The City’s a Reality; So Are the Watchdogs

Now that cityhood is a year-old reality, two men who enlisted in the fight against it see an even greater challenge before them: the self-appointed posts of city watchdogs.

Al Rumpilla, former co-chair of the Vote No Diamond Bar Incorporation 1989 Committee, and Frank Dursa, another longtime incorporation foe, now spend every other Tuesday evening seated in the front row, left side of the Walnut Valley Unified School District board room, where the City Council holds its bimonthly meetings.

With copies of the U.S. Constitution, Robert’s Rules of Order and the Brown Act within reach, Rumpilla, 46, takes meticulous notes. Often, he and Dursa, 66, speak out loud--and not always during the public comments period. Sometimes, they heckle.

And always, they find something to criticize, whether it’s furniture for City Hall (too expensive); a Diamond Bar newsletter with council members’ names on the front (political propaganda); city-paid trips to conferences and seminars (unnecessary), or a proposal to charge people for council agenda packets. That last was a slap in the face, they said, since they’re the only residents who regularly ask for copies.

Their nit-picking may not always be appreciated, but it is certainly noticed. “Their hearts are in the right place,” City Manager Robert Van Nort said recently.

Dursa retired from a job in sales management for a food company; Rumpilla is on disability from his truck-driving job after a back injury.

“I really don’t enjoy going to these stupid things, but from the very first day there was that violation of the Brown Act,” Rumpilla said, referring to several closed-door meetings the council-elect held before being installed. The San Gabriel Valley Daily Tribune sued the city, and won a court order to open the meetings.

“Now that we’re a city, I want our money spent honestly and wisely, not on foolish things,” said Dursa, sitting at Rumpilla’s dining room table on a recent morning.

“Ten dollars on my tax bill would be harder for me to come up with than $1,000 for other people making $40,000, $60,000, or $100,000 a year,” Rumpilla said.

There’s barely enough space for two coffee mugs on the table, which is covered with the accumulation of a year’s worth of City Council meetings: stacks and stacks of paper, thousands of reports, resolutions and ordinances the council has passed, revised or rejected.

And hundreds of newspaper clippings--Diamond Bar this, Diamond Bar that--neatly mounted on scrapbook pages.

“We’ve both missed two council meetings,” Rumpilla boasted. “When I missed one (Councilman) Gary Werner called me asking, ‘Are you sick?’ ”

But the two men aren’t always welcome. On several occasions, Mayor Phyllis Papen has sternly told them that they’re out of order.

And perhaps for a long time, Rumpilla and five other incorporation foes will be blamed for botching the incorporation process and almost causing the city to lose $1.2 million in property taxes.

The election had been scheduled for November, 1988, but was postponed because of last-minute objections by the residents in a letter sent to the county Local Agency Formation Commission.

Papen, who has flown to Sacramento several times to lobby for support of a bill to get the money, has accused the “handful of people” of bringing about a situation that almost deprived Diamond Bar of tax money.

Rumpilla dismisses the criticism with a wave of his hand.

“All we did was exercise our constitutional rights,” he said. “We’re being called gadflies, burrs on a dog’s tail. Whatever you want to call me, I’d wear it proudly.”