” The City of Santa Ana will pay out more than $700,000 under the severance agreement struck with former city manager Paul M. Walters,” according to the O.C. Register.
The Voice of OC asked Santa Ana Mayor Pro Tem Sal Tinajero if the council majority miscalculated? “A miscalculation is the car’s running at 50 miles per hour and you think you can get across before you get hit,” Tinajero said. “But if the car speeds to 110 miles per hour, that’s not a miscalculation, someone just changed the rules on you.”
Tinajero’s lame answer says it all. The Council blew this one big time. And once you figure in the cost of a national search for a new City Manager and the cost to pay our current temporary City Manager, Kevin O’Rourke, the total cost of the Council’s petty vendetta against Walters and Mayor Miguel Pulido could be over one and a half million dollars!
The Register also reported that O’Rourke “will receive a $22,083 monthly salary. He will also receive travel expenses of up to $4,000 a month for the first 60 days, and up to $2,700 a month afterward. He would also be allowed to use a city car for personal and city business.”
The Santa Ana City Council is spending money our City simply doesn’t have. And the State of California is still looking for the City to pay back over fifty million dollars in redevelopment dollars.
Walters by the way wanted to return to the SAPD but instead the Council blew him out and now has had to pay him a mint – which he deserves. But this mess was entirely avoidable. The Council created this disaster and now they have to sleep in it.
This Santa Ana Spring, a term Tinajero coined, is starting to look just like the disastrous Arab Spring. And with Walters out you can expect the bodies to start piling up in our city, just like in the Middle East…
