Term Limits: From 1996 to Measure W

Covers the original 1996 term limits, the 2019 attempt to extend them, and the 2024 Measure W campaign — its placement on the ballot, its taxpayer-funded outreach, its private funding, the sign-enforcement dispute that ran alongside it, and the ordinance change that followed.

1996 — La Palma voters ratify two-term (8-year) consecutive term limits for City Council members, approving Measure O with nearly 80% of the vote. The structure adopted: two four-year terms, followed by a mandatory four-year waiting period before a former member could run again.

August 20, 2019 — The council's first attempt to extend term limits reaches the dais. At a study session, Councilmember Nitesh Patel — who tells the council he requested the item and is “neither in support or opposed” — opens a discussion on extending council terms from two consecutive terms to three (12 years total) and cutting the mandatory cooling-off period between terms from four years to two. Councilmember Goedhart, who is not seeking re-election himself, moves to direct staff to prepare a ballot measure for the March 2020 municipal election reflecting that change. The motion carries 3-0 (Goedhart, Goodman, Steggell), with Mayor Pro Tem Kim and Councilmember Patel abstaining. Mayor Goodman tells the room there is “no nefarious intent” behind the council's interest in the idea.

September 3, 2019 — Two weeks later, residents turn out in force to stop it. The council takes up Resolution No. 2019-40, which would place the three-term, two-year-cooling-off proposal before voters at the March 3, 2020 election. Eleven residents address the council on the item — nearly all of them opposed — including Robert Carruth, who asks that the item be tabled permanently, and letters read into the record from former Councilmember Steve Hwangbo and resident Steve Maikoski, both opposing the extension. Facing that turnout, Mayor Pro Tem Kim states on the record that he does not support the proposal and hopes it is tabled; Councilmember Patel says his earlier abstention was specifically to let public input come in before he took a position; Councilmember Goedhart says he personally favors longer terms in principle but that this is not the time to move forward. Mayor Goodman then moves to table the resolution indefinitely; Patel seconds; the council votes unanimously, 5-0, to kill it. The measure never reaches the March 2020 ballot. No source reviewed for this document shows the council revisiting the underlying idea's merits when it reversed course — only that the reversal followed the public turnout. Five years later, a similar proposal — again framed around continuity and leadership experience, again advanced by a subset of the sitting council — would return as Measure W, this time without the same scale of advance public pushback, and would reach the ballot and pass. See the June 4, 2024 entry below.

May 8, 2024 — Nearly a month before the City Council ever voted publicly to place a term-limits measure on the ballot, the City executes a consulting agreement with Tripepi Smith for “Outreach Services on a potential ballot measure to adjust term limits” — time-and-materials, not to exceed $20,000, with firm president Ryder Todd Smith as project manager reporting to the Assistant City Manager. City calendar records show weekly check-in calls between the consultant and the City Manager's office beginning in May. The consultant's May invoice — billed to “PROJECT: City of La Palma – Term Limit 2024 Ballot Measure” — shows Ryder Todd Smith personally billing the City for “drafting ballot language options” and drafting the press release announcing the council's ballot resolution. In other words: before any public vote, taxpayers were already paying a communications firm to write the measure's ballot language and script its rollout.

June 4, 2024 — The council votes 4-1 (Keo Conklin dissenting) to place Measure W on the November ballot, extending council term limits from 8 to 12 consecutive years — the same three-term structure the council itself had proposed and then tabled in 2019 after the public turnout described above. Keo Conklin later tells Voice of OC that “residents did not call for the term increase”; it was pushed by her council colleagues. The measure is branded the “Election Reform and Voter Choice Measure” — branding that appears throughout the consultant's taxpayer-funded work product.

