City Council - Special Meeting

Yeah. Welcome to the Wednesday, May 13 special council meeting. Roll call please. Yes. Mayor Gillman. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Main. Here. Council Member Rule.

Here.

Council Member Lang. Here. Council Member Whitman. Yeah. And would you lead us in the pledge, please? Of course. Thanks. One rise. Ready to begin. Thank you all for making this special meeting. An approval of the agenda? Any objections to the agenda? Nope. Okay. And then before we go into the closed session, Renee, please come up. Thank you.

Good afternoon. It's the end of evening. Renee Roth. I'm not exactly sure what you're going to be discussing today because I have I'm not following a lot of this anymore. But I just want to let you know that I have been following it.

And back in March 2025, a group of us wrote a letter, and it was in the paper. Council member Whitman must recuse himself due to glaring conflict of interest. Sussa Francina, signed that letter as well as some other members of council from the past. It was dated 03/14/2025. And we said that we he needed to recuse himself because he is not an impartial body or person who, is going to be making decisions regarding what happens in the disposition of this case at, the city.

So we called on him to recuse himself. He is personally and professionally invested in the outcome. First, mister Whitman filed a sworn declaration in support of the seven plaintiffs suing council member rule. The superior court judge found he misrepresented the facts in the case. 21 out of 22 objections to his statements.

So this is a glaring thing that you really need to look at. You do not have an impartial player who is sitting right here on your dais here ready to make judgments about this case and how it impacts impacts the council going forward. You now have to new legal counsel, and I'm very happy that you have new legal counsel who can help to hopefully make clear that the code of conduct for California law says personal involvement compromises objectivity, and it requires recusal. If rule must step aside from closed sessions regarding this, that same standard must apply to mister Whitman. No exceptions.

I urge the new legal counsel to act. Whitman should be advised by counsel to recuse himself now before this counsel takes another vote that could be rendered void as a matter of law because you're trying to decide on things against rule when you've got a player on your team who is an active player.

Thank you. Thanks for being here. Anybody online? No, mayor. Okay. We will adjourn to the closed session. Report out please, mister Mehrotz. Thank you.

Yes, the city has come out of closed session and there are no reportable items out of closed session.

And with that we are adjourned. Thank you.