Issue date: October 20, 1999
By RENEE BATTI
It's been a rocky three years for the West Bay Sanitary District, a formerly quiet Midpeninsula sewage-collection agency that leapt into the limelight in early 1997 with the indictment of its top manager on 36 felony counts of theft and other crimes against the district.
Since that time, the five-member district board has come under attack for not properly overseeing the district's management, for open-meeting law violations, and for illegally hiring the current manager -- who was a board member at the time of his September 1997 appointment.
District Manager Carl Schrader's job hangs in the balance with the November election that will fill three seats on the board. There are five candidates for the four-year terms. Two incumbents, both Schrader supporters, are on the ballot: Finn Halbo and Harry Harrison.
Of the three challengers, two say they are committed to taking a close look at Mr. Schrader's suitability for the job. They are John Lomax and David Walker.
The third challenger, Ronald Shepherd, who successfully sued Mr. Schrader for accepting the job while still on the board, says simply: "He's got to go."
Mr. Schrader's employment history with the district zigzagged as a result of Mr. Shepherd's lawsuit. The board, clearly nervous when the suit was filed in April 1998, in a single closed-session meeting that month fired Mr. Schrader, then rehired him as interim manager.
After a recruitment effort for a new manager, the board chose Mr. Schrader again as district manager on a 3-2 vote.
Voting against Mr. Schrader were John Carcione, who has pushed for Mr. Schrader's firing since he was elected in 1997, and Don Van Creveld, who is not seeking re-election as his term ends this year.
Other election issues include the district's long-term planning for replacing old lines in its service area: Menlo Park, Atherton, and parts of Portola Valley, Woodside, East Palo Alto and nearby unincorporated lands.
Challengers also are criticizing the firing of employee Tim Clayton, who in March filed a whistleblower complaint charging that Mr. Schrader allowed the building of an illegal sewer in Portola Valley. The board enacted the whistleblower code used by Mr. Clayton in 1997, soon after former manager Charles "Sandy" Thomas was indicted; a number of employees, the board learned, had suspected wrongdoing but were afraid to come forward.
Mr. Thomas pleaded guilty to several felony counts and served a jail sentence.
In the order they appear on the ballot, these are the candidates and their views on key issues.
John Lomax
Although he supports fellow challengers Shepherd and Walker, Mr. Lomax said they are not running as a slate. The three hope to create a new majority on the board, replacing the current majority of Mr. Harrison, Mr. Halbo and board president David Knight, he said.
Mr. Lomax said his top priorities include improving management-employee relations and staff morale, and crafting a long-term, financially sound replacement plan for the district's aging sewer lines.
Mr. Lomax's professional experience includes work as a senior research engineer and as an associate director of the telecommunications lab at SRI International. He also worked on both sides of the negotiating table in the field of labor relations. His experience, he said, makes him well qualified to "understand the technical side of the district's problems," and deal effectively with management and employee issues as well.
Regarding District Manager Schrader, Mr. Lomax said, "I have a strong predisposition to review his qualifications and performance." If the new board fires Mr. Schrader, Mr. Lomax said, he would urge members to review the resumes the district received last year when it recruited candidates for the top job.
Although he has only recently begun attending board meetings, he has reviewed minutes from meetings of the last six months or so, he said. He has also studied reports on the district's future sewer-line replacement needs. Those reports, he said, are inadequate to determine what needs to be done -- and when and at what cost -- to replace the aging lines before they become problematic or fail.
He said he is concerned that the district's reserves may not be adequate for the replacement projects that must be done. "Some will have to be done within the next 10 years, and the majority (will need replacing) in the next 25 years."
Finn Halbo
Mr. Halbo has come under fire for his firm support of Carl Schrader, whom he urged to apply for the manager's position in 1997.
Defending Mr. Schrader's integrity in the face of a June court ruling that he illegally accepted the manager's position, Mr. Halbo places the blame on the district's counsel at the time, Bill Esselstein, who told the board Mr. Schrader did not have to resign before being hired, Mr. Halbo said.
Defending the board's 1997 hiring of a longtime member without advertising the position, Mr. Halbo said, "I believe very strongly in Carl Schrader and his technical competence." He cited Mr. Schrader's experience as an engineer in the sanitation field, and added that the current manager "has the highest reputation for his abilities in the field. ... In my mind, he was the man."
Asked about the criticism by a number of people that the board behaved like a "good old boys' club" in appointing one of its own to the $90,000-a-year position instead of advertising the job, Mr. Halbo responded that, in hindsight, he can understand the criticism. "But at the time, I did not see it that way," he added. "In some ways, I was blinded by the technical situation -- I didn't give a thought to the political considerations."
