Avenal Council Member Tries to Call Meeting Alone After Recall, But State Law Says He Can’t

Ricardo Verdugo, the only Avenal City Council member not on the city’s recent recall ballot, posted agendas around town for a special City Council meeting he planned to host by himself in early July. The meeting agenda covered steps for replacing recalled Mayor Alvaro Preciado and referenced calling a general election.

The problem: State law doesn’t give him the authority to do it alone.

Chris Micheli, an adjunct professor at McGeorge School of Law, told FOX26 that the California government code provisions Verdugo cited “don’t provide any authority for this.” The issue comes down to quorum — the minimum number of members required to officially conduct business or make binding votes.

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“Even in the unique situation that you have here in the city of Avenal with only one active member of the council, he or she can’t take any official action because California state law says that a local legislative body has to establish a quorum,” Micheli said.

That means Verdugo would need either a mayor to call a special meeting or two other council members to join him in making that call. If he wanted to become mayor himself, he’d need at least two other council members to vote with him to put him in that position. He cannot do that by himself.

Verdugo previously said in June that he would step into a mayoral role “if it got to a point,” though he said at the time he hoped the city would be able to get four new council members and return to normal operations.

The Breakdown

• Verdugo is the only active Avenal council member after a recall election removed other members, including the mayor
• He posted agendas for a special meeting to address replacing the recalled mayor and calling a general election
• California law requires a quorum (minimum number of members) for a local legislative body to conduct official business — that requirement doesn’t change even when only one member remains active
• To call a special meeting, Verdugo would need either a mayor or two other council members to join him; to become mayor himself, he’d need at least two other members to vote for him

What This Means for You

Avenal is in a governmental standstill — the recall removed most of the city council, but the one remaining member can’t legally act alone to fill the vacancies or move the city forward. If you’re an Avenal resident, the people you voted to recall are gone, but the city can’t function until their replacements are in place.

What to Watch

The real question here is how long Avenal will be stuck in this limbo. The city has called a general election to fill the vacant seats, but the timing of when new council members will be seated remains uncertain.

The other pattern worth naming: a recall that clears out most of a council without a clear succession plan is a real governance failure, regardless of what prompted the recall in the first place. Voters had reasons to want these officials out, but the mechanism left the city unable to function — a cost that falls on residents, not the recalled officials.