All right, good morning.

And welcome to the Rules Committee meeting of June twenty-fourth, twenty twenty-six.

I'm Joel Cava, Council Member for District One, Chair of the Committee.

Our committees liaison Sarah Jordan will go over instructions for today's meeting.

Sarah, Chair Lakava.

Well, members of the public are able to attend the meeting in person.

This meeting is being televised and live streamed on the city's website, and council administration will continue to make arrangements for the public to comment using the Zoom webinar platform.

Members of the public who wish to provide virtual testimony must enter the virtual queue by raising their hand before the virtual queue closes.

The queue will close after the last virtual speaker finishes speaking, or five minutes after in-person testimony ends, whichever occurs first.

This will allow for better meeting management between the two platforms and ensure the committee is able to manage and conduct city business.

We appreciate the public's cooperation.

Chair Lacaba.

All right, thank you, Sarah.

I will now call the Rules Committee meeting of Wednesday, June 24th, 2026 to order and call the role.

Vice Chair, Council President Pro Tem Kent Lee, Councilmember Raoul Campillo, Council Member Vivian Moreno, and Councilmember Sean Elo Rivera.

I am present.

Also attending the meeting today is Jillian Andalina with the office of the independent budget analyst.

Kathy Steinman with the office of the city attorney, Matt Yeah, with the office of Mayor Tag Loria, and Abby Reuters committee consultant.

With that, Sarah, please continue with public comment instructions.

Thank you, Chair.

If you are in person, please complete a speaker slip located at the entrance of the committee room and place it on the top of the box indicated at the table at the front of the room.

Please do so in a timely manner to ensure proper meeting management in-person testimony will conclude before virtual testimony begins, and members of the public can also join the webinar by computer, tablet, or smartphone by accessing the link which is listed online in the preamble language of the agenda on the city's webpage.

If you need to participate by telephone, you may do so by dialing one six six nine two five four five two five two inputting webinar ID 160-439-9420 pound.

This information is also available on the agenda and it will appear on the screen during the public comment period for each agenda item.

Please note that if you are watching via City TV twenty-four or online, there may be delay.

Please participate via the audio on your phone and mute your TV or your computer when it is your turn to speak.

If you wish to speak to a particular item, please wait for that item to be called and then raise your hand to speak by tapping the raise your hand icon if you're a Zoom participant, or if you're calling participant by pressing star nine on your phone.

If you raise your hand during a non-comment period, your hand will be lowered.

Chair.

Alright, thank you, Sarah, for reviewing those instructions.

For the benefit of the public, a quorum is now present.

We will now take up not agenda public comment.

The council members respect and appreciate the public's input and are fully committed to protecting every participant's free speech rights at council and committee meetings.

Sarah, please proceed with non-agenda public comment.

Is an opportunity for members of the public to comment on items that are not on the agenda but are within the subject matter jurisdiction of this committee, and each speaker will have two minutes as a reminder.

If you need to participate by telephone, you may dial 1669-2545252, inputting webinar ID 160439-9420 pound.

We've received one speaker slip here in the committee room, so we will begin with in-person testimony.

Max Schmidt, please approach the lecture and you will have two minutes.

Hi, I've been homeless in San Diego, Los Angeles, and a few months in Phoenix for um exactly a year and six months, and during that time I've been followed around by people who um make weird noises that will um this is um that that weird noises that torture me.

For example, they will make um squishing noises or clapping noises that um will make my genitalia uh feel like it's going to ejaculate when completely not erect.

I think the internet calls this um sensitizing someone to noises and then torturing them.

Um they will also make noises that make my um testicles tingle as if I'm stricken completely with fear.

Um, and these people follow me around um downtown San Diego everywhere I go, so I can never get any peace.

I can never get um any freedom.

And they also um at the risk, the reason they do this type of torture is because it's makes you sound mentally ill when you talk about it.

So at the risk of sounding mentally ill, the people who follow me around for the past year and a half torturing me, even in the homeless shelter.

Uh um, I'm not gonna at the risk of sounding mentally ill, they also speak random bizarre um gibberish that um is the equivalent to being forced to wear wear headphones nonstop throughout the day that um constantly say bizarre, weird gibberish, and while that's happening, make squishy and clapping noises that um torture physically torture you.

And I just wanted to say that I'm being mentally and physically tortured everywhere I go, and that every human deserves um freedom.

Every human deserves respect.

And for this to be happening in America is disgusting.

And this is what communist countries do to dissidents.

And I know that if if um these people could kill me and get away with it, they would.

But they're instead trying to get me to turn to drugs or kill myself, and I've experienced all this sober and s of sound mind.

Thank you for your testimony.

That concludes comment here in the committee room.

So I will begin the five-minute timer for all those in the virtual queue to indicate if they wish to provide non-agenda public comment.

As a reminder, each speaker will have two minutes.

We currently have seven hands raised and we will begin with Becky Rapp.

Please unmute and begin.

Good morning.

My name is Becky Rapp, and I'm here today to raise concerns about transparency and public notification regarding marijuana permit ownership changes.

I recognize that under the city's municipal code, marijuana permits may be transferred, assigned, or undergo ownership changes subject to city requirements.

However, while the code provides a pathway for these transactions, it does not provide meaningful notification to the communities that originally participated in the approval process.

Seven years ago, Rancho Bernardo residents spent countless hours reviewing and commenting on a pot shop application known as Urban Leaf.

Community members attended hearings, submitted written comments, and voiced concerns about the location and operation of the business.

Public engagement was required because the city recognized that these permits have significant neighborhood impacts.

Yet since that approval, the permit has changed hands multiple times through acquisitions and corporate transactions.

Today the business operates under a completely different brand known as Cake House.

Despite these changes, residents received no notification, no public update, and no opportunity to understand who now controls the permit.

Communities deserve a simple a simple heads up when a permit involving a highly intoxicating substance changes ownership or branding.

At a minimum, there should be a public notification process so residents can stay informed about who is operating in their neighborhood.

I ask this committee to please update municipal code to provide public notice of permit transfers, ownership changes, and major rebranding efforts so that communities are not left in the dark after investing significant time in the original approval process.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next caller is Madison.

Please unmute and begin.

This morning I would like to talk about some policies that shape the future of our city, and I encourage you to keep youth health and safety at the forefront of any cannabis-related decisions.

Recent research found that cannabis advertisements featuring illustrations, flavors, and positive sensation appeals significantly increased adolescents' desire to use marijuana.

Researchers also use brain imaging and found that these marketing techniques trigger neurological responses in youth that are different from those seen in adults.

In other words, young people are uniquely vulnerable to these messages.

Today's marijuana products are far more potent than those of previous generations.

As future cannabis-related proposals, regulations, or ballot measures come before the city, I urge you to prioritize transparency, public health, and youth protection over industry expansion.

Parents should not have to compete with sophisticated marketing campaigns designed to normalize marijuana use.

Government has a responsibility to create policies that reduce youth exposure rather than increase it.

As a mother, I ask that any future cannabis policy discussions and create careful consideration of the impact on young people and the long-term health of our community.

Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

Blair Beekman, please unmute and begin.

You will have two minutes.

All right, thank you.

I'm beginning to uh better understand the story of our our first uh public commenter.

Uh good luck that um, you know, his issues are are that of um you know uh what is extreme things going on in his mind right now and what are uh actually examples of real life.

It's kind of our everyday birds and bees of life basically, and learning how to bring these extreme examples into our everyday, you know, the everyday practices of everyday life.

That's because he's a young person.

Good luck how you can figure out how to do that, and um it takes practice.

Um I'm really understanding, so I can I can talk more at length about this.

That uh there is hope.

You know, I go through the same thing, and it's learning how to make things more regular and asking people to stop also.

That that's important too, and it's a combination of the things.

Good luck in how to do that.

And noticing your own uh uh uh over exaggerations of things sometimes that's important too.

With all that said, uh, thank you uh for today's meeting.

Uh I hope you're really uh considering I've been talking for over a week now that I really think we can be developing uh patterns to to leave uh the ALPR vendor flock, find a new flock vendor or find a new ALPR vendor if one at all, and talk about reducing technology overall year after year.

And I think that's a really fair compromise that will still serve public safety in local neighborhoods very well.

I I think it's an awesome compromise system that I hope everybody's considering ways into work that way.

Uh we'll be talking more about that in the fall, obviously.

Uh, this is an ongoing issue.

Good luck how we can continue talking about it.

And I um I'm running out of time.

What I really wanted to talk about today, and that was um the uh community energy.

Uh, I don't think that uh uh municipality is has to be the ultimate.

Let's have many choices in the importance of community energy itself.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The five minute timer has exhausted with four hands remaining up in the queue and we'll take no other callers beyond these four hands raised.

Phone number ending in eight seven zero zero.

You can unmute by pressing star six.

Uh Joy Sanyata.

Thank you, Blair.

Okay.

Uh I didn't have the energy to write my reckoning speech last night.

I decided to speak on law spontaneously this morning.

So law permeates most everything.

I guess we cling to it for solidity, federal, state, and local.

Even nature has laws big time.

Plus, we have code, regs, policies, or results, and so forth.

It goes on and on.

It can be overwhelming.

I am so thankful for all our legal eyes.

Here is something I've wondered about lately.

Do we look at law enough before we proceed?

Settlements and judgments, litigation, threats of suits against us, and us against them too.

Are we looking closely enough to prevent and control as best we can?

I doubt that.

Oh, excuse me.

I doubt that the $30 million settlement was really truly preventable.

That's the way life is.

That's the uncertainty of it that we face in life.

Can we do better?

Of course we can, and I ask that we do better.

Let us not let a system of protections rule our city as to create litigation as a given and distract us from the core of our work, which is to connect the dots and bring us together of heart and mind.

Sort of.

Actually, not even sort of like the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

Thank you.

This does conclude your time.

Thank you for your comment.

Thank you, Sarah.

Our next speaker is Francine Maxwell.

Please unmute and begin.

Good morning, Francine Maxwell.

I want to thank the council for passing the code of conduct for boards and commission.

The problem is you didn't tell the community that you cannot remove um a commissioner based on the code of conduct without a vote from the city council.

And it's far and rare and in between and it never happened that the city council will remove a commissioner for um going against the code of conduct.

So I want to give you that the Human Relations Commission in their last meeting at Jackie Robinson YMCA, the chair gave his report from meeting with the city attorney with possible Brown Act violations.

Our city attorney, our chief deputy city attorney, said that there was no brown act violation.

The HRC chairman gave his report, and a commissioner said that it was just hearsay.

The commissioner wanted the deputy chief city attorney to come so that they can see the body language, that they could hear the answers themselves.

Disrespectful goes against the boards and commissions, code of conduct, and nothing will happen.

So again, in this season, we need the Human Relations Commission to be diligent.

The word for the remainder of 2026 is courage.

Does this city council have courage to stop the human relations commission debacles that occur when they're coming out in the public?

We need strong leadership.

We need someone to ask what is happening with the boards and commission.

Why does the mayor's office protect bad behavior?

We need to move forward in love, but we also need to have courage.

You guys voted this in, the code of conduct, hold people accountable.

It's the right thing to do.

Thank you.

Judy Strang, please unmute and begin.

Good morning, rules committee.

I've been thinking a great deal about Monday City Council meeting and the passage of item 202 regarding pot deliveries in the city of San Diego.

And I think it's w a wonderful first step that it really demonstrates that we care about whose delivery pot in our city and where is that pot coming from and what is the condition of it?

And are they just wandering around with pot money and a truck somewhere and we don't know anything about them?

So I appreciate it.

But I was confused when I heard there were several people who are planning if the county adopts a permitting process for marijuana that they are concerned that if they get one of those permits are allowed to get one of those permits, they don't want to register in the city of San Diego.

So I've been thinking as was mentioned that day that there were many deliveries that people felt were coming from other cities that do allow permitted marijuana storefronts.

Perhaps we could notify those cities that have pot shops and have some sort of understanding that each of our cities are allowed to have a registry, and that we would expect that anybody who has a permit to operate in this case the city of San Diego would comply with the registry requirements of other cities.

It seems like it would be a very respectful approach for parents for one, young adults for another, and for the city and for their rules.

Seems like an easy fix to eliminate some of the problems we might see.

Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

And the final caller in our queue this morning is Catherine Rhodes.

Please unmute and begin.

That I'm not happy that our Q Transit Occupy tax ballot reform measures that would solve the city's structural budget deficit and not getting a second rating.

Also not getting a second reading.

So yes.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you, please.

Okay, great.

Um, so anyway, for all come PO is ballot measures for parking afternoon um pay parking at the beaches and bay.

And also some evil remarriage ballot measure, um, and our our two ballot measures are now going to not even get a rules committee hearing.

So anyway, I looked through the um the language on committee and ballot measures, and it seems like anybody, any other committee besides the rules, can also put this on your agenda.

So it could go through the full city council.

And I forgot how many people you need for an item to go through the full city council.

I don't know if it's three or four that you can um, you know, bypass council president and put it on the agenda.

So I I'm requesting one city council member.

Um, committees and rules.

I mean, since we're being kind of sabotaged and not allowed to um bring our ideas forward as normal.

Um, you know, that's been normally how we do it for the last 20 years.

Um, if you guys could bring up our ballot measures in your in your committees, and then bring it to the full city council, and so we would have an opportunity to actually solve our structural budget deficit.

I don't understand why the city unions do not understand that um this is this is how we and you know there's um a political lobbyist, um I think her name is Kilkenny, that is meeting with like the IBA and different city council members, specifically on um our measure one to add online travel agents to the municipal code.

Thank you.

This does conclude your time.

Thank you for your comment.

And as a reminder for any hands that went up after the five-minute time are exhausted.

We are taking no other callers, but you could submit your comment at councilcommittee at Sandiego.gov, and we will post and circulate to the committee.

And this concludes non-agenda public comment.

All right, thank you, sir.

Uh, we'll now move on to committee members, mayoral staff, city attorney, and independent budget analysts comment, and I will kick it off before turning over to anyone else who might want to speak.

Uh actually a nice segue.

Today is the last regularly scheduled rules committee for committee review of proposals previously submitted for placement on the November 2026 ballot.

After today, the clerk will remove all measures not moving forward for 2026 from the Monday agenda notices section.

Many of the ones submitted by council members have now alternative timelines in pass, and I will leave it to my committee colleague colleagues to respond to the public if they have questions on the status of your proposals or timelines.

At the March meeting, the committee approved my motion for District 1 to explore two measures related to TOT that were submitted by members of the public.

After many conversations and analysis, I am not proceeding with a second committee meeting on those two proposed measures for this election cycle.

Let me explain.

Amending our TOT ordinance to include online travel companies would be financially benefit beneficial.

However, it would not provide the windfall some have claimed.

The analysis was done by the Office of the IBA and the city treasurer.

It would not have fixed our budget deficit.

I made it clear at that March hearing that a proposal to overturn measure C was a non-starter and a big jump in TOT was also a non-starter.

And apparently my colleagues agreed at that time.

As my office explored the topic of adding the online travel agencies to the ordinance, it became clear that such a measure, although supported by a variety of stakeholders, would require two-thirds vote of the public, a very tough threshold in today's environment.

Lack of voter confidence and timeline concerns for for such a highly technical measure are two of the reasons that I'm not proceeding with either piece of that proposal.

I still believe a fix regarding the OTAs is necessary, and I believe there is space to also talk about the TOT ordinance in general, but not now, not for 2026.

And I look forward to collaborating with the uh industry and other stakeholders to develop language for 2028 that I hope will include a comprehensive look at our TOT ordinance.

And with that, I don't see any other requests to speak.

So we'll move around.

I'll move on.

First, do we have any requests for continuance?

Not hearing any.

We will now take up the consent agenda.

Sarah, please introduce the items.

Thank you, Chair.

The consent agenda includes items number one through five.

Item one is the approval of the committee minutes of April 22nd, 2026.

Item number two, awarding a contract to Pasadena Consulting Group as a successful bidder for an electronic filing system.

Item number three, information guide on group participation updates and council determination of community engagement efforts.

