By BROOKE SELF
STAFF WRITER
Posted Feb. 12, 2015 @ 8:19 amADELANTO —Adelanto City Manager Jim Hart is taking a two-week leave of absence while using up accrued personal time, he said Wednesday night after he did not attend the open session of the City Council meeting.
“I have time on the books that needs to be used up,” he said. “I’ll be out for two weeks.”
City Attorney Todd Litfin said Hart was taking a “management leave” and there was no reportable action following the City Council’s closed-session performance evaluation of Hart. Two council members said previously they believed a change at the top was needed.
Hart said he attended the closed-session meeting but left soon afterward.
“I was there but let them know I needed to use the time, so they excused me tonight and next meeting,” Hart said. “The council has the right to evaluate me at any time, so I look at this as them exercising their right to provide input to me. They are entitled to their opinion. That is why there are performance evaluation processes, so they can share their thoughts. The more appropriate way to do that is in the closed session and not the newspaper.”
When asked about Hart’s leave, Councilman Jermaine Wright said, “Change is coming.” Hart’s nameplate was missing from the dias, and former Mayor Cari Thomas said, “The writing is on the wall.”
Just hours before the council meeting, Adelanto Mayor Rich Kerr asked Hart to deliver a State of the City address to the local Chamber of Commerce at Stater Bros. Stadium. Kerr said he thought Hart was the “best person” he could choose to give the presentation.
“I made a last-minute decision when I saw everybody here,” Kerr said inside the packed conference room. “I wasn’t at that point to give this presentation. ... (Hart) was the best person I could pick to present this to the chamber to get everything across to you in the proper way.”
Hart delivered a PowerPoint presentation of the city’s recent activities, saving information about Adelanto’s fiscal emergency to the end.
“The city’s finances ... I’m not going to spend a long time on this,” he said. “We’ve been talking about this back and forth for years; the city struggles financially. The bottom line is that the tax revenue that comes into the city doesn’t sustain the cost of services being provided.”
Hart said the city’s annual tax revenue is equal to about $4.5 million and its $2.6 million deficit is compounded by a $4.9 million contract with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department to provide public safety protection, in addition to other city contracts.
He also said a controversial prison plan to develop a 125-acre facility in Adelanto next to the city of Victorville’s Federal Correctional Complex was not a “done deal.”
“As you know, it didn’t lack news coverage,” Hart said. “Los Angeles County still has to approve it. If they don’t approve it, then there’s no deal. If they do, then we go from there. Long-term benefits for the city is you’re going to get $1.2 million annually and about 1,000 jobs. It’s going to be very helpful for the local area.”
Hart also touted a $17 million annual payment that would come from the developers 20 years after the revenue bonds used for the construction of the facility are paid off. However, later he said it appeared Los Angeles County was nowhere near adding the prison topic to an upcoming agenda.
San Bernardino County 1st District Supervisor Robert Lovingood and Hesperia Mayor Eric Schmidt were both in attendance at the State of the City event. Lovingood made it clear in comments to the Daily Press after the presentation that there would be no “county takeover” in Adelanto amid the city’s potential bankruptcy filing. The city’s cash is expected to be depleted by the end of the year, according to Hart.
“It’s a defined process that the state and (Local Agency Formation Commission) really manages; the county doesn’t manage it,” Lovingood said. “I don’t want any misinformation on this. There’s a process; if you look at the city of San Bernardino it’s the same thing. There’s a delineated process but the county isn’t the one that makes a decision. There’s no county takeover.”
Schmidt said he thought each city in the region was responsible for its own destiny. When questioned about the possibility of incorporating Adelanto into other local cities, he inferred that it wouldn’t “make sense” to do so, and said there were no talks occurring on the subject.
“We understand the collective impact of each city on the community,” he said, “and we try to give each city its own sovereignty to make its own decisions. And we do our best to back those decisions.”
Brooke Self may be reached at 760-951-6232 or BSelf@VVDailyPress.com. You can also follow her on Twitter at @BrookeSelf or @DPEduNews.
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