Twenty-six months after the Chris Mann managerial era in Yucaipa began inauspiciously and controversially, it closed out this week with the city council agreeing to pay him $279,045 to go away with no further adieu.
Mann on January 9, 2023 was brought in to replace his predecessor, Ray Casey, after the latter was forced into tendering his resignation less than three months after his contract to oversee municipal operations in the city had been extended for 20 some months in October 2022.
The secretiveness that had been maintained by the council troika that held a figurative gun to Casey’s head to induce him to voluntarily step down – then-Mayor/District 5 Councilman Justin Beaver, District 3 Councilman Bobby Duncan and the then-recently elected and installed District 1 Councilman Matt Garner – gave rise to tremendous distrust of City Hall among a substantial cross section of Yucaipa’s citizenry thereafter. As a consequence efforts to recall Beaver, Duncan and Garner ensued, which Mann took extraordinary efforts to derail.
Those efforts included moving the woman who had been serving as the city clerk, Kimberly Metzler, out of that role and putting Ana Sauseda, the city clerk who had worked with him in Canyon Lake where he was previously city manager, into her place. Thereafter, Sauseda used her authority as city clerk to file suit against the recall petitioners based on what she claimed were but which a judge later ruled were not misrepresentations with regard to Beaver’s, Duncan’s and Garner’s actions in deposing Casey. Mann facilitated Sauseda hiring, at city taxpayer expense, a Los Angeles-based law firm to pursue that litigation against the 194 Yucaipa residents who had signed the documents to undertake the ciruculation of a petition to initiate the recall of Beaver, Duncan and Garner. Ultimately, that law firm would bill taxpayers an unknown amount of money reported to be in excess of $1.5 million which Beaver, Duncan, Garner, Mann and Sauseda were too embarrassed to quantify and which has therefore remained hidden. In addition, taxpayers were on the hook for a likewise unquantified amount of money in the form of the legal fees of those citizens who contested the lawsuit Sauseda brought against them and which failed.
While that lawsuit succeeded in stymieing the 2023 recall effort against Beaver, Duncan and Garner, in 2024, a contingent of District 1 residents succeeded in reviving the recall attempt against Garner and succeeded in removing him from office in the November 2024 election. Duncan, faced with the enmity of a significant number of his District 3 constituents over his removal of Casey, chose not to seek reelection in the November 2024 election and left office in December 2024. Beaver braved the passionate sentiment against him over the Casey ambush and managed to garner enough support among District 5’s voters to be returned to office. He remains winged and wounded, however, with many of the city’s residents, both in his district and in the other four districts, suspecting or convinced that he is on the take.
One of the reasons that a goodly number of Yucaipa residents are of the impression that what is now perceived as the Casey sacking/Mann hiring debacle involved graft is based on the differing orientations toward governance that Casey and Mann embodied.
Casey was a Princeton graduate, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering, Casey worked in the private sector for nine years as a consulting engineer and as a construction company project manager, thereafter working in the public sector as the principal engineer in the City of Temecula’s land development department, as the highway engineer and road commission manager for the Isabella County Road Commission in Michigan, the development services deputy director and city engineer for the City of San Bernardino and then Yucaipa’s city engineer for five years before he was elevated to Yucaipa city manager in 2008. During his more than 14 years as city manager, Casey had evinced, based in large measure on his expertise as a civil engineer, an understanding that any incoming development had to be matched with adequate infrastructure, the cost for which had to be defrayed either by the developer or the city’s taxpayers. In his role as city manager, Casey demonstrated that he was capable of serving as not only an honest broker between pro-development and anti-development forces and sentiments within the community but advocating for and insisting that project proponents be financially responsible for the infrastructure and off-site improvements that must accompany their development efforts.
Mann, on the other hand, while having experience in government at both the elected and staff levels, was nonetheless a creature of the private sector that coordinates with and is regulated by government it its effort to turn a profit in large measure at the expense of, or added expense to, taxpayers. After obtaining his four-year college degree from California Lutheran University, Mann in 1999, at the age of 23 was elected to the West Lake Village City Council. He parlayed what he had learned about the political and governmental processes during his time in that role to mastering how those dealing with government as an applicant – for a job, for a contract supplying goods, for a contract supplying services, for a franchise or, most significantly, for approval of a development project – can present themselves in a way and deal with the bureaucrats serving as analysts, processors, regulators, deputy administrators, administrators and department heads that will get that application approved.
In 2005, Mann founded Mann Communications, which according to the company’s website functions in the main as a representative of developers and development interests seeking to move building proposals past the planning process and get them approved. Mann Communications specializes in, according to the firm’s website, making sure that “elected officials are… provided the political cover they need in order to support good projects” to “provide our clients with a wealth of knowledge and experience and a winning approach to land use entitlement.”
