{"id":285900,"date":"2025-10-08T07:04:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T07:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/285900\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T07:04:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T07:04:14","slug":"lemon-grove-still-cant-agree-who-should-fill-council-vacancy-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/285900\/","title":{"rendered":"Lemon Grove still can\u2019t agree who should fill council vacancy \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

A vacancy on the Lemon Grove City Council will remain after a contentious meeting Tuesday ended without consensus \u2013 but leaders agreed to open up the process for additional candidates.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe community wants healing,\u201d Councilmember Yadira Altamirano said. \u201cThe atmosphere has changed up on the dias in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a heated discussion, the four city leaders rehashed their arguments from the last council meeting \u2014 coming to a gridlock as to who should fill the seat, which opened when Sitivi \u201cSteve\u201d Faiai unexpectedly passed away<\/a> over the summer.<\/p>\n

Newer members of the council want Lauren Faiai, widow of Sitivi Faiai. On the other hand, the more longstanding council members advocated for Jay Andrew Bass, a well-known figure who holds seats on the Lemon Grove School District board and the city\u2019s planning commission.<\/p>\n

The division rang true again during the meeting on Tuesday, where the council\u2019s deliberations quickly devolved into arguments about each side\u2019s unwillingness to budge.<\/p>\n

City leaders were presented with eight options which included, but were not limited to: reconsideration of the current candidates, opening the process up to new candidates, creating a subcommittee for vetting candidates, or holding a special election.<\/p>\n

Mayor Alysson Snow and Mayor Pro-Tem Jennifer Mendoza balked at introducing new candidates.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were presented with eight very good candidates,\u201d Mendoza said. \u201cThere is no one there that wouldn\u2019t make a good city council member.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mendoza continued to advocate against the appointment of Lauren Faiai, saying it would be a \u201clegacy appointment.\u201d Both Mendoza and Snow said they had previously shown a willingness to consider more than one candidate<\/a>, whereas they argued the remaining council members refused to budge on their pick.<\/p>\n

\u201cI chose the person that I thought was what we needed,\u201d Councilmember Jessyka Heredia responded. \u201cI just really want to reiterate that you didn\u2019t compromise either.\u201d<\/p>\n

The vacancy has underscored tensions on the council, as well as calls from community members for a return to normalcy. A new member who can help bridge the ongoing division is necessary, Altamirano said.<\/p>\n

Unable to reach a consensus, city leaders opted to move forward with a new slate of candidates, with the concession that previous candidates be considered \u2014 without reapplying.<\/p>\n

In order to avoid another gridlock, Snow said it should be required that the vote is held on a ranked-choice model. This means that each council member will pick their top three candidates and if no candidate wins the majority of first-choice votes, the option with the least is eliminated and votes are redistributed until a majority is reached.<\/p>\n

The council agreed that once a new set of candidates is selected, a town hall will be held to weigh the community\u2019s opinion on each option.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A vacancy on the Lemon Grove City Council will remain after a contentious meeting Tuesday ended without consensus…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":285901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,20161,1370,24349,728,50,3549,3550,7264,7289,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-285900","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-east-county","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-lemon-grove","14":"tag-local-news","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-san-diego","17":"tag-san-diego-county","18":"tag-sandiego","19":"tag-top-stories-sdut","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115337275940285263","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}