Uptown Planners will hold a special election to fill two seats after a confusing debacle regarding bylaw reforms, complaints to the city, and accusations of Brown Act violations.

At a special meeting on April 21, the board debated the minutiae of their bylaws, city communications and the Brown Act for hours after facing backlash for appointing former chair Mat Wahlstrom to fill the rest of a four-year term left empty by Helen Rowe Allen resigning. While no details were decided at the meeting, members voted to create an ad hoc election committee headed by Mary McKenzie to plan, find candidates and hold a vote.

By the end of the meeting, Wahlstrom had left the board table at the front of the Joyce Beers Community Center to sit with the audience to observe a frustrated board angry at the city and progressives for allegedly undermining the board’s independence.

The controversy highlights the recent changes in planning groups’ function, support and power. Volunteer elected community members are still struggling to adapt to a city listening to their input less and investing less in the boards after a series of reforms both within certain planning groups and as city-wide policy.

Reforms

After years of attempts, the city passed sweeping reforms in Sept. 2022 with the stated hopes of increasing transparency, organization, and diversity of members of planning groups. The reforms also took away some of the power community planning groups (CPGs) had to oppose and appeal the approval of large housing developments for free.

City Attorney Mara Elliott also included changes in the package to protect the city from liability. CPGs are indemnified from lawsuits except in the case of Brown Act violations – a significant rule in this situation.

Certain planning groups had already made reforms to attempt to address the lack of renter, youth, and BIPOC representation on their boards in smaller ways with term limits, outreach efforts, seats saved for renters, and other efforts.

During a brief period in which the Uptown Planners was filled with a progressive coalition in 2018, the group changed its bylaws so that empty board seats could not be filled by appointment but instead required public input in the form of a special election if a seat was empty more than 120 days out from the regular March elections. The bylaws do not allow for a seat to be left empty until the annual election outside of that 120 day period.

In 2020, the city approved these bylaw amendments but did not update the rest of the bylaws to reflect that the board would no longer have appointed members. Instead, appointed members were referred to throughout the bylaws except in the section about filling empty seats and elections. The vague and contradictory bylaws added to the confusion surrounding the appointment of Wahlstrom.

Recent action

In recent elections, the Uptown Planners board flipped again with more conservative members opposing major development projects winning in repeated landslides. The new board selected Wahlstrom as the chair a year ago. However, his term was set to expire April 4.

Due to people leaving the board, term limits, and other complications from the pandemic, in the March election in 2022, elected members had a wide array of term lengths. In the bylaws, candidates are supposed to say what seat they are running for. Without districts though, this is nigh impossible so a precedent is in place for the highest vote winner to receive the longest term and so on. With Wahlstrom receiving the least votes of the winning coalition, he was placed in a seat with only a year left in its term despite his availability to serve for longer.

In a previous election, Roy Dahl was given a seat with a four-year term despite knowing he would need to resign three years in due to term limits – a demonstration of how this precedent limited common sense appointments like Dahl receiving a term he could not fulfill. Without districts or the precedent though, election chairs or boards would have had leeway in who got what seat – a potential place for cronyism to enter into the democratic process.

Ahead of the annual election on March 7, the board’s February 7 meeting included agenda item five that said “Determination Regarding Candidates For Election and Potential Candidate Forum.” The board was to consider the recommendations made by the ad hoc elections committee, chaired by McKenzie. What those recommendations were was not stated. In the subcommittee and communications, there was confusion about how many seats were open in the election, with Wahlstrom writing a letter to the committee asking he be considered to fill Rowe Allen’s seat as a possible solution. Later, McKenzie stated she did not know ahead of time that Stephen Cline would move to appoint Wahlstrom to the empty seat.

After Cline’s motion, the board voted to appoint Wahlstrom to fill Rowe Allen’s empty seat for another three years. When blindsided community members realized this appointment took place a month ahead of an election, there was outcry. People contacted the city to see if this may be a Brown Act violation since Wahlstrom’s appointment was not explicitly included in the agenda. With the board and city digging further into the bylaws, it became evident that the board was not allowed to make appointments in the first place – further muddying the waters.

“If we couldn’t do it, we couldn’t tell the public we maybe might do it,” said Tony Silvia in the special meeting.

Response

Public comment at the March 7 meeting included complaints that Wahlstrom’s appointment vote should have been publicized clearly in the agenda ahead of the February meeting. Brer Marsh read out city communications that suggested the agenda item about the election was not adequately transparent about a possible appointment. The board might face further complaints or lawsuits without the defense of the city attorney if the city determined this did in fact violate the Brown Act.

In the wake of the controversy, the board held a special meeting on April 21. Clifford Weiler brought forth a resolution to ‘cure and correct prior action of this board’ that would make the appointment of Wahlstrom null and void without admitting there was anything wrong in either the agenda or the vote.

Board member Chris Cole said the outcry was based on personal vendettas and vengeance after losing the election. Board member Mary Brown echoed his comments, stating, “Other groups have found no other way to challenge us, other than to try this underhanded thing. They can’t beat us is at the ballot box so they cause all this trouble, and they go behind the scenes and bring in the city…[which] does not like the fact that we are pushing back on their destruction of our community.”

In public comment, Sharon Gehl, one of the people concerned about the agenda item, urged the board to follow the current bylaws and hold a special election.

Weiler’s resolution eventually prevailed, but only with Wahlstrom and other board members arguing they were concerned that the vote would be seen as capitulating to criticism and threats when the board did nothing wrong. In their view, the agenda item about elections was vague enough to include Wahlstrom’s appointment.

“I don’t believe that is a Brown Act violation… Any attempt to cure, it is an admission, whether or not that’s the case with the legalese,” Wahlstrom said when asked to share his opinion since he had to abstain from the vote. “The whole thing is predicated upon the assertion that somehow there was like some cabal or conspiracy to place me… rather than what it was, which was a good faith effort to try and get everything on track.”

However, fears that a lawsuit regarding Brown Act violations could lead to the board being disbanded were stronger. With his appointment voided and his April 4 term expiration, Wahlstrom stopped leading the meeting halfway through and sat back with the audience. The past two months actions undertaken with Wahlstrom as chair still stood with no retroactive issues, according to research by Weiler on the Brown Act.

The next agenda item was about re-appointing Wahlstrom to the board, now that it was public knowledge. However, whether the board had the power to make appointments was under scrutiny and Wahlstrom announced he would not accept a seat if he was appointed to it.

Some board members wanted to appoint Wahlstrom anyway as a show of support for their former chair but they were overridden by those who wanted to hold a special election as aligned with the city’s suggestion and their own bylaws.

Amid public comment for the new agenda item, Isaac Warner expressed his frustration that the meeting had been about saving face, not focusing on what is best for the public. The audience descended into an argument with obscenities shouted at each other. Eventually, the board, now headed by interim chair McKenzie, brought back order and voted again to set up an Ad Hoc Election Committee to plan a special election. Getting even 1% of the 30,000 Uptown population to vote would be a major turnout at a regular election. Special elections tend to have even lower turnout than regular elections.

“We’ll have a special election and it’s stupid and unnecessary and yet it is the thing to do,” said board member Lu Rehling.