Recommendation to request City Manager to communicate the City of Long Beach’s opposition to Senate Bill 9 and Senate Bill 10 to the Governor and urge his veto of these bills.
Okay. So, nonmembers, please cast your vote. Just one part. Most cars. Thank you. I remember 20. Recommendation to request city manager communicate the city of Long Beach in opposition to Senate Bill nine and Senate Bill ten to our state legislative delegation and governor's office. Thank you. And before we go, I don't see emotion yet, but before we go to the motion, I want to raise it with the city attorney concerned about Brown next and raised on this item. Could you speak to that, please, vice mayor, members of the council. Thank you. Yes. On Friday afternoon, I received a call from the vice mayor and Councilmember Urunga alleging a possible Brown Act violation regarding this item before you this evening. The both the vice mayor and the councilmember provided copies of emails they received from Council District eight asking if the Councilmember wish to sign on to the item. In addition, they indicated that Council District eight, since upper request to Council District three and five, also requesting their signature on the item. I have confirmed that these four emails were sent and the alleged violation is that Council District eight communicated with a majority of the council members outside of the public meeting concerning this upcoming item on the agenda. It is my opinion that there is sufficient evidence to show a direct communication with the majority of the Council members concerning an item within the jurisdiction of the Council outside of a public meeting, and then at in fact the item that was attached to the emails requesting they sign is the item placed on the agenda this evening. I understand the position of Council District eight that the Communication was only seeking the members to sign on to the item. However, as I mentioned, the communication requested. The letter was shared with the majority of the council and the item is taken a position on a state legislation. It would be reasonable to assume that those members of the Council agreeing to sign on to this letter, reviewed the council letter and would be or are in support of the position, and therefore it appears a collective occurrence of a majority of the Council was being sought in advance of the public meeting. So based upon my limited information here, it is my opinion that a Brown Act violation would occur if this item is considered, debated or voted on this evening. Further, my recommendation would be to withdraw or receive and file this item for a future meeting in order to cure this alleged violation. I would also recommend the Council consider adopting a Council policy that you would have no more than three members of a council sign on to any agenda item to help eliminate this possible violation. It's just very easy to occur unintentionally, of course, that the if one of the council members is not available or they discussed it and they are unable to sign on and they go to another council member and all of a sudden you might have five members inadvertently now discussing it or having it in front of you. So it something that the council hopefully will consider in the future. But for this particular item, I believe you could cure it by receiving and filing it this evening. And the council member from the eighth District or any other council member could bring this back as early as next week, and we would be able to move forward and discuss and consider it. Thank you. Thank you. And I think we should. You know, be mindful of the advice of the city attorney. Councilman Alston, would you like to respond? Sure. And possibly in the zeal of of trying to in urgency try of trying to get this item before the city council. Procedural errors were were made which I will assume responsibility because they were staff to staff communications and worked work member to member communications. I want to be clear on that. But in July, the City Council approved a motion for staff to review the potential impacts of SB nine and SB ten very, very important items of legislation here in Long Beach and throughout the state. And to report back to the state led committee. And typically that state led committee would take that information and then will consider making the recommendation to a full city council about whether to take a position on such a legislation. However, the state large committee met when we met to discuss this item on Wednesday, August 25th. It was agenda that they received and file item of a report so the committee could not even consider a motion to take on the particular bill. Of great importance to the city. This is despite the fact that all three city council members at the state led committee stated during the meetings that they did not support the bills. So given the timing of these bills, both now SB nine and SB ten have now passed the legislature and are on the governor's desk. We cannot wait for another committee meeting to be schedule. I felt it was important to bring these items forward to full consideration of the City Council to discuss and to consider taking a position on. I believe that we should urge a veto of both of these bills because they are bad for Long Beach. We have a history of cracker work legislation here and we know what the impacts are on our communities and neighborhoods. We