Already.

So I'm gonna call to order this meeting of the legislative rules committee or the board of representatives at 701 p.m.

Today, April 28th, 2026.

I note that I see representatives blank and road, Vice Chair Caporelli, Representative Hughes, Pyatt, myself, Stone, Weinberg, all in attendance.

So the board that are attended that I haven't otherwise called, please go ahead.

Make yourself known.

No others.

So I declare that we do have a quorum.

And then we're going to move forward with item one on the agenda, which is LR 32.016, an ordinance for publication to repeal the appointments commission per article 17 of chapter 6, including section 6-121 through 6-124 of the code of ordinances submitted by the Caroline Senates.

With that, uh, do we have a motion to approve this item?

Motion to approve.

Thank you.

Uh a second.

Um we had a couple of invitees here today to discuss in more detail this item.

Uh we have uh former representative Jess Stella and also former chair of the appointments commission, Steve Gars.

Um the appointments, okay?

Marjorie.

Do you have any any opening um remarks?

Well, the appointments commission, this is the reason why I voted it was necessary, something that was losing from the uh I've been, I was like the chair mentioned I was on the board of reps.

So on the 29th board towards the end of it on the 30th board.

Um I used to go to the appointments committee.

And so many times the appointments committee, we used to always hear this is the only candidates submitted the name.

This is the best candidate that we have that that's been selected.

So I decided on the 30th board to actually have um a review on the process.

In the very beginning, some you know, some of the people felt like there was no necessary reason to have uh review, and I thought it was I thought differently at the time.

We had a review, and to make a long story short, I felt that we're taking the word of one person.

The person that um was in charge of was Marty Lamine at the time, and nothing to to nothing against them.

I just I've always felt that government should be transparent.

I should not take the word of anyone, just simply because they're telling me this is what's what's going on.

This is the best person that's been selected, and again, based on whom.

So with that, the more I kept digging into it, the more I felt like I think it was at this point.

We do need transparency.

There's got to be a system where the public gets to know how the process works, how it's moved forward, and and the more I kept digging into it, the more I it really happened.

Um I also discussed about the fact of we have a Democratic Party and we have a Republican Party.

What happens if you're not an affiliate?

What happens here if you're some other party member, the working class, whatever whatever party might you might be associated with, or you may be a Democrat or Republican but chooses not to go to DCC or the RTC or anyone else, but wants to be able to submit their name.

How would you do that?

And the only way you can is to have a commission that a commission is based on the fact that is open to the people, and does at the same time produce a way of having some sort of transparency for everyone.

Steve Steve took over as chair.

Um I forgot I forgot exactly when he went when he was selected, but the appointments commission never had a chance on the on the 31st board to actually do what it was supposed to do.

We're supposed to be in a nine-member board, and out of the nine, we only had three people, three civilians that were selected.

The chair resigned, and the vice chair that left us with no quorum and nowhere to form a meeting without right now.

You're the chair, right?

You have to have someone that presides over a meeting.

You cannot preside, but vote on anything, but you don't have a chair or vice chair, and unless and not have quorum.

And the only reason why we started establishing quorum also is because I asked if the two members of the board of refs representatives, there was one word budget, and one Democrat at the time in the very beginning of conception, we weren't allowed to vote.

And I asked, I need to we need to change that.

And by doing so, we were at time towards when Steve came on and you got Jackie Pioli, because prior to that we didn't have that.

We had three people on the board.

So how effective is a board of commissioning ever going to have you know do anything of substance if there wasn't members to begin with.

I mean, I could go on and on um on other things, but the other like another case in point that that that the reason why I thought about the employments commission too is that there was a person named Frances Lane.

She used to come to our board meeting, she used to go to our board meetings religiously before pre-COVID.

She submitted her name for the housing, right?

On commission.

She submitted her name, she submitted her name to DCC.

She submitted anything to office, and she never received anything, any information about an interview, what's going on with the process, so forth, whatever.

The only reason why she was interviewed, and the only reason why she was finally put in that commission, because she actually knew enough people on this board to say, hey, what's going on with the process?

And when it was brought up to the mayor at the time, Mayor Mayor Martin, I think Mayor Martin rightfully so stepped in and say, Hey, what's going on?

So she was interviewed, she was selected, but how many other people have fallen through the cracks as we speak that don't know what's going on with the process at all?

So um I've heard at times that where people say, Well, this is something that the appointments commission as a layer or somehow is redundant and so forth, whatever.

I disagree.

The way I feel the way the the way it's written right now, and the way I see the appointments commission the way it should be, if it's done properly, is that the DCC, the RTC, and people from the from the public, if they once they submit the names, even the mayor's office, once they submitted the names, they should have a compiler of the list of all the people that submitted the names, right?

That becomes transparent at the same time that that's public record who submitted the names, and that list is given to the mayor, whoever's serving as mayor.

The mayor at no time is stripped of her um his or hers authority to select who they want.

But I think it reinsures the public of who's putting the things forward because again, I find it of a city this large over 145,000 people, and for me to hear a meeting that this is the only person that submitted the name for that position, I kind of find troubling.

I don't that's the part that that if they did if someone did submit the name, it might have gotten lost.

Just say for an argument, it might have got lost in an email on the list or anything.

But you prevent that from happening when it's there's an actual list that's compiled and it's public.

And I'll just leave it off as that.

I don't know if you have additional questions, you want me to answer anybody else, but I just felt that's where I'm at with this.

Thank you.

I appreciate those comments.

I'm gonna kick it over to Mr.

Gars if you have any other opening remarks, and then and then we'll open it up to the to the representatives if they have any questions for either of our invitees.

Sure, thank you, Chairman.

Um, just to answer Jeff's question, um, I came on appointments commission in November um 2024.

Um, and during that time, um, we had heard from several people that um they haven't heard back on their application, they had submitted applications and they never heard back anything.

So um I received an email yesterday from Dan uh Lombardi who put an application in for HPAC back in January of this year, and he wrote me and he was just saying, you know, just checking in to see if you heard anything on the on HPAC.

I submitted an application back in January and haven't heard a word.

Um, I went on to the website today, and I noticed there's four vacancies for HPAC.

So you know, that's one of the concerns that Jeff brought up and and I have had, and um you know, like I like to hear how that could be addressed.

And also ask if somebody I don't know if anybody is here from the administration, but if somebody could get back to him and just let them know what his status is.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Gars.

Is there any are there any representatives that wish to seat the floor or ask any questions of our invitees?

Yes, correct it up.

Um so you mentioned uh there were some resignation of the chair and vice chair and difficulties forming quorum on the appointments commission.

Um the kind of concern I have is I mean, I like a lot of the ideas about the transparency, the public record, and the place for people to put forward their names that isn't the DCC or the RTC.

Um I guess my concern is that it seems like the appointments commission wasn't serving those purposes effectively because there was no quorum.

Um because of the lack of people in there.

Uh so I guess the my thinking is there's there's two kind of paths that I see.

One is to try and reform the appointments commission to address those issues, and the other is this second ordinance that we're gonna take up later in this meeting, which is kind of trying to automate that process.

Um the the question I have for you is essentially what reforms do you think would be needed to kind of get the appointments commission to meet those calls?

Um is there a path forward on that that we could take rather than going through a few?

Um I think the first thing is you have to you have to put personnel.

I mean, you can't it's like right now, let's talk about this committee.

If you didn't have if you only have two people or three people, and you have a chair and vice chair, and and then two of the people here are from board of records, and then you have one person that's been that's a civilian that's someone that's been appointed.

How productive could that meeting really be?

So the idea that Steve just mentioned that in 2024, November, he was he was selected as chair.

October of 2023, over a year later, I mean a year before, we lost the chair.

A month, two months prior to that, the vice chair resigned, and we weren't even told she resigned.

Well, I mean, found out because I questioned, but okay, so we lost the chair, and when I question it, then over that's when I realized we were never notified, you know.

So that's one of the things.

I mean, look, I I see what you're having.

I item number two, right?

And again, item number two.

I like everything that's stated that we spoke about that, but you're still putting that information, you're still putting that all on the board of reps.

And if you think about it, and not to say anything negative about this board, this current board, of course, but I always think of what could happen down the road.

I always think of not only about the present, but down the road.

Right now, we're sitting on a board of reps that are 40 democrats.

So right now, 40 democrats are supposed to determine who the Republicans should be on any of these boards of commission, let alone any other any of these um any other parties or non-filies, so forth, whatever.

And I think that's a lot of authority, a lot of power for one party.

I think that the whoever's the appointments commission should be, it should be it should be a level playing field that's up that's separate from government itself.

And they're the ones that should be uh working on this transparency and so forth.

Um, because what happens down the road, you have a board that's consistent of all republicans, or or with the current environment that we live in today that we see that it's getting worse as we go forward.

We're seeing that the racism, anti-Semitic, you know, you name it, everything's happening, and it's getting worse.

It's like even happening.

We've even had incidents in Stanford, we can't say it's not happening here.

Right.

So again, having a board that shows trans transparency that shows you who's being selected, because right now, even like I look at this.

I look at I and I could come and I I apologize, and I'll send you some things that I have from when I was on the board.

Maybe you should put it, maybe it should be linked on this item itself.

But even this, it tells you the amount of women and men, the breakdown, right?

I can't, I'll not gonna lie, I can't read it's too small for my my vision.

Um the last time I would really set to them back.

Hold on.

I can do it.

I think the last time I saw it was about give or take, about 31% were women.

28%.

No, it's 20%.

So it's gotten down in the last time, last time was 31 employees.

Now it's 28.

Even with that, it doesn't tell you the breakdown of the women, how many of them are black Hispanic?

How many Asian so forth?

What again?

These are things that the appointments commission could dive into deeply.

And again, the public themselves could look at who's sitting on the sports commission if they choose to do so.

The idea that even on item number two, that anyone the board of commit on the board, being the president or leadership or a committee members, they could ask for that.

But it's not the same way of actually having a board of commission that has a meeting every that's supposed to have a meeting every month.

This is what we're gonna put on this is because we're supposed to even be in charge of the website, we're not.

And yet again, if you're gonna if you're gonna take if you're gonna dismantle something, it's hard for me to believe you're gonna dismantle something that's never had the chance to actually walk.

You know, you can't expect a child to run if you never even if you've never taken the time to show your kid and stand them up and everything to ride a bike, whatever.

You're already saying it's we're gonna, you know, we're gonna dissolve it.

And I think that's where personally the 32nd board, I'm hoping that you guys can actually do something that the 31st board couldn't do what it wasn't able to do, but I think a lot of it has to do with the map.

We have until that happens, the appointments commission will never be effective, it will never be what I've been hoping to have.

I don't know that answers everything, but yeah.

So if I can kind of boil that down a lot, um, my kind of takeaway is that the alternative path forward to getting rid of it and ceding that power to the board of representatives and the administration.

The alternative is to get the administration to start getting serious about really stopping the uh because the appointments committee is if you know if you think about it, it's still not gonna even with the transparency so forth or whatever, the appointments committee is always gonna be okay.

This is the only person we have.

That's the only person.

So we're gonna tell you right now, it's either hey, pick me for a commit for that proof uh that commission, and if you don't, we may that commission may not have quorum or that commission.

Oh, that's the best candidate for the appointments commission actually gets all the applications, you know.

That's where the transparency starts to happen.

Sorry, oh yeah, you may I add questions on this um overall question relevant to the all of this.

Now, like if I recall correctly, the appointments commission didn't exist prior to the 29th board.

Correct.

All right, what was the process?

You may not know, and and I don't know if anybody in this room actually knows from what I heard though.

There was no appointments commission.

They what we had was basically people were either appointed by the mayor, you know, from the public, somebody they knew, or well the or the parties, like you said.

I mean, the problem is the unaffiliated completely out of the loop.

No, no, and I'm not arguing that point.

And we all know that the commissions have issues, but if we we all know the appointments, we went through this with the 31st board happened in that one that into that being said, well, we didn't have one before the 29th board, it didn't function under the 31st board order at all, from what I read, pretty much, and what you said basically boiled it down that.

Yeah, we we decided we it was you had no quorum on the 30th board, it was we drafted line by 30th towards the end, and on the 31st board, it's where we were supposed to enact on that, right?

And it really didn't fly, right?

Yeah, so I'm not trying to make light of it, and then I and I understand the ability for something like this to have transparency and to provide more input to the system than would be normally available, especially for the unaffiliated, but if it didn't function for four years, and then another four after that, we've been four.

Well, all right, so the only the four that from the 31st book.

If it didn't function at all, and no offense to Mr.

Kirsty either, yeah, you know, the inputs what you get, you know, you stuck with what you get, but if it didn't function and try to resurrect a dead horse, I mean I think we're going down a bad path, and we should maybe pursue a more automated path that article two would bring to the tape, and item two, yeah.

Item two of that, sorry, item two one of that.

Yeah, okay.

So I'm not saying that the board wasn't a grand idea, but it just doesn't have the functionality because of any number of things, including COVID.

So you add that all in COVID.

I'm just saying that it landed.

We started with the concept of it over COVID because we we didn't have anybody coming to the table, probably, and that's where the process.

