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Councilwoman La Berge presented data regarding the cost of past and future focus groups. The three prior focus groups consisted of 6-10 people each chosen at random, a total of 24 people, who were paid $40 each, a total of $960. The facility where the focus groups were held charged $400 per meeting, a total of $1,200. Mr. Bob Richey, a retired executive with Executive Services was paid a total of $250 for his services. The total for the three focus group meetings was $2,410. Councilwoman La Berge said the contract for the newsletter, Connection, was $50,000 which included postage, printing, and production for six issues per year. This compares to the previous City newsletter which was issued four times per year at a cost of $49,000. Councilman Ruskin said the focus groups were held in the same manner employed by advertising agencies, "to understand people's responses. We were sitting behind the two- way mirror... The people in the focus groups were told that their focus group was being monitored, that there were City people on the other side of the mirror listening to their answers, and that they were also being taped." In response to Councilman Leipzig's questions, Councilwoman La Berge said although the recommendation for the number of future focus groups was not specific, she would like to have focus groups every two years, unless there was a specific reason to have one earlier. Councilman Leipzig said, "Of course that doesn't coincide with elections." He said that some of the comments given to improve the newsletter were "articles with improved story content and articles that are not repeats of newspaper stories. This is my concern... Most of the articles in (the Connection) are articles that have been covered in one of the weeklies or the dailies that cover Redwood City. That is one of the objections I have. I have objections as you know to continuing this newsletter based on cost, based on the potential conflict of interest, based on these focus groups which I think potentially can be used as political tools. I see the redundancy of the articles. Every two months coming out for six issues is not going to grab people's attention. We are in a very information oriented age. We are all inundated with mail, e-mail, faxes, television, radio, we get more information than we need some times. Six issues a year is something you might get from your club, or your church, or some organization of that nature. For the City Council to try to communicate with the citizens with six issues a year, I think is a great waste of money. The newspapers, we may not agree with the way they cover our stories, but they do a very good job of covering Redwood City. I don't think we've had as good a coverage of our Council meetings and our Planning Commission meetings since we've had a daily in Redwood City, and it's been some time. We have the Chronicle, we have the Mercury, we have the Times, we have the Tribune, we have the Almanac. They do an excellent job of covering the important issues. Again, there are not articles that I am aware of in the three issues that have come out of this City taxpayer paid newsletter that have not been covered." ADJOURNED REGULAR COUNCIL MEETING MTNUTE BOOK NO. 55 JUNE 9,1997 MINUTES Page No. 390 PAGE 4