San Bernardino Acting City Manager Rochelle Clayton this week provisionally rescinded her self-demotion to deputy city manager, as the jockeying for longevity, if not permanence, in the county seat’s two most powerful staff position is intensifying.
Clayton, who was first hired by San Bernardino to serve as deputy city manager in April and was precipitously promoted to interim/acting city manager in May, was on the verge of being promoted into the full-fledged city manager post in October. In November, however, her grip on the reins of control in the city become somewhat more tenuous. This month, two of her most abiding supporters on the city council are leaving as a consequence of the results of this year’s election cycle. Over the next several weeks, moving into early 2025, there will be grounds for suspense as events play out to determine whether Clayton, who has already picked up the support of two of the three incoming council members can secure the backing of the third and can regain the confidence of at least one of the four current members of the council to guarantee that five of the city’s eight elected leaders will entrust her with the administration of the city for the next five to ten years.
Since 2012, the city has employed six city managers, one un-actuated or would-be city manager, and five so-called temporary/stand-in/interim and/or acting city managers. The discontinuity San Bernardino has suffered in its managerial echelon, which is equal to or greater than that of any of the 23 other municipalities in San Bernardino County over the last dozen years, has been compounded with other misfortunes pertaining to its litany of senior staff members. Two of those managers sued the city, with one receiving a $750,000 settlement in addition to her severance for what she claimed was an unjust termination and the other, whose employment with the city was never actuated when he spurned the city’s employment offer, collected an $800,000 settlement when he claimed the city’s failure to keep its job offer to him confidential cost him his job as city manager in Salinas, the city where he was employed when he applied for the San Bernardino job. The city paid out nearly a million dollars more in severance packages when it parted company with three of the other city managers.
San Bernardino hungers for a competent, experienced and dedicated manager, one to plan, organize, direct and control its function as governmental entity. Differing perspectives and visions with regard to the city’s priorities among its mayor and seven council members, not to mention personality clashes and conflicting motivations among those elected officials, have made the forming of a lasting consensus on whom they should entrust with that managerial authority difficult and, it might seem, impossible to obtain.
For some 115 years, from the time that the city charter San Bernardino abided by for most of the 20th Century went into effect with its passage in 1905 until the charter was given a major makeover in 2020 based upon a majority vote of the city’s residents in the 2016 election, San Bernardino had what were essentially two co-regents – the city manager and the mayor. The 1905 Charter substantially limited the mayor’s political authority. The mayor, under most circumstances and with only a few exceptions, had no vote on action taken by the city council, except in decisions relating to hiring or firing city staff, appointing city commissioners or committee members and in breaking a tie. The charter also conferred upon the mayor veto power on 4-to-3 or 3-to-2 votes of the council. Outside those confines, the mayor’s political power rested in his/her authority, as the presiding officer at meetings of the city council to wield the mayoral gavel and control the ebb and flow of debate by recognizing who held the floor and who could speak and for how long during discussion of the matters being voted upon. Moreover, a San Bernardino Mayor could be a political player in his city’s governance to the extent that he or she had the ability – or the force of personality and/or popularity – to influence the city’s voters as to whom they elected to the council. And if he or she possessed the wherewithal after the council was elected and seated to form a viable and reliable ruling coalition thereon, the mayor’s political mileage could be extended.
Still the same, under the 1905 Charter, the mayor’s true power was not political but administrative, for he or she shared with the city manager the power hire and terminate city staff members. Therein lay the mayor’s true ability to shape local governance and influence policy.
In 2016, however, the revision of the San Bernardino Charter attenuated, limited or outright eliminated elements of how the city had been run for the previous 111 years. Eliminated entirely were three elected positions within the government – that of city attorney, city clerk and city treasurer, all of whom had previously been voted upon at-large by all those registered to vote in the city. The 2016 Charter kept in place the council ward system in which members of the council represented not the entire city but a subdivision thereof, jurisdictions which comprised one seventh of the city’s land area and one-seventh of the city’s population and where those council members themselves lived. The new charter did not eliminate the mayoral position, the holder of which was elected at-large to represent all residents of the city. However, the charter did do away with, almost in its entirety, the mayor’s administrative authority. No longer, after the first mayoral election following the 2016 charter change, would the mayor have the ability, in conjunction with the city manager, to hire new employees. Nor would the mayor’s authority extend to firing existing employees. The mayor did retain some limited appointment power with regard to city commissions and committees. Also intact was the mayor’s authority as the council’s presiding officer, the wielder of the gavel during meetings, veto power on 4-to-3 and 3-to-2 votes, the power of decision on tie votes and a single vote on the council’s hiring decisions, which are limited to the city’s three senior staff posts – city manager, city attorney and city clerk. And there was nothing in the new charger that could repress what had always been the San Bernardino mayor’s intangible and/or unspoken talent, if indeed he or she possessed it, the power of persuasion and influence, the ability to sway the vote of perhaps just one, or two or three or more of the members of the city council through his or her public statements or speeches, in private counsel with less than a quorum of the council or during the course of discussion or debate on the items to be voted upon when they came before the council. The 2016 Charter further switched the city’s elections from odd-numbered years to even-numbered years, consolidating San Bernardino municipal elections with the primary and general elections held in California’s gubernatorial and the national presidential elections.
