 Well, good afternoon. Let me get that turned down just a little bit. I don't think we need it that loud. Welcome to our first meeting of the Rebooted Open Government Task Force Implementation Subcommittee. Some of you might have seen the introductory email calling this the Sunshine Ordinance Committee, which will be a part of it. But we thought it was more appropriate to refer to this sort of within the full scope of what we're looking at. So we will be calling this the Open Government Task Force Implementation Subcommittee. With that, Ms. Gomez, do you want to call the roll? At the record show that all the subcommittee members are present. And I've got a couple of folks around the table that I'm going to allow to introduce themselves as well. So we'll go all the way around starting with Kalua. So I'm Kalua Barnes, the Director of Community Engagement and Interim Rec and Park Director. And I'm Sue Gallagher, City Attorney. John Sawyer, City Council. Chris Rogers, I'm the Vice Mayor. Julie Holmes, Santa Rosa City Council. Izzy Gomez, City Clerk. Danielle Gardenio, Community Engagement Coordinator. Alright, thank you so much. And we will begin today's meeting with public comment on items that are not on the agenda. Is there anybody who would like to come up to the microphone and give public comment? Okay. Seeing nobody rise, we will move on to our first of our scheduled items. Really a quick introduction from myself on what this task force is going to start with and where I think that it will go. As many of you know, there's a frustration when the community gets involved and puts together a plan that has been never actually implemented. You came together over the course of seven months back in 2015 and 2016 to deliver this report to the City Council, the Open Government Task Force Report. What we are charged with doing here in this committee is first and foremost reviewing the status of the implementation of the recommendations from that task force, what has been implemented, what has not been implemented, and for the things that have not been implemented, we will have a discussion on either why they haven't or what we need to do to get them across the finish line. Then we will be making recommendations through this body on how we distribute our workload so that we can maximize what that report was entailed to do. We've added a couple of other things that we'd like to discuss as well, such as the City's use of ad hoc committees, which was not contemplated in the first drafting of the ordinance. I will be very interested to hear from you and from the rest of the public what additional things you would like to hear in this subcommittee as well, but I think we're going to start today with the implementation plan. Before we go there, I'm going to turn it over to my two colleagues, Council Members Combs and Sawyer, to see if either of the two of you would like to make some comments as well. Council Member Sawyer. Well, thank you, Vice Mayor, and I think you've articulated our mission very, very well, and I look forward to hearing the public comment and to ultimately the recommendations. This time it will move forward, and I like the way you mentioned that those items or those pieces of this agenda in the broad scope of the word, that we be very, very clear as to if we cannot implement, maybe we can't implement now because of budget constraints. Whatever the implementation or reasons for non-implementation, it's really, really important that the community know why for anything that we are not moving forward with at this time or if we are not moving forward at all because things have changed in the last couple of years, but I think all the clarity that we can offer will be vital in this process. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Combs. Thank you. Well, first I want to recognize that Dede Bridges is here who was one of the key players in the original Task Force, and I look forward to hearing from you and your comments with regard to the intent of the Task Force as we move forward. Obviously, I'm interested in hearing from everyone, but have a particular key interest in hearing from you, and really appreciate that what we're talking about here is implementation and not just a review of the Task Force's work. So I'm looking forward to it, and thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member Combs. And I should also note that my intention writing this committee is not just to talk about the implementation of ideas, but where we can apply them to this subcommittee as well to get a feel for what they would look like. So for example, there was a requirement recommendation in the Open Government Task Force report about how long the agendas should be in print and items should be available when possible. Obviously, we were not up to code with that in this meeting, but hopefully moving forward, we'll be able to implement those and see what the impact on staff is and how that would actually affect the city in a broader sense if we were to take that through the rest of our committees and the City Council. Our intention is to be out in the community as we do these meetings. I hope that there will be an attempt to do this throughout the city, not just in one district, and really try to engage the public and model what we think will be good Open Government practices. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Kahlua Barnes to walk us through sort of where we've been. I'm going to get out of the way because, as you'll see, my head will be in the way of the presentation if I don't move, so I apologize, but go ahead and take it away, Kahlua. Okay, while we get the projector set up, I just wanted to kind of explain why certain staff members are here. The Office of Community Engagement was created essentially as a result of the work of this task force, and the city clerk and the city attorney, although they are generally at public meetings, they are here because they are a huge part of the implementation of these recommendations, and so the Office of Community Engagement is responsible for shepherding them across the finish line, but much of the recommendations actually impact the clerk's office, the city attorney's office, and other places within the city departments. So with that said, I want to ask for you to, you should have in your, would you collect it, should be a document that's actually landscaped with some colors down the columns, and we'll be looking at that shortly. So we're starting first with an overview. The Vice Mayor started with some information, but essentially the Open Government Task Force was created in January of 2014 by the then mayor, and the goal really was to look at, to create a community-based group of folks who were interested in ways to improve government processes, transparency, and engagement. Today we're going to talk about what the recommendations are, the implementation status as we mentioned, and then one of those many recommendations is actually a proposed sunshine ordinance. So convened in 2014 by the mayor, the final report was issued in December of that same year, the group was actually a group of 12, why is this? A group of 12 members of the community including, well, 10 members of the community, and then two members of the council were part of the Task Force, including Dee Dee Bridgetooth here in the audience, and Dee Dee, you want to raise your hand? And over the course of that year, essentially what we came away with were recommendations for improved communications, improved collaborations, access to decision-makers, voices to be acknowledged, and efforts respected during the government decision-making process. And overall, this appears to be four major recommendations, but as you'll see when I talk a little bit further, there are actually sub-recommendations within this. Hold on one second, we're having technical difficulties. So as I was saying, the recommendations came into four major headings, but each of them had their own sub-categories within them. So overarching, there were some immediate goals that were identified. Then there was actually a recommendation to develop a culture of public engagement, a culture focused on communication, and then the development of policies that promote openness. So starting, so we're going to walk through kind of the immediate actions of where those are, and then we'll spend a lot more time than some of the other detailed recommendations. There was a recommendation initially for the creation of, so 1.2, there were three strategic objectives. One was to hire a communications director. One was to adopt a sunshine ordinance, which is part of what we'll deal with in this group, and then to create a city mission statement that embraces community engagement. Pause. Do we have copies of this? So if you guys are okay with it, we're going to turn this off because it's actually more annoying to have it flicker on and off than to just turn it off. Thank you, Kalila. And if it works for you, what I would like to do, and if it works for my colleagues, I would actually like us to walk through these four different sections individually and allow for public comment after each section as well. Okay, so if we'll actually go to slide number four. We have recommendation one, and if you look at the landscape document that you had, it's actually 1.1 was an open transparent government, hire communications director, creative city mission statement, and I'll stop there. What has happened regarding the hiring of communications director is that I think the city learned over the last two years that the communications director was actually not quite the right term, so we've done two things. The city has actually hired a community engagement director, which is for the, and initiated an office of community engagement, and then subsequently hired a communications individual who is the PIO slash Intergovernmental Relations Officer. And the distinction that we can talk more about that is communications is actually kind of largely assumed to be going in one direction, and engagement is a different animal altogether. And so we actually, the city now, I think, has embraced that obligation by speaking, by selecting and creating the office of a community engagement, a community engagement director, and the public information officer. Vice Mayor, would you like to take comments on here, or keep walking? So let's walk through on item 1.2. There are three different segments to it. If you could walk through all of those, that'd be great. Sure. So the second bullet is adopt a sunshine ordinance based on the Open Government Task Force. That sunshine ordinance was actually drafted and presented to the council in 2016 after a number of public meetings over a period of several months. So if you will go to the... If you look at your colored Excel spreadsheet, it should have each of the items that were listed in the Open Government Task Force report. I believe it's probably later in the packet under the areas that have not been, yeah. So one of the things you'll discover is there's some overlap in the recommendations. But if you'll go to the second page in, and it reads as 4.1, draft and adopt sunshine ordinance. It's kind of in the middle of the package. The second bullet. Mm-hmm. Draft and adopt sunshine ordinance that supports transparency and open government through practices that exceed minimum requirements and statutes for public meeting records. So here it is. And so as I was saying, that recommendation actually was initiated by my predecessor. It was after a period of several meetings with the public. That recommendation was actually taken to the council. And there was a significant amount of feedback regarding the draft of that ordinance. And so it remains having not been presented to the council again, and the plan is actually to spend at least one meeting, maybe more, just on the ordinance. It's pretty detailed. It speaks to issues about the lead time for posting meetings, which the vice mayor has already mentioned. It speaks to the issue of language accessibility. It speaks to enforcement and many kind of complicated things that are easier to attack in bite-sized chunks that we want to do over a meeting or two. And then the third item that's listed on this summary is actually create a city mission statement which embraces community engagement. What the city has done is not a mission statement per se. During the strategic planning process and goals setting, the council actually kind of used a more technical definition of mission. And so what we have done is actually adopted a mission statement that is to provide high quality public services and cultivate vibrant, resilient, and livable city with five values. And one of those values is transparency. And the vision was Santa Rosa leading the North Bay. So I've got copies of that, not in your package. And there's enough for everyone who would like to have a copy of it. Danielle, do you want to pass these out? Thank you, Colloa. And I will ask you to just pause there for a minute and ask my colleagues if they have any questions on the section one immediate actions recommended for council section of the Open Government Task Force. Council Member Combs. Actually, I'd like to hear from the public if they feel that the mission that we have adopted with the word openness is sufficient. And is there any public comment on section one? Go ahead, Gregory. I said you could talk. Now that we've turned the microphone off. Thank you for letting me comment on each of the items as it comes forward. 