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HomeMy WebLinkAbout16 - Cost Proposal for Televising Planning Commission Meetings - CorrespondenceReceived After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 12 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 February 23, 2016, Council Agenda Comment The following comments on an item on the Newport Beach City Council agenda is submitted by: Jim Mosher ( jimmosher@yahoo.com ), 2210 Private Road, Newport Beach 92660 (949-548-6229) Item 16. Cost Proposal for Televising Planning Commission Meetings According to the staff report, the Council has two issues before it: 1. Should City staff be instructed to televise, live stream and archive the meetings of the Planning Commission? 2. If so, when should it start? Given the City’s supposed commitment to transparency, California’s Constitutional commitment to maximal public scrutiny of governmental meetings (since Prop. 59 of 2004, in our “Declaration of Rights” Cal. Const. Art. I, Sec. 3(b)), and the trivial cost of implementation ($50 per hour), the answer to the first question should be an unequivocal “YES.” The answer to the second question should be “NOW”: 1. At its meeting next week (March 3rd) the Commission is expected to be holding a study session to review, for their benefit and, they said, for that of the general public, plans for several proposed new developments in the airport area and try to determine how they fit together. They will also be receiving an update on the status of the City’s implementation of its General Plan. Both of these are matters of interest to a far wider audience than any particular project applicant or opponent, and hence presentations that should be archived for future review. 2. At its March 17th meeting my understanding is the Commission and public will be seeing not only the possible approval of one of the major airport area projects, but there will aso be a study session on the various proposals for additional new development in the Newport Center area, including (but not limited to) the so-called “Museum House” project which drew an overflow crowd at a scoping meeting in the Community Room last night. 3. Given the technological ease and small expense of providing coverage of these, the above, and the more mundane the Planning Commission does, are all things the residents of Newport Beach (and the world) should be able to follow from the comfort of their homes or computers. 4. There is no reason this couldn’t start next week (or even tomorrow). All that Newport Beach and Company is being asked to do under their contract is to make available one of the technicians who handles the City Council meetings (and formerly worked directly under contract to the City) to come to City Hall on the evening of the Planning Commission meetings, turn on the City-owned equipment and while the meeting is in progress select camera. 5. Starting March 3rd wouldn’t even bump any previously-scheduled programming from the City’s government access cable channel, since the schedule for next week does not appear to have been released yet. And as an example of what it might bump, if Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 February 23, 2016, Council Agenda Item 16 Comment - Jim Mosher Page 2 of 4 the City wished to broadcast a 90-minute meeting this Thursday at 6:30 p.m., it would simply displace a previously scheduled rebroadcast by Newport Beach and Company of the “Stone Soul” Concerts on the Green program from June 2015, something that has been shown many times before. Of the County’s 32 cities, at least the following 13, some much smaller than Newport Beach, have responded to the state Constitutional mandate for improved scrutiny of public meetings by televising their Planning Commission meetings, starting in the years indicated: Tustin (2007), Fullerton (2008), Costa Mesa (2009), Laguna Beach (2009), San Juan Capistrano (2012), ), Seal Beach (2012), Lake Forest (2013), Santa Ana (2014), San Clemente (2014), Villa Park (2014), Huntington Beach (2015), Los Alamitos (2015) and Fountain Valley (2016). Some not yet on the list may be contract cities without separate planning commissions. Many of the cities listed above televise not just the Council and Planning Commission meetings, but other board, commission and committee meetings as well. And nearly all consolidate access to all their city-produced videos on a single “government videos on demand” web page, providing ready access with a couple of clicks to everything available in video format, with options to view online or download. It should be a source of civic shame that in Newport Beach, City staff, apparently without consulting our elected leaders, recently deleted links to City Council meeting videos from our own video on demand page, and instead of making them more accessible made them immensely more difficult to find, as well as losing for at least some of them the item-by-item indexing and comparison minutes that formerly accompanied many older ones. In Newport Beach, the link to “Agendas, Minutes, Video” now leads to a page with instructions for interested parties to follow one of two possible links to a document database where they are apparently expected to search for a “specific Council Meeting date” where (although exactly where or how or what they are looking for is not explained) they may find a video “if available.” How to use, or even recognize the video, once found, is not explained. Instead, users are encouraged to study the “help feature” of the database. However, the current