Recommendation to receive a report on recommendations for streamlining City Council meetings; and Request City Attorney to prepare an ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code governing the City Council meetings according to staff recommendations and City Council direction. (Citywide)
Thank you. And now we're going to item 17. Report from City Manager Recommendation to receive a report on recommendations for streamlining city council meetings and request the city attorney to prepare an ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code governing the City Council meeting citywide. Thank you. The first customer she recommended do a staff report. First, do I have opening comments? You know, in the spirit of this item, I'm going to make some opening comments, but they're going to be extremely brief. And then after the report, I reserve the right to make a few comments after that. But those will also be brief. So what I'd just like to say is that this item first came to council on October 23rd. So I just went back to my newsletter that we wrote on the 19th, and I just like to read what we posted then. And this is October 19th, 2018. I have authored an agenda item asking the mayor, city manager, city clerk and city attorney for a report on ways to streamline and shorten our council meetings with a third of the meetings lasting more than six and a half hours this year. It is unfair to expect the public to wait through the proceedings to speak on important issues. I just want to re-emphasize that that has always been the intention of this item, is to give the public greater access to these meetings and have their voices heard and to try to curtail the long waits they have. So with that, thank you to staff for the report and look forward to hearing it. Thank you, Councilmember. With that, we'll go to the staff report. Thank you, Mr. Supernanny. And so we have a staff report. We will also try to be brief. We'll go through a little bit of the history and the outreach we did, and then I'll walk through the recommendations. So for the beginning, I'd like to introduce Stephanie Zavala, one of our management assistants who helped us with the research . Mayor and members of the City Council. On October. On October 23rd, 2018, Council requested a report back on best practices for streamlining council meetings. The City Manager's office, City Clerk's Office and City Attorney's Office conducted outreach and best practice research to prepare recommendations for a council consideration. The Council Meeting Streamlining Outreach Survey was launched on November 18th and it was open for a month to obtain feedback regarding current meeting structure. The the survey contained six questions one asking for feedback on streamlining the meetings, and five related to demographics. There were 218 responses to the survey. These two charts. Demonstrate the breakdowns of who responded to the survey by council, district and ages. Survey results from the public resulted in the following themes limit public comment during high attendance meetings. Limit Councilmember discussion. Limit repetition of praise and agreement between council members. Adhere to agenda order. Establish time limits for agenda items. Limit presentation. Slash ceremonies at the beginning of meetings. Publish hidden agendas and estimated times for each meeting at at least a week in advance. The city clerk's office also reviewed all city council meetings in 2018. Out of 35 total meetings, 12 meetings lasted over 5 hours. For each of these meetings that went over 5 hours, they found that public comment took less time than council and staff time. In addition to the survey staff also reached out to specifically the ten largest cities in California to find best practices for council meetings. The city clerk's office reached out to other Southern California cities to see if they had undertaken any streamlining efforts for their council meetings. From this outreach and research, the this presentation contains ten recommendations for immediate implementation, three recommendations for future implementation, and five options considered but not recommended. Thank you, Stephanie. So I will walk through a little bit of the recommendations that we came up with. But before I start, I just would like to say that we were really looking for a direction tonight. We came up with some ideas and concepts. These are really your rules. So as a body you really need to decide what you're comfortable with doing what you would like to change. There may be other things that you're interested in, or some of these that you believe are inappropriate and just want to say these are ideas for debate and discussion. So the first one we came up with was just to continue to encourage the city council to reach out to staff prior to the council meetings. Any questions that we can help answer before the meeting? And we always are willing and able to do that to help you make an informed decision when you get to the council floor. Second, we'd like to suggest that we set schedule time and time limits for ceremonies and presentations. We often have the public come and that means a whole lot to them to come and be able to present to you or be honored by you. And so having a set time to conduct those presentations would provide some structure. And we we recommend setting a limit of about 5 minutes per presentation so that we normally have about two or three of those. And it would really be a structured part of our agenda. And we'd like to the city clerk to help keep us all on schedule by creating a timer for presentations to keep that on track. We also recommend that when we do get those meetings where we get lots of speakers on an individual item, that we basically continue the practice that you've put in place over the last year , which we think is working very well. Essentially, we would codify that when there is more than ten speakers identified for a specific issue, that the allocated time drops down to 90 seconds for everybody. We would then formalize this practice in the code. But of course, with exemptions for language access and ADA exceptions. We continue to encourage use of the consent calendar. If you've noticed, over the last year we have been putting more items on the consent calendar and I think that's been going pretty smoothly. We'd even look to do more as it makes sense. And those would be things like grant applications, contracts, receiving file items. And of course at any time if you think that needs to be on the regular agenda, any council member can pull those for discussion. Number five for content calendar. We'd really like to get those done before 630 as a matter of practice. Those are fairly routine items. I'd also like to say that often those are the items that we have some of the junior staff here who are there to answer questions and a lot of them are on overtime. So we'd like to have them if they need to be. Give you some information. Do that by 630. You can this item, you would still be able to do consent any time you'd want to if you needed a push it back. But we would just release the staff after 630 and then any items that we couldn't answer, we would just hold those over to the next council meeting. Number six. Where possible, we'd suggest keeping to the posted agenda order. But we know that that a lot of times you'll have different groups come up and that we do need to be flexible. So we're not saying not to be flexible, but where we can try to create some predictability. And part of that pairs with the idea of times certain. So where we know we're going to have big groups try to set a time certain so that that group can prepare and the groups before them know to be able to get there either before or after for their item. Number seven, we are suggesting kind of helping the council keep track of the discussion and creating 30 minute timer after city council or after the the public have spoken that we just create a timer for ourselves. And then at 30 minutes, basically the clerk would remind us and say to the council, would you like us to continue debate? Would you like to vote or would you like to table this and move on so you could continue debate and continue debate. But I think this would help us create some sense of, you know, that we've discussed for 30 minutes and let you come to a decision point on that. Number eight, we have a number of city council committees. When we do have items that are really lengthy, we expect lots of debate. We would encourage sending those items to committee. They can be heard in committee and we can get a lot of that debate at a committee level. Sometimes those meetings are even at times where the public can