Charter Review Committee – June 4, 2026

Good evening and welcome to the June 4th, 2026 meeting of Glendale's Charter Review Committee.

All right, thank you everybody. I'll call the meeting to order. First item on the agenda is roll call.

Committee members Durham?

Here.

Flower?

Here. Garibian? Haroutunian?

Here.

Karapetian? Here. Monisarian?

Here.

Meek?

Here. Magardichian?

Present.

Miller?

Here.

Povilaitis? Smith?

Here.

And Yu?

All right, um, next item, report of the recording secretary regarding the posting of the agenda.

The agenda for the June 4th, 2026 Charter Review Committee meeting was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2026, before 5:30 PM on the bulletin board right outside City Hall.

Thank you. Uh, next item on the agenda, oral communications. Discussion is limited at this to items that are not a part of this agenda. Each speaker is allowed 3 minutes.

Chair, we currently have 2 speakers.

All right. We'll take the first one.

First one, Herbert Milano.

Ms. Beth Brooks wants to give me her 3 minutes. Is that possible to arrange?

If she can say so for the record, I'd appreciate it. I'm gonna give you 6 feet.

I'm gonna keep this one.

Want this one?

I'm gonna give you 6 feet.

Very well. All right, 3 minutes. I want to express to you my appreciation for, first of all, the interest of participating and becoming part of this committee. There are not many people who actually take the interest to spend the time and understand the impact of what you're doing. But I remember reading the history of biographies of many of the founding fathers, and especially reading the discussions that took place during around 17— what is it? '91 or so, when the Constitution was being discussed and implemented, the foundation of this nation. And it's just an amazing thing to see the intellect, the drive, the discussions that took place to create the Constitution of the United States. And to this day, now 250 years later, still thriving, but it's the institutions that has allowed this country to remain what it is. Despite the individuals that get elected, It's the institutions that matter. And the formation of those institutions to some extent is right here in this room with you. That is how important this is, because for decades, what you do, what you propose, and what the city council approves and the voters approve will be incredibly significant. We have a city with expenditures of $1.2 billion. And it is— According to all the records that I give you, it's hardly being audited or supervised. And that attracts all kinds of people. And if we were to look at the Justice Department unit on public integrity, you just see individuals, elected officials all over the country, right, in the hundreds being caught for bribes, corruption, and so forth. And I met some of them in the city of LA. As part of my previous advocacy and work, I have gotten to know a lot of the council members directly. I supported them. I paid, I did contributions, had dozens of conversations. I've got to know a lot of the council directly, but I also spent the better part of 20 years looking at the city's financials. And the output of what I've given you is part of my background in accounting and in systems implementation, which is kind of auditing. It's like auditing. And so I want you to think of the importance that you have in bringing forward an institution that is strong and that works no matter who gets elected. And that's what I want to convey to you, an appreciation for what you are doing, being here present and discussing and studying this. But then the other part, the courage necessary to bring it forth. And I wish you luck. I don't know if I will be doing this much longer, but I thank you for this.

Thank you, Mr. Milano. Next, Beth Brooks.

Hi, thank you. I want to, you know, say the same thing as Mr. Milano. I think you guys deserve a lot of credit. I think you're incredible. And I think, you know, I've always thought that the incredible work you'll do could be for naught because it will go to the council and they'll do whatever the hell they want to do anyway. I have people contacting me right now saying, can we change the charter? Can we get things on the ballot? Can we over— what can we override? What can the people do? Because the people now have to maybe feel their voices weren't heard. Or their voices were heard because people who win things, they win because of ballots, not necessarily because of messaging. But that's irrelevant. Well, it's not irrelevant, but it is something. But I'm also here because I wanted to say, because you meet once a month, I'm surprised you don't allow members to meet by Zoom, you know, virtually, because then you have to wait for another month to take a vote. And I think that's just such a waste of your time. And I've seen that happen already. I really think this just, to me, is, again, I love the word no-brainer, but it really is a no-brainer. I mean, if people can be wherever they are, in the laundromat, in Coffee Bean, you know, in the corner somewhere, in their car, They should be able to take part in this, and you get stuff done. I just think that expedites things. The third thing is, because the fight never ends, you know, I went to a planning commission meeting yesterday, which was so interesting to me because none of the Glendale Environmental Coalition people showed up, although they typically do show up. You know, just two women in general who are basically Dan Brotman groupies show up. I think so. [SPEAKING SPANISH] And because they talked about that the GWP is asking for a conditional use permit to put 3,300 solar panels above Brand Park in the Verdugo Mountains, that in a high fire severity zone, and there's an ecologic— there's a sanctuary right there. This is actually ecologically, environmentally, ridiculous, crazy. What do you destroy in order to get a very small percentage of solar energy in a location you should not be doing that at. I am telling you right now. And somebody came up who actually is a lawyer and said, "Hate to tell you, but the deed that Leslie Brand gave the city is based upon you are allowed to keep the property, the Brand Park and the Verdugo Mountains, if it remains a recreational use." So the GWP is asking for it to have a permit to put a utility— a structure for a utility that is not a recreational use. And—

Thank you.

Damn well I'm contacting the Brand family, who is apparently quite litigious, to make sure that— to be careful of this. This will be an environmental disaster. And I would like for those of you who— I know there's some of you who I respect very much who are part of the Glendale Environmental Coalition and who are interested in this— to take a look at this, please, and let people know that that organization should not just be a conduit for a politician to get points. It should really be to take care of the the environment and the ecology. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Ms. Brooks. Ms. Brooks, can I ask you a question? What's your dog's name?

Luca, my dog, who has Cushing's pancreatitis, anemia, and diabetes, and is a miracle. Come on, Luca.

Good dog.

Thank you. Yeah, good dog.

Chair, we do have one caller on the line.

Okay, thank you. Caller, please go ahead.

Anikash, you're on air.

Hi, good evening everyone. My name is Ani. I am contacting you. My ask is simple. Having gone through the documents, my ask is for you to make the city's internal audit truly independent. Put that in the charter. Here's the problem, and it's straight from the city's own presentation. Internal audit reports up through the city manager's office. It is authorized for 3 people. 2 seats are vacant. It's running at 1. 73% of its recommendations sit unimplemented, and it has never audited a single federally funded housing or grant program, even though those funds carry the highest compliance risk the city holds and are an issue that I have been advocating for due to the emergency housing voucher funding running out, as we know now, in September. If you compare that to Long Beach— Long Beach elects its city auditor. The auditor answers to the voters, not to the city manager. In Glendale, the auditor answers to the city manager. That is the difference, and that is a gap I'm asking you to consider closing. And I ask you to do that by recommending 3 things to the council. One, put the internal audit function and an independent audit body in the charter itself. Right now, it only requires an outside financial audit. Internal audit exists only by ordinance. Thank you. Which the council can weaken at any time. 2, move internal audits reporting line out of the city manager's office to the council or to an independent commission. 3, direct that the audit work being built this month include federally funded housing and grant programs. You are also being asked tonight to consider changing how the city moves money between funds. Please do not expand that discretion while the only office that checks it still reports it to the people it would be checking. There is such a massive loss impending for these 188 households. I have spent months advocating for a solution. The city's stance is that it is relying on federal funds while Measure A LA County funds are there on the table to be used, and they are being locked up instead of being served as rental subsidies. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] for these families. I am deeply, deeply concerned about what's going on when the conflict of interest between who is checking what involves the lives of the most vulnerable households in Glendale. We are literally about to be putting people out on the streets while employees charge their salaries to these funds and then gatekeep through mechanisms that remain opaque. Thank you. The very small amount of the money that they have even decided to allot when there's a much larger pool available. I know this is not easy work. I know nobody wants to see unsheltered community, family, friends. Nobody wants that. But we need oversight, and something is deeply wrong.

Thank you. Thank you, Oni.

Sure.

Any more callers?

That is it. No more callers.

All right. Next item is approval of minutes. This is the minutes of the meeting of May 7th. Does anybody have any questions about what's in the minutes, changes, corrections? Any public comment on this item?

No.

Do we have a motion to approve the minutes?

I so move.

I'll second. Motion from Elizabeth. Second from Stephen. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Aye.

Abstentions?

Aye.

4 abstentions. Motion passes. All right. Next item, staff comments. Care to comment? Sorry.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Oh.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Okay.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] No comments from the City Attorney's Office. I don't know if City Manager has anything to say.

Okay.

No comments.

That takes us to our discussion items. There are 3 items here. 2 are continuations of prior discussions, and the 3rd is a new one. My hope is we can reach some sort of conclusion on the first 2. So the first 2— the first one will be our continued discussion regarding proposed language establishing qualifications for the city clerk and city for the city treasurer.

Do we have a report on this item?

There's no report. I know that members of the committee were going to draft or consider drafting proposed language, and I know that documentation has been submitted to the committee regarding qualifications for the treasurer.

Okay. So I have in front of me, we all should have in front of us, 2 pages stapled together. It looks like this. And Denise, I understand that you wrote this?

Yes, Chair, would you like a quick background? Please. On how—

First let me just say thank you for bringing something to the table for discussion. I appreciate it.

You're welcome. And that was the sole purpose, to bring something to the table for discussion. So all I would say as we prepare to discuss this is for us to consider this. We have many options, even though there's options here here that are in writing, the first and foremost option is to look at no qualifications, which if people are so moved on that, there would be no qualifications in writing. Secondly, if we did want to look at qualifications of the Treasurer, letting this group know that this is built on what staff provided us. They provided us with very thorough documentation. My impression upon reading that documentation was that the county seemed to have the most —exhaustive set of guidelines around it by which to build some writing for you to consider or language for you to consider. I can keep it pretty high level on the Treasurer and the City Manager. This is identified simply that we would include in our language that they are registered voters and that they do live in the City of Glendale. Another thing for your consideration is that they have a valid baccalaureate, master, or doctoral degree from an accredited college or university. For the treasurer, that they have a valid state license issued by the California Board of Accountancy. That by valid, that would be active, and, and that it authorizes them to practice in that capacity. For the city clerk, a similar possession, possession, or an ability to obtain a certified municipal clerk. In summary, if people felt that they wanted to look at this more specifically, for me, those top 3 criteria would do it, because now there's no written criteria, but for me, that would do it. But if we wanted to be more specific in the charter language, I added options for 4 and 5. For your consideration. If you want to also have a valid charter issued by the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts authorizing that person, you could include that. That seemed to be the county— if you know and remember from our notes from staff, there were 4 options by which somebody can demonstrate that they have an accountant background. The county chose the top two, the first and foremost being the CPA, the second being the charter financial analyst. I just for ease took that one out and just put in a CPA that our treasurer— so again, that's all for your consideration, not at all my decision. But in the ease of what could be in charter language and staying in that spirit, It seemed that a resident, registered to vote, a degree, and a license to practice in that field gets us to a better place of candidates that might show up without putting a whole bunch of nuances and details and language around this that might not be necessary in a charter. The only other thing that you might consider, which those who hold a license, they— Number 5. 5, the county had the 2 years of continuing education. You could opt to include that. I can tell you from my work on the license board for occupational therapy, I can tell you that in order to have an active license, you have to have a certain amount of continuing education within a certain amount of years. It seemed redundant to me for a charter language, but I put it in there for those of you who if you like more details. And lastly, on the qualification of the city clerk, you could look at 1 and 2, and you might decide that you want them to have this certified municipal clerk when they take— when they are going in. I don't know the nuances of that. I'm not an expert in that. But you could also, the way the language is written by the county, have it within 1 to 2 years of office, which is something to consider, or to not have that at all. So again, what's before you is to decide no language, some language, my language that I'm proposing for our ease and conversation is based on the county, and if you don't like any of it, you have great notes from staff and you can have at it. Thank you, Chair.

All right, thank you, Denise. I'd like to probably take these sequentially, Treasurer first, then Clerk, so we're not mixing and matching, although I understand that some issues will overlap. Does anybody have any questions? And I want to do questions first to get some clarifications, if people want it, then we'll get some input from the public, and then we can open up to general discussion. So are there any questions either for Denise or for the staff about this proposal for qualifications for treasurer?

Is there a duration for the residency or no specified duration, 1 year, 2 years?

I don't believe that that's enforceable as long as they have legal residency at the time they file their papers.

And may I? Can I comment, Linda, on that? The reason I didn't go further than a registered voter, we have to think of this in practice. Somebody wants— somebody fills out the paper for a position. They can— our clerk can check a box, they're a registered voter, that's easily identifiable, that's legit. They can check their record of their university and they can check their active license. So I tried to put in language to give us better guardrails, but also think about what has to happen in real-life probability, which is why if we start adding all kinds of nuances, it could become more subjective. But again, that's an opinion, not a fact, what I just lastly said there.

Paul?

Chair, my question is probably going to lead to a broader discussion, so maybe I'll hold off.

Oh, okay. Anybody else have questions? I'll jump in. It's not a huge one. I don't think that— this is for the staff. I don't think that the charter actually specifies that you, you know, anywhere the qualifications for any elective office, you have to be an elector, a resident of the city. That's controlled by state law, isn't it?

It is in our charter, but it's also in state law.

Okay.

I can double-check if— I'm pretty sure we have a provision in our charter.

I believe the charter refers to the muni code that talks about it.

Correct.

Okay. But in any event—

Right.

And our charter does incorporate elections code.

Okay.

So it would be covered by that as well.

All right.

And my next question I think is for Denise, and I just want to understand the intent here. 3 and then 4 and 5 additional items. Are these intended to be, I assume, additive? Like you have to hit all for this first 3? You have to be qualified as number 1, obviously number 2, and number 3?

Yes, 1, 2, and 3. And to be clear on my position, I included 4, 5 because many of you think differently than me and want more. I'm not suggesting that.

So are they— so if Are 4 and 5 potentially additional or alternative to say number 3?

Additional.

If people feel like 1, 2, and 3 is not enough, I provided additional language for your consideration.

So in order to be a treasurer, then you must be a CPA under this proposal? Mm-hmm. Okay.

Then I'll just, I guess I'll make this a question. I get where 1, 2, and 3 are ands, —but could it be 3 or 4? That you have one of those?

That is how the county wrote the language, and yes, if the committee would like it to be that way, that could be possible.

I agree that it should be—it could be either 3 or 4. It doesn't need to be both.

And since you have some background in that area, are people usually both or are they one or the other?

It varies.

Okay.

'Cause I've known CPAs who've gone on to, typically I've known people who are CPAs and then they've gone on to get a CFA and have both. But there are plenty of CPAs who never go and get a CFA. And there's CFAs that maybe aren't public accountants.

I would say they tend to be two very distinct and different career paths where you have probably minimal overlap. One is counting stuff, for lack of a better term, and the other one is analyzing and making investment decisions on stuff. Stuff. So again, very simplified.

Building off that comment, question for staff is which of those differing professional avenues most— more closely overlaps with the actual functioning duties of the city treasurer?

Mr.

Takayan, accountant versus The primary functions in the Treasurer's Office, I mean, it's an interesting question because generally speaking, the accounting functions within the city's organization are handled by the Finance Department. Finance Director oversees everything from payroll to budgets to accounting, accounts receivable, and such. But the finance in the Treasurer's Office, the Treasurer's Office not only invests the the city's portfolio, but also manages the city's day-to-day treasury functions. So they essentially are operating a mini bank, if you will. So there is a little bit of overlap. It's not so distinct that I could say it stops right here.

Okay.

I think, not to complicate matters worse, but the California Municipal Treasury— I forget what the official acronym is— there is a program that certifies municipal treasurers, or certified treasurers. Oftentimes, these are individuals who come up the ranks through cities, counties, school districts, and such. The requirements that Committee Member Miller has proposed tend— appear to mirror very closely what the requirements there would be. The only difference there is I think there is a minimum number of view requirements to get that certificate.

