New trash settlement offer ignored by Los Al Council majority
February 7, 2012 in Uncategorized By: Dave Emerson
(2/7/2012, Los Alamitos) At last night’s Los Alamitos City Council Meeting During the open session Art Debolt, one of the plaintiffs in the trash suit, offered to settle. He made the public settlement offer in response to Mayor Edgar’s earlier pronouncement that settlement negotiations were at an impasse.
Debolt, however, indicated that if the city would drop its appeal, approve a new trash contact and pay roughly $300,000 in legal fees. He also asked that all future negotiations be done in public.
In response, Council Member Graham-Mejia asked Mayor Edgar if they should discuss the offer. The Mayor indicated the settlement talks were confidential and then moved on to approving the new ordinance, as well as reaffirming the current contract with CDS.
The second reading of the ordinance will be February 21. [ad]
Regardless of your views on the trash contract, the offer to negotiate in public seemshard to argue with.
The offer itself seemed more than generous.
However, the Council majority rejected the offer out of hand, then changed the law to allow them to keep the existing contract.
Kusumoto litigation:
The public portion of the meeting took about two hours and fifty minutes, the closed session took another forty five minutes, with no reportable action at the end, which seems to indicate they are not choosing to sue Council Member Kusumoto at this point.
I will take that as a hopeful positive. The last thing we need is further litigation at taxpayer expense. However, since the meeting was conducted behind closed doors, there’s no way of knowing what happened.
Council Member Kusumoto recused himself from Closed Session.
Meeting Video Up
Kudos to Larry Strawther and CSMP (Community and Schools Media Partnership) for getting the video up so rapidly.
( To follow along on the agenda, followed by attachments & staff reports, click here.) Item 9B is the trash code rewrite, which passed (you guessed it!) 3 – 2.
As always, your comments, diplomatically expressed, are welcome. [ad]
(Google adworks picks the ads, which go towards the web hosting. Interesting choice: Bail bonds!)
Thank you Larry that was quick.
What have you been smoking Emerson? Why should the taxpayers pay a dime of Debolt and Ivler’s politically motivated lawsuit? If you weren’t friends of theirs you would be against this too. Even the judge stated it was politically motivated. Since they wanted the lawsuit those two should pay their own legal fees.
The trash proposals were done in public. Everything about it was public. Another of Debolt and Ivler lies.
BTW how do you know that suing Kusumoto was the subject of the back room meeting? Did Mejia tell you what the subject was? If she did, that would be another Brown Act violation on her. You should have no knowledge of what went on last night and what the subject of the meeting was. Another lie told by you Emerson and your cronies.
If I remember correctly, Chuck Silvia stated at 1/17/2012 meeting that Mr. Debolt and Mr. Ivler were seeking to profit from the trash contract. Then last night Mr. Debolt made the settlement offer which Mr. Emerson summarized above and includes a request for $300,000 in legal fees – is that what Chuck Silvia was referring to on 1/17/2012? I thought the settlement talks were private, how did Chuck Silvia get this information? Hey Lisa, is this the way you think?
I got this info from the Patch. Mr. Sylvia did not have any info as to Debolt and Ivler’s legal bills but I’m glad that they have quite a bit on their plate to pay. Tell all your Debolt cronies to pony up to pay his legal bills, the taxpayers won’t.
But where did Emerson get his info about a private meeting held behind closed doors? How does he know that the City was considering sueing Kusumoto?
It eas on the agenda….duhhhh
This is not true. The agenda only stated Kusumoto’s name and the Brown Act. How did you get from this to the City is suing Kusumoto? Is this another Lie? Is this a guess? Or did someone like Mejia tell Emerson what went on in the meeting or what the subject for the meeting was?
Lisa,
please go get the person who reads you the blog and have them read this to you because they must has missed it when Dave put it in his post before the meeting. It explains it all, anyone who couldn’t figure this item for closed session out needs to go back to reading class.
It’s as plain as the moo-moo on your back.
read below from the agenda
Read below from the blog
Good grief girl, get a grip on yourself.
No, this could mean initiation on the criminal level too. This could mean looking over papers to be sent to the County and State for prosecution. You are dead wrong about our increasing expensive city attorney.
Not one dime of taxpayer money has been paid for the trash lawsuit. Consolidated has paid for the City’s legal fees. The only ones with increasing legal fees are your cronies Debolt and Ivler.
1) In order to accept or reject the settlement offer the City Council would have to (a) discuss it and (b) vote on it. Since they did neither last night I fail to see where the headline comes from.
Dave E. here. Good point. I just changed “rejected” to “ignored” in the headline. Didn’t even need white-out! Gotta love cyber-reporting!
2) Lisa seems to think that Mrs. Poe was right with the “it was all political” lie, alas, Mrs. Poe and Lisa are wrong. The Judge clearly ruled that the City Council violated the City Code. There was no question about that. Mrs. Poe and Lisa can claim that it’s political as much as they want but, the court found that NOT to be a fact. The fact, as determined by the Superior Court, was that the Council Majority voted to violate the City Code. Mrs. Poe and Lisa repeating the lie they love does NOT make it a fact. I do like the new twist, putting the lie into Judge Banks mouth. Nice try, too bad the actual court reporters copy was posted on line in it’s entirety by Shelly.
