2026-02-03; City Council; 05; Update on Federal Activities in the City of Carlsbad

CA Review JRT
Meeting Date: Feb. 3, 2026
To: Mayor and City Council
From: Geoff Patnoe, City Manager
Staff Contact: Christie Calderwood, Chief of Police
[email protected] 442-339-2197
Je
nnifer R. True, Sr. Assistant City Attorney
[email protected], 442-339-5198
Subject: Update on Federal Activities in the City of Carlsbad District: All
Rec
ommended Action
Receive an update on what the Carlsbad Police Department has observed in terms of federal activities within the City of Carlsbad.

Executive Summary
On Dec. 9, 2025, the City Council unanimously approved a minute motion directing the City Manager to bring forward an informational report by the Police Chief to share any observations specific to recent federal activities in the City of Carlsbad and to share any involvement the Carlsbad Police Department has had with this activity, if any. The informational report will give City Council the opportunity to ask any questions that may help separate fact from fiction.

Explanation & Analysis
Background
The City of Carlsbad and the Carlsbad Police Department do not have authority over federal enforcement activities. Carlsbad police officers do not enforce federal immigration law, do not participate in immigration raids and are not involved in immigration-focused operations.

The Police Department’s policy on immigration violations directs Carlsbad’s police officers to enforce the law equally and serve all community members without regard to immigration status, to avoid immigration enforcement or status inquiries except as allowed by law, and to comply with California’s Values Act (SB54), as detailed below, to ensure victims and witnesses feel safe reporting crimes. The policy is provided as Exhibit 1.

The Police Department also gives its officers specific training on the protocol for handling administrative arrest warrants from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for immigration violations and federal criminal arrest warrants. The department’s training bulletins on those topics are provided as Exhibits 2 and 3.

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Item #5 Page 1 of 27
Applicable state laws
The City of Carlsbad and the Carlsbad Police Department operate under a set of state laws that define and limit local involvement in federal immigration enforcement. These laws are:
• The California Values Act, sometimes referred to as SB 54 (Government Code Sections 7284, 7284.2, 7284.4, 7284.6, 7284.10, and 7284.12), generally restricts state and local law enforcement agencies from using their resources to assist in federal civil immigration enforcement, including inquiring into immigration status, honoring immigration detainer requests, sharing certain nonpublic personal information, or making arrests based solely on civil immigration warrants. This law permits specified forms of cooperation in defined circumstances, such as participation in joint task forces focused on non-immigration crimes, responses to certain criminal history requests and assistance related to visas for crime victims.
• The California Transparency and Responsibility Using State Tools (TRUST) Act (Government Code Sections 7282 and 7282.5) limits when local law enforcement agencies may comply with immigration detainer requests or otherwise transfer individuals to federal immigration authorities. This law generally permits such cooperation only under specified conditions, including when an individual has been convicted of, or in some cases charged with, certain serious or violent felonies or other offenses.
• The California Transparent Review of Unjust Transfers and Holds (TRUTH) Act (Government Code Sections 7283, 7283.1, and 7823.2) requires law enforcement agencies to provide written notice to individuals when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) requests an interview or a transfer of custody, and to inform individuals of their right to decline an interview before it occurs.

The Immigrant Worker Protection Act (Government Code Sections 90.2, 7285.1, 7285.2) limits the ability of employers to allow immigration enforcement agents to access nonpublic work areas, absent a judicial warrant. It further limits an employer’s ability to allow immigration enforcement agents to access, review, or obtain employees’ personnel records, absent a subpoena or judicial warrant.

The California Department of Justice’s information bulletin, “Updated Responsibilities of Law Enforcement Agencies Under the California Values Act, California TRUST Act, and the California TRUTH Act,” is provided as Exhibit 4.

In addition, a new state law, California Government Code Section 12532.5, requires the California Attorney General, on or before July 1, 2026, to publish a model policy for local agencies relating to interaction with immigration authorities. The city has not received the model policy from the Attorney General. Once it is received, the city must implement the model policy or its equivalent on or before Jan. 1, 2027.

Fiscal Analysis
There is no direct fiscal impact associated with the informational report.

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Environmental Evaluation
The proposed action is not a “project” as defined by California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, Section 21065 and CEQA Guidelines Section 15378(b)(5) and does not require environment review under CEQA Guidelines Section 15060(c)(3) and 15061(b)(3), because the proposed action to report on the city’s observations specific to recent federal activities in the City of Carlsbad is an organizational or administrative government activity that does not involve any commitment to any specific project which may result in a potentially significant physical impact on the environment. Any subsequent action or direction stemming from the proposed action may require preparation of an environmental document in accordance with CEQA or the CEQA Guidelines.

Exhibits

1. Police Department Policy 428 - Immigration Violations

2. Police Department Training Bulletin - Protocol for ICE Administrative Warrants

3. Police Department Training Bulletin - Federal Criminal Arrest Warrants

4. “Updated Responsibilities of Law Enforcement Agencies Under the California Values Act, California TRUST Act, and the California TRUTH Act,” information Bulletin from the California Department of Justice dated Jan 17, 2025

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Policy
428
Carlsbad Police Department
Carlsbad PD Policy Manual
Copyright Lexipol, LLC 2025/04/22, All Rights Reserved.

Published with permission by Carlsbad Police Department Immigration Violations - 1
Immigration Violations
428.1 PURPOSE AND SCOPE
The purpose of this policy is to provide guidelines to members of the Carlsbad Police Department relating to immigration and interacting with federal immigration officials. 428.1.1 DEFINITIONS
The following definitions apply to this policy (Government Code § 7284.4):

Criminal immigration violation - Any federal criminal immigration violation that penalizes a person’s presence in, entry, or reentry to, or employment in, the United States. This does not include any offense where a judicial warrant already has been issued.

Immigration enforcement
- Any and all efforts to investigate, enforce, or assist in the investigation or enforcement of any federal civil immigration law, including any and all efforts to investigate, enforce, or assist in the investigation or enforcement of any federal criminal immigration law that penalizes a person's presence in, entry or reentry to, or employment in the United States.

Judicial warrant
- An arrest warrant for a violation of federal criminal immigration law and issued by a federal judge or a federal magistrate judge.
428.2 POLICY
It is the policy of the Carlsbad Police Department that all members make personal and professional commitments to equal enforcement of the law and equal service to the public. Confidence in this commitment will increase the effectiveness of this department in protecting and serving the entire community and recognizing the dignity of all persons, regardless of their national origin or immigration status.

The Carlsbad Police Department is committed to complying with all provisions of the California Values Act (SB 54 de Leon).
428.3 VICTIMS AND WITNESSES
To encourage crime reporting and cooperation in the investigation of criminal activity, all individuals, regardless of their immigration status, must feel secure that contacting or being addressed by members of law enforcement will not automatically lead to immigration inquiry and/or deportation. While it may be necessary to determine the identity of a victim or witness, members shall treat all individuals equally and not in any way that would violate the United States or California constitutions.
428.4 IMMIGRATION INQUIRIES PROHIBITED
Officers shall not inquire into an individual’s immigration status for immigration enforcement purposes (Government Code § 7284.6).

Exhibit 1
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Carlsbad Police Department
Carlsbad PD Policy Manual
Immigration Violations
Copyright Lexipol, LLC 2025/04/22, All Rights Reserved.

Published with permission by Carlsbad Police Department Immigration Violations - 2
428.4.1 CALIFORNIA LAW ENFORCEMENT TELECOMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM (CLETS) Members shall not use information transmitted through CLETS for immigration enforcement purposes except for criminal history information and only when consistent with the California Values Act (Government Code § 15160).

Members shall not use the system to investigate immigration violations of 8 USC § 1325 (improper entry) if that violation is the only criminal history in an individual’s record (Government Code § 15160).
428.4.2 CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF MOTOR VEHICLES
Members shall not obtain, access, use, or otherwise disclose noncriminal history information maintained by the DMV for immigration enforcement (Vehicle Code § 1808.48). 428.5 DETENTIONS AND ARRESTS
An officer shall not detain any individual, for any length of time, for a civil violation of federal immigration laws or a related civil warrant (Government Code § 7284.6).

An officer who has a reasonable suspicion that an individual already lawfully contacted or detained has committed a criminal violation of 8 USC § 1326(a) (unlawful reentry) that may be subject to an enhancement due to a previous conviction of an aggravated felony under 8 USC § 1326(b) (2), may detain the person for a reasonable period of time to contact federal immigration officials to verify whether the United States Attorney General has granted the individual permission for reentry and whether the violation is subject to enhancement (Government Code § 7284.6). No individual who is otherwise ready to be released should continue to be detained only because questions about the individual’s status are unresolved.

If the officer has facts that establish probable cause to believe that a person already lawfully detained has violated 8 USC § 1326(a) and the penalty may be subject to enhancement due to prior conviction for specified aggravated felonies, he/she may arrest the individual for that offense (Government Code § 7284.6).

An officer shall not detain any individual, for any length of time, for any other criminal immigration violation of federal immigration laws (Government Code § 7284.6).

An officer should notify a supervisor as soon as practicable whenever an individual is arrested for violation of 8 USC § 1326(a).
428.5.1 SUPERVISOR RESPONSIBILITIES
When notified that an officer has arrested an individual for violation of 8 USC § 1326(a) or under the authority of a judicial warrant, the supervisor should determine whether it is appropriate to:
(a) Transfer the person to federal authorities.
(b) Transfer the person to jail.

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Carlsbad Police Department
Carlsbad PD Policy Manual
Immigration Violations
Copyright Lexipol, LLC 2025/04/22, All Rights Reserved.

Published with permission by Carlsbad Police Department Immigration Violations - 3
428.6 INFORMATION SHARING
No member of this department will prohibit, or in any way restrict, any other member from doing any of the following regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual (8 USC § 1373; Government Code § 7284.6):
(a) Sending information to, or requesting or receiving such information from federal immigration officials
(b) Maintaining such information in department records
(c) Exchanging such information with any other federal, state, or local government entity Nothing in this policy restricts sharing information that is permissible under the California Values Act.
428.6.1 IMMIGRATION DETAINERS
No individual should be held based solely on a federal immigration detainer under 8 CFR 287.7 (Government Code § 7284.6).

Notification to a federal authority may be made prior to release of an individual who is the subject of a notification request only if the individual meets one of the following conditions (Government Code § 7282.5; Government Code § 7284.6):
(a) The individual has been arrested and had a judicial probable cause determination for a serious or violent felony identified in Penal Code § 667.5(c) or Penal Code § 1192.7(c). (b) The individual has been arrested and had a judicial probable cause determination for a felony punishable by time in a state prison.
(c) The individual has been convicted of an offense as identified in Government Code § 7282.5(a).
(d) The individual is a current registrant on the California Sex and Arson Registry. (e) The individual is identified by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the subject of an outstanding federal felony arrest warrant.
428.6.2 NOTICE TO INDIVIDUALS
Individuals in custody shall be given a copy of documentation received from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) regarding a hold, notification, or transfer request along with information as to whether the Carlsbad Police Department intends to comply with the request (Government Code § 7283.1).

If the Carlsbad Police Department provides ICE with notification that an individual is being, or will be, released on a certain date, the same notification shall be provided in writing to the individual and to his/her attorney or to one additional person who the individual may designate (Government Code § 7283.1).

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Carlsbad Police Department
Carlsbad PD Policy Manual
Immigration Violations
Copyright Lexipol, LLC 2025/04/22, All Rights Reserved.

Published with permission by Carlsbad Police Department Immigration Violations - 4
428.6.3 ICE INTERVIEWS
Before any interview regarding civil immigration violations takes place between ICE personnel and an individual in custody, the Carlsbad Police Department shall provide the individual with a written consent form that explains the purpose of the interview, that the interview is voluntary, and that he/she may decline to be interviewed or may choose to be interviewed only with his/her attorney present. The consent form must be available in the languages specified in Government Code § 7283.1.
428.6.4 TRANSFERS TO IMMIGRATION AUTHORITIES
Members shall not transfer an individual to immigration authorities unless one of the following circumstances exist (Government Code § 7282.5; Government Code § 7284.6):
(a) Transfer is authorized by a judicial warrant or judicial probable cause determination. (b) The individual has been convicted of an offense as identified in Government Code § 7282.5(a).
(c) The individual is a current registrant on the California Sex and Arson Registry. (d) The individual is identified by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the subject of an outstanding federal felony arrest warrant.
428.6.5 REPORTING TO CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE The Investigative Bureau supervisor shall ensure that data regarding the number of transfers of an individual to immigration authorities, as permitted by Government Code § 7284.6(a)(4), and the offense that allowed for the transfer is collected and provided to the Records Manager for required reporting to the DOJ (Government Code § 7284.6(c)(2)(see the Records Division Policy). 428.6.6 REPORTING TO CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE The Investigative Bureau supervisor shall ensure that data regarding the number of transfers of an individual to immigration authorities, as permitted by Government Code § 7284.6(a)(4), and the offense that allowed for the transfer is collected and provided to the Records Manager for required reporting to the DOJ (Government Code § 7284.6(c)(2)(see the Records Division Policy). 428.7 U VISA AND T VISA NONIMMIGRANT STATUS
Under certain circumstances, federal law allows temporary immigration benefits, known as a U visa, to victims and witnesses of certain qualifying crimes (8 USC § 1101(a)(15)(U)).

Similar immigration protection, known as a T visa, is available for certain qualifying victims of human trafficking (8 USC § 1101(a)(15)(T)).

Any request for assistance in applying for U visa or T visa status should be forwarded in a timely manner to the Investigative Bureau supervisor assigned to oversee the handling of any related case. The Investigative Bureau supervisor should:
(a) Consult with the assigned investigator to determine the current status of any related case and whether further documentation is warranted.

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Carlsbad Police Department
Carlsbad PD Policy Manual
Immigration Violations
Copyright Lexipol, LLC 2025/04/22, All Rights Reserved.

Published with permission by Carlsbad Police Department Immigration Violations - 5
(b) Contact the appropriate prosecutor assigned to the case, if applicable, to ensure the certification or declaration has not already been completed and whether a certification or declaration is warranted.
(c) Address the request and complete the certification or declaration, if appropriate, in a timely manner.

1. The instructions for completing certification and declaration forms can be found on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) website.

2. Form I-918 Supplement B certification shall be completed if the victim qualifies under Penal Code § 679.10 (multiple serious offenses). The certification shall be completed and not refused for the specified reasons in Penal Code § 679.10(k) (3).

3. Form I-914 Supplement B declaration shall be completed if the victim qualifies under Penal Code § 236.5 or Penal Code § 679.11 (human trafficking). The declaration shall be completed and not refused for completion for the specified reasons in Penal Code § 679.11(j)(3).

4. Forward the completed Form I-918 Supplement B certification or completed Form I-914 declaration B to the victim, family member, or authorized representative (as defined in Penal Code § 679.10 and Penal Code § 679.11) without requiring the victim to provide government-issued identification (Penal Code § 679.10; Penal Code § 679.11)
(d) Ensure that any decision to complete, or not complete, a certification or declaration form is documented in the case file and forwarded to the appropriate prosecutor.

Include a copy of any completed form in the case file.

1. If Form I-918 Supplement B is not certified, a written explanation of denial shall be provided to the victim or authorized representative. The written denial shall include specific details of any reasonable requests for cooperation and a detailed description of how the victim refused to cooperate (Penal Code § 679.10). (e) Inform the victim liaison of any requests and their status. 428.7.1 TIME FRAMES FOR COMPLETION
Officers and their supervisors who are assigned to investigate a case of human trafficking as defined by Penal Code § 236.1 shall complete the above process and the documents needed for indicating the individual is a victim for the T visa application within 15 business days of the first encounter with the victim, regardless of whether it is requested by the victim (Penal Code § 236.5).

Officers and their supervisors shall complete the above process and the documents needed certifying victim cooperation for a U visa or T visa application pursuant to Penal Code § 679.10 and Penal Code § 679.11 within 30 days of a request from the victim, victim's family, or authorized representative related to one of their assigned cases. If the victim is in removal proceedings, the certification shall be processed within seven days of the first business day following the day the request was received.

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Carlsbad Police Department
Carlsbad PD Policy Manual
Immigration Violations
Copyright Lexipol, LLC 2025/04/22, All Rights Reserved.

Published with permission by Carlsbad Police Department Immigration Violations - 6
428.7.2 REPORTING TO LEGISLATURE
The Investigative Bureau supervisor or the authorized designee should ensure that certification requests are reported to the Legislature in January of each year and include the number of certifications signed and the number denied. The report shall comply with Government Code § 9795 (Penal Code § 679.10; Penal Code § 679.11).
428.7.3 POLICE REPORTS
Upon request, an officer or supervisor should provide a victim or authorized representative with a copy of the report filed by the victim within seven days of the request (Penal Code § 679.10). 428.8 FEDERAL REQUESTS FOR ASSISTANCE
Absent an urgent issue of officer safety or other emergency circumstances, requests by federal immigration officials for assistance from this department should be directed to a supervisor. The supervisor is responsible for determining whether the requested assistance would be permitted under the California Values Act (Government Code § 7284.2 et seq.).. 428.9 TRAINING
The Training Coordinator should ensure that all appropriate members receive training on immigration issues.

Training should include:
(a) Identifying civil versus criminal immigration violations. (b) Factors that may be considered in determining whether a criminal immigration violation has been committed.
(c) Prohibitions contained in the California Values Act (Government Code § 7284 et seq.).

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Exhibit 2
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Exhibit 3
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Exhibit 4
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All Receive - Agenda Item #
For the Information of the:

CITY COUNCIL
Date 11-(4 CA V CC
Adriana Trujillo CM ACM DCM (3)
From: Beverly Marston <[email protected] >
Sent: Sunday, February 1, 2026 10:27 AM
To: City Clerk
Subject: Agenda Itema #5 UPDATE ON FEDERAL ACTIVITIES IN THE CITY OF CARLSBAD - Feb. 3, 2026 meeting
Dear City Council Members,
I am writing as a community member to express my concerns regarding the ICE presence in our city. It is essential that the Carlsbad Police Department actively uphold our constitutional rights and ensure our safety.

I want to see transparency regarding data sharing with federal agencies. Our community deserves trust and clarity from our police department.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Bev Marston
Carlsbad resident
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1 Adriana Trujillo
From: Stephanie Wells <[email protected] >
Sent: Sunday, February 1, 2026 5:21 PM
To: Keith Blackburn; Priya Bhat-Patel; Teresa Acosta; Melanie Burkholder; Kevin Shin; City Clerk; Manager Internet Email
Subject: Public Comment: *5. UPDATE ON FEDERAL ACTIVITIES IN THE CITY OF CARLSBAD Dear Mayor and City Council,
I'm writing to urge the City of Carlsbad to take clear, proactive steps to protect the constitutional rights and civil liberties of everyone in our community—regardless of immigration status.

I first want to recognize the strong collaboration I've personally experienced with the CPD regarding public demonstrations, including the No Kings protests. My experience has been that CPD worked to keep everyone safe while respecting free speech and assembly, protecting constitutional rights in real time.

More broadly, I respect the community-building work CPD has done over the past several years. I've seen a real commitment to modern, best-practice public safety: prioritizing de-escalation, approaching difficult situations with professionalism and restraint, and strengthening trust through consistent engagement with residents. I also appreciate the work CPD and city partners do in responding to homelessness with coordination, services, and an emphasis on safety and dignity.

That foundation of trust is a major asset for Carlsbad. It's exactly why I'm asking the City to put strong, public guardrails in place now, so residents can be confident their rights will be protected regardless of status and so community trust won't be undermined by fear or uncertainty.

