Late Written CommunicationsCC 07-16-19 SS#2
Commissions & Committees
Late Written Communications
Public Engagement: Improving Council Communications with Advisory Commissions and Committees
AMENDED CITY COUNCIL SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT
Meeting: July 16, 2019
Subject
Study session regarding improving communications with and effectiveness of advisory
commissions and committees.
Recommended Action
Conduct study session regarding improving communications with and effectiveness of
advisory commissions and committees, receive public input on subcommittee
recommendations, and provide direction to staff.
Public Engagement: Improving Council Communications with Advisory
Commissions and Committees
City Council requested this item in an effort to improve communications with its advisory
commissions and committees.
Prior Efforts
In the summer of 2018, a request from a prior Councilmember to consider eliminating
multiple City commissions was met with support by two other Councilmembers. This
led to a subsequent meeting where, following public input, this request was voted down.
As an alternative, Council asked staff to bring forth a future agenda item seeking input
from its advisory commissions and committees with regard to how to improve
communications. Input was verbally sought by staff; no written feedback was sought or
obtained from the advisory commissions and committees. Accordingly, the current City
Council decided to re-visit the process in an effort to provide recommendations reflective
of the purpose of the request.
Timeline
• July 2018: Council decided to not merge the Library and Public Safety Commission
into the Parks and Recreation Commission. Instead, Council directed staff to look
at how to improve communication with commissions.
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Public Engagement: Improving Council Communications with Advisory Commissions and Committees
• November 2018: On an agenda item to improve communication with
commissions, the Council approved the Code of Ethics and gave direction that
commissions should only work on items in the Council’s Work Program. Not all
commissioners were contacted or had the opportunity to provide written input for
any proposed document on that council agenda item.
• December 2018: Council formed a subcommittee to improve communications with
commissioners.
• January 2019: The new Council rescinded the Code of Ethics.
• February 2019: The subcommittee created a survey for advisory commissions and
committees to ask questions on various aspects of commission functions, in
addition to communication with the Council.
• July 2019: The subcommittee creates a report and recommendations for further
Council discussion.
Current Process
With the direct support and work of then Interim City Manager Timm Borden, the
subcommittee was able to obtain direct written feedback from members of its advisory
commissions and committees (Attachment A). The subcommittee evaluated this feedback
and makes its recommendations to Council accordingly. The scope of these
recommendations includes aspects of meetings and procedures which affect the
qualitative nature of communications between Council and its advisory commissions and
committees, and the recommendations, as such, in their totality, have been contemplated
and designed to improve the overall process of our communications and engagement
with the public from a structural and functional perspective.
Recommendations
• Public input. Obtain public input in the present study session for all items
recommended by the subcommittee as part of the effort to improve
communications between City Council and its advisory commissions.
• General Engagement with the Community, Councilmembers and Advisory
Commissioners and Committee Members. The subcommittee recommends that:
o Councilmembers make best efforts to attend at least one meeting per year
of each of Council’s advisory commissions and committees;
o The City provide notice to advisory commissions and committees of
various community events both directly related and unrelated to the scope
of the respective commission. Council and advisory commissions and
committees should be included in the list of formal outreach channels from
the City for any event;
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Public Engagement: Improving Council Communications with Advisory Commissions and Committees
o Each commissioner or committee member strive to attend at least two
community meetings between regularly-scheduled meetings of the
respective advisory commission or committee and report such activity,
recorded by the staff liaison in the meeting minutes, during regularly-
scheduled meetings;
o For the monthly meeting with the Mayor, each representative of an
advisory commission or committee provide a written summary of the
commission’s or committee’s activities since the prior monthly meeting
with the Mayor. Alternatively, staff can provide summary minutes for the
Mayor's meetings. These written summaries should be circulated to
Council and advisory commissions and committees in an effort to provide
updated information on activities;
o The City provide information to each advisory commission and committee
with respect to the mechanisms of outreach from the City and how to
access these mechanisms. For example, advisory commissions and
committees should be able to add items to the calendar that the City places
online to notify the public of future events; and
o In addition, the subcommittee suggests that the web page of each advisory
commission and committee include a section with a brief description of the
top three items the group is currently working on in order to provide the
public with a reference as to the advisory commission’s or committee’s
current activities.
• Scope and Frequency of Commission Meetings. Public oversight of City business
is the governing mechanism and overarching principle for commission meetings.
As a general matter, for example, advisory commission and committee meetings
should not be cancelled without the written approval of the commission or
committee Chair. The past practice among certain of Council’s advisory
commissions and committees of staff cancelling meetings without consulting with
the commission or committee Chair is one that needs to be discontinued. Staff
should consult with and obtain the consent of the chair of the Council’s advisory
commissions and committees prior to cancelling meetings. Some commissions
appear to meet more frequently than the original direction by the Council. For
example, the Sustainability Commission has been meeting every month, instead
of every 3 months. The subcommittee recommends that Council review the
frequency and the scope of commission meetings once a year. This way the
Council could provide further direction in the event some commissions cancel
many regular meetings due to lack of business. With regard to the scope of work
of an advisory commission or committee, guidance should be sought from the
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Public Engagement: Improving Council Communications with Advisory Commissions and Committees
Cupertino Municipal Code to the extent that the scope is described there. Should
an advisory commission or committee seek to expand or revise the scope of its
responsibility beyond the Municipal Code or the approved City Work Program, it
should submit the request prior to Council’s annual review of the work of its
advisory commissions and committees. Commissioner Handbook, p. 23. The
subcommittee recommends that each advisory commission or committee provide
an annual review of all of the topics the advisory commission or committee has
worked on in the prior calendar year by January 15. The subcommittee further
recommends that each advisory commission or committee be encouraged to
provide feedback to the City Council with regard to areas of recommended
changes or improvements to their respective public-meeting process, including
with respect to interactions with and efficacy of the staff liaison.
• Communications with the Staff Liaison. The fundamental roles of advisory
commissions and committees are to receive public feedback and advise the City
Council. As such, staff should seek the input and feedback of commissions and
committees on items rather than only providing information. The subcommittee
recommends Council support for a policy-based statement that the staff liaison for
an advisory commission or committee supports the commission or committee in
its fulfillment of the scope of its responsibilities, including advising Council, as
those responsibilities have been directed by the City Council. The staff liaison
should on a regular basis provide topical updates and activity reports to the
advisory commission or committee, for example, with respect to grant-funding
opportunities, outreach meetings, and construction updates relevant to the scope
of the advisory commission or committee’s work. The subcommittee recommends
that the staff liaison makes it clear to the members of the advisory commission or
committee that meetings between the staff liaison and individual members of the
advisory commission or committee are available. Subject to adherence to
requirements related to communications, the staff liaison should assist with the
distribution of relevant and useful information between Council, commissioners,
and committee members.
• Agenda-Setting Process. The subcommittee recommends that prior to each
scheduled meeting of an advisory commission or committee, the Chair and the
staff liaison should meet to set the agenda, in person, by phone, or by email. The
other commissioners or committee members should be informed of the date of the
agenda setting meeting in case a member of the advisory commission or
committee would like to propose an agenda item to the staff liaison. With regard
to other logistics related to the setting of agendas, the subcommittee makes the
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Public Engagement: Improving Council Communications with Advisory Commissions and Committees
following recommendations for the purpose of ensuring openness and clarity in
our process:
o The last item of each meeting should be “Staff and Commission Activities:
Reports and Future Agenda Setting” with a draft of future agenda items,
ordered by tentative meeting dates.
o If any single commissioner proposes an agenda item, either before the
meeting to the staff liaison or at the meeting, the commission shall discuss
whether to schedule the item during the Future Agenda Setting item.
o The Chair of an advisory commission or committee is able to add an
agenda item to the meeting agenda.
o Any two commissioners can add an agenda item for the future agenda item
list. The Chair or staff liaison should respond by the following regularly-
scheduled meeting with a schedule for adding the item to the future
agenda item list. This recommendation would ensure an avenue for non-
Chair members to add an item to a future agenda. Currently, any
commissioner may request that the Chair place an item on a future agenda,
but this does not necessarily obligate the Chair to do so. Commissioner
Handbook. p. 13.
o The staff liaison can add an agenda item only with the written consent of
the Chair to add the item. Required permit processing hearings may be
added by the staff liaison, in consultation with the Chair.
o Once an item is added or scheduled to the future agenda item list, the item
cannot be removed until it is discussed for removal at a regularly-
scheduled meeting during the item for “Staff and Commission Activities:
Reports and Future Agenda Setting”. Any rescheduling of future agenda
items shall be discussed and approved during the item for “Staff and
Commission Activities: Reports and Future Agenda Setting” unless events
prior to the next meeting require postponement of an item, in which case
such a postponement may be made by the staff liaison, in consultation with
the Chair.
• Training and Development for Civic Duties. The subcommittee recommends that
all advisory commissioners and committee members receive an orientation which
includes the governmental structure of Cupertino in an organizational chart, a
description of the scope of work for the advisory commission or committee, a
detailed description of the work flow over the course of a year, background
regarding the Brown Act, and background regarding conflicts of interest and
ethics under AB 1234 and FPPC requirements. For any advisory committee or
commission such as the Planning Commission with decisional authority, its
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Public Engagement: Improving Council Communications with Advisory Commissions and Committees
members should receive an orientation on requirements governing quasi-judicial
approval processes, defined as proceedings, applications or other particular
matters involving a specific party or parties. These situations occur when, for
example, a commission is deciding whether to grant or revoke a use permit or
otherwise affect an individual’s right or entitlement, and is contrasted with the
commission acting in a legislative capacity where it is deciding whether to enact
or advise on an ordinance or regulation with broad applicability. For quasi-
judicial decisions, members should disclose to their advisory commission or
committee the content of any meetings with residents, resident groups, developers
or prospective contractors or any persons outside of the public meeting process
concerning issues before the commission. As provided in the Commissioner
Handbook, page 19, members are encouraged to disclose the content of meetings
outside of the public meeting on legislative items as well. Commissioner Handbook,
p. 19. Staff liaisons should inform their respective advisory commission or
committee of relevant workshops and meetings, with this information being
available as well to members of the other advisory commissions or committees, in
the event that any of their members would like to broaden their knowledge base
with respect to the meetings and educational opportunities of other advisory
commissions and committees.
• Statement of Ethical Obligations and Recommended Conduct. With regard to the
prior Code of Ethics brought forth by staff without consultation to the public or
Council, this subcommittee believes that adherence to legal requirements and
ethical conduct is paramount in service to the public. From the feedback from our
advisory commissions and committees, the prevailing sentiment is that there are
no aversions to a statement reflecting our already significant ethical obligations as
reflected under laws such as the Brown Act, and also reflecting the belief that as
public servants, we should lead by example with regard to how we conduct our
interactions with others. Commissioner Handbook, pp. 18, 26-28. As such, the
subcommittee recommends that a succinct Statement of Ethical Obligations and
Recommended Conduct be provided to the public through the City website, and
in hard copy on an annual basis to the Council, to our advisory commissions and
committees, and to City staff to indicate our common understanding that we work
together in service to the City with democratic representation and public
oversight, under principles of integrity, and with standards of basic courtesy
meant to foster healthy discussion. It is the recommendation of the subcommittee
that, based upon the foregoing input from our advisory commissions and
committees, and following this study session and input from the public and City
Council, that the City Manager’s office working in concert with the City Attorney’s
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Public Engagement: Improving Council Communications with Advisory Commissions and Committees
office draft this Statement, and that the City Council review the Statement at a
future Council meeting.
• Meeting Protocols and Meeting Minutes. The subcommittee makes the following
recommendations for Council to set policies with regard to the logistics and
record-keeping of minutes in an effort to improve communications:
o The Chair of the advisory commission or committee runs the meeting and
decides the policies and procedures for interaction with the public
observing principles of equal treatment and availability of opportunity to
speak. For agendized items, at the Chair's discretion, the public can
interact with the members of the advisory commission or committee
beyond the public-comment time limit in order to facilitate better
communication of the topic at hand. With respect to the qualitative nature
of such interactions, the purpose is to understand the various public
perspectives. Commissioner Handbook, pp. 16, 18, 19.
o Agenda packets should be comprehensive and include as much supporting
materials as available for transparency, including staff presentation
materials as part of the materials published together with the notice of the
meeting agenda. All meeting materials should be paginated in sequential
order from the beginning of the agenda to the end of the agenda. This is
integral to the basic function of communication within the context of any
given meeting and in any reference to such materials. The subcommittee
recommends that the paginated area include, in addition to the overall
page number: 1) an identification of the meeting; and 2) the date of the
meeting. This will help members of the public, the Council, and advisory
commissions and committees communicate better with each other and the
public with regard to background materials provided through the
mechanism of public notice as pertain to agenda items. In the rare instances
where supplemental documents are provided after the agenda has been
posted, staff will ensure the documents are clearly labeled with headers
indicating the meeting and item number.
o Any presentation and other materials not posted in the agenda packet
should be posted online after the meeting. These materials should also be
paginated with a clear indication that they were not included in the
materials released as part of the publicly-noticed agenda.
o Discussion items and action items should be clearly and distinctly
identified as such.
o Advisory commissions and committees should strive to keep summary
minutes as opposed to action minutes. Currently, minutes are required of
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Public Engagement: Improving Council Communications with Advisory Commissions and Committees
all commissions, but the type of minutes is not specified. Commissioner
Handbook. p. 13. Most advisory commission and committee business
comprises discussions that is advisory in nature. Summary minutes should
include summaries of each comment from a member of the public. An
increasingly feasible alternative or tool in this effort with the current state
of improving technology is the use of automatic transcription. If automatic
transcription is made available to supplement official minutes, action
minutes may be sufficient.
o If transcriptions of the meetings are not available, meetings of the advisory
commissions and committees should be video recorded. Where higher-
quality video-recording is not available, simpler video recording is
preferable to audio recording.
o When providing recommendations to the Council, in addition to the
specific vote, staff should provide summaries of the positions of an
advisory commission or committee in both the majority views and
minority views. The Council requires the scope of the diversity of
viewpoints represented.
o Draft Minutes should be posted online as soon as they are available, within
one month of a meeting in order to ensure the timely availability of a
description of the scope of meetings. Certain advisory commissions and
committees that meet on a quarterly basis, for example, will not be
available to meet to approve the minutes until three months following their
prior meeting.
o Currently, commissions may adopt their own parliamentary procedure
with Council approval. In the absence of any parliamentary procedure,
Robert’s may be followed. No commissions have formally adopted their
own parliamentary procedure. For Council meetings, according to
Ordinance No. 006 (Attachment C), Council may also adopt specific rules
and procedures, but in the absence of any such procedures, the Council is
governed by “Robert’s Rules of Order—Revised” 75th Anniversary
Edition as published in 1951. This ordinance went into effect in 1955. At
the November 20, 2018 Council meeting, Council voted to adopt
Rosenberg’s Rules of Order for commissions, committees, and Council,
however, the implementation of this was placed on hold to allow for
additional feedback and a report by the subcommittee. In summary,
Rosenberg’s Rules of Order is a simplified version of Robert’s Rules of
Order. It takes a subset of the most commonly used rules of procedure to
help people to better understand how meetings are run in the smaller
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Public Engagement: Improving Council Communications with Advisory Commissions and Committees
government bodies. A table comparing Rosenberg’s Rules of Order,
Robert’s Rules of Order, and current practices for City Council meetings
can be found in Attachment B.
• Regular updates. Advisory commissions and committees should provide periodic
written updates to Council regarding the status of their activities. The
subcommittee recommends that the frequency of these updates be determined by
the respective advisory commissions and committees but be no less frequent than
every three months. Similarly, the subcommittee recommends that the length of
these updates be determined by each advisory commission and committee with
an encouragement to strive to be both comprehensive and succinct.
• Agendas and Work Programs. Generally, work programs should govern agendas.
This applies both to Council agendas and the agendas of its advisory commissions
and committees. However, past experience has indicated the obvious need for
flexibility with regard to adding items to agendas. The subcommittee
recommends that two members of an advisory commission or committee be
required to add an item to agendas, with the understanding that for the purpose
of effective planning, our advisory commissions and committees should strive as
a general matter to work together on annual work programs and aim over the
course of the year to address those items. The timing of when agenda items added
by commission members are considered should be determined by the Chair of the
advisory commission or committee with the designated staff liaison providing
assistance as needed or advice as requested. Commissioner Handbook, p. 13. The
subcommittee also recommends that Council, for its part, consider how its annual
work program items can be improved by interacting with its advisory
commissions and committees, perhaps with an extra column on the draft and final
work program spreadsheets entitled “Advisory Commission(s)/Committee(s)”
which could then identify the possible synergies. Furthermore, the subcommittee
recommends that Council reach out to its advisory commissions and committees
prior to the first draft of the Council work program, to ask for recommendations
of items to add. Since a commission could then look to the Council work program
to see which of its recommended items were included, this process may further
support the end goal of having work programs reflect the goals and policies of the
City Council. Commissioner Handbook, p. 13. If, for instance, the first draft of the
Council work program is presented in February as it was this year, then advisory
commissions and committees should be asked by no later than January to provide
recommendations as to what items they would like to see Council consider adding
to its work program for the upcoming fiscal year. The subcommittee also
recommends that the current-year and prior-year work programs of Council and
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Public Engagement: Improving Council Communications with Advisory Commissions and Committees
its advisory commissions and committees be posted on the City’s website. For
active current-year work programs, the subcommittee recommends that staff
provide quarterly updates as to the status of each item and addend the work
programs accordingly. The subcommittee further recommends that advisory
commissions and committees have the discretion to add items requiring minimal
amounts of budgetary and staffing-based resources. For additional items beyond
those identified in an annual work program that would require significant
amounts of budgetary and staffing-based resources, such items should be
considered for inclusion in the subsequent year’s work plan, but if such an item
requires earlier consideration, the subcommittee recommends that Council
approval be required.
_____________________________________
Prepared by: Subcommittee Members Vice Mayor Liang Chao and Councilmember
Darcy Paul
Assisted by: Katy Nomura, Assistant to the City Manager
Reviewed by: Deborah Feng, City Manager, and Heather Minner, City Attorney
Attachments:
A – Advisory Commission and Committee Feedback Summary
B – Robert’s and Rosenberg’s Rules of Order Comparison Table
C – Ordinance No. 006 on Council Procedural Rules
D – 2019 Commissioner Handbook
Advisory Commission and Committee Feedback
1)How do you have the public interact with your Commission? For example, is it formal
and the public is limited to a certain amount of time, or is it more informal and
conversational with leave of the chair? Would you like to change your current format? If
so, in what manner?
Audit Committee
•Each meeting allots time for public comment at the beginning of the Committee’s agenda.
Since this opportunity by the public to comment has not typically taken a lot of time (I recall
one public member attending and commenting in the past five years), the segment is
informal and more conversational with leave of the chair. I see no need to change at this
time.
Bike Ped Commission
•Historically the meetings of the Bicycle Pedestrian Commission have been more informal in
nature, with very open participation from all attendees including residents. There is
currently no structured community input process or time limits. This often leads to good
dialog about critical topics, but also had sometimes shown challenges, when contentious
topics were on the agenda, and this is an area of potential improvement to provide a more
structured community input process
•The public has generally been allowed to give their input pretty liberally at the commission
meetings. Also, it is not uncommon that the commissioners attend the community meetings
organized by city staff in conjunction to various projects. In this case the commissioners may
get some more informal information/feedback, as well as of course be present to hear the
discussions and input given at the community meeting in general. At occasions the
commission has fielded questionnaires.
•The public currently interacts with our commission in an informal and conversational way
during each agenda item, with everyone participating in the discussion. This has been
effective during the 2+ years which I have been on the commission, with non-commissioners
enhancing our work. However, in the past few months, our commission has seen some
issues with one particular resident attending the meetings but not participating in these
conversational discussions in a productive manner. He has interrupted speakers, attempted
to change the discussion away from the agenda item, insulted City Staff, made implications
that BPC commissioners have been unethical and attempted to stop discussion by
disparaging each agenda item or its particulars during the discussion. When I was the chair,
I requested each time that he refrain from doing these things, but it chills the discussion
when the chair has to interject to stop a speaker. During our last meeting on February 20,
2019, discussion on one particular item was stopped because the interruptions because too
numerous to continue our work. Due to these issues, I would recommend going forward
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that we increase the formalization of our public interaction to enhance the productivity of
our meetings.
