Vollaire Duped City Council, Member Says

Former Bradbury City Manager Aurora (Dolly) Vollaire was manipulative and enjoyed the support of a council majority that discouraged questions, Councilman Tom Melbourn told a roomful of his constituents Tuesday.

Melbourn called the meeting to defend himself after he was served with a recall notice by residents who say the entire council should resign in the wake of allegations that Vollaire, 54, misspent thousands of city dollars.

Mayor Audrey Hon has been served with a similar notice.

“You’ve got to walk in our shoes,” Melbourn said about himself and Councilwoman Beatrice LaPisto-Kirtley, who together made up the minority voting bloc. “In retrospect, yeah, it’s glaring. But we sure didn’t see it at the time.”

The district attorney’s office is investigating allegations that Vollaire used the city credit card, petty cash and money for which she was reimbursed on her personal credit card to buy personal luxury items ranging from fine china to designer sunglasses.

The City Council routinely approved large payments to those accounts, and rarely pressed Vollaire, who was fired last month, to explain where she had spent the money. Other payments that the council never saw were approved by the mayor, and all the checks were signed by the mayor and treasurer.

Yearly city audits by the Pasadena accounting firm of McGladry & Pullen also failed to uncover any irregularities.

About 30 people--roughly a fourth of Melbourn’s district--turned out to ask questions, argue cantankerously or just listen to Melbourn’s account of his frustration serving on a council where the majority voting bloc sided with Vollaire, who served as Bradbury’s city manager for 20 years.

While some walked away satisfied that an era of more vigorous checks and balances has begun, others said the entire council, the city treasurer and the auditors bear some blame.

“They have a fiduciary responsibility to look out for the receipts and expenses of the city,” said resident Bob Johansen, an accountant. “You can’t put total reliance on a city employee, or why even have a council?”

During a decade of annual audits, auditors with McGladry & Pullen should have noticed something was amiss, he added.

“Why not go back to them and collect the money? They’re the ones who did not do their job. CPA firms get sued all the time over this type of thing,” he said.

Melbourn, despite saying at first that he would not be “pointing any fingers,” said neither the city treasurer, who should have checked receipts, nor the auditors did their jobs properly.

“Should the audit have caught everything, 10 years ago or five years ago? Yes,” Melbourn said.

The same auditing firm is now reviewing Vollaire’s spending back to at least 1983, and a report outlining how much she may have misappropriated will be released soon.

That in-depth audit of all Vollaire’s receipts, Melbourn added, is being conducted free. “They’re doing it to cover what they didn’t do before,” he said.

Representatives of McGladry & Pullen could not be reached for comment.

Resident Larry Kester said council members should have asked more questions.

“It’s just so simple. Some of this stuff you look at and just say, ‘This is insane,’ ” Kester said of the various checks cut to cover Vollaire’s spending.

“We’ve got to recall them all so a new council can come in with a fresh eye,” he said after the meeting. “All the people on there now are just worried about trying to protect themselves.”

Melbourn--backed by LaPisto-Kirtley, who came to support him--told the group that Vollaire never itemized her spending in a way that would indicate she was misusing funds.

“When we saw the F&A;, we erroneously--and it’s got to be my fault--thought it was her deferred compensation plan,” Melbourn said of Vollaire’s personal credit card account.

In one 19-month period, the city paid more than $11,000 to that account alone. Tens of thousands more went to the city credit card account with Bank of America, much of that spent at fine department stores and boutiques, records show.

“You’ll notice that the B of A is split into two separate columns,” Melbourn said of two separate checks the council approved to that account in one month. “Well . . . it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to add up two columns, but they’re on two separate pages.”

“She had a real good game going,” added LaPisto-Kirtley. “It was a plot, but she convinced us she was being fiscally frugal, telling us how she had saved a couple hundred here, and $50 over there. Frankly, she did a real good job, because we fell for it.”

Melbourn said the council had very little time to review the list of monthly checks, which, unlike the rest of the backup material for council meetings, was first presented to them at the meetings. He added that working on a council where the majority backed Vollaire made scrutiny of her actions almost impossible.

“If I hadn’t been there, I don’t believe Dolly would have been fired,” he said of the closed session that decided Vollaire’s fate.

Of his own plans, he said, “You want me to resign, but I’m not going to resign, because I made a commitment to serve until April, 1994. And I’m going to serve that term.”

“If it hadn’t been for Tom, with me as backup, it may have not even gone to the district attorney’s office,” LaPisto-Kirtley added.

While many in the audience grumbled in response to Melbourn’s pleas for understanding, some said it is time to stop blaming and move forward.

“I think that this is a small town, and small towns are notorious for trusting each other,” said Claire Rohan. “I kind of think they’ve learned their lesson.”

“I still have faith in Tom,” added Debbie Foulger. “I feel that maybe the eyes could have been open a little more, but I have a feeling that if I had been in those shoes, it would have been me standing up there tonight.”