what is wrong with additional sunshine? nothing.
Not enough time on the agenda? Hold more meetings or elongate one
Resistance to sunshine is a bad sign.

It's good that Mueller has been uploading his calendar to the city website. Unless the city is incompetent, they should have analytics showing that nobody is downloading his calendars. [Portion removed]

Wow @HobNob pretty hostile trolling there! Someone sure didn't like this Almanac article!

It sounds like the Mayor is sandbagging the transparency feature.

"He said that he has asked City Manager Alex McIntyre repeatedly if the matter will be put on a council agenda, but was told the agenda was too full. In an email dated June 13, Mr. McIntyre told Mr. Mueller that the mayor had "indicated that she is not interested" in putting the item on a council agenda."

It sounds as though the Mayor is sandbagging the transparency feature.

Why doesn't the Menlo Park City Council adopt the same agenda rules as the Fire District:

7.8 Agendas
Agendas for respective meetings shall be determined in the following manner and shall comply with appropriate noticing and publishing.

Agenda Item Requests - Board Members
As stated in Policy 4.2, the Fire Chief in collaboration with the Board President and/or Vice President shall prepare an agenda for each regular, committee and special meeting of the Board of Directors. Any Board member may request the placement of any item related to District business on the agenda of an upcoming scheduled regular Board Meeting in one of four ways:

1. By voicing a request during the open session of a Board Meeting that an item be placed on the agenda for the following meeting;
2. By submitting a request, outside of a Board Meeting, to the Board President or the Fire Chief with a copy to the Clerk of the Board;
3. By submitting a request, outside of a Board Meeting, to the Fire Chief.
4. By the Board member adding agenda items directly by submitting a form.

The Agenda Item request from Board members will be placed under the “Proposed Agenda Items” section of the agenda. If the Board approves the Agenda Item request, that item will be placed on the upcoming regularly scheduled Board Meeting and the requestor will work with staff to provide necessary reports and/or attachments for the Board Meeting packet.
******
It makes no sense to give whoever is current Mayor or the unelected City Manager veto power over the desires of the other elected Council members.

Council Member Mueller’s idea is good and needed today more than ever. That a Menlo Park resident can go to the City’s web site and see with whom our council members are meeting is good information. We want to know what exactly our council does between meetings.

It’s a two-way street between the interest Council Members have in possible developments and developers have in soliciting interest from Council Members. Residents have a stake in where our elected officials choose to spend their energy.

More sunshine is better than learning about development projects by reading a Planning Commission or Council agenda three days before a meeting.

Adding the City Manager to Mr. Mueller’s proposal would be an added ray of sunlight into the workings of our City.

Council Member Keith’s response to Mr. Mueller’s suggestion does not speak to the issue. This is not a burden on Staff. At this point it is a request that Council Members tell the residents which whom they are meeting. When Ms. Keith says she has additional things she wants to do as the Mayor, why not share with the public the names of the people with whom she is meeting in her effort to achieve her goals? And what are her goals?

Mueller has crafted several ordinances that appeared on agendas. Previously, Mueller explained his idea at a council meeting before drafting it. At last night's meeting, Mueller explained that he send his draft policy to the press without informing any city council other than the mayor because he was instructed to do so by Bill McClure. That sounds odd.

Transparency advocates from around the Bay Area are watching this case unfold with great interest. Mueller's ordinance is a model ordinance that may soon appear in other jurisdictions. In November 2016, grassroots advocates worked vigilantly to pass Proposition T, the lobbyist gift ban in San Fancisco. It passed with the largest margin of victory in SF in over 20 years.

@"press pass": It is hardly odd that Council Member Mueller did not send the draft ordinance to his fellow City Council members, and only sent it to the Mayor. The Brown Act in California requires that Council Member Mueller only speak to one other Council member about an issue that will appear before the Council. It sounds like city attorney Bill McLure is instructing his Council members well to follow the Brown Act. It is interesting that you find fault with Mueller for notifying the Press on his communication with the Mayor regarding the draft ordinance. That's actually the definition of transparency ;) The real question that still lingers is: Why won't Mayor Kirsten Keith agendize this issue?

