Oversight Board Committee - Regular Meeting

Are we ready? Are we ready? Okay, very good. Okay. It's now 10.05 on Monday, June 1st, 2026. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Before we take roll, I have a statement about Zoom to read. This meeting will be recorded. The Zoom application will notify you that this meeting is being recorded. please press continue on the Zoom application to stay in the meeting. Use the raise your hand feature in Zoom when you would like to speak on an item. Please unmute when called to speak and mute yourself when you are done speaking. Please lower your hand when you'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, we'll now take roll. Maria, could you call the roll?

Members Chahal, Chair Jane, Member Park. Thank you.

All right. We're now going to consent calendar. We have two items on our consent calendar. One is approval of the minutes for the April 13th Governance and Ethics Committee meeting and the May 21st Governance and Ethics Committee meeting. Does any of my fellow members have any comments or questions?

I just want to note for the record that committee member Shahal wanted to correct the minutes that during the item three, I inadvertently put Robert's sue and it should say Robert's rules.

Okay. Very good. And motion to approve minutes. I had a couple of comments. Yeah, I had, I know it was in the motion to add the table that member Chahal had referred to, and that was in the motion and we approved that. I had asked for that to be added. In any case, We had a member of the public asking about adding a ticker to our videos and such. And so I believe that that is, I saw a notice that two things are happening. One is that our Legistar video recordings now have a speed option where you can view the video the video at faster speeds, like 2X. And then I think we're also, maybe Norik can clarify, I think we are gonna be adding some sort of ticker to it to identify the item that's being discussed and maybe the speaker.

Yes, thank you, Chair Jane. Yes, my understanding is that they're working on that banner that identifies what agenda item the, Council so that those that are watching may follow along. So that's in the works.

Very good. All right. So there's a motion to approve the consent. Is there a second?

And Chair Jain, I did send the table to City Attorney as well as to Maria. Maria, can you please update that minutes with that table included on that one? Thank you.

With those changes, Is there a motion? Is there a second? Second. All right. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. All right. Now we'll move on to public presentations. Is there a member of the public that would like to speak on an item that's not on the agenda?

Not on the agenda. Thank you very much. And I've got two minutes on the item three coming up later, but this is different. Hi, it's for the record, Chris Stampolis, Santa Clara. And I wanted to more just kind of point out as you're looking to future agenda items here that in the education world, as you probably know, so at a college board or at a school board, State law specifically provides a process for members of the public to directly agendize items for action on agendas for those governance bodies. So I'm not advocating that that should have to happen here. The reason I'm bringing it up is because I think in the public, not just in Santa Clara, but sometimes across the entire state, residents get confused. because they often first encounter governance when they're a parent of a small child. Maybe they have to go to a school board. That's kind of their entree way. They don't often just go straight to a council. And they learn the process. Oh, if they have a real issue and they can't get it resolved, well, then this is how they actually get it on the agenda for that board of trustees meeting. Now, they may give their two or three minutes, a couple other people come up and The board listens and goes, thanks for playing, have a good day. But okay, but at least they had their chance. And if the board wanted to take action, they can. So the reason I'm mentioning it here is to consider in the future some way to maybe make it that much more clear that members of the public don't have the legal right to directly agendize items for the city council meetings. because that may take the heat down just a little bit, I think, in some corners of this community. So especially with everything happening with, you know, there's so many different things around the city, but obviously in the old historical downtown, there's, you know, a lot of issues that are coming up. Some folks are frustrated. The other half of my quick few seconds here on public press is that I think also really making it clear that the downtown community task force does not directly communicate with the council regarding issues to be agendized. At least that's my interpretation of it. And again, it's more just something for this body maybe to consider to clarify whether it does or doesn't, because I believe that they more are kind of an informal discussion. They provide really more back and forth to staff. And I've heard numbers, members of the public getting frustrated. Why isn't the task force agendizing items that the city council has to deal with? And so, again, I'm not asking for change. I'm not asking to change. put more power with them, but just to make it clear. So if somebody wants something agendized, they realize, oh, it's not going to happen that way. Go a different way if they really want to get something done. So thank you very much. See you at number three. All right.

Thank you. Do we have anyone online?

We do not have any hands raised online. If you'd like to speak, please raise your hand. No hands raised.

All right, now we'll move on to our agendized items. We have two items. The first is number two, discussion and action on a proposed special meeting scheduling policy. This is continued from May 21st. So we have a staff presentation.

Yes. Thank you, Chair, Jane, and committee members. I'll intro this item and lead it off, but also we have Nora Pimentel, our Assistant City Clerk, who has a significant hand in our scheduling process, as well as Assistant City Manager Araceli Azevedo and assistant to the city manager maria lay who support this committee but also have a significant role in scheduling meetings and so this topic came about because if we go to the slide two on the powerpoint the governance committee has expressed an interest in establishing establishing guidelines for scheduling special meetings i will also say on an operational basis we have identified that as a significant need as well, and have actually started to implement the draft policy that is before you just to provide a detailed structure to how we pull for meetings. I would also say at a high level in recent months, it has become very clear that the two regular meetings of the city council are not enough. And in fact, if we look back on our history of having special meetings, we have over the last few years had 40 plus meetings, right? And so we know that the business that needs to be conducted at the city council level for this organization and all of its enterprises are more than two meetings a month. I will also say one of the ways that we're recognizing that now is we are starting a process where we will poll for two additional special meetings each month, whether we know we need them or not, just to have them on the calendar so that we're not doing the process that I know the committee and council are familiar to, which is once we see an established need, we then poll at that time. Also important to note that the city charter requires two regular meetings each month, but sets no procedure for scheduling those meetings. Our city clerk's office, really led by Assistant City Clerk, Nora Pimentel, administers the process in close collaboration with the city manager's office. And so the proposed policy is designed to, as it says up above, add structure, consistency, and transparency to the process. If we go to the next slide, what we want to articulate, and I know the committee knows this, but it may be a helpful refresher, also important for members of the community, or actually there was a prior slide in the prior PowerPoint that talked about the type of meetings. I think it's not in this deck, but I'll just start talking about it now because it is, here it is. So there are a number of types of special meetings. So there are regular meetings which are held twice a month per charter. Those are also combined with our stadium authority and other authorities. By law, those agendas have to be posted 72 hours to be in compliance with the Brown Act. Next are what we call special meetings. These are on non-regular meeting dates and times. They can be called by the mayor or the majority of council or the city manager. And the requirement there is that the agenda be posted 24 hours in advance, although we endeavor to post sooner and when we can apply, comply with the 72 hour timeframe for regular meetings. Study sessions, important to note, can be held within a regular or a special meeting for complex or lengthy topics really when at times no action is recommended, but the council needs to have significant discussions before that final action. Closed sessions, as we all know, are confidential meetings of the city council under the Brown Act. And there are six criteria by which a closed session can occur. Those are detailed in your staff report. One, for personnel matters for individuals appointed by the city council. Two, to discuss pending or anticipated litigation. Three, to discuss real estate negotiations regarding the price and terms for payment, purchase, exchange, or a lease of specific real property. Four, labor negotiations. Five, to discuss public safety or security matters related to threats to public facilities or the public's right to access public facilities. And six, license applications or license renewal by an applicant who has a criminal record. Brown Act specifies those six areas and the city complies with that. Next is a category, thankfully, that we do not need a lot, which are emergency meetings. And then under the Brown Act, when there's a necessity for a public meeting, there's a process for us to call for a emergency meeting. The next slide discusses our process. And so it's really based on the majority principle, which is when we need a special meeting, we will select the date that the most members can attend and no members individual schedule will be given preference over the other, not the mayors, not any other member of the council. The initiation of the process, And this process would begin with either the city manager or majority council request via written or electronic notice from the city clerk's office. The process starts with the city manager's office selecting three dates. And so we select three dates for the possible special meeting. And that's based on any number of criteria. Sometimes there's a consultant. So it's the consultant schedule combined with the city's business calendar. But we select three possible Brown Act compliant dates. The city clerk's office next will poll council members and provide a deadline no more than, 48 hours from the date of initial poll. And so that allows time for us to contact council members via email, via text, via phone, and assess their availability for the meeting. Importantly, the city clerk will compile and is now compiling a written availability summary that's kept internally for our record on how we complied with the process. Once responses have been received or that 48-hour time period has elapsed, the city manager's office then selects the date of the special meeting based on four criteria. One, the greatest availability. Two, if there's a tie or... the greatest availability, we select the earliest date. And we also confirm that quorum would be met and ensure that there's been equal treatment and no adjustments have been made from one council member's schedule. Lastly, once the data is selected, the city clerk's office issues a notice for the special meeting per the Brown Act and then records that availability summary. So it's a very standard process, we think. The policy has provided a little structure to what we have been doing. We think that we have addressed a number of the concerns that council members have articulated, but certainly the policy is here for your discussion and feedback. Also, I know that there has been discussion on having more regular meetings. And so that's not embedded within this policy, but certainly that is a discussion that can be had. There are some very important on do we want more special meetings in the charter or would we like to lead the charter to two regular meetings and then have special meetings? I think that's staff's preference, but open to discussions on that. And as you know, there's a charter review committee going on now to discuss potential changes to the charter. With that, I'll turn the presentation over to the committee.

Are there any questions from my fellow members?

