Petrilla Gets a Reprieve, and Vote of Confidence

A city council in flux had an emergency meeting on Friday, and the three of them played nice with each other. They also played nice with their other colleague, Jesse Petrilla, and reconsidered whether his seat on the dais should be replaced until he returns June 17 from training with the California National Guard.

The fifth council member's seat, Gary Thompson's, was empty. Thompson resigned Thursday citing family and business issues, leaving Rancho Santa Margarita with three councilmen.

It was an extraordinary turnabout for Petrilla, 27, the youngest councilman in city history. Mayor Tony Beall said that as a goodwill gesture, he would even recommend Petrilla replace Thompson as the city's mayor pro tem.

They will meet again on Wednesday and hear city and staff reports on how to move forward to permanently replace Thompson. For the moment, though, they aren't going to replace Petrilla, but will instead exhaust every opportunity for him to teleconference—perhaps at a public place off the Fort Knox military base.

At the Feb. 23 meeting, Beall, Holloway and Thompson voted to replace Petrilla with Baric dissenting. That was one of the dominoes that fell in a media firestorm played out in the Orange County Register.

Beall also called for unity, and Baric told the approximate 35 onlookers that his colleagues were, indeed, patriotic and supportive of the military. That was in the wake of articles written by Register columnist Frank Mickadeit that portrayed the move political suicide and unpatriotic because they had voted to replace Petrilla while he was in training. They had done so because the Army wouldn't make any assurances that Petrilla could meet via teleconference and still comply with the Brown Act for a series of six council meetings as well as budget development meetings.

Baric, referred to by Mickadeit as his "workout partner" was a common thread in the articles while Beall and Jerry Holloway were not contacted. The columns essentially threatened the council members with a recall if the council made good on its decision to replace Petrilla, who was the leading vote-getter in the November election and who was four meetings into his civic career when his military orders changed.

That didn't seem to go over well with those who addressed the council. Larry McCook, who hopes to replace Thompson on the council, said "it's approaching yellow journalism, and I want to be on the record with that."

Beall, who nearly came to tears at one point describing his father and father-in-law in the military, said "some in the military have contacted us and are offended and took our actions as disrespectful. Based on the inflammatory information they were provided, I don't blame them. I believe the author—that was the intention."

The meeting Friday had a consistent tone, that the newspaper articles had been divisive and should stop, a sentiment that was almost universal from the large number of residents who spoke during the public comments portion of the meeting.

Praise was also heaped upon Thompson, the last original city councilman whose decision took everyone by surprise.

With the loss of Thompson, the remaining councilmen decided to revisit the idea of temporarily replacing Petrilla, and were in agreement that city staff should try to determine if Petrilla could participate in a meeting at his convenience to choose Thompson's replacement.

Petrilla, a 2nd lietenant, this week sent out a release from Fort Knox— where he is currently stationed in tank school—saying that "the Army has expressly stated that teleconferencing would be possible despite some statements made in council meetings, or in various media."

Although the city had not yet seen any evidence of that, Beall opted to give Petrilla "the benefit of the doubt" and explore the issue again.

Beall went even further, though, acknowledging that the issue had become uncommonly divisive and as a gesture of goodwill that he looked forward to nominating Petrilla to replace Thompson as the mayor pro tem, the council's second in command.

When asked if Petrilla was ready, Beall answered succinctly.

"Yes."