re of collaboration inclusion and productivity within the city these standards apply to all city council members as well on january 16 2019 as part of the league of california city's conference in sacramento for new council members myself vice mayor Cummings and council member Glover all attended a training in work respectful workplace policy specifically in regards to assembly bill 20 20 53 that training was delivered by a set of attorneys with expertise in both harassment and work respectful workplace policy at the same conference i spoke with council member Glover over dinner about his use of derogatory remarks to members of the council i explained at that evening with him my discomfort in beginning our professional relationship with such a negative language the city's respectful workplace policy provides definitions responsibilities and examples of disrespectful behavior including repeated use of derogatory remarks or insults berating insulting and being disruptive the policy importantly states that all persons are required to behave respectfully and to refrain from disrespectful behaviors and most importantly to not condone or ignore disrespectful conduct to employees volunteers council members commissioners customers contractors and visitors to our city okay i'm going to go ahead what our vote will say tonight to our community will set a standard on how we view treatment of our colleagues our staff community members business owners and government partners i hope our entire council will take the step tonight that recognizes these violations are serious and merit formal censure indeed the city manager was very clear that we as the city council are the only body that can formally say no to this behavior council member Crohn's and Glover's behavior was duly investigated each of them was found to have clearly violated the policy and none of the 13 complaints were found to be false no one who works at or with the city of santa cruz should be worried about interacting with a council member i will tell my colleagues tonight that this body is very damaged at this point in the eyes of our community i've had many community members parents families and individuals tell me that they will not come to a city council meeting for fear of how they will be treated our democracy is at risk in this very chamber when our community our staff parents families and our business and government partners do not feel safe engaging in our democratic process i believe strongly that this item deserves an up or down vote that this item deserves public comment and we have had we have many members of the public here to speak on this island item if there are any efforts to table the item or postpone it not only would that be improper misuse or misuse of procedure but would be a cynical effort to squash debate and silence women in our community minority that's all i've got to say to open the item uh council member matthews if you'd like to add any comments i'd like to add just a few words and i'm i'm really speaking from the heart tonight i'm going to go ahead oh really i'm going to go ahead and wait just a moment council member matthews if you could just for a second i again want to readjust remind the community that we will have an opportunity to hear from you this is an opportunity for the two council members to bring this item forward and they can present their item i am going to immediately open up public comment after that so we'll hear from you and then we'll go ahead and return back for action okay so we will hear and we'll have an opportunity to hear and we'll listen to you respectfully and we'll ask that you listen to others respectfully again if i see somebody disrupting the proceedings i will ask you to stop and i will give you a warning and if it continues to happen i will ask you to leave everybody has an opportunity to speak including the council members who are i'm sharing their item at this time go right ahead thank you i wanted to start by saying that many people in the community people here tonight have uh made a direct correlation between this item on our agenda and the recall process and i want to say for me personally these are absolutely different things i have to say that's discouraging i'm going to go on for me they are two different things i would say i i look out i know a lot of you out there and i have worked with a lot of you on a lot of different issues and i respect you and i treasure the fact that i have been able to work with so many people on so many issues over the year and do good things for our community tonight what we're dealing with is a separate matter to me this represents completion enclosure of the city's process of accepting investigating reporting on and responding to violations of city policy in this case there were multiple complaints filed by several women alleging violation of the city's respectful workplace policy as is appropriate these complaints were investigated in this case by an independent third party and two of the complaints were upheld if these complaints had been upheld against the city employee there would have been an appropriate level of recourse internally from a reprimand to firing depending on the severity and the circumstances but in this case the complaints were not against staff they were against council in this case because the complaints were upheld against elected council members the remedy lies with us in the hands of the council as has been mentioned this is not the first time the council has censured one of its members it's happened at least twice to my knowledge for different reasons i personally think it's important that we lead by example in our conduct towards one another and towards our staff a workplace where harassment disrespect and bullying take place cannot function at its full potential in fact this very point was made in the most recent issue of western city this is the monthly magazine of the league of california cities the featured article is entitled it starts with civility elected officials role in attracting and retaining employees and it goes on to talk about the importance of elected's behavior in gaining the confidence of the public that's why we have this policy and that's why the state law as well has codified the principles of a respectful workplace now i would like to respond in these comments the the complaints that have been filed that we're dealing with tonight were all filed by women in this case that was the pattern but a respectful workforce policy is important across the board when you think about it if we observe bullying disrespectful behavior or similar action against someone on the basis of race sexual orientation national origin citizenship status we immediately think that's not right we would readily agree that such behavior should be reported investigated and have consequences i would say that's the case regardless of any individual characteristics it's a good general principle to have to behave in a respectful manner some people have maintained in the course of this conversation that civility is a false ideal that passionately fighting for a cause trump's civility or a respectful interaction that may be true in some cases but here we share a common workplace and we live together in a community we run into each other in the course of daily life at the grocery store walking along a west cliff drive at our kids soccer games i believe it's important to maintain the social connection that keeps our community together in the face of the vitriolic example set at the national level these are my reasons for cosigning and supporting the measure before us in my mind this brings to closure a very unhappy period in our council's relations i fervently hope and i will work to forge respectful productive relations between council and staff and help restore the public's confidence in our ability to do our job the time now is to move forward thank you i'd like to make a motion to table this so that we can move on i didn't yeah i had a feeling that i'd like to make that motion though i didn't um acknowledge you so as the president like to make an appeal then i'm gonna go ahead uh you i'm gonna go ahead and i i'm sorry but i consulted with the city attorney and i can make an appeal to that i will go ahead and ask for your advice on this um my understanding is it takes the presiding officer to acknowledge a council member to speak if the presiding officer does not acknowledge that person then they can make an appeal to the council to override the presiding officer at that time then we can go ahead and take a motion or potentially hear what the motion before us will be but it takes the presiding officer to rule on a point of order and there was not a violation of rules nor did i acknowledge council member brown on this item i'll quote directly from the rule the presiding officer shall preserve strict order and decorum at all meetings of the council announce the council's decision on all subjects and decide all questions of order in accordance with the procedural rules for motions and debate and announce the council's vote on all actions or direct city administrator to do so if there is an appeal to a decision of the presiding officer the council as a whole shall decide the question by majority vote any council member with the exception of the presiding officer may move to appeal a decision of the presiding officer if the appeal motion is seconded by another council member the council shall vote on the appeal okay so my my i will go ahead and respond as the presiding officer i did not acknowledge council member brown um and i feel that the community has been wanting to address us on this item and it's my interest to hear from the community and have a public comment on this item and to not use the parliamentary process to just delay that potential discussion and ability of the community to speak to us on this item my i'm going to go ahead and ask that my colleagues respect me you can appeal my decision if you do do so choose you're welcome to do that but i have the opportunity to rule on this and to explain my logic on this so i respectfully ask that you adhere to the processes in that way i will go ahead and not move forward with acknowledging council member brown she is welcome to appeal i would like to hear public comment on this item and if there is interest in this majority of council and overriding my decision in not allowing the community to speak to us or to have us hear this item then that's the majority's decision so that's my ruling i move to appeal second okay there's a motion to appeal the ruling that i just made on the point of order all those in favor please say aye opposed no so that passes with council member crone lever um vice mayor Cummings and council member brown okay so council member brown that was an appeal of the of the of the of the mayor's decision not to recognize the council member so there has been a motion made i presume the motion would be motion to table second okay all those in favor please say aye opposed no okay that passes with council member crone lever brown all right go ahead all right i'm going to go ahead and ask everybody to okay if we could all just why don't we all just take a moment please thank you we still have another item on tonight's agenda that where we will be moving forward with at this time um this is the second item on tonight's agenda it's brought forward to us by the staff i'm going to go ahead and ask those who are not interested in staying for the second item to feel free to exit the chambers those that are interested in staying in the chambers tonight for the second item you're welcome to stay i will ask that you adhere to our rules of decorum good job i'm going to go ahead and ask that you adhere to the rules of decorum and not shout out miss hawkman please we will begin the second item and i will announce the title of the item when the when the transition has taken place okay so the second on the second item on tonight's agenda is the city council's city council investigation recommendation implementation and this is brought forward by city manager martin burnall and um hr director at lisa murphy who will be presenting on the item the order of this will go that will have a presentation from staff will have questions from the council will open it up to public comment and will return back for action and deliberation so go ahead and hand it over to staff at this time thank you mayor so i was going to do a brief introduction and then turn it over to our human resource director lisa murphy to go over the actual recommendations i simply wanted to do a brief presentation focused really on moving forward i ask that you please you know not take what i'm presenting as accusatory or blaming it anyway my intent is to present what we can all do to improve our ability to govern and that'll be my focus so i mean clearly the the report the investigative report clearly shows the need to improve our environment amongst council members and between council members and staff and you know it has had an impact there's no doubt that it that it has the environment on staff morale in particular which is a concern to me and our ability to attract and retain employees and so it's important that we sort of move forward as i mentioned you know the HR director represents some recommendations regarding that to improve our circumstances and situation here but again i'd like to focus on how we can govern effectively and there are you know attributes of exceptional city councils that we can all follow and we can do but we can all do better in this regard and i just wanted to just focus a little bit on those because i think that would be helpful again if we focus on how we can improve ourselves to govern more effectively so there and i'm going by you know some of the the league of california cities and other organizations that put together these attributes that i think are important i think for all of us to recognize and we do well in some of these areas and not so on some of these areas and i'll go over them really quickly and these are the six and i'm just going to go through each one individually so the first is teamwork and really there it's for each other to really work together as a team and to further a common purpose and that really is not just council amongst each other but also staff and the council and the community to extend possible and working in a coordinating collaborative manner is is more effective than doing the opposite in general and for that you need a high degree of respect trust and openness that's the way you can really do that and and if you don't have that then you're not going to be able to have teamwork and and and be able to work collaboratively in particular but it also takes having some obvious some tolerance you know we have to have about we have to value diversity differences of styles different perspectives and for that you have to have you have to be respectful but also we have to think about and act strategically really as far as serving the city's mission and goals and thinking about the big picture because that's why we're here to really govern and to be strategic and to try to achieve goals in mission in the mission of our city so teamwork is just really critical really to any functioning organization and to be able to be productive the other is having clear roles and responsibilities and and there are different roles that we each have you know as policymakers you have a role to represent the values the beliefs and the priorities of the community and I know you know that while serving in the community's best interest but that means listening and having trade-offs you set the policy and the vision for the city and it's best to avoid micromanagement because the the city manager's responsibilities to do the day-to-day operations and that's really critical to the function