The mayor’s office may be a lonely place for Craig Gartman.The
man who cultivates an image as the council’s watchdog, the sole
dissenter pushing back against an over-reaching bureaucracy, has
been drawing the ire of his peers in recent months.
Gilroy – The mayor’s office may be a lonely place for Craig Gartman.
The man who cultivates an image as the council’s watchdog, the sole dissenter pushing back against an over-reaching bureaucracy, has been drawing the ire of his peers in recent months.
Gartman’s colleagues on council don’t mind that he disagrees with them on issues, or that he often finds himself on the popular side of controversial votes. Such votes have positioned Gartman for Gilroy’s top elected seat, said Councilman Roland Velasco, referring to Gartman’s April announcement of a possible mayoral bid.
But it’s not Gartman’s votes that bother Velasco. It’s his politics.
“At the dais, he tries to embarrass the council, and by doing so, he puts himself in the position of putting himself at the forefront,” Velasco said. “Maybe he’s right, and six other intelligent, independent-thinking adults are wrong. Or maybe those six adults are right and he’s wrong.”
Councilman Dion Bracco, who accused Gartman of “performing for the Dispatch” at a recent budget workshop, also questioned Gartman’s style of politics.
“I don’t believe this is a good way to go, being a maverick,” Bracco said Thursday. “The election’s a long ways off, and if he’s elected, how’s he going to lead a council that isn’t on his side? That’s something he really needs to be careful about. He’s running the risk of alienating everyone.”
Gartman announced a possible bid for the city’s top elected seat in April, amidst a wave of public anger over council approval of a pay bump for about 20 of the city’s top managers.
The sole dissenting vote came from Gartman, who drew repeated cheers and applause from roughly 100 residents as he blasted his colleague’s decision as the most “fiscally irresponsible” he had encountered while in office. Two weeks later, council members were handed initial budget projections showing the city is on a six-year path to eating up its entire $27 million reserve.
Gartman said he still has not decided whether he will run in November – even if he fails to beat incumbent Mayor Al Pinheiro, he has another two years on his council term – and in the meantime, he defends his dissenting votes as matters of principle.
“I need to be able to put my head down on the pillow at night,” Gartman said. “I voice my opinion and I vote my conscience. There have been very sensitive issues come up as of late. They have been largely staff-driven issues, and I disagree with the direction that staff is pushing council. If someone has a problem with me voicing my opinion, I’m sorry, but if I remember right, this is a representative government … We all have an equal voice and an equal vote.”
Gartman’s gripes began nearly two years ago, when council was caught flat-footed by the announcement of the biggest mall project in Gilroy history. Gartman insisted that city staff should have alerted council to the prospect of a 1.5-million-square-foot mall on farmland east of the Gilroy Premium Outlets. His colleagues brushed aside his calls as micro-managing City Hall.
Since then, Gartman has often found himself voting against the grain. He voted against a $370,000 legal settlement with a former building engineer who was threatening to sue the city for wrongful termination. He voiced his dismay with the handling of construction delays in a project to overhaul Gilroy’s historic main drag, Monterey Street.
And more recently, he has taken his colleagues to task over the shift in pay schedules they approved in April for the city’s top managers. The benefit, which will cost the city at least $200,000 a year, calls for top managers to always receive 15 percent higher pay than their subordinates, and 10 percent more than the average pay their peers receive in nearby cities.
The audience cheered Gartman’s criticisms of the proposal April 16, while his colleagues voting in favor of the plan bristled.
“I do not think this issue is a broad conspiracy in every city,” said Councilman Paul Correa, referring to Gartman’s suggestion that the pay plan amounts to a “pyramid scheme” that would lead to spiraling increases.
“Our discussion sounds like this must be an election year,” Correa said.
Mayor Al Pinheiro, who campaigned for his first term on his ability to compromise, has struggled to contain his frustration on the dais.
“I think my job as a mayor has been to build consensus, to keep dialogue open,” Pinheiro said. “(Gartman) has some great ideas at times, but at times, it’s the kind of ideas where ‘Here it is, take it or leave it.’ ”
The city’s deficit-spending mode is an example, Pinheiro said. Officials have spent three months searching for ways to bridge a $3.8-million gap between spending and revenues in the coming fiscal year. Such budget shortfalls threaten to erode Gilroy’s $27-million reserve fund within six years.
Gartman has insisted on closing the spending “gap” in a single year – a plan that City Administrator Jay Baksa said would require firing 60 to 80 employees from City Hall’s staff of 280-plus people. The rest of council has called for a “gap closure” plan that would avoid any firings and would align spending and revenues within five years.
Gartman regards the plan as a symptom of a bigger problem – his colleague’s willingness to serve as a “rubber stamp” for budgets and policies offered up by Baksa and other city staff. He has pointedly questioned Baksa at council meetings, challenged his budget numbers, and pounced on the city manager’s mistakes on budget spreadsheets. While colleagues have delved deeper into the budget process than any recent years, Gartman suggested the process remains rigged from the start.
“You take the most publicly sensitive items and you say we have to cut out the senior center, the youth center and fire half the police department and fire department,” Gartman said, referring to criticisms of his plan to eliminate deficit spending in one year. “People will say ‘Geez, we have to approve this budget.’ I’m not willing to say that. I don’t want to cut the youth center. I don’t want to cut the police or fire department. But maybe we don’t hire another (information technology) person or an assistant city administrator. We find ways to make the cuts elsewhere.”
Gartman will get his chance June 14, when council expects to review and take a final vote on the 2007-2008 budget. In the meantime, he plans to continue mulling whether he will run for mayor. All his council colleagues – as well as three council hopefuls also running for seats in November have endorsed Mayor Al Pinheiro, prompting the councilman to accuse the mayor of “locking up” the election early. Pinheiro counters that he never approached any colleagues or candidates for endorsements, and that they offered voluntarily.
Though Gartman has refused to announced his decision – he said to expect final word before July 4 – his council colleagues say it is simply a matter of time. And recent votes have reinforced their suspicions that Gartman cares as much about political cachet as he does about voting his conscience.
A noise ordinance the city spent nearly two years crafting passed in May without Gartman’s seal of approval, and on Monday, Gartman cast the sole dissenting vote against an ordinance that imposes stiff fines on adults who provide a haven for underage drinkers. The law attempts to legislate social behavior, Gartman said, insisting officials should go after people who sell alcohol to minors.
Those votes have caused less friction than bewilderment on the part of Gartman’s colleagues.
“As mayor, he’s going to have to bring people together,” Pinheiro said. “He can’t just go in there like a bull in a china cabinet, what is he going to do as mayor? Force them to agree?”
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