The consultant-crafted 75-word ballot question voters saw leads entirely with benefits — “To expand the ability of La Palma voters to choose who is elected to city council; provide the opportunity for more consistent community leadership; and broaden the candidate pool…” — and never states the two facts that mattered most. First, that it extends allowable consecutive tenure from 8 years to 12. Second, and most consequentially, that the terms sitting council members had already served would not count: the ordinance's own text applies the new limits only to terms “commencing with” the November 5, 2024 election, and the City Attorney's impartial analysis states plainly that “current members of the City Council will be provided with a fresh set of three (3) four-year terms.” Voice of OC calculated the practical effect: incumbents could serve up to 20 years. That incumbent-reset provision appears nowhere in any of the taxpayer-funded outreach materials — not the FAQ sheet (produced in English, Spanish, and Korean), not the utility bill insert mailed to every household, not the citywide mailer, not the news release. A La Palma voter relying on the City's own materials was never told the measure restarted the clock for the people who put it on the ballot. The only place that fact appeared was the impartial analysis buried in the county voter information guide.

How the reset was written into the measure — Measure W did not simply raise the limit from two terms to three; it was drafted so that terms already served did not count toward the new limit at all. Under the 1996 structure, a councilmember who had served two four-year terms (8 years) hit the cap and owed the electorate a mandatory four-year break before running again. Measure W's operative text applies the new three-term, 12-year limit only to terms “commencing with” the November 5, 2024 election — meaning a sitting councilmember's prior 8 years of service is treated, for term-limit purposes, as if it never happened. The practical result the drafting produced: a councilmember already partway through or finishing an 8-year run could be re-elected in November 2024 and serve three additional four-year terms on top of the years already served — up to 20 consecutive years in office — without ever triggering the cooling-off period the original 1996 measure was written to guarantee. This was not a side effect of raising the cap; it was the specific mechanism the ordinance's own text used to raise it, and it is the single fact the taxpayer-funded outreach campaign never disclosed to voters.

June 12, 2024 — Eight days after the vote, the City issues Purchase Order #22959 for “Ballot Measure Services” to Tripepi Smith in the amount of $25,000 — $5,000 above the contract's stated not-to-exceed — charged to the General Fund (account 001-120-6000) and signed by the City Manager and Assistant City Manager.

May–September 2024 — Tripepi Smith invoices the City monthly, every line item billed to the “Term Limit 2024 Ballot Measure” project: $4,893.75 (May), $7,116.50 (June), $3,345.00 (July), $1,368.75 (August), and $1,367.50 (September) — $18,091.50 in documented public funds — for ballot language drafting, website copy, press releases, the citywide mailer, the trilingual FAQ sheet, the utility bill insert, Spanish translation, social media content, and monitoring of posts. California law permits public agencies to spend public money on neutral, informational materials about ballot measures, but prohibits spending public funds on campaign advocacy (Gov. Code § 54964; Vargas v. City of Salinas (2009) 46 Cal.4th 1). Whether one-sided materials that were branded “Election Reform and Voter Choice,” framed exclusively around benefits, and silent on the incumbent reset stayed on the lawful side of that line is a question voters — and the FPPC — are entitled to ask. Notably, the records the City produced in response to a Public Records Act request about the consultant engagement included drafts of the ballot “Argument in Favor” and the “Rebuttal to Argument Against” — the formal advocacy documents — sitting in the City's own consultant-engagement files.

October–November 2024 — Campaign finance filings (FPPC Forms 460 and 497, obtainable only by public records request) document who was actually behind “Yes on W.” These are not press characterizations; the following comes directly from the committee's own sworn filings:

Councilmember Nitesh Patel was the Treasurer of the Yes on Measure W committee (FPPC ID #1474110), signing its campaign statements under penalty of perjury. The committee's official address on the filings — 5021 Shirley Drive, La Palma — is Patel's own residence, and the committee's contact email is his personal Gmail address.

The committee's October 24, 2024 Form 460 reports $24,500 in monetary contributions raised calendar-year-to-date through October 19, with about $22,960 already spent. Press accounts of the complete filings put the final total at approximately $26,500 — most of it from sitting council members and the Patel family.

Schedule A of that filing itemizes contributions from Nitesh Patel himself (employer: Devi Construction, Inc.), Niti Patel ($5,500 — same Shirley Drive address, affiliated with Ram Tulsi, LLC), and Waldman Tax & Financial Services, 7861 Valley View Street ($1,000) — the business and address of sitting Councilmember Mark Waldman, matching his own candidate Form 460 on file with the City Clerk. Earlier filings reported by the press include $5,000 from Nitesh Patel and $5,500 from his brother Vikesh Patel — the incoming District 3 councilmember, who won his seat running unopposed and whose own Form 470 declared he anticipated raising and spending under $2,000 on his campaign — and $2,500 from another Patel at the same address.

