Tag: Money Grab

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Family Ties Run Deep at Garden Grove City Hall – At least 117 employees, including a council member and former mayor, in recent years have had at least one relative also working for the city

Garden Grove, California –

Family Ties Run Deep at Garden Grove City Hall

Employees for the city of Garden Grove like to say they’re part of the “Garden Grove family,” and that nickname is more or less literal.

At least 117 employees, including a council member and former mayor, in recent years have had at least one relative also working for the city, according to a public records request posted on the city’s website.

The issue has been controversial in Garden Grove, where the Orange County District Attorney is continuing an investigation into allegations of nepotism in the hiring of former mayor Bruce Broadwater’s son Jeremy as a city firefighter.

It was Bruce Broadwater himself who in October made a request, under the California Public Records Act, for all employees, current and former, with a relative working for the city.

In 2013, Voice of OC reported that a number of top officials had relatives who work in the city, including former city manager Matthew Fertal’s three sons and niece.

Broadwater has said that he did not intervene in his son’s hiring, pointing to a change in the city’s nepotism ordinance while he was off the city council.

He said that while he didn’t approve of his son’s hiring, it was not against city policy at the time, and certainly not unique.

“What am I supposed to tell [Jeremy] — that everyone and their brother can hire somebody and he can’t get hired?” Broadwater said at the time.

Broadwater’s Public Records Act request, which is available on the city’s new public records portal, shows that in addition to a number of top officials and department managers, many rank-and-file employees also have had a husband, wife, parent, child, cousin or in-law working for the city.

Councilmember Kris Beard’s two sons and finance director Kingsley Okereke’s two daughters and son have worked summer jobs in the Recreation Department. Community Services Director Kim Huy has a brother-in-law in Public Works. IT Director Charles Kalil has a sister-in-law in Community Development.

One employee, an administrative analyst, has a father, cousin and two brothers in the city, according to the document.

City firefighters, who gave former chief David Barlag a vote-of-no confidence when Jeremy Broadwater was slated for hiring, are certainly not immune.

Police Chief Todd Elgin’s son-in-law, and the brother-in-law of police officer Brian Dalton (the son of former mayor Dalton) are Garden Grove firefighters. Batallion Chief Paul Whitaker’s wife Lucia is a fiscal analyst for the fire department. Two fire captains — Alberto Acosta and Justin Truhill — are brothers-in-law, while firefighters Travis and Shane Mellem are blood brothers.

After a hot 2014 election season that saw and departure of both Bruce Broadwater and Fertal, employees have been especially attentive to public concerns over real or perceived nepotism, said former interim city manager Allan Roeder.

While it’s not uncommon for employees to meet on the job and marry, or for the children of a police officer or firefighter to follow in their parents’ footsteps, Roeder said he thought the number of relatives in Garden Grove is “high.”

“From a best practices standpoint, it’s best to avoid [hiring relatives] wherever possible,” said Roeder, who was the city manager of Costa Mesa for 25 years. “Quite honestly it creates perception, even when the employees are not in the same department…that, because someone is related to someone else, there may be favoritism, or something of that nature.”

From a practical standpoint, Roeder said it also makes it difficult for the city manager to manage employees if they have to worry about placing two relatives in a working relationship.

“You don’t want to put yourself in the position of having to manage workload based on those types of relationships. It’s better not to have to constrain yourself than to try to work things out after the fact,” said Roeder.

Amid the nepotism controversy, former Human Resources Director John D.R. Clark left for a job as Vice President of Southwestern College in Chula Vista. His subordinate, Laura Stover, has since been promoted to director.

In Sept. 2014, while both Broadwater and Fertal were still in office, the city passed a new nepotism ordinance that bans the future employment of relatives of high-ranking employees. It also doesn’t allow related employees to work in the same department or be placed in job where they could one day be supervised by a relative.

Relatives of officials could still apply to work 1,000 hours or less in a part-time position, subject to city manager approval, while part-time employees hired prior to September 2014 are still eligible for promotion to full-time employment.

However, while the new policy ensures the city will have fewer related employees in the future, officials are bound by the previous policy when it comes to those hired before the change, said City manager Scott Stiles, who took in August.

“It appears some people on the list are no longer with the City…and given the City’s current [nepotism] policy…I think the list will continue to be reduced,” Stiles wrote in an email. “Without doing some more research, I can’t report whether this list is more or less than what you might find in other cities the size of Garden Grove.”

