The Hollister City Council emerged from a late-night closed session Oct. 19 without City Manager Ana Cortez, and with a unanimous vote to ask dozens of city employees back to the negotiating table after Cortez gave layoff notices to them last week.
The council approved the “emergency resolution,” which could result in all 36 laid-off city employees returning to work after being notified of the layoffs Oct. 14. The layoff notices had placed the affected employees on 30 days of administrative leave before their employment ends.
But now, Mayor Roxanne Stephens said those employees will soon hear from the city’s human resources staff to discuss coming back to work. A motion by City Councilmember Dolores Morales said the human resources director will “meet and confer with the unions” to negotiate on their employment, which includes an effort to find financial savings for the city.
The Oct. 19 vote—which took place just before 11pm and after hours of impassioned, and at times boisterous public comment from residents and city employees—also rescinded a declaration of financial emergency that the council had approved at an Oct. 2 meeting.
Among those likely to be affected by the latest decision are nine civilian police employees who had received layoff notices. Hollister Police Sgt. Bo Leland, president of the Hollister Police Officers Association, welcomed the council’s decision.
“For you guys to ask those employees to come back to work…and to rescind the financial emergency so we can get to the actual work of solving this city’s problems—I am in agreement with that,” Leland told the council.
Cortez, who had advised the council to declare a financial emergency in the first place, did not return to council chambers when the five city councilmembers came out of closed session Oct. 19.
Two of the city’s largest union groups had taken votes of no confidence in Cortez in the days after she issued layoff notices. The HPOA and the Service Employees International Union called on the council to fire Cortez, offering a laundry list of grievances and allegations.
The council did not say why Cortez did not return to council chambers. One of two closed session items on the agenda was titled a “public employee performance evaluation” for the city manager. Stephens said she did not have “anything specific to report” from the closed session.
The council scheduled a special meeting for Wednesday, Oct. 21, “to finalize some decisions that we preliminarily made tonight,” Stephens said. She said for legal reasons, the city needs “a couple of days” to agendize the Oct. 21 items.
“Just know that the discussion that we started today about your concerns about the city manager will be part of the agenda item on Wednesday,” Stephens said.
The employees who received layoff notices Oct. 14 included nine civilian police employees, a police captain and 25 employees in the city’s public works, finance, senior services, parks and recreation and airport departments.
HPOA and SEIU representatives have said the employees who received pink slips perform critical “behind-the-scenes” responsibilities—such as answering phones, maintaining records and keeping storm drains clear—and possess unique experience and knowledge that are difficult to replace.
The layoffs would have had significant impacts on city services. Some of the civilian police staff even returned to work after Oct. 14, despite being on leave, according to union representatives.
Unions allege financial shenanigans
Union presidents said Cortez did not consult with them or department heads to attempt to find other options to save money for the city. Leland and Frank Garcia, president of the local SEIU, claimed that Cortez and city finance staff have reported inconsistent and incorrect numbers when trying to explain the City of Hollister’s dire situation.
Garcia said he recently noticed some numbers in city financial reports that were incorrect, and notified city officials
“The city replied, and admitted that there were some incorrect numbers,” Garcia said before the Oct. 19 meeting. “That’s accountability. How are you going to lay people off when you openly admitted to me that you’ve miscalculated? How is that even possible?”
Garcia has worked in the city’s stormwater department for about nine years.
Leland said he had reached out to Cortez last week to discuss his ideas to save money in the police department, but the city manager refused to talk or meet, and has not been transparent about city finances.
“Ana Cortez’s history here can only be described as irrational, inconsistent and ineffective,” Leland said. “Depending on the day, the deficit around here is $3.8 million, $6 million, $16 million, $11 million and $20 million. Those are all the different numbers we’ve received from her. That’s out of control.”
At the Oct. 2 council meeting, Cortez urged the council to declare a financial emergency after describing a dire situation in which City Hall only had $178 in its general fund bank account, and officials had no way of paying employees the following week.
Also at that meeting, the council approved an interfund loan of $18 million from impact fees to the general and water funds in order to make payroll.
The city’s deteriorating financial situation is due to years of mismanagement and inattentiveness by previous city officials, according to Cortez and the current councilmembers.
The meeting drew hundreds of people, with a standing-room-only crowd spilling out the back of council chambers and into the City Hall lobby. Union members and their supporters—many wearing purple SEIU T-shirts—gathered outside to rally the public before the meeting, and continued to demonstrate with signs and flags inside City Hall during the council session.
Most of the 50-plus speakers during a public comment period at the beginning of the meeting expressed their support for city employees.
Raucous audience
Cortez, who the council hired on Feb. 2, did not appear to look in the direction of the individual speakers or the audience at any point during the 2.5-hour public comment period.
Some of the affected employees shamed the council for hiring Cortez in the first place, despite allegations of employment mistreatment and other grievances earlier in her city management career. Others said they have tried to reach out to their supervisors and Cortez for more information, but have not received any responses.
Some admonished city officials for letting go of longtime city employees with an apparent disrespect for decades of service and commitment to their jobs.
Stephens tried but failed to control the audience, asking them to hold their applause when they agreed with an individual speaker, often leading them to applause louder. Some speakers continued talking after a two-minute timer signaled the end of their time, even after Stephens told them to stop speaking.
At one point, Councilmember Rolan Resendiz loudly urged Stephens to “let them speak,” resulting in a brief shouting match with the two officials yelling over each other.
Animosity among city officials and audience members reared its head as well. When former Mayor Mia Casey stood up for her turn to speak, Resendiz displayed a handwritten note accusing her of bankrupting the city.
Casey told Resendiz to remove the note, and her husband Jon Casey, who is running for Hollister City Treasurer, approached Resendiz at the dais with a stern expression and pointing his finger at the councilmember.