It takes courage for elected officials to propose transparency ordinances. It's unfortunate, but not unexpected that "hobnob" and "press pass" would try to disparage Mueller.

We'll have an opportunity to fine tune the council in November 2018.
Three council seats up for dusting off, including the current Mayor's.
HUGE. Sad.

Regarding Proposition T, San Francisco has an International Airport, new sports stadium, a multi-billion dollar transbay terminal under construction and over a million people, among other things. If transparency advocates are watching this as @Public_Advocate describes, they may be wondering why this policy is being proposed for such a small city with volunteer council members.

Regarding the Brown Act, is is acceptable and appropriate for council members to post items of interest to the city council email log, and request that no one reply. This is how other agenda items are requested. This current drama is the first case, we are aware of, where there are multiple articles and even an op-ed were written on a draft policy that has not been shared with the entire city council. We're not "finding fault" with Mueller's strategy, we're simply pointing out the line that the city attorney told him to sed his policy to the press while excluding his fellow council members is odd.

"Regarding the Brown Act, is is acceptable and appropriate for council members to post items of interest to the city council email log, and request that no one reply."

I often send emails to my fellow Fire Board colleagues with the Do Not Reply line and I believe that doing so is totally compliant with the Brown Act.

What I find distressing is City/Town attorneys and managers using the Brown Act as an excuse to muzzle their elected officials by counseling them not to utilize social media.

According to Mueller, he has followed the practice of not copying the whole Council for some time now to be compliant with the Brown Act. He says he followed the same practice with the Anti Religious Registry Ordinance he wrote, that the Council just adopted. In that case Rich Cline agreed to put the anti-registry proposal on the agenda and didn't unilaterally block it from the agenda.

Peter, at the last council meeting, Mueller brought this agenda item up, and the mayor then asked the council for direction to add the item to an upcoming agenda, but there was no support from any other council members. The mayor then proposed that this item should be taken up at a future goal setting meeting.

There seems to be confusion about what this policy is, and how much staff time it will require. For some reason, Mueller send the draft policy to the local press, but not his fellow council members. The Almanac even wrote an editorial encouraging council to adopt a policy that a majority of city council have never seen.

[Editor's note: The Almanac's editorial did not encourage the council "to adopt a policy ...". The editorial encouraged the council to consider the proposal at a future meeting.]

A few people were upset the mayor did not want the sanctuary city discussion on the agenda .They wrote in demanding that the item be added to a specific date. This episode was followed by a slew of emails from the same group requesting that the mayor cancel that item and move it out. These emails appear in the city council email log.

It appears the mayors doesn't want anything on the agenda, and only adds items to the agenda in response to public pressure. Alternatively, the mayor could be very amenable to adding items to the agenda, but we'd never know that because people are so busy demanding items appear on the next agenda.

The responsibility of a Presiding Officer is do do the will of the people not to impose their own personal agenda.

Democracy was never designed to be efficient.

"Very odd", you are sure confusing me.

1. Isn't the next City Council goal setting meeting next year, when there is a new Mayor?

2. If Mayor agendized the sunshine policy, then couldn't the Mayor could attach the proposed policy to the agenda and the other Councilmemebers could review it? Why didn't she just do that?

Dear @John, you have a good point. The current mayor should put this item on the agenda for discussion on or before the meeting where a new mayor and vice mayor are selected.

The only surprise here is that Kirsten Keith refused to put the "sunshine policy" on the City Council agenda before she and the of City Council killed it.

The sunshine policy never stood a chance. Menlo Park likes it secrets.

Hope Ray proposes term limits and district elections next.

If transparency is to be achieved then all forms of communication must be included, even text messaging.

It appears that now is the time for the Menlo Park City Council to demonstrate their commitment to political transparency. I have requested this item be added to a September 2017 agenda rather than wait until 2018.