of our local government and to hold me accountable quite frankly so and also it's important to recognize the subject matter expertise of staff and to utilize their knowledge and experience to guide and inform our decision making it's it's part of the decision-making process you don't always have to go with it that's okay but I think it's important to at least recognize it and support it and recognize that they're here to help you and help the community and to be professional in that regard to honor the relationship with staff and each other again that's critically important to be able to have good working relationships between each other and with the staff and yourselves individually and as a group and to really respect each other with with dignity and respect and act in a civility and a high level of professional decorum is important in order to be able to do that and to listen and to really listen and to allow people to to express their opinions and to contemplate and analyze and before jumping ahead and making decisions or judgments that's that's really critical and I think you know council members it's important you know that you build trust by not playing the gotcha game and to strive to not have secrets or surprises you know at our meetings here we want to be transparent we want the idea here is to be able to make good decisions by working together and having that trust not by trying to scheme or somehow figure out a way to sort of make each other look bad or to make a point for some alternative reason that's just not it's just not good overall obviously that doesn't help to build trust right moving forward and again here too I mentioned this before but respecting different styles and perspectives is this really critical important and to be open to new ideas again that means again listening effective meetings I know this is something that you were probably not very well known for and it's hard in the public sector to do this to have effective meetings in this kind of environment in this kind of form it's just just basically it's it's kind of it's just hard in a setting like this when you have to do everything in public but it is important nonetheless to adhere to meeting protocols and processes and we're all working to do that and to plan and to organize agendas and to develop you know more focused meetings to the extent that we can because then it allows us to really focus on the business of the community and to allocate your time more appropriately for the things that you really have to prioritize which is our goals and responsibilities and priorities and of course that that has to be balanced with honoring public participation and engagement that's that's important too and we work to do that all time obviously being prepared in advance and focusing on really our goals and objectives is super critical to have an effective meetings and be able to feel like you've accomplished made a accomplishment center moving forward and again demonstrating respect and civility with each other and stuff is also important within in the in the meeting setting this was well and holding each other accountable you know we need to operate and open ethically and and work to engage the community and to really think about short-term and long-term strategic directions and goals again that's again it's it's it's a common theme here in all of these that being strategic and thinking about our goals and objective is important and holding you know each other and yourselves accountable for your own behavior and the behavior and effectiveness of the whole entire council is important and adhering to operating protocols and codes of conducts and establishing clear priorities and goals and like i mentioned before holding the city manager accountable for results and then finally it's always good to really try to continue to improve ourselves and that means staying informed when key issues and there's a variety of ways to do that obviously and the resources that are available to you obviously speaking and engaging with the community and gaining insights and knowledge on all aspects of governing because it's ever changing and not everything is black and white and there's always more to story whenever you talk to somebody so doing what you can to improve and to learn and to engage is incredibly important and listening to listen as many times more important than learning to give a speech i think a lot of times we forget that and particularly in these public settings because there's sometimes a desire to sort of to speak and say what you want but it's it's probably more important to actually listen than it is to speak so those are just the six i think things that are i think recommended is sort of traits when you look at what are the traits and attributes of an effective city council they do these things well they consider these things well and i just wanted to point that out because i think it's important for all of us to recognize that in the community as well and with that i am pass it over to our human resources director lisa murphy to go over the specific recommendations that the investigator made good evening mayor council lisa murphy human resources director tonight i'm going to go over the city council investigation recommendations and implementation just a brief background as you all aware investigation was conducted by an independent investigator into the violations of city policies by members of the city council the investigation was concluded in July the investigator made a series of recommendations i myself have made several recommendations and this report requests that the council approved those recommendations these are all also listed on your um in your agenda the first recommendation and what i plan to do is go through each one and then what we can do is maybe come back to them and and address them individually if you want to make any alterations or clarifications the first one is appoint a subcommittee of two council members to work with staff to develop a code of ethics and conduct policy for elected and appointed officials this isn't unusual this is actually very common throughout many of the icma recognized cities that the councils do adopt these types of policies and i think it would be best if we had the two council members participate and staff can help support create that i've also listed in your staff report timelines of which to be able to prepare these items and i believe in this particular one i said we could do it within the next two months the second recommendation uh was that all council members agree to attend a mediation conducted by qualified conflict resolution professional we have several two proposals that have come to us isn't by all means the the ones we have to go with but what i'm looking for you tonight to do is to agree to pursue this avenue look into the training and participate in a mediation voluntarily and utilize one of the two consultants that have proposed on this project the third recommendation that all new council members attend a live training session of the sexual harassment discrimination and workplace conduct policies within the first 60 days of taking office and attend every two years thereafter as required by the state of california although this may seem not not new what is new to this is the first 60 days right now the city offers those trainings throughout the year you are required at some point during the year to take that training and you can also take it online which sometimes may not be the most effective so with this requirement from the first 60 days and you would be able to have that attended by january the league of california cities offers it when you're first elected and also the city of santa cruz offers that training live in january as well recommendation number four that staff will review and revise if necessary administrative procedure order section two a discrimination harassment retaliation policy implementation complaint procedure and administrative procedure order section two one b respectful workplace conduct policy these are administrative policies that are developed by the administration with the work of our equal employment opportunity commission helped us as well on the workplace conduct and what i'm proposing is to utilize the eeoc again as well as staff who would like to of the city who would like to participate we have definitely learned going through this process that we can improve upon this process there are opportunities that we can be more successful when we hopefully never have to proceed down this path again so i have also put down the recommendation to bring this back to the council hopefully sometime uh in early january i think we'll be able to meet the with the eeoc during that timeline as well because they also participate in those policies depending on that outcome then we would bring back to you for recommendation number five which is the council review and revise if necessary council policy 25.2 discrimination harassment retaliation and respectful workplace conduct policy based on the outcome of the previous recommendation that's because those two policies actually this policy the council policy is sort of the umbrella policy of those two that you do have direct approval over so what i'd like to have is that the staff and employees work on the the two policies revisions if necessary and then we'll bring it back to you and have those two policies mirror each other and finally the last recommendation was number six which is to direct the staff to prepare a formal on-boarding process for new city council members that incorporates these policies uh within again the first couple months of your of individuals becoming elected and coming on board there's a lot to learn there's a lot to know and if we have a more formalized policy that would delineate important council policies your handbooks our apos important projects the budget any number thing whether in labor negotiations or whatever it might be in land use issues that might be pressing before you that would be part of the on-boarding process that would take place with the intention within the first 60 to 90 days of being elected with that that concludes the the six recommendations and so i would like to turn it back over to you to discuss each one and hear what you have to say and have any advice on two updates and so on so forth so this would generally be the time if there's any council members who want to ask questions of staff i think this is going to require a number of kind of conversations and discussions if it's okay with my colleagues i would just prefer that we go ahead and open it up to public comment then we can return back for questions action deliberation okay so we'll go ahead and open it up to public comment i had two requests for groups that want to speak to address the council on this item um the first is a city employee who is interested in speaking on behalf of herself and other city employees who didn't feel comfortable coming forward i'll go ahead and invite up that city employee now and you'll have up to four minutes good evening mayor walken city council members i'm susie ohara assistant to the city manager i stand this evening before you with my family by my side and my community behind me to share that i am city employee number four and i speak for women here at the city too afraid to speak for themselves a few members of our city and community are here to stand in solidarity with us victims i ask others in chamber chambers who would like to join them to feel to please feel free to raise your hands i'm honored and humbled to have you all here with me i am city employee number four but i am not a faceless number i'm a mother of three young daughters a wife to my husband a devoted public servant servant who has withstood months of abuse and abuse that continues through council members glevers persistent victim blaming and zero recognition of the harm that he has caused i share these experiences to be an example of courage for those too afraid to report abuse for victim blaming keeps from people from speaking out and fear keeps people from telling their stories i'm here to tell my story in spite of that fear because you need to hear me and you need to understand the impact this experience has had on me is surely not news to any of you it certainly was captured by the investigative report as i cried through most of my testimony in fact i've cried to each and every one of you except for council members glever and crone over the last several months right here at city hall no one should feel this way at work even though the investigator couldn't prove my claims to violate a city policy he proved those events happened months of interrogation from the dais happened using my image to depict the violent ways city employees interface with ross camp happened sending interns to stand physically over me alongside activists as they slung hateful speech to me happened recording me while mimicking those same activists abuse of questions at camp ross happened all these things happened and they hurt me they hurt my family this process has been devastating and many things need to change to protect city employees from ever having to experience this kind of trauma in the future first and foremost the council members must stop this abuse of conduct towards staff their behavior has put a stain on our city and it hurts its employees the respectful workplace conduct policy must be rewritten rewritten to standardize the investigation investigation process and protect complaints to the maximum extent possible the policy should recognize victim blaming as a form of abusive conduct council member glever calling me and council member mires racist or unconsciously biased and suggesting that we are responsible for his behavior by virtue of us not speaking to him first is abusive ironically it should be noted that i've spoken to council member glever no less than four times about his conduct four times and his behavior did not stop further if the policy continues to include council members it should define disrespectful behavior from the dais quietly snapping improval or laughing smirking or nodding one's head while a member of the public parade staff is demoralizing abusive and wrong we see you even when the camera doesn't and it hurts it hurts us and lastly council members brown and comings your decision tonight is no less than heartbreaking for me you have told me that my voice does not matter you have told me that i do not matter these processes must incorporate a some element of restorative justice this victims must be given an opportunity to share their experience with their abuser and those that can hold them accountable you just took that away from me and what i can tell you is that while i may be one woman one mother one trusted city colleague i represent many more city staff and community members that have been impacted by this abusive conduct abusive conduct that has shaken the city to its core and left us completely demoralized one sentence you must take that into consideration during your deliberations tonight thank you susie i got to stop you i i thank you very much we'll have you go next we'll have you go next after we have one more presentation and that is um for former and current members of cpaw hi i'm lea the kramer vice chair for cpwa w sorry it's a little bit of setting so he's sorry um good evening council members i'm speaking on behalf of current and former commissioners for the city of santa cruz commission for the prevention of violence against women or cpwa to affirm our commitment to the women complainants who have come forward with regard to the abusive and disrespectful conduct of council members crone and lover as a commission we start by believing start by believing those who have the courage to come forward and share their stories of harassment and abuse