attend. That's not a normal Tuesday night. And then when it would come back, if we already had that opportunity for a lot of debate, we would be looking at a lower amount of debate level. So maybe a minute if it had already been hurting committee and is just being reheard at the council level for item nine. I want to take it back to the supplemental agenda and when it was created, this council created the supplemental agenda and it was designed to really handle those issues that were time sensitive and couldn't get on the regular agenda. So it was designed for really the emergency items are the ones that couldn't be done by that in that for eight days, which is what we try to do for all of our regular agenda items. Over time, we've seen more use of the supplemental for routine items and regular items, and that provides less time for you as the council and also staff and the community to kind of ask questions and debate. So we encourage kind of getting back to what the supplemental was originally designed for. And by doing that, you would add a statement of urgency on your council letters. Just to clarify, this is urgent because so if I'm putting it on the supplemental, I have to because of the following reason. Number ten. Sometimes our close sessions tend to go over. I think this council tries really hard to have them done by 5:00. But if they do need to go longer than that, we do have the option of continuing those to the end of the meeting or continuing it to another another day. So those are a short term recommendations. We do have a couple ones for future implementation that we'd like to let you know about. One is to hold a Robert's Rules of Order refresher. But there are also some additional council rules out there. There's Rosenberg's thank you. Rosenberg's rules that some of the cities are looking at. There are Roberts rules just a little simpler. We'd also like to really look at some use of technology in the new civic center. For example, some agencies, especially Metro, have sign up devices that you can sign up either on your personal device or at a kiosk, or you bring it down to the city clerk and you say, I'd like to speak on these items. That allows the chair to actually have a list of people who want to be able to speak. And then you would be able to do that at any time until it's time that the item is heard and then it's cut off so that there's a sense of how many speakers that we have. So we're exploring that technology. We can do a little bit of that with our Granicus system, but it would probably mean creating a new system as well. So we're looking at the metro system. We also, just as a fun idea, thought, you know, a lot of our a lot of you want to make sure that you're talking to the people that show up and letting them know that you support them. There may be other ways to do that through emojis or other kind of fun ways to let them know that you're supportive of what the speaker is saying. So we we can look at that. And finally, electronic board to announce the council meeting agenda order. So when we do need to move it around that we can electronically let the council know that. So I'm at the end of the presentation. I do want to point out a couple of areas that we looked at, but we aren't recommending. One was shortening public comment. We actually tried that as a council back in the nineties and that wasn't very well supported. You could also move public comment all the way to the end of the meeting. You know, that is an option. You know, it doesn't normally take that much time. So we're not recommending that you could add additional meetings. We heard that in the community outreach we actually found in the city of Austin that it didn't result. They tried that, they added it, and it actually resulted in more meetings and more discussion because there was just more time to have all that debate. So that actually didn't shorten meetings. Timing. Councilmember Comments. A number of cities have tried this and none of them actually found that they enforce those rules. We really didn't feel that, you know, that that would stifle debate. So we didn't feel that that was something to recommend and then stopping it at that time. Long Beach also tried that to set a curfew and that, you know, didn't really help move the meeting along either. So with that, we tried to keep our presentation presentation brief and we're ready to answer questions. Thank you so much. Let's start with conservatorship or not. Okay. Thank you. I'm anxious to hear my colleague's comments. Just one point there on on Robert's rules and maybe the city attorney would like to weigh in on this. And we are required to follow Roberts rules. Is that correct? Under our ordinance, we have adopted the council has adopted Roberts rules unless they conflict with the Brown Act. Yes. Okay. So it's a matter of how closely we adhere to those rules. I believe this is the point in the presentation. That's correct. Okay. So I guess part of this motion would be to, you know, adhere strictly to Roberts rules in our meetings. The second was on the. Well, not in order of priority, but. The the thing that wasn't added to the city of Austin trying additional meetings, I think I said in October, that's counterintuitive to what we're trying to achieve here. You give us more time than we're not streamlining our meetings. But beyond that, what wasn't mentioned is cost. And that would be a significant cost to the city, I assume, to add another meeting per month. We would expect each meeting. We have security costs. We have a cost for all the staff to be here where I'm doing free parking, all those things. So yes, we would expect each meeting there would be a cost probably in a couple thousand dollars. Okay. Thank you. Well, I promised my comments would be brief, so I'm going to defer to my colleagues now. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilman Austin. Thank you. And I if I had an emoji, I would give a thumbs up to the staff's report. I think it was very thorough. The outreach and survey results are here and very, very telling. I support, I think, most of what has been recommended by staff to help streamline our meetings. And I want to thank councilmember member Supernova and my colleagues for bringing this issue forward. Obviously, we are here to do the people's business and oftentimes our city council meetings, I would say, devolve into theater and presentations in front of the council as opposed to public comment. But also what I'm seeing here from the the survey results is that our residents believe that the city council should be talking less. And so whether or not we put this in a policy, I think we need to govern ourselves accordingly. So I'm going to hurry up and get get through this. And with respect to transparency, I think obviously this is the place of the people's business. And so we should be as transparent as possible. I'm definitely always interested in hearing public comment. I learn something new every time we go through that. But limiting the time is, I think, makes a lot of sense and is consistent with what many other public agencies do. I think we're very generous here as a city council and compared to other other public agencies, other city councils, the county and others. And so thank you again for bringing this forward. And I look forward to supporting it and hopefully having more efficient meetings in the future. Councilman Councilmember Pierce. Hello and thank you for this item, Darrell. I support staff's recommendations. There's a couple of comments that I do need to make. I appreciate that for number three, you've kind of laid out for us today of a formal way that that would be done. I wanted to make sure that it wasn't done on an ad hoc basis and that there was a standard in place for reducing the time the council committee items is. I think it is something I support, but I want to recognize that it's a challenge. And so as much as we can try to schedule those so that we have full committees and we have full conversation and that it's not a 20 minute presentation and doesn't allow for community members to engage is really important. I think one of the things that was brought up by some of the committee members I met with was full time council and recognizing that cities that have committees where they do a lot of work in committees are full time council and that it is challenging to have real debate all night long till 1:00 in the morning without having a full council in a city that's trying to tackle some big issues. So I wanted to just say that publicly that doing the work in committees can be challenging. The other parts that I'd like to just comment, you know, for the presentations and