Clerk’s Office Seeks Changes in Recall Petitions
Proponents of removing three Pico Rivera councilmen must revise paperwork before they can begin collecting signatures.

PICO RIVERA — Members of Pico Rivera Community for Truth in Politics hoped to begin gathering signatures this week in their effort to recall three members of the City Council. But their efforts to recall Mayor Pete Ramirez, Mayor Pro Tem Ron Beilke and Councilman David Armenta hit a snag Tuesday when group leaders received a certified letter from the city clerk’s office asking that minor changes be made to petitions they plan to circulate.

That could delay for another two weeks the collection of signatures because recall supporters must re-submit the petitions for the city clerk’s approval.

Raul Murga, executive director of the Pico Rivera Community for Truth in Politics, served the three councilmen with recall papers after the Aug. 2 City Council meeting.

He said the recall was based on the three voting to hire an inexperienced city manager last December and voting to close the Pico Rivera Stables in Bicentennial Park earlier this year.

In their formal response to the recall, which will be part of the paperwork recall proponents must present to people whose signatures they are seeking, the three councilman chose to attack the backers of the recall.

“There is no basis for this recall other to settle personal grudges,” Beilke said in his response. “Two years ago I led a recall effort that included many of the same individuals now a part of this recall attempt.”

“It is ironic that yet another mean-spirited and unnecessary recall effort would be foisted upon the voters by a small group of angry gadflies,” Ramirez said in his response. “Our residents overwhelmingly agree and support the new direction at City Hall. We will not be intimidated in our efforts at turning this city around and significantly improving public safety, fiscal discipline, efficient delivery of services and resident satisfaction.”

“This latest recall effort by a disgruntled ‘Gang of 25’ malcontents is a thinly veiled attempt to overturn the positive results from the last council election and reverse course on the New Agenda for Progress in Pico Rivera that has already achieved significant success,” Armenta said.

Beilke referred to an attempted recall effort in 2004 that targeted Councilmen Gregory Salcido and Carlos Garcia and former Councilwoman Bea Proo after the three voted to give former City Manager Dennis Courtemarche a raise to keep him from leaving the city.

Armenta and Ramirez supported that recall effort, which failed to collect enough signatures to force a recall election. Beilke defeated Proo in the 2005 municipal election and within a month of his election voted with Armenta and Ramirez to fire Courtemarche, a move that cost the city $360,000 to pay off the remainder of Courtemarche’s contract.

Beilke, Armenta and Ramirez then hired Chuck Fuentes, who ran Beilke’s successful campaign for the council, as a consultant while a search for a new city manager was conducted.

Last December, Fuentes was hired as city manager even though he had no experience in municipal government and lacked a college degree.

Earlier this year, the current council anger members of the Pico Rivera Community for Truth in Politics by voting to close the stables at Bicentennial Park, forcing the owners of the horses housed there to find new places for their animals.

Although most of the horse owners were not residents of the city, the citizens group sided with them and have appeared at most City Council meetings this year, criticizing the current council leadership.

This is the seventh time since 1993 that recall papers have been served against members of the City Council here. Only one effort ever reached the ballot.In 1997 Councilmen John Chavez and Gil De La Rosa were recalled by voters. Ramirez and Garcia were elected at that time to fill their spots on the council.

Once the city clerk approves the recall papers, Murga’s group will have 120 days to gather signatures of registered voters in the city. Murga said earlier this month it would probably take 5,500 signatures against each councilman to place the issue on the ballot.

Complicating the process is the fact that Ramirez is up for re-election next March, along with Salcido and Garcia. State law prevents an elected official from being recalled within six months of his or her re-election date.

Compliments of Los Angeles Wave (City News Service)
On the Net: http://www.wavenewspapers.com/

City manager job anyone?

HELP wanted ad:
"City Manager of Pico Rivera, California, population 67,000. Salary up to $145,000 per year. Last two city managers fired. City council split 3-2. Recall attempt under way. City politics unstable."

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

We're not trying to be funny. We're simply emphasizing a point that Pico Rivera has made self-evident during the past couple of years.

Who now would want to be the city manager of Pico Rivera? Certainly, the more qualified candidates will avoid this city like the plague as a place for advancing their careers.

What can we possibly say in an editorial that could be helpful; something other than taking a side and contributing to the destructive political polarization of Pico Rivera?

We can say to all of Pico Rivera, you need to right your ship of state and you really should have done it without firing City Manager Chuck Fuentes. Still, we were not in favor of the hiring of Fuentes, primarily due to his close alliance with Mayor Pro Tem Ron Beilke in the city council campaign of 2005.

But, once Fuentes was seated in a 3-2 vote, to fire him nine months later seemed like an unfair sampling of his abilities. Especially, if Beilke was correct when he said the city budget was $5 million better off during Fuentes' brief tenure.

The only thing that really changed in that nine months was the council majority. Councilman and former Mayor David Armenta left the majority of Pete Ramirez and Beilke, which had hired Fuentes. Armenta joined with councilmen Gregory Salcido and Carlos Garcia to form a new majority against retaining Fuentes in his position as city manager.

One thing the firing of Fuentes may have done is take the steam out of an effort to recall Ramirez, Beilke and Armenta, because they had opposed the hiring of Fuentes in the first place.

