The four-fifths strength Yucaipa City Council this week bypassed a prime mover in the successful effort to remove Matt Garner from the council’s ranks when its members made a [3-to-1] decision to fill Garner’s empty council post with an individual who has been less outspokenly critical of the city’s leadership.
Garner’s abbreviated political career was rooted in events that took place in the weeks and months before he was elected to and sworn into office in the Fall of 2022.
At that time, Garner was vying, along with Sherilynn Long, Mark Taylor and Erik Sahakian, to succeed then-incumbent District 1 Councilman David Avila, who had declined to run for reelection that year. Similarly, in the city’s District 2, incumbent Greg Bogh was not seeking reelection. Chris Venable and Nena Dragoo were competing to take Bogh’s place.
On October 23, 2022, 16 days before the November 8, 2022 election, the Yucaipa City Council as it was then composed – consisting of Avila, Bogh, District 3 Councilman, District 4 Councilman Justin Beaver land District 5 Councilman Jon Thorp considered a proposal to extend then-City Manager Ray Casey’s employment contract, one which guaranteed his employment with the city until June 30, 2024, granted him a 3 percent increase of his base salary to $299,420 annually, such that he was making $422,901.50 in total annual compensation, putting him among the 25 highest-paid city managers in California. Comments by the council members that night memorialized their apparent collective belief that Casey’s experience, which included prior work as the Yucaipa’s city engineer/public works director from 2003 until 2008 and his 14 subsequent years as city manager, taken together with his standing within the municipal management profession, justified the action.
Bogh and Avila, based on their long history of working with Casey, considered the October 23 vote to be one of their final significant acts while in office, since ensuring Casey would remain with the city for more than a year after what was to be the new council was in place would allow the two new members to familiarize themselves with his abilities and therefore be able to decide whether he should remain with the city, perhaps well into the future. This, Bogh and Avila hoped, would be one of their legacies.
What was unknown to everyone but a small circle of people in Yucaipa in the fall and early winter of 2022 was that there was a hidden agenda, one that involved Beaver, Duncan, Garner and just a handful of others. Though they had not let on to anyone outside of their tight political circles, Beaver and Duncan were displeased with Casey’s performance and had been for some time. Aware, however, that Bogh and Avila sharply differed with them in their assessment of Casey, and that Thorp, who had been on the city council since 2020, would side with them, they had gone along with the majority at the October 23, 2022 meeting, not wanting to prematurely reveal what they were planning.
While the Brown Act, California’s open public meeting law, prohibits a quorum – meaning three or more of a five-member panel such as the Yucaipa City Council – from discussing any public issues to be decided by those members in their elected capacities outside the public forum of an agendized meeting, that law did not prevent Beaver and Duncan from talking over and coming to a consensus between themselves regarding what they felt about the city manager and whether he should remain with the city, even if their private conversations were 180 degrees at odds from their public representations. Nor were they restricted from discussing their feelings or intentions with anyone else who was not on the council, and that included prospective members of the council such Garner, Long, Taylor, Sahakian, Dragoo and Venable, the candidates seeking election that year. While it is not known whether Beaver and Duncan made any overtures to Long, Taylor, Sahakian, Dragoo or Venable, it is now common knowledge that the two councilmen were dialoguing with Garner prior to the election. Garner signaled to Beaver and Duncan that he was prepared to jettison Casey if he were to succeed in his race.
When Garner was elected, but before he was sworn in in December, he reiterated in his contact with Beaver and Duncan that he was on board with tossing Casey from Yucaipa’s ship of state just as soon as he was in place to do so.
There was, however, a technicality that would prevent an early activation of the plan to remove Casey. A provision that had been placed into the Yucaipa Municipal Code was that “The city manager shall not be removed from office, other than for misconduct in office, during or within a period of ninety days next succeeding any general municipal election.” As such, the earliest the city council could have acted to fire Casey would have been 8:01 p.m. on February 5, 2023.
