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 – Jim 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 secretly lay out strategies and instructions to their trusted politicians and city staff, Who knows, maybe there were MANY “retreats.”

The Cabal’s biggest project in 2019-21 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, e-mailed to him by Flint through his assistant Annie Mezzacappa (I could get you Sidhu’s script for any meeting you want from that era) :

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 it shouldn’t be that much, that it should be a loan, and that there should be 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 summarily 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 of him being Flint’s choice.

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 Vanderbilt 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 what was already a bad deal! And what Arte and Flint wanted, Arte and Flint would get, no questions asked. 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 (no public comments allowed) 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 rightly be furious, if they were paying attention. And the two councilmembers not under Flint’s control, Jose Moreno and Denise Barnes, would be speaking the uncontestable truth – this deal SUCKED ASS even more than before! Most troubling of all, the 2020 elections were coming right up, and (again assuming Anaheim voters were paying any attention) the Cabal could even lose its Council majority! (Didn’t happen anyhow, but they sure had to plow a lot of money into Faessel, Avelino and beating Denise Barnes.)

So the panicked kleptocrat made several plans that week to get all the Cabal’s ducks in a row. First:

1. The “Mock Council Meeting”

We first heard of this planned late-September “mock council meeting” (or planned series of 3 meetings actually) in Sidhu’s 2023 plea deal, and it really grabbed the imagination – it was such a perfect, iconic illustration of Anaheim’s sham democracy, a confirmation of our suspicion that our government was run by special interests behind the scenes while public meetings were merely for show. Some of us were planning to make a theater piece out of this “mock meeting,” we even found a director. [NOTE: Vanderpool was apparently not involved with the Mock Meeting – we’ll get back to Jim shortly, but this is a BIG PICTURE piece.]

Ashleigh was Mayor when we learned of the Mock Meeting, and she decreed that any officials who’d participate in such a sham “should resign immediately.” Councilman Stephen Faessel and City PIO Mike Lyster, both named in the FBI document, claimed variously that the Mock Meeting never happened, or they didn’t go, or they never heard of it. I even started to think that maybe it was just a dingy idea of Flint’s that never materialized.

PERO NO. Look what just erupted from Todd Ament’s old computer: Two things: A Sept. 22 voice recording of Ament announcing and describing to the rest of his Chamber board that this mock meeting had actually happened the day before, in the FSB office next to the Chamber office with the blinds drawn; and a PDF agenda for the Sept. 21 mock meeting, e-mailed on Sept. 20 to the following miscreants whom I’ll list in small print cuz there are too many:

• Elected officials Mayor Harry Sidhu, Councilmen Steve Faessel & Trevor O’Neil;
• City staff: Sidhu aide Annie Mezzacappa & PIO Mike Lyster;
• The Chamber’s Todd Ament, Laura Cunningham & Pang Yang;
• Flint/FSB employees John Hooper, Alex Burrola, Brooke Bushart, Betty Martinez & Citlalli Vazquez;
• Angels brass John Carpino, Molly Jolly & Alex Winberg;
• Wordsmith-for-hire Matt Cunningham;
• and Miscellaneous kleptocrat lobbyists/consultants Jerry Amante, Marie Garvey & Rich Knowland.

Note that Flint e-mailed the elected officials and city staff at their PERSONAL E-MAILS to keep this conspiracy secret, as is these people’s wont. Note also that “mock meetings” is the term the FBI used; Jeff Flint, ever facile with the euphemism, called this “Debate Prep.” But the outrage is not JUST the preparing of a canned meeting, but that the Angels and their consultants were directing our elected officials, directing them at how best to give away the store to them and make you and me like it.

I do want you to see that PDF agenda, it’s really kind of funny, in a dark way. Here’s the first part, of how Flint cast each character who wasn’t there. Flint himself insisted on playing the demonic Jose Moreno, fancying himself a student of the good-government progressive’s quirks; Matt Cunningham had to play Brandman LOL!

I could go on, about this Mock Meeting, but I’m trusting you to click on the document, and I need to get back to talking about our protagonist Mr. James Vanderpool – the time is flying and there is so much to say!

