 to talk about the sunshine ordinance. Ms. Gomez, should we just announce the the role? Let the record show that all subcommittee members are present with the exception of subcommittee member Sawyer. Thank you and we are welcoming two new people to the show. We have councilmember Oliveris is joining us in the new year no stranger to the open government task force or the sort of a welcoming setup and we also have the interim director for the office of community engagement. Jason, do you want to say a couple words? Thank you vice mayor Rogers. I'm just excited to be here and really take what has been built as far as community engagement and take it to the next level with the rest of the team. So I'm excited to be here. Thank you. Thank you and rounding out the team we've got the city attorney Sue Gallagher. We have our great clerk Daisy Gomez. We will move on to public comments for items not on the agenda. Does anybody have anything they'd like to talk about before we get going? Go ahead and for folks who missed it we are using the mics even though we probably don't need them because it makes it easier to do the closed captioning for folks at home who are really thrilled to see these videos on Friday night I heard. Thank you very much Eric Frazier with the Greater Cherry Street Neighborhood Association and other pursuits in the community. Thank you very much for the opportunity to participate in this process. I did create a letter with a couple suggestions and I didn't think they necessarily fit within the agendized item so that's why I'm speaking now. So as my letter specifies I've used the CPRA to gain access to information through the city. Sometimes I feel like I'm forced to rely on it rather than just have accessibility to documents or information that would seem fairly mundane in the process of researching at some point. And the staff has been responsive and we believe we've received the information in a timely manner however it would be impossible for us to know whether something was missing. However on several occasions the source documents had no notation as to the date of composition or reference to other dates including effective dates, expiration dates and so forth. So that called into question what type of standards you're using when documents are created. And so there's a number of standards, ANSI standards, ISO standards, ARMA standards and of course the state and federal agencies are full of standards when it comes to information. So the question would be what standards does the city already follow and therefore what's going to assure that dates are recorded on source documents as they're produced. So my suggestion number one was make sure things are dated and suggestion number two is implement document standards if you're not using them. And those standards should be from a recognized source so the standards themselves are something that people that are interested in following along understand what to expect when they're served up information. Okay so the second part of this has to do with studies, reports, white papers and the like. I'll just call them all reports. I believe that transparency should begin with the call to action for the RFP or an assignment being articulated to the staff and therefore standards would provide guidelines for how the scope, hypothesis, problem, subject matter is defined for the assignment. And it would seem to me that you'd want a really clear scope before you're engaging either staff or outside contractors and that scope should be one that sets the stage for transparency about what the assignment is. So implement standards, suggestion number three, implement standards that clearly identify the scope, hypothesis, problem or other subject matter for all internal and externally produced reports prior to execution. And because we don't have a light I'll give you about 20 second heads up here. Okay great. And number so in the process of assembling the report certainly the contractors or staff rely on information and gather information to make their analysis. So the next suggestion would be to assure that the report includes information in a way that anybody can verify the information, any part of the report. Okay and that leads to suggestion number five which is create a practice for how the public can indelibly add information, that may influence the scope, eradicate redundancies and unnecessary costs and add if needed any opposing argument alongside any report. Surely everybody realizes in this day of age it's quite common for the public to be able to serve up qualified peer review analysis of information. Thank you so much. I actually think some of this will come up as we continue our discussion so thank you for the information on it as well. Anybody else for it? Go ahead Pat. You absolutely can. Thank you. In reviewing the ordinance there's something that I thought we were going to see and I didn't see it so I'd like to comment now. Is it on the sections we've already discussed or is it overall we're missing something from the whole ordinance? Well I missed the last meeting because I was else so I don't know. We'll jump back to the sections we discussed last time as a look back on the red line so let's discuss what's missing there when we get there if that works for you. Okay I'm not sure where it needs to go so I mean it's something that's not there that I would like to see there. Okay. I'm not sure where the there is so. Yeah let's get to it first and then I'll give you that opportunity for sure. So anybody else for items not on the agenda? Mr. DeWitt welcome. As I said please join us. Yes but if you've used the mic makes it easier for the close captioned services. Hello my name is DeWitt. I'm from Roseland and this year marks 25 years that I've been following the city's government better than when I was a youth. I'm very concerned that we don't really have open government yet even though we've tried with discussions starting as far back as the community involvement task force and its report that was brought out in the mid 90s and I think the dilemma is not from the elected officials. I think it's from the entrenched bureaucracy that the people who get into these positions begin to look at it like oh well man it's more work to inform the public we have to do more. Well you know what the taxpayers pay a lot of money to try to make sure and have a really efficient government that shares all the information with us that it can and it shouldn't be looked at like oh well hey you know we can't get to that I'm too busy as a matter of fact you should do everything that the Brown Act which was passed in the 1950s states is possible and you should air on the side of even more information being given out to the public rather than looking at it like oh man couldn't get to that so sorry you didn't get to see it. A perfect example is when a letter comes in to the council or the city manager thank you so much mr. DeWitt. Is there anybody else? Great so we will move on to our scheduled items that's a quick recap new year new committee where we have been going with this committee is a pretty lengthy scope of work and you can see some of those items listed under item number five the future agenda items where we chose to start was with the original draft of a sunshine ordinance that was produced following a lot of work by the open government task force a number of years ago what we are doing right now the item that we are working on is working our way through that draft ordinance to update it to make sure that it captures as much of the recommendation as many of the recommendations from the open government task force report as possible and then what we will do once we have finished walking through it is go through our scheduled items of additional things that we wanted to discuss see if we need to add something into the draft ordinance that was not there to begin with and hopefully come up with a document at the end of this that really puts us on a path for an open government here in Santa Rosa where we are at today we found ourselves last meeting a month ago working through articles one in articles two of the draft ordinance and we did it a little bit different we gave the public an opportunity to comment pretty much on every step of the way through it I took the comments back I did a red lined version of that ordinance that has been made available to the public both prior and at this current meeting if you do not have a copy we have extras so let us know and so now I want to walk through a little bit rehashing some of that with some additional comments that came in I'm going to make a couple of changes on the draft that you have and then I'm going to open it up for some additional public comment as well as well as making sure that councilmember oliveris has a chance to weigh in on some of these sections as we go first and foremost I'm going to walk through some of the changes that we're going to make and it'll be reflected in the new draft that'll be released I'll make the same commitment I'll try within a week of this meeting to get that draft turned back around to the public so right off the bat page one section five subsection b it says set three strategic objectives for the organization and then it actually lists the objectives but it's not formatted properly so we're going to fix the formatting on that to show that items subsection c d and e are actually those three items as outlined in the open government task force so that's a non substantive but a format issue on section c same page it was brought to my attention that the early and adequate the way that the red line draft was actually gives the policymakers early and adequate opportunity to respond to questions from the public we'll be putting this back in as early and adequate opportunity for the public so the way that it'll read is democracy in our representative form of government requires that the public have an early and adequate opportunity to understand the government's activities and to communicate its thoughts and concerns to its elected and appointed representatives so we'll make sure that early and adequate applies to both the public to get that information as well as to the council to be able to respond and get answers back to as well on page two under definitions a we may in the the second draft it was brought to our attention that the definition of agenda and then outlining what actually is in the agenda might be better served to have a quicker definition of what an agenda is in an actual section of the ordinance that outlines what is required in an agenda so we may have that change coming forward as well so you had some questions about section d yes my question my concern was the the same formatting issue is with the agenda so that the definition of citizens guidebook would be a short reference something to the effect of citizen guidebook means a guidebook prepared by the city in accordance with section blank and then the substantive requirements for the citizens guidebook the outline of the government structure etc would be in a substantive regulation folks don't necessarily know to look at definitions to find the requirements for things okay so you that you may also see that won't be a content change more of a reformatting so that it's more consistent without the ordinance should read and if i may there are a couple of other definitions that raise that same issue so okay so just as a general overview we're going to look at that you may see in the next red line draft a little bit more of that consistency but i promise you we won't change anything substantive from those definitions in the redraft councilmember oliveras do you have any other any questions or anything to