. That was my, that last one I said was my attempt to articulate that. Yes. As to, so what the options were for, for elections in a primary was a general election. Yep.

Regarding the chief of police powers and duties, I believe the previous charter left that ambiguous, whereas here you are enumerating them and you're stating outright that the chief is responsible for the supervision, management, and administration of the department. I believe this is a increase in the authority given to the chief. And my concern is that we're selecting the chief from a very small pool of candidates. And I believe about half of the elections, we had no choice. So I would prefer if this were left as it was, ambiguous, and not enumerate those powers so we have more flexibility in the future should we need it.

Um, Mr. Chair, if I might, I think that, that you're, you're jumping ahead, do a very significant discussion that will, will occur at the next meeting because the thing that was the item two or 2.3, the thing that was discussed tonight is that whether to change the qualifications of the chief of police, not the duties. Yeah. But there was a discussion in the course of that of having alignment with the qualifications and the duties, but that's really, that's not part of group two's report out. That's a group three report out that you'll get at the next meeting.

See no other comments.

Okay, so.

Can we just do that as a direction or do you need a official motion?

If I were to, it might be worth having a formal motion here. I think what the motion would be is to direct staff to come back with and work with group two to the extent possible, right? Come back with The changes as presented with a modification for the park disposal provision to replace material impact with any impact. to include, at least for now, consideration of adding qualifications, right, to the chief of police and getting additional information regarding the election, the timing and type of election post-appointment, including whether or not a primary election could be considered a general election so that final action could be taken on that item. That would be what I think I've gathered the consensus of the group.

I move as Glenn laid out to move along with group two and then on to four. Is there a second to that motion? Second.

There is a second. Like do a roll call vote or we just vote? Roll call vote.

Holly Roberts? Yes. Pat Nicolai? Yes. Bernard Tanzi?

Yes.

Joe Susinski? Yes. Eric Crutchlow?

Yes.

Burt Field?

Yes.

Steve Kelly? Lauren Diamond? Eric Jensen?

Yes.

Mark Beckman? Yes. Susan Peters? Yes. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Do you want me to keep rolling?

We roll on to group four.

Group four. Next slide. Group four was the boards and commissions group, composition, powers, and duties of the various boards and commissions. Another active group, five meetings, even a sixth meeting. I think we're missing one of the ones here, the May meeting. There was a lot of stakeholder input from this group, including from the planning commission, the parks and rec commission, and especially the board of library trustees who met multiple times on this. And of course all the city's respective department liaisons, including the city clerk's office on the various terms and conditions for this group four item. to summarize the recommended changes. And Mr. Chair, we could also take a break if you wanted to take just a couple minute break before we dive into this one. I'm seeing nods from folks.

I think a five minute break would be all. Five minute break, okay.

Thank you.

Oh, God, please don't beat it. I can't. She could. See how far. But I hear your thought process.

The beatings will continue.

Yeah, like...

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah. Makes sense at the wrong time.

Thank you.

No, we're not.

No, we're not.

Yeah, we're going at 2 o'clock.

We're breaking the record. 1 o'clock. Provision about removing any, or excuse me, the word material. It just creates this, you know, I don't see as many birds as I used to.

Okay, we're going to get back on the record here. And by consensus, we're going to skip group four's recommendations. And we'll use go to those at next meeting on the 27th. And we're going to jump into the group six recommendations and get those hopefully finished up tonight.

