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Segment 1

Okay, we have reached a quorum.
Wow, this feels louder than normal.
I'm going to call our meeting to order.
It is Tuesday, May 6, 2025, and I'm calling to order the special meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Clerk, can you please take the roll? Yes, Councilmember Kesarwani is currently absent.
Taplin is currently absent.
Bartlett is currently absent.
Councilmember Tregub? Present.
O'Keefe? I am here.
Blackaby? Here.
Lunaparra? Here.
Humbert is currently absent, and Mayor Ishii? Here.
Okay, quorum is present.
Okay, today's special meeting item is a presentation and discussion of Brown Act training from the City Attorney's Office, so thank you all so much for being here.
I'm going to pass it over to you, and thank you, by the way, to all the staff that are here as well.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Thanks for allowing us to come before you and present on the Brown Act, which is essentially the Sunshine Laws that are enshrined in California state law, and we have our own sort of mini version of it in, can you hear me? Just go ahead and pull it closer to you.
Yeah, got it.
Okay, and yeah, right up in your mouth.
I know it's close, but it'll help us.
Perfect.
I have the whole team here.
We have Sam Harvey, Deputy City Attorney Sam Harvey, who is very familiar and super ingrained in Brown Act issues and advises on Brown Act issues and conflict issues all the time.
Steve Hylas, and actually both of them are also secretaries to the Open Government Commission, so it's a very appropriate role for them to be here.
Myself and we have Nate Dahl, who's the Assistant to the City Attorney, and did a tremendous job putting this presentation together for us.
We can delve right in.
All right, good afternoon.
So jumping right in, the basics of the Brown Act are to ensure that the public's business is done in public.
All meetings of legislative bodies are open to the public, adequately noticed, stick to the agenda, and allow the public to speak on agenda items and on any non-agenda matter within the Council's jurisdiction.
All legislative bodies of the City are covered by the Brown Act.
That includes the City Council, Council Committees, Commissions and Boards, and any bodies that are created by charter ordinance resolution or formal action of a legislative body.
An ad hoc committee is not a legislative body covered by the Brown Act.
This is a narrow exception.
It has to be less than a quorum of the legislative body, no formally fixed meeting schedule, no continuing purpose, so not a standing committee, and it's advisory to the parent body, the Council.
So agenda requirements.
Agendas must be posted 72 hours before a regular meeting or 24 hours before a special meeting.
The Berkeley City Council regular meeting agendas are posted 11 days before the meeting, so even more than the requirement in the interest of giving the public advance notice of the items being discussed at the meeting.
The notice must include the time and place of the meeting and provide a general description of each item of business, sufficient to provide the public with notice of what will be discussed and what action might be taken.
The legislative body must not take action or discuss any items that are not on a posted agenda.
Additionally, limited exceptions to discussing agenda items, or excuse me, limited exceptions to discussing items not on agenda include a brief response to statements made by the public, brief announcement or reports, directing staff to put an issue on a future agenda, and need for immediate action which came to the City's attention after the agenda was posted, and that requires a two-thirds vote, and then emergency situations where there are severe threats to the public's health or safety.
And with that, I'm going to pass it to Sam.
Thank you.
So with all these sort of general provisions of the Brown Act applying whenever an entity is meeting, can we go back one slide, please? Nate, can we go back one slide, please? You know, a key question is what is a meeting? What actions of the City Council will actually trigger a meeting that would be subject to the Act? And the Act defines a meeting very broadly.
It says a meeting occurs whenever a majority of a legislative body gathers to discuss business within its subject matter jurisdiction.
So basically any gathering of a majority of the Council can become a meeting.
This can occur at social gatherings, meetings of other legislative bodies, retreats, workshops, you know, a variety of forum in which a meeting could occur either intentionally or inadvertently.
And a meeting can also happen via writing, you know, via phone, via email if a majority of the Council is discussing business within their jurisdiction.
So the Brown Act outlines a couple specific exemptions to the meeting definition.