In 2018, John Valdivia, who had been a member of the city council beginning in 2012 and was thus on hand to see, up close and personal, the administrative authority of the mayor as it existed under the 1905 Charter, was elected mayor. As a member of the council, Valdivia, despite being on less than fully amicable terms with the Carey Davis, the mayor who served the last full term under the 1905 Charter, opposed the charter revisions voted upon in 2016. As it would turn out, Valdivia’s motive for what looked like preserving Davis’s enhanced mayoral authority was not to extend his political rival’s controlling reach over the city but rather to preserve it for himself. That became clear when he challenged, and defeated, Davis in 2018.
While it would be inaccurate to say that Valdivia’s victory in 2018 was a hollow one, the prize he won – the position of San Bernardino mayor – did not carry the authority that Valdivia had long aspired to possess. The administrative sway that had been the purview of Davis and
Davis and the 25 mayors going back to 1905 before him – Patrick Morris, Judith Valles, Tom Minor, Bob Holcomb, Evlyn Wilcox, A Ballard, Donald Mauldin, Raymond Gregory, Elwood Kremer, George Blair, James Cunningham, Will Seccombe, Henry McAllistger, Clarence Johnson, Ormond Seccombe, Ira Gilbert, John Ralphs Jr, Grant Holcomb, Samuel McNabb, John Henderson, George Wixom, Joseph Catick, Joseph Bright, John Hanford and Hiram Barton – had the purvies of an administrative sway – whether they exercised it or not, which had been a facet of the job that Valdivia wanted to exercise. That administrative power would not only have given him a certain autonomy over how the city was to be run, it was a primary motivating factor in Valdivia’s political ambition because of the means it provided him in ensuring that his political backers and the network of businesses, developers, vendors, service providers and holders of city franchises who had supported him in his run for city council and then mayor would be taken care – by having their contracts with the city or projects to construct homes, apartments, commercial centers, warehouses or factories approved, their licenses, permits or franchises granted – so that they would be in a position to support him with donations when he again ran for mayor or chose to move up the political evolutionary chain by vying for county supervisor or the Assembly, State Senate or Congress.
Upon being elected mayor, however, the reality of the limitations that were baked into San Bernardino’s mayoral quiche had for him a bitter taste. He came into office with what appeared to be the tools it would take a post-2016 mayor to succeed, with what appeared to be five of the city council’s five members aligned with him, and willing to support his agenda in terms of policy and overall city direction. He put that control of the council into early action, moving to remove as quickly possible the city manager who had been put into place under his predecessor Davis so that he could direct the hiring of a city manager who would come into that position understanding that he or she was beholden to him and would thus be willing to serve as his proxy in the administrative role, thus restoring, in large measure, the authority that the mayor had lost with the charter revision.