Mr. Halbo places much of the blame for the district's state of turmoil on alleged political motives of board member Carcione, who, Mr. Halbo said, is using the board as a springboard for higher office.
Regarding sewer line replacement, Mr. Halbo defends the board's planning for future needs, saying the district has a five-year plan that "will be tweaked along the way." The district has a $5 million reserve, built up in part for future sewer line replacement projects. In planning for such projects, five years is "as far as you can get realistically," he said.
Harry Harrison
He served two terms on the Menlo Park Planning Commission, and his community service in a number of areas won him the Chamber of Commerce's Golden Acorn Award last year.
Mr. Harrison said he supported Mr. Schrader's rehiring as district manager last year because of his expertise in the field of sanitation. If Mr. Schrader is fired, however, Mr. Harrison said he would urge the board to hire a replacement from within the agency rather than conduct another costly search.
The board and Mr. Schrader have been trying to mend fences with and boost morale among employees, he said, adding that the district now hosts periodic lunches with employees toward that end, he said.
Mr. Harrison also advocates assigning one of the "rank and file" to attend the twice-monthly Monday night board meetings, with pay.
Although he voted to accept an investigator's report on whistleblower Tim Clayton's complaint -- a report that accused Mr. Clayton of bad faith and urged his firing -- Mr. Harrison said the whistleblower's code "needs considerable improvement."
Asked why he supported hiring an investigator -- attorney Christopher Cobey -- whose expertise is in representing management to investigate a complaint by an employee against management, Mr. Harrison said he relied on the recommendation made by the district's counsel, Marc Zafferano.
Mr. Harrison said the district needs to do some long-term planning for replacement of equipment and sewer lines so it is not faced with all the replacement work and costs at the same time. Although the most recent study on sewer line replacement identified what had to be done in the next 15 or 20 years, it didn't outline a schedule for the projects, he said.
Ronald Shepherd
He became interested in following district matters when John Carcione, a family friend, was elected to the board in 1997. He said that after attending a couple of board meetings, he concluded: "This is atrocious."
Mr. Shepherd said he had no intention of running for the board when he filed the lawsuit against Mr. Schrader in April 1998. But as time went on, he began to consider a run, and this summer when the filing period opened, he decided, "I've had enough. ... Somebody's got to step up to the plate."
Mr. Shepherd said that as a member of the board he would offer expertise in managing people and in capital planning. He said the current board doesn't have an adequate long-term capital plan or a realistic plan for replacing aging sewer lines.
He also criticizes the board for what he sees as lack of leadership, saying the district manager has too great a role in setting the agenda for the district. "The board should set the policy and (do the) planning for the organization, not the manager," he said.
He advocates creating subcommittees of the board in areas such as finance, capital improvement and labor relations.
An immediate priority for him is to get the board to study the state of equipment and sewer lines in the district, when they will need replacing, and what the costs will be. He said the latest study commissioned by the district on replacing sewer lines is "full of holes," in part because it lacks hard data on the age of many sewer lines.
A firm advocate of replacing District Manager Schrader, Mr. Shepherd said he would consider rehiring fired whistleblower Tim Clayton, who was acting manager for most of 1997, and giving him the top job for six months. If Mr. Clayton does well, he would be given the job permanently, Mr. Shepherd said.
David Walker
Regarding District Manager Schrader, Mr. Walker said he "would want to look more closely at how he was hired." After observing Mr. Schrader at recent board meetings, Mr. Walker said: "He seems to know what he's talking about. But on the other hand, the way he was hired was illegal. Maybe he wouldn't have gotten the job if his buddies didn't give it to him."
Mr. Walker advocates establishing subcommittees of the board that would focus on specialized areas such as finance and long-term planning.
He is concerned, he said, that the district has not done proper planning for replacement of aging sewer lines, and criticizes the most recent study on the matter as based on insufficient data. He advocates a full-scale inventory of the district's sewer lines to resolve some unanswered questions, such as the age of some of the pipes.
Asked if his long acquaintance with John Carcione would make it difficult for him to act independently, he said he has already told Mr. Carcione he intends to look at all issues afresh and form his own opinions.
Mr. Walker said he, Mr. Shepherd and Mr. Lomax "don't agree on everything, but we realize that the only way changes will be made is to get in together and break the (current) majority."
If elected, Mr. Walker said, he wants to go out in the field with employees to "see what they're dealing with ... on their own turf." Also, he added, he's fascinated by the nuts-and-bolts work of laying pipe and engineering efficient systems.
© 1999 The Almanac. All Rights Reserved.