Mayor’s Presence at Community Workshop Raises Questions

To the editor:

I was in attendance at the 4/7/11 Community Workshop. The presence of an elected official who has voiced opinions at city council meetings regarding the subject at hand could cause a problem of the community sensing process. Mayor Madrid was flitting about before the meeting conversing with several persons. I do not know what was said.

This all seems inconsistent with Fair Process Laws in that a future decision maker is attending and interacting with those whom are supposedly providing honest, fair and uncoached views for that same decision maker at a later date. And as stated in the 2006 City of La Mesa “Ethics in Public Service” Document from Liebert Cassidy Whitmore Law Corporation page 13 item 3: “There is a strong interest in the law to prohibit even an appearance of impropriety. This common law doctrine extends to non-economic conflicts, which means that a conflict (or even the mere appearance of one) that is not related to a financial interest may still be prohibited even though no money is at stake.”

I believe the Mayor’s attendance and interaction with attendees has compromised the fair, equal and impartial process in this instance. The following questions and thoughts came to my mind as a result of the Mayor’s attendance and activity at the meeting:

Were those people, talking with the Mayor, in attendance at his suggestion or invitation or advisement?

Was the Mayor “stacking” the crowd with certain viewpoints?

Was the Mayor aware there would be poling and recording of positions of the attendees and knowing he might use the results to make a decision?

While the poling was admitted by city staff to be non-scientific it nevertheless does have some impact with decision makers, otherwise why perform the activity? 

And maybe most troubling is that the Mayor, being the only elected official decision maker in attendance, was able to glean information unequally of other decision makers and before the official report was presented to the city council for action.

This places him in a unique position among decision makers that simply cannot be duplicated for the other decision makers. Having personally interacted with some and having had the opportunity to hear firsthand all the remarks from the citizens in attendance, he alone will be able to discuss issues from that perspective while the other decision makers will need to rely solely on the written report generated by city staff.

Not using this collected information should not be a particular problem, I have read that more meetings are scheduled. Prior to that time the council should really discuss and adopt a policy regarding the attendance of elected officials who will be making later decisions to city-sponsored or conducted meetings where data and information or public sensing is to be specifically collected for presentation to those same persons for later discussion and decisions. Either all elected officials should attend or all should stay at arm’s length from the process until completed and the report is presented to all of them at one time.

Scott Kidwell, La Mesa