City council to convene closed session on personnel evaluations and labor negotiations

The city council announced it would convene a closed session to discuss personnel matters, including performance evaluations for the city manager and the city attorney, and to meet with labor negotiators. The presiding officer made the announcement after confirming a full council was present.

“The council will be going into closed session today to discuss personnel matters,” the chair said, adding that “the closed session is authorized by Government Code Sections 54957 and 54957.6.” The chair asked the council to take the meeting into closed session and thanked the mayor before moving on to the details of the session.

The chair identified two agenda items for the closed session: public employee performance evaluations (naming the city manager and the city attorney as the employees under review) and a conference with labor negotiators. The council named Human Resources Director Judy Fawn Kalinowski and special counsel Alpert of the law firm Best Best & Krieger as the city’s representatives for the closed-session discussions.

Council members present were acknowledged during roll call; the presiding officer confirmed that all five members were present before the closed-session announcement. The clerk reported there were no members of the public signed up to speak at that time.

Because the session concerns personnel and labor negotiations, the council cited Government Code Sections 54957 and 54957.6 as the legal authority to meet in closed session. No substantive discussion of the items occurred in the public record beyond the description of topics and the identification of the city’s representatives.

The council announced its intention to meet in closed session; the public record in the transcript ends with that announcement. Any actions, findings, or outcomes from that closed session were not disclosed in the public portion of the meeting transcript.