In staff's notes to us, if I may add, the item that was just called out by Mr. Takhtajan is— there are 4, if that wasn't clear to people. There are 4 options that they gave us of different certifications. The county has 2. I chose one. You're leaning back towards 2, or discussion is going towards 2. But if you wanted to look up what all 4 of those are, they're in our April 2nd interdepartmental communication from staff, and they're right in there.

If I can, um, just maybe clarify, what I was referring to was the Certified California Municipal Treasurer Program, and in order to qualify for that certification, Aside from the 6 years of Treasury experience, which I'm not suggesting for this position, typically it's people from these positions that end up going and trying to get the certificate. Some of the prerequisites they look for is a bachelor's degree in related fields such as Treasury, finance, or investment-specific experiences. Again, fairly similar to what Committee Member Denise Miller has proposed.

I'm going to go ahead and ask my question now.

Please.

I think it's germane to what's going— the discussion. Committee Member Miller, you modeled this after the LA County Treasurer's Office, which is an appointed office. It's not an elected office. So how, in your mind, how does that key difference affect what qualifications are used? And then secondly, who judges the qualifications.

Thanks for the question. So if I may clarify, I— we are— our communication of April 2nd outlined 4 options. So that's where I started when I was looking at this. Do we in our language include all 4 options? The next part of the workflow was to look at the table. And in looking at that table, and whether it was county, Huntington Beach, Redondo, elected, appointed, was irrelevant to me. It was a matter of what, what are the bare minimums? If there's none now, what does it take to be in good practice in this subject to be a subject matter expert? Okay. Expert in this area that I would want someone who would want to be a candidate for our city treasurer. That was the driving force.

So whether that position and the qualifications that go with it that you stated is elected or appointed has no bearing whether it's elected or appointed?

No, I would want them to, at a minimum, to have a CPA. I'd want to know they have a college degree and I'd want— what's my third one?

The valid state license.

Yeah, valid state license.

Okay. Okay, well, we can move on to— that'll probably be a discussion.

Okay. Any more questions, or ready to hear from the public on this one? All right. If any members of the public want to speak on this particular issue of qualifications for the treasurer, I'll give you 2 minutes on just that. Thank you.

I would think that it's very germane whether a treasurer was elected or appointed, because you would have a greater pool of people who would be appointed who you could actually see about their qualifications or their experience, different things, but you wouldn't have as great a pool of people who would be elected. I don't know. I don't understand how that's not germane. Number one. Number two, I think you would have to say to yourself, what would be the danger of not having some— you're investing the city's money. I think that's probably more important than the— to have a finance background, to be a financial analyst, than it is to be a CPA. Because if you're not a CPA, I think your investments could be safer, but if you aren't as— a financial analyst, your investments may not be safe. So you have to think about what would be the repercussions of not having one versus the repercussions of not having the other. What would be the damage done if you didn't have this versus what would be the damage done if you didn't have that background? I think given that you want to protect the investments of the city, that's probably where you want to— that's what I would want from a treasurer because of the sheer numbers. You know, you could— You could get different CPAs, but you can't always get a financial analyst to handle, you know, more than a billion dollars worth of investments. So I think that that's— it doesn't— it just seems to me that you would choose the one with the finance background because of the investments versus there are lots of different— I mean, he could do it. But, you know, I happen to know him and I know he could do it. But he's a CPA and I think he could do that because of who I know who he is and what he's handled in the past, but that doesn't mean that you'll get anybody who's going to be special like Allan.

Thank you, Ms. Burke. Chair Flower, I have a question.

I just want to make sure we have— is there anybody else who wants to speak on this?

Yes, I believe we have 2 more, one Herbert Milano and Anika Shah on the line as well.

All right, Mr. Milano, 2 minutes.

Mine's not on the topic.

It's on a—

What's that?

My comment or question to you. I just want to know if our public has the memo of April 2nd.

It was part of the agenda packet from April, so it would have been available on the website.

Okay. Thank you.

I want to give you a perspective with regard to the city clerk.

We're not talking about the city clerk at the moment. This is about the city treasurer qualifications.

Okay. I can address it as well. The city treasurer is under constraints with regard to what the city treasurer can invest in. And pretty much all his activities are about investments. The accountant would be excellent if you're evaluating a particular entity that you want to invest in. So you can do a proper analysis. But most Most financial analysts have that as part of their requirement. So it's an investment position, not an accounting position, in Glendale's charter, unless it is changed, where you give him more power to oversee the city, because we don't have an electric controller, then yes, you would want it. If you expand it, allow for an accounting requirement. If you don't, just keep it as a financial requirement for his background. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Is this the same caller from earlier?

Yes, it is. Hi.

Okay, ma'am, before you start, I just want to— if you could keep it quick. I gave you the extra minutes earlier, but you were speaking on topics of the agenda, so that earlier comment period was for non-agenda items. So if you could just keep it brief. Thank you.

Absolutely, I will do so. So I'm calling regarding The credentialing, the CPA versus CFA, I want to advocate for consideration of the CFA credential because the competency that this exam requires is something that I think would bring in candidates who also have extensive experience from different backgrounds and perspectives that would elevate not just investment decisions,, but also risk assessment as well as income analysis. A treasurer evaluates that issuance strategy and they also oversee cash flow positioning across dozens of funds. The CFA exams, as a result of the way they are structured, would supplement what already exists, like Mr. Toktalian had mentioned earlier, about the finance department's functions. A CPA is an accounting credential and it's great about how you can audit books, prepare financial statements and ensure compliance with accounting standards, but your finance department already does that. You already have CPA types of thinkers. A CFA, I think, would strongly benefit the city and also bring in a full perspective that could only do incredible things to also help meet gaps in budgets and do future forecasting. Thank you. Adding instead of repeating what is already there. So I just encourage you to consider the CFA designation because it is quite rigorous. There are multiple levels to it. And I say this as somebody studying for one of them myself. So I am biased in that sense. But I think it can only help. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else?

No more callers or speakers on this item.

Okay.

Chair, may I just make a quick comment?

Very quick.

The only thing that I would add is with option— with the options before you, bullet point number 3 and then bullet point number 4 for additional consideration, perhaps if the conversation goes there, consider an either/or, not an and between the two. The pool of candidates who would essentially have both those certifications is very small, um, in, in any community.

Thank you. I had, I had a question from regarding this then. Um, so Mr. Talian, how common is it, or have you come across other cities for city treasurers that have both, or have you at all?

Yeah, I wouldn't be, uh, in a position to speak to that, uh, at this at the moment, I didn't do the research in that manner. I know the City Attorney's Office had done a lot of research in terms of the qualifications that some other agencies required, but I don't know that we looked at it from that particular lens.

I'm looking at Ms. Quashnow. We didn't.

Because it really seems to me that if someone is going to be a treasurer of a city with a billion-dollar budget, then it's okay to ask for both. I mean, it's not too much. I know it kind of reduces but also increases their qualifications too. So we get to saying—

Certainly. I mean, that is an argument.

You have to find them living in Glendale. And I'm not saying there's not a lot of talented people in Glendale, but someone who has those skills probably already has a job too.

Talent Interested in running.

And interested.

Key word.

Allen.

Given that city treasurer's an elected office, I do think if you limit it to having a CFA, it's going to limit your pool of candidates. And I don't know that that would be a good thing. Because I think the voters should also be looking at the experience the candidate brings. And, you know, you might be a CPA that does have more investment experience. You know, I managed a $4 billion portfolio for a couple of decades. I'm just a CPA.

I nominate Alan.

But I mean, the other thing is, I think what the city, maybe Mr. Tak Doglin can address this, but I think what the city is allowed to invest in, because you always have investment parameters and policies, is pretty limited. We're not out there playing the futures markets and investing in, equities, I don't think.

That is a very good point. Not only is the city treasurer limited under state law in terms of what they can invest portfolio in, but that's further limited by the city council's adopted investment policy, which adds a separate layer of strictness or limitation on investment vehicles. Not only investment vehicles, but types of investments as well.

So, our treasurer position is very— in terms of the investment function, it's very different than working for Goldman Sachs, for instance. You know, it's not going to rise to that level.

Won't pay as well either.

No, and that's why I don't know that you're going to get a bunch of CFAs knocking at the door to try to be city treasurer.

Have we moved into discussion? Are we in the discussion?

Oh, yeah. We're well into discussion at this point.

So, I start back with the first— the predicate of do we appoint or elect? Currently, it's an elected position. After much consideration, I've come to the conclusion that it should be an appointed position for the very reason that we want to be able to appoint people that are experienced and have the proper credentials at that time and place in the city, where, you know, to lock in a series of credentials today in the charter and expect that they will be relevant and capture everything for the next 10 or 20 years, I think, is tough, number one.

Number two.

Secondly, I just— I think the position, the unique Venn diagram of Glendale qualified, willing to run, you know, for election is a very narrow overlap. Third, the position of treasurer, and to a certain degree this applies to the city clerk, which we'll talk about later, The role of the treasurer from when the city was first incorporated and the charter was first written has changed significantly. Not only in the size, we've talked about the billion-dollar portfolio, but the sophistication and some of the functions that, you know, the treasurer has to do. You know, they are no longer receiving money and making sure the, you know, the dog licenses are paid and things like that, which kind of, is more of a CPA-type function. So, it just— I think it's immensely clear to me that you want qualified people. The qualifications are probably gonna be a little fluid over the next 10 or 20 years. And it really should be appointed just like LA County is appointed. Because we have a very narrow, you know, that Venn diagram is pretty narrow of who's gonna be able to get elected. Qualified and all that. So that's the conclusion I've come to.

I haven't heard from a few people. Anybody who hasn't spoken yet want to jump in or?

I'm in the process of thinking. Yesterday I was listening to some people in the AI world and investments. Now I'm so scared about all these minds who do all these things, so I want— I feel like every— for me, the responsibility is really, really huge, but it looks like they also have some limitations, of course. It's tempting to ask them to have everything as much as possible, but like Alan said, I really don't know how much of it is CPA, and I'm still learning. But I think anybody who deals with more risk— that word is important to me, and I have to do more probably studying whether to ask for as many qualifications as possible or really look at what their limitations are and kind of not really look at it, but look at experience and what what they've done in their lifetime, because it can always be the case. But I was looking at the number 5. I think as— I am always for continuing education, but I think to have a valid license, and correct me if it's not, you probably have to have some things that you always have to update yourself, right?

Yes.

Okay. Okay. So I think I need to listen to more and learn more, but that's where I am.

Chair, if I could just add two more points.

You know, the other thing is going back to what the treasurer's role used to be, I see the wisdom in having it elected when you are really handling the money, so to speak. Like, think of it as a cash box, and you're handling the city's cash box. And you have a lot of responsibility and you don't, you know, you are actually doing more than just a very limited scope, which the Treasurer does now. So that is— I could see why that would want to be directly elected. But now that role has changed, not only in the size of the cash box, but how far they can move their arms as they are dealing with that. That is the— that is part of it. The other part of it is—

Yes.

The qualifications certainly need to be qualified, and if I had to choose, the ideal candidate would be more of a CFA type of person than a CPA type of person because it's most relevant. But who evaluates the qualification, right? Obviously, CFA is one organization that issues CFAs. That doesn't change. Maybe there's going to be some other qualification in the future. And maybe we just say, you know, they got to have a CFA or an MBA, because many, many positions in the finance world, if you're hiring for that role, an MBA is equivalent to a CFA in many people's eyes. Ultimately, I think that's why you need to have it appointed, so that the people can evaluate the position, and it's not a binary thing. It's not like, do you have a driver's license or not? It's, do you have a degree? Where's the degree from? Did you— were you at the top of the class or the bottom of the class? You know, a doctor who graduates at the top of his class is probably different than one that graduates at the bottom of his class. So, you know, how do you put that into an elected position? So I think if we all agree that they need to have some qualifications, The second question we're obligated to ask ourselves are how are those qualifications evaluated? Who does that? And I think if it stays elected, there should be no qualifications, just to be clear. But I do think there should be qualifications, which is what got me to it should be appointed.

Brian?

I don't hear from you.

That's because my stance is kind of the boring one, which is general. I'm just kind of not for qualifications this specific. In the charter language for reasons that Paul just mentioned of foresight and looking ahead and will it be relevant and which ones to pick. I think there's a reason you see very few cities have qualifications for these positions, and when they do, they end up being quite general. I think 'cause the fear that people are trying to, I think, address with having these qualifications is that some con man might make his way through and be elected city treasurer with no qualifications whatsoever.

Mm-hmm.

And it reminds me of when we were talking about districts and people were talking about putting a solution for a problem that just doesn't really exist. And I guess I see it in that light a little bit, that for someone to get on the ballot for election and, you know, promote their qualifications and to get to a certain point, you'd have experience that would probably require these. We heard from the Treasurer that he didn't really think any of this was necessary and that someone running would most certainly have this. I just haven't really heard a convincing argument that qualifications are needed.

I am for having general qualifications, I'm not for not having any. I served on the board of a nonprofit organization, and for a nonprofit organization with a very, very small budget, we ended up changing the bylaws to have a treasurer with the qualifications, because for 40-something years, it was not managed properly. Because they couldn't read financial reports.

As simple as that.

As for elected or appointed, I would like to minimize the political influence, so I prefer an elected role. Paul mentioned it, but that's my stance on that.

Elected.

Elected role. So they are not controlled by the council or city manager, and they are just elected by people. If there are qualifications, then those people have to pass some filters and the people are the ones who are voting for them. So that's where I am right now.

Your turn.

Oh, I'm sorry. I also don't think— I'm sorry, one more point. I also don't think we need to list all the degrees. Minimum bachelor's degree should be enough. If they have a master's and doctorate, they definitely had a bachelor's. So I think that should be— if we go for number 2, just to simplify it. So take No, no, let's keep it, but we can just say a bachelor's minimum. I understand, but we can say minimum a bachelor's degree. That's it, to just make it smaller, shorter.

You can't get a master's without bachelor's, usually.

Usually.

Mm-hmm.

When Dr.

Lewis, you have a master's.

This is true.

All right. Stephen, did you want to add anything?

I'm not sure how it works.

Sorry, Carl.

I've been listening to what people say. I am sort of leaning toward an appointed position, but I want to know who or what— how that person would get appointed. Is it just through City Council? Is it just through city manager? In our city, the city manager runs anything, and I would require some minimum requirements of that person to even apply for the position. You know, some experience to show, you know, I've seen a number of elected people who didn't have qualifications and run into trouble or run into difficulties, which is— So if we went for an elected or stay with an elected Treasurer, I would think the The more qualifications they have to prove that they have, the better.

Can I ask a quick qualification or clarification? Didn't we as a committee settle the elected versus appointed?

I was going to raise the point, but letting people talk. We have had 2 votes on the issue of whether or not to recommend a change of the charter to make the treasurer an appointed position. And so we had the first vote and then we had a motion to reconsider. So in my mind, that issue is settled. I don't even know if procedurally you could do yet another motion for reconsideration. I would not be in favor of that even though I was on the losing side of both of those votes. So I would not be— to me, the issue is settled. But, you know, that we're still having this conversation does speak to something.

Just to be clear, Chair, that's your personal opinion, right?

Yes.

Even though you were on the appointed side, your opinion is—

Well, like I said, we've had 2 votes.

Yeah.

And so the issue is settled as far as that goes. I don't know whether or not it would be proper to raise the issue again.

Well, if we're talking about procedurally, that's a—

Yes.