today we are here in particular supportive susie ohara who's served as a staff coordinator for cpwa during then commissioner glove lovers tenure we believe that the entire commission and miss ohara witnessed and experienced disrespectful conduct by then commissioner glover as defined by the city's current administrative procedure order which applies to employees volunteers council members commissioners customers contractors and visitors of the city of santa cruz two commissioners who served during council member gloveers tenure on cpwa were asked to participate in this investigation as witnesses to this conduct both provided testimony that illustrated this pattern of disrespectful conduct by then commissioner glover we believe that this has been a pattern of disrespectful behavior from the cpwa to now on city council and we urge the city council to take action tonight to put an end to what miss ohara city staff council members and others are experiencing in their workplace additionally the commission will be meeting tomorrow night and our hope is to be able to provide resources recommendations and guidelines to the council that will help you as you craft as you craft your plan to address disrespectful conduct harassment and ethics in the workplace we hope to be able to share our recommendations with council shortly so that we can prevent this from happening to others in the future thank you for your time go ahead and now open it up to public comment we'll go ahead and have folks who want to address the council on this item please line up to my left and you'll have up to two minutes my name is a land of soosh first i want to acknowledge each council member here for your dedication to public service and for the sacrifice so that they service and tales in your personal lives each one of you comes into this service with your own priorities and passionate commitment to the people you represent and given the complexity of the issues you are grappling with it's not surprising that conflict may arise and we should be thankful for your willingness to work through this conflict the rose report details for each council members crown and grover one allegation that was substantiated while the others were unsubstantiated and the key recommendations are for council members to avoid making public accusation of misconduct against one another and city staff without first addressing it in private and attempting conflict resolution other recommendation is for all members of the city council and selected staff members to attend and participate in professional mediation in view of these positive recommendations the censure is contrary to the spirit of improvement in city governance promoted in the report by including the censure complaints that were not substantiated it violates our justice principle of being innocent and proven guilty and by voting on such a censure prior to implementing the report recommendations the censures puts emphasis on punishment rather than remediation the censure conflicts with the recommendation of the report and would achieve an effect opposite your time is up your time is up thank you i had some prepared remarks but events that occurred here today make me want to preface them i read from the administrative procedure order section two number one b of the respectful workplace document examples of disrespecting behavior number two intentionally ignoring someone we just saw the mayor intentionally ignore council member brown's attempt to follow with robert's rules of order i would like everybody to understand that in section five under records it says that there are three ways that things can be resolved substantiated unsubstantiated or not withdrawn not guilty as hell or throw it out those are the three that are in the book i'm glad we have a book to follow disrespectful conduct examples a single act this is in the book quote a single act shall not constitute disrespectful conduct unless it is especially severe or egregious like a laugh that isn't there the responsibilities of council members to use conflict management skills to effectively manage disagreements the mayor has totally failed on this one address if possible an appropriate behavior directly with a person engaging such conduct in professional and non-confrontatory way like council member meyer did or like the mayor's perception speech next speaker good evening i'm matt o'hara finishing for susie o'hara just a little bit you must take that into consideration during your deliberations tonight and try to rebuild this organization for the sake of the future of this city thank you this is an abridged statement i'm submitting my full statement to the council now i'll take just a few seconds to speak as matt o'hara and when susie said this has had a big impact on her family it certainly has my sense is that many people in the audience who are laughing when council member meyers mentioned that many of the claims were not found to be false and in fact they're unsubstantiated laughed and they consider this sort of theater but what i'll say is that i watched this report happen in real time and what my wife had to go through wasn't right and it shouldn't be experienced by other city employees and i hope that we can move beyond this and you can all work to to get us there thank you good evening good evening same council and good evening everyone my name is aisle banjo i am the former student body president at the university of california santa cruz serving and representing about over 18 000 students also one third of the population of santa cruz and i'd like to take this moment here to talk about the reflection and the representation that both council members crone and glever represent as the student body president as a former president they are here to represent our voices and to fight for our causes and to really be supportive so i want to say thank you to both of you for your service and for everything that you've committed to this to this town you know as president i had to fight throughout my sophomore year of my university i've had to fight to raise about half a million dollars for homeless students and it's unfortunate that the students on campus are sometimes having to do the jobs of city council by fighting for homeless students because certain meetings and agendas are derailed by unsubstantiated claims and it's unfortunate to see sometimes how local government can sometimes get the toxicity that the national government currently has and it's obstruction that we're looking at right now so i would ask that you all city council members reflect the beliefs and the values as we just saw presented here today by all the people here please raise your hand if you are in support for councilman guver and chris koh thank you that sounds like a majority to me which is a democracy so please respect the values and the voices of all of us and the student body which is again one-third of the population this is really unfortunate and i will be here to make more remarks as we go forward but the only way to establish a community to be someplace in a place where people feel like they belong people like me who is a the first black male student body president at ucsc even though is santa cruz is less than one percent black is by being able to have these voices reflected so i think that darrell darling um the rose here uh for me means hope uh i it's a matter of public record that i was one of the interviewees one of the participants in the first uh investigation or discovery of whether or not the community would be able to come together after the election and after the defeat of the rent control ballot measure and i identified as was reported in the report that uh yes i had hope the final conclusion was that the council's dysfunctional and that the community is sufficiently divided that there is very little trust my statement was i concurred that it's iffy at best but i'm here to say that uh the path that you are on um i agree with our city manager uh i agree with the uh with the people who have said reconcile listen to each other what you want what you want in your heart to happen for our city is what you will be able to do and we will do it with you this community here wow i mean i have another 10 seconds this community elected you seven people to get along enough that you can decide about different positions on various issues but you seven live here because thank you we elected you your time is up thank you to make a difference for us thank you very much i just finished one sentence oh yeah thank you we have the next speaker we'll have up to two minutes hello my name is vicki winters first of all i'd like to extend my really my heart felt sympathy to you susie i was there at ross camp uh during the when you were there what you were doing the working conditions you had to endure that was impossible and it was all put on you and i hold the city manager responsible for that no one should have had to shoulder that alone if you can please address the council um and then i just want to say it's also unfortunate that this whole issue was susie had to occur in a very contentious political environment the threat of recall was deployed even before the first city council meeting to influence a vote on just cause eviction that came out then mayor watkins made her accusations at the february 12th council meeting which made any collegial relations between the council virtually impossible so i think that you should shoulder some responsibility for the dysfunction here and then i'd like to address the laugh that no one else heard except one person other people heard a snort or a grunt other people heard nothing here on this dais uh that was the only accusation against council member crone that was substantiated i've listened to the tape multiple times i've extracted the audio and like looked at the levels and everything there's a cough clearly heard from chris's mic seconds before the city employee says in my professional opinion and then there's nothing um he may have cleared his throat he may have made some other sound we heard here where there was a very loud sound during someone's public testimony that was inadvertent if we were all suspicious of each other and conspiratorial we could have thought oh he did that deliberately to disrupt but if you just if you have the faith and good faith to go to someone and ask seemed like you laughed at me i think she could have reconsidered that next speaker mayor Watkins and city council civility is a tool for marginalizing for silencing marginalized voices historically it's been used to justify the genocide and enslavement of indigenous black and other non-white people imposing civility makes it impossible to respect the diversity of styles and perspectives of others that were outlined tonight i recommend a training for city employees including city council members that addresses the impact of institutional racism santa cruz county such as what santa cruz county community coalition for overcoming racism offers attempts at keeping things civil so far has prolonged this process and worsened the conditions of this city the issues at hand require passionate discourse and challenging of the status quo if there's going to be any effective change this is how progress is made and the proof is in our history thank you i am paula leroy it seems a little strange that somebody could bring accusations publicly where the person is not able to talk about them themselves you know i mean this sort of a one-way thing and so i think that's something unfortunate what i want to say is i see a lot of rulemaking in the recommendations but i didn't see as much mediation although you talked about that in the beginning and i'd like to see because lots that i heard tonight especially from the two people that spoke about censure from them i heard derogatory remarks berating i've seen a lot of bullying i am worried about the working of this body i see democracy at risk when people that we have elected are being shut down and disenfranchising an election i feel there could be leading by example i don't see a lot of kindness or inclusion from the two leaders it is an unhappy period and i wonder really who all is responsible i am not diminishing any you know investigation or issues i mean and there's lots of ways those things happen in workplaces that leadership especially i think could help those people who have different backgrounds styles ideas work together work things outcome to some kind of healing and i really think that's what leadership is supposed to be doing um and like i think if there's mediation and i hope there will be that everybody holds themselves accountable am i bullying am i not hearing other councilman am i working as a team member am i making an agenda with all the other team members or i'm i just deciding the agenda on my myself and so it has been an unhappy period i hope the recommendations will be followed i hope the wonderful thing that you were talking about goes through and i have um worked with chris and drew for many years known in many years they are amazing people and we need them we need them we need you all thank you thank you i want to address you this evening as a professional mediator i've been doing that for 25 years what i've seen often happens is there's what's called a spiral of conflict and someone perceives a hostile intent they have a perception of that and then they do defensive counter attack it's really important for this council and all of the staff to have training and conflict resolution and communication skills not just mediation because you want to know how to say to somebody wow did you just roll your eyes at me and they can say no i was thinking about oh my gosh i didn't feed the parking meter you never know what it's going to be but when you actually check in with somebody something totally different than what you're making an assumption about is happening usually and if it isn't great to call somebody on their behavior and i really encourage you to do work on race class gender and power issues i've been in that work for over 15 years and there are these subtle things that we perceive by somebody that don't have anything to do with their race their class their gender or their power or they may and they may need to be called on it they may need to be aware of it so not just doing mediation it's great that you're going to you know have those conversations but you've got an incredible resource here here the conflict resolution center of santa cruz county has been teaching these skills on active listening how do you listen to somebody in a conscious and present state how do you not you know make a comment because you don't agree with them you know it's disrespectful when someone is speaking not to listen to them and we don't know how to listen we're not taught how to do that we're taught how to ride a bicycle maybe balance our checkbook but not how to actively listen and take away everything that's distracting you and say what's really going on for you here in this moment you know and we have people who are overworked we have stress we have all kinds of things so i really urge you to make another recommendation which is for conflict resolution communication skills and for race class gender and power training so that you can see thank you this is pretty emotional for me um as you all know i'm a long time woman 81 years old i'm also a long time 40 years active feminist i was the editor of matrix magazine i'm a lesbian i get as angry as the next person certainly as upset as susie and as donna i trust your feelings but i know as a woman an angry woman a still angry woman about the way women are still treated after all these years ever since susan b anthony was out there and it's still not somebody is being abused right now somebody is being killed right now a woman why we can't carry that over and understand