By Mark Gutglueck
The San Bernardino City Council on Monday, February 10 returned acting City Manager Rochelle Clayton to her underlying status as deputy city manager as part of a coordinated effort to have her depart the county seat next month to become city manager 69 miles north in Barstow.
Immediately upon Clayton relinquishing her hold on the role of top administrator in San Bernardino, the council that evening during a specially-called meeting elevated Assistant City Manager Tanya Romo to replace her.
Clayton will leave San Bernardino eleven months after she was hired to serve as deputy city manager by then-San Bernardino City Manager Charles Montoya in April 2024, ten months after she was elevated by the city council to serve as interim/acting city manager when the city council terminated Montoya in May 2024 and five months after the San Bernardino City Council unanimously offered her a $325,000 salary/$452,313.36 total annual compensation contract in October 2024 and four months after the city council rescinded that offer in November 2024. In the months since, San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran, working in conjunction with recently-departed council members Benjamin Reynoso and Kimberly Calvin and recently-elected-and-installed council members Mario Flores and Treasure Ortiz Mayor, has sought to reestablish the consensus to dispense with the qualifier “acting” from Clayton’s official title.
Despite Tran’s intensive efforts, however, research Councilman Ted Sanchez carried out in October 2024 using the California Public Records Act revealed that in July 2024, Clayton learned from the California Department of Housing and Community Development that San Bernardino had been cleared to receive a $17 million Homekey grant earmarked to underwrite the cost of constructing residences for the homeless. The city council had not been informed about that grant award. Other documents Sanchez located showed that equally quietly and without seeking direction from the city council to do so, Clayton had declined the grants. When Clayton was questioned by the council as to why she had made a “command decision” against accepting the grants, she explained that they came with strings attached that she believed would have hamstrung the city in its effort to deal with the challenges presented by the proliferation of homeless.
Consequently, former Councilman Damon Alexander and council members Sanchez, Sandra Ibarra, Juan Figueroa, Fred Shorett and Kim Knaus proved hesitant over the last four months to commit to promoting Clayton to full-fledged city manager status.
Tran has now thrown in the towel in her effort to establish Clayton as the unequivocal head of 224,393-population San Bernardino’s municipal administration suite. Instead, the Sentinel has learned, Clayton is to begin with 24,815-population Barstow as its top administrator on March 10, 2025.
With Clayton’s temporary reassumption of her rank and role as deputy city manager, which is to last the duration of a 28-day month and Romo’s advancement into the role of the city’s acting lead administrator, the intrigue-filled progression toward reaching a managerial stasis in San Bernardino moved onto its next chapter.
Since November, San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran had been militating to install Clayton as her city’s full-fledged city manager but experienced rough sledding as her vote combined with those of two lame duck council members at that time were not sufficient to approve a contract with Clayton the entire eight-person council in October appeared ready to sign off on. While Tran at that point could count on former Fifth Ward Councilman Ben Reynoso and Sixth Ward Councilwoman Kimberly Calvin to promote Clayton, who had for five months been serving in the capacity of acting or interim city manager, Clayton at that point had fallen out of favor with First Ward councilman Ted Sanchez and three other members of the council – Second Ward Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra, Third Ward Councilman Juan Figueroa and Fourth Ward Councilman Fred Shorett were beginning to question whether the city’s future should be entrusted to Clayton. Then-Seventh Ward Councilman Damon Alexander, who with Reynoso and Calvin was destined to leave office on December 18, 2024 as a consequence of all three having not succeeded in their reelection efforts earlier that year, was against making a long-term commitment with Clayton rather than allowing the three individuals who had been elected to replace Reynoso, Calvin and himself – Kim Knaus, Mario Flores and Treasure Ortiz, respectively – weigh in on the matter.
Simultaneously, within a handful of city employees and among a small but energetic and outspoken group of civically-engaged citizens, which included supporters of the mayor and city council and elements of the business community, factions were forming that were either strongly pro-Clayton or strongly anti-Clayton. Before November was over, the pro-Clayton forces, with Mayor Tran leading the way, were militating for the sacking of City Attorney Sonia Carvalho and the anti-Clayton contingent was just as adamantly pulling in Carvalho’s favor. At one point, Clayton, in what would soon redound to her disadvantage, joined in with the effort to end the city’s relationship with Carvalho and her law firm, Best Best & Krieger.
Ultimately, Mayor Tran, recognizing that both Flores and Ortiz were favorably disposed toward Clayton and were ready to drop the modifier interim from her official title, reformulated her approach, deciding the best prospect to bring Clayton aboard as the undisputed top city administrator was to wait until the new city council was installed and attempt to persuade Knaus and either one, two or all three of Ibarra, Figueroa and Shorett to join in endorsing Clayton.
