Oversight Board Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay, 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 and also to lower your hand when you are finished speaking. Please unmute when called to speak and mute yourself when you are done speaking. If you are 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. and press star six if you are participating by phone to unmute. This is the call to order for the June 3rd meeting of the Charter Review Committee. Will staff please call the roll?

Holly Roberts.

Here.

Pat Nicolai.

Here.

Bernard Tanzi. Mohammad Naveed. John Brooks.

Here.

Joe Sisinski.

Here.

Eric Crutchlow. Burt Field.

Here.

Steve Kelly. Here. Lauren Diamond. Here. Eric Jensen.

Here.

Mark Beckman. Susan Peters. Here. Thank you.

Excellent. Okay, good evening. My name is Pat Nicolai, and I'm the chair of the Charter Review Committee. On behalf of the committee, welcome to today's meeting. At this time, please turn off or mute all electronic devices, including cell phones, that may interrupt this meeting. So we're going to start and get right into business and so the first item on business is staff presentation of the proposed final draft charter update and committee action on a recommendation to the city Council for presentation of some or all of the proposed charter updates to the voters at the November 2026 general election.

Thank you Mister chair and thank you for of not looking at the PowerPoint, which has an extra the in the title. Happy to be with you here today and moving a couple of slides ahead to present to you on really the end product of all the good work that this group did and took substantial action on already as you'll recall, at your May 20th and 27th meetings. But that all kind of gets packaged together here tonight for you to take your definitive action to advance the good work that this group did to the council now for council's consideration. For your benefit maybe in reminding you of the path here and certainly for the public's benefit, I wanted to step back first before we talked about the end work product and talk with you a little bit about how we got here. The charter project origins, as you'll recall, go back to, early 2025 when this idea for a comprehensive charter update was added to the Governance and Ethics Committee's work plan. The whole idea was in light of the fact that the current charter was originally adopted, at least this iteration of it back in 1951 over many years since then that the charter had become outdated and out of alignment with state laws and out of alignment with a city of this size certainly, and city practices and what had become to be believed to be best practices. Charter also had some overly technical lawyer language and enough ambiguity that from time to time when our office was asked to interpret it and apply it to various situations, it was difficult to interpret and apply in a consistent way. uh the other thought was that we've learned and talked about here was really the last comprehensive update that had been done to the charter was back in year 2000. that's a long time ago and while that was comprehensive in some respects it really wasn't that comprehensive it just touched on a few things kind of throughout the charter but wasn't really a wholesale look you know of a lot of the elements um of the charter The idea at the origins of this was again, to engage in a comprehensive review and update of the city charter to correct all these things, to correct mistakes, to clarify terms, to update policies and language, to align with current law and the city practices and best practices. The governance committee in light of all of those things thought this was a good idea and recommended the project to the city council in the summer of 2025. And the council thinking this was a good idea, directed staff to formulate a charter review committee to implement this project now commonly referred to as the charter project. The results of a pretty elaborate recruitment and selection process, which you'll all recall was a combination of six lottery picks and seven council nominations was approved by the city council on September 16th, 2025, along with a set of committee bylaws and the charter review commission, really committee was born. Next slide, please. I do want to restate this from the bylaws, because I think it's important. And you all did a really good job, I thought, throughout of being cognizant of this and tempering we're comparing a lot of the really good ideas and discussions that came up about a whole host of potential things and issues and additions to the charter, but aligned back to this stated purpose. This no charter project can be all things to all people, even a comprehensive charter update. And this language from the bylaws really captured it. The purpose of the CRC is to work with city staff with input from the community to facilitate the implementation of the charter project. Charter project involves a process for comprehensive review of the city charter to identify provisions in the charter that should be corrected, clarified or modified for the charter to be fully consistent with applicable state law aligned with current best practices for city operations and in general, easier to understand and apply. At the end of the process, the objective of the charter project is to produce a draft comprehensive charter amendment for presentation to the city council and if the city council so directs, possibly the voters at the November 2026 election. So that's the origin, that's the purpose. Next slide, please. The process now, which you're all, again, familiar with, maybe somewhat nostalgic about, as we think back to your first meeting in October. The process had a lot of elements to it that were really attempted to be well thought out, right? With really good input from this group on designing a process that got us here. Started with training on the structure and workings of city government and open government laws. There's a, pretty good diverse experience of this group with some with a lot of familiarity with the operations of local government in different capacities and aspects, but a number of you with no experience at all with this being your first experience and really the layman, even the informed layman doesn't really have a good understanding of what a charter is and the workings of city government. And if you're going to be asked to review that and tinker with that, it's a good idea to start with a good grounding in that. And of course, as this is a legislative body, with some of you, again, being on your first legislative body, training in open government laws was an important part of that. Another really integral part of the process was the creation of the ad hoc subcommittees, one for each of the six identified subject matter areas that we did the best we could with creating. There was overlap, you know, as we experienced as some of the sections got shuffled around, but in the end, I think they made sense. And the ad hoc subcommittees were crucial to the process really as the project's working groups. There was stakeholder input to the subcommittees as contemplated, including city's professional staff. And interestingly, and in a very robust manner, the identified charter boards and commissions, right? That provided input. And a number of them met a number of times in order to evaluate the provisions that affected them to make sure that their input was thought out and fully considered. Monthly report outs by each of the ad hoc subcommittees, of course, has been a familiar part in rhythm of this project with presentations to the full CRC on issues discussed, progress made, and for purposes of soliciting input from the CRC and the public. benchmarking with other similarly situated charter cities. There were 19 that we came up with, with those charters uploaded and available to staff, the CRC and the public on the city's website. If you remember, if I'm remembering correctly, the criteria for that was cities between 100,000 and 200,000 in population, some of our neighboring cities, cities with stadiums, cities with municipal utilities, And of course, given my recent experience and familiarity with a comprehensive charter update from my previous city Chula Vista, Chula Vista city charter was also included in that. So there are about 120 or so charter cities, 19 of those were curated by Ms. Reuter here mostly in thinking about that criteria based on feedback and those were looked at and available. There also you'll recall was the development of levels to characterize proposed changes with levels one and two, and potentially some level three changes to be included in the comprehensive recommendation and the possibility that one or more level three proposals could be standalone measures. The concept of level four measures was also created in order to capture really good ideas and maybe important ideas, but things that simply were too substantial and or too complicated to be included as part of this project and not aligned with the purpose. There are other project process and recommendation considerations that went into this. As you will recall, and we'll talk about a little bit later tonight, there were meet and confer obligations with labor groups with respect to changes to existing charter articles that could impact civil service rules for classified employees. So we'll talk about that a little bit. That was another process element of this. As you'll also recall, we had the April 7th check-in with the city council regarding project status. And because we were starting to get into some pretty significant reorganization rewrite, you know, aspects of this, as we got deeper into this to make sure that the council wouldn't be shocked when that, when that charter came back to them, not with little dabble, you know, changes here or there, but really substantial changes that really reorganized things, you know, and, um, and council accepted that report without comment