The charter review commission was created the last time the
charter was amended in 1998. The charter review section of the charter is:
Sec. 1701. - Charter Commission.
Beginning in January of the year
2010, and in January of every tenth year thereafter, the Council shall appoint
a Commission to consider and propose amendments to the existing Charter. No
later than twelve (12) months from each inception, the Commission shall submit
its proposals to the City Clerk for placement on the ballot at the next
scheduled election.
Under this section of the charter,
every ten years the citizens have an opportunity to place charter amendments
before the voters. In October 2009, knowing of this process, I began asking
those in the city when the applications for the review commission would be
available. Evidently no one in the city was aware that there was this
requirement (this is the kind of thing the city attorney should be on top of). Despite
my bringing it to the attention of the city, they didn’t even begin the process
until January, when the commission was, under this section, to be seated.
Once it was brought to the
council’s attention they weren’t sure how to form the commission. They asked
the city attorney and I discussed the outcome in my previous post.
Deciding how the commission would
be formed and making applications available took several months so the
commission wasn’t seated until April of 2010, not January 2010 as mandated in
the charter.
The charter review commission,
like all city commissions and committees is subject to the Brown Act which
mandates that all meeting agendas be posted prior to the meeting and that the
public have the opportunity to address the commission on items to be voted on,
or to make suggestions. In addition, there were a couple of public input
meetings held at Ganesha Community Center.
I had the fortune to be among the
original 15 persons appointed to this commission. At our first meeting, we were
told, that despite the fact that we were trying to deal with the city’s main
legal document (its constitution if you will) that we would not have a
representative of the city attorney’s office at our meetings due to costs. The
assistant city manager and city clerk were made available as staff resources. Very
much later, when it became obvious that we were looking at significant changes
to the charter, the city attorney did start coming to our meetings and argued
against things as potentially illegal or would cause litigation that we had
worked on diligently over many months.
The charter says specifically that
whatever the citizen commission comes up with MUST be placed on the next ballot
and the council may not change or block it. It was argued, when we made changes
which were unpopular to some of the council, that the council could offer a
competing charter amendment on the same ballot, while this is probably true, it
would generate additional expense for the election and potential legal problems
depending on how the vote went. Something for consideration.
The commission took each section
of the charter, as well as ideas for new additions suggested by the whole
commission and city staff, and created 4-5 member subcommittees (no
subcommittee could have more than 6 members as defined by Brown Act) to study
each item and come back with suggested changes. While the commission as a whole
met monthly, many of these subcommittees met on a weekly or monthly basis
themselves and all members of the commission were on several subcommittees, so
would be meeting multiple times per month.
Based on this type of structure,
this was not a commission for wimps. Some of us were attending as many as 8
meetings per month in order to come up with workable drafts.
One a subcommittee had created a
draft of a section, the section would be brought to the entire 15 member
commission for discussion and vote at a regular monthly meeting. It was
determined that no section would move forward without a 75% affirmative vote.
Unfortunately, with the late start
for the commission, the November 2010 elections and the seating of a new
council in December, which came four months before the 1 year that the
commission had to complete its work caused problems. Again, the city attorney
weighed in and stated that the newly elected council members could remove and
appoint their own members to the commission. This meant that after working on
this project for 8 months, we now had new people who had no background it what
had been done and we needed to get them up to speed.
Once the commission had come up
with consensus of what should be included as changes to the charter, we started
to look at how we would want it presented to the voters. Certain things we felt
should be presented as separate ballot items while others could be combined.
Again, the city attorney and city staff fought (I say this rather than
suggested because suggested is way too mild) that we only have one ballot item
citing the cost of putting items on the ballot, which was about $20,000 per
ballot item if memory serves. The 15 members acquiesced and the entire
amendment was created as one ballot item.
This actually did not serve the
city well because the amendment was eventually defeated in the 2012 election.
That meant that things that the city had asked for, where the city’s actions are out of compliance with the charter
or where state law had made the charter requirements out of compliance with
state law, were actually DEFEATED by the people. As an example, the way that
the charter requires cost of living to be determined is NOT the way the city does
it, despite the voters having voted
against doing it the way the city does it.
My Suggestions for the 2020 Charter Review Commission.
1.
Start the process early. Make sure that by October 2019
or earlier that there is a process in place with nomination applications
available by November 1 so appointments can be made before the end of December.
It is really imperative that we have a commission in place by Jan. 1.
2.
Determine the size of the commission. I HIGHLY
recommend that the council follows the charter and makes this a legitimate
commission which is made up as required by the charter.
3.
Make it clear that, since the commission must submit
its report by the first meeting in January, that commissioners, once appointed
cannot be replaced unless there is a resignation or illness. Since it’s a one
year commission, commissioners should be dedicated enough to follow through on
it.
4.
Allow that there may be a need to have more than one
ballot item, or the council should suggest a limit to the number of items to
mitigate funding issues. Let’s be transparent here.
5.
Legal assistance should be provided by the city from
the start of the process. And the city attorney should not try to bring undue
influence on the commission but merely give legal advice.
6.
Make sure that applicants understand the time
commitment for this very serious and special commission. If a 7 member
commission is appointed, it may not be feasible for subcommittees as was done
the last time, so there will probably need to be multiple meetings per month
(remember we only have 12 months to review a document with 17 sections, and we
may want to add additional).
What I’d like to see any charter review commission take up
1.
Changes to the section on the charter review commission
to reflect the items that I noted above. Make sure that some future council or
city attorney is not tempted to “interpret” the intent of the section.
2.
Based on what’s been happening in the past few weeks,
ask for an RFP process for the City Attorney every 4 years. Regardless of
whether they’re good or bad, in my opinion a review of cost and services will
serve the city well in the future.
3.
Make the commissions stronger. There is a perception
that staff prefers that commissions not be too strong. I think that citizen
participation is vital and that commissions can have a vital role in the
process. Create a process where if commissioners resign or seats become empty,
that there can be a MUCH MORE timely manner of ensuring that commissions are
filled. Also, do something to make it so that we don’t end up with the
situation where historically some commissioners have missed as many as over
half of the commission meetings in a year, causing “lack of quorum”
cancellations. You can’t get ANYTHING done if you don’t meet.
4.
Clean up any irregularities within our charter. Let’s
make sure that our charter and the way that the city does business is
synchronized. Right now the city is doing a lot of things which are contrary to
the charter. If there’s a reason, let’s fix the charter and make it a document
that we will respect! Or, let’s fix how the city operates and make them operate
within the charter.
I’m sure that there are others. I
tried during the last round to get an Ethics Commission (fought by city staff
and the city attorney) which didn’t get enough traction. We had also
recommended a police commission which, given that the recent grand jury report
(Aug. 2018) stated, “effective community relations and public trust can be
earned through an open and accessible complaint process.” The grand jury noted
that 44 of the 46 departments in the county do not have civilian oversight, and
that this is a problem that should be “of great concern.” The creation of a
citizens police commission should look to alleviating this problem. I’m
personally in favor of these, and expect to advocate for them. As we get closer
to the formation of the commission I’m sure that I’ll have other thoughts.
I know this is long and it’s not
everything but I’ll be more than happy to answer questions from my perspective.
Please leave comments here. I’m sure that those who will be appointed will
probably be reading this as will those who appoint them.
In my next posting, after the
holidays, I’ll be discussing the kinds of things the commission can, should,
shouldn’t, and might want to, consider.
No comments:
Post a Comment