Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. Yeah.

Well, tonight is not going to be a repeat. Thank you. I promise. All right. So I now call to order the Planning Commission meeting of March 11th, 2026. All right. Allegiance. Everybody stand. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Vice Chair, would you please read the statement of values?

As we gather, we humbly seek blessings upon this meeting. May we act with strength, courage, and will to perform our obligations and duties to our people with justice to all. Let us seek wisdom so that we may act in the best interest of our people, our neighbors, and our country. All this we ask so we may serve our community with fairness and respect, putting their needs before all.

Thank you. Please be seated. All right. So Elizabeth, the roll call, please.

Mr. Bhatnagar has notified us that he will not be in attendance tonight. Commissioner Biagini has also stated the same, that she will not be here tonight. Commissioner Chair Kuru? Here. Commissioner Wang?

Here.

Commissioner Buza?

Present.

Commissioner Saleem?

Here.

Chair Crutchlow?

Here.

Very good. Thank you.

I move to excuse Commissioners Bhatnagar and Biagini.

Second.

The motion was made by Commissioner Saleem, seconded by Commissioner Cherikourou to excuse commissioners from tonight's meeting. Go ahead and record your vote, please. Thank you. The motion passes.

Thank you, Chair. Public hearings are conducted by the Chair in accordance with the following procedures. The Chair of the Commission directs all activity during the hearings. All comments shall be addressed to the Commission. Any item on this agenda may be continued to subsequent hearing. Applicants will be allotted up to 10 minutes to present and justify proposals following staff presentation of the item. Other speakers will be given up to two minutes. The applicant is allotted up to five minutes for rebuttal of comments. No additional comments will be accepted upon the close of public hearing, although the Commission reserves the right to direct questions to any speaker on any matter. Special procedural time limits may be applied to any items as prescribed by the Chair. Appeal of Commission actions must be filed in writing within seven calendar days.

Thank you. Copies of the current agenda and staff reports for each of the items on the agenda are available from the Planning Division office on the Friday afternoon preceding the meeting and available online. Continuances and exceptions. This part allows This part of the meeting allows for the applicants, members of the public, or other interested parties to request that an item be one, continued without hearing, two, withdrawn, or three, taken out of order. Are there any requests from applicants, the public, or the Commission for continuance or exception for any of the items on tonight's agenda?

No, there are not.

The Planning Commission has seven members. Whenever the full commission is not present, applicants have the option to continue the item to another meeting. There is one item on the consent calendar today. Secretary Chirikuru, would you please read the procedure for the consent calendar?

The procedure of the consent calendar is as follows. Consent calendar items may be enacted, approved, or adopted by one motion unless requested to be removed by anyone for discussion or explanation. If any member of the Planning Commission staff or the applicant or a member of the public wishes to comment on a consent calendar item or would like the item to be heard on the regular agenda, please make your request now. Items listed on the consent calendar with associated file numbers constitute public hearing items. Today's one item is the Planning Commission meeting minutes of February 11th, 2026.

So shall I make a motion to approve the minutes of February 11th, 2026?

Second.

Who made the second?

Lenz. Thank you.

Motion was made by chair Crutchlow seconded by Commissioner Salim to approve the consent calendar. Go ahead and cast your vote, please Very good, thank you the motion passed Thank you.

Are there any members of the public that would like to brief rate? There any way I can do a short request I

Okay, I'll make it quick. It's I was hoping that we could find a way to add to the procedure to identify the items on the agenda that we are acting as quasi judicial versus advisory so that I can have a different perspective when I'm researching and commenting on things because I think we've had this come up a few times in the past where we've delved into areas and topics that were simply outside the bounds of what we should be as a commission. So I think it's a legal decision or some way to indicate that the item is a quasi-judicial decision versus an advisory to the council decision.

Would you like to give an example?

I'd like to. Okay.

Without getting too specific, right?

Well, we've had a recent conversation around permit that actually turned into being a legal issue. We spoke of it at length and I was wondering, since we were getting repeated advisory from our then attorney, that we should not be talking about some topics of what we were talking about. It would help to know that those items, I'm being so vague, those items were in the correct category for us to discuss.

I'm interested to see what you would like to see because I'm very sorry, Xander, the lady that was here last time, what was her name?

Yeah, Jen Byers, Ms. Byers.

She was very good about saying to us, like, listen, this is what it's about. Keep it on course here. So she did go to that to a point. How would you like to improve that? I would like to know up front so that I wouldn't. Hey, really, this is the background you need to know?

Yeah, and it shouldn't be too big a deal. I mean, just a legal symbol or something that says we're discussing this as a legal deciding body instead of as really comments to being advisors to the council.

Well, yeah, I think the crucial distinction you're thinking of is the distinction between quasi-judicial and legislative. And quasi-judicial is when you're basically acting as like a bunch of judges and you're applying a set of facts to the legal principles. And it's really important that you tailor your... comments to the findings that you have to make for quasi-judicial. The city attorney has encouraged staff recently to be more explicit about whether it's a legislative or quasi-judicial decision in agenda reports. So we will continue to do that and make sure that that is flagged prominently in the future. But yeah, that's a certainly good observation for quasi-judicial. It's important you focus on the findings and not things that are outside your scope. So we can, we'll redouble our efforts on that.

I just was raising the issue to see if we can find a way to form a law that avoids the confusion we ran into. That's good, thank you. Sure.

Okay, so public hearing items. The only item we have tonight is a study session, role of the planning commission in the charter review process. So before staff starts, I had a request. Since I am on the Charter Commission, what I'm going to do is basically hand over the gavel to my heir apparent here, Secretary Cherukuru, to kind of run the meeting. Excuse me.

I don't think being on the commission is a conflict. I'm the vice. Oh, I'm sorry. She's the secretary.

Yeah, well, Mr. Chair, you know, I appreciate your effort to avoid conflicts. There are certain times you need to abstain, certainly, if you have a financial interest in something. There's also incompatible office conflicts where you can't both serve, say, on a County Planning Commission and a City Planning Commission because you have overlapping jurisdictions. When it comes to a board like the Charter Review Committee, it's designed so that there will be overlapping jurisdiction. You're supposed to be involved in both. So this is sort of a rare instance where you actually don't need to abstain. So while I'm sure Your fellow commissioner would appreciate a chance at the gavel.

You're not obligated to... Actually, you're correct, because when I was in the chair review committee, also prior to that for term limits, I was sitting in the civil service committee, too, and I was in both committees, too, and there was no problems at all. The attorneys said the same thing.

If the lawyers are okay with it, I'm okay with it.

I'm okay with it as well. I appreciate the chair's sensitivity to the matter. One thought you might have had in thinking this was necessary and appropriate for you to do, if I might add for the record, was a conversation that you and I had When in when we were in a committee One of the committee's that you were attending was that when it came time for this commission to provide its input it might be better even though you might traditionally be the spokesperson for the Commission that you not be the spokesperson for the Commission in that instance and that you would be receiving the information and acting on that information in your capacity as a CRC member and not as the Commissioner. It doesn't you know prohibit you from participating in the discussions and obviously ultimately making a recommendation including on matters that might relate to this Commission but my thought was it might be better for a different person to designate to represent this Commission but I agree with Xander regarding your capacity tonight no problem with you presiding over the discussion.

Sounds good. Let's go. Okay. Whenever you're ready.

