David Perez

By Mark Gutglueck
Internal politics in a city across the county line is having a profound impact upon the future of Tres Hermanos Ranch, the primary component of a significant expanse of open space at the extreme extension of southwest San Bernardino County.
2,450-acre Tres Hermanos Ranch, consisting of rolling hillsides, canyon creeks and oak woodlands beside pastures that are verdant in spring and golden brown as summer advances, straddles the Los Angeles County/San Bernardino County border. At its southern end, it abuts Tonner Canyon, lying at the mouth of Orange County.
For half of a century Tres Hermanos Ranch was the playground of three fabulously wealthy men who acquired it in the early part of the 20th Century – oil baron Tom Scott; Harry Chandler, former publisher of the Los Angeles Times; and William Rowland, the son of John Rowland, who led pioneers over the Santa Fe Trail to California and the San Gabriel Valley in the 1840s. In 1978 it was purchased from the Scott, Chandler and Rowland heirs by the City of Industry’s Redevelopment Agency for $12.1 million. For three decades there was recurrent discussion of the City of Industry utilizing the property – which lies entirely outside its city limits – as the site for a reservoir and perhaps an electrical generation facility to ensure that two commodities key to the city’s expansion of its industrial mainstays would be available in quantity and economically to the businesses choosing to locate there.
With the 2012 shuttering of redevelopment agencies statewide, the City of Industry lost control of the property to the state-created successor agency to the city’s redevelopment agency and its accompanying regional oversight board, which was entrusted with seeing the property sold, and the proceeds of that sale distributed to the other taxing agencies in the area such as the county, school districts, water districts and public safety entities.
In May 2015, Irvine-based GH America and South Coast Communities, which represented capital from mainland China, tendered a quiet $100 million offer to buy all 2,450 acres of Tres Hermanos Ranch, then adjusted the offer to $101 million in making the purchase overture public some 13 months later. When no larger offer manifested, that sale seemed certain. But things fell through based on the consideration that the maximum number of units permitted to be built on the 1,750 acres of Tres Hermanos Ranch in Chino Hills is 467, and that Diamond Bar would limit the number of dwelling units on the 700 acres within its confines to no more than 624 houses and apartment units combined, rendering a venture to develop the property residentially less than spectacularly profitable. The GH/South Coast proposal stalled, as the capital needed to make the purchase dried up. Nevertheless, there were persistent reports that GH/South Coast or another development company was intent on getting access to the property and, through applying a formula that included hefty political contributions to local politicians, changing the zoning and density allowances on the property and constructing anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 homes.
This prospect generated a state of alarm among Chino Hills and Diamond Bar residents who were already feeling the pinch of overburdened transportation infrastructure, particularly in the morning and late afternoon commute rush hours.
In August 2017, the Industry oversight board, in a 4-3 vote, consented to selling the property to the City of Industry for $41.65 million. The oversight board required in the terms of the sale a restrictive covenant that limits the use of the property to a renewable energy project, utility augmentation, open space, public use, and preservation. The City of Industry announced its intention of constructing a solar farm on the property. Then-Industry City Manager Paul Philips asserted the lowered cost on the purchase gave the city leeway toward developing the property into a renewable energy enterprise. Phillips said much of the Tres Hermanos acreage was to remain undisturbed or would otherwise be committed toward recreational and open space purposes.
In short order, however, indeed on the same day that the oversight board voted to sell the property to the City of Industry, August 24, 2017, the City of Chino Hills dashed off a request to the California Department of Finance to undertake a 60-day review to determine if the sale of Tres Hermanos Ranch to the City of Industry was legal and reject it if any anomalies were discovered. Four days later, the City of Diamond Bar sent a similar letter to the California Department of Finance. Both cities called for the sale to be vacated, as the price – discounted by some $59 million from what GH America and South Coast offered – qualified as what both cities alleged was tantamount to a gift of public funds. Both cities maintained they would sustain a significant loss of tax dollars as a consequence of the nearly $60 million reduction in sales price. In its letter, Chino Hills maintained that the City of Industry’s intended use of the property to host a solar farm makes the property more valuable than the $101 million GH/South Coast offered.