Disaster Council
• Commission Liaison
This is not a public forum but those that have an emergency response role. Participants are
invited to participate for example participants would be Fire, Sheriff, Water District, San
Jose Water, Citizen Corps, Public Works, Businesses, Schools, Faith Based Organization
Fine Arts Commission
• Public speakers get set time to speak and with leave of the chair time of the public speaker is
increased if needed. I would like to keep the current format.
• On agenda, oral communications.
Housing Commission
• We usually only have a few members of the public attend, if any. The interactions with the
public are restricted to public comment, where the members get 3 minutes to speak. The
commission is not supposed to ask follow-up questions or engage in a continued dialogue. I
believe in some cases it would be appropriate to relax this format and have a format similar
to a workshop, if the commission and staff think that continued discussion with the public
would be productive. I do not think the public comment format should be abandoned
altogether. Without having this structure, meetings may drag on or go off-topic quite easily.
• Public interaction with Housing Commission: it follows a similar procedure as City Council.
I think that limiting residents to 3 minutes (or some limit) encourages people to be succinct
in their statements. Brief statements are easier to understand for all people in the room.
1. The Chair can allow more discussion, as necessary.
2. Consider Work item for Housing Commission: Write an outreach plan, so that
residents are aware of our General Plan’s affordable housing goals, the City Council’s
support of those goals, and how the City plans to meet goals. If there are current successes,
we need to state them, then discuss plans how to move forward. Since affordable housing is
not viewed the same by all residents, it would be good to include an educational effort
showing how housing for all incomes and abilities is good for everyone in the City. The
wording in the General Plan Housing Element is strong underpinning for such outreach.
• Commission Liaison
Housing Commission follows a formal agenda. Member of the public are able to speak
during Oral Communications or during the public portion of any agenda item. Speakers fill
out a speaker card and are limited to three minutes. The Chair manages the meeting and
this process works well.
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Library Commission
• I’m new to the position, yet have enough experience to comments on this item.
• In my two terms on the Library Commission, we have done both. Most recently, based on
strong suggestion from our City Liaison, the interactions have been extremely formal and
time limited. In previous years we have been much more informal. Which, by the way, I
prefer—unless there are so many attendees wishing to speak that time limitation and a
schedule of speakers is necessary for equity.
• The Library Commission encourages community engagement during its meetings. One time
last year, one commissioner was en route to the meeting but was delayed. The meeting
proceeded as a community meeting until the commissioner arrived, which worked really
well because everyone who was present was permitted to ask questions following a staff
presentation. We all learned from the questions from the community. In situations where
the commission receives new information and is not deliberating, I would like to see more
“community meeting” sessions within Library Commission meetings.
• The formal part of the interaction with the public is usually during the three- minute Oral
Communication in every Commission meeting. We constantly have people who express
their opinions and raise their concerns during this time period. Informally, there are
consistent communications among the public and the Commission members. We met
people when we participated in activities, ceremonies, or even council meetings. I think the
current format is good, both formally and informally. I don’t think we need to change what
we do now, but I do think we can improve the communications by even adding something
new. For example, in our last Commission meeting, we think it might be a great idea for us
Commissioners to put up some tables and take turns during the upcoming Library Survey
period in May/June to give out flyers, brochures and some gifts to survey participates. This
way, we can not only incentivize more people to participate in the survey but also let the
public know us more.
• At this point, public can interact with our commission by submit emails, attend to our
meetings and for some Chinese speaking people, they can reach commissioner via wechat.
Parks & Recreation Commission
• Formal. Limited time to speak.
• I am not familiar with current format yet. Overall I prefer to be more flexible and more
accommodating. Any format that not violating rules should be welcome.
• It is more formal. I’m not sure we would be able to make it more conversational or informal
due to the nature of where we meet and the fact that the meetings are televised. I especially
think that if we have an item with a lot of interest or even something that might be
controversial, that it is best to have some kind of procedure and formalized control of the
meetings. I am happy with the current way we conduct our meetings. We have come to that
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understanding over the past couple years about procedure and it works well.
Commissioners ask staff clarifying questions, we then take comments from the public, we
then follow-up with any comments we might have about the agenda item. Our chair
follows-up and will pose questions that the public might have asked during Oral
Comments. We also interact with the community at the many Parks & Recreation events we
try to attend.
•Current model is formal meetings with public allowed throughout. It works fine and I like
to continue this format. Only change I would love to see is to have the oral communication
points are captured into minutes as those are critical feedback which we want to refer to.
•Commission Liaison
Very similar to how City Council interacts. Oral Communication and accepting
presentations when requested. The same 3 minute time limit is enforced. The Commission
does not discuss presentation items, only asking clarifying questions. I think the format
works well.
Rosenberg’s rules will be easier to manage and much less structured but will require
training.
Planning Commission
•The planning commission runs the public meeting in the same format as the City Council.
No, I would not change. It is important that public communications be well formatted and
structured.
•We may choose to meet with the public at their request. I have been emailed to meet in an
informal setting.
•Formal communication is always going to be needed to move issues along according to
prescribed procedures. I would not change this format - except to rigidly enforce rules about
clapping, booing, banners, and other activities that can intimidate nervous or outnumbered
members of the public. In addition to the formal meetings on the dais, informal workshops
or drop-in sessions have been used by all my commissions' staff as a way to gather input
without procedural or time constraints. I also make it a practice to have many coffees or site
visits with applicants or concerned citizens. One time, two neighbors couldn't agree on a
proposed balcony, and it was the only item on the Planning Commission’s agenda for that
evening. I stopped by their homes that afternoon and, after meeting with both of them, got
them to agree on a compromise. We were then able to cancel the meeting and save the City
some time and money.
•Our interaction is FORMAL, per Robert’s Rules of Order. I think this is necessary to
maintain fairness and equity around public input.
Public Safety Commission
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• I would like public to able to interact more without the time constraints. Sometimes the
person is not able to finish what he wants to say. Time limit for public to speak should be
raised to 5 minutes per person. I would also like to incorporate more informal ways of
interactions.
• Formal with a time limit, I’d like to keep the time limit to retain structure.
• Currently it is formal and happens during oral communication. An informal conversation
and more time would be useful. Maybe a special day where all PSC is only available for
public discussions.
• Currently if we have members of the public wishing to give oral communications they are
given 3 minutes to speak though sometimes they might be given 15-20 seconds over the 3
minute mark to finish up their communications. Afterwards the chair will ask if any of the
commissioners have clarification questions to ask the person. I personally think imposing a
3 minute limit is a bit harsh since most people feel rushed and might get flustered or lost in
the original intent of the communications. I also feel that a more informal setting would
seem friendlier and less rushed to hurry and get their thoughts out before they are stopped
at the 3 minute mark.
• Formal at meeting, 3 min/person, same as city council meeting. Informal when being
approached at various city locations/events/functions, and usually ends with resident
coming to make their requests formally at PSC meeting
Sustainability Commission
• As a commissioner, I am prepared to interact with public at any time and place. I usually
introduce myself in public gatherings and encourage attendees to discuss with me of any
questions they may have.
• Our meetings are very informal. We follow the standard procedures of allowing time for
public comment on an issue, but the discussion afterward is informal with most of the
citizens participating where they could offer specific information. Also, I get suggestions
from neighbors and friends that I bring to the commission.
• The public interacts with the Sustainability Commission informally and in conversation.
They are allowed to speak throughout the meeting, either providing their expertise or their
opinion on the agenda item. On occasion they even start a new topic of discussion. There is
no time limit to their interaction with the commission. I would prefer that it not be so
informal and that their interaction be more controlled and not in conversation. I prefer that
they speak after the commission has discussed the topic. If what they would like to say is
not an agenda item, then they should speak and share about that during Oral
Communications.
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•The public sometimes attend our meetings to understand what the commission does.
During the time of public comment they may chime in. They are member of the public who
have a business related to sustainability. We have been approached by a few different types
of consultants who would like some involvement with the city. Ranging from Water to Air
tight Homes. What we have done is one member will vet these companies before they come
to the meetings. They still can attend publicly but not in a formal capacity.
Teen Commission
•The public is always welcome to come and sit in on meetings to observe and if they wish to
voice their opinion, they can fill out a card to do so. However at all of our public events,
people can always come up and have informal conversations with us. Currently our format
seems to work pretty well for us, as all that wish to communicate with us get the chance to.
Furthermore since we are the teen commission, fellow teens seem to feel more comfortable
communicating with us informally.
•The public interaction are more informal and conversational. I would not want to change
the current format.
•Public interaction is more informal with our commission. Members of the public do have to
fill out a blue card in order to speak, but other than that, there isn’t much formality to it. It is
a very conversational format whenever members of the public come to our meetings. I’m
fine with our current format, and I don’t see any reason to change it.
•Currently, the commission has both an oral communications and some room for public
comment after each item. During these times, we usually do not cut off the public unless
they are talking for unreasonable length of time. The public comment is less structured than
oral communications, and usually does not necessitate a time limit.
•I believe that the interaction between the public and my Commission is semi-formal. The
public can come in anytime they want to without telling us and can really be informed about
how our commission runs and what we do in the commission. Of course, all of our public
guests have been very polite and formal during our meetings as well. I think our current
format is great because it is a comfortable and informal learning environment for the public
and suits the Teen Commission well too.
•We normally have people who want to see our meeting come to it, and we're usually not too
formal with time-limits, as we prefer things to be conversational. I think that this should
stay the same, because it helps the us stay connected and seem approachable to the public. I
think that making it more formal and restrictive would stifle communication and make
citizens feel that we don't care/don't listen to their ideas.
•We have openings in our meetings and our website is pretty accessible. I would say the
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interactions during the meetings are formal as they have to fill out forms/contact the
commission earlier. I would like to make it more open to discussions by having teen
Commission info booths in Cupertino events.
Technology Information & Communications Commission
•As new commission member, I haven’t had regular interaction with public on the TICC
subject matters so far. However, I do have the ideas for making it working well – one, by
adopting the model of block leaders. Essentially rotate the meetings throughout the city on
regular basis with small and localized group each time that gives focused attention to issues
and connecting with individuals.
As for the commissions interacting with public during official meetings, it is preferable to
have a formal process with limited time per individual and a priority for city residents. I
liked the recent goal setting meeting where residents are asked to share their comments on
the items that are not in the agenda first and then bucket the public comments close to the
pertaining agenda item. It will sure lengthen the time if one were to come early to cover
multiple items but at the same time, gives residents to come only during the agenda item.
•It is a blend, we try to follow a formal procedure but will deviate if needed.
•Currently public can come in and interact at the beginning of the commission meeting.
While it is ok, I think there must be at least one other time during the meeting when the
commission can open up a Q&A or comments time slot to give public another chance to
interact with the commission. The Chair should reserve right to decide when to stop the slot
with a reasonable resolution/adjournment to any open issue being brought up during the
public interaction and continue with the commission’s regular agenda.
Any boundless informal any-time interaction format might reduce the efficiency of the
commission. Again, this may not be true to other commissions.
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2) Do you use rules of order to conduct your meetings? If so, which rules? If not, would
rules of order be useful from your perspective?
Audit Committee
• Yes, Roberts Rules of Order
Bike Ped Commission
• The flow of the meetings is structured in nature based on the agenda, but the Commission
allows all attendees to provide input and feedback/discussion on each agenda topic. The
BPC has primarily advisory function, and in few cases votes are required. When votes are
required, they follow a structure according to Robert’s rules of order.
• For the most the process at the bicycle-pedestrian commission has been fairly informal.
Lately we have started asking for the public to fill out speaker’s card. Even so, the members
of the public has been allowed to speak and comment on agenda items during the meeting
in a more or less informal fashion.
• We don’t currently use a specific Rules of Order, but we do stick to the agenda and the rules
regarding discussion and voting. In general I would prefer to use a Rules of Order like
Rosenberg’s, and not Robert’s.
Disaster Council
• Commission Liaison
Yes, Robert’s rules might be something that works
Fine Arts Commission
• We do follow code of conduct for the meeting. And it is certainly a useful way to conduct
the meetings as meetings stay organized and orderly.
• We use rules of order recommended by City.
Housing Commission
• By default, we use Roberts’ Rules of Order. Having the rules is useful to allow our meetings
to run effectively.
• The Rules of Order appear to be similar to the City Council rules, in which the Chair runs
the meeting and maintains focus on the agenda topic, closing discussion, calling for a vote,
etc. This seems appropriate given the many issues that could come up during any
discussion of Housing strategies.
• Commission Liaison
We use Robert’s Rules of Order. The Commissioner’s would benefit from an annual update
or handout on the rules of order.
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Library Commission
• I’m new to the position, yet have enough experience to comments on this item.
• Again, our format changed to a more formal one recently. A couple of years ago, with a
change of City Liaison, we were encouraged to adopt greater parliamentary formality,
which we did but without consistency or agreement on which rules we were following.
Very recently we evaluated a range of parliamentary procedures currently in use by other
Commissions and/or at nearby cities and voted to adopt one. Unless an issue is particularly
contentious, I don’t feel this is necessary. Adherence to the agenda is important so the public
notices can enable informed and appropriate public participation.
However, constant strict adherence to procedure typically makes the meetings awkward as
we struggle to accomplish the interactions we want while constantly referring to ‘rules’ with
which we are unfamiliar and the implementation of which don’t result in the outcomes
desired. I feel a competent Chair can identify when an issue or discussion reaches a point at
which it is necessary to invoke the use of parliamentary procedure, and meetings could then
more flexibly proceed most of the time without it.
• The Library Commission has followed Robert’s Rules of Order to receive input, deliberate,
and make and vote on motions. However, we have also decided to pause Robert’s Rules at
various times when the Commissioners agreed that we could get better input with
community members and commissioners exchanging information conversationally. I
understand that in 2019 commissions will be expected to transition to Rosenberg’s Rules of
Order. I hope that we will have the same latitude to suspend Rosenberg’s Rules when doing
so would facilitate community engagement or offer opportunities to clarify concerns from
those present.
• Yes we do use rules of order to conduct our meetings. As the Chair of the Library
Commission, I tried to follow the Robert’s Rule of Order, at least at the high level. Details
include but are not limited to: business that will be discussed is listed in the Agenda under
new business/old business, quorum to vote, nomination and election for officers such as the
new chair, de cision making process such as motion, second, voting etc. Of course, there are
various topics on this which I can’t exhaust, and I do think rules of order are useful, in that
they provide Commissioners and the public with predictability, structure, rules to follow,
and hence more efficiency and effectiveness.
• Yes, I think we use Robert’s rule of order. It works for us.
Parks & Recreation Commission
• Roberts Rules.
• Certain rules should be respected.
• Yes, we do. We (think) we use Rosenberg’s. My understanding is that this was approved by
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council to standardize for all commissions/council.
• We use the rules of order proposed by the city and not sure what rules is it… I find it useful
with what we have now.
• Commission Liaison
Robert’s, converting to Rosenberg’s once training is available and complete.
Planning Commission
• Yes, Roberts Rules of order
• We seem to use Robert’s Rules. I would personally prefer PC learns and uses Robert’s Rules
exclusively.
• We always use Robert's rules of order, according to City Clerk policy.
• Yes, this is necessary for the meeting to work fairly and effectively.
I would prefer Robert’s Rules of Order as it encompasses a broader set of procedures and
situations. This assures that we have a full palette to make legally sound policy decisions,
and gives the Planning Commission solid common ground with applicants and others we
interact with.
This level of formality is not necessary for the purely advisory commissions, but I think it’s
better to have uniformity of rules across the entire organization. The Council packet for the
proposed Ethics Code included a abbreviated list of Robert’s Rules for simple meetings,
which would probably be a good standard.
Public Safety Commission
• We follow the principles of rules of order.
• Robert’s Rules, good as is.
• Yes. We have a order and guideline /format to follow in every meeting
• I believe currently we use the Roberts Rule of Order format but after being asked to review
the different formats of holding a meeting I personally think the Rosenberg’s Rule of Order
is a much more user friendly format and would welcome a change to it.
• We follow the Brown Act as well as the Council meeting rules, and its useful.
Sustainability Commission
• The Rules of order is important in getting business done. We follow general guidelines set
by the City. It is similar to the order of meetings used in other public meetings.
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• Yes, but not very strickly
• No, we do not use rules of order to conduct our meetings. For our commission, I do not
think rules of order would be useful at this time.
• Yes we do. It is important for the chair to maintain order and schedule. We will get off track
without them.
Teen Commission
• We do use rules of order during our meetings like Robert’s Rules.
• Yes, we use Robert’s Rules of Conduct in our meetings.
• No, we don’t use any specific rules of order to conduct our meetings. I don’t think rules of
order would be useful specifically for the Teen Commission as they would create a more
detached, overly formal environment that simply doesn’t suit the commission. I do think
more of a focus could be made on staying on topic without diving into unrelated tangents,
but I don’t think that requires a whole new rules of order system.
• We do not use a specific names rule system, but we most closely align with Rosenberg’s
rules of order, or a somewhat simplified Robert’s rules of order. No additional rules of order
strike me a specifically necessary to help us function better as a commission.
• Yes, the Teen Commission follows Robert’s Rules of Order to conduct our meetings. We
always consider the rights of the majority, the minority, individuals, and absentees. Our
decisions are made based on the majority and we take into account of absent people. The
Teen Commission also follows the Brown Act; we conduct business and make decisions
only in public meetings, publish and follow meeting agendas, and provide an opportunity
for public participation before making decisions. I think using rules of order is useful
because it promotes fairness and efficiency and ensures majority rules.
• We don't use a specific set of rules to conduct meetings. I think that it should be this way,
because it is the most effective way to get idea and free conversation flowing. We're still able
to stay orderly and respectful, and we don't talk over each other, so I think we work best
without a strict set of rules that have to be followed.
• We use Roberts Rules of order to conduct our meetings.
Technology Information & Communications Commission
• I believe rules of order is always useful in public arena where every individual is entitled to
equal right and equal opportunity and at the same time the scope can find no boundaries.
• We try to approximate Robert’s Rules of Order
• Roberts rule of order sounds fine to me.
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3) Do you feel your Commissioners communicate with the Councilmembers sufficiently to
advise the Council? Do you feel that Commissioners’ communications with staff could be
improved, and if so, how?
Audit Committee
• Yes since in fact two of the five Audit Committee members are Council members (this year
Mayor Scharf and Council Member Paul) I feel that there is a formal and institutionalized
communication between the Committee and Council. In prior years, for example it has not
been unusual for various Council members to take action based on particular circumstances
and needs of the Committee. The Committee has excellent communication to and from staff.
Zach Korach, Kristina Alfaro and typically the City Manager (now of course Acting City
Manager Timm Borden) attend Committee meetings along with specific staff who may
make special presentations as needed. This kind of staff involvement with the Committee
has enabled multiple communication points over the years for example in prior years
special staff and Committee member communication occurred on the urgent reconciliation
of the cash accounts on a special project basis and the more recent uncovering of alleged
embezzlement by a senior accountant. Of course all such communication outside of a
Committee meeting must be handled in accordance with Brown Act provisions.
Bike Ped Commission
• The primary council-commission communication is via the monthly major meeting, which
serves well as an update to the major, but there is very limited communication to other
council members about topics related to the Commission. Many of the Council members are
participating also in the various community outreach meetings, which allow additional
informal communication to other city council members. If possible, it may be advisable to
extend the monthly major meeting to include the full council. The BPC has elected to rotate
the monthly major representative, and use the prior month’s meeting minutes as well as the
agreed workplan as the primary input mechanism into the major meeting.
• I think it could good with more direct communication between the council members and the
commissions. The communication with the city staff is very good though.
