From: Rodriguez, Nicholas
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2020 10:49 AM
To: Duyshart, Eric Cc: Mermell, Steve; Jomsky, Mark; Leclair, Phillip; Sands, Bryan; Bagneris, Michele; Reyes, David
Subject: Subcommittee and Commission meetings
Dear Eric,
There is an urgency to restoring as much of the business-as-usual of City government as soon as possible. This includes
regular City Council meetings, Council subcommittees, Commission meetings and the like. They need to occur, on a
regular basis, as soon as possible.
Meetings used to be a relatively easy matter of opening the doors to the public with few to no technology issues. That
is not the case under the State orders and the specified protocols where the meetings are entirely technology based. As
was seen at the recent meeting of City Council, staff is still wrestling with that platform and finding a work-around to
problems that arise in the course of the meetings. In that regard, Pasadena’s Department of Information Technology is
a world class department that is working proactively on the issues. The stakes are high as, if there is any glitch, the
public meeting ends and cannot legally continue.
The Planning Commission has not met under these new protocols yet, and there are a number of land use matters in
which the Commission’s decision is required by law, so its meeting is critical. Tomorrow, there will be a dry run of the
specific technology platform that staff will use for the Planning Commission. It provides for public access and
participation as well as handling the participation the Commission itself. The Planning Commission meeting itself will
take place next week. At that point, there will be a tested platform that will, hopefully, function well and will be
suitable for meetings of the City Council Subcommittees as well as other commissions.
However, these technology based, public meetings will require the participation of staff from the Department of
Information Technology at every meeting, and possibly additional staff to monitor the public participation element,
including public comment. There have been requests for a Public Safety Committee meeting, a Finance Committee
meeting and now an EdTech committee meeting. Planning Commission and its subcommittees need to occur on a
regular basis because of the decisions they are required by law to make. There may be other Commissions that should
be meeting because of their important role in public business. Staff should not be making the decision as to which
Committee meets and which Committee does not meet. Staff should not be making the decision as to which Committee
meets first because of resource questions. It will be a decision of the City Council to decide how to allocate these
resources in determining the priority for public meetings.
So, in short, the technology is not in place to have an EdTech meeting this week or next. Hopefully, the technology will
shortly be in place, and City Council can provide priorities for these important meetings which staff will then
follow. Since there will not be sufficient technology resources for every public body that wishes to meet, or should
meet, it will be up to the City Council to establish priorities, not staff.
Happy to discuss.
Respectfully,
N
Nicholas George Rodriguez
Assistant City Manager
City of Pasadena