Eleven roll calls were taken at the September 14 City Council meeting. Two councillors were recorded absent for all eleven, a third for ten, and a fourth for two. The minutes, posted this week in the September 21 packet, do not say why for any of them; the president gave a reason from the chair for two.
Who was where
Council President Roberto Jimenez-Rivera announced at the start that Councillors Norieliz DeJesus and Tanairi Garcia were out because their children were sick. They are marked absent on every vote. Councillor-at-Large Kelly Garcia answered the roll, voted yes on the first roll call of the night, the $249,000 Mass Save grant at about 7:51 p.m., and is recorded absent on the ten roll calls that followed, from the gala donations at 8:22 through the Rule 31 referral at 9:41. Nothing in the minutes or on the recording explains her departure.
Councillor Manuel Teshe, whose attendance we examined earlier this month, arrived at 7:04 p.m., three minutes after the call to order, and was present for most of the night. He is recorded absent for two roll calls: the Broadway layout order at 8:47 p.m. and the final vote of the night on Rule 31 at 9:41. He was present and voting on the Chief Economic Development Officer referral at 9:21 and the Traffic and Parking items at 9:27 in between. That brings his count for the year to 22 missed roll calls of 59, still the most on the council.
The other seven councillors, Todd Taylor, Giovanni Recupero, Jimenez-Rivera, Deron Hines, Lisa Santagate, Calvin Brown and Leo Robinson, voted on all eleven.
What it meant Monday
With eight in the room for most of the evening and seven for the Broadway vote, the council was never short of a quorum, and no result turned on an absence. The 5-to-3 vote to send the economic development officer to committee would have been 5 to 3 or closer with the three absent members present; the 4-to-3 Rule 31 vote had four members out, the most of any roll call this year on a contested question. Under the council’s rules a motion to refer needs a majority of those voting, so four votes carried it.
The record and its limits
The minutes record arrivals and absences and nothing else. Chelsea’s council has no rule requiring a member to give a reason for missing a meeting or leaving one early, and the charter’s attendance provision for appointed boards, which the Charter Review Committee is proposing to tighten, does not reach the council. What the record does show is that the three members who missed the second half of Monday’s meeting are the three who did not vote on the largest questions of the night, and that one of them, DeJesus, chairs the Ways and Means subcommittee that meets Tuesday on the items the council could not decide without her.