Extra
Special City Council Meeting to Change Rules of Procedure
City Council and fellow Berkeley Citizens,
At 4:30 tomorrow, the City Council has a special session to consider changing the "Rules of Procedure" for the City's legislating process.
At the October 2 Council meeting, the CM undermined the Homeless Commission (Item D.a), Housing Advisory Commission (Item G.a), Community Health Commission (Item 10a), Human Welfare and Community Action (Item 11a), and the Peace and Justice Commission (Item 12a) by placing the accompanying “do nothing” CM sponsored items (*.b) on the agenda. The City Council contributed to this marginalization of their Commissions by moving the CM items to consent – avoiding any real discussion of Commission sponsored ideas. This marginalization of Commissions is an erosion of what little democratic input the public has. It attempts to transfer Commission power, the ability to introduce ideas to the Council, to subcommittees which will be better able to prevent these ideas from appearing at full Council meetings. These subcommittees will be under the thumb of the CM through her staff. The proposed changes will likely exempt the CM sponsored legislation from a similar subcommittee review. These rule changes will entrench the top-down power structure of the Berkeley Corporation run by its CEO – the City Manager.