A bill for an ordinance submitting to a vote of the qualified and registered electors of the City and County of Denver at a special municipal election to be held in conjunction with the coordinated election of November 3, 2020, a proposed amendment to the Charter of the City and County of Denver to create a nominating commission for the City Attorney. Creates a provision in Charter for a nominating commission for the City Attorney. Councilmember CdeBaca approved direct filing this item on 8-13-20.
Thank you, Councilman Ortega. All right. See no other questions on Council Bill 759. We're going to move ahead. The next item up is Council Bill 836. Councilman Clark, will you please put Council Bill 836 on the floor for publishing? Yes, Madam President. I move. That counts. 836 be ordered published. Thank you. It has been moved. And can I get a second? Can. Thank you. Council member say the baka your motion to amend. The spill. There was some confusion about potential conflicts with another bill that we sent to the ballot. And I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew we were. These are designed to work together. They're not designed to conflict with each other. And so there is a section in, I believe it's sea for where there are 30 days identified between the time of a vacation of the city attorney, city attorney seat and the task of nominating a minimum of three individuals to the mayor for appointment. And I would like to amend that to be within a reasonable time to pair with Councilwoman Sawyer's bill that we got on the ballot. And there are that one sentence later. There's also a point where that 30 day time frame is alluded to. And I'd like to also change that to within a reasonable time. And. Q Councilwoman, do you have the exact language that we need read into the record if you want to go ahead and read that in? That would be great. Okay. It is under C one and second sentence. This list, the list shall be submitted within a reasonable time after the removal, death, retirement, tender, or resignation of the city attorney. If the Mayor shall fail to make appointment from such list within the 15 days from from the time it is submitted to the Mayor, the appointment shall be made by the City Council from the same list within the next 15 days. Okay. Thank you. I want to check with our council secretary. That's not exactly what I'm seeing up on the Strip. So I just want to make sure that we're at the right place. I don't see it in my script. Let me check. Yeah, we do want that. Informal motion on the floor, please. Got it. I move that council bill 20 dash 0836 be amended in the following particulars on page two line ten strike. The list shall be submitted not later than 30 days, and replaced with the list shall be submitted within a reasonable time and timely manner after the removal, death, retirement, or tender of resignation of the city attorney . Line 11. Strike after the removal. Death. Retirement. Tender of resignation of the city attorney. Line 18. If that strike if the and replace with if the nomination commission has not presented its nominations under this subsection to the mayor in a reasonable and timely manner, the mayor may thereafter fill such vacancy on the mayor's own motion, applying the standard set forth in this subsection and strike lines 19 through 21. Right on. Thank you. It has been moved. May we get a second, please? I can. Thank you. Questions or comments by members of Council on the Amendment? Councilwoman CdeBaca. Sorry. I think I did my comments first. Oh, okay. We got we got that. So the purpose of the amendment is to eliminate the rigid deadline and allow for future flexibility by submitting potential nominees to the mayor. Councilman Sawyer, you're up for a question. Thanks. I just wanted to check with the city attorney's office regarding the phrasing of the council approval of mayoral appointees. Bill says, I can't remember the exact wording, but I believe it is appointed by and nominated and appointed by the mayor and approved by council. So I just want to double check with the city attorney's office that that that this doesn't. Can you just can we just talk really quickly about the dovetailing of these two to ensure how that works together? They might be getting upgraded. Yeah, I think we're getting them on. All right. We have Jonathan Griffin up to answer. You need to mute yourself, Jennifer. Huh? There you go. There is no video either. I just practiced all this so I would be ready to go. So we do not believe that there would be a direct conflict between these two bills. I was pointing out initially that we are on the amendment still not the bill itself. So but just to expedite, just to say, because this nomination commission creates a list of nominees for the mayor to choose from, and then the mayor of Portland nominates and appoints from that list that there is not a direct conflict between these two. Okay. And John, can you just really quickly on this amendment, this then clears up any conflict that there is between the two that initially proposed wording and the wording for the for what has already been referred on the council approval of mayoral appointees. Yes. Yes, absolutely. And so the bill that was passed by city council regarding council appointments or council consent to appointments uses this reasonable time frame. So this also matches that. Well, okay, so we can talk about the whole bill later. But I just wanted to reconfirm on that one right now for the. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Madam President. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman. See no other questions from council members. Madam Secretary, roll call on the amendment for 836, please. CdeBaca, I. CLARKE All right. Flynn Oh. Herndon? No. Hence I. Cashman. I can h i. Ortega i. Sandoval. I. Sawyer. I. Torres. I. Black. Hi. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results. Two nays. 11. 