add on article one so that will be pages one two and three i do not is there anybody in the public are there any changes substantive uh or discussion points mr duit and mr duit if you will we will actually get to minutes later in today's agenda in the section that actually outlines what is required in the minutes so just to make sure i put that out there for you i appreciate that sir but i'd like to put out for you yep that when it says those members of the public who spoke on each matter if the speakers identify themselves it should also state what the speakers were saying there should be a reference to did they support what was being spoken about or were they against it their comments especially if it was two to three minutes worth shouldn't just be summed up in one word spoke okay it needs to accurately reflect what's going on with the person who took their valuable time to come down here and try to participate in these meetings i mean it's really to me very important so thank you kindly yes sir and uh as i said i think you'll hear that from me in just a minute here as well all right we will move on to article two top of page four section a the new section a this was one that we had a pretty substantive discussion about you will see that we have drafted language that says supporting documents will be added to the preliminary agenda as they become available so that was the discussion around if something is ready to go don't hold it until the last minute that we are required to as things are ready they will be added to the agenda as well we in section c made the compromise that we had talked about moving from three days to four days the original draft ordinance said five days we agreed we are going to try for and see how that went as well for i apologize four days business days for hosting so that folks have a chance to respond i have longer to respond section f we captured some of the uh public comment uh discussion including outlying that members of the body do have the ability at the end of the entirety of the public comment to ask staff to follow up with folks to clarify or to ask for something to be added to the agenda go ahead yeah um i have a couple of comments in in this section um thus far the first is in the new sub subsection b two comments i would just note that the standard that we have embedded in here is somewhat a very subjective standard that the person has a reason a reason to attend the meeting or to seek more information and um i would suggest and we don't know um what people's interests are and what might trigger them to want to come or get more information but suggested that perhaps we substitute language such as that would alert a person of average intelligence and education of the general substance and significance of the item i put that out there um and then in that same paragraph um that the description should contain a link to any background documents or recordings from previous meeting discussions on said item when applicable um and i just want to clarify that the intent would be if it is a continued item we're linking back to the original uh item that it's not that we're going to link to every item that was potentially relevant uh going back and as a point of clarification daisy with our system is there the ability to start adding tags to items so for example housing homelessness things of that nature we're going forward one could click on a tag that says homelessness and they'd see other things that had been tagged that way currently our system does provide that it's a search um tab in insight and if you use that feature by using just the term keyword you could use homeless or anything else um it'll give you everything that it has ever been brought up in every single body government body yes okay so perhaps there's a middle ground there not actually linking to each individual staff report on items that have been years in the making and many things but start using a tag feature that allows the public to see particularly what's been been mostly recent that would be great my concern was just logistically how it was as a practical concern okay one other which is on the now subsection e which is that any correction or supplement needs to be posted no later than the fifth calendar day prior to the city council meeting i would point out that it is not uncommon that we have corrections or modifications or wordsmithing at the council meeting itself and i want to make sure that this um section does not preclude or tie the hands of the council to making um making changes either of their own generation or at the suggestion or recommendation of staff yeah and i think we can wordsmith that to both get the intent while also uh especially when it's done an open yes session uh have that that ability very good council member alavarez any comments none great we will apologize folks i'm working off of three different documents at the moment uh as you'll see we combined sections it was l and k have both been combined and reordered to j where now it reads copies of city council agendas in english and spanish shall be provided to any resident of san rosa who so requests and made available in the city clerk's office time consistency of four days rather than the the draft of the five and and council member just for a little bit of background we had pretty substantial conversations around if you have to request the documents to be translated for you it is less open and it is more of a barrier to entry so english and spanish will be the norm although su did have a question down in the new section l we have two different thresholds for additional languages we have 10 000 people or five percent of the total population which right now 10 000 is lower than five percent so we might want to provide some consistency there and just choose one number i believe it's pretty in the federal government i think it isn't at five percent not linked to a total amount i i believe so so that that will that is yet to be clarified then yeah i i should confirm that that what's in the voting rights act so city population yeah so you also had a question about section k you asked should the time for the translation run from the date of the request and should there be a deadline for making the request i think the intent of that the the no later than two business days prior to the city council was an acknowledgement that if the request came in sooner than or closer to the council than two days out that that might present a challenge as well um obviously again for non-english or Spanish requests so i think we can wordsmith that but the intent was that the request has to be made at least two days prior so that'll bring us to the end of that section councilmember did you have any questions no great uh is there any comment on these changes mr frazier thank you eric frazier uh so on section a uh where we're now talking about platforms that are used to disseminate information in this case what's called out as gov delivery is there any concern uh that these platforms might jeopardize uh personal information or track users histories or things like that that would put us in contradiction to the higher bar introduced by european standards when it comes to protection of personal information or things like that in other words is there a procedure that you go through to sort of vet those contractors or those platforms to make sure that they're caring for their business in a way that doesn't either create the illusion that users might be afraid to use those services or an actual fact um you know jeopardizes people's information thank you we can uh check with staff and get back to you on that as well um so mr dwight um yes dewayne she told me it was cold in here so she enjoys the running back and forth okay exercise is good i um i'm glad that you're making these steps here i am still supportive of the five business days and would like that to be shown in the record and i think that if time shows that uh four is possible then i bet we could move to five um secondary to that i'm glad that you are having the opportunity for council members to respond to uh items which are now under f that's a good thing when people come and speak with you it's not a problem to at least give them some recognition that there was information shared and then um i think it's really important on the last bit of this was the um situation of um the ability of those who are not tuned in to government to perhaps get some better understanding when you post it on the website about this open government ordinance that you explain what's possible for a resident or an interested party to be able to get the things that are looking for it's one thing to say well it's up on the web but if a person is not well versed in how to get something off of the city's website it can be a really uh laborious task so uh one last thing i know you're in a hurry and i don't mean to use up a lot of your time but i think it is also important that when you have this item be and the city attorney mentioned the idea of changing some of the language the way it reads now it might seem that the word interests is something like a property or some sort of tangible item and you might be able to word it to just say a person who is interested in topics and then it has opened up that opportunity thank you for your time and the back i'll get some exercise thank you mr. Dwight is there anybody else for this section seeing none we will go on to bottom of page six the broadcast of meetings uh i did miss one uh change that i intended to make so we will make it all regular meetings of the city council board of public utilities and planning commission which are held in the city council chambers shall be recorded that's actually intended to be all meetings that are held in the council chambers that are recorded not necessarily limiting it to the city council the bpu and the planning commission so we'll make that change uh as well in paragraph a the live broadcast and archive video shall be closed captioned in english and spanish we're going to put that directly into the ordinance as well and that council member if you have no other questions any other comments from the public on this section go ahead so well we actually uh can't dictate to the school board how they run their meetings and what they do with them i do know they use our facilities but for city run city ad hoc city committees that are in this room that they'll be recorded when available when it's okay we'll do great in the subject would would it be appropriate to uh articulate a way that citizens can suggest or instruct that meetings are actually held here so they can be recorded there's a number of meetings that are held outside of here that aren't recorded perhaps you know the state some of them are recorded even if they're off-site right so this doesn't necessarily address that issue but is there plans for all meetings to be recorded to some level and if so what is that standard and that sort of thing yeah and uh council member do you have any thoughts on that i don't know that we've discussed that in the past i know there's obviously logistical issues as far as how that how that happens and uh almost have to inventory all the different numbers and types of meetings that we have and figure out a threshold as to when something like that's going to happen so something i think that needs to explore in a little bit more maybe we'll put a pin in that and come back to it as well so that will bring us to new work for tonight we'll begin with the closed session and litigation reports uh and sue i know you're largely going to take this this section could you walk us through what it says what's in your view possible or what concerns