Upland Treasurer’s Aggressive Tax Measure Advocacy Costs Him Appointment As Committee Chairman

City Treasurer Greg Bradley’s willingness to serve in the role of Upland Mayor Bill Velto’s “pit bull” in attacking those who questioned or opposed the Measure N sales tax initiative on this year’s ballot has created considerable controversy in the city of 78,583. Indeed, the fallout from the vitriolic characterizations the treasurer has made of some of the City of Gracious Living’s citizenry has been so acute that the city council this week balked at conferring upon Bradley the honor of chairing the committee that is to monitor how that tax money is to be spent if the measure passes in November.
Two years ago, the city council placed an identical one-cent-per-dollar sales tax override within the 15.62 square mile Upland City Limits on the November 2022 ballot. Velto and Bradley took the lead in promoting that initiative, which had been labeled Measure L by the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters. As it would turn out, Measure L went down to defeat, with 12,697, or 55.4 percent of the city’s 22,919 voters who participated in the polling opposing the tax, while 10,222 or 44.6 percent supported it.
For Upland city officials, that defeat stung, as in the same election, the residents of Ontario and, earlier this year in the March 2024 primary, the residents of Chino voted to impose on themselves similar one-percent sales tax increases.
In 2022, city officials estimated that the passage of Measure L would generate for the city something like $16 million per year in added revenue.
In what a good cross section of Upland voters have come to believe was a deliberate effort at misdirection by city officials, in July, just before the elapsing of the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office’s deadline for placing a measure on the November ballot, the Upland City Council voted to place a measure before the voters that would change the city’s formula for the cost of business licenses, which, if passed, was to result in an additional $3 million to $4 million for the city. Then, in a last-minute change, the Upland City Council on August 8 scheduled a special meeting on August 9, at which it voted to forego the measure aimed at changing the business license schedule and substitute another one-cent-per-dollar measure into its place. That meeting, which took place at 12 noon, concluded slightly more than four hours before the 5 p.m. August 9 deadline to have all paperwork relating to a ballot measure to the registrar of voters, who serves as the county’s highest elections authority.
It turned out that the city had coordinated with some of the city council’s major political donors to bankroll a committee to support the measure, which entailed the hiring of a political consultant, Naseem Farooqi, to guide the campaign to pass the measure. Indeed, it was learned, the city had commissioned a survey of 400 city voters to ascertain whether there was adequate support to pass the measure and that Upland’s representative in the California Assembly, Chris Holden, knew at least as early as June that Upland was going to put the one-cent sales tax measure on the ballot.
A core of Upland residents who were opposed to the tax as well as a good number of those who were not necessarily opposed to it but who were not fully convinced that it was necessary came away with the impression that the city was not acting forthrightly and with absolute transparency by hiding what its true intention was by 1) delaying until very late in the pre-election season to announce its plan to place a measure on the ballot, then 2) misleading everyone with the business license fee schedule measure which was ultimately withdrawn and 3) springing the sales tax measure on the city’s residents after having known months – or perhaps years – in advance that the proposal was in the offing.
When in the aftermath of what the registrar of voters labeled as Measure N was qualified for placement on the ballot, both Velto and Bradley took to social media, heralding the resurrection of the sales tax initiative, seeking to generate enthusiasm for it and overcome or bypass the residual opposition that had manifested nearly two years previously.
Using the classic form of political promotion, both emphasized the underlying need for the funding to carry out the city’s agenda of providing, maintaining, refurbishing and improving infrastructure and enhancing services, ignoring or outright refusing to acknowledge the sentiment against a tax increase clearly established in the previous election, dwelling on the city’s relative financial disadvantage, as a bedroom community, to neighboring cities with their more robust commercial bases.
One reality that existed to complicate this, however, was that in framing the language for Measure N, city officials, conscious of the failure of Measure L, sought to imbue the latest version with rhetorical embellishments that would influence the voter into favoring it based merely upon its verbal presentation using the most positive and favorable of characterizations of how the money the measure would raise would be spent.
It is a peculiarity of California law that tax initiatives approved by voters which devote the money collected to a specific purpose, referred to as a special tax or earmarked tax, must be passed by a two-thirds majority. Under California law, initiatives that call for the levying of a tax to produce revenue for which no use is specified, referred to as a general tax, need to gain a simple majority approval to pass.
