Iran's foreign minister has met his visiting counterpart from US-Island Qatar, as Iran and Washington appear to be at an ompress over the fate of talks to revive a 2015 nuclear deal. On Wednesday, Iran had won Western State against rebuking it at the International Atomic Energy Agency after the U.N. atomic watchdog's latest report criticized the country, while the U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said time was running out to revive the deal when the world passed. Now Qatar's foreign minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Tani was in Iran days after Blinken visited the Gulf Arab state, which has good ties with Iran. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko have met in the Kremlin. The Russian Belarus formally opened vast joint military drills earlier in Thursday, a week-long exercise across the territory of both countries, and the Baltic Sea that has lumped some NATO countries. The Kremlin has proved a vital ally for Belarus after the West imposed sanctions on Minsk over a violent crackdown that followed a contested election which gave Lukashenko his sixth term in office.


XPS is a valuable tool for studying the chemical modification of surfaces, particularly in carbon nanomaterials such as graphene and carbon nanotubes. Dopants like nitrogen, boron, and phosphorus are commonly studied to modify these materials properties for specific applications. However, careful sample preparation, consideration of intrinsic photoemission response, and appropriate spectral analysis are necessary to accurately interpret XPS results and avoid incorrect conclusions. This review provides a practical guide for interpreting XPS spectra of doped graphitic carbon nanomaterials and serves as a reference for their binding energies essential for compositional analysis via XPS. This article was authored by Tomas Suzy, Thomas Pitchler, and Paula Aguila.


Let the record show that all council members are present and actually I have to do roll call because of the teleconference so vice mayor Rogers here councilmember Sawyer here councilmember Combs here great and thank you Julie for joining us from New York for those of you who didn't hear Julie is there solving California's housing crisis in the Big Apple that's we appreciate that yeah so we'll go on to public comment but first and foremost I think one of the things we had talked about in the very first meeting was trying to run this committee in a way where we tested out some of the open government aspects that we are really preaching and putting into this ordinance and I think that from the comments that I've heard from folks both in email and phone calls and in individual meetings clearly this one fell flat so I do appreciate of that standard I should say I do really appreciate staff finding it an alternative location hopefully next time it's a little bit easier for folks to find and I do appreciate the advanced time in terms of the posting of the agenda and the documents I'm going to ask for three specific things for the next meeting that I think will help to address some of the concerns that I heard one is we did a really good job of following a recommendation 2.2 B expanding the use to be 2.4 B the sites for city meetings expanding them we need to also be utilizing 2.2 B expanding the use of the city's email lists and mailing lists we did have the documents up in time on Legistar but not on the city website not through our email lists so I'm gonna ask that next time with our 12 day lead time we send out the agenda and the supporting documents through those lists as well I also think we need to put it on the website and the current open government task force website says that the committee is inactive I'd like us to update that to reflect that we are doing things and that this is our current agenda and what our supporting documents are I think that'll be helpful and then third and final I can't keep everything in my head from monthly meeting to monthly meeting so I oftentimes go back and rewatch the video in doing that for preparation for this meeting I found that the video from our first meeting in October is up on YouTube but not on the city's website that needs to be addressed and then our second meeting from November is nowhere to be found so I want to make sure that we have that updated as well and obviously the meeting tonight gets put on there so my apologies to folks who were trying to be more engaged with this I think with those three things we'll get this right by the time we're done any questions so you want to utilize the former open government task force website and not the new subcommittee website if there is a new subcommittee website I apologize it is not what is linked to on the web on the city's aggregate website so we'll figure that one out yeah because the links that I that I at least found and I tend to think that I'm a tech savvy millennial took me to the inactive page so I know that that probably happened to others as well that clear cool we'll go on to public comment then go ahead Dwayne and really fast I do have there's a microphone up here and I don't have access to a clock so I'm you're pretty good at self-regulating yourself when Dwayne go ahead in three minutes go ahead hello my name is Dwayne DeWitt I'm from Roseland and I wanted to thank you for being here having your meeting in our neighborhood I also wanted to start a positive note Merry Christmas to everybody and happy holidays and say that if you look right over here that drum Rams drum line that's kind of what I'd like to see the theme for this whole thing drumming up more information and interest sharing the information with the community better so earlier we were talking about how some people may not have known where to be I think that if you keep the opportunity to come back here that you just try for the gymnasium that has the address right on the side it's right there on West Avenue you can see it in big letters and people will know to go right there we've had some meetings there previously and I believe that would be very helpful the next thing is I was hoping that you folks would begin a process that was actually utilized in the past rather well and it used to be that whenever communications were made to the City Council or the City Manager you could find a copy of those communications relatively easy for the matters on the agenda of a City Council meeting or even the Planning Commission or others there would be a spot in the binders that were communications you could see what was going on so last night at the excuse me two nights ago at the City Council meeting I mentioned that our US Congressman Mike Thompson took the time to write a letter to Santa Rosa City about our efforts to have a Roseland Veterans Trail just over there a few hundred yards away with a Roseland Veterans Grove and a healing garden and yet I think because it was just addressed to the City Manager that it's not available I can't find it anywhere that letter and I'm like it should be something that the public could have seen already it's already a month ago and I didn't find it looking on the internet but then I'm a bit of a Luddite and I don't have home computer and home internet so with that in mind there used to be a computer on the front desk at the City and staff so they didn't want it there because nobody was using it but that's because like this meeting tonight it was under publicized folks didn't know that you could go to that computer find your items and then maybe print it out that would be a really helpful thing at the City Hall office so what I'm talking about is all helpful things for Christmas I'm my Christmas wishes to find the copy of the letter from Congressman Thompson and maybe get that computer in on the desk at the City Hall office who would be next. Hi my name is Fred Kruger I'm from the Hughes Avenue neighborhood group here in Roseland I have three comments first there's a difficulty in working with the city often because there's no institutional memory in the departments specifically beginning around the year 2000 our neighborhood group developed petitions and work to develop a Roseland Creek Park because we're the single most under parked area in the city and it's huge the disparity for perspective the general plan specifies that there should be six acres of park land per thousand residents and in Roseland we have roughly 17 to 18 thousand residents and that six acres per thousand is divided half external to the city and half internal which often includes school grounds which are not available to the public and so there's a duplicity in counting school grounds as part of the allocation for the neighborhoods and so we've advocated that but there's a disparity again between the deliberations that are private within the city park and recreation department and the neighborhood and what they have repeatedly been saying but when the parks and recreation department ceased to exist probably around 2010 I could be off a year or two they didn't have records of historical deliberations and meetings and that is not a difficult thing to remedy so that now we're in a situation where the neighborhood is almost unanimous in wanting a nature park and the city management and the parks and recreation has a different vision of what's appropriate now we've consulted with psychiatrists and cutting-edge park developers and we find that there's more therapeutic value for the neighborhood with a nature park with parks and recreation department I think that's too innovative and it might not serve the whole community but actually the studies show that there's more therapy there's more relaxation of tensions there's dispersing of the tensions and gangs with a nature park and we can substantiate that but we can't get through to city parks and recreation department and we don't know how they come to the conclusions that they arrive at so that as part of open government we would like to know how conclusions by the city are arrived at and why they have this divergence between what neighbors blink is the best thing for us all right thank you sir and there's one other thing I need you to wrap up your comments all right there's traffic we can't handle more growth and development simply because thank you sir we already we need to move on to the next person yeah but we have issues that don't get resolved and traffic is a huge one in our neighborhood thank you thank you anybody else for public comment for items not on the agenda yes sir could we I think we could bring the mic to you yeah yeah I think yeah I don't think the camera will get you but I think you're good that's all right right I expect to be in this condition the past the early part of next year so but it's been a long time I wanted to comment about the Brown Act I have served on the housing authority since 2010 and have had multiple ethics trainings and really kind of came to the conclusion after years of thinking about it but the Brown Act is frequently interpreted in a mindset that I think is kind of contrary to its purpose its purposes to provide for open government and frequently its application seems to be reducing the amount of communication that the public can have and so I started to do some research on that topic and I found on the internet a publication by the California League of Cities which is where the Brown Act was written back in the 1950s and the author of that paper is a partner at the law firm that I have heard of best best and Krieger they have consulted with the city on matters related to redevelopment in my own experience and I've just read you this brief portion the Brown Act does not prohibit individual members of the legislative body