No, and that's what I'm trying to tell you.

It was that was never COVID had nothing to do with this.

This had to do what I just mentioned earlier, simply about the fact that the lack of transparency of people that said kept coming to board members saying they submitted their names, and they never once ever heard.

I'm gonna use myself as an example.

Recently, I just put myself with a police commissioner, right?

You guys pick married, that's fine.

And that's not the issue that I have.

But I put I submitted my name through the through the website, right?

Thank you, sir, for submitting your name.

Okay, that was months ago.

I have not received anything from anyone.

So that the point is so the point is that was one of one of many reasons why I said the appointment the appointments commission.

The idea that people submitted the names years ago and to this day have never received an email, or to say, hey, we kept you on a list.

What list?

Is there any list that we could talk about?

See, that's the reason why appointments commission was created to create a transparency where you could actually create a list and say, hey, David, thank you for putting your name.

We have you here with many other applicants that put the names also forward.

And here you have the idea that we you you could actually come to a board of reps meeting and a committee meeting saying that this is the only person that submitted the names again, it goes back to based on WAM.

I don't and and again, I don't trust anyone like that.

I don't think government should blind anyone should trust um government blindly like that also, regardless, and and so the idea that COVID had nothing to do with this, because again, I noticed that there was a problem from the very beginning when I first started on the 34th, and that was before COVID even started.

So this is to me, and it and again, it's like I said, considering that the current climate that's going on right now, right?

Where you could have uh a per a particular person, he or she that's in charge of submit of picking people and not knowing how do you know this person's not biased, racist or anything like that towards any group?

How would you know that unless you have something that you could draft information?

Just say I'm just gonna throw out a number.

Say, for example, you have 2,000 Hispanics, and they put in their names into to put it in through through the whole system, and out of 2,000, you you wind up with maybe 10, 15.

How would you know there's a problem within the system itself that the person's deliberately maybe not picking Hispanics for whatever reason may be, unless you have a list?

See, this is where and and to say that that a be a dead horse, I'm not saying it's not a good thing.

No, no, no, no, I'm saying the point is a lot.

But what I'm saying is it's not about keeping alive because it's like it's like buying a house.

For you to buy a house, you have to have an idea, right?

You have to have you think about hey, I gotta book my credit, I have to have money for the DOM payment.

I have to do this before you could do anything, right?

The idea is that we have the groundwork with the with the ordinance, but it never got off the ground because we never had the personnel.

I mean, like, how many other boards say like zoning?

We have a zoning board and we have and we have and we have and besides the zoning board, you have alternates.

Why?

Simply because when if a if the a member cannot make it, you have melton, so it keeps flowing.

How will you go to flow meeting where only three people?

I don't know.

And right now, if you think about it, and even now, and the current right now, if you guys are on the 32nd board, by this ordinance, two people are supposed to be selected for the boards of commission that's supposed to represent this board that hasn't happened.

So you're not even following the ordinance right now.

So that itself, you see, this is what I'm saying.

Unless you people, unless people take this board commission seriously and give it the finding chance that it deserves, then you know you're right.

It is a dead horse because they never got off the ground.

Uh yeah, uh DDL.

Thank you, everybody.

Before I represent or before I recognize Representative Weinberg, I just want to give a shout out to three members that came in attendance.

Uh majority leader Morrison, representatives Graham and Walston who joined shortly after the meeting was opened.

Um Representative Weinberg, you have the floor, followed by representatives Lepine and the cubes.

Thank you.

Uh through you, may I ask if that's a question?

Um in your view, should the president of the United States provide a list to the US Senate of every person who has an inch who is expressed an interest in serving on the Federal Reserve.

Okay.

Well, it doesn't matter what my view about the president.

What matters for me is our rules.

And I hold on, you ask me a question and answering.

So my so the thing is this, our rules, our rules is about transparency.

And regardless of who the president may be, the president is a republican, as democrats, part of our our core value is supposed to be about transparency, about diversity, right?

And we could go on and on and on, but that's who we're supposed to be.

And at the end of the day, if we're if we're talking about the fact that this is the way I see it, is it what I mentioned?

I know I'm repeating myself.

This is about safeguard of abuse of anyone um abusing that power.

No, no, when it comes to when it comes to actually voting for someone on these boards and commission, they should be transparency.

Okay, so I'll I'll take from your answer because you don't care to answer the question.

But I did answer, no, you did not.

I didn't, it was a simple question.

I don't think we I don't think that's so let's move on.

Um are you aware that until recently, probably the last year or so if I remember correctly, um that data on ethnicity was not captured on the applications.

Okay.

I probably say yes.

So would you agree that since many members of the many men current members of our volunteer boards and commissions, the city simply does not have uh data on um on ethnicity?

So over time, it can produce information it can provide data, but as of now, well, data would probably be on will be would be incomplete.

Would you agree?

Of course, if that's not there, is of course that will be quite so so I think that's a problem that uh that we've that we've solved through changes in in the application, um, and that will work so that offline, and that sort of ethnic data will be very easy to uh to um to uh to to provide question.

Um you've talked a lot about um the absence of um sufficient members on the commission to form quorum, inhibiting the commission's ability to um to to function effectively.

Would you agree that one of the commit that one of the commission's members most important responsibilities was frankly recruiting going out into the community, talking to people, attending like we did on Sunday at the Art Red and not you know, uh, to meet people and talk up the um you know people from the public who trump to meetings um and and talk up the um uh the the value of um of serving on volunteer boards and commissions would you agree that that that was a that was an important responsibility of the commission members, it could have been but well so since having a quorum you know sufficient members for a quorum or not, can you explain to me how that prevented members of the commission from recruiting, particularly recruiting on a billion yeah?

Okay.

I can't speak for anyone else of course if I can speak for myself I did and to to assume that I wasn't out there asking people to not only join the board of reps, board of commissions and everything else again that's your understanding.

Nothing I never said I never did that.

But the point it still brings me back to one thing how do you how do you well by what authority do I get the chance to do so do so or take any action when we don't have a chair or vice chair in the sense that the point is when you don't have the only people you had doing the even even the board reps we had two different Republicans that took over and that's bad on time right we didn't have a chair we didn't have a vice chair so you're asking me did we meet I did I can't speak on all the people that were there before and I'm not going to speak for Steve because for all I know Steve might have done the same but at the actual the the the idea of us going as a as a complete board or anything we didn't have a board the way it's up the the way I felt about it well I would think that whether there were sufficient members on on the board to form a quorum to actually the purpose value of quorum is then you can because then the board can vote on certain on certain measures but I don't think but I don't see no no no I understand without how can you vote how can you vote with those no I understand so it's going to I understand that without a forum can't take a vote or chair vice chair right but I don't understand frankly how the lack of a forum um inhibited commission members from performing what at least from my perspective was one of the core responsibilities of the mission which was frankly just to go out and recruit.

But I just I made that statement I said I can't speak on everyone else but I did do that.

So again yes I think we've had the opportunity to ask the question we've heard the response you know of course you know we can represent we still have the floor and of course you've been making sort of statements as to you know your your impressions of the commission um but I do want to make sure we are cognizant of the rest of the speakers do you have any further statements or further questions?

Well I've heard a lot tonight about uh this I haven't read back on an implication and I agree that's that's not cool um I frankly I just think it's bad matters um but um but I don't know why I I think what the well what I what I sense the former commission members asking for is sort of an explanation of why an applicant why the mayor why a mayor um did not put forward and nominate and and chose not to not nominate certain atmosphere and I don't see any reason why um why the mayor should be obligated to answer that question um just like I don't think the president of the United States um needs to need to explain why they didn't nominate someone for the federal reserve or the FC City or you know or any number of different different boards and missions and the you know in the federal and infrastructure um we had as a city we had a serious problem with um with our volunteer boards missions which is we had too many vacancies and too many and too many moldovers that problem has largely um been solved um by my analysis if I remember correctly excluding um members of volunteer boards and commissions whose terms expired either november 30th there was seven the first um and who um there were you know as of last month there was something a lot like 18 or 15 percent of um you know of active boards and commissions of the of members of active boards and commissions that were either holdovers or ACA um

Um there were you know, as of last month, there was something a lot like 18 or 15 percent of um you know of active boards and commissions of the members of active boards and commissions that were either holdovers or ACA.

Um and I would submit that that's not a big number.

Um, particularly when the appointments commission every month is getting seven, eight, nine, ten um nominations to um to it to to interview.

Um so there's you know, this strikes me this the appointments commission strikes me largely as a solution in search of a problem.

Uh I would agree that the problem did exist.

I don't think that I don't see any evidence that the appointments commission contributed in a meaningful way to solving the problem.

I think the board of representatives through his job owners um you know sent a very strong message to the mayor that she needed to get serious about about nominating, and I think that that's the evidence to me says that that's taken place.

So this extra layer of um of bureaucracy, frankly, strikes me as redundant and unnecessary with that on you.

Sure.

Thank you, Representative Wembert.

I'm gonna continue through this list.

Um, because we have a lot of members that haven't had the floor yet.

Um, and also Mr.

Gars, I do see your hand there, uh, and I'll get to you as well.

Uh Representative Le Pine, you have the floor.

Thank you, Chairman.

Would it make sense to if Mr.

Garce has anything to add in response that's relevant to respond first, and then I'm happy, I'm happy to wait for him.

It's your call, Chair, but I I do want to move forward, and I and I know his hand has been up for a while.

Um, and I I do have a spot for him in the line, uh, but I know just to keep things flowing, I want to hear from the voting members.

Okay.

Because I know you've also been waiting for a while.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So uh I guess uh to you, Chair, I question I my uh non-legal, you're you're a lawyer, and I know you're not sitting in that lawyer's seat right now, but I'm gonna ask just as I often do for your insight.

I mean, my understanding of FOIA is that um city policies don't override FOIA, and therefore, if uh there was requested disclosure of any kind of list of submissions of names, is that not information that uh the city is legally obligated to provide uh representative pine.

I I am an attorney, but I have very little experience with FOIA.

Uh so I I won't comment on that.

I will say I do know from my reading of the charter that this body has statutory authority to compel the delivery and compilation of records um from the city administration.

Um so if if the board of representatives, for example, ever make demand for those kinds of records, that would be have to be made available.

So I don't know if LOIA's necessary implications or obligations, but the board has independent powers.

Okay.

And so maybe under that line, so wouldn't as a standing agenda item wouldn't the board's appointments committee be able to submit on whatever cadence they wanted to, the list of people that are in the queue or have submitted a name for a position for an appointment consideration.

Uh procedurally and statutorily, I think that's true.

I think that's accurate.

Okay.

I that would be my understanding, but I think that's worth finding.

Do we need a commission to provide information to a committee that already exists if the ask is for transparency?

And I think transparency is um a fair ask, but my understanding is both a non-board of reps member prior to this election cycle, and now as a member of the board of reps, maybe even more so now as a member of the board of reps, is that there are many public protections safeguarding against transparency.

Uh as Representative Weinberg said, that's not going to make up for bad manners.

It's not going to also make up for poor governance of a committee or a commission.

Uh, but if transparency uh is something I certainly align with um with Mr.

Stellan, I don't think we need a separate commission for transparency, would be my understanding.

And so that is one of the key goals here.

I think we should pursue transparency through existing means before we create additional layers that aren't functioning, would be one ask.

And I also appreciate the service of Mr.

Sell and Mr.

Garst and the and the concerns still around this issue.

It to me is a uh never-ending uh argument to try to create safeguards against those that are in elected office and who they may choose that we may not particularly agree with those choices.

I think the democratic process and the transparency that we're all afforded allows for those things to wash through the system or be corrected.

If people are unhappy with that, there's plenty of ways to exercise that displeasure and even oust the people that are responsible for it.

Um but I think about so many of the key appointments in the city, far more than some of the appointments made uh that that this commission would oversee.

That the public's only say over that is the executive level uh um elected candidate that wins the public's trust to sit in that seat, and so through participation, like uh one of our uh maybe several online uh of the members of a community who come to meetings and voice their opinion, who volunteer for positions, who choose to run for office, or who choose to vote people in or out of office, I think there's plenty of checks.

If we try to commission our way to further checks, I think we are trying to layer in protections that ultimately lead to massive inefficiencies unnecessarily.

So I'd rather exercise the tools at our disposal versus creating new ones, uh seeking potential solves for future problems down the road, and I yield.

Thank you, Representative Le Pine.

Representative Fields, you have the floor.

Thank you, Chair McEwen.

And I just wanted to echo what uh Representative LePine and Representative Weinberg uh said.

Um I fully support uh item one, and I think item two complements it uh further and adds to uh the information uh reporting requirements, and I think that's where uh the accountability and transparency uh comes in.

Um I I see uh transparency a little differently as it comes to the appointments commission.

I I don't think that uh another uh layer of bureaucracy adds transparency.

I think it just adds to the process and can in many cases make people less likely to want to go through it.

Um so that's why I will be uh supporting item one tonight.

Uh, but thank you, uh Chair McEwen.

I yield.

Thank you, Representative Hughes.

Mr.