At least in some, if not most, cases, voters are more inclined to pass a tax if they have assurance it will go for a specific purpose toward which they are favorably inclined. In the case of Measure N, the city wanted to have to achieve the lower threshold of a simple majority to pass the tax rather than having to convince two of every three voters to approve the measure. Thus, it proposed Measure N as a referendum calling for a general tax, while layering into its language references that gave it the appearance of a special tax. An eagle-eyed Upland resident – one who had opposed Velto in the 2020 election, Lois Sicking Dieter – had picked up on the way Upland city officials had hedged on the measure’s language. She retained an attorney, Cory Briggs, and challenged what the city had done by filing a writ of mandate, calling upon the court to issue an order intervening in the process prior to the matter being placed on the ballot. Superior Court Judge Superior Court Judge Stephanie E. Thornton-Harris ruled in favor of the Upland residents lodging the challenge, making a finding that city officials had used deceptive language within the measure itself. She issued an order that the registrar of voters change the wording of the measure before the ballots were printed.
Velto and Bradley took to social media popular in Upland, including Next Door and the Facebook pages Upland Politics, Upland Patriots and Upland Forum as well as Mayor Velto’s forum, redoubling their effort to convince as many resident and voters that they could that the city is in a world of financial hurt, with not enough money to pay its employees and maintain its library, its police department, its streets and sidewalks, its water system, its social programs, its animal care providers, its schools, its infrastructure, its storm drains, its trees, its parkways, its parks and medians. City residents should take pride in their city, they asserted, and be willing to part with an extra penny on the dollar whenever they went shopping to ensure that their city is able to hold its own with regard to the comparable public improvements in nearby cities.
In the give-and-take that typifies social media, there was some support for what Velto and Bradley were saying, but there was also disagreement expressed, including those who pointed out that the city’s residents had already made their feelings about a sales tax increase known two years ago when they soundly rejected Measure L. Further, some pointed out, many if not all of City Hall’s financial problems were self-inflicted wounds that stemmed from a woeful lack of fiscal discipline, with the city’s elected leadership having failed to exercise its authority over city staff, to which it had grown much too close, accepting low production from city employees, making ill-advised and unrelenting concessions to the public employee unions representing Upland’s municipal workers which conferred upon them overly generous salaries and even cushier benefits while perpetuating the city employees’ four-day work week. The city council, Measure N’s opponents pointed out, had been compromised by taking substantial campaign donations from the city employee unions. This meant that the city council, those critics charged, instead of balancing the city’s budget by driving down its personnel costs, was instead calling upon the city’s residents to make up for the politicians’ inability or unwillingness to be hardnosed with the city’s underworked and overpaid employees.
Velto, who has an acerbic streak, perhaps upon the advice of his advisors and perhaps recognizing on his own that as mayor he could not afford to become too confrontational with his constituents, sought to restrain himself in his response to the opponents of Measure N participating in these on-line forums. He did not, however, endeavor to likewise curb Bradley, who himself has a reputation for being caustic in his remarks and displaying a sharp temper when provoked.
A perception grew, and remarks were made to the effect, that Bradley was serving in the role of Velto”s “attack dog” or “pit bull.”
In confronting those who have expressed the viewpoint that the tax is unnecessary, Bradley has not shrunk from using the terms idiot, moron and imbecile in characterizing them.
Bradley said that those advocating against the tax, those constructing such arguments using state-supplied and city-supplied documentation relating to the pay levels of city employs as well as those who were not opposing Measure N but questioning the financial numbers its supporters were marshaling in favor of it were “municipal terrorists up to their usual tricks” who were, he averred, engaging “in an endless stream of lies.”
Those residents who questioned the need for enhancing the city’s revenue stream by increasing taxes rather than reducing operating costs as a means of balancing the city’s budget and did so by making a comparison of private sector salaries that were on average less than city employee salaries, Bradley said, were citing “irrelevant information” and “clearly have no idea how municipal finance works.”
