Commission statuses
Three of the four city commissions gained new appointments during the May 23 Signal Hill City Council meeting, replacing commissioners whose terms were expiring May 31. These commissions were: Planning, Parks and Recreation and Civil Service. Five commissioners serve on each commission.
In a departure from previous council practice, Wilson chose to make appointments following the city charter, which authorizes him to not only nominate candidates for subsequent council approval but also, if he chooses, allow no other nominations. However, since not all of Wilson’s nominations for open positions were approved by the council and he made no further nominations nor allowed other council members to do so, four commission seats remain unfilled.
“In any application process, there are people that get voted on the commission, and there are people that don’t,” Wilson had said during the meeting. “We cannot appoint everybody that applies.”
As a result, full commission representation and functioning now depend on filling one open seat that has since been noticed, plus the continued service of three commissioners— Gary Dudley, Paul Patterson and Steve Strichart— whose terms have expired and who had applied for reappointment but were not nominated by Wilson. [Editor’s note: Strichart is the associate publisher of the Signal Tribune.] Of the three commissions, the Planning Commission is the only one with complete representation. It gained three new commissioners during the meeting— Carmen Brooks, Victor Parker and Christopher Wilson— adding to two continuing commissioners, Jane Fallon and Rose Richárd.
The Parks and Recreation Commission gained two new commissioners, Terry Rogers and Debra Russell, who will join continuing commissioners Caroline Kiss-Lee and Nancy Lauer.
However, since Wilson did not make an additional recommendation for the Parks and Recreation Commission for the council to approve, the fifth seat on this commission must continue to be occupied by Gary Dudley, whose term has expired but whose reappointment was not recommended by the mayor.
City Attorney Dave Aleshire had made clear at the council meeting that Dudley’s continued service was expected according to the city charter.
“Your term ends by a date if there’s somebody selected to replace you,” Aleshire had said. “Otherwise, your term continues to run.”
Though Dudley verbally resigned during the meeting in protest to the appointment protocol, according to the city charter such a resignation is only binding if it is formally submitted in writing and accepted by a majority of council members, neither of which occurred.
According to City Manager Charlie Honeycutt, Dudley has since decided to remain on the commission until reappointed or replaced.
In an interview with the Signal Tribune, Dudley expressed some concern with the mayor’s selection process, which, to him, was suggestive of age discrimination.
“Myself and the other three most experienced people were not brought forward [for vote],” Dudley noted. “The only thing left for us to do was to either quit or go forward.”
While Dudley acknowledged the benefit of allowing new candidates the chance to serve, he also recalled a private interview with the mayor about a week before the meeting and wonders if that may also have played a part in the mayor’s decision not to recommend him for reappointment.
During that interview, Dudley said, the only question he was asked was whether the mayorship should be a municipally elected full-time position.
“That was the only thing he talked to me about, if I agreed with that or not,” Dudley said. “I said it should be put on a ballot so the people could vote on it. I don’t know if that had any effect [on the mayor’s decision] or not.”
Above all, Dudley felt disappointed, having worked on the Parks and Recreation Commission for 24 years and helping to develop six new city parks.
“After giving so much time and effort to your city, I thought it was a slap in the face,” he said. “I felt disrespected actually.”
The Civil Service Commission has been similarly impacted by the mayor’s refusal to recommend available candidates for its open seats. David Hopper was reappointed, joining commissioner Ronald Griggs, leaving three positions unfilled.
One of the open seats is due to one of the commissioners, Parker, being appointed to the Planning Commission. A notice for this position has been issued, seeking additional applicants to join the pool of candidates who had previously applied.
The other two open seats on the Civil Service Commission now depend on continued service by commissioners whose terms have expired— Paul Patterson and Steve Strichart, both of whom had applied for reappointment but were not nominated by the mayor for council approval.
Like Dudley, Strichart also verbally resigned in protest at the council meeting on May 23. However, he too has since rescinded.
Strichart explained that he had asked the council during the meeting whether he was effectively being asked to continue serving until a replacement was found. Receiving an affirmative reply, he verbally resigned.
“I was angry that I couldn’t even be considered,” Strichart said. “To not even get a chance to be voted on [by the council] was wrong.”
Strichart also disagreed with Wilson’s comments at the meeting that using the appointment procedure outlined in the city charter, which had been voted on by the citizens of Signal Hill, was democratic.
“There is nothing democratic about denying council members [a chance] to vote on particular candidates, only those nominated by the mayor,” Strichart said. “To me, that is not a democratic process.”
Strichart emphasized that he is continuing to serve for the good of the City, ensuring that the Civil Service Commission remains active. Otherwise, he said, there would be no quorum established at their next meeting on June 7. On its agenda is approval of all the new commissioner appointments.
“If we don’t ratify the list, they can’t hire off it for another month,” Strichart explained. “It’s not fair to the City, and it’s not fair to the people trying to get hired.”
Strichart also expressed concern about whether there would be an experienced Civil Service Commission in place for an upcoming disciplinary hearing.
