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By JEREMY HAY
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
A messy City Hall conflict has spilled into the open, startling employees and publicly pitting Rohnert Park’s longtime finance director against its new city manager.
The turmoil involves Sandy Lipitz, a 21-year city employee, who has retained an attorney to negotiate the terms of her departure from City Hall. In June, she received a critical email from City Manager Gabe Gonzalez, who has been in his post a year.
“The City needs to be able to rely on the budget information and analysis you provide, and has been unable to do so,” Gonzalez told Lipitz in a June 28 email made available this week by her Santa Rosa attorney, Scott Steever.
Lipitz, whose official title is Director of Administrative Services, hired Steever, of Lanahan Steever and Anderson. On Friday he said, “She’s being targeted by Gabe.” Lipitz declined comment.
In early July, Gonzalez, who has criticized the city’s previous financial decisions, hired an outside accountant to review the finance department. He described the move as an ongoing effort to examine city operations and also stripped Lipitz of her responsibilities for purchasing.
Gonzalez would not respond Friday to questions about his remarks to Lipitz, or whether her work had harmed or put at risk the city’s finances. He said city attorneys had advised him against it.
Steever said Lipitz’s willingness to disagree with Gonzalez led him to try and get rid of her.
“If she disagrees with Gabe she lets him know,” he said. “They’re looking to find something in her performance so they can force her out because she will challenge them.”
The events have roiled City Hall, where employees said they learned of the situation Thursday.
“Total shock,” one longtime staffer who works closely with both Gonzalez and Lipitz, said, describing employees’ reactions.
Steever said negotiations with city attorneys about a separation agreement are underway. He said that additional steps may be considered, but would not elaborate.
“As things get more difficult and more untenable for her at City Hall, we’re going to have to look at her options,” Steever said.
Asked whether the accountant’s review was prompted by concerns about Lipitz’s performance, Gonzalez said Friday, “I’m just doing my job and looking at all city departments, recognizing we have a serious (financial) situation.”
He initiated a similar review in February of the city’s public safety department that was a part of a controversial exploration into contracting out the city’s police and fire services. The proposal was dropped last week when public safety officers approved a new contract with $2.3 million in concessions.
Steever said Gonzalez and Lipitz reviewed the auditor’s report Friday.
Gonzalez described it as a “debriefing of what we learned.”
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Is Lipitz gone yet? Nerve is right. Carrying a significant structural deficit year after year and then negotiating an early retirement? Taxpayers deserve better.
Gabriel A. Gonzalez…abbreviate the name, and it spells out G.A.G. which is exactly what he makes us do!! Send him back to Mendot, PLEASE!! Gabe stated he hired an outside attorney as an “ongoing effort to examine city operations”….B.S!!! It’s because he doesn’t know how to audit the city’s finances himself! Therefore, how could he possibly say Sandy has made mistakes in her position. *DING, DING, DING*!!! “Lipitz’s willingness to disagree with Gonzalez led him to try and get rid of her.” Gabe is power hungry, not trustworthy, and gives a bad name to Latinos every where. Is this the kind of man you want running your city?? I sure don’t! (P.S. I am 100% Mexican and proud, so this has absolutely nothing to do with racial discrimination.)
Why do you assume that RP is operating the sewer system at a loss? Because Lipitz or those who rely on her numbers say so?
Even if RP was running the sewer system at a loss, it would be justified in doing so for the same reason it operates the police department at a loss: to provide an essential service to all! Government does not exist to make a profit. If the purpose of government was to make a profit, it would be better to abolish government as it presently exists and turn it over to venture capitalists.
It’s possible this is a sign of the Apocalypse but I actually agree with John Hudson re Gonzalez and Lipitz. The only thing holding the world together by a thread is our disagreement about the sewer bills. I can’t see the justification for forcing Rohnert Park to operate the sewer system at a loss.
Things are pretty bad when Hudson is correct about more things than he’s got wrong. Lots of his recent posts were pretty good actually. What the heck is going on in this world? Pretty soon I’ll have nothing to say.
