CCA 610/17/2023
REPORT ON COMMISSION MEETING CANCELLATIONS
There have been numerous commission meetings cancelled in the past year. This report examines the relevant meeting provision statutes, ordinances, and policies; who has authority to cancel a meeting under the existing framework; what are valid reasons to cancel a meeting; what processes are required; and recommendations about how cancellations should be documented and approved, including any suggested ordinance changes.:
I. Legal framework
Redondo Beach Municipal Code section 2-9.101 established that each "commission shall hold a regular meeting at least once a month."
"Regular meeting" was not defined in the Redondo Beach Charter as it pertained to Commissions. However, as it pertains to the City Council, Charter article IX, section 9.2, sets forth that the Council hold "regular meetings twice a month at times fixed by ordinance or resolution and may adjourn or readjourn any regular meeting to a date and time certain as specified in the order of adjournment..." Commissions, such as the Library Commission and the Historical Commission have fixed dates for their meetings in their bylaws, and in the case of the Library Commission, an alternative meeting date if the regular meeting falls on recognized public holiday. See, Library Commission Bylaws art. V, Sec. 1. 3
• Section 2- 9. 101 Organization meetings. Chairman.
"Each board or commission shall meet as soon after the first day of October of every year as practical for the purpose of organizing. At such organization meeting, the boards and commissions shall organize themselves by electing one of its members to serve as chairman for the ensuing year and one of its members as secretary. Until September 1, 2022, each board or commission shall hold a regular meeting at least once every other month, except that the Planning Commission, Harbor Commission, Budget and Finance Commission, Public Works Commission and Recreation and Parks Commission shall hold a regular meeting at least once each month. From and after September 1, 2022, each board or commission shall hold a regular meeting at least once each month. In addition to any such regular meetings, each board or commission shall hold whatever special meetings may be necessary or convenient to dispose of business without delay. All proceedings of any board or commission shall be open to the public." Approved 9/21/21. Ord. O-3219-21.
2 Prior to 1997, the meeting requirements for commissions was found in the Redondo Beach Charter, art. XV, section 15.4. That section also included a requirement for commissions to hold a "regular meeting" once a month.
3 Under the Historical Commission Bylaws, art V, Sec. 1, the regular meetings of the commission are to occur on a fixed date, every other month. However, in noted in section 2 of Ord. 0-3219- 1 Page
In addition, Administrative Policy/Procedure (APP") (2/8/10), sets forth on page 3 that the "Commission meetings are set pursuant to an adoptive schedule..." That schedule is published on the Redondo Beach website (Redondo.legistar.com).
Under the current ordinance, a regular commission meeting cannot be rescheduled or omitted, except as described in the commission's bylaws (related to recognized holidays) or by resolution/ordinance of the City Council. As described herein, no commission business may be conducted at a regularly scheduled meeting if there no quorum or if the agenda is not published in a timely manner, as described in the Brown Act.
Il. Brown Act
"The liaisons, staff and Commissioners shall comply with the State Brown Act (Open Meeting Law) and its application to Commissions, Committees and Sub-Committees." APP 2.12, on page 2.
The Ralph M. Brown Act (Gov. Code §§54950-54962) governs many aspects of legislative bodies, such as Commissions, including requirements for notices, posting of agendas, actions that may be undertaken during a meeting, and in having an open, public meeting.
Cal. Gov. Code §64950 reads:
"In exacting this chapter, the Legislature finds and declares that the public commissions, boards and councils and other public agencies in this State exist to aid in the conduct of the people's business. It is the intent of the law that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly. The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created." 21, all other provisions are repealed that are inconsistent with the ordinance are repealed. Hence, the Historical Commission regular meetings are monthly. In 2023, the Historical Commission formally requested that the Council allow it to meet every other month. The Council has not yet considered that request.
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Thus, cancelling a commission regular meeting by staff, by direction of staff, or for a lack of a quorum, is a serious matter that warrants the attention of the City Council, the City Manager, and the City Clerk. It should not be a routine event.4 III. Publishing of Agenda under the Brown Act
In order to hold a meeting or consider an item, under the Brown Act, the agenda of the upcoming regular meeting must be posted at least 72 hours prior to the meeting. Cal.
Gov. Code §54954.2(a)(1). See also, APP 2.12 at page 1. "All commission agendas must be posted at Door "1" bulletin board as required, and a copy should be placed in the commission binder on the City Clerk's counter. A "Proof of Posting" with a copy of the agenda attached should be filed in Central files." Commission Roles, Responsibilities & Rules of Conduct ("Commission Roles Policy"). S IV. Cancelled meetings.
