Mr. Weiss, now that your misbehavior as a city councilmember has resulted in a potential lawsuit against the city and has now been made public, this is the right time for you to consider your options. I’ve lived here since 1970 and have never seen this kind of misconduct by an elected official directed toward anyone in city government, much less a city manager. With your cooperation, George, this is a first and should be the last.
Your transgressions cost Laguna taxpayers close to a half million dollars when all the component parts are tallied. The cost likely would have been much greater had the city not negotiated a separation agreement with the city manager. Clearly, the city and its attorneys knew the merits of the potential lawsuit against it were incontrovertible.
Here are the two options you should consider now – I recommend you choose both: your immediate retirement from city council, a resignation letter would work, and a substantial reimbursement from you to the city for triggering this liability.
Jerry Immel, Laguna Beach
Jerry, your LTE is genuinely laughable! You apparently were not at any of the multiple CC meetings where we the citizens of Laguna were forced to endure former CC person Peter Blake browbeat fellow CC persons, residents, and anyone that had a conflicting opinion. Your statement that You “have never seen this kind of conduct directed toward anyone in city government” is patently absurd. Your statement can only be true if You never saw CC person P.B. in action. I cannot believe You actually declared that. LOL!
I assure You as I sat and watched CC person P.B. swear and bully on a regular basis, all we got from Mayor Kemph was “Peter, Peter, Peter”.
Of course the conduct of Peter Blake was allowed by CC person Whalen, CM Dupuis, and at the time Mayor Kemph with no consequences.
The triumvirate of Blake, Whalen, and Kemph enjoyed their majority and abused it regularly with the full support of the CM.
If not for Us the Citizens and CC person Weiss monitoring and bringing their Pro-Development, Anti-Resident slight of hand approvals to light we would have a Parking Structure where the Library is, and we would be breaking ground on a Parking Structure that the City would never own. (but we would pay for it!) etc., etc., etc.
Anyone who has followed the soap opera that was the Dupuis tenure is quite aware of her multiple missteps as our CM. Please stop blaming George Weiss, CC person Weiss should be applauded not chastised. Whalen can describe the reasons anyway he wants but the CM’s problematic/questionable record speaks for itself. Debacle after debacle. The grip that Dupuis, Whalen, Kemph, and Blake “had” is slipping into bygone times. Now maybe we can get back to doing the peoples business. Thanks to CC person George Weiss for being an advocate for Us the Residents of Laguna Beach.
George Weiss is just the convenient fall guy for Whalen and Kemph, and I think You know that. If You don’t You must have the same selective amnesia that You have experienced during the prior council that CC person P.B. was part of.
Where was Mr Immel, this protector of “civility”, during the reign of former councilperson Peter Blake? I don’t recall his ever writing a LTE to decry the relentless misbehavior and misogyny of Blake towards anyone who disagreed with his positions or dared to challenge him. But now he’s calling for Mr Weiss to resign and reimburse? What a laughingstock. Especially since the allegations from Ms. Dupuis are exactly that, allegations – unproven from a former CM who was known to play games to get what she wanted. Does anyone recall the “rumors” of her leaving LB, which resulted in her getting an off-cycle 10% pay increase? Or her relentless efforts to prevent release of the police-stop body cam? I could go on with other examples of cost-over runs, circumventing public oversight, etc.
But Mr. Immel then goes on to state: “…have never seen this kind of misconduct by an elected official directed toward anyone in city government, much less a city manager…”. He seems to not realize that those holding the top-job attract criticism; sometimes warranted, sometimes not. But top execs are expected to weather the criticism- not to fall back onto flimsy defenses such as “..hostile workplace…”, in order to stifle the criticism. Let’s recall that Ms. Dupuis was among the highest paid City managers in all of Orange County (and over seeing one of the smallest populations). She was paid a princely sum to do the job and taking the heat was one of the trade-offs.
So, Mr. Immel, so why have you seemed to have turned a blind eye to the years of Mr. Blake’s creating a “hostile council environment”, and why you are so quick to pass judgement against Mr. Weiss in a situation where a) allegations are unproven and b) the person making the allegation was in a top job that is expected to attract close scrutiny and criticism?
