Tom Schwab, whose prudent personality inhabited City Hall and became the embodiment of civic governance in Grand Terrace for 22 years, has died, 16 years after he left the helm of the city. He was 68 when he moved into eternity on December 13, 2025.
Born August 17, 1957 in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, Thomas Joseph Schwab was the third of four sons of James and Catherine “Kay” Schwab. James was a chief master sergeant with the Air Force who over his 32-year career served in military bases around the world, including in Japan, where he met Kay. Shaped by his 50 percent American/50 percent Japanese heritage and his itinerant family lifestyle that exposed him and his brothers Mike, Dan and Jim to life in Asia, England and multiple U.S. communities, including San Bernardino and Norton Air Force Base in his teen years. That led to his matriculation at California State University, San Bernardino, from which he graduated in 1979.
Immediately after graduation, Schwab became a full-time municipal employee, having landed a position as an accountant in the City of San Bernardino’s finance department. Three years later, he was hired as the finance director with the City of Porterville.
In 1984, Seth Armstead, a retired United States Air Force Colonel who had been his father’s commanding officer at Norton Air Fore Base and who had become Grand Terrace’s first city manager upon the city’s founding in 1978, tapped him to serve as finance director in Grand Terrace. In 1987 upon Armstead’s retirement, Schwab became city manager of the 3.5-square mile 9,400-population city.
He remained in that role for 22 years. Located in heights above Colton and San Bernardino, the community, which is positioned at the southernmost end of central San Bernardino County against the Riverside County frontier, grew and matured prior to its incorporation from an agricultural district into an upscale residential community that housed many of the successful entrepreneurs with businesses in Colton, San Bernardino and Rialto.
When Grand Terrace was somewhat reluctantly granted cityhood in 1978 by the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission, there were doubts that it had a strong enough retail tax base to sustain itself as a municipal entity. Accordingly, Armstead had constructed a spartan governmental structure for the city, which was isolated from its surroundings by its elevation and limited road access. Schwab inherited from Armstead a cautionary approach that eschewed having the community giving away to intensified residential development, while an effort was made to preserve the town as a bedroom community unaffected by the frenzied growth that was going on all around it. During Schwab’s time as city manager, the city’s population grew by 29.47 percent, which was generally less than was the norm for cities in San Bernardino County over the same period, with the notable exceptions of Needles, Big Bear Lake, Montclair and Barstow.
In order to keep the city afloat financially, without a huge influx of retail sales tax dollars, Schwab had to maintain fiscal responsibility, which was second nature to him as the city’s long-time finance director.
Schwab had to negotiate a middle path between maintaining the aesthetic and living standards those in an affluent or semi-affluent community wanted to maintain and the accumulation of adult toys such as boats and motorhomes those of upper-middle class status indulge in. A constant element of Schwab’s existence as Grand Terrace city manager was dancing a fine line between the citations the members of the city’s code enforcement division were writing for the parking of Winnebagos, Fleetwoods, Pleasure-Ways, Thor Coaches, Newmars, Tiffins, Travatos, Foresters, Airstreams, Roadtreks and motorboats that were being parked in driveways and in front of homes. In some cases, residents knuckled under. In other cases, they rebelled en masse, making following through with enforcement difficult and delicate. In a few select cases, the city went to the wall, upping mere citations for city code infractions to misdemeanors, obtaining criminal convictions against city code standard offenders to make examples out of some and obtain compliance by many. Schwab found himself having to moderate one of the code enforcement officers he had hired, Patrizia Materassi, who subsequently became the city’s director of planning and development, letting her push code enforcement principles so far, but reining her in when it appeared the citizenry being regulated were threatening the tranquility of his ostensible political masters on the city council.
In most cities, the city manager is answerable to the mayor and city council, as it is the defined function of the city council to set policy and the duty of the city manager to carry that policy out. It was somewhat different in Grand Terrace. Schwab in his combined roles as finance director and city manager had far greater longevity than any members of the city council. Thus, each newly elected member of the council would turn to Schwab for guidance and successive city councils fell into a pattern, for the most part, of allowing him to set the policy that the council members then ratified and he carried out. In this way, there was a long-established and honored tradition in Grand Terrace of Schwab essentially drafting the twice monthly city council agendas, then meeting with each of the council members separately in the days prior to each meeting, instructing them on how to vote. Only rarely were there any vote tallies other than 5-to-0 on actions taken by the city council during Schwab’s tour as city manager.
The various city councils in the city during his tenure abhored controversy and relied upon Schwab, as they had Armstead before him, to deaden any community dissent. The city maintain a low profile, with only some minor exceptions, as Schwab managed fore well over a decade-and-a-half to consistently fly the Grand Terrace plane of state under the radar.
He cultivated relationships with newspaper reporters and would tell those journalists who had a reputation for aggressive or investigative coverage of the news, “I appreciate what you do. In fact, I admire it. To me, the exposés you have done are an important contribution to the community. I just think you should do that kind of thing outside of Grand Terrace.”