Since September 1, 2022 (until September 30, 2023), 40 commission meetings have been cancelled. The Redondo.legistar website, identified 27 cancelled meetings; an additional 9 cancellations were not identified as cancellations on the website, including three "holiday" cancellations, where the regular meeting date was not included as being scheduled on legistar, but posted notice of cancellation. There were another four (4) cancelled meetings that were not scheduled on legistar and do not appear to have a posted cancellation notice. These four meetings appear to have been scheduled on or near a "holiday" and are considered "holiday" cancellations for purposes of this report.
The breakdown of the 40 cancelled commission meetings is as follows (in descending order):
Preservation (8)
Public Safety (6)
Recreation and Parks (4)
Library (5)
* At every regular meeting, members of the public have the right to directly address the body on any item of public interest if that item is under the jurisdiction of that body. 5 Adopted by the City Council on 9/21/10; reaffirmed by City Council Resolution CC-1111-530 on 11/8/11. The Commission Roles Policy was updated 9/3/19 by authorizing the City Clerk to revise the policy pertaining to excused absences. The Commission Roles policy is supposed to be distributed to each commission member.
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Historical (4)
Budget & Finance (4)
Public Works (4)
Harbor (3)
Public Arts (2)
Planning (0)
Based upon the information currently known 14 were cancelled for lack of quorum (35.0%), 7 for holiday (17.5%), 3 for lack of business (7.5%), one for a technical issue, one on staff request, and 14 for yet to be identified reasons (35.0%).' None of the meeting cancellations appear to have been reported to the Council, and of the known meetings identified as cancelled due to a lack of quorum, in several instances commissioner absences that would have caused the lack of a quorum were not reported to the Council? There is no provision in the City charter, or ordinance related to commission regular meeting cancellation. However, there appears to be four "legitimate" reasons to cancel a regular meeting. The Brown Act identifies two, where it prohibits the legislative body from conducting business: (1) failure to post the meeting notice at least 72 hours before the scheduled regular meeting; and (2) there is no quorum of members present. Besides these two occurrences that may justify cancelling a meeting, other reasons include: (3) technical issues related to the broadcasting of the meeting to the public; and (4) if a storm/earthquake/public emergency/other public safety occurrence make it desirable to • On September 11, 2023, a public records request was made (posted with Clerk on 9/12/23)for the cancellation notices for all commission meetings; the affidavit of posting for those cancelled meetings; and the email to the Clerk notifying the Clerk that the meeting was cancelled. The response period to the records request was extended on September 21, 2023 to October 5, 2023; the first batch (Public Safety) was received on October 5, 2023; the second batch (Budget/Finance; Harbor; Historical) was received on October 12, 2023. A third batch purportedly will be made available by October 26, 2023.
Under the attendance policy set forth in the Commission Roles Policy: "Board/commission members are urged to make every effort to attend all meetings. If a member must be absent, he she should notify the City Clerk by emailing [email protected] as far in advance of the meeting as possible so an excused absence may be requested from the City Council." The Clerk is periodically required to report to the Council the requests for excused absences. As noted in consent agenda Administrative Reports going back to 2019, "Commissioners are required to communicate impending absences directly to the City Clerk for processing." See e.g., Administrative Report for July 11, 2023 City Council meeting. Municipal Code section 2-9.107 contemplates that a commissioner seeking an excused absence must obtain "permission of the City Council expressed in its official minutes."
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cancel a meeting. The first three items, as described below, are subject to abuse and should be promptly be examined by the City Council. The last item would require direct action by the City Manager, generally under emergency powers, subject to later City Council review.
Reasons commission meetings were cancelled in the past year include:
Holiday. Seven meetings were cancelled appear holiday related; three specifically mentioned the holiday in their Notice of Cancelled Meeting. At least two of the reviewed commission bylaws have provisions for regular meetings that fall on a holiday. In cancelling the meetings, those bylaws were not followed. Holidays schedules are known well in advance of the meetings. The dates for the regular meetings that fall on a holiday could have been cancelled or, once published, be rescheduled by the City Council, consistent with the Brown Act notice provisions. Thus, "holiday" should not be a valid reason to cancel a regular meeting.
Lack of Business. At least three meetings were cancelled under the guise of lack of business. The Brown Act is designed so that the public has the opportunity to address its legislative bodies, whether it be for an agendized item or a non-agendized item.
Cancelling for this reason is ABUSIVE and not consistent with the Brown Act.
