Okay, so it's nine o'clock, and I'm calling to order this rules committee meeting of the San Leandro City Council.

Today is Wednesday, April 22nd.

Madam Clerk, would you please take roll?

Councilmember Simon.

Present.

Sorry.

Present.

Thank you.

Councilmember Bowen.

Present.

And Mayor Gonzalez.

Present.

Thank you.

Okay, may we have the public comment announcement?

After each agenda item is presented, the mayor will ask for committee member comments and then take public comment.

You will have two minutes for your comment.

A countdown timer will appear for the convenience of the speaker and attendees.

So this time we'll move to item 2A.

Today we have two items.

I understand that Councilmember Simon has some time constraints.

I also have some time constraints, so ideally we can move through this uh by approximately 10 o'clock.

Councilmember Simon, the floor is yours.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um the restorative justice item discussion to consider implementation of restorative justice mediation to the city council discipline policy.

I have prepared a handout, and everyone should have a copy of that.

And what I've done is taken the discipline policy and implemented track changes, and I've highlighted a few key terms I wanted to touch bases on before uh digging into the details.

Uh so I think one of the key terms that's in our policy and is throughout many of our city documents is the word fair, something that's just equitable, or impartial.

And I think that's really important for us, and I think we all believe that we should all be fair in in all of our policies here at the city.

Um stepping back a little bit, why restorative justice?

And folks may have Googled this or tried to research it on their own, and I've been researching um as well.

And why restorative justice?

Because it focuses on repairing harm through dialogue, and I want to highlight that word dialogue.

It's important for us to communicate and talk, um, and community accountability aiming for rehabilitation and reduce recidivism, whereas traditional discipline centers on punishment, retribution, and rule compliance.

While traditional methods use suspension to isolate offenders, restorative practices like mediation foster relationships to prevent future incidents and reduce reoffending by 14 to 18 percent.

That's some information that I found online.

Some of the key differences between restorative and traditional approach.

Uh the core goal is for traditional discipline, it seeks to punish and enforce compliance while restorative justice prior prior to sizes repairing the harm caused to the victims and the community.

The reform the ref the role of the offender, traditional systems, isolate the offender, while restorative justice requires them to take active accountability and make amends.

Victim support, restorative justice centers on the victim's needs and voice, whereas traditional retributive models often treat victims as a secondary witness.

And the methodology, traditional systems rely on suspensions, detentions, and expulsions, and restorative justice systems use restorative circles, mediation, and conferences.

And the outcomes, restorative justice seeks to build social skills, strengthen community relationships, and prevent future harm rather than focusing only on punishment.

So that's just some background.

And what you have in front of you is the actual discipline policy, and in track changes mode in red font, I have made some recommended edits for consideration.

And the title essentially of the discipline policy would be changed to as shown above, restorative justice collaboration and discipline policy.

And first page you can see it just added that that term as I mentioned, and the bulk of the changes are on page two.

So the first step, and this is essentially taking away the consultation with city attorney step, but the attorney is involved with this method.

So the mayor, the council member or the mayor seeking to raise a concern of perceived violation would submit the information to the city attorney for evaluation and actually warrant it.

Then the city, and I'm not going to read it word for word.

I'm just going to kind of highlight it.

Uh the concerns of the perceived violations are brought to the full council, including the council members or mayor who are subject to the referral.

Then the city attorney would meet with the council to discuss the process for addressing or investigating the situation.

And if permitted, this will happen in closed session, excluding the members who both raised the concern as well as those who committed the violation.

The next paragraph is the this is the first step to address the concern of the perceived violation among the entire council, including the claimant and the defendant.

And just let me step back a little bit.

So the approach focuses on repairing the harm and allowing the offenders to understand the impact of their actions and make amends while reducing stress, anxiety, and rescissitism.

Now, if the majority of the council, now this is excluding the claimant and the dependent defendant, excuse me, back to the fairness.

Do you have a point of order?

I do want to.

So hold on.

You are now on the mic.

I know that we started the meeting.

So I'm just, I guess I want clarification on exactly what the presentation is about because it seems like we're talking about the discipline policy in general and changes that council member Simon would like to it rather than restorative justice.

Okay.

So I assume that your point of order, I'm interpreting that as this is this has not been noticed because instead of discussing whether we should do it, we're actually talking about policy changes.

Correct.

Um and just so first I'll go to city attorney.

Have we noticed what we're discussing?

So the City Council discipline policy is referenced in the uh agenda item, but uh it is uh the full item is discussion first to consider second implementation of restorative justice mediation into the city council discipline policy.

I think we do have to take into consideration that this is a discussion first, and then that we're talking about uh just the consideration of implementation.

