Off the I-15

Monday night’s City Council meeting ended in a fury of motions over the proposed $65,000 contract with Zenon Environmental Corporation to supply membrane-engineering services to the city for the new wastewater-treatment plant.

Council member Joe Gomez started it all when he moved the recommended action listed on the agenda, essentially to pay Zenon $65,000 for “special engineering services” and added direction to city staff to bring back a breakdown of all the costs associated with the new facility, something Council member Julie Hackbarth-McIntyre requested.

Mayor Lawrence Dale killed Gomez’s motion for lack of a second, Dale said, and then proposed a motion to cancel the contract with HDR, the firm hired by the city to build the city to build the new wastewater-treatment facility, and hire a different company, Micromedia, to build the facility. City Attorney Yvette Abich jumped in and said that the mayor could not make that motion at this time because it was outside the scope of the agenda item, the contract with Zenon.

So Dale made a substitute motion to reject the contract and asked the city staff to bring back the issue at a later date.

But they weren’t done. Council member Steve Curran asked Gomez to amend his motion to add direction to city staff to strike a clause from the contract requiring the city to provide inspection and on-site testing of Zenon’s equipment.

Gomez amended his motion, and Curran seconded it.

Just before the motion went to a vote, the mayor made another substitute motion to reject the contract and directed city staff to find a different direction. Hackbarth-McIntyre seconded the substitute motion.

Just before the substitute motion went to a vote, Gomez attempted to make another substitute motion to approve the contract. This did not go through.

When the dust, or motions, cleared, the council voted 3-2, with Council member Steve Curran and Joe Gomez against, to reject the contract.

But why? Why was the mayor’s motion put to a vote before Gomez’s?

Abich explained it to me after the meeting. Under Rosenberg’s Rules of Order, the parliamentary procedure the City Council operates under, the council must first deal with the last motion made, in this case, the mayor’s motion, she said.

According to the rules:

“First, the chair would deal with the [last] motion on the floor, the substitute motion … If the substitute motion passes, it would be a substitute for the basic motion and would eliminate it. The first motion would be moot.”

Abich said that once the mayor’s motion to reject the contract passed, 3-2, the council could not vote on Gomez’s amended motion to do the opposite, approve the contract. Case closed.

Check out the action for yourself on the city’s Webcast of the meeting.

Some other notes about Rosenberg’s Rules of Order:
• Written by Yolo County Superior Court Judge Dave Rosenberg while he was a Yolo County Supervisor.
• First appeared in Western City magazine in August 2003.
• Designed as an alternative to Robert’s Rules of Order, used by the British Parliament.
• Available online here