Fuentes was hired to replace veteran City Manager Dennis Courtemarche. Courtemarche's was fired after the March 2005 election when Beilke was elected and replaced longtime Councilwoman Beatrice Proo. At the center of the effort to oust Proo and to create a new council majority was outrage that Courtemarche had been given a $40,000 per year raise, bringing his annual salary to $200,000.

After watching all of this play out over the years, we have come to believe that Pico Rivera is one of those cities that somehow manages to get some things done despite its never-ending meaningless political machinations that most of its populace tunes out.

The only ones who can continue playing that game are those whose lives center around the endless bickering and little else and those hearty souls who believe they can make a difference.

And, you know what? The latter group does make a difference, for the better, but the game-players, the bickerers, the malcontents, some of the gadflies come very close at times to ruining it for everyone else.

All of you who have an investment of homes and businesses in Pico Rivera would serve yourselves well to take back your city from those whose interests are mainly self-serving.

Pico Rivera City Manager Update
(September 21, 2006 3:11 PM)

Although speakers at last night's city council meeting attempted to give glowing reports of the city manager's accomplishments, in the end, the blotched and unwarranted closing of the Pico Rivera Stables and the lack of experience and education lead to the dismissal of Charles P.Fuentes as the City Manager of Pico Rivera.

With Beilke and Ramirez voting as Fuentes' allies, the majority of Armenta, Garcia and Salcido voted to oust the former Chief of Staff of Grace Napolitano. This came after eight months of protest from the members of CTIP and disappointed residents. From the very beginning, the process to hire a City Manager was flawed. Fuentes, Beilke's campaign manager and campaign contributor, was never qualified for the position of running a city and it was only Beilke's incessant campaigning that convinced the other four councilmen to vote in favor of hiring Fuentes.

Now the only remaining question is - Will the City Council of Pico Rivera pursue an honest, diligent, and unbiased hiring process that will provide our city with the best possible candidate to become our new City Manager.

Raul Murga
Pico Rivera
webmaster@pr-ctip.org

Cities' Eminent Domain in Peril

Even if voters in November reject Proposition 90, an initiative that would bar governments from confiscating private property for redevelopment projects, local redevelopment agencies face new, tighter restrictions if pending legislation is signed into law by the governor.
Four bills that seek to limit the power of eminent domain, which allows local governments to buy up private property to make way for revitalization projects, already have passed through the state Legislature, with strong bi-partisan support.
The four bills now are on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger's desk awaiting his signature or veto. On Monday, the governor's office declined to say whether he will sign or veto the bills. The governor has taken no position on the legislation, his office said.
The bills all would create more legal hoops cities would have to go through before using eminent domain or when expanding or creating new redevelopment areas.
"What I'm trying to do is make the redevelopment and eminent domain process more transparent to the average property owner, be they residential or commercial," said state Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, author of three of the bills.
One of Kehoe's bills, SB 53, would require redevelopment agencies to spell out when, where and how they will use eminent domain. It also requires that the agencies re-designate an area as still blighted before extending the life of a redevelopment area.
But city redevelopment officials, not surprisingly, say the current efforts to change existing redevelopment formulas will only make it harder to revitalize blighted areas.
"I sense there's a lot of knee-jerk reaction to a case that was an East Coast case that had no relevance in California," said Jeff Collier, Whittier's community development director. "I see the potential for somewhat hamstringing the City Council from having the flexibility to do a project or amend a project area when an opportunity may arise in the future."
Had it been the law, Kehoe's SB 53 could have held up Whittier's recent ruling to reinstate, for an additional 12 years, eminent domain in the lower Uptown area, Collier said. Had that been the case, the city would have had to pay as much as $50,000 for a new study to determine whether eminent domain should be reinstated there, he said.
That would be an unnecessary waste of time and money, he added.
"It's pretty fair to say at least in Whittier's case that we haven't seen any significant change in the area," said Collier.
Another pending bill by Kehoe, SB 1206, the most controversial of the four, tightens the definition of "blight," which cities must establish in order to create a new redevelopment area.
John Shirey, executive director of the California Redevelopment Association, said the bill would make it "much more difficult" to create new redevelopment project areas.
The bill's language eliminates some of the earlier definitions of "blight." Cities would have to list special factors that prove a potential redevelopment area contained no public improvements, or that it is not experiencing any normal investment activities one might to find in non-blighted areas.
SB 1206, also by Kehoe, makes it easier for residents to challenge a redevelopment project. It gives residents more time - 90 days, instead of the current 30 - in which to gather signatures for a voter referendum.
A fourth eminent domain bill, SB 1210 by Sen. Tom Torlakson, D-Concord, would make it harder to government agencies to gain quick possession of private property through the use of eminent domain. It also requires agencies to pay up to $5,000 for an independent appraisal.
Pico Rivera City Manager Chuck Fuentes objects to Torlakson's bill.
"Unfortunately, this bill makes it more time-consuming and more difficult for redevelopment agencies to obtain orders of prejudgment possession," Fuentes said.
"While the Pico Rivera Redevelopment Agency has no current plans to exercise its power of eminent domain, this bill will place further burdens on that power, should the agency decide to use it."

By Mike Sprague, Staff Writer
Email: mike.sprague@sgvn.com
Phone: 562.698.0955, Ext. 3022