Vote on This!

For those who love trainwrecks...County Supervisor Janet Nguyen was elected to the Board of Supervisors by three votes (never say that your vote doesn't count) creating a vacancy on Garden Grove City Council. The debate on their City Council is one that we Newporters are VERY familiar with. Do they appoint or call for a Special Election. We all know what the Newport Beach City Council has done in the past four years, appointing four new City Council members who have ALL been "re-elected" in during subsequent elections. Now in Garden Grove, their City Council did something completely different than what had happened in Newport Beach, they couldn't come up with a consensus appointee. In their first swing at the appointment, they tried three different people, and each of the three couldn't get the sufficient amount for approval. I suppose none of the three (including a previously appointed City Council member who lost in his first attempt at election) weren't as strong, or as accomplished, or as "insider" as any of our four "automatic" appointees. Which makes it extremely curious how our City Council members can go through the huge amounts of applicants and somehow always come to a consensus as to who the appointee should be. All four times. No conflict, ever. Anyway, more fascinating is the 1990 Advisory measure the Garden Grove voters APPROVED which "recommends that council appoints the highest vote-getter who lost the most recent election." But that is just "advisory" and not legally binding, so Garden Grove voters were presented with this on their ballot, approved it, but the City Council isn't required to follow it, and Garden Grove has never followed it during since 1990, so why do they even waste time and taxpayer money on it. But it does bring up an interesting question. What do we do the next time a Newport Beach Council Member resigns? And would we want the second highest vote getter (Bob Schoonmaker came in second to Councilman Ed Selich in 2006) to automatically get in like Garden Grove voters advised in their city? In the soon-to-be vote happy Newport Beach future, I don't know. Last year, the City of Westminster, when a council member passed away, they kept the seat vacant until November, Garden Grove wants to appoint and Newport Beach appoints. And we all know how that turns out...