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, City Manager. Quick question. You mentioned that you plan to hold two special meetings in the calendar every month going forward. My question is for the sake of council members, as well as for the residents, Raghuram G. When will you indicate let's say we fill the calendar up to December from June onwards, right now, when will staff like Council members and there's no Okay, this meeting is cancelled. Raghuram G. or What is the time period when everybody will know that this meeting will not hold? Because council members have to decide their schedule. It's not a full-time council. We all have to work around our schedule. So that's my first question.

I'll turn it over to the assistant city clerk.

Thank you for the question, Member Shahal. My understanding is that when we propose these four meetings and those two special in the month, if that meeting is not needed, we will let you know with one week advance notice that it's not going to happen.

Preferably because we are planning way ahead, I would say at least two weeks would be, like if you can work out, that would be good because people can plan accordingly. But at least one week is there, right? If we can plan it sooner, that would be great.

My other question is... And Council Member, we can endeavor for two weeks, but one week was selected because there are oftentimes things that arise, or certainly during labor negotiations, we may want to know the outcome of a labor session before canceling that date. Knowing once we give it up, it's likely gone. I will caveat that when we set two additional special meetings a month, that is except during the council recess period, we would not schedule special meetings during that time.

Thank you. Can we also get a guidance on, I know council members can attend remote meetings. How many remote meetings they can attend? How many excused remote meetings they can attend? Because now that we are doubling the number of meetings, there may be more chances of people traveling and what would be the scenario on those? How many remote meetings they can still attend?

The, I was just looking at the charter provision that you think I'd know by now with how immersed we are in the charter, but I'm, I think the provision in the charter, and I'm looking over the assistant city clerk who might know it better than me, is that a city council member is subject to, in effect, removal, a vacancy of their seat if they have five consecutive missed regular meetings that are unexcused. the thing that one of the things that the assistant city clerk and I have been talking about that's contemplated somewhat in the charter update process is that there's currently not a specific policy regarding when the conditions under which an excusal may be granted. And so while the charter committee isn't proposing to change the standard for five consecutive meetings, it is including a recommendation that a policy be developed to define the process by which a person would be excused or not. The charter standard, five consecutive meetings is similar to the general law city standard, but I think the general law city standard includes missing that specified number of meetings or a different number over a 60 day period. And so that's the standard for what you're currently required to attend. And I believe it refers to five consecutive regular meetings, if I'm not wrong. So in theory, a special meeting, if it's missed, wouldn't constitute under the current rules set forth in the charter, a missed meeting that would count towards a potential result in a member being subject to dismissal. And I'm looking at the assistant city clerk. She's nodded mostly to confirm that, in fact, I've described that accurately.

I had it clear. My question was how many remote meetings? How many? Yeah, I'm sorry.

I didn't hear the... the current remote, the allowance for remote meetings, and I'm looking again at the assistant city clerk, there's an unlimited number under the standard remote participation, where in fact your address is listed on the agenda and the public's is available to attend. I think now what's allowed in any calendar year is five for cause remote participations.

I just want to clarify, it's a percentage of the number of meetings in the AB 49 or whatever it's called. And so I think you're allowed 20% of the number of meetings, which means two out of 12. But if you have more meetings, then you get to have more meetings that are subject to just cause, but then do special meetings count in that number of meetings.

So assistant city clerk is on it. So I will stop talking.

So what I've read for SB707 is if there's two regular meetings a month, then it's five. If there were three regular meetings a month, it would go up to seven. So that's where it gets bumped. We're talking special meetings, unless one of those became a regular meeting, then that's how you would get the bump to the seven.

So going forward for next year, they should be regular meetings so that we can yet more meetings for just cause.

That's my recommendation. So my clarification. So the special meeting will not be counted towards the number of meetings. Oh, okay. Okay, yeah, that's right.

So, and I'm sorry that, and I was answering the wrong question, as I do occasionally, when you posed it regarding the, although that's relevant too, right, for purposes of, you know, if we're going to add more meetings, you would want to know, right, if that, if missing a special meeting would count, you know, against, you know, what your required attendance is under the charter and under the charter the way it's currently drafted, it wouldn't. Your question regarding remote participation is a good one. And I'm looking at the assistant city clerk, does the, does remote, does 707 speak to your ability to participate remotely in special meetings? Is there any limit on the number of for cause, you know, participations in special meetings? I don't think there is.

Well, from what I understood, and of course, I leave that to your legal discretion.

Yeah, I'll have to take a look at it, I guess, to see if you knew.

Because it says how many regular meetings. So depending on your regular meetings, that's how they identify how many days you can participate remotely. So it was two meetings a month. That brings you to the five days. If you had three meetings a month, then it brings it up to seven days.

Yeah, so I guess to your point in saying you'd rather have them be regular meetings, query if those are special meetings and they wouldn't count towards the number, maybe that isn't a reason to have them be regular meetings because if they were special meetings and it wouldn't count, you could potentially participate in more special meetings remotely and not have that count. So I'll have to research that. We haven't looked at that. I'm not sure that 707 speaks to that.

So basically, if I understand right, unlimited remote meetings can be done, but for cause excused, if you don't want, if somebody doesn't put their address into the agenda, then they are depending on that particular rule of percentage of total.

Yeah, and currently with the number we have scheduled, it's five. But yes, if you were to convert it to more regular meetings, it could be adjusted. And we'll have to look at the special meeting rule because that's meaningful. I'll even start looking at it while you're discussing. Thank you. Okay, Member Parr.

Yeah, so just clarity. Do special meetings require excusal? I mean, we've had the mayor not excuse members at special meetings. And I think it was a good kind of a policy just to allow that. But we've had the mayor skip excusals for special meetings. Is there a requirement that members must be present for special meetings?

I'll repeat my earlier reference to what the charter says about it. The charter standard, right, for the number of unexcused absences that may result in forfeiture of the position only refers to regular meetings. And I don't think the city currently has a policy, again, looking at the assistant city clerk, with respect to excusals being excused from a special meeting. Understood, and I think that- Or any meeting for that matter. It's just kind of done as a matter of practice currently.

Understood. I think that from that perspective, it doesn't really matter if the extra meetings are special meetings or regular meetings. It's just that regular meetings would allow more participation because people could attend remotely. Special meetings, is there a requirement? I mean, what is the requirement? What is the allowance for attending special meetings remotely? Okay. I mean, does that get, again, special meetings don't seem to count against excusals. Do they count against remote meetings?

Let me start with the answer for that. Individuals would be able to attend special meetings remotely. They do now. I think part of your question, it relates to, is there a required excusal process within a special meeting agenda. Right now there's not, certainly the city council could adopt a policy to ensure that that's on every special meeting agenda. I think with regard to your other question about having, or your statement that a regular meeting will allow more participation, If the date is known in advance, a regular meeting or a special meeting could engender the same amount of participation. It really depends on availability of schedules, council plus public.

Actually, what you just said is very important, which is if there's no special meeting excusal process, then I don't know what that is, but having more regular meetings would increase the number of allowed remote participation. that it's instances and that's what I'm getting at. When you say just the number of meetings, that's not precise.

Can I add Mr. Chair and member Park's comments get at the issue that I said I was gonna research, which is, for purposes of the calendar limit on the number of for-cause participations that each individual council member can avail themselves of, I need to research how that applies to special meetings. My current belief is that it doesn't apply so that there might, you might be allowed to miss more than five meetings. If in fact, some of those are special meetings, but I need to research that. I don't know the answer.

A city manager. If I can. If there's a desire to increase the number of allowed remote participations for regular meetings, that could also be addressed through a separate policy change that doesn't necessarily require making additional regular meetings a month. Oh, I understand that that has come up through this discussion as the council would like additional remote participation opportunities. That can certainly be accomplished irrespective of if the additional meetings are regular.

Okay, Member Park.

Yeah, I'm gonna say, so that would be done and we would do that because we're a charter city and we can put that into our charter versus, I mean, because at some point, what does SB 707 say about that?

PB, Jorge Boone & the the SP 707 is part of the brown the brown act applies to charter cities, we can't change the rules of the brown act because we're a charter city that's why I want to research and haven't researched yet the. impact of a limit of the number of for-cause remote participations as it might apply to special meetings?

Because my question is on the statement that if there's a desire to increase the number of allowed missed meetings, this can be done via policy change. And it doesn't sound like that's precisely true.

Yeah, there would need to be a policy for excused absences with respect to that, but the policy with respect to the Brown Act will be a matter of Brown Act research and analysis that I want to be able to advise you on.

Because I mean, there are questions as to what happens if we have, I mean, this is a part-time council. We decide to have more meetings. I know that if we wanna make them regular meetings, I think that requires a charter change because the two meetings per month is written into the charter.

But what happens if we require more? Minimum two. It's a minimum two, yes. So you could always have more.

True, but unless there's a policy that specifies that it can or should be three or it should be four, I think that there's always the argument that the charter does not require four.

There's no doubt the charter doesn't require four. It's a minimum of two, but you could, as a matter of city council policy, add more regular meetings.

Okay, so we can make that a policy change. We can make the requirement for the number of meetings a policy change? Yes. Okay, and then what happens if we require more meetings and we cannot get quorum for that increased number in a given month? I mean, what happens there?

If we don't have quorum, we won't have the meeting. And so you will believe staff will seek to poll for a special meeting because there was not form for that regular.

