Alas, I miss all the good stuff. The last city council study
session, Monday June 9, seems to have been quite a show. I guess I
will just have to watch the video clips on the Dispatch Web site or
trot over to City Hall and borrow the video. The contentious issues
were three: sidewalks, Sunshine, and agendas. Sidewalks have been a
never-ending issue in Gilroy for the 20 years I’ve lived here; the
real old-timers say sidewalks have been a problem for 20 years.
Alas, I miss all the good stuff. The last city council study session, Monday June 9, seems to have been quite a show. I guess I will just have to watch the video clips on the Dispatch Web site or trot over to City Hall and borrow the video. The contentious issues were three: sidewalks, Sunshine, and agendas. Sidewalks have been a never-ending issue in Gilroy for the 20 years I’ve lived here; the real old-timers say sidewalks have been a problem for 20 years.
The city planted some beautiful trees in the parking strips, some of which, liquid ambers and Dutch elms in particular, have a disturbing habit of turning sidewalks into broken puzzle pieces of erratic elevation and attitude. Three city council candidates in the last election cycle made fixing the sidewalks a central point of their campaign.
One candidate, Perry Woodward, also championed the idea of a Sunshine Ordinance, which would attempt to force city government to be more open to public scrutiny. Immediately after the last election, Mayor Al Pinheiro told the newly elected council members to let him know what topics they wanted to have on the agenda, and he would work with the city clerk to get them scheduled.
The three have repeatedly, month after month, requested that Mayor Al Pinheiro place sidewalks and Sunshine on the council agenda for discussion and resolution. And repeatedly, month after month, they have been told, “Staff is not ready” to address those issues.
But why, inquires the politically astute reader, do we need a Sunshine Ordinance? We have the Brown Act, which mandates open meetings in California. Surely that should suffice. In theory, yes. In theory, elected officials should always remember that they are elected by the people to conduct the people’s business. They should instruct staff, and in particular the city attorney, to err on the side of keeping meetings open, and to only schedule closed meetings for items that absolutely must be kept private. In practice, many elected officials have feet of clay. They all too soon transmogrify into politicians. They buy into the staff philosophy that they – staff and council together – know best, and that items should be discussed in closed session unless they absolutely are required to be discussed openly.
Or, as Perry Woodward says, consider the tax code. Human creativity being what it is, people continually find ways to evade the law. So the tax code must be revamped and updated to compensate for the creative ways people find of evading taxes. And the Brown Act is similarly evaded by politicians and staff who want to operate without public scrutiny and the inevitable criticism. So we need a Sunshine Ordinance: an updated Brown Act, customized for Gilroy.
Sunshine Ordinances are fairly common: San Jose, San Francisco, Milpitas, and Benicia already have them. But I digress. At the January Summit meeting, the three reiterated their pleas. And there was February and March: the fifth month…. And Perry was promised that the Sunshine Ordinance would be on the agenda for the April 11 meeting. Eagerly he awaited his agenda packet. It came, he opened it… no Sunshine Ordinance. Meantime, the council spent an hour discussing whether a permit was required for line dancing downtown, and other such critical issues.
And so Perry scrutinized the city charter to see whether the mayor really was the only one who could put items on the agenda. And behold, the city charter says no such thing. Any council member can put items on the agenda. The mayor is a mayor, not an agenda gatekeeper. The city attorney confirmed it. Mayor Al is trying to keep his gatekeeper function.
He says, in an email to staff and council: “We have never had a problem with the way things have been until now and it’s always been a practice that the Mayor works with the administrator to set the agenda.” I like Al. But I think he is wrong to put the immemorial custom of the service above the letter of the charter, and wrong to delay putting sidewalks and Sunshine on the agenda. Fix the dang sidewalks. And let the sun shine in.
