Council committee of the whole meeting to order Agenda's roll call I'm boron excuse bulk excuse Bowers excused Decker Yesha here Hannon here Hanna excused Heidemann excused Kittleson excused Montemayor here Ratke here Rinfleshe here Vanderwill here versey here and longman excused Exactly what we need nine By the skin of our teeth we can meet Next pledge of allegiance Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all Next we're looking for approval of the previous minutes the last committee of the whole meeting of the previous Motions are made is our second All in favor of that motion approving the minutes say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye. Opposed? Motion carries Okay, this is the first of hopefully Numerous committee of the whole meetings my goal as stated our opening Common Council meeting was to have these as informative, but also to be the body where Open discussion and debate can occur In a more relaxed atmosphere than perhaps Common Council The There are several items I think that will be coming up shortly But before we get to that I thought it was important as what as well as many other Council members that we had an introduction for not only the new all the persons Which will have more in depth tomorrow. I understand but also for the returning all the persons kind of a review of Some of the responsibilities and duties and ethics of our our position So with that we have Two people actually speaking today, correct. We don't have Dan today And that would be a city clerk Sue Richards and city attorney Steve McLean. Thank you both for speaking to us today And I guess Sue will start with you Thank you Well, it's gonna be relaxed. I'm gonna just kind of go through well Jim not that relaxed I'm just gonna go through some things That are more procedural things That I went through and I thought about the things that we run into that we seem to have Not issues, but just questions about on a pretty regular basis I gave you a packet with some of the things that we're gonna just touch on just stop me if you have a question I know that I sometimes come off as really pushing you and really making you hold the line But it's really important and I'm trying to keep everybody On track with what we need to do as a city. So forgive me if it sounds like I'm really a Taskmaster, but that's my job One of the first things this is one of the first things that is very important for this council is Dealing with all the agendas and minutes. You may think that you belong to one or two committees. That's all there is we have Probably over 55 58 committees now Even though they all don't meet every single week They do meet throughout the year and we get agendas and minutes flowing into the office Constantly as you can tell by your emails that I send you It's very important I'm the one that keeps track of all of the agendas and minutes It has to be one person so we can make sure that we are doing our legal responsibility of posting them Or you can't have your meeting if you don't have it posted properly It's important by our municipal code that we have all the minutes in a certain amount of time which we'll go through in a second What I would ask is that your agendas in your minutes should all be sent to me electronically What we do is we distribute them we don't write the agendas we don't write the minutes unless it's for the council That's the only minutes in the agenda that I write So you're gonna have parent Departments that work with you like public works for the public works department Etc that will work with you if you're a chairman of a different committee I take care of all the posting whether it be actual physical posting of the agendas and I also distribute them to the different groups all the media get them which is required We have a distribution list of the public a large Distribution list of the public and then we have an internal list and then we have the automatic list So you all get this On a like I said, I don't wait till the end of the week I do it as I get them in because sometimes people need to have that ahead of time to schedule So you will be getting them pretty regularly. I do split them up between minutes and agendas You'll notice you'll get to usually emails from me So that's what that is Another really important thing and I'm a real stickler on this is that we need to have the agendas to me at Least 24 hours before you're planning your meeting if it's not before 24 hours I've been known to stop meetings. I'll come up and say look you didn't Post it and with enough time and it's all to do with the public having the right to be there having the right to be noticed for your meeting so The one thing that I would ask is that you give me at least an hour maybe two before that 24 hour period Because if you send it to me a minute before the 24 hours, I might not be at my desk I'm not sitting there looking at the emails all day long just waiting for you to send me something even though that would be fun But I don't do that. So if you can send it an hour or two, that would be greatly appreciated As far as the minutes go this has been a real stickler And we do have a lot of people that call me and say the minutes aren't there yet And they may have waited a month or two months or three months and they want to know what happened We have it in our municipal code you have to and I'm saying you collectively Whoever is responsible for the minutes has to get them to me within 96 hours of that meeting That way I can get them posted on the website. I email them out to everybody the media, etc. I Realize that it's hard sometimes, but three months later is probably not a wise idea. It's going against our code You know, you have to do your very best to get it to me as soon as you possibly can and everybody's really picking up the pace I'm getting them within you know, 10 hours of the meeting. It's really getting better. So I must really be cracking the web The other thing that I've had to Put in place is a deadline for when the council documents come in I know that you probably think well, why does she have to have them in at this point? The meeting is not till next Monday Well, what you have to understand is there's a process that we have to take that I have to do with the agenda or with the documents rather Get them written get them processed, you know, it's a pretty laborious process Whether we're doing it on the paper version or even if you know when we go to the electronic version It's still going to be a laborious process as far as getting everything in So that's why there's a deadline midweek where I need to have the documents so that I can get them written Write an agenda and make sure you have them by the weekend So if you ever wonder why is she pulling them so fast now?   We always are up here The only time that they wouldn't be ready on Friday There's occasions during the year that I'll be gone Either to conferences or whatever and I'm not back till late Friday. I start writing the documents on Saturday We run them and I usually have them done by Sunday So we would email you and say your packets will be ready Sunday after five and that doesn't happen very often But it does happen on occasion most the time you'll be able to pick up on Friday or over the weekend And you can get in with your key fob all weekend long after hours Okay The other thing that we sometimes get questioned on is when you get calls from your constituents and they are Telling you something's wrong. I need help with this or whatever it is I would ask that you you know when you're talking trying to solve the problem with them If it's something that you know that you just can't pass on It's a real easy situation that you could call Public works or whatever ask them to put it in writing so that they can submit it or you can submit it to me So we have a paper trail some kind of a trail that they've actually Registered a complaint with you so that we follow up on it Otherwise sometimes they get lost in the shuffle and I hate to see that happen It's easier if you as an alderman don't say it for them have them put it in writing or email or just email it to me That we find is really the best way to handle it And if you you know if you get to an email or any kind of letter over the weekend right before council meeting Just fire it over to me and I'll do it on Monday morning. That would be great I gave you some websites where you can I'm sure all of you have been on one of them is our city website The county's website is there Our municipal code which are all of our laws are on our city's website. You can link right to it On your desks, you may not all have them right now, but there is a Cheat sheet it's a laminated sheet that tells you how to do all the motions so that when you're standing up here And we're all looking at you and you say oh my gosh, how do I do this? I always have that sheet sheet in front of you So you will all have that the new alderman will have it so if you want to make a motion to pass a resolution the wording will be there Okay In the packet that I gave you these are just some things that are real helpful We've got the most current automatic list with all the emails addresses and phone numbers current as of I Think Dennis you were the last one to change something we've changed that so it's current as of right now And any time something changes if your phone number changes email changes, please let us know and then we'll resend these out to you Okay, I've given you a current list of the standing committees I've given you a current phone list of all the internal people in the city But you need to get a hold of Dave Bebel and how it works He's going to be on here So you don't have to not that I don't want to hear from you But you don't have to call me and say how do I get a hold of this and some of you like to call directly to the department So I've given you that There's a sheet in here on Just some helpful hints as far as Procedures starting the council meeting it starts at seven you need to be here early to sign documents Anytime after 6 30 would be great Don't show up five to seven if a document needs to be signed and and the mayor pounds the gavel and the documents not signed And on my desk it can't get acted on You know, it's not my rule. It's the way it is So that's why you're always here us saying if you've got documents out there. We need them And basically I've just given you a summary of The different things that we have the different documents. There's five different types of documents Those I'm not going to go through now I'm going to spend some time with our new older persons next week and we'll go through that So that you understand a little bit more about how the documents work I also have the full complete as of today the committee listing for you because that changes sometimes people are added people resign This is the most current It will be on the website and that will change as We get any changes The last thing that I would say is I think most of you you all should have this except for the new old person I think Scott has this There's a book that the League of Municipalities puts out that I purchase To have on hand. I think most of you have been issued one of these This is one of the most valuable resources for an official. It is it's called the handbook of For Wisconsin Municipal Municipal officials It is everything you ever wanted to know about being an older person Everything from annexations to financing to everything you want to know Uses as your resource you have all of your department heads and your departments uses resources is a fantastic resource And your new Alderman you'll be getting it next week when we meet so this is something and Really if you have any questions You know we learn as we are going on And I'm sure you know that as you go through meetings, especially the new older persons as you go through every meeting You learn more about how things work. So don't panic that you think oh my gosh. I don't know everything It takes people six months or more a year just to figure out what the process is So don't panic if you don't know it we understand and we're always here to help So that's it for me Thank you. So any questions All right, thank you Chairman rightfully Sue As far as your department goes and questions regarding old documents or research in your department Maybe you address how you'd like that handle Well, we are the keeper of the records for the city basically we have all all the council documents dating back to the 1800s We have all the minutes books So if there is something that it's an easy find something that's within the last six months or a year