**************

2. The HAVASU RETREAT.

Again, this Sept. 23, 2020 e-mail from the Chamber’s Laura Cunningham to the new City Manager Jim Vanderpool sprung up UNBIDDEN from Todd Ament’s haunted old computer:

Now, THAT was something we’d never heard about, a “retreat” at Lake Havasu the day after the mock meeting, the week/weekend leading up to the fateful Sept 29 vote! And Jim never saw fit to mention it, during all the hullaballoo of 22-23 about the goings-on of 2020. This is what got him into whatever trouble he’s in, with Mayor Ashleigh.

Truly, Vanderpool did not have much to do with the shitty Flint/Sidhu stadium deal – it was pretty much in final shape by the time he was hired. He wasn’t expected to speak much about it at the Sept 29 meeting, and he was not required to attend the Mock Meeting. But shit he is the new City Manager and has to be kept in the loop to some degree, hence the Havasu Retreat.

In his panicked self-exculpatory e-mail of last Christmas eve, which you could look at again, Jim claims, “It was a social gathering, not a ‘retreat,’ as may be incorrectly characterized.” Except, excuse me, the title of Laura’s e-mail to Jim above was “Havasu Retreat Sept 24-29.” When is a retreat not a retreat? And we KNOW exactly what Jeff Flint meant by his “retreats,” from extensive descriptions in the JL Report of the December retreat that Jim was also invited to. (More on that below.)

Jim has also said that “No city business was discussed.” This is SO hard to believe, do you? Given the timing, right in the middle of that panicked week before the final Stadium Heist vote? Jim, you are stretching our credulity here to the breaking point.

Two other things while Mrs. Cunningham’s e-mail is fresh in our mind: Why does she ask for Jim’s husband Hernan’s cell phone for texting? It’s not like Jim doesn’t have a cell phone. This looks like an attempt at another layer of secrecy, if you ask me. Also, do you think Matt & Laura Cunningham wear big stupid blue rubber gloves when they do the dishes together? I bet they do, and probably some kind of stupid aprons too.

But what music do they listen to while they’re doing the dishes? I would suggest (if the Herbie Hancock has stopped playing for you) – Hernando’s Hideaway, and “What We Do is Secret” by the Germs:

That December Retreat.

We don’t know how many secret “retreats” were organized over the years by Flint and Ament, but we do know a lot about the one held in December 2020 at some big resort hotel, right after the November election and a few months after the above events. Thanks to FBI wiretaps we’re privy to the snarky discussions Flint and Ament had about the new councilmembers as they decided to play it safe and invite “just family” to this retreat – Sidhu, Faessel & O’Neil. And Jim Vanderpool of COURSE – the City Manager was ESSENTIAL to this retreat.

And it’s thanks to the JL Report that we know the topic/purpose of the retreat: Anaheim was (and still is) expecting a windfall of new revenue in a few years when we’re done paying off the bonds we took out to help Disney expand in the 90’s – about $100 million a year, what the insiders call “LPMR funds” but I think we should just call it the revenue we rightly expect from being host to a business as huge and successful and demanding as Disneyland.

And the purpose of the retreat was how exactly to divvy up all that revenue so it’s not available to popularly elected councilmembers. Flint and Ament, thinking their reign over Anaheim would last far into the future, wanted to make sure they would continue to control as much of our city’s revenue as possible.

We appreciate that Vanderpool gave the most complete and honest description of this retreat to the JL Group. (A lot better than Faessel or Trevor at least.) But we were disturbed that he seemed comfortable with that kind of undemocratic secrecy and greed being just the way things work in Anaheim. Like the chameleon, Jim was settling into his new environment, becoming one with it.

And soon the urbane new City Manager was hosting POOL PARTIES at his East Orange home, pool parties for ALL Anaheim’s movers and shakers, pool parties that rivaled ANY “retreat!”

*********

EXIT VANDERPOOL stage right

In which we ask:

• Why would Jim be leaving now, after such a vote of confidence last week by 6/7 of the Council? And

• Is this a good thing? Should we be glad? Could we do a lot better?