that that is also true of people who have suffered race discrimination for all these years you know this is really we don't ride the me too thing and forget about black lives matter in this town this is a really important thing um i've known drew and chris for many many years personally i don't know drew as well i've known chris well i've been in so many meetings with chris so many places they are such good people we need them we to achieve democracy to balance you know the people who are representing i'm afraid it's true cindya and martin and donna it's you represent the people who are established the money and interest in this time i know that's not your whole agenda but you're supported by them we are not we have to have we finally have a voice on this council and i am so glad we do and i don't want to lose it hello council my name is satio ryan i don't want to blame or judge anyone i see all of you here in a very difficult position it's hard personal interactions are hard conflict is hard i think when things fall apart it's a wonderful opportunity um what i see in my own personal life is whatever shows up on my path is my path so what i hope for you and what i've been what's been coming to me is i went to the library the other day and i took some cds of marshall rozenberg nvc nonviolent communication and he was talking about his mediation work with with gangs and with warring tribes in northern nigeria and he helped them it took a while but he helped them find a way to understand and find empathy for each other and i my feeling is if that's possible in a situation that difficult it should be possible here too and i i think that you know i get triggered in my own life we all get triggered we get into our own pain i see a pain people feeling hurt and upset and i get that happened in my own life too but unless we're willing to look at ourselves everyone i don't exclude anyone here all of us the whole community whatever you do with mediation i hope you will consider nonviolent communication mediation if there's room to bring in another uh someone that wants to help i hope you will consider that and that whatever you do to heal yourselves will heal the community as well you will give us all benefit and it's a gift look at this as a gift not as a problem i hope you will thank you good evening my name is shebra calentari johnson and i care deeply about this community that's been my home for over 25 years and in particular because my family escaped literally escaped an oppressive war torn country to come to a country and a community where there is respect and there is civility and i understand the word civility differently than what was brought up earlier tonight and i have to say that i am heartbroken and disappointed but what i've experienced tonight um we are more than this we are not about divisiveness we are not about explicit and implicit disrespect we as a community aren't this this isn't who we are we are a cohesive community that can address very complex issues what i've dedicated my professional life to is bringing in resources some of the work i do is a grant writer i bring in resources for homelessness to address disproportionate minority confinement structural racism substance use this is what i've dedicated my life to and what we have seen and experienced tonight what i have is keeping us from addressing these very complex issues that need to be addressed and i will say coming up here i've spoken in front of council board of supervisors many times but i'm shaking because this doesn't feel safe it doesn't feel like someone with my perspective and point of view can come up here and speak and as a woman of color that feels horrible so i want to ask all of you at council and all of the community members behind me and anyone else who's watching to please help us shift this culture of divisiveness and disrespect to one of cohesion and respect thank you good evening council members i'm i'm really encouraged that you're about to embark on a mediation and i wish you well in that and i'm hopeful that that that will become just part of the culture of working for the city of santa cruz i want safe workplace emotionally safe workplace for susie and for for everybody who works for the city and you've got a leader who exemplifies that martin bernard and i have differed over whether to put a parking garage in downtown santa cruz but i cannot imagine him ever saying my ideas are idiotic or irresponsible i had heard i have heard that from from a council member um what i think the city struggles with is what to do to make this workplace safe and i think that that punishment paradigm where you know here's the here's the code right and you know you get training in the code and then you if you violate it you know somebody complains it and somebody investigates and then you punish you know we know it doesn't work with our children i have two kids fighting with each other our our kids and and we want to stop the behavior so we punish one of them it may force it underground but they're still going to be at each other's throats you know so let's move on beyond the punishment paradigm let's all see what kind of responsibility we can take for making this a better community thank you hello my name is buyers the first thing you're not supposed to do is apologize and i actually want to apologize first mainly to council member mires council member matthews and to mayor watkins because i wish i was speaking on behalf i wish i was speaking to my friends and i feel like we're not friends and that that sucks because i feel like there's more openness when we're speaking to our friends drew and chris are definitely friends but they didn't even start out that way it was totally random how i even got involved with these two but they are amazing people and the word respect has been thrown around a lot and i thought that i would just take whatever time i have left to define oxford dictionary respect a feeling of deep adoration for someone or something elicited by their abilities qualities or achievements that seems really intense so the second one is do regard for the feelings wishes rights or traditions of others do regard that to me seems key and it seems like it's appropriate so what does do regard being it's in the making decisions and in its day-to-day activities a body subject to the duty must consciously consider the need to do the things set out in the general quality general equality duty eliminate discrimination advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations i'm basically basically just going to stress on the foster good relations aspect i really hope that there could be an opportunity to foster good relations in the do regard in that definition of respect i really want that to be expressed in its fullest thank you i don't know um that whoever that lady is who put this recommendation stuff up i agree with all that stuff she was saying that's very good idea it's very good working stuff she want to be on the board um these two gentlemen here i have had contact with them i could read people i could see i know what's in them you can't associate these two are good people i cannot see them intentionally trying to harm nobody verbally mentally none of that they are too good for that they are bigger than that now this lady right here um Myers um i've seen the disgust in her when councilman Glover is speaking just disgust won't hear nothing he got to say and she got the home the gall to be talking about whatever she was saying i've been at a meeting where i'll say the mayor started the meeting talking about the ability and at that same meeting minutes later try to cut down councilman Glover and what he was trying to say what's civility in that stopped us from when we wanted to speak democracy i know this lady over here is a good lady too i see what's in people humans these are good people there's no way i don't know how somebody can hold councilman Glover responsible for something that happened at Ross camp there was a many people over there councilman Glover is the only one i saw over there because he's concerned he's an activist and he's doing things for our community so i don't get the logic in what's up that happened over there and it's his fault i don't get that it's something else but i get so riled up when i come here oh my goodness anyhow whoever that lady is they put this up um is there a seat open can we put it on the board that's not what i wanted to say but it's something your time is up okay good evening my name is steve schnarr i think that it's a great idea for the council members to have some mediation obviously the current situation is dysfunctional and untenable which is evidenced by the fact that all of the community and yourselves and staff are wasting entire evening talking about this instead of actual city policies that we elected you to to work on apart from that i just wanted to say that it seems very self-interested and transparent the way that certain council members are trying to frame this dysfunction as just blamed on two individual people and some of the same things that have been thrown at them which first by the way miss mires the not substantiated doesn't mean that that that was ridiculous to try to imply that these things actually happened when they were found when it was investigated and not substantiated but council member matthews i've been in a meeting when after dozens of people testified to an opinion you did not agree with you described it as idiotic and former council member comstock gave the middle finger to the crowd former council member noran at a public meeting that she was attending of the coastal commission was like shouting out of turn and had to be told to stop shouting so i'm not saying that they should have been censured or kicked off the council that i'm just saying politics is tough people have strong emotions not everybody likes everybody that's the way that the world is and it's it's very um it's disgusting frankly it's the reason why people are disgusted with politicians in washington and it's and it's disgusting here to see you transparently use the same behaviors that you and your comrades will use as an excuse to go after other people because you happen to disagree with their politics and you're and you're sorry that you lost power that you had for so many years good evening members of the city council i'm chris nunyes i've been here since 1993 you and i have had encounters councilman i want you to know that i'm five feet two in the morning when i wake up i'm five feet tall by noon as i saw councilman glover walk across the back he reached almost to the top where it says conduct that's pretty big i used to be um the administrative analyst for the commission on the status of women in santa claire county way back in 1978 when we were all still all over the bay area trying to understand and define and describe harassment we still didn't have any definitions we knew what it looked like we knew what it felt like it wasn't until much later on in the 80s when i left to do other things in vocational training that uh some of the sisters and uh the brothers in law schools students and professors finally started to mint some you know good legislation what i'm seeing here after 40 years looks very promising to me but it looks like a beginning there are two things going on here one is the institutional stuff and this is good this is good as a beginning and i hope to see it developed more fully the other thing that is going on is obviously political and what i heard earlier even before this session started was i heard a lynch mob in the making and they weren't going over to take councilman glover or chris crone they were looking for someone else and we've actually had a woman lynched in california and i want you to know that thank you have letters from 52 people that i'm speaking on behalf of tonight hello senate crew city council members and senate crews community my name is robert endicott keller and i represent a group of gentlemen who have had a history with homelessness addiction poverty and recidivism we have participated in and benefited from programs and services provided by the senate crews county sheriff's rehabilitation and reentry facility in washington when we decided we needed to hold up our end of the bargain and what we felt that would look like we started putting together a plan our conversations led to a transitional restorative justice program for people like us by people like us called give back to senate crews but we needed help we wrote over 30 letters to people and groups in the community looking for guidance and support but we only received one person's response senate crew city council member drew glover he recognized our value when no one else did he encouraged us to write down and organize our ideas then to send them to him he answered our phone calls listened and asked questions council member drew glover was concerned with how we were feeling and what we were thinking he spent his personal time on his weekends on multiple occasions to come out to the program facility at roundtree to validate us as worthwhile human beings with worthwhile ideas council member glover was willing to look past our faults to see who we really are he has faith in our potential and ability to turn our lives around council member glover is willing to do with us what most people don't have the stomach to do which is really listen and believe in our intent we support council member drew glover because council member drew glover supports us and if you really want to solve these issues in our community you should take a page from his book and listen to the people you're trying to help and if you don't want to or you can't please don't take the one person that does senate crew city council member drew glover please don't take away our voice we can do better we will do better thank you for your time and thank you drew my name is elise casby and i'm a survivor of psychological financial and emotional abuse my father was one of the highest lawyers in the united states of america he was assistant attorney general of the state of oregon i went through 20 years of harm by all kinds of professional people in this world and i have learned to identify abusers abusers often feel that they are being abused i am very concerned tonight about some of the dynamics in this room so i'm going to say a couple of things very quickly okay number one i stood up and supported susie o'hara after the ross camp because i felt she had been completely overloaded with work i was there i witnessed what happened but i am very concerned about susie's presentation two weeks ago when i went to pick up a city agenda there were two people in the room the receptionist i was in a corner of the room and i had a view to the hallway susie was there and there was another person there incoherent homeless person he was totally incoherent the receptionist wanted to go on her lunch break and i didn't want to talk to the gentleman because he was too incoherent he didn't seem to be drunk he was just completely understandable i mean not understandable i saw susie she was in the hallway making a face of disgust and grimacing as she stood there and i just want to say nobody was there to support what i saw so you don't know if i'm telling the truth but i'm telling you i'm telling the truth we need to score training racial diversity in this mix of mediation that's very important that this council take on understanding racial diversity and white privilege i have had to study abuse i recommend the nasty people abuse i'm excuse me the nasty people book also the verbal abuse patrice havins book on verbal abuse the abuser santa cruz together had a strategy to use the homeless we know this we have a copy of the notes from that meeting they had a strategy that included the special election they had a strategy to