Charles Duggan Jr., whose four-and-three-quarters-year tenure as Redlands city manager involved him almost immediately getting off on the wrong foot with one of the most active grass roots civic engagement groups in San Bernardino County when he first began working in Redlands but whose temperament simultaneously has allowed him to cater on a weekly, monthly and year-long basis to the city’s elected leadership, was granted an increase in job security Tuesday.
Duggan, formerly the city manager of Auburn, Alabama and at that time the administrative services division manager and treasurer for the Marin Municipal Water District in Northern California was hired as Redlands city manager on a vote of the city council on November 5, 2019. His start date with the city was on January 13, 2020.
Duggan’s arrival in Redlands corresponded with the final stages of the political career of Paul Foster, such that an understanding of what Duggan represents to the community cannot be fully comprehended without a knowledge of how Foster initially guided him.
Redlands was one of San Bernardino County’s original four cities and came into existence as a population center in the decades prior to the Turn of the Twentieth Century. It was the most upscale of the county’s original cities, where the wealthy business owners in San Bernardino purchased homes, many akin to mansions in the late 1880s, 1890s and early 1900s. Located within one of Southern California’s most fecund agricultural districts, the city had a secondary reputation as a resort town where the well-to-do of the Atlantic Seaboard, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland and other Eastern cities would winter. As Redlands matured along with the rest of Southern California in the mid- and latter-20th Century, the citrus groves and its accompanying packing industry that had been part of the ambiance and cachet of Redlands gave way to more and more intensive residential development. Yet, because of the sensitivity and sensibility, as well as the wealth, of the scions of the landed gentry in Redlands and succeeding generations of residents who were living in an atmosphere that was less citified than other parts of rapidly urbanizing Southern California, a good number of Redlands residents coalesced around the concept of preserving the atmosphere they had become accustomed to. This manifested in what was variously referred to as a slow-growth or controlled-growth or no-growth movement. Over time, elements of that approach were codified into the city policies and ordinances, including the voters’ passage of controlled-growth or slow-growth Proposition R in 1978, Measure N in 1987 and Measure U in 1997. Measure R put a limit on the annual growth rate, followed by further refinements and restrictions put in place under the auspices of Measures N and U, such that no more than 400 residential dwelling units can be approved or constructed within the city annually, and the city council is not empowered to suspend, waive or rescind those provisions.
Foster was a member, at one time in good standing, of the low-growth/controlled growth advocacy, and in that guise made his rise both socially and politically in Redlands, first as a member of the planning commission, where he put his low-growth sentiment on display, and finally onto the city council. As a member of the council, which in Redlands chooses to elevate one of its members to the mayoralty rather than having direct mayoral elections by the citizenry, Foster was appointed mayor for an extended period of time.
As was probably inevitable, Foster, like several others elected to the city council, found himself up against colleagues on that panel who had been elected with the heavy backing of the development industry. Over time, Foster was himself heavily lobbied by developers and their representatives and he soon was himself accepting donations in substantial amounts from developers, his rationale being that he would not be able to maintain himself in office if he did not. Thereafter, Foster made an almost 180-degree transition, from a low-growth/slow growth/controlled growth advocate to one who now saw the necessity of progress, and someone who had come to believe that Redlands had to seize the day and go along with those who were willing to make an investment in its future. By the mid-2010s, Foster was Redlands’ staunchest pro-growth advocate.
Accompanying this transition, Foster had embraced a popular trend in urban development, one that called for increasingly dense residential development at the core of a metropolis, standing within the shadow of railroad and bus stations, such that residents of the future would have little or no need for their personal vehicles and could use public transit to commute to their workplaces, ones that were to remain, primarily, west of Redlands in downtown Los Angeles, Los Angeles, greater Los Angeles, Los Angeles County or Western San Bernardino County or Riverside County and Orange County.
This trend called for high-rise apartment buildings. Residential structures over two stories were, however, anathema to those intent on preserving the vestiges of Redlands grand past, and they protested vehemently at the direction Foster was seeking to take the city in, using Proposition R, Measure N and Measure U as a shield against the urban intensification that Foster was advocating.
In 2019, just as the managerial tenure of Redlands City Manager Nabar Martinez, who had done much to facilitate the pro-growth approach Foster and his council colleagues had pursued, was imploding, Foster and the remainder of the pro-growth forces in Redlands hit upon the concept of placing before Redlands’ voters a new measure, one aimed at undoing the strictures of Proposition R, Measure N and Measure U to allow the city council to accommodate the development industry.