So to council member bowen's point, um, I do think that this is the language provided by councilmember Simon is illustrative, but I do believe there's an interim sort of step.

Are we to to you, Mayor, as the chair, um sort of discussing first, are we going to even consider implementation?

Okay, the restorative justice.

Okay.

Um I think we we agreed as a council to come and discuss the concept of restorative justice here at rules and whether we want to implement right now.

Because this is an audio meeting and people cannot see what we have.

We have a set of red line proposed changes to the policy.

Um I don't believe that these were noticed to the public.

So I don't, you know, I'm gonna ask you explicitly, are we allowed to talk about this red line?

Not the concept, but the specific red line without noticing the public.

So in the context of the discussion about implementing considering implementation as this is a potential example, we're not in violation of the Brown Act because uh items that are provided to the legislative body, such as the committee at the time of the hearing or at the time of the meeting, as long as it's made available to members of the public who wish to see it, they can get copies as well.

Truthfully, though you haven't received this in advance, which is not our usual practice, but it's not against the Brown Act to provide such information as part of a discussion.

One one last question, just to make sure that we're following the order.

Does our city council handbook currently require um council members or members of the public to provide us advanced notice of materials that we will be discussing at the meeting?

I believe the answer is currently no.

It's not a requirement, but that would be separate from an expectation.

Yes.

Uh I believe you're correct, Marin.

We can double check.

Uh of course, the handbook is not inconsistent with the Brown Act's requirements.

And so then the Brown Act is a floor, not that the council could be more restrictive and could be uh more prescriptive.

So at this point in time, what I'd like to see um if I'm understanding your legal guidance correctly.

We had agreed to talk about whether we want to do restorative justice.

And I think you are presenting an example of how that could work out.

And so as long as we keep the discussion on does this body recommend to the full council that we adopt a restorative justice, that would be okay.

But at this point in time, this body could not recommend these specific policy changes.

That is correct.

Okay.

Councilmember Simon, is that is that clear, or would you like some clarification?

Uh yes, some clarification.

Uh, just want to understand why could, if this body agreed, just like if we had a discussion and I didn't prepare this and hand it out, why could we not make recommendations to council and publish this for the public to see at the next council meeting so it could be more efficient, trying to include clear improve efficiency for the next meeting?

Well, this is gonna be published because it you've submitted it as part of the the this hearing today, so it is part of the official record of this meeting because it was distributed to the to the committee and is available to members of the public.

So in that sense, the as part of a recommendation from this committee, it can certainly be presented to the full council because it's part of the record of this meeting that this was discussed as illustrative of a potential change in policy.

But we are not technically, there's no recommendation from the committee as to this is going to be the change in the policy.

Right now, you're the item is just a deconsider discussion.

But this is still a part of the official record of this meeting because it was provided to you and as a member to members of the public, is available to members of the public.

Okay, so we're not adopting it, of course.

We can recommend it if we choose.

So we could recommend it to the council or some variations of it.

Certainly, it's obviously part of the discussion by this committee because it was provided to the committee and to is available to members of the public.

Is it something that is within our let me just say within our own practice that we would take this and without having had it vetted, without having had it published?

No, that's not the usual practice of the council or any of the committees.

Okay.

Thank you.

If you can proceed.

Okay, thank you.

So back to the second paragraph of the red-lined majority of the edits here.

So this is the first attempt, the first step to attempt to address a concerned of perceived violation.

And this is to essentially uh streamline the process, make it more efficient, and get all parties involved.

As I mentioned, this is including the entire council, including the claimant and defendant.

And we would receive training in advance to help us learn those tools.

And as I mentioned earlier, we would I'm not I'm not I am not recommending that we bring a consultant on board on retainer to step in every time to help this mediation.

We as a council would do this ourselves.

Okay.

And if a majority of the council, excluding the claimant and defendant, if they feel restorative justice collaboration is not appropriate, if the issues just so agregious that this is not going to work, or we've attempted the restorative justice and it did not resolve the concerns, then we would go back into our normal disciplinary process as defined below.

And just a one edit to that request for discipline, just saying that we've we've attempted restorative justice essentially, but it was not successful.

And just for simplicity's sake, keeping one party involved, the city attorney and throughout the document rather than the city clerk, uh the city managers is keeping everything flowing through the city attorney.

And back to the fairness, as I mentioned at the beginning of this discussion.

Um I think what we're trying to do here is just be more fair with the process, be more fair with our time, with our money expended, um, just the whole process.

Um, I also have some other recommended edits that I think would really help the efficiency of the process is that the claimant and the defendants, we should be uneligible, they should be uneligible to vote on the matter on any of these matters uh on discipline.

