Oversight Board Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay, very good. Welcome everybody. This is the meeting of the Governance and Ethics Committee for Thursday, March 21st, 2026. It's now 10.04. I'd like to call this meeting to order and I have something to announce to the public. This meeting will be recorded. The Zoom application will notify you that this meeting is being recorded. Please press continue on the Zoom application to stay in the meeting. Use the raise your hand feature in Zoom when you would like to speak on an item. Please unmute when called to speak and mute yourself when you're done speaking. Please lower your hand when you're finished speaking. If you're calling in by phone, identify yourself by name before speaking on an item. Press star nine on your phone to raise and lower your hand. Press star six by phone to unmute. All right. I would like to have roll call. Maria, are you?

Chair Jane?

Here.

Committee member Chahal?

Present.

And committee member Park.

Here.

Thank you.

Okay, very good. We have, next we have our consent calendar. There's one item on the consent calendar and that's the meeting minutes of April 13th. And I think Maria mentioned had wanted to pull that.

Yes, Chair James. So I'd like to pull the minutes from the April special meeting. I was informed by staff the minutes should note in action during the work plan item discussion, the committee's approval of bringing an internet disruption policy for SB 707 requirement. The committee voted to directly bring that to council and the item will not go to the governance and ethics committee. committee first. So I wanted to note that. So what I'll do is revise the minutes reflecting that note and bring it back to you at the next committee meeting for approval.

Okay, very good, thank you. All right, next we move on to public presentations. This item is reserved for persons to address the body on any matter not on the agenda that is when the subject matter jurisdiction of the body. The law does not permit action on or extended discussion of any item not on the agenda. Okay, are there any, I don't see, oh, I see a member of the public here. If you would like, we're at public presentation. If you would like to speak on an item not on the agenda, please come forward.

Sorry about that. I was talking about perfect timing.

Okay.

Sorry, I'll be really fast. I'm running out of breath too. Um, so last time I was here, I talked about, uh, one of the things, which is, uh, on the, at the governance and ethics meeting, which is, um, adding a, um, ticker or a thing to follow council meetings. Um, so, you know, what item you're on, what items are on the agenda, easy to watch from YouTube channels, as well as maybe organizing our YouTube channel. Um, really hard to find certain things when you're looking for it. So I think that would be a good thing moving forward. Special orders of business. I saw, you know, I was at the council meeting the other night, a lot of special orders of business. When I was on the city council, I felt that special orders of business really kind of stalled and kind of took away from, I'm not saying that we should have, shouldn't have them, but they took away from a lot of the meeting and we didn't get to the meeting at eight. So maybe if we can, consolidate.

I'm still running out of breath running up here.

So if we consolidate that, that'd be really good because I think that just, I think somebody mentioned it the other night that it does weigh on the council a little bit. I know that we maybe could flex that, but that's up to you guys. And meetings going till 12 a.m., past 12 a.m. I've noticed that it consistently becomes an issue. I know that council has gone till 2 a.m. in the past and And then it becomes a situation where council members are being rushed. And I know one person is consistently doing that, saying that they have a job to go to in the morning. Well, some people that have a job to go to in the morning, they own their business. Some people don't. So it's like when some people need to get things done, and especially city management, and they want to move things along, we shouldn't be pigeonholing everything and forcing everything through one thing. uh to finish by a certain time you guys should be taking the time to get things done and this is why i think you do get a lot of backlog and back you know things that back up on the council agenda um but again um i think my biggest thing though is adding the ticker you know if this this could be added to an agenda to even discuss that or i don't know how that process is done um i think it will help a lot of people because there are people who usually watch these meetings and they're like oh hey Um, you know, I want to be able to talk during this item. Well, they don't want to sit there and trying to figure out scrubbing, trying to figure out where they're going to go to. So I think that would be really beneficial for everyone in the community. I know Cupertino does it. I know San Jose does it. Um, we did it in the beginning and we had, like I said before, we had the little Fox news, CNN ticker scroll thing at the bottom might've been a little annoying for some people, but it gave people updates on when things are coming. So, um, but thank you guys for hearing me on that. Uh, apologize for running in really quickly and running out of breath. But those are kind of my basic issues that I hope that this commission can take actions on. Thank you.

Thank you. I don't see anyone else here. Is there anyone online?

No hands raised online.

Okay, very good. We can move on to the items on the agenda. I would like to rearrange the order of the items. I would like to move item three ahead of item two. Item three is discussion and possible action on updates to council policy reconsideration of council action. So I think we can just take item three now for a staff presentation.

So again, I don't know where this is in council policy. I don't know if this is part of a charter, but usually when we make an amendment to the ordering, we vote on it. Like when I'm in BTA, when I'm in other meetings and there is a suggestion to move the order, usually the membership votes on that. We haven't done that. We've taken the chairs, whether it's a council meeting or here, we've usually just taken the chair's you know, whimsy on how they want the meetings to be arranged and the agendas. And in this case, I actually don't see a place where we can do an arrangement of the agendas. And the reason that this is important is if people are coming to a meeting, not necessarily this meeting, but if people are coming to a public meeting with many agenda items, and they see that something's towards the end of the meeting, whether towards the beginning of the meeting, they may come later or earlier for that item and then miss it if it's rearranged. in the middle of the meeting. What I usually tell people is if you see something, if you have something you want to go to, go to the continuances, exceptions and reconsiderations to see if that item is going to be moved. But if that item is moved in the middle of the meeting after an item has been taken, for example, that really causes people to miss items. And it's just a general question. What is the protocol for moving agenda items in a meeting?

I'll let the city attorney respond to that. I do have some comments.

Yeah. The arrangement of things at meetings is, is typically something that's managed by the presiding officer and the presiding officer can propose those things like was just done, you know, by member Jane. But ultimately if the, the majority of whatever body is involved, doesn't approve or support that, it would be a matter that the majority would get to determine. So if there was a circumstance like the one that Member Park was referring to where there were competing interests, right? And there might be expectations about one group of having something appear in the order that it's listed, that could be something that would be raised. And in effect, say to the presiding officer, presiding officer, I don't, you know, agree with that. And the presiding officer could either adjust, you know, what their proposal would do, or it could be put to a vote of the majority of the group. And so there's kind of an informal aspect to it, but ultimately a formal aspect to it. In the end, the presiding officer, you know, has the kind of the discretion to propose the arrangement of those things, but any proposed change would be subject to the approval of the majority.

Okay, so my comments are that on the VTA agendas, there is an item called orders of the day, and that's when things are proposed to be rearranged and there is a vote on that. Now, I was going by the example from our Council meeting on Tuesday, where we were discussing the na for that value of partners and I suggested that we move that item to after public presentation, the mayor agreed to that and we didn't have a vote on it so. I was going by sort of that precedence that the mayor has had, but I'm perfectly amenable to adding an item called Orders of the Day and having a formal vote on it.

Yeah, and that's not on the agenda today, right, for you to discuss. It could be something in thinking about your work plan, right? One of the things we want to get to that I think is on your work plan, and I'm not remembering what order it would appear on, is just your review of the meeting management protocol policy, right? That would be the perfect place, right, if you were going to want to formalize what I just described about the common practice. If you wanted to make it more formal, you know, than that, you could, and the meeting management protocols could be an appropriate vessel, you know, for that modification.

And I think during the meeting, as we get close to midnight, sometimes things get rearranged at that time as well. So I don't, kind of don't want to be fixed on, I guess we could always take a vote at any time to change the order through a motion. Member Chauhan.

Thank you, Chair. So I think from residents' point of view, it makes sense that we decide about it and be transparent on it. Just on the city council agenda, we have concurrences, exceptions, reconsiderations, and we can add order of the day. order of the items for that matter on that line itself. Because why I'm saying that it's good for the resident, if some people come to the city hall and they know their agenda is at so and so place, and they work according to the agenda, how it's listed. But if we, at the outset, if we are able to do that, that, hey, we are pulling this agenda item before this item, before reconstitution of the order, basically, it makes sense for everybody listening at home or everybody in the audience to know that, yeah, it will happen. So I think just a reorganization of that item, basically, reconstitution, exception, continuances, as well as reordering of the agenda that should help for resident tuition and i'm all okay like if somebody objects we can do it by vote or if it is by consensus nobody objects it should be okay but it has to be done at the outset all good comments mr chair i don't want to get too much into the deliberations on on this because this item's not on the agenda but i think the point is it can be done

in any number of places, including on the fly as it comes up. And again, I will add that when 055 comes back as a matter that this group's clearly interested in addressing as potentially making more clear or formalizing that policy. I would ask that it not be discussed any further because it really is a substantive discussion about something that's within within your jurisdiction.

As the chair, I'm going to take the prerogative of moving item three ahead of item two, simply because the city attorney also needs to leave early. So, okay. So we're going to go forward. Okay. Member Park.

So I'm not suggesting that we take this up in substantive discussion. I mean, I'm trying to use this as example as something that, you know, supports a question that I have. I know that we can do a lot of things by consent. Not everything requires a vote. And by consent is actually, it's in the guidelines. I wanna know if there's an ordinance or a policy for the chair simply being able to move agenda items, meaning I no longer trust what people would characterize as something that is commonly done. I mean, we're here considering items on today's agenda because of interpretations that go against what is commonly done. So I understand that we can do things by consent. But as this executive staff has told me, that if it is not, if there is no policy, if there is no ordinance for that, then simply trusting it to interpretation at the time will give us very different results depending on what we would like the outcomes to be. so at this point I would make a referral I I was not going to object to changing the orders of business uh that the chair was doing I was not going to object to that but I did want to know what the policy was because it seems that when it comes to matters of policy we blow with the wind

I hear the referral and not as a formal referral because that would require a vote of the majority, but I had already indicated that that would be an element that would be brought back as the 055.

Yes, I'm trying to explain why it's important to me. Thank you. Okay, let's in the interest of time, let's proceed with item three.

