Michael Milhiser, who previously guided municipal operations in Montclair, Ontario, Upland and Adelanto, has taken on a fifth top municipal administrative assignment in Fontana.
Fontana had need for an interim city manager, as Ken Hunt, who had been with the city since 1997, recently retired.
Milhiser, who hails from a family that is heavily involved in municipal governance, acceded to the position of Montclair city manager in 1978, succeeding Lauren Wasserman. He remained in that position for 14 years, moving on to become city manager in Ontario, where his father had been that city’s treasurer, in 1992. He left that position in 1994, but picked up the assignment of Upland manager in 1996. He remained there until he was forced out of that post by Upland Mayor John Pomierski in March 2005. Pomierski  would be indicted by federal officials on corruption charges six years later.
Milhiser subsequently became the interim executive director for Tri-City Mental Health Agency in Pomona, where he remained for more than two years. He left Tri City to serve in the capacity of chief administrative officer for the Morongo Band of Mission Indians. In 2018, he took on the assignment of interim city manager in Adelanto.
A pensioner who is pulling a $195,000 per year pension from the California Public Employee Retirement System based upon his work with Ontario, Upland and Montclair, Milhiser under the rules governing retirees can work only 960 hours per year under contract for a public agency.
Thus, at 40 hours per week, Milhiser will be able to remain in Fontana no later than the first week of January 2020, given his start date of July 23. The city council will need to find a long-term replacement for Hunt by then, or otherwise bring in another interim manager.
The city agreed to pay, and Milhiser has accepted, a straight $148 an hour, with no other benefits beyond the provision of a vehicle.
Milhiser’s appointment was supported by Mayor Acquanetta Warren and councilmen Phillip Cothran Jr., John Roberts and Jesse Armendarez.  Councilman Jesse Sandoval opposed the hiring.
Milhiser, 72, lives in Montclair and is a board member with the Monte Vista Water District. His wife, Laurie, was considered as an appointee to the Montclair City Council earlier this year, before the council ultimately decided to appoint Tenice Johnson. His brother, James, is currently the treasurer in the City of Ontario. His father, Charles, was formerly Ontario’s treasurer.
Michael Milhiser attended Chaffey College and obtained a bachelor of arts degree in public administration from Chapman University in 1969. He then earned a master of arts degree in public administration from Claremont Graduate University.

Public officials with San Bernardino County, the City of Barstow and the Victor Valley Transit Authority last week participated in a ceremonial groundbreaking for the Victor Valley Transit Authority’s Barstow operations facility anticipated for completion in early 2020. The major capital improvement comes precisely five years after the consolidation of the Barstow Area Transit Authority with the Victor Valley Transit Authority.
Most recognizable to the crowd on hand was Barstow Mayor Julie Hackbarth-McIntyre, who used a shovel to turn over some earth where the 8,500-square-foot facility will rise from the ground at 100 N. Sandstone Court, just north of Main Street.
“We’re pleased to see the quality of service the Victor Valley Transit Authority has brought to the Barstow area,” Hackbarth-McIntyre said. “This facility will help the Victor Valley Transit Authority move forward with its successful plan to serve the Barstow community with excellent and efficient public transportation.”
The 5.5-acre Barstow Victor Valley Transit Authority facility will integrate with the already in-place Victor Valley Transit Authority’s compressed natural gas and liquid natural gas fueling station. Upon opening, it will replace the Victor Valley Transit Authority’s leased facility located in east Barstow, which is hamstrung by its location within a difficult-to-access commercial complex.
The new facility will feature many amenities, including three modern service bays, updated maintenance equipment, ample room for operations and administration staff, and an accommodating lobby for riders who come in to purchase bus passes.
“We’re excited to see the operational savings the new location will deliver to the agency,” according to the chairman of the Victor Valley Transit Authority’s Board, Hesperia Mayor Larry Bird. “Refueling the buses from its current location has always been challenging and added a considerable expense to operations.”
The current 12-mile round trip to refuel adds 38,880 miles every year to the authority’s operations. Placing the facility next to the fueling station will save the Victor Valley Transit Authority over $100,000 per year in operating expenses.  Because of the new facility’s proximity to an existing gas pipeline, the need for transporting the fuel to the station by truck will be eliminated.