or issue being presented. The other thing that was talked about a lot, both in the larger group and in some of the smaller group meetings, was what goes in front of the voters as a result of this, right? There's a 75-word ballot question. There's a 500-word impartial analysis. There's links to the actual charter. But what, if we're going to go through this whole process, are they going to see this process? massive underlying strikeout document and be completely confused and overwhelmed by, is that even a useful thing to present to the public? And the research that we put together concluded that no, that's not what needs to go in front of them. These other elements can go in front of them. Although very importantly, we don't want the voters to be uninformed. Those materials should and need to include a link to the various versions of the charter so that the voter who really wants to dig in can go to the city's website, look at the original charter, look at an underlying strike ad version of the charter, look at the clean version of the charter, and have there some frequently asked questions and other explanations and information to explain to them what's really going on. And so that was important to the group, particularly if we were gonna go down the path of making some massive changes. Another thing that was discussed was elections costs. Ideally, right, there's gonna be a comprehensive measure, but even that one measure itself will cost, we've estimated through the ROV between 250 and $300,000, right? It's not a small thing to put a matter, you know, before the voters on an election. And so if there was going to be potentially a separate measure, right, what's that gonna cost? And we're still getting some refined numbers on that, but, the current expectation is that could cost another $250,000, right? To put another measure, you know, on the ballot. So something that this group will want to think hard about. And of course the council spending the money we'll think hard about as well. And finally, one of the considerations is that people should recognize that there are after steps that were taken. If, if the, the, The project gets council support, it goes in the front of the voters and the voters support it. We're not done, right? There's a fair amount of implementation work to be done, particularly with the organization that will require all of the city documents and references to the charter that are currently included throughout the city code and throughout a number of city policies, all that needs to be looked at and updated. There are also a number of very substantive ordinances and policies that this charter now contemplates in order to implement its new terms, most notably the public works section, but other sections as well. So you're not done, this group might be done, but the city's not done with the work that this project contemplates. More work would need to be done in order to implement it all. Next slide, please. So finally, the results of all of that summarized on this slide is... really a lot of good work that one slide doesn't do justice to. Reorganization of the charter that consolidates 18 articles into nine and aggregate sections more logically by subject matter. I think we saw that when, We were able to produce the clean version of it and the side-by-side table of contents to see how much cleaner and how much better organized the charter now is with not little funny sections hidden on things that you wouldn't necessarily find or be aware of as much as possible, reorganized in a way that makes sense. There's also throughout, although some of this work is still ongoing and we need to keep scrubbing it as we go along before we get final, final, final on every word, implementation of a number of charter-wide conventions. These are listed here. Certainly adopting more modern article and section numbering system is helpful. Updating article and section titles added entitled subsections to better describe the contents of articles and sections and to facilitate document navigation. That's now been done throughout the document. Converting he, she references, which was modern at the time back in 2000 when it was only he, but to the more modern generic references to the position or title and where that's too clumsy or impossible that they reference, again, consistent with modern conventions. Using capitalized terms as defined terms. This is a major bugaboo for me. There's so many concepts in this charter that are intended to have meaning beyond the words that are used. But a lot of the times, just regular small cap references are made to those things. And the person who's looking at is left to figure out and understand and define what those words mean. When there were important words, that warranted definition, this charter now creates capitalized form definitions for that. Part of the scrubbing is still looking at all those to make sure we're using all the right terms and that's being used consistently, but that is a very important and useful aspect of this project. Deleting parentheticals at the end of most sections that provide section histories in favor of a matrix, that's still under construction to consolidate section histories in one place, including cross references to any city code section or policy that implements the charter is an important aspect of this. We still need to create that, but that's very much part of the project. And then I think I skipped one here, deleting, removing section titles and texts for previously deleted and reserved section, right? There's a lot of clutter in this charter and we're, pulling the clutter out in order for it to be clean and usable. Finally, of course, this bolded last paragraph, the real meat of the work, article by article and section by section modifications that modernize language, eliminate ambiguities, add explanations for government structure and process, right, where it really wasn't, didn't have that, filling in gaps where there are concepts that just simply aren't addressed. For example, what constitutes a vacancy, now fully defined, right, for reference for everybody. And again, aligning the charter with current state law and city's current and best practices. We saw a lot of this with the fiscal section, and the financing provisions that really had been dated and had gotten out of alignment with how things are financed and done. So I wanna refer to at some point without dragging you through a version of the presentations that you had on the 20th and the 27th, which were in great detail, I don't think you're expecting that or you need that. Again, I will talk about the underlined strikeout version and the annotations in it when we get to that slide. But these next few slides, there were a few things that we were assigned to do or that you said, hey, we're still debating these things, give us some information about this. And these next few slides get at those issues. As you know, one of the ones of greatest intrigue and interest to everyone is on this next slide, Section 202.3, the Chief of Police Powers and Duties. I'm happy to report to you that a light version of this is now supported by both the existing chief and the existing city manager, which does a number of really important things, even if it doesn't resolve every aspect of it. Number one, it includes adding clarity to the chief's role as the head of the police department. This was not in the charter before. It was in the municipal code, but municipal code can be changed by council people. You could argue that the charter suggested this was what the role might be, but it really didn't say so. where so many of the other positions clearly said, right, that those positions were heads of things. And so that idea is drafted. You saw it in your previous draft. It remains in at least staff's recommendation to you on how you might proceed. The chief and the city manager also are supportive of language that you also saw in your May 27th draft that kept the existing list of duties and obligations intact, but added to that a duty of the chief to update and advise the city council and the city manager on matters relating to public safety and law enforcement, right? It's an important role that goes two directions. It's managing the police department and making sure all that work's done correctly, but it also needs to be the professional advisor, right? Because these things have impacts on what the city manager does and what on the city council does. And so there's that connectivity that was added there. The existing chief looked at that and said, hey, I have to have discretion as to how I go about doing that. And so the proposed final version, which isn't in the draft that was circulated, but that I would recommend be included, is that there be the clarifying provision there that this shall be done, you know, in the professional discretion of the chief of police and not just because someone demands, you know, that of them. again, professionalizing, making it clear in the charter that this is a professional position. And then in the end, both parties agree that adding charter language to resolve any ambiguity over appointment and discipline authority is not necessary at this time. And they don't want that to be a distraction from the benefits of the charter project generally. There is a understanding about how those things work. In my ideal world, there was articulation to that included in the charter. The dynamics of that currently are left to the good relationships between professional people. And without the ability to come up with some really refined all party agreed version of that, both parties thought, hey, these changes by themselves are great. don't have to solve every problem with this project. Let's not let a sensitive matter distract from the overall project. And so that's where they ended up. That doesn't mean that's where you all need to end up. But I know there was sensitivity on this issue given the stakeholders and folks involved.

