A tipster tonight reported that there was a strange entry on the agenda of yesterday’s council meeting. Keep in mind that these formal postings are the legally required notices that are supposed to detail any business at hand.
As we pointed out earlier, this “reorganization” meeting was where the old mayor said goodbye to everyone and the new mayor and vice-mayor got selected and installed. At least that’s how it always is with these things, and the Leader only reported their picks after the event was over.
But wait. What was this all about on their agenda?
REORGANIZATION OF CITY COUNCIL:
Pursuant to the provisions of the City Charter, this is the time for the Council to select one of its members to serve as Mayor and one to serve as Vice Mayor.
Recommendation:
Select Mayor and Vice Mayor for coming year.
Mrs. Reinke was selected as the Mayor and Mr. Talamantes was selected as Vice-Mayor.
Hold on! When did that happen? Who knew that the choice had already been made?
Although this is about as unsurprising a news story as we’ve ever heard, the council only nominated and voted upon those two marginal characters at a formal meeting they hadn’t even held yet…
Right? Did we miss something somewhere? If not, read on.
When was this consensus arrived at, and who gathered it, at least enough to be able to list the results way ahead of time? Did the city manager go around and seek out the verdict in private? If so, isn’t this a violation of the Brown Act? (It is if he shared the news with them independently to make sure it happens.)**
Obviously, staff was in on the selection when they mentioned its outcome in writing, so it’s obvious that some quiet consensus-gathering was being performed at the highest administrative levels.
We won’t go so far as to say that Flad recommended this choice, but who knows? The language being used is too incomplete for that conclusion. But the little agenda preview we’ve gotten here for a future council vote is at the very least amazingly revealing about how this CM works. He gets in on decisions by conferring with the individual council members to arrive at a given result ahead of time, and then, in this case at least, he even publishes it.
It’s not very bright to give away your operating game this way, even if it just barely skirts the law. But what consequences do these people ever have to face?
** NOTE: Which he did– by declaring it to them on their agenda before the formal vote. It looks like somebody got a consensus and then alerted them all to the joint decision when the discussions were outside of the public eye — which is a blatant ‘hub and spoke’ violation of the Brown Act.
A big court decision a few years ago gives California CMs the right to go around and discuss things with each individual council member. But if they share the results of their discussions with the others in an attempt to garner a consensus on a future vote, that’s still illegal. And what could be more of a sharing than to actually publish the decision for them all to see before the vote?
Oops. Talk about shaving that ice a little too thin…
Could it be that the copy quoted above is the result of someone—-recording the RESULTS????
Check the time stamp, maybe–just maybe this mystery is solved, no suspects, no persons of interest,
no assist to the BPOA Board Members.
I thought about that possibility, but that’s for the minutes, not an agenda– plus, they didn’t note the League of California Cities pick right below it.
I’m sure this will be their explanation if challenged– but they never fill in the other council agendas with results later on.
It looks like staff jumped the gun and accidentally revealed a secret off-the-books pick ahead of time. The council should have had all those discussions in public per the Brown Act.
If they try to claim that they were merely updating the agenda, they also have to explain why they set a precedent, because they never do this on other agendas, and then they’d be forced to explain why they left out the League pick.
You really should be aware that this proves how ill-informed and ignorant you are.
Go on the city’s website and look at the agendas for every past meeting. Notice anything? They’ve got simple notes as to the outcome of votes! OMG!
I’ve seen these “results” added to the agendas for at least a year now… While the full minutes have much more detailed accounting of the proceedings. It makes me wonder though… On how many other topics that you claim to know things, are you equally ignorant of the facts????
No, they don’t.
I looked at probably a dozen of them before I posted the piece– just to make sure– and none of them have “updates” on the decisions or the votes. That’s because they are not minutes. That’s what the “minutes” do.
Which would explain why that particular May 3rd formal agenda posting did NOT have the result of the League pick right below the mayoral item.
You’re confusing agendas with minutes. Which they won’t even post for at least 3 months minimum, so no one can Brown Act complain about them within the legally required 30 days.
Wow. I always laugh at how these city defenders go out of their way to attack the credibility of we critics, when in fact it is their OWN legitimacy that’s in question. While it’s possible that there may be one or two that were updated with one thing or another, it’s not a practice.
And by the way, Bob, you might want to try a little harder with the phony e-mail address that you cited on your comment. They paying you for such slipshod PR work?
UPDATE** I actually went back and looked at even more agendas. The only time they have updated them–very rarely- was on a previous minutes approval at the head of the meeting or, very occasionally, an airport commissioner report. There was one that announced the appointments of committee members, the PC, but that only begs the question– maybe those picks were known ahead of time as well.