In the meantime, the city had made tentative arrangements for the consulting firm of Jacob Green & Associates to interview the mayor and members of the council separately and then in a collective setting to determine their expectations with regard to the performance of the city manager, city attorney and city clerk. The intent was that the firm could in some fashion create clarity and distill a description of the set of necessary skills and talents and desirable qualities of those who are to function in the city’s leadership echelon, providing the mayor and council assistance in determining whom they should hire as city manager. As it would turn out, however, the already heavy work schedule of the several Jacob Green & Associates professionals prevented the interactions with the mayor and council from being actuated in December or in January. Moreover, there was some concern that Jacob Green & Associates might prove hostile toward, or would otherwise not provide a fair and unbiased evaluation of Clayton. One of the Jacob Green associates was Teri Ledoux, who had served as San Bernardino’s city manager herself in 2019 and 2020, during which time she had established a close working relationship with Councilman Sanchez, Councilwoman Ibarra, Councilman Figueroa and Councilman Shorett. Sanchez had stated publicly that he considered Ledoux to be the best and most professional municipal administrator he had ever come across. Ibarra, Figueroa and Shorett held her in high regard, as well. The general consensus was that Ledoux and Jacob Green & Associates would apply an exacting standard that would be very challenging for Clayton to meet.
Toward the end of November 2024, Clayton, who was yet very interested in getting the full city manager assignment and had applied for the position in conjunction with the city council’s resolve to conduct yet another recruitment for the post, proposed that she return to her former position as deputy city manager so that her candidacy for the city manager slot could be considered without the inference that she had an unfair advantage over competing candidates. Additionally, Clayton appears to have believed that her exit from the acting city manager role would illustrate to the council how indispensable she was to the city’s operations and that this might induce the council to forego a formal recruitment effort and simply hire her. Clayton then moved to actuate that plan, signaling to the council in an email that she would return to her rank as deputy city manager as soon as the city lined up another interim city manager.
At that point however, public statements made by the three council members-elect – Knaus, Flores and Ortiz – and backchannel communications involving the existing members of the council led Tran to believe as of the first week of December that sufficient votes to elevate Clayton to city manager would emerge upon the formation of the new city council on December 18, with her vote and those of Figueroa, Knaus, Flores  and Ortiz definitely swinging behind Clayton to be potentially linked with the support of Ibarra and Shorett, once those two saw the inevitability of Clayton’s ascendency.
Indeed, on December 18, when Knaus, Flores and Ortiz were sworn into office and Figueroa, who had been reelected in 2024 took the oath for the third time, there was a showing of bonhomie during that night’s meeting which encouraged Mayor Tran to attempt, the very next morning during a specially-called meeting of the council, to muster the five minimum votes on the eight-member council to approve a contract. Though Tran, Flores and Ortiz were ready to make that commitment, neither Knaus nor Figueroa nor Ibarra nor Shorett was prepared to join with them, and the council merely agreed to a plodding and methodical process to examine the city’s managerial options. In the ensuing month-and-a-half, Mayor Tran was unable to stir up the two additional votes she needed.
Over the course of January and the transition to February, what did take place, however, was a subtle shift in how the city is being administered and the approach toward filling the long-term city manager post, which gave Tran grounds to think the effort to get Clayton into place could yet work. City Attorney Sonia Carvalho, with whom Clayton had developed a mutual hostility and who has been a mainstay at city council meetings since 2000 when she succeeded Gary Seinz, the city’s last elected city attorney, has been a non-attendee at recent meetings, replaced by Albert Maldonado, another attorney with Carvalho’s law firm, Best Best & Krieger. And the city ended its arrangement with Jacob Green & Associates for guidance with regard to evaluating council priorities/preferences/expectations with regard to the function and roles of the city manager, city attorney and city clerk as well as the city manager selection process. Jacob Green & Associates has been replaced by Ralph Andersen & Associates, which counts among its associates Fred Wilson, who was San Bernardino’s city manager from 1996 until 2008. Wilson’s tenure with the city predated that on any of the current members of the council, including Shorett, the longest serving current member of the council, who was first elected in 2009.