Very good. I think my PowerPoint is going to get loaded here in a minute. And while that's happening, I will introduce myself. Glenn Guggins, city attorney here since 2023. Occasional presenter to you all. I'm trying to remember the last time I did that. It's been some time. And a number of you have, of course, seen me on television. um come to my ab-1234 presentation which by the way we will be if you're due for that training uh scheduling again for um late april early may um you know this year so be on the lookout for that we think it's the best way for you to get trained even though there are other options I'm really before you tonight, and we're talking about dual capacities, really representing the charter project and the kind of charter review committee's mission, you know, in that project. Zander for tonight. in most respects, when he's available, will be your advisor on Planning Commission matters. If you can find a way to pit us against each other, that might be amusing for all involved. So I invite that kind of question if you've got one as we work our way through this presentation. Still not seeing... Sorry. There we go. Sorry. Very good. So what I'm here to present to you tonight is... the presentation on the city's charter project. And most particularly, and of interest to you on the Planning Commission's role as a stakeholder in this project to provide input on Article 10, which relates to boards and commissions, you know, rules and procedures, and a charter section. It says 1006 here. It actually should say 1006 and 1007. Those are the sections within Article 10 that relate to the composition and the powers and duties of the Planning Commission. I'm so before though we get into the particulars of the project I thought it was appropriate and we did this when we presented this project to the City Council and as part of our training in bringing the Charter Review Commission up to speed, I thought it might make sense, even though some of you are, a good number of you probably are sophisticated in this regard, to give you at least a little background information on what a city charter really is, you know, and why it matters. So this next slide that I'll review with you now really digs into that a little bit. The city charter is in effect the equivalent at a local level of the city's constitution. It establishes a structure for the city's government and outlines the city's powers and responsibilities. Charters are important in California. There might be different rules elsewhere that relate to the equivalent of charters in other states. But in California, under the state constitution, cities that become charter cities have pretty substantial authority We'll talk about how that's been waning a little bit lately, and you guys probably are more familiar than most groups about how that's waned lately. But charter cities in general have authority over what are referred to as municipal affairs. And municipal affairs usually fall into a number of categories, and they're listed here on this slide. Municipal election matters, what you need to be, the qualifications you need in order to hold an elected office, the terms for that office, whether or not you've got district elections or at-large election, who in the structure of government is elected as opposed to who's appointed. That is considered to be a core municipal affair. General law cities have those things dictated to them by state statute. Charter cities get to decide those things themselves by vote of the people in a provision of the charter. land use decisions. Sorry, this one's a little awkward because a traditional municipal affair is in fact the local jurisdiction's ability to make decisions about what types of things go where, right? And the specific rules about that. as you know again somewhat painfully in recent years there's been a lot of state preemption in this area particularly with respect to housing and particularly with respect to affordable housing and a lot of that local discretion has been taken away the state's decided in everyone's best interests and certainly there is a common interest in in having more housing and having affordable housing but much to the local jurisdictions frequent consternation right the the intended or unintended consequences of that you know frequently put pressure on cities to have things that that they don't think make sense you know either at all or in the places where they're required so but as a charter city you have more authority over these things than general law cities would even if it's starting to be not away by the state the structure of the government's workforce is also a matter that is a municipal affair what kind of departments you have, what kind of advisory bodies you have, what positions are selected or appointed by whom. the city of Santa Clara, city council appoints the city manager, the city attorney and the city auditor, although we don't currently have a council appointed independent auditor. We have that function being performed but not by a city council appointed auditor. That isn't uniform in other cities. Other cities have council appointing other things directly or different selection processes or different types of structures of workforce. Every charter city is allowed to be pretty unique about how they design their workforce. Fiscal policy is another area that's a municipal affair. How we budget, spend, and account for our revenues, and, you know, the kinds of manner in which we raise revenues, a lot of that is something within local control. There is, of course, as you're all aware under the Constitution and in other preemptive ways at the state level, some encroachment on that, particularly with respect to, you know, taxes and fees, where certain kinds of taxes and fees need to be adopted by state law in accordance with certain processes, and certain types of things also require votes of the people. But in a lot of categories, charter cities have substantial authority over their fiscal policy. And then another important one, again, with some encroachment and preemption by the state, you know, over time, how the city awards and implements public works in its municipal contracts is also a traditional municipal affair. the preemption that's occurred recently in this issue in this area have frequently taken the form of the state conditioning its award of state funding. to cities, and we rely on a lot of state funding for public works projects, on cities agreeing to certain provisions regarding how they award public works contracts. Prevailing wage, for example. If you do not pay prevailing wage on your public works contracts, you get on a naughty list from the state and you are potentially disqualified from receiving a significant amount of state grants. What do most cities do now? They pay prevailing wage because that's a very important aspect to them. There's also provision in state law now that says if you, as a local jurisdiction, have a rule which prohibits you from entering into project labor agreements, you are also potentially disqualified from receiving grant funds. And so in making rules, even though this is a traditional municipal affair, in making rules which relate to the state's authority to decide who gets, you know, their state grants, they've, in effect, circumvented, in a way, you know, the otherwise sacrosanct municipal affair of cities' ability to decide how it procures, you know, public works. So, interesting, you know, dynamic there, but, again, most, there are still pretty good ability of charter cities to kind of design, you know, what government they want, and As a result, amongst the 482, or more or less, 84, 85, we lose one, we gain one every now and then, cities, about 120 plus or minus are charter cities, and Santa Clara, of course, is one of them, and that's why we're even talking about this. Charter provisions, again, mostly general provisions, although different cities take different approaches to this. Some cities have super detailed charters. Pasadena is an example of a city that has incredibly detailed charters with a lot of provisions in it that most cities may not have at all, or if they did have at all, they'd have in their municipal codes. uh... some of them are super detailed some of them are tickling the more recent ones are just a few pages long uh... that i did newly formed you know charter cities basically just have a few pages that uh... declare that their charter cities and that they have all municipal affairs that they're entitled to and they don't bother making you know even even basic rules in their charter they make all of them by ordinance that's for purposes of trying to get uh... authority even if it's at the ordinance level for making rules in these municipal affairs affairs areas santa clara is somewhere in between on this our charter is about thirty five pages it's got a lot of traditional uh... provisions in it similar to a lot of charters that were adopted at the time we adopted our charter nineteen fifty one i think there was a standard charter that was being circulated about around a lot of cities and a charter city movement you know back then and so Our charter has a lot of provisions that are similar to a lot of other charters. And like a lot of charters, as a result, over time, it's really gotten out of date and out of alignment with how cities currently do business. And we're going to talk about that in our next slide. With one last comment on city charter basics, charters, a city to become a charter city needs a vote of its population, majority vote, in order to approve the charter. And if you are going to amend the charter, You also need a vote of the people. You can make rules at an ordinance level, you can adopt resolutions, you can make policies that are implementing of your charter, but you cannot modify your charter other than by a vote of the people and a formal amendment that's put before them. So, Charter Project Origins, I started to touch upon it And the bottom line is, in a lot of respects, Santa Clara's charter is outdated. It was adopted back in 1951. It's been amended since multiple times. But it really has gotten out of line with a number of state laws. in a lot of instances the city's actual practices, and in many other instances what are now considered to be best practices for cities in a modern environment. As you might imagine, things were done differently back in 1951. The city of Santa Clara was different, you know, back in 1951. I think we've quadrupled at least our population. We were probably more agrarian, you know, back there, and industrial, and we are now, you know, a high-tech community with a stadium. It's different, right? Things are different now. Some are the same and nice, you know, that way, but a lot of things have changed. Examples of how what we do now is out of alignment with what our existing charter says includes our budgeting process, right? Our charter is very specific about having an annual budget and a lot of the rules around what you have to do with monies at the end of a budget year and how you amend a budget relate to an annual budget. Well, without regard to the charter, a little bit of a misalignment with charter practices, we now do two-year budgeting. Lawyers like their clients to abide by all the applicable laws. Even if it's not that significant of one, even if it's not anyone that anyone's likely to enforce against us, our rules in a place that respects rule, the rule of law, ought to all align. And there are some provisions in our charter now that are hard to apply because they relate to an annual budgeting process in our two-year budgeting cycle. And so one of the things that's out of alignment is how we budget. That should be fixed. The public works and use of city forces provisions in our charter, contemplate and require that if we are to enter into a public works contract or if we are to use instead of a contractor City forces to do anything that's considered to be a public work and the projected cost of that work is $1,000 or more that needs to go to the City Council for approval and if it's a public work project needs to be formally bit and Okay. In 1951, $1,000 probably was a lot of money. I don't know what the equivalent was. I haven't done the math on that. But it's gotten to a point where that's a little absurd, you know, for a city like this with the kinds of projects that we do and the volume and the complexity of the projects to have to go to the city council now. Oh, did you just do the math on that? twelve thousand now five hundred dollars still an absurd absurdly low low number and so one of the discussions that we're having with one of the subcommittees is what do we do to change that right how we modernize that do we increase the number you know, to $250,000, $500,000, right? What's the right number? Or do we eliminate a number, you know, entirely and say, hey, public contracting needs to work like this, should be let this way, you know, most of the time. There should be checks and balances to make sure, you know, it's fair and consistent with best practices. Exceptions, if you're going to make exceptions and do things other than what's contemplated, you should have to make findings, right? But all of the details of that are going to be made by ordinance, right? That would be a different way of of modifying this. The professional staff is working with a subcommittee assigned to that particular item to kind of address that issue. Another example is in the procurement arena, there is no provision that allows the city to engage in design build procurement. I think a few of you might be in the industry enough here to be familiar with how that works. design bid build is the traditional standard for letting contracts, significant contracts, and always awarding the contract to the lowest responsible bidder. That's fine, and it has its value, but A lot of the times, you end up getting a contractor that may not be the most qualified contractor. Their bid may be artificially low, and you end up having to pay a lot of change orders. And as a result, projects are delayed. And there's not an opportunity to do value engineering along the way. The design-build process and a number of variations of the design-build procurement process has, instead of a architect and then a development of specifications and the award of that contract to a contractor, where you frequently have the architect and the contractor pointing fingers at each other, the design-build concept solicits a proposal from a design and contractor team, where that team needs to put together a proposal for the construction of the project, typically at a guaranteed maximum price with some value engineering and revisiting of the design along the way built into it. It doesn't make sense for every project. Simple projects like road work don't lend themselves to that. You're probably better off getting a low bid contract in a traditional process. But if you're building something sophisticated, like we do all the time in our electric utility, like we do all the time, and particularly now with Measure I out there and $400 million of infrastructure money to build projects, replacing fire stations or enhancing the international swim center those types of contracts of size and complexity really derive a lot of value out of a design you know build procurement process and so And unfortunately in California, unless you have that in your charter, you're prohibited in effect from using that in the way that really is valuable to us. So another element of this upgrading the charter to best practices would be currently proposed adding a design build aspect to that. Those are the examples. A last one that hits a little closer to home for you all, although it doesn't relate to you, is the terms that are in Article 10 that relate to the Board of Library Trustees. Back in 1951, the Board of Library Trustees, in effect, ran the library system. There were provisions that they made all the rules, they chose the librarian, they actually were responsible for administering the library system. That is not what the Board of Library Trustees does now, and I would venture not very many, you know, ongoing boards of library trustees do that. They are a very significant and valuable actor in providing input and recommendations to staff, but they don't administer the library. And so updating those provisions to reflect what they do, to reflect what it makes sense for them to do, and be clear about what staff does, what the council does versus what the Board of Library Trustees does is another matter that the same subcommittee that's relating to the the Planning Commission is currently working on I So asked for interpretations by people of things in our charter, particularly around elections time, where the charter also isn't clear. It occurred to me that it was time for a comprehensive update. It occurred to me particularly because shortly before I came up to this fair city when I was the city attorney for the city of Chula Vista, Chula Vista also fine city with a old charter outdated in a lot of material respects went through the same process it did a top-to-bottom comprehensive review of its charter and the value that was added with that I think was really really appreciated and that was a successful enterprise that was approved by the voters 64 or something you know percent and it really added a value added a lot of value So what occurred to me in evaluating the governance and ethics committee work plan, this would be a thing to tender to them for their consideration. So we did as much back in early 2025. They liked the idea. We refined it a little bit based upon their input. It was presented to the city council. In October of 2025, the city council, in effect, activated this charter review committee, which, based on city council direction, consists of 13 members, seven of which were appointed by council people and six of which were chosen by lottery. That itself was a very interesting solicitation and selection process. Mr. Crutchlow, you were appointed, right? You were not allowed to remember. So you were one of the district representative appointed members. And so, As you know well, that group was assembled and convened, and we are off and running and deep into this charter project. And so this next slide talks about this charter project implementation and how it's working. There were adopted bylaws back in October.

Is it okay? Yeah, I was going to say is it okay to ask an in context question or do you want?

I don't mind answering a question along the way.

I was curious as to whether the charter is going to be extended for budgeting to include things like ongoing maintenance and improvements because I've noticed that there are a lot of the projects were historically bid out as building construct, I'm sorry, designing construct, but it sort of stumbled a little bit when you got to maintenance and improvements because those were so long-term that was left to future councils to continue to approve the budget. Swim Center, you know.

Yeah, fair question and that actually issue was raised by the subcommittee that's looking at the fiscal sections of the budget. The thought process at this point is that level of detail or establishing standards at the charter level might be difficult and isn't typical in that what's required under different budgetary circumstances could vary. and what becomes a best practice for setting aside reserves or providing maintenance, again, could vary over time. Those rules are important ones, crucial ones to the administration of a city effectively, but at this point, based on the benchmarking that we've done and the thought process, it's not considered a best practice to include those things in the charter itself.

It is a moving target. There's always going to be increases of cost and changes in technology, but is there some part of the process that it can be formalized to do...

scheduled review to make sure that projects aren't being ignored to death yeah, so there are provisions in the in the fiscal section that talk about the need to the the budgeting process and the need to develop reserve you know accounts and there's responsibilities assigned to the finance director of the be you know accountable you know for things and so that would be a place to look you know for that and I'll make a note of that of your inquiry and talk to fiscal about it if that's something they want to take up I am on that committee and so I agree with everything that's being said and your question is actually being brought up

How do we do that? And what does belong in the charter versus, let's say, do by ordinance or some other method to make sure that the charter doesn't become this very, very prescriptive. Every little thing is in there. So, yeah. And the other thing is I would encourage any member here to join and be a member of the audience and have their say when we have our meetings because we would love to have participation by all citizens.