For some Diamond Bar and Chino Hills residents, they considered the letters to be a less-than-fully-thought-through knee jerk reaction. They feared that those challenges, either intentionally or inadvertently, would if successful redound into the even more ominous eventuality of the property being converted to residential subdivisions, with tens of thousands of residents being packed and stacked onto the land, and the tens of thousands of cars those new residents drive adding to the morning and evening rush hour commuting nightmare current residents are already dealing with.
Through all of this there was a problematic opacity on the part of the City of Industry, which provided little in the way of information with regard to its solar farm project proposal, which called for rows of photovoltaic panels to be arrayed across the property to produce 450 megawatts. An analysis of the rough parameters of the project laid out by the City of Industry indicated that roughly 73.5 percent of Tres Hermanos Ranch’s 2,450 acres – 1,801.4 acres – would need to be devoted to the footprint of the solar panels, assuming the most efficient type of panels were used, in order to achieve the 450 megawatt generation goal.
Though the procedural challenges Chino Hills and Diamond Bar officials had initiated through the California Department of Finance failed to stem the project, on October 20, 2017 the City of Chino Hills filed a legal action in Sacramento Superior Court that sought to enjoin the City of Industry from proceeding with the solar project at Tres Hermanos Ranch.
Residents in Chino Hills and Diamond Bar have grown accustomed to Tres Hermanos’ pastures nestled among rolling wooded hillsides and canyons as a picturesque backdrop for their own community. Many of them have assumed that the ranch, with its proliferating bobcats, mountain lions, skunks and opossums, exists as a wildland preserve, providing a welcome respite from the expanding urbanization of the region and its accompanying commotion that encroaches on virtually all other aspects of their collective existence. In reality, the property had been subject to sale and/or development and eventual intensified use all along. For them, any development of the property is anathema, and it is merely a matter of opinion or personal preference whether blanketing the property with solar panels or residential subdivisions is the most appalling alternative.
For months, the issues with regard to Tres Hermanos Ranch remained unresolved and the legal standoff between the cities of Chino Hills and Industry has remained in suspension.
With the turn of 2017 to 2018, however, a long dormant power in the City of Industry who had begun to reassert himself more than two years previously moved to intensify his hold on the city, in so doing rearranging the political landscape there. That shift, the Sentinel is informed, is very likely to result in the developmental paradigm at Los Hermanos Ranch modulating from public use/renewable energy/utility uses/open space to large scale commercial development.
An individual who until recently had comprehensive access to the inner sanctum at Industry City Hall has confirmed to the Sentinel that former Mayor David Perez, who once bestrode the city like a political colossus, has taken the hidden reins of control there firmly in hand, and reduced the five members of the city council to figurehead status, as they cast their votes on all matters of substance in the city in keeping with Perez’s commands.
Perez is a leader of the city in the slightly varied mold of one of its founders, James Marty Stafford. Stafford, the second largest landowner in what would become the City of Industry, in league with attorney Glenn R. Watson in 1954 resisted neighboring La Puente’s effort to annex his industrial property. In 1957 Stafford was a prime mover in transitioning 12.06 square miles of unincorporated county land consisting primarily of industrial properties into a city. The model Stafford and Watson sought to use was that of another primarily industrial suburb of Los Angeles, Vernon, which incorporated as an industrial community in 1905. The City of Industry did not then have, nor has it ever had, a substantial population base, though in 2000 its population surged to an all-time high of 777. In the run-up to the City of Industry’s founding, Stafford and Vernon were nearly thwarted when their opponents pointed out that the area did not have sufficient population to incorporate under then-current California law. They got around that by claiming the 131 patients being cared for at a local insane asylum, El Encanto Sanitarium, and its 31 employees as residents to meet the inhabitation requirements.
Stafford steered clear of holding elected office, preferring to pull the strings of the puppets he installed in those positions, including the city’s first mayor, John Ferraro, who was “elected” upon the city’s creation in 1957. Stafford utilized his status in the community and his control of city officials to orchestrate a number of questionable deals enriching himself and those in his circle, influencing or outright controlling the awarding of Industry’s municipal contracts, the lion’s share of which went to his associates and business partners. The most lucrative of these was the city’s trash hauling franchise that was given to his business partner, Vicente Perez, without a bidding process or public hearings. Vicente Perez was David Perez’s uncle.