for the hearings, I'm fully supportive of having those at 3:00 instead of 5:00, having them before a full council meeting start. So I'd be curious to hear from others, mayor council on what their, their thoughts are. But as much as we can here earlier, recognizing that we have working families that need to come at five, but if it's a presentation or we're giving a certification that those things can happen with with people that that need to show up for those specifically and absolutely in the staff reports in the council agenda, I've seen other city council agendas that do include staff reports in full or in those binders so that we're not looking and receiving the information for the first time or the Monday before so that we can really digest it. I think that that for me is the most important part too, is that the comments I think that was made around limiting the discussion and questions with staff on the floor. It might look like theater, but it's part of making sure that everybody that can go back, look at the videos, know that we've asked the questions, it's memorialized and that they have the answers to that. So I don't have a change on the motion, really, just making sure that that we have an ordinance that doesn't limit council engagement. I don't believe there's a price you can put on community engagement. We're here to govern for everyone. And so making sure that it's accessible and I'm hearing councilmember supervisors comments, there has been some conversation out there that this is about limiting public engagement and it's about making sure that public engagement is accessible and real for every single person in our community. So I really do appreciate this item on the floor tonight and I look forward to hearing my council colleagues comments. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. I'm going to start with a compliment. I know that we talked about. Over complement each other. One of the things that I often hear from my colleagues I'm sorry. From my community and. I agree as well as many of us have really successful newsletters. And I know, Jeanine, you're a Councilwoman Price or Pierce your newsletters well-written and I try to memorialize my comments through the newsletter instead of having to do it at the dais, because there aren't as many community members who want to spend the time fast forwarding and rewinding, but hopefully through some of the recommendations I'm making, it'll be easier for them. So having reviewed a lot of agendas and dealing with long meetings over the years, I'd strongly suggest the following. Friendlies Council consider that the order of agenda items are based on the attendees present with big agenda items given a time certain. So if we have 100 people here to speak on one item, that item shouldn't wait until 10:00 at night. Those 100 people who are here should be at the front of the of the agenda. And I think that the mayor's done that pretty effectively, but it hasn't been required. And I think that if it was required, it would give the public some knowledge and understanding. I recognize that there'll be additional resources available at the new City Hall at whether it's Metro or Coastal Commission or County Board of Supervisors. You can register that you want to make a public comment so that the staff know how many are coming in advance. But I don't think you should have to drive down to City Hall to register. So if it was possible to. Register for. Public comment when the agenda comes out stating that you plan to be there, I think that would be helpful so that we'd be able to get that picture further in advance. I don't know how you work that out, though, because oftentimes people then no show and so that gives a false number. So I don't want to people to game the system, so I don't know what that looks like, but I'll pass that to staff. But I would like to formalize that in the new city hall. Since we have a system for queuing that day, maybe that day you come and you click. I'm registered here. I attended that. The items with the most attendees or the groups of attendees should be at the front end of the meeting. I would like to have council consider moving any discussion of non agenda items to the end of the meeting and here's why. The first priority of the council at a regularly scheduled meeting to be do is to be doing and discussing the business of those things that are on the agenda. And we should give priority to the people who came and waited and want to speak on items that are advertised to be discussed. Because we aren't able to take action on non agenda items anyway. And so for that that would be my an additional friendly. Public participation on general matters, not agendas, are important, and we need to be able to have those opportunities. While many council members have a lot of community forums, not everyone from every other district goes to each other's community meetings. And I can understand why this forum is appropriate. But I also don't think that if there's a ton of people here on agenda items, that they should have to wait. I've had many business owners and community members wait until ten, 11:00 at night to make a comment on an agenda item that they were planning on, on commenting. So I think that those are important specifically to council. I am sorry. Staff Recommendation number seven. I would be in favor. I appreciate the point of order at 30 minutes. I would be interested in having a count up clock on these screens for us to see what that looks like. I would also be okay with every council member having the unlimited amount of times to queue, but for them to only speak in five minute increments. And so I think that that helps because if you're going to have a 30 minute clock. What I would be concerned about is a filibuster of one council member, not necessarily intentionally, but that they have 30 minutes of things to say and the other eight council members don't have that opportunity. So I would recommend a count up clock with five minute limits and then you can recue and get back in line with with no penalty. I would also feel strongly that the number of signatures required to be placed on a. A supplemental agenda. If you would like to be a supplemental agenda and you feel it is an urgent item, I think you need to get 200 signatures because there are way too many items have been active. So it is actually not against the Brown Act. I'm not saying you'd be signed onto the item. I'm just saying that you would sign to open the discussion. Is there any way that that's possible? No. Okay. That's okay. Well. Would it be possible to take a vote at the beginning of the meeting of whether or not all agenda supplemental items are able to be tabled to the next week? You could take an action that night once the agenda has been published, you could take an action to table or continue and item anything. Rolonda. Yes, I. Will put that in my personally. But just one thing for us to think about. Over here taking notes, I'm not sure I'm going to be. Writing at the end for an acceptance of my friendly. Yep. Okay. First friendly council member. Super. Now would you be open to formalizing that agenda? Items with the most speakers would be moved to the front of the meeting. Yeah, okay. It. Since we're into Robert's rules, does the chair recognize me to speak? Yes. Council member. All right. Thank you. Yes. Wonderful. Would you be open to my friendly that there's a 30 minute count up clock of point of order with a five minute friendly for each councilmember. Yeah. I would like to ask staff if if that's something that's feasible. I think it sounds like a great idea, but. So we could do a count up clock. We could do count up or count down. I'd actually need to ask the clerk about, you know, whether you know what that would mean to track each council member and whether we could do a sub clock of 5 minutes. Okay. So if the friendly is. Let's explore this. I'm on board with that. Wonderful. And then and. Just if I can get some clarification, what happens at 5 minutes is the chair is supposed to then cut the council member off and move to the next. One. I'm happy to time it myself. Okay, so 5. Minutes at. 5 minutes, the next person cued up would go and the person that spoke the first 5 minutes is welcome to cue back up. But other people get to go first. Understood. Wonderful and then giving first priority to agenda items and second priority to people who want to speak on items that are not agenda item. And if I could ask for clarification on that, is are you we're discussing public comment here on non agenda items. So you're you're recommending that the public comment on non agenda items is moved to the end of the meeting. I actually would say that, yes, I feel that the number of people who come here to speak on agenda items, or at least if we have a system that shows cueing, that if there are a number of agenda items that have no one here to speak, then of course speaking on non agenda, these items could come. So if I understand correctly, currently we have kind of a hybrid where we allow the first ten members who sign up and then our second public comment period is really a continuation of the first one. We just allow ten at the beginning. So if I understand your motion, an amendment would be to move all public comment to the end of the meeting. I'll wait on that one, but I would just like to hear my counsel colleagues ideas related to. Well, it's. Hard for. Me. I'm not sure we can wait. If you're making a friendly, it's either making the point or withdrawing discussion. I'm not going to make that piece of friendly. I'm just open to hearing my colleagues here. It's hard for me to see many members of our community here to speak on a specific item and have to wait for non agenda item. So just something to think about. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Vice Miranda. Yes, yes. Thank you very much. First of all, I want to thank Coach and Superman for bringing this. I just want to say that. That the intent on this item is very thoughtful and that I do appreciate all our public speakers and that's what it's all about. I think certainly it's about the public. It's not about we want to do it dices because we say what we have to say and I think we should get it over with. But it's all about the public. This is why you had us, you know, to be your, you know, our individual that you chose to be your your your our council person. But what I'm saying is that I like to listen to the public more than like to listen to ourselves because you make a lot more sense than we do. That's the way I look at it. So I want to thank you guys for your engagement and your involvement. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor. Councilman Richardson, I. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So there's a lot that I first of all, I want to recognize staff. They got their staff report in in 10 minutes. Good job, staff. That was a lot of slides and got it done. So I recognize that few a few thoughts, a few notes. So one, I'm not sure that our compliments are really that big of a time. Drainer saying saying nice things to each other goes a long way. I remember some councils when they had very few nice things to say and I know sometimes we get reprimanded for being positive sometimes, but I think I just want to say I don't think it's that big a deal to give someone a compliment. It's not gonna take that much time. Secondly, on the on, I support all of the recommendations that are listed and I want to raise up one issue about the committee meeting times. I feel that the committee meet when we start committee meetings on Council Day, you can't get through a lot of work, especially when they're big committees, economic development, budget oversight. These are these are committees with a lot of conversation. And so I think we need to we need to implement a time certain to end those. When you use your bucket of time, your 30 minutes or whatever it is, your committee meeting, you can't take any more items. Is there is there a way to do that? Mr. PARKIN Yes. The committees could decide that on their own, or we can. We as a council set that as a policy for the committee. You could set that as a policy for your city, for the council. Committee for committees. Yes, you could add that. I'd like to I'd like to add that as a friendly. Councilman Huebner So can you restate so this is if there's a committee meeting taking place prior to council, you cannot go beyond the time that you are budgeted like you were scheduled. I enthusiastically okay. I think that helps. And then in addition to that, I think that the council committees in almost every city in most cases should meet on days other than council Tuesday, and that should be lifted up. I don't know that we can that we should make that the law, but we should like we should use other days and evenings to come in and do council committee meetings. And I know because that's the real opportunity to get people to come give public input if it's a canned one hour before the council meeting, I don't think that that's realistic and people aren't off work then. So we need to think about taking at least setting one additional evening per month where we just do, you know, council committee meetings, something like that. So when you think about that, is there something we can sort of work with on that? How can we hold people to that or encourage that if that's on the clerk can do when we schedule them? I think really that's up to the nine of you and what time you have available. So right now we really know that you're you've got other responsibilities. So we try to put things on Tuesdays, but the chair of the committee can call that time for whenever they want to do. It in the way I see it with the structure of our council, if we have, you know, you know, folks work and all that, I think it's not too much to ask for one additional evening. Like doesn't have to be a Tuesday to try to get your committee work done. And then the next thing I would say is I love the friendly amendment that Councilman Mongeau put forward about sort of we're moving up the folks who brought out a bunch of people because I think it rewards civic engagement and it rewards organizing. There's been a lot of times when we've had a bunch of people from North Long Beach, but their item, their issue just wasn't as hot as some other item with fewer people, and they've had to wait til ten, 11:00 at night because their issue wasn't really that sexy citywide. Right. But they turned out and they did it and they deserve to be be brought up sooner. So I support. That. If I could ask for clarification on that is that if we're trying to write that into the ordinance, it's going to be more than 75 people. It's more than 25 people is more than 50. I, I just want to stress. I think it's the discretion of the chair, but there has to be a mechanism. We're going to have to figure out what that mechanism that I don't think 75 is the number. And I don't know what I'm asking. I think it's like a show of hands, right? If there's 30, 40 people in there at the end of the meeting, they raise their hand. That's something the chair has got to recognize. So it'll be we'll write it as the discretion of the chair. If there's a crowd, the he or she, whoever the chair is, can call that item up. That's the current policy we have right now. And I don't know. That's what I'm asking. We need we need it to be codified somehow. Well, you need to give me. I need to have some way to codify it in that we can. Let's what? I said we keep going. I think I know where committee member and Councilman Mongo trying to get to. So let's clarify that in a minute here. Okay. And then the last thing I would say is, you know, I think two or three of us probably might be some offenders on being a little long winded. You know, it's okay. I get it. Recognize that might be one of those offenders. And I'll say I think the five minute clock could work. I think in cases where it won't work and we just need to call it out, is when the maker of the motion is making a presentation. And I don't think they should be making 30 minute presentations. But in all honesty, if you put something together, we can say if you're the maker of the motion, you have 10 minutes. But every comment beyond there's five. And if you want to queue up after your ten, but you've got ten to get your presentation, I think that's really reasonable. So would you accept that, Councilman? Super now. I'm seeing some nodding heads. Well, I'm a little unclear on this when that starts happening. This term not accusing you of gaming the system. At a certain point, we're going to look at who who's conducting the presentations. And I didn't want to go there tonight and have a count on, gee, which council office is doing the most presentations and whatnot. So that's a little bit of my concern there, if that makes sense to you. Well, this has nothing to do with tracking. I think we should be, frankly, tracking how much time council members are taking. That's not one of the friendlies right now. Okay. The friendly right now is simply I'm concurring on the five minute clock and I'm saying the maker of the motion, I think is a bit different if you are sort of making the motion and you're making a presentation. Staff got a really efficient presentation done in 10 minutes. I think council members and the public, I think