In the agenda packet, the City notes that Carlsbad officers do not enforce federal immigration law, do not participate in immigration raids, and are not involved in immigration-focused operations. The City also notes CPD policy is to serve all community members without regard to immigration status and to avoid immigration status inquiries except as allowed by law. I appreciate that clarity. My request is that the Council now take the next step: make these boundaries unmistakable, citywide, and operational especially in moments when federal immigration activity may be heightened and residents are frightened or confused.

I respectfully request the Council direct staff and CPD to adopt and publish the following ICE- related protections:

1. Codify and publish Carlsbad's non-participation in civil immigration enforcement Reaffirm publicly (in a Council-directed statement or resolution) that City staff and CPD will not participate in immigration raids or immigration-focused operations, and will provide equal service to residents regardless of status.
2, Bright-line "judicial warrant only" standard
Adopt a citywide rule that the City will not detain, arrest, hold, or provide access to nonpublic City areas based on ICE administrative warrants, detainers, or informal requests—only a judge-signed judicial warrant (or other legally required circumstance) should authorize actions that affect liberty or access to restricted spaces.
1 3. No direct or indirect assistance with ICE operations (absent immediate safety necessity or legal compulsion)
Clarify that City resources will not be used to support ICE operations—directly or indirectly (for example: traffic or perimeter support, standby presence, intelligence sharing, facility access)— except where required by law or needed to address an immediate threat to life or safety.

4. City facilities protocol when ICE appears
Create a written protocol for all City facilities (City Hall, library, parks & rec sites, senior center, etc.) requiring staff to:

O immediately contact a designated supervisor and the City Attorney, o deny access to nonpublic areas absent a judicial warrant, and o document the request and the City's response.

5. Data privacy: no voluntary sharing with ICE
Prohibit voluntary sharing of nonpublic personal information (addresses, phone numbers, customer/utility records, permits, etc.) with ICE absent legal compulsion, and conduct a short review of City systems and vendor contracts to ensure they align.

6. TRUTH Act compliance that is visible, multilingual, and verifiable Ensure the City/CPD consistently provides written notices and consent forms required when immigration authorities request an interview or transfer, and make the process and forms publicly available (with language access), so residents understand their rights and what is voluntary.

7. Transparency reporting on ICE-related requests
Provide regular public reporting (for example: quarterly) on the number and type of ICE or related requests received (interviews, holds, notification, transfers, facility access, records requests), whether a judicial warrant was provided, and what the City's response was—including confirmation when there were no requests.

8. Commit to early adoption of the forthcoming state model policy The City has noted that the state will publish a model policy relating to interactions with immigration authorities in 2026, with local implementation required in 2027.1 ask Carlsbad to commit now to bringing that model policy (or an equivalent policy) back for public discussion and adopting/implementing it as early as feasible, with community input.

These safeguards are not about politics, they are about due process, equal protection, and community trust. Clear boundaries protect civil liberties, prevent fear-driven rumors, and ensure all residents, including victims and witnesses, feel safe calling for help and accessing City services.

I respectfully request that the Council agendize these safeguards, provide a timeline for implementation, and respond in writing with the specific steps the City will take.

Thank you for your leadership and for protecting the rights and safety of everyone who calls Carlsbad home.

Sincerely,
Stephanie Wells - Dl Resident, Citizens Academy Graduate, Citizens Police Acedemy Graduate CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content is -Wa761
2 Adriana Trujillo
From: Lisa Shaffer <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, February 2, 2026 7:58 AM
To: City Clerk; Teresa Acosta; Priya Bhat-Patel; Keith Blackburn; Melanie Burkholder; Kevin Shin
Subject: Agenda Item 5
I appreciate Councilmember Acosta putting this item on the agenda. While residents value public safety and want immigration laws to be followed, we do not want our community terrorized by masked agents in unmarked cars making violent abductions without judicial warrants or due process. We especially do not want children to be taken, or to be separated from their parents.

Please ensure that our local law enforcement staff understand the limits to what ICE is allowed to do, and that we are not using City resources, including parking tots, in support of ICE operations. Please coordinate with the school districts in our area to ensure that school drop off and pick up are safe times and spaces for our children.

We all want serious crimes to be prevented and serious criminals to be held to account. That is not what we have observed in our community and elsewhere, Like in Minneapolis. Let's NOT become the next Minneapolis or LA. Carlsbad is a safe and welcoming community. Our law enforcement personnel do an excellent job of protecting public safety. We do not need ICE stirring up trouble here.

Thank you.

Lisa Shaffer
7964 Grado el Tupelo
Lisa R. Shaffer, Author
Potholes, Parks, and Politics
LisaShafferWords.com
1 _ CAUTION; Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.

Adriana Trujillo
All Receive - Agenda Item it --r-
For the Information of the:
_ICITY COUNCIL
DateHOUP CA '- ---CC '-"----
CM V ACM v - DCM (3) i.----

From: Manager Internet Email
Sent: Monday, February 2, 2026 3:21 PM
To: City Clerk
Subject: FW: Agenda item 5 comment
From: Sharon Bodon <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, February 2, 2026 1:58 PM
To: Keith Blackburn <[email protected]>; Manager Internet Email <[email protected]>; Priya Bhat-Patel <[email protected]>; Teresa Acosta <[email protected]>; Melanie Burkholder <[email protected]>; Kevin Shin <[email protected]> Subject: Agenda item 5 comment
To Carlsbad Mayor and City Council,
As a Carlsbad resident I have appreciated the Carlsbad Police Department's commitment to de- escalation and fostering our community's trust.

To preserve this trust, I urge the Council to codify and publish clear protections for all residents regardless of their immigration status.

Specifically, I request the City formalizes the following safeguards:
• Non-Participation: Officially reaffirm that City staff and CPD will not participate in immigration raids or civil enforcement.
• Judicial Warrant Standard: Prohibit detentions or access to non-public areas based on ICE administrative warrants; require a judge-signed judicial warrant. • Resource Protection: Ensure no City resources or data are used to assist ICE operations, except where strictly required by law.
• Facility Protocols: Establish written procedures for City staff to deny ICE access to non-public facilities absent a judicial warrant.
. Transparency: Implement regular public reporting on ICE-related requests and compliance with the TRUTH Act.
. Early Adoption: Commit to implementing the forthcoming 2026 state model policy.

Clear, operational boundaries are essential to ensure all residents feel safe accessing City services and calling for help. I look forward to your response regarding a timeline for implementation of these community safeguards.

Sincerely,
Sharon Bodon
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1 All Receive - Agenda Item #
For the Information of the:

CITY COUNCIL
Date 1-ib/2,49CA CC L-:"
CM i•-•"--ACM 1---15CM (3)
Adriana Trujillo
From: Narima Lopes <[email protected] >
Sent: Monday, February 2, 2026 5:46 PM
To: Keith Blackburn; Priya Bhat-Patel; Teresa Acosta; Melanie Burkholder; Kevin Shin; City Clerk
Subject: Public Comment- Agenda #5
Dear Mayor and City Council Members,
I'm writing to urge the City of Carlsbad to take proactive steps to protect the constitutional rights and civil liberties of everyone in our community, regardless of immigration status.

I appreciate the work the Carlsbad Police do regarding homelessness. I would like the Council to codify and publish that Carlsbad Police officers do not enforce federal immigration law, do not participate in immigration raids, and are not involved in immigration-focused operations, that they serve all community members without regard to immigration status, and that they would avoid immigration status inquiries except as allowed by law.

I respectfully request that the Council prioritize these safeguards and provide a timeline for implementation.

Thank you for your leadership and for protecting the rights of those who live in Carlsbad.

Sincerely,
Narima Lopes
(District 3, Carlsbad)
CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.
1 Adriana Trujillo
From: Nikki Facidick <[email protected] ›
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 7:43 AM
To: Council Internet Email; Keith Blackburn; City Clerk Subject: Request for Carlsbad to Adopt San Diego—Style Immigrant Rights and Due Process Protections
Dear Mayor and Members of the City Council,
I am writing to respectfully urge the City of Carlsbad to adopt the same community safety and due process measures recently implemented by the City of San Diego, including the regional model ordinance designed to protect residents' constitutional rights and clarify limits on local involvement in federal immigration enforcement.

San Diego's approach—grounded in California law, including the California Values Act (SB 54)—demonstrates that cities can prioritize public safety, due process, and community trust while remaining fully compliant with federal law. These measures do not interfere with federal authority. Rather, they ensure that local resources are not used for immigration enforcement and that residents' personal information and access to city facilities are protected unless federal agents present a valid judicial warrant.

Specifically, I encourage the City of Carlsbad to consider adopting policies that:
- Require a judicial warrant before federal immigration agents may access non-public areas of city property - Prohibit the sharing of residents' personal or immigration-related information without a warrant - Limit participation of local law enforcement in immigration enforcement activities - Extend these standards to city contractors and organizations receiving city funding - Promote "Know Your Rights" education so residents understand their constitutional protections San Diego's model ordinance provides a thoughtful and practical framework that Carlsbad could adopt or adapt to reflect our city's values. These protections help ensure that all residents—regardless of immigration status—feel safe accessing city services, reporting crimes, and participating in civic life, which ultimately benefits the entire community.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I appreciate your service to our community and your commitment to policies that promote safety, trust, and fairness for all who call Carlsbad home.

Sincerely,
Nikki Faddick
Carlsbad, CA
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Adriana Trujillo
From: kelly.leberthonl [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 8:39 AM
To: City Clerk
Subject: Feb 3, Agenda 5 Support Carlsbad PD
Carlsbad law enforcement officers deserve to have the full support of the city council and the community when it comes to doing the jobs they are hired to do - enforce our laws.

One only has only to look to Minneapolis to see the chaos that ensues when local law enforcement is not permitted to enforce laws - like people intentionally blocking traffic and intersections: spitting, shoving, hitting law enforcement; throwing rocks, iced water bottles, Molotov cocktails, etc at law enforcement and their vehicles. These are not peaceful protests but intentional mayhem designed to create an environment that leads to violence.

Do not permit Carlsbad to become a lawless city because that will ultimately mean violence and mayhem.

Keep Carlsbad Safe. No Chaos in Carlsbad! Support Carlsbad Police! Thank you for your attention to this matter,
Kelly Le Berthon
1 . CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safel
1 All Receive - Agenda Item # 5-
For the Information of the:

CITY COUNCIL
Date 2/ 3 /2(aCA 1-""—CC
CM ACM 1----DCM (3)
Adriana Trujillo
From: Vanessa Forsythe <[email protected] >
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 10:05 AM
To: City Clerk; Kevin Shin; Priya Bhat-Patel; Keith Blackburn; Melanie Burkholder; Teresa Acosta; Geoff Patnoe
Subject: Public Comment Agenda item #5 Update on Federal Activities in City of Carlsbad Dear Mayor, Mayor ProTem, City Council Members and City Officials Unfortunately I am unable to attend this evening's City Council Meeting. I appreciate that the Carlsbad City Police Chief will be sharing her knowledge of what federal activities have occurred in our community. I believe that our city civil servants including our police officers and fire service personnel demonstrate a commitment to performing their duties in the interest of doing what is best for the community. My understanding is that they are properly vetted and take a pledge to uphold the constitution that includes our civil rights.Our community is composed of both citizens and non-citizens and most of our constitutional rights, including due process, equal protection and rights in court apply to all. My concern is that federal ICE agents' actions in our community and other communities like Minneapolis are not respecting individual rights guaranteed by the constitution. These are uncertain times for our democracy where fear overwhelms and routine life is disrupted. As a community we need to hear from you our leaders that you will uphold our constitutional rights and the safety of all people in our community and not work with federal agents beyond legal requirements.

As a professional nurse, though retired I still maintain my license, and I know that when someone calls out "help" or appears in distress a nurse's response is to come to their aid. Alex Pretti was killed when he attempted to aid a distressed woman who had been pushed to the ground by federal ICE agents. A. Duran, a fellow member of California Nurses for Environmental Health and Justice, wrote this in response to the murder of Alex Pretti and the violence in Minneapolis," It is the duty of nurses to care for all people, regardless of background, race, ethnicity, religion, immigration status or political affiliation. We demand that this ethic of compassionate, indiscriminate care be the foundation of the government and institutions meant to serve and protect US,,,
As our Carlsbad elected officials and city leaders I ask for a formal resolution stating outright that we stand with the people of Minneapolis who are under siege by ICE and that all residents here in Carlsbad will receive equal protections under the law regardless of their status as a citizen. We need a stated city policy or at the least a resolution indicating that its employees will not cooperate with federal authorities in sharing nonpublic personal information of all Carlsbad residents.A statement should be included directing staff how to respond when ICE is at a public facility clarifying that a judge-signed warrant is required for entry to a non-public space. The policy should confirm that City resources will not be used to support ICE operations—directly or indirectly (for example: traffic or perimeter support, standby presence, intelligence sharing, facility access)—except where required by law or needed to address an immediate threat to life or safety. For the sake of transparency and accountability, police and other involved local officials should publicly report known ICE activities at regular intervals. The policy should Include a statement that our elected officials and civil servants will respect and protect the rights of our community members to speak out and gather peacefully to protest federal actions.

Regarding that piece referenced above mentioning the ethic of compassionate and indiscriminate care - I call out to my neighbors to respect the dignity of all people living in Carlsbad. We know many families in our neighborhoods have had family members abducted by ICE - losing those they loved, without financial support, afraid to leave their home to go to work or school given the uncertainty of what will happen next. Available resources and civil rights need to be posted on our website and in public places in multiple languages. We are one community, It is not others experiencing this siege and violation of rights together we must respond in solidarity as a community - speaking out and doing what we can to help each other.

I appreciate that you as our elected officials will take action and continue to do what is best for our entire community.

Vanessa
Vanessa Forsythe RN MSN
CPC Co-Chair Mission & Stewardship Committee
California Nurses for Environmental Health & Justice
CleanEarth4Kids
League of Women Voters North County San Diego
"To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give it up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security (they don't mean me) or by despair (there's nothing we can (1o).- - Audre tor& CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. 1 Adriana Trujillo
From: Katrina Waidelich <[email protected] >
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 10:34 AM
To: City Clerk; Keith Blackburn; Priya Bhat-Patel; Council Internet Email; Melanie Burkholder; Kevin Shin; Teresa Acosta
Subject: Agenda Item #5: CPD Update
Dear Mayor Blackburn and Members of the Carlsbad City Council, I am writing to share my concerns regarding the presence of federal immigration authorities in Carlsbad. Although I serve as a Library Board Trustee, I want to be clear that I am not speaking on behalf of the Board; I am speaking solely as a Carlsbad resident and as a mother.

I would first like to thank the Carlsbad Police Department for its ongoing commitment to building trust within our community and for its dedication to serving the needs of Carlsbad residents. That trust matters deeply, especially to families like mine.

When my husband and I chose to make Carlsbad our home, we intentionally settled in the Calavera neighborhood because of its proximity to local schools. We imagined our children walking to school with friends, greeting neighbors, petting dogs along the way, and feeling a genuine sense of belonging in their community. For years, that vision has been our reality — and it is one of the reasons we love living here.

But recently, that sense of safety has begun to feel uncertain.

I am increasingly concerned that school zones — both public and private — could become locations for immigration enforcement activity. Two brothers were detained less than half a mile from my children's school, across the street from a daycare center. In January, another individual was taken near Pine Community Center, just a few blocks from both a Montessori school and Jefferson Elementary. Many families only learned about these incidents after the fact. There was no proactive communication from the city to help families so they could make decisions about the safety of their children on the way to school.

Carlsbad does not provide a bus system for most students, which means many of our children walk through these neighborhoods every day— sometimes with younger siblings, sometimes without adults.

Children should not have to witness masked individuals carrying military-style weapons on their way to school. They should not see someone crying while being forced into a vehicle on their walk home. Yet these are the scenarios I now find myself preparing my children to encounter.

And I find myself asking difficult questions;
What should I tell them to do?
Should they call the police? Seek help from a neighbor? Hide in the bushes? Keep walking with their eyes averted? Most importantly — can I still promise them that their walk to school is safe? I want my children to trust law enforcement. As a public school teacher, I work alongside officers who help foster positive school environments, and I am grateful for the relationships they build with our students and school community. Trust is the cornerstone of that work, and we must preserve community trust in local law enforcement at all costs.

I respectfully ask the City of Carlsbad and the Carlsbad Police Department to continue prioritizing transparency and communication with families and residents.
• When incidents occur near places where children gather, timely information helps parents respond thoughtfully rather than react in fear or let rumors spread.
• Commit to instructing city employees to only allow federal immigration authorities to enter a city building after confirming a valid judicial warrant, reviewed by a representative of the Carlsbad Police Department.

Visible reassurance from local leadership goes a long way toward preserving the sense of safety that makes Carlsbad such a special place to raise a family. Please continue the work of strengthening trust with the children and families of this community.

Best,
Katrina Waidelich
Icatrinawaidelich0gmail.com
1CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.' 1 Adriana Trujillo
From: Council Internet Email
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 11:40 AM
To: City Clerk
Subject: FW: Agenda Item #5
From: Jolene Vanyo 4_z.,)[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 11:22 AM
To: Council Internet Email <[email protected]>
Cc: Board of Trustees <[email protected] > Subject: Agenda Item #5
Dear Councilmembers and Trustees:

I wish to state my full support for law enforcement — local, state, and federal — and their efforts to keep us safe here in Carlsbad.

Regarding Agenda Item #5 for today's council meeting, please reflect on the following:

The refusal to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration is one of the most destructive and divisive acts of deliberate rhetorical obfuscation.

Legal immigration is governed by law, consent, process, and reciprocity. It reflects a social contract: our government sets rules, applicants comply with them, and admission follows. Illegal immigration, by definition, bypasses that framework.

Treating objections to the latter as hostility to the former is intellectually dishonest and morally manipulative. This conflation weaponizes empathy while silencing legitimate concerns about sovereignty, fairness, resource allocation, and the rule of law.

It reframes enforcement as cruelty, compliance as bigotry, and borders as prejudice — thereby making any rational policy discussion impossible.

Once the distinction is erased, critics are no longer debating policy; they are defending themselves against moral accusations, made by people who are being led to believe that these laws, and those tasked to enforce them, are immoral.

We are watching as many city councils in California are evading responsibility by turning a policy failure (the failure in years past to enforce federal immigration laws) into a moral drama, and are caving to pressure from "Abolish ICE" and "Abolish Police" movements that are capitalizing on recent tragedies in Minneapolis to push their agenda. These are tragedies which could have very well been avoided if local law enforcement had been permitted to respond appropriately to the chaos caused by protest agitators and individuals who intentionally set out to impede and obstruct federal law enforcement.

Please do not let Carlsbad push more unnecessary fear into the community by feeding into the false and dangerous narrative that enforcing federal law is now immoral, and do not let our community descend into chaos by obstructing local police from their duty to preserve law and order. Our police should provide for the protection and safety of ALL — community members, as well as law enforcement officers. ALL lives matter.

Respectfully,
Jolene Vanyo
Carlsbad CA
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Adriana Trujillo
From: Curtis Wilbur <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 12:14 PM
To: City Clerk
Subject: Additional steps to protect residents and visitors to Carlsbad Dear Mayor and City Council Members,
I would be one of the first to say that we are living in exceptional times. Having seen the lawlessness exhibited by ICE and DHS personnel in their various "anti-immigrant" exercises, I am particularly concerned with how municipal law enforcement deals with these people. I'm sure I speak for most Carlsbad residents when I say that if armed and masked teams of ruffians show up at my neighbor's door in the middle of the night, I can count on our police to show up if I call 911. And if I happen to be on the street exercising my constitutional rights of speaking out and observing, our police force will be there to protect us from the harassment, random arrests, tear gas, pepper balls or even bullets that ICE is so fond of employing.

