Jeannette Vagnozzi, the native journeywoman local governmental administrator whose eventual capture of the managerial brass ring was ultimately compromised by the political concessions she had to engage in to snag it, has died.
Her loyalty to those in political and managerial levels above her was sometimes reciprocated and sometimes not, delaying and cutting short her ascension to positions of authority she had aspired to and which a number of her professional colleagues believed her to be eminently qualified to assume.
Born on October 11, 1964 in Upland where she spent her childhood, Vagnozzi returned to that city toward the end of her time as a public official, acceding to the position of city manager, the highest professional position she attained and the crowning achievement of her career. Upland would also prove the setting of her most intense challenges, as she wrestled with various types of personalities who had commandeered their portion of control over the city.
One of five daughters in a Catholic family, Vagnozzi attended and graduated from Pomona High School in 1982. She then attended the University of La Verne wheree she obtained a bachelor of science degree in business administration and went on to get a graduate degree in leadership and management there.
In 1991, she obtained a position as an intern with the City of La Verne. The following year, she was hired as a staff employee by then-City Manager Martin Lomeli. She steadily advanced as a key member of Lomeli’s staff, from a junior administrative analyst to analyst to senior analyst, then administrative services officer and assistant to the city manager. When Lomeli retired in 2010 and was succeeded by Bob Russi as city manager, Vagnozzi was promoted to assistant city manager. In 2015, then-Upland City Manager Rod Butler persuaded the Upland City Council to allow him to hire her away from La Verne as deputy city manager in Upland.
Butler’s move had defied a standard city officials had set for Upland more than a decade-and-a-half previously.
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In 1998, the Upland City Council as it was then composed, reasoning that the assistant city manager’s position and its expense were not justified in a city of 68,000, did away with the position of assistant city manager, essentially putting then-assistant city manager Mike Matlock out of work.
In 2005, then-Upland Mayor John Pomierski, seeking to solidify his hold on the reins of power in the City of Gracious Living, got rid of then-City Manager Mike Milhiser and convinced the remainder of the city council to allow him to install Robb Quincey, who was amenable to his direction, as city manager. The difficulty was that Quincey, despite having bachelor’s and master’s degrees and a doctorate in public administration, was not long on municipal managerial experience. His only time in that role had been in the slightly more than four years he had put in as Hesperia city manager. In Hesperia, Quincey enjoyed the title of city manager but it was assistant city manager Rod Foster, who had far more municipal management experience than Quincey, who actually ran the City of Progress. Within two weeks of his arrival in Upland, Quincey convinced Pomierski to lure Foster away from Hesperia to serve as city manager in Upland. In essence, over the next five years, Foster ran the city with regard toi day-in, day-out operations, while Quincey assisted Pomierski in a host of depredations which ultimately resulted in Pomierski in 2010 being indicted by a federal grand jury on political corruption charges. During those same five years, Pomierski conferred seven pay raises on Quincey. Foster left Upland to become city manager in Colton. Quincey was himself arrested and charged with three governmental corruption counts and removed as city manager.
The experience with Pomierski and Quincey convinced the differently-composed post-2010 Upland City Council of the wisdom have having the city function under the guidance of a city manager who was held to constant account by the city council and without the assistance of an assistant city manager, deputy city manager or any type of secondary city manager. Thus, the city council acceding to hiring Vagnozzi as deputy city manager represented a significant turnaround for Upland.
On July 26, 2016, the Upland City Council abruptly, on a sharply divided 2-to-2 vote, fired Butler. When the council did so, Vagnozzi, in a show of selflessness, sought to dissuade the council from taking that action. Thereafter, the council, at least in part because Vagnozzi had resisted the sacking of Butler, did not elevate her into the interim or acting city manager’s post, instead bringing in former Police Chief Martin Thouvenell to serve as interim city manager.
Though it was expected that Thouvennel would remain in that position for a relativel yshort direction while a decision on who the next full-fledged city manager would be, he spent an extended period of 18 months. The City council, which was looking for direction from Thouvenell on making a city manager selection, bypassed choosing Vagnozzi at that point because Thouvenell was not favorably disposed toward her. Despite that, Vagnozzi, who had far more municipal administrative experience and expertise than Thouvenell, was, during Thouvennel’s watch, in large measure functioning as Upland’s de facto city manager. The city council instead hired Roemead City Manager Bill Manis, who began with Upland in January 2018. Nine months later, Manis abruptly resigned.
The city council elevated Vagnozzi to the interim city manager’s post following Manis’s departure. Less than two months later, as a consequence of the November 2018 municipal election in which then-City Councilman Sid Robinson had opted out of running and incumbent Councilman Gino Filippi and incumbent Councilwoman Carol Timm lost, three of the council members were to depart from their posts in December 2018. Despite the fact that they were lame ducks, Filippi, Robinson and Timm, who participated remotely from North Carolina where she was celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday with her parents, at the last council meeting during which they were yet voting members the final week of November 2018, joined with then-Mayor Debbie Stone to hire Vagnozzi as city manager. They did so pursuant to a three-year contract that under no circumstances could be terminated any earlier than March 2019 and which conferred upon her a conditional severance guarantee of roughly $155,500 if any future council elected to terminate her before the contract’s scheduled expiration of January 1, 2022.
While Russi, former LaVerne Mayor Jon Blickenstaff and then current LaVerne Mayor Don Kendrick were present at the meeting to encourage the council to hire Vagnozzi, there was a sizeable contingent of Upland residents who went on record asking the council to defer her hiring until after the newly-composed council, with Robinson’s, Timm’s and Filippi’s replacements were installed and could participate in the decision with regard to who would serve as city manager.
The following month, Filippi, Timm and Robinson were no longer on the council, and were ultimately replaced by Rudy Zuniga, Ricky Felix and Bill Velto.
There ensued some discontent among the recomposed council on the parts of Zuniga, Felix Velto and then Councilwoman Janice Elliott, not as much with Vagnozzi’s performance as city manager but her presumption in accepting the appointment to the city manager’s post by what she knew was a lame duck city council and not respecting the wishes of the newly-elected members of the council. Vagnozzi’s relationship with Zuniga, Felix, Velto and Elliott never jelled. It is unknown whether, if she had in November voluntarily deferred to a decision by the subsequent council as to the hiring of the next city manager whether she would have gotten the job. Many interpreted what had occurred in November 2018 as an act of political revenge by Upland’s lame duck city council less than a month after two of those members had been voted out of office.
As it turned out, in May 2019, the Upland City Council, with Mayor Debbie Stone dissenting, voted to hand Vagnozzi her walking papers.
She nevertheless had the satisfaction, however brief, of being the supreme municipal employee in her hometown and teaching classes in municipal management and public administration at the University of La Verne, where she had been an undergraduate and postgraduate student herself. .
For years and with quiet dignity, Vagnozzi had been battling cancer. She at last succumbed, On October 11, 2026, her 62nd birthday.
Vagnozzi was predeceased by her parents, Joseph and Anna Vagnozzi and her sister, Sister Julianna Vagnozzi. She is survived by her sisters Joanne Vagnozzi, Janice and Joseph Celio, and Joyce Vagnozzi; nephews John Celio and Sarah Jones, Christopher and Theresa Celio, and Mark and Kristin Celio; her cherished great nephews and nieces Anthony, Christina, Vincent, Gianna, Jason, Francesca, Dominic, Luigi, Michael, Rafaela, and Mariana; and cousin Linda Biscardi.