Here's the PDF documents of live reporting threads for Tuesday's meeting.
In an unusual structure, there were two separate meetings. The first, at noon, was in the Special classification, which requires little notice and does not operate under the same council rules as a regular meeting. That meant that non-consent items, which require deliberation and longer public comment periods and are usually scheduled at 5pm or later to accommodate public participation were scheduled at 12 pm. Not surprisingly, the meeting in which much of the deliberation occurred was poorly attended. During this meeting, as well, Council passed legislation sponsored by Janani Ramachandran, Council President Kevin Jenkins and Kevin Houston. Though CMs expressed a desire to amend the legislation on the dais, President Jenkins promised the legislation would be brought back at some later time after first reading with amendments. It's unclear how this would occur, but must happen before or along with the second reading of the ordinance, which would then become the first reading.
The latter meeting at 3:30pm coincided with statutory requirements on the Geologic Hazard Abatement District, a nominal set of actions. The agenda had consent items, two statutorily required public hearings and a staffing report mis-agendized as a public hearing. But despite the apparent effort to minimize discussion, two items placed on the Consent calendar in the second meeting ending up garnering a fair bit of discussion, and antagonism because they had been placed on the consent calendar in the first place.
A report on MACRO that had already been heard at the Public Safety Committee a week earlier ended up being discussed at some lengths. At the PSC meeting, due to complaints on lack of information about the extension of MACRO's area scope and its lack of focus on 911 calls, newly appointed PSC Chair Charlene Wang had originally scheduled the report for non consent. The intention there was to give it more ample discussion. But during the subsequent Rules scheduling, Jenkins, who is also the Chair of the body, put it on consent instead. During Tuesday night's Council meeting several commenters complained about the shift and the lack of information and oversight of the program.
Another item that was expected to be uncontroversial, a renewal of a contract with the OPD's mental health services contractor Michael Palmertree, ended up being extensively discussed as well, as representatives of another firm demanded in public comment to be considered for the contract. Palmertree has been the service entity for the contract for nearly two decades, but in the latest run up to the renewal of the contract did not have to bid for the contract. The discussion included concerns about the fact that Palmertree has stated he intends to retire within the duration of the contract.
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