Original article: August 18, 2022
Fred Weis reads the opening of the Brown Act Law to the City Council
Here is the opening paragraph of the California Brown Act Law, shown split here for clarity. What was read was from “The People of this State” and onward. Highlight is added.
In enacting this chapter, the Legislature finds and declares that the public commissions, boards and councils and the other public agencies in this State exist to aid in the conduct of the people’s business. It is the intent of the law that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly.
The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.
It is my belief that City Staff have been withholding information that the People require in order to make an informed decision.
What I am saying here is not just about a lack of letters. It is about a lack of respect of the public process.
In my view, the letters are not the only thing that is being withheld from the public. The letters are only a part of how this Gateway process is being made obscure and filled with misrepresentations.
I would hope that we would see a remedy to what is an on-going issue. I have been observing this ever since I started learning about the Gateway plan, in January 2022. I see it as a repetitive pattern — showing disregard of normal, acceptable operating procedures and process.
In the efforts to manage the process of getting the Gateway plan adopted in an “efficient” and speedy manner, what we are seeing is, I believe, a case of “the ends justify the means.” That is, we want a good plan and there seems to be an attitude that doing whatever it takes to get this done is okay.
And that is where I disagree. I want a good plan too. But I’m not willing to see the public being shoved out of the way by violations of public process. I’m not willing to see specific requests of the City’s Committees and of the Planning Commission being disregarded and ignored.
One obvious and provable example are the letters that have been written to the Planning Commission. The first we saw of these letters was in the agenda packet for the April 12, 2022 Planning Commission meeting. See article here. Included were 42 letters (approximate number) relating to the Gateway Plan that the Community Development Department had been receiving over the previous five months. Included in this batch were the very important letters from Pacific Builders co-owner Nick Lucchesi (January 15th) and the letter from Andrea Tuttle (February 13th).
What’s more, not all the letters received relating to the Gateway plan were in this April 12th, 2022, release. Some were missing.
Even with all the public input and Planning Commission comment regarding this practice of delaying the letters, the Community Development Department refused to supply the letters in a timely manner.
Commission Vice-Chair Judith Mayer said: “The fact that we’re not receiving messages from the public as they’re being submitted to staff, it complicates things a little bit. And I appreciate all the messages that we’ve gotten this time.”
Commission Chair Julie Vaissade-Elcock said: ”The only other thing, David, is the public letters, they’re never in the packets. Are they just not getting them in on time? Is that what the problem is?”
Letters intended for the June 14th, 2022, meeting were not in the agenda packet. And they were not in the June 28th packet, nor in the July 26th packet, nor in the August 4th packet. At that point the letters had been missing for two months.
At the August 4th, 2022, Planning Commission meeting the Community Development Director announced that the letters would no longer be a part of the Planning Commission Agenda Packet. They would instead be made available on-line, and they would be posted there in batches. These batches might be posted once a month, or perhaps once every two months. At this time, it looks like every two months or longer. A transcription of the section of the Planning Commission meeting with the words of the Community Development Director is shown below, here.
The letters that were posted prior to this August 4th announcement were indeed on-line. There were letters there up through May 31st, 2022. In other words, the letters from June 9th were still not available to the public — 2-1/2 months later.
As to why the Community Development Director chose to have the cut-off for letters be that particular date — May 31st — when he easily could have included the letters from, say, June and July is something we likely will never know. What we do know that as of this date, August 18th, 2022, letters from June 1st onward are not available to the public, and this has been 2-1/2 months.
Below is the letter which I gave to the City Council members after speaking to them on this matter, at the City Council meeting on August 17th, 2022.
I chose to hand-deliver this letter to them, as that way I could be certain that it would be printed in the City Council agenda packet. For whatever reasons, the manner in which letters to the City Council are handled is quite different from how the Community Development Department handles letters to them. In short, letters to the City Council are put into the next agenda packet or are made available to the public immediately after the meeting — within a day or two, even if they are received the day of the meeting. Letters to the Planning Commission may show up two or three or four months later.