Item number four, repealing municipal code, chapter four, article two, division four related to bathhouses.

And item number five, updates to council policy 300-04.

Annual salary review of positions with the salaries established by council.

Chair.

Alright, thank you.

These items will remain on the consent agenda unless a committee member requests to pull an item off of consent.

Are there any such requests?

There are no such requests.

Sarah, please proceed with public comment.

Thank you, Chair.

The public comment period for the consent agenda is now open.

Each speaker will have one minute per item with a maximum of three minutes to speak to the consent agenda.

When I call on you, please indicate which item or items you wish to speak to.

We will begin testimony with in person here with Maximilian Schmidt.

You have indicated you wish to speak to items one, two, three, four, and five.

So I will place three minutes on the clock for you for you to manage to speak to these five items.

Hi, I just want to say that I oppose item one, two, three, four, and five because of the um city-sponsored terror and the city sponsored um premeditated severe harassment, which I guess could even because it's premeditated be first degree murder that's being paid of tax dollars.

Um item three says uh we're talking about community engagement efforts, and how about we engage the community to um engage uh public transit authority who s who stand around the um Charlie station, the light rail station, while you wait for the light rail and they make lip smacking noises that can make your um ex-excuse me for um this sounding inappropriate, can make your penis feel like it's going to suddenly ejaculate when not even erect at all.

I think that the um internet, after I researched it, calls this sensitizing someone to noises, and those public transit um authority people, the people who wear the blue shirts at the light rail, they're getting paid um they're getting paid with tax dollars.

And I've also had um police officers harass me and make lip smacking noises that made my penis feel like it's going to ejaculate when suddenly ejaculate when not erect at all, and sex being the last thing on my mind, and it's actually pretty painful.

It's um physical harassment, and then also what about the light rail intercom?

The light rail intercom has also made noises that have made my penis feel like it's going to suddenly ejaculate that is very painful.

I think again, I think the internet calls it sensitizing to people to noises.

So this is city sponsored because it's happening from um cities that are getting uh people that are getting paid tax dollars and the light rail intercoms doing it too.

And I don't want to say if homeless, I don't want to say if staff at the homeless shelter are doing it, because I don't want to them to be vindictive and kicked out of the homeless shelter because um I don't want to sleep on the streets because it I've been attacked on the streets.

So this is what's called city sponsored terror, and because it's premeditated, where I'm pretty sure um they can watch me through the third eye and they know when I'm going to come to the light rail station and they can make the lip smacking noises that physically torture me.

I think it could even be considered trying to kill someone because they've certainly turned got people to turn to drugs or suicide by doing this to someone before, and it's nonstop.

They do it non-stop hundreds of times throughout the day.

I'm being physically tortured by people getting paid tax dollars.

Our next speaker is Victoria Labroso, and you have indicated you wish to speak to items three and five, so I will place two minutes on the clock for you to manage to speak to these items.

Okay, thank you very much.

Um Victoria Labruzzo, CPC chair.

Uh council members, the uh on item three.

Uh, the 12-page staff report discusses multiple avenues for public participation.

All good things.

Yet planning groups are mentioned only four times, and only as part of the distribution of information.

Meanwhile, you have six hundred and thirty-six volunteers serving on CPGs throughout San Diego, representing every planning area, every council district.

They provide structured, transparent forums where community members discuss projects, policies, and neighborhood issues.

The report repeatedly discusses how uh to reach and engage the public, yet it barely acknowledges the city's largest existing network of organized community participation.

If the city is serious about community engagement, community planning groups should be included as the foundation of communication and advisory, not simply treated as places where information can be distributed after decisions are already being formed.

With 636 volunteers serving throughout San Diego, a seat at the table, which you all are familiar with, may be one of the most effective and least expensive ways to strengthen community engagement.

The city does not need to create a different engagement network, it already has one.

Uh, that's for three and five.

Um, looks great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

Our next speaker is We Tran, and you have indicated you wish to speak to item number three.

So I will place one minute on the clock.

Hello, my name is Wij, and I'm executive director for V voices.

I support the item number, I think.

All my work is about public engagement, and part of big work, even to start out of organization, is to engage one of the most difficult population.

Vietnamese people try to participate in this comment.

Uh, if it's been a work of like a lifetime now, but one of the things that I want to raise is that I want you guys to really fund the project to ensure that there are enough uh capability to outreach a community.

I have a situation recently, I want to flag you recently.

There was a brand that's coming from the CD for inclusive engagement.

It was to pick three organizations, each organization have $21,000 to do two workshop from now until August.

That is a checkbox.

What I want you to do is to really fund the time for the city clerk and the communication to really outreach to the community because my community is just the checkbox won't do it.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for your testimony, Kate Collin.

You have also indicated you wish to speak to item three.

So I will place one minute on the clock.

Good morning.

As Victoria has mentioned, the 12-page staff report for this item lists an array of city outreach efforts, but it barely mentions the community planning groups that have served San Diego for 50 years.

Why have they been marginalized?

Planning group members were elected to those their offices just as all of you were.

They have earned the trust of their constituents, they speak for their communities, and no one knows that better than Council President Lacava, who served with distinction as the chair of the community planners committee.

So please adopt the seat at the table proposal that Victoria, as the current CPC chair has put before you planning groups have a decades-old mandate to represent community voices.

Please let them carry out that mandate.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And the final speaker here in the committee room this morning for the consent agenda is Paul Kruger.

You've indicated he wish to speak to item number three.

So I'll place one minute on the clock.

Well, thank you very much.

Um I don't uh disappoint this is on a consent agenda.

It needs so much more discussion.

Um, you know, for me, as I try to watch how business is done.

I I think the most important thing is not um having listening sessions and quote-unquote engagement, but actually responding to what people are telling you uh and acknowledging the difficulty that community groups and residents have when they seek any kind of information from your offices uh council and mayor, and that um I think what is a widespread feeling by those of us who have attended these community outreach sessions back on the trash tax or more recently on the uh neighborhood homes for all that this is uh completely artificial uh box checking measure uh in which our our uh true feelings are not at all taken into account.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This concludes testimony here in the committee room.

So beginning the five minute timer for all those in the virtual queue to indicate if they wish to speak to the consent agenda.

As a reminder, the consent agenda includes items one through five, and when I give you permission to speak, if you can please let me know which item or items you wish to speak to.

We will begin testimony with phone number ending in 870.

Please press star six.

Uh joy, excuse me, a Joy Sanyata, two and three, please.

Ten minutes, please begin.

What did you say?

One minute?

Two minutes.

One minute each item.

Oh, I'm two minutes.

That's that's my problem, Sarah.

My ears, I need to clean them out.

Okay, uh President Lacava, quickly, uh thank you so much for the clarity on the measures.

And um Catherine, please check your uh your tech.

Uh it I could barely hear you, and I want to hear you.

Please look at listen to the replay and see what you think.

Uh okay.

So on two, uh uh these are both great items, two and three.

Uh we love our city clerk, uh, office of the city clerk, and and I love what what they said.

Uh here's the statement.

The vision of the city office of the city clerk is to connect all San Diegans and their city government through greater transparency and equitable access.

Thank you for your work, and this was a big, big job that you completed and nothing's perfect.

We keep working on it to make it perfect.

I haven't found perfection anywhere yet.

Uh number three, increase awareness by city council meetings, up city council meetings and reduce barriers to participation.

Comprehensive public engagement initiative.

I love the initiative.

Communication, accessibility, participation outreach.

Uh a question on the social media platforms.

Uh public participation in public record is a public record.

So will the information that we give be put onto social media platforms for people to review and so forth.

I don't know if I don't do social media, so I I'm I I'm not sure where we're heading on that.

Uh, physical considerations.

A big thank you for fitting this into your FY27 budget.

When will you need more resources for this important initiative?

Please let us know.

And then uh City Clerk, uh, are you working on the public records?

I mean the public comments.

Um, not in the minutes, but uh, you know, it with the meeting agendas and so forth because conclude your time.

Thank you for your comment.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Catherine Rhodes.

Please unmute and indicate which item or items you wish to speak to.

You're very difficult to hear.

I'll give you another opportunity to talk, and if it doesn't come in clear, I will circle back around.

If you can please identify which item or items you'd like to speak to.

Three, can you hear me?

We can hear you.

I I heard you indicate you wish to speak to item number three, so I'll place one minute on the clock.

Wonderful, thank you.

I'll speak up louder.

Um, first for item three.

Um I agree with Victoria for the seat at the table to put the committee planning committee and groups um as a way to disseminate information.

And the next thing is specifically for the city clerk.

In the olden days um you could go um what I would sometimes do when I do little investigations is I would go through each city council um agenda in order.

But now there's not even a list of city council meetings.

You have to now they have something called current meeting future meeting and past meeting instead of just having meetings um I think when you have all these different current past everything I think you should just have all the meetings in order that they came in um so that we could actually go to each meeting and actually you know investigate what's going on.

Right now it it doesn't work.

A lot of times when I do searches for words um sometimes it'll take like five minutes for the search is to thank you this does conclude your time thank you for your comment our next caller is Blair Beekman please unmute and let us know which item or items you wish to speak to Blair Beekman items uh one, two and three.

Three minutes please begin.

Thank you.

Uh for the meeting minutes uh on last uh meeting there was talk of uh council person lee's idea of a tax on overall uh uh if you have many houses uh if there can be a tax on that um I thought that was an interesting idea it's a lot simpler than the tax initiative that just failed um on on second homes and so I'm curious um a truck is pulling up right now so I'm curious how that um we have a real problem in San Diego of understanding what uh council personal and Kent Lee and others are working on in uh just an overall philosophy of our future of housing I think of why it failed not to mention that uh the the uh uh San Diego Union was saying they only wanted the money for revenue things.

Yes we need the money for revenue but there's an overall philosophy we're trying to develop for the future of housing that I hope becomes more important to the people of San Diego in the future.

Um Kent Lee is trying to address housing and revenue um I hope we can uh understand that those concepts and be more open to it in the future um with that said uh thank you to the work of city clerks uh and what they're trying to do uh how their job can always be more efficient um I'm really looking forward to um and the work that they can do and I hope Diana Fuentes can return as city clerk during uh city council meetings.

I like the the male city clerk um he did a good job I I just I like Diana Fuentes the most the absolute most I I just like her presence around I hope she can be around um and finally um for the uh final item about uh working on the uh including uh community groups in in the planning process in the future it was nice to hear Paul Krueger today um I got the sense that he is not happy with something about it um I think cool all right my last minute thank you I I was I was getting the sense he is not happy about something and that hurts because this was a really really nice idea and I think um I think we have to be developing a future of what is community participation and the fact that we have a strong mayor and not a uh a council city manager mayor system we have to work doubly hard I think it's an important goal of Mayor Gloria how to encompass the future of of community participation and this item so well addresses that they're doing an awesome job.

I mean I work in tech accountability that also wants better community participation.

There's many areas that want a uh more community participation and effort.

The mayor has to learn to be open to those concepts and bring that in your city staff has to be more open to that.

Uh good luck what we can be developing.

It's really important for our future, guys.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The five minute timer's exhausted with three hands remaining to speak to the consent agenda.

We'll take no other callers beyond these three hands raised.

Becky Rep, please unmute and indicate which item or items you wish to speak to.

Good morning.

My name is Becky Rapp.

I'd like to speak to items three and five.

Two minutes, please begin.

I appreciate the city's efforts to expand public participation and engage residents who do not traditionally participate in government process.

Those efforts are important and should continue.

However, it's concerning that the city seems to be overlooking one of the city's most successful and established forms of community engagement, which is our planning groups.

Planning groups are boots on the ground.

They represent one of the city's largest networks for public outreach and civic participation.

Every month, volunteers across San Diego hold public meetings, distribute information, maintain websites and email lists, and engage directly with residents on issues affecting their neighborhoods.

Community planning groups are not simply participants in the process, they are partners in the process.

The city does not need to reinvent another community engagement structure when it already has a citywide network of dedicated volunteers who understand their communities better than anyone.

These residents know the local concerns, challenges, and priorities that may never be captured through surveys, presentations, or one-time outreach events.

As you consider this item, I encourage you to build upon the community engagement that it already exists, include community planning group representatives and future discussions about public participation, transparency, and outreach.

The people who spend thousands of volunteer hours connecting residents to city hall deserve a meaningful seat at the table.

Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

Crypto Bradley 200.

Please unmute and indicate which item or items you wish to speak to.

Number three, please.

One minute, please begin.

I would say the planning groups are the way that they go.

Most of the people that care in the neighborhoods.

Most people are just too busy working.

They don't realize what's going on.

It seems like the mayor does all the decisions.

You guys are just 10% of the of the clean up the mess at the end.

But it's a message to the ladies in the room.

I wonder if they could take care of Max Man.

He's very concerning to me.

Maybe take Max into the ladies' room and relieve the pressure on his life.

Because he might uh he might be coming on the on the podium someday.

Hector, come on.

You know better.

Okay.

Talk to you later.

Our next speaker and final speaker on the consent agenda is Judy Strang.

Please unmute and indicate which item or items you wish to speak to.

Good morning.

I'd like to speak to item three.

One minute, please begin.

Thank you.

Community engagement.

I wanted to share some similar thoughts regarding planning group.

And it occurred to me when we were talking about making sure that the items that we consider at planning group, in this case, I'm talking about when a application for a marijuana Starbucks has been applied or provided at the city, then the city lets the planning group know.

We had that experience in our planning group.

We discussed it for six months.

We researched it.

We had the uh permittee come in and speak to us.

He answered our questions.

It was wonderful.

And then the minute that permit went through, they sold.

And then we never heard another thing and it changed hands.

Our planning groups know what's going on.

We spend an enormous amount of time researching items because we want the best for the community we live in.

And we need to be continually involved in the process.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Chair, this concludes comment on the consent agenda.

All right, thank you, Sarah.

Um, I'm gonna start it off uh because several of the items um come from uh our office.

Um thank you to the members of the public.

Uh thank you to the Office of the City Clerk for item three and to my staff for the other two items uh that are on the consent agenda.

I appreciate the comments that were raised about item three by various members of the public, but I think there's kind of a misunderstanding of why item three is on the agenda.

As a brief reminder, uh Sacramento passed SB 707, which amended the Brown Act and changed some of the rules of the Brown Act.

City of San Diego, and specifically the office of the city clerk already complied with quite a bit of that.

There was, however, one key element that was changed that required us to pivot, and that is that people participating virtually had to be treated exactly the same as how people who participate in person at public meetings.

You may have read in this morning's UT about how Encinitas chose to do that.

We, on the other hand, and kudos to uh City Clerk Fuentes said we will make it work.

It's a big technological shift, but the city clerk's office has committed to say that if you can come in to uh city council or committee meetings and see time so that you can have one larger presentation instead of a bunch of smaller ones.

Then you can do that remotely.

And so that's part of what is embedded in item three.

For those of you who want that larger conversation, uh, the city clerk will be doing this presentation at city council this Monday, June 29th.

So we certainly welcome your participation.

There seemed to be an understanding that the community engagement efforts was council creating a brand new community engagement process.

That's not what is item three is about.

SB 707 says when you change your rules, City, you have to let as many people in the community understand what those new rules are going to be.

And so what the city uh clerk has submitted is their evidence that they believe that they have done that community engagement, that they have done best efforts to let people throughout the city actually understand we're changing some rules, and actually I would argue that it increases the opportunity for public participation, and the city council needs to agree that adequate community engagement was done for these specific changes.

Again, we are not creating a new community engagement process.

So, and we did hear two presentations on these changes, which will go into effect uh July 1st.

And I recognize that this will be an adjustment for all of us, and I appreciate council administration and the city clerk for your hard work to implement this.

District one has brought forward several items over the months uh cleaning up council policies and section of the municipal code over the last year, and this is part of that effort.

Uh, item four, this code section does not reflect the values of this city and should no longer be part of our municipal code.

Enough said on item five.

This item is part of my ongoing work to update council policies.

Since 2010, there have been multiple voter-approved measures as well as state law changes which affected the subject this council policy.

