Updates: Council discusses ordinance to make property owners
clean up junk abutting their lots… Sidewalks never discussed due
to councilman’s absence… Body likely to push for $37 million
library bond measure… City salary policy still up in the air…
City attorney weighs pros and cons of ‘sunshine’ ordinance before
planned study session.
A three-day meeting has yielded a dozen more meetings.
City staff and council members completed their marathon policy summit Monday night after talking about some of city’s most pressing concerns, from the library to salaries, transparency to teens, and everything in between.
But there was so much to talk about that the council will have to hold a study session in the very near future just to prioritize the concerns — “A study session on study sessions,” said Human Resources Director LeeAnn McPhillips — and then schedule dozens more study sessions to tackle them individually.
The council never even talked about sidewalks because Councilman Bob Dillon left the summit Monday afternoon due to illness. The body will discuss the controversial issue Feb. 11.
“Can you imagine what this would have been like if we had talked about sidewalks?” Mayor Al Pinheiro said. “This policy summit agenda was just packed out of sight. It was ridiculous.” Blurry-eyed city staff and council members all nodded their heads in response before recommending that the council hold more summits and avoid procrastination in the future.
While the council did touch on all of the agenda’s 50-or-so items except for sidewalks, they ultimately decided to devote individual study sessions to 24 of them. Scroll to the bottom of this story to see a list.
Library barely cuts it with voters
More than three in five voters, or 64 percent, support a $37 million bond measure to fund library improvements, but that’s not quite enough because bonds require a two-thirds voter approval.
A consultant learned this by interviewing 400 Gilroy voters earlier this month in both Spanish and English. Most said the library is important, but they were concerned about increased property taxes and existing city funds.
To remedy this concern, “the city should consider a program of public education and outreach before placing a measure before the voters,” said David Metz, an employee with Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates, which compiled the study.
The council will discuss this idea at a study session specifically for this topic and the planned arts center, a presentation on which will occur Feb. 20 by the Community Services Department. The arts center and library currently have funds scheduled for use in 2012 and 2015, respectively, according to draft budget figures.
Metz pointed out that putting the bond measure on the November ballot might give it a better chance than postponing the measure because this November more younger people will turn out at the polls to vote for president, and the library study showed that younger people supported the bond more than older residents, Democrats more than Republicans, as well. But a potential bond measure for Gilroy Unified School District and another for the proposed bullet train could also appear on the ballot and draw taxpayer support away from those more concerned with transportation or education, Metz said.
When residents heard exactly how much the bond would cost them – $31 per year per $100,000 of assessed property value – then library support dropped from 64 percent to 51 percent. Raising sales tax was another unfavorable idea, but when residents learned about the dilapidated building susceptibility to earthquakes and the potential for schoolchildren to be crushed, support rose again; but again, after voters heard all the factors, support did not quite exceed the necessary two-thirds.
“The closure of the library is a legitimate possibility,” Councilman Dion Bracco said. “It has a leaky roof. The heating and air system is shot. Everything in that building is shot, and heaven forbid we have an earthquake a day when the place is full of kids. We have to get these things out there so voters understand that (the state’s library renovation coffers are empty) and we’ve been turned down two or three times by the state, and that’s normally where money comes from. This is actually our last option.”
Gilroy’s head librarian, Lani Yoshimura, said Metz’s survey still left the door open but that she was heartened by the majority of residents who want a new library.
The voters’ take on the library:
Two-thirds of voters have been to library in past year
71 percent satisfied with overall quality of library, but 47 percent said it needs more space
79 percent of voters said the Gilroy library is in greater need of repair than sidewalks, streets and the arts center
Council mulls salary issue
Although city salaries was a hot-button issue last year during the council and mayoral campaigns, Monday’s debate was rather muted. Mayor Al Pinheiro said the body will reconsider the issue at a study session before springtime, when the city’s 45 top-level employees will negotiate compensation.