Yeah, very good. I appreciate that thought, Mr. Chair. We'll jump into group six, which is starting on slide 24. Group six was assigned the fiscal administration and procurement sections of the charter. One of the ones in a lot of respects that cried out for the most change and potentially substantive update with one instance in particular we'll get to. This group met a good number of times and was really benefited, I think, greatly from stakeholder input from public works department, um, Craig Mobeck, the director of public works and Ken Lee, uh, the finance, um, uh, director. I also got input from, um, um, and, and was able to pass that along from the city auditor, uh, and then, um, Silicon Valley power, uh, that didn't appear directly, uh, but was involved in, um, the public works, you know, aspects of, of the analysis, uh, for this section. Uh, so summarizing the, the, the changes, um, the first set of changes are the, are the ones that, that, that the group here about heard about from the, um, finance director Lee, um, the, um, budget preparation sections, old section 1301 new sections, 801.1 and 801.2. Um, The change is really focused on adding language to allow for the current biennial budget process with alternating operating and cabin and capital budget approvals. One of the things you've heard a couple of times. and are now hearing again, hopefully for the last time, is that the way the city currently budgets doesn't align with how the charter contemplates the budget process. The charter contemplates a single budget every year. And instead what the city does is it divides its budgeting process up into an operating budget and a capital budget process. And it's done biannually. which is there's a two-year operating budget and a two-year capital budget, and they are presented in alternating years. What we do as a city should align with what the budget says, right? And so this is really one of those examples of aligning, you know, with the current practices with the budget language. And it is, you know, not everyone does it this way, but it is a very common practice that I think... is supported by current staff and appreciated by the city council, because it allows kind of even a more detailed presentation on the operating budget or the capital budget, depending upon which one's up, then they would be able to give if they had to give the same one every year, right? They can give a very detailed one and project out, for two years of estimates if they're doing it in a biannual manner. So those are really the extent of the changes in those first couple of sections. Budget contents, what goes into the budget. There are a lot of sections in here of really unnecessarily detailed and inaccurate descriptions of what the contents of the budget were. Those are in old sections, 1311 through 1314. And what the group talked about is whether those things, you know, need to be there any longer or instead, you know, can be synthesized into a smaller paragraph. That's what member Lee, or member Lee, he's not a member, honorary member, director Lee, you know, was recommending. And ultimately what the, group six thought made sense and so there's a lot of sections um in this the in the existing charter that were deleted um and then were synthesized into uh section 600.3 which just oh jeez thank you which were synthesized in 801.3 um to include a number of different elements. And I'm going to go to 801.3 now and say that about eight different sections, maybe six different sections have now been boiled down to this description of budget contents. The budget will contain provisions to fund city operations, programs and services, city facilities and infrastructure improvements, maintenance and repair, reserve accounts to cover future anticipated and unexpected operational or capital needs, and then such other lawful projects or programs approved by the city council. The most important aspect of this that was talked about at really some significant length by the group was, whether or not the charter should include specific standards for the reserves, right? What reserves accounts should there be? And is there an amount or a percentage of the budget that should be included in the charter itself? And there was discussions about that, both with Mr. Lee in the room and outside of that. Ultimately, although there is meaningful concerns expressed about how the city has been establishing its reserves, and a concern about wanting to be as specific as possible. Based on Mr. Lee's professional input, the thought process ended up being that it's hard to establish a standard in a charter that would need to be revised by the voters that really captures every set of economic circumstances or the needs of the city at the time. And so... It would be better to, while obviously we're still requiring reserve accounts, instead leaving it to city council policymaking to determine what the appropriate reserve amounts should be. There was language added that put some guardrails around that to make sure that the city council decision about this what about what the reserve amounts right and accounts should be would be based on recommendations from the city manager and the finance director regarding best practices and then based on available funds right you might not always have money to put into your reserve accounts depending upon financial circumstances sometimes you might have more you know than an annual you know reserve policy might require and so the thought was please include requirement for reserve accounts, but perhaps by begrudging consensus, don't establish detailed provisions around what those reserve accounts should be. So I'll stop there. I have a feeling members of this group might want to comment or add to that.

Sure. My favorite topic. So I think that one of the reasons that this was a very interesting group to be in was because of the examples of what had gone on in the city that we haven't maintained a lot of our significant property and there weren't sufficient reserves. And it was good to, you know, Director Lee was very good at answering questions about what needs to happen. And while you don't want to necessarily be specific about it, look at it this way. A lot of times when they talk about reserves, they talk about we'll take 5% of our revenue and put that into reserves for a rainy day fund versus things like I look at it as you know all the assets that you have and you have reserve funds for that. I'm not saying that they don't do that today. What I'm saying is the city council has to be responsible to make sure that when we look at what needs to be maintained and the equipment and the assets that we have, that the allocation should be there They should be projected and even reported on saying, Hey, listen, you know, we were supposed to have this many reserves for training facilities for the police and we're not maintaining that. And this is how much we're in debt. We found that out recently when they tried, when they proposed a 600 million bond measure because we were lacking funds. So, I think that this is an area that when you look at it, we have to be very careful about what we can say in the charter, but I still think that the city council itself needs to make sure that we are funding and maintaining all the things that we need to do considering what has happened. It's a bad example that has been set by not just this, you know, I won't blame it on this city council. I will say it's been kicked down the road by several city councils. And now the city council had to address it in the way that I don't want to address it. So reserve funds have a lot of different meanings and the meaning should to me, if I can identify it, identify it, save for it and make sure that you don't have to have a bond measure to, to fix things later on.

