I gotta take issue with Mayor Ashleigh on this: She finds it outrageous that the public heard about the closed session vote last Tuesday that temporarily saved James Vanderpool’s bacon. She called it “corruption,” saying “you see what kind of corruption I have to deal with?” If leaks are “corruption” then I do not think the word “corruption” means what she thinks it means. Anaheim City Hall is indeed full of leaks, and it’s generally a good thing – it’s not like it’s national security or something, it’s the people’s business in the OC’s biggest town.

And our favorite leakers in Anaheim City Hall are now telling us that the upcoming staff resignation posted in the agenda for THIS Tuesday’s meeting is indeed that of City Manager Vanderpool. And they tell us that his office upstairs, his office of five and a half years, is all but cleared out. And word is that some “ragtag militia” drove Jim out – I guess by that they mean my friends and I, who used to be known as the “gadflies,” or “corruption fighters,” or “the Clean Up Anaheim Coalition.” Ragtag Militia will do just fine though.

But wait a second, I am WAY over my skis. If we are going to write, and read, a story about Vanderpool, who was famously dubbed a “chameleon” by a department head for his useful flexibility under any sort of political leadership, we need to hear that great Herbie Hancock jam. Just click play and keep reading, it is really good background music for this purpose:

As the walls began to close in for Jim just before last Christmas – unexplained eruptions of incriminating documents from Todd Ament’s old computer fueling bombshell stories in the Times and Voice, implacable opposition from both the Mayor and the Ragtag Militia, a whistleblower who wouldn’t stop – he lamented by e-mail of “significant mischaracterizations and misrepresentations of events dating back more than five years now.” Receiving a response of “100% support” from the most Cabal-connected of the Council, Natalie Meeks, Jim replied to Meeks,

“Thank you, Natalie. Really means a lot. I can’t believe the story is going to surface five years later. Ridiculous.
I’m very concerned that certain people are trying to sabotage any Angels deal.
It won’t stop me!”

Huh? That “sabotaged Angels deal” raised eyebrows – what Angels deal now? But first, let’s go back and revisit that time five-and-a-half years ago, when Jim first became our city manager, and see what ghosts from 2020 are bedeviling him.

The Genesis of Vanderpool.

Jim Vanderpool did not just flop out of the pool of Buena Park onto Anaheim shores like some evolving fish – he was the specific choice of Jeff Flint (right) and if you don’t know who Jeff Flint is, then you really need to. There was probably nobody with more power than him in Anaheim between 2018 and the May 2022 scandals when he fled – especially once his puppet Harry Sidhu became Mayor at the end of 2018.

Lobbying prolifically as “FSB Core Strategies” with an office adjoining that of Todd Ament’s Chamber of Commerce and the tourist agency Visit Anaheim, Flint also managed most of the big PACs that got councilmembers and mayors elected, and by the Sidhu years he completely controlled 5 of 7 councilmembers. He and Ament cutely referred to themselves as “The Cabal,” and their most loyal, trusted politicians they called “The Family.” We know of at least two “retreats” they conducted, where they’d lay out strategies to their trusted politicians and city staff.

The Cabal’s biggest project in 2019-20 was the Stadium Heist – their plot to unload the Angel Stadium and all the valuable land surrounding it, at a bargain basement price, to billionaire team owner Arte Moreno. Anaheim’s most VALUABLE public property. Flint was actually a PAID CONSULTANT for the Angels… WHILE he was giving orders to the Council majority and staff. No wonder it was such a shit deal for us Anaheim taxpayers, and we’re very lucky the FBI finally came along in 2022 to blow it out of the water.

Year of Darkness 2020

COVID and Mayor Sidhu – a match made somewhere dark and bad – Covid and Sidhu ruled Anaheim in the year 2020. Covid made our attempted recall of the abysmal mayor impossible. And meanwhile every other city our size began using Zoom meetings to allow public participation during the pandemic, but Sidhu jumped at the chance to increase secrecy and held Council meetings by TELECONFERENCE with shitty audio that whole year.