During their campaigns, Councilman Bob Dillon said he would rather pay average wages for competent employees than pay the best salaries in the region, and Councilman Perry Woodward said he would work to over-turn the council’s April 2007 salary decision. But sparks did not fly Monday morning.
Councilman Craig Gartman was the lone dissenter in April 2007, when the council approved a plan calling for the city’s top 45 employees to earn 12 to 15 percent more than those they supervise and 10 percent more than the average salaries for comparable positions in 11 surrounding cities including Morgan Hill, Santa Cruz and Hollister. Compensation for Gilroy’s top-level employees has lagged behind their fire, police and municipal colleagues’ throughout the years because the 45 are not unionized and most cannot work overtime.
Gilroy surveyed the 11 cities in 2005 and will do so again in 2011, which means that salaries won’t continuously ping-pong against the whims of nearby cities – just once every seven years, Human Resources Director LeeAnn McPhillips said. But Gartman pointed out Monday that Santa Cruz and Morgan Hill adjusted their salaries soon after Gilroy did, which means Gilroy has since become less financially attractive than the two neighbors, he said.
“We’re trying to stay competitive, but we’re going to close our eyes for seven years?” Gartman asked. He also pointed out that Sunnyvale, which is not one of the surveyed cities, has a boss-subordinate pay gap ranging from 3 to 18 percent. San Jose and Santa Cruz have similar policies. Again, Pinheiro and others stressed the possibility of tweaking Gilroy’s percentages at the upcoming study session.
“After taking a second bite of this apple and looking at it again, hopefully this time we can present it the correct way,” Arellano said. He added that people such as interim City Administrator Anna Jatczak, who came from San Jose, and Community Development Director Wendy Rooney, who came from Colorado, work for more than just the money. There are also the benefits, the weather and many other factors, he said: “There are so many things we cannot control.”
Les White, a former city manager of San Jose and interim city manager for Seaside, facilitated Monday’s discussion and said that Gilroy’s salary plan is not unusual compared to other nearby cities.
White stated that Gilroy’s comparable cities were good comparisons and that a city should not be ashamed of paying decent salaries to employees because of the valuable work they do. He said having the city administrator, who is a part of the top 45, handle their negotiations was a fine idea because the non-unionized group has nobody else. White also suggested loosening the 15 percent requirement as a way of hiring, retaining and promoting lower-level managers, and he even floated the idea of offering housing loan programs for city managers in this deflated housing market.
Councilwoman Cat Tucker explained that she was not interested in changing the April decision. “I intend to support it, but police and fire employees are different than managers,” she said in a nod to Gartman’s point about Sunnyvale’s elastic percentage guide.
This idea could interest Woodward, who said Monday, “Frankly, we haven’t heard anything new.”
But Councilman Dion Bracco, who owns a towing company here, stressed the importance of relatively high wages for city employees even after he said there might be no end in sight if cities keep one-upping each other. “I’m in the private sector, and if I don’t pay my employees what Marx Towing pays, then I get what Marx gets rid of,” he said. “When you pay peanuts, don’t be surprised when you get monkeys.”
Residents already maintain sidewalks and trees, why not junk? council asks
Property owners need to start cleaning up their own messes, and those that don’t even belong to them.
So the city council told Environmental Programs Coordinator Lisa Jensema, who reported Monday that city staff, local volunteers and South Valley Disposal & Recycling joined forces to clear junk from six alleys between November 2006 and June 2007. The total clean-up project – which included picking up 112 tons of trash and recycling 32 tons of discarded metal and electronic equipment – benefited 1,100 households and businesses and 62 city blocks, Jensema said.
Council members praised Jensema and her volunteers, but said the city should not have to pick up after residents.
“We can’t allow this to continue,” said Mayor Al Pinheiro, who suggested that the city adopt a trash policy similar to its weed abatement policy. That is, the city could place a lien on a property if the owner does not clean up their mess, just as the city can place a lien on a property if its weeds are growing out of control.
