What It Takes To Be a True Maverick

I first want to apologize. I have been completely absent in my Patch blogging. With wedding season in full gear, I have been very busy being the maid of honor in my best friend’s wedding, getting ready to be in another close friend's wedding and attending others throughout the summer.  

My father has also taken up some of my time—not that I am complaining. We sit and talk politics for hours at a time. It is always entertaining, and he keeps me on my toes at all times.  

As many of you know, my father, a Watsonville city councilman, keeps a blog The Watsonville Fishing Report. I am huge proponent of this blog—I wish he would blog daily. Through his blog, Emilio Martinez shows what it takes to be a true political maverick.

It does not come easy, and our family has seen what people can do when they do not believe in your thoughts and transparency. However, my father promised his constituents that he would make sure he would tell them where their money was going. He said he would vote for what was best for the people he represented. And he has never once broken that promise.

A couple days, he wrote the below blog. It was one of the best ones he has written yet. I thought I would share:

Sex, Lies and Video Tapes

By Emilio Martinez

I rarely take exception to people writing or stating that I have done little for Watsonville. The latest one was from a Felton female fan of the Sentinel. I wrote an op-ed chastising the Sentinel for taking a fair weathered flip flopper tactic. The Sentinel criticized Watsonville in an Editorial for dealing with Ethic Code Violations instead of focusing on job creation after sensationalizing my alleged ethics code violation resulting from a private telephone conversation with George Ow lobbyist Elias Alonzo.    

One of the first things I accomplished was having the Community Development Department provide the Planning Commission with copies of Applications for permits. This had never been done before. I did this after a Burger King was proposed next to the Red Roof Inn and the applicant complained of the process which included selective code requirements. And, because come to find out, some members of the Development Department were having meetings and deciding which applicants could start a business in Watsonville without the Planning Commission’s knowledge.

Another accomplishment was determining how much the city spends in legal fees. City Attorney Alan Smith claimed his invoices were “client privileged” information in his attempt to deny me access to view his legal fees. It took me one full year and countless of hours conducting legal research, writing emails to our city manager, memos, and public records requests before being allowed to view the invoices. Of course, the invoices weren’t “client privileged” information, because the city council is the “client,” and they approve payment of Smith’s billings. How could we approve payment for legal services if we didn’t know what services were provided and how much they cost? How Smith convinced then council member Luis Alejo, also an attorney, that his fees should not be privy to scrutiny by the city council is incomprehensible, especially after finding out that City Attorney Smith stamps his own invoices for approval of payment.

Along with allowing me and the other council members to view the legal invoices, an agreement was also made that City Manager Carlos Palacios would provide a quarterly report of legal expenses to the city council. He has done this only once. Why? Could it be that Palacios and Company did not want the public to know that the city spent around 1.2 million in legal expenses alone attempting to build housing around the airport? Or, that the city attempted to circumvent Judge Paul Burdick’s ruling against development around the airport by lying to the Planning Commission that it was both safe and legal to allow construction of a cabinet shop at the edge of a runway resulting in another lawsuit by the Watsonville Pilot’s Association? The city lost, again, and had to pay the pilots another $50,000 for their legal fees in addition to what we had to pay City Attorney Smith. This information would most likely be hidden from the public if it wasn’t for yours truly.

I spent approximately 100 hours attempting to determine the location and the purchase process of a fire truck for which the city paid $225,000 almost three years ago but still did not own the truck leastwise have possession of it. A council member should not have to spend that amount of time and having to resort to Public Records requests for doing his job, which includes the accountability of tax payer’s dollars. At times it seemed that I had a better chance of finding Jimmy Hoffa’s body than receiving factual information about the fire truck from Fire Chief Mark Bisbee, our City Clerk, our City Manager, and our Finance Director. 

I also requested that illegal immigrants be allowed additional time by our Police Department to have somebody retrieve their vehicles before being towed if they are stopped for a fix it ticket or a simple traffic violation.  Good business dictates that people on their way to work should not lose their only mode of transportation because they are tax payers and we need the money.  

I proposed and was instrumental in having a Smart Meter Moratorium. 

I demanded and it was approved that we receive a copy of the Agenda on Wednesdays instead of on Friday evenings leaving little time to conduct due diligence before Tuesday’s city council meetings.

I demanded and it was approved that we receive copies of the Summary of Disbursements on Monday instead of just a few minutes prior to the commencement of Tuesday’s city council meetings. The summary is a list of expenditures by the city that usually is in the two million dollar range. Just recently a $47.00 haircut was listed as an expenditure on the list; wonder who got that haircut?    

In the process of doing all this I have proposed:

• A Mural Festival which was harpooned by City Attorney Alan Smith with an email threatening to report me to the Attorney General and the D.A. for violating the Brown Act because I used the word “when” instead “if” upon referring to having the festival.
• A Sports Complex at Ramsey Park for nationwide tournaments which still could be done and completed with Redevelopment Agency Money which may have a better chance of revitalizing downtown than the Manbe-Ow Industrial Park.
• A Food Truck Festival along with the Birding Festival to attract foodies to further boost our economy.
•  Flowers and lighting in our downtown along with an anti-litter banners on light poles.
•  Placing kiosks at areas where tourists stop and congregate with a map and a list of local businesses to attract them into our city.

But, most important, I have fought for transparency in our local government and my family and I have paid the price for it. The Sentinel made sure of that. If it wasn’t for my wife Kathleen I would not be able to put in the amount of hours needed to obtain information from city staff that should only take a few hours a week to do. If anybody deserves a “Thank You” it’s Kathleen.

It is astounding the amount of information that is being withheld from the public by our city manager, some members of his staff, our city attorney, city clerk, and some news media. After 18 years of the obvious mismanagement that has been concealed with lies and misrepresentation of facts, we can conclude that with the current city administration the possibility of reducing crime, increasing job opportunities, and improving Watsonville’s image has about as much of a chance as the City of Bell had with Robert Rizzo.