HomeMy WebLinkAbout16 - Cost Proposal for Televising Planning Commission Meetings - CorrespondenceReceived After Agenda Printed
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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
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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.
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Item No. 16
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Item No. 16
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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