That's a discrete question that the City Attorney could answer.

Yeah.

Mr. Garcia?

Generally, a motion to reconsider or rescind a prior action has to be made by somebody who voted in the majority the previous time.

Sure.

I think given that you had the vote, again, the vote, the second vote, you'd probably, I think you would still need somebody who voted in the majority or didn't vote with the majority to table it essentially, would have to bring it back up. But again, that would, and because it's not on the agenda, somebody would have to raise it and then we'd have to, you'd have to vote on whether to bring it So procedurally, it's—

there is a path should someone want to do it. Look, I'm not trying to belabor the point, but you can see, as you pointed out, there's a reason why we're having this discussion. It's because they're intertwined. We probably should have thought about them together in retrospect. And, you know, I think it's— we may be left with a decision that is suboptimal unless we want to take the procedural path. So—

Can I bring it back over here because I don't think I've heard from Elizabeth since she asked the question.

I'm personally for qualifications. Now whether— because I need to hear more if it's CPA or CFA. I really need to know which one is really the one that our city really needs. Like, you know, I need to maybe hear more from our city staff, or— because I think qualifications are really important for our treasurer. Again, I'm also wondering who would be the one to— that part, maybe someone can answer to that. Maybe our assistant manager can answer to that. Who would be monitoring the qualifications? [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] communications too. That's important.

Sure.

Or bringing it up.

Right. Let me take a crack at the second question. And the first one, I'm actually going to kick over to our very qualified finance director who has served in a number of these capacities over the course of his career. So maybe he can provide his own professional opinion about the CPA versus the CFA as it relates to the treasurer function. With respect to the question of who would —determine qualification. If the recommendation was, or if the charter stated, you shall have a CPA or you shall have a CFA, to me, it's fairly simple, and there may be differing views on that, and I respect that. But I think it goes to the point that if you have earned that certification and you have passed that state test, whether you were at the top of the class or not, you have—

You have earned it.—

you have qualified to operate in that field. And you are bound by certain requirements under that licensure. So the certification in and of itself is the determination of whether somebody qualifies or they don't. Again, this may be a differing view and maybe there is nuance in how maybe some people view that, but that is how I would take that.

Well, as If it's an appointed position, it would be important. But if it's not, if we've already decided on elected, then the minimum requirement would do.

And that's a great point. If it was an appointed position, I would say that the charter should— would probably be beneficial for the charter to be a little bit more flexible because at that point, it's going to be the potentially the city manager who would be making that appointment with the city council's approval.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and the job duties as well as the minimum requirements to qualify would be something that gets vetted through the Civil Service Commission, which is a completely separate entity within the city structure that has a very independent level of of operation. Quite different from a lot of the other boards and commissions. So my point in kind of giving you this long-winded answer is there is a number of— if it's an appointed position, there's a number of checks and balances where they would have to meet minimum qualifications established by the Civil Service Commission. And then a number of people, you know, competing for that position or applying for that position would have to be vetted. The most qualified rising to the top, and then the final step being the city manager making an appointment certified by the city council.

Thank you. Can I ask a question for the city attorney? So if it's an elected position and there's a set of qualifications, and I want to run to be the treasurer—hypothetical, I swear— What's my process? Who do I show my credentials to to get on the ballot?

Chair Flower, I believe that that would go, in the normal course, it would go to the city clerk.

Okay.

They would obviously consult with the city attorney's office. But just to give an example, if somebody wants to run for LA City Attorney or California Attorney General and they need to be a member of the state bar, actually, I had to do it in California.

You can go to CalBAR.

It's a little bit easier, but no, I think even in the case of California, you don't have to be licensed, you just have to have been practicing law for 5 years prior. So yeah, but you have to submit that evidence to the city clerk of the city of LA, or in the case of the state, Secretary of State. They verify it. It would be a very similar process. That could probably be fleshed out by either in the charter or it could be put, there could be a process established in the municipal code to do that.

Okay. If we had something that specified like item number 2 in that second paragraph, it says, or, you know, public administration, economics, finance, accounting, or a related field. Who would make that decision, and who do I complain to if they say my field is not sufficiently related?

Fair enough. So again, I do believe the City Clerk can make that determination. Her office does consult with us. I'll give you an example. So when somebody runs for city council, they have to put their primary occupation or vocation. So they'll say, I'm a professor, or this is my occupation. Then that— there has to be some verification with the clerk's office that that person is indeed doing that. So they already have that experience with that, and I don't see that being a huge administrative problem for the clerk's office to do.

And Chair Flower, you don't have to even consider number 2. That's just another option. If someone has a valid state license, they would have to— a path to get that license is they would have to have a university degree. So I just wanted the crew to consider that, our committee, and then lastly, to also know it doesn't matter to me if it's CPA or CFA or— excuse me, because it's their field. I want to make sure. CFA. It doesn't matter in terms of the language put forward, but I would just ask everyone to consider that a CPA means— you were a CPA? Yes. Okay. So you— nothing has changed in the 10 years—

no, I know you're 30.

Years of service. Nothing's changed. I mean, let's be real about this. It's a state board. It has a disciplinary body attached to it because you have a state license. Remember, one of the issues that was talked about was when different speakers came to us is if it's elected, which is what we've voted on twice, if it's— if it's an elected position, one of the one of the cons against that was that they could— the city manager didn't have oversight. Well, the state of California has oversight. So if there's disciplinary issues, I guess all I would just ask you all to consider is, sure, expand it to include the CFA if that makes more sense from our experts here or people who've called in, but please, at a minimum, still include CPA because that's attached to the disciplinary body that the public can go and view on the state and can know exactly who they're— if they've had past transactions, if there's ever been discipline with their license. I mean, voters would want to know that, I think. And with a certified body alone, you know, that's why I don't like the either/or. With just a certification, the path to clarity on their discipline is not as clear. Okay. I just want you to consider that.

Could I ask a theoretical question? If the person running was previously convicted for something, would that prevent them?

Depends on the crime.

Okay, let's say it was, I don't know, let me ask you this. What kind of crime would allow them to run? What kind of crime?

There's a specific list.

That's my election too, I could look it up. So for example, You had individuals who was convicted for embezzlement or crimes related to public office, then they couldn't hold office. There's a number. I think even felonies—

Well, they'd lose their license, Mr. Karpatyan, which means, again, they would lose their license if they have a qualification of that.

So if somebody's elected and then during— they have these accreditations, these qualifications, these certifications. Positions, and then at some point during their 4-year term, they lose it. Well, that's a different issue. Or say they don't get all of their ongoing education requirements during the term of office. And this kind of leads over to the clerk discussion. Is the only recourse recall?

Depends on the language of the charter that's in there.

Right.

That's why you might want to—

You'd have to account for a process for somebody who loses their accreditation.

Right.

Correctly. I think they wouldn't—

if the language was just that you have to be— you have to have whatever criteria, either this education or this license, to be elected to the position, then if they lose it, they don't necessarily forfeit the office. It would have to be in the charter that says what happens. That, you know, if it basically says you have to maintain that eligibility for the entire term of office, Then at that point, if they were to lose their office, then somebody could— and for the non-lawyers, what happens is when somebody loses their eligibility for office, somebody would have to file what's called a quo warranto action to challenge that eligibility. You first go to the Attorney General, say, "This person is no longer eligible to serve. Please allow me to sue in quo warranto and challenge their eligibility," and then get them removed. So that's the process. That's for anything. So somebody—

How long does that take?

Longer than the term?

No, not necessarily. They usually make the— the AG usually makes the co-ento decision allowing somebody to sue in 90 days, and then after that, I mean, there's a period of time.

Usually that written opinion kind of tilts the field. Yes.

Do you want that? Do you want that language? Was your question going to the place that you want us to consider language like that, or—

No, I'm just— I'm trying to think through the consequences. Issues here.

I think what you're doing is similar to what I'm doing is the practice— we all agree that qualifications are necessary. What those qualifications are, we're still kind of talking about that. But how do you actually implement that in an elected position and the mechanics of it from the point they want to file to run to the point they're elected and throughout their term? How does that actually work? And does it achieve the goals that we want? Number— that, that's what we're trying to think about here. In terms of the qualifications, the, the, the CPA is a state-issued certification. CFA is not. CFA actually has 3 different levels: Level 1, Level 2, Level 3. And they each focus on different aspects of financial analysis. There's portfolio management, there's financial statement analysis, things like that. That is way more germane to what the current position is for the city treasurer than a CPA is. The problem is, 10 years from now, I don't know if that's going to be germane to what the current treasurer does. And I— if we've already crossed the Rubicon of— it's an elected position, then I'm strongly requesting that there not be any qualifications other than you're an elector of the city. Because there is no practical way to actually implement the qualifications. That's the reality of it. Now, if someone wants to take a stab at— A different way. Bringing back the issue, there is a path to do that. But I raise my hand, I evolved right after the first discussion because I actually thought about it. And to Chair's much chagrin, we actually agreed. So—

I'm not chagrined that we agreed.

That was a joke. So anyways, I just think it's unfortunate, but there is no way to actually have qualifications in this elected position.

I'd like to hear from Carl.

You probably really don't. I wanna hear from everybody.

It's like—

I'm being— I'm kidding.

That's my job.

As I said, I think we settled the issue, elected versus non-elected. Look, it won't be the end of the world if we don't put any any qualifications in there. I understand that. I actually think there should be some, and I kind of lean toward obviously one being a resident and a voter of the city, two the degree, and then I lean toward three or four, either a CPA or that. And then the rest of it is left to the voters. And if someone loses it in the middle, then we might have to deal with it, and I don't know if at some point they change CPAs to something else, we might have to revisit the— we might have to revisit the charter. I think there's been a pretty strong history of— I think CPA has been around for most of my life. I don't think that's likely to change too far down the road. But I mean, what I'm looking at here is the qualifications are kind of the minimum bar, the absolute minimum bar to clear. Then the rest of it is up to the voters to determine whether or not the person— what that person's qualifications are, whether they're the top of the class, the bottom of the class, do they prefer this, do they they prefer that. And I'm okay with either or. I'll take Ms. Brooks' compliment of Allan going, it's like, he's capable of managing that. Well, that's ultimately what we as voters have to do. So if I look at qualifications, it is the lowest threshold to get across for the voters then to figure out whether or not they think you're qualified and responsible enough to do the job.

Thanks, Carl. Al?

I agree with Carl, and the reason I would say if we include qualifications that it should be 3 or 4, I think there's an oversimplification of if you're a CPA, your experience doesn't matter, you're just a bean counter. If you're a CFA, 'Your experience doesn't matter. You're an expert financial analyst.' And I think that way oversimplifies the role that experience plays. First of all, when we go to 2, it says, 'In any of the major fields of study, including economics, finance, accounting, or a related field.' Well, when I got my MBA, I didn't just take accounting courses. I took economics courses and I took plenty of finance courses, which covered bond issuance, equity analysis. My MBA and my CPA did not mean that, "Oh, I only took accounting courses. I knew nothing about finance." And when I went into public accounting, my audits, my biggest audit, which took most of the year, was a large bank. That bank had a huge portfolio of loans. You have to analyze their loan portfolio, determine what their reserves should be for future bad loans. They also have an investment portfolio and lots of, corporate transactions. And I also audited 8 mutual funds in a mutual fund group, including money market funds, equity funds, bond fund, uh, international stock fund. And so, that's how I ended up in Treasury, is because I had a lot of experience. I wasn't just— Mm-hmm.— you know, a CPA who only had accounting courses, no, I don't think I would have ended up in Treasury. But I think it's the experience, which is what Carl was saying, that matters. You know, have either of these two qualifications, and then let the voters decide who has the best background and experience. Because, you know, I'm sorry, but degrees— aren't the only thing. Just having a degree does not mean you're the best candidate. Having a CFA versus a CPA, that shouldn't be the determining factor. The voters should have an ability to analyze the experience and qualifications. Thanks.

I wanted to suggest different wording. Basically to say relevant professional credentials may include but are not limited to certified public accountant, chartered financial analyst, certified government financial manager, or successor credentials recognized within the accounting, finance, or public finance professions, basically to address Paul's concern for future changes in the certifications. Thank you.

Yeah. Could I ask Alan a question? Alan, so who— how was your cumulative experience, education, and which is exactly what we're talking about, right? How was that evaluated before the decision was made that you should— you're qualified enough to take on those roles? In Treasury, for example?

When I left public accounting, I got hired by the corporate headquarters of a Fortune 100 company in the Treasury Department. And I did work my way up. I wasn't put in charge of the investment portfolio, you know, on day one.

But, but I, I, I, exactly, but who, Was it a process? Was it a panel? Was it people, qualified people? Was it a checkbox where they just saw, well, you know, he's had 5 years of experience?

No, it's not a checkbox. I had to interview with 6 different executives and people working.

So if it took like 6 different people to interview you to determine if your qualifications actually were what you said they were, is a city clerk going to do that?

Oh, I misunderstood the question. I think I was being interviewed to see if I would be a good fit and had sufficient knowledge. But the Human Resources Department did all the verifications of my university transcripts and my CPA degree, things like that. I mean, that went all to HR.

Okay, thanks.

Don't you think the voters are going to do that, Mr. Karpatyan? I mean, if we have minimal guardrails around—

We've just been through that process.

Well, no, so here's my answer to that question. As a general rule, I believe the voters should make as many decisions as possible when it comes to city government. That's, that's a general rule for me. This particular role, because it's not a policy role, it's a, it's really a job with a very discrete function, doesn't rise to the level where it needs to be elected. That's how I've made that switch from being elected to being appointed. And for the very reason that you're bringing up, do you think they will take the time, like HR, to go through, um, the CV of whoever is running to make sure they have the right stuff for—

That's not what I said.

I'm sorry, what was your question?

The, the language that's written, to, to your point, could be done by a city clerk. You are No disrespect at all. You are— you either have a degree or you don't. You have a license or you don't. You have this or you do not. And look, just so you know, even though I'm bringing up that point, I want you to know, even our city treasurer, Mr. Smith, I just want to correct the record. He did say that no qualifications were necessary, and then when asked, He said they could be necessary. So the conversation— the discussion can be looked at both ways is what I'm saying. And so the language that was presented to you was presented to give minimum guidelines. And I guess to move the agenda item, what's really before us is we've already— we recognize that you've moved to appoint it, but this Commission has twice voted on elected versus not. You have a path forward on this commission if you want to do something different, but for now, for the amount of time that we spend, I'd like to direct us towards are we looking at qualifications or no qualifications? That, that's what's before us.

So I thought your question was would the voters evaluate it?

It was— And let me be more fair. I think the voters would evaluate—

But was that your question? Yes.

Okay. And you do not.

So, yeah, I do think they will probably not take the time to evaluate the degree, the years of experience. And even if they did, again, are they— this is a job. It's not a policy decision where you can— Someone can articulate what their philosophy is on something, right? This is a very discrete job. It's not a philosophical decision where you can agree with one's philosophy on something. More bike lanes, less bike lanes. [LAUGHTER] More housing, less housing. This is very different, which is why— Again, yes, we are at a different place, and if the question before us is what qualifications besides the bare minimum currently in the charter, there should be no further qualifications as far as I'm concerned.

That is what I think is before us. No qualifications or bare minimum qualif— that is what I thought the task was in— in writing that.

I agree. That is the question that we are bringing forward this time. And we were bringing it forward last time, but we didn't have anything in front of us.

And just to be clear, my point in bringing this is to illustrate why my position is probably the right position. Because I believe any series of qualifications is, one, untenable, unworkable, and unrealistic. From a practical perspective.

