By Mark Gutglueck
Big Bear Lake City Manager Erik Sund has weathered what previously appeared to be potentially crippling challenges to his authority, as the entirety of the city council, as it is currently composed, has voted to extend his tenure with the city at an enhanced salary.
More than a dozen members of the Big Bear community, including some of its more vocal, active and civically involved residents/officials, have pressed in recent weeks and months questions about Sund’s demeanor and attitude, including his ability to maintain his equanimity while under challenge or in the face of demands of and inquiries about his policy and approach.
In August 2022, Sund was brought to Big Bear to serve as city manager in the aftermath of Frank Rush’s departure as the mountain community’s top administrator some five months previously. It is not altogether clear, and no one is willing to say definitively, what the circumstances of Sund’s hiring were. In one version of events, he had already been terminated from or had departed the employment of San Clemente, where he had been city manager since 2021. In another account, he was yet working for San Clemente when he was offered the Big Bear Lake job, and he elected to leave San Clemente in the lurch.
Whatever the reality, Sund was willing to make the transition to the 5,231-population San Bernardino County city despite the consideration that doing so might be considered a professional step backward from managing the 64,293-population Orange County city of San Clemente. Big Bear Lake is the second-smallest municipal entity population-wise in the county, not too far ahead of Needles with its 4,959 occupants.
While things may or may not be as explosive and difficult in the backrooms and corridors of Big Bear Lake City Hall as they are at other municipalities throughout San Bernardino County, for a multitude of factors, most notably that it is not a large community and is somewhat isolated, San Bernardino County’s city by the lake does not draw a lot of attention to itself and what controversy engulfs it is not widely celebrated.
According to some knowledgeable individuals who are in a position to know, however, that is not to say Big Bear Lake is not bedeviled by controversy or that Sund for the slightly more than two years that he has headed municipal operations in the resort hamlet is not centrally involved in it.
According to former Big Bear Lake City Councilwoman Bynette Mote, who was elected to the council in 2020 and was a member of the council that hired Sund, he has displayed “a lack of professionalism” she believes should disqualify him from remaining as city manager.
According to Mote, one of the first manifestations of Sund’s unsuitability for the city managerial role of which she is aware took place four months after his hiring. Mote said Sund showed “aggressiveness and disrespectful treatment towards one of his colleagues at a public meeting in December 2022.” Mote did not identify the colleague. Mote said the city council did not take seriously her effort to address the issue during a February 8, 2023 closed door evaluation of Sund’s performance.
According to Mote, Councilman Rick Herrick had also been informed about Sund’s comportment, but it was difficult to get a majority of the council to make an examination of the matter.
On September 6, 2023, Mote said she had witnessed, in the company of Planning Commissioner Jeff Holoubek, what she characterized as “Mr. Sund’s uncalled-for temper tantrum” in which “he essentially kicked me and Planning Commissioner Holoubek out of City Hall.” She said “Mr. Sund’s behavior… was aggressive, argumentative, irate, and condescending” and that he assumed what she called a “defensive stance [with] clenched hands” during which he addressed her and Holoubek in a “loud voice” she found “bullying.” Mote said, “No normal person acts like that, especially in a professional role and in the office and to one of his bosses.”
Though the entire city council at the October 11, 2023 meeting at which Sund’s annual evaluation in closed session was carried out did not take any action to discipline or terminate him, Mote called upon her former colleagues to examine in detail a memo she had prepared for that discussion. That document and the information it contains is not publicly available because it pertains to a personnel matter which is subject, according to City Attorney Steve Deitsch, to strict rules of confidentiality.
Mote said that her resignation as a council member tendered on February 14, 2024 was precipitated by her experience with Sund. Stating that she had worked “so hard to earn” her position on the city council and that she considered herself to be “one of the city’s biggest cheerleaders,” Mote said she was driven to leave “because I never want to see Mr. Sund again.”