A major issue in the debate over Measure L in 2022 and the current debate over Measure N at present is whether the current crop of city officials in leadership positions, including staff members who are participants in and future beneficiaries of the city’s pension program, managed by the California Public Employees Retirement System [CalPERS], made an adequate effort to reform the program by reducing its costs to the taxpayers by converting it into one that is paid for out of the paychecks of the city’s employees rather than defrayed by the city, as those employees’ employer, and thereby the city’s taxpayers. Bradley repeatedly asserted that the system of guaranteeing the city’s employees pensions had been reformed. In effectuating that “reform,” what city officials, including Bradley, did was to issue bonds to pay for the city’s obligation to the California Public Employees Retirement System. Those bonds are to be debt serviced by current and future city residents and not the city employees who are the beneficiaries of the pension program. When it was pointed out that this hardly qualified as reform and that the elected city officials who had gone along with that approach – the mayor, city council and Bradley as the city treasurer – were serving the interests of the city’s employees rather than the city’s residents, Bradley went ballistic.
Without explaining what, precisely, was in error with the narrative relating to the lack of actual reform in the city’s pension plan reform effort, Bradley accused those of engaging in the dialogue about it who did not accept that the burden of the pension system needed to be borne by the taxpayers rather than the recipients as “lying” and trying to perpetuate what he called “a fairy tale.”
When residents began utilizing the Transparent California website, an independent clearinghouse for information about how much money is paid to government workers, to establish that Upland city employees are being provided with salaries and benefits that on average were two to three times greater than the salaries and benefits of city residents who work in the private sector, Bradley took aim at Transparent California, asserting it is “a confusing, incomplete, and out of date website.” When Bradley was challenged with regard to that representation and asked why the city, if the information Transparent California was providing was misleading, did not disclose city employees’ salaries and benefits on its website, he maintained collating the information in the city’s possession and posting it would prove a task that would be too work intensive and could not be done by current city staff, as it would “require one more person working for the city and waste that amount of additional wages.”
An issue that was raised on social media by both residents at large and those opposed to the increased sales tax was the perception that Upland municipal employees were underworked and thus less productive and overpaid in comparison to other municipal employees. Bradley was dismissive of citizen observations with regard to City Hall being open only four days per week and closed on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. He was equally dismissive of those who remarked that with a population of less than 80,000, Upland employed both a city manager, who in 2023 was paid $268,147.14 in salary, given $11,299.93 in additional pay and provided with $117,163.08 in benefits for a total annual compensation of $396,610.15, and an assistant city manager, who in 2023 was paid $225,422.29 in salary, received $40,558.15 in additional pay and drew 117,558.94 in benefits for a total annual compensation of $383,739.38, Bradley insisted “The three people in the City Manager’s office are doing the job that was done by five.” Those who suggested an assistant city manager in Upland was superfluous were morons, according to Bradley.
While Bradley appeared to relish delivering insults to those participating in social media exchanges who were critical of the city, by comparison, there have been over the last few years others carrying water for the city who have likewise been pointed and harsh, indeed every bit if not more vituperative and mean as Bradley in blasting those who are not charitable in their assessment of how Upland City Hall has made use of the more than $164 million currently entrusted to it by taxpayers and ratepayers on an annual basis, including more than $61 million in its general fund, over $60 million in its capital improvements fund and nearly $35 million in its enterprise fund. Among those have been, on increasingly rare occasions, Mayor Velto, who was formerly unrestrained in the hostility he displayed toward those of his constituents who did not appreciate his stewardship of the city, but who has tempered his vitriolic reactions to criticism in recent months. Others are two frequent posters who have been identified as Velto’s brothers, neither of whom cotton to the governmental agency headed by their brother being portrayed in any sort of negative light. Three others – those who purport to be Carol Combs Kindron, Michael Potter and Thad Pith – have used base and deprecating language in suggesting that those who are unhappy with the performance of the city and its employees are of poor character or decidedly low intelligence or both.
It is not absolutely certain whether those post under the names of Kindron, Potter and Pith are who they purport to be or if someone else is masquerading in their identities. Kindron and Potter are indeed actual individuals living in Upland. Kindron, 74, is a financial administrator for the Lewis Group of Companies, which has been for more than three decades one of the city’s primary institutions. She lives in the 1500 block of North Mulberry Avenue. Potter, 72, formerly lived in a home directly across the street from Kindron and is apparently living in the 1700 block of Crebs Way in Upland at present. Information about Pith is a bit more elusive. An individual using his name has surfaced within cyberspace from time to time over the last three years, but no further information about him is available from immediately accessible public sources.