1.2, hire a communications director. I just wanted to comment. You've hired both of them. I'm a little worried you're going to fire both of them in the next budget cuts. If you have to choose between one of them, I think the Open Government Task Force spirit would say that the community engagement director is the more valuable to the process they engendered. And the communications director was a mis-titled initial and hasn't got the support of most people I know in the community. So I just want to make that comment. The second was that the Open Government, 1.1 set the goal of open and transparent government. All that it seems like you've done is to improve the relationship via, in my opinion, pronouncements and or statements. The real task of engaging in the community, getting strong neighborhoods has just begun. And you need to spend a lot more time creating the diverse communities you want and having them engaged with the city. Because so far I haven't seen a whole lot of that, though we're all working together. Thank you so much, sir. Go ahead. Well, that's what I was going to talk about. Just a niggly point, but I am, Kalua, you're speaking way too fast. I'm only catching about a third of what you're saying. The acoustics in here are terrible. And for us, I think if the next meeting had tables instead of chairs, assuming that we're going to have a pretty small workout, it's really hard between the fast talking and the shuffling of pages. So I'd really like to have a little bit more of a comodious experience. So thank you. Absolutely. And we'll definitely work on that. I apologize. Go ahead. To echo what Gregory said, and that is that the mission statement which embraces community engagement under the implementation notes, that is not community engagement. So community engagement that we talk about is when it's a two-way street and not a one-way street, when it's a partnership and not just this is what you're doing and there you go. So again, I just want to underscore that community engagement is a two-way street. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you so much. This last year has been kind of a haze for me. So if I missed meetings that were there, I would like to apologize because I did miss a lot. But the time that I recall that you were talking about creating a mission statement was when you set your goals. And that's when we sat behind a defined road to define that we were not part of the group that was talking about this. And when we worked together as the open government task force, it was about us working together. Citizens, along with our elected and appointed officials to create a city mission statement. And so I don't think that there was active community engagement if there were meetings and you talk to people about it. And I... Thank you so much. Is there anybody else who'd like to speak? And just so you know, we are taking notes on some of these. Some of them you'll see addressed in the next meeting. We can correct some of those as well as I think there will be potential for this committee. And I would expect that this committee ends up making additional recommendations along with the implementation of the open government task force. Collewey, Council Member Sawyer. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Is the copy of the mission statement that you developed here in our documents that the open government task force is mission statement? I was hoping that you got that far because it's one of the most difficult things for any group to do is to create a mission statement. And so I was hoping that you had got that sort of... But I'm sure we can do that, but especially when it involves a large number of people, hopefully a large number of people, it's difficult with a small number of people. So I was hoping we could check that box off, but I look forward to that. Thank you. If you want to move on to Section 2. And I'll start by saying that I'm from the south, but I've never been accused of speaking slowly, so I'm going to work harder on that. And I think they're just to make it a little bit easier for folks following along at home. As you walk through Section 2, I know it's not all in the beginning of the document because we have many that are in progress. So if you could explain where you're looking at the beginning, that'd be great as well. I'll do that, and let's all start by taking this landscape document and numbering the pages so that we all know which page we're talking about. So we're going to number the first page, one, and the backside of that, two, and proceed from there. So everybody should have seven pages. But you could number it if you like. I did. I hope that the record shows that the engineer was the one who figured out that there are actually eight pages, but that one doesn't have any content. This page intentionally looked blank. The other thing I want to share with you is that the reason this is a little bit more difficult to follow is it's actually sorted by status. And so I propose that it may be easier, Chris, to go down this by status rather than jumping back and forth. I think we could do the status in the order, and then we can plug it back as I wrap up the presentation. Okay, I think that that's fine. If I may ask, how was the status determined? So the status is determined by staff, which I'm sure we'll have comments about. Okay, so if we look at page one, we've actually looked at 1.1 since the council goal. We've looked at 1.2.1, higher communications director. We've looked at 1.2.3, can we create a mission statement? 2.3.1. And so simply what we've said is all these here, we consider completed based on it being green, and already we've gotten some feedback that the mission isn't satisfactory. Okay, so this next one is make time at the beginning of council meetings for public comment, and we see that as having been accomplished during the current format with council meetings. There are two times for public comments on, for items not on the agenda, including a time that starts no earlier than 5 p.m. And again towards the end of the agenda. And so Chris, if you, Vice Mayor, if you want me to stop here, take comments or? Well, I just had a quick comment slash question to ask folks to weigh in on at some point. One of the things that I have noticed from running the meetings is that the same individuals tend to get there ahead of time and put in cards, which means when you only take 10 cards, those end up being the folks that are heard from all the time. Would it be appropriate, or is there an equitable way to do that where at the time of public comment, it's actually random which cards are selected in order to hear a more broad swath of folks who have public comment. Just putting a pin in that for now, for my colleagues and for the public. If you want to continue through the completed status items, we'll do that after. Okay. And then 3.1, create a communications director position. We've already discussed that one. We consider it done and done with both the communications and the community engagement role. 3.2, it says overhaul the city's website to create an effective tool for residents. This one actually want to qualify. The major overhaul was done, but we see the opportunity for continued improvements. And one of the recommendations that I'll discuss as the council, the subcommittee makes its way forward is something called a transparency portal. It's a model that's in place across many organizations. And so we've got documents that are public, but to perhaps create a front door where all of them are linked from rather than having you find them across the website. So we consider that a check mark with room for continued improvement. Again, not to weigh us down, but I'll put a pin in. I know that not everything is transferred from the old site onto the new site. So far, the old documents for the open government task force have not been transferred yet. Let's try to get those on that transparency portal. Council Member Combs. One more green before we go. I had wanted to put a pin in there also in terms of the portal being two-way so that individuals can make comments or provide comments easily through transparency. And then if you go to page two at the very top is a continuation of the website's recommendation which reads revise and update the city website to make it easier for the public to find information about the city, including guidelines for public access and participation, and make city policies and procedures available on the website. I do want to add though that as the website was being developed it actually was not done in a vacuum. There was a process where the chief information officer and Daniel could speak to that, but there was a process of gathering input for the development of the website and then also a preview before it launched with community members. So I think we all agree that there are some opportunities for continued improvement, but we think that one's more done than not. And so this is a good place to break. Right. Pat, if you want to start us off. I think for the public if you could. Sorry. That'd be great. I have a question. Oh, I have a question. I apologize. The closed caption needs the mic. Yeah. Okay. I have a question. Will you be discussing at any point the change in access points with the lower comment and dais not being available and the lack of access to the audio visual? Will that be part of your discussion? I know it comes up every time I'm at city council, someone's complaining about having to be so far away. And so I just was wondering if that might be an agenda item for discussion. And I will, because this is a good place for us to say this, future agenda items is on here for discussion as its own item. I'll put that on my list and then we can discuss what potential future items we should put on there, but I'll make sure that we have that on there. I just wanted to second and expand a little bit on Julie's comment about two-way and one-way. Both the Office of City Engagement and the website suffer from being about a website or the activities of the engagement. I was very much involved in the development of the website. I had great ambitions for it, but it is really not just transferring old stuff onto it or figuring out a way of having it be prettier. I really would like to see the statistics on use because I don't see, and I don't see the website designed in any way to engage our idea or to be able to figure out some way in which you bring our even activities into the website. It looks like a city and a city alone. It does not look like a community. And the website ought to reflect the community and let the community know what's happening in the community. And that is a big component of the website's development. And for whatever reasons, it seems to be... Renee? Not very user-friendly. When I try to put in district maps, new maps, I get a list of all kinds of things that have maps. Nothing that I'm looking for for the new maps. They ought to be right up front. These are the maps. I shouldn't have to call staff and say, please tell me where I can find this and they send me a link. So the communications and intergovernmental affairs relations officer is actually in the city manager's office. So it's not a part of the Office of Community Engagement. ABDS have a public comment on these particular items. Council Member Combs. I have a couple of questions. One is perhaps we... one's a comment which is with regard to the earlier comments. Perhaps we need to put somewhere in this set the community engagement role so that it doesn't just reference communications director. And the other is a question about whether the website is in fact the technology that we want to address specifically or if we need to be talking about more multi-layered technologies. My kids don't go to websites much anymore but they look on Facebook to see... to learn things, surprisingly. So a broader social media agenda other than the website, maybe that's another pin. I suspect that websites were a big deal a few years ago but websites are not a primary source all the time. Council Member Sawyer. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I totally agree with the frustration about the website. I think it's dreadful trying to find information unfortunately. Part of the problem is there is so much information there and management of that information has become very problematic and I understand that but to the point about the maps I finally found the path to the maps and it's through the city clerk and it says elections and then it says districts it says find your district. I think it should have been on the front page because it's so important right now with us voting. So it would be, I think the website itself could probably take as much time to improve as what we're doing right now with Sunshine Ordinance and I would love to get it improved and I think what Council Member Combs mentioned as far as technology, it's going to continue to change but right now we need to make it as friendly as we can given what we currently have as far as hardware but it is very, very frustrating and that's one thing I would love to see tackled but I'm not sure that this group is the group to tackle it. I think we should charge someone with tackling it like maybe our IT department with the help of the community coming together again and letting them produce something, letting us try it because I virtually never am pleased with the results that I get from our website and it's for a variety of reasons and I'm not blaming any one person but it's terribly frustrating. I'll just make one quick comment on the district maps srcity.org slash district elections. If you go there, there's a bar you can type in your address and it'll show you which district you're in but the fact that I have to share the web URL means that our website is not doing a good job of navigating people to it so we'll put it in that one as well. Kalua, if you want to go through the next five here the in process, it's 2.1 through 2.1.6 to finish out page two and we'll take comments on those as well. Certainly. Can I add at least a comment about the comments on the website? I think what is worth considering as we talk about who takes on making it better is to perhaps the solution isn't a single website but it's something that's more layered so that you have an engagement element which is software out there but there is some core information that is more difficult to live on a social media platform so I don't think it's an either or it's probably some combination of tools that can satisfy and provide an engagement opportunity as well as provide just straight data that's easy to get to. Right. And we can't get off this topic without mentioning the My Santa Rosa app as well but that's more of a reporting tool and generally there's a frustration around having discourse and dialogue and I think we need to figure out how to build that in. Casper. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And something that Greg mentioned about their ability to respond or to what you see on the website it would be important to know what parts of the website need to have that ability because I would think that there are sections that were people's comments and you'd have to have someone monitoring the comments that there are certain parts of the website I'm sure that would generate comments on a regular basis and I think we would need to identify those priorities first and then find a way to make that happen but I'm sure that not every part of the website would need to be two-way is my guess but we need to find out which ones would be helpful to be two-way. And may I just comment? I agree there'll likely be some areas that have a stronger need and appropriateness for it to be a two-way communication on whether it's a website or a Facebook or whatever it is. I will just caution the subcommittee and the public that having a public comment going on to the website itself there's going to be some issues it can be done but be aware that there's some complications in terms of moderating the public comment that comes in issues of if we allow it it's going to have to be completely open and setting standards for what can be public and what cannot swearing inappropriate comments about individuals things like that so it's going to be more complicated than simply opening the gate for open entry by the public on an official city website. Thank you and we will put a pin in it for now and we'll come back to it obviously an area with a lot more discussion to be had in potentially future meetings as well so Councillor we understand there are issues associated with once you open a free speech venue you're stuck with a lot of speech there are benefits and we need to have that conversation one of the part of the pin is considering who should be in the room while we talk about the improvements of the website it is my experience that however much I get along well with highly trained technical people as a person with a degree in engineering sometimes it's not the best person to talk about a website as a website designer because while they know a lot about websites it's somewhat easy for them and the people who need to use it often are having a problem using it may not be intuitive to the whole public so it may be that we want to look for a resource like a librarian for how to move forward with making the more community-engaged part of the website open just I think we need to be a little open about who's in that room. Thank you Council Member. Alright Kalyua go ahead let's move on to the next five and we'll come back to the website issue for sure. Okay starting with the yellow designated areas at 2.1 genuinely engage and partner with neighborhoods volunteers, businesses, institutions and other organizations which support our community I'm going to keep reading because I want to kind of talk about the resilient neighborhoods concept and how we think it might meet this need look for opportunities to form partnerships with community organizations and neighborhood groups create opportunities for partnerships and ask for help in getting people engaged further incorporate the community advisory board and civic engagement practices and below there are a number of things clarify roles and mission educate and outreach about participatory government work with teen council emergency preparedness regular communication with council the next item is explore reassessing and restructuring cabs so that it can help facilitate and activate more effective practices for community engagement build on excellent engagement model of the center rows of violence prevention partnership make use of key strategies outline and line of girls discussion planning for stronger local local democracy a field guide for local officials to effectively engage the community during decision making and then there are subsets of examples there active recruit actively recruit diverse viewpoints involve those citizens and structured facilitated small group discussions interspersed with large forms for amplifying shared conclusions and moving from talk to action give the participants in these meetings the opportunity to compare values and experiences and to consider a range of views and policy options produce tangible actions and outcomes and then establish a Santa Rosa established Santa Rosa as a leader in civic engagement with the goal of increasing openness transparency and accountability and then there's a list of transparency on the following page develop a cross departmental framework in order to institutionalize a more collaborative approach to engagement brown bags electronic newsletters coffee with a council member listening forms create strategically located electronic and bilingual kiosks for public information again we've got some overlapping here again about the website encourage a new charter review committee to explore district elections and pay for council the district elections thing kind of took care of itself close the communication loop acknowledging the value of community input wisdom and participation foster a spirit of collaboration and problem solving decision making start critical conversations earlier with the community and hold such meetings at times and places conducive to participation increase opportunities for diverse community engagement and effective participation again a strong civic infrastructure and then we get to the sunshine ordinance so I'll stop there because most of that is actually wrapped around this notion of a culture that values public engagement and I want to talk a little bit about what the office of community engagement has been doing that's aimed at this although it's not this it speaks to the spirit of what's intended here as opposed to the literal list of the items that's provided for starters the we actually launched the community advisory board I'll go to that first actually a charter mandated board of 14 members that essentially preceded the creation of the establishment of districts and that group has been in place since 2002 but we actually launched a strategic planning process this year and out of that which is yet to go to the council they've actually embraced the notion of the resilient neighborhoods which I'll talk about and they actually want to use the capital improvement the community improvement grants for resilient neighborhoods and neighbor fest resilient neighborhoods is actually a concept we the office of community engagement has actually been working with the city of San Francisco to try to replicate a model that we think works here and we think it actually creates the framework that makes a lot of the things recommended here possible it's built on the notion essentially where you start with block parties you can infuse it with some disaster preparedness and we were hoping to partner with the fire department and police to do that layered on that we had the concept and we can spend a whole meeting talking about it so this is just to give the highlights layered on that would actually be out of these neighborhoods would be the elevation of some folks who have an interest in community leadership who might go to a leadership academy cohort of 20 to 25 folks over a period of three to four months and it's designed