Attachment A – Page 1 of 2
Attachment A – Suggested Handbook Changes for 2024 Handbook Revisions Changes are as of late 2023
Note: Staff has not yet determined the exact sections to which these suggested changes will apply if the City Council chooses to include them as changes. In an effort to keep the revised Handbook organized, Staff requests the ability to draft the exact language and evaluate the best placement within the Handbook document as an administrative task and to bring the suggested final language to City Council for the items that the City Council chooses to advance from the list below.
Suggestions from Council Members (as of November 2023):
- Kou: no proposed changes
- Stone: no proposed changes
- Tanaka: no proposed changes
- Veenker:
o Revisit discussion on remote participation for public comment (audio and video) o Procedures Page 14 (Sec. 3) Order of the Agenda: Consider adding a land acknowledgement at the start of meetings
- Lauing:
o Procedures Page 30 (Sec. 5.1(b)1 says “The Council limits the total time up to 30 minutes per meeting for General Public Comment.” We sometimes don’t abide by that. Should we abide by it strictly or have an exception clause (such as “at the Mayor’s/Presiding Officer’s discretion the 30-minute limit can be extended”)?
o Consider eliminating call-in public comment.
- Lythcott-Haims:
o Procedures page 30, Sec 5.1(a)(1) Mentions that the public can access the meeting online. Given recent events, I feel we should discuss whether to discontinue online public comment for items not on the agenda. o Procedures page 34, Sec 7(b) says there is a 2-3-year time limit on City Council priorities. This limitation was of concern to many of us last year. Feels like we should discuss.
o Procedures page 34, Sec 7(b) also says Council will provide (only) 2-3 specific objectives within a priority whereas this year we had many more. We should discuss whether we are going to hold to this expectation in coming years or whether we need to amend the handbook.
- Burt:
o We don’t have anything under the Consent Calendar on how long the members of the public get to speak if speaking on multiple Consent items. I recommend limiting it to 3 minutes total and it can be reduced according to other procedures on public speaker time reductions.
Attachment A – Page 2 of 2
o When Council members vote no on a Consent item and get to speak about their no vote, we do not have a time limit set for them. I recommend it be limited to 3 minutes total, no matter how many items a Council member has voted no on. o Council members’ use of public-funded events for their own political purposes:
need to clarify rules on this per FPPC.
o Protocols Page 37, Sec. 1.4(b)1: Council members should address each other with formal titles. We should update this section to address that Committee meetings can be less formal.
o Procedures Page 6, Sec. 1.2(d): Under CAO Committee, there is nothing about an annual responsibility to schedule CAO performance evaluations. Language should be added to address this scheduling responsibility for this committee.
Also should add that the CAO committee can review the contract on who will do the CAO reviews as well as review and recommendation to Council related to CAO recruitments.
o Agenda setting for Committee Business: the CPP does not spell out how Committee agenda setting is done. It should say that Committee agenda setting is done between the staff and the Committee chair based on the Council referrals and annually assigned items. Can also include that agenda setting will include items within the Council guided delegated topics of the Committee. o New recommendation: That a Committee would be able to make recommendations to the City Council for a Committee to be able to discuss/explore a specific topic instead of always using a Colleagues’ Memo to Council to get a topic delegated to the Committee.
Note from Staff: For the Committee’s consideration when looking at the suggestions related to remote / call-in participation, it should be noted that the City Council may revise its procedures by ending (either indefinitely or temporarily) the call-in option for public comment. Doing so, however, would foreclose the ability of City Council Members to use streamlined noticing procedures under AB 2449 where there is just cause or emergency circumstances. To use streamlined remote attendance procedures under AB 2449, the agenda must provide an opportunity for all public comment via a call-in option, an internet-based option, and an in- person option. (Government Code section 54953 (f)(1)(C)).
Proposed Changes for City Council Handbook from Staff (as of November 2023):
A. Establish a protocol related to the gifts the City can receive from international partners such as Sister Cities. The intention is to set a maximum amount of a gift that a City representative can receive on behalf of the City. This would also include a note that City officials cannot accept hotel accommodations from an international partner.
B. Establish as a procedure, additional guidance for proclamations, specifically identifying guidelines on if and why proclamations can be brought forward.
C. Note: The suggestion related to additional ad hoc committee guidelines has been removed for the March 2024 City Council discussion