Garst, if you still have comments, you've got the floor.

Yes, thank you, Chair.

Um, I have a few comments.

Um if you look at the spreadsheet um for the appointments um boards and uh commissions, as of December 1st, they were, and I believe I gave this number before 115 seats that were either vacant or the term expired.

So even prior to that, and the whole purpose that I thought the board was this commission was for was to aid in getting names put forward.

Even during the last two years, there's been a lot of seats that have not been filled.

There's there's holdovers, there's been expired seats, and um if people um, you know, if if they're not following up and um they're not getting back to people and seats are not filled, to me that that job's not um done.

It needs more work, it needs more help, and and the uh commission could could definitely help with that.

And um, we did put names forward um that Carl asked about, uh Representative Weinberg asked about.

We did put names forward.

I put names forward to the RTC um and some others that were put forward, and one of them was Dan Lombardi.

And as far as like our effectiveness, um, if we were to get people um that were interested, um, and we didn't have uh a quorum, you know, how how are you gonna interview these people?

So we also tried to um schedule events with the city that we could um have handouts.

Um I know the Board of Reps had um an event last year at Mill River, and um we could have had a table there and and hand and gave out you know handouts to people that were interested.

We could have had a table in um you know down in the lobby at City Hall.

Um there could have been uh handouts when people exited polls.

Um there's a lot of things, there's a lot of ideas that we did have, but they they couldn't be executed.

Um and many times when we had made requests, um there was there was no quick response.

So to me, if you want something to be successful, it will be successful if you put you know a good effort in your mind to it.

It just seems like they didn't want this to be successful.

Thank you, Mr.

Gars.

Representative Blank and then Representative Weinberg.

Um I'm not 100% familiar with everything that goes on in the board, only um here or a year and a little bit more now.

And but I do know um one of the comments made was that um the number of people and the quantity um the quality percent of the people being possibly appointed, and I know that is mitigated by the appointments committee.

I that's the point of the appointments committee within the board of raps is to review anybody that the mayor has asked to become part of a committee.

Um so that oversight exists.

Um I I see a flaw.

I I already hear the flaw that that we're not as a city being um active um reactively, not even reactively, looking at the number of people requesting uh appointment.

Um but I don't know if a commission, another commission within the city burgeoning number of committees is going to help that situation, and I think item two of our uh tonight's agenda would more than likely help clean that off a bit if we put some additional wording in it.

So uh that I yield.

Thank you, Representative Link.

Representative Weinberg, do you have a floor?

Thank you.

So I just want to, you know, we've continued to we continue people continue to promulgate this myth that this that the city's volunteer boards and commissions are overrun by with vacancies and um and um and holdovers.

Um so I just want to introduce some data.

So yeah, um so I I this is now an analysis that I did as of March 27.

Um at this point of month.

Um I looked at 26 volunteer boards and commissions.

I took the list of volunteer boards and commissions on the city's website.

Uh I excluded one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight that were listed there.

Um, most of them because in their case, all members are either elected or appointed officials, you know, not members of the of the community.

So they're really not relevant, I think to the you know, to the issue of of vacancies and holdovers.

They did also exclude uh the appointments commission since she was under commit consideration for abolishment.

And I think we can all agree that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for mayor appoint people to a commission that she's looking to um or to clubs.

Um just to make sure I'm understanding correctly.

Does that mean that you say excluded the board of education because the oh I also excluded like yeah, that's yeah, yeah.

These are the volunteer.

I forget that we're volunteers too.

But we are volunteers, but we but uh the members of the board of reps, the board of finance, and the board of education are volunteers in only the most perverse sense of the work.

Thank you for pointing that out.

Um anyway, these 26 boards and commissions have uh a total of 150 seats.

Okay.

As of the again, those 26 um boards and commissions, and I'm glad I spent 15 with me.

Uh I have a total of 150 seats.

Okay.

Um 77 of those seats are filled as of March 27th, were filled with someone who was current uh on a current term.

43 of them were filled with uh uh with volunteers whose term expired even November 30th or December 1st.

Yeah.

Um so I think I think we would all agree that it would be a little irregular, maybe maybe that's not the right word for a mayor at the end of her term to try to slam through a bunch of people whose terms are to fill a bunch of positions in terms of firing.

I can give some historical examples going back to 1800 about that, but I love thank you.

But I received five, I I received an a considerable glare from the chair.

I won't know maybe later.

So that's 43, uh seven were interviewed on March 26th.

Okay, so they're not included in the 43.

The Christophson completely approved on um on uh at our April meeting, board meeting.

Um nine were on terms uh and by the way, nine were on terms that expired before November 30th.

Those I would consider true to be true holdovers.

14 positions were vacant out of the 150.

So the total, as I said before, I had the numbers a little wrong when I did this, you know, off the top of my head.

The total that were, at least from my perspective, true holdovers plus vacancies were 23 out of 150, which is roughly 15 percent.

Is it is that equivalent to the basic number that Mr.

Garst gave us of about 100 seats?

No, because it because I believe that Mr.

Garst is using a report that uh was that the appointments commission discussed at their November 2025 meeting immediately following the um uh or or in early December, or actually I think it was in early December.

Um so that um I think that analysis considered the uh position the the what I'll call the November 30th, December 1st holdovers to be true holdovers.

I consider them not to be true holdovers.

Um, obviously we're all entitled to whatever definition to respond to needs.

Um so I I so I I point this out and I won't belabor the point any further.

Um this continuing narrative that there is this um pervasive holdover and vacancy problem.

I I think just is not conform to the to the facts of the situation, and with that I guess uh but before I recognize you, I just wanted to say that I think you know we've had a substantial amount of time to kind of discuss this and also ask questions.

So I'd like to kind of move this forward.

So what I'd like to do is solicit from the committee any last members that want to seek the floor to ask questions of either of our invitees before I give each invitee an opportunity to kind of give their closing remarks, and then I'm going to kind of solicit some motions that move us forward into the agenda.

Um I'm not seeing either in the room or online anybody seeking the floor.

Uh Representative Brenn, you've got the floor.

Thank you, Chair.

I just had a question uh through you to uh Representative Weinberg about the numbers he just stated.

Sure.

Um Representative Weinberg, you said that number was expired seats or vacant seats.

So it's a so excluding the positions that the excluding the members of volunteer boards and commissions whose term expired either on November 30th or December 1st, 2025.

As of March 27th, 2026, uh there were nine others whose terms expired before November 30th of 2025.

And I would submit those from my viewpoint, those are true, those are true holdovers.

There are people who are in seats on you know, active members of boards and of active boards and commissions who's terms have been you know whose terms expired quite a while ago.

The ones who expired um at the end of November, the last day of November, the first day of December, um, where a lot of these um the way a lot of these commissions are written up in the charter or in their ordinances, that's when the term expires, um, particularly when a court when it when it's the same time as a you know as a mayoral election.

Um as long as the mayor after the election is moving aggressively to either renominate those positions or um or nominate replacements, which I think the record shows she has been doing.

Uh, I don't consider those to be problem holding ours.

Okay, thank you.

And then thank you.

And my only other comment was um what uh Jeff Stella was talking about.

I understand the need of transparency.

I understand the need that um uh some uh members of the public may want to know uh the list of applicants uh that apply for certain boards of commissions.

Uh even if we didn't uh post the actual um individuals detailed information, at least somewhere on each of the boards and commissions, we can see the number of applicants, just like you would for a job application.

Oh, uh 33 people applied for this position.

Um, 27 are being reviewed, nine are being rejected, whatever the case may be, uh, given a metric instead of um the actual detail.

And if they wanted the detail, they can always FOIA uh the city for that information.

And that was all I had to say, and I yield thank you for your work, guys, on this committee.

Thank you, Representative Graham.

Uh representative Westra Caparell, you go.

I have a couple of questions.

Um question I have um either to Mr.

Burst or Mr.

Stella, is how with this with this commission, you're still not seeing the interviews and the applicants that are going to the DCC and the RTC, correct?

You're only seeing, so it still does not give you, it doesn't solve the problem of transparency in truth, because any applicants that are going to the DCC or the RTC are not in the public purview because those are private organizations that keep that information to the library.

It does solve it because you just mentioned say, like if I go to D if I go to the DCC, right, or the RTC and I get interviewed.

My name submitted directly to the mayor, right?

Right, from the DCC or the RTC.

So you wouldn't see the app.

Correct.

So I'm talking about the the way the system, the way the system's been all this time.

The way I see the appointments commission is that say like they interview you, right?

The DCC as a Democrat, right?

And calls the Republican or we were the guys as a Republican, right?

No, now you have people from the public, they want to be interviewed.

But they when you said people from the public.

So say like if say like I want to submit my name.

I'm on as a number graphic, but I don't want to go through the DC or the RTC.

I just want to submit my name.

I'm new to town or whatever, I don't know who to go to, or I submitted my name to the DCC and have never heard from them.

Right.

The point is, if I submit my name to the to the appointments commission is here, Darren, you they put they um the DCC selected you, it comes to the appointments commission, the RTC puts on one, they put it go to the appointments commission.

You got at least you're ready because you know, I I think we have to think about these groups of people, the DCC and the RTC for what they are.

They're separate private organizations that allow us to carry their label if we said if we hit a certain amount of their criteria, right?

And so I don't know that the DCC's rules, we already see these rules would allow you, a Democrat or Steve Garris, or Republican, to submit to the commission as a Democratic City committee, as it as a as a Democrat without still going through them.

You see what I'm saying?

I wouldn't allow them if I were if I were the head of the Democratic Party.

But that's the point.

Somebody that's a Democrat or a Republican to go through.

I'm playing devil's advocate.

Right, no.

So let me explain it to you.

Let me explain.

Okay, that's what I'm saying.

Okay.

You go to the DCC.

You're into them.

You're selected.

The DCC says, hey, and and put your name forward to the appointments commission.

So the appointments are the mayor.

Appointments commission.

Is that how it's supposed to work right now?

That's the way I see it, yes.

Right?

So that's part of the transparency.

Because of Holland.

So I just want to make sure I understand.

You're asking the person, a Democrat and a Republican to first go through each of their own party and then the commission and then the mayor.

No, they don't vote to the commission.

The DCC.

Okay.

Let me try to see the drones.

And yep, I just also want to make a opposite of time.

Um, so you know, uh I'm just trying to answer that.

No, I understand.

Um, I also want to try and minimize the back and forth as much as possible.

You know, you know, kind of let's formulate the question and I'll kind of get the answer.

Yeah.

And then so if you submit your name to the DCC, they interview, right?

At that point, you don't have to do anything.

The DCC submits it, then they they forward your name to the appointments commission.

Okay.

Okay, the RTC could do the same.

And if anyone else chooses to submit the names at an unaffiliated working party or whatever party.

Right.

So at that point, at that point, by putting in the appointments commission, at that point, there's transparency simply because it's a public record.

Compared to not this, if you go to the DCC, RTC, or or even the public goes directly to the mayor, there is nothing.

There's no transparency, there's no there's no list, and the idea that we're going to FOIL, unless you're gonna tell me you're gonna FOIA the mayor every month, and takes it takes time.

You're not gonna get that in time in a timely fashion, the information that of who if there's a list because what again, up to this date, no one's ever said there's a list that's been generated for any of these boards of commission.

Well, I'm sure that the DCC and the RQC have lists, but they they're not, but there's no transparency because they were basically for lack of saying it, they're they're like a club.

They're not getting right.

So then so they're not you can't FOI them.

No, I think you no, you cannot.

No, actually, you cannot.

That's been that's been already established that you cannot foil them.

Hence the reason why.

If how would the commission then force them to give a list if they don't want to?

Well, it says that they that that's that's the whole thing.

We're supposedly it says according to the ordinance, we're supposed to generate a list and give it to the mayor.

And did anybody ever ask the DCC or the R.

We haven't had a meeting.

That's did you have any further?

I mean, I do, but I just feel like I I don't I don't feel like for me, I don't feel like I could settle whether or not this commission lives or dies tonight, because I don't feel like all my questions were answered, but I and in the the idea of time, you know, I get why you can move on.

I also don't, I don't have a clear idea right now, and I don't know if anybody else does of what the ordinance would do that the commission's not doing.

Certainly the ordinance is not gonna mandate setting up a table and all these different things to try to get other people in.

I don't think it's it's I don't think it's a level of bureaucracy if the commission was functioning as a vehicle for people that are unaffiliated or independent or working party to come be interviewed because we don't really have a mechanism for that, right?

They just go straight, they just go straight to the mayor.

Um so then a commission could be good for recruiting and and and gathering information and stuff.

Um, but I just I want to say something to to everybody here.

I think the way that it's set up right now, you know, the mayor does have the power to appoint whoever she wants.

To Carl's point, you know, just like the president has the power to put one name forward.

Uh I think that no mayor in the last three three boards has wanted to abdicate that power at all, because any time we've tried to touch this and gain more transparency, we have failed.

Um, so thinking in that way, I just don't think the mayor is gonna stamp this commission, even if we capital it.

So I think you know, maybe the ordinance is the way, I don't know.