Attending a conference or another open and public event that's held by another entity is not a meeting as long as the majority of the Council who are present stick to the scheduled program and don't otherwise talk about business within their jurisdiction.
Social or ceremonial gatherings are not on their own a meeting unless you were to discuss matters within your jurisdiction.
And then the Brown Act specifically indicates that one-on-one communications are always permitted, but we have to be mindful of creating serial meetings.
So serial meeting is defined as when a majority of the legislative body uses a series of communications either directly or through intermediaries to discuss, deliberate, or take action on any item within their subject matter jurisdiction.
It's, you know, unlike maybe an ordinary meeting like this evening, the members don't have to be face-to-face in the same room at the same time, but over time through a series of communications a quorum has discussed or deliberated on a topic.
So there's a couple ways this can occur.
The first model is called the daisy chain model.
This is where Council Member 1 talks to Council Member 2 on a topic and then Council Member 2 talks to Council Member 3 and so on until a majority of the Council discussed a topic.
The other kind of slightly more complicated model is the hub-and-spoke model.
This is where one Council Member serves kind of in the center here and is individually reaching out to other Council Members so that, you know, Council Member A calls Council Member B to talk about an issue.
Council Member A then calls Council Member B to talk about the same issue and so forth until five members have discussed a matter.
And, you know, it's important to note here that for all serial meetings, and in particular with this model, intermediaries can, you know, create the bond between these communications.
And in fact, in this hub-and-spoke model, you could have that central role played by a city employee or official.
You could even have it played by a third party, a member of the public even, who is, you know, coordinating communication amongst members.
So it's something to be mindful in, you know, that this model can occur even without, you know, a Council Member in that central role.
Next slide, please.
So, you know, as we noted earlier, media can occur via text, via phone, in-person email, basically through all these different media.
One thing you may have noticed is when you receive a message maybe from a staff member that's sent to the entire Council, generally you are BCC'd on that email.
That's to avoid a Council Member inadvertently hitting reply all and responding to the entire Council via an email chain, and there you would have a potential meeting right there in that email chain.
And so one way to kind of conceptualize this is in terms of Brown Act Circles or Brown Act Chains.
You know, these would be the group of Council Members you've discussed an item with when, you know, you're coordinating with each other on a matter, you should confirm who is in your circle and chain to make sure there's, you know, less than a majority.
And so it's important not to just kind of be aware of who you're talking to, but who the other folks you're talking to are also talking to, so that you have a sense of how far this kind of chain goes and so that you're not creating a chain conversation that adds up to a quorum of the Council.
And so one example here, say you had three Council Members who were drafting an item, you know, if two of those Members were to also go confer with one other Member individually, they would have created a serial meeting right then and there, you know, of five Members.
And one thing to note, you know, once you've kind of created your group who you're speaking with, your chain or your circle, you can't sort of swap people in and out, you know, if the total number of people is going to equal a quorum of the Council.
And then, you know, the serial meeting concept plays also into how authorship and co-sponsorship of Council items takes place.
So under the Council's procedures, Council items are limited to, you know, maximum four authors or co-sponsors total, right? You couldn't have five Members on one agenda item.
You would have, you know, arguably that item itself would be an impermissible meeting.
And so, you know, that group of people who are drafting, authoring, co-sponsoring an item are also a circle or chain for this purpose.
And so the Council Policy Committees also take into account, you know, to have preventative measures to prevent serial meetings from occurring.
You know, Council Policy Committees consist of three Members, so a quorum of the Council Committee is two.
And then, of course, if you were to add two people to a Committee, you'd have five, so you could have a quorum of the whole Council.
So the general rules are that two Committee Members can't discuss an item that's referred to their Committee outside of a public meeting.
That would be a meeting of that subcommittee, an unnoticed meeting of that subcommittee.
If two Members are authors or co-sponsors of an item that's before their Committee, one of them has to recuse themselves so that there is not a majority of that Committee already having, you know, weighed in on that item.
All three Members cannot author an item that will come before their Committee.
And then only one author or sponsor who's not a Member of the Committee who may be visiting to, you know, discuss the item can attend, because then, you know, if you had more attending, you'd have five Members.