Very good, thanks to Maria for putting together this presentation. I'll spin through it, because I know you really want to just get to the discussions on this. As a matter of background, Council Policy 042, entitled Reconsideration of Council Action, establishes a process for members of the City Council and the public to request reconsideration of a council action. The current policy was last revised on October 27th, 2020, and the Governance and Ethics Committee members have referred this policy for further discussion and review. It may have happened at the council level as well, but I know you folks all wanted this discussed. Next slide. And the next few slides is, a summary, but almost a verbatim statement of what the policy says. It's probably worth going through it and me reading it just to give both you and the public a refresher on how the policy reads. So here item one, a request for reconsideration may be made by any person at the same meeting at which the action was taken, including an adjourned or continued meeting at the next regular meeting of the city council or at any intervening special meeting of the city council. important elements to this it's any person right it doesn't need to be a council person it can be a member of the public um but the idea is it needs to happen promptly right either at the meeting or at the next meeting it's not something that can just be brought up whenever right in in the future The person making the request item two shall state orally or in writing the reason for the request without dwelling on the specific details or setting forth various arguments, right? This is really kind of a procedural aspect at this point. And it's not supposed to debate the substance of the matter. It's just supposed to indicate, hey, I want this matter to be reconsidered. And here's basically why. A motion to reconsider an action taken by the city council can be made only by a council member, when we're talking about council members, who voted on the prevailing side. I know we're gonna spend some time talking about that, but may be seconded by any council member and is debatable. At the time such motion for reconsideration is heard, testimony shall be limited to the facts giving rise to the motion. Again, this is the procedural aspect of it, right? Why is it that the reconsideration is proposed? The motion must be approved by a majority vote of the entire city council in order for the reconsideration to be acted on. Next slide is actually redundant. It's one of the things I'm suggesting would be revised as part of this policy. The way our policy structure is set up, a lot of times things get repeated. So I'm gonna skip that one, because it really just restates something that earlier stated, but item two here, if an intent to make a motion for reconsideration is communicated to the mayor or the city manager by any council member who voted on the prevailing side prior to the deadline for posting the meeting agenda, then that item shall appear as a possible reconsideration on the posted agenda for the next regular meeting or intervening special meeting. Otherwise the city council discussion or action on a possible reconsideration may occur only if the item is added to the agenda as allowed under the Brown Act, which addresses emergency or urgency situations for actually taking that item up. That's a matter we'll talk about too, because I think some clarity should be attached to whether or not we're talking about in that context, the request for reconsideration be posted on a future agenda or whether or not the reconsideration itself is proposed for that next agenda. And I think that's an important distinguishing factor that's been a matter of some kind of confusion and issue as we've talked about this. Next slide upon approval of a motion to reconsider. And at such time as the matter is heard, the city council shall only consider any new evidence or facts not presented previously with regard to the item or a claim of error in applying the facts. That's something I've listed as something to talk about too. That's been the process. And it really, in a way that may be a little artificial, but I get why it's presented that way. What if someone has a change of heart, right? Is it a change of heart? No, I have different thoughts about it. Does it need to be new evidence? Does it need to be something no one knew before? Or can it just be upon reflection, a person thought differently about the matter? It's worth, I think, fleshing out what that is intended to mean. You don't have to make it be anything, but I think it's worth having that be a little more clear. This next item here too, if the motion to reconsider is made and approved at the same meeting at which the initial action was taken and all interested parties are still there, the matter can be reconsidered at that same meeting. But item three here, if the motion for reconsideration is taken at the same meeting, but the people are not present, then it's supposed to be agendized to a future meeting. I'm glad member of former council member Becker is here because this side actually came up in an item that member or then council member Becker had raised. And in fact, I was not familiar with this nuance of the reconsideration policy at the time. And the reconsideration occurred on from getting what the item was, right? heard at that meeting, but all of the people who had came to talk about that particular item had already left. And so Mr. Becker subsequently realized, and I realized that that shouldn't have gone down that way. And ultimately that was corrected, right? And so it was re-agendized for action and consideration on a future meeting because Again, the whole idea is to only have things happen where there is an opportunity for the people who care about it to be present. So I think that's a good and meaningful provision in the policy. It probably bears some better drafting and clarification about how it applies, but that's why that's set up in that way. And I've had a personal experience with it that we were able to catch and correct, but it's an important principle. Finally, the clerk shall provide notice to all interested parties as soon as possible when a matter becomes the subject matter of a motion to reconsider. Again, that kind of implements the second part of it, that if people weren't there and it's being agendized for a future meeting, if we have a record of those people, and obviously this would particularly apply where you've got an applicant involved, then that applicant would need to be informed of when the matter was going to be reconsidered. reconsidered both as a matter of best practice and the obligations to comply with due process. So next slide. Some of the things that... And there could be many more for you folks to consider and discuss that I thought were worth identifying for you as how this policy could be updated and improved. One is obviously add a clear definition of prevailing party in various circumstances. This seems obvious, but it's not obvious in the application to various circumstances. There are a variety of different principles. There's a variety of different standards and factors to be considered. The important thing, I guess, for me to communicate to you is you all decide. These are your parliamentary procedures, and they need to make sense to you and be applied in a way that you all want to be applied. And so I think I would certainly welcome this, some clarity about how that works and how that implies and how you all intend that to apply is a good matter for your discussion. And we can get into that further of the kinds of variables that you might want to take a look at as you think about filling in that definition for purposes of this policy. There is some redundant language in the policy that we'd suggest either eliminating or clarifying, and that's just cleanup stuff that we try to take on every time you guys look at a new policy. Item three here, add clarity to the process requirements for taking up a motion for reconsideration at a future council meeting. I pointed this out as I was going through the policy. It's a little unclear the way the policy is drafted of how you get something added to the agenda and whether or not the thing that's being added is the request for council to put the item on a future agenda or whether it's the agenda item itself, right? And so I think that bears some clarity, right? For Brown Act purposes, if it's going to be an action on the item itself, as opposed to, hey, do we want to agenda this item for future consideration, then it does need to be listed on the agenda. But if it's just a, hey, I want to ask the council whether or not we want to add an item to the agenda, Ideally that's listed too, but it's almost akin to a referral. And we've talked about these things as they come up, right? If something comes up for the council people, you're not supposed to act on public presentations. You're not supposed to, you know, do things that aren't listed on the agenda, but if something comes up in the course of the agenda and you want it, you know, either presented to staff or added to a future agenda, as long as you're not substantially discussing that item at the agenda where that comes up, it can be discussed for at least for purposes of saying, hey, the majority of us agree that this should be added to a future agenda, either for discussion or action. So I think the way this policy works warrants some clarity there, right? Are we talking about the procedural matter of putting the item on a future agenda are we actually adding the item to the future agenda, right? For action on the substantive matter. I think some clarity there is warranted. Obviously we'd always need to comply with the Brown Act, but our policies for how a particular council person engages with that issue or gets it added to agenda are worth clarifying, I think. And it is not as clear to me as it should be under the existing draft of our policy. And finally, the matter I, again, amongst other things you guys might wanna talk about, as I indicated, as I was presenting the existing policy itself, I asked this question, must the decision on a reconsideration be limited to consideration of only as it's drafted new evidence or facts not presented previously with regard to the item or a claim of error in applying the facts? I get this. as a potentially restricting element where we're talking about a quasi judicial determination, right? With respect to an applicant's proposal. And so that might be one of the things we think about and change, because it is different, right? When it's just an internal staff proposal and there's no real due process elements wrapped about it, The evidence in the record of the proceeding is not as magical of a thing. You guys have full range of discretion to do it. But when it's a quasi-judicial hearing, Again, this is more of a quasi judicial hearing concept, right? Only new evidence, right? Because you already had all the evidence and facts in the record where you made your initial decision. And so this might warrant some discussion and clarification in your own policy, because I think there are different considerations when it's something where an applicant is asking for an approval versus when it's just a contract or some other action that might arise in due course for implementing city budget decisions, operations, contract approvals, whatever it might be, that in effect is initiated out of the city manager's office as opposed to an applicant's proposal. So all those things worth considering this the policy in its current form is kind of a blunt instrument you know and kind of a is one size fits all for all those things i think some additional discussion and curation about who the prevailing party is in different circumstances and how this policy applies because it might apply differently in those other circumstances a very good topic for this group you know to take up I do not have next slide, please. I do not have a redrafted version of this, you know, ready for you. Sue put together, you know, a couple of proposed of changes that I think are helpful, giving examples of things, but I hadn't reviewed it yet and really didn't want to get out ahead really of this group anyway, in terms of what you're looking for before the policies brought back to you, you know, addressing all these issues, the way the group suggestion advise. And so, recommendation is discussed and provide direction to staff right on this policy with the idea that I would gather all of that and consistent with your direction, bring back, you know, a revised updated policy for your ultimate action to recommend to the council. That's my presentation, Mr. Chair here to obviously answer any questions and receive your feedback.

First, we'll go with member comments or questions. Any member like to ask questions or comments? I've got a question.

Yes, go ahead, Member Parr. What do you consider redundancy in the policy currently?

There's just repeated language.

Repeated language is not necessarily redundancy. What is the repeated language that you're claiming is redundancy?

You can see it in the language here. When I presented it, there's item, item one on slide, after the background slide, item one on the first slide summarizing the policy and item one, on the second slide is just a repeating of the same term. So, and there's no particular reason for that in the content.

It is definitely a restatement of, but they are very different in intent. The first item is a request for reconsideration and it goes for the request. The request for the reconsideration should be made at this time. And it goes on to say that it does not limit who can make the request. A request can be made by a person on the losing side. A request can be made by a member of the public. A request can be made by anyone. It goes on to say, to make some stipulations on who can make the motion. And then the second now. Restatement of many of the things goes on to talk about the motion, but these are very different in intent. The first one talks about who can make the request. The second one talks about who can make the motion. I'm seeing that.

I think that's right about that particular redundancy. That's not a good example of redundancy, right? It's different.

And so I'm asking, because I've been looking at this as well. And I mean, I'm very sensitive to redundant language because I value repetition when it comes to speaking. I don't value repetition when it comes to contracts. I don't value repetition when it comes to things that are written. And I cannot identify things that I would consider redundant that I would remove.

Okay. I don't really consider that to be as complicated the substance of what we're talking about, why don't we allow the city attorney to, when he comes back and proposes language, identify redundant items at that time and then we can consider those. Understood. I don't see any point of discussing that right now.

Well, the reason that I bring it up is because it is it was salient enough, it was important enough to actually put in the slide. And if it were something that were simply brought up during the matter of discussion during the discourse, that would be one thing. But the fact that it was important enough to write as an item on the presentation itself makes me think that this was thought out in advance. And when I looked at all of these items, I tried to apply, where do I think this applies to the policy and where I cannot find I am simply asking for clarification.

Okay. Do you have any other questions?

I mean, I've got comments, but I think that I'll wait until the other council members have, the other committee members have had their questions answered and maybe we can go to the public and then we can go into comments.