I I but I do think that before we vote on removing the commission, we should try to get some things in place first, maybe just table the discussion of the commission, try to get the ordinance passed and and you know, some other thoughts.

Maybe just table the discussion of the commission, try to get the ordinance passed and and you know, some other thoughts.

I like some of the questions that representative La Pine was asking um to Mr.

Stella about, you know, could we compel lists and names for transparency for the public if we so chose?

So that's it.

I yield.

Thank you, Vice Chair Campbell.

I know Representative Weinberg, you were seeking the floor.

Um, I think that's not a bad segue into kind of what I propose.

Um, if you indulge me uh momentarily, I think you know this has been a fruitful discussion, but I agree with Vice Chair Camparelli that it would be more beneficial for the committee and its decision as to whether or not support repeal to consider first the ordinance proposed under item two, which is directly related to achieving some of the goals that were discussed.

Um, and so I know Representative Weimar, you've seen the floor.

I'll be very brief.

Oh, right.

The process that that Mr.

Stella's um was just outlining where an applicant um there's interviewed by the party, um, and then that um applicant that is goes to the commission and then goes to the mayor is is actually the process that the mayor rejected when she vetoed uh the ordinance in December, and um, and that this board, the 32nd board, uh, rejected overwhelmingly uh in sustaining the in sustaining the um so there is that that is not so that is not as as I understand the process on the table.

One other very quick point.

Um even to me, the um the most interesting uh point where someone derails, someone who's interested, derails is not in the mayor's office, where I think the mayor has every right to do that.

Um the uh the interesting one situation is when someone derails at the party level.

It doesn't get put forward by either party.

Um, and frankly, I don't know, since those are private organizations, um, the only way that the person can underail himself or herself is they're still free to apply directly to the mayor to the bank of office.

Um so you know, so even if they're derailed at being at the party level, they still have a way to uh to you to to apply.

That doesn't that doesn't prohibit that from without the representative weinberg.

Yes, um, so you know, I'd love to kind of close out the discussion.

Um, so you know, and I know we've spent a little more than an hour um of the committee's time in the discussion, and I also want to respect the time of our invitees.

So I want to give them an opportunity to share very brief closing remarks.

Um, and then I'm gonna solicit um from a member of the spot, a motion to lay this on the table so that we can take up item number two um and discuss this and then circle back to a final vote on item number one once we've got some context as to how the committee was leaning with respect to item number two, which could include either a final resolution or potentially postponing this further.

Um, but I'll begin with uh Mr.

Stella and then Mr.

Gars, if you got brief comments.

I'm gonna just recap some of the things that we just said really quickly.

Um, right now about the whole derailing thing.

Um that's even with the derailing, the idea was the appointments commission, even if you submit your name, you could actually be interviewed by the appointments commission if you choose to do so.

If you feel like he or she puts the name in the RTC or whatever, they could do so if they want if they chose to do so in that sense.

So again, another safeguard to want you know, to move the person, the process forward.

Um representative um Weinberg mentioned about the no time did the anyone myself learning the point, anyone in the appointments commission ever mentioned that the mayor doesn't have the final authority.

We have no authority to override the mayor whatsoever, whoever he or she picks.

That's not what this is all about.

Um but one of the things he did mention is that moving forward right after the election, if you put people and you you fill up these spots.

When I did a review on in June of eight of 2022, and I asked for the list, and we had about the expires back then, right after the election, basically, we knew people that were expired for years.

And though you're mentioning, though you're mentioning that that the expired list is shorter, you had people prior to this 30-second board that you guys just voted in that were on it's that were expired, but only that have been on the board of reps, and I was on the board of reps for eight years.

So the idea that the authority the the reason why I also believe the approach commission is very important to have monthly meetings and this transparency because once it expired someone's expired, I believe the mayor has 120 days.

I think it is.

I it's 90 or 120.

I forgot exactly my head to select someone.

Once that doesn't happen, the board of reps are supposed to pick someone, they have the next shot to actually submit someone.

The problem is that if you don't have something or someone that's telling you, hey, board of reps, I'm notifying you guys, I don't select someone.

You have that you have the right to select someone yourself.

That's never gonna happen.

Because until 2022, many of us, many of us didn't even know that people were expired a year, five years.

Again, someone was expired over nine years.

So that in that sense, that also robs the board of refs the the right to select someone also.

And the idea of saying that you're gonna FOIA someone as an attorney, you do.

I mean, you know how litigation, how long it takes.

If you guys were to FOIA, the mayor, any mayor, by the time it could take, I think I I forgot what's the the amount of time they have, but they're not they don't have to notify you within a day or week.

It could be over a month, I think it's two months or whatever, right?

Before they get back to you.

So what are you supposed to do?

When they're you know, are you supposed to FOIA the mayor every other month, every month to get this list?

Because that's the problem with number two.

That though it sounds nice in paper that you you could compel the mayor, but it's nothing compelling.

And one final note.

Carl Weinberg representing Weinberg Man is throwing this out.

No, no, I'm saying something you mentioned.

The ordinance that was that was vetoed by the mayor, right?

Was the same ordinance that was created that was that the um corporation council drafted and stated on the record that at no time does it rob the mayor of any authority of the selective process.

So, other than the fact of just vetoing because you don't want transparency, I don't see any reason why we should vote something down that doesn't strip you of any rights as the mayor to do what you wanted to do.

And that's where I'm at.

And again, it has nothing to do with this current mayor because a lot of these expires happen many years under Martin and all the other mayors prior.

This was something that was to create and try to fix the problem that we have moving forward, and I leave it off with that.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Salah.

Uh, Mr.

Gars, you got some brief remarks.

Uh thank you.

Um I just counted the expired seats as of December 1st.

I don't want to beat it at that horse, but it was 119.

So if the um board of reps um appointments committee approved, let's say you know, 10 per meeting, uh that would that would be 30.

So it would still make 89 seats that are that are expired.

So um it it looks like there's still a lot of work to be done.

And um, you know, my feeling is all along that the appointments commission could have helped.

I totally understand that it's the mayor's right to put any name forward, but I don't understand why people who have put their names forward for an application have not heard anything back for four months.

So that's just gonna lead to um bad press.

Um people um not wanting to participate if they hear that they're gonna put their name forward and nobody's gonna respond to them.

But thank you for listening.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Gars, and thank you again to you both for for coming and speaking to the committee.

Um, I really appreciate your your your advocacy.

Um Representative LePine, you have the floor.

Chair McCown, I know you want to wrap this up.

I just want to separate.

There, there have been a lot of helpful comments, and I appreciate them, but there's also a lot of opinion being thrown in with comments, and I think it's important we separate and put fact to them.

I heard a comment that the the the there was an intent to see this commission fail.

That's an opinion, that's not a fact.

Um I I've heard a comment that the uh people put forward have to go through uh the party committees, and you can't see that publicly.

Well, any of us can go right on the website right now and submit a name.

There's nothing barring anyone from the public from seeing all the open spots, applying a name the minute that's entered, it is subject to FOIA.

We just heard a comment about how many months it can take in litigation.

FOIA is not a litigation item.

There are legal obligations of municipal governments around FOIA.

Uh I I've submitted many requests.

You have four days, four days to respond to a request.

The agency has an opportunity to say they're extenuating circumstances, they have to explain why that gives them an extra seven days.

This isn't litigation.

This is meant to protect exactly what we I think all do align on.

Everybody on this call aligns on transparency.

Those elements are there.

So we have a committee that can pull this data.

We all have the power to do it individually, the public can do it individually, and anybody from the public, those are on the call tonight, anybody urging, and I think for concerned citizens, get people to apply.

Find out.

And the penalty of a government that doesn't respond to the public is they get voted out if they're not doing that.

So that's what could happen.

And that's how democracy works.

So I I just want to separate a lot of these statements and the slippery slope of what can happen from fact.

Uh also the idea that nobody knows when people's terms end or start.

It's all listed.

It's all public right on the Stanford CT.gov website.

The action, the date, the expiration, it's all there.

And I yield.

Thank you, Representative Le Pine.

At this time, I I'd really like to solicit a motion to lay this on the table.

So move to second.

Thank you.

Second, thank you.

Uh, this is not debatable.

Um, all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed.

No.

Thank you.

The nay is noted.

Um, we'll have to move back to a roll call vote.

Uh so starting from the top, representative blank.

How do you vote?

Um sorry, I should also clarify.

This is one of those things.

I knew it was the yeah.

This is on the motion to lay.

Okay, thank you.

As comfortable as we may be with the late.

Yes.

Uh Representative, yes.

Uh Vice Chair Camporelli.

Yes.

Representative Hughes.

No.

Uh Representative Hyatt.

No.

Representative LePine.

Yes.

I'm a yes.

Uh Representative Stone.

Yes.

And Representative Weinberg.

Yes.

That is seven votes in the affirmative and two in opposition.

So the motion passes.

Uh, so this item was laid on the table.

We'll move on to item number two.

Thank you again for our attendees.

Thanks.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Have a good night.

Mr.

Gars.

Okay.

Great.

All right.

We are moving on to item number two, which is LR 32.017, an ordinance for publication amendment.

Oh, sorry.

This is important.

Uh amending the code of ordinances to establish information reporting requirements of the office of the mayor with respect to the applicants and appointees of the city's boards and commissions submitted by uh myself and vice chair cannibal rally.

Is there anybody that wants to see Representative Woodreaux?

Representative Blank.

Uh I would like to make a motion to amend this item.

Um, as per the documents that I sent you before the uh meeting.

Uh um, Ms.

Monpollo, are you still on the call?

I am.

Would you were you able to receive that document?

I emailed you.

I was not looking at email.

Hold on, let me check.

If you don't mind, let me know if you receive that.

If you could pull it up.

While we're putting that up, I can give a reverbal description of what sorry, apologies.

Um, if you could summarize the specific motion to amend that you want to move with first, and then let's see if we get a second, and then and then we'll and then you've got the floor again.

Sure.

So the specific motion to amend that I am uh proposing is a combined of all of the documents I sent you.

Um and what this would do is it would add a requirement that anyone who is appointed to a border commission must fill out the application specified in this ordinance.

So they cannot take a seat unless they have done it.

Um it would add a requirement of the application form make clear to the applicant which questions are required and which ones are optional.

Um it would uh change the verbiage on the mayor, which was inconsistently referred to uh with pronouns.

There was some places that said his or her, some places it just said hers, so it's gonna make it his or her everywhere.

Um that's and somebody should approve right.

Uh and additionally, it would add a date of effectiveness.

Um that would be uh the first of the month at least 30 days after uh passage.

So that would essentially work out to being a two-month lead time.

Um because we usually pass these things on like the first Monday of the month.

So you would have 30 days to get to the next month and then the first of the month after that.

Uh and that gives the administration time to come into compliance uh before it uh looks full force.

Uh so that's all the changes in there.

Yeah, if you want to skim it and see if that's uh Ms.

Moncolo, if you could scroll down and zoom out a little bit so we might be able to try and fit all the text.

Maybe it might not be possible.

Oh that's it's a little small.

Yeah, maybe I'm sorry, maybe move zoom back in.

Honestly, that's gonna be um feel free to let me know when to scroll and I'll scroll around.

I'm so sorry.

Representative Boudreau, I'm gonna take the floor back momentarily.

I realize we don't have a motion to approve.

There's nothing to go ahead.

So moved.

We have a second, second, thank you, and patch the motion on that.

Thank you.

And I from what I saw it did look correct.

So if you could scroll down a little bit, please.

Um we're adding the uh make such requirement known to the applicant.

Uh such applicant shall be made known that they are no obligation to provide this is the demographic information.

Uh this is the his or her fix.

And at the bottom, I believe is the effective date.

Yes, first day of the next month, 30 days after enactment.

Perfect.

Thank you very much.

Is there a second to this month to amend?

Second.

I haven't ready.

I heard um a second.

Okay, thank you very much.

Um representative the draw, do you wish to seek the floor further?

Or um discussion, I mean, for the amendment.

Not at this time.

Okay.

Representative blank, you've got the floor.

Um would you ask Ms.

Vantabo to please scroll up so I can read the first half of it again.

Thank you.

Right there.

That's good.

Thank you.

Ms.

Montalmo, I'm sorry, could you delete in track changes the text beginning at the mayor and ending at shall cause that'll at least in the first paragraph?

That'll turn it red, might visually be a little bit easier in the beginning.

The part that's already struck, yeah.

If you can just delete the whole struck in part in track changes.

I get read some.

There we go.

Okay.

Let me know if I need to delete anything else or if I need to scroll back down or anything.

Thank you.

Um you have the floor.

Thank you.

Um and I appreciate uh Mr.

Effort in keep give giving us a better document.

Maybe um uh and and chips.

Uh apologize.

No, anybody puts up a flavor into it, you definitely will.

Well, um I have two comments.

And one comment is and then this is one is an amendment to your amendment, and one is just a comment, or they're both comments, and we can see where that leads us.

But one of them is um we're going to an electronic form as per this anyway.

Um I don't know if it's needed to be stated that it's an obligation to fill out the form because I mean how else would you get the job?