work hard to create more affordable housing, workforce housing in our community. And we've had extensive community engagement as we've worked through and adopted a new land use element in housing policy. These bills apply to a one size fits all approach to the entire state without the benefit of community input and extensive work that we put in at our local level to address the housing crisis. And we all know it takes time for new housing to be built. And we are seeing new housing opportunities, including affordable housing in many parts of our city. We're also seeing great success with our 80 new policy built throughout the city. I think Mr. Turner wants to get to know I'm not done. I know he just came from county council and I would add when the council from the eighth District concludes, I would caution the rest of the council members to respond or debate this issue. It's clear the council member from the eighth District isn't finished. And I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I don't want to anyone to respond or to reply to that because then we would be debating the issue. So with that. Okay. But at the same time, we have work to preserve the integrity of the distinct character of many of our neighborhoods in our city. So tonight, understanding the advice of the city council and ask for my colleagues to join me at some point in urging the governor to veto these bills and instead let our city continue to work to meet our housing need. And then, as I love mayor likes to say, the Long Beach Way with local community input and policies and zoning that take into account all of our local needs. And again, Council, I do hear that that there is a receiving flow option to to to to. To to vote on that that that is completely okay with me. And again, I will just reiterate that I do not and it was not intentional to to violate any any procedural rules, any Brown act. Because if you walk down the line here, I have not had contact or conversation with more than two of my colleagues on this particular item in any way. Thank you. And just to be clear, that motion received five. There's also a government office that received promotion. Okay. So there's a motion receiver file that is that we your second in fall in price. Um, I was going to I actually had a couple procedural questions not about the merits. But just quickly, I just want to be clear on what we're debating. Yeah, well, I didn't know what Councilman Austin was going to say when I said he's given me a lot to think about here. So I think what I would like to do is make a friendly that this item come back. Does it have to be refiled or can it can we make a motion to bring it back on another time? Can we just put it on for next week? Just got to put it back on. Absolutely. We can bring it back. Anyone could put it on the supplemental for next week. That's right. Okay. So so the procedural question I had is so I was one of the recipients of the email asking if I would sign on to the item, but I don't know who else was asked. And so is it is it the case? And this is just a clarifying question. I answer don't know the answer to this question. If you ask three colleagues to sign on to an item and let's say one of them signs on and two and says, you know what, I'm not interested in signing on. I don't support that. Are you then precluded from asking someone else to sign on? That's correct. Okay. So then do you have to rewrite your I mean, then what do you do? The item can't come forward. You could still bring the council member could bring an item forward by themselves. You may not be able to put it on the supplemental, but you could bring it forward as an individual council member. And that's why I would strongly encourage you to consider a policy where you limit it to three total council members, because that's where the BRANNICK violation occurs is by the now we've shared this and reached and maybe had a debate and as Council member often points out, this was maybe chiefs of staff, two chiefs of staff, but that's attributable to the council office. And so that information has been shared and the courts have been really clear. Aye, aye. Like button shared on an email account could be a brannick violation if five council members just hit that. So you don't have to have substantial debate. It just has to be outside of the public forum with more than a majority. So yeah, I understand that. Nine Appreciate that clarification. I mean, there's been times where there's been four people on an item and then someone on that item has sent me a text or reached out and said, Hey, I want to talk about this. And I've said, I can't talk to you because there's already four people on the item and I've known that that was an okay, but I didn't know that if somebody refuses to sign on the item, which I think is what happened here, then you're precluded from bringing it forth. If four people had been asked. That's correct. Because now you've you've discussed it with a majority of the members outside the presence of the council out of the public meeting. I understood and I appreciate that clarification. So so I guess the only thing we can do tonight is receive and file on this. That that's. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Not on the mango. Thank you. I guess I have a couple of questions. One is that I choose not to sign on to items or to sign onto items without providing any feedback to my colleagues. Ever. I mean, often. I don't mean ever. Often, because I'm not here to block them from getting another signer. I can think of a time where Councilman Price and I may have agreed on coyotes in the city, but at the time she had asked me to sign on to an item and I did not tell her whether I supported or did not support the item, just that I was not prepared to sign onto the item. What she did not know is that I was working with the university on my own item and I just chose not to participate. So that was, in my opinion, not a discussion. And I think that gaining consensus is really the intent of the Brown Act. And in no way do I feel that a council member, especially in this case, choosing not to sign on to the item, is getting us towards consensus, especially when a lot of our chiefs of staff knowing us individually, know our positions generally and sign on or don't sign on or recommend because sometimes it's just not the time. And so I guess I would say that I've actually consulted two attorneys because I was very shocked that this was a potential Brown Act violation. And this particular individual who has served as a city attorney to other cities has stated that their position is that it's on building a consensus around an item or about a discussion, which I don't think either of which happened at this case. And while I respect your opinion, Mr. City Attorney, is it not a justification and opportunity as a board to still move forward with the item and deal with the potential remedies that are required? And if so, what do you believe those remedies would be? Well, first, I totally disagree with your comment. I think that this is a Brownback violation if you act on it and if you debate it this evening, because the letter in which is in your agenda package was shared with a majority of the council members outside of the meeting before the meeting. And so taking an action, your action would be considered null and void. And your direction to the city manager in this case would be come back. You would have to rescind the action and then reconsider it to try and cure it. So you're you're not. Plus, it could be referred to the PPC and potential fines and penalties. But I think if I'm giving you what I believe is practical advice here too, is how do we fix this and cure it and move forward? We can certainly have a longer debate on what you believe is reaching a consensus or reaching an agreement, and that would be facts specific on each one of the times when you're looking at the Brownback violation. So you can't have a general statement that says, well, if I just didn't talk to him, I didn't violate Brownback. That's not how it works. Well, I respect that. I also read every single agenda item every single week. And so every single agenda item is shared with the majority of the council in advance of the discussion of the item. That's that's true. When the agenda package goes out to the public. At the same time you're talking about before the item is submitted to the city clerk is what I'm talking about for consideration are placed on the agenda. So if the media shared the agenda item publicly in the local news with that potentially and we read it, would that be a violation? If you communicated with your members of the council about it or their staffs of your offices, communicate with each other. Yes. Look, I. Didn't communicate that. That's I think right now you're assessing that there's a potential branch violation, but there hasn't been discussion with me or I don't know any of the other colleagues I know, not me, about if it was potential that I had a discussion with Councilmember Asad about this item. So we received the package and you signed on to the items. It's assumed that you read the item and agreed to sign on to that. I was asked if I wanted to sign on to an SB ten SB nine item by my chief of staff, and I said Yes. That agenda item, if you checked my email, has not been opened and has still not been open to this day just because I didn't have time to open it. And I guess going into these details is important, and I feel that there's a little bit of procedural gaming going on because we already had a position stated by I. Just another point the committee is Councilmember Austin Councilmember Muranga and Councilmember Richardson all stated their opposition. If Council member Austin would have come to other members of the body. And not the members of his committee would be have also had the violation. I just don't know. I'm not sure I'm following your logic here, but I think that the if the question is, could the council member, Austin, have approached someone other than on the pub on the state led agenda to bring this item forward? The answer is yes. Even though they also publicly already stated their position on the item in committee. The question was whether the person on the state led committee could approach a different council member not on that committee, to ask them to sign on the answer. On an item already heard by the committee. That's correct. Okay. Well, I think we're always learning. Thank you. I just want to say I think we need to be cautious with the president with that and there's elected official and let me just say, I don't believe Councilman Alston was intentional or anything. I think it was a procedural mistake among chief of staff of a previous chief of staff. I understand. But this is not where we should split hairs