220124 1236 Fwd_ Partial Transcripts from 12_27 and 1_10 City Council MeetingsFrom:Scott Minikus
To:cpsminikus@ca.rr.com
Subject:Fwd: Partial Transcripts from 12/27 and 1/10 City Council Meetings
Date:Monday, January 24, 2022 12:35:55 PM
Attachments:011022 comment transcript.pdf
122721 comment transcript.pdf
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter Grant <pgrant@cypressca.org>
Date: Jan 24, 2022 7:19 AM
Subject: Partial Transcripts from 12/27 and 1/10 City Council Meetings
To: Peter Grant <pgrant@cypressca.org>
Cc:
Mayor and Council (via bcc),
A Council Member requested partial transcripts from the last two City Council meetings. As is our
rule, copies are being provided to all Council Members.
Peter Grant
City Manager
City of Cypress
Office 714-229-6680
Cellular 714-335-1685
pgrant@cypressca.org
CYPRESS CITY COUNCIL REGULAR MEETING
JANUARY 10, 2022
City Council comments before vote on Consent Calendar:
Morales: “I’ll take a motion from…”
Peat: “I’ll make a motion to approve the consent calendar.”
Morales: “Thank you, second…”
Marquez: “Can I make a comment?”
Morales: “Yes.”
Marquez: “So I just wanted to say Mr. Mayor, at the November 22 nd meeting I was
reporting my work to the community, and the City Manager was having a
discussion with two people in the audience. I’m asking for the cooperation
of my colleagues that when someone is speaking on the dais, to please
pay attention and refrain from communicating with ot hers. For me it was
distracting and it seemed you know, I was just a little bit upset about it,
and I just want whoever has the floor whether it’s a colleague or
community member, to have that persons attention. At the December 10th
meeting I did not attend because I had sustained an injury, and I asked
my colleagues not to meet in closed session without me. They chose to
meet again and it is not okay. I hope my colleagues don’t do this again. At
the start of the December 27th Council… At the December 27th meeting,
Council Member Minikus loudly raised his voice, and asked me two
questions in a bullying and harassing manner. This was not okay, as we
are supposed set an example of good behavior on the dais and in our
community.”
Morales: “[inaudible] Council Member Marquez, if I can get to a point of order here.
We’re working on the consent calendar. There will be an opportunity
towards the end of the meeting for Council Member remarks if you ’d like
to [inaudible] at that time.
Marquez: “Okay, I just wanted to say, on the consent calendar I will be voting no on
the approving of minutes.”
Morales: “Well, did you want to pull that item, so that we can speak directly to that
item?”
Marquez: “Yes. It was Item 3, and item 7, and item 8. I just wanted to ask some
questions about that.”
City Attorney: “and if I may clarify Mr Mayor and Council Member, did you just wish to
register a no vote on those items or actually pull them and have separate
discussions?”
Marquez: “I just wanted to have a little bit of a discussion and I wanted to make a
few comments about them.”
Morales: “Okay. So, items number 3, 7 and 8 will be pulled for now. I’ll go back to
Council Member Peat. Is that for…you’ll move the balance of [inaudible]?”
[Vote took place]
City Council comments during City Council Member Reports and Remarks:
Morales: “I’ll start with Council Member Peat.”
Peat: “[inaudible]”
Morales: “Thank you very much. Council Member Minikus?”
Minikus: “Nothing to report tonight, thank you.”
Morales: “Thank you. Council Member Marquez?”