So you're saying you don't have to be a resident in Glendale?

No, you have to.

No, you have to. That's any elected position.

Yeah.

Okay. All right. So there is a qualification.

No. But I—

But that's any elected position. What I see is a position and no additional qualifications than what's currently in the charter for this position.

Ah, thank you.

I haven't really chimed in with my thoughts on this. Do it. So I'll reiterate what I said earlier. We have voted twice on the issue of whether or not the Treasurer's position should be elected or appointed. I personally consider it settled. I disagreed with the decision. But the decision was made that this group as a whole thinks that the position should remain an elected position. I respect that. I respect it so much that I don't think we should be imposing further qualifications on the office. Let me say why. The decision itself to make the position appointed, and this position in particular, is in essence us saying we think that the treasurer's position is more of a matter of public trust than it is professional duties and obligations. Because we know how to do that. We've just gone through all those civil service—

Uh-huh.

Discussions. That, that whole process is designed to insulate hiring for people who work for the city from political decisions as much as that's conceivable. It's never going to be completely insulated. And so we know how to do that. We're doing that. But we've decided no, public trust and electoral accountability is more important than a process that vets people professionally.

Thank you.

And so if we're going to do that, I think it's somewhat counterproductive, if not hypocritical, to turn around and say, but we don't trust the voters. So we have to put some guardrails in place. If we want this position to be accountable to the people, let the people decide and let the arguments be made. It's a political decision who that person is at the end of the day. And if they can make the case that they have the necessary qualifications and that people should trust them with being treasurer, then people will vote for them. But to suddenly become a second-level gatekeeper because, "Well, don't pick that person." Well, then why are we asking them to weigh in at all? And I do think, for practical realities, I think that we start drawing circles, like Paul said, around what categories of people within a city of 2,000 people and falling, qualify for this one particular electoral office, I think our pool is going to be smaller and smaller. And that's my worry. So if we're going to make it elected, and again, I consider the position— that question settled here, I would be in favor in just letting the voters choose for themselves and not try to gatekeep it further. Thank you. That's my thought. It's not meant to be the last word, but I was holding back.

So are we open to motions? What's the pleasure of the committee? You know, I mean, I'd like to make a motion to leave the charter language as it stands and for this— for the treasurer's position.

There's a motion.

I'll second it.

Motion from Paul, second from Brian. Any discussion before we vote?

Can we go over— an aye vote is leaving it as is.

No change.

No change.

I don't even know if we want to make it formally a recommendation for no change. All of our stuff is recommended.

Okay. Let us never forget.

There is no discussion. Can we get a roll call, please?

Committee members Durham?

No.

Flower?

Aye.

Peribian? Haratunian?

Aye.

Harapetian?

Yes.

Monosarian?

Yes.

Meek?

No.

Magradician?

No.

Miller? No.

Povilaitis?

No.

Smith?

Yes.

And you?

What is it? Nice.

That's it, 5-5?

Yeah. Let no one ever say the fix is in with this committee. Love this place. Okay. The floor is open. The motion fails.

Chair, would it be appropriate to hear from Mr. Liang? Any thoughts he might have?

Sure.

If he's willing. And I mean any thoughts whatsoever, not necessarily—

Please tell me why I'm right.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] I was just going to say, for the record, Jack Leung, Director of Finance at the City of Glendale. I actually don't have any more comments. I feel that the charter committee actually had a very good discussion. All the facts and thoughts are laid out on the table. So I don't have anything new to add to this conversation. But thank you for the opportunity.

All right. Thank you. Would you mind if I asked if any members of the committee have a question for you? Since you weren't here earlier when we were doing the— quiz the staff part of the meeting.

Sure, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. I had that original question about the CPA versus CFA, just for my own edification basically, because really again, I think it's irrelevant if it's elected, so, but I still want to know what your thoughts are about that.

Is the question specifically which of those two certifications would be more applicable to the City Treasurer position?

Right, right. Thank you for clarifying that. I just assumed he heard it, but yeah, thank you.

Thank you for that question. I think Mr. Durham really spoke to it already. In my mind, I think there is no guarantee that CPA or CFA give you the relevant experience because both paths actually could lead you down a path that you do nothing that's related with investment. Experience actually is very, very important. From my personal experience, I have served as an appoint— appointed treasury in my past life. I have also worked with colleagues within the municipality area where there are elected treasurers, and there are qualifications, very qualified people that actually goes into each one of those categories depending on their experiences. So that's part of the reason why I say I don't have anything to add. I don't think one or the other just by itself provides your 100% certainty that is more relevant to the role that Glendale— Yeah.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions?

Do we have to come to a majority?

To take any action, yes. But just right now, do we have any more questions for the speaker? Thank you very much.

I appreciate you attending.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Denise, please.

Thanks. To the city, do we have— are you— I mean, if it's the will of this committee to try and get us to a majority, certainly I'm here for the duration. But is another option that you would— I mean, again, going back to the fact when the speakers came to us, the city treasurer said in one conversation, yes, there could be minimum criteria. He used the word minimum. This was to do, and then the next time he said, no, I don't think there needs to be criteria. He, he could argue it both ways. So the point— and then you've seen the vote here where perhaps this committee, uh, or this charter commission could see it both ways. Is that enough to give that recommendation to council to identify how our vote is, or are we supposed to send solid Yes.

Well, given that it's a 12-member commission, there was always a possibility that there could be a split vote on a particular item. In fact, I think we initially had that tie vote on the district question before we brought it back to you. But certainly, if this is the ultimate outcome, that it was— the committee was evenly split on the issue, that we would provide that— there was no action, no recommendation. But here is— you know, here are the viewpoints of both sides on the issue, and we would just provide that information. Information to the council.

So we are back at discussion. Motion failed. We heard from a speaker just now who is probably closer to this than anybody sitting around this table. And that speaker said that I can't give you an answer in terms of what discrete qualification would make someone more qualified. Which— Again, I think speaks to the fact that if it's an elected position, as Chair Flower articulated, as I have, you can't have any functional requirements. It's just counterintuitive. So, you know, I would implore those other than, you know, the people who voted to reconsider this, given this new information, and at least if you've come to the conclusion that it should remain elected, fine. Let's vote to impose no further qualifications because it's just not feasible, and at least inform the council and the public of all the work that we've done and what the speaker just said.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Is anybody interested in making an alternative motion at this time, either to take a different action or to table this?

I think we're going to be where we are with districts, so I'll just make a motion to table it. It moves here. We've discussed it. We are where we are. It's time to move.

I think we've discussed it for a full fiscal quarter.

Longer than I thought. Longer than I thought we'd be here. —would. So it's like, I think we just move.

Chair Flowers.

We got other things to cover.

I'm sorry about that, Carl.

Was that a motion?

Does it— are we— I'm asking as it relates to his motion, are we doing that for both positions then?

We've just talked about the treasurer.

Okay.

We might end up at the same place on the next one.

We might end up at the same place, but all the more reason to hurry up and get there.

And so my motion is just to table it and we move on. We've taken a vote. We are where we are.

Staff can report what they've seen here today.

We've got other things to tackle.

And I second his motion.

There's a motion to table from Carl and a second from Elizabeth. Can we get a roll call, please?

Committee members Durham?

Yes.

Flower?

Yes. Peribian?

Paratunian? Yes? Parapetian? Monisarian? Meek? Present! Megurdjian? Miller? Povilaites? Smith? And you—

It was almost unanimous. All right... Steven? Hahaha. Stephen Lankford: President?!

Mr. Chairman? Yes?

Yeah, that— does that count as an abstention? Yes. Okay, all right. So I guess this is A2 at this point, the question of Treasurer's qualifications. You know, I want to hear from Denise, who provided some language. I think, again, I appreciate the work, but without rehashing the entire thing since there's a lot of overlap, can you tell the committee why these 3 things in particular were important to you for the clerk?

So, yes, I can. I did think that I tried to give a high-level overview when I spoke about both of them. One speaks to living in Glendale, being a registered voter. Second speaks to a degree. Third speaks to a special designation. And certainly we can go to discussion, but if you want to know if we're—— if we— I am opposed to having qualifications for one and not the other. So if you want the item moved, the discussion moved that way, I'll just close with that comment and then—

Okay.

Well, are there any other questions about this item before we move into discussion on it? I was going to— that's why I was asking. If not, I wanted to give the public a chance to comment before we talk about this. All right. Is there any members of the public who want to speak to the question of qualifications for an elected city treasurer? Clerk.

I do not have any cards, but Mr. Milano, if you're interested. Mr. Milano. Herbert Milano.

Okay. Mr. Milano, I'll give you 2 minutes.

I hope this discussion is a lot shorter than the last one. Um, I just want to give you a perspective. I've known the city clerks of the city of Glendale since Doris Tweed was a city clerk, so that's going back to the year 2000 and earlier. And we have had many years where we had an appointed city clerk, many years in Glendale without a problem. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Milano.

Any discussion on this question? Does anybody want to make a motion one way or the other on whether or not to recommend putting qualifications on the office of elected city clerk?

I guess I will move that there's no qualifications except for the one that's already on the charter.

So is that an affirmative recommendation for no change on this question?

Yes.

Okay. I'll second that.

All right. We have a motion from Mr. Meek, second from Paul. Can we get a roll call, please?

Committee members Durham?

Yes.

Flower? Yes.

Garibian?

Haratunian?

Yes.

Parapetian?

Yes.

Monisarian?

Yes.

Yes.

Magruder.

Yes.

Miller. Yes.

Povilaitis.

Yes.

Smith.

Yes.

And you.

All right.

Look at us making recommendations. Okay. On to 6B. A continued discussion regarding the Independent Audit Commission. So rather than reopening this entire thing, because I don't think— am I right, the staff doesn't have an additional report at this time? We do not. We've had this Discussion discussion. at some length about whether or not to make any recommendations regarding charter amendments to address the Audit Committee either in some regard. Right at the close of our discussion, which was a good discussion, if you missed it, I recommend going back and watching it. Thank you. Our esteemed Vice Chair put forth an idea that I found intriguing and wanted to hear more about. And he was kind enough to give us a written proposal about his idea of perhaps including— recommending to the council charter amendment that would enshrine the audit committee's existence in the charter and at the same time include the elected city treasurer as an ex officio member of that committee. Did I summarize that properly at the high level?

You want to take us through the rest of it?

And so what you have— I'm going to tell you, this is not written in stone because, as you know, this is not what I would consider what I would do if I were city staff and going out there, because I did not go run around and talk to a treasurer and talk to folks to go do this, and I can find some concerns even with what I put here. So please don't take this as like, hey, this is a take-it-or-leave-it kind of operation.

You wrote draft for discussion. Yeah.

I saw the watermark. I put draft for discussion, and there's no magic in any of the numbers, and there's no magic in any So where I started was, it's like after kind of listening to some of the public comment, having my own professional experience, it's like I think there's some value in having an audit commission. And I think there's some value in having an audit commission with a certain level of authority. Short of starting and going, just saying, hey, we're going to have a controller somewhere to go do this and kind of looking— now having watched some of the budget study sessions and kind of looking at where the city is. It's like, well, with what we have, is there a way to maybe change what we do? And I think maybe it's worth— as you say, enshrining— putting the Audit Committee into the charter. And basically— and the way I wrote this was basically the City Council would be required to adopt an ordinance, much like civil service is created and that has to include certain things. I don't want to preclude the ability to change things coming down the road, because I think some of audits is based on leadership, and no matter how we do this with an audit committee or who we put on there, it's going to depend on who's there. And, you know, it's never fun, I think, if you run an organization and someone says they're coming in and auditing you. I don't know that that gives everybody a warm and fuzzy feeling when the auditor walks in the door. Right. To look at your operations. But I've also been there where I've asked for audits on things because I wanted to know whether or not our operation is doing what it is. And if we never ever look, we'll never ever know. And we will go along, as I used to say, fat, dumb, and happy, thinking that everything is okay, and then we find out one day it's not. And so sometimes we need to look, and sometimes what we think was good is like, whoops, we need to put a couple of things in there. And I'd rather not have that by luck. I'd rather have it— By accident. Have it by skill. So here's kind of where I came down. So I just started with sort of the preamble that the council would put into an ordinance that you had to have an independent audit committee with the authority to review city financial information and controls. I just kind of wanted to sort of set the tone with that. Then I went to membership. And please, this needs some thought and some feedback. Yes. It really does. I landed on the number 7, but there's no magic to number 7. I had 9 in there, I had 5 in there, and I did a couple of different things.

How much money can we spend?

And I kind of need maybe some sense from the smarter people around the table as to what might or might not work. So anyways, I started with 7, of which 4 would be appointed by council, 2 by the treasurer, and then the treasurer would be an ex officio member, and/or chair, depending where people come down. So I put that just in parentheses on the audit committee. Thought behind the— thought behind this is if we're going to have an elected city treasurer, and somebody out there mentioned it, that that might be a good place to sort of house the audit function. It's an independent person. It's not the city council. It becomes a shared responsibility to make sure that what we're doing in the city is appropriate. Okay. So Council has the fiscal responsibility, Council has the lawmaking and the policy setting thing. This would then put the Treasurer kind of into the spot of potentially being the other person to go, hey, we need to be looking at some other things. Now I'm going to put my asterisk up. There's obviously one potential conflict of interest, and that's if you're auditing the investment portfolio. So that's why I said this is going to need some thought behind it and more than that. Thank you. Then, you know, I basically laid out going, hey, I think if we were talking about what should an audit committee have the authority to do or what does it need to do, they got to meet at least 4 times a year. Don't want to limit them to less, but I think quarterly, I don't have a problem putting that in the charter that, hey, if you make them, they got to meet. I don't want to limit them, but I think there's got to be a minimum. That they would have— that their job would be to provide the Oversight and review audits conducted by or on behalf of the city, so whether it's inside or outside. The authority to review city contracts and operations through the audit process. The authority to review city council financial— city— the city's financial information and internal controls. Approving an annual audit work plan for subsequent approval by city council. Making recommendations for changes in policies and procedures based on their audits or their review of audits, publishing a report of audits and findings and presenting that information to the City Council at least annually, but that doesn't preclude them to do— from doing more, making recommendations of firms to conduct financial or other audits, and then having the assistance of city staff or other resources to assist in their oversight responsibilities in the annual work plan. And frankly, some of that comes out of the ordinance and, and just trying to put it into non-legal forms. When I look at— whoops, sorry. Yeah, I can't write like a lawyer.

I was taking that first one.

I almost asked ChatGPT to do that for me. And then kind of looking at council, it's like, as I said, I look at this, I think it's got to be a shared responsibility in how they do that. That they got to approve the annual work plan. So they ought to know what's being audited. But then I'm also kind of going, hey, if, you know, I want to make sure that if If someone's going to change that work plan, then maybe it needs to be done by a supermajority vote. And if you're going to add something or take something off, you need to publicly write down why you're adding or taking something— taking something off. Again, with the thought of maybe putting a little sunshine on decisions, going, hey, we're auditing this, we're not auditing that. They need to provide the resources to accomplish the audits. As I said, and I do not want to put something into the charter that requires any kind of budgeting, so my thought was, that the City Council would then have to also certify that they have provided adequate resources. So I'm thinking staffing and funding to accomplish that audit plan, and then reviewing the recommendations of the audit committee. And so, as I said, I don't know that you all can tear this apart from here on out. It is not written in stone. It is just some thoughts on maybe how we share responsibility and have maybe an independent elected official that's not part of the policy-setting body who might also be there to go, hey, we have an issue that we need to audit, and the audit committee would be— they would either be a member or a chair or something like that. As to who appoints things, I'm still thinking through whether or not, you know, could it all be appointed by council? Could it all be, you know, should it be split between the city treasurer? Should it be 5 people? Should it be 7 people? I was kind of leaving that out, leaving that out. And with that, I will drop it on the table for thoughts, or you can tear it up. I almost tore it up this morning.

