Consider Revising the City Council Call for Review Process to Appeal Board and Commission Decisions by Requiring that Two, Rather Than Just One, City Council Members Initiate a Call for Review and State a Reason for the Appeal.  (Councilmember Ezzy Ashcraft)
Thank you, Ms.. Spencer. So I brought this call for review. If you've had a chance to read the staff report, I think it's fairly straightforward. A call for review by the C o. It's my counsel referral concerning the call for review process. Those words are just too similar in my mind anyway. My council referral asks that the council consider revising the City Council call for review process to appeal board and commission decisions by requiring that two rather than just one. City Council member members initiate a call for review and state a reason for that appeal. And just by way of brief background. Currently, a single council member can ask that a decision of a city border commission be appealed, and it's been taking place sometimes without even stating a reason to do so. Now there is always the appeal process that any member of the public can engage in, but that does require the payment of a monetary deposit to the city because there is a cost in additional staff time for preparing for this appeal process. The financial requirement doesn't apply to council members, and my reason for bringing this is that I think it's always good to get a second opinion, if you will, just validating that, yeah, this is this is something that we need to look at as a council. You would have to get three votes to gain that majority to approve an appeal anyway. And it just might be that those two heads are better than one and might say, for instance, just taking the case of the most recent call for review appeal that we had at the last council meeting of a planning board decision that had been approved unanimously by the planning board, and it was called for review by one council member. And this was it involved a private private property owners in some work they were trying to do on their property. I asked them to go back and tell me how much did it cost you if you'd add up all your costs to prepare for the Planning Board's call for review? Because the planning board did say, we want more information on this particular item that had to do with making sure that heritage oak trees were preserved in this project where some work was being done in the proximity of their roots. That was, I think, well and good. And it was a very detailed, well documented appeal and response to it. Those homeowners spent $28,000 getting their experts together, getting engineers, analysis, landscape architects, arborists. They have engaged an attorney, so they paid that and they got the approval. But then within the prescribed time period, this appeal was brought. They ended up spending another $4,500 just to prepare for the council. The appeal before the Council and the council upheld the planning board decision on a 4 to 1 vote. So this is money that these applicants are spending before they even get to the point of of doing the work. And I'm just concerned that we need to be mindful of the time and the cost to both members of the public, to our business community, and also staff time and expenses. So I think this is a reasonable approach, and I believe there's probably some public speakers on this item. Thank you. Did any other councilors want to speak at this time before I call the speakers? All right. There are six speakers on this one. If you'd like to speak on this item, please submit yourself. Kerry Thompson. Thomas Ellerby, then Janet Gibson. Hello again. As the Chairperson for the Government Relations and Economic Development Committee for the Chamber of the Chamber of Commerce, we felt that it was a really unfair burden that is placed on particularly the business, because that is generally the one area that seems to be called for review more often than on a residential basis. However, it's inconvenient for both residential and business people to have to go through this process. The costs are prohibitive, it adds. It delays projects. There is a fair process for going through all of these projects that people are given ample opportunity to speak at any one of the various planning board meetings, city council meetings. However, the process has to go through and to have them go back after everything is done and approved is just unfair and unnecessary. And I do like the idea of having a second pair of eyes, another thought process, and think that that should be a requirement. They're not happy. The city council is not having to bear that cost. So they're not really having to think about it like someone who a private citizen who is having to really weigh that budget item for themselves to, you know, call that project for review. If. The. Applicant has to go through all of that cost. That is also a deterrent to business. Businesses think, you know, they're not going to want to come and do business with the city if they're afraid that they're going to have to then have this project called for review. Their investors are not going to want to invest in a project, and it's just not a good use of time, of staff's time of the council's time. I mean, there are a lot of other important things that they could be doing. So I urge you to approve Council Member Ashcroft's call for a review referral. And thank you for your time. Thank you. Thomas LV. Good evening. At the last council meeting, my wife and I were called to defend a project