Okay, just a point of order.

So city attorney.

Uh Councilmember Simon has indicated that the remaining edits are for efficiency.

He did not tie them to restorative justice.

So are those properly noticed for discussion today?

Fairness.

Just to be your words were efficiency.

Well, that's part of it, but the beginning is fairness, and fairness is restorative justice.

You said you wanted these changes made for efficiency.

Okay.

That's the record.

Now, if you want to change, but first I will let city attorney answer my question, then you can change your description.

Thank you, Mayor.

No, this is uh to council member Simon, if you will, uh Mayor, I think we want to make sure we're tying everything obviously to the agenda item restorative justice collaboration.

So to the extent that any other edits are not in the restorative justice justice collaboration um agenda item or issue, I would be careful and advise the committee to um not go into those sections and just focus on the restorative justice mediation.

So with that in mind, council member Simon.

The floor is yours.

Thank you.

Uh so fairness, I believe is an integral part of restorative justice, and anything we see in this document that is not fair, I think it's incumbent upon us to raise that issue to our colleagues.

If we don't address it today, I understand, but at least we should make that recommendation when it comes back to council.

I don't I don't think that um it's right for us to just look the other way when we see things that are in conflict with restorative justice.

So those that's my recommendation.

Okay, so thank you for your presentation.

At this point in time, what we'll do is we'll take questions, not comments, questions on this item, then we'll take public comment and we'll return to discussion.

Questions first.

Council member Bowen.

Yes, um question around making changes to the discipline policy.

When we in the past have done this, was it when we were looking at the handbook in general, and then that's the um when we do our annual or every other year, look at the just for um clarity.

So we will go to city manager on that.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you, Councilmember Bowen.

Um, so the the handbook isn't on a cadence of updating every whatever schedule.

Uh the last time we did the handbook, it just took over a year, so it's felt as if we were constantly doing it.

Um and so, and the and actually the discipline policy is referenced in the handbook, but it's not in the handbook, and it's its own document, its own standalone document.

Yeah, got it, and just I think because it's been such a long constant process, I think the last two years.

And so we separately went through a process of going through the discipline policy.

That is correct.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, so uh some questions on my end.

The problem to solve is I think number one going back to being fair, being fair to our constituents to solve problems in a fair method to be just, equitable, and partial, and to be efficient.

I think that just looking at some of the past disciplinary processes that we've been through, taking eight to ten months to get to a first step.

Um is not fair, it's not efficient, and I think we should look at processes that are out there that have been proven to be more effective and more efficient, which is restorative justice.

And I think that we as council members should take that lead.

We should take that role to resolve these issues amongst ourselves if we feel as a majority that they can be resolved at our level rather than jumping to such high um bars of investigations and other things when they could be resolved amongst ourselves.

My second question is what is the impediment to dialogue?

Can I ask because as I read um what you've presented us today?

It basically is a request that there be dialogue.

So what is the impediment to dialogue?

It's not part of our process, and this is making it part of our process.

And I understand here at City Council, we are very focused on policy and process, such that it prevents us from doing things, in my opinion, that make common sense at times that we are so focused on process.

Therefore, the process is very clear what we are to do, very clear.

And I think this will help us guide us to resolving issues more in a fair method and more efficiently and effectively third question.

Do you have any evidence of such a strong word?

But I'll still use the word evidence.

Do you have any evidence that uh council members today are unwilling to dialogue and aren't dialoguing looking at our past to uh disciplinary processes, not sure about the first one, but the second one, I think there could have been improved dialogue amongst the claimant, the defendant, and the council members, which is defined here.

Um that did not happen for 10 months.

Not exactly word for word, but we could have improved that dialogue process, and this will this will help us do that.

So turning to that specific example, are you suggesting to the public that dialogue wasn't attempted before the investigation?

I don't know this the specifics, but I just believe that we could have had improved dialogue rather than going to a full-blown investigation.

I think we could have talked more.

Okay.

Um then my last question.

When I have read about restorative justice in the past, this is probably public information.

I know it's public information.

I've worked with teenagers for many, many, many years.

This concept of restorative justice is in response to harm done.

And fundamental to that, harm being done is an acknowledgement of the harm done.

What is the impediment today that keeps any council member from apologizing to another council member?

Why do we need a policy change I don't think this is specific to uh just apologizing?

There's many other elements that's part of restorative justice that can help reduce the harm.

There's as I mentioned, it's defined here as part of the research, emphasizing accountability, healing over punishment, and understanding the impact of the actions.

So I don't think apologizing is going to solve all of our issues.

I think there's a several tools that can help us.