• I personally feel that we do not advise the Councilmembers enough on biking and walking
issues. Generally, the Council only solicits our feedback during a very brief 10 minute
update during the Mayor’s meeting once per month. We speak during Oral
Communications and during any biking/walking project agenda items during City Council
meetings, but this is not requested by the Council. There have been several projects voted on
in the last year which I would have thought should have prompted more questions to the
Commission from the Council but did not. (Only recently have I received questions about a
project from one newly elected City Councilmember). In general, it is difficult to tell
whether the opinions from commissioners—who have thoroughly studied the details and
impacts of a particular project for all of Cupertino—carry any more weight than individual
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homeowners who are representing only themselves. Regarding Staff communication, as a
commission we could use more information on progress and more input into decisions
made by staff. This would enhance our work, especially as advocates for Bicycle and
Pedestrian projects.
Information on the progress of projects is improving. Recently, I requested an ongoing
monthly update using a spreadsheet on all the Bike/Ped projects currently in progress,
which is now reviewed at each BPC meeting. This has improved communication, but it is
still sometimes necessary to ask direct questions to Staff to get an update on certain projects
(“When is design expected to be completed for that Bike Boulevard?”) before an update is
given. The City Staff have also implemented email updates on progress on the Regnart
Creek Trail and the Junipero Serra Trail. These not only help the residents but also help our
commission visualize the progress on the many projects. Unfortunately, much of the other
work by Staff is done without any input from the Commission, including new forecasted
dates on construction, upcoming dates for requests for funding, newly scheduled public
meetings (and locations/dates for those meetings), and other items that would be useful for
us to know or advise on in our advocacy efforts. Oftentimes, we find out about these things
through secondhand conversation, when an update is posted to the website, or when it is
mentioned in a commission meeting only a few days before the event. One other note: our
Staff Liaison does not regularly meet with the Chair of our commission, but the Chair has to
request/schedule a meeting. It would be helpful if this happened at least monthly, to set the
agenda and for the Chair to be fully informed about all current decisions and progress on
Bike/Ped issues by the City Staff.
Disaster Council
• Commission Liaison
We currently don’t or have we had a communication path to the City Council. Cupertino’s
emergency organization should have a reporting mechanism updating the issues, work plan
updates etc.
Fine Arts Commission
• I certainly feel communication between commissioners and council members should be
improved via formal and informal meetings.
• Nothing to add at this time.
Housing Commission
• I do not feel like the Housing Commission advises City Council sufficiently. Aside from the
recommendations we make in meeting, there is little direct communication with
Councilmembers. We have the monthly Mayor’s meeting, but only the Chair has attended
these meetings. Kerri Heusler, our commission’s staff, has been easy to reach and
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communicate with.
• Communicate sufficiently with Council? I understand that the Housing Commission Chair
has a meeting with the Mayor once a month. I understand that it is a group meeting with
the other 9 Commission Chairs. Does it include the six committees? If this is a one-hour or
ninety minute meeting to let the Commissioners/Committees update the group on key
issues that is likely enough time to allow information to flow properly. The Mayor can
request a follow-on meeting of the group, if necessary. Chairs could be given time limits to
help stay on point and on time.
1. I am assuming the Chair can ask for additional time for a one-on-one meeting, if
necessary, to provide extra information.
2. I understand the Housing Commission contacts the staff via its own staff
Advisor. It seems that would be fine. The Advisor could set up direct lines of
communication with other staff members for special projects. Also, we are not authorized to
direct the staff. Can go through the City Manager, if budget is needed.
• Commission Liaison
The Chair attends the Mayor’s monthly meeting to provide an update on Housing
Commission activities. The Chair reports back to the Housing Commission during the
Commission Reports agenda item at each meeting. If the Chair is unavailable, they will
make arrangement with another Commissioner to attend on their behalf. Attendance at the
monthly meeting provides an open line of communication between the Commission and
City Council. Staff is available to assist Commissioners regularly with any items.
Library Commission
• I’m new to the position, yet have enough experience to comments on this item.
• Those are two different questions.
3a) No—but the primary reason for this lack of communication is that the City Council
routinely fails to consult with the Library Commissions to request and acquire advice. In
recent years the Council often has not acknowledged communications from the
Commission, or some individual members have responded by not as an official
communication of the Council. It has been my impression that the many proactive and
regular communications from the
Library Commission to the City Council—reports of Work Plan, in person reporting at City
Council Meetings, the distribution of awards, and reports of Work Plan accomplishments—
have been viewed as ceremonial. In contrast, contentious issues of great community interest
and impact have not been referred to the Library Commission. It has been my impression
that city staff have independently managed those issues and have excluded and minimized
the ability of the Library Commission to be informed and to participate.
3b) Yes—I’d suggest starting with a simple customer satisfaction metric, similar to the
automated questions used by many companies with extensive customer service staff:
Did we meet your needs? Was our representative knowledgeable, professional, helpful, and
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courteous? Are we keeping our commitments? Assuming the city staff are expected to
provide a service to the Commission, routinely asking if the Commission is satisfied with
the service being provided would generate direct measurements instantaneously and also
gradually build a picture of such interactions over time.
• In my experience, commissioners are comfortable sharing ideas related to process and work
product with staff and Council Members.
• I don't think the current level of communication with Council is sufficient. The most regular
time for communication with the Mayor happens once every month and each commissioner
can only speak for a few minutes since there are 10+ commissions. Further, in Mayor
Meetings, it is only the Mayor who is present, so we can’t really talk to the other council
members on a regular basis. I don’t know if we can set up regular times with Councils
because they are already busy. But I do think it will be great if we know they will be
available for us when something happens and when we need them. So it can either be a
regular quarterly meeting, or each Council member might be able to come to our
Commission meeting once every year, something like that.
• Commissioners takes turn to attend Mayor’s meeting and if necessary, we can make
appointment to meet with councilmembers. Staff attends all commission meetings. The
communication channel is open.
Parks & Recreation Commission
• Communications could be improved. A monthly report could be prepared. But given
meetings are only monthly, not sure how this would be any different than if Council read
the minutes of the meetings.
• Still learning. No comments
• I do feel that the only time we interact with council is when we attend the Mayor’s Meetings
or attend a council meeting when one of Parks & Rec’s items are on the agenda. I feel like
we can sufficiently advise council because staff is very thorough and many of on
commission have many years of experience in the community with various issues. If we
don’t think that we have enough information we will request more and/or postpone
advising until we feel we can make an informed decision. I feel we have very good
interaction and communication with staff. Many of us see staff on a daily basis in our
regular interactions in the community. We also attend many of Parks & Recreation events
which also enable us to interact with staff. I personally feel we have a very good working
relationship with Parks & Rec staff.
• Not really. The communication from commissioners is only through very few standard
process
– Mayor’s meeting and yearly work plan update which is not sufficient at all – this is based
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on my experience through Library commission. More frequent (Quarterly) update to the
City council (standard template for all the commissions highlighting accomplishment,
challenges and asks) is necessary. Commissioner’s communications with city staff could also
very well improved as the current communication is mostly administrative. While this
helps, it is not clear on who makes the call on some of the budget asks and decisions etc.
within the city. Just to get plugged into those process to understand the actions would
certainly help the commissioners to be much more effective… for example, no idea how the
budget allocation for the commission is happening and how the spent is tracked on a
monthly basis etc.
• Commission Liaison
For items that are more important, I think the Commission could benefit by providing more
written advice.
Planning Commission
• Many of the matters that come before the PC go to the Council. Communication with
Council is limited and I feel that that is generally fine given the desire for an unbiased view
of any specific element being reviewed by the PC. The PC communicates well with staff
through multiple means.
• It is really unclear what we can ask staff to do. I need particular, reasonable data to make
decisions and want to ask for it at will.
• With Councilmembers: Yes, there is enough communication.
- Proactive Councilmembers sometimes sit in on commission meetings just to listen,
and this helps.
- Sometimes Councilmembers will call me for clarification, and this also helps.
- Councilmembers have sometimes called smaller meetings (through the City Manager)
to discuss an issue informally and in more detail.
- I have sometimes asked a councilmember to meet over coffee to discuss an issue one on one.
- I also make it a point to attend public events, where there are often opportunities to
chat one-on-one with Councilmembers in an informal setting.
(I also make it a point to frequently attend meetings, drop-in sessions, or have one-on-one
coffees with County supervisors, and State legislators, and/or members of congress.)
Therefore, I don't think we need to change any procedures - it's up to individual
Councilmembers and Commissioners to avail themselves of the communication
opportunities that already exist (always, of course, complying with the Brown Act).
With Staff:
Staff have worked on communication by holding informal workshops events, or field trips -
sometimes open to the public, sometimes not. A good staff person will do this often.
I have worked on communication by calling staff members, and sometimes they invite me
stopping by for a one-on-one or small group meeting.
As with Councilmembers, both staff and appointees on a commission have to work on
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communication - but again, I don't think there is a need for any change in procedures. Good
staff and good commissioners do this anyway.
• This is two different questions.
Communications with Council has traditionally been through the staff liaison and
department structure. This has worked fine for me in Planning and Parks & Rec. I think
these more formal commissions have better communication than the others, due to the
meeting content. I have heard from some of those serving on other commissions that they
don’t feel there is a clear connection to the Council, and I’ve similarly heard
Councilmembers say they have little visibility into the commissions.
Commissioner communications with staff have been exemplary. I think the staff liaisons
have done a great job across the board being available and supportive. The only issue is that
different liaisons see the role of work plan development differently, where some are clearly
transmitting Commission ideas up the decision chain, while others may block further
consideration.
Public Safety Commission
• I feel Commissioners should be able to communicate and discuss with the council members
more frequently.
• Commissioners do not advise Councilmembers as designed. There is a large gap in
communication. We need to find out what will make the Council value commissions more
and set up a more direct official communication channel for us to know what are areas that
we could provide insight on.
• I think there is a protocol to communicate with the council members. Well more time would
always be useful given the agenda items. I think it will be useful to get email
communications on the result of the meeting with council members and what agenda items
are being followed. Sometimes some items fall through and we lose track of it unless it is
brought up over and again
• Currently the only way of communications to the council is through our city staff liaison
and they will bring questions and feedback to the city manager in the weekly staff meetings.
Other than that is the monthly mayor’s meeting that originally was an informal meeting
with representatives from all commissions to give a brief report on current work items and
thoughts or ask questions. The general idea of a mayor being briefed is great but in reality
the time is at one of the most inconvenient hours due to daily life and personal schedules
and the lack of parking at the library since we do not have city parking lot passes. I do like
the suggested written brief as an alternative.
• We communicate with staff who advise the city manager, whom then advice the Council;
very lengthy process and key points may be lost with a 3 party communications. Ideally, we
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should have Council instead of city staff attending our meeting, but that place lots of burden
on the Council. We had Council / Mayor attended our meetings in the past, and
communication is significantly improved as its direct and clear.
Sustainability Commission
• Our Councilmembers and staff are very approachable, responsive, and supportive of
commissioners and general public. I strong feel the current communication process,
including emails, phone calls, is sufficient.
• I do feel disconnected from the council deliberations. On many topics, such as the essay
contest, we operated independently.
• I do not feel that commissioners communicate with councilmembers sufficiently to advise
them. I think that commissioners' communications with staff is sufficient.
• Yes, but we meet infrequently compared to council. The progress on our topics is not as fast
paced. For this reason they may not always be a need to communicate with council on a
monthly basis. We as a commission need to do more.
Teen Commission
• Currently I feel that more contact with Councilmembers is needed as both parties are only
vaguely aware of the other’s plans and goals. I feel it could be improved, through either
written summaries of things the Council would like us to know or having meetings where a
Councilmember attends.
• I feel the commissioner can communicate more with the Councilmembers to sufficiently
advise the Council. I think communications with staff can be improved by having staff at
some meetings to help staff understand what we as a Commission are trying to accomplish
with this event.
• Yes, I feel that Teen Commissioners communicate with the Councilmembers sufficiently to
advise them whenever we feel that we have an insight to provide that would serve the
Council well in their decision making process. I don’t know of anything specific that could
be done to improve communication with staff - our current communication with our staff
liaison is adequate for our needs.
• I feel that the commission communicates sufficiently with the Council. I feel that our
communications with staff could be improved by talking more with staff that are not
specifically oriented towards youth programs. For example, we could communicate more
often with other commissions’ staff liaisons.
• No, I don’t think that we communicate with the Councilmembers sufficiently to advise the
council. While the president of the Teen Commission does go to the mayor meetings each
month, I do not think this is sufficient enough for our ideas to be reached out properly to the
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council. I think that the Commissioners’ communications with staff could be improved by
having each commission fill out a form after each meeting with requests or updates for the
council or have more commissioners participate in the mayor meetings.
• I think that we do effectively communicate with council. But, I still think that the update
reports that was asked about in question 12 is a good idea and would improve
communication even further.
• I think the commission communicates fairly with mayors meetings and do not see need for
improvement at the moment.
Technology Information & Communications Commission
• As the new member, I have not had experience interacting with council members yet. I
would like to see staff and commissioners keep the regular and frequent communication
established and practiced. With public policies derived from public requests, comments and
opinions, not all ideas can materialize in a timely fashion also equitably.
Given TICC’s core function is technology, TICC should lead by example of conducting
public business more efficiently and really shed the public perception that governments are
slow.
• No, the commissioners’ communication w/ council is not sufficient. We have had a great
relationship with staff.
• Currently there is not direct interaction with the Council. However, there are monthly
Mayor update meetings where commissions update the Mayor. This meeting is usually a
quick update format with each commission having approximately 5 to 10 minutes to
update. It will be a good idea if individual commissions are able to meet with the Mayor
and the Council on a periodic basis. On the other hand, TICC has good communication with
the city staff through our Liaison and is very efficient. We are thankful to Bill for the Liaison.
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4) This year, per decision of the prior Council, all Commissions will submit ideas regarding
their annual work program to their respective City departments. The City departments
will then develop their proposed work program, including Commission items, for
Council consideration. Once Council adopts the final work program, the items pertaining
to each Commission will serve as priority elements of their respective work programs.
What do you think of this new process of approving work programs by City Council?
Anything to improve?
Audit Committee
• On a high level of setting priorities, this approach makes perfect sense to me. On the other
hand, the Audit Committee is a hybrid type of Commission in a number of ways including
for example
1) having two Council members on the five member Committee; 2) Both municipal code
and prior City Council resolutions and actions have assigned operational approvals of
various city staff reports to the Committee; and 3) As part of the municipal code
prescription that the Committee review the audited financial statements and independent
CPA audit reports often it is expected that the Committee have a wide range of discretion in
completing its operational functions. Accordingly as to the Audit Committee I would
suggest including a footnote clarification that it is expected and in fact part of its mission
that the Audit Committee would explore any and all avenues of relevant inquiry and
activity, regardless of beginning of year approvals, in order to accomplish its assigned
operational responsibilities.
Bike Ped Commission
• I think this is a good process improvement, and will work well for the Bicycle Pedestrian
Commission, as we are working primarily on longer term projects. These improvements will
provide clarity and focus throughout the year. For Commissions with more shorter term
time horizons, there needs to be a way to include new items during the course of the year.
• It seems still a little unclear how this process will work. I imagine we will learn more as this
progresses. To have a general agreement on the work plan for a commission does not seem
unreasonable. I would think, however, that one would want to give the commissions some
independence to advise the city council and city staff outside this work plan. Seems right
that the commissions should be able to give unsolicited advice the city council and city staff.
• Our current work program is very high-level and only pertains to the goals of the
commission itself, not the work done by the City Transportation Staff. Using the new
process would allow Staff and Commissioners to partner together and use our limited
resources more wisely to effect the most useful changes. As an additional benefit, it would
improve communication with the City Council regarding our Bike/Ped projects. It would
definitely require us to change our mindset on how we formulate our workplan, but I
would welcome this change.
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Disaster Council
• Commission Liaison
Yes it would be great to have some input on the Councils work plan for our
department…where did COOP come with?
Fine Arts Commission
• I certainly feel communication between commissioners and council members should be
improved via formal and informal meetings.
• Nothing to add at this time.
Housing Commission
• This new process is a good idea. I would also add that, if possible, members of the public
should be encouraged to contact Commissioners if they have any ideas for the work plan.
Any ideas that the Commissioners would like to work on can be passed on.
• All Commissions will submit ideas regarding the annual work program to the City
Departments? Yes , this sounds good. Does this change the current annual submission in
some way? Is Commission input now provided directly to Councilmembers? I attended the
priorities setting meeting on Feb 2 as a private resident , but I do not recall that the ideas on
the “Work Plan List” were identified as comung from Commissions or City Departments.
Residents provided ideas at the meeting.
1. If there is no method now for submission of work ideas from the Commissions this
is one good way. It will give Staff time to estimate the time required of Staff to complete the
work item. It appears this may streamline the process, if currently the ideas go through the
Council and then to the City Staff.
• Commission Liaison
Annual Housing Commission items:
Housing and Human Services Grant Funding Allocations (BMR Affordable Housing Fund,
CDBG, General Fund Human Services Grant)
CDBG Action Plan
CDBG CAPER
Library Commission
• Personally I think this is very in-efficient way of conduct business for the city. Any good
ideas that missed the initial deadline have to wait until next year to be implemented.
Commissioner should have certain flexibility to do their work.
• I’m agnostic. Recently the Library Commission reviewed and revised its Work Plan to be in
line with the City Council’s top level Plan and stated priority objectives. I found many of the
top level objectives so broad; transparency, effective use of resources, public outreach; it was
easy to align broad objectives of the Commission with them. I have yet to see a specific
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direction on a specific project from the Council to the Library Commission, so have no basis
to judge how this will work. It may improve engagement—as the Commission feels they
have been empowered and consulted, and the establishment of specific objectives and
reporting procedures improves communication.
• I do not understand the process as it is described in question 4. I would expect Council to set
its work plan during its priority setting workshop in January/February. Then, commissions
set their work plans based on the priorities set by Council and from input gathered from the
community and shared by staff. Finally, commissions present their work plans to Council
and get to work to complete the work plan items. While it is important to have a thoughtful,
integrated process for developing work plans, it is also important not to spend so much time
on the planning that there’s too little time left to complete the work objectives.
• I agree with this plan but have a few things to clarify. First, it seems that there is only a
small window (something like between December and January) when Commissions can
submit ideas for consideration. Therefore, for new ideas which are brought during the year
will have to wait for next year for adoption. This may hinder some great ideas to be
implemented in time. However, what I don't understand is what constitutes new ideas. For
example, assume the Library Survey will happen in June, and we only come to the idea in
April that we should let more people know about the survey, and incentivize more
participants to join the survey. So the new idea is to put down let’s say $300 dollars as
incentives and marketing budget, but this is not part of our original work program. So does
it mean we have to wait until maybe another two to three years to implement this? ( since
the survey only happens once every two or three years) Second, I wanted to understand
more about how long the process will be. If I’m given a guideline as to how long each step
will take, I will feel much more comfortable knowing that the Council will approve, or give
revisions in the next two weeks, instead of two months.
• I would like to see more flexibility in allowing Commissions to make adjustments or
prioritize certain tasks that come up and demand an urgent response. Having to wait until
the following ye ar would not be optimal in certain instances.
• In the past, each commission has quite a bit freedom to develop unique work program and
carry them out. While commission does need supervise from the council, it would waste
councilmembers’ time if micro management is involved.
Parks & Recreation Commission
• Commissions have historically given an annual work plan presentation to Council. Council
was free to ask questions, provide guidance, and redirect effort. The timing and formality of
this new process seems very cumbersome and exceedingly lengthy. It seems that it will take
at least 1 – 2 years for a new area of interest to be proposed by a resident or Commission,
incorporated into the following year’s Council work plan, then agendized into the
Commission work plan, before it can then come back to Council for feedback and Council
approval. By the time this all happens, commissioners and Council members may not even
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be on the Commission or Council to see the item through to implementation. Any new
process needs to allow items to be agendized for Commission meetings for public input and
review of options without having to have a full Council review a year ahead of time.
• Hope the process can be more flexible and more efficient
• I actually like this improvement. We have often not understood why we created our
workplan in August and synching up with council and the other commissions makes sense.