Mayor, yes.

Uh I believe according to the current ordinance, the mayor can just appoint someone out of thin air.

So Mayor Simmons can say I appoint Davidson.

So we would get no, we would get no data.

Correct.

And that's the that's all that's got it.

Good.

All right, that's the first.

And the second thing is um I actually had two.

Um my apologies for taking um the the the second is um and and I think it goes towards transparency.

There's nowhere in here that I that I read, forgive me if my eyes have deceived me.

Um we get where the board of representatives report states a summation of some sort that would give us they have to give us a report, right?

But it it it check out section F.

Okay, hold on one second.

And shall not be presented in such a way as to reasonably doing I I would I would like to see given given the the amount of information we had discussed in the prior item.

There's nowhere in there.

I would love to see something that would say or added to this in some way that gives us an idea of how long that person's been on a list that has not been identified as position because we we we've heard a lot of no a lot of statements made that people have been put on a list, supposedly a list, and no action was taken, nobody's contacted them, nobody no information.

I don't know how to do it, I I have less than no idea, but we have no there's no loop, there's no closed loop here.

We've got an open loop system, and we've got to close it somehow.

That's why people don't know when they you know when they've applied to a board seat, they of any commission or board.

We we don't there's no closed loop.

We're not notified, we're not being friendly to people.

It's like going out for a job application and finding out later, oh by the way, six months ago that job you wanted, that's gone.

And six months from now it's like you know, I'm not the kind of guy who sits around waiting for that.

I'm beat on your door for a bunch before I find that out.

But there are a lot of people out there.

Well, you know, the city does what it does, and you know, it goes around and they wait, and six months is an unreasonable time to find out then later you finally run into somebody and say, Oh, you know that I'll put an application about that, and you go, I don't know how they don't.

And then you go, oh, why?

So how do we close that?

I mean, I'm just posing a question is how do we close it?

And and and I don't know if we do it here or if we do it somewhere else.

I I don't know the answer for that one.

And I apologize if I'm I'm thinking of doing the right thing.

So I'm just gonna stick to that.

Okay, I I yield the floor.

I have one more comment, but I'll take it up.

Representative Weimerton, you got the floor?

Uh yeah, the the way I read Section D, so Section D is the um first of all, I think that we'll we're really discussing the amend.

Yes, there should be limited.

So I'm gonna just limit my comments to the amendments.

Um I think these are perfectly fine clarifying amendments.

I yield.

I surprise surprisingly yield.

I mean, Representative Le Pine, you have the floor.

Yeah, I appreciate the amendments submitted by uh Representative Padreau.

Um, I believe uh both uh Vice Chair Camporelli and um representative Weinberg are members of the appointments committee.

Uh so I I have a question if I can through you, uh Chairman Count to them.

Um related to if you can scroll up Ms.

Montavo real quickly for me.

Uh so the application um even up a little further.

Ah, there it is.

So uh complete an application, the form of which shall be determined by the mayor.

So my first question to the two members of the committee is that there should there be um any kind of oversight of what that form looks like by the appointments committee.

So at some point it doesn't just become a simple form that is essentially a it doesn't provide the information that the committee would like to have, and then to um to represent a blank's point uh is there uh a way to um for that problem that Representative Blank is talking about to be to be governed through the committee of the committee thinking about how can they bring more transparency to the process, how can they solve the problem of follow-up?

Isn't that a matter to be taken up in the appointments committee?

And it's more a matter of effective management than it is of changing legislation.

And I would I would be interested in the opinions of members of the committee.

Representative Weinberg.

Thank you.

So no, I I think your first question is should the committee um have some oversight or whatever, you know, place some role in the drafting of the application form itself.

And you know, and really what I think what it sounds like what you're getting at is how can we be assured that the application uh collects the information that we want.

Do I understand you correctly?

That's correct.

And in no time can't just be uh amended based on the views of one individual sitting in that seat.

Yeah.

I I think that um if you look at a subsection B.

Right, it provides a list of information.

The apple the application required, the application should require the applicant to disclose.

I'm just gonna I'm gonna add it, I've got a dot dot dot here uh to make it easy to disclose the following information.

So it's so if we look at that and then look at at subsection C, those two subsections are essentially outlining what the information of the or the minimum information that needs to be uh requested or demanded on the application.

So I think we've already covered uh the you know, you answered your first question there.

Okay.

Um the ordinance in essence provides the the oversight.

I guess I guess the committee, if it chooses, can vet the application form to make sure that it conforms with uh subsections B and C.

But you know, I I'm rather confident that um that it that it can't that it will, and in fact, the current application uh provides with the exception of maybe language spoken, maybe that's on there.

I can't remember.

But I think all that information is already uh being being solicited or on the application currently.

So I think we've covered that.

In terms of the second question that you asked, which I think is a follow-up to uh the concern that that David was um was asked was raising, which is how does the committee know if an application if someone has applied and their and their application has gone into some purgatory zone at the level for for for lack of a better for lack of a better or better term?

I think the answer is the committee asks, right?

Okay, right.

So it's the business of the committee.

If the committee feels that they you know you know that they want that information periodically, they can ask for it.

If the committee senses that there's a problem, uh so that uh and on an exception basis, asks for that aggregate that that aggregated information, then they then they can uh I you know having uh a fair amount of professional experience in both recruiting and in designing recruiting systems.

Um not telling an applicant that you've received the application, not telling them that in a timely way is as I said before, at a minimum bad manners.

Um not telling an applicant um that sorry, but the position's been filled, is also bad manners.

And over cocktails, I'll be able to I'll be glad to share an interesting story about this, but I won't do that uh on the committee's time uh you uh is that is that helpful, Noah?

Yeah, I mean what I take from that is I think these are common sense changes, they make the document better, and I think the committee is that protection to dig in and address some of these issues, and we don't need to write it further into the document.

So I appreciate it and I yield.

Thank you, Representative Lefine.

Representative Hughes, did you still wish to seek the floor?

Uh no, thank you.

Okay.

Representative.

Oh, sorry, Vice Chair Caparelli had a question regarding some of the things that you just said.

Like I because I like the idea of having like a closed loop, right?

Because that that is an issue.

So is there some kind of way because I remember when we had the ordinance last go around, your one of your main concerns was that people might not want their name after being rejected of the public.

But to Representative Le Pine's point, anything can be FOIA it.

So, you know, if you're putting your name up, he's saying that that information can be brought into the public.

So my question then is is there some way that we can write something into the ordinance that allows the appointments committee of the board of reps to seek that list and receive the list?

We already may have uh I'll I'll answer that.

No, we only know the the names of the people that the mayor is submitting to us.

We don't know who's applied, and that's that's what you're talking about.

I in terms of what the committee would have the authority to do, the committee might have the authority to compel those kinds of records.

I don't know what sort of information the city can permissively redact from a FOIA request.

Um, but I do know that the the board and the committee, specifically the president, the majority leader, and chairmans of committees, um have the authority to compel the disclosure of records.

Um but beyond that, uh does that kind of address what I I guess I was asking.

Well, if you're saying that I, as a member of the appointments committee, can ask the mayor for a list of applicants for the zoning board for 2025 and proceed it without compelling her through a FOIA act, then yeah, I have that ability and it would be redundant.

But if I don't, yeah, it wouldn't be individual committee members, but it would be the president, the majority leader, and the chairpersons of committee that had a power in the court of ordinances insistingly.

So the the chair of the appointments committee right now can ask the mayor for that list on the list, and the mayor would have to give it.

That's what the records portion of the code of ordinances says.

That's my understanding.

Can we get uh on that?

Yeah, then we can open the oh, do you mean solicit one?

Sure, we can solicit.

I mean I just legislate the concept.

I think I think in a discussion about this ordinance, he's asking that question, and I I think it's a good question.

And if it and if it's not, does this committee have the will to add that?

Do you as sorry I should ask you?

I didn't know he was gonna ask that question.

I'll yeah, I'll I'll certainly take the question.

Um I wouldn't be in favor of compelling the disclosure of individual names.

That's why I structured it in such a way that the data would be anonymous and also prohibits structuring the data in such a way that a mayor could back to the first ordinance that was Pedo.

Exactly, exactly.

And so that's where I think I find discomfort is if we are kind of making it part of the process to publicize the names, especially because I think that that becomes a little less in line with the value this ordinance seeks to address or seeks to provide, which is largely um aggregate picture.

Um I've made another, I think that you know, understanding the length of time an applicant has been in this pool, if that's in fact how it works, or if it might be more kind of a job in which an applicant is simply decline and not waiting indefinite, you know.

I think those are questions that are not fully answered at the moment, um, that are that are worth exploring.

Does that answer your point?

Well, that's that Ryan, by the way.

That's that's thank you.

Okay, did you still wish to seat the floor?

Uh I do.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, oh I I have one more little tidbit that I need to understand why.

Um it says in paragraph B.

Yeah, require pursuant, uh yeah, shall we require the and then we get down to first last name and ask five minutes?

The confirmation of Stanford voter registration status.

Also is that sorry, it's mandatory.

Representative blank, I just wanted to remind you we're on the amendment.

Oh boom, let's say that for the main motion.

The amended text is just the blue text.

Right.

Oh, okay.

Back in sorry, I yield.

Yeah, okay.

Representative.

Yeah, I think what I want to say is main motion.

Okay.

Is anybody else seeking the floor with respect to the amendment?

Uh can I seek the floor for opening order?

Sure, yeah.

Oh, I have a amendment to address one of Representative Bike's concerns.

Would the chair prefer that be an amendment to this amendment or a separate amendment after this one is disposed of?

Let's go for a separate one.

I would do a totally different uh section.

And actually, I would do a separate one.

Functionally, it really is six months.

All right, same number of votes.

Let's do a separate one.

Okay.

Um, any other do you think um any other folks seeking the floor for the amendment?

Seeing none, let's try it by voice vote.

All those in favor of the amendment summarized by Representative Boudreau and displayed on the screen.

Please say aye.

I all opposed.

Any abstentions.

The motion passes unanimously.

Now the question before the committee is the approval of the ordinance as now amended.

Is anybody that wishes to seek the floor?

You want to get in line?

This is for the main motion.

Yeah.

Back to Representative Blank.

Thank you, uh Chair.

I need to understand confirmation of this in paragraph B.

Confirmation of Stampered Voter Registration status.

What does it mean?

What?

What does it mean?

Right.

Exactly.

Because hey, either you're a registered voter or you're not a registered voter.

Yeah.

Right.

Do you have to be a registered voter per the bylaws or the for the statutes within the city to be on a commission or a board?

If you do, then okay.

If you don't, what's the point?

Sure.

Well, as the crafter, I'll I assume that direction might be drafted or directed.

I sure anybody wants to put that too big.

I'll I'll take it.

Um so when I drafted this ordinance, um, a lot of it is codifying existing practice.

This is a required field on the existing form.

That's about it.

Um it is currently required in order to submit the form that you identify the information that's in that required portion, and that's all I got for you.

I don't know as to whether or not voter registration status is relevant for qualifying to sit around.

I suspect it is not.

But I don't I don't I don't know.

Um, but I know that that's the existing practice.

I don't know.

I don't know if the code ordinances.

So I can't answer that question, but so that's why I asked.

Okay, no, that's that's I'm good.

All right, representative.

Yeah, I I first of all, I believe I believe that um either the charter or something.

Uh uh assist that humans be an elector.

I think that's the language I remember.

I think that's the language.

I'm not quite sure what that means.

I realized that yeah, I'll have to say but I think that's the language.

Yeah, so I don't know if that means that you're L that you are a registered voter or you're eligible to be a registered vote.

I don't know.

Anyway, um, it can't be too easy.

Yeah.

Well you also can't be a non-SUSA.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

By that you by that qualifier by that qualifier.

Which doesn't exist, you know, in some municipalities.

Um the what's been uh I think what I think what um I mean I do find confirmation of stamp for voter registration status a pretty ambiguous.

I understand where you got it from, but I think that's a pretty ambiguous label.

I think it's just um uh you registered voter status and um and political party affiliation of any that might be better language if we unless that was directed at me, if not that right.

That might be that might be better language.

Um I'll be glad to make an amendment if move it to amend.

We have that language if that's and section CSS you know, not required to provide political okay.

Um so any sorry, but I think uh confirmation is what um the um I am strongly opposed to anything in this I I have some concerns about the ordinance anyway.

Um but I am strongly opposed to anything that requires the mayor to disclose the names of applicants whom he or she did not nominate um for any number of reasons, not the least of which is I think if people knew that it would discourage them from applying.

So I think it said cross purposes to the bigger biggest purpose here.

Um and uh um it's while it might not I I think it puts undue pressure on the mayor, even if it's it'll be legal um to nominate someone to avoid embarrassment or whatever.

Um I also think it's not really what we care about.

I agree.

I don't care if Rosa Flores.

I'm gonna use an if this I'm gonna use the Latina name here for purposes of illustration.

Um I I don't care if Rosa if a if a Rosa Flores was nominated by the mayor or not.