I recognize that if these masked marauders show up here in large numbers, it's going to be a challenge to keep the peace. But please do your best to be here for us. Thank you for your service to the community.

Curtis Wilbur
6664 Towhee Lane
Carlsbad
760-607-7459
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1 Adriana Trujillo
From: Adriana Trujillo
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 1:25 PM
To: Adriana Trujillo
Subject: FW: Asking all Council Members for Continued support of the Carlsbad Police and K-9 Units
From: Susan Clifford <sarcliffordPgmail.com >
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 12:25 PM
To: Council Internet Email <[email protected]>
Subject: Asking all Council Members for Continued support of the Carlsbad Police and K-9 Units Dear Council Members.

We are asking all members of The Carlsbad City Council to support our Carlsbad Police Department Police and K-9 Units.

We have lived in Carlsbad almost 8 years.

One of the great features of this City is the low crime. This low crime is due to a Police presence of patrol cruisers and quick response of our Police for emergencies including car accidents, robberies, vandalism, drugs, homelessness, deaths, or any emergency and non-emergencies, etc.

We have called Police twice in 8 years. Once for vandalism at our home. The other time was a homeless encounter that threatened harm to myself.

There has recently been a residential robbery in our neighborhood that the police responded to also.

I implore all City of Carlsbad Council members to keep this City and residents Safe by continuing to have Police Officers and K-9 Units employed in the City of Carlsbad.

Public Safety of residents is a duty of any City in America.

Please continue to support our Police Department, Police Officers, and K-9 Units.

Thank you.

Sincerely
Mr. and Mrs. Richard J. Clifford
7027 Cinnamon Teal St, Carlsbad, CA 92011.

CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content is 1 Adriana Trujillo
From: Diana A <[email protected] >
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 12:31 PM
To: City Clerk
Subject: AGENDA #5 Update on Federal Activities in the City of Carlsbad Good afternoon,
I want to express my appreciation for the Carlsbad Police Department and their commitment to actively engaging with our community.
would like clarification on how information is shared with ARKS and the use of license plate readers in this context. Ensuring that public spaces, like our library, remain safe for all community members is vital; everyone deserves to feel welcomed and secure in these environments.

My concerns also extend to the protection of our constitutional rights. Given the actions of ICE in other cities, which have often resulted in rights violations (and killings), 1 would like to understand how Carlsbad PI) would respond to situations where our constitutional rights may be compromised.

Moreover, I am eager to know about the budget allocation towards assisting federal agencies with immigration work and how this impacts our 911 dispatchers, particularly in relation to call volume and funding connected to ICE incidents.

As an engaged community member, I'd like to ensure the safety and well-being of everyone in our city. The presence of ICE fosters fear and distrust among community members which I hope we can address collaboratively.

Best regards,
Diana Aguirre
Citizens Academy Graduate
D3 resident
F ...., CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content isl safe.'
1 Adriana Tru'illo
From: Council Internet Email
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 1:22 PM
To: City Clerk
Subject: FW: Agenda ken 5
From: Peggy <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 1:19 PM
To: Council Internet Email <[email protected]>; [email protected] Subject: Agenda Iten 5
Dear Councilmembers and Trustees:

My husband, Dale Bartley and myself fully support all law enforcement in general and our Carlsbad Police Department (C PD), in particular. Our CPD is professional and completely dedicated to our Carlsbad Community.

Parents and Teachers who do not teach children to respect the authority of police officers are failing these children and our community. Respectful and peaceful protest is our Constitutional right; breaking the law and destroying property or the safety of others is not,
Chaos as seen in many cities across the USA is a travesty of the values for which our Nation stands. Please do not promote chaos and violence in our beautiful ity of Carlsbad.

Respectfully,
bale and Margaret Bartley
You have made us for yourself, 0 Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." St. Augustine Sent with Proton Mail secure email.

CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content A safe.
1 Adriana Trujillo
From: Donn Rutkoff <[email protected] >
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 1:31 PM
To: City Clerk
Subject: Item 5
Spare the rod and attack a Federal lawman?
A thousand years ago Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides (Rambam) said: to be merciful to the cruel is to be cruet to the merciful. Giving Pretti a free pass for his previous assaults let him run straight to hell. Given how rabid he was on previous assaults, it might have just been a matter of time before his behavior led to this.

Same for Goode. Much of the non "tefty kook" world knows "spare the rod and spoil the child". In the U.S.A. we are guaranteed a speedy trial, because justice delayed is justice denied. Letting an accused criminal run free by allowing numerous delays is being merciful to the accused, and can backfire, to put it mildly.

In the Pretti case, leniency and mercy led to his own death. He never spent even one night in jai( for disorderly conduct or vandalism. There is nothing merciful in letting the wicked to continue to be wicked.

Donn Rutkoff, Man About Wine
Cell phone 415-515-0492
CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content isi 1 Adriana Trujillo
From: D Lech <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 1:58 PM
To: Council Internet Email; City Clerk
Subject: agenda Item #5 public comment
I fully support our dedicated Carlsbad Police Department doing whatever it is they need to lawfully do in order to keep our citizens safe and enforce the law. I would expect the same support for them from our entire City Council. This would include cooperating with federal authorities to assist in the removal of illegal alien criminals from our country. By abiding with sanctuary city policies, we create a safe- haven for criminals from all over the world and from other states, which only contributes to more chaos, division, and lawlessness as we have seen in other cities. Deportation of illegal alien criminals was former President Obama's policy when he was president for 8 years, and there were no protests.

Why is it not OK with our new administration? Please do not allow anti-police extremists to politicize our police department.

Regards,
D.Lech
Carlsbad Homeowner/TaxpayerNoter
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1 Adriana Trujillo
From:

Sent:

To:

Subject:

Tony Bona <[email protected]>
Tuesday, February 3, 2026 1:14 PM
City Clerk; Sheila Cobian; Geoff Patnoe
All Receive -Agenda Item# S
For the Information of the:

CITY COUNCIL
Dat~)d/J / UCA v CC ~
CM _ACM vocM {3) ~
Please include this for tonights Agenda item 5 Correspondence I am submitting this correspondence as a formal administrative complaint concerning a recent public statement made by a sitting member of the Carlsbad City Council on social media.

I understand the City does not police or moderate social media content. This complaint is therefore not about platform governance, but about the conduct of an elected official and the use of their public position to issue statements that have material implications for public safety, civic trust, and the integrity of city leadership.

The statement in question makes serious and inflammatory allegations, including claims of "lawlessness," violence, and coordinated cover-ups by federal authorities. These assertions are presented without evidence and are framed in an overtly political and provocative manner. Although published on social media, the statement was issued by a sitting council member whose identity, title, and public authority are inseparable from the message and its impact.

Of particular concern is the foreseeable effect on public safety and community confidence. Public statements by elected officials that disparage law enforcement and suggest unlawful conduct by government institutions can inflame tensions, foster hostility, and create confusion among residents regarding lawful authority and enforcement. The medium does not diminish the risk. When such messaging comes from a city leader, it carries weight, credibility, and potential consequences that extend beyond personal opinion.

While council members retain the right to express personal political views, leveraging the visibility and credibility of elected office-regardless of platform-to advance unsubstantiated and inflammatory narratives crosses a clear boundary. City leadership communications, whether issued formally or informally, should reflect sound judgment, factual accuracy, and an awareness of their impact on public safety and civic cohesion. In this instance, those standards were not met.

Accordingly, I respectfully request that the City Manager's office review this matter as an issue of official conduct and judgment, rather than social media moderation, and consider whether the statement aligns with the City of Carlsbad's ethical standards and expectations for elected officials. At minimum, this matter warrants acknowledgment and clarification to mitigate further erosion of public trust.

Thank you for your attention to this issue and for your role in upholding the integrity, professionalism, and public safety obligations of Carlsbad's city governance.

Sincerely,
Anthony Bona
1 Acosta for Council 2024's Post
Acosta for Council 2024 is in Carlsbad.

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STA
l ~Rl S!IIID CITY COUN(ll
I'm both outraged and heartbroken by the deaths of
Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The lawlessness, violence
and coverups from this federal administration have to
stop and there must be consequences.

At the city level, I have been working to keep Carlsbad safe. In December, I made a motion to have our
Carlsbad Police Chief give a public update on ICE
enforcement in Carlsbad, which will take place
February 3rd. I made a motion to have the city support
state legislation to curtail e>etreme face coverings by law enforcement. There is more to come. I will continue to support safety, protest injustice and protect our
rights.

CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless 2 X
Adriana Trujillo
From:

Sent:

To:

Subject:

Kim Piker <[email protected]>
Tuesday, February 3, 2026 2:11 PM
City Clerk
February 3rd City Coucil Meeting -Agenda #5
Dear Mayor and City Council Members,
I'm writing to urge the City of Carlsbad to take proactive steps to protect the constitutional rights and civil liberties of everyone in our community, regardless of immigration status.

I respectfully request that the Council prioritize these safeguards and provide a timeline for implementation.

Thank you for your leadership and for protecting the rights of those who live in Carlsbad.

Sincerely,
Kim Piker
Neighboring City of Encinitas resident
CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content i safe.
1 Adriana Trujillo
From: Council Internet Email
Sent:

To:

Tuesday, February 3, 2026 2:37 PM
City Clerk
Subject:

Attachments:

FW: Letter Regarding Federal Immigration Enforcement
CEA Letter -Federal lmmigration.pdf
From: Scott Davison <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 2:00 PM
To: Council Internet Email <[email protected]>; [email protected] Subject: Letter Regarding Federal Immigration Enforcement Dear Mayor Blackburn, Councilmembers and CUSD Trustees, Please find attached a letter from CEA regarding Item 5 of the Council Agenda this evening.

Best regards,
SCott
Scott Davison
Executive Director, Carlsbad Education Alliance
[email protected] I (619) 905-7181
www.opencusd.org
lnstagram: @cbadedalliance I Facebook: Educate Carlsbad IX: @CbadEdAlliance CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content i safe.
1 February 3, 2026
City of Carlsbad
Attn: City Council
1200 Carlsbad Village Drive
Carlsbad, California 92008
Via E-Mail: council@carls bade a. gov
boardoftrustees(a)carlsbadca.gov
RE: Concerns Over Anti-Police Extremism
Dear Mayor Blackburn, Councilmembers and Carlsbad Unified Trustees:

I.S&
It is concerning to once again see anti-police extremists bring their latest campaign against law enforcement to the City Council with the latest cause celebre, "Abolish ICE." As I noted in our previous letter from May 2025 (attached), these are the same few voices in our community who continue to look for ways to normalize their opposition to the mere existence of law enforcement. It is not difficult to understand that the individuals behind the failed "Abolish the Police" movement are once again attempting to gain traction by targeting specific law enforcement agencies which they believe will achieve more buy in.

Last year we noted that the Moms Demand Action group (which the City often recognizes through resolutions) is fundamentally opposed to the use of School Resource Officers on our CUSD campuses for the same reason that the "Abolish the Police" movement is opposed to law enforcement as a whole: they believe that "policing as an institution is racist."
We urge you to continue to supp01t the Carlsbad Police Depaitment and its eff01ts to enforce all of the laws that keep us safe, including protecting our citizens from anti-police agitators and protecting fellow law enforcement partners in their efforts to enforce our state and federal laws.

The vehicle for opposing laws we disagree with is through peaceful protesting and advocating to elected leaders to change those laws. Instead, a few agitators are now attempting to interfere with law enforcement and convince the City Council to have the Carlsbad Police Depaitment stand aside while they do so. This is not the message that the City should send to its citizens and our children.

Please continue to keep politics -and particularly these fringe political causes -out of our city and law enforcement activities.

Scott Davison
Executive Director, Carlsbad Education Alliance
Resident, D2
Citizen's Academy Graduate, 2024
[email protected] I (619) 905-7181
cc: Carlsbad Unified School District Board of Trustees ( boardofirustees(a)carlsbadusd. net) Carlsbad Education Alliance I www.opencusd.org I [email protected] May 19, 2025
City of Carlsbad
Attn: City Council
1200 Carlsbad Village Drive
Carlsbad, California 92008
Via E-Mail to [email protected]
RE: Concerns over Gun Violence Awareness Proclamation
Dear Mayor Blackburn and Councilmembers:

I was recently informed of the City Council's discussion of possible changes to City Council Policy No. 99 (Proclamations) after a few complaints were received about the political viewpoints ofrecent recipients. In view of the Council's direction to revise the policy relating to the political activity of the recipients, I want to bring your urgent attention to serious concerns with the "Proclamation in Recognition of National Gun Violence Awareness Month" and recipient group, Moms Demand Action, on the agenda for your meeting on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. Given the nature of the Proclamation and the group behind it, it would likely run afoul of any upcoming changes to Policy No. 99 and should likely be pulled from the Council Agenda until the policy is revised to reflect the current sentiment of the Council.

Initially, I want to share my support for the comment by Stephanie Wells, a Moms Demand Action leader, that "Proclamations should reflect the diversity, contributions and values of our entire city -not serve as a vehicle for political branding."
Ironically, the "Proclamation in Recognition of National Gun Violence Awareness Month" was initiated by the group receiving it, Moms Demand Action, as a "vehicle for political branding." Moms Demand Action is a highly politicized anti-police extremist organization funded by billionaire Michael Bloomberg's powerful Super PAC, the "Everytown for Gun Safety Fund." Moms Demand Action solicits donations for the Everytown for Gun Safety Fund PAC on its website1 and endorses (and funds) candidates for political office2 (including current Carlsbad council members and school board trustees).

Moms Demand Action is known for extremist positions, such as advocating for the removal of School Resource Officers, 3 blaming police for gun violence against African Americans ( due to "systemic racism, white supremacy, America's gun culture and the militarization ofpolice"),4 and supporting California legislation to limit a homeowner's right to self-defense, 5 a bill so controversial it was pulled by the author.6
Politically, Michael Bloomberg spent $45,000,000 through the Everytown Fund to elect Democrat candidates in 2024 7 and recently announced another $10,000,000 to elect Democrat attorney generals. 8 1 https://secure.actblue.com/donate/mda-web
2 https://www.instagram.com/p/DIRuaCzpOjv/
3 https://everytownresearch.org/report/how-to-stop-shootings-and-gun-violence-in-schools/ 4 https://everytownresearch.org/repmi/gun-violence-and-the-police/ 5 https://www.everytown.org/press/california-moms-demand-action-and-student-demand-action-volunteers commend-introduction-of-legislation-aimed-at-preventing-armed-extremism-and-vigilante-violence/ 6 https :/ /www .abc 10 .com/article/news/po Ii tics/ california-self-defense-bi 11-pulled-due-misleading-information/ 10 3- 078c5b64-f8c8-4cad-9f55-4133 l 0a8cd3c
7 https ://www.washingtonpost.com/po litics/2024/07 /31 /bloom berg-everytown-gun-safety-election/ 8 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/us/politics/michael-bloomberg-everytown-trump-democrats.html Carlsbad Education Alliance I www.opencusd.org I [email protected] Proclamation for Gun Violence Awareness Month
May 19, 2025

Page 2 ends

The National Gun Violence Awareness Month campaign is an Everytown initiative under the "Wear Orange" campaign9 and is a membership and fundraising10 opp01iunity for Everytown.

Hostility to police and law enforcement is a growing trend in Carlsbad that the Council and the CUSD Board of Trustees urgently need to address. Recently, the Principal of Carlsbad High School forced a guest speaker to remove his vehicle from the parking lot simply because it resembled a Border Patrol vehicle. Why? The Border Patrol is a federal agency which protects Carlsbad from dangerous incursions on our beaches and keeps dangerous drugs like fentanyl from coming across our border and poisoning our children. Even US Representative Mike Levin recently announced a $60M plan to expand the presence of the Border Patrol along Carlsbad beaches. 11 A high-level administrator demonstrating this type of hostility toward law enforcement is a black mark on our city and our schools.

This Wednesday, the Carlsbad Unified Board of Trustees will be discussing a proposed course on Ethnic Studies, a subject known to fault policing as a tool used by white supremacists against marginalized communities. Last year's Ethnic Studies class at Carlsbad High School included a lesson labeling the police as a "Repressive State Apparatus" used by the "Dominant Culture" to oppress minorities. At some point, Ethnic Studies will be required for every graduate. Unsurprisingly, Ethnic Studies is being supported by the same groups and individuals sponsoring the Gun Violence Awareness Proclamation.

It is unfortunate that the Council is continuing a pattern of capitulating to a few loud voices who are unable to tolerate people with different views (while unironically demanding "diversity"). This behavior sets a bad example for our students, who are in desperate need of role models that encourage civil discourse and respect others with different views. If we truly want Proclamations to reflect the diversity of our city, providing them to groups with conservative values should be just as acceptable as providing them to groups with liberal values, and just as acceptable as providing them to groups who are pro-law enforcement and those who are anti-law enforcement.

However, if the Council is inclined to prohibit individuals or groups from being recognized simply because of their viewpoints, withdrawing tomorrow's political branding by an anti-police group seems like a good place to start.

Scott Davison
Executive Director, Carlsbad Education Alliance
Resident, D2
Citizen's Academy Graduate, 2024
[email protected] I (619) 905-7181
cc: Carlsbad Unified School District Board of Trustees (boardo(lrustees(ci),carlsbadusd.net) Rick Schmitt, Interim Superintendent (rschmitt(a),carlsbadusd.net) Julie Redfield, Principal, Carlsbad High School (iredfield(a),carlsbadusd.net) 9 https://everytownsupportfund.org/initiatives/
10 https://store.everytown.org/collections/wear-orange
11 https://levin.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-mike-levin-calls-for-60-million-in-federal-funding-to-prevent future-boat-smuggling-incidents
Adriana Trujillo
From:

Sent:

To:

Cc:

Subject:
marcella wilbur <[email protected]>
Tuesday, February 3, 2026 3:35 PM
City Clerk
Marcella Wilbur
Comments on Agenda Item 5 Agenda item #5 UPDATE ON FEDERAL ACTIVITIES IN THE CITY OF CARLSBAD -February 3 Meeting
Dear Mayor and City Council Members,
I want to extend my gratitude to you and the City of Carlsbad Police Department for ensuring our Carlsbad community always feels safe and welcoming to all people. I very much appreciate the effort you put in to be responsive to the needs of the people in this community. I am sure you intend to continue to do that even in these very trying times.

My main concern is the OHS representatives who are claiming to be ICE have become a gang of unlawful delinquents who come into communities to terrorize, kidnap and harm the citizens of the community. I am looking to the Carlsbad City Council and the Carlsbad Police Department to protect the peaceful citizens of the community and their rights from any confrontations from these OHS agents. I am also looking to you to hold anyone who breaks California law to be held accountable.

Thank you very much for your service to Carlsbad.