• As mentioned in the commission meeting, from the high level this process seems to be a top-
down approach of city council setting the specific work plan items and expect the
commissions to just execute. If this is the case, this simply nullifies the freedom the
commission has today and imposes lots of constraints. I would like to see that City enforces
that every work plan item to be connected or correlated to the city’s vision/mission goals
and provide a boundary to operate. Commissions should operate within those boundaries
but have the freedom to connect with the community members to serve for their best
interest but align it to one of those city goals (ex. Operational efficiency, community
outreach etc.) Approval of every work plan items for every commission is not what I want
our city council to do. Rather trust the commissioners who joined the commissions with an
intent to use their skills and experience for the benefit of our community… let’ not curtail
them.
• Commission Liaison
A great improvement to get everyone on the same timeline and schedule, coordinated with
budget.
Planning Commission
• No. (nothing to improve)
• We were not told to prioritize and now I’m hearing we cant prioritize on March 12’s
meeting. Seems our chair can agendize it? Why not?
• I think this is a bad idea. Staff and commissions should do develop commission work
programs together during a public meeting. My concern with the procedure described
above is that if the final version of the work plan is left up to the staff, council members who
do not understand the limits of own roles may look over the staff's shoulders and essentially
bypass the commissions.
• This isn’t a change for Planning or Parks & Rec but may be somewhat different for some of
the other commissions. The past and proposed models both limit the scope of what the
Commissions may pursue, which can be an issue. But the Commission’s interests need to be
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reconciled with the staff bandwidth (particularly a problem for Planning), and using the
proposed model is probably the best resolution.
Public Safety Commission
• That is a great idea. It will help improve the process and we will be able to focus on
important prioritized tasks.
• Set and communicate dates on when the proposed program is being evaluated, will be
finalized by, and give direct feedback from Council (with names of which councilmember
made which suggestion) to city liaison to us and vice versa from commission to Council, to
eliminate vagueness.
• It is a great way of structuring Commission’s work to prioritize, strategize and deliver on
the goals. It would also be good to keep items of lower priority that are not considered for
this years work so that if something on the main list has to abandoned/aborted for some
unpredicted reason, the back burner list comes into play
• First off the idea sounds great but I think having to wait for an approval by council will
limit what our commission (PSC) can accomplish throughout the year. We currently focus
on education and outreach and have presented 2 large forums per year for the last 7 yrs.
which have historically ranged in 40 -150 people attending and understand that these need
some kind of approval due to budget allocations and spending as well as reservation of
room and planning if it will be catered or not and lining up presenters and topics.
What would be the limiting factor is that we hear from people throughout the year in
regards to concerns that span a wide range of topics and we currently try to address these as
quickly and thorough as possible but these are dynamic situations and spontaneous and my
concern is if they are not included in the presented work plan we might not have an
approval in time to develop a plan.
Perhaps in such a spontaneous event the city manager can review the proposal and expedite
an approval.
I do feel that the council should be fully aware of our work plan no matter what.
• Good intention but time consuming. 6 months may be lapsed when it is done
Sustainability Commission
• I think the formalized process can help to structure the commissions’ work progress (and
meetings) and measure the work outcome of the various commissions.
I suggest that Staff set up the basic work plan with essential businesses of each commission
included, then allow commissioners to provide additional items for commissioners ( of their
respective commission) to discuss and vote on.
• In general I think it is a good idea, but often issues come up do to unanticipated events. We
will have to see how this works out.
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• Excellent idea!
• I think it is good. Also I know that if there are additional items that need to go into the work
plan. Then we can go through city staff and council to get those additions.
Teen Commission
• Overall this new process of approving work programs seems to infringe on each
commission’s autonomy as this process requires a middle man to communicate each
commission’s goals which could lead to the watering down or misinterpretation of their
ideas.
• I think this process is not beneficial to the Teen Commission because our terms are different
than the other Commissions’ terms. The process does not allow us to put input in the
Council’s work plan, until more than halfway through our term.
• I think the new process is fine in order to tie goals together among multiple different
commissions, but it feels a little too restrictive with the compartmentalization of goals into
separate categories. I don’t think that’s too big of a deal as most of our goals do happen to
fall into those categories even if it’s a vague attachment.
• I think the new process of approving work items will create a somewhat more coherent plan
for the city as a whole, but I fear that some items will be lost in translation, and
misinterpreted, or discarded without public or commission input. I also worry that, by
virtue of approving or vetoing large blocks of items as a whole, there is not enough room for
nuance. Allowing commissions a review period of their specific larger work plan would
perhaps mitigate these impacts.
• I think that this new process of approving work programs is very good because it would
allow the commissions to share the same goal and be able to support the City Council better.
However, regardless of the new goals of the City Council, each individual commission
should be able to approve their work plans themselves. I do not think it is necessary for the
Council to approve them; each commission should know best about the items that would
help the community and make decisions accordingly.
• I think that although this may help keep the commissions in sync with the goals of the
council, it may inhibit important changes that the individual commissions may want to
make just because the City Council doesn't want those changes to occur. I feel that this
might give the council too much power over the goals and actions of individual
commissions.
• I think this is a fair method to develop work programs. I think work plans should have a
hard due date to quicken the process.
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Technology Information & Communications Commission
• It’s certainly a good idea to gather inputs from commissions and bubble them up to Council
for consideration. One thing that is required is transparency of progress and publishing how
things affect fiscally to city and residents. Commissions’ and council’s decisions should be
backed up by the reasoning.
• It’s an improvement. Some direction from council might be helpful.
• This only makes sense and I am glad the Council will play more active role in setting and
approving the work item priorities. I believe this will help final outcomes of the
commissions’ efforts reflect the city’s future direction more accurately.
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5) What do you think of the current process, if any, of setting your regular meeting agendas?
Does any member of your Commission meet with a staff member to set meeting agendas?
How do you wish to improve the current process of determining how items are placed on
your agenda? For instance, would you prefer a system where items that require minimal
city staff resources but are not on your annual work plan can be included on a regular
meeting agenda?
Audit Committee
• Committee typically will build on a schedule of activities driven by operational necessity
depending on the time of the year. For example, the Committee typically will review the
audited financial statements of the City’s previous fiscal year in meetings during the first six
months of the following fiscal year. Similarly each quarterly meeting will involve the review
and approval of the quarterly Treasurer’s reports prior to the Treasurer releasing the reports
to City Council all on a regulatory prescribed schedule. Typically the chair of the Audit
Committee will meet (in- person or by phone) with Zach Korach in advance of each meeting
to confirm agenda items. Often the Audit Committee will have outside professional
consultants, experts or contractors invited to a particular meeting so the timing and items to
be covered also often are on a tightly timed schedule. Current process includes opportunity
for Committee members to send suggestions to the Chair or staff liaison (Zach Korach) who
in joint collaboration will set the agenda for a particular meeting. This process has been
working well since the Committee has a number of operational actions that need to be
accomplished. To be honest, I am not sure I understand this question? The Audit Committee
typically has had to call a number of special meetings in a given year because of the
operational demands mentioned above (municipal code and City Council Resolutions
assigning specific tasks to the Committee) in order to meet the major operational tasks
assigned to the Committee. Typically each of those items require more than minimal city
staff involvement, for example preparation of the Treasurer’s reports, review of the CAFR
and management letter, implementation of the various investment policy statements over
OPEB and Pension and city cash inflows and outflows. Adding additional agenda items, I
would suggest need to go through careful advance consideration to ensure 1) Audit
Committee has sufficient time to complete the operational tasks already assigned to it; and
2) proper authority has been evaluated as to why and who adds items to the Audit
Committee for its consideration since typically that will involve more than minimal staff
time investigating the various answers to the questions raised from Committee members.
On the other hand, as I had mentioned in an answer to above previous question, it is very
important that the Audit Committee be given wide latitude in exploring avenues of
questioning in order for the Committee to complete its various operational responsibilities.
Some of those questions could involve minimal staff resources in the beginning but could
turn into more substantial projects as the answers unfold.
Bike Ped Commission
• The interaction with our staff Liaison has been very open, and has always been open for our
input on agenda items. No concerns here.
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• I believe the current process is that the chair and the city staff representative are setting the
agenda, though many items originate from the city staff so in this process the city staff
person may be more active. I am hoping the chair is solidly involved in this process though,
if not the chair should be. That said, there needs to be a path to get an item on the agenda
that is not checked by the chair and/or the city staff person. For this purpose we should
really have a standing item on each commission’s agenda where the commission decides on
items to be put on next meeting’s agenda, outside the exclusive control of chair and/or the
city staff person. Would be good to add such a standing item to the commissions’ agendas.
• Our current process is functional, but it’s not really optimized. I would prefer that we can
add items to our agenda at the prior meeting, and have “Future Agenda Items” and/or
“Mayor’s Meeting Report” on the agenda as a standing items (I was told we could not have
these currently because they are not a ‘standard’ agenda item). It would also be helpful for
the Staff Liaison to meet with the Chair on a regular monthly basis to set the agenda, which
is not currently happening. Having the flexibility to have unique standing agenda items,
seems like it would be helpful for other commissions, too. I have not had issues scheduling
anything on our agenda.
Disaster Council
• Commission Liaison
Agendas and development of the agenda works well. Council is comprised by staff
members. Agenda development works well.
Fine Arts Commission
• I think current process of setting agenda is working out well. I don’t think any changes are
required for Fine Arts Committee.
• Generally, Chair and Staff work together to build meeting agendas. Some agenda items
arise during regular meetings and are noted for next regular meeting. For instance, would
you prefer a system where items that require minimal city staff resources but are not on
your annual work plan can be included on a regular meeting agenda? No opinion.
Housing Commission
• The current process is not very transparent on our end. To my knowledge, staff does not
meet with any Commissioners to set meeting agendas. Given that a significant number of
Housing Commission meetings are cancelled each year due to lack of agenda items, I would
recommend that staff identify meetings that lack agenda items or have space for additional
agenda items. For these meetings, the Commissioners should be able to propose agenda
items as long as they do not require significant staff resources.
• Setting monthly agendas: I understand that our work program comes from the Council
through the City Departments to our Commission. Our Feb 14, 2019 agenda format did not
include a topic for discussing other possible work items, although I was advised that we
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will be discussing work items at a future meeting. I would like to add a regular agenda item
for discussing possibilities. These ideas would not necessarily be agreed upon, but would
provide opportunity to discuss. Yes, I like the survey idea of a “system where items that
require minimal city staff resources but are not on our annual work plan can be included on
a regular meeting agenda.”
• Commission Liaison
Currently, staff sets the agenda for Housing Commission. In addition to our annual items,
staff regularly schedules presentations on current public hearing items such as ADU
Ordinance Updates, RHNA Subregion, and the BMR Manual Update.
Library Commission
• Since I’m a new commissioner, I yet have experience regarding how to set up meeting
agendas. But on the other hand, I do think we should have a system that we can add
meeting agenda to discuss items that not on annual work plan to improve efficiency. We
should define what is “minimal city staff resources “means.
• Many included questions. Generally, I was happy with the setting of agendas in the past, as
we planned the outlines of the next meeting at the conclusion of each meeting.
Subsequently, this could be marginally modified at need by the Chair with the support of
the City Liaison. Recently the agenda has, instead, been developed by the Chair in
consultation with the City Liaison and I have felt my requests and suggestions as a
Commissioner—to the Chair and to the City Liaison— have been routinely overlooked.
Also, items the Commission discussed and earmarked for future meetings have, instead,
been forgotten. Overall I feel the good will and sincere public spirit of the volunteer
Commissioners is best served by flexibility in the setting of agendas and not a rigid
adherence to any particular procedure. If the Chair solicits and is receptive of input and the
agenda is established in good time, that’s enough.
• In the past, the Chair has worked with staff to prioritize agenda items and remove proposed
agenda items, if needed. As of January 2019 the Library Commission has two new staff
members who support it, and I am not sure how much input the Chair has been able to offer
regarding agenda items (which ones and in what sequence). My preference is for a
productive partnership between the Chair and staff to set agendas with items that are
closely integrated with the commission’s work plan/scope.
• So what happened in 2018 when I was the Chair was that I did meet with the city staff a
couple of times to set up the meeting agenda. But in reality, most of the times, it was
communication over the phone, which I think worked out perfectly. What I think was not
clear at the beginning was that we didn’t really give the other Commissioners chances to
add more agenda items. Then after I told them they can add agenda items, they started
sending me emails before I spoke with the city staff every month. In general, I do think
whatever procedure it is, we should collect ideas from all parties before we finalize the
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agenda. For the last question, I wouldn’t mind it become a regular meeting agenda.
• It is very efficient to set our regular meeting agendas right now. Chair exchange the emails
with staff to set meeting agendas. Current, it takes less than 2 months to get a new item on
the agenda （if the public raise a concern the day after we have the current month meeting,
the item will be added on next month meeting, which is less than two month）. Urgent
issue currently can be address using the public oral communication, though it limited to 3
minutes. Yes, we would welcome to have freedom adding new items to regular meeting
agenda if taking staff minimum resource and only when it is important.
Parks & Recreation Commission
• When I was Chair of the P&R Commission, I regularly met with the Director of P&R to
finalize the monthly agenda. The work plan was reviewed at every meeting to ensure the
Commissioners were aware of upcoming agenda items. Absolutely need flexibility in the
Commission agendas to review items not on the formal work plan! Given the proposed
plan, how will ‘minimal city staff resources’ be determined?
• Yes. I support to have more options. Current process looks ok. But I am not sure what will
happen if there’re some controversial issues.
• Current process works OK. We set our work plan but also understand this is fluid
depending on status of items, etc. Chair usually meets with director to look over agenda
before the meetings. Yes to the last question.
• Typically Chair works with the city staff to set the agenda. City staff asks the commissioners
to send possibly agenda items to him/her which typically gets discussed with the Chair to
finalize. Given that we run over those 2 hours most of the time, any agenda item which gets
included by the city staff even though the resources requirement might be minimal, will
extend the meeting times… I like to understand what those items require minimal city staff
resources?
• Commission Liaison
The past few Chairs have met with me prior to setting the agenda. The current Chair travels
extensively and we don’t generally meet prior. However, we communicate electronically
and the Chair approves the final agenda. We would all benefit from a process to determine
how items get on agendas. It’s not very clear. The work plan is more or less a list of agenda
items to work on. This works very well for this commission. However, as things come up,
the remaining work plan items are malleable. Additional items are often added that are not
on the work plan as requested by staff, community or commissioners.
Planning Commission
• For the PC, the agenda is driven by the need to review elements as defined by the City
Ordinance as well as projects where there is probable contention and thus the need for a
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public meeting is needed. Does any member of your Commission meet with a staff member
to set meeting agendas? Not to my knowledge.
• There is no definition of use of staff resources being “minimal.” How do we know what our
fellow commissioners have tasked staff?!
• The agenda is staff's role. If individual commissioners meet with individual staff members
to place items on the agenda, the result would be chaos at worst, or long meetings at best.
Agenda items are best placed on the agenda through the annual work program process,
regularly scheduled annual events/reports, or project-related issues encountered by staff.
A commissioner must learn to be patient. Commissioners who want to place an item on the
agenda and missed the annual work program process can use the time until the next work
program cycle to do more research and conduct individual meetings to build support (all
within the Brown Act, of course).
• This was the responsibility of the chair when I was in Parks & Rec and this worked
effectively. The staff liaison was always responsive to requests from the Chair (and other
commissioners) about considering agendizing items, with the proviso being that there was
sufficient time for the staff to prepare an agenda item before the agenda was published.
Given the more restrictive approval method being proposed, I find this question odd since
the commissioners are not well situated to be able to tell what the staff demands are of any
particular topic.
Public Safety Commission
• In my opinion, the current process is fine.
• Current process is okay; maybe add a section for city liaison to share council communication
items to be more intentional.
• Are you implying a planning tool and a tracking tool? I dint quite understand this.
• Currently if an item is approved through a discussion to be added to the agenda we request
staff to present to city manager for final decision if we can proceed or not. I think the current
method of a discussion of any proposal is working fine and allows us to ask questions and
take a vote if the proposed item should be added to agenda as a new item. Working with
our liaisons has been a painless experience and if we were able to go through them to ask
for an approval of a spontaneous work item and I would like to see this continue in the
future since it gives us the ability to address and react quickly as needed.
• Our practice is one Commissioner can recommend a new item, and it can be added if we
have a second from another Commissioner; but Chair / City staff can veto the new item.
Sometimes, city staff introduce new items without following this general guideline, which
added unforeseen effects on the meeting. I prefer to continue our current practice, provided
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the city staff should also follow the same practice.
Sustainability Commission
• Our staff has been very supportive of each commissioner’s desire to report/discuss/support
sustainability related activities and actions. To ensure compliance with brown act
requirements, I usually communicate my item with staff only; staffs will propose
actions/process to address the item. It worked great for our commission.
• I think the development of the agenda is fine. How off-agenda items work out is somewhat
capricious.
• Our staff liaison primarily sets the agenda, especially the new business items. I am fine with
this as she is the most familiar with items of interest to the commission and of happenings
locally and regionally. I believe any commissioner, with consultation of the staff liaison, can
also place items on the agenda as desired. Also, our staff liaison is very mindful of including
items for subsequent meetings during the current meeting at the request of a commissioner.
Yes, I would like items to be included on our agenda that require minimal staff resources
and are not on our annual work plan either.
• I would like to not give more to city staff. I think our agenda should highlight what the city
staff is having to do, and updates from city staff. It should be driven by the workplan and
staff.
Teen Commission
• Our system serves us quite well as we often already have items that need to be continued at
the end of each meeting. Whenever we want items to be on the agenda we email our liaison
who contacts our chair and vice chair for approval of the new item.
• I would prefer a system where items that require minimal staff resources but are not on
your annual work plan can be included on a regular meeting agenda because sometimes we
come up with ideas in the middle of the year that require minimal staff that we would like to
pursue.
• I think our current process of setting regular meeting agendas works well for us. We can
email our staff liaison if we have something that we would like to add to a certain meeting’s
agenda, and the agenda is emailed out to us as a PDF a few days before the meeting for
prior review. I would prefer a system where items that require minimal city staff resources
but are not on our annual work plan can be included on a regular meeting agenda, as that
would allow more freedom.
• I think our current process of setting meeting agendas sets a good balance between
informing the public and including particular items that the public or commission want.
Currently, any member of the commission or public an email our liaison with an agenda
item for the soonest meeting, provide it is not within three days. I would prefer that this
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system, including items that are not on our official work plan, remains in place.
• I think the current process of setting our regular meeting agendas works very well. Our staff
liaison looks at the action items from last meeting and creates the new agenda accordingly.
He also takes time to provide the agenda as early as possible for the commissioners and asks
us if there is anything we would like to add on the agenda. This allows the teen
commissioners to be prepared for each meeting and come up with new ideas for our items.
• I think the way we set meeting agendas is good right now.
• To create schedules, a member must contact our staff liason, Daniel Mestizo. I think we have
a good system of including parts of our work plan and small quick fix to do list items onto
our agendas.
Technology Information & Communications Commission
• I would like to have this communication model established to deliberate on the agenda,
change course as needed for improved delivery of service to public. In this regard,
continuous communication with staff is imperative while maintaining the rules of order.
While monthly meetings are good to take up bigger agenda items, smaller ones may not
require as much locked time. Of course that depends on the item itself and staff and
commissions can collectively decide or if required, make a blind vote to determine that.
• Staff helps with the agenda. We’ve had great staff support.
• Items to be discussed and/or placed on the agenda are brought up during the Oral
Communications phase of the meeting at designated time currently. Also, during the
proceedings of the agenda if any open issue surfaces that is determined by the commission
to require separate consideration, those are placed in the action items and, if qualifying
enough, in the future agenda. Since the TICC has the city Liaison attending the meetings we
could directly interact and determine any future agenda items. I believe this is already ideal
at least for the TICC.
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6) With regard to the quality of your discussions, would you say that your conclusions are
arrived at through a collaborative and input‐based process or something more pre‐
determined? If the latter, what suggestions do you have for improving the qualitative
nature of the process? Please be considerate but candid.