All right. Let's start off— Carl, thank you. And stop being so humble. You did nice work.

It's really here for discussion.

Yeah. So let's start the discussion with just some questions. If people have questions either for Carl, for— just where he was coming from with some of this, although I think you did a good job of describing it, or for the staff in terms of like how this might be implemented or anything like that. Alan's had his hand up patiently for the last 30 seconds.

Carl, I'm just trying to distinguish. I mean, I kind of want to start at the beginning just for my own thought process. It's true, correct, that one of our boards and commissions is an audit committee of 5 positions that are appointed by City Council, like our other boards and commissions, or most of them. So are we talking about scrapping that commission and replacing it with something different?

I don't think so. I'm not trying to— because, I mean, look, full disclosure, I mean, their presentation from the internal audit folks was wonderful. And then full disclosure, in my professional life, I have worked with the internal auditors, and I think they do a tremendous job. So what I was looking at was— I don't want to say scrapping it, maybe potentially adjusting it slightly, because when I look at the ordinance, I think most of those functions are there. What it doesn't have is, as I said, where probably the tweak would be, would be potentially allowing a treasurer to appoint a member or two and/or making the treasurer an ex officio member, the elected treasurer an ex officio member of that committee to put an— and basically, I was almost thinking chair in order to be able to move that audit a little bit outside of normal city staff. Okay.

Okay. It just seemed like a lot of items in 2 are sort of already there. I was trying to focus more on changes to the status quo. I mean, trying to identify specific changes to the status quo, because a lot of these things in 2, when I look at Audit Committee meetings, they're already doing a lot of this stuff.

No, and I think you're correct. They are doing a lot of this stuff. So what I'm looking at is changing this a little bit from being solely ordinance and solely council-driven to moving it to the charter, kind of keeping what I think are the good things in the ordinance and making sure that those don't change. And I think I added a couple of things in terms of, you know, making sure that that audit committee has the authority to review contracts and procedures. So if the Audit Committee wants to look at something, they can make that decision if that makes sense.

Right.

And it's, you know, as I said, fully knowing that it's like, hey, in order to do this, you need support and all that. And I don't want the City Council completely in the dark as to what's being audited. But once it's appointed, that it has a level of— maybe a little bit level of greater independence than it has now. Yes, correct. So its direct line isn't through staff to City Council. It also involves the city treasurer who can then also, if you will, if necessary, wave a red flag and say, hey, we have an issue.

Because am I correct that it would give them a little more independence? Because currently the head of internal audit develops the audit plan in conjunction with the committee.

Yeah.

But they don't— I haven't seen them say we want this particular contract audited. They basically kind of rubber stamp the internal audit plan for the year.

And I think where I'm trying to get with this is to make sure that whatever language that we might come up with, it gives the Audit Committee a little bit more independence to be able to potentially do that. To say, hey, I have an interest, one of the members has an interest, the Treasurer has an interest, they've seen something within there, they're going, hey, we need to audit this., and that they can then make a modification or request something into the plan that they think ought to be audited.

Yes, thank you.

All right.

Further questions?

Yeah, mine is a question, but I also kind of want everyone's thoughts. Can it— can it ever be as independent as possible, and what would those options If this is as close or a little bit different than what— I don't know what would the law allow or how it could possibly be.

Yeah, I mean, theoretically—

That's an elected controller.

Yeah, it could be there. I didn't start there, but it could be you— we add another position to the city and it's an independent controller and then they do the the auditing.

Because otherwise you are electing 5.

Yeah, I mean, it is kind of like going, okay, otherwise you are literally, you have to elect the entire committee. And so I don't know that that is particularly necessarily practical or how we want to move that forward. I was just looking within sort of the framework that we have, can we make what we have a little better, a little bit more independent?

No, of course not.

And I mean, even I think from from a controller or an auditor, it's like generally their, if you will, power comes from the ability to shine light on something and to make something, you know, to say, hey, here are the issues and we put them out. My other world looks at things like NTSB and FAA. The NTSB will do investigations and make recommendations. Ultimately, FAA have to— has to decide whether they can do it because I can see situations where an auditor could recommend something, and I think, I think Mr. Takhtalyan pointed it out, there are sometimes those audit conditions going, they stay open for an awfully long time because it might be, we got to change a computer system, and that is not, you know, and if it's a major system that touches everything, that may not be something that is fiscally possible at that point in time, and so you just have to deal with what you have at that point.

Yeah, and I'm honestly not even This is great. I wouldn't even be able to do it, meaning for people and the public to have that comfort saying, okay, now we think it's being independent. I don't know, maybe there are ways of hiring someone else and then keep the checks and balances. I'm just curious to know. So it's not, again, involves everything around what it's already kind of happening. I was just curious.

And as I said, truly no ego in this. It's just— I just put some thoughts on paper. As I said, I can see some downsides to what's here also. So as I said, there are smarter people than me around this table. So at least it gives us a place to start.

Sure, yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Any more questions for, like, staff about how this might work?

I've got a quick question for Carl. The 2 additional— oh, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I'm sorry.

I think Steve was moving.

No, she did.

Elizabeth.

Sorry. Thank you. The question I had for Carl, maybe for staff, is has the treasurer ever been involved in any kind of an audit procedure in the past?

Not that I'm aware of.

He's been audited.

He's been audited. But I don't think—

Just for the real audit.

Yeah.

For the elected official.— who doesn't— who, although works within the city, doesn't necessarily— he's not the finance department.

But he is in charge of some investments.

Yeah. That's where I see— that's what I said. That's one place where there would be a conflict.

Yeah. I just see a little bit of conflict of interest there.

Just for the record, that was just a joke on my part. The city treasurer was not audited for any particular purpose, no different than any other operation who has audits. That touched their processes.

I took it as such. Thank you.

And it was in a professional, not personal capacity.

Absolutely.

Okay.

So, it's not a question, it's a comment, but have you thought about— first of all, actually, thank you to both of you for preparing all this. It was very helpful. I forgot to mention it earlier. Thank you so much. So, have you thought about having the pressure as a non-voting member, as an advisory role there? To remove the influence of the Treasurer? No?

I am open to anything. As I said, I just decided I was going to get something down on paper so we could talk about it.

Okay.

And as I said, truly no ego involved in this. It was just like going, all right, maybe we should add a little different experience. Look, there may be other people we should add or not add. Or, you know, maybe it works just putting it in the charter without. I don't know. But food for thought. So I'm okay, yeah. I thought about it, said okay, I could probably go through and do a list of whole series of options for this, but I figure we might as well discuss it.

I have one more question. The word independent here, does it mean they cannot be a city employee, or what does it mean?

No, independent up there in the very top is really meant to just emphasize the fact that the audit committee is independent, that once the people are assigned to it, they should— they have a level of authority as that. So I guess maybe I'm going to try and put it this way. It's kind of like the other commission that's in the charter is the Civil Service Commission, and it functions with a level of independence because it's in the charter. So even though the members are appointed by—

More so than, say, the Planning Commission.

Yeah, even though they're part of the— even though they're appointed by City Council. So that was part of going, hey, just to set set the tone going, hey, this is important to the health of the city and this function is important.

Thank you so much.

Paul.

I think this question may be for the city manager's office. Are there any things that are either procedures or contracts greater than or You know, are there any— is there anything explicitly required to be internally audited? The reason why I'm asking this question is, Carl, you said shining the light, right? So we all want the light, but the question is, where does the flashlight go? How does someone know to point it in that corner, right? And one way is it's a big contract or it's— you know, it involves certain parties, or perhaps there's a whistleblower or someone actually brings to light, hey, you need to look in this corner. So, you know, is there anything like that that requires an audit to be done? So if someone, for example, again, a whistleblower or somebody says, hey, you need to audit this contract, does— how is that handled? Are there any required audits? Yes.

So it's a multifaceted question. I think that the simplest answer to that is the only true required audit that comes to mind right now is the city's annual financial audit.

Yeah.

That's— but that's not something that's necessarily performed by the internal audit department or section. That's performed by an independent auditor, external auditor.

Right.

And— but it is a document that's presented to the audit committee committee before it's presented to council. The other thing that we do on an annual basis, and we've sort of made it a mandatory thing, I'm not sure if it's legally mandated, but we do it as a mandatory function, is the PCI audit, the payment card, because there are significant implications associated with that. We want to make sure that we're always at the forefront of any potential issues that may arise.

So that's helpful because, you know, the financial audit is a whole different kettle of fish, right? I'm really focused right now on the internal audit function. I wasn't here at the last meeting. My takeaway from that meeting was we just, A, don't have enough auditors actually doing the work, either internal or external. We have none external, right? They're doing— you don't have an external party doing internal audits. Correct. So we just don't have enough auditing, internal auditing being done. And I was shocked to have one person here just saying, you know, like she's holding her finger in the dike, basically, holding the water back. And I think this is a step in the right direction, and I appreciate Carl for putting this together, and I'd like to— it should be in the charter. There should be something that— an affirmative obligation to have meaningful audits, properly staffed, independent, and I'll take it even further. There should be some mechanism. I don't know what it is. I got to think about it. But if someone, you know, in City Hall says, look, you really need to look at this contract, and they find a way to get the audit— internal auditor's attention,— and it's a, you know, it's a legitimate whistleblower or, you know, point being made, there should be an obligation to audit that. And there should be a mechanism where that is brought to the Audit Committee and to the public after it's been investigated. So I just— again, I was just watching that video from the last meeting. There's one person in this whole department doing internal audits. It's kind of crazy. And so hopefully we can put this in the charter and make sure it's properly staffed.

We're kind of moving into deliberation.

Can I comment? I haven't commented once.

More of a question or comment?

It's a question and a comment. And it's a question for Carl. So fairness to all of you, I'm on the Audit Commission.— and, or letting people know in transparency. Carl, the thing that you— I want to go back to the statement you just made two statements ago about what sounded like the problem statement, which is you want something like the civil service from all this discussion that took place. Remember, I wasn't here in May, but I watched it. From all this discussion that took place, We want some language that there's independent, that it must be done, which I can get behind you on that, and almost some of the language Mr. Karpetian did, I can get behind that, what he did there. Everything else, this is super helpful, but I don't think any of it's necessary for a charter. Like, I think in 3 sentences—

Okay.

—if the statement we're trying to do is the independent, it must be done, it's outside of council, I can totally get behind you and move to that. I— so many— the comment is so many of these things are what is in the audit commission, to Mr. Derham's point. And I guess what I would ask Mr. Takhtalian is anybody that's on that audit commission can ask for a contract review outside of what is presented to that audit commission, correct? Like, the city can say these are the 6 things we want to look at, and someone on that audit commission can do that. Now, I recognize historically they haven't. We're a newer group that's— we've gotten a lot of public feedback to do that. Those are all separate from what's happening, but to the point of—

I'm sorry.

Can this be done? It can be done. That's a function of the Audit Commission, right?

Absolutely. It can be done. It is something— before we take the final work plan to the City Council, it does have to get presented to the Audit Committee, and then it goes to the Council. So at that point, when it's being presented to the Audit Committee, is an opportunity to say, what about this? The other part is, you know, we talk about whistleblowers or the need to perhaps identify or dedicate resources towards an audit or review of some sort midyear. We have a couple avenues to go down that path as well. Either we amend the work plan that was approved by the City Council, or we have the potential to outsource that audit to an external firm. We have done that in the past when certain conditions warranted it.

All right.

Just to the question, kind of looked at civil service, which the charter provides certain guidance and guardrails, because the rest of it is by ordinance for the city. And so the thought was setting up that is certain things need to be in the charter to make sure they do not ever leave an ordinance because somebody wants to modify something there. So that's some of the thought process. Behind a little bit of detail into the charter, not the specifics, but the certain areas that would need to be covered. And then, as I said, you know, it's kind of like the thought of going, hey, I don't really want to put in there that someone has to fund something, because I think Paul makes a good point that there's not a lot of people doing internal audit right now, but I think then council needs to certify that, going, hey, this is the work plan, And we're saying publicly and in writing that there are sufficient resources in the city to do this audit. So I think it needs a little bit more than just 3 sentences of you have to have an audit committee. Now, you know, look, again, whether it's— whether all these— I just tried to get some of what I think are the more salient points to go in there and not then try to, if you will, micromanage the rest of it from the way out. So that's kind of the thought process.

Okay. Behind it.

I agree with you.

And it's open to change. As I said, there's smarter people around the table.

My comment is I agree with your thought process. I guess what I'm trying to get— and I didn't really give wording that I'm committed to. I agree with your thought process. That's the overarching thing about it being in the charter. I guess what I'm trying to understand is what would those items look like? Because I— this is a little bit too prescriptive. This is perfect, and I think you should give it to the Audit Commission, really, frankly. I just don't know if it belongs in the charter, which I've been consistent on.

All right. So I think we're primed for discussion, and I would like to, before we get into that, let the public weigh in. Is there anybody—

Chair, we have two cards, but I do want to note that Beth Brooks is no longer in the room. We have one card.

All right.

Herbert Molina.

Ms. Molina. Oh, 2 minutes.

With all due respect, Chair, I would like to have 5. I put hundreds of hours of work in this proposal I put up. More than anyone here in this room, but perhaps other than the Assistant City Manager, has put as much effort, presence, into this issue. I would like to have 5 minutes.

Any objections from the committee? All right.

No.

You can have another 4 because we're already in the first minute.

Thank you very much. If there is any one thing that this Commission or committee can do, it's to increase the level of prevention of any potential corruption that may happen in the future. If there is one institution that needs to be strong, this is the institution that we must put in place. The current committee system that we have is not a commission, it's a committee where the individual members are selected or approved by the city council members for 6 years. The chair of that committee was the campaign manager of one of the council members, who at one point in time he was mayor, two times. During one particular instance back in 2012, that same person was asking for the names of the individuals who were whistleblowers. Fortunately for the city attorney, they prevented it. This is a significant problem when you have 62 contracts where 59 of them were never audited. We have hundreds of millions of dollars that have not been audited. Where you had the attrition of the audit committee— of the audit function go from 6 down to 1 year after year, attrition after attrition, never replaced. I've attended these meetings and all of the committee members have appear and they talk as if they had no power whatsoever. They are rubber stamp. They never initiate anything. They allow only 4 meetings a year for a city of $1 billion in appropriations. How on God's earth can you allow that? But there is resistance. I'm making a suggestion that you move to table this item and read the document that I prepared. I put hundreds of hours of careful effort to identify what other entities are using and how they're using it to prevent corruption. Corruption is the one most negative thing that a city can have anywhere. It is your job to try to prevent it. We cannot prevent the people who get elected, but we can create the structure so that if they get elected, they have controls. I also put in there the reasons why I didn't want Mr. Pavlidis in this, in this committee and as chair, because he's an insider. He's part of the system. Thank you. And he's basically proposing the status quo. What we have, put it in the charter, except for a couple of minor items for the city treasurer to be involved. But for the rest of it, that's the status quo. For the city council members to elect the appointed individuals who are going to oversee what they are approving. The number of— I can come here and talk to you for an hour, 2 hours, going through the history of all of the deficiencies that I've seen, that I studied. I put the effort, and I would like for you to take the effort to read over this document and try to invalidate it. Test me on it. Question me on it. We have the city finance director here. We have the city finance manager here. I'm not going to put in this document information that is false, and if I am incorrect on any one of them, tell me. But I'm telling you, putting the status quo into the charter is the wrong thing to do. Thank you. This city needs an absolutely strong, independent, fully capable of selecting. We want that contract audited. Oh, we have that development for $200 million. We want to audit that. You had a lawsuit against a particular developer? Bring back that, that document because we were— right now you cannot do that. The city council will not allow you. So it's contract change order after change order and nobody challenging it. That's what we have. Thank you. One thing that you got to do is strengthen the city's approach to making sure that there is no corruption. Work on that. This is difficult for you to accept because you know many of these people individually. Allow yourself the chance to read this. Table it.

