East Palo Alto plans to look for a new city manager to replace current manager Magda Gonzalez, the City Council indicated at its Tuesday, July 15, meeting.
The council met in closed session Monday to discuss Gonzalez’s contract, which expires Oct. 21. Though council members were precluded from talking publicly about the contents of their closed session discussion, after being pressed by a member of the public regarding whether Gonzalez resigned or is being replaced, they referred comment to City Attorney John Nagel, who said that the council will discuss hiring a recruitment professional to find another manager.
Mayor Laura Martinez called for a special meeting for July 22 to discuss retaining a professional headhunter to complete this process.
Before the closed session, an overflow crowd of residents came to City Hall to express their displeasure with Gonzalez’s actions as city manager and demand her termination.
Gonzalez has come under fire for an alleged lack of transparency, particularly when she considered possibly contracting police services with the San Mateo County Sheriff and for an audit of the city’s Rent Stabilization Program.
The latter incident caused a firestorm of protest after it was revealed that the auditors interviewed three representatives of two large landlords but not any tenants about the rent program. Rent board member Shyree Randolph, a tenant, was interviewed by the consultant, but only in her capacity on the board and not as a tenant, she has said.
The audit targeted Rent Stabilization Program Administrator Carol Lamont, accusing her of being biased in favor of tenants. Lamont strongly refuted the allegations and resigned in March in protest. Her last day was May 10.
Statewide tenants’ rights group Tenants Together obtained 3,000 pages of city documents through the California Public Records Act, some of which purported to show that the audit was biased in favor of the landlords, which included the city’s largest, Equity Residential (EQR).
Some documents appeared to show a close relationship between Gonzalez and EQR, including an email that tipped the developer to three tenants’ rights ordinances. The email was not sent to any tenant groups.
Gonzalez told the Weekly last week that Tenants Together “cherry picked” the documents. She defended her record of support for the rights of under-served communities over the years and said she fully supports the rent program.
Gonzalez, a former Redwood City deputy city manager, has served as city manager since she was named to the position in 2012. She did not return a request for comment Tuesday.
Maureen Larsson, a rent stabilization board member, said she believes that Gonzalez misjudged the will of the people.
“Any city manager who appears to undermine two of the fundamental reasons for East Palo Alto’s incorporation — to determine who polices us, and laws to protect residents from the abuse of exploitative landlords — isn’t a good fit with the city’s culture,” she said.
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Can’t cherry-pick if there aren’t any cherries to pick. Those are facts, and the emails didn’t write themselves.R Buh-bye Magda!
East Palo Alto is too small, and too dysfunctional, to ever hope to be a city in any sense of the word. It would be hard to expect to find anyone who is competent, and rational, to ever hope to be able to make any significant changes in East Palo Alto so that it might eventually become a decent place for people to live.
It should disenfranchise itself, and return to unincorporated status in San Mateo County. The County has the resources to help the residents of East Palo Alto deal with the problems that it faces—particularly in the area of law enforcement.
Other options include Facebook buying up all of the property, replacing slums with company office buildings and parks. Given Facebook’s money, and the diminutive size of EPA—that would probably be the solution that can take place over time—without a lot of political hoo-rah.
@Disenfranchise-EPA ~ Your ignorance and bias speaks for itself. Wow.
Moving on… Good for the citizens of EPA. The power of voice. Keep your strength and determination. You will find a person who has morals and ethics, for their is corruption in EVERY city.. Rich and poor. Time reveals all things.
Keep on demanding what’s right for yourselves and the city!
Kudos!
Finally! This is not the first incident which indicated strongly that Ms Gonzalez was not appropriate for EPA. I only hope that the ‘professional’ headhunter will, perhaps for the very first time, consider the needs and desires of EPA citizens and propose someone who is not only in it for the money and contacts that can be made. EPA needs to be governed from within. Despite the paternalistic and disparaging attitudes held by too many of our neighbors, the expertise does exist within the city to run itself. It is the many parasitic consultants and nonresident employees who make poor decisions and perpetrate the dysfunction.