you might have with the current language sure i'd be happy to um this provides in accordance with the brown act um that we must disclose on the agenda and also state verbally an open session um the uh title of the closed session and the statutory basis for the closed session state law also requires that i or someone who's filling in for me make a report after the closed session in open session make that report in open session um as to any uh action that was taken in closed session so we do that um i was a little bit confused on d as to what that meant in terms of the location or reports to the public after a closed session has ended be in a venue that's open to the public i'm if i understand it correctly the intent of that is that we make the report out during the open session here in chambers where the public is um is present that is our practice and that is required by state law so that's that's consistent in terms of um litigation that's either adjudicated or settled the the text in terms of any settlement shall be subject to disclosure um that is generally the case um except for when there is um privileged information the final sentence in e says that no attorney um representing the city uh shall agree to any settlement provision that requires confidentiality um i do have concerns about that that will need an exceptions carved out for where there is privileged information so they're very well in a settlement agreement can you give us an example yes um there very well can be information about medical conditions there can be information about um if it's a plaintiff or defendants financial records there could be uh even in some instances proprietary information that's confidential um and i would suggest that um there be an exception for anything that is um subject to privilege under the public records act so if you couldn't get the information in the public records act um i would suggest that should be also confidential in the context of a settlement um it is not often that that those situations arise but they do sometimes arise and would that be the entire settlement would not be available or would there be a redacted version that redacts the privileged information we could we could redact we could do it either way um so we could redact the privilege information um and release whatever is still a non confidential um i there may be situations where it's difficult to do that because it's so integrated into the terms of the settlement but again that would be rare and i think we could address that at the time but if um you know we if we if we include redaction of an allowance for redaction of any confidential information uh not subject to disclosure under the public records act i think we're in good territory um in f when the settlement's not reported out immediately um which is often the case because we don't have it actually finalized until it actually is finalized and signed um we currently do quarterly reports uh on settlements and the request is that we do the monthly report for settlements that are over 25 000 and that's fine we can we can readily provide that council members uh all of ours do you have any anything to add yeah i want to go back to uh subsection d on that i think we could use a little bit of worst myth and in that because it it seems to me i mean is there ever a time that um we would have a closed session and not an ensuing council meeting no we'd always have it's always in the context of a council meeting it it is possible that at the at a particular council maybe meeting perhaps the closed session is the only thing on the agenda um but we could come down into chambers announce the results of the closed session um we could also uh this could provide that we give an additional report out at the following next following council meeting we are required by state law to report it out immediately after the closed session but there's nothing to prevent us from reporting it out a second time at the follow-on yeah i was looking at this and trying to figure out well we're trying to fix it seems like something wasn't happening but i think it does happen automatically and and we do have the provisions within a council meeting as far as how that is running it's in open public it's videotaped and all that so right in some ways it's redundant and also but unclear maybe we kind of tighten it up a little bit okay and is your preference to include a second report out or simply clarify that what we're talking about is the initial report out um in open session yes it's just a clarification i think we i think maybe even the last year we may have had something like that but we we after we were done we came in here right session and disclosed that right and you're correct that it is that piece of the um the meeting is recorded and and online so okay that's all i have great but pat we'll get you a microphone i just want clarification is the city attorney's revision of um e will we still have the limitation prohibiting attorneys to agreeing from agreeing to uh restricting disclosure outside of the concerns that you had yes it would prevent us from um agreeing to a settlement this uh settlement that prohibited disclosure except to the extent of information protected under the public records act hello going to it i am of the mindset the more news we can use the better so i think on f it should report out all of the settlements at least in a written format so that someone could find what's been going on and i think that it's important that we um look at these closed sessions as if it's the opportunity for the decisions to be made but at least report to the public that someone has come and spoke i know miss gomez takes a minute sometimes of when i come and speak but people have asked me well i don't see anything there that says you came and went and spoke about that and it's difficult to find i've come to a number of closed sessions especially involving real estate matters that recently were can uh what's the term for that contracted and funds were spent taxpayers money and other people in my neighborhood weren't able to find that information so maybe that could be something that we could work on thank you thank you sir thank you very much uh eric frasier so on subsections e and f uh it's current practice sue for the quarterly reports to come out about pending litigation and what's been um you know what's been settled or what's still pending and as i recall those reports included pretty brief descriptions about the subject matter of of those issues so what i don't see here is where you know while the the text and terms under e seem to apply to the entire document let's say our entire information of settlement um don't you go through a process where you're actually creating a concise abstract or a summary of that and if so wouldn't the summary alone be enough for the initial disclosure to the public knowing however that the full textual document of a settlement subject to the limitations from cpr for confidentiality um would be available for those that need it or want it or request it so that it's really that abstract if you will that you'd have control over so that the information contained there certainly would not be subject to re redaction under cp you know the records handling yeah so um and then then is it taking mr. de witt's comments under advisement would it be practical then that that monthly report is just the continuation of the excel spreadsheets that you do that contain all all items with an abstract go ahead do you want to write um yes we can certainly we do keep a spreadsheet um and we keep that up to date and we can provide that monthly and we would um we can also use that to provide information both on settlements and on pending litigation um we also include where we've had a court adjudication um in those in those reports and we can we can provide that and i guess the question then is um to the to the subcommittee as to whether you want that limit the settlements limited to over 25 000 or whether you want it to be all settlements okay go ahead um i just i have a point of clarification when you were talking about some information such as financial or medical that might need to be confidential is redacting that information the default position or would the city council would the city attorney make the decision about whether to redact or hold more information than just that piece we would withhold um only the information that is not disclosable um under the pra and the the caution that i would give is we would be redacting that specific information but i can envision a time where the settlement might that may end up redacting a fair amount of the settlement language if it's if it's all woven in and embedded again it's unusual for a for a settlement to include that kind of information but it does happen so um and while we're trying to figure out exactly what you do at a council meeting and what you put in paper and what you say there is one phrase in here that doesn't seem to be consistent with what we do now and i i don't want to give any more work but the a section where it says before any closed session before right the city council shall disclose on the agenda and verbally now you've always put it on the agenda i was pleased to hear that or to read that something i'm a part of was on tuesday's agenda but i've never heard you say before the thing what it is you're going to be talking about to that degree and so i guess i'm perfectly happy for it to be written and then after you guys come out say something but saying it both before and after seems like more than you're doing now and maybe i've missed it but right and that the one of the complication one of the complications is that we when we're going into closed session we start up at the mayor's conference room so um there's occasionally there's public there but um common it's it's not common that public is there to hear that announcement but um i this right yeah yeah yeah i understood i'm gonna bring it back councilmember oliver's yeah i don't know if i had something to do with a comma or not but it sounds to me that you want you're going to uh place it on the agenda and verbally during the open session you're saying that you know what i mean that we had a closed session right so i think that's that's what i'm reading as the intent of this it's not that you announced verbally before the closed session but you're announcing it during the council meeting um i i actually believe that the intent is that we also make a verbal announcement in the in the mayor's conference room before we start that we are about to hold a closed session on pending litigation under section such and such of the government code okay yeah all right if it works for you councilmember it works for the public i think what you'll see from me in the redraft is uh perhaps something with that section on on a in terms of clarifying that it is at the actually in the closed session room acknowledgement of what the scope is going to be um in subsection d uh i will clarify i think you're right i think we just need to wordsmith it the intent will stay the same but i'll write it a little bit clear in subsection e i will add uh exception language uh similar to uh what sue mentioned for the privilege under the public records act uh and i will write it as the city attorney will redact what is uh privileged under the public records act and maintain the rest that is available as well that's mr dwitt's point trying to make as much public as possible uh for section f we will build in that that monthly report will uh have the um pending litigation listed as well uh and it'll be monthly and i'm personally if it's easy for you sue if it's already in the spreadsheet