The City Council is scheduled to receive its first public briefing Tuesday on a new city public affairs function dubbed “OPTIC.”
The City Council meeting will also include votes on waiving the confidentiality of certain emails between councilmembers and Stockton’s attorney, and on rules clarifying who has the power to disband temporary City Council committees, the agenda shows.
On top of that, the tenor of the meeting will be under scrutiny after several months of vitriol on the dais, including in August when clashes between Mayor Christina Fugazi and Vice Mayor Jason Lee came to a head. The last meeting on Sept. 10 was relatively calm, but still featured conflict among councilmembers over a committee member removal.
How Tuesday’s meeting will compare remains to be seen.
OPTIC
The Office of Public Transparency, Information and Communication is composed of five employees within the City Manager’s Office, led by city spokesman Tony Mannor, according to a presentation linked to Tuesday’s agenda.
Mannor started as spokesman in May, according to his LinkedIn, following the retirement of Stockton’s previous longtime spokesperson Connie Cochran.
OPTIC aims to foster open communication between city government and residents and build public trust, the presentation documents state. Its employees specialize in “graphic design, video production, public relations, web development [and] data analytics,” the presentation states.
The group’s mission includes making “all legally available information accessible to the public” and providing information in a timely manner, among other goals.
Though OPTIC hasn’t yet been publicly unveiled before the full council, the group has already faced questions from Lee.
“I was surprised to see this department pop up on social media, and it not come before the council,” the vice mayor and chair of the City Council Audit Committee said at July committee meeting. “I don’t remember approving a budget for an OPTIC department.”
Under former Interim City Manager Steve Colangelo, the City Manager’s Office faced scrutiny from some councilmembers for allegedly moving money around beyond council view.
Colangelo reportedly transferred an employee tasked with ensuring equitable and diverse hiring at the city out of the City Manager’s Office, and used the freed-up funds to hire a consultant to assist him in his own role.
Disbanding committees
At Tuesday’s meeting, the City Council is also scheduled to vote on proposed rules that would clarify when ad hoc committees can be dissolved.
Ad hoc committees are temporary panels of councilmembers established to address specific issues, in contrast with the City Council’s permanent committees for ongoing tasks such as managing audits and drafting new legislation.
The issue of who has the power to dissolve ad hocs exploded in June when Fugazi disbanded an ad hoc committee tasked with helping hire a permanent city manager. Former members Enriquez and Lee protested the decision. Colangelo was interim city manager at the time.
Under the rules facing a vote Tuesday, ad hoc committees could only be dissolved upon their own request, through a supermajority vote of at least five City Council members, or after a set period of time.
The rules would also clarify that ad hocs are created through a simple majority council vote.
Releasing council emails
The City Council is also scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to waive any confidentiality rules that might apply to emails sent from the City Attorney’s Office to unnamed councilmembers on July 30.
The council agenda provides scant description of the emails, except to say they were sent from the city’s lawyers to the council “at approximately 1:13 p.m.” on July 30.
No explanation of why the council is considering clearing a path for releasing the emails was provided.
On July 29, the City Council voted in closed session to replace Colangelo with Deputy City Manager Will Crew, who would again serve as acting city manager after a short stint before Colangelo’s hiring.
It’s unclear if the emails are connected to the vote.
Also happening Tuesday:
- A vote on a roughly $250,000 contract for a survey of gaps in Stockton’s street lighting as part of the next phase of Fugazi’s signature Light Up Stockton project. A first phase which fixed vandalized lamps and switched 133 decorative downtown lights to LED bulbs has already been completed, according to a report by city staff.
- A vote to accept Stockton’s long overdue Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. Such reports are typically finished before the yearly budget, which the council approved on June 24.
- A vote to accept Stockton’s yearly report on how it’s spent money it received from the federal government to help homeless residents, providing affordable housing, and address other needs.
- A resolution formalizing the City Council’s opposition to the Delta Tunnel Project.
The City Council open session is scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall.