Clayton to Make Second Attempt at City Sponsored Special Events Policy

After tabling its city sponsored special events policy at its last meeting, the Clayton City Council will take another shot at it with the Mayor requesting reconsideration. The item will be taken up at the Nov. 7 council meeting.

This comes after a lengthy, yet testy discussion at its October 17 meeting where Mayor Jeff Wan realized he didn’t have support for the red-lined version of the policy created out of the ad-hoc committee on the draft policy. The city manager stated he didn’t need a committee.

According to the agenda, at the request of the mayor, the ad-hoc committee version of the policy is being brought back for reconsideration.

City Sponsored Special Events are:

Concerts in The Grove
Clayton Car Shows
4th of July Parade
60th Anniversary of Incorporation (one-time event)

At the October 17 meeting, Mayor Wan called the original policy crafted by the city manager as “bad” in which Councilwoman Holley Tillman called the red-lined policy “still bad” and questioned why the council could not let the city manager just do his job versus being micromanaged (see exchange).

City manager Bret Prebula explained he never asked for a subcommittee stating he knew what needed to be done.

“There is no value I can see in working with a sub-committee except for more work for me or my staff I delegate to do it. I understand what needs to be done and I understand what we need to do, how we need to do it. It will take someone a good year to understand how we do it, but then it will be consistent. The idea was to get councilmembers out of this business so if someone doesn’t want to do it or they know how to do it, then we have a process that is not connected to council and still allows the community to have the events they enjoy and love. That is the policy that I set forth originally. We can debate if its too operational but the background and history was intentional much like a recital to give background and context for why we were doing it and the importance of it. My request of this council is to go back my original policy and allow me to do the RFP as needed under the budget constraints outline by the policy and bring back at some reasonable time frame as needed to update the council on the status of where we are on the various events whether it be financial, operational or otherwise.”

His statement left councilmember Kim Trupiano apparently confused questioning why they event went through this exercise.

Prebula stated he never asked for a subcommittee, but asked for the policy to be approved when he brought it forward in September.

Tillman explained the council was not listening to the city manager nor taking his recommendations as the policy being created, through an-hoc committee, created “too many cooks in the kitchen”.

“We need to respect that he is saying please don’t do that,” stated Tillman. “If we are going to wordsmith this then we need to get rid of the actual committee for the city sponsored special events. That is his ask. If we want to change any other words, I am fine with that, but we don’t need a committee for this.”

Trupiano at that point stated she was fine with removing the committee portion in the policy and defer to the city managers recommendation.

Prebula shared the city sponsored special events committee would never do the RFP and staff was always going to do the RFP but controlling the timing, how, what, and when, the scoring and potentially being under his signing authority is more effective than going back and forth with a sub-committee which he said was not great value.

Wan, who lost his third vote on the item at that point, called for the item to be tabled so they could work on the draft policy.

Council to Discussion Continued Use of Hybrid Meetings

The Clayton City Council will discuss the continued use of hybrid meetings for City Council, Planning Commission, and Budget/Audit Committee meetings. Hybrid meetings have allowed the public to participate remotely, which has value to the goal of increased public participation.

Although the City is not legally obligated to conduct hybrid meetings, and therefore, in light of the significant hate speech being seen throughout the Bay Area through the use of the Zoom platform for public comment, staff wanted to confirm the continued use of hybrid meetings for future City Council, Planning Commission and Budget/Audit Committee meetings.

Regardless of the decision by City Council, staff would recommend the option stay, at a minimum, to allow consultants or staff to present via hybrid meetings when it makes sense for the City, as well as to allow Councilmembers and Commissioners to participate in a hybrid fashion when the threshold under AB 2449 is met.

Due to the desire to maintain the option for hybrid meetings for staff, consultants, and Councilmembers/Commissioners (when applicable) at a minimum, unless City Council removes the hybrid meeting in all instances, the annual costs will continue. The cost associated with conducting hybrid meetings includes audio/visual equipment set-up, monitoring and processing of meeting content.

Costs for hybrid meetings are: