Ramona Water District Chief Cites Bickering for His Resignation

Charles Paul said he had taken all he could stand when he resigned as president of the Ramona Municipal Water District this week.

The second-year member of the district, which is the closest thing to a city government in Ramona and provides water and sewage among other services to the town, said he is tired of the dissension and bickering among its board members.

“It just wasn’t worth it,” Paul said of his decision Tuesday night to step down as president. He will remain a voting member of the five-man panel.

“The district is really crippled without a board that does their jobs. . . . (Current) board members have lost sight of what their jobs are,” he said.

Paul was referring to board members Bernard Kuhn, Jack Allen and Fred Reese, whom he called “a bunch of mini-managers” whose arguing has brought the district to a complete standstill.

Paul’s comments came in the wake of a vote taken by Kuhn, Allen and Reese at Tuesday’s meeting asking him to step down as president. The three maintained that Paul was unfair in his leadership and was the cause of many of the problems among board members. They also said Paul constantly tried to stifle their input during meetings while granting board member Vern Leming more time to express his views.

“(Paul) ran a tight ship, and it got away from him,” Allen said.

After Paul stepped down, Kuhn, Allen and Reese elected Kuhn as president--with Paul and Leming dissenting.

Kuhn said he will try to heal the rift that exists among board members.

“I’d rather not continue the dissension,” he said.

But infighting has been quite common to the district for years.

The county grand jury is investigating the district because Allen tried to dodge a late payment of a fee of nearly $1,000 when he was delinquent on one of his own water bills to the district he helps govern.

This investigation was preceded in December by a damning 13-page report by the county grand jury that was critical of the district members for their lack of leadership.

Jury members wrote that the district was suffering from “chaos, discontinuity and low morale . . . too often, the district board meetings are contentious to the degree that an atmosphere of hostility pervades and personal attacks overshadow the issues at hand.”

The district also has had many personnel changes over the past 10 years, including the shuffling of five permanent and four interim general managers and several fire chiefs, legal counsels and finance directors.

After the grand jury’s report, Kuhn, Allen and Reese sent an angry reply to the county, but Paul and Leming supported the report.

This dispute has only added to the district’s problems, Paul said.

“Things just keep getting worse,” he said.