Okay.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you city attorney for the briefings. I think one of the contentious point is the prevailing party definition. And I did search and I, let me go back basically. historically, the practice has been, and we were advised because I had a firsthand experience when I was trying to bring something back, but I was on the losing side. And they said, no, you cannot bring it. So prevailing side definition has to be very clear what we are. And it can be an item like I did. such some of these prevailing side issues under Robert's rule as well as Rosenberg rules of the order and Robert's rules article by third party clearly mentioned either the prevailing party is who voted yes and the motion passed. And in case motion did not pass, the prevailing party is the person who voted no, who did not support the motion. And in Rosenberg, it clearly mentioned that the prevailing party is the one who voted no. whose motion passed basically. So that definition and everywhere I found it is the prevailing party is the one whose motion passed. And if the motion does not pass, if it is a tied motion, it's a no party like who did not vote for the motion, they are considered the prevailing party. So I want a full clarification on that. This is the search I made on Rosenberg as well as the Robert Shules article. And if you want, I can give you the Rosenberg article.

I'm familiar with all of it. You can share with me what you'd like, but I've done some research on it as well.

So that clarification, like we need a very clarifying order. And this only... Let me also point out one thing. This only applies to the, if the one of the seven council members want to bring the item to the for reconciliation on the dais. But if a resident or an audience want to bring the reconciliation, it does not apply to that. Whether they're prevailing or not prevailing, they are not on that side. So as a resident, anybody can ask for a reconciliation. So we have to be very clear on that. And I think we should document that, that any resident or audience can bring for reconciliation irrespective of the prevailing side. It does not apply to them. that that clarification has to be made on that. Then I have a question about reconsidering new evidence or facts, right? So just take an example, let's say, a council member is on the prevailing side or on the losing side. So first, once we define the prevailing side, then we'll go further to that. But assuming somebody was on the prevailing side and he go backs into the community and the resident pushed forward to him, hey, no, you did wrong. These are the facts about it, right? Can a discussion with residents be, good point to reconsider an item. We are trying to find out a reason for reconsideration. We have to put forward a reason. Although I, the council member who was on the prevailing side does still thinks that he made a good decision, but to take care of the residents view after his residents pointed out, no, you did make the wrong decision and you need to bring it forward back with these reasons. Although the prevailing, the council member is not still convinced that my decision was good. Can that be a reason? Because he's listening to the resident. He's listening to the resident feedback. Can that be a reason to bring for reconsideration? My question. On taking up the motion for reconsideration. Oh, future council meeting. city attorney you mentioned that if the prevailing site council member discusses this with the city manager and it's put on the agenda item that this item will be reconsidered Can that item be reconsidered in the same meeting? Because that item is put on the agenda that this item may be reconsidered and this is the item to be reconsidered. Can that item be put on the reconsideration on the same, not on the same meeting, but a future first meeting basically. Right now, our practices, and that's a right practice, I'm not denying that. We reconsider an item, up or down vote on that, and then bring forward, because it's not had been agendized, bring forward that item back on a following meeting or whatever time decided basically. So my question is, if the city manager is able to put that thing on the agenda, that this item will be reconsidered, can that item be discussed in the same meeting? So those are my clarifying questions right now. Thank you.

You can respond to those if you like. Appreciate the questions and couldn't agree more about prevailing party, right? That's why we're talking about it. There's a variety of different approaches to prevailing party. I think what you've cited and described is accurate. I will tell you that, and one of the reasons why I ended up where I ended up on this last very controversial item that we had was that I had advised at least in previous situations where no action was taken because there weren't sufficient votes. And it wasn't the exact situation that we had this last time, but it was in a 3-3 vote. My conclusion on a 3-3 vote was that no action was taken and that in effect, there was no prevailing party and that anyone could bring it back. And I had advised you of that previously. You could have disagreed with it then. It might not have been right, wrong then. But the reason why I advise that and one of the reasons why I applied my own reasoning and common sense, what I thought was applicable in your situation is under our existing policy, under this reconsideration policy, prevailing party wasn't really defined. And there is some nuances to what you might look at in different circumstances. Those nuances include, yeah.

Can I interrupt you on that? Yeah. Just for a healthy discussion. Sure. When you say there is no decision if this item is tied or something, if I understand it right, let's say there is an appeal to counsel and there's a 3-3 vote.

Mm-hmm.

So it's not that no decision was made. The appeal fails. So there is a decision. So my contention is there is, even if the vote is one way or the other, the decision is already made. It failed. The agenda item failed.

Yeah, so in that situation, we actually have specific rules that talk about that. So there was no action. The 3-3 vote is no action taken. But the practical reality of that is because there already was a decision in place, the appeal fails and that underlying decision remains in place. But that's because there was already an actual decision taken. And again, this is the importance of thinking about this in different contexts. On an appeal where there's a due process hearing might not be the same thing or rule you want to apply, when for example, it's something brought forward by the city manager. So all that needs to be thought about. That's why it's not as simple as we might think it is because you've got both due process considerations and your own parliamentary considerations to factor it.

I just took a case of appeal, but in case there is a new agenda item and three, three vote is there. So what outcome basically doesn't pass?

That's right. It doesn't pass.

That's right. So my contention is when you say there is no decision, actually there is a decision. It did not pass. That's my contention.

And we don't need to contend on this. Honestly, I'm not trying to debate you on it and say whether you're right, wrong, or otherwise.

No, no, I'm not.

My point is for all of you to ultimately decide. You all decide what that means. It's not me who decides what it means. And if you've got a clear policy that says that, You won't hear me advising anything different than what the policy says. So I get what you're saying. And again, that's why we're discussing it, right? Let's fill the void. And it can be filled with what Roberts says, what you think Rosenberg says, although I don't think Rosenberg speaks to it as clearly as you've described, or what The man in the moon says, I mean, you want it to be more thoughtful than that, but it really is your parliamentary procedures are yours. You always need to comply with the Brown Act, but how you decide to take things up amongst yourselves is for you to decide and apply. The other thing that's interesting that I'll just mention, but we can't really deliberate on significantly here, but as a 055 issue, and this even came up, you'll recall in the discussion of the prevailing party issue, What is the rule for all of you to say, hey, these are our parliamentary procedures, we're gonna follow these. But in this circumstance, we wanna waive it, right? Because it's unique or we think a different rule should apply, right? That doesn't ordinarily apply. What vote of you might waive a parliamentary procedure? You could conclude no vote of you allows to do that, right? And that you need to follow the parliamentary procedures, you know, to the letter, no matter what. But you could also conclude, and this is one of the things that 055 doesn't speak to now, and it should explicitly, hey, no, a super majority vote, a unanimous vote, or whatever vote, you know, you might decide, even a majority vote, but that wouldn't make as much sense, right, as some higher standard. You could decide, right, that you wanted that to work differently. amongst yourselves. And so another thing to think about and to take up as you go down this path. So can a discussion with the resident be a reason? Did we talk about prevailing party enough for at least for now? Yeah. So your other point, can a discussion with the resident be a reason? This is exactly why I brought up kind of what I did with the, must the decision on reconsideration be limited to, you know, consideration of new evidence or facts. In theory, if the resident says something new to you that you hadn't heard before, right, it might be new evidence or facts, or it might be something that, and the residents said already, right? But they repeated, you know, in a conversation to you and you're like, you know what? I've thought about that more and I feel differently now, right? So the answer is, Yes, and that bears some, again, further fleshing out. And again, it may depend on the circumstances, right? Certainly if there's an applicant, right, that has an opinion about a particular permit or action that's before you, that would be a meaningful thing and may warrant different rules that apply to that. But a resident as well on something they've got a strong opinion on, Ultimately again, it's based on the procedures you guys decide, whether it's a resident initiating or whether it's you initiating it, you should set the rules for what you're allowed to consider as part of the reconsideration. And if there's due process rules that would apply, My advice to you wouldn't be that you couldn't consider anything that you heard, but that that thing would need to be explicitly introduced into the hearing, right, so that everyone has the benefit of it. That's where due process would apply. You can't, you know, someone told me this and now I'm going to change my mind on it and not talk about it. we would need to have a formally noticed public hearing and that particular thing that you heard would now need to be formally introduced into that public hearing so public could comment on it and see it and all of your colleagues would be able to comment and unseat it as well. But that's just, we need to align all those things going down that path. Finally, you asked, I think the city manager is eager to say something about this.

Just on the note of a resident reconsideration, it's my understanding, and city attorney, correct me if I'm wrong, that a resident can certainly request a reconsideration either directly to a council member or during public comment at a council meeting, but a resident cannot unilaterally request request a reconsideration and force the council to vote on that reconsideration, right? It's a opinion from a resident that has been given to the council, either individually or as a body. And then it is one council member's decision to say, hey, you know what? I would like to request that reconsideration if in fact they were on the prevailing side or whatever the rules are. or at the meeting, the mayor could say, okay, we've had that request. Why don't we have a vote on that? And that is essentially her saying as the presiding officer, and maybe we need clarification on that point, but I just want to make a point there and then potentially have additional comments later.

And that's a good point. It wasn't the context of your question as I understood it, but that's a very important point that I think warrants clarification in the policy. Again, similar to, and I know there's disagreement about this, the 030 policy, right? A resident can bring an issue up, but ultimately whether or not that thing gets agendized is usually a vote under current policies of this body. So that's what you just pointed out is consistent with that.

Okay, totally, and I wasn't intending to bring up the 030 policy, just under the reconsideration policy, wanting to clarify how that worked. Got it.

And that warrants further clarification the way it's drafted. It would be one of those clarifying factors, but that's my understanding of how it works and is intended to work and has been applied.

Okay, so which is a resident can request it, but it's up to the individual council member or the council as a whole to do it. And as the clarification we need on if the mayor or presiding officer, whether that's the mayor or the vice mayor, whoever, irrespective if they were on the prevailing side, If a resident comes and says, I'd like a reconsideration, can the presiding officer then call for a vote on that reconsideration? Or does that have to follow the prevailing party rules?

That is my point, basically. Because we have an item on our council agenda, reconciliation, continuance. So under that item, if a resident brings it forward, the council has to vote up or down vote.

That's my consideration. If it's brought there, the council needs to vote and then it would be agendized at a future meeting for action. That's right. But the vote at that meeting would be, do we agree that this item should be reconsidered?

I agree with that.

That's right. Yep. That's my understanding. So let's clarify that.

If at a regular meeting, a member of the public speaks under reconsideration. They then, by virtue of requesting it, have the unilateral ability to request the city council to take a vote on that request.