Audit Committee
• I would say the discussions are based on a collaborative and input-based process. For
example, city staff is asked to post one week in advance of a Committee meeting, the
document package to Legistar. Committee members then are expected to read and prepare
based on the available documents for the discussion to be held at the meeting. During the
meeting, time is allotted for city staff presentations, outside consultant and contractor
reporting, Q&A by Committee members and then a consideration of a resolution. During
the deliberation on the resolutions, further discussion is explored and then a vote is held on
the resolution. Of course if city staff is unable to post the documents sufficiently in advance
of the meeting or members of the Committee come ill-prepared to a particular meeting then
the process can break down.
Bike Ped Commission
• The discussions at BPC meetings are definitely more collaborative input and discussion
based, allowing a voice for all attendees including residents. This largely works well, but
due to the open nature of the discussion, it is sometimes challenging to drive to a timely
conclusion. This may be an opportunity for making the dialog with residents a bit more
structured, still allowing all residents to provide input, but possibly only one defined slot
per resident per agenda item.
• Collaborative and input-based.
• Of course our commissioners each have their unique viewpoint; in fact, I personally
consider this a positive aspect of our commission. This means that each member contributes
their insight to different facets of the discussion. I would say that on almost all agenda items
the commissioners do not have a predetermined conclusion. We use our time to evaluate
and listen to each other to see what we can do to bring everyone’s ideas to a satisfying
conclusion or agreement for all. This isn’t always possible, but in general it is. I would say
that we have a respectful and collaborative process. For example, I shared some of my
answers to these questions at the February 2019 commission meeting, and the other
commissioners gave me helpful feedback which changed some of my answers.
Disaster Council
• Commission Liaison
Collaborative
Fine Arts Commission
• All the decisions that are made is with collaboration and always input based and which is
really effective for a committee to work efficiently.
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• FAC only meets 6 times a year. Working is sub-groups to do prelim work around research
or drafting proposals helps move ideas and projects along during regular meetings.
Housing Commission
• For agenda items regarding the annual disbursement of Community Development Block
Grant funds, Below Market Rate Affordable Housing Fund, and other funds, the funding
allocations recommended by staff are usually pre-determined, though there has always been
room for discussion. Most other discussions are open-ended and collaborative, though I
observe that the amount of speaking time across different commissioners is often
unbalanced. For more productive conversations, I would encourage the Chair to facilitate
the discussions in a manner that does not allow a few members to dominate the
conversation.
• No input on this one.
• Commission Liaison
Yes, the Chair runs the meeting and manages the discussion with Commissioners, member
of the public, and staff.
Library Commission
• Although I only attended one meeting so far, my conclusion was based on input-based
process.
• The conclusions of the Library Commission, over my experience of about 8 years, have
always been open, collaborative, input based, and often the result of spirited discussions
with occasional disagreement but always with courtesy and respect. Those conclusions have
not routinely been communicated in a timely or effectively manner to City Council, and
have not always been followed up as requested by city staff
• I have tremendous respect for my fellow library commissioners and for the staff members
who work with us. I feel our discussions related to agenda items are open, thoughtful, and
collegial.
• I would say that almost at all times in our Library Commission decision making process, it
is based upon true collaboration and input-based process. I couldn’t even think of any
decisions that were pre-determined. And there were times when we got three yes and two
nos, and vice versa. That being said, I should say that at least 50% of the times, we did draw
the same conclusion, mainly because all of us do have similar views on certain topics.
• Conclusions are arrived through a collaborative and input-based process most of the time.
We don’t always have all votes approval. Sometimes, we reserve the right to disagree but
the motion passed via majority votes.
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Parks & Recreation Commission
• Collaborative
• I think research work before the meeting is more important. Discussions during the meeting
may have 30-40% chance to swing my vote.
• I believe it is a combination of both.
• Yes it is. We indeed have healthy arguments and debates but that’s exactly needed so that
we can bring the best solution for the community. I can certainly help in any areas where
my team is in need of it
• Commission Liaison
The Commissioners are mature and well informed. They make good, fact based decisions
after robust discussions.
Planning Commission
• With regard to the quality of your discussions, would you say that your conclusions are
arrived at through a collaborative and input-based process or something more pre-
determined? Up to this point, collaborative discussion. However, for the PC, it is now
obvious that there has been pre-discussion and decision making prior to the meeting. There
was a clear violation of the Brown Act with three members having deciding in advance who
should be the Chair of the PC. The fact that there was a nomination of the current chair
(Wang) without any discussion and even an expressed interest by Commissioner Wang that
this was a predetermined decision. Politics have come to play in a strong way on the PC
with the current Commission. If the latter, what suggestions do you have for improving the
qualitative nature of the process? Again, Planning Commissioners should not be discussing
agenda items prior to the meetings. I cannot stress enough how poorly this reflects on the
public meeting process and will erode the trust of the public. The three new Planning
Commissioners should be educated and made clear to them that this behavior is not
acceptable. Please be considerate but candid.
• We had a commissioner suggest a park within 400’ of his home suggest it become a more
naturalistic area which would prohibit soccer...
• The Planning Commissioners I worked with during the last two years were the best I've
ever worked with - they were prepared, civil, intelligent, and thorough in their discussions.
We even enjoyed each other. Watch the tapes.
Regarding pre-determined conclusions, I think I may have seen an egregious pre-
determination during the 2/12/19 Planning Commission meeting. This, I suspect, also
violated the Brown Act. Here's why: it is customary for the chair position to rotate. This is
especially important for those who are new to commissions, so they can watch and learn
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how to efficiently run a meeting. On 2/12/19, the annual nomination to rotate the chair died
for lack of a second. Both another commissioner and I strongly suspect that this idea of a
lack of a second was discussed between all three new commissioners beforehand. This is
VERY serious - not just because meetings will be poorly run, but because three new
appointees to an important commission began their appointments with a cavalier attitude
toward the Brown Act - the violation of which is a violation of the law. I think the three new
commissioners should, individually and privately, be deposed under oath regarding this.
• My experiences have been collaborative, open-minded and effective. This always is variable
depending on the commissioners, which is to be expected.
Public Safety Commission
• The quality of discussions is quite rich and we arrive at conclusions in a collaborative
manner.
• Yes, I believe everyone on the public safety commission is thorough to ensure everyone’s
input is considered and respected.
• I feel it is important to keep everyone’s views in mind when making decisions. There hasn’t
been anything that I know of that there was a pre-determined conclusion, however when a
idea/initiative is floated or discussed, it is also important to take note of it, some research
done and in the following month’s meeting, decision taken. While most initiatives follow
this process, there have been instances when some ideas are immediately disposed off.
• I think we all have a mutual respect for one another and if differences in opinions occur
during a discussion we ultimately look at the larger picture as to who benefits from one of
our decisions made.
• To me it is about the greatest good for the greatest amount of people.
• Usually collaborative unless city staff came with pre-determined guidance. We also
experienced issue with new Commissioners who would like to bring up ideas that were
discussed/decided in the past, and we end up spending time revisiting old issues.
Sustainability Commission
• My experience has been the conclusions of items of our commission were always
collaborative. All commissioners had opportunities and fair and reasonable amount of time
(we respect each other’s time too) to provide input, all input was justified by the proposer
and discussed by the full commission. In my opinion, the current process is working well
for our commission.
• I think our discussions are very well done. There is a lot of collaboration amongst ourselves.
• I feel that our commission has discussions where every commissioner is allowed the
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opportunity to speak and to be heard in a respectful manner, but our conclusions are pre-
determined and typically unanimous.
• We have a lot of collaboration. We only have something pre-determined when it some
something very niche. Even then it is vetted and critically analyzed by the team.
Teen Commission
• With regards to our discussions, I would say that the conclusions were arrive at are almost
always through collaborative discussion as all of us bring and share different perspectives.
Our commission has created an environment where no one feels like they cannot voice their
opinion.
• I think are conclusions are collaborative and is adjusted with everybody’s input.
• I would say that our conclusions as commissioners are mostly pre-determined, but they are
discussed among the group and we come to a conclusion as a group through a collaborative
process. Although this mostly comes to a majority vote, I think the majority of us agree on
major issues and can work through lesser issues as a group through an input-based process.
• I believe that the Teen Commission does an excellent job of balancing opposing viewpoints.
Our genuine discussions rarely result in a “canned”, pre-fab answer, and the compromises
and/or discussions almost always result in the best decision.
• I would say that our conclusions are arrived at through a collaborative and input-based
process. This is because everyone in the teen commission is not afraid to give their opinions
about the topic. I think everyone in the teen commission is really determined to give it their
all for each decision that we need to make. Everyone really takes time to view others’ ideas
and work together to truly build and prepare the best events that we can for our
community.
• I think we get to decisions collaboratively. We do disagree with each other a lot, and we
arrive at decisions only after we discuss our disagreements. We arrive at a conclusion that
everyone agrees is the best course of action.
• I believe our discussions are fair concluded and completely collaborative. I do not feel as if
we need improvement for our discussions.
Technology Information & Communications Commission
• Public policy and service are best done with collaboration. While some individuals may
present superior ideas and solutions, their implications and best adoption is only possible
thru input-based collaborative process. However, for doing it efficiently requires continuous
adoption of better tools and techniques, which are also trustworthy.
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• It’s frustrating in these modern times we are unable to conduct business asynchronously. I
think it would be possible to conduct discussion and business using modern technology and
still remain compliant with the Brown act.
• While discussions happen on the agenda items, I wish meetings could go deeper into
technological advances that are needed for the city. However, I am glad sub-committees
could be formed to break out and do deeper due diligence. For example, last year a
subcommittee gave its report identifying the community’s internet needs in order to be
business friendly and ready for smart city evolution. The sub-committee could meet much
more often than the commission regular meeting for several hours per week and had great
outcome. Such strategies should be adopted more often by the commissions (at least TICC
given its broader scope of impact) to drive a qualitative outcome. This strategy is effective
since the main commission’s broader activity can continue at regular pace while individual
objectives can be pursued in breakouts and brought back to the forum with much richer
content for the commission’s perusal.
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7) Do you feel your Commissioners are representative of the residents? Why or why not?
Audit Committee
• Since two of the five Committee members are elected City Council members I would say
that certainly at least 40% of the Committee is representative of the residents. As to the
other 60% at large members of the Committee, I think it is appropriate to include members
who have financial backgrounds and are able to address complex and detailed financial
issues. For example an understanding of the implications of how actuaries typically arrive
at a discount rate on the calculation of the City’s unfunded OPEB or pension liabilities can
lead (one can argue) to a more productive review of the actual calculation than if no prior
background is available on which to draw. Having this kind of financial experience within
the 60% at large Committee members may not be representative of the residents of the
City.
Bike Ped Commission
• The BPC commission feels a good representation of all residents representing the
diverse background and interests of Cupertino. No concerns here.
• It is probably the case that often the commissions have people on them that have
particular experience expertise in the area the commission deals with. As such they are
likely a, for the subject matter, somewhat selected set of people. That said, within that
group of people it appears that the members come from many different walks of life and
as such don’t represent a single opinion but quite the contrary usually have different takes
on how to address the issues.
• I would say that we are very representative of the residents. Our commissioners range in
age, location of residence (east or west side of Cupertino), having children or not, and
include both heavy recreational/commuter cyclists and those that rarely get on a bike.
Though there are small groups of very vocal residents that are against bike and ped
projects that are adjacent to their particular property, overall, Cupertino residents are
very in favor of walking and biking trails (80% of residents in the Parks & Recreation
Survey of last year favor adding trails and pathways), and also in favor of improved
safety infrastructure for walking and biking, especially for our schoolchildren. Knowing
that residents of Cupertino are so positive about improving their community in this way
is a primary driver of the Bicycle Pedestrian Commission. As commissioners, we are
pleased to represent ALL of our residents, and listen to their ideas and their concerns.
Disaster Council
• Commission Liaison
The attendees to the Disaster Council are people, businesses, contractors that have an
emergency response role and the Disaster Council helps facilitate a format to meet,
review, work on specific projects where their input is required for “Whole Community”
participation is needed. Examples would be emergency plan annexes, exercise
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development, expectation setting etc.
Fine Arts Commission
• Yes definitely. Each commissioner plays an important role of spreading awareness in the
community about the committee and the work committee does for the community so I
think it is an important role each commissioner plays.
• Not sure
Housing Commission
• No. The Housing Commission is comprised of one business representative, one financial
representative, and three residents. To my knowledge, all three of the residents are
homeowners. Cupertino’s population is 38% renter. Given that homeowners and renters
often hold different perspectives and experiences regarding housing policy, I believe there
should be some representation of tenants/renters on the Housing Commission. Perhaps,
similar to the business and financial representative, there can be one seat that can only be
filled by somebody who is a renter.
• Is the Housing Commission representative of the community? Since Commissioners
are volunteers, it is probable that not all segments of the population are represented.
However, since all people may not be directly involved in the Commission, it is our
duty to ensure outreach to the community for new or changed policies. One of our
specific goals as a Commission is to recommend policies for implementation and
monitoring for affordable housing. For any new affordable housing, outreach to our
community to advise them of the advantages of affordable housing is critical.
• Commission Liaison
Yes, we have a balanced and engaged Commission.
Library Commission
• Yes! It’s my goal to bring the voice of residents to the city council and library staff.
• Yes, broadly speaking I think they are.
• I believe the Library Commission represents the community it serves by geography
(east/west, north/south, and West San Jose neighborhoods), ethnicity, and age. After
attending the SCCLD Library Forum on 2/2/2019, I learned of so many new SCCLD
offerings—such as expanded Freegal services for online music download and streaming,
Creativbug (online database of 1,000+ crafting videos), and Tech Kits (materials to promote
STEAM learning for all ages)—that are likely of prime interest to teens and young adults.
As a result, I think a Teen Library Commission would be a wonderful addition to the City
and great way to help young people learn about library resources that are likely of high
interest for them.
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• This is a hard question, since we only know the people around us and what they think,
but whoever we know, they only represent a very small percentage of the residents. Based
upon such a small sample, I don’t know if we are representative of the residents as a
whole, to be honest. That’s why the Survey is so important, because this is a solid and
helpful way for us to get to know what residents are thinking about the library, and the
sample size is big enough. That being said, the five commissioners do have different
voices and usually discuss things from different perspectives. Therefore, I would say,
based upon the various opinions we hear from commissioners, I would assume they
represent different voices from the public.
• Yes, we have a very diversified commission.
Parks & Recreation Commission
• Seems like these days whenever a decision is made that some resident or group of
residents do not like, then those residents accuse the decision makers of not representing
the ‘residents’. Residents have a wide range of opinions, some are informed of the issues
and some are not. Criteria for appointments to Commissions seem extremely vague.
• Yes, Commissioners should be representative of residents. Though everyone may has
different view on one issue, the whole commission should be balanced by selecting
commissioners from different groups and with different background.
• Yes. We have a good mix culturally and also age wise, long term community members
and more recent arrivals. Those that are involved in many other aspects of the community.
• Absolutely. Commissioners are the voice of the community but the outreach in
explaining this is not yet done effectively. Since City council can’t be there everywhere
every day, it is important that we become conduit to connect the community with the
City Council.
• Commission Liaison
Demographically, we could be a little closer with a second individual of Chinese
background. They are all leaders in their community, involved in school board, Rotary,
etc.
Planning Commission
• Not sure
• There has been a shift for the PC commission, hopefully this commission is
more representative now, but absolutely not before.
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• They are not representative - nor should they be. Timm, perhaps you really meant to ask
about commissioner’s representing the views of the public. Commissioners themselves
should be representative of the small segment of the population that has experience and
expertise in the area that the commission addresses. Commissioners should, of course,
consider the interests of the residents - but not necessarily be guided by them.
Commissioners should be guided by State laws and local ordinances, such as the zoning
in the General Plan. Often residents do not like what is allowed by law, and that's where
commissioners should diplomatically remind them that commissioners are bound by the
ordinances passed by the Council. I once asked several angry residents who were
opposing a two-story house on their street to raise their hands if they did not know
before the meeting that everyhouse on their street was allowed to have two stories. About
five or six hands went up. If we on the Planning Commission had listened to these hand-
raisers and denied the second story, we would have deprived the homeowner of the
value he or she counted on when buying the property. Based on the City of Palo Alto vs.
Arastra Corp, this is inverse condemnation and is illegal.
• How can they not be? If the question is about the composition of the commissions, then I
think that they have reflected the interests of the community well. If this question is
whether the commissioners take their role to be representing some constituency of
residents, this is highly variable with the commissioner.
In selecting Commissioners, the goal is to find at team that can collectively represent
the questions and interests of the community, and to find the people who have the best
background to understand the issues and ability to collaborate to get to solutions. If
you do that, the Commissions – which are advisory rather than policy-making – will do
fine.
Commission appointments have always had a political undertone that detracts from
their doing the best job. This problem continues and should be more effectively
addressed in the future. Since only the Planning Commission has policy-making power
delegated from the elected Council, all the other commission work is only advisory in
nature.
I would go even farther to say in my 8 years of commission experience, the greatest
frustration of many commissioners is that the Council will often unilaterally bypass the
recommendations of the Commissions and staff as well. This is, of course, their
prerogative.
Public Safety Commission
• Yes, I feel Commissioners are representatives of the residents.
• Yes – Ethnicity, industries, age, and concerns reflects the best wisdom of the community
in my opinion.
• Yes, they are. We have had many instances where we have reviewed many of the
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residents’ emails and have discussed and prepared corresponding answers and/or have
taken it to next level of discussion.
• Although are main purpose is to act as an advisory body to the council I think our main
objective is to represent the members of our community. I have been a commissioner for
almost 8 years now and have never felt that we were an advisory body to the council
except one or two occasions when we were asked to get more information or look into
public safety related issues and have always focused on being a representative of the
residents. I feel our record of work items and operations can show that. I actually look
forward to hearing from residents at our meetings and in everyday general interactions
within our community I strongly encourage people to bring their concerns to the PSC and
be heard. I have held many jobs in life and this one that has zero financial gains for me has
been the most rewarding.
• PSC is more in tune with the residents as we attend most of the citywide public events
with our own table. Residents come to us for safety issues, but many times we have to
refer them to Planning / BikePed Commission due to Commission boundary.
Sustainability Commission
• While each commissioner may have different focused area (such as riding green, building
green, school education, etc.), they each brought her/his passion and expertise to the
commission. Each agenda item, scheduled or added, was carefully considered, discussed
and implemented (or delayed) with good reasons that ALL commissioners understood
and agreed on. My feeling is all commissioners of our commission represent the entire
Cupertino very well and always made decisions with all residents’ benefits in mind.
• I think so. We are pretty diverse in terms of age and varied professions.
• No. Current commissioners all have experience and/or expertise in sustainability. Not all
residents have our experience/expertise so it can be challenging for us to represent them.
We don't have many opportunities to interact with the residents other than when they
attend our meetings. It's hard to be the pulse of the community on the topic/issue of
sustainability when there are not many opportunities for interaction between the two
groups.
• Yes we are. We are a wide variety of folks who represent many different interests.
Teen Commission
• I feel that I along with my fellow teen commissioners are representatives of the residents
here in Cupertino because we are able to be the voice for a very important part of our
community which is the youth. Furthermore the events we create and the issues we
work on directly affect us and our peers. By being so connected to the group we
represent we are truly able to understand their needs and wants out of the city because
we are apart of that group and others in it will often voice their opinions to us more
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freely than they would to adults.
• Yes, because we are a diverse group of people who have different opinions on everything.
• Yes, I think our Commissioners are representative of the Cupertino residents that we
represent, as we are teens that go to Cupertino schools, with the same needs, wants, goals,
and problems that Cupertino.
• I feel our Commission is representative of the residents we are supposed to represent:
teenagers and youth. We have a mix of ethnicities and ages, including both seniors and
middle-schoolers. Currently, the commission is predominantly female, but I would not
say this affects our decisions.
• Yes, I do think that our commissioners are representative of the young residents. Since we
are the teen commission, our goal is to mainly target the teens in the community. Since
everyone on the teen commission is a teen, everyone is able to relate and understand some
of the problems and needs that our teens have in today’s society. This is a great thing
because it helps us plan events that will entice Cupertino teens and hopefully impact them
positively as well. For example, Bobatino was a massive success because we were able to
get teens to come to and relieve stress at the event.
