Come November, Seal Beach voters will decide if the city would be better off without the runoff election system called for in the City Charter.
On Tuesday, May 29, a discussion among divided council members ended with a decision to place the runoff issue, and several other proposed changes to the City Charter, on the November ballot.
Voters will also decide if city council members should be banned from working as Seal Beach department heads for three years, among other changes to the City Charter.
City Attorney Quinn Barrow said these issues would be separate items on the ballot.
Runoff issue
City staff recommended changing the City Charter to eliminate the requirement that a candidate for City Council win 50 percent of the vote plus one to take a council seat.
If the candidate with the most votes fails to win 50 percent plus one, the election goes into a runoff.
Councilman David Sloan said the issue should go to the voters.
Councilman Gordon Shanks and Councilman Gary Miller both opposed eliminating the runoff.
“Not having a runoff is in my mind less democratic,” Shanks said.
Shanks said that you could have five or six candidates running for an office and have one win with less than 30 percent of the vote under a winner-take-all system.
Deaton, however, said it was democratic to let voters decide. Deaton talked about her own runoff battle for the District 1 council seat after she received 49.6 percent of the votes cast in the original election. She said voters she spoke with “thought it was the most ridiculous expenditure for half a percentage point.”
According to the staff report by City Clerk Linda Devine, the District 1 runoff cost Seal Beach $14,645.
Resident Seth Eaker said there were better things to spend money on than runoffs.
Deaton also said very few people voted in the runoff election. She said it was difficult to have a runoff after Christmas.
Miller said he agreed with Shanks.
Mayor Michael Levitt said he preferred eliminating the runoff.
Patty Campbell of College Park East said the winner should be the one who gets 50 percent plus one. Campbell said one way to reduce the expense would be to do a mail-in ballot.
She said eliminating the runoff was a “chintzy” way out of an election. She suggested leaving the City Charter alone.
Campbell suggested returning to holding City Council elections in March.
No tie-breaker
Council members, however, apparently did not care for the staff proposal to add a tie-breaking procedure in the City Charter in the event two candidates for office receive the same number of votes.
“I really have a problem with this,” Deaton said.
In response to questions from council members, City Attorney Barrow said staff could look at what other cities were doing to address tie votes in elections.
Barrow said the council could wait until after the election to deal with the issue.
Levitt said if the council waited until a tie vote, someone would say the tie-breaker procedure wasn’t fair.
Barrow said the council could pass a resolution prior to the election rather than ask voters to change the City Charter.
Revolving door
The City Charter currently forbids a former Seal Beach council member from taking a job as the city manager for one year after leaving office.
Staff proposed expanding the ban to include prohibiting council members from becoming paid department heads.
The proposed Charter change would also expand the ban from one year to three. Council members agreed to place the issue on the November ballot.
“I just don’t want the City Council to become a stepping stone to a paid position,” Deaton said.
Barrow said banning former council members from working for the city for three years would knock them out of the next election cycle.
Resident Seth Eaker said a three-year ban on taking a staff position should be the minimum. “I would be more comfortable with five years,” Eaker said.
“I think that the idea of moving from a council position to a staff position is ripe for potential abuse,” Eaker said.
Other Charter issues
Currently, the city manager’s duties are listed in the City Charter.
Staff suggested those duties should be placed in the Municipal Code instead. Council members agreed.
Deaton said leaving the city manager’s duties in the Charter meant they could only be changed every two years.
City Manager Jill Ingram said that, according to the charter, she was to attend every commission and committee meeting—a requirement that would have her at meetings seven nights a week. She also said that, according to the charter, she was the head of the finance department.
Voters will also decide if the section of the Charter governing the Board of Education should be eliminated, seeing as Seal Beach is now part of the Los Alamitos Unified School District and the council has no authority over the school board in real life.
Yet another issue voters will decide is the requirement that the council take 21 days to call an election. It no longer takes the city that long to determine election results.
Commendation
That same night, the council issued a commendation to Seal Beach Police Cpl. Mariana Martinez for her service to the families of the victims of the Salon Meritage shootings of 2011.
Interim Chief Robert Luman read the commendation. Martinez was assigned to be the department’s liason to the families of the victims, both living and dead, who were killed during what has been called the largest mass murder in Orange County history last October.
According to the commendation, Martinez assisted families with the logistics of arranging respectful memorial services and burials for the victims.
Martinez has also been the single contact for the families as the prosecution of the case moves forward.
Mayor Michael Levitt then presented the commendation to Cpl. Martinez.
According to the commendation, Martinez was recently named an award winner for the California Peace Officers Association Award of Distinction and was recognized by Crime Survivors, an advocacy group for crime victims.
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