ruthlessly and exploitively use the homeless as a scapegoat for this situation also the seppo's report and the rose report you're trying to run around that your time is up all right next speaker i believe i have four minutes no you don't actually you have two minutes really you're not going to give me the right to request a group presentation that i know you had the group presentation for the item that was motion to table so you have two minutes well why should i be surprised okay um there's a hullabaloo about civility and civility has been the cry of mayor wattkins and those who have controlled the council's agenda though without the popular mandate that might justify such control council members excluded grow impatient or angry the public grows outrage they speak out or try to and presto they are all uncivil so when the mayor fails to make the civic auditorium available as tonight and keeps much of the audience outside or in a second building as tonight in spite of repeated requests or when she locks them out of the building after muzzling speakers who've waited hours to speak they don't act like a fascist style salutes and the raised voices are labeled uncivil and become the basis for further repression when signs are raised that block no one the mayor interrupts her own meeting to threaten the audience with eviction devices to thwart progressive measures the mayor's selective recognition of favored council members and her ignoring of those like glover whom she prefers not to hear from excluding progressive matters altogether from the agenda items while packing it with talk-heavy staff concocted items that take up time and space in endless chatter calling on the city attorney to provide brown act pretexts and to shift previously open items into closed sessions highlighting partisan city officials like the chief of police who support her reactionary position as well as the assistant city manager institutionally the city manager city attorney and department heads have run the council agenda and while the city council comes and goes these unelected highly paid officials remain in power unchallenged unmonitored and for decades unaccountable in practice they set the agenda that needs to be stopped and it's not a part of this recommendation why not your time is that next speaker there my name is eric erickson and i'm gonna tell a quick story with the little bit of introduction um i grew up here bayview mission hill santa cruz high cabrillo ucse i worked there for a few years so i'm 33 i'm just gonna say like you know my peers don't show up to this stuff as i'm sure you're painfully aware secondly i got involved politically after the bernie sanders campaign in 2016 after that ended i got involved locally and with the democratic party i was a delegate to the state party and i was appointed a pdc representative to the local dcc so the story that i want to tell is one dcc meeting right over downtown that synthia mathews you were present at i gave a presentation um criticizing the democratic party about how they're corrupt and corporate influence has corrupted that party that's another story but rachel no ryan was a sitting elected councilwoman as were you at the time and after i gave that presentation she called me an asshole like loudly in front of a group of people who were like representatives of the community you were sitting there and you know she didn't laugh or scoff like you did let alone maybe a laugh that wasn't heard you know and i never heard anything from you so it just makes me curious what the motivation is here i want to say first to susie and i've said it before my heart goes out to you i hate speaking louder um nobody should go to work and like deal with that kind of stuff like super true i mean she's smart and she has integrity and she's trying to do her job and she and i look at things very differently but she's trying um i think that's one piece of this i think the i don't want to do the blame game it's no fun and everybody we're all doing it um to move forward and to actually use these recommendations to actually sit down and talk to somebody that you know you've been hurt by and you've also hurt like you got a you know man up and apologize too um and i you know and people up too um for myself i'm i got big personality and you know i have my values and i get frustrated and i mouth off sometimes too i get it like absolutely um but it's not just them that needs to apologize and need to be able to step forward and stuff like that having that motion and talking about false was not said no that false isn't part of that it's substantiated i'm substantiated withdrawn and somebody even gave an example from one of the policies so to try to do this whole thing and try to point at people and all that stuff like we've got so much other stuff to do i don't want to talk about this stuff i like people and stuff like that i want to help with homelessness you guys do all sorts of stuff let's just just man up woman up whatever let's just apologize and move on and like see people as people thank you yep good evening um madam mayor wherever you are and council members my name is ed porter spent a lot of time in this room over the last 45 years and i've had the experience of being a new council member and fortunately it was a different city manager so i'm not casting aspersions but none of this happened for me what's on this page that i'm looking at right now none of it and so i can sympathize a little bit that i'm not going to blame anyone um this council has fallen apart somehow and now we're fixing it and so i'm gratified that we are fixing it that you are fixing it because you we have elected all seven of you and we've said in this evening of comment tonight fix it council because we want to go ahead income rotary and respect and get our business done and not do the stuff that we did in item one and it's time to do that so i will just say like vicki winners i played the tapes again and again and again turn the volume up loud and soft the sound on the tape is a cough that lasts about a half a second it's not what is said in the charges yet council member crown apologized for it anyway i guess i would apologize for a cough myself but everyone should know it was a cough it's good that we're doing this and we'll come away tonight maybe there's a turning point in this council a little more time for madam mayor to do all the right stuff and the right stuff is to implement this as effectively as you can and make sure that all seven council members participate because that's where the dysfunction came from my name is reverend beth love and first of all i just want to acknowledge each one of you because you're sitting there in the public eye in the public scrutiny it's not an easy job i wouldn't take it and i know that each of you has the intention of service or you wouldn't have run and so thank you i appreciate that um i i'm in support of these recommendations that are being made and i'm really clear that that's not enough because these are technical recommendations for a problem that's not technical it's a problem that's adaptive this is from the work of ronald hyphens and i highly recommend you check into ronald hyphens work when we're looking at a situation that's adaptive where there's um conflict where there's personalities where there's people rubbing up against each other where there's style differences where there's issues of oppression and exploitation and racism and all these other things we can't put a technical solution on it and expect it to work it won't it needs an adaptive solution and i'm gonna as a minister i'm really going to call on each of you on the council and even those on staff to like look deep in your hearts and look at what is yours to do in this because what i know about human relationships is that if we're in a situation and there's conflict we're bringing something to that and it's on us to change um and so i i just want to encourage everybody to see this as an opportunity not just to fix a problem but to heal and an opportunity for this council maybe to emerge stronger than ever and so again i don't see these recommendations as enough i'm going to second what others have said i think there needs to be some communication training some conflict resolution and some deep soul searching and i would add do a retreat or something get to know each other go hang out together be kind and loving to each other and see if we can't get this all together and be a powerful powerful community that we should be so thank you very much for your time good evening mayor and council members my name is claire you all know me i've really enjoyed hearing the third hand knowledge this evening about what's been going on at city hall and what it's felt like in this council chamber i've enjoyed hearing the perceptions of what we've actually been experiencing and i've enjoyed hearing how dismissive people have been about the real and hurtful processes that our city employees went through as part of this investigation or that a simple conversation would solve an issue with an obvious power imbalance i found it fascinating how easy it is to dismiss those experiences there's a difference between being a bad person and being a person who has done something wrong nothing before you tonight was calling anyone a bad person it was simply acknowledging that wrongs have been done and there should be a public acknowledgement of that i've been in this chamber a lot but i've never felt as disappointed in this group as i have this evening i'm thankful that lisa has brought forward next step actions to correct obvious deficiencies and i look forward to hearing your discussion and action on those items what i most want to say though this evening is i'm thankful that mayor Watkins was brave enough to step up first in being a leader and setting that example that we as employees would be listened to it gave the rest of the women the faith that they in turn could be brave enough to report what had happened to them so mayor Watkins i thank you for that my name is kathy agnor i've been a resident in this city for more than 60 years i've been a city employee for more than 29 i've experienced times of disrespect harassment uncivil treatment as a city employee and i didn't have the courage to do anything about it i was fortunate that there were commissioners and the city of staff that supported me and got me through those very difficult times my goal has always been to make a difference i think that's yours as well all of you i am sad and disappointed in the council's action to not support censure which is defined as to express severe disapproval susie is my supervisor for the last two years and i'm inspired by her i will say it's demoralizing a city staff that management positions and elected mayors are not believed or supported i'm a service employee will my voice be heard or respected thank you to the city council my name is freeman best and i've been living here since 94 i'm an employee of the static cruise counter office i'm a literally sports official high school sports officials for all the sports harassment disrespect i live it every day you know women's will equal right equal pay and when you're working with the public when you're working with the public sometimes you disagree and because the person don't speak the way you want them to speak it's not harassment sometimes just a disagreement but if you have to be scroll put on your lady's shoes and you know you just just top it up because of everything it's not easy you think it's easy for me every day as a black man living in static cruise it's a great place to live but i i see discrimination every day tonight this lady sitting here she went to this young lady that was sitting in the weather and i saw her move what did she do wrong and then you looked at the audience like her move i didn't like what you did to her discrimination every day as a black person i see it and i saw it in here tonight next speaker i witnessed a disturbing act of exclusion and incivility at the first full council meeting after the 2018 election i feel that this overlooked occurrence should also be addressed when the rose report recommendation of mediation and conflict resolution begins at that 2018 meeting mary watkins made the expected committee appointments giving between two and up to five assignments to all council members except to drew glover exactly zero for councilman glover something i have never seen happen before and i don't know if any of you have either i have never seen it happen over 17 committee appointments were made that night how would you have felt if you were the one person who was completely left out was this an error or could it have been on purpose if it had been an honest mistake and apology and an explanation would have been offered pretty quickly to the new councillor who had mistakenly been slighted in the mayor's committee assignment process because no outreach to mr glover was made i am left to assume that it was a purposeful action not a good foundation on which to build council camaraderie at the first full actual meeting mediation and conflict resolution can serve to turn a gesture of ill will into one of good will please do not choose to continue to ignore this form of bullying that i'm talking about it's a silent but equally hurtful bullying by exclusion that was delivered to drew glover at his very first full council meeting this slight has been completely ignored for nine months and it too should be addressed as the ross report advised by providing mediation for all council members hi my name is jenna here and i'm not really good at speaking in public but i'm gonna try um we live in communities um but we seem to be all pretty disconnected even with today's technology and whatnot um the advancements globalization and all that i mean we know everything about our favorite celebrity but we don't know our neighbor's name next door we don't know who you guys are i mean you guys are making the rules and decisions for the whole community um i just see this whole thing is petty it's really petty i mean somebody was hurt you know in a in an interaction with someone because of the words that were said their words they're not sticks and they're not stones and there's no reason why they can't learn better to learn how to do better um i mean our country was founded basically uh diversity on community and people working together and we've got this incredible experiment called democracy that just happens to be working great but our governments are tearing it down there's always somebody looking up or somebody outside looking in but there's just not enough community involvement in everything and we need to learn how to talk to each other we need to respect each other we need to welcome the differences where it's okay to disagree you don't have to you can agree to disagree um but we need to we need to get to know each other all better i mean i've been living in my car in my RV for two and a half years i don't know anybody's names here but one or two people you know i come to a couple meetings my daughter just moved back with my grandkids because they couldn't afford to live here for a while let's see who's got better now they're back you know i'm fourth generation Santa Cruz and but people see me as a troll and you know because i don't have a place to live i just can't afford three thousand dollars a month but that doesn't mean i'm not a good person or that i'm not someone who's knowing any more than the people to Ross camp that i keep hearing over and over and over again like some type of you know parasite just to be homeless you know you you're not so we need to talk to each other more i was actually just sitting at home watching this being streamed and i felt like i had to come down just to offer my full support um and to say i believe the women who have experienced bullying