CITY MAY ALTER POST OF MAYOR; COUNCIL TO DISCUSS PLAN TO HAVE ELECTED OFFICE.Byline: Erin Gebroe Daily News Staff Writer Recent squabbles among City Council members, particularly the battle over their nominee to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, are sparking a larger debate that could ultimately rewrite re·write v. re·wrote , re·writ·ten , re·writ·ing, re·writes v.tr. 1. To write again, especially in a different or improved form; revise. 2. the City Charter. At issue is whether Santa Clarita Santa Clarita, city (1990 pop. 110,642), Los Angeles co., S Calif., suburb 30 mi (48 km) NW of downtown Los Angeles, on the Santa Clara River; inc. 1987. Situated in the Santa Clara valley and nearby canyons, Santa Clarita includes the former towns of Canyon Country, should do away with its current rotating-mayor system and allow voters to elect a mayor. The City Council plans to discuss the option next month. The mayor debate ensued after Councilwoman Jill Klajic urged area mayors to support Councilwoman Jan Heidt as nominee for the north Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. County seat on the MTA (1) (Message Transfer Agent or Mail Transfer Agent) The store and forward part of a messaging system. See messaging system. (2) See M Technology Association. 1. (messaging) MTA - Message Transfer Agent. board of directors, which decides how transportation funds are spent throughout the county. Klajic's letter struck a dissonant dis·so·nant adj. 1. Harsh and inharmonious in sound; discordant. 2. Being at variance; disagreeing. 3. Music Constituting or producing a dissonance. chord chord, in geometry chord (kôrd), in geometry, straight line segment both end points of which lie on the circumference of a circle or other curve; it is a segment of a secant. A chord passing through the center of a circle is a diameter. since the City Council had previously voted 3-2 to support Councilman Frank Ferry. Following news of Klajic's letter, Ferry requested the City Council study the possibility of changing the mayoral rotation. Klajic is the next council member in line to serve as mayor. Ferry did not return calls for comment. The city's public information officer, Gail Ortiz, on Friday started researching the feasibility of an elected mayor and an amended mayoral rotation. She may also review the city's policy on the use of city letterhead stationery, which Klajic used to write the letter. Ortiz said she will contact other similar-size cities to determine advantages and disadvantages of an elected mayor. ``I'm pulling up anything we've done in the past, and I'm updating it,'' Ortiz said. The Santa Clarita City Council has five members who take turns being mayor for one-year periods. The system, which most small cities use, gives council members equal power, resulting in a mayoral position that is largely ceremonial. Elected mayors, on the other hand, typically work for the city full-time, compared to council members who usually have other full-time jobs. Having an elected mayor would cost the city more money, but exactly how much is unclear. Santa Clarita council members make $965 a month. In Palmdale, the four council members are paid $600 a month while the mayor makes $1,000. Lancaster council members and mayor all make $600. Meanwhile, Pasadena is switching from a rotating-mayor system to an elected mayor. Voters approved having an elected mayor Nov. 3, and the first mayoral election will be next month. A task force is studying how much the mayor's salary could be, said Pasadena City Clerk In the United States, a City Clerk is an elected or appointed official who is responsible as the official keeper of the municipal records. In some places, the Clerk may be known as the "Village Clerk" or "Town Clerk". Jane Rodriguez. Additional costs include a salary for a mayor's field representative and renovations in the council chambers to add another place on the dais. That will cost $29,000, Rodriguez said. The cost is worth it for some people, however. ``The very fact that you were elected makes a difference,'' said Lancaster Mayor Frank Roberts Frank Roberts may refer to:
Roberts is in his second two-year term as an elected mayor. He also served one year as mayor under the previous rotation system In combinatorial mathematics, rotation systems encode embeddings of graphs onto orientable surfaces, by describing the circular ordering of a graph's edges around each vertex. . ``You don't have the clout,'' Roberts said of the rotation system. ``You don't learn the job in that one brief year.'' Former Santa Clarita Mayor Carl Boyer also supports an elected mayor. ``People really have no idea what a mayor ought to be doing as opposed to what a mayor does do in Santa Clarita,'' Boyer said. The mayor should be involved with state and federal agencies to secure funding that would benefit the city. The person should also be more involved in local organizations like the Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, Association of Governments, Boyer said. ``SCAG scag - To destroy the data on a disk, either by corrupting the file system or by causing media damage. Compare scrog, roach. determines how much low-cost housing will be built, and when you have a part-time mayor paid like the other council members, it's really terribly difficult for the average person to take the time to attend all these meetings and really represent the city,'' Boyer said. ``The financial cost is absolutely nothing,'' he added, ``as compared to the cost of not being represented.'' |
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