Two current Atherton City Council members and recently resigned council member Alan Carlson last week publicly challenged allegations made by a town volunteer that they received preferential treatment from the town’s Building Department, but took no action to remove their accuser from his position on the town’s Audit Committee.
Dr. Sam Goodman’s allegations were made in a Dec. 12 letter to the Almanac editor about the ongoing battle between the town and former finance director John Johns, who is suing the town over his October firing.
The matter was placed on the Dec. 19 council agenda to give Mr. Carlson and councilmen Charles Marsala and Jim Janz a chance to respond publicly to the allegations, said Mr. Janz, who was elected mayor earlier in the meeting.
Dr. Goodman chairs the town’s Audit Committee, which received regular reports from Mr. Johns as he conducted audits of the Building Department after irregularities were turned up.
In the letter, Dr. Goodman defends Mr. Johns and criticizes a private investigator’s report on the former finance director’s conduct. The letter also said, “The fact remains that three members of the City Council had their hands in the cookie jar of favorable treatment by the building department, didn’t want the news disseminated and therefore shot the messenger.”
Mr. Carlson, Mr. Marsala and Mr. Janz gave lengthy and detailed statements challenging the accusation. They called into question why the matters of their building projects and permits were even dug up during Mr. Johns’ audit of the Building Department, raising questions about Mr. Johns’ involvement and motives.
Mayor Janz noted that the project in question in his case dated back to 2000, yet Mr. Johns had said he was reviewing projects from the previous six years only. “Why was this project reviewed when it was outside the parameters of the review?” Mr. Janz asked.
Mr. Marsala’s case occurred in 1999, when he was a new resident in Atherton and well before he joined the council.
Resident Steve Ackley’s comments from the podium reflected those of several others who spoke after the discussion of the allegations: “Where are we going with all this? Let’s put it to bed. … Let’s move on.”
After the meeting, Mayor Janz said, “As far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of it.”
Dr. Goodman said the mayor, by putting the matter on the council agenda, was “trying to make himself and the council immune to criticism and also discouraging people from writing letters to the editor of newspapers.”
By doing so, Dr. Goodman said, he blew the matter up “to extraordinary proportions and … inevitably created a situation where they were going to have to defend themselves.”
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