Murrieta City Council Embraces Measures C and D; Falls Short on E

The Murrieta City Council has done an about-face and reverted back to what voters originally asked for when Measures C and D were approved in November.

Council voted 4-0, with Councilwoman Kelly Bennett absent, to strike down revised ordinances they had

"The further and further away we get from the wording of these measures is opening a can of worms and I think we ought to keep it as close to the original wording as possible," said Councilman Alan Long.

Measure C, which limits council members terms to two consecutive, will be effective as of the 2010 election, instead of in the next election.

Measure D, which limits council members pay, will now include benefits in that salary cap. The ordinance that was up for approval Tuesday did not include the benefits.

"That message needs to be clear to the citizens of Murrieta that the will of the people will be met by this council," Long said.

Measure E, however, was still a sticking point for both the Council and the proponents of the measures. The measure was meant to limit the city manager's pay to 2.5 times the median family income in Murrieta.

Councilman Rick Gibbs said his opinion has not changed on Measure E as it was introduced Tuesday, after having been rewritten by City staff to avoid "legalities."

Gibbs said placing a cap on the City Manager's salary was not up to the voters, but the City Council.

"As soon as the measures passed I thought, 'we're going to court,'" Gibbs said.

Gibbs is against putting any cap on the City manager's pay. Rather, he said it should be commiserate with the market.

Council voted 3-1 to draft a third version of the measure, with Gibbs voting no and Bennett absent. Assistant City Attorney Jeff Morris, who drafted the revisions to the measures, was also not present at Tuesday's Council meeting.

The draft approved by Council does include the 2.5 times salary cap on the City Manager, but ultimately still gives the Council authority to set the top administrator's pay. It also does not include benefits in the salary cap.

City Manager Rick Dudley made $241,618 including benefits in 2009, according to the state controller's website, which is about $30,000 above the 2.5 times limit approved by voters.

Gibbs feared the City would lose the best manager it has ever had, and was willing to take the risk and go to court over it.

While Long, Mayor Randon Lane and Councilman Doug McAllister admitted it was a compromise to what two-thirds of voters approved, they said it was "as close as the City could get."

“This is clearly something that a lot of people are going to disagree on,” said McAllister. "...this may be as close as we can get until the judge tells us otherwise.. it has been very clear since 2008, that is has been the desire of the proponents to take it to the Supreme Court, and I've been convinced that no matter what we do, it will end up there."

Public Response

Bob Kowell, a Murrieta resident and one of the chief proponents of the measures, said he was satisfied with C and D, even though D as rewritten by the City does not include all the language the voter-passed measure did.

Measure D caps Council pay at 15 percent of the median family income in Murrieta, which is assumed by all parties to be between $80,000 and $90,000.

The new version, which will be up for final adoption at the next Council meeting, leaves out club memberships as part of the total compensation a Council member can receive as part of the salary cap.

Kowell said the intention was to include an fees paid out by the City to organizations that Council members hold seats on.

"Even though we could haggle over the memberships, we've gotten enough," Kowell said.

Council countered by saying that they don't hold club memberships; the organizations, such as the Western Riverside County Council of Governments, are memberships held by the City.

But Kowell, a professed Republican, said those were the organizations that proponents meant for the City to avoid, as they are "centralized government" when he prefers "decentralized government."

Long questioned why the club memberships even needed to be brought up.

"The measure says club memberships. We start to convolute the wording...it is clear to me that WRCOG is a City membership," Long said.

Mayor Lane also said there were no individual memberships that Council members were entitled to. At the previous meeting, Lane was the lone vote in holding out for the measure to include benefits in the salary cap.

The Final Product

The measures will come back to the Council for first readings at their next meeting in March--C as it was originally written; D without the provisions for including money spent on club memberships as part of Council members' compensation; and E with Council members expecting a lawsuit.