Wasn't level three and four the intended resolution to those things?

This is potentially a level three issue. Yeah, and we can talk about that when we get to it. An option for you is to not change anything at all, right, in this, if there's too much angst and, you know, an upset and potential sensitivity and intrigue around it, right? Not certain people might... think this doesn't go far enough. Other people might think it goes too far. If that ends up being kind of the tenor of the council or the community about this, again, no changes can be made or this could be identified as a level three item that the council may consider after things we'll talk about when we get to the recommendation part as a standalone measure. And again, if the recommendation is to do nothing or they decided to do nothing, then it is by definition, right? Level four, you know, something that you might need to be studied and looked at, you know, more deeply. The next section is minor, but something I wanted to bring to your attention because the elected city clerk's been really good about monitoring this and as the folks on the groups that he presented to know, really giving his good thoughts and perspective on the appropriate role for the elected city clerk. And in hearing the description of the updated language that allocates duties between the city clerk and the assistant city clerk, he observed that there was some concern about language, where the assistant city clerk was authorized to act in the absence of the city clerk. He thought that language was a little cavalier about what absence might mean, right? If he's not there some afternoon, because the assistant city clerk get to do something and it wasn't intended to mean that. So he asked that some additional clarifying language be added to that. This is the language that I came up with in discussions with both him and the assistant city clerk that they're supportive of. And so now, instead of saying in the absence of the city clerk, it says in the event of a vacancy in the city clerk's office, the city clerk's extended absence or an urgent necessity where the city clerk is unavailable to act, then the, and again, this fits into the grammar and structure of the provision itself, then the assistant city clerk can take action with respect to the elected city clerk's duties with respect to all of these things. And so I thought it was a good observation that was solved with language. And so if you decide to proceed with this, my recommendation would be to include this amendment as part of your recommendation. There was another issue That was, are we okay on tech? Okay. There was another issue that was presented that was a potentially controversial proposal from the planning commission that the group, COB, Dan Burke. : For nonetheless thought appropriate right to tender to the larger group for the consideration, and that was the planning commission's desire for a provision and language that. COB, Dan Burke. : assured that the City Council would be obligated to give them deference when the City Council was hearing appeals of planning Commission, you know determinations. And even a step further, a proposal that if the city council was going to act in any manner inconsistent with what the planning commission had decided on an appeal, they would need to act with a super majority of the city council. There was reasonable concern, I think, from a number of you about how this would be perceived by the council as an encroachment on their, the discretion. Normally things are heard by the council, what's called de novo, which means they get to look at it new and fresh. And of course, look at what the planning commission did as part of their record of their proceedings, but ultimately be able to decide in their sole discretion by a normal vote, right? What they think about what that underlying recommendation was. But the Planning Commission felt strongly that they thought they should give some extra deference. The discussion went to a thought that hey, maybe that's too much. Maybe that if the planning commission had the authority to designate a planning commission representative to go in front of the council when a matter was appealed and in effect state the case of the planning commission and advocate for their position, that that could ameliorate the need for this type of provision. We discussed this matter internally, because I had indicated, as you may recall at that meeting, I thought that is something that the planning commission could do. And member Crutchlow, the chair of the planning commission was remembering advice that he might've been given to the contrary. But I talked through this matter with Xander Abbey, my staff person assigned to the planning commission, and he agreed with me. There is potential issues with planning commissioners communicating CoB, Gerrit Slatter. outside the context of the planning Commission on what they want some designated representative to say. CoB, Gerrit Slatter. And if a designated representative isn't officially designated they are supposed to identify themselves, not as a representative of the planning Commission right, but as an individual person, but none of that suggests that. planning commission couldn't currently without any need for any amendment to anything, let alone the charter, couldn't actually designate a planning commission representative. And I think the thought that I remember of the consensus of the group, if that was the case, a softening of this provision was possible, including potentially the deletion of the provision that called for the supermajority vote. So I am sharing with you and confirming from you that in fact, that is the legal capacity that the planning commission might have, and you may wish to consider now some modification to that language at a minimum per member Kresslow's suggestion deleting the concept of a supermajority vote. This next slide.

Can I ask a question about that one?

Sure, of course.

Is there anything particular about the Planning Commission which makes that unique? In other words, should this be applied to other commissions as well?

Yeah, good question. I think the planning commission is unique because it is one of the few boards and commissions that actually has final decision-making authority with respect to decisions. But in many cases, if not most cases, their final decision-making authority can be appealed to the full city council. The civil service commission has final decision-making authority, but can any of their decisions be appealed to the city council or are all those absolutely final?

When the Civil Service Commission is acting in its judicatory capacity as the Board of Review, When the civil service commission is acting in its adjudicatory capacity as a board of review or disciplinary appeals and things of that nature, their decisions are not appealable to the city council. They are appealable to the superior court. However, final decisions of the civil service commission relating to other transactional matters generally are not the sort of final, final decision on a matter. They are sort of a step one in a process that culminates with the city council. So if for whatever reason, the civil service commission chooses not to pass a transactional matter, it would not proceed to city council for approval. There wouldn't be sort of an appeal avenue to the city council there.

So different, right? And planning commission really being the group that has this as a phenomenon and a dynamic on a regular enough basis, they obviously cared enough to make this suggestion. So next slide with Sue talking a little bit on this one, I'm going to turn over to Sue. I don't think you've seen this slide, but I think it accurately reflects where we're at and you can add whatever, use the slide as you see fit or ignore it and present more accurately kind of where we're at with things. It's not bad.