So one visiting Member plus three Members is four.
You're still shy of a quorum.
And then an item can only go to one Committee before it goes to full Council.
If you have three Members on each Committee going to two different Committees, it would mean you might have as many as six Members of the Council weighing in on an item before it goes to the full Council.
So in 2020, the State Legislature added specific rules about social media to the Brown Act.
And the basic concept of it is familiar.
It's Council Members can communicate with the public individually on social media to answer questions, to give information, to solicit information.
But Council Members cannot talk to each other on social media.
And so things to avoid here are friending other Council Members on social media, liking comments, making comments on posts.
These can inadvertently create a serial meeting.
And on that note, it's advisable to keep your communications with the public general as opposed to being about specific agenda items that are upcoming just because of the fear of inadvertently creating a hub-and-spoke serial meeting kind of with the media as the hub.
So now I'm going to talk about teleconferencing.
And these are the rules in the Brown Act for teleconferencing are notoriously complicated.
And so if you have any questions about it, please ask me.
But this is set up as what the general rules are, and then I'll go through the exceptions.
And so the general rule is that the Brown Act has had rules for decades about teleconferencing, and these rules are really contemplating multiple meeting locations in Berkeley, each of which is open to the public.
And so the rules fittingly require that each of the remote locations will be listed in the agenda, will be open to the public, and agendas will be posted at all remote locations.
And so to follow these rules, council members are required to post their remote location on the agenda and open it to the public.
And obviously, this can be sensitive if your remote location is sensitive, if it's a private place.
And so there are some exceptions in the Brown Act available in specific situations I'll go through.
So in the wake of COVID, the state legislature developed some new rules allowing members of legislative bodies to participate remotely without having to open their remote location to the public.
But these are narrowly confined to certain circumstances.
So these circumstances are defined in the Brown Act as just cause or emergency circumstances, and they are limited in number.
So you can do just cause up to two meetings a year and emergency circumstances up to seven times a year.
And essentially to qualify for these exceptions, it would require an illness, a family care need, or a disability.
Travel on official business is another option.
And then in these situations, you can participate remotely from home, but only if a quorum of the council is physically present in person.
For disabilities, you have an option of doing the just cause participation if it's a temporary situation and it comes up at the last minute, or pursuing an ABA accommodation, which I will talk about now.
So for purposes of the ABA under our new policy that we enacted last year, council members can participate remotely as an accommodation for disability.
This wouldn't have any specific time limits.
It would be individualized based on your needs.
And as part of that process, you can request that the city waive the Brown Act requirements about posting your address and opening it to the public for disability-related reason.
If you have any questions about this or you want to pursue an accommodation, you can contact the ADA coordinator or our office or both to determine accommodations that might work.
And just a quick note on that new policy that Steve just mentioned, Steve actually helped draft that and bring it to fruition.
So just wanted to give him credit for that.
Thank you for doing that.
Yes, of course.
And then finally, there is an exception in emergencies.
If the governor has declared a state of emergency, then the council couldn't meet remotely.
This obviously is an uncommon situation, but it occurred during COVID and it presumably could occur during a future pandemic or another emergency situation.
Next slide.
Okay, so back to the typical in-person meeting.
So the Brown Act requires two comment periods for general meetings.
One is general matters within the jurisdiction of the body, and the other is a comment on specific agenda items.
And for special meetings, that general comment period isn't required.
The city council's rules of procedure actually go further by allowing for Zoom public comment and comment from public employee unions.
So they go further than the Brown Act requires.
Outside of the Brown Act, there are also some First Amendment limitations just to flag here.
So under established law, the council is allowed to and has adopted some reasonable regulations about prohibiting disruptive behavior and creating rules of decorum.
But disruptive needs to mean activities like shouting, booing, stopping others from speaking, as opposed to expressing opinions that you might not like or find offensive.
It's important that the legislative body not prohibit speech based on viewpoint.
And there are a few categories of situations where council can meet privately, as you're aware of.
