Councilman Misetich's Statement

Rancho Palos Verdes City Councilman Anthony Misetich delivered statements during the September 21 meeting of the Rancho Palos Verdes City Council concerning an advertisement paid for by Marymount College and he also provided some other comments.

Here is Councilman Misetich's statement:

"Last Thursday September 16th, voters in Rancho Palos Verdes received a mailer and an ad in the PV News that implied that I- Councilman Anthony Misetich am in support of Marymount’s Measure P. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I was shocked that Marymount had hijacked my comments that were made during a discussion regarding a completely unrelated matter. Those comments were in reference to the contrast between the city of Rancho Palos Verdes electorate being an engaged electorate and the electorate of another city not being as engaged in their civic affairs. Marymount never asked for my permission to use my comments in their materials, but rather chose to manipulate my comments to suit their own purposes. In my opinion, this is deceptive and unethical conduct by Marymount College.

For the record, I oppose measure P. I along with my council colleagues voted to oppose the Marymount Initiative. I along with Councilman Stern wrote the City Council resolution against the Marymount Initiative. Additionally, I was one of the authors of the argument against the Initiative. For that action, I was sued along with my colleagues by Dr. Michael Brophy, President of Marymount College. Dr. Brophy lost that suit, in court on September 3rd, where the Judge in the case ruled that his lawsuit against the city council was in effect trying to censor political speech. In another lawsuit, that same judge found that the Marymount rebuttal argument was misleading.

For the last three months, Marymount has been sitting upon a modernization plan that was approved by this city council, with two slight modifications; the athletic building was reduced in height by 10 feet in order to preserve views, and the athletic field was moved 60 feet farther away from PVDE to create a buffer. This was very similar to an alternative option for the field proposed by Marymount. In fact, Marymount could start putting shovels in the ground tomorrow if they wanted to start their expansion plans. This initiative is completely unnecessary.

What the Initiative is really about is Marymount’s plan to add two high density dormitories in one of our single family residential neighborhoods. Marymount chose not to ask the City Council to consider or even evaluate Dormitories. Instead, Marymount chose to qualify an initiative to create its own special district; to become a land use island unto itself with special provisions to eliminate important city oversight as an end run around the City’s processes.

The city council voted unanimously to oppose the Initiative. Since then, Mayor Wolowicz, Councilman Campbell and I have had false criminal accusations manufactured against us by Marymount; the entire council has been sued by the President of Marymount College, as I previously mentioned, for writing a ballot argument –in essence for exercising our first amendment rights. And they are now using my name and comments without my permission to intentionally mislead voters.

Why would Marymount use these false and misleading tactics? I believe it is because the city council took the wind out of their sails when we gave them the expansion plan that they asked for. Now they have to create a straw man; a bad guy, to fire up voters to support their Initiative. That bad guy is the city and the city council of Rancho Palos Verdes. Furthermore, they were deceptive by not presenting the dorms to the council but instead embedded the dorms in the initiative.

Finally, I feel that it is sad that a Catholic liberal arts college would use tactics like manufacturing criminal accusations against council members, and use innuendos, half-truths, and intimidation. These aren’t the tactics of a college that teaches its students to seek the truth, but rather are the tactics that were employed by Totalitarian regimes during the 1930’s. So much for Marymount’s pledge to take the High road in this election.
Mr. Mayor, I will be sending a letter to Marymount asking the College to formally retract the use of my name without my permission in its misleading mailer and in the Ad in the PV News and for a written apology. "