or two years And you need to find it You can give us a call and we will dig it out for you I can scan it and email it to you if it's a little bit more lengthy process I'd ask that you just give us some time You know, we don't have that many people there and we're you know We're usually pretty busy and we would just do some research and that will take just a little bit longer But we do have all the books there the minutes books and all the council documents Most of the contracts with the city Between our office and the attorney's office. We have I would hope all of the contracts with the city The city has so So we're kind of your resource place for that Citizen I do see the your request to speak right now Unfortunately on the agenda. I did not actually post public comments today I will add that Next time if perhaps you want to lean over to an alderman and maybe the alt person would be so kind too But unfortunately, I don't have that on the agenda to to a for public input apologies So the questions this time Just a final question suit that in if an alder person wishes to write a resolution And doesn't know how right that's a really good question We get a lot of calls for I need to write a resolution. I need to put an ordinance in how do I do that? Between our office and the city attorney's office. We can guide you We're not going to write you're going to have to write what you want, you know that the Part of that but I think that we can give you the procedure on how to do it Send you samples of ordinances and resolutions. You should always always have the city attorney check the ordinance and The resolution if possible to see if it's in proper Legalese I would hate to have a document come through and all of a sudden we've got to move it out because it's not proper Just check with the city attorney before it comes in would be a really good idea, but we can help with Yes, if I if I can just comment, please both Sue Richards and Steve McLean are invaluable resources that are available and if you ever have a doubt About writing in ordinance or about which I believe are going to be discussing ethics up here Do not be afraid to call them if you're ever in doubt You're better off Calling the resource and getting a straight answer than you are winging it. So I mean I've five You know in my four years around here.  All right, we'll move on to a city attorney's Steve McLean Thanks, Eric. I just want to on the discussion of the drafting ordinances I know the issues come up with the Alderman verse the already I Guess I do that based on my experience what generally if it's a rather complicated ordinance or somewhat major I guess my preferences rather than our office drafting something complete upfront Generally, I my advice is to Run something through a committee that deals with that issue and see what the sentiment of the committee is as to whether There's more than just one individual want to Pursue that legislation or would support it. I found There's a number of documents that spent a lot of time on on ordinances that really didn't go anywhere and I mean I Don't really mind doing that so much, but it's certainly a lot easier and more efficient for our office if if the subject is broached at the particular committee of jurisdiction over that subject and the committee says Yeah, I have the city attorney, you know work within draft something up and bring it in at least then I have some feeling that there's more than just one individual that Has an interest in this and it might have some legs so that Our office's time can be used most efficiently You know there there are times when if it's not a real sort of involved thing We don't have a problem drafting it up right from scratch, but the Some fairly complicated things that where there are a lot of issues or There are policy questions as to what's to be included and what's not I get some Guidance or feel from more than just one alderman say Before we draft it up and go to that time. It's helpful. I think and I I think it's probably more productive for the council too To clean if I may So in committee we appropriate then to say based on our discussions We make a motion to direct the city attorney to write a resolution with these points That's at least then we know that's been passed by the majority of the committee Yeah, or even wasting his time or even you know wouldn't even need to direct our office Just we got some indication that there's some sentiment for that subject matter because You know I'm spending a fair amount of time drafting that stuff and That's not going to go anywhere. It's really not productive. Thank you as Far as my understanding is we're meeting with soon I and I think all of them get your meeting with the three new alderman on Tuesday at noon That's what I what I intend to cover At that Meeting with the new alderman is a couple of things that I'm not going to talk about tonight What I view as really sort of an orientation of the big picture of what an alderman is What your authority is under the statutes as an alderman what the authority of the city council is What the talk about legislative procedure? how you You get Documents passed and whether you use an ordinance or resolution or sometimes you need a charter ordinance And what the difference is whether you need a majority vote or a supermajority a two-thirds vote Sort of quorum issues I'll be talking about a little bit about parliamentary procedure agendas The Charter law of municipalities how in the old days every city in the state or most of them had special charters that were just specifically for them and how The legislature did away with the special charters In the early 1900s and went to a general charter law and kind of cover what's in the general charter law home rule authority what authority City has to enact legislation how What sort of scopes of topics you can? Pass legislation on whether it conflicts with state law or doesn't conflict with state law and things like that Classes of cities were a second-class city and talk about what's the difference between a first-class city And I should say we're a class a city of the second class Yeah We'll be talking about One statute that the deals with general municipal law chapter 66 of the statutes kind of Brief overview as to what's in there types of things that the cities deal with And I'll also spend a little bit of time on Municipal and personal liability under Wisconsin law. I think it's important for Alderman to know If they're hanging out to dry personally on actions that they may take or not take as opposed to when the city is Obligated or may indemnify Individual Alderman for actions that they take or don't take and what scenarios that apply so That's what I'll cover with the new Alderman next week Tonight I thought really there's a in My experience sort of three big core subjects that Alderman deal with that are non substantive Matters as far as legislative type things, but they're three important areas for Alderman to be aware of One is the open meeting law One is the public records law and one is the ethics laws and our ethics code Interestingly enough, they're all addressed in chapter 19 of the state statutes. I Thought tonight if if if you're willing I'd talk about the open meeting law I could spend Hours on this and I'm sure you'd all like to stay here for hours and listen to this but I Think I talk about the open meeting law tonight and perhaps some future date will get an opportunity to talk about the public records laws Public records laws don't You know Alderman don't deal as directly with the public records laws as they do with the open meetings law Although I will say as a caveat if you get a home computer and you're doing work city work at home and You're getting emails and so forth those sorts of things become public records and you've got an obligation under the law to Retain those you can't just delete all these Emails and and various documents you get Question we have a question I Get emails apologize for interruption. Thank you chairperson run push, but get emails all the time from Constituents do we have to save all those too? I mean what's the you know? I don't like this. I don't like that this that I mean do we need to save all of those I? Would say yes. Yes. You should Alrighty should be saving that stuff. Okay, I have been but I didn't know what a presumption is anything's really a public record unless it's personal notes if If it's Generated sort of and covers the scope of your authority or scope of scope of your duties as an alderman And you need to preserve those things Generally general rules for six years There are certain things like You know get What I would say would be equivalent to a phone message or something like that on a pink slip where you know you got a call from somebody and I Would view the electronic version of that no different than the hard copy and that's that's not really a public record That's you get junk mail. That's you get spam. That's not public record, but communications Between you and constituents communication between you and city officials other alderman that you should really be keeping because The public can make requests for that information Some of that stuff may be Not accessible to the public for various various reasons may be confidential or May not be available But in general, I think it's a good idea to save that that material So getting if I can shift in gears to the open meeting law, so we have one more question Thank You Chairman Steve how about telephone calls when they call and ask me a question. I give them an answer Yeah, you got to save those No, the good thing about the telephone is it doesn't It's not it doesn't stay there forever. It's not a document No, you don't have to obviously telephone calls a telephone call A lot of times from a government employees or government official standpoint telephone is often a lot Easier and more convenient because of the fact that you don't get this paper trail And then you have to worry about whether you got to keep it or you don't have to keep it So the phone can be very helpful As opposed to doing a lot of business by email, although You know, I'm old-school enough where I Generally prefer the telephone versus a lot of emails and things like that. It's easier for me But I know the you know younger Alderman and stuff you Grew up on email and instant messaging and text messaging and all that stuff, but all that creates Records they're they're there even an electronic format and they're Potentially subject to the public records law I Guess the to interrupt again I think the public should be aware too that one there communicate with us especially by email They're creating a public record and that there should not be any expectation of anonymity or or privacy when communicating even through email For the public's sake as well You may get so I comment like this is just for your benefit. I want you to vote yes on this But don't tell anybody that I said that be aware. That's a that's the document that's been created if the email to you Especially and and a letter to Correct, right, okay Haven't seen a lot of requests, but we've had the mayor had an open records request from the boy and press for six months Worthy emails You know sent received whatever And we spent a long time going through them And Yeah, most of those were sent to sent to the mayor, but the He's got them. They're on his in his computer. They're they create a record there I Steve I I was I'm sorry. Okay. I I received a couple open records requests a year or so ago from from one of the labor unions and produced what they asked for and Can you charge people for producing this stuff and and what happens if you produce it and they never pick it up Oh, I guess let's forget open meetings. We'll talk about public records I was trying to do a segue First of all the concept with public records is Rather documents maintained by an authority and the statute defines authority to include individual Elected or appointed officials so records you maintain that are your Records are your public records if you get stuff from the council meetings to take them home their their records although Most of that stuff would be at the city clerk's office and the city clerk is really the primary Repository of the official public records you just got a copy But if if you have that in your possession and somebody makes a request for it They got a right to get a copy Can you charge for that? Yes the the standard is that you can charge your reasonable costs of Reproduction And We've applied in the city That at 25 cents a page generally I Guess what I would suggest and advise all the