from separately providing their own commentary and opinions about a matter and it goes on to say nor does the Brown Act prohibit one-way communications which means that a member of a legislative body is permitted to make their commentary to the rest of the members of the body by inclusive email so that that is one piece of information I subsequently had conversations with the legal department at the League of Cities and I did some further research and found a August 30th 2018 update on the Brown Act that was had been was presented to the Santa Clara County Office of Education or Board of Education and there is a clarification there you know this interpretation of what constitutes serial meetings etc but one-way communications or even a board member to the rest of the board is not expressly prohibited as long as it does not implicate the reaching of a collective concurrence so you know there is a line there but rather than making a brick wall there we need to define lines in our interpretation of the Brown Act and very frequently I think they've been walls created that inhibit communication not only from the general public but also among the members of a legislative body so I would hope we can get enough outside new information because a lot of this I think comes from the early age of email in the advances that have come in the use of the internet give us more options great thank you thank you much sir is there anybody else for public comment okay the we will go on to everybody has three minutes for public comment for items not on the agenda and then we move on to what is on our agenda so we'll move on to item four it is the draft open government sunshine ordinance hopefully everybody has a copy if not there are extra copies over there and just to walk through it a little bit so that everybody understands sort of what the intention is of how we will do this I apologize in advance it's probably going to be a bit tedious we have in front of us a number of documents we have the ordinance which if you will remember from our last meeting there were two ordinances the original and then there was the red line version after the first wave of input had come back on the ordinance back in 2016 is that correct we have accepted those red lines as our starting point for our discussions on this ordinance today today's intention is to walk through article if we want to run through article one there's a couple of comments article two and if we have time we'll get to article three otherwise we'll punt article three until our next meeting as well with that document you also have a separate document right here that are touch points from discussions both in the open government task force report as well as from our previous meetings with an understanding of what does the draft ordinance say what is the brown act requirement what is the current practice and what is the recommendation within the task force report and we'll ultimately be walking through these parts of the ordinance to determine how are we going to structure the language we'll have that discussion on the article in this open public forum I'm going to then take my attempt to do a red line based on the comments that I hear from council members and from the public and within a week of this meeting my goal is for us to have then the red line re-uploaded for folks to see what the suggested red lines are and then we'll be discussing each section as we go through it and at the end we'll discuss it again in its totality hopefully reflecting everything that we agree upon here today that worked for staff see some nodding heads from the public if you all like that idea as well great so with that kalua do you want to start us off sure so before we get started another way to look at it is that although there's 10 or 12 15 pages of the ordinance what we really did is look through it and try to identify decision points and so those decision points we've attempted to summarize here so rather than parsing every single word that's in the draft what we really try to focus on is where are there things that actually are decisions that are kind of policy and nature and so we can start essentially we our first comment start on page four and we start immediately with a discussion about notice well before we before we start on page four I do want to give the public a chance to weigh in on article one which is the definitions and I I did have a couple of questions that I personally had walking through the ordinance that hopefully I can get staff to address beforehand so I'm going to start actually on page two and can I add one thing before you get started yeah absolutely so the other caveat is that this first section which is called findings and purpose really represents the recommendation and the language from the task force report so we're going to be retitling that so we didn't want to change what they had its expressed intent and so that that section came actually from the task force recommendations yeah that's really helpful to hear thank you so specifically at the bottom of page two section D the citizens guide book and for the for the public it says citizens guide book means a reference tool for residents of the city of santa rosa that outlines city government structure organization responsibility and basic function and goes on from there who is going to write that and what is the timeline associated with that and is that potentially a deliverable of this committee ultimately I can't imagine that it would be a deliverable from this subcommittee I think it would ultimately be staff or kind of the most expedient way would actually be to identify something that some other jurisdiction has actually done and build on that I don't think that it would be efficient for us to start from zero and we'd have to do some research on kind of what that timeline might look like it's a pretty heavy lift so it's not something that I think we would do during the during the life of this subcommittee unless you went on for a while yeah so we do have on the future agenda items a discussion related to this I'm looking for the language in front of me so it's just it's from the open government task force because it says the following words and phrases shall have the meaning specified below while the following so they show that they have the phrase words and phrase but I'm not I've never you know other than that definition it's in there I missed it so does that help with whether or not it's something that we want to tackle how what is the level of importance of that guidebook well it is in the open government task force as a recommendation one of the things we did discuss in the first two meetings was potentially doing a one sheet on the website of how to engage style document and perhaps when we have that discussion towards the end of of this work product that would be the appropriate time for us to see if there's a nexus here between the how to engage in the citizens guidebook and I'm probably just mixing terms at this point but I do want to I did want to put a pin in it before we went on to page three and page four it's a it's a good thing to have yeah go ahead Julie yeah Julie go ahead I just want to make sure that this guidebook and other things that are referenced here are either available on the website or have a link on our website so that people can readily find anything that we make a reference to so if we're having a citizen's guidebook that's in English Spanish if we do that not just a single sheet how to engage government but there should be a link and the guidebook should be findable on the web yeah I totally agree okay it doesn't say that it says make it available in English and Spanish but it doesn't say on the web and if I may through the chair the references on page 10 in subdivision f and it does indicate that the community engagement director would create the guidebook and I would also mention that although it is on page two listed in the definitions I think we'll want to look at some of this structure some of the definitions really get into policy and are not purely definitions and we may want to shift some of those provisions into the substantive provisions of the code rather than in the definition okay and do you have we'll come to the public and if you do you have any in particular that you want us to flag that for the two that I would flag that for is the citizen's guidebook we could have a definition there but but we should also things like making it available in English and Spanish should be in the provision that says it should be prepared the other definition that I thought was more substantive than definitional is the open by default I think at some point we also need to talk about open by default in terms of not just that the information is open but that it is available like posted I mean some data gets posted and other data doesn't get posted it may be that we don't want to post absolutely every document but at some point we need to have a conversation about what data is posted and readily available I don't know if it goes under open by default or not okay that's a good discussion for us to put a pin in to come to and that that notice has been made so and then again I apologize folks it'll be a little bit tedious on page three for sue the g the definition of meeting I actually looked up government code section 54950 it actually appears that it's all of chapter nine of the government code that references meetings and so if you could take a look and see if it's more appropriate to reference this as chapter nine then by putting in the specific sections within chapter nine just in case there's amendments that come out of Sacramento as well yes I'm happy to do that and I'll do that for a number of these also f the legislative body the meeting and I was going to compare the definitions that are already set forth in the Brown Act and I think it would be helpful for us to be consistent with the Brown Act yep yep and actually chapter nine of the government code is is the brown act so exactly sorry great uh john any questions on article one no good Julie any article one questions okay how about from the public is there anybody who has a question on article one specifically dissipation and particularly expediting citizen involvement and without that we would get lost in policies and rules and so by having that focus on how we as citizens of Santa Rosa can participate that's the editorial key okay mr. do it well let's go ahead give you the microphones folks can hear you thank you sir the idea that I took away from the original open government task force meetings was the effort was afoot to make things simpler for citizens simple folks not complex folks who have a lot of training be able to understand how to participate in our local government as well as possible I think it's really important that the citizens guidebook be looked at is something that could be put together there are models of those from the American Planning Association the ICMA which is a management organization statewide excuse me and other groups that have already done this US EPA what was the first one you said American Planning Association and next is ICMA it's an international management association city management right then just follow that basic approach of making it simple right from the first page on and let people get the things they need to use next under age minutes for a number of years now the city has switched over to what they call action minutes and if you went to a meeting 20 years ago the minutes would actually and I don't want to be rude Dwayne but we are going to get to minutes later in this meeting well you're not being rude I'm just pointing out