Partially in response to the calls by those in opposition to Measure N who have questioned how the additional tax revenue will be put to use if the measure is approved and partially as a ploy to promote the measure with voters generally, Velto and the city council hit upon chartering a committee or commission to monitor the expenditure of the money.
A loose consensus had developed throughout the crowd in support of Measure N that the logical chairman for the commission or committee should be Bradley, based on the efforts he had made in support of Measure L in 2022 and the lead he was taking in promoting Measure N in 2024. This week, on Monday, September 23, at its regularly scheduled meeting, the city council took up consideration of a resolution establishing a measure N citizens’ oversight committee. The resolution called for the “[e]stablishment of [the] Measure N Citizen Oversight Committee and operational guidelines. Contingent upon the passage of Measure N at the November 5, 2024 General Municipal Election, the city council hereby establishes the “Measure N Citizens’ Oversight Committee.” One of the attachments to the resolution included an exhibit, what was termed “Exhibit A,” which had the effect of counting a few of the city’s chicks before they hatch. Exhibit A, which was titled, City of Upland Measure N Citizens’ Oversight Committee Operational Guidelines, states, under Section 1- Committee Purpose, states, “On November 5, 2024, Upland Voters approved, by a majority vote, the City of Upland 1% Sales Tax for General City Services, a general one percent (1%) transactions and use (sales) tax – Measure N.”
Present at Monday night’s meeting was Bradley, who had come with the expectation that he was very likely to leave that evening with the appointment as the committee chairman having been conferred on him.
Prior to the consideration of the items on the evening’s agenda, members of the public were given the opportunity to address the council during that portion of the meeting referred to as oral communications.
An Upland resident, Mike Nunez, anticipating like many present that the appointment of Bradley as the committee chairman was to be a formality, indirectly confronted the council with regard to the wisdom of giving Bradley an official role and even greater status than he possesses as city treasurer in regard to promoting Measure N and determining how the revenue it is to provide will be utilized.
Nunez spoke openly of Bradley’s aggressive approach and propensity to insult those expressing views contrary to his own.
“Just because we are a group of residents advocating for fiscal responsibility doesn’t mean that we deserve to be labeled as idiots, lunatics, ignorant and the latest gem attack by our treasurer: municipal terrorists,” Nunez said. “We are simply trying to ensure that we are not taxed more than necessary. It is important to have an open conversation about fiscal policies without resorting to name-calling. Maybe the city attorney can revisit that policy with the city treasurer.”
He and others were attempting to have reasonable and constructive interchange with the city’s decision-makers and were being obstructed by Bradley’s tactics, Nunez said.
“There is many of us who feel that the way this measure was handled raises some concerns,” he said. “It seems the timing of your proposal was more of a political strategy than genuine care and need for our community, waiting to see if you would be unopposed this coming election. It is disingenuous. In case raising taxes was truly a compelling issue, why didn’t present it throughout the year?”
Nunez’s reference was to the consideration that in the current electoral cycle, the positions held by Velto as mayor, First District Councilwoman Shannan Maust and Bradley as city treasurer were up for election. No one came forward to run against them by the deadline to file for candidacy, which corresponded with the deadline for placing measures on this year’s ballot. What Nunez was suggesting was that given the unpopularity of the sales tax as illustrated with the defeat of Measure L in 2022, the city council held off putting Measure N on the ballot until it was clear that Velto, Maust and Bradley would have no competition in this year’s election.
Bradley used the oral communications portion of the meeting to address the council as well. He was not chastened by Nunez’s comments, and instead doubled down on his position that the sales tax is needed, that the competent, dedicated and knowledgeable officials at City Hall are better equipped to determine whether Measure N should be approved than are the ill-informed, ignorant and questionably-motivated residents of the city who oppose it and labeling those naysayers in terms befitting their stupidity was justifiable.
Bradley said his time as an elected city official has dispelled his previous impression that the city and city officials were being fiscally irresponsible and had convinced him that the city has engaged in and effectuated financial reform which now justifies city officials requesting that residents tax themselves further to assist the city in redressing remaining monetary shortcomings. He said newspaper articles, rumors and social media were providing misleading reports that city officials were being wasteful and self indulgent in their spending of public money.