alderman if you Get any open records requests contact our office and we'll help you through it. I think that's the best way to go Some things you may have may not be a record Some things you maybe get you can get asked a lot of times you'll get requests from Individuals or citizens groups to answer a list of questions And they're citing the freedom of freedom of Information Act of the federal law or the state open Public records law You're not obligated to answer questions under the public records law if you've got a record You've got perhaps an obligation to provide make that available to the public, but you don't have to start You know doing a lot of research and answering questions and things like that. That's It's strictly a matter of if you got the record and it's Deemed to be public and there's no reason why it's confidential or excluded as an exception to the public records law You've got to make it available now You don't necessarily have to copy it and and a lot of times what I do I've had requests from other attorneys they make open records requests for a whole bunch of Files in our office. I have Oftentimes called up the attorney and said look You know, I'll dig out all the files that are relevant to your request I'll have them on my conference room table and you can come in anytime during the working hours and Look through them to your heart's content if you want to make copies of anything You're free to do that And we'll charge you for whatever you want copied that From my perspective is often very effective. It saves saves a lot of time and and needless Copy and stuff that nobody's really interested in in any way and and frankly it puts the burden on the requester to To really look through and see what what it is if anything they're interested in There are what else can I tell you about public records? You you have the right to if you do produce a copy Basically 25 cents is the it's the standard you generally don't have the right to Charge You know your time if you will spent in making the copies and things like that that's all sort of deemed to be within the 25 cents That we use this as a general rule Under the public records law If somebody makes a verbal request they Can't sue you if you don't respond in order for them to Pursue anything to sue you later on their request needs to be in writing and writing can also be email If somebody does make a written request to you or an email request for public records You got to respond to it you can't just blow them off and not respond The courts hold that if you don't respond basically you deny their request and I got to write if they wish to pursue it to go to court and And sue you under the public records law You can't then argue to the judge that well If I had responded I would have denied the request for this this and this reason It's too late at that point you have to if you're going to deny a Request you got to indicate what your basis is for that denial up front And there's a lot of case law on this where you know you say I'm not going to give it for this particular reason and The court deems that that's not a legitimate reason there might have been another legitimate reason But you didn't really deny it on that basis court's going to say you got to turn over the record There's a question again. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chairman How long from the time we get that open records request do we have to respond to it? Is there a statute? timeframe or just Properly within a reasonable period of time But but properly you can't just say well I'll get to it when I get to it and blow it off with for a month or so Generally the Attorney General's office takes a position that ten days is a reasonable period of time And again though if you do get a request contact the city attorney's office immediately I Am not aware that much that alderman get requests for open records or for public records. I've seen it but typically they're looking for copies of our files or copies of Records from the mayor or the city clerk or some city department finance department things like that that Regularly generate a lot of paperwork dealing with the city But and I advise all the departments to generally when they get requests unless it's pretty routine and unless they Are confident. They're just going to give it and they've got it available for them to contact our office as well it's There are You know a lot of issues with police chiefs here at the police department gets a lot of requests for Police reports internal police investigations Some sort of sensitive matters Sometimes and the news media is looking for them or somebody else for whatever reason and There may be Statutorily valid reasons not to provide those things Or there there's also Many times if the record Makes reference to and the subject of the record is a city employee The law requires that before you release the record you give the city employee notice And there's a statutory scheme for doing that you got to give them written notice and they've got ten days to To respond, you know, for instance, I get a request and there's something in there involves some city employee and I make the determination that It's subject to release Before I release that I've got to give the employee notice and an opportunity to go to court and Get a court order to stop that release if I don't do that. I could be liable to the employee for violating their privacy rights Another thought came to me and vanished immediately Public records again the there's a lot of statutory Exceptions things that aren't public Prepare that well for public records discussion tonight, but I did bring the statute along to take a quick look here Trade secrets. These are limitations upon access Law enforcement records certain law enforcement records are not subject to disclosure Contractors records some of those are and some of those aren't for instance, we get requests where DPW has whole contract file with the contractor that's doing a street street pavement work and You get requests from individuals or labor unions curious as to whether or not the contractors pay paying prevailing wages A lot of that information we might not even have in our files, but there's Statutes talk about since they're contracting with the city that the we've got to Get those from the contractor and make them available in our open records request with certain You know deletions for names and social security numbers and that sort of thing A lot of personal information health care records Social security numbers Often home telephone numbers and things like that can be redacted from records Before you release them But like the open meeting law the general presumption is it's subject to disclosure there's Wisconsin is very has very strong Laws on public records and public meetings that the general strong presumption of the state is that all these things are Public and open and available to the citizens to find out What's going on in the government and how things are are managed in the government and It's The the restrictions are always pretty narrowly construed and there's what's called a balancing test in the public records law If there's nothing that says it's Disclosable or not disclosable The custodian of the record and that's what you are if it's your record and they're making a request to you If it's your record, you're the custodian of the record You engage in what's called the balancing test And weigh the public's right to access to the record Versus the harm to the public in disclosing the record and This comes up More frequently than you would think I remember one sort of classic scenario it also involved the police department. There was a Number of years ago, there was a shooting Police officer shot an individual on the south side who had his wife, I believe hostage and was threatening to kill her with a knife and And That was the guy had been torturing his wife for number of hours and he had that all on video and The police had the video and the news media was interested in getting the video and It was it was a very gruesome CD and the issue was whether or not the The Benefit to the public in releasing that Was outweighed by the harm to the public and in and the harm to the privacy interest in disclosing that sort of thing Now another thing on public records is if you get a request and you're not the custodian of the record You don't have that record They're asking you for something you don't have you don't have to generate a record to respond to them and You don't have to say well I don't have that the you know this other alderman's got that You're only the custodian of what you've got If they're making the request of you Your obligation is with your documents not with anybody else's We're somewhat flexible Sort of on a case-by-case basis in the city where Somebody will make a request to the finance director and We know the finance director doesn't have the records, but the city clerk does Sometimes we'll you know contact the city clerk she'll make the records available and we'll respond to that But from a technical standpoint the finance director could just respond and say well You know, I'm not the custodian of that record. I don't have it period doesn't have to say that the You know Sue Richards happens to have that record you might want to contact her or I'll go talk to sue and get it from her So it's a very technical statute it's Again, it's part of the under the general theory in Wisconsin of open government. It's important to the public publics got a right to know these things got a right to Get copies of the stuff, but as I say it's not your job to Generate responses to just questions. That's not to say that you can't do that and very often That may be the most practical thing to do. I know the fire chief got a request Earlier this week From a group and they asked the series of questions and it was not yes or no, but it was they wanted numbers of this numbers of that and You know I advise the chief way you don't have to answer the questions like that.  And I don't have a record that gives those numbers.  There's certain certainly nothing wrong with the answering those things, but That's not a requirement of the public records law Steve if I may I know we're off of your prepared topics right now The one topic I would like you to speak on if possible unless there's any questions before I move on to Is it seems every year that I've been on since 2003? the question of Ethics of you know, does that ethical behavior from all the person or not an ethical behavior from all the person? I don't know if you're able to if you prepare anything to discuss Yeah, you know the ethics of our position here. Sure Unless there's any other points someone also bring up first Okay The big picture is there's a state statute also as I said it's in chapter 19 that There is a code of ethics for local officials code of ethics for local government officials employees and candidates chapter 19 section 19.58 59 and in addition to that state law the state law says that In addition to this statute municipalities can adopt their own ordinances also dealing with the codes of ethics And so we have adopted an ethics code. It's been on the books for quite a while now that deals with the Ethics issues And you should bear in mind that when we're talking about ethics in government I guess you could make a lot of jokes about ethics in government But it's not really You know the the technical issue is not where whether you're a moral or an ethical person so much is but rather the gist of it is whether you have a financial interest or a personal interest in whatever it is that is the issue and Under our ethics code Our ethics code by the way is in chapter 2. It's 2-261 through 277 This this is for the new alderman. This is our code of Ordinances it's by chapter chapter 2 is the chapter on administration And I was kind of in our orientation session with the new alderman kind of thumb through the code book so that It used to be every alderman had one of these code books, but they've gotten very expensive to maintain and keep so now you you know You're told to go to the website and look at them and they are there, but it's just Maybe it's age again. I always find it's It's easier for me to look it up in a book than it is to look at it online and trying to search online is not Not to me as as easy as looking at an index or table of contents on a hardbound but For your benefit that I've got a hardbound copy that's kept up to date of the code of ordinances the city clerk does there's a copy in here if you're just Hanging around city hall with nothing to do and you want to thumb