Marquez: “Yes, thank you. I just wanted to say, mention at the start of the December
27th meeting Council Member Minikus loudly raised his voice and asked
me two questions and I felt was a, I was kind of shocked, bullying and
harassing manner. This was not okay as we are supposed set an example
of good behavior on the dais and in our community. I was surprised by
this behavior, as I’ve been kind to Council Member Minikus. I hope that I
will not experience this again. I also asked that Mayor Morales stop this
behavior when he sees it. When I ran for office I didn’t sign up to be treated
in a harassing manner by my colleagues. I had mentioned early in the
year…so they know I was bullied as a kid in 2nd grade at Damron
Elementary School. I never imagined that I would experience it as an adult
in front of the residents of my home town. Finally, at the January 10th
meeting on Friday, I had asked my colleagues to meet virtually tonight. I
live with and care for my elderly mother and I wanted to make sure she,
and our city employees, everybody in this room tonight and all of the ones
that are not here are protected from the COVID-19 omicron variant. For
me, it, this is a public safety issue. At our December 27th meeting I found
out three days later that someone in the room had been exposed to
COVID. I was stressed about whether I had passed along the virus to my
mother. On, and worried about running around to get tested. On Friday
my colleagues voted…this last Friday, I asked my colleagues to be able
to meet virtually. My colleagues voted no to have the meeting virtually. My
option was to go virtual from home, but I would have to publish my home
address on the meeting agenda, post the meeting on the front door and
invite the public into the house, if they wanted to participate. I said no due
to concerns about the safety of my mother and I. I did see on the agenda
that Mayor Pro Tem Hertz-Mallari who voted no to my request was given
the opportunity to have a virtual meeting here in City Hall in another room.
And when she inferred I was trying to get out of work, and was given the
option to work from the City Hall conference room tonight. And a less, here
I am in a less safe position… you know with my elderly mother at home. I
do see that Mayor Pro Tem Hertz-Mallari is here on the dais tonight, I’m
surprised to see that. But I trusted that I will not face these obstacles to
work safely on behalf of the residents of Cypress. I’m honored to serve
the residents of Cypress and will continue to fight to elevate their voices
and make them the focus of my service despite such obstacles. I also
wanted to say, respond to Mr. Mario Bica, to let him know that I have no
connection to the plaintiff or no relationship. I had no idea someone with
the last name of Marquez even works at that organization. Also, I just
wanted to, let Mr. Yerian know, we can have a phone call and I can try
and help answer your questions. I also want to report that I went to… there
is a family on Grenada Avenue in Maple Grove North Park area in the City
who had a fire in their garage this week. I want to thank our City Manager
for informing us about that information. I was able to go to their home on
Saturday, the Moses family, a really lovely couple. W e talked for an hour
and I just wanted to check in to see if they were okay, if they needed food
or anything, any assistance, and you know I just…you know that was
really helpful for having such a rough week, meeting such a lovely couple.
What else? I think that is it for right now and that’s it, thank you Mr… oh
wait one more thing. I had a productive meeting last week with Mayor
Morales and we spoke, and I recommended to him about an idea to have
a community advisory council that I would lead, and I look forward to
having more discussion about that issue with him and I want to thank him
for his time and adjusting his schedule to meet with me last week. Thank
you Mr. Mayor.”
Morales: “Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Hertz-Mallari.”
Hertz-Mallari: “Thank you Mr. Mayor. I wanted to share with the community that we had
a grand reopening of our library. Our library is open for service and all of
the operating hours are back to normal. The only thing that is on hold are
the in person programing, like the story times and such, but residents and
card holders from throughout the county can go in and check out books
and use the technology and the staff are there and excited to welcome
you all back. We had a great reopening ceremony, Assemblywoman
Sharon Quirk-Silva was there, Supervisor Katrina Foley was there, it was
just a wonderful day, so I appreciated being able to do that. I sit on the
Executive Committee for the Library Advisory Board for the County, and
we were really happy to see the culmination of the updates that have been
done to the building. In regards to the virtual meetings, we did have a
discussion on this on Friday, and in large part the reason that I did not
support that was because I think it’s really important that we are here so
that people can come address us in person. Its fine when people , when
folks call in, but we are here to really engage with you and to engage with
one another, and so the in person meetings are much more successful in
terms of being able to communicate clearly. In that meeting which we held
virtually we had all kinds of technical glitches and people were hard to
understand. And Council Member Marquez was correct, I was on the
original agenda to be in the conference room because on Monday I had
been exposed to COVID, so on Tuesday I contacted our City Manager
knowing that there are ways that we can participate remotely. You know
that’s part of the current operating, that’s not a COVID thing that’s a City
Council opportunity for all of us at any time. There are deadlines and
notices that have to be done so we put that in place right away in the event
that I would need to be working remotely and we never have to do it from
home we can do it from anywhere. So, I wanted to do it from the
conference room, the technology there is a little bit better, and I didn’t
really want to have a notice going up outside my house either, so I get
that. But there are ways around that and we just have to follow the
procedures that are in place so that if we don’t want to be here in person
we can talk to the City Manager and the City Clerk about what those
options are. W e just can’t do them at the last minute. So we have to plan
ahead. And fortunately I was able to be here in person so I didn’t have to
worry about it. Three negative COVID tests in the last, I don’t even know
how many days. So, all that to say I think that it’s important we are here
for you and until, you know, we are sending staff home to work virtually
and we’re on a shelter in place kind of order or something dramatic
happens, I think you… we owe you the opportunity to come and speak to
us in person and we owe our colleagues the opportunity to speak in
person because there are ways to operate remotely if we need to. We just
need to be availing ourselves of that. And thank you very much for
everyone that’s here in person. It’s a long night for all of you , but your
voices matter. That’s all I have.”
