The mayor held a community roundtable Wednesday, and
participants are as split on its worth as they are on the issues
discussed at it.
The mayor held a community roundtable Wednesday, and participants are as split on its worth as they are on the issues discussed at it.
The five-hour meeting led by Mayor Al Pinheiro addressed everything from public safety to development, and included 10 high-ranking city employees and Pinheiro’s hand-picked list of 21 community members, including artists, health care providers, developers and a county supervisor.
Council members, per state laws, were allowed to watch but not speak. The mayor did not invite representatives from the Gilroy Police Officers Association or Fire Local 2805. Some attendees believed the discussion to be enlightening and hoped for another session, while others described the gathering as a choreographed political stunt.
“Let’s be honest – this was the mayor’s show,” said Councilman Perry Woodward, who sat through the entire meeting without speaking.
The mayor is hoping to reshape his image, Woodward said, in light of a now-stagnant recall effort from a local conservative activist.
“This is, in my view, how the mayor intends to defeat the recall vote coming up,” Woodward said. “He had (Santa Clara County) Supervisor Don Gage up there, who’s one of his leading supporters, and a bunch of people he knows he needs help from to avoid a recall.”
Only two of the 21 community members invited by the mayor gave money to his 2007 mayoral campaign, according to campaign finance records.
Eric Howard, president of the Gilroy Downtown Business Association, attended the roundtable and said the roster might be enlarged and the agenda narrowed, but otherwise he “loved” the format.
“I thought the agenda was too intense, and maybe the unions should be there next time, but where do you draw the line? It wasn’t about bashing the unions,” Howard said. Anytime you can get people talking about and resolving issues, it can’t hurt.”
Councilmen Bob Dillon, Dion Bracco and Craig Gartman came down softer than Woodward and generally agreed the mayor has more political clout to organize such a meeting, the fruits of which the council will discuss later, they said.
“I guess if this meeting was important to a council member, they would have been there to hear the community come out and talk about their frustrations,” Bracco said. “As a council member and as a citizen, I have opinions on the issues too, but I thought it was handled very properly with the mayor in the background.”
Gartman, who missed the meeting due to work, expressed faith in the city’s checks and balances.
“If (Pinheiro) wants to call a meeting, he can call a meeting, and he talked to (City Administrator Tom Haglund) and got his buy-in for staff support,” Gartman said. “The mayor can’t dictate what staff does because that’s left up to the city administrator.”
The staff presence last week rivaled a regular council meeting, but Haglund stressed the city was not extending any special favors to the mayor and that the number of employees reflected the meeting’s holistic agenda. Haglund’s time alone amounted to nearly $500, according to Dispatch calculations based on city compensation data. Human Resources Director LeeAnn McPhillips said she could not immediately say how much the meeting cost in salary time.
Woodward saw this use of staff time as a violation of council rules as council members must seek approval to borrow staff for extended hours, he said.
“They mayor has his ‘Coffees with the Mayor,’ and he can do that because it doesn’t require staff time, but we have to get permission to use more than one hour of staff time,” Woodward said. “The very top brass of the city were all there for five hours, and that’s a concern. Council members should be allowed to participate and it should be agendized as a meeting instead of the mayor imposing his political views … There was a certain agenda being addressed at taxpayer expense.”
If future roundtables occur, they will likely warrant fewer staff members due to a more-focused agenda, Haglund said.
“This was our first roundtable, and we were feeling our way through the process,” he said. The meeting generated “good ideas” and rallied the community. “Any other council member is free and open to suggest their own roundtable in the future.”
Gilroy Firefighter and Local 2805 Representative Jim Buessing said he would like to attend any future roundtables.
“Public safety was a big topic, and it would’ve been nice if public safety representatives had a seat up there,” Buessing said. “It is in our best interest to know what the community thinks and to answer any questions they may have.”
POA President Mitch Madruga – whose union issued a unanimous “no confidence” vote in the mayor earlier this summer and who did not attend because he was bedridden with the flu – called the event a “political show by the mayor.” The meeting’s premise arose from issues raised by public safety unions, “so not being part of that discussion makes it kind of moot,” Madruga said.
“How is someone from the arts community or the education community supposed to bring up good, solid questions regarding public safety when they really aren’t involved in that field?” Madruga said.
Pinheiro did not return phone calls Monday.
