In a special meeting, the City Council of Los Alamitos approved a motion to declare an emergency to fix a natural gas leak in a line leading into the city’s police department.
Mayor Jordan Nefulda said the special order of the day was to discuss the emergency gas line repair for the police department.
“The gas line to the police department building is damaged and was reported to be leaking,” the mayor said. “This item recommends immediate action to begin repairs of the gas line that feeds the police department and the city’s emergency generator.”
City Manager Chet Simmons told three members of the Council attending the special meeting that if they did not declare an emergency, it would take as much as six months to fix the dangerous leak which, in essence, was unacceptable.
At issue is the city’s charter, which was initially approved in 1960. Simmons said under the city’s charter, unless the issue is declared to be a legitimate emergency, the RFP and bidding process could take as long as six months.
“I want to say that this leak has been going on for about a month,” said Simmons, noting that the city found a gas leak near the main line which was repaired.
“Then the company came back and realized that there were two additional gas leaks out of an abundance of caution. Obviously, we have shut down the gas to the building until such repairs can be made to the problem,” the city manager said.
“The problem here again is related to the city’s charter in that it doesn’t allow for any public works project that is over $10,000 to take place without a formal bidding process,” he said.
If the city was held to go through the normal public works process, “it would take between five to six months to accomplish,” he said.
“So today, we’re asking you to essentially declare an emergency and authorize the city manager to execute any and all contracts needed in order to facilitate the fix within the building to the gas line,” Simmons told the Council.
“Speaking for the police and the chief, it is a very serious matter,” he added.
By declaring an emergency, the city would legally be able to bypass standard rules and fix the leak, Simmons explained to the Council.
He said while the $10,000 amount is written into the 1960 charter, that amount would equate to $106,000 today. While he asked the Council to declare the emergency, he was careful to mention this is the exception, not the rule for doing business.
“And I can tell the question that you’re going to ask is ‘Chet, why don’t we just do this for every single project so that we can skip this,’” Simmons told the Council. “In consultation with the city attorney and the city clerk, it has been made very, very clear to me that trying to obfuscate that rule is obviously not in line with the charter.”
Council member Tanya Doby questioned Simmons “in the interest of making it abundantly clear, why we didn’t address more immediately, please explain?”
Simmons explained the limitations of the city’s aging charter and used the opportunity to say why he thinks the city should offer a charter amendment this fall.
“Within our charter, there is a limit on what exactly we can do without having gone out and done a formal bidding process,” said Simmons, carefully going through each step and explaining why it would take six or eight months to complete.
“The city council did authorize staff to start the process of looking into a charter amendment. This is the primary reason for moving forward with that charter amendment to put ourselves more in line with not only surrounding cities but also just good business practices,” the city manager said.
“There is a reason why there’s a process that allows us to change the charter from time to time, which the city has done in the past,” he added.
While any proposed charter amendment has yet to surface, there have also been discussions among council members that the city’s charter also limits terms of service, which some have hinted may have to be changed because of districting.
Nevertheless, the Council voted unanimously 3-0 to declare the police department gas leak a city emergency, giving Simmons the authorization to bypass the bid process and have the leak fixed.
Nefulda, Doby and Mayor Pro-tem Shelley Hasselbrink voted in favor. Council members Emily Hibard and Trisha Murphy were not present for the special meeting.
Interestingly, the Council’s special order agenda called for them to go into Executive Session to discuss “anticipated litigation,” however Mayor Nefulda protested, saying the matter should wait until Hibard and Murphy were present.
The Council agreed and chose not to go into executive session and the special meeting was adjourned.