From: Jennifer Landesmann
To: Council, City
Subject: Mayoral election discussion & Feedback on Town Hall format Date: Sunday, May 19, 2024 5:15:04 PM
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Dear Council,
Thanks to yesterday's Palo Alto Daily Post, I saw that tomorrow Monday you will be discussing a proposal to change how the Mayor is selected, and Mayoral terms. The article notes that the duties of the Mayor wouldn't change if the city moves to possibly allowing voters to select a Mayor from a pool of candidates which have served two years on Council. So, the changes are mostly procedural yet the article mentions that a report to Council for Monday's meeting lists potential advantages that the new system would "empower" voters and that by extending the Mayoral terms, the mayor could "build stronger relationships at the regional, state, and federal level." I suggest that procedural changes that are not accompanied by ways to measure the benefits of a change are purely political, which is the opposite of empowerment. Instead of making this political, I suggest that you develop a performance evaluation system on how regional, state, and federal issues are being handled to address citizen issues and concerns - starting with asking residents for ideas and suggestions. Moreover, the way the City currently handles regional, state, and federal issues is vague. For example, last year the Policy & Services Committee completely changed the federal/state lobbyists on a Consent Calendar.
Zero transparency and there was no competitive bidding to make the decision on who to retain and for what. How would changing the way we vote for a Mayor or how long they serve make this different?
One area for improvement is in the City's Communications, Documentation and Follow up on neighborhood issues. I attended our recent neighborhood Town Hall and the best part of the meeting were the questions from my fellow neighbors. The unfortunate part is that some answers from staff were along the lines of "send me an email and I will get back to you"...but I also want to know the answer. Three other problems - Town Halls only happen every three years; the Agenda ends up being only the most urgent or complicated issues - which ends up muting everything else; and there are neighborhood issues that affect all Palo Alto neighborhoods that would instead benefit from a city-wide Town Hall, specific to that issue.
It has been frustrating that Council has been investing in "Marketing" and PR for some new projects, which I would say is appropriate for selling detergent, but there has been very little progress on investing in better communications about long standing issues that involve health and quality of life. These communications require more information, details, context, institutional history, regular updates and a consistent place to find them. I used to track some topics by searching for staff reports - but staff reports only happen if the issue is on the Council agenda so an issue can languish with zero citizen engagement for years as long as it's kept off the Council Agenda.
As long as communications are handled in a way that disempowers citizens, I don't see how voting for someone vs having a rotational Mayors will make a difference. Your initiative to change procedures must be much more specific about how we will be able to track and measure performance on all our issues.
Lastly, the City's Community Engagement webpage
has a "Previous Town Halls"l tab for
which I have the following suggestions:
Use a tool like Otter.ai or similar to transcribe the video replays Organize and document the audience questions and answers by topic Add subsequent questions to the City and answers
Create a report that can track some of the burning open issues Get feedback from the neighborhoods on the report
If you cannot have a Town Hall more often, please review, update, and get feedback on the last Q&A
Thank you,
Jennifer