Yeah. Which obviates the prevailing party provision.

No. No. It doesn't have to, sorry.

No, but what vote is being taken? You would expect- Reconsideration only. but you would expect that the resident makes the request, but that request can only be entertained by a member of the prevailing party.

And see, and that's the good in this, that's another thing that warrants, you know, again, clarification. It's not clear what the interaction is between a voter, for me anyway, a person bringing the item up and whether or not if there needs to be a motion made on it, whether that can only be made by a council person on the prevailing party. It can work, again, just to a point, it can work any way you guys want, right?

Just like we adopted a Roberts rule or Rosenberg rule, we could adopt any policy we want. That is right.

As long as it doesn't violate state law. That's right, the Brown Act. That's right. It all needs to be consistent with the Brown Act. So when something's brought up that's not listed on the agenda, really it's only a procedural discussion of whether or not you're going to add it to a future agenda. That's right. And the dynamics of how that flows and who gets the right to do it, the clearer that is, the better. I'm delighted to have it be clear. City Manager, I'm sorry, did I talk?

I think if we're going to talk about that point, rather now or later i do have some thoughts that i would like to share about having a resident have the unilateral ability to request a reconsideration vote so i just don't know if i i hear you city attorney that that needs clarification point of order i see other people have um questions but point of order

So we're going a lot of discussions where we're talking about a lot of different things about a resident when it's very clear in this policy, what the policy should be. It's very clear here. When we talk about who can make the reconsideration is anyone can make the reconsideration, whether it's a public member, whether it's a council member, whether it's somebody on the winning side, whether it's somebody on the losing side, anyone can make the request, but only a council member can make the motion. And the council member that makes the motion must be on the prevailing side. This is very clear. All these other discussions and opinions that we have seem to ignore what's here. So that's the first thing that I want to say. And the fact that we're saying on a note of reconsideration that mayor, presiding officer, irrespective of whether or not they vote on that item, can they call for vote? No. Only a member of the prevailing side can make a motion. Anyone can make the request. So I'd like to continue with this because I have a lot more questions. But when we're wasting time, when we've got people that need to leave, I think that if you have opinions on residents and O30 process, that is not what's in discussion here. And the items that we're discussing are clearly defined here. I'd like to move on.

If I can, I was clarifying and council member or committee member Park, I actually agree with you. It should be a member of the prevailing party. I want it to make the motion to reconsider. I totally agree with you. As it's stated in our policy. I understand that. I was asking for the clarification because it was brought up and it was unclear. I think in our conversation, I also heard the city attorney say that it is unclear in the policy that if that is made at a council meeting under reconsideration, if by virtue of that request on that agenda item, it means that Anyone can say, let's have a vote on that. If the presiding officer can say, if in fact the interpretation that the committee is comfortable leaving here with, that it is only the prevailing party, I think that that's appropriate. And I think we can, as we adjust the policy, make that clear. I just wanted to have a discussion on that point. I totally understand what you're saying, Council Member Park, that as written in the PowerPoint.

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think, again, the thing that's, and I can conflate it here a little bit that city manager you're referring to is a little funny. It says if the intent to make a motion for reconsideration is communicated to the mayor or the city manager it really wouldn't be the mayor, right? It's the city staff and city clerk, you know, who's setting up the agenda, right? For the next meeting, the mayor doesn't set the agenda, you know, in matters like this. So that's if a prevailing party city council member actually wants the item to be agendized for possible action. And that's the current process. Again, we're talking about that As I understand the policy, and I think Member Parks looked at it enough that he probably understands it better than any of us at this point, that that's potentially something that if it's listed on the agenda, the action on the reconsideration itself can actually occur on the agenda, not just the procedural aspect of it. And again, I want to be clear about if that's what Member Park thinks it it says and what this group wants it to say, because potentially that could be a basis for adding an item to the agenda of the way our policy is drafted. So that's worth talking about as well. Not necessarily responsive to the question we're having now, but actually it is. Future city council meeting to put on agenda, can it be acted on? So as I understand this, if a prevailing party wants a reconsideration and they tell, not necessarily the mayor, but the city manager or city clerk, hey, I want this added to a future agenda for reconsideration. Is this intended to mean the substantive action on that item can be taken? I interpret it to mean that the substantive action can be taken on that. It's not just a procedural decision at that point because the prevailing party in effect has done it. Now, if it's not intended to work that way, Um, and I'm reading it wrong, you know, um, because again, I've not studied it the way I'd like as usual to be able to, you know, prepare to you on it. Let's be clear about that. Is it the substantive item or is it the, uh, is it just the idea of a reconsideration itself?

Okay. Um, so I have some comments. Um, The first line under request for promotion, it says made by any person. I know we've talked about this, but again, I believe that it should be that the motion can only be made by somebody from the prevailing party. And I think I read in item two on page four, that really only the prevailing side can have it appear on an agenda. it on. The crux of the matter is defining prevailing party. I think that's been the contentious item, and my understanding is we can decide whatever we want as a council. This body can make a recommendation to the council, and then the council will vote on it, and it will just change the policy. This policy doesn't, there's no state law. I believe that defines this. It's just within Roberts or Rosenberg's or any other meeting management protocol. So I have a serious issue with new evidence or facts. I think that that that provision in there is really to expedite the discussions that you don't want to rehash the whole thing, but you could have new members that show up for that meeting. It could be that somebody who wants the reconsideration brings all their friends and they may not have heard the discussion. And then the thing about it is like, if in the meeting, I want to have a reconsideration of something that I prevailed on and voted on. And I asked for the reconsideration. How do I know that one member who's online has left the meeting? I have to like lock the doors and keep everyone in the room because I don't know who left, you know? So I think that certainly if there's an applicant that left that, that's significant owner applicant, but I don't know about supporters and opponents. I think that just makes it complicated. And now in terms of new facts, that is really debatable because when we have meetings that go till 2 a.m. and there's, amendments and there's, what are they called? Not an amendment, it's where you propose another motion, substitution motion, substitution motion. People get confused at 2 a.m. and you might just have made the wrong vote and then you wanna reconsider it. You don't need any new facts, you just, you know, 2 a.m. it's hard to make, you know, coherent decisions. So I don't see that there has to be new evidence or facts. It could be just, hey, I realized I made a mistake in my vote. But in order to sort of expedite meetings, you don't want, and this is why you want the prevailing party, because if you had any party, then we'd just be, reconsidering every item. That's why it's important to make sure that it's prevailing party so that we don't just keep wasting time. But I don't see that there has to be new evidence or facts. I think if you're on the prevailing parties and you had a change of heart or you realized, yeah, you made the wrong vote, you should just be able to reconsider it. That makes it, easier than somebody having to say, oh, I talked to a resident or, you know, I read this thing online and, you know, it doesn't make sense. And, you know, sometimes what happens is we're awarding a contract and then the party that lost the bid, they'll come in and they'll, try to appeal it or they'll try to reconsider it and they'll bring new information. So that's something that probably happens periodically. So I think the key thing is to define prevailing party and everything else is kind of minor compared to that.

okay i have a number of questions based on the discussion okay member park so again i hear new facts or misapplication of previous facts i think that both those things uh do not preclude needing any new information but i think both those things are there to guide what kinds of information we'd like to hear meaning if you have a new fact or if you think you have a re you have just changed your mind. We'd like to know why you changed your mind. I think that having that Those things listed is very good when it comes to giving people an idea of why you would bring something forward. It could even be this. I think that a person who made the decision has misapplied this fact. But that's not new information, but it's misapplication. And it's not just necessarily that I made a mistake. I thought this. I now believe something else. It could be I've learned something new, and this is what I've learned. I don't think anything here precludes anyone from bringing up a reconsideration for any reason. We are just saying we'd prefer, we would like to have a reason rather than, well, it's Tuesday and I want... You know, I walked outside and it was raining and I want to have a reconsideration. I think that understanding that if something was misapplied, if information was not presented, I think that's very valuable to have that. But what I hear here in this discussion um member chahal actually interrupted the city attorney when he was describing and i'll paraphrase city attorney was saying i devised in previous actions where there were not enough votes so that no action was taken but under existing policy there's some uncertainty and nuances depending on situation and he started saying nuances include and i would like to know what those new ones nuances would be um And I've heard that, well, once we agendize, if it's on the agenda, then we can make a vote. And the short answer is no, that is not true either. It really depends on how it's agendized. If something is agendized for a report, then a report does not immediately allow an action, a vote to be taken for action. This is very clear to me. When we talk about things like, well, we can do anything we want, we can decide what vote is required to essentially ignore parliamentary procedure, this is very dangerous. I mean, one of the reasons that we have procedures which must be voted on, and without provisions of, well, we can just decide at the time by consent, by majority vote that we're not gonna follow this procedure is it tries to prevent a runaway council or a runaway committee or a runaway anything from simply gaming the system and gaming the vote. There should be no discussion. I am shocked and surprised that anyone would come up with a suggestion to a governance and ethics committee that we have a policy, we have a process that would allow us to overrule a parliamentary procedure on the fly. That makes no sense whatsoever. Much of the discord, everyone's saying, oh, it's about prevailing party. It was never about prevailing party. Prevailing party is a symptom, is one of the issues that we're complaining about. But the reality is, what kind of leeway, what kind of ability do we give to people to make interpretations on the fly? I've talked to a lot of lawyers about this. I've talked to a lot of judges about this. And they have said, where there is lack of clarity, doesn't matter if it's about prevailing side or anything else, where there is lack of clarity, usually there's a sidebar discussion, there is a deferral until clarity is achieved, and then we move forward. And what I have seen in this committee and on council are so many decisions where we've decided on the fly to break with common understanding, with understanding that has been presented at the meeting of Member Chahal did a little bit of research on prevailing side, prevailing party, and found a lot of really common things. In fact, I did a lot of research as well, and I cannot find a single thing that promotes the city attorney's interpretation of prevailing side at the time that a reconsideration was made. So here I'm asking, why are you suggesting that we can do anything? Why are you suggesting that we can simply agendize something and having on the agenda means that we can take a vote? Because that is not true. What are the nuances that you considered when changing common understanding of prevailing party? And what other nuances could there be? These are very important things. It's not really about prevailing party. It's about our ability to change reality on the fly. And an example of this is prevailing party. So these are the questions that I have right now. And I'd like to understand, um, what the city attorney means by, by these things.

