Water District Wallowing in Troubles

Somehow, despite the turmoil, disruption, infighting, back-stabbing, backbiting and controversy, Vern Leming thinks the future of the Ramona Municipal Water District is looking up.

Fact is, he says, that’s the only view possible when you’ve hit bottom. And statistics suggest that is where the public agency has wallowed in recent years:

- The district, which provides water, sewage, fire protection and parks and recreation for the Ramona area and is the closest the town has to a formal city government, has chewed up and spit out five permanent and four interim general managers in 10 years. The district currently is headed by yet another interim general manager.

- Since 1978, the district has lost or fired five permanent fire chiefs and is on its sixth. Two other men have served as interim fire chiefs four different times since 1978.

- The district recently hired its fourth legal counsel in two years.

- The district is on its fourth finance director in three years.

- The five men who govern the district have a combined, cumulative total of five years’ experience on the board of directors. Two men have served on the board for two years and are its “senior” members; one man has been on the board one year, replacing a man who was recalled after a year in office, and two others were seated earlier this year.

But statistics aren’t the entire story.

- The most recent general manager literally became so sick and tired of his job that for a time he could only stand showing up for work one day a week. His underlings were making decisions he should have been making. Finally, he quit altogether and announced 24 hours later, “My health has improved remarkably.”

- One of the directors of the district is threatening to sue the district.

- Another director supported a lawsuit against the district.

- The county grand jury in January issued a scathing 13-page report critical of the district’s leadership--or lack of it. Because of meddling by directors, the district staff is suffering from “chaos, discontinuity and low morale,” the jury found; “too often, district board meetings are contentious to the degree that an atmosphere of hostility pervades and personal attacks overshadow the issues at hand.” The three-man majority of the board fired back a nasty, two-page letter of its own criticizing the grand jury, and the two-man minority wrote a rebuttal to the majority’s position, thanking the grand jury for its critique. So the three-man majority then wrote a rebuttal to the minority report.

- The grand jury is again investigating the district because one of the directors, Jack Allen, tried to dodge a late-payment fee of nearly $1,000 when he was delinquent in paying one of his own water bills to the district which he himself helps govern.

- District engineers are worried that because of the constant disruption and changeover of management over the years, long-range planning for the area’s water and sewage needs, not to mention ongoing maintenance of aging water and sewer lines, has fallen by the wayside and the district is now behind the eight ball on issues that, ultimately, relate to a resident’s ability to turn on tap water or flush the toilet.

Specifically, plans to construct the Ramona Dam and reservoir are a year behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget because of litigation and unforeseen rock excavation costs. And a sewer hookup moratorium is in place over part of the district because it is years tardy in finding a place to dump the increasing amount of effluent generated by the growing community; and the Regional Water Quality Control Board finally sued the district, ordering it to stop accepting new sewer hookups until the disposal problem is solved.

Only in recent weeks has the district begun making specific plans for lining up a new source of treated domestic water when the City of Poway in 1989 terminates its agreement with Ramona to supply drinking water--a fact the district was aware of three years ago when the pact was made, but was slow to act on.

“There has been such a lack of continuity in management and on the board of directors, we’ve had a hard time staying on focus on the things we’re supposed to be taking care of--sewage and water,” said one senior employee.

And Leming noted that, given the district’s reputation for management turmoil and political upheaval, the district has had to look far and wide to find persons willing to work in the district.

“When we hired our most recent fire chief, we were told by a consultant that there were 80 fire captains in San Diego County who were qualified to become our chief. But not one of them applied. We hired a fellow from Florida.

“And there must be hundreds of qualified finance directors in the county, but we only got two applicants from within the county for our finance director’s job. Who would want to work at a place that has our reputation? We may be limited in our recruiting to people who haven’t heard of us.”

So it goes in Ramona these days.

“In a perverse way, things are better now than they have been,” said Leming, a civil engineer who was seated on the board in January. “Sometimes before you rebound, you have to go ‘splat’ and hit bottom. Well, I think we’ve hit bottom, and there’s no way to go but up.”

If Ramona residents find it amazing that the district is in such leadership disarray, they don’t seem to be doing much about it. Many persons considered qualified to run for office haven’t because, they say, they don’t want to dirty their reputations by association with the district’s board of directors. It has created a vicious circle of sorts: the worse matters get, the more distance the community seems to put between itself and the district, and the further from resolution are the problems.

The most recent general manager was Robert Bradford, who had the job for 1 1/2 years before resigning March 24 “for reasons of health.”

The biggest single reason for quitting his $64,000-a-year job, Bradford said in a recent interview, was the meddling by some directors in the day-to-day running of the district that fostered a debilitating sense of suspicion and distrust, not only among the rank-and-file employees but within management and the directors themselves.

Undercutting Authority

One director, he said, “reviewed some of my correspondence on a desk and told a secretary, ‘Don’t send that out.’ He directly countermanded my own orders. Talk about someone undercutting my authority. What’s an employee to do?”

Bradford declined to target specific board members with his criticism, but staff members say their complaints primarily are with directors Fred Reese and Jack Allen.

John Stratford, who served as general manager from November, 1983, until he was fired in March, 1985, by three newly-elected directors, said Reese “was constantly in the office. He had employees really shaken up. He had this attitude that he was a one-man auditing and investigating committee.”

Leming noted that Reese once complained at a public board meeting that a district worker was seen on the weekend shopping for groceries with his family in a district vehicle. Reese’s remarks at the meeting carried the implication that the employee was guilty of wrongdoing.

“All Reese would have had to do was call Bradford with his concern, and he would have been told that the employee was on stand-by that weekend and was required to be in the district vehicle so he could be in radio contact with the dispatcher and respond to an emergency call immediately,” Leming said. “But instead of taking care of the matter quietly, he chose to air what he thought was dirty linen in public. The assumption around here is that every rumor, innuendo and bad connotation is true.”

