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The Fall
How a city manager lost the council's confidence and lost his job.
By Kara Chalmers
City Hall was a different place on Feb. 9. Usually cheerful members of the city staff were not so cheerful. According to staff reports, doors had been slammed and wastebaskets had been kicked. And tears were shed throughout the day.
The evening before, it was announced that Larry Perlin would be leaving his post as Saratoga's City Manager. And so this day was far from routine, with two staff meetings, one with Perlin at 8:30 a.m. and one with Mayor Stan Bogosian at 3 p.m. to explain why.
But few members of the staff, including Perlin, were satisfied with the answer given by the City Council, which on Jan. 25 had asked Perlin to resign, at the beginning of a closed meeting in which the council was supposed to evaluate his performance. The announcement was made public at the council meeting Feb. 8.
At that meeting, Bogosian said that the council unanimously decided that asking for Perlin's resignation would be in the city's best interests. He said that Perlin and the council had "irreconcilable differences in management philosophies." Later, he said he could not comment further.
"This has been a difficult decision for the council," Bogosian said at the meeting and then thanked Perlin for his dedicated service. As some city staff members wiped tears from their eyes, Perlin delivered a speech at the meeting, prior to Bogosian's, in which he especially thanked the staff. "It is you who are the true backbone of this community, and you who I shall miss the most," he said.
According to Perlin, the council's request that he resign came as a complete surprise, and he does not understand why he was, in essence, terminated.
"The reasons, in my opinion, were vague, general and non-specific," he said. "That suggests to me that there are deeper reasons I will never know. I find it hard to believe that job performance or personality is really what's behind this."
The reasons the council gave, according to Perlin, included that he was not a team player, that he seemed to be going in a different direction from the council at meetings, that he dropped the ball on some issues, and was late with some projects. When pressed, Perlin said council members couldn't give him any specific cases, not one.
Council members contacted for this story would not comment on the reasons. Mayor Bogosian said the city attorney had instructed the council not to comment on the dismissal, since it was a personnel matter.
"My sense is that they pulled canned 'how to terminate your city manager' answers out of a handbook," Perlin said. "I couldn't honestly tell you what it stems from ... they don't owe me an explanation, but maybe they owe the community one."
While Perlin's dismissal shocked some of his subordinates, political insiders were hardly surprised. "He just couldn't work with the council," said former council member Victor Monia, who had originally supported Perlin's appointment. "There was a lot of frustration."
Perlin succeeded Harry Peacock, who served as the city's top exective for 12 years. Peacock was fired three years ago, following the passage of Measure G and the election of Bogosian and Jim Shaw who were closely aligned with the initiative. Council members said at the time that Peacock no longer fit into the community's changing political landscape. Peacock is now the city manager in the Los Angeles County city of Malibu.
Following Peacock's dismissal in February 1997, Perlin, who was public works director, was tapped as interim city manager while a search was conducted. He had been with Saratoga for seven years, and previously had worked for the city of Capitola.
In September of that year, Perlin tossed his hat in the ring fo the job. He was hired in November on a split vote, with the newly elected council members Shaw and Bogosian dissenting.
Perlin found himself involved in several controversies during his slightly more than two-year tenure. In July 1997, he enraged members of the city's Library Commission with a proposal to dissolve the volunteer body that had been operating for four decades. In1998, youth sports advocates were irritated by a proposal to charge use fees to offset playing field maintenance.
In 1999, Perlin also clashed with Hakone Foundation's board of directors after the city converted a gardener's cottage into a low-income housing unit. During negotiations Perlin raised the prospect of the foundation's dissolution if its trustees did not cooperate with the housing plan.
Finally Perlin lost the confidence of the entire council, which voted 5-0 to end his employment. Knowledgeable sources say Perlin had not followed up on requests made to him by council members on key initiatives, such as scouting out locations for new sports fields.
The council is still in the process of determining how it will recruit a new city manager, according to Bogosian. Perlin will remain with the city until Feb. 29.
Perlin admits that it is almost inevitable that city managers will be fired. "As you get beyond the City Council that hired you, your chances of remaining become less and less," he said. But he still thinks the council made a poor decision for the city.
"It was a short-sighted decision," he said. The city manager's yearly salary of $99,000, the high cost of housing in this area and the very low unemployment rate in Santa Clara County (it was 2.1 percent as of December 1999) may make it more difficult to hire a new city manager than the council realizes, Perlin said.
But Bogosian responded that the council is not worried. "We have every confidence that we'll be able to find a talented manager to serve the people of Saratoga," he told the Saratoga News.
Perlin said he was worried about what the decision will do to the morale of the city staff, which he said is stronger than it has ever been. When Perlin took the job of city manager, the city's utility-users tax had been wiped out and there had been a corresponding reduction in property taxes. The city's budget was $1.5 million out of balance.
The city had to come up with a plan to close the gap between revenue and deficit in the general fund. Some of the city's programs and services were cut and some positions were eliminated. Three years later, the city is financially and strategically in the best situation it's ever been in, Perlin said.
"We went from the real doldrums, the real dire straits, in March 1997 to right now being on very solid ground," Perlin said. "I can't claim complete credit for that, but I think I had a lot to do with it, and I have a hard time believing that my job performance was the reason they let me go."
According to Recreation Supervisor Beverly Tucker, Perlin "took a bad situation and turned it around and made it positive." She said that the working environment at the city had been pleasant since he took office. "There's been a sense of camaraderie among the staff," she said.
Community Development Director James Walgren, who has worked with Perlin for more than 10 years, said, "I was very surprised. Larry is a wonderful individual and a bright, hard-working, conscientious manager. I have tremendous respect for Larry, and I'm going to personally miss him a great deal."
Perlin and his family live in Santa Cruz. He says they want to remain there so he will look for jobs in this area. He will leave the city with a severance package for up to six months of work, unless he accepts full time permanent employment somewhere. That translates to roughly $50,000 plus all benefits and he will be paid in full for four and a half months of accrued leave, some $37,000. Technically, he could take a whole year off from work to travel or spend time with his wife and young children, he said. He can take time to decide whether he even wants to stay a city manager, he added.
In the last few days, Perlin says he has already received job offers, and he is not concerned about his situation.
"I'm getting tossed out by my ear," he said. "But I'm sure I'll land on my feet."
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