“We have an employee’s future in our hands,” Strichart said. “It’s not something you take lightly.”
Strichart affirmed his commitment to the City, which now depends on his continued service along with the other two commissioners forced into the same position.
“My loyalties are to the City of Signal Hill and not the mayor,” Strichart said.
Appointment procedure
Though Wilson’s methodology of making commission appointments at the May 23 council meeting conforms to the city charter, it nonetheless has caused internal disagreement among council members.
Section 602 of the Signal Hill charter states that commission appointments are made by recommendation of the mayor, with subsequent majority approval by the council. Wilson distributed a copy of this section of the charter to each council member prior to the meeting.
“The members of each of such boards or commissions shall be appointed by the mayor, with the approval of the city council,” the charter states.
“That is the common way of doing it,” City Attorney Dave Aleshire said in a phone interview, adding that the provision is based on state law.
Still, Aleshire acknowledged that the mayor’s exercising of this prerogative was a departure from the way it had been traditionally done by the Signal Hill City Council.
“In the past, it was an informal process where different people would throw out names and keep working on it until they had a majority,” Aleshire said.
In this instance, Aleshire stated, Wilson had called him before the meeting and asked about the charter and assumed he had the power to make appointments.
“It became an awkward issue [at the meeting] when the mayor threw out who he was not willing to nominate,” Aleshire said.
Councilmember Lori Woods also confirmed in an interview that though the procedure as outlined in the charter hasn’t been followed for at least 20 years, it is not prohibited, nor is it against the charter that the council made appointments differently before.
“While no other mayor [!] has taken that to mean he makes all nominations, there’s been no violation,” she said. “[And] it’s not like the past councils or past mayors have violated the city charter by appointing commissioners the way we’ve done.”
Regardless, while Woods stated she initially appreciated Wilson’s streamlining of the appointment procedure, she became confused by the way the process unfolded, especially when Wilson stopped short of recommending more of the available candidates to fill open seats.
“He chose not to make any more nominations,” Woods said. “I’m still trying to figure out the purpose.”
Her uncertainty, in fact, led to a misguided vote on her part.
“I should have stopped and asked for clarification,” Woods said. “I regret not pausing and stopping and reevaluating the situation of which seats are left and where are we now.”
Ultimately, Woods doesn’t see the appointments as fairly made.
“I can’t see how it was fair,” she said. “Definitely not fair to the council, and several commissioners did not feel it was fair to them.”
Councilmember Larry Forester concurs with this view.
“It was one of the most unfair procedures I’ve ever seen in my 20 years on council,” he said in a phone interview. “That small, little clause was one that’s never been used in [!] 20 years. In all my 20 years on council, every member has had a chance to suggest a candidate.”
Forester acknowledged, though, that the mayor had every right to appoint candidates per the terms of the charter.
“He might have been technically right according the charter, but he was wrong in enforcing it,” Forester said. “We had just never noticed [the clause] or never used it because internally we felt it wasn’t right for the mayor to have the sole power of ‘up or down’ on a commissioner.”
Forester further suggested that it was more the manner in which Wilson enacted the charter’s tenet that raised red flags.
“The mayor [!] interviewed all 17 candidates privately, which I don’t think was acceptable,” Forester said. “He exerted a unilateral decision. He didn’t consult with any of us. He didn’t say that [this clause] was in the charter and [he was] using it.”
Thus the process didn’t seem judicious to Forester.
“It was a legal stunt per the statement in our charter, but was it fair and was it equitable? Did it respect the citizens of Signal Hill? No,” he said. “I’ve never seen an elected officer in the city [!] insult the citizens as Mayor Wilson did.”
In addressing the confusion caused by his chosen method of making appointments, Wilson noted that confusion also existed during previous commission appointments as well, since the mayor would just decide what the procedure would be.
He felt that using the charter would eliminate this confusion, at least going forward.
“We should be using the charter because it was voted on by the citizens,” he said, referring to when Signal Hill became a charter city in 2000. “At that point, we should have started using it, but we didn’t. If we’re not going to follow the rules, who is?”
Wilson further defended not allowing additional nominations besides his own as being consistent with the charter.
“We could have had a charter that said each council member can nominate and the rest of the council approves,” he said. “This is what we chose to put in there as a council.”
Wilson noted, too, that he was aware that the charter requires existing commissioners to continue serving until their positions are replaced and therefore knew that not all positions had to be filled during the May 23 meeting.
One of the reasons he didn’t nominate candidates to fill all the open seats was that the council had decided early in the meeting not to allow nominations of candidates to any commission, but only to the commission(s) to which they applied, which he said he did not anticipate.
“Hopefully the council will agree to allow nominations for anyone that applies to any of the commissions,” Wilson said, looking ahead to the next council meeting.
At least one of the new commissioners appointed, Christopher Wilson, hasn’t let any council confusion interfere with the work he anticipates ahead of him.
“I’m just honored to be on the Planning Commission and bring more attention to the north side of Signal Hill,” he said in an interview. “I am excited [!] to be appointed by the council and looking forward to working with them.”