Ultimately, one of the deals Stafford manipulated to enrich himself, the construction of the 660-acre, $65-million Industry Hills and Sheraton Resort, involving kickbacks and bid-rigging, came to the attention of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney. Stafford and five others were indicted and they all entered guilty pleas to a variety of criminal charges in 1984 and agreed to pay $4.5 million in fines. Stafford spent three years in federal prison. Miraculously, John Ferrero, who was the city’s first mayor elected after its founding in 1957 and who remained in office an astounding four decades, was never charged, despite having been installed into – and maintained in – his position by Stafford. The ground charted by Stafford and Ferrero was covered by one of Ferrero’s successors and protégés, David Perez, who would use his position on the city council and as mayor to steer more than $326 million in city contracts to his family over a period of two decades. Most notable among those contracts is the city franchise for trash hauling and refuse disposal.
Today, the city boasts just 219 residents. At the same time, there are 2,607 businesses in the city employing some 81,000 people, over 99 percent of them commuters.
David Perez possesses immediate or direct influence over roughly a third of the town’s registered voters, who are either his relatives or people who live in homes or on property he or his family’s investment company owns. Another 50 percent of the city’s residences are owned by the city itself, over which Perez exerts control. Of the city’s 131 registered voters, 16, or 12 percent, are members of the Perez family.
In June 2012, citing health concerns and a desire to spend more time with his wife, David Perez resigned from the city council.
In Perez’s absence, something of a reform movement materialized. Without his presence on the council dais and absent his loyalists monitoring the day-to-day operations at City Hall, most particularly after the 2013 election, moves were undertaken to counteract the fashion in which the Perez family was able to monopolize municipal contracts and dominate other city activities and decisions.
An indication that Perez had lost his grip on City Hall came in 2014, when the city filed suit against him, alleging his companies had utilized city-owned land as a refuse holding grounds without prior arrangement or permission, and that his companies accordingly owed the city $9.6 million. While that matter was pending, the city brought in the international accounting firm KPMG to go over the city’s books with an eye on the city’s contracts with Perez’s operations going back two decades. KPMG was able to progress a considerable way toward the completion of that survey without alerting Perez or his family by not requesting parallel documentation from any of the companies affiliated with Perez.
Despite that strategy, the Perez forces caught wind of the ongoing audit, and picked up on as well the change of attitude, indeed the growing hostility, toward them pervading City Hall. The Perez family and the remnants of its political machine regrouped and rallied in late 2014 and early 2015, and put together a slate of candidates for city council they could count on to reverse the situation – Cory Moss, Newell Ruggles and Mark Radecki, who was at odds with his brother, city manager Kevin Radecki.
In April 2015, KPMG delivered its audit, having concluded that Industry paid Perez’s various companies, including Zerep Management Corp, City of Industry Disposal Co., Valley Vista Services, Inc., Vincent’s General Services and Grand Central Recycling & Transfer Station Inc., $326 million over a 20-year period. Pointedly, according to KPMG, roughly $219 million of the money paid out to Perez’s companies appeared to have been made pursuant to non-existent, uncontested or rigged bids, conflicts of interest, graft, misappropriation of public funds or “corrupt conduct.” According to KPMG, Zerep grossly overbilled on several of the services it rendered, such as charging on the order of six times what other contractors did for monthly citywide street sweeping and parking lot maintenance.
The following month, with the clock ticking down toward the June 2015 election, the city, under the guidance of city attorney Michele Vadon, filed a contract fraud suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court against Perez, four of his nephews and their affiliated companies doing business in the City of Industry, alleging “public corruption and personal profiteering, all at the city’s expense.”
Named in the suit were Perez, his nephew David M. Perez, Vincent M. Perez, Christopher Perez and Peter D. Perez, Zerep Management Corp, Valley Vista Services, Inc., City of Industry Disposal Co., Vincent’s General Services and Grand Central Recycling & Transfer Station Inc.
As a city official and mayor, David Perez, the suit asserted “enriched himself and the companies he controlled at the expense of the city and its citizens to whom he assumed an obligation to faithfully serve.”
The suit focused on $219 million of the $326 million the Perez family companies realized as the result of their contractual dealings with the City of Industry between 1995 and 2014, “which went to the benefit of the former mayor, his brother and his brother’s sons.” In doing so, according to the suit, the defendants “submitted or conspired to submit claims for money for the provision of general maintenance and miscellaneous services under the Zerep contract to the city that were never authorized or provided, or were inflated.”
