Cord Bauer, San Clemente
You don’t need to look to Arizona or Florida to see election issues that have not been resolved. There are two very big issues still in front of San Clemente.
First, OC Weekly published an article on Nov. 2 that contained one lie after another about then-candidate Dan Bane. It was all false, and OC Weekly removed the story and apologized to Dan profusely. Here’s the problem—they confirmed that their single source came from within San Clemente City Hall, but the source is still not known.
This article was meant for one thing only—to keep Dan Bane off the council. That’s staggering, considering where the source came from. Was this discussed during the last city council meeting? No. Put on the agenda? No. All we know is that Councilmember Kathy Ward was one of the first to link to the article on social media, and one of the last to take it down. As of this writing, I don’t think she’s even apologized for her action/non-action.
Second, at the very end of the last city council meeting—when most of the audience had left—Mayor Tim Brown floated an idea to put in place severance package guidelines for executive employees of the city and to make sure that they become enacted before the new councilmembers are seated. Visit YouTube and enter “San Clemente City Council November 7th” and scroll to hour 1:52:40 to see the discussion.
Dan Bane and Laura Ferguson were elected to address some major issues within the city, especially regarding our city manager and assistant city manager. There’s been huge employee turnover, allegations of misuse of funds and abuse of employees. Now, in addition to their current severance package, it appears that Tim Brown, Chris Hamm and Kathy Ward may want to sweeten the deal.
Laura Ferguson pushed for a “sunshine ordinance” like our neighboring cities now have. Residents will know what’s going on, because it all happens in the open.
Until there are sunshine laws, please pay attention. Your votes and your tax dollars are being marginalized.
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