i can remove the 25 000 uh barrier as well just to again try to be as open as possible and then somewhere in this section uh i will include language that reflects that uh the minutes will show that somebody showed up for public comment and what their comments were related to we can also build that into the section later when we talk about meeting minutes perhaps it could go there as well so uh we will move on to public access and comment i think this one will be a fun one um so section a we do this currently is that correct sue yes we do great um for section b the public comment period most of this section codifies what we already do we have previously talked about adding in uh that the comment cards will be randomized when public comp the first 10 when public comment starts i'm going to leave that open for discussion for the public uh had a conversation with mr dwitt this morning where he mentioned that the county he has to get there way earlier than any of us want to so we can put his card in we want to make sure that folks not just those who can get here early have an opportunity to be heard early but that everybody has a chance so that's why i'm putting in it out there for the discussion about a randomization uh by the clerk of the 10 cards prior to handing them to the mayor for that first public comment window so we'll discuss that uh we also have opened up for discussion the where public comment will occur and it has been uh an issue or a conversation topic about whether or not folks will be able to come down into the barrel or we'll do it from the top uh we're going to have to for some of this have public safety way in because that is part of why that change was made but i will tell you uh i am more than happy to put into the ordinance accessibility of an overhead because i know that has been an issue as well even if it's from the top and i have checked with staff and i know that we have the capability at least so we will have to figure out the logistics but i'm willing to do that that might be a good compromise uh if public safety can't get on board with folks coming back down uh i will pause there because i suspect between a and b will have a few comments but i want to turn it over to councilmember oliveris for your thoughts on how we do public comment uh yeah what we have here it seems to be consistent will we've already been doing so i don't have any changes to suggest at this point how about those two points about the or three points i should say about location of where public comment happens accessibility of the overhead and a randomization of cards have any questions or comments no i i think the random the randomization is is a good thing i i mean i i know that it could cause issues with people stacking the deck if you will you know pretty early uh so i want to make it as fair as possible and clearly uh the public safety has to be considered and what we're doing as far as where the public is commenting from uh this is an old chamber i mean i wish it was upgraded and ideal for for other situations but this is what we have and i don't think we can get a new building anytime soon so i think we really have to seriously consider uh public safety it's something that is occurring across the country as far as considerations so it's kind of that balance uh but i would be open to finding a way of having the public come closer to us if we're able to uh also ensure public safety for the entire council chambers great i'm going to open up for public comment go ahead pat and i'll come up to you after our helga i was wondering if you could expand from 10 to 12 just because i think that's not a whole lot of extra time and i think it's quite a difficult thing for people to have to wait till the end of the meeting if they were there at the beginning so i was wondering if you could accommodate more than 10 okay i would like to advocate for a time certain for public comment in um for the first group of speakers i mean i've over the years been to a lot of meetings and it's very difficult as a member of the public to speak if you sit here and you wait and you wait and you wait and you're not sure when that will happen so i i think that's a critical part of trying to encourage public comment mr dwight thank you dwayne duit this is to comment to uh compliment miss lemke's point there i think it would also be nice to wait a moment or two if need be for five o'clock this idea that okay five o'clock's not exactly here right now so we're going to rush into the next item which then can take sometimes 45 minutes to an hour so let's try to be flexible to help get those 12 speakers that have been mentioned to come forward at five o'clock and then for a bit of drama have the clerk shuffle the cards so that we all see it because i've been here before when i've known mayors to stack the deck and make sure that some people are going to get spoken and others aren't so i think it would just be a wonderful thing for miss gomez to work up a nice little shuffle technique and let everybody see it and then we go forward for our speakers be they one or 12 thank you kiley thank you very much we'll give we'll give dwayne his own ball he won't even need a number just dwayne i actually opt for personalized water bottles because sometimes it's really hard to get hydration when you know that you have to speak and you're like ah you know it's really dry in here but um yeah thank you very much um i wanted to be sure that this section pertain to what is noted as public comments on an agenda not comments that are part of an agendized item that's correct right and then i i also wanted to take a quick second just to um acknowledge that um as elected officials you have to put up with a lot of comments that don't necessarily seem to be within the jurisdiction within your subject matter jurisdiction and so i'm wondering i know you have a citizens guidebook but that has to be some sort of not only does it use a lot of valuable time but as somebody who uses the public comment feature sometimes it's hard to follow after somebody who has taken a moonshot and you're not exactly sure why that subject that that particular information is being considered now it could be a matter of practice that you take all comers if they're a member of the public then they're allowed to speak for that two or three minutes and i suppose that's okay but um that that was the one comment that one two comments thank you go ahead gregory conclusion i have is resurrect the city channels on comcast and have a five o'clock anybody you know who wants to take 10 minutes or however you know because there's plenty of time on that and you have the whole city if you start using it why limit all those perfect poets and others to this chambers when they can talk to the whole city so resurrect the city channel let the library make the space available in the library and at five o'clock anybody wants to go over there and just do free speech messages can do it all right i'm going to go ahead bring it back um so i heard councilmember i heard two issues that to me actually fall within the discretion of having a good mayor and one of them was the we're five minutes away from five o'clock we're going to go on to the next item and make people sit through it so i think uh when we talk about the ordinance and the requirements versus what should be done i don't i don't know how to codify that sometimes in the ordinance i think that there should be language if i can come up with it that the intent is to have it as close to five o'clock when when possible or when feasible uh if we're 15 minutes out probably going on to the next item right so i'll see if i can come up with some form of a compromise of language there the other one to mr frazier's point about folks who are talking about an issue that is not actually related to the item that is also up to the discretion of the mayor to call them out on it and it's rare but it does actually happen but to your point i hear that from folks all the time that they'd like to come they'd like to speak on an item but they don't want to have to sit through being sung at from time to time so i i get both sides of that one that issue i don't know that we can codify in here i think that that is leave that within the purview of the mayor that's my own personal take thoughts yeah i i agree with you it's it's it's difficult that sometimes we're trying to get to that five o'clock and is it 15 10 minutes you're also looking at the the uh the size of the agenda because sometimes we have very packed agendas but i think that the mayor needs to make an effort in that and use their judgment when you're getting pretty close and not just plow on through but maybe maybe time to take a quick maybe a stretch for everybody to wait for that five o'clock to come up uh but but also in my experience i haven't been on the council for 10 years now we don't get a storm of people that come in on items that are not on the agenda meaning for the after part of it unfortunately sometimes i've seen somebody wait all night uh and into the night after a long agenda long multiple public hearings to speak on an item not on the agenda that could have been resolved by a phone call right it was like just an issue with some right that i think you're familiar with those so i think it's part of that public education that you can call people about some of these issues uh and it wasn't here that really the complaint but where do i go and and a staff member will reach out to them but it kind of sad that the to see somebody sit through an entire meeting who's never been here before just to address some minor issue that they're dealing with and to help them out uh but but it is difficult i know what you're saying hella as far as saying your way to the night to speak on the last part and so i and i don't know how to address that but but i and then the other thing too with uh uh things within the purview of the council you know with half a brain anybody can connect the dots right say whatever you know you all you have to do is mention the topic of what we're talking about and it's in so it's hard it's hard to regulate that word whether it's by the commissar making up there's a shot of the moon or the the poet or the song as long as they're mentioned something related to it they tie it in you know so it's kind of tough and to be fair i think that there are definitely some council members that myself included who occasionally do the same thing and get awkward looks from sue trying to figure out if we're going to talk about items not actually listed on the agenda but we've made some tenuous connection so i understood it yes yeah absolutely but but i but i think we need to make every effort though again it's that public access and ability to speak to the council especially on items on the agenda to make it as easy as possible for the public to do that right so if it no objection from you or from you sue i love the idea about the city channel free speech don't think it fits in this ordinance but i can definitely push some folks i'll see about adding some language to try to make it clear that the mayor should make every attempt to have public comment at five o'clock take a break if they need to and then i'll add in comment or language about randomizing i am fine with going to 12 cards yeah i i i think it's something to explore and again it's it's i can you go back to that the thing how big is the agenda but the other thing i wanted to ask is our are we or have we reviewed the actual speaker cards and are we plan to do that to be honest with you i haven't really sat down and looked at one and read it i don't know what information is on there for the public but i think providing as much