Appointment an option for City Council




DOWN A MEMBER—Mayor Al Adam sits alone on the dias during a City Council meeting in March held in compliance with social distancing standards. The other four council members weighed in over the telephone. Acorn file photo

 

A sudden vacancy on the Thousand Oaks City Council has left the four remaining members with two unenviable options: serve the next eight months at 80% strength—constantly risking 2-2 ties—or enter the politically charged world of appointing a replacement.

Rob McCoy’s decision to resign April 4 in protest of county and state public health orders that outlaw church gatherings has triggered discussions over whether it’s in the city’s best interest to operate short-handed in the middle of a public health crisis and with several key votes looming.

A statement released by the city manager’s office April 5 indicated McCoy’s seat would “likely” be left vacant till November.

But not every council member is sure that’s the right approach.

“I think it’d be a good idea to have an open discussion at a council meeting, have that as an agenda item,” Councilmember Ed Jones told the Acorn this week. “I’d like to hear the others’ thinking.”

Appointments have in the past been a source of political rancor in T.O., so much so that in 2012 a group authored an initiative that would require all vacancies to be filled by a vote of the people. Right to Vote was adopted into law by the council after supporters gathered enough signatures—over 8,000—to place it on the ballot.

The current municipal code states all vacancies must be filled by special election on the next regularly established election date, in this case Nov. 3, the natural end of McCoy’s four-year term.

Because Right to Vote included a provision allowing interim appointments until the date of the special election, the council is within its rights to choose a stop-gap until the fall, City Clerk Cyndi Rodriguez told council members in an April 8 memo.

“Should the City Council desire to make an interim appointment, the (Thousand Oaks Municipal Code) allows for an appointment to fill a vacancy,” Rodriguez wrote.

Newbury Park resident Mic Farris, the author of Right to Vote, said that given the political climate in 2012, his group could have opted to ban all appointments. They didn’t.

“Given the heat of drafting (the initiative), we could have forced the council into never appointing again. But we thought it might be good to allow (a little) discretion,” Farris said.

Councilmember Bob Engler, is, like Jones, undecided on appointment (both were elected in 2018). One factor in his thought process, he said, is the number of significant votes (e.g. Kmart housing proposal, general plan update) on the immediate horizon.

“We’ve got a lot of things on our plate, and can we do it with four? Probably. Would it be better with five? Probably,” Engler said. “I’m kind of wrestling with that right now, and my decision is not fully formed yet.”

When weighing pros and cons, one of the things working against an appointee is the timeline, Engler said. If the council wanted to go about appointing “the right way,” he said, that would involve at least 30 to 45 days to properly advertise the vacancy, interview applicants in a public forum and make a final decision.

“That puts us in mid-June,” Engler said, noting the council traditionally recesses between late July and early September. “By the time everything is done, we’re looking at three, maybe four months. . . . ‘Is the squeeze worth the juice?’”

The two longest-serving council members, Al Adam and Claudia Bill-de la Peña, both indicated they were not interested in the idea of an interim. Bill-de la Peña said that as someone who was around for two controversial appointments (2005 and 2011) and who vocally supported the Right to Vote signature-gathering campaign, she could not in good conscience support such an option. In those instances, the appointees filled out much longer vacancies, years, not months.

“I’m good on riding this out until November,” she said.

“We have big-ticket items every year. There’s never a year where we don’t do anything significant. We’ve done this before with a reduced amount of council members, and I’m sure we’ll get through this with this current group.”

Adam, who will be seeking his third term on the council this fall, said the whole spirit of Right to Vote was to avoid appointment.

“No matter how you look at it, an appointment can be political and they can come with some baggage,” he said. “I, for one, would want to really avoid that.”

Former Councilmember Andy Fox, an unapologetic supporter of the appointment option during his 24 years on the dais, told the Acorn the council could avoid a political firestorm by choosing someone with no interest in running for office.

“In this particular case, it’s my view that if the city could find a person who met some very strict criteria . . . somebody who has a track record of involvement in the community, somebody who has knowledge of how the city operates, somebody who the council could agree upon unanimously, it would be doing the residents a service by having five council members,” Fox said.

“There are some big-ticket items like the general plan (update) that I think the residents deserve a full City Council if possible to deliberate these things.”

Fox pointed out that given the COVID-19 outbreak, it’s not hard to imagine one council member getting sick and being out for an extended period of time.

“Then you’re down to three. Then it gets hard to get business done,” he said.

Asked if he would be willing to accept an appointment and return to the council, Fox said no.

“As much as I love this city, once the council gave me the honor of putting my name on the side of the building . . . that’s not an option,” he said. “But there are good candidates out there, not many, but they’re out there.”