These are specific and precisely defined exceptions in the Brown Act, and this council cannot meet in closed session outside of these specific situations.
The situations are, the standard ones are litigation, labor negotiations, real estate negotiations, or security threats.
In the case of litigation, it can be either litigation that's active, that's currently in court, or litigation that's threatened.
But if it's a threatened litigation, it needs to be sufficiently defined and definite to qualify.
So it's a bit of a case-by-case analysis.
And then under the open government ordinance, certain actions need to be reported out after the closed session and then also at the next public meeting.
As far as enforcement is concerned, there are two big ones.
So first of all, is a lawsuit either to invalidate city actions after the fact, and the second is to stop violations of the Brown Act as they are ongoing.
It's important to avoid the violations of the Brown Act as they are ongoing, Brown Act as they are ongoing.
It's important to avoid the violations because invalidating acts of the city council can require you to redo business that you've already completed.
And note also that there is a criminal enforcement provision of the Brown Act for situations where a member has intentionally concealed information from the public.
Prosecution is rare, but the existence of this provision kind of emphasizes the importance of erring on this side of greater public access.
And you can also file a complaint with the Open Government Commission, which will go to me or Sam.
Thank you, Steve.
So just to recap some basic reminders that under the Brown Act, can you hear me? Okay, okay.
Under the Brown Act, meetings must be noticed and open to the public.
This allows the public to observe and participate in the council's conduct of public business, and a meeting is defined as a gathering of a majority of the council to consider a matter within the council's jurisdiction.
Some common misconceptions about meetings, the form and formality of the gathering does not matter.
The member need not reach a decision or consensus for the gathering for it to be a meeting.
Sometimes there's a misconception that if you discuss something, but you didn't vote on it, it's fine.
That's not the case.
Even preliminary discussions can violate the Brown Act.
A meeting need not be at the same time or location because the Brown Act prohibits serial meetings as well.
And also a serial meeting happens when a majority of the council uses a series of communications, either directly or indirectly through intermediaries, for instance, their staff to discuss, deliberate, or act on any matter within the council's jurisdiction.
Here we're providing a list of some real life examples that we were able to find studying the literature on the Brown Act.
A private informational tour for council members of water facilities owned and operated by the water district that provides water service to the city.
A birthday party where a majority of the members discuss specific public business.
A text chain among a majority of the members about an agenda item during the meeting at which the item was considered.
An email from one member sent to all other members that shares thoughts about an item being considered at a meeting that the member cannot attend.
A member who sits on a committee shares with with her fellow committee members the opinions she has gathered from the members who do not sit on the committee.
Some basic takeaways to err on the side of caution.
The Brown Act must be interpreted liberally in favor of public access and be on high alert whenever a majority of the council members or staff come together whenever members are sharing views of views of other members.
And these are obviously some of the more common issues that we discussed but there are some nuances and fact patterns that arise and we really welcome you contacting our office.
We work on these issues all the time.
This is the team that works on Brown Act issues and sometimes we coordinate with the city clerk's office but we welcome your questions and and specific concerns or issues that you may have.
That's our presentation.
Thank you.
I don't know why we don't clap for every presentation.
I think that would be nice.
So I have I have a bunch of questions but I want to see if my colleagues have any first.
Oh and I didn't turn that on.
So Council Member Draco.
Thank you Madam Mayor.
Thank you for the presentation.
Just a quick question on page 15.
The last bullet that an item can only go to one committee before it goes to the full council.
How are you defining committees? Are these standing committees or could they include committees like the four by four the three by three and the two by two? And is it in seriatim or in general they can never be double referred? So I'll take the first part.
When this was written and we actually were involved in drafting with the city clerk's office and a few other folks the basic structure of the subcommittees.
This was really intended to apply to the policy committees of the council.
It wasn't contemplated that it would apply to the four by four, the two by two and those other.
Do we call those committees or I don't know what the formal yeah yeah.
So this was really specifically written to deal with the policy committees because there was a time that there was no policy committee.
So in kind of creating that structure we were thinking about how to avoid a situation where a quorum is meeting serially basically.