not just to figure out not only how government works but how to work together because reality is community engagement it sounds good and it feels good and not a unified voice from the community and so we would actually want to teach neighborhoods and communities to learn to work deliberately amongst themselves before they even come to council and then next from there we would actually hopefully have then over time a body of folks who are both engaged locally planted in their neighborhoods who know how government operates both just not just the city but the county we've talked about a partnership and then who might be really great Boarding Commission members to just kind of build a network of active neighborhoods active individuals and folks who are engaged at that level the resilient neighborhoods we actually presented it as part of the budget this year we were not funded but we persevered so at this point we think we've applied for a grant with the 90 way we're hoping and we've gotten eight eight neighborhoods neighborhoods who have said yes we'd like to do a block party and what we call neighbor fest and so the block party model is we would give them a grant we say here's a block party on a date we would have city departments out there there's a tabletop exercise that is actually focused on preparedness they do asset mapping as part of that exercise Recology gives them a waste bin to put all their stuff in and they roll it away and decide who in their neighborhood will keep it the model in San Francisco actually goes one step farther and it actually has non-profits as partners in this scenario but we're going to try to just pilot the neighbor fest program next year from April to August we're going to have 10 or 12 of them we've also had the community foundation expressed an interest in funding at least three of them in an underserved neighborhood so ideally we would work with perhaps community action partnership to have some in the rosin area and then we've had Catholic Charities expressed an interest in doing it out of a couple of parishes and all of this we've had several meetings where as we conceived of the program we actually invited folks to help us develop it and so we'll share kind of what we think it may not check all the boxes but it's to start to how you really kind of create in the community it doesn't speak to the organization yet but it does speak to the neighborhoods capacity and framework for participating amongst themselves and then participating with us and so we're at the end of this we think one of the things that staff is going to be recommending is a way to to satisfy this list of kind of very generically building a framework for engagement will be the neighborhoods model so I think we've covered a lot of what we did as we were working on it and I say we Daniel and I mostly Daniel the goal really was it turned out that it aligns with the task force recommendation but it wasn't the guiding document we think that the value of this office and the thing that we're supposed to be doing is actually what the task forces do and the only way to engage them is to create two partners one is a community that actually knows how to do it and is given some space in the process and then the more difficult one quite frankly is organizational change and that we'll talk a bit about as it talks about a culture focus on it says communication I think it's engagement they're not the same thing it may be it's both but I don't think it's either or so I'll stop talking now for comments and then we'll go to the next one you're ready well and I hope and I will come to comments in a minute I hope that we don't just gloss over this by saying that it's going to be the resilient neighborhoods network which I think would be easy for us to do I'd like us to get a little bit more in depth and even if we have to do that in a second meeting I'm happy to do that I'm really curious about for example opportunities to form partnerships with other community organizations obviously we have some folks who are in the audience who are part of Santa Rosa together who's doing a lot of this work when we talk about disaster preparedness I know for example the ridgeway district has literally divided the ridgeway district into block captains for disaster preparedness we do see across the city that there are some neighborhood groups who are already doing this work how are you going to plug them in and get their ideas on how this should work and partner with them on some of our more broad strategic goals that are in here so let me start by saying we're minimally resourced and so it's been a challenge but what we at least the way we're thinking about doing the pilot is we're actually starting with neighborhoods who are already organized so we reached out to existing organized neighborhoods so the probability of success in this pilot works it also requires that we get fire involved but one of the things that I did mention that we're hoping to do as these block parties happen we give them a toolkit but someone actually needs to be there kind of probably helping as an extender so one of the ideas we had was to train non-employees community members whether it's Santa Rosa together or we had looked at the volunteer center of Sonoma County to create a kind of a cadre of folks who are committed to this program who get trained on how to do it who work with the neighborhoods to help them do their parties to help be an extender for us quite frankly because we don't have the capacity to do most of it without some other resources the partnership I think the other opportunity for partnerships is that as we were developing this there were actually lots and lots of non-profits who are out there who actually love this idea which is how we were able to get folks who are willing to help fund it is to see whether in fact it could work so we're totally open to that it's just how do we manage how do we start, how do we test and then how do we expand to to grab more folks and I didn't necessarily I didn't expect that it's the only solution but we think it's a good it's something to shoot at for how we might build onto it to get some of these other things done Thank you and if you'll walk through this a little bit with me have you had a chance to work with CAB to clarify the role and mission yet understanding that you have two members up here and a different discussion about what the mission of CAB was going to be Yes so that we hired a consultant Civic Makers was the name of the organization they interviewed the department well they offered interviews and I think they had interviews with two or three department heads they met with the city manager they met with some of the council members I'm not sure right now how many of you guys were made yourselves available then the CAB actually spent two half days so they spent a day kind of developing some really big visions for what they wanted to do and then they came back and we had a final session where they worked on their one year plan in that process they actually sunset some of the other subcommittees that they had like Housing for All and some things that really they were passionate about but they couldn't affect an outcome for they now and we'll share it and post it but we actually have the draft we have their mission and vision we're working on the final of the strategic plan that they've come up with that we'll share that hasn't come to council yet but they are highly motivated they're actually doing things the three categories were actually engagement expertise and tell me would you like me to read the mission statement real quick and then I can read off the okay so the CAB's new mission is the community advisory board connects city government and residents so the public can have a voice and decisions that impact their lives and build a stronger community their three strategic categories are empowerment, expertise and operations so they have developed ad hoc's that are beginning to tackle some of the things that they said that they would outline in their one year work plans and they've also developed metrics to help them keep moving along and be able to measure the work that they're doing it is the first draft of the strategic roadmap is available on their website which is www.srcity.org CAB we're actually hoping to wrap up this one year work plan development that they had and get the finalized document up on the website within the next month great thank you so much next on the list was education and outreach about participatory government I'm a big fan of participatory budgeting I think we've talked a lot about that how is that work going we have taken no steps there so the idea of participatory budgeting I think actually is likely to be more successful now that we've got the districts but it also is most effective when there's money budgeted that they can talk about so it's not something we've been forced to do as the office of community engagement so what I'm hearing from you is potentially that this is something that we need to bring back to council as a recommendation to actually fund projects and then allow the community to engage in participatory budgeting of some sort so that they can satisfy this requirement correct how about work with the team council no team council exist and not has been created okay well and I do know that there was used to be a student representative on the city council I think there has been some talk of bringing that back into the fold it's something that I'm very interested in exploring is integrating the student councils throughout Santa Rosa into the city governance as well and we can talk potentially about ways that we can do that so I think I'm very interested in what comes I was hoping this would become a pin item I believe that having a team sit next to council members during the meetings was not really an effective use of the teams time or a way of getting council input from teams in general so I would like us to have ways to do outreach and to be more engaged in the community with the young folks item D on this and for folks at home we're at 2.1.5 now D for emergency preparedness obviously it's something that we have discussed a lot over the last year and obviously funding for COPE has declined in fact I believe it's been eliminated is this another area where you'd like us to discuss potentially needing to fund it or are there other avenues that we are looking at to do emergency preparedness again as I said some neighborhoods and OSN is working on their plan right now are doing it right now themselves how can we help so I think the fire department if they were here would say funding they have significantly more requests for their presence to help with preparedness than they are able to provide the neighbor fest program is preparedness but it's kind of preparedness at the most basic level it will involve we hope partnering with the Red Cross and the fire department but anything that's kind of more robust they would actually we need additional support for even when the COPE program was sort of moving along in a more robust manner um it was very difficult to receive maintenance services for neighborhoods who were in the process so it was easy to get something started but it was much harder after a year or two to make sure it continued and was ongoing that as leadership changed in neighborhood organizations as people moved that it was maintained so if we can add the maintenance concept and not just the startup concept both to general emergency preparedness and to neighborhood watch type programs and finally on this section item E regular communication with council the community advisory board one thing that we should contemplate or discuss is now that we are in districts whether and this goes with item 2.1 0.6 as well whether or not cab and I think it should should be realigned with the new districts rather than the existing cab districts and I understand that