Letter hand-delivered to the City Council at their August 17, 2022 meeting:
To the City Council
Spoken at Oral Communications, at the end of the meeting, August 17, 2022.
Small edits have been made, such as adding the year to dates.
Commissioners: [ed: Councilmembers] Please read the transcript of David Loya speaking at the August 4th Planning Commission meeting. Thank you.
re: Letters to the Planning Commission – Worse than before
I spoke for just a few sentences on this at the August 3rd meeting.
I would greatly hope that this is the last time that I speak to the City Council on this.
What I am saying here is not just about a lack of letters. It is about a lack of respect of the public process. On the last page I have included a quote: Sentences from the first paragraph of the Brown Act, from 1953.
In my view, the letters are not the only thing that is being withheld from the public. The letters are only a part of how this Gateway process is being made obscure and filled with misrepresentations.
I would hope that we would see a remedy to what is an on-going issue. The situation has been going since January and February.
The letters to the Planning Commissioners are not getting into the agenda packets, or otherwise made available to the public. Typically, the letters are 2 to 4 months delayed. Some letters don’t get in at all.
I can remind the City Council that this does not appear to be a problem with letters sent to and received by the City Council. In fact, I can hand this letter to you today, on August 17th, and it will likely be attached to the Council’s agenda packet in a day or two.
Why can’t the Community Development Department use a system – or improve upon a system – that the City Council has had in place – for decades?
It is only a problem with the Community Development Department.
It is not at all clear if the letters in the past were reaching the Commissioners. With the newer e-mail system, it’s more likely they are getting the letters. Put the public has been shut out of seeing the letters.
When I suggested that the letters to the Planning Commission could be posted on-line, that was a suggestion intended to solve a problem — namely, that the letters were not appearing in the Planning Commission agenda packets.
The letters can be put into the packets. Or they can be put on-line. Either way is fine. But that it be done in a timely manner is what I was getting at.
On August 4th, the Community Development Director announced that the letters would now be posted on-line. That would seem to be a good thing.
Letters were posted there from 2021 up through May 31, 2022 – over 2 months earlier.
Why were all the letters not posted?
There were two problems – even bigger problems than the previous problem.
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- Still, not all the letters were there.
- Because of the “posting in batches” approach, letters from TWO MONTHS earlier were still not available to the public.
To post letters in two-month batches is deficient.
As of now, August 17th, there have been no letters after May 31st are there – 2-1/2 months ago.
Some history:
May 24th, 2022, Planning Commission meeting. David Loya said:
“And again, a reminder to the public, if you submit your comments on the Thursday before the meeting or earlier, you’ll see those comments included in the packet. If you submit them after that point, I’ll forward them on and then incorporate them after into the packet “
And as Commission Vice-Chair Judith Mayer said:
“The fact that we’re not receiving messages from the public as they’re being submitted to staff, it complicates things a little bit. And I appreciate all the messages that we’ve gotten this time.”
Jane Woodward and I submitted a total of 3 letters on Thursday, June 9th. They were not in the June 14, 2022, Planning Commission packet. At that June 14th meeting, David Loya did not apologize one little bit. He said:
“Again, I’m not sure what I said when I said it last time, but I was quoted as having said something that is not the case.”
[That’s correct: “I was quoted as having said something that is not the case.” David Loya was quoted as saying something that he now says is not true. However it was true when he said it, and at the time that he said it he meant it to be a true statement.]
He then explained that the letters would have to be there on the Wednesday prior to a Tuesday meeting. Typically the agenda packets are posted on Friday afternoon.
At that June 14th Planning Commission meeting, the Chair, Julie Vaissade-Elcock, spoke:
”The only other thing, David, is the public letters, they’re never in the packets. Are they just not getting them in on time? Is that what the problem is?”
The reply from David Loya:
”I’ll have to look into what the issue was there. Our intent is to bring those forward when we receive them, we bring them forward at the next meeting. If there’s something that slipped through the cracks, I’ll have to, I mean, I take responsibility for that and I’ll have to find it and bring it forward the next time.”
