The Santa Ana Council Majority has placed an item, 1C, on the agenda for the next Council Meeting, on Jan. 22, that reads:
PUBLIC EMPLOYEE EVALUATION OF PERFORMANCE AND/OR
POTENTIAL DISMISSAL/RELEASE pursuant to Government Code Section
54957(b)(1)
Title: City Manager
This is it folks. They are going to move to fire our City Manager, Paul Walters. They apparently did not learn a thing from the last Council meeting, on Jan. 7, when dozens of local residents and business leaders, including OCTA Chairman Greg Winterbottom, SAUSD Trustee and Local Attorney Jose Hernandez, and Com Link Chair Evangeline Gawronski, ripped them a new one for threatening to fire Walters. Imagine how many folks will turn out for next week’s meeting?
Council Members David Benavides and Angelica Amezcua were absent last time and Michele Martinez left early. This time presumably they will all be there. Last time Council Member Vince Sarmiento and Mayor Pro Tem Sal Tinajero had no comment. Will the cat get their tongues again?
No one has as of yet offered up a good reason to fire Walters. That is because there is no foundation to do so. By firing him, the Council majority will return him to the SAPD, where he will once more serve as the Chief of Police. However they will likely name Santa Ana Parks and Rec Agency Director Gerardo Mouet as the interim City Manager and he will be able to dismiss Walters from his post at the SAPD as well.
In the end we the voters will be saddled with a huge settlement that Walters is due, contractually. And we will end up with a lesser City Manager. All of this apparently is being engineered by labor and by a Council majority that has forgotten who they serve, in their rush to attack Walters and our popular Mayor, Miguel Pulido.
All Walters did was serve our city. He saved us from a budget crisis, last year, that the Council created. And he drove crime down in our city to levels not seen in decades. He is owed a city statue. Instead the Council majority is fitting him with a noose – in order to punish Pulido. They will be punishing all of us. What next for this foul bunch?
Be sure to show up on Jan. 22 at 5 pm at the next Council meeting. Let’s take a stand for Walters!
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Good Morning Dr. Lomeli,
Have gotten the instuctions on what to post today from Azumeca yet. David has the kids this weekend so give him a break. "Daddy's gonna take us to pancakes"!
When you are ready, you can begin posting your drivel here under your newly minted fake name or at the other place, don't you realize that the longer you avoid the TRUTH the bigger the lie becomes.
Have a good day!
This meeting ought to be a circus. The council majority is trying to clean up its earlier mistake of hiring Walters - an unqualified choice. Walters has zero qualifications for the city manager position and should never have been hired. But one must ask, what has changed since they hired him? If he was a good choice 8 months ago, what has changed to deem him an imprudent choice now?
This meeting will be a farce on all sides. Hopefully, we can finally get full council to attend (particularly Claudia Alvarez’s stooge, Angela Amezcua aka Angie Oliver, who has chosen not to attend the council meetings). This council must articulate a reason to move on without Walters and the mayor needs to present a case about how the chief is qualified for this position (particularly since the Board of Supervisors chose not to appoint him as Sheriff).
Walters has a Master's degree in public administration, from USC, and man year's of success as a Police Chief. He oversaw the construction of our city jail and police headquarters. How is he unqualified?
That said, I agree with the rest of your statements. The Council voted unanimously to hire him. Firing him now is going to cost taxpayers a fortune, for no good reason!
This is the stuff recalls are made of...
Yes, but Walters is really hooked up with the Federal Government and knows how to keep those National Defense funds coming into Santa Ana and Anaheim.
Sanctuary Cities not.
The Federal Government will no longer allow "sanctuary cities" to apply for those multi-million dollar Anti-Terrorism grants.
Thus Santa Ana is not a "Sanctuary City"
How much do all of the individual city council members know about the Santa Ana-Anaheim Police alliance?
Do they know everything? How much do they care?
They are probably put there to not care and only conduct theater.
look forward to more theater.
The Council simply has not indicated that they give a damn about any of this. And you bet that they have signed off on all of it. They will just make a lame excuse that they were not informed by staff.
2007 was when the Federal Government created a Homeland Security bill demanding changes in municipal police relations with their Undocumented Detainees (illegals to some). The Homeland Security- U.A.S.I. Federal Grants that target specific urban municipality areas do not even strictly apply to the confines of cities or counties but rather to joint jurisdictions that over lap city boundaries. Anaheim- Santa Ana ( Anaheimistan).
Can anybody say Theo Lacy Detention Center$$$$$.
Can anybody say Prison Industrial Complex?
Benavides, Tinajero and Martinez were all elected in 2006. Sarmiento was appointed not long after, in 2007, when Solorio moved on to the State Assembly.
What about the state grants that fund the DUI checkpoints that barely catch any drunks but do take many cars away from immigrants who are not allowed to get licenses - although our state is run by Democrats?