The Banning City Council last week placed City Manager Doug Schulze on indefinite paid administrative leave and at a special meeting appointed Police Lt. Robert Fisher acting city manager. Both motions passed 3-2, with council members Colleen Wallace and Leroy Miller voting against.
“It’s not a punitive thing, it’s not an investigation,” Mayor Sheri Flynn said in an interview with The Riverside Record. “It’s a matter of looking at some concerns that are sometimes easier to question and look at when the person is not actually there, because other people may feel intimidated.”
The council also considered Public Works Director/City Engineer Art Vela, Administrative Services Director Lincoln Bogard and Community Development Director David Newell for the role of acting city manager before landing on Fisher.
“We felt that the other candidates are really needed in their positions,” Flynn said. “To take them out of that position when they’re doing a lot of work that needs to be done that’s fairly important, would be a detriment to the city.”
Flynn said there would be less of an impact for Fisher, who has a long history with the city, to move from his current role in the police department into the role of acting city manager. The appointment comes a little over a year after Fisher returned to work as a condition of a settlement with the city over a wrongful termination lawsuit, according to a report from the Record Gazette.
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“He was wrongfully terminated, and it went through a series of judicial arbitration, judicial appeal and he was restored to his job, and it was not a valid firing of him,” Flynn said. “He had to defend himself, because he was being accused of things that weren’t true.”
The move to place Schulze on leave came just two months after the council voted 3-2 to remove City Attorney Serita Young from that role, with Wallace and Miller voting against the move. Miller did not respond to multiple requests for comment and Wallace declined to comment for this story.
The council then appointed John Pinkney of Slovak Baron Empey Murphy & Pinkney LLP to serve as the city’s interim city attorney in a 4-1 vote with Wallace voting against. Pinkney is also the city attorney for Beaumont.
“We picked the one that we thought was going to be good, because he had experience in Beaumont,” she said, noting that the council also appreciated that he was local. “He had gotten Beaumont back in shape and saved them from bankruptcy.”
The changes at city hall come after a contentious election in which two incumbents lost their seats on the council and a third was decided by just one vote following a recount.
“We promised the citizens change,” Flynn said. “They didn’t like the road Banning was going down the last five or six years, and [change is] what we’re delivering.”
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