11 eyes. The amendment to council Bill 836 has passed. Councilmember Clark, we need a new motion to order published. Yes. Madam President, I move that council bill 836 be ordered as amended. Thank you. It has been moved. May we get a second? Second. Thank you. Comments by members of Council on Council Bill 836 Council Member Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. I don't believe the amendment fixes the ultimate conflict here. The sponsor of this had agreed to the council approval of the mayoral appointments, and that should have settled the matter. What this does is it introduces, frankly, a rather goofy and ill advised process for selecting the city attorney. It puts it in the hands of people outside the city family. When I go to select a lawyer for my personal interests, or when the city selects a lawyer to represent its corporate interests there, it's there's no reason to go to an outside group to say, who should we hire? This should be a choice of the counsel, the administration, the auditor and the clerk, the independent agencies that are represented by the city attorney who is now selected only by the mayor. If were I to craft an amendment to the charter that would solve this problem, I think that Councilwoman Ortega will I will agree with this. We should have an amendment in the charter that permits the city council to hire its own separate legal counsel, separate from the city attorney's office. The second level of of approaching this issue should be that when the mayor selects the city attorney candidate for that the cabinet, that that position would be selected by a committee, a screening committee that consists of the mayor. The President of Council with the advice and consent and consultation of the body, the auditor and the clerk. But farming this out to an outside committee of just anybody is frankly goofy and ill advised. And and the final problem with this, of course, is that this had been scheduled for committee twice. It should have been hashed out in committee. But the sponsor pulled it from the agenda and it had never been discussed in committee. And here we are making sausage at the last minute. This is not how we amend the charter. There is no urgency to this. The city attorney right now, as far as we know, isn't going anywhere for two years perhaps. And this is something that can be more intentionally planned and discussed over the next year. There's a ballot next year that this could go on. And frankly, I would push to have the city council, the auditor and the mayor join in the selection of the city attorney and have a stake in that. Or, as Councilwoman Ortega has talked about for years, have the city council with its own with its own attorney and council. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. We've got Councilman Herndon up next and then I see other hands raised in the queue. Go ahead. Councilman Herndon impressing with the members who signed up to speak. I would refer to him. I'll be voting no on this. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilman Black. Thank you, Madam President. This was discussed at the December nine Charter Review Committee, and I went back and watched the committee. And I was very intrigued by the idea of the council being involved in selecting the city attorney, because we are the clients of the city attorney and I still really like that idea and I'd like to spend some more time talking about it and thinking about it. Unfortunately, we do have a process and we set up the Charter Review Committee and the next step was to come to finance and governance. This was scheduled for July 21st and then was canceled. And I really believe that amending the charter is a pretty weighty matter and we should follow the process. We should fully understand items before we send them on to the voters. I feel like we owe it to our constituents and to the general public that we follow the process and make sure we've gotten an analysis and we've gotten feedback from the community. So I'm not going to be supporting it tonight, but I'm very open to future discussions about this. And I agree with what Councilman Flynn said, that we're probably not going to have a vacancy in this job any time soon. So that that'll give us the time we need to have a more thorough discussion of it. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Sawyer. Thank you, Madam President. I think based on the fact that I was the one who referred the council approval of mayoral appointees Bill and did all of the research on it, I am the most supportive person of this, you know, of any council member out there. I, I think 100% that this is something we need to discuss further. And when I did the research for the Appointments Bill, I know that there are other strong mayors, cities out there who have a nominating committees for a number of other positions. I don't know the specifics of those because I wasn't doing the research on specifically on the nominating commission. So I would but I would like to know more. And I think those are the kinds of questions that I have that I would have asked had this gone to committee. And I would like to know what has worked in other cities? Why? Who sits on those boards? Why those people sit on those boards? What other what unintended consequences have come because of the people who sit on those boards? What best practices have other cities who use nominating commissions, you know, have come? Why? You know, there I have a lot of questions that I think need to be answered when we are talking about changing the charter of the city and county of Denver, the single most important governing document we have in our city, we can't do it lightly. And even though we want immediate action and I mean, I get it because I am a an imperfect action is always better than perfect inaction person myself. That is a mantra I live by. I think that sometimes, as frustrating as it might be and as desperately as we might want to move quickly, it is better to slow down and be more thoughtful about how we approach this. And this is one of those situations because we don't want to change the charter of