========================================================================= [City of Pacifica letterhead] August 25, 1995 Bruce Hallman 768 Alta Vista Pacifica, CA 94044-3413 Dear Mr. Hallman, I appreciate your letter of August 16, 1995 expressing your concerns about a notice for a special City Council meeting and your reference to the Brown Act. The primary location for the posting of special meetings is at the entrance to City Hall. This location, alone, is sufficient to satisfy notice requirements. Additionally, we do provide notices to other locations as time permits, and this usually is completed 24 hours prior to the meeting, however these notices are not required. In this instance I also called the Pacifica Tribune just prior to press time on Tuesday, and was able to get them to add the notice. They also wrote a small article about the subject of the notice. The additional notices are not required by law, however the City Council of Pacifica is very concerned that the citizens receive ample notice of meetings and not just the required 24 hour period. However, sometimes the time constraints do not permit a lengthy prior notice, so we do the best we can. I appreciate your interest in the use of the internet as a method of informing citizens of upcoming meetings. However I believe the internet audience in Pacifica is relatively small in comparision. We are moving towards the increased use of the internet, but with caution as to the amount of increased staff time necessary for an on-going program. Finally, while I appreciate your enthusiasm for the internet and your desire to involve the City, I do not feel it is appropriate for you to establish a "Pacifica official" list, and to have us contact you for the password. What ever level of participation on the internet we choose, we will insist on complete control of the official City of Pacifica entries. Thank you for your continued interest in the City of Pacifica. I trust this letter provides a better understanding of our efforts to provide adequate notice of meetings to our citizens. Sincerely, [original signed Charles English] Charles English cc: City Council, Ed Vandehey] ============================================================================ A copy of the 16AUG95 Hallman=>English letter follows... ============================================================================ August 16, 1995 City Manager Charles English Pacifica City Hall 170 Santa Maria Ave. Pacifica, CA 94044 Dear Mr. English, I am concerned that your notice given for the August 10, 1995 Special City Council meeting did not meet the requirement of the Ralph M. Brown Act, government code #54956 which states: "The call and notice (for public meetings) shall be posted at least 24 hours prior to the special meeting in a location that is freely accessible to members of the public." Attached is a copy of your notice posted in the Pacifica Main Library, which is dated and time stamped by your fax machine at 9:42AM 10AUG95 only 10 hours prior to the meeting. The reason that I am writing to you is not to be critical, but rather to express my support to you, and to the premise that Pacifica will be better with the maximum possible participation of the public in it’s local government. To this end, it is important that you give the best possible distribution to announcements of all public meetings. The Brown Act provides for "at least 24 hours notice", and earlier and better notice should be given whenever possible. I also strongly recommend that the City distribute announcements of public meetings by electronic mail, via an automated mailing list. For essentially no cost, the City could send announcements to a single distribution list EMail address which would then instantly broadcast the announcement to all people subscribed to the list. This distribution list could be password protected so that mailings could be sent only by an official representative of the City. The list could also be open for the public to subscribe or unsubscribe of their own accord without intervention by the City. The software for this type of mailing list already exists, is secure, is easy to administer and is free to use. I would be happy to assist or advise you how to establish a mailing list for the City to use to distribute official announcments. Such a system could be established within 24 hours should you give the go ahead. Very truly yours, Bruce Hallman |