Title
Potential Revisions to the City's Sunshine Ordinance
Body
To: Chair and Members of the Open Government Commission
From: Janet Kern, City Attorney
Michael Roush, Interim Assistant City Attorney
Re: Potential revisions to the City's Sunshine Ordinance
BACKGROUND
At the Commission's October 6, 2014 meeting, staff presented a number of proposed changes to the City's Sunshine Ordinance. A copy of that staff report is attached. Based on discussion at that meeting, the Commission directed staff to return a redlined version of the Ordinance to the Commission. The Commission would then review the Ordinance and make a recommendation to the City Council as to whether all or some of the revisions should be adopted.
In light that there are new commissioners on the Commission and therefore more time may be needed to consider this item, staff is recommending that the Commission review this staff report, review the attachments and, unless the Commission concludes it has had ample time to review the Ordinance and make a recommendation at this meeting, schedule a special meeting in March or April at which time this matter may be considered further.
DISCUSSION
The salient revisions are set forth below.
1. Subsection (f) of Section 2.90-2 (Findings), concerning the use of electronic communications at meetings, has been deleted from the "Findings" section (because it would be easy to overlook) and placed in Section 2-91.4 (h).
2. Responsibilities of the City Manager and the Mayor have been moved from other parts of the Ordinance to sections 2-90.3 and 2-90.4, respectively.
3. The definitions of a "passive meeting body" and a "passive meeting" have been clarified in sections 2-91.1 and 2-91.2.
4. Subsection (e) has been added to Section 2-91.6 to provide if a member of a policy body is unable to attend a public meeting or hearing, generally that member may not submit written comments to the policy body concerning the subject of that m...
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