that we have trouble with St Charles Street. We own that property and the call was made in spite of having. A unanimous approval by the planning board. Having four or five months of vetting being done. By the planning staff. Just to give you a little bit about my background, I'm a retired executive. One of a three person council that was responsible for $6 billion business with $24 million overall business. My responsibility is worldwide. I understand what the decision means and the impact that it has, and I don't feel that as I work tonight. The due diligence you gave to everything that you review tonight was applied to me with regard to my project. A simple phone call to any member of the body representing the planning board or the staff would reveal that the city arborist as well had approved a plan that was revealed to our mayor who made the call for me during the during the session. The people that she made the call. On behalf of my neighbors, I'm sure they had an expectation that when they came here that they would receive a different outcome. That it would be repealed. But our mirror only represents 20% of what needs to be done to get it overturn it. Just based on my observations in the meeting, I didn't see where she made contact with any other council member. To have you understand why she had made that call. I think my wife and I have been injured. You talked about it financially. Of course that's a part of it. But this process has been tedious for us. And that call impacted us in a way that caused more mental anguish than I've suffered in a very long time. So I think what you're doing tonight is something that's necessary. We need to rein it in. We need to have. We need to have the same kind of due diligence applied to what happens to me and others in this community that you did when you looked at what has to happen with the homeless in the seniors community. Thank you. Janet Gibson. And Janet Gibson. And then Dorothy Freeman and then Gretchen Lebow. And Michael McDonough. So in Janet Gibson, I know all of you in just hearing this gentleman's comments, I am very sympathetic to that. I think that, however, my experience with the referral process is quite different, and I think that this was an unusual exception. I go back. Ten, 12 years on my street, on Morton Street, across from the Trinity Lutheran Church to the a small Victorian cottage that was there since it was kind of rundown when we moved in in 1973. But by the nineties and in year to probably 2000, they were the people had been there, sold it, and there was an owner who let it run down. It was a rental with several illegal apartments and the shingles were falling off the roof. And and he you know, he didn't fix it up. He just rented it. Navy was still here at that time. Well, eventually he wanted to tear it down and. And build a duplex. Yeah, we all know that tearing down Victorians is not too profitable because you can't build more than a duplex in Alameda. But it was a small house and he thought he could do it. And the neighbors on our street were just we have a lot of nice Victorians. Several have were torn down in the fifties and sixties and we have apartment houses but but it generally is a Victorian street. And so we, we got together and we went to the planning board and it wasn't planning board, it was the Historical Advisory Committee. And we presented our you know, we thought that this House had a lot of assets to it and help the neighborhood and could be restored. But they didn't they voted to were to let it be torn down. At that point. We were able to use the referral process as neighbors in Alameda to to have a second hearing. And it was at at that time that I became acquainted with the Alameda Victorian Society then and Chris Buckley and he did research on it and indeed it was a historical home. The bigger home next to it was the original home. This had been built, built for a family member. It was built by an architect that was famous. And anyway, the council voted to to change that decision. And and now it's it's it was purchased by a young man who's been working all these years and continues to and it looks quite nice now and will continue to even get better and better. It has been a real asset. That type of possibility won't be available to people who don't have the money to spend it. I think we're really talking. Finish up your comment. Yeah. That if you want to be responsible to citizens in Alameda, they need this process to be covered unencumbered. Dorothy Freeman. Good evening, Mayor Spencer. Council members and staff and public. I'm Dorothy Freeman. Some staff and business people have objected to the call for a review process as causing unnecessary delays and overload of staff. Time for business. The rules associated with the referral process are designed to keep action on the process short. Within ten days after the decision, another major objection about the referral process is from the Planning Board regarding council referrals for decisions the Planning Board has made. The public has a right to request a review without adding layers against them. When the 2100 Clement development was before the Planning Board, there was a very important issue for a homeowners association rule requiring garages to be used for parking and not filled up with storage. The city staff, the developer and the community all agreed on language that would be included in the homeowner's association rules. Parking in our neighborhood, as in all of Alameda, is difficult. So