SOME DAMNED FOOLISH THING IN PALM DESERT: Was There a Plot to Pack the Council in Cathedral City?

Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans

                -Prince Otto v. Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg, some time Imperial Chancellor of Germany, predicting the cause of the outbreak of the Great War

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!

                -W. Scott, Marmion (1808),Canto VI, stanza XVI


“Council members are elected to make decisions on City business not to listen to disgruntled citizens, Appointment is the only fiscally responsible way to fill vacancy.shame on you for change of mind!”

                -Jean Benson, former Palm Desert councilwoman, Facebook comment, February 28, 1919, on the Cathedral City city Council’s decision to call a special election for District 1.




Summary: A snarky series of Facebook comments from former Palm Desert councilwoman Jean Benson may very well have exposed further evidence of a plot to pack the Cathedral City city Council. Benson’s comment, lamenting the Council’s decision to call a special election, and implying that there had existed a contrary consensus, may very well constitute probable cause to believe that criminal violations have been committed, and that at least two of the members of the Cathedral City city Council committed them. Jean needs to think seriously about shutting her yap and lawyering up. Some damned foolish thing in Palm Desert may have blown the lid off a real scandal.

Great wars and crises always seem to begin with small, foolish things. Germany’s Iron Chancellor, not Angela Merkel but Otto v. Bismarck-Schönhausen, predicted, in 1888, the famous “Dreikaiserjahre,” that the next general European war would begin as a result of “some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.” Just two and half decades later, Bismarck’s prediction was borne out on that thrice-cursed day of Vidovdan, June 28, 1914, when teenaged Serbian terrorist Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, setting in train of the series of events which led to the outbreak of the Great War.

Similarly, a tweet describing the self-immolation of a merchant in Tunis triggered the events of the Arab spring, a sociopolitical phenomenon which has yet to play itself out.

On a more local level, it was an indiscreet exchange of emails between Cathedral city Mayor pro tem John Aguilar and former Mayor Stan Henry which exposed, and led to the foiling of, an apparently well laid plan to appoint Mr. Henry to serve out the unexpired term of the late Mayor Gregory Pettis.

The particulars of what we may call the “Plan for Stan” are not yet fully known. That information will only be developed if the Riverside County District Attorney’s office undertakes the investigation so critically necessary to determine whether there may have been criminal wrongdoing connected not only with the “Plan for Stan,” but also with Mayor Pettis’ death itself.

That there may have been criminality involved in the “Plan for Stan” might have been nothing more than a conspiracy theory even 24 hours ago. However, in an ill considered Facebook post, former Palm Desert councilwoman Jean Benson may have inadvertently provided evidence that the “Plan for Stan” was in fact the result of a carefully orchestrated, violative-of-the-Ralph M. Brown Act, plan, scheme, and artifice to foist Mr. Henry, a resident of District 3, on to the resistant residents of District 1. This would be not only a conspiracy to violate the Brown act, but to perpetrate a voter fraud, and a violation of California law requiring elected representatives to live in their constituency. 

Again, this is a matter for the Public Integrity unit of the Riverside County District Attorney’s office.

Ms. Benson’s incontinent Facebook comment read:

    “Council members are elected to make decisions on City business not to listen to disgruntled citizens, Appointment is the only fiscally responsible way to fill vacancy. [ S]hame on you for change of mind!” (emphasis added)







 

Aside from demonstrating Ms. Benson’s utter, hubristic, and arrogant disregard for the constitutional rights of constituents to petition for redress of grievances, and to instruct their representatives, it also displays what we in the legal profession refer to as “guilty knowledge.” By saying “shame on you for change of mind,” Ms. Benson has raised the inferential possibility that there was indeed a carefully orchestrated “Plan for Stan” developed either by Mr. Henry or on his behalf, possibly by former mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa and her right wing, conservative claque of loyalists and fellow travelers, presumptively in the aid of laying foundation for a DeRosa comeback.

At all events, Ms. Benson’s post, like so many of the tweets from Mr. Trump, like so many of the damned foolish utterances of Mr. Trump’s mouthpiece Rudy Giuliani, and like Mr. Aguilar’s “butt dumb” emails that gave the game away, will not serve to shorten any potential DA or unofficial investigation of this process; as former Trump campaign advisor and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has put it, in the context of the investigation by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, they will only serve to lengthen such investigations.

