ATTACHMENT C
Transcript from June 6, 2024 Workshop
Special Meeting of June 6, 2024
Verbatim Transcript of actions
POLICY MANUAL WORKSHOP
CHAPTER 2 – ROLE OF CITY COUNCIL
Section II. Council Election and Governance
Jan Perkins Consultant with Raftelis
First let's do a hand vote on the first one. Two consecutive years as Mayor regardless of an election cycle in terms of the elected office. And Andre would do the actual language of it, but that's the intent, so who agrees with just that first one.
Council Member Jones
Two Consecutive Mayor years as Mayor regardless of election cycle.
Jan Perkins
So, somebody might be in their fourth year of their term as elected office member and first year as a Mayor. And then the next year could still be Mayor.
Pam Wideman Consultant with Raftelis
But they, but they only, but they have one year. But they can only do one. One year.
Yeah.
Pam Wideman
As they can do one year, not the full term.
Mayor Becerra
Two years start, the two years don't start over?
Jan Perkins
No, the two years do not start over.
City Attorney De Bortnowsky
Two consecutive years regardless of term
Council Member Jones
Two consecutive years regardless.
4 of 4 agreed
Jan Perkins
Okay, so then I wrote this one. Except if four -fifths council votes to elect the siting Mayor for another year, that's another.
Mayor Pro Tem Harriman
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As long as we have the super majority in there, then. Yeah. Because in the history of Victorville, we had councilmen that were councilmen for 20 years. Okay. And this City ran awfully damn smooth, at least as a citizen to me. And I've been actively coming to council meetings for more than 20 years. So, with that said, I do agree with what we have here. Just no more than two terms, consecutive, no matter which election cycle, unless we have a super majority.
4 of 4 agreed.
Pam Wideman
Yeah. So, with the acceptance of a nomination, the council member should publicly answer the following questions. Question. If appointed, will you well and faithfully discharge the duties of the Mayor as set forth in the C ouncil Policy and P rocedures Manual? If the implies are not confirmatory, the council member is denied the nomination.
Pam Wideman
So do we agree that this. We're going to take this part out?
4 of 4 agreed to remove it.
Jan Perkins
So, on that same page, section two, there are a bunch of changes after item seven .
So, if you could just scan through that and see if there are any disagreements with.
Pam Wideman
Starting with “The Newly Appointed Mayor..”
Mayor Becerra
It isn't what we just discussed going back and forth of how we get to Mayor.
Pam Wideman
That's right. Yep. So, we're good with this section based on our previous discussion.
City Attorney De Bortnowsky
It's the same language in subsection C down below, though.
Pam Wideman
Publicly public. Yeah. We can take that out.
City Clerk Thompson
So, after C there's still some of that language
Council Member Irving
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Still some stuff. If the Mayor Pro Tem did not receive consensus or support at the time, this goes back to where we were in November 2023.
Pam Wideman
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. So, we’re taking…
Council Member Irving
Are we taking that out?
Pam Wideman
Yes, yes.
Council Member Irving
I’m sorry I thought the stuff in the blue is what…
Pam Wideman
That was what was added. But we were based on the discussion before that we just had. We're taking that out.
Jan Perkins
And then, C because of that previous conversation we just now had.
4 of 4 agreed to remove C and “If the Mayor Pro Tem did not receive..”
SECTION III. ROLE AND DUTIES OF MAYOR
D. Seating Arrangement for City Council
Mayor Becerra
Okay, this is where I have a problem with it, D. I'm not a child don't tell me where to sit.
The Mayor Pro Tem shall always be seated directly next to the Mayor, unless it's during council.
Jan Perkins
Yeah. I'd like to suggest that the word, shall even is really restrictive, because what if we have a workshop and it is an open public meeting with, you know, a goal setting with lots of public. But it may not be necessary for the council to be seated exactly that way. I just, since it's a policy document, I just. I just don't know that you really need to be that restrictive at a council meeting.