This item would simply update the council policy to reflect these changes, and I want to thank the city attorney's office for the work in drafting this new language.

So, with that, I will move the consent item and turn it over to my colleagues and we'll go to council member Campillo.

Thank you, Council President.

I'll second the motion.

Appreciate your comments, appreciate um our city clerk, Deanna Fuentes, for good work.

I know they did one of the outreach sessions in my district, and my constituents appreciate that.

Just want to address the comments from the community uh planning groups.

Definitely appreciate how hard they advocate to make sure their voices and their constituents are heard.

Absolutely appreciate them always coming down uh to advocate uh on behalf of the people who are volunteering hours and hours and hours uh for to put have input and community input and uh small D in democracy.

Uh so I I just want to thank them for being here uh and their perspective is is uh not falling on deaf ears.

Absolutely hear what you're saying.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Campilla.

So we have a motion by myself and a second by council member campio.

I don't see anybody else in the lights.

So uh we'll go to a voice vote.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Nay.

Any anybody opposed?

Nobody abstaining.

So that does pass unanimously.

Um again, thank you to my colleagues, thank you to the members of the public uh for the time and a special shout out to our city clerk, but Deanna Fuentes and her team.

Uh that first council meeting with these new rules is going to be interesting, but I know the city clerk's gonna be ready.

All right.

With that, we will now take up discussion agenda.

Sarah, please introduce item six.

Thank you.

Item number six, follow the money ordinance.

Real-time disclosure of money spent to influence city decisions and a ban on lobbyist contributions.

And if you're watching on City TV or the live stream and you'd like to dial in to speak, please call 1669-2545252, inputting webinar ID 160 439-9420 pound chair.

Council Member, do you want to make some opening comments and then introduce your staff?

Thank you, Council President.

I'll hand it over to Rosa in just a moment.

I just wanted to um acknowledge this is a conversation that we started in the context of potentially bringing forward a ballot measure uh upon digging in.

Uh we realize that this what we aim to achieve can be done through um updates to the municipal code, and uh given the city's uh financial situation, the the budget challenges that we're having.

Uh we didn't want to unnecessarily uh uh spend on a ballot measure when we can do what we aim to do through this process instead.

Uh so what you are seeing and hearing today is the next step of the conversation that began as a potential ballot measure.

And with that, I'll hand it over to Rosa.

All right, let us know how much time you'll need.

Thank you.

Um good morning, Chair Alcava and members of the rules committee.

I'm Rosa Lasquaga, Deputy Chief of Strategic Initiatives, and I would need about 15 minutes.

All right.

On behalf of Council Member Elo Rivera, I'm here to present an update on the comprehensive campaign finance and ethics reform package for the city of San Diego.

Today we're here to talk about who city government actually works for.

Our vision is simple a San Diego that works for all San Diegans, not just those who are with the resources to hire lobbyists and fund campaigns.

The goal of the ordinance is to rebuild trust by bringing real transparency to the money being spent to influence city decisions and by removing the concern that lobbyists are paying for that influence.

The problem we are addressing is that big money and corporations are having a bigger impact on city decisions than we are noticing.

Wealth concentration is reaching historical levels, and with that, we are seeing an increase in political spending by the wealthy.

What we're seeing in San Diego is that the well-funded interests are deploying the same tools used in electoral campaigns, paid media, targeted outreach, digital advertising to shape how this council votes on policies.

And online campaigns, spending like this and activity goes largely unnoticed until a quarterly report is filed, often long after the vote has already happened.

Existing disclosure rules have not kept up with modern campaign strategies.

There are main loopholes and limitations that prevent true transparency and disclosures.

Millions of dollars are spent to sway city decisions through expenditure lobbying with no disclosure until long after the vote.

And currently the public has no way of tracking the spending until the quarterly monetary report where they're where there we see the total amount spent.

These are loopholes that are being used right now in San Diego in real elections and in real city decisions.

The mailers and digital ads that you see on this slide are real examples of expenditure lobbying campaigns targeting city decisions before this council.

In some cases, the true source of funding in these mailers was never disclosed to the public.

San Diegans received these communications and had no way of knowing who was actually playing to influence their opinion.

Lobbyists are playing both sides of the fields.

This ordinance proposes two targeted approaches and reforms.

First, real-time disclosure of expenditure lobbying, so that the public knows who is spending money to influence city decisions while those decisions are still being made.

Second, a ban on lobbyist contributions to elected officials and candidates, so there is a clear enforceable wall between lobbying activity and campaign finance.

Before I explain the proposed changes, I would like to go over key definitions.

Under existing San Diego municipal code, an expenditure lobbyist is anyone spending 5,000 or more per quarter on indirect lobbying activities like PR, advertisement, media relations, or public outreach designed to influence a municipal decision.

Currently, expenditure lobbyists report their activity using Form E C 605 to disclose expenditures for indirect lobbying activities.

Those are conducted during a reporting period filed quarterly, disclosing what was spent but not who funded it, and not in time to matter.

The reporting party is whoever pays for the activity, not the vendor doing the work.

And lastly, municipal decisions is currently defined in San Diego's municipal code.

The ordinance proposal covers the full spectrum of municipal decisions, from an ordinance and a resolution to contracts, land use permits, and any action by a city board or the mayor.

Influence campaigns do not limit themselves to just high-profile votes, they target the full range of decisions that affect San Diegans' daily lives: housing, transportation, permitting, public safety.

Disclosure requirements need to match that reality.

This slide captures the heart of our disclosure reform.

We're proposing seven concrete changes.

And I'll walk through each of them.

Current threshold 5,000.

The current threshold to report is 5,000.

We would like to update the threshold to a thousand.

The reporting threshold would drop, but this does not mean we're restricting free speech.

It's also knowing who is funding the influencing campaigns that cross meaningful financial thresholds.

Our proposal lowers that threshold to a thousand to close the gap between what's happening on the ground and what is being reported.

Currently, there's no registration requirement for expenditure lobbyists.

We are adding a registration requirement for expenditure lobbyists, which will also create a cost recovery for the city clerk's office.

We would like to transition the quarterly disclosure report form E City-605 to 24-hour reporting.

This is in line with the city's campaign finance requirements.

Form EC-605 Schedule A City Decision discloses who paid but not the funding source and pass through of what was paid for.

We believe this form should require to disclose the true source and who they paid and what for.

On communication disclosures, we're currently when they're filing, there is communication behind the proposed committee or not the true funders behind the committee.

So we propose changes will require top five funders disclosed on all public communication.

Currently, local rules do not require AI disclosure on the communication sent to the public.

Changes will require disclosure on AI generated or AI altered content if images are altered and used to send to San Diegans.

Lastly, there's no transparency requirement or record keeping of communication sent to the public from expenditure lobbyists.

The proposed changes will require a copy of all public communication be filed with the city clerk.

These changes mean that the public will be able to have actual numbers of what's the real campaign behind influencing them.

We're not inventing something new.

Every element of the proposed draw proposal draws on frameworks that already are working elsewhere.

Arizona voters pass proposition 211, the voters' right to know act, requiring disclosures of true source of political spending.

Rhode Island and Los Angeles already require top funder disclosure on public communications.

California AB 3 2 3 5 5 establish AI disclosure requirements in political communications.

And of course, our own municipal election campaign control ordinance already requires rapid disclosure for campaign spending.

We're simply applying those same standards to expenditure lobbyists.

A grew a gap that has existed for too long and updating existing disclosure rules that have not kept in pace with modern campaign strategies.

This is what accountability looks like in practice.

Under this proposal, any public communication paid for by an expenditure lobbyist would have to carry a disclosure identifying the top five funders by name and dollar amount right on the communication itself.

No more paid for by a committee with a generic name.

San Diegans would know exactly whose money is behind the message before they decide how to respond to it.

Los Angeles already requires a copy of up all public communications to be filed with their ethics commission.

Creating a searchable public archive of influence campaign materials.

We're proposing the same for San Diegans to file with the city clerk.

This is a basic accountability, and if you're spending money to influence a city decision, the public should be able to see what was being sent.

The current San Diego Municipal Code does not prohibit registered lobbyists from making campaign contributions to the officials they lobby.

The county of San Diego prohibits it.

The state of California prohibits it.

The City of San Diego is the exception and the gap that we need to close.

Both council, the county ordinance number 9889 and the state's government code already prohibit lobbying campaign contributions at the respective levels.

The legal framework is well established, and the city's municipal code hasn't caught up yet.

Today we're asking the rules committee to direct city attorney's office to draft that language that finally closes that loophole.

Thank you.

The requested actions for this item is as follows.

Request that the city, the council district nine office works with the city attorney's office to draft an ordinance and amend the San Diego's municipal code to create real-time expenditure lobbying disclosures and bound on contributions from registered lobbyists.

I appreciate the time and thank you, and I'm here to answer any questions.

Alright, thank you for the presentation and the work.

With that, Sarah, please proceed with public comment.

Thank you, Chair.

We've received three speaker slips here in the committee room to speak to item number six.

Each speaker will have one and a half minutes.

We'll begin testimony with Max Schmidt.

Please approach approach the elector.

Max Schmidt.

Our next speaker is We Tran.

Sorry, I'm always running.

Again, me again.

I support this because I also, I mean, we work in political spaces long enough to know that the more transparency, the more people likely to engage the process.

The political climate right now is so bad.

People just trust it.

And it's super hard to get people to like come out and vote and all kind of stuff.

And basically with mailer, I don't understand the thing about mailers in this country.

There have to be some sort of control for this.

Like people just put out misinformation all over the places.

It's super hard to educate the voters, all the issues, all kind of thing.

And um we I mean, we have a president elected because of all the misinformation.

So the leaks that we can do right now is establish rules to increase more transparency.

We supported item.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Paul Kruger.

Thank you.

This item, like the others we've heard, really does go to the heart of transparency in our process.

And I would like to just clarify that I absolutely support a bigger role for community planning groups, even in something like this.

Um, for six years, there has been an effort to actually do away with planning groups or certainly minimize to the extent that we the uh this council, too many of you and the mayor can, instead of taking the approach of expanding their membership.

As to this particular item, um, I think all of us support any changes that increase transparency and public disclosure of uh work done by lobbyists.

I s I specifically support the true for true source and top five funding proposals.

Uh, but I wanna say you have to have lived in a cave or be illiterate if you didn't know from getting your mailers on measure a who was paying for them.

It was absolutely clear on both sides.

The California Realtors Association opposed measure A.

The labor union supported it.

And it was written there, and if you wanted to know anything more about it, then you would know to go to the city clerk's office and find more detail.

So really the issue is education here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That concludes testimony here in the committee room.

So I'll begin the five minute timer for those to indicate if they wish to speak to item number six.

As a reminder, each speaker will have a minute and a half.

We currently have ten hands raised, and we will begin with Simone Fuller.

Please unmute and begin.

Good morning, rules committee.

My name is Simone Fuller.

I'm a di I'm a resident of District Five and a member of Youth Will, a youth advocacy organization.

I'm commenting to support item six as it creates avenues for transparency in municipal decision making.

Specifically, item six proposes a ban on contributions to elected officials from registered lobbyists.

Community needs must be prioritized over paid interest or personal political gain, especially for youth whose futures are often overlooked.

Currently our city code lags behind as this restriction already exists at the county and state level.

Special interest politics at the city level harm civic engagement by fostering distrust in the city's to c capacity to govern fairly.

Youth are often excluded from the democratic process due to age, but are left with the consequences from decisions funded by special interest lobbyists.

Support for item six is a step toward rebuilding community trust and equity and ensure San Diego is a city young people can thrive in.

Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

Carmen Penaloza, please unmute and begin.

Hello, rules committee.

My name is Carmen.

I'm a resident of District 9 and also a member of Youth Will, a youth advocacy organization.

I'm calling in to support item six, most importantly the idea behind the ordinance, because transparency has been a key factor driving civic engagement amongst youth across the nation.

This ordinance is worth exploring to amend San Diego's municipal code because many youth avoid voted voting due to fear of making wrong choices.

Transparency regarding the funding behind municipal influence efforts would better support their own decision making process.

This ordinance will lead to informed and competent decisions made by youth and other voters.

Voters have lost stress because some city decisions often benefit corporations and lobbyists via loopholes at the expense of residents.

We ask you to support the next steps for this ordinance to drive youth voter engagement upwards and with transparency, ensure voters can trust local government again.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Youth Will, please unmute and begin.

Hi, Rules Committee.

My name is Viliana.

I'm the director of policy at Youth Will.

We're a youth advocacy organization.

And we're also an organization that does a lot of civic engagement and education for young people in the city of San Diego.

And today, calling in to support this item and most importantly, the idea behind making sure that there's more transparency to ensure that participation is there for a lot of our constituents and also um others across um the city.

And this ordinance is definitely worth exploring and taking to its next steps um to amend the San Diego Municipal Code because many young people currently have a lot of um fear of making wrong choices, especially when it comes to voting transparency regarding the funding behind um who is influencing efforts would support their decision making process.

Um and also if this restriction exists already at the county level and under state law, then the city needs to definitely catch up.

Um and we ask you to support the next steps for this ordinance in order to support youth, um, drive voter engagement upwards and support with transparency to ensure that people can trust local government again.

Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

Serena Pelka, please unmute and begin.

Hi, good morning.

This is Serena Pelka from Climate Action Campaign, where we work to advance a clean, affordable and reliable energy future across the region.

We're calling in today to express our strong support for the follow the money ordinance.

When wealthy interests and money to shape city hall decisions, San Diegoans really deserve to know who is paying and what they want.

For example, for example, excuse me, Sempera spent almost three million dollars on lobbying and two million dollars on campaign finance over the last year.

While we know that they lobby against clean energy solutions that bring community benefits to San Diego families.

So this proposal would really ensure that San Diegans can have more transparency, follow the money in real time, um, before decisions are made and raise their voices around it.

So we support this item.

We see it as critical to um to really ensure that the public has that timely accurate information so that they know how decisions are made and what is influencing them.

So please support the item.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Catherine Rhodes, please unmute and begin.

Hello, this is Catherine Rhodes.

On March 21st, 2026 lobbyist report showed that intensive communication groups and Maddie Kilkitty lobbying for general conversations regarding online travel companies.

And I believe that that is regarding our two um top re transit occupancy tax reform ballot measures.

And so it says that they um they met with staff for council president Joe Locava, Council Member Shawnee Low Rivera, Ket Lee and Vivian um Moreno, plus the IBA.

Plus, um just doing a Google search.

I see that um policy director summer patent of council member Campillo's office also work for Intensive.

And so I try to figure out how much money have they paid you, you guys, or how much money did they call uh did it cost in lobbying cost um to tell you guys false information that will um that's sabotaging the city of San Diego without allowing me to give you alternative information, um like true information.

For example, in fiscal year 2022, the city of Anaheim, when they're adding online travel agency to their ballot language, they only expected three million dollars to be brought in, but instead it was sixty-five point seven million.

So the only information that you have to use, um the online travel agencies try to say, Oh, it's only gonna be like three million or a few little million.

And uh there's also this does conclude your time.

Thank you for your comment.

The five-minute timer has exhausted with five hands remaining in the queue.

We'll take no other callers on item six beyond these remaining five hands raised.

And as a reminder, each speaker has a minute and a half.

Please unmute and begin.

Hello, my name is Tristan Beerie.

I'm the youth organizer with Youth Will and a member of the community.

Uh we are a youth advocacy organization.

I'm calling in support of item number six because transparency is growing to be uh a larger and larger issue when it comes to civic engagement as somebody who speaks to youth on a almost daily basis.

I hear this growing sense of apathy when it comes to elections and voting on measures because they feel like many issues and elected officials are only serving whoever funded them and are going to benefit those funders rather than you know the youth themselves.

So, creating this sort of transparency that informs youth of when AI is being used to sort of alter images or you know when extra funding is coming in from external resources uh would do a lot in terms of creating that transparency that the youth are craving and would help them a lot in their voting process.

So I think that this is really necessary, and I'm asking you to support this ordinance.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And Yik, please unmute and begin.

Good morning, Chair Lakaba committee members.

