Eight months after Redlands officials were caught phoneying up official city documents, the city has embarked on the wholesale shredding of the contents of its files, including records, forms, logs, chronicles, reports, contracts and other and materials that fall under the rubric of municipal documents.
The city maintains that it is scanning or otherwise electronically recording those materials it is required under the law to retain for the specified durations provided for in the California Government Code. Nevertheless, there is no independent system to ascertain what materials re being preserved, and after the paper-to-digital conversions are made and the hard copies are destroyed, there is no mechanism to verify that all of the records, files and documents eradicated were converted into a recoverable format.
One aspect of the city council’s authorization of the destruction that some city residents are alarmed about is that a portion of the material slated for destruction consists of digitally-formatted material that was put into miniaturized formats with the originals having been shredded long ago. That the city is maintaining that the rationale for destroying this material is it does not have adequate space to store and preserve it even though it is not in its current format space intensive, is seen as as being a ploy to eliminate documentation that is in some fashion or other implicative of City Hall, the city’s elected leadership, city administrators or lower-down members of city staff in activity that is wasteful, wrong, potentially illegal, outright illegal or embarrassing.
In February 2007, the Redlands City Council as it was then composed adopted Resolution No. 6576, which specified regulations governing the retention and disposition of public records, with the intention of providing an ongoing and relatively comprehensive historical backdrop and recordation of past and ongoing city decision-making and official actions as both the present and future transition to the past. Thereafter, laws changed with regard to what municipal records should be kept or were mandated to be kept, in what medium, and the appropriate length of time of retention. Central to these changes were allowances for eliminating paper records if they can be converted to digital format. Due to the complexity and the various statutes regulating public
records retention, the city attorney recommended the expertise of a consultant be brought to bear to determine how the city should proceed.
In November 2023 the city engaged Gladwell Governmental Services, Inc. to upgrade its records’ management program.
Based upon what was represented as being “very limited space in city facilities, many departments filing and storing copies of the same records, Redlands produc[ing] and manag[ing] many permanent records, escalating records storage expenses, technology advancements [and that] Redlands will realize significant savings in labor costs, storage costs, free filing cabinet and office space, and realize operational efficiencies, the city council on July 2, 2024 voted to move forward with a protocol Gladwell came up with for retaining records or destroying them.
According to a model schedule and policy Gladwell provided to the city upon which to base its retention and destruction of records, there is no specified retention period beyond ten years. A two-year retention is suggested for documents and records relating to legal noticing; staff reports, agendas, audio recordings and video recordings and minutes relating to city board, employee board or city council subcommittee meetings and actions; routine correspondence; grant applications; vehicle trips and maintenance; appraisals on reals estate not purchased or sold; policies, procedures, manuals, flyers, handbills, newsletters; special project subject files; manuals; subpoenas and surveys. A five year retention is suggested for documents and attendance records relating to training provided to city staff; documents related to federal grants and reimbursements; cash receipts; real estate appraisals; special districts, assessment districts, landscape maintenance and lighting districts. Gladwell recommended retaining agreements and contracts; studies and reports including annual reports for ten years. In the case of several types of records, including those for boards of what are termed “outside organizations,” preliminary drafts; calendars; text messages; transmittal letters; PowerPoint presentations; emails, social media postings, preliminary notices for construction projects; photographs; and newspaper clippings, the recommendation is that they be destroyed when “no longer needed.”
Gladwell calls for permanent retention of only two categories of records, those being “historically significant” reports and zoning studies and minutes for boards of commissions, committees and advisory committees.
Curiously, Gladwell’s recommendations provide for allowing for city council meeting minutes, audio recordings and videos to be destroyed after four years.