Quorum? In more than a dozen instances, this was the reason for cancelling a regular meeting. Under the Brown Act, if a quorum is not present for a scheduled meeting, the & The cancellation of the June 14, 2023 Rec & Parks Commission meeting for lack of business appears to have been improper. That meeting was announced at the May 10, 2023 commission meeting. This meeting was cancelled almost a week prior to the commission regular meeting. In an email dated June 8, 2023, staff confirmed to commissioners that there was business to be conducted, but due to "summer preparations" and developing next year's budget, the meeting was not being held. The July 12, 2023 agenda also confirmed that there were multiple items of business that could have been placed on the June 14, 2023 agenda. ° See footnote 7 re: City excused absence policy. Similar to a lack of business cancelation, lack of quorum cancelations can be abused. For example, the June 21, 2023 Historical Commission meeting was cancelled due to a lack of quorum almost two weeks prior to the regular meeting.
However, no commissioners requested an excused absence. The July 19, 2023 Historical Commission regular meeting was also cancelled due to a lack of quorum, and again no requests for excused absences. In a July 18, 2023 email, the Community Services Director stated that "we did not have any new business items and when the Commissioners were informed of this they declined to attend leading to a lack of quorum." A public records request did not reveal any such communication to Commissioners confirming that there was no new business. With the recent directive from the City Manager not to cancel meetings due to lack of business, lack of quorum may be a way around that directive.
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legislative body cannot hold the meeting and cannot take public comment. As it relates to quorums, the Council established attendance protocols, requiring commissioners to request an excused absence from the Council by notifying the City Clerk in advance of the meeting. See, Commission Roles Policy, described herein. The Clerk presents these requests from the Council for approval. This makes it easy to verify whether a cancellation for lack of quorum is ABUSIVE or not.
There are two types of quorum cancelling meetings: (1) when the agenda is posted 72 hours before the meeting consistent with the Brown Act; and (2) those meetings that are cancelled more than 72 hours before. Both of these types of cancellations have the potential for abuse. Of the 14 meetings cancelled for lack of quorum, 6 were the first type and 8 were the second type. Of those cancelled for lack of quorum more than 72 hours before the meeting, there is an opportunity for staff, the City Manager, or the Clerk to verify that excused absence requests have been received prior to posting the Notice of Cancelation. Furthermore, of the 14 cancelled meeting for lack of quorum, it appears that 12 of them were cancelled for a lack of quorum when there was insufficient documentation submitted to the Clerk of an absence that would show that there would not be a quorum.
Technical issues. Unfortunately, this happens occasionally. The September 27, 2023 Public Arts regular meeting was cancelled at the time of the meeting when a technological issue could not be fixed.
Staff recommendation. In one instance, it appears that staff did not want to have the commission's September 2023 regular meeting. In the published August regular meeting agenda, under adjournment, it was specified that the next regular commission meeting would be in October. Staff then asked the commission to vote on having the next meeting in October, which passed. This was done with the staff's knowledge of the ordinance's requirement for monthly regular meetings, as he had advocated earlier in the year to recommend changing the ordinance to allow the commission to meet every other month and had presented a detailed Administrative Report to the commissioners on the subject. He also appeared aware that the ordinance had not yet been changed. This appears to have been an ABUSIVE cancellation of a regular meeting. 10 This has led to instances where commissioners, staff and the public appear, but the meeting cannot proceed. Such was the case, for example, with the Rec. and Parks Commission's July 12, 2023 regular meeting
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V. Who can cancel/postpone a regular meeting
Under current ordinance - it appears that only the City Council can cancel a regular meeting - unless the meeting is cancelled for lack of a quorum after the posting of agenda, for a technical issue at the time of meeting, or for an impending public emergency. The Council may wish to modify the ordinance so that the City Manager, in certain instances (such as a public emergency) can act, in his sole capacity, subject to ratification by the Council.
Under the current ordinance - a commission cannot unilaterally vote not to have a regular meeting, such as was done at the August 26, 2023 Historical Commission meeting. Such action by a commission, absent a change in the ordinance, is only a recommendation to the City Council.
VI. Recommendations:
1. Amend ordinance so it provides more flexibility.
2. Have the City Manager present periodic Administrative Reports to the Council identifying cancelled meetings for the prior month and the reasons for the cancelation. The Council can then decide to ratify the cancelation or make further inquiry.
3. Have the City Clerk certify in the excused absence request Administrative Report presented to the Council that a meeting cancelled for lack of quorum was supported by sufficient commissioner excused absences requests to cause a lack of quorum.