It was as this Measure, designated by the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office as Measure G in the March 2020 Primary Election, that Duggan was brought into Redlands as the city manager to replace Martinez.
As Duggan had been chosen and hired by the city council, he felt it was incumbent upon himself to embrace what the city council was proposing – in this case Measure G – even though he had no previous experience in Redlands or any knowledge of the history or the varying perspectives and values at play. As it would turn out, at the March 3, 2020 election, Measure G was soundly defeated at the polls and by mail-in ballots, 24,407 votes or 64.88 percent in opposition to support of 7,798 or 35.12 percent of the total 22,205 votes cast.
From the outset, it was obvious to the controlled-growth faction in Redlands that Duggan was not on their side of the cultural divide in the city, and that when it came down to issues relating to development and Redlands’ urban transition on which the city council and a sizable contingent of the public at large were divided, Duggan could be counted upon to side with the city council.
In late 2021, after the FBI had been poking around in Redlands and some of its agents had come to interest themselves in information suggesting one of the reasons Foster had made his switch from a dyed-in-the-wool slow growth/controlled-growth advocate to the major voice for aggressive development in Redlands was because he had been provided with something in the way of monetary inducements from members of the construction industry, he tendered his resignation as a member of the council and moved to Washington State.
Foster had been a mentor, at least on land use issues, to two of the council members who had hired Duggan – Eddie Tejeda and Denise Davis. Both Davis and Tejeda, as the rest of the city council, have made a commitment to the Transit Villages concept ushered in during the Martinez Administration and advanced under Duggan’s management. That plan calls for five such transit villages around Redlands – in the vicinity of the entrance to Redlands University, in Downtown Redlands, in the New York Street district and in the area around the Alabama Street and California Street rail stations. In the transit villages, developers would be permitted to construct tenements or cortiços, that is concentrated, high density housing in apartment buildings of four, five, six or seven stories, with roughly 80 to 120 units per acre.
The advantage of such an approach from an urban planning standpoint was that the inhabitants would have the advantage or at least opportunity of utilizing the rail system, which already connects with much of Southern California and will reach even more locations in the future, to commute. For many elements of the building industry, the city’s encouragement of this approach was potentially very lucrative, as by building upward would intensify density and maximize the number of dwelling units on the land to be developed, increasing profits.
Simultaneously, this approach mortified that portion of the community committed to controlled and slower growth, preservation of the city’s historic properties and avoiding the intense urbanization that was occurring elsewhere in Southern California and San Bernardino County. Within that subset of the Redlands population were those who were absolutely and totally against that intensification of land use, no matter where it were to occur and even if it were limited to the five circumscribed districts. Others, while willing, perhaps, to allow the density the plan called for to be concentrated in select and tightly defined and confined spaces, were nonetheless skeptical and concerned that allowing any or all five of the transit villages to become established would allow the camel to get its nose under the tent, such that the city would pursue the construction of high-rise projects elsewhere, leading, eventually, to intrusion of higher and higher density development into the city’s existing residential neighborhoods and the displacement of single family homes by apartments, condominiums, duplexes and triplexes.
The tension between the purveyors of high-density growth and the controlled-growth advocates yet exists and still has not been resolved.
The confrontations Duggan has had with the controlled-growth/slow-growth crowd has armed him with information that has given him insight with regard to whether or not elements of the development community have succeeded in compromising the current members of the city council, which includes both Tejeda and Davis, as well as the council’s currently longest serving member, Paul Barich, and Jenna Guzman-Lowery and Mario Saucedo. Those residents, by their own interaction with advocates of transit-oriented development – which translates into urban districts with integrated high-density residential, commercial and recreational spaces within walking distance of public transit hubs – have learned that standards considered crucial to the success of that approach have been developed. As such, they recognize that a two-stage litmus test exists to determine whether an official who is embracing the transit oriented development approach, as is embodied in the transit villages concept in Redlands, is sincerely seeking to advance the community in keeping with the this current urban planning trend or whether the official is simply shilling for a developer who is using the trend to exploit the situation in order to maximize profit by constructing the highest density project that can be gotten away with. Thus, the first phase of the litmus test consists of whether the politician is in favor of high-rise development. Simply being in favor of building edifices of four, five, six, seven or more stories above ground is not an indicator, in and of itself, that a given politician is accepting bribes from a developer proposing such a project. Such a stance does, however, set up the second phase of the litmus test, which extends to whether the politician is simultaneously intent on requiring the builder of the high-rise project to construct in parallel conjunction underground parking facilities of no fewer than three levels and extending to a possible depth of four or five or six levels to accommodate the vehicles of those residents to occupy the high-rises. Given the standards of the trending urban planning concept of high-rise construction in conjunction with transit-oriented development, if a politician, elected official or planning official favors high-rise development but is opposed to deep underground parking structures, the logical derivation is he or she is on the take, and what is being taken are bribes – gratuities, kickbacks, graft – from the developers proposing the high rises.