or cut corners or debate whether or not if you want to have a council discussion and a study session on the Brown Act, we certainly should do that. But trust in public officials has waned. That's the truth. And we shouldn't cut corners. The city attorney had a recommendation. I think we should respect that recommendation. His recommendation is also to go from 4 to 3, because this isn't the only time this has happened. And so we should, you know, rather than accuse gaming of the system, we should just follow the rules and do what's supposed to be done. And I don't think this was intentional. But the accusation of gaming the system is just knowing the rules and knowing the process. And we should follow that process and move forward together, protect our city, bring the item back, and we'll have the debate that you want to have. But that's what I think we should do. How come the Super Bowl? Thank you. Two things. This this question is procedural, number one. And number two. I was not asked to sign on to the item, so I think I'm in a safe zone here. So my question would be, moving forward, if this were to be heard one week from tonight, that would require a supplemental to be submitted by noon on Friday, which requires three signatures. Am I correct on that? That's correct. Okay. So is it the opinion of the city attorney that that could be accomplished? Based on the conversation we've had here tonight? That's a very good question. But I believe the answer is yes. I mean, what the allegation is this evening and what I'm dealing with this evening is the item before you on the agenda tonight was delivered to and discussed by at least by the staff members, five members of the council. So I am encouraging not to consider that tonight to re agenda is it to cure it. So if if for example, the council violated the Brown Act, generally speaking, the one of the remedies could be to place the item on the agenda and rescind the action taken by the council to cure it and then reconsider that item . The that so in essence, that's what you would be doing. You would be saying we could put this forward. And for example, the council member from the eighth District wouldn't couldn't maybe doesn't put it on the supplemental, but a different council member puts it on and gets two other people to sign it. There is no Brown Act violation there. Okay. Yeah. Thank you for that. And I'm going to guess your recommendation. We'd have only three people sign that supplemental. That would be my recommendation. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. To follow up on the procedural questions of council member super or not, does the item need to be any different than the item that is before us tonight? This particular item? I think the answer is no. I mean, you're asking and going to have a discussion or a debate, I assume, on the merits of whether you're going to ask the governor at this point in the legislation to veto the legislation that's carrying on is apparently on the desk of the governor. So I think the answer is no. It does not have to be any different. You just need to bring it back. And it. Will have an. Elevation outside of. Every member of the dais before it was filed. I think that's my concern. Am I wrong? It has now been shared with every member of the staff before it was filed. So why is it not the same violation? Councilwoman Margo Let's be respectful of everyone's time, but we can. Councilmember Richardson, I think you have already accused us of trying to cut corners, in your opinion, as welcome and appreciated. But thank you. For your opinion of my time. This is an important item to my district and my council. Like my completion on the agenda so we can debate it. We did. Thank you. And you broke the Brown Act, so. I did not make the accusation. Thank you. Councilman Austin. Thank you, Mr. City Attorney, for winning and explaining your position. Again, I take full responsibility for the the procedural error, and I look forward to debating this matter next week and taking the position one way or another at the full city council. I think this this this item deserves our attention. And we are clear on how to how to move forward. I move to vote. Fantastic. Very public comment on this item. It's like there's one. Janet Foster. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. I'll be back next week. But I just wanted to ask your support of SB nine and SB ten. And primarily it's because these two bills will contribute to building housing that we so need, and Long Beach needs to be a part of it. I know their views about what neighborhoods, but their neighborhoods that are bearing the brunt of a lot of the development. It's not shared equally. I think that we can talk about this a lot more reasonably than I think what fears that are out about what type of housing being built? Who gets controlled? What does a neighborhood look like if this is allowed? I think it can be reasonably done. But I just wanted to be here in support and to ask the city council to not not lobby the governor about this, but let it stand. We've had great representation locally who stood who stood and supported this. And I'm here for Long Beach, Yimby, the Long Beach Yimby chapter. So I'll be back next week. Thank you. Thank you. No further public comment. Members, please cast your vote. Motion is carried. Thank you. Our final item of the item of the evening. Item number 32.22, please.