Beaver and Duncan, at the same December 12, 2022 meeting at which Garner was sworn in to office, were appointed mayor and mayor pro tem, respectively. Both were determined to strike while the iron was hot and before Casey or anyone else would have an opportunity to dissuade Garner or compromise the resolve the trio had to move Casey out of the Yucaipa City Hall executive suite.
On January 9, 2023, the night of the Yucaipa City Council’s first meeting of that year, Beaver, who is employed as a detective with the Azusa Police Department, made certain that he arrived at Yuccaipa City Hall early. There, he buttonholed Casey in the latter’s office, closing the door behind him. Firmly and without hesitation, Beaver informed Casey that he wanted him to tender his resignation or otherwise immediately retire. If Casey refused, Beaver told the city manager, the votes to fire him would soon be forthcoming.
Some 40 Yucaipa residents had come to the meeting, informed ahead of time that something big was in the offing. Several who went on the record, after the closed session was concluded, in support of Casey. That had no appreciable impact in convincing the council to reverse course by rescinding its action.
Casey, his hand being forced, went into that evening’s closed session, at which his performance was being discussed. During that discussion, upon being assured that the city would honor the commitment made in the October 23, 2022 contract extension to pay him his annual $299,420 salary until the end of June 2024, offered his resignation. The city council voted 3-to-2, with Thorp and Venable dissenting, to accept Casey’s resignation. The council then voted 4-to-1, with Thorp dissenting, to fire City Attorney David Snow, a move which was couched in the euphemistic language to the effect that the attorney was being “released from his contract with the city.”
Seemingly out of nowhere, Stephen Graham, who was formerly a deputy city attorney with the City of San Bernardino and who was at that time the city attorney of Canyon Lake, materialized to serve as city attorney, beinghired on a 4-to-1 vote, with Thorp dissenting. Thereafter, with Graham functioning as the city attorney, the council, again voting 4-to-1 with Thorp dissenting, voted to hire Chris Mann, the city manager of Canyon Lake, as Yucaipa’s city manager.
A substantial cross section of the Yucaipa community, including members of the traditional establishment and its old guard, found the events of January 9 upsetting and disillusioning. With Mann and Graham on hand for the meeting and Graham assuming the role of city attorney on the spot without any forewarning, there were immediate accusations that a violation of the Brown Act had taken place.
Residents who were opposed to what was tantamount to Casey’s sacking reasoned that a Brown Act violation had to have taken place, as Graham was on hand for the meeting, waiting in the wings at City Hall, before he was hired as city attorney or even so much as recruited for the post, and, likewise, Mann was immediately present, reportedly waiting in his car in the civic center parking lot, in anticipation of the action the council ultimately took.
The council majority would eventually form a response to the Brown Act violation accusation that held no such violation had occurred since the collusion with regard to Casey’s forced exit and Snow’s firing had taken place prior to Garner being sworn in as a member of the city council, such that when that plotting took place, the three did not constitute a quorum. Further, the council majority and their defenders rejected the claim that Casey’s sacking violated the municipal code section that related to not firing the city manager during the 90-day period after an election. They pointed out that Casey had resigned and had not been terminated by council action.
For those upset at Casey’s departure, those defenses were ones that relied on distinctions without differences and constituted an admission of duplicity on the part of the three, given Beaver’s and Duncan’s October 23 vote to extend Casey’s contract and Garner’s failure to inform the community of his intention with regard to the city manager prior to his election.
In its haste to get rid of Casey and put Mann in place, the council troika had created a circumstance in which the city was double-paying for the services of a city manager. In addition to the $220,130.80 in annual salary, $8,181.81 in pay add-ons and perks, and $44,134.19 in benefits for a total annual compensation of $272,446.8 that the city was paying to Mann to serve as the city’s top administrator, it was paying a $299,420 salary to Casey. Those city residents were baffled at why, if Beaver, Duncan and Garner were so set on getting rid of Casey and hiring Mann, they didn’t wait to make the transition at mid-year 2024, when the city’s contractual obligation with Casey was set to draw to a close.