In a remarkably rapid fashion, however, based largely upon Valdivia’s demands that the members of his coalition unquestionably support his initiatives while he made little or no effort to support them in the programs or efforts of significance in their wards or political circles, his coalition began to fall apart. While he ultimately succeeded in jettisoning City Manager Andrea Travis-Miller, whom he had inherited from Davis, doing so came at some degree of cost, as Travis-Miller, sued over being force out of her post with a year-and-a-half left on her contract, and ultimately prevailed. Valdivia succeeded in advancing Teri Ledoux, whom Travis-Miller had promoted into the assistant city manager position, to the position of city manager. His hope that Ledoux would give him carte blanche in terms of procedural and policy autonomy did not pan out, and she soon evinced the same resistance to Valdivia’s demands that the mayor encountered from the members of the council when he sought to order them around. Ledoux, who by that point had eclipsed the age of 60, at any rate intended to retire, doing so in 2020. Valdivia, meanwhile, was working behind the scenes and outside the knowledge of most of the members of the city council or city staff, carrying out a recruitment effort to replace Ledoux. In that regard, he and Councilman Juan Figueroa had interviewed Hemet City Manager Chris Lopez, whom Valdivia had determined would fit the bill with regard to complying with making sure his network of donors were provided with lucrative city contracts, franchises or project approvals. Ultimately, however, when Valdivia was unable to line up support for Lopez that went no deeper on the city council than Figueroa and then-Councilwoman Bessine Richard, he began to more discretely seek out a city manager candidate that would do his bidding. One of those he interviewed in this fashion was Robert Field, a 1989 University of California at Riverside graduate who in the 1990 worked as an environmental specialist with the Krieger & Stewart civil engineering firm and thereafter worked in the public sector with Riverside County in its economic development agency and facilities management divisions, both of which he eventually headed. Field’s career had advanced significantly under Riverside County’s leadership by then-Supervisor John Tavaglione and county chief executive officer Bill Luna and Jay Orr, acceding to the post of assistant Riverside County chief executive officer, in which capacity he oversaw 24 county divisions and 840 employees, an annual operating budget of $650 million and a $1.5 billion capital improvement budget. Just prior Valdivia interviewing Field, the county chief executive officer who had replaced Orr, George Johnson, fired Field, in some measure, it seemed, because Johnson was nervous about the prospect that the board of supervisors at some point might elect to replace him with Field. To Valdivia, Field’s understanding of the vicissitudes of politics and that a top-drawer governmental employee could get ahead by pleasing his political masters was a quality that he very much wanted in a city manager. With stealthy aplomb, Valdivia was able to get the city’s human resources division to present Field to the city council as a potential candidate for city manager without anyone, other than his two council allies – Figueroa and Richard – knowing of his role in inducing Field to apply for the job.
In September 2020, following Ledoux’s exit, Field was hired on a 6-to-2 vote. Of note, both Councilman Fred Shorett and then-Councilman Jim Mulvihill, who were Valdivia’s longest-standing opponents on the council, supported Field’s hiring, while Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra and Councilman Henry Nickel, who had been members of Valdivia’s once-intact-but-at-that-point-dissolving ruling coalition, dissented.
Valdivia had succeeded in getting his man into the city manager’s position by having others sell Field to the city council as a financial guru who could spur economic development on a multiplicity of levels in a way that would miraculously rejuvenate the city financially, primarily by luring businesses of all order to the city, such that San Bernardino would literally grow its way out of the financial doldrums that represented such an existential threat to it, which indeed had led to its 2012 bankruptcy filing.
As arguably the foremost practitioner of pay-to-play politics in the region, Valdivia had accumulated over half of a million dollars in political donations by promising scores of business owners that he would ensure their success by getting City Hall to smile on them by approving their projects or their contracts with the city or, alternatively, making certain they were not interfered with by municipal regulators. Even before Field had the city manager’s job, Valdivia had introduced many of those donors to Field, familiarizing them with the city manager-to-be and impressing upon Field that these were the entrepreneurs who represented San Bernardino’s best hope for financial resurrection and that as they prospered, so too would San Bernardino. An understanding was cultivated and in place by the time Field was hired. Field would make sure that those who were willing to invest in the city would see a return on their investment.
Meanwhile, the rest of the city council, as it was then composed, held out hope that Field would be able to turn things around for the city financially.
Despite the exuberance of many when Field came aboard, the actuality was that his experience in San Bernardino was foredoomed.
Despite Valdivia’s belief that Field was politically sophisticated, sensitive to nuance and perceptive, it turned out he was blind to certain realities. Field never, or at least until such a time as it was too late, understood that when Valdivia interviewed him in early- and mid-2020 with regard to the city manager position that he was doing so without the knowledge, understanding, consent or blessing of the city council. Field came into the office of city manager believing that he had the support and backing of the city council on all issues or all issues of importance. In fact, by the time Field was hired, Valdivia’s reliable support on the city council had dwindled to just Figueroa and Richard. And just three months later, in December 2020, Richard was gone from the council, having been replaced by Kimberly Calvin.