3) The defendant could pay the plaintiff’s attorneys fees in settlement, or they can take their chances in court (where it will most likely cost more).
4) The trash proposals were done in public… Ah, Lisa, this is like Poe stating that everyone had a chance to speak. Yes, but they weren’t listened to, even when they pleaded with the City Council majority to NOT break the law and violate the City Code the City Council majority choose to do so. The only available option the Citizen’s had, after being ignored by the City Council majority, to be heard was to get an independent third party to hear their complaint and order the City to follow the City Code. That is what Citizen’s did. If you look at the remedy from the lawsuit it was for the voiding of the contract and redo it following the City Code. That is exactly what the Superior Court ordered in the writ. Nothing for DeBolt. Nothing for Ivler. Enough of your lies Lisa. Show where DeBolt or Ivler get one single penny of stop telling the lie.
Simply, the City of Los Alamitos has been presented with an offer to settle on-going litigation. The City Council can either call a closed session to discuss the offer, or they can put an item on the agenda to discuss the offer. Once they have discussed the offer (either privately or publicly) they can then notify the Plaintiff of their intent (their votes). As was made clear the Plaintiff would like to have all of this done publicly as they have nothing to hide. It is now up to the Los Alamitos City Council to decide how they wish to proceed.
JB, the attorney took the case on with the intent that he would win it and the defendant would cover the attorney fees and court costs if they lost. The State Act he took the case on under was the Private Attorney General. An attorney taking on this type of case gets paid by the defendant if they win. In this case the Plaintiff won. At this point the Plaintiffs attorney may plead to the court for his costs and fees. At no point was the plaintiff “on the hook” for attorney fees (what is being asked for in the settlement offer) so there is no way Chuckie’s rant could be considered to be accurate. It was just the fevered rantings of a man who has lost his grip on reality.
Ok now you have switched from Kusumoto to Debolt and Ivlar. I repeat…get a grip.
Lisa, if Consolidated has “paid” the fees, then I’m sure you can show me where the checks have been deposited. Last I heard the City is paying the City Attorney (look at last nights warrants) and I have not seen anything where CDS has actually paid the City of Los Alamitos back for the money that has been paid to the City Attorney. So, if you have the proof that all the money has been paid to the City of Los Alamitos to cover the costs of the warrants paying the City Attorney, please feel free to show them. Otherwise, stop making up facts from whole cloth.
I’m still waiting for Lisa and Chuckie to show up and demand that Poe, Stephens and Edgar resign from the City Council because they violated the Brown Act.
We have my post of the violations of Stephens and Edgar, and the last nights reading by Jody which cover Stephens, Poe and Edgar. And I have five more (from Dec and Jan) for the next council meeting, and now we have Dave’s.
Lisa and Chuckie, please come down and be as demanding of the majority (Poe, Stephens and Edgar) as you were of Warren. Or be hypocrites. Your choice.
I apologize for my recents snarks … but the comments from Lisa/Lisette and others attacking Warren Kusumoto and Gerri Graham-Mejia while defending the council majority, just made it too tempting.
My point in all of what I wrote was for Dave to understand that he didn’t really know what he was writing about when it came to a closed session. Dave, all you were doing was guessing just like you have in the past on many items. You are writing a blog and it comes off that you are saying the truth when in fact you are just guessing!
@jb
When you have reality, and then people start posting stuff showing that they are detached from reality, it is tempting to be snarky (I have to really control myself).
There are facts, and then there is opinion. When people expressing their opinion either ignore the facts, or create facts out of whole cloth to support their opinion, then you can either question their sanity or their motives.
Be snarky. It’s okay.
JM: What I read about the judge’s order was for the City to rewrite the code. I never saw where the judge stated that this RFP had to be sent out again to all the bidders. He stated it was a bad code that did not fit the requirements for a trash contract. No one intentionally broke a law. That is what you want to see, but its not the truth. I have dealt with contracts such as this one and the way the Council dealt with it was accepted by the US goverment as legal and binding more orders than would fill your house. A trash contract is not buying a car, its a complex proposal of different prices with a variable of how many business there are and how many residents. If the City had broken the law in the manner you have written about the judge would have had to send the matter to criminal court as the judge takes an oath to uphold the law. As the judge stated he felt that your side would not be happy with the outcome.
So, Lisa, you are agreeing with Dave’s point that the reading of the agenda failed to clearly state what was going on in closed session (since you and he arrived at very different conclusions based on the information provided) and that by NOT being clear there has been another violation of the Brown Act?
Please take reading lessons. Judge Banks did NOT order the city to rewrite the code. Judge Banks ordered the contract voided and ordered the City to re-issue the contract by following the City Code. [Please see the writ which you can most likely get a copy of at City Hall]
Again, I point to the writ. That is ALL the court ordered.
That is NOT in the writ. In the discussion in court Judge Banks stated that the only issue he had with the code as written was the use of the word “professional” for trash collection.
