tool name

Friday, Nov. 13, 2009

Rift between mayor, council paralyzes Sanger City Hall

SANGER -- A growing rift between Sanger's mayor and the other four council members is threatening to paralyze City Hall.

Last week, Mayor Jose Villarreal accused the other council members of breaking state laws that govern closed-door meetings and announced that he will boycott such meetings in the future.

That prompted two other council members, angered by the mayor's decision, to say that they, too, will boycott closed-door meetings.

By law, the council must make critical decisions involving litigation, employee discipline and labor negotiations behind closed doors.

But if all three council members follow through on their boycotts, there won't be enough for a quorum in closed session.

If that happens, City Attorney David Weiland said Thursday, "you're hamstrung."

Weiland said that in his 16 years as a city attorney, he has never seen a City Council member boycott closed-session meetings.

If the council members' differences can't be resolved soon, Weiland said, the city won't be able to discipline employees or move forward with lawsuits.

"That's very serious," he said.

The division on the council apparently stems from a dispute over how the city should select a new city manager.

Its former city manager, Jim Drinkhouse, abruptly resigned in February.

A Fresno County grand jury report later accused him and several council members of benefiting from cozy relationships with developers and grossly mismanaging the city's finances.

The report also criticized Sanger's leaders for depleting its reserves in previous years, forcing the city to make drastic budget cuts this fiscal year.

The grand jury said that the council did not fully vet Drinkhouse before hiring him in 2001.

Drinkhouse later disclosed that he had been convicted of forgery. That oversight has made the current search for a new city manager all the more sensitive.

Two months ago, the council asked former city managers from three Central Valley cities to review the 74 applications Sanger had received for the city manager job.

The three former city managers -- who volunteered their time -- whittled the list down to 12 candidates.

But at an Oct. 1 meeting, while the mayor was out of town, the council decided in closed session to scrap the process and hire a recruiting firm.

Council Member Victor Ruiz said this week he voted to hire the firm because he believes that Villarreal "tainted" the process by asking one of the former city managers whether a particular person had applied. Council Member Mike Montelongo raised similar objections.

Villarreal acknowledges that he asked Nick Pavlovich, a former city manager in Reedley, about whether someone -- he wouldn't say who -- had applied for the job.

But he said it was a harmless question that he asked in his capacity as a member of the council's recruitment committee.

Pavlovich and the other two members of the selection panel -- Allen Goodman, a former Lemoore city manager, and Jim Marshall, a former Merced city manager -- said that no one influenced their decisions and that the selection process went smoothly.

"We were just left alone," Goodman said.

The panelists also said that all 12 finalists were well-qualified candidates for the job.

Nevertheless, the council decided Nov. 5 to pay a recruitment firm $19,500 to review the applications and select a handful of finalists.

"There was no reason and logic behind it," Villarreal said of the council's decision. "It was based on impulse and emotion."

At last week's meeting, Villarreal announced he would no longer participate in closed-session meetings because he said the City Council deviates from its closed-session agendas.

Villarreal's boycott announcement prompted Ruiz and Council Member Martin Castellano to say that they, too, would not participate in closed-session meetings.

Ruiz said he was offended by the mayor's decisions and said he plans to continue the boycott as long as Villarreal does. Castellano did not return calls.