Vallejo is scheduled to choose a vice mayor in Tuesday night’s city council meeting — the first of the new year.
The City Charter Section 319 requires that a council member serve as vice mayor. Historically, the council rotated the position of vice mayor based on the seniority of council members. The post would go to the most senior council member who had not had the chance to be vice mayor yet, and in the case where two or more members of council had the same seniority, the member receiving the most votes was elected at the preceding election.
This practice has not always been followed, and the council has not adopted a formal policy indicating a particular process or practice. There is no obligation by any member of the council to accept a nomination to serve as vice mayor.
Vice Mayor Dr. Rozzana Verder-Aliga was originally elected in November 2013 for a two-year seat, and re-elected in November 2016 with a total of 14,837 votes and in 2020 to the District 1 seat with a total of 4,258 votes (44.78 percent of votes in that district). She served from January to December 2016 and from January to December 2021, 2022 and 2023.
In April, Verder-Aliga announced she would be running in the 2024 election for the state Senate District 3 seat. If elected, she would represent Napa, Solano and Yolo counties, in addition to portions of Contra Costa, Sacramento, and Sonoma counties.
Councilmember Mina Loera-Diaz and Cristina Arriola were both elected to the council in November 2020 — Loera Diaz to the District 3 seat with a total of 5,820 votes, and Arriola to the District 6 seat with with a total of 3,866 votes. Neither Loera-Diaz or Arriola has served as vice mayor in Vallejo.
There are two action items on the agenda for the meeting, with the first one being a possible resolution of the city council to adopt a city council budget and expenditure policy to govern the city boards, commissions and committees.
The next action item is for the council to review and provide direction regarding council member referrals.
According to the staff report, the recommendation is to adopt the two-part process previously adopted by the council to formalize council member requests to allocate the city’s scarce staff resources to provide information, analysis, review or study.
Prior to the regularly scheduled meeting the council will have a special closed-session meeting where the council members will hear legal counsel concerning the cases of Brian Buster vs. the City of Vallejo and Willie McCoy vs. the City of Vallejo. McCoy was killed in February of 2019 when six police officers shot at least 55 times after being found asleep in his vehicle at a then-Taco Bell drive-thru.
