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HomeMy WebLinkAbout03-17-2015 Charter Committee Agenda & Backup City of San Bernardino Volunteer Citizen-Based Charter Committee Agenda Time: 5:00 p.m. Date: Tuesday, March 17, 2015 Place: EDA Board Room 201 N. E Street, San Bernardino, CA 92418 The City of San Bernardino recognizes its obligation to provide equal access to public services to those individuals with disabilities. Please contact the City Clerk's Office(909) 384-5102)one working day prior to the meeting for any requests for reasonable accommodation, to include interpreters. Anyone who wishes to speak on an agenda item will be required to fill out a speaker slip. Speaker slips should be turned in to the City Clerk,who will relay them to the Committee Chair person. Public comments for agenda items are limited to three minutes per person. ROLL CALL PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE CHAIR'S COMMENTS PUBLIC COMMENT(LIMIT 30 MINUTES) ACTION ITEMS 1. Approval of minutes from February 10, 2015 meeting(Attached) 2. Discussion of the impact of the City's Strategic Planning process to Charter Review 3. Discussion and possible action on whether the Committee should consider General Law form of government or specific items of the Charter to be amended. 4. Future meeting date(s). ADJOURN The next meeting of the Volunteer Citizen-Based Charter Committee will be 5:00 p.m., Tuesday, April 14, 2015 in the EDA Board Room, 201 N. D. Street.Attendees are encouraged to park on the top floor of the City Hall parking structure and access the EDA buildingfrom there. Volunteer Citizen Based Charter Committee February 10, 2015 DRAFT Minutes The meeting came to order at 5:05 p.m. in the EDA board room, with committee members Dennis Baxter, Casey Dailey, Hillel Cohn, Michael Craft, and Tom Pierce present. Chair Phil Savage, vice-chair Gloria Harrison and Member Gary Walbourne, were absent. Also in attendance were City Attorney Gary Saenz, Mayor Carey Davis, Council Member Nickel and City Clerk Gigi Hanna. Dennis Baxter called the meeting to order, Clerk Hanna read the roll call and the group recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Public Comment There were comments from two members of the public: Scott Olson, San Bernardino Richard Castro, San Bernardino ACTION ITEMS 1. Approval of Minutes for January 10, 2015 The committee approved the minutes from the January 10, 2015 meeting. (Motion by Craft, seconded by Pierce, and approved, with Dailey and Cohn abstaining because they had not been at the previous meeting.) 2. Presentation by and discussion with Michael Martello, ILG-recommended Charter expert Baxter introduced Michael Martello, Institute for Local Government, who discussed his professional background and experience with Charter amendment processes, including being full-time city attorney for two cities where his experience with charters included amending them, defending them, watching one of his council members get prosecuted for violating one. He currently is retired, but works as a volunteer teacher for AB 1234 (ethics Education for Elected Officials)and worked 12 years as the City Attorney representative to the Fair Political Practices Commission. He spoke about the experiences of updating the Charter for Mountain View, California. The city formed a council committee, which was successful. I When asked about the difference between a Charter and General Law City. He responded: that the Charter belongs to the people and you are not free to break it. The cleaner the law is the better,the clearer it is, the better, and sometimes,the shorter it is the better. So tonight I'm here to respond to any questions you have. Don't expect me to give you any legal advice because you have a city attorney. But I am happy to answer questions based on my experience or my opinion. Dennis Baxter pointed out that all the committee members have an RFP request for services for a charter expert, scope and other services to be performed. (Document attached)and asked Martello's take on it. Martello said he if you are looking for them to come back with a price you can handle, will talk to Gary about how to get best price for services. The other key thing is, he said, I've found it is useful to have a committee work through the city attorney. Tom Pierce said he'd like to know to hear about the process of the committee in Mountain View because he was curious how the San Bernardino Charter Review Committee is going to progress in a fruitful way so that, several months down the line they don't decide that the process should be done differently. Martello said that when he became city attorney for Mountain View,the City had some funny rules and the Charter had not been touched or updated. He started taking to council every year about the things he would remove from the charter. The Council had a policy and procedures committee and asked him to make a list, and they and the public added some things too,to the list of what needed to be changed. The City started holding public sessions on the charter change. The charter committee was comprised of three council members,the city clerk, city manager, and