My name is Noah Yiyuk, and I'm a researcher with the Center on Policy Initiatives.

We urge you to vote yes on the item.

Amendments advance transparency around who's influencing city city decisions by sharing real-time information about who's funding campaigns and banning contributions from registered lobbyists.

San Diego should be a city where everyone has what they need to thrive, where workers are paid enough to live here, have stable housing, and are treated with dignity.

Right now, that's not the case.

Every decision the city council makes and every dollar the city spends should bring us a step closer to a city where everyone has what they need to thrive.

That's not happening.

Instead of closing that gap, some elected officials are working to make this city more profitable for corporations and the wealthy who use their money to shape city decisions behind closed doors, or they're prioritizing their next political ambition, not what's best for San Diegans.

San Diegans deserve to know who their electeds are actually serving.

Please vote yes and move this ordinance forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is phone number ending in 8700.

You can unmute by pressing star six.

You will have a minute and a half.

Yes, committee member Elo Rivera.

I support this.

Thank you so much.

I am going to the heart of it from my heart.

Okay, here I go.

Abraham Lincoln said this.

Better angels of our nature would rise up and preserve unity.

Dear committee member Elo Rivera.

Everything you've written and that was spoken at the presentation is right on.

But I don't I want you to look at your vision statement and listen to Abraham Lincoln.

I want you to eliminate not just the wealthy and the powerful.

If you would please take another look at it, I think you will be really supporting and empowering what you're really offering to us.

The beauty the beautiful tapestry.

If you can say those words, you will put that into your vision statement.

A beautiful tapestry.

I will never forget that.

So thank you for listening.

I I was really concerned about saying this, but I wanted to go on on the limb.

Uh thank you.

This does conclude your time.

Thank you for your comment.

Blair Beekman, please unmute and begin.

You will have a minute and a half.

Hi, uh Blair Beekman.

Uh 10 plus speakers.

Uh, thank you that you offered a minute 30 to uh for public comment time.

I hope this is uh the type of thing you can do much more often.

Uh a minute 30 is really nice.

Thank you for allowing that.

Uh and thank you to uh council person uh Lakaba for describing that uh uh the previous item 707 and what uh to clarify that that concept yet it's from that you know uh Paul Kruger and myself uh really we have strong beliefs in the importance of community participation and what that can mean for our future process and um uh how that can be ideas of real innovation basically, and uh it's just an important factor that we have to consider in our lives.

And uh this is an item that tries to work towards that.

It tries to work towards community transparency and accountability, and there's a number of subjects that we can be doing those better practices on, and that all involves participation of the community.

Um, good luck how we're doing that better.

And um, hopefully that's the theme that can continue.

Uh, we can be thinking about uh this sounds like a really good item, and it was really nice to hear uh young people uh talking about uh their feelings on it today.

Uh good luck.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And the final caller to speak to item six is Nicole Lilly.

Please unmute and begin.

Hello, my name is Nicole Lily.

I'm the executive director of R10.

Organizing powerful use for an inclusive equitable instancy and sustainable future here in San Diego, also 23-year old resident of district free.

And I'm calling in today to support item six because the idea behind this ordinance is so critical because transparency has been a key factor in seat position.

This ordinance is worth exploring through the San Diego's municipal code because personally I spoke to youth ahead of the primary election who are avoiding voting due to fear of making the wrong choices, but also a deep mistrust in the elected that were being offered to them.

This ordinance will lead to more informed and competent decisions made by young people and in the city of San Diego, and do a lot to help with the mistrust that we've developed, because a lot of city decisions have often benefited corporations and lobbyists feel we pulled at the expense of residents.

We repeatedly come immobilize out and you know see ourselves directly out by wealthy uh folks and corporations who don't have our best interests at heart.

So I really urge um this committee to move along, be followed in an ordinance, and I appreciate Council Member Eliger's office's efforts on this issue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And this concludes testimony on item six.

All right, thank you, Sarah.

Uh with that, we will turn it over to committee members for questions, comments, entertain a motion.

And we'll start with Council Member Elo Rivera.

All right.

Um thank you so much, Council President.

Um, let me start by thanking Rosa for your work on this, uh, Ava for the support you provided, um, city attorney's office, uh, the clerk, um, the conversations that we were able to have um with Brin at the Ethics Commission, uh, all of that was incredibly helpful as we've been working on this.

Um as I said at the beginning, and as Rosa said, we believe that San Diego should work for every San Diegans.

Um, and that it's important that it actually is every San Diegan and not just the people with the money and the access to get heard first or be heard um loudest.

And that's what we're we're aiming to address.

And this isn't a new problem.

The influence of money in politics has been eroding people's trust in government for decades, and it got a lot worse after Citizens United opened the floodgates on outside spending.

Right now, people are watching influence get bought and sold at the highest level of the federal government in plain sight.

And this isn't just a one-party problem.

If we're serious about confronting corruption in an economy that too often works for the wealthy and well connected, and nobody else, then we have to be willing to look at the role of money in all of our politics.

And we don't get to make that case everywhere else and and not apply it to ourselves.

And all of that, all of those conditions create a headwind for us, building trust in government at every level, including here at City Hall.

People already believe the game is rigged because it is, and whether or not that's true in any specific case, the fact that San Diegans can't see who's spending to influence the decisions made in this room is exactly the kind of thing that convinces convinces people that things aren't on the up and up.

But I also want to make sure make sure that I name something because this is really important to me.

This isn't about the my colleagues, this isn't about you all.

I in fact, I've watched people up here make really hard principle votes.

Um think about Council Member Moreno and Council Member Lee's uh commitment to housing, and that coming from a place of real principle and a desire to see people have a future living in this city, and then those decisions get presumed to be based on something besides that commitment to values.

And that hasn't a corrosive effect on our politics and our city and our ability to get things done.

So the problem isn't the people in this room, it's that the most consequential spending to influence what happens in this room takes place in ways that the public can't see.

And when that happens, the effect is an abstract.

There are people who are negatively impacted by that.

There's the low-wage workers who are fighting to earn enough to keep a roof over their head and food on the table, but have the public's opinion shaped by multi-billion dollars entities' efforts to scare Sandy Eggens into believing that decent pay for everyone will make their lives worse.

There are the renters who show up to City Hall to ask for a policy that would help them stay in their home, only to watch hundreds of thousands of dollars get spent on mailers designed to confuse and scare people before the policy debate debate even starts.

It's small businesses trying to compete on a living level playing field with companies that can outspend them hundreds of hundreds of times over before a single vote is cast.

And it's the young people that we heard from, some of whom we heard from today who want a future in this city and are watching the policies they're counting on get shredded by lies.

They don't have the resources to fight back against.

These folks show up, they do what they're told they're supposed to do, they engage in the process, and too often they are playing from behind because the other time the other side had the resources to tilt the playing field before the game even started.

And that's what we're aiming to fix.

Uh what Rosa walked you through does two simple things.

It says that when someone spends real money to influence public perception of a decision before this council, the public gets to know who's spending it, how much, which side they're on, and if they're using AI to deceive people.

And it says that the lobbyists getting paid to influence city hall shouldn't be also funding the campaigns of the people that they're lobbying.

County prohibits that, the state prohibits that.

Uh, we don't yet, and I don't think there's a good reason for us not to do it.

So with that, Council President, I will move uh approval of the recommendation and seek the support of my colleagues today.

All right, we have a motion by Councilmember Ila Rivera to move the recommendation.

Um I'm gonna jump in and second uh the motion.

Uh I want to thank you, Councilmember and your staff for the good work in bringing this forward uh and pursuing this through ordinance updates.

Uh as you said, under the current rules, special interests can send out mailers and text messages as encouraging San Diegans to participate in city deliberations with misleading information and no accountability about who is funding the campaign.

Understanding who funds a message is important information for San Diegans to know.

It allows the voters to be thoughtful in their stance.

The voters may or may not agree with actions that we put forth as council, but they at least they will be well informed about who is trying to influence them.

And I appreciate the attention to quicker reporting, detailed fr funder information requiring a copy to be submitted to the clerk.

These added transparency measures will benefit the public.

And my only closing comment is we do a lot of work in campaign finance reform, and it's awfully complicated.

And to the degree that we can make these things clear and easy to understand, more likely we'll get compliance here, that may be an impossible ask, but I just didn't want to throw that out there.

So again, uh seconding the motion.

And so with that, we will turn to Councilmember Campillo.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Councilmember Ilo Rivera, Rosa for your work on this item.

I was gonna second the item, but I'm glad to see you jumped in there, Council President.

Um, this is this is a really uh necessary step forward.

I think distrust in government is at an all-time high, and we all understand why.

I'd absolutely don't blame the public for that.

And of course, there's just so much money to influence decisions across all levels of government.

And so the public having the ability to see where money is being spent to influence decisions is an important part of that transparency.

We don't want anything to be buried under lobbying disclosures where, you know, every three months something gets uh filled out, and then if they forget, it's a slap on the wrist.

And who can keep up with the disclosures coming in when they're put in amendments that are put into disclosures, all of that sort of stuff.

Um it gets very confusing for the average voter to be able to understand what is going on in a campaign.

Uh and also in a time when misinformation is rampant, people need to be able to verify that information directly for themselves.

So it's an important step in the right direction.

And as part of this work, I'm also interested in seeing how efforts to close a lot of the loopholes um can lead to different types or more sophisticated sophisticated types of spending.

Um, sometimes uh a good intentioned idea ends up leading to something else, as Councilmember Elo Rivera pointed out, Citizens United just opened up Pandora's box in the worst of ways.

Uh, for example, you know, when you ban something tends to lead to higher expenditures and packs and independent expenditure groups, uh, where it's oftentimes trickier to figure out.

But with the disclosure component that I'm seeing before today, a lot of that can be alleviated.

Um, and I'll have a specific question on that in a minute.

Um, there were a few references in the presentation and staff to reports to other cities, and when this comes back to full council, I'd be interested to see what we learn from them.

Um I do have a suggestion while your office is working on this ordinance.

Um, the current definition of organizational lobbyists is defined as uh a group or organization that makes 10 or more lobbying contacts to influence a municipal decision within a 60-day period.

Um so right now, someone would have to make 10 specific direct outreaches to city officials, whether it's a city council member, the mayor staff, or a member of uh the city staff as a whole, um, to try to influence a decision before they're then required to register as a lobbyist, uh, which is really interesting because you only need five council members to vote affirmatively on something for it to become a policy or resolution or ordinance.

Um, or you could contact all nine council members and still not be required to disclose that lobbying activity because the number threshold is ten.

Um someone with millions of dollars on the line right now can have their director of government affairs speak to every single council member and not have to file a lobbyist form and register right now, or they could meet with all nine council members over sixty days and then on day sixty one meet with the mayor staff.

And because they didn't have ten contacts within sixty days, they don't have to disclose anything.

And furthermore, with the proposal to ban lobbyists from donating, which I agree with, there's individuals who are indeed lobbying, but because of that threshold, they would be able to lobby and still able to donate to campaigns because they did not reach that 10 uh active outreaches with uh outreach actions within 60 days.

So I think we can uh take this good idea and add something to it that makes it simpler and clearer for everyone to understand.

If you lobby at City Hall, you register as a lobbyist, even if you do it once.

And if you are a lobbyist and you lobby even once, you then shouldn't be able to donate.

So Council Member Elo Rivera, would you be open to amending the lobbyist definition to include to ratchet it down from the 10 contacts necessary over 60 days to a single lobbying contact so that that loophole that uh can be exploited would be closed?

Yes, Councilman Cambia, thank you for that.

Um I my team did some work on this to um to cross-reference other jurisdictions as well.

Um we see that LA uh applies the definition to someone who employs someone who spends 30 compensated hours within three consecutive months.

San Francisco has one paid contact.

Um yes, I think the the we want to make sure we have the right details in there that we don't um unintentionally burden the wrong sort of person when we craft that language, but the general idea of making sure that folks aren't gaming the system um in the exact way that you just described, uh, absolutely that's something that we'll work on uh before this comes to council.

Okay, I appreciate that.

Um my staff and I had also been working with the ethics commission about updates to the lobbying ordinance to the ethics ordinance, the campaign control ordinance as well.

And so um we have there would be uh an exception that would probably need to be added to protect against what you're talking about as specific individual who might come and advocate uh for a license, you know, a person who's uh doesn't hire lobbyists but simply comes to talk about it that isn't compensated as part of their employment to lobby.

So uh definitely will reach out to your office with that amendment that we've discussed with the ethics commission and other meetings.

Um I appreciate your uh willingness to collaborate on that.

I do have a second question on a specific issue.

Um, the idea of listing number uh specific number of funders.

I've seen in multiple jurisdictions um across many states.

Sometimes it's top three funders, sometimes it's top five.

Um, how many do you anticipate wanting to put in there?

We're starting with five, and I think between now and council, one of the things that we want to make sure of is that the space that vi that that naming five with the dollar amount that they are spending wouldn't take up too much space and put us in jeopardy of of uh running afoul of of free speech uh law as a result of that.

So um the preference would be more, um, but three, I think also gets the job done in an important way.

Understood.

Okay, great.

Um, and then the third question is one of practicality, I guess.

And you kind of touched on it too.

Mail and television ads are obviously easier because of the amount of space, text messages, um, you know, are compact and other sorts of things.

Have you thought through the details on which media of advertising you would apply a specific um threshold to or would it be the same for all types of political communications?

I think we want to start from a place of applying that higher standard across the board, and then if it's impractical in certain um modes of communication, then tailoring it accordingly.

But the intent now um is to apply the greatest level of transparency to as many uh forms of communication as possible.

Um and then again, if the practicalities of it don't allow for that uh uniformly, then we'll adjust accordingly.

Okay.

Last question on the specifics.

Do you would this apply to uh do you think this the disclosure requirement would would apply to um simply in specifically formed com um committees and or general purpose packs, or would that also apply to candidate control committees, considering we're we're restricted as candidates who control a committee from taking from organizations?

Yeah, so this in front of us today is aimed at uh the lobbying piece, right?

Um so are you asking if we and if we wanted to lobby?

No, what I mean is um there's so this doesn't apply to uh generally generally formed PACs specific candidates supporting PACs that are independent expenditures for the purpose of campaigns.

This is specifically for lobbying communications, not for campaign committees.

Correct.

We plan on addressing this for the campaign piece after, just the full transparency.

We wanted to do this first um because we're seeing an uptick in in this sort of activity.

Um campaign season, we're not gonna change what's happening now.

So we have a little more runway there.

We want to apply these same rules to campaign ex uh spending as well.

But the first thing that we wanted to address was what we're seeing in terms of of this uh expenditure lobbying happening and worth noting it's not just happening here in the city of San Diego, it's happening across the San Diego region as well.

Uh, we know that there's um the sim similar tactics and strategies that have been used here in San Diego.

So there's no reason to believe that this is going to go away.

Um so in front of us, lobbying only, intent is to apply these same sta same standards to uh to campaign spending um once we're able to get this done.

Very good.

Okay.

Thank you.

Appreciate that and appreciate the uh willingness to analyze that amendment and potentially integrate it.

Thank you, good work.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Campio.

Uh not seeing anybody else in the lights.

I I did want to address one of the comments raised by the public, as I stated in some earlier comments.

Uh the ballot measure with the OTAs, the industry was in false support.

That is both the lodging association as well as the online travel agencies uh were in support uh of that.

Uh our TOT ordinance is not the same as Anatom Anaheim's.

Uh what they do with OTAs is probably different than what we do with OTA.

So we thoroughly vetted this internally, not based on any influence or any lobbyist uh meetings that may have had.

So I want to make sure the public uh understands that I appreciate the frustration uh by the supporters of this.

But we did our due to all adjunct, I believe came to the right conclusion.

With that, I'll go back to Councilmember Elon Rivera.

Sorry, Council President.

I I meant to address that.

It was actually a perfect example of exactly why I think this is so important.

Um you get into the weeds, you um are doing your absolute best to govern well and have no problem telling powerful interests to kick rocks when it time is right.

