Your reporting and comments on tonight’s Regular City Council Meetings (1/22/2013)
January 22, 2013 in City Council Meetings, Commissions, Your reporting and comments By: Dave Emerson
(Los Alamitos, 1/22/2012) Both agendas are up with the 4:30 meeting appointing Commissioners and considering standardizing terms with a questionable ending time. (See “Another fast one on Commissioners? And who’s best?”)
At 6:00 the Regular Monthly Los Alamitos City Council Meeting includes a wide range of interesting and controversial topics. (See “2 Heavy Council Agendas for Tuesday” and “Minimal savings reported from reducing Council Meetings“)
For direct access to the complete agendas & staff reports, click below:
- For the 4:30 p.m. meeting agenda (& staff reports), which will not be televised.
- For the 6:00 p.m. Regular meeting (& staff reports), which begins with at least 20 minutes of presentation and lingers into the night, concluding with a special session.
This post is for your reports and comments on tonight’s meeting. Tell us what you saw, what you thought, & put up links to other reports on other media.
Try to be diplomatic and keep at least some focus on positive things. Council Meetings, like life, are full of ups & downs.
Don’t be surprised if the headline to this post and some of the content changes to reflect decisions being made. Shoot, I may even end up making it into 2 posts. Or 3.
OK, I did split it into 2. Click here for details on the results of the 4:30 Special Meeting, or to report on it or share your perspective.
The regular meeting ended about 11:15. I watched it on LosAl TV3
I can not comment on too much because it was too painful to watch. When Grose and Edgar speak it is just to painful.
Edgar is still on the OCSD and wants to remain there as Chair till his term is up in June of 2014. Murphy and Grose supported him with a 3-2 vote.
Very sad because he does not deserve it. Most of the meeting was bad. I think the raises went through.
It was incredibly refreshing to see new leadership on the Los Alamitos City Council. With this new leadership came the hope that we would see changes in favor of the citizens of Los Alamitos.
Those hopes were dashed as the City Council caved in and approved pay raises for the city employees.
The reasoning for the raises was so the taxpayers of Los Alamitos could pay as much to their city employees as every other city in Orange County. It sounded like a teenager saying they needed a new car because all of their friends had new cars.
Other cities are going bankrupt because of the inability of their city councils to say no to bloated salaries.
Amazingly, the charge for raising salaries was led by our city manager who is leaving the city after receiving a yearly salary of $170,000. As we look for a new city manager, will the City Council need to raise this bloated salary to show how much we appreciate our employees? How many taxpayers in the city of Los Alamitos make $170,000 a year?
We are a city of 12,000 and the City Council needs to get in tune with the taxpayers.
If every employee quit, there would be lines of eager applicants to apply for a position.
While I have issues with the contract at this time, the reality is that the 8% is a shift from the city paying it to the city paying the employee and the employee paying it. So, the actual “raise” is 1%.
My issue is that we just boosted the “income” that we have to pay retirement on by 8% and gave a 1% increase. This is a long term cost, not a near term cost. I would have been much more supportive of a 7.5% increase and they take on all 8% of PERS as that reflects the fact that they will get more from PERS from the increase in salary.
As a separate issue the City Manager salary is not reflective of the actual job and should be adjusted appropriately. That we overpaid Angie is without a doubt clear. The base of the last City Manager should not be the starting point for the next one. Nor should the whole “managing someone making more than you” argument (compression).
As I said at the meeting, the comparisons that were used, like Cypress at more than four times our size, were fictions. It would be like me going to Iowa and finding a town of 11,000 and using their salary as a comparison point.
In 2007 it cost me about $70K/yr to hire a PHP programmer with five years experience. That was about the same (3% more) as it was costing me in 2001 when I was a CTO. In 2012 it cost me about $62K. (~10% less). Times have changed. If we don’t take these changing financial times into consideration, then we are NOT doing the job we are supposed to be doing (and by “we” I mean our elected representatives).
Another example would be the family who is not going in to bankruptcy (Los al), but lives very modestly (Los al) They maintain their modest lifestyle, just plug along and once in a while buy a splurge (tv in council chamber) They do not file a bankruptcy because they do not spend money they don’t have trying to keep up with the Jones.
Then the “kids” come along and want more $$$ because their friends in the county get more $$$. We should have told our kids to go to work with their friends.
Los al would hire new employees, but they wouldn’t be the greedy ones. They would be the ones who are grateful to have the job. If our “kids” want more money they can get jobs in the big cities that can afford to pay them big money. Los al can not afford champagne employees on a beer budget.
