Turnover Among Rosemead City Staff

Backers of the incumbent city council members have been trying to blame "someone else" for all the turnover among city staff in recent years.  They're including this charge in some campaign literture, and they've sent numerous Mike Lewis-penned letters to the editor.  Our own supporters have rebutted those charges in recent letters to the editor:

From Brian Lewin, in the Feb 23 Pasadena Star-News and San Gabriel Valley Tribune:

Incumbents acting badly

Letter writer Martha Wagner had it mostly right in her Feb 9. letter, "Atmosphere in Rosemead." There has been bullying, intimidation and turmoil since March 2005. But its primary location has been in council chambers, and its sources - Jay Imperial and Gary Taylor.

For a clear illustration of that, she need look no further than the meeting of Dec. 19. Were she there, she would have seen Taylor both lose control of the meeting and contemptuously refer to Councilman Tran as a "good boy." At the same meeting Councilman Imperial used profanity and baselessly implied that a gift given by Tran might have been stolen.

As for the "exodus," it was clear that with the defeat of two (and very nearly three) members of an arrogant and complacent city council in March 2005, major changes were in the air. The staff in question no doubt saw this over time and felt that, for reasons of their own, it was time to move on. After all, when you have such an abusive atmosphere as Wagner suggests there is, you see a constant turnover of staff. Why, then, have the new employees stayed?

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From Todd Kunioka, in the Feb. 16 Pasadena Star-News:

Changes in Rosemead

The staff of the city of Rosemead answers to the city manager. The city manager answers to the city council majority. So if there's been an "exodus" of city employees, it's either because many old-timers have decided to retire for reasons that have nothing to do with the city council, or because the employee no longer has the confidence of a city council majority.

Last time I counted, John Tran plus John Nunez are only two members out of five on the city council. Thus, singling them out for everything that goes wrong in Rosemead is the province of the mathematically challenged.

The fact is that the March 2005 election finally lit a fire under a city council that had become too comfortable in their jobs.

So it's no accident that, only after March 2005 did we see the city council push for a new garbage disposal contract, a new contract calling for increased staffing from the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, quicker response times on graffiti removal, the launch of a city Web site and a beefed-up city newsletter.

While these improvements are a start, there's still a long way to go before city pride will truly be justified in Rosemead.