that it needs to be more than action minutes you need to return to the old policy that basically summarized what people said like if we leave out of here today and you say no action was taken no one will know that we gave you this much time of our valuable time also community's members time is just as valuable as the paid staff and the others thank you for your time absolutely anybody else absolutely thank you my name is Lee Dibble and on page two under paragraph D you talk about towards the last three or four lines you talk about the task force to ensure the public has an adequate opportunity I would like to see you add early and adequate opportunity because some of the issues that have been discussed to my knowledge are there just hasn't been enough time or publication of of the documents necessary so I'd like to repeat where that was that's in C I apologize I heard D D okay up in the third just third line from the bottom it says to ensure that the public has an adequate opportunity I would like to see early and adequate opportunity I believe it's F it is page two it is C right at the very top of the page okay well I'm I took the one that I got off printed off the internet today section one dash one zero point zero one zero the findings in purpose subsection C it's and if I may it's also in subsection F third third line from the bottom of F has it yes thank you thank you for finding it we are going to talk about minutes later yes comments yeah we will paragraph okay on the other one I'm going to have a different paragraph on page three there's a talks about open data portal that paragraph you use the word in their new website and I I think you should just say website why are you delineating new because that could mean if you're got one under development you don't have to put it in the existing website etc it was moved in yes and it's going to be new again I think the I think the internet was new when we started this that's all I had for wordsmithing at this point thank you is there anybody else before we go on to article two public access to meetings great and I think that this article is going to be the sort of the meat and the potatoes of what we're looking at so just to walk through it and again apologize for it being a bit tedious but I'm going to look first at section B no later than or subsection B I should say no later than 12 business days before a regular council meeting of the city council the city clerk's office shall post on the city website that the official posting location at city hall a preliminary agenda containing a meaningful description of each item of business to be transacted or discussed at that meeting at the meeting that's from the as I understand it from the open government task force and it is where we will start klua with the decision points that we have here as you'll notice from your second document the brown act asks for three days notice the current council policy is the 12 calendar days as opposed to the 12 business days that was in the original draft ordinance that is a bit of a substantive difference and so I'm going to pause there and see if either councilmember has a thought on allowing the suggested change of 12 calendar days as opposed to 12 business days excuse me sorry they're reversed well I'll weigh in on that I have heard over over and over and over again the difficulty in adhering to 12 business days I'm not sure how to um how long have you what are you currently dealing with are you dealing with the calendar or business because it currently we're doing um nine nine yeah and it's nine uh calendar calendar okay so if you were to go to and that's only for the preliminary right so that okay so one of the things that I had heard that would be that would be very very helpful um it's kind of a compromise actually is to shorten the number of days necessary for um the preliminary but to make the advance these future items very very clear about what we're looking at in the future make the definition or the um description of those items really clear know that little the the second piece of the are we referring to the upcoming meetings ones yes that you be more clear on what's upcoming so that it needn't be necessarily on the preliminary with that kind of notice but that the gives the public enough opportunity to especially if they're interested in a particular item to find out um what is what that item is because it's pretty it's pretty is cryptic right now and one of the members of the of the task force said mentioned to me that yes it would be the more and advanced notice we have the better but a compromise would be that that that those future items be better described so that it's clear what we're talking about uh and this these are future items um and that would take some of the pressure off the need to have for instance 12 business days which seems um like a long time to me I mean I I'm not sure how the staff would deal with 12 business days and I'm going to ask specifically to to Sue since I know your office is one of the most heavily impacted um is 12 calendar days achievable and is 12 business days achievable um the answer is anything's achievable what's gonna happen is um it takes a certain amount of time for any agenda item to go through the process to get the reviews it goes there's a long list of departments that each item goes through finance legal environmental um and and so forth um what moving uh expanding the time that you have to post beforehand is gonna the result is going to take longer for items to get to council so things that we can post now in nine days in advance um moving it to 12 days 12 business days what adds another almost a week um and so it's just going to take that much longer for items to get to you um it does then the other issue that happens is that there will be um in many instances there will be things that happen during that time frame that will require more updates uh so forth when it gets to council so in terms of workload the date the due date doesn't change the amount of work um but it changes how how quickly you as council will see things all right council member combs do you have any thoughts sorry i was on mute i i have some concerns about the next sentence that follows that sentence about contacting people by email is it appropriate to go there or are we still on the 12 days uh go ahead and go there but i'd also still like to hear your thoughts on the 12 days i i think the 12 days is a good idea um and and i'm part of this 12 business days or 12 calendar yeah i think that makes business days makes sense because it's very difficult for groups to organize over the weekend anyway so folks who want to make public comment or neighborhoods who want to make public comment it's very very difficult for them to use weekend days um you know a lot of folks are only on their internet that's why we have cyber monday um is that was when people came back to the office and got on their computers um so it's it's helpful to to i think call it business days um the concern i have with regard to the email lists has to do with people who have offered uh that they are very interested in a specific topic but don't reliably get an email when that topic comes up and the general there is a new agenda notice uh requires that you go and look at the agenda to make sure your topic is coming up or not is there another place in this document where we say folks want to be on a specific subject matter list get noticed for that subject matter so i i'll let staff answer that but one of the things that i think we're going to need to be a little bit cautious on is while i agree with you this is the policy not the implementation and so if we want the policy to be that we have that capability let's let's try to dictate that but um but yeah i see daisy is looking at me so i have actually had interest um where individuals wanted to get a specific topic and they wanted to be alerted to that and granicus does have a mechanism in place so that the person could um sign on subscribe to that specific insight page and then they can get the notification immediately as soon as that the agenda is published or even when the record is created they automatically get an email saying that this is expected to go on a specific council meeting date and i've actually had several people call me and saying that they loved the feature because they were just getting that one item so if i were specifically interested in anything that had to do with climate change for example um i can go into granicus and only get noticed on anything that might have something to do with climate change that's correct if they use the word all electric or all electric ready instead of the word climate change that's correct because you have to put in every key term that you want to be notified on so that key term is what's going to be important and what i've done is i've done i actually have then that's why i'm actually bringing it up because i've had several people call me if there was a way that they can be notified of just that one item and not the entire agenda so that's the reason yes that's that really is information that i thought i had asked about and had gotten a different answer so i'm delighted to hear this answer thank you okay and um i'm going to go to the public really fast on specifically section b gregory did i see you wanted to speak on that that's the 12 day yeah for the last couple of years it seems to me the post comes out around five o'clock on thursday is that about right sometime before five o'clock you try to get it up there that's correct yeah i criticized you guys when you went to friday morning so i know what the friday thursday night is and i'm assuming that that reflects a wednesday calendaring a wednesday meeting of the mayor and this and you know you finalize it on wednesday and you get everything up on the preliminary and the so two weeks ahead preliminary goes up on let's say it's a wednesday you're posting both the staff reports to the one that's coming up on next tuesday and you're posting the preliminary for the week after that i mean that's the pattern i've seen is that i get both i get a preliminary two weeks and i get staff reports one week now if you count from that thursday friday saturday sunday monday tuesday so five days i've got you know before uh before the next council meeting to absorb all those staff reports and seven more days for the preliminary so we're already on a 12 calendar day preliminary you're not talking about final in here but if you're going to talk preliminary and back that up you're already at 12 so i don't understand where this nine is because nine would make you guys posting it on sunday night and you know you don't do that so i'd like to make sure i'm clear on what you're proposing because 12 calendar days is what you're doing now i really appreciated you're going to business days and i understand that doing going to business days is going to back it up to the point where you're on tuesday night or monday night before the city council meetings meaning you're trying to post something up i can understand how hard that is and so i'm really looking for the staff reports i don't care when you put the preliminary up i've got enough the preliminary is so useless to me that it is not important that go from 12 to 10 you know business to 12 calendar you can still do it on 12 calendar but i sure want to have the staff reports whenever they are done put up and i know some of those staff reports don't wait till thursday at five o'clock to be finalized there's some staff reports that are pretty well done two weeks before so i would like you to have the process that gets to us as early as you can staff