this rule was very important to the community. During the planning board meeting, when the rule was discussed. One planning board member remarked that she agreed or disagreed with the rule because she liked being able to use her garage for storage. There was no further discussion on the rule and it was, as it was known, the project had to come back to the planning board the next time 21 came before the Planning Board. The staff report still contained the recommendation to the homeowners association to require that garages be kept available to park the number of cars the garages are designed for. There was no discussion about the rule until the last 5 minutes when the planning board members were formulating their vote. Then a different planning board member stated that the proposed rule should be removed because it would be a first for Alameda as no present homeowner's associations in Alameda had that rule. At that time, it was too late for public comment or staff comments, and the text was removed from the highway rules. The community members requested a Karl Rove call for a review, but it was determined that a call for review was not necessary because the project had to come to City Council for approval and the Planning Board decision could be heard at that time. The council voted correctly to return the restrictions on parking and garages to the highway rules. There has been a lot of discussion about the time and effort that has to be has to be spent by the developers and the staff to call for a review. The community also spends time researching the information they bring to the council. Our community group spent the entire month of August researching, searching condo and town homeowners association rules. What we found out is all and I repeat all, condo and townhome owner association contracts contain restrictions on the use of garages for parking cars. This includes all the homeowners associations here in Alameda and in fact that planning board members should have and the planning board members should have been familiar with this, at least they should not be making decisions without knowing the rules. Thank you, Gretchen Lipow. Okay. I'm Gretchen Lipo. Welcome. You know, my team and I did some research on this, and I'm going to. And I we sent you a letter, and I'm going to just summarize it. We're in opposition to this referral, and one of our goals is to make city government open and responsive to our citizens as possible. Okay. Such a constriction of citizen access to the council should not be enacted unless there is clear and convincing evidence that supports the conclusion that the present procedure unduly burdens council and staff and has some other demonstrable, significant adverse impact on the city. Councilmember Ashcraft Primarily our primary argument is for requiring two council members to initiate a call for review. Is that an individual council member might feel pressure to accommodate the wishes of constituents regardless of the merits or cost and time burden. However, no data is presented to substantiate this claim. Our letter includes an analysis of eight matters which have been call for review from 2015 through the current date. Seven of the eight calls. For review were either high public interest items or matters that impacted a much broader sector of the community that the property that was the focus of the call. The high public interest items were Harbor Bay, Hotel, Park Street, shipping, container development, mixed use development at the corner of Webster and Taylor and the Harbor Bay Assisted Living Development . All four of these property projects were approved by the Planning Board. The calls for review resulted in three of these projects being rejected or amended by the council, with the fourth project being rejected by a regional agency, BCD. What our citizens should have free and easy access to the appeal process rather than requiring them to lobby multiple council members to call for review or pay the substantial fee required for a citizen initiated appeal. In these four instances, a fee of what 850 to $220 would have been required. So we're asking you to reject this referral. And I feel like I gave a little bit of that as I gave a speech about a year ago on the container thing where I said a committee of people in Alameda spent in the city spent about $100,000 on this job to come up with a. Plan for. The area that they were going to build these containers. That plan was didn't have anything to do with the proposal that finally came out. And so we said, wait a minute. You know, does the planning board know that the city had a committee that worked on this, came up with a plan? Oh, I don't think so. And so that particular project was rejected. Anyway, I just want to end by saying, you know, this is a time when we need to open up things and be much more user friendly to our citizens and not close the door on them. Thank you. Michael McDonough. Good evening, Madam Mayor and the rest of the council. I want to thank. I'm Michael McDonagh, president of the Alameda Chamber of Commerce. I'd like to thank Marilyn as the Ashcraft for bringing this as a referral. And this is an issue that we have great despair over. And if we want to have some some facts, since 2012, up to 2006, beginning of 2016, I believe there were something around six call for reviews between 2016 and I guess it was middle of 2015 and the end of 2016 there were almost a dozen. And it's interesting that some time ago this wasn't a problem, but now that it has become a problem, I'm glad that you brought this up because it's important to bring a referral. The council needs more than one person to bring a referral like this, is my understanding. I don't see why this calling for a review. Is that not true? Not true? Oh, that was my understanding. My fault, Valerie. I'm the only one who brought this one. Okay. All right, then. And I'm glad you brought up the dollar amount that the young man had last last council meeting. 