Now while defenders of Ms. Benson may point out that she’s well north of 90, people don’t usually age out of arrogance and hubris. Ms. Benson has a reputation for having a sharp tongue, and equally for being a close friend and something of a loyalist of Kathleen Joan DeRosa. Thus, the first question that anyone should ask seeking to get to the bottom of what is now fairly obviously a conspiracy to violate the rights of the residents of District 1, is: what did Jean Benson know and when did Jean Benson know it? Where did she come by her information? What was decided out of public view, by whom, and what minds were changed?

For by suggesting that there existed some consensus, of which Ms. Benson had been aware, which was departed from to her evident annoyance, Ms. Benson has suggested the existence of not only a conspiracy to violate the Ralph M. Brown Act, but an actual, knowing, and deliberate violation of the Act itself. To the extent that there exists probable cause to believe that a Brown Act violation has occurred, Ms. Benson may very well be either a material witness or a co-conspirator. She may want to think carefully about shutting her arrogant yap and lawyering up.

Some damned foolish thing in Palm Desert may blow wide open a criminal conspiracy to stack the Council in Cathedral City. Let and investigation be opened and let it go wherever the evidence takes it.

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Paul S. Marchand lives in Cathedral City and practices law in Rancho Mirage. He has been a member of the legal profession for 30 years as of this spring, and has little patience for bumbling, fumbling, ill-informed laypeople who think they are qualified to practice law. The views contained herein are his own, and should not be construed as legal advice.

HOW THE COUNCIL MAY HAVE SAVED ITS OWN BACON

Summary: Last night, the Cathedral City city Council did the right thing and abandoned its butt dumb plan to appoint an at-large councilmember to fill out the unexpired term of the late Mayor Greg Pettis. The appointment plan, apparently cooked up by former mayor Kathleen DeRosa and her loyalists, and apparently inadvertently exposed by Mayor pro tem John Aguilar, envisioned the Council appointing former mayor Stan Henry, not a resident of the constituency, to fill out Mayor Pettis’s unexpired term. As word got out that this seemed to be a “done deal,” voters in the district 1 constituency in question and throughout the city rose up in righteous indignation. Last night, the Council felt the chill wind of Wintry Disapproval, and retreated from its butt dumb plan, opting instead to call a special election limited to candidates and voters in District 1.

Cathedral City, February 28, 2019 -- Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas once observed that “[i]n politics more than in anything else, the beginning of everything lies in moral indignation.” Last night, in abandoning its butt dumb plan to appoint an at-large member of the Council to represent District 1 and fill out the unexpired term of the late Mayor Greg Pettis, the Council bowed to the moral indignation and Wintry Disapproval of the residents of District 1 and of the larger electorate of Cathedral City. In doing so, the Council may just have saved its own bacon.

Most revolutions begin with small things. The Xinhai (Hsin-hai) Revolution, which led to the overthrow of China’s Qing Dynasty in 1911-1912 began with the inadvertent explosion of the package bomb in the Yangtze Valley City of Wuhan. The Arab Spring began with a small merchant immolating himself in the city of Tunis, and our own American Revolution, our protean national liberation struggle that has become the model for all which followed, began when a bunch of pissed off farmers at Lexington and Concord stood up to a landing party composed of Royal Marines. As John Parker, commanding the Minutemen on Lexington Green said, "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."  

The residents of District 1, like the Minutemen on Lexington Green on April 19, 1775, three days after Easter, confronting a plan to impose upon them a councilmember from outside their own district, felt the moral indignation that is the heritage and birthright of every American whom any government proposes to tax without representation. The city Council’s butt dumb, apparently done deal to appoint Stan Henry to Greg Pettis’s seat would have left District 3 with double representation, while bereaving District 1 of any voice or representation whatsoever on the city Council for the next 20 months. The residents of District 1 weren’t having it.

As the situation developed, there emerged evidence to suggest that this was a plan that had been cooked up by former mayor Kathleen DeRosa and her political cronies. DeRosa, who for ten bitter winters served as the worst mayor in Cathedral City’s history, showing the same kind of Trumpian, Outer Boroughs, bridge-and-tunnel pettiness, vindictiveness, thin-skinnedness, and sheer nastiness as The Donald himself, mixed with an almost sexual desire for power and a political comeback, induced her cronies to start beating the drums for an appointment of Stan Henry to the Council. DeRosa, clever enough to know that her name in this community is still mud induced car salesman Andy Jessup to belabor the Council with a lengthy email extolling the ostensible virtues and qualifications of Mr. Henry.

