Richmond City Council (Richmond, California)

The Richmond City Council is the governing body for the city of Richmond, California.

The council consists of the Mayor of Richmond and six other city council members, one designated Vice Mayor. The council members are all elected from the whole city; no members are elected by district or ward. The council members are elected to four-year terms, as opposed to the previous six-year terms. They are not all elected at once.

The council members meet every first and third Tuesday of the month and, if necessary, hold special meetings on the remaining Tuesdays.

Presently, there are eight Democrats, one member of the Green Party, and no Republicans.

The city council had met at the Richmond Civic Center at City Hall for decades, but due to seismic instability the council started meeting at an alternative site in the Marina Bay neighborhood. Some of the council favored a permanent move to this site, which is newer and in one of the more affluent neighborhoods. However, the majority of the populace was against this action as it would move City Hall from a central location to a rather isolated one. The city council has now returned to meeting downtown with the reconstruction of the Richmond Civic Center.

In the 2006 city election, Gayle McLaughlin of the Green Party was elected mayor of Richmond after a close race with Democrats Irma Anderson and Gary Bell.

Jeff Ritterman is chief cardiologist at Kaiser Permanente Richmond Medical Center.

Rights activist; former lawyer

Ran for city council for ten consecutive elections, often coming in second place and finally elected for the first time in 2010.

After Gayle McLaughlin's victory in 2006 the council appointed Harpreet Sandhu who had been the city's Human Relations Director to her vacant city council person seat. The fact that public input was not considered and that the candidates were not revealed to the public outraged many in the community. This led to the passage of an ordinance allowing anyone who can obtain 20 registered voters to sign a petition in their favor to be able to register with the city for a vacant seat. The petition was added to get the vote of council member Nate Bates, who considered passing the law without such a requirement would turn the city council appointments into an American Idol style circus. Mayor McLaughlin voted against this measure since she thought the city needed to overhaul the process entirely to make it more democratic. Her campaign manager and vocal community activist Juan Reardon called the new ordinance a "travesty."

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Wikipedia