information on that card for them as far as some tips to maximize their three minutes is important uh i know sometimes people have a lot to say and and and i and i don't know other samples out there of speaker cards that we could maybe look at that may make it more efficient for people for people and easy because it's not an easy thing to do it's for some it's intimidated and comes with the council but give them some tips to maximize their three minutes i think would be important so i'm going to do it instead of going there right now i'm going to park this item but okay yes absolutely yeah that's a great idea and what i will do is daisy if i could assign to you and we'll come back we'll take a shot at revamping the speaker card take a look at it revamp it around the council member's comments and perhaps when we're done walking through the ordinance one of the things we can do in this body is take a look at it and and revamp it so great i mean it can i think that at that point the issue is who gets to speak in the first half versus the second half i don't think the the first 10 to 12 i don't think they care where they fall in that 10 to 12 so long as they get in it versus at the end but we can if you'd like we can randomize it at the end as well well i think it's important just because i've seen some housing debates where people got in their cards very quickly came here in order to do that and the first 10 or 15 cards were all either for rent control or against it and um you know i think that makes the difference and understood perception okay really quick mr frazier thank you i want to underscore the nexus between spoken public comments and written public comments so to dwayne's point if we saw that written comments are actually published then you could probably cut down on the desire for people to speak publicly i know i'll write and i'll send but then i'll be like oh is it actually being heard and considered and if it was important enough to write then i'll make an appearance and take time and all that sort of stuff and i could cut it out if i knew that my written um communication was on target it's a great point i'm going to make sure we move on mr do it we can talk more about this after uh councilmember i actually i think that that is a great idea let's explore the idea of um public comment that comes in in writing and give call it 24 hours before us the cutoff so we're not putting too much work on staff uh make that publicly available at the meeting for folks as well let's let's explore that if you're okay with that sure and if i can add i just want to let you know excuse me that granicus offers a product called e comment which we actually have as part of our it's just one of those things i haven't been able to push forward um because of all the other projects and so that's one of the next things once i'm done with the pri solution that's one of the other things that i look forward to using is the forecast and then also e comment which would be which would tie right into it great let's talk a little bit more and see if we can get some language video comments understood i'll see what we can do there from an it perspective uh for example i know that the overhead is a doable video might be a little bit different i'll have to see what we can do yep yep all right we're going to move on to to section c again we're on page eight uh i have in section c i just have questions about the feasibility of the section that says the presiding officer may request speaker represent speakers representing similar views to the extent that they can have an organized and collective voice to designate a speaker a spokesperson yeah i'm here in the chuckling because i i don't know the feasibility of that uh so i'm going to put that out there section d this is written so that uh public hearings may not commence later than nine p.m. otherwise the public hearing is bumped i actually think personally i would like us to rework this section so that the public hearing has a time certainty and any agenda item that is not urgent gets bumped because i know oftentimes the public shows up for a public meeting not necessarily the agenda items so i'm going to throw that one out there and then uh subsection g we have this amorphous how-to guide that i think this plays into so i'm going to throw those issues on the on the table uh councilmember do you have any any questions any comments or any uh concerns with the section no and i don't know that c is actually a requirement that people designate something i think i've seen it used as a suggestion and i've seen it accepted to a certain extent so i i don't see anything wrong with asking for that to to move things along but it should not be a requirement that a group of people identify a spokesperson and that's the only person that speaks but it's i think it's okay to to suggest it yeah it does it's a may so to your point it could happen um yes and and and again the other with the later public comment sorry that nine o'clock for for for public hearings and i think we have done that where we move them up ahead but i think we need to make an effort to do that so if it's possible to bump an actual report item i guess that would be appropriate yeah i would just note that d as written um simply addresses public hearings involving fees as part of the annual budget adoption so whether you want to make that more generally applicable um to public hearings that would be up to you any other comments no any from the audience saying none uh i do think um i will leave in the section on c to your point having an option always better uh for d so i think i just i've just realized i misread it it's except for those hearings so sorry about that i take it back right uh i'll kick back some language to you uh where i think i want to go with d if it's acceptable to you council member is um public hearings will commence at five excuse me at nine p.m at the latest in any additional uh agenda items that are not deemed as urgent will be kicked so it'll be similar language but in this instance it says any that are not deemed as urgent essentially that are public hearings will be continued i'm going to flip that to be non urgent agenda items so so that would require the the mayor to make a an agenda amendment basically yeah correct okay correct great we'll move on to meeting minutes uh mr dwindelway and mr dwitt stepped out but i'm sure we'll we'll get him here in this as well um so in the meeting minutes it says at minimum the minutes shall state the time of the meeting was called to order the names of the members attending the meeting a one-sentence summary of enroll call vote on each matter considered at the at the meeting uh the time the local body began and ended any closed session those members of the public who spoke on each matter if the speakers identify themselves and the time the meeting was adjourned i'd like to add the members of the public who spoke on each matter and a one-sentence description of their comments is that put that out there council member i'll get your thoughts on this well well i yeah i'm i'm i'm thinking about that i mean i'd like the idea of of indicating whether somebody was for against an item but it's it's leaving it to the city clerk to to make a judgment here on what's going to be the best sentence to capture what somebody had just said and they're going to come and say well i would rather say this than that i want that to be a stronger statement than this piece was so currently the way the minutes are done is and it's trying to capture what is in support of and in opposition of if there is no real clarification and i can't get that from the person who spoke because i don't have the context that they are providing at the meeting then i just go ahead and try to do a general statement as much as possible so that i'm not guessing and and saying something that they weren't meaning to say so a lot of it is open for interpretation sometimes but the most important thing that i try to capture is the support in opposition to i'll come to you guys in a second here i want to finish out this section since it's one paragraph the second half of the paragraph lays out when those minutes will be available once approved and i just had a question mark by it because from my perspective once they get approved typically there are not massive revisions to it so how necessary is that additional time does it actually matter at all if we put it in there anyway who's that going to put more workload on you uh mr dwitt we're talking about minutes so you won't want to go far thank you son yeah um an idea in this card you might ask them to give you a one sentence summary which could help you in developing it oh it is there okay that's good yeah that's lent you i don't know what the practice is with city council minutes but having been on the housing authority my greater concern is actually recording comments of members of the housing authority um the the minutes are so sketchy that it really gives no sense of the meeting most of the time and i don't know that's also true here for the city council but often at the housing authority we adopt practices of the city council so it matters and once long ago before you came there was about a four month or five month period where you didn't publish any minutes because you didn't have a lot of meetings it was over the summer it didn't have it so i waited and waited and waited for those meetings i couldn't attend fortunately i had the video to go back and look at it but so i guess what the question i'd like to ask is are you interested in a concept that would have the draft minutes published very quickly like you publish an agenda you can always change them later when it gets to the final minutes but they have a big gap between nothing and the final minutes just because you want to approve them you know because right now the practice is you wait to put the minutes up until after they've been approved not after the meeting a week later two weeks later whatever it is that you get because i don't think you i don't know your practice but i don't think you're waiting very long to make the minutes the question is if you don't have meetings and you can't get them approved they're sitting in a desk you know and i'd like to try to get them out to the public as early as possible and daisy let me ask you a question when we do the closed captioning does that create a transcript that does create a transcript it's that's the closed captioning yeah so so the video and the closed captioning is available within two hours after the meeting is done so that's the most that's actually the way that staff works if they're trying to amend an ordinance or anything that was mentioned on the floor the night before because the publication takes place pretty much immediately after the very next day actually we're already working on that so there is no real time to work on draft minutes there's just we're already trying to catch up for the very next item um i i try not to during the fires the wildfires that definitely impacted um when the the minutes were coming up because prs was the priority um and so now it's all caught up um now that sometime has passed but um to vice mayor rogers's point the captions and the videos are available immediately after the meeting at least a couple hours after so and really fast customer all of ours yeah how long are the videos kept they're archived i mean they go oh they're there forever forever they're there forever so i mean for me i think it's kind of looking at this as as a whole it's hard what we're trying to do with open government and where we've come since the inception of minutes you know when you had to write everything down because