Since Wilson left San Bernardino, the city has had only limited stability and continuity with its city managers. In the last 16 years, the city has now had 13 city managers/acting city managers/interim city managers, 11 of whom the city burned through, including two who previously held the post and were brought back for what were encores that ended poorly. During that span, the average tenure of a city manager was Charles McNeely was lured away from his position as city manager in Reno to replace Wilson in 2009, but he bailed on the city as its deteriorating financial position pressed it ever closer to bankruptcy. After McNeely left to avoid the damage to his professional reputation that would come from being in the saddle when the city sought Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection in 2012, Andrea Travis-Miller took the helm of the severely listing municipal ship, working diligently with then-Finance Director Jason Simpson to prepare for the filing for bankruptcy, gamely consenting to be the city manager of record when that action was taken. She then gamely soldiered on in the interim city manager capacity for another six months, electing of her own accord to leave in early 2013 to become the executive director of the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments. She was replaced by Allen Parker, who stuck around to the end of 2015, leaving before the council got around to terminating him. The council then elevated Police Chief Jarrod Burguan to serve in the interim/temporary capacity of acting city manager. Thereafter, Mark Scott was hired as city manager, but he jumped ship in 2017. Thereafter, Travis-Miller, who had made her way back to San Bernardino as assistant city manager under Scott and was thus on hand just as the city emerged from bankruptcy, was elevated to city manager in August 2017. During her second tour as city manager, she became closely identified with the administration of then-Mayor Carey Davis, which ultimately redounded to her detriment when John Valdivia, who had been the city’s Third Ward Councilman, defeated Davis in the November 2018 election. From the time Valdivia was sworn in as mayor in December 2018, he was militating to force Travis-Miller’s departure. In April 2019, Valdivia mustered the votes to put her on administrative leave and following month, assembled the four other votes he needed to add to his own to terminate her without any citation of cause. Teri Ledoux,who had been acting as Travis-Miller’s assistant city manager, was promoted to replace her. In 2020, Ledoux retired, and Valdivia convinced the city council to bring in Bob Field, who was then Riverside County’s head of economic development, to serve as city manager. In 2022, Valdivia was voted out of office, replaced by Tran. Less than two weeks before Tran was sworn in, Field, recognizing that he was strongly identified with the passé Valdivia mayoral administration and would likely, when Tran succeeded Valdivia, suffer the same fate Travis-Miller had endured when Valdvia succeeded Davis, resigned just ahead of Tran being installed as mayor. The Tran-led council then tapped McNeely to reprise his role as city manager, this time in what was understood to be an interim capacity just long enough for the city to find a replacement for Field. After a few months, however, McNeely warmed to being in the post and he began lobbying, it turned out unsuccessfully, to be hired back as the actual city manager. The council then selected from among 68 applicants for the city manager post Steve Carrigan, at that time the city manager of Salinas. There was a delay in finalizing Carrigan’s employment contract and getting it signed, but in the meantime the job was formally offered to Carrigan, who accepted the offer. Then, six days before the council vote to confirm the contract was to take place, Carrigan backed out. He thus became the city manager that never served so much as a day as city manager but nonetheless was paid $800,000 for his “trouble.” The council then backed up, regrouped and hired one-time Watsonville City Manager Charles Montoya. Montoya lasted with the city seven months before the council, without citing cause, dumped him, replacing him with Clayton, who has now been succeeded by Romo.
While the discontinuity with its city managers has not been pronounced in Barstow as in San Bernardino, that city has likewise experienced instability within its administrative echelon. In the fifteen years since 2010, it has had seven city managers/interim city managers – Richard Rowe, Curt Mitchell, Nikki Salas, Albert Ramirez, Jim Hart, Willie A. Hopkins, Andrew Espinoza and Kody Tompkins – who have lasted in place an average of one year and ten-and-one-half months. Of note, Curt Mitchell, who was not a municipal managerial professional but rather a college administrator, had the most durability as Barstow’s top staff member, remaining in place more than eight years. Ramirez and Espinoza were the city’s police chiefs when vacancies in the city manager post came about, and they were called upon to fill in. As in San Bernardino, Barstow’s managerial inconsistency has been a product of both council discontent with the performance of those planning, organizing, directing and controlling city operations and the desire of the managers to leave. Notably, after Mitchell moved to retire in 2018, the city appealed to him to remain in place as an interim until his successor was found. That successor was Salas, who appeared to be doing well, but was forced to resign in January 2021, a month after the installation of a new mayor and two new members of the council who had been voted in as a result of the November 2020 election. Police Chief Albert Ramirez functioned as the acting city manager until the city convinced former Adelanto City Manager Jim Hart to serve in an interim city manager capacity while the city conducted a search for a managerial professional to replace Salas. Ultimately, the council setled upon Alameda County General Services Manager Willie Hopkins, with whom the entire council was well satisfied for more than two years. In January 2024, however, Hopkins departed to become the city manager of Compton. Thereupon, the council moved Police Chief Andrew Espinoza, who possesses a master’s degree in public administration, into the city manager’s office. Having been caught unaware by Hopkins’ departure, the council was unable to capitalize on the executive manager search it had conducted two-and-a-half years prior when it hired Hopkins to utilize the list of candidates it had considered then and hire one of them. Espinoza’s term as acting/interim city manager dragged on toward the end of 2024, at which point, another election had intervened, resulting in another mayoral and single council position changeover. By December, there was, beneath the surface, a degree of discomfiture with Espinoza among some members of the council, and the city redoubled its managerial recruitment effort, soliciting applications. Among the twelve who applied was Clayton.