A lot of appreciate that. A lot of, a lot of good discussions around that. Um, And I think this the inclusion of that provision and the reference to you know inputs from professional staff adds value, you know, to what it currently says on the next page. It talks about budget implementation and amendment provisions. Hopefully these section references are right. Old section 1300, new section 801. There was a lot of work done here, mostly driven by the finance department's desire to have it very clear about what the... staff authority is to, you know, make budget modifications, you know, along the way during the year and what kind of things need to be brought, you know, to the city council and your ability to carry forward funds. And to the extent a council approval of a budget amendment is required to Is five votes always required or might there be a circumstance where just a simple majority would be required? And so there's a variety of changes that were made. The language was changed. revised in order to try to use more layman's descriptions of things instead of pure budgeting nomenclature. And the provisions here as revised clarify where the budget amendment requires city council approval or where it would be administered by the city manager and where the city manager is allowed to make modifications to the budget is if it's within the various department and funds that have already been appropriated. In other words, below the line of what the council approves, the city manager is able to move money or even department heads are able to move money I've got money allocated to me. You know, that's a significant amount of money. But how I spend it, you know, within particular line items is something that I'm allowed to do. And the city manager gets to do that as well. And so it makes that clear, clearer than it was as to what the authority would be. It also allows for and expands a little bit the provisions that allow the city professional staff to carry forward funds from one fiscal year to another. If There is funding for an approved capital improvement project, right, that either was intended to take multiple years or turns out taking multiple years, or if there's money committed to a multi-year contract. The revisions to this budget would allow those monies to be carried forward to the next year because the council's already approved their use for that purpose without having to bring it back to the council for it to be approved again, right? There are certain things when you go down the path for implementing a capital improvement project or for implementing the terms of a contract where you're counting on those monies and it would be compromising if, in fact, the council approved it one minute but then didn't the next. So it allows for, in those limited circumstances, for the carry-forward of funds. it does retain the requirement for council level amendments to the budget. In other words, money taken from one place and moved to another, right? At the high level, not below the line, right? Where it's just within existing funds or departments, council would need to approve that. And the existing requirement for a five vote approval, a super majority approval is retained, but there's also a provision that modifies that to only a majority approval for where, in fact, if the funds are no longer needed for the original purpose, in other words, there's project savings, or where there's actual new revenues that get allocated. For example, if the city gets a grant and is getting a grant for a particular purpose, The existing language basically says there needs to be a supermajority vote for that, where the revised language says, no, that's new money that wasn't approved in the first place. We're not changing something the council already did. In effect, they're approving this thing in the first place. So if the city gets new money for a particular purpose, it shouldn't require five, a supermajority vote of the city council. So these are all things that the finance director in his implementation of the budget kind of wishes there were in order to give him certainty in order to balance his administration of the budget with the council's obviously right and ability to approve things. So those are the changes that are proposed there. I will point out that part of our research on this, because it's pretty typical to have the charters that I've seen, including with the benchmarking, five votes for budget amendments. There is a, for general law cities, that is the requirement, but it is not a, it is something that charter cities get to decide for themselves. In other words, if our city wanted to, just require four votes for every budget action, both with the original approval of the budget and the amendment of the budget, we could do that. But the thought is there is a certain check and balance, right? If the budget, if the council approved something and now you're changing it in a meaningful way from what they approved in the first place, that a super majority vote would be required to change that was originally approved in the first place. But some people observe, look at that and they think that's a little bit ironic. Because you'd think it would be five votes in the first place, you know, and then a minor amendment would be four. So there's a lot of different thinking around this. Really, the thinking and the changes that were made were driven by the finance department's experience and desire to be able to administer the budget in a more effective way.

Glenn, when the Peregrine contract passed with four votes rather than five recently, and the city council suggested that they scrounge around to find the money, it was within this existing authority to move money around within a department, for example, that would allow them to do that.

Yeah, I'm trying to read that. And of course, it was a controversial action and subject for more for, as much for citizen concerns about use of data for that contract as it was for parliamentary procedure reasons. The... The reason why it required five votes is because it was proposing to use monies that hadn't been allocated for that type of purpose. So it was taking money from one place and moving it to another place. Why? even when five votes weren't obtained in the end for that, the contract was approved, but the project was able to proceed was that the city already had money that didn't need to be moved that it could use to fund that project. And so the actual movement of money, while that was preferred and was part of the primary recommendation, it actually wasn't necessary under the approved budget that already existed

fund that contract so i think i'm remembering that correctly and that's where it ends up is the the existing allocation of money the appropriated funds were sufficient if they move them around under this authority to fund it my question is does this authority exist under the current charter to move within departments as opposed yes to move within yeah that exists already

Yeah, it just, what the changes do is make it more clear what the dividing line is, you know, using more layman's term language, but also language that the finance department's budget professionals understand as well. Next section is purchase of goods and services. Really not much to talk about here. There was already a provision for this. it the only modification there added a provision for the city council policymaking to or for the city manager and city council policymaking to consult with the director of finance and in the fiscal area that kind of consultation to make sure policymaking is tethered you know in a in the And the professional person who's assigned that responsibility, it was viewed as a good idea and a best practice. Next page is really the kind of the brunt of this item and where most of the time was spent both in discussions and in input. And that is the proposed changes to the public works provisions. As you all remember from the initial presentation, because this was identified right from the beginning as something that needed an update, and from the various report outs from Group 6, the existing language in the charter regarding public works is pretty outdated in a number of respects. one of the most conspicuous ones being that for any public work that costs more than $1,000 was required to go through a formal notice bid process and was required to have city council approval. Beyond that, not just public works, but any decision to use city public works employees forces to perform a public work that was projected to cost a thousand dollars or more also needed city council approval. And so what that ends up requiring is, and this is, it's mostly Silicon Valley Power, but it's other utilities as well. They've got a lot of employees that can perform public works and do minor projects, major projects they bid out, but they've got in-house staff to do this. Every time they had a thing they wanted to do that cost more than a thousand bucks, they had to get the city council to approve that and make a determination about that. They've looked at kind of some benchmarking for that. And over the last, I think, three years, they've had like at least 50 or 60 items that had to go to the council to do that. That takes up a lot of staff time, more than you might think, and really kind of slows down their ability to use city forces in order to perform these functions. So the other thing that the existing charter language didn't include was the ability for the city to do best value procurement for public works or any other type of alternative procurement process. traditional public works are procured with the project being designed, typically by either in-house city engineers or engineers that they hire. And then once they design that project, that design is put out to bid. And contractors bid on that and according to our city charter that bid must be awarded to the lowest responsive responsible bidder um not the best bidder not the most experienced you know bitter um the lowest bidder that can create dynamics where um a bidder who might not be the best bidder bids on a public works project they lowball it, right? And then lo and behold, as they're implementing the project, you had to award the contract to them. You get change orders, right? That you end up having to pay because they've identified things, you know, that they've concluded wasn't in the original scope. So traditional design, bid, build, you know, projects are kind of the standard and work, you know, a lot of the times and, you know, Most of the contracts you deal with are good honorable contractors that make proposals and you go about and implement those projects. But there are certain other projects and circumstances where it would make sense to have what's referred to as a best value process, where instead of just automatically awarding a project to the low bidder, you're evaluating the quality and experience of the contractor. And you are potentially awarding a contract to not just the contractor, but to a team of a design professional and a contractor that work together in order to come up with a proposal that in fact, they would have to ultimately produce at a capped amount. In other words, a guaranteed maximum price contract. These alternative procurement mechanisms are frequently used for complicated projects and are viewed as something by our public works department And public works professionals has something that can save time and save money and end up with a better, you know, ultimate project that could be value and engineered along the way to manage costs. And so our current charter doesn't allow for any of that. And, and The thought was particularly with now a $400 million infrastructure bond and some complicated projects like building fire stations that are frequently done with design build kind of best value projects. Now would be a good time to modify our charter to allow for those types of alternative procurement mechanisms. So there was a lot of presentation about this, appreciated the public works director coming and talking about it. I'm hopefully doing a good job of describing his professional expertise about how these things work. All of that, with all of that considered, the consensus of the group was to really replace the existing charter language that has these unusually low limits on things that need to go to council and require formal bidding with a outline of what a public works procurement ordinance would include. including an appropriate benchmark for what would need to be formally bid, you know, and what council approved, where council approval would be required. And a lot of other kind of good elements of checks and balances, including alternative bid practices, you know, that would allow the city to deploy, you know, what are considered to be modern, you know, best practice, best value, you know, procurement mechanisms when the circumstances required. So that's what this slide describes, which is the option A proposal. Don't just adjust the limits because $1,000 would need to be, you know, increased to, $250,000 or $500,000 in order to make sense and that might have people reacting very adversely to what you're proposing to do in that regard and extend and instead take the existing language and contemplate the adoption of an ordinance that would implement all of the details about how public works by city council approved ordinance.