And I am not an expert.

This is just my research I've done, and I would like to bring an expert in to help us to train us on these tools for a one-time training session.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Bowen, the floor is yours.

Um, did we want to do I would like to just move on to comments?

So do we need one to public comment before that?

Let's do public comment.

Madam Clerk, do we have any public comment on this item?

Mayor, we have not received any comment cards.

Okay, so we will close public comment on this item and then move to our own discussion.

Um I'll start with the fact that I am not supportive of making any recommendation to add this.

I think that we are um still working through our own internal discipline policy, and as is, we still need to ensure that what we have in place works.

Um restorative justice, despite what Councilmember Seidman just said, although I do believe he actually answered his own question is about accountability, um, whether or not an apology is part of it, restorative restorative justice does not exist and is not effective and does not work unless you start from a place of acknowledging harm.

Um and with the intent of restoring the harm that is done.

There's also um an inability to go through with this process if there is not a neutral mediating party to be able to um uh administer the process, and in fact, if you were to try restorative justice without accountability and without um a neutral mediator, you actually risk causing more harm because then you are um uh basically asking the person that is harm to go through the the trauma again, or to have to defend their experiences to a person that has not or a party that has not acknowledged harm.

So to me, this is one um unnecessary and two would potentially be more harmful.

Um and I would just like to clarify that um uh in the previous statement about more dialogue, certainly um dialogue and an attempt to reach out um documented, actually, you know, submitted to with with the city attorney and um involved uh was um did occur, and um you know um folks uh or people that should have could have responded and did not, and I find it pretty um uh rich that they would be asking for dialogue now.

So I mean, I just kind of want to I'm not gonna be supportive of this.

Mayor, if you are, we can continue this conversation, but I I think we're wasted enough time on this.

Okay, so I think the comments uh my comments focus on a couple of things.

Uh first I am unclear how we are impeded from dialoguing today.

I am unclear how the proposed words create dialogue because if people aren't willing to talk, they won't talk with someone else in the room.

Um I am struggling to understand how this proposal in any way is restorative justice because restorative justice is contingent on accountability and acknowledgement of harm done.

And based on my experience thus far, where I have attempted to uh help bring council members together, I have seen no willingness to acknowledge any responsibility or accountability, and so putting words on a piece of paper, I don't know change that.

This is just expanding process.

Um I do believe that a discussion about how we vote on investigative outcomes is out of order.

Um could we have that discussion at another meeting?

Absolutely.

Uh my approach is different.

I think everyone should be able to vote.

Um there's a variety of reasons for that, but I think everyone should be able to vote, not two people or three people or four people get excluded.

Um I am frustrated that we're having a discussion about red lines that we haven't seen before the meetings, so that there wasn't an opportunity to prepare.

Um we've told staff that staff needs to provide us information in advance, and we give them grief when they don't let us prepare for a meeting.

So I'm I'm a bit frustrated that we didn't get this in advance.

Ultimately, the the model of restorative justice, where people acknowledge responsibility for the harm that they do, and work to apologize and work to adapt uh word choice, actions, um all of that stuff, I think is a good thing.

It's very hard to be against the abstract idea of restorative justice.

Um but it is all contingent on someone saying, some people saying, whoever the accused are.

If factually something bad happened, if that's established, it it's so contingent on acknowledgement.

And I think council member Bowen is correct that if there's no acknowledgement, then there's really no restorative justice.

There's just dialogue.

Dialogue in itself is not restorative justice.

Dialogue can be quite antagonistic.

Dialogue can be quite hurtful.

So I'm trying to figure out how we achieve the vocabulary end.

The vocabulary is restorative justice.

How we achieve that end, um, because I think there's nothing wrong with that.

I'm actually supportive of the concept of restorative justice.

I just don't see how how this moves that forward.

Council member Simon, if you'd like to weigh in.

Uh sure.

One comment I'd like to make.

Well, just on the edits that I provided, this is not staff's issue.

This is my issue.

With the time that I have allotted, I worked on this yesterday, finished it up this morning.

Um I could have done nothing and just talked through it.

So this was my attempt to help to be more efficient, and I think it is better than me just talking verbally and you not seeing anything.

And I will try harder in advance, but with my time constraints, this is this is what I could do.

So this is not a staff issue.

Um, second is what I would like to do, and it sounds like there is not consensus here on the language that I've provided, but I would like to bring this back to council for discussion on what we talked about today.

Um my edits are in the record that have been presented.

Um, share this with counsel, full council, they can see it, they can digest it, the public can digest it, and whether we decide to proceed with it or not, um, is the will of the council.