In a memo to the city council regarding her resignation, Mote said, “As a result of all this [i.e., her experience with Sund], I am also uprooting my family and moving away from this amazing community that we [she and her husband] both gave 110 percent to for the past 7 years. There are so many more examples of the adversarial treatment I received from Mr. Sund and I did my best to try to communicate it to all of you, mindful of the rules and unreceptive atmosphere. It is not acceptable for a councilmember to have to say several times that she is so uncomfortable with her city manager that she stopped one-on-one meetings with him. This is not acceptable under any circumstances.”
Mote said she at first thought her inability to work cooperatively with Sund was her shortcoming.
“For a long time, I felt like the problem was me,” Mote said in her memo. “I can’t tell you the relief I felt, but also the sadness, to hear that more people are stepping up to share their terrible experiences with Mr. Sund, despite their fear of retaliation. If he abuses a boss, his colleagues and community members in this way, how is he treating your city staff? What kind of environment are they working in? How many more people are you going to lose? Or worse? And this is all just about his behavior, not any of his other unethical and lacking skillsets.”
Brittany Lamson, the secretary to the Big Bear Water District Board of Directors who was elevated earlier this year to serve as the district’s interim general manager and is now the district’s assistant general manager, has had a rough time in coexisting with Sund. According to Lamson, she was unable to have a meeting of the minds with Sund or to get on the same page with regard to a critical issue playing out in the Big Bear community known as the Replenish Big Bear Project.
The Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency is the lead agency with regard to the Replenish Big Bear Project, an undertaking in which the City of Big Bear Lake, the County of San Bernardino and the Big Bear Municipal Water District all have a substantial interest and/or stake.
That project will involve subjecting the community’s wastewater [i.e., the effluent from its sewer system and runoff from its storm drains] to an initial sand filtration process followed by the use of an ultrafiltration medium involving bundles of hollow membrane fibers with pore sizes so small that bacteria and virus cannot pass through them, backed by high pressure pumping of the water through semi-permeable membranes, after which the water is to be subject to ultraviolet disinfection and an oxidation process. That water will then be returned to Big Bear Lake in a quantity sufficient to prevent the level of water in the lake from dropping as it has in recent drought years. Because of the more primitive nature of treatment modalities currently used by the Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency sewage treatment plant, the wastewater processed there is not now put into the lake. The Replenish Big Bear Project would change that.
The Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency jurisdiction extends beyond the 6.42-square mile, 5,231-population City of Big Bear Lake, and indeed surrounds the lake entirely, to include most of Big Bear Valley, which entails Big Bear Lake, Big Bear City, Fawnskin, Holcomb Valley, Sugarloaf, Erwin Lake, Baldwin Lake, Bluff Lake and Lake Williams. Though its name implies that it is a municipality, Big Bear City in actuality is an unincorporated county area, completely separate from and, at 32.03 square miles, larger area-wise than the City of Big Bear Lake and more populous as well, with 12,738 residents.
In April, while she was functioning in the role of the Big Bear Municipal Water District’s general manager, Lamson arranged for an informational briefing relating to the project to be provided to Big Bear Lake’s primary newspaper, the Big Bear Grizzly, which appeared in its April 11 edition. Lamson said she received a call from Sund on April 12, the day after the article appeared.
“He used the conversation to tell me that I had no clue about partnership behavior and that I should have given them a heads up about the article,” Lamson said. “I reminded him that we had a full board meeting about the decision and did not need his approval to publish facts. He continued to become increasingly aggravated, telling me this is not how managers act and if the Municipal Water District wants a seat at the replenish table, this is not how to do it and continued to say the full article was a bunch of lies and false facts and it was ridiculous. After listening to him yell for about 10 minutes, I told him I did not appreciate the way he was speaking to me, and I would tell the board all his concerns.”
This set Sund off, Lamson said. “He threatened that I don’t dare tell my board or anyone about this conversation,” according to Lamson. “If he had concerns about anything he said he would go directly to my board and did not need me speaking on behalf of him.”
Three days later, on April 15, a Monday, a meeting involving all of the managers of the agencies involved in the replenishment project was held.
