Councilmember Carl Wolfe Orchestrated a Plan - Violation of the Brown Act?

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Mayor, and Councilmembers:

At the December 1, 2020 council meeting, Councilmember Carl Wolfe orchestrated a plan (and in violation of the Brown Act) to appoint himself as Mayor and Councilmember Peter Coven as Vice Mayor and pass over Vice Mayor Jeff Wan (an Asian American) for Mayor.

This was Peter Cloven's first day on the job. Clayton has three ethnic Councilmembers and the two Caucasians are in leadership positions. Smells like racism to me.

Jeff Wan is a very popular, intelligent, competent Councilmember and has proven his leadership abilities over the last year. He has an overwhelming amount of community support and many wrote letters to the council that was read at the December 15th meeting asking for the council to reverse their decision and appoint Jeff as mayor.

The community is outraged at the way Jeff Wan was treated and there is no logical reason for him to be passed over.

I do not believe Clayton is a raciest city. To the contrary, I believe the community has continually supported and voted for ethnic candidates, thus the make up of the current council. It does appear that racism has crept onto the city council.

The vice mayor and mayor position in Clayton is rotational with each Councilmember having an opportunity to serve as vice mayor and mayor. For the past forty years the vice mayor has always been appointed Mayor except for one vice mayor that did not win er-election and one vice mayor that had to resign because he was convicted of a felony. It has also been a long tradition that the one who receives the highest number of votes will be elevated to vice mayor (Jim Dias received the highest number of votes in the November 2020 election).This did not happen on December 1st. These guidelines and traditions are in place for a reason. It is to prevent what occurred at the December 1st council meeting.

Peter Cloven has indicated he could not support Jeff Wan for mayor because Jeff supported Frank Gavidia's (a Hispanic American) candidacy for city council. Instead he supported Wolfe who is the only other non-ethnic councilmember. As a planning commissioner, Cloven could not support Frank Gavidia, (a two year commissioner and next in line for vice chair), for vice chair of the commission and instead he supported a non-ethnic commissioner with only a couple of months on the commission. Seems to be a pattern here. What happened to diversity and inclusion. Still waiting for Peter Cloven and Carl Wolfe to explain their actions.

Sincerely,

Bill Walcutt

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