To repeat: “I’ll have to find it and bring it forward the next time.”
The Planning Commission meets 2 times a month. There was a special meeting on August 4th, 2022.
June 28th – No letters in the agenda packet.
July 12th — The meeting was cancelled.
July 26th – No letters in the agenda packet. At that point it was six weeks since the letters should have been in a packet.
August 4th – No letters in the agenda packet.
August 9th – No letters in the agenda packet. At this point, nine weeks.
Now, in theory, the letters are being posted on-line “in batches”
The website says: “Generally comments will be uploaded in chronological, monthly batches.”
The letters from after May 31 are not there, including mine from June 9.
So that is: June – July – half of August. That is 10 weeks – 2-1/2 months.
I have posted the letters onto the Arcata1.com website. I timed it. Depending on the level of redaction required – typically not much – it would be about 1 minute, sometimes 2, to post a single letter.
I posted 58 letters in about an hour and a half.
If I were to post them in a group, as one large PDF file, as the City is doing, it might take 10 or 15 minutes.
At the Planning Commission meeting on August 4, 2022, this is what David Loya said. It is shown on the YouTube video at time 1:53:39. Here is the link, cued up and ready to view: https://youtu.be/2Aterde8zbU?t=6819 or at: shorturl.at/bGLN3
David Loya:
“When will the letters be available. We have a public member who is tracking our every move very closely identify this to the Committee and to the Council, Planning Commission rather. And I wanted to, I wanted to be the first to tell you this, but it got out ahead of me. Spoiler alert. We are now taking — and we’ve heard this from the public, so we’re responding to that — we’re taking all of the communications that we’ve received and putting them onto our website under the SIRP page. So if you go to the SIRP page and you follow the “How do I get involved” link, which we’re probably going to need to change the name of now because there’s a lot more information in there than just how to get involved. “How do I get involved” takes you to the “Outreach and Engagement” section. Within that section, we’re actually having a section where we’re uploading verbatim the comments. It’s taking us a little time because we have to redact personal information from those, which is why you’re seeing them bunches. But those are coming forward and will continue to do that through this entire process.
The policy before was to incorporate those comments into the Staff Reports as we get them. But what was happening was that, you know, information was trickling in from so many different sources and at different times, and people were wondering, “well, why isn’t my letter that I sent to you today in the staff report?” Well, because the staff report was already published.”
[Note: This is complete mischaracterization of what actually happened. Letters were not put into the packets or made available to the public, in some instances, for months after they were received. This is not a question of a letter being received after the packet was published, not at all. And even if it were, then that letter should have gone into the next packet, two weeks from that point.]
“So we’re kind of transitioning. Now all of that information is going to be online located at this website. So you’ll be able to read them there. And then anything that comes in under the EIR, communications with the EIR, they’ll be located in two places. They’ll be located, we’re going to continue this process where all the public comment will be uploaded in the same place. So anybody who’s used to getting that information at that location, they’ll go there, they’ll find it. But we are legally required to house correspondents that’s related to the circulation of the EIR in the EIR and deal with those specifically and respond to them in the EIR. So you see them in there as well.
So we’re moving away from putting letters in the packets and moving into putting all that information on the website and making the referral there. So that’s where you’ll see the letters and, yes, to answer your question, it’s not going to be a summary. It’s going to be verbatim what they said. We will continue to summarize in the engagement report, what we’re hearing from the public from all different venues, whether it’s the written correspondence or oral correspondence at hearings, or meetings.”
Members of the City Council, I ask you:
- “we’ve heard this from the public, so we’re responding to that”
- “So we’re moving away from putting letters in the packets and moving into putting all that information on the website and making the referral there. So that’s where you’ll see the letters”
- “We will continue to summarize in the engagement report, what we’re hearing from the public from all different venues”
Putting up the letters in two-month batches – is this giving the public what it deserves?
As a reminder for everyone:
The Brown Act Law 1953
Starting with the 3rd sentence of the Law:
“…The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist in remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”
Thank you for your dedication to our wonderful city.
— Fred Weis