The City of Redlands ran afoul of public opinion last year when it was revealed that something was amiss with documentation recording action involving the city’s planning, building & safety departments and its overarching development services division. As was reported in the Sentinel and other publications in May 2025, the City of Redlands issued permits for the construction of an accessory dwelling unit located at 12747 Hilltop Drive, which included the project proponent succeeding in having city officials check off a series of met requirements in the application and planning process for the project, which was to entail the construction of the retaining wall and the installation of a new septic system, including the addition of a 1,000 gallon tank Those included the granting of the grading permit on November 15, 2024, the issuance of a permit to construct a retaining wall on December 2, 2024, the issuance of a permit to construct a 1,200 square foot structure on December 19, 2024 and the issuance of a permit to install a new septic system on March 25, 2025.
Documentation relating to the project shows that on March 14, 2024 and March 28, 2024, Chris Jensen signed off on a fire safety review and a plan check for fire safety, respectively. Similarly, on March 14, 2024, July 8, 2024 and August 7, 2024, Andrew Carothers is shown on city documents to have done pre-construction reviews of the plans for the accessory dwelling unit, which included, a correction to a building review, another correction to a building review and comments with regard to a building review, respectively.
Jensen was the Redlands Fire Department’s fire marshal from 2020 until 2022, but left Redlands to become the fire marshal and a division chief in Rialto in 2022. He thus was not available to undertake the review and plan check in 2024 as he is credited with on the city’s official document.
Carothers began with the City of Redlands as a plans examiner in Redlands in April of 2016 and remained in that assignment until April of 2020, at which point he promoted to the city’s chief building official. In February 2022, Carothers left Redlands to become the senior plans examiner with the City of Riverside. He, too, was not available to undertake the review and plan check in 2024 as he is credited with on the city’s official document.
In the same timeframe in which city documents were being forged with regard to the application to construct an accessory dwelling unit at 12747 Hilltop Drive, the Redlands City Council as it was then composed voted to permit city staff to dispense with the rules put in place by a previous city council 2007 aimed at keeping city records intact.
On July 2, 2024 the Redlands City Council unanimously passed Resolution No. 8597, adopting a records retention schedule and authorizing the destruction of certain city records. In that resolution, the members of the city council, which then included Paul Barich, Eddie Tejeda, Denise Davis, Mario Saucedo and Jenna Guzman-Lowery justified making the change because “the maintenance of numerous records is expensive, slows document retrieval, and is not necessary after a certain period of time for the effective and efficient operation of the government of the City of Redlands and Section 34090 of the Government Code of the State of California provides a procedure whereby any City record which has served its purpose and is no longer required may be destroyed.” In adopting Resolution No. 8597, the council repealed Resolution No. 6576.
In so doing, the city council washed its hands of any further involvement in the destruction of city records, granting autonomy to do with city records as was deemed fit by those further down the municipal chain of command.
The city council did not limit the destruction of city records to those that existed in paper form. Rather, the council defined the records and documents eligible for destruction as “documents, instructions, books, microforms, electronic files, magnetic tape, optical media, or papers; as defined by the California
Public Records Act.”
The council said such destruction was to take place “upon the request of the department head and with the consent in writing of the department head, city clerk and city attorney, without further action by the city council. of the City of Redlands.
The city council’s authorization gave city staff license to destroy the original documents pertaining to the construction of an accessory dwelling unit at 12747 Hilltop Drive which included Jensen’s and Carothers’ forged signatures, which potentially or likely yet bore the fingerprints of those who had committed the forgeries.
City officials declined the Sentinel’s invitation to respond to those who have asserted that the city is being indiscriminate in what is being preserved and what is not and feel that the destruction of the original paper/hard copies obviates a type of analysis that can in some instances be done and which cannot be replicated with digital files, such that the original records/documents should be maintained. Those officials, asked to offer an assurance that nothing crucial is being lost as a consequence of this action provided a generic statement provided in the July 2, 2024 resolution by the city council that “It is standard business practice for California cities to authorize the routine destruction of records that have exceeded their adopted retention period, upon the request of the department head and ith the consent in writing of the department head, city manager (records manager) and city attorney. This will reduce costs and improve efficiency for the city.”