you did not have the video you didn't have recordings so how do they all blend together now they don't necessarily replace each other but supplement each other so looking at minutes i know where i can need to go to get the details of that that's the minute that's on the video and it allows me to go to a time certain on there as far as when public comment was made and things like that so it's kind of i'm not i'm not looking to duplicate things but the supplement the effort that we're making and a lot of the things we've talked about here already has been a lot of access to television radio technology computers so we should continue moving in that direction too but again i can understand that going back days and days and days past when we didn't have this technology available with some of that was needed but i think it's evolved and i don't know what your perspective is with in your field at what you're seeing around the state as far as that evolution as well in in this in this effort there's actually many jurisdictions that are doing away with minutes because they're using just the closed captioning on the videos hello dwayne do it i want to air on the side of more information for the public in regards to what miss lemke said the minutes from the 1990s gave an accurate reflection of how a meeting would go it would show the dialogue in a sense between the staff the elected officials or the appointed officials on a redevelopment agency and the public who might come to comment at the turn of the century i was on an elected body called a project area committee for redevelopment at that time people from staff said well we're going to change to action minutes because it'll help us we don't have enough time we don't have enough money and what it essentially did is it eviscerated the information for the public home whole meetings would go by and there's nothing there to really look back to and when we say well you can get anything on the internet or on the video records no you can't the average person can't go back to that and find something that easily there's a new software that's been out for a while called dragon speaking naturally which they use over at the junior college for folks to just talk and it transcribes it and then someone can go through and pull the stuff out real quick and i believe that you should still have written records of meetings that accurately reflect what's been happening in the meeting and how people participated that's what the brown act was about in the beginning and i think that we're relying far too much on technology saying oh well you can access that from that meeting well i know you can't go back to the project dairy committee meetings that we held from 2000 to 2004 before we were dissolved and find anything that we talked about hardly so that speaks for itself it shows that that technology didn't really help us we're in the dark about what happened on those redevelopment meetings unless you can find them for me and i bet you can't uh uh eric frazier and thank you this is important information to uh council members oliveras point about sort of this whole ecosystem that includes video and audio and and all this and even platform opportunities and that's a good point but i think in your standards you can differentiate between what is like source information like perhaps a video an unedited video is more of a source type of information rather than abstracted information and it's really i think the abstract is what we're looking for to be recorded in the minute so that a reasonable researcher can scan the the minutes and understand the issues enough from the minutes abstractly and if they need to dial deeper they go to the source information it could be the whole video could be a transcript of the video and so on and so forth the other part that i wanted to address here was about the platform and we were talking about speaker cards being able to serve up an abstract of what that public person is saying during the public comment session and i think that's a good idea because the more that you can have you know in the technology field the more user generated data that you have can make your job a lot easier right and so if the speaker cards have that already on them i know they do what the what prevents me from filling it out completely is that the speaker cards are here and i don't want to take the time to write something that i'm going to speak about knowing that it's not even going to be recorded but knowing that there's some abstract about my comment that's going to be recorded i would suggest then that the speaker card would be available before the meeting so that it can be filled out perhaps a little bit more completely that might be a task that can be accomplished over the platform i don't know but then that could just sort of flow together in the abstract for your minutes and so on and so forth all right thank you i'm going to bring it back and miss oh i'm sorry yeah david harris i served on the housing authority for eight years and i wanted to comment also and ask the question about this what we were told is that or the city council direction is to do action minutes you know so basically what did you vote on and what was the vote was really the only content with and i don't know where that came from i'm glad to see that there's no reference in this ordinance to action minutes i mean and leaves me with the question though that this is there some other document that has been being used to direct you know uh the way minutes have been changed over time i mean or is this going to supersede any of these other things that we've been told are somehow established practice in the city all right i'm gonna i'm gonna pull it back i actually i don't know the answer we've used action minutes since i've been paying attention uh or especially since i've been on on the council um council member i'm gonna suggest uh kind of a compromise here i think part of this is in the revamp of the speaker card i think if we put a note on it or somehow reflected that uh that the clerk uses that as a way to briefly describe the comments that were made i think to mr. phaser's point people might put a little bit more effort into what they were trying to say if they know that i i think that there's a concern sometimes from speakers that putting what they're going to say means that somehow up here we're going to prevent them from saying that and i think if it's made clear that it's actually about open government to help make sure that other folks who aren't out at the meeting can understand what they said i think that's one way we can try to do that so let's look at that in that what i will also do is the language that i had sort of suggested about um members of the public who spoke on the matter and a brief description of their comments might be a way to encapsulate that that'll still be included and that'll uh the clerk will be able to have sort of that that tool of trying to capture it on the the comment card as well but then i think we also can put in here uh that the the transcript will also be made the full transcript will be made available we already do that anyway and i think most people don't know that so i feel like if we did those three components that's probably i think a good compromise where the totality of your available information gives you the summary to be able to to look and be noticed and then if you want more information you can go to the video or go to the transcript what do you think yeah and i think i would i would ask the city clerk as far as her ability to make make that happen right because i mean if we are providing information on the speaker cards i think we're able to input that as as it happens yeah and and maybe even adding if you want that added to the minutes to make sure that you um indicate what it is that you're commenting on and then also um to that note there is um definitely room for us to add on to the agenda or on the minutes the link of where you can actually go to view the video and to view the full captioning and there's a feature where you could do a search so if i typed in duane do it's name you'll see him in every single every time he ever spoke his name's on there that's what we're all looking for duane do we have a server big enough for that that's right and so and it's just providing you that information that link so that you can see that and do the search for yourself yeah because i know that on the agenda we do add some standard language at the bottom of it as far as right so so adding more information for the public on how to interact with our with our with our systems would be would be a good thing but if i may i would make one comment where we've talked about there being a transcript available it's not an actual transcript it's the closed captioning which is good but not perfect i'll reflect that in the language that it is i'll say the text of the closed captioning will be made available but that should reflect that so i can do that um go ahead just a question um are just to catch me up to speed are we do providing will we be providing closed captioning in spanish as well correct and i'm assuming then the transcript of that will be available yes correct thanks yep uh great we are through article two we're moving so sue uh article three is public records we're going to keep trudging along in this first section uh the release of public records and the responsibilities of staff most of it seemed to me to codify what we already do i did want to suggest a text change on c it says record requests can be submitted via phone call email walk-ins fax us post etc i just wanted to strike that and say record requests can be submitted in person or in writing or over the phone because i figured that that just captured everything and just left it at that if you're comfortable with that i'm i'm fine with that um and then do you want to walk us through the rest um well i was just i'm i'm happy to walk through the rest or um i i did want to comment on the first paragraph under um 1-10.080 that's the release public records um this does say the provisions of the government code are incorporated here in by by reference um i would note that i mean that's fine to put that in but those code sections do govern and we don't need to incorporate there's no reason really to incorporate them in they govern by themselves okay and do you want to keep walking through uh 10.090 sure um the this lays out the um role of staff and responding to public records requests the a designates that there'll be a the city clerk is the public records coordinator and that each department also has a department coordinator i would say the latter part of that sentence is a little ambiguous um but that is fine the public records request requires that we produce documents um a also suggests that we are required to provide oral information to the public um i have some concern about that in terms of certainly we want staff to be available provide as much information as is available and appropriate but we also want to we don't want to be requiring that individual staff members or even a department representative always be on the hook to respond orally to questions of the public um we get all kinds of questions and if we have documents the public records right public records act requires that we provide those documents it does not require that we produce new information or that we um answer questions orally so um i i think that's that's a troublesome provision the oral information um the b which is simply that the department representatives coordinate with our office and with the city clerk um to ensure compliance that's happening and that's completely appropriate um c suggests that