I could care if a mayor is habitually choosing not to name not to nominate people of you know of Latino in the background, but I don't care about that individual, but I don't care about whether that individual and a particular individual was put forward.

I think what we were hearing from our guests earlier is that they care a lot about why because they keep on mentioning specific names.

Representative, I just want to one part of the individual names were not put forward.

I just wanted to I think that's a mistake.

I just wanted to clarify that's not opposed on the ordinance.

I understand the common germane to the to the actual ordinance.

So unless well you haven't said anything, so there's so I just wanted to remind that.

Yeah, kind of right.

But it seems like we were at least raising the question of should we be moving in that direction?

I want to discourage us from doing that.

Or you yield I thank you, Representative Wamber.

Uh were you seeing the floor?

Representative LePline, you've got the floor.

Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, just to bring the point on the uh the required um voter registration status point.

I do think it conflicts with what is not required below, which is political party, and maybe the clarification is uh what we're seeking in that is verifying eligibility to vote of the voter, which is a component of voter registration status, but voter registration status covers more ground than that, including the contradictory element of political party.

So maybe we replace confirmation of standard voter registration status, it's confirmation of stand for voter eligibility.

Is a more specific ask that doesn't conflict with the next paragraph of C, Section C, which says they are not obligated to disclose political party.

Uh thank you, Representative Le Pine.

Do you yield?

Sorry, I yield.

Thank you, Representative LePine.

Uh I'm just gonna respond to that briefly in that the application currently asks a binary.

Are you registered to vote in Stanford?

Yes or no.

Um I also would suggest that voter registration status itself specifically typically is whether or not somebody is registered to vote.

You don't have to actually disclose a party when registering to vote.

It's an independent question that's included on the form, but isn't necessarily part of registration status.

So I wouldn't, I don't necessarily agree that there is an inherent conflict in the drafting.

Uh but that that would be my that would be my response.

Um representative um Boudra, were you still seeking the form?

Yes, then we've got a another motion to eventually for representative blank's comments.

No.

Um this would insert into section E after the words over the same period of time.

Uh it would insert the words the number of applicants who received responses to their application.

And so the idea with this uh amendment is to prevent this kind of radio silence issue that uh we've been discussing.

Uh I mean it doesn't necessarily prevent it, but at least it forces the administration to fess up and say, look at all these people we haven't responded to, versus it reporting what we did respond to these people, we at least told them yes no.

Um so what was the what was the words in the words I used were the number of applicants who received responses to their application.

Okay.

Um so we have a motion to a man.

Can I just ask the question?

Um information to but if they don't respond, then they don't have to report it, and they don't generally respond for hearing.

So how does that fix it?

I think that's true.

I mean, I'm just saying, I mean, I know that it is true, actually.

That sounds like a subset of like, you know, that's something of responses to the value of it, but not necessarily clarifying questions.

So first, let's get a second support.

Okay, thank you.

If you like seat the floor, yeah, you got it.

I don't know how that helps anything.

Yeah, so I agree that it doesn't compel a response.

Um, and which is kind of doesn't totally solve the problem.

The hope is that it's at least saying that the administration has to acknowledge look, we have a hundred applicants and we only responded to three of them, and then you know, we could at least hold that up and go, what the hell are you doing?

Uh, versus we have a hundred applicants and we did respond to you know 97 of them.

Yeah, and maybe 97 of them got emails that say no, we don't want you, but that's still recurring us.

Oh, I'm sorry.

My my hope is that it at least encourages better behavior about this, and and maybe it doesn't go far enough.

Um, but that's what I came up with on the spot.

Yeah, I'll say all right, Representative Wybert you better question uh through you to Matt through you to Matthew.

Um what qualifies as a response?

We've received thank you very much.

We've received your application, okay?

The the you know the the sort of good matters threshold.

Yeah, is that does that qualify as a response?

We've received your application, and we think it sucks.

I'm not suggesting that we received your application that the position did fail.

Um what qualified me?

What qualifies as a response?

That's the former.

So my intent in this amendment uh had been that the former would not qualify, okay.

Um, but that the latter, while being inadvisable, would qualify.

At least a response from the administration saying no, we don't want you is a valuable response that I think people would appreciate to know that they have been rejected.

Okay.

What about if I might make any respect?

What about could this qualify as a response?

The um we're still interviewing others.

Um, basically we're still on we we haven't rejected you, but we're not ready to make a decision yet.

Would that qualify as your response?

We can tell that I just thought this up on the um sometimes that's why it takes more than one meeting, honey.

Yeah, uh ultimately, I think what maybe we should I should make another amendment to this amendment is to drive it towards uh notice of final decision now.

It's possible that this encourages a non-ideal behavior in which the administration gives people a final decision saying no so that they can check off the box, even though they might have wanted to have that person in backup.

Um which is not ideal.

Uh I'll admit that.

Um, but I think that final decision is still probably the best place to draw the line.

Okay.

We filled the position with some we've nominated someone else.

But there's we're anticipating a vacancy in eight months, and we'd like to continue to consider you at that time.

Is that considered a response?

I think we should I think we should structure the language um such that the that would not be considered a response, and that the behavior we would encourage is to say this position has been filled, therefore you have not been accepted, and the response is no, however, we do think you're interesting.

These apply in the future when this other agency becomes available, or what actually does happen with some frequency.

Um we like to consider you for a different commission.

That actually happens with with real with real frequency.

See, look it here's the here's the concern I have with what you proposed, and I know you're doing it in good faith.

Um I think that the if you if you um if the only thing that we're counting as a response is uh close the door on your way out, um we're misleading ourselves as to what's going on.

Um because then there are going to be plenty that for good reasons for reasons that we would support would be considered that they haven't received a response.

If you want to go down this road, frankly, which I think I advise not, but if we were then I define a response as the good manners response at the beginning, because that to me is just like you know, that's sort of a threshold, and there's no point in not doing that.

I think everybody you know will agree that that's something we should do, just like when we get it when we get an email from a constituent, we should respond and you know thank them for taking the time to actually write to us, even if we don't have an answer, even if first we're not able to you know to answer their um their question.

Um so it if you want to go down this route, that's what I would recommend, but I actually recommend not going down this scroll.

Okay, but thank you, Representative Weinberg.

Representative Hughes, you have the floor.

Sorry.

Thank you.

Uh yeah, I totally kind of want to echo what Representative Weinberg says.

Um, you know, this is well intentioned, but I just I'm concerned that we're overthinking it a bit.

I mean, no response is in fact a response.

Um, you know, I don't think we need to add more responsibility and mandate that you know the mayor's office interacts with every applicant and make sure that their hands held and they get a participation trophy.

Um, you know, the mayor's office has a million and one things that they're focused on and have to do from potholes to other infrastructure projects, economic development.

So I'm concerned that we're starting to teeter on um, you know, just adding uh stuff for them to do just because it feels good.

Um so I just want to express that and uh I yield.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Representative Hughes.

Representative Pine, did you still wish to seek the floor?

No, I think uh those last comments captured my feeling.

Let's let our leaders do their job.

Thank you, Representative O'Pine, Vice Chair Camp Riley, you've got the phone.

I just had a question.

This was meant to close the loop that he was talking about, whereas we don't know how many people have applied for a position.

And to me, if we were to add that, it would disincentivize them giving any answer at all.

In other words, we we heard from uh Mr.

Stella that there is an automated response saying I've received your application, that would be considered a response, right?

And automatically we would then have the information aggregated, that would be enough, but if the mayor's office doesn't want us to know these things, which I'm I'm not saying anything against the mayor, but I don't really think they do.

I don't think they care to have us know that information.

So that would then disincentivize them, even reaching out to the public and saying I've gotten your your application.

They have an out if they don't want us to have the information.

Thank you, Vice Chair Cam Riley.

Before I recognize Representative Blank from the comments, sorry.

Oh, well you're not done.

I'm so sorry.

I was talking about his amendment.

So I do have a question to be put on the list of something else.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Um so here in the comments, um, I just wanted to provide a potential opportunity.

If you'd like to ask permission for the body to withdraw your motion.

Oh please.

Okay.

Um any objection from the committee.

The motion is withdrawal.

Um with that being said, Representative Blank, you still wish to seek the floor with respect to the main motion.

Thank you.

Uh Vice Chair Camperelli, did you wish to see the floor with respect to the main motion?

Yes.

Um, I'm wondering if we can, because one of the things that uh Mrs.

Stella identified that was an issue, and I do see it as an issue.

Um is the thing with the appointments um with regard to the the board of reps.

Sorry, I'm very tired.

Um one of the flaws in this whole thing was that the mayor has a certain amount of time, 120 days to appoint somebody.

If she doesn't, then the board of reps, I think.

Um, I'm guessing at the numbers here, I think has 75 days to make an appointment.

And we never made those appointments because we didn't know that number one, we had that power, and then number two, that those dates were were going by.

And so I'm wondering that if this ordinance can address that really large problem by somehow, I think uh Representative Weinberg has an idea, somehow triggers either the board office or somebody to monitor those things and then let us know, or the appointments committee or something.

Because I don't think that boards should should sit without having to come before this body expired for indefinite periods of time.

And that's a that's a flaw in the charter that was unable to be corrected.

Did you yield?

I do yield.

Thank you, Mr.

Kimberly.

Representative one reading by the floor.

Yeah, here's the here's the problem, Karen.

It really the charter shoots itself in the foot.

Right.

Okay.

Not for the reason that not well, yes, partly for the reason that you're describing.

Reason it should shoot itself in the foot is it's got this 120-day time period during which once a once once once a term expires that the mayor is supposed to nominate.

Okay.

However, in other places in the charter where it talks about where the charter talks about specific boards and commissions, it requires an awful lot of these to expire at the end of the mayor's term.

Okay.

So I mean, that's the reason why, as of like can you give me an idea of what yeah, that's why we have so many positions.

That's why there's so many positions.

I think you were saying before.

Going back to the data that from that I was quoting before.

That's why there's so many positions that expired either on November 30th or on December 1st.

I don't remember that being the case, but can you give me an example?

Did you remember any of them?

Which ones well, I only by looking at so the arts and culture commission had as of March had five positions that uh expired on December either on November 30th or December 1st.

2020 of 2020.

At the end of a mayor, it's well, in the in the charter it reads at the end of the mayor.

So this schools, yes.

So, and it's not practical.

But then the next, but then but then they have 120.

Right.

But if you think about the problem, right.

So 120 days is four months.

Okay.

Okay.

So that's December, January, February, and March.

It's not possible.

Um that it it's that problem.

Let me just continue.

Okay.

So there were probably close to 100 as as Steve was citing.

Probably close to 100 position, 100 terms that expired at the end of the mayor's term.

It's not possible for the mayor to renominate.

To nominate, and it's not possible, frankly, for the appointments commission, unless the sleeping ballots warm in.

Not possible for us to interview that many people, candidates, nominees during that 120-day period.

That's what that's what I mean when I say that the charter in essence shoots itself in the foot.

It creates a situation that's impossible.

It's effectively impossible to I think it's pretty.

I think that that part of the charter is common in other charters, and that is something that we could look into.

It could be.

Um because I think I mean, I think 120 days is a reasonable amount of time, and then four months.

I don't know.

I think that that's how it is all over Connecticut, but I could be wrong.

That's something that we think about.

Maybe, but it you know, it may be that other municipalities, many of which are a lot smaller than Stanford, um, don't have 26 volunteer boards and commissions.

So if they've just got a handful, then maybe they can maybe they can move those nominations through in a four-month period, but we just can't.

I mean, it's just I don't I don't agree.

Do you think we can you think that the I think I want to I do want to limit the back and forth um because we're kind of devolving?

Do you think we can you think that the I think I want to I want I do want to limit the back and forth um because we're we're kind of devolving conversation um we can look at other municipalities but I would like for this ordinance to try to lose that loophole that is there anybody else to clarify also the the text of the charter um so I have some any objection read it um it it says that the mayor shall I'm paraphrasing shall submit these names make nominations um and provide it further however if the mayor shall fail to submit a nomination of the board of representatives within 180 120 days after the expiration of a board or commission or alternate members' term in office then at any time during the 120 days thereafter the president of the board may nominate in the board may approve a successor right further etc etc my point being the confirmation does not have to happen within 120 days only the nomination right that's right so in theory the mayor can nominate a slate of 100 seats and the appointments committee can schedule the next however many months to fill that spot yeah of course you see it's your now that's true so that absolves us as members of the appointments committee from having to bring sleeping bags that's true right but and the overtime but it doesn't but do we but do we really want a mayor who prior to an election is not going to be probably spending a lot of time doing interviews and you know the and you know and thereafter you know is the mayor really have the bandwidth to do call in a hundred interviews during that that you know constrained time period given um given all his or her other but we are then responsibility I know is the back it's right actually sorry it's a charter point where we have conflict in the chart yeah we have a conflict in the chart with respect to the valid right concerns that representatives can't really weinberg have are they germane to the ordinance which is about reporting requirements and not actually about the no thank you represent process right I would rule that no these are no longer this conversation is no longer germane to the subject matter of the ordinance despite its value so you're saying we can't or add to this ordinance and we have to be a separate ordinance well we can't amend the charter I'm not trying to amend the charter the the time periods uh it's charter not working I'm not trying to amend the the time what I'm trying to do is put a trigger oh this oh I see so that the the president of the board of reps is notified that expiration of 120 days has passed and it is now up to them to either appoint someone or allow the hole in the charter to continue to exist which is just for all the the new members of the board of reps what has happened is that democracy because of a loophole in our charter has ceased to exist where the mayor appoints but the if if she doesn't reappoint and somebody sits in an expired seat any seat in the city that's appointed then the board of reps doesn't have the ability to have that person come before them.