that might actually take charter review it does not okay so staff has actually already started to have that conversation and we've looked at the charter and the resolution document in that the assignment of the districts so do you want to speak to it right that the charter identifies at least seven districts that just says a cab should have at least seven and up to 14 members at least seven by district districts to be determined by council council adopted those districts in by resolution so the council can shift that at any time by resolution so I will put a pin in that that potentially with this body will want to do is recommend that the council update the cab ordinance to reflect that the districts are now the council districts rather than the existing cab districts some of us will be at large for another two years so we need to their communication plan yes plan correct and the I was going somewhere else just a minute the communication from cab I actively communicate with my own appointees quite a lot my cab appointees and my appointees to other boards and commissions so I'm not having a problem within the context of my own appointees with regular communication but I am aware that cab doesn't communicate as a body to the council as a whole and so I would really like to emphasize the need for cab to communicate as a body to the council as a whole and stepping back to 2.1.5 regarding the role in mission the charter does outline three or four things cab is supposed to do and at least until the charter is modified I think we do need to be mindful of those three or four items which include having a role with regard to planning and zoning for the next two years I was going to suggest that we devote some time at a future meeting where we bring the charter provision that instituted cab as well as the resolution and then can have a fuller discussion and yes currently yes only three council members will be district based for the next two years the remaining currently it's an assignment system and you could adopt something similar and modify it as you see appropriate I think it will be helpful to have those documents in front of us I'm going to jump to item 2.1.8 on page 3 I'll come back to public comment once we make our way through the ones that clue and I apologize folks I know this is more of a digestible or large chunk that's hard to digest here so actively recruit diverse viewpoints which is one of the things that I was hinting about with public comment as well we tend to have the same folks who speak first and speak often at council that's not a problem on their end but it is a problem on our end if that's the only viewpoints that we're hearing so how are we taking active steps to recruit diverse viewpoints I want to understand that and then item B that is what we put a pin in to do with our open government task force committee at the next one potentially facilitating smaller group discussions not uncomfortable chairs in acoustic challenged room so I will pause there council members are there any other questions on these my own experience has been that meeting in the same place means that certain group of people feel comfortable coming to that location so at some point meeting at different locations if not as the body as some other mechanism for doing that so that we go to where people are comfortable coming to so that we I see one of the ways of actively recruiting diverse viewpoints is to go to diverse places I will move to item 2.2.1 on page 4 and in particular the increase direct communication with the city council and the city manager I know obviously this body can only make recommendations to the city council each council member is welcome to engage the public as much or as little as they can I will be elected doing how is that working with the city manager as well when we talk about brown bag lunches, electronic newsletters etc. have we have what is the city manager doing on this front so to my knowledge there aren't any brown bag lunches the electronic newsletter that the city manager issues is for is internal there's not a document that you regularly issues that is outward facing aimed at the community and so you've talked about with the council member that's kind of for you all to decide and then there the listening forums I think is probably a little more nuanced the departments aren't here tonight but a number of them regularly, first of all they have marketing and outreach coordinators who maintain social media portals as a tool for communicating, they also are pretty active in the public meeting space I think water is a very good example with the level of effort they had over the course since the fires last year in terms of taking information to the public responding to questions and trying to keep people really really informed and I would actually call those listening forums as you guys know the solution ultimately before determining that the water over time would resolve itself with some things was a solution of the filtered system that actually was an idea that came from the public so I can't speak for all of the departments but I will say on their behalf that there is a fair amount of public meetings that happen PED does a number of meetings planning and economic development that I think also is a forum where they both try to have information available but also listening to what the feedback is and then taking that into either the data that they create making information accessible on the website and things like that so it's not very black and white it's more nuanced I'm keenly aware that some departments have like regular coffee with a cup for example I don't know how those are funded and if individuals are buying their own coffee what's the story there I wanted to have a regular lunch meeting with some constituents that I was hoping would be a diverse group that would bring input in and basically was told I had to put that bill myself and that a take home pay of less than $500 a month on council really was not in a position to do that obviously I can have meetings where people buy their own lunch I would like to know in terms of staffing to notice that this is happening funds for putting materials out flyers or whatever and then who buys the coffee it would be helpful to know what resources would be available if a council member wanted to do this I'm hosting a public meeting November 3rd I'm using the council chambers to pay for the staff myself to open the council council chambers and close it so there are in fact fairly limited opportunities for council members to have meetings in which we engage the public and we seem to have to pay for them ourselves so that might need to be discussed thank you I'm going to pause there unless there are any other questions from council members or comments I'll put it up to the floor items 2.1 on page 2 through item 2.5 on page 5 go ahead Pat and I apologize it's just for the closed captioning I lived in San Francisco until I went to college there is a tremendous history of neighborhoods that is very different so my neighborhood had a historical society just for Bernal Heights just a huge amount of infrastructure so I'm excited that that might be a vision but we're very different we have to start from zero my neighborhood doesn't have an organization where I live right now I'm going to have a block party this Sunday we hope to start growing it but I see that this plan is putting a lot of emphasis and weight on the resilient neighborhood network so I hope are we putting the resources there to create it because it will take a lot to create anything approaching what San Francisco has in the way of network identification and utilization so I really hope if this is the answer to the open government task force that you really look at prioritizing resources for that secondly I would like you to put a pin in really looking at how we can use citizen engagement for the upcoming charter revision and the upcoming general plan revision I would like to see a bottom up approach and I know that staff and some of the council have been approached by the Santa Rosa Housing Coalition for all Santa Rosa Housing for All Coalition which Santa Rosa together is participating in but I think we have the chamber really look at starting a model of training neighborhoods to be part of bottom up planning and I think they're going to be coming to the council or would hope to come to the council before the end of the year for your endorsement of this process Santa Rosa Housing for All Now or something coalition but I really would like to see coming out of this some plan for bottom up planning in the challenges for planning that we have in the upcoming time thank you Gregory? I have the same cold as Kahlua does so I'll try not to choke and I've always been a big supporter of CAAP but I want to raise the question of if the resilient neighborhood network is really just one in Kahlua's brain and two in some of the hearts of the CAAP members is it ever really going to get off the ground and so I'm echoing what Pat said but I'm trying to make sure that we don't narrow its capability by limiting it to those two places it is hard for the rest of the community to perceive how a monthly group of folks who are struggling to find their purpose and a director split between two departments are ever going to relate to us Citizens to deal with homelessness but we know that the city is drowning there's nemeism because we now have district areas and we're talking about where we're going to put low cost housing and we have all these districts and I think that desperate neighborhood how can we bring everybody together that homelessness is at just that the problems with the budget it's not just the city council you need to figure out how to fix those roads and do all that but we all have to kind of bite the bullet because there's not very much money out there and get neighborhoods and groups to understand that we need to work together and so I think CAAP is great I'm certainly proponent of emergency preparedness but big issues that are happening there's a lot of like green citizens in but some a lot of things but getting the community involved so that we're educating how we're going to thank you Dwayne, you're all good Dwayne Hello my name is Dwayne DeWitt and I'm from Roseland I grew up in Santa Rosa Santa Rosa public schools I want to talk about 2.1 first to get along neighborhood groups that just are with the Chamber of Commerce it should be where communities that have come together and have tried to advocate for something in their community to try to help the larger Santa Rosa actually get treated fairly and be treated equally I've never seen that happen yet even though part of Roseland has been in Santa Rosa for a really long time and then 20 years ago they made a county island on purpose to avoid having to deal with some of the social equity and environmental justice issues that were at hand there so we finally got in a year ago and we're still biting the bullet we've been biting the bullet the whole time my entire life here in Santa Rosa so it's really important that we understand that if you're going to look for opportunities to form partnerships and create opportunities for partnerships that you sometimes work with people without the same economic background as you or didn't go to the same high school as you that there are definitely people throughout the community that are really diverse very diverse and it's okay to be different than other people and not have to go along to get along okay further incorporate the community advisory board I went to the original community involvement task force meetings that report is still available I went to the original community engagement team excuse me, community action team they were called CAT they were saying who let the CAT out of bag because nothing was really happening much I knew a number of the mayors really at the time one of the mayors boldly told