Residents packed Alhambra City Council’s Chambers on Monday, September 9, 2019 (Photo – Michael Lawrence)
In an extraordinary reversal, the Alhambra City Council voted last night to remove the so-called “Mejia Amendments” from an ordinance that was originally meant to update the City’s municipal code so that it was to be more in line with case law.
By Sean McMorris
The Mejia Amendments, which Colorado Boulevard.net previously wrote about, would have cut public speaking time at Alhambra city meetings from 5 to 3 minutes and prevented members of the public from submitting speaker cards on an agenda item before public comment on the item was closed. The amendments were added as riders by Councilman David Mejia at the first reading of the ordinance. They were then passed by a 4-1 vote with no discussion or opportunity for the public to weigh in.
People showed up in force at the September 9, 2019, city council meeting to weigh in on the amendments. They waited in a standing room only for over two and a half hours before the City Council got to the second reading of the ordinance, the last item on the agenda. Then, residents and community members spoke about the Mejia Amendments and the surreptitious way they infiltrated a seemingly innocuous ordinance.
It’s hard to describe the affair as anything other than a drubbing of the city councilmembers who initially supported the amendments. Of the dozens of people who spoke, only two got up to speak in support of the amendments. One was Planning Commissioner Suzi Dunkel-Soto, who has taken criticism as of late during public comments for benefiting from thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from a developer whose controversial project she voted to approve. The other was Transportation Commissioner Lucy Banuelos, who used a significant portion of her speaking time to complain about how non-Alhambra residents are allowed to speak at city meetings. Both Dunkel-Soto and Banuelos are Mejia appointees.
The other 30 or so speakers voiced opposition to the Mejia Amendments and passionately defended their right to publicly speak to local government with less, not more restrictions. Some brought up the First Amendment and Brown Act during their comments. Many noted that some of the Councilmembers defense of the Mejia Amendments was patronizing. One resident dared the City Council to vote the amendments through so that he could organize a recall effort. Another noted that a community-led ballot initiative (The Alhambra Election and Campaign Reform Act) that is meant to address corruption and moneyed interests’ undue influence at City Hall will put an end to unpopular city council actions like this if it passes at the ballot box in 2020.
Tom Williams addresses the Alhambra City Council on Monday, September 9, 2019 (Photo – Michael Lawrence)
Alhambra City Council got it right
Ultimately, the Alhambra City Council got it right by removing the Mejia Amendments from consideration, but not without first receiving a civics lesson from the public, which ironically came by way of the very process the Alhambra City Council was proposing to limit.
It should be noted that Mayor Adele Andrade-Stadler was the only member of the Council who never supported the Mejia Amendments.
> View the entire city council meeting here. Public comment on the Mejia Amendments begins at the 2:39:00 minute mark.
Sounds remarkably similar to the old Temple City Council’s way of running the city. ?