A recall committee formed, and some 193 city residents lent their names as sponsors of the effort, with 62 residents of District 4 signing the notice of the intention to circulate the recall petition against Justin A. Beaver, 67 residents of District 3 signing the notice of the intention to circulate the recall petition against Bobby Dean Duncan and 64 residents of District 1 signing the notice of the intention to circulate the recall petition against Council Member Matthew Gabriel Garner. Among those latter 64 signing the recall petition against Garner were Hansen Wang and his wife, Colleen Wang.
Reasons given for seeking the recall against each of the three were that they had acted to terminate Casey and had violated the Brown Act in doing so.
In the aftermath of Casey’s departure and the hiring of Mann, Mann replaced the city clerk who had been in place under Casey, Kimberly Metzler, with his own choice, that being Ana Sauceda, whom he had previously promoted to city clerk when she was employed at the City of Canyon Lake, from which he had departed to become Yucaipa’s city manager.
Mann then hatched a strategy to protect his political masters on the city council. He induced Sauceda to hire the Los Angeles-based Sutton Law Firm and two of its attorneys, Bradley W. Hertz and Eli B. Love, to file on her behalf as Yucaipa City Attorney and the city’s chief elections officer, a lawsuit challenging the validity of the recall effort. The Sutton Firm filed for Sauseda a writ of mandate, one that asserted the stated grounds for the recall of Garner, Duncan and Beaver were false and misleading, since the recall proponents could not prove their allegation that a Brown Act violation had occurred with the forced departure of Casey, nor could they prove Beaver, Duncan and Garner had individually acted to terminate Casey and Snow, since relieving Casey of his city manager’s post and firing Snow were actions taken collectively by the entire city council as a body. Sauseda’s suit was filed against all 193 of the recall proponents.
Further statements emanated from City Hall suggesting Sauseda might seek to have the 193 recall proponents prsecuted on misdemeanor charges of circulating a petition that featured false statements.
The recall petitioners failed to meet the August 16, 2023 deadline of obtaining 1,826 valid signatures of District 1’s registered voters, 1,478 valid signatures of District 3’s registered voters and the minimal 1,623 valid signatures from District 4’s registered voters to qualify the recall elections against Garner, Duncan or Beaver.
The purpose of the writ of mandate having being met – staving off the recall effort – Sauseda, meaning Mann and together with Garner, Duncan and Beaver, wanted to simply drop the suit. Judge Michael Sachs, before whom the petition for a writ of mandate was being heard, after the expiration of the deadline for the submission of the recall petitions, deemed the issues being litigated moot. Nevertheless, some of the recall proponents had gone to the expense of retaining legal counsel, and if the suit were to be dropped against them, the city would be in the position of having to pay the recall proponents’ attorneys’ fees. That would not only look bad, city officials, recognized, it would expose that the city had engaged in a frivolous and vexatious legal action for political purposes.

There was also the matter of the clock remaining running on the Sutton Law Firm’s billing of the city for Hertz’s and Love’s legal work l. This meant that not only were the city’s taxpayers footing the bill for the Sutton Firm’s legal work but the lawyers’ fees the defendants in the case had sustained if the matter were to be dismissed on a motion by the plaintiff. Moreover, simply dismissing the case with the demise of the recall effort would be construed by virtually anyone looking at the totality of the circumstance that the lawsuit was merely a manipulation of the legal system to interrupt the recall effort.
Sauseda refrained from dismissing the suit. In the meantime, a so-called SLAPP motion by one of the defendants, Colleen Wang, one of the 64 signatories of the intent to circulate a recall petition against Garner document, made its way through the court process. A SLAPP motion, which argues that a given lawsuit is a strategic lawsuit against public participation, is a request by a defendant in a civil action for a finding that the cause of action cited in a lawsuit against him or her is activity that is a form of protected free speech or activity protected under the U.S. or California Constitution which is therefore not actionable, i.e., subject to being legally contested. In Wang’s case, it was her assertion that in signing on to the recall effort, she was engaging in action to seek redress of grievance using a methodology preserved for her and other citizens under the law, namely recalling an elected official from office, the process for which is outlined in the California Government Code.