through the code book I Think for an alderman it's important to have some general idea at least what the laws of the city are and that's really what the the code of ordinances is it's the The law books for the for the city what our rules and regulations are and what's what's allowed and what's not I guess we have a question thank you alderman Ryan flesh in our code of ethics it talks about Impropriety or the appearance of impropriety and that always gets to be kind of gray as to we're supposed to according to our ethics code avoid all even appearance of impropriety and And I don't that's always gets to be kind of one person's opinion versus another person's opinion I wonder how you deal with that well, you know ethics codes are you know There's no real bright line tests on ethics codes a lot of it is Gray areas. There's no doubt about that Let me cover the definitions of financial interest and personal interest because they are defined in the Ordinance of financial interest any interest which shall yield directly or indirectly a Monetary or other material benefit to the officer or employee or to any other person employed or retaining the services of the officer or employee I Should point out by by saying officer or employee as alderman your officers of the city Our ethics code also covers city employees Personal interest is any interest arising from blood or marriage relationships or from close business or political affiliations Whether or not any financial interest is involved As I say our our local code adopts the state code as well Once again, there's a declaration of policy in our ethics code that basically promotes impartiality independence and responsibility to the people and that's that's The way you're supposed to conduct yourselves is In the best interest of the public and not your own personal best interest There do you have a question? You know regarding, you know the the ethics code in the gray area, you know one one One thing I've always used is that if you're stepping into what you feel is a gray area You probably don't belong there and then it normally works if you look at it as black and white If you're if you're going into a gray area and you think there may be the appearance of Impropriety if you don't go into that gray area, you never have to worry about it and that's that's one thing that I think that You know Will keep a lot of people, you know if you use your conscience and if your conscience tells you this is kind of a gray area Stay out of it, and you won't you won't run into any problems, you know with the appearance of impropriety, which is normally what? Things will lead to Thank you before I get into specifics as to what is in the code as to What's okay, and what's not? the overview is that Council in the ordinance has created an ethics board Which is comprised of all the alderman and the chairman of the committee the whole is the chair of the ethics board There is provision in here that When in doubt as to Your particular, you know particular action you may or may not be considering taking Or whether to do something is appropriate or not you can seek an advisory opinion from the ethics board One problem is that that's kind of generally pretty time-consuming and by the time you Convene the ethics board and and you're looking for some confidential opinion. You're not looking for Disclosing the issue publicly generally Time has passed for whatever Whatever the issue is somebody's offered you free tickets to the Bucks game or something like that and you need to know an answer You know before the game hopefully As to whether you can go or not So the the ordinance or there's a separate resolution that designates the law and licensing committee as A subcommittee of the ethics code and that's some help in that that's only a five-person committee and if Looking for some quicker advice that may be possible to go through the law and licensing committee Which Alderman Rindflay she also happens to chair this this council year The code doesn't specifically provide for it, but As mayor and Alderman Gisha have mentioned Contact our office if you got Some concerns about whether what you're doing is appropriate or not You know, it's one of those things like It's sort of a smell test thing as the mayor said sort of let your conscience be your guide. It's It's not quite that simple but if Something is nagging in your mind and you're just not sure it's better to ask beforehand because While not specifically in our code courts generally will view actions taken after requesting advice or getting an opinion as to whether it's Appropriate or not and as long as you follow that advice You're generally going to be in a lot better shape and viewed as Having done the right thing to get advice and and of course not going to slam you individually for for breaching the ethics code when When you did the best you could you got, you know sought advice and you followed the advice you you received I'm sorry Steve since we haven't done this one's at least in the law and licensing subcommittee before I guess the question would be to what degree is can this be done in closed session? What do we just be an open session? Much of it can be done in closed session and then that's provided for in the in the code a lot of these things are Basically, you're looking for a confidential opinion and you're entitled to confidential opinion to State to the world, you know what what your dilemma is Really is not the way people deal with ethics issues But the ordinance provides for and the state statute provides for meeting in closed session and Discussing ethics issues and things like that The ethics board the other function it has Besides just advisory opinions is in the event there is Someone brings a complaint against an alder person or an employee For violation of the ethics code. It's the ethics board that does the investigation and would hold a hearing say on on the Issue as to whether there's violation or not The penalties under our ordinance We don't provide for monetary penalties. The state statute says we can if we want to put in the ordinance Penal monetary penalties ours does not but the penalties in the ordinance that we've got are That a violation may constitute a cause for suspension removal from office or employment or other disciplinary action So it's a serious matter if it's an alder person who's Being an investigated the alderman stands down from the committee and doesn't participate obviously in the investigation But there are Due process rights If an investigation were to go forward the individual Charged if you will has has rights and Ability to seek counsel if it's pushed to that point and right to be You know Have a hearing if if there's going to be some sort of sanctions imposed by the ethics board another question Steve In terms of Votes on the council floor here if it is decided as a person that I Should remove myself from the voting abstain and vote I also need to abstain from the debate. Is that correct as well? Yes that's Basically if you need to abstain you abstain base from that whole issue You can't discuss the merits of the issue and then just say well, I'm like Abstaining from the vote you need also to abstain from the discussion. Okay. Thank you Abstention is Really a personal thing also Nobody can force you to abstain There's You've got a First Amendment right even though you're Government official you still got the right to free speech and if You know you may run into an ethics code violation if you do vote but Nobody else can tell you that you have to abstain. That's really your choice Can give you advice and suggest you might want to but Nobody can force you to As the specifics we've got a code provision that says no city official or employee shall request or permit the unauthorized Use of city-owned vehicles equipment materials or property for personal convenience or profit a lot of these things are sort of Obvious but they're in the code. No city official shall grant any special consideration Treatment or advantage to any citizens beyond that which is available to every other citizen So you can't pick and choose favorites You know obviously you got personal friends and so forth that's not an issue No, city official whether paid or unpaid shall engage in any business or transaction Or shall act in regard to financial or other personal interests direct or indirect Which is incompatible with the proper discharge of his official duties in the public interest Contrary to this article or which would tend to impair his independence of judgment or action in a performance of his official duties that's the Sort of the the appearance or you know would tend to impair the independence of judgment Sometimes it's not clear or it's clear probably in your mind that you know to accept a free dinner from somebody isn't going to influence you but If you look at it objectively and you really need to do that might this tend to influence You know my judgment when an issue and maybe there is an issue pending regarding that business or that individual or whatever and You know should I be accepting that we also have another section? I'll get to in a second dealing with meals and things like that. That's more specific No city official shall engage in or accept private employment or render service for private interests When such employment or service is incompatible with the proper discharge of his official duties or attend to impair his independence of judgment or action the performance of his official duties Unless otherwise permitted by law and a less disclosure is made as provided by this article Disclosure of confidential information this this comes up in a closed session scenario the council goes into closed session to discuss an item that's properly a subject for closed session and The next day you read about it in a shabuaga press Somebody talked to the news media The section says no city official or employees shall without proper legal authorization disclose confidential information concerning the property government or affairs of the city Nor shall he use his such information to advance the financial or other personal interest of himself or others So there's a couple keys there. No city official shall without proper legal authorization disclose confidential information. So Closed session material Remains closed now the law is generally It it remains closed until the the need for it to remain closed No longer exists The question is well, when is that and who makes that determination? Generally my advice is if if you have that question and you're considering releasing confidential information because you think it's no longer confidential contact our office and and Let's talk about it But there are there are certain things that you know two years later that It's really not confidential anymore. If you say something about it you're not breaching the ethics code even though it may have been confidential at one time but Certainly when in doubt don't just Make the leap that well, you know, this is general knowledge and therefore I'm going to disclose what the What I heard in a closed session of the council Here's the big one and this is the one that comes up most often it's entitled gifts and favors No city official or employee may solicit or accept any valuable gift favor or thing from any person who to his knowledge is Interested directly or indirectly in any manner whatsoever in business dealings with the city Nor shall any such official or employee accept any gift favor or thing of value That may tend to influence him in the discharge of his duties or grant in the discharge of his duties any improper favor service or thing of value Favor shall include but are not limited to admission tickets to sports or entertainment events restaurant meals transportation for personal purposes and Providing accommodations at a hotel or a resort Absent other unusual circumstances the following actions of officials or employees shall not be deemed to be violations of this article And here's the where we sort of set somewhat arbitrary guidelines receipt of a gift that is an unsolicited item of nominal intrinsic value you get some key chain or pencil or something like that from Yeah covers trinkets Receive of memento such as coffee cups paper weights Provided the value received does not exceed $20 and that distribution is of a general nature That was kind of the Mayor Schneider and Mayor Mayor SRAM exception The old days the mayor's office had a whole shells of coffee mugs in in the office and This covers things like coffee mugs provided the value does not exceed $20 and the distribution of us is of a general nature now