ABSTRACT: After the City Council meet for about three hours in closed session yesterday to discuss a "perforamce evaluation" of City Administrator Rich Guillen, City Attorney Don Freeman announced that “no action was taken.” However, "the city council will continue to discuss the matter next month," according to the news account. Mayor Sue McCloud declined comment when asked by Central Coast News Reporter Susanne Brunner.
Pop Up Video: Carmel City Council Discusses Sexual Harassment Allegations
Duration: 2:45
Carmel City Council Takes No Action Against City Administrator
KION CENTRAL COAST NEWS, August 24, 2010
NOTES:
Former City Council Member Mike Brown, Carmel resident Joyce Stevens and 2010 mayoral candidate Adam Moniz appear on the video with comments.
Most people who signed a petition addressed to the City Council of Carmel-by-the-Sea hoped for the removal of the city administrator, according to the news account.
ADDENDUM:
Carmel evaluates City Administrator Rich Guillen
Closed-door session to resume in September
By LARRY PARSONS Herald Staff Writer, 08/26/2010
Guillen’s performance discussed behind closed doors, challenged outside them.
By Robin Urevich, MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY, AUGUST 26, 2010
8 comments:
Embarassed and ashamed for the council. They dithered for three hours while the issue of Rich Guillen festers and festers. With the promise of more dithering when it is obvious what to do to all except 4/5 of the council and city attorney-fire Guillen. The only path out of this sorry mess is to first get rid of Rich Guillen.
As expected, no action taken. But at least the city council is going to continue discussing Rich Guillen's performance.
Which means members of the public must continue to communicate with council members (by email, letter, or by whatever means) to voice displeasure that Rich Guillen is still our City Administrator.
Here again is the contact information for the five council members that our faithful blogger had previously provided:
Council Member Karen Sharp
Tel: (831 624-5727 (Home)
E-Mail: karensharp@yahoo.com
Council Member Ken Talmage
Tel: (831) 624-2462 (Home)
E-Mail: kktalm@aol.com
Council Member Paula Hazdovac
Tel: (831) 625-2480 (Home)
E-Mail: pjhaz@hotmail.com
Mayor Sue McCloud
Home Tel: (831) 624-7310
E-Mail: cloud93921@aol.com
Council Member Jason Burnett
Tel: 831-624-3252 (Home)
Email: Jason@BurnettforCarmel.com
The council needs to hear from people that have not been heard from before but who share the same outrage as many of those who have been speaking up. Your emails do make a difference.
As in my previous post, Karen Sharp may be "on the fence" about Rich Guillen, and she needs a few nudges to do the right thing. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why it would be so hard for Karen to not see the problems with Rich. What would she do if she had a daughter working at city hall under Guillen? Karen should do the right thing to protect the city employees, and the women in particular.
I hope more public will respond and not give the council any breathing room until Rich Guillen is gone.
The city's defense attorneys from Kennedy, Archer & Harray (Giffon and Home) were present at the meeting and went into closed session with the council. Let us hope that along with Don Freeman, at some point they will help the city negotiate Rich's departure. Rich certainly doesn't have enough sense on his own that it would be appropriate to resign his position.
A disturbing thing about this ongoing scandal is the revelation of the blurring of boundaries between the job powers of the city administrator, city attorney, mayor and council members. For example, the city attorney told the public he had hired an investigator to do an investigation into vague, undefined things. Should not the hiring of an investigator be put on a council agenda for public input and a vote of the council? Another example, the mayor and council are to set policy, but we know the mayor interferes with the city administrator by making deals with her special interest groups in secret without it being known to the general public. And of course the city administrator rewarding Christie Miller and Heidi Burch with undeserved taxpayer monies because they went along with his inappripriate workplace behavior and other employees threatened or punished and forced to leave city employment. I think we need to clean house from top to bottom. It will take a long time, but we have no other choice because of the refusal of the mayor and council members to take responsibility for their errors and ommissions and overall bad job performances.
In Carmel, no action is done when immediate action should be taken and action is taken when no action should be taken. Clearly, at this late date, the council should not have to deliberate for 3 hours to realize that nothing less than a unanimous vote to fire Rich Guillen is the minimum action necessary. If the council does not fire Guillen, then the council will not be able to proceed with other matters with the confidence of their constituents.
The city council owes it to the public to have a vote on the dismissal of Rich Guillen. Then come 2012 election time voters will have a clear choice between candidates for open and transparent government versus candidates with a circle the wagon mentality around unacceptable conduct.
It seems clear that the city council led by Sue McCloud wants to drag this out until the public loses interest and the council can then ignore the issue. Will McCloud even allow another closed session to continue this? With the exception of Jason Burnett, all of the city council is responsible for letting Rich Guillen get away with his actions, not to mention his incompetence, so they must all wish this whole issue would go away. I encourage everyone who reads this to help keep the issue fresh in everybody's mind by writing a letter to the Herald expressing disgust with Guillen and the city council. Encourage others to do the same.
I see our hardworking mayor is at it again. First out of the bullpen promoting her propaganda was Matthew Little (her appointee to the HRB), second out of the bullpen promoting her keep Guillen propaganda was Dennis Levett, and now third out of the bullpen her former council member attack dog Gerard Rose promoting her “no fault” spin on the Jane Miller case. Who’s next warming up in the bullpen for their debut as number one in Paul Miller’s Carmel Pine Cone? Stay tuned. Except, if she wants everyone to now come together and forget about the entire mess because there are so many more important issues to tackle, if you believe that, then why did it take 3 hours in closed session last Tuesday with the promise of more hours in closed session going over the matter in September? You cannot have it both ways, except Sue McCloud has had it all ways in Carmel forever.
Did the city attorney write the current sexual harassment policy or did Don Freeman outsource that job too? No more than a scan of the policy provides readers with the obvious deficiency in the policy and that is, when the complainant is the HR Manager and the target of the complaint is the city administrator, the policy is silent. Who was responsible for approving a policy with such a glaring omission, I would like to know?
The CEO and editor of the Monterey County Weekly were certainly correct when they wrote there is ineptitude and incompetence in our city government. And not just with the mishandling of the Jane Miller matter.
Join the conversation at the Fire Rich Guillen Facebook page!
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