really realistically, if you come with a motion in 5 minutes and the mayor says it, that's 5 minutes, it's going to happen a lot. And so I think having a reasonable cap and saying ten is fair. If I can add a suggestion. Yeah. And I, I understand where Councilor is going to go to the city attorney really quick. I saw people, people queued up. For clarification on the maker of the motion. I think if I hear it right, it's if that's their item, they're bringing their item and they're introducing that. I am not. Hey, I signed up as the maker of the motion for this item, so I get 10 minutes. No, no, that's. You're right. If you're present, like you prepared this item. And the intent of the item here was that the speaker, whoever it is, whether it's the council member or the staff, the 30 minute clock happens for debate. So that wouldn't apply to that. You know, the council member presenting or staff presenting it wouldn't apply to the public. It's when we say, okay, we'd like to have councilmember debate. That's when the 30 minutes would, sir. I think that's right. And so I think that clarifies the point. And so the 30 minute clock is on debate. And so if you're presenting the motion, the clock's not on during the understanding. Okay. All right. Got a. Five minute clock. As well. There is no five minute clock if you're presenting a motion. That. Is not part of the debate. Thank you for clarifying. That's helpful. Councilman Ringo. What's nine times five? 45, 45, nine council members hear 5 minutes each as 45 minutes and then the mayor always has to put in his is just 5 minutes. So you're talking 50 minutes, a five minute thing or 3 minutes? I love it. Just like the crowd. Just like everybody else. Just like everybody else. And without. Without rescuing. Because you're going to go into another person's time again. I don't know. But I'd like to refute the fact most council meetings when we like going to midnight is because we're having a healthy or a robust debate. There's point, counterpoint, recue, kind of the point substitute, substitute and substitute a substitute that takes long. I mean, there have been council meetings that I've been here. In fact, it was more so in the beginning because we had a lot of inexperienced rookies. Or. Sophomores who didn't really or were not really aware or trained in Robert's Rules of Order. And I really, totally agree with the Robert whose order I saw some comments that saying it would be a waste of time. It is not. We need it because there's a lot of people who haven't gotten formally through it that works with it or within it, but not fully trained in how it works. I'm saying that because it's I've had 20 going on 20 years of this, but the bottom line is that if you want to make council meetings efficient and streamlined , it's something that we have to monitor ourselves and, you know, and and when we get into a debate or we get into a a robust discussion or whatever it is that we want to make a point, you know, there's got to be a time where we have to agree to disagree and move on. And if it's such that we can't come to a consensus, then let's table it for the next for the next meeting. If it's not time sensitive, that is I mean, I know sometimes we have time sensitive issues that we have to absolutely deal with that now. But if it's not time sensitive, then we will move on. As many of you know, I also belong to a coastal commission and how we handle those meetings basically is that it's a time set for public comment. And I'm not I'm not in agreement. We're moving from the comment to the end of the meetings because some people are here precisely for that. They want to come to make a public comment in the beginning of a meeting, put in their their comments, put it on the record and then leave. And for a lot of individuals who are here, even for controversial items that we have to have a lot of interest, we could probably move that up also to to get them to have their say and then they could move on. So, I mean, there's a different there are various ways, obviously, of of using time more efficiently. And another recommendation this would be more accurate to the public than to us. If there is a item out there that is highly controversial and there's going to be more than ten people would say 15 to 20 people with 3 minutes each and then going out to one or two, they could, you know, do a group presentation themselves, you know, like like consolidate themselves to say that, you know, if, if we are part of a of a I see, I see. I know. Kilkenny as an example, there's five of you here, you know, you want to make one presentation for maybe 4 minutes, that's it. And not each for again need to speak for 12 minutes. You could have one presentation for four just as an example. The, the other parts, you know, and there's, there's going to be a lot of other controversies. I mean, we deal with controversies every, every, every minute, every, every council meeting. So that's going to that that city that I know. I'm getting the word over here from American media that I don't I think I read about 5 minutes. I think a right. About 5 minutes. If you would interrupt me, I'll finish up. But but the bottom line is, is that there's other ways of measuring and counting our time, but we have to self monitor ourselves. That's making council member Councilman Gonzales. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you, Councilmember. Super not for bringing this forward. This is a great item. I'm an agreement with one through seven on the city staff suggestions, but I will emphasize a few of them and get through it really quickly. Of course, one thing I'll add is absolutely, I think we need a better guidance and proper use of consent versus supplemental versus regular agenda and committee meetings to so that we're not, you know, crowding the regular agenda with. Things that could be added to the consent calendar. And I think we just, you know, need to be maybe told a little bit more directly that that could be a potential versus adding more and more to the agenda number to the public comment side, I would be in preference of keeping it in the beginning just because there are people that, you know, want to get through public comment first and not hear all of the back and forth through council comment. And given that we're talking about potentially 45 minutes plus, I mean, I think public comment deserves to be first and we keep consistent and ensuring that and what I'll say to. Believe. We were going back and forth about like what would the limit be for people in the audience? And I think we could possibly keep it consistent, keep it consistent with what we've said here in the city. Staff report that after ten people we reduce down to 90 seconds. So that could be where we move it up in the agenda as well. That could be a potential and. I'm also in favor of closed session at end of meeting. Sometimes it's hard as working full time as well to get to closed session at 330 or 4:00. And I know city attorneys like, no, don't do that to me, but I'm sorry. Sometimes it's it's really difficult having another job and having to come in and kind of rushing to closed session. That's just the fact of the matter with many of us. And then lastly, I will emphasize that the city staff presentations, a lot of times I know that I'm caught in speaking, you know, on some issues on the dais and asking more of the technical questions. Because I haven't seen the city staff report and I haven't seen it until I sit down in the dais at 5:00 and I have to kind of thumb through it beforehand. So it would be really great to have that. And I know a few colleagues have mentioned the same 1 to 2 weeks in advance, if possible. So we can have some time to review and digest and we can come a little bit more prepared to council meetings with that information. That would be helpful. And I know we have staffs here, too, but you know, again, many of us. Work. Other jobs and it's a little difficult. And I'm also of the same mindset as Councilmember Muranga on the 3 minutes. I'm totally great with that. If we want. To go along. That I think the public has 3 minutes. I think we can also, you know, work with 3 minutes as well. So that's what I will say. But I want to thank Councilmembers Hooper now again and city staff for bringing this forward. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Price. Thank you. I actually wasn't going to queue up on this topic because I like all the suggestions. But I will say that sometimes the process of debate takes a long time and a lot of times we're asking questions of staff and I want staff to give detailed responses. So if my clock is going for 5 minutes and staff takes 3 minutes answering a question which I want them to answer, then it limits my ability to talk. And I'll tell you, I mean, this is great. These are all great guidelines. But I was elected to be an advocate on behalf of my residents, and I'm going to advocate in the way that works for me. And I'm going to take the amount of time that I need to advocate for my residents so we can set these as guidelines. But I am I'm not going to be limited from queuing up again. I'm not going to be limited from asking questions. I'm not going to be limited from being heard. I'm not going to be limited from asking questions. I have a right to be heard and advocate so we can set the standards as guidelines. But there's just no way that, you know, we always talk about language access and making sure that everyone feels included and all this stuff, you know, it might take people a little bit longer to articulate what they need to say. It may take people the opportunity to hear from all of their colleagues before they might change their mind. They might hear something they like a colleague say and say, you know what that makes? That's a really great point. It's not about rushing through. I understand the intent of this, and I think it's great, but. I'm going to advocate and I'm going to represent the way that I know how in my time frame. That's the bottom line. So if the chair wants to hold me in contempt, the chair can do that. But I'm going to advocate for my residence. So I think these are all great guidelines. I think we can definitely stick to try to stick to the 5 minutes and really try to respect that spirit. And I think it was Councilman Richardson that said, you know, we monitor each other in the spirit of what we're trying to do, but there's no way in hell anyone's going to limit what I have to say and how I have to say it. Not going to happen. So thank you. Let's go to the public comment and they're going to come back to the council. Oh. Yes. It's. Larry Goodhew What I'm adamant about is returning to work to what worked so well for so long in terms of public comment, i.e. after the opening Pledge of Allegiance and any special recognition of various different paradigms and so forth. The first ten people that signed up to speak will speak. And that has always been the process until we had our criminally complicit mayor come in and jerk the council speaker list and the council items around like Seinfeld's Kramer enters and leaves room period. Stick to work what works so well for so long. Then you'll have the you'll have the backing of the community. Once you start doing what the mayor is doing. You lose the support of the public. Thank you. Karen replied. As someone who regularly comes to the council meetings, I was pleased to see that a lot of my suggestions were adopted. I was one of those that wanted to limit the council member time because it's obvious when you haven't had time to read about the issues that you're kind of just talking, and that's not a productive use of time. So that's my comment on that. The awardees, you know, I come and I see the same awardees year after year after year. I don't think that's necessary. I think there should be a limit to the number of times when the awardees come forward. All the nonprofits want to be honored. All the nonprofits in our community do valuable work. So it's really painful to see somebody come up here five years in a row and be recognized that many times when other organizations are excluded. So that would be a suggestion for that. One of the few issues that I agree with, Larry Good Yuan, is that the ten people should be able to speak at the front of the meeting. However. I don't want those ten people to all be for the same organization presenting the same position. A lot of times that blocks some of us that come and can't get here early enough from being allowed to speak in those comments on the non agenda item. Sometimes we have important things to say that are time sensitive and that blocks that out. So I'd like you to think about that. And then the other suggestion is, you know, I handled the legislation for the Gray Panthers and I utilized the register. They have a system where you can sign up to be notified when legislation is coming forward that you have an interest in. I'd like to suggest that the city look at doing something like that. So I was watching a public safety committee online yesterday and I would have liked to have been at that meeting. They were talking about the group grant. I was one of the original four matters of the group grant. I would have liked to have been at that meeting. I didn't know that that meeting was happening. So my other pieces, we need a full time city council. You guys do amazing work for part time staff and I know you probably all put full time in. I think we need to recognize that as a community and work to making that happen. Thank you. And our last comment. To make sure it wasn't like 15 people bothering me. I agree with Karen there. Um, you know, some of us, me personally, I work 60 hours a week, so it's kind of hard for me to get here at 2:03 p.m. and sign up with 1015 of my friends that we're all going to talk about the same exact thing. You know, I think that's just like a clear abuse of the system. Um, I agree with Councilman Mongo in relation to you said something about figuring out some kind of app or a way to register our comments beforehand so that you can see the queue and judge in amount of how many people are queued up to move agenda item up or down and due to how many people are outside waiting for it. Personally, I would say that it would be great. You know, I know there was a lady the other day, she was complaining about some million TV or whatever. Maybe you'll be great whenever that TV screen comes, you know, as soon as it goes, you know, over the time limit, it just sounds like like a nuclear bomb. Like this starts blinking. And then you can just cause I see, you know, the the mayor and the vice mayor, you know, these some of these people, you know , they don't got a lot going on in their lives. So it means a lot to just be like yelling at you guys for whatever the 90 seconds or whatever. So it's like, maybe you can just shut off the mic. You don't even have to say, excuse me or whatever you can. Maybe you can queue up, Madam Clerk, you can just like shut off the mic and time's done. You got to get out of here because it's just it's it's crazy. In relation to maybe the awards. Yeah, maybe. You know I know it's good to see the children with the, the Boy Scouts and a lot of these non-profits. I'm not technically opposed to it. I do think if we're going to be trying to figure out a way to be timely, maybe maybe on another day from 35 minutes , 45 minutes, you can just knock all them out. And, you know, you can open up the time for more, you know, retirees and come out here and be young. And but in the meantime, the friendlies, if I see people, you know, you know, that's us over here. As far as you guys. Yeah, some of these friendlies, it's crazy. Like, it's like nine friendlies that are friendly, that are removed. The friendly. So I hear, councilman, you're wrong. It's like, you know, and not to minimize, of course, public discourse as important as our representatives to, you know, use you are representing us. But sometimes I'm like, I mean, where are we even? I like the semantics of where these things are. Sometimes I'm looking at the city attorney and like, do you know where where the position is or the friendly is at this moment? And I'm looking at him. He's confused. He's looking at his notes, too. So, you know, we can just figure out a way to streamline. I'm with you, Mr. Supernormal. Time is of the essence, and time is important. And I would like to be leaving here at maybe like 8:09 p.m. instead of, you know, these midnight hour. So it's like this are. Thank you. Thank you. That closes public comment. Let me go back to the council. Councilman Richardson. Thank you. I'll be quick. Just two things I want to clarify with our city attorney. So, number one, we have the process of let's say that an item here warrants more debate or whatever. We could suspend rules or move to extend debate on all those. That council has the ability to do that, correct? That's correct. Under the current municipal code. And we would imagine doing it similar in a in a revision to the municipal code. The first section reads The Order of Businesses City Council. It all regular meeting shall be as follows unless otherwise waived by the consent of the Council. So with the consent of the Council, you could waive your rules. Okay? And I think that's important to say. We can, you know, we can go along with these guidelines, but if