exactly what that distribution is of a general nature is little unclear to me, but the Somebody offers you I've got one of my office. I use it every day. It's the cup. I use it says River's Edge on it It was this condominium project on Penn Avenue there went to their grand opening and they were at the grand opening. They were Providing coffee mugs and so it was for general distribution to anybody that was attending the grand opening I've got it. I've been drinking coffee out of it ever since Attendance or participation at modest ceremonial events I eat groundbreaking's grand openings receptions As well as business lunches outings and conferences provided the value received does not exceed $30 So business lunch is okay as long as it's not a frivolous or you know a big deal This $30 has been in here for 20 years and may need to be updated, but it's still $30 Attendance or participation at events or function sponsored by the city where there is no intent to influence the official or employee If you recall I think at the last council meeting you approved a city employee going to Colorado Springs as part of a Bike program Paid 100% by the organization putting on the event. It's tied into the the grant monies that the city got for Non-motorized transportation that sort of thing, but it includes room and board basically while they're out there Rather than just Them contact while they contacted the individual rather than the individual just saying oh, yeah, I'll just take that We brought in a resolution and had the council Sponsor that individual to go and really that that's what this deals with the tenants or participation events or functions sponsored by the city Where there's no one tent to influence the official or employee One situation that arose and I think former fire chief is probably still mad at me over this but The city was looking at purchasing a fire boat And the manufacturer was out in Las Vegas and the manufacturer or I think it was manufactured offered to pay full freight for room and board for a week for the chief and number of firefighters to go out there and demonstrate the boat I Told them is He can go out there, but Either he needs to get the council to to sponsor him and say that it's for City business, that's why you're going or they need to Pay pay the reasonable rate themselves and And go but but not accept the freebie from the contractor and That's what they ended up doing is they went Sure had a nice time in Las Vegas But it wasn't on the contractor's dime, and I think that's the best approach when When a contractor is looking to wine and diner fly it to somewhere to To view something We've had that seems like a lot of fire issue fire trucks and things like That You know some are like to Indianapolis or something and you think Jesus is that a gift or not, you know Or is that a liability but Anyway, we've got somewhat definable provisions in the code on gifts and favors, but If somebody that you know that is interested in doing business with the city is looking to give you something for quote-for-nothing Or do you some favor? personally Bells ought to be going off in your mind that Something doesn't smell right here and either decline or Seek seek some advice as to whether it's okay or not I don't know how many times I've got calls from employees Generally department heads were vendors Offer them tickets to sporting events bucks games brewers games and You know the the vendor saying well, they just you know, they do that. That's just general business. Well Yeah, but you're you're dealing with that vendor and they're trying to influence you to to buy their product and If you want to accept the ticket Pay them the full value of what it's worth and and you don't have an ethics issue Or decline to go but a lot of times I find I'm sort of the bad guy. I get to say no and people don't generally like that but It's really you look at it as a smell test that Are they doing this because they're your personal buddies? And you're going golfing with your personal buddies or or is it You know something that they wouldn't it have invited you but for the fact that you're an alderman and They've got some potential interest coming up before the council or not necessarily with you, but with the city and It could tend to influence you in your judgment on that particular issue Steve I'm going to interrupt here for a second. I think the crowd's getting a little restless I know we could talk for several more hours I've been sufficiently terrified from doing my job. I think I lost you and we haven't gotten to open meetings yet I Think with your permission would like to re-invite you back to cover some of these issues that you may come up with The three that you may feel like you are important to bring up to the rest of the committee But I think in short and summary Get his phone number on your phone and call whenever there's any questions it won't end out The longer I'm doing this I think the more you've heard from me and realized that He's a resource to protect us and protect the city as well. That's that's why I'm here I'm not here to be a hard guy, you know, I Provide advice to the council. That's my statutory authority and legal authority and Try to do it to the myself and my sister to the best of our ability. You may not always agree with this and As an attorney, you know, we provide advice. We don't tell you what you that what you have to do and if you choose not to follow it that's up to you but You know somewhat your dilemmas if you don't follow our advice and it's wrong. You could be left hanging out to dry Your attorneys aren't cheap, right? I don't know Price is right For in-house attorney here, yeah, yeah, yeah So I think I'll open up to any additional questions from the committee this time If there are specific questions like said, please call Steve directly if you think it's something enough that we should all Here let me know and we can bring that back at a later date to this committee so that the entire council Can can hear or the committee the whole excuse me can can hear. Thank you Steve. Appreciate that. Thank you, Sue information The last item on the agenda is the separate date and time as you may know We've had some difficulty in settings of meeting on a day that we already had so you had three meetings now Some had to on this evening The date has come up most often people requested is the Wednesday of council week The problem with that is Getting noticed anything that gets referred from the Monday come and council meeting to get to on Wednesday would have to be posted right away on Tuesday Okay Okay, does that Wednesday work for at least for those council members that are here the week of council meeting Okay, we'll look at scheduling that day instead then for items that get referred to committee the whole Just as a resource as I was looking at this today the The Party really that enforces public records law open meeting law is the Attorney General's office Generally the statute says the district attorney or the Attorney General, but the Attorney General deals with those issues a lot They've got very good information on state the Department of Justice website If you look at that website, there's a section lower left hand corner and title public records and open meetings And I looked at that the other day. There's a click that and there's a They've got a compliance guide that they update every year on the open meeting law on the public records law that's Got a lot of a lot of information it's About 30 page each of them about 30 pages long. I also noticed there's they've got a Video that was of a presentation that Attorney General's office presented I think sometime last year to the general public That's an hour and a half on The open meeting law You know if you got a free hour and a half and you're looking to you can't fall asleep It's it's available on the web I started looking at it and I fell asleep No And there they've also got a PowerPoint on the website there on public records law, so It's a lot of good information there, too Thank you to the McLean, thank you to the cleric signatures Motion to adjourn Motion made is our second second all favor say aye. General it's aye. We send adjourned


Modern web development involves quite a few tasks, running servers, optimizing images, and processing source code. These are the kinds of manual tasks that you can automate with gulp, grunt, make, or other build tools. We're going to use gulp for some of the more complex labs in this class. So here's a quick introduction to how it works. Gulp reads a file called the gulp file to tell it what to do. This is a sample gulp file.js file. It's written in JavaScript with a couple of node.js extensions for loading other files. The require statements at the top load the core gulp commands and the gulp interface to uglyphi. These are known as gulp plugins. Uglyphi is a program to compress and minify JavaScript. Gulp files are divided into a series of tasks. A task might run on a server, minify some code, or even delete files. Each task should be one self-contained action. We define a task named uglyphi-js and write some JavaScript to implement it. The gulp.source task reads all the JS files from source slash JS. We then pass all of these files into the uglyphi tool using the pipe command. The output of each command is ready to pipe into the next, so use the gulp.desk command to write the result into new files under dist slash JS. Formally, gulp is a cross-platform streaming task runner that lets developers automate many development tasks. At a high level, gulp reads files of streams and pipes, then streams to different tasks. These tasks are code-based and use plugins. The tasks modify the files, building source files into production files. To get an idea of what gulp can do, check the list of gulp recipes on GitHub. Gulp is a node package, and the plugins that it uses are also node packages. So you need to install node.js first. This also installs a node package manager. You should also enable gulp from the command line. To do this, install the gulp CLI package. You can then go into your project or create a new one and have NPM install the gulp plugins you need into your project. Write your gulp file.js, and you can begin using gulp from the command line. Here's an example of creating a project and installing gulp plugins. The first line creates a new NPM project. This generates a package.json file that lists your project plugins. The following commands install various example plugins, including gulp itself. The save dev flag updates the package.json file with the corresponding plugin. The plugins are installed in a node underscore modules directory. With this method, you can easily reinstall all plugins in their dependencies later by using the package.json file rather than reinstalling each plugin individually. Note that plugins A, B, and C are imaginary. We're just using those names to show how plugins work. Once the plugins are installed, they need to be loaded into the gulp file using require. Now you're ready to define tasks. This task is named taskABC. It takes files from the sum source files path and pipes them through functions from each of the plugins, which modify the files. The processed files are passed to gulp.desk, which writes the files to the sum destination path. The task we just defined can be run from the command line by typing gulp, space, and the task name. In this case, it's gulp space task-abc. Here are some more resources for learning gulp. As usual, use the links in the slides or your textbook to learn more. There's no special gulp lab at this time. You'll get plenty of practice in the lessons after this one. Once you are comfortable with gulp, there are two more things you may want to try. The first is to create a default task.  This code assigns task1, task2, and task3 as prerequisites. When you run the default task, the prerequisites will run first. You can do this for any task, not just the default. You can run this task by typing gulp, space, default, or just playing gulp on the command line. Default is the one special task that doesn't need to be called by name. The other trick is to make gulp run tasks whenever your files change, in other words, when you hit save. Gulp.watch monitors files for changes. When the files change, watch will run the associated tasks. This code watches CSS files in the styles directory and all JS files in the JS directory. If any CSS files change, the process CSS task runs. If any JavaScript files change, the process JS task runs. This watch task is started by running gulp watch from the command line, though this task can be named anything.


