By Robert Haugh
The City Council had a special meeting yesterday to officially adopt a resolution to put the November election on the ballot. Everyone attended — sorta.
Councilmembers Patty Mahan and Pat Kolstad dialed into the meeting. Mahan was listed on the agenda as calling in from 13845 Pine Street Bigfork, MT 59911. Kolstad was at 22200 East Bennett Lane Liberty Lake, WA 99019 — the home he moved to last summer.
This isn’t the first time the two dialed in. They did it on June 25. We’re wondering if they’ll be dialing in to a meeting on even numbered months from now on.
More Info on No on Measure A Report
We missed some interesting tidbits in yesterday’s story.
But thanks to some eagle-eyed readers, we’ve added a couple paragraphs to the story:
Another plaintiff, Umar Kamal contributed $1,000. He said in a public Measure A debate at the Muslim Community Association with Charter Review Committee member Hosam Haggag, “please vote No on A so we can win the lawsuit.” Wow. He also moved away from Santa Clara recently.
Another interesting expenditure is a $1,000 payment to Eric Stroker, a consultant with past ties to Ed McGovern, the political consultant for disgraced former Councilman Dominic Caserta and the 49ers.
We’re not sure where Kamal moved. But maybe he can arrange to dial in to City Council meetings,too.
Of course they’re entitled to a vacation. If this were an isolated incident, it would not be an issue. But Mahan and Kolstad don’t really care about the city. They won’t vote for qualified candidates to replace Caserta. They help the opponents in lawsuits against the city. They have weak attendance records going back a year. Kolstad moved out of town and doesn’t have the decency to step down from the council. This is a disturbing pattern of behavior that is clearly anti-Santa Clara.
The (another “special”) 0900 meeting was strictly a formality. It lasted 7 minutes. The vote was unanimous.
The other castigated dial-in was not on June 25th.
I believe you’re referring to another “special” meeting on July 5th (scheduled late on July 3rd).
That, by the way, is where the Council cast their preliminary vote to eliminate most of the independent functions of the elected City Clerk position.
By the way, all you “Assistant City Clerk” fans, the last “Published Minutes” on the City’s Legislative Public Meetings website was March 6th (which included approval of minutes from the Council meeting on Jan 30th).
They said at the last city council meeting that the council was off until late August. If that’s true, why is it wrong that council members weren’t in attendance and had to phone in? When was this meeting scheduled? Or are you just stirring the never-ending Mahan Kolstad pot again?
Just want to say that I enjoy reading your coverage of Santa Clara. You seem to know what’s going on and you do your homework. Your opinions are also backed up by facts. Bravo and keep up the good work.
Your work is quite different from the dingbats at the Santa Clara Weekly who cover city hall. They are terrible writers who don’t seem to know much about basic research or how to logically construct arguments. I’d say that the writing reminds me of a high school newspaper but I don’t want to insult high school newspapers since most are substantially better.
I don’ know about other, ACTUAL Santa Clara residents, but I am tired of people from outside of SC interfering with how we run our city.
When people speak at the council meetings, for any reason, they should be required to qualify themselves as resident or non-resident. Period.
And yes, residents should have more influence.
And Yes, I am a Santa Clara Resident.
Howard, 95% of the funding, perhaps more, for Yes on Measure A came from non-residents, and most of that from out of state.
As Robert noted yesterday the vote was 52% to 48% against Measure A. I guess you could call that “narrow”; a convenient interpretation by the losing side.
Apparently Mayor Gillmor and the Council majority felt that loss was due to confusion and misunderstanding (being charitable) on the part of the voters. They are now proposing an “Advisory” Measure on the ballot in November asking voters to reconsider that vote and the imposed 6 district remedy. That ballot measure will not have any effect on the Court’s decision and will cost the City upwards of $100k merely to file it. No doubt, this is a set up to file an appeal of that decision which will probably cost the City at least $500k, “for on-going legal expenses” as COA Doyle describes his on-going additional budget requests, which for “strategic reasons” cannot be more specifically disclosed. I imagine they (we) are right now already paying for consultants preparing for that appeal which, despite Doyle’s expensive advice, will fail.
Only 50 people donated to No on A. Seven were from Santa Clara and 43 were from other cities … just saying. So it works both ways Mike. And much of the non-resident funds for Yes on A were from FairVote – while headquartered out of state, they were very active in the districting process.
Patty and Pat how dare you go on a VACATION