CALEXICO — Gloria Romo hadn’t been mayor of Calexico all of 20 minutes when the chief architect of the successful recall election campaign against two of her fellow City Council members set her sights on Romo mid-council meeting.
The reorganizational meeting of the City Council on Wednesday evening, Jan. 17, was already off to a rocky start as the entrenched divisions on the council only became that much more evident when the ceremonial rotations — and subsequent votes — for mayor and mayor pro tem were fractured, 3-2, affairs.
Yet that set the stage for the big show. As Romo presided over just her second agenda item after taking the gavel from outgoing Mayor Raul Ureña — himself the subject of an April 16 special election to be recalled from office along with council member Gilberto Manzanarez — it’s as if Calexico Recall 2023 Committee leader Martiza Hurtado concocted a reason to comment on the issue at hand in order of serve intent to recall papers to a dumbfounded Romo, who looked confused several minutes after the document had been handed to her.
Members of the recall committee could be heard cheering on Hurtado, before all of them apparently left council chambers and the meeting resumed.
Any path to recall Romo could be a lengthy one, a lesson the committee has learned with the process to get Ureña and Manzanarez on the ballot. Following the service of their initial intent to recall notices, there was a period of time before the committee could even start the process to collect residents’ signatures to qualify the recall for the ballot. That was a process that took about six months, give or take.
None of the council members addressed the recall notice during Wednesday night’s meeting.
If that had never occurred, the meeting had a certain level of tension already pent up when the act of electing the mayor and mayor pro tem took on the weight of differing opinions of Javier Moreno and Camilo Garcia against the rest of the council.
That was set up with council member Moreno’s motion to make Garcia mayor, despite Romo’s place as mayor pro tem for the last year and the ceremonial successor to Ureña. A group in the audience erupted in cheers with Moreno’s motion.
“As an ex-mayor, I don’t doubt anybody up here has the ability to serve as mayor, as chairmanship … as (public comment speaker) Luis Castro said, we missed that protocol two years ago. We should go back and follow it,” said Moreno, referring to Garcia being bypassed for mayor when he was due in the ceremonial order.
Shouts of “fix it!” and “it’s only fair!” came from the audience.
Seconded by Garcia himself, the motion failed 2-3, with council members Romo, Ureña and Manzanarez voting against Garcia as mayor.
As if on cue, a member of the public stormed out of council chambers, slamming the door behind them.
Manzanarez said before he was a council member, there existed an ongoing animosity among the council and in the city in choosing mayors and mayors pro tem. When a situation arose in the last few years in which the ceremonial rotation was jumped, he said he spoke to former council member Lewis Pacheco outside City Hall.
“He told me, ‘It’s just a title. It doesn’t matter,’” Manzanarez said.
Still, Manzanarez said the fighting and animosity could be solved in part with an ordinance that codifies a formal rotation, and allows no skipping or jumping of council members so “we can stop this nonsense,” he said.
With that said, he made the motion to elect Romo as mayor. Ureña seconded the motion, and she was elected 3-2, with Moreno and Garcia against. Thunderous applause and cheers came from the audience and a few shouts of “Viva Mexico!”
Before the vote Moreno noted — and City Attorney Carlos Campos agreed — that an ordinance cannot set in stone a formal rotation for mayor and mayor pro tem. “We can’t do that … It’s already been clarified,” Moreno said.
Garcia spoke briefly about being passed over. “I have been the target of this skipping, but I’m not bitter …” He went on to call for the council to better and for the mayor to behave and for the council to act with decorum, for her to know her place and “understand the scope of your work.”
Following Romo’s election, Ureña nominated Manzanarez as mayor pro tem. He was elected 3-2, with Garcia and Moreno against.
Reading from a prepared speech, Romo first addressed the audience in English:
“Citizens of Calexico, I put all my experience and time into serving and listening to you, so that together we can seek the progress of our beloved city of Calexico,” she said. “To the workers and the administration, I say you have my full support, respect and gratitude. I hope to receive from all of you your trust to carry out the functions of mayor as consistently and appropriately as possible, always having as its main objective the wellbeing of the entire population.
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“Please pray for me, and viva Calexico,” Romo concluded.
Manzanarez kept his comments short, thanking those who supported him before he was elected and now. He reiterated much of what former Mayor Ureña highlighted about the city’s financial picture during his State of the City Address on Jan. 10, stating that the city is in the best shape it’s been in in years, a statement backed by factual information.
He said the city went from being “$4 million in the green” to “$4 million in the red” in just four years’ time, but not the healing has been significant, to the point where Calexico has had its best economy in the past eight years.
Fire Station No. 2 and Recall No. 3?
Big on ceremony and light on business, reorganization meetings are often devoid of heavy lifting. But there was one item pertaining to the embattled Fire Station No. 2 that required the council’s attention.
The council was being asked to select one of three engineering firms to guide the grant-funded rehabilitation of the firehouse, which has been unlivable for some time and has problems with mold, roofing, electrical, structural and other issues that pose health and safety risks to Calexico’s firefighters.
Fire crews have been using a travel trailer on the fire station’s property at 900 W. Grant St. to stage during peak traffic hours when Fire Station No. 1 might be cut off from the west side of the city.
Of the three proposals the city received, Calexico City Manager Esperanza Colio Warren recommended The Holt Group Inc. of El Centro at a cost of $112,000 to the city. She explained that while The Holt Group was not the cheapest, the firm was willing to do the work fast enough to make the deadlines required of the state grants to refurbish the firehouse.
Plus, Colio Warren said during her time as a deputy Imperial County executive officer, she was in charge of three fire station builds in which The Holt Group was involved. In all cases, the firm was fast and professional, she said.
The council unanimously went with The Holt Group with the idea that all work to Fire Station No. 2 needs to be completed by October 2024.
Early in the discussion, Calexico Recall 2023 Committee’s Hurtado came up to speak, seemingly on the pretense to address the issue of selecting an engineering firm. But when she spoke she didn’t really speak about the topic; rather, she spoke about Mayor Romo’s lack of respect for the community, for the Fire Department, basically stating she was not fit for the job, then serving her the intent to recall form, and ratcheting up Calexico’s political theater to new levels.