Dear students, I would like to present to you the concept of the marginal probability density function and I will be presenting it with the help of an example. If we have two continuous random variables X1 and X2 then the joint PDF is written as small f of capital X1, capital X2 at the point small x1, small x2. And of course, we will need to take the double integral of this function with respect to both X1 and X2 in order to obtain the total probability that the one that is equal to one. This is the basic thing regarding the joint PDF. Now that we have this thing, now how do we define the marginal PDF of X1 and the marginal PDF of X2? Well, it is very simple for finding in order to find the marginal PDF of X1. All we have to do students is to integrate joint PDF with respect to X2. Let me say it again. If you want the marginal PDF of X1 then integrate the joint PDF with respect to X2. Or if you want the marginal PDF of X2 then integrate the joint PDF with respect to X1. Let me present to you the algebraic formula that can be written as follows. Small f of the random variable X1 at the point small x1 is equal to the integral from minus infinity to infinity of small f of the random vector x1, x2 at the point small x1, x2. And this integral is with respect to x2 because you are seeing that we have written there the x2 which is written there, focus on that so that you will know which variable of the integral we are taking. So you can see that in order to obtain the marginal of X1 we are having the integral with respect to x2. Exactly the same way we have for the other one and that is in front of you on the screen. Now let us take a simple example. Suppose that the random variables continuous random variables X1 and X2 have the joint PDF given by small f of X1, X2 is equal to X1 plus X2 and the limits of X1 and X2 are 0 to 1. X1 also goes from 0 to 1 and X2 also goes from 0 to 1. So we have this particular joint PDF and of course you can check for yourself that if you take the double integral of this PDF both with respect to X1 and X2 from 0 to 1 because we generally write minus infinity or infinity. But when you have that from 0 to 1 obviously you will write 0 to 1 for both of them. You can check it yourself that this double integral will come out to be equal to 1. So that is done. Now suppose that we are wanting to find the marginal PDF of X1. So just do exactly what I said a short while ago that simply integrate this joint PDF with respect to X2. So let us do it right now. Integral from 0 to 1 of X1 plus X2 with respect to X2 is equal to the integral of X1 with respect to X2 plus the integral of X2 with respect to X2. Now let us look at this separately. The first one is written in X1 integral that will come out because when we are integrating with respect to X2 students X1 then acts as a constant. Or if it acts like a constant then we can take it out. So when we take it out what are we left with inside? We are left with 1. Now if we take the integral of 1 with respect to X2 what do we get? Of course we get X2. After that apply limits 0 to 1. So upper limit minus the lower limit put on X2 1 minus 0 so that is equal to 1. And the one that was taken out X1 multiply it with X1. What do you get? X1 into 1 that is X1. This was the first part. This is how it is. Now let us focus on the second part the integral of X2 with respect to X2. So what will come? Obviously X2 square over 2. Now apply limits on this 0 to 1. Upper limit minus the lower limit. So X2 square over 2 instead of that 1 square over 2 minus 0 square over 2. Solve it. Obviously it is equal to half. So therefore what is the final result? The final result is that the marginal pdf of X1 is small f1 of X1 is equal to X1. The first integral was solved. Plus half to the second integral was solved. But students you cannot complete it. Just write this and think that it is complete. You must write the domain of this function. Or in other words the support of this function. Since this is the marginal of X1, it is obvious that you have to write the range of X1. X1 and X2 you know you remember. Both of them were going from 0 to 1. So it is obvious that you will go ahead with this.  And the more formal or rigorous or mathematically proper way of writing it. Under that you will also write 0 elsewhere. So this is how you can find a marginal of X1. And I leave it to you to find in a very similar manner the marginal pdf of X2.


The Bank of England has never had a female governor. The Bank of England's top officials make decisions which impact everyone in Britain, but right now their members come from a narrow range of backgrounds. Out of the 23 members on the most important committees, only 7 are female. BAME communities are underrepresented and the bank itself recently revealed that BAME staff are leaving the bank in disproportionate numbers. And a majority of those on the Monetary Policy Committee, which is in charge of setting interest rates and policies such as quantitative easing, were working in the city or for large companies before taking up their post. This results in the kind of group thing which helped cause the last financial crisis, something which the bank itself acknowledges. So is it surprising that over the past decade the bank's policies have disproportionately benefited the wealthiest in society? The bank itself even admitted that its policies have increased the wealth of the top fifth of households by 200 times more than the poorest. In the next few months, the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, will have to make some of the most important decisions of his political career. Who to appoint as governor and deputy governor of the Bank of England? In doing this, he has the chance to fix a problem that's plagued the bank for decades. The fact that the makeup of its senior positions bears so little resemblance to the country its mission is to serve. So before Philip Hammond makes these crucial decisions that will affect our country for years to come, we need to make sure he understands that we need more diversity at the central bank. Because unless the most powerful committees are representative of our country as a whole, they can't possibly understand how every community is affected by their decisions. So we need more women, more people of colour, and more people working in the real economy outside the financial sector, or for trade unions or civil society organisations. We've partnered with 38 Degrees on a petition, which already over a thousand people have signed. So please help us make sure every community is represented at the top table. Please sign and share the petition now.


Welcome back. I'm Drone Tech and you're probably wondering why you haven't seen anything about this story from the so-called mainstream media. I'm talking about CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, NPR. I guarantee you that you've not heard anything from any of these sources. You know what? I'm sorry. They actually have reported on it, but as usual, they're being as deceitful and misleading as possible. So what we have here is a radicalized Democrat who no doubt had a healthy dose of CNN and MSNBC who took pipe bombs to a Republican rally with the intention of hurting innocent people. From the post-millennial, a man in full black block behaving suspiciously near a right-wing rally outside the Pinellas County Courthouse in Florida on January 6 was apprehended by deputies after he tried fleeing on foot. Garrett James Smith, 22, was arrested and found carrying an active pipe bomb, antifa propaganda in a written document on what to bring for his direct action.  I know that domestic terrorism is a grave threat, but what can we do to stop it? What we need is to take the laws we already have and apply them to white people. White people are committed to being villains in the aggregate, right?   The thing I want to say to you is we got to take these motherf***ers out. But I know, but like, we can't say that, right? We can go after international terrorists. Why can't we do it at home? Today, we're mostly looking at our neighbors rather than a Osama bin Laden that's far off in Afghanistan. Bin Laden and Cove didn't have supporters and sympathizers among the House Republican caucus. The party is basically a domestic terrorist cell at this point, and they should be treated as such. There are elements of the GOP that are starting to look like the jihadists. Al Qaeda wasn't umbilically linked to the American conservative movement in the way that these domestic extremists clearly are. Alright, folks, we're going to talk about the media's reaction or lack thereof. But first, let me tell you about the special coin offer for my viewers. Now, something's not adding up, is it? Stocks are at record highs, but the government just borrowed five trillion dollars. And it's transitory, but it just went up to 6.8%.  Gas? Electricity? A precious metals IRA with Noble Gold will help you to avoid the worst of this. This month, Noble Gold is giving away a free, one-tenth ounce solid gold American Eagle Coin with any qualified plan you start. Start by calling<PHONE_NUMBER> or visit our website at noblegoldinvestments.com. Just make sure to tell them drone tech sent you. You can also use the link in the description or pin comment. A little more from this story, Smith was purportedly targeting dozens of the attendees of a rally protesting the treatment of January 6 suspects on the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Capitol riot. It's just so fitting that all we heard for the last couple months is that there was going to be a right-wing terrorist attack on January 6. But what ended up happening? A left-wing Antifa Chud who was radicalized by the Democrat state media was the one to launch an attack. It doesn't take a psychic or a genius to see that the media's inflamed rhetoric is going to incite some nut job out there who's going to feel completely justified in taking action against these inhuman monsters that the media has said is a danger both to democracy and the earth. Now of course the most infuriating thing here isn't that the media is just ignoring this story largely in the mainstream, it's that the ones who are reporting on it are doing it very deceptively. The AP's headline here reads, quote, Florida man accused of bringing explosives to a rally supporting January 6 suspect. Most people reading this, knowing nothing about the story beforehand, are going to assume that it was a Republican nut job when we know for a fact that this guy was a left-wing Antifa. Besides having his Antifa action plan, he also had flags and riot gear with the iron front symbol right there on it. The arrest affidavit also lists Antifa and anti-government violent extremism as aggravating factors in this arrest.  Also in Smith's backpack deputies found a helmet with an unspecified logo that had been seen at other protests in cities including Portland. I've solved it, I figured it out. Ten. Nine. Jesus. Eight. Seven.  Don't say anything. Only works if I figure it out. Must be close ones. We stare at you in the face. An unspecified logo they say, even though they admit right there that we've seen the symbol at other protests in Portland. They're being intentionally dense here to protect themselves and their foot soldiers. The Daily Beast is pushing a similar deceitful narrative, claiming that nobody could possibly know his political affiliations or his motivations, just like the Walkish and Christmas parade massacre where the same people were completely baffled about this guy's motivations despite those being very clear on his social media feed. Florida Man arrested with explosive near Oath Keeper Rally police say, her average person is going to read that headline and all they're going to see is Florida Man, explosive and Oath Keeper. Noah Kirsch, the guy who made that headline, knew exactly what he was doing. A subsequent search of Smith's house turned up hand-style grenades and a pipe explosive, though his political affiliations were not immediately clear. Hey, you're absolutely right. The flags and riot gear emblazoned with communist symbols offer no evidence whatsoever. Alright folks, I can already feel my blood pressure rising so I'm going to go ahead and end this here. But if you enjoyed this or found it informative, please share it, give me a like and leave me a comment to let me know what you think.