Real quick, just to be clear, we don't budget in compliance with the charter, but our public works are held back by what's missing from the charter. Sorry, hour three snark.

Yeah, I think how our current charter is drafted, has many more projects formally bid and coming to council for approval than makes sense. So it creates a lot of extra work and slows down our public works projects. And because it doesn't allow for alternative procurement mechanisms, it does not allow for more efficient and potentially money saving alternatives to implementing complicated public works. And so this would, in effect, replace our existing structure. Not traditional bid-build concepts, because we frequently do and would make sense to do that, particularly on things that we do all the time, like road improvements. That's not a design-build project. It's a fairly straightforward project. There's a lot of contractors that do that work. When you bid that out, the low bid, you know, you know, frequently is by a really good, you know, contractor that you can count on to do that work and you don't need these other procurement mechanisms. So it doesn't replace that. It just where it makes sense to do the alternative, you know, procurement process adds an additional public works procurement tool that would now be available to the city council and public works.

So,

That's the description of what was proposed as an alternative to this, which was evaluated, but ultimately determined not to be as good as option A. Option B would have been tinkering with the existing language to increase those limits by a specific dollar amount or potentially increased by an index and then adding the alternative procurement. But the thought was this was a better approach and one more likely to be approved by the voters who weren't, who wouldn't instead be looking at of what you're increasing a thousand to 250,000. What are you thinking? What are you doing? Right. Um, uh, it would be, it'd be, might be hard to message around that. It was also pointed out that back in 2000, there was an effort to increase that dollar amount from 1000 to 50,000, which probably seemed like a lot, you know, back then. And that measure was defeated, you know, by the voters. So, um, the thought that this this other approach would probably be better received. And of course, all of the rules about this would still be made in public. They just would be made by, you know, city council ordinance. It's not like, you know, these things would be happen, you know, in a in in a dark room. So any other questions on the public works part?

Think 602.4 is not the right.

Oh, geez. Which one?

I also don't know if 802.2.3 is right. I think it's just 802.2.

Oh, it's not 802.2.3? I'm going. Now that you guys have been catching these, yeah, Courtney's on top of it. Which one? Okay, that's wrong. Okay. Okay. I'm clearly Section 8 or something.

So Option A is the one we just went through where we don't increase the 1,000 to 250,000? Okay, so.

Yeah, that's Option A. Yeah, Option A. And it's detailed, obviously, in the language itself. New Section 802.2. I'm happy to talk to any of you about it more. You can see it really importantly, I think includes, it contemplates this all being implemented by ordinance, but it's not just any old ordinance, right? The ordinance has to contain these things in it. which are pretty good checks and balances that make sense. The city council retains approval rights over major projects while minor projects are approved by the city manager, right? And the ordinance will decide what that break point is, right? It could be 250, it could be 150, it could be 500, you know, whatever the city council ultimately decides, right? Competitive bid processes for all contracts with formal advertisement for bids and sealed bids required for all major contracts. So it doesn't do away with that. It still contemplates it. And it says in general, except as provided below, the award of contracts shall meet the lowest responsive and responsible bidder. So there's a variety of things in there. I won't read all the rest of them, but are designed to be the framework for a good thoughtful, you know, kind of ordinance with checks and balances to make sure that it's being done in an appropriate way. Okay. Yes.

Was the intention that we're going to present option A and option B in our final, or are we going to pick one of those?