Even worse, their May 1, 2009 agenda for the previous mayoral picks did NOT have any kind of update.
Burbank clearly has no practice of updating its agendas with the final results. Anyone can check for themselves. So I wouldn’t want to be in their position of having to defend that particular agenda entry as an “update.”
You’re not looking close enough.
Look at the 4/27 agenda. Item 2, note the “5-0″ after the recommendation. Item 3, note the “Noted and filed” after the recommendation. Item 4, note the “As recommended 5-0″ after the recommendation… Even such detail as item 5 where it says “4-1 Gordon no.”
Let me give you a link….
http://burbank.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php?view_id=6&clip_id=982
2009 seems to be an anomaly… as we look at 5/1/08… “Mr. Golonski was selected to serve as Mayor and Mr. Bric as Vice Mayor” and “Mayor Golonski was appointed to serve as Director with Vice Mayor Bric as the Alternate.”
http://burbank.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php?view_id=6&clip_id=170
Yup, you look a lot closer now and you see more than ever. Surprise surprise.
2009 is also not so much of an anomaly, it’s turning out. Except one week in particular:
What’s going to be their explanation for not “updating” their May 1st, 2009 agenda? The only one that was already pointed out publically as not being updated?
Who doesn’t know that they decide things before the step out into public. They just got caught this time is all.
Good point Dorian. It isn’t so surprising anymore that this city does illegal stuff. What is really scary is that they get caught and get away with it.
They may not– I’m considering a Brown Act complaint about this behind-the-scenes decision. We should have had that discussion in public– just as we had the Spanos and McConkey pass-overs debated in full at their Tuesday night public meetings way back when.
That’s what Flad and Company were trying to avoid this time, but it looks like they blew it by revealing the consensus prematurely on the agenda. Pretty sloppy… they’re gettin’ careless.
This was avoidable.
Please check my comment, May 5th, 6:11 pm.
It would have looked a lot more “real” if there had actually been a discussion that even though Dr. Gordon has been elected TWICE he is being passed over again, and why. I heard they prepared a list of people who had been elected after serving one year but many of them had been elected twice, and most were top vote getters or got elected out-right in the February election. The people that I remember who have been passed over were Tim Murphy, Susan Spanos and Ted McConkey in the past 20 years. All three only stood for one election and served 4 years each. What was done with Dr. Gordon was truly offensive. Dr. Gordon is the most experienced council person except for Golonske and has already served 3 years+ because he was elected to replace Stacey Murphy who was arrested after serving only a few months of her second term.
I noticed that Golonske was completely quiet except for voting and we all believe that he calls most of the shots on serious issues. (Lately it has been fun that he has been loosing a few but he still has the power and closeness with the staff to get things done.) If you think about it he’s going to want to be mayor again so he will want to be vice mayor next time around which would mean that the most that Dr. Gordon could ever hope for would be to make it to vice mayor before his term is over.
2009-2010 Mayor Bric, Vice Mayor Reinke
(Golonski & Gordon reelected, Telamantes elected)
2010-2011 Mayor Reinke, Vice Mayor Telamantes
2011-2012 Mayor Telamantes, Vice Mayor Golonske
2012-2013 Mayor Golonske, maybe Vice Mayor Gordon
(Election year for Golonske and Gordon — 2013)
This is most likely the plan. Who can imagine that Golonske would sit still for one minute to be passed over as Mayor during this term, but we will just have to wait and see.
I don’t remember Tim Murphy getting passed over, but it probably happened. He might have had more competition from Flavin or whoever as the other newer guys.
But I remember that when they just started talking about Spanos possibly getting omitted, the you-know-what hit the fan– it was considered to be totally unfair. Even Rogers came out against it as a bad precedent.
But at least they had the discussions. This time there was nothing (except behind the scenes, of course.)
UPDATE: Murphy never got passed over for someone who had served as mayor before. He got beaten out by a fellow council member. But in Gordon’s case, he was passed over by both Ramos and Golonski a few years ago, who had both served previously.
Because of the other incumbents, Bob Kramer was elected mayor after a short time. But that’s because the other candidates had previously served (except Spanos). Ted hadn’t, but the case was made that Bob had gotten in first and had more votes.
If people haven’t yet stolen the Leader microfilm down at the library I’ll check out the history. But some of those rolls of film have their own history of suddenly “disappearing” whenever things get hot and the precedents could prove embarrassing to the city or difficult to explain.