Hey guys, welcome. This is freesaloneducation.com Matt Beck. I'm here with American Salon magazine. We're at the premiere beauty show I've got Sam Villa here. What's up Matt? Super excited. I pretty much say I'm excited to talk to everybody but I am legitimately excited for the fact that You were doing free content before free content was cool. Wow, right? Yes, yep, you've been doing it forever and I you know I launched freesaloneducation.com the goal was you know, just to educate I watched the way that you create videos is It's knowledge first and then everything else comes after that. Well, you know what man I think one of the most important things as a hairdresser we must never cease to learn You know why because I really believe Matt there's danger in the comfort zone So a lot of times I'm telling hairdresser's keep one foot in the comfort zone and one foot out Yeah, always continually to challenge yourself to do something another way that you already do, right?  See that's what keeps that's when you're excited You understand it that like so I've actually come out across this quite a bit is now that you create so much content You have to go back and you create the same You know one length bob or whatever right when you cut it differently like maybe you cut it horizontally one day You cut it vertically the other day now. You're understanding all aspects of haircutting not just the one way Like so so so true and the most important thing about that is this is that one link bobs as we know Matt They're difficult to cut right right, so it's about finding. I think that the world is so fast-paced now It's about finding simplicity. Yeah simple ways to do things like a lot of times Matt I'll teach this whole concept of compressed cutting Yeah, you know like Montreal, Canada when I took a big section like that and lifted it Elevated and cut it they just cringed and they kept cringing through the haircut, right? But what was great to watch their faces when I dried it and then I did an interview with an editor from a magazine in Montreal She said I have to be honest to tell you she goes in Montreal We're we don't do it that way right? She goes we were all watching you do this and we go that guy is crazy But she said I have to tell you when you were done it was absolutely beautiful So she said there is another way to cut hair. Yeah, there is and there is you know There's a reason there's a reason behind everything we do. Yeah, and I think so Condense cutting when you look at things like that like condense cutting you're condensing an entire section as long as you understand The why behind it, which is what you guys have mastered in explaining the why thank you tell me about tell me about your team How did how did the whole thing get started? When did it start? Well, I think it really started for me personally when I I've always been teaching now for 35 years, right? But I didn't really know I was really in sports and I was coaching quite a bit So I knew you know how to go about teaching buddy someone how to do something But when I got in the hair world, I really knew that I wanted to be a platform artist or be a teacher So I figured out how to do that But what really jumped start me was when I joined Redkin and they said Sam you need your you're really good But you need to turn it around and focus on the learner It's learner-based and I didn't quite understand said learner focus They said focus on the learner make everything based what you do what you teach for the learner Okay, when you take yourself out of the way Matt it all comes out in a genuine way I have to be honest to say I don't understand sometimes how platform arts can get up on a stage and make things sound so difficult Yeah, you know or they make things look so difficult when they can be so so simple So it was about you know teaching buddy somebody something, but then you had to have the why behind it I think too many teachers are out there teaching them. Here's how you do it, right? But they never get the why in there. Yeah, and when you get the why in there people are like, oh, I get it Yeah, for example condensed cutting the example I use is like taking paper in a paper cutter the less paper you take the edges really clean Yeah, the more paper you take you get the paper moves and you get this soft little curved line Yeah, so I tell people so why would you want to take section by section get a precise and then go in there and slice It or point cut it into it, right? You know, let's press it. Yeah, and they go well Sam. That's not how I was taught Yeah, right. Yeah, you always hear that right, but you know what? Like I said, there's more than one way to do something, you know, they always they told the Delta soon It's never gonna work and guess what it worked and then they said you're gonna be precision cutting for a while and then we start slicing and we start point cutting and We did that because the consumers were picking up round brushes, right? And I'll never forget a salon owner said Sam you need to get over your precision little self I go what do you mean Bob? He said I'm gonna teach you how to point cut. I'm gonna teach you how to slice Yeah, and I said that's not how I was taught and then he made a comment He said your taste will be a journey in this industry He said your taste buds your eyes are gonna change in terms of how you see things your hands are gonna change the way You do things right? He goes I'm teaching you this because if you keep cutting everything blunt and precise It collapses the discovery Sam is if we slice it and we do this But it balances for the canvas and it functions then the clients gonna be happier because they got a round brush in their hand Right now when I understood the why behind that I was all in I jumped it Yeah, it completely makes sense because it's so hard for somebody to if they're creating if you have a precise shape That you've cut and then that client's trying to recreate that at home, right? It's not not oh, yeah So definitely really impossible. I think that's why I'm into this whole world of simplicity Yeah, you know clients and correct me out there if I'm wrong, but clients one in and they want out Yeah, so you have to understand, you know, there's sir There's some clients and I'm gonna take me that we can take an hour for a haircut and a finish But there's some clients where you know you can get that shape done in 30 to 45 minutes It's still great quality shape and without sacrificing customer service But it's but their life is so fast-paced they want in and they want out just like you color us out there They figured out how to eliminate a hundred foils, right, right? They figured that out. Yeah, so I mean it's all about discoveries Yeah, so you would so you started when did you start the Sam via ran matter of fact? Funny that you ask. Yeah yesterday was our eight-year anniversary Launched it here at premiere a lot Orlando. Okay, we launched it eight years ago Oh, wow, and I had to walk back in that corner where we were and stand there Yeah, let's say this is where it all began. So tell me about that like what was that booth like? What was that? Oh, it was it was overwhelming, right because I never realized You know how much respect I had in the industry and then when I put my name on something People will come just the booth was slammed and we were like what you know, I said, what do you stand line for a comb? I go you're standing in this long line for a comb. They said Sam I've been waiting for you to put something with your name on it. I just want to hold I just want to hold it That's awesome Matt that that you know, that's there's nothing you can't pay enough money for that Yeah, well the thing I look up to you for is the fact that like I I just see You are the person that just you give you give to the industry You're not asking for anything and and that's when you're so people are looking up to you for that And I see like people are who would you recommend platform artists the year all that stuff It's always your name put in there because of the hard work that you put in the dedication you have to the industry So that's really cool. So tell me about What's coming up in the future with Sam via and the products and just everything? I know you always have yeah, there's some cool stuff. We have come happening I want to go back to that comment that you made I really believe Matt that if I can help people get what they want I'll get what I want right, you know And that's the whole philosophy of the brand and we've got some great stuff coming up I want to create another series of shears So what I'm doing Matt is I wanted to come out of the gate and gives a sheer that's good quality That was in the medium price range. Okay, that a lot of hairdressers could afford that was really important to me Yeah, then I came out with another series called essential series and I said to myself I want to make this for the kids coming out of school I want to wake it make it for the hairdressers that can't afford a five hundred right hundred three hundred dollars here Yeah, now I'm coming out with a Rolls Royce Okay So now it's time to come out with the sheer that there's a tribe out there that want they they have no problem Paying nine hundred a thousand dollars for your shares So I want to go in there You know, so I'm just putting my feet in the marketplace in terms of the Those price ranges because I want to be able to capture all of the market not just a particular mark Okay, so I'm excited about the shears. I'm also excited about the new blow dryer Okay, and the reason I'm going to come out with another blow dryer is my whole The brand is set up on ergonomics. Okay, the brand is set up on education so ergonomics to me blow dryer was important that's light and quiet and Compact so you don't have the extension of that arm. Okay yet the response I get on the blow dryer There's a tribe out there. It says I wish your blow dryer was more powerful. Okay. I wish it was hotter Okay, now I'm against really intense heat yet, right?  Okay, so that's in the mix to blow dryer I can't wait for the curling iron Man, I'm telling you I've been working on this project for four years. Okay, the curling iron Why is the thermal tool industry forcing us to? Spring activated isn't pretty amazing, right? Yeah, when you think about it It's difficult to find a good Marcel. Yeah. Yep. So I'm making a Marcel iron.  