Agreed and we'll talk about that a little bit here in the charter project implementation about how valuable that could be. I will say though projects like this are so wonky. It's usually the wonky people who volunteer for it and who participate in it. present company included, that really lean into it. It's not the right term. Sexy is not the right term. It's not the kind of thing that attracts a lot of public interest and input. We do solicit it. All the CRC meetings themselves are public. I'm surprised there's not a whole crew of people here in front of you following me around on my charter presentation roadshow. The city of Sunnyvale is currently going through the same process and one of their they just finished their process and they reported out to the City Council one of the things and I talked to the lawyer who staffed that project said our Committee members they were so earnest and they were so hard-working, but they were so sad that no one came to any of their meetings Why don't more people care about this and they did surveys and they and they tried oops. I want to go backwards and They tried all sorts of different things to get people to be interested and participate in the process, and it just didn't translate. It's just not that kind of thing. Super important thing, and groups like this kind of appreciate that, but the public at large is busier with other things than to turn out for such a thing.

Well, there was a very nice lawyer that did bring Stan's Donuts once. There was.

Yeah, that was a way to get them in. Talking about the participation from the public, when we had the term limits, we usually used to have at least 40, 50 people in the meeting from the public coming into these meetings. And everybody was interested in that.

Yeah, the political stuff tends to bring out more folks. There are some tweaks being made to those sections by this project, but not things like that. And I'll talk about how this project is more focused than that and really not designed to restructure things now on this slide. So the bylaws provided the stated purpose for this project. This charter project was intended to develop a comprehensive charter amendment, a top-to-bottom review and recommendation or amendment to make corrections. There's some things that are mistakes. Eliminate ambiguities. There's a fair amount of that throughout. Align the charter with state law and current best practices. A lot to be done in both small ways and significant ways. and also to make it easier to understand and apply. A lot of the language is kind of silly and antiquated. Lawyers can be, even today, me included, silly and antiquated in our language. But one of the reasons why it's good to have a committee like this is the committee is supposed to be the . And so it's really a comprehensive exercise to look at the language, look at what it says, look at its organization, and bring it up into a modern, you know, standard so that it's easy for us to understand and read, you know, and interpret, and anybody else who needs to look at it, particularly candidates running for office, right, they can have an understanding of how things are supposed to work.

On that note, through the chair, can we start by addressing acronyms? What is BOLT?

Bolt, I'm sorry, Board of Library Trustees. Got it. And so a good question. There are going to be some defined terms in the charter, but they will be very clearly defined with the whole definitions section. Yeah, Bolt's kind of a cool term for libraries, right?

but I did need to make sure. It took me a while to understand what CAO was, and now I'm doing my interpretation along the way.

Yeah, sorry, we're all, I'm as bad as anybody. CRC, BOLT, yeah. I called it, they're both the acronyms for the Board of Library Trustees are good. BOLT is kind of cool, and BLT.

I just wanted to make sure along the way when we are reviewing of course you're going to come into it and I'm very happy that our chair currently is in it but would we also be looking at why would why charter what are the perks what are the cons

Yeah, so I clearly haven't done a good job of describing that earlier because that was my attempt to say that. I don't think there really are cons to being a charter city. It's harder in some respects in that you don't have a lot of default rules to refer to like general law cities do. But if your charter is maintained and updated to be consistent with best practices, I don't see many downsides to being a charter city.

So one of the things that I have seen is our election cycle as opposed to general. When you have terms that are two years, you are adding cost to the city's budget to run that particular election. So when it doesn't align with the general, other cities, then there is the validation of is that, I mean, how do we- So here's the thing that's good about being a charter city, right?

You don't have to do anything different than what general law cities do. Most cities, including charter cities, don't run their own elections. They align as much as possible with the elections that are run by the registrar because of that very thing you stated, that they're less expensive, it's less work for local staff, you have people that are experts at running elections, printing the ballots, tallying the votes. As a charter city, the thing about being a charter city that's good is if you've decided and your voters agree, right, because they have to approve those provisions in the charter, that you want it to be different and unique because there's something unique about your community, you want elections run in a different way, you could do that, but you don't have to. You could, if you wanted, as a charter city, refer wholesale to the elections code and go, people are going to be elected just the way it says in you know for a city council person or in a general law city so that's the thing you get choice it's a matter of choice of local choice so process is supposed to be driven by practical and legal considerations right the idea of this even though you you certainly could make arguments that elements of our charter could be better if they were different, right? This isn't designed to be a major restructuring of the city operations or change the city's elections process, right? And these things might be identified along the way by the Charter Review Committee as, hey, maybe we should look at, I don't know, ranked choice voting, for example, right? Which a lot of cities are going towards as a mechanism to provide a election process that encourages moderation amongst candidates and reduces somewhat the influence, some would argue, of special interests or party politics. I'm not saying it does do that or I'm an expert on that. And some cities have looked at it. Others are not looking at it. That's not what this project is about, right? That is a whole big thing in and of itself and couldn't possibly be done by this group in the time period. Doesn't mean it's a bad idea, but this isn't to restructure any major element of government. It's to bring it up to speed, right, with what the law says and what we're doing now and what best practices are.

One more question. Of course. And I remember this because I do a lot of the public contracting law validation, at least I know. When the state removed in the procurement contracting laws for women-centered business to be given a score, and it was like state law, does a charter city have the ability to still say minority and women businesses will...

Yes.

They can actually overrule the public contracting laws?

There are... I answered too quickly. There are some elements of the public contracting rules that have been deemed to be of statewide concern. and are things that this is when the state gets to preempt, you know, local jurisdictions. They do this with respect to housing production, right? They say the production of housing is a matter of statewide concern. And I, okay, Charter City, I get that you, you know, usually have control over, you know, your municipal affair and land use decisions, but because housing and affordable housing is a matter of statewide concern, guess what? I make the rules for you. There are some elements, I think, of the public contracting code that work that way too. I'm not I think charter cities have a choice in that area to either do it or not do it. You obviously in all cases need to comply with the California Constitution and you can't discriminate in any ways, right, that it violates either, you know, federal law or local law and of course what constitutes discrimination now is being redefined by the current federal executive branch, you know, in ways that are challenging. for a lot of local jurisdictions. But to your particular answer, I don't know if the public contracting code in that area has been determined to be a matter of statewide concern where we're preempted or not. But that will be probably a question that that committee takes up and talks about as part of their exercise.

Thank you.

So in the charter project implementation, and we're starting to get to the stuff that really matters to you, it contemplates the creation of ad hoc subcommittees, right? This was a big project. The charter's got a lot of different kind of divergent provisions in it. And the thought process was, and it was a process that we used successfully down in Chula Vista, was in effect to break the charter up into sections. sections that make sense right that are in roughly the same you know subject matter and develop ad hoc subcommittees in effect working groups subgroups of the larger you know CRC in order to meet on a flexible schedule right without the public you know being there and all the the what's required to support you know that meeting in a in a public setting and the ability frankly of groups to try out ideas you know and be more candid and hear drafts and you know and and throw things around without worrying that that would all of a sudden become a news story you know and and and uh... uh... you know and potentially distract from the effort and so Ad hoc subcommittees were created, and we'll talk about those on the next slide, as the working groups, right, to meet as often as they need to, ultimately to report out, right, in public to the CRC itself, and really to kind of get the access to the stakeholders and to professional staff dedicated to them to do the section by section review and analysis and work necessary to piece this whole thing together. as we've said a couple times, to kind of eat the elephant, right, one bite at a time. And the idea of using these working groups was to develop, in the short amount of period of time, we might break a record for this if we pull it off, Mr. Chair, to put together a comprehensive amendment to be presented to the council, which we need to do soon, no later than June, in order for them to be able to act in July before they go on recess, because whatever is come up with and whatever the council decides to put on the ballot, they don't have to decide to do anything, but if they hopefully decide to put something comprehensive on the ballot, it needs to be to the Registrar by August 7th in order to appear on the November 2026 ballot. That's charter project implementation, right? There's some guiding principles. There's ad hoc subcommittees kind of as the working group. And there's a timeline that we need to meet in order to meet the objective, which is a 2026 comprehensive amendment. Sorry.

Commissioner. Sorry to interrupt. The state does not have to give a review preview to make sure that it doesn't conflict with any of the state laws on our charter?

No, there's no required review by the state in this process. There are some interesting procedural internal review requirements and noticing requirements in order to qualify an amendment like this for the battle. We need to start factoring that into our overall timetable and structure. Ultimately, charters need to be filed with the Secretary of State before they go into effect, any amendment or any charter, but the state doesn't review it. If you tried to do something that preempted the state, it just wouldn't be valid. It just wouldn't have the effect of law. In theory, someone could challenge a charter provision if it exceeded its own authority.

The only people that have to review it are the voters.