Morales: “Thank you.”
Marquez: [Inaudible]
Morales: “Council Woman Marquez.”
Marquez: “Thank you Mr. Mayor, I just wanted to say my wanting to have this meeting
virtually has nothing to do with me not being committed to my community. I
love seeing everyone here and I would love to have people here all the time
but right now the variant is spreading like wild fire, our hospitals are full and
I think public safety is key. I mean I just I want everybody… all the city staff
and everybody works so hard they have families they go home to and I don’t
want something to happen. I don’t want to lose a staff or a loved one , a
family, somebody’s family member so that is my reasoning. Thank you so
much.”
Morales: “Thank you. Let me just summarize and say that part of our staff working
hard is putting these meetings together, and as anyone can see on camera,
and certainly those who are here present, we are socially distanced, we are
meeting all of the guidelines whether it be by the CDC and certainly the
County of Orange. There are a lot of those things that can happen and could
happen, should happen, might happen. I know that our staff certainly goes
a long way to doing a lot of the things to ensure our safety and the safety of
the community. I would just… I just wrote down two words and for me
that…timeliness and communication. Council Member Marquez you
brought up a number of issues regarding Council Member Minikus and I had
already made that clear to you that I did in fact did speak to him.
Communication goes both ways. Remember the community brought up
having heard this particular meeting and it did sound like she said that there
was tension. As human beings we are going to disagree and yes, we would
always hope that we always conduct ourselves as adults. The reality is there
are times emotions are going to be there. I for one would always hope that
we would address differences with each other, not out in public. I really don’t
want to rehash all of what you and I talked about. You know I understand
you…cited the one… Mr…Council Member Minikus’ comments, and like I
said I spoke to him about that…”
Marquez: “Thank you.”
Morales: ”…but I also pointed out that the comments you made to Councilman Peat
and bringing up his wife I thought were most inappropriate. Your response
was that “I’m entitled to my opinion”. Everybody’s entitled to an opinion, but
I think the manner in which we do that, the professionalism, and the
empathy and certainly the reasonableness in which you cited that. And
again, I don’t want to have to go through all of this. You know you had a
member of the community site your attention to detail. You know, just
tonight, this apparently was so important to you, but you left your notes at
home. Mayor Pro Tem was provided, I mean was prepared and presented
that to you. I just… we are always trying to conduct ourselves. We are
always there for the public. We are here as your elected officials. I would
just hope that when you have an issue that we do not draw it out and that
we see each other face to face with those issues. So, as a member of the
public did bring out, we do attend to the business of the City. That is what
we were elected for. With that I will end my comments for tonight…Mr. City
Attorney, any comments?”
City Attorney: “No comments this evening. Thank you Mayor.”
Morales: “Thank you. Mr. City Manager?”
City Manager: “Nothing from me Mr. Mayor.”
Morales: “Thank you.”
Marquez: “I just have one more comment… When I mentioned Mayor Peats wife I
was just stating a fact not an opinion. Thank you.”
Peat: “Excuse me that is not a fact. You can’t make a statement about my wife
and a fact about something that hasn’t happened…she… you never spoke
to her, you never talked with her, I don’t know how you assert that she’s
running for City Council. How do you make a statement about my wife doing
something when you’ve never spoken with her? And how dare you bring my
family into this.”
Morales: “So…”
Marquez: “I was stating a fact about…”
Peat: “You were not stating a fact, you were stating an opinion.”
Marquez: “I was stating a fact about the bias on the ad hoc committee. I was just
stating...”
Morales: “So Council Member Marquez as I’ve already recommended…”
Marquez: “[inaudible] no intention of making anybody upset.”