Sincerely,
Marcella Wilbur
6664 Towhee Lane
Carlsbad, CA 92011
CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless ou recognize the sender and know the content i safe.
1 From: Council Internet Email
To: City Clerk
Subject: FW: Concern about Immigration Enforcement Activity in Our Community Date: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 3:46:59 PM
Agenda item 5

From: Valencia Porter <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 3:46 PM
To:

Council Internet Email <[email protected]>
Subject: Concern about Immigration Enforcement Activity in Our Community

Hello,
I am a resident and homeowner in Carlsbad for the last 24 years as well as a Carlsbad business owner. I am concerned about immigration enforcement activity in our community under this current administration. Not only has there been a lack of due process, but targeting children and families as they are going to and from school has created chaos, danger and trauma to not only those families but the community-at- large. I am urging Carlsbad City staff to collaborate with the school district and Carlsbad Police to ensure that children will not be exposed to violent and traumatizing interactions with federal law enforcement particularly:
while going to and from shool
in city facilities and programs (recreation centers, libraries, summer camps) Keep Carlsbad residents safe!
Thank you for your consideration,
Valencia Porter
CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.
•
•

Morgen Fry
From:

Subject:

Attachments:

City Clerk
• -2-\-,{~ Cov.v, {,l,~ All Receive - Agenda Item# J2._ t'\«,..,-\I v-W For the Information of th~:
0 .., F,ITY COUNCIL
Date ~\2lo cA _cc _
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FW: Please see the attached letter re (1) offering to supply the City Council and Chief of Police with free window decals stating "I Support My Local Police" and (2) Demand that City Officials Stop Violating the First Amendment by Making "No Applause" Ann lettter to City of CARLSBAD RE NO CLAPPING RULE Office of the City Attorney .docx From: Letitia Pepper <letitiaepepper@yahoo .com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 4, 2026 5:02 PM
Cc: Council Internet Email <council@carlsbadca .gov>; City Attorney <attorney@carlsbadca .gov>; Manager Internet Email <manager@carlsbadca .gov>; Police <police@carlsbadca .gov> Subject: Please see the attached letter re (1) offering to supply the City Council and Chief of Police with free window decals stating "I Support My Local Police" and (2) Demand that City Officials Stop Violating the First Amendment by Making "No Applause" Anno ...

CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content i safe.
1 Office of the City Attorney
City of Carlsbad
1200 Carlsbad Village Drive
Carlsbad, CA 92008
February 4, 2026
Re: (1) Offer to Provide the Carlsbad Police Department with Free Window Decals That Say, "I Support My Local Police"
(2) Demand that All Members of the City Council, Including Anyone Acting as Presiding Officer, Honor Their Oaths to Support the U.S. Constitution, By Not Chilling Protected Speech with "No Clapping" Announcements Introduction
I attended the February 3, 2026 Carlsbad City Council meeting. I did not arrive at the beginning because the closest parking lots and street parking areas were full, and, due to physical problems caused by untrained/improperly trained San Diego Unified School District "Police Officers," I couldn't run or even quickly wall< to the meeting.

I therefore did not hear an announcement apparently made at the beginning of the meeting that no clapping (or, presumably, other forms by which audiences typically indicate their opinions of a speaker's comments) was allowed. That announcement violated everyone's free speech rights, by impermissibly chilling protected speech. That issue is discussed in the second section of this letter.

1. Support Your Local Police
Many people were there to voice their opinions about ICE. Some of the speakers' comments indicated that they were, IMHO, unreasonably afraid that they, patently older, middle and upper middle-class Caucasian Americans, were going to be stopped, questioned and possibly even abducted or killed by ICE. A small group of elementary and kindergarten aged-Caucasian children even did a presentation in which they expressed their personal fear of ICE.

After the public comments, the City Council members grilled the City's Chief of Police (who had already presented them with an excellent, detailed report about the CPD and ICE which had been read to the public) on these issues. It was clear that both the public and the City Council wanted their local police to protect them from ICE.

It is refreshing indeed to hear people actually looking up to their local police department and its officers. I have "I Support My Local Police" decals on all my vehicles. therefore would be honored to provide the Chief of Police and the City Council Members with40 such decals for free, and information on how to order more.

2. It Is the City Council's and City Attorney's Duty to Defend the First Amendment.

Therefore, the City Must Stop Violating the First Amendment by Making Any Announcements that Chill Protected Speech
Introduction
To hold public office, everyone is required to take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. There is a legal presumption that every member of the Carlsbad City Council, and that all other City officials, including the City Attorney, have done so.

The very first part of our Constitution is the Bill of Rights, and the very first right in that Bill is the First Amendment. They are first because the Founders of this country knew they were the most important items to ensure freedom and liberty for all.

The purpose of the Bill of Rights is to make it clear that the individual citizens of this country have precedence over governments. Individuals have constitutional rights that no government can destroy. American is the only country that was founded on individual rights given to us by God, not governments, which is why they are inalienable.

Free Speech Covers More than the Spoken Word and Individuals, not Government, Choose Their Form of Speech at Public Meetings
Speech involves more than spoken words. It can be words printed on cardboard and on T-shirts. It can be hand signals, including gang signs, American sign language, and an upraised middle finger. It also can be catcalls, applause, stomping feet. These are all forms of speech, because they convey meanings that can be understood, and they all constitute "free speech."
"Free speech" obviously means that individuals, not the government, get to choose their mode of conveying meaning. This means that at public meetings, individuals get to decide if they want to demonstrate approval or disapproval of what has just happened in any mode of free speech, just so long as it does not disrupt the meeting.

Only Actual Disruption May Be Banned
Disruption means behavior that makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult to conduct business, not merely speech that is boisterous or critical. Examples are excessive noise, preventing others from speaking, refusing to adhere to time limits, or violating lawful, reasonable (i.e., constitutionally sound) rules of conduct. Legally, any disruption must be "actual" rather than based on the content of the speech, or the preference of a government official, thereby ensuring protected First Amendment rights are not violated.

Any Free Speech that Occurs During the Period Between One Speaker Reaching the Podium and the Next Speaker Taking the Podium Is, by Definition, Not Disruptive At City Council meetings, speakers are called in turn to a podium and given a set amount of time to speak. When they finish, they must turn around and go back to the audience or leave. The time after a speaker finishes, and until the next person arrives at the podium, is the time during which, traditionally, an audience's members may choose to express support or disapproval of that speaker's points. The purpose of such audience participation is to allow the City Council, which is supposed consider the opinions of the public represents, to learn something about public opinion.

Free speech, in any form, whether clapping, booing, foot stomping or finger snapping a la West Side Story, which occurs during that limited period of time and which ends so the next speaker can begin, legally cannot be considered disruptive, because it is not actually preventing anyone from speaking or from being heard.

Mere Excuses Cannot Be Used to Defeat Individuals' First Amendment Rights Ironically, the February 3, 2026 meeting was not interrupted by my applause of a few speakers. It was interrupted because the Mayor decided to take call a break so he could come and personally plead with me not to applaud, possibly as a personal favor.

In attempting to persuade me to give up my First Amendment rights, he gave me several excuses for prohibiting non-disruptive speech.

First, he claimed that clapping slowed meetings down. I pointed out that because free speech, including clapping, normally takes place just as described above, between speakers, it does not slow meetings down. The Mayor then expressed his concerns that people would not stop free speech as soon as the next person arrived at the podium. I said this is easily remedied by reminding the audience to end their protected free speech as soon as the next speaker reaches the podium.

Next, he expressed concerns for individuals who are so timid that they are easily discouraged from speaking by fear of an audience's response, and so, apparently, their free speech rights must be protected at the expense of the audience members' free speech rights. Such a rationale for chilling free speech is clearly unconstitutional; the government may not lawfully protect one person's free speech rights while censoring others'.

Conclusion/Demand
It is unlawful to make announcements at the beginning of public meetings (or during them) that chill the public's free speech rights. Therefore, I kindly demand that City officials stop making any such announcements, including the ubiquitous "no applause" announcement.

Thank you for your anticipated attention to and cooperation on this very important Constitutional principle,
Letitia E. Pepper, SBL 105277
1718 Hicks Street
Oceanside, CA 92054
Morgen Fry
From: City Clerk
Subject: FW: Demand to Cure & Correct - Council Meeting from Feb. 3, 2026 Attachments: Carlsbad CC Brown Act Violation - 02-03-2026.pdf; Screenshot - Carlsbad City Council 02-03-2026 - Item 5 - Update on Federal Activities in the City of Carlsbad.png From: Mary Davis <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 4, 2026 10:59 AM
To: City Attorney <[email protected]>
Cc: Manager Internet Email <[email protected]>; Keith Blackburn <[email protected]> Subject: Demand to Cure & Correct - Council Meeting from Feb. 3, 2026 February 4, 2026
Office of the City Attorney
City of Carlsbad
1200 Carlsbad Village Drive
Carlsbad, CA 92008
Re: Brown Act "Cure and Correct" Demand
February 3, 2026 Carlsbad City Council Meeting
Item 5 ("Update on federal activities in Carlsbad")
Dear City Attorney:

I attended (in person) the Carlsbad City Council meeting on Tuesday, February 3, 2026. I write pursuant to the Ralph M. Brown Act (Gov. Code §§ 54950 et seq.) to demand that the City Council cure and correct an action taken in violation of the Brown Act during that meeting.

According to the published agenda for the February 3,, 2026 regular City Council meeting, Item 5 was listed as "Update on Federal Activities in the City of Carlsbad," with the staff recommendation to "Accept the report." The agenda did not state that the Council would consider or take action on any policy, directive, resolution, or direction to staff beyond receiving and accepting the informational report. The item therefore reasonably appeared to be a report-only item.

During Item 5, following the Chief of Police's presentation and public comment regarding the City's interactions with federal immigration authorities, a council member (Councilwoman Teresa Acosta) requested that the City move forward with posting "Know Your Rights" information on the City's website. The City Manager responded on the record that he already intended to proceed with such a posting and did not require Council authority to do so. Nevertheless, Councilmember Acosta insisted on a formal vote "to put it on the record," and the Council proceeded to take a motion, second, and vote directing staff to post "Know Your Rights" information on the City's website.

This vote constituted an action of the legislative body and a directive to staff that went beyond the scope of the agendized recommendation to "Accept the report." Gov. Code§ 54954.2(a) requires that agendas contain a "brief general description" of each item of business to be transacted or discussed, 1 and further provides that "[n]o action or discussion shall be undertaken on any item not appearing on the posted agenda" except for narrow emergency and urgency exceptions. The California Attorney General and multiple Brown Act guides emphasize that a legislative body may not act on items of business that are not identified on the posted agenda in a manner that reasonably informs the public that action may be taken.

Here, the agenda's description of Item 5 as an "Update on Federal Activities in the City of Carlsbad" with a recommendation to "Accept the report" did not reasonably inform the public that the City Council might consider and vote on directing staff to post "Know Your Rights" materials on the City's website. Members of the public concerned about such a directive had no notice that a policy decision or directive relating to "Know Your Rights" information would be considered or acted upon at this meeting.

The insistence by a council member on taking a formal recorded vote, over the City Manager's statement that he already planned to act administratively, underscores that this was more than a mere clarification or brief response; it was a distinct item of business and a substantive direction given without proper agenda notice. It a/so clearly shifted the authority from the City Manager and made this a Council-initiated directive and mandate (ergo, an un-agendaized action item.) By taking this vote, the Council violated Gov. Code§ 54954.2's prohibition on taking action on items not appearing on the posted agenda. As you know, the Brown Act allows any interested person to demand that the legislative body cure and correct such a violation by nullifying the action taken and, if the body chooses, reconsidering the matter at a properly noticed future meeting.

Accordingly, I hereby demand that the City Council:

1. Formally rescind or nullify, at a noticed public meeting, the February 3, 2026 vote taken under Item 5 directing staff to post "Know Your Rights" information on the City's website; and

2. If the Council wishes to reconsider this directive, re-agendize the item at a future meeting with a clear agenda description indicating that the Council may discuss and take action on whether and how to post "Know Your Rights" information on the City's website.

This demand is made within 90 days of the date on which the challenged action was taken, as required by Gov. Code§ 54960.1 (c). Please consider this a written demand to cure and correct under that section. If the City Council does not cure and correct the violation within the statutory period, I reserve all rights to pursue appropriate remedies as provided by the Brown Act.

I would appreciate a written response outlining how the City intends to address this issue. I remain supportive of transparent and lawful public decision-making and hope the Council will take this opportunity to reinforce full compliance with the Brown Act for future agenda descriptions and actions. Council members must remember that politicized stunts have real-world consequences. Gov.

Code compliance is NOT optional.

Sincerely,
Mary Davis
Government Watchdog & Steward
2 Screenshot of Item 5 agenda wording:

ORDINANCES FOR ADOPTION:

3. ORDINANCE NOS. CS-506 AND CS-507 - 2025 ACCESSORY DWELLING UNIT AMENDMENTS 1) Adoption of Ordinance No. CS-506 adopting amendments to Title 21, Zoning Code, of the Carlsbad Municipal Code and Local Coastal Program to ensure consistency with state law related to accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units (Case Name: 2025 Accessory Dwelling Unit Amendment; Case No.: ZCA 2025-0001/LCPA 2025-0023/PUB 2025-0009); and 2) Adopt Ordinance No. CS-507 adopting amendments to Title 6, Health and Sanitation, and Title 20, Subdivisions, of the Carlsbad Municipal Code, to ensure consistency with state law related to accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units (Case Name: 2025 Accessory Dwelling Unit Amendment; Case No.: MCA 2025-0002/PUB 2025-0009). (Staff contact: Morgen Fry, City Clerk) City Manager's Recommendation: Adopt Ordinance Nos. CS-506 and CS-507.

PUBLIC HEARINGS: None.

DEPARTMENTAL AND CITY MANAGER REPORTS

4. WORK PLANS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2025-26 FOR THE LIBRARY BOARD OF TRUSTEES AND THE ARTS COMMISSION - 1) Adoption of a resolution accepting the fiscal year 2024-25 work plan report of accomplishments and approving the fiscal year 2025-26 work plan for the Library Board of Trustees; and
2) Adoption of a resolution accepting the fiscal year 2024-25 work plan report of accomplishments and approving the fiscal year 2025-26 work plan for the arts commission. (Staff contact: Suzanne Smithson and Craddock Stropes, Community Services)
City Manager's Recommendation: Adopt the resolutions.

5. UPDATE ON FEDERAL ACTIVITIES IN THE CITY OF CARLSBAD- Receive an update on what the Carlsbad Police Department has observed in terms of federal activities within the City of Carlsbad. (Staff contact:

Christie Calderwood, Police Department and Jennifer True, City Attorney) City Manager's Recommendation: Receive the update.

COUNCIL COMMENTARY AND REQUESTS FOR CONSIDERATION OF MATTERS: This portion of the agenda is for the City Council Members to make brief announcements, brief reports of their activities and requests for future agenda items.

City Council Regional Assignments (Revised 01/15/2026)
Keith Blackburn Bu(•n,1 V,,L, L,goon JPl
Mayor (hdtriUer uf (0frtff1c1tz~ Ltd1\UP (dltcrc1t-i.tc) (lr•,1:1 !'("!KV !:dli.Jnle JP/, (,xltc:tildtc)
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Mayor Pro Tern - District 3 Clea,, Ln"flW A'1,Jr,t c JP/, [cc1·0,,1,i:_ Dc 11ckipr>1c11t s,.1bc01n1:1ittce
Feb. 3,2026
CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content i 3 February 4, 2026
Office of the City Attorney
City of Carlsbad
1200 Carlsbad Village Drive
Carlsbad, CA 92008
Re: Brown Act "Cure and Correct" Demand
February 3, 2026 Carlsbad City Council Meeting
Item 5 ("Update on federal activities in Carlsbad")
Dear City Attorney:

I attended (in person) the Carlsbad City Council meeting on Tuesday, February 3, 2026. I write pursuant to the Ralph M. Brown Act (Gov. Code§§ 54950 et seq.) to demand that the City Council cure and correct an action taken in violation of the Brown Act during that meeting.

This vote constituted an action of the legislative body and a directive to staff that went beyond the scope of the agendized recommendation to "Accept the report." Gov. Code § 54954.2(a) requires that agendas contain a "brief general description" of each item of business to be transacted or discussed, and further provides that "[n]o action or discussion shall be undertaken on any item not appearing on the posted agenda" except for narrow emergency and urgency exceptions. The California Attorney General and multiple Brown Act guides emphasize that a legislative body may not act on items of business that are not identified on the posted agenda in a manner that reasonably informs the public that action may be taken.

The insistence by a council member on taking a formal recorded vote, over the City Manager's statement that he already planned to act administratively, underscores that this was more than a mere clarification or brief response; it was a distinct item of business and a substantive direction given without proper agenda notice. It also clearly shifted the authority from the City Manager and made this a Council-initiated directive and mandate (ergo, an un-agendaized action item.)
By taking this vote, the Council violated Gov. Code§ 54954.2's prohibition on taking action on items not appearing on the posted agenda. As you know, the Brown Act allows any interested person to demand that the legislative body cure and correct such a violation by nullifying the action taken and, if the body chooses, reconsidering the matter at a properly noticed future meeting.

Accordingly, I hereby demand that the City Council:

1. Formally rescind or nullify, at a noticed public meeting, the February 3, 2026 vote taken under Item 5 directing staff to post "Know Your Rights" information on the City's website; and

This demand is made within 90 days of the date on which the challenged action was taken, as required by Gov. Code § 54960.1 ( c). Please consider this a written demand to cure and correct under that section. If the City Council does not cure and correct the violation within the statutory period, I reserve all rights to pursue appropriate remedies as provided by the Brown Act.

Sincerely,
Mary Davis
ORDINANCES FOR ADOPTION:
~- ORDtNANCE NOS. CS-506 AND CS-.507 - 2025 ACCESSORY DWELLING UNIT AMENDMENTS 1} Adoption of Ordinance No. CS-506 adopting amendments to Tide 21., Zoning Code, of the Carlsbad Municipal Code and Local Coastal Program to ensure consistency vr1ith state law related to accessory dwelling units .and junior accessory dwelling units (Case Name: 2025 Accessory Dwelling Unit Amendment; Case No.: ZCA 2025-0001/L.CPA 2025-0023/PUB 2025-0009}; and 2} Adopt Ordinance No. CS~507 adopting amendments to Title 6 .. Health and S.anit11tioni and Title 20, Subdivisions, of the Carlsbad Municipal Code1 to ensure consistency with state law related to accessory dwelling units .and junior 111ccessorv dwelltng units (Case Name: 2025 Accessory Dwelling Unit Amendment; Case No.: MCA 2025-0002/PUB 2025-0009). (Staff contact: Morgen Fry, City Clerk) City Manager's Recommendation: Adopt Ordinance Nos. CS-506 and CS-507.

PUBLIC HEARINGS: None.

DEPARTMENTAL AND cnv MANAGER REPORTS.

4. WORK PLANS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2025-26 FOR THE UBRARY BOARD OF TRUS.T£ES AND THE ARTS.

COMMISSION - 1) Adoption of a resolution accepting the fiscal year 2024-25 work plan report of accomplishments and approving the fiscal year 2025-26 work plan for the librnrv Board of Trustees.:
and
2} Adoption of a resolution accepting the fiscal year 2024-25 work plan report of accomplishments and approving the fiscal year 2025-26 work plan for the arts commission. [Staff contact: Suzanne Smithson and Craddock Stropes, Community Services.)
Clty Manager's Recommendation: Adopt the resolutions.

5. UPDATE ON FEDERAl ACTIVfflES IN THE CITY OF CARLSBAD-Receive an update on what the Carlsbad Police Department has observed in terms of federal activities within the City of Carlsbad. {Staff contact:

Chris.tie Calderwood, Police Department and Jennifer True, City Attorney) City Manager's Recommendation: Receive the update.

COUNCIL COMMENTARY AND REQUESTS FOR CONSIDERATION OE MAmRs~ This portion of the agenda is for the City Council Members to make brief announcements, brief reports of their activities and requests for future agenda items.

