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Santa Cruz has a proud tradition of a high degree of community participation in government. Yet, we have reduced that level of involvement by cutting the number of meetings of our Commissions and other advisory bodies because of budget constraints. We need to restore the monthly meetings of our advisory groups as soon as possible and maintain our inclusive tradition.

Under the Brown Act, The City Council is allowed to consider certain personnel matters, liability and legal issues in closed session. But, too often, those closed sessions cover all the details relating to the parties involved even though the legal or personnel question is narrower. This disadvantages everyone when the Council is reluctant to repeat discussions of matters already covered in closed session. The beneficiary of public discussion is the public. The Council needs to have the patience to fully discuss and consider matters of concern to the public IN PUBLIC.

The Brown Act also requires that anytime a majority of the Council or any Commission will participate in a meeting regarding City business, that meeting must be advertised as a meeting of that body and the agenda must be posted in advance. Too often, this provision has been used to prohibit the participation of one or more members who would have otherwise done so. The Brown Act was intended to encourage OPEN meetings and NOT to reduce participation. This practice should be changed to a more inclusive one where more meeting agendas are published and everyone who wishes to is encouraged to participate.

Often, we need to obtain opinions and preferences of residents about current issues. Typically, the city gets such input at public hearings or with expensive polls. But, the potential of gathering MUCH more input from the community using the surveys on the City's web site is mostly ignored. A much larger sampling of the community can be taken at a tiny fraction of the cost of commercial polls. Santa Cruz should use today's technology in smarter ways such as polling and discussion / comment pages to enable an improved democratic involvement in community affairs.

Santa Cruz should also consider innovations and improvements in its public process. A Charter review committee needs to examine how other cities have modernized and restructured to determine what changes might be beneficial.