That's right. The voters ultimately review it. So that's the test in the end of it. So next slide, ad hoc subcommittees. So here are the ad hoc subcommittees that were created. I'm fond of the color coding. I don't know why. It makes me happy. So that's why it's done like that. Group one is power and structure of city government, rules, process for action. That's a certain article of the section, and those are kind of related things. Group two is City Council Elections, Power and Conduct of Meetings. That's another subcommittee. Group three, Senior Officials, Duties and Qualifications. Group four, aha, Boards and Commissions, Composition, Powers, and Duties. Group five, Civil Service, General Rules for Classified and Unclassified Employees, Commission, Composition, and Duties. the municipal affair of structure of government. This is one of those structure of government sections. And group six, the other committee that member Crutchlow is on, fiscal administration and procurement. Pretty logical breakdown as I look at it now and the kind of overall reorganization we're contemplating. Some of these pieces are getting broken up and transferred from one committee to another. In the end, we think it will come together and all make sense. So, group four. Boards and commissions, composition, powers and duties. They've met a couple times so far, November 13th and then February 12th. Their next meeting is actually tomorrow night. I don't expect you to have anything to provide them for tomorrow night. This is really just kind of a preview of the charter and the project and kind of what we're hoping to get, the input we're hoping to get from you. at tomorrow's meeting based on a number of meetings including a presentation like this that I gave to the Board of Library Trustees and a couple of meetings they had to discuss what they wanted to do with their section. Probably more than you might need because like what I described, their section was so Manifest in the authority that they were given and they knew they needed to kind of work on it yours isn't You know, I don't think that misaligned right with what you're doing now But there's really was and so they had to really invest some time and work in it They ultimately came up with a recommendation and some on talking points in a direction And an anointment of their chair to come and actually present tomorrow night to that to that committee so we're working we worked with the with the bolt and in order to help them develop their recommendation. We're working on some talking points and some recommended changes for that president. He's going to present tomorrow night to this other subcommittee for their consideration and ultimate recommendation to the larger CRC and ultimately to the city and ultimately to the voters. The role of the planning commission in this charter review process, for each one of these ad hoc subcommittees we identified stakeholders right there certain staff you know members that are the ones who have to live you know and and and in effect live by you know and implement these terms of the charter and there's certain other potential stakeholders including some outside parties uh... that that are important to provide input on uh... no surprise for the boards and commissions composition powers and duties every one of the charter-identified boards and commissions is being solicited for their input. And for you, as an identified stakeholder, your input is being sought with the review of the boards and commissions Article 10 of the charter. We're particularly interested, of course, in the Planning Commission input on Charter Sections 106, and 1007. Those are the provisions that talk about the composition, duties, and powers of the Planning Commission. And so you know you're not, as I mentioned, you're not singled out. The other charter-based board and commissions are Parks and Rec, the Board of Library Trustees, and the Civil Service Commission. And their input will also be solicited. Board of Library Trustees already has been. And in fact, the Civil Service Commission already has been, you know, solicited. And they are the furthest down the path, and that subcommittee is further down the path for an interesting reason. The civil service rules in the charter and some of the terms of the Civil Service Commission don't align any longer with current process and the current definitions of what constitutes a unclassified position or a classified position entitled to civil service protection. Unclassified positions are ones that, in effect, can be fired and hired at will, usually senior management positions and other certain positions. Classified positions, on the classic concept of civil service, have certain protections, both protected by labor groups and by state law that says, hey, you can't do these things to these people without certain due process rights and certain bumping rights in connection with promotions and selection and the like. And so we've got a set of rules in the charter that outline that. Not all the details, right, in accordance with an appropriate charter balance of having the right level of structure and language, but not all the detailed rules. We've got that in the charter. And under applicable state law, charter city or not, if you make changes to rules that affect the conditions of employment for your employees or could potentially do that, you're obligated to meet and confer with those employee groups before you change those rules. They don't always get to tell you what the rule should be, right? That's usually a product of, you have to comply with the law and the contract will dictate that. But you have to meet and confer with them and get their input on, hey, how might this affect you? And consider their input when you're making the final rule. Changes to these civil service rules have potential impacts on every labor group in the city. So in order to get out front of that process and to comply with the necessity of that review, that group went first, right? And there was a focus of resources on getting the input from the Civil Service Commission and the review and the input from the committee assigned to those sections. And we're now starting down the path towards the meet and confer process on the draft, you know, proposed language with the various labor groups. So they're out front. You guys aren't behind, though, in general, and so particularly, and that's why I appreciate you indulging me in this presentation with this being the only item on the agenda, because we did want to get you off and going and started with what this process would be.

Question.

Yes.

On the unions, When we do ratification of unions, how is that timeline against the timeline that we are proceeding with? Let's say SEIU.

I'm sorry, say that.

SEIU or Local 21.

Yeah, so I am not the expert on the details of the timing of that process. Sue Ruder from my group is, and she's administering that process. But there's a period of time that when proposed rule changes are submitted to a labor group, they have an opportunity to provide input. And if they ask to have some discussions about the proposed changes, you need to sit down and talk with them about that. So there's fairly well prescribed, I think, rules of engagement on that. And we're okay with that. It's not three months. It's not six months, right that I'm so We're within the time frames that will allow us to get that input back Yeah, and honestly the changes aren't that dramatic We're not expecting, you know anyone to be really that exercised about it, but that doesn't mean you can skip the process, right? You've got to go through the process anyway, and if there's issues or concerns, you know, those are those need to be discussed so Issues to consider. The specific provisions that relate to you, section 106, 1006, has the composition of the planning commission, seven members comprised of qualified electors of the city. Does that still make sense? Again, we're not changing it. You're not going to be 20 members now, right? You're not going to do all this. You know, it's a tweaking, right? It's a consideration of is there a modification that needs to be made. Seven members. Is that the right number? And interestingly, is a qualified elector the right requirement? I will note to you that the Board of Library Trustees, which is Something a lot of different jurisdictions are doing is saying, hey, we don't think you should need to be a qualified elector to be on the Board of Library Trustees. We think residency within the city is enough. Qualified elector is a registered voter, which also requires proof of citizenship, right? So a lot of jurisdictions are now looking at the, you know, a broader definition of what a constituent is that should be allowed to provide input, you know, into the running of the city. And they've decided, and a lot of them decide not to go this way, but a lot of jurisdictions have decided to loosen the rules for advisory boards and commissions. You still need to be a citizen in order to be elected to office, but that rule is within the purview of a charter city to decide whether with respect to... boards and commissions representation, whether that's a necessity. Down in Chula Vista, just as an example, a significant Latino, you know, population, you know, community with a, I believe to be pretty substantial undocumented population, the thought process there was, hey, there's a lot of people that are disenfranchised from being able to, you know, make our recommendations here. Let's include that as a element of this comprehensive amendment. It was considered not to be so controversial down there that it actually was included as part of the comprehensive amendment and was adopted along with all the other more minor changes that The sensibilities up here, the circumstances up here may be different. I don't know. Ultimately, all of that will be filtered through these committees, through the larger committee and through the City Council, but the Board of Library Trustees, for one, in their consideration of their rules, have decided to suggest that maybe residency would be enough, you know, in order to be on the Board of Library Trustees. issue to consider, right? Is seven the right number? Is there any suggestion other than qualified elector that you want to consider or recommend? Secondly, does the list of your powers and duties properly describe your role and function? There aren't too many. I'm sorry, I don't have them in front of me. I was intended to distribute all of that. Xander does, and I'm going to read them to you now, thanks to Xander. They're pretty short, so I can read them all. the Planning Commission shall have the power and be required to after a public hearing thereon, I'm sorry, I'm laughing because hopefully thereon will no longer be a word in the updated charter. There was another word. Forthwith. Right, that was it. Forthwith was the one that we were wrestling with with another committee, and I was like, we're not going to have. I think I suggested language that said thereafter, but that's not as bad, right, as forthwith or thereon. After a public hearing thereon, recommend to the city council the adoption, amendment, or repeal of the general plan or any part thereof for the physical development of the city. That's a thing you do. We might word it a little bit differently, but it's probably a good thing to list as a overall overarching responsibility of your group. B, exercise such functions with respect to land subdivisions, planning and zoning as may be prescribed by ordinance. Again, a little haughty, you know, in the language, but it is a thing that you do and maybe that gets fine-tuned or updated or expanded, you know, further in order to incorporate particular kinds of things that you're asked to, you know, to act on. Although again, remember, detail isn't necessarily better, right? Because if these encompass enough of what you do, maybe these words are okay. And then finally, right, it's just these three, right, Xander? I'm thinking. Is exercise such planning, zoning, environmental, or other functions as now or may hereafter Authorized by the state of California insofar as they do not conflict with the provisions of this chart, okay, that's Absurd, you know overly lawyer, you know language, but I get it right There's a lot of catch-all most of powers and functions and a lot of you know These rules is you don't want to make a list and what if you forgot something and you can't point to it, right? if there's things in general, you know like those things a catch-all provision isn't, you know, usually out of order and So part of your deliberations on this when you schedule it, you know, for deliberations on this is to look at these. There's a code, I think, section that also elaborates more, you know, further on this. I think, Leslie, isn't that right, that talks about planning? Maybe you look at what the code says about what you do. Those should be aligned, right? These can be more, you know, the code can be more detailed, but they definitely, you know, should be aligned. And you may want to look at that and go, hey, does this properly capture the full scope and nature of our responsibilities? Or should we recommend some changes, you know, to that? Again, to modernize, to make it more clear. and to make it aligned with what is currently doing and what your current responsibilities are. So that is something that you will be asked to do. Thank you, Xander. And then finally, do the other elements of the boards and commissions article 10 of general application, right? There's some provisions that say, hey, here's some general rules that apply to all the charter-based boards and commissions and to any other board or commission the council may decide to create. Do you have any thoughts about those in general or as they apply to you, you know, as probably the most prominent kind of board and commission in the city? For example, there are terms that talk about the process for appointment of boards and commissioners, talk about the process for filling vacancies, talk about terms for board and commissioners and attendance requirements. If you look at those things and you think they're out of whack or they require some fine tuning, you might not recommend the same thing as another board or commission, but all boards and commissions input is desired and being sought by this committee and ultimately, you know, the council in terms of wanting to develop a thing that reaches out to the people who matter, right? Who know and who are experiencing it, you know, and wanted to get it right. So, finally, next steps. General discussion tonight on how you want to proceed, and you can provide direction to staff at least, you know, for purposes of agendas, agendizing something in the future. Obviously ask, you know, whatever questions you want of me, happy to answer them. Ultimately, agendize for a future more in-depth discussion and action. And I'm not saying you need to you know, make any bigger deal out of this, right, than you all wanted to, right? These things might not be off, right? You might be, you know, this is good, right? Or no, just a couple tweaks there. Ultimately, your action should include identifying a planning commission or commissioners, you know, representatives, to present the commission's recommendations, if possible, at a group four ad hoc subcommittee meeting. But if that can't be aligned, you could do a written version. right, Xander or I could be your liaison, right, to provide those. It doesn't need to be, and again, any more than you guys, you know, decided to be. Board of Library Trustees was a big deal and so they're going through a full representative process. It's up to you to decide how you might choose, you know, to provide, you know, to provide your input. So that's my presentation. I appreciate your patience with wanting to give you guys a full understanding of this important project that's going on, just as an important governmental body anyway, and certainly as a stakeholder whose opinion is valued and being sought. Mr. Chair, back to you for questions and whatever other kind of discussions you may want to have.

Thank you. So I'll open it up to questions. Please, Commissioner Wong.

Oh, yeah, question. I googled. California, they have 482 cities. Roughly 121 are charter cities. How about the rest? How can they cover their... Yeah.

How does the cities that are not charter, how are they?

Yeah, so those are considered general law cities. And general law cities are governed by the laws of the state. And there's a lot of laws in the government code and in the election code that govern how, and in the public contracting code that govern how they conduct themselves. And they're governed by the rules that they themselves make that are not inconsistent with those state laws. So charters, and of course, they're covered by the California Constitution as well. Charter cities are governed by the California Constitution. We're subordinate to that no matter what. We're governed by our charter and any laws we make consistent with our charter. And we're governed by the state laws that the state has decided are of statewide concern or are otherwise not municipal affairs that govern us. And so charter cities get a certain amount of discretion in these areas of municipal affairs that I described early on in the presentation, but otherwise we're governed by general laws as well, the general laws of the state. General law cities are all governed by the general laws of the state without a charter.

Okay, yeah.

And I could do, I didn't do the, there was a, i've got a chart that says charter city general law city you know and compares that i should have known that with this wonky group i i should have busted that out too i'm sorry i don't have that i if you wanted me to come back on a future meeting when you're digging in i'll be happy to present that okay yeah

I'm very proud of my new title. Thank you.