me well it's not racism that keeps Rosalind from being treated fairly it's economics it's just class you know it's the other side of the tracks kind of thing he's a good mayor build on the excellent engagement model Santa Rosa that is something that's working because it's getting money so how about we put the entire community engagement department under that take it out from under because essentially what the CAT the community advisory board the same old same old man those folks who are in power so then we'll get to Mr. Leninger interesting guy with a bit I don't think they'll ever happen here in Santa Rosa unless can change the dynamic if we allow sunshine ordinance I was fortunate when I was in college we'll actually we'll get there in just a minute yeah we stopped at 2.5 to allow comment draw with the lines and go back to 2.1 produce tangible actions and tangible curves so I I'm not going to implement a clock I'm going to start doing it but okay that's great hopefully you saw it was in a polite yep absolutely sir nope nope you're great thank you so much Miss Barnes do you want to do items 4.1 through to the bottom of let's do 1.2 so for the remainders that are in process certainly so we're starting at the top of page 5 build strong civic infrastructure educate people about how best to engage draft and adopt a sunshine ordinance that supports transparency and open government through policies that exceed minimum requirements and statutes policy recommendations that exceed minimum requirements for public meetings Miss Barnes if I would I've been asked if we could take a 2 minute break closing in on an hour and a half we'll take a 2 minute break here so that council members can use the facilities if you want to take us away on item 4.1 sure so restarting at the top of page 5 build strong civic infrastructure educate people about how best to engage the drafting of the sunshine ordinance which is itself a pretty big lift and some direction provided from the task force around that recommendation was codifying some existing practices that the organization already has in place publishing written guidelines and printing them on the website to help people interact more effectively and then move council reports to the end of the meeting or at a more flexible time 4.2 is closed meetings and the recommendation there requires that the government body disclose the reason for any closed meeting as part of the agenda and expand requirements for disclosure of settled litigation including quarterly public reports and I won't read all of these because everyone has copies but they are all that are for consideration and then I'll go to the next page in yellow and then come back and kind of give the status 4.2 see public records it says hire or designate a public records coordinator to ensure each department is compliant with open government statutes and expedite response times provide clear guidance on how to make request for public records and maintain a public records index that identifies records and establish a formal appeals process when the request for public records is denied and then the third one in yellow that shows in progress is set 3 strategic objectives for the municipal organization and I have to say I'll look in here and see what those 3 recommendations were because I don't recall precisely what they were so if we can go back and start to talk about the status I'll do that let me go ahead and walk through this with you first so we already talked a little bit about the the Sunshine Ordinance and I think we do need to have a meeting specific to look at the Sunshine Ordinance with it a presentation of what exactly the minimum requirements are and what other cities that have best practices are doing as well so that we're considering it from both of those lenses and I do think we already put a pin in that I do think I'm going to push heavily that one of our major meetings that we have as we get this committee off the ground for item 4.2 formally adopt and codify existing practices and procedures to provide earlier notice of city council agendas you have a note here that it's not recommending that the staff is not recommending earlier noticing can you perhaps delve into that a little bit for us to understand the why so on this one I've got both the city attorney and the city clerk who I think can speak better to it since they are the ones responsible for the posting so Daisy Gomez with the current timelines that we're trying to accomplish now staff has to provide all of the documentation at least five days before the final publication just to get an agenda item we're trying to get staff to provide to us the agenda language at least nine days before well there's a lot of review in the process and so at least 12 days before which is usually about a Wednesday or Tuesday we try to generate an agenda and we need a agenda language in order for staff to review and see if there's items that need to be pushed back if it affects another department and because we do have several departments actually reviewing all of the agenda items it becomes a heavy task for staff to prepare all that information and review it so it's quite a challenge currently for staff to provide the documentation with the timeline that we currently have which is pretty far much different than a lot of organizations and I've actually did a poll with other jurisdictions for example cities that we compare ourselves to that functions in the same manner that we do and also is about the same size as our jurisdiction and we're the only one who has the timelines that we have and meeting it has been very difficult especially for my office because we do get the information in our office and council members know that they end up getting a revision and sometimes it's the day of the meeting it's because it's just constant review constant changes that are happening that it becomes impossible to provide the information when council members could have time to review it for the public to come and review it it's an incredible challenge it's a moving target all the time with information and just involving every single department that has to review the agenda items and the attachments and providing their input you can imagine the back and forth that just adds on more time for you to have a final product I'll just add state law as I think you know state law requires 72 hour posting so you have to post the agenda information 72 hours in advance so we have a nine day posting requirement for the agenda language which we are meeting and I think the proposal was to go to 14 days and I will so just to kind of set the standard and the jurisdictions that I am not aware of any other jurisdiction that does even a nine day posting but we make it work but as Daisy mentioned each item does go through a series of reviews any department that's involved or impacted by the item and in addition it goes over to PED for review for CEQA it goes to the finance department for any finance implications and it always goes through our office as well so it becomes more difficult but the other piece of it is just being able to respond quickly so we have to go through extra steps if we want to bring something to council and the council has to make certain findings if we want to bring you something that has arisen within that nine day period so if we extend it back 14 days it just gives us less flexibility puts a higher hurdle in addressing to evolving situations and I don't recall whether the proposal was to also require that the actual staff reports and resolutions be posted either nine days or 14 days in advance but that would be an additional hurdle I very much acknowledge that the 72 hours is difficult for many people to be able to and not only the public council members as well to wade through but when it's a heavy agenda then I have no concern with us making all efforts to get things posted as early as possible but I did want to just put in context the state law requirement and to reiterate that yes these go through quite a review process and that any extended deadline impacts our flexibility to respond to evolving situations there may be ways to address that but just a heads up so I appreciate that from my perspective I see no problem if we can on the non-urgent things and there are a lot of things that are non-urgent that come before the council having the item prepared and sitting there for a week for people to review and I know in particular and personally as a council member there are many instances where things are brought to us at the last minute where it didn't need to be brought to us at the last minute and can often feel like we are being managed through a short timeline and I'm sure that the public feels that way as well so I'm not going to say that I'm willing to take this off in our discussions I'm going to put a pin in it and continue to have that conversation about what it would actually look like if we continue to try to have documents out there even if it's a week early or a little bit of an earlier posting on the agenda and building into the ordinance some flexibility for the times where there is going to be last minute coming items coming through or last minute changes to the presentation and try to figure out how we do this in a way that builds in that flexibility so that we have the intent of providing information to the public and to the council in a timely manner with enough time to actually do the civic engagement and community input around the items while also respecting that there is some last minute things that do come up and I certainly did not mean to insinuate that I thought that the discussion should not happen I certainly think that it's worth having that discussion and I'm simply expressing that there are there'll be some difficult practical implications that we'll have to grapple with and figure out how to address them. Right. Council Member Sawyer. Thank you Vice Mayor. Excuse me. I was speaking with one of the really active members of the Open Government Task Force and they mentioned to me that they understood that there would be challenges in changing the noticing and becoming more aggressive in that regard. So I have a question before I mention what they said whether we were trying to be more responsive to the community than other communities are trying to set the bar higher. I'm wondering if we could have a conversation ultimately about maybe a compromise position more than most people but not necessarily as onerous as what I'm hearing our current practices. So I just looked forward to having a conversation. One of the things that was mentioned to me by this particular member was the importance of the advance agenda making sure that those especially those media items are very, very well in advance. I'm not even sure how far out it makes sense but so that the community can not just see it once but see it regularly and pay more attention to that advanced calendar because it puts the community they start to see things on a regular basis, they're not surprised where they are saying I'm sorry I missed that meeting I didn't know because they missed it for some reason. A lot of people say they weren't aware it doesn't mean that the information wasn't out there it maybe wasn't out there as soon as would have been good for them. We can't be perfect but I think that being more mindful of the advance agenda and having that more visible and often would help the community understand what the council is dealing with at any one time and we can make them that will change and that calendar will change because everything does but I think we need to be mindful of it and make sure that that advanced calendar is more noticeable. And if I may I did one and I very much agree I think it will be an interesting discussion to see how practically we can provide that increased notification without tying our hands too much so I think that will be an interesting conversation and I just