by Timothy Rutt
What happened Tuesday night during a private meeting between members of the Altadena Town Council and Supervisor Michael Antonovich's representative? It depends on who you ask.
The meeting was not an official meeting of the council -- no decisions were made and no votes taken, according to attendees who spoke with Altadenablog. One of the meeting attendees, speaking off the record, said that the meeting was to address some personality conflicts on the council that were impairing its effectiveness, to talk about problems with procedure, and admonish a member who was forwarding internal council emails to members of the public.
The private meeting at the Altadena Community Center was called by Antonovich's field representative Sussy Nemer, who told Altadenablog she would not talk about it on the record. "I'm not going to -- I don't think it's appropriate. It's a private meeting to discuss private matters, common sense stuff."
Council chair Sandra Thomas said that the meeting was about "nothing -- we just needed to talk over some things." Part of it involved Arroyo Pacific Academy resubmitting its bid to create a school on Palm Street, which is scheduled to go before the Land Use Committee on Dec. 6. Thomas said that "the discussion was mostly about that ... that was really the main thing. The other thing was that we just need to be out and about in the community and take care of our census tracts."
There was some discussion at the November town council meeting about whether a quorum was met for the Land Use Commitee, and Thomas said that was one of the things addressed last night: "There was a question in procedure, but the procedure was absolutely right ... the problem that we thought we have, we didn't have."
Councilman Tecumseh Shackelford said that Nemer "just wanted to go over some of the rules with us, and how the town council is functioning or something like that." Shackelford, who said he had not attended the recent meetings of the council or the land use commitee, admitted to being "completely lost last night ... I wasn't up to date with any of that stuff."
