 Welcome everybody to the March 9th, 2023 City Council meeting. May we have a roll call please? Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. And let's all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Right. And any additions or deletions? Yes, there are changes to see me. Okay. And today we have a presentation, which will be read by me. This is the proclamation declaring March 2023 as Red Cross Month, which I just said. So during American Red Cross Month, we celebrate humanitarian spirit of Capitola. Caring for one another is at the heart of our community and the people of Capitola exemplify this through their acts of kindness and willingness to volunteer. The City of Santa Cruz County local Red Cross volunteers help those in need by assisting during fires, floods, and providing recovery support. Recently, the Red Cross participated in the shelter efforts during the winter storm event. Volunteers support and donations are critical to community resilience. The city recognizes the month of March in honor of all those who fulfill Clara Barton's noble words, you must never think of anything except the need and how to meet it. For as mayor of the city of Capitola, I proclaim March 2023 as Red Cross Month and encourage all citizens to reach out and support the Red Cross's humanitarian mission. And I welcome anybody to speak on that. Yeah, you both can say something. Do you want to go first? No. Oh gosh. Okay. Pressure's on. There you go. Ladies first, ladies first. I have, I have a written message. Wonderful. So hello, my name is Jackie Castorena Davila. I'm an associate board member with the Red Cross and joining me today is Antonio. It is a great honor to accept this special proclamation declaring March as Red Cross Month. Our mission wouldn't be possible without our Red Cross volunteers who make up 90% of our workforce. As community heroes and celebrate their commitment to support individuals and families in need, they are a beacon of hope on everyone's darkest days. And I am incredibly, I am incredibly proud to share a few highlights of what we've accomplished together in the Central Coast chapter. As many of you know, in January, we responded to one of the worst flooding disasters our area has ever experienced. We are looking at how we can better prepare communities for new, for new, a new pace of disasters we've experienced as a result of effects of climate change. The Red Cross is committed to doing its part to reduce the current and future humanitarian impacts of climate change globally. Over the next several years, the Red Cross aims to grow disaster workforce, strengthen support networks of partners in high-risk communities, expand recovery assistance for those with the greatest needs, and enhance support services for people who can't return home. The Red Cross is making strategic investments now that will enable us to grow our capacity and adapt our disaster mission to help families and communities better cope with the humanitarian crisis caused by climate change. And I am proud to share that our Central Coast chapter has become a certified green business and it is the first in the nation to accomplish this. Chapters across the nation are inspired to also become green business certified or at the very least adopt the same measures to help the organization reduce our environmental impact across the board. Help can't wait during emergencies and that's why the Red Cross steps up to ensure people receive the relief and care that they need. Every eight minutes, Red Cross volunteers respond to the US's largest disasters like hurricanes, floods and wildfires, which have grown in frequency and intensity. As disasters continue to upend lives each day, our volunteers support is critical. The scope and scale of its disaster response was huge in our chapter area alone during this past January. We opened 31 shelters across our three counties in the Monterey Bay area. 82 total shelters opened across the entire response area. And in terms of size and scale of this disaster, if you were to compare it to Hurricane Ian, the response in 2022, we opened more shelters than the 74 opened for Ian. This demonstrates the lack of accessibility to the areas affected by these winter storms and the importance of Red Cross team members collaborating with our partners to ensure we have shelter sites and plans ready to go at a moment's notice. We are now focusing on the next phase of the response, helping communities affected on the long path to recovery. We are working with partners in damage assessment and plans to get our community back on its feet again. Damage assessments with floods is different than it is with fires as the process for flood inspections takes more time because the damage to the structure isn't as obvious as it is with fire. So each structure must be inspected for damage and reported. Every day, people in our community rely on Red Cross volunteers for support. There are many ways you can help your neighbors in need, including through our most needed position of disaster response volunteers. If any of you are interested in volunteer opportunities or just to know what to include in your emergency to go kit, please visit the redcross.org. Or you can download the app, the Red Cross app, where you can get notifications or tips on how to best prepare for an emergency. On behalf of the American Red Cross, we thank you for this proclamation. But most of all, we would like to thank you and your city staff members who have worked closely with the Red Cross over the years to prepare for all types of emergencies or future disasters in our community. Thank you. Oh, very good speech, isn't it? Very good speech. She is a UC Berkeley graduate. Well, it shows. So it's part of our Red Cross. My name is Antonio Rivas and I'm part of the executive board of the Central Coast chapter of Red Cross. And mostly, you know, she said everything that we do. So really, I would really want to thank you for this proclamation. And especially the fire department and the sheriff's department, the police department, everybody in the staff, because I think capitalists suffer a lot. And we are lucky that we got the governor here. We got the president here. So it's hopefully that all that presence from the government be able to give you the money and the funding so you can be able to be able to do the business that it lost a lot of stuff. You know, it's important that we get into it. Another thing that's very important is that as a former mayor of the city of Watsonville, I don't know if it's just some of you. So it is important that the city of Watsonville also suffered a lot too. But one of the things that really we need is more volunteers. And I really, for the people in the audience, anybody else to try to volunteer for the Red Cross. Because everything that we do is volunteer and we provide the resources, the funding and everything else to help our communities. It is important to do that. And also blood donations. We need the blood. So anybody else for you from the city council and everybody from the staff, be sure, you know, whenever we have our blood drive, please volunteer and tell the neighbors and everybody in the community because it's a big need in a sense of blood donations. So with that in mind, I just really want to thank you for a bottom of my heart for all the things that you do and also the support that you give to the Red Cross. So thank you and hopefully no more bloods and hopefully we can be able to survive this. I know we have a big storm coming in, but hopefully nothing will jeopardize Capitola or anybody in our communities. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. I'll give you the proclamation too. Can we take a picture with all of you together? That would be great. Thank you. And what a good time to name March as American Red Cross Month after all we've been through and some other impending things happening. So as a reminder, everybody stay safe. And if you can volunteer, please do. Thank you. Thank you. We will move on. Is there a report on closed session? Good evening, mayor and community. We had a closed session on the item on the agenda and no reportable action was taken. Thank you. Great. Thank you. And additional materials. Thank you. Are there any oral communications by members of the public? These will be, you can speak about anything that's not on the agenda or any consent. I see nobody here. Anybody online? Cool. All right. Any staff comments? Storm event. City staff has been in close communication with our partners participating in the county wide operations center. We're also monitoring creek flows, the weather, tides. And we'll share with the community that the high tide this evening is about midnight and then we have another high tide tomorrow night. Lower high tide tomorrow noon and then a high tide. And those are the times when we get the most concerned about high flows. But the good news is that we're not looking at king tides. We're looking at high tides that are sort of well within the normal high tide range. So everyone should be prepared. Monitor the weather forecast. And if you need sandbags still, they are available behind city hall. Thank you. Anybody on council? I do. Yeah. As many of you recall just a few years ago, the city of capitol banned flavored tobacco. And just recently the state of tobacco control 2023 California local grades were released. And I want to say in 2018, we're maybe a F or a D or something like that. But the good news is we, because of that work and our continued efforts and our police department, essentially going out and ensuring that not just flavored tobacco is not sold to our youth, but just making sure all the laws are being abided by the city of capitol has earned a grade A. And so we have come a long way and congratulations to our police department and to city council for adopting that just a few years ago. Thank you. That's great news. Thank you. Yeah. Any other comments? I just have one, just a little note. You can mark your calendars that are museum or capitol museum. We're having a grand reopening of a new exhibit. It's called capitol signs of the times. This will take place on March 18 starting at 11 30 a.m. till 2 p.m. refreshments and special presentations will be featured. So I encourage people to go on out and check it out. Okay. So then we'll go to consent. And I would like to pull item eight B from the consent items and I'll be looking for a motion on items eight A, eight C, eight D and eight E. I'll move items eight B, C, D and E. Oh, I get A, C, D and E. Great. We have a motion and a second. May we have a roll call please? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. And then I will hand the floor over to Vice Mayor Brown. Okay. So I believe item eight B you pulled because you have to re-choose. I did pull because I have to re-choose and I'll tell you why. My employer is a restaurant called Paradise Beach Grill. They provide sometimes live entertainment and it's located approximately 150 feet from capitol bar and grill. So to avoid any appearance of impropriety or conflict, I am recusing. Thank you. All right. Do we need, do you need to leave? No. Okay. I'm sorry. Scooch back. My apologies. Mayor. Okay. So with that we will entertain a motion to vote on consent item eight B. I'll move item eight B. I'll second. All right. We have a motion and a second. Can we have a roll call vote please? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Carried unanimously. Thank you. Or unanimously with one abstention. Sorry. I wasn't trying to get rid of you. No. That's fine. You need to leave. I need more status than you are today. All right. So we're going to move on to general government item nine A. The, we're considering changes to administrative policy V 18, the outdoor display of governmental and non-governmental flags on city property. The recommended action tonight is to approve the changes to the policy. I thought I'd like to maybe out something to that we were talking about making it six months. For the appeal process or to bring back that item. Maybe if we can make that to 12 months instead of six months. I'm talking about an item within the staff report for this way for nine A. Is that what we're talking about? Yeah. So I think we're going to go with staff's presentation first. Council member. And then what we can thank you. I don't order. Sorry. No, that's okay. It's very exciting. I know. Okay. I tried to get the mayor to leave. So you. Okay. So thank you so much mayor and council. This will be a brief presentation about our current flag policy. And we're doing something a little different. I'm wondering if it's going to work. Aha. Okay. So background. I might be moving around. In May of 2021 council did approve the current policy outdoor display of governmental and non governmental flags on city property. And since then council has approved one of three total requests. And recently and late January council did ask staff to bring an updated draft of the policy for your discussion recommendation and then hopefully your approval. And I'm not sure. I skipped something here. Sorry, everyone. Okay. So our current policy. States direction for how and when to fly our flags at half staff and also how people can request non governmental flags flown. And that's just what the current policy is about. And potential changes are going to let our clerk move me forward. Thank you. Based on feedback from council and some research of regional other policies, we made some potential changes in the draft included in your agenda packet. So the changes here, there's two different options. I'll start with the first. Basically, everything stays the same. However, we're suggesting that non governmental flag requests must now with the changes be sponsored by a council member and then would be again heard in a public meeting. The flag requested would be the same size as our city flags. That's more of a cleanup item. And as our council member mentioned. A denied request would be reconsidered after one year rather than what is currently in the policy, which is a six month turnaround. So that would be option one. Option two would be virtually the same with one added level that a request would still be sponsored by a council member but would require a super majority vote of council to be approved. That would be four out of five of you voting I to fly a flag versus three. So that is your second option. Go ahead. City manager. Excuse me. We found in the city of Watsonville. Oh, yes. Okay. Yes. I think the intent is just, you know, when the city moves by three to item, it's still something signifies a lot of disagreement. And so it's just one factor to consider is would you want to make sure that. Yes. And I should have also mentioned both the city of Scott's Valley and the city of Watsonville, their flag policies do already include that a request is sponsored by a city council member. Okay. And those are really the changes recommended or up for your discussion. Our next slide is just the recommendation, which is to approve option one or option two or provide more direction. So I'm here for questions. Thank you. Great. Any questions? I have a question. Can you clarify what sponsorship by council member means? What? So basically it would be like council bringing a flag request to staff. So to be more clear or a member of council general. So does that mean during a city council meeting at open public comment accounts member would then have to say to staff, this is what I want to do. What's the best practice? What protocol are we going to be writing into place to sponsor? I think we could determine a different process, but that is the current process. It's probably would be the simplest one to utilize. It's just that a council member would bring it up as you do currently during council comments about future. I know that some of our policies are specific in stating that as the practice is this. So this would have to be added, added language to the policy. That's the practice we want to follow instead of just one day. That would be, I could include that language and you could just direct that I think during the meeting tonight. Any other questions? I have a question. Yeah. Could you go back to I believe the second, the second slide? Third slide. Yeah. Pre-approved list of non-governmental flags. Can somebody elaborate on that? Is that this is our current policy? Yes. So the policy included in the packet, that's like the third page of the policy. When this was brought to our attention early in 2021, council directed a certain flag included already in the policy. So that was what that is. Does that. So does this mean that only pre-approved a flag that's on the pre-approved list of non-governmental flags can be approved? Is that what that means? No. What I think it was intended was that if a flag is on the pre-approved list, you don't need to request it every year. Got it. Yeah. And then that was going to be my next question is if council sponsors a flag, is that an ongoing thing? Or is that per year and needs to be basically re-sponsored and re-requested each year? I think that would be included. Six months or whatever it may be. I believe the way it is now is it would be included in your request, right? City manager? Yes. Basically the frequency of flying. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Actually I do have a question. Yeah. Now that I think about it, is it in our, and forgive me if it isn't, I just didn't know, is it already in our policy for a method of taking a flag off of the pre-approved list? Do we have that in our policy? I don't believe so. No. So that's an interesting question, but I think removing an item from the flag policy, amending the policy that the council could do, simply if we didn't have a bulletin or something like that. Just the same way that we wanted to sponsor a flag, we would say I would like to reconsider the policy and remove a flag. Okay. I was just curious. Yeah. Okay. Any public comments on this item? See none here? Do we have anybody online? No. Okay. So we can take it back to deliberation. It's already up there. Yeah, Joe is the head of the game. I'm sorry. He had a second. I like number two and adding to what you stated earlier. Option two. Yeah. Yeah. So does anybody prefer to make a motion on option one or option two? I'd make a motion for option two and the verbiage you had in there. Sure. We'll include that that council member Brooks mentioned. I'll second. Great. Motion and a second. I have a roll call please. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chloe. Great job. And now we have nine B. It is our 2023-2024 fiscal federal funding requests. I've said that out of order. You recommended action is to consider requests for this fiscal year federal funding. Mayor and council, first off, I need to apologize a little bit for a bit of a vague agenda item. We were working frantically to try to put something together for your consideration this evening. The Director will be presenting a little bit of this, but I want to provide some background is that our congressman has asked the city about whether we would want to request any funding in this next year's budget. We've had conversations with staff for congressman and his office, and they've encouraged the city to think a little bit hard about given the recent damage we've sustained the visits from our governor for president or congressman that there was a commitment there about everybody following through and helping capital for these times. So they really have encouraged us to apply. We've talked to them about a number of different options to apply for, and I think what we're looking for is basically feedback on kind of those acts. The applications are due next week, so that was the real push to get something in front of you this evening. And one of them is kind of a big new project, but I think it really warrants council's feedback before we submit it up the chain. Anything we submit up the chain, it's got to go through a lot of steps. It has to move through a divided government in Washington, D.C. There's no guarantee we would get this money. I need to be clear about that. But at this point, it's whether or not we should put that request in with congressman. I'll turn it over to Jessica. All right. So as city manager, summarized that we've been approached by staff of Panetta to submit for the community project funding for this coming year's appropriations bill. The requests are due in the middle of next week. As a reminder, the city received $3.5 million in this type of funding for the Wharf resiliency and public access improvement project. We actually just submitted our paperwork earlier today to receive that money, so that's very exciting. And then any request is not guaranteed to be promoted or the city to be selected for funding, but we do want to put our best foot forward for these projects. So there's several types of funding available here. We have three projects that qualify for three different types of funding. The first one being the city's community center. So the potential ask for this is about $2 million. This would come out of HUD funding, which is the same type of funding that we are getting for the Wharf. It's a more general funding has less requirements. There's no match requirement. And it would be to fund the renovation of the community center. You may recall that you all approved a contract for the design of that project. Maybe two council meetings ago, we just had our kickoff for that project. There's a pretty wide range of improvements that can be done there. The money we have for this project, for next year's budget, the 1.8 million that has been suggested would cover all of our contractually obligated portions of that project with the school district, but there's opportunity for other interior and exterior improvements, particularly for the electrical system out there. So not the prettiest thing, but something that would be definitely needed to improve our HVAC and have the community center work optimally. So that is one potential project we could put in for funding. The second project is the one city manager referred to is our cliff drive stabilization and public access project. So in the budget for this year, there is a study for cliff drive to assess the stability of the bluff. It's going to be a pretty daunting project. We've lost part of the bluff during the storms near both of the upper and lower parking areas. The request for this project would be for construction. This would be through FEMA. The maximum request is 10 million dollars, and that's what we would aim to ask for. There's a required match of 25%. The estimate for this total project is 1 million in engineering environmental costs and 10 million for construction. That's based on a project that's being currently constructed in Pismo Beach, so it's actually a pretty reasonable estimate for this type of work. The scope would include the professional engineering and environmental services, construction for mitigations to stabilize the bluff along cliff drive, the repair of the stairs that were also washed away during the storm, and then construction of a pedestrian walkway. Staff has had preliminary conversations with the coastal commission and other permitting agencies. Nope. Nope. I'm looking for the one with the picture, Julia. Thank you. I'm looking for the one with the picture on this