Resignation Was Prompted by Exposure Threat

Jim de Boom, who resigned after just a week as president of the board of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, stepped down because an angry parent vowed to publicize problems that had led to De Boom’s ouster from the local YMCA’s top job several years ago.

The parent said De Boom’s role in creating a significant debt at the YMCA shows that he would probably be a poor choice to head the school district in the wake of the largest school embezzlement in California history.

“Based on what little knowledge I had about the financial situation at the YMCA, which was bleak after his term there, I did not feel he was necessarily the right person to lead the school district out of its financial woes,” said Marianne Towersey, a Newport Beach mother of two who helped with YMCA fund raising in the 1980s.

In 1988, De Boom was asked to resign after 13 years as YMCA executive director when the board of directors found that the Y’s finances had been mismanaged and that the organization was deeply in debt, several YMCA board members said.

When he gave up the school board presidency last week, De Boom cited increasing demands from his private business and his lack of fiscal skills, rather than mentioning the YMCA issue.

But in an interview Friday he acknowledged stepping down as president so that questions about his tenure at the YMCA would not “compromise the integrity of the district.”

Referring to the public outcry over crowded classrooms, teacher layoffs and the admitted embezzlement of at least $3.5 million by the district’s former top financial officer, De Boom said that “the board doesn’t need more battles than it’s got.”

“The Board of Education has got enough attacks coming at it from different directions for different reasons, I didn’t think they had to defend me,” said De Boom, 51, who was first elected to the board in 1983 and served as president in 1988.

De Boom and YMCA board members confirmed last week that De Boom ran the YMCA during a string of deficit-laden years that left the organization deeply in the red, forcing it to merge with the Metropolitan Y--an umbrella group for several YMCAs in Orange County--rather than remain independent.

At the time of the merger, several months after he left, the YMCA reported a debt of $1.6 million, said Jerry Nutter, president of YMCA of Orange County.

Most of the debt came from a failed capital campaign near the end of De Boom’s tenure. Intending to expand the facility at 2300 University Drive with a 45,000-square-foot addition that would have included a gym, locker rooms, a counseling center and a kitchen, the YMCA board sought to raise $6 million from community members and corporations.

Fund-raisers, however, collected only about $100,000, a fraction of the $1.2 million that had been invested in running the campaign. About $400,000 more was owed local merchants when the YMCA merged with the Metropolitan Y in early 1990.

Even before the campaign, De Boom had confronted fiscal problems. At times, he spent money intended for the agency’s retirement and worker’s compensation funds on general operating expenses, he and board members said.

“If you’ve got $10 and you’ve got $40 worth of bills, you take the bill that’s most pressing and that’s usually the electricity,” De Boom said Friday. “It was a matter of priorities what to pay and what not to pay.”

Members of the YMCA board during the 1980s criticized De Boom’s financial management skills and said he should have been more forthcoming about budget shortfalls. They said he should have initiated cutbacks rather using the retirement and workers’ compensation funds to pay every-day expenses.

“He did not do his job well, obviously, he went from zero debt to huge debt,” said Sterling Wolfe, who was on the Y’s board of managers then and is now its president. “The YMCA today is paying the price because we still have that debt that was incurred during his tenure.”

“He was neither all good nor all bad,” said David Smith, who was treasurer of the YMCA board at the time of De Boom’s resignation. “Over a period of time (De Boom’s) assumptions about the budget became a pretty serious problem that needed to be reckoned with,” Smith said.

In discussing the controversy about his leaving the school board presidency, De Boom said that he was aware of concern in the community about his financial management skills and that it had surfaced before he was named board president Dec. 8.

Nevertheless, he permitted the board to choose him and only stepped down when he learned that a resident intended to publicize his YMCA history, he said.

The controversy about his handling of YMCA affairs apparently first came to the attention of a school board member on Dec. 7.

That happened when Towersey called Sherry Loofbourrow to tell her she should look into De Boom’s history with the YMCA, Towersey and Loofhourrow said. Towersey suggested that De Boom would not be the best choice to lead the board during a time when it had to restore confidence in its financial management.

Loofbourrow then called De Boom and discussed the matter with him, he said. Loofbourrow declined to discuss her conversation with De Boom.

At the board meeting, De Boom was unanimously elected president.

The action surprised Towersey, who remained concerned. She called Loofbourrow again on Dec. 9 and said she would publicize De Boom’s YMCA history unless he stepped down, Towersey said.

On Loofbourrow’s advice, De Boom did resign the presidency Dec. 15.

Towersey said she feels that she did the right thing for the district. “I am a concerned parent. I don’t have faith in his ability to lead the school board. I would never want to damage him or his family,” she said.

The other five board members said last week that De Boom’s resignation took them by surprise, with their first warning of it coming when a revised agenda indicating reorganization on the board was faxed to them Monday afternoon.