The recall proponents had also lodged a complaint with the San Bernardino County Civil Grand Jury based upon the issue that had sparked the recall effort, that being the termination of Casey with virtually no warning followed by the hiring of Mann without any sort of competitive recruitment process for the city manager post in a way that appeared to have been a violation of the Brown Act. Ultimately, in its end-of-the 2023-calendar-year report, the grand jury, while avoiding delving into the issue of whether a Brown Act violation had occurred or not, delivered its findings with regard to the way the city council majority had conducted itself on the evening of January 9, 2023 and thereafter.
The city council majority of Beaver, Duncan and Garner, the grand jury said, had “blindsided” the community by forcing Casey’s departure and exacerbated the situation by replacing him with its “pre-selected choice,” i.e., Mann, without “vetting” or “any applicants at all. The council didn’t interview other qualified applicants,” the grand jury noted. “There were no other applicants to be considered for such an important decision.” Yuciapa’s citizenry was justified in its perception, the grand jury said, “that the council acted with a lack of transparency when it replaced the former city manager and city attorney.” Noting that Judge Sachs had “deemed moot” the issues contained in Sauseda’s lawsuit, the grand jury expressed dismay that the matter was still being litigated and was perpetuating the community’s distrust of city government. “Since the new council term began,” the grand jury stated, “the Yucaipa City Council has developed a reputation among many residents of ignoring the concerns of the public and of fostering an atmosphere of mistrust, disdain, anger, resentment, lack of transparency and appearances of conflicts of interest.”
On January 31, 2024, Judge Michael Sachs, who oversaw the lawsuit filed by Sauseda against the 193 Yucaipa residents, entered a ruling in favor of the defendants and simultaneously granted Wang’s SLAPP motion against Sauseda and the City of Yucaipa, allowing attorney fees to be awarded, and finding that the grounds for the recall were truthful.
Judge Sachs stated from the bench, “In my humble opinion, she [Sauseda] could have avoided this. The city could have avoided incurring costs. The respondents who are essentially exercising their constitutional rights, would not have had to incur costs. And this seems to me to be a waste of funds, both public funds and private funds.”
According to Judge Sachs, Wang had established that she, like the other recall proponent defendants, was acting in the capacity of a citizen seeking to apply her constitutional rights by trying to qualify a recall measure.
Both Beaver and Duncan were scheduled to stand for reelection this year. The 2023 recall effort proponents chose not to resurrect the effort against them, since a vote with regard to their remaining in office was to take place in November 2024 anyway, they calculated. As it would turn out, Duncan opted against running for reelection. Garner was not up for reelection until 2026. The recall proponents, Hansen Wang and Colleen Wang prominent among them, revived the recall effort against Garner. Uninhibited the second time by any legal challenge from the city clerk, that effort succeeded when the recall proponents gathered well beyond the 1,958 signatures of registered voters needed to qualify placing a recall question against Garner on the ballot in November.
On November 5, Garner was blown out of office, when 3,527 or or 65.73 percent of the 5,366 voters in District 1 supported removing him from office, while or 1,839 District 1 residents, or 34.27 percent, opposed his recall.
The effort to prevent Beaver’s reelection was somewhat less intense than the campaign against Garner. On November 5, he was reelected with 2,457 or 51.26 percent of the 4,793 votes cast in the District 4 council race, as his opponents, Kristine Mohler and Gordon Renshaw gathered 1,833 votes or 38.24 percent and 503 votes or 10.49 percent, respectively. Councilman Thorp was unopposed in the election. In District 3, Judy Woolsey was elected to replace Duncan.
Of note, unlike most recall elections, the 2024 Yucaipa District 1 recall question against Garner did not have with it a parallel election to choose his replacement.
Thus, the determination of who was to fill out the remainder of the term to which Garner was elected in November 2022 was a matter which would be left up to the remaining members of the city council. Under California Government § 34902 (a), the city council had 30 days from the time after the election was certified and the vacancy of the District 1 council office effectuated to either fill the vacancy by appointment or call a special election to fill the vacancy.