For months, well into 2021, Field continued to demonstrate just how politically tone deaf a high caliber governmental functionary can be. While it is publicly unknown what transpired during the closed sessions in which the mayor and city council participated and to which Field was an intimate witness, during many of the open public meeting sessions of the city council it was plain to see that Valdivia had lost any control of city council he once had. This became painfully evident in December 20201, when the city council voted to censure Valdivia during a public hearing. Well prior to that, several city officials close to the mayor or once close to him found themselves being given a scrupulously close going over the FBI, which was looking into money from Chinese corporate officials allegedly being passed to several American municipal officials, Valdivia among them, to facilitate that communist country’s investments in real estate and construction projects. It was not until 2022 that it fully came home to Field that Valdivia was not San Bernardino’s political kingpin, that the mayor could not ensure his future with the city and that the attention that was being paid to him by some half dozen federal agencies and two international ones was on account of his close affiliation with Valdivia. Only then did Field seek to distance himself from the mayor. At that point, however, it was too late. Despite having more than half of a million dollars to throw toward his re-elective effort that year, Valdivia managed to place only a distant third in the June primary, failing to qualify for the November run-off, which ultimately was won by Helen Tran.
Before Tran was sworn into the mayor’s post in December 2011, Field tendered his resignation. That touched off a scramble to find a suitable city manager that has not abated since. At first, the city called upon Charles McNeely, who was in place as city manager for three years before he left in 2012 as the city’s downward economic spiral was sucking it into the vortex of bankruptcy, to serve as a caretaker while the council tried to find a suitable administrator, someone who might undo the city’s decades-long pattern of managerial discontinuity, and remain in place five years or maybe even ten years and oversee a cogent approach toward modern urban planning and renewal. The council made an internal commitment that in carrying out the recruitment for this ideal city manager it would not prejudice the selection process by giving any candidate an inside track by allowing someone who was serving in the role of acting city manager to compete for the job. That principle seemed to be accepted, and given that McNeely was 70 years old and had come out of a comfortable retirement to take on what was understood by all, most particularly his wife, Rosalind, to be a temporary assignment, there was no suggestion at all that he was to be in place for any time more than six months.
Around three months into the assignment, however, McNeely felt himself growing into the position he once held, and he began to believe that he had an opportunity to mend the wound that had been inflicted upon himself and the city more than a decade previously when he had bailed on the position to avoid being the city manager who was in place when San Bernardino had declared bankruptcy. If his health were to hold out, and if his wife to hold still and agree to remain in San Bernardino instead of insisting on returning to Escondido, there was no reason he could not remain in place for two years or maybe even three and keep his hand on the San Bernardino ship of state’s rudder and stabilize the situation. As he was warming to the idea, so too did three of the members of the council. Nevertheless, the council had made a commitment that whoever was serving in the interim position would not accede to the fully empowered managerial post, and the idea foundered, even as Koff and Associates, the Berkeley-based executive search firm was looking at potential candidates to fill the post and inviting those interested to apply.
For a short while, at Mayor Tran’s suggested, the council flitted to consider hiring David Carmany, the city manager of West Covina. More than a decade-and-a-half before she had become mayor, Tran had gone to work for the City of San Bernardino in 2005 as an analyst/executive assistant in the human resources department. A decade later, she was promoted, at the age 33, to the position of human resources director. She had done well in that position until shortly after Valdivia became mayor. His suggestions and order to and demands of several of the city’s employees, primarily women who worked in his office or in some sort of liaison capacity to it, ranged from the proper, to the inappropriate, to political, to overtly or covertly sexual, were met with resistance. As the human resources director, it had been Tran’s role to ensure that the city’s employees performed the legitimate tasks assigned to them and fulfilled their professional duties within the guidelines of protocol and workplace norms and standards. Having to negotiate a middle ground between the mayor and city employees alleging sexual harassment against an elected official with a dictatorial proved overwhelming to her. At that point, in late 2019, she was rescued from her dilemma by Carmany, who offered her what was essentially a lateral transfer into the human resources director position with West Covina. In 2023, things having run their course for Carmany in West Covina, Tran did her best to return the favor, seeking to have her council colleagues agree to making him city manager in San Bernardino. That effort failed, however, when Tran could muster no more than two votes in support of hiring Carmany.
Even before Koff and Associates filled out a roster of potential city manager candidates, no fewer than four members of the council grew particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of the city being able to lure Stockton City Manager Harry Black to serve as San Bernardino’s city manager.  Harry Black, the city manager of Stockton since 2020. Prior to holding that, Black had been the city manager in Cincinnati, Ohio; the finance director of Baltimore, Maryland; a senior aide to Richmond, Virginia Mayor L. Douglas Wilder, the former governor of Virginia; .
A 1985 graduate of the University of Virginia, Black went to work for the New York Transit Authority and then the New York City’s Mayor’s Office Department of Contracts. Though he had successive degrees in public administration, he had no formal education in finance, Black was able to transition into his next job as assistant director of investments for the New York State Insurance Fund.
In 1995, he moved to Washington, D.C., and served in four capacities over four years in the District of Columbia government, including a position with the District of Columbia Child and Family Services Agency, the deputy chief of procurement, the director of budget and finance and chief financial officer and director of administration for the Council of the District of Columbia; the assistant director of investments for the New York State Insurance Fund; and, early in his career in the public sector, a staff employee with the New York Transit Authority and then the New York City Mayor’s Office Department of Contracts. In addition, at one point he had been employed in the private sector, as vice president of McKissack & McKissack, an architectural and engineering firm, coordinating governmental contracts for that company. For a time in the summer of 2023, the council sought to establish a back-channel line of communication with Black. During what were supposed to be secret talks, those seeking to speak for the city were frustrated by what they found to be Black’s escalating salary demands. Black then became concerned that members of the Stockton City Council would learn of. Those talks broke off after Stockton officials, having learned about the dialog he was having with San Bernardino’s representatives, moved to contractually bind Black to remain with their city at least another four years, giving him an 8 percent – $25,783 – raise, upping his annual salary before benefits from $322,285 per year to $348,068 per year.
Shortly thereafter – three weeks into August – the city council, having sized up the 62 candidates identified by Koff & Associates, reached a 6-to-2 consensus to offer Steve Carrigan, the Salinas city manager the job. Rather than moving to finalize the hiring at its September 6 meeting, however, the city council tarried. Because the council’s regular meeting scheduled for September 20 was cancelled and because a city manager hiring was required to take place at a regularly scheduled meeting of the council, Carrigan’s hiring was delayed until the October 4, 2023 meeting.
In the meantime, Koff & Associates earlier that year had been seeking to recruit managerial candidates for other municipalities. During the course of those efforts, Carrigan’s name had surfaced as a possible city manager in those cities. When San Bernardino came across with its offer, council members with other cities were informed that his name had been withdrawn because he was going to go to work in San Bernardino. Word to that effect began to spread. On September 27, Carrigan, having had a change of heart, contacted Koff & Associates to say he was no longer interested in the San Bernardino post. He then sent out an email to Salinas city employees, informing them of his intent to remain in Salinas. On October 3, the Salinas City Council, holding a specially-called meeting, voted to terminate Carrigan as city manager there.
In October, having been spurned by Carrigan, the San Bernardino City Council, in a 5-to-3 vote, hired Charles Montoya to come in as city manager. Montoya had formerly held the city manager posts in Avondale, Arizona and Watsonville in California, town manager in Florence, Arizona, finance director and treasurer with the Town of Castle Rock in Colorado and was the chief financial officer for both Centennial, Colorado and for Jefferson County, Colorado.
From the outset, Montoya did not get on well with Councilwoman Calvin. By December, Calvin was raising multiple objections with regard to what she said were repeated efforts by Montoya to overstep his authority as city manager and usurp the purview of the council. With regard to some of those issues, Calvin suggested, Montoya had ulterior motives, which extended to his intent to churn fees for service providers such as financial advisors and bond brokers with which, Calvin said, Montoya had pre-existing relationships. For several months, the majority of Calvin’s council colleagues downplayed her expressions of concern about Montoya, suggesting that his energetic approach to addressing outstanding issues facing the city was a positive rather than a negative attribute in a city manager.
Carrigan filed a claim against the city, asserting that he had lost his job in Salinas because San Bernardino city officials had failed to keep his application for the city manager’s position confidential. With Montoya at the city’s helm, the council then employed Tustin-based JL Group to look into the issues relating to the 2023 city manager recruitment effort and the debacle involving Carrigan. In April 2024, JL Group released a report which gave no indication that it had examined or interviewed Koff & Associates personnel with regard to that company’s security arrangements with regard to documents or information pertaining to the more than 60 applicants for the San Bernardino city manager position. Rather, JL Group’s report stated that a “preponderance of credible evidence overwhelmingly points to Calvin as the originator of the closed-session leaks” relating to the city manager search in 2023. While Montoya was yet in the role of city manager, the JL Group report was publicly released. At that point, Calvin was more or less isolated, and was being consistently backed only by Councilman Ben Reynoso with regard to most issues dividing the council.