Would you like to respond to that? Sure. Um, couple, um, thoughts there. Um, I appreciate the comment regarding stating of the reason and that the reason for the reconsideration should be stated. I do think though the current language is limiting. And so if there is a desire to not have it be limited to new evidence or facts, I would suggest that additional language be added to address that fact. that I'm agree and I'll leave the nuances apart to the end. Depends on how the item is agendized as to whether or not of how you act on that. Agree with that completely, right? And that's one of the things we're getting at. If an item is, and this is where there should be clarity, both in this policy and then how it might appear on the agenda if it is being agendized. If the item is listed as discussion of whether or not to agendize for a future meeting, reconsideration on an item, that's one thing. If it's agendized to say reconsideration of an item, that's a different thing, right? One is a procedural decision to whether or not a majority of the council wants the item to be agendized at a future meeting or whether or not the actual decision is going to be made. A two-step process is usually better, right? In order to give everybody full and proper notice. And so I just want, I think the policy warrants some clarification on that.

City Manager, do you want to intervene there? Well, just only on the two-step process. And I'm just thinking for... operational reasons of needing a finality of decision. I think the two-step process could elongate the time and potentially take a month. And so if the policy is defined as the prevailing party, however prevailing party is allowed to reconsider, if that person raises their hand or comes to staff, I think it should be agendized for the vote to reconsider, not agendizing a vote to determine whether you reconsider. because that could be two weeks or even a month to have that reconsideration done. There could be a very important business operational or even third party project need to know what is the final council decision.

Yep, no problem with that. It can work either way. Oh, and the idea that... and I'm not trying to be dangerous or provocative with my suggestions on what this group can do with its parliamentary procedures. Of course, your parliamentary procedures should be grounded, right? In things that make sense, right? And that protect fairness and result in finality, right? On things that deserve finality. I guess my point being though, it doesn't need to be any particular thing, right? It needs to make sense. And I think there is, precedent in different procedures. I haven't done the research on it, but I did some preliminary research on it about waiving parliamentary procedures in different circumstances. That is not an uncommon thing and not an outrageous thing. There might be circumstances where the policy as it applied would create an injustice or it would be unfair or might cause an unreasonable delay, whatever it might be. the idea would be though that if you developed policies that you all agree on they should apply unless there's an extraordinary circumstance and to have an outlet right where some super majority vote or unanimous vote of the council says hey these are our normal procedures um we're going to waive them under this circumstance and have a vote i i would encourage that you consider that at least you don't have to build it in it can be however again how you decide it makes sense but that you should consider that. If I can.

Very, very good point. I would proffer a suggestion. In my experience, it is common for city council policies that are passed by a majority for the council to be able to waive that if a majority agrees to waive it at a council meeting without agendizing the policy for consideration. Because as the city attorney said, there could be a timing issue. You could have an issue before you. Even, for example, your policy on does the meeting end at midnight. A majority of council with a policy passed with majority should be able, I think, to waive that council policy with a majority vote at the meeting. However, there are times where council say, hey, you know what, this is a really important thing. We want a super majority to be required to amend the policy, right? If you do that, my recommendation would be maybe that's something that you really reserve and you say, hey, if we're going to waive this policy that requires a super majority, you can't just do it at a meeting with the super majority vote. You have to agendize that for waiver, right? And things like that are common. reserve policy right the city must have x percent in reserve and oftentimes people say we're going to make that a two-thirds policy because that's an important financial thing and so making the city council say hey we want to agendize changing the policy before we actually take a vote on it is an important thing to do. And so I would just proffer that, that if something is passed as a majority, you allow that to be changed at a council meeting. But if something requires a two-thirds majority, the policy has to be agendized in order for it to be overridden.

And I think you're, those are all very good points, if I might, Mr. Chair. But you're extending my point beyond my context in which I was proposing it. the waiver that I was talking about was only with respect to parliamentary procedures, not with respect to other, you know, policies, but I appreciate, you know, the point that you made. So to the question, the final question, or I guess the man that I explained myself or requests that I explained myself and the nuances of things, I think you can consider a variety of different things when deciding, you know, who the prevailing party is. And I've touched on a couple of them, um, already. One is, um, is it a, um, Is it an application and is it a third party proposal or is it a internal staff matter? And this might beg some further definition about when staff can actually bring things back. One of the discussions that I think one of the questions that a member Jane had, hey, does the city manager have the ability just to bring this back on their own? Good question. I think typical standard practices, yeah, the city manager could just bring it back. And so do you even need a council vote, right? For a reconsideration on something that the city manager could say, hey, we looked at this again and I brought it back to, we thought about the concerns that you had and I'm bringing it back to you, right? So there's an interesting interplay, right? Between, is it a formal reconsideration with respect to maybe a final determination regarding an applicant or is it something that's a matter of city business, right? That in theory, um or in practice or by policy the city manager could have brought back on their own so that's one example of where you might make you know a different determination about um kind of how the reconsideration rules apply or how prevailing party rules apply the other one is um Is it was it in fact a a definitive outcome or was it in fact an insufficient number of votes to approve something right and we talked about that and there's rules that suggest you know it could work the way member to halt you know described, but it doesn't need to work that way. The 3-3 vote could be something where there's no prevailing party. A 4-1 vote where you needed five votes to approve something, interesting nuance in that case, right? Because it wasn't, it was also 2-15 in the morning or whatever time it was, and there wasn't the thought to bifurcate the item at the time. The item could have been bifurcated, right? And you could have had a different vote on one aspect of it on the other, and it all went down. So- the fair thing for you to consider is, was it in fact a outcome based upon achieving the number of votes necessary to approve something, or was it just not getting the sufficient number of votes as was required? A 3-3 vote when four votes are required, a 4-1 vote when five votes are required. You do not have to have the same rule for those things. And it's worth considering whether or not you want to. Another nuance. Another issue that's of interest, and again, can be factored in or not into your decision-making is whether all the council members were there at the time of the meeting. Did you have everybody there to vote? If there's a sense that this is something that everyone would want, Do you want to have the prevailing party? Not that a person who wasn't there, right? You know, bring it up, but it should that be a factor that you can consider? You can argue that both ways, right? No, the matters of importance, you know, to the city should have the maximum number of council people, you know, voting on them as possible. The other argument is if someone really cared about something, right, they would have made sure they were there, right? And they shouldn't have missed the vote. And if they missed the vote, well, they're stuck with the outcome of whatever the vote was. I'm not telling you how to decide on that. I'm just saying that could be a factor into deciding the circumstances under which a reconsideration might be allowed or not. Other ones. The other thing, there's also competing interests here with this. On the one hand, and a lot of the explanations for the prevailing party reconsideration rules talk about this, you want finality in decisions. If there's a decision made, you want finality. And I think that definitely applies with respect to when people are applying, you know, for permits, right? They need to know whether that's a, you know, thumbs up or thumbs down. And it could also apply, you know, in the context where it's a matter being brought forward to you by the city manager, the city manager, right. Needs to know, you know, thumbs up or thumbs down. And we wrestled with that, right. With respect to the, the, the city hall ENA issue. No action is often limbo, right? And so action and direction is appreciated.

And so there's use in that.

But there's other potential equitable considerations involved as well. And I'll apply it now to part of my rationale in the advice that I gave with respect, was it the Peregrine contract? Was that the contract we're talking about? The things that I was thinking about when I advised on that is, first of all, we don't have a actual built-in standard rule within our rules that defines what prevailing party is. The reconsideration policy doesn't say, our 055 policy doesn't say, Rosenberg's actually doesn't say. Roberts says, and it includes the provision that you talked about, that the prevailing party may be someone who's in the minority on the vote when an insufficient votes are necessary. That's a general statement, right? That's not a particular application with respect to every possible circumstance that you might have. So one of the things that I was thinking was, hey, We don't have an actual definition of that on our own parliamentary procedures. I've advised in the past that, for example, in a 3-3 vote, that that constitutes no action taken and that any party could apply. So I was trying to be consistent, not necessarily with how you'd been advised in the past or other rules, but with how I'd advised in the past on it. I also considered the fact that not everyone was there and that it was an internal city matter and that in theory, the city manager could have brought it back. You know, if the action wasn't taken, that was also something that I was considering. I also considered the late hour fact that the item could have been bifurcated in theory, there was a four vote aspect to the item, you know, that could have been considered an approval had we had our wits about us, right? And had that be parsed, that was a factor in my consideration of things. And then I also thought about this again, the finality of action. One thing where if five votes were required and one of the votes wasn't in favor, if that's the only party, right, if there were four people in favor, one was against, you needed five votes. If there was no other avenue to bring that matter back. and the prevailing party was that one person. And that's the only person who could act on that. In effect, one person has decided something where a majority of people, even though you needed more than that, what you know was in favor of it, had basically that one person could make the determination with respect to that contract. If that's how the rules apply and you want the rules to apply, great. But there's also a consideration of whether or not a single person should control decisions with respect to any particular matter. So it's a balancing of interests. And I will say, and I appreciate that member Park reached out to Mr. Rosenberg himself and provided him pretty good description of our circumstances to get his input on it. One of the sentences though, that I'll read that wasn't referred to in the response back is, The bottom line is that the rules are based on a rule of reason and common sense. When in doubt, rely on the opinion of your city attorney. Okay, I'm not perfect. Again, you guys can decide differently. I think there was an absence of specific policies that apply under that circumstance. I was endeavoring to apply reason and common sense with all those factors evaluated. And I get how there could be disagreement. I get how you could point to another standard that you might say, no, this is how it's supposed to work. And this allows this thing to work that way. I advise the best I could under the circumstances. That's why we're here, right? Amongst other reasons that we're revisiting all of these policies. you guys can direct me and have me come back with whatever recommendation this group makes about prevailing party and about any other issue. So those are my comments and in response as best I can. Member Park too, I know your strong views on this matter.