Understood. But at this point, now I want to get to kind of why we would have a special meeting versus why we would have a regular meeting. If we can't, have a, and I understand the city attorney is going to look into excused absences, but if we don't have, if we can't increase the number of excused absences, then it seems like the desire would be to have special meetings where special meetings don't seem to have, I mean, we'll look into it, but don't seem to have, don't seem to count against the absences allowed by SB 707.

So that's- I'm sorry, I wanna be clear about what I'm researching. It's not excused absences, it's the ability, it's the number of times you can participate remotely.

Yes.

So I wanted to make sure we are distinguishing between those two things. And so what the charter talks about is five, consecutive unexcused absences at a regular meeting could be a basis for losing your position. What we're talking about maybe in addition to that is the SB 707 allowance for the number of allowed remote participations in any calendar year. So the thing that I am researching is that as to whether or not that applies to special meetings.

Understood, so it's the number of times that we can participate remotely because there's a limit as well.

That's exactly right, four clause, right? Under the traditional mechanism, if you know that you're going to be absent and you're away and as long as you're listing your address, city clerk 707 doesn't change that. That still is, you can have as many times as our local policies might allow you to participate remotely. The only limit is on the for-cause exceptions where it's not listed on the agenda because you didn't have time to list it on the agenda. And it's kind of a last minute or health emergency or sickness or other kind of thing that qualifies in that category. Those are the number that are limited.

Understood. And even with the posting, I mean, that's always the workaround. As long as we can post and we can have the agendas posted in the meetings, But we've had instances in other jurisdictions where people who were in remote locations had to leave the meeting early because of their time zone, because of a lot of other things, and the meeting as a whole also had to end. So I'm concerned about that. I mean, that's a concern. I mean, at some point, a lot of people think this is about number of meetings, and I want to kind of make clear why we need more meetings, because we have a lot more things that we talk about, stadium authority, and again, I don't know if you can tell us the number of authorities that actually meet in one council meeting. At the one council meeting, we have a We have a notice that we tell the public that for each attended meeting and how many attended meetings are we actually, how many meetings are we actually attending in a city council meeting? Because it's not just one meeting, it's multiple city, it's multiple council meetings, it's multiple committee meetings. Um, including stadium authority. There used to be sports authority, the housing authority. There used to be a number of authorities that used to meet separately. We used to close the, the specific meeting we were on and open the sports authority meeting. The, uh, you know, close the sports authority meeting and then open the housing authority meeting. We used to do that separately. Um, We had a member of the public complained that, well, in a lot of cases, those meetings had no agenda. And if those meetings had no agenda, then it would have been better to simply cancel that meeting rather than open it except the meeting, the minutes of the previous meeting, which was, there were no minutes because there was no, there were no items and then close it and then pay each council member an additional $30. Well, now I think we get paid additional $30 for each meeting that's attended and we just lumped them all together. And I, I'd like some clarity there because that's, you know, we have a stadium authority. We've got, um, We've got an enterprise fund. We've got SVP that we talk on all these different things. And the fact that our council meetings take longer, some of it is due to robust public input, robust discussions, but that's not the entire story. And I kind of like to remind the public why we have so many issues and why there are so many items that the city of Santa Clara considers that other cities may not.

City manager, do you have a comment? Sure, we're looking at the number of specific authorities. Don't wanna quote the number here now, but just in response, Committee member Park, you're absolutely right that the two regular meetings a month is not enough to get the regular business of the city completed, which is why we have had over 40 total meetings for the last few years, and which is why we are now scheduling at least two additional special meetings a month. With regard to the authorities, it's important to note that the posting of the agenda for a meeting of the city council, the stadium authority and concurrent authorities is really done as a convenience matter because there is not an item on every agenda for all of those authorities. And in fact, sometimes there's not even an item on the agenda for the stadium authority. It's done so that there is consistency for posting the agenda. The city could change where you only post for the actual entity that is on the agenda. I think you recounted some of the history on why that's done, but you are correct right now. Right now it's one meeting. with all the authorities that can change. I will also note that it is not just the authorities that create the additional business. It is also some of our enterprises. And you mentioned Silicon Valley, which is not a separate legal entity. It's a department of the city. Then there's the convention center and some of our other enterprises that, again, are not specific legal entities, but add to the complexity of Santa Clara. And we all know Santa Clara sort of feels like a medium-sized city, but we sort of punch above our weight because we have the breadth of Silicon Valley power. We have the stadium and a lot of the assets of a much larger city.

Well, we punch above our weight because we've got a $1.7 billion budget, which is multiple times any other budget, any other city our size. We've got a general fund that is larger than entire city budgets of neighboring cities. I think that this is one of the reasons that we do that. I brought up that SVP, to show that these are the things that Santa Clara must consider that other cities do not. I do, again, the change that was made to how the city council meetings are noticed happened before your time. So I don't expect you to know this, but again, the complaint that was made by the public was that the city council would open an authority meeting and then close it immediately because there were no items on it and get paid $30 for every meeting that was opened and closed with no action. This happened with a number of meetings, sports authority, housing authority. After that complaint was made, Shortly after that, then the change was made to city council meetings to notice all the authority meetings at once and open all of them at once and then close them all at once. Going around the actual request, which is, let's just not have an open authority meeting. Another question I have for clarity is, do council members get paid for each of those those authority meetings, even if there is nothing on the agenda for those authority meetings.

If I can go ahead and answer that. So for the $30, the eligibility for the meetings include the Santa Clara Stadium Authority, the Sports and Open Space Authority, and the Housing Authority. There are additional authorities that do not receive or are not eligible for the $30 payment. That includes the Stadium Authority, Sports and Open. I'm sorry, I read the wrong one. City of Santa Clara Redevelopment Agency, Bayshore North Project Enhancement Authority, Public Facilities, Financing Corporation, and that's it.

Understood. I think that my memory serves correctly. It was the Sports and Open Space Authority and the Housing Authorities were the ones that I specifically remember.

Did you have any other questions?

No, but my other comment was, you know, people ask why I think I, you know, I've been saying things about a full-time council and people think it's about money. It's not about money. It's, I want no excuse or any council member to be able to say no to a meeting. I mean, right now there are many excuses. There are many reasons because we have other things that we, we schedule in our private lives because well, the requirements for city council are not as big, but it's, I think that with a $1.7 billion budget, with a stadium authority, with the Silicon Valley power, with all of the committees, with all the medium-sized items that our city deals with, maybe we are right in having to require a full-time council. Again, it's not because of the money, it's I want the responsibility that comes with a full-time council.

Okay, I have some questions. The first is my understanding is special meetings don't have public presentation. So I wanna make sure that these are not really special meetings. They're just an artifact of the fact that we need more meetings than are in the charter and are put on our calendar that we approve So I wanna make sure that all these special meetings will have public presentation time. And the other thing is, you know, of course we had 41 meetings last year. That's not including committees. That does not include this committee or any of the other committees audit, any other committees. That's just 41 council meetings. So clearly when we, put only 24 meetings on the calendar, then staff has to come up with 16 other meetings or 17 other meetings that they have to pull for. It's an onerous job to pull. It's also doesn't give us predictability. You know, if somebody wants to have a meeting with me, it's much easier to schedule that meeting a month out than for next week, because my calendar is full. So to put meetings on the calendar almost a year in advance makes us block that out so that we're not going to schedule other things. So I like the idea of having more meetings put on the calendar. But I just want to make sure that all special meetings will have public presentation time. The other question I had was that when staff is pulling for three times, three dates, we need to consider the time. We haven't considered the time of that meeting. So if it's a closed session meeting where we don't need the public involved, that could happen in the middle of the day. Now, council members work full-time, I'm fortunate that I don't, but we do need to consider the time. So far, we haven't even discussed the time of those meetings. You've only discussed dates. So I wanna understand what the thinking is behind pulling for those times, because that opens up. If you're freeing that it's not just evening meetings, then it opens up more possibilities.

Chair Jane, good question. Can I address the first thing you said, which is ensuring that special meetings have public presentations on them? We can certainly do that. And in fact, we've had conversations recently about these special meetings, having them act more like regular meetings. So it's not just public presentations, but it's also special orders of business. I believe the last special meeting we had at a special order of business. And that's because again, even the length and the number of special orders of business we have become challenging when we start our meetings at 5.30 or six o'clock and then the regular starts at seven. As you know, we often have sometimes 45 minutes to an hour of public presentations. And so staff's understanding and we can make it more explicit in the policy that these special meetings would have the same feeling of a regular meeting with all the the same areas on the agenda with regard to scheduling very very good question i think first let's discuss scheduling times for a special meeting that will have more normal city business certainly our thought was we would keep with the council's current practice and policy is to start the regular meetings at six o'clock. If there is a study session or closed session ahead of time, sometimes 530, because oftentimes those discussions an hour just isn't really enough. And when we, as you know, need to have a break in between, if we start at six, we really only have 45 minutes. And so we oftentimes have those pre media closed sessions or study sessions at 5.30. And then we would begin at seven o'clock with the core portion of the special meeting. For those, that's what we were considering. With regard to a special, I'm sorry, a closed session only, We were really thinking that we wouldn't change our current practice, which is understanding that we have a number of council members at work or have commitments during the day. We would initially try to have sometimes in the evening. And so in polling for three, potentially two would be in the evening, one would be during the day. I do think if staff started polling for closed sessions, during the workday knowing that a number of council members have daytime and work commitments that may not be equitable and fair. And so while certainly having meetings in the evening times has a significant impact on staff, I think given our current structure, it would be more appropriate to have vast majority of the meetings in the evening. I will say that certainly with labor negotiations, we have had conversations ahead of time and let council know that we really may need a meeting around lunchtime. And so we would endeavor to still do that. And I will also say that most municipal corporations that have their meetings during the day, closed or regular, have full-time councils. And so we weren't, because we have a part-time council, weren't looking to really go there unless there's a change.