That is, when I say it, it's a compliment. Yeah. By the way, I have the numbers.

So the wonkiness came already. Oh, very good. At least in the county, how many are charter cities and how many actually are general law of consequence.

My numbers were roughly right, right?

No, I'm only looking at the counties. So out of the 15 cities. Oh, it's just in the county. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm looking from more our geography, our Silicon Valley comparisons.

Yeah, San Jose, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto.

There was some discussion about it because it's not just the county. Because if you're trying to say, look, we're one of the people that have a stadium, who else is similar to that and what kind of challenges that they may have? So we kind of opened it up to what makes sense to be comparable.

Yeah, we did. We did some, and there's more benchmarking, right? You can do really infinite amount of benchmarking.

Demographics, election cycle, mayoral election, at large, termed, rotational. There's just so many.

Yeah, so we've identified, yeah, we identified kind of 19 that we thought were a good cross-section of ones that had similar qualities to us. Some of them are very different, like LA is one of them, right? Because of stadium ownership and utility, you know, involvement, right? We're an Uber city, right? We're like a big city, you know, and we're like a small city in some respects. So we've got some regional cities identified. Chula Vista, of course, because my familiarity with Chula Vista and having just gone through that process is identified as one to look, you know, look at. cities of similar population in the region once with utilities as I mentioned so there's about 19 that have been benchmarked as you know very comparable but we're looking you know if there's a particular issue that comes up we are trying to look more broadly at that at other at other charter cities you can do a little bit of analysis paralysis you know with that and go too far with that but we we're trying to provide as much information you know as we can that's relevant in consideration of all these issues

Did you have more questions? Yes. Please. Yes, co-pilot.

Yeah. Actually, yeah, you mentioned in November we have an election. My question is what's the deadline? The reason I ask is because the AT&T cell phone base station we have a measure R or whatever, I can't remember, so we cannot build the wireless station in our park. How can we put that thing in the ballot?

Yeah, so appreciate that. Measure R, as you've described, is a measure that was adopted in 2018. Is that right? Yeah. That was adopted... uh... i think was it a citizen's initiative even that was put on the ballot and adopted i i forget what charter section is seven seven fourteen point one i think which uh... essentially says that uh... the city cannot sell or change the use of park property that's identified right on a list of, you know, the city park properties without a vote of the people. That is a section that's being looked at, not to repeal, not to modify in any material way. Again, that would be a major kind of change of something that's already in the charter and probably outside the scope of this group. But they are looking at that as for possible relatively minor modifications of that. Potentially, for example, in order to allow some ancillary use of a park property that's not inconsistent with the use of that park property that otherwise could be beneficial to the city. And maybe a bad example of this, because I know it's a controversial use, but if there was a desire to have some kind of telecommunications facility, um along a you know the edge of a park as opposed to closer to a neighborhood right where there may be more concerns you know for people about the proximity to the neighborhood um that's something now that pro that probably um depending upon your interpretation of measure are might require a vote of the people even though it's not disposing of the property right it's really just a you know short-term license And even though it's not really changing the primary use of the property, it's really an ancillary use that could be viewed as consistent. Again, I'm not trying to debate whether that particular thing is a good idea or not. I'm just trying to give an example of the kind of thing that if someone were to look at that and modify it or clarify it, hey, are certain is no matter what you do, you know, allowed or could that be modified? But no one's looking at that for purposes of making material changes to it or undoing it that's it's considered a recent change that obviously was important to the voters not that long ago it's not anything that's inconsistent with you know best practices it was a will of the people kind of um modification yeah i mean

Just my personal feeling is if we can have the cell phone tower, the telecommunication equipment built in the park, I think it's win-win. The city can also get some income. My question is how can we put that thing on the ballot to improve that part?

There could be a different process for that. If anyone who wanted to do something material to change Measure R, you could talk to your council person, come to a council meeting and go, hey, I'd like the council to consider this. I think this is something that we should modify. and then the council ultimately the council decides right what to put in front of the in front of the people i think that would be a tricky one now though there's still a lot of of sensitivity um um in preserving you know uh parkland yeah so so the then the process is to start with the city council yes propose that to city council yeah what's the deadline um And again, I don't mean to steer you away from the current charter project. I just don't think it's something they'll take up, again, for the reasons I stated. But in order to... get anything on the ballot for 2026, you would need to have council evaluation and action to allow all of the final paperwork to be presented to the registrar by August 7th. So honestly, I think you'd need to start now.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah. Because there would be a lot to that.

Let me make one comment about it, if I may. When AT&T was trying to build their cell tower in here, that's where a lot of this controversy comes from. And the gentleman that represented AT&T, very nice, very patient, worked with us very well to make sure that everybody understood what was needed. The biggest thing that surprised me about it was the fact that the map that they showed, the heat map of, you know, what cell coverage there was in Santa Clara, here in the middle of Silicon Valley, was relatively poor. And for something that, you know, we represent the latest and greatest in technology and are home to people like NVIDIA, Intel, and stuff like that, it was, you know, it's, well, if you're a citizen here and you have cell coverage, you're lucky, and if you don't, you don't. So my thought was, The amount of time and effort that it took AT&T, it took staff, it took commissions to look at and review, I think that what we should do is literally look at it from a very simple standpoint. We need this. Let's not do it one tower at a time. Let's get everybody in here that we need to get in here and have a master plan for putting these towers up so that we can kind of deal with the controversy all at once, which would include looking at, you know, do we put some of these in parks? But we also need to know where you're going to put a tower effectively to then get the best coverage. And it may not necessarily be in a park. But I understand where you're coming from, and I think it would be good to take a look at that part of it as well. Master plan it, get the arguments done once, one meeting until 3 o'clock in the morning, and we're good.

No, actually, we can get done in about five minutes. Thank you.

Did you have any other questions?

That's it. Thank you.

Anybody else have questions for staff?

Please, Lance. Well, I'm just going to let everybody else go first if there's any other.

Well, I always go last, so you know how that works now.

Privilege of the chair. So I have two things that I'm kind of interested in. Is there mechanisms, are there mechanisms being built into this process to give flexibility to the Charter such that we can come back in a year and see if there's something that really needs to be changed. We can add an addendum, we can add footnotes, we can add something that doesn't delay acceptance or our ability to migrate to some new process or technology or whatever simply because of the solidity of the Charter. The second one, which you could probably answer together with, how are we going to define qualified electors? I don't expect there to be a list of exact qualifications, but we may want to have a few examples to give people ideas about what is something that fits a given commission or committee. I don't think we as a group would want to fill the dais with seven real estate agents or with seven developers. There should be some diversity of opinion so that we have discourse and we have an ability to Explore other ideas and that doesn't get reflected anywhere in the process of defining a qualified elector I know we can't do discrimination, but we can set expectations on how our Commission's committees etc are filled with some divert not diversity. Sorry, that's apparently a dirty word now, but I variation of people being used for the position.

I appreciate the question. The idea of flexibility on keeping up with technology changes is a good one, and it kind of manifests in different ways depending upon the section of the charter you're talking about. A very simple, sorry, maybe crude example of that is Currently, the charter requires certain types of notices, you know, be provided to people. And it's, the charter requires posting or the provision of notice in the newspaper of public record, right? And sometimes posting in multiple locations. We will still do that because we're required to do that. But a number of the committees that have these notice provisions are saying, we need to do more than that, right? That's not a very modern way for people. No one's reading those newspapers, right? To find, I'm sorry, some people maybe are reading those newspapers, but not really the common public, right? Isn't looking to the back of a newspaper with legal notices to go, aha, there's a public hearing, you know, that I'm interested in, right? You need to do more than that. And so one of the things that's being proposed, and I haven't drafted the language yet, um, maybe I did, I'm not remembering if I have though, but is to add to that some concept of kind of electronic or digital or website notice that isn't so specific that that itself becomes antiquated, you know, some period of time, but is technologically aware so that as technology evolves over time and there's different forms, you know, of ways of communicating with people, hopefully you capture that, right, in the language, at least for the next 40 years, right? And maybe people are, you're beaming stuff into people's head, you know, in a chip that Bill Gates put in there when he got you vaccinated, right? I'm joking. I'm being ridiculous. For the record, that was being facetious, just to be clear.

So... We'll add to that. Yes, please. In some ways, you can make it really simple in one sense. Because one aspect of it, you could say, are you using push technology or pull technology, right? So pull means like, hey, I go to the website or I read the newspaper and I gather that in. And then you can have somebody say, look, I would like push technology where somehow... I get on an email distribution list or I get a text message or whatever. But the beauty of it is it doesn't define the specific means by which that happens, just that I want something where it's you proactively send it to me rather than I have to go find it.

Yeah, that's a good concept, so we'll think about that. But an example of what you're talking about, right? And there might be other things that, again, if we're talking about This isn't technology so much, but an evolving practice. They probably didn't have design-build as a mechanism 34 years or now. They do now. Maybe there's going to be some other hybrid form of procurement 10 years from now. And so the idea with the language is, bless you, is to, maybe concepting like push-pull, have some words, which is my job, to come up with the right words, that wraps itself around current versions of that type of procurement, design-build. Managed, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you. You're going to draft it now.

But not have it be so limiting, right, that, oh, it's not listed here, right, so we can't do that. Now I have to do another charter amendment, right, in order to encompass that.

There is a danger that lowest quality bids generate lowest quality results. And that mentality could be devastating for our city.

And that's why this concept is going to be introduced. Again, it doesn't apply in all circumstances, but when it does apply... in my personal view about structure of government, it should be applied based upon a professional staff recommendation in accordance with an ordinance adopted by the city council, right? It's not in the charter, right? It doesn't, the charter doesn't dictate things so specifically that gosh darn it, did something wrong and so now you there's a new thing that you ought to be able to do that's great and would be of great public benefit but you got to go to the people again to you know to tweak it and so we're trying to be cognizant of that i don't think we'll hit every you know we'll push every button um and in the end if there's something significant right that this group doesn't you know pick up that all of a sudden becomes a new thing or a new thing that's dangerous right that people want to either get rid of, you know, or add some additional checks and balances to, the charter can always be amended again. But the idea with this swing of the bat, if you will, is to try to capture as much of these, again, not revolutionary, but many best practice, you know, revolutionary, you know, changes all in one amendment as possible.

I just want to add to that. I think part of what has been said to us is that There are times when things make sense to put in the charter, and other times just do it by ordinance so that you have that ability to quickly change it. But also the process, and please correct me if I'm wrong, we try and line charter reviews with general elections. That's right. It's once every two years. So if we do do something like, boy, we really want to get rid of it because that was bad, we would have to have a special election to do it. Yeah.

