| |
Richmond City Council agrees on new member at last
By Hamed Aleaziz - SFGATE
Updated 4:12 pm, Wednesday, February 25, 2015
A 47-year-old blind attorney has been appointed to the Richmond City Council after a weeks-long stalemate over who would be selected to fill the empty seat.
The Richmond City Council appointed Vinay Pimple (pronounced Pimplay) on Tuesday evening. The slot, which had been left vacant after the inauguration of Mayor Tom Butt, had 17 contenders — but it was Pimple who garnered the four necessary votes to get appointed.
Pimple will be sworn in March 3. The council was unable to appoint anyone — including the candidates nominated by Butt — during the previous two meetings in February. The appointment avoids a special election for the seat.
“It means a lot because it is placing a lot of trust in me, and these are people who are acting on behalf of their people who elected them,” Pimple said.
The opportunity to serve as a council member gives Pimple the chance to help pay forward the volunteer help he’s received in his life, he said.
“As a blind person you always feel like there are so many people that have helped ... so much — there’s no chance that I can do what has been done for me. Now here’s my chance.”
Pimple moved to the U.S. from India in 1993 and has worked as an English teacher and software engineer. In 2006, he graduated from UC Berkeley School of Law. Since then, Pimple has devoted much of his time to helping with his wife’s chiropractic business and writing software.
He has served as a mentor for at-risk youth, volunteers planting trees in Richmond, and works as a tutor for both high school students and adults. Pimple is also setting up an immigration law practice.
He said his legal and software background will make him an important addition to the council.
“I’m good with math and numbers — that is very key. When many people see numbers their eyes glaze over. ... When I see numbers I pause, think about it and contextualize it to get a better understanding of that issue,” he said.
Pimple said he’d like to focus on good governance — including posting meeting agenda details sooner for both council members and concerned citizens — and social justice issues. On that end, Pimple said he believes he could be a voice for the poor.
“They often don’t have the resources to really follow through on things, investigate something, and see that what is supposed to happen for them does happen. I hope to fill that gap,” he said.
Pimple will join three others voting on the council, including Butt, who are not part of the Richmond Progressive Alliance. One member of the alliance, Eduardo Martinez, voted for Pimple. The other two, Gayle McLaughlin and Jovanka Beckles, abstained. Pimple had previously failed to get four votes at the Feb. 17 council meeting.
Martinez, who voted for Pimple last week as well, nominated Pimple again on Feb. 24.
Butt said he voted for Pimple to avert having “a fourth person on there who would form a voting bloc with the RPA.” He also said he wanted to avoid an election that would have cost the city $500,000.
“I voted for him primarily because it appeared he was the only one we could all support. ... There weren’t really any negatives about him.”
Beckles, however, rejected assertions that the alliance votes as a bloc, pointing out that Martinez voted for Pimple. She said rumors that the group members “vote as a bloc, think alike, strategize,” are false.
Hamed Aleaziz is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: haleaziz@sfchronicle.com
Vinay Pimple appointed to fill vacant seat on Richmond City Council
Attorney Vinay Pimple was appointed Tuesday night to fill the empty seat on the Richmond City Council, after three weeks of deliberation. (Photo by Bonnie Chan)
By Bonnie Chan and Larry ZhouPosted February 25, 2015 8:31 am
In what many are calling a surprise move, the Richmond City Council voted Tuesday night to appoint Vinay Pimple, a blind attorney and volunteer tutor, to fill the vacant seat on the council that was created last month by former Councilman Tom Butt’s ascension to the mayor’s seat.
“I’m happy that people compromised and agreed on a candidate,” Pimple (pronounced Pim-PLAY) said following his appointment. “I think that was a good thing to do.” But Pimple also said he was surprised by the result: “It’s hard to tell where your four votes are going to come from.”
The appointment is the culmination of three weeks of political deadlock, during which many of the 18 candidates who applied for the seat were nominated by a sitting councilmember, but failed to garner more than three “yes” votes at any meeting. A council majority of four votes was needed to appoint a candidate.