“Sadly, a small group of malcontents still believed the nonsense and the news sources and were even working to create the news and supporting the newspapers,” Bradley said. “We also have a problem with uninformed residents that refuse to look at facts or even consider that they may be wrong, quoting ignorant drivel that is provided by their puppeteers.”
In a reference to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, Bradley said, “One of these groups filed an objection to part of our [pension finance reform] plan.”
Bradley offered an oblique defense of his social media postings, stating, “I now see that the biggest problems we face is public distrust in our current government for little or no reason at all.”
He offered his encomium that “I am thrilled with the progress in this city over the last dozen years.” He offered this advice to the city’s residents: “When you vote in November, please keep in mind that there is massive misinformation provided on social media, mail, legal and illegal political action committees and word of mouth.”
Bradley then alluded to his expectation, shared by others, that he was to head the Measure N Citizens Oversight Committee.
“I am happy to see that we are continuing to move forward on many issues and assume that I will be participating in any future committee to allocate funds from any sales tax measure,” he said. “To be clear, as the citizens’ representative in the finances of the city, I would insist on that.”
In introducing discussion of the resolution to create the oversight committee, Upland City Manager Michael Blay said, “This is the time for the council to weigh in on the way they want the committee to be formulated and who would be on it. For instance: would the treasurer be on it as well as maybe five appointed members?” Blay said he was looking forward to “however the council would like to set up the committee that would to give the public the confidence that this money would be spent as you directed.”
Observers of what ensued during the discussion of the resolution have differing interpretations of whether what evolved was entirely organic or whether what occurred – the decision to form the committee without Bradley as chairman or even as a voting member – was choreographed ahead of time.
What did emerge, but was expressed without too great of emphasis, was that Bradley was not only a lightning rod that attracted controversy and dialogue originating with others that produced more heat than light, but was a major source of controversy and antagonism himself.
Clearly, Bradley’s primary backer was Mayor Velto, who initially proceeded under the assumption that there was no question that Bradley was to serve as the committee’s chairman. Velto’s vision, at least as he initially articulated it, was that the committee was to be a tool that would quash any criticism of the tax or the manner in which it was to be spent, by providing, at least ostensibly, those who were opposed to its levying with an opportunity to express themselves as to how the money would be distributed to various city departments and among municipal priorities. Under Velto’s approach, Bradley, in acting as chairman, would ride herd on the members of the committee who weren’t already part of the City Hall establishment.
“I’d actually like to have somebody who opposes it [as a committee member],” Velto said. “That’s what I’d like, to have somebody who opposes it, personally, more than one who opposes it. There’s many out there who oppose it who are more vocal. I’d like for those people, those residents that oppose it so much that I’ve asked to come down here and meet with [Assistant City Manager] Stephen Parker, that I’ve asked to come down here and sit with our treasurer and discuss this, so they don’t feel so disenfranchised from this process.”
Early in the discussion, it appeared that Councilman James Breitling was endeavoring to not burn any bridges with Bradley. He initially said, “I love the idea of Mr. Bradley serving on it.”
Subsequently, however, the discussion shifted, almost imperceptibly, as the conversation subtly turned to the need for installing on the committee members who were independent from the city. One criterion for selecting members was that none of the appointees could be members of other city commissions or committees. While the concept of having Bradley as chairman was yet intact, the discussion turned on how many members would be in the committee. That each council member and the mayor were to have a single appointment seemed to be inherently agreed upon from the outset. With Bradley as chairman overseeing five members, however, the potential for the committee’s votes to end in a 3-to-3 tie was noted. Curiously, Mayor Velto did not pursue the option of simply naming Bradley as his appointee to the commission. From there, the council moved toward accepting that Bradley would be a non-voting member.
A slow devolution proceeded thereafter in which Bradley no longer being a member took hold.
There was discussion about how the public would interact with the committee and how the committee members would interact with each other, as well as avoiding the pitfall of violating of the Brown Act, California’s open public meeting law, which prohibits a quorum of members of a governmental panel from holding discussions outside the context of a public meeting or forum.