project. They suggested to us to really consider the big overall picture, so improving public access. Right now we just have a road shoulder on the side there in addition to stabilizing the bluff for our arterial road. The road is also a primary segment of the California coastal trail and is documented by the coastal conservancy as needing improvement for shoreline access. It's also identified in the area as an at-risk facility. Next slide, please. The third project would be a roads project. This would be sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration. The request would be for a million and a half dollars for the 41st Avenue corridor. So the idea here would have a complete streets plan for the entire 41st Avenue in the city limits, and then have an implementation on the south end. So from Capitola Road south to the end of the city limits with the county. This money requires a 25% match, $250,000 in engineering environmental, and then the 1.25 in construction for the lower half. The idea would be to improve safety for all modes of travel and to also implement recommendations of our pavement management program. The overall PCI or pavement condition index of 41st Avenue is below 50, which is considered poor. I think the average is actually about 47. This is just an example of what a complete streets plan would look like. I'm not sure what jurisdiction this is, but this is just kind of an example of our end product here. Something to manage all modes of travel, including the bus, bikes, pedestrians to enhance safety and comfort for all users. And really the goal is to encourage economic revitalization so if and when the mall ever comes to be, we have a plan that we can provide to developers and to the community of what we really envision 41st Avenue to look like. And with that, I will take any questions on these projects. Or Jamie may have something to say. I'm just going to add a couple of things. It may have been clear to everybody else, but we're suggesting asking for all three. That's going to be my question. We're suggesting asking for all three. I'm just going to go to the congressman's office and they did say that for items where we would be happy, we would be okay with the amount decreasing. We were thinking that we would identify maybe like a $7 million floor to the cliff drive funding and then we were thinking relatively low floor of the community center funding because it's a project that we need to do and it would be great to get help. So you don't need to choose that. We've talked about it in our hazard mitigation plan for the new council member since we haven't talked about that yet. And the way I think about that cliff drive is that it's, you know, we keep losing a foot here, you know, chunks here and there. And then someday it's going to look like West Cliff and Santa Cruz and we're going to be talking about one way in the street and at that point we're going to open and hopefully make a much cleaner entry into the village for folks that are approaching by foot. So with the 25% matches that we need for two of those projects, we need like $2.8 million that we would be able to match where that money come from. Well, some of the internal strategy was that was part of the ask for the community center, that if that was funded we could free up some funding that we've already allocated there. And that would help with the loss. And then, yeah, we don't have a firm plan at this point to fund it. I think we would have to figure out. We do also have the road funding this year. We put a million dollars into the roads. So if that looked like that was going to be successful, we would use local matches there. So the road funding I'm not too worried about. The loss, 25% of a $10 million project is a lot of money. So that was part of the strategy around the community center. And give it that we've already put some money in. Right. And then with the roads, we put a million dollars into the roads right now. And we take, what would I just say it would be, $385,000 is 25% of $1.5 million. And we took that away from the roads to get a $1.5 million grant. It's essentially just putting that same money back into 41st Avenue and not into the roads that we identified in the budget discussion last week. Is that right? Am I making sense? I think there would need to be some privacy. I think there would need to be some prioritization for sure. I think that actually Lord 41st was included in the cycle next. A portion of it, yes. A portion otherwise. But yes, there would be some reprioritization. And realistically, we wouldn't know about this until probably December this year. So would that mean that any work that we would plan to have done on the roads or the community center would now be on hold until December? Well, we would know if it was submitted before December. So if we were out immediately, we would know. But potentially. Oh, like if the congressman actually didn't make the request on our behalf or, okay, I see what you mean. Okay. The other option is if we're still in the mix and we're looking at the pavement project and the team is putting it together, what we could do is we can also structure the bid so that we end up leaving some headroom so that we can add it in on the road potentially if we needed to or take it out. By that I mean like, we could have a couple of streets that could get us to keep us, to keep that extra cash available that we could add it in if we weren't successful down the road. So I don't think that should be a major hang-up. But the cliff drive side, two and a half million is a significant match. Yeah. It's a significant match. And I think we would be talking to the Coastal Commission, the Coastal Conservancy as well as everybody else that we could find about how to close that gap. Okay. Thanks. I had a question about the cliff project. I'm looking at the slide or are they going to do it similar to what the county did in Pleasure Point? And are they going to get rid of the rift-wrapped rocks that are at the foot of the cliff? It would need to be designed but likely, yes, that would be a good comparable project. It was nice when they got rid of all the rift-wrapped rock and then put some trails in there because we've had quite a few people stranded up on the rocks at high tides. But they were stranded on top of the rocks because they couldn't get down more than previously. They just were out showing or caught walking up towards the cliff. They get stuck on the rift-wrapped rocks and when they rebuilt there in the county it became a lot safer because people had little go trails to get themselves out. Got it. So just curious about the plan. That would definitely be something we would need to take into account. It's not too freaky this side. Much more frequent than we find time. But it happens. It does happen. Sure. Another question. I'm just curious with the 25% matching I think you said you're requesting like $10 million for example. So does that going to bring the total project budget to $10.25 million? I think it probably would. That's what? Okay. I think we're going to get knocked back. Right, so then maybe the total project would end up something close to it. It might make more sense for us to ask 8 or 9 somewhere in there but you know this is a fast moving target at this point. 10 is a good round number. Yeah, 10 is a good round number. Well the other thing to think about also is do you want to bounce back to the bluff shop? There's some where we start and stop the project there's some flexibility. Right. You know there's the most urgent areas where you look at it and go whoa that's going to be very some scaling to do it all the way through here we think it's closer to 10 but there is some scalability. Oh and the other thing I guess I should add is that realistically we would find out whether we got this funding and you know processes with FEMA and then they want it's the funds in three years. So it isn't as if we have to come up with 2.5 million next week. It's 2.5 million probably four years from now. So there is there's some time for us to plan. Okay and then so the recommendation is to go for all three and then is there a chance like even Panetta's office or somebody might just come back to us and say like hey you know we've got a lot of requests we need to whittle it down and you guys would just come back to us and we could decide what we wanted to focus on or I don't know that that's super likely they would play out that way I think that it's possible that they would ask us like okay we're comfortable submitting for 700K for the community center so my recommendation would be to give us the authority to apply for all these guys and and if at the end of the day they come back and say one of the three then we can come back it would be tight we have to probably call a special meeting okay I would also say that these projects come from three different funding sources so chances of them saying that comparing our three projects is probably them comparing them against other projects excuse me and not our own because they are coming from different funding sources okay question yeah so Jessica on the NOFA it states that pretty clear for the community center that it was CDBG dollars but you mentioned HUD have you looked a little bit more closely at that I believe HUD had a little bit of it didn't specify community center so I guess my question is just rhetorical maybe look more closely at that for CDBG more specific because it states community noted thank you any other questions okay do we have any public comment on this item seeing none here anybody online please okay so we can bring it back to council I'll make a motion I don't know what for staff recommendation that we move forward and making requests for all three projects I'll second great motion in the second maybe we have a roll call aye aye aye aye thank you passes unanimously alright we'll move on to 9C which is our city council orientation presentation so this myself again with this chair so this item actually was originally planned for I think the second week of the new council's term and we were unfortunately due to weather related travel related all sorts of different issues we were unable to get scheduled until now so this is typically put your put your hat back on and imagine this is your second time we've all sat together together and all the questions you have then we'll answer now kidding aside that that was actually our original plan so it's a little awkward but we're going to try to move through this stuff relatively quickly I think it's going to be broken up between some presentations I'm going to make some presentations the city manager is going to make and our city clerk so we'll try to keep it interesting as we break between the different items I think it'd be a good opportunity for questions if anybody has any rather than waiting until we get on the way to the end and so this is the overall format I'm not going to read it all the way through but I promise you that it'll be interesting and we will have different speakers so it's not going to be me just talking my entire time but I will kick us off and talk about kind of the council manager form of government and I think most of you are familiar with this and this is maybe for the community as well but the council manager form of government is the most common form of government in the state of California of the 480 something cities in the state all but about 10 of them are cities that don't use what's called a strong mayor form of government what that means is the mayor is the CEO so in those cities like San Francisco Los Angeles Oakland to name a couple those cities the mayor is the CEO the mayor is hiring department heads the mayor