Elizabeth Orona and Louise Smith appointed to Ad Hoc Budget Committee
The Solvang City met Monday, Feb. 24, for its regular meeting, most of which was devoted to a presentation reviewing the Brown Act, the law devoted to transparency in city government.
Councilmember Elizabeth Orona was absent for the meeting.
The meeting started off with the Pledge of Alliance led by Bridget Paris, whom City Manager Randy Murphy thenannounced was the city’s new public works director. Murphy said Paris would start the next day, and Paris took a few moments to address the council.
“This is kind of a homecoming, as I worked for the City of Solvang a while back,” she said. “I look forward to serving this community again.”
A change in the agenda was made to begin the meeting. Presentations usually become before the Public Comment on Non-Agenda and Consent Items, but knowing the Brown Act presentation would be rather involved, Mayor Dave Brown decided to switch the two and put Public Comment first. However, attendance was light for this particularmeeting and no one requested to speak, so council moved on to the presentation.
Assistant City Attorney Craig Steele made the presentation on the Brown Act, titled “Transparency Laws and Due Process — What You Need to Know.”
The Brown Act, officially called the Ralph M. Brown Act after the state Assemblyman who authored it, is a California law passed in 1953 that guarantees the public’s right to attend and participate in meetings of local legislative bodies.
Steele point out the three purposes of the act ensures: Public participation in the decision-making process for a legislative body, public oversight of the decision-making process, and protection of public agencies’ legitimate confidentiality interests.
“I liken it to the old ‘sausage-making’ analogy,” Steele said. “[That means] if people who have business before the city or observe the business of the city get to see how decisions are made in the city, participate in those decisions, and see the process, they have more confidence in the decision whether they agree with it or not, because they got to see it being made.”
Steele went on to say the main gist of the presentation is to make sure a “meeting” isn’t held and defined what constitutes a meeting. The criteria, according to Steele, is to have majority present; putting it at same time and location;and hear, discuss, or take any action.
One emphasis on the presentation was the direction to avoid “serial meetings” in discussing city matters. Steele described those as a series of direct or indirect communications either in person or electronically by a majority of the body discussing city matters.
“We always caution about unintentionally committing a serial meeting violation,” Steele said. “That could be group emails and texts, comments on an article you read or someone else’s posts, or any social media posts.”
Steele added three takeaways from the serial meetings discussion: Don’t discuss city business with more than one other councilmember outside a meeting, avoid soliciting or airing views on a city matter with other members, and avoid interacting with other members on social media.
The presentation later moved to meeting agendas, which during council discussion harkened to a dispute in the council’s previous meeting on Feb. 10.
In that meeting, Councilmember Mark Infante started a motion to approve an item pulled from the consent calendar approving the contract for an environmental review concerning the controversial Wildwood development project on Alamo Pintado Road, but a speaker opposed to the project immediately called for a point of order, saying that council couldn’t pass something without it being on the discussion agenda.
Infante brought that up during Steele’s Brown Act presentation for further clarification.
Steele said, as he did at the Feb. 10 meeting, that council was well within its rights to vote on the action, pointing out that the public had commented on it as part of the Consent Calendar comment before it had been pulled. He added that pulling a Consent Calendar item for discussion did not move it off Consent onto the regular agenda.
Steele wrapped up the presentation by noting the council has a higher responsibility than the general public to conducting government meeting correctly and must be above reproach.
In other actions for the meeting:
In his City Manager’s report, Murphy announced three public meetings to be held at Solvang’s council chambers: A discussion on homelessness Wednesday, March 12, at 5:30 p.m.; Measure U Citizen’s Oversight Committee on Tuesday, March 25, at 2 p.m.; and a fire awareness meeting on Monday, March 31, at 5:30 p.m.
The council passed the Consent Calendar, although one item concerning a contract extension worth $765,422 with Extreme Clean Janitorial for cleanup work in Solvang’s public areas.
Mayor Dave Brown asked why the contract was extended rather than put up for bid. City Administrator Wendy Berry said it was done to get the contract in line with the city’s budget cycle, and she and Murphy also expressed great satisfaction with Extreme Clean’s performance. The Consent Calendar was passed with 4-0 vote.
In the one discussion item on the night, the council appointed Councilmembers Louise Smith and Elizabeth Orona to the Ad Hoc Budget Committee with a 4-0 vote.
The City Council meets next on Monday, March 10, at 6:30 p.m.