so when we talked about this even before the reconsideration came to council we talked about not all council members were present and again i believe that's what the definition of quorum is i talked to this about many talked to many judges i've talked to many lawyers about that and that's like that there is no there is nothing that says everyone should be present It says that a quorum must be present, and the quorum is what determines whether or not something is done. You said, well, should one person block a vote? And I'm saying, for reconsideration, any time, any time any vote fails because of one person, then one person blocks the vote. To say that the Peregrine contract or any contract is different, not true, not at all. If something required four votes and there were four people, if something requires any one person that blocks a vote can be one reason. And for you to suggest, do you really want one person to be the avenue, the only avenue? And the short answer is that's what the rules say. or you suggest that we may not want that, I think is very bad. When you say we can change the rules, having the policies, these are the rules that the public, the council, the committee, this is what people expect. This is how people anticipate the world and committees work. For you then to say at any time we can change the, what the rules are and change what the expectations are is to say that anyone that cares needs to be watch every single meeting, just in case council decides willy nilly to change a, a rule that is longstanding for the city manager to say, well, for things that are, I'll go back to this, but you know, Majority of council, we can ignore a policy by a majority, and for something that requires a super majority, we should agendize a waiver. Oh my goodness, there is no difference. At this point, the suggestion should be every single policy should require a super majority, so we have to agendize a waiver. So we have to tell the public what we're changing in our next decision before that decision gets made. But to say that we should, by majority, be able to change a policy while we're discussing the policy itself makes no sense. And again, I know that this committee, a lot of members on this committee like efficiency. This is not about efficiency. This is about preventing a runaway committee, a runaway council, even a runaway public from taking over for ignoring the greater good. To hear this as suggestions, and I'm just saying, I'm not making any, that is absolutely horrifying to me. Um, late hour. I mentioned it was a late hour. We should have bifurcated. We, you know, we had one person I told everyone, well, it looks like we need five votes and I am going to tell you what it, what it takes to get my vote. I literally said this and people say the late hour is 2 AM. I'm sorry. I've seen bad decisions made at 8 PM at the start of a meeting. This is not, these are not going to be changed. These are not going to be, um, prevented and corrected by any of the things that you've suggested. At some point, people make bad decisions. If people are tired enough, are tired and they say, well, I'm not capable of making the decision at this time, that should be stated. Like some of these people have to get in their car after making bad decisions and drive home. Oh, my goodness. Are we suggesting that they are creating a danger for the you know, and to the public because they have to get in their cars and drive home? And we've just seen that they are incapable of making good decisions in a public meeting. These are very dangerous things to suggest. But again, I'm willing to accept them. When you say prevailing side was not the majority, that the prevailing side did not lose, sorry, the prevailing side was not the majority, that how did you stay it here? Five votes was required, trying to be consistent. I'm sorry, there is consistency. There is consistency, which is the prevailing side is whatever, whatever side voted for the final action. You wanted finality, and you're suggesting that any time a motion fails without a majority of council members voting against it, that there is no finality? That makes no sense whatsoever. In your world, we would have to take an inverse vote anytime an action failed without the majority. If it were a 3-3 vote, we'd have to say, you know, vote for it? Yes. Now we'd have to say, now the vote against it must succeed with the majority. This makes no sense. The fact that you're suggesting this to the committee makes no sense. At some point, the question that I had, which is how do we, you know, I did. In fact, I wish you could hear the phone conversations. I talked a lot about, well, we defer to the city attorney. and we talked a lot about well what makes a good city attorney what makes good decisions uh that's one of the reasons why and it ended up with well send me what you really want to talk about in an email because there are so many other things that we could discuss that um you know we're moving away from the actual topic but You know, anytime there is a lack of clarity, I no longer want to hear what the executive staff tells me, because the executive staff has suggested lots of crazy things, such as during public presentations, public input, we can vote to agendize something. That doesn't make any sense. There is no world in which that makes sense, especially when there is an agenda item on every council meeting that that that where that should be done i did not bring this up because i wanted to vote against it i wanted to vote vote for it but my question was this is not the appropriate place is this really the appropriate place when i've heard that well things must fail with a majority that trying to be consistent not everybody was there an internal city action this was not an internal city action this was a contract with an external party like you're trying to put all these things together and try to mitigate, I'm gonna say a blunder by the city attorney's office. And again, I've talked to a lot of people who've seen this. The fact that the city had technical problems during that night that we just glossed over, that it almost feels like people were saying things because they knew that there were problems with people, with the public being able to see items. But we've had public members recover the video from other sources and re-put it on YouTube and put it onto other channels. So people have seen this. I mean, this goes very much to the public's comment about organizing the videos, but People have seen this video. I have talked to a lot of people about this, and not a single person has come back and said, well, I think this interpretation was a good, well-thought-out interpretation. In fact, I've had a lot of comments simply be WTF.

Amber Park.

Yes. What I'm saying is we are discussing these things.

We are here. to clarify what we wanna do. We can have a motion, you can make a motion.

That's correct, but we need to go to the public.

Yes, we will do that.

So I will keep. I'm gonna say for the executive staff to be able to repeat again and again and again, these kind of ridiculous things, I think they need people to respond to that.

I would like for you to make a motion, let's go to the public. We'll go to the public.

as quickly as I can in five little bullet points. First, thank you to the city attorney, Juan, for bringing up that about the reconsideration in the same meeting. I know that meeting, the city manager brought up to me a lot of new information that really kind of was putting the city in a difficult situation. It was my fiduciary duty. Yes, the public left. Yes, we corrected the issue. But again, if we were living in fantasy land where the whole thing could be free, which I wish every youth sport thing could have been free, but it couldn't. So we had to take that reconsideration. People got so upset with me and the city council. I totally understand where they were coming from, but it was like, hey, city manager gave me some information that really I should have taken consideration of. So that was that point. Two, I remember we did it again at the next meeting reconsideration. For example, one time I voted to appoint a commissioner. The next meeting I reconsidered it because we found out new information that commissioner was actually living in his place of business, not a residency. So we ended up reconsidering that. And then the third thing is that the losing side, I know that there has been losing sides that can bring up issues. I know we've had it when we were on council too, but the losing side was usually always present that brought that up. So it brings me to now number four, which is about the reconsideration policy. I know that in the past, I know I've seen it before. I think it was council member O'Neill in the past where she wasn't present at a meeting. She showed up to the next meeting and then they took a vote. Basically it reversed the decision that was prior. And I don't think that's a good thing that if a council member is not there and they're absent and then they come back and they vote for it, that's a reverse. I don't think that's fair. It's like, you know, kind of, I think it's cheating. That's my, my, my point of view. But, and as, as for a tie, I think council members, a decision's a decision when it came to a tie, it failed. I know that we did that with reconsider reappointment for a commissioner. So I think it comes down to defining a decision as well. But those are just my kind of small points. And I hope that you guys can take those into consideration, especially when it comes to reconsideration policy. Don't let people vote on something that they weren't here for because I think that just sets a bad precedent. Thank you. Thank you.

Are there any other members of the public?

No hands are raised online.

OK. I would like to make some comments. When we do bring something back for reconsideration, if there are new council members there, certainly they're part of the council, they get to vote on the item. It's not limited to the people that were there when the original decision was made, but in the example that the member of the public brought up is there's, we should not reconsider something just because somebody who wasn't there wants to reconsider it. That's, they weren't on either side. They weren't on the prevailing side or the losing side. So, but you know, I wanna go back to the planning commission where, if an item needs four votes and there are only four members there, the attorney allows the applicant to defer the item to a future meeting. I like that policy because the probability of getting four votes out of four people is lower than getting four votes out of seven people. So, I don't know if that's something that we wanna consider here. I know that there's quorum and there's the definition of quorum, but the issue is when there are only four council members there and you require unanimous votes for something, is it possible to defer the item to another meeting? to have more council members weigh in on it. Something to consider. I certainly like the idea of bifurcating items if you need four votes or five votes. And we do mention on the agenda when you do need four or five. But you know, if you had only four council members there, you could never pass anything that required five votes. In which case, does that fail? There's a lot of nuances and I know you're going to come back to us with a policy, but those are things that I would like to be part of the consideration. My personal preference is that the prevailing party is based on the actual event. If something failed, the people that voted against it are the prevailing party. So with that, I'll entertain more discussion. Yes, Member Chau. Thank you.

So as regards clarification or streamlining the prevailing party, definition, I think I can suggest something. There's a good table. This was an article by Anne G. McFarlane about Robertsville, and it has a very good table on that, prevailing party. So outcome and prevailing side. Majority vote in favor? Of course, yes, is the prevailing party, those people who voted in favor. Majority vote against? That means no voting party are the prevailing side. tie vote, those who voted no. Because tie vote is, as I was earlier saying, that tie vote doesn't approve the decision. It basically fails the decision. So it says tie vote, those who voted no. If two-third vote in favor, in case we need like five on two-third vote in favor, those who voted yes. If they favored, those who voted in yes are the prevailing side. If fewer than two-third vote, in favor than those who voted no is the prevailing part. So this is a very good table and I think city attorney might have seen it, but if not, I can send this thing to you.

Yeah. I have seen it, go ahead and send it. So I make sure we're talking about the same thing.

I think this very much clears what the prevailing side would be in all the scenarios basically. I would suggest that and it's open.

It isn't necessarily all the scenarios, but it is a good framework better than what we.

It is a scenario which is left. We will discuss that. Yep.

Very good. Thank you. Appreciate that.

And I have a couple of questions while doing the discussion what we had. So let's say there are two items. Staff recommends two items. In an agenda, there's Staff, there are two recommendations from the staff. Recommendation one, recommendation two, and both are needed to be discussed. It's not that either one of them has to pass. So both are needed to be passed for an agenda item. So let's say we didn't bifurcate the agenda and somebody says staff recommendation and one item needed five words, And staff recommendation item number A or item number one only needed four words, and item number two needed five words. there are let's say four, three votes on that. And there is no bifurcation. There is a four, three votes by the council or four, two votes or four, one votes on the council as a combined agenda. Does that mean that agenda item staff recommendation number one passed, but staff recommendation number two failed? I want a clarification on that. That's my question basically.

Yeah, my interpretation and advice to counsel on this most recent matter and why it needed reconsideration, you know, frankly, for the whole thing is that if it's combined and not bifurcated, that in that case, it would not have passed. Even the item number- Even that other item, because it was presented together. However, and this is the, I think an important point, either staff or council, without requiring the reconsideration vote could then bifurcate the item and say, okay, we didn't have enough votes to vote it together. I see there's multiple items staff, right? Would it be helpful or is it possible for us to bifurcate? So at least this part of it was passed. I think that is another thing worth clarifying is that it's not a reconsideration if the item's still live and a bifurcation option exists. It should be able to be bifurcated after the fact. without a reconsideration in effect of the original vote. you can decide from a parliamentary procedure that that's not true. But if that's the case, that will probably start requiring staff as a matter of approach, having every item be voted on separately as opposed to combining them in the first place. And then if for some reason there's an issue, dealing with it after the fact. But my advice now would be that if it's presented together and voted on together, no approval of any of it occurred because it was bundled and everything needed that, you know, the super majority vote in the example that you gave.

