Your reporting on tonight’s Council Meeting, 12/17/2012
December 17, 2012 in 2013 Issues, City Council Meetings, Teamwork, Your reporting and comments By: Dave Emerson
(Los Alamitos, 12/17/2012) [This post is only for comments tonight's City Council meeting(s), to read and/or comment on the very interesting Mayoral and Pro Tem election please click here.
The agenda's (click here), as two new Council Members will be sworn in. . . after 98.3% of the agenda has already been dealt with!
At least if you count business by pages of agenda, staff reports, and attachments!
Yup, of the 271(!) pages put online Friday afternoon, only 3 1/2 of them deal with items occurring after Dean Grose and Richard Murphy are sworn in.
Should be an interesting meeting!
Hopefully significant steps will be taken towards a more effective Council focused on working together to move Los Al forward.
This post is for your reports and comments on tonight's meeting, whether you watched it on LosAlTV3 (live or delayed) or in person. [ad]
Tell us what you saw, what you thought, & put up links to other reports on other media.
Click here for the second of our two reports on tonight’s agenda. It includes a link to our first report (it includes a link to the first report).
Thanks for giving us your report & your perspective.
Well, despite pleas from two Council Members and several audience members to install newly elected Council Members the way Los Alamitos has always done it and the way our surrounding communities do it, Troy Edgar and his outgoing wing man & woman bulldozed forward, inconveniencing dozens of friends and family members of both outgoing and incoming Council Members as well as ordinary citizens like me, who finally gave up and went home.
Right now, as so often before, I’m incredibly frustrated by the actions of our three former majority members as orchestrated by Mayor Edgar.
It’s just after 7 right now and the Council’s just getting to “Consent Item L,” an action that was hammered out behind closed doors, that the City’s number one vote-getter Richard Murphy wanted to be involved in, the proposal that locks in major raises for City adminstrators upon which our most recently elected Council Members were kept from participating in by the lame duck majority.
Very frustrating. and very wrong.
Discussion is continuing on Consent item L. Hard to believe anyone could consider this a “Consent” item. Never been discussed in open session. All done behind closed doors.
Put it on the consent calendar because no discuission’s needed. Lock in 9% raises, give new powers to the City Manager. Give 9% raises to our highest paid staff.
Just another consent item.
No need for the people’s choice to discuss or vote on it when the loser and the gal who didn’t even run are available to do it!
After much discussion, a motion is made and seconded to table the complex “Consent Item L.” Mejia and Kusumoto support. Edgar and his two lame ducks oppose. Motion fails.
Poe moves to pass Consent Item L. Stephens seconds. Mejia and Kusumoto no. Edgar & the ever lamer ducks, yes. Motion passes.
Democracy in action, Troy Edgar style.
Well Dave, there was a little surprise on that “Consent Item L” you are so upset about.
Maybe you didn’t see it, but after the dust and cake settled Council member Kusumoto made a motion to revisit a couple of the items from the consent calendar. Which apparently is legal. I didn’t even know you could do that.
The then Mayor Edgar was a bit surprised as he had to ask the city attorney what’s up with this ?
The new council members got to vote on these items after all. The most important reason why Edgar had to have Poe and Stephens participate in the meeting to vote on the “consent calendar.”(Well,maybe also because Edgar is an attention whore, and he knew he would have his favorite cronies from other councils there, along with aids from Moolach, Royce etc. He just couldn’t resist his last 15 minutes of fame.)
As usual they wanted to ram through the staff salery item whin NO TRANSPARENCY to the residents who will be paying for it.
WELL, guess what? IT WILL NOW BE BACK TO A REGULAR OR SPECIAL MEETING WHEN THE RESIDENTS WILL GET A CHANCE TO WEIGH IN OR AT LEAST WATCH WHAT THEY WILL BE PAYING FOR THE REST OF THERE LIVES. YES, even if you have no retirement the staff will. All of this was done behind closed doors, much like the trash contract by Poe and Stephens.
Maybe we will have some transparency now. Time will tell.
Thanks for the report, “But wait.”
I was aware something like that could happen, but didn’t think it would be at the same meeting. As I understand it, a Council Member who votes for a matter has the right to ask the item to be reconsidered later.
Somebody did their homework. We need the transparency.
We’ve got some outstanding managers working for us, but it’s been a tough six years and most working people I know are just happy to have a job. Many, many workers have taken pay cuts just to keep their jobs. Most Realtors I know are making a small fraction of what they were making six years ago, many are virtually unemployed. . . but with no unemployment.
I thought both Richard Murphy and Dean Grose showed wisdom and preparation in their remarks in the second discussion of 8 L, and that tabling it was the correct decision. A lot of time could have been saved if that decision had been made when Warren first proposed it. . . or when Warren, Gerri, & several audience members asked that decision matters be delayed for the new Council earlier in the meeting. I proposed one possible “middle way” tonight, JM proposed another in a comment here a day or two ago.
Hopefully all five Council Members and City Staff will learn to work together in sincere respect to find mutually acceptable solutions and middle ground. Then they can come up with the best solutions as well as prioritizing what our town really needs most. Hopefully with some minor adjustments the Council can move forward with this item after further consideration.
Score one for transparency, justice, and the American way!
You know it is really surprising how Edgar just never seems to learn from his mistakes. He doesn’t listen to requests, warnings, complaints, suggestions etc.
Family , friends, dignitaries had to sit through his dog and pony show.
He is truly a text book narcissist. what has all his bad behavior gotten him? How is he better off now politically than he was six years ago?
It’s pretty sad when you think about it.
What do we want Los Alamitos to be? Really. What do you envision City Hall as being? What we need, before we get into contract issues, is a clear understanding of who we are, what our needs are, and how we should have the city running.
Do we need a City Manager who makes more than two times the median income in our city? Why? Couldn’t we get an experienced assistant City Manager from a larger neighboring city (like Anaheim or Santa Ana) that is looking for that first City Manager job at a third of the same cost? We could then hire a person just out of school to be trained as our assistant city manager. We can change the way that the city prioritizes hiring to meet the needs of the business and residents, and in doing that we also change the way that we hire and pay.
Should the salaries of city employees be tied to the median income of the residential base? The suggestion that we tie salaries to some “competitive” schedule based on how much cities around us are overpaying for services is questionable at best.
We really need a community discussion on who and what we are, and who and what we want to be.
Troy Edgar last night established a city policy that he would never have accepted as CEO of a company. He stated that any employee to the City Council can create a task without approval from the City Council, work the task without any approval from the City Council, and then submit a bill and that it will be paid. If that is how he runs his business, then I want to be a consultant to his business!
Let’s look at how it runs in the real world, since I actually did this for EDS. One of my tasks at EDS was to go and see how the client was doing business and which business processes they were doing were inefficient and that we (EDS) could go in and make better. Then I would write up the issues and why we could make it better and pass my work on to our contract negotiator. That person would meet with the client and make a proposal. If the client agreed, we would contract the work and I would meet with the team to go over the analysis and the potential solutions, sometimes even leading the development. But not one iota of work or time was changed to the client until we had agreement and the contracted authority to do so. That’s the real world, not the fantasy world that Troy Edgar created last night in order to give the City Attorney in excess of $400 that she was not entitled to.
Considering Troy is still on the City Council I definitely want citizen input before we establish another business process, this time by contract, that hurts us.
If you want to let staff run amuck move to Bell.