That's yep, that's that's the challenge if you do something that really really has a big blowback later on but agree with everything you said the vote So I'm gonna inject a Extremely niche example just to give you an idea of what poked a hole for this for me a conversation on next door recently was complaints that Waymo's were parking outside of a park that has a no parking sign in front of it and And the issue is coming up that a Waymo car is never parked. It's an unattended Vehicle, it's an automated it has no driver, but it has no concept of being parked. So we're gonna be facing Pushback on things for even city ordinances around our parking decisions our lane division ideas if What happens if an automated or? self-driving car in encroaches on a bike lanes if it wasn't part of the Definition of the the cars programming is it illegal? Is there a hard law on that and all these things are so open-ended ambiguous concepts that We have to have some flexibility in our charter for our even for simple things like parking ordinances to be able to adjust and adapt and evolve to Take what the current legal results are for those kind of challenges

I hear you and I'm thinking as we think about right what goes into the charter and what doesn't that is a level of detail that I don't see being necessary going into the charter.

But it's going to come up for the cases of ordinances.

Yeah so here's the thing and that's the thing that that being a charter city does right is just because it doesn't say it explicitly in the charter doesn't mean that you can't necessarily do it. It's true with design-build, but most things, again, so long as they are not inconsistent with state laws that apply to you, the Constitution and other matters of declared statewide concern, and as long as your charter doesn't prohibit it, you can do it. The charters are designed to be restrictive when you are consciously wanting to restrict and control behavior and enabling when you don't want to control behavior. And I would list the thing that new things come up. Yeah. No, I hear you. And we need to be, again, we need to be cognizant of that. And there'll be specific provisions in there and how charter laws relate with state laws. With the idea, again, that we are, I'm intending to as a charter city that wants all of its authority unless we want to take the authority away from ourselves, giving ourselves as much local authority as possible. That's kind of one of the credos of being a charter city. The other question you had regarding diversity, you know, on the committee.

Well, actually, it was more like how do we really define qualified diversity?

Yeah, so there are a little bit different things. Qualified elector actually is a defined term. Qualified elector means that you are registered to vote within the jurisdiction that you're representing. And in order to be registered to vote, you need to demonstrate certain things to the registrar of voters, which includes citizenry. So that's more of a resident registration citizen concept, qualified elector. That is a defined term. under state law. The point that I understood you getting at was, Hey, if we want a certain mixed composition of representatives on the Planning Commission, I don't want it to be seven real estate agents. I don't want it to be seven developers. I don't want it to be seven laymen who don't know anything about development. I want an engineer and this and that, the other thing. There can be provisions for that. Those things are usually done by ordinance. Because again, it can be mercurial as to what kinds of compositions make the most sense depending upon the phase of development that a city is in. But if that's something this group wants to say, hey, you know what, no, I want to make sure by vote of the people, only to be changed, you know, if you go back to the vote of the people to change it, that you want some more specificity or at least concepts about, you know, about how to, in effect, populate, you know, your commission to make sure there's diversity on there. That's an interesting discussion. Again, I've not seen those things, except in probably very unique, you know circumstances where it's such a specialized you know Commission you really need you know absolutely need some expertise right and so there might be some affirmative expertise I've seen that done and I think we did it in in Chula Vista when they were talking about qualifications for people on the redistricting Commission right when you go to districts and then every ten years you get the the census and that triggers a requirement to reevaluate your population to make sure the lines that you've drawn now align with whatever the population growth has been in the city. There was very conscious effort there to introduce some level of both geographic diversity and other forms of diversity so that there was a composition on that districting commission that was viewed as representative. Here, right, I think there's no requirements that there be a person from every district, right?

No.

And, you know, that may end up translating naturally in terms of how the recommendation process is. But in theory, that might be an example, right, of some level of, you know, the kind of diversity that I get and could see as being something like for this body to make sure you've, you know, it's not all... District 2 people, right, who might have a District 2 mindset, whatever that is. I'm not sure what District 2's mindset would be. But I get that as an interesting topic of discussion amongst you about when you think about your composition as to whether or not that's something you want to suggest goes in the charter, either specifically or in terms of maybe general language that then in turn could be translated into something that's implemented by code, by ordinance.

So can I ask what suggested would be more like I'm looking at diversity in terms that a lot of people may think about it more of an impartiality and certain qualification. I mean, I don't need somebody to be know CEQA and stuff backwards and forwards and stuff, and staff does train, and we can go to other training things to make sure we're up to speed and stuff, but definitely some kind of thing that would say, hey, look, it's not gonna be impartial if everybody is coming from, I hate to say we're gonna beat up on realtors, but let's beat up on lawyers, if they were all lawyers. That would be very interesting. That would be great. I'm sorry.

Not for the lawyer advising the group. It's absolutely true. Are there any lawyers on this group now that we're talking out loud about that? Yeah, okay, good. We're good.

Anyway, but the idea would obviously to have some kind of something in there that says, hey, look, you're trying to make this group Okay, diverse in terms of making sure that they have the right impartiality, let's just say. I mean, somebody that wants to be, who's a realtor, people who have been realtors have been on the commission, obviously, right? I think everybody has tried to, I'm gonna be nice about it, has tried to be impartial and do their due diligence and such. And the lawyers around here are very good about letting you know if you're not. So... but maybe it makes sense to have something in there that just spotlights that.

Yeah, so maybe a little bit different of a concept than the one I was talking about, but as you know, I'm forgetting, I always forget. No, you're on fiscal. There's a discussion about in one of the committees, Is it yours? I'm sorry, I forget which ones you're on. About setting up a, and because there's no list now of kind of duties of a city council person to, and there's detailed duties for the mayor, right? There's duties for boards and commissioners. There's duties for the city attorney and for the city manager and everybody else. What about duties of the city council, right? What are they expected to do? And one of the discussions of the duties that in response to input from the committee that I've now drafted, right, that may be controversial, hopefully not, is, you know, a duty to put even though ethics rules say this and the city's own code of ethics say this, to give it more prominence, elevate to the charter level the obligation of a city council member to put the city's interests above their own and to be professional and courteous in all their interactions with each other, with staff, and with the public. So there was an observed, you know, concern by this committee of, and I'm like, oh my gosh, don't, don't, we can't put rule, you know, specific rules about that in the charter, right? That doesn't provide in the charter, but can these principles, you know, be listed as principles, the things that the, you know, that the city council people should do? I think there's a consensus, at least on that committee. We'll see how it translates, you know, up through the channels of consideration on that, that that's something that could add value, right? Even if it's not detailed. You could add that for boards and commission members too, right?

As a general duty of all boards and commission members. It's kind of sad that you bring it up and what you're saying is that the people don't know how to behave or how to, you know, act with respect towards others. So we have to, it's like being in kindergarten then. You can't do that, you can't do this. Just be respectful and treat others like you would, you know. like you expect to be treated. And we're here to serve the people, especially in the city council. So whatever any other citizens comes up, you don't need to have any laws telling you that you should treat them with respect and listen to them and show that you're concerned with their issues.

and that's kind of sad that we have to write that down. I'm not commenting on the existence of that or the lack of that, but what I am telling you is that was an interest of the committee members to elevate that principle into the charter. Just again, even as a reminder, in the end of the day, right it's it's incumbent on each individual person to conduct themselves right in an appropriate way i think was it was your point and so i'm not commenting on the need for that or anyone's particular behavior but i'm i'm trying to translate into this charter project you know issues and concerns that are expressed you know to me through the through this committee process um calibrating that for what you know what's consistent with the charter project and what belongs in a charter and what doesn't So I'm trying to do yeoman's duty there, if I can, on balancing all those interests and getting it drafted correctly. But appreciate the interest and the question on all those fronts. Again, things for you to talk about.

One last dimension to this conversation on qualified electors. Is there a characteristic of the individual to allow them to participate fully in the sense like if we had a commissioner who only spoke Mandarin, would we as a city be required to print all materials in both English and Mandarin? Would we require a translator to be available for that commissioner?

uh... are there limits that we're placing on at the qualifications for practicality in purpose of being able to participate fully in the commission uh... so uh... interesting question not a thing that i don't think that the charter i think would direct i mean that would be a matter of you're asking question as a matter of law are required you're not saying we should add this to the charter to make sure that if there's someone who speaks a different language that they are fully supported. I didn't hear you saying that. I hear you saying, is that something that we would be required to do? Maybe you are saying that.

I don't want to bring in ADA, but I also didn't want to say things like, well, a fully blind commissioner, a fully deaf commissioner. There would be characteristics of the support that we as a city would have to provide.

So rules do apply to that. I'm aware of rules for... you know, if a member of the public, right, wants to, doesn't speak English, you know, as their primary language, there's a requirement that they be given extra time, right, in their testimony, right? So if you had three minutes and English wasn't your primary language, you'd get six, right, in order to allow you to have a translator. I'm not sure we need to have, you know, that we're required to have translators of all the different language. I know we're obligated to translate all of our materials and on our website, you know, into multiple languages and Google Translate and other mechanisms are making that more and more possible and elections materials are making that more and more possible. I honestly don't know the answer unless Sander does about the level of support in that context or others that we would be required, you know, to support commissioners. I know ADA rules would apply, right? You need to be able to get up on the dais, right? And, you know, and participate and access, you know, facilities. And if you need other kinds of support, you know, we would be required to accommodate that. But language translation, Sander, are you aware of rules for that?

We went through that on the last meeting is why I was...

Yeah, and those rules that I said that apply to the public were applied there. We actually had some discussions about that to make sure that, you know, every opportunity for due process was afforded that person. Sorry.

For the applicant, yes. Yeah.

Yeah, for the applicant. Yep, I remember that. But again, don't know the answer to you on actual board or commission member as to whether or not translation would be required. Did you Google it while we were talking?

No.

Okay, very good. So rough justice answer pending. But regardless of that, that wouldn't go in the charter, right? That would be, you know, we'd comply with all laws, yeah. And I would argue that... If you wanted to make an affirmative obligation to put that in the charter, that would be a lot. That's not just a tinkering. There's a lot that goes into the cost of that and the analysis of that. That's a bigger thing than you might think.

It just makes the term qualified elector fuzzier right now, which is...

Yeah, and again, back to qualified elector, all that means is resident and registered to vote and a citizen. I mean, you don't need to, you know, I don't know what the language requirements are for that.

There is a case saying that voter literacy requirements have been struck down as unconstitutional. So you don't have to be able to read English to be a qualified elector. in previous administration.

No, that is a very good thing. Yeah. Oh, I don't disagree with it. I just said it would add some interest.

I hate to differ with you. If I recall, my grandparents had to become citizens. They had to know how to read and write and speak English That's becoming a citizen, but there are definitely citizens in the history of the United States that would say he could not vote because he couldn't read. Somebody's wasting time on this. If somebody's in the city council and they don't speak English, how did they become a citizen if they didn't go and speak English? We're wasting time here. Are you getting charged by the hour? Otherwise, let's wrap it up.