And from the documents which just keep leaping out of Ament’s old computer, we know that every word Mayor Sidhu uttered at these meetings was carefully scripted by the micro-manager Jeff Flint. We could tell the Mayor was awkwardly reading sentences he’d never seen, words he wasn’t familiar with, and that as the meeting progressed nothing he’d say would show any reaction to or awareness of anything anyone else had said. Now we have access to all the scripts Flint wrote for Sidhu, agendas with Harry’s words printed large in RED. Sad… Here’s the beginning of the Sept. 29 script:

Up till June of that year we had a decent City Manager. No rebel, no trouble maker, very competent, but with a streak of independence and honesty that was sometimes not appreciated by the Cabal. His name was Chris Zapata (right.) He would give his opinion – when asked! Once he said he didn’t think $6.5 million of federal COVID aid should be sent to Visit Anaheim as a gift – that at most it should be a loan, with specific benchmarks. The Cabal didn’t like hearing that, they wanted to get their hands on that money no strings attached! He also suggested at one point that we should try to get Arte Moreno to put Anaheim back in the team’s name. That was way too much for the Cabal, and Zapata was roundly fired!

Jeff Flint knew Zapata’s perfect replacement, someone who’d never be guilty of such insolence, someone the Cabal could work with – Buena Park’s CM James Vanderpool, who had tried for the post before! So he ordered Sidhu and the four other council drones to install Jim forthwith. Reading Jim’s e-mail, he seems most defensive about the circumstances of his hiring, but nothing he writes refutes the Times account.

A slight irony (or something) that probably only I have noticed because I’ve been fighting Jeff Flint for 18 years: Jeff’s first big-paying political gig was running the anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 from his Costa Mesa Schubert-Flint Consulting – that was something he believed in fervently. I know because I led a protest there in 2008. Well, now he has pushed for hiring a happily gay-married City Manager – I wonder if Jim knows Flint’s past? Maybe Jeff’s homophobia has become less fervent over the years, or maybe the pursuit of money is just more urgent.

And during most of that year, as far as the public knew, we were heading inexorably to selling our stadium and surrounding property for $320 million – an awful deal that many experts considered about $200 million short. Here is how we felt about that then:

Sept. 21-29: Nine Days of Infamy!

Well, we hadn’t heard nothing yet! Suddenly in September it was announced that Arte would NOT pay $320 million for our property. $150 million was the highest he would go – less than half of that! To make up for the difference he’d build some affordable housing, as well as a public park near the stadium. This would be approved by Council at a teleconferenced meeting September 29, and in the 9 days leading up to that, Jeff Flint was a whirlwind of micro-management, making sure the 29th would go as planned.

Because the public would be furious, if they were paying attention, and the two councilmembers not under his control, Jose Moreno and Denise Barnes, would be speaking the uncontestable truth – this deal SUCKED more than ever!

[to be finished Monday – but I wanted to break the news of Vanderpool’s resignation… V]

The “Mock Council Meeting”

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Mock Meeting Plan

The HAVASU RETREAT.

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The Case against Vanderpool

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Vanderpool Self-Defense E-Mail

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https://anaheim.granicus.com/player/clip/2477?view_id=2&redirect=true&h=b1f89a28ca93358dc52e9f7939289c3a

People forget that all this – the Sept 29 2020 meeting particularly, which finalized the swindle – happened in the height of COVID, and so the Sept 29 meeting was teleconferenced. Assholes. They didn’t mind all getting together in Flint’s office, but they couldn’t come to Council chambers OR spend the extra couple hundred dollars to put on Zoom meetings like every other city did.

Remember, not too long before, Carrie Nocella and Jeff Flint had co-written a big speech for Mayor Sidhu about the budget, and Carrie laughed by text (which the FBI acquired) “Harry reads your script so poorly!” and Flint replied “Yeah, he never rehearses!” I bet this was in his mind when he insisted on doing a rehearsal this time! And these people had to do what Flint said, he ran their elections at this point, along with working FOR the Angels.

ZINGERS. It was important, to Flint, for his puppets to be prepared with ZINGERS to disarm Moreno & Barnes and make them seem ridiculous. I remember, catching one of those “ZINGERS” from Trevor and it was really stupid, let me see if I can find it… Damn I can’t find it. It was REALLY STUPID. Like Trevor saying … oh, I can almost remember it. Oh yeah. It was some variation of “When you don’t have facts or the law you just throw things around. Councilman Moreno is the ?? something of something” Yeah… was a takeoff from a Carl Sandburg quote, converted into a Jeff Flint zinger.