That is up to you. I think it would be a little, it's up to you. I think it can be approached either way. That would be a good thing for discussion and direction.

We had this discussion in the subgroup too. It's like, keep it simple. Too many options, you wind up like everybody starts coming up with third, fourth, fifth options. So I think if we agree that option A is the right one to do, I would suggest that that's what we pick and leave it at that because guaranteed they will be questions and there will be, you know, let's do it this way instead.

Yeah. I think you need to identify it as a conceptual alternative, but putting them both in front, you know, maybe a lot, all of this is going to be a lot, right. As you can tell from how we're going through it now for, for the council to absorb and, you know, react to, and that, that might be a good instinct.

I know group six is obviously in favor of option A. Is anybody not in group two opposed to option A?

Or did I not do option A justice and do any of the group two people want to speak for it?

Well, I mean, what we were saying is like, okay, change the values and like, this has already been done. So it didn't work out. So it was like, okay, what's a better way of, doing it rather than saying, oh, we'll change it to $2,000, still too low. We're not gonna do 50,000 or 250,000, which is probably more in line. But I think I like this because what it does is it tells the city council you do by ordinance And if you don't trust your city manager, you can always say, no, I don't like that what you just did, or we're going to change the thresholds because we've had these problems. But it's dynamic. You don't have to change the charter every time to try and get something like this done because obviously you don't change the charter very often. It gives the city council the ability to deal with it in real time.

One additional thought, if I might, on that is This is probably a level three change. As opposed to other level three changes though, wherever you're like, oh, if it's level three, is it even worth putting separately on the ballot? This one would be worth putting separately on the ballot. This could potentially add a lot of value. And if for some reason, the council said, hey, I don't want to risk the rest of this amendment, but I definitely want this. A good case can be made that, hey, let's put the comprehensive one on the ballot, but let's put this one on just separately because we want this no matter what. that might be a reason to go all the way, right? If you're going to put it separately, you might as well get the full thing that you want, you know, in, in the amendment, but, um, that's strategic political thinking that ultimately the council will think about, you know, and decide on as they contemplate what's the best thing to put in front of the voters and what's the best way in order to do that. Um, If nothing more on that, we'll go to the audit requirements. This is pretty straightforward. Old section, I think 1319 and new section, I think 803. that the changes here eliminate language suggesting that each city employee gets audited. It's a weird sentence that says that we shall audit, you know, the finances of the city and, you know, each city, you know, employee director and everything else. That's not how audits are done. You don't audit each individual person's, you know, conduct. And it seems to suggest that. So that is eliminated. That's not the kind of audit that's being contemplated here. So it eliminates that language. It also imposes a standard on the audit. It should be done in accordance with generally accepted auditing and accounting principles applied to government agencies. That language and concept came from from Ken's group. There was a lot of talk about, should we be, you know, should it be this standard? Should it be that standard? Should it be that standard? Again, the thinking is it's the charter, right? Those standards could change. The concept of auditing standards and accounting standards even is different from a private agency, you know, a private company to a government agency. And there are particular you know, accounting and audit standards that apply to government agencies. And so being at least that specific, but being otherwise general, Ken Lee was comfortable with that as being the appropriate standard. And finally, the concept of an audit being presented to the city council was included in there, but it didn't contemplate what currently happens and what ought to happen and is a best practice is that there's an audit committee that's set up. And so this now contemplates that the report out goes through the audit committee, ultimately to the city council. And so that existing best practices structure is now memorialized in this version of that. Special rules for utilities expenditure and revenues, old section 1320, new section 804, correct? It eliminates some outdated details for how utility monies could be expended. under both state law that requires the utilities to account for their revenues in a way to assure that they're not charging rates that are higher than costs. There are some special rules that apply to accounting for utility enterprises. This preserves that. Um, in accordance with applicable law, but not in the language that's described in the charter. Cause the, what the language that's described in the charter is not accurate and is unnecessarily detailed. And so the details were eliminated and it refers instead to as required by law. And that was suggested by Ken and his group. Um, There also were some modifications just for clarity on the very important provision that's in our charter. and needs to be in our charter, it needs to be voter approved. The language that provides for a 5% transfer of utility gross receipts to the general fund now makes it clear that those monies can be used for general fund purposes where it was more vague than it should have been in the past. As a lot of you are familiar, while this charge applies to all utilities, it's Silicon Valley power that generates so much revenue from this. It's now approaching 35 plus million dollars a year that our general fund gets from this. So it's an important source of revenue. It needs to be in the charter and voter approved because it could be characterized and treated as a tax, even though it's built into the rate. So this is an important thing to both preserve and to make sure is worded the right way. It doesn't propose to increase the amount or decrease the amount or make any other material change.

Please go ahead and get your sneeze out of the way. I just wanted to point out a small nitpick. In 803.1, we have a generally accepted auditing and accounting principles. And then in 801.3, we have reference to applicable government accounting standards. I don't know if those are intended to be the same thing or if one refers to the other.

That's a good comment. I'll make sure there's uniform references. One is purposely auditing and accounting because it's an audit and there's different standards for audits, but give me the other section again, 803.1 and 801.3.

Okay.

