Round 2 of Interviews in Special Meeting Tuesday

The short list of applicants vying for a spot on the Rancho Santa Margarita City Council will get another chance to appear before their prospective colleagues on Tuesday. Mayor Tony Beall called a special meeting one day in advance of the regularly scheduled meeting on Wednesday.

At stake this week is a $100,000 special election. If the three voting members of the council—Beall, Jerry Holloway and Steve Baric—are unable to choose by May 2 a replacement for the seat vacated by Gary Thompson on March 3, the issue will go to a special election in November with a six-figure cost to the city. 

Given Baric's expression that the 12-candidate field represented an "embarrassment of riches," failing to name a council person would represent the height of dysfunction.

The meeting Tuesday, 5:30 p.m., represents an opportunity for the five men and one woman on the short list—each received at least one vote as a top-3 candidate from Beall, Holloway, Baric and fourth councilman Jesse Petrilla—to be interviewed.

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Beall was not present for interviews of Kenney Hrabik, Curt Stanley and Peter Whittingham when they were interviewed in a group of six during a special meeting that was called to accommodate the schedule of Petrilla.

Petrilla was not present to interview Carol Gamble, Brad McGirr or Michael Safranski.

On Saturday, because of a conflict with his schedule, Petrilla gave his blessing to the council to vote without him; it had previously taken the stance that all four existing members of the council would have a vote in appointing Thompson's successor.





Petrilla is training with the California National Guard through mid-June.

The agenda calls for re-interviewing of some or all candidates, and for taking public comments.

The councilmen will not vote on a successor at this meeting, though it will probably get to that point at the meeting on Wednesday, April 27.

Molly McLaughlin, the city clerk, said all candidates were notified of the special meeting "but the scope of the meeting was limited to those six."

When they met last time, the four candidates—Petrilla taking part by teleconference—deadlocked 2-2 on Gamble, an original council member and former mayor in the city. She resigned her position in 2004 to care for her parents.

A motion to vote on Hrabik, owner of the controversey-laden Dove Canyon Courtyard, failed to pick up a second. A motion to vote on Safranski, the board president for the Trabuco Canyon Water District who was listed as the No. 2 candidate on three lists, was seconded for the purpose of discussion only and went nowhere.

The four councilmen ranked the candidates 1 to 3. Here is how they ranked them:

• Beall: Gamble, McGirr, Stanley
• Holloway: Gamble, Safranski, Hrabik
• Baric: Whittingham, Safranski, Hrabik
• Petrilla: Hrabik, Safranski, Whittingham

A lot of attention will be focused on this meeting, and the one Wednesday, because of the perception of a generally failed effort on Sunday to discuss the candidates. There was no actual debate among the councilmen, and they got bogged down by determining protocol in the 4-hour 40-minute meeting that left council and audience members frustrated.