Do you want to add to that Sam? And what was I'm sorry what was the second part of the question? I think you answered it.
I was wondering if they're seriatim like they can only be discussed by one committee at a time or but I think you answered it maybe as part of the first question.
Other questions? I'm sorry council member Linapara.
Thank you and thank you so much for the presentation.
When you're describing the hub and spoke meeting it says that even a member of the public can serve as the hub but because the public isn't bound by the Brown Act and council isn't necessarily told which council members the public member has talked to, how does that work? Is it only if the public shares the perspective of the other council members or can the public also not talk to more than four council members on a specific issue? I think it's a it's an important point in that you know right a member of the public could go individually count talk to all the council members right.
I think what happens in the hub and spoke model particularly with third parties where there's some sort of relaying and consensus building that that would happen there.
So for example to make that more tangible like let's just say there's a community member that was advocating on a specific issue and then they went to five of us to let let us know about the specific issue.
It's okay if they go and share their opinion but if they say well council member you know x told me that they think this you know what do you think about that then that would essentially be creating could be creating a serial meeting if that happens amongst like five council members.
Correct.
Can I follow?.

Segment 2

Council member, can I follow up on that? Sorry? Yeah, of course.
If the member of the public is themselves forming consensus without telling the other council members what the others said, does that make sense? Like, if there's a, say, on a project, a ZAP appeal and the developer is talking to five or more council members, and each individually, now that person knows that the majority of the council supports one thing, but the council members don't know that a majority of the council supports that thing.
Right, I think what the rule is really designed to prevent is a situation where a quorum of the council is communicating amongst itself, right? So that would be the kind of key, I think, missing ingredient in that scenario.
Okay, thanks.
Yeah, that's a great question because we don't always know, like, who a community member is speaking to.
And yeah, you would want to be careful about that.
But I think that you answered that question.
Thank you.
Yeah, can I jump in on just to get, this is really helpful.
That's an excellent question.
I'm just, I'm trying to think of, like, some practical guidelines, like, would it be fair to say, talk to any member of the public you want, but if they start to, like, if they started to tell me what other people said or think, I should just stop them? Like, is that the kind of the golden rule for this sort of, to deal with this issue? I think that's right.
Yeah, so just, just like, I don't want to hear what other people say, Brown Act, but let's keep talking.
Just don't say that.
Is that reasonable? Or maybe even introducing, when you get into the discussion, say, you may, you may or may not have talked to other council members.
I don't want to really participate in any discussions.
Right.
Better to be preemptive about it.
Okay, so that would be the best practice to avoid this issue.
Yeah.
Okay.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Council Member Trakup, just so you know, your mic is on still.
Anyone else have questions? Okay, I have some questions.
All right.
So can you give us some examples of what wouldn't be appropriate at a gathering hosted by, say, another organization? Because, for instance, sometimes they have us come and, like, speak about something that's going on.
I'm guessing, like, if it's something that's already happened, it's different than if something's coming up.
But I'm just wondering if you could speak to that, because I think giving tangible examples and, like, advice on how to deal with it is very valuable.
Sure, and I think I would caveat by just saying that, you know, each of these Brown Act scenarios, as they occur in real life, are very fact specific.
So it can be, it can be kind of difficult to give kind of general advice on on everything.
But, you know, as a general matter, the rule is that, you know, you're permitted from discussing matters within your jurisdiction, not as part of a formal part of the program.
Right? So, if you're mingling during that event and discussing it with amongst a quorum of the members, that would be the main area to watch out for.
So, for example, like, say, we were speaking on a panel with someone who was not in our Brown Act circle, but we were sharing information about an item that was coming up.
If we were sharing just the information itself versus, like, sharing the information plus our opinion on it.
Yeah, I think the Brown Act contemplates participation on panels, you know, being part of that exemption, but I think, you know, it would be.
Probably helpful to speak to our office about those sort of potential pitfalls before before attending something like that.
