MORAGA TOWN COUNCIL MEETING SEPTEMBER 27, 2017

Transcription

1 TOWN CLERK S DEPARTMENT MORAGA TOWN COUNCIL MEETING SEPTEMBER 27, 2017 CORRESPONDENCE RECEIVED AFTER AGENDA WAS PUBLISHED FOR ITEM: 11. ORDINANCES, RESOLUTIONS AND REQUESTS FOR ACTION A. Council Response Letter to the San Francisco Chronicle Review and Approve Response Letter to the San Francisco Chronicle Article on Moraga s Fiscal Emergency Published September 15, Rheem Boulevard Moraga, CA (925) mmcinturf@moraga.ca.us

2 From: Cooper, Audrey Sent: Tuesday, September 26, :14 PM To: Bob Priebe; Mary Jane Muller; Amy Cunningham; Teresa Onoda; Roger Wykle; Jeanette Fritzky; Kymberleigh Korpus; Cc: Byrne, Trapper; Gray, Michael G; Diaz, John Subject: From the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle To the Town Council and city staffers of Moraga, It has come to my attention that the Town Council has spent considerable time working on a two-page staff report and six-page letter requesting corrections to a recent San Francisco Chronicle article. I further understand that this issue is a discussion item on the agenda for your Sept. 27 meeting. Please include this letter in the official record. Given the resource challenges facing understaffed local governments, I assume this effort must be a high priority of the Town Council. To alleviate the need for future expenditures of staff time, I m writing to make clear the process for requesting corrections of The Chronicle. Individuals can always call the newsroom or send an to me or other editors. Individual requests carry as much weight as those from a Town Council because we demand accuracy in everything we publish. In that spirit, I have considered the errors you allege in the draft documents. None of them are actual factual lapses as much as they are preferences that the article should have been presented more from your point of view and not included the voices of people who disagree with current town policies. Respectfully, that is not how news coverage works. I ask you to consider the lens through which you view news coverage. It is very odd to read that you believe we do stories like these to sell newspapers or increase online readership. Let me assure you, stories about municipal budgets do not light up the Internet, nor do they prompt people to buy newspapers. Our news decisions reflect topics we believe will better inform people in the Bay Area and Northern California. Our role is to inspire informed civic discourse, and we reject pressure to tilt coverage in any direction. We report hundreds of stories a week. As I often say, there has never been a story we couldn t have made better with more time and the benefit of hindsight, but there is a large void between that an actual factual errors that mislead voters. I hope you come to see the distinction. The town s communications on this subject have veered very close to smearing The Chronicle with the banal term fake news and also have impugned a professional journalist. I hope we can pursue a more productive working relationship in the future. If you have any future concerns with The Chronicle s reporters or legitimate corrections of fact, we will immediately address them. I would also encourage you to consider meeting with our editorial board if you wish to discuss this particular issue in more detail. Additionally, you are welcome to call my office at any time or send me an . Sincerely, Audrey Cooper Audrey Cooper EDITOR IN CHIEF

3 From: Sent: Wednesday, September 27, :38 PM To: Marty McInturf Cc: Subject: September 27, 2017 Town Council Meeting, Item 11.A. Attached is a letter for distribution to Town Council and Meeting. Thank you -- U.S. Tel: x702 (Pacific Time) U.S. Mobile:

4 September 27, 2017 Moraga, CA Attention: Moraga Town Council Re: September 27, 2017 Town Council Agenda Item 11 (A) SF Chronicle Letter I am writing about the referenced agenda item. On June 28, 2017 Town Council Meeting, the Town Council spent approximately 29 minutes reviewing and ultimately voting on the Budget and related Staff Report, including the Declaration of Fiscal Emergency. Today, the Town Council has been asked to review and approve a 6- page letter to the San Francisco Chronicle that apparently took far longer than the 29 minutes spent discussing the underlying Declaration of Fiscal Emergency. I also note that Town resources have apparently been spent having the Town s attorney review the draft letter. Do you think this is a useful way to spend the Town s limited resources, spending valuable staff time and legal services like this? And, spending more time on it than considering and debating the consequences of the Declaration of Fiscal Emergency on June 28, 2017??? Do you really believe anyone even remembers the article, considering hurricanes, earthquakes and other major and local news since then? Have you considered the risks of resurrecting the story and bringing more attention to the Town s problems? While it is apparent the writer of the article and the editor in charge of reviewing the article did not catch the % of compensation calculation errors in the article, it points out the fact that using single, aggregate metrics and data points to compare one City to another is inadequate and much more complicated. It should be clear from the mistake and the painful rebuttal in the draft letter, that simply comparing aggregate metrics is confusing and potentially misleading. I am talking about the ones used by Staff such as: % of Revenue used for compensation expense % of property tax received $ per capita spent Etc., etc.. Your draft letter points out the need to decompose these aggregate metrics and evaluate the underlying city-specific facts and data before reaching correct and/or useful conclusions. For the same reasons, the use of aggregate data when discussing Moraga s situation can be equally confusing and misleading. 1

5 Regarding references to me and my quotations in the draft letter, I strenuously object to your seeking to recharacterize my comments. Please remove references to me, my individual name and my quotations. Moreover, in the defensive paragraph about reducing Town expenses, the statement the Town reduced expenses by $88,000 without out further context is grossly misleading. The fact, omitted, is the reduction is equivalent to ONLY 1% of the previous year s budget. In summary, this agenda item is a huge waste of time and money. I am also curious from a Brown Act standpoint, the comment that several Town Council members requested this letter. Was it two or was it more than two and would that constitute a Hub and Spoke or Serial conversation? Signed, 2