The College of the Canyons board of trustees failed to come to a majority vote on the selection of the board’s new president Wednesday. The election was tabled until next month.
During the board’s annual December meeting, where board leadership positions are selected for the new year, the four present trustees – President Sharlene Johnson, Vice President Fred Arnold, and board members Edel Alonso and Carlos Guerrero – gridlocked at a 2-2 vote for both nominees, Johnson and Guerrero.
Johnson and Arnold cast “no” votes for Guerrero, while Alonso and Guerrero voted “no” for Johnson. The board’s fifth trustee, Darlene Trevino, was absent from the meeting.
The board struggled for several minutes to come up with a procedure to decide on either nominee before ultimately postponing the election, along with elections for a new vice president and clerk.
“If I remember correctly, Robert’s (Rules of Order) says that you must, if there’s a tie, that you need to refer back to your bylaws … and the next option is a coin toss,” Alonso said. “So I’m just putting that out there.”
Interim Superintendent-President Jasmine Ruys said she’d anticipated the vote may hit an impasse.
“We had looked into it just in case this happened,” Ruys said. “Since we knew we didn’t have a majority, we were pretty comfortable keeping the president in place until the next organizational meeting, where we would have all five members to be able to make the decision.”
The board is expected to vote again at its retreat on Jan. 9, with the hope that all five trustees will be present.
Michael Monsour, College of the Canyons’ Classified Senate president, told trustees during his address to the board the Classified Senate had added Trevino to its September vote of no confidence in Johnson and Arnold.
“In addition to the original items in the resolution, just in the spirit of transparency, and also in the spirit of constructive feedback, classified members expressed a perception that at times, trustee Trevino’s level of engagement has not consistently reflected the priority they expect of the trustee role,” Monsour said.
Monsour called attention to Trevino’s absence Wednesday during his address – not only from the board’s presidential election, but also from a closed session meeting earlier in the day, where Ruys was unanimously voted the college’s official interim superintendent-president.
“This is a significant meeting, and every trustee should be here tonight. It was well known ahead of time,” Monsour said. “I understand that Miss Trevino has a lot of other commitments, and not having her here to be able to comment on that and to be able to respond is unfortunate.”
Ruys, who has been serving as the college’s acting chief executive, and another candidate interviewed for the position during the closed session meeting.
Eric Harnish, COC’s vice president of communications, said the college wouldn’t disclose who the other candidate was.