I think we need to clarify that. I agree. Because to me as a logical or layman person, because the item first presented, recommended by staff passed because they're four one votes. It's only the second item which lacked the five one vote. So I need some clarification on that.

Yeah, I appreciate that because it could work either way. It could work either way. Again, that's kind of a parliamentary issue for you. I'll include that in the zero, that doesn't necessarily address this other than the, is it a reconsideration if it's subsequently bifurcated? Because I think the reconsideration policy should address that, but that should be a 055, you know, modification or clarification. City manager, I think has some thoughts.

Yeah, city manager. Just on the recent item, how we dealt with it, and I believe there was a clarification that night after the vote is that there was approval for the item or the recommendation that only needed four votes, but then the piece that needed five votes did not pass. I think going forward, what we should do until there's a policy clarification If we bundle things, it can only be things that need the same amount of votes to pass, right? And so if there's multiple recommendations and to require a simple majority, those can be bundled, but the other items that require five, you have to take a separate vote. And staff can manage that actively in meetings until we have a policy clarification.

And what if you had items that require five votes, but there's only four council members present?

consider that that then no yeah we you couldn't act on that i don't consider yeah that that we and we've have you seen from time to time when that has occurred and fortunately it's been rare those items are pulled off agenda and brought back yeah

And I have more comments to make, right?

And be mindful that the city attorney needs to leave in five minutes.

I'll be short.

So quorum versus full council.

I agree with contention, but Councilman Park was mentioning. I think everybody knows that if we have a quorum if we have a number of council members sitting over there that should not be an excuse to bring it back if somebody is absent so i want to make sure We clarify on that and we follow that ruling basically that if number of council members are short by one, two or three, whatever the case may be, and decision has been made, decision has been made. That should not be an excuse to bring it back. If I'm absent from it, my bad, I should be diligent enough to join it, but it should not be a reason to bring it back. Now, question about that is if somebody is absent and no decision has been made, can that be a prevailing party? Because in theory, if I'm sitting on the dais and I abstain from an item, I'm basically a no vote, right? In theory, when I'm sitting on the dais, my vote is considered no vote. So if I'm absent from a meeting and practically my vote is no, logically if I, same corollary if I apply to that. So can an absent person be a prevailing party in our scenario or not. If not, we have to define that only people who are present in the meeting be the part of the prevailing side, whichever way it is basically. So especially in the no vote, prevailing side, we didn't need to clarify that. If I'm absent, either I can be considered a prevailing party or I'm not considered a prevailing party. We need to define that.

basically yeah i think that that would be an unusual um thing to attach to a person who wasn't there the ability to to be a prevailing party so that consistent with what your other point was about if you're not there tough you're not there that the the rule when clarified i think would not allow that person to be treated as a prevailing party yep

as long as we clarify because it should be written down because I'm considering that the opinion that if I'm silent on a particular item, my vote is considered no. So he's also silent. He didn't participate, but he's also a person absent is also silent. So we should clarify.

Yeah, and your point about a person abstaining too would be defined as they couldn't be a prevailing party. They did not participate.

Exactly, that was my next one.

Non-participation, either present and abstaining or not present. In my conventional understanding, it sounds like feedback, at least from a couple of you, I imagine Member Park agrees with that, shouldn't be anyone who could ever be considered a prevailing party.

Okay, so prevailing party will have only people considered who voted yes or voted no. Abstain is absent.

Abstain means absent. I mean, abstain is you are physically taking yourself from that decision. Yeah. So you are not physically absent, but you are saying for the purpose of this vote, I am absent.

Yeah.

So they will not be considered as a prevailing party in either case.

Understood and agree.

Perfect. Okay. Defining a decision. Like I know tie what we did say here, we have to define if there is a tie vote, something like that, that decision has to be defined. It is a, It's the motion failed. So it's a decision that motion has failed. We need to define that just to clarify on that basically. So those are my comments and suggestion basically. Thank you. And I can send that to you.

Okay.

Member Park. Yeah. So I have a couple of things like, and we discussed this earlier. We've got multiple items. They're not bifurcated. In fact, I mentioned this fact at the time we took the vote. And city attorney said, well, you know, half of the motion passed and half motion passed. No, I did not. I did not say that at the time that we were discussing this prior to the reconsideration. This was one of the nuances. This is one of the things that you had brought up to me. And I can read back the discussion that we had.

You can, but I specifically said I did not advise that. I advised the opposite.

I think that we definitively squashed that by saying that severability requires agreement and understanding prior to the vote. You cannot apply severability after a vote has been taken. I agree with you. But this was definitely a nuance that you had brought up to me prior to the reconsideration as to why part of the motion had succeeded. So if you're saying that that's not true now, I'm going to say, I will stick with my recollection and my notes that say you had brought this up as a reason for why half the vote.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I don't want to debate, have viewers in my debate about this take over because I do need to take off. I'm just telling you that my advice was, on the matter of whether or not that the item that only required four votes passed, my advice was that that did not be treated as having passed.

Understood. And that was after because I looked into it and I had a second discussion.

I'm not going to debate this at this point.

So. Move on. Okay, and again, I'm really concerned about all of the specific details that we're putting into ordinances and policies. Like it would have been better if we had said, well, as defined in other rules, but because we can change rule sets willy-nilly, it sounds like we should define these. Many of the things that we talk about are clearly defined in other places. And it'd be really nice if rather than say, well, Santa Clara is special, they're a charter city and their charter city says the sky is green, that we have a consistent, that we say the charter and our ordinances tell you what's different for very specific things. But for general things, for prevailing party, For people to come in here and be told, oh, we do questions only all at once and then we answer. These are things that break the world's understanding of how things work. And I'm all for exceptions when exceptions are warranted. But when we make exceptions that break people's understanding of how the world in general works just because Santa Clara is special, I do not like that. Again, the problem that I had with the bifurcation is usually, and we shouldn't have to say this either, we shouldn't have to have a rule that says if a motion fails because part of the motion failed, it was understood to me that there would be a secondary motion. I was waiting for that. In fact, in my letter to Judge Rosenberg, I specifically state I was surprised that we moved on. I was surprised that we moved on because usually in that circumstance, there is another motion. And that motion will be either for the part that succeeded, the part that failed, or a separate motion that we think that the committee can agree upon. I would challenge the city attorney and the city's attorney's office to come up with contrary examples to what the public has said, to what Judge Rosenberg has said for a definition of prevailing party, for a definition of any of these things. And for continuances, I hear the chair's request that, well, in planning commission, because many of the applicants may not be corporations, they may be residents, they may be people, there is a you know, there is a, it's a nice thing. It's a nicety that we inform them that by the way, you can continue this item because you need this many votes and there are only this many people. I think that it would be a nicety to do that for counsel as well, to say that we must do this and we must bifurcate, we must. These are all handled in the way that we do standard procedures. By locking down everything, and I had this talk with Judge Rosenberg as well. Somebody else should do another PRA on my discussions with Judge Rosenberg. But I know as an engineer, when you over-constrain a system, you create new problems, which is why In the very beginning with this executive staff telling me that every single nuance there should be an ordinance or a council policy for doesn't make any sense to me. But then I realized, oh, in the case that we've got a, runaway executive staff or runaway council or runaway committee, now this is very, very pertinent to this, then we need to have something that says, how do we do this? This is not about prevailing party. To me, this is really about how do we defer an item when there is lack of clarity? But to say that we need to define every single thing in advance doesn't make any sense to me. For us to say that we must have an understanding of every single council policy, I'm sorry. I didn't vote on 99.99999% of the ordinances, the policies, the codes, the regulations in this city. And for us to say that we need to have an understanding, no, I think that consistency I mean.

I'm sorry, I hate to interrupt, but I need to leave. And so.

I don't think you're necessary for the motion.

I think we can, there isn't really a motion because we're going to come back with a policy, but we're providing direction. Yes. So I will. We can provide direction. You can make a motion if you like.

I will make a motion, which is... I would like to understand how we defer an item when there is lack of clarity rather than simply go with an interpretation that is made, especially if that interpretation has problems or disagreements by public and by council members. I would like severability, concepts like severability and continuances, not to be defined explicitly, but to be managed by an understanding of what the rules are. Continuances are always allowed. That is a continuance item. That is not a reconsideration item. When it comes to talking about how we do a vote,

Okay, those actually relate to potential changes to the 055 policy, as opposed to the reconsideration policy, which is what we're talking about. So I don't disagree with any of that or appreciate the thought, but I don't think it's with respect to the item that's in front of you.

And actually that's my notes as well, which is a lot of these have nothing to do with reconsiderations, have nothing to do with revealing party. A lot of it has to do with 055. So Mr.

Chair, I would ask if there's direction on the 042, at least for now, my purpose is we get that.

I'm going to let the city attorney go. You can watch the meeting later and you can watch the discussions, but we can entertain a motion for the 042 policy.

Appreciate that. Thank you. Appreciate the discussion.

So my motion would be to add clarity on prevailing party, add clarity on the difference between who can make a request versus who can make the motion, meaning anyone can make the request and to leave substantially all things unchanged. I do not want things removed because my understanding of what the city attorney had requested to remove was actually different in nature. They are not redundancies, but I would like clarification on terms, in particular, prevailing party, in particular, who can request reconsiderations. But I don't see anything else that needs to be changed. I would prefer, as much as possible, not to remove information unless you can prove why it's redundant. But in the cases that I've heard, I have seen no redundancy, and my concern is that we are cutting away at things that we don't seem to fully understand.

I'll second that motion and we already discussed about it.

Well, the issue that I see is that we're saying we want clarity, but not too much clarity. I don't think there's enough clarity guidance to the city attorney for what to do. It's something like putting in the table that member Chahal had suggested would provide a lot of clarity and adding something about whether somebody is absent at the meeting would, I like the clarity because it's subject to whoever the executive staff is in the future. We have had a number of city attorneys that had lots of different opinions about things. So I personally prefer to lock things down because you can't just do things with handshakes anymore. So I would like you to, I mean, we have a motion and a second. We can vote on that.

The reason that I didn't think writing that table was necessary is because, and this was my request, my question to the city attorney, I do not think that the city attorney staff can find examples where what member Chahal suggested is not true. And again, I can make it more explicit and say, I would like to clarify who the prevailing party is based on the table, which is finality says a motion either passes or it fails. If it passes, the people that vote for it are the prevailing party. If it fails for any reason, lack of votes, then the people who vote against it are the prevailing party.

You're saying the table.