Okay, and then is it possible? I know you mentioned that you can't swap out people on your Brown Act circle, but let's just say an item gets decided, but then a different iteration of it comes back to council later.
Could you speak to that? Please.
Sure, so it can be tricky to sort of draw a line where one item becomes another.
I think it is not uncommon, though, for subsequent iterations of an item to still be very much kind of part of that earlier discussion, right? Very much part of that same topic.
And obviously, it's not really possible to break every single conversation up into a separate siloed topic, but I think it's something to be on the lookout for.
And I think a best practice would be to not bring new people in where there's, you know, subsequent discussions that have any kind of, you know, firm tie in to a prior item.
Can you speak to more about what happens if you violate the Brown Act and, like, if this is something that's happened here before? Just a little history.
Sure, so the primary way that, you know, suits are brought is a member of the public or other complainant will submit a demand letter to the city, demand that the city cure and correct or cease and desist.
It's an activity that they allege violates the Brown Act, and if the city's subsequent actions aren't sort of satisfactory to that complainant, they can then file a lawsuit.
Certain violations of the act, as Steven mentioned, can lead to invalidation or repeating of actions, maybe under more proper procedures, or jurisdictions can be required to sort of formally disavow a certain practice.
Maybe they were taking public comment in a way that didn't comply with the Brown Act.
So those are kind of the main examples that the challenges and complaints and enforcement manifest themselves.
As Steven noted, the criminal provisions are there.
I think it's very infrequent and rare for those to be sort of utilized, but I think they speak to the severity and importance that the legislature place on the openness of public meetings and compliance with the Brown Act.
And you mentioned social media posts being it's better to keep them more general, not in specific items.
Can you can you say a little bit more about that? And and like, what happens about afterwards? Because I think it is important to let the public know about items that are coming forward and.
Sure, I can speak a little more about that.
So, it isn't a Brown Act violation to to speak on social media individually about a specific agenda item, or even necessarily how you plan to vote on it.
But what our concern is, is that if it's published somewhere that the mayor thinks a certain way about an item, and then somebody else thinks a certain way about it.
And then some other council member in a different place about what she thinks about an item, it could create the sort of hub and spoke.
So really what our concern there is, is that the hub and spoke.
But in terms of simply informing the public about upcoming items, encouraging people to come to a meeting is completely.
Fine, and if you have any questions about a specific situation, feel free to.
Contact us, and we can noodle.
Through it with you, that's yeah, that's absolutely right.
I guess 1 nuance I would introduce into the mix is if you're posting on social media or writing an article about.
Um, a quasi judicial decision, then that is likely not appropriate, but you have wide discretion to.
Write about, let's say a zoning ordinance, or as long as you're acting in your legislative capacity, you have a lot more flexibility to express your opinions.
Um, but if, but, um, because you also sit as a judge in your quasi judicial capacity, you're going to do that later on tonight.
For example, on 1 of the items.
You should not be expressing your opinions or thoughts.
Or how you're going to vote for something on social media or a newspaper article or anything of that nature.
That's helpful, and I think it's good for staff to know that too, so they don't accidentally speak on behalf of their council member or myself.
So, for the teleconferencing slide, you talked about, um, it can only happen if the public may attend in person or via teleconference.
So does that mean if there is a meeting where council members are participating via teleconferencing, then the public needs to also be able to participate in teleconferencing? But if it's entirely in person, then it's okay.
If there is no teleconferencing aspect for the public.
Correct.
Okay.
And then, um.
Can you elaborate on the 2 types of public comment? I thought that was interesting.
I think that was 21.
Yes, so specific comment is specific comment on it.
And then the general public comment is any matter within the jurisdiction of the body.
So it's a little more general, but it isn't necessarily anything.
Um, and in terms of the rules.
Under the 1st amendment, a council meeting is considered a limited public forum.
And so it's allowed to have that speech.
That's off.
Topic, but it just can't be done in person.
So, for example, if someone came to counsel, and just to give you a ridiculous 1 was like, we really want you to control the weather.
Why aren't you making it sunny or something? Like, we could say this is not relevant.
