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As the East Palo Alto Sanitary District bid its final farewell to the community on Tuesday after more than 80 years of sewer management, there were no eulogies or proclamations recognizing its decades of service.
Rather, the final meeting of the district board devolved into a scene of accusations and acrimony as board members clashed over travel expenses, legal strategies and personnel disputes. The district, which serves East Palo Alto and a portion of Menlo Park, dissolved under a stench of impropriety, with board members squabbling, the general manager facing an investigation over financial irregularities and its vice chair being questioned over her role in the board hiring a public relations firm.
At the Sept. 30 meeting, Fergusson and board Chair Dennis Scherzer brought attention to another irregularity: the list of trips that board member Glenda Savage had elected to undertake on behalf of the district in the months to come. The list of travel expenses, which Fergusson obtained through a Public Records Act request, include a trip that she took to Washington, D.C., between August 19 and 24 for a podcast conference. Records show that she had also booked trips between now and March 25 to New Orleans, Charlotte, San Diego and Las Vegas.
Savage, for her part, took umbrage at an email that Fergusson had sent out to various community members earlier in the day, sharing these receipts and describing the board’s recent closed session actions.
Fergusson, who joined the district board in June, said in the email she was made aware in late July and early August of “irregularities in District operations and finances.” After holding two closed sessions on Aug. 14 and Aug. 29 to evaluate the performance of General Manager Akin Okupe, the board voted 3-2 to hire a law firm to investigate these allegations. Under the $75,000 contract, the firm Armijo Legal Solutions will also consider a complaint that Okupe allegedly filed against Fergusson pertaining to the board’s recent hiring of a public relations firm, according to Fergusson. Okupe was placed on paid administrative leave.
The decision to investigate Okupe was polarizing, with Savage suggesting at the Sept. 16 meeting that the $75,000 expenditure was not necessary because the district is about to cease to exist. Scherzer countered that he believes it’s a critical investment to determine whether the allegations of impropriety are legitimate.
“I’m just trying to avoid legal liability in case there is merit to any of these complaints,” Scherzer said. “But we need someone who is an expert to review them and determine if they have merit.”
The board will not be around to see the results of the investigation. Rather, the report will now be delivered to the city of East Palo Alto, which on Oct. 1 officially took ownership of the district’s assets and responsibilities.
For East Palo Alto officials, the consolidation (or “takeover,” as sewer district officials like to call it) is extremely welcome and long overdue. Council members and developers have complained for years about the district’s practice of charging developers high and seemingly arbitrary sewer hookup fees. Disputes over these fees had doomed several popular developments, including a school and a nonprofit center, and significantly delayed others, according to city officials.
The city’s petition to take control of the district was reviewed and ultimately approved by the San Mateo Local Agency Formation Commission, a state body that governs jurisdictional disputes, during two separate votes last fall and in July. The sanitary district then sued both the city and LAFCo but their attempt to reverse the ruling hit a dead end on Aug. 30, when San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Roger Piquet declined to reverse the LAFCo ruling.
According to Fergusson, she and Scherzer had both supported appealing the Piquet decision. They were overruled, however, by their three colleagues, Savage, Ophelia Bello and Betsy Yanez, according to Fergusson’s email.
Savage, who has been on the board for 21 years, explained at the Sept. 30 meeting that her decision not to appeal was based on the advice of the district’s attorney, who estimated that appealing would cost the district about $200,000 and that the likelihood of winning on appeal was less than 2%.
“If we move forward and lose in the end, it would all be over $1 million,” Savage said. “For me, the answer was no. I stand by my decision and hope that my work on this board demonstrate my commitment to the community.”
Savage also said that all the trips that Fergusson had sited were booked more than six months ago, before she knew that the district would be dissolved. She said that she had since canceled these reservations.
Scherzer said that the district is still waiting for confirmation that the money will be returned to the district.
“We have no evidence of that and we’ve been reassured that this is going to happen,” Scherzer said.
He also questioned Savage’s decision to sign up for these events, which included the Southeast Renewable Energy Summit in Charlotte and the Transform Conference in Las Vegas, which according to its description targets “leaders, thinkers, and entrepreneurs seeking to make transformative change in workplaces and work cultures.” When Savage contended that he also goes to conferences, Scherzer argued that there is a clear distinction between the trips she was planning and his attendance at the meetings of the California Association of Sanitation Agencies, an organization of which the district has been a member.
“It’s not like any conference I’d ever went on,” Scherzer said.
The debate over East Palo Alto sewers has spilled over into election season, with Scerzer, and district board member Ofelia Bello both running for the City Council. Also running are Gail Wilkerson, who serves on the sanitary district’s rate committee, and Webster Lincoln, a supporter of keeping the district independent.
During the district board’s final meeting, Lincoln acknowledged the high tensions in the room and urged members to “keep it professional and refrain from attacks.”
“A lot of people in this room wanted to keep this district independent. It wasn’t successful. It is what it is,” Lincoln said. “We still have to live in this community, and we still have to get along with each other, regardless of whether this district exists or not.”
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