That makes sense a couple more questions one is you said that the mayor can call a special meeting city manager calls special meeting or council members and this became an area of contention because when Anthony Becker was trying to schedule a special meeting for termination of a city employee. we needed to make sure that we avoided Brown Act. And so if you're trying to get a majority of council members that want to propose a special meeting, you're now in a Brown Act situation. So I want to clarify that if a council member wants to have a special meeting, then the council member will work through the city manager's office that then would pull the, the other council members to see if you wanted to have that special meeting occur, because we don't wanna get into a Brown Act situation.

Sure, absolutely. And we have a process for that. I will say the council member may approach the city manager's office or the city attorney's office, but we have a process and a form that is Brown Act compliant.

I'll turn it to the city attorney. Yeah, just a reminder, we did update that policy and process, and there was a form that we revised as the previous form when I reviewed it, created some Brown Act issues inadvertently. And so you're exactly right. Scheduling communications themselves are exempt under the Brown Act, but the... the manner in which that occurs needs to be carefully managed because it would might be easy to inadvertently exchange substantive, you know, communications about the subject of the meeting. And so your description is correct. Majority of the, you know, a single council person or two, right, can initiate a request for a special meeting. But ultimately, if it's a council member called special meeting, a majority must agree to call that special meeting and manage through city staff in order to avoid inadvertent serial communications under the Brown Act on substantive issues. Okay.

Just wanted to clarify that. The last question I had was when you're polling council members for a meeting, you know, we have budget amendments that require a super majority, require five. So you wanna make sure that when you poll for quorum, that you're at least getting five when those items are on the agenda versus four for standard quorum for a meeting. I also think that it's a little onerous that if you have a serious issue coming up and you poll and you only get four, then you need a unanimous vote of those four. So I actually kind of prefer that we have N plus one. So if you needed four for deciding something, you have to get five council members to that council meeting. If you need five, then you need to get six council members to that meeting. Because it's just, I mean, it's just very hard to get a unanimous vote on a contentious item or a serious item.

Chair Jane, very, very, very good comments. I think to the first one, we, and I'm sorry, I'm actually blanking on your first point right now because I was-

If you needed five.

So actually in our process, that's why we have a confirmation of quorum. It sort of seems that that's not needed because if you have a majority, you have a confirmation of quorum, but it's exactly for the reason you mentioned, which is if there's something that is going to be on the agenda that we know requires five votes and we have a quorum for the meeting, but not five attending, that allows us to either adjust the agenda items or pick another date. So we are certainly considering that. With regard to your last point about N plus one, we had not discussed that. I would say that if council does or the committee desires something like that, having it in policy is better because what we don't want staff to be doing is agenda shopping items, right? Or being accused of agenda shopping items. But I certainly understand the point you're making where If there is a contentious item, having more council members hear that item is generally better.

I totally agree. Yeah, that would be my recommendation is to formalize that plus one. Other comments? Just a member Chau. Yeah.

Just one clarifying question. just for the policy matter, because when we are putting anything in record, I just wanna hypothetically, nobody has been turned off from the council for five consecutive absences. But my question is, as per charter, you have two meetings, regular meetings, and as per policy, we might increase it to three. for that clause that city council members, if they miss five consecutive meetings, they can be thrown out of council, which one applies? Does the charter too many meetings apply or our policy meeting apply? There's a confusion, like I want to clarify which one applies in that scenario.

Although this never happened in the past. I hope it has not, but just. Yeah, one of the things that you'll be seeing soon that will come out of the charter commission committee recommendation is an acknowledgement that the current charter didn't specify with any detail what constitutes a vacancy or an effective forfeiture of office. It's now specified in a fairly standard conventional way. And once that, if in fact that's approved and submitted to the voters and approved, that would be the standard for vacancies and you couldn't modify that by policy. So that would become the standard for what constitutes the actual vacancy for purposes of removing somebody. Charter would dictate, if charter establishes a standard, you can't change it by policy, I guess is what I'm saying. But that's for future.

I'm saying as per current, let's say charter doesn't pass or there are two options. Charter can pass that, charter may fail.

And the current charter actually already has the provision for five unexcused absences at a regular meeting. but it doesn't define what the excusal or non-excusal policy is, right? And now the charter isn't proposing to change that standard, but it's calling for a policy to be enacted.

My question was, are the two meetings which are defined as per the charter, are they considered the regular meetings or the policy? Let's say we make a policy, oh, we will have three regular meetings in a month. Charter only says two. So somebody can be thrown out within a two month and a half, whereas as per charter, he can be thrown out only in six months. So basically two months versus three months. It can be as per charter in three months. You're right, if the charter. Two months.

Yeah, if the charter didn't change the current standard for five consecutive meetings, it might if, and you call for more regular meetings, the policy in effect could result in the charter being applied in a way that is more strict than it currently is. You're absolutely right. I get your point. That is a possibility. And so in theory, just like the remote participation standard applies to the number of regular meetings, in theory, the charter provision, and this could be something that you address when it comes back, could be modified to calibrate to the number of regular meetings that there are if you thought it would be unfairly applied in the event that an additional number of regular meetings are applied.

Basically, I didn't get the clarification. So charter will stand. The charter will stand, not the policy.

For purposes of defining both the minimum number and the absences. And I thought your point, because I was extrapolating is in theory, if you have a policy that requires more regular meetings, then it's possible that missing five consecutive meetings is more likely because you've increased the number of regular meetings, but the charter would stand. Yeah, that standard would continue to apply unless, which is what I was suggesting, you might propose in this go round with the expectation you might be adding regular meetings that it now be calibrated to the number of regular meetings that you're held. You don't have to do that. I mean, five consecutive is a lot already, almost no matter how many regular meetings you have. And again, if you recall, it's five unexcused absences, right? So there's a fair amount of leeway and policy that can be made around that to avoid the charter standard turning into a gotcha just because you scheduled additional meetings. But it is a good point of something to be aware of as you go forward in making your policy and in connection with the charter update as well. But the charter, like, sorry, to your point, the real point I think you were trying to make and you wanted me to confirm is that, yes, the charter standard as it was drafted would apply and you couldn't modify that by policy. The city manager had a comment.

Oh, okay. Yeah, go ahead. We are not a full-time council and luckily we, I'm a business owner, self-employed basically, I can modify my schedule. So just for the people who cannot, like if we are scheduling a meeting from eight to five, like office hours basically, I would say the quorum should be two-third of the majority. If we are scheduling between that, that minimum two-third of the members should agree to that. I'll suggest that. Okay.

Any other questions? Otherwise I'll go to the public.

I have some questions. I will leave my comments. But there are a number of items that require, like it must be continued to a regular meeting. We could not continue items to a special meeting, for example. PB, Jorge Boone. : Up until recently, I had the idea that reconsiderations could only be done at a regular meeting, but I when I read the actual policy, it says or an intervening special meeting, so I realized that Oh, in some cases, some reconsiderations probably were not valid because people waited till regular meeting for that to happen. PB, Jorge Boone. : What are the. PB, Jorge Boone. : The. I mean, if we, what are the nuances in scheduling a special meeting versus a regular meeting when it comes to, I mean, there's a lot of things that need to be considered. I mean, reconsiderations, exceptions, continuance is only part of this, but I guess my question is, can we look into that? Because we need to know all the things that we're affecting. Anywhere that a special meeting is treated differently or anywhere that a regular meeting is specified, we must know all. of the effects that we are creating by saying that something is a special meeting versus regular meeting. And again, if we have five, three meetings per month, we can hit five regular meetings within a month and a week. I mean, that is quite possible. And a month and a week seems like a long time, but it's not really that long if you've got personal crisis, if something is coming up, which is why know, it would, if we did have three per meeting, it would actually go up to seven, but even seven meetings, um, that you could do remotely, um, you know, the number of absence that you could have is quite easily achievable in a very short amount of time. And I think we need to have consideration of that as well.

Okay. Um, any other questions? All right. I'm going to go to the public.