Morales: “The problem is you did and....”
Peat: “You have scolded us for the last several meetings. I am tired of being
scolded by you, in public. If you’ve got something to say to me say it…let’s
take care of our business in private and quit bringing it out here in the public.
I’m tired of this. We haven’t brought up all the stuff that we could about
what…how we feel about how you’re conducting yourself. What give s you
the right to sit here and criticize all of us? For things that happen in meetings
and none of us say anything about you. I’m tired of this. This needs to stop
now.”
Marquez: “I do not agree with you raising your voice at me.”
Morales: “Well, Council Member Marquez…all…I…we don’t like to have to do that
either, but again I really don’t want to air out all these things out. And to go
back to a word you’ve often, optics. The public or whomever it is, is seeing,
believing, understanding one side, not understanding another. I’m afraid
that if I even start to scratch the surface of all of this it’s going to reopen and
rehash everything that we talked about Thursday. And clearly in that
meeting there were a number of things that were discussed that you
yourself weren’t doing. So, my thought is to let’s move forward. That was
what our agreement was. How you handle your business and your relations
with Council Member Peat, Council Member Minikus, and Mayor Pro Tem
Hertz-Mallari is your decision, but we were all elected to do a job. To be the
best professionals that we can at it and certainly this is not helping. So, I will
close this meeting.”
CYPRESS CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING
DECEMBER 27, 2021
City Council comments prior to New Business item:
Morales: “I just saw the City Manager’s email from earlier today at 4:06 p.m. in
advisement or notification that this meeting had not been properly posted
on the City’s website, which of course should have been done. So Mr. City
Manager I’m going to preempt you just a little bit and we’ll take it to a vote
if”
City Manager: “Hang on a second Mr. Mayor, that is, Mr. Mayor I’m sorry to interrupt you
that is not correct. There was no issue with posting the meeting. That was
a concern that Council Member Marquez expressed. I informed her as to
the fact that there was no Brown Act violation and provided her options if
she sought to have the item continued. That’s not something that she
chose to do, I don’t know, unless that’s something she’s interested in now
that you need to take any action on.”
City Attorney: “And if I may Mr. Mayor, the legal requirement is posting it on your City
website, the Facebook is additional, but your City Manager is correct.
From a Brown Act standpoint there is no issue.
Morales: “Councilwoman Marquez did you want to address that”
Marquez: “I just have concerns that we didn’t do the same kind of * you know people
look on Facebook to find out information about the meeting. I also have
concerns that it is a holiday weekend that you know we’ve had a year of
twist and turns and families are exhausted and people are on vacation
right now so I feel like we’re doing this, you know not clearly and
transparently in the public eye. That’s a big concern to me.”
Minikus: “Then why didn’t you bring it up earlier when we proposed the date?”
Marquez: “I’m bringing it up right now.”
Minikus: “Why didn’t you propose it when we were talking about this?”
Marquez: “I was not here at the last meeting. I had an injury.”
Minikus: “You still could have brought it up.”
Marquez: “I, you know what, I… it’s a concern...”
Minikus: “[inaudible] weeks ago.”
Marquez: “[inaudible] November meeting we had during Thanksgiving when people
were on vacation. It’s really important to have this transparent for people
to see.”
Morales: “Let me... I’ll let you finish Council Member Marquez and then I’ll move
around to the others. Go ahead.”
Marquez: “No I just, that’s just a concern of mine. People are tired and we just had
Christmas and we got the documents on Friday night, on Christmas Eve
when it’s family time, so I just, that’s a concern to me. People are busy,
they have families, they, we just had a holiday and they need time to digest
this information, as well as myself.”
Morales: “Ok. Council Member Minikus, your thoughts.”
Minikus: “[inaudible] express my thoughts. This seems like an ambush, Frances.
You knew about this meeting weeks ago. You should have said something
then, period end of story. I’m done.”
Morales: “Council Member Peat.”
Peat: “I propose that we keep moving forward. We have time to look at this
material between now and our next council meeting on January 10th and
I believe that we still have opportunity to make updates to the presentation
because the first meeting isn’t until January 19 th so we have about a
month, three weeks, three weeks in which to read and digest the material
and make any changes that we’d like to. So I propose we continue.”
