What You Can Do

At Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, I saw so many members of the community stand up and voice their dissatisfaction with the actions of New Mayor Marie Gilmore, Vice Mayor Rob Bonta and Councilmember Lena Tam relating to the removal of Ann Marie Gallant as Alameda’s Interim City Manager. Speaker after speaker stood up and explained how her dismissal violated several statutes of the Brown Act and the City Charter.

This page has video of the entire City Council meeting, with a convenient drop-down menu that allows you to skip to the parts of the meeting that interest you the most. I suggest viewing sections 7-A and 9-A to see the community’s and Councilmember deHaan’s concerns over how Gallant was fired, and 9-C to see Councilmember Johnson’s suggestion that a report be prepared by the City Attorney to tell the people if or how the Brown Act and City Charter were or weren’t violated.

That’s what you can do: since New Mayor Gilmore looked utterly uninterested in pursuing such a report, and New Vice Mayor Bonta looked downright uncomfortable with the idea, the citizens of Alameda need to pressure our employee, the City Attorney, to do her job and follow up and investigate the malfeasance of our elected officials.

Send a letter with a tracking number listing your complaints about what statutes of the Brown Act have been violated [including 54957.6. (a), 54957.7. (a), & 54957.7. (c)] , as well as which statutes of our City Charter [including 2-2 & 7-3] during and succeeding the meeting of 12/28/10 concerning the employment of Ann Marie Gallant and Christina Baines.

Direct it to:

Donna Mooney, Acting City Attorney
Alameda City Hall, Room 280
2263 Santa Clara Ave.
Alameda, CA 94501

Voting at the booth on election day is only one way to participate in Democracy. New Mayor Marie Gilmore was elected on only 36% of the vote; to act so quickly, in secret, and against the transparency she trumpets is a warning flag to the 64% majority of Alamedans who voted for other candidates this past November.

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