Jan Perkins
So, is there agreement on striking that last sentence?
4 of 4 agreed
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F. Absence of Mayor
Pam Wideman
Yep. Okay, so, Absence of the Mayor. The suggested addition is the, shall perform. In the absence of the Mayor , the Mayor Pro Tem shall perform the duties of the Mayor.
Are we okay with that?
4 of 4 agreed
Pam Wideman
Okay. The Mayor Pro Tem is duty-bound to, duty-bound to the council as a whole and to Victorville, rather than to the Mayor?
4 of 4 agreed.
Pam Wideman
Okay. Very, very good. And then if I go on down, the City Clerk shall call the council meeting to order. When both the Mayor and the Mayor Pro Tem are absent, this from any meeting of the council, the City Clerk shall call the meeting to order. Are we okay with that?
Mayor Pro Tem Harriman
And then the council that are present will decide who runs the meeting.
Pam Wideman
Okay. And so go on. Whereupon a temporal presiding officer shall be appointed by the council members. That's where you're going. Council members present to serve until the arrival of the Mayor or the Mayor Pro Tem, or until adjournment, whichever comes first. Sounds like we're all okay with that.
4 of 4 agreed.
G. Request to Allow City Clerk to Run the Meeting
Pam Wideman
Yeah. All right, so let's go on down to request to allow the City Clerk to run the meeting.
Council Member Jones
I'm sorry because I want to make sure I get to chime in. This is one of those things that I don't think is needed, because when you're the Mayor, you're a presiding officer. You have the authority. You're presiding over the meeting. And that can look a number of different ways. You can have a City Clerk doing certain things, but. But when he says to run the meeting, that, to me, says presiding over the meeting. So, if you want. If you want the City. If the Mayor would prefer the City Clerk, for whatever reason, to read
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the, you know, the introduction to public comments or announce the votes or do any of those things, that's what. That's within the purview of the Mayor. I think it's just simply understood. I don't think it's helpful to have this. I don't think it really adds anything.
The Mayor already has that authority.
Council Member Irving
I agree with Debra . If she wants to, if she wants you to handle consent Agenda , run the, she can assign it to you. If she wants to, she can just sit there and not do anything.
If she wants to, because she's running the meeting.
Pam Wideman
So let's, let's test again then. Who is comfortable deleting this portion, this ad dition, knowing that the Mayor can, can assign portions of the meeting to staff or other council members as he or she feels necessary? Who's comfortable with deleting it? Show of hands.
2 of 4 agreed to remove
Discussion continued
Jan Perkins
Okay let’s see. So, the title would be request to allow the City Clerk to assist with the meeting. The language would read, the presiding officer at any City council meeting, be it the Mayor or Mayor Pro Tem, as applicable, may request that the City Clerk assist with a portion of the meeting. Period. Period. So it does not say, assume the role of the presiding.
3 of 4 agreed
SECTION IV. ROLE AND DUTIES OF ALL COUNCIL MEMBERS
. Annual Review of Residency
Pam Wideman
Going on to Annual Review of Residency
Pam Wideman
So, you guys are right on task. It's 10: 31. Before we break, let's. Let's see a show of hands. I'm kind of based on our discuss ion, based on our conversation, who's comfortable with leaving this language in the document? All right, seems like we might.
So two. Two. Right. Two people.
2 of 2 agreed
Discussion continued
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Pam Wideman
So one more time before we go to break. Are we okay with leaving. Who's okay with leaving this as instructive information, and I'll just leave it at that. Who's okay with leaving in the document?
3 of 4 agreed
B. Advance Preparation for Meetings
5. Effect of Unexcused Absences
Pam Wideman
So our next area that we need to address is around the effect of unexcused absences.
So let's start.
Pam Wideman
So, show of
hands, who sounds like we're comfortable with this language? The addition of this language.
