Community Corner
Mandel Voted Council President on Rotation Basis
Councilman Len Torres reasserts belief in policy enacted last July.
Scott Mandel was voted president of the Long Beach City Council by his fellow council members Tuesday, as part of the Democrat administration’s unprecedented policy of rotating presidents every six months. Fran Adelson, who served as president from January to July 2012, was voted vice president, the position held previously by Mandel.
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“I appreciate the council’s confidence in me,” Mandel said after he took his seat in the president’s chair at the center of the five-member council.
Mandel, who was first elected to the council in 2011, succeeds Len Torres, who was the sitting president since July, when Adelson stepped aside as the new policy was announced. Mandel thanked Torres for serving as president during and after Hurricane Sandy, which he called “one of the most trying times in Long Beach’s history.”
Prior to Tuesday’s votes on both resolutions, Torres spoke about the rotation of presidents, reasserting his belief in both the policy and his fellow council members.
“One of the things we’ve done as a city council is to really examine the concept of the rotation of the presidency,” said Torres, a former educator who was first elected to the council in 2009. “One of the things that I want to assure everyone is that it’s a healthy thing. I have to say that in the 36 years I’ve spent in education, when we rotated teachers it was a healthy thing, that we showed that teachers can handle multiple grades. And after awhile we had better schools as a result of that. I feel the same way about the presidency.”
On Tuesday, the council voted 3-1 for the changing chairs, with Councilman John McLaughlin absent and Councilman Mike Fagen casting the only 'no' vote, as he did in July, when he said that the new policy was made “behind the scenes.” Adelson said she disagreed with Fagen’s statement.
At that time, Fagen and McLaughlin both challenged the lack of a nomination process for a new president, as was required for prior incoming presidents. But Corporation Counsel Corey Klein essentially said that because the names of the new officials appeared in the resolution, a nomination process was unnecessary.
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