Reese, a retired certified public accountant, said he considered his election a mandate from the voters to monitor day-to-day operations within the district, and did not like Bradford trying to restrict his access to staff.

Most Meddling

“We take our jobs pretty seriously,” he said. “If you restrict someone’s ability to speak, you better have good reason. I’ve worked and lived overseas for years, and I’ve come to appreciate our First Amendment rights.”

Reese does not deny spending time in the office, but said it is for the purpose of making informed decisions as a director. He has never, he said, given orders or direction to the staff.

While Reese, who has been on the board for two years, is considered by staff to be consistently the most meddlesome of the directors, what is described as one of the single most serious affronts came from Jack Allen, who was seated on the board in January.

A few days later, he showed up at the office with tape recorder in hand and “interrogated” two department heads--finance director Glenn Ward and personnel director Mike Ewald--about a district audit and staffing levels, Bradford said.

“They came into my office afterwards and threatened to resign on the spot. They said they’d never been treated in such a way,” Bradford said.

Bradford said that the two told him that Allen’s tone was accusatory and confrontational. Ward and Ewald declined to be interviewed by The Times.

Allen denies the characterization, saying he was simply trying to brief himself on district issues and believed the two department heads could fill him in. He said he still had a copy of his tape recording, but he refused to let a reporter hear it.

In the wake of that incident, Bradford sent his staff a memo setting down guidelines on staff-board interaction and directed, among other things, that “Employees are not required, nor are they authorized, to meet with any directors to discuss any business of the district or its staff . . . “ unless they first have the approval of their department head or Bradford himself.

That Feb. 5 memo angered Reese, Allen and director Bernard Kuhn, who voted at a board meeting to overturn Bradford’s directive.

Raised Hackles

The board’s 3-2 vote against Bradford raised the hackles of the employees themselves, who, through their local union and employee associations, wrote letters of support to Bradford, giving him a “vote of confidence.”

“Can you believe a labor union coming to the support of management? But we had to because of what the directors were doing to us,” said one employee.

Last month, the directors adopted their own policy statement, laying down their ground rules for board-staff relations. And despite previously having overturned Bradford’s rules, the new board guidelines noted officially for the first time, “The point of contact between the board and all district employees is the general manager.”

“The board members therefore acknowledge that . . . neither the board nor members thereof shall deal with any district employee except through the general manager or representatives designated by him,” the policy said.

But the policy was open to ambiguity, it seemed, for the very morning after its adoption, director Allen called a billing clerk, asking waiver of a 10% penalty of nearly $1,000 that was levied for his being one day late in paying his water bill. He said he forgot to pay the bill because, ironically, he was embroiled in district business.

Allen said he called the billing clerk because he deemed her to be the general manager’s duly designated representative. She referred the matter to Bradford who, saying he was wary of being “set up” by Allen, agreed to waive Allen’s penalty assessment. “I figured, to hell with it, I’ll waive it.”

Board President Chuck Paul and Leming said Allen should have gone to Bradford directly with his problem, and by going to a staff-level person, Allen was violating the very policy he had voted to accept the night before.

In any event, the board voted 4 to 0 at a subsequent meeting to force Allen to pay the penalty assessment, and district employees say they have been asked by the grand jury to forward documents relating to Allen’s waiver request.

Backcountry Syndrome

Grand jury deputy foreman John Kauth said his committee has asked for “additional data (from the district) to help us determine whether we should reopen our investigation into the Ramona Municipal Water District,” but he declined to elaborate.

Bill Davies, who served on the board for four years and decided not to seek reelection last year, said the district is suffering from community apathy. “We’re victims of the backcountry syndrome, where everyone kind of does his own thing and doesn’t pay much attention to government.”

Paul, the board president and a two-year “veteran” of the board, said he too is bothered by community disinterest.

“The only time the public seems to participate in our affairs is when we’re discussing a problem or project that specifically would affect them, such as a sewer moratorium in their neighborhood. But generally, the community is apathetic about what is happening in the district, and that’s frustrating to those of us who are trying to turn things around.”

In virtually every election in recent years, the incumbent has either chosen not to seek reelection or, if he did, was defeated. “The community may not know the issues,” said Paul, “but they know there’s a problem of some sort, so every election they blame the incumbents--no matter who they are--and throw them out of office.”

Level of Distrust

Bradford said the level of distrust was so high within the district that the directors even decided not to send a district representative to the Ramona Planning Group, which serves as a local advisory panel for the county Board of Supervisors, for fear the representative would misrepresent the board.

Board member Allen admits he holds a grudge against the district, not only because of the billing incident but because he feels the district has reneged on a promise to build him an avocado grove road of certain standards to replace one that will be lost when the Ramona Dam and reservoir is ultimately completed, bordering the back side of his property.

It is over that issue of whether or not a previous general manager had promised to build a replacement road of upgraded specifications that has caused him to prepare a lawsuit against the district, Allen said.

If there is a swing vote on the board of directors, it may well be Kuhn, who reportedly has grown frustrated with Allen’s style of leadership.

Kuhn said of Allen, “He says he was elected to get rid of waste and mismanagement, and he wants in the worst way to investigate it. But the rest of us don’t see the problems the way he sees it, and we don’t see eye to eye with him.

“The problems of the Ramona Water District have fed upon themselves. The turmoil has created more turmoil,” Kuhn said. “The public gets stirred up and perceives need for change, so the people on the board don’t get reelected and the new directors come in, all armed to tear things up and fix things, but they don’t have any experience, and it creates instability.”

Allen said he doesn’t plan on running for reelection in 3 1/2 years years--and probably wouldn’t win if he sought reelection. “I don’t think anyone could win a second term,” he said.