the city attorney staffed it. The public and press attended committee meetings. That process took quite a while, he said. The Committee wanted to see other cities' charters for comparison, and then they worked it down to the things they wanted to change,those things they wanted to update, dividing the job into tasks. Casey Dailey asked if the changes were brought forward as a one-or-none format. Martello said it was in one package at the time he was there, but there may have been another since. The changes were mostly updating, modernizing and housekeeping issues. Dailey asked if there was any special outreach to the public to help educate the public on changes coming. Martello said yes. The people of Mountain View generally thought there was good governance. They had a Mountain View civic forum that would organize a couple of meetings in the neighborhoods, and they presented the proposed changes to the Chamber of Commerce and explained in public several times what they were trying to do. The people had a lot of questions, he said. 2 Hillel Cohn asked if during his experience, he was asked to come up with a new charter, or just amendments to the existing one/and asked the pros and cons. Martello said if redlining an ordinance will make it more difficult to understand,then there is need for a new ordinance. He said the same is true for a charter. He said: I noticed with your charter that the organization is one of the issues you might want to tackle if you were going to change your charter. Typically they start with form of government, powers of council, and city manager. Yours is wordy but at the time it was originally drafted the city was pretty young. So I understand that there is a lot in there that you don't need. Personally and professionally I've found that is sometimes the enemy of clarity is to have so much for people to try to embrace. Some cities literally pass a charter that says"we are a charter city; we have any powers available to a charter city and otherwise we will follow the general law." It's that short. If you were really going to go through your charter and update it, it might be very confusing rather than just retiring it. Dennis Baxter asked if Martello had ever worked with a citizen's charter committee or just governmental bodies. Martello said it has always been with governmental bodies, but state law provides for many ways to do this, including via commission. Michael Craft asked what length the charter that Martello helped refine was. Martello said they didn't shorten the charter so much as clean it up,take out antiquated sections and words and provided clarity. He estimated the charter was less than 25 pages. Michael Craft said he had completely misunderstood the SLAPP and anti-SLAPP legislation that he had mentioned in the January meeting as a possible concern to him in Martello's background and that he was comfortable with Martello's position on anti-SLAPP legislation. Tom Pierce asked about the process Martello followed in the charter amendment he'd worked on. They first identified items that are not controversial, but shouldn't be part of the charter. Then they covered those areas of controversy, including whether the Finance Director could also serve as internal auditor, and updated what a"qualified elector"was. The committee considered all of these issues together then began paring down the list. Tom Pierce asked how many items were in the initial group of items placed on the ballot. Martello said there were 9-12 items, which were lumped together and taken in an up-or-down vote. The items included those that were merely clean-up as well as those that were stumbling blocks for the community and committee. And they all passed. Tom asked how they engaged the public so it felt appropriately informed about the proposed changes. 3 Martello said the council gave it a lot of attention at council meetings, study sessions, putting it on the ballot and meeting with different groups. We went anywhere we were invited and we invited ourselves to a lot of places. The period of time for this was between when the council ordered the election, and when it was held (approximately 3 months). People's main attention to elections, he said, occurs after Labor Day. Martello said the committee worked on the proposals 9 or 10 months before presenting them to the council. Casey Dailey asked Martello what his experience was with in how much or little discussion of labor and labor relations and collective bargaining is incorporated in a charter. Martello said he's not a big fan of it. I don't think that's what the charter is for. But if it is important to the public that something be expressed, it has a way of making that known. Several items of possible inclusion in the charter were discussed, Martello said,then the committee would report to the council periodically and council would weigh in on those they liked and didn't. But, if you are going to make a fundamental change, like the form of government you have, you need to make that decision up front, he said. Martello said: I'm a fan of creativity in general. If you want to go down that path, and you want to look at a streamlined