He's not getting paid. That's the problem. Hold on there. Just take it easy, okay? I issue hardship bills. You're welcome to leave. No, hold on. People want to ask questions.

Let them do it. No. Stop.

We're going to conduct this in a way that is correct. If people want to ask questions, you're going to let them ask questions, including yourself.

Go for it.

Thank you. Any other questions?

That was it.

I'm here for any other questions that folks may have. And with a commitment to come back if you want me to come back to you when you actually deliberate more specifically on this, I'm happy to provide support.

What's the next steps with this from the committee that we need to do?

There's the slide. I'll spin through it again. Ideally, you'd say, hey, let's, this is worth, we want to provide formal input. Let's agendize, let's ask staff to, you know, add the, you know, a more detailed discussion of this to our next, you know, I would ask at your next agenda, obviously, it needs to work with other things that you've got going on, but interested in the input of this group as soon as possible to get in the mix, right, of the committee. And then that committee will be meeting regularly. And if you want an audience with that committee, we'd coordinate scheduling in that regard. So first step really is, if you're comfortable, collectively directing staff to agendize by consensus or otherwise as your attorney might advise to Agendize this at your the next available, you know meeting where it makes sense to to have the discussion and then and then dig in You know and and decide what you want to Recommend to the subcommittee.

Okay, given that the next time we're meeting is April 8th. I'm curious as to when do you need our

There's no exact input date. It really is as soon as possible. So I would ask if you can do it on April 8th, that you do it on April 8th. It's an ugly meeting probably. Wow. The power play here at the staff table.

We have the El Camino Real specific plan that night. And the super graphic ordinance for FIFA games, but the next meeting isn't until May 20th, so Yeah, or a special meeting I mean I hate to suggest a special meeting I

I would, if it's, I mean, our office could produce the RTC, you know, for it, probably to help frame the issues or maybe do a little single, you know, it wouldn't be a long RTC. It would be a, here's the language, here's the things we talked about that you may want to look at, you know, to help focus your discussions in a deliberate way. That would be what the RTC would be.

I mean, honestly, if it has to be May, it has to be May. I'll leave it to staff.

Okay.

We'll be ready.

Thank you, too. And thank you for keeping us straight, too. I appreciate it. So you mentioned it's a project. I'm going to just go very logistics here. Are we able to actually measure success of this charter?

That's a really good question, and a couple of the committees have asked that, too. I think the larger committee had that discussion, right, Chair Crutchlow? And I think the answer was there are I think the intent of this project is to have both qualitative and quantitative benefits, right? Qualitative benefits, hard to measure, although I think very real and potentially cost savings, include ease of user, maybe not. But I think there is a qualitative value in improving the document. There are also any number of different quantitative things that... I'll go to kind of the one we talked about the most, which would be, you know, procurement mechanisms that save money on projects, right? Or decisions that are logically made within staff's authority as opposed to the elaborate process, as you guys know. Look, even Leslie was trying to get me to write an RTC for her. there's a lot of work goes into putting an item together, you know, and getting it agendized, having staff people kind of in the room, you know, to present, you know, the item to the board or, you know, or to the city council. And I've got a very, very busy, very bright agenda We can have lawyer supporting SVP who has an absurd book of business. Zander, as you guys know, can have an absurd book of business. And if we all and any of the business people staff probably puts the most burden on, to the extent you have to put all of these things together, not just to do the work itself, but to package it in a way that gets properly noticed and agendized and in front of counsel. and it's not really the kind of thing that council should care about or should need to act on and the public doesn't really need to see, that's a lot of staff time. And so, again, I think it's a combination of qualitative and quantitative. I don't know if we're going to go about the business of measuring those. I think that we're going to talk to the council and make sure the council knows how many when it comes to them examples of projects, you know, that go in front of them, you know, and an estimate of staff time to that, that will be, you know, that will able to be identified as a potential highly likely cost savings.

Let me give you an example. You could try qualitative. This is an election by the citizens. It's a moment in time. Yes. You decided because you came with your prior practice of Chula Vista. Otherwise, what would be a possible Mechanism to say let's revisit the Charter every 10 years Why would we not be that specific or measurable or achievable? And I'm going going Smart goals here, so you get the vibe, but I don't think we should not have the ability to qual measure quality of life Because the the kind of demographics will change the kind of technology will change the kind of interest of the next generation could change. So I just wanted to make sure that there's a possibility to have the charter review happen in a very methodical structure.

Yeah, that's an interesting point. I don't know that I would, because that standard even might change, right? we might do such a good job this time that it doesn't need to be revisited for 20 years, right, or probably not 100, you know, but for 20 anyway. So I don't know that I'd want to put a formula into the charter, but you make a good point about, you know, it being built into, you know, how good government administers itself. There might be some one thing that comes up that you want to act on sooner than 10 years, but, you know, there— you know, periodically it ought to be reviewed. What some cities do to make that more likely, and again, I'm not suggesting that here because it's a structure of government thing and I'm not trying to create new commissions, but where I came from in Chula Vista, they had a standing charter review commission. It didn't have to be a process where either for, I don't mean this in a derogatory way, political reasons, right? Because a lot of council-driven stuff is around elections, right? And a lot of citizen initiative stuff is around elections, right? People decide that terms need to be longer or shorter, or the appointment process needs to be this or that, or the election system should be this, and if you're that, you can't be that. There's a lot of interest usually in that. But why I thought the process in Chula Vista was so valuable and why I think this process is so valuable is it doesn't talk about that stuff. It talks about the efficient operation of city government. And it emphasizes that. And it solicits input from, you know, people who are involved in having to administer the charter. And that arguably should be an ongoing, you know, exercise. And if you had a standing charter review commission, you know, right, then that would be a resource, right, for city manager, you know, a finance director or council, right, or a committee to say, hey, as things come up, I've got a standing group here that's constantly educating themselves, constantly reviewing the charter, constantly saying, hey, how can we make this better? It can result in over-tinkering, right? So there's a balance to it, but those are my thoughts on that.

So when we are setting, and I'm going off of all my project management here, so bear with me. So when we are going on a charter, which has been ancient, like our zoning ordinance in some ways, okay, 1951, we did a charter grant. 1951, we wrote a zoning ordinance. We never touched it after that. And we continue to feel the pain points in all our, you know, planning commission yes i'm going to stick with my scope here that's a good analogy the zoning code update is a very good analogy yeah so in general the loose and framework is always going to be transparency accountability you know in the best interest of people's health safety uh... inclusivity ensuring environmental you know uh... whatever uh... efficiency and frugality there's all the good words that are will always stand the test of time. Being good, bad. But what I do want to get into the nuances is where you're going into your project delivery. That is coming under your capital project delivery, frugality and accountability and fiscal responsibility. Again, going back to, we have about 18 terms in just how we do project delivery, capital project delivery today. You do not need to belabor every one of them because you're going to have something come up. But I will give you an example. When there was a new model, especially because it's a public contracting system with the UCs, they were limited by the design-bid-build process. And for a particular project, it had to go all the way to the UC regions. to get the qualifiable ability for that project to proceed. We should try to look at something that is more principle-based for our project delivery, because every process is going to have its own perks, benefits, best value, based on, but you could put it into a smart process again with a framework. And the framework is based on a rubric. Is this, God, Maybe the cost of the project is one, but the schedule of the project is the benefit to the citizens at large. Is there supply, market demand that will dictate the delivery process? So when you talk about project, you can't beat me, but I'm just saying that you could build that as at least, the framework doesn't have to be in the charter. You should have the nimbleness to actually rewrite the framework at will, because that should be managerial. It should be administration-taken, but you could reference that. That all are delivered.

Yeah, so I appreciate those thoughts. And we are trying to get that right, particularly in procurement. Again, it's supposed to be empowering. Yeah. And it's supposed to be broad enough that it encompasses both things that are being used now and things that are consistent with those. Like you said, you know, best value, right? You know, efficiency and speed, you know, and execution. you know, value engineering, right, things like that, to include principles as opposed to specific procurement mechanisms. I think that's a good observation, and that's ideally how the charter works, right, and that when you, and the procurement mechanism of the moment that's consistent with one or more of those principles, if you need details about how you go about doing that, that's an ordinance and it's policy. You don't need to amend your charter.

And on the technology front, again, generic terms, there's brighter minds here, so I won't contest that. But we're a smart city and we're innovation. So those are where we are going to drive the infrastructure. The nuances are the devil in the details. can always come through your ordinance, can come through your everyday bread and butter. But to enable the thought process that we are a smart city, that we are always going to look out, but in the context of environmentally sustainable and resilient.

Yeah, appreciate that input. Yeah, appreciate that input.

And we should be, I know it probably doesn't have that kind of interface yet, but transportation is a huge gap right now. VTA, we don't even account for it in our charter. What is our connectivity to jobs, to education, to local housing? So I do want to make sure we are at least anticipating our city in a future state when VTA is much more endowed, that we build a very, I would say, futuristic transportation-enabled connecting Point to point. The last mile is, interestingly, 30 minutes to get a VTA from Tasman Levi's Station, but Caltrain and BART are like, you know, like clockwork. So where is the ability for a future generation for Waymo or, you know, to actually support through our public transportation system. So I didn't see that in our charter, but I'm giving you nuggets that I may not have a future opportunity, but through my chair here, at least representation, that we have the right charter with a vision, a mission, key measurables. Are we coming back and telling your citizens This is what your charter does for you on a regular basis. How are we keeping ourselves and the government and the structure and the management between the city council, the city administration, the city manager, the city clerk, the fire office? How are we connecting that governance in an accountable, transparent way?

I appreciate those thoughts. That is probably a grander idea for what the charter currently does or could do in this process. Again, ideally it doesn't keep all those things from happening. But it doesn't, and so at a minimum, it can certainly do that. And it makes sure that the tools are there in order to be able to do those things. But that would be, to have the charter be a vision statement for the city, I don't think it does that now, and that would be quite a separate exercise in order to have it do that. I mean, to the extent, and again, I'm thinking currently your roles and functions are pretty generic, and they probably ought to stay generic, but potentially there could be a you know, an additional role and function of the planning, you know, commission that says, you know, to encourage these things, right? You know, to make recommendations, you know, to the city council and planning and you're not on everything, right? We've got our lanes, you know, on things that encourage, You know, the kinds of things that you think ought to be encouraged. But I warn you, when you're getting into policymaking, right, as opposed to structure of government that creates policy, dynamic spaces in which the local entity can make choices for itself. When you go beyond that, you might end up in a political conflict, right? If you identify a vision that doesn't align with the council's vision,

I don't think it's my vision. I'm just saying the city has a vision.

Yeah, a vision. But I mean, if it's coming out of someone's...

It should be agnostic of city council.