Councilwoman Maust expressed concern that if Bradley were the chairman, the members would not be able to interact with him as a source of information relating to the city’s finances.
“Can we put Greg as the treasurer then as the chair?” she asked. “That way any of those that want to communicate with Greg can? Can we make him the chair?”
“As long as he’s a member of the committee, but again, in an advisory capacity but not as the chair leading it,” Breitling said.
The council made clear that the committee would not have the final say in directing how the Measure N money was going to be spent, but would simply make recommendations to the city council.
“I want to make sure that there’s transparency, that there’s public awareness, the public can come and listen, they can hear what these committee members have to say, they can have their own comments to the same committee and that way, when it’s presented to us, they’ve had a lot of community input,” Velto said, noting that the council would still have the authority to reject the recommendations made to it. “Then we have to decide as a board if this is the direction we agree and support, just like the planning commission,” Velto said. “I would personally ask Greg to be the chair.”
Breitling, at that point began to tip the conversation away from including Bradley as a committee member.
“Mayor,” Breitling began, “I don’t think that the city treasurer 1) should serve as the chair, because that makes that six and…
“He’s a non-voting member,” Velto interjected.
“As a non-voting member,” Breitling continued, “I almost feel that, just for the sake of full, full transparency, because I can hear it already, if Mr. Bradley was the chair, I can see people saying, ‘Oh, he’s influencing the committee. He’s guiding the committee.’ I’d just like to see the committee be the committee and Mr. Bradley be in an advisory capacity, there to answer questions and the committee be on its own. That’s what I think. Complete independence from any influence or however it is to be tailored and name-called, for me that would be the best organic way of doing it.”
“I’d like that, but Greg would not be a voting member,” Velto proposed.
“An advisory capacity,” Breitling said, qualifying and partially concurring and partially disagreeing with the mayor.
“He’d be in an advisory capacity,” Velto said.
Councilman Carlos Garcia said, “I agree with the mayor pro tem.”
Breitling is the mayor pro tem.
Velto, having come around to accept what Breitling was saying, stated, in essence, that the committee would form without Bradley being a member, but that he might be in attendance at the meetings as someone who was knowledgeable about city finances and thus could respond to the members’ questions.
“I think we should allow the committee at that time to decide how they want, whatever role they want him to play,” Velto said.
Toward the end of the meeting, Councilman Carlos Garcia, somewhat indirectly, stated the reason why Bradley had been left off the panel.
“I think we know that there’s a lot of tension with the election coming up,” Garcia said. “Elections are not supposed to divide us. They’re supposed to [have] all of us work together. We are the City of Gracious Living. I think we also need, as leaders, to set an example for what that really means. It’s okay to disagree with folks if we’re not on the same page, but it also creates dialogue and communication when you talk things through. We may walk away with differences of opinion but we have to respect each other professionally. I think as leaders, we have to really focus on that, for our community especially.”
Breitling said, “To echo some of Councilmember Garcia’s comments: One of my favorite quotes is by Ruth Bader Ginsberg who says, ‘It’s okay to disagree. It’s not okay to be disagreeable.’ Whatever your position is on the upcoming Mesure N, just be respectful and get the facts. That’s all I ask.”
The council voted unanimously to form the committee without specifying Bradley as the chairman.
In an exclusive interview with the Sentinel, Bradley initially downplayed the degree to which he has been involved in the campaign to promote Measure N.
“I was pretty heavily involved in Measure L,” Bradley said. “We have a professional consultant this time. Two years ago, people formed the wrong conclusions, so we hired a professional consultant this time.”
Bradley indicated that a health challenge he dealt with earlier this year and deferring to the campaign consultant had kept him out of the thick of things with regard to Measure N.
“I did not meet who is running it [the Measure N campaign] until yesterday,” Bradley said with regard to Farooqi. “I don’t have a lot of energy.”
When informed that despite his not taking an official role in running the Measure N campaign, his was the most frequent and recurrent presence on the social media sites in which the measure has been heavily discussed in recent weeks, Bradley acknowledged that he was a participant in the impromptu exchanges relating to the measure that take place in those online forums relating to the Upland community. He has taken part to set the record straight when inaccuracies make their way into the collective conversation.