So for example we had people that were sitting on boards and commissions that were expired from 2015 2012 2017 that never came before the board for reappointment because this period of time had passed the mayor had not appointed anyone because they like the person sitting there but they thought that the board would not approve that person so they never put the person forth that that's not democracy that's circumventing democracy um and so all I'm saying is can't we have something added to this that just triggers the president of the board to be notified that the mayor has not appointed anyone the 120 days has lapsed and that the board now has 120 days to either appoint someone and if they don't appoint somebody it goes back to the mayor for reappointment and it just keeps going uh Vice Chair Hyperelli if I may suggest if you are interested in making a motion to that effect one appropriate motion might be to amend this ordinance in order to insert section 52-12 and retitle the existing 52-12 to 5213 uh titled expiration report where it might read the mayor um or his or her designee shall notify the president of the board of representatives um upon the expiration excuse me upon the date that is 120 days following the expiration of a an appointed member's term um I think period okay would that address your yep do you wish to make that motion yes is there a second second so the motion the question before the committee is a motion to amend inserting a new section five two twelve and relabeling the existing section five two dash twelve um

One appropriate motion might be to amend this ordinance in order to insert section 52-12 and retitle the existing 52-12 to 52.13 uh titled expiration report where it might read the mayor um or his or her designee shall notify the president of the board of representatives um upon the expiration excuse me upon the date that is 120 days following the expiration of a an appointed member's term um I think period okay would that address your yep do you wish to make that motion yes is there a second second so the motion the question before the committee is a motion to amend inserting a new section five two-twelve and relabeling the existing section five two-twelve um oh Ms.

Montalvo if you so this would go right above section five two-twelve so it'll be a new section so do you want me to renumber violations and penalties to two 52-13 and then make a new 52-12 for the expiration report?

Yes okay Chair McCalkey I don't know if this is a a point of information or not so if it's not you can just slap it down but sure is it relevant that posted right on the Stanford government website is a list of all of these appointments with a clear expiration date uh no that's not a valid point more representative time but I'm happy to give you the floor so you can ask substantive questions once the motion is open.

Okay no worries thank you um so the text following expiration report which is suggestive um a clarifying as to what your motion is would be um expiration report the mayor or his or her designee shall notify shall provide notice to the president of the board of representatives uh of the make sure this is this works um shall provide notice of the board the president of the board of representatives of any vacancies or expired terms the vacancy or the expiration of which I'm sorry a truck just rolled by my office and it's very loud I apologize the vacancies or expirations of which have exceeded 120 days from the date of such vacancy or expiration by Showley does that accurately summarize thank you the discussion can happen that's true uh does anybody wish to seat the floor with respect to the motion representative Le Pine Boudreau and uh Weinberg yes sorry so going back to the point I I guess what I'm not understanding about this is that it I I would think this is the business of the uh appointments committee and that they do have a list of expirations and make that a standing item of their agenda if they so choose to review that every time they gather uh and the 120 days is is easy to um to calculate off of the expiration date so I'm not sure why we have to write this in um and why this isn't part of making a committee function more effectively versus us trying to write it into a resolution and I give only a one before yeah I want to sure I don't put that you got it can we have a does anybody else have to go you you can make a motion I'd like to make a motion for a five minute potty break and there is there a second I'll take thank you all the the committee's two more hours the committee's gonna be in a five minute recess never make it as a laser makers rule no forever

Already we are going to get a response resume.

We are going to call this uh meeting of the committee back to order.

Um, and I'm just gonna say for the record that we still have sufficient number of representatives in attendance to maintain our quorum.

Um with that, um, I believe, if I remember correctly, Representative Le Pine.

I think you were next to seat the floor, unless I'm mistaken.

Also, I'm good, yeah.

Thanks.

Representative Boudreau.

I did not think the forum was uh way off.

Weinberg.

Yeah, okay.

And representative, oh um Jordan Leader Morrison White.

I think he left.

Uh Representative Wyber, you still got the floor.

Okay, thank you.

Um this is the main motion.

Right.

So sorry, no amendment.

You're correct.

This is the amendment language that's now the new subsection 52-12 of the right.

Yeah.

I I uh I'm I'm going to vote against this amendment.

Um as uh representative Le Pine pointed out, I think it's unnecessary.

Um and duplicative um the uh charter as uh as we as we learned when uh when the chair read the charter section says that the president may appoint or may nominate such a board, you know, shall you know it's not and it's not required to um at the expiration of the of the 120 days.

Um I think I I think that um we can all we can all agree with a high degree of confidence that both presidents on the 31st board were well aware uh that positions had expired that the that positions terms had expired.

Um and um and and chose not to exercise the this particular power that the charter um that the charter gave them.

Um and I'm sure that this president also is well aware of this power.

The information on uh is ease is readily available on line.

But um so we can you know get on then on the website and we'll know exactly which is you know we'll know exactly which positions have have expired more than 120 days.

So I think this is just completely this requirement to affirmatively notify the president of the board when that happens is entirely unnecessary.

Okay.

I thank you very well.

Um did you yield also seeing that majority of the morsen is the one in attendance?

I wanted to pass him uh vice capital, you go.

Okay.

So both points were the same.

Yours was the same as representative lapine, I believe.

So what I would like to say is that you're you're removing the the obligation from a paid employee of the city, and you're putting that obligation on a volunteer that is doing a very heavy job because it is the president of the board of reps job to then decide if a reappointment of an appointment will be made.

And so you're removing that from a paid office that has staff and and people, and you're putting it on the person on the board of reps who has the biggest job of all of us, right?

Being the president.

Like I can't even imagine how she's doing that right now, or how any president does that that job as a volunteer.

Um and so this would address a problem that you yourself have agreed is a problem, right?

Having expired people that are not coming before the board is a problem.

Um it circumvents the board of reps and it allows people to sit on boards and commissions that have been expired and have not been interviewed by this body.

Um the charter is set up like that, and no one has been exercising that because they just don't have the bandwidth to be even aware of it.

And so I don't really see what the problem is in having the mayor's office have somebody that's just in charge of alerting the president of the board of reps when someone's expired.

I think putting it on a committee, making it a committee obligation, um, sort of doesn't make sense with the way the charter works, which is it goes to the president, the president decides if somebody will be appointed by the board of reps, and then it moves on.

It does that doesn't get decided by the committee.

Um I just I don't understand what anybody's issue with that be.

Like what is the main issue?

And my question is to either representative Le Pine if he still has the issue, or you like what's the problem with that?

Uh I I I want to limit the the back advice and I understand that uh let's leave a question over if they would see before they can't answer it.

Representative Boudreaux.

Um I have a question um on this for anyone who knows law better than I do.

Uh, because I see again what was previously section 52.12, but would it now be 5213?

Um we say that anyone, any officer, employee or department head in the city of Stanford who willfully violates any provision of this article, uh, shall be considered to have violated the code of ethics.

So in making this reporting requirement, which is a day of reporting requirement, if they forget to do it that day and do it the next day, is that would that qualify as a willful violation and thus an ethical breach?

Or is that not considered willful as well unless they're specifically like I'm not gonna enforce that.

No, that was in the existing text below.

Aren't we discussing my question?

Comment is on the implications of your motion to create liability of it's already there.

This is this is already there.

Well, sorry, I mean here.

So the the representative Boudreau is is basically said is his question, um, which is kind of open-ended and not direct to edit anybody particularly is is whether or not the insertion of this requirement has unforeseen and negative implications because we have that enforcement mechanism at the bottom.

Um, which you know, in the question specifically is if you fail to comply with section 52-12, your amendment accidentally or inadvertently, is that considered willful under the under the law?

That is that question.

Yeah, um direction I mean.

No, uh and who decides.

Uh the Board of Ethics.

Okay.

Would decide probably fine.

And I I don't want to kind of hind further on what is or isn't willful.

The only thing I would suggest is my other understanding is willful is more than accidental.

Do I thought before?

Yes.

I would say that if the if this the board of ethics is deciding, that's probably fine.

I don't think we're gonna run into any uh issues with that.

Um my thinking to uh some comments later, Representative Kipper, I mean is just that in the main report that we require, there's some flexibility in it.

It just says once a month and it can happen, you know, at some point in there.

And so I think it's less liable.

Uh whereas when I've been talking to Representative McCune during recess, uh, he proposed this text to you specifically so that it would hit on a specific day.

And so there's not a lot of legal room in that.

And that's where my concern had been coming from.

That's coming from the the charter though.

With the reporting requirement rather than the appointment requirement.

So that's where I was coming from on that.

And it seemed like that's not an issue because the board of ethics probably wouldn't crucify someone for forgetting to send an email.

I imagine.

Uh so I'll look for it.

More simply redundantly.

Thank you, Representative.

Um Jordan Leader Morsen, you've got the floor.

Thank you, Chair.

Forgive me for missing the last the first few minutes of post uh potty break.

I was having difficulty.

Um okay, I I think what we're doing here needs to be run by corporate counsel because we have uh we have uh a history of uh inadvertently running afoul of the uh restrictions uh afforded in the charter.

Um we don't want to uh inadvertently put a risk a requirement on any part of uh of the government uh that the charter already covers that that we we can't make more difficult.

Um I this would not go to the Board of Ethics because if if we're gonna make a requirement with a penalty, first of all, the penalty actually has to be enforceable.

Um and that would be legal, not ethical anyway.

So my my suggestion is that we um determine what language we want here and run it past corporate council to see if we're gonna if we if our effort runs a foul.

Thank you.

Thank you, Majority Leader Morrison.

Representative Le Pine, you've got the floor.

Yeah, uh I'm really worried that you know we spent a lot of time getting to this point with this document.

And I I do believe in the good intention of everything that's being put forward, but I think we're letting perfect be the enemy of good here.

And uh, you know, if if uh uh majority leader morrison's comment is uh and I have to defer to that is relevant, then that puts this whole thing on hold.

I do think, you know, uh Vice Chair Camp Relly asked a question about you know whether uh where where the responsibility would lie to produce it and should it go on a committee and people are strapped.

Uh I mean it's the committee reviews appointments, the document is there.

You throw it into uh uh chat GPT and you can produce the 120-day date in about five seconds for every listed item on there.

We could sit here and argue whether the mayor should do that or whether the appointments committee should do that, and who has the time to do it, but the information is there and it can be done.

And if I'm on an appointments committee, I want to know who's up.

I want to know what's open, and I want to know when it expires.

And that seems like a basic requirement for knowing how then we need to do our job on that committee.

So again, I think it's a good document.

I'd hate to kick it down the the road because of this clause.

And I would suggest we eliminate this.

If it's something to pursue later, fine, but the information is there to get what we want.

If we're we're really arguing about who has to furnish it, and that seems like a high price to pay for not being able to put this through.

I'd like to make a motion to move the question.

Let's see.

Is that a motion to move the question on the floor?

Is there a second?

Committee.

It can't move the questioning committee.

I don't believe that is that is our pro that is our policy.

I I agree.

I don't think a policy policy tradition.

We we we don't we we don't do that in committee.

It's only allowed on the floor.

I mean, I think the I think that it's gonna fail, which is what you want.

So I'm just trying to move it along.

We could just no one else wants to speak, then we'll move it.

Right.

He still has his hand.

He took his hand out.

Okay, so I I I'd have my hand up if the chair would indulge.

Okay, we can keep going on it.

I so on on the motion which which did receive a uh a motion in a second.

Did you second that?

You did not second that.

Oh, I thought I saw that.

Apologies.

So if you so before I rule as to whether or not the motion is even appropriate to entertain, because is it you did say okay?

Yes.

Okay, so the motion did receive a second.

Um I have not seen anything other than the the suggestion that it's custom against custom.

Um, but I haven't seen any demonstration of that custom.

I don't see anything written in our rules, and I don't know any prohibition Roberts as to not entertain motions to point of order.

Yes, you you say point of order?

Yes.

Uh there are no hands raised.

Which there are people seeing the floor, yeah.

Representative blank and Morrison will speak to the floor.

So representative Morrison was still seeking the floor at the time.

Okay.

Um withdrawal.

I was just trying to make this faster and it's making it slower.

I'll withdraw my motion to move the question.

That's fine.

I haven't stated the question, so you can withdraw it and permanently.

Representative Morrison, you've got the floor.

Thank you, sir.

Um piggybacking on what Representative LePine was saying.

Um there's already a report online available uh of the expiration dates of of various uh positions.

Um and it is updated, I believe it's every three months or every six months.

