exercised his first amendment right before the planning commission of the town of yucca valley it is our contention that based on california law the supreme court case of the city of madison joint union school district versus wisconsin employment relations board and as well understand it is the staff report they required in the staff or port to the commission to contain all of the papers that your client submit he's allowed to submit them directly him self esteem well your honor several weeks beforehand this is petition rides several weeks before and he gave his report to the staff to be given to the planning commission prior to the hearing on june tenth other people submitted views including contrary views to my client and in fact some of them including ad hominem attacks on my client to the staff beforehand those were then given to the planning commission with out thirty five pages of supporting material from my client's report most of your clients report was contained in the staff report says certain parts of your client's report the extra thirty five pages against a deposition material or whatever excess of the material was not included in the port and your position as i gather it is that the staff report to the commission mu issue as we should have been the opportunity to have the decision makers read his report beforehand but that's not a first amendment right so this is a new standard just a cart's view was that your complaint was complaining about the government speech because it was the staff's speech staff's report to the council and the government has the right to say why did lines just like just what medium that it should be provided we gave it to the staff to the report was given to the staff to be given to the planning commissioners we did he did not ask her to be included in the speech it is a limited public forum and this case the brown hand requires and the wow citizens to be able to directly communicate with the decision that he got a chance to do it during the hearing well our argument your honor is that the effectiveness of reading at is remember the question i ask right ok but you want the brown act by the brown act give the tris brown access either ahead of time or during the meeting and you got to during a meeting so where is your first amendment rights are come from well the first amendment right is we exercise the right to communicate directly before but the brown act does not give you a right to communicate before it says out the supporting evidence or not it changes his i want one why not well because he has a right and a limited forum to petition the government amend this complaint to more clearly state a first amendment claim or is this your only basis for the claim i do i do not believe we have any the project and they had material that wasn't even relating to the limited forum and that tracked my client for things it didn't have anything to do with the project under says that members of the public this is five four nine five four point three eg members of the public to directly during the consideration of them where does it say that you have a right to do it before they have a choice that's your choice but i believe that is our choice honor i believe that the for purposes of the first amendment there should be a liberal interpretation to allow freedom of speech and freedom to petition the government and by having the election that do beforehand because of the allegations of our complaint that it is more meaningful ok i think we've given you good morning your honour's meant please the court my name is to nalen and i am here on behalf of the town of yucca valley let me try to get to the heart of this and i think we've understood the argument so far which is have created a first amendment issue i don't believe so your honor i let me let me back up slightly and say i think this case can be decided just on the facts of what happened what nothing in the brown act at all about staff reports they are commonly done the kind of public participation that the brown act is talking about is oral participation in five four nine five four point three when there is this discussion of before and after some cities choose to do all public comment on items on the agenda items are not on the agenda at the beginning of the meeting some choose to have a public comment period related to each agenda item and so that's where the before and after comes in from the standpoint of the staff report where the staff is making a recommendation i believe the staff actually could present only comments as part of its staff report that are in favor of the project and consistent with its recommendation i will say i've never seen a city do that none of our clients do that if they if they pass along comments with the staff report they typically pass everything along here the concern was because of a protective order in litigation the city wasn't a party to the city it was concerned about being used as a device to evade that protective order because mr connick was told by the court sure you can submit whatever you want to a public agency as part of the process of mr felos the renewing his home occupation permit what i don't think the court recognized and i don't think the parties to this other litigation recognized was that once it was in the city's hands it was a public record anyone could come in make a public records request for it do whatever they wanted with it post beginning of the meeting me which in the uk a valley is reserved for matters that are within the city's jurisdiction but not on the agenda mr coney presented a complete copy of the report to the town council and  was available to the town council which actually is the ultimate decision maker on the permit i don't mean to dismiss the importance of the planning commission but the count the planning commission's decision me was appealable to the town council and in fact was appealed to the town comment at the meeting there is the option of sending written comments not just to staff but directly to the planning commission members or the town telcel members there are other avenues go have to wait for  you don't have to wait for the staff report you don't have to wait for the item to be on the agenda it doesn't even have to be something that's on the town's radar to be able to send comments in fact a lot of the time issues transmitted by mr cain made to the planning commission that's correct and in fact they were and that is reflected in the record in this case so the only issue is whether they must be included in the staff report and i think it was due to its theory is that the staff report itself is a public forum that does seem to be his theory although i don't know he's ever stated it quite that way i think that from from that perspective if we're going to try to look at it that way walker versus the sons of confederate confederate veterans says that this is on page twenty two fifty in that case a government does not create a public forum by inaction or by permitting limited discourse but only by intentionally opening a nontraditional forum for public discourse and the staff report it isn't discourse really between anyone but the staff and whatever legislative body it is that they're communicating with in the staff report and the staff report is not required by the brown  act in addition the walker case goes on to say in order to ascertain whether a government intended to designate a place not traditionally open to assembly and debate is a public forum the court has looked to the policy and practice of the government and to the nature of the property and its compatibility with expressive activity what we don't want to do is turn a staff report into essentially something like a blog on a website where you have the staff and the public repeatedly