So that was my request of today is to move this forward to a future agenda item at a the next available council meeting.

Okay, so this came to this committee because at that council meeting, well, among various reasons at the council meeting, there was significant disagreement on what restorative justice meant.

And there was even this there was a disagreement between the members on the council, and those dismember disagreements was a bit among members of the public, and the general census, you guys go and figure it out at rules.

So this is the mandate from the council, as I perceived it, and we can see if staff remembers it differently.

The mandate from the council is you guys go and figure this out because there's a lot of disagreement here, you guys go figure it out.

And I feel like what we have today is we don't really have resolution of what that means.

So you're simply saying this is what I propose, take it back to council.

But that's not what our mandate was.

Our mandate was there's lots of disagreement out there about what restorative justice means.

Boy, this is complicated, you guys go figure it out.

And right now, we have we got your proposal this morning, and you're saying send it back to council without any vetting.

So I am not supportive of going back to council until we at least bounce it around and really dig in some more.

I'm gonna go to council member Bowen to get your reaction to his to council member Simon's request to send this right back to city council.

Uh no, I'm I'm in um agreement with you, mayor.

I um if we were going to actually talk about restorative justice as a conflict resolution mediation um uh uh tool, then uh we could sit here and actually talk about what restorative justice is and define it and what that process would look like and actually include it as a um uh uh um uh to really explore what it means and the purpose of it.

That to me is not what we're doing today.

Even the red line items are less about what restorative justice is and more about how it would be incorporated, I think into or how it would be.

Um so I think fundamentally we aren't even addressing what restorative justice is, but I will tell you that we don't even have to because fundamental to it is an acknowledgement of harm and an effort to be able to work together.

And the reality is that what we have in place right now, in terms of a um uh uh council consideration of discipline, uh consultation with the mayor, letter of rubber man, we still have many avenues to be able to dialogue, work through conflict with restorative um justice and the um acknowledgement of harm or accountability that still requires some sort of action to be able to say, did something occur or not occur?

So I I just think that this opens up a can of worms that is not necessary.

I would absolutely not um support bringing this to the council.

I don't even know what this would be that we would be bringing to the council, and we're just going in circles.

We do have uh in our agenda structure, and this is to city manager or city attorney.

Um in our agenda structure, we do not have a reporting out of what committees uh do say evaluate.

And so council member Simon talked about uh some sort of report out and or request to the city council.

So can you help me understand as a general principle?

How would we report out uh the discussion that occurred at rules committee?

Uh thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

You are correct, we do not have that structure in our agenda.

Um, the only thing I could think of that is a type of report out from what happens at a committee is the minutes of this meeting that are on our legislator system on our website.

Okay, because the minutes are action minutes.

So it would really just be the recording.

Yes, sir.

That's not me, the recording of this meeting.

Okay.

And presumably it could be uh as items of public interest.

There could be a discussion there.

I'm gonna um turn it over to the city attorney because my understanding is that items of interest are not for discussion at the council meeting.

I didn't mean discussion, I said purely reporting out what transpired here.

Oh, yes, and items of interest, the council member can basically say whatever they'd like to say.

Okay.

Okay, well, we'll close this out with council member Simon.

So just so I understand, Mayor, you would like to bring this back to rules to further flush this out to discuss.

Yeah, it it's my preference that we keep talking about this here.

That among other things, I do believe this concept of uh uh council member bowen laid out.

Let's define restorative justice.

Restorative justice is this.

Then it's A, B and C.

Once we have A, B and C, then we would craft some sort of policy that we can tie back and say this part of the policy achieves A, this part of the policy achieves B, this part of the policy achieves C.

Okay.

Right?

It's just that we really get into that discussion.

And that that's what I started off as.

I don't have a photocopy of this because I didn't have time, but I did explain this in the beginning.

You don't have a physical piece of paper, but in the beginning, I did explain why restorative justice, I explained that.

It focuses on repairing the harm through dialogue.

Uh the key difference between restorative justice and traditional approaches.

If you would like me to hand this out instead of talking about it.

I definitely I took notes for sure.

I'm assuming council member Council Mr.

Bowen took notes.

I think the real issue is that it is unclear.

Again, we just got the the your suggested red lines today.

It's unclear how what we have here achieves those goals.

But even more importantly, all that you're talking about there can be achieved through dialogue.

And so for me personally, I think that it's uh disruptive for council members to get the city attorney involved when they have a disagreement.

I think that we should be able to talk amongst ourselves without going to an attorney to discuss.

So that's just one example of the types of things that I think that we can vet amongst ourselves to try to reach on a consensus of what a policy change would look like that we then send to the city council.

