Belmont Agrees to One-On-One Mediation With San Carlos

The Belmont City Council voted 3-2 late Tuesday night to engage in one-on-one mediation with San Carlos and will send Council Member Christine Wozniak.

Mayor Coralin Feierbach and Vice Mayor Dave Warden were the two dissenting votes. They had also voted against any mediation with San Carlos at the .

At that meeting, the council voted 3-2 to send Council Member Warren Lieberman and Wozniak to mediation with two members of the San Carlos City Council, Vice Mayor Andy Klein and Council Member Randy Royce. But because three of those council members also sit on the fire board, the idea of sending just one person from each city was introduced. The San Carlos City Council voted Monday night to send Mayor Omar Ahmad if Belmont were to agree to one-on-one mediation.

The mediation, scheduled for April 22, will not be open to the public. But the Belmont City Council is hopeful any mediation conducted after that would be public.

The Belmont City Council weighed the pros and cons of public and private mediation, and overall felt strongly about holding all mediation in public.

“I think ideally this would be better conducted completely in public,” Wozniak said. “If I’m going to be honest, I would say that I don’t think San Carlos wants to do this mediation in public and that would be a show-stopper. I’m willing to go the extra step to have just two people go in a room to find out if there’s [any future].”

Warden echoed Wozniak, saying public mediation would be best.

“I don’t know what would be said in private that can’t be said in public,” Warden said.

City Manager Greg Scoles suggested the council not demand public mediation in the beginning and see where things go after the first session.

“I think to start out with having that as a demand would be a problem,” Scoles said of public mediation.

The city council ultimately said it was willing to participate in one private mediation session with San Carlos.

Meanwhile, Belmont is still pursuing plans for a standalone fire department. The Belmont-San Carlos Fire Department is set to dissolve in October.