Morales: “Ok. Mayor Pro Tem Hertz.”
Hertz: “I think it’s a really important issue that I don’t want to you know delay
discussing as long as what Council Member Peat said is accurate, that
after our next council meeting we would still have the opportunity to make
adaptations to the presentation. Ok and our consultant that is in the room
is saying yes.”
Consultant: “Yes, that’s correct.”
Hertz: “Ok thank you very much. Yeah I don’t know, November and December
are very, very full and I understand your concerns Council Member
Marquez. But I understand we’re on a deadline as a result of the
challenge, and so I’d hate to put off at least a first enga gement with this
as long as this isn’t the only engagement. Alright.”
Morales: “Which it wouldn’t be.”
Hertz: “Alright.”
Morales: “Ok and my thoughts, the fact that it wasn’t posted on Facebook is not
something that we’re required to do. That’s more of the social media page,
whereas on the City’s official government website that’s where it was
posted, which is where it normally is. Additionally, documents for it were
on schedule, as they regularly are, online for people to access them. And
heaven knows I don’t need to hear about the local paper continuing again
if we should postpone this to hear about how we’ve had another secret
meeting without informing the public. And I think we have all the things
that we have that are in place and we are in a format I believe the public
has known. I get that it’s busy, Lord knows everyone here has gone
through it as well. And it isn’t anything that people in the City don’t already
know about. And for those that are very interested, as evident by some of
the community pages, the reality is they’re going to be looking so we’re
here to start providing that information to them. So with that, Mr. City
Attorney do we need to take a vote on that or?”
City Attorney: “No, unless there is some action to postpone it.”
Morales: “Ok, then we’ll continue with that. So Mr. City Manager, if you would
please. Thank you, my apologies.”
City Council comments during New Business item between staff report and consultant
presentation:
Hertz: “Just a follow on question on that, so the slides and the commentary are
going to be in all three languages?”
Consultant: [Provided response]
Hertz: “And the message is consistent at every single presentation because
every presentation includes the same pre-recorded informational
PowerPoint.”
Consultant: “Correct.”
Hertz: “Excellent.”
Consultant: [Provided additional information]
Hertz: “That’s excellent and I do want to thank you, the notes I provided you this
morning you incorporated immediately. So I appreciate how responsive
you’ve been.”
Consultant: [Provided additional information]
Morales: “Council Member Marquez, any more questions or thoughts.”
Marquez: “I was just concerned with the, when we talk about the PowerPoint, I saw
just like a slant in some of the information so I will be giving you some
information about the process that I saw just there was one fact that said
that we weren’t able to do an Asian district and we did have someone from
the, an attorney from the UCLA voting rights project who said that that was
possible. So I’ll [inaudible]”
Morales: “Anything else. Councilwoman Marquez anything else, you’re just still
reviewing?”
Marquez: “Oh I thought you were talking to somebody else. I’m ok at the moment.”
Morales: “Ok. Council Member Minikus.”
Minikus: “I’m good for right now, thank you.”
Morales: “Ok. I’d defer to Councilman Peat but he and I sat through all those. Do
you have anything else?”
Peat: “No.”
Morales: “And Mayor Pro Tem Hertz?”
Hertz: “No, I, is the next step actually going through the presentation? Ok.”
Consultant: [Provided response]
Morales: “Let’s, Mr. City Manager are you ready to go still or should I defer over to
the City Attorney for any input.”
City Manager: “Well it sounds like from your survey of the room Mr. Mayor that the
Council is comfortable with the schedule and the meeting format and what
I would suggest at this point is that you let Ms. Barrios walk you through
the presentation.”
City Attorney: “And just to, for clarification on the process if I may Mr. Mayor, to the extent
Council Members think of input for this pa rticular PowerPoint I know
Council Member Marquez suggested there’s some information she’d like
to see in there. You may want to consider what process you’d like to follow
in reviewing any input to this presentation and ultimately creating the final
work product.”
Morales: “So I’ll go back to Ms. Barrios for that. If we have any more input, what
would be a cut off in order for you guys to look at it, review it, implement it
and get it back to the rest of us for another review?”
Consultant: [provided response]
Morales: “Are you ok with that?”
Marquez: “Yeah”
Morales: “And that would give, you’d be able to have something back to the rest of
us by when to review it?”