“What I can tell you is that we have a responsibility to follow the established nepotism policy set by City Council, and that we strive to follow best practices necessary to maintain the public trust,” Stiles added.

Roeder said the only instance where the issue came up during his nine months at the helm was when an existing part-time employee sought a promotion to a full-time position.

Because of the potential for the person to work under or with a relative, “We denied the promotion,” he said.

Councilman Phat Bui said there isn’t much the city council can do now, given the nepotism policy was put in place after the hiring of most of these employees.

“For now, we just need to make sure the promotion or transferring of employees be done fairly and based on the merit of qualifications,” Bui said. “And I would like to have a process where anyone…would be able to appeal to upper management or the city council as well.”

Councilmembers Beard, Chris Phan, and Steve Jones did not respond to a request for comment.

Mayor Bao Nguyen declined to comment on the employment of relatives until the DA completes its investigation, but added that he believes the city will be transparent moving forward.

“I think people want the city to be fair in its hiring and that they all have a fair chance when they apply for jobs — and I think we’ve made that clear moving forward,” Nguyen. “But it’s important people continue to hold us accountable and bring up these issues.”

https://voiceofoc.org/2015/11/family-ties-run-deep-at-garden-grove-city-hall/

Contact Thy Vo at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @thyanhvo

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Turf Rebates – one country club got $1.9 million – the rebates amount to a transfer of wealth, he said – they often go to the rich, who can afford to pay for new cars, pricey solar panels and landscape contractors

During the brief heyday of Southern California’s turf removal rebate program, 17 Orange County country clubs, cities and homeowners associations got rebate checks of more than $100,000 for tearing out turf and replacing it with drought-tolerant plants, according to records.

The country clubs were part of a flood of rebate applications from homeowners and businesses that drained several hundred million dollars from the Metropolitan Water District’s reserves in a matter of months, leading the district to institute caps on maximum rebates and, eventually, shut down the program for lack of funds.

The six-figure payouts – in the county’s largest payout, one country club got $1.9 million – were funded largely by unexpectedly high water sales in recent years and came in the form of bills collected from homeowners, businesses and public agencies from Los Angeles to Santa Ana to San Diego.

The turf removal rebate program was lauded as a way to get Southern California unhooked from its water addiction. Lawns suck up vastly more water than what water officials dub “California-friendly” landscapes of succulents, desert plants and native shrubs, and replacing them was seen as key to surviving the current, four-year drought.

Though the program existed for years, interest in the program skyrocketed after Gov. Jerry Brown declared California was in a state of drought in January 2014.

And it made a major splash in early 2015 – a trajectory that correlates with the severity of the drought, the public’s awareness of it and the amount of money available for those willing to sacrifice their yards.

In 2010, when the program was young, payouts for Orange County homeowners and businesses were $1 per square foot. For the first nine months of 2013, the rate was lowered to 30 cents per square foot. But in October 2013, it increased to $1, and in May 2014, it increased to $2.

The Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC) uses Metropolitan funds to operate the program for all of the county except Santa Ana, Anaheim and Fullerton, which go directly through Metropolitan.

Since starting the rebate program, MWDOC has processed rebates for the removal of 9.5 million square feet of turf.

APPLICATIONS SOAR

In January 2014, MWDOC was getting 10 rebate applications per month. By September, it was getting 800 per month. And by April 2015, it was getting 1,600 a month, said Joe Berg, the director of water use efficiency at MWDOC.

To keep up with demand, Metropolitan added $350million to the conservation budget in May of this year, bringing the total conservation budget for all of Southern California to $450 million. Of that, $390 million was devoted to turf rebates.

By early July, officials had shut down the program because demand outstripped even the increased amount of cash.

“Frankly, we weren’t prepared for that incredible increase in participation,” Berg said. “When the program exploded in participation, it was not financially a sustainable program for us. We could not rebate our way out of the drought. We needed to put in some cost controls.”

And that’s what MWDOC and Metropolitan did. Before May, homeowners and businesses could get as much rebate money as they had approvals. A handful of Orange County country clubs and golf courses wrangled payouts of hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for ripping out hundreds of thousands of square feet of turf.

A few homeowners also collected outsize payments: more than 25 Orange County homeowners received checks for more than $10,000 each.

