Loading...
220411 1421 Re_ Demographic Data from Cypress School District_REDACTEDFrom:Michele Magar To:Fred Galante Cc:Frances Marquez; Peter Grant; Alisha Farnell Subject:Re: Demographic Data from Cypress School District Date:Monday, April 11, 2022 2:20:56 PM Hello Fred, First of all, thank you for your email late Friday afternoon. I’d spent the day watching civil rights webinars, so was brain-dead and had already turned off my laptop for the day by 4pm. I don’t really like playing the lawyer game, so will cut to the chase. We both know that law school teaches us to argue all sides of any dispute, analyze every comma, and do our very best to protect our clients. So I appreciate the time and effort you put into responding to the legal authority I sent you last week. However, as the experts I consulted told me: this is why we have judges, to ferret out these sticky problems and decide how best to settle honest differences of opinion re statutory/caselaw interpretation by two smart lawyers. I cannot disagree more strongly with your position that half my emails are not protected by attorney-client privilege because you’ve labelled them “strategy” instead of “legal advice.” Given the hostile environment my client is facing, the two are inextricably linked. How could they not be, when my client was just threatened with five levels of increasingly severe sanctions if she refused to sign a policy that was clearly designed to intimidate her into “getting along” with her colleagues instead of championing the concerns of Cypress residents? In fact, I was so stumped by the email you sent on Sunday, asking my client to hand over any possible responses to an email that had nothing whatsoever to do with the scope of the CPRA disclosure request, that it took me five incredulous reads before I realized it had been harvested via a word search because it contained the word “district.” As in “school district.” It has zero relevance to voting rights or district voting, yet your email warned that failure to disclose responses to this email could have dire consequences. How in the world would that happen, when any reasonable person would read the content for what it was: my client’s attempt to secure federal funds to benefit low-income school children who live in Cypress during the pandemic. What does that have to do with voting rights or district versus at-large elections? If the City Manager considers an email about “school district” relevant, that’s his opinion. But it’s as relevant as an email with the phrase “beautiful district” or “shopping district” or any other synonym of “area.” Should I tell my client to word-check every single communication she has from now on and make sure to substitute “area” for “district” lest she be asked to double-check and produce her responses to emails outside the scope of the next CPRA request? And yes, I had been told by the subject matter experts I consulted that if my client wanted to fight your disclosure of the emails between myself and my client, she would need to do so by filing a counter-suit in court. And I appreciate your giving my client another 8 hours today to let you know whether she wants to do that, before you disclose the communications I believe fall squarely within the attorney-client privilege. But as you know, not every dispute is worth the time and financial investment involved in a court battle, and my client has wisely decided to stay laser-focused on helping the everyday residents of Cypress engage with elected officials, and demand that Council Members acknowledge and respond to their concerns. That’s why she ran for office. She trusts the electorate to judge for themselves whether who she is, and the change she represents, are worth embracing. And like all effective lawmakers in the minority, she has the patience and endurance to stay focused on ignoring any attempts to distract her. She’s content to trust Cypress voters to decide if they want a different type of City Council in November. As I’ve said in prior conversations, my client does not want to fight her colleagues in court. She’d rather endure the treatment she’s receiving because she thinks it would be a waste of City time and money to engage in a lawsuit to defend her rights—because she understands that however much her political opponents try to make this about her, it’s not. It’s about what she represents, and her refusal to be “controlled” and “get along” with her four colleagues. She teaches government, and she worked on the Hill: she understands what happens to elected officials who refuse to betray the people who elected them, even at the cost of having their character attacked in an effort to distract voters from focusing on what matters: whether their concerns are being addressed or ignored. She knew what she’d signed up for, because she’d helped elected officials in the House combat the same thing. So Cypress can rest easy knowing it will not be facing a lawsuit from my client today. And if the City Manager wants to release an email outside the scope of the CPRA request, that’s entirely up to him. My legal advice to my client is to produce the communications that fall within the scope of the CPRA request, not ones that come up in a word search for “district” that fall outside any reasonable interpretation of relevance. I see no hidden agenda, no reference or implication or hidden message. I see nothing more than what appears in plain English: the email from Mr. Timothy McLellan dated November 23, 2021 is a response to my client’s desire to help low income kids in Cypress benefit from federal funds. And since they’re too young to vote, I remain stumped as to why the City Manager is not just releasing it, but also insisting my client supply any responses should any exist. If I advised her to respond to the City Manager’s request, I’d also have to advise her to search for any communications about “beautiful districts,” “shopping districts,” and other uses of the noun “district” regardless of whether it had anything whatsoever to do with voting rights, voting districts, at-large versus district voting, or any other reasonable interpretation of the scope of the CPRA request at issue. I apologize for the length of this email, but given the time and attention that went into your response on Friday, I wanted to provide the same kind of courtesy and respect by providing you more than just my legal opinion. I also wanted to take this opportunity to state my opinion regarding the futility of any future attempts to distract my client by making her fight for transparent and politically accountable government about her. She doesn’t see it that way, and I’d be doing a disservice to my client if I rendered legal advice in a vacuum, when context is relevant and inextricable from my legal advice about how best to respond to what she’s experienced, and sadly, may well continue to experience, until Cypress voters have the opportunity to weigh in on the type of leadership they want on the Dias on election day. Sincerely, Michele Michele Magar 415.793.4144 [cell] On Apr 10, 2022, at 5:35 PM, Fred Galante <fgalante@awattorneys.com> wrote: Fred Galante | Equity Partner Aleshire & Wynder, LLP | 18881 Von Karman Ave., Suite 1700, Irvine, CA 92612 Tel: (949) 223-1170 | Dir: (949) 250-5410 | Fax: (949) 223-1180 | fgalante@awattorneys.com |awattorneys.com This email and any files transmitted with it may contain privileged or otherwise confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, or believe that you may have received this communication in error, please advise the sender via email and delete the email you received. From: Peter Grant <pgrant@cypressca.org> Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2021 09:37 To: Peter Grant <pgrant@cypressca.org> Cc: Fred Galante <fgalante@awattorneys.com>; Alisha Farnell <afarnell@cypressca.org> Subject: Demographic Data from Cypress School District Mayor and Council (via bcc), Cypress School District forwarded the email below to ensure the City Council had access to the information it contains. As a separate reminder, it is the city’s practice that all city business to be handled through @cypressca.org email addresses. Any city-related email is a public record (regardless of the account used) and the city is best able to comply with Public Record Requests if searches can be limited to city servers. Using city email also ensures email is retained for six months; third party email providers do not have retention policies. Finally, city email is more secure and the use of third party email puts our servers, systems and data at-risk. Peter Grant City Manager City of Cypress Office 714-229-6680 Cellular 714-335-1685 pgrant@cypressca.org <image001.jpg> From: Timothy McLellan <TMcLellan@cypsd.k12.ca.us> Sent: Monday, November 29, 2021 16:41 To: Peter Grant <pgrant@cypressca.org> Cc: Anne Silavs <asilavs@cypsd.k12.ca.us> Subject: FW: Some data From: Timothy McLellan Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2021 12:14 PM To: 'marquezfrances13@gmail.com' <marquezfrances13@gmail.com> Subject: Some data Hi Frances, Attached please find some demographic data for Cypress School District for the 2021- 22 school year. To qualify for the federal free and reduced lunch program, a family of four must make less than $34,000 a year. The reduced lunch program requires an annual income less than $48,000. With 70% of our students at King School qualifying for this program, you can see we have a lot of needy families and students in that particular school boundary area. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly. Also, my cell # (714) 306-2496. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!