in the city workplace full stop um i don't believe any fault falls on them for not being able to overcome unacceptable work conditions so i want to make sure that was really clear there's a lot of people that believe that that aren't here tonight that are offering our support to these victims i want to make sure that you know that you have a lot of support in the community and let's not forget that two of these um accusations were substantiated by a independent third party i won't get into how that doesn't invalidate the rest of these complaints but my heart goes out to those complaints as well and it's not acceptable to have a council member acting this way um i think if many of us acted this way in the workplace and were found to have substantiated complaints against us we'd probably be fired or severely punished and i just wanted to say that mayor what can thank you for doing your job in a hostile work environment that i i feel that in the room tonight thanks for being a leader we just really appreciate you especially as a woman so thank you evening you guys have heard from a lot of people so i won't take up too much of your time i was also watching at home and felt the need to come down here and just lay a little support on for the women who have made these complaints i think that it's a really terrible thing that we have city council members who feel unsafe to come to work or feel uncomfortable and i'd also like to echo that we do have two substantiated findings which i think a lot of people are hand waving away as oh just suck it up or you know put your big girl's shoes on or whatever you want to say um but i think we should really be respecting that and putting some weight behind it thank you i just want to say a few things um i'm really happy about a lot of the recommendations that's good uh the mediation could have been done before the investigation before spending 18 000 but i'm happy to see that it's in there i also agree with some of the people that said conflict resolution is really important as well as um something on institutional racism i don't think a lot of people realized what that means um and um the other thing is the false using the word false that wasn't part of any of the words that ali brokaw had mentioned so i'm everyone is switching everything around it was only two items and both of those were so minor but no one wants to look at those and one of them was a laugh that no one can i think the woman that was just up here she spoke about she was the one who observed a laugh so that wasn't even i i i he just believed i from what i gather from the report it was believing someone's word against someone else's word and the other one was over a small conflict of a room being in the room too long than the time that was allotted and a remark was made i mean my goodness all this i think it's much deeper than this i really think it's about something else and it's more about getting our most progressive candidates off and i just i'm looking forward to the mediation i'm looking forward to doing other things because i really hope you can work together hi again there really day show i am a licensed marriage and family therapist who is retired and what i so all these recommendations are great and what i know about people and change is that even when people super want to and they're paying me a lot of money they can't so what i think would be a good recommendation that could have avoided i believe all of this is that somebody is available immediately when someone feels that they have been violated it you know hearing what these women felt is is heartbreaking to me seeing what's happening in the community is heartbreaking to me it's i feel it's just polarizing people and tearing it apart so i think that if there was someone who was a conflict resolution person who was available immediately when someone felt that there was a problem in the workplace because no one should have to work in a workplace where they do not feel safe i mean i think everyone here would agree on that so that that step should be in place to have someone immediately available and it would not have had to go to where it's gone so health in all i think would involve having immediate an immediate way of resolving the issue and again i want to implore you to denounce the recall because it is destroying this community and it's breaking my heart and a lot of people's hearts and i respect all of you and you do what i could never do sit here and listen to all of this so thank you good evening mayor walkins and council members and city staff and community i'm sorry if i'm a little scattered i wasn't going to speak this evening but i felt really compelled so i work as a social worker with the county i've been bullied up by workplace myself so um you know i'm not trying to say my experience has been the same as these these women who have you know put themselves out there and shared their story this evening um and i i hope that we can recognize these women's experiences that they felt as well as working towards resolve and mediation um i interview people for a living um i ask people about some of the most difficult times in their life i work for child protective services um and you know everyone's perspective on situations and um instances is is differs um so and there's a lot of you know factors at play there's you know the women who have spoken and i have talked about gender as being contributing factor we've heard from other folks talking about race being a factor i think we all need to acknowledge these are all factors at play um and as the um woman who's a conflict resolution um specialist or mediator i can't remember her title um said you know we need to look at all these issues and put them in context and um yeah i hope we can recognize everyone's experience and and move forward thank you good evening mayor and council members my name is rachel dan i wasn't planning to speak tonight i'm nervous and having a bad hair day um but i was compelled to speak anyway um because of the action on the last item um i was um because of the the last item i was disappointed and it inspired me to speak to this item um i've been attending council meetings for this um for the past 20 years in this town that i love um and i will tell you that the atmosphere in this room has gotten much less welcoming and clearly work needs to be done by all members to make the public feel more more welcomed um preventing the public's ability to speak on the previous issue is unprecedented never in my years has a council prevented the public from weighing in on a duly noticed item on the agenda tabling the last issue was appalling and cowardly to the council members who made the motion to table that was shocking and disturbing what type of atmosphere do you think that sets for the people of this town uh we will remember what happened here tonight this is not the end the majority of this council will be remembered tonight for silencing your constituents and silencing women who are here exhibiting extreme courage to share their truth thank you susie and thank you claire i stand with you even if the council majority doesn't thank you next speaker speaker hi my name is jane i was here this afternoon being a very straight laced professional public health person and now i just want to talk about being marginalized i was so moved by the woman who got up and said civility is a way to marginalize certain voices i think that is the one thing that if people take away from this that when you someone is intense someone is trying to get across a feeling or asking a question or really needing to bring an issue to the rest of the group or not paying attention or don't want to pay attention or have other concerns getting them to be quiet and nice is really nice but everything is lost and i've had that happen to me more than once where i have been silenced because i was too intense i wasn't night enough if you talk to me in a nicer voice i'm more willing to listen to you i mean this is not what we need when you are representing your community maybe yes sir there are times for being civil i'm not opposed to civility but please remember that if someone is intense someone really cares and i do understand how staff could possibly feel because i've been staff and i've been staffed aboard so i understand but please keep in mind that as women many of us in this room including all of you up here and maybe you know black men and maybe someone who's in a position of power and feels like god i don't have any power how am i going to solve this problem or whatever it is that each of you bring in terms of your own insecurities and the things that you need that please try to listen to each other and not to quiet each other thank you hi i'm brett garrett i'm feeling really heartbroken tonight um i want to suggest one more recommendation that um there may need to be some kind of procedure that makes it equally possible for each council member to get items onto the agenda um when they want to get something on the agenda i've understood i'm kind of heard rumblings that that may be a very contentious process that's very difficult for some of the council members and i would hope that all of the council members can easily get items on the agenda when when uh when they feel it's necessary um and i just i kind of feel like there's a war happening when i really believe all seven of you sincerely want what's best for our city um but if if you don't each hear all six of the others it just becomes really i don't know i'm just heartbroken i i support mediation or whatever it takes to really hear one another um and i'm not saying that there's two people that need to hear one another i'm saying there's seven people that need to hear one another thank you very much pat malo um i was born and raised in this community it's the only place i've ever lived hopefully it's the only place i will ever live um first let me start by saying sorry to susie and all the staff and all the people who have been caught up kind of in between a lot of this i think and um you know you should never feel that way at work and i'm sure you don't get paid enough um and so you know secondly i'd just like to say that you know i think that this is a a rough period right now um we've got so much conflict not just on the you know council but it seems like in the community um and i think that the sad part to me is that you know the competing visions neither one of them or none of our visions in this room are enough to address these issues right and so we need to be able to forgive ourselves for not having the answers forgive each other for not having the answers and come to the table around this stuff and i know it sounds cheesy but i mean i think that's start one is we're all walking around this place like we got the solution and i mean we are facing major major just local issues right now cost of living all of this stuff every one of us unless we're a multimillionaire is going to get priced out of this community one generation or another or maybe won't even have other generations because of larger global issues and so you know i i worked with you know every one of you guys almost in the room on some issue or another and you know i consider everyone allies on you know all of these other projects from multiple sides of this thing and so you know usually i'm like entertained watching the tv show but tonight i'm you know struck by the real life of this and just the it's like you know there's plenty of projects i'd like to see done we're all putting them aside because of this mess and i think we all need to forgive ourselves and each other for this oh and if we can send the public to this stuff too it might help a little thank you i wanted to come tonight um i was uh at the ross camp um while susie was there um and i i'm speaking as someone who there's been a lot of conflation people have talked about people having different viewpoints from drew glover it seems like there's been an idea that there's been this assassination attempt against him because of different political views but i really like your politics and but i was there and i felt like what you did was disruptive it did undermine our attempts you know we had a job to do um i hope that we can make a lot of progress um for homelessness i like a lot of your ideas but i hope that you can treat people with respect um i think that sometimes there's this idea in politics that if you're disruptive you can bring attention to an idea but i think that's probably not what we need to do now moving forward um you know it's scary as staff to like have jobs like that to do um and to think that council members are going to come um you know for an example tell people at the camp that there are motel vouchers available that need to be used for emergency hospital type situations and then have people at the camp not want to move because they're holding out for the vouchers and when i ask who told you that they say that council member over there in the purple shirt in the power color that's easy to identify it undermined what i did it definitely undermined what susie was trying to do um and i think there are probably other people like me that hadn't been planning to come today who didn't want to necessarily speak up because it's such a complicated issue because they're afraid to speak as staff and i i do hope that we can um come together in the future um and that even if we have different political beliefs we can all treat each other with respect which i haven't seen happening so far thank you i'm scott graham um it seems to me that most of the people that spoke before me are addressing item number one not item number two so i'd like to address item number two um i think probably just two of these recommendations would i go along with if i was sitting up there which would be number two and number three um the rest of it seems like there's a minority on the council that wants to make some new rules that'll be more punitive because they didn't think drew and chris got spanked hard enough and so we we want to make something that'll be more punitive than what's already there um this this council uh guidelines of behavior was reviewed and updated two years ago and so just because drew and chris did something that was looked upon as being wrong now we want to reopen it up and try to put more punitive measures in there because we want to make sure that the next time they get out of line we can really smack them down thank you i'm not sure if i don't think there's any additional members of the community who wants to address the council at this time um we'll go ahead and bring it back to council action and deliberation i guess i'll just say um you know it it is this is this is very difficult and to some of the comments that were brought forward we are better than this absolutely and we as elected leaders need to be held to a higher standard and we as an institution in a governing body need to ensure that every employee commissioner person who is working here or participating in our government is doing so in a workplace that's free of harassment intimidation and um and and that's unacceptable completely unacceptable um part of the healing process is accountability my understanding is that is not on the table for discussion and um we'll go ahead and move forward with how we can institute some policies at this point to improve our processes so that we can ensure that no individual feels intimidated or has had had experiences as some of the city staff who spoke up and had the courage to speak up this evening i have um a lot of admiration and respect for those folks so with that we'll go ahead and bring it back to the council for action on these items i'll go ahead and acknowledge my colleague to my left i just want to acknowledge as well the people who came and spoke tonight because i know that um takes courage to