2008-02-22 TPDCDP - Laserfiche WebLink

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BOWMAN: I have a question as new person. How often do you not have a quorum? YUEN: I think we’ve always had a quorum. Have we canceled a meeting for -? WOODWARD: I think once in the last year. YUEN: Okay, once, okay. We’ve canceled a meeting once for lack of a quorum, having five people to meet. We have had a lot of matters where there was a split vote and so there was no decision made, because of six people split 3-3 or 4-2 or something like that. So that’s been quite common. BOWMAN: My reason for asking that is I do feel it important that we be able to have two meetings, which would be 60 days to hear it. But if something happens, in that case, you know, maybe longer would be better. So I just was asking if that was a problem. YUEN: Yeah, I would, you know, barring anything extraordinary, we would be able to schedule two meetings in 60 days. That’s for sure. BOWMAN: Can you make it a condition that 60 days or at least two meetings, or is that -? I don’t know. Just an idea. WATANABE: Any comments to that? Well, while they are pondering that, Mr. Woodward, you had some comments? WOODWARD: Well, yeah, we’ve only had, in my year on the Commission, we’ve only had one meeting that was canceled due to lack of a quorum. But the problem is it requires five positive votes, you know, it’s not a majority of – and I’m sure you probably know this – it’s not a majority of people that are here; it’s five votes one way or the other. And if we have five people there, you’ve got to have 5-0. And if you don’t, it doesn’t pass, and then it gets passed off to the next meeting. So things do happen like that. And that’s the reason -. You know, again, as I say, this ordinance is not going to take, it’s not going to become part of the General Plan until 2015. So I think to give ourselves that extra month would be good. Now if everything goes according to plan and we do it in a month or two, that’s fine. The other thing – and I would echo Commissioner Alameda’s comments and I brought this up when Allen Salavea made his presentation to us – these Community Development Plans are certainly not perfect, and it’s, you do come into the problem of sampling bias; you are not going to have, even in the best circumstances, probably more than 15 percent of the population of any given community that are going to participate. And how do you know that that 15 percent is representative of the entire community? You don’t. So I think it’s a bit presumptuous of us to suggest that we’re going to make this law based on what 15 percent said who happened to come to the meetings. And you are right, you know, it’s going to be a group of retired people, people who don’t work, not people who have jobs and kids; so we are dealing with a bias sample. There is no doubt about it. WATANABE: Yes, Ms. Siracusa. EXHIBIT B 12