32,000 or so to get that. But the business community has spent millions. And it really has hurt our reputation as a business. Business environment. This is something we're trying to achieve here in Alameda, especially at some of the areas, for instance, Alameda point where we want to attract business. But if the business can go through the process that's established through the planning board that is appointed by you guys and that to do their job and it's approved and then after spending millions more because they think they have an approval, have the rug jerked out from under them, just does not do well for our reputation. And, you know, there is a process, so all the public has to do is participate in the existing process, which is the planning board. And then when they do come to the council member council here for final approval, in many cases participate in that process. And if they don't if they're so interested in these projects, then there is a process for them to have easy access to show their opinions, not after the fact, when they don't like the decision. And if they are so interested in the decision, it should be possible that they would pay the money that's that's necessary to pay to do that. And it's been shown in the last year and a half, many times that that the one council member rule has been abused a bit and not necessarily by you guys, but it has been something that's been called to our attention. The business community doesn't like it and we would really support this. I would I would recommend three, but I will accept the two because I think that's better than one in this case. So we support this and urge you to pass it on behalf of the business community. Thank you. He's our last speaker on this item. And so if I can just reply to some of the comments and I appreciate the members of the public coming out and speaking. So in the examples that were cited by a couple of of our speakers about projects that were indeed called for review, and there was some modification made. There is still no proof that they couldn't have garnered a second opinion from a second council member, and it wouldn't have prevented that project from, you know, coming back to the council. But I'm just saying that sometimes I think even as elected officials, we need to police ourselves and that it is not unreasonable for us to just have the opportunity to stop and think of what all the implications are. And I think that this is a time when we're we're moving forward. We have, you know, hopefully we're attracting new business. We want to create jobs. And there are all kinds of reasons that someone might want a project called For Review. The addition of that second opinion and that the the person bringing or people bringing the appeal state the basis for that appeal, I think is just fair and reasonable. So those are my comments and I'm happy to hear from my colleague. I thought each one. Of. Them wrote me. Thank you, madam. I said a quick question of staff. So we did a referral on this last year and it's in the queue and, you know, kind of at the tail end of. Of the timeline. I mean, if we pass this, we would still have that referral. Come back with some other substantive reform ideas or. We have a referral that wasn't this specific for two. So we would and that ranks in the middle, um, priority of the council goal setting workshop. And so when we bring that back. The Council could add this as a part of that to say look at the referral process, but also specifically look at this request. And again, hypothetically, if we pass it, I mean, we get this is a change to the municipal code. That's where we're. Where we have that authority. It would require a change to the municipal code. So what you would be voting on now is basically what the city manager just explained. You would be telling staff to go back and look at modifying the municipal code to accommodate this, and I think it could be done in connection with staff's already work in progress on it . Meanwhile, we would have if hypothetically it's passed, it wouldn't be implemented until whenever that is on the schedule. So we could have council direction that we want to be able to call for review, but. It may take 6 to 10 months to implement. So. That may be something we should talk about. I mean, I am kind of sympathetic to the fact that. Folks can have this happen with no skin in the game. I mean, the couple that had the. The garage. I mean, they had a lot of money invested and. I understand the business issue, too, but it, you know, kind of hit home to me more with a residents because residents don't have. Is unlimited amount of funds. As you know, we all like to think businesses have. And yet, you know, they had to expend their money. But those that wanted to call for review had no skin in the game. They could just all one of us, we could put it in there and then they get a free, free ticket. And if you get a free ticket, I mean, you're you may think twice about calling something if you have to pay $2,000. And I mean, I don't know how much I mean, I can't engage in a dialog with you, but I'm not quite sure how much you had to spend for that extra that extra time to bring it to the council. 