The lawsuit further alleged that after he left office, David Perez “continued his corrupt practices to profit personally at the expense of the city.” The suit made note that Perez was “attempting to regain control over the city by supporting candidates for city council,” and with a degree of prescience predicted he would thereby obtain “undue influence and control” over the city once more.
Indeed, Moss, Ruggles and Radecki were elected on June 2, 2015. On June 9, the newly composed council voted to repeal that section of an existing city ordinance that barred the council from firing the city attorney within 180 days of a municipal election. On June 10, the council voted to sack city attorney Michele Vadon. The council then repealed that element of the ordinance likewise restricting it from firing the city manager within 180 days of an election, and less than two weeks later gave Kevin Radecki a pink slip.
The city council, which had replaced Vadon with Jamie Casso, hired Paul Philips shortly thereafter to replace Radecki. For a number of reasons, the council was not able to act with as much dispatch as Perez wanted in dismissing the lawsuits that had been filed against him and his companies and associates. Casso, did, however, arrange to put them on hold on the pretense that probes of the city by both the state controller and district attorney prompted by the lawsuits should run their course before the city either proceeded with the suits or dropped them altogether.
In the meantime, California State Senator Ed Hernandez had likewise taken a cue from the filing of the lawsuits and was looking into whether legislation could be brought to bear with specific regard to Industry and its situation. As Hernandez’ efforts were progressing, California Controller Betty Yee undertook and concluded an audit that found “the potential for fraud, waste, and abuse of public resources was extremely high” in the city’s methods of operation and that the city overpaid employees while allowing elected officials to use city credit cards to purchase personal items and services. Yee indicated the ethos of the city was shot through with “conflicts of interest and favoritism” and that high-ranking city officials such as the city manager were provided with “broad authority” to approve contracts and authorize payments without detailed documentation. Yee confirmed elements contained in the May 2015 lawsuit against David Perez, documenting that in the two years between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2014, $12.26 million was paid to Zerep Management Corporation, with much of that disbursed without adequate invoices and without proper authorization. Yee said this was part of a wider pattern in which the city paid its contractors millions of dollars without clear explanation of work being done,
As Senator Hernandez’ proposed legislation touching on the City of Industry was about to advance to the committee stage, a compromise was struck by which Hernandez agreed to withhold or kill the bill in exchange for the city hiring Bill Lockyer, a former assemblyman, state senator, state treasurer and California attorney general as the city’s reform advisor and watchdog in 2016.
While Lockyer was in place there remained a check upon the fashion in which the Perez political machine could proceed with the exploitation of Industry’s governance.
It was at this juncture that the successor to Industry’s redevelopment agency and the Industry oversight agency, over which Industry officials had some sway, were entertaining the $100 million and then the $101 million bid proposals on the Tres Hermanos property put forth by GH America and South Coast Communities. Despite the GH America offer, Industry city officials were revisiting the long dormant idea of using the Tres Hermanos Property for utility purposes. Quietly, Industry leased La Jolla-based San Gabriel Valley Water and Power, headed by William Barkett, the entire 2,450 acres at Tres Hermanos Ranch for $1 per year as an encouragement to develop a proposal to construct a 450-megawatt solar farm on the property. Additionally, the City of Industry gave San Gabriel Valley Water and Power a 65-year option on continuing the lease of the property and provided Barkett with loans and other funding for feasibility studies and preparations relating to the solar project. The deal with San Gabriel Valley Water and Power called for an annual payment of $4 million to the city for the use of the property along with the sale of the energy to be produced there to the city and City of Industry-based businesses at bargain basement rates.
For City of Industry officials, however, the fate of Tres Hermanos Ranch was but a minor issue involving land outside of the city. The real action at Industry City Hall in 2016 was taking place inside the city attorney’s office, where Casso was taking his marching orders from the Perez political machine. With the investigation into the City of Industry by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office sputtering or languishing without definitive conclusion, Casso acted to begin winding the lawsuits against Perez down. In November, 2016, Casso on behalf of the city filed a legal malpractice suit against his predecessor as city attorney, Michele Vadon, based on her involvement in filing the May 2015 lawsuit against Perez, his associates and companies, which the lawsuit characterized as ill-advised and politically motivated, as well as ineffective counsel Casso alleged Vadon had provided in defending the city against a sexual harassment suit filed by a woman against David Perez, which resulted in a the city paying a $1.2 million settlement.