“I am relying on the information I have learned over the years I have been treasurer,” he said. “I have monitored things in the form of Facebook, so I’m running one corner of it. There’s been a lot of misinformation, so I’ve been trying to put out the facts.”
The conversations that take place on and through social media, in the final analysis, will probably not be a major factor in how the vote on Measure N goes. A few individuals with strong opinions one way or the other are engaging with each other and growing animated, but He realizes now that those exchanges are not likely to move the needle when it comes to whether Measure N passes or fails, he said. He had, he admitted, become abstracted in the online exchanges and gotten caught up in the polemic.
“To be honest, I did get a little bit carried away,” Bradley said.
Farooqi pointed out and he had come to concur, Bradley said, that “Social media is a zoo,” and that he should use his understanding of the Upland’s financial situation and his intensity in a more productive manner in an effort to promote Measure N.
Queried on whether the city council and senior city administrators had been plotting all along since the defeat of Measure L to reintroduce another sales tax measure, which has now manifested in the form of Measure N, Bradley said, “I have no idea.” He indicated that if the game plan had been to lull the opponents of Measure N into a state of complacency and then spring what became Measure N on the voters at the eleventh hour, using the deception and misdirection of the business license schedule makeover measure to obscure city officials’ true intent, Bradley said he had not been made privy to the strategy.
“It took me by surprise when they made the flip [from the business fee increase measure to the sales tax measure] at the last minute,” he aid. “It [discussion of revisiting the sales tax proposal in 2024 after its failure in 2022] was in the background. There was talk about it. They did a survey and when they saw that people might support it, they changed their minds. That [the survey results] made them confident it was a good time to put it on the ballot.”
To the extent that he has now found himself front and center in the debate over whether the sales tax increase in Measure N is necessary, Bradley said that in at least some respects he is ill-suited for the role.
“I was drafted into this job,” he said. “I am not an advertising person. My thinking is in science and technology and math. I never had any interest in politics. I just know we need it [the tax increase].”
Still, when offered the opportunity to do a sales job for Measure N, he did not shrink from the task, using virtually every standard tactic conceivable, from confidently pronouncing it would pass to touting the professionalism of city employees to engaging in dire warnings of the catastrophe that will ensue if the voters don’t go along with it this time around. Either on his own or working from a script put together by Farooqi, Bradley made his Madison Avenue pitch for Measure N.
The odds of the city’s success in getting the residents to vote to impose a higher sales tax on themselves this year is far greater than what Measure L’s prospects were, Bradley asserted.
“Obviously, it is going to be better than the last time,” Bradley said. “A lot of people who voted against Measure L tell be they are for Measure N this time.”
Without the money that Measure L will provide, Bradley said, “It is going to be bleak. Our streets are falling apart. We need some more police officers. We are six or seven short at the moment. Los Angeles is pushing the homeless in this direction. The crooks are getting very bold. In a few years we will have the Olympics and there will be even more people being pushed this way from Los Angeles.”
This brought him close to reinstigating his attacks on those who are against Measure N.
With a series of elliptical statements, he accused those who had opposed Measure L two years ago and those who are now opposing Measure N with having conflated efforts by senior staff, including the assistant city manager, to standardize the city’s policy with the failure of city officials to transfer the burden of paying for current retired employees’ pensions and of paying for future retirees’ pensions from the city’s taxpayers to the employees themselves.
“There are a lot of uninformed people out there,” Bradley said.
The Sentinel asked Bradley if such uncharitable characterizations of the city’s residents might have led to the city council electing against designating him as the chairman of the sales tax oversight committee. He said he did not think his having engaged in a spirited back and forth with members of the community over the sales tax measure had anything to do with his not having been named committee chairman. Rather, he said, concerns about the Brown Act’s restrictions on committee members communicating with one another, which would have prevented the committee members from being able to speak freely and outside the context of official meetings with him, one of the most knowledgeable sources available about the city’s financial picture, is what convinced the council it would be better for him not to be a committee member.
As to the controversy that had developed as a consequence of his pointed and sometimes vitriolic displays while he was engaged in dialoguing with the public, Bradley said his First Amendment rights allowed him to speak his mind.
“The city attorney said as long as I’m talking as Greg Bradley and not as the treasurer I can say whatever I want,” Bradley said.
-Mark Gutglueck