I'm saying I cannot find examples of any other system So I'm adding saying this table, but I am stating it in words.

So I'm seconding that because we are including the today discussion and this item is coming back to us and city attorney, city manager already heard what we want. So I think most of the stuff which Park has mentioned is- It is coming back to us, but it needs to come back to us as a policy.

If the policy includes the table and you want the table in the policy, we need to give that direction.

So I know city managers did mention there can be other scenarios. If you bring that back, okay, in addition to the table, there are some scenarios. We should be open to listen to that. If there is no, nothing, that's okay. But if we said something that there are options other than what we presented, we should be able to look at it.

So you believe that the city attorney has enough guidance from our discussion to bring back a written policy? I think so. We should be able to... modify to a minor extent and then- Yes, yes.

Okay. That's what I think.

Okay.

And that's what I think member Park has mentioned and that's why I seconded that.

Yeah.

So- You're the maker of the motion. Yeah, so I am going to...

Hold on.

Yeah, I am gonna write this down so it's clear and it's consistent.

Thank you.

While we're discussing. So I am going to, okay. Okay, so my request is to come back with updates to council policy 042, removing nothing unless there is clear justification of why something is being removed. but clarity around prevailing party based on the Roberts rules definitions and table that council member Chauhal has said, but I mean, I believe that any definition of prevailing party will come to the same conclusion with clarity around who can make a request, which is anyone can make a request, whether it's the public, whether it's a council member, whether it's a prevailing side or the losing side, anybody can make the request. Yes, I know, but it's clarity, meaning we just had a long discussion about this where the executive staff didn't seem to understand that it was already in there. So clarity on the motion can only be made on the prevailing party based on the definition of prevailing party, clarity on the process of agendizing the reconsideration, whether it's for action or for discussion, that it would be agendized for action, a single step process, unless the requester prefers otherwise, or unless there is a reason to be done otherwise. To retain maybe clarity around retaining that new facts or an explanation of how previous facts were misapplied or misunderstood should be part of the the reconsideration process. I'd like to retain that.

And I think that's what we discussed, right?

Yeah. And again, anything else, but I mean, there will be a separate referral for to revisit the 055 policy and other policies, since we seem to want to constrain every single thing. Okay. I'll second that motion. Yes. Bring it back.

Okay, I'm going to support this, but I don't actually like the explanation of why the new facts. I think somebody should be allowed to reconsider because they changed their mind. In any case, we'll take a vote.

That's actually allowed. I just want to check. That is allowed. It's new facts or... you know, misapplication of facts, or I changed my mind. A misapplication of facts could be, well, I thought this, I thought something else now, and that's allowed. It is not required that you have new facts.

Well, the mayor insists on having new facts.

She is wrong. The fact that she is wrong should not force us to change what is listed in our policy.

Okay, so we'll take a vote now. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstained? Passes unanimously. That is advice to the city attorney to draft a policy that we will approve in the future. Okay. I expect that the next item number two will be a long discussion.

Yes.

So I would actually like to defer that to a future meeting.

Through the chair, staff is fine with that. I will simply note that the draft policy that is within the agenda report, staff is already following that via direction from the city manager's office on how to schedule special meetings. And so I do think that there was a need for clarification and definition of our process that has happened. It is being presented to the committee for your consideration, any modifications. Having this discussion at a later date is fine, but know that we have made some clarifications and changes to how meetings are scheduled.

Yeah, I don't want to discuss it because we're not, I mean, it is on the agenda. One of the consideration I didn't see in there was people's work schedules and there was dates in there, but there was not consideration of people's time. So, you know, could you schedule a meeting at 10 in the morning? Could you schedule a meeting at 8 p.m.? So there should be some consideration of people's work schedules.

I will say anecdotally, we do do that when the city manager selects potential times for the city clerk to poll for. But no, the policy does have a practice in there where we accept the meeting where the majority of members have confirmed that they can attend. There are times where there is a business need to have a meeting earlier in the afternoon or even during the workday. We do that very sparingly, understanding that people have work commitments. I think the last thing that I should say is given the amount of regular business that the board needs to conduct, We have recently started a practice of polling for additional special meetings just to have potentially up to two additional special meetings on the calendar every given month. And we will be canceling those if we don't need them, but the city clerk has pulled for additional meetings. Now going forward in June, you have a meeting You have two regular meetings. You also have a special meeting on June 15th and the special meeting on June 30th. So those are the two additional meetings. July, we are polling for an additional meeting for priority setting, but that is during your recess as well. And so July and the beginning part of August will be a little different, but really beginning in August and going forward, we will poll for two additional special meetings, whether at that time we need them or not, and then we will cancel them if not.

Okay. So I guess we'll move on to staff report unless anyone has a comment about deferring this item.

So I don't have a comment about deferring the item. I think that we should spend as much time as this item deserves. I would like to make comments about special meetings. I mean, something that we did not talk about here, but I noted is very different from the way that we treat reconsiderations is that reconsiderations must be done at the next regular meeting or it can be done or any intervening special meeting. And I think that people kind of glossed over that, but I realized that in some cases where we've waited for a reconsideration because it wasn't a regular meeting, it is allowed in a special meeting. For the schedule, I want to remind everyone that we are not meeting as a city council. We also have the sports authority, the housing authority, and that the sports authority is not the stadium authority. Stadium authority is an additional authority. We also meet for SVP. There are many things that we do. Chair Jane mentioned at the last meeting that we had over 40 meetings last year, which is almost one a week, but it's clearly more than three a week. I'm sorry, three a month, sorry. But these are the things that we need to consider. When we come back at some point, I think this will go into a larger discussion of what is the time commitment that council makes. But the special meetings, I think the special meetings are, a fallout of the time commitment, but we are treating only we are looking only at the proposed special meeting scheduling. And I think at some point we should also address the larger the larger question. Last thing is one talking about special meeting schedules. I would also like a some consideration of how agendas get set because I had a discussion with a member of the public that meetings go long because discussions are long, that's true. But if we're not doing agenda management, then meetings will go long even if there's no discussions. Like at some point, I counted the number of slides that we had to go through. And we usually state something like there is a minute per slide. Some slides may take 10 seconds. Some slides may take two minutes. But the average is a minute per slide. But all of these things need to be considered. The fact that we're only talking about special meeting schedule means we are only talking about the fallout. We're not talking about the causes. And I would like at some point, if this is brought to us, to have some discussion of the causes.

We have on the staff, we have staff report, any staff report.

I just want to note that we're working to reschedule the ethics item that was set for April 30th meeting when we had to cancel due to personal conflicts. So we are working with a consultant to get dates for that.

Okay. And At the last meeting, we had a number of work items that we added. How are those going to be scheduled or worked into our work plan?

We're working internally with staff to see which ones can come to your next meeting in the regularly scheduled quarterly meetings for the rest of the year. So we are plotting out that work plan as we speak.

Okay. And we can send you additional items for the work plan as well.

We have your list that you had approved at the work plan discussion, but you can also refer to additional for consideration. Like the member of the public had a suggestion, you know.

Okay. Committee member reports, future referrals for consideration. Okay. Member Parks.

So I think we are coming, looking forward to the O30 process. I would like to add, if we haven't already on there, it sounds like a lot of the discussion we had for reconsiderations also affects the 055 process, which I would like to bring back for consideration. I would also like to add a process for how we deal with processes that require clarification. I mean, right now we have a, I mean, the reconsideration item that required clarification because we did not have a concept of prevailing party and other things that we just decided on the fly, which it turns out went contrary to the face of the facts that we have seen every single fact that we've seen afterwards. And I'd like to have a process that says, I'm sorry, we need to have a discussion. We need to have a clarification before we simply move forward with you know, a quick, we need to have a process for that.

And through the chair. Yeah.

So at our last meeting, we went through the scope of work and the future agenda items for this committee. It is a very, very long list. And I think today is an example of one item took the entire two hours. So with additional requests and policies to look at, I'm not confident that we will be able to get through those items and we would likely need additional special meetings. Given the normal work of the committee and the council, that may be challenging. What I would like to remind the committee of is that in December, we were going to talk about the overall project that staff is working on to take a look at all of the council policies and put them in a comprehensive council policy manual. I need to check in with staff on where we are given workload and things, but should we be able to do that in December, what you would receive is a collapsing of all of your policies into one comprehensive document. That document will have track changes for things that we're proposing to amend. So a number of the policies that have been requested will automatically be in that December packet. And so my recommendation would be that you only agendize items that you think are critical that must be talked about prior to December, and then all the balance of the policies we'll talk about then. I will say though, given our track record and the amount of time it takes to even discuss one policy, how we develop a process and a methodology to get through all those policies. I think we collectively need to do some thinking on and it can't be done in the regular quarterly or even special meetings. We may need to schedule very long sessions of this body where we're stepping methodically through all of the policies. I will just put that out there.

Thank you.

Member Park.

Yes. So I just want to remind the public that the Marketing and Economics Committee meets every single month in public at the library. At some point, people have been talking about ethics and governance as a big issue. And if we seriously want to address the public's concern, then we, the city, should also think about how we make this meeting more important. that we maybe consider monthly meetings in public at the library, that we consider, I mean, our track record for canceling this meeting or delaying this meeting is terrible. It is, as one of the public members said, the most canceled meeting, the most deferred meeting of all the committees that we've had. And I hear the comments about, well, it takes us a long time to get through items. These are governance and ethics items. This is not about a logo, which should have taken a little bit more discussion than we had for the logo. These are important items. The fact that they take a long time, there is a lot of discussion, and the discussions are heated or robust should not be a surprise. What is a surprise to me is the time that we schedule to have these robust and long discussions, which is not enough. Again, when I ask about agenda management, when I look about scheduling, we need to look at this meeting as well. If we had this meeting every three weeks, which puts it at slightly more than once a month, I think that could be warranted. It's not a matter of, well, we need to fit all the items into the schedule that we have. At some point, we need to schedule, we need to make schedules based on the items that we have to address. I hear what are the things that are essential. We want to prioritize things that we need to hear before the December policy update. I am right now fearful of the things that are going into the policy manual because of the discussions, because of the interpretations that I've heard from executive staff on what this council does. In almost every single case, we have ignored, removed, excised things that are very important to the people. We have added powers, we have muddled things where there was not need for a change. And I am very concerned about this. And I would like to have the full time to have these discussions. I understand the concerns about time, but we do not try to fit the items into the time. We need to have time for the discussions.

Member Park. All right, with that, this meeting is adjourned.