And the pr the assumption that folks make that decisions that um that could potentially benefit one group or another are that those those positions are being taken or those decisions are being made because of the influence of money.

I I I think that's just so corrosive.

And so, and so you know, it's it's an a that's a perfect example of why I think this is so important and why I wanted to make a point of saying this isn't about um the actions of uh you or my colleagues.

I again like I really think about housing issues and like why it is so important to some of the folks on uh on the council.

Um, and that was just another really important example.

So I appreciate you bringing that up and want to make sure I said as well that is exactly part of why I think this is important to do.

All right, thank you, sir.

Uh I don't see anybody else on the lights, so we have a motion by Councilmember Ilo Rivera and a second by myself to move the recommendation.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any names?

Any abstentions?

All right, that passes unanimously.

With that, sir, please introduce our final discussion item, item seven.

Thank you, Chair La Cava.

Item number seven is the resolution affirming the city of San Diego's.

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

Item number seven is further committee review of a ballot measure proposal by Council President Pro Tem Lee to strengthen fiscal accountability and oversight.

And if you're watching on City TV or the live stream and you'd like to dial in to speak, please call 1669-2545252 and when prompted and put webinar ID 160439 9420 pound.

Chair.

Alright, uh, Council President Pro-Temily, you want to kick that conversation off.

Sure, thank you so much.

And um I want to thank my committee colleagues for their feedback when we last heard this item in March.

Uh, and as just a quick uh primer, this measure is focused on strengthening fiscal accountability and oversight here at the city of San Diego through three primary changes in the charter.

Uh, one is the mandate of chief operating officer to administer day-to-day operations.

Uh, secondly, to establish mechanisms to protect funding for our independent oversight offices.

There are two add the ability for the council to propose mid-year budget adjustments.

Um, as a reminder, at the last rules committee meeting, we also accepted an amendment by council member Moreno to remove the city auditors' term limits, and that is now reflected as well.

Uh, given the time frame since March and without a rules committee meeting in May, what we have brought forward to you is the latest draft language uh produced with the city attorney's office and with feedback from the IBA.

Um, I'm looking forward to having a meaningful conversation about this proposal uh as we look to continue moving it forward, and I'll uh chime in further after the presentation.

So with that, I think I'll hand it over to our chief of policy, Angeli Hoyas, who will walk you through the proposal.

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem.

Good morning.

I am Angeli Hoyos, Chief of Policy for Council President Pro Tem Kent Lee.

I am here today to present district six's ballot measure regarding fiscal accountability and oversight in the city of San Diego for further committee review and consideration on the November 2026 ballot.

Council District 6 requests that the rules committee forward a proposal focused on fiscal accountability and oversight by considering the following amendments to the city charter, which requires voter approval.

Number one, ensuring key independent oversight bodies in um in our proposal, it is the office of the city auditor, city clerk, office of the ethics commission, office of the commission on police practices, and the independent budget analysts have sufficient funds to operate and carry out their duties.

Number two, removing the term limits of the city auditor to continue proper oversight.

Number three, enhancing fiscal accountability by allowing uh council consideration of mid-year budget adjustments under specified conditions, and number four, specifying the role of a chief operating officer or COO.

These amendments include describing job duties and responsibilities and procedures regarding appointment and removal.

This slide presented before you is a summary of proposed charter amendments indicating the proposed changes to the city charter.

It is it also shows that there are minor amendments related to our proposal that are needed to be to resolve any other discrepancies throughout the charter.

I will now go into more detail on the four components of our ballot measure.

Through this proposal, our office seeks to protect funding for independent oversight offices in the city through two parts.

The first is that we are establishing minimum funding levels for the Office of the city auditor and the Office of the ethics commission as a designated percentage of general fund operating revenues in the three preceding completed fiscal years.

Additional details will be explained later in my presentation.

The second part is limiting budget reductions below prior year funding levels for the auditor, ethics, city clerk, office of the commission on police practices, and the independent budget analyst, except under the following specified conditions.

There is a substantial change in general fund revenues, there is an interference with the council's ability to fund other programs, and the council has restructured the office or commission.

A waiver of the minimum funding requirements will not materially impair the ability of the offices and commissions to perform their charter mandated duties and their duties required by the council by ordinance, including duties to ensure the city's compliance with applicable federal and state laws.

And lastly, the council may adopt an ordinance to implement these minimum funding requirements.

With these amendments, our proposal protects the offices, safeguards independence from management and political pressure, and continues to build trust with the public and accountability in city government.

This next slide shows examples of cities in California where a portion of their budget sets funding levels for certain offices.

As shown, this is not a unique concept, and other large cities in California have implemented a version of this component of our measure.

Through initial feedback from both offices, Council District 6 moved forward with determining minimum funding levels for the auditor and ethics with the assistance of the IBA.

To determine this, we requested feedback of what each office's responsibilities, objectives, and needs are to carry out their duties, and we very much thank both offices for their feedback.

After considering the preliminary analysis from the IBA and reviewing both offices' budgets over the past several years, Council District 6 moved forward with setting minimum funding levels as a percentage of the average of the last three years of general fund operating revenues.

Doing this accounts for the fluctuations of non-discretionary accounts infringed from year to year and mitigates budgetary impacts.

This also mirrors current language in the reserve policy for determining general fund reserve targets.

Specifically for the Office of the City Auditor, their funding level will gradually increase over five years to avoid perpetual disputes about OCA funding while still adjusting funding to match the growth of the city.

Although the Office of the Ethics Commission initially suggested setting a minimum funding level, this week they have requested to not move forward with this level in our proposal.

We are happy to make that change should this move to council.

Our next component of the measure proposes to remove the term limits of the city auditor to further ensure accountability within the city.

This was a recommendation we accepted from First Committee Review back in March.

As shown here, the city auditor can currently serve a maximum of two full five-year terms or 10 years total.

Our proposal amends this section of the charter to appoint the auditor for an indefinite term.

This is to ensure stability within this office, considering the job qualifications of serving in this role, which can discourage qualified applicants from applying to the position.

This is also similar to the California State Auditor.

At the state level, they are appointed to a four-year term and can be reappointed indefinitely.

The third component of our measure involves allowing the council to propose, discuss, and implement mid-fiscal year budget adjustments to the city's adopted budget.

The council would outline the terms and conditions of this process by updating the existing ordinance.

This component aligns with our goal to create a more accountable and effective city government with the mayor as the executive authority and council as a legislative body.

Our fourth component proposes charter amendments that specify the role of a chief operating officer.

These amendments include describing job duties and responsibilities and procedures regarding appointment and removal.

Of note, our proposal outlines the current process and how the mayor shall appoint a COO with the appointments subject to the confirmation by the council and how the COO will report to and receive direction from the mayor.

However, we include they are still accountable to the council and members of the public.

In regards to the dismissal process, a mayor initiated dismissal of a COO is subject to ratification by a majority vote of the council.

A council initiated dismissal of the COO requires a two-thirds majority vote of the council.

Effective December 10th, 2028, if the COO position is or becomes vacant, the mayor shall appoint a successor subject to the confirmation by the council, but no later than 90 days after the vacancy.

If the recruitment process is expected to take longer than 90 days, the mayor may appoint an interim COO subject to confirmation by the council.

Our office believes it is in the best interest of the city to improve the strong mayor form of government by focusing on fiscal accountability and oversight.

It is our goal with this policy to prioritize the best interest of city residents and businesses, promote ethical, transparent, and accountable government, preserve appropriate checks and balances, and maintain strong and accountable mayoral governance.

With that, the proposed action before you today is to request that Council District 6 work with the Office of the City Attorney, the independent budget analyst, and other relevant city departments to finalize the language of the proposed ballot measure and forward the proposed measure to the City Council for consideration on the November 2026 ballot.

Thank you for the time.

That concludes my presentation.

Alright, thank you for the work and thank you for the presentation.

Please go to public comment.

Whoops.

Okay.

I have a script.

All I have to do is read the script.

So we have comments from both the IBA's office and the mayor's office.

So we'll begin with Julian Endalina from the office of the IBA.

Thank you so much, Council President Lacava.

I'm Julian and Alina with the IBA's office.

I will focus my comments on preliminary fiscal impacts and key considerations related to the proposal's minimum funding requirements as well as the council's authority to make mid-year budget adjustments.

Regarding minimum funding requirements, there are two components here.

The first, the proposal establishes a prior year funding floor for several key independent departments and an additional percentage-based minimum funding level for ethics and city auditor.

Regarding the prior year funding floor, there are no anticipated fiscal impacts associated with maintaining respective department budgets at prior year funding levels.

We appreciate the exclusion of one-time and non-discretionary costs, which allows some reductions to occur without impacts on department service levels.

We also recommend fringe costs be excluded since they are largely out of department's control.

This change may be more appropriate for a future implementing ordinance.

Turning to percentage-based minimums, those again are further proposed for ethics commission and city auditor.

The ethics commission target is set at 0.1% of the three-year average of general fund revenue, and the auditor's target would be phased in to 0.37% by fiscal year 2032.

Since the proposed language requires a council policy to establish which general fund revenues are included in the minimum funding level requirement, in order to develop initial fiscal estimates, our office assumed that the same general fund revenue definition in the city's reserve policy will be used for this measure.

Projected impacts would change if this assumption does not hold and the approved policy or in the approved policy or if associated implementing ordinance makes additional changes.

Additionally, fiscal impacts assume a 3% growth in general fund revenue for future years.

Actual fiscal estimates will be based on actual performance of general fund revenue.

At a target of 0.1%, the fiscal year 2028 ethics commission budget would increase by about $30,000 over its fiscal year 2027 adopted budget.

However, their budget may naturally exceed this increase based on normal increases in staff costs driven by things like pension and health care benefits.

This percent target is in line with the Ethics Commission's historical proportions of general fund revenue.

For the city auditor, the target begins at.31%, which is also in line with the OCA's historical proportions of general fund revenue, and there's no anticipated fiscal impact for fiscal year 2028.

However, over a five-year phase in, there would be some real fiscal impacts, most of which would hit two fiscal years.

In fiscal year 2030, that would require an additional 900,000, and in fiscal year 2032, there would be another 900,000 required based on our assumptions.

In total, it would cost 2.4 million to get to the 0.37% target and projected required budget of $8.4 million, which is up from OCA's current budget of $6 million in 2027.

These figures slightly differ from the presentation based on updated information and we will continue to refine going forward.

A portion, but not all of this increase would have naturally occurred without the budget, I'm sorry, without this ballot measure due to rising staff costs.

We want to know that if a different denominator is ultimately chosen in future council policy, meaning if we don't use the three-year average of general fund revenues as included in the reserve policy, these fiscal impact projections would no longer apply.

For example, if the definition of general fund revenue is broader, the targets cited in the charter would result in a higher required budget and would have a larger fiscal impact.

Shifting to key considerations, it is worth carefully considering whether these charter-mandated targets reflect the council's desired service levels for the City Auditor and Ethics Commission.

Additionally, when this proposal was last heard in March, there was a request that the IBA provide information about best practices.

From a budget perspective, best practices generally encourage you to preserve financial flexibility in order to respond to changing fiscal environment and priorities, and therefore we do not recommend including minimum funding targets tied to a percent of revenues.

However, we do recognize that this proposal attempts to strike a balance between meaningful protection of certain key independent departments and limited flexibility to respond to changing conditions.

Still, flexibility can be helpful in certain situations.

For the ethics commission, if council implements the audit recommendation to include classified employees who file statements of economic interest to be under the jurisdiction of the ethics commission for both education and enforcement purposes, ethics would likely require additional resources.

This would in turn make the minimum funding target, which is largely based on current operations obsolete.

However, if there is an increase to the ethics commission budget, the provision requiring funding at the prior year level would ensure increased funding is maintained going forward unless the requirement is waived.

Second, the committee should consider the impacts of a successful revenue measure in the future, such as a sales tax increase, which could significantly and automatically raise budgets for these two departments without an assessment of actual operational need, ability to spend, or the ability for council to consider other priorities.

Finally, we want to make sure that consideration is given to the city's long-term financial situation.

Given the recent settlement of trash fee litigation resulting in additional general fund subsidies being needed in the next two fiscal years, as well as impacts of rescinding paid parking at Balboa Park, a structural budget deficit is likely to persist into fiscal year 28 and 29.

To the extent the structural budget deficit remains in fiscal year 2030, when the city auditor budget is projected to have a large increase.

This could inadvertently require program reductions that may not be desired by a future council.

We also want to recognize that the association of Local Government auditors or ALGA acknowledges the importance of sufficient funding for an effective audit function and the importance of limiting management and political pressures the audit function may be subject to during the budget process.

But no recommendation currently exists and is pending additional research.

Additionally, the World Bank, when assessing the independence of audit institution, specifically evaluates three items.

First, if an audit institution has the freedom to propose its own budget, but not necessarily that the request is fully accepted or budgeted.

Second, if the audit institution has the authority to propose its budget and the approved budget is released, does the institution have the right to appeal to the legislature directly?

And finally, is the audit institution able to make use of the allocated budget without constraints.

For instance, there's no delays in funding or limits to usage.

We highlight the World's Bank assessment methodology because it outlines a process that is in line with the city's charter language currently and the existing budget process for a city auditor.

And finally, moving away from these funding levels and turning to the remainder of the proposed ballot measure.

We note one section would allow council to make mid-year budget adjustments.

We understand that specifics of this per this provision would be outlined in a future ordinance if that kind time comes.

We recommend that mid-year adjustments be allowed only when the mid-year budget monitoring report and/or quarterly monitoring reports are considered to provide departments certainty over their budgets and operations.

It should be emphasized, however, that first quarter and mid-year projections could still have a high degree of uncertainty, given that they only include three and five months of actual expenditure and revenue data respectively.

Should this item pass today, our office will work to refine the fiscal impacts of the ballot measure, including coordinating with the Department of Finance as we normally do for developing ballot measure fiscal impact statements.

That concludes my remarks.

Thank you.

Alright, thank you, Jilly.

We always appreciate the input of the office.

Thank you, Council President Lakava.

Good morning, members of the rules committee.

My name is Matt Yaggyagan.

I'm the director of policy from Mirita Goria.

My comments will take about five minutes today.

Let me start where I expect we agree.

The mayor supports a strong oversight, real transparency, and accountability that makes city government work better.

He supports these goals and he supports the institutions that deliver them.

And he thinks Council Member Lee for raising this discussion.

But the question today is not about these goals, but whether to pursue these reforms at this time.

It's whether this committee should send a permanent change to the city charter toward the ballot without the vetting or public engagement, a change this size demands.

The mayor's answer is no.

And the concerns behind that answer are the same ones I raised before this committee on March 18th.

Here's the bottom line.

A charter amendment is permanent.

This one would reshape how the city is governed and how it spends taxpayer dollars.

And the one office equipped to tell you what it does to the rest of the budget has not been asked to weigh in.

We should slow down.

Now, this measure writes permanent funding floors into the charter for five departments, phasing upward over several years.

It does that during the most serious budget shortfall the city has faced in more than a decade.

And the charter floor is not a budget line.

A budget gets revisited every year against real fiscal conditions, and the charter mandate binds every future council and every future budget, no matter what the city's finances look like in 2028 and 2030, or in a downturn, none of us can see today.

When dollars are guaranteed to five departments, the pressure doesn't vanish, it moves.

It falls on the services and the workforce that have no charter protection.

That trade-off should be vetted before it becomes permanent, not assumed and discovered later.

Now the measure does include a waiver.

We read it closely.

It takes a two-thirds vote and findings on the record.

That bar is high by design, and in a genuine fiscal emergency, it may be the hardest to clear at the exact moment the city needs the most flexibility.

Now, this is a measure that revises the city's budget process.

And unfortunately, the Department of Finance, the office that coordinates the very process this measure rewrites, has not been asked what it would do in this situation.

The mayor's asking that finance should have the chance to weigh in on changes to the process it coordinates, and we believe this is another reason for this process to slow down.

Then there's a question voters would actually be handed.

The ballot question forces four unrelated changes into a single yes or no.

Minimum funding floors, removing the term limit on the city auditor, new mid-year budget authority for the council, and a mandated chief operating officer.

Four decisions that appear unrelated, but one box to vote in.

Some of these may be popular on their own, but a voter who wants the funding floors is forced to also accept a structural shift in the city's daily operations.

That is not a clean choice, and one more reason to take the time.

Additionally, we understand there are questions being raised today about the city's obligations to meet and confer with its represented employees on the budget provisions in this measure.

I'll simply note that addressing those questions is paramount to this process and our reasons to get this right rather than fast.

So I'll close with this.

The Charter Amendment is forever or close enough to it.

There is no harm in spending the time it takes to review this properly to understand the fiscal and operational consequences before we ask voters to make it permanent.

This measure changes how we are governed and how we allocate taxpayer dollars.

The office that develops and monitors our budget hasn't been consulted, and the trade-offs should be measured.

The voters would be handed four decisions in just one box.

We respectfully ask the committee to return this item to staff.

Thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Alright, thank you, Matt.

I appreciate the input.

With that, Sarah, please proceed with public comment.

Thank you, Chair.

We've received two speakers slips here in chambers.

We'll begin with Max Schmidt.

Max Schmidt.

We will move on to Paul Kruger.

Please approach the lecture.

You will have a minute and a half.

Thank you very much.

We're going to do two minutes.

Thank you very much.

First, I'd like to say that the presentation by the IBA shows the importance of that office.

If it wasn't for the detailed work they did on reviewing this, I don't think you could have anywhere near the conversation you need to have about how you're going to move forward.

Number two, I hope you'll discuss the uh exemptions under the minimum funding for these oversight uh commissions because if you in fact uh support these minimums, those exemptions look as if they um just present too many opportunities to uh remove the funding.

Um they're just loopholes, it looks to me.

Um I think there's issues with the suggestion on the auditor.

We might we might be wise to allow reappointment at four or five-year intervals for an indefinite time, but as I read it and you can correct me, um, this would uh make a permanent infinite uh indefinite appointment, which I don't think you want to do.

Most importantly, um, the appointment of a chief operating officer and uh power given to the council to regulate or oversee uh oversees, oversee that COO.

We have a strong mayor form of government in San Diego, and really, this simply skirts around the issue of whether we are going to consider reverting to a city manager form of government.

As long as we have a strong mayor form of government, the mayor clearly controls uh the administration of our government, and the COO would be the mayor's prerogative.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That concludes testimony here in the committee room.

So I'll begin the five-minute timer for those to indicate if they wish to speak on item number seven.

We currently have five hands raised, and we will begin testimony with Ann Marie Hogan.

Please unmute and begin.

You will have two minutes.

Good morning.

The Association of Local Government Auditors, ALGA, primary organization for all local government auditors in North America congratulates you for supporting accountability by supporting the Office of the City Auditor.

ALBA fully supports protection of auditor budgets and elimination of auditor term limits to improve independence.

ALGA support is based on auditing standards issued by the Controller General of the United States, Alga's model legislation, and ALGA's work in 2006 when I and the San Francisco auditor actually appeared in purpose in person several times in our work with San Diego, all of which are noted in my June 15th letter.

Minimum funding levels protect auditors from political interference because auditor funding should never be controlled by those whose work is subject to audit.

In this case, that would be the mayor.

So under the current situation, the funding for the auditor's office is controlled by the mayor whose work, you know, gets audited by the auditor.

Term limits for city auditors are not a customary practice in terms of my 24 years as an auditor and an ALGA member.

They impair auditor independence because they actually discourage qualified candidates from applying.

So as a former resident of San Diego County and a city auditor for 24 years, I join ALGA in recommending these charter changes.

And continue to use.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Catherine Rhodes.

Please unmute and begin.

Hello, this is Catherine Rhodes.

One thing that I really like about this is that you're going to have a say that unclassified service employees, not city union people, can be fired and removed at any time without appeal.

That's great news.

I always thought that that was the case.

So this is everything to do with middle managers.

Middle managers could now be um their jobs can be taken away, and then of course, as an alternative, you could just ask them to get a regular union job at um half the cost.

So that's great that you're putting this forward.

Um I always thought that was the same.

When this is going through, I think that um Ken Lee specifically should have this be the um instead of the strong mayor form of government.

This is now the strong mayor, strong city council form of government, and that's how you should you should use those wordings to market it because that's what I thought we were supposed to have before.

And if we don't have this change right now, then we really should get rid of the strong mayor and go back to the other people.

But everything you're doing right here is exactly what's needed in order for the strong mayor, strong city council system of government to work.

Because right now, um the mayor's doing everything he can to um sabotage you all over the place.

So anyway, I'd like how you are going to be able to have uh mid year budget um amendments you're getting rid of that section 72.

Um section seventy three um the transfer of of appropriation and fund balances at any time from the control of the strong mayor to the control of the stronger city council.

I like that requirement for chief operating officer.

Um, of course, that's what you should have when you have the strong mayor form of government, and he shouldn't be able to just not have it.

Um, and then I really like that the CAO has to attend the city council meetings because right now um when you guys have questions for the mayor's office um if there's no city thank you this does conclude your time thank you for your comment our next caller's phone number ending in eight seven zero zero you can unmute by pressing star six you will have two minutes uh joy a senata committee vice chair president pro tenly I'm not ready to say yes or no on this and Jillian fabulous thank you five stars and thank you for including the structural budget deficit concerns that is really really needed and I'm glad that the mayor's representative spoke to us that's our mayor speaking and I do think that the mayor needs more opportunity to weigh in on this and I also want to include the Department of Finance.

Now I think you cleared this up for me but uh question uh does this align with current related policies or are updates needed or are we going to eliminate someone some of them and write new ones I'm very concerned about the impact on the policies.

Now I really did some good work on this and I struggled.

I struggled with the charter amendments draft I struggled with a lot of it to understand it.

To me changing the charter is like changing the Bible this is very complex.

Our dear voters are they gonna be able to understand the ballot language and four main components under one box?

I don't think so these are dear ordinary a lot of them are yeah these are dear ordinary public people please this is complex slow down.

Look at this thoroughly that's very this does conclude your time thank you for your comment additionally the five minute timer has exhausted with two hands remaining in the queue we will continue with Blair Beekman.

Please unmute and begin.

Hi Blair Beekman wow this is amazing I've I've not known of this coming before.

Really nice to hear uh the city of Oakland right now um for all the wonders I've been talking about they're going through a strong mayor process also and um they uh they have a ballot measure coming up this fall to really support the strong mayor you uh they want to create an IBA system the same as San Diego but I keep trying to report I have to be walking out the door here as I'm saying this but I keep trying to report to them that problems we're having in San Diego, excuse me, right now is that um we are the the IBA system is as nice and as decent as everybody is and we have a good process we still have disorganization.

We don't have clarity in how our our programs uh function and you can be organized and work well together.

I mean that's key and Oakland's having the same exact issue.

They want to solve it through the IBA process.

They want to invent that and bring it create it to Oakland.

But we're you're talking about next steps here.

And I think that's awesome.

It's really beautiful that that process that you're developing uh some sort of uh the coordinator of the job that was taken away in two thousand twenty five bring that back.

Um, I I and to call ourselves a strong mayor, strong council city, I think can be okay.

I'm also interested that the mayor said there needs to be a possibly more community input on this and st and and dialogue.

That's an interesting concept.

Do we need four subjects at ballot time?

Can we do two within council and then two on the ballot?

Things like that.

Um those are my questions.

Um how we organize the future of our government.

Uh it's a better organized process.

That's key to all of it.

And if we all work on that together, the same of Oakland.

So we all can work together on this stuff.

Uh good luck on your efforts.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And the final caller for item number seven is Crypto Bradley.

Please unmute and begin.

I support this.

And the reason why is because of use.

What we've been doing under the mayor's system.

Like the when the youth showed up for the Balboa Park thing.

They were so they get all their stuff, and they found out the city already purchased the meters before they even voted.

You could see the young guys just going, What the hell's going on?

Why are we here off work when the decision's already been made?

It was a total shady thing.

And then if the mayor doesn't like it, that's probably a good thing.

We should vote for this.

You know, just and before all that happens, I think we should call out the doge team.

Get some young guys, give them the information, and we'll really see where the money's going.

Because right now it's behind every curtain, every corner, every door, hidden in the garage.

Where's the money going?

Who's brother?

Whose sister, who did Todd meet in Paris, is getting the money, you know, stuff.

It's totally shady, and the kids can see it.

You know, we gotta live our lives roll, we've got to take a grain of salt, but when the kids get down there and they go, There's no chance, man.

After you've already bought the machines and you're gonna take a vote on it.

You know, what's the deal here?

The kids know uh almost every decision we make.

And um we should go ahead with this and more.

I think we should call the doge team just on the side.

A few of the young guys to actually document where the money is, because you're not you're not gonna tell us where the money is.

It's it's all these different languages that are presented.

And even the auditor, you know, if you're gonna fire the auditor, why even have an auditor?

You know, you can't have be able to fire them or even pay the auditor just on the side, man.

It's that's really shady, just like that auditor said.

That's total shade.

Anyway, I'm for this thing.

It's good.

Thank you.

And this concludes testimony on item seven.

All right, thank you for the public comment.

Thank you, Sarah, for managing that.

Uh, we will now turn back to committee members for questions, comments, entertain a motion for this item, and we will start with the proponent, Council President Pro Tembly, sir.

Thank you, Council President.

Um, I wanna start off by thanking our team from the district six office, Angeli Hoyos, uh, Madison Coleman, um, on our policy team for the uh tremendous amount of time that they've given towards working on this measure.

Um, a lot of thanks also to the city attorney's office, um, Joan, and I know Joan brought in Brett, Kathy on occasion, as well as City Attorney Ferber, um, just in trying to to get into the details uh in the months that we've spent on this.

Uh and then also to the IBA, both Charles and Jillian, um, whose feedback is important um along the way.

Uh I I want to thank my colleagues in advance for engaging in today's discussion and want to share that your feedback, your questions, um, and even all of your concerns are actually very important to us as we continue to work on the substance of this measure.

Uh as Angeli has walked you through the framework of the measure, um, let me share with you a couple of updates as uh that we already intend to make as we move forward.

Um two of them.

One is that given the feedback and the recommendation that we've heard from Alga, which is the Association of Local Government Auditors, we intend to work with the uh city attorney's office to continue to define the auditors uh term length, which right now in the charter is set as five years, as well as the ability for the council to review and or remove the auditor if necessary, this is following uh the guidance that we got from Alga um and something that I think would also align us with what we see with the state auditor.

Um with feedback from the um ethics commission, uh we also will be looking to remove them from having a set percentage of minimum funding.

Uh so they will apply along with the other offices in terms of uh the restrictions on reductions.

Uh but the only office that would um actually have a set percentage of funding moving forward uh would be the office of the city auditor.

Uh and again, that's in a discussion with the um ethics commission as well.

So today's proposed ballot measure is actually quite simple.

It aims to strengthen fiscal accountability and oversight at a time when public trust in the city and in government is something I think we have to address.

First off, the measure mandates the hiring of a chief operating officer, defines the position's roles and responsibilities, and sets terms on their hiring and dismissal.

After 20 years of operating under strong mayor, I believe this is a moment that we do need to look back and acknowledge that changes should be sought to improve governance and to ensure that we have proper checks and balances in place.

When I speak with community members, stakeholders across the city, and even in some cases city staff, one of the key areas we have heard over and over again is that there is a need for a chief operating officer at the city to oversee day-to-day operations, as well as our workforce of over 11,000 employees.

It's not a political role, it is truly an operational role, and any company of this size, you would have someone in that capacity to lead that component.

It's simply best practice, especially when we compare ourselves to other strong mayor charters across the state that do define a chief operating or administrative officer in their charter.

It's something that simply when we set up a strong mayor was missed and not included.

So this measure would re-establish the position with duties and responsibilities that align with the functions that they've had in the past and establishes that they are accountable not just to the mayor, but also to the city council.

Of note, I will note that our original intent when we presented this item in March was to apply this portion of the policy immediately upon passage.

But you'll see that in the draft, we have now written it to take place in December of 2028, which is in the next transition of Merrill administrations.

And Council President, this is something that you had offered feedback on in the prior hearing.

And again, I would welcome feedback from my colleagues if they would see any specifics in the substance of this portion that they think need to be flagged.

The next item is mid-year budgetary adjustments.

This was not uh an overly complicated change.

Uh I think we have acknowledged that in the charter it specifies that by ordinance the council sets the guidelines for how the mayor can propose mid-year budgetary adjustments.

We've had several challenging budget cycles.

There are times where we have mid-year influxes uh in revenues, or we project that we might be seeing a deficit ahead.

And I think we are at a moment where, given the tightness of how the city's budget functions, the council should have a voice in what proposals are put forward in the middle of the year, not just simply to vote up and down a mid-year budget proposal.

I would agree with the IBA that again, if we're updating the ordinance that is currently in place, uh it's an opportunity for the council to ensure that even if mid-year budget adjustments are proposed, that it is in line with the major quarterly and mid-year monitoring reports that we typically have to ensure that we have some guidelines around how that process works.

And then finally is the protecting of funding for independent oversight departments.

In recent years, this council has seen proposed budgets that have called for cuts to our independent oversight offices.

We have in the past, for example, heard from our city auditor or the executive director of the ethics commission that they receive a request to identify 20% or even 7% this year of cuts.

And we've heard from them that those cuts, if implemented, could materially impact their ability to perform their charter mandated duties.

Each of these years, the council has helped to restore any reduced funding as part of its final budget action, and often it's done as a part of a recommendation made by the IBA.

What this portion of the amendments does is it restricts the mayor or the council from reducing the discretionary budget of independent oversight bodies bodies, the auditor, ethics, commission, the commission on police practices, the IBA, and the city clerk below the prior year's approved annual budget.

I would note that even holding flat as a dollar value year over year is in its in itself practically a reduction, especially given that we typically expect cost of living increases year over year.

The policy outlines a number of conditions for the council uh to be able to waive this with a two-thirds majority, but we do intend that the bar is set high, meaning that significant reductions in revenues, for example, is a condition, perhaps the restructuring of any of these bodies, as we have seen with the IBA in recent years, as well as ensuring that we abide by state and local charter mandates.

The objective here isn't necessarily just to provide a funding floor or a ceiling, it is to ensure that year over year we're not having the same discussions about these offices and having to restore their budget.

For the Office of the City Auditor in particular, I want to start by acknowledging the tremendous amount of work that is conducted by our city auditor and how crucial their role is in holding the city, including all of us, accountable.

The Office of the City Auditor has often identified significant cost savings that benefit the city.

They've identified efficiencies that, when implemented, also result in cost savings.

And their work is only limited by their capacity based on staffing.

And it's not hard to imagine that with additional capacity, those savings that they ultimately implement could outweigh any increased costs.

All at the end of the day, while improving city functions and helping to rebuild trust with the public.

As our city city auditor has previously shared, their percentage of funding as a proportion of the city's budget has decreased over the course of the last decade by roughly a third.

And in this year's proposed budget alone, the auditor's budget was proposed to be reduced by over 200,000 dollars, a move that would clearly reduce their capacity to conduct their oversight.

We should all be appalled that at a time when public trust is of utmost importance, that we would see proposals year after year to reduce funding to our independent auditor or any of these other oversight departments.

So this measure establishes a minimum funding percentage that matches their current level of funding of the FY27 budget.

That percentage would phase increases in fiscal years 30 and 32 to a level that aligns with benchmarks established in several large other large cities.

And specifically, we've worked with the IBA to identify a budget marker that we believe could be fairly stable, that avoids significant one-time costs.

For example, the you'll notice that the CIP budget is not included here because of its uh significant variances, and then is ultimately smoothed out by utilizing a three-year rolling average.

The IBA even pointed out that a future revenue increase could have an impact, and that is why a three-year rolling average was actually critical, so that you don't see a significant one-time influx of funding, but that you would have the ability for them to ramp up over several years.

