Redwood City council meetings will have to keep offering remote access under a new state open-meetings law, but if Zoom or phone access fails, officials could continue city business after a required recess and a formal finding that the meeting should go on.
The City Council voted Monday to adopt a Brown Act technology disruption policy required under Senate Bill 707, which also requires the city to post Spanish-language agendas and expand outreach to communities that do not traditionally participate in public meetings.
“I’m not a fan of writing a blank check,” said Council member Gee of the unknown costs. “I think it’s good policy to be engaging and to reach out to communities, but we need to have the funding to do it, and that didn’t come with this bill.”
City Clerk Yessika Castro said the changes will bring unknown costs and impacts on workload, particularly as the city prepares to translate agendas, update public meeting procedures and expand outreach.
In February, the city projected up to $19.7 million in annual deficits starting in fiscal year 2028-29. To maintain city services, officials proposed using the remaining one-time unassigned fund balance of $8.7 million and about $4 million from the city’s nearly $36 million Section 115 Pension Trust.
The policy adopted Monday spells out what happens if remote access fails during a public meeting. If a disruption prevents the public from attending or watching remotely, the presiding officer must announce the problem and recess the meeting while staff tries to restore service. For City Council meetings, the recess must last at least one hour or until service is restored, whichever comes first.
If remote access is still down after that, the council may adjourn or continue the meeting. To continue, council members must vote to find that the city made good-faith efforts to restore service and that the public interest in continuing the meeting outweighs the public interest in remote access.
The law also clarifies that the city is responsible for making sure its own meeting technology works at the meeting location, but not for fixing technology problems for people tuning in from elsewhere.
Starting in July, meeting agendas will be translated into Spanish to comply with the law, because, according to the staff report, 31% of Redwood City residents speak Spanish, and about 61% of those residents speak English less than “very well.” The requirement applies to agendas, not full agenda packets, and the law allows the use of machine translation, including Google Translate.
SB 707 also requires that the City Council make reasonable efforts to engage groups that do not traditionally participate in meetings, Castro said.
The council passed the technology disruption policy unanimously, which will take effect July 1, as will the agenda translation requirement. Other legislative bodies will follow suit at a later date, and the new agenda management system is expected to be operational by November, Castro said.
