The Morgan Hill City Council voted 4-1 to remove Councilmember Yvonne Martinez Beltrán from her Mayor Pro Tem position following months of controversy stemming from a February incident and subsequent investigation.
The decision came after a heated meeting on Aug. 20 where Martinez Beltrán accused Mayor Mark Turner and her colleagues of retaliating against her for filing a complaint alleging Turner physically intimidated her during a Feb. 7 council workshop.
“This is bullying. It’s a dark spell coming to our small, little, beautiful town,” Martinez Beltrán said during the meeting. “There’s no basis to remove my title other than the mayor’s personal vendetta against someone that he is threatened by.”
Martinez Beltrán was the only councilmember to vote against the motion to remove her Mayor Pro Tem title. The council then selected Marilyn Librers to serve as Mayor Pro Tem for the remainder of 2025 and all of 2026, by the same margin of votes.
The controversy began during a Feb. 7 workshop meeting when Martinez Beltrán attempted to discuss an immigration declaration that wasn’t on the agenda. According to Librers, who has served a total of 12 years on the council, Turner repeatedly told Martinez Beltrán the item needed to be properly agendized before it could be discussed, in order to give the public sufficient notice.
“The meeting started at 9am. He finally had to call an emergency break, because she wouldn’t stop,” Librers said. “She was not following the rules. It was 9:17. So we spent 17 minutes of the mayor trying to say, ‘If you want to talk about this, we need to agendize it.’”
The incident escalated when some form of physical contact occurred between Turner and Martinez Beltrán. Martinez Beltrán filed a complaint alleging battery, while Turner has maintained his innocence. A third-party investigation commissioned by the city found no evidence of assault, though it does not dispute that the mayor touched Martinez Beltrán.
“The definition of battery is unwelcome touch,” Martinez Beltrán stated during the Aug. 20 meeting. “The video, the police, the witnesses, the investigator, the DA, they all confirmed he touched me, and that is battery. Battery is a misdemeanor crime.”
The Morgan Hill Police Department also investigated the criminal allegations and referred the case to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, which declined to file charges.
The three council members not involved in the altercation—Librers, Miriam Vega and Soraida Iwanaga—participated in closed sessions to review the investigation findings. They pushed for a July 22 special meeting to make the report public rather than waiting until August.
“I felt that it was an urgent matter to bring forth, not to hold off until August,” Iwanaga explained. “I thought it was important enough to give the public the opportunity to read the report, see what I had read, they had the same access that I did.”
Vega noted that she voted to hold the July 22 special meeting in the hopes of returning to city business in August with the controversy behind them.
“I was one of the people that pushed for it, too, because I was hoping that we were to deal with this in July,” she said. “We would come to our first meeting back from break and deal with actual city business. I really wanted us to put this behind to be here today and have dealt with it already. So, we pushed for something that would get it on the calendar quickly.”
Turner claims the investigation results are indicative of “types of behavior that has been longstanding with Councilmember Martinez Beltrán, such as intimidation, bullying, badgering, racial discrimination, lying to the police, lying to the investigator.”
Martinez Beltrán vehemently disputed these characterizations, defending her nearly 10-year record of public service. She noted she received 42% of the vote in the mayoral race against Turner and was recently honored as Senate District 15 Woman of the Year.
“I have served the city of Morgan Hill and its residents loyally and in good faith, for almost 10 years,” she said. “I have been elected and re-elected to my seat. I garnered 42 percent of the general vote of residents in this city for the seat of mayor, exactly what our current mayor got seated with when he ran in 2022.”
Public support for Martinez Beltrán appeared to have galvanized since the July 22 special meeting, during which people speaking during public comment largely joined Turner in decrying Martinez Beltrán’s accusations.
In contrast, the majority of public comments at the Aug. 20 meeting favored Martinez Beltrán. Many commenters did not take a side, but expressed concerns about the dysfunction caused by the controversy, calling it a distraction from crucial other city business.
Vega, one of the newest members on the council, said her vote to remove Martinez Beltrán’s role as Mayor Pro Tem was based on integrity concerns after reading the investigation report.
“I don’t take this lightly, Yvonne, I really don’t,” she said while seconding the motion. “I’m basing this on integrity. I’m really new to this job, to this position. And I do think that integrity is something that we need to hold, probably, at the highest. And based on the report that I read, I don’t see that.”
Martinez Beltrán argued the removal was retaliation for challenging Turner politically and filing her complaint. She claimed the investigation was limited in scope and that witnesses she provided were never interviewed.
“People who were there, they saw,” Martinez Beltrán said. “I emailed to the city a list of witnesses who were not council members, who were not the city manager or the city attorney, who serve at the will of the city council, and they were never ever interviewed. The city limited the investigation’s scope to omit everything before the election.”
Questions also arose about the video evidence from the February incident. Martinez Beltrán said there were discrepancies between a 29-second clip released publicly and raw footage she requested, calling for the full video to be made public.