Yeah. I'll look at those. They should say the same thing. Yeah. Appreciate that. Finance and tax authority. This is very wonky. It was reviewed by two outside councils, both our bond council and a lawyer that we have advised us on various financing things to in effect clean up this language, to give the city all of the authority that a charter city can have in order to, impose taxes, impose fees, impose assessments and issue debt, but without throwing out any clearly conscious, purposeful limitations in the charter on our ability to do that. And so I think a balance was struck Here, there was some outdated language that inaccurately summarized state law and the rules that used to be standard rules to apply to revenue bonds that our bond council has had to work around and instead of issuing conventional revenue bonds, he's had to issue certificates of participation, which gets you the same place, but it's a more complicated financing that costs you more with respect to utilities financing. And we do a lot of utilities financing because of how expensive SVPs things are. And so you'll see in this section that we deleted a lot of sections, right? That just were super detailed, frankly, back before there was a lot of state laws in place, both in the Constitution and otherwise, that regulated that in a more detailed way. So we're, in effect, modernizing our charter by eliminating pre-state law enactments and just having it be in compliance now with state law. As I pointed out, it also retains important things. One of them is the existing limit on bonded indebtedness is now included in that. It's limited to 15% of the total assessed value of city real and personal property. We did some cleanup language in this section, but it doesn't change the essence of that limit on the city's ability to issue debt relative to the value of its assets. We also include and even clarify and update express rights and requirements for voter approval of any taxes, fees, or debts that require voter approval under state law. That's pretty clearly embedded in the Constitution. And that provision is retained with its own heading so that voters know, hey, we're making some changes here, but none of this is intended to kind of take anything away from your ability to vote on this. on things that require your vote. Finally, yay. There's a quirky provision in the charter that talks about the limit on the abilities city to finance nuclear facilities. The current language in Section 1321E, in effect, prohibits financing of a nuclear power plant or any interest therein unless approved by the voters. This was enacted in 1981. When was Three Mile Island? Oh, I don't know. You know, and there may have been anti kind of nuclear, you know, sentiment back then. I haven't done a lot of detailed conversations with SVP, you know, about this, but no one's proposing to build a nuclear power plant right in Santa Clara. But the idea that as nuclear power might get more prominent and available, that SVP might not be useful for them to enter into a contract to acquire an interest in a nuclear power facility and that they would, depending upon the cost of that, might want to finance that. This is kind of an unusual, almost, you know, maybe dated, right? For its time, you know, restriction on SVP, its ability to have an ownership in nuclear, you know, in a nuclear facility. Not in Santa Clara, right? Anywhere, because it doesn't say that. So could this be changed or is it radioactive? 1979 is when it happened. Yeah, Three Mile Island, 1979. So, I mean, excuse my goofy pun or whatever it was. This is one of those things, right, that you look at and you're like, that doesn't make sense. We should change that. And then you change it and the reaction might be, what are you doing? Are you building a nuclear power plant? Are you trying to build a plant in Santa Clara? I can see that being a reaction to people if it was changed like this. And so it's tendered as something that would make sense to modify. Would it be worth having it be its own measure? I don't know. should it be identified maybe and tendered to the council for their sentiment, you know, and to see what they think about it, that's up to you guys, you know, as the arbiters of, you know, what it makes sense for this group to recommend or what might again be a third rail, even if it seems to make sense, right, as you talk about it, that, you know, the public perception of it might be different. And so leaving that for group discussion and or questions,

comment your wisdom before and saying if it isn't a problem that needs to be fixed do we need to fix it i think that in this case why open up something that's going to be potentially contentious and then take away from the rest of the the work that we're trying to do and get things done i think If there was something in front of us right now where somebody said, hey, we want to do this and such, I think that's the appropriate time. And in the end, it says, hey, the voters have to approve it. So I think if we do go nuclear for some reason, great, let's do it when we have that in front of us. Otherwise, if we bring attention to this, it could detract from the rest of the things that we're trying to do.

That's fair. Glenn, just to clarify, you've read it and you've read it with outside counsel. this can't be read as financing one inside of Santa Clara, right? The existing language such that we would be able to finance one outside of Santa Clara. You're confident in the read?

The current language doesn't talk about inside or outside Santa Clara. It just says we can't finance a nuclear power plant or any interest in a nuclear power plant. It isn't even place specific. In theory, again, not contradicting member Crutchlow's comment, because I agree with him. I mean, that's a reasonable place to end up with. Yeah, and particularly when you quote me, it must be reasonable. But um in theory if you were going to tweak it right and say that city can't you know finance any nuclear power plant within you know or near you know the city of santa clara um you know in theory you could say that but it's still right that that's sensitive of an issue i don't know if that fixes it if someone's going to react adversely to it um i don't i don't know that that fixes problems with state and federal anyway so i mean there's

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And I think that, you know, it also, if you want to play hacker on this, small nuclear power plants, SMRs, which are the big thing that people talk about today, potentially, I don't have to finance it. I'm just going to buy it. Buy the damn thing, make 300 megawatts, and I'm not financing it technically. Well, you know, I don't think the voters would appreciate that either. But again, I think we're stepping on, we're putting out a landmine we don't need to put out

Fair enough. I'm glad of you volunteering your backyard.

I think that makes sense to me. If one due diligence thing I might do before I you know, before this comes back for your final action. I'll re-inquire with SVP to see if there's anything there that, oh my gosh, yeah, nuclear is happening. And yes, we really need and want to do that now. Yes, that's going to be important to us to getting a competitive advantage. I'll get some, you know, additional input on that. But I appreciate your perspective. It may just be too much.