• I think we are representative of the citizens. We come from a lot of different schools in
Cupertino, and we leave many meetings with assignments to ask our peers for their
opinions about certain issues and topics that pertain to them that we want to focus on,
and we make sure to take these into accounts.
• Completely, since the commission tries to include students from all around
Cupertino with different interests. For example, I am very interested in Computer
Science while another commissioner is interested in debate.
Technology Information & Communications Commission
• I will defend this question both ways: I feel the current members come with technology
background and community is heavily technology aware, so that is a good thing. They are
certainly competent on advising the best possible solutions to social issues. What I didn’t
notice or missed so far is anyone having working experience with seniors and special needs
residents.
• It’s a self-selected subset further filtered by council, it is highly unlikely that is
representative of the residents.
• I strongly believe so since the commissioners are also residents from different parts of the
city. I as a TICC commissioner, Disaster Service Worker (as part of city’s Amateur Radio
Emergency Services) and resident keep an extra eye on sensing the city’s needs as I
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interact with lots of friends and several general community members on a casual and
usual basis. Great ideas emerge when interacting with the diverse community as a general
public. This in conjunction with the commission’s interaction with the Liaison to get city
insights definitely gives TICC the necessary content representative of our residents.
However, I also believe the commissions should arrange for direct community
engagement at least twice a year to give community an opportunity to provide their input
into city’s future in reference to a particular commission’s objectives. For example, TICC
should arrange city hall style high interactive public meetings to solicit community’s own
pulse on the city’s drive towards smart, safe and efficient city. Participating public should
be encouraged to give their insights, feedback and new ideas from their perspective. This,
I believe, will be effective to all other commissions too given the rich diversity in our
communities in terms of culture, profession, skills and experience.
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8) It has been suggested that a code of ethics is needed in order to maintain ethical
standards and behavior. What are your thoughts on this proposition? If you support
having a code of ethics, what would you like to see included in it?
Audit Committee
• I think it is a best practice for any organization to promulgate, and ask its employees and
volunteers to acknowledge and document agreement with, a code of ethics. I like the
example of a code of ethics as published by the City of Santa Clara particularly since it was
developed in collaboration with the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics of Santa Clara
University: http://santaclaraca.gov/government/ethics-values/code-of-ethics-values Please
see the full text included at the end of my answers and designated as Appendix A (attached
as a separate attachment)
Bike Ped Commission
• I do not mind a light weight of standards and regulations, but would avoid a too heavy
approach. Commissioners are committed volunteers, and are already bound by rules and
regulations including FPPC, as well as the Brown Act.
• That may not be a bad idea. Do we currently have a formal code of ethics that cover the
commission’s work? Maybe that could be a good starting point. Are there other already
developed codes of ethics for similar bodies that one can look at?
• A code of ethics is a fine idea, but it would need to be specific and be careful to regulate
behavior and not thought. It should not be so broad/nebulous that an argument could be
made that no one is meeting it, or that violations of it could be used as an excuse for dis-
appointing a commissioner that a Councilmember disagrees with. I think that many things
are already codified, such as all the provisions of the Brown Act, which already prevent a lot
of unethical behavior. Here is what should be included (of course not limited to these items):
1. A gift policy for Commissioners and Councilmembers—not just reporting, but a limit.
2. Require City Commissioners to not work actively against projects endorsed or
created by other City Commissions. For example, a commissioner on the Planning
Commission should not form a group to oppose an Arts initiative by the Fine Arts
Commission.
3. City Commissioners should consider themselves as a representative of our City, and
as such, be held to a higher standard than before their term. They should hold to the
standards of other commission meetings when attending them, even if they personally, as a
resident, wish to violate them. They should treat our City Staff and other Commissioners
with the respect that the institution requires, regardless of personal feelings.
4. Require appointee commission candidates to disclose at the time of their application
any advocacy work they have made either for or against any City projects, plans, etc. within
the last 2 years, highlighting especially those related to the commission for which they are
applying.
5. Specify ethical requirements on how the City Council appoints commissioners.
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Appointments should be based on criteria such as expertise, ability to work with staff and
the public, and commitment to fulfilling official duties. It should not be a political or
personal reward. Any parties to litigation with the City of Cupertino or any of its officers
(councilmembers, commissioners, staff, etc.) in the last two years should not be appointed to
a commission to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest (even if materially there are
none).
Disaster Council
• Commission Liaison
Our Citizen Corps has developed a code of conduct and a copy is attached.
Fine Arts Commission
• I agree. The current code of ethics is sufficient.
• What is the problem you are trying to solve? Beyond the Brown Act rules do we currently
have stated rules about, for example, self-dealing? If yes, we should make them more
visible; publish and promote them regularly. Are we concerned about commission members
and others being civil during meetings and other interactions? In this regard, I would hope
the City Council would set the tone and be an example for all City activities including
closed meetings. The tone of any organization is set from the top. Example rather than rules.
Housing Commission
• It is important to have a code of ethics. If we have a code that is established, it will ensure
that public servants and representatives are held accountable for their actions. I would like
the code to prohibit representatives from discriminating, whether through words or action,
by race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin,
age, ability, or unmentioned protected classes.
• Yes, a code of ethics is very important! Each Commission is considering the use of public
funds for the benefit of the community. Political relationships are complicated. Having
guidelines is, therefore, useful. Many people who are new to public service may not be
aware of the special requirements of public service. The avoidance of the appearance of
conflict of interest is not obvious to everyone, therefore, it must be stated in the code of
ethics. It is stated in the draft that is being proposed for the City of Cupertino. I read the
Draft City of Cupertino Code of Ethics and Conduct for Elected and Appointed Officials. It
is very good. Perhaps add: to Conduct Guidelines, Paragraph 2(f) (Avoid personal
comments) the first two sentences found under Conduct with the media, 6(b). (Be especially
cautious about humor). I found the discussions about Conduct among Councilmembers and
Commissioners to be very helpful in my new role. We serve the Community, not individual
Councilmembers. The draft guide discusses ethics training which would be very useful.
• Commission Liaison
It is necessary to have some document that outlines expectations and conduct during a
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meeting for both the Commissioners and the public.
Library Commission
• No. Since it’s very hard to define “Code of Ethics” in a very objective way, its better not
have it. City council and commissioner run the city without it for so many years, no reason
we need to add it right now.
• I do support ethical behavior, and it is always a good idea to reiterate and maintain
consensus on what the standards are, as well as welcome open discussions of how to
achieve and maintain those standards as the opportunity arises during Commission
discussions. I’m sure there are a few existing examples of such ‘codes’ to choose from. I
don’t think we need to reinvent that wheel.
• I feel the “code of ethics” project serves the interests of a few who seek to control the words
and behavior of others whom they disagree with politically. In my opinion, a “code of
ethics” is both a distraction and a power grab. I appreciate the efforts of Council to focus on
the important work that must be done to serve the City and its residents and to not get
sidetracked by non-issues, such as the adoption of an unnecessary “code of ethics”.
• I’m actually surprised that we still didn’t have a code of ethics in place until now. I do think
it is necessary and critical. When I was working with HP a few years back, we had a Code of
Ethics that the whole company would savor as the Bible for employee behaviors and ethical
standards. Same principle works here. We need it. The most I wanted to see included in it is
the requirements on our fundamental mindset and way of thinking. We have to put the
interest of the city in front of any individual, and do not let our personal emotions or
personal interest be in the way of our judgment. It is easier said than done but we need to be
reminded constantly to adopt this rule.
• We need rules regarding decorum and civility. The personal attacks during the Planning
Commissioner meeting were disappointing to see. As much community engagement as
possible must be taken regarding this matter.
• We are all volunteers with professional backgrounds. We had code of ethics training in the
corporate environment before. So I think we can easily adopt any form of code of ethics. The
only thing I would like to add to code of ethics is to require councilmember and
commissioner to list all the public events they attend on behave of the city in city website.
Parks & Recreation Commission
• The Brown Act itself already provides a barrier to any collusion on the part of individual
commissioners. Most of the commissions (away from Planning) do not have any policy
making authority, only advisory. I view their role to be collection of public input on various
topics, representing that public input as well as providing any personal expertise in the area
being considered for recommendation to Council. Staff should provide oversight to ensure
that Commissions do not act outside of their advisory role. While commissioners should be
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allowed to advocate as individuals for policies, they should always be clear that in those
situations they are speaking as an individual resident and not on behalf of their commission.
• Hope to know the details first.
• Support having a code of ethics. Important to have mutual respect between
elected/appointed officials and staff.
• The propose code of ethics is not the one I would recommend given that we had so many
questions on it – which yet to be answered. Basic code of ethics enforcing the type of
behavior each one to resonate and respond is what we need it.
• Commission Liaison
A code of ethics would be effective to remind all about the need to maintain civility and
given the recent and ongoing concerns around conflicts of interest, a code could be very
clarifying.
Planning Commission
• It has been suggested that a code of ethics is needed in order to maintain ethical standards
and behavior. What are your thoughts on this proposition? I agree with this. While people
think they will always act ethically, there are too many conflicts of interest possible. In
today’s political climate, it is imperative that we all act ethically in performing our duties.
Almost all good corporations have a code of conduct to stress the criticality of ethical
behavior. If you support having a code of ethics, what would you like to see included in it?
Need more time as well as draft of what was previously proposed.
• I have sent Manhattan Beach’s meeting decorum information to the city along with
something from Palo Alto. What happened my first day on PC...
• An ethics policy is only needed when there is unethical behavior.
So yes, I think it's needed. As to what should be in it, I've attached, as Attachment A, an
annotated text of the rescinded draft Ethics Policy as a starting point.
As described above, I have seen what I think is a violation of the Brown Act.
Also, a recently appointed Planning Commissioner is (or was until very recently) a plaintiff
in a lawsuit against the City on a planning matter. The role of a Planning Commissioner is to
use his or her role as a commissioner to shape Cupertino's growth - but that role does not
involve suing the City over a planning matter.
A citizen is free to sue, of course, but to do so and at the same time (or shortly thereafter)
serve as a Planning Commissioner is, I think, an unethical conflict of roles. It was unethical
for this person to pursue the role of a commissioner, and is was unethical for the council to
make the appointment.
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• The actions of the Council and Commissions are highly regulated to reach legal and
appropriate outcomes. I don’t think that there are many examples of egregious behavior in
the scope of the commissions that immediately warrant more formality. The biggest issue is
if a commission acts outside of their advisory charter, which should be corrected by the staff
liaison. The actions of the Library Commission in 2018 with regard to advocating for
placement of a voting drop-off box are a recent example – the Library Commission is not
empowered to make a policy decision, only to make a recommendation to the Council. The
Council did not appear to be aware of the advocacy actions that the Library Commission
was taking both internally and publicly that were outside of their charter in the municipal
code. This should have been resolved before it grew out of control. The Council over the
past few years has had more examples then the Commission of actions that could be
considered on the ethical boundaries. This is up to the Council to decide how to address. I
don’t have any opposition to developing a written code of ethics, behavior and expectations,
but would hope that the content tracks closely with the many legal requirements imposed
on the city government rather than creating a lot of new rules.
Public Safety Commission
• I support the notion of having code of ethics. I would like it to specify moral and ethical
obligations in delivery of our services.
• Code of ethics is never a bad idea, however, our commission from my experience has
demonstrated high ethical standards and behaviors, so I don’t think this step is necessary at
this time.
• I think mostly all commissioners are ethical and follow the code. Having a code of ethics
may help bring a little more guidance. However I think mostly it feels things are in place.
• When I first was appointed as a commissioner I was reminded that I now was a
representative of the city regardless of the fact I am a volunteer and no matter what if I was
to be asked a question while in public by anyone to remember that what I say can easily be
turned around into “Commissioner McCoy said this” shortly after being told this I
experienced it firsthand and something I said in a personal opinion was used against me. I
have always kept this in mind and have strived to practice strong ethics regardless of the
setting. I think all elected and appointed officials should practice this as well. A code of
ethics should reinforce the idea that you now are representative of the city regardless the
setting or situation whether it be social media, meeting, and public.
• We already follow a code of ethics like the Brown Act, I am not sure why additional code of
ethics is necessary.
Sustainability Commission
• I think a code of ethics is very important and should be adopted and maintained on regular
basis. The code of ethics is a summary and reminder of laws and policies required of elected
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and appointed officials, and it’s a good common standard and best practice for all of us
public official of Cupertino to follow. When we choose to serve the public, we are
committed to comply with the laws and policies that are in place; it is nice and easy for us to
have all regulations and practices in one place to refer to. The laws and policies were
adopted by the public in the past; the code of ethics is a good reminder not only for the
officials but also for the public. There should be trainings of the code of ethics required of
public officials and offered to public on regular basis.
• I don’t see a need for a code of ethics for our commission. Our activities do not result in
significant decisions on expenditures or major decisions such as the planning commission’s
activities.
• A code of ethics is an excellent idea. It would set clear expectations on standards and
behavior.
• Ethics is always important. I do not have an opinion on what should go into the code.
Teen Commission
• Establishing a code of ethics would be a good way to outline the city’s expectations and
norms for those that represent its inhabitants. However, on the other hand creating one will
not create change, for people must be compelled to do so. One important thing that should
be included is that regardless of age or gender, all should be treated with the same respect.
To be more specific when attending other commission meetings, it sometimes feels as if the
youth opinion is treated differently simply because of a matter of age.
• I have no position on this proposition because I think that the code of ethics depends on
each Commission and what is their standard.
• I don’t think a code of ethics is necessary for the Teen Commission specifically, as we’re not
engaging in any unethical, questionable, or risky behavior. I can’t speak on the behalf of
other commissions, however.
• I believe that a code of ethics, although a nice gesture, would not have a concrete impact on
the ethics of a commission. In addition, I fear it would allow members of the public with
grudges, whether reasonable or not, an effective way to stop a commission entirely on
murky grounds. In addition, state law already mandates a certain level of ethics. Overall,
although certainly an interesting proposition, the potential for a code of ethics to be either
impossible to enforce or enforced to the point of impossibility forces me to no support its
creation.
• I think a code of ethics would be very informational and helpful in order to maintain ethical
standards and behavior. I think that a code of ethics can set forth ethical principles and
standards that would help our commissioners boost their personal commitment to engage
in ethical practice.
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• I don't support a code of ethics, because I don't feel like it would help us increase order in
any way, and we already have enough order within our commission in the first place.
• I do not, for our commission, believe it is very necessary. I feel we represent Cupertino in
the best light.
Technology Information & Communications Commission
• Code of ethics is absolutely required where public money is involved and decisions affect
not only current work but also future of city fiscal health and residents living satisfaction.
• I’m not sure what problem this is trying to solve. I already assumed that we were supposed
behave ethically.
• Code of Ethics is a must have for any entity associated to the city pursuing city’s objectives
and future. It is my belief that the commission’s members should hold their position to the
highest standards of professionalism and candor. The commission members should hold the
objective of the commission to help the city their highest priority and interact with the each
other within the commission only with that goal in mind and without any self-promotion in
mind. That said, I am proud to have been chosen to the TICC commission in 2017 purely
through the Council’s interview process and without any prior acquaintance or affinity to
any Council member or city staff. At the same time, I also request the Council to continue
promoting such independent and neutral selection process to get good mix of willing
citizens to serve in the commissions. In addition, if it is a reasonable ask, I request the
Council members not to seek out, even implicitly, for their own endorsements from the
commission members during election cycles and publicizing in campaign material such as
campaign websites during election seasons. This has high potential of yielding an inaccurate
impression of a commissioner as a supporter of one candidate over the other during Council
elections while one may in reality be neutral. I believe the commission positions are not
political. There should be some form of inclusion of such concept in the code of ethics and
conduct in order to ensure the commissions are constituted of the service loving
independent citizens. This is also important for instilling confidence in the commissions
serving the Council and the community.
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9) From the perspective of higher‐quality interaction between Council and Commissions,
we would like to consider any suggestions you have with regard to events, procedures,
and formats. Outside of formal updates at Council meetings and our annual appreciation
dinner (and please feel free to comment on those as well), are there any other types of
interactions you would like to see considered and delivered in order to improve our
channels of communication?
Audit Committee
• None come to mind.
Bike Ped Commission
• As suggested earlier, the monthly major meeting is a good way of communication with the
major, but also with the other commissions. I would see value of extending this meeting to
the full council (if possible).
• It would be good to strengthen the channels via which the city council and the commissions
communicate. Maybe it would makes sense to have a channel for more formal direct advice
from the commissions to the city council, maybe in form of periodic written reports.
• We do not do formal updates at Council meetings. Our liaison will give staff reports, but we
are not given time to give an update or a statement on the commission’s viewpoint. The
appreciation dinner is very nice (the food is good), but not substantive—there does not
appear to be an expectation that the Council will be better informed about the particulars of
projects after that event. It would be helpful for the Council to solicit feedback directly from
the Commissioners prior to a vote on a particular proposal at City Council. As mentioned
above in question #3, only once in the past year have I personally been contacted by a
Councilmember to learn more about a specific project. Currently, feedback is either the Staff
Liaison delivering a brief synopsis of the views of the BPC, or one of us speaking for 3
minutes during public comment. A second item that would be helpful is to allow at least
one member of the Commission to attend special meetings when they are held with Staff to
discuss upcoming projects on the Council’s agenda. This is particularly relevant to our
work, as Staff will meet with Councilmembers at a particular location to discuss a bike or
pedestrian project proposal. Commissioners are not invited, though some residents—often
those most against the project—will be allowed to join. Lastly, having a Councilmember
occasionally attend our commission meetings would be useful. It would allow
Councilmembers to better understand what is done at our commission, foster closer
relations with the Council, and allow for more in-depth discussion on specific topics. Only
twice in the last two years has this occurred.
Disaster Council
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• Commission Liaison
Good idea to have a formal reporting process as well as something that would allow for a
more informal opportunity to have a discussion or relationship development. Since
relationships need to be established before an emergency.
Fine Arts Commission
• I definitely would like to see more events and formal as well as informal meetings where
commissioners could communicate with city council members and increase communication
and collaborations. Events where two or more commissions are assigned to work together
towards increasing interest and awareness in the community. Set goals given or set
assignments will also help to collaborate commissions.
• See comments for item 8 above
Housing Commission
• Periodic written updates for both the council and the commissions would help improve
communication. It would be great to have a way to share outside events or meetings that
either Commissioners or Councilmembers are attending, such as a shared calendar. There
are a lot of relevant events happening in our region, too many for one to keep track of by
them self.
• For higher quality interaction between Council and Commissions, consider: 1. Procedure:
Allowing a 1-2 page written dissenting opinion to understand the ‘nay’ votes on an issue
from a Commission.
• Commission Liaison
The Chair attends the Mayor’s monthly meeting to provide an update on Housing
Commission activities. The Chair reports back to the Housing Commission during the
Commission Reports agenda item at each meeting. This process works well for the Housing
Commission.
Library Commission
• I would love to see city council member attend the commission meetings from time to time.
– I’m very appreciated that Liang attended first library commission meeting in February.
• See above, the suggestion for Customer Satisfaction inquiries with respect to city staff/
Commission interactions. I am open minded about the new process for Work Plan
development. I’d like to understand what the process will be for reporting back into the City
Council on the Commission’s progress and accomplishments towards the established Work
Plan goals. I think that will define where high-quality interactions can occur.
• It was deeply unfortunate that the City decided to run the invitations and date for the
commissioner appreciation dinner concurrent with the effort to “disappear” the Library and
Public Safety Commissions (July/August 2018). Not feeling especially “appreciated,” it is not
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a surprise that Library Commissioners did not attend the appreciation dinner in 2018.
• I do think if Council members can attend our Commission meeting once in a while, it will be
very helpful for them to know more about us. But I also realize there are only five Council
members and there are more than ten Commissions. I also think that emails and texts are
always options but if we can be assured that we will get responses in the next 48-72 hours or
even a week that would be super.
• Hiking, picnic and other events should be organized to let commissioners and
councilmembers know each other better.