Consultant: [provided response]
Morales: “So January 3rd, next Monday, end of business day by 5:00 p.m.”
Consultant: “Yes.”
Minikus: “Pete’s tossing something out.”
Morales: “Go ahead, sorry Mr. City Manager.”
City Manager: “That’s ok. What we’d do then is incorporate the feedback that we thought
was, using our professional judgement, consistent with the direction the
Council gave, note anything that was suggested but not included and
bring that back for final Council consideration on January 10th.”
Morales: “Ok, I like that. Is everybody good with that? Councilwoman Marquez?”
Marquez: “Yes.”
Morales: “Minikus?”
Minikus: “Yes.”
Morales: “Going just by last names now, sorry. Councilman Peat?”
Peat: “Yes.”
Morales: “And Mayor Pro Tem Hertz?”
Hertz: “Yes.”
Morales: “As well as with I. So if we’re all good with that at this point le t’s have Ms.
Barrios go ahead with her presentation. If you would please.”
City Council comments after vote:
Morales: “That is the… go ahead”
Hertz: “I just have a question, I’m just confused on the process so Council
Member Marquez if there is something that you were disagreeing with, we
probably should have heard that in the discussion.”
Marquez: “Yeah I just want to say since the beginning of the process this has been
very difficult for me to experience. Since we received the demand letter in
September to go to a district elections the entire, I feel that the entire
process has been disrespectful to the residents and taxpayers of our
community. The City has held eight closed session meetings over the past
three months with little or no feedback to the community, so I want to tell
the story. Because the City of Cypress did not comply with the California
Voting Rights Act like our school district did in 2018, the demand letter
cost the city $30,000. The majority of our council voted to and hel d eight
closed session meetings to discuss the issue. The one open meeting that
was held on the Monday of Thanksgiving week when community
members, was held on Thanksgiving week when community members
were busy with their families especially when dealing with the difficulties
that Covid-19 has thrown at us on a daily basis. The meeting was used to
select members of an ad hoc committee to take the issue to the
community. I feel that this is a tactic to halt having to comply with the law.
All of us in the room know that it’s important to comply with the law.
Members on this Council are worried about having to go to district
elections and possibly having their homes drawn into the same district
which means that current members and those will that run might not have
the opportunity next time. Someone will be forced to have to sit out the
next election. You know, why would members comply with the law when
they are benefitting from a system that works for them? Thus denying the
growing Asian-American and Latino communities, the Asian-American
community which is now at 37% and the Latino community which is now
at 33% according to the most recent census data numbers, from being
able to elect the candidate of their choice which is occurring today. I know
because as a professor I have studied this issue. I asked to serve on the
ad hoc committee, Mr. Minikus, I asked to serve on the ad hoc committee
because I felt it was important to have members with differing viewpoints
serve on the committee in order to present both sides of the issue. Mayor
Peat told me that I would not be able to serve on the committee since I
would face another election. He stated that the collective experience of he
and Mayor Morales would serve the committee well. However, Mayor Peat
failed to mention that he had a foot in the game as his wife Bonnie Peat
will run for City Council this coming year, therefore the ad hoc committee
has a bias and in my eyes this process is unfair. On December 13 th, I
asked Mayor Peat and the Council, in writing, to not meet about this issue
without me and they did. At the first meeting we held, Mayor Peat made a
big issue about everybody from the Council being in the room for such an
important issue that was going to face the future of our City. At that time
I had sustained an injury and apparently my views did not matter. In our
first redistricting meeting, Mayor Peat stated that all members should be
present in the room again when we discussed the issue because it was
important for the future of the City. Here we are today, it’s Christmas
break and the staff is on vacation, a well-deserved one they work very
hard. This meeting was not advertised as usual. The Facebook post was
distributed at 1:07 p.m. because of my complaint. You know, no offense
to the consultant who is doing very good work, but I received the
PowerPoint on Friday night, Christmas Eve. We should have had more
time to review this information. I do not think it’s right that we are approving
this without more of the public’s involvement. I have reviewed the contract
and I see that the plan needs, it’s not specific enough for how everything
in the meetings will be carried out. I would like to have more time to review
it since I received it on Thursday, the day before Christmas. I’m concerned
about the salaries for the staff in this contract, I think they’re very high.