Lamson said, “At the meeting on Monday, I was ready to move forward but before the meeting even started, he [Sund] walked into the room and with a sarcastic remark asked if the Municipal Water District was in or out, pointing at me and saying I have no idea how to be a manager and it’s so obvious because I would understand how my choices are wrong, and degraded me personally and professionally. This degradation continued throughout the meeting for 45 minutes until he got up and accused the Big Bear Lake Department of Water & Power general manager of wasting his time.”
Lamson reported that “Before the chief operating officer’s report started, President Steve Ludecke asked [Big Bear Municipal Water District Chief Operations Officer] Mike Stephenson to expand on the meeting a little.” As Stephenson “explained a little more about the replenish managers’ meeting,” Lamson said, Sund intensified his ridicule of several of the meetings’ participants.
“The inappropriate behavior from the city manager was unbelievable,” Lamson said. “He continued that he had never seen disrespect on such a level.”
Singling out Lamson as being “a horrible and uneducated manager,” Sund, pointing his finger at her, uttered, “You have no fucking idea what you’re doing” and “If you were a real manager you would understand how wrong the article was” and “This is so far over your head, you do not even get it.”
According to Lamson, Sund insisted that the information in the article was inaccurate, despite it containing the same precise figures published in the PowerPoint presentation that was prepared to document what the project consisted of and what its costs were.
Lamson said, “He kept pointing and saying things like ‘You don’t know a fucking thing. Fuck this. The Municipal Water District is not at the table.’ It was the worst behavior I have ever seen from someone in that high of a position. It was completely unacceptable and it was honestly just childish as hell.”
“I have no desire to work with Erik Sund again,” Lamson reported in April. “The group was much more productive without his dishonest and unprofessional way of conducting business.”
No fewer than 14 other residents in Big Bear Lake have questioned whether Sund’s management of the city is in keeping with the best interests of the city and its residents.
Discontent with Sund and his performance had been brewing within the community for some time.
At the June 12, 2024 city council meeting, Dan Gulbranson, a Big Bear Lake resident, said, “Mr. Sund, your reputation proceeds you: You’re a bully, condescending, foul-mouthed.”
Gulbranson suggested that Sund’s shortcomings did not confine themselves to being rough around the edges and being impolite, crude and profane in his dealing with people, but that the city council was tolerating him because it did not itself have the sophistication to know what skills are needed in a city manager to run a municipal operation and was thus willing to settle on someone of low caliber. Gulbranson estimated that about one fifth of city staff were inadequate to the tasks they were being called upon to perform and that in their city government assignments before coming to Big Bear Lake they had been given an ultimatum that consisted of a choice to “resign or get fired. About 20 percent of our people shouldn’t be here.”
Gulbranson said the city council was controlled by what he called a “troika,” consisting of Mayor Perri Melnick, Councilman Rick Herrick and Councilman Randy Putz.  In conducting interviews before making hiring decisions, Gulbranson said, the troika had failed to determine whether key city staff were qualified. Likewise, Gulbranson suggested, Melnick, Herrick and Putz were responsible for keeping Sund in place.
“Did you ask them intense questions?” Gulbranson asked, rhetorically, before answering, “No!”
Gulbranson accused Sund of Ill-advisedly and illegally transferring funds from one city department to cover expenses in other city departments, doing so on an impromptu basis without revealing ahead of time on the city council’s meeting agenda about taking such action, which is a violation of the Brown Act, California’s open public meeting law.
At the June 12 meeting, Peggy Baldwin, a 16-year Big Bear resident, said she was concerned about the city’s lakefront property and wanted to get the lowdown on its future and therefore wanted to speak directly with the city manager. She had not done so, she intimated, because she had been warned that “Mr. Sund is not the easiest person to discuss things with and I have also been unfortunately warned that by all means ‘Do not meet with him alone.’ I don’t know how to begin to express how very disappointed and saddened I am that in this day and age I don’t feel safe as a woman meeting with one of my representatives.”
Baldwin said that by his “bullying and disrespect,” Sund was “tearing down the foundation of our community.”