Just like to note for Disenfranchise-EPA what the Merriam-Websters definition of “disenfranchise” is. It means to take away someones right to vote
dis·en·fran·chise verb ˌdis-in-ˈfran-ˌchīz
: to prevent (a person or group of people) from having the right to vote
Full Definition of DISENFRANCHISE
transitive verb
: to deprive of a franchise, of a legal right, or of some privilege or immunity; especially : to deprive of the right to vote
Finally, a competent city employee who questions the status quo of the economic dysfunctions within the city. The powerful want her out? Bring in the FBI.
Paly Mom – great comment! Corruption, deceit and bias exist at all levels of politics. We need someone who understands and respects our town’s history, who understands why we have our rent stabilization laws, who upholds it, whose self-interested is balanced with the skills to carefully steer us in the right direction, while working collaboratively with city council.
The hiring of Gonzalez was in some ways an odd fluke: A mistaken early announcement of her hiring by Ron Davis, who was acting city manager, which resulted in the loss of another solid candidate was a big part of Gonzalez’ hiring. Even back during the interview process, there was some concern about hiring her, amongst those tasked with it. We’ve been reaping what our city government sowed, and it’s time to end this lousy cycle.
@Laughable, your comment is utterly laughable. You apparently know nothing about the history of EPA or the questionable characters that come in and out. You apparently did not read any of the articles or press releases that came out revealing the corruption of Magda Gonzalez. Your complete disregard for what is right and wrong should come as a shock to me, but strangely enough, it doesn’t (in case you missed it, my lack of shock is not a good thing).
As a city manager Magda had every right to audit any program she so chose. It is her job to evaluate and determine the effectiveness of programs within the city. Yet, her email exchanges, harassment and illegal dealings with landlords, are what ultimately ousted her. Make no mistake, EPA residents have far cried for someone among staff who will stand up and challenge Status Quo. We know that there are others among staff who do not carry they vision of the city. We are watching them too, and hope that justice will prevail in their removal as well.
It is easy to sit, laugh and point out flaws in others when you’re far removed from the issue. Rethink your position “laughable”, challenge your thoughts and actually take a look at what is going on, or miss the beautiful struggle that EPA residents are about to engage in to take back our city.
Laughable’s comments are exactly that – because they reveal their ignorance, lack of facts and no real knowledge of what Gonzalez has been up to.
We need another ML Gordon type of city manager.
> shows ignorance and bias ..
Not certain how suggesting that this municipality is too small to be sustainable is ignorant .. but let’s look at a few facts–
City Revenue: $18.3M (2014-15)
City Size: 2.5 square miles
Population: 28,155+ people
Assessed Value: ~$2B.
Palo Alto’s budget for about twice as many people is now about $160M.
It’s very difficult to use simple comparisons of two City’s expenditures to compare the management, or other issues. For instance, the Fire and Sewer systems in East Palo Alto are provided by an assessment district. These districts bill the clients via property taxes, so the cost of owning property goes up, but the revenue needed to sustain the town is smaller than if it had to provide these services itself.
The following is an assessment of EPA from the San Mateo LAFCo in 2009:
East Palo Alto:
http://www.co.sanmateo.ca.us/attachments/lafco/pdfs/2009-07-07_msrepa.pdf
Financial Ability of City to Provide Services
a. While the City has made progress to enhance revenue and
reduce operating costs to close an ongoing structural
budget deficit, it does not contain adequate reserves to
offset sustained economic downturn.
b. Information from the San Mateo County Assessors’ Office
indicates that the City’s property tax revenue will
continue to decline in the short term and the City
projects that sales tax revenue growth will slow and
remain flat.
c. Due to the structural budget deficit compounded by
economic uncertainties, the City will need to frequently
re-examine and adjust the Adopted Budget and alternatives
including contracting for service to meet the most essential
of city service priorities, particularly public safety.
&&&&
This LAFCo assessment is about six years old, so perhaps it needs to be brought up to date—but it seems that this important government agency also has opined that EPA probably would not be sustainable in the future.
The following links are for general edification—
Tax Rates For Santa Clara County:
http://www.co.sanmateo.ca.us/Attachments/controller/Files/2013_TaxRateBook.pdf
City of East Palo Alto Budgets:
http://www.ci.east-palo-alto.ca.us/Archive.aspx?AMID=48
As to bias—well, every one is biased, and slinging this pejorative around probably won’t win you any awards in a debating contest.
(Amazing the the Weekly censored the previous post–but that’s the price one has to pay to try to converse in a heavily Liberal environment. Free speech for me–but not for thee!)
