DEL MAR — A new investigative report found that a Del Mar City Council member violated multiple guidelines and policies due to his conduct toward the city manager, city staff and contractors and violated the Brown Act by disclosing information from a closed-session meeting.
Councilmember Dan Quirk was censured by his fellow council members in a 4-0 vote on Monday night after the council received an overview of the findings of the three-month investigation by third-party workplace investigative firm Public Safety Consulting, Inc. The council agreed to initiate an investigation into Quirk’s conduct last August.
The investigation found that Quirk interfered with City Manager Ashley Jones’ ability to effectively do her job and violated the terms of her employment agreement. Quirk also directed city staff to take action that contradicted the City Council’s direction and pressured, harassed and made disparaging comments about city staff and consultants.
In a 206-page report, city staff members detailed how Quirk barraged them with excessive questions about ongoing projects, including utilities undergrounding, the Del Mar Riverpath, and San Dieguito Drive repairs. This reportedly caused staff a great deal of stress and took hours of time to address, with the effort to respond to Quirk’s communications costing the city around $20,000 in additional staff time, as previously reported by The Coast News.
Council members said the censure, which serves as a formal reprimand for an elected official, is necessary to protect city staff and the City Manager. Quirk was also previously censured in December for repeatedly failing to clarify when he was sharing his opinion versus that of the council at large in his public statements.
“For a City Council elected by the residents, this is the highest level of punishment, which is censure. If Del Mar was a major corporation, someone who committed the acts detailed in this investigation would likely immediately be dismissed. Council members cannot do that, therefore, this public censure is the only rebuke we have left to request a minimal level of decorum,” said Councilmember Tracy Martinez.
Quirk claimed the investigation was “illegitimate,” noting that this was the second investigation contracted by the city. He denied the allegations and said he was never told he was causing the city to incur additional costs.
“As far as this censure, there is zero legitimacy,” Quirk said. “My concerns and questions about projects are very legitimate.”
City Attorney Leslie Devaney said Del Mar did hire another investigator prior to Public Safety Consulting, but he was unable to complete the investigation and did not end up charging the city. Public Safety Consulting, Inc. was then hired to begin a new investigation in October, which they completed.
Quirk walked out of the meeting partway through the discussion of the investigation report, making him absent for the censure vote.
Crossing the line
The investigation found that Quirk, elected to the council in 2020, exhibited conduct that caused issues not only for Jones but also for her predecessor, Christa Johnson, who was placed on administrative leave in early 2021.
In interviews with the investigator, Jones said Quirk had “challenging conversations and dynamics” with Johnson and was integral to her removal as City Manager. This occurred just months into the start of Quirk’s term on the council.
The report said that after Jones was appointed to the City Manager’s seat in December 2021, Quirk began communicating heavily with her about city projects in a manner that fell outside his purview as a City Council member.
The councilman also tried to act as a “project manager,” directing staff and consultants to cut costs and take action that he thought was necessary, even if it contradicted the direction provided by the City Council, the report said.
This conduct violated the city manager’s employment agreement, which states that no council member can interfere with the execution of the city manager’s powers and duties or provide independent direction to any subordinates of the city manager, according to the report.
Quirk also sent frequent emails with extremely detailed questions about elements like project costs, which staff often could not answer to his satisfaction.
In one example, Public Works Director Joe Bride also told the investigator that “about 40 percent of his time was used for interacting with Councilmember Dan Quirk, and his other projects and operations took up the other 60 percent.”
If Quirk did not like staff’s answers, he would suggest they were not the right person for the job or make other disparaging remarks, city staff and council members said. Jones would frequently have to intercept Quirk’s attempts to direct staff to ensure that projects proceeded correctly and that staff were not being mistreated.
“The investigation revealed that staff and consultants cited numerous examples of Quirk pressuring, harassing, and/or directing them on how to do their jobs,” the report stated.
In some cases, staff interpreted Quirk’s comments as direction and implemented his suggestions because they thought he had the authority to do so. In 2022, during the city’s undergrounding pilot project, Jones said she discovered that Public Works staff had reduced communications with residents, reduced civil design, and reduced field presence, all at the suggestion of Quirk, according to the report.
“Jones specifically asked the staff why they implemented those things, and it was because they thought they were getting direction from Quirk, under the direction from Council, to streamline and seek efficiencies wherever possible,” the report said.
Multiple individuals also reported that Quirk stated Jones should be removed from her role, which Quirk denied.
Jones said that despite repeated discussions with Quirk about his conduct, the issues persisted.
“This is by far the most difficult situation I’ve ever found myself in and it’s something that no city manager wants to find themselves in,” Jones said. “I have a responsibility to our staff, I have a responsibility to our contractors, to make sure that they’re able to go and do their job without any outside interruption or disruption from individual council members once decisions have been made by the City Council.”
Brown Act violations
Investigators also determined that Quirk violated the Brown Act by sharing information from a July 2023 closed-session meeting with members of the public.
Early in August, a member of the community contacted Jones and informed him that Quirk had called and relayed details of the council’s July 24 closed-session meeting regarding the San Dieguito Drive repair project.
After an email was sent to council members informing them of the importance of following the Brown Act, Jones said the community member informed her that Quirk had contacted him to ask whether he had told Jones about their conversation.
Quirk denied sharing confidential information with community members. However, he stated that he believed the San Dieguito Drive project should not be discussed in a closed session.
The community member who contacted Jones declined to be interviewed as part of the investigation — however, the investigator said they could confirm the incident through documentation. Quirk reportedly contacted other community members about the closed-session meeting.
This is not the first time Quirk has been accused of violating the Brown Act. In 2022, while serving as a city liaison to the North County Transit District, the councilman was also reprimanded for sharing closed-session information with other individuals.
The report laid bare many frustrations with Quirk held by city staff and council members, which had previously stayed behind the scenes. Councilmember Dwight Worden said he would like to see Quirk learn from the investigation and change his behavior, but he was not optimistic about that possibility.
“I don’t think we’re going to see that from Dan Quirk, and therefore it falls to us as a council to set some guardrails… to protect our manager, our department heads and our staff from a council member who’s off the reservation and won’t follow the rules,” Worden said. “It’s not within the city manager’s responsibilities or job duties to try to rein in a council member.”