Parks & Recreation Commission
• The Mayor’s monthly meeting with representatives from each Commission is an
underutilized forum for the mayor to come up to speed on Commission activities and for
commissions to learn about activities in other Commissions. The freeform format of these
meetings often leads to wasted time and an unclear agenda. Each mayor conducts these
meetings differently, some more efficiently than others. Council often undercuts the
effectiveness of the Commissions by ignoring the recommendations of the Commissions or
giving greater weight to resident input at Council meetings than was provided to the
Commission. Council should give greater weight to public comment given to Commissions
so residents see the value of participating at Commission meetings rather than feeling
everything has to be presented to Council.
• Coffee hour, small meetings, and email
• Can’t think of anything specific at the moment but I think that by virtue of serving on
commissions, commissioners are engaged in the issues, the community, and take extra effort
to follow council meetings, other commissions, and events.
• Two council members (not violating the brown act) attending the commission meetings on a
round-robin would certainly help. Review meetings to go through the SMART goals set
initially
– this could be a review with the Mayor and Vice Mayor.
• Commission Liaison
The Parks & Recreation Commission is different from other commissions in that
Commissioners play an active role in Community Events. These same events provide
opportunities for City Council to make personal appearances and I would like to see more
of our events with both Council members and Commissioners present for short periods.
These are simply “opportunities” and not requirements for appearances.
Planning Commission
• From the perspective of higher-quality interaction between Council and Commissions, we
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would like to consider any suggestions you have with regard to events, procedures, and
formats. Outside of formal updates at Council meetings and our annual appreciation dinner
(and please feel free to comment on those as well), are there any other types of interactions
you would like to see considered and delivered in order to improve our channels of
communication? The mayors meeting tends to be a good venue for communication of
activities of all the commissions to the Mayor and other commissions.
• The reports section of the agenda has become a competition for who went to more events, is
that a good thing? Does the City Council have regular office hours? When can
commissioners speak informally to city council members? If the city council is spread thin,
how can commissioner requests be met? We have commissions which are not in synch with
the CMC, how will that be resolved?
• The interaction and communication opportunities I described in my answer to #3 above are,
I think enough to ensure adequate communication - if both councilmembers and
commissioners work at availing themselves of these opportunities. Councilmembers are
busy people, and commissioners are, too - not to mention staff. To add additional formal or
administrated communication activities would, I think, result in overload. What is really
important is that elected and appointed officials understand their roles. A Cupertino
department head whom I greatly respect once told me, "The best thing a city council can do
is to hire really great people and then stay out their way." I've thought a lot about this and,
as a commissioner, I've been careful to not interfere with staff's work. I may send then
tidbits of information I've gleaned from a conference or a publication, and I may ask for
clarification - but I won't tell them what to do. It's appropriate, however, to disagree with
staff from the dais on an agendized item. There have been times when the Planning
Commission voted unanimously to disagree with a staff recommendation - but this was
done publically, according to set procedures, and after a thorough and civil discussion.
• No comments.
Public Safety Commission
• Communication with council should be effective so that needs and concerns are heard and
given attention. Email or personal meetings should help to communicate.
• Not at the moment. May be more challenging to organize outside of formal settings due to
the Brown Act pertaining to quorums.
• It might be a good idea to have commissioners have a 1x1 with a council member of their
choice twice an year. It helps bring a bit more connectivity
• I can only speak for myself but the commissioner’s dinner is something that I look forward
to and you see the other commissioner’s smile and laugh and hold their heads highly. I
think it’s very easy to forget we are volunteers and sometimes our commitments have a cost
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to our families and friends but none the less we keep them. I think a little appreciation goes
a long ways.
• It would be great to have Council attend our meeting, such as last year with Former and
Current Mayor. Both the residents and Commissioners can benefit from Council attending
our regular meetings
Sustainability Commission
• As stated earlier, all council members and commissioners are very accessible to each other, I
don’t feel the need to alter or add more formal communication processes. If Council feels the
need to discuss issues with me, I can be reached on my cell phone anytime. The
commissioners’ dinner, including spouses, is very nice. If council would like a time to meet
with just commissioners, a code of ethics training/retreat would be appropriate. Public
officials are required to be trained on ethics and provide proof of training completion
regularly; I think City can prepare us by giving an annual training. The code of ethics is a
good common subject to bring us together.
• I would like to know what the council feels are the top issues that the city faces. If one or
more of those issues are compatible with the commission’s charter, it would be helpful to
know that.
• I think having a councilmember who is the liaison between our commission and Council
would help our commission be better connected to Council and for our work to be of benefit
to Council.
• It is hard for us as commissioners to put a lot of time into this. We will do more. There needs
to be more communication from our end. The council can and should be more involved by
giving our team items to focus on. What we have now is a good system.
Teen Commission
• One method that can be employed for better communication is having Council create short
summaries of items they’re working on and goals they have that pertain to commissions.
These can be sent out to commissions on a monthly or bi-monthly basis, so that we are
always aware of what’s happening. Like I’ve mentioned earlier, having Council members sit
in on meetings would also offer both parties great insight to how the other operates.
• I think when regarding improving the channels of communications, Council and
Commissions’ communications have been very high quality with only a few bumps in the
road that is usually straightened out by more communication.
• I think a Council member could come to one of our meetings once a month just to check in
with us on what they’re doing as a Council and how that might connect with our goals.
Other than that, I don’t think any other specific forms of communications are necessary, as
the Commission updates to Council as well as a follow-up by the Council should be fine, as
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our current forms of communication work well whenever something big needs to be said
that would impact Council.
• I would appreciate minutes for the Mayor’s meeting, if possible, so I could be better
informed about what the council and other commissions are doing, rather than relying on
secondary- hand reports, which although helpful and informative, are, by the nature of
memory, somewhat imprecise.
• I think that each council member can take turns coming to each commissions’ meetings. It
would help the council understand some of the items that our commissions are tackling and
enable better communication and collaboration between the council and the commissions
• I think that it might be helpful to have some less formal events as well for all the
commissions to participate in, as I think that would foster closer connections between the
commissions.
• I feel that the mayor’s meeting is very communicative with our commission. To improve our
interactions further, possibly consider a council member attending a meeting every couple
months.
Technology Information & Communications Commission
• We live in Silicon Valley with it as the bedrock of technology and innovation. People,
businesses and even governments do adopt tools for doing things better and faster.
However we have gaps where we can do still a lot better. Remote conferencing is one for
individual commissions and cross-bridged with council, staff or residents. City should
certainly own the tools and put them to use.
• Minimally a meeting/discussion with some council member. There seems to presumption
that commissioners are political animals and have met and interact with council members.
• I appreciate the annual dinner. Thank you. I would definitely love if every Council member
as well as the Mayor at some point in a year stop by at the commission meeting at least once
for, say, 30 minutes to give their thoughts, vision and insights into the goals of the
commissions. If required, special meeting session in addition to the regular meeting can be
arranged to accommodate the Council member’s and Mayor’s availability during the year. I
know there are several commissions in the city and the Council members’ and Mayor’s time
could be limited. Yet, I am confident it will be valuable for the commission members to get
to know the Council members and their views one on one.
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10) Outreach to the community is critical to our efforts; what mechanisms of outreach to the
community would you suggest that we adopt or improve upon?
Audit Committee
• I am not familiar with all of the mechanisms currently under serious consideration or
already being implemented. I do think that outreach to the community can include
“educational training” that might help set the foundation for why some decisions are taken
or not taken. For example, offering community educational workshops explaining the
purposes of the various commissions or various city government departments can help to
explain why these organizations interact in the way that they do or why certain actions are
explored first in the Planning Commission and then reach City Council.
Bike Ped Commission
• BPC commissioners are actively involved and are participating with the various outreach
efforts from the city related to individual projects during the course of the year. BPC
Commissioners are also participating with other community events during the course of the
year including the Earth Day Bike Rides, Fall Bike Festival, Bike to Work booth. BPC
Commissioners are also volunteering with other organizations in the city, allowing
community and resident outreach.
• For all the bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure projects the city staff generally hold
multiple community meetings, often also attended by a subset of the commissioners. It
seems to me there is plenty of opportunity for community input in that process. In addition,
all the commission meetings, as well as the city council meetings, are open for the public to
attend to and speak at. Again, seem there is a lot of opportunity for community input here
• This is an important aspect of every commission’s work. I would recommend (1)
encouraging staff to institute regular updates (weekly/biweekly) on projects as they are in
progress, whether via the City website or email, depending on public interest, (2) having
public outreach meetings at various times and at other locations, such as at schools—instead
of mainly in the evening—to allow for residents with children to attend more easily, and (3)
having staff clearly explain during these meetings that though input is taken, recorded and
carefully listened to, it doesn’t mean that it necessarily can be implemented. Residents can
complain they weren’t “listened to” when what they ask for is unfeasible and so doesn’t
happen. They may not be getting the understanding from the Staff on how the process
works for public input. We have also talked some at our meetings about using social media
more effectively and more often; many residents have stated that they do not know about
upcoming events, project status, or how the process works. Increasing our “push” system
for information would be one improvement.
Disaster Council
• Commission Liaison
I agree that getting the right people to participate is very important. All of our partners that
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have an emergency response role is a very large group and a multiple pronged approach is
needed. Personal contact and relationship maintenance is very time consuming so having all
of our contracts include an emergency role component would be very helpful to announce
the Disaster Council and define the expectations and response roles.
Fine Arts Commission
• Community events and seminars or workshops is the direct way to increase communication
with the community in my view.
• FAC has regular marketing activities around promoting our 3 art contests – Emerging,
Distinguished and Young Artist. We also seek publicity in local media for contest
announcements and winners as well as having winning art displayed on the Library art wall
for 6 months/yr. We also seek opportunities to work with other commissions, City-
sponsored programs (ie, utility box painting program, provide input for proposed
performing arts center) and the public in general. We look for opportunities to be visible at
City events, the Senior Center, and at our schools and art schools. Our newest work-in-
progress programs include “Art in Unexpected Places,” and we are also working on
identifying interior spaces, beyond the Library, where art can be displayed for public
viewing. Looking for outreach opportunities is a regular part of our activities.
Housing Commission
• I strongly believe that our outreach should include languages aside from English. Our
community is diverse with many people whose first languages are not English. We can
always improve our accessibility for English language learners. This applies not just to
outreach; we should try our best to provide language interpretation at meetings if we have
the resources available. Our outreach should also be on various social media platforms.
Many of our subcommunities often use different platforms, such as WeChat, WhatsApp,
LINE, KakaoTalk, etc. We can explore the possibility of having community liaisons for
different platforms and languages.
• Outreach to to the Community: Diverse populations require diverse methods. Consider:
1. Add meetings held in the neighborhoods affected by a big policy. This has been
done with the Bike/Ped Commission. Meetings are hard to attend. The closer they are to the
person’s home, the more likely they can go. Plus, they will feel more listened to by the City.
2. Paper news
1. Keep the Scene magazine. Some residents are not in the electronic world at all.
If they do not do so already, ensure that all Commissions include an item in the Scene that
helps residents get to know the Commissioners, or understand their role. Several City
Departments already do this.
2. Post cards and letters are good because everyone has a postal address.
3. Door hangers. That requires volunteers or paid labor to distribute but can more
easily aim at a specific local area.
4. Posting in the usual public places, including the Cupertino Courier. Improve
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by adding public posting places in more areas, esp. those far from Quinlan Center, City Hall,
or the Library. Ex: I saw the Parks Master Plan request for comments in my nearby park, as
well as Nextdoor.
3. Neighborhood Park events were a great idea implemented last summer.
4. Fourth of July celebrations are very important. The music in the afternoon was a
very nice added feature last year. The traditional ones, like patriotic music and fireworks,
should remain.
5. Electronic means:
1. NextDoor has been very useful to me. I have heard complaints about it,
though. Any replacement needs to be available to most residents. Perhaps a better vetting of
comments on Nextdoor would ‘save’ it. This isn’t a problem on Nextdoor that is unique to
Cupertino. Or unique to Nextdoor. People do not always take care about their comments on
social media the way they would in a conversation.
2. Email works and most people have it.
3. Text? Many people text and do not email. I much prefer email because the
emails are easier to keep track of.
4. I have heard different apps recommended, but the City needs to be careful that
we do not use electronic apps that are “walled gardens”. For example, I have email, text,
and Nextdoor, but do not have Facebook or Twitter or any other social media app. The more
different kinds the City uses, the harder it will be for staff to remember to put the messages
on all of them.
6. Telephones. Most people have them.
7. Word of mouth is good, though hard to quantify. Continue to encourage block
parties, emergency groups, festivals, etc. where people meet.
• Commission Liaison
Continue to implement current outreach efforts.
Library Commission
• n/a
• My experience and expertise is with the Library Commission. I suggest you recognize the
centrality of the Cupertino Library to the life of the community and utilize your partnership
with the SCCLD to combine City Council outreach with opportunities for public education
and non- partisan issues-focused presentations with library resources. The Cupertino
Library is a respected agent of unbiased information on an wide range of issues—there is,
indeed, no issue on which a public library could be a prejudiced or one-sided deliverer of
information. Partner with them—have issues forums, and engage with the library to
highlight relevant writings, articles, films, etc in advance or, subsequently, in support.
• I hope the City can decide on an open online communication forum that does not have
profit or the financial interests of its investors as the barometer for determining which
comments from residents will be shared and which ones will be removed. Please select an
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online communication forum that lets subscribers see all posts shared in the City. Under the
current online communication forum, the hosting company isolates residents by
neighborhood, by subject matter, and by content of posts, which inhibits open
communication among residents.
• We did discuss this in the past few meetings, and based upon feedback from the other
commissions, we have exactly the same feeling – our marketing is not powerful enough.
Therefore, we should definitely spend more time and efforts on outreach to the community,
and simply let more people know about us. I do think social media is very powerful, but we
didn’t leverage the use of it too well. Also, I think for Indian community, we should use
What’s App to get into some Groups, and for Chinese community, use Wechat Groups etc.
These are things we can do easily. Further, we should allocate resources dedicated to
marketing, set up a marketing department, set up a marketing sub-committee, people
monitoring marketing strategies and implementation on a regular basis, etc.
• The budget for Facebook ads should be increased and more physical signs and banners
placed in key locations throughout the parks as well as the library. Finding a way to target
those that are busy throughout the day but residents of the city is important.
• Need to publicize workshops, commission meetings and city council meeting more.
Parks & Recreation Commission
• N/A
• N/A
• I actually think the city does a pretty good job of outreach despite folks thinking otherwise.
Of course, there is always room for improvement. Maybe quarterly townhall meetings?
• Form a sub-committee or advisory-committee with industry or domain experts and attach
them with the commission. This is a volunteer-based committee not under city / government
governance but acts as a sounding board for providing more community insights to the
commissioners.
• Commission Liaison
We need to focus on social media and opportunities to reach Chinese and Indian
community members.
Planning Commission
• Outreach to the community is critical to our efforts; what mechanisms of outreach to the
community would you suggest that we adopt or improve upon? Communications is always
challenging, and one method does not work for all. Age, connectivity are all different for
our citizens. I strongly recommend using all methods to maximize outreach.
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• Nextdoor and the Mercury News are not helpful in bringing the community together.
Cupertino Scene could be more useful. Aren’t there ideas?
• I once suggested, only half seriously, that if we wanted to really get the public's attention,
we should hire a fleet of old WWII bombers to fly over the city at treetop level dropping
leaflets. Getting the public's attention in Cupertino is difficult because we have no effective
local press, and many people are very busy with school and work. That being said, an
informal precinct analysis of the 2018 anti-Vallco Specific Plan candidates indicated that
these candidates received the most votes around the Vallco area. What this says to me is that
although the City held many public workshops at City Hall, we should have held meetings
and workshops in the neighborhoods near Vallco. Such meetings are not easy for staff - ask
David Stillman about the responses he got during meetings held in parks for public works
projects. But that's okay - even if staff is confronted by angry neighbors, the neighbors will
come away from the meeting feeling that they have been listened to. Signs at the site of a
proposed project also help, as do mailers. Also, I think the City could do better with email
notifications. Although I've signed up for email notifications for numerous issues, it seems
that I have not always received complete and timely follow-up emails or notifications from
the City. And we should not neglect knocking on doors by staff and commissioners.
Although most doors won't be answered, those who do answer will likely talk with their
friends and neighbors about the conversation. Residents are often impressed that someone
took the trouble to come to their door. If the City (and, frankly, the commissioners) had
done a lot of door knocking for Vallco, we could possibly have saved a lot of money.
• The only thing needed is to make the role and responsibilities of being a commissioner more
visible to the public. I worked at the Volunteer Festival last year for the Planning
Commission and I don’t think the public has much of an idea about what Commissions do.
This question may be more about interacting with the public more. The Brown Act imposes
some limits on commissioner participation that need to be honored. I think it’s very
important that Commissioners understand the relationship between the commission’s
consensus/group decision vs. their personal opinions when representing their commission,
and would encourage you to be mindful of not creating social situations that blur the
responsibilities of the Commissioners.
Public Safety Commission
• We could use social media such FB, Twitter or nextdoor to post about activities by the
Commission and receive feedback of people. We should give attention to public health
aspect as well in the City of Cupertino. There should be an Outpatient clinic set up for
Mental health, Food and Nutrition, Oral Health, public health education. May be we could
have public health editorial section in Cupertino scene where professionals could posts
articles relating to food and health to bring more awareness.
• Have the city actively help us advertise our upcoming workshops / events with digital and
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physical flyers.
• I think there is a lot of knowledge gap among residents about how rich of resources are
available with the city. Many people are not even aware of many programs that the city has.
May because of the churn rate in Cupertino. It will be better to host neighborhood specific
events so there is more outreach and take help from block leaders to organize and host these
events.
• I would like to see our commission have a more modern webpage where more information
can be shown perhaps highlighting a topic of the month introduce the first responders that
serve our community.
• Townhall meetings are better than formal city council meetings for outreach.
Sustainability Commission
• On specific subject, the City website serves the outreach function really well. Our official
email addresses should be available and easy to find on City’s website; we should make
sure that we all reply to public requests promptly. This should be a “code of ethics” item.
The City’s support of community based events, such as Mayor’s State of the City, Earth Day,
Fall Festival, Community Volunteer Fair, Cherry Blossom, Mother’s Day, Diwali, are
excellent and fun ways to connect with the community and introduce general subject to
Cupertino residents.
• "Office hours" where the public can come to a specific location at a specific time and speak
to commissioners. All commissions would send a representative to attend. This would be an
informal event and would be held monthly. It would be an opportunity for the commissions
to interact and hear from the public.
Teen Commission
• Creating city accounts on platforms that citizens use a lot now such as Wechat or WhatsApp
would be a great way to further city outreach as those are apps that lots of locals use very
frequently.
• I think more events for the community to gather at would be ideal for outreach to the
community.
• I think a monthly email blast to Cupertino residents summarizing the work of the
Council that month could be implemented, with email collections coming at fairs and other
city events.
• I would suggest that more outreach via NextDoor and email occur. In addition, I would
recommend varying the times at which outreach meetings occur: some people are not
available in the evening, and having morning or afternoon meetings at a variety of venues
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would mean reaching a larger set of residents.
• I think that the city could get more public engagement and community involvement by
promoting their events better. Even though the city does plan out a lot of events, the
promoting part of the process is not very efficient. The city could promote their social media
accounts more, as most of their promotional events are on their social media pages.
• I think that a lot of the community doesn't really know that many of the commissions
actually exist, so interacting directly with the public instead of just having them come to
meetings most of the time would improve outreach.
• I strongly believe the social media aspect should be strengthened by becoming more active
on Instagram/Facebook and target younger audiences as well.
Technology Information & Communications Commission
• Having remote conferencing will liberate everyone a lot. Expecting a physical presence is
probably single biggest hurdle for participation. While nobody wants to restrict freedom of
speech, involving non-residents can lead to ineffective results for residents and city. While
non-residents can input their comments, residents should be given priority during prime
time of the group meetings. TICC and staff MUST continue to explore on a priority basis to
get better tools to improve outreach with trusted tools. Perhaps this collective group should
plan special sessions on finding those tools outside the regular planned meetings.
