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Fullerton’s Voting Rights Should Not Be Taken Away By Its City Council

December 18, 2018 //
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The empty seat on the Fullerton City Council should be filled by election, not by appointment.

Diane Vena

(Reprinted from the Fulleton Observer and the Voice of OC)

When Jesus Silva was sworn in as the District 3 Fullerton City Council Member at the December 4 City Council meeting, he vacated the remaining two years of his at-large seat on the Council.  At the December 18 meeting, the new City Council should schedule a special election for the Fullerton voters to determine who will fill the remaining two years of his at-large seat rather than appoint his replacement.

On November 6, a majority on the Council approved a change to the Fullerton Municipal Code that no longer requires a special election to fill a vacancy on the City Council. The revised code still allows for a special election, but it also now gives the Council the power to appoint a council member for the second half of a four-year term without an election.

Residents who were able to attend that Council meeting while the polls were still open on election night, spoke in opposition to this change and expressed concerns that the Council was making this change just in time so that it could appoint a replacement if Silva won his bid for District 3.

Council Member Fitzgerald dismissed the residents’ concerns saying, “We are not having that debate (about whether the Council will appoint a replacement).” She and Council Member Whitaker each stated that the change was simply to align with a new state law – enacted in 2015.

But Fullerton’s code prior to the Council’s changes, last updated in 2011, was not out of synch with the latest version of California Government Code 36512. While the state law does allow a city council to appoint a replacement for the second half of a council member term without a special election, it does not require a city to adopt that option. Section (c)(1) explicitly states that “a city may enact an ordinance that requires that a special election be called immediately to fill every city council vacancy.”

When this important decision comes before the Council on December 18, the argument in favor of appointing will likely be that the cost of holding a special election is too much. When City staff introduced the ordinance at the October 16 meeting to change the code, they estimated a cost of $391,532- $428,150 to run a special election and $224,055 – $260,866 for an all-mail ballot election, which the City might be able to hold if it meets specific criteria in Elections Code Section 4005.

But how much is “too much” when the rights of voters to determine one of five people to represent a city of 130,000 for two years is at stake?

When the Council considers what our voting rights are worth, hopefully it will also consider the opportunities at which it failed to avoid the potential need to fill a council vacancy during the transition to by-district elections. The Council made the decision that created the potential for this vacancy when it chose to place District 3 on the ballot in 2018 knowing that there were two current council members residing in that district and that both would likely run and if the more recently elected was to win, he would have to vacate his at-large seat.

If the Council then argues that it had to put District 3 on the ballot in 2018 to “be fair” to Council Member Sebourn who, upon nearing the end of his at-large term in 2018, would otherwise not be able to run for re-election in his district, that problem was also created by the Council. In August of 2016 it chose the district boundaries. To avoid placing then Council Members Chaffee and Sebourn both in District 2, it approved a map that cut-out a small segment of District 2 to put Council Member Sebourn into his own district, District 3, where no other council member lived until Silva was elected in November 2016.

Voting rights are priceless and should not be taken away to fix any of the problems the Council created. We elect a council member to be one and only one representative on the Council. Making an appointment would give the council members more representation than they rightfully have. The Council makes important decisions that have far-reaching and long-lasting effects on all who live in Fullerton. Those decisions should only be made by voter-elected representatives.

It is unfortunate that when Fullerton is trying to increase voter representation on the Council through a change to district elections, there is now a move to decrease it, which is what would occur if an appointment rather than a special election is used to fill the vacancy on the Fullerton City Council.

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Categories 2016 Elections, 2018 Elections, Ahmad Zahra, Bruce Whitaker, District Elections, Doug Chaffee, Elections, Fullerton, Fullerton 5th District Election, Fullerton City Council, Fullerton District 3, Fullerton District 5, Greg Sebourn, Jennifer Fitzgerald, Jesus Silva

City Council Wants to Fix Library Board Appointment Process That Isn’t Broken

October 1, 2018 //
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Goldberg Library Variations

By staff consultant Rube Goldberg

Matthew Leslie

The Fullerton City Council is having another go at the Library Board appointment process Tuesday night, October 2. “Based on community input on September 18, 2018, the Mayor requests that the City Council discuss, and members of the public to provide input, into an alternate process for appointing members of the Library Board of Trustees“ reads the Staff Report accompanying the Agenda (reproduced below).

While it is true that the community criticized the City Council for not asking the volunteer library support groups Friends of the Library or the Fullerton Library Foundation for their respective opinions on the idea of needlessly changing the Trustee appointment process, as far as we know, nobody ever asked for an alternative process in the first place, other than City Councilmemeber Jennifer Fitzgerald. On May 1 she unilaterally suggested that the City Council appoint themselves as Trustees and create what would essentially be a subservient and powerless Library Advisory Board. What the community did two weeks ago at the last City Council meeting was to roundly reject this idea the Council making themselves the Trustees when we said to just leave the Library Board alone. The community did not say to try to solve a problem that doesn’t exist by terminating a perfectly clear and functional process by which members of the City Council each appoint a Trustee from the community to serve as Trustees.

Like the last agenda two weeks ago, this one does not specify anywhere why any change at all to the Library Board appointment process is needed. As far as we can tell, it is just another solution–and probably a bad one–looking for a problem.

