Via the Victor Valley Daily PressBy BROOKE SELF
STAFF WRITER
Posted Feb. 6, 2015 @ 12:01 am
Updated Feb 6, 2015 at 9:21 PMADELANTO — The finance director of this fiscally embattled city announced her resignation this week and the city manager faced public heat to resign amid a performance evaluation by the newly seated City Council.
Onyx Jones headed up Adelanto’s Finance Department for the past year as officials struggled with a $2.6 million deficit brought on by low property and sales tax revenues. Jones submitted her letter of resignation on Wednesday, Mayor Rich Kerr said.
“She turned in her paperwork and she’s leaving at the end of the month for personal reasons,” Kerr said.
City Manager Jim Hart, City Attorney Todd Litfin and Jones could not be reached for comment Friday. The city’s main offices also were closed, as is their regular schedule.
Hart has served as Adelanto’s top city official for 10 years and is in the middle of receiving a job review by the City Council, according to board documents. Before coming to Adelanto, he was city manager in Twentynine Palms and Rancho Santa Margarita.
“I know they’re negotiating his contract, to buy it out, so that he’ll leave,” former Mayor Cari Thomas said on Friday.
Councilman Jermaine Wright said he thought the city needed “a change at the top” and that Hart has been “holding the city back.”
“The contract he got was very lucrative,” Wright said. “I would never have approved that contract; it was signed just before I got on the council.”
In recent months, Hart has frequently taken heat for his high salary from residents, outside groups protesting prison expansions and even City Council members and candidates. But Thomas sounded unhappy that the council could ask Hart to take a pay cut following his evaluation. She said he has taken on additional work since the city significantly cut its staff amid the fiscal crisis, and she touted his experience.
“I’m not a fan of lowering someone’s salary,” Thomas said last week. “I don’t think that’s an honest (move).”
According to former State Controller John Chiang’s latest report, Hart was the highest paid city manager in the High Desert with compensation totaling $280,000. His retirement and health care package tacked on another $50,105 and his total package was worth more than $330,000.
When previously asked to comment on the public complaints about his pay, Hart gave a breakdown of his total compensation package.
“The number includes other things besides salary, like accrual payouts, an advance on deferred compensation, value of the use of the city vehicle, etc.,” Hart wrote in a statement. “My actual salary is $216,000, which is the lowest salary out of all the city managers in the desert. That all gets put in the number. The other city managers don't have city vehicles, they receive auto allowances for using their personal vehicles, so that could be part of the difference.”
Councilmen Wright and Charley Glasper both said they were unhappy with Hart's performance during his tenure with the city.
“The city has been needing a change at the top,” Wright said. “I believe he’s been holding the city back.”
Glasper said he thought Hart has done a “mediocre job” and hasn’t done enough to brace the city for its fiscal crisis. He also said he wishes Hart would have taken a pay cut while dozens of staff members were being laid off.
“People are throwing rocks at us to do something about this situation,” Glasper said. “They keep coming up there and yelling about it. They’re throwing more rocks at him then they were throwing at us. How can you sit there and make $280,000 and the city is going broke? And we have a smaller population than any city up here, yet he’s making more money then all of the city managers in this area. You draw your own conclusions.”
The next City Council meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday. The city manager’s performance evaluation is again on the closed-session agenda.
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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