reports because that's the meat of what's going on that tells me what i'm going to be facing when i'm before the council because i'm reading the same thing that the council's meeting and i would think that the council people would who have to vote on this is are even more insistent on having as early as possible those staff reports yep thank you greg dwayne hello my name is dwayne dwitt i think it is very important that we keep one theme from the original open government task force meetings and that was this is about making it simpler for the public to understand and participate not necessarily about the concerns of staff in the preparations of the reports and making them available i believe the 12 business days is reasonable and helpful and i think they'll quickly adjust to it once it's become part of their job description to do that as required by this so i'm hoping that you folks will put that in there as a requirement thank you okay yeah go ahead daisy oh sorry go ahead mike yeah so michael varela just to give a little context cab member appointee of mr rogers and then my significant other is the city clerk but i will keep this as objective as possible so i've been on both sides of the the velvet rope there's no one here but uh of this i've been a city council staff member down in long beach city twice as big as santa rosa with a lot more staff and a lot more items that were brought up and i've also been on the other side now as a as a board member for my neighborhood association richry historic district here i've put together a weekly kind of legislative preview so having the as you mentioned the staff reports and things like that has really helped in me better inform my my neighbors as to items that are coming up that may affect us but that's only effective not just because i'm putting that together for my neighbors but because they're engaged and i think really what we're the business day is changing that in my opinion isn't going to matter if you care about something you've already informed or you're connected with a group who's gonna you know send an alert like hey we gotta go in and like the housing rent um i'm blanking on the term um the price gouging there we go thank you thank you the price gouging you know if you're connected with one of the many groups that are organizing around that i'm sure you got an email you got a text and that's really what brought a lot of the people out it wasn't having an extra three six nine days to review something uh on on the at city hall or on the city website that wasn't what brought people up so i think really as a cap member as an active community member i think we really know focus on how can we better educate the public to be connected to receive those gub delivery emails to follow the city on facebook everyone's on there somewhere getting the information and what i found working with especially the spanish speaking population here is that a lot of us are connected through facebook and that's how we get a lot of our news out to come out to events like this great thank you anybody else okay go ahead john thank you chris and i think that that actually um is another way of uh referring to what the person mentioned to me the person that was on the open government task force that wanted more clear definition and a clearer idea of timing on that advance agenda because being cryptic does not help you know it could just say you know and the timing is actually not specific and then nor nor does it nor should it be because it can change too easily on that advance agenda but i think that people people do need to understand what those items are it can't just say gouging ordinance um what gout what are they talking about and spending a little more time and that gets reprinted each time it's not the definition is not going to change the timing may change but the clarity of the definition will not and i think that that will go a fair way to inform those people that are most interested in preparing for a particular item hitting the council yeah i appreciate that john and i i think uh to that point what i like in the language is the preliminary agenda containing a meaningful description of each item um to that point to that end i agree i think that we can do that for a preliminary agenda given additional time from what i've heard from most staff it is also the finalization of the documents to gregory's point that takes most of the time so i i have no problem with 12 business days for the preliminary agenda and then we'll move down after this to a discussion on the final agendas and staff reports and the timing of that which i think is more significant but john how do you how do you feel on b i i think that anything that we can try anything and and i would be comfortable with that i think what part of what is concerning to me um is for instance in december if we were to look at um at that 12 business days the the item would have to hit on the 14th of december for us to discuss it on the on the 1st of january and that that's a long time and if if if we had an item that was of importance and we were two days late in getting getting having that come to our attention but did not rise to the level of an urgency ordinance we wouldn't see that for a month and that's and then no no another full week would would would move would would happen before we would be able to see that and that just it just sounds terribly inflexible to me and i i think that we can come up with a compromised um dating and i think that what you're what you're suggesting is actually a good compromise at least we can try it so are you willing to go forward with 12 business days to try it yes how about you for the preliminary yep for the preliminary and 12 calendar or is this so we'll jump down to d in a minute the final it's five okay right in here so preliminary i would yeah i would i would be willing to do that cast member comes and i really do also want to repeat and and appreciate the meaningful description um in there um and if we can say uh as an aside maybe not necessarily in the ordinance that any documents that are available at the 12 should be linked at that time i think that i yeah i think that can be reflected okay thank you and if i can if i may just um bring up i did actually um ask three specific departments just to tell me what it was the impact because i'm not the specialist in those specific departments and really it's the three culprits who are always late so one of them was housing and community services and what i ended up doing was just asking them and i interviewed them and asked them specifically how it would impact their department or even more so how would it impact the community the council um most importantly and so i just wanted to share a few of the responses that they gave me so that's something that you're making a decision with a full understanding um so housing and community services talked about three specific areas one was the homeless services submission deadlines um it talked about how a lot of homelessness are requested with very little lead time and sometimes after the deadline additionally these items typically require last minute changes and it requires further delay being addressed by the council in a timely manner the housing trust um they talked about meeting the submission deadline would be difficult for bond issuances where documents are generated by bond council and outside investors the current timelines result in documents being received from outside council close to or after the deadline increased the required days of advance posting would further exasperate this problem and then federal programs these often get very little lead time for federal funding allocations comment periods and deadlines these efforts are regularly unable to meet internal city deadlines for federal programs as they stand increased the days required of advance posting would further exasperate this problem the bottom line hcss said they would love to meet the current deadlines but circumstances are often beyond their control and that's one department planning and economic development they gave me a huge long list finance another one it would impact everyone and we'll eventually see that impact and i just wanted to make sure that you were all aware of it before you move on to this decision and i appreciate that and again we're talking about the preliminary agenda uh not necessarily the the final documents and there is we'll get their subsection h which perhaps we should have discussed already uh notwithstanding subdivision f so that's the correction or supplement of an item already in the agenda packet uh the city council may take action on items of business not appearing on the posted agenda under any under any of the following conditions and that talks about determination of a majority vote of the city council that an emergency exists showing of good cause with the majority of those present an urgent item or business may be discussed and acted upon if the item appears on the revised regular meeting agenda released to the public at least five days ahead of time council shall determine that good cause exists prior to taking action upon the item if uh what i'm what i'm trying to point out here is there may be a mechanism in this red line where we build in uh in the event of fema spur something on us at the last minute or or bond council has an issue that there's a good faith effort for us to maintain this 12 business days lead time on the preliminary and then still have uh action taken when it needs to be taken and and perhaps this is the way that we word it but but the ordinance does contemplate that as well and from discussions with the public they understand that that happens as well it's just making sure that when appropriate and when when it's not just us dragging our feet that they have time to weigh in okay go ahead john i wonder if um in respect to their their concerns that we examine our um H and look at and talk to them about those those circumstances where they are looking for special dispensation on their time and to be able to drill in a little bit find out how often these circumstances occur do get a little more um a little clarity so as not to create anxiety in the department and i'm just kind of wondering how often those items that are have a time constraint that were there having a problem are really in that much uh what a concern or interest of the community so not to not to second guess them but to drill in a little more about what are those circumstances and and to do a carve out underage and to create a the an exception for them once we find out how often these things happen and what's the nature of their of the constraint that the legality the state requirements federal requirements because i don't want her to to tie up and and keep them from going forward with an item that that actually is almost a technical environment as opposed to something of interest of the community and get a little see if we can give them a carve out the lessons their anxiety about it so i think what i'm going to try to do if i can can move the agenda a little because i don't want us to to bog down too much i think what i'm going to do is i think i'm going to try to suggest language for the red line going forward that really addresses sort of this concern while also maintaining what we've heard from the public as a desire and so again the way that we'll do this process is within the next week i will offer that language as red line as an available document and then at our next meeting there will be an opportunity for the public to weigh in on a sort of that that verbiage and see if if see if we need to make changes or see if we've hit it but i