The Cloverdale City Council issued Councilmember Marjorie Morgenstern a formal warning Wednesday night over her treatment of city staff, passing up the censure resolution drafted for the meeting.
Mayor Brian Wheeler made the motion near the end of a special meeting at the Cloverdale Senior Multipurpose Center that ran about an hour and a half.
“I don’t think a censure going out the door for anybody or a censure for somebody running is good,” Wheeler said, according to the city’s video of the meeting. “I would like to just make a motion to issue a warning to council member Morgenstern and have this issue done. This is part of moving forward to me.”
Councilmember Mark Laskey seconded. The vote was announced as 4-0, with one abstention.
A warning with no conditions attached
Under the council’s Governance Manual, a warning tells a member not to engage in identified conduct. It’s meant for a violation the council considers “not sufficiently serious to warrant censure.” Censure is the manual’s most severe action, a formal reprimand that can come with the loss of committee seats and other privileges.
The motion as Wheeler made it named no conduct and set no conditions. The draft censure resolution in the meeting packet would have required Morgenstern to send all city business to the city manager or city attorney, and said she “shall not contact other City staff, except the Cloverdale Police Department in cases of emergency.” The council didn’t adopt that resolution.
Councilmember Andres Marquez abstained. “I’m going to give a abstain on this vote for the reason that there has not been an investigation,” he said.
Earlier in the meeting, Marquez said the manual calls for an independent investigation by a neutral party before a warning or censure. “That step hasn’t happened,” he said.
The staff report, which lists City Attorney Alex Mog as its contact, said Morgenstern “must recuse herself from consideration of this item.” On the video, during the roll call, Morgenstern took the microphone and said, “Okay, I’m voting yes, along with you.”
The city hasn’t posted minutes of the meeting.
A bed bug complaint, then a no-contact order
According to the staff report, Morgenstern began emailing city staff in July about a suspected infestation in her apartment. County Environmental Health inspected and found no evidence of bed bugs in her unit, the report says, as did Orkin Pest Control.
Assistant City Manager Eric Sanders became the city’s point person on the complaints at her complex. The report says his exchanges with Morgenstern “became progressively more hostile and aggressive,” and that when he told her he would attend a Sept. 17 inspection of her unit, she called the Cloverdale Police Department.
On Sept. 25, City Manager Kevin Thompson emailed Morgenstern that some of her dealings with Sanders had “at times, been abusive.” He told her she “may not communicate directly with City staff, unless you are contacting law enforcement for an emergency.”
Morgenstern forwarded that email to three other elected officials in Sonoma County and a newspaper reporter, according to the staff report. In her message she alleged that Thompson and the city clerk had gone to a strip club during a 2023 conference in Sacramento. The report says the city has no records showing any city employee or official went to a strip club.
The report also says that in 2023, a city employee raised concerns about comments from Morgenstern that the employee “felt were of an inappropriate sexual nature,” and that the city attorney at the time told her such talk with employees was not appropriate.
On Oct. 5, the council met in closed session to consider threats of litigation tied to Morgenstern’s conduct toward staff, and directed that a censure item be brought forward, the report says.
Morgenstern calls it retaliation
Morgenstern had up to 10 minutes to answer before public comment.
“Many people think that this is about a strip club. It really is not about a strip club,” she said. She said the issue was bullying and intimidation.
“I am not apologizing for telling the truth,” she said.
She said Thompson’s email came days after she had emailed him to complain about his behavior, and that she had written to Sanders as a private citizen. She said Sanders had been overheard at City Hall volunteering to be her handler.
“I’m not a dog. I don’t need a handler. I’m an elected official,” she said.
She said she didn’t want Sanders in her home and called the police on purpose.
“And I think this whole thing is retaliation,” she said. “So I’m sick of being bullied.”
Clerk denies strip club visit, asks her to resign
City Clerk Mike Maloney spoke during public comment, saying he was speaking “not as a member of staff, but as a person.”
“I did not, definitively, unequivocally, did not go to a strip club,” Maloney said. He asked Morgenstern to resign.
Vice Mayor Todd Lands said before the motion that he would push for censure, pointing to what he called “losing an assistant city manager because of council member behavior.” Lands then voted for the warning.
Morgenstern’s term, like Wheeler’s and Marquez’s, expires in December.