we need to i appreciate your suggested um revision of c and this also requires that we acknowledge the receipt via an email within one business day of receipt um i will say that the public records act requires that we we respond within 10 days so that's a very significant um shortening of that period um although this simply says that we've gotten your request if there is a easy logistic way to provide that response that's fine but given that we can receive requests in a lot of different ways and it may take a day or two to get from the department um to the coordinator um that's a that's a difficult um timeframe to meet if i could just add um we currently already ain't to do that unless it's at the very end of the business day and sometimes we'll get it um right at the out you know within the minute of when um staff is leaving and and they actually try they stay behind just to try to respond to those to acknowledge that the request has been received so just so that that's on the record in term d is um that we will we'll prepare a tally and a report of all the record requests that um we've received and um publish that once a year again that's a logistics question um that daisy may be in a better position to open or to answer i'm sorry um so that there's that first sentence and then i can i'll let daisy respond to that and then i'll respond to the second yeah so um currently um we have a software called a next request that we're working with and we're at the very early stages of trying to get training on that and that software will allow for that to happen for this for us to be able to provide it not just when you request for it but we could actually direct it um directly online it'll immediately as soon as the request comes in and it has been responded it'll be completely available and you can do searches by name um it'll be keyword search it's pretty easy um oakland is currently using that software and um they have a huge i mean they have way larger request than we do and um it's been something that they've been really happy about um because we don't have the staff to um provide a lot of the different things that the ordinance is asking for um that product hopefully will help us solve that and uh would that make its way onto the open data portal that's correct great and and daisy does that include that my recollection is that includes our responsive letter and the documents as well that's correct and so that responsive letter um under the public records act is required to include if if documents are um if we if we don't have responsive documents if documents are privileged um we don't have to give a privilege log but we have to say we're you know subject to these exemptions we're we're not producing some documents um so that will all be in in that report that's correct the exemptions will be listed even what often what departments have reviewed the documents um all of that will be on there yeah and it's their uh size limitation is an an issue and it will be there forever unless we put in our retention um I may later suggest some um word change to the number of requests denied denied um is um a little bit of a loaded word um there are you know sometimes it's because we just we don't have the documents so we're not denying anything we just don't have any responsive documents sometimes um there as I said there are exemptions so I would suggest that we change um that and I do want to add that um in our letters when we do indicate that we don't have nondisclosure records um we ask to see if there's a reason why that they think that they have um a controlling legal authority that supports a different result and then our city attorney will review that so it doesn't just end with me great um he is suggesting that staff be trained um and that of course we do um it's um putting it in the ordinance um may give rise to some questions and some complaints that folks aren't trained enough um so there's a little bit of a room for some um public questions that come out of that but we we do train people and um both clerk does our office does um so we do that annually unless there's crossover of staff and finally the F um is about the community engagement director um making every effort to inform and educate the public about the provisions um and I I don't have a legal response to that um but would ask uh Jason if he has any concerns uh no concerns I think it it does align with what we're trying to build with the office of community engagement uh I think Vice Mayor Rogers you had referenced it earlier really engaging our residents so they feel heard and part of the decision-making process is something that we want to promote within all city departments um and and also using different avenues and understanding that you know social media may work for one uh but that may not work for everyone and so someone may not have the robust Facebook, Twitter, um Instagram like like our city attorney Sue Gallagher may have but uh we we have to use and utilize other options and so it does align with the future of the community engagement department and I will uh in the interest of making sure we try to get through as much of this tonight as we can I will mention that this particular section in Citizens Guidebook Academy all of that is actually falling under a future agenda item for us to discuss specifics uh on what that could look like or to begin to brainstorm that so uh Council Member Olivares do you have any comments on this section uh not on this section I just had another idea but I might hold it for a while okay uh anybody in the public I see a number of hands um yes I this is the piece of the one that I was going to say before I don't know where it goes but we're talking about educating the public and then in this you're talking about educating staff on the requirements but I we have talked a lot about having some kind of an internal policy manual or guidance on community engagement the whole you know and examples and there are lots of best practices and I could share from other you know research that I've done but I would hope that somehow we address that issue I don't know if it goes in this ordinance but that there's a internal guidance around the culture change that you want to have happen because it's hard for people to go from where they are to figure out how to go where we want them to go right I would like to see that as part of the that discussion you were talking about in the future absolutely yep hello Dwayne DeWitt uh two things that are important it should be a part of the culture for the city employees to give you information that's not secret so many times departments treat all information as if it's a secret and you should have to go through a full california public records act request and it shouldn't be that difficult specifically the recreation and parks department they sit on information that they should just be able to give you but they make you jump through a lot of hoops to get it on f I would really like to see it say the city manager the mayor and the city council shall make every effort to inform and educate the public and not have it be a specific employee the community engagement director because budgetary situations may come up or that department gets absorbed into something else and then they'll just be like oh it's not my job so we don't have to do that it should actually be the city manager's office the mayor and city council shall make every effort that wraps everybody up into the same ball wax hopefully gets it done well we'll come to you next thank you Eric Frazier and I do apologize in advance when I have to take off right after this comment we'll catch up with you later a couple things on E and F so I agree with Dwayne DeWitt's comment about many people in leadership being able to provide information and education to the public just makes sense I'm wondering to council member comment earlier of whether the community engagement could actually have a representative at a city council meeting to act as an ombudsman for those people that come forward that have a question they're waiting for public comments but in actuality their question can be handled easier just by talking to an informed person in the city and also you know when we talk about education and training within the staff there should be standards and those standards should be relatively transparent but there's always a continual need to educate the public obviously right about how to get involved and when to do and who to contact and all that sort of stuff and I think an ombudsman on site can help people along that process and also hearing what's going on in the section and how staff is being trained and what have you it seems like we're entering into an era where public records requests are not necessarily all that formal I mean I have a request I'm not saying oh yeah I need to come with a big hammer to try to get the thing I'm just sending a request in and that's acknowledged that I sent a request and then in 10 days I'm getting some records it it doesn't seem like a lot of heavy lifting so I think it's really a question of people being educated as to oh this is how the process works you're just requesting records as opposed to feeling like you're calling in the Calvary but to Dwayne's point it is really frustrating in the past where you'd reasonably have an expectation that information would be available and then you find out that it's like pulling teeth to get it and that's not really fair and that's really why we're meeting here today so I really appreciate that but and then to that point when information is requested and documents have been requested once by some public citizen are those documents then posted on the platform so that somebody just has access to you know without jumping through hoops just searching through the platform coming up with the responded information and thank you and I'm sorry I have to step away absolutely thanks for joining us I just want to second the comment that Dwayne DeWitt made about F and I don't feel strongly whether you list those three entities or you say the city but we are trying to change your culture so it definitely shouldn't be one individual great thank you I'm gonna bring it back councilmember yes I would agree with that as well I think it's taking ownership of it as as a city and not just with one department and it's something I think we can all share yeah the ombudsman thing yeah it goes back to my comment earlier about public comment I can remember a time when I was mayor getting back then you got the whole stack of cards as they came in I remember seeing something that looked like more of a procedural thing and during a break going up to the person and approaching them and resolving it right there so finding a way to do that the thought that I had that goes somewhat to that but also the education of the public it's that big screen up there is how do we use that before the council meeting with some of these tips up there how you know tips on making your maximizing your three minutes you know there's that education piece as people come in and fill in uh to use that screen we just have a standard video whatever it is that we show it's just sitting there instead of just the logo whatever we put up now and and also looking for opportunities to do the same thing during breaks on on the tv as well to kind of have some rolling tips that we can update and change but I think we should use some of the some of the the platforms that we have available to us now to do things it's kind of doing things just because it's the right thing to do not because we have to do it but I think it's one more opportunity just to keep putting that out there so people can learn about