Speaking (without authorization) for the “Ragtag Militia,” after the 2022-23 scandals, arrests, and reports, we kind of thought there would be a house cleaning. There should have been. The shit Flint, Ament & Sidhu got away with wouldn’t have been possible without highly paid and cooperative staff starting with the City Manager – after all this is a “strong City Manager” town, not a “strong Mayor” town. But the four new councilmembers – all of them elected promising “reform” to one degree or another – kept on everybody, signaling (it seemed) a return to “business as usual.” And for three years they chugged along happily with Vanderpool as far as we could tell – after all, chameleon.

But that’s just us. I’m not sure when Ashleigh’s dissatisfaction with Jim began; I’m told that the search for, and final choice of, a new police chief in December, was the final straw. Ashleigh wanted one guy, but Jim got the Chief HE wanted – and on top of that he got him a whopping $436k a year, claiming that was the only way he could lure the guy over from Glendale, as though we just HAD to have this guy. And, as predicted by our insider friends, Jim is/was on the verge of demanding more than that for himself – justified by the fact the Chief reports to him. All in a town with a $72 million structural deficit.

Then this Havasu Retreat thing erupted out of Todd Ament’s old computer and Ashleigh pounced, like this was a FIRING OFFENSE. Doesn’t sound like any of her colleagues agreed though, word is they called it a “witch hunt,” and at least three of them expressed Extreme Vanderpool Love. So why is Jim leaving now, breaking the hearts of Ryan, Carlos, Norma, Kristen, and as many as TWO Natalies?

OCCAM’S RAZOR SAYS: There is probably something much worse than the Havasu Retreat about to come out, and Jim knows it’s about to come out.

***************************

Epilogue and Appendices

Update WEDNESDAY: We were right when we broke this story on Sunday, Jim resigned in closed session at last night’s meeting. He told the Register that he was planning to retire this year anyhow, but just decided to do it a little early, and didn’t really say why. He did give a gracious statement about “all the accomplishments” he and the council had been part of over the last 5-1/2 years. Greg Garcia, as we predicted, is now interim CM as he has been every time the seat’s empty in recent memory, but he’s told me before that he doesn’t want the top job – “Too much pressure,” and “everyone gets mad and blames everything on you!”

Sorrow reigned on the dais in the wake of the chameleon city manager’s departure, but none keened quite like Rubalcava:

Appendix 1: Moreno & Bouffard

I wanted to “uplift” – that is the WOKE terminology – to “uplift” the remarks Dr. Jose Moreno made to the Voice about Vanderpool; not having worked with Jim as Jose did for two and a half years, I must defer to Jose’s judgment:

Jose Moreno, a former city councilman and critic of the canned stadium deal, described Vanderpool as unethical, manipulative, and a “good soldier” for special interests who would talk officials out of scheduling initiatives to be debated publicly. “A lot of things that are good for transparency and ethics and for the city as a whole have never seen the light of day, in part because the City Manager Jim Vanderpool talks council members out of it with the backing of the special interests that often fund the campaigns of these council members,” he said in a Wednesday phone interview…

“For the city to be on the cusp of reengaging in negotiations for our stadium, for our land, it would not be wise to continue with this city manager and, frankly, this public information officer (Lyster), because they both have been found to be manipulative of the facts and to operate unethically,” he wrote…

Then there’s whistleblowers. One of the ballyhooed “reforms” during the 2023’s “Fall of Reform” was a “whistleblower hotline” by which reports of waste, corruption, incompetence, abuse, whatever, could be reported … TO CITY MANAGER VANDERPOOL. ??? To the guardian of the status quo? This sure didn’t help celebrated whistleblower Kari Bouffard (now CEO of “CLEAR,” Citizens for Local Ethics, Accountability & Reform) when she reported a lot of malfeasance in her department and got herself fired like Zapata for her troubles. Here’s the Voice on Kari:

Last year, Bouffard filed a tort claim alleging she was wrongfully fired from the city for exposing fraud, refusing to take part in unlawful contracting practices, engaging in protected whistleblower activity and reporting sexual assault and harassment.