The salary ranges from $200 for the CEO to $75 for the account intern,
that’s a lot of money for an intern to make. Moreover there are errors, I
see errors with the data listed here in the PowerPoint which will go to the
community. The U.S. census data needs to be updated and we’re paying
thousands of dollars for data and information and I’m hoping that will be
correct in the future and I know it will, thank you Arianna. It states that
demographers also cannot create a majority Asian district when we we re
told by attorney Sonni Waknin from the UCLA voting rights project that it
is possible. In her data, she had looked to the last, she had looked at the
last two [inaudible] from the congressional election one year ago and
found that voters, the Asian-American Latinos weren’t able to elect the
candidates of their choice. She had the data in her hands. You know I just
want to say that this is what people despise about elected officials, making
decisions when the community has not been made aware of a meeting.
We have a fiduciary responsibility to spend the money of taxpayers in
Cypress responsibly and I feel just really important about this. This is the
town where I grew up in, where my father who grew up in a segregated
southern California worked seven days a week to own a home in Cypress
and send six kids through college. You know I do not see that happening
with the current process. I do not see fairness. I ask for more time to review
this information and thank you.”
Morales: “So just to address a couple of your points. There’s no decision , no final
decision here being made. We still have all that time. You’re asking, in
essence you brought up Ms. Waknin, I’ll point out that back on November
22nd I reached out to her, she didn’t present any information or leave any
information that night which she could have easily have done. I reached
out to her on November 22nd, even providing a phone number, still haven’t
gotten a call back. So my concerns are the same as yours and I’m sure
that Ms. Barrios and all of those affiliated with the company are going to
provide that, especially since you’ve already put them on notice that
whatever information she has is inaccurate. Nothing here is finalized, so
I’m having a hard time understanding why you feel that everything is being
done secretively or inappropriately or without notice or without enough
time. I just have a hard time with that.”
Marquez: “Yeah well I just feel like we should comply with the law. Th e law is the
law and you know that you’re a former police officer.”
Minikus: “City Attorney are we violating anything?”
City Attorney: “Yeah the one thing I would just clarify is we have yet to find any evidence
that the City of Cypress has violated the law and any further discussion of
that is a closed session issue and I do have a little bit of a concern about
some of the statements that were made in closed session about, that were
referenced should stay in closed session. So I would just admonish the
Council that before we make statements, that we only know about during
that we only learned about in closed session, to the public because this is
a public meeting that that would not be appropriate. Again we have yet to
see any evidence of a violation of the CVRA.”
Morales: “I would add one other and that is, Councilwoman Marquez, just because
it’s a law doesn’t necessarily mean it’s necessarily accurate or correct. I
can tell you of a time that I was that officer here in Cypress, we had a
particular ordinance it was found to be illegal and we enforced it many
times over until that was [inaudible]. So exactly as the City Attorney said
there’s nothing here that says there’s a violation, it is something that we
are responding to a letter that was served to the City.”
Hertz: “And if I can just speak to it too because I asked the question, why did you
vote no. In general, after there’s a motion and a second then that’s where
the discussion happens and we talk about the pros and cons of whatever,
you know, the item is that’s on the table. So your no vote very much took
me by surprise because you didn’t express…”
Morales: “Any of those points”
Hertz: “… any of those points. That would’ve been, in my experience that
would’ve been the time. Right before a vote tha t’s when we have those
conversations, you know all of us, all five of us, our opinions matter and
we need to be speaking to each other when those points can make a
difference. And then in terms of you know, just in the future I just would
appreciate that, because if we’re having a difference of opinion that it’s in
discussion not after a vote or walking away going why did that person vote
no or why did they abstain I don’t get that. We need to be communicating
really clearly to each other in the moment, because clearly you had a lot
of well you know, you had a very articulate thought process there.”
Minikus: “Why would you do that? Why would you do all this? It’s like you
intentionally gaslight stuff and I don’t understand why.”
Marquez: “I have a right to an opinion.”
Minikus: “Right, you do absolutely, no doubt. But this is, this is that, that”
Morales: “[inaudible]… Ok so we have [inaudible]…”
Hertz: “Well we voted.”
Morales: “…we voted. No I meant [inaudible]. If there’s no other comments,
anything in closing Mr. City Manager?”
Hertz: [inaudible]