Newport Aquatic Center in turmoil as board members who sued colleagues get the boot

The Newport Aquatic Center executive board is down to four members.

For months, the board had been split by a lawsuit: two members suing three of their colleagues plus the center’s executive director and other staff members, alleging financial and other misdeeds.

This month, Bill Grant, Jon Van Cleave and Jim Netzer — the board members named as defendants — and board member Greg Collins, who is not named in the suit, voted to eject Bruce Ibbetson and Donna Warwick, the members who sued, saying they were “disruptive,” “hostile and antagonistic” and “likely to continue disturbing the affairs of the Newport Aquatic Center if they are allowed to remain as board of director members,” according to a notice of the Sept. 4 board meeting, where Warwick and Ibbetson got the ax.

Warwick, who joined the board in 2016, said she saw her removal coming and didn’t attend the meeting because she didn’t want to “legitimize” it.

In the 32-page meeting notice, Grant, the board chairman, gave detailed, point-by-point rebuttals to Warwick and Ibbetson’s allegations and suggested the two “have behaved in a seditious, obstructive, disruptive or unreasonable manner that is contrary to the best interests of the Newport Aquatic Center.”

The lawsuit, filed in December in Orange County Superior Court, accuses Grant, Van Cleave, Netzer, longtime Executive Director Billy Whitford and several NAC staff members of misconduct ranging from credit card abuse to allowing for-profit operations at the nonprofit facility. The suit demands that a judge appoint a receiver for the center, declare the board’s bylaws invalid, remove Grant, Van Cleave and Netzer from office and bar Whitford from the premises.

The case has carved a deep line of demarcation among members of the Newport Beach institution.

NAC, which sits on city- and county-owned land on the shores of Upper Newport Bay’s North Star Beach, has offered recreational and competitive rowing and paddling for boaters of all ages since 1987. Whitford has been the director for 21 of those 31 years.

Warwick, Ibbetson and several parents of middle and high school students in the competitive junior rowing program say the case is about loose ethics to the point of corruption. The other side says it’s a power play to the point of a coup.

Whitford characterized the suit as an attempt to vault junior rowing over all other NAC programs and make the center an incubator for elite athletes.

Supporting high-level rowing is one of the aquatic center’s roles — it is a training facility for U.S. Olympic hopefuls and international teams.

But it also offers summer youth camps and public vessel rentals and partners with community organizations to introduce people with disabilities to paddling. Among the programs are an outrigger paddling team for the blind and an introduction to boating for underprivileged youths.

“This diversity of programs is one of the targets of those who are attempting to exalt the junior rowing program and give to it preferential treatment over the other programs in their attempt at a hostile takeover of the NAC,” Whitford said in a statement.

Warwick, who has been involved with NAC since 2008, when the eldest of her three children was a junior rower, denied Whitford’s claim of elitism and dismissed it as a “battle cry” to pit outrigger canoers against rowers.

She said she wants accountability and segregated funds for junior rowing so it doesn’t subsidize adult programs.

She acknowledged that junior rowing is expensive — $4,000 per child for seasonal tuition. But not all rowing families are wealthy, she said, and those who sacrifice to pay the fees should feel like their money is going specifically to that program. Currently, all NAC funds go into one pot.

“I’m fighting for financial integrity and what’s fair for everyone,” she said.

The lawsuit also claims the defendants allowed a privately owned, for-profit canoe manufacturer to assemble and distribute boats and paddles on the premises. It also alleges use of NAC credit cards for personal use and says at least $227,000 has gone missing from the junior rowing program.

The notice before the Sept. 4 meeting denied involvement in the private canoe business and said the credit card use was in the center’s interests. It said the claim of missing money was “reckless and brazenly false” and meant to “foment, agitate and incite members of the public to believe and adopt the same false portrayal.”

Whitford called Warwick and Ibbetson unreasonable and said they are intentionally sowing discord.

“In many cases, there is a legitimate question about who did what,” Whitford said in his statement. “This is not one of them.”

However, Warwick said she is confident that she and Ibbetson will prevail.

“We just have to play that long game,” she said.

This is the last of two parts.

hillary.davis@latimes.com

Twitter: @Daily_PilotHD