During weeks of passionate debate over the vacant seat, candidates Sheryl E. Lane and Claudia Jimenez were widely considered to be frontrunners, and their respective support among the councilmembers demonstrated an apparently immovable dividing line. Lane, a public policy director at the nonprofit Earned Assets Resource Network (EARN) and Chair of the Richmond Planning Commission, was the favored candidate for both Butt and Vice Mayor Jael Myrick. Jimenez, a former community organizer with Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization (CCISCO), was the favored candidate for the three councilmembers affiliated with the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) – Gayle McLaughlin, Jovanka Beckles and Eduardo Martinez – who openly considered her an alternate to their first-choice candidate, RPA member Marilyn Langlois.
But Martinez, diverging from McLaughlin and Beckles, voted yes on Pimple last week. Martinez then moved to appoint Pimple on Tuesday and was seconded by Bates. Pimple ultimately carried the votes of Martinez, Bates, Butt and Myrick, with McLaughlin and Beckles abstaining. Pimple’s swift appointment, after weeks of stalemate, was met with cries of surprise from members of the audience.
Pimple will be sworn in at the next city council meeting on March 3.
Pimple is an attorney with a law degree from UC Berkeley, according to his candidate statement. Before becoming an attorney, he was a software engineer with Verizon and an English teacher at Rutgers University in New Jersey and at Mithibai Junior College in Mumbai, India. Pimple is currently an active volunteer with Richmond Trees, a group of community members that has so far planted some 400 trees in Richmond. He also volunteers as a writing coach with WriterCoach Connection, as a math tutor with Literacy for Every Adult Program (LEAP) and as a mentor for at-risk youth with Richmond Police Activities League (RPAL).
“One of the things I will push is transparency issues,” Pimple said of his immediate goals as a councilmember. “Also I hope that technology will be used more so we can do more with what we have. I have a software engineering background, so I will use that.”
Pimple is blind, which was noted as something that set him apart from the other candidates vying for the vacant seat. Councilman Nat Bates pointed out during the February 17 meeting that Richmond residents with disabilities did not have representation on the council.
Pimple says he uses screen reader software to read, and does not anticipate his visual impairment presenting problems in his role as a councilmember. “I have actually read an 800-page novel in one day,” he said. “If it’s a novel, I can read 80 pages an hour. The only issue I have to deal with is that sometimes PDF documents don’t have the best formatting, so I have to request the original data in Excel files – but that should be an easy thing.”
Immediately prior to Tuesday night’s council meeting, about 30 community members supporting Claudia Jimenez organized a press conference on the steps of Richmond City Hall, cheering and holding write-in signs all beginning with the phrase “I support Claudia Jimenez because…” and ending with reasons including “she cares about our community” and “the North & East neighborhood needs more representation on the council.” Jimenez supporters have filled the City Council Chambers at every meeting since February 10, when the council first began considering candidates for the vacant seat.
Following Pimple’s appointment, Jimenez supporters left the meeting and gathered in the lobby, discussing the possibility of submitting a motion for reconsideration. Jimenez said she was surprised that Myrick did not vote for her, saying, “I think he is just listening to one person” – ostensibly implying Butt, with whom Myrick has agreed on every candidate but one. (Myrick has twice voted against Marilyn Langlois, while Butt has abstained.)
The Richmond City Council last appointed someone to fill a vacant council seat in 2013, when Gary Bell fell ill and died shortly after being elected to the council. The council appointed Jael Myrick, then a 27-year-old field representative in Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner’s office, from a field of 12 candidates. Myrick had run for a council seat in the 2012 election and had received just over five percent of the vote.
Pimple was also a candidate for the vacant seat in 2013.
Richmond City Council vote record on all candidates over the span of three meetings:
Archives | RSS
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Richmond Selects New Councilmember — Finally
by John Geluardi
The Richmond City Council ended a two-week logjam last night by selecting a new councilmember to the seat left vacant when Tom Butt was elected mayor in November. The selection ends, for the time being, a rift among leftist political factions that together have made Richmond one of the most progressive cities in the country.
