AT the regular Los Alamitos City Council meeting last night, March 16, several public speakers called for the reinstatement of former Mayor Dean Grose. Grose resigned his seat on the Council two weeks ago amid a scandal over a racist e mail. The Council declined the option of holding a special election to replace him and also rejected the idea of selecting the next highest vote getter from the November elections as the appointment.

Instead, the Council decided to publicly interview up to 8 candidates at their meeting on April 6, 2009. Each of the existing 4 Council Members will submit 2 names by next Monday. these candidates, assuming they actually want to join the City Council, will be publicly interviewed at the Council meeting on April 6. If there are no duplicates in the names the Council Members submit, and even if the interviews are no more than 20 minutes each, it will be a long meeting.

The 4 existing Council Members were united in their desire to avoid the cost of a special election. It also appeared that they agreed that they would like to find a candidate they can unanimously support. When Council Member Gerri Mejia asked the Council to consider former Mayor Ken Parker, the next highest vote getter from the November election, there was not support among the other Council Members for appointing Parker.

There was also no support expressed among the Council Members for reinstating Grose. Even though several public speakers directly asked for his reinstatement by the Council, there was not even any discussion by the Council of this as an option. The appointment of either Grose or Parker would most likely continue the divisions on the Council and inhibit moving away from the old conflicts. . Based on their comments, it seems that the Council Members were all interested in finding unanimous agreement on the appointment. The last test of this will come when they actually vote. If anything other than a unanimous vote is the result, it probably will mean that the current minority will be perpetuated and dissent will continue. If, on the other hand, they actually manage to find someone they all can agree on, there is a reasonable chance that the factionalism will be reduced and the people's work can move to the forefront.