If I'm not, I don't know the exact number.

question so we can withdraw permanently representative morsen you've got the floor thank you sir um i uh piggybacking on what representative lepine was saying um there there's already a report online uh available uh of the expiration dates of of various uh positions um and it is updated i believe it's every three months or every six months if i'm not i i don't know the exact number but if if it's as simple as uh the appoint the chair of the appointments committee referring to that report every month and saving a copy of it for reference perhaps that's the easiest Occam's razor solution to this entire issue can I respond thank you majority more so did you yield okay yes you wish to see yes and and representative morrison with all due respect it hasn't happened it's never happened so unless we we look to put a mechanism in in place see and and we won't be here forever right so seats will continue to expire people won't get appointed those people will sit in the seats and it will just continue this vicious cycle we we have oftentimes I've heard many people on on the 31st board and now on this board say we've recognize that it's a problem but no one ever comes up with solutions to fix the problem or close the loophole um this is at least something that sets some motion in place where this body the person that's in charge of appointing which is the president gets gets word that the seat is open I don't think that it's fair to put that onus and that responsibility on a body that is volunteer rather than the people that are being paid to do the job so that's it I yield thank you representative weinberg given the floor yeah I uh I would submit that um that it was a problem and the problem is actively missoled because as of March 27th there were only nine what I'll call meaningfully expired uh meaning there were only nine people serving on meaningfully expired terms um the problem so uh you know I don't consider um the ones whose terms expired on November 30th or December 1st to be meaningfully expired because I think that it's uh frankly impossible to interview those you know for the mayor's office the mayor as well as the um as the appointments committee uh to do an effective job of interviewing for all of those seats in such a short period of time because um so it's just it while it while it certainly once was a problem um it has effectively in my view at least uh been solved and I think that if I I when I redo this chart which I plan to do prior to the board meeting um and with your permission I'll submit it so you know for the for the record um I suspected that uh count of nine the what I'll call deeply expired um uh incumbents uh will be fewer I know it'll be fewer because some of them are being interviewed tomorrow do you that represent one by Share Kevin are you looking for that that's not a systematic problem being fixed that's a mayor doing her job right and and this problem didn't start with this mayor this problem started with mayors way before this mayor and we don't know who's going to be the mayor you know after this mayor so again we are not fixing a hole in the charter we're just we're just saying that this mayor has is now doing a better job um the other the other thing that I want to say is that people were not put in front of the last board purposely because the mayor didn't think that that board would approve them and that's also not democracy Carl that's just somebody circumventing a system that is broken and so I'm not trying to fix the system because I can't fix the system right the charter revision fail.

All I'm trying to do right now with this amendment is to put a mechanism in place where at least the board who's a volunteer board would be notified by the paid people in the administration that a seat is open and it has not been filled and now it's on them to to appoint somebody that's it I yield thank you my share cambrelli is there anybody else that wishes a seat the floor or are we ready for a vote on the amendment seeing no other members uh let's do this by roll call um so this is a motion to amend by inserting what is now referenced as section 52 12 expiration report um inserting the text displayed on the screen um we're going to begin with vice chair camparelli representative blank yes representative yes representative hughes no representative high no representative

Um, so this is a motion to amend by inserting what is now referenced as section 52-12 expiration report.

Um inserting the text displayed on the screen.

Um we're going to begin with Vice Chair Camparelli.

Representative Blank.

Yes.

Representative Boudreaux.

Yes.

Representative Hughes.

No.

Representative Hyatt.

No.

Representative Le Pine.

No.

Representative Stone.

Yes.

Representative Weinberg?

No.

I I am a vote in favor.

That brings it to one to three, four.

That is five votes in favor, four votes against.

The motion passes.

Oh, sorry, well, that was all the so there are no extensions.

Uh great.

So we are back with the question before the committee is adoption and approval of LR 32.017 as further amended.

I move to recommit.

Okay.

There's a motion to recommit.

Um before I before I see if there's a second review.

This is the main motion, item number two.

Um before before I see if there's a second receipt question.

May I suggest a motion to postpone definitely.

Um can you articulate the difference?

The difference only being postponed definitely will definitively place it on our agenda next month.

A motion or recommit places it places its fate in steering's hands where it could, in theory, potentially not make its way out of our agenda.

I uh move to recommit.

Thank you.

Is there a second to the motion?

Second.

Thank you.

Uh so the question before the committee is whether or not to recommit item LR 32.017.

Seeing no one's eaten the floor, I'm gonna speak on this one.

I don't think it'd be appropriate to recommit this.

I think it would be appropriate to postpone it as we similarly postponed item one last month.

Um I've spoken on this before, where I think there is value um in ensuring the continued business on particular items.

We have momentum here on item two, we have momentum on item one, and we also don't know steering's opinion as to the priority of this item.

There's always the possibility that steering may feel that this is not appropriate for the agenda next month, and I don't think it's wise to invite that possibility when we don't need to.

Um, so I would encourage this body to vote no on the motion or recommit instead if we need more time to postpone definitely to our next commitment.

Representative Weinberg.

I prefer the humility of recommending.

And I thank you, Representative Weinberg.

Are there any other members that wish to seek the floor with respect to the motion to recommit?

Okay.

Um let's uh let's do roll call.

Um explain it, please before we oh sorry, thank you.

This is a motion to recommit item LR32.017, uh, which would place it back to steering.

Um, who will then decide whether or not it appears on our agenda next month?

Uh and it'll get back on steering as amended.

Right.

Yes.

Um uh Vice Chair Camperelli.

No.

Representative Blank.

No.

Representative Boutreau, no, Representative Hughes.

Yes, Representative Hyatt.

Yes.

Representative Le Pine.

Yes.

Representative Stone.

No.

Representative Weinberg?

Yes.

Final no vote.

That is four votes in favor and five against the motion is defeated.

Five distures.

No, no, the motion is defeated.

Um the motion did not pass.

Okay.

That was for just to clarify.

I don't know if I misspoke.

I might have.

It is late.

It was four votes in favor and five votes against.

Okay.

So we are back to the main motion.

Is there anybody that wishes to seek the floor?

What was the main motion?

To approve.

Uh yeah, that's what we are now.

No, the I put the motion was to postpone.

Yeah, nobody made that motion.

You made the motion.

Then I will move to the I can't make motions.

I will move to postpone.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

Second.

The motion for the committee is whether or not postpone to postpone definitely item LR32.017 to our subsequent meeting is moved and seconded.

Is there anybody that wishes to seek the floor?

Representative.

Um curious about the motivation of postponing.

Um is there specific information you're hoping to get over the next month?

Because I would have liked to have taken the vote on this today.

May I?

You've got the floor then yeah.

Uh yes.

Uh I think uh representative Morrison has pointed out that there are legal questions that need to be that that uh that need to be answered.

I also think that like um that when um when votes are particularly close like this, um we're um you know we're better off.

There's no there's no like there's no urgency where there's some some reason why it has to be um where it has to be resolved immediately.

Uh I think we're all we're generally better off to move with deliberate speed.

Okay.

Do you yield yes?

Okay.

Is there anybody else that wishes they see seek the floor?

Seeing no other members, I'm gonna speak for a moment on this item.

Um I also would have liked to have seen a vote on this item tonight.

I don't think it's necessarily detrimental not to.

That being said, to the two points that are raised in support of the motion, whether or not um whether or not we need legal counsel on this particular item or whether or not the amendment is permissible.

So in my opinion, we already have the statutory authority to compel the disclosure of information, including a more comprehensive requirement that the mayor provide a report as we as the nature of this ordinance already is, you know, with more information.

So as to whether or not we already have the authority, I think it's pretty clear that we can require of the mayor's office to deliver information.

That's the whole nature of the ordinance, and that's what providing notice is.

It's a requirement that notice that information be provided.

Um information that the office of the mayor has accessible to them.

I don't think it provides any undue burden considering they should be tracking this information already internally, um, but purely from a statutory perspective, purely from like an authoritative perspective.

I I think that it's clearly on its face permissible, and secondarily, as to whether or not we see legal opinion.

I've spoken to the corporation council on this ordinance.

They are in receipt of a draft, and they also specifically said that they may not seek to review this draft until after the committee has had an opportunity to look at it, which we have now done.

They have spoken to them about the substance of the ordinance, which they did not have any particular issue with, um, including everything we've kind of talked about absent the amendment.

So it has originally drafted.

Um so that being said, I don't think we need to necessarily hold this off if the desire is to solicit clarity as to our authority to enact the second the last amendment before us.

But I also agree with representative Weinberg that we are not harmed by by postponing this further if it need be, despite the fact that it would be nice if we could resolve it tonight.

With that, I I yield um any other comments.

Seeing none.

Yeah, yeah, I do.

You have a comment?

Are you sure Representative Weinberg?

Please go ahead.

And I'm going to speak with uncharacteristic bluntness.

Um I apologize in advance for making reference to the 31st board.

Um the 31st board um had a habit of moving forward gung-ho on things.

And um, and a number on a number of different things.

I'm not going to chronicle them, so we'll get very emotional at this point.

I do, so I'm not going to.

Um and as a result got its nose quite bloody on many occasions.

Um I don't think that's good for governance.

I don't think that's good for relationships between the different um parts of uh branches of government.

Um I while each branch of government has different responsibilities, and there is a an element of check and balance built into that system.

Less significant in our case than for example with that roll.

Um, I think that in addition to hearing from legal, um, I worry that the ordinance is currently written and amended tonight.

Um has more than a trivial potential of getting vetoed.

I don't think that's in the best interest of the city when we can consult with the other branch of government and um and um and and reach and reach a solution that everyone can feel comfortable with and to what we what representative said where uh what we're meeting with vote.

Um so I strongly recommend that we just take it, use this opportunity to take a step back, get some do some consulting.

Um, and hear from others who are involved in this process and uh and consultate on that on what we on what we learn.

I think we'll come up with a better ordinance by doing that.

Um that's why I recommend that we postpone, and with that thank you, Representative Windberg.

We voted to no motion about that fail.

Motion we can move failed to.

Oh, no, we're voting, we're we're discussing on your yes.

Um the only uh representative walson, you've got the floor.

Oh um, good evening, everyone.

Good evening.

I've sat I've sat through long meetings regarding this issue here, and here we are again tonight.

There's there's been enough time to discuss everything, put everything on the table, and uh only thing I can do is just shake my head.

I just feel like this is just beating a dead horse, flowing around and around and around.

When are we going to put this to bed?

We gotta be done with this.

We can't we we're just lingering it, lingering it to and it's gonna keep on lingering, and then it's going to the next board.

What are we gonna do about this tonight?

That's it.

Thank you, and I yield.

Thank you, Representative Wolston.

Seeing no other members, uh, Vice Chair Camperelli.

I would like to say that I am gonna vote to postpone.

Um, I'm gonna I think the ordinance is good the way it is, but I'm gonna vote to postpone because uh the vote was very close.

I don't know if we would have the votes from the full board at this point.

I I do think that we should speak to corporation council and and the mayor's office.

Um, but I but I do want to make one thing clear.

This this body should not be just legislating on things that the mayor wants but will accept because if we were to pass this ordinance and the mayor vetoed it, the charter gives us final vote on that, and it would be the same board of reps, and so we could just vote to overturn the mayor's veto.

So I don't think that we should be legislating because we're afraid the mayor would veto it.

That being said, I think there is a there should be a spirit of cooperation between the board of reps and the mayor's office and the you know that that exists.

I mean, it just for me it does exist, but this is something that I don't think hurts the mayor's office or hurts the mayor's uh powers and and should be added to it because for the last 15 years it hasn't worked, and people have sat on boards and commissions expired.

Um but I do think I do think that we should go back and and double check things and take that time yep.

Anyone else seeking the floor?

All righty seeing no other folks, let's try it by voice vote.

See if we're optimistic about it.

Um so is the question before the committee is whether or not to postpone definitely item LR 32.017 as amended, all and this would be postponing it to our next meeting.

Um all those in favor, please say aye.

Any abstentions motion passed unanimously.

I know you're excited to leave, but we have more business.

Can I also solicit a motion to postpone definitely item number one LR32.1.

Thank you.

committee is whether or not to postpone definitely item LR 32.017 as amended all and this would be postponing it to our next meeting um all those in favor please say aye aye any abstentions motion passed unanimously i know you're excited to leave but we have more business can i also solicit a motion to postpone definitely item number one l r 32.16 thank you in a second anybody wishing to seat the floor uh and with that um let's try it by voice vote as well so this is the motion to postpone definitely um item l r 32.016 to our subsequent meeting all those in favor aye all opposed nay we'll get that nay understood i hear the objection uh let's try by roll call um sorry one second no uh so this is a motion to postpone definitely item l r 32.016 representative receiving vice chair camperelli have you a vote yes representative blank yes representative boudreaux yes representative hughes no representative hyatt no representative yes representative stone yes representative weinberg yes i'm a vote in favor that is five votes in two seven votes in favor uh two against the motion passes and the item is postponed uh having concluded the business of the committee do I have a motion to adjourn adjourned thank you I hear motion a second the committee is adjourned at 958 p.m april twenty eighth that'll point to six thank you very much everyone good night