charter and a change of government, here's what you can say to the voters. We're going to adopt a very basic charter that changes the basic form of government but keeps in the basic things you need in a charter,then directs the council to convene a charter committee to begin, if it passes, continue putting the rest of the pieces in. You can exist with a very minimal charter because most charters mimic general law anyway. It's all about communicating what you are doing to the voters and if it is too complex, you end up with something where people are against it in fractions... doesn't matter if people are against the whole charter,they will reject it based on those areas they dislike. Martello said that the charter committee had to approve a change by at least a 2-1 vote to recommend the change to the council. Along the way,the committee was very deferential to what the council wanted to d and it also gave the public a taste of what they were working on. Martello said the charter amendment passed by a margin of about 61 percent. Afterwards,they continued the review process. They went back to council in the next a two-year cycle, and the council decided there weren't enough proposed changes to warrant the expense of an election Martello said the most contentious issues cities face in looking at charter change is labor issues and setting up certain things in a labor agreement, such as minimal staffing on a fire truck. It is very difficult to cut costs if there is minimal staffing. He said he'd also seen a lot of angst over districts and how elections are run. 4 Hillel Cohn asked whether a Charter or General Law city works best. Martello said he'd choose a Charter, but would model a General Law city for the most part, in particular a council-manager form of government. A strong council-manager form of government it is the evolution of local government, he said, adding he had worked with councils who were incredibly powerful, but the administration is left to the city manager and the council sets policy. Dennis asked him about his feeling about putting procedures in a charter. Martello said his general view is that a city's constitution (its charter) is ruled for the expanding future, not the passing hour. He said he would prefer that a charter direct a council to set policy via ordinance. Any change to the policy would require a public process. Martello said he had not worked with a full-time council Martello sent a sample of a model charter prior to the meeting and Tom Pierce asked Martello his take on it. Martello said: What I like about the model is the discussions. It lays out here is the issue, the pluses and minuses; and it gives you an independent discussion of those items. And that's what happens in real life. So I thought that was an excellent place to at least start the thought process. Hillel Cohn asked is Martello felt whether San Bernardino's Charter committee stood a chance of making any revision to the charter. Martello said: I think you absolutely can get revisions passed;the question is what quantity and what sized pieces you will get changed. Communication is key to all of these things. My council felt that if they weren't in support of it, its ok to have one or two people doubtful, but in order to pass it by the voters, it should be something most of you and most of the council can get behind. Regarding the city's search for a charter expert to consult with the committee, Martello said he wasn't so sure there was such a thing as a charter expert. I think you probably have on your staff someone as much of an expert—or can become an expert—this is common sense stuff. Look at best practices, look at other cities... plagiarize everybody. And you have a national example to study. It's a great educational process for someone on the city attorney's staff. I think there are a lot of folks who can come in, you can spend a lot of money, so to have someone work through that with you could be expensive and this isn't rocket science. It just isn't. Cohn commented that what is rocket science is trying to sell something to the public. Martello suggested that an elections consultant could perhaps help with that. Baxter asked Martello his opinion of the effectiveness and quality of a charter with myriad city attorney opinions. 5 Martello said he couldn't find anything in the San Bernardino Charter that mandated it or called for it. He said he'd talked to several people—and they had never heard of a CA opinion being published with the charter, or meaning anything. I searched through the charter to see if there was something that said that the city attorney's opinion shall be attached. City Attorney opinions promise to be more confusing, and almost prove the point: that if you need a city attorney opinion to interpret the charter,then it is probably not the best charter. City Attorney Saenz said that the city attorney opinions attached to the charter are for purposes of interpretation for benefit of public or council; they are not part of the charter nor dictate how the charter should be interpreted. Furthermore, he said, legal opinions can be incorrect.And in my opinion, they misinterpret our charter and can be misstatements or inaccurate. Ideally, you shouldn't have a lot of legal opinions interpreting the charter. I believe in a charter that is so easy to read that a lay person can understand it. Legal opinions just further complicate and confuse the issue. Ideally you want a charter that doesn't require a lot of legal opinions to be understood. Michael Craft asked if Martello was going to respond to the city's RFP for a charter expert. Martello said he was happy to volunteer and help, but he is trying to be retired. 