speak up when you feel like you've been wrong and as the mayor said you know no one deserves to be discriminated against in at all in our community let alone in the workplace um we need to behave respectfully we need to all try to work together um and that is something that has been expressed multiple times um on the city council one thing for me that has been really challenging is that um ever since february when the initial bullying allegations came out and then throughout this entire year there have been multiple times when members of the city council have asked for mediation and conflict resolution to try to bring ourselves together we've had two retreats one was in march i think the other one was around may june the first of which we talked about communication with one another and how we could effectively communicate we also discussed shared values for an entire workday and one of the things that was very much strongly expressed at that meeting was that we wanted to have conflict resolution and some mediation to try to overcome the differences at the second meeting we again spent the morning discussing shared values and priorities over the six month term again one of the number one things that came up was conflict resolution and mediation among tension that was in the city council um i feel like you know the fact that we haven't addressed this by now has led to more divisiveness within our community after the election in november and when we became when we were seated and started the city council in january what i felt came with being seated on this dais was the same energy that was put into both the no on m campaign and the yes on m campaign that tension within our community came up here and little has been done to try to resolve it and to try to bring us together um i feel like some of the members of the city council we've been able to try to overcome our differences and work together effectively but it hasn't been all of the members of our city council and so from my perspective before we go censoring our city council members and creating more divisiveness within our community we need to first start by having a conflict resolution process and trying to see where we can overcome our differences and bring ourselves together because if we don't we're just going to continue to see more to more more more divisiveness within our community um everyone has said at these meetings that they honestly wanted to work together and work with one another um everyone said they wanted to work in good faith and we need to be held accountable to that since we all said that we were going to do that and i think that's the first step for us to try to address these issues um and um i'm happy to discuss some of the other issues as they come up before the council gets further into the discussion i just want to remind the council that because a motion to table has been made um under your meeting guidelines once a motion to table has been adopted um the motion requires that all discussion of the item under consideration at the time of the motion be halted immediately without further discussion so i would just caution council members to direct your attention to the item that's before you and not the prior item okay agreed okay so if there's any um questions comments we can maybe just move forward and council member brown um i i do want to make a comment uh that is kind of leading into uh moving forward which is what i have been hoping for a long time that we would be able to do and i want to say i'm really sorry to the city employees who feel like um this is not a safe work environment for you um this is seriously a priority for me and i'm sorry that you feel that my um interest in having a conversation about how we move forward um rather than um focusing on um you know punitive measures is in any way an indication that i don't support you because i absolutely do um i so i just wanted to say i i did want to say that it's i do not don't want to talk about the previous item but i did want to say that i do um you know i want to echo vice mayor Cummings remarks about the failure of uh to get any responsiveness on moving forward with mediation and conflict resolution after months and months of this brewing um tension that has been um it has not made this a safe you know of a work environment that feels safe for me and i think for many people at this dais um in addition to our staff in addition to people in our community and i just want to see us find a way to move forward i think that the recommendations that have come before us um are our good place to start i do want to see us um commit to some kind of conflict resolution training and not just mediation um because i think that is really at the root of our challenge that we we have not been willing as a body to do that despite um multiple members requesting that that happen and so we are now at a place where we can actually try to um move forward on that and i'd like to see that happen i hope it does um this evening that we can move forward in a spirit of collegiality in that regard okay now's the time for action and um so i don't know if you wanted to take these bit by bit and then we or if we wanted to have a council member make a motion um i i do have an addition i'd like to request at that time when that comes forward but i can't make a motion council member come i will join the the voices too about um you know you should not have a work environment that you you know that there's hostilities and there should be ways um available to all employees to solve these issues um on march 10th of this year i wrote a letter it's part of the uh the rose reports in the packet um reaching out to the to the mayor i said dear martin i'm writing this letter to you because i want to take responsibility for my part and the difficulties of our working relationship i want to try to reconcile and work together in the future in a mutually respectful way when you said there are perceptions that my colleagues both council member crone and council member glover are intentionally bullying me because i am a woman i assume that you agree with those perceptions i'm taking those perceptions seriously because i have undoubtedly learned attitudes of inequality towards women simply by growing up in our culture for a long time i have attempted to unlearn these beliefs i take to heart your comments and i'll redouble my efforts at self reflection it would be helpful if you would let me know what i said that you found to be bullying behavior i want to be aware of what language i use that contributed to your negative experience in the meantime i want to assure you that i respect you as a person and a woman in a leadership role i wrote that on on march 10th i've yet to have a response and i again reached out to the mayor uh and asked for mediation for conflict resolution and again i had had no response and so i i'm just uh a bit frustrated um about this the whole process as it's rolled out so i i think that it's when we do the shame and blame before we get to the um reconciliation part it's it's really difficult for to take the reconciliation part you know in a serious way if we're doing the shaming and blaming maybe we should add two different meetings instead of putting this on the um the same agenda um i think i would like to see us take the the rose recommendations and um use that as our template uh because i don't i see some of those rose recommendations missing from what's what's been recommended by miss murphy um one of them in particular the first one that he recommends in the summary and as well as at the end of the report council members should avoid making public accusations of misconduct of bad faith against one another and against city staff without first privately and internally addressing these concerns and attempting conflict resolution and rectification when possible uh and i think that there's a lot of politics going on here and you know it's very difficult having this kind of discussion even in the atmosphere we're existing right now just in our community and somebody just said it about uh vice mayor said it had to do with measure m and anti measure m and we saw some of that attention at the at the microphone tonight um i would like to incorporate the rose recommendations there's five of them um into um the recommendations that are before us as well um and i wouldn't mind um people voting on that as well and i'm going to pass it out thank you mayor so i guess i mean one thing i will say as we move forward with next steps is you know in february it was a time it was a different time and and at that time um i i felt it was it was my responsibility as a leader just to say something um and beyond then um i don't think anybody could predict that multiple uh folks would come forward after that and an investigation would ensue and so here we are now at a place that is um going to move us as leaders if we can say we want to move forward with policies and procedures and we want to move forward with um next steps that's the place we are now so in terms of repair it's on this council to move in the direction or to consider some of the recommendations to move forward to not only ensure that we have policies that protect our staff or council members or commissioners but we also have next steps in terms of process i don't think the onus is always on those who come forward and speak up so with that we'll go ahead and have um you present your motion if that's the case is that where we're at well i'd like us to look at um what um miss murphy put before us and then maybe separate the you know if up or down votes on each um item and then also up or down votes on what um the rose report recommended on page 89 because i i mean we did pay a significant amount of money and went through this whole process it seems to me that um some of the recommendations are are are very good and um you know worth sticking into the the final recommendations okay okay council member glever and then council member matthews and then we can go ahead and start emotion or breaking them down the process so that was a lot um from all the different perspectives i want to start by speaking to the staff members i totally hear you and your uh feelings around any interactions that may have taken place or any issues that you may feel with regards to interactions with council members um or myself included i uh want to emphasize uh in also what uh council member crown had mentioned about the february 12th meeting which was what really set all this off it was before anything else really had happened uh and immediately following the february 12th meeting following friday i believe uh i met with the mayor in her office uh to talk about potential ways that we could work together and to address the statements that she had made at the city council meeting encouraging that we would uh open into future reconciliation which as with council member crown's request was never answered so i'm really excited to see these recommendations for us to be able to move forward but also agree with what the mayor just said with regards to that it shouldn't be on the onus of the people making the complaint to uh in act or engage in initiating the conflict reconciliation i think that should be from the leadership of the organization whether that be from the city council itself or from the city manager's office which from my experience the ways that conflict is dealt with even through that interaction is lacking and that's why i really hope that in these uh motions that we can definitely incorporate that uh city staff or especially the city manager's office is involved in the conflict reconciliation training and in the ability to address issues in real time so that we don't have to deal with complaints that go without there being any kind of interaction or conversation beforehand where there are not unnecessary memos sent out with regards to barring staff from speaking with council members because they haven't even tried to go through any kind of mediation or conversations so there's a lot of holes in the organization with regards to the way that uh conflict is dealt with i also really appreciated the statements from people that were recommending uh race class gender and power issues training i think that's really important i think that we should be incorporating aspects of nonviolent communication into this also implicit bias training so all of these things i think should be layered upon each other because outside of the policies which i think should be addressed and looked at to make sure that all of these factors are taken into consideration in the language i think that this is a beyond a policy issue and more of a ideological issue as well as a personality issue because there is right now in Santa Cruz an ideological battle for different perspectives on whether we're going to be working one way or another and that was shown in the election in 2018 that is shown in any online forum that you go on to right now to look at conversations and indicative of the attempt to remove members of this body from the city council solely on a policy disagreements so i look forward to what we decide here are you going to make this motion well i i would actually you know i'm going to go ahead and acknowledge yeah i'd like to you know sort of like put them together okay we'll go ahead we'll go ahead and acknowledge councillor Matthews i agree and i'd actually be happy to launch a motion just looking over these i think there's a huge amount of overlap between the staff recommendation and yours agreed and i'd like to know what your requested edition was before we get going sure my requested edition is having the subcommittee or staff review the city's harassment and workplace policy and address any changes to the policies and procedures that and then return to the council with a recommendation if necessary in regards to personal liability for any elected or commissioner or other who is has liability and for any substantiated harassment claims this is something that both congress and the senate had done in the past in terms of putting the liability on the individual and if our policy doesn't have that component and there was some sort of legal consideration that we look at that in terms of our policy that was a lot to process all at once but i think what i'll do is go ahead and move the recommendation before us and i'm going to make a few changes did you have some suggested changes as well let me put this on and then we'll work on it the first is to appoint a subcommittee of two council members to work with staff to develop a code of ethics and conduct policy for elected and appointed officials so that's the first thing and i'll just say that this is commonly done in many other cities we don't happen to have one and i think the first item that is on Chris's proposal council members should avoid making public accusations of misconduct and bad faith that seems like the sort of thing that could go into the code of conduct do you agree with that i'm i'm trying to with the suggestion would the suggestion be that that council subcommittee incorporate number one in terms of what they're reviewing and potentially incorporating into a recommendation as one of the items to be considered in the code of conduct um i i i would just like to vote up or down that i mean i'm understand i don't understand why we have a committee of two and not three for example i don't understand how as murphy said we could get this done in two months which seems when i talked to other people it sounded like there's a lot more time going to be involved in something like this just if i could i also spoke with lisa and there are good examples of this as starting points so i think a committee of two or three with staff takes some time and in advance i think individual council members would want to let staff know of the