On Tuesday January 21, 2025, five days after the one-year anniversary of Espinoza’s January 16, 2024 elevation into the city manager’s role, he was suspended as both city manager and police chief as well as executive director of the successor entity to the Barstow Redevelopment Agency and the manager of the Barstow Fire Protection District and manager of the Odessa Water District.
A subset of the applicants, which included Clayton, were deemed finalists for the position and were interviewed separately by the city council and by a community-representative panel composed of city residents selected by each council member. The City Council was unanimous in its selection of Rochelle Clayton as the top candidate.
According to a staff report prepared for the February 18 Barstow city council meeting at which Clayton’s hiring is to be voted upon, “Ms. Clayton has been providing top-tier executive management services to local governments for over 30 years, with 17 years with the County of San Bernardino, and service most recently as interim city manager of the City of San Bernardino, and previously as assistant city manager for the City of Menifee and deputy & interim city manager/administrative services director for the City of Banning. She has a bachelors of science in business administration and comes prepared to lead Barstow to its next level of excellence. Ms. Clayton intends to fully engage with the community and is looking forward to delivering her skills and expertise for the community’s benefit.”
In addition to signing on as Barstow city manager, Clayton will also serve as executive director of the successor entity to the Barstow Redevelopment Agency and the manager of the Barstow Fire Protection District and manager of the Odessa Water District.
The terms of Clayton’s employment contract with Barstow were negotiated with Mayor Tim Silva and Councilwoman Barbara Rose, who is the city’s current mayor pro tem. Those terms have been signed off on by Barstow City Attorney Matthew T. Summers.
Under the terms of that contract, she is to receive an annual gross base salary of $274,000, up to $39,171 in perquisites and pay add-ons and $44,450.12 in benefits, or $357,621.12 in total annual compensation. That is substantially less than the $325,000 salary and $452,313.36 total annual compensation she would have received upon being accepted as San Bernardino’s fully established city manager.
In addition, San Bernardino had offered Clayton a one-time $10,000 bonus/coverage for her moving expenses if she were to relocate from her home in the Woodcrest District of Riverside to somewhere within the San Bernardino City Limits. There is no such provision in her employment contract with Barstow. There is some concern, at least on the part of certain observers, that the 82-mile one way one-hour and 15-minute commute in light traffic or 164-mile two-hour-and-30-minute in light traffic round trip daily commute for Clayton from her current home to her workplace could prove taxing and might over time diminish Clayton’s enthusiasm for the job as well as her performance.
The contract makes clear that “Pursuant to the provisions of the Barstow Municipal Code Section 2.08.010, [the] city manager serves at the pleasure of the city council and on an ‘at will’ basis and has no vested right to her employment, subject to the terms and provisions of this agreement.” The contract has no set length but specifies that “This agreement will remain in full force and effect until one of the parties terminates it as provided in this agreement.”
The contract further specifies that “The city council may terminate [the] city manager’s employment with [the] city at any time, with or without cause, and without advance notice. In the event of such termination without cause, [the] city manager, after termination and upon executing a claim waiver and release of liability approved as to form by the city attorney, will be entitled to a severance benefit of six (6) months of city manager’s current base salary plus payment of accumulated vacation leave.”
If the city terminates Clayton and cites a valid cause for doing so, she is to receive no severance.
San Bernardino and Barstow, like Colton and Needles, are among San Bernardino County’s oldest incorporated cities and are its four historic railroad towns. Though it thus has a reputation as being a place filled with roughnecks, Barstow is noteworthy for the way in which it welcomed women into its leadership roles, although in some cases the experienced problems that may or may not have had roots in their gender.
In 1966, Ida Pleasant was elected Barstow’s mayor, the first female mayor in San Bernardino County history, paving the way for her eventual successors, Katie Islas-Yent and subsequent mayor Julie Hackbarth-McIntyre.
In 2007, then-Barstow city manager Hector Rodriguez selected Dianne Burns, who had spent two decades with the Los Angeles Police Department as a patrol officer, homicide detective, sergeant and lieutenant of a gang suppression unit, to replace Lee Gibson as police chief. Burns, however, would encounter difficulties with some of her officers, who objected to her managerial style, leading to her temporary suspension and eventual retirement.
Salas was able to land the city manager post in 2019, and did well in that role until she was forced out in 2021.