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. . - Councilman Leipzig said the last issue had "a front page story with pictures and 'on the street' questions. It was very cute, but it didn't serve much use. I think this is a --- horrendous waste. I know where you are coming from, you want to communicate. I want to communicate. I want more people to apply to commissions, attend Council meetings, become involved, call us, write us. We all want that. This is not the way to go about it. I have questions as to, the contract was given to someone who mayor may not have worked on two or three campaigns for some of you up here. Whether paid or volunteer. I don't know. I think the potential for conflict there, the potential for conflict with these focus groups is too large for us to go forward with. We don't need to be in the newspaper business. We can't compete with the dailies or the weeklies. They do an excellent job of covering Redwood City, and I think this is, again, waste and it's a potential conflict." In response to Mayor Pro Tern Howard's comments regarding the results of the focus group, Councilwoman La Berge said the key rIDding was "People were actually hungry for more information. While perhaps there is a certain segment of the community that doesn't want any more information there are people who reside in Redwood City who want to know more about certain issues. They were specific about the kinds of issues that they were interested in. We have received very good responses from people who have either called or written to the editor, or who have actually made comments to the Council or myself. I think if you do ask citizens in this community if they in fact believe that the newspapers are doing a tremendously good job of covering Redwood City, I think you would find that there is a large portion of the community who would not agree with you, Councilman Leipzig... We did ask the citizens... we represent the citizens, and the fact -- that we serve them is very irnportant. That is one of the reasons why we asked them 'what do you want? What information do you want and in what form do you want it?' This is what we were told. These focus groups we specifically put together to represent the diversity of the community." Councilman Ruskin said, "I would like to answer Councilman Leipzig's various points. When I first was appointed to the Editorial Committee, I made the suggestion that we look into improving the newsletter, because I felt it was ineffective. Councilwoman La Berge and I talked about it and discovered how few people knew it existed, much less read it. My initial inclination was to end it for a couple of reasons. One was to save the roughly $50,000. Another reason was because I had some question as to how effectively we could communicate even in a newsletter. And I also had some concerns about the role of the Council publishing a newsletter. But, I felt before I made a decision we should look into it and get some factual basis. When we started holding the focus groups my opinion gradually changed because I could see and hear for myself that the people in the focus groups, all of whom were Redwood City residents, really wanted it. Their problem was, from their point of view, they wanted it improved. When they were told how much it costs they almost all felt it was worth it. They wanted more news. And it was watching these focus groups that convinced me that my initial impression, my initial desire to end the newsletter would not, from my point of view, have been good government. Because the -- people seemed really to want more information, wanted us to do a better job of producing a newsletter. ADJOURNED REGULAR COUNCIL MEETING MINUTE BOOK NO. 55 JUNE9,I997 MINUTES Page No. 391 PAGE 5