Disenfranchise – in their last sentence, has shown their true colors.
EPA Organizer – the only to this cities problem is “Gentrification. “ look at the improvement with the removal of Whiskey Gulch area of the city.
Laughable – you’re not sticking to the subject, which is the possible ousting of Gonzalez. What do you know about her and her Reign of Error?
I’ve lived in East Palo Alto since 2009. Tracking the comments, I really wonder if some of the commentators have spent much time in EPA. My neighbors include a Stanford Professor and her husband, a Marketing VP at a tech startup, a Director at HP, a Director at Yahoo, an Apple Software Engineer, and an EBAY employee. I see hundreds of Google and Facebook employees biking to work along the Bay on my morning walk with my dog on the Bay Trail. East Palo Alto may face the challenges that every city with poverty has, but to imply that it should simply unincorporate and “go away” is ridiculous. East Palo Alto is changing rapidly, and the challenge for the new city manager will be to manage the changes and competing priorities gracefully, not maintain status quo.
Mark – did you forget to mention that honoring the reasons for the City’s incorporation are crucial, and that even though you only mention your neighbors who are professionals, that EPA is filled with working class people? Who else are your neighbors – there must be others besides those that you mentioned? Full on gentrification is NOT what the majority want. We don’t want to be like all the other Peninsula cities. We treasure diversity – including economic diversity. Latinos are the majority, and the ethnic shift we’ve experienced in the past 15 years is still manifesting.
A city manager who isn’t going to cozy up to big economic interests is crucial. We need someone who can identify the strengths in our diversity, shore that up, and reduce the vulnerabilities that we have. Neutrality with crooked landlords, demanding that if they want a seat at the table requires that they be in compliance with the laws, is paramount. Learning about, understanding and valuing the various city offerings is also important.
The next decade is going to be very important, and we need the right people with the right mix of smarts, experience, sophistication, heart and respect for residents to run the city. This also means that residents need to keep participating in the city’s processes. Apply to be on commissions and boards, take some time to learn about city laws, participate in the General Plan meetings, attend city council meetings, vote, demand transparency, let your elected officials and their hires know what matters to you.
Hmm – Yes, obviously we have many working class neighbors. We speak Spanish at home, and my neighbors also include Costco employees, school teachers, house cleaners, and gardeners. My larger point to people who have not spent any time here is that it is a diverse community that has many people who don’t fit the profile of what “Disinfranchise” sees as EPA.
For more on East Palo Alto’s remarkable history see the film Dreams of a City: Creating East Palo Alto. even though made a long time ago still is a good orientation. Can be seen online at http://vimeo.com/23458988 or just Goolge “dreams of a city vimeo” and it will show up
East Palo Alto’s embattled city manager will be replaced, mayor announces
http://www.mercurynews.com/rss/ci_26163374?source=rss
I wish Palo Alto would wake up and oust the City “Manager.”
Throw her out on her azz. No letter of recommendation. Don’t come back.
Chris Peter, the Equity Residential (EQR) employee who was on the rent board, was kicked off. Hahahahahah!
Seeing that a LAFCo report is quoted, I wanted to clarify that LAFCo made no recommendation that the City dis-incorporate. LAFCo did not opine that the City would not be sustainable in the future. The report identified challenges for the City that were not unique to the City of East Palo Alto, in particular at the onset recession. In the coming year LAFCo will revisit municipal service reviews for south county cities. In the meantime readers are encouraged to visit the City’s website to view budget, audits and other reports.
Word is that Magda Gonzalez resigned. Who will hire her now? Maybe she and that sham consultant, Nadine Levin, can open their own firm.
I shouldn’t be surprised that some EPA outsiders don’t even feel the need to hide that fact that their ideal outcome for EPA would be to raze it to the ground, evict everyone, and annex it to Facebook. Clearly the people who live here now, some of whom have lived here for generations, and who provide underpaid labor for the surrounding, privileged communities, don’t count for anything. To some, East Palo Alto is nothing but the last affordable real estate in Silicon Valley, ripe for the plucking by those who already have wrung the maximum profit elsewhere. Thank goodness we do have a committed group of people who continue to resist that sickening viewpoint and value the flawed, but rich and unique community here.