3500 or 4500. So those that were against the project. Which, by the way. Passed 4 to 1. How to spend nothing. So I think there's an inequity there. And if just like I think I said this when we did the referral, the Supreme Court, it takes four of the judges nine. Now there's eight, but four to hear something because in their mind, if they're not going to overturn it, why should they spend their time? So in my mind, if we're not going to overturn something and you can't attract two people, I think you should have three. By the way, I agree with Mike, but Brown, if you can't. But. There should be some reasonable likelihood that the planning board is going to have their decision overturned. If there's no skin in the game and I mean, I had a problem with then I have a problem with it now and I'd like to see this referral get implemented sooner rather than later if it passes. And member matter. S.E.. I looked at this and I looked at it also in context of the. It's no longer a referral. It's counsel direction because it passed here and it's on the priority list. The first thing that caught me was the requirement that a stated reason for and justification for the review has to be included. And I think the one on the floor that I saw in the oak tree situation is that that wasn't there. That being said, some of the other calls for review did have the justification, but it was hit and miss. And I think that needs to be tightened up and I think we have the opportunity to do that when the priority. The priority set brings that ordinance back here as far as having two members. It means that and this is I don't agree with that. I think any appointed body, there has to be an appeal, a mechanism to appeal to the elected body and there has to be a ability to do that. That's not cost contained. And I think in the act of going to another council member to lobby that council member to get your review on the council. I think what causes the problem or the appearance of problem, because we're going to sit as a quasi judicial body when the matter comes to review a planning board decision here. And we have very strict guidance from our training from the city attorney that we have to be careful not to prejudge evidence that comes during that review . And I think I'd rather preserve that and continue having the ability to have one council member call something for review. And then when the comment was made, well, it should be three. Well, if it's three, it's going to be a council meeting and we're going to do it anyway. And it's already time metered and it's ten, ten days. It has to be within ten days of the decision is when the review has to happen just like the appeal and as far as. I think we need to do a really good job in letting people know the entire process because I heard comments that, well, you should have participated in the process. While the process includes an appeal process and currently and includes a call for a review process. And that's the that's the way it works now. And that won't change. Even if it's one or two people, you'll still have to land that in your project that you you could have it either appealed to call for review. And if I could just respond to Mr. Rogers, his comments, particularly on the problem of the two council members prejudging an issue if that were the requirement. So currently on our council referral process, we could have two members bringing a council referral. In fact, the next one is. And then if you go back to the Supreme Court analogy that Council Member Oti offered, I am quite sure that if you looked at the history of the Supreme Court decisions, just because four justices voted to hear an item doesn't mean that all four of those voted to, you know, in a certain way, it's what you would be saying is, yeah, I think this deserves a second look. And it might be that it comes back and the second look yields a different result or it might yield. Again, I'll go back to the planning board review. I think it did make it a better process when it came back, but it doesn't mean we're prejudging. It just means that someone else thinks, yeah, this is worth taking a second look. And as far as making the appeal process financially available to our citizens, I quite strongly believe that if there were neighbors who came to a council member and said, Hey, we're really opposed to this project, it's been approved in our neighborhood, but we don't have the wherewithal to get that $750 appeal fee. What can we do that a council member could recruit a second council member, assuming it wasn't just something that was really just arbitrary and capricious. So I think those are certainly reasonable questions to raise. I think they have reasonable answers. Thank you. Thank you, vice mayor. You know, I think that there's a lot of presumption that that either you have to, you know, get another council member on board or speak to another council member. And that that's some sort of extreme exercise. You know, we. Presumably if it's going to council. We do hear from all of you who are concerned when it is agenda ized as it when it is brought for review. And so for the projects that like the one at the last meeting, you know, I heard both from both sides prior to that meeting. And I and and so I don't think it's a huge lift to send the same requests to multiple council