is hiring police chief the mayor is vetoed the rest of the council council manager form of government is different is that the city council becomes the board of directors and the city council you guys make laws you guys create for the project you guys establish the city's goals the city area board situnate tasks the main point is that I'm working for you guys you guys give direction to me limited situations in the end of the closed sessions aunt阻 litigation real property so one of the key things is that that direction comes from the full council aren't supposed to go to the police officers. They give that person a ticket, they've been parking. That direction will come through me at a council meeting by a vote of the city council. That being said, council members are always, always empowered to ask questions. In general, kind of the rule of thumb is that it's a research question. If it's a couple hours, my staff will just get it for you. If it's full day or two days worth of work, I would strategize with you about how to bring it to the full day. And I mean, I think everyone can understand the purpose behind this is just so that one council members can't find a realistic way to work for everybody. Then I just want to touch really quickly on the orange chart, but unfortunately we've got a little cut off down the bottom. But basically you'll see that the city council is up on top. And in city council, you have two hires that you manage as a city council. First one is me as a city manager, or maybe the first one is Samantha as your city attorney. And the second one is me as your city manager. So the city attorney is outside of city manager's responsibilities, but I am responsible then for hiring four different departments, which one of them is from by our direct or those departments. And then we have the recreation division, also within the city manager department, we do HR, then in finance, they're responsible for overseeing things like payable, making money, paying the bills, making sure our books are balanced. Public works is kind of divided into two general themes. We've got the folks who work in the field and then the folks who work in the community development is divided into two divisions in building and construction. And they work in the field a lot. And then we have the planners, and those folks who want to issue the permits that you can go to the planning commission. The hotel project, the 41st avenue, we work with the community council. And then the police department is broken up into a case we have. Looking there, it's hard for me to see exactly we have the records division, which is the administrative side of the police department, their patrol, which is our officers. And we also have the parking enforcement division. I didn't think that was within patrol, but it looks like it is on that chart. So I got a little thrown off. But that's the basic structure of the city. And there's a whole bunch of other things that we do, and we participate with other jurisdictions, services, participate with other jurisdictions to provide services. So that includes libraries, we partner with the city of Santa Cruz, the county, and Scotts Valley, our dispatch center, we do lots of bills in, Scotts Valley is out, animal services, all the cities in the county participate through that jointly, 3CE, our community power. We are one of the four members there. And that's an entity that goes all the way down to Santa Barbara County. Sanitation and flood control, we partner with our county to provide regional transportation commission and then Metro. So there's a whole bunch of other government services that are provided to the cities that you and I, we all sit on the different boards for these entities and we divide them collaboratively with other cities. And Jamie, the reason that we have that, because not all cities are set up like that's one because we're small, but there's a name for it. There's a, we're one type of city versus another type of city. Common law? No, I can tell you. General law, that's what I meant. Common law. Charter versus full city. Yeah, charter. Charter versus city. We're not married. We're not married. So contract versus full service city. Sorry, I don't know if I said that correctly. So our contract city is generally thought of as one that has a lot of contracts for services. You know, it can be like a contract with your sheriff or policing is a really common one. Or a combination between the two. You know, I think if you look more towards Santa Cruz they're more of a full service city. They have a fire department, a police department, a water department, all those things. We're not in the extreme end of a contract city where we really, there are some cities out there that just have an administrative staff and you manage the contracts with other agencies. It includes my portion. Are there any questions kind of on the overall form of government, our departments, our organization? Who's our representative for 3CE? So 3CE is organized with two different boards. There's the policy board, which sets the rates that have produced the budget. And then there's the operations board. And we approve the contracts and kind of oversee the general manager. I'm on the operations board and council member Brooks is on the policy board. Thank you. You're welcome. The meetings are now in, well, they're supposed to be in person. Down at the bottom right. So they're, which is a lot closer for us than it is for Santa Barbara. Now the most interesting part of the presentation, the Brown Act. With your hand held. I know, right? Yeah. Should I sing it? Is that what you're going to suggest? Yeah. And sing. And sing. So nothing more awesome. On our rainy Thursday night discussion of the Brown Act and complex public records act. I feel like I have told all of you about this until I'm blue in the face and you probably know it. So I'm going to blow through the basics and go over some things that I feel like come up all the time with a lot of councils. And so hopefully it'll be useful to you. If not, it'll be over soon. Okay. The Brown Act, what you really need to know about the Brown Act is on the dais, stick to the agenda. Off the dais don't have a meeting, which is a meeting means three of you talk about something that could come before the council pretty broad, right? Conflicts, what you need to know is if you think you have a conflict with anything on the agenda, let me, Jamie and Julia know as soon as possible. I will say especially me, because usually conflicts, while to you may seem really simple. They're actually really complicated to research and it can sometimes take three or four hours to research and so we have to find that time. So please, please, please tell us as soon as you do. We'll probably have some factual information or factual questions for you and then we'll send you an email telling you whether we think you have a conflict. Public Records Act, what you need to know is that now that you are unelected, you are the city. So anything, any communication that you have in writing, whether it be on your Gmail account, your Hotmail account, your, whatever, AOL, whatever, text. Who here still has a Hotmail account? Oh, I just would like to say I hope, I hope my husband is watching now. It's all public, right? It's all because you were doing the people's business. So if we get a records request for any of that information, we will be contacting you and saying please pull all those communications. What a lot of council members do and what is a good practice is to have all of your city business conducted on your city email account. Okay, next, non-agentized items. In general, everything that you talk about up there needs to be on the agenda. There are some exceptions. You can briefly respond to public statements or ask questions of members of the public. During public comment, usually we don't recommend that even though the Brown Act says it is lawful because it's difficult to know what briefly means in the Brown Act. And it's a good way to stray from the agenda. Like I said, you can ask a question for clarification. You can make a brief announcement. That's why we have that item on the agenda for council member announcements. We don't have to state the specific announcement that you will be making. It's a surprise to all of us. And you can ask as you have done in the past, you can ask to have a matter put on a future agenda. Next, you can also add an emergency item to the agenda. I spent some time on my slides on emergencies that seems to be appropriate these days. There are two different ways in which you can add emergency item to the agenda. One is the standard is similar to what I think is gonna be discussed later in the presentation for calling an emergency meeting. And that is there is a really dire emergency happening. And so it's hard to imagine practically these circumstances because if there is a really dire emergency, I don't know that you'd be having a council meeting, but assume that you are. Assume that the agenda has gone out between the time that the agenda goes out and the time that you are sitting here, there is a dire emergency and you need to talk about that item. Then you can say, I would like this put on the agenda, there is a dire emergency. It requires only a majority vote of the council to put on the agenda. Second scenario is it's not necessarily a dire emergency as defined by the government code, but it is an item that is important to be discussed immediately because there is a need for immediate action. And the agency, which is not just you, it's all of the staff didn't know about it until after the agenda went out. In that case, it requires a super majority, but I think these things happen so, so rarely. I just tell you, just to a little trivia. Okay, next. Alrighty, of course you've done it. Okay, this is a question that comes up somewhat often, so I think a refresher is helpful. If you are disqualified from voting on an item or participating in an item because you have a conflict, you are disqualified from the entire item. You cannot participate in the debate or the discussion or public comment and then recuse from the vote. You need to be out of the entire item. And it's not just the item on the agenda, it's communicating with staff about it in advance communicating with your fellow council members, communicating with planning commissioners about it. You're out of the entire item. Okay, next. Avoiding bias. There are two ways in which you serve the community as a council member. One is through making legislative, serving in your legislative function. That is what the council does most of the time. I think every item on the agenda tonight is you acting in your legislative function. That is usually what you're doing. You're making ordinances. You are directing staff. The flag policy is an example. You're making a policy or adopting an ordinance that applies to the entire community or a large portion of the community. At times, you will sit in your quasi-judicial or adjudicatory function. In that case, you are essentially acting as a judge. So you are ruling on an appeal in most cases or you are issuing, you're ruling on an appeal of a permit issuance. In that case, your decision affects one person or a small, small number of people, like an applicant that may be four people. If you are acting in your quasi-judicial capacity as a judge, just like any other judge, it's important that you not be biased. And so what can create bias is saying in the community, I support this project. I'm going to do whatever I need to do to make sure this project is not approved or is approved. You can kind of use your common sense on that. If, and if you have any questions, you