PAYMENTS CAPPED

In May, officials instituted caps of 25,000 square feet per year for businesses and 3,000 square feet total for residences.

The nearly $1.9 million payout for El Niguel Country Club, with its lush golf course tucked in a Laguna Niguel valley featuring more than 7,000 yards of terrain, three lakes and a rambling creek, was by far the highest rebate in Orange County. It accounted for more than 10 percent of the rebate money paid out to county homeowners and businesses.

El Niguel General Manager Eric Troll did not respond to messages seeking comment.

No other business in Orange County collected more than $1 million. The next highest was just over $500,000. The highest residential rebate here was about $32,000.

Homeowners were issued 10 times as many rebates as businesses. But the businesses collected more money total – more than $9.9 million compared with just over $7 million. The average commercial rebate was also more than 14 times higher than the average residential rebate.

In Orange County, 345 commercial rebates were handed out, and the average was more than $28,800. Homeowners got roughly 3,500 rebates, with an average of $2,014.

After El Niguel started its headline-making renovation, MWDOC’s phones started ringing off the hooks with applications from other golf courses. Some didn’t apply in time to get rebates.

PROGRAM MAY RETURN

Just a handful of country clubs getting massive payments is “exactly what we want our caps to avoid in the future,” Berg said. He added that the rebate program will likely come back in a different form.

“We have a very limited budget and we want to stretch that budget over as many people as possible. We don’t want to give the majority of money to just a few sites,” Berg said.

There are advantages to offering fewer, larger rebates, however. It takes less administrative time and money to process fewer applications, and a gallon of water saved is a gallon saved, regardless of where.

But when more people get more rebates, it expands exposure to alternative, drought-tolerant landscapes, water district officials said. When a batch of homeowners gets rebates and plants succulents and other less-thirsty plants in a visually appealing fashion, their neighbors might be inclined to redo their own landscapes, with or without a rebate.

That’s exactly what happened in The Reserve, a gated community in San Clemente where MWDOC studied the impact that offering landscape rebates had on the community. Several years after a limited number of homeowners were given the incentive to redo their yards with drought-tolerant plants, neighbors had followed suit without an incentive.

And while payouts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars may be shocking to budget-conscious ratepayers, they aren’t a handout, said UC Irvine professor of planning, policy and design Dave Feldman. Golf courses and country clubs have paid water bills for years, likely at very steep, tiered rates. The rebate money comes from a pool that includes those water bills.

“You’re not just returning money. You’re returning money in a way that’s going to have a lasting and durable impact,” Feldman said.

LOW-INCOME HELP?

Any way you cut the checks, given California’s long love affair with water-sucking grass, the breakup is bound to be expensive.

“You have to start somewhere. We’ve invested in a certain kind of aesthetic in the region for many, many years, when water wasn’t such an inhibiting factor as it is today,” Feldman added.

The next step, he suggested, might be finding ways to open the turf rebate program to low-income homeowners. Currently, homeowners must first pay contractors to redo their lawns – the rebate comes later.

The turf rebate program has not been without its critics. Brett Barbre was one of several Orange County representatives to the Metropolitan board to vote against increasing rebate funding in May.

A staunch conservative, Barbre said he opposes rebates for other environmental causes such as electric cars and solar panels. The rebates amount to a transfer of wealth, he said. They often go to the rich, who can afford to pay for new cars, pricey solar panels and landscape contractors.

The rich also happen to be the patrons of exclusive country clubs.

“I just think it’s wrong to be going to a private country club. That’s not a proper use of ratepayer dollars,” Barbre said. “I think it’s going to be eye-opening for people when they see where the money is going,” he added.

Additionally, the water savings brought by turf rebates cost more per gallon saved than other rebates, such as toilets and showerheads, Barbre noted. Water experts say, however, that water-efficient appliance rebates have nearly run their course in California.

“There’s a sense that a lot of the water savings for indoor has already been picked,” said Matt Heberger, a research associate in the water program at the Pacific Institute, an environmental group in Oakland. “That’s why these turf replacement programs are attractive.”

https://www.ocregister.com/articles/rebate-683759-water-program.html
Contact the writer: [email protected] Twitter: @aaronorlowski

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La Palma, the county’s smallest city, hit with big cuts

La Palma, California –

When things get tough, it’s often the little guys that get hurt the worst. And after the recession, Orange County’s smallest city is in the midst of some very big belt-tightening.

