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In this week’s Around Town column, read about plans to address misbehaving City Council members, who’s offered Blossom Birth a new home, and an outstanding international volunteer.
CENSURE SENSIBILITY … What happens when a City Council member misbehaves and what should their colleagues do about it? That’s a question that the council’s Policy and Services Committee debated at length Tuesday night as it formulated the city’s new censure policy. While they hope they won’t have to use it, the goal is to create a mechanism for both investigating potential misdeeds and for publicly rebuking them. Under the proposed policy, council members who wish to censure a colleague would co-sign a memo, which the full council would then publicly consider. Depending on the nature of the misdeed, the council could follow suit with an admonition or escalate it to a censure, a formal shaming that may come with a stripping of committee assignments. There would be an investigation and the target would have a chance to respond to the allegations against them at a formal hearing. “We hope this is rarely used, but it’s very delicate and we have to get it right,” Council member Ed Lauing said during the Aug. 8 meeting. The council also agreed that censures should not be doled out for political reasons and that, when feasible, council members should try subtler approaches like a private chat or a referral to the mayor to hash things out. At times, however, going public is the best option, Council member Vicki Veenker said. “You can imagine something can be said that’s so offensive and so outrageous that we might feel the need to make a public comment on it. … Addressing it in private is not enough,” she said.
SUPER SISTER … Jeannet Kiessling may be part of the Palo Alto community, but through her work with the nonprofit Neighbors Abroad she’s shown that the whole world is her family. Kiessling, the liaison for Palo Alto’s German sister city, Heidelberg, has received the Sister Cities International 2023 Annual Award for Volunteer of the Year for her work to connect with people not only in Heidelberg but also Palo Alto’s other sister cities and Ukraine. She launched the Neighbors Abroad Ukrainian Emergency Children’s Relief Fund when Russia invaded in early 2022, which has raised more than $110,000 and more for Ukrainian orphans and other vulnerable children, according to Neighbors Abroad. To highlight acts of courage, she co-created with Enschede, the sister city in Netherlands, the Pastor Leendhert Overduin Moral Courage Essay Contest, which is open to high school students. She organized a multi-cultural festival celebrating the music and foods from each of Palo Alto’s sister cities. This year, Sister Cities International honored all award winners virtually and in-person on July 28, 2023, in Durham, North Carolina.
A NEW HOME … Longtime Palo Alto pregnancy, birth and early parenting organization Blossom Birth and Family has moved to the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center on Fabian Way in Palo Alto, the JCC said in an Aug. 3 announcement. Blossom, which opened in 1999, had to move three previous times and since 2017 had been serving clients only remotely. Adding Blossom to the Oshman Family JCC would seem a natural fit. The JCC offers family programming including parent-participation classes for infants and programs for children, young families, young professionals, seniors and adults. “These are two organizations that really believe in building community. We both understand that it takes a village when it comes to one of the biggest journeys of your life, which is starting a new family,” Tamara Thiel Prizant, the Oshman Family JCC’s community engagement director, said. Blossom’s classes at the Oshman Family JCC include weekly Baby and Me Yoga, Prenatal Yoga, baby sign language, facilitated support groups and resource fairs. The partnership with Blossom Birth is also an opportunity to further connect the Israeli community to the larger English-speaking community, said Gali Beck, head of Libi – The Center for Your Growing Family. Libi offers Hebrew-language programming for new mothers and young families up to 3 years of age at the Oshman Family JCC’s Israeli Cultural Connection.
It would have been useful if the City Council members on the Policy and Services Committee on Tuesday had addressed real issues of City Council misbehavior, of Council members who ignore the Council’s own Ethics policies and ignore conflicts of interest and refuse to recuse themselves. Instead, they were absorbed in theoretical niceties, pussyfooting around how to deal with actual Council misbehavior.
At the meeting, I provided evidence of a City Council member who, during his first period serving on the City Council (including a period as Mayor), refused to recuse himself during the discussions of an issue in which he had manifold conflicts of interest. The Committee ignored my plea to discuss how citizens can bring attention to the evidence of conflicts of interest of a City Council member. If the public is to support and have confidence in the City Council’s conduct of the public’s business it is essential for the Council to enforce the guidelines on ethical behavior, and to provide ways in which members of the public can securely and confidentially provide information about a Council Member’s conflict of interest.