City CrnmcH Regiooal Assignments (ReviSced 01/15/2026)
Keith Bla,ekbum [.!.u,_•r1c1 V:~1s L:igo1Jn JPC
Mayor
t.:le,in Lr:.1.:crgy ,il,iliani.:.i::

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L1n:1n,:, '/1,':1:;to:_••,\ldler A1..d.l:011tv L\1jJlci of ll:t,:ctms. s.,~.r,JD.AG [~1.).Jrd i::,f :.kc,_t~r:; (2 ;1111.121 JlJt,~I ~ .. i::.,r,JlJAG ::.huk1t1,e Pr£:,.l.'1 vrJlicl' \,Vork Gioup l..:111.1:: n,n,J Priya Bhat~Patel Lit'('/c:,r.huo1 C:orn11:1tti:!1_·
Mayor Pro Tern - District 3 1]e::'.l1 1 (11r~rg•~ ,1,ikn1i.:.,2 _iP,e,, [.~.::; ri ,:.:-tn ;c Dc•.11.: lop111(•r11 Su::.:icJ rr 1rn1tr.cr.:

Feb. 3, 2026
Morgen Fry
From:

Subject:

City Clerk
FW: Thank you for not arresting me, or anyone else, for clapping last night, or in the future. Thank you for your anticipated withdrawal of all First Amendment-chilling comments to the public at future public meeting
From: Letitia Pepper <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 4, 2026 11:32 PM
To: Council Internet Email <[email protected]>; City Attorney - COVID <[email protected]>; Manager Internet Email <[email protected]>
Subject: Thank you for not arresting me, or anyone else, for clapping last night, or in the future. Thank you for your anticipated withdrawal of all First Amendment-chilling comments to the public at future public meeting RIVERSIDE: Resident, city settle clapping suit- Press Enterprise https :/ /www.pressenterprise.com/20 l 5 /06/04/ri verside-resident-city-settle clapping
suit/#:,--,:text=After%20spending%20more%20than%20$186%2C000%20 on%20legal,city%20officials%20have%20done%20little%20to%20preven t
CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless ou recognize the sender and know the content i safe.
1 Morgen Fry
From:

Sent:

To:

Cc:

Subject:

Attachments:

Mike Borrello <[email protected]>
Saturday, February 7, 2026 10:49 AM
Keith Blackburn; Council Internet Email
[email protected]; City Clerk; City Attorney
Let's restore free speech in Carlsbad
Clapping as Protected First Amendment Expression.pdf
Dear Mayor, City Council, and Staff
At our last general council meeting, and immediately after I addressed council, I received a well appreciated surprise - a lone person clapping. It turned out to be an old friend, Letita, a retired attorney from Oceanside. She told me it was the first time she's attended a Carlsbad Council Meeting, but perhaps you've seen her before at past County Board of Supervisor's meetings. Of course she was admonished by the Mayor, who approached her after calling a recess to personally explain to her the 'rules'. I had to leave, but imagine rather it was the Mayor that received an ear full. You see Letita's been down that road before having successfully sued the City of Riverside over the same matter where she won a settlement.

Clapping is within the scope of the First Amendment, considered "Symbolic Expressions". If you remove, or else whittle away, piece by piece the elements of the First Amendment, you whittle away at the core of Liberty. And that has been disturbing me deeply. And so this morning I finished some research on the matter and prepared a brief that I hope you will all read and seriously consider revising our city policies on public engagement and discourse.

I've often said "Covid Ain't Over" ... I believe that's true for a number of reasons besides lingering now impotent viral strains, but one reason includes how horribly public officials treated the people during covid. Hammering down of public discourse including [polite and non disruptive] clapping was fallout that remains. It's time to to un ratchet and reverse these behaviors.

I have also copied the city clerk in this communication. CITY CLERK: please include this email and its attachment as a public communication in city records for public access since it serves the Public Interest. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Mike Borrello
Carlsbad Resident
CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content i safe.
1 Clapping as Protected First Amendment Expression
Mike Borrello Feb 7, 2026
Clapping after a speaker finishes is generally considered symbolic or expressive conduct, which falls within the scope of the Constitution's First Amendment protection of free speech. The Supreme Court has long recognized that the First Amendment extends beyond mere words to include nonverbal expressions of agreement, approval, or disapproval, if they convey a paiiicularized message likely to be understood by others. For instance, in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), the Court protected students' armbands as symbolic speech protesting the Vietnam War, emphasizing that such expression is shielded unless it substantially disrupts government operations. Similarly, clapping-or even booing-can symbolize support or dissent, providing "valuable feedback" to all involved parties, without necessarily being verbal.

However, this protection isn't absolute in government settings like city council meetings. These are typically classified as "limited public forums" under First Amendment doctrine (see Perry Education Ass 'n v. Perry Local Educators' Ass 'n, 1983). In such forums, the government can impose reasonable time, place, and manner (TPM) restrictions on speech if they are:
• Content-neutral (not targeting the message itself),
• Narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest (e.g., maintaining order or efficiency), and
• Leave open ample alternative channels for expression.

Restrictions that are content-based (favoring or disfavoring certain topics) or viewpoint-based (favoring one side of a debate, like approval over criticism) trigger strict scrutiny, requiring the government to show the rule is narrowly tailored to a compelling interest-a much higher bar that's rarely met.

If a clapping ban is enforced only when it disrupts proceedings ( e.g., prolonged applause drowning out speakers), it might pass muster as a reasonable TPM restriction. But a blanket ban on non-disruptive clapping could violate the First Amendment by suppressing expressive conduct without reasonable justification.

Courts have emphasized that "disruption" must be actual, not merely potential or speculative (see further below case law).
1 Analysis of Carlsbad's Policy and the Mayor's Enforcement Based on publicly available evidence including meeting agendas and transcripts from Carlsbad City Council meetings (e.g., from 2022 and 2024), the city's policy on public speakers does not strictly prohibit clapping however 'politely' however coercively shuts it down under the pretense of being "disruptive to business".

While the policy references the Brown Act, there's no explicit clapping restriction in the Brown Act-mandated public comment notice, but the mayor or presiding officer routinely announces a guideline welcoming clapping during "ceremonial presentations" (like proclamations and awards) while asking attendees to:
"Refrain from clapping during the business section of the meeting, starting with the non-agenda public comment."
The stated rationale is to ensure "the people's business can be conducted efficiently" and that the chamber remains "a place where all points of view are welcomed and respected."
The city's invocation of "the people's business can be conducted efficiently" as a justification for banning clapping during public comment periods is not only a thin veil for suppressing dissent but also a profound hypocrisy that undermines the very democratic principles it purports to uphold. At its core, this rhetoric co-opts the language of public service to prioritize the council's comfort and agenda over genuine civic engagement, effectively redefining "the people's business" as whatever aligns with the officials' preferences while marginalizing the voices of the actual people they serve.

Consider the mechanics of a city council meeting: Public comment is explicitly mandated by the Brown Act (Gov. Code§ 54954.3) to ensure residents can address their representatives on matters of local governance, including criticism of policies or officials. This is the essence of "the people's business"-a forum for collective input, feedback, and accountability. Clapping, booing, or even silence in response to a speaker serves as a communal barometer, signaling to both the council and fellow attendees the resonance ( or lack thereof) of ideas presented. By curtailing these non-disruptive expressions under the guise of efficiency, the city doesn't expedite "the people's business"; it sanitizes it, stripping away the raw, unfiltered reactions that inform public discourse. This silence doesn't prevent disruption-it enforces a one-way communication where speakers (often courageous residents challenging the status quo) are isolated, their words hanging in a vacuum without the affirming or dissenting echoes from the community. In 2 effect, the policy protects the council from the discomfort of visible disapproval, particularly when criticism targets "THEM" (officials), while claiming to safeguard efficiency for "US" (the people).

The hypocrisy deepens when juxtaposed against the selective enforcement further addressed below. During ceremonial presentations-proclamations and awards that are inherently positive and council-endorsed-clapping is not only permitted but encouraged, allowing expressions of approval for state-sanctioned narratives. This creates a bifurcated forum: One segment celebrates alignment with authority ( clapping welcome), while the other, where residents might expose flaws in that authority, demands sterile neutrality ( clapping banned). If efficiency were truly the goal, why does applause during awards not derail "the people's business"? The answer lies in viewpoint favoritism: The policy amplifies support for the council's actions while muting potential opposition, violating First Amendment neutrality requirements as outlined in cases like Reed v. Town of Gilbert (2015), where the Supreme Court struck down rules that treated similar expressions differently based on content or viewpoint.

Moreover, this approach erodes trust in local government by signaling that "efficiency" is code for control. Historical precedents, such as the evolution of meeting decorum rules in California, post-1990s, show that such bans often emerged amid rising public activism, not organic disruptions. By framing clapping as inherently disruptive-regardless of its brevity or volume-the city preemptively disempowers the audience, discouraging participation from those who might fear admonishment or ejection. This isn't efficient; it's exclusion, prioritizing the council's uninterrupted monologue over the people's dialogue. If the goal is truly to conduct "the people's business," the city should embrace these expressions as vital feedback, perhaps by adopting less restrictive alternatives like time-limited responses or clear guidelines for actual disruptions, as suggested in Ninth Circuit rulings like Norse v. City of Santa Cruz (2010).

In challenging this policy, one could argue in court that it fails even intermediate scrutiny for limited public forums: It's not narrowly tailored (blanket bans ignore non-disruptive instances) and lacks content neutrality (favoring pro-council expression). Ultimately, this rhetoric exposes a paternalistic view where officials decide what constitutes "the people's business," sidelining the people themselves, especially those bold enough to critique power. This not only chills free speech but betrays the democratic compact, turning public meetings into performative theater rather than arenas for accountability.
3 To summarize, this enforcement-admonishing clappers as "disruptive" and claiming it impedes the council from completing its duties-constitutes state action under the First Amendment, as the mayor is acting in an official capacity to regulate expression in a public forum. (The Brown Act, California's open-meeting law, requires public comment periods but doesn't prohibit audience reactions like clapping; it explicitly bars prohibiting criticism of the agency.) 1 From a strict legal perspective:
• If the ban is applied to non-disruptive clapping: This likely violates the First Amendment. Courts in the Ninth Circuit (which includes California) have ruled that public bodies cannot preemptively ban expressive conduct unless it actually disrupts the meeting. In Norse v. City of Santa Cruz (9th Cir. 2010), the court held that ejecting a speaker for a Nazi salute (non-verbal expression) without evidence of actual disruption was unconstitutional, stressing: "The City cannot define disruption so as to include non disruption." A blanket no-clapping rule during public comment, even if politely phrased as a "request," becomes coercive when enforced with admonishments or threats of removal, potentially chilling speech. • Efficiency and civility as justifications: The city's interest in efficient meetings is significant, but a total ban isn't narrowly tailored if clapping is brief and non-disruptive. Alternatives like time limits on comments or warnings for prolonged applause exist. Claims of "disruption" must be substantiated; mere annoyance or feedback (positive or negative) doesn't qualify. As one legal analysis notes, bans on clapping under the guise of "civility" often mask efforts to minimize dissent against city policies.

Historically, clapping was indeed more freely allowed at public meetings decades ago, before many local governments adopted stricter decorum rules in the 1990s and 2000s amid rising polarization. For example, pre-1990 accounts of California city councils (including in the Ninth Circuit's early cases) show applause as common without routine bans. The shift often tied to broader trends in meeting management, though some attribute it to cultural changes ( as you mentioned), but legally, motivation is irrelevant if the effect suppresses protected speech. 1 firstamendmentcoalition.org
4 According to other analyses and expert commentary, stricter decorum rules in public meetings, including bans on clapping or similar expressions, have exacerbated political polarization rather than merely responding to it. While the initial adoption of these rules in the 1990s and 2000s was often framed as a reaction to rising disruptions amid growing partisanship, they can create a feedback loop that intensifies division. Here's a breakdown of why, drawing from legal, sociological, and governance perspectives:

Perceptions of Censorship and Suppression of Dissent
When local governments impose blanket restrictions on non-disruptive expressions like clapping or booing-often under the banner of "efficiency" or "civility"-it can be interpreted by participants as an attempt to sanitize debate and shield officials from accountability. This perception fosters resentment, particularly among those who feel their views ( e.g., criticism of policies) are being disproportionately silenced compared to pro-government sentiments ( as in the selective allowance during awards ceremonies). Legal scholars note that such rules, if seen as overreach, entrench distrust in institutions, pushing frustrated individuals toward more extreme or unregulated forums like social media, where echo chambers amplify polarization. 2
For instance, in managing "angry mobs" at meetings, guidelines emphasize empathy and alternative forums for dialogue but warn that enforcement perceived as suppressive "may further entrench distrust," hindering compromise and deepening community divides.

Reduced Civic Engagement and Alienation
Stricter decorum can deter broader participation, especially from marginalized or dissenting voices who might already feel intimidated. This creates an "us-versus them" dynamic, where meetings become echo chambers for aligned attendees, while outsiders grow more alienated. Surveys of local officials highlight how national "culture war" issues spill into local forums, causing conflicts; if rules limit reactions, it may reduce opportunities for shared understanding, instead escalating hostility. 3
2 ca-ilg.org
3 carnegie.org
5 In Indiana, for example, legislation allowing local definitions of decorum ( with "three strikes" enforcement) aims to make meetings more accessible by curbing monopolizing disruptions, but critics argue it alienates groups and intensifies free speech conflicts, potentially worsening polarization by limiting expressive actions that build communal feedback. 4
Historically, as polarization rose, these rules coincided with declining trust in local gove1nment, suggesting a cyclical effect where restrictions not only fail to de escalate but fuel further disengagement and extremism.

Broader Structural Impacts in an Era of Polarization
In the context of state-local power struggles, restrictions on local meeting conduct reflect a broader "dilemma of localism": empowering decentralization for innovation while checking parochialism. However, in polarized times, state interventions ( or local self-restrictions) that constrain expression can amplify tensions between cities and states, or within communities, by reducing local autonomy and dialogue. 5 Training programs to combat incivility, like those from Braver Angels and the Institute for Local Government, focus on skills for handling disruptions without strict bans, implying that overly rigid rules might be counterproductive by failing to address underlying contempt. 6 National trends show polarization creeping into local governance, with lack of civility contributing to gridlock; if decorum enforcement prioritizes order over inclusion, it risks exacerbating this by modeling top-down control rather than collaborative discourse. 7
The potential for exacerbation lies in the execution: Balanced, viewpoint-neutral approaches ( e.g., focusing on actual disruptions) can mitigate, while blanket or selective bans may backfire.

The Hypocrisy: Viewpoint Discrimination in Allowing Clapping Selectively The policy's inconsistency-permitting clapping during proclamations/awards ( city-endorsed, often positive events) but banning it during public comment/business (where speakers may criticize policies)--raises serious 4 indianacapitalchronicle.com
5 yalelawjournal.org
6 westerncity.com
7 naco.org
6 constitutional concerns. This isn't mere hypocrisy; it could constitute viewpoint discrimination, which is presumptively unconstitutional in any forum. • Proclamations and awards are "state actions" endorsing certain views or achievements, and allowing applause there effectively favors pro government expression. In contrast, banning reactions during public comment silences feedback on potentially controversial topics, disproportionately affecting dissent ( e.g., no clapping or booing for criticism of city actions). The Ninth Circuit has repeatedly struck down rules that prohibit criticism while allowing praise, as in Chaker v. Crogan (9th Cir. 2005), where a law shielding officials from defamation but not critics was invalidated. Similarly, in Leventhal v. Vista Unified School District (S.D.

Cal. 1997), banning criticism of specific officials at meetings violated the First Amendment.
• This selective enforcement isn't content-neutral: It distinguishes based on the context ( city praise vs. public input), implying favoritism toward viewpoints aligning with the council. Strict scrutiny applies, and the city would need to prove a compelling interest (e.g., order) with narrow tailoring-unlikely, as they already allow clapping elsewhere without chaos. 8 9 • Broader implications: This could also violate the Brown Act's mandate against prohibiting public criticism (Gov. Code§ 54954.3(c)).

No direct case law addresses this exact hypocrisy, but analogous rulings (e.g., unbalanced treatment of applause vs. heckling) suggest neutrality fails.

Recent Case Law Addressing Similar Actions
No cases directly challenge Carlsbad's policy (yet), but several recent decisions (post-2010) inform this:
• In California (Ninth Circuit):
• Acosta v. City of Costa Mesa (9th Cir. 2013): Upheld a rule banning disruptive conduct like "handclapping" only if it substantially interrupts 8 ysnews.com
9 nevadacurrent.com
7 •
•
•
•
•
proceedings. The court approved language requiring actual disruption, implying blanket bans on non-disruptive applause are invalid. 10 White v. City of Norwalk (9th Cir. 1990, still binding): Allowed removal for disruptive speech but not for mere disagreement or impertinence unless it impedes order. Recent analyses apply this to audience reactions. 11 Outside California:

Tyler v. City of Kingston (2d Cir. 2023 ): Upheld a sign ban at meetings as reasonable to prevent disruption, but noted rules must be viewpoint neutral-relevant here if Carlsbad's policy favors certain expressions. 12 Hall-Rayford v. City of Eastpointe (E.D. Mich. 2024, settled via FIRE lawsuit): A mayor silencing critics during public comment violated the First Amendment, emphasizing that shutting down supportive reactions (like applause) to dissenters is unconstitutional. 13
Older but influential: Cox v. Louisiana (1965, Supreme Court): Protected clapping and cheering in a protest as expressive, overturning a "breach of peace" conviction unless violent or obstructive. 14
Conclusion
Carlsbad's enforcement likely violates residents' First Amendment rights if applied to non-disruptive expression, and the selective allowance during presentations exacerbates this as potential viewpoint discrimination. If challenged in court ( e.g., via a Civil Rights Section 1983 lawsuit), the city would bear the burden of justifying it, and precedents suggest they'd have a legal struggle. Historically, these bans are a modern development (clapping & booing the norm in 1776), but present legal focus would be on neutrality and actual disruption. I urge the City of Carlsbad to reconsider their policy on nondisruptive public expression at council meetings, to avoid litigation, but more so to recognize the people's role in the city's business by empowering voice, not hammering it down.
10 mrsc.org
11 rennepubliclawgroup.com
12 firstamendment.mtsu.edu
13 thefire.org
14 scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu
8 From:

To:

Cc:

Subject:

Date:

Attachments:

Mike Borrello
Keith Blackburn; Council Internet Email
[email protected]; City Clerk; City Attorney
Essex et al
Wednesday, February 11, 2026 10:28:22 AM
Essex_Et_Al.pdf
Reference used in rebuttal
On 2/7/2026 10:48 AM, Mike Borrello wrote:

Dear Mayor, City Council, and Staff
At our last general council meeting, and immediately after I addressed council, I received a well appreciated surprise - a lone person clapping. It turned out to be an old friend, Letita, a retired attorney from Oceanside. She told me it was the first time she's attended a Carlsbad Council Meeting, but perhaps you've seen her before at past County Board of Supervisor's meetings. Of course she was admonished by the Mayor, who approached her after calling a recess to personally explain to her the 'rules'. I had to leave, but imagine rather it was the Mayor that received an ear full.

You see Letita's been down that road before having
successfully sued the City of Riverside over the same matter where she won a settlement.

Sincerely,
Mike Borrello
Carlsbad Resident
CAUTION: Do not open attachments or click on links unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.

