Torrance City Council – A Town Hall Style Conversation About Local Politics

California Government Code 54950 otherwise known as the Ralph M. Brown Act mandates that municipal councils and other legislative bodies conduct their deliberations openly.  The Brown Act also states that:

“The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”

With regard to how the Brown Act treats e-mail communications specifically, one publication noted that “the attorney general has issued an opinion concluding that ‘[a] majority of the board members of a local public agency may not e-mail each other to develop a collective concurrence as to action to be taken by the board without violating the Ralph M. Brown Act.”

That same publication offered several tips for avoiding problems when using e-mail including:

• Refrain from replying to an e-mail if the reply will be directed to a majority of the council.
• Refrain from taking a position or making commitments on matters yet to be decided by the council
• If e-mailing the entire council, do so only to provide information … Do not communicate your position on a matter pending before the council to all other members of the council.

Three days prior to the recent Council meeting where the item to dismiss Mr. Plourde from the Library Commission was heard, Ashcraft sent an e-mail to the entire Council and members of the City executive staff.  The e-mail was sent in response to a communication from the City Manager notifying the Council of the addition of the item to the agenda and reads as follows:

“I’m sorry to hear he just doesn’t get it.  I totally agree with this action, especially after speaking with him during the time the mayor had him in and seeing his reaction to what we discussed.”

When pressed at the meeting whether the e-mail constituted a violation of the Brown Act, Assistant City Attorney Patrick Sullivan declined to answer stating that, “I don’t give advice to the public … if the Council would like me to answer I can … the Council and the City is my client.” Apparently nobody on the Council wanted Sullivan to answer the question during the meeting as they passed on the opportunity to ask him to respond.

The agenda for the upcoming Council meeting includes a recommendation from the City Manager to remove Arthur Plourde from his Commission post for “advocating a personal agenda while representing himself as a City Commissioner.” No further details are provided in the agenda material.

There are always two sides of a story, but Plourde, for his part, believes the City is railroading him out of a Commission appointment due to his desire to keep his “oath of office” requiring him to uphold the Constitution of California.

That Constitution establishes English as the official language of the state. In what Plourde views as a violation of this constitutional provision, he claims the library is “constantly accommodating … requests for books in home languages of immigrants who are supposed to be here as Americans not as travelers.” As evidence of this, Plourde noted that the library right now has “requests for books in Farsi.”

Plourde further went on to say that, “much could be saved in taxpayers money if the Library was not so accommodating … to people who live and work here and refuse to learn ENGLISH. He also queried, “Why should Taxpayers have to put up with this? Even the Torrance Transit has signs on board their buses in Spanish and that is not necessary either.”

It is for pushing this concern with the City Librarian that Plourde believes he is now being labeled a troublemaker and removed from his position. When asked about this situation, the City Librarian declined to comment.

Plourde was appointed by the City Council to the Library Commission only a few short months ago on January 27, 2015.  Plourde, now retired from Boeing, is a well-recognized face within local Republican groups as he has volunteered on the campaigns of several local republican candidates and been active in the Tea Party movement.

The Torrance municipal code does allow the City Council to remove commission appointees by a majority vote of the Council.  Absent further information from the City, however, Plourde’s plight does present an interesting dilemma. It is clearly within the Council’s right to remove Plourde, but should they? What type of precedent will removing Plourde set for current and future appointees?  At what point does expressing your firmly held beliefs, no matter how someone on the Council might disagree, rise to the level of unduly advocating a “personal agenda” thereby necessitating removal?

The agenda for the upcoming Council meeting includes a vote to provide City Attorney John Fellows with a considerable boost to his salary further enhancing what is already one of the most generous compensation packages in the state. Under the proposal, Fellows will receive an immediate 4% increase in base pay with another 4% increase to follow 01 Jan 2016.  The two raises will increase the City Attorney’s base salary from $259,210 a year to $280,368 a year.

Data gathered by the website Transparent California reveals that in 2013 Fellows received $45,053 in direct pay beyond the base salary as well as benefits valued at $68,191 for a total yearly compensation package valued at $372,454. The proposed $21K salary increase will also provide Fellows with a significant retirement benefit as it could add to his pension anywhere from 12 to 15K per year depending on when he retires.

As standard business practice, the City conducts routine salary surveys to ensure pay and benefits are consistent with comparable cities. Despite having not had an adjustment to his base salary since November 2008, Fellows salary remains one of the highest in California and appears considerably higher than other City Attorney’s from comparable sized California cities.  Indeed, Transparent California shows that only the City Attorney from Santa Monica had a higher salary than Fellows in 2013.  Additional data obtained from Transparent California shows the following for City Attorney base pay for cities near to Torrance in population size:

• Huntington Beach City Attorney Base Salary: $214,864
• Escondido City Attorney Base Salary: $225,505
• Sunnyvale City Attorney Base Salary: $210,642
• Orange City Attorney Base Salary: $191,421
• Pasadena City Attorney Base Salary: $225,33

The proposed increase for Fellows comes on the heels of several legal settlements that have depleted Torrance’s legal defense fund. The Daily Breeze reported in fact that legal fees escalated so much recently that late last year [2014] more than $1.6 million from the city’s operating fund was transferred to a reserve fund to pay for the “influx of unanticipated settlement claims over the past two fiscal years.”

One of those cases settled in early 2014, in which the City paid nearly $2 Million to a Police Officer tasered by his supervisor, only recently came to light after an inquiry led by the Daily Breeze.  Responding to why that settlement was not disclosed to the public earlier, Fellows was quoted as saying “It wasn’t done intentionally…we’re not trying to hide it. We’re just not trying to publicize it. It’s a fine line.”

Ironically, the proposed increase to Fellows salary comes on the same night that the Council will meet with legal counsel in a closed session due to yet another significant exposure to litigation.