Seat on Sanitary District Board Appears Headed to County Supervisors for Decision

The deuces are wild at the . Its board of directors looks intent on voting 2-2 on just about everything as long as one board seat remains unfilled.

The board Monday on the naming of a fifth board member to serve until the November election, and the district’s consulting attorney now plans to notify the Marin County Board of Supervisors of the stalemate and appeal for a fresh round of interviews.

However, the directors decided to meet one more time — at 6:30 p.m. Thursday — to see if an agreement can be made before the decision slips from their grasp.

Following a 2-2 vote Monday afternoon on whether to send a letter to the county supervisors, President Bill Long was frustrated enough to say, “If this business isn’t an example of why we need a fifth board member, I don’t know that we can produce a better one. We’ve fallen into serious pettiness here. Anyway, the process will move forward.”

Long and Mike Di Giorgio were in favor of sending a letter to the supervisors before the end of the month in an appeal for help making the decision along with sending the resumes and letters associated with six candidates for the vacant seat. Directors Dennis Welsh and George Quesada were opposed.

The opening was created with the effective April 1, and the Novato Sanitary District board had 60 days to approve a choice before the county supervisors got involved.

District counsel Kenton Alm said the board of supervisors could order the district to conduct a special election, possibly as early as August, and that it would cost the district several hundred thousand dollars to conduct. After the directors were finished their agenda Monday, they decided to convene Thursday for one more shot at the task.

The meeting provided a regular dose of accusation and barbed words.

“I am a little resentful to hear things from other board members that we’re not being cooperative,” Welsh said while looking at Di Giorgio during the proceedings.

“I didn’t say that,” Di Giorgio said.

“You’ve implied that. These are philosophical differences … I resent being labeled as somebody being an obstructionist.”

“I said no such thing,” Di Giorgio interjected.

“It’s implied,” Welsh said.

The meeting also featured speech by Quesada, who knew that Long and Di Giorgio needed to leave for another meeting by about 6 p.m. Starting at about 5:10 p.m., Quesada, who partly because he was bitter for being overlooked as board president five times, spoke for nearly 15 minutes about the history of the Novato Sanitary District, tracing its roots to a state legislature vote in 1923 that allowed each county to form a sanitary district. He talked about how few people there were living in Novato at the time and how the district did little more than set rules for outhouses. “There wasn’t much sewage being generated, except maybe for the cows,” he said.

Long briefly interrupted the speech, which had the makings of a filibuster, and reminded Quesada that he was speaking while there was another motion on the table. Quesada said he was just providing some historical perspective in case anyone was interested.

Shortly thereafter, Quesada said he didn’t like the idea of the district board or the county supervisors “usurping the power of the people” by appointing someone to fill the vacant seat. “It has the smell of a smoke-filled back room and machine politics,” he said, adding that maybe the Novato City Council or another local committee would be more qualified than the county supervisors to break the deadlock.

Di Giorgio, who like Quesada spent time on the Novato City Council, said the board needs to follow the law in making the appointment.

“It’s not about the (November) election,” he said. “It’s about finding the most qualified person for this board seat. We have a lot of things to do, including figuring out the financing of the water treatment plant and the ability to make more recycled water. This board has a duty to its customers and ratepayers to appoint a qualified person for this seat.”

And once again, as he’s done at several recent meetings, Di Giorgio made a motion to nominate , who has more than two decades of water and sewage expertise and multiple stints on other sanitary boards. Long seconded, but the motion failed with a 2-2 vote.

Welsh then made a motion to nominate Suzanne Brown Crow, an attorney who has been following the district closely over the past several years during the building of its new $90 million treatment system and the contracting of the international company Veolia Water to operate the plant.

Quesada seconded the motion even though he had just announced minutes earlier that he was opposed to anybody filling the seat until the November election.

“So you don’t object to filling this seat … or do you?” Long asked Quesada after he seconded the motion to nominate Brown Crow.

“I do,” he said.

After that vote failed, Quesada made another about-face and nominated John Coleman, a Novato resident he described as less educated than the other candidates but dedicated. Coleman was the only candidate to tell the board during interviews last month that he would not seek re-election in November if he were made Fritz’s temporary replacement.

“We’re at loggerheads, and John is sort of in the middle,” Quesada said. “I see him as the ideal candidate and I hope he would be favorably considered.”

Welsh seconded the motion, but did not vote for Coleman, leaving Quesada alone with his vote.