J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn.
2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 pp. 1–27
J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 6 Copyright 2007 Walter de Gruyter /C1 Berlin /C1 New York. DOI 10.1515/JNETDY.2007.001 Does a Global Temperature Exist?
Christopher Essex 1, Ross McKitrick 2, Bjarne Andresen 3,* 1 Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, N6A 5B7, Canada
2 Department of Economics, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada
3 Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 5, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
*Corresponding author ([email protected])
Abstract
Physical, mathematical, and observational grounds are employed to show that there is no physically meaningful global temperature for the Earth in the context of the issue of global warming. While it is always possible to con- struct statistics for any given set of local temperature data, an inﬁnite range of such statistics is mathematically permissible if physical principles provide no explicit basis for choosing among them. Distinct and equally valid sta- tistical rules can and do show opposite trends when applied to the results of computations from physical models and real data in the atmosphere. A given temperature ﬁeld can be interpreted as both ‘‘warming’’ and ‘‘cooling’’ simul- taneously, making the concept of warming in the context of the issue of global warming physically ill-posed.

1. Introduction
It is widely held that the atmosphere and oceans have been warming over the past half century. The basis of this view is that there is an upward trend in the graph of a statistical measure or statistic called the ‘‘global temperature’’ [1, 2]. It arises from projecting a sampling of the ﬂuctuating temperature ﬁeld of the Earth onto a single number (e.g., [3, 4]) at discrete monthly or annual intervals. Proponents claim that this statistical measure or statistic represents a measurement of the annual global temperature to an accuracy of e0.05 /C14 C
(see [5]). Moreover, they presume that small changes in it, up or down, have direct and unequivocal physical meaning.

While that statistics is nothing more than an average over temperatures, it is regarded as the temperature, as if an average over temperatures is actually a temperature itself, and as if the out-of-equilibrium climate system has only one temperature. But an average of temperature data sampled from a non- equilibrium ﬁeld is not a temperature. Moreover, it hardly needs stating that the Earth does not have just one temperature. It is not in global thermody- namic equilibrium – neither within itself nor with its surroundings.

It is not even approximately so for the climatological questions asked of the temperature ﬁeld. Even when viewed from space at such a distance that the Earth appears as a point source, the radiation from it deviates from a black body distribution and so has no one temperature [6]. There is also no unique ‘‘temperature at the top of the atmosphere’’. The temperature ﬁeld of the Earth as a whole is not thermodynamically representable by a single temperature.

The global temperature statistic is also described as the average, as if there is only one kind of average. Of course there is an inﬁnity of mathematically legitimate options. Indeed, over one hundred di¤erent averages over temper- atures have been used in meteorology and climate studies [7] with more ap- pearing regularly. For the case of temperature, or any other thermodynamic intensity, there is no physical basis for choosing any one of these from the in- ﬁnite domain of distinct mathematical options.

The international standards organization ISO tried to choose one but failed [8]. The problem is not a mere absence of a convention for selecting one from among many mathematically di¤erent but physically equivalent measures for a single underlying property. The problem is that there is no single underlying property, because there is no global temperature. But this does not stop aver- ages from being made.

There is no experimental or theoretical way to falsify any particular choice of averaging rule, if averages are (falsely) proclaimed to be temperatures. Pro- claiming them to be temperatures leads to a paradox, as any two ad hoc choices applied to a particular out-of-equilibrium ﬁeld can have mutually contradictory behaviors: the system can seem to be both warming and cooling simultaneously. Paradoxically, whether the system is ‘‘warming’’ or ‘‘cooling’’ becomes a property of the choice of average – a choice which is in- dependent of the system.

The resolution of this paradox is not through adoption of a convention. It is resolved by recognizing that it is an abuse of terminology to use the terms ‘‘warming’’ and ‘‘cooling’’ to denote upward or downward trends in averages 2 C. Essex et al.

J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 of temperature data in such circumstances. Statistics might go up or down, but the system itself cannot be said to be warming or cooling based on what they do, outside of special circumstances.

By the same token, di¤erent statistics produced by di¤erent averaging rules should not be expected to behave the same, since they are not measuring a single, well-deﬁned physical quantity. Unfortunately, it has long been consid- ered a problem in climatological debates that the well-known global temper- ature averages behave di¤erently from each other. Debates as to which is the correct one are fundamentally false, with no correct resolution. They have an interminable aspect, as has been illustrated in comparisons of satellite and ground-measured ‘‘global temperatures’’ [9], or of di¤erent versions of the satellite-measured series [10, 11], or in debates about whether the medieval era was ‘‘warmer’’ than the present, e.g. [12]. We argue herein that these dis- putes have their root in attempting to estimate a physical quantity that does not actually exist, and hence there is no prospect of resolution on scientiﬁc grounds.

But if the statistics are not actually temperatures, what then are they? Can they be used as indices to warn us of subtle dangers, like the proverbial ca- nary in the coal mine? Or are they just examples of an inﬁnity of ad hoc num- bers extractable from measurements that might be followed to no end? So far the proponents of global temperatures have been able to avoid this question. They have not substantiated exactly how changes upward or down- ward in their statistical measure or statistic might a¤ect dynamics and local states within the atmosphere and oceans. However, that has not stopped many remarkable attributions of cause: small increases in their global statis- tical measure or statistic have been cited to explain hurricane formation [13], viral infections in frogs [14], encephalitis in horses, and even pulmonary dis- ease, delirium, and suicide in humans [15].

The awkwardness of such claims is obscured because the concept of averag- ing is so routine. In fact, it is so pervasive that it may even seem implausible to mount a critique. But it should only be routine where it makes sense. Per- sonal income and height are meaningful at the individual level, and no con- ceptual problems emerge when adding or averaging over a population. But there are certainly examples where averaging or adding destroys the meaning of a variable. In economics, for example, an exchange rate is meaningful when comparing two currencies, but the ideas of a ‘‘global exchange rate’’ or a sum over exchange rates are both nonsensical. Regardless of the fact that enough data exist to compute something analogous to a ‘‘global temperature’’ for the money markets, neither the level nor the trend in such a statistics would provide any meaningful information about the global economy. Another ex- Does a Global Temperature Exist? 3
J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 ample: Individual telephone numbers are both meaningful and useful, while the sum or average over telephone numbers in a directory have no meaning.

The notion of being globally ‘‘hotter’’ or ‘‘colder’’ for out-of-equilibrium sys- tems is not altogether without merit. Miami in January, with temperatures ranging from 20 to 30 /C14 C, say, is certainly warmer than Toronto at, say, /C0 15 to /C0 5/C14 C. However, this ranking of relative warmth is not based on averages, but on the ranges in respective temperature ﬁelds. Since the ranges do not overlap, all averages will agree which ﬁeld seems to be the warmer. It is inde- pendent of the choice of average.

Not so for the case of comparisons of Earth’s temperature ﬁeld at times a few years apart. The range over the globe (about /C0 80/C14 Ct o þ40/C14 C) is essentially the same for both when compared to statistical trends in averages (i.e., about e0:1/C14 Cy r /C0 1), which are three orders of magnitude smaller. In cases where ranges overlap, not all averages over a given set of actual observations agree on trends (see Section 3), throwing into doubt for this case what ‘‘warmer’’ or ‘‘cooler’’ means.

It is clear that there are many misconceptions about non-equilibrium temper- atures ﬁelds. This paper serves to expose and identify them with speciﬁc ref- erence to the measurement of climate change. They may be summarized by the following points, which are treated in detail later in the paper:

1. Sums or averages over the individual temperatures in the ﬁeld are not tem- peratures. Neither are they proxies for internal energy.

2. Temperatures from a ﬁeld (individually or averaged) neither drive dy- namics nor thermodynamics. Instead, dynamics is driven by gradients and di¤erences, in temperatures and other variables.

3. A global spatial average cannot be an index for local conditions, otherwise nonlocal dependence (i.e., ‘‘thermodynamics at a distance’’) for local con- ditions would be required.

4. The utility of any global spatial average of the temperature ﬁeld as an index for global conditions has been presumed but not demonstrated.

5. It is easily demonstrated that di¤erent spatial averaging rules over temper- atures can have contrary trends in time (i.e., some increase while others decrease in time) when the two ﬁelds being compared have range-overlap, as they do in this context. This is demonstrated here in a basic example and subsequently with actual atmospheric temperature-ﬁeld observations.

6. No ground has been provided for choosing any one such statistics over the rest as the one proper index for global climate.

7. If there are no physical or pragmatic grounds for choosing one over an- other, and one increases while the other decreases, there is no basis for concluding that the atmosphere as a whole is either warming or cooling. 4 C. Essex et al.

J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1

2. Averaging and physical temperature

2.1. Temperature versus average of temperature data
Thermodynamic variables come in two varieties: extensive and intensive. Ex- tensive variables are proportional to the size of the system. They are additive.

In this category we ﬁnd volume, mass, energy, entropy, particle number, etc.

We can combine two systems and the values of extensive variables for the whole system will simply be the sum of the values from the two components.

Correspondingly, a mean subsystem (loosely called the average) will have this sum divided by the number of components. Such an average over a quantity like mass is meaningful because the sum is meaningful. For example, average mass is of importance to airlines because it is helpful to estimate the total load of an aircraft without having to weigh every passenger.

Intensive variables, by contrast, are independent of system size and represent a quality of the system: temperature, pressure, chemical potential, etc. In this case, combining two systems will not yield an overall intensive quantity equal to the sum of its components. For example, two identical subsystems do not have a total temperature or pressure twice those of its components. A sum over intensive variables carries no physical meaning. Dividing meaningless totals by the number of components cannot reverse this outcome. In special circumstances averaging might approximate the equilibrium temperature after mixing, but this is irrelevant to the analysis of an out-of-equilibrium case like the Earth’s climate.

Setting mixing aside, consider two disjoint isolated equilibrium systems, a and b, with functions of state U
a ¼ f aðX a
1 ; X a
2 ; ... ; X a
n Þ and U b ¼
f bðX b
1 ; X b
2 ; ... ; X b
n Þ respectively, where U a and U b are the respective internal energies. X a
j and X b
j represent the corresponding extensive variables in sys- tems a and b, respectively. Obviously, given f a, the extensive variables for system a completely deﬁne the thermodynamic state of system a. Similarly for system b.

The partial derivatives, qU a=qX a
j and qU b=qX b
j , are the jth intensive vari-
ables for the respective systems. The temperature of each system is, of course, the particular partial derivative with respect to the system’s entropy, T ¼ qU=qS: ð1Þ
Together, the intensive variables form the tangent spaces of the respective functions of state. As such, they are local properties of the state space and are thus independent of the scale of the system.

Does a Global Temperature Exist? 5
J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 Let us propose that an average over temperatures from both systems is re- quired to be a temperature. This proposition produces a contradiction. The state, and the temperature, of system a, say, is completely determined by the variables fX
a
i g and does not change in response to a change only in fX b i g.

But any average is a function of both temperatures. Thus, while each temper- ature is a function of the extensive variables in its own system only, the aver- age must depend explicitly on both sets of extensive variables, fX a i g and
fX b
k g. That is it must depend on both states and it can change as a result of a change in either one. Then the average cannot be a temperature for system a, because system a is mathematically and thermodynamically independent of system b by assumption. Similarly, it cannot be a temperature for system b.

Consequently, the average is not a temperature anywhere in the system, which contradicts the proposition that the average is a temperature.

While it is thus simple, obvious, and unavoidable that there is no one physi- cally deﬁned temperature for the combined system, the example illustrates the contradiction that arises in requiring an average over a local equilibrium tem- perature ﬁeld to be itself a temperature of anything.

With reference to global temperature statistics, consider a projection of the full temperature ﬁeld, Tðr; tÞ, onto a single real value, XðtÞ, at time t, usually the present. For concreteness, consider an average of temperatures:

XðtM Þ¼ 1
N
XN
i¼1
Tðri; tM Þ/C0 1
M
XM
j¼1
Tðri; tj Þ
"#
: ð2Þ
Outside of small details, such as mappings of actual measurements onto a uniform grid on the surface, X is a common statistical measure actually used in discussions of global warming, intended to quantify temperature changes over the entire globe at time tM , by deviations from a sliding average in the past. This statistical measure is also known as the global temperature anom- aly. The summation over i estimates a spatial integration of the ﬁeld over the surface of the Earth, where Tðri; tM Þ is the air temperature at location ri and time tM , and the summation over j accounts for a customary interval of time from the past to establish a local time mean (30 years is traditional).

X is explicitly a function of Tðrk; tÞ for all rk (i.e., X ¼ f ðTðr1; t1Þ; Tðr2; t1Þ; ... Tðr1; t2Þ; Tðr2; t2Þ; ... TðrN ; tM ÞÞ). In contrast, local equilibrium states in a ﬁeld are deﬁned at a particular location, r. Other locations not in an inﬁnites- imal neighborhood are independent, just as systems a and b are independent of each other. The statistical measure X, on the other hand, exhibits the same property as an average of temperatures between the systems a and b: it de- pends on the states of all the local subsystems, not just the state at any one location.
6 C. Essex et al.

J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 Thus the same paradox arises as for systems a and b.I f X is supposed to be important at r, it also depends explicitly on states at all remote locations frkg.

However, chemical, physical, or biological processes governed by tempera- ture at r are not functions of temperature other than at r. So if one insists on X deﬁning processes like the melting of glaciers at some location, say, the melt- ing is forced into being a function of temperatures elsewhere on the planet, too, which is physically untenable. Claiming otherwise is tantamount to tem- perature at a distance! While forces at a distance are considered an acceptable concept for classical gravity and electromagnetism, they are not suitable for thermodynamic processes.

It is worth noting in passing that X su¤ers from the additional problem that it also depends explicitly on temperatures from the past. So in the picture im- plied by them, not only are the fate of glaciers today explicitly dependent on temperatures in a remote desert, say, but also on temperatures in that desert from twenty years ago.

On top of this problem, even if we let the two systems a and b come to equi- librium so that the temperature is the same everywhere and all possible deﬁ- nitions of average are equivalent (see Section 3), this common temperature will not be uniquely speciﬁed by the original states of a and b. It will also de- pend on the path taken by the process. Suppose two thermal systems a and b have equal heat capacities but initially di¤erent temperatures T a and T b. After putting them in thermal contact, they will equilibrate at the common temper- ature ðT a þ T bÞ=2. If on the other hand they equilibrate reversibly, i.e., while producing work, their common ﬁnal temperature will be
ﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃﬃ
T aT b
p
.

Even in this simplest case, ‘‘averaging’’ between these two systems is not unique.

2.2. Average over temperature ﬁeld as index or proxy
The argument is often heard that the global temperature, however it is cal- culated, while not being really what is physically driving the climate, is a good index or proxy for whatever does drive it. Science and engineering are used to such indirect measurements. Temperature itself, for example, is almost never measured according to its thermodynamic deﬁnition, T ¼ ðqU=qSÞ
V ; N1; N2; N3..., but by measuring a volume, bending, electrical conduc- tance, eigenfrequency of a crystal, radiation spectrum, etc. All such measure- ments rely on di¤erent assumptions being met. Physicists and chemists are well aware of these restrictions. However, no such physical arguments have been made for using a statistic as an index for climate driving force. Not even a statistical correlation has been forwarded for such a connection. ISO standards for measuring and calculating such an index were optimistically Does a Global Temperature Exist? 7
J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 promised after the Johannesburg climate meeting [8], and standards have been published regarding measurement of greenhouse gases, but the ISO has been conspicuously quiet on the measurement of a global temperature.

If temperature ﬁeld averages are not temperatures, can they function as an index or as a proxy for climate dynamics? While an index need not be a phys- ical variable explicitly, there are nonetheless unavoidable requirements before a statistic can be regarded as an index. An index is a statistic produced by a consistently applied rule that characterizes some, usually complex, process usefully, even though the precise connections between it and the process may not be fully known or understood. As an index, the statistic usefully encapsu- lates a possibly large set of data into one dimension for a speciﬁc purpose.

Proposing a statistic to be an index can be risky. What is regarded as ‘‘useful’’ may prove to be quite imprecise and subjective. Therefore, the burden to demonstrate the utility of a statistic as an index must lay with those who pro- pose it as one. Similarly, the burden should never be to prove a statistic is not an index.

However, a peculiar circumstance exists for the case of averages over the tem- perature ﬁeld. False, but common, impressions that such averages are actual physical variables generally, and temperatures in particular, have left the task of demonstrating the utility of such statistics undone. The apparent physical origins have led to the most uncritical thinking about what trends in such sta- tistical measures or statistics might imply.

While it is impossible to prove that such averages are not useful in any man- ner whatsoever, it can be shown that temperature ﬁeld averages cannot be useful in certain speciﬁc roles in which they are cited. For example, upward trends in X are said, uncritically, to indicate trends in underlying dynamics, such as changes in the numbers or severity of storms, and trends in rainfall, not to mention melting of glaciers or many other local physical dynamical processes.

What connection exists between these dynamical processes and such aver- ages? No physically precise reasoning has been proposed as the basis of such a connection. Indeed, it is unlikely that there is any such connection because intensive variables, like temperature, do not generally drive dynamics, and in particular do not drive the dynamics of the atmosphere and oceans, whose dynamics are caused by gradients, or di¤erences in thermodynamic inten- sities, rather than the intensities themselves.

To be more explicit, consider a free thermodynamic mixing process between two subsystems a and b, isolated from everything except each other. In the ab- sence of sources and sinks due to chemical reactions, extensive quantities 8 C. Essex et al.

J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 summed over subsystems a and b, except entropy, will not change. The change in entropy is equivalent to the existence of the process:
dS ¼ 1
T a /C0 1
T b
/C18/C19
dU a þ Pa
T a /C0 Pb
T b
/C18/C19
dV a /C0 ma
1 T a /C0 mb
1 T b
/C18/C19
dN a
1 þ/C1/C1/C1 ; ð3Þ
where T is the temperature, P the pressure, and mi is the chemical potential of species i. Superscripts refer to the subsystems a and b. When the subsystems are in equilibrium with each other, all intensities are the same in both systems (T a ¼ T b, Pa ¼ Pb, etc.). In that case dS vanishes and nothing happens. No- where in Eq. (3) do intensities enter in isolation. Di¤erences cause processes.

It is true that phase changes and rates of chemical and biological processes depend parametrically on (local) absolute temperature. However, if there are no di¤erences in intensities, like di¤erences in chemical potential for chemical reactions, thermodynamic processes would not happen in the ﬁrst place. Even the sensation of warming or cooling is not a consequence of a single temper- ature, but rather because of the thermodynamic forces that are set up be- tween the intensities in our bodies and those of our surroundings. Thus two people can disagree on whether a given room is cold or hot.

If absolute intensities do not drive climate dynamics, there is no reason to ex- pect that averages over them will. Moreover, at least for small changes, an average over the temperature ﬁeld can be insensitive to climate change. Be- cause of the local independence of functions from their gradients, an average can change in time without any appreciable changes in dynamics, while great climate changes can be envisioned under a constant average.

For example, simply rotating thermodynamic intensity ﬁelds with respect to the Earth’s surface leaves ﬁeld averages invariant but can imply signiﬁcant climate change. In the special case of X, invariance only requires changes that leave the sums in Eq. (2) unchanged. There is an inﬁnite range of possi- bilities of such changes with X invariant that would constitute signiﬁcant cli- mate change. Indeed, an overlooked type of climate modeling experiment is climate change under ﬁxed temperature ﬁeld averages.

Ultimately, it can be no surprise that local states are not well represented by a globally based statistic, casting further doubt on the role of X as an index. It is also worth remembering that an invariant X would not generally imply in- variance for other temperature ﬁeld statistics, from di¤erent averaging rules.

As there are an inﬁnite number of such statistics extractable from a ﬁeld, there is also the question of whether the di¤erent statistics convey the same mes- sage or not, if any is conveyed at all. It is di‰cult to claim a statistic is a use- ful index when many very similar statistics seem to say something di¤erent.