Thank you, Chair Jane, and thank you, council members, for participating here in the middle of the day on a Monday on the issues. In listening to the conversation, I just wanted to provide a couple comments from the public perspective. And that's that Senate Bill 707, when Senator DeRozan wrote that, the whole concept was to just allow for more participation. And my interpretation is that there is nothing that takes away I guess the role of council members. If you have regular meetings and then you've got your special meetings, the regular meetings are just kind of what happens on an ongoing basis, right? Your special meetings are things that are added on to it. So there can easily be excused absences for a special meeting, regardless of whether or not somebody is getting paid, regardless of whether it applies towards somebody not showing up. So we all know there's a political aspect to when you attend and when you don't attend meetings. And if somebody can't make a bunch of special meetings, well, you know, that can become political communication out there that has nothing to do with whether or not you're a legal member of the council. So my suggestion is this, and it's an agendized item. You could take this action right now. is for this group to refer to council to have a standing item on every regular meeting and every special meeting that does two things. You're going to have one that's going to be up on roll call, and that would be about excusing absences. Super easy, right? And then the other item is going to be somewhere in the agenda, scheduling of special meetings. Because my sense is that staff is, I just think it's crazy. They've got a poll for all of these special meetings. That should be in a really urgent situation when something comes up between regular meetings or even between special meetings that wasn't anticipated. Whereas if you've got that item up there, that allows, if the mayor wants to call something for a special meeting, the mayor says, listen, I want a special meeting. I'm suggesting it's this date. You work it out right then. If I could just have 15 seconds. And if it turns out it's not the mayor's thing, it's a majority of the rest of the council or just a few, okay, well, somebody then, because it's agendized, I make a motion that we have a special meeting to deal with this. I suggest the date of somebody's seconds, and then it's a majority, you get your four, well, then you negotiate your date and your time right then. And if that's a standing agenda item, 90% of what staff's now having to do with polling doesn't have to be done. And then the public knows. And my last little item is just in terms of the regular meetings, I like the idea that there's just two per month as regular because that becomes the foundation. layer on whatever else you want in terms of special meetings and let the council fight it out about whether you want to have public presentations or not. I mean, you know, I personally, I think two, two meetings a month where anybody can come and talk about anything I think is cool, but if you want more, that's fine. But I think anyway, thank you so much for letting me just provide the input. And I strongly encourage you because I know you're going to make a recommendation in just a few minutes, please include at least one of those items I just mentioned because they smooth things out.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

All right. Anyone online?

There are no hands raised online.

Okay. So we can create a recommendation. I know that the city attorney has some homework to do. Do we have a motion or a recommendation? Yeah, city manager.

Can I do a quick recap on what I think I've heard and where we are? We presented and talked about the policy before you, and I did not hear any major concerns with the policy. What I did hear was one, a discussion of making sure those special meetings look and feel more like regular meetings. Two, I've heard, we've heard in the concept of if they're, of having N plus one or contentious or significant, items with significant community engagement. And then three, we've heard of having if a meeting would be scheduled during the work hours from eight to five, having a two thirds majority approval needed to calendar. So those are the three verification slash changes that I've heard. So what I would proffer is that the committee talk about those, and if you're good with those, take an action on the policy that . Then we've had a number of conversations around, do the additional meetings be special meetings? Should they be regular meetings? What are the unintended consequences?

What are the benefits of those?

Part of that relates to additional research that the city attorney needs to do. Part of it may also involve a charter change. And then we also had a discussion around the methodology and calculation for absences that are excused for cause or for cause excusals. What I would proffer to the committee is because charter changes would be needed and there's a separate charter review process going on. And let me say before I say that, and there are also things about creating additional regular meetings that we haven't talked about today. One of which is scheduling. If we have two or if we have three, are they on Tuesdays? Does that conflict with planning commission meetings? this scheduling of actually this room we're in is sometimes our biggest constraint when scheduling those meetings. And so if they are regular meetings, how does that impact? But again, lots of discussions around that. So through the charter project, one of the things you could do is provide a recommendation and or counsel direction to, as the city attorney said, at a minimum, have a proposed change in the charter that would calibrate the calculation or the, or cause exemptions based on the number of regular meetings. That way, if the city, if the committee, then the city council wanted to add additional regular meetings, you could do that by policy versus the charter change, knowing that if you want to add additional regular meetings, it has to be on a ballot, which is every two years when council, I believe. And so, and it would also allow for potential flexibility, right? You may start with three regular meetings and then go to four. And so that would be my suggestion based on the conversation. Certainly the attorney, if you would like to opine on that.

Yeah, no, again, the whole charter project's coming back to you. There's a bunch of issues to talk about. This is a micro issue maybe in the grand scheme of things, particularly again, since that maybe the more important thing for the number of absences that might constitute loss of office, it's the definition of developing a policy of what actually constitutes an excused absence might be more important than the calibration. But either or both of those things, it was certainly possible as part of that larger discussion. And I did want to just acknowledge Member Park's observation. There are, you know, there potentially are ripple effects, right, to this as to what's a regular and what's a special meeting under current rules. Sometimes you can only do things at regular meetings. That's also a thing that's being brought up as part of the charter process that you'll be seeing pretty soon here. And there's also the current dynamic where with the current kind of decision that the council, with our agendas being so full of items, right? And a council decision needing to be made almost every meeting, it seems at midnight, hey, are we going to keep going? Or are we going to continue this? if in fact there was a meeting available and scheduled, you could adjourn your regular meeting to that meeting, at which point it would be a regular meeting, right? For all purposes, which may be good in some respects and not good in others, but certainly would give flexibility if in fact there was a limitation on your ability to take action at a regular meeting or a special meeting that next meeting would be a regular meeting you know for all purposes so sorry riffing a little bit there but to member park's point there there's there's and and including the reconsideration you know policy there are things to think about you know when we, when you are evaluating whether or not you just want to add regular meetings, right? As a matter of policy, because there's so much going on or whether or not you want to create some flexibility as currently being proposed and get some clarity on, you know, how you go about polling for, you know, and scheduling special meetings in order to fill the gaps. Either one, you know, can work and give you, you know, greater, you know, capacity. One gives you a little more certainty. One gives you, sorry, a little more, you know, flexibility. You know, in theory, you could schedule four meetings a month and cancel them. right, if you don't need them. But all of that needs to be part of the thought process. I think what the city manager is suggesting that the policy in front of you with some modifications works at least in the short term for purposes of allowing staff to understand the parameters around which you are comfortable scheduling special meetings, but further analysis going forward might be useful in deciding whether or not you may even wanna take the extra step and have your regular meetings schedule be modified either through the charter process or otherwise.

You manage did you have a comment yeah, I just excellent points I just want to also piggyback off a comment the city attorney made that connects an earlier comment that remember to Hall made around when we would cancel the special meetings and the policy envisions a week and ideally I said 2 weeks, but the point that the city attorney made which is if we're at a meeting and oftentimes we don't get through all of the items having not called off that special meeting for the following week allows us to say, okay, we're going to continue these meetings to the next meeting, special meeting that's already scheduled, right? Or continue the regular meeting. And so that may very well be a reason why we wait to not call off that special meeting until a week in advance.

I have some comments.

Are there any other comments? I'll wait.

Okay, so we have this thing called the tickler that we use internally and we have the TMAC and it becomes really problematic to the public to know what's going to be on an agenda. So I think we need to be pretty, we need to just plan better to make sure that the public knows more than a week in advance if something's gonna be potentially on the agenda. Anything can be continued by the council at the last minute. And so I just wanna, staff is already basically working to this proposal here right now in terms of polling. And I think Nora has already scheduled four meetings a month for the rest of the year after August, right? So we're kind of working off of this policy. I imagine that staff knows our intent and we can make a recommendation at this time, knowing that staff will then fill in the gaps when it comes forward to the council. So that's sort of how I'm operating here. I just wanted to make a comment. I really like knowing well in advance when my meetings are gonna be. So when we do the calendar for next year, 2027, we should have at least three meetings on the calendar. So that three meetings a month on the calendar. just makes life easier for staff to not have to pull for those meetings. And it makes it easier for us to put stuff on the tickler. You will know that that meeting's happening and then you can do the TMAC and the tickler with more certainty. So those are my comments. Any other comments?

Quite a few. So TMAC used to be an item at the end of council meetings. Like I remember when the TMAC used to be discussed at the end of meetings and it was removed at some point, but this is how we knew that things were coming up. Um, I would kind of like to see that back again, but I mean, you will clearly see in past agendas, we did have a space for the TMAC. Um, I have the idea and I'm listening to the public input, but I have the idea that special meetings should be special, right? If we're using special meetings for regular business, that kind of is just a work around, right? And I think that that work around implies that there is not a problem. I think that using special meetings for regular business is the definition of we've got a problem and everyone should know this. I mean, I come from AeroAstro and we have one, Basic tenant, broken things should look broken so that people don't accidentally think that they're working. And that's how I look at things. When I think about N plus one, N plus one is a preference. It's not a requirement. I mean, at the last meeting, we had the mayor blame a single member for a delay of a council meeting. because of lack of quorum. And I will remind everyone that lack of quorum is not the fault of any single member of anybody, unless maybe you only have three members or two. There is no situation in which there should be blame assigned to any single member. And when this happens, it kind of, you know, layers icing on top of a problem of a very, very bad cake. And we should know that these kinds of things are not true. And again, I'm very against making the requirement for quorum different. Quorum is the definition for how many members are required to have a meeting. If we do a quorum check, then we have four members and items where five votes are required are moved to another meeting, that's fine. We've had a request that we do something formal like in planning commission, where if there are exactly the number of members required for a vote that we automatically continue an item. I'm going to say that perhaps we let applicants and council members know when we have the exact number so that they can request continuances. But to mandate that we have N plus one or to mandate that we automatically continue an item because of that, I don't think that's good policy. I mean, is that something that's convenient? It is convenient from a specific point of view. If you're only trying to optimize one aspect, then you're right. Anything looks good. But when you look at the world of possibilities of what could happen, I believe that changing the definition of quorum to allow a meeting to happen or not happen. I think that's a very bad thing. Again, we heard items about special meetings requested by council, majority of council, working through executive staff. Well, I recall the issues with some of the special meetings that we have called in the last five years very clearly. In fact, I have notes on them. And in cases where the special meetings deal with executive staff, it's very difficult to work with executive staff on a special meeting that requires, you know, that talks about executive staff. That's the number one thing. The second thing is I believe the exemption on Brown act for scheduling of meetings. I believe that that addresses the problem without having to do anything else. But that was the one thing that when I asked for clarity, um, I'm not going to say that we were lied to, but I will say that we were not given really good feedback by the then executive staff on what we could do there. And I kind of feel that council was railroaded into doing specific things because the feedback that we were given was not very good. But to change things because we want to make them more explicit, I mean, we have a joke, which is if it's too explicit, it's pornography. And I think at some point we need to make sure that things are explicit enough without constraining too many things. I understand that engineers and other people that like schedules, rigid schedules, would like to constrain things as much as possible, but over-constraining problems also creates more problems. And we need to consider, we need to have an understanding of what the changes would be before we simply decide to allow executive staff or staff change them. At this point, I cannot be supportive of any recommendation going directly to council without knowing the answers to some of the issues that we've brought up. My motion will be to continue this item until we get the answers that we've requested in this meeting. I think that to simply allow executive staff who has often changed the nature of governance and ethics recommendations to full city council, to simply allow that to happen again, I think is very dangerous. And I will not be supportive of that. Again, I know that I'm a minority member, but I would really like the other members of this committee to consider going forward with a very loose recommendation without having the answers with an idea of this is what i'd like without knowing what the consequences of those ideas would be but my motion would be to continue this to another meeting where we can get the answers we can talk about the issues with more detail and then come up with a recommendation but the recommendation i cannot i cannot come up with one today that's my motion is there a second