No, that's not bad. Yeah, I can channel you. All right. So as I mentioned at the last meeting, there was a robust meet and confer process over the last several months with the various unions, many, many meetings. um with all the unions some with individual unions addressing um their each of them have sort of uh unique concerns right because their membership is made up of folks who do a variety of different um roles within the city and so they have different concerns and different um uh areas that that they focus on um so we spent a great deal of time sort of explaining these things uh all the different parts of uh the three the three articles that are covered by group five uh and While a great deal of progress was made over the course of these discussions, whereby we proposed a lot of different language to address their concerns, we are still sort of in the position where we do not have assent from any of the bargaining units to any of the language that was proposed under Group 5. And so given the timing constraints that we're working under, there just won't be an opportunity to reach that consensus with the unions before this has to go to council for their approval. And so, like I said last week, there was gonna be a high likelihood that the recommendation was going to be not to proceed with the proposed red lines to these sections, because this is definitely an area in which if we propose changes without the assent of the unions, it would be, I think very clearly in a category four situation where the results of going forward without that assent could create such a problem that it would negatively impact the success of the project as a whole. Not to mention the fact that there would be potentially other legal issues that the city would face in the event that we did move forward without a successful meet and confer process in the interim. So for all of those reasons, the recommendation for these particular sections is to proceed forward without incorporating the red lines that we had.

Very good, thank you.

can i just make one one of course i just want to say and call out that the subcommittee members for group five did so much hard work they really really did early on you met early you met often um and you you really did a great job and provided a good faith thoughtful product for the start of Meet and Confer. And it's, you know, from my perspective, it's unfortunate that we don't have the fruits of those labors to present to the city council or to the world. But I think, you know, to the extent anybody's listening or will listen, I do wanna give kudos to the subcommittee for doing all of that, you know, even though it didn't end up where we had hoped it would.

Appreciate that. And there may be a little bit of a nuance to the action that you might take here that Sue will be hearing for the first time from me and can react to when we get to the formal recommendation. But want to get through one last issue before we go to the, at least a discussion of the updated charter document that's in front of you, again, not in gruesome detail, but at least to describe to you and to the public what was made available to you in the public. There was one last issue I didn't put a slide up on, but that the group asked me to take a look at, and that was the language, regarding financing of interests in nuclear facilities. There was discussion that said, well, what's wrong with that? Why can't we do that? Nuclear may be a thing right now that's safer and more common. This isn't talking about building a nuclear power plant in Santa Clara. It's talking about financing interests in nuclear power plants. And it is entirely theoretically possible that at some point in the future, Silicon Valley Power might want to not build a nuclear power plant, but purchase nuclear power that's being generated as part of its mix of power. the thought was, boy, this is the joke, maybe a radioactive provision from the public's standpoint, even if that makes sense to a lot of people who don't have that same visceral reaction to the idea of nuclear power. But it's probably, It's only worth tinkering with this if this is some real impediment and some imminent need, right, for SVP in order to provide power. Are we solving, if we are solving a real problem, maybe we look at it, but if it's a theoretical problem, it's not worth it. I had conversations with both the director of SVP and general counsel for the SVP for my office, and their opinion was, This is something potentially we might wanna do, but it probably would only be in a power purchase agreement context and it wouldn't be financed. We wouldn't need to finance that type of agreement. of engagement with nuclear energy. And so there wasn't a particular thing that they thought needed to be accomplished with revising this and their recommendation was to just leave it alone. And so I wanted to share that back with you. I think that was the instinct of the group. It's confirmed now at your request through conversations with SVP folks, they view it the same way. Finally, perfect timing. Next slide. Wow, you're good. Okay, presentation of the updated charter distributed to the CRC and the public for this item. The latest version of the charter project updated document was distributed to you and uploaded over the weekend to be available to the public.

When do we think, was it Saturday or Sunday?

Saturday, right? Saturday afternoon. We didn't quite have it ready for the Friday posting, but it was available, distributed to you and concurrently made available to the public on Saturday afternoon. There really weren't substantive changes or intended to be. The version was substantially the same as the version that was presented to you on May 27th with some important differences. Um, what's new were the annotations, right? That some of you had seen in little snippets of this that hadn't been distributed and circulated as part of the ad hoc subcommittee groups. Um, but There hadn't been a full version sent to you that had all of the different comments in the margins. And what I was able to do to produce this document was to go through all those comments and not have them be internal follow-up, here's what the thought was, but to actually convert them into publicly available and digestible explanations of what was being done on a section by section article by article basis and where appropriate references to some of the laws and policies that were looked at as a backdrop or that informed the discussions with respect to those provisions and for more substantive proposed clarifications, deletions or additions to the charter, an explanation of what the rationale was as to why the groups and ultimately the CRC ended up where they ended up with respect to those sections. And so this messy underlying strikeout document, now has the benefit of quite a few, as you go through it, if you look at it, annotations, again, to explain the thought process. What was done? Why was it done? What was looked at? It could be improved. It could be enhanced. It's something that I think I'll take up with the ad hoc committee that's finalizing kind of the report, you know, in the documents, you know, for the presentation. But that is the, I guess, revelation, the public revelation of this particular document. It is now highly annotated, again, intended to be a guide for anyone who's looking at it to understand, my gosh, what was done here? What was the thinking here? So staff is proposing that this version, along with the existing charter and a clean version of any proposed updates, that's gonna be prepared. Once you guys give the go ahead, you know, on this document be presented to the council on June 9th and be available to the public, right? annotated, you know, underlying strikeout and a clean version that may or may not, depending upon how that looks also have those same annotations kind of overlaid on top of it. So that as much as possible with the project of this scope and scale, people can actually really, you know, understand without having to have every word read to them kind of where the group was coming from. So next slide. Staff's recommendation. for CRC action. Consistent with your instructions to us at the 20th and 27th meeting where the different pieces of this were approved, we're now recommending that you consider approving the draft charter update in substantially the form presented with such modifications as the committee may direct for presentation to the city council. that you recommended the council that they take such actions as are necessary and appropriate to place the proposed charter update on the November, 2026 ballot for voter approval and substantially the form presented, but with such modifications as they may direct, right? They may want to substantially modify or tinker with, you know, the recommendation that you made. We didn't include a, a super majority vote requirement to override your recommendation with this as the planning commission might've proposed. And to advise the council, this is where there ought to be and could be some discussion here, that if they have any issues or concerns with any components of the comprehensive charter update proposal, that they consider either removing that component or after a cost benefit analysis, consider whether or not it would be worth to present such proposal as a standalone measure. The most obvious example of this is the Public Works provision that we talked about that is highly desired and is considered to be something that can add a lot of value and options for the city, particularly as it implements Measure I infrastructure expenditures, as you'll recall, and it may warrant $250,000 of additional funds to put that on as a separate measure. It doesn't need to go as a separate measure, but that's an example of one that might warrant separate consideration. Not every level three issue would, as there's been some discussions about. For example, the measure are modifications to allow potentially for minor secondary uses of property. there's discomfort with that. Again, I'm not telling you how to recommend or the council what to do, but that might not be, there's not enough there, right, to say, let's spend $250,000 to have that be a separate matter. Maybe there is more there that I'm suggesting, but not as obviously, right, with that as there would be for the public works provision. Another set of separate provisions or that are kind of fall within the level three, level four, are any of the proposed changes to the chief of police provisions, right? Either the suggested qualifications enhancement, which again, seems like a good idea, and maybe not that controversial, but in an area where there is potential controversy and a lot of scrutiny and the duties and obligations section, again, that seems even that much more rational and logical, but if it's the kind of thing that's going to engender a lot of concern, maybe that's something that can either be separated taken up this election, or frankly, just put in the parking lot for evaluation as a level four thing going forward, along with the suggestion, for example, from that group of looking even at residency issues with respect to the chief of police. So clearly much more substantial. And then finally, advise the council as part of your recommendation, advise the council that there may be other level four issues worthy of consideration in the future. And here's an interesting twist to this, that you either identify now or that you may identify upon request of the city council or after this process is complete. Might level four suggestions be a distraction of the focus on what the level three items are? Maybe so. You don't necessarily have to identify your level four issues now. It might be something that you can follow up with later after you know, the comprehensive, you know, amendment is proposed up to you at your disposal as to how you might want to present on those things. So Mr. Chair, with that, I'll turn it back over to you, to the group. Obviously we would need to go to the public too after maybe questions are asked with whatever public input there might be on this recommendation. And I'm happy to dig into the underlying strikeout document, if anyone has any questions about those references and the annotations. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. So what I thought we could do is just start with the four issues that are pending from our last meeting. So we can just go through them in order and have discussion on them and see if we can come to resolution on them. So the first one is the police chief powers and duties.

