Council’s Ontal Quits After Vote

Carson City Councilman Manuel Ontal abruptly resigned Wednesday night after voting with a majority of the council to cancel a controversial waste-hauling contract at a special meeting called for the purpose of reconsidering it.

Mayor Daryl Sweeney and council member Raunda Frank, who had voted previously with Ontal to award the commercial hauling contract to Browning Ferris Industries, stuck with their decision and voted to maintain it.

But Ontal sided with council members Jim Dear and Kay Calas, who had initially opposed the award as tainted, and voted to rescind it.

Dear spoke passionately, saying: “The way this was done before was wrong. We have a chance to right the wrong....”

Ontal said nothing during the debate. But after the vote, he stunned the packed council chamber by announcing his decision to resign.

Ontal said Carson residents deserve an “honest and fair” decision-making process.

He said he felt he had let people down and said he hoped his resignation “can be another step in the cleansing process this city so badly needs.”

The contract award process became enmeshed in controversy when it was revealed that a lawyer, employed as a consultant by BFI and as an attorney for the city, faxed BFI supposedly secret bid information that a BFI competitor had supplied to the city.

On Tuesday, FBI and Internal Revenue Service agents searched the residences of Sweeney and Frank, looking for evidence of an unspecified crime.

A third warrant was served Tuesday on the Gardena office of BFI.