Yes, can I ask a clarifying question? Committee member Park, what are the questions if you want to elaborate which are pending?

Oh, I mean, we haven't discussed what makes a meeting special. We haven't considered what, you know, if we just make a special meeting a regular meeting, what are the consequences of that? um there are so many so many specific things that we need to know i don't like making special meetings exactly like regular meetings because again then we can just treat them interchangeably and i think that special meetings should be at some point special the fact that we had a special order of business at a special meeting i don't think that should have happened and yet it did happen I mean, these are the kinds of things, like if we want to change it, we should have very specific reasons for changing that. But the real reason that we did these things is, you know, the problem that we're trying to work around, which is we don't have enough regular meetings for the business of the city. And rather than work around that, I think that we should admit that and deal with that directly.

So as regards the special meeting, we are not changing the calendar this year, right? The calendar will be changed next year. And today's, I think agenda was only for the special meeting scheduling. So I think your clarification for special meeting versus a regular meeting adding to the calendar, that is not on the agenda today as per my understanding. So what we are deciding today is scheduling policy for the special meeting. Because I understand if you have some questions, but if those questions have been answered, I think we should move forward. I think that's clarified that we are only talking about the special meeting scheduling policy.

We don't even know what the ramifications are of the special meetings versus regular meetings. We don't know what that is. We don't know what we don't know these kinds of things. And at some point, I'd like to know that before we simply make a change to the special meetings. Again, what I've asked for, what I've stated before, it's absolutely true. Special meetings should be special. If we are trying to make special meetings to support the fact that we've got a lot of regular meeting items that we need to address, then I'm not in support of this change.

Oh, so you're saying that special meetings should not support the regular agenda items?

Special meetings should be special. That is my contention. And at some point, how special they should be and what ramifications special meetings have you know, by being considered regular meetings or, or being considered special meetings. I think that those should be, those should be well-known by this committee before we proffer a recommendation.

If I can, the core of the proposed policy is really just process for scheduling special meetings. It doesn't change the type of special meetings we have or what's in them. And so there were discussions around potentially adding things to the policy, a two thirds majority for anything scheduled during work hours, ensuring that there was one additional council member before a quorum plus one and adding things such as public presentations to special meetings. The committee could, as committee member Park suggested, not take any action. You could also take action on the core proposal, which doesn't change the nature of special meetings. It's literally just a process. I will say, as I said before, staff has already started to implement the process because the process was actually developed because of a number of challenges we were having and concerns raised by council members. And so it has provided a structure as well as a documentation process because we have council members ask, well, why was this date picked over that date? I couldn't make that date, but yet you picked it. And so it does provide formalization and documentation of that as a city manager would be my intention to continue to keep that whether council adopted this policy or when it changes to it later, because it is been very beneficial operational.

So I had some comments. First is on planning commission. If you need four votes and there's four commissioners there, it's not that, the item is automatically rescheduled. If the applicant or a development requests it, they get an automatic grant of postponing that item. And the reason why I was asking for the N plus one for the special meetings is because these are scheduled specially. It's more likely that you're not gonna get a quorum or to meet quorum for a lot of dates. If you've scheduled something a year in advance, it's very likely that all the council members will have made that a priority and that you'll get seven council members there. But if you're scheduling a special meeting one or two weeks in advance, it's highly unlikely you're gonna get a lot of people. And that puts a lot of items at jeopardy of passing because you need to have four out of four votes for those items. So that's why for special meetings, I was asking for N plus one, not for regular council meetings. I mean, we're not gonna council regular council meetings if we only get four council members there. But for special meetings, I was asking for N plus one. I am going to pretty much insist that special meetings have public presentation time. So special meetings will not be traditional special meetings. So it makes it complicated. I will not be seconding that. We have continued items meeting after meeting, and we won't really be able to have a robust discussion of number three, item number three. So I will not be supporting the motion to continue.

Comment. Like member part again, the issue is regular meetings. I mean, do we really, why are we, we agendize special meetings prior to looking at a regular meetings is kind of a question to me. I almost feel like, um, the time for this committee for this particular committee is being wasted, but I mean, all the issues that we are discussing are really problems with scheduling regular meetings. And all of the things that without addressing those, just simply have a loose tack on policy for special meetings and make those changes first, don't make any sense to me. I think that this will affect the way that we look at regular meetings because the comment will come up, well, that's addressed with special meetings. Again, at some point, the special meetings, special meetings should be special. There should be a reason that we have special meetings. But by saying that, well, we want to address this, we got a short-term need and we're gonna make the short-term need and we're gonna put a policy behind it. That doesn't make any sense to me. I understand the urgency of some of the members of this committee, but that urgency is a false urgency. I'm waiting for them to continue their comments because I wanna make sure that they hear this. They're the people that are gonna make the recommendations.

Okay, to the attorney or manager, did you have any comments?

No additional comments, only to say the proposed policy before you does not address having additional regular meetings. Understand that that has been brought up through the discussion and as a desire, as we've talked about, there are a whole host of additional things that need to be talked about and it necessitates probably several conversations with this body before going to the city council. Totally understand that. I also do not disagree with Council Member Parks statements about special meetings being special and regular meeting and the potential need for additional regular meeting. I will say we are where we are, right? We are where we are in that the city's current process and the charter calls for at least two regular meetings. The city's historic practice is having two regular meetings and that's what's been adopted. So by necessity to get the business of the city done, we have been scheduling special meetings and we have created a process by which we hold for and schedule those special meetings that has been beneficial. And I think the committee has articulated, you know, not disagreement with the core parts of that process. What I hear council member park articulating is really wanting to have that discussion about having more regular meetings and potentially not even wanting to develop this policy because of a good point that broken things should look broken.

I don't disagree with any of that.

I just wanted to really made a bright line between the core functions of the proposed policy, which is process around what we're doing now versus the discussion we're having. And I think the city attorney has additional comment.

Yeah, I agree with that. the sidebar that we are having, Member Park, which we always have only in response to things that are being said in an attempt to figure out how to respond to those. So those are necessary and normal part of our hearing you. So I hope you appreciate that. The conversation we were having was around the importance of, and I think a lot of you have touched on it, if we're going to be scheduling meetings in order to handle regular city business, right, because we have so much, how do we make those look and feel like regular meetings and function, you know, like regular meetings? Because they're not a traditional special meeting. Oh, someone's thing came up, right? And so we have to address that thing. Instead, this is We've just got a very large volume of business and there is value in having meetings be regular, both for advanced noticing purposes, for public participation purposes, including public presentations, and expanding the number of things that you can do, right? Because there are some limitations, mostly what comes to me is adoption of ordinances, right? That can only happen under our existing charter at regular meetings. And so how do you create a regular One of the ways that you create a regular meeting that could be in addition to what the city manager is talking about, which is the process for getting these meetings that weren't put on the schedule right at the very beginning of the year is to, if in fact a number of them have been scheduled, have the city council adopt a resolution that says for the rest of the year, we've got these meetings that are going to be treated as regular meetings. And that's how you create a regular meeting, right? And is one of the distinctions between a regular and a special meeting. A special meeting is usually something that comes up in the flow, right? That there is a process for because everybody's reacting to an issue. And a regular meeting, right, is something that you've got scheduled in due course. And so I think consistent with what the city manager is proposing, which is process. we could evaluate and discuss and potentially bring back to the council, if we know there's gonna be a need, right, for a certain number of meetings, adopt a resolution and have the council in effect, remend its regular meeting schedule, you know, for the remainder of the year or for a segment, you know, of time to say, we're adding, you know, these regular meetings during this busy cycle. So that's just a thought that kind of round out, you know, what the kinds of discussions that you're having that I'm hearing and I'm looking to the city manager to make sure I haven't run a foul of anything you had in mind. I don't think so.