Something we have no control over.
Like, we're allowed to limit this public comment.
Any thoughts on that 1? I mean, I think as a general matter, particularly for general public comment period, it's best to err on the side of permitting public comment.
So, for example, if someone came to counsel, and just to give you a ridiculous 1 was like, we really want you to control the weather.
Why aren't you making it sunny or something? Like, we could say this is not relevant.
Something we have no control over.
I mean, I think as a general matter, particularly for general public comment period, it's best to err on the side of permitting that comment.
And obviously the council has reasonable time limits, so I don't think someone would not be permitted to speak for 45 minutes on the desire for the weather to be regulated.
Maybe in that case, someone could argue that there are relevant tie-ins to city policy, climate change, you know, you name it.
So, as a general matter, I think we'd advise that you tread carefully on regulation of the general public comment.
Okay, that makes sense.
Thank you.
I appreciate you for humoring me.
So, in your real life example slide, slide 26, you talk about, you give some examples here.
One of them is a private informational tour for council members of water facilities owned and operated by the water district that provides water services to the city.
That could be, for example, if they're talking about that water facility and how to legislate it.
Is that what that example means? Just having that informational tour, I think best practices would warrant that that would be noticed as a meeting because it's going to be really, really hard to just be taking in the information and there's going to be instances where you're going to want to have some discussions.
But that doesn't mean that less than a quorum could go.
But I think best practices warrant that if it's going to be a majority of the council going on one of these informational outings with, and this is a water facility that's owned and operated by the water district that provides, so it's within the city's jurisdiction.
I think it would be a good idea to notice this as a public meeting and then you also have greater flexibility because I think you're going to be, I've just seen real examples of this where, for example, it's a controversial development project and a site visit becomes really important.
And the council wants to, because of just the efficiency and the economy of time, staff says, we'll just take the whole council on a site visit.
And then they notice that as a public meeting and go about it that way.
Thank you.
That's helpful.
My time's running out.
I have a few more questions.
So this one says a text chain among the majority of the members about an agenda item during the meeting, which the item was considered.
But it could also be that you're in a specific Brown Act circle, but then someone is texting people who are outside of the Brown Act circle.
That could also be a violation.
Potentially, yes.
And this one, an email from one member sent to all other members that shares thoughts about an item being considered at a meeting the member cannot attend.
What if it's like an email sent to one person, which is about general thoughts, not on a specific item? Tell me what that example is again.
So, like, if there's a council member who is in touch with another council member, that's part of a conversation that's smaller than a quorum.
But it's about general issues, not about a specific item.
Less than a quorum would not be an issue.
But it becomes more, I guess, because of this.
If there's a cumulative.
Maybe I need to have like, maybe I'll give you a more specific example another time because I'm running out of time.
So the other thing is at our retreat, we had talked about being really clear about who's in our Brown Act circles as a way to kind of prevent that.
And I think it would be helpful also for us to share the committees again with everyone.
So all the staff knows, too, like, who's on which committees.
But I'm wondering if you could give us any other best practices for maintaining the Brown Act circles specifically, considering that we have staff.
I know we have a lot of our staff on.
So, again, staff, thank you for being here.
Sure, a couple of thoughts.
I think you mentioned staff.
I think it's important to note that staff can be intermediaries in a serial meeting chain.
So, you know, making sure your staff are obviously aware as well as who of which members are conversing already about which topics.
And then I think just being very communicative amongst yourselves when you are initiating conversations with other members about who's already spoken on this or who have you already confirmed.
You know, who have you already conferred with so that you're not sort of immediately walking into a meeting and then an hour into talking about it, you say, oh, by the way, I've talked to five other people or four other people about this already.
So I think just being proactive up front and then making sure staff are aware.
OK, thank you.
And then any other additional things we should consider when there are lobbyists involved? I think the same advice around the hub and spoke model in particular is one to watch out for that, that someone who's communicating to the city on a topic can can play that intermediary role.
So just being mindful of, you know, what they're saying to you about other members positions and opinions.
Thank you.