did just want to not let one comment slip by without some response and that is the sense that staff may be holding back on putting things on the agenda intentionally and granted I've only been here a few years I have never seen that and the people that I work with in all the departments have great integrity and I understand why people may feel that way but it's often just emerging situations things are changing sometimes even from council requests of can we get this on really quickly maybe situations so I didn't want to let that go by and I apologize it was probably a little bit too forward on the comments but I do have a master's in public administration and I do know half of the training was how to handle the elected official more so than handle the city so that's the frame that I do come from council member combs first I want to thank the city clerk and the city attorney's office I know that you have yeoman's work and not enough hands to do it all so I want to tell you that I hear and appreciate that there are possible strong resource needs here as well and appreciate what you succeed in doing week after week I am often amazed at how functional offices are on Monday when I know there's a Tuesday staff meeting you know Tuesday council meeting I think that we can do better in terms of simple and clear language about what it is we are going about doing and this is particularly important when we are talking about issues of zoning and land use planning I think those are very difficult for the general public to understand that something that doesn't sound like it directly affects them actually does directly affect them and I think how we discuss those items and how we present them on the agenda and how we name and label them can make a strong difference in the explanation of what's going on I'm really glad that we have this item that has been called list at the bottom of each past agenda that is a calendar of topics to come I think having it be at the bottom of an agenda and it's typically you have to go find an agenda that already happened you can't really look at the current agenda because it doesn't get there as quickly that's not a very good place for that it's not a bad place for it but it shouldn't be the only place for it I think we need to have a calendar of topics to come we are now like when we did agenda review this morning we looked at the agenda for Tuesday and then we looked at the agenda that in southern parlance is called Tuesday week meaning that it's the next Tuesday I'll continue to say Tuesday week for that one because it's such a useful term so I understand the Tuesday agenda is often able to go up Thursday and be almost fully fleshed out I think we can post the Tuesday week agenda more fleshed out than we do and I'm interested that we may have a solution there that gives people a little more opportunity understanding that that might have some fluidity in it I myself am aware so I had a difficult child and one of the things that would happen is that we would walk and that child always somehow managed to be well behind where we were walking when we took walks if we went a little faster though they didn't fall further behind they somehow always managed to be a little behind but right there functionally going the same pace we were but dragging their feet and saying I can't keep up but somehow managing to keep up so without meaning and implication here I'm trying to figure out why if we change the time frame all of the issues and concerns and problems are still there that doesn't mean that we can't do them sooner there because you have to start sooner on all those issues and concerns so while I am hearing appreciating that it is very difficult to meet a deadline because there's so much review to be done it's not clear to me why deadline X can't be deadline X plus 7 and still have all of those same problems and concerns so I will need to understand that for a lot of what we talk about I do understand there are items that need to happen more rapidly so I am not inclined at this point to set in stone a more wide deadline but I am inclined to say we need a more advanced deadline understanding that there are some changes and I would like to also add a pin for the concept that we shouldn't get something the same day as the meeting and I hear that it's happening but often I'm getting something at 12 and I'm going into a meeting at 1 o'clock after having received phone calls all morning on the items so it really isn't effective for us as account at least for me as a council member to receive anything the same day it just is not fair to me and certainly not fair when I've had constituents calling me during the day about an item and then come in and discover in the agenda packet that that item has been changed there's a lot of changes, misspellings I understand that but anything much more than that I don't think we should get on the same day it doesn't seem to me that it meets the 72 hour rule so I'm going to keep walking through these a little bit I know we are dragging in time a little bit we're going to keep pushing through so publish written guidelines establish time certain periods for public comment and move council reports to the end of the meeting are those all items that the mayor has the prerogative over and in particular during the agenda setting and are these items that we can just take care of by bringing that up with the mayor and having him implemented at our next agenda setting meeting can you explain a little more the written guidelines on the website I've got a pin in that for the website conversation but the establish the time certain periods for public comment as well as the moving the council reports to the end of the meeting those would seem to be done in agenda setting by the mayor and the vice mayor that's correct the the mayor vice mayor can can adjust that the mayor who's ever handling the meeting can adjust that either in advance or or at the night of the meeting other than it needs to be after five and I think there may be some other requirements for the public comment period in some of our established resolutions step procedures that are established by resolution I don't have them right in my mind at the moment but I'll look at those so there may be with respect to the public comment timing and length that may need some some adjustment in a resolution but in terms of moving where the council reports falls in I think that's within the mayor's discretion okay if there's no objection from the subcommittee I will take that back to the mayor for our next agenda setting and ask him to consider implementing that with a lead in time where he can announce it at a couple of council meetings that potentially that change is coming so people understand it if there are no objections I have a couple of questions I don't recall reading in the open government task force that there was a request to move council reports to the end of the meeting was that in the open government task force recommendations I just don't recall seeing it and it's possible that I missed it so if it's not one of their recommendations I would wonder how it got here perhaps it is one of their recommendations and the other is to be clear that establishing time certain applies not only to public comment but to public hearings and I am aware that we have had multiple instances where folks have come and waited a very long time for public hearing and then we've gone to dinner and then they when we come back there's not as many people there so I'm very keenly aware of missing public hearing comments from a wide range of members of the public right and council member it does say while balancing the need for time certain schedule of public hearings and I will point out on page 20 of the open government task force report it does suggest move council reports to the end of the meeting for a more flexible time. Thank you. Council Member Sawyer. Thank you Vice Mayor. I just want to mention that I've seen a number of iterations of receiving public comment and I believe once we went to two and one no earlier than 5 o'clock that the complaints seemed to diminish and that we've tried out a variety of things over the years but this seems to work fairly well with some of our study sessions can run over but you can't stop the study session and then if it runs to 5 o'clock or 5.30 it can interrupt that no earlier than time but it seems to be it seems to work more often than not where it is the mayor is pretty clear on moving to public comment as close to 5 o'clock as possible but it seems to function better than the previous policies as far as the council member reports I would have no problem with moving them to the end of the meeting and I think sometimes there are announcements that some people might miss but in the spirit of moving meetings forward I think that would probably not be a bad idea okay then I will take that recommendation back to the mayor to move the council reports I will put a pin for potential future discussion around us I tend to agree I like the time certainty as close to 5 o'clock as possible on the public comment I don't know if we need to revisit that as this entity but for now I will take the council reports to the end of the meeting back to the mayor and I would like to repeat the concern that we talk about a time certain for public hearings that we need to talk about a time certain for the public hearing as well as the public comment moving on I understand the comment now item 4.2.5 require that the governing body disclose the reason for any closed meeting as part of the agenda or verbally announce the reason for emergency items being discussed prior to the closed session it says in process what do we need to do to move that to completed there is going to be some the brown act sets parameters in terms of what must be disclosed and what cannot be disclosed so I will need to shape that and see how we what we can and what we can disclose either prior to or after a closed session item our current practices meet the state law requirements but I will want to take a chance to look and make sure that they are doing more is not going to violate the confidentiality of closed session items great I appreciate that and I am putting a pin in having a conversation about what exactly the brown act requirements are and what we could within the parameters of the law disclose additionally to the public I would point out that we now have a public report on the city attorney so I am interested that that is listed still under in process are we planning to discuss that more detail so we have actually been in further detail tonight than I had expected so the thinking is we will probably end up with some things that follow-ups that are not completed and we can come prepared to talk about those at the specific meeting when they are on the agenda and if I may respond as well yes we are doing the quarterly more or less reports pretty quarterly and we will certainly be better at doing that going forward so unless there is more that you would like or that the public would like in those reports we will from my perspective we are doing that and it is in place I was pleased that we were doing that and wanted to express that we had started that process item 4.2 I think we discussed that a little bit and then Kaloa did you get any more information on item 1.2 here three strategic objectives I appreciate that we have difficult timing but 4.2 I hope at least we will come back to that I have made a public records request I said this is a public records request and what I got back was go look it up on the on the tape and so I am interested in how the guidelines are being used and how informally we are handling those absolutely I will put a note down Kaloa did you have anything else on 1.2 or should I go to public comment sorry I I appreciate that I will take public comment on the items that we just discussed items 4.1 through 4.2C Gregory I