Mosca Voted Out as Delegate to Council of Governments
By Sameea Kamal
Published: Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
At last night’s meeting, the Sierra Madre City Council designated Don Watts and MaryAnn MacGillivray to serve as delegate and alternate to the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments, ousting Councilman Joe Mosca from the position mid-term.
Mayor MacGillivray and Mayor Pro Tem Watts attended a meeting of the Council of Governments recently, which the mayor said was an interesting exercise.
Though Mr. Watts had his complaints, saying he had felt that there was little opportunity for the city to have a voice in the Council of Governments. He said he felt that Sierra Madre representatives were outnumbered and outvoted in the organization that represents 87 cities throughout Southern California.
“I tend to agree, but we have to try,” MacGillivray said.
Joe Mosca, who formerly served as the representative, said that it was important to have a voice within the process at a regional level.
“Not engaging has more serious consequences,” Mosca said.
Mosca discouraged the council from replacing him in the middle of the term due to the work he is currently working on in his position representing the city to he organization, but said that he would still participate alongside whoever was selected.
MacGillivray said she wanted to see a new perspective in the representation to work towards having Sierra Madre’s voice heard, despite Mosca’s assurance that he had been speaking up for the city and the regional as a whole.
Councilmember Kurt Zimmerman proposed a compromise that would select Watts as a delegate due to his development experience and Mosca as the alternative.
“When you walk away from the regional voice, you’re going to get state mandates, but [if replaced] I’m afraid we are taking Joe’s three and a half years of work and throwing it away,” Zimmerman said.
Watts agreed that Joe was valuable in the organization and its process of sending representatives to the Southern California Association of Governments because he “knows the culture.”
The public hearing on the delegation prompted accusatory statements about Mosca’s work for the city, while other residents acknowledged Watts’ experience.
In the end, a motion to select Watts as delegate and MacGillivray as the alternate passed 3-2.
Correction: The October 14th article “Mosca Voted Out as Delegate to Council of Governments” incorrectly stated that Kurt Zimmerman was the alternate to the Council of Governments. The alternate was John Buchanan. Sierra Madre Weekly regrets the error.
1 Response for “Mosca Voted Out as Delegate to Council of Governments”
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This report is obviously the work of a baffled person. The councilman who proposed the compromise was John Buchanan, who offered to step down as the COG alternate and give that spot to Don Watts. And you really need to ask this question – if Joe Mosca was so concerned about service as Sierra Madre’s delegate to COG, why didn’t he at least occassionally attend the meetings? As anyone can see by going to the SGVCOG site, the attendance record of Sierra Madre there is almost nonexistant.