City Manager Christina Turner assured the council that no staff member had modified the video, explaining that the breaks in city council meetings are typically not recorded in order to preserve private conversations.
“I will wear your retaliation as a badge of honor,” Martinez Beltrán said after the council’s vote. “I will continue working in spite of this for the people.”
The council is planning a facilitated session with all members to address council norms and ethics as they attempt to move past the controversy.
Vega, who called the situation difficult for all involved, emphasized the need to move forward. “We must find a way to put this behind us and move forward to do the work for which we were elected to do,” she said.
At least the lawyers hired by the City Manager and City Attorney admitted that after interviewing City Manager Christina Turner, City Attorney Don Larkin, and council members Marilyn Liebers, Soraida Iwanaga, and Miriam Vega the only credible information they had to determine what occurred during the meeting break was a video.
The City Manager’s claim that “no staff member had modified the video” may be true but the fact is that video which news organizations, including the San Jose Mercury News, posted online WAS altered by someone, somewhere along the chain because those versions have much lower video quality than the unmodified version, making it nearly impossible to see what occurred.
The Morgan Hill Police Department’s summary finding from reviewing the video was, “ at no time during the video recording was there any obvious signs of a push or physical altercation”. That statement is inarguably true, and the officer report included a description of what specific features and actions in the video led to that conclusion.
On the other hand, the ‘independent’ investigator did not explain how the video supports her conclusion; she simply stated that she watched it. I don’t care if someone has done 50,000 investigations, just because I said so is NOT a credible or fair way to draw a conclusion on such a serious matter.
A careful examination of the video based on magnified frame-by-frame analysis shows that
Mark Turner made physical contact with his right hand on Yvonne Matinez’s Beltran forearm just below the elbow as she was mid-stride, causing her body to rotate and her orientation towards the path she was walking on to significantly change.
There was no 𝑜𝑏𝑣𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠 sign of a push. When someone is walking with a normal gait, and force is applied from a mostly orthogonal position, especially when one of their feet is not grounded, it does NOT take much force to constitute a push. You don’t have to see someone with flailing elbows to cause the orientation of the person’s torso to change and with near certainty causing a sense of imbalance and a step out of place. That is what the video shows. A push.
The City represented the investigation as independent, transparent and thorough, and the report claims to contain factual conclusions. However, a transparent and thorough analysis of 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨 not only corroborates that Mark Turner pushed Yvonne Martinez-Beltran, but shows that every witness whose claims were used to make other supposed ‘factual conclusions’ that attacked Ms. Beltran’s character made statements that were wholly untrustworthy and showed dripping, blatant bias. The report is not a ‘fact finding document’ as purported, it is a shoddy analysis of a video and totally unsubstantiated attacks by people who showed themselves to be untrustworthy sources.
This was not an isolated incident, it was a continuation of a long pattern of behavior where public employees and elected officials Just Make Up anything they believe with help them achieve their goals with total disregard for Public Interest. And Just Making It Up is tolerated. Mark Turner’s cynical hypocrisy just takes it to a new level where gross exaggerations, derogatory name-calling, totally fabricated and inflammatory claims, and now inappropriate physical contact are fair game when attempting to discredit, discourage and impugn anyone he considers an opponent.
Morgan Hill residents deserve better.
Joe – all I’ve ever seen online for many, many months now is this Martinez Beltránis a public nuisance and certainly should not be sitting on Morgan Hill City Council. I remember reading during the mayoral race at a debate that she was completely unprepared for the questions being asked. She didn’t have facts, dates, knowledge etc. whereas Mark Turner was very prepared. Please keep your trumpian remarks to yourself.
Oh OK ‘JT’
Got it.
Mark Turner was so prepared to give away ten and a half million dollars of taxpayer money to MOHI over a FIFTEEN year period, all he could come up with to explain his decision was that if he didn’t do it, somebody else might not”. Is that sort of what you mean by Mark “was very prepared”, ‘JT’?
Joe,
It’s interesting that you leave out the fact that this entire episode happened due to Martinez Beltran’s irresponsible behavior during a council workshop meeting. After being repeatedly told discussion can not be done on an item that had note been on the agenda, an emergency break had to be done. I also find it interesting that “everyone” else is either lying or is biased against Martinez Beltran according to you including members of the city council, independent investigators, the police department, etc. Nowhere, not once, do you include the fact that Martinez Beltran started this issue, has had numerous issues in the past. Her claims of racial bias, retaliation, video manipulation – all typical reactions from her when she doesn’t get her way. I’ve attended only one city council meeting. Her behavior was appalling at the meeting, yelling, bullying, making rude remarks. I couldn’t believe she was allowed to continue to be present at the meeting. I’ve never gone back.
What is it you have against Mark Turner? He doesn’t do things/respond the way you want him to so he must be bad?
I’ve seen your prior posts tearing into people who don’t agree with you. There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing, you take it too far.
Wow Joe, you sure can burn up a lot of words. Just how is the mayor giving $10 million dollars away? Do you understand how thew hotel incentive program works? Apparently not…