No, I totally agree with that. But I think that discussion is truly a separate discussion because it links back to the number of things we talked about tonight, which is by increasing for today, which is by increasing the number of regular meetings. What unintended consequences are there? What are the implications? and how the charter may change to make sure there's alignment with how a certain absence are calculated. And so it's absolutely right.

Through the chair. Yes. If I may just add a comment, I've been enjoyed listening to this discussion and just from my perspective, because I am at those meetings with you and I hear what you're saying, I hear your concerns and your comments and to, the committee member Park's point that special meetings should be special. I think these meetings City Manager Jovan is proposing is for those special closed session meetings, we have to take into consideration consultants and outside legal. And so having these dates would help when we're scheduling those, as well as special study sessions, new projects coming up, things that you need to be informed. And sometimes we don't have the time on a regular meeting. I think we could throw in my one annual special meeting for our process for interviews for the boards and commissions. That's a special meeting as well. You know, we have an upcoming June 15th special meeting and that's for the charter review update. That's been a project that's been ongoing for the past few months. So. just to understand that that's what those meetings are for. I think that this last special meeting that occurred, I think was a one-off because that is not normally what is done where we carry over regular business on a special meeting. However, we do need to really realize that we are at the end of our fiscal year. We have had budget. We've had many study sessions on budget. We've got some items that are coming. And we've had contentious items that has had a number of items that have been robust discussion needing to continue and bring back. And so that's taken up some of the council's time. But I think when we look back, we are pretty much sticking to the regular meetings. with all the city business, right? And our special meetings has been more for those closed session meetings, sometimes things that are unforeseen that our city manager and attorney need to have. And so with those meetings being put on the calendar would maybe ease having to pull you, call you, text you. And so that's just my perspective and my comment to you all.

Thank you. Yeah, I really liked the idea of sort of amending the calendar to make the balance of the year, just regular meetings. And I totally get the point of a special meeting should be special with no public presentation, because if you're doing boards and commissions and somebody, you have a hundred people in the room on public presentation, you're never gonna get to the board and commission interviews. So I understand why special meetings don't allow for public presentation, but these meetings are not gonna be really special meetings. These are gonna be regular meetings, the ones that have been scheduled every week for the rest of the year. So I like the idea of turning those into regular meetings and then as needed, add special meetings for specific issues that we don't want public presentation because it'll sidetrack from the point of those special meetings.

And we were sidebarring on that too. I think to put your point in context is where we're scheduling, where we're going through a special process to schedule a meeting that has a bunch of items on it that's not the traditional special meeting that the city clerk's talking about, then what you're saying is, that ought to have public presentations on it. But if it's a true special meeting and there's reasons not to have public presentations, you're still okay with it proceeding in accordance with their traditional rule. Yes, absolutely.

Okay, any other comments?

Member Chahal. Quick one. So I did write that comment, like we should have a regular meeting calendar update for the rest of the calendar year. So I think that come up by the... executive staff as well as you. So I think that's the solution. I agree with Councilman Park's contention that these are sort of a regular meetings. So I think for the rest of the six months, the rest of the year, I would suggest the staff to bring the resolution and amend our existing calendar to add another additional regular meeting into the calendar. And because the topic we are talking today is how we schedule a special meeting basically.

And there are certain things which have been taken care of, equal treatment.

All council members are equally treated. Earliest date tiebreaker, like if, oh, that date suited somebody, so you pick that. Now we define that earliest tiebreaker date, basically. So I think we should move forward with this special meeting and resolve the regular meeting concept separately. Like, as we mentioned, like, staff can bring the resolution for the rest and next year of course staff can add more number of meeting and uh charter does say minimum two as of now but we amend the charter in november if it happens that's a different issue but as of now we have two regular meetings minimum we can add more so we can bring more meetings regular meetings into the calendar and go ahead with the process of scheduling the special meetings. I know Council Member Park had some.

Okay, Member Park.

So I think, I mean, if the resolution is to make more regular meetings for the rest of the year, I mean, that's a very different thing. I don't know by the way that this is agendized that we can do that. If we can, that I would be all for.

It'd be more of a referral, Member Park, than it would be an action.

That's correct. And that's my problem with this, which is, I mean, we need to make the actual policy work before we simply change the special meeting policy to try to put a bandage fix on this. This is a very bad way to do it. PB, Jorge Boone. : that's why I feel that this was it was a an error to bring up the special meeting process without addressing what the actual problem is. PB, Jorge Boone. : And again, if we could have made resolutions make more regular meetings for the rest of the year. PB, Jorge Boone. : I have that in my notes and i've had this in my notes that i've been pushing down, but I mean when I look at this i've been looking at this, I don't know that that's an action that we can take here. but to state that we're gonna make all these other changes without understanding what the meeting schedule will be, N plus one, without understanding what the ramifications of N plus one are, you know, without knowing how we're gonna make the actual policy work, simply making changes to the proposed policy with these changes doesn't make any sense to me. Again, if I could change this to referral to come back with how we make, a resolution to make more regular meetings for the rest of the year, I will 100% support that. But to make changes that seem nice because of the problem that have been put before us without discussing what the actual fix should be, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I think that that's put here because of expediency. Maybe there's a sunk cost fallacy where we spend so much time talking about this that this committee wants to vote on something, but this is not the right thing to vote on. At some point, I will make the referral to bring back how we can make a resolution to make more meetings, regular meetings for the rest of the year, but to make changes to special meetings based on the discussions here, I don't even think that these are discussions that we should have been having.

Okay, there is actually a motion on the floor. I think, did it die for lack of second?

Are you talking about my motion or Charles?

Yeah, your motion.

My motion died for lack of second.

unless somebody wants a second okay so so why don't we do that i i would suggest something i'm not sure when our next meeting is we already had a detailed discussion about this thing i think this item has been discussed bearing some minor questions for councilman park and subject to directing staff about which we cannot do today because it's not on the agenda, that rest of the year calendar should be amended to add regular meetings to the city council calendar. If you bring that, both these items in the next meeting, I think we can act on that at that time. Is that okay, Councilor Park? The motion would be continue this item, scheduling of special meeting scheduling policy and direct staff to bring this item as well as amending the rest of the year calendar by adding another regular meeting to the calendar. So that- You're saying bring it to here or to- No, if we want to, because- Because that was- That was Member Park's motion was to bring it back to here.

So my question is, do you want to bring it back to here or you want to bring it back to here?

Bring it back here so that we can- refer to the council both these things at the same time. And Councillor Park wants that those things should be clarified. And that's what I'm saying. Bring both the things over here to the back to the committee, and we can refer to the whole council, both items at the same time. Is that okay, Councillor Park?

And I accept that. I mean, I am very uncomfortable with making a recommendation to council when I don't even know what the details of the recommendation is. Okay, yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Bring it back over here in the next meeting, in the next governance meeting. Okay. The city manager had a comment.

I think it's important to have a discussion. If you're directing something for the next meeting, have an understanding of the staff's workload and what it would take to do that. There are a number of questions. Hi. There are a number of items that have been discussed tonight that will require additional research, right? The city attorney has mentioned one. We've talked about taking a look at our other rules to see what items can be brought back to regular meetings versus special meetings. We've also talked about implications to the city charter project. Sitting here right now, I don't know that all of that work can be done to bring you a full complimented analysis at your next meeting. I also want to articulate that the policy before you talks about process, right? What's been talked about is changing the number of regular meetings. Now we can conceivably do that and not answer all of the questions that have been raised, but I don't know that the committee wants to do that because what I've heard articulated today is you want answers to the unintended consequences, the impact on the charter that will take some time to analyze and bring back. We have a number of other things going on, including the charter process that may not mean that we can't bring you back all of the analysis for action at your next meeting. I also want to say with respect to having more regular meetings for the balance of this year, potentially having one will work, which is council member Jahal, what I heard you articulated. I just want to make sure that there's not an expectation that all of the additional meetings would be regular meetings through the fiscal year, because as a city assistant city clerk articulated, some of those we may use for interviews, we may use for truly special purpose items. And so if it's adding one as a regular meeting, I think we can do that, but we would need to really go through the calendar and ensure. I'll turn it over to the city attorney who appears to be grabbing his mic.

No, I appreciate that. I think the request you're making is consistent with your recommendation, which is at least take action. process aspect of it with all the rest of it coming back in due course.

Can I offer a possibility here? What if staff were to amend this policy that is presented to us and answer the questions? You know how we have... in our regular city council meetings, we have responses to council questions and those could just be the modified policy and answers to questions could be emailed to us so that we could see those in advance of the next meeting if we are going to continue this to another meeting. That would potentially save some time in our next meeting.

The only thing that's in front of me, although there's actually a few things we might need to talk about is the analysis of the remote participation issue or that's the primary thing that's in front of me. I don't think there's gonna be a clear answer on that based upon my preliminary research. The more likely than not what I will need to advise you is that pending some case or input from the attorney general's office kind of interpreting that we should probably, well, I can make an argument that special meetings aren't governed. You should probably to be conservative, view remote participation at any meeting to count towards the limit that you have. Yeah, towards the limit.

I'm just, I'm trying to, it sounds like the sentiment is to bring this back, but I don't want to go through a full meeting the next time. I'm trying to figure out how we can get our answers ahead of that next meeting.