can certainly ask me or Jamie or Julia. If you do show bias in the community, you would need to recuse yourself from discussion of the item. It's most important that you watch bias in your quasi, if it's a decision that's in the quasi-judicial capacity, bias in the legislative capacity, on decisions regarding your legislative capacity, it's not as critical. I mean, you are elected to have opinions because you have opinions. So it is not as critical if you say before this meeting, I really support option one on the flag policy. You're sitting in your legislative capacity, it's not as important. There are no due process rights at issue. Okay, next, remote appearances. I'm going to blow through this because I know that I've gone over it a couple of times. AB 361, the law that allowed the council to remote into meetings during the pandemic has expired. We now have two options. You can either appear under the traditional Brown Act rules or the rules under AB 2449. The main distinction here is whether or not you need to post on the agenda the address from which you are appearing. So the bottom line here is if you would like to appear remotely, please, please let me know in advance and I can work with you on which of these procedures might make sense. If for instance you are appearing from a conference, you may want to use AB 2449 because you're fine posting the address of your hotel on the agenda. That's no big deal. It's one of the reasons that you can appear remotely under that legislation. If for instance, you are not feeling well and you are appearing from home, you may actually, I had that backwards. If you're appearing from a conference, you are probably fine posting so you want to use the traditional Brown Act rules. If you are appearing from home because you're sick or you've got a sick kid, in that case, you may want to use the new rules because you are not required to post your home address and allow public comment at your home. I mean, I know if in some places I live in the city, if I posted a notice on my door and invited the public in for public comment, they might come in for public comment. So you can think about that and I can work with you on what might work best for you. Next, parliamentary procedure. That's not me. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, thank you. Over here. Go, Julia. Oh, I can cover it, Julia. I'm sorry, I didn't know. No, it's like, listen about the clicker. Yes. Well, I don't know if the clicker's super. It's a work in progress. It worked earlier today. So the city of capital has been using Rosenberg's rules of order as parliamentary procedure for meetings since 2007. The key points of this procedure is that this is how you would process motions in seconds. This is how you can conduct amendments to motions. If somebody makes a motion and somebody else wants to amend it, you would make a friendly amendment. You can substitute motions. If one person makes a motion and another person wants to change the motion entirely, you can do a substitute motion. You can also call the question, which calls for an immediate end to discussion and calls for a vote. Or you can call for a point of order, which would make a clarification during the motion. Can, Julia, can you just, I love to call the question a point of order. Can you just give us briefly? Like an example? Yeah. Sure. So, do you want to talk? Sure. I, I thought about it. Oh, no. It's totally fine. Yeah. But you're doing great. So to call the question, so for example, if there was a discussion happening and there was a motion on the floor and discussion was continuing to happen after the motion was on the floor, then one council member could call the question, which would end discussion on the item and trigger the vote for the item. And so there would have to be a vote in the motion to either pass or fail. And if the motion was to fail, then the discussion will continue again until an alternate motion was made. Perfect. I think I would just add that I think it requires a super majority. Anything in Rosenberg's rules that basically makes people stop talking requires a super majority. Yeah, you have to vote to call the question, right? You can't just go straight to the vote on the motion. You have to vote to call the question. And then you vote on the motion. The vote to call the question is four-fifths. Yeah. And then point of order. You want to tackle this one? Point of order, I don't know that I've ever seen a vote on a point of order. I've just seen a council member say sort of point of order, we should be doing this this way. And it's exact, I've seen it used exactly like it sounds like point of order. We should be getting public comment before we debate this item. Or point of order, there is a substitute motion on the floor. Shouldn't we vote on that before something else? I don't feel like I see a lot of point of orders here. It just sounds so mean. It does sound quite aggressive. But you have a very engaged city attorney and city manager, so you may not need points of order. I'll also make a note that the city has adopted a code of conduct for our council members which we're going to talk about later in this presentation. And the code of conduct does kind of outline procedures for how council members should treat each other's staff and other members of the community. So point of order could also call to and discussion that's maybe not in line with the code of conduct. Julia, could you also briefly talk about substitute motions because I know that sometimes there's some confusion about is that a motion that you'll vote on after, if you'll vote on first and how that works. If someone makes a motion and then someone makes a substitute motion? Yeah, I can do that. So usually the substitute motion, the order of the vote, it goes in reverse order. So there's an original motion and then there's a substitute motion. The substitute motion is voted on first. And at times, a substitute motion will obviate the need for the original motion, which is why it's done in reverse order. Same with a friendly amendment. I guess an amended motion is the same as a substitute motion. So yeah, reverse order. Is that your question? Yeah. The one thing I was going to add on point of order, I think a few times I've seen it, it really is like it's sort of a way to interrupt if you're not there. Like if you're sitting over there and you're like, I don't think we've gone public comment. And you can just sort of grab your mic and kind of interrupt this point of order. And it kind of gives you the floor. So it isn't necessarily an aggressive thing. It can just be like a hey, are we on track here? Versus doing this? Well, you could tell you yes, that also works. Which I need every meeting, which is fine. Are there any other questions? All right. Moving along. So you all are familiar with our city council agendas by now, but just to briefly cover the different types of meetings that you might see, I think so far this year we've seen two of these, maybe almost three. But basically there are regular meetings, which are scheduled in advance. This meeting calendar is adopted at the end of the year for the following year. The agendas for regular meetings are published at least 72 hours ahead of the meeting in accordance with the Brown Act. Items address a variety of topics, but general business for the city. And in capital, the city council meets on second and fourth Thursdays at 6 p.m., which is a recent change to this city council meeting calendar. The other type of meeting is a special meeting. Sometimes special meetings are planned in advance, like the budget hearings that were adopted recently. Or sometimes they can be scheduled last minute. The time requirement for agendas for special meetings is actually only 24 hours ahead of time. So a meeting could be scheduled on Monday and then held on Wednesday, and the agenda would be published in accordance with the Brown Act. Special meetings are typically scheduled to cover a single issue, so a workshop or a time-sensitive item. And the third kind of meeting, which Samantha touched on earlier, is an emergency meeting. And these are very rare and critical and are usually scheduled with less than 24 hours notice. And these are meant to address threats that pose immediate threat or concern to the health and safety of the community, and the city council would have to take immediate action to approve something. Can I ask you a question about agendas? Sure. If there is an edit to the agenda after it goes out, does that update get set directly to council? Do we get the updates? So it depends on the type of edit. There is a provision within the Brown Act. I believe that if there's like a very small, like a typo was corrected on the agenda, then there's an allowance for a small edits like that. But if there was a substantive change to the content of the agenda, then it would have to be republished and re-sent out to like everyone that's on our receivable list for the agenda. So as you already know, we do have sometimes closed sessions, and these closed session meetings are closed to the public, but we do open the meeting in public session. The council then adjourns and goes to another location to conduct the closed session business. The closed session is usually directly prior to open session or regular meetings. Only specific items qualify for closed session. The most common closed session topics are litigation, real estate negotiations, personnel issues, or labor negotiations, and disclosure of confidential information from these sessions is a misdemeanor. For example, I included the closed session language from tonight, which you guys are all familiar with. I'm not gonna cover too much of this because by now you've seen many of our agendas, so the agenda structure should be pretty familiar for you. But I did wanna mention that staff recently in the past couple years did undergo an effort to streamline the agenda process and make sure that time limits were set for some of the items like presentations or oral communications or staff and city council comments. This was based partly on city council direction to staff is that at the time, because the meetings were starting later, the time it took to finally get to like the meat at the item ate into everybody's evening, not only city council members and staff, but also members of the public who were in attendance who wanted to hear or participate on a certain item. So in an effort to address that, staff has made changes to streamline the agenda structure, making presentations limited to eight minutes, staff and city council comments three minutes each, and oral communications on off agenda items or consent calendar items three minutes each. So the consent calendar, as you're all familiar with now, all items are adopted with one vote. There's no presentation or discussion required. However, items can be pooled at a city council member's discretion or sometimes by staff. And then general government items are public hearing items. Each item follows a procedure that's outlined in our agenda. There's a staff presentation, time for council questions, and then public comment. And the reason why council questions occur before public comment is that the council may have a question that the public would also want to know an answer to. So it kind of helps to combat duplicative questions. Following public comment, there is council deliberation and then a vote. For the oral communication portion of the agenda, this section is really targeted for things outside of the jurisdiction of legislative body or for not items listed on the agenda. However, members of the public could also use this time to comment on agenda items that are on the