Mr. Chair, if I might, before you deliberated and resolved on those, I think you probably, in this case, you should go to the public first because the public input might impact those issues for consideration. So I like the idea of how to approach it, but you want public input first.

Excellent. So again, we're going to talk about chief of police, the city clerk powers and duties, the planning commission power and duties and the meet and confer civil service rules. So is there any public comment on those topics?

There are no hands raised.

So I knew that Glenn.

That's challenging dealing with a clairvoyant.

So let's get back to the first item, the chief of police. So as I see it, there's three things we can do. We can go with the recommendations as reported by Glenn today. We could recommend going back to the old language, which just means eliminating all the proposed changes, or we could recommend additional language and take it to the council as a level three, potential level four topic. So what I'd like to do is just kind of open it up to discussion, see what people are thinking about that.

With respect to the police powers, as I mentioned last week, I do believe we need higher and higher authority, at least of sworn officers, to be present in the charter to discuss emphasize the fact that Santa Clara does indeed have an elected police chief and voted just recently not to have one or not to not have one. So with that said, I agree with your third proposal. Um, if the language in there right now is agreeable to the two stakeholders, mainly the chief of police and the city manager, so be it. But I would like to see stronger language, including the chief of police's ability to hire and fire sworn officers as a level three that will be presented simultaneously to the city council.

I would like to say a simple statement. If it's not broke, we don't need to fix it.

I concur. I think the more we put into it, the more likely we're going to have a problem with voters.

I'm just asking if we could have that language up on the screen. Language on the screen. would you be able to share your screen for the document?

Yeah, give us a sec with that. I think we actually can do that. Yeah, that. So to be clear too, there isn't, if you're looking for appointment language, that's not in the draft that you've got. That was not drafted. It was to be determined. And since there was no consensus amongst those folks, I don't have draft of that language in front of you. What is there is the, that we're gonna see if we can share here in a minute. Courtney's working on it. The language regarding the chief of police as head of the department and the language of the chief of police responsibilities to consult with city council, but not with the discretion language that I described. We had not added that yet. So we can look at the language and Courtney's working on getting that, you know, shared with you, but there's no draft language regarding appointment or discipline.

So I do agree also that it's probably best to let it lie if both the city manager and the chief of police have agreed that this could be an issue going forward and jeopardize anything that we're working on, then I'm hesitant to bring that up.

Just when you say let it lie, leave the language as it's written now with Glenn or to let it lie as in don't touch it at all?

to update the language as it's been reflected on the slide.

Got it.

I just want to add one point as you're discussing this, that Chief Assistant City Attorney Sue Reuter shared with me, and I'm not going to try to say it because she's right here. So Sue, if you could make that point yourself better than I would.

Because there hasn't been any final language here in this section relating to appointing authority, the various bargaining units that are represented by employees in the police department were just notified in general of the idea of these things that was being discussed. And so We have made some of the folks aware that to the extent there is language relating to appointing authority delegation from the city manager to the chief of police. that is intended to be limited to sworn personnel only, but within the sworn personnel, there's more than one bargaining unit that's represented. And one of the bargaining units has stated that they wanna meet and confer with regard to any changes to the appointing authority, so. one of the bargaining units is okay with it, and the other one at least wants to meet and confer about it. So if there are going to be changes relating to the appointing authority, I just would want to sort of warn everybody that that is gonna be subject to meet and confer with at least one of the bargaining units.

So not necessarily determinative, but certainly a complicating factor.

Understood. How is it there's two, or more than one representing justice sworn officers?

I think within the police department there are, five or six bargaining units that have employees. So the sworn officers are divided into management and POA. So everybody up through the rank of Lieutenant of sworn officers is within the POA and then above Lieutenant. So that's captains and assistant chief are in the, make police management and they're sworn officers. And so that's why there's two within the sworn, but there's also non-sworn. There's unit 578, that's employees association clerical workers. There's regular unclassified management employees. That might be it.

All 12 of them have been advised of the language that Glenn currently has in the .

They have signed off on it. They've been advised of this language. They have not yet signed off on it. But this language here, aligns pretty closely with the existing powers in the city code. So there is some helpful explanation of what supervisory capacity is, you know, under the city code, but it doesn't, it doesn't change the appointing authority. It doesn't sort of arguably give substantial effect to the terms, conditions of employment, because it aligns quite closely with what's already in the city code.

And that was the thought, right? In elevating it to the charter, it is understood, but subject to revision by the city council. Whereas if it's in the city charter, it's not subject to revision and it becomes a core characterization and responsibility.

If I can clarify to you, then it sounds like if we were to put any appointment language in there, it would run afoul or potentially be delayed by at least one bargaining unit. So the... The desire then is to pursue the language that makes it more clear that we have a chief of police, but leaves as yet undecided whether or not the chief of police is actually in charge of the police department.