While it was Citizens contention in the third cause of action that the decision of the City Council majority was to knowingly violate the City Code, that cause of action was struck down by the anti-SLAPP the City filed and won. That is under appeal, and if the Citizens win the appeal then it may actually be heard by the court and ruled on.
The question of whether the City violated the City Code is NOT a question, it was ruled as a fact. The City Code states that a violation of the City Code is a misdemeanor. That is a fact.
The two facts above clearly show that you are, as usual, wrong. While the question of intent is still in the air, the fact that the majority voted to issue a contract that didn’t follow City Code is an established fact, and the City Code that says that doing so is a crime is a fact.
The above makes NO SENSE. There was a City Code that had to be followed. It’s the law. You don’t get to pick and choose when you will follow the law or not. The City Council majority did not follow the law. Kind of a binary process to quote Mr. Edgar.
The law was clear. First determine the “responsible bidders”. And then pick the lowest cost. Sloan Vasques stated that all the bidders were responsible. That left the City Council the task of picking the lowest cost. They didn’t. Thus the OC Superior Court ruled that they did NOT follow the City Code and ordered the city to void the contract and then follow the City Code.
The court left the City a great deal of leeway in HOW they could meet the order. Including making any modifications to the City Code that the majority wants to make prior to following the City Code to award the contract.
I am so glad that the City and the community can count on your expert legal advice. As far as I am aware at no point did the Plaintiff or Defendant’s legal council provide Judge Banks with the complete City Code, or ask Judge Banks to enforce anything other than the express remedy of the litigation. I highly doubt that Judge Banks, or any judge, is familiar with every City Code within their jurisdiction. It would shock me if any were. There was no reason for the court to know that the violation that the court found the Defendants guilty of was in fact a misdemeanor within the City of Los Alamitos.
Yes, he said that he can count to three and pointed out that we could as well. When he stated that he was not going to tread on the separation of powers between the judicial and legislative branches by ordering any specific way to “fix” the violation, he also said that he expected the City Council to follow legislative process.
In that legislative process the City Council had many options. From eliminating that section of the code completely to rewriting it, to leaving it as it was. The order in the writ bis very simple, void the contract and then follow City Code to get a new one.
If the City Council majority decided that they just wanted to eliminate the whole piece of code that tripped them up, and then not even put the exclusive solid waste franchise out for bid, but just give it to whomever they so choose, they could do that and meet the requirements of the writ. The writ was VERY specific, and the judge allowed the City Council to do what City Councils do, set the law, he only insisted that they follow the laws as set.
His comment to us was we might not like the way the City Council majority went about meeting the writ as they could do exactly as I described above, wipe out the City Code requiring a competitive bid (change the City Code), and just hand the exclusive solid waste franchise agreement to CDS and be done with it (exactly what Mrs. Poe said they could have done before this whole thing started, and what they had done for years before that with Briggeman).
JM Ivler says:
I’m still waiting for Lisa and Chuckie to show up and demand that Poe, Stephens and Edgar resign from the City Council because they violated the Brown Act.
Why would Lisa and Chuckie demand that Poe, Stephens and Edgar resign if the City Attorney have not found that they violated the Brown Act?
I don’t believe it is up to the city attorney to judge if there has been a Brown Act violation.
She can analyze, research, and run up her billing to the city.
Ultimately it is the DA, AG or maybe the GJ who would decide if any Brown Act violations have taken place.
So where did the citizens, Mr DeBolt and Mr Ivler, get the money to file this lawsuit?
WOW! An observant comment for a change. Let’s compare and contrast that with what the OC Breeze posted:
When legal council believes the case should go forward they can take a public interest case under the Private Attorney General act and can do so on a contingency basis. The attorney keeps records of the billable hours and expenses and then, if their clients win, they request the court to award the fees. In this type of case the court generally awards 2X damages.
Now if Shelly was any kind of journalist she would have made sure to make a phone call to actually get the facts, or at least asked the basic question you asked. A real journalist would have gotten the facts, not just made stuff up from thin air.
Congratulations Susan, you are a better journalist then Shelly (which in my personal opinion isn’t that high a bar, but you rose above it). Good question.
Yo! Lisa, where have you gone? I am missing your wonderful storytelling time. Can you or Chuckie please come back and let me play whak-a-troll a bit more as things are a tad slow and I need something mindless to do between bouts of writing software.
And who is Greg on Shelly’s blog responding to Dean Grose? I mean here is a member of the GOP I can agree with (at least on this one issue).
[note that Shelly's blog is just that, a blog. I have decided that Susan, who is a commentator on Shelly's blog, is more of a journalist than Shelly as at least she came here and sought facts, unlike Shelly when she published her "opinion" piece as "news" with tons if incorrect and invalid data/information. I mean just how condescending is the phrase "Councilman Kusumoto had done his homework." - as if Warren had not done so in the past, or that he was not expected to do so. Maybe the better way of putting that was "Mayor Edgar again flouted his lack of knowledge of the law." - Slow day when I beat up on such an easy target as Shelly's lack of journalistic ability... ]