Members of Council—
I provide the following comments AND specific revision suggestions on the Staff’s draft proposal to revise the City Council Procedures Manual (Agenda item F1, meeting of 5/14/24):
1. Make clear and consistent what your standard Council meeting time actually is. As basic as it seems, literally this meeting and the draft Procedures manual are at odds. It points out how pervasive the issue and confusion can be. Manual says 7:00pm. This meeting—like seemingly many in last few years—starts at 6pm. Which is it? It is confusing to the public and your constituents. See below fr how it interacts with Oral Communications too. Honestly, COVID is plain over for starters. I personally find 6pm very awkward alongside. Either revise your meeting start time back to what the Procedures plainly say, or revise the Procedures AND have a properly agenda’ed discussion about it. It was not highlighted as a principal discussion topic for this meeting to be clear. Meetings more generally should favor public participation, and I don’t think meetings crossing the conventional “dinner hour” do, Zoom availability or not.
2. Return to historical Council policy of TWO oral communications sessions, one near beginning, one near end. Various of the revisions in the Staff redlines are trying to wipe that history away. Several times council or staff tried to make this change to a single opportunity to speak, and I see it somehow got implemented in Council agenda practice. I strongly object to this--as I have repeatedly in the past specifically with prior Councils and senior Staff. It was surfaced and ultimately rejected in various agenda’ed items about it over the years.
* First, members of the public can’t rush to be there near the start of a meeting necessarily. Two periods provide a better opportunity.
* Second, frankly the start time for that first session of Oral Communications is wildly variable and unpredictable, depending on what has been prioritized and stacked in front of it on any given and changing Council agenda. That works unfairness to the public. You ultimately control that variability the public is saddled with already, not the public who wants to take the time to speak.
* In practice, the second period is/was seldom used—from attending many, many meetings. The rule was always understood to be to use one or the other (not both) to avoid someone potentially abusing dual periods.
* Besides personal time availability by members of the public AND lack of a reliable time for the first comment period, frankly I think the second session can be INDEPENDENTLY valuable. Something may be said or a question may arise during a meeting for example which is not an agenda specific topic, but a member of rthe public/audience would like to comment, provide input or raise a general question. Or, he/she may have elected to sit quietly for some portion of the meeting to gather thoughts, observe, whatever. This all can promote rather than discourage better input from the public.
* In the past, Staff and council have argued for this restriction under the guise of “streamlining” meetings. As I have said then and I say now, from sitting through many endless meetings, frankly the biggest time burners by far are not the public comments, but the extended Staff and then Council discussion. Probably 75% of many meetings to provide a broad ballpark. Little or no effort is made to rein this in. You should—and need to maintain that discipline yourselves. You don’t “solve it” by limiting public input further.
* Big picture, I think honestly the underlying priorities here are UPSIDE DOWN. You should encourage and promote public input and comment, not try to restrict or channel it narrowly for expediency, supposedly “going home” earlier or otherwise. Honestly, among the most valuable things I hear at local government and similar meetings IS public comment. I may not agree with it, or I may think a speaker’s economic or other self- interest is involved, or occasionally it is some ad hoc office campaigning of sorts during elction seasons. But it helps me—and you--understand the pulse and diversity of the community and its beliefs better at the margin. As pointed out further below to, it is also part of the sacrosanct right of Free Speech. Encourage and embrace it, don’t try to narrowly channelize it and restrict it.
3. Update the sections of the Procedures that deal with the public nature of most emails (in their use by Council, Staff or otherwise) to include ALL texts specifically. Honestly, I am pretty shocked given the ubiquity of texts that that this has been overlooked or neglected. Is this intentional? If so, why? It should have long since been clearly addressed. Please get into the 21st Century and include texts in any discussion around email or any other forms of written communication. They are ultimately just another writing. Your records retention policies should be reflecting the same.
4. FULLY BAN all use of disappearing or similar email, text or other electronic communications by any member of Council, its Commissions, other advisory bodies AND Staff. To be clear, fully ban their use for both the widely understood/common default disappearing messaging apps, e.g. Signal or Snapchat, but ALSO similar “confidential,” “vanish” or similar modes in even mainstream conventional applications like Gmail, Facebook Messenger or otherwise. There is extensive discussion and recognition of the issues here in the public domain and in the literature, including specifically in governmental contexts. Again, I am dismayed it has not been flagged, let alone included. I feel strongly enough about it that I think you should consider making it a (misdemeanor) violation of the local City code to use a disappearing form of communication in any intentional way for City business. It is simply not right, essentially akin to pre-emptive destruction of potential evidence in many respects, and an end run if used around Public Records access, potentially the Brown Act, and other legal requirements.
5. Remove ALL references to policies seeking to limit criticism of Council or Staff. See for example p. F-1.26. While perhaps unpleasant at times, this is a core right of the public. In any application by a governmental authority such as yourselves, I view this sort of provision as a direct violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and of Article I, Section 2(a) of the California Constitution. Honestly, I am pretty shocked to even have to point that out! Folks in public office and senior policy staff need to take the input as it comes, whether elegant or not, critical, laudatory or anything in between. You cannot restrict of chill freedom of speech. Sure, regulate peaceable conduct, disrupting meetings, profanity and the like (including clear hate speech when obvious in context). But not ever core general speech, including highly critical. I have found myself profoundly disagreeing with various things I have heard in oral communications contexts in local agencies, school boards and the like. But I will always rise to protect free speech, and then in turn where warranted rebut it or offer a different opinion if needed.
6. Make clear use of any communication by the public to council or staff, including physical or email addresses, speaker card identifying information or otherwise is to be used solely for that purpose, and NOT for any other. More generally, make clear through your Procedures and Policies the City, its representatives and Staff conducts business and maintains contact information only on an “opt in” basis and not “opt out.” Obviously you can provide narrow exceptions for law enforcement related matters, but not for political, civic or other matters generally. Doing otherwise is unfair, not consistent with the public’s expectations, nor in alignment clear trends toward codifying more clearly rights to privacy and related identifying information. Even more so in California that is already leading the Nation in many ways around this issue.
7. While I view the other issues above as more important, I would support continuing at least one donation of time (a second three minutes) for public input in general. I have been at Council many a time where one person speaks better for a group, perhaps a couple/partners are of one mind but prefer one to speak throughout, where someone has a fear of public speaking, or language issues, or various impediments. Honestly one better organized set of 5 or 6 minutes is also better than multiple often disjointed and repetitive comments by related speakers. By eliminating the donation of time, you may end up encouraging all those negative or suboptimal options, and perhaps at times even chilling speech--the very shy, language or otherwise impaired, people “afraid” of government, etc. Keep the donation rule simple too and not get into administering exceptions case by case--are they truly disabled, clearly related to each other or not, have a language problem, are scared, etc.
Thank you for your favorable consideration of these matters.
Regards, Elias Blawie
Long time Menlo Park Resident