Saucedo, who was previously a member of the Redlands Planning Commission, Guzman-Lowery, Davis, Tejeda and Barich have all supported the Transit Villages concept and have both signaled support for the construction of high-rise structures in Redlands and actively supported them with votes. At the same time, Barich, Tejeda, Davis, Guzman-Lowery and Saucedo have been curiously and rigorously silent with regard to whether they are in favor of holding the developers of the high-rises to a standard which would require that they augment their projects with three- four-, five-, six- or even seven-level underground parking facilities. Indeed, Saucedo, Guzman-Lowery, Davis, Tejeda and Barich have not only been silent on the matter, they have gone out of their way to avoid having to deal with the subject matter altogether. In presenting to the council the proposals for high-rise projects that have so far been approved, city staff did not include in those plans a requirement that the developer include underground parking facilities. Not one member of the council sought to explore the issue of underground parking when those projects were discussed, deliberated upon and approved.
Duggan, advantaged by his discussions with the no-growth/low-growth/slow-growth/controlled growth citizen group advocates and his knowledge regarding urban development standards as well as his access to the city council, knows, or has a very good idea with regard to, how Barich, Tejeda, Davis, Guzman-Lowery and Saucedo feel with regard to the requirement that developers of high-rise buildings in Redlands accompany any such projects with multiple-story underground parking. This has given him a glimpse on a window that few others have, that being whether his five political masters are being bought off by the construction industry. That knowledge, it is widely suspected in multiple quarters in Redlands, had a lot to do with the council having voted unanimously to extend Duggan’s contract to serve as city manager and give him a raise.
Steve Rogers, who is among the most involved of a cadre of extraordinarily engaged residents examining civic affairs in Redlands, told the Sentinel he was against the city council providing Duggan with the contract extension and a pay raise at this point. He felt so strongly about the matter that he addressed the city council before it took that action on Tuesday night.
“I’m against him getting a raise because his current contract isn’t up until 2026,” said in his remarks to the Sentinel. “The city council initiated its discussion on this way more than a year before that contract is set to expire.
When a discussion about Duggan was scheduled for a closed session of the city council several weeks ago, Rogers inferred that the city council was loading up to extend his contract. Rogers said he confronted the city council at that time. He said, “I asked, ‘Why is this on here? This is not the time, when we have not seen how he has fully performed on his ongoing contract, that this should come up for renewal.’”
Rogers said that perhaps his sharpest pang of dissatisfaction with Duggan is that he is “unresponsive” to the issues that he and others have brought up during open discussions of specific projects and items related to both general and specific policy. At the very least, Rogers said, what he wants out of Duggan is for him to make sure the city council is informed about views of residents or facts that might conflict with the information or recommendations provided to the city council by staff with regard to items that come before the city council for discussion and a vote.
Rogers further noted that the council took up the discussion of granting Duggan a contract extension and a raise at the height of the current election season.
“I don’t think giving the city manager a raise should take place until after the election,” Rogers said. “I get the impression that Mr. Duggan is using the election, while the outcome is uncertain and there is a possibility that the incumbents won’t return to the dais in December, as a way to leverage a raise.”
Rogers said that Duggan freely and frequently engages the city in inappropriate arrangements and that he did not need to go any further than the agenda for the Tuesday evening council meeting at which Duggan’s contract extension and raise were being discussed to find another item that served as an example of such an arrangement. In this regard, Rogers referenced the Venue at Orange Apartments to be built at the southwest corner of Orange Avenue and Alabama Street. The action taken involves the city providing the applicant on the project, the Miller Architectural Corporation, with a $1.5 million forgivable loan and a density bonus because the project is to include 50 affordable housing units as part of the project.
“I understand that affordable housing is the watchword by which all local governments live nowadays, but the real elephant in the room is that Gary Miller is the architect on this project,” Rogers said. “The city hired Gary Miller to serve as the architect to do the new City Hall in the City Bank building.”