I think this language makes it pretty clear that he's in charge of the police department.

As long as the city manager hires the right officers, right? So with that, I'm finished with this issue. Thank you for your patience.

Okay, does somebody want to make a motion then to accept the changes as proposed by staff?

So moved.

Is there any more comments on the motion? Is there any public comment on the motion?

And chief, you could do this by, I would say by consensus with the final, with all of it being wrapped into the final recommendation, which we'll take a formal vote on. So if you could, you, if you, you may want to check for consensus on this and then we can include in the final vote.

Show of hands. This is that to support the change to the chief. We'll do the formal vote for all the changes. So the second item city clerk powers and duty there was the discussion about updating the language to clarify what in the absence of does anybody want to make a motion on that.

To accept the changes or to accept the changes.

Oh, good. That's what I seconded.

And again, are we all everybody good with any discussion on that? No. Okay.

The next one is just noting to the chair, but for the record, consensus to include that in the final recommendation.

The next one is the There we go. The planning commission. So the discussion was over whether or not we wanted to add a super majority to the language that's in the charter. And my question, Glenn, is in the charter, it talks about the language of saying that the city council will give deference to the, but that language would stay, but the requirement for the super majority would not stay.

That is up to you. Um, it wasn't perfectly clear, um, and didn't need to be, I mean, the, the, at the previous meeting as to how much of that might be revisited. If in fact the planning commission had the ability to designate someone to represent them, um, it'd be up to this group, you know, to decide whether or not that entire provision needs to, you know, could come out or. Again, the one that people, the element that folks seem to have the most issue with was, which is the super majority. So Mr. Chair, I would defer to the group as to how much of that you would want to revise. My recollection of the intent was that it would only relate to that sentence and that other, the desire was to have other elements remain.

So if a, everybody goes to, page 45, I believe it is, where the last paragraph says city council deference. There was language added. And then there was in the parentheses was the requiring the five affirmative votes.

And Mr. Chair, we're trying to get that up on the screen now too for you.

Okay. So I don't know if anybody in that group, group four or if... Steve was a prior planning commissioner. Anybody wanted to provide any comments on whether or not we should leave that language in without the five affirmative votes requirement or strike the whole paragraph?

I'm okay with the modified version where somebody from the Planning Commission can speak to the council if they want to, as a group, appoint somebody to speak on the matter to the council. Striking out the required five votes.

So if I might, Mr. Chair, through the chair, appreciate that comment. I'd even thought about that too. There's not a need to include in the charter that that is a element of planning commission authority, right? It's just a right that they have. But this provision could also be converted to instead of what it is, which is its own subsection about deference that the city council should provide. which arguably should go on the city council section, but I'll put that aside. There could be in the alternative, a new subsection seven that says, or a new subsection six with the catch-all one currently numbered six being dropped below that says, can you scoot that down to get the end of this section on the screen so folks can see it? There it is, yep. And the alternative, again, you don't need it. It's not required to be in the charter, but if there is a desire to emphasize that, you could add a provision that gives the planning commission the authority to designate one or more of its members to appear before the council to represent the planning commission's position on any matter appealed to the council, something like that. So if there is a desire to convert this to an affirmative power, of the planning commission as opposed to purporting to modify the city council authority either through giving due consideration, which doesn't seem that aggressive, but you know, is something that in effect is imposing something on the council in the planning commission section, as opposed to giving the planning commission an additional authority, or again, the alternative, just deleting that last sentence, which clearly modifies, you know, substantially their discretion. So, sorry, I don't mean to give you too many options there, but in response to Mr. Kelly's recommendation, you don't need that. As a affirmative right, I think member Crutchlow's thought was if they had that right, some portion of this wouldn't be necessary.

And I'll have to lawyer that a little bit. You said a moment ago, they just sort of had the power. Is it an inherent power in the planning commission? If that power is just sort of magical and ephemeral, maybe we should include it, especially if it's belongs to any of the other commissions or boards and it becomes its own section about, you know, what the power of a board and commission is, it is includes, assigning one of their members to represent themselves before the city council.

Yeah, and again, I think the planning, Mr. Chair, if I might, the planning commission's a little unique, again, because we're talking about appeals to the city council, so it isn't necessarily a wholesale thing. But frankly, even for the advisory councils, boards and commissions, it is an inherent right that they have in their conduct of their affairs that if they're making a recommendation to the council, Um, even if it's not an appeal, you know, of a decision that they made, they could designate, you know, someone to represent that group. So it's not anything that's necessary to elevate in the charter either for the planning commission or any other border commission.

Okay. Does somebody want to make a motion then on what language to include in this section?

I'll make a motion to exclude it. I'm confident if we already have the powers as planning commissioners, then they can appoint somebody. But I would appreciate if the city attorney would let the existing planning commissioners know they have that ability. Thank you.

Second.

Yeah, Mr. Chair, we'll certainly do that. And to understand the motion, is the motion to delete just the second sentence of supermajority to maintain the deference section, but to delete the sentence that talks about a supermajority requirement? That is correct. Okay. I understand, Mr. Chair.

I have a question regarding the timing of such a appointment of a speaker for the commission. I believe that would have to happen before a vote. Would there be a time when the commission has a report, someone is, they say no, and then the commissioner appoints someone to address the board. Would it be too late to actually have any effect on that vote?

Mr. Chair, if I might, great question. We had exactly that same conversation when we were talking about this. To the extent, because there could be a timing issue with it, right? You don't know when you make your decision if the matter is gonna be appealed or not. And so part of the discussion was, with my lawyer who staffs the planning commission was that if this was something the planning commission wanted to avail themselves of, it doesn't need to be in the charter, right? But if the concept was, hey, we wanna start doing this, they may want to do that as now a routine matter with respect to any decision they make that's gonna be appealed to the council to include as part of their action a designated representative in the event that that item is appealed to the city council, because it could go to the city council without an intervening planning commission meeting where they would make that decision. So the mechanics of it do require something, you know, some element of forethought if they're going to animate, you know, that right. But no language in the city charter is needed to address that. It would just be something that the planning commission would need to implement as part of their routine handling of matters that might be subject to appeal.

Okay, so we have a motion and a second. Any more discussion on that? Everybody's on board with that? Consensus to make that change as well.

Consensus to include that, yep, in the final recommendation.

The last one is group five provisions subject to meet and confer. So the recommendation is to not make any of the modifications except for the renumbering and minor format wording changes.