Any other questions from my colleagues? I'm sorry.
Council Member Taplin.
Hi, thank you, everyone.
I just have one question.
It's been a while since 2020.
I was the only new person that year, so I benefited from having on boardings from each department.
And it was during COVID, so it was sort of predominated by the EOC.
But I'm wondering whether the City Attorney's Office offers on boardings for the new members? We do.
OK, just curious because I recall getting a Brown Act on boarding.
We did receive a Brown Act on boarding, but I felt that there were more examples that we weren't able to cover in our time.
So this kind of just covered a broader range.
We also many of us went to the California League of Cities training, which also covered some of this.
But I think it is really helpful just to hear directly from all of you.
And I think, like I said, to share the information with staff and make sure we're all on the same page.
I think it's always good to get a refresher course.
Council Member Lunapara.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I believe I know the answer to this, but I just want to really make sure.
On social media, if, for example, a quorum of us went to a rally on the UC campus, something not related to City of Berkeley business.
And then on social media, we tagged the other council members in a photo at this rally.
Would that violate the Brown Act? That's a great question.
You want to pick up? Sure, I can take this once.
So I might want to think about this a little more, but I would think that that probably is not a violation of the Brown Act, because the language in the law specifically is about discussing, deliberating or taking action on an issue on an item or matter within the legislative body's jurisdiction.
If you were going to a rally and just there, but not talking to each other and just putting each other in a picture, I'm not sure if that would count as discussing, deliberating or taking action, but we can think about that some more and get back to you on it.
See you on it.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Tracob.
Thank you.
Just wanted to confirm kind of two hypothetical situations.
So, an item is called sponsored by four members of the council, moves to a policy committee.
It is appropriate, notwithstanding not more than one co-sponsor of that item must be able to attend the discussion.
But would it be appropriate for members of the committee that were not part of the drafting of that item to then discuss as a full body any potential amendments to the item? I assume the answer is yes, because that is how we can get to potentially a qualified positive recommendation.
My second question is, if multiple members of the body have amendments to an item that they wish to discuss, I want to confirm that that is appropriate, particularly insofar as maybe creating a combined motion that includes all of the different amendments as one package of amendments that then is voted on by the committee.
Clarifying question, are these discussions happening in a publicly noticed policy committee meeting? Yes.
Okay, so that's fine.
Okay, I think that might be all of the questions.
I really appreciate it.
It's not just about us making sure we're in line.
It also kind of enables us, hopefully, to feel comfortable when we're out and about in public and running into each other to not be afraid to do that.
I think that sometimes this is seen as punitive, and I don't mean it to be that way at all.
I think it's really good for us to understand just what we're supposed to do and making sure that we're within it, but also that we understand the expansiveness of it as well.
I really appreciate you all going over this with us, and thank you so much for putting this presentation together.
It's really very clear, and we know now who our experts are on this, and so if we have other questions, I'm sure we'll go through FEMA and check in on that.
So I think that that is it, and is there a motion to adjourn? So moved.
Yes.
Never mind.
Public comment.
Say again? Public comment.
Oh, yes.
Thank you.
Speaking of, is there public comment? There's one hand raised on the Zoom, so we can go to Carol.
Thank you.
I was wondering about the impact of the same public comment being heard by two different policy committees with different council members on it, and it arising in discussion.
So there is actually a quorum of council that has engaged in some discussion, however brief, on a particular issue, and if that all is impacted under the Brown Act.
Is that your full comments, Carol? That's my full comment.
Thank you.
Does the council wish us to reply? Go ahead, please.
Good question.
That would be okay under the Brown Act, because it would be taking place at a notice meeting, is my understanding.
I think that that crosses over with Council Member Trakop's question as well.
Is there other public comment? There are no other hands raised.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
All right.
My apologies.
Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved.
A second? A second from Council Member Bartlett.
And I think we're all here, so can we adjourn unanimously? Well, there's nobody on.
There's nobody remote, yeah.
She's not on Zoom? Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
Yes.
We are adjourned then.
We are adjourned.
Recording stopped.