am going to move on from the the 12th business may i yeah we're we're we're moving on to that section right now so uh so for section d yeah that the red line you're talking about offering is in is in section h on page five h is in herald uh i don't know if it'll go into section eight or if it'll go into section b but it will yeah i understand i i don't know until i actually look at how to structure it but the intent the intent of h will be brought into section b in some way either h or b makes sense thank you i just wanted to clarify yep absolutely so i'm going to jump down to section d which is really i think the crux of the conversation which is the final agendas and staff reports will be posted no later than five business days to the city's website and at the official posting locations at city hall and be made available at the front counter in the city manager's office and i think that that's really the the section regardless of the preliminary when it goes on the agenda and uh note taken on accessibility for the public i i think where it really comes down to is with those final agenda documents the five-day lead time to make sure that folks have time to read them and be able to engage not only their own neighborhoods so that people are paying attention but then to come back and engage council members as well um and i don't see this was this was one of the decision points so final agendas five business days uh senator rose's current practice is that five business days though there are times where we have revised agendas that come to us literally up to the day that we have the meeting which i think is really the problematic aspect that i'm going to open it up to folks to talk about um but john first i want to get your thoughts on this well it's i'm not sure how how common it is that we get um important changes to our to our agenda and where the information sometimes there's a there is accuracy in accuracy issue so they will they will submit something to us a correction but i'm i'm not sure how often a substantive change is presented to us the day of a council meeting yeah and uh and i'll go to julie in a second the other part of this conversation that i think needs to be mentioned is that we do do quite a bit of wordsmithing also from the dais on final uh final ordinances and resolutions which then we do have an opportunity to still discuss them so how do we what i'm looking for is how we strike that balance between providing the information that the public needs to weigh in meaningfully while also still uh preserving our ability to have that public conversation around ordinances council member combs do you have any thoughts well i i think that for me the key was in be as in boy making sure that there's a strong and meaningful explanation 12 days out makes the five business days tolerable it's still very difficult because it's thursday over the weekend to tuesday it's not it's not like you get it monday for a friday meeting so the keeping it at it's my understanding that it isn't a full five business days now it's friday monday tuesday right so we're we're expanding it to five business days from five calendar days yeah correct if that's possible then then yes and i think f the features of f we can talk about when we get to f yeah so what i'm saying between let's let's talk about them together so between d and f you have final agendas and staff reports five business days out and then a correction or supplement five actual days out as i read it the fifth calendar day prior to the city council meeting so what we currently do is section f the ordinance contemplates doing d which is five business days out and i think that that's where um we've talked about some of that impact so five business days out from the council puts it on the council day on the council day yeah right so i don't know how you would do that yeah and i don't know how the city clerk would do that you did have to give you back the person you wrote he lost and then another person on top of that i think so i'm going to take public comment on this go ahead gregory i'd like to see wednesday or tuesday so for this business days i love it because i read the staff report from thursday night to wednesday night would be a victory for me going to tuesday is hallelujah okay then i got a real almost a week you know to be able to absorb the staff reports and to be able to maybe continue to know the rules of santa rosa we'll learn we'll learn about okay go ahead sir yeah it is the part of the description but that's pretty ambiguous and the part is an issue you can slide a lot of different uh orientations into that and so there should be definition that includes the inclusion of all perspectives on on an issue otherwise it can be politicized okay thank you sir anybody else dwayne hello my name is dwayne dewitt more time is better especially for the public who may not be as savvy as many of the groups you've spoken about i do believe that it's really important also that the communications that come from various neighbors of projects and things also be made available i remember coming to one of the first city council member excuse me city council meetings that i attended in my adulthood about 25 years ago and there was a woman there dealing with an issue on terry road terry lane perhaps and um she didn't know that other people had also been concerned about what was happening until she got there on the day of the hearing basically and saw that there were some things in the file so i appreciate the gentleman next to me and his comments about facebook um does the city have a facebook page okay i didn't know about that and i don't follow those things on facebook i'm not big on dealing with internet stuff that that well and i believe there are many people in the community who just want a more traditional approach of give them more time have the files available let people read these things they're sometimes very deep and complex with lots of pages thank you for the time thank you dwayne okay anybody else yeah david here so this comment i mean the idea that the city kirks office is supposed to be putting something out on the tuesday when there's a council meeting going on you know that's not practical you know uh and just how to steer around that and me but this five business days takes you to as you pointed out to the previous time of a meeting you know there may or may not have been a meeting then but um i think you can wrestle through to something that's a little more reasonable than having a deadline at the time that the previous week's council meeting would be going on but i note the reference here to government delivery and i assume that that's some piece of related to granicus's register but you know i actually i don't know what that means and i do know that that's you know that's all a moving target to kind of things that are available uh to facilitate these things being posted and maybe that's a topic that we would get into is i don't know how many years we've had granicus but i know that that space is getting have more and more offerings provided and i'm certainly not up to date on it but that might be a topic that would answer some of these questions all right thank you sir so i'm going to make a suggestion how about for this section maybe the verbiage says something to the effect of staff will make every effort to have final documents four days four business days no later than four business days from the meeting something of that nature which i think then gives staff if you're just completely slammed which i know happens to departments that you're still making the effort to get that there otherwise it still has the intent of giving people more lead time go ahead one second julie if i may um that becomes a very difficult standard to enforce and there's certainly going to be disagreements between the staff feeling they're very slammed and the public feeling that they're not sorry julie go ahead i have some concern about the the sort of wiggle room in that language and and would take the advice of the city attorney on that i have i have another comment though um does it make sense at some point and i don't know if it belongs here or in a policy or other administrative document can we separate out some of the larger reports that are harder to read and more difficult to get through you know sometimes we get a huge thick thing to read on thursday night and it it does it make sense for us to talk about sort of the size of the document and the time so that people have more time to process i i appreciate that's that's may not be the only reason people need additional time for example sometimes you want to ask the staff a question and if you get the document on friday and and it's a rdo day and there's no staff in on friday and then you only have monday in which to ask the clarifying question really so that's why i i have some concern about you know how many business days because it would be really helpful to give folks enough business days to have a question and answer from staff recognizing that we have friday party uh rdo days so that was two points i'm asking about yeah john well i just i kind of wondered this kind of begs the question of being a little more bold perhaps in the future and that would be should the council meeting change to wednesdays i mean that would be i don't know if any city that does they usually do on mondays or tuesdays not sure why wednesdays never chosen maybe it's because they just don't do it on wednesdays i don't know but it would it could it could cause that to happen i mean then maybe that discussion needs to take place i think that the the it's the staff reports that's really where i gained my information as well i mean i and the staff reports are rarely any more than than usually the three or four pages sometimes seven to thirteen fourteen pages usually on on that's pretty typical but change making this kind of change we either have to staff up the city clerk's office which is understaffed right now and have that conversation during uh our budget talks um or potentially change the date of the council meeting i don't see how we can have well i don't see how we can do it have it both ways you know without making a pretty substantive change in your office or our council meeting date set in the charter or is that option a choice that we have um that was exactly what was going through my mind um and i do think that it's in the charter we we can we can we can confirm we can confirm that but i don't have my okay so uh julie uh what are what are your thoughts here where would you like to go with this on that we need to address staffing issues for the clerk um i like switching to a business day rather than calendar day count and could do for business days um i do think we need to address when we get for example um a large a very large report like the trash contract was um that people should have more time with it and i don't see a way that we've addressed you know consent items are given the same amount of time as something major like a water or trash contract deal yeah and i and i don't know how we adjust uh in ordinance to be clear in ordinance um how to address the difference in size now if if it was a if it's the mayor the mayor can have a commitment or or make a a decision that that those items will be set on the agenda with an appropriate amount of time for the public to be able to weigh in but i'm not sure how we in an ordinance legislatively dictate that attribute uh john what are your thoughts on this section well i you know are you talking about the length the sides of a of an item well something like the garbage contract was was available to the to the to the public