City Attorney Linda Callon said it is definitely possible to force a property owner to deal with mounds of trash on their own property, but when it comes to placing a lien on a property for junk abutting that property, Callon said she was unsure
“But we do it for sidewalks,” Gartman retorted.
Gartman was referring to state and local laws that require residents to maintain and repair damaged sidewalks and take care of city trees along their property if they present a danger. The city can place a lien on a property for its owner’s failure to repair them, though it has never done so, according to former City Administrator Jay Baksa. Residents are also required to trim bushes and weeds that seep out from their properties into public right-of-ways, according to city code.
The question, then, is whether junk that obstructs drivers’ views and contributes to area blight should be treated like sidewalks and city trees.
Property owners already have to maintain their power lines, trees, weeds and sidewalks – even if they did not cause the damage – why not make them responsible for cleaning up trash abutting their property, Bracco said.
The mayor’s main concern Monday, though, was to recoup costs the city spent on cleanup efforts. He also directed staff to research the council’s current junk ordinances and the legal possibility of creating a new ordinance to require property owners to clean up junk adjacent to their lots. Pinheiro and Councilman Perry Woodward also discussed the idea of having a city-wide garbage day once every six months or so, but it was unclear how this would correspond with any new ordinance.
One hurdle to implementing the potential ordinance would be getting in touch with junk-laden property owners, which Jensema said can be difficult because often times they do not live in Gilroy or simply do not care.
A code enforcement officer who deals strictly with waste codes will join the Community Development Department in March, according to Director Wendy Rooney.
Sunshine ordinance needs refinement and more discussion, city attorney says
City officials expressed both positive and negative concerns Saturday about Councilman Perry Woodward’s comprehensive open government ordinance.
Attorneys from the city’s law firm, Berliner-Cohen, told the council that the Open Government Commission included in the proposed “sunshine” ordinance needs more guidance and specifications. They also recommended that parts of the ordinance defer to less stringent state laws when it comes to responding to public records requests and revealing information from closed sessions.
Councilman Craig Gartman was absent Sunday, but the rest of the council unanimously agreed to hold a more in-depth study session on the ordinance in the near future. This will give city staff additional opportunities to air concerns about how much time and effort it will take to implement Woodward’s ordinance. Interim City Administrator Anna Jatczak and Councilman Dion Bracco began to express these concerns Saturday.
“It seems like we’re putting up a lot of barriers and stumbling blocks for staff and anybody involved in the city,” Bracco said.
Jatczak agreed, but she said it was too early to tell: “When it comes to impacts on staff resources, it’s very hard to quantify those at this point and time,” Jatczak said. “But I can say the turn-around time (for responding to Public Records Acts requests) is going to be an issue, so we’ll need to talk about that…We also need to talk about the cost-benefit ratio for some of (the ordinance’s requirements).”
Jatczak was specifically referring to the three-and-a-half days she and City Clerk Shawna Freels spent gathering drafts of a controversial police study and all city e-mails related to them because The Dispatch filed PRA requests to obtain them late last year.
“I’m all for transparency, but I’m weighing the balance between transparency and efficiency in government,” Jatczak said. “With the recent Matrix police study request (from The Dispatch) for those draft documents, we did that, but I’m not exactly sure that translated into any benefit or gain for the community” because the newspaper never followed up with a story. “We really need to understand what the costs are as it relates to staff resources.”
By and large, The Dispatch has been making all the PRA requests Berliner-Cohen has received recently, according to City Attorney Linda Callon. Mayor Al Pinheiro noted that the city can get a bad reputation when it naturally pushes back against the newspaper, which is a much different entity than a private resident seeking answers or documents, he said.
“I think the paper might see that differently,” Councilman Bob Dillon said.