To ensure his commitment to these development initiatives, according to the Mann Communications website, Mann took an ownership stake in the projects being pursued, which technically made him a developer himself.
“Mann Communications Principal Chris Mann has been an active partner in numerous development projects in California, Nevada and Arizona,” the Mann Communications website states. “Having worked both as an elected official and as a developer, he uniquely understands the development process from both the public and private perspectives. Understanding the practices and motivations of each side better than most, he is able to provide tremendous value to the entire development process, making Mann Communications an invaluable member of any project team.”
Highly troubling to many Yucaipa residents was that Mann, even as he was working as the city manager of Canyon Lake, overseeing the regulatory process of that city’s land use decision-making and planning functions was simultaneously working for and accepting money from developmental interests, the very entities he was supposed to be regulating. Yucaipa residents needed to go no further than Mann Communications’ website to glimpse those development interests – residential developers Lennar, Pardee, Meritage Homes and Richmond American, builders Holland Development, Jacobsen Family Holdings, Turner Dale, Rotkin Real Estate Group, Carlton Properties and AES Corporation, Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse, Inc., Clear Channel Outdoor, BrightSource, Preferred Business Properties Real Estate Services, Beaumont Garden Center, Passantino Andersen, Robertson’s Cement, Oakmont Industrial Group, The Golshan Group and Desmond & Louis Incorporated. Many of those companies had intentions of pursuing projects in Yucaipa.
It was not lost on a wide cross section of Yucaipa residents that Duncan was a real estate agent. Previously, on a city council made up of individuals embodying a variety professional classes, allowing the real estate industry a seat at the table was not perceived as being problematic. What it looked like at that point, however, was that Duncan had put Mann in place to boost the prospect of more and more development in Yucaipa, in turn increasing his ability to sell houses and make money.
At the same time, Garner was the partner in a building materials company which did over $4 billion in business per year, by which he had a stake in the city being more accommodating toward development.
The specter of Casey’s forced exit hung over the city, and there was a perception that Beaver, Duncan and Garner had ditched him in favor of Mann, who would have the city adopt an absolute open-door planning and development process by which the city’s largely rural nature would come under increasing threat and the balance that had long been maintained between its Old West, worldly, agricultural, mercantile, semi-rural and urban influences was to be discarded and replaced by subdivision after subdivision that would make Yucaipa indistinguishable from scores or even hundreds of other cities in Southern California that are now composed, practically, of wall-to-wall houses.
Uncharitable word spread to the effect that Beaver, Duncan and Garner were in the pocket of the development industry and taking money, either directly or indirectly, from the building industry or as a consequence of its success, if not in envelopes stuffed with greenbacks passed under the table at a local eatery then in some other form in which the money was laundered as checks or payments for some innocent-seeming service never actually rendered or goods never delivered or in some other creatively hidden form or favor whereby a family member was employed or provided with a stipend or item of value that had not been legitimately earned.
Over the last two years, the anger at what the council majority had done on January 9, 2023 never diffused. The San Bernardino County Civil Grand Jury looked into the matter pertaining to Casey’s displacement followed by Mann’s hiring, concluding that “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.”
With the removal of Garner from the city council as a consequence of the District 1 recall vote during the November 5, 2025 election and Duncan foregoing participating as a candidate for reelection in the same, whereby Judy Woolsey was elected in a close three-way vote to replace him, with the installation of the council in December 2024, only one of the council members who had prevailed in the January 9, 2023 vote to accept Casey’s resignation remained on the council dais. Because of the confidentiality that attends public decisions with regard to public agency personnel issues, the newly composed council was unable to make open utterances with regard to its intention with regard to who is to occupy the executive suite at Yucaipa City Hall. Moreover, a provision in the Yucaipa City Code prohibits the city council from terminating the city manager for 90 days following a city council election. Thus, the council was not in a position to sack Mann prior to 8.pm on February 3. Consequently, the city council, which had been augmented in December with Bob Miller as an appointee to replace the recalled Garner, on February 10 undertook a closed door evaluation of Mann’s performance as city manager along with that of City Attorney Steven Graham, who also goes by the name Steven Pacifico. Mayor Thorp, while making no mention of Mann after the city council adjourned into its February 10 public session following its closed door meeting, stated that the council was directing staff to put out a request for proposals with a 30-day timeframe for city council attorney candidates.
The agenda for the city council’s February 24 meeting indicated that the evaluation of Mann’s performance was yet ongoing and that the council was in the process of negotiating with Mann over the terms of an extension of his contract to serve as city manager. While the public, or a portion thereof, had the impression that those discussions involved coming to a determination of what sort of salary and order of benefits Mann was to receive to remain as city manager, what in fact was taking place was a discussion between the council and Mann about what the terms of his departure were to be. At issue, apparently, was whether the council as it is now composed had the stomach to terminate Mann citing cause, in which case it would need confer nothing – neither a full year’s salary as stipulated under his contract if he were to be dismissed without cause or a severance package – or whether it would let him go without citing cause, in which case it would need to provide him with a full year’s salary, which at this point amounts $233,535.92.
