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City manager gets more time to pay back loan

by Renee Batti

Terms of the bridge loan from the city that was part of Menlo Park City Manager Glen Rojas' employment agreement have been changed to give him more time to pay it off.

The City Council unanimously approved the change on June 22, giving Mr. Rojas until Feb. 1, 2011, to repay the $127,000 bridge loan, which originally was to be repaid when he sold his former residence in Riverside.

So far, he has paid $95,000, but because he hasn't been able to sell the house — Riverside was recently named by Forbes Magazine the third-worse post-bust real estate market in the country — he has been unable to repay the loan in full, he said. The balance due on the loan, with interest, is about $41,500, according to a staff report.

Mr. Rojas, who was hired in 2007, bought a home in Menlo Park in October 2008 with a $1.27 million loan from the city. His employment agreement provided for a bridge loan of 10 percent of the purchase price, secured by the new home and the Riverside house. The terms of the loan required him to pay it off in full when he sold the Riverside house.

Mr. Rojas requested earlier this year that his employment agreement be changed to allow him to sell the Riverside house without paying off the bridge loan in full at the time of the sale if the sales proceeds are not enough to fully pay off the loan.