consent calendar to avoid having them pooled from the consent calendar. Public comment on agenda items that are listed on the agenda is required prior to council vote. And right now we do have Zoom and in-person participation for our members of the public. When it comes to public comment on agenda items or off agenda items, members of the public have a lot of leeway as to what they can say. The only things that would really be prohibited during a council meeting is something that's disruptive to the meeting or disrupts the meeting or something that is, I believe the language is like a harmful, like something harmful or inciting violence, that's the one, yeah. So those are really the only two limitations as to what somebody could say during a meeting. And when it comes to responding to public comment, I believe Sam touched on this earlier, but basically comments are a part of the record of the meeting and remarks should be addressed to the council as a body and not to a specific council member. City council members aren't required to respond to public comment and shouldn't engage in a discussion with members of the public if they come up here and have a comment. But a statement could be provided, I think is what Sam mentioned earlier, or direction to staff could be provided as a part of the city council member discussion. Jump in on this really quickly. Just on the what's allowed and what's not. There's actually some pretty famous litigation, I think, in the city of Santa Cruz. Nazi salute, Nazi salute allowed. Yeah, it has to be. That was allowed, but someone turning to the audience and getting the audience to chant was not allowed. It is really about an actual disruption of the meeting. Yeah, so that's one of the things is somebody coming up here and saying how horrible your city manager is and saying awkwardly. Yeah, I was picking on me here, but that is allowed. And I know council members have struggled with that before when somebody is making very direct personal attacks but personal attacks are really imbalanced. Insighting violence or making it so we can't do the meeting? But couldn't we ask them, so we have three minutes thing up there. After they're done, we can ask them to leave and if they don't leave, that's disruptive and then they can be escorted out, correct? Yeah, if they're not following the direction and they're not letting the meeting proceed. There is also a section of the municipal code that addresses remarks to the city council, so there is like a little bit of guidance there as well. And then the last one of the responding to public comment. My recommendation, you may have somebody up there that has some really good questions that they pose. My recommendation is always to let the public comment end and then as a council member, staff won't just start answer. It's your meeting, if the council's meeting, we're looking for direction from the mayor. But except when public comment is closed, if you think that there's some items that deserve a response, you're more than welcome to turn to staff and say, during public comment, we heard a number of good questions about X. Do you think we could get a quick response down? That's totally inbound, totally appropriate. I'd recommend waiting until somebody sits back down because when they're standing there and then you ask for a response from me or you give it yourself, it's very easy then. Usually what I see is the person with the mic that up there that's like, what about this situation, what about it? So pretty quickly, you're in a meeting. Were there any other questions before we move on? All right, thanks. So going over some basics for the agenda. Agenda items are for council to act on as a topic or to discuss an issue at length. Each item must be on a published agenda in accordance with the Brown Act. This does include items that require no action. So for example, if you are to accept a presentation or present a proclamation, those also need to be agendized. How to put items on the agenda? So there are two ways that items can be agendized. The city manager has the discretion to put items on the agenda during the regular course of business. But in accordance with capitol and municipal code, you can also request at an open council meeting for an item to be agendized at a later date. So any person on the city council can request an agenda item during a regular or like an open meeting. The requirements to add an item to the agenda during the meeting or after the agenda is published. We talked about this prior, but it's basically for emergency situations or things that require action prior to the next meeting. And then in terms of organizing the agenda or where items are placed on the agenda, this is something that city manager works with staff on. Certain items require public noticing or public hearing. So staff is making sure that we're tracking legal requirements to ensure that those public noticing requirements are met. And those items fall under the general government or public hearing section. Other items when possible can be approved on consent which requires less discussion. And those are more regular routine business items. Some possible council actions could include providing direction to staff, making a motion to authorize or approve an item. Things that often come up on city council agendas are resolutions and ordinances and resolutions are formal adoption of policy changes, changes to the budget. Occasionally they can involve formal adoption of like a large contractor, things like that. The most legislative action the city council can do is introduce and adopt ordinances which introduce changes to the municipal codes, the laws of the city. Ordinances are required to be introduced and then adopted at a subsequent meeting and become effective 30 days after adoption. Or there are emergency or urgency ordinances which would have more immediate action and are followed up with a regular adoption of an ordinance at a later date. So now switching gears from the agenda, we're gonna move on to the code of conduct and other applicable administrative policies for the city council. And some of these were included in your agenda packet. But to start off, administrative policy I42 is the code of conduct. This policy was originally developed in 2020 and then adopted in 2021. It works in conjunction with legal requirements for the city council. So legal requirements regarding the ethics or like regular trainings that are required or code of conduct that is required. I may outlines core values for city council members and appointed officials to city advisory bodies. And there are procedures outlined to investigate violations of the standards and penalties outlined for those violations within the policy. This code of conduct policy provides transparency and allows for standards for decision making for elected and appointed officials. There are standards for relations with other council members for decorum at public meetings. There are standards for communications with the public, boards and commissions, other governmental agencies, staff and media. And it establishes standards for how city council and appointed officials are expected to interact with staff. All members of our city advisory bodies are provided a copy of this policy and are expected to sign it along with our city council members. And the signed copies are made a part of like the administrative record for each group. So we have them on file. I think all of yours are also available to you on net file, which you use for your code or conflict of interest filings. Some other administrative policies that are applicable are the technology reimbursement policy which came up at a recent meeting. This is policy V10. Council members who elect to go paperless and sign this policy may receive an annual reimbursement for a digital reading device or software to receive agenda materials or city materials. So for example, if you elected to go paperless and purchase an iPad, you could receive an annual reimbursement amount in exchange for that effort to be more environmentally conscious. The other administrative policy that is important here is policy I31 regarding abstentions. Council members are prohibited from participating in governmental decisions that may have a material financial effect on their economic interests, including his or her personal finances. However, noting that council members should not abstain from a vote to avoid casting a controversial vote. And so this policy was really crafted to help make sure that council members are participating in discussion and then not backing away from the vote at the last minute and making sure that everyone is casting a vote appropriately. Julia, just to clarify, personal finances include your spouse as well, correct? Correct. So anything that would be outlined on your conflict of interest filing. And with that, if there aren't any other questions, I'm gonna turn it over to Chloe to talk about our other policies. Do my best. Thank you so much, Julia. So we're gonna talk briefly on how to appropriately use social media. You know, it's very exciting again. So this is touched on earlier by our fabulous attorney, but it's worth mentioning again that there are different types of hearings, right? So most commonly you're gonna be working as a legislative body, so you'll be establishing policy and rules for groups of people or property. But however, occasionally, you might be in your quasi-judicial function, which means you're acting like a judge, you might be applying a rule or approving a permit for one business or one person. So a good question to ask yourself if you're confused is, are you affecting one person or the whole city? And that kind of leads you to what kind of function you're serving under. That's important because whether or not an item is quasi-judicial or legislative, you would treat it differently on social media. So that's what we're gonna talk about. Now, we have this handy-dandy chart which was included in the policy and in your packet. And it outlines kind of the different ways you can behave on social media and if they're acceptable or if they're against the policy. So there's a lot of behavior on social media that is completely fine. It's almost encouraged by elected officials at this point. And I'm gonna have examples. So there's acceptable behaviors and generally speaking, I think, certainly the five of you and most of our elected officials and appointed officials are using social media to their advantage to just push out information, spread the word about programming. That's great, we love that. Thank you, keep doing it. Okay, moving into what's a little iffy and what could get into being against the policy is if you're sharing or posting on quasi-judicial items. So for example, one specific permit to one business, all of a sudden you start posting, hey guys, there's an item coming up about a very specific situation that only affects one person. And by the way, I never post about this ever, but right now I am. That's fishy, so maybe don't do that. That would help us all. But if you do start doing that, you may need to then submit all of that ex parte communication to the city such like same way you would for additional materials. So even if it's technically allowed, it's a lot of extra work, so you may just decide not to do that. And then when we get into being against the policy, again I'll have examples. If you're expressing your personal opinion about a quasi-judicial matter. So for example, if before a public meeting, you're expressing your personal opinion being against a housing project, before the meeting, before the public meeting, before your vote, you've basically shown your bias before you've