Recommendation to request the Mayor to convene the Charter Amendment Committee of the City Council within 30 days to discuss placing a City Charter amendment before the voters to amend and restate Article XIA of the City Charter to establish a Police Oversight Commission and add a Director of Police Oversight position.  (Citywide)
Item 39 is a report from City Manager. Recommendation to convene the Charter Amendment Committee of the City Council within 30 days to discuss placing a charter amendment. City Charter Amendment before the voters to establish a Police Oversight Commission and add a director police oversight position citywide. Great. I'd like to get a staff report on this particular item. Sure. I will give a really brief overview, but I'd like to introduce Patrick Leathers and from the Citizen Police Complaint Commission. He's the manager of that program, as well as Anita Lakhani, who worked out of the city attorney's office to prepare the draft language for the charter amendment. Looks like. Oh, thank you. So just to give a little bit more background on this, I think you're aware that in May of last year, an independent consulting firm did a an in-depth study of the current Citizen Police Complaint Commission process, and they came back with a report and a series of recommendations back to this commission or to the council here in February of this year. The city council considered that report and directed staff and the city attorney to begin the charter amendment process that essentially had two, two steps to it to, number one, draft the charter amendment language and number two, to initiate the meeting come for process. So I'd like to just walk through briefly what has happened since that time. As I mentioned before, the city attorney has prepared draft charter language, charter amendment language that would amend Article one eight of the city charter, that would fundamentally establish a director of police oversight, as well as a restructured police oversight commission. And that that effort, the draft language has been completed. The next step that was required was for the city team to to start the the labor negotiations with the affected labor groups, essentially regarding that restructuring that has been proposed, the restructuring of the Citizen Police Complaint Commission and the action that is being requested tonight is for the City Council to approve directing or referring this matter to the citizen, to the Charter Amendment Committee. And that is what is being asked of the city council tonight. Next slide. And I'd just like to briefly walk you through if the charter amendment is passed, there is a series of actions that would still need to be done in order for that this change to occur. Number one, the city council would need to appoint a police oversight director. We would need to establish and appoint a new a police oversight commission. The current charter language proposes to amend the number and the term of the citizen police complaint. The third, I should call it the right term Police Oversight Commission. And the that changes essentially to be consistent with other charter commissions in the city. The other action would be to move forward with the staffing and the administrative management functions of the Commission, and that would be laid out in the municipal code. The other two actions would be authorizing the city council would need to authorize a budget for the Commission, for their administrative and management operations and a budget and the amount that will be sufficient for them to conduct the duties that are outlined in the Charter amendment. And lastly, the other item that would need to occur would be for the meeting confer process. Should that charter amendment pass, we would need to continue those meet and confer discussions in order to address any of the affected labor impacts to the affected bargaining groups. So with that action, if the Council refers this tonight to the charter committee, there would be three hearings of the charter committee between June 14th and August 9th. And then there is another series of steps that all of the other all charter amendments would be subject to. That is getting direct arguments and impartial analysis of the of the language in the charter and of course, submitting rebuttals to the clerk and lastly, mailing the sample ballots out to the electorate. And of course, the election in November 8th. So that's a really brief overview of the process between now and the final election. I'm available to answer any questions. So I'll take the privilege to ask the first question. Obviously, the item before us is referring it to the charter commission. What what authority does the charter commission have when they when we when they meet? And if you could just for those paying attention here in the audience and those at home, you just outlined who the charter commission is. Yes. Chair Austin, thank you. The Charter Amendment Committee is a committee of the whole. It is the members of the city council as a whole, as a body sit on that committee. This the three meetings, as identified by Linda Tatum, would then be joint meetings of the Charter Amendment Committee and the City Council. So your discussion at those three meetings will determine what this final item will look like. And then at that final third meeting, council will be asked to take a vote on whether to place that item on the ballot or not. So so the charter amendment committee would have the ability to to tweak what has been presented to me. Correct. They they could tweak it. They could decide not to move forward with it. They have a wide range of authority to decide what they would like to place on the ballot, if anything. Okay. And so this action tonight, voting on this tonight actually just moves the process to the charter amendment committee. That's correct. It would allow you to begin those discussions at that first meeting. I just wanted to get that clarification. Thank you. Councilmember You're not going to Germany. No, but thank you for that clarification. Councilmember Super. No. I think this was answered with the chair's question. But if we go back to that slide where it has IT director position listed and for those who didn't follow this previously, I think there was a discussion in this body that it would be a director and even a salary was suggested. So this position would kind of take the place of what the city manager's function is now with the current. That is that is generally correct. If you go back to the the report, it very specifically lays out the role, but it is roughly the equivalent of a director in any other city department. And yes, it would essentially replace that role currently that's in the city manager's office. So to Councilman Austin's question, approval of this tonight does not lock in that position or does it? It does not. It is. We have a draft for discussion prepared for the Charter Amendment Committee to consider and discuss and based upon the direction we receive can be changed. Okay. Thank you. As I said, Councilman Austin asked the question it was answered. But I just want to clarify that specific point. Thank you. Is there any public comment on this item? No public comment. No public comment. See no other queued up behind the real members less well. The motion is. Carried. Great. The next item is item new business number 40.