Thank you, Mr. Molina.

All right.

Time for further discussion. Anybody have any thoughts on whether or not you want to move forward with any sort of recommendation regarding audit function or audit committee vis-à-vis the charter?

Our audit committee as it stands now,— in our charter. Is it allowed to pick and choose what it wants to audit?

It has the ability to make recommendations to the audit— for it to add to the work plan, and the work plan ultimately gets approved by the City Council.

But just a correction, it's not in our charter.

Correct. It's not in our charter. The Audit Committee was established by ordinance.

There's literally nothing in the charter about audit an committee.

Okay.

So basically our city work plan is what tells the audit committee at present what to audit?

No.

No. No?

As it was presented at the last meeting, meeting, each year the city performs a risk assessment, and we went through a very lengthy discussion and explanation of what the risk assessment tool looked like. based on the results of the risk assessment, certain areas of concern rise to the top, and we take those concern areas, the areas where we have the greatest risk, and we develop a proposed work plan of the list of audits that we want to conduct for the following 12 months. We take that proposed work plan to the Audit Committee. We explain to them what it is. what the plan is. They give their stamp of approval and it goes to the City Council for final approval. That becomes the final list of audits that we will focus on for the following 12 months. Okay. If at any point— sorry, one more thing. If at any point in time there is a desire by the Audit Committee to modify that work plan, that is a possibility. It just means that we would also have to go back to Council to get the approval to modify.

Okay. And in that work plan, are they auditing specific projects or just departments?

Projects or contracts. It could be a list of things, but there is no such thing as auditing a department. I think as I stated at the last meeting, you have to have some specificity in terms of what you're auditing.

Yeah.

Otherwise, it's a never-ending— I mean, it's a ball of yarn. You just keep chasing things.— even in fact, even in the audits that we choose, like the fire department audit that I believe our auditor, senior auditor was mentioning, what started off as something we thought was going to be a very structured, kind of focused audit has evolved into something far greater because when you touch one area, you realize there's a connection to another and another and another. So it does have the ability to— or the potential to kind of snowball at times.. And, you know, once you see it, you can't unsee it. We're not going to say, oops, that wasn't part of our original plan, so we're going to ignore those facts. That's how some audits end up taking much longer than what they were originally anticipated.

Thank you.

Of course. You're welcome.

Mr. Takhtaghlian, I have a question about something you just described. I want to make sure I have this right so I can do right over there. So there's a work plan. We have the work plan. Are you saying that a Commission member— and I really don't know the answer. I'm not doing a leading question. I really don't know.

I might not know the answer either.

Well, but I know we get a lot of input from the public on this. And so I want to be— I want to make sure I have this straight. There's a work plan. We want to— and there's an order. And a committee member wants to take something out of that order. Did I hear you correctly that if a committee member wants to bring an audit forward that's not in the work plan, did I hear you correctly that you have to go back to council before we can do that?

No, we would take the recommendation to add an item to the work plan to the council so they can amend their approved work plan. Taking an item out of order, if it was on the original work plan, say there's 10 things, those aren't necessarily in chronological order. If there was a reason to move one before the other, that's absolutely something that's within discretion of both the auditor, city manager, or the audit committee. But to actually add or delete certain things from the approved work plan would require council action. If it took council action to establish it and approve it, it would take council action to amend it.

And on that same thing, then back to what you were speaking about, Carl Povilaitis, about what the civil service does. If we wanted language in the charter which gave more independence around— not specifically all the duties, but gave independence outside of council for something to be audited Is that what you are— is that what you were proposing?

That is part of at least the attempt here to do that, is that the Audit Committee should feel the independence that if there is something that they want on the work plan, that they can get it on the work plan. And look, I kind of figured we aren't going to get anywhere unless somebody puts something down on paper, so I'm putting something down on paper to get us going. I don't think we're going to make a decision on this tonight, but I'm hoping it gives some people some thought. If it's not strong enough, then we need to talk about where the independence or the strength needs to go. But we've got to start— if we're interested in going down this path, we've got to start somewhere.

Elizabeth.

Yeah, I haven't heard enough evidence that we can finalize something tonight, just like Carl said. Bravo. Bravo. Bravo.

Even I would tell you that.

But however, I would like to study what we have and maybe look into more, maybe ask more questions so that I will be more educated about the decisions we're making. Because I feel right now, personally, I'm not in a position to decide tonight. But I think one thing I know is I'm definitely leaning towards more independence. And I appreciate what you did. Definitely lots of hours on this, but I think this is not exactly giving us— giving me the feeling of there is independence enough on this one.

No, and that's why it's here for discussion.

It's like—

All right.

As I said, there's a lot of smart people around this table. This is something to start from, and let's go from there.

Okay, thanks.

And one last question around this. If we are going to if we are going to table this, Mr. Caipetti, about 20 minutes ago you gave a summary of 3 items. Do you remember what those were? Because I would like to think about those. What you proposed is what sounds to me language could look like in an audit commission, but I need time to digest it.

I have too much gray hair to try to remember 5 minutes ago. No, I don't recall, but I'm sure it was brilliant. Yeah, it was probably—

It's helpful.

I don't know.

It's so helpful that I'm asking you.

Yeah, no, I don't know. We'll have to watch the tape.

There we go. So the assistant city manager has an idea. Before we get to it, I just want to— comment on something we keep seeing, and I think it's an important concept, but I want to focus our conversation on grounding it, and that's this idea of independence in the auditing function. What does that mean? We say we want them to be independent.

Yes.

You don't want them to be directly, you know, controlled by the people that they're, you know, or who— whose work they're auditing. But are we talking about electing more people? So how do we achieve independence? That's— I don't have an answer, but, you know, you can never be completely independent without them having no oversight. You can't— or, you know, being elected to the position. Are we going to elect 5 people to an audit committee? I just think that's problematic. So I'm not saying I'm against the idea of of any of this. I just— it's a concept that keeps coming up, so I'm open to hearing what do we mean by independent. That's all.

I was thinking about this. That's why I asked the question for Mr. Paulides as well. So if we go with based on what we have here, I would propose having 3 appointed by the council, 3 appointed by the treasurer, and the last person would be selected out of the resumes received by the 6 people who are appointed. It makes it complicated, but the last person is the last voting person.

Yeah, it's like, we'll pick a mediator, you pick a mediator, and they pick a mediator. That's how— yeah, a lot.

Well, you have to have someone pick these people. Someone has to appoint them.

Right. Well—

So how do we balance it out? 3 from this side, 3 from this side, the last person who is the 7th person has to selected by outside those two groups, basically.

Let me take a stab at just responding. It's not what I was really going to talk about, but there are degrees of independence. So, certainly, assuming the members are appointed, you can't get around that. That is, you know—

They have to be appointed by somebody.

Correct. But beyond that, perhaps a level of independence would be if a committee member wants a particular contract audited, they can make that motion, it can get approved, and it doesn't have to go to council to get ratified, right? The work plan could be, that's it, it's done, and the audit will commence. Another tangential level of independence is, You know, if— I'm thinking I'm—

Yeah, I just want to articulate something that I think you're— there's independence of function and then there's independence of appointment. So the idea that they don't have to get a decision to audit any particular process, they don't need approval from the council, that's independence of function.

Right, right. We're talking about different degrees and different concepts of independence within—

This is what I wanted to talk about.

Yeah, great. I heard you. Knocking. So, you know, the other thing— I just lost my train of thought.

Sorry.

Mm-hmm. What was I gonna say? I forgot.

They don't have to go to council.

That's right. Oh, that— got it. So I don't know how this would actually work. I'm thinking on the fly here, but I'm going back to You know, we have 3 positions, but there's only 1 person there. You know, not much audit is going to happen regardless of whatever level of independence there is. So could there be an affirmative obligation that there has to be a warm body in that qualified person doing the work at any given time? I don't know how that— I can hear the jeering from the people who actually have to implement it, but how do we avoid essentially, you know, flying blind, right? Where you're spending a ton of money and nobody's looking at it. Or you have processes that may be outdated and you don't have personnel to review them. Or you have complaints that come in Look, we're doing audits, but my takeaway from internal audits, again, internal audits, we're doing audits, but my takeaway from last meeting watching it is we're doing like the bare minimum, like the stuff if we didn't do it, it would be abject negligence, right? We don't have time to do the things that would get us the real improvements 'cause we just don't have the resources. We could do more. Well, no, I mean— No, I agree. PCI audits, you have to do those. You have to make sure that your credit card machines are processing and reconciling accurately. But besides that, you should have resources to look at construction contracts or, you know, how are vehicles maintained or the— you know, there should be other— there should be resources to look at that spend and make sure it's being spent, you know, well.

Elizabeth? Okay. Alan?

Mr. Takhtoglian, what is the— well, there's probably not a process, but how does the city handle, you know, say there are other departments that are severely or chronically understaffed that they really can't fulfill their function. I mean, what kind of urgency is there to try to get the staffing up to par?

That's sort of an open-ended question. So I mean, I can give you the practical and I can give you the legal. And I think from a legal perspective, there are state statutes that require us to provide the associations and the city council— associations an opportunity to know what— how many vacancies exist within their ranks, how long those positions have been open, and give them an opportunity to provide feedback. Then we have an obligation to annually report that to the City Council. Something we do during the budget process. That's the legal sort of statutorily required process by which we do these things. The other—— part of this is sort of the internal, the practical. We— there is a goal internally to fill vacant positions as quickly as we possibly can, especially today after years and years and years of budget reductions and cuts in staffing with the same expectations that we deliver the same services we always did. We can't do the same with less. So as soon as that occurs, a vacancy occurs, our goal is to move forward in a strategic fashion to fill those, those positions. In fact, there's cases where we know there's an impending retirement. We will not wait until that position becomes vacant. There is a process where we approve what's considered an overhire to bring some, at least get the recruitment started and/or bring somebody in for that knowledge transfer to occur over a very short period of time. And then when the retiring person leaves, the overhired position essentially fills that role. I'm not so sure that I answered your specific question. But the urgency— I think the question was, is there urgency and how do you fill it? There is an urgency. We try to fill it as quickly as possible. But I wouldn't be 100% honest if I didn't say there has been areas of the organization that have strategically been— where filling vacancies has strategically been held vacant for a period of time for budgetary reasons.

Could I ask a follow-up?

Laid fallow.

Mr. Tuckton, could I ask a follow-up? So there's currently 2 positions in this internal audit department that are not filled right now?

As of about 4 months ago, we ended up with 2 vacant positions and 1 filled. That— the function itself has a total of 3 allocated positions and has had— and had 4 allocated positions prior to that. A couple of years ago, due to the budget situation, when we had a vacancy, one of the vacant positions was eliminated. The goal was to have a total of 3. We've had some issues with recruitment and retention.

So I'm willing to take a stab at it that we probably need to have 6 people actually doing the work. Just, I don't need you to answer, this is just a theory and it's based on nothing other than gut, so it could be completely wrong. But we currently have 3, down from 4 most recently. Of that, of those 3, there's 2 empty, you know, there are no bodies there.

Currently in recruitment, yeah.

How long have those positions been vacant?

One has been vacant for approximately 4 months during this process, and the other one, I don't know. It's a little longer than that.

Is it a year?

Honestly, as I sit here today, I don't recall the specifics.

And is it because people don't want the work?

No, actually, it's not. Let me back up. The one position— of the two vacant positions, one was held vacant intentionally as part of last year's budget reduction strategies. The position wasn't eliminated, but it was held vacant as one of the ways that we were going to bridge the funding gap for that one-year period.

So it was a conscious decision—

That was a conscious decision.

—made by management.

Yes. And the term I used at the last meeting was perhaps that was being pennywise and pound-foolish, but that's the situation we found ourselves in.

Was that based on direction from council or was that an independent decision of management?

It was a management decision that was presented to council as part of the budget balancing strategy. So it was an overall decision.

Okay.

The other position was filled at the time, and I'm not at liberty to get into the details of why it was ultimately vacated, but we are in recruitment for both those positions. The reason I smirk when you use the number 6— for what the— perhaps the opportune staffing levels would be—

Optimum.

—is because— optimum— is historically that is what it was. There was a city auditor, which was an executive-level position at the head of that section. That auditor had 5— I believe 5 positions beneath them at varying levels, everything from an entry-level all the way up to a senior-type auditor. And that was in the heyday of the city's, you know, budget situations.

What was the most recent decade of that heyday?

Honestly, I couldn't tell you, but the last person who held the city auditor position was Michelle Flynn, who ultimately became the finance director. So maybe 2013?

Probably before that, because she was the assistant director before she came to the final director.

I'm going to get to my point. So for roughly 13 years, roughly, right? A decade.

That's what?

A decade we've been running short, or short relative to what it was in the past. I don't know off the top of my head, but I'm willing to bet our expenses our expenditures have increased during that decade, yet our audit capacity has diminished significantly. There's been a conscious decision jointly between management and council to further keep it, you know, keep a position vacant. I think what you've just illustrated is exactly why— Thank you. This has to be memorialized in the charter in a way that you can't make an excuse for spending more and not having proper oversight. You can't say it's because of the budget or whatever. [LAUGHTER] And I think Carl's headed in the right direction by putting this thing together. Meaning at the very first threshold step, it has to be put into the charter where it can't be messed around with, where it can't be interpreted one way or another. It's very black and white. And I'm looking forward to figuring out the actual specifics of how it's gonna work. And perhaps there is a correlation to revenue. There's perhaps some required thresholds, you know, that if you are signing a contract that is more than 1% of the expenditures, it must be audited. I don't know. These are all just ideas, but I think we need to think about those and make sure they get in the charter.

You want to throw out your idea?

Sure. That is probably an interesting segue because some of the items that you mentioned earlier may be addressed in this. This is— what I'm about to say is not a recommendation. It's not something that we've given any thought to. In fact, I kind of just started having a conversation with the City Attorney here as different ideas were coming up and I was hearing the different desires from the committee members. The one commonality amongst the group is the topic of independence. And then it's what is independence? What does that mean? Is it an independent auditor that's elected by the public? Is it an independent committee appointed by the council or not? Anyway, one of the things, if the committee is interested in— what I'll share right now, if the committee is interested in the following, I would ask for an opportunity to go back and vet this and see if there is potentially an opportunity to make some sort of a proposal that fits the desires of this committee.

Thank you.

What I was thinking is there's a lot of reference being made to the Civil Service Commission and the level of independence that the Civil Service Commission has. I don't think that there's been any debate that there is— that that is an independent commission. One idea would be that the charter mandates the existence of a city auditor. That audit position would be appointed by the city manager no different than any other executive-level position. But that position would have a dual reporting relationship just like the human resources director does to the city manager as well as the commission itself. Our human resources director is not just the HR director, she's also the chief examiner. She has a very independent reporting relationship to the Civil Service Commission and does not take direction from the city manager on certain things that the Civil Service Commission has authority over. So if we were able to establish that sort of, um, structure, I think that, that addresses sort of that independence and the reporting relationship, um, to, uh, of that auditor. Um, the other idea would be right now the only reason that the The primary reason that the City Council is the entity that's approving the work plan is because I believe it's required under the ordinance. I mean, we'd have to check it.