members. And that's something that's fully within, you know, your ability and certainly could be done via email or phone call doesn't necessarily mean a face to face meeting with every council member. But as part of the due diligence, when when you are involved in a project or you oppose a project and have strong feelings about it, it's certainly an option to go to the council. And I think that to dismiss that as saying it's really cumbersome to do to talk to two council members and get support, I just don't see that because that happens leading up to the meeting. And I think ultimately at the end of the day, we're still having the process it still allows for and in fact, I think it helps to to reach out to the council members. You going to reach out to them at the meeting, reaching, you know, presumably you've been paying attention to the project. If you've got feelings, you know, strong feelings about it. I don't think it's you know, like I said, I don't think it's cumbersome to reach out for the call for a review. And I think, frankly, it'll strengthen the cases that we do here because somebody has to make a decision to call for a review. And I don't think when we look at whether or not you're adjudicating ahead of time, certainly the person making the decision to call for a review has based that on something, whether it's an ask or they disagree with the the factors that were looked at by the board in making the decision. So I think, you know, for that reason, I'm inclined to support the change just because I think it's in line with everything that we're looking to achieve. And it's it's certainly feasible. And I think it's going to make our it's going to strengthen our process in terms of the cases and making sure that there's merit to them and that there really is something that we're looking for. So I will not be supporting this. I think it is important to look at the facts. In 2015, there were four or five, depending upon how you count. It calls for review by council. In the entire year. In 2016, there were four calls for review. At this point, there has been one call for review in 2017. And so you think or calls for review in one year, the planning board makes a minimum and I don't know how many reviewable decisions they make in a year, but they meet 22 times a year, twice a month. And I would just say, okay, let's say they only make two reviewable decisions a year and that's 44 decisions that they make a year. Four out of that would be approximately 10% of the cases. The decisions at a minimum, I mean, it could actually be a much smaller percentage than that. And I am concerned about the Brown Act. We are allowed to only speak with one other council member before something is called for review. And then when you look at the items that are have that let's look at some of these items. And I appreciate I'm going to say assets, research and efforts in regards to speaking in regards to the facts of the decision in regards to the cell phone towers, the school district had taken action to remove those. That was that. Many people in our community think that it is not safe to have cell phone towers on top of our apartment buildings. And that was something that I think was worthy for council to weigh in on. I also think it's important to take note planning board members are appointed by council. They are not elected by the people and council does not speak. It does not go to planning board meetings and weigh in on the issues. There are opportunity to weigh in on decisions of planning board is to call it for review. That is the process. And in regards to, for instance, the due diligence of the only way for council to exercise due diligence is actually to have it come to council. That is where we get to ask our questions and weigh in. We do not do that at the planning board meeting, so it must come to council for us to exercise our due diligence that that is the place where it takes place. But if you look at the cell phone towers, I think it was a legitimate concern for council to weigh in on that issue. When you look at the hotel at Harbor Bay, I call that for review. And and yes, I a council level. It failed. It was a there was a compromise that I would actually say it did not fail. There were accommodate changes that were made in the parking on the Harbor Bay at this level. And in fact, it was member Odie that made the motion that made those changes. Now, if I had had to reach out to say that, say, I would have thought, okay, which one council member am I going to choose to work with on this? Then maybe I would have chosen a different council member when in fact it was member that came up with, I think, a legitimate solution of how. To do it. I thought he would have done that. And. I don't think. Yes. Remark. No. No. Yeah. So we have to guess which is the one. And he, I think he made a good suggestion and that's where we went forward however and I and I did not support that though it was a leave a 3 to 1 vote, one member had to recuse himself, member matter, S.E. And then when that project went to Bccdc recently, again, we had many community members attend those hearings and Bccdc shut it down. So to me that actually validates our concerns that it was within the 100 feet of the bay and that it was not a good project and that's rare for B DC to shut it down. So I think that does mean something. The Shipping Containers project that was also called for review, that was on 1926 Park Street. And in fact our council voted to not allow that project