A decision was reached to not cite cause in terminating him, after which the council and Mann hashed out a separation agreement in which he is to forego his right to being paid the $233,535.92.in salary he would otherwise be due and both he and the city are to mutually hold each other harmless with regard to his serving as city manager, his departure or the situation or circumstances with regard to both in exchange for a one-time $279,045 payout as well as one year of health benefits for Mann and his family.
His official date of departure is on March 31. Reports are that he had begun clearing out his office at Yucaipa City Hall over the weekend of March 8-9. Reportedly, the termination agreement was finalized on March 10.
Mann leaving the employ of the city after working slightly more than two years means he will not reach the milestone of five years with the city, at which point he would have qualified for lifetime medical benefits for himself and his dependents.
The roughly two years and one one month that Mann served as city manager is now being referred to by several Yucaipans as a “managerial cul-de-sac.” That dead end, which began with Mann and ended with Mann and providing no continuity between Casey and whoever is to succeed Mann, has cost the city in excess, it is estimated, of $2 million that otherwise would not have been spent. This includes a redundancy of $720,497.33 consisting of the $441,452.33 paid to Ray Casey to buy out the last 17 months, 3 weeks and one day on his contract ending on June 30, 2024 following his January 9, 2023 departure from the city and the $279,045 payout to Chris Mann agreed to this week.
That does not include the money paid to Sauseda to take on her role as city clerk, consisting of $160,219.64 in total annual compensation paid to her in 2023 and $181,909.47 in total annual compensation paid to her in 2024, when Metzler was already functioning in that role, nor the $160,224.96 in total annual compensation paid to Joe Pradetto in 2023 and $182,051.79 in total annual compensation to serve in the role of director of governmental affairs and public information officer in 2024 when there were no such positions on the Yucaipa staff before Mann arrived. Nor does that include the money paid out by the city to pay for the Sutton law firm’s legal services relating to the lawsuit Sauseda filed against 193 of the city’s residents and the payouts to cover the legal fees of Yucaipa residents George Sardeson, Steven C. Maurer, Sherilyn Long, Robert Huddleston, Wanda Huddleston, Jeanette Livolsi McKovich, James A. McKovich, Jay S. Bogh, Kari L. Bogh, Kathy Sellers and Colleen Wang, when they contested Sauseda’s lawsuit. All told, it appears that the city council majority’s move to get rid of Casey and replace him with Mann has cost the city at least $2.3 million and perhaps as much as $2.8 million.
The entity that grew out of the reaction to the Casey sacking/Mann hiring, Save Yucaipa, proved far more resilient than Beaver, Duncan, Garner, Mann, Graham/Pacifico, Sauseda, Pradetto or the members of the Sutton Law Firm anticipated. The recall effort to oust Beaver, Duncan and Garner was not expected. It was thought that Sauseda’s lawsuit would not simply obstruct the recall effort but convince those participating in it to desist in any further political activism. While the suit brought on Sauseda’s behalf by the Sutton Law Firm succeeded in thwarting the original recall effort, it did not prevent the contingent of city residents, working under the auspices of Save Yucaipa, from reviving the recall effort against Garner and removing him from office. Nor did Mann’s machinations and Sauseda’s lawsuit prevent Save Yucaipa and its members from convincing Duncan to bug out of seeking reelection in 2024. Save Yucaipa’s members did not desist in their activism following the 2024 election, maintaining pressure on the city council, despite Beaver’s reelection to it, to end the city’s relationship with Mann.
Now that the current council has, at some expense, made a break with Mann, Save Yucaipa members are hopeful that the council will purge the city of any remaining vestiges of the Mann administration, extending to, as one of its leading members put it, acting “to sever ties and cut off dead limbs, including Sauseda and Pradetto. We’re hopeful they’re next to go.”

Pradetto told the Sentinel that it was acknowledged during the recent performance evaluation of the city manager that “Chris Mann has successfully achieved every goal the city council established for him and for the organization.”
Still, Pradetto said, “At this time, both the city council and Chris Mann agree that a leadership transition is in the best interest of the city’s future. As part of this transition, the city and Chris Mann have signed a negotiated separation agreement. The city council expresses its appreciation for Chris Mann’s service and wishes him well in his future endeavors. While his role as city manager will conclude at the end of this month, Chris and his family will continue to be valued members of the Yucaipa community. The City Council remains committed to ensuring a smooth transition and will begin the process of recruiting a new city manager to continue the important work of serving Yucaipa residents.”