Ramona Water Board Assailed by Grand Jury

The Ramona Municipal Water District is in such leadership turmoil that it risks not being able to attract competent personnel to deal with such pressing problems as water delivery and sewage treatment, the San Diego County Grand Jury said in a report issued this week.

“Lacking experience as directors and operating without the benefit of by-laws or other rules that define their roles, the board is answerable for the absence of strong leadership, rapid turnover of personnel and the loss of community confidence,” the report stated.

“The obvious turbulence and instability” of the district “has left its mark--a community factionalized, polarized and understandably confused,” said the report, which was issued Tuesday.

But the three senior board members suggest that the grand jury’s report was more an indictment of the entire Ramona community than of the board members themselves.

The board members formally received the report at their meeting Tuesday night, but withheld discussion of it until their next meeting, on Jan. 27.

The grand jury said it found no cause to order a criminal investigation into the district’s management and operations. But it observed that:

- Board directors have meddled in staff-level affairs, thereby causing “chaos, discontinuity and low morale.”

- Board meetings “are contentious to the degree that an atmosphere of hostility pervades and personal attacks overshadow the issues at hand.”

- There has been an “unbelievably high” turnover among the board of directors; the five current board members have served an accumulated total of only five years on the board.

- Because of that instability, “there is the very real prospect that the district--and by extension, the community of Ramona--will suffer by not being able to attract competent personnel to fill senior management positions in the near future.”

- Since 1978, the district has employed eight general managers--two who resigned, one who was fired, four who served on a temporary basis until successors were found, and the current general manager, Robert Bradford, who has served since September, 1985. None of the six senior management staff members has been with the district longer than 18 months.

The district is the most prominent form of government in the Ramona area, providing water, sewer, fire protection and park services for about 22,500 residents in the unincorporated county area, deferring to the county only for Sheriff’s Department protection and land-use decisions.

The grand jury began its investigation last August at the behest of several Ramona residents who complained about irregularities in the mail ballot election in 1981 approving construction of the Ramona Dam, and allegations concerning the management and cost overruns of the dam project. Construction of the dam was halted 12 months ago when the contractor walked off the half-completed job in a dispute with the district. Construction has not resumed because the district has not yet been assured of additional federal funds to complete the work.

The jury recommended that the board hire a management consultant to define the duties and responsibilities of board members and senior staff members, and to stop meddling in staff operations, and for the directors to “avoid personal attacks and hostile relationships.”

The grand jury report did not identify specific board members as the source of the district’s leadership problems.

Of the five current members, the two senior directors took their seats two years ago this month; another has served for one year since the recall of a board member, and the two newest board members took their seats this month.

While there was some criticism that the grand jury report overstated the problems, directors said they did not find too much fault with the panel’s overall findings.

“It says what I’ve been saying ever since I came on the board,” said board Chairman Chuck Paul, who has been on the board two years. “The board’s recent history has been in playing the role of five general managers instead of allowing a competent general manager to do his job.”

Paul said Ramona voters and not the board members themselves should be faulted for the transiency of the directors.

“The people in Ramona by and large get what they deserve,” Paul said. “There’s not much community participation in anything. Ramona has no pulse. They seem to react to whatever crisis is coming up. There’s not a lot of solidarity, but a lot of backbiting.

“They’ll vote out incumbents not necessarily on the merit of his performance but just because he’s an incumbent.”

Indeed, each of the three board members elected in November, 1980, was ousted by the voters in November, 1984, while neither of the two board members elected in November, 1982, sought reelection last November. Of the three newcomers elected in 1984, one was recalled a year later and the other two--Paul and Fred Reese--remain on the board as the senior members.

“It’s a thankless job,” Reese said. “If things are going smooth, you rarely get any compliments, but if things go wrong, you get a lot of heat. When a term is up, a board member asks himself, ‘Why go through this again?’ ”

Bernard Kuhn, who was elected to the board last year in the wake of the recall election, said, “Many of the citizens of Ramona are not too well-informed as to what goes on in the district, and there have been some vocal minorities who have raised their voices, and not always with the facts and the complete story.”

Kuhn, however, said he was not disturbed by the constant turnover of board members, saying that those who offered themselves for reelection did not campaign hard to retain their seats and that it is just as common for a director to put in four years of service and then quit.

He added that the district has suffered from the area’s growing pains. “Planning has fallen behind because of the growth,” he said.

Paul said Wednesday he agreed with the grand jury’s specific recommendations to the district, namely that the roles and responsibilities of the board and general manager be better defined and separated, and that the directors work to “avoid personal attacks and hostile relationships.”

Paul noted that even prior to the grand jury’s report, the district had hired an outside management consultant to help smooth the district’s operations.

But he said the jury may have overstated some concerns, especially regarding staff turnovers. “We have a very strong general manager right now, and I’m confident he’ll be a long-term general manager,” Paul said. “And the board demonstrated with last night’s (Tuesday’s) meeting and in previous workshops their willingness to work with him and solve problems.”

The 13-page report noted that civic-minded citizens might be hesitant to offer their services as board members because of the volatile history of the board.

Among the problems confronting the water district, according to the grand jury report:

- How to assure a future water supply, especially in three years when the City of Poway will stop treating about half the water now pumped to Ramona. Options include building a district-owned water treatment plant or purchasing treated water from other sources.

- How to deal with increasing sewage demands. Construction of homes and commercial establishments stopped a year ago because the area’s sewage-treatment capacity had been reached, and although one of the treatment plants is being expanded, there is concern that it will still be inadequate.

- How to upgrade the district’s fire department, which it inherited as a volunteer department from the county. The department has been served by no less than five fire chiefs in the last eight years, the grand jury noted.

- How to maintain district facilities and equipment, because “in past years no funds have been set aside” for maintenance.

- How to deal with “an inordinately large” number of lawsuits filed against the district in recent years, confounded by a “rapid turnover” of lawyers representing the district and the absence of legal counsel at board meetings.

- How to deal with the “debilitating effects of an extraordinary rate of turnovers” among board members and general managers.

- How to reduce the level of hostility at board meetings, especially among those board members who have supported litigation against the district itself.

- Finally, how to get construction of the Ramona Dam back on track.