By careful development and code policies, Schwab was able to prevent the erosion of neighborhoods or the overbuilding of apartments and other multi-family residential projects that attracted crime and a criminal element, such that Grand Terrace avoided or sidestepped the proliferation of robberies, burglaries, assaults and murders that were increasingly common elsewhere in San Bernardino County.
The city council was so satisfied with Schwab’s performance, that it induced him to remain in Grand Terrace rather than move into a city manager’s post in a larger city where he could make more money by allowing him to utilize the city’s program to reclaim and refurbish abandoned properties to take over ownership of two houses in the city.
While Grand Terrace was able to exist, for most of Schwab’s watch, in the heights upon the hill as a bastion of relative tranquility in fast-paced and stressful Southern California, as his career was drawing to a close, his final year-and-a-half with the city was marred by a degree of political turmoil that far outran its diminutive size.
At the root of his problem, Schwab at one point admitted, was what he characterized as a bad choice in selecting someone to be his successor as city manager.
In 2005, the then-48-year-old Schwab, looking down the road roughly a decade ahead, hired Steve Berry, a one-time executive with the trash hauling firm Waste Management, as his assistant city manager. Schwab hoped that he would be able to train Berry as his eventual successor. His intent was to acclimate Berry to the city, with its more laid-back approach and more intensive financial constraints than most other municipalities. He believed that Berry could assimilate his approach and concern for the preservation of the Grand Terrace lifestyle, respect it and replace him with few hiccups. Schwab at that point was intending to stay in place at least until he was 55 or perhaps until he was 57 or 58, at which point he would head off into a comfortable retirement and Berry would assume his place.
In 2008, Schwab suffered a subdural hematoma, and was hospitalized. Berry stepped in to temporarily fill in as acting city manager. Berry, however, coveted the role of city manager, and in early 2009, after Schwab had recovered, a struggle ensued between the two in which what was at stake was whether Schwab would return or Berry would be promoted from his interim status to actual city manager. The battle royal between Schwab and his one-time protégé threatened to tear the sedate city apart and interrupt the community harmony that had been for many its most endearing quality.
Virtually everyone in the hamlet seemed to be taking sides. With Schwab stood the city’s Old Guard and traditionalists. Berry, on the other hand, had the advantage of having day-to-day control of City Hall and the trust of a majority of the council, which he had cultivated during his more than six months in the capacity of acting city manager. Only then-Councilman Jim Miller was completely favorably disposed toward allowing Schwab to return. The other members of the council – then-Mayor Maryetta Ferré, LeeAnn Garcia, Bea Cortes and Walt Stanckiewitz – were concerned about Schwab’s health and his ability to pick up where he had left off. Initially, the balance of the council appeared to be gravitating toward elevating Berry to the position of full-fledged city manager.
Schwab, however, was not without assets and options.
Yet ensconced in the city’s structure was Jo Vehalle, who had been Schwab’s executive secretary and had remained in a similar capacity with Berry. Vehalle, who was able to liaison with the executive secretary who had proceeded her, Betty Trimble, managed to secret out from the city’s files documentation showing that relatively early in his tenure as assistant city manager Berry had been involved in an embezzlement that had been buried by city officials to spare the city embarrassment. Just as the skullduggery with regard to the unearthing of Berry’s employment jacket was being effectuated, the city council was in the act of conferring upon Schwab a retirement package that upped considerably the pension he would receive, which served as an inducement for him to end his effort to return as city manager. In the meantime, the sordid details of the embezzlement Berry had been involved in, which was at that point beyond the statute of limitations, tumbled into public view, with multiple press accounts elucidating the matter. Reluctantly, both Ferré and Stanckiewitz came to understand that keeping Berry in place would subsume the city in scandal, and he was terminated. Bernie Simon, the city’s finance director, was designated to serve as acting city manager following Berry’s departure.
To the extent that the community of Grand Terrace had been able to maintain an air of probity and simplicity up to that point, the Schwab/Berry chapter ended the city’s innocence.
Schwab retired, but his value as city manager soon became evident, as without him in place, the city careened from one controversy to another, replete with political rivalries that had not seemed to exist previously, accompanied by community tension.
In retirement, Schwab was able to indulge his passion for travel, which was an offshoot of his early life as the son of an Air Force career officer. He explored much of the world over the last 15 years, and pursued interests in aviation, classic cars, and motorcycles, and fished and played golf at any convenient opportunity. As he had been a devoted father to the two daughters, Ariel and Catherine, he had with his wife Linda, he found gratifying living out the role of “Ojichan” or grandpa on a day-to-day basis or assume the role of “Ojisan,” grandfather, when he was called upon to mete out discipline to his two grandchildren, Laurent and Lorelei.
-Mark Gutglueck