The apparent target of one of these emails was Mayor pro tem John Aguilar, who first came to the Council as an appointed protégé of former Mayor Pettis. Mr. Aguilar apparently, either out of foolishness or deep fatigue (don’t you think he looks tired?) did not appreciate the dangerous position into which he was about to place himself, and emailed Mr. Henry with a series of missives which created an unmistakable and ultimately undeniable impression that Mr. Henry was a shoo-in, and that his appointment to the Council was an inevitability. What is more interesting is that Mr. Aguilar apparently sent these emails from his municipal email account, and that he attempted unsuccessfully to delete them after discovering that a Public Records Act request have been filed demanding their production.

That is in and of itself actionable criminal misconduct, and also demonstrates the existence of what in the criminal law is referred to as “a consciousness of guilt.” In plain, non-Vulcan English, that means that to all intents and purposes, Mr. Aguilar had not just dropped, but had hurled, a big malodorous turd into the municipal punch bowl. It was a foolish, ill-considered, and potentially criminal act. The email was itself a public record, and California law frowns with Wintry Disapproval on destruction or falsification of public records. Worse for Mr. Aguilar, it does not matter that the attempt is not successful. The crime is complete at the time the attempt is made. What Mr. Aguilar did was not just dumb, it was butt dumb.

By engaging in such conduct, Mr. Aguilar not only exposed himself to potential investigation by District Attorney Mike Hestrin, he may also have exposed himself to a further investigation by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, and possibly by the Legislature itself. At all events, Mr. Aguilar has exposed himself as a political lightweight with no sense of optics and no understanding of the often exquisitely complex compliance mandates under which public officials are supposed to govern themselves. At all events, Mr. Aguilar fatally tainted the whole appointment process.

When the Council met last night to determine whether to appoint someone, this blogger and a number of other individuals within the community, including Cindy Uken of the Uken Report, and Casey Dolan of Cactus Hugs, as well as local activists Simeon Den, his husband Peter Palladino, Lynne O’Neill, Alan Carvalho and his husband former councilmember Shelley Kaplan, and a number of other morally indignant residents, had sounded the alarm.

The general gist of our “polemic” was that the Council needed to abandon any appointment and call a special election, limited to voters and candidates in District 1. We packed the Council chamber. After nearly 2 hours of public comment, which hit the Council like a cast iron skillet upside its collective head, and with the Council looking stunned that the apparent “shoo-in Stan” plan was threatening to create an enormous political crisis that might subject each of them to a recall, and might subject the city to lawsuits whose defense would exceed in cost the maximum amount a special election could be expected to cost, councilmember Ray Gregory, who had already seen the light, offered a motion to call a special election for District 1 limited to electors and candidates from that district.

After several agonizing seconds, during which it appeared that the motion might die for want of a second, Mr. Aguilar, finally understanding that Mr. Gregory had thrown him a lifeline, seconded the motion, though not before chastising supporters of an election as “thugs” who had presumably cooked up their objections to his plan to shoo-in Stan Henry solely to hurt his feelings.

Now from my own experience as a former councilmember of eight years, I know that as a general rule when one seconds a motion, unless one seconds it “for the purposes of discussion,” using those so-called magic words, one has in effect committed to vote in favor of the motion. Either Mr. Aguilar lacked the experience to understand that, or he was truly seconding the motion and conveying an unmistakable tell that he intended to vote in favor. In the end, the Council saved its own bacon and voted 3-1 in favor of the motion.

Councilmember Ernesto Gutierrez, a nasty, Trumpian little piece of work, a small fingered vulgarian, known for his bush league behavior, his fealty to The Donald, his dislike of the queer nation, and his conviction that women should not enjoy reproductive choice, voted against the motion. Already, community activist sources are telling me that they are preparing to lodge recall paperwork against Mr. Gutierrez at the earliest legal moment, i.e., on the 91st day after Mr. Gutierrez was sworn into office (see, e.g., Elections Code § 11007).

The apparent theory of any recall against Ernesto Gutierrez will be that his “no” vote on calling a special election is 1) a violation of his Article XX constitutional oath of office, 2) a violation of democratic norms, and  3) evidence of his possible participation in a violation of, or conspiracy to violate, the Ralph M. Brown Act, which denounces private meetings by representative bodies.

Mr. Gutierrez and the rest of the Council need to be reminded that we do not work for them, but that they work for us. Last night may have represented a distinct and palpable change in the political power dynamics of Cathedral City. Activated residents are no longer prepared to tolerate the presence of the Council that ignores the manifest and evident will of the electorate. It is reasonably safe to infer that the three councilmembers who voted in favor of the special election had had the fear of God put into them that they might be the targets of a recall had they gone ahead and appointed Stan Henry to the Council. Mr. Gutierrez apparently has yet to learn that lesson.

