Guest Opinion: Menlo Park council member explains task force action Guest Opinion: Menlo Park council member explains task force action (March 16, 2005)

By Lee Duboc

I would like to clarify some statements that were made at the March 8 City Council meeting. Some people misinterpreted my comments.

I did not in any way indicate that I was concerned by our city's fair and open government record, in general, and our staff's scrupulous and excellent adherence to the Brown Act -- open government law -- past and present. I am fully in support of our city attorney's suggestion that we have an open and inclusive seminar on the intricate subtleties of the Brown Act.

There is only one aspect of the long years of process dealing with the child care center issue that I deem private. That is the private conversations past council members had with some Measure T campaign committee members. In an effort to recruit citizens to join the Measure T campaign committee, some past council members had to assure them that the $6 million child care center was only an option, not a done deal.

This was a private matter, as the Measure T campaign was, by law, not a city activity. It was promised that once the election was over, the council would reconsider the issue. I only know about this because I was present at a rather heated, private exchange among some of these people. (For the record, I was on the Measure T campaign committee, and I was not one of those committee members seeking this promise.)

That is why it is curious to me that certain past council members are only concerned about the "promise" of the $6 million center, and not concerned by the promises they made in private.

I also want to state, unequivocally, that I had nothing to do with the slight Brown Act oversight that was discovered, almost two years after the fact, pertaining to the child care task force. In fact, I had no reason to doubt our staff's scrupulous adherence to the open government standards, since I knew that former City Council member Paul Collacchi had corresponded by e-mail with our assistant city manager about the openness of the task force meetings and questions were asked and answered about it at public council meetings.

No council member raised Brown Act concerns at the time of the task force since we were all so confident in our staff. Likewise no member of the public or city commissions raised a timely Brown Act concern.

The reason I still have complete confidence in our staff is that the Brown Act violation was a very minor one. As our city attorney stated at the council meeting, the technical violation happened because staff did not post the agendas of the child care task force meetings at City Hall. Agendas were provided and records were kept and available for the public to see, even though minutes of the task force meetings were not required by the Brown Act.

Bottom line, the staff did more than was required in many ways.

A speaker at the March 8 meeting stated that I implemented a "gag order" that "forbade" task force members from speaking to the press. In reality, at the suggestion of another task force member, all task force members agreed that it would be better not to speak to the press until after we, as a body, finished our frank and open discussions and reached an agreement on the report the task force would produce.

This was suggested because we agreed that our job was to take emotion out of the process and simply explore the facts.

It is concerning to me that some speakers last week ridiculed the honest and frank responses and assessments made during the task force meetings. Critics have stated that the task force was not representative of various points of view, yet criticize the diverse perspectives of the task force members. The logic of this argument is difficult to follow.

(In an interesting aside, where did those citizens find the information they now use against the task force members? In the public records.) Lee Duboc is a member of the Menlo Park City Council.

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