But right now, I don't I don't feel comfortable creating on the fly.

And I think that we should uh continue uh working on this.

So that's my proposal, so to be very explicit.

My proposal is that this stay within rules uh for right now until we can figure out what how this works.

That's fine.

I I agree.

We can keep working this out.

You have what my recommended edits are, and hoping you can come back with some recommended edits while um looking at the core differences of restorative justice.

Looks like you've taken notes, so that's good.

If you could provide that, though, that would be helpful.

I can provide you a copy of this as well.

Sorry to interrupt.

I just want to go, Councilmember Bowen.

Do you agree that this is uh something to be kept at rules for further dialogue?

Councilmember Bowen, floor is yours.

Yes, and just for clarification, the direction from the council was to bring this to rules for us to discuss whether or not we would want to include restorative justice or to define what restorative justice is, and if we want to include it in the discipline policy.

Correct.

So all of that is still on the floor.

It's just really continuing with the mandate given to us by the city council.

This I I certainly don't view this as we're evaluating whether these are the right red lines.

They're really uh the full mandate of the city council.

And that's what's still remains on the floor in this uh soup of activity.

Okay, and um, if you could also just help me understand um if we say um as a committee, we would like to include this or not include this, and again, not I'm not referring to these redlined items.

I'm just referring to the inclusion of um restorative justice as um uh part of this discipline policy.

Um that would just come back at a later point to um the council whenever we decide to talk about the discipline policy again.

Well, I'm trying to understand how much time we want to spend on this right now and whether it is the best use of our time as well.

What is what's the next step for this?

So the next step for this, as far as I'm concerned, and I'll go to city uh manager, because I know that we've got uh kind of an agenda stream for our rules committee, and there's things that we have to work on that that we're we're planning to work on.

So I think that typically city manager Scott or her agenda, and I'm not sure where it would fit in this given all the other constraints that that we have things that we need to be working on.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Well, um actually we were just looking at rules recently, and for the rules committee, we actually don't have anything on the upcoming agendas as of today that can always change, depending on what happens at council meetings.

And so I can bring this back as sooner or later as the the council um the committee directs.

I would just need to know exactly what am I agendizing if I am to bring it back to rules.

Okay, so we have consensus that it stays in rules.

Now the question is simply what is it that's that that we're talking about?

The council sent us here with I think uh two mandates.

The first mandate is do we want to include this?

And number two, if so, what does that look like?

And I think that both of those still sit here with a priority on, you know, like what is it that we're trying to achieve, and what's the problem that we're trying to solve?

Because I think at the very core, the disagreement that was occurring between the council members involved things like, oh no, it's this, no, it's this, no, it's that.

And because you don't have agreement on what the it is and how that solves the problem, which the problem was not well defined, that needs to be explored here.

Um, and it may take several sessions because I think there's probably differing perspectives, and this might be one of those places where the public involved more more readily so that we help them see.

Can I continue my Yes, please?

Yes.

Um, and I want to clarify a few things as well.

So, in terms of our discipline, the um the discipline policy.

Um for the purpose of considering any sort of discipline, the very first step that's not included in this is to whether or not to discipline, correct?

Maybe city attorney.

So that is correct.

And and how again, can you remind us?

Would we as a council decide to discipline?

According to the current policy, a complaint could be brought from a member of the public or from a member of the council.

And it's a request, not I should say uh request for discipline.

A request for discipline could arise from a complaint.

And when a complaint comes in, it's received, and the council ultimately decides are we going to further investigate or take the complaint on its face as it stands, or not do anything at all.

Understood.

So if, for example, we a complaint comes in, um, we say take it on its face in that like there's enough, there's enough evidence or information out there to believe it to be true.

So an investigation investigation would not be necessary.

Otherwise, if there was maybe some doubt or just more clarification, an investigation would be necessary, like what had occurred with um the complaint that I brought to the council.

Correct.

Okay.

And then after that, then um the council would then look at the investigation, the evidence, any of the information that was part of the complaint, and then look at what could be considered for discipline or any sort of accountability action.

Um it would be anything like consultation with the mayor, letter of reprimands, statement of disapproval, admonition, uh written notice, hearing procedures, all of these things are a tool for accountability and discipline, but that does not occur until after the council has gone through a process of um investigating a complaint and making a decision to sustain or not sustain the the um findings.

That is correct.

Correct.

Okay.

So with um uh restorative justice club um as a potential uh discipline tool, that would not even um be part of this process until you get to a point where you're considering some sort of discipline.

Yes, I think that is certainly the logical way to approach a restorative justice mediations after facts have been received, and then the council has decided upon what the facts are.

Great.

