CONTROVERSY LOOMS OVER COUNCIL BALLOT VOTE

The City Council Tuesday placed three controversial measures on the
November ballot, but not before tweaking their wording and going on
record opposing their passage-all in a manner one councilmember
thought might violate state law.

In other news from Tuesday's meeting-the last before a nine-week
summer recess-the council agreed to provide emergency funding to a
debt-ridden local jobs program and threw out a neighborhood vote on
undergrounding utility wires because of a legal issue and confusion
over the project's cost to residents.

This was the council's last meeting before the summer break. The
council will next meet on Sept. 21.

The ballot measures would make prostitution the city's lowest police
priority, grant new rights to medical cannabis users and
distributors-including by-right zoning for new cannabis clubs in
commercial districts-and establish a board to regulate the city's
public trees.

The City Council wants none of the above, so last week-instead of
simply placing them on the ballot, which they are required to do-they
created a four-member subcommittee to revise the ballot summaries that
voters will read on their touch-screen voting machines and sample ballots.

After Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmember Dona Spring wrangled over
ballot language, the subcommittee unanimously approved slight
revisions to the prostitution and marijuana measures and reached
general agreement on more substantive changes to the ballot summary
for the tree initiative.

But there was one problem, said Councilmember Kriss Worthington after
the council meeting. The subcommittee reached "unanimous" agreement
without ever meeting face-to-face. The subcommittee reported they met
"informally and via e-mail" to reach a consensus, which Worthington
believed violated the state's Brown Act prohibiting the majority of
members of an official public body from discussing an issue outside of
a noticed-public meeting.

"Every subcommittee that I've been on has been governed by the Brown
Act," he said.

But City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque said the subcommittee was an ad
hoc body, not subject to the Brown Act. The law would only have
applied, she said, if the subcommittee had a fixed meeting schedule,
comprised a majority of the council or a continuing matter of
jurisdiction, like the council's Agenda Committee.

Attorneys for the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) and
California Aware sided with Albuquerque.

"I hate to say it but she's right," said Lisa Sitkin, a San Francisco
attorney who mans the CFAC hotline. "It's all carved out there and she
followed it to the letter."

"I'm not positive that it's illegal, but I think it's immoral,"
Worthington said. "When we appoint subcommittees I think the public
should know what they're doing." He said Albuquerque gave him the
impression that the subcommittee never met in person because the
meeting would have to be noticed.

Worthington also griped about the council's vote to oppose the
measures they placed on the ballot when the meeting agenda didn't
specify that such a vote would take place.

Albuquerque replied the vote was legal since the all three measures
were listed on the meeting agenda for discussion. The council's vote
to oppose them Tuesday can now be incorporated into the official
opposing arguments mailed to voters.

Also reaching voters before the election will be the city attorney's
analysis of the measures, much to the chagrin of tree ordinance
sponsor Elliot Cohen, who last week argued the city attorney's
analysis and the city's impact report on his measure were full of
inaccuracies and overestimated the price of his proposed tree board at
$250,000 annually plus $100,000 in start-up costs.

After Cohen met with city officials last week to address his concerns,
the city attorney's analysis now simply lists initial costs at $350,000.

Albuquerque said she had to compress the two cost figures previously
written in two separate sentences to include other language that Cohen
requested and keep the analysis within the mandated 500 words.

Cohen, though, smelled a rat. "Sine I complained about inaccuracies
they raised it to $350,000," he said. "When the city collapses two
sentences into one and it costs them $100,000, they need to learn how
to edit."

He still insists that the tree board, empowered to license tree
workers and regulate the planting and removal of trees, would cost far
less than $250,000 and require a quarter-time staff member to
administer, not two full-time staffers as the city estimates.

But Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna said the tree ordinance would be
"incredibly cumbersome" and require a huge amount of staff work to
serve the board, hear appeals, conduct investigations and administer
the ordinance.