The Victor Valley Transit Authority intends to eventually incorporate zero-emission battery electric buses into its Barstow fleet. The Sandstone Court/Main Street facility will feature four battery-electric charging stations, battery-electric storage, and a photovoltaic array.
The Victor Valley Transit Authority recently participated in the post-earthquake relief effort in Trona, dispatching several of its transportation vans to the town at the extreme northwestern corner of San Bernardino County. Those vans provided transportation service into and out of Trona’s neighborhoods where passage by larger-scale vehicles was deemed too dangerous because of low hanging power lines.

Thanks to a joint Azusa Pacific University Nursing Program/Salvation Army effort involving other community volunteers, homeless individuals in the Victor Valley will be provided with an often-forgotten-and-neglected service to benefit their health next week.
On August 1, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. the fifth annual High Desert  “Homeless Foot Washing” event will be held at the Salvation Army headquarters in Victorville, 14585 La Paz Drive.
Dubbed “Sock, Shoes & Salvation” the faith-centered event will provide the needy with food, health screenings, haircuts, shoes, socks and other necessities.
Azusa Pacific, a private, evangelical Christian institution, includes a seminary, the Graduate School of Theology, which hews to a Wesleyan-Arminian doctrinal theology. It also features a nursing program. Nursing instructors and students from Azusa Pacific will examine the feet of those who come into the four-hour long foot clinic. The students will have an eye out for infection, which wound specialist Victor Koivisto will attempt to redress. They will also offer instruction on the importance of hygiene and offer foot care strategies for those with diabetes.
Victorville Mayor Gloria Garcia, a member of the Salvation Army Advisory Committee, will initiate the event with a convocation.
Over a dozen organizations will participate in the event, including Victor Valley Homeless Services, the San Bernardino County Behavior Health Department, the San Bernardino County Public Health Department, the Ready for Reading Book Club, God’s Hand Extended, Victor Valley College Student Homeless Services, San Bernardino County Veterans Services, High Desert Second Chance, Choice Medical, San Bernardino County Preschool Services, Community Mission Medical Care, CX3, and the Victor Valley Rescue Mission, which will provide mobile showers, courtesy of Liberty Water, which will send in a water truck.
It should be disclosed that agents with the California Highway Patrol will be present, seeking to induce or intimidate any parents with children to have those children fingerprinted. Parents can stand on their rights and refuse that “service,” if they so choose, though doing so may be difficult given the implied authority of arrest the officers may use in their efforts to get as many California residents into the state’s law enforcement data base as possible.
A number of businesses, including Cardenas Market, have contributed money to enable the event to be put on. In-Shape Health Club provided 30 boxes of shoes for use at the event.

West Coast summers are sizzling, hot! And, California is the bees knees when it comes to a cool vibe. Aside from sun dresses and bikinis, some neat trends are the Hawaiian shirts, racer back tanks, and anything tie-dye. To top it off,  add the typical California old school Vans tennis shoes. It’s not at all about a hippie look but more about putting fun into Cali by adding some way back  pieces  into summer. To add elegance, wear sea shell jewelry with your outfit as a California summer piece. The heat is on and we’re feeling it, so stay cool and have fun piecing together the summer fun of a wardrobe.
“I’m a Hawaiian shirt guy. I’ve made that life decision.” -Chris O’Dowd

By clicking on the blue portal below, you can download a PDF of the July 19 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 07-19-19

The City of Redlands has added a “rumor control” page to its website.
Just below the page’s logo, its mission is enunciated. “The rumor control page is committed to dispelling inaccurate or misleading statements concerning the City of Redlands,” it says.
This week the page stated, “No rumors at this time.”
The ostensible goal of the page appeared to be to quell falsehoods before they metastasize. Some Redlands residents nonetheless saw something a bit Orwellian about a rumor control office, akin to the Ministry of Truth described in the dystopian novel 1984, in which an arm of the government seeks to control public perception, applying that effort within the context of official authority.
