REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Appoint Applicants to the Citizen Advisory Committee to Advise Council on Outreach Efforts Related to Potential Changes to City of Sunnyvale's Electoral System
BACKGROUND
On December 11, 2019, the City Council approved a Community Engagement and Outreach Plan to gather community input on transitioning from the City's current at-large with numbered seats system for electing City Council members to a district-based form of elections. As part of the outreach plan, Council approved the formation of a Citizen Advisory Committee ("CAC") to advise on community outreach efforts and serve as ambassadors to encourage resident engagement with a term length of 11 months (February to December, 2019). Council also authorized the Mayor to appoint three Council Members to serve on the ad-hoc CAC Selection Criteria Subcommittee to advise on the application process, then to appoint a second ad-hoc Selection Subcommittee of the new Council to nominate candidates to the CAC.
DISCUSSION
Per Council direction, Mayor Hendricks appointed three Councilmembers (Larry Klein, Gustav Larsson, and Russ Melton) to serve on a subcommittee to develop the criteria, application materials, and timeline for the CAC selection. The criteria and desired qualities were as follows:
* Eligible to vote in a Sunnyvale election in 2020
* Connection or outreach experience with diverse communities in Sunnyvale
* Ability to understand and communicate potential changes to the electoral system
* Effectively serve as an ambassador to encourage resident engagement
* Availability to attend public outreach meetings and 3 to 4 CAC meetings
* Open minded
* Impartial
* Community minded
The application was released on December 20, 2019 with a deadline of January 22, 2019. The application was made available in English, Chinese-Simplified, Hindi, and Spanish.
To promote the opportunity, staff posted the information on the Facebook, and NextDoor, created a news post on its website, a...
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