At all events, however, the shift in the power dynamic on the Council, and between the Council and the community hopefully betokens the emergence of a Council that will be more responsive to its respective constituencies and to the community as a whole. We have come a long way from the 10 sour, dour, gray, Leonid Brezhnev-like winters when the city languished under the lackluster leadership of bridge-and-tunnel Kathleen DeRosa. We cannot afford to go back. Our future is progressive, and we must make it clear that we expect, nay, demand progressive representation on the city Council. Moreover, we must make it very clear to our elected representatives that they will pay a heavy political price for crossing us again. We’re prepared to be “thuggish” and to put an awful lot of hurt on the delicate feelings of city councilmembers who ignore their constituents and attempt to inflict upon them the horrors of taxation without representation. The revolution continues.

-xxx-

Paul S. Marchand, Esq., is an attorney who lives in Cathedral City and practices in Rancho Mirage. He served for eight years as a member of the Cathedral City city Council. The views contained herein are his own, though he has probable cause to believe that they are shared by a substantial number of voters throughout Cathedral City.

DUMB, AND BUTT DUMB: the Cathedral City city Council’s Rookie Mishandling of the Council Vacancy.

 Summary: The Cathedral City city Council has mishandled from Alpha to Omega the filling of the vacancy created by the death of the late mayor Greg Pettis.  From Councilman John Aguilar’s butt dumb emails to city Council applicant and former mayor Stan Henry, to the city’s shortsighted refusal to hold a special election, to the threats being murmured by city “cheerleaders,” and loyalists of former mayor Kathleen DeRosa, this process has bereaved the city Council of much of the trust it once enjoyed in the community.  My own communications with Mayor Mark Carnevale, in which I urged upon him the abandonment of the appointment process and the calling of a special election have brought many angry people out of the woodwork, and I expect to be doxxed, threatened, and perhaps even referred to the State Bar for having had the temerity to exercise my First Amendment guaranteed right of petition.

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My late grandfather, the one from El Paso, Texas, never suffered fools well.  When someone did something spectacularly foolish, he would turn to me, and addressing the by my childhood, say “Curly; that fellow isn’t just dumb, he’s butt dumb.” 

Butt dumb soon came to represent for me an expression of utter disdain, far beyond even wintry disapproval.

Right now, Cathedral city has availed itself of a process described by blogger Casey Dolan as a “dumb plan.” to try to fill the vacancy on the city Council created by the death of former mayor Greg Pettis.

Instead of honoring the manifest sense of the voters that the city should be divided into electoral districts for the city Council, and instead of letting  a normal democratic process play out, the four surviving members of the Council decided to substitute their wisdom for that of the 10,000+ residents in District 1, where late mayor Pettis had resided.

The council’s butt dumb idea might have worked but for a number of serious flaws in the execution.  The Council, guided by legal advice that ---in the view of this attorney of 30 years experience— comes close to constituting, if not constituting, gross legal malpractice, chose to open the process up to at-large applicants from the entire city, rather than doing the right thing and restricting it to applicants from District 1.

The Council then compounded its error by accepting a variety of solicitations concerning the identity of the prospective appointee.  Former mayor Kathleen DeRosa, easily the worst mayor in the city’s history, and her claque of intransigent loyalists, including particularly auto dealer Andy Jessup, began banging the drums on behalf of former mayor Stan Henry.

At this point, the “draft Henry” campaign might have looked like nothing more than exercise in poor form and political grandstanding.  That was before Councilman John Aguilar stuck his oar into the process, and in so doing, fatally tainted it.  In a series of ill considered emails, Aguilar reached out to former mayor Henry with what appeared to be an implied representation that there existed three votes on the Council to appoint Henry to the vacant seat.   

In doing so, Aguilar ---who owes his initial arrival on the Council to the partisanship and support of the late mayor, who secured his appointment to succeed Councilmember Sam Toles, who left the Council in the middle of his first term to take a more lucrative position in Manhattan— managed to cast significant doubt on his own integrity and to raise a very real possibility that there may have been criminal wrongdoing involved.  

At all events, Councilman Aguilar has behaved in a manner entirely inconsistent with his obligations to the public, and, given that we now live in a #metoo-influenced political culture in which a single tweet or inconsiderate utterance constitutes grounds for removal, he should, once the special election is over, tender his resignation from the Council.  The Council is not a place for politicians with actual or apparent ethical compromise.