What do we as a city need?
Do we need a City Manager with 15 years experience as a city manager in cities with populations of 30,000 or more? Or can we get by with an Assistant City Manager for that same city coming here and this being his first City Manager position?
Do we need a Community Development Director in a city that has been completely built out? Or can we get by with a Public Works Director who also has building and planning departments reporting to them?
What we as a city have failed to do is rightsize the city to it’s needs. That should be the primary task of the City Council at this point. Then we should ask if we have the right skill sets in the right positions at the price we feel is reasonable. When establishing a “reasonable” price we should consider not only what is being paid in the public sector, but what is being paid in the private sector as well. Market conditions effect salaries, and the public sector process of only looking at comparisons within the public sector is a faulty piece of logic that must be corrected since it fails to adequately address current market conditions and leads to inflated salaries in the public sector.
We can start the process of correction by hiring appropriate for the City Manager position and then tasking the new City Manager to do a sweeping reorganization of the City Staff to adjust to current public and private market conditions and rightsize the city to meet the needs of the community.
Imagine how much interest we would get from people applying for the City Manager position if that was the first task for the new City Manager. You get to totally remake over the staffing of the entire City of Los Alamitos, learning from past mistakes from other cities and you have a blank slate to start with. A chance for some bright young experience assistant City Manager to make a bold statement on how better to run a city, with greater efficiencies and lower costs. To prove it, and to be able to command a much better future by executing exceptionally well here.
Dave E here:
Per our outstanding new City Clerk:
Sounds like the right move: Seek to minimize the cost & let the bigger cities fight this battle, possibly to the Supreme Court.
This is basically a challenge of a law the City passed last year that was pushed by the OC DA. Many cities adopted it, some have subsequently modified it, now we’re getting hit with a lawsuit challenging it.
This is not a battle the second smallest city in the OC needs to be fighting!
Looks like a good call, City Council!
Dave E here. I have yet to find any coverage of Tuesday’s Regular Los Alamitos City Council Meeting (1/22/2013) anywhere but here and in The Patch.
Nothing from the Register, at least not that Google can find! I don’t know if anybody there has the time to wade through almost six hours of video.
The Breeze reported on the 4:30 Commissioner appointment meeting, nothing yet that I’ve found on the almost 6 hour Regular Meeting. Hmmm, 1 1/2 hour meeting or 6 hour meeting, which would you want to sit through? Seems like a smart move on Shelley’s part.
I’m guessing The Patch’s John Crandall skipped the presentations, stuck around for the first Discussion item (the pay raises), & then took off. I have excerpted and linked his article below. Very informative, with some good quotes–I recommend reading it.
So, on the Saturday after a Tuesday City Council Meeting, with all the media out there, we have one actual reporter reporting online on one agenda item, a few citizens reporting here, and nothing more.
That’s sad.
I can’t criticize anybody–I stayed home taking care of the grandkids, watched part of the discussion of the 7-11, & called it a night! I still have the whole six hours on my DVR, for whatever that’s worth.
Anybody know a retired or budding journalist who’d like to report here on Council Meetings?
The good news is we’ll doubtless get a good report in the News Enterprise. . . in four more days!
Kudos to John Crandall for getting his report up before 7 Wednesday morning!
Here are some excerpts:
Click here for the full Patch Report. It’s well worth a read. . . just for the comments alone!
Thanks, John!
Dave, the beginning of the meeting was fluff, start at the oral communication.
A lady spoke about banning plastic bags in Los Al. That was an interesting and worthwhile watch. A man spoke who lives in the area, and is impacted by the new 7-11 He spoke in opposition.
A resident thanked Angie/Sandy and bitched about Mejia. Nothing new there. JM spoke about how much money the non-profit Chamber is making.
The warrants and consent calendar went through without a hitch
Then a recess for cake to say goodbye to C.A. Sandra Levin.
Then the long PC appeal on the 7-11 hours & liquor restrictions. Applicant spoke, residents spoke, staff spoke, cc members spoke. Mejia pointed out that a 7-11 is not an allowed use in the CG zone. It going back to the PC.
Then a recess, not sure why, maybe a bathroom break.
Then the raises item. Angie spoke cc members spoke, it passed 4-1
Then the “who’s on first” skit to consider the boards and commissions.
The only reason it was a long meeting is because there were a couple of recesses AND Edgar still thinks he is mayor. The guy loves to here himself speak. He still think someone cares what he has to say.
If you fast forward to the items of your interest you will not have to watch it all. If you see Edgar on the screen just keep going.
[Link to video of Regular Meeting]