Feb
28
OC Register photo of Channel 2's Michelle Gile reporting live from Los Al City Hall yesterday
(Los Alamitos, CA, 2/28/2009) As writer and creator of the only blog devoted exclusively to the city of Los Alamitos, allow me to give some local perspective on the sad saga of our Mayor, beginning with the surprising answer to a question many locals have been asking since Grose announced his “resignation” Thursday night: What did Dean Grose actually resign from?
It took a fairly rigorous cross-examination by Michelle Gile of Los Angeles’ CBS stations channel 2 and 9 to get the answer directly from the Mayor’s lips, but it’s now clear that Grose’s “resignation” announcement is a lot less than you might think. To this local observer, it’s really just more evidence that Los Alamitos desperately needs Dean Grose to really step out of the limelight, and take with him at least one member of the “Gang of Four” that broke local tradition to put him in the Mayor’s office.
As is typical in small towns in California, Los Alamitos has only one branch of government, the legislative branch. There is no executive branch. The city is governned exclusively by it’s five member City Council. The Mayor is not elected by the people, but by the City Council.
Out of a desire to clear some confusion about my “redneck” fellow citizens and voters of Los Alamitos, please let me repeat the first part of that sentence: The Mayor of Los Alamitos is not elected Mayor by the people of Los Alamitos, but by the City Council.
Mayor Grose was elected to the City Council in November of 2008 in after failing to be elected in his two previous attempts. He was elected Mayor by a 4 – 1 vote of the Council last December. (More on that 4 – 1 vote in a later post).
His term as Council Member is four years, but his term as Mayor is only one year.
The position of Mayor is more one of decorum than power. He is the public face of the city, but the only real power the Mayor has is leading City Council meetings. He functions as the chairperson of a committee, not as a Chief Executive.
On Thursday evening, February 26, Dean Grose e-mails a lengthy “statement” to our local print media, in which he said “At our Council Meeting on March 2nd, I will step down as Mayor.”
The question that immediately came to my mind was if he’d also resign as City Council Member. The statement was completely silent on that, but it was clarified in that channel 2/9 interview:
Michele Gile: So, will you resign from City Council?
Dean Grose: I’m gonna be stepping down as Mayor.
Gile: Will you resign from the City Council?
Grose: No.
Why not?
Because, uh, uh I don’t believe that is necessary.
(Click here for video of the interview. It isn’t pretty.)
As a Los Alamitos resident and citizen for over 20 years, I have many problems with Dean Grose. There are many reasons he needs to resign, both for the community’s good and for his own. They go far beyond the debate as to just how much of a racist and include issues of integrity, capability, and the derision and infamy he has unwittingly brought to my town, its citizens, its employees, and its businesses.
The image on the e-mail Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose forwarded
The damage Dean has town to my small town is as irreversible as dumping a truckload of feathers into one of our Santana winds. It can, however be partially mitigated. At the very least, removing Mr. Grose from the public spotlight will keep him from dumping more feathers. It will be good for him and good for the community. Everyone can get on with their lives, damaged thought they may be.
That’s why Grose resigning his office as Mayor but staying on as a Council Member just doesn’t work.
It’s like an oncologist cutting out 20% of the cancerous tumor.
It’s like firefighters putting out a third of the blaze and then leaving.
It’s like the police telling the man pointing the gun at you to take two steps back.
It’s like the Orange County Council of the Boy Scouts discovering that a registered sex offender is a Scoutmaster and asking him to step down and serve as an Assistant Scoutmaster.
It just isn’t going to work.
It’s saying that here in Los Alamitos there’s no room for a Mayor who’s obviously insensitive, not terribly bright, and possibly racist, but he’s welcome to serve on the City Council.
Do you think Rev. Al Sharpton will cancel his rumored visit to our City Council meeting Monday night once he figures out what Mayor Grose is not resigning from?
Warning: The watermelon e-mail is not an isolated incident.
Just yesterday two different people showed me a total of four different bulk e-mails apparently forwarded by Council Member Gross during the last two years because he apparently thought they were also funny. Two mocked Mexico and Mexicans. One was so sexually offensive I didn’t even finish reading it. One was a transcript of the infamous racist rant of “comedian” Michael Richards (Seinfield’s Kramer).
That last one was a hard copy that looked authentic but could possibly have been “photoshopped” together. It was apparently sent the day before the watermelon e-mail. I saw the other three on the recipient’s computer screen, directly from the recipient’s e-mail. By now it should be pretty obvious that those aren’t the only ones.
If you regularly use e-mail, you’re almost certain to have a few “friends” who frequently forward e-mails, and others who never forward. Those who forward, but rarely, are few and far between. And that water melon e-mail is certainly not the type of e-mail a “rare forwarder” would pass on, unless he was a raving racist or owned a watermelon farm. Actually, a raving racist would almost certainly be a frequent recipient and forwarder of exactly this type of e-mail. Which makes the alleged Kramer rant forward even more disturbing.
The point is, common sense tells us that it’s almost certain that there are more embarrassing Grose e-mails out there. With the massive nationwide interest this tragic incident has generated, some of them will eventually come out as long as he”s a Los Al City Council Member. There’s no way this is going away while Dean Grose remains a public official.
Eventually, Grose will have no choice but to also resign from the City Council. The sooner he makes that choice, the better for Dean Grose, his family, his supporters, his fellow Council Members, and, most important, the better for the citizens and businesses of Los Alamitos.