The Sentinel contacted the city’s spokesman, Carl Baker, to see if he could speak to what had triggered the need for the addition to the city’s website, and if there had been a recent spate of pernicious falsehoods being spread that had proven problematic for the city.
“The rumor control page was added with the launch of the city’s new website, which went live earlier this month,” Baker said.
As to what had prompted the page’s inclusion on the website, Baker said,  “It was suggested by staff and based on a similar page that the City of Glendale implemented several years ago. The intent is to provide factual information that residents may use to answer common questions or evaluate false or incomplete information published or disseminated widely through social media, comments made at public meetings or other methods.”
Asked if there was concern that the city taking on rumors might come across as a heavy-handed use of governmental reach, Baker said, “It is not intended as a forum to express opinions or to argue in favor of or against issues. As the public information officer, I will be responsible for maintaining the page, but the content may be provided by other staff with subject matter knowledge. City staff will also assist in monitoring the circulation of rumors, questions and misinformation and evaluating whether they are significantly pervasive to warrant a response on the city’s website.”
–Mark Gutglueck

The community of Trona is making a slow recovery on a multitude of fronts in the aftermath of the 6.4 and 7.1 Richter Scale magnitude earthquakes that hit the area on July 4 and July 5.
For a handful of the town’s residents and businesses, however, the devastation is proving more lasting.
Temblors and their aftershocks shook the earth and structures, cracked the earth and pavement, damaged underground water storage and pipelines, damaged or ruptured natural gas pipelines, damaged or cracked in some cases building foundations and above-ground elements of their structures, shifted buildings on their foundations and caused items and merchandise inside commercial and other buildings to come crashing down.
As early as Monday, July 8, personnel with the office of the county fire marshal and inspectors with the county land use services division were conducting inspections of properties and facilities in Trona, beginning with commercial buildings downtown that were likely to attract large numbers of members of the public.
Those structures were either red-tagged, yellow-tagged or green-tagged. Those red-tagged were deemed not habitable in their current condition, with a determination the structure has been severely damaged to the degree that it is too dangerous to inhabit. Those yellow-tagged were cataloged as moderately damaged to the degree that their habitability is limited, not suitable for overnight stays and useful only for limited occupancy. Those green-tagged were designated as suitable for habitation with no major damage noted.
According to the county, eight commercial buildings were red-tagged and four were yellow-tagged. Four underground storage fuel tanks were red-tagged. Among residential structures, 31 were red-tagged and 51 were yellow-tagged.
On Sunday July 14, the county posted on its website, “All initial inspections of earthquake damaged structures in Trona and nearby San Bernardino County communities have been completed by damage assessment teams led by the county fire marshal, including building inspectors from land use services.  Structures that were not tagged as yellow or red, can be assumed to be green-tagged, with no major damage noted. However, residents are encouraged to call land use services at 760-995-8140 or 909-387-8311 to request a follow-up inspection if they have particular safety concerns, or to re-evaluate the tag status, considering repairs (such as a gas line or other utility repair). Remember: A yellow tag means the occupant may enter briefly to retrieve essential items. A red tag means the building is not safe to enter. If you have a yellow or red tag, call for an inspection appointment to discuss the damage assessment and next steps.”
The Sentinel made an inquiry with the land use services department’s building and safety unit and was told that a red-tagged home is not to be considered to be uninhabitable into perpetuity or absolutely fated for demolition. Rather, critical repairs of the damage can in most cases be undertaken and effectuated by a registered and licensed contractor if all stages of the repair are suitably monitored and checked off by building and safety division inspectors.
Official governmental building inspections are to be compended into a single, full report which is to be sent to state and federal officials for review. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will ultimately determine if the earthquake damage meets the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act criteria/threshold for assistance, such as low interest loans.