Gonzales is no hero. He supported the illegal vote to cancel the Measure L election result and raise rates. Wait until you see your sewer bill in a few weeks. Then think again about who the real heroes are.
Personally, I suspect that Gonzales is just another self-aggrandizing bureaucrat who will do everything to feather his nest at the public expense. He simply had to get rid of Lipitz because of her incompetency in a critical position as so clearly demonstrated by her letter posted on our website: http://www.rpucc.org
If by “creepy” you mean that after making many mistakes an employee trying to shake the city down by hiring an attorney to negotiate a separation agreement than you are right. This action takes the phrase “you have a lot of nerve” to new heights. Go Gabe, Go!
It’s time for the City of Rohnert Park to have new leadership and new mangement. Gabe Gonzalez needs to cleans house and remodels this Country Club of a City for the chosen few….Let’s hope he doesn’t get chased out of town like the rest! As a resident I hope he uncovers every dirty little secret. If you are not outraged you are not paying attention! There is something creepy going down in this litle town!
WE TOLD YOU SO! Go to http://www.rpucc.org
On our website we have posted a letter from Ms. Lipitz admitting to publishing a statement in the October 9, 2009 edition of The Community Voice containing huge “clerical errors” in the tens of millions of dollars.
Lipitz is the person responsible for keeping the financial records on which the city supposedly based its representations that Measure L would drive the city into bankruptcy. Those representations can be no more valid than the financial information that Lipitz created.
Ms. Lipitz is leaving city hall less than one year since the new city manager arrived. Often new managers perform internal audits. Sometimes these audits find irregularities. Sometimes people just don’t get along with new management. When an employee hires a mediaholic attorney to handle their exit all the alarms go off. A forensic audit should be conducted as soon as possible to protect the integrity of both parties.
If the Press Democrat reporters search back into their archives, they’ll find articles where Lipitz sounded the alarms about numerous financial crisis situations, especially the unfunded retiree medical costs which the City promised to fund but never did.
In many ways, Lipitz knows exactly what went wrong and why and when. I’m pretty sure that 10 years ago she told city leaders exactly what would be happening today if they didn’t address the situation.
Of course she was blown off and of course she did absolutely nothing to change course. They say success has many fathers and failure is an orphan.
Lipitz as finance director is about as responsible as anyone for the mismanagement of Rohnert Park. She is after all a very highly paid management employee.
She probably needs a lawyer to arrange some kind of indemnification from Rohnert Park to shield herself from future legal actions when all is revealed. She’ll probably be thrown under the bus by the very people she advised. Messengers don’t do too well when the bad news is thoroughly exposed.
Get ready for massive public outrage when the details of her golden parachute become known. It’s going to be beyond all human comprehension because she has a large keyring of skeleton keys. Of course she needs a lawyer for a lock box before putting her toe in the water.
“Fifteen-year Councilman Jake Mackenzie, who has worked with Lipitz through at least six city managers, said he could not comment on a personnel matter…”
OF COURSE!
Gonzalez wants a scapegoat. He wants Lipitz out, but all she has actually done is to follow orders from her prior bosses, those six prior city managers, and the city council for all those years.
Like a new CEO taking over a troubled company, he takes it all out on the employees (he wants to balance Rohnert Park’s city budget on the backs of the employees when it was City management and the City Councils that got the City into the hole it’s in) and on those who were just doing their jobs the best under previous bosses and their own policies. And I’d expect Gonzalez now wants to install his own hired-gun Finance Director, perhaps someone who worked for him in the two-bit town he came from, to cover up the mistakes he’s making.
Pretty bad when you have to get a lawyer to quit your job. I wonder how much the lawyers on each side of this will make as the city continues to spiral into insolvency?
Rhonert Park is the ugly ducking of city politics in Sonoma County. They are the gang that can’t shoot, not the gang that can’t shoot straight.
Good old boy, Jake “Pothole” Mackenzie has seen alot in his time on the throne in RP unfortunately he has not learned a thing about governing the city he spends so little time in it with his SMART board and transportation committee meetings interests.
Maybe thats why they have had 6 managers in 15 years and a politically disfunctional city government.