The Rancho Mirage City Council last week came to a consensus to hold off on figuring out how it wanted to fill the vacancy created by the sudden departure of Councilmember Meg Marker until after the Nov. 5 election.
“I think we may want to know the results of that election, or at least what the results are likely to be, so that we can take those results into account in determining the best way to fill this vacancy,” Mayor Steve Downs said at the Oct. 3 meeting. “So my suggestion is that we may want to delay our decision about how we fill this vacancy until after the Nov. 5 election.”
Some who spoke ahead of the council discussion questioned why there was no staff report to help inform the discussion while others urged the council not to appoint a new member, largely due to the fact that three of the four currently on the council were appointed.
“Three out of four appointments is simply inappropriate,” Wayne Avrashow, an attorney who is running for a seat on the council, said. “And my goodness, four out of five, as [City Attorney Colin] Kirkpatrick knows the legal expression, would shock the conscience, so I urge you [to hold a] vote-by-mail special election.”
Marker resigned at the Sept. 19 meeting over a policy that she said would “prevent any successful business person from sitting on this council.” Marker is the co-owner of Marker Broadcasting, which operates five local radio stations.
“After she left the chamber, the remaining four council members did the right thing for the people of the city of Rancho Mirage and for our business community, and unanimously approved that conflict of interest measure,” Downs said of Marker’s resignation at Thursday’s meeting. “Now I find it difficult to understand why anyone would object to compliance with high ethical standards, but former Councilmember Marker did.”
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Some local business owners who spoke at the meeting said the new policy forces them to make decisions that could impact the bottom line of their businesses.
“Resolution 2024 was and is a direct attack on small businesses and on businesses as a whole,” Gregory Goodman, owner of My Little Flower Shop and city council candidate, said. “It forces businesses to make a choice who they want to do business with, the city or the city council member, if they are a business owner, like former Councilmember Meg Marker.”
But Downs maintained his position that the policy was good for the city and would allow the council to protect the public from the “evils of conflict of interest.”
“Residents want to know that the city is taking reasonable steps to protect against the evils of conflicts of interest, and the Rancho Mirage business community wants the public to know that our businesses operate not only in full compliance with the law, but with the highest ethical standards,” he said. “So the bottom line is this, our residents want to spend their hard earned dollars with local businesses that they know operate with integrity.”
And while the council did not take a formal vote to table discussion about how to fill the vacancy, there was a general consensus of the council to place it on the agenda for the next regularly scheduled city council meeting, set for Nov. 7.
“I think that we’re talking about a very short period of time here,” Mayor Pro Tem Ted Weill, who is running for re-election, said. “We’re almost three weeks, four weeks away, so that would be the appropriate time to make a decision.”
A full recording of the meeting can be found here on the city’s YouTube page.
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