After Aguilar’s emails became known in response to a Public Records Act request from a resident, the metaphorical defecation hit the ventilation.  Full disclosure: I myself am one of the 14 applicants who put in an application to be appointed to the vacant seat.  I am declaring, and will reiterate that declaration this evening, that I will not accept an appointment which may be proffered by the Council as a result of this tainted process, and I call on each of the thirteen other applicants to do the same thing.

In the meantime, blogger Cindy Uken, reporting in the Uken Report, reported on an email sent by “a resident” late yesterday evening to embattled Mayor Mark Carnevale.  Immediately speculation began to swirl as the identity of the resident.  KESQ/KPSP on air weather personality Patrick Evans, a resident of the same district as Mr.  Henry, asked on Facebook, in a sort of nice-car-you’ve-got-there-it-would-be-terrible-if-anything-happened–to-it tone of vague and implicit menace, who the “resident” in question happened to be.  The obvious impression of Mr.  Evans’ request, and of the tone in which it was couched, suggested that it was Mr. Evans’ intent to “doxx” the resident in question, i.e., to make public disclosure of private information, after the manner of Fox News and the Bernard Sanders campaign during the 2016 Nevada state Democratic convention.

Let me preempt Mr. Evans, end the speculation, and put Mr.  Evans’ employer on inquiry notice.

I am the resident who wrote the email to Mayor Carnevale.

The email, which, the truth be told, was a difficult document to write, was written from one friend to another, from the man who first encouraged Mayor Carnevale to seek elective office, and supported him in that initial bid.

The email was, in truth, somewhat remonstrative in its tone; as Mark’s friend, I felt I had earned the right to speak with absolute candor on an issue where the Council clearly needed to hear from someone with institutional memory who has served two terms on the city Council himself.  It usually takes a friend to convey an unwelcome or inconvenient truth: “it takes an enemy to speak ill of you and a friend to tell you about it.”

In my email, the text of which is set forth below, I pulled no punches, spared no rods, and set forth for Mark what I thought the consequences of going forward with an appointment might be.  I urged upon him the course of action I urged in a previous post in this blog on the necessity for a special election.  Specifically, I urged him and his colleagues to abandon the appointment process, call a special election, and limit that special election to candidates and voters within District 1 itself.  Anything else, I suggested, would be a slap in the face of the approximately 10,000 residents of District 1, and an equal insult to the democratic process.

The members of any body politic, from the Mayflower Compact of 1620 to the city of Cathedral City nearly 400 years later, must be able to have confidence in the integrity of the processes by which policy is developed and implemented, and by which representative vacancies are filled in our public institutions of self-government.  Like the United States itself, Cathedral city enjoys a republican municipal form of government.  Our elected representatives are temporary custodians of the res publica, the public thing that is the joint possession and inheritance of every single member of the body politic.

Unfortunately, Councilman Aguilar has forgotten the duties incident to his custodianship of our public thing.  He seems to have forgotten the responsibilities laid upon him, indeed he voluntarily assumed, when he took the oath of office prescribed by Article XX of the Constitution of California, subscription to which is a nonnegotiable precondition for executing any public office in the state of California.

In my email, which I will stipulate was written with ill-disguised passion, I spoke with candor and unease about the situation in the city that, until now, I have been proud to call home.  I have been implicitly threatened on Facebook by Patrick Evans, I have been called an asshole by Haddon Libby of the Chamber of Commerce, also on social media, and I expect further such threats or possible State Bar referrals following the publication of this post.  It pains me to think that I may never again enjoy the good food and hospitality of Mayor Carnevale’s Italian restaurant, with which I became so well acquainted when my offices were located immediately above his kitchen, and where the aroma of calamari and other Italian goodies used to rise to torment the tastebuds of an overweight man starting about 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

Yet, when all is howled and done, as much as I might not want to, the recent testimony of disbarred attorney Michael Cohen before Congress today has reminded me that sometimes ethics must come before social considerations.  I wrote my email to Mark Carnevale as an anguished friend, not as a political rival seeking to score points.  The ball is in Mark’s court: either he and his colleagues can do the right thing, abandon this feckless and now fatally tainted appointment process, and call a special election limited to candidates and voters in District 1, or they can face the voter revolt and possible recalls I predicted in last night’s email.  I hope, for the sake of all of us in this public thing we all call home, that Mayor Carnevale and his three colleagues will do what is right, even if it is not expedient.

The text of my email follows:

Mark, old friend, this is a hard email to write.