Per the Form 460 and 497 filings, contributions of $5,500 from the Orange County Professional Firefighters Association, IAFF Local 3631 — the union representing Orange County Fire Authority firefighters — were routed to Yes on W through the candidate campaign committees of Councilmember Debbie Baker and Vikesh Patel rather than given to the measure committee directly. The relevance of the fire union's interest: Nitesh Patel represents La Palma on the Orange County Fire Authority Board of Directors, the body that governs the budget and labor relations affecting Local 3631's members — and he has since been elected Vice Chair of the OCFA Board and chairs its Budget and Finance Committee, positions announced by the City of La Palma itself. So the money of the union whose pay and working conditions are shaped by the OCFA board helped fund — through the committees of Patel's council colleague and Patel's brother — a ballot measure extending the tenure of the La Palma official who now helps lead that board. No evidence of any agreement or coordination between the union and Patel has been presented, and this document does not allege one. But the appearance of intertwined interests created by this money flow is precisely what campaign finance disclosure laws exist to expose, and voters are entitled to weigh it — especially because none of it was volunteered; every piece had to be extracted through records requests.

In total, the money of at least three of the five sitting council members — Patel, Baker, and Waldman — flowed into the campaign to extend their own allowable tenure.

Schedule E shows where the money went: nearly all of it to paid slate-mail operations whose names are engineered to resemble independent voter guides — “Budget Watchdogs,” “California Voters Guide,” “Senior Advocate,” “Election Digest,” and “Voter Newsletter” (five entities sharing a single Torrance address) — plus $13,288 to DTN Tech and additional payments to 3AM Communications and Walking Man, all for “Mailers and Walk Pieces.” Voters receiving a mailer from “Budget Watchdogs” or “Senior Advocate” endorsing Measure W had no way of knowing the endorsement was purchased by a committee run out of a councilmember's house and funded by the incumbents the measure benefited.

Campaign signs and mailers positioned the measure as a matter of public safety and “government reform.” Councilmember Keo Conklin's assessment, on the record: “It's deceptive and not transparent.”

Patel, who was terming out, declined to answer reporters' questions about the measure or about whether two brothers serving together on the council warranted additional transparency. Baker and Waldman did not respond to press inquiries at all.

Unlike other cities that post campaign finance data on their websites, La Palma required a public records request just to see who funded the campaign.

September–October 2024 — the sign-enforcement dispute, documented in the City's own words. Under the temporary-sign law the council adopted in December 2021 (signed by then-Mayor Nitesh Patel), erecting a temporary sign on non-residential property requires an approved City permit. As the Measure W campaign peaks, that rule becomes the center of a dispute that plays out in formal legal correspondence — and ends with the City Attorney placing key admissions in writing.

On or about September 16, 2024, City Manager Conal McNamara personally removes a “No on W” sign from the public right-of-way; a uniformed La Palma police officer is later sent to return it. This is not a resident's allegation: the City Attorney's October 15 response letter confirms the City Manager removed the sign, offering as the sole explanation that the City Clerk — who “would typically be involved” in such removals — “was not available that day.”

October 1, 2024 — Attorney Adam Sechooler, retained by resident Robert Carruth — spokesperson for a group of residents, including former La Palma mayors, opposing Measure W — serves the City a demand letter warning of First Amendment liability. The letter documents the McNamara sign removal, states that unpermitted “Yes on W” signs stood at non-residential locations across the city (near the Walmart, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and La Capilla restaurant, among others) despite repeated enforcement requests the City rebuffed with “a vague reference to supposed ‘custom,’” and demands that the City either enforce its ordinance or decline to enforce it — neutrally, as to all viewpoints. It warns that continued selective enforcement could expose “individual staff or members of the La Palma City Council” to action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

