City Council Interview Process Begins Thursday Without Mayor

The City Council of Rancho Santa Margarita will hold a special meeting on Thursday to begin interviewing candidates to fill the council seat vacated by Gary Thompson last month.

In attendance will be Councilman Jesse Petrilla, who will be home in RSM as part of a four-day pass from training with the California Army National Guard in Fort Knox, KY, where he is attending tank school. Petrilla hasn’t attended a council meeting since early February.

However, the meeting apparently will not include Mayor Tony Beall, who boarded a flight Monday evening for Hawaii to finalize a business deal. Beall will return Saturday night. Petrilla will leave Sunday.

Although the agenda for the 6 p.m. meeting won’t be finalized until Tuesday at earliest, it is expected that it will be limited to interviewing candidates. The plan is to interview six applicants Thursday and the remaining applicants April 13 during a regularly scheduled council meeting.

Beall will be reduced to submitting a list of questions for City Manager Steve Hayman to ask on his behalf, then watching video of the answers.

"The decision to call a special meeting that excludes the mayor from interviewing half of the individuals seeking appointment to the council compromises the integrity of the entire process and creates suspicion and distrust," Beall said. "This political ploy is wrong.

"[This] is one of the most important decisions this council will make. The process should be beyond reproach and fair and equal to every applicant. This is not. Every applicant should be entitled to a fair and equal process and stand before the same review panel. How would any applicant want to be reviewed solely on videotape?"

Councilman Jerry Holloway admitted, "I don't see this as a win-win. People are going to be unhappy. If we interviewed everyone on the 13th and excluded Jesse, people would be unhappy. If we split it down the middle, people would be unhappy.”

Beall is definitely among the unhappy. Although the mayor could have called a special meeting at his discretion, Beall was not in favor of doing so. He instead preferred to conduct interviews at the regular meeting April 13 rather than meet on a weeknight during spring break.

However, Holloway made the request Monday morning, and by Monday afternoon both Petrilla and Steve Baric had agreed, providing the necessary majority for a special meeting to take place.

“It’s not fair to the applicants who deserve a fair and equal process, it’s not fair to the residents who are given very little notice, and it’s not fair to the mayor, who will be out of state on business,” said Beall, who could theoretically call another special meeting upon his return to interview candidates directly. “Calling a hasty meeting effectively excludes the mayor from the process. I’m shocked and equally disappointed by their decision.”

Holloway, who personally selected 10 candidates from a field of 21 applicants to interview, said he expects that interviewing 12 candidates will be time-consuming and can’t be done at the regularly scheduled April 13 meeting, especially if there’s a desire to question candidates for any substantial duration.

He also said that “no one council member is more important than another in the process.”

“Clearly, this is a tough situation,” said Holloway, who has been on the council since 2002. “We’re trying to create a process that is fair to everyone. … We won’t have 100 percent agreement that this is the best process. It is the best process for the parameters that we have.”

Holloway said he expects that it will take three meetings to select the new council member, who must be in place by May 2. He said this plan would allow all four council members to participate face to face—at least to some extent—in the interview process. Otherwise, Petrilla—called away in February by his military commitment after only four council meetings—might be excluded if his schedule does not allow him to teleconference. Petrilla has indicated to the city staff that April 7-9 are the only days he will be available through April 25.

“Excluding Petrilla completely, not taking advantage of his being here, would not be reasonable,” Holloway said. “I don’t feel like we’re excluding anyone. … This is a tough situation because of the parameters we’ve been given. We’re trying to make the best out of a difficult situation.”

The interviews will be videotaped and made available to the councilmen who miss the meeting.