Because of ruptures in the water supply line from Ridgecrest to Trona, the Searles Domestic Water Company had been unable to deliver water to its customers following the first of the two major quakes. Following the governor’s declaration of a state of emergency on July 5, bottled water was being distributed to residents of the community by July 8. Shortly thereafter, portable toilets and showers were brought into the community, the lion’s share of which were set up on or proximate to the Trona High School campus. As of Thursday, July 11, the Searles Domestic Water Company had restored water service to the entirety of the town, with the exception of a handful of isolated streets in one of the town’s neighborhoods. Though the integrity of the broken, cracked and leaking water mains had been restored, dirt and other contamination had made their way into the lines, and residents were advised to boil the tap water that was available. On July 17, it was announced that Trona residents no longer needed to boil their water for use in cooking, and that they could use the water for drinking purposes without concern for its purity. The county also informed the town’s residents that the company would not assess past due fees on its customers’ bills for July. The new phone numbers for customers to contact the Searles Domestic Water Company are 760-382-3776 and 760-382-8553.
Operations at the Trona Library, one of the few structures downtown that had not been red-tagged or yellow-tagged and which was converted to a cooling center during the post-earthquake crisis, returned to normal on July 18, with its standard hours restored. Normal operating hours are: Monday – Wednesday: 11 a.m. – 7 p.m., Thursday: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., Friday: closed, Saturday: 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., Sunday: closed.
Beginning on Monday, July 22, construction debris bins will be available Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Trona Transfer Station, 13177 Trona Dump Road.  The dumpsters located at the Trona Library (82805 Mountain View, Trona, CA 93562) and Argus Area (across from Shell Station, 82275 Trona Road, Trona, CA 93562) will be removed today.  Trona residents in need of non-construction clean-up may call Team Rubicon, a volunteer organization, to request assistance at 310-640-8787.
Hazardous waste collection will take place Saturday, August 10 and Saturday, September 28 from 8 a.m. to noon at the San Bernardino County Fire Station, 83732 Trona Rd. in Trona.
Effective today, the local assistance center at Trona High School is to be closed, and a recovery center will open at 13207 Jones St. in Trona.

By Mark Gutglueck
In a tacit indication that San Bernardino city officials have abandoned the strategy of staving off a second municipal bankruptcy by substantial reductions in the salaries and benefits provided to city employees, the city council and mayor this week in a 5-to-3 vote finalized the promotion of Assistant City Manager Teri Ledoux to city manager.
In doing so, the council conferred upon her a raise of nearly $50,000 over what she was being paid for serving in the role of acting city manager, which she took on when the council suspended former City Manager Andrea Travis-Miller in April. The action brings Ledoux’s total compensation package to over $300,000 per year.
The council in May fired Travis-Miller, creating the need to fill the city manager vacancy.
Travis-Miller, who was a key assistant to former City Manager Charles McNeely, had herself been elevated to the role of acting city manager in 2012 when McNeely left the city under the strain of dealing with intractable financial problems besetting the county seat. It was under Travis-Miller’s guidance that the city made its August 2012 filing for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection in Riverside Federal Court. Miller remained in place as acting city manager for the next six months, departing to head, as executive director, the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments in February 2013. She thereafter was hired as the city manager in Covina, but came back to San Bernardino as assistant city manager in October 2016.
In June 2017, just two months shy of the five-year anniversary of San Bernardino having entered into bankruptcy, the city emerged from Chapter 13 protection. Over the course of those five years, the city had tentatively regained its financial footing by getting Federal Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Jury to acquiesce in the $350 million stiffing of more than 200 of its creditors, some of whom were paid 60 cents on the dollar, others 50 cents on the dollar, others 40 cents on the dollar, others 30 cents on the dollar, with one class of those to whom the city owed money, litigants against the city who had prevailed in court on various lawsuits, getting just one cent on the dollar for the first million owed to them for those judgments.
Two months after the city’s exit from bankruptcy and after the departure of then-San Bernardino City Manager Mark Scott, Miller was hired, in August 2017, on a five-year non-guaranteed contract, as San Bernardino City Manager. In October of that year, she arranged to lure Ledoux, then working as the assistant to the city manager in the City of La Verne, to take on the assignment of assistant city manager in San Bernardino.
