The Board of Directors of the Rossmoor Community Services District has approved on a split vote a change in the slow-motion replacement of retiring General Manager Joe Mendoza.
After somewhat of an awkward discussion, the board voted 3-2 to allow Mendoza to change his title to “Interim General Manager” and alter his contract to allow him to immediately transition from a “salaried” employee to an hourly employee.
According to the agreement approved by the vote, Mendoza will now be paid $55 per hour and will be eligible for overtime pay as the district continues to search for a General Manager to replace him.
In addition, Mendoza’s contract amendment allows him to collect unused vacation pay at will and he will be allowed to be paid for unused sick time accrued under his salaried contract “upon final separation” from the district.
Mendoza resigned nine months ago, but there has been no replacement found, His new hourly agreement has no termination clause, yet legal advisor Tarquin Preziosi said the board can “at will” vote to separate him from the district.
“I think we all have the best interest of our CSD in mind,” Mendoza told the board. “You know, I put in six years (as General Manager of the RCSD). and I don’t want to walk away and have any negative issues or anything, you know, not covered,” he said.
Mendoza said he asked for the new arrangement for his own well-being.
“It’s time for me to either go to work part-time somewhere, or it’s just that feeling that I have for my personal well-being,” Mendoza said to the board.
“The salary part means you can’t just work, you know, unlimited hours, which I have in the past, and I want to cut down just a little bit.”
If Mendoza puts in more than 40 hours, however, his new “open-ended” interim contract will allow him to be paid overtime, like any other employee.
“I have given you my word that I will stay until you find somebody, and I will help train them if needed,” he told the board.
Some board members were confused by the action and before discussing it, asked Preziosi to explain.
“So general manager Mendoza is currently a salaried employee as the appointed General Manager of the district,” said Preziosi.
“As we know, the district is in the process of recruiting for a new general manager, following Mr. Mendoza’s announcement of his intent to retire from full-time service with the district,” he continued.
“Mr. Mendoza has requested that in the interim period, while the district is searching for a new general manager, he be converted to an hourly employee, to work on an hourly basis, as set forth in the agreement,” said Preziosi.
“This is Mr. Mendoza’s request, and he presents this. I have drafted this amendment for the board’s approval,” the District’s legal advisor said.
Mary Ann Remnet, the Board’s First Vice President, expressed reservations and concerns over the new arrangement.
While she agreed the board needs a General Manager, the agreement before the board should be more of a “short-term” bridge to a new leader rather than completely “open-ended.”
“I have concerns with it because it (the agreement) has no definitive path forward,” she complained.
“It’s one thing to say we have an interim,” she said, “but we’ve been looking for a general manager for nine months now,” said Remnet.
She said the agreement would make more sense if it were a “short-term bridge” from Mendoza to the next General Manager.
“I’d like to be able to revisit it and look at it. And I don’t know if that requires tabling, reconsideration or what, but this just kind of, to me, feels like kicking the can,” she said, “and it’s a bad choice of words, and I’m not filtering them right now.”
“I am not comfortable approving it with all of the open ended pieces,” said Remnet.
“General Manager Mendoza has resigned and indicated that he doesn’t want to be general manager here. And this was intended to be a short interim agreement,” she said.
“I’m going to have to agree with that,” said Director Jo Shade.
Director Michael Maynard disagreed.
“I don’t necessarily agree with that,” said Maynard, suggesting the word “interim” implies Mendoza’s agreement and employment will be short-lived.
“The name interim is a stop-gap measure, not necessarily a kick-the-can measure,” explained Maynard.
“And I think if we don’t enter into an agreement, and we’re not successful, we need to have security in our place of having an executive who knows how to lead this district, which Mr. Mendoza does,” he added.
“So the idea of, well, what if this takes too long,” noted Maynard of the ongoing recruiting process.
“Well, that actually, to me, makes my point of why I’d want to have an interim contract with our experienced General Manager, because what happens if we lose both? Is our district better off? No, not at all,” Maynard concluded.
“We need active leadership for this district, and I believe we need to secure an interim position. And the goal, obviously, is to find the replacement, the ongoing, longer-term solution, but the fact that we don’t have a definition of what the time is for what we call interim, I don’t see how that plays,” said Maynard.
“So I am in a different opinion,” he said.
Director Tony DeMarco said “I’m taking Mr. Mendoza at his word that he’s staying on to help us out, and I agree that we need an interim, and we need a general manager.
“Call him whatever you want, but, and certainly, Mr. Mendoza is a seasoned general manager for RCSD, and I you know, if this process takes a month or six months or a year, I’m hoping that Mr. Mendoza is going to fill that gap,” said Demarco.
Several times during the debate President Nathan Searles offered the board the chance to go into executive session if the board wanted to continue discussing the issue.
The board finally approved Mendoza’s contract amendment by a vote of 3-2, with Directors Remnet and Shade voting against it, while Searles, Demarco, and Maynard voted to approve the new arrangement for Mendoza.
In another action in March, Mendoza gave the Directors a report on the community’s fire hydrants following a fire last month in which one of them was alleged to have suffered a “catastrophic” failure.
Following a conversation with Ken Vecchiarelli, General Manager of Golden State Water, the company contracted to supply water to RCSD and, in doing so, maintain its water delivery infrastructure.
Mendoza told the Directors that “all our hydrants are being inspected and replaced every three years.”
He said 65 of the community’s 384 hydrants were replaced last year, including the one that failed during the Orange County Fire Authority’s fight to extinguish a blaze on Feb. 10.
Mendoza said the Golden State water official suggested the catastrophic failure term used by the OCFA spokesperson “wasn’t the case.”
Both Maynard and Demarco inquired about record keeping of inspections, with Demarco suggesting the community should have a record of hydrant inspections like keeping records of all of the community’s trees.
Remnet said much of the inspection information is on the Golden State website suggesting a link between the two could provide inspection info for interested Rossmoor residents.
