White: “I think the public accountability will hopefully motivate them to come to the table and work out some of our issues.”
Hey – maybe they’re just not that into you..
Item 18: Transit Ad hoc 2 x 2 Committee with Banning: https://beaumont.civicweb.net/…
Nancy Carroll: Informally I talked with council member Welsh about starting up the 2 x 2 concept that we talked about before. They seem to be really on board with it. I know it’s had some bumps before, so I asked for this Item to come to Council so I could find if there’s interest among other Council Members in meeting with the City of Banning. It’s probably going to be with the Mayor and one other councilman.
White: Banning does not want to do it in public. I talked to Councilwoman Franklin and she said “no no, we’re not doing this in public”.
Carroll: Was that a recent conversation?
White: About two weeks ago. Because of my experience. I tried to do this last year and they began the conversation with “we don’t trust you”. I’m a little bit skeptical about trusting them in when in a Closed Session they just want to beat up on us. And though out the process of last year they made commitments to come back for meetings, they arranged meetings were I was supposed to show up on my own and they showed up with their staff. They had agreed at the end of last year to put an Item on their Agenda and we would as well; a needs assessment. Joint. First individually, then joint. They said they would do that and then when we went back to them again they said “o yea, we’ll do that”. They were supposed to have done it at the last meeting, so I’m just saying that i’m not comfortable with the 2 x 2 that is not a publicly noticed meeting. If I’m alone in that, that’s ok, then you can decide not to. If there’s consensus with the Council that is a condition to discuss with them upfront and see if they push back.
White: Council Woman Franklin said it would not be a public meeting.
Carroll: At this point I would rather put it back to them again. Get out two people and put it back to them again and see if they have become more flexible. See if, depending on who they appoint; if that makes it have any more flexibility and then see what happens beyond that. I don’t want it to be a grip session if we’re not getting together to actually put the problems on the table and figuring out solutions, then it will end up not going over otherwise. Does our City Attorney have any advise?
Martinez: Yea, so what’s our perimeters?
Pinkney? I don’t have the Resolution, but the way it was prepared and tee’d up was. my recollection was creating sort of a committee comprised of two council members from Beaumont and two council members from Banning. Under the Brown Act; when you have a sub-committee of the Council that’s comprised solely of a minority of the council, it’s not subject to the Brown Act. But when you have two committee members from Beaumont and two from another agency, then that committee is not comprised solely of a minority of the council – it’s a minority of this council and a minority of their council. My opinion is that it should comply with the Brown Act because of the way it was tee’d up in the Resolution. I remember looking at it the last time it came up. The spirt of the Brown Act is to conduct the People’s Business in open.
Martinez: Can we appoint a Chairman that can meet unofficially?
White: That’s what we were doing last year, that was the process throughout the whole year and we made no progress really. There was nothing ever accomplished. The Mayor would say “I have to talk to my staff” and he’d walk out of the meeting like ‘yea, that’s a good idea, we’ll do that’. Then when I don’t hear from him for several weeks and I follow up his comment is “well, staff didn’t like that idea”. Because there was no public accountability to us moving forward; it’s my opinion that they continue not to move forward and I believe, and I’ve heard from both of the two council members that we’ve mentioned, both directly and indirectly, that they still feel that we are the ones that are holding this up.
White: I went to them several times and said: “look; we’re willing to do whatever it takes to get this moving forward. Whatever it takes, but we need some commitment from you to show us that you’re interested”. And I didn’t get anything other than ‘yea, that sounds like a good idea’ and then nothing ever happened. And maybe it’s good that I’m not on this committee moving forward, but I think that in order for this committee to succeed there needs to be some public accountability on both sides. It needs to be clear, I think it will be harder for them to drag this out if it’s clear to the public that we are making every effort to cooperate and they are not.
White: I think the public accountability will hopefully motivate them to come to the table and work out some of our issues.
Carroll: I don’t want to be in a position where, legitimately or not, we sound like the group that’s holding it up. With that in mind I’d like to go through with the appointment and follow the City Attorney’s recommendation for a public meeting. If they are not cooperative and they don’t want it that way and they don’t meet us..