the city and county of Denver lately. And I see that having spent hundreds of hours on research and conversation with my mayoral appointments, charter referral and and when we got to the end of that process, it went through on consent because even the, the, the council members who are not going to sit down and vote for it on their own ballots at the end of the day agreed that that enough conversation and enough research had been done, that the people of the city of Denver deserved to sit down and be able to vote on it because it was researched enough and had had enough conversation and enough questions and had gone through the process. So I think as much as I do support this and as much as I do believe that there is a conversation that needs to happen here, the conversation hasn't been had yet and so it needs to be had. And so I will not be supporting this tonight, but I absolutely support this moving forward. And I look forward to having this conversation and hearing about research as it is done and and referring this to another ballot, because the people deserve to vote on this. And and so I look forward to doing this work. But tonight's not that night. Thank you. And. Q Councilman Hines. I think you've been a President while I respect our current city attorney. This is televised and recorded. After all, our last class had at least two clear examples of disagreement between the council and the Mayor. The examples made it clear that there are limitations to the current system, particularly when it comes to the council's legal representation. There was a sexting incident and there was the Great Hall Project where council wanted to retain its own council for analysis. And and so I see that there definitely is a limitation to the current current situation. I like the idea. And, and when last Thursday afternoon, Councilmember CdeBaca and I talked about this, I said, I like the idea of having someone that's 100% on state and city council side as opposed to someone who has to weigh or somehow be neutral. If if there is a great hall conversation or, you know. Impropriety conversation. And so, you know, I wonder I mean, just based on the some of the people comment to some of the people that I've already weighed in, I wonder if the body would support referring this to back to committee so that we can have a larger conversation and so that this this can move forward sooner rather than. Rather than kill it and and then redo this or restart the conversation at some point in the future. I don't know what. Madam President, if I should make a motion. But I'm happy to do that. We have a few more up in the queue and so maybe we'll get through them and then we we have that out there. You haven't officially made the motion yet, but we'll we'll entertain that. Councilman, say the block. I see you up in the queue. But because you're the sponsor of this, I'm going to go ahead to the other council members and we'll we'll let you circle up the group. So, councilwoman, can each. Thank you, Madam President. I believe that this is not quite the right proposal to solve the concerns. I actually don't think nominating committees are the right approach for this is an internal facing position. It's not an external facing position. You know, the Monitor, for example, has a nominating process in the city code for that because it's very accountable to the people. And the city attorney in this case mostly advises agencies. And so I did not go back like Councilman Black and watch the video, but I recall talking about the idea of a selection committee that council would participate in directly. I'm frankly not interested in having someone from the community who's not going to be working with this person day to day to be the one to select them. I believe that it's council ourselves who would want a seat at the table. So I believe there are multiple paths to getting there. That could be through an agreement with the administration. It could be through a charter amendment. I'm open to talking about ways to address the challenge, but for me, this is just not the right solution for this position. I just don't believe in nominating committee is the right approach for this position. I believe having the council in the clients, right. So the auditor and I in my in this case, I would say it's it's not quite the same list of people either that are in the nominating committee list. It's it's those independently elected agencies that that I think are the direct clients. So and I believe in terms of the monitor, that's a separate issue that requires separate discussion. So so I am very supportive of continuing conversations about the city attorney's selection. But in my opinion, I would not support re referring this to committee because this is not the right approach. I would support a start over where we go back to the conversation that we were having, where all those ideas get vetted and and the pros and cons get discussed. But of course, I will wait and see what the motion is. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman. Councilman Flynn. You kick your back up in the queue. Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to respond to Councilman Sawyer because I was the member she was talking about that had the questions about the council approval, and we had a full and robust discussion about that. I just want to tell her that I am going to vote yes on it. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Next up, we have Councilman Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. So I just want to remind you that we started the work of the Charter Review Committee last year to be geared up and to allow the opportunity for us to have the issues sort of vetted through the charter committee. And then we had a deadline of having them all done by. I can't even remember what that deadline is right now so that they could move through the Finance and Governance Committee, because that was the referring committee that would then move them to the full council. And what we were doing with all of the bills that were coming before us or the proposals was to either say, yes, they are answering all our questions or no, they're not. In some cases, some of the issues were not going to be solved through the charter. They were issues that could be done through through reviewing the I mean, through changes to the municipal code. And so a couple of them were referred back to the appropriate committee to deal with some of those issues. This particular issue ended up Councilwoman CdeBaca did bring the a couple of proposals to the Charter Review Committee, and this is one that was withdrawn because it got folded into the work of Councilwoman Sawyer's committee. And so, you know, we all learned last week that this bill got filed. I did have a conversation with Councilwoman CdeBaca about what this would do. I share some of the concerns that we have not really had the opportunity to thoroughly digest how how this would work and to understand how it works in other cities and where we could be even more successful in having something that gives us more voice. And I've been vocal going back to when I served as a district councilperson, really working to. Have Council, City Council have its own legal council. And that's where I started with with my original conversations about, you know, and this was on the heels of, you know, what we experienced with the Great Hall, where some of us pulled our resources, tried to make sure we had a thorough look at that contract and were slapped on the hands and told we couldn't do that, that we didn't have the authority to even use our own resources. And so that's part of why I brought my bill forward that allows us to hire professional services. And that will be before the the voters in November. So that in our day to day work, we will be able to hire the professional services that we need at any given time. And that does not mean we're hiring somebody to represent us. But if we happen to hire somebody that has a legal background but brings the expertize we need to help us in our work, whether it's doing investigations, whether it's looking at contracts and helping to, you know, ensure that we have crossed all the T's and dot at all the I's, like with the Great Hall contract that would allow us to do that. I really believe that this one needs further discussion so that we could have the ability to. Be able to clearly explain it all to the voters and make sure that it does exactly what we're wanting to do. So I would I would suggest that I don't know that somebody actually move this. Councilman Hines, I think you you talked about referring it back, but I would suggest that we look at the November 2021 ballot time frame and really give us the time to dove into this and be able to discuss it more thoroughly. So I supported the amendment, but I'm not supporting the bill moving forward tonight because of those concerns. Thank you, Councilman. And just to clarify, this has been moved and seconded. And a reminder that there's no way to re refer it and still make the deadlines if we referred it back to committee. Just wanted to to put that out there, Councilwoman Torres. Thank you, Madam President. Just hearing, I think, some of the commentary and. Interest that some of my. Colleagues have, I'm actually also a I don't feel like. There's a requirement, like we're not. Pressured into. Making sure that this gets on the November ballot. Explicitly, I think there are future ballots that we can consider because I would want to weigh. Councilwoman Ortega's initiative around this one and whether or not either or both or if there's some contradiction between the two, because I don't want to lose sight of the one that Councilman Ortega has been has been interested in and working on. So because of that, I think I'll also be voting. No on this one, but wanting to see it raised up again. Before the spring election. Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman CdeBaca. Thank you, Madam President. So it's clear that many of you have not actually read this because it does many of the things that you all just asked for, specifically, Councilman Flynn. It does not choose an outside body. The point of this, it's a seven member commission. All of the. Members on this commission are designed. It's designed to have those independently elected, also represented by the city attorney bodies at the table. So there are there is an appointment by the mayor or himself. The and this flexibility was asked for. That's why it doesn't say the mayor. But one member appointed by the mayor, one member appointed by the clerk and recorder, one by the auditor, one to by the city council and two by the independent monitor. This is more important now than it ever has been before, because we have a situation where you have a city attorney that represents the cops, the mayor, city council and the independent monitor. For example, right now we have a situation and I would have loved to bring her on. I do have a witness available on the call if possible, but we have somebody who has direct experience having castigated cases and then got punished for those investigations. And so we have no neutrality in the way that we're being represented as independently elected bodies and separate but equal branches of government. We have no transparency in how decisions are being made, and there are hundreds of investigations that are happening right now of police brutality and abuse. We do not have a system to deal with this. I would love to see our city attorney appointed by council or anybody else but the executive branch, but that's right. Now that's not the reality. And so what this was trying to do was at least give us input at the front end. Debbie's is here. I mean, Councilwoman Ortega's is hiring outside extra counsel in addition to our city attorney. If we if we were to to do that, it's we still have to take the advice of our city attorney. And this panel makes the most sense, because the city attorney doesn't just represent city council. It doesn't just