The Lompoc City Council agreed to hold a meeting to evaluate City Manager Patrick Wiemiller and council members in an attempt to improve communication after months of public feuding.
“I think it’s important that the council can open lines of communication as a whole,” Councilmember Jim Mosby told the Sun.
At its Sept. 19 meeting, the council directed city staff to schedule an internal workshop in closed session for Tuesday, Oct. 3. Although the Brown Act requires the city to label the meeting on the agenda as a performance evaluation for the city manager, council members took great pains to clarify that the meeting would only be a discussion and a forum to iron out differences.
“I’m seeing this as an opportunity for us to go home and do our homework, read through the council handbook, and each be prepared to have questions for our legal counsel about our boundaries and expectations,” Councilmember Jenelle Osborne said, adding that the meeting would be a chance to “have a frank discussion with our city manager about where we have overstepped, and how we can communicate better.”
Councilmember Dirk Starbuck brought forward the motion as a follow-up to the council’s Sept. 5 meeting, when council members Victor Vega and Jim Mosby brought forward motions to review Wiemiller for possible disciplinary action or termination.
“The last meeting we had, I asked Councilmember Vega if he would bring back a discussion on this meeting,” Starbuck said. “I spent a lot of time thinking about this because I think there was a lot of overreaction and reactions, and we are seeing the repercussions from that right now.”
Starbuck added that he would like to see the council come to a consensus to have an employee performance discussion and council communication, emphasizing the latter.
He said that having such differing opinions was not necessarily a sign of dysfunction.
“Somebody once told me that if we are all thinking the same, somebody isn’t thinking, and that was pretty obvious there was a lot of thinking happening here,” he said, referring to the city’s months-long struggle to pass its biennial budget and past arguments between council members and Wiemiller.
Mayor Bob Lingl asked Starbuck how this meeting would be any different than the past two reviews the council conducted on Wiemiller.
“This is how I would like it listed on the agenda,” Starbuck responded, “it’s not disciplinary, it’s not termination, but I think that it might be good to discuss some of our things out of public in closed session.”
Starbuck said he had already met with Wiemiller one-on-one and noted that other council members had most likely done the same.
“I think as a group, it would be good for us to sit down and talk to Mr. Wiemiller,” he said.
Vega confirmed that he also spoke to the city manager and, while not mentioning it directly, seemed to respond to the 20 or so people who spoke during public comment criticizing council members’ recent behavior.
“I think maybe some of the direction got a little bit heated, but I think in the long run, I think these were difficult subjects to move on,” he said. “Many of the people, people that are out there judging us, and listening to us, yes, your expectations are absolutely correct. We should be professional. We should be decent. We should be able to at least talk things out.”
Vega then said he had an issue with former City Council members publicly criticizing the council and challenged them to get back into politics.
“These previous councilors saying, ‘Hey, we would do things differently,’ I applaud you, [but] man, run again, come over here and do it again—show us if you’re going to do this,” Vega said. “But until you’re in our shoes, it’s very difficult to come up here and do this job and do the amount of homework that was necessary to even come up with the questions … you know it’s very hard to change the flow of the river when you come up with these hard questions.”
Vega added that he believes the council was moving in the right direction to be more professional.
“Sometimes we say things we don’t mean or seem to take things out of context,” he said. “Mr. Wiemiller is a city employee, and we’re trying to do the best job for the people that elected us.”
Vega then asked Wiemiller to make a statement in regard to the Aug. 22 council meeting where the city manager refused to answer a question from Vega. That August exchange ultimately led to Vega and Mosby’s Sept. 5 call for Wiemiller’s review and possible termination.
At the Sept. 19 meeting, Wiemiller reiterated his stance, echoing his public apology to councilmembers at the Sept. 5 meeting.
“Clearly the City Council—and at any time the vote of the majority of the City Council—is what sets policy and guides governance and provides ultimate administration of the city,” he said. “You [the council] in turn implement your policies through your city manager.”
Wiemiller added that he hoped his statement helped clear any doubt about his understanding that the council holds the “ultimate authority over city affairs,” and then read a provision from his city manager’s contract that matched his statement nearly verbatim.
The request for review went forward.
Lingl reminded the council they’ve had open discussions regarding Wiemiller at council meetings.
“He’s answered questions, we’ve filled out forms,” he said, “I just, for the life of me, I don’t know what this is going to do other than have another round to possibly satisfy one or two individuals. I just don’t understand this. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same result.”
Starbuck argued that the closed-session discussion would be different.
“This isn’t the same thing. I will just say, I’ve talked to Mr. Wiemiller about a couple of ideas and thoughts, and I didn’t want to bring them out in the public,” he said. “Mr. Wiemiller is aware of what my thoughts are, and it’s not making the same mistake, it’s a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”
Osborne then expressed her approval: “As long as this is part of us evaluating ourselves, and how we communicate with each other, as well as our city manager, I can support this.”
Staff Writer Spencer Cole can be reached at scole@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 28 – Oct 5, 2017.