long before we dealt with it as as a as a council now it's a draft or a draft contract but um there would there would have been plenty time for the community to um digest an entire contract it's very very large probably not of much interest to many but it would have been available to the community long before five days or or 20 days for that matter i i think it was it was available long before we ever saw and i that would satisfy my concern um i'm just not it's just not clear to me how we write an ordinance that says you know if it's a big important thing link the draft yeah that's right and i do have in uh section b for the preliminary i did have a note to add language that you suggested about when uh when when possible to have documents posted when they're available right and i don't have the exact language down but the idea being like with the garbage contract if it was on the preliminary but the draft had been done two weeks before that it would link to that that draft as well so i so i do have that covered in section b but sue go ahead oh i just simply wanted to um let you know that i did pull up the charter and yes the charter provides at the meeting shall be on tuesdays okay um i think uh i am happy for us to give it a try doing four business days which puts it close of business on wednesday giving the public an additional day i think that that splits the difference and and we see what the impact on staff would be and if it doesn't work it doesn't work we come back we have that discussion and change it um but i i'm i'm comfortable with trying four business days if i could just chime in real quick and let you know that on wednesdays um after our tuesday council meeting in the wednesdays is when we actually review the agenda with the chair with the mayor the vice mayor and then also with staff to talk about all the agenda items so i just want to make sure that that you're aware of that because that just is going to impact everyone because usually there's a lot of last-minute changes that happen from that meeting and that adds on and that's why we have to publish on friday because the impact has actually affected the whole wednesday afternoon and then thursday on into the very late evenings on thursdays well that you know and chris and i have both been in that in that room while those changes happen and it is it can be a bit of of a time flurry uh on those wednesdays you know at the end of the day then this has been the one of the items that has that has caused the most concern with staff and their ability to uh to function and to respond to this kind of of request what's going to happen after we go through this process is we're gonna they'll go back to the council a recommendation to council the the city manager and all of those all the all the staff will be weighing in the council will hear that testimony and decide whether they and the impact there will be impacts discussed by staff to to to the full body and then they will the full body will decide whether to go in one direction or another so we could all we can do is what the best we can do here and then get there find out the dig a little deeper when it goes back to staff and when it goes back to the full body and have them chew it up a little more and decide whether they want to go forward with it we can only do what we can do and do and the best we can do julie last thoughts well it i think we're we're better holding on to the four business days maybe we give it a trial run you know and see how it goes um it concerns me what i'm hearing is that um the wednesday is a is a good day from staff's perspective for doing the uh amendment update setting the agenda for the next week um it may be that we need to move it a week out then and go to the prior wednesday so that we're running even further out i appreciate that that sounds more difficult but it does give the staff time to make the changes um for the thursday posting the previous week rather than the wednesday posting we're talking about i think let's go with the four business days and then consider whether we need to back it up further for staff's convenience yeah and uh i i will make that note and uh the draft the red line will reflect four business days i also think the other variable in this is that the mayor uh and and staff should discuss moving the agenda setting meeting if having it in the middle of wednesday ends up being uh an issue i'm fairly certain the charter does not stipulate that agenda setting happens wednesday at 11 o'clock but if there's a potential to do it call it right before the uh the council meeting call it monday call it first thing wednesday morning something to give staff more lead time as well um let's let's consider that as well but i think the overall intent is a solid one so um i will i i was just going to mention that mondays and tuesdays tend to be very full and busy days in preparation for the council meeting yeah so um it's a practical uh issue um and whether it gets means that the meetings get postponed yet another week which means we're looking at a pretty lengthy time to get anything to council um but we can certainly talk about different options great let's go ahead move forward on this uh as we are coming up on 7 30 uh pretty quickly here and we're only a couple of pages in here so i i think we'll finish uh page let's try to get through the end here of uh this particular section and then we'll stop at broadcast of meeting uh broadcast of meetings and pick up there at the next meeting um i did want to go to section g really fast uh no action or discussion shall be undertaken on any item not appearing on the posted agenda except that members of a policy body may respond to statements made or questions posed by persons exercising their public testimony rights to the extent of asking a question for clarification providing a reference to staff or other resources for factual information or requesting staff to report back to the body at a subsequent meeting concerning the matter raised by such testimony so practically speaking we have a uh call it a body rule that during public comment we don't respond and get into back and forth with folks i think that uh a way to do this and i'm going to throw this out to the council uh is uh allow for an opportunity at the end of public comment for us to ask staff to follow up to ask staff to respond back to somebody and make that one of our standing rules i know we do it typically but i also know that there are oftentimes where folks are standing in bewilderment at the microphone as they're asking questions and getting no response from the council because that's generally how our policy is uh again to prevent a back and forth that is goes a little bit awry in those situations that might deviate on a brown act violation i i would like us to build into this section that at the end of public comment there's an opportunity for council members to dictate to staff or direct staff based on answering questions uh john yeah i i think that we need to be find some kind of vehicle to respond i'm uncomfortable with the final um a line here where it says um uh let's see or requesting staff if someone's going to be requesting staff to do anything it should be the council's i don't think someone from in the audience should be requesting staff to report back to the body at a subsequent meeting concerning the matter raised by such testimony that that speaks to what you just mentioned chris if the council if a council member hears a here's some a comment or a question that that clearly merits some a response from staff than than the council one of those seven should be hearing that and asking and asking for a response but i i would um i would not want um a member of the of the audience or the the public to be telling staff to come back with with the response based on their testimony yeah uh council member comes i'm reading it as that members of the council or it says policy body but i'm reading it to me members of the council can't ask for um the clarification or ask that staff at the end of the comments follow up or say can a staff member get in touch with that person um that's what i'm hearing your intent to be is that am i reading that correctly that's correct so we'd be building into the ordinance ordinance sort of what we have as a unofficial policy that some of us have adopted of following up right after public comment to make sure that at least the public is heard uh and where uh where there needs to be follow up that there is follow up um it's an excellent idea i'm really excited about that um is does council report outs cause any problem under this section well so we have council reports is uh somewhere else in the ordinance suggested or in the open government task force suggested that it occur at the end of the meeting and we'll have that discussion when we get there for sure if the city attorney if this limited what we can say in council report outs no um this particular provision only relates to a response to public comment and does not uh does not concern the council report outs and i i will mention too that um as the chair mentioned um there are brown act constraints with respect to the extent that that the council members can respond uh to public comment yeah i think that's probably a good idea for us not to engage get into a lot of engagement back and forth during public comment it could get pretty difficult at times um but i do think uh the reference to staff is a good idea and i appreciate that chris that you've done that yeah and i do just want to uh signal for you in the conversation about council member report outs which is obviously where we add things on the agenda where i think we should discuss is having council member report outs after public comment which would give us an additional if somebody brings up an issue that needs to be uh agendized for discussion gives council an opportunity to say we're going to have this discussion but with that i'll go to public comment really quick go ahead my name is helga lemke and felt that i couldn't say anything or said something that was like meaningless so um i think it's a very awkward way to to leave members of the audience it feels like you're not acknowledging them at all so i think it's a great idea and even though you do it informally some of you having it in the land you know here would set up a dynamic that said the rest of us could counsel someone who's asking you to respond like wait till the end you know so it's a process that really builds expectations on both sides and i think would improve performance great and we're going rapid fire folks right just in in terms of wordsmithing you know what testimony shows up here i mean we're talking about public comment so why not just use the comment because testimony would suggest okay am i testifying because i was asked to make a comment no i mean most of the times you're talking about people on their own volition making comments right so i think testimony is a bit confusing in this context okay thank you duane yes i hope you'll my name is duane do it i hope to remember back to ken blackman he actually would send you a letter in response to some of the things that you asked about i have not had that happened since and have never had it happen with a council member responding to things that are important so i think that one of the things that's really important here is that you understand the brown act doesn't say you cannot speak okay you have the opportunity it's just some policy that someone along the way has instituted and it really is uncomfortable for many people because they've come all the way there on their time to sit through a meeting and to listen and they just