Part of the incentive Ledoux was given in making that transition was a sizable increase in pay. In La Verne, Ledoux was pulling down a yearly salary of $114,437.10 with $22,645.25 in benefits. The pay range for assistant city manager in San Bernardino ran from $172,000 to $213,000 yearly. Travis-Miller arranged for Ledoux to be brought in at a significantly higher salary step than was normally provided to a newly-hired assistant city manager, such that Ledoux’s hiring in San Bernardino represented a salary boost for her well in excess of $70,000 annually. Additionally, the benefits provided to Ledoux in San Bernardino were, at over $40,000 annually, close to double those provided her in La Verne.
Upon her elevation to acting city manager status in April, Ledoux’s annual salary was bumped up to $212,000.
How much money Ledoux would demand to have the qualifiers “acting” or “interim” detracted from her title and keep her in the role of city manager was of some moment. As she comes into the position, roughly two years after San Bernardino’s departure from bankruptcy, the city again finds itself behind the eight ball financially.
When the City of San Bernardino’s budget for the recently concluded 2018-19 fiscal year was drawn up and that spending plan passed by the city council last year, Travis-Miller in her then-capacity as city manager and then-Finance Director Brent Mason projected the city spending $166,357,066, of which $126,247,699 was accounted for in the city’s general fund and $40,109,367 in other funds that include special revenue, enterprise operations, and internal services. Travis-Miller and Mason said the city could afford all elements contained in the spending plan, which entailed a five percent increase in the general fund over the previous year, based upon $168.943,334 in anticipated revenue, allowing the city to net a surplus of $2,586,268, which was to be salted away in its reserves. As the fiscal year progressed, however, it became apparent, primarily because of a shortfall in the actual amount of revenue from gasoline tax that was to come to the city, that San Bernardino was not meeting the revenue projections assumed at the outset. Ultimately, it turned out, the amount of money the city took in during 2018-19, running from July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2019, was off by nearly $13.8 million, such that not only did the city not realize the $2,586,268 surplus, it actually received roughly $11.2 million less than the $166,357,066 it was going to spend.
The warning signs were clear: the city is heading, unless significant adjustments are made, back toward bankruptcy. Midway in 2018, the optimistic projection was that for the 2018-19 fiscal year, the city would fare well. But the modeling Travis-Miller and Mason were using at that time was less sanguine about future years. Based solely on what they could see at that time, Travis-Miller and Mason indicated that the projected revenues for 2019-20 set against the city’s projected expenditures would result in a $4.3 million deficit for that year; and that the modeling showed that the projected revenue to expenditure gap would continue to grow over the next three years until by 2022-23 the city was projected to run a $7 million deficit that year. Moreover, according to Travis-Miller and Mason, the city was on a collision course with its unfunded pension liability issue, such that the city, which was required to put up $20 million as part of its contribution to the California Public Employees Retirement System in 2018-19, would see that payment zoom to $40 million by 2028-29.
At the outset of 2018-19, the city had some $33 million in its reserves and was anticipating adding another $2.86 million to that sum during the just concluded year. With the gas tax shortfall, however, the $2.86 million never materialized and instead, the $11.2 million deficit ate into the city’s reserves such that the city now has less than $22 million in its rainy day account.
Prognostications, based on the best figures available, now indicate that the city, which ran an $11.2 million deficit in just concluded 2018-19, will see that annual deficit jump to $16 million by the end of 2019-20, $18 million to $19 million by 2020-21, $23 million to $25 million by the end of 2021-22 and $30 million to $34 million by the end of 2022-23. While those numbers are somewhat short of the $49 million operating deficit the city was faced with in 2012 just prior to its Chapter 13 filing, the city’s present reserves of less than $22 million are on a trajectory to be depleted to zero by the end of October 2020. At that point, unless the city’s spending patterns have been drastically altered, the city will not only be spending more money than it is bringing in, it will have no other source to make up for that deficit. Accordingly, the City of San Bernardino’s second bankruptcy filing could come as early as November or December 2020.
Considerable thought has been given to finding some way for the city to make its way up the steep and slippery path from the fiscal abyss it is being drawn down into.
An intrinsic element of the city’s dilemma is the overly generous salaries and benefits, given the restrictions on the city’s multiple revenue streams, that have been paid to San Bernardino’s municipal workers for decades.
