Posted Mar. 5, 2015 at 6:02 PM
Updated Mar 5, 2015 at 9:16 PM
ADELANTO — Former Adelanto City Manager Jim Hart said on Thursday that he knew the newly elected City Council wanted to make personnel changes at the top, which prompted his resignation made effective on Monday.
“I know I was on the (chopping) block,” Hart said. “The majority of the new council members ran on the fact that they felt they needed to make change. As you know, I was attacked by the public for a number of things, starting with the Utility-User Tax. I was the face of the tax and they started to attack.”
Hart said he had a “good idea” his potential termination was imminent following the election and during the start of what were three separate performance evaluations on closed-session City Council agendas.
“I had an inklng that this was the potential based on what I said earlier,” he said. “A council has a right to do an evaluation every meeting if they want to. So, when they decided they were going to do a performance evaluation, that was basically the beginning of that process when they started talking about the fact that they felt like they needed to make a change.”
Hart said he chose to take two weeks of paid administrative leave toward the beginning of the process in order to use the time he had accrued.
“I had time that I would have lost if it wasn’t used, so I decided to take it at this time,” he said. “Unfortunately it got portrayed in the paper like I was being put on ‘admin leave,’ like I was being punished, but I wasn’t. I decided to do that and (the City Council) said that’s fine; I had enough hours to take me to February.”
When asked if he thought the City Council made a bad decision in letting him go, Hart gave a neutral response.
“It’s really their decision; they have a right to make that decision,” he said. “City managers — they always say we’re kind of like NFL coaches. You can have something go wrong and they can just choose to let you go just because they want to. That’s why you have contracts.”
His actual take-home pay with severance will total approximately $160,000 after taxes and other fees are taken out, and the total impact to the city facing insolvency and a $1.7 million deficit is about $225,350, records show.
“These were agreements made by a previous council,” said Councilman Jermaine Wright. “This council was bound by what the agreement was. We had the ability to negotiate something lower, like a car in lieu of a whole bunch of money that was negotiated prior — now the city is losing a vehicle and not more cash.”
Councilman Charley Glasper said the City Council directed City Attorney Todd Litfin, who was responsible for the face-to face talks. Glasper said Hart would not “back down” on his nine months severance pay.
“I think he got his requests,” Glasper said, “whether it was a sweet deal or good deal — he bargained for it and that’s what he agreed to. He wasn’t backing down on it so we had to agree to it. All of the fine print and legal stuff, the attorney had to go through with a fine-tooth comb.”
In Hart’s final settlement, which he negotiated between the City Council through the City Attorney, he received nine months severance pay, lifetime health insurance benefits and a 2012 Chevrolet Tahoe he was using as a city vehicle. Hart says most city managers have a 12-month severance package in their contracts and his was below that.
He went on to defend his leadership, describing a few major projects that he worked on to increase sales tax revenue that eventually did not pan out. However, he said the reasons were beyond his control, including Target dropping its plans to build a store in the planned Adelanto Towne Center and a state prison plan that never came to fruition.
“I wasn’t even looking at the city running out of cash,” Hart said. “My focus was to do things so it didn’t. It’s not like I just said 'Its OK, I’m out of here.' It’s because the council felt like they needed to make a change, so we came to that agreement.”
Hart said he believes the decline in the city’s current deficit from $2.6 million to $1.7 million proves his management was making a difference.
“The reason (the deficit) is down to $1.7 million in my mind is because of good fiscal management, through tight financial controls and through making sure expenditures only occurred that had to occur,” he said. “It’s my opinion that it was good fiscal management that brought the deficit from $5.4 million to $2.6, to 1.7 this year.”
His wife Nicole Hart agrees. She said she believed her husband was an asset to Adelanto.
“I thought he worked extremely hard in moving that city forward,” she said. “He had great staff that were by his side.”
Though Hart says the city’s finances have “always been tough,” his initial role when entering his position more than 10 years ago was to build relationships with other cities.
“When I came to Adelanto — Adelanto had a bad reputation,” he said. “Other cities didn’t want to work with it. There was very little cooperation. One thing the council asked me to do was to build relationships with other cities, which I think we succeeded in with Opportunity High Desert.”
City Engineer and Public Works Director Thomas Thornton is now wearing “three hats,” adding the role of interim city manager. He did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
Wright called Hart’s resignation a “move forward” for the city.
“We can start the healing process and try and get things going,” Wright said.
He said the City Council’s performance evaluation of Hart came after he did not have one done for several years.
“It was time for an evaluation of what he has done,” Wright said. “We were going about it the proper way. This is what should be happening. The fact that he hasn’t had one in many years I guess is a fault of the former council. But we were not going to sit by idly and not do our due diligence in making sure the city is getting what they paid for.”
Hart’s salary as reported by the State Controller’s office of approximately $280,039 last year was often attacked by the residents. But Hart said his actual salary was $216,000 and that cutting it would not have solved the city’s deficit. He said his philosophy was adopted from the Teamsters labor union in that it was better to lay people off than cut employees’ salaries while they are taking on additional work.
“That just creates disgruntled employees,” he said.
Glasper says he expects the City Council will find another interim city manager to replace Thornton before finding a permanent city manager.
“Tom Thornton is wearing three hats right now and that’s a pretty heavy load for one person,” Glasper said. “He’s agreed to take on the interim position until we can get an interim, and then subsequently a permanent. At this point it’s a step-by-step process. We’ve got to go through advertising and interviews and a contract has to be drawn up.”
The next Adelanto City Council meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday at 11600 Air Expressway.
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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