Yeah.

But I believe that the ordinance requires the City Council to approve it. You could amend— the City Council could amend the ordinance to allow that the approval of the work plan be done by the— audit committee itself. That way, if there was something that came up, to the point that Committee Member Miller made earlier, in the middle of the year, and there was a desire to add, delete, modify something on the work plan, it could be done at the audit committee level with the concurrence of the majority of the audit committee members, not something that would have to go through this bureaucratic process of going back to the city council for approval for revision, modification, and such. And the other thing that I would add is there— if, if this were a model that were to be put in place, Perhaps something to consider would be at least an annual report to the city council on the functions of the audit committee. Again, I'm not recommending this. I'm just trying to distill sort of the comments that I heard around the room today to try to address the key points.

How would you address, which I think these are all, I would certainly consider these things. How would you address the issue of, You know, we've drafted all this stuff, but there's nobody there to actually do the work. How can we make it so that— such that, you know, you can't just leave a position vacant?

Well, and I think that the way I would address it— oh, sorry, go ahead.

I was going to address it practically. I was just— that leads into the— Go for it.

I guess I've said enough.

We've been— at least the public conversation about auditing the city contracts or functions has really been focused on, you know, there must be some malfeasance here. Because they're not auditing all these things and we have a budget deficit. You might just have a budget deficit. It just might not have to do with malfeasance. Clearing anybody. My point being, though, if we reframe this whole discussion as, let's say, we need to find out what everybody is doing wrong and just acknowledge that we don't have the staffing, the resources to actually adequately defend the city from accusations that may be groundless, but we have no ability to rebut it. And so if we were— so as a policy matter, which may be outside of our authority here, You know, like, the city's failure to adequately staff this function, I think, is, you know, it's coming home to roost because the city is unable to say, no, that project that you're saying ran over, you know, we've already done the internal audit. Here's the result. Now, you can take the time to read it and figure out whether or not you agree, but —right now there is no defense.

So just to be clear—

In the vacuum of facts. I am just making the point that—

I am not coming from the place of—

—we reframe this and tell the council like—

Well, I am not coming from that place. I am coming from the place of an average person, who I think I am, and sees one very diligent person presenting their internal audit work, and she says, "It is just me." for a city the size of Glendale, the fourth largest city in the county, you're like, "Huh? That doesn't make any sense to me." So again, the practical question, which I don't know if you answered, like, how do we make sure that you actually have to have people there doing the work? And if you can't hire people, you have to hire people as an employee, you have to hire a firm then to come in until you bring someone in. There has to be people within a 30-mile radius who can do this work, and it can't go vacant for more than a certain period of time. I don't need that answer now, but I think we need to answer that question so that whatever plan we come up with can't just be left with one person holding the bag for 3 or 4 people.

Sure, I'll just say that at the end of the day, the way that the city functions, and just about any other city that I'm aware of functions, is any— these types of matters are a policy decision that ultimately made by council. The appropriation of funds and resources are items that the city council has to weigh across an organization and divvy them up as they're available and see fit. To answer your specific question about how do you build in some sort of a safeguard, against no lack of resources or maybe a city manager, if you will, not our city manager but a city manager who is also making a recommendation. I think that the point I made earlier where there is a dual reporting relationship between an audit— city auditor reporting to the CM as well as the audit committee gives the audit committee a voice. In fact, it gives the audit committee sort of a mandate to bestow upon that audit— the city auditor to be able to seek those resources if they're not receiving a level of cooperation, if you will. Or not cooperation, but a level of appreciation for what the challenge is. Again, I'm not saying that's happening today. I'm just kind of thinking through to answer, in a manner to answer your specific question.

Okay, well, I think we'll come up with something. The first step is acknowledging that the problem we're trying to solve and— Go from there.

Mr. Takhtoglu, so back to the action items that you've put forth, like suggested, what does that look like? You would come back to this Commission with some options, some language, what does that look like?

I would anticipate that we would come back at the next meeting with some sort of a more refined structure of what this could look like. One that doesn't necessarily mirror the Civil Service Commission, but uses the same principles of independence that exist with the Civil Service Commission to adapt it to the Audit Committee. That way, we can— we can get to a point where it's not a matter of scrapping everything that's there today and starting from scratch. It's how do you improve upon what you have today. Because clearly, it was a system that worked. Since, you know, the early 2000s, but adding a layer of independence, which is primarily what this committee has been focusing on for no less than 3 meetings now.

I think we can make it 4.

It sounds like it might be 4.

I like that idea.

I do as well.

I move we table this until next week, or continue it, I should say, not table it, continue it to next week.

We need a motion, but—

Then let's go on.

Yeah. Does staff have the direction that we'd like to hear more on this? Alan?

Oh, Mr. Garcia, I think you've mentioned, I'm just concerned about timing because we only meet monthly, but I think you mentioned before that if charter, if the city council is going to vote to, put language on the November ballot about charter changes, they need to start working on that by early August maybe? But what is our deadline? Because we're already in June. Yeah.

Correct. So the absolute deadline that the council has to put something on ballot for November is in August. But given that there's a lot of items that the committee has discussed that the council may defer to the next election, which would be March of 2028. These items, they may go— they may just go to March 2028. I think the only things the council really focused on for November are the civil service matters, which have to go in November, and then any of the other small cleanup items that you've already weighed in on and we've already— the language is already drafted, you've approved it, and the council is in favor of it. So those items will probably be going forward as well. Everything else that we've discussed will likely end up going to March of 2028 anyway.

So notwithstanding the fact that I really hoped we would finish here with something, I do think that there was solid progress here, and I want to thank everybody for sticking with it. Brian, you look tired, but—

Can I ask one big question?

Go for it.

I don't want to open it all up, but sometimes when we're talking about, and I like this suggestion, suggestion of an independent auditor, but we talk about independence and we go, well, the one thing would be if we voted on a controller. Like, is that— would that be something we want to explore? Because that's like a distinct position for everything we're talking about.

That's what LA just did. They just had a—

Oh, LA. I thought you said Ellie.

Los Angeles.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I guess like if they're bringing back language just to seed it, I liked everything I heard, but my brain just goes like, oh, one step further, we really want this independent person who could influence the commission. You know, it's not out of our realm to consider having an elected controller that then could either oversee the commission, appoint people to the commission. We kind of keep searching for this role, and that struck me as something that comes up.

Alan?

It's a matter of semantics for me, but, um, uh, I like Mr. Takhtaghlian's suggestion of a city auditor. I mean, whether they're elected or appointed. But I come from a corporate background, and a controller is really, in a corporate environment, is the equivalent to our finance director here in the city. And the internal audit department would never report to a controller in a corporate environment. Because the controller is, you know, preparing the financial statements and doing all the accounting. So I would say, you know, for me, the position would be city auditor.

That's fine. Yeah, I used to think it was a comptroller. I guess the only thing is, while we're considering it being this dual path of stuff, one, I don't know if they need to bring back language on it, but it being independently elected, I think, is also worth considering. Considering, since we seem to always be floating around that as the ultimate idea of independence.

So, to be continued. Okay. Do a little time check. It is 8:19. What is the appetite for moving on?

I've misplaced my Thank you. Thank you.

Let's see. So we have one last business item. It's review of charter language related to fund accounting and related finance cleanup. And the finance director has been very patient. I think that's why he's in the room tonight. So I think I'd like to extend him the courtesy giving his input. However, you want 5 minutes break? We've been going at it for almost 3 hours. Call it 10 minutes, just to be honest.

5.

5, okay.

All right. Charter Review Committee is called back to order. And we will now hear a staff report on Item 6C, review of charter language related to fund accounting and related finance cleanup.

Thank you, Chair Flower and members of the committee. I will try to briefly summarize kind of what the issue is. We view this as largely a cleanup to make our charter funds consistent with general accounting— general accepted accounting principles. We have had a number of funds in our charter for decades that are in many respects outdated. Not consistent with current accounting practices, and may actually make work for our finance department that otherwise we wouldn't have to do. If you just go to the next slide, 'cause it's really just kind of the depiction, and you have a hard copy in front of you. So we have, just to give you a sense, the city actually has currently about 78, and it kind of varies over time, but we have 78 different forms funds through which we fund different types of operations within the city. There's enterprise— there's a general fund, there are special revenue funds for specific types of purposes. When we collect certain types of fees, we have to account for them in a separate pot from the general fund. And then we have enterprise funds related to the water and power utility. We have enterprise funds for our sewer utility and our refuse utility. But the charter speaks to these 10 specific funds. The first 4 on the top are all associated with the general fund, and then the 6 at the bottom are all related to water and power. And so, in essence, and the actual language of these funds is on page 91 of the packet, starting on page 91 of the packet, to kind of give you a sense of what we were dealing with. And just to give you a little bit of background, we previously put forth to the voters a proposal to revise these funds to comply with generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, as I'll call it from time to time. And it was part of a series of charter amendments that all failed including the one related to changing the position of city treasurer from elected to appointed. And I believe that had a large— that was a large reason why all those measures failed, because that particular one was unpopular. So in large and short, so some of these funds you'll see, like, just to give you an example, the general budget— we have a general budget fund and we have a general reserve fund in the charter, but under current modern accounting for public agencies, you really maintain all these operations in— or all these funds in one fund called the general fund. Under our charter, when we— after we take in all our revenue and pay all our expenses at the end of the year, we're required to then put the remainder into this general reserve fund. But under modern accounting, we basically have a general fund. You pay— you collect your revenue, you pay your expenses, You budget, obviously, before you do that. And then at the end of the fiscal year, there is what's called a fund balance, and that's your reserve. But we're specifically required under our charter to maintain these separately. There's some other funds that are just really outdated. We don't even really use anymore for any practical purpose. We have a general service fund, which is for— I actually gotta look it up because it's related to lot cleaning, engineering, other incidental expenses, connection with street opening and improvement proceedings, purchase of general supplies. Again, those are all— if they're related to the general fund, then they're parked in the general fund. If they're related to the utilities, then they should be parked in those funds and not— again, some of these go back to the '40s, I believe, and so just really outdated. Going to the water and power side, these two depreciation funds, there's one for water and there's one for electric, actually require requires us to set aside certain funds that the city manager estimates are going to be necessary for capital improvements for the following fiscal year. Well, that's a capital fund, that's not a depreciation fund. Depreciation fund is you have— you're basically accounting for how much your assets are going to depreciate in the next fiscal year. It's actually not funding, you are just accounting for how much you think your assets are going to depreciate over time. So we actually had litigation over this before we put this before the voters because this very issue, we were not assigning a certain amount of capital for these two funds into this fund. We tried to argue to the court that this was not something that you would do from an accounting perspective. The judge ruled against us, so we do, I believe, my understanding is we do now sort of account for that capital funding in this depreciation fund, but we also obviously have our own capital accounts for that as well. In addition, just like I noted with the general, we have a general budget fund and general reserve fund in the charter. We also have the revenue fund and the, we have a surplus fund, the reserve funds, which are the general Glendale Water and Power Reserve Fund, which is basically surplus funds. And again, those are outdated. You're supposed to have one fund for each of these operations, and that's really it. From an accounting perspective. And that's why Mr. Lang is here. He can kind of explain some of the challenges and that they encounter trying to comply with all these different charter requirements. And just to give you another example of how this doesn't comply with current accounting standards, currently when we— at the end of the fiscal year with respect to our— our water and power funds, well, on the electric side, we, again, we collect our revenue, we pay our expenses, the charter requires us to put that money into the reserve fund, and then at the end of the year we make a transfer, which is part of our budget, to the general fund from electric, which is allowed by law. We can't do it on the water side, but we do it on the electric side.

Mm-hmm.

That,— that transfer from the general Glendale Water and Power Reserve Fund to the general reserve fund, which is what the charter calls for, is a direct violation of GAAP because you're making— you're essentially making a payment from one savings account to another, which, you know, it's not— and sorry to get a little technical, but there's a lot of things in this— these provisions that are just, again, either outdated or specifically don't comply with generally accepted accounting principles. So really what we're talking about here is just trying to simplify all these funds into these 3 funds, the general fund, which would handle all of the general fund operations, and then separate funds for the water utility fund and the electric utility fund. In addition, there is— that we would propose sort of as the— it's a catch-all, which would be— it would require the city to maintain separate funds for specific functions as required required by federal or state laws, charter provisions, generally accepted accounting principles, and generally accepted auditing standards, or as determined by counsel. So that— those other 68 funds that we have, we would be complying with that. This charter provision would ensure that we're maintaining those funds in accordance with those provisions. So that's like a very high-level overview, but again, from our view, what we're trying to do here is to simplify the fund accounting in our charter to be current, get rid of some of these outdated provisions, and make the finance director's job a little easier. So if you have questions on specific funds, then I'm 100% sure Jack's gonna be able to answer those questions better than I can. But we're here to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much. We'll start the questions with Alan.

On the chart where funds are grouped, there are two that underneath the water, there are two for GWP that aren't grouped. It's not like four going into one.

Sure.

But I assume that all four of those would go into Electric Utility Fund.

So actually the sinking fund and the reserve fund are related. I should have had arrows pointing to both of those. Those 'cause they both relate to both water and electric. So the reserve fund, again, that's the reserve fund for both water and power, water and electric. And then the sinking fund is, it currently requires the utility to, or the city to put, that's where it's supposed to put its principal and interest for bond payments into that fund. And again, that is accounted for in all the other utilities. In municipal utilities in California. That's accounted for in the water fund and in the electric fund. It's not a separate fund that it has to be maintained in.

Brian.

Is the language we see on 91, all the strikethrough and everything, that's from the last amendment that failed, or that's what you're recommending today?

Well, both, frankly. But it was what was in the prior charter proposal.

Is it an identical recommendation from what failed?

Essentially, yes.

Okay. Would these changes make it easier to transfer funds from GWP or the electric fund specifically, make it easier to transfer those funds to the general fund?

No, it wouldn't make it easier. It wouldn't make it more difficult either. It's, again, the transfers are embedded embedded in the charter. We're not proposing any change to that. Currently under state constitutional provisions from Proposition 218 and Proposition 26, we're prohibited from making a transfer from the water fund even though the charter allows it. We are— but we do make the transfer from the electric fund and we're not proposing any changes to how that operates. It would still— the only thing is that we would no longer be taking it out of the— when we go at the end of the year, we adopt a resolution saying we're transferring it from the from the GOP surplus fund to the general— the city's general reserve fund to the city's general budget fund. Those steps just get eliminated, but it's still the same calculation in terms of what gets transferred to the general fund. Does that make sense?

A little bit.

Okay.

Where's it—

oh, well, obviously this has been a hot topic around the city for the better part of a decade or so.

Yeah, I would say Yeah, continues.

And so given that it's been a hot topic, I wanna make sure we give this proper discussion and a thorough understanding.

Yeah, understood. And that's a fair question, a fair point. We're simply trying to simplify the accounting, but not actually adjust how the calculation of the transfer beyond what the charter allows.

Let me ask it a different way. Are all these changes, purely formalities to make the chart of accounts align with GAAP, and there is no substantive change to how funds are accounted for or can be transferred or anything substantive like that?

Well, I'll turn it over as Mr. Leung has—

I mean, technically there is some Because I think for me, the substantive changes are the things that I would like to really understand.

Sure. What problem are we trying to solve?

I mean, we're all about substance here.