By a vote of 4-0-2, with Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) Councilmembers Gayle McLaughlin and Jovanka Beckles abstaining, the council selected attorney Vinay Pimple, 47. Pimple has little government experience, although he has volunteered extensively in Richmond as a writing coach in city high schools and as a math and reading tutor for Literacy for Every Adult program (LEAP). Pimple, a volunteer with Richmond Trees, also has planted roughly 400 saplings on city streets. Pimple, who is visually impaired, is also a former software engineer and English teacher.
While Pimple’s political leanings remain unknown, his selection means Richmond will avoid an estimated $500,000 special election and months of a potentially lame duck, six-member council with no deciding vote.
The stalemate was broken by newly elected Councilmember Eduardo Martinez, a RPA member who expressed support for Pimple from the beginning of the appointment process.
Richmond progressives won a stunning election victory in November by defeating four candidates who were supported by Chevron. The oil giant, which operates a refinery in Richmond, spent more than $3 million in an attempt to regain control of the city council from the chronically underfunded progressives. The campaign expenditure was unprecedented in a Richmond election. But the strategy backfired when the national media picked up on the campaign and presented it as a David versus Goliath struggle, which drew a great deal of support to city progressives.
However, in early February, when it came time to appoint a councilmember for Butt’s seat, a rift opened with the mayor and Councilmember Jael Myrick on one side and the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) on the other. The RPA was insistent on appointing only two of the eighteen potential council candidates — RPA member Marilyn Langlois and community organizer Claudia Jimenez — which would have given the RPA full control of the council without an election.
Not only were city residents uneasy about the RPA’s attempt to gain control of the council, but also the campaign for their chosen appointees was mishandled. RPA leadership made false claims about political accomplishments and made questionable claims of having a voter mandate.
RPA members, mostly using social media, also made awkward attempts to demonize Butt and Myrick, who over the years have worked with RPA councilmembers to challenge Chevron dominance of city politics with lawsuits, establishing unprecedented emission standards, and putting an end to unfair utility tax structures that the refinery had enjoyed for decades. Butt and Myrick also joined RPA members in challenging Wall Street banks for unfair and predatory lending practices that generated widespread foreclosures and blight in Richmond’s working class neighborhoods.
Now that the appointment is over, the council remains one of the most progressive in the Bay Area — if not the country. With the ongoing presence of the Chevron refinery and the company’s inexhaustible resources, a clear micro version of the national struggle against corporate dominance of federal, state, and local government will continue to play out in Richmond, and for the time being, city progressives have the upper hand.
Want to receive TOM BUTT E-FORUM and other action alerts on Richmond political and community issues delivered to your email address? Email your name and email address and/or the names and email addresses of others who would like to be placed on the mailing list and the message "subscribe" to tom.butt@intres.com. Comments, arguments and corrections are welcome. Tom Butt is a member of the Richmond City Council when opinions and views expressed, without other attribution, in TOM BUTT E-FORUM, they are those of Tom Butt and do not reflect official views or positions of the City of Richmond or the Richmond City Council unless otherwise noted. Visit the Tom Butt website for additional information about Tom Butt's activities on the Richmond City Council: http://www.tombutt.com. Phone 510/236-7435 or 510/237-2084. Subscription to this service is at the personal discretion of the recipient and may be terminated by responding with “unsubscribe.” It may take a few days to remove addresses from the distribution list.
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
To the extent that content is excerpted under the fair use doctrine from other media, I urge readers to subscribe to the print versions of these media with print versions to help support professional journalism and the businesses that publish news, and I urge readers to log in to the online versions to access additional content, related content and unrelated news as well as the advertisements that support the media. I especially appreciate local sources of news that include the Contra Costa Times , the San Francisco Chronicle, Richmond Confidential and the East Bay Express.
|
|