I would say that's great. Definitely do that. I would also say that if they are looking at doing it, let's not make this the the touchstone for them to start that process. Let's let's let them bring it out on their own and such. Because I think that it just again, it'll there's so much that we're changing. Less is better.

I'd just like to add that I believe there's nothing preventing SCP from buying electrical power from a nuclear facility. It's just that they can't have ownership of it. And as such, I don't think it's very limiting. So they could still buy power from a small modular reactor in Utah if they want to.

Well, I was thinking about buying one in my backyard.

Well, you never know. That might be going in all the data centers.

It's for my ADUs.

Yeah, it's funny. I think you're all right. I think the language is very specific, right, to financing of a nuclear power plant or interest therein. It doesn't say you can't buy nuclear power. It doesn't say you can't buy a nuclear power plant. So it's a little – if that's what the thought was to try to prevent any involvement for the city in nuclear power, it wasn't drafted very – Yeah, in 81, if you were going to finance – you would have to finance a nuclear power plant.

There's no way you could buy one, and that would be – you'd still be paying that off.

Very good. So if there's any other questions or comments from group six that they want to add Chair, then you could consider going to the public for Yes, the public.

I'm sure there's hundreds of people online right now. If they would like to make a comment on this topic. Okay, so there's no public comment. So for feedback, I think the one major topic is the proposal A or proposal B. So maybe if somebody from group six wanted to make a motion to put forward, that would be helpful.

Make a motion that we put forward option A and not option B.

There's a motion and a second. Any discussion on that?

Can I recommend maybe if there's, you could combine that so as not to make too, is everything else okay too? So you could say, recommend we proceed with all language as presented, including option A.

Make the motion. Does that sound good? I accept the friendly amendment to the motion. And the second?

Excellent. Should we do a roll call vote? Roll call.

Pat Nicolai.

Yes.

Bernard Tansey.

Yes.

Joe Susinski.

Yes.

Eric Crutchlow. Yes. Burt Fields.

Yes.

Steve Kelly. Lauren Diamond. Eric Jensen.

Yes.

Mark Beckman. Yes. Susan Peters.

Yes.

Okay, I guess we can move to the last item on the agenda. Last item on the agenda is staff presentation and solicitation of committee input and or direction regarding process for creating and contents of the committee's final report and recommendation to the city council for the charter project to possible need for an action on scheduling one or more additional committee meetings to complete the charter project work plan.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The process for completing and contents of final report and recommendation to the city council, I think we need to defer that discussion to the future meeting. We've had a few discussions along those lines with a couple of the committees about how that process might work, but I honestly haven't had the opportunity to give that any further thought. I'm saying defer it John Potter, Only because I don't have a presentation, but that doesn't mean this group can't discuss if you've got ideas about what goes into the report. John Potter, You know, and how that will be presented. John Potter, It would I just don't have any. John Potter, Any great insights you know at this point, other than the fact that I think we need a very detailed report. that I've already started framing out some of the contents of that, looking at the Sunnyvale example, which I thought was very thoughtful and well done and understand that, I necessity with, with my kind of understanding of all the different elements of this, I will need to play a prominent role, you know, in the presentation of that. But I think the presentation would only be enhanced by ownership and involvement of the groups in adding to that presentation and playing a role in describing the thought process and how you all ended up where you ended up with your recommendations. So those are just my general observations, but I don't have too much to say beyond that.

I have a question about that. How much time do you think you'll have to actually figure that out. So let's say we have our final draft, right? When do you think we'll have our final draft? If you can kind of make a guest of it and how much time do you think you'll have to actually sit and figure out a way to present it to this council?