Right. So I would— because part of your question was, are we changing the way we account for these? And we are, but it is really to make it consistent with GAAP. And to that, I'll let Jack maybe can provide a—

Yeah, if I understand the question correctly, yes, we will do our accounting slightly differently. Mostly it's procedural related because right now because of the charter language we have to kind of go through a couple extra steps to both meet the charter requirement as well as meet the GAAP requirement. This will just kind of align what GAAP requires us to do as well as what charter requires us to do, which brings more efficiency to the procedure. But as far as the substantive policy decisions that's sitting behind these financial transactions, none of those gets changed.

Okay, so— as someone who took some basic accounting, if, you know, instead of making 4 journal entries, you only need to make 2, is that essentially what we're talking about?

That's basically it. Yes, that's a good summary of what we're trying to do and what we're trying to clean up here, as well as a language update. So as Mr. Garcia mentioned, that some of this language are no longer the more common language that's used under GAAP terms nowadays, so we're just updating some of those as well.

Okay, and then could I just ask you, I think Mr. Garcia touched on this, the issue with the depreciation fund. I'd like to understand that a little bit more.

Definitely ask him.

Yeah, so what was the issue and how is it being addressed, or is it even being addressed by this change?

Absolutely. This is obviously only the third time I had to answer that question because it is a very confusing name in our operations today. Because what it looks like is a depreciation fund, and that's how it's described. But the reality how it operates right now is a capital project fund that actually hosts out of the budget for the capital project spending for our electric fund as well as a water fund. So we will propose some changes. And in addition, the charter actually specifically speaks to both of these funds with a set-aside feature that will actually accumulate funding for future repairs and replacement of our capital asset. And then it actually contradicts with the language in the— In the charter. A surplus fund. I'm sure it wasn't intended, but it just kind of happened that actually require any end fund— end funding fund balance at the end of the year gets swept into the surplus fund, which defeats the purpose of a capital set-aside. So we— basically, we are still setting aside of fund balances, but they are sitting in the surplus fund, which actually gets in the way of transparency because from a financial reporting perspective, you can't really see how much we set aside for capital, how much is actually the remaining fund balances on the side. So if that provides a little more information of what we're trying to clean up.

Let me just follow up on that. So in my mind, when I hear a depreciation fund, I'm depreciating some percentage of an asset in any given year, I'm accounting for that depreciation, and then I'm figuring out how much I will need to replenish, make allotment for replenishing that depreciated or replacing it in the future, assuming I want to replace it. Otherwise, it's just going to go to zero. So—

Correct.

Does this change make it easier, clearer? Does it ensure that that process happens better? Could you just talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, absolutely. As I mentioned, right now, the charter language doesn't allow us to put that set-aside fund in a separate— to keep it in a separate pot because we have this requirement to sweep everything into the surplus fund. With the language change, we will be allowed to actually keep that separate. And in my mind, that actually makes accounting and the transparency better because that actually shows how much we have in that set-aside fund.

Okay, thank you.

Mm-hmm. Thank you.

I could just point out one particular provision which may or may not be deemed substantive, but I just wanted to put it out there. Currently under the charter, the charter says we have to— we make the transfer, the general fund transfer that you mentioned, at the end of the fiscal year. So we budget it. So right now we're going through budget season. The council is going to consider the budget on June 23rd. They're going to adopt it with the transfer. Under the charter that the actual— it's budgeted, but the transfer is not made until the end of the fiscal year. So we're actually going to be adopting this fiscal— this year's transfer this year, or this month as well. The change— the language did say that it could be done in accordance with the city's budget procedures. So it would change, though, it would be done. And prior to us implementing it the way it was here, we were doing 1/12 of the transfer every month. I'm sorry. I think that's— so that was the preference for the finance director at the time to do it that way. It's probably not the end of the world if we leave it, that part of it the same, if we wanted to. So if the committee thought, the council agrees to leave it, that still has to occur at the end of the fiscal year, probably not the end of the world. But I just wanted to point that out because some people felt like that should be— that should occur at the end of the year. And then the other thing is, The language on the transfer adds the word gross to operating revenue because there was an argument that was made many years ago when this issue came up in litigation that because the money had to come out of the surplus fund, that meant it should be net. Now, we litigated that. The city won on that issue, meaning it's the gross number. So we put that in there just so it was— that was consistent with the litigation. So I just wanted to point that out as well. That's not intended and it is a change that is just consistent with the case that resulted from the litigation in 2000— it has been a while— '16, '14, something like that.

So just following up on that, in terms of the revenue that comes in from the electric side of the GWP, is there a restriction and is it addressed in this change in terms of what type of revenue, rate payer versus otherwise, what type of revenue can be transferred? Does it make a distinction between revenue?

No, it just says operating revenue, which is typically the revenue that comes from rates, but it could be other revenue that the utility has.

Okay. Okay, thanks.

Other questions?

And just to clarify, gross is what the is based on now.

Correct.

And just so you know, you'll see it says 25%, but the current city's current practice, except for one year when we were in really bad financial shape, has been about 10%. 10.8.

Okay. Well, if there's no more questions for the moment, I'm going to ask if anybody in the public wants to speak. Do we have any speakers?

Yes, we have one speaker.

Speaker:HERBERT_MOLANO] I really would like to get everybody's attention on something truly important. There is an essential fund in the city of Glendale that is missing. It's really, really important for us to have that. You all understand what depreciation is, right? It's the loss in value because of the use of the assets. Ideally, when you combine the total amount of depreciation, it's there for a purpose, to give you an idea of how much money you need to put aside into a sinking fund or a capital improvement fund, and the city doesn't do that. And the reason why it doesn't do that is because they can take the money from the Glendale Water and Power and move it over to the general fund and not fund the capital assets that it needed. And they've been doing that for decades. So what has happened? We have nearly $800 million in bonds that were absolutely necessary. If the city had this particular capital replacement fund, where you put aside money every single year to try to replace that depreciation, if we had put that money into some type of income-generating activity, right, instruments. We would have had enough money with those earnings to have absolutely zero bonds. Zero. No interest payments. And you well know that if you have $800 million in bonds, eventually the total amount of interest will be around $800 million. So that's $1.6 billion that we didn't need because he gave the appearance that we had the money to put it into the general fund. And once you put it in there, I'm sorry to tell you, but police and fire got there and said, "We want that money." Right. In one way or another for benefits, for pensions, for whatever, post-employment benefits. And we didn't have the money. And the same thing with regard to public works. We don't have a sinking fund to put into public works. So we absolutely need a capital replacement fund or capital improvement fund, just like the city of Sunnyvale, the city of Irvine, the city of Roseville, all of them in California. We need to put the money aside so that we don't have to go into this incredible amount of debt. Your debt per household today, by my calculations, including the deferred infrastructure needed, is around $40,000 per household. And it was $2,500 back in the year 2000. These are rough numbers, but it's the calculation based upon all of the money that was used by not putting money into sewers, the roads, sidewalks, This city has been consuming the assets every single year to the tunes of tens of millions of dollars, moving into the general fund, and it appears that we had the money. And so what do the employee unions say? You are in balance, you have that money available, give it to us. So that transfer from the general— from the, from the electric funds should have said net. After you put money aside into a sinking fund. That's the absolute need of the city. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Milano. No other callers.

All right. Thank you. Well, anybody have strong thoughts on this? It's getting late in the evening. I don't know whether or not people's silence is exhaustion or— Satisfaction with the way in which the information has been presented, there's no questions, in which case I'll ask for a motion.

How much, for Mr. Taktalian, how much do we have to spend on roads, or actually not roads, how much do we need to spend on electrical, electric infrastructure for the next 10 years? Is there an estimate?

Yeah, I mean, yes, there is. Okay, let me ask—

sorry, without going—

And the reason why I hesitated is because I wasn't sure if you were talking about roads or electrical infrastructure, two different departments. No, forget about that.

I was going to ask about roads, but I want to keep it to what we're talking about here in terms of electric utility, for example, or water for that matter, if you know that one. Do we know? Is there a piggy bank or one of these funds set up to, for example, fund water infrastructure improvements?

Sure.

So we figure that over the next 20 years, we're gonna spend $400 million, and currently, the fund has $10 million in it, or is there even a fund?

There is, and let's stick with the water one because that was the most recent presentation that was made to City Council probably about a month ago. We presented council with a water master plan as well as not a proposal but an indication of the present condition of the water system and the needs for upgrades over the next— I want to say it was either 20 or 30 years. The overall replacement costs over the term of those 20 or 30 years— do you remember if it was 20 or 30?

20.

Okay. So let's just say over 20 years. Was roughly $100 million. Do we have $100 million sitting there today to upgrade that? No. Do you need $100 million sitting there today to upgrade that? No. You're not going to do it all in one year. So, you know, when we talk about funding resources, funding resources for those types of functions come from one of two places. It either— the maintenance and future improvements come from rates, And— or they come from the issuance of debt, like bonds. Would we issue $100 million of bonds next year just because we adopt a water master plan? No, I think I would look at the finance director and he would say absolutely not.

You would want to do—

You would do that over a period of time in which you're going to be performing construction so that you can actually build them into your cost of service analysis., which would then be passed on to the ratepayers who are essentially going to benefit from that service for that time being.

Okay. So the number— so your example is $5 million a year, not escalated, just straight line over a 20-year period, right? That gets you to $100 million. Um, but is one— are one of these funds dedicated for putting money aside there?

I'm going to ask our finance director to get into the details of that.

That's actually the topic I was speaking to just a moment ago, is the depreciation fund based on the charter language has some notes in there that are meant for it to be a set-aside fund based on the depreciation of the asset. But I do want to, you know, get a little bit accounting nerdy to think about this. If we just look at a depreciation, you think about a regular— house today, and then we put away the depreciation thinking that we're going to be able to replace it in 20 years. But the reality is, in 20 years, the price is no longer what we depreciated against for. That is why it's a very common occurrence when you see local governments across the nation, across the world actually, when they need to replace major infrastructures that are very, very costly but very, very critical to the community, they usually use a combination of funds that has been saved up by the governing body. And in addition, whatever gap that comes in, they're actually going to bond against some of those. A great example at the City of Glendale is our recent near completion, the Grayson Project, which is one of the most expensive projects that we have undertook. The total project cost is about $633 million, and the bonded portion of that financing is a little bit under $500 million. That means there's actually more than $100 million that actually kicked in from the fund balance, from the electric fund, that was essentially saved to finance this kind of major infrastructure upgrade. That basically proves my point earlier that it's not always obvious because we are actually hand-tied to put that in an entirely separate fund. It's actually just coming out of the fund balance. And that is something that we're really trying to bring some modernization that we can make it more transparent so the public can actually see that we're actually setting money aside for this kind of infrastructure investment.

So sticking to the water example, and thank you for that explanation, the Water Works Depreciation Fund, which is the old name, the current— yeah. But that's the fund where money is set aside for— replacement of water infrastructure. Is that correct?

Well, currently the charter has one language that says that we should set aside fund, but then another language said that any excess fund out of— from this fund should be swept into the surplus fund. So following charter language, we're not able to keep a fund balance in here, but essentially we're still saving away money, but it's just kept in, in a different fund balance.

It's swept into the surplus fund, you said?

Correct.

The chart is gone there. The surplus fund is— was it on this list of—

It's the Glendale Water and Power Reserve Fund.

I see. Okay. So the money is there. It's just in that fund instead of the depreciation fund, which you're proposing to change the naming of it.

Correct. And it's there in one pot, right? So we have our operational reserve. We have our bond bond covenants reserve, we have our capital set-aside reserve, everything is in one.

But you don't have a discrete number for the infrastructure set?

Yes.

Okay. I see. That's what we struggle with. All right. So this change would then allow us to see exactly how much is set aside for future infrastructure. So in this case where we have a $5 million obligation for the next 20 years, this example that we're using, we could go into this fund after this proposed change and say, oh, there's $10 million in that fund right now, or there's $1 million, or there's nothing, or whatever, and then we can assess the potential need for debt financing in addition to whatever we've set aside.

Correct.

Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful.

I'm taking my cues from you folks on this one.

Do people want to think about it? Do we want to— are we ready to make a decision on it?

Again, I reiterate my question. Are we tired, or are we just fully in support of the proposal?

I defer to the experts, and I don't have the expertise to know any different, or to parse through it right now. It sounds very sensible. It sounds increased transparency. I'm very in favor of it.

I know we've seen an image I know we've seen this. Very helpful, thank you to the city staff. And I know we have our agenda. Are you specifically asking us to look at language within this packet? Are you— proposed language? What is the specific ask of this committee?

So I think what we're looking for now, if you're ready to delve into it, is just to— if you're okay with the concept,— and then understand the concept and you're good with it, then we would bring this language back to you, maybe clean it up a little bit, then you could look at it and say we're comfortable with this and make any tweaks. So I think that's kind of the direction we need now.

So here's—

A clean new document?

Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, we can do that.

Okay.

Yeah, so my suggestion would be to do just that. I think we've— we're all at the end of the rope here tonight. —this is very thorough. Thank you. Let's bring it back, and I think we'll be able to make a decision at the next meeting. That's my suggestion.

That's sufficient direction. I'm good.

That is?

Okay.

All right.

Well, we'll return to that in July. That takes us to reports-information. Other reports and/or information?

No, sir.

There will be none.

Future agendas. Okay. So—

I do have one question. If you look at July—

Yeah, we're going to talk about that.

We're just—

The date. Great. Yeah. Can I? So future agendas. I had asked previously for some sort of, you know, projection of where we were going in terms of having more meetings and when those meetings might fall. I think we're getting to our next regular scheduled meeting would fall on the Thursday before the Friday, which is the observed Fourth of July.

Sure.

Now, I, for one, am dedicated to self-governance and democracy, and so I think it's a fine way to celebrate the Fourth. But I do realize that other people have family commitments that may take them out of town over a long weekend. So—

We were going to suggest just moving that to a special meeting the week after.

All right, so—

July 2nd?

July 9th.

July 9th.

You can look at a calendar.

I'd request we keep it on the 4th.

It's the committee—

Sorry, sorry, not the 4th, the 2nd. And then that way people who are enjoying the 4th and maybe bleeding into next week don't have to worry about it.

I suppose, you know, my preference would be the 2nd, but I also— I am available on the 9th or the 16th. Thursdays are generally good for me.

I move we keep it on the 2nd.

Is that a problem for staff?

Huh?

Are there any objections to keeping it on the 2nd?

I'm fine with the 2nd.

Okay. Maybe we could grill hot dogs. Yeah.

Fireworks.

Okay.

I'll bring the cupcakes.

All right.

So I think we're all on board to come back on the 2nd.

And then so the items would be obviously this item we just discussed, the audit component that— We'll get a staff on that.

Amazing proposal.

And then there was some additional cleanup that we thought, you know, and we might not have time at the next meeting, but if we do, we'll add that as well. Just really basic cleanup that I think we've—

It will be the eve of the 3-day break.

—no, I understand.

I don't think we want to go forward.

Well, we'll just do the two items. That's fine. That's fine. We'll just do the two items.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

July 2nd.

Sorry?

July 2nd.

July 2nd. We're going to keep that on calendar.

So before we go, I want to just remind everybody, Herman gave us this very nicely printed package to review. Perhaps we could take a look at that. I've only had a chance to briefly look at it where I'm specifically mentioned, and I want to thank Herman, who said he put hundreds of hours and careful effort into this, and just point out that there's two facts in here about me that are just absolutely not true.

Uh-huh.

So I won't go point by point, but I don't know what the Association of Los Angeles County Municipal Attorneys attorneys are, and I have not lived here for 20 years. I've lived here for 12 years. So perhaps we can get a corrected version in the next meeting. With that, if there's no objections, are we okay to adjourn? All right. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you.