one have some sort of interaction in a positive manner and i believe that you could do the best thing now by saying hey let's have that default option that you are allowed to speak to the the general public you are allowed to respond and when uh excuse me when a public member asks you about something specific please try to have staff respond to it putting the reports at the end of the meeting is helpful for that because you can say yes mr. a said that miss b said this we need to respond to that and that will show a greater interaction in a positive manner thank you yep go ahead that's an important inclusion that represents respect on the part of the council to the public and so that only is going to enhance the importance of public comments and uh it acknowledges on the part of the council that there is a wisdom in the public absolutely so sometimes um no i i appreciate that so we will i will include that language in the red line that uh is is circulated next uh and we'll we'll do this item and then we'll do one last opportunity at public comment on this section globally uh i want to look at sections k l and m uh as flagged uh by kalua on a decision point copies of city council agendas in english shall be provided to any resident of santa rosa who so requests and made available in the city clerk's office free of charge no more than five business days prior to the city council meeting copies of city council agendas in spanish shall be provided to any resident of santa rosa who so requests and made available in the city clerk's office free of charge no more than two business days prior to the city council meeting i'd like consistency between those two paragraphs and then finally and copies of the agendas in a language other than english or spanish will be made available yada yada yada from from that point i just want to make sure that we have consistency between sections k and section l that the uh business days prior to the city council meeting is the same uh and john i'm gonna open it up for you well i i think that that shows respect and i and i i can't see a reason why they cut off the three days unless there are some practical rest you know restraint on on getting the you know the translations and there maybe there was but i i'd like to certainly like to investigate or what why that constraint is or why that change is there we should make every effort to make them equal council member comes it it sounds as it's written as if the agenda is automatically provided in english and only translated after a request is made for it to be in spanish and that's why there's the delay in the two i'm guessing that is that an accurate guess that's correct that sounds correct uh what we have previously discussed here is is a consistency of doing it in spanish as well the issue is shouldn't we just do it in spanish yep at the same time uh and i would agree with you chris that we should um i'm also concerned that we do closed captioning only in english my understanding from an estimate from a couple of years ago is that it would cost about 34 000 a year to do the closed the open captioning excuse me in spanish as well as in english and then in the next section which we'll get to at our next meeting that is also one of those uh recommendations so we'll come back to that as well councilmember com okay i just wanted to you know if it says the agenda is available in english i agree with you the agenda should be in spanish also um at what point are we going to do the reports in both languages and that's a good question uh for staff and maybe we maybe we put a pin in that one and come back to it as well um so i'll add it thank you i'll add it for a future discussion and by the way uh this consistency between k and l seems to me inconsistent with section n which is copies of the agendas in a language other than english or spanish will be made available automatically if the threshold of that particular non-english and non-spanish speaking population reaches or exceeds 10 000 people or five percent uh which to me means that the way that this ordinance is written is if you exceed five percent so long as it's not in spanish you automatically get it and so i want to make sure that there's consistency there uh as well and so i think we can fix that uh are there any comments on that from the public all right thank you but i'm going to take one last quick public comment specifically on this section uh article two section one dash one zero point zero three zero is there anything that we missed otherwise we're going to stop here for the night and at our next meeting we'll come back with the broadcast of meetings the rest of article two article three and then make our way through our list as well so last public comments mr mr do it hello my name is duane do it i believe that letter g under this section is very important and i do hope that it will be exemplified to make sure that no elected official feels they cannot talk to the public that it's okay to interact at a meeting thank you anybody else go ahead yes david here it's actually uh councilmember combs mentioning the rdo days caused me to start thinking that you know when it was every other friday you know it's always confusing as to know what was when and there's good intent in talking about business days but there's simplicity if it was you know wednesday at one p.m no matter what was going on the rest of the week you know because you start throwing in uh monday holidays and then okay is the friday after thanksgiving is that a holiday and the fact that the date that you're doing these things would move back and forth is just a confusion you know if you could if you could do a fixed date in what falls in between there if it's too much days off etc well you know you'll adjust that by pushing it to the next council meeting and and just having the simplicity of people knowing when things are going to be available by not having to know you know okay what's a holiday what isn't a holiday etc i think there'd be some benefit in just being simple and not trying to accommodate business days okay anybody else great and to that point i think we can build that into the ordinance as it's written but in the guiding citizen engagement document perhaps it's easier for us to say you'll have it by close of business on wednesday to be more clear for folks so with that i'm going to call it a night thank you folks for joining our next meeting will be at city hall uh in january that's uh we'll be doing our downtown for our next one at city hall that's so i hope to see you folks there it'll be a little bit easier to find thank you uh i don't have the date off the top of my head uh currently set for january 9th but councilmember soyer is going to be out of out of the country so we may push it uh for when he gets back take it make a phone call on on the agenda the very last page of your agenda it has the dates and times oh and i apologize i am going to add one thing to the agenda for uh next month as well there are an inordinate amount of cab seats that are either open or coming open and it seems like if we can have our discussion on a separate ordinance to align cab districts with the council election districts it seems like it's an appropriate time for us to have that conversation so i'm going to ask staff to bring that to us as the first item so we can get it out of the way at our next meeting as well so thank you folks


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we're joined by NewsClick's Prabhu Purkhayasth and we are going to be talking about the two lawsuits that have been filed against Facebook. Now these antitrust lawsuits were filed by the United States federal government and a number of states and they alleged that Facebook and they've actually even called for the Facebook to divest Instagram and WhatsApp to of its most important properties. And they alleged an entire pattern of antitrust violations stemming for the last many years. Of course the same federal government had cleared Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram, which is the argument Facebook is using. So to look into these arguments as well as the implications of the case, Prabhu is going to be talking more about this. Prabhu, thank you so much for joining us. So first of all, if you can just give us the key arguments that the government is presenting in terms of what exactly are Facebook's crimes. I think if I have to answer the question you're asking Prashant, it might mean a much more knowledge of US anti-monopoly law than I am capable of. So I'm not going to go into the legal issues, just the broad issues maybe. The key issue here is, and this is something we've discussed earlier in the Google case also, that anti-monopoly laws in the US have been rather sparingly and used in the last few years, last few decades in fact. And the only other case earlier was the Microsoft case, which after AT&T was the only other case the US government, the company was settled privately between Microsoft and the US government by Microsoft making certain concessions. This is a follow up to what the big tech four companies are doing and the House committee, US Congress had interrogated the four tech company CEOs and at the moment we see action against first Google and then Facebook. Both of them put together cover a very significant part of the world's ad revenue and particularly the United States is even more so and based on the monopoly of different kinds. Google's monopoly is a search engine. So of course it has other properties also, it uses Gmail, it uses the other Google Maps, various other properties that Google has. But the bulk of its concentration in terms of ads really comes from its monopoly of the search engine, which in the mobile field is 95%. And in the field of the desktop, it's about 90% of the US market. So this is a very significant part of its monopoly. And this time we have the Facebook, which is the other 95%, 95% of the social media platforms. So these are really two different kinds of monopolies and each of them have resulted in them being able to get a lion's share of the ad revenue, particularly the digital ad revenue. And as we now know, the digital ad revenue is becoming the significant part of the ad revenues in all spheres. So it's already overtaken in the US, all other forms of ad revenue, television, newspapers, everything put together. So obviously in the future, this is going to get much worse. So this is why the US government, the US administration, and these are bipartisan consensus that seems to be emerging that monopoly is bad. And this is something which in the US has not been done. And it has been argued that monopoly is good provided in benefits to consume. This has been the key argument. And of course, if a product is being given away free to the consumers and it assumes we are the consumers, the general public is a consumer. So why should there be harm in terms of monopoly to the consumers? This has been the key argument which has prevented action being taken. It's good that finally the anti-monopoly part of the law, which is that monopoly itself is dangerous, is being looked upon as a way to curb the power of big tech companies. So I think that's a welcome sign. First with Google, now with Facebook. Facebook case also what you raised, there is an interesting argument that has been advanced in the case itself. Like the Google case, which is much more textbook follows what the Microsoft case did that they had tied up with various companies to see that their product becomes a de facto search tool for those devices. In fact, Apple's devices are one of those, one of these restrictive agreements. In the Facebook case, the argument