October 15, 2024 — City Attorney Ajit Thind responds in writing (Colantuono, Highsmith & Whatley file no. 42034.0011). The letter denies any constitutional violation and insists the City's enforcement has been content-neutral — but in mounting that defense, it makes three statements now on the record over the City Attorney's own signature. First, an admission of years of non-enforcement: “City staff has not enforced a ‘permit’ requirement in the LPMC against various kinds of small signs on non-residential property for several years” — meaning the sign law on La Palma's books was not the law its government actually applied, under an unwritten enforcement practice known to staff but invisible to any resident reading the municipal code. Second, confirmation that the City Manager personally removed the opposition sign, with no explanation offered beyond the Clerk's unavailability — and no explanation at all of why the City's chief executive, whose office was simultaneously administering the taxpayer-funded Measure W outreach contract, was personally pulling a sign opposing the measure his council majority was funding. Third, an announcement — made mid-campaign, in direct response to a legal demand — that City staff “has already been working on an amendment to the LPMC to exempt small temporary signs on non-residential properties, regardless of their content, from any permit requirement,” which “will codify staff's historical interpretation,” with first reading expected at the November council meeting. The same letter responds to the residents' legal demand in part by attacking the resident personally, asserting that Carruth “has a history of making complaints that have been unsubstantiated but have caused a tremendous drain on staff resources.” And it encloses photographs of unpermitted “No on W” signs — arguing that measure opponents benefited from the same non-enforcement, while confirming the City had removed none of them.

October 22, 2024 — Sechooler replies, noting that the City's claim of years of content-neutral non-enforcement is irreconcilable with its chief executive personally removing an opposition sign in the middle of the campaign. The reply further asserts — an attorney's stated-on-information-and-belief representation, and labeled here as such — that numerous “Yes on W” signs were placed on non-residential property without the property owners' consent, that the City refused repeated requests to act, and that owners at a prominent location ultimately removed the signs themselves. It rejects the personal attack on Carruth as an unwarranted ad hominem, and closes by reserving the option of litigation.

The Event-News Enterprise, reporting on the dispute, sought comment from the Mayor, the City Manager, and City Attorney Thind and received no response by press time — the City answered its residents' lawyer, but not the public. The episode is of a piece with the rest of the Measure W record: the machinery of the City itself — permits, code enforcement, staff discretion — deployed unevenly around the measure its own council majority was funding. What began as a resident's allegation ended with the City's own attorney confirming the central facts: a permit law that had gone unenforced for years, a City Manager who personally removed an opposition sign, and an amendment to erase the rule already being drafted while the campaign was underway.

Measure W passes with roughly 58% of the vote. The council members who funded the campaign are its direct beneficiaries.

December 10, 2024 — the rule quietly changes. Five weeks after the election, the council adopts Ordinance 2024-04, which — among a large set of state-mandated housing and zoning updates — removes the very permit requirement the “Yes on W” signs had been accused of violating. The 2021 sign code (signed by then-Mayor Nitesh Patel) required a City permit for temporary signs on non-residential property; the October 2024 demand letter alleged the council-backed committee's signs had gone up on commercial properties without those permits while the rule was enforced against others. Ordinance 2024-04 adds a new exemption: temporary signs of six square feet or less “are exempt from the requirement to obtain a permit,” with up to three allowed on any non-residential property. In other words, the conduct the residents' attorney had flagged as a violation was, weeks later, redefined as permissible. And the amendment's origin is not a matter of inference: the City Attorney's own October 15 letter announced, in direct response to the residents' legal demand, that staff was “already been working on” the exemption to “codify staff's historical interpretation” — with first reading expected in November. The ordinance's first reading came on November 5, 2024 — election day itself — and adoption followed on December 10. The documented sequence is what it is, and readers can weigh it: the City created the permit rule in 2021; a council-majority-backed committee was accused of violating it in October 2024; the City Attorney announced the fix mid-campaign in a letter responding to that accusation; and in December 2024 the City amended the rule out of existence. Two facts cut the other way and are stated here in fairness — the amendment was adopted after the election, so its legal effect could not have helped the Yes-on-W signs during the campaign, and the signage exemption was folded into a much larger ordinance (2024-04) whose main purpose was compliance with state housing law. Whether the small-sign exemption was routine cleanup or a convenient fix for an embarrassing enforcement dispute is a judgment the record lets each voter make; what is not in dispute is that the rule the incumbents' own committee was accused of breaking is no longer on the books — and that the City's lawyer announced the plan to erase it in the same letter in which he defended the City's conduct.