Politics & Government

Kaufman Might Not Be Kicked Off After All

A clarification was made Wednesday by the city attorney's office on whether or not RB Planning Board member Robin Kaufman was actually voted out at the March 5 meeting.

A deputy city attorney's clarification of San Diego City Council policy on Wednesday seems to indicate the Rancho Bernardo Planning Board did not have enough votes to remove Robin Kaufman from the group Tuesday night.

At the Tuesday meeting, a balloted vote was cast on whether or not to remove member Kaufman from the board after she asked a foundation to refuse the board a grant, since the believed the group wasn't complying with the Brown Act.

According to bylaws, a two-thirds vote is required to vote a member out. Fifteen of the 17 members were present at the evening, and nine voted in favor of removing Kaufman, with four against the action and two abstaining.

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Teri Denlinger, chair of the RB Planning Board, told Patch that the two abstentions did not count as votes, thus making the nine votes satisfactory for two-thirds of the 13 counted votes.

However, Deputy City Attorney Heidi Vonblum, in an email sent to Patch and the Planning Board by Kaufman on Wednesday, said that the two-thirds figure calculated with the number of members in the "recognized planning group."

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"A two-thirds vote means two-thirds of the votes cast, ignoring blanks which should never be counted. This must not be confused with a vote of two-thirds of the members present, or two-thirds of the members, terms sometimes used in by-laws," the email quoted from Robert's Rules of Order.

Vonblum then wrote in the email, "Although the Council Policy first refers only to a 'two-third vote', it also refers to the two-third vote requirement as a 'two-third' vote of their recognized planning group.

"Read as a whole, the requirement is more akin to the 'two-thirds of the members' situation described in Robert’s Rule 48, meaning that to remove a planning group member, two-thirds of the total membership of the planning group is required to remove a member."

In this case, it appears 12 votes—two-thirds of 17 members—would be required by the board to remove Kaufman, despite Denlinger's statement Tuesday night that nine of the 13 votes were sufficient.

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