want to give you a little bit of background about why what we are asking for is good for the city I know it is good for you guys to get more information earlier so you are not caught by the press it is good for us to just know the detailed staff reports and I am really supporting the direction you are going but I want to tell you why I believe San Rosa together was founded or at least what I have been telling people for a long time and I have seen it in action we used to fight each other and wait until we got to the city council and try to battle it out and try to figure out whether or not we had 4 votes and we didn't ever come together because we didn't have any information about what each other was doing business environmental community activists we were in the dark you remember the times when we fought at the city council over things and if we had gotten together earlier we might have been able to come up with compromises we might have been able to understand each other as you began to issue staff reports and have stuff out earlier we could all huddle a Thursday and figure out what the real details were but a week before we could figure out who was going to go to the council for what we got heads up early the list helped even more because we could say October we are going to fight that battle alright so helping us get together in the community to know what you're up to saves you time and it really saves us pain and anguish so I'm arguing for getting information out earlier not at the level of absolutely everything I mean I've got an alarm on my cell phone Thursday at 5 o'clock to check what it is they post I know the times you've not even made 72 hours I'm looking for something a week ahead of time maybe 4 or 5 days ahead of that something that gradually tells us what it is you're going to be up to so we cannot fight each other so we can inform each of us I know people like me who are in all different sectors who are doing the same thing we talk to each other but we only talk to each other when we feel like we know what it is that's on the table if we're not informed we don't talk anybody else on this section Pat you look like you're about to say something alright we will move on to 1.2.2 and go ahead and take us home Kalula 1.2.2 is actually the sunshine ordinance and it is very dense and so we have not well a draft was created and presented to the council in 2016 that there was a significant amount of comment on that document our goal is actually to bring back that document as a starting point perhaps and to have council have the subcommittee evaluate what's the best mechanism for achieving what we're trying to achieve whether it's an ordinance and or resolutions and what that might look like and then to walk through the key decision points of the recommendations for things we want to achieve and those elements that were in the draft report so we'll expect to spend at least one meeting and perhaps more just on the sunshine ordinance 2.1.1 shift definition of partnership to include community involvement it's not clear enough what is intended so as we work through this process ideally someone like or otherwise can kind of help us understand what that means and whether there's a to-do or whether it's just kind of a philosophical orientation for the organization and finally 2.1.2 and I think this one's particularly important given our conversations around budget cuts and lack of resources right so at this point there's not a city central coordination for volunteers the largest user I think of volunteers is actually recreation and parks and they've got a really robust system for how they onboard them and keep them and then actually grow them into employees but we don't have a central place in the organization for coordinating volunteers and no action has been taken so I'm going to put a pin in this one because the use of volunteers coordination with volunteers seems to me to fall right within the scope of community engagement as well and perhaps we should discuss how we do that. Councilmember Colms. I wanted to add the concept of interns here and it also sort of links to the teens as well as to college students and currently our internship program is limited to folks who are currently enrolled or have an enrollment coming as opposed to someone who is for example exploring before they enroll in a particular program at a university so we may want to examine that and I'd like to look at 2.1.1 with the we often hear the use of the word stakeholders in meetings and I think that if we're going to talk about partnerships and community involvement we also need to talk about an expansion of the definition of stakeholder. I'm going to open it up for a public comment on these items. All right, seeing nobody rise thank you so much Clua for walking through that with us obviously we've still got a lot of work to do on that I will go to the next item on the agenda and what I'm actually going to do if it works for everybody so we have on here next is goals and then after that is future agenda items and I kind of want to put this on its head a little bit I'm going to start with public comment and I'm going to do it on both of these items what I'd ask the public who's here give us what you'd like the goal for this subcommittee to be beyond what we've already talked about and give us what you'd like us to agendize to discuss and then we can put together the next agenda you see that the next proposed date is Thursday November 1st and I will promise you the first item on that agenda will be to discuss the scope given what we've heard today and given what public comment is on what our work product is going to be as an output for the open government task force so I'm going to start with Pat if you want to come on up I would like you to address my request earlier which is how we can use community engagement in the Charter Amendment and the general plan process and also how can we best resource the neighborhood resiliency network if it's going to be the carrier of so much of our wishes I'd like you to address the website I think we ought to figure out a creative way of trying to get the website to be much more open and much more engaging you're good alright Renee other than a winning season for the Cowboys what do you want to see oh boy from your mouth is all I could say and I like what everybody said I just want to make sure that we get back to my little pet peeve of community engagement being a two way street and that we really look at ways out in the future that we can be partners with the city and get to what what Gregor was talking about you know to be real partners we have to understand what you're doing what you're looking at what's coming down the pike so that instead of coming at the last minute and we're just so angry we could spit we've had a chance to look at it to think about it to talk about it to discuss with you and get educated on things that we might not know so that we can actually work together to accomplish what we all want to see and do it without that horrible antagonism at council meetings where it doesn't make any difference anymore alright council members I've already made the comment about discussing what was not included in the open government task force but the use of these ad hoc committees and whether or not they should be subject to the same brown act requirements why it's either a positive or a negative going forward is there anything in particular either that you want to prioritize within the current open government task force or to add to our potential scope for our work product from this and I'll start with council member combs I appreciate the comments of the public I think that they're on the right track I need to be listening I'm missing what I would call a discussion at least of the philosophy if not of the actual implementation of how we do what I would call open by default I think that's a piece that is missing from the conversation and I think it's important for us to consider whether we're talking about what we keep open or what we keep closed and I think we want to be talking in a more limited way about what's not open council member Sawyer thank you vice mayor I think one of the I think we probably have enough to deal with just the website alone would be would be plenty but I know that we have a larger charge than that so I'm very comfortable with what has been identified as the priorities what I would do hope that we make really clear our our capability to provide resources I'm very concerned about expectations not being realized expectations are always a little bit dangerous because they usually disappoint in our everyday lives and in politics as well so anytime we're talking about financial resources which is usually what we're talking about I just want to make sure that we're very clear about what are our capabilities and what is outside of the realm of possibilities given our budget considerations and that is a full council discussion and of course that has to do with the budget but I'm concerned when I saw the coordinator that last I am and I thought probably no time soon are we going to have a person with that title as a new hire now being able to switch some responsibilities that may be a possibility and we're doing that all the time when people are getting burned out and that fly is really bothering me he's made his rounds I think but anyway when we talk about resources I don't want people to have unfortunate expectations when it comes to resources let's make sure we're really open and clear about what we're expecting there so thank you councilmember Sawyer clearly doesn't like gag flies so we'll try to figure that out as well so if there's an objection from my fellow council members I think I will talk with staff about it but I'm inclined to ask that our next meeting start with a discussion around the sunshine ordinance what it says what the applicable state laws say for what the minimum is so that we can start that discussion and how it integrates into the rest of the plan as well but I do think that the primary work product is going to be whether or not we need a sunshine ordinance other things are ongoing that we obviously will continue to beat the drum about as we move forward this process but I do want us to start by looking at the sunshine ordinance may I just ask for clarification sunshine ordinance includes a number of different items and so would we be looking to cover all of those items or at least start that discussion to be prepared for staff to be prepared to discuss all the entirety of the ordinance or do you want us to focus initially on the time frame for posting and publications I think that's a good it'll be an interesting discussion and the some of the openness access to documents is also on there there's a number of different points so we're happy to come back ready to address all of those I'm just looking for some direction yeah and what I would ask us to do is similar to what we did tonight with the task force report where we walked through it sort of item by item and assessed the viability or the status of them I'd like us to do the same thing for the proposed ordinance that had come before the council was addressed have a more clear understanding about the shortcomings of the ordinance so that we can bolster that and perhaps draw from that other areas within the ordinance that will require more discussion before we have a final work product but at least as sort of a guide on the Sunshine Ordinance side to understand that within our conversations with that I'm going to call us to a close about six minutes behind where we expected to be thank you everybody for participating we'll see you November 1st and it is worth noting November 1st 6 o'clock not 5 o'clock and I will work with Kalua perhaps not this room actually perhaps somewhere in Roseland or somewhere else within our community for the next one just to just to keep us on our toes keep us around