3. Review, Discuss and make possible changes to RFP for Charter facilitator/expert. Hillel Cohn questioned the wording in the RFP that dictated that the expert would need to be able to overcome"mental hazards." City Attorney Saenz suggested that be shortened to"the charter expert should be able to show how other communities have addressed the issue, and eliminate the reference to"mental hazard" The group decided via consensus to change the word "expert"to"consultant," in the RFP, agreed to the nature of the services to be provided and asked respondents to create an overall budget. Tom Pierce asked if sending out an RFP would commit the city to hiring one. Saenz said it would not. Public Speakers: Scott Olson, of San Bernardino: said he wanted address Item 4, discussion of plan of approach for charter change. As was stated,the charter is the will of the people. That's me,the resident, the voters. When you are talking about general law, general law is city law determined by Sacramento, I don't know about you but I personally think Sacramento is more screwed up than San Bernardino. So the idea that we are going to rely on something that comes from Sacramento to determine who we the people choose, the general law thing—try to float it; it's going to die quick. He spoke about the committee's bucket list: my definition of the bucket list is a predetermined list of a political agenda you guys set up. That's the wrong way to do it. If you want to do effective change,the first thing you've got to do is to identify what we want to change 6 — is it a problem? You guys went into this with a predetermined idea of what the problems is, with your bucket list and the end output—the fiasco called Yes on Measure Q. The voters knew it was nothing more than a political agenda. If you want to have effective charter change, identify the problem, then consider if it is a solvable problem that can be solved by the Charter. Once you do that, you can begin to look at solutions. I'm asking you to dump the bucket list. The people in this city are interested in what is going on. If you cannot come up with charter changes in a way that residents can feel that they are making this city better, we're all wasting our time. Richard Castro, of San Bernardino: I am glad Martello was here, and pleased to hear what he said and hear from the committee. Our charter has become too legalese, to the point that we're worried about delving into it for fear of breaking some kind of law. He said that rather than look at the charter via a bucket list,they might consider it an Occam's Razor because you can't see the form until you cut the extraneous things put in there with legal opinions. If something should be passed it should be along the lines of clarifying the charter and paring it down. He said he wouldn't be comfortable voting for something that creates a loophole. Casey Dailey, in responding to the speaker, asked if people were so engaged and passionate about this city, where they are on election day. He asked Martello to explain General Law v Charter city. Martello said there are 480 cities in California, about 25 percent of them are Charter cities. And most of them, except for the big cities, most of them follow the general law. The charter gives you the ability to set policy in certain areas, like elections, like bidding public projects and setting penalties, setting your own rules, but by and large, most cities are General Law. For most part, when any city is considering Charter change, a city manager or City attorney looks at general law. Martello said the most important power a city has is the police power, which is an extremely elastic power that exists under general law or in a charter, and is not really much greater under a charter. One difference that people hold out there is that your land use power is broader under a Charter city. However, what most cities do when they adopt their charter, or their General Plan, most cities' housing element says it must conform to the general plan. So there is this consistency requirement imposed on general law cities by the state of California, but I've rarely seen a charter impose that. Dailey added: So it is not a totally accurate statement to say that Sacramento is dictating your laws if you go to a general law city. Martello said it may be perception, but it is certainly not reality. There was discussion about the date of the next meeting, which was set for Tuesday March 24, 2015. * This was later changed to March 17, 2015 to accommodate Charter Committee members' schedules The meeting adjourned at 6:48 p.m. to March 24, 2015 in the EDA Board Room, 201 N. D Street. 7