In April 2017 the City of Industry dismissed the contract fraud suit against David Perez, his family members and their companies.
With the 2017 election cycle, Catherine Marcucci replaced Roy Haber on the city council in June.
Despite the Perez political machine’s control of the city council, there were yet reformist elements afoot in the city. One issue reformers were concerned with was the consideration that the Perez family controlled much of the housing stock in the city, making them landlords to a significant percentage of the electorate. The other major owner of residential property in the Industry is the city itself. More than 20 of the homes the city owns are rented to four of the members of the city council, their family members, or their associates at significantly discounted rates of $600 to $700 a month. Two of those council members live in three-bedroom houses overlooking a golf course in the Industry Hills.
In the face of criticism of the Perez family’s domination of the town and its politics, the concept of expanding the city’s housing stock was floated, thereby increasing the city population and diluting the Perez family’s political hold with the introduction of voters who were not beholden to the family. That approach, championed by Lockyer, had found support from city manager Philips and city clerk William Morrow, who is also an attorney and was serving as the general counsel to the city’s housing board.
In seeking to implement the housing expansion plan, the city, the city council and the city’s housing board entertained various proposals, the most serious of which appeared to be one put forth by National Community Renaissance to construct up to 54 homes on two properties, including 17 two- to three-bedroom, single-family attached garage homes on a five acre property the city owns on East Walnut Drive, south of the 60 Freeway. Lockyer expressed concerns that having the city retain title to the homes to be built which would then be rented to the anticipated influx of new residents would be problematic, as city officials would remain in the role of these new voters’ landlord, yet wielding political influence over them. He called for formulating a “de-politicized” application process for those applying to get into city-owned housing.
The plans to expand the number of city residential properties by more than a third and conceivably doubling the number of voters in the city, representing a threat to the Perez family’s continuing domination of the city, were not well-received by David Perez and some of his nephews. They utilized their influence over the city’s planning commission to block the first installment of that plan, and the planning commissioners delayed and then balked at voting on a proposal to build 25 new homes near Industry’s borders with Diamond Bar and Hacienda Heights.
Lockyer expressed irritation with the delay, saying the Perez family power block had acted to prevent new voters independent from the city’s political status quo from being able to move into the city. On January 9, Lockyer said of the Perez family, “They control the voting pool and they don’t want that changed. The town can’t survive ethically unless they expand the number of voters in the community to not have one interest be dominant.”
In a closed-session meeting on January 11, 2018, the Perez family-dominated council voted 3-2 to end Lockyer’s contract. When asked to disclose the grounds for the termination, Casso declined to do so, saying confidentiality applied to the proceedings because the city reasonably foresaw “anticipated litigation” growing out of the matter.
Two weeks later, the city council again adjourned into closed session and took up a discussion of firing city manager Paul Philips, city clerk William Morrow and Anthony Bouza, an attorney the city was employing with regard to the solar farm development issues at Tres Hermanos Ranch. Sufficient support to sack Morrow and Bouza manifested. Nevertheless, the council fell short of a necessary third vote to pull the trigger on Philips, as Mayor Mark Radecki and councilmembers Abraham Cruz and Catherine Marcucci were unwilling at that point to join with Cory Moss and Newell Ruggles in handing Philips his walking papers.
On the morning of February 27, however, the council convened into a specially called closed session meeting at which the only topic of discussion agendized was “public employee discipline/dismissal/release.” At that point, the entirety of the council voted to terminate Philips.
Within a week of Philip’s departure it was revealed that the City of Industry was beginning to rethink its tentative commitment toward the Tres Hermanos solar project, for which Philips had been the primary public advocate. By December 2017, Barkett and his cohorts with San Gabriel Water and Power had burned through some $14 million in carrying out preliminary planning on the project and had spent another $6 million in legal fees and other nondescript expenses, and had yet to produce anything tangible in terms of physical assets on the ranch grounds or anything indeed beyond conceptual plans. Barkett and San Gabriel Water and Power have submitted invoices for services relating to the solar farm proposal exceeding $1.5 million over the last three months that the city is refusing, at least so far, to pay. Some have interpreted that as an indication the City of Industry has given up on the solar farm concept at Tres Hermanos Ranch.
