The Council made very few concrete policy decisions on Tuesday night, its last meeting of the year, but it did finalize motions made at the last meeting and also laid the groundwork for what promises to be another action-packed year.
The most notable exchange was a debate over what the role of the alternates would be – whether they would be full participants, except on voting matters, much as they are on other commissions, or whether they would only participate in the absence of another member.
There are good arguments both ways. On the side of full participation is the notion that they need to be engaged and involved in the process throughout, in order to be able to step in to make a critical decision. A secondary point is that this allows for the participation of a more diverse group.
The first argument is compelling, but the second point is actually an argument for the expansion of the size of the committee – a move I support.
On the other hand, opponents of the idea to expand the committe felt that ten participants is enough, that this is a highly-complicated matter, and that they need a smaller and more focused discussion.
Councilmember Sue Greenwald attempted to push this as a friendly amendment to Rochelle Swanson’s initial motion, but Ms. Swanson was opposed to the idea and declined it.
So, after the main motion passed, Sue Greenwald made the motion as a stand-alone motion. This time she was joined by Mayor Joe Krovoza. The mayor must have surprised himself by backing the motion, because he said not only was he going to second the motion, but he specifically said this was not for the purposes of discussion, but that he would actually speak toward the motion.
It seemed a little odd, because in general that is understood, unless otherwise indicated.
They went back and forth, each had their views and their positions, but in the ended it ended up a 3-2 vote in favor of full participation.
As I suggested a moment ago, my own view is that we needed just to expand the membership if our rationale is to bring in more points of view. I am in favor of broader participation, and I do not buy into the argument that a larger body is going to detract from the discussion.
However, once the council decided to go with the creation of five alternates, they should have allowed the committee itself to make the other decisions.
I have been hearing for a while complaints that this council micromanages the city and their agenda. The rumblings are that they mistrust city staff (I can’t imagine why) and go about formulating policy on the dais when they should actually give staff specific direction and ask them to come back.
Frankly, I think they have done this more in recent months than they did originally. But while I think staff is need of a major overhaul, I think a lot of times they work out fine details on the dais that they have no business doing. Unless there is an urgency to pass an item, they should have their discussion, provide majority council direction and ask staff to come back with a more refined proposal.
That will save a lot of time on the dais and save precious time for other discussions.
This discussion, while at least brief, was frustrating. You are entrusting the committee to examine very important subject areas and granting them a good deal of discretion to do it. Why not create the five alternates and leave it to committee to figure out who should and who should not participate?
The Chair of the Committee was there on Tuesday night. She spoke. She said her personal preference was to allow everyone to participate as she felt getting more perspectives from experts in the community was valuable.
At the same time, she made it clear that she had not discussed it with the committee, so she could not speak for them. This would have been a perfect opportunity for the council to delegate a non-policy issue, one that is procedural to the committee that they are entrusting to do critical work.
Instead, they went around the room, each councilmember laid out their position, they did so in a respectful and professional manner, then they voted and moved on. It is not a huge deal, but this would have been a logical and reasonable time to delegate and avoid having to make another 3-2 vote on what is already a contentious matter.
To recap again, I do not make this into a huge issue by itself. I just have a longstanding view that the council tries to do too much. They should provide policy direction. They have already done that.
The question of creating five alternates for the committee was in their purview, the question as to how those five alternates would work within the committee structure would have been best left up to the committee.
We talk about length of council meetings – and again this was not completely onerous, but it was avoidable and could have saved time.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
David, the general conduct and governance of the CC needs an overhaul. This is not good governance that we have going on here. Good governance is staff presentation, public comments, brief CC clarification questions (if necessary), motion, second, vote, move on. All the speechifying, commenting, grandstanding, obstructing, should be left for media opinion pieces, public speeches, and the campaign trail. The CC is wasting their time, staff time, legal consul time, paid adviser time, and most importantly, the public’s time. Having to sit through a bunch of gobeldy gook while waiting for an agenda item of interest to come up is an extremely trying, frustrating experience. It is a barrier to community participation and harms the community on many levels. Perhaps I’m in a minority on this issue. I look forward to reading the perspectives of other Vanguardians.
Who are the alternates, or will that be a separate action?
I’ve read through this twice, and I can’t quite figure out what you think should have been delegated to the committee. The level of participation by the alternates?
“The level of participation by the alternates?”