The “Co-conspirators”
It’s hard to see how this whole incident would be any different if it was “only” a City Council Member sending the e-mail instead of the Council’s elected leader. The main difference it makes to me is that it severely tarnishes the other three Council Members who voted him as their Mayor: Troy Edgar, Marilyn Poe, and Ken Stephens.
The three Council Members who deliberately bypassed last year’s Mayor Pro Tem Gerri Mejia to put Dean Grose in the Mayor’s seat. Council Member Troy Edgar not only nominated Grose for Mayor but, once Grose was installed, declared himself “giddy” in his Council Member Comments from the dias a few minutes later.
The three Council Members who were strongly endorsed and supported by Dean Grose, especially the two elected last November. Dean Grose came to my neighbors and my homes to ask us to vote for them! Once elected, they voted for him.
Their silence speaks volumes:
The three Council Members who have said almost nothing about Dean’s actions and this whole ugly situation. Yesterday I spoke with the lead reporter on this story for the Orange County Register, the rerporter who first broke the story. She has made frequent efforts to get statements from Dean’s three supporters on the City Council, and only heard back from Ken Stephens.
Yesterday I saw Marilyn Poe drive into the Los Alamitos City Hall parking lot. When she saw the Channel 2/9 news van and reporter, she drove to the far end of the lot, then walked behind the Council Chambers building to get to her office, a route I’ve never before seen anyone take! A print reporter who was there, saw Poe head around the back and darted around the other side of the Council Chambers building to intercept her. When Marilyn Poe saw the reporter coming, she again reversed course and darted into a back entrance into the city office annex. The reporter told me she’d never seen anyone cut, swerve, and dodge like that before!
To me, the complete silence of Coouncil Members Poe and Edgar (who nominated Grose for the Mayor’s post) seems to make them an even worse liability to the community than Grose is. Community leaders would speak up. And Los Alamitos needs community leaders on our City Council right now, not Council Members who run and hide, who don’t return reporters’ calls and e-mails, who dodge difficult questions. Who by their vote in December and their silence now are Dean Grose’s strongest supporters.
That’s the local perspective of one Los Alamitos resident. But we need more than one perspective on a matter this important. That’s why, as always here at LetsFixLosAl.com, we encourage open posting for all points of view. All I ask is that you keep your tone civil and your language diplomatic and family friendly. Because, believe it or not, Los Alamitos used to be known primarily as a great place to raise kids, an extremely family-friendly community. We are trying to maintain that tone in the only blog devoted to Los Alamitos, where we hope to continue posting a local perspective on this issue throughout the weekend.
Related posts:
- Complete Text of Mayor Grose’s “Resignation” Statement
- Dean Grose resigns as Mayor but not from the City Council, effective Monday
- The latest from CNN on Mayor Grose and our first reader poll
- The Los Alamitos City Council’s options on filling Dean Grose’s Council seat
Comments
6 Responses to “Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose backpeddles on resignation”
Leave a Reply
lol
Carma baby . Dean do yourself a favor and just go away quietly and this will all go away . If you drag this out you will end up not only getting booted from Council but probably loosing your business. Think about it Dean, Don Imus lost his job as a radio broadcaster for a racial slur and he is a wacky radio host .You are the Mayor of a City do you really think you are going to keep your seat ? Dude you are done ! The only chance you have of sitting on City Council would be to put on a dress and have your 3 yo yo buddies reseat you as Deana Gross your twin sister
Being on the City Council is about being a leader. It’s all about leadership.
Dean has proven that he is not a leader (as if there was any doubt before, his actions have erased all that doubt).
Mrs. Poe has shown that she also lacks the leadership we need to be on the City Council. Her visible ducking of reporters is just a symptom of that.
Mr. Edgar too has failed in the last week to show one ounce of leadership. When crap is flying all over the place, it is a leader who stands up and attempts to do something about it. Mr. CEO has been nowhere to be seen. This is his partner on the council. This is the man he nominated for Mayor. And where has Mr. Edgar been? MIA.
Mrs. Mejia has a distinct disadvantage as the Gang of Four removed the one lifeline connection she had. In what they declared to be a cost savings move (but we all know was not) they stripped from her the one solid line of communication she had.
And the one person who was put on record, Mr. Stephens, provided a wonderful non-answer that would have made a Bush Whitehouse press secretary proud.
While Mr. Grose should resign, of that there is no question, I think we in Los Alamitos need a few leaders to step forward. To repair this damage we need leadership, and my concern is that Poe, Edgar and Stephens can’t supply it. They don’t have the skills or the inclination. They have shown that, in a moment of crisis in the City of Los Alamitos that not one of them has the leadership skills necessary to lead our fair city. When we needed action and leadership all three were AWOL.
This has affected his ability to lead the city, then why is he not stepping completely down?
So, it doesn’t affect you as a council member…come on Dean. It’s not like no one will notice that you’re two seats over instead of in the middle of dias.
Please step down. You are costing the city thousands of dollars every day that you hang on to your seat.
Leaders do not run and leaders do not hide.
I am appalled that long time resident Councilwoman Poe has not stepped out and publicly condemned this behavior and at least stated that the views of the mayor are not the views of the council or the citizens.
I would think that a semi intelligent councilman/woman would be busy advising this colleague to completly step down. They have taken an oath to serve/protect our city and its residents. I would consider this act to be a duty based on the oath I heard them repeat. The fact that it has not been seen shows that they are not advising Dean to do so. Their silence is deafening.
Question, What political party does the city council belong to?
All GOP