I want to specially note that we have kept in mind that the city continues to face a structural deficit into the next year, and the five-year outlook has shown that we expect an improvement starting in FY29 due to a reduction in pension obligations, hence why the phasing that is set forward in this measure uh takes place starting in fiscal year 30 and beyond.

Finally, I do want to state that it's absolutely our intent that as this moves forward, we will be continuing discussions with our represented employee organizations about the specifics of this proposal as well as any need for meet and confer.

On that note, uh I would turn to the city attorney's office uh simply to ask for their opinion this far about meet and confer, but also to confirm that our ability to have those discussions uh aren't hampered if we continue moving this draft forward for the city council.

Good morning, uh Council President Pro Tem Lee and members of the council.

I'm senior deputy city attorney Joan Dawson, and thank you for the question.

Um the discussions here relate to the policy considerations, and the full council would advance an item to meet and confer.

So it's perfectly fine for you to be having these discussions, and if the committee advances the item up to the council, the council can have similar um policy discussions and direct the city's management team for labor negotiations to engage in the meet and confer process on the specific question of meet and confer here with this proposed charter amendment.

It's our preliminary view that establishing many minimum funding requirements in particular is the management right.

Under the charter, the council determines the services the city uh provides and the level of services to be funded.

However, that is not the end of the inquiry for purposes of compliance with California's collective bargaining rules.

As a general rule, a charter amendment that impacts a bargainable matter requires notice and opportunity to bargain those bargainable bargainable matters rather prior to placement on the ballot.

The specific specific question here is whether there are bargainable impacts that need to be resolved, especially through any potential changes to the charter language.

If there is a question about whether there is a bargainable impact, or in fact, the city has a disagreement with a recognized employee organization about whether something is a bargainable impact.

The city still must meet with the recognized employee organization to clarify the city's bargaining obligations.

Thank you, Jim.

Uh, and I appreciate the clarification.

Um, and I would uh want to acknowledge that even at this as this moves forward, the timeline I think will ultimately be defined by answering some of those questions that have been brought up, both on substance, if there are any issues brought up, as well as the process, and our office is certainly open to any result as we continue to move this forward.

At the end of the day, we we believe that these changes are a necessary piece to ensure better governance here at the city of San Diego, something that we certainly owe the public.

And so today, I think this is where your feedback is my colleagues uh on the substance of this measure is critical.

Um, the aims of this measure to ensure greater fiscal accountability and oversight, I believe, are clear, and I look forward to making further refinements and to ultimately hear from our council colleagues next on how we move forward.

Uh with that, I will move the staff's recommendation.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank you, sir.

So we have a motion by council president pro tembling to move the recommendations.

We'll go next to council member Moreno.

Uh thank you for the presentation, and also I want to thank uh committee member Lee and his staff for bringing this forward.

Uh, as the audit chair, I get to see firsthand the important functions of the city auditor.

Um, and this is what I will begin my comments with.

Um the auditor is a key pillar in promoting transparency and good governance in the city of San Diego.

Uh, the office was created by San Diego voters following several scandals, which nearly bankrupted the city.

It is charter mandate to audit and investigate all city departments, offices, agencies, and officials.

This small office with their current resource is supposed to audit a total of 6.4 billion dollars in annual expenditures, 13,000 city employees, and hundreds and hundreds of contracts.

The Office of the City Auditor needs to be able to compete with other local auditors across the nation when it comes to compensation, even with their limited resources, they've received constant awards for their reporting.

As was mentioned, the association of local government auditors wrote a letter in full support of the current efforts to eliminate term limits for the city auditor and to formalize protection for the city auditor's budget.

The city auditor is only one pillar of good governance and transparency.

The ethics commission monitors and enforces city government ethics laws.

City clerk makes these meetings more accessible to everyone who's interested in joining and being a part of the process.

The IBA makes sure that this council receives unbiased analysis and advice regarding all legislative items bearing financial impact to the city.

The Commission on Police Practice Practices makes sure that the city has an independent community oversight body of the San Diego Police Department.

All these elements make it so that this city is being more transparent, accessible, and accountable to our residents, which creates good governance.

Another charter amendment that I strongly agree with, is the council abilities, uh, the council ability to make adjustments during the mid-year report.

This report is such an important review in understanding how the city is keeping in line with the adopted budget.

Having the authority to make mid-year budget adjustments enables the council to better address the concerns of our communities and ensure that public resources are aligned with the needs and priorities of residents across our districts.

Lastly, a chief operating officer, also known as a COO, has a crucial role in any local government agency.

This role is responsible for operational oversights, uh oversight, process optimization, resource management management, and addressing crisis management.

The city of San Diego has 13,000 employees that provide different services to our residents.

The COO is a key player in the day-to-day operations, which requires the full attention of a professional, experienced individual.

This position also implements initiatives and objectives that the city should act on.

Having one person fully dedicated to overseeing these priorities is essential to ensure they receive the attention, accountability, and follow through that our residents deserve.

This item focuses on making the city more transparent by strengthening the independent departments that exist to make sure corruption doesn't happen internally.

And with that, Council President, I'm happy to second the motion before us.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

And so with that, we have a motion by Council President Pro Tem Lee and a second by Council Member Moreno to move the recommendation.

And we'll go next to Council Member Campio.

Thank you, uh Council President.

Um I have a few ideas, but I I am I'm a bit curious about the issue relating to meet and confer requirements as it relates to some of these.

Obviously, we know that we can confer uh whenever there's a material term of employment that is changed that can mean supervisorial structure, could mean hours and wages and uh job responsibilities.

Uh, that presents a problem.

Um how do we intend to resolve that problem at this moment?

Council President Proto.

Maybe I can answer it more broadly and if if you want to get it into a technically, Joan probably is better fit for that.

Uh but what you have presented before you is a draft of the proposal, and so as we understand it, in order to go to meet and confer, we'd need a final version to actually move forward.

Um, and so today I think what we're looking for is really feedback on the substance of the policy item itself.

Once it goes to the full council, uh, there would be an opportunity to finalize if there's an item.

And I think in the time between now and then, if it's determined that there are components of it that will require the meet and confer process, uh, or we want to proactively take an effort to work with our REOs on that.

That might change the ultimate timeline of things.

I don't think it would change whether this moves forward again from a substance standpoint.

Um, yeah, I don't know if that helps to answer Joan.

You might have more to add.

Understood.

Okay.

Um appreciate you answering that.

Um I think uh there's a lot of merit to the proposal.

Um, essentially, bottom line effort designed to protect core obligations as a city and insulate civic city services uh or city accountability structures from political decisions, and I I definitely agree with those.

Um, I agree with setting floor limits for ethics, uh, the ethics commission and the auditor, it's a good start.

Whether these particular percentages are the right ones, we can debate that.

Um, because if we can't protect basic accountability, uh we can't lead in good faith.

Um I noted in my budget memo, my uh May Revised recommendation remo this last month that I think the ethics commission and the uh city auditor's Office uh deserve a reliable amount of budgeting every single year so that they can do their job uh and at this point they're they are underfunded as it is.

Um so I think that's really important.

Um, and of course we can figure out that exact amount, but in principle I like that idea.

The city auditor as well, it's an incredibly important position.

Um I think it's interesting, I don't think the city auditor, their office themselves builds public trust.

It's the council and mayor that when we follow their data and their recommendations of the auditor builds that trust um because they can't implement we implement, we run the government in the city.

Uh so it's up to us to take that position seriously, and I think that the mayor's office and the city council have taken that taken it very seriously.

Um I believe our city auditor got a national award for the number of recommendations they make that have been accepted and implemented uh by uh our city, by the mayor's office, by the departments, and that was a it's a pretty remarkable thing to point out.

Um I think that the term limits uh currently as they are are not uh appropriate.

Five years is too little given the market of good auditors, right?

Um and it leads folks to think they only have a 10-year career in the city and have to go somewhere else.

Um I think longer terms would be appropriate.

Um, not I don't necessarily think uh there should be term limits if the person is doing a good job, uh the the term limit itself sets that perspective sets that cutoff point if they're not um and they need to be able to operate independently, but not forever.

Um I think one of the issues that I I saw uh council president pro tem that uh I appreciate the work on it, but I disagree with the formulation of it, is the issue of the dual accountability track of the COO.

Um saying that the city council could remove the COO with six votes, or the mayor could remove the COO with five votes.

Um that leads to a really sticky situation that could be a management disaster.

Um let me explain what I would what I could see happening.

If the COO is supposed to make sure the departments are operating and serving the public, living carrying out the budget uh every day, the COO is now answerable to two different bodies of government, the executive branch and the legislative branch.

I think that the current system where the COO gets appointed by the mayor, when the mayor does appoint that person, and then we ratify that.

I think that's a good step.

Um, but then after that, having the legislative body involved in potential removal of that person uh, especially with the vote counts that I I saw in the draft, uh the problem that creates there is that the mayor supposedly supervises the COO, but the COO's tenure depends on the council.

Um really the COO's job ends up becoming staying in good standing with the mayor plus four council members, um, or with five council members and not the mayor.

Um I think that could lead to some paralysis in service delivery.

Um administrative timidity really to say uh the C the CEO has to essentially keep tabs on how many council members are supportive of that person.

Um we can hold them accountable through um committee meetings.

I've seen I think every member of this committee ask hard questions of delivery of services, and uh I think that gets things to change.

Um but I don't want the COO to be trying to play favorites with either saying I can keep five members of the council happy and ignore the mayor, or I can keep the mayor happy and four members of the council.

I think that that is a pitfall of the current way it's drafted.

Um we've seen that it's uh similarly, uh it's not exactly a perfect model or matchup, but it took a long time to recruit and keep an executive director of the Commission of Police Practices because when the authority and account accountability is diffuse, the job becomes all about keeping the job and not accomplishing the mission at hand.

And so um without the clean accountability structure, I think it's just it's gonna be a management problem.

Um if operations don't work, the the mayor can blame the council for blocking removal of a COO, or the council could then blame the mayor for hiring and supervising the person.

Um the COO gets mixed instructions on what to do and how to carry out the mission of the city.

Um so a clean line of accountability is just as important as us as a legislative body holding someone accountable, and we can do that.

Um we don't want blurred accountability lines, is what I'm looking at.

So I certainly certainly don't have to agree with the way the CEO position has been handled recently, but I think this dual track loyalty concept is really problematic and something that I I would not be able to support in a final version.

Um, and uh I think I'll leave my comments right there and listen to the rest of my colleagues.

All right, thank you, Councilman.

We'll go next to Council Member Ilo Rivera.

All right, thank you, Council President.

Uh, I'll start by thanking Council President Pro Tem Lee and Angeli and the District 6 team for all the work on this.

Um there's a lot in here that is is really really important.

Um the work of the independent offices that was referenced, um, incredibly important.

Um the frustrations that are in uh driving some of what's in front of us, I certainly share.

Um I do not like the mid-year budget process.

It's been frustrating since I uh arrived to the council, and we've been loud and clear about why we think we need a COO.

And I I will say that I think what's what's frustrating is I think that that obvious need to everyone who um is on the, I think everyone on the council, I think we've we've voted on that in various forums a couple times now.

Um the public's expressed frustration, workers have expressed frustration, and despite funding being there for the position, the action wasn't taken.

So Matt, I'm gonna, you know, just to be really honest, like it's it's hard not to hear your comments as a an effort to delay for delay's sake, because the mayor doesn't want to have a COO, or so it seems and it's been made abundantly clear by the fact that we don't have a COO and despite council's repeated attempts to have a COO, that not happened.

And that plays itself out in real ways on a regular basis.

Last week we had an incredibly important discussion at a budget committee, and there wasn't that you were in the room to answer from a policy perspective, but who was in charge from the operational perspective to respond to some of the questions that we had about issues of liability that cost the city tens of millions of dollars.

No one the times the CFO steps in and tries to answer, that's not fair to them.

Uh they're not the boss of the people who um are making the operational decisions that they're trying to speak to.

And so I I do want to ask, Matt, is the I is the conversation getting to this point where we're considering a charter change where we've now made multiple attempts through the budget.

Is it resonating at all?

It's not about Mayor Gloria not working hard or not being thoughtful and smart.

It's about this to Councilmember Moreno's point, this being a city of 1.4 million people with incredible complexity, long-standing challenges, and one human being not being able to do massive jobs at once for a prolonged period of time.

Thanks for the question, Councilmember Ilo Rivera.

You know, the mayor's position on the chief operating officer is that uh, you know, uh ultimately the uh execution and implementation of city operations is a uh a right that's delegated to the mayor per the city charter as it currently stands.

And there was a decision made decades ago by a previous mayor, previous administration that they were then to delegate that to a chief operating officer and set up a management structure uh in order to keep tabs and help implement uh and deliver the services that uh our residents deliver every day.

The current structure that this mayor has set up is that uh the mayor would like to retain that authority and retain that um uh that ability to uh oversee and be involved in city operations.

Uh he set up a an executive team with chief officers uh that oversee various branches here in the city uh that he relies on and works with in order to uh again uh implement those services and understand kind of the realities of what it takes to run uh a city of this size and to deliver the services to over a million residents here.

So um the mayor's position ultimately is that uh he has a management structure that's in place uh that he's relying on.

Uh it's it's one that uh he believes in, and at the end of the day, under the charter, that's that's his delegated authority.

Right, and and I that's be been abundantly clear.

I think again um when requests are not responded to, it's natural for this body and others to start looking for other tools to have frustrations and ideas heard and responded to, and this is one of those tools, and so I think it just it I'm not gonna stop looking for tools to address this issue because we're not we're not seeing a change in what has been identified as a key issue on multiple occasions.

Um, I'll pivot from there.

As I'm doing that, there's also this component of the independent offices and the auditor in particular, the the recommendations, while often accepted, there's this thing that happens between the recommendation and the acceptance of those recommendations where the digging in the critique is not seen as an effort to make the city stronger, but taken in in almost a personal way, and when independent offices and the work that they do are seen or or felt to be seen as more of an annoyance rather than a effort to make the city stronger, it again uh uh raises the the desire to protect those independent offices from the impacts of that.

There is one correction that I do think is important to note.

I think that the mayor's office could be much better in supporting the auditors' efforts.

I think it's counterproductive and not useful at all for the mayor to propose a budget that reduces the auditor's budget, and the end of the day, the auditor's budget is not controlled by the mayor, the council approves the budget.

It's just one important detail that I wanted to correct.

So all of that being said, I I I appreciate the merits of this.

I appreciate the frustrations that are leading to this, and I certainly appreciate the goal where I can't get to yes, what's not happened in terms of engagement with our REOs.

And that's important to me for a variety of reasons.

One, it's just always important to me that the workers who make San Diego work are part of the conversation about the decisions that have uh have an impact on them.

And while I understand that the meet and confer process isn't triggered in a technical way until full until the full council makes a decision, that doesn't mean that we cannot be meeting and conferring along the way, and I think that we should be.

And I'll just use one example of what that has looked like.

The due process and safety ordinance is a policy that we brought forward.

Um, and while meet and confer was not going to happen until the council passed the full policy, we met with almost every REO and discussed the ordinance, were able to flag concerns along the way, and then pass something that we at least knew that they had had input on, and then the meeting confer process kicked off, and that took several months.

Um but it wouldn't have felt right to to wait until that full ordinance was passed to have those conversations.

And I think the two ways that it plays itself out um the most importantly to me is the qualif surrounding the COO, the qualifications of the COO, which I I don't have an issue with what's on paper here, but I think it's important for our city workers to weigh in about what they think is essential for that person to have, and then um the the baselining of budgets.

While I agree with protecting them, I also think that simultaneously not including them in this in this conversation up until this point, and then setting a floor when we don't have a plan to grow the pie and we're in the budget situation that we are, does send the wrong message to representative employees of the city that they will continue to have to do uh more with less um and that less being the only thing that um is is certain in terms of the budgetary future of the city.

So um I would be very supportive of this conversation continuing and it comes it continuing via work with the REOs, um, but I I can't support this going to full council without that step happening first.

Um, and that's j again based based on a principle that I have that um our city workers need to be included um more than what is required by law in order for us to get to the ultimate goal of delivering San Diegans the services that they want, need and deserve.