version of the database has no help feature I am able to find. And even for those who manage to navigate this incredibly baroque system will discover we seem to have lost the capability of downloading the videos for offline viewing – a feature readily available in nearly all the above cities (and still available in Newport Beach for the non-government-meeting videos on the video on demand page going back to 2005). In other words, in Newport Beach we have much more ready access to the “Pick a Pet” program from October 2010 (taking 3 clicks from the home page to view) than we do to a video of the either of the City Council meetings that month (taking 9 clicks to view, many non-intuitive). And one can save a copy of the former from the video on demand page, but not the latter. February 23, 2016, Council Agenda Item 16 Comment - Jim Mosher Page 3 of 4 Some other information about this issue that may be of interest to the Council and public: 1. Despite the City’s claimed commitment to transparency, as recently as 2014 (see Item SS3 at April 22, 2014, meeting), when some departments began posting audio recordings of the meetings under their control, City staff began enforcing, and recommended continuation of, a little-known Council policy requiring destruction of all meeting recordings after 30 days (buying storage to save the recordings was estimated to be adding about $100 per year to City costs). Although Council recommended retaining the recordings for one year, it is probably only through the intervention of then Planning Commission Chair Larry Tucker in the following consent calendar approval of the destruction (Item 3 on May 13, 2014) that any of the older audio recordings of Planning Commission meetings still exist. My comments certainly didn’t sway the Council, and all the other recordings that then existed (for example of Zoning Administrator, Hearing Officer, and board, commission and committee meetings) have presumably been destroyed. 2. Operation of the City-owned video equipment in the City Council chambers, as well as programming the City-controlled government access cable station was out-sourced to Newport Beach and Company (at a cost of $150,000 per year, which is more than it was estimated to be costing the City itself to do this) as Item 18 on March 11, 2014. Although it is not clear from the minutes, when I asked why the City was not instead using its resources to expand true government access by recording and televising Planning Commission and other governmental meetings, then Council woman Nancy Gardner corrected me by saying that according to her reading of the contract the new arrangement did commit NB&Co to such an expansion and enhancement of governmental programming (see the last few minutes of the video, which seems to have lost its original time-stamping and indexing). Unfortunately, I believe Ms. Gardner was mistaking a contract definition of “Live Programs” for a “Scope of Work” requirement. Nonetheless, the $3,600 per year for recording Planning Commission meetings seems a trivial addition to the contract amount. 3. The small amount it costs to supply the technicians necessary to video record Planning Commission meetings suggest only a small fraction of the current $150,000 per year is going towards City Council meetings. NB&Co appears to have used much of it to develop a separate state-of -the-art production facility within its own offices for its own private use. It might be noted that according to page 4 of the March 2014 staff report this is separate and distinct for the City’s obligation to purchase and maintain equipment in support of a government, which is (or was being) funded by approximately $265,000 per year of cable fees. 4. The $150 per meeting proposed by NB&Co may also be compared to the $60 per meeting the City pays each of the seven Planning Commissioners for their participation per Council Resolution 90-70 (a total of $420 per meeting). 5. Under the existing Scope of Work of Contract C-5762 (page B-2), NB&Co is required to “Prepare and submit a report on an annual basis each March to the City Project Administrator describing the programming provided in the previous twelve (12) months. February 23, 2016, Council Agenda Item 16 Comment - Jim Mosher Page 4 of 4 Report shall also include metrics showing the reach and impact of NBTV on City visitors, residents and businesses.” The Council and public may wish to review those reports to get a better impression of how effective this partnership has been compared to when NBTV was operated by City staff. 6. The present staff report is incorrect in saying “The Planning Commission meets twice per month on the Thursday preceding City Council meetings.” Under its Rules of Procedure, the Planning Commission actually meets “on the Thursdays preceding the second and fourth Tuesday of each month,” whether or not the Council meets. In particular, it frequently holds two meetings in August and two meetings in December even if the Council only holds one. 7. The present staff report is also incorrect in saying “Planning Commission meetings are not currently broadcast on NBTV or recorded for replay via the City website.” An audio recording is in fact made and posted for replay on the City website. However these are difficult for the public to use because it is hard to identify speakers, and, of course, the visual aids being spoken about are not visible. And in addition to the tedious download required to even begin listening, without indexing and visual cues it is very difficult to locate a particular item in the audio stream. This may be contrasted to Anaheim which manages to provide small, separate audio files for each Planning Commission agenda item. 8. In that connection, it may be noted that it is my understanding that the time-stamping and subsequent automatic indexing and archiving of the City Council videos is performed by City Clerk personnel, and not by NB&Co. It seems possible to me that the audio recordings of the other board and commission meetings held in the Council Chambers could be similarly time-stamped and automatically indexed in a video format (even though there may be limited video to accompany the recording – such as whatever is shown on the screen during the meeting) if we were fully utilizing our existing Granicus/Legistar technology. Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Received After Agenda Printed February 23, 2016 Item No. 16 Brown, Leilani From: Brown, Leilani Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2016 8:29 AM To: Brown, Leilani Subject: Late Email Attachments: Planning Commission Meeting Video Recordings Good morning Council. Attached is an email received after the City Council meeting. Leilani I. Brown, MMC City Clerk City of Newport Beach 100 Civic Center Drive I Newport Beach I CA 192660 T (949) 644-3005 ; F (949) 644-3039 1 Ibrown(c)newportbeachca. ocovv Regular Business Hours, Excluding Holidays: Monday to Thursday: 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Friday: 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Brown, Leilani From: Cat Lincoln <catlinc@outlook.com> Sent: Friday, March 11, 2016 7:23 AM To: Dept - City Council; Info@SPON-NewportBeach.org; City Clerk's Office Subject: Planning Commission Meeting Video Recordings Categories: Leilani Please vote YES on Agenda Item #16 in support of televising Planning Committee Meetings and making the videos available on the city's website. I hope it is not too late to make my voice heard on this matter. Thank you, Catherine Lincoln Irvine Terrace Sent from Mail for Windows 10 Mayor Diane Dixon and City Council Members City of Newport Beach 100 Civic Center Drive Newport Beach, CA 92660 Copies Sent To: City Council ity Manager _� City Attorney ✓._ He Subject: Reconsideration of Televising Planning Commission Meetings Honorable Mayor and City Council Members: An important goal of the League of Women Voters is to encourage transparent and easily accessible public information at all levels of government. The League of Women Voters of Orange Coast Board has recently learned about the City Council vote of 4 - 2 on Tuesday, February 23, 2016, to deny the request of Newport Beach residents to have the Planning Commission meetings televised live. There is no surer way for residents to lose trust in their elected officials than for them to feel that their City Council is suppressing access to readily available and inexpensive public information. Televising the meetings live would be a win-win for the City Council, the Planning Commission and the community, as discussed below. Therefore, the League of Women Voters of Orange Coast respectfully requests that the City Council immediately agendize this matter for reconsideration, and vote in favor of televising the Planning Commission meetings live for the purpose of encouraging knowledgeable Newport Beach residents to participate in their public process. The City Council is elected by residents to make important decisions affecting the community, with input from their electorate. Because the Planning Commission is appointed by the City Council to evaluate and render decisions on land use and development proposals, it is important that Newport Beach community members have access to both City Council and Planning Commission meetings via live television. Currently, only the City Council meetings are televised live. Televising the Planning Commission meetings will help residents learn more about the planning process and to better understand the projects before the Commission. Such knowledge leads to a better informed community and public decision-making process. That is why all cities that abut Newport Beach televise both their City Council and Planning Commission meetings. League of Women Voters of Orange Coast, P. O. Box 1065, Huntington Beach CA 92647-1065 From the League's experience, public participation sheds a more comprehensive light on planning and development proposals and helps Commissioners make better, more thoughtful decisions on behalf of their communities. City planning and development should not occur in a vacuum. Moreover, offering televised meetings also shows respect for the time of community members who are unable to attend an entire meeting; residents could watch the live meetings from home until it is time to arrive at City Hall to address the Commission on projects under consideration. Additionally, aging and disabled residents who are unable to attend meetings may watch the meetings from home and contact their elected officials to voice their opinions once they better understand project proposals. We want to commend Mayor Dixon and Council Member Petros who voted in opposition to this denial, and thank the entire City Council for your reconsideration of and affirmative action on this important matter. Sincerely, League of Women Voters of Orange Coast S)4w 1W i adana 7owd 574am 2U4w" Diane Nied Barbara Wood Grace Winchell Co -President Co -President Co -President cc: The Daily Pilot The Newport Beach Independent League of Women Voters of Orange Coast, P. O. Box 1065, Huntington Beach CA 92647-1065