Progress.

Welcome.

It's another beautiful evening in Pueblo, Colorado.

I call to order this special council meeting.

Today is Monday, June 17th, 2024.

The time is 734.

Madam Clerk, we're going to move to roll call.

Mark A.

Leff?

Here.

Dennis Flores?

Here.

Roger Gomez?

Here.

Joe Latino?

Here.

Regina Maestri.

Here.

Sarah Martinez?

Everyone is here.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Can we now move to item C resolutions?

Item C1, a resolution appointing a qualified person to fill the vacant at-large city councilor seat created by the resignation resignation of Charles Hernandez.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

If you would like an update on the position, I would like to share with uh counsel and the public that we did receive a withdrawal of Chris Nickel.

Uh he has withdrawn from the at-large race.

Um please uh let staff know if there's any other decision processes uh that you would like us to assist with, but otherwise, I believe that the information stands as to last Thursday's meeting for council's decision.

Thank you, madam clerk.

Uh did we need to approve the resolution?

So at this point, uh staff would recommend um uh suspending the rules if there's no objection from counsel to allow for um counsel to do the same thing as previous, which is to perhaps do a few votes and see where you are at, and then once you have a successful candidate actually moving the resolution and filling in the name of a qualified person into the resolution itself.

Got it.

As your motion.

Got it.

So first just um nomination.

So if there's no objection from city council, I'm going to suspend the rules, which allows for multiple nominations.

And uh that means if not if a if a nomination fails, it can be brought up again.

And as we saw the other night, and again and again and again.

So if there's no objection, we'll move on with that.

There are no objections.

Uh it's my it's my uh belief that we'll just move through this process exactly like we moved through it on Thursday night.

Uh when we left Thursday night, we said we were gonna take the weekend and we were gonna gather information, listen to our constituents.

Uh think about it, uh, and come to a uh uh a meeting of the minds on this beautiful uh Monday evening.

And so hopefully that's what's going to happen.

So I'm gonna open it up to nominations.

We have uh counselor Gomez, you can certainly have have a comment.

Well, I had to again going back to what I and this is not intended to be personal, but this has got to get on the table for me.

First and foremost, I want to declare that I am not the one who gets easily intimidated.

And I believe there's not anyone in this dais who does as well.

So please can we stop with the redundant and tight battle cry once and for all?

We're all independent folks, and we all have our own minds, and there's nothing personal that I can see going on.

Secondly, I want to apologize to Chris Nickel and his family who had to endure one unfortunate and unsubstantiated Chris after another during the vacancy process.

It's my opinion.

This was set in motion after I made a principled vote, what I believe was a principal vote, basically denying counselor Regina Meisha's desire to swap from a small district seat to a citywide at-large seat for personal gain.

That's my opinion.

I can assure you this was not a personal, this is not personal, but I feel no one should be able to appeal to this kind of elevated swap without one vote or the input from the at-large constituency.

This is clearly outlined in the curriculum manual, CERSA and Claro Municipal League handbook.

They advise avoiding this kind of manure due to negatively impacting the voters' perceptions.

Page 52, chapter 10.

Our council should never have allowed or entertained this particular process after the main requester was given specific warnings by the city attorney that she should recuse herself from participating in filling the at-large seat.

Maybe it's me, but I believe that also means not being able to vote on the final outcome.