Joyce Barker, who with her husband has owned property in Big Bear Lake since 2006, said, “While I am sure Mr. Sund interviews well… Mr. Sund demonstrates neither people nor personnel skills nor personal knowledge of the needs and wants of our city. It is incumbent upon decision-makers to review performance and collectively decide whether action should be taken regarding a recent hire. I implore the city council members to examine the current situation.” She decried “the diminished attendance at meetings due to dissatisfaction with project research that has been delegated to outside consultants who know even less than Mr. Sund about our community and are paid exorbitant fees with our tax money.”
She said, “[T]he verbal abuse meted out by Mr. Sund is not in keeping with the culture of Big Bear Lake.”
Lauri Jenkins said that in her interaction with Sund she found him “condescending and patronizing. I was in shock, because I could not remember ever being spoken to in that way, especially not from someone in an esteemed position of city government. Since then, I’ve spoken to many other individuals who had a similar experience with Mr. Sund. This type of behavior is absolutely unacceptable for anyone, but particularly from someone in the position of city manager. Why has there been no reprimand from the city? We, as the community, deserve more and we demand more.”
She urged the city council to “take action” against Sund and offer the community an assurance that “this type of bullying and sexist behavior will absolutely not be tolerated in the City of Big Bear Lake.”
Mayor Melnick, while thanking those women who had come forward with expressions of concern about Sund and those who had related their own troubling interactions with him, was generally dismissive of the concerns, indicating that she had not witnessed Sund acting inappropriately or offensively.
“I don’t have concerns about his behavior with me and I’m a woman,” Melnick said.
Melnick’s approach, however was challenged by Suzy Gillian, who noted that the mayor had expressed her willingness to defend Sund and his behavior in private conversations but not in public.
Christina Nehls told the council, “You have a city manager who is rude, disrespectful and believes in this culture of bullying and bad behavior.”
Nehls said that she had detected genderist attitudes from Councilman Herrick. She hinted that Putz was tolerating Sund and his excesses because Sund was knowledgeable and supportive of city policy that was financially favorable to Putz personally.
Tom Sitton, a business owner in Big Bear, like Gulbranson, expressed his belief that the city council was willing to overlook Sund’s personality flaws and certain unattractive social traits because he was useful to them in other ways that involved bending the city’s operations and policies in accordance with their own personal wishes and advantage. In this way, Sitton, suggested, Sund’s behavior, however offensive it might have been to some people, did not loom as a major issue with Melnick, Herrick, Putz and to a somewhat lesser extent, Councilwoman Kendi Segovia.
According to Sitton, Sund was either incompetent with regard to certain aspects of the city’s operations or, in the alternative, he was willing to simply look the other way when it came to someone with political juice or connections to members of the city council benefiting from policy decisions that otherwise were not in the community-at-large’s best interest. Sitton referenced “boondoggle projects,” and then lighted upon one example. “You were going to pay $895,000 for a corner lot that just recently sold for $400,000,” Sitton said. “Who purchased this property for $400,000? Maybe it was one of your friends. I don’t know. It really sounds like a major fraudulent boondoggle to me. How many boondoggles can you get away with?”
Sitton implied that someone on the council or those connected to someone or more than one on the council had an interest that was advanced by the city’s action which Sund had facilitated, contrary to the interest to the community as a whole.
Sitton said that the city/city council had been “buffaloed into hiring Sund,” who was a less than accomplished municipal administrator, given that in overseeing a city as small as Big Bear Lake, he had an inordinately large staff to assist him. Sitton said it was not unusual or unreasonable for Sund to have a personal assistant but that two assistant city managers and a deputy city manager in a city of less than 6,000 population was uncalled for.
“This is very, very expensive,” Sitton said. “The failure of decision making… is far from over.”
For a time, it seemed that the city council was on a trajectory to redress the issues relating to Sund’s management approach. At the July 10 council meeting, both Melnick and Segovia made references to their discussions with what Segovia quantified as “nine” women in the community who had difficulty or confrontations with or were concerned about Sund.