Yes, let the committee decide how the alternates will participate.
[quote]The mayor must have surprised himself by backing the motion, because he said not only was he going to second the motion, but he specifically said this was not for the purposes of discussion, but that he would actually speak toward the motion.–[b]David Greenwald[/b][/quote]I don’t understand this sentence. The most logical explanation for Joe’s statement is that he strongly agreed with me, and wanted to make that clear.
I was told by two members of the committee that the committee had voted to ask council to keep the number of members to ten, because it would be too difficult to have a meaningful discussion on such a complex issue with more than ten.
If that is true then having alternates participating in the discussion defeats the purpose of keeping the number of participants to ten.
Sue, I both agree with you and disagree with you. I think it is incumbent on the alternates to “choose their spots” (when participating) a bit more at a meeting where they are not voting than they might if they were actually a voting participant because of an absence.
There certainly will be times when the additional five perspectives does result in a better consensus decision when a vote is taken, but just as often “less is more” will be guidance that the alternates will probably follow.
David, the advantage of the alternate choice rather than the full participant choice is that the risk of failing to meet a quorum at any one meeting is virtually nil. It didn’t happen very often, but for the Housing Element Steering Committee there were a few meetings where the meeting started without a quorum. In each case late arrivals did make the quorum happen, but it was touch and go. Not having to worry about quorum issues should make agenda management and expert testimony scheduling easier.
I don’t know who the alternates are going to be, but when one Council member asked me my thoughts, I recommended Nancy Price. I think she would be a great addition to the WAC.
“I don’t understand this sentence. The most logical explanation for Joe’s statement is that he strongly agreed with me, and wanted to make that clear.”
It seemed awkward to me. It’s not how people typically second motions.
“I was told by two members of the committee that the committee had voted to ask council to keep the number of members to ten, because it would be too difficult to have a meaningful discussion on such a complex issue with more than ten. “
All the more reason to leave it up to them to decide rather than the council.
[quote]It seemed awkward to me. It’s not how people typically second motions.– [b]David Greenwald[/b][/quote]Councilmembers make all kinds of comments. Since the mayor is supposed to speak last, he wanted to signal that he had a strong opinion. Why single out that particular innocuous comment for criticism? [quote]All the more reason to leave it up to them to decide rather than the council.– [b]David Greenwald[/b][/quote]I disagree. I was told that the committee voted that it was too difficult to hold a serious conversation on a complex topic with more than ten people. If that is true, then it is far more civil for the council to set those guidelines before the alternates are selected. And prospective alternates would have realistic expectations when they decide whether or not to apply or accept.
Once the individuals are selected, it becomes too personal to vote on whether or not they can participate in the discussion.
Sue, I attended the meeting as a citizen observer. To the best of my recollection (which on this point is quite good), no member of the WAC said “it would be too difficult.” What virtually everyone who spoke said was that “it would be more challenging.”
Sue: I singled it out because it seemed unusual as though he were about to say for the purposes of discussion and changed his mind almost mid-sentence. I have never seen it phrased that way. Obviously you seem to think it was a big deal that I made note of it, but I’m not sure why.
I’m not going to rehash what was said/not said at the WAC meeting in regard to wanting to keep voting members of the WAC to only 10. I will say there were differing comments around the table. However all indicated a wish to keep the voting number to 10, but for individual reasons. Nevertheless there was a desire to add five alternates so as to avoid quorum problems.
At the subsequent City Council meeting approving five alternates, Council member Greenwald moved to not permit alternates to participate at WAC meetings other than during “frequently called public comment”. I personally felt that policy would have been a mistake because:
1) additional expertise should be/is always welcome;
2) WAC members need to keep fully engaged any time they fill in for an absent WAC member;
3) attendance of alternates may drop off if they are not permitted to participate – meetings will be twice monthly;
4) as Council member Dan Wolk pointed out, what is the rationale for frequently having public comment during a meeting, but not allowing alternates to participate? It is essentially a distinction without a difference;
5) the WAC Chair would have to stop and hold public comment for alternates every time the WAC wanted to discuss a new issue, an awkward and unnecessary process;
6) I believe 15 grown adults can manage to play nice/act professionally at a meeting.
I am grateful the vote went the way it did on this particular issue, as I think it was the correct one under the circumstances. My faith is in the WAC, who are very committed to their mission/charge.
Well said Elaine.