that did you know this that you know that just an idea yeah no I love that I actually I'm getting a flashback of sitting in the movie theater and it's you know did you know and it's about a movie that's exact that's exactly what I'm thinking of that and and even encourage your departments to do that you know did you know they can use uh my Santa Rosa to do this it's just all all that there's just so much potential to use that big screen up there during council meetings and other situations yeah I totally agree uh don't know how we would build it into this ordinance but I think that I took a note down I think it's something for us definitely to work with staff on to to get done um sue I agree with you I'm happy on sub on a to remove the and oral just because of the the point that you made for the section C maybe I wordsmithed it a little bit so that it's not 100 binding that people have to get acknowledged within 24 hours because to your point Daisy sometimes things come up I don't want to revert back to the 10 days because I think that it is relatively easy to do an acknowledgement that we've at least received the information so I'll I'll wordsmith that a little bit sue I'll work with you on section D to find a better word than denied that still encapsulates the spirit and then I completely agree on F I'll I'll change that to say the mayor the city council and the city manager so that it reflects the intent which is all of us to be in this together doing that and then again in F the citizens guidebook in some of that we'll be discussing at another meeting with that potentially looks like and the intent is that we come out of this with products that actually make it easier for people to understand how to engage with the city and make that engagement more meaningful and I think that's where really the rubber meets the road is on those sorts of discussions so we'll come back to that we have about 15 minutes here we're going to see where we can get and it looks like we're probably going to be finishing this up in our next meeting as well disclosure of records section one dash one zero point one zero zero who wants to take this one and I had no comments on this section and this may be one that that we tag team between Daisy and I the a a talks about routine requests to prove to provide this disclosable records within three business days my two concerns are how do we define a routine request often requests it seems simple I completely acknowledge there are requests can I get a copy of that complaint certainly here it is there are other requests that may seem simple that in fact entail going through potentially thousands of documents doing searches number of different searches and number of different ways we end up with a stack of documents that someone either in the clerk's office or in our office has to go through to make sure there's not attorney client privileged documents in there are other confidential documents so my concerns are and what how do we define and determine what's a routine request and three days is often not not feasible again if you're asking for a single document easy enough we should be able to put our hands on it and give it to you but anything more complex may take more than three business days um the next is the um that we respond within 10 business days which is required by the brown act and this pretty much tracks I'm sorry the PRA I had written down here brown act so exactly the PRA um uh see is the response need we need to include an estimate as to when the documents will be will be available and what the cost will be that's already required and we do that additional time should not be permitted to delay a routine or readily answerable request again this is the concern of how do we define a routine or readily answerable request maybe we can provide some wordsmithing of that but again that's um can be touching uh e that the um requester doesn't have to state a reason for making the request um and that's that's the law so we can't we can't ask why or how are you going to use information if you ask for it you get it um and the written request is is great that does help us keep records better but again the law requires that we respond to any public records request whether it's written or oral so anything to add Daisy no I think you nailed it um a lot of the terms are subjective um like the term more complex I think that's another one um that I noticed that I think maybe wordsmithing councilmember anybody in the public okay Sue I'll work with you on some of that wordsmithing but overall section looks relatively fine website information open by default our favorite phrase here at the open government task force so we have a just as a point we do have a separate section or a separate discussion that we have tabled for the website I know Gregory is itching to change it even though we just have a new one that came in we also have the open data portal that is up and running as well so I don't really have any comments on this section but Daisy go ahead yeah I have one question um on here it references a um records index and I don't know what that is I'm thinking that's a retention schedule um section b yeah in section b and I don't know what a records index is other than maybe a retention schedule and I just wanted clarification on that or maybe we should change that because I don't know okay we will potentially wordsmith that okay anything on section c that's all I have um I do have comments um on on a um it's all public information I think what we want to say is all city documents um there's some other wordsmithing that we can do in there um and this is I would again suggest that it's uh other than information that's exempt from disclosure uh under the public records act or federal or state law um and we don't our office doesn't define the exemptions we follow the exemptions that are already set in um in state or federal or local law um see if I can um on letter a what about all disclosable city documents um in terms of in terms of it being that that being substituted language right not all city documents but maybe all disclosable city documents because I think that'd be more clear okay but I think the disclosable needs to be linked to what is uh disclosable under federal state and local law okay because we reference when it's not disclosable right okay um and that was those were that was my primary primary concern okay council member anybody got Gregory on the change that you just suggested I don't know whether this is a difference without a distinction but I know the difference between asking for a document when I came in quite a few months ago asking for a database a bunch of records that you guys constructed an excel excel spreadsheet from of all the people who had been arrested for certain kinds of crimes that's not a document it's a piece of city information and it's a little different than if you just simply say all city documents and I don't want you to I don't want anyone to believe that looking at this that it has to be an already printed document that you're looking for because you have been generous in helping me identify information that you had and then get that and I value that it was useful to the public and to the discussion yep no yes and um the definition of document under state law and under the PRA includes all electronic uh data as well it's a very broad definition and so maybe we need to clarify that that that's all included yes do I want to thank you for under the website open by default that's a wonderful thing to have in a sense I am concerned that it's difficult to find which information is going to be kept secret and there is information that is kept secret in a sense specifically on real estate transactions when things are occurring you can't find that information even sometimes after the transactions completed contracts are solved and money's been spent you have to know where to look apparently especially if you're dealing with the right of way agent and that whole um departmental approach to things it's been of real concern to us over in roseland because money has been spent to buy land to do things and yet we can't find the facts if you will a lot of times it's very difficult so I'm very supportive of a data coordinator but it has to be one who has the open by default mindset and says oh yeah let me share as much as possible and we're not a secret organization we're an entity to help the community thank you absolutely if I may um there are a lot of um provisions under the under the public records act um that protect a lot of different documents from um from disclosure including real estate negotiations prior to completion of the sale I'm thinking it may be helpful for us at a future meeting to outline those um various categories so that if we adopt an open by default except as provided under state or federal law that folks actually have a sense of what that means because there may be a lot of things that the public hearing oh we're open by default and in fact you know staff and council members that sounds like everything now is available when actually there are a lot of things that are protected under law and it may help people to know what those categories are and then if you if the council chooses to relax those standards that's a conscious choice after a real estate transaction is completed there should be a easily accessible reporting of what occurred the amounts paid for and uh when the transaction actually took place six months ago there was discussions about a property in roseland and uh we still don't know the final sales price and who paid for it we're told the city bought it but then we're actually told it came from a grant from the state so thank you thank you mr. dwitt so I will on that section make the changes about disclosable city documents what perhaps we'll do is actually add into the definition section what a document entails in accordance with state law that would reflect gregory's question about it not just not being a document we can make that change except for those that are exempted under applicable federal and state statutes daisy i'll work with you on what the records index is intending to in to capture and we'll we'll fix that and i think we will stop here for the night on the ordinance i think it's how we have only a couple of minutes i don't want to don't want to go on to the next section and not be able to finish it next meeting and again my intent will be to turn around a new red lined draft version within a week it'll be uploaded to the the draft agenda it'll be uploaded to the website and i'll make sure it's also sent out to the list as well and pat if you don't get it give me a call we'll make sure that you that you get it next agenda we will begin with the look back on the language that we've discussed tonight see if there are any if i missed anything which as we saw today i do from time to time we'll just make sure that that's all covered we'll finish working our way through the rest of the ordinance uh and i will also assign the discussion about the ad hoc excuse me ad hoc committees to that agenda item as well again this might be a section where when we discuss how ad hoc committees are utilized that we decide that there may be needs there may need to be language added to the ordinance to cover ad hoc committees so i'll assign those as well and then the following meeting we will get to the resilient neighborhood network study session that way once the draft ordinance is out there we still have another meeting where we're continuing to do our work but we'll provide more time for folks to comment on the draft before we bring it back to finalize and send it to council with that we are adjourned