Summary Description of Public Comment Should Maintain the Same Detail as in 2014, by Liang

From: Better Cupertino
Date: Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 9:18 AM
Subject: Summary description of each speaker should maintain the same detail as in 2014
To: City Clerk <CityClerk@cupertino.org>, David Brandt <davidb@cupertino.org>
Cc: City Council citycouncil@cupertino.org

RE: Agenda Item 18: Consider continuing the policy of providing action minutes for City Council meetings.

Dear City Clerk, City Manager and Councilmembers,

  Thank you, the City Clerk, for providing a short description of each comment during Oral Communication and on each agenda item. For each speaker who took time to attend the Council meeting, this shows a respect for their opinions and good governance.

   Although the adoption of "action minutes" was done in 2002, the amount of details on summary description of each speaker who comment during either Oral Communication or on Agenda Item have deteriorated since December 2014. Recently, it is down to only a mention of names most of the time.

Here are some examples to show how the amount of details have reduced recently.

    July 30, 2015 Study Session on GPA procedure: speaker is only mentioned by name.

e.g. Cathy Thaler
Xiaowen Wang
Lisa Warren
Kevin McClelland speaking on behalf of Cupertino Chamber of Commerce
Martin Woh

    March 3, 2015 Oral Comm. in Council Meeting: Still pretty good detail.

e.g. Jon Willey talked about the online survey on the draft Community Benefits Program and how it pertains to building planes. He noted some of the residential comments and distributed a hard copy of the document he was referring to.

Lisa Warren talked about the General Plan Amendment process and urged Council to not lose sight of the big picture. She mentioned a Los Altos City Council meeting which talked about a moratorium in that City and handed out information regarding that meeting.

    Oct. 7, 2014 Study Session on GPA EIR: very detailed summary for each speaker. (the same detail for the speaker on each agenda item.)

e.g. Albert Wang representing Marina Food and Marina Plaza said that they are planning to renovate their site and anticipates bringing the store back as a retail anchor and support for the community. He noted that the location along Stevens Creek Corridor is perfect for residential and retail activities and he hopes to be able to increase the height and density enough in the renovation project to make their site economically viable.

    We understand that the City Clerk might have more work load due to recent Public Records request. We are grateful for their efforts.

    However, please understand that the residents won't be requesting any Public Records regarding the GPA process or the community benefits process or Vallco if the City has provided meaningful community participation in the past two years or Council has taken the time to consider important items that affect our lives carefully.

    To foster good meaningful communication between the residents and the Council, please provide good detailed summary for each speaker for both Oral Communication and agenda items, as it has been done up until late 2014.

Sincerely,

Liang Chao