4. Have the City Manager sign-off on all posted notices of cancelled meeting, prior to posting.
5. Check the calendar every six months to determine if any future proposed commission regular meeting date falls on a holiday. If so, then at least two months in advance of the meeting, have the Council reschedule the date of the regular meeting, first in conformity with the commission bylaws, second to another available date during the month, or cancel in its entirety.
6. Have the City Clerk maintain all the Notice of Cancellation and Affidavit of Posting of the cancellation notice on the Redondo legistar, or the Clerk's website (so that it is searchable, much like minutes, agenda packet, resolutions, and other 7 Page
records), AND maintain a hard copy book of cancelation notices in the lobby of the Clerk's office for public inspection.
7. Amend the attendance section in the Committee Roles Policy to delete the reference to City Charter 15-8, as that provision was repealed in 1997. //
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CANCELLED COMMISSION MEETINGS
Sept 2022-July 2023
Cancel If "lack of quorum"
Meeting Reason Date identified # in Clerk Reports
Date Commission Cancelled Cancelled on legistar posting to Council Posting signed by 2023
7/13/2023 Budget/Fin unknown undated Legistar y-B2 Doug Kaku 3/9/2023 Budget/Fin lackBusiness 3/9/2023 Legistar y-B2 Doug Kaku 1/12/2023 Budget/Fin lackBusiness 1/12/2023 Legistar y-B2 Doug Kaku 7/10/2023 Harbor quorum 7/5/2023 Legistar y-B2 4 Laurie Koike 3/13/2023 Harbor unknown Legistar
1/9/2023 Harbor unknown Legistar
9/20/2023 Historical staff 8/16/2023 Legistar 8/16/23 agenda 7/19/2023 Historical quorum 7/11/2023 Legistar y-B2 0 Cameron Harding 6/21/2023 Historical quorum 6/8/2023 Legistar y-B2 0 Cameron Harding 5/17/2023 Historical quorum 5/8/2023 Legistar y-B2 1 Cameron Harding 9/4/2023 Library holiday 8/24/2023 MtgNotID y-pix; 8/7/23 agenda Erin Schoonover 7/3/2023 Library quorum 6/20/2023 Legistar y-pix 0 Erin Schoonover 8/2/2023 Preservation quorum 7/25/2023 Legistar y-pix O Latrice Williams 7/5/2023 Preservation quorum 6/23/2023 Legistar y-pix O Latrice Williams 4/5/2023 Preservation unknown Legistar
3/1/2023 Preservation unknown Legistar
1/4/2023 Preservation unknown Legistar
9/27/2023 Public Arts technical No
8/21/2023 Public Safety quorum 8/21/2023 No Y-B1 2 Kyle Lofstrom 6/19/2023 Public Safety quorum at meeting No video 3
3/20/2023 Public Safety unknown Legistar
2/20/2023 Public Safety holiday 1/16/2023 MtgNotID y-B1 Kyle Lofstrom 1/9/2023 Public Safety holiday 1/9/2023 MtgNotID y-B1 Kyle Lofstrom 7/24/2023 Public Works quorum 7/10/2023 Legistar y-pix 0 Lauren Sabian 7/12/2023 Rec & Parks quorum No video 2
6/14/2023 Recs & Parks lackBusiness 6/8/2023 Legistar y-pix 0 Cameron Harding 4/12/2023 Rec & Parks unknown Legistar
2022(9/1-12/31)
9/8/2022 Budget /Fin quorum 9/8/2022 Legistar Y-B2 1 Doug Kaku 11/7/2022 Library unknown Legistar
11/2/2022 Preservation unknown Legistar
10/5/2022 Preservation unknown Legistar
11/30/2022 Public Art unknown Legistar
12/19/2022 Public Safety quorum 12/19/2022 No Y-B1 1 Kyle Lofstrom 11/28/2022 Public Works unknown Legistar
9/26/2022 Public Works quorum No video 3
11/9/2022 Rec & Parks unknown Legistar
Holiday cancellations, where meeting date not reflected on legistar AND no Notice of Cancellation posted:
1/2/2023 Library
9/5/2022 Library
12/7/2022 Preservation
12/26/2022 Public Works
Clerk's Absence Reports
10/17/2023 timely
10/3/2023 1post
9/5/2023 2post
7/11/2023
6/20/2023 111
5/16/2023
5/9/2023 timely
4/18/2023 timely
2/21/2023 timely
12/20/2022 timely
12/6/2022 timely
11/8/2022 1post
10/11/2022 timely
10/4/2022 1post
9/20/2022 1post
9/6/2022 timely