4 of 4 Agreed
CHAPTER 5 – MEETING RULES OF CONDUCT AND DECORUM
Section II. Rules of Discussion and Debate
Pam Wideman
Okay, let's jump to Chapter five. All right, so we'll start with a civil. I'm sorry. The Rules of Discussion and Debate.
Pam Wideman
Okay, so our first one. This is. This is meaty here. Let's just start. Let's just work our way through. A. Let's talk about section A. Leslie, you want to start with this one or do you want me to. I've been leaning on you all morning.
Pam Wideman
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so show of hands, who's comfortable? Rules of discussion and debate with this section. So that would be A, B, C, D, E.
Council Member Jones
Oh, wait a minute on E. I do have one. Point number three. It says council members limit comments to three minutes. It's currently five minutes, and our council has been no council to my knowledge since we put that five minute rule in place, no one's abused it.
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Pam Wideman
All right, so who's. Let's show of hands. Who's comfortable with three and two? Okay.
So with the way this is written.
3 of 4 agreed
City Attorney de Bortnowsky
Item five on that requires a majority vote on extensions. I think that probably should be changed to at the discretion of the presiding officer.
City Clerk Thompson
And at three, at the end, it says, unless extended by majority vote, it should be changed there as well.
4 of 4 agreed
K. Failed Motions and R. Voting Rules
Jan Perkins
So Failed Motion is a cleanup and then R, R. 8 is the Tie V ote, and that's a cleanup as
well.
4 of 4 agreed.
Pam Wideman
Any abstention for the office of the Mayor counts as an affirmative vote for the current Mayor.
Council Member Irving
So if a Mayor has done their 2 year term how do you achieve the four-fifths vote with only 3 people
Deputy City Manager Smith
Two-thirds of the majority of the entire council membership.
Pam Wideman
But if you only have three people present is what you're saying.
Council Member Irving
Then we didn't get there. We didn't meet the threshold. Is that correct?
4 of 4 agreed
SECTION IV. Public Participation and Rules of Decorum for Council, Public, and Staff
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B. Rules of Decorum for Council, Public, and Staff
2. City Staff Members
Council Member Jones
Well, because before it was written where City staff followed the same rules as council members in terms of, you know, Internet use, etcetera, during meetings, it's just fundamentally different. Right. One is transparency for elected officials. The others is they have to be able to do City business. If something pops up during a council meeting.
4 of 4 agreed
C. Enforcement of Decorum
Pam Wideman
Are we all okay with this cleanup language?
4 of 4 agreed
CHAPTER 6 – ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
Section IV. Use of Personal Accounts and Personal Electronic Devices for City Business
Pam Wideman
So let's move to Chapter six, Administrative Matters, section four, item C. Use of social media sites, page 50. Any concerns about this section? New section , a nd, Andre, again, while they're reading, if you want to provide any context.
Pam Wideman
All right, so sounds like we have consensus. We're good with this added paragraph.
4 of 4 agreed
CHAPTER 3 – COUNCIL MEETINGS
Pam Wideman
We didn't spend time on Chapter three, but that sounds like we were fine with Chapter three.
4 of 4 agreed
CHAPTER 7 – RELATIONSHIP AND CONDUCT
CHAPTER 8 – COMMUNICATION AND REPRESENTATION
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Pam Wideman
Correct me if I'm wrong, though. I don't see if we had any. That we had any major issues on Chapter seven. It looks like it was just clean up, Chapter eight. Looks like that was clean up Chapter eight.
4 of 4 agreed
Section IV. City Council Spending and Reimbursement Policy
Mayor Becerra
I have a question, page 63. City Council Spending and Reimbursement Policy.
Mayor Becerra
It's already approved. But there's some stuff that comes about that we have to be registered within two days, three days, four days. You know, say we got something coming to the floor in Sacramento. They give us three, four day notice
Council Member Irving
So. So, like, I'll give a good one. The C
ongressional Black Caucus. I can go there, but
I can't go there as a public, as an elected official because the City . In other words, I can go as an individual. I don't even ask because it's my understanding that I can't go unless I get consensus from the council. And the council would say, well, how does that relate to Victorville.
