Evan Sanders and Marcus Chavez were appointed to fill the Los Banos city council seats left empty when voters recalled two former councilmembers in November. Their selection, in a somewhat complicated voting process, brought the council back to its full strength of five members.
But the appointments were not without a few contentious moments that have marked the city council’s meetings.
Midway through the nearly three-hour meeting, councilmember Kenneth Lambert announced he would not follow the selection procedures established by council at its last meeting. The council had agreed on two rounds of weighted voting with each of the three councilmembers casting votes for two candidates in the first round then three in the second. Since the votes were weighted, the candidate with the highest vote total would be selected.
Instead, Lambert decided he would vote for only one candidate in the first round. That caused a prolonged discussion, with councilmember Deborah Lewis finally insisting that if Lambert could not follow the rules his votes should be ignored. When city attorney Bill Vaughn agreed that would be the proper approach, Lambert relented and begrudgingly followed the agreed upon procedures.
Saunders is a self-described “full-time commuter” to the Bay Area who has lived in Los Banos for 21 years. He was selected to finish the term of Doug Begonia Jr., who was recalled by roughly 80% of the voters in his district.
Chavez said he has lived in Los Banos “since 1979” and works at Morning Star Packing Co. He will finish the term of Brett Jones in District 3, who was voted out by around 75% of voters in his district in November.
Both Chavez and Sanders talked about the necessity of building a sense of community to address the city’s most problems.
It was actually the second meeting of the day for the council, which convened a special session at 2 p.m. then immediately adjourned to closed session to discuss the performance of city manager Josh Pinheiro.
After an hour in closed session, Mayor Amabile emerged to say that “no reportable action was taken at this time.”
Many observers in the city had expected something more. Pinheiro has been at the heart of the controversy that has rocked the city for the past two years. His hiring, firing and rehiring was engineered by four members of the council – including Lambert and former Mayor Paul Llanez, Begonia and Jones. Their decision to pay $1.8 million following vague accusations of misconduct by some members of the council was considered an outrage by many residents and led to the recall of Begonia and Jones and the lopsided loss by Llanez.
Under Pinheiro’s leadership, the city has experienced upheaval throughout the ranks of its employees. The city’s unions signed a letter of “no-confidence” in Pinheiro, and two are working without a contract. Five of the city’s eight department heads quit during Pinheiro’s two-year tenure. The city’s most recent finance director quit after eight months on the job with no explanation – a move Pinheiro tried to keep secret until after the election.
On a 3-1 vote, the previous council gave Pinheiro unprecedented job security by requiring a unanimous council vote to dismiss him. In every other city in the Valley, city managers can be fired without cause or explanation, most often on a simple majority vote of the council.
But no action took place.