Mr. Immel – always so quick to point fingers in the wrong direction.
If anyone should be paying for their mistakes, it should be Council members Sue Kempf, Bob Whalen and Peter Blake – the cabal that was so insistent on appointing Ms. Dupuis in the first place, knowing full well she was not nearly as experienced as the other applicants for the job. As far as being a tool for promoting their pro-development, pro-business, pro-tourism, pro-Mo Honarkar agenda – she fit their bill perfectly.
Having never been a City Manager, with no degree or credentials for the role, and given her propensity for hot tempered, top-down, autocratic management, her demise was inevitable from the get-go.
Ms. Dupuis was part of the debacle to possibly sell the library out of under residents and turn it into a parking lot. To his credit, Councilman Weiss was the only one to dig through the intentionally buried details to alert the public and avert that shyster move.
Where is Mr. Immel’s mention of Ms. Dupuis’ overt protection of Mo Honarkar – both in not enforcing the many red tags on the Hotel Laguna’s renovation (permitting Mo to continue without plans, permits and inspections) and in allowing Mr. Honarkar’s armed thugs to break into and commandeer the 14West Hotel and Hotel Laguna? God knows how much that’s already cost the City in legal fees . . . and how many millions it might yet cost the City if the hotels’ proprietor sue.
Then there was Ms. Dupuis urgent insistence that the City buy the Ti Amo restaurant for a fire station and jamming that sale through without an appraisal (we bought it for around $400,000 more than a previous offer) – only then for her to inform the City that the site was too small because it also needed to service an emergency medical unit (something the fire department had been looking into for around two years). That cost the City $2.7M.
Let’s not forget Ms. Dupuis’ abuse of authority for her traffic stop – trying to prevent a ticket by asserting her power to the stopping officer as the Chief Of Police’s superior. All followed by her attempt to cover up the event, costing the City at least $50,000 in legal and video production fees – all for naught after being forced to release the video evidence she was trying to hide. (We’re still waiting for the last three months of legal bills on that defense because she’d refused to release them.)
When Bob Whalen and crew repeatedly tried to foist the Presbyterian church parking structure boondoggle on the public, why was Ms. Dupuis willing to accept the church’s $7M land valuation without getting an independent appraisal?
While Mr. Immel is concerned by the City Council’s astoundingly over-generous pay-off to Ms. Dupuis for around just two years of City Manager service (nine months severance, plus $233,000 and a house allowance for seven more years), I’d suggest he take a look at how much Ms. Dupuis’ disservice has already cost the City . . . plus the potential amount in lawsuits she’s already encumbered us with . . . along with any other missteps her continued service could have cost.
Apparently in Mr. Immel’s world, this kind of ineptitude, corruption and unethical behavior shouldn’t be subject to criticism. If that’ so, he’s wrong. The thin-skinned Ms. Dupuis couldn’t stand criticism and when faced with it, she publicly accused residents by name in a City Council meeting of creating a hostile work environment (a bullying tactic in itself), resulting in a pending defamation lawsuit against the City. More legal fees at taxpayer expense, thanks to Ms. Dupuis.
Again, unable to withstand criticism, she then made an unproven, never legally filed, verbal accusation of creating a hostile work environment (where have we heard that before?) as a smear tactic against Mr. Weiss – the one City Council member who questioned her mismanagement and continuous lack of transparency. What a convenient way for her to save a little face, extract as much cash out of the severance deal as she possibly could, and smear others on her way on out the door.
I could cite a whole laundry list of other costly faults and failures regarding Ms. Dupuis, but suffice it to say that if she was as wonderful as Mr. Immel and her other supporters proclaim she was, she’d still be here. And she’s not.
If Mr. Immel is so doggedly determined to extract compensation for Ms. Dupuis’ demise, I suggest he demand it from those who pressured and insisted on appointing Ms. Dupuis – Kempf, Blake and Whalen. They got their way, let them pay.