(Los Alamitos, 1/7/2013)  7 p.m. update:  Yup, over in less than an hour, except for that closed session.

As noted below, the Management Compensation package was pulled, leaving 3 items:

Council Reorganization Revisit, done in maybe three minutes:

• Mayor pro tem Murphy resigned, saying he had heard Council Member Mejia wasn’t interested in serving as Mayor this year and wrongly assumed she wasn’t interested in Pro Tem either.
• CM Murphy nominated CM Mejia
• After pausing to give CMs Edgar and Grose an opportunity to second the motion, Mayor Kusumoto seconded.
• Motion to appoint CM Mejia as Mayor pro tem passed unanimously on a roll call vote.
• Mejia thanked Murphy and explained that, because she has “minor surgery” scheduled for this year she felt she couldn’t serve as Mayor, but could serve as pro tem this year and Mayor next.

Appointment of Windy Quintinar as City Clerk, passed unanimously after City Manager Avery explained how well Windy had performed the bulk of the City Clerk’s functions over the past 17 months and the additional credentialing she had gained.

Schedule & Request for Proposal for hiring a new City Attorney:

Tonight’s audience: 30 students, 11 residents, 4 reporters. Anybody know who’s hiding her face?

This one took a little more time as ad hoc committee members Edgar & Mejia explained their divergent thinking on time schedule.  What impressed me was each Council Member seemed to be thinking through the process independently–no majority/minority was evident.

• CM Mejia indicated she’d like the matter to be discussed at Regular Meetings rather than Special Meetings in the interest of greater transparency.
• CM Edgar pointed out that only using Regular Meetings could extend the schedule three months
• CM Grose pointed out that  it would probably only extend the schedule one month, if that.
• CM Mejia conceded that Special Council Meetings could be called if needed, then produced a motion adapted from the notes City Manager Avery had been taking.
• Motion passed unanimously.

Council moved into closed session to discuss something about the City Manager.  The Mayor indicated he didn’t know if there would be reportable action or not.

Meeting over in under an hour!

Council acted more like a Commission, working together to try to find common ground and workable solutions, and ending up in agreement each time.

The closed session could be huge or could be a tying up of loose ends with no reportable action.  My money’s on the latter, but I’m not putting any money on it until I see what Doc Holliday calls, hopefully using relatively diplomatic language.

Scroll down to post your reports and comments, or read on for the original post.

5:40 Breaking News:  The Manager Compensation -package (Item 4B) has been pulled from tonight’s meeting.  According to the City Attorney, compensation cannot be discussed in a special meeting.   

Is it just me, or does it sound like the City Attorney doesn’t get around to actually reviewing the agenda until just before the meeting?  Hopefully residents will still be allowed to state their opinion on the matter as it’s bound to come up in two weeks.   Now back to our regular blog. . .

Thanks to a wise last-minute decision tonight’s 6 p.m. Los Alamitos City Council Special Meeting will be telecast live tonight and rebroadcast as usual, which I think means at noon and 7 p.m. Tuesday.

 The agenda includes a “revisiting of the process” of last month’s Council Reorganization, Discussion of a Salary and Benefits package for the City’s Managers[now postponed for 2 weeks],  hiring (at long last) of  Windy Quintanar as City Clerk, a proposed process for hiring a new City Attorney, and a mysterious Closed Session regarding the City Manager, which apparently to “consider the appointment, employment, evaluation of performance, discipline, or dismissal of a public employee or to hear complaints or charges brought against the employee.” (Quoting the Government Code Section cited in the agenda)

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 our initial report on the agenda.

Click here for our thoughts on rotating the Mayor’s office.

Click here for JM’s revelations on management salary increases.

Thanks for giving us your report & your perspective.