220411 1603 RE_ Demographic Data from Cypress School District_REDACTEDFrom:Fred Galante
To:Michele Magar
Cc:Frances Marquez; Peter Grant; Alisha Farnell
Subject:RE: Demographic Data from Cypress School District
Date:Monday, April 11, 2022 4:02:57 PM
Michelle,
I spoke with the City Manager and, to the extent your email is requesting additional time, he agreed
with the City Clerk to provide an extension of 24 hours. So, a response by 5:00 p.m. tomorrow
(Tuesday) would work.
One final issue is that the Public Records Act encompasses social media posts as well, so I just want
to make sure that if there are any responsive posts, those be included in any additional documents
to be produced as well. Thank you.
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 |
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From: Fred Galante
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2022 2:50 PM
To: Michele Magar <tanyaprojectmlp@gmail.com>
Cc: Frances Marquez <fmarquez@cypressca.org>; pgrant@cypressca.org; Alisha Farnell
<afarnell@cypressca.org>
Subject: RE: Demographic Data from Cypress School District
Hi Michelle,
Thank you for the response. My email about the school district representative’s communication
relates to a discussion I recall that Mr. McLellan may have provided information to Ms. Marquez
regarding demographic information held by the school district that would be relevant in addressing
the CVRA threat faced by the City. If there are no such written communications, she can simply
confirm that and we can leave it at that; provided that if the requester makes further issue of this,
we can address it when the time comes.
As for your other points, you did not provide me any legal authority to support your arguments that
the other communications in your emails to Ms. Marquez fall within the attorney-client privilege.
Given the legal citations I provided that seem unequivocal and directly on point, I simply cannot
suggest to the City that your arguments provide any legal support for the City Clerk not to turn over
the balance of those communications. Redactions of written communications are not generally
appropriate for items that do not fall within the scope of a public records request. Instead,
redactions are appropriate only where a communication is attorney-client privileged or otherwise
subject to protection under the California Public Records Act. So, if unrelated discussions appear
within a responsive communication, the entirety of the document is generally produced, unless we
can cite to a specific privilege.
Finally, I will defer to the City Clerk or City Manager on your request for additional time as I did not
set that timeline. Should there be any flexibility, either of them or I will let you know. However, I
know the deadline was set so as to avoid any delay and resulting potential penalty in complying with
the City’s obligations under the California Public Records Act.
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
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From: Michele Magar <tanyaprojectmlp@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2022 2:21 PM
To: Fred Galante <fgalante@awattorneys.com>
Cc: Frances Marquez <fmarquez@cypressca.org>; pgrant@cypressca.org; Alisha Farnell
<afarnell@cypressca.org>
Subject: Re: Demographic Data from Cypress School District
*** EXTERNAL SENDER ***
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 #