The following month, a majority of the sentiment on the city council had shifted away from supporting Montoya, such that on May 22, the entirety of the council had swung behind Calvin in her determination to separate the city from Montoya. A vote that day was made in closed session to terminate him without cause. Doing so triggered a provision in his employment contract requiring that the city confer upon him a severance payout equal to 12 months’ salary – $325,000. Thus, San Bernardino taxpayers were handed a bill of just about $548,644.93 for the roughly 6.75 months that Montoya was working for San Bernardino as its city manager from October 2023 until May 2024, consisting of $182,812.50 in salary, $40,832.43 in perquisites and benefits and a $325,000 severance package.
In August, to settle Carrigan’s legal claim, the city paid him $800,000.
Approaching her second anniversary as mayor, Tran is replicating, in a remarkably similar way, Valdivia’s effort to artificially reestablish mayor administrative authority in San Bernardino. Just as Valdivia had cast about trying to find an individual who could be installed as city manager who would do his bidding, at first believing that Ledoux was that person and after being disappointed in that regard finding and settling upon Field, Tran has come to believe that moving Clayton into place as the city’s full-fledged city manager is her ticket to approximating the power of mayors of yore. Without there being anything in writing, there appears to be an understanding that – minor issues and distractions aside – on the big policy decisions that are of consequence in the county seat, Clayton is to see to it that the mayor’s will prevails.
On October 2, the threshold that Tran had been itching to cross for some 22 months at last seemed to have been achieved when the city council, during a closed-door negotiating session, had resolved to offer the city manager’s post to Clayton, which upon being actuated would provide her with a $325,000 salary, subject to an annual cost of living increase tied to the consumer price index and capped at 5 percent, another $11,619.95 in perks and pay add-ons and $115,693.41 in benefits, for an initial total annual compensation of $452,313.36. In addition, the contract the city council was purposed to approve called for providing her with a one-time relocation benefit of $10,000, if she were to move to a residence within the boundaries of the City of San Bernardino within two years. What was even more pleasing to Tran was that the decision to elevate Clayton into the position that would serve her political purposes was not a development that she had to go out on a limb to achieve or create enemies over, since the decision to hire Clayton was unanimous and entire council was behind doing so.
But just as had been the case with the cancellation of the second council meeting in September 2023 with Carrigan, because of the cancellation of the second council meeting in October 2024, the regularly scheduled meeting at which the city manager could be effectuated was postponed until the first meeting of the following month. And just as had been the case with delaying Carrigan’s hiring, delaying Clayton’s hiring interfered with that outcome. In this case, Councilman Ted Sanchez had learned, through a response he received to a California Public Records Act request that less than two months after Clayton had taken on the acting city manager assignment, she had been informed by the California Department of Housing and Community Development that San Bernardino had been selected to receive a $17 million Homekey grant to pay for a sizeable percentage of a $26 million homeless shelter the city intends to build on Sixth Street. Clayton had not informed the city council about the state’s offer of the money and, again without informing the council, notified Sacramento that the city was declining the money. Sanchez would also learn that the city had under Clayton’s watch further failed to lay claim to another $3 million grant from San Bernardino County to pay for homeless service efforts because the city had not made three adjustments to its planned homeless assistance strategy that would have qualified it to receive the money. When this was brought up for discussion during the closed session prior to the public session at the November 6 council meeting in which Clayton’s hiring was to take place, the council elected at that point to pull the ratification of the city manager’s contract from the public portion of the meeting agenda, placing her hiring, or at that point possible hiring, into indefinite abeyance.
For Tran, it was back to the drawing board. Getting Clayton into place as the city manager was still the goal. It was just that now it was probably not going to be a unanimous vote to hire her. She recognized that two of the solid votes in Clayton’s favor were to be supplied by Reynoso and Calvin. This meant getting Clayton’s contact approved prior to the December 18 meeting at which they and Alexander – another possible vote for Clayton – left was a goal worth pursuing. Tran held out hope that Clayton would be able to offer a convincing explanation for having turned the state and county money for the homeless programs down, perhaps by demonstrating that the strings attached to the money were prohibitive ones that would have rendered the shelter project one that was not worth pursuing. While she knew that Sanchez had defected and could be counted as a vote against Clayton, she was not entirely sure whether Ibarra, Figueroa or Shorett might still provide a crucial fifth and maybe even a sixth or seventh vote to promote Clayton.
On November 20, which was the second-to-last opportunity for the council to take any action before the changeover in its members that will come when Kim Knaus, Mario Flores and Treasure Ortiz supplant Reynoso, Calvin and Alexander on the council on December 18, Tran sought to test the sentiment of the full council with regard to who should be guiding San Bernardino from the ship of state’s control room. She did not do this by moving once more to hire Clayton but rather cashiering one of the city’s other main constitutional appointed officers under the 2016 Charter, the city attorney. In doing so, Tran line up an array of forces within the city who were on the outs, one way or another, to a minor or greater degree, both passionately and dispassionately, with City Attorney Sonia Carvalho and her law firm, Best Best & Krieger. Carvalho and the firm had been under contract with the city since 2018, when the last elected city attorney, Gary Saenz, had shed his staff attorneys, paralegals, investigators and clerical assistants in reaction to the charter change eliminating the elected city attorney post as of 2020. Getting rid of Carvalho would also mean jettisoning the retinue of lawyers at Best Best & Krieger also working for the city, including another partner, Assistant City Attorney Thomas Rice; another partner Deputy City Attorney Jason Baltimore; one of the firm’s associates, Thomas Maldonado, who advises and represents the planning commission; and another partner, Elizabeth Hull, who advises the city with regard to the disposition of the Carousel Mall Mall property. Prior to the meeting, Clayton generated a memo that went to the council supporting the firing of Carvalho.
What emerged during the November 20 meeting in which Sanchez and Shorett used pariliamentary procedure to stymie the mayor was that while Calvin and Reynoso supported the mayor in being ready to oust Carvalho, both Sanchez and Shorett were opposed to firing her, that Ibarra and Figueroa were at best noncommittal toward doing so and that Alexander was against the council as it is currently composed taking any action that will impose on the incoming council any change in staff leadership that the three new members will not have an opportunity to weigh in on first. What Tran took away from that was any prospect of getting Clayton into place will come only after the change in the composition of the council takes place on December 18. Moreover, Tran has come to recognize, whatever alignments that will come into being – on both the council and among city staff – after the new council is in place will create a huge either/or gap the city will need to overcome. Either Clayton will be the city manager or Carvalho will be the city attorney but a continuation of the status quo in which both remain in place in their current roles represents a house divided against itself which cannot stand.
Last month, a consensus formed on the city council to have Jacob Green & Associates, a company which touts itself as specializing in organizational and leadership development consulting, carry out an evaluation of the function of the three staff positions identified in the city charter – the city manager, the city attorney and the city clerk. Even as that consensus was forming, there was confusion within the council as to what the purpose and timelines of the evaluation were. Some council members thought the evaluation was to be of the three individuals filling those posts – Clayton, Carvalho and City Clerk Genoveva Rocha. Others saw the evaluation as being of the positions to be filled and the expectations of the jobs to be performed than any examination of performance of city personnel. Some expected an instantaneous evaluation to take place, one that would be completed quickly enough for the city council to take Jacob Green & Associates findings into consideration in time for the existing city council to arrive at a decision before December 18 as to the future of Clayton, Carvalho and Rocha with the city. Indeed, Mayor Tran, sight unseen expected the Jacob Green & Associates report to provide the council with the grounds to promote Clayton and fire Carvalho. On the other side of the spectrum, Sanchez anticipates the final report will supply the council with the rationale for finding someone other Clayton to serve as city manager.
In the hours prior to the December 4 city council meeting, sensing that the requisite five votes needed for the council to follow through on its October 2 tentative decision to offer her the city manager promotion were not there and the council was, as the move toward retaining Jacob
Green & Associates for the evaluation indicated, heading toward conducting a statewide or nationwide recruitment of candidates for the city manager post, Clayton informed the council that she intended to self-demote to the deputy city manager post as soon as the city finds a stand-in interim city manager to replace her. Her motivation in doing so was, she tacitly indicated, that she wanted to remain as an employee with the city, even if that meant she would not be city manager. She said she was interested in applying for the city manager’s post, indicating she would formally do so when the city began accepting applications. Her calculation was, apparently, that if she remained as acting city manager while she was competing for the full-fledged city manager position and lost in that competition, she would run the risk of being terminated, since she would have no guarantee of returning to her her previous position as deputy manager. Thus, by stepping back into the deputy city manager’s role that Montoya hired her into, she would have job security relating to her position as deputy city manager and remain as a contestant in the city manager sweepstakes. .