held your public meeting and learned from staff and accepted public comment. So that's really against the policy. And in that case, you may need to recuse from the vote at all. So we're gonna go through some examples. And I believe we can even get a little interactive here. This is an example of a post about a capital recreation movie night. Do we wanna guess? And just yell out is where does this fall on our scale of acceptable or not? I love that, acceptable, perfect, correct. I think you can see the word, this is one of our posts technically, but if you wanted to share that, that would be great. Yeah. And then here's another example, some information about, it's very pertinent for this evening, a weather pattern coming in. Again, you could probably guess, totally fine to share that. That would be really nice engagement on social media. Now here we're getting into another example. Say you've posted this, this a picture. What do you think about this park project on 12th Street? Leave your comments here. I'm seeing shaking questionable. I'm liking what I'm seeing, correct, discouraged. And really the reason is because, oh, both popped up, but depending on your patterns on social media, if you really never post about anything and all of a sudden here you are posting about a very specific project, it's just a little bit fishy. You're kind of treating an item differently than others. And a result, as I said, and Jamie's gonna jump in, I can tell. You may need to then submit all the communication. So that's your post and any comments, you know how it can get, that could be hundreds of comments that we now need to include in our record. So just be aware of that. And yes, please, city manager, go right ahead. The other reason why the policy says that it's discouraged is really a little bit about protecting council members because the notion is like, we have a process, we come to a meeting, the public is here, you're gonna receive this data presentation, you're gonna hear from the public and then you're gonna make your decision. And so I would always counsel, not always. I mean, there's certain situations where you can say ahead of time, for example, if you have a specific thing that you're gonna push for funding for the budget, I think that can be fine to sort of advertise. But in general, if it's like telling people how you're gonna vote on something ahead of time, can lead people to the assumption that you don't care maybe what's gonna happen or you're not gonna listen to your peers, for example, if they make sure they're arguing about it in their approach. And how about just general information? City council's gonna be meeting this Thursday and we're gonna be discussing this, this and this, come voice your thoughts to us, stuff like that. Yeah, consistency is the key there, number one. And then I think, you know, the problem, the only problem, and I'm gonna turn over to Sam to help with me if I'm wrong here, is if you've never had done that before and it was like on the appeal hearing night for Gnarly Projects. Okay, but I'm just on a normal council night. Yeah. Yeah. Louie, you might get to a slide about this, but are you gonna talk about comments? So I just think about this as discourage because a person, a council member might feel it necessary to respond to one of those comments, which then is... Brown Act. Yeah, right. I don't know if you were gonna show slides on that, I just don't wanna take it. I was gonna jump in again. I didn't wanna interrupt, Chloe. Please do. That's exactly right. I mean, this is a really good way to violate the Brown Act, right? You should really refrain from commenting on other council members' posts on social media. And even with the public on items that could potentially be on an agenda, right? Because you don't wanna like... Publicly respond. ...show bias in communities. That's right. Is this just for quasi-judicial or for all agenda items that we're not allowed to show bias and from a legal perspective? Okay, so the Brown Act issue applies to all items. So if someone posted on a legislative item, if someone posted, if Vice Mayor Brown posted, we are discussing the flag policy at tonight's meeting, come and tell us your thoughts. You responded and Council Member Brooks responded. That could be a Brown Act violation. The bias issue is more of an issue with adjudicative items. So, but that's a separate issue then. I guess my question is, so say I posted online before this meeting, I don't think we should adopt the new flag policies recommended or something about non-judicatory... That's a legislative item, right? Yeah, on a legislative item, is there laws against that? Yeah, so I understand your question. I think you're asking, can I show bias on a legislative item in advance of the meeting? And legally, I think the answer is yes. And that's the question I'm asking. Yeah, legally the answer is yes. What Jamie said is right. You know, usually Council Members don't do that. It's more for political reasons, but legally what the law is concerned with is you not showing bias on quasi-judiciary items. So, from my side, I'm concerned with you not showing bias on quasi-judiciary items. But cut, or whatever. It's called different things in different court cases. Sometimes it's quasi-judiciary. But as long as it's relating to the general public, it is legally fine to post whatever opinions you have. Yeah, like I said, I'm hesitating because it's such a bad idea. Yeah, and that was gonna be my follow-up. It's like, I'm not fully understanding what the negative aspect of forming an opinion publicly on an item is, if not legal ramifications. Yeah, so I understand your question. I mean, it's like, as a politician, you run on certain ideologies and beliefs, so why would you not publicly express those opinions if they're going to be, you know. I think it's more about the meeting. Yeah, I think it's more about a specific item. You can say like, I'm pro-affordable housing, but then if a housing item is coming before Council, I think it, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think in general, it's kind of appropriate to say, I've always been for affordable housing. This particular item's coming to us tomorrow and then it's wise not to say, and I'm going to vote for it until the public comment has been heard and we've heard the staff presentation because I think the general idea is that public comment, that we are here to make our decisions based on what we hear from staff and the public and that we're making decisions in the best interest of the public. And so if we don't get public comment ahead of time, we're just saying, I've already decided what I'm going to do. And that's just what I've started. I'm always interested to see what everybody actually has to say based on each item to help mold a decision if I'm on the fence about something or I don't know, you can bring all of your support of ideas here and this is to me, more of like the public forum rather than social media in a way. One other important thing to understand about this, this policy, the last policy that go to conduct and then I guess the other one, the abstentions policy, those are your rules for yourself. So saying it's discouraged, it's Samantha's online legal issues with expressing an opinion issue. I'm explaining sort of political ramifications or process issues, but then also this policy has been adopted by the council that says, look, we are discouraging this sort of thing. Okay, so this came from a previous council to label this behavior as discouraged. That's exactly right. Yeah, okay. So this policy, I don't know the number off the top of my head. Basically, it was trying to go through and saying, hey look, this type of stuff, we encourage it as a city, as a city council, we say this is good sharing information. Expressing bias though is discouraged because while not technically illegal, it can get you in the city potentially in trouble. So that was kind of the council's, that's where the genesis of this is. When you say it could get me in the city potentially in trouble, what? So most specifically, what I can imagine a situation is, is when you say, I'm gonna vote X, you know, you post on your, on the gram, say I'm gonna vote like X, and then people look and say, wait a second, he's not listening to the public. We're all coming to the meeting and sort of creating. And yeah, and that's, yeah, trouble, political trouble. Got it, thank you. So the next example relates to that a lot. I would say, Julia, do you mind? I just got angry with the clicker. So this is kind of, it's exactly that and more because this is a quasi-judicial item on top of everything, but basically, if you're posting about an affordable housing project, you're against it, come to the meeting and tell us why I'm planning on voting no. I think you can guess that is against the policy, right? And the reasoning again is because you're showing your bias, you're showing your opinion, how you're gonna vote before the public meeting, before the forum, before hearing public comment, et cetera, as we've already discussed. And in that case, you would likely need to recuse, which basically means you don't get to do what you were elected to do, which is vote. So that's also trouble. Really, that's the last example. It's great to hear lots of questions and interests in this. Do we have more, we wanna talk about with social media at this point? Okay. I'm open for questions. I guess I'm just curious about the Brown Act. So because if I did post an opinion about a, I'm sorry, what was it? Non-legislative item and the other say, and then maybe one of the other council members sees that, and then they post not necessarily as part of a conversation, but maybe it could look like that. Their opinion, is that gonna be a violation of the Brown Act? Is that as seen as some form of communication, even though it's public on social media? If it's on your post, if two council members post on your post, and that's likely a Brown Act violation. If they're posting on their own- If I say pro-housing and another council member says, I'm anti-housing, that wouldn't be considered any form of discussion. Likely not. Yeah, okay, thank you. I wanna say one more thing about this example, about why this is such a bad idea in addition to what's listed. If the city gets sued by an applicant or an appellant on a quasi-judicial decision that you make, the lawsuit is generally a writ, which is a truncated lawsuit, and the only thing that the court really considers is the record, which is all of the written, all of the stuff, all the information that has been generated on that item until it gets before it gets to court. In that case, this post would likely be a part of the record, and that is just not what we want to be the record for our city. That's a great point, thank you. Any other questions? Okay, thank you so much. I think this is, I've got the handle on the tech here. So moving on, we've talked about a lot of different policies, that again, that was a good distinction our city manager made. We've discussed council member policies that the council themselves have adopted and approved. So they're about yourselves. Now we wanted to discuss some potential administrative policies, new policies that you may want to pursue based on feedback we've had that staff has heard from council members. So really there's just one in particular regarding council training and travel. And I wanna cry. So this is something that we have a very understood practice between council and staff, but it's not been formalized in a policy. So just to kind of reiterate, and this is using numbers that were suggested in the goals meeting recently. So would potentially be in