City Attorney de Bortnowsky
I think your option in that case is if you weren't comfortable with this you'd have to then defer to the City Manager and give him a lot of discretion in terms of what he's going to approve, which puts him in a somewhat awkward position.
Mayor Becerra
So then how can we fix that? In the sense, could we make it the Mayor and the City Manager, not just me, but whoever's sitting at the Mayorial seat, the City Manager, the Mayor and then. Go ahead Jen..
City Clerk Thompson
So previously, it was quite a while ago, the council had a spending limit per council member. I think it was twelve hundred dollars per council member. And you could spend that on outside, outside stuff other than what was, approved.
Mayor Becerra
So where do we go back to? How do we get that in at a $1,200 mark? So, and think about this, folks, because it would be available to all five of us.
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City Manager Metzler
And that's an important point that you're making there because I think the large part of the evolution getting to this point was because this council had concern over one member in wanting to try to protect City from that one member just arbitrarily participating in activities that really weren't City business and getting the City money.
Mayor Becerra
What about that, what I'm saying, like Keith, that to be able to go to Sacramento when there's going to be a vote on the floor that affects the City , according to this, we can't do it unless, and we don't know when they're going to vote. We don't know when they're going to bring it to the floor. So, it can't be something we can leave out there.
Council Member Jones
You can't have a council member going and representing the council and speaking for the council when it hasn't taken a position. The other thing is, I think more about, like, the situation that recently came to the fore with Brightline. We got an invitatio n just a very few days in advance, and then we had, you know, we had, I couldn't go, but we had some people having to jockey about trying to do that when we didn't have a way in the policy to do that. But Brightline was, clearly affects our City. It was an important, it was an important event. We had people from Washington, DC here at this event. And so, it would have been difficult for Victorville to not show up and represent, but we had no way for them to be reimbursed because of the way this policy is written. So, I think about it more that way, making sure it's always professional development, and so forth.
But we do have from time to time, things that pop up that it's reasonable for us to go to. But we're, our hands are tied up front because someone's not giv ing us the time frame it.
Council Member Irving
I do agree it does put the City Manager in an
awkward position because then he's
tasked with deciding what's important and what's not important. I do think as elected officials, we should be participating much more, more actively in the politics of what happens. So while professional development is im portant, I think what's happening politically because we don't want to just be a council that rubber stamps whatever the City Manager says. We have positions. And I also think that the way this policy is written, I understand that we don't want to allow abuse to occur, but it's unfair because it ties to our hands, too. So, what's maybe, you know, injustice to one is injustice for all, so to speak, in that spirit. So, you know, I can't go to a whole lot of stuff anyway, but I would like to see my colleagues out there on the forefront.
Pam Wideman
I
t sounds like the issue around here is broadening this. So that encompasses more than professional development. Some examples are laid out here, but it's broadening it past that and addressing the time limit.
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Council Member Jones
It has to be nonpartisan in nature. This is a non partisan office.
Jan Perkins
Okay. So my thought was, it's what I'm hearing, is that the gap of advocating on behalf of the City of Victorville, and Keith already mentioned that. Yes. Maybe you're nearing the point that the City could be more active in advocacy in Sacramento, maybe even in Washington, depending on what, you know, on grants or whatever. So, one idea, one idea which I think would not require any change to this at all would be that as you consider your legislative program for the year, that would be, c ould be an opportunity to lay out a budget for that. And that's where perhaps the City Manager then would have some authority to say for when the council takes an official position on bills or to advocate for something in Washington, whatever it is that then you're authorizing the City Manager to then just decide when it would be appropriate to send a member of the council.
Jan Perkins
Well, this would be a way to actually address, because you could lay out as part of a legislative program your policy positions on a certain thing as City Council and then legislation that is consistent with that. Then you'd be able to write those letters or if it is warranted, go before Sacramento. So that's just a thought. And Keith, sorry about putting you on the spot.