• Given the predominant Mobile culture, an active Mobile (iOS/Android) application specific
to the City of Cupertino could be valuable to be in touch with the community. Such
application should be engaging and informing people of local news, developing
news/emergencies such as missing person, accidents, etc.), safety tips, recycle days
reminders, even citywide Easter egg hunt games or similar, movie night reminders, even air
quality index during fire seasons, etc. to name a few. This will also be a critical component
of our drive towards Smart City. Additionally, any analytics inferred from such application
can give the pulse of what is important to the community as we embark on actually
prioritizing Smart City goals (e.g. Public Safety, Traffic efficiency, shopping/dining
experiences, parking, etc.) Commissions should meet with the Public at least twice a year in
city- hall format to understand the city’s pulse and inputs in respective commission
objectives. Encourage city’s children, teens and even adults to participate in TV grade
content productions in the form of competition or casual contributions. The content can be
about solving specific city problem or pure creative arts, documentaries, etc. This not only
excites creative thinkers in the highly skilled Cupertino community but also engages the
community and drives them to watch the city channel more enthusiastically. This time can
be used to also inform the public about important policy changes, laws, reminders, etc. For
example, there was a Social Host Responsibility Ordinance 10.05 passed in 2018 but not
many were aware of such. Over all the city channel content idea is something for us to
consider. I also see a possible synergy of this community-sourced-content concept with the
city’s Performing Arts related agenda. There may be a win-win all around for the city.
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11) Does your Commission prefer action minutes or summary minutes and why? How do
you feel about having action minutes accompanied by audio recordings?
Audit Committee
• I think a combination of action and summary minutes are important for the Audit
Committee. I interpret “action minutes” to mean a list of the action items that various
Committee or City staff members have committed to take as a result of the Committee’s
meetings. That is a convenient list of who needs to do what. On the other hand, often the
Audit Committee should show for the public record that its deliberations were reached in a
fashion allowing for multiple inputs and considered various possibilities while ultimately
deciding on a particular action. I think in many cases that record of why a decision was
taken can be as important as what decision was taken and I interpret that to be “summary
minutes.” I personally do not want audio recordings to be a permanent part of the
Committee’s deliberations.
Bike Ped Commission
• I would characterize BPC meeting more as summary minutes. They provide a good
comprehensive view of what has been discussed, but also include actions or votes taken.
The meeting minutes are useful as they are, and do not see a need for change.
• I feel the minutes should be as detailed as possible. Audio recordings would be OK also.
Might actually be a good idea to also have a phone bridge into the meetings that the public
as well as commissioners that happen to be traveling can call into to participate in the
meetings.
• As our commission does not have very many voting action items, we really need summary
minutes. I have looked back through previous minutes to see how the discussion went on a
particular topic, or what “direction” we gave staff. As there was no vote, this would not
have been recorded, and I can’t imagine trying to find and listen to over two hours of
meeting recording to find it, assuming I knew during which meeting this particular fine
point was discussed. Action-only minutes would not be useful for our commission. I have
no problem with additional audio recordings, though I’m not sure to what purpose they
would be as our summary minutes cover everything and are much more easily searched.
With our meetings being run in an informal and conversational way, it could also be very
difficult to tell who is speaking or even to hear them in the room.
Disaster Council
• Commission Liaison
I believe we currently use summary minutes. This seems to be adequate for one purpose but
a more detailed reporting method is needed to get the status of work programs to City
Council to promote action.
Fine Arts Commission
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• Summary minutes works well as we could review it whenever needed.
• Personally, I like paper. I like action minutes to identify who is responsible and when
something is due, especially since we only meet every other month. Memory fades quickly.
Failure to meet a responsibility or deadline delays progress. Audio recording of meetings
are hard to use. Who is speaking? Topics can jump around. When 2 or more are speaking at
the same time it is hard to understand what is being said. Other organizations I am involved
with have tried this. I gave up using the recordings.
Housing Commission
• I prefer having summary minutes since it summarizes the essence of the discussion and
makes the information more accessible to the public. I do not support having action minutes
accompanied by audio recordings. The City Council and Planning Commission already
have video recordings, and I would be open to having recordings published as a
supplement to the meeting minutes.
• Action minutes or summary minutes? I like summary minutes. You can refer back to them,
if necessary. Action minutes accompanied by audio recordings would be good. Would, also,
be good if they were made available on the Commission electronic agenda page. Would be
available to more residents.
• Commission Liaison
The Housing Commission uses action minutes.
Library Commission
• n/a
• Not sure what each represents.
• My preference is to have commission meetings reported using action minutes accompanied
by audio recordings.
• I believe the current we have is both action minutes and summary minutes. This is a
tradition until now and we think it is good. But even for summary minutes, we still missed
many things, especially detailed discussions and thoughts exchange among members etc.
Therefore, I do like the idea of action minutes accompanied by audio recordings. The
fundamental reason for this is the audio recording is one of the best ways to save ALL the
information in its original format, in case disputes arise and people need to go back to dig
deeper. The comprehensiveness of the audio recording may not seem so useful most of
times but will be critical to clarify issues when there are disputes.
• Either one would be fine as long as it doesn’t waste staff’s time and provide public a full
picture of meeting discussion and results.
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Parks & Recreation Commission
• Audio recordings should be available from all commission meetings. More detailed minutes
would be an improvements.
• N/A
• Prefer action minutes but either is fine. Fine with them being accompanied by audio
recordings. Doesn’t apply so much to our commission since the meetings are televised.
• It is very important to have a clearly spelled out action times for the commissioners to
follow and respond. So, action items with deadlines (ETA) is a must. Having audio
recordings and minutes is useful for the public to review and understand things happened
in those meetings.
• Commission Liaison
Summary minutes are also more effective for this commission. Almost all P&R Commission
meetings are televised. Televised Commission meetings would be better served if we could
determine how many people are actually watching the live feed.
Planning Commission
• Action minutes are fine.
• We are recorded and on line.
• Action minutes, with video or audio back-up. Do we have to capability to post and keep
audio recordings of all commission meetings? That would be helpful.
• Because I’ve served on the Parks & Rec and Planning Commissions that have full video
records, I think action minutes are sufficient. Summary minutes have value, but are a heavy
load on all parties because it can be very hard to summarize complex discussions in a
neutral way that we can vote to approve.
Public Safety Commission
• Our Commission would prefer action minutes by audio recording as it allows everyone to
know what happened in the meeting.
• Action minutes accompanied by audio recordings – concise and to the point. People can
speak more freely.
• Great ides – Action + Audio
• Captain Urena currently records our meeting both audibly and in a written form and his
assistant then transcribes the meeting for public record and I think it is a great idea and
should be continued. I personally was surprised when I attended other commission
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meetings for business matters the somewhat unprofessional method of keeping records of
meetings.
• Our meeting minutes are very comprehensive, including both the discussion as well as final
action, so I do not think any changes are required. Since I cannot find meeting minutes
before 2013 on Cupertino website, I do not think adding audio is a benefit other than
creating more work for the staff.
Sustainability Commission
• I am not sure about the definition of action minutes, the summary minutes; and the
difference between the two. The minutes we currently have are very good, easy to read and
find the information I need. The way the minutes are taken should be kept going forward.
In our case, I don’t think recording the meeting is necessary and effective as many of our
meetings had presenters and slides, these will not be recorded well on a tape.
• I personally would prefer minutes that both provide a summary and also contain action
items so that it documents what was discussed and provides a starting point for the
following meeting. It also provides accountability and responsibility. I could do without the
audio recordings but if required/mandated, I'd understand and will be fine with it.
Teen Commission
• Our commission prefers summary minutes because it keeps the focus on the discussions
being had and not on making sure everything is being recorded properly. Personally, I’m
against having action minutes that are accompanied by audio recordings because there are a
lot of unanswered questions that surround that such who would access to these recordings
and would they be a good use of resources.
• Our commission prefers action minutes because it is easier to keep track of who made what
happen. I feel against having action minutes accompanied by audio recordings because I
personally feel it is extraneous.
• I can’t speak on behalf of the rest of the Commission, but I prefer action minutes. I don’t
think audio recordings are necessary for action minutes.
• Our commission strongly prefers summary minutes; often we do not take any actions on an
item besides discussions and plans, and we strongly feel that the public would not be
adequately informed by action minutes. Action minutes accompanied by audio recordings,
although arguably the most informative, have a large set of problems: in the event of
equipment failure, the meeting would be entirely unrecorded. In addition, our meetings
often last three hours. It is far less helpful to the public to listen to three hours of raw audio
to find one item than it is to read an accurate summary of the discussions and action that
took place.
• I prefer action minutes because it allows both us and the public to have a clear record of the
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decisions made during each meeting. I do not think there is a need for audio recordings;
action minutes should be sufficient enough in informing what happens during each
meeting.
• We usually have one designated member of the commission take meeting minutes. I feel
uncomfortable with the idea of recording our meetings, because being recorded and having
other people be able to hear that recording whenever means that I would feel a little hesitant
to speak openly. This isn't because we say things that we shouldn't-rather, because having
every word we say recorded is a little off-putting.
• Our commission believes summary minutes are more valuable as the audience we are
targeting to read these notes are more likely to understand a summary rather than action
minutes. I do not endorse action minutes with audio recordings because I feel as though
recording the meetings will limit ideas from being conveyed because of the fact of being
recorded.
Technology Information & Communications Commission
• I don’t see people going back to recordings and listening or watching all of them in full.
Action AND summary minutes should be published and we should use tools that can help
speed up gathering them. For example using speech to text conversion tools to achieve that
is quite possible. Recordings can be retained and linked if further validation of the thought
process or dispute resolution is required. Recordings can also have shorter shelf life due to
their cost to infrastructure.
• Reflecting back for a while now, I started thinking the summary minutes might be beneficial
as it can capture several nuanced points that the commission members bring out. This will
be a great reference for the commission’s future proceedings. Especially for a commission
such as TICC the topics can quickly get intensely complex given its nature and scope. The
summary points can literally provide the dots that can be tied together to obtain a
comprehensive outcome. For example, a prior suggestion by me to tap* the local talents
from our high performing High Schools instead of only De Anza college to work at city’s
various positions (e.g. IT, Planning, etc.) as volunteers/interns could not be captured
anywhere in our current format. On the other front, I am fine with the audio recordings. But
if not archived there is no real use to the recording except for immediate reference by the
city for jotting down the meeting action points. But I agree archiving so much recording is
expensive to the city. I do not have specific opinion about the recording itself. [* Amount
and quality of mobile/cloud software applications, marketing and advertising skills,
statistics/analytics skills that I see from our very Cupertino high school students, I believe,
are valuable resource for us to tap while at the same time engaging with the community’s
important segment some of whom may want to continue a career with the city. I hear about
students who went to great undergrad schools and/or worked in large prestigious
corporations such as Google and returned back to the city, they love, to work.]
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12) Starting this year, Commissions will be submitting a 200‐300 word update of their current
work to Council every other month. Do you have thoughts on this process?
Audit Committee
• Since the Audit Committee addresses certain ongoing operational items, which often are
handled by City staff on a daily basis, I suggest that City staff be closely involved in the
creation of these periodic submissions of the Audit Committee’s updates.
Bike Ped Commission
• I would hope we can align these updates with the meeting minutes (i.e. adjust the
format/structure) of the meeting minutes to the needs of the council. I do not recommend
creating yet another monthly document, which is largely overlapping but different from the
meeting minutes.
• Sounds like a good idea. See my answer to 9) above.
• I think it would be a useful, as long as the Councilmembers read these updates and consider
them in their deliberations. I can imagine it will take a while to read the updates from all the
commissions, and the Councilmembers will need to agree to make time to do this. I can also
see that it would be helpful for a particular commission to see what other commissions are
doing. For our commission, knowing especially what the Planning, Parks and Recreation
and Public Safety Commission have in progress would be very helpful (without having to
attend all their meetings). Thank you again for taking the time to answer the above
questions. If you have any additional thoughts or comments that you would like to share,
please feel free. Thank you for soliciting our input. I hope it is helpful, and that we all can
work together more effectively based on the results of this survey.
Disaster Council
• Commission Liaison
Is this limited to the work plan item from Council? Maybe some clarification as to the objective
of such updates would be used.
Fine Arts Commission
• This will definitely make the committee work towards their assigned goals and meet the
targets. I think it is effective.
• Think this is a good process. Questions: Who will read Commission bi-monthly reports?
Who will provide feedback to Commissions? We need to know this.
Housing Commission
• I support this idea. I would like to clarify whether the Commissioners or city staff will be
writing the updates. If this has not been decided, I believe the Commissioners should write
them with the assistance of city staff, and for each update to be approved by a vote, like we
do with the meeting minutes.
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• 200-300 word update? Every other month. Yes. Although I recommend that it be in addition
to the monthly Mayor’s meeting. Face to face meetings are important.
1. Update would keep focus on key actions, especially, Commissions that do not meet
frequently.
2. Help the Council stay aware of each Commissions’s annual goals.
3. Council is considering merging some Commissions, also, adding a separate Commission for
Traffic. Updates could help identify key overlaps, or highlight why you need to keep both
sets of input.
4. Consider whether to have enough copies for all attendees, to keep all in the loop.
13. Other Comments
1. A Traffic Commission is vitally Important. Right now Cupertino has a joint public/private
partnership with Apple Inc. to work on traffic issues. It was put in place on July 31, 2018, as
an alternative to changing the tax structure and increasing taxes on some businesses.
However, in the press of land-use decisions, the fact that Cupertino residents rank traffic the
highest issue outside of housing makes it extremely important that there are people
committed to that issue. If progress is not made, then the Council would have the proper
notice to decide how best to proceed with obtaining more funds.
2. If Commissions are merged, the name of the newly formed Commission needs to identify
where the public can find the information normally worked by the former Commission(s).
Perhaps the former Commission (s) could be renamed as Committee(s) that report to the
newly formed Commission. Perhaps one former Commissioner from each new Committee
would become a Commissioner on the newly formed Commission.
• Commission Liaison
Consider posting the Commission work program on each Commission website.
Library Commission
• n/a
• Depends entirely on what happens to these updates after submission, and what feedback is
provided. It’s only a productive ‘communication’ if it’s two-way. Seemingly useless ‘reports’
will rapidly become content-free.
• Maybe offer a template for presenting the update and share deadline dates for the whole
year to help commissioners (or the Chair) structure their data and submit responses on time.
How will the updates be used? Will the City publish them somewhere? Comment: I hope
that changes to commission-Council-City communication permit commission chairs or 3 of
5 commissioners to refuse to add agenda items offered by staff if the chair or the
commission members can make the case that the agenda item is outside the scope of the
commission’s work. Commissions have very little time to work together. It is both
counterproductive and demoralizing to commissioners to dedicate meeting time to agenda
items that fall outside the purview.
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• This is the first time I heard of this but do think it is a good plan. My question is after
hearing the current work, will Council provide feedback or it will just be a one-way
submission? I think feedback from Council will be very helpful from our perspectives and
will create a positive bilateral communication flow.
• Most of the time, our commission is already provide summary report in bullets to update
our current work. So we welcome the change. However, 200-300 word limit perhaps isn’t
necessary. It should basic on quality of the content, not the word count.
Parks & Recreation Commission
• Again, wouldn’t a review of more detailed minutes suffice?
• N/A
• I feel that the commissioners are already spending a lot of time studying up on the agenda
items. This may add another layer that might not be welcomed. This could become a tedious
request. We all have busy lives. And who should do it? The chair? The chair and co-chair?
Add anyone else and you may run into Brown Act issues.
• I prefer to provide city council a measurable outcome table for the work plan items (SMART
Goal Progress report) City need to build a dashboard system where every commission
should fill in their work plan and update the progress which should be pulled out during
City council meeting to track. Public will also look into that progress – today every
commission provides completely differently and have no way to correlate the overall
progress for the city.
• Commission Liaison
This sounds like a good idea.
Planning Commission
• No.
• That’s two tweets from the Planning Commission, if that’s all we have to share, we aren’t
being properly tasked at all.......
• Is this really necessary? The Mayor's monthly commissioners meetings provide a good
opportunity for the Mayor to have a face-to-face discussion about the work of commissions,
and commissioners then have an opportunity to convey this information to their
commission colleagues at their respective meetings. Also, Council members can read
summary minutes and watch commission videos, as many of them do. They can even visit
commission meetings, or drop in on events put on by a commission. I'm afraid that council
members who are not experienced with the many opportunities available for interacting
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with commissioners are perhaps trying to micromanage commissions. Councilmembers get
adequate information when staff make their reports when a commission's action is placed
on the Council agenda. What is the purpose of these reports? If Councilmembers will be
using them to somehow inject their opinions into a commission's work before an issue
comes before the council, this would undermine to normal procedures for
commission/council interactions.
• I think this is very impractical! A commission should have a chance to meet and approve the
content of this update, like any other consensus document we generate. It’s almost
impossible for this to happen on a bi-monthly schedule for commissions that meet once per
month or less. The alternative for the Council is to look at the minutes (again, better if they
are approved if you’re going to make a decision on them). This seems like a bad idea.
Public Safety Commission
• I would prefer it to be quarterly as Council should give enough time for the Commissions to
take some concrete action and observe the impact of the activities in the quarter and submit
the report.
• It would be helpful to have a two-way communication, so it’d be nice to have Council
submit a response to our update each time (doesn’t have to be long).
• I think it is a good idea. However, because some of the work plan is still under review to be
finalized, it might have a late start.
• A written brief is great but it might just be a copy and paste if nothing has changed. I think
if there is a substantial change to the agenda or work plan then a brief should be made.
• I think that is a duplicate of meeting minutes, so I am afraid it is just additional work with
minimum benefit. By reading meeting minutes across all the Commissions, it is apparent
that there are big differences in how each of the Commissions are operated and
documented. Perhaps the first order of business is for the Council to establish a policy to
unify the operating procedure for all of the Commissions, e.g. all must follow the same
procedure as City Council meeting, as well as clarify the boundary between the
Commissions, e.g. when residents wish to complaint about numerous biker traffic
violations, do they go to Bike/Ped or PSC ?
Sustainability Commission
• Is the monthly mayor/commission meeting still in place? If so, the commissions’ updates are
provided during the meeting. Our chair used to bring updates of other commissions to our
meeting which was good to have. We only have four official meetings each year, what
should be included in the bimonthly updates? Is bi-monthly report a staff report? It may be
helpful if Council can provide a standard format for this report.
• I agree that Council should be aware of what the commissions are working on. I think an
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update every other month is too frequent. I would prefer to provide quarterly or biannual
updates. This is based on how active our commission is. I prefer providing a written update
versus attending a Council meeting to provide the update.
Teen Commission
• I think that this is a good step to take in better communication, but like I’ve stated the above,
I believe the Council should be held to the same standard and do the same so all parties can
be well informed.
• I think this would be a little extraneous because we have Mayor Meetings every month.
• No, I think it’s fair.
• I believe that it will help the commission to review their work; however, as the Teen
Commission tends to focus its effort on a few large events, aiming for a large impact,
updates every two to three months may give an unclear picture of the impacts the teen
commission is actually having.
• I like this process a lot. I think it is good to have the Council being informed about what
each commission to doing each month. It would also allow the Council to overlook each
commissions’ progress and be able to see what kind of events each commission is targeting.
• I think that this is a good idea because it would help the council see what each commission
is working on, as well as help each individual commission see their own progress as well.
As long as the council doesn't act negatively to this (which I don't believe they would do
that), I think that this is a positive idea.
• I believe this is a good idea as it will allow the commissions to reflect on the use of their time
in meetings and allow the council to stay updated in a more comfortable way.
Technology Information & Communications Commission
• I fully support this. I would like to not stop it there but keep an eye on improving it. Making
the common methods and procedures across all commissions will help even further.
• Not a bad idea. Such update can also help the commissions to reflect upon the extract of the
commission efforts each month and help set a high standard for productive meetings while
allowing constant sync with the Council and its expectations.
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Small Cell
Late Written Communications
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Oral Communications
Late Written Communications
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Cupertino Village Hotel
Late Written Communications
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Bike Ped CIP
Late Written Communications
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Agenda Posting Timeline
Late Written Communications