The conversation routinely turned back to the police study. Woodward and Councilman Peter Arellano argued that the issue with the drafts was not whether they contained discrepancies or eyebrow-raising redactions, but the length of time the city took to release the drafts. Woodward also questioned the timing of the final report’s release after the election and said the city’s inclination to withhold the drafts bred suspicion because top-level police personnel and former City Administrator Jay Baksa were reviewing the drafts and offering input on the supposedly “outside” audit, Woodward said.
“I’m fine with just seeing the final draft. I’ll review that with a tooth pick, and if I don’t agree with parts, then I’ll change them at that time. But with the Matrix report, the city administrator and police were involved, so it was no longer an outside review. That was the perception,” Arellano said. “Was that a true outside evaluation or not?”
“Thank you, Peter. You articulated my point exactly,” Woodward said.
The 31-page sunshine ordinance also calls for more detailed agendas and record-keeping and requires that council members submit any topics of conversation to Freels before meetings. Within 12 months of the ordinance’s passage, Freels would also have to compile an index of documents for each department, agency, task force, commission and elected officer. Department heads, who must receive open government training under the ordinance, would also become part-time liaisons, updating their particular Web sites regularly with documents and happenings and answering residents’ questions on where they could find certain department materials.
The ordinance aims to supersede the state’s current open government law, known as the Brown Act, and make it easier for residents to get government documents without filing PRA requests, which can take weeks. Woodward proposes to do this, in part, by creating the Open Government Commission: a five-member body of transparency-minded residents appointed by the council, but Callon said that the commission — which will facilitate records requests and report to the council periodically — needs more guidance and clarification to make sure it does not assume Berliner-Cohen’s legal authority when it reviews open government issues.
Callon also cautioned against the ordinance’s requirement to tape closed sessions. State and local laws allow closed sessions for legal and personnel matters and union and land negotiations. Members of the public could review the tapes after whatever matter is resolved, Woodward said, and this would discourage forays into topics “that ought not be discussed in closed sessions.” But Callon and Pinheiro said that such tapes could allow unions to peek at city strategies and then adjust their own negotiation techniques accordingly.
“Once we let that out — that kind of conversation — then when the next contract negotiation comes up, (the union) can certainly come up with what some of us think,” Pinheiro said. Perhaps, then, transcribing the video tape and redacting it — and also blacking out names when it comes to personnel matters — could be a solution, Callon said.
The ordinance also requires that requests for public records be fulfilled within 24 hours unless the relevant city department needs more time for a specific reason. Woodward said this will allow residents to avoid waiting 10 days to receive a response under the PRA, but again Callon and Jatczak raised concerns about staff time and resources. “Is it practicable?” Callon asked.
Woodward based his ordinance off Milpitas’ two-year-old open-government law, he said. For this reason, Pinheiro said he wanted to hear from the city about its experience.
“What is it Milpitas had in there that it found out it couldn’t have?” Pinheiro asked. “That will give us more information and allow us to learn from them.”
Assistant City Attorney Jolie Houston said she spoke with a former Milpitas city attorney who told her the city was having trouble getting its commission formed. She also noted that the city does video tape its closed sessions.
Either way, the council is set to move forward.
“We need a long study session because I have enough questions for at least an hour,” Bracco said. “Before you can fix something, you have to identify the problem. What’s wrong? What are we trying to fix? I’d like to get into that during the study session.”
Council debates high cost of odd-year elections
Last November the city spent nearly $200,000 to hold the council and mayoral elections, plus one ballot measure.
In comparison, the City of Morgan Hill only spent $50,184 for the same number of races in 2006, City Clerk Shawna Freels told the council Friday afternoon in an effort to shift Gilroy’s election cycle to even years.
Nearly 17,000 voted in Morgan Hill and about 15,000 in Gilroy in November 2006 and 2007, respectively, but because Morgan Hill held its election on an even year, the city piggy-backed on state and federal elections and saved taxpayer money. The 2005 Gilroy City Council election cost about $90,000, Freels said, and about 20,000 people voted, according to