to proceed. So again, by having it come here and that was brought by a member of De SOG, one member. Then we weighed in as a council and we, we sent it back and it had to completely modify the use permit member already. And I brought regards to 1716 Webster so that when there were two of us that would have been allowed, but I again I would not have known. Oh member Oh, you're the one out of all of us that I should be asking about moving forward. And that is because we can only speak with one. So. To me that that is the problem we lost and everything is correct. We failed on that one. But but but again, to me, it was worthy to have it come here. Okay. And then the other, the assisted living project that when I called for review and it was rejected by council, three council members agreed. And, and also when we call something for review. I do attend as many planning board meetings as possible. However, we do not get into the depth and detail of any project that we do when it comes to council. And the council level is where we really then spend time. Exam. That's where we do our due diligence here. And on that project it did fail. And then, of course, there's the structure recently at Saint Charles that came up that I brought. I called for review and that one also failed. However, when you look back at all of them for a year has been the pattern, which is not that many. My opinion, and when you look at each one, I would think at least half of them have either been have been modified in some manner by council when they come here. And I think that really is council's job. We are the elected officials. We are exercising our due diligence when we examine projects and I don't think it is done haphazardly. I did receive an email suggesting that these calls for review, the term haphazard was used. And I and I don't think that that's appropriate. I think that each of us, before we call anything for a review, we do take it seriously. And we are actually and there was also a suggestion that by calling something for review, you are reducing transparency in the process, which to me is absolutely the opposite. We are there are many more people overall that attend council meetings. And in fact, I was on a bus going to to Sacramento today and I asked the gentleman who was very informed if he could name the planning board members and no, he could not. He can name every council member. So in regards to who does our who do our residents expect to make the decisions? Who do they know? Who do they have the relationships with? It's council. And as much as I appreciate the work of the planning board, I do think it is important for council to protect this ability for us to do our job and be accountable to the people. So I will not be supporting this. Thank you, Mary Spencer. And so I just want to reiterate for my colleagues in the audience that I'm not suggesting that we eliminate the appeal process. I'm just suggesting that we put a little more thought and deliberation into it and also that we be mindful that there is a cost. Nothing is free. We talk about wanting a free shuttle around the island. It's a great idea and a number of us are scrambling to figure out how to pay for that free shuttle. It was interesting to hear the example of the cell phone towers decision cited as an example, because in that particular case, it is the state of California that promulgates the regulations that apply to the placement of cell phone towers. And the planning director had certainly made that very clear, that the city city law does not. It was the word trap, but it's a local law. A local law doesn't overcome city law. We were bound by state of California regulations. So it was an exercise in a lot of time spent. A lot of speakers came up and voiced their opinions. At the end of the day, there was nothing the council could have done. And so might that have been a case where that second opinion would have said, you know, we've got a lot of items and issues before this council. Let's make sure that what we're doing really counts is really meaningful and within our within our ability to influence. So, again, I'm not saying do away with it. I'm just saying make it fairer all around. And in regards to the cell phone towers, we gave direction of prioritizing location so that when cell phone companies want to add them within the city that we have, prioritize what we think are safer, better places than on top of apartment buildings, for instance. So we did give direction to staff that they were able to use moving. Forward in. A progress that. Situation because we realized we can give direction without calling an item for appeal. But it has to be in front of us. So that's how that item came. In many ways to that issue in front of us. But anyway, I think we've probably said all we need to say. Does anyone else want to comment? Okay with that? Well, I already have a motion. I will make a motion that this council will consider revising. The city council call for a review process to appeal boarding commission decisions by requiring that two rather than just one, city council members initiate a call for review and state reason for the appeal. You have a second? I guess I'll second it then. All those in favor. I. Oppose. No. Oppose. Motion carries 3 to 2. Next Item nine be. Consider adoption resolution in support of a Congressional investigation regarding the impeachment of President Donald Trump. This item was put on the agenda at the request of Vice Mayor Vella and Council member Odie.