Welcome to La Palma, all 1.8 square miles of it.

Since the recession, the city cut nearly 20 percent of its workforce, to 52 employees from 64.

The changes included reducing the police force to 27 from 32 over six years and more recently implementing more layoffs, combining several civilian departments and eliminating two directors. In July, the City Council created a citizens Financial Sustainability Committee to oversee operations and investigate additional efficiencies.

That’s not all. The city is considering suspending its signature event, La Palma Days, a festival the city points out is also known as the “official Veterans Day parade of Orange County.”

La Palma Days is firmly on the calendar for Nov. 14. But this year is special. The city celebrates its 60th anniversary of incorporation and its 50th anniversary of changing the town’s name from Dairyland to La Palma.

Yes, it would be a shame to suspend the event after such an auspicious year. But revenues are down; pension and other expenses are up. And in establishing the finance committee, the council warned: “The types of measures beyond those already enacted and planned may impact the character and traditions of the city.”

But don’t mistake small for weak. Fiercely independent, La Palma has plenty of pride and more than a few surprises. Money Magazine in 2011, 2013 and 2015 named the city one of the best places to live.

DIVERSITY OF CULTURES

The face of Orange County is changing quickly. Guess which O.C. city has the largest percentage of Asian residents? I would pick Garden Grove or Westminster, maybe Irvine.

Of course, the answer is … La Palma. With an Asian demographic of 48.1 percent, according to the U.S. census, La Palma noses out Westminster. While small at nearly 16,000 residents, La Palma also has the highest percentage of African Americans – 5.2 percent – of any Orange County city.

Cruising La Palma is a treat. Within a few blocks, you can find restaurants specializing in Vietnamese, Chinese and Korean cuisines.

City Manager Ellen Volmert is at the wheel as school lets out and mentions that nearly 20 percent of La Palma is Korean. She reports that city officials visit Korea and are in the early stages of developing more permanent connections.

We pass an area where new houses are proposed. Mind you, the development is nothing like what we see in Irvine, Tustin, Lake Forest or Yorba Linda, where thousands of homes are under construction. In La Palma, on what was a small strawberry farm, seven homes are expected.

Still, it’s a good sign. Register columnist Jonathan Lansner reported in July that La Palma was an especially hot housing market, with homes selling within 33.4 days. He noted low home prices likely were part of the reason; in July, La Palma had a median price of $560,000.

Volmert turns onto Dallas Drive. It looks like a typical cul de sac. But visit this area during the holiday season and be prepared for traffic jams. Christmas decorations cover lawns, holiday lights glow.

The city manager beams. It is that kind of neighborliness that makes living in the smallest city special.

BILLBOARD DOLLARS

To help increase revenue, La Palma has several projects in the works. Each is modest, the kind you’d expect from a city that was designed as a bedroom community and still prides itself for its “small-town character.”

One project involves allowing La Palma to erect several commercial billboards along the 91 freeway. Sure we’re not talking big money, but we are talking six figures. And every little bit quickly adds up.

Another project is Centerpointe, the city’s mixed commercial development north of the 91. Centerpointe dates to the early 1980s and has been updated several times.

It offers hotels, restaurants and office space including La Quinta Inn, Kaiser Permanente, A’Roma Ristorante, Samsung Chemical, CJ Foods.

FIVE SCHOOL DISTRICTS

Because of a quirk in history, there is at least one weird thing about La Palma – a city you can walk across in a half-hour. It’s served by five school districts: Anaheim Union, Centralia, Cypress, Fullerton and Buena Park.

Understand, when those districts were fashioned in the late 1800s, the area was cow country. With far more cows than kids, no one paid attention to the mishmash of school districts.

As I leave the city, I visit John F. Kennedy High. The school opened less than a year after Kennedy was assassinated and became one of the first schools named after our 35th president.

Emblazoned on one wall is Kennedy’s famous inaugural statement: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

In an age of Facebook and Twitter, the quote would probably take the country by storm for 15 minutes. And then disappear. Yet it remains as vital a call as the day it was made more than a half-century ago.

It is a national call carried on the broad shoulders of one very small city.

https://www.ocregister.com/articles/city-682843-palma-one.html

Contact the writer: [email protected]

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