Stalemate Continues on Voting for New Member of Novato Sanitary District Board

Several minutes after he said he’d need two more weeks before he could make a decision on voting for a new board member, director George Quesada voted.

“I thought you said you weren’t prepared to vote, George,” said Bill Long, the board’s president.

“I’m not,” Quesada said.

And so it goes with our local sewer board. Monday’s meeting, which included more than the usual bickering among the board members, resulted in another stalemate on the naming of a fifth member. It’s looking more and more like the Marin County Board of Supervisors will end up making the decision by default later this spring.

Quesada said on April 25 with the makeup of the board and that he was ready to do anything he could to unseat what he called the “unholy trinity” of Long, Mike Di Giorgio and James Fritz, three directors who often voted together and secured a majority. A 36-year director, he said he was bitter that he’d been overlooked five times when the board had chosen presidents.

But with as of April 1, that threesome has been a twosome and the board has made several unsuccessful attempts to vote in a new member.

On Monday, Di Giorgio made a motion to appoint Jean Mariani to the board. Mariani, who has decades of water treatment and leadership experience, got votes from Di Giorgio and Long as she had April 20 on the board’s first attempt to fill the seat. But Quesada and director Dennis Welsh voted no.

Welsh then made a motion to appoint Suzanne Brown-Crow, an attorney who has attended sanitary district meetings religiously and was an opponent of the district’s five-year, multimillion-dollar contract with Veolia Water, an international firm that is operates the district’s treatment plant.

Quesada had said seconds earlier that he was not prepared to make a decision on a new board member and that he had only talked to five of the six candidates who interviewed for the role. He said he believed he would be ready by the next board meeting in two weeks. But with Brown-Crow’s name on the table, Quesada voted yes to support Welsh’s effort. Long and Di Giorgio voted no.

Quesada then made a motion of his own to appoint John Coleman, a retired truck driver with no experience in water treatment. His motion was not seconded. Coleman had vowed during the application interview to only serve until November when that seat would be the subject of an election, possibly creating an easier re-election effort for Quesada, whose seat is also up for grabs this fall. Generally, incumbents have a greater chance of being elected than newcomers.

Di Giorgio then said he’d like to “present our dilemma” to the county board of supervisors sooner to break the deadlock rather than waiting the obligatory two months after Fritz’s retirement. Long said it would be wise to wait one more meeting and place that idea on the sanitary district’s board agenda.

Manager-Engineer Beverly James said the county board of supervisors typically goes through its own application process in such situations and does not have to choose from the six people who applied for the post.

Mariani and Brown-Crow were the only ones to prompt motions at the April 20 and April 25 meetings. On April 25, Welsh and Quesada of the proceedings because they both felt there was no reason to rush a decision.