Thank you, Council President.

All right, thank council member uh Elo Rivera.

Um this is a big deal.

Um I will weigh in as well.

Uh and I'll start uh by thanking Council President Pro Tam Lee and your staff.

Uh, this was a very deep dive on a lot of important issues.

Uh and I know that you approached this with a thoughtfulness that you approach uh all issues.

And it also kind of occurred to me as I was listening to everybody talk, uh, despite what is sometimes characterizes the outward appearance.

Think about council member has an idea, the city attorney devotes their resources uh to to weigh in and took a lot of work to put this language together.

The IBA added that to their work plan.

Uh so there's an extraordinary amount of collaboration that happens at City Hall that isn't often uh characterized in the uh outward facing uh dialogue about what we do or what we don't do.

Um the um uh I raised a number of concerns in March, um, and and I'm also kind of inclined just to make sure there's no confusion.

We didn't have a May rules meeting, which breaks my heart.

Every time I'm chair of a committee, I want every month to have a meeting of that committee because there wasn't anything ready.

So I didn't want anybody to think that we delayed this or cut the runway time because uh we canceled the May meeting.

So I don't think that was the intent, but I just wanted to make sure that people understood.

Um I raised a number of issues at the March Rules Committee when this idea was uh the big idea was floated out there, and I'll respond to some of the things I heard from my colleagues.

I've generally been against the idea of minimum funding levels.

The city does not have a good history uh on this.

Uh, if you think back about we have an ordinance with the library funding, supposed to have a certain minimum.

We've never touched that.

Uh, the petty for the arts is an annual debate, uh, and I think an appropriate debate about whether we do trade-offs with our various uh things that we're trying to do as a city.

Uh Mark Kersey got a ballot measure with an infrastructure lockbox idea.

I don't know that we've ever implemented that as well.

I think we waive it every single time.

And I think what it does is really force the mayor and the council to think long and hard about what we want to do.

The independent departments are obviously a different animal from the general front and uh and the enterprise uh departments.

Uh, but I have yet to see, and nobody's pointed out to me that there was anything ever punitive in how the annual budget allocation was done for any independent department.

Um, people have different values, people have different perspectives about what is a required funding for that department to function well.

Um, and the fact that the mayor may have one opinion, the council ultimately has that control during the June budget conversations to say we agree with the mayor's proposal or we disagree.

Uh so to me, the only advantage of doing something like this with the potential risk, however small, uh, is that it makes life a little bit easier for council because no longer would we have to have that debate.

I don't think that's to me a worthwhile cause.

And I would also argue a little bit.

I think the challenge with the auditor, I know the department would disagree with me, is that the problem is not that they don't have enough funding.

The problem is all the other departments don't have enough funding, and so they make fantastic recommendations.

They point out things with surgical precision, and then the departments say we don't have the resources to implement those recommendations.

We agree with those recommendations, we don't have the resources, and so it's not that we're trying to undercut any of the independent departments, it's that every department in this city is underfunded.

Uh, and that's the challenge we have.

And as many people said in different ways, until we can figure out how to balance the cost of running a big city like this with the resources that we have, we will always struggle.

Uh, we will always have to make those value judgments about library funding, the penny for the arts or the independent um uh departments will always be a conversation.

I think that's what I signed up to do when I opted to run for elected office.

Uh it isn't plus it is painful every June.

Uh the past two Junes have been especially painful.

Uh, but I think the process that we have under the current charter got us to the right place with the way the uh council adopted the budget and the mayor agreed by signing it without any veto.

So I still struggle with with the idea of um lockboxes, lockboxes, lock boxes.

A little bit of long, it's been a long morning already.

Um the um the other component of it is the CO, that's the other big one in this, and I do appreciate Council President Potem.

You did respond to uh my comment about not uh putting this in a ballot measure that would then be implemented uh the next day, but giving up the mayor's option if they wanted to, but otherwise it really would be to that next mayor to decide what to do.

And I disclosed um at the March hearing that I was thinking about bringing a ballot measure that would have introduced the COO as one of the holes in the current charter that for some reason was not put in uh when we switched our form of government.

Uh, but I would have done it more akin to the way the CFO is.

There's language in their scope of work, uh, it's the mayor's job.

Um, and I too, uh Councilmember Campio uh was more eloquent than I will be uh about this intersection between the mayor and uh the council role in that and the mixed message uh that it sends to a COO, who am I really uh responding to, the mayor who is my boss, or the CEO who can control my fate, and all the other um positions that are actually are in the charter right now seems to work very well since we made that big shift some uh 20 years ago.

So it's one thing to just put the COO into the charter uh to fill that what I think of as a whole.

Uh, but the language here I think is problematic, and you know, it's not apples to apples, but I think about a charter amendment that says uh council member, we're gonna decide whether we like your chief of staff or not.

Um we know you hired it, no, they work for you, uh, but the council may not like the your chief of staff, and we want to have the authority uh to get rid of that person.

Not apples to apples, or a very tiny apple compared to a very, very big apple, uh, but I think it illustrates the challenge of the mayor under this current form of government, and I think that's what we're talking about.

Is this current form of government, uh, whether they should have the flexibility to select a COO, to work with that CO to delegate authority to that CO, and to decide that CO is not working, and have that sole authority to remove that CO, as we saw a couple of years ago.

Uh, but that is under our current form of government the way it should remain, and not have this mixed uh message about what's the mayor's authority, what's the council's authority in the COs.

So I have I have uh some real concern about that.

On the other hand, this is a dialogue that has been floating around for the past few years that I think is a worthy conversation, and whether it is a more modest uh way that I would was thinking about or the more expansive way that my colleague has put in.

I know there's some disagreement on this, but I see this as a fundamental change to our form of governance, and that it deserves a longer runway with more stakeholders, and whether it's the REOs or whether it is our community leaders to weigh in on whether this fundamental change to our governance structure um should move forward.

Uh the strong mayor form of government wasn't a ballot measure that was introduced on one day and then a few days later it was then adopted by the committee or whatever process they had back then and then thrown on the ballot that there was a very long runway that really thought it out.

Um so I think there is some bones here that um deserve a longer conversation going forward, uh a longer runway to figure out is this we want to do.

Some people still talk about whether the strong mayor form of government is still the best government uh system for our city uh based on what we've learned over the past 20 years going forward.

Um I remember hearing in 2020 when I was running for office, people were talking about it then based on the previous mayors uh that we had.

So um this kind of I still I'll repeat myself that I see this as a fundamental change in our governance, and it deserves a longer runway with more engagement going forward.

Um trying to think of what uh, you know, and I I I do want to tag on with uh council member Ilo Rivera's.

There's a difference between what is the legal process for meet and confer and talking with the REOs, and then there's the conversations that can be had uh I think there has been very positive, productive, uh trustworthy conversations by a council member or the mayor in working with REOs when they want to make these kinds of changes without actually triggering the meet and confer process, the formal process that has severe legal uh implementations.

Uh the other part that I'll throw in that one of the other things that I also see us struggle with is we put these ballot measures in, and then we get the votes, and then we have to have the implementation ordinance, and it drags out.

And maybe it was because the REOs were not engaged earlier or where there wasn't a broader coalition.

Um commission on police practices was highlighted.

I think it's a perfect example.

They still, despite an overwhelming public vote, they still can't do their job as included in the charter because they're stuck.

And I don't know how you fix that process because we want to respect uh the meet and confer process.

Uh, but something has to be done there when the voters send a very strong uh signal uh going forward.

So that to me I also see is a problem.

So some of the challenges that I think this is trying to fix, I don't think this really fixes them.

The chronic underfunding of every single department, uh, whether the independent bodies have enough funding is I think a legitimate concern that I think this council can still do the good work in whatever the mayor thinks, we can override what the mayor thinks and fund it at the appropriate level.

As we did this year, we restored funding to the IBA, we restored funding uh to the audit committee.

I think we funded some of the um the ask that the ethics commissions had.

We have that authority.

I don't think we need to lock anything into the charter that undermines our authority to have that thoughtful discussion.

All right, I'm gonna get off uh my so bug.

So at this time I can't support moving this item forward despite the good work, and I appreciate all the good work.

I would not council member, if this doesn't move forward, you have to make your own decision.

But I think there is something there uh that does deserve a longer runway uh and getting to the right spot, whether it looks exactly like this or some kind of modification.

Uh, I think it deserves that, um, and there can be a bigger, larger engagement of that conversation, and that would be I think a very noble thing to move forward on.

So I'll stop there and return it back to Council President Pro Tim Lee.

Thank you, Council President.

And um I appreciate the feedback from all of my colleagues, uh, especially when it comes to uh the components of the measure that they have any concerns about.

Um, and and I appreciate that even the discussion about having the runway of discussions to be held.

Uh I I think our openness to timeline is actually important here, which is that um we recognize that if we want to put it on the November ballot, that could be a council decision that's made.

Uh, if the council would like to have continued discussions on the item as well, that runway is actually fairly long if we're looking at a future item.

Uh and so there's many ways that we could look at that.

But um, I think you actually presented a really great example, Council President, which was the Commission on Police Practices.

That was an item that was brought forward with an intent to meet something that I think the public was looking for.

Uh it was passed by voters, and yes, from a process standpoint, it's been uh held up through the meet and confer process.

I would never go back and suggest that we never should have brought that forward and passed it before going through that.

Um, I think the need was there, and the council and the public certainly uh agreed.

Um so I do want to answer uh councilmember Campia's questions, because I I appreciate you bringing up the dual structure of governance, and that's something that we would actually appreciate a continued conversation about, because at the end of the day, I don't believe the intent is to simply create uh an environment where you could have this dual structure of accountability.

Um, in most cases, we would hope that that is not gonna be the scenario that comes into play.

I think when we look at other major cities, we often see that their operating uh leadership is not something that turns over just because it uh an executive administration turns over.

Um we've seen that happen more often here, and simply because under strong mirror, we have the ability to have someone come in and replace anyone and everyone that they'd like um without much discussion.

I think some of the goal that uh we had from the beginning was to provide an ability so that we could at least protect some of the operating components of the city, and it would require at least um agreements between a majority of council and the mayor to make changes.

Um so if there are other ways that you could see that being um addressed, uh I think we're certainly open to that conversation.

Again, assuming this has the opportunity to move forward, uh, because I think it's actually a fair point to make that we can't address every single scenario that could come up.

We've seen many different things that we may not have expected in the past, even under the current charter.

Um, but we were looking to achieve a balance that seemed reasonable.

Uh we'll go back to Councilmember Campio.

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem.

Let me ask you a quick question based on something you just said.

So it sounded like you s you were implying that a mayor would appoint a COO, have institutional knowledge, and then when a new mayor was elected, the new mayor would not remove that person from the COO role unless five council members at that time said yes, let's take that person out of place.

And so that is the type of structure you're trying to create.

Uh definitely see the wisdom in that.

Um, for greater stability that would not just be political.

The thresholds could change too, by the way, right?

So I I don't think we were locked into that majority threshold either.

There was some discussion about a supermajority initially.

Um and maybe it's the reverse.

Maybe the adjustment is that there's not a supermajority that um denies the dismissal.

Um one other difference to point out is that the mayor's ability to remove the COO is currently outlined as being for or without cause.

So they really just have the freedom to make that decision.

The council's two-thirds ability to remove a CO has to be for cause, as it's currently written.

So it it's o I imagine that is only really in a rare scenario where you have a CO who is not functioning, and a large enough majority of the council would determine that there needs to be a change, and that could be done that way.

At the moment, there's we are we are a strong mayor form of government.

So at the moment there is no way to uh to make any change there.

I hear what you're saying, and uh that you you distilled it down into a sentence that council member Ilo Rivera uh put forward that I that I think uh I agree with.

Given that the water is a little muddy on the right way to go forward, given the the feedback that I think members of the public and members of our city workforce want to have, I think that a broader item an information item at full council, something where we can dig into details might be appropriate.

I'm not sure when that is.

I know that I'm very concerned about the timeline of our last council meeting before break is July 14th.

Uh is that right, Council President?

Yes.

Yeah, that's the goal.

And and August 8th is typic is when any ballot initiative would have to be supported as a legal deadline for the county, correct city attorney.

I don't know that it's exactly August 8th, but it's in early August.

Okay.

Um some changes are needed.

I think that uh I would err on the side of going slow rather than pushing through at this moment so that the conversations can be can be detailed and at length.

I know that in the past, council president, you mentioned the charter reforms typically come out of a larger charter reform committee and and uh oftentimes don't come from council members.

Um that is always an avenue, though certainly I think that our to get city services done appropriately and quickly, um, you know, all due haste is important.

I think at this moment I'm erring on the side of where the council president is putting forward in terms of deliberation rather than moving forward at the moment.

Um, but I I I applaud your desire to fix problems that are there.

Certainly I see them too.

So thank you, Council President.

Uh thank you, Eltimark Campio.

Um, I'll offer a couple of thoughts uh maybe in the right, because I want to push back a little bit on my colleague, Council Member Deal Rivera.

You know, what I love about this council is that there's nine of us and we have different backgrounds and expertises and different views about governance and responding to our constituents.

Um I think there has been a clear uh message from the council about some of the frustration of any one mayor to be able to handle the complexity of a big city uh going forward.

And you know, the way as I said, one of the ideas I had was a much simpler version of what the council president pro tem put in front of us today uh just to get it into the darn charter because I again I think it is a whole um but at least from my perspective uh I also want to recognize that while a lot of you may not be satisfied, I've seen a sea change in how the mayors reacted uh to this criticism by the council.

Uh one of it was um dismissal of some individuals uh at the DCO level.

Uh the rebranding, sometimes you need to do a rebranding just to send a signal.

Uh, but I have seen a sea change in how the chiefs uh now respond to council and the presence of the chiefs at council meetings.

Maybe not every time, maybe they need to be have a heads up when something is going to be discussed uh at committee or at the full council, but I've seen a sea change.

And one of the other changes that I recommended was that by and large, I think for the first four years that I was in office uh that I've been in office, I never saw a DCOO.

I never had a conversation with the DCO.

If I had a problem, you know, I reached out to the mayor and I said that's got to change.

How can you expect the council to understand or respect the decision of the DCOs if they're never around?

If we don't know what they're doing, what role they have.

And so I've seen a pivot that I think is important.

Is it far enough?

You know, we can debate that.

Uh, but I think that has a seen a change, and I think a lot of it is due to the council's reaction, uh, frustration, uh perhaps the public's as well.

And so I do want to recognize that when we have these moments when things are changed for the better.

Um personally, I think we ought to recognize that.

It's a continuing process, we can always do better.

Processes can always improve performance of individuals uh and the relationship between the mayor's office and the council can always be better, stronger, more productive.

Uh, but I did want to kind of push back a little bit, and maybe it's up to committee chairs, maybe it's up to me in running the council hearings that we send a better message that hey, we need the mayor or a chief to be there, not just the the mayor's rep there uh to answer some tough questions uh that this council has and is certainly not shy about putting out there.

So I I just wanted to kind of add that as maybe kind of a postscript to some of my other comments.

So not seeing anybody else on the lights.

Uh we have a motion by councilmember Lee and a second by council president pro tem Lee, my apologies, and a second by council member Moreno.

Um I'm gonna go around the room, which I always hated when we did it during COVID, but I think I I want since there seems to be some messages, so I'm gonna ask for individual votes.

Council President Pro.

God, I am so sorry.

Councilmember Ilo Rivera.

Council President Pro Tem Lee.

Yes, Councilmember Moreno.

Moreno, yes, council member Campillo?

Respectfully no.

And I will add a respectful no uh as well.

So that motion fails.

Um, and so under the rules of council uh we have no action today, and but there is room for an alternate motion uh if anybody wants to make one, and I don't see anybody responding.

So uh with that uh that will close item seven and will bring us to the end of today's agenda.

I will now adjourn this meeting of the rules committee until the next regularly scheduled meeting to be held Wednesday, August twenty sixth twenty twenty six at 9 a.m.

We are adjourned for the summer recession