effect for the 23, 24 budget upon your vote on the budget, of course. Basically, we would be functioning with $15,000 total for council travel and training, the understanding is that means each of you have 3,000 and there's no sharing between members for the fiscal year. Now, it seems reasonable that maybe it would be a good idea to have these understandings written down in a formal policy. So some other kind of points to consider that we would then put into a draft and bring for your approval at a later meeting are here on the screen, based on other jurisdictions policies and things that have come up in conversation. So would you wanna have any requirements around out of state travel to trainings? Would that mean maybe council needs to approve out of state travel? Do you wanna have a report to council after? Are there parameters around the kinds of training and activities that qualify for reimbursement? Believe me, I've read literally policies that are nine, 10 pages on this kind of stuff. So it might be surprising, but we can get really detailed or just general. It's up to the five of you and any other kind of specifics around hotel rates, anything that you might wanna be regulating. So I'm really just here to take notes and hear what you'd like and then bring a draft back. And of course, if our city manager has anything to add, please do. I think I got everything in there. With the bobble mic, it's all too apparent to exist. No, it's your job. It's your job. I don't know. I call your bluff. Let's get a stroke again. So this game about actually when I was briefing council member Peterson and we were talking about the travel and training and we were going through these things and I was explaining that in general, the travel and training, it can be very broad for any sort of type of training for new council member, experienced council member, whether it's a league event, it's a local conference, all kinds of things. And I mentioned that in general, we haven't ever used the funding for, and I call them galas, but Red Cross is hosting a $500 plate dinner or something like that. That's not really about training. That's about kind of fundraising and networking. And so it seems prudent, frankly, that we would have that written down because if that's the way the council wants this budget to be used, it seems like it's better to have it written down rather than to need to sort of negate and it's not the best role for your city manager. The out of state travel, that's one idea would be to have council approval for out of state travel. I don't, I can't remember a time that I've had a council member go out of state, but the notion there would be that it would just go on consent agenda. So if you're gonna go out of state, you just need to be comfortable with the world knowing that you plan to go to the lease there's conference in Orlando, Florida. So when we get a sister city in the Bahamas and we want to travel. Exactly. So that's where we need to write this policy, very clear that it allows for that travel. Yes, exactly. And that's the kind of thing, right? Cause you could say you want to go to Bahamas for a conference about parks, right? One day, conference them all. So the question is, that would be one mechanism by which you just make sure that the council is approving that travel. I think, Samantha, in Watsonville, the council approves all travel and training for all council members. They do that in San Jose. And I don't recommend that. I think that that can lead to just a lot of clutter on the agenda. And it would be better to just say if it's in state and it's travel and training and it's not Kayla's, it's good. And then if it's out of state, which like I said, I can't remember seeing this in the past, so that doesn't come up on me. I tried it. I'm kidding, you said no. And we don't need to do it. We stick with the current format. But like I said, it, as I told council member Peterson when he asked the question, it's not right now. That's kind of an uncomfortable position to have, just sort of a loose understanding that I have. This is open for discussion now. Yeah, absolutely. Any direction, I'm taking notes. Oh wait, questions, are there any questions? Do we have to go to public comment? Do you want us to? Are we on questions or comments? This is just direction. There isn't like an approval or emotion. So I think you can just chat if I'm wrong. So if you would want staff to bring this back to council, you could probably ask for it at this point, but we can't discuss it too much because it's not on the agenda. Oh, we can, we want to add agenda. Dive in. I think it would be nice to have some sort of a guidance on what types of training and activities would qualify and maybe even specifics on hotel rates. I would only think there's anything bad. I think that's within reason. I would personally hesitate to have a requirement for out of state training and travel because I think it's very common to go out of state. It's very relatively inexpensive to go out of state for different travel or training purposes. So I just think it would be unnecessary to bring that back to council. In my personal opinion, I think it would be best left up to the decision of the individual council member. I mean, yeah, there's only, there's not very far you can go with, I mean, three grand a year, that would probably be your entire years worth of travel and training if you were to go to an out of state conference. I mean, I could see value going even out of country, honestly. My experience with most cities. But out of country, I think is different than out of state. Yeah. Most cities and counties have policies where they have to get it, ask for permission to go out of state for training because of how costly it is. A couple of cities or counties that I've worked with, you always had to have permission. It wouldn't be a bad idea to have to be a vote from the city council if you went. Well, wait to clarify, we're not getting any additional money. No. If it becomes a costly trip, we're not getting additional funds to cover it. We just, we get our three grand and that's it, right? Exactly. I think it would be nice to like identify the intent of what council travel is. Okay. So once we establish what these funds are for and identify what the definition of council travel is, so to staff's point earlier, it excludes at a high level networking and galas and really anything to take your political stature, this would have to be council work. I mean, in my eyes, this would have to be in relation to council related stuff. So I think for me, if some language was supposed to come back as a clear definition of what council training is and then I mean, I think what you get in trouble with is specifying overnight stays and hotel rates. It's a constant thing. You'd have to update and change over from city to state to country. So I don't have one way or another. I don't, that's not something that I'm worried about. It's just more about identifying the real like nature of council travel and the purpose of it. And for me, it would be something that would, that where we are a reflection of the city and that the information that we obtain through the travel is we're then acting as a resource and an information post to bring back to council. So an example is like a league. We learn about Brown Act and code and other things and policies and then we act as a resource when we return and we share that information with council, you know. So that's what I imagine for this kind of funds to be used and especially because it's public dollars. And I think we have to really think about that legally as on what's legal in terms of using public dollars for. And I get, I know there's some sort of things to math that can help us include in that. You want it to be, you want it to be related to city business so that it is not a gift of public funds, right? I also want to note a minor apology that the specifics about hotel rates that's actually already contained. So the city has a travel and trade travel policy that applies for city staff. And it says council member Clark said, you know, specific requirements about being in state, out of state, kind of what those approvals are. Those don't apply to council members but it does have like a max rate for hotel and we use the GSA. And screwed and travel, all that stuff. The GSA reimbursement rates are what you get unless you're staying at a conference because a lot of times conferences, the host hotel is at a different rate. So it says you can stay at the host hotel or you have to use the GSA rate whichever one you can get. So that actually, the rates is actually already covered by the city's overall travel fund. But this whole thing, council member Brooks's point about kind of saying what the intent is because I have sort of in my own head, basically, I think council member Brooks who articulated pretty much exactly what I would have said but like having that written down, the council say, yeah, that's the purpose of the travel and training budget. And then the other key question is like, what do you want as council member Clark said like something if you go out of state that there's additional approval but if mayor signs off on it, the whole council, what country that triggers the additional review or are we good as long as it's consistent? That's up to you. I don't want to stifle anyone. I mean, council member Peterson, if you want to go to another country and you're going to learn some cool stuff and bring it back to council with the use of public dollars, I'm behind that 100%, right? And I think if we can identify a clear definition of what those things are, I think that any of us could, and if you find a good deal, it could be a really applicable conference or training section. I mean, if it's like aviation. No, yeah. We don't have technology, we don't have that stuff, but you know, but I think that's where the challenge is, it's just really identifying what is useful and what are some of the things we do here. And it's interesting because how you're talking about it, it makes it sound like you're almost going somewhere to gather information and then reporting it for the benefit of the whole council. Whereas I sort of interpreted it as you could go to like, you know, like the new city council training and it's so, it's almost more professional development. So you, as an individual, would be able to perform your duties better as a city council member rather than necessarily reporting or for the benefit of the other city council members. I feel like it's so balanced. I think it's a combination of that. Right, it could be either, I feel like. It's more professional development in the sense of being a public official. Yeah, yeah, so. Exactly. For the overall good of yourself and the council and the communities. Yeah, yeah. Keep Jamie in line. Keep Jamie in line. There's an actual conference. I don't think there's enough conferences for that. I think. The Bahamas. Yeah, exactly, specifically. All going. I think I feel pretty comfortable with what you've all said. Do you have anything else you want to add? I'll bring, we'll bring a draft back for your approval. So you'll have a chance, of course, to see details. Okay, thank you so much. And I think, shockingly, that brings us to further questions and then that's really our big orientation for you. So thank you for your patience and all your contributions. Thanks, thank you, thank you. Do we need public comment for this? Anybody? Anybody? Anybody online? Lost our identity. Yeah, we got lost in our own world. Great. We don't need a roll call, we're good. Brings us to item 10, adjournment. Everybody stay safe, stay home, stay dry, still raining. Stay home.