The Staff Report continues…“Such a process could include stakeholders in the Library to include the Friends of the Library, the Library Foundation, and local school districts. A panel of stakeholders could then make a recommendation to the City Council for appointment as Library Board of Trustee appointments become available.” One would hope that members of the City Council were already consulting with these groups when considering appointments to the Library Board, but if it must be codified that people who know a thing or two about the library ought to be listened to, then such an action  seems harmless enough…

…unless, the whole thing is just cover for a majority of the City Council to control the Library Board outright. As it now stands, each Councilmember appoints a single Trustee to a five member Board. This arrangement ensures that the balance of the Library Board reflects the balance on the Council, which is as balanced as the electorate collectively sees fit to make it. If another process is adopted whereby the entire council must approve appointees recommended by the Library Foundation or Friends of the Library, a bare majority will be able to make all five appointments. This is not a strategy for making the Library Board more “independent,” as Mayor Doug Chaffee suggested during his attempted damage control at the last meeting.*

One possible method of adding informed voices to the Library Board would be to allow the Library Foundation and the Friends of the Library each an ex-officio seat on the Board, but allowing them to directly appoint members with voting power changes the way the library is governed, and any such change should be justified somewhere in an agenda report, but isn’t at this time. It’s still a mystery why this entire issue is being bought forth in the first place.

*And since when does Doug Chaffee care so much about a more independent Library Board? He objected to any member of the current Library Board serving on the 2018 Library Ad Hoc Committee, claiming they were too “biased” about what to do with the Hunt Branch. The 2012 Library Ad Hoc Committee included all five Trustees as members.

100218 ADM Library Board Appointment Process Agenda Report

100218 ADM Library Board Appointment Process Agenda Report2

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Categories 2018 Elections, Doug Chaffee, Fullerton, Fullerton City Council, Fullerton Public Library, Jennifer Fitzgerald, Uncategorized

Library Board Adopts Strong Statement Against Council Takeover

September 17, 2018 //
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Sept 17 2018 Letter to Council v2

Letter to the Fullerton City Council from Fullerton’s Library Board of Trustees

Matthew Leslie

Tonight at an emergency meeting at Fullerton’s Main Library, the Library Board of Trustees adopted a strong statement against a proposal that members of the Fullerton City Council appoint themselves as Trustees of the Library instead of members of the public. The proposed change is to be considered at the regular meeting of the Fullerton City Council on Tuesday, September 18, 6:30 p.m. at City Hall.

Unilaterally suggested by Council Member Jennifer Fitzgerald during a May 1 meeting, the proposal has met with nearly universal condemnation, prompting the obvious question of why Ms. Fitzgerald would risk such political damage on something so high profile with so little seeming chance of success. Two other votes would be necessary to pass the item, and even Mayor Doug Chaffee, who frequently votes with Jennifer Fitzgerald, seems doubtful about that happening. In a Voice of OC story today he is quoted as saying:

‘“I’m unaware of any one of us wanting to take it over,” Chaffee said. “I don’t see support for it.”’

Like Jennifer Fitzgerald, however, Doug Chaffee favors selling off the Hunt Branch Library, and is quoted in the same article in reference to its possible sale:

‘Chaffee said, should the city sell the Hunt building, some of the money would go back to the library system. “It is city property for the council to decide on, without the library board,” Chaffee said.,’ revealing that our current mayor thinks it is perfectly fine to take property gifted as a branch of the Fullerton Public Library, sell it, and keep at least some of the money to use for whatever purposes the City Council decided would be appropriate.

The same day, the Trustees met to discuss both the proposed takeover and the utter lack of consultation about it with their body or the Fullerton Library Foundation or Friends of the Fullerton Library. Even Joshua Dale, Ms. Fitzgerald’s own appointee to the Library Board, speculates in the same Voice of OC story that the city’s general need for money is behind the proposal, revealing that she evidently hadn’t even consulted with him on the plan. According to the Voice of OC, “Fitzgerald did not return a phone call Monday seeking comment.”

The text of the Trustees’ letter in opposition to Jennifer Fitzgerald’s proposal is below, co-signed by her own appointee:

“September 17, 2018
Dear Mayor Chaffee and the Honorable Members of the Fullerton City Council:
The Fullerton Public Library has been governed by an administrative Board of Trustees for over one hundred years. In that time, generations of Fullertonians turned billions of pages of millions of books, but more importantly the Fullerton Public Library has been supplemented in its mission through the open hearts of volunteers and the open wallets of its generous patrons.
We find it deeply disturbing that the City Council would direct staff to prepare an ordinance to replace a century of precedent concerning the library’s governance without collecting input from the individuals and associations deeply invested with making the library the success that it is today.
The Council has not made its case for change, so it is impossible for this Board to offer a constructive argument for why it ought to justify its own existence, but the purposeful exclusion of the Library’s support groups from this important conversation does not require an argument to understand its obvious offense. The City Manager and the City Attorney had ample time and ability to include supporters and volunteers in this process. They chose not to. We strongly object.
Should the Council desire to assume direct management of the City Library, it ought to start with an inclusive conversation and receive input from its volunteers and supporters.
If the Council has a case for change, we invite an open and transparent discussion in the form of a joint meeting with the Library Board of Trustees. We traditionally include the Friends of the Fullerton Library and the Fullerton Library Foundation in all our discussions.
As such, we insist they have a seat at the table when discussing the future of our free and public library. Until this conversation occurs, it is in the best interest of the City and the Library to table decisions related to how our hundred-year library operates, serves its patrons, and promotes continuing lifelong learning.
Sincerely,
Sean Paden, President, FPL Carl Byers, Vice-Chair, FPL, Joshua Dale, Trustee, FPL Ellen Ballard, Trustee, FPL Ryan Cantor, Trustee, FPL”

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Categories Doug Chaffee, Fullerton City Council, Fullerton Public Library, Hunt Branch Library, Jennifer Fitzgerald, Uncategorized
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