we're going to break them, we should just try to get consensus or approval from the council to do it. And I think if it's an important issue, council will approve that. And then secondly, in terms of committee work, just one thing I want to clarify I think is a bit redundant when you know sometimes it's okay, but sometimes redundant if an agenda item starts, that council gets referred to, a committee committee does work, refer back to council and and the distinction between our commissions and our committees. I understand work can originate at the committee level. It ultimately has to come to council, but it doesn't have to initiate at council and go back to a committee and back to council. And there's been some, you know, some questions about whether you know about that process. But it happens all the time. The B or C has originated work has ultimately made it. The Council Economic Development Committee is rejected works ultimately ultimately, you know, made it to council and it cuts out council time having to come back for those two bites of the hat. And council member. I agree, but it's not a very clear bright line in the origination of the work because if if you have a chair that starts directing staff and starts accumulating and using a bunch of staff resources in time or in the city manager's opinion is excessive. Then that work would have to go to council and have it be referred back to the committee in order to do that work. But but generally speaking, on small items. Yes. So and that makes sense to me. What I mean is the ability for a council, for a committee to refer work to council committees, have that ability to refer something. The Council doesn't have to direct staff to build something or do a lot of staff time, but simply referring work, the council committee can do that. Yes. Great. That's wonderful. Thank you. And actually, Councilman Longo is actually cued up first and we did public comment and didn't go back to her. So, Councilman Mongo, I think Councilman Austin. Perfect. I just want to appreciate one of the comments that came forward about legislation you're interested in. One of the items that I brought forward was about how to better. Pull in community input. And I would love for members of the public to be able to register in our new system that says, I'm interested in anything related to the elderly or housing or whatever it is to notify them of those key words in an agenda item. I think that that's a really important second. I am completely supportive of the recue idea. I think that I want to support a lot of the things Councilman Price said in that we each have different ways to advocate for our residents. I've actually even heard through the grapevine that she's defended the way that I advocate for my residents. And I appreciate that. I also recognize that sometimes each of us spend a lot of time writing up a list of questions. And I know I've done this before where I will go through all my questions and then. Sitting next to me. Daryl's like crossing off the same questions. And so I think that we can gain some variance in the way the questions are asked if we go through a campaign process. And I also believe that the count up timer is just a guide, not necessarily a hard and fast. And so I appreciate the comments Councilman Richardson made on that as well as for the other days of the week and meetings. I can't speak for other residents, but it is a trek for my community to get downtown. It's a trek. And so if there is an agenda item on the city council meeting that they might be interested in. That's one of the values of having the Budget Oversight Committee meeting right before so they can kind of speak to both components of it. I'm open to exploring other days of the weeks and meetings, but I also recognize that that can be a challenge. And I often, instead of having committee committee meetings, I try to just do community outreach meetings in the neighborhoods that are impacted and then gather that information. But one of the components of that is that the EA comment, the number of characters allowed is very limiting. So I don't know if there'd be a friendly to explore both the number of characters allowed and what an appropriate number would be. And second, the community comment period is too short. People want to spend time writing them out. And I know that the city the city clerk has made some exceptions on big agenda items. But I would love for even when the agenda item isn't posted, they're often people who have very distinct comments. And what they do is they then email all of our council offices, see all of us, and I think that it would be much better for it to go to the city clerk and have a place that we can all log into and check that the public can also check, too. I think that transparency is really important. So if you'd be open to having the city clerk look into that, that would be great. Um, okay, so we just talked about staff time, so we have different entities who've weighed in on this. So I guess we have to ask the city clerk individually if that's something feasible that she can look into. Okay, then we'll accept that. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Thank you. I have a question for the city clerk regarding this. If this is voted on and approved this evening, this will go to you to create an ordinance. Is that correct? Yes, sir. And in terms of it being an ordinance with the the I keep hearing guidelines, but I don't feel like they're guidelines if it's an ordinance. Right. That's correct. This would be come the new order and proceedings for the council meeting. So I'm not going to ask again on some of the clarifications on the 5 minutes and the 30 minutes. Are we putting those in there? And I've heard they would be guidelines. They would be a recue for the 5 minutes, but there's unlimited recues or so that would then become part of your rule unless you vote to suspend that for a particular item. You know, I do appreciate Councilmember Price's comments and all of our my colleagues comments regarding this. I know that we all endeavor to to to have more efficient meetings and and council members who bring our brought this forward. I seconded the motion this evening. But I'm I'm a little concerned that we may be over restricting ourselves if we put this in an ordinance. And so I would just ask if, Councilmember Suber now, would you be friendly, open to a friendly to to create created council policy that that that does all that we've discussed here this evening as opposed to an ordinance. Well, if I understand what we have in place right now, Mr. Parkin, just an example. We have a moment of silence. It wouldn't make sense to eliminate that. We wouldn't gain a lot. But by ordinance, we're required to do that. Would that be correct? You currently are required to do it unless waived by consent of the Council. So right now all of these are how the meeting your rules that the Council has approved to how you're going to conduct your meeting so that the public has an understanding of what we're going to do. So we do the moment of silence. We do the Pledge of Allegiance, we're hearings, public comment, etc. All of those can be changed by a vote of the Council or consent to the Council being moved around. But this lays out the framework for how you're going to conduct your meeting. So if we're directed to make these changes in the staff report, we would come back and come back and bring an amended ordinance to you with the revised rules. And the first sentence will say, you can waive these if you with consent of the Council, and if you like them, we will adopt it. If not, you can send us back and tell us what to change. Okay, so that that was my point. That was my starting point, if you don't mind me saying our city attorney suggested I start there. And just as that is a guideline, we're working with a current ordinance. So my proposal was let's bring forward a new ordinance. And I think some of these things are still a little bit fuzzy. We need to sort them out tonight. But at the end of the day, you're coming back with an ordinance that we still have a second shot at. A second and third shot. Right. We would bring back for first reading. And if you make changes, we'll bring it back again. And until you're satisfied with. And our understanding from the council direction tonight is that you'd like this to be flexible. So, you know, we would create that 30 minute time period, but then you have as a body the ability to decide what you want to do. Those 5 minutes would be there, but then, you know, it all is within the 30 minutes where then we would get direction from you. Do you want to continue debate or you as a body want to stop