All right Now you got me on that part. Yes, because what I want is I want to I'm a guy that wants to satisfy the hairdresser's needs Right hairdresser making tools for the hairdresser's for the right reason, right? I'm not about the money So it'd be easier for me to make a Marcel and here's a wand I want to give them two irons and one that's important to me. Yeah, and it's a longer barrel These short little barrels they sell to us and we're trying to get in there and do this and just get some bend and wrap the hair Yeah, it's longer barrel and push a button Comes off and snaps right back in I'm in I was just doing a client yesterday And I was wrapping her hair around a large barrel curling iron right with the spring load But you know not using the spring loaded part. So yeah, I'm all in on that Yeah, isn't it cool? Yeah, right. So I'm gonna come out and then beginning. I'll come out with Marcel and spring now Why spring because I want them to be able to retail an iron spring activated to the consumer. Okay, Marcel Professional so I think sometimes we have to ask ourselves as hairdressers behind the chair What sets us apart from the consumer, right? Sometimes it's a simple tool that you're holding in your hand Yeah, and then again, there's consumers out there. So I want the same blow dryer you're holding You know sir. Yeah, you never know I mean, we might have that with the iron but right now those are the items that are really really excited about that's very cool And then so and you have a great team. I've met Andrew Andrew's awesome a ton of times and your team keeps growing Yes, so is that something that are you looking for? Education people is there something is that something your company does? Yes, we are we're a growing company And we're becoming much more in demand and I can't do everything myself Right my obligations with red kid, right? So Andrew is awesome in terms Andrew is a lot like me We believe in people right we believe that people by people then they buy things Yeah, so it's about making that connection. We make that connection with the way we teach We make that connection with our tools, but most importantly is we are we got to grow our team, right? You know and as a leader, I have to know when to step aside That's important really important and give these kids the opportunity to grow so we're growing our team We just brought on board Jesse Lenaris, okay? He was an ex-Redkin artist and he's awesome. He's great I think he and Andrew or Andrew is building a new cutting system for us. Okay. I'm so immersed in Redkin It's difficult for me to think differently than what I think right Andrew's built a new cutting system Which will be launching out in January 2017 is our goal. Okay, and then Jesse will contribute to that But I you know what? And I don't have a problem saying this I need a woman On stage on stage on stage. I want to make that perfectly clear man I need I think we got to open the door for a woman to get up there and teach So I'm looking for a female that's really good with long hair and they can cut and can color and it's difficult to find I mean we've we've had we did a big audition process We had over 300 people apply right my artistic director Geneva Cowan and Andrew were in charge of narrow it down to like five people Okay, and the five people they narrow down to we're all guys. I said, where's the women we need a woman? Yeah, Sam, you know, we just didn't get what we feel is the right fit. Okay, the right need So that's what I really want to do is add women But we're growing as a team and I think it's important to grow as a team And this is what I keep saying to people too like you so a lot of people want to they want to be educators They want to be platform artists or whatever I think now is the time where it's easy if you want to put in the work to Reach out to companies like Sam Villa via social media Yes, you guys are definitely a big part of that and Tagging you in the work that they're doing absolutely getting involved in that way and then when you show up to a place Somebody already knows who you are right. So what else would you say? Somebody that's trying to come up in the industry What would be a piece of advice you would my I totally want to tag on the way you said I think social media is the way to go. It's a route to go You've got so much talent now coming out of two dimension the two dimensional world the social media world a lot of talent now Great with the hands and great with the eyes and great behind that screen Right a lot of times they come out from behind and now you put them in front of people But they can't teach right but they can do some beautiful hair So I think it's an opportunity for these people that are out there that want to become a platform artist I think what's really important is that you go the social media route yet at the same time You've got to learn how to communicate what it is that you're doing what you're doing exactly So my suggestion would be what I used to do when I was young would be grab a mannequin Get in front of a mirror the mirrors the audience and speak it out Yep, and you talk it out and I would talk it out while I was listening to rock a little music Why so I controlled my little voice so I could learn how to control this because sometimes there's a committee in here That talks to me, you know, and I got to learn how to control that committee That's a good social media is really the route to go then the other route would be show up of these shows Yeah, you've got to come to these shows if you want to be a platform artist You want to be an educator want to be a teacher you got yeah You have to see what people are doing you have to watch presenters learn from presenters learn the do's and the don'ts Yeah, you know what what's what are they doing that you like? What are they? Doing that doesn't maybe fit for you and walk away with those ideas and those things and then make them your own You know one of the mistakes I did Matt was I'll never forget The very first show I did About 200 people in the audience Speaking before me and doing a haircut was Paul Mitchell Right Paul Mitchell himself and this was the guy that I would I mean just Right followed So I got up there and I tried to be Paul Mitchell and my guy that was my coach at the time and helping me He said what are you doing?  Yeah big true learning lesson for me. Yeah, I totally agree I worked I worked for Paul Mitchell the company for 10 years And I found myself trying to be those people for a long time Is that true and then my my wife constantly reminded me to To be myself and then you know when I finally launched my company it was I started to get it. I started to understand who I was right and that's really cool to hear Well, I love you because I I love listening your interviews.  Yeah, you know, and I think if you have that You know the the people pushing you to the top That's what's a lot of people like to be interviewed. I love to dig out and figure out what how the heck everyone else did everything So this is a way better seat for me Because I get the insider information So that's very cool. So anybody wants to follow sam via Sam via everything, right? Yeah, so it's a sam via here is our instagram Sam via professional is our Professional facebook page. Okay, and then also be sure to check out the the youtube channel slash sam via that That's where all the education goes.  I mean Such a cool plan.  Yeah, exactly people go word. Where'd you come up with that? I go I'm the messenger I'm the guy that goes out there finds it and then I deliver it right.  Awesome on that note We'll end it


and we're becoming the cat whims of the neighborhood. We're telling them, well, you got a nigga talking about that big use on grid and big use snitching. Who making him snitch? On Boss Talk 101, 101. Here we go on talk.   What does it do for the culture at the end of the day? What does it do? Destroys us, destroys us, because now I'm printing and proving to do a what up on you here.   We're telling them, well, you got a nigga talking about that big use on grid and big use snitching. Who making him snitch? I did see that. What is that all about? Everybody is, everybody is really, really, that just came back up. Look, in California, in California, per inmate in state prison, they pay $106,000 a year per, this is general population inmates. We have the biggest prison system in the world, in California. Our death row inmates is 670 death row inmates, right? The account annually for them is $63.3 million for a death row inmate that's sitting in a cell 23 hours a day, $63 million?  California spent $600 million to house rehab prisoners, $600 million. The corrections, their annual budget for the State Department of Correction in California is $15.8 billion with a B. Where is this money going?  So the GRID program, they got an annual budget of $15 million a year for the GRID program. And if BQDM is on a GRID program, they getting paid $3,000 a month, but you're getting $15 million. Let's go to where the money is since you wanna talk about who's this and who's that.   You gotta be in a deep breathing because I never know nothing about how the police were, where you get all this information at? Yeah, well he talks about this and he's on the GRID program and he works with so and so and he's a confidential informant. If he confidential, how did you find out? Who are you informing for? Who are you working for? So you put this gossip out in the neighborhoods and we look at each other about this and it ruins, gang banging ain't a culture. It's a way of life because we don't know anything else.


Leaders in the profession of arms provide a consistent and clear voice of communication to their people. While balancing today's complex environments, take time often to examine your perspective. Imagine how your intent and expression may be received by the other. Our individual differences impact how we perceive, process, transmit, interpret, and ultimately take action. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience as listener. Ask is my intent through my overall expression as well as my words clear and in relation to my expected outcomes. And leave space for clarification. Your listeners will process your messaging through their lenses. Leonardo da Vinci once said of perspective, it's not what you look at that matters. It's what you see. Lead well this week.


You know, women are more likely in general to back whatever is the hegemonic community norm. When it was religion, they were more conservative. And they were. I mean, freshman undergrads in 1970 were, the females were more conservative than the men by a little bit. But since 2004, it started moving the other way and now it's just quite a big gap and women are a lot more to the left. And I think they're just reflecting the dominant messages that they're getting in institutional settings. Whereas the boys are a bit more rebellious and have always been more contrarian in a way, rebellious. And I think they're getting more from the internet that's countering what they're receiving in school, university, corporations, so on. If you follow that line of thinking, the purple-haired woke woman is the Bible basher of the fifties in some sense. Yeah, like an extreme version of the communal values, like it's almost like if you're in a Muslim society or a Christian society, the religious fundamentalist exemplifies communal values. Everyone's pious Muslim. They're a fundamentalist. It's tough to argue against them, but they're exemplifying the values of the system. And I'd say probably that's what these blue-haired people are doing. They're just exemplifying the values that everyone should have in the system. I think in the first person experience is they are countercultural in some way. They think they're countercultural. They think they're countercultural. It's really weird paradoxical thing. But this whole thing, it requires a sort of artificial reality. It's always 1933 with Hitler about to rise to power. We're always back in 1950s Alabama. Or one step away from slipping back into it. So by sort of ginning up this artificial atmosphere of white supremacy or misogyny or whatever it is, against that backdrop and that fabricated and invented establishment, you're a rebel. But the reality is of course, yes, this is just a matter of providing a backstory for what is effectively an elite actor in a way or a representative of an elite value system.