At the December 4 meeting, the council conducted its closed session after the public session had concluded rather than at the opening of the meeting, a deviation from the order in which those components of the council’s meetings normally take place. Tran had again requested for discussion during the closed session the dismissal of the city attorney as well as the appointment of an interim city attorney. Upon returning from the closed session, Mayor Tran announced that the council had voted 6-to-1, with Councilman Shorett to have Jacob Green & Associates to conduct what she called an “evaluation for the city attorney, city manage, city clerk.” Tran indicated the council would hold a special meeting on December 11 at which those evaluations would be carried out. She made no mention whatsoever of any action with regard to terminating the city attorney or appointing an interim city attorney in her place.
Within the next week, however, there were developments to indicate that the forces behind promoting Clayton as city manager have made significant strides in securing the support needed to reach that goal.
One such indication came with the announcement that Jacob Green & Associates, which includes on its staff former City Manager Ledoux, was not prepared to rush into the evaluation and do it in one fell swoop on December 11. Tran and her support network have backed up and regrouped, and are taking stock of the resources and assets Tran has at her disposal. One of those is Tran’s entrée with Ledoux. Both were raised in San Bernardino. Both began their careers as public employees in San Bernardino, Ledoux as an unpaid intern in the city manager’s office, followed by fifteen years as an executive assistant to the city manager. For five years, from 2005 until 2010, they were colleagues in San Bernardino. Tran and her supporters believe that Ledoux’s insight with regard to what is required of a city manager in San Bernardino, coupled with Clayton’s real time experience running the city will place her at an advantage when it comes to Ledoux/Jacob Green & Associates making an assessment of who is best cut out to serve San Bernardino as city manager. Moreover, Ledoux’s experience in San Bernardino included working in conjunction with Carvalho. Elements of that relationship and certain events that transpired at that time, Tran has come to believe, will redound, ultimately, to Clayton’s advantage.
Information in the public domain consisting of public statements made by council members-elect Flores and Ortiz indicate they are ready to vote with Tran to promote Clayton to city manager at any time a motion to that effect comes before them once they are on the daias. Information developed by the Sentinel indicates Councilwoman-elect Knaus will likewise support Clayton. The determination of who will move into the city manager’s post has always been and at this point has certainly reduced itself down to a numbers game, with five votes among those seven members representing wards one through seven and the mayor being all that is required to approve the city manager contract. In this way, a single vote offered by council members Ibarra, Figueroa or Shorett will permanently offset the solid opposition that exists on the council in the personage of Sanchez.
Scott Beard, the owner of Gerald W. Beard Realty Company, has, in his own words, “invested” over $500,000 in supporting and opposing politicians in San Bernardino County’s central valley over the last quarter of a century. The outcomes in those situations in which he has opposed candidates or officeholders has been every bit as if not more noteworthy than those he has supported. In 2013, what started out as an across-the-board effort to recall the mayor, the city attorney and the entirety of the city council in San Bernardino succeeded in seeing City Attorney Jim Penman and City Councilwoman Wendy McCammack removed from office. He opposed former Councilman Henry Nickel, who was defeated by Knaus in November. He virtually singlewalletly bankrolled Ortiz’s victory this year. He has heavily contributed to the election and reelection campaigns of all five members of the county board of supervisors. He has met with Clayton at least eight times in the last four-and-a-half months and appears to be strategizing with her on how to wangle the appointment as city manager. She has met with the leadership of both the San Bernardino Police Officers Association and the San Bernardino Police Management Association and obtained their support by assuring them that in upcoming contract negotiations, she will agree to raises of no less than 6 percent.
The Sentinel has learned Tran has reason to believe that the numbers game by late January or early February will turn sharply in Clayton’s favor, such that it will be clear that five votes are committed to promoting Clayton, at which a sixth vote will manifest certainly manifest, followed by a likely seventh vote. With Clayton in place as city manager by the end of February, the exodus of the Best Best & Krieger law firm will be effectuated no later than the end of March, the Sentinel was told.
Clayton was so certain of that outcome that on Tuesday, December 10, she walked back her previous statement made on December 4 that she wanted to return to deputy manager status, signaling she is indeed interested in accepting the city’s offer of a contract to and that she will accept the terms previously specified if the city were to offer it as it indicated it was ready to do on October 2.