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Council approves community outreach
By Jana Seshadri
The council member outreach program proposed by newly elected Sunnyvale City Councilman John Howe was accepted unanimously, albeit after much discussion and clarification.
Fresh off the campaign trail, Howe said he was struck by the number of neighborhoods in the city that do not meet regularly as groups and was concerned about residents who do not have adequate opportunities to meet and discuss issues with their council members.
"This council should reach out to groups that are not necessarily organized," Howe said at the Jan. 8 meeting.
The issue that prompted his proposal was an informal neighborhood meeting last month in the home of Donna Carrig, a resident of the Washington Park area.
"It's much more convenient and comfortable for me and other residents to meet council members in an informal setting," Carrig said at the meeting.
Carrig said the purpose of arranging the meeting was to get interested residents from near and far together and discuss issues.
"I received a lot of positive feedback from the meeting," Carrig said.
Having met and talked with a few council members outside the city hall setting, Carrig said she invited four of them to attend the meeting in her home. But she said only three council members could attend for fear of violating the Brown Act, since more than three members would constitute a majority of the council.
Sunnyvale City Attorney Valerie Armento clarified doubts from all the council members regarding the stipulations of the act.
According to the Brown Act, a gathering of people, which includes a majority of the council members, at the same time or place to hear, discuss or deliberate upon any item that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council, is prohibited. The act also prohibits the majority of the council members from developing a collective concurrence on any issue. The act stipulates that during this open and noticed meeting, the majority of the council members do not discuss among themselves business of a specific nature that is within their subject matter jurisdiction.
"City Council members cannot deliberate or voice any type of opinion on any issue at these meetings," Armento said. "It's much safer to talk about large, general, conceptual issues."
Resident Thom Mayer, from the Lakewood Village Association, requested the council find a way to hold legal, noticed meetings in informal settings in various neighborhoods.
Several council members expressed doubts about the program itself. Howe stressed that the council member outreach program should be purely voluntary. If any of the members or city staff do not want to attend a particular meeting, then they do not have to, Howe said. Meetings, which could be held at any public place like a school hall or church building, should not be restricted to neighborhood associations, he said, but should include special groups and groups of residents with common concerns and problems. Upon further discussion, Howe added a sunset clause to the motion, which will allow the program to be reexamined in one year so that its further continuation could be discussed at that time.
"I think it's extremely valuable for us to go into the city's neighborhoods and listen to the people there," Howe said.
Council members Pat Vorreiter and Jack Walker both said that past experimentation with a similar program resulted in very poor attendance by residents. Consequently, Vorreiter said there should be a preliminary effort by the council to get the program started.
"We should have some kind of spark that would get people there," Vorreiter said.
"If we don't have any particular issue to discuss, nobody shows up," Walker said. "We should do a certain amount of outreach for issue search."
There was further discussion on whether to involve the staff in this outreach effort. The council agreed that to begin with, staff could publicize the council's interest in attending neighborhood meetings and determine whether there is any interest among citizens in this type of meeting at all.
The council also decided that after the initial outreach, staff would only facilitate these meetings by forwarding associations' requests to the council, notifying associations of council member availability, and providing council members with a brief summary of pressing local issues, if any. Howe moved to expand citizen input via council outreach to neighborhoods, Walker seconded it and the motion carried unanimously.
"We can do this inexpensively and effectively, without taking up a lot of staff time," Howe said.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