I think you’ve seen the coverage of the donnybrook that has blown up over the appointments process to fill Greg’s seat. It is a donnybrook for which you and your colleagues must take responsibility, or potentially face a revolt from the citizens of Cathedral City

Unfortunately, John Aguilar -who owes his initial incumbency to an appointment that you opposed- has really screwed things up. Frankly, old friend, I think John needs to leave the Council after a special election to fill the vacancy in District 1.

John has arrogantly and foolishly  placed the entire Council in an untenable legal and political position.

Unfortunately also, Mark, I don’t think your remarks to KESQ today helped to clarify the situation. 

The coverage shows you saying “If you're asking me is it unethical -- I wouldn't have done it I I don't think I was probably the proper thing to do but by no means that it show which way he's going," while you also steadfastly maintained that there was “no collusion.” Mark, your denial of any “collusion,” does not appear credible in light of what we know transpired between John and Stan. (emphasis added)

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of understanding of basic political optics on the part of you and your colleagues.

When we originally spoke about this matter over luncheon, for which by the way Sonja and I are deeply appreciative, you expressed to me a desire to move this process along as quickly as possible. However, the method chosen by the Council has led the Council into a zone filled with landmines which John has apparently insisted on stamping on and dancing on, which has now blown up in your faces.

I am also concerned that what has happened constitutes probable cause for a possible criminal Brown Act investigation either by Dist. Atty. Mike Hestrin or by Attorney General Xavier Becerra.  An investigation by either the district attorney or the Attorney General can be expected to expose the city to all of the embarrassment of a criminal probe, together with substantial unnecessary expenditure. Additionally, the city must also consider the possibility that the same Malibu law firm that threatened litigation to force us to adopt districts will seek to file a civil suit against the city sounding in fraud and in bad faith.

Moreover, the costs of defending either a Brown Act lawsuit, a lawsuit challenging Stan Henry’s right to serve, or a lawsuit from the Malibu attorneys will probably exceed, by orders of magnitude, the estimated cost of the special election. As a local taxpayer, I know what my preference would be under such circumstances, and I, together with many taxpayers, would object to the spending or our dollars on such litigation defense.

Also, if members of the Council had institutional memory that only Greg Pettis, Bud England (who is keeping a very low profile nowadays) and I have, you all might have realized that the city Council can function effectively for a number of months as a body of four. Permit me to recall to your remembrance how in 2004, when Kathleen DeRosa was elected mayor, her council seat became vacant.  The Council had initially thought to fill the vacancy by appointment, but deadlocked 2-2. We therefore called a special election in 2005, wherein the late Chuck Vasquez was elected. Between December, 2004, and June, 2005, we met, and governed, as a Council of four. This precedent should have been before you, and it should have turned you from the error of wanting to fill the Council vacancy with foolish haste. This is what I tried to warn you about at our luncheon. Too soon old, too late smart.

Old friend, what the city Council seems to have forgotten is that there are people in this community who have served it before, who have institutional memory, who have never brought upon the city a whiff of scandal, but whose knowledge and institutional memory the city scorns. Your appointment of Sergio Espericueta as Mosquito and Vector Control District trustee was an insult. Gary Howell or I, as former trustees, would have made much better trustees then a Walmart mechanic with no knowledge or experience.

Unfortunately, old friend, you and your colleagues have created a perception that this city Council is nothing more than an old boys club seeking to perpetuate its membership by co-optation. That itself is an insult to democracy, and it is an insult to the voters in District 1, to whom you should be giving a preferential option.

I am disappointed, old friend, in John and in the rest of you as well. You are better than this; you should not have allowed this kind of nonsense to occur on your watch.

In all friendship, Mark, I think it is my duty to warn you that from what I have heard, there is substantial sentiment for a recall of the entire Council. In order to avoid the messiness of a potential recall effort against the four of you, you should immediately abandon the appointment process.

Instead, you should call a special election at the earliest possible time for the earliest possible date. That election should be limited to candidates from District 1. Further, John Aguilar needs to be referred to the District Attorney or the Attorney General for ethics violations.

I would prefer to see Cathedral city know continuity of government rather than experience the chaos of a recall of the entire Council. But given the apparent indifference of the Council to the voters of District 1, any course of action that does not include an immediate abandonment of the appointment process and the calling of the special election limited to voters and candidates in District 1 will probably result in exactly the chaos many of us fear.

Do the right thing, old friend. Abandon the appointment, call a special election, and secure John Aguilar’s resignation from the Council once the election is over.

Yours,

Paul S. Marchand, Esq.