debate? So we think we'll bring back something that has a lot of flexibility for you. Okay. Thank you. And then just just to well, I think the overarching point here, the overall goal is that we would we would exhibit self-discipline. We would try to adhere to these. And I think there's more pressure on the chair of every meeting to adhere to these. And if he's agreeable to that, I think I think we've got a winner here. So I'd like to stick with the ordinance. Thank you, Councilmember Country Ringo. Just out of curiosity, how much time we've been spending on this so far? So, Councilmember, we actually looked at the debate, that original debate before we went to council comments, believe it or not, was exactly 30 minutes. There we go. We're almost downtown. Sorry. Had to recue when I think another thing a lot of this has to do with the the the the agenda itself some of the agenda items that we have in here can be in hour long. And there are some agenda items here that we can basically maybe even flavor into the consent calendar without having to. A vote on them at the end of our debate, because I know some of our council meetings have gone on and on and we still have a we still have an agenda to deal with at the end of a long debate. So I think maybe staff can look at these agenda items much more carefully and make more of a of a call whether we could put more agenda items on the consent calendar. And as states are here in number four, you know, we can always pull an item from the consent calendar if if any of us feel that we need to talk about it a little more. So I think pulling some items from the from the general regular agenda into the consent might help streamline some some of our meetings as well. Yes, sir, that would be. Thank you very much, Councilwoman Price. Thank you. I agree with that. I think that's an excellent suggestion. I want to go back to this flexibility that we're writing in about the debate time. And here's the problem I have with, you know, with consent of the council, we can extend that. What does that mean? Do we have to then vote on it? And it has to be by majority vote? It's kind of sounds to me like a call for the question type of process. And that's a problem to me because every member of this council should feel like they could they should be included in the process, even if they're saying something or advocating a position that others don't agree with. Obviously, when we have people here who are advocating for one position or another, the council members with whom they agree, they'd love to hear more from the council members with whom they disagree, they'd love to hear less from. So I don't want it to turn into, you know, a popularity contest where we do. That's why I hate that call for the question, because even though I may agree or disagree with my colleagues, I still respect the fact that every single one of them worked really hard and makes tremendous sacrifices to serve in this position. And I want them to be able to say what they need to say on Tuesday nights. And and so for me, you know, it's not I don't who's the judge of if what you're saying is significant enough to continue talking. I don't. So that's the part that I really don't. Don't like is that fact that we'd have to take a vote. And by consent of the majority, a person would be allowed more time to talk. I just. I don't understand what we're trying to achieve with that. And I would I would I would ask the maker of this motion to rethink that, because I think, like like I said, I mean, there's no. I don't know what the deterrent would be for someone to violate that policy. I if I could answer just a little bit of that question, the the way I would interpret the if you wanted to suspend the rules for that evening or for that particular item, that would be done by consent. If there was if someone objected to waiving those rules, then there would be a motion, a second, and it would be a simple majority vote to either suspend the counsel rules or not to end the debate at the end of the 30 minutes you would need, unless it was by consent a motion, a second and two thirds vote to end discussion. It's similar to call for the question. So you would need as a majority to and discussion not just I mean a two thirds majority supermajority, six votes, not just a simple majority. Yeah. Again, I would just ask my colleagues to really think about that. What are we trying to accomplish there? How much time do we think we're going to save? And can you foresee a situation where we are? Excluding a member of this body based on either their content or their style or their tone. And is that fair? And so that I would just ask my colleagues to think about that. I do not think this should be an inclusive process where every single one of us who's worked, regardless of whether we agree or not, we all have families at home. We all you know, most of us have other jobs. We've all worked really hard to get here. It should not be a popularity contest. And not that this would ever happen in this body, but. Political bodies have been known to have filibusters and random things like that that happen. This is part of the democratic process. It takes time. It takes time to have debate and get through that process. And so I just I don't want to feel I don't look a lot of people here know this. Maybe they don't. English is my second language. Sometimes it takes me a little bit longer to process what I'm thinking. I have to hear from other people in order for me to get to the point where I need to feel comfortable in my decision. It might take me longer to articulate what I'm feeling, thinking than others. I shouldn't be at a disadvantage because of that. And I'm not just talking about me personally. Put someone else in my position who also English as their second language and needs more time to process. I just I don't want to feel rushed because there's a timer on, on on me. And I want to be able to listen to my colleagues because there might be a possibility that something they say changes my mind and requires additional debate. So that's the only problem with this that I have, is that it limits our advocacy abilities. And I do believe that it puts some at a disadvantage based on their content, their tone, their style, or possibly the way they think as adult as adult learners. And I don't think we should do that. Thank you. We're going to we're going to go to a vote. The one thing I'll add to what the and then and I want to make sure we we get to the vote, I think and I you know, I can support what's on the table, as is councilman. Maybe what we do also just to address some of Councilman Price's concern is we do keep the five minute, but instead of doing that hard stop at 30, we just allow for now to continue that process going so that people feel they can come back to an issue. And we're not limiting that. I could support that. And I think that at least that is heard. If the council's okay with that, councilman. Yes, ma'am. I just want to make sure the city attorney is on, if that's that's clear enough. So we're not. Well, the staff recommendation was at 30 minutes. Will there be an automatic point of order which the council would then have to extend debate? I think with were what we're saying is there wouldn't be an automatic point of order, but the five minute clock would continue. So I'm not sure. I just need a little clarification. I think that there would be five minute. The way I understand it now, at 5 minutes, you would move to the next speaker and everybody can read. That's correct. At a total minute of 30 minutes. Then there would be some sort of notification to the council and you make a decision whether you continue. I think what I think. Going to eliminate the 30 minute I. Think I think what we're saying is we keep a. Five minute, 5 minutes, but we're. Not doing the 30 minute cap. What people feel comfortable, they can come back in and continue if they need to continue. Okay. So we'll take the 30 minutes. That's correct. Five minute caveats. That's correct. As many times. Okay. Thank you. And then the the other amendment was that at the chair's discretion and that's subject to override by the council, the chair will determine the order based upon attendance. I think I'd like you guys to come back at that first reading and make that and make that suggestion of how we would do that. But I think we're trying to basically enshrine the practice we already do. Okay, we'll put something together and. Then count from super or not. Nope. Please cast your votes. Motion carries. Great. Thank you very much. And thank you, Stephanie, who is also obviously putting a lot of work into that. With that, let me move on to item number 16.