Palm Desert City Council - Study Session, September 11, 2025

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[00:02:45] Mayor: Good afternoon and welcome to the Palm Desert City Council study session for September 11th at 3:15. So, we're going to have a presentation from our city clerk, Mr. Mahia.
[00:03:14] Anthony Mahia: All right, honorable mayor and city council. I'm Anthony Mahia, city clerk, and for your consideration are possible amendments to the appointment process for the mayor and mayor pro tem.
[00:03:37] Anthony Mahia: Okay. Today I'll be seeking your direction on two issues. First is a clarification that declining service as either mayor or mayor pro tem resets a council member's last served date for purposes of rotation priority. And second is consideration of adding a deferral option in tie situations, allowing members to voluntarily defer service without penalty.
[00:04:01] Anthony Mahia: Regarding issue one, currently Resolution 24-13 states that in appointing the mayor pro tem, priority shall be given to the member with the longest continuous service since last serving as mayor, if ever. Under a strict reading, if a council member declines serving as mayor pro tem, that does not affect their priority as the rule only looks at the last time they served as mayor. Clarification is requested. The clarification requested is: if the rotation priority identifies Council Member Doe as the mayor pro tem and they decline to serve, should it be treated as though the member declined to serve as mayor pro tem and mayor, thereby moving to the end of the rotation? Staff's recommendation is yes, because presently a member declining to serve as mayor pro tem retains their priority every year until they decide to serve.
[00:05:00] Anthony Mahia: If the city council agrees, the proposed amendment would state: if a member declines service as mayor or mayor pro tem, that member shall be deemed to have last served as mayor in the year in which service was waived, and in future placement in the rotation shall be adjusted accordingly. An example is if a member declines appointment as mayor pro tem in December 2025, they will be treated as though they served as mayor with a term ending December 2026.
[00:05:28] Anthony Mahia: The second issue is tie situations. Currently, when there is a tie, the rules require a method of chance to break the tie. There is no option for members to cordially defer to another while maintaining their priority for the following year. For example, if three council members are tied, the tie will be broken by drawing straws. The winner will serve as mayor pro tem and the other two will participate in a tiebreaker the following year. If this provision is added and we had a three-way tie, and two members would like Council Member Doe to serve as mayor pro tem first, they may defer and retain their priority for the following year. And I'm available for questions.
[00:06:15] Mayor: Okay, thank you very much and good catch on that. Okay, are there any questions? Sure.
[00:06:22] Councilmember: My question is, if there is a three-way tie between Council Member A, B, and C, and A defers, and then there's a draw for B and C, then for the following year, would it be A and B that would enter the next tie and have to do another tiebreaker?
[00:06:46] Anthony Mahia: That is correct.
[00:06:47] Councilmember: Okay. Thank you.
[00:06:49] Mayor: Okay. Are there any other questions?
[00:06:51] Councilmember: Yes. In the example of Councilwoman Quintanilla, of Council Members A, B, and C, moving this from the abstract, do we presently have a future tie coming our way?
[00:07:05] Anthony Mahia: Yes. So if the first issue is clarified that declining to serve as mayor pro tem counts as also declining to serve as mayor, then we will have a three-way tie between you, Council Member Pedetto, Council Member Nandi, and Council Member Quintanilla. And so if there was a desire for one or two to defer, that's not an option presently.
[00:07:28] Councilmember: So the first issue gets fixed, then we have a three-way tie?
[00:07:31] Anthony Mahia: Yes, sir.
[00:07:32] Councilmember: And then the second option is to figure out how we just arrange that three-way tie.
[00:07:39] Anthony Mahia: Because presently the only option is either somebody says, 'I don't want to serve,' or we do the tiebreaker.
[00:07:48] Mayor: Any other questions or comments? I mean, I look at what you've done and you've provided us with a solution that makes sense to me. Does anybody else have thoughts on that?
[00:08:00] Councilmember: I concur. But do we have to choose on the second part of your issue?
[00:08:06] Anthony Mahia: Yes. So that way, I will be bringing whatever your decision is to the October meeting.
[00:08:16] Councilmember: Okay. So in terms of the deferral, is it either-or? So we can decide through discussions and negotiations, or if there's no negotiated agreement, then it goes to the tiebreaker?
[00:08:33] Anthony Mahia: Got it. Okay. Yeah.
[00:08:36] Councilmember: Sounds good to me.
[00:08:38] Mayor: All very grown up and reasonable to me.
[00:08:41] Councilmember: Question. As we're looking at last term served and last term since serving, etc., I think that the purpose of the rotation is to allow equitable time to share perspective and policy. I would like to add that there be a provision that there should not be an allowance for back-to-back mayoral rotation. There needs to be somebody else, and under no circumstance—let's figure something out if that were to be the case—but no back-to-back.
[00:09:15] Anthony Mahia: Certainly. So we could add a provision that says that no council member may serve as mayor for two years in a row, essentially sequentially. And then if that results in there being no option, then there's a provision for it to just go to open nominations.
[00:09:34] Councilmember: That sounds reasonable.
[00:09:38] Anthony Mahia: Okay.
[00:09:39] Councilmember: Thank you.
[00:09:39] Mayor: Thank you. Is that it?
[00:09:42] Councilmember: Oh my gosh, this is so easy.
[00:09:46] Mayor: Go crazy. All right. All right. So, we've done our work. Is there anything else?
[00:09:51] Councilmember: Great job, Anthony. I know this was a lot to wrangle and finesse the language, and thank you for that.
[00:09:58] Anthony Mahia: Nothing additional for study session.
[00:10:00] Speaker: Great. Thank you. Okay. So then we will
[00:10:03] Speaker: meet back here. What time? At 3:45.
[00:10:07] Speaker: We got plenty of time. Okay.
[00:10:10] Speaker: Thank you so much.