With his trademark smile swiftly restored, new Vice Mayor Chris Armenta this morning extended a branch dipped in the soothing serenity of olive oil toward his colleagues on the City Council after last night’s divisive, thunder-laced electoral meeting.
The Morning After felt refreshing, he said. His old self was back.
“I am looking forward to a new day,” he said. “I am already past last night.”
Upbeat and laughing, he declared that he bears no lingering animosity after he and his colleagues torridly grappled in the muddiness of Council Chambers over the next generation of City Hall’s leaders.
“No looking back,” he told the newspaper. “I am focused entirely on the future and on the welfare of the community.”
A firestorm was set off when Andy Weissman, by a 3 to 2 vote, moved directly from Chair of the Redevelopment Agency to Mayor, devastating Gary Silbiger, who had strongly expected to go straight from Vice Mayor to Mayor.
Tradition Trashed?
Mr. Armenta contended last night and again today that Mr. Weissman’s path discarded “tradition and replaced it with a new process.”
But what about his peculiar “no” vote — the only dissent — when members were polled on electing the second-year Councilman to be Vice Mayor?
“That was a no-confidence vote in the new process,” Mr. Armenta said. “Nothing personal. It was not against any individual.
“It is absolutely accurate to say I am looking forward to a new year of serving the public.”
In the heat of the meeting, the almost always cheerful Mr. Armenta alternated between passivity and speaking out on standing firmly by his principles, especially the ones calling for civility and respect for tradition.
Although some persons thought Mr. Armenta turned down an offer to be Chair of the Redevelopment Agency before peripherally accepting the Vice Mayor position, he did not see it that way.
Doing the Right Thing
“I don’t know that I rejected the chairmanship,” he said. “What I did was turn it over to others to decide. I was in an awkward position,” apparently meaning that a quandary had been created when his good friend Mr. Silbiger had just been stingingly defeated for the No. 1 job. A disconcerting blend of conflicting feelings was coursing through Mr. Armenta’s cloud-covered mind.
Should he accept the chairmanship that had launched Mr. Weissman into the Mayor’s office as a sign that he hoped the same outcome awaited him next April?
Would one acceptance or another be, or seem, disloyal?
Was that the right way to conduct oneself in the presence of a friend who was hurting, angry and feeling betrayed?
“I was honored,” Mr. Armenta said, “that Mehaul threw my name out.”
But he wanted his peers to make the final call.
“I have said it before,” he told the newspaper. “The Council is like five brothers. Sometimes we have differences. But they heal. At the end of the day, we are family. “My only concern is the welfare of the community.”
Mr. Armenta has been a mainstay every Monday night in Council Chambers since he was elected City Clerk in 2002 to the first of two terms.
He expected the Council to follow what he called “the regular rotation schedule.”
He would advance from Vice Chair of the Redevelopment Agency to Chair, Mr. Weissman would go from Agency Chair to Vice Mayor and Mr. Silbiger would become Mayor.
After observing the City Council from the Clerk’s desk for six of the past seven years, Mr. Armenta said that “this was a process that seemed to be working.”
Tradition, however, may have been victimized by the swine flu.
Election Night, said the new Vice Mayor, whimsically, “usually is a celebratory occasion with family members present.”
Neither Mr. Armenta’s wife or son was present last night, though, to present him with another traditional gesture, a pin signifying he is the No. 2 elected officer in the city.