Not a lot, um, day a week. No more, more, more than that. I mean, I, I, At this point, this far along, we probably need to start roughing out what the report looks like anyway with the elements of it that there's already some consensus and direction on. It probably makes sense to, in my thinking about it, to the extent this group has bandwidth that may be set up a, and we could do this at the next meeting. It's probably not agendized properly for this meeting, some form of ad hoc subcommittee, you know, the report committee, you know, to help with the, architecture you know in preparation and potentially presentation of elements of the report um and so when i was deferring it until may 27th that was one of the thoughts i had right to you know formally enlist the the support of a subgroup of this you know committee um because you're all looking for more still more to do um you know with this in order to facilitate you know that production but um Yeah, there's not a lot of time between now and when this needs to go. The next slide kind of gets at that a little bit, and it might make sense for me to go through this in order to inform your thinking about that process. As I mentioned briefly at the beginning of our presentation, this is how it's currently kind of laid out. for city council consideration and action. We are targeting an initial presentation to the city council on June 9th in a workshop setting. In other words, presentation with council questions and preliminary feedback, but no action, right? At least to get it out in front of them and familiarize themselves. The report wouldn't necessarily need to be done by then, the formal report and recommendation, but at least the document in substantially final form, if not final form would be good to present to them and to the public with some even more formal, big leagues, city council level, socialization and familiarity with the draft. So the next presentation and ideally with the formal recommendation and report, would be presented to the city council at a special meeting, which we just got scheduled this morning for June 15th, you know, 2026. They wouldn't necessarily take action there either. And in fact, I doubt they would, but they'd have had a time right after the the study session and, you know, with a copy of the report, you know, by then to have further thoughts, you know, about this and maybe even give a, you know, go, no go on, you know, how much of this they'd be prepared to finalize, you know, and even consider recommending, you know, for the upcoming ballot measure. And then, you know, An additional presentation may be necessary in early July to them, depending upon the feedback, you know, that we get from them in those first two sessions. But no matter what, unless they're going to schedule a meeting during their summer recess, which I handicap in the highly unlikely, you know, area, they would need to act on that. really every element of this, that's the actual proposed charter changes and all the different pieces of what goes into putting a ballot measure, you know, on the ballot. um, by their last meeting of July 14th and 2026. If you remember that, um, all of that needs to be finalized and submitted to the registrar voters. Um, I think the date this year is August 7th or 8th. I forget which one, but in, you know, that in, in that timeframe, you know, in early August, in order for them to do all that they need to do in order to make sure it gets on the ballot. So pretty compressed timeframe. Um, And this is how it maps out. The scheduling requirements for the Charter Review Committee on the next page, we've already got scheduled the May 27th meeting to hopefully, if not finish, come close to finishing the report outs. If all of you look at the materials, right, and even the PowerPoint on the other group, and we'll try to get it out, you know, the rest of it out front of you. Maybe I can be a little less exasperating and detailed, you know, in my presentation of all those elements to it. But depending upon how that goes, you may need another CRC meeting in June prior to the June 9th city council presentation in order to finalize, you know, your recommendation. And I think that's likely given how long it took, you know, for us to go through that. Courtney, had been polling and can give you maybe an update now on what polling she might have or might need to do in order to check what the availability of this group would be to reconvene for hopefully what would be the last meeting necessary in order for you to develop your recommendation and maybe assign to any subcommittee you might've decided to create the responsibility to get the report finalized and over the line. And so that's how it maps out. Mr. Chair, and I'm obviously open to discussion and direction as the committee may see fit.

I see a lot of tired faces and no comments.

I think that you did a good job. What's the outline of the report and how do you present this? Just say, here's the old one, here's the new one. It's gonna be a lot of questions, right? And we know that. So I'm thinking that at least coming up with what does that look like? How would you, if you were on city council, how would you wanna consume this? Because this is reading like one of those Dostoevsky books, which is huge and it's really hard to figure out who's killing who. But I think, you know, For me, like a couple of my thoughts like number one have a prefix that goes in like hey here is our philosophy and going through this one clean it up, make sure it lines up to things that were changing you know we came up with these different levels, you know 1234. and we are identifying, you know, these are the things that we feel that, you know, our blow should be easy. These are the ones like, yeah, we know that this should probably be taken out as a separate battle, at least given the philosophy that we went through, because that's going to probably be one of the questions they will ask. And then how do you put this in at a high level? And what's the 30, I can't quite see what a 30,000 view would be to showing all this. Um, but I think it needs some kind of overview and preface to, to be able to explain some of the things that we did and why. Um, but I think that's the key right now is what should the format of that presentation be and how can we best help you to get there?

Yes, both in written and verbal form.

Your verbal is fine. You explain things great.

I know one of the things we have to do is go to public comment. Does anybody in the public want to discuss the scheduling requirements? Shocking.

People are online. One of them is probably my wife. She wants to know where I am.

Anything else we needed to accomplish tonight before we adjourn to the 27th? Or we could discuss group four.

Yeah, other than appetite and availability for a June meeting, I think is probably a good conversation to have. Or if you just want, to the extent we think we are likely to need the meeting, and I think we're likely to need the meeting, just ask, or need a poll, you know, you for nights where we're available and we can find a space to meet. May 27th is perfect.

So let's just book it.

Yeah. So May 20, May 27th, we're booked and that's going to be in city council that, you know, the trick for that might be this was pretty grueling. I can do better in making my presentation tighter. Sorry, I produced the report and wasn't able to spin through it even once before I had to present it to you. So I could probably be tighter the next time this comes to you to get through more. But we might need a meaningfully longer meeting on the 27th in order to even get to a place where we only need one more meeting. in order to complete it. So I guess I might adjust expectations for the group as torturous as this was, we might need another torturous plus version of this. And again, people's availability for one more round in order to be prepared for the engagement with the city council. Yeah.

We need a motion to have the city provide us coffee at the 27th meeting.

Yeah, I'm sorry. I've been one of the logistics things. I didn't even bring water for myself, right? That's how attentive I am. I think I brought snacks at the first meeting, and then after that, it's all fallen by the wayside. That would be very good. Yeah, that's right. So... 16082389231190190190190190190190190190190190190 I didn't know they had to stay the whole time. And maybe she told me. But after Patty being there along with the rest of us until the wee hours, you know, to have her and her staff set this up for us and host us in a different, you know, location, super appreciative of that support. So.

The late...

No, fining is no longer a thing for the libraries. Yeah.

I can start coming back.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, then if we're going to end this meeting, I do have to say, because maybe my wife is one of the people watching. It is my 20th wedding anniversary tonight.

Wow.

Very good.

And I thought, what better way to spend it than at a CRC meeting? Yes. We shall see if I make it to 21 after this.

Yeah, I was going to say. It might be now at risk.

But if she is watching, I love you very much.

She can watch the recording.

I will make a recording available. Very good. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.

Motion adjourned.

thank you for coming thank you for going back to back and coming after that you want is a pdf okay or do you need to right okay