Personnel costs in the city entail, on average, in excess of 91 percent of the city’s budget. While it had been the hope of Patrick Morris, who was San Bernardino’s mayor when the city declared bankruptcy in 2012, as well as the intention of the mayor who succeeded Morris, certified public accountant Carey Davis, that the bankruptcy could be used as a means by which the city could adjust the exorbitant costs it was bearing in personnel costs, that did not prove to be the case. In the four years and ten months between the time it entered into bankruptcy in August 2012 and its emergence in June 2017, the city while skipping out on just over $350 million it owed to a combination of some 209 creditors, vendors and partners, was unable to make any meaningful adjustment in what it is paying toward its most substantial cost – its employees. Left largely unscathed by the financial devastation the city was experiencing were the city’s workers, who continued to draw unreduced paychecks throughout the ordeal. They have seen no reductions in pay and their benefits remain intact, including the pensions they were promised by past mayors and city councils, though going forward the city’s employees are now being called upon to make a slight increase in their individual contributions toward their retirement benefits.
Thus, after five years of bankruptcy and two dubitable years of recovery, the underlying problem that sent the city into the pit of financial hell still exists.
What had emerged, prior to the extension of the contract to Ledoux was a tentative strategy that was both bold and desperate, painful for some to contemplate, startling and outside the box. But given the city’s untenable position, it existed as the best, and perhaps even the last option to keep the city’s ship of state from being capsized by the colossal financial swells threatening it.
Indeed, last month, before the departure of Bill Essayli, who since December had served as Mayor John Valdivia’s chief of staff, the city council undertook what appeared to be a test run for such a strategy, seizing upon the opportunity that the 2016 passage of a revamped charter, which Valdivia at that time opposed, presented them. In addition to a host of other reforms, the charter revision eliminated the city attorney and city clerk positions as elected offices. Using its authority at a specially-called meeting on June 11, the council voted 4-to-2, with Councilman Jim Mulvihill absent, to reduce City Attorney Gary Saenz’s pay rate over the final nine months he will occupy the elected city attorney’s position by 45.8 percent and to reduce City Clerk Georgeann Hanna’s pay during the same period by 59.2 percent. Thus Saenz, who formerly made $246,266 in total annual compensation as city attorney, has seen the amount of remuneration he is to receive between July 1, 2019 and March 31, 2020 reduced from $184,700 to $100,000. Hanna, who was receiving $171,466 in total annual compensation as city clerk, including salary, benefits and add-ons, is now having her compensation over the same nine-month span reduced from $128,600 to $52,500.
It was thought that Ledoux, whose experience, résumé, skillset and portfolio as a municipal management professional are thin, might prove amenable to accepting a total compensation package that was roughly two-thirds that which had been provided to her predecessor. In practical terms this meant that Ledoux would be given a $175,028.34 annual salary, coupled with $30,770.61 in benefits, for a total annual compensation of $205,798.94, as compared to the $307,941.56 in total compensation on a yearly basis Travis-Miller had made, consisting of her $262,542.50 annual salary and $45,399.06 in annual benefits. One justification for the difference consisted of the consideration that Ledoux’s previous experience paled in comparison to that of Travis-Miller. Ledoux’s top assignment career-wise consisted of her time as San Bernardino’s assistant city manager and acting city manager over the previous three months. Travis-Miller, on the other hand, had been city manager in La Mirada and Covina, had headed the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments joint powers authority, and boasted her two stints with San Bernardino as assistant to the city manager/acting city manager and assistant city manager at the time she was promoted to city manager in 2017.
More importantly, however, was the moral, practical and situational authority Ledoux’s acceptance of the lower salary and benefit package would vest in her and thereby set the stage for her and the city’s political leadership to ask the city’s workers to voluntarily take across-the-board 25 percent pay cuts.
If the city’s workforce complied with that request, the city would be able to meet its financial burden, keep its head above water, and prevent its expenditures from greatly outdistancing its income, make the escalating payments into the California Public Retirement System to ensure that the city’s retirees receive the pensions promised them, and spare the city the ignominy of again going into bankruptcy court to seek permission to avoid paying its way in the world.