Chair Jane, looking at the city attorney and staff, what I also understood was there was a request to analyze all of the other actions that the city council takes by type and which of those have limitations either in state law or our local regulations around if it can be continued or heard at a regular special meeting and have that information inform your discussion. That's the piece that just sitting here right now, I don't know that we can do that by the time of your next meeting. And staff can remind me when the next meeting is on the calendar and city attorney.

It doesn't have to be the next meeting. It could be the meeting after the next meeting.

Totally. And I'm good with that. The initial request was for the next meeting.

And your next quarterly meeting is September 14th and then December 7th. You have two remaining.

With likely a special meeting because we're not going to be able to get to the next item.

Those are your regular scheduled meetings. Special meeting, talk about special meetings. Yeah, and more likely than not, the conclusion on, at least under existing law, of what the limitations on what can happen at a special meeting. The primary one is adoption of an ordinance. I think the more nuanced issue that Member Park was getting at is what are the ripple effects of having more regular meetings or more special meetings as opposed to regular meetings and how does that impact all of the various city policies? That's a meaningful lift to really look at that and answer that comprehensively. That's the one for me that's going to take some time.

a member part? So again, I was going to mention that this does not, the special meeting process or the special meeting answers don't have to be at the next meeting. In fact, I don't care if they ever come back if we cannot resolve the regular meetings issue. That's the first thing. Second thing is I understand, again, it seems like I do not want to make a change to a process if we don't know what the changes to the regular process would be first. I feel like we're putting the cart before the horse by saying, well, we're gonna have, we're gonna spend a lot of time on the filler without looking at the actual material we want to build the wall. This is not the way that process, good process should be done. I understand that there is a desire for efficiency and not to go through meetings, but again, Policy, public meetings, civic work is not about efficiency. It's about democracy, and it's about ensuring that we've got good outcomes. And if good outcomes require more discussion and robust discussions, that's exactly what we should have. The other question that I've brought up time and time again, which I guess I'll make this referral at the end of this, is we need more meetings of this committee. Like we talked about how many times the marketing and economics meeting has been, I mean, they're being done monthly with subcommittees. At some point, we need many more things to discuss here because the items that are being brought before us are not the items that are the priority. Again, to bring up special meeting policy and process prior to looking at the regular meeting policy and process or the schedule, that doesn't make any sense to me. Right. And again, the motion that we actually want to make is to amend the calendar for the rest of this year for regular meetings. That is not what's before us. I mean, at some point, I would really like to look at, you know, to amend what we do and have more meetings, scheduled meetings for this, the most canceled, the most delayed, the most deferred committee meeting. you know, outside of the marketing economics committee, which had a two year hiatus until city manager decided to put, you know, a lot of support monthly into monthly meetings for the marketing economics meeting. But again, you know, we are not putting the time into, I mean, how much time, how important is governance and ethics And if we're saying it's not as important as people are telling us, then by all means, keep the schedule. But I have been asking this entire year for how do we get a schedule that allows us to go through the work in front of just this committee? And we've been ignoring that too. But I guess I will ask for Council Member Chihal, your motion was continue this item, special meetings, direct staff to bring this item at a undetermined date, doesn't have to be the next meeting, but as soon as possible, amendment to the calendar for regular meetings. And I would like, you know, maybe it can't be done here, but I would like to look at the schedule for these meetings so that the next meeting that we look at is not the September meeting. Again, the question I ask is how important How important is governance and ethics to the city that we delay this meeting, we cancel this meeting, and we have one per quarter? But my amendment would be that, I mean, I didn't hear Council Member Chahal, Committee Member Chahal asking that this be brought back to the next meeting. I heard that it was.

You did, okay. I did say next meeting, but I'm open to bring it back as per convenience of the staff.

Yeah.

So my motion stands the same.

Okay, then my second stands. Accepting. But sorry, sorry. My second is predicated on, we just change it to, we change the, to a future meeting. Right. And my guidance would be, this is not part of the motion, but my guidance would be after we can take a look at changes we need to make to the regular meeting process, we should not be considering special meetings first over regular meetings. We should solve the problem of regular meetings first, before we start changing willy nilly the requirements or even the process for special meetings.

Okay. There is a motion and there's a second, city manager.

I just want to clarify for the record, I think committee member Park's statements around bringing forward changes to the special meeting process as inappropriate before we discuss the regular meeting process. Let me just say for the record, I understand that committee member Park and potentially other members of the committee or the council want more regular meetings that discussion can happen. I will say the process change came about because directly concerns that committee member Park made to myself and staff about how special meetings were being scheduled. And so we took a look at it and put in a process that I don't hear the committee disagreeing with. It's just, we would like to have more regular meetings before we formalize the process change that has occurred in council policy, because that's what you feel is the core issue. I don't disagree with that, right? I just want to be clear that we adjusted the practice because of concerns raised by committee member Park. And I think that has been beneficial to both staff. And I haven't heard disagreement about the core changes to the structure of how we schedule special meetings today.

So I'd like to respond to that. And I will go through all of my notes, all of the previous comments that I've made and the comments that I've made in public. They have never been about special meetings. They have always been about regular meetings, every single one. The fact that we're treating special meetings like regular meetings, that has been a concern. And to turn that around and tell me that the only issues that I brought up were about special meetings, which is why you brought up only special meetings, agendize that here, that makes no sense to me. I can go through Let me do a search. Actually, I can show you this.

Okay, I'll show you this.

But again, the issues that I brought up had nothing to do with special meetings. My concern was that we were using special meetings for regular meetings, but it has always been. I have been very consistent about this. But for you to say that you change things around to bring special meetings process first because of my input makes no sense to me whatsoever. I'd like to call the question.

Hey, we have a motion and a second. All right, all in favor, aye. Aye. Opposed, none. Passes unanimously. Okay, so now we have item number three. We're clearly not gonna get to this item. So we'll have to be pushed to another future meeting. Is there, I can do that, yeah. All right, we'll open this meeting, this item and we'll take public comment.

Thank you very much. This is the item where I showed up for originally for today. Chris Stample is Santa Clara. The comment I wanted to provide is with regard to kind of some of the difference that's in the current report. between whether a council member is requesting an item in writing versus requesting it up at the dais. It was not clear how they would request something from the dais. And so I wanted to suggest that a standard agenda item be added to the regular meeting agendas that includes requests for future council members. consideration for council item obviously separate from having a special meeting having a special item because it's it's unclear how somebody would do that without just interrupting and then you're making a motion but under what kind of agenda item where is it versus on here the other piece i wanted to um to request is that the language currently talks about whether an item should be added to a future agenda for consideration of whether it would then be scheduled as a substantive item to be considered. Following me, right? It's kind of currently this two-step process. And I think that rather than having it be in the next two meetings, which one of the sections says it's got to be within a couple of council meetings, the other one doesn't refer to it. Just simply have it say at the next regular meeting. To me, I think that gives the power to the council to clearly say, hey, any council member that wants to have an item considered, you can make your pitch and get a majority of council to go forward. You shouldn't have to wait because you're not talking about the content. You're just talking about whether or not it's going to go forward. And the current language allows it to get pushed out so far that, you know, to me, that I mean, I was frustrating when I served as an elected official. And it's like, I think that the council should have the power. So thank you very much.

um all right is there a motion to uh um i guess close public comment and then uh continue this item to the next uh just a quick moment i can make that motion actually uh to the comment from the i okay just a clarification the our regular agenda item already has reports of the members special committee and council member 030 request already in the agenda regular council agenda has that. Yeah. Right, yeah. That already is there just to fulfill your request. And I can say, close the public comment and continue this item for the next meeting.

Is there a second?

I have a question, which is if we close public comment, does that mean that when we discuss this, that there will be no public presentations? What does that mean?

Yeah, if I may, you don't need to close public comment. This isn't a formal public hearing. And so Member Park, that hopefully will address your issue. If this member of the public or any other member of the public wants to speak on this item, when it comes back on your agenda, they can do so.

Has he used his time?

I would leave that up to the presiding officer.

I'll give him, I would give him his time, but you know, again, but.

So we're going to, is there a motion to continue this item? Okay. Your second. All right all in favor aye. As is unanimously okay so now we move on to staff reports very staff reports. A are there any committee member reports or future referrals for consideration.

Yes.

Yes, Member Park.

So again, I guess we should make this all always very explicit, but I would like to talk about how we agendize more meetings for this committee. I think that we should have some talk about future items. We discussed that, but we didn't talk about anything past June and we're basically in June. But the referrals would be, schedule for the Governance and Ethics Committee. At some point, I would like to see how we make this monthly. At some point, I'd like to know how we can have this in a more public place to perhaps encourage public input like we do for the Marketing and Economics Committee. It doesn't have to be at the library, but I would like it to be, I'd like us to consider how we make this, we meet more often so that we can address the backlog of issues that we want to address. And I would like to ask how we can make this more public to potentially get more public input. So that's one referral. I think that, I don't know if we need a referral for regular meetings. I think that at some point we've got that with the previous item.

Okay, we can't discuss it because it's not agenda.

Not substantively, but you can, by consensus or formal vote, ask that that be added to a future agenda. Okay, I would like to add it to a future agenda. Okay. Noting consensus for purposes of agendizing that at a future meeting. All right, we're adjourned. Thank you.