Tired of the mayor’s traditional authority,
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the three
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city councilmembers have risen up with their own agenda.
Tired of the mayor’s traditional authority, “the three” city councilmembers have risen up with their own agenda.
Councilman Perry Woodward is leading a campaign challenging Mayor Al Pinheiro’s traditional role of crafting meeting agendas. Monday night’s contentious sidewalk debate precipitated the head-butting, and the next day Woodward, Bob Dillon and Craig Gartman also invoked a rarely used section of the city charter that allows three of the seven council members to call a “special meeting.”
Tuesday morning the three submitted a letter to City Clerk Shawna Freels instructing her to schedule a meeting July 9 to address Woodward’s proposed open government ordinance. It has been eight months since he submitted it for review, and the three said they have grown restless with Mayor Al Pinheiro’s slow pace.
“If he can’t do the job, then we’re going to do it. Many members of the council have asked for things to be put on the agenda and been told by (Pinheiro), ‘No,’ ” said Gartman, referring to the festering sidewalk problem and the four months it has been since the council killed the formerly proposed ordinance. “The sunshine law was the straw that broke the camel’s back. (Pinheiro) did not want to put it on the agenda even though it has been a month since the May 10 summit when we identified it as the number one priority, and (before the letter to Freels) there was still no date?”
But Pinheiro vehemently denied ever saying, ‘No’ to anyone and said he puts items on the agenda when staff has prepared relevant materials. Some items such as the sunshine proposal take longer to consider, he said, especially when staff is working hard on next year’s budget.
“The mayor isn’t holding one damn thing back … I have never said no. Gartman is lying. He is lying. Never, never did I say no. I have no problem putting things on the agenda,” Pinheiro said. “I only have so much I can do as a mayor. I’m not going to direct staff to do things if they’re not ready, especially when they’re figuring the budget out.”
Hours after the three submitted their letter to Freels, Pinheiro declined Gartman’s request to incorporate a separate item into next Monday’s agenda.
“I would like to ask you a favor, and that is to follow protocol and send any items you may want on the agenda in the future to me,” Pinheiro wrote in an e-mail to Gartman at 3:49 p.m. Tuesday, an hour and 11 minutes before the agenda-submitting deadline, according to city code. Freels has since incorporated Gartman’s request – including a bit of last-minute material is fine, she said – but she and City Administrator Tom Haglund added that council members usually broach agenda requests at the end of meetings. Afterward, the mayor and city administrator consider them for the next agenda.
That is also how things worked in Hanford, Haglund’s former city of employment, he said; and Councilman Dion Bracco agreed with the process and said it has always worked smoothly for him.
“I’ve never had a problem putting something on the agenda by just calling the mayor or the city administrator,” he said. “This is just a whole lot to do about nothing.”
Haglund said he was already planning on incorporating the sunshine ordinance into an agenda by the end of July. During last Monday’s meeting, however, Woodward, Gartman and Dillon decided not to wait for Pinheiro to schedule a sidewalk vote when they directed one, with the council’s consent, to occur next Monday, bypassing Pinheiro and Haglund’s traditional post-meeting consideration. Pinheiro dismissed the call to vote as a political charade lingering from last year’s campaign.
Enough with this “mayor-may-I” tradition, Woodward said.
“I am not trying to precipitate a crisis. In fact, at this point I have no immediate intention of placing anything on an upcoming agenda. But I surely will want to do that at some future point, and unless the law at that time says I need permission from you (Pinheiro) or someone else, I don’t intend to ask for it,” Woodward wrote to Pinheiro during a three-and-a-half-hour salvo of e-mails between the two Wednesday morning. “The fact that ‘that is how it has always been done’ is meaningless to me. I would rather be right than consistent.”
“(But) we have never had a problem with the way things have been until now,” Pinheiro responded. “Just think if all seven of us decide at the same time that we each want to put three items on the agenda just as long as we turn in a request by 5 p.m. We will lose any sense of priority or ability to provide support to any item requested on the agenda.”
Bracco called Woodward’s attempt at reform “childish” and lamented the council’s division between Gartman, Dillon and Woodward on one side; Bracco, Pinheiro and Councilman Peter Arellano on the other; and Councilmember Cat Tucker usually in the middle. Tucker did not return messages Thursday.
“Perry apparently has no intention of going by any rules. He’ll do whatever he wants, whenever he wants and doesn’t need permission,” Bracco said. “Whenever we vote on something, and it’s 4-3, that’s still the majority, but (the three) are always doing this run around to try something else,” Bracco added, referencing the scheduled sidewalk vote to consider whether the city will fix all the broken walkways at no cost to residents. Tucker, Bracco, Pinheiro and Arellano have said they won’t support that path, but the other three floated the idea during Monday’s meeting and said they wanted it to be on next week’s agenda, much to the chagrin of the mayor.
“Right now our council is not working for the citizens. It’s bickering back and forth, but we can get so much more done when we work together,” Bracco said.