Does a Global Temperature Exist? 9
J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 Thus the proponents of X as an index have been able to avoid two crucial tasks:
i) They have not been required to justify or demonstrate the physical useful- ness of a statistic extracted from the temperature ﬁeld. ii) They have not answered why X is the statistical measure of choice and not some other extract of the temperature ﬁeld with potentially very di¤erent behavior.

The very di¤erent behaviors of other statistics are discussed in Section 3.

2.3. Field average as energy proxy
If a ﬁeld average is not a temperature, and it is not an index, can it be simply a direct proxy for internal energy instead? This calls for statistics like X to be given up as drivers of climate or as indicators of local dynamics. Instead, tem- perature is to be viewed as equivalent to energy, and thus the numerator of the right side of Eq. (1) is to represent changes in the global internal energy. Then any physical meaning is born by changes in energy instead of temperature.

This strategy has two problems. First, substituting temperature for internal energy amounts to extensifying an intensity, and second, the role for a global averaged internal energy in climate is unclear, especially given the few per- cent that we could expect it to vary.

Despite popular thinking otherwise, temperature and energy are not equiva- lent. Temperatures can be very high at very low energies. While heat is a form of energy, temperature is, fundamentally, a measure of how energy is spread over quantum states. For example, radiation from a small laser powered by ﬂashlight batteries can have temperatures peaking as high as P10 11 K. This
is higher than many stellar interiors but one cannot even feel the heat of the beam on one’s hand [6].

The myth of the equivalence of temperature and energy comes from the pro- portionality of internal energy U to temperature T, through a heat capacity.

In the case of an ideal gas with no internal molecular structure, we have UðN; TÞ¼ 3
2 NkT: ð4Þ
While Eq. (4) is not an equation of state in extensive variables alone, it is eas- ily derived from one by di¤erentiating it according to the deﬁnition Eq. (1).

In the result, U is not only proportional to T but to N as well, so, being in- dependent, changes in T are not equivalent to changes in U.

Introducing a local version of Eq. (4) by dividing through by volume, V , 10 C. Essex et al.

J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 uðn; TÞ¼ 3
2 nkT; ð5Þ
where u C U=V and n C N=V, we see the same issue holds locally: measuring changes in T cannot determine changes in u in environments where the num- ber density is also variable.

But are changes in n large enough to matter for the processes in this case? Using Boyle’s law and Eq. (5),
du
u ¼ dP
P ¼ dn
n þ dT
T : ð6Þ
As dP=P is about 5% across the entire Earth’s surface while dT=T would be closer to 20%, variation of n cannot be ignored, globally speaking, in com- parison to variation in T for the processes actually in question. As T varies about four times as much as u over the Earth, temperature cannot be a proxy for internal energy in climate. In fact, these numbers suggest that places of high T tend to correspond to low n, which agrees with the well-known tendency of aircraft to have diminished takeo¤ performance at high air temperatures.

Even if trends in global U were measurable and known (they are not), the question remains what it would mean for climate dynamics. Like variations in X, signiﬁcance is simply presumed without further consideration.

3. Averaging without physics
The notion of averaging exists independently of physics. Loosely speaking, it is nothing more than holding one mathematical object to stand in for many.

Usually we think of a single number standing in for a set of numbers or standing in for a more complex mathematical object. While having a single representative taken in place of many can be convenient, clearly something is lost in it. The representative may not exhibit what is physically relevant, as the selection rule need not be set by the physics.

Setting aside the statistical analysis of physical data, averages arise within physical theory in two basic ways. They can emerge, for example, as an inter- pretation of a previously existing structure rather than as an intrinsic prop- erty. In the case of quantum mechanics, the term expectation value is used for an eigenvalue that characterizes a mathematical operator and thus a quantum state. The expectation value has the character of, if not the name of, an average, but it need not be interpreted as one. The interpretation is def- initely after the fact.

Does a Global Temperature Exist? 11
J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 In other physical applications, averages arise in a somewhat ad hoc manner.

They are simply sums over physical quantities that have been normalized. In principle, normalization is a convenience. It is not essential, and so neither is the notion of averaged quantities essential to the mathematics in such physical theories. What is essential is that the sums have meaning in the ﬁrst instance.

As we saw in the preceding, sums are not generally meaningful over all vari- ables. Temperature, pressure, and chemical potential are just a few of the ex- ceptions. Nonetheless, it may happen that a variable is not additive, while a transformation on that variable is. For example, a variable deﬁned by the square of internal energy is not additive, but its square root is. The physics thus presents a coordinate system for that quantity that is preferred over an- other. Similarly, normalization of the corresponding sums results in a pre- ferred average.

However, for thermodynamic intensities there is no preferred coordinate sys- tem. The sum has little physical meaning, so all transformations are in play.

Normalized sums are not invariant under all transformations. Thus more than one average is unavoidable. Statisticians have long known this. Unlike physicists, they work with data unconnected to underlying physical theory and have uncovered classes of averages that reﬂect this. One is faced with having an inﬁnity of averages, having all possible values within the range of the data set.

The most well known of the class are the Ho ¨ lder or power means [16]. These arise from transforming the mean under simple powers. Alternatively, they can be deduced by varying geometric assumptions about what constitutes the length of a vector. This method has pedagogical signiﬁcance because it forces an enlightening conﬂict between conventional biases: one cannot have both the classical mean and Euclidean distance. This class of average is by no means exhaustive.

This section makes three contributions to a thermodynamic discussion of non- equilibrium ﬁelds:

1. A simple thermodynamic example is shown where di¤erent averages over given temperatures exhibit contradictory time trends. Thus the notions of warming and cooling are problematic for non-equilibrium temperature ﬁelds.

2. Global conditions are deduced for when it is possible to say, unequivo- cally, that one temperature ﬁeld is warmer or cooler than another.

3. It is demonstrated that any value of a data set can represent the mean in some coordinate system. If there is no preferred coordinate system given for the average because the physics does not provide one, then any value in the data set can stand as an average of the temperature ﬁeld. 12 C. Essex et al.

J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1

3.1. Warming and cooling simultaneously?

3.1.1. The averaging operator and the origin of contradictory trends For the case of a ﬁnite data set, an averaging operator, A, maps the set onto a real number within the domain of the original data. Clearly, a value that does not satisfy this requirement would be a pathological representative of the set. In the case of temperature data, the domain of A is the range of data from the original ﬁeld.

Thus the resulting real number is within the interval induced by the original set. This deﬁnition is still quite general. All of the well-known (standard) averages, such as the mean, the mode, the median, the root mean square, the harmonic mean, the geometric mean, or the inﬁnity of nonstandard, un- named others satisfy this requirement, without necessarily being equivalent to each other. It also follows from this deﬁnition that a set made up of identical data values can have only a single average value, independent of the type of averaging operation. That single value corresponds to the single repeated data value.

The aim of these mappings is of course beyond the mathematics and beyond any statistical theory. Neither mathematics nor statistics su‰ce to determine whether any result of such mappings achieve any aim. Moreover, the data and its underlying physics do not depend in any way on A.

On the basis of the deﬁnition, A is not a unique operation unless some addi- tional rules, R, beyond the fundamental deﬁnition are speciﬁed (cf. the impor- tance of path followed as discussed at the end of Section 2.1). Thus if we av- erage over a set f to get x, we must specify the operation, A R in terms of R,
ARðfÞ¼ x: ð7Þ
If there are two di¤erent rules, Ra and Rb, and one set, f, then in general the averages are di¤erent,
ARa ðfÞ¼ xa
ð8Þ
ARb ðfÞ¼ xb;
where xa A xb. Furthermore, if the f is a function of t (i.e. fðtÞ), then _xxaðtÞ and _xxbðtÞ can have opposite signs. This idea is illustrated in the following physical example.

3.1.2. A physical example of contradictory trends Let us consider a speciﬁc example involving temperature. A glass of ice water at 2 /C14 C is sitting beside a Does a Global Temperature Exist? 13
J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 cup of co¤ee at 33 /C14 C. The two remain isolated, but are allowed to relax to room temperature, which is 20 /C14 C, according to Newtonian cooling (heating).

To complete the example, a plausible relaxation time of eight minutes for each container was set for the sake of this illustration, but the phenomenon we will ﬁnd is not unique to this value. In this manner, the ice water is al- lowed to warm, while the co¤ee cools accordingly.

For this example, the two independent temperatures were averaged in four di¤erent ways. They are not exhaustive by any means. Furthermore, exam- ples with other temperature units and other averages may be formulated, but these would not add materially to the value of the example.

The averages used are:

AR/C0 1 ðT1; T2Þ¼ T/C0 1
1 þ T/C0 1
2 2
/C18/C19 /C0 1
;
ð9Þ
AR1 ðT1; T2Þ¼ T1 þ T2
2 /C18/C19
;
AR2 ðT1; T2Þ¼ T 2
1 þ T 2
2 2
/C18/C19 1=2
;
AR4 ðT1; T2Þ¼ T 4
1 þ T 4
2 2
/C18/C19 1=4
:

R/C0 1 is the harmonic mean. It is precedented, for example, in the case of tem- perature in connection with minimum entropy production and the radiation ﬁeld [17]. It also appears in connection with average resistance in a parallel cir- cuit and in average travel times on a road network with varying speed limits.

R1 is the simple mean, often used over small temperature ranges and in con- nection with simple Newtonian heat exchange.

R2 is the root mean square, which is well precedented in statistics and statis- tical mechanics. In the latter case, it appears particularly in connection with kinetic energy. It can also emerge in connection with the potential energy of a spring.

R4 would appear in connection with black body radiation.

The results of the Newtonian cooling calculations are shown in Figure 1. It is clear that the starting ‘‘system temperature’’ varies widely depending on the averaging formula chosen. Because of the property that all averages must be the same for a set composed of equal values, all averages must approach the room temperature. All of these averages clearly exhibit this proper behavior. 14 C. Essex et al.

J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 Clearly, whether the system seems ‘‘warmer’’ or ‘‘cooler’’ at time t ¼ 5, say, in relation to t ¼ 0 depends on the average chosen. But the data are independent of the averaging rule used, therefore the sign of the derivatives is not intrinsic to the data, but a property of the averaging rule selected.

If the physics does not prescribe one rule to be used over another, as it does not for temperature, we may use any rule. If one interpreter of the data chooses one rule, while another chooses a di¤erent rule, there is no way to settle a disagreement as to whether the system is getting ‘‘warmer’’ or ‘‘cooler’’ with time.

Alternatively, if one has a change of opinion about what rule to use, the ranking of the two systems may be instantaneously reversed. In a mathemat- ical sense, this would just be a quantitative alteration in the time derivative.

However, ‘‘warming’’ versus ‘‘cooling’’ is a qualitative distinction for thermo- dynamics. Changing the sign of the derivative reverses the ranking of the two states catastrophically, in the sense of a qualitative change that is extrinsic to the system studied. That is, rank order is catastrophically reversed by simply changing how the data are interpreted – a rank order catastrophe.

There are only two options: admit the possibility that non-equilibrium sys- tems can simultaneously warm and cool or take the position that these terms Figure 1 Four averages over one thermodynamic system. The rules for each, denoted by R/C0 1, R1, R2 and R4 are deﬁned in Eq. (9).

Does a Global Temperature Exist? 15
J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 have no meaning in such cases. We adopt the latter convention. In either case, the ice water is warming and the co¤ee is cooling, and while that is hap- pening they are not in thermodynamic equilibrium with one another or with the room. There is no physically coherent way to reduce this dynamic to changes in a single temperature number for the system as a whole.

Arbitrary averages can and do give contradictory behaviors in more complex cases, too, as we shall see below. Averaging does not represent any means of avoiding the fact that a system is not in global thermodynamic equilibrium.

Thus, in the case of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, temperature averages fail in the most basic role of an average, which is for one value to represent many.

3.2. Range overlap and global ranking of ﬁelds
In Sections 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 it was shown that objects out of equilibrium can- not necessarily be compared to each other as being ‘‘hotter’’ or ‘‘cooler’’. It makes problematic the claim that Earth’s temperature ﬁeld is warmer or cooler today than it was a hundred years ago, or that one century is hotter than another century.

In contrast, it is obviously valid to make the observation that the temperature ﬁeld of the Sun is hotter than the temperature ﬁeld of Pluto, yet each of these bodies have non-equilibrium temperature ﬁelds. What makes this comparison di¤erent? The simple answer is that there are no common values in the re- spective temperature ﬁelds. This was not the case for the example in the pre- ceding section, where the interval spanned by the range of temperature at time t ¼ 0 contained the interval spanned at later times.

In the case of a temperature ﬁeld on Pluto, the Sun, or the Earth, we work with a subset of the ﬁeld which constitutes a ﬁnite number of values. This is a practical necessity even if it is not a mathematical one. The range of values from the ﬁeld induces the domain of the averaging operation. This domain is an interval, which according to the deﬁnition in 3.1.1 limits what an average can be. Consider the interval operation, I, which deﬁnes the domain of the data set f. For two non-overlapping data sets f
1 and f2,
Iðf1Þ B Iðf2Þ¼ u: ð10Þ
This condition is global in that it is entirely independent of speciﬁc locations in the original ﬁeld. It follows that
ARðf1Þ/C0 ARðf2Þð 11Þ
16 C. Essex et al.

J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 has no zeros over all possible rules R satisfying the deﬁnition in Section 3.1.1.

No zeros in Eq. (11) means it never changes sign, so there cannot be a rank order catastrophe as R is varied over all rules. If the global condition Eq. (10) holds, then it is not ambiguous to say that one set is warmer or cooler than the other. In the case of the Sun and Pluto, it is reasonable to expect that Eq. (11) holds, so that we may say that the Sun is hotter than Pluto without con- tradicting the preceding.

But if
Iðf
1Þ B Iðf2Þ Au ; ð12Þ
we will say that the ﬁelds yielding f1 and f2 have range overlap. In the case of range overlap, we cannot guarantee that there are no zeros in Eq. (11) and therefore there can be rank order catastrophes, which means that the ranking of temperature ﬁelds as ‘‘warmer’’ or ‘‘cooler’’ is fundamentally problematic.

It is possible for Eq. (11) to have no zeros over all reasonable R in cases where Eq. (12) holds if a local condition is applied such that every location in the ﬁeld is increasing or decreasing. This condition does not occur in real- istic ﬁelds such as that of the Earth, and it is not global.

In the case of the Earth’s temperature ﬁeld, the temperatures form a set of values, fl . The ﬁeld at time t1 is being compared to the ﬁeld at time t2.I n that case, Eq. (12) holds. In fact, this is among the most extreme cases of range overlap because,
Iðflðt1ÞÞQIðflðt2ÞÞ; ð13Þ
from which we conclude that ranking the Earth’s temperature ﬁelds at two instants in time is highly problematic. It simply is not comparable to the case of Pluto versus the Sun.

3.3. Coordinate transformations and means
A naive view suggests that the simple mean is always the appropriate scalar summary for any set of data, including temperature data. But this is unten- able for reasons more general than those related to the thermodynamic issues discussed above.

Data have no intrinsic meaning. The context establishes the meaning. It also establishes whether the numbers themselves are used or some other numbers derived from the raw data. ‘‘Derived’’ data always raises the issue of coordi- nate transformations on the raw data. As noted above, temperature data used in climate measurement are inherently derived, since air temperature is never Does a Global Temperature Exist? 17
J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 measured using the thermodynamic deﬁnition Eq. (1), but using instrument- based proxies such as length, volume, electrical conductance, etc., not to men- tion natural proxies such as tree ring widths and wood density, ice core layer isotope ratios, and so forth.

Even in the absence of a distinction between raw and derived data, questions about the natural form of an average emerge. A context for a data set may take the form of an auxiliary structure on the data that induces a geometry.

The geometry can imply the natural form of an average that can di¤er from the mean. In the absence of a context, di¤erent norms on vectors formed from data can induce a class of averages, which have the same mathematics as a range of transformations between raw and derived data. The change from raw to derived data inevitably involves mappings and coordinate transformations.

One physical quantity is measured, but another physical property is sought.

The two quantities are linked by a relationship that amounts to a coordinate transformation. Consider a case where basic observational data must be transformed to acquire the quantity for which an average value is sought.

Suppose that we measure a raw set fy
ig with N positive elements from which
we derive a set fxig by a nonsingular monotone transformation.

In examples such as kinetic speed or radiation energy as raw values, an aver- age over derived kinetic energies or derived temperatures would be expressed in terms of a power law. The raw and derived data are related by y ¼ xr for positive r, then the mean of fyig is equivalent to the mean over fxr i g,
AR1 ðfyigÞ ¼ AR1 ðfxr
i gÞ ¼ 1
N
X
i
xr
i : ð14Þ
But the mean over the derived data is
AR1 ðfxigÞ ¼ 1
N
X
i
xi: ð15Þ
Thus, in either case there are two data sets and two simple means – one for each of the raw and derived sets. For the radiation example, we essentially measure fT 4
i g, ignoring constants of the classical black body law. To get tem- perature, we must transform the measurements by taking the 1/4 power. That is r ¼ 4. Similarly, for the speed problem we measure fjvijg and take the square, which means that r ¼ 1=2.

But what is not mandated by the naive view is which mean to work with.

That is, do we use the transformation to compute ðAR1 ðfyigÞÞ1=r or do we 18 C. Essex et al.

J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 compute AR1 ðfy1=r
i gÞ instead? Do we take the mean ﬁrst and then do the
transformation, or do we do the transformation and then take the mean? Sta- tistical theory does not provide an answer.

Outside of exceptional cases,
ðA
R1 ðfyigÞÞ1=r A AR1 ðfy1=r
i gÞ; ð16Þ
i.e., the mean operation does not generally commute with the powers. As a consequence, the mean is not a coordinate system invariant.

3.3.1. Vector norms, geometry, and averaging The most important excep- tion to Eq. (16) is when all the elements of fyig are identical to each other.

In this case, all acceptable deﬁnitions of averages must yield the same value.

Accordingly, for the degenerate class of sets where all elements are identical, averages must also be invariants under transformations. This degenerate class turns out to tell us about the geometry of averages.

Suppose one aims to ﬁnd the average length of streets in a city. Let us use fxig to denote the set of lengths of the city’s streets. Form a vector from this set, 3x1; x2; ... ; xN 4. Vectors can have lengths in their own right. Seek an- other vector with the same length but having all elements being equal. The equicomponent vector that results is 3AR1 ðfxigÞ; AR1 ðfxigÞ; ... ; AR1 ðfxigÞ4, provided the vector’s length is computed as the sum of the (positive) elements (e.g. x1 þ x2 þ/C1/C1/C1þ xN ), which is the sum of the individual lengths of the streets. In this case, the traditional mean emerges as the average, and the length of the vector is nothing more than the summation of lengths of all of the city streets, which seems to make particular sense for this case.

It is notable here that the naive view of the mean runs afoul of the naive view of length. The latter would hold that the vector’s length ought to be Euclidean (i.e., ðx
2 1 þ x2
2 þ/C1/C1/C1þ x2
N Þ1=2). But an equicomponent
vector of equal Euclidean length is 3AR2 ðfxigÞ; AR2 ðfxigÞ; ... ; AR2 ðfxigÞ4 or 3ðAR1 ðfx2
i gÞÞ1=2; ðAR1 ðfx2
i gÞÞ1=2; ... ; ðAR1 ðfx2
i gÞÞ1=24, which does not yield
the mean. It yields the root mean square. One cannot normally have the mean and an Euclidean geometry for data.