items the issues that they would have covered in the code of conduct so a working committee could probably tackle that pretty fast that was just my thought so it could be i don't care it's call it three you know appoint a subcommittee of three council members to work with staff to develop a code of ethics and conduct policy for elected and appointed officials to include accusations of misconduct or bad faith against one another among other issues just trying to get it out there does that do it for you i'm just like that that one statement because i really think that that first statement goes to the heart of where we're at right now and why we maybe shouldn't have come here got here but we did and this is somebody who's looked at it interviewed all these folks and said as his first recommendation council members should avoid making public accusations of misconduct or bad faith without talking or at least looking for some sort of mediation okay why don't we um i'll go ahead and acknowledge vice mayor comings and then we'll just break them up so that we can eventually move on them okay vice mayor i just want to mention to council member current i think that the intention is that currently there's no code of ethics and conduct policy for appointed officials in the city um and the idea is that we can put together a subcommittee to develop that code of conduct policy which my assumption is that we'll all agree to if we're going to serve as city council members and that your item number one be one of the codes of conduct and so when this comes back yeah by this committee we will adopt that okay agreed yeah that's where i was trying to go sorry okay do you want to make that into a motion to appoint the should we take them one at a time i think that would be okay then i'll i'll make us the first motion that we appoint a subcommittee of three council members to work with staff to develop a code of ethics and conduct policy policy for elected and appointed officials um to include that the council members should avoid making public accusations et cetera et cetera et cetera the language in christophers and that council members should be encouraged to contact staff with other issues they feel should be considered in the code of conduct policy i'll second that so that gives everyone a chance to direct their concerns to staff okay do we want to appoint those individuals now or do we want to do that in this another form i think personally i think what might work in this circumstance is to have you as our hr director to think of what a good mix of three members in regards to your interpretation i don't think i don't know how i can win in this scenario to be quite honest with you so for me i think having an outside somebody from the hr who wants to work on these issues with a diverse group of council members why don't i put out a call for volunteers after here and see what comes through if i have more than three then uh i'll i'll meet with everybody and and see how we can't uh whittle that down okay great okay so we have a motion um for item number one to incorporate item number one of council member crone's suggestions as a consideration as that subcommittee develops their code of ethics essentially correct okay should we go ahead and vote on that all right can i ask for a clarification before you do second part of that that i heard during the discussion was that council members um should contact staff to include additional provisions in the code of conduct that council members would like to not provisions issues should that should be considered issues that should be considered perfect thank you and that's right to also allow from other input thank you for the clarification okay any other questions on that one all those in favor please say i are you opposed okay that passes unanimously okay then um number two on chris's all members of council receive immediate training in the city administrative procedure order 1b the respectful workplace conduct and city council policy two point 25.2 i think that very closely mirrors four and five um and actually overlaps with three in different ways um so the public doesn't have this in front of it so i apologize for that um the item three in the staff recommendation is that all new council members attend a live training session of the sexual harassment discrimination workplace conduct policies within the first 60 days of office and attend every two years thereafter as required by the state of california what's different from that from our current policy is it requires a live training session which i think we all know it's a little bit more effective than an online training and uh it's within the first 60 days rather than in the first year so um i think that's pretty close to what your number two is there it's the same yeah so maybe if we just go with that number three that's in the uh staff recommendation the one thing it doesn't say is immediate it it doesn't say immediate and i think just to be realistic if we say within the first 60 days and then there's another um uh item in both in different forms in the staff recommendation and yours talks about um onboarding where is that um if i can maybe just offer a bit of a suggestion yes maybe we can go through what we have for the staff ones if there's elements that have been missed then we can pull those that we want from the additional i think to try that i was just trying to find the i know and i think it's just a little bit complicated and difficult for our city clerk to catch and i think we'll have a chance to get to everything if we got it so i'm going to move um item three which is all new council members attend a live training session the sexual harassment discrimination workplace conduct policies within the first 60 days of taking office and attend every two years thereafter is required by the state of california second okay any further discussion all those in favor please say oh i have a question around this one item because um is this a general sexual harassment discrimination workplace conduct policy because i think that it's good that we have that training but what i was going to add to it was that we're provided the city's policy specifically which we weren't provided when we first onboarded and i think that there can be you know the nuanced details within the city's policy so if we can also be provided the city's policy within 14 days and sign an agreement or a letter stating that we have read and agree to the city's policies as well as the training yeah um let me just say that that gets down to number six here which is direct staff to prepare a formal onboarding process for new city council members that incorporate sexual harassment discrimination workplace conduct policies so and if you looked at the um discussion of that and you've all been there you get elected you get sworn in in mid december and then basically the city shuts down and then you come to the first meeting in january and you got to operate like you know what's going on and you don't and so um i think the idea of doing that part of it early on i don't know if you feel it's adequately covered in six there i i think sometimes for the live training session lisa you can tell me don't we bring in external trainers for that we do we also we do incorporate in the live training uh i just want to also mention that as part of that training is is unique to us so that we do the workplace conduct and we also do require the cultural uh diversity training of all new officials so why don't you know why don't we just fold that in um so that would be then all new council members do all that within the first two years as we're required by this state of california and the training shall also include santa cruz specific policies on bill in the blanks workplace we do the the workplace conduct respectful workplace conduct as well as the cultural diversity we require that as well okay i can include all those policies okay did you catch that um bonnie okay is that appropriate for the seconder of the motion yeah okay any further discussion this is item number three okay all those in favor please say aye any opposed okay that passes unanimously then i'm i'm saving two till the end because i have some a little more complicated thoughts on that number four staff will review and revise if necessary the i'm just going to say apo administrative procedure orders section 2a and the apo section 2 1 b and uh the reason that the staff reviews those this is what i have learned is that the administrative procedure orders are developed internally by staff and so they they will review based on the learning experience that we've gone through and look at the areas that need refinement or clarification and i know from those um the staff members who spoke and their experiences the whole issue of what was confidential about what they were saying and what wasn't was not clear that was a big issue for them so and we've talked so um these are things um that need to be clarified and here again i think if individual council members reading over the apo see things they they feel need to be dealt with they can get to our staff but the the review of the two apos would be done at the staff level so you're moving number four that's number four okay that second question i'm just wondering council member joe roses reported he why didn't he point this out or did he and i didn't see it the well i think that's the that's one of my recommendations is that now that we've had a significant event occur unlike any other we have learned some lessons as we've gone through uh not just only whether it could be definitions but process as well notification process so i think a whole overlook of the the entire policy is warranted and yeah so for the discussion council member i mean i guess i would just say my interpretation of this also is that the rose report doesn't speak to it because part of the where the issue came up was in the rose report and what was made public as part of that so it wouldn't so it was kind of a document that is the basis for consideration of this question um yeah uh but during this whole thing uh there's been a series of press releases released by the city and it has been very uh defaming of council member glover and myself and we've heard it from a lot of many people around town and i i i wonder if this also the committee could take up that also that that aspect of it and say well what what is a press release when you're using council member's names and you're just using innuendo that's out there it was um it was really that was was hurtful also council member mires well i'm just going to bring up then the use of facebook and uh framing me as a racist so these are things that need to go on uh we all need to sort of realize that there was things revealed that should have been confidential there shouldn't have been predetermined for facebook posts about the outcomes of the investigation you should never never call someone a racist i've been an out lesbian for 34 years okay so don't don't call me a racist so i'm sorry that a press release upseted you but do not defame me in this community i think let's get these motions done i'm tired let's go home i know don't okay let's let's maybe take a let's let's maybe take a three-minute breather and we'll come back and we'll get through the motions i think we're really there i think we're very almost exactly the same so maybe we could expedite that i can't make a motion i think i have a motion for do you want to break is that what you're thinking i think we need a two let's just are you okay let's move okay so i think if we could i think there isn't a need to necessarily labor this and the issue was raised about a press release i think that's the kind of thing when we go through the apo that's where that should get addressed so let's send that issue to lisa okay talk about so you move number four why don't you see okay seconded as written okay council member vice mayor coming seconded all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay that passes i want to get to number five number five has to do with the council's policy 25.2 and that's the one that we act on so the staff will develop the apos with input and then bring forth a suggested revised council policy so i will go ahead and move that the council review and revise as appropriate council policy etc etc based on the outcome of number four okay second any further discussion council member i mean that's a lot to take in what just happened if i had done that the world would have ended based off of all of these things that are going on right now i think number one right right here that was of the rose report council member should avoid making public accusations of misconduct of bad faith against one another and against city staff without first privately or internally arrest dressing these concerns i have no idea whether you were addressing myself or council member crone you're looking at both of us the entire time and you just made a public accusation in bad faith against one of your colleagues without any anything so i i would just say i don't want us to rush through this because of that outburst and i feel our speed picking up as we're starting to talk about these different issues this requires our focus and our attention and we need to be very thorough because if there's that response to the assumption i have no idea what facebook posts and who you're again who you're talking to but to have that response to anyone in suggesting you're a racist i think that that is why we really need to have some of this implicit bias and anti-racism training worked into our training regiments because that was really disturbing and intimidating to me so i would really appreciate it if you would not i'll just go ahead and pause for a second why don't we go ahead and just acknowledge the fact that item number two on the recommendations is to have some conflict resolution and um i think that right now we have an opportunity to choose a path that we can move forward with trying to institute some not only procedures and policies around improving our government structure but we also have a path to say we will have an opportunity to have these difficult conversations we are going to commit in some regard to some form of of mediation and conflict resolution in the future but tonight at 10 20 um after a really long and um difficult evening i'd say we can take the hat we can let that be so i guess my hope is that we can move through this knowing that one of the potential outcomes will be for us to move forward with some conflict resolution could councilor matthews i think i've moved number five which is revising review and revise as appropriate policy number 25.2 that's the policy on discrimination harassment retaliation respectful workplace that we adopt as a council did you already move that you said or you want to know that's that's the next step that's after the review of the apos then maybe the next step okay so do you want to make that as the motion i'll second that motion um all those in favor please say i any opposed that passes unanimously i will say the whole issue that this number one on chris is about avoid making public accusations i do think that's appropriate to go into the whole code of conduct decision and i will just say about facebook god only knows what goes out on social media okay but let's try to keep it directed to the content before us at this time please um then let's go to number six which is directing staff to prepare a formal onboarding process for new city council members that incorporate sexual harassment discrimination and workplace conduct policies i'll second that and add that we incorporate that new city council members and commissioners also be incorporated into that as well vice mayor i'd like to wait i don't know if that was that second yeah that was second day myself i'd also ask