represent the mayor. It represents all of us the clerk, the auditor, the independent monitor. And so that is why we should have a panel. It's not a unique thing. This is actually how we do our judicial appointments in the city of Denver. And so there is a model that we already use in our attempts to get a neutral judge appointed to serve the citizens of Denver. The one thing the one seat that might allow an outsider is the two appointed by the independent monitor. In theory, it would be the monitor, plus someone from the Citizen Oversight Board. And while I understand that the city attorney's job is to represent the agencies within the city, there is also a perception of a duty to the citizens of Denver. And so this creates a seat at the table for all of the people who are represented by the city attorney. It doesn't take away the mayor's appointment power. It doesn't give city council any appointment power. This simply gives us a seat at the table in vetting the nominees that go to the mayor for him to choose from , and then hopefully for us to confirm if Councilwoman Sawyer's bill passes. This is not complicated. This does not interfere with anything. This is actually, in a lot of ways, what we do with our are searches for a chief of police, our search for the sheriff. We create these ad hoc community groups. But because we because we think that they are the ones who are the stakeholders that should be at that table. There are no other people who should be the stakeholders besides the seven that are here. And I moved to this conclusion from an original space of wanting an elected city attorney because other cities have elected city attorneys. And we talked about this in charter committee, and I integrated all of the feedback that you provided, including yours, Councilman Flynn. And that is what is should be in front of you. But it's clear to me that it hasn't been read, and I'm still asking for this to be put forward. If it goes back to committee, it won't make the ballot. And I just think that's a disservice to the city right now. We're telling them that they don't deserve to. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. Councilwoman, I did read it and there was plenty of opportunity to discuss this at the two meetings of Fingers Committee before you pulled them off the agenda and at the three appointments that you and I had to discuss this the last one today that got canceled an hour before we were going to meet . I did read it. It doesn't say that the nominating committee is consists of the clients. We are the clients. It says that we appoint somebody and those are outsiders. The a city attorney is not a neutral party. The city attorney is our legal counsel and we rely on them for advice. This whole structure makes sense when we're selecting, as you said, a police chief or a sheriff or if the manager of public works. We would want a selection committee consisting of people with backgrounds in street maintenance, in mobility and bicycle infrastructure, things like that. That would make sense. But when we're hiring a lawyer, I don't form that out. And there's nothing in your language, which I did read, that says that you have to appoint people who are with your agency, like would we appoint the president of the council? That would make more sense. And in fact, that's what I would advocate as one of the two alternatives to this, that the city attorney only those candidates are selected by president of council auditor, clerk and mayor and that and then we approve them through councilwoman Sawyers amendment should have passed but the way it's set up here I did read I understood it. It came to Councilwoman Ortega's committee in December. And we haven't heard of people that since, until it got a direct file. And that's just not that's just not fair to the to the citizens of Denver to do it that way. Thank. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Ortega. The only thing I want to add here is that there are so many different areas that the city attorney is responsible for looking at. Yes, a lot of the claims that come to our safety department end up, you know, being reviewed by the city attorney and many of those end up, you know, before us or for settling some of those. But the contracting process is one that is still, I think, warrants some major issues of changes. I work with a a small nonprofit in trying to get a small $50,000 contract that took four months, which is ridiculous. And as we're talking about having a we roll out grants to, you know, small organizations in our community. Many of them don't have the the you know, the the technical capacity to deal with something that just drags out that long. So we've got the issue with labor disputes that happen with some of our employees. That's that's part of the process. So it's far more broad and engaging than just interface with our our units of safety. And that's where for me, I want to see, you know, how we can loop the conversation in to deal with a lot of those other issues and categories. And if you guys remember, some of you were on the council when we were asked to vote to forego one week of our review of of the bills and do them only on one reading instead of two readings, which we used to have. And that was to make the contracting process quicker. It still takes the same amount of time with the agencies. It just shortchanged city council and the amount of time we actually have to look at the bills. And as you know, many of us spend the weekend looking at things that get filed because it's all too often. And Councilman Flynn and I have talked about this and have been working on trying to ensure that we have the contracts actually come to committee so we can see the details of what we're voting on before they move to the floor of council. And the clock starts ticking at the time they get filed, not when they bring us the contracts to committee. So it's all those kinds of things that I think need to be folded into that conversation. And that's part of why I would like us to have the time to really be able to have a much more thorough conversation about this. So that's why I'm going to be voting no to that. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. And I'm going to go ahead and weigh in and then we can bring in Councilwoman CdeBaca back up. Anybody who knows me knows that I like to have all my information in front of me. I like to have time to look through it. I want to always ensure that the constituency that I represent has time to thoroughly understand what this really means. And although on first blush, it looks simple, I don't want to disrespect my community. I don't want to do something out of bounds when I am their elected official. And even if I personally feel like this makes good sense, they deserve to have that voice and that saying it and so wanting to honor that and to as well with it and let Councilwoman CdeBaca come back up. And then we need to determine if we're going to go ahead and vote on this as it stands or if, Councilman Hines, we want to entertain a referral back to committee, but knowing that it will not make the the ballot deadline. If we do that. Councilman CdeBaca, you're back up. Thank you, Madam President. Just wanted to again address the fact that this followed the process that was set out for it. Of course, you haven't heard a peep since December about it. There are kind of been a couple of things that have been at the forefront of our jobs lately. And so it's not it's not that anything was being hidden from anyone. It's not that anything new pops up. It's the same it's the same thing we were proposing in December. And the fact that this committee thing structure keeps getting weaponized and it's not a solid, solidified process. It's not spelled out anywhere. It's not required. It is problematic to me because we are supposed to be workshopping things. I have been in committees where I have asked specifically those who do not agree with the wording, how would they workshop it, how would they make it different? And I have been denied any support. And so here we are today. Councilman Flynn has an issue that could be amended by striking out two words and putting a semicolon. And that is what we're that is where we're at. You have we have council members who have said over and over that the stakeholders represented by the city attorney should be the ones to appoint. It says to members appointed by the city council to members from the city council. These amendments could be put forward. And it's not it's not acceptable to say that we didn't have time to see. This was filed on a Thursday. Everything that comes to us on Monday is typically filed on a Thursday. We have the weekend to review it. And so I don't I don't accept that this process can continue to be weaponized against me. I have an email right here. The day before I was supposed to be in committee, we canceled city council. We canceled it in operations that day. I asked specifically what was next for my committee, and I found out that night that we two of our proposals that were supposed to be in committee didn't even get included on the calendar because they didn't go through charter committee. When there are links to the videos of me presenting in charter committee. And then when we get rescheduled, we get rescheduled on the day that we don't have enough votes to get it out of committee. I asked on. The day before, I asked Kendra, I said, are we are we actually workshopping this proposal or are you setting it up? Her response to me at the very end of her email was, Our rules do not allow us to kill bills in committee. We can only move to the full council or delayed to a date certain. Should committee members vote down a bill we'd have to delay to a date certain. Alternatively, the sponsor could direct file. Let me know what you decide. If I know that I don't have the votes in committee to get my bill out of committee that day. Why would I waste anybody's time when I'm trying to have the same opportunity? Everybody on this body has had to have my bills heard in front of the body. It doesn't make any sense. And I'm sure on the next proposal you're going to have some way to weaponize the process. And that is that to me is unacceptable. We have direct filed multiple things over the last five months, multiple things with multiple with hundreds of millions of dollars associated with them, with huge impacts associated with them . And there's never been a problem. There's never been a question. And so vote how you wish. But it's becoming very apparent that the rules change for some council members and there is a double standard and it's very clear. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Flynn. Madam President, the only thing I want to say to the body is that no one is weaponizing process here. Every other charter amendment that is headed to the ballot went through that process very easily and followed the process. What we're seeing here is weaponising of chaos. Thank you. Councilwoman Black. Since I was mentioned. I just want to clarify that this was scheduled for July 21st to come to committee, and I received an email from a consultant to see the Baucus aide, Lisa Calderon, on June 20th that said, Thank you for your patience. After conversations with various stakeholders, Councilwoman CdeBaca has decided to pull her three proposals from the Fingers of Committee for tomorrow and instead will be direct final filing at a to be determined date in the next several weeks. We appreciate your consideration in scheduling accommodations, accommodations and and so I guess you were counting votes and didn't think you were going to have the votes. I don't I don't know if that would be true or not, but we weren't given the opportunity to spend that hour and a half. I actually made it a two and a half hour meeting to make sure we could talk about all three of your proposals. Everyone agreed to stay for an extra hour, and we really needed that time to discuss it. And when you refer to bills that we have direct filed in 2020, almost all of them were emergency measures related to COVID and getting money out into our community to help people during this crisis. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman CdeBaca, we'll have you back up and then we'll go ahead and do the vote. Unless, Councilman Hines, you have an appetite to refer, but knowing that it won't make the ballot deadline. Thank you, Madam President. I just want to point out that the four people that are in committee, Deby was out sick. The two people who called my bill out tonight, Flynn and Herndon. The person that told that chairs the committee and told me that my bills didn't even go through charter committee was you. How could I not be counting votes? How could I not understand that you were going to that you didn't even look at the fact that I presented this. So it's not okay to say that we passed all those or introduced all those other things on direct file because it's an emergency, is it not an emergency that we have hundreds of investigations of police brutality and excessive force and no neutral so far. That is an emergency. That is an emergency. And what we're telling the public is that it's not and that's not okay, because there are two emergencies right now. It is the racism in our city and what our police are doing. And it is culprit. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Hines. Thank you. Madam President, I would like to move to refer this to your committee. Second or. Okay. We have a motion and a second. To re refer Council Bill 836 to committee. Madam Secretary, roll call, please. Quick point of clarification, Madam President. Wasn't there already a motion on the floor for it? Do we need to do something with that motion to allow for this motion? I thought that we had to take action on that motion first. But no, we can have the Madam Secretary clarified, but they were telling me that we could proceed either direction. But we'll go ahead and let her chime in. Well, we do have the emotion on the floor to order published as amended. In the motion to refer is actually secondary. And so it will just take precedence. So we don't need to withdraw. We just needed the new motion made so we can go ahead and move forward if. That's what you would like to do. Okay. So we're going to re refer this to committee and. Madam Secretary, roll call comments. Yes. Oh, sorry. Sorry about that. We're getting a lot of text messaging then back and forth. So on process. So, Councilwoman, can each. Thank you, Madam President, I. I heard some openness to changes that could be made to this. So based on that information, I am comfortable I will be voting to re refer. If the bill were not to change significantly, I could not support it, but wanted to clarify that the dialog has influenced my decision to support the referral . Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Hines. Thank you, Madam President. So I'm going to, as I mentioned previously in the comments, there are good reasons for us to to change the way our process works now, as in the representation process to council members said about this point. While we have a process of going through committee, I mean, really what I want is I want to be transparent, accountable to the people who elected me actually, and to the people who didn't elect me. You know, I want to be transparent, accountable to everyone in District ten. And and so I think that through an abundance of caution and and ensuring that that we can have a conversation that potentially we can get additional votes, because it sounds pretty clear that this won't pass, as is that if we can if we can have a conversation to to quote Hamilton dying as a young man living charter to paraphrase that quote grandstanding is easy, easy. Governing is harder. I mean, I want to make sure that what we do is we have a conversation, we have the process, and we have an opportunity to get more of our colleagues on board. We we are a bi, we're a body, we're not individuals. So having one person continue to move the same thing forward without that isn't palatable to the rest of the council, just doesn't it's that that doesn't move things forward. So I hope that we can re refer so that we can get more people on board through maybe a couple of words and a semicolon or maybe a little bit more. I don't know. But, but I'm looking forward to creating change so that we do have better representation on council. Legal representation. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman. Councilman Clark. Thank you, Madam President. I just want to I think, you know, heard a lot of different concerns. I have concerns as well. And I don't think that the re referring this to committee is the right step. I'll be in no for that. There is nothing stopping us from writing a new bill and introducing it in committee any day. But I think that Councilman Ortega's point about looking at the calendar and the map to 2021, since this does not appear to be ready for 2020, would be important. And just referring it doesn't do that. And I think we should take a look at that and plot it out on its. Course for. 2021 appropriately. And so albeit a no for referral and no, I'm not. Should it should it not be referred? Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Clark. Councilman Flynn. I think that you're also a on referral. This needs to be scrapped and refiled as a bill that we can actually work with. Thank you. And that's an easy that's an easy process. Thank you, Councilman. All right. Looking for any other questions? All right, Madam Secretary, roll call on the referral, please. Hynes. All right. Cashman. Now can each. I. Ortega. I see the ball. I want Sawyer. I. Torres. I black. No. CdeBaca. I, Clark. Now. Fun. Now. Herndon now. Madam President? No. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results. Six days. Seven days. Six nays, seven I's Council Bill 836 will be referred to committee. Moving on to. Our next item. Is Council Bill 837. Councilmember Clark, will you please put Council Bill 837 on the floor for publishing?