But I'm with you. I mean, if it's certain things, then it's not other things. And if it's expressed in a certain way... Should we be good?

Yeah. I mean, those are like generic terms. I'm saying have a vision that's much more simple. You have a charter review committee that is tasked to come up with it. The six groups or your swim lanes are going to come up with it.

Yeah, so for me, that is policy setting in front of the city council. That's people get elected, right, to capture the zeitgeist or vision, right, of the moment. And their job is to, in their capacity, is to come up with that. I don't think the charter document is the place that that resides, at least the current functionality of the charter. I think you are conceiving of... city council retreat vision making that then translates into what they tell council to do or tell their staff to do. Right. So I hear you it's a good it's a good concept I just I don't see it at least in this charter project and in any charters I've seen you know what you're describing as manifesting in charter language.

Got it. I only say that no project can happen without at the very basis what do you want to accomplish out of that project. Whatever the charter wants to accomplish is going to come out from the very basis of what you're trying.

Yep. And I guess the way I would describe that, putting it in much less visionary terms than yours that are, again, wonky, is maximizing local control and giving local government the tools to translate whosever vision is in it into rules.

Go ahead and finish your thought here, please. Yeah, I'm done. I have to interrupt here. Yeah, please. I'm sorry, are you finished? I am absolutely done. Commissioners, let's try and keep it to the specific topic about what the Planning Commission's input to the... Yes. I love your thoughts, everybody. And if you want to come to the Charter Commission meeting, I'll buy the donuts.

I promise. If I could, I would. But I do want to make sure... Will you write the RTC?

Because Leslie's not going to write my RTC. I don't even know what RTC means, so...

Chair, can I just add one thing to what Commissioner Chirico was saying? A lot of the stuff you're talking about, the vision, is in our general plan, and that's our guiding policy document, which also needs an update soon.

You can actually interrelate and say the charter references the general plan. That would be much better. Local structure. I'm not trying to get high-flying words.

That is the tool. Thank you. I made it more clear. pedestrian with a City Council vision but yeah that in terms of the transportation and land use and infrastructure and environmental friendliness and housing and all of that that's in your general plan that that I think is the city's that is the city's vision document thank you not the Charter makes sense and I can go ahead and make sure that she'll get the

Which is to do all the work Take it on can we keep it on to the yes for the boats and commissions I do want to make sure under the charter of the Planning Commission where we have currently land use and zoning as the Key words to ensure whether it is through your general plan or whether it is through your zoning ordinance that we continue to build upon the role of the Planning Commission and Is that still in our swim lane?

Yes, ma'am.

To review environmental, because now the state has almost taken away the review of CEQA. The notion of CEQA was tied to how your city's environment was impacted by a project. We still have city resources that are then getting diluted or not even reviewed for water, for air quality. So I don't know how to say it beyond that the Planning Commission still has its goal, role, responsibility to review projects against environmental standards. And I don't know if that environmental standards are in the general plan or in the zoning ordinance, not that I've ever seen it, but just giving that opportunity for us to insert it. Sustainability, is it in our climate action plan? Great, then reference it, cross-reference it. The resiliency. in a major incident or in something that we have a major power outage. What is the resiliency plan for City of Santa Clara? Not that it is something that I want the charter to reference, but I just want to know the planning commission's purview on those and infrastructure planning. when we are talking about future proofing for a 5G or 10G, whatever be the future state, we are still a city that has a very, I would say, electrical grid-based system that even our power poles are all over heads.

so i appreciate that without still within what we're talking about with the charter because that's the yeah so i i'm the the some of the specifics are clearly beyond um but the idea um and i think xander can help with the language now and evaluating projects i hear you talking about evaluating um you know determining in connection with your your decisions um the um the project needs and impacts, right? That could be across a broad spectrum. And so I think I can see that as being a general kind of duty within your spectrum. Again, you'll talk about that more specifically as to whether or not that makes sense. And Xander and or I will be here to help to see if there's language for that.

That's it, thank you, Chair. You're welcome.

All right, anyone else? So one item I want to just, in order, you speaks last, speaks best. All right. In the follow-up, just more specifically, If we, as individual commissioners, want to go ahead and put in some idea, like we come up tomorrow, we have this brilliant idea, shall we just send it to staff so that way staff has some, obviously not to everybody else, we don't want to do a violation of the Brown Act, but the individual commissioners, if they want additional questions or topics to be addressed at this future agenda item, send it to staff ahead of time. That would be great because that gives everybody a heads up and gives them some time to actually consider it.

I'm sure Ms. Xavier would love to receive those comments so that she can include them in the RTC that she'll be writing.

I absolutely would love to receive those comments, so please do send them to me. He got him to write the RTC. I will send them along.

Yes. So I assume that we have our own deadlines then in getting our draft ideas to Leslie within a fortnight so that she has an additional fortnight to finish it. I know, that's why I use it.

Barely.

Need to get your comments to Leslie forthwith.

Forthwith? Forthwith. Okay.

Yeah, I would say within a week.

Fortnight is actually one that I still like to use because when somebody says biweekly, what does that mean? So, okay, there's one I actually vote for.

I don't know. It means both.

So okay, so So yeah, so you go ahead. So we'll send it to staff ahead of time, please. That would be very helpful and then finally Xander We I'm assuming we have to open this to public Questions. Yes.

No You should ask it.

There's any no, is there anybody I see there's nobody here So is there anybody online that wants to we do not have any hands raised online to make comments? All right. Anybody want to make a motion to close public hearing? I It's technically not public hearing.

We don't need to close.

I like the technicality of this. All right. Then that's it for the study session. Thank you very much. Very good study session. Thank you. Very well prepared.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

And I would like to scratch your wonky from record.

Transcripts generated automatically. Yes.

All right What is next on the calendar here We have reports of Commission board liaison and committee announcements and other items I'm mr.

Chair if I might I'm gonna take my leave of you and poke my head in to see if the other subcommittee And I was supposed to be staffing simultaneously is still talking so Yeah, thanks. Thanks all of you appreciate thoughtfulness and the input and I will be here at the next Meeting or at least someone will be here in addition to Xander to tag-team represent our office. Thank you Thank you.

So thank you. Thank you for an attraction by the hour All right Announcements and other items

Did anyone go to the State of the Valley address, Feb 27th? Sorry.

I did.

You did? Any report up? Yes. Thank you.

I will never go back again.

Beyond that.

Actually, nothing new.

It wasn't as informative. Microphone. Hold on, stop. Mic and...

Yeah, it wasn't as informative as I thought it was. The first one that I attended was about three years ago, just prior to the COVID deal. But I was really surprised. We had, Silicon Valley Power had two tables and only about four or five people were there. And, you know, it was really, let me put it to you, there's nothing new that they said. And I think one of our meetings is more informative than

So our birth rates are still declining?

Yeah, I wish I can get my money back, you know, get our city the money back.

Are our birth rates still declining? Are our jobs doing better?

Everything is, like, it's all gung-ho. Our jobs are increasing, like they say, but there's not, because in reality, only the healthcare services are increasing. 50% of the, you know, the same thing, 50% of the populations are Asian compared to the way it used to be, and, you know, The people that own homes that there are residents are about 50% of the homes, single homes are owned. Something that is there if you just pick up the news or just Google stuff, all the facts were there. Nothing really new. No solutions to the problems were there. Presented there. So it's actually more like, you know, like we're out like a cheerleading type of thing It wasn't that much of a Yes, I just I was really disappointed, you know I'm sorry that the city had to pay but I've Even worse that Silicon Valley power had two tables there. They had a paper two tables Any other announcements other items I just want to say something else. Tomorrow, I believe, if we have a chance, anybody here, the proposal for the Mount Marianas development, they're going to be showing it at the fire station on Walsh. even if we just go there as just Observers and just to see what kind of feedback the citizens are giving just as you know Quiet like a little fly on the wall just to see what it's gonna. I believe it's between six and seven. Is that correct?

I'm pretty sure it's six it's on the city event calendar if you'd like I could send you a link to that is that the the Fire Museum at the Fire Training Center, but I can send you a link if you'd like, but it is on the city event calendar.

That's right on Walsh. Yeah. It's right on Walsh.

Yeah.

It was a good idea just to go there and just to quietly sit there and listen, which you'd be surprised. I did that when we had the one for the golf course, and I was really surprised what the citizens were saying and so on. I didn't say anything. I just sat there and listened.

That that meeting is at 6 p.m.

Tomorrow and there is a zoom option as well And the video is posted after the meeting if anyone wants to look at it after the meeting also All right, there's no more announcements or other items let's go on to Commissioner travel and training reports requests to attend trainings I

I sent all of you a master list of upcoming conferences quite a while ago. We really don't have anything on that list that's coming up until next fiscal year, which is the California APA Conference. But again, that does not mean you cannot attend trainings or use your budget to have a presentation made at a meeting. Leslie, do you have anything to add about that? I do not. OK.

All right, next item then. Director of Community Development Reports.

As far as the Planning Commission budget, you're basically at approximately $16,000. And again, fiscal year does end June 30th.

June 30th, thank you. Upcoming agenda items.

We'll have the same session again.

On April 8th, we'll have the El Camino Real specific plan and an ordinance regarding super graphics in the buildings surrounding the stadium area during FIFA events. In addition, there will be a follow-up to tonight's study session.

Thank you, Xander.

Anything to add?

Nothing to add. That's exactly correct. I'm sorry. I was trying to share my screen with your budget stuff.

That's great.

We were still on. Can I just ask, did the Sutter application come in? It did, yes.

Okay.

And is the NVIDIA application in? Which one? NVIDIA expansion. Yes, that is also in, yes. Okay, thank you.

Question on the progress for the dinners. Now that the council said do it, are we going to do it?

I've had no update on that. Awesome. But I will let you know as soon as I hear something. Um. So council actions since your last meeting on February 11th. At the city council's meeting on February 24th, they did hear the objective design standards that were added to the zoning code, which were approved unanimously, as well as the historic resources inventory update approved unanimously. And then finally, they also heard a reconsideration of the denial of the Subaru conditional use permit for the change in the trash enclosure. And they did unanimously deny that again.

All right. So...

Just a reminder, sorry, sorry. Did Planning Commission approve and the City Council denied?

No, you denied and they appealed your denial. The Council upheld that appeal and then the applicant asked for a reconsideration of the denial.

To be clear, the first time it went to Council, they were unable to achieve a sufficient number, unable to make a decision, which meant the underlying decision stood. but then there was a motion to reconsider at the next meeting. The council voted yes, we would like to reconsider that. They then held another public hearing, at which point they did vote to uphold your decision to deny Subaru's request.

Thank you for the clarification.

It's so nice to know that we're in such... Sync. Yeah. I'll leave it at that.

Okay, so any other council items? We're good?

That is it.

Thank you. So a motion to adjourn to April 8th.

I move to move to adjourn. Second.

Great. Thank you.