City Manager Metzler
No, and that's fine. I think it's good and constructive. We don't have today a legislative platform. However, what we have relied on is our strategic plan, and perhaps that could, in lieu of legislative platform, be used because while, yes, we felt a little constrained as it relates to responding to letters of support that are requested for the league, we have gone so far, especially if it's already identified and adopted on our strategic plan, or perhaps the council previously took action on an item that's related to it. We've allowed that or relied on that to be able to justify the support without having to wait, you know, potentially a month or whatever to, when it's too late to go to the council. So we kind of narrowed our way into or weaved our way into being able to do it, but, you know, probably could build in, know, additional flexibility if we pointed to the strategic plan and authorized, whether it's positions or travel, so long as it's consistent with the, you know, the goals, the intent and the mission of the strategic plan that could intermediary until we get a legislative platform.
City Attorney de Bortnowsky
Perhaps the suggestion is that, you know, Keith and I and City Clerk work on some proposed language because, again, this has to come back to council for your approval, try and create some flexibility. I think Keith's suggestion that it be consistent with the strategic goals makes a lot of sense because it gives you some gu idelines. The flip side, what you want to avoid is the public being out there, sensing that all of a sudden these council members are going off on these little junkets everywhere with sort of a
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free rein and a free budget. So. But I think, I think, you know, we get the sense of the discussion and the need to have some greater flexibility. I think Keith, being the City and the Clerk, again, can work on some languages, make it a little broader than it already is.
Pam Wideman
The City, the City Attorney, City staff, they're gonna come back with some language to, based on kind of what we've heard today, to broaden this portion of the policy, give you a little bit more flexibility.
Mayor Becerra
Which includes letters, right, Andre?
City Attorney de Bortnowsky
Mhm
4 of 4 agreed to bring back with new language
CHAPTER 2 – ROLE OF CITY COUNCIL
SECTION II. COUNCIL ELECTION AND GOVERNANCE
Jan Perkins
So on page, go back 17 on the agenda
. Okay. Kind of in the middle of that page. It
says, if you can find. If no consensus on a new Mayor is reached after two consecutive council meetings, the Mayor Pro Tem will assume the role, providing he or she A , is willing to serve, and B, did not receive and accepted nomination for Mayor at any time.
I think that is fine. I think. I mean, that's not inconsistent with what you've already talked about. D goes, goes away. Because then c goes away. I'm sorry. C goes away.
Pam Wideman
Okay. So A is willing to serve. Well, that's obvious, right? We're okay with that. A.
4 of 4 agreed
Pam Wideman
All right. And then B. Did not receive and accept a nomination for Mayor at any time
during the appointment process. Are we okay with that?
3 of 4 agreed to remove B
Pam Wideman
The last sentence of, should the council fail to appoint a new Mayor Pro Tem , the
council member with the longest tenure, excluding the Mayor , shall assume the position. We said we’d strike that.
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4 of 4 agreed
Pam Wideman
So what we talked about earlier is the City
attorney and the staff will incorporate the
feedback that we've heard today, your changes, and bring this, the revised manual back to you on your future C ouncil agenda. And you all talk about what a genda, but recognizing that staff is going to need some time to incorporate this. Everybody good there?
Pam Wideman
So all I said was just recognizing that the staff needs some time to incorporate these changes. I don't know what the workload is, but it just come back at a future agenda.
4 of 4 agreed
CHAPTER 1 – INTROUCTION AND PURPOSE
Section II. Effective Date and Periodic Review/Update of Manual . Annual Review
Mayor Becerra
I want to stay a biennial. What it was. If we can't figure this out, if we got to do this every year.
City Clerk Thompson
But it also notes that the intent of this is that any such changes are only done at that review. So not like Onesie twosies.
Council Member Jones
So if you have something that comes up, you have to wait potentially two years.
Pam Wideman
You will do a biennial review. Everybody okay with that show of hands?
4 of 4 agreed