As it turned out, however, Ledoux was having none of that. She insisted that she receive 99 percent of what Travis-Miller was remunerated by the city. Moreover, she refused to be paid anything less than $10,000 more than San Bernardino’s police chief. Thus, the contract that was considered by the city council on Wednesday night this week provided for her receiving an annual salary as of that night of $259,674, benefits running to roughly $46,000 per year, a guarantee that she receive a salary at least five percent higher than that provided to the police chief and that she be given, as of August 1, a 3.5 percent raise.
The contract was backdated to July 1, 2019 and runs through December 31, 2020.
Assuming Ledoux remains in the position at least 12 months of the contract’s 18 month duration, it will up her pension, provided to her under the auspices of the California Public Employees Retirement System and her contract, from the $122,472 she is eligible to receive yearly upon retirement at present to an annual pension of $181,642.50. She will receive that amount of money, per year, for the rest of her life.
While council members Fred Shorett, Sandra Ibarra and Jim Mulvihill voted in opposition to extending the contract to Ledoux, council members Henry Nickel, Bessine Richard, Juan Figueroa and Ted Sanchez voted to approve it, as did Mayor John Valdivia. Shorett cited the long term escalation of costs to the city in terms of the increase in Ledoux’s pension in enunciating his reason for opposing the contract.
The short term of Ledoux’s contract – 18 months – together with her age, 61, is an indication that she intends to retire with the expiration of the contract. This is seen as an acknowledgment that Ledoux is intended less as a permanent city manager committed for a significant duration, but rather as a caretaker. Given that the council agreed to hire her at what is essentially the same rate of pay as was provided to Travis-Miller, the opportunity to apply the strategy of uniformly reducing the salaries and benefits of the city’s employees to obtain the savings needed to stave off bankruptcy has been essentially obliterated. Had Ledoux gone along with accepting a more modest salary and benefit package, she would have been in a position to ask the rest of the city’s workforce to voluntarily take 25 percent pay cuts. It now appears that either Ledoux toward the end of her 18-month tenure as city manager or her immediate successor will be obliged by the exigency of the city’s financial circumstance to lay a significant number of city employees off in order to achieve the economies that could otherwise be had with salary reductions. Logically, Ledoux will at some point, most likely sooner rather than later, have to undertake a study to determine which of the positions on the city’s payroll are not absolutely crucial to municipal function and can thus be permanently eliminated. It is further likely that a significant number of city positions deemed necessary for the continuation of municipal function and the provision of services will be filled by contractual arrangements, by which young and qualified candidates, eager to obtain municipal experience or positions, would be hired at salaries or hourly rates approaching 25 percent lower than is being provided to current city employees holding those positions.
It is therefore anticipated that the city will, in the month or two prior to Ledoux’s scheduled retirement, need to initiate massive layoffs of city employees. At present, the city’s work force stands at 722, which is under 55 percent of the city’s peak level of 1,319 employees in 2007-08. If the layoff option is applied in such a way that it is effectuated uniformly across all levels of employees in terms of pay grade, the city’s workforce will need to be reduced to 541, meaning layoffs of 181 municipal workers would likely need to be initiated within the next 18 months. If for practical considerations the city must hang on to its higher ranking and higher paid employees such as department heads and assistant department heads, there will need to be a higher number of layoffs, such that the city’s employees may be reduced to fewer than 520.
At that point, the city’s only other viable option will be to go into federal bankruptcy court once more to seek refuge from its creditors. That stratagem, however, is by no means a surefire one. The possibility yet exists that whatever bankruptcy judge the county comes before, either Judge Jury or another federal judge assigned to hear the city’s bankruptcy petition, would make a finding that given that San Bernardino had already spent five of its last eight-and-a-half years under the bankruptcy court’s protection and was yet unable to put its financial house in order, the city’s ability to remain as a going concern is so questionable that bankruptcy is not a reasonable solution, instead putting the city into receivership, a step which would be likely to lead to the outright disincorporation and decertification of San Bernardino as a municipal entity altogether.