So it would be under the same list as A, B, C, D that we've talked about before in terms of our um the discipline policy.

Just here's another tool for being able to um address some sort of action harm misconduct at the council.

Right.

Right.

Okay.

So I think can we, as a as a uh the rules committee recognize that that is actually in terms of where this would land in a discipline policy, that that's where it should actually be.

So um, I know it's a little confusing the way that it was presented to us today.

Okay, so what I'd like to do, and I'm gonna come to you next, Councilmember Simon.

But the the just the question on the table, I think goes to where restorative justice as councilmember Bowen understands it, would fit in.

I think you've heard the the public has heard uh my confusion because what I see in here is more uh in the spirit of mediation before a complaint occurs, as opposed to what I perceive to be restorative justice.

And so I'm gonna come to you, council member Simon.

Would you agree that restorative justice occurs as part of the discipline process and a separate and apart from maybe early mediation before a complaint gets filed, or even after a complaint gets filed, there might still be a request to mediate, but that in itself at the top is not restorative justice.

Well, first, I would like to say I do believe we need an expert here.

Because I don't think anyone here is an expert in restorative justice.

This is our knowledge, our research that we know, but we're not trainers on this.

So I think we should be trained as a council on this concept, irrespective of the what order this goes.

I just want to bring that up.

But back to your question, I do believe that in my opinion, this is a tool that should be used before discipline.

This should be a tool if someone raises a concern of a perceived violation, it may or may not be that we as a council talk this out, that we try to address this situation, and that is the whole intent here of being fair and being more efficient, because what I've seen is that is not that is not is what has occurred.

So I'm recommending something different, different than what we've done.

I'm sorry, just I want to be clear that I want to make sure that I heard you correctly.

So you do view it as a tool in the disciplinary toolkit.

Did I hear you correctly or did I misunderstand?

It's it's the early stages.

It's in the discipline policy, but I'm changing my recommendation.

It's a restorative justice collaboration and discipline policy.

So I think before you I think, as I mentioned before, some things can be so egregious, just so bad, that yeah, I think discipline would be necessary.

But I think there are many issues that we as council can work out that can resolve early on rather than you know, soaking up a year of time from council.

I really do believe that.

And I think we have to explore that.

I may not have all the answers here.

I am no expert.

I'm a civil engineer.

I'm doing my best here to help us city move forward.

But I think there's things we can do better.

I I would never say that what we we have done is set in stone.

I don't think we should ever do that.

So my recommendation, and I agree, let's keep working on this.

Okay, whether the order is, you know, we'll figure that out.

I would recommend we go before we go into a full-blown investigation, especially if it's a minor issue.

Okay.

So I I think that there's been enough dialogue so that um staff understands big picture where we're things that we need to explore, right?

We've kind of outlined a variety of things.

People can listen to the recording of this meeting to just figure out where we where we kind of need to go.

Um, I do believe that uh there needs to be more research done.

I'm this was presented as a non-staff, non-expense item.

So I don't know that there's interest at this point in time and in starting to spend a bunch of money that we didn't budget for because we already had the budget uh this planning discussion uh and and this is not in our current budget.

Um but I think that we can continue having that dialogue.

I would recommend that we do this uh not in May but in June, so that we can all have plenty of time because we're all quite busy, but we need to go and do our own research.

I continue to believe that uh as council member Bowen pointed out that there is a uh mediation-like structure that can happen uh before a formal complaint gets filed, and that it should happen.

And quite frankly, in the matters that we have had, it did happen.

That's my public representation.

But at the end, instead of perhaps censure or some sort of punishment, could the parties involved through the use of a mediator work things out, harm gets acknowledged, reconciliation occurs.

Um, would that be better?

And I think that that's a wonderful tool to have in the toolkit.

But all that is to be discussed here.

And my question to you, Councilmember Bowen, are you fine with bringing this back in June?

Uh I'm gonna answer that question, and then I'd like to make my comment.

Um, I don't if that is what the rules committee wants to do and wants to spend our time doing, um, I think I would have to go along with it.

I don't agree with it.

I don't think it's necessary.

Um I also for um public record, this is an example of why this doesn't actually work in real time.

So, council member Simon just made a comment to say we don't have to waste a year on an investigation if we had something like restorative justice.

When he refers to wasting a year or taking a year to go through a process, it really was to do with an investigation into real sustained misconduct.

These things occurred, and it took almost a year from the investigation to this council being able to do something about it to try to hold the council accountable for its own actions, and in talking about it within the last three months, we still can not acknowledge that harm.

So talking about restorative justice as if it somehow would have made things better is incredibly difficult to sit here and go through it and listen to you because it is a joke, and it is incredibly re-triggering, because this is to say, had we just talked about something, it would have been okay.

