After five hours of what many called a “charade”, 6 San Jose City Council members decided to appoint former City Council rep. Margie Matthews to fill the vacant District 4 seat. Council Member Pierluigi Oliverio surprised many in the audience ready to object to the anti-democratic, unethical process of rushing through a pre-determined appointment with his own version of torture for his fellow council members to let them know just how peeved he was for ignoring the democratic process.
Oliverio asked each of the three candidates for the temporary appointment every question he could think of about every issue the city has ever worked on. (Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.) Nevertheless, the interview process took an enormous amount of time, and then Oliverio decided to abstain from the final vote, also in protest of the ramrod process of bringing in a hand-picked vote for incoming Mayor Sam Liccardo.
Three council members were absent from this circus…eh we mean, council meeting. Rocha, Campos and Kalra stayed away presumably because they couldn’t stomach the farce that was the “special meeting” to “consider” candidates for appointment.
The council meeting started off with dozens of community leaders and good government advocates ready to object to the whole process, but as the meeting waded along, the crowded thinned out, leaving a handful of die-hards to voice their concerns for a lack of open government.
So Margie Matthews will be sworn in to represent Council District 4 until next August. Matthews offered to “swear on a bible” that she wouldn’t run for the office in the special election to be held April 7. The filing deadline for that race is January 9, 4 days before Matthews is sworn in to the temporary job. So she still has time to change her mind, since there was no bible available.
On a side note, the council will be back for another special session December 30 to appoint an interim City Manager, as current CM Ed Shikada takes his leave of this messy excuse for city government. Happy Holidays.
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