Mr. Chair, here's where I'm going to maybe inspire discussion. from my chief assistant to kick me. I hate giving up on, and she does too, giving up on the good work that was done, both by the committee, subcommittee, and by, frankly, my staff, Sue, not me, Sue, in engaging on this. Some of the positions taken, are challenging for us to understand because we really think we're just trying to align it right with things that make sense. And so I've not given up hope that there may be ultimately buy-in to some or all of the provisions. And so what I might suggest with my optimistic perspective is that the action on this B to include it in your recommendation, but only the language, you know, as both originally presented with modifications, you know, developed in the meet and confer process, but only if in fact there is a fully, you know, that the proposed changes were fully resolved in a meet and confer process that's completed before the city council needs to take action on the matter. So it leaves it a little bit out there as potentially something that might happen, but communicates that from the perspective of this group consistent with the recommendation, it may be imprudent to include it without that process being completed, given the potential legal exposure and issues that that would trigger. So I'm gonna allow Sue to comment on that recommendation, good, bad, bananas, or otherwise.

I mean, we could certainly continue to try to have dialogue. It's unclear to me who's gonna be available from various bargaining units in the condensed timeframe that we do have since we are taking this to first study session next week. I'm happy to reach out again and continue with the efforts certainly for everybody I just don't want anyone to get their hopes up because we are number one on a condensed timeframe and number two have sort of reached a point where there are 10 bargaining units who would have to agree. And I- It's a sure thing. Yeah.

I mean, you must have the management group agreeing at least, right?

Yeah, the other thing I don't want to do, and this was why I tendered it to Sue to comment is if we're tilting at windmills at this point, I don't want her spending too much time and effort on something that's just not going to materialize. And so I'd love to keep hope alive, but I don't wanna have it communicate to Sue who's on the front line of this, you know, some, for lack of a better term, fool's errand, right, to try to salvage something, but to be exerting, you know, her valuable resources unnecessarily. So just was thinking if things could come around, that that could be the direction, but also calling it is fine by me too, and out of respect, both for the effort that was put in, but kind of just maybe where we're at.

Is it pronounced quixotic or quixote?

Yeah, that's one of those ones I don't, I'm not brave enough to say out loud.

Speaking for myself, if another week may make a difference, I'm okay. You think it can get them together.

Sorry, were you asking me, do I think I could get it done in the next week?

If you're making progress, yeah, another week doesn't kill me.

Holly?

I would look at it as if it's not accepted and it's worked down the road, at least you have a head start.

I would have to agree. I think with all the work that Sue has done, we don't want it to go to waste. So I think we should keep it on the table. If it doesn't happen now, I think it should be something that she looked at in the future.

So if I'm gathering this, if I may put it together, not to make the motion, but to ask maybe that if the group is supportive of keeping the work out there, and included in a recommendation, but recognizing that if there's not support from the labor groups, it wouldn't be this group's recommendation to include it, but without putting any particular burden on Sue to have to pull a rabbit out of a hat, right? It could happen, it might not happen. Sue's not gonna go into 12 hours of negotiations But if they see the light or a little bit of extra effort can resolve it to preserve the effort of the group, it sounds like there's consensus to do that.

So we can make a motion, if I understand you correctly, that to include it if she can get it approved.

Yes, in effect to support including these changes in your recommendation, but subject to resolution of the meet and confer process affirming labor group acceptance.

So I'll make a motion to include it subject to the final resolution with the unions. Is that the way I should say it?

Sounds perfect.

Okay, understood. Yeah.

Okay, so it sounds like we have consensus on all of the issues that were questionable. So with that information, there's the staff recommendation, slide 13 that everybody saw. So if maybe somebody wanted to make a motion, all those staff recommendations and include all of our proposed changes.

Make a motion to include all staff recommendations. Second it.

And chair, I might, since we parsed a little bit public input on those particular items. Yeah, if this is the larger and I'm sorry, I was distracted on something else. If this is the recommendation to proceed with the whole package, then I might suggest you make sure there's no additional public input before you proceed with action on that motion. And we will do a formal roll call on that.

Excellent. Is there anybody in the public that would like to comment on this?

There are no hands raised. Okay.

I guess we can do a formal, any other questions or comments about the motion? Seeing none, roll call vote.

And if I might just pause for that, I wanted to make sure that the group saw we did get some public comment and input today from a member of the public, Dr. Shanks, with some comments and questions about the process. I think he's monitoring it and didn't provide public comment, but his recommendations relate to the... discussions around ethics, you know, and a couple of the proposed changes, including with respect to, eliminating the newspaper publication requirement for ordinances in advance. Just wanted to make sure people saw those comments. You don't need to act on them, but if you had any questions or issues with that before you acted, staff's standing by and ready to respond to those.

I'll just observe that committee for, I believe it was for, we did hear both of those things, including an ethics commission and some reflections on the stadium authority and concluded that neither was appropriate in substantive form in a rework of the charter like this.

Very good, appreciate that. Yeah, from the group that was tasked with that, appreciate that observation. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to make sure that was, folks were aware of that and appreciate the commentary from member Sosinski.

And I'll just add, when I reviewed it, I thought it was better served, not in the charter, but in next debate, if the council updates its ethics requirements.

Very good, thank you, Chair. Back to you to continue with that motion in action.

Any other comments or questions? Hearing none, we'll do the roll call vote.

Holly Roberts.

Yes.

Pat Nicolai.

Yes.

John Brooks. Yes. Joe Susinski.

Yes.

Eric Crutchlow is not here. Bert Field.

Yes.

Keith Kelly.

Yes.

Lauren Diamond. Yes. Eric Jensen.

Yes.

Susan Peters.

Yes.

Excellent. That brings us to item number two on the agenda, which is staff presentation on status of draft final report to city council on the charter project and solicitation of committee input or direction on any necessary or appropriate next steps in preparation for the currently scheduled June 9th study session and June 15th special meeting with city council.

Mr. Chair, appreciate you moving us quite right along. Item number two, of course, that doesn't have the right date for the meeting, but the final version of this will. I might request... Mr. No, not yours, but I might request, Mr. Chair, that we take a five minute recess there in light of a particular event tonight. There are there have been cupcakes brought in for the group and a five minute recess might allow us to join that. And we can then just this next item shouldn't take too long and then we can just jump right back in.

That's a brilliant idea.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

All right, we'll get back on the meeting and try to finish up before our sugar high crashes. Staff?