given, and this was originally advanced by Dina Srinivasan, a scholar who had written that what is the harm that is to the consumer is basically that their privacy has been successively watered down by Facebook as a platform. And they have done it when they feel secure that they have a monopoly. And for instance, when they were faced at one point by Google plus earlier Myspace as a competitor into the social media space. At that point they said, let's go slow on weakening Facebook's privacy policies. And they have enough documentary evidence that the antitrust department seems to have collected to show from internal emails and so on, that the consideration of weakening monopoly, weakening privacy portions of Facebook's operations was closely aligned to how the perceived whether the consumers had an alternative or not. After the acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram. It's very clear now that Facebook has no competition in the social media space in the United States and large parts of the world. In fact, TikTok was emerging as one of the possible future competition. Well, it's been partially killed in the United States for the US government. And in India also one of the major markets for TikToks been killed by the Indian government. So given that there doesn't seem to be any major global challenge to Facebook in the social media space again. So this is where the US administration's move comes in that they have asked that the divestment of WhatsApp and Instagram from Facebook may be splitting it up, making it different companies and therefore restoring in some sense competition in the social media market. So it's an interesting development. How far it will go, we don't know, but the fact that 46 states have joined the Union federal government over there seems to show very broad bipartisan support for this move. Of course, the right wing, as you know, is anti Facebook because that they don't support conspiracy theories enough. And therefore they don't support Trump's close to Q and on positions enough. And therefore Facebook is actually a liberal conspiracy. So you have that part of the Republican Party, which is of course support anything against Facebook believing it's a liberal conspiracy. But on the other hand, there is a broad bipartisan support amongst even what would be called the left of the Democratic Party. It is not left by any other country standards, but the US standards, even Elizabeth Warren reconsider left. So even that section has been strongly arguing or controlling monopoly, and therefore against taking action against the Google and Facebook, and maybe Amazon would be the next in line. We don't know, because if you remember, four companies would put on the on the stand in this tech investigations by the Congress. And in this, the two now who are left out are Amazon and Apple. We'll have to see what happens to them. Right, and in this context, it's also important to see that in Europe to there's been over the past few years, quite a bit of action against some of these big tech giants fines have been levied against Google, for instance. And they two are looking at, of course, privacy is also a big concern over there. So the other key question would be that we see that the global north, there is this kind of action that's taking place. But in the global south, so far, there seems to be very little oversight or very little addressing of these issues. So is there a scope, for instance, say, in Indian law to actually address something on these lines. You see, we have also the competition commission that exists in India. So similar provisions can be also used against Google and Facebook. The point is, Google and Facebook's part doesn't come from Indian market, and neither will competition appear easily from the Indian market. And therefore, we seem to be believing that going soft on Google and Facebook is okay. And what we can do is ask them to invest money in Indian companies. So in that sense, you can see that asking Facebook not asking but permitting Facebook and Google to invest large amounts of money in Geo could be in a way that, okay, we give you command over this market, which is the social media and the search engine market. But in lieu of that, you don't compete with Reliance and Reliance Geo and be their partners. In fact, help to fund them and therefore emerge as a long term player, maybe the telecom market. Geo has dreams of also becoming a global player in the telecom market. Maybe that's the way Indian government seems to see. This is also a way that Indian government has been looking at the people. People are not its interest. Its interest is really capital. And you can see that in the anti-farmers stand that the government takes, that farmers will be benefited because the corporates will be benefited. And if corporations get benefited, therefore the farmers will get some indirect benefits. It's a very old line that the RSS always had that anything which means state intervention in the economy is wrong. What Indian state should do is support big capital and big capital will develop India and there will be the trickle down effect that will fall. Effectively, this has been the RSS ideology right from the times that it opposed all forms of Nehruvian economic development post-independence. So I think that's still the bonus that the government of India would like to follow. What you raised also is what are the other countries doing? You see, whatever other countries can do, it can only play at the periphery of the issue because unfortunately there is no global body that can do or step-take steps against a global monopoly, particularly when the global monopoly comes from the home market of the strongest capitalist power in the world, the United States of America, which effectively controls the financial flows in the world. So it's an architecture which means that other countries can play at the margins, but they cannot really reform the way Google and Facebook would behave. And I think that is the problem you have, that we have global dominance of tech, but we have no global governance in the tech or any other sector for the matters. And I think that is a key problem that we have here. We have attempts by the Europeans, particularly the EU, to look at privacy and data retention and data privacy. All of these are being played, but there's no economic lever on these issues. All that they are saying is, host all your activities on data, don't take it to the United States and do it here. Which at one point, Google and Facebook might really do, all that they will do is that until it is necessary for them to pay, they might say, let's pay the fines, the amount of revenue we get is more than enough to pay the fines, and the fines become too big, but it will shift a part of our infrastructure to Luxembourg or something. So those avenues are still open, but Australia, that is an interesting change, because they have said, if Google uses the news of Google, the news of companies, news companies on its platform in different ways, it should pay some money. Now, whether that will work or not, that we have to see, but that's an interesting development of what they're doing. Because all this platform, this Facebook or Google, they don't generate any content. Generation of content on the basis of which Google and Facebook's monopoly still works is by others. Now, it's a lot of it is by you and me. If we are on Facebook, we write stuff, media stuff and our friends see it. But in terms of Google, even more than Facebook, it's really other media companies which generate the information or research companies or publishers of different kinds. And that's what Google really indexes and presents it. And that indexing is valuable because otherwise you won't see that information readily. But that is the strength of his market path. But what happens if the content generators die? And that's a question we have not answered because content generators get no tangible benefits from it, unless they are looking at ads. And as we know, probably 5% to 7% of the money may come to the content generators via Google. But probably 90% or more of the revenue that is generated from ads in this tool is also income for media companies is really Google. And that's a problem and it's true for Facebook as well. That's a problem that we have not been able to solve in terms of economy. And that will not be solved by the way European Union is also going. So I think fundamentally what the US has done is at least a step in the right direction, but they can do it because those companies are American companies. Other countries, very difficult for them to do it. How they can break up Google in different ways in different countries. That means that those countries have to say unless there's a Google France, you can't do anything. That is a localization at the level which nobody has taken up as yet. So I think that's something that we have to see. Thank you so much Praveel for talking to us. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching.


I'm Dr. Peter Mancini. I'm a general cardiologist here at VenoCure. I've been a general cardiologist for 18 years now. Born and raised in Detroit, did all my training down at Wayne State, and fortunate enough to be a part of this practice. I am the guy in the practice that is a general cardiologist. So if you have any problems with doctors not listening to you, I'm your man.


Welcome back to Tennis Talk, my name's Cam Williams and there's been bad news for Alexander Zverev with another setback to the foot injury. Of course he twisted his ankle at the French Open. Let's go have a read of an article that has come out talking about the extent of this setback to his ankle. So this is what sources have said on Twitter. So Zverev is suffering from a bone edema that we've talked about a couple of weeks ago that took him out of the Davis Cup and if it's untreated it could be up to three to nine months to resolve the problem. If he does get treatment for it, which could be more surgery, it could reduce the pain and the healing time, which means he'll be back maybe a little bit sooner than three to nine months. But some other sources are saying that it could be four to 12 months of recovery. So Zverev might be out for another 12 months, which is absolutely crazy because he's already been out for so long, almost six months since he got injured. This could be something that he could be dealing with for a long time yet. So there you have it, bad news for Zverev when it comes to injuries. And you know, this is one of those injuries that could be plaguing him for his entire career. We've seen players like Del Potro in recent times get an injury with his knee injury and it just kept coming back, kept coming back. Of course, Federer, he's just retired because of a knee injury as well. Well, he retired because he's 40. But also the knee injury was kind of what I guess confirmed his retirement. And Zverev, only, you know, early 20s, he's sort of early to mid 20s in his prime is starting to get these injuries as well and could be out for the next, who knows, three months, 12 months. I mean, it could be really, really bad. But let me know down in the comments below, when do you think we'll see Zverev back? Do you think we'll see him back sooner? Do you think he'll go back into surgery? Do you think we'll see him maybe at the start of next year? I don't think we'll see him for the rest of the year. And that's just because I think that, you know, he needs to get that time to recover and come back strong next year. But he might not be playing for a long time yet. Let me know down in the comments below. When do you think he's going to come back?