Over the last month, it has appeared that there is a leadership vacuum at Industry City Hall. No one was brought in to replace Philips, and on March 15, the closest thing approximating an acting city manager, Industry’s director of administrative services, Alex Gonzalez, tendered his resignation. Gonzales, who was brought in by Philips to assist him in taking corrective action in response to state controller Betty Yee’s audit findings, in writing charged the city with multiple violations that were both criminal and administrative in nature, and failing to live up to promises of reform. He said the firings of both Philips and Lockyer were indications that the nepotism and cronyism besetting the city have not abated.
The reality is that while the City of Industry does not currently have a city manager, the Perez family political machine is in control.
A recently departed City of Industry official, who agreed to speak to the Sentinel only under the color of anonymity, said, “There is no mistaking that David Perez and the Perez family are back in charge again. They have been for some time. You can see it in the [city contractor] procurement votes. Paul [Philips] was attempting to set up guidelines and create some discipline with regard to contractor services. He was doing analyses of performance, etcetera, and trying to enter into contracts along those lines, based on that type of criteria. CNC [a civil engineering firm with an office in the City of Industry] did not score well, and he went out to other firms. The council initially went along with Paul, but CNC had connections to the Perezes and the council voted to rescind and give the contracts back to CNC.”
The incestuousness and cronyism besetting Industry City Hall is overwhelming, the former official said, stifling any efforts at dissent or reform. “You have members of the city council who have jobs dependent on city contracts,” he said. “Four of them live in city subsidized housing and could be kicked out and so on. That was a motivating factor of at least two of the dissenters in the January vote who had opposed firing Paul but then went along with the 5-0 vote the last time.”
Philips was also undone by the housing stock increase issue, the former official indicated. It was significant, he said, that the vote was done unanimously. “I happen to know they had a majority willing to fire Paul Philips in January, which came around after a subsequent vote on procurements,” he said. “They waited until the vote was unanimous and that shows David Perez has a complete grip on the council and the Perez family has reasserted itself.”
Asked about what impact the recent staff changes at Industry City Hall would have on the development of Tres Hermanos Ranch, the official said, “It is hard to know exactly what that means for Tres Hermanos, ultimately. In the past, there was discussion about using the property for a reservoir. Last year, there was unanimous city council support of the solar project as well as trails and other public uses. That support seemed to be unanimous the whole time I was associated with the city. I don’t know if that has changed on the council. There was public criticism from the other two cities – Chino Hills and Diamond Bar – relating to what the footprint of the solar component of the development would be, the visual impacts on other neighborhoods and process disputes such as when does the city or the developer have to make greater disclosure of the details of the proposal. So, there were some council member sensitive to the public criticism, but they were generally in favor of the project, while Paul was there.”
At this point, the powers that be in the City of Industry are not on board with San Gabriel Water and Power, he indicated.
“Paul’s gone now,” he said. “What I have heard, purely in the realm of gossip, what is essentially going around the city, is that the Perezes are back in charge and they are against, or have scrapped, the procurement for that project. Whether the Perez family has alternate ideas is not clear. There was gossip that when the development of the property as housing was discussed, their ears pricked up because they have an interest in a road paving material concern, and laying miles of the fabric or whatever material that was to be used for those roads could make them some money.”
The former official continued, “I’m not there anymore. I can only say what it looks like. It looks like the solar project is off the table. That is because the project presents problems and they will also have to contend with the legal challenges, the lawsuits from the other two cities [Chino Hills and Grand Terrace].”
At the same time, resurrecting plans to develop the property residentially presents a problem, he said.
“My recollection is that when that process evolved the price was lowered for the city acquiring the land, and there was a restriction requiring public use of it rather than private development,” he said. “So some order of commitment was made to keep at least some of the property for public use. The use of the land probably could be changed, but they would have to go back to the oversight board. That would be another obstacle to doing that, to changing the plan again. They might do that, but I doubt they would go to that level of effort to turn it into housing, especially since the two cities [Chino Hills and Diamond Bar] have limitations on the number of units. The Perezes want to make money. Commercial is where the real money would be.”
Stephen Larson, an attorney representing the Perez family, told the Sentinel, “Although they are active and concerned citizens of the City of Industry, Mr. Perez and his family do not and cannot speak for the city. To find out ‘the City of Industry’s intent with regard to Tres Hermanos Ranch,’ you need to speak to members of the city council or its city manager.