Real harm occurs, and if you want to be able to, you as um a council member, us as a council wants to be able to talk about things and go through some sort of restorative justice process, great.

At the same time, this does not solve things and it does not make things in the past okay because we can talk about it.

And I just having a really difficult time talking about something that is not even defined properly.

The person bringing this cannot say that he understands what it is, and yet we're going to spend even more time, more staff time, more of our time sitting here talking about this, and we have many other things to be talking about.

We actually have another agenda item for today, and it's now almost 10 o'clock.

So at this point in time, um you're fine with coming back in June?

Councilmember Simon.

Well, I would like to come back for sure.

I'm just looking at calendar and schedule and remote access or not.

We don't have we will not have remote access in June.

There was some discussion in the future, but not no, not in June.

What about July?

Are you available in July?

Um, I think June would probably better, but could we bring it back next month?

Um in a month.

I'm not positive that I'll be here.

And I think that it we also need time to do some research and come to just have some discussions about this.

We can do June if if it's possible to be flexible on that the date, if it's not the exact fourth Wednesday of the month.

Um, if that's possible to have some we can work towards that.

We can work towards it.

I mean, obviously, everybody's calendar is everyone's different.

I but yeah, let's plan for June.

Council Mr.

Bowen.

What exactly do you want to accomplish in June?

Um I'm I'm gonna just yeah, just but because we've already talked about what we hope to continue to analyze whether we should and what that might look like because we haven't even defined restorative justice here, right?

So you asked for a definition.

We need to come to consensus about what that even means to begin to understand how we would address which problem.

So there's a lot to be talked about, and I think to belabor this any more other than saying let's talk about it again in the future.

Um to clarify, that's for us to define.

So this is not so the homework is for the council, the this the box this committee to come back with our own understanding of what restorative justice is and what that could mean if we think that that's necessary to find its way into a policy change, what that could begin to look like.

Because step one is we have to know what we're talking about, it has to be defined.

Step two is is it necessary?

Are we already doing it, et cetera?

And to the extent that it is necessary because there's a gap in what we're doing.

Then how do we implement that?

Should the person the council member that brought this to the council and to the body not be the person that is responsible for being able to adequately define and present this as a potential policy or toolkit for tool for us to use, and then for the rest of the committee to be able to understand and accept and go forward with it?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, so it is incumbent upon you, Councilmember Simon, because this is your proposal.

You are requesting that a change be made.

And so, and this will be the last word on this topic.

We are moving on.

We we have got to get from you not an idea of some word, but a very clear definition.

We've got to have a convincing argument for why we should do this.

And then, you know, like as I've just laid out why we should do it, what's keeping those goals from being achieved with the current method, right?

Because I was asking my questions.

We're like, why can't we dialogue right now?

What's keeping that from happening?

And then what would the policy, does it need to be in policy, i.e., and then what would the policy changes look like as the proposal?

Is that something that you can come back to?

Well, mayor, I've read that.

I have it right here, and I will give it, you know, send it to staff to give to all on counsel.

I've given you why restorative justice.

I've explained the the differences between traditional approaches and restorative justice, and I gave you my recommendations.

If you need and you just got it today, so I understand it takes time to digest it.

So I will give that to you, and you have it, and we can sound like there's some fundamental differences on whether we believe this should happen or not on this rules.

And that's okay.

I mean, we're not all gonna agree on things, but I think we should continue the dialogue after you've had time to digest what I've presented, and I will give you why and the differences between restorative and traditional approaches.

Right.

So it's it's so let us we're gonna end with this item right here.

Uh thank you for the robust discussion.

We're moving on to item 3b in our agenda or 2b, my apologies.

Cannabis policy next steps, city attorney.

I have a meeting at 10 o'clock that I told him I would be late to, but I told him I might be 15 minutes late.

I expected this other item to have only taken like 20 to 30 minutes.

So, you know, we're not I know that council member Simon needs to leave relatively soon because he has a 10 30 and he needs to travel.

I have a meeting that I'm currently late to.

So can we just push it one month?

I would really appreciate that.

Thank you.

Um, do we have any public comment?

Because I don't think we do.

We have one public comment.

Oh, it's brown.

Not on the agenda.

It's got to be public comment, not on the agenda.

Sorry.

And we and we can talk separately, obviously, at another point, but do we have any public comment that's not on the agenda?

Okay, so we do not.

So just for the record, very clearly, item 2b has been deferred to our next rules committee meeting.

Uh, there was no public comment.

Committee members, do you have any comments?

Seeing none, we are adjourned at 10.04.