Let us suppose, without loss of generality, that some data set, fxig, has posi- tive elements. Just as this data does not necessarily have a context, vectors like 3x1; x2; ... ; xN 4 need not possess a mathematical geometry (an inner product) and hence any particular length. In choosing a length, one induces a geometry and an average. The vector lengths or norms, discussed above, both belong to a class of norms known as l-norms, lr, which depend on a pa- rameter, r,
Does a Global Temperature Exist? 19
J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 ðlrÞr C
X
i
xr
i ¼ NAR1 ðfxr
i gÞ: ð17Þ
This class of norms is not exhaustive, but it is su‰cient for our discussion. For a data set fxig the equicomponent vector arising from any such l-norm is lr
N 1=r ; lr
N 1=r ; ... ; lr
N 1=r
/C28/C29
: ð18Þ
A component of Eq. (18) is the Ho¨ lder mean. Note that for the city streets ex- ample the length is l1, which is known, appropriately, as the ‘‘taxicab’’ or ‘‘city streets’’ norm. The Euclidean case was l2. All other positive values of r induce di¤erent geometries.

From this we conclude
ðAR1 ðfyigÞÞ1=r ¼ lr
N 1=r A AR1 ðfxigÞ; ð19Þ
where yi ¼ xr
i was substituted so that we could observe that Eq. (19) is the same equation as Eq. (16). However, in this section we have not presumed a distinction between raw and derived data. The issue is the underlying geom- etry, which brings exactly the same transformation group into play even if transformations are not introduced at the outset. Considering the geometric context generates the same inﬁnite family of distinct averages as emerged in the previous section.

3.3.2. Averages in general This inﬁnite family of averages agrees with the basic deﬁnition from Section 3.1.1. If we take the limit as r ! l then l
l ¼ maxfxig C xmax, which is known as the ll-norm or max-norm. Ac- cording to Eq. (18), the average becomes xmax, too. Thus it is not only the largest element of the set, but it follows that it is the largest of the family of averages, as r is varied over positive values:
lr
N 1=r ¼
P
i xr
i
N
/C18/C19 1=r
a Nxr
max
N
/C18/C19 1=r
¼ xmax: ð20Þ
For r ¼ 0 we ﬁnd lr=N 1=r becomes the geometric mean in the limit:
exp½ðP
i ln xiÞ=N/C138 a exp½ðN ln xmaxÞ=N/C138¼ xmax.

Negative r is easily treated by forming the set fwig where wi C x/C0 1 i . Then wmax
will be the largest average over fwig for positive r. As min fxig¼ 1=wmax, then xmin C minfxig is the smallest average for negative r. As it is also smaller 20 C. Essex et al.

J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 than the geometric mean, because exp ½ðP
i ln xiÞ=N/C138 b exp½ðN ln xminÞ=N/C138¼
xmin, it is the smallest average for all r.

Thus any value from the entire interval, IðfxigÞ, is admissible as ‘‘the’’ aver- age, even values not in the original set but within the interval. This agrees with the basic notion of the average from Section 3.1.1. Any member of the original set can be representative of the whole set – very democratic.

Even though we have resurrected the entire data domain of the data set to be the range of possible averages, we have not encompassed all averaging rules.

Potential averaging rules do not end with simple powers. With the harmonic mean as a clue, any non-singular monotone function, zð/C1Þ , will do as long as it has an inverse, z/C0 1ð/C1Þ ,
z/C0 1ðAR1 ðfzðxiÞgÞÞ C AzðfxigÞ: ð21Þ
Even this cannot be said to be comprehensive in itself as it does not yet in- clude weighted averages, nor have we extended the notion to a continuum, which we must face for the atmosphere, at least at a formal level. A little bit of imagination will widen the possibilities substantially.

Nonetheless, this class is already more than broad enough for our purposes.

In fact, we will reduce it slightly to use families of averages that include the l-norm averages, which are sometimes called the ‘‘mean of order r’’ family, hereinafter ‘‘ r-means’’ for convenience. We can also introduce the ‘‘mean of order s’’ family, hereinafter ‘‘ s-means’’ [18], where these families of symmetric means are important in the theory underlying index numbers in economics.

The s-means are given by zð/C1Þ ¼ expðsð/C1ÞÞ , or the resulting average is 1 s lnðAR1 ðfesxi gÞÞ ð 22Þ
or
r-mean: ARr C 1
N ðxr
1 þ/C1/C1/C1þ xr
N Þ
/C18/C19 1=r
ð23Þ
s-mean: ARs C 1
s ln 1
N ðesx1 Þþ/C1/C1/C1þð esxN Þ
/C18/C19
:

These means will be used in the next section.

4. Averages and actual atmospheric data
As discussed previously, the temperatures of the Earth form a continuous ﬁeld, Tðr; tÞ, which varies in time. However, observations can only be made Does a Global Temperature Exist? 21
J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 at speciﬁc locations, frig, and times ftj g. While the desideratum of the global averaging operation would seem to be a component of an equicomponent vec- tor that has the same length as the temperature vector extracted from the ﬁeld itself as per Section 3.3.1, it is still an intensive ﬁeld that provides no deﬁnite length. One might naively expect something like A
R1 ðTðri; tj ÞÞ to be the aver-
age used. However, what is actually done is much more arcane than any exam- ple of averaging operation discussed in the preceding sections [1, 2, 4, 7, 19].

The averaging rule varies in time. For example, there has been a substantial drop in the number of available weather stations since the 1970s, and espe- cially since 1990, when the number of sampling points around the world fell roughly in half over four years ([7], Figure 2). The resulting land-based aver- age is then combined (in some cases) with a series constructed using samples of seawater temperature collected during the twentieth century by ships, using a combination of bucket-and-thermometer observations and automated en- gine cooling-water observations.

Observations are not made at a common instant, t
j , for the whole ﬁeld, as one
might naively expect in the ﬁrst instance. Instead they have a common day, d, and measurements are made in terms of local time of day time producing a set, fT t; d
ri g¼ OtðTðr; tÞÞ; ð24Þ
where ri is place and t is time on day, d. The operation Ot is the time- dependent operator that takes the full ﬁeld to the set.

Land-based meteorological stations around the world provide records of daily maximum and daily minimum temperatures, denoted max ðT t; d ri Þ and
minðT t; d
ri Þ. The daily average is deﬁned as ðmaxðT t; d
ri Þþ minðT t; d
ri ÞÞ=2. Most
land-based stations only report this type of average, although some provide the min/max.

From Section 3.3.1, this average is the mean of the ll and l/C0 l Ho¨ lder means over daily temperatures. This combination is a new type of average in terms of this paper, which naturally can be expected to have distinctive behaviors.

We introduce a new averaging operator Ax
R, which only averages over x
holding other variables ﬁxed, thus producing a set and not just a real number as output. In this case, A
t
l indicates the average is over t and we denote the
mean of the Ho¨ lder means by l.

Clearly, based on Section 3 and particularly 3.1.2, it may be problematic to de- termine whether one location is warmer or colder than another on any partic- ular day with this statistic. Thus the observational network actually provides At
lðOtðTðr; tÞÞÞ: ð25Þ
22 C. Essex et al.

J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 At every ri the mean of the daily values is taken over a month. The resulting series of monthly values is translated by subtracting the mean of the monthly means themselves further averaged over a thirty-year interval (nowadays 1961–1990 is used). These reduced values, known as anomalies, are then sub- jected to ad hoc adjustments which speculatively reduce the e¤ects attribut- able to any land-use changes since before human settlement in the area, ef- fects due to changes in equipment or measurement site, missing stretches of data, etc.

The adjusted anomalies are then subjected to a mapping to yield estimates of what the anomalies might be if the actual observation sites were distributed with a uniform density over the surface of Earth. The average series are grouped into latitude–longitude boxes and averaged up to a ‘‘gridcell’’ level, with weights applied so that the variance is not a function of the number of individual stations in the gridcell. In this way, records from isolated stations count more heavily than records in more densely sampled locations.

These translations to ‘‘anomaly’’ coordinates and the other mappings that speculate on what the values of observations might be at di¤erent locations not measured, or under di¤erent conditions not known, are denoted by M, MðA
t
lðOtðTðr; tÞÞÞÞ: ð26Þ
Finally, after taking the simple mean, we arrive at the global temperature sta- tistic X that is actually in use,
X ¼ AR1 ðMðAt
lðOtðTðr; tÞÞÞÞÞ: ð27Þ
This statistic is clearly more complex than the X introduced in Eq. (2). It is far removed from AR1 ðTðr; tÞÞ, which X is widely confused with. There is no evidence that trends in AR1 ðTðr; tÞÞ need agree with that of X, nor is there a physical reason to prefer one over the other.

Debates about the di¤erence between trends in X and 1, where 1 is the out- put of an entirely di¤erent averaging map of microwave ﬂuxes, F, received from satellites, are also problematic. There is no physical reason why X must equal 1 or even have the same trends. X and 1 are entirely di¤erent statistics in a mathematical sense, even if they each are mapped from the same Tðr; tÞ for the Earth.

So far we have shown that di¤erent averages exist, they are used, and that contradictory trends can emerge between them. We have shown that the con- ditions exist in the atmosphere where such paradoxical behavior can be ex- pected to be found. In the following we show that it does in fact appear in real atmospheric data.

Does a Global Temperature Exist? 23
J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1

4.1. Contradictory trends in global temperature averages Ranking a particular type of ﬁeld average computed over a sequence of times amounts to determining a trend in that average. Here we show that the sign and size of such a trend computed statistically is dependent on the choice of averaging rules, which will su‰ce to demonstrate both that the ‘‘global tem- perature trend’’ is not a unique physical variable, and that ranking this or that year as the ‘‘warmest of the millennium’’ is not possible, since other aver- ages will give other results with no grounds for choosing among them.

To illustrate with actual temperature data, we computed averages of temper- atures over twelve sites (see Table 1) and computed a linear trend in each case. The trends through the 1979–2000 period were computed with r-means and s-means. The raw data are themselves averaged (simple monthly means:
r ¼ 1) smoothing out some variability, but this could not be avoided, and does not a¤ect the main results below. Stations were selected to give reasonable geographic variation, but whether it is a ‘‘global’’ sample or not is secondary for the purpose of the example. Stations had to be in continuous use during the 1979–2000 interval. Missing months were interpolated linearly as long as there was no more than one missing month in sequence, and it was not at the start or ﬁnish of the sample.

For each value of r, s (cf. Eq. (23)), the monthly r; s-means across the stations were computed, then a linear trend was ﬁtted using ordinary least squares after deleting rows with missing data. The trend values are plotted in Figures 2 and 3. For the simple mean ( r ¼ 1; s ¼ 0) the decadal ‘‘warming’’ trend was

0.06/C14 C/decade. This turns out to be the peak value of the trend: for most values of r and s the trends are negative, indicating ‘‘cooling’’ across the 1979 to 2000 interval.

It might seem contradictory that the same data show ‘‘global warming’’ of about 0.02 /C14 C/decade for s ¼ 0:04, but ‘‘global cooling’’ of /C0 0:04/C14 C/decade for s ¼/C0 0:04. But there is no contradiction in the data: They do not show ‘‘global’’ anything. The data are local. The interpretation of ‘‘global’’ warm- ing or cooling is an artiﬁcial imposition on the data achieved by attaching a label to, respectively, a positive or negative trend in one particular average.

Table 1 Twelve weather station records used for Figures 2 and 3. The data are monthly aver- ages from the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) [3].

Phoenix, Arizona Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Cartagena, Colombia Egedesminde, Greenland
Dublin, Ireland Salehard, Russia
Chiang Mai, Thailand Ceduna, Australia
Jan Smuts, South Africa Halley, Antarctica
Honolulu, Hawaii Souda, India
24 C. Essex et al.

J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1

5. Conclusion
There is no global temperature. The reasons lie in the properties of the equa- tion of state governing local thermodynamic equilibrium, and the implica- tions cannot be avoided by substituting statistics for physics.

Figure 2 Trends (in K/decade) through r-means from 12-station sample.

Figure 3 Trends (in K/decade) through s-means from 12-station sample.

Does a Global Temperature Exist? 25
J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 Since temperature is an intensive variable, the total temperature is meaning- less in terms of the system being measured, and hence any one simple average has no necessary meaning. Neither does temperature have a constant propor- tional relationship with energy or other extensive thermodynamic properties.

Averages of the Earth’s temperature ﬁeld are thus devoid of a physical con- text that would indicate how they are to be interpreted, or what meaning can be attached to changes in their levels, up or down. Statistics cannot stand in as a replacement for the missing physics because data alone are context-free.

Assuming a context only leads to paradoxes such as simultaneous warming and cooling in the same system based on arbitrary choice in some free param- eter. Considering even a restrictive class of admissible coordinate transforma- tions yields families of averaging rules that likewise generate opposite trends in the same data, and by implication indicating contradictory rankings of years in terms of warmth.

The physics provides no guidance as to which interpretation of the data is warranted. Since arbitrary indexes are being used to measure a physically non-existent quantity, it is not surprising that di¤erent formulae yield di¤er- ent results with no apparent way to select among them.

The purpose of this paper was to explain the fundamental meaninglessness of so-called global temperature data. The problem can be (and has been) hap- pily ignored in the name of the empirical study of climate. But nature is not obliged to respect our statistical conventions and conceptual shortcuts. De- bates over the levels and trends in so-called global temperatures will continue interminably, as will disputes over the signiﬁcance of these things for the human experience of climate, until some physical basis is established for the meaningful measurement of climate variables, if indeed that is even possible.

It may happen that one particular average will one day prove to stand out with some special physical signiﬁcance. However, that is not so today. The burden rests with those who calculate these statistics to prove their logic and value in terms of the governing dynamical equations, let alone the wider, less technical, contexts in which they are commonly encountered.

Acknowledgement
Thanks to Kirill Kondratyev for encouraging the publication of this work.

References
[1] Global Temperature Record, Climatic Research Unit Web site, http://www.cru .uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/, accessed December 2005.
26 C. Essex et al.

J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 [2] Global Temperature (Meteorological Stations), Goddard Institute of Space Studies Web site, http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/, accessed December 2005.
[3] Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), Surface temperature: Station data, http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data/update/gistemp/station_data/. [4] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2001: The Scien- tiﬁc Basis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001. [5] http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/temp/jonescru/jones.html. [6] Essex, C., Kennedy, D., Berry, R.S., How hot is radiation?, Am. J. Phys., 71 (2003), 969–978.
[7] Peterson, T.C., Vose, R.S., An overview of the global historical climatology net- work temperature database, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 78 (1997), 2837–2849. [8] Boehmer, K., ISO and climate change: Delivering on the promise, ISO Bulle- tin, August 2002, http://www.iso.org/iso/en/commcentre/isobulletin/comment/ 2002/August2002.html.
[9] NRC (National Research Council) Panel on Reconciling Temperature Obser- vations, Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change, National Academy Press, Washington DC, 2000.
[10] Christy, J.R., Norris, W.B., What may we conclude about global tropospheric temperature trends?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31 (2004), L06211, doi 10.1029/ 2003GL019361.
[11] Fu, Q., Johanson, C., Warren, S., Seidel, D., Contribution of stratospheric cool- ing to satellite-inferred tropospheric temperature trends, Nature, 429 (2004), 55–58.
[12] Esper, J., Wilson, R.S.J., Frank, D.C., Moberg, A., Wanner, H., Luterbacher, J., Climate: past ranges and future changes, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 24 (2005), 2164–2166.
[13] Trenberth, K., Uncertainty in hurricanes and global warming, Science, 308 (2005), 1753–1754.
[14] Pounds, J., Bustamante, M., Coloma, L., Consuegra, J., Fogden, M., Wide- spread amphibian extinctions from epidemic disease driven by global warming, Nature, 439 (2006), 161–167.
[15] Yoganathan, D., Rom, W.N., Medical aspects of global warming, Am. J. Ind.

Med. 40 (2001), 199–210.
[16] Bullen, P.S., Handbook of Means and Their Inequalities, 2nd ed., p. 537, Math- ematics and Its Applications, Vol. 560, Springer, New York, 2003. [17] Essex, C., Kennedy, D., Bludman, S.A., The non-equilibrium thermodynamics of radiation, Part II, Ch. 12, in: Variational and Extremum Principles in Macro- scopic Systems, Eds. S. Sieniutycz, H. Farkas, pp. 603–626. Elsevier, Amster- dam, 2005.
[18] Diewert, W.E., Symmetric means and choice under uncertainty, Essays in Index Number Theory, Vol. 1, Eds. W.E. Diewert and A.O. Nakamura, pp. 355–433, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1993.
[19] Hansen, J., Ruedy, R., Sato, M., Imho¤, M., Lawrence, W., Easterling, D., Peterson, T., Karl, T., A closer look at United States and global surface tem- perature change, J. Geophys. Res., 106 Issue D20 (2001), 23947–23964.

Paper received: 2006-05-03
Paper accepted: 2006-06-26
Does a Global Temperature Exist? 27
J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. /C1 2007 /C1 Vol. 32 /C1 No. 1 Update on Federal Activities in the
City of Carlsbad
Christie Calderwood, Chief of Police
Jennifer True, Senior Assistant City Attorney
February 3, 2026

2 TODAY’S PRESENTATION
• Legal Landscape
• Police Department Policy
• Interactions with Federal Agencies
• Communication with Federal Agencies
• Investigations involving Federal Agencies
• Police Department’s Role
• Questions
ITEM 5: FEDERAL ACTIVITIES
3 LEGAL LANDSCAPE
ITEM 5: FEDERAL ACTIVITIES
• The California Transparency and Responsibility Using State Tools (TRUST) Act (Gov. Code, §§ 7282 and 7282.5)
• The California Transparent Review of Unjust Transfers and Holds (TRUTH) Act (Gov. Code, §§ 7283. 7283.1, and 7823.2) • The California Values Act (SB 54) (Gov. Code, §§ 7284, 7284.2, 7284.4, 7284.6, 7284.10, and 7284.12)
4 The California Values Act (SB 54)
ITEM 5: FEDERAL ACTIVITIES
Pursuant to SB 54, the Police Department DOES NOT:
• Use local law enforcement resources or personnel for federal civil immigration enforcement
• Inquire into immigration status or honor immigration detainers • Share nonpublic personal information with immigration authorities • Conduct arrests based solely on civil immigration warrants • Transfer persons to immigration authorities without judicial authorization • Deputize or place officers under federal supervision for immigration enforcement • Use immigration authorities as interpreters
• Provide dedicated space or detention facilities for federal immigration custody 5 LEGAL LANDSCAPE
ITEM 5: FEDERAL ACTIVITIES
• The Immigrant Worker Protection Act (Gov. Code, §§ 90.2, 7285.1, 7285.2)
• Gov Code, Section 12532.5 (SB 580)
6 POLICE DEPARTMENT
POLICY
ITEM 5: FEDERAL ACTIVITIES
• Policy 428 and compliance with Senate Bill 54
• Protocol for ICE Administrative Warrants
• Protocol for Federal Criminal Arrest Warrants
7 ACTIVITY
ITEM 5: FEDERAL ACTIVITIES
Interactions with Federal Agencies
Communication with Federal Agencies
Investigations involving Federal
Agencies

8 POLICE DEPARTMENT ROLE

IF CALLED TO THE SCENE
• Keep the peace by ensuring safety for all
• Enforce the law
• 1st Amendment protections
ITEM 5: FEDERAL ACTIVITIES

9 ITEM 5: FEDERAL ACTIVITIES
QUESTIONS?

Carlsbad City CouncilFebruary 3, 2026

Carlsbad City Council
February 3, 2026