Rogers remark relates to the city’s purchase of the six-story City Bank building, which is now undergoing renovations and tenant improvements to allow the city to clear out of its current City Hall quarters at 35 Cajon Street and move the city’s officer to the six-story structure at 300 State Street.
“Gary Miller is doing the improvements and seismic modifications for the new City Hall, the whole nine yards,” Rogers continued. “That job was awarded on a no bid basis. There are too many anomalies or irregularities or improprieties or I don’t know what you want to call it. Standard contract language says that in all of these major projects there should be no conflicts of interest involving the developer. In my opinion, having an architect who is working on a city project like the City Hall makeover who is getting a $1.5 million forgivable loan with a term of 55 years on another project in the city amounts to a conflict of interest.”
Rogers said, “That is an example of the type of improprieties that Charles Duggan is right in the middle of, and the city council does not seem to be in the least bothered by it. The very night he is involving the city council and the city in a conflict of interest, the city council is giving him a raise.”
Rogers has been critical of Duggan for utilizing questionable property valuations with regard to projects as well as in both land acquisitions and land sales.
Rogers, a licensed civil engineer, has had numerous go-rounds with the city on engineering issues and has been critical of the city for employing, on certain projects, engineers who are not registered or certified by the State of California.
On at least a handful of specific items, Rogers has quibbled with the city over technical engineering issues and decisions by those unregistered engineers.
When Rogers made his feelings about Duggan known at Tuesday night’s council meeting, Councilman Barich remarked that Rogers has nothing positive to say about the city, and that as such, Rogers should pull up stakes and move to Yucaipa. Barich’s outburst prompted Assistant City Attorney Albert Maldonado to preempt any further remarks from Barich. Maldonado told the councilman that it was not advisable for him to get into a back-and-forth with Rogers over his expression of his opinion.
Mayor Tejeda, who said he and Barich had negotiated with Duggan on the contract update, offered the justification for the action by saying, “A few months ago the city manager requested that the city council consider revising his contract and also consider bringing his salary into within the median of what other city managers earn in other communities.”
In 2020, Duggan was paid a salary of $249,216.01, another $5,500 in perks and pay add-ons, and benefits of $54,343.55 for a total annual compensation of $309,059.56.
In 2021, Duggan received $269,984 in salary, $6,000 in other perquisites and pay add-ons, $44,229.90 in benefits and a $21,301 annual contribution toward the pension he is to receive in retirement, for $341,514.96 in total compensation.
In October 2022, more than two years after Duggan had begun as city manager, the city council extended his contract, which was set to expire in January 2023, another three years to January 2026. That contract extension contained a controversial provision, what was termed an “incentive bonus.” The language in the contract stated, “Annually, beginning in August 2023, employee may be eligible for a lump-sum incentive bonus, at the sole discretion of the city council, for performance substantially above expectations. The city council will establish criteria as the basis for any bonus that may be awarded and such criteria will be delivered in writing to employee before December 31 of each year.”
That incentive bonus without specified criteria attached to it was questioned by many residents, most notably those who had previously been critical of action the city council had taken and which Duggan had facilitated.
In 2022, Duggan took home a $267,884.51 salary, another $12,131.92 in perks and pay add-ons, and was provided with $108,518.82 in full benefits for a total annual compensation of $388,535.25.
In 2023, Duggan’s salary was increased to $288,292, his perks fell to $6,650 and his full benefits reached $112,283.78, for a total annual compensation of $407,225.78.
According to Maldonado, “The employment contract will be extended to January 31, 2028. Effective January 15, 2025, the annual base salary shall increase to $315,000. Effective following the first payroll period following July 1, 2025, the city manager will receive a 2 percent increase to his salary over the prior year. All other terms as set forth in the current contract remain unchanged.”
We appreciate your leadership and look forward to keeping you as long as we can,” Daivs said.
“I hope you retire here,” said Barich, “but many, many years from now, of course.”
“You have listened to a lot of the suggestions that council members have asked of you, and even of the public,” said Mayor Tejeda. “Sometimes, perhaps it doesn’t come off that way, but in the end, behind the scenes, I appreciate that you do listen to the public, members of the public who are making critical analysis of how we do our work here, how you do your work, and you do make those changes. I appreciate that.”
The vote to extend Duggan’s contract and provide him with a raise was unanimous.
–Mark Gutglueck