Thank you. I hope the people observing in public got a cupcake themselves from somewhere. We can't do virtual cupcakes yet. So when the technology is developed, we'll try to provide that as well. Item number two, Chief, as you introduced it, next slide, please. This was, we're gonna report out to you on kind of where we're at with the report. This slide will look familiar. I'm not gonna go through every aspect of it. It's the outline for the report that we tendered to you for some preliminary input. The draft of the report that I'm putting together is a little different than this, but substantially follows this outline. Next slide, please. The other thing we talked about at the last meeting was how to present the charter itself Already talked about that, right? Present the original, the underlying strikeout and a clean as revised version with the clean version or maybe the underlying strikeout version being the one we use as the primary presentation document. Still thinking about that and I'll get input on the thoughts on that from the ad hoc subcommittee when we meet and talk about both the report contents and presentation strategies. But no matter what, it'll have... the annotations in it, which I'm hoping will be useful to all who observe. And we can even... to trick it out even more when I go through and review it. If there's a section that doesn't have an annotation or there's an annotation that doesn't fully reflect the thought process that went into the recommendation, hoping the ad hoc committee and or any of you who might observe that, you can email me and make suggestions on how the annotations might be fleshed out. Next slide. the status of where the report is at. I've started and distributed a preliminary draft of the report to the ad hoc subcommittee. I like the parts that I've fully drafted, but there's still a lot more to draft as the ad hoc subcommittee members who have received it already will maybe have observed already. There's good portions of the report that are still more in outline kind of note, you know, form with, The pieces of what, you know, the work that was done, you know, are there, but it's not fully synthesized, you know, and presented in a narrative form. So there's still a lot of work to be done with an updated draft. I intend to be distributed, you know, tomorrow, again, for the group to take a look at. The goal is to have the report done for inclusion in the packet for the June 9th meeting. This is distributed by the end of business on June 5th. I'm going to keep working towards that, but it's really unrealistic and unfair of me to expect full ad hoc subcommittee input, you know, by that point. And so the more likely outcome, unless I'm as magical as Sue is going to be with the labor groups with respect to the group five work that the, the, report might need to be completed in advance of June 9th. I think it's important to get it out and published before June 9th, but not in advance and along with the packet. I'll have to come up with a different, more skeleton report to be distributed with the packet, with the report then made public then. An initial meeting of the ad hoc group has been scheduled for tomorrow night at 6 p.m. Thank you. That's what you needed more meetings with me to go over the latest draft and discuss the best path to completion of the report and roles and responsibilities that people might be willing to undertake for the June 9th study session with city council. I don't think that's going to be a heavy lift for the CRC necessarily at that point, because study session is probably going to be you know, mostly a presentation and then city council asking questions that in turn will be answered, right, and brought back to them. It may be good to have that group on call to facilitate answering questions, particularly if they're looking for, and I hope they are, you know, direct input and feedback from the members themselves about, you know, the experience and the thought process, you know, that went into creating the recommendation. A June 8th meeting of the ad hoc has also been tentatively scheduled to kind of see where we're at and what presentation responsibilities there might be. Next steps. slide, city attorney's office ad hoc to finalize the report, ideally by June 5th. Sorry, I keep that's really more admonishing myself as opposed to the ad hoc to get the draft out. But if not possible as soon as possible prior to the June 9th study session. Initial presentation to the city council on June 9th will have no action, but will solicit initial council questions and feedback, right? That's what a study session is. It's really to introduce the subject, you know, and receive questions from them. Most study sessions on complicated topics, end up with the presentation, receiving the questions, answering a few of them, but needing to come back right with answers on the rest. And so that I think is a likely scenario on the 9th as well, depending upon the initial feedback and questions presented by the city council, another ad hoc subcommittee meeting may be necessary to prepare for the June 15th presentation to council. They were not told this when they volunteered, but now they're hearing it now. Um, At the June 15th special meeting, the CRC's report and formal recommendation will again be presented with the possibility for city council action or direction. They may not be ready by then, right? It's a pretty major thing, but obviously they'll have had the study session. They'll have had a chance to look at it and think about it. They'll hopefully have the benefit of answered questions and the recommendations cautiously optimistic that we'll get substantial feedback from them at that June 15th meeting, which is dedicated to this subject, right? That's the other than a closed session item that we needed to get in because we needed their feedback on a matter that's got some deadlines on it. The June 15th meeting is only this project. So they will have their full attention at that. and then much to the delight of a number of you i reminded you that this you have a june 17th meeting on your schedule as one of your regular monthly meetings it's it's probably if necessary right depending upon how things go maybe there's nothing to meet about maybe there's a lot to meet about but that is on your calendar um and it's probably a good idea um probably to at least hold it and then touch base and see you know what there is to do for that meeting An additional presentation to council may be necessary in early July, depending upon what they do. But if they elect to proceed, final consideration and approval, as I've told you before, needs to occur by July 14th, 2026. That's not really a deadline for approval. registration or registrar of voters. It's a deadline because that's the last council meeting before their summer recess. And so we'll need all of their action really on every element of this, right? What the final draft charter looks like. the ballot question, the resolutions to amend the consolidated election to include this item, a budget action to fund the placement of the item on the ballot. If they end up proceeding with two measures as opposed to one, all that would need to be articulated as well. So quite a bit of work. mostly for me and my group at that point by translating these things into the mechanics of the actions that are necessary to put something on the ballot. But all of that needs to be finished by July 14th. So that's the end of my update and presentation on that. Mr. Chair, obviously open to any questions and expect to be in the mix with the ad hoc group that you created. Thank you for that. And thank you to the volunteers for that tomorrow night to see where we're at with the report and allocate roles and responsibilities.

Any questions or comments?

Those cupcakes were really great. Thank you.

Excellent cupcakes. Excellent, seeing none, we'll go to public presentations. This item is reserved for persons who wish to address the committee on any matter within the subject matter jurisdiction of the committee that is not on this agenda. The law does not permit committee action or extended discussion of any item not on the agenda, except under special circumstances. Governing body or staff may briefly respond to statements made or questions posed, and appropriate body may request staff to report back at a subsequent meeting. Members of the public who wish to address the committee on a non-agendized item should request to speak at this time and raise your hand. Any member of the public raising their hand?

There is one member.

Excellent. If you unmute yourself.

Good evening, everybody. My name is Farzan Tontnevis. I represent SCEA Unit 578 from the bargaining units, employees of Santa Clara. I just wanted to say thank you to Sue for her hard work regarding Unit 5 and the conversations with the bargaining units. We appreciate her hard work. That's it. Thank you.

Somebody like Sue. Okay.

Everybody likes Sue, Mr. Chair. Give that a second.

Okay. Any staff or committee member comments? Hearing none, then the meeting is adjourned.

Very good. Thanks, everybody. And that was nice.