Of note, however, is that the minutes of the June 12 and July 10 council meetings were never compiled, nor contained within the packets accompanying agendas of later council meetings nor posted on the city’s website.
The issue of Sund’s comportment is complicated by the blanket of “confidentiality” which is thrown over personnel issues pertaining to governmental employees in California generally as well as the somewhat abnormal secrecy that attains with regard to municipal employees in Big Bear Lake, particularly as a product of the blackouts on information imposed by City Attorney Steve Deitsch. On both October 9 and November 13, the city council carried out a performance evaluation of Sund during its closed sessions at those meetings. While the October 9 council meeting agenda was posted on the city’s website, the agenda for the November 13 meeting was not. Deitsch made no specific mention of the evaluation before the council adjourned into those meetings on October 9 and November 13. When the council came out of those closed sessions, Deitsch made no reference on the record with regard to the evaluations taking place and he reported that no action had been taken with regard to the evaluations. Later in the November 13 meeting, however, when the council took up the public session item relating to Sund’s increase in pay, Deitsch stated that the council had given Sund a positive work evaluation. That discrepancy, one in which he on one hand reported that no action had been taken and subsequently reported the council had made a positive finding about Sund’s performance, has not been explained or resolved.
In 2023, Sund was remunerated with $258,292.80 in salary, $2,587.03 in perquisites and pay add-ons and $133,647.80 in benefits, for a total annual compensation of $394,527.63.
As of this year, he was being provided with $265,000 in salary. The action scheduled for the council’s November 13 meeting was for the council to secure Sund’s services with the city going forward by agreeing to increase his salary by 5 percent to $278,250 and change the health care plan in which he and the eligible members of his family formerly were enrolled from a health maintenance organization to one in which he, his wife and defendants can choose a doctor at their own discretion as part of a preferred provider medical service arrangement.
During the November 13 meeting, the objections that members of the community had lodged against him previously were disposed of entirely. Such statements were the invalid bellyaching of a relative minority of inveterately dissatisfied malcontents, according to the city council.
Three of those so-called malcontents, Edgar Allaniz, Gilbranson and Sitton, were on hand on November 13 to make their feelings known.
Alaniz referred to Sund as “incompetent.”
Gilbranson said, “The sooner he goes, the better.”
Sitton, saying Sund was a “reflection of our existing government,” offered his opinion that, “It’s time to drain the swamp.”
Deitsch, however, as the council consigliere, brought the curtain down on the badmouthing of Sund when he announced that during the evening’s closed session, “I can say that the city manager received a favorable evaluation.”
Segovia sought to put to rest criticisms leveled at Sund based upon his continuing residence in San Clemente, where he was previously city manager and yet owns a home, by saying that Sund lives, at least during the work week, in Big Bear Lake, where he owns a second house he purchased well before he was hired as city manager. She said Sund was committed to the community of Big Bear.
Herrick rejected the concept of there being a “triad” that favored Sund and is keeping him in place.
Herrick praised Sund’s “thick skin,” saying the job he was doing was “overall excellent,” and that “I appreciate the work he does, regardless of the abuse that comes his way every meeting.”
Putz said that “There is a shortage of good people like Erik,” and that the average citizen fails to understand that city administrators have to be paid on a scale above that of average workers.
“The [municipal employment] marketplace we are competing against is very tight and if we want someone good, we have to pay,” Putz said.
Putz said that what Sund puts up with “is not easy. I appreciate Erik’s willingness to hang in there.” The councilman touted the city manager’s ability to “sit here quietly and listen to relentless personal attacks and slanderous comments and go through it with grace. I consider his raise combat pay.”
Mayor Melnick did not mention any of the negative characterizations that had been made about Sund.
“One of the things I value about Erik is the team he has built and the support he has shown to our employees,” Melnick said, indicating she put no stock whatsoever in reports that Sund was overbearing in the manner in which he treats others. “Employees say they value and appreciate his leadership,” Melnick said.