By Chris Collins / The Fresno Bee
The Coalinga City Council wastes money, circumvents open-meeting laws and has conflicts of interests, the Fresno County grand jury concludes in a stinging report issued Friday.
The seven-page report says that in one instance, council members promised city police officers added benefits if they agreed to turn against their police chief. In another case, a council member who also is a sheriff's sergeant insisted on hiring deputies with the Sheriff's Office as security guards -- even though extra security was unnecessary, the report said.
"The investigation revealed that these issues have been an ongoing problem for many years," the report said. "... Testimony and documentation indicated that some of the City Council members were unaware of their municipal code, personnel rules, and the limits of their authority."
The report doesn't accuse the council members of committing any crimes.
Two of the council members referred to in the report -- Mike Oxborrow and Tony Garcia -- denied any wrongdoing Friday. Former Mayor Trish Hill, who is accused of helping a developer who had a business relationship with her boss, declined to comment.
"The report is full of some falsehoods," Oxborrow said. "To give the impression we're all messed up and dysfunctional right now is just flat wrong."
The report notes that the city has had a troubled history, with 17 city managers and nine police chiefs in the past 18 years.
Many of the issues seem to revolve around a long-running dispute involving three council members -- Oxborrow, Garcia and Hill -- the former city manager, Stephen Julian, and the former police chief, Jerry Galvin.
Sometime around July 2007, for reasons that aren't clear, the council asked Julian to fire Galvin. Julian refused, and the council placed him on administrative leave. They also passed an ordinance giving themselves the power to fire Galvin directly.
But a group of Coalinga residents intervened. They persuaded two-thirds of the city's voters to pass a measure that returned hiring and firing power to the city manager. Nevertheless, Galvin announced in April that he would retire.
Later that month, the council fired Julian, even though he had a contract to work to the end of 2009. He later sued and settled for $225,000.
The grand jury report said that in March 2007, Oxborrow, Hill and Garcia met with the Coalinga Police Officers Association. The council members rotated in and out of the meeting in "a deliberate attempt to avoid the quorum requirements of the Brown Act," the report said, referring to the state open-meetings law that prohibits a majority of council members from meeting together outside of a council meeting.
The report said the council members in that meeting tried to get the officers to agree that Galvin should be fired and offered them additional job benefits "in exchange for their support." Nevertheless, the officers held a vote expressing confidence in Galvin.
Oxborrow and Garcia denied Friday discussing any plans to fire Galvin at the meeting or offering anything in exchange for the officers' support of such a plan.
A separate incident occurred in May 2007 during an annual city festival, the grand jury report said. Galvin wanted to use Coalinga police officers and reserve deputies from the Sheriff's Office to provide security at a minimal cost. But Garcia, who also is a sheriff's sergeant, "insisted" that the city contract with the Sheriff's Office to hire full-time sheriff's deputies -- at $50 an hour -- the report said. In the end, the city spent an extra $4,000 to $5,000.
Garcia said he was only concerned with making sure there were enough trained officers at the event. He said he recused himself when the council voted 4-0 to hire the deputies.
There was another incident with the appearance of a conflict of interest, the grand jury reported. At some point in 2007, Hill and the city's planner met with developers who wanted to build on a large swath of land that potentially would more than double Coalinga's size. Part of the land was owned by a ranch owner who employs Hill as a secretary, city officials said.
Julian, the former city manager, said the developer had been told for years that a large part of the property was outside the area designated for the city's expansion. Nevertheless, the Planning Commission and City Council approved the development in late 2007.
Hill joined the City Council in voting to change the city's general plan so the development could move forward, which prompted the need for a new environmental study, the grand jury report said.
Normally the developer would pay for such a study, but the city footed the $100,000 bill, the report said.
Oxborrow said the city handled the costs because the council was afraid the developer would sue if it had to pay for a study that it didn't initially know would be needed.
Bill Skinner, the city's current city manager, said the city plans to make a formal response to the grand jury report.
In addition, the city will soon adopt a code of ethics and will begin a series of workshops to train City Council members on open-meeting laws, the city's code, how to handle personnel issues and how to avoid conflicts of interest. he said.
"Things have been moving in the positive direction," Skinner said.
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/1150904.html
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