“I raised issues related to procurement integrity and governance, which was my professional responsibility to do so,” she said when asked about Vanderpool..“I don’t feel that those issues were paid attention to. I don’t think that they were given the importance that was required to operate appropriately as a municipality.”

This is how Jim responded to Kari’s allegations at the time, we’ll see what the courts say:

Appendix 2: Havasu Scuttlebutt

A Havasu local sends me a fascinating e-mail which I quote without doxing them:

Hi Vern,

I just read your Feb 1 piece about the Anaheim City Manager and the Havasu Retreat and have a few things to add.

I own a waterfront house about 7 down from the house controlled by Todd Ament in the Havasu Landing Resort. I say controlled because according to management there he didn’t own the house although he considered himself the Mayor of Havasu Landing. How the controlled term comes about is that during Covid, the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe closed Havasu Landing Resort (HLR) to all but homeowners and since Todd wasn’t on the lease, he was turned away at the gate when he tried to visit after it closed. I believe a sister-in-law or somebody like that was the owner on record. In any case in September of 2020 I’m almost certain that HLR was still closed to visitors due to Covid restrictions but I believe Todd has weaseled his way in by that point. I’m not sure how Todd managed to get the Cunninghams or Vanderpool into the resort at that time but I suppose it could be done with enough weaseling. During Covid you couldn’t rent houses either but again, weasel. Todd probably just asked the neighbor to help out as he was surrounded by rentals. You can check with the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe about closure to visitors or house rentals in Sept 2020 but they shouldn’t have been there.

I recently read that Vanderpool’s closed door testimony was that he paid $190 for the house that he shared with the Cunninghams for 2 days. $190 for a shared house is roughly half the daily rate. I’ve attached the most recent rent brochure I had for the area. The prices listed do not include a 15% surcharge that goes to the Chemeheuvis. Units 29 & 34 are the ones in the immediate vicinity of Todd’s former house.

Lastly, the HLR house is at the center of Todd’s mortgage fraud felony. He was expecting to use proceeds from the sale of the HLR house as his down payment for the Big Bear house he was buying. The HLR sale fell through and he had to commit mortgage fraud in order to close on the Big Bear house.

I know it’s been reported that the FBI was looking into Todd’s contract with Santa Ana Unified for Covid testing but I haven’t heard anything since then. They were doing stuff like setting up an EZ-Up in a school parking lot and conducting Covid tests but they also would take the kid’s temperature and use that as the basis for billing as a full office visit. I suspect that the contract was so poorly written that they could get away with that but it’s just another piece of Ament’s sliminess.

His wife really isn’t a bad person but she has a real bad picker. I believe her former husband was on his way to kill her when he was arrested. Todd treats her badly, wouldn’t be surprised if he gets physical with her. But she just has no clue. Todd hides all his sleaze under this cloak of religion.

Anyway, maybe this is more background info and maybe it’s all just gossip. You choose.

Appendix 3: Too Soon?

Zapata Tanned and Ready!

If the “Ragtag Militia” has anything to say about it, we’d be very happy to have our former City Manager Chris Zapata back – he was as capable as anyone and more honest than most, and should never have been fired. THAT was one of Sidhu’s and Flint’s major misdeeds – everything Chris said that got him in trouble turned out to be wise and correct.

Since Anaheim scandalously fired him, he’s been the City Manager of Sausalito, just north of San Francisco. And they love him there. During those 2022 scandals I spoke to him and he was NOT interested in coming back to the chaos of the City of Kindness. A friend of ours recently grabbed this screenshot from the Sausalito website:

But I hear he may be available and interested THIS year, if things have indeed changed here. I think we want someone capable, HONEST, an independent city manager not afraid to speak his mind, and someone who also believes in transparency and accountability. And cares about the city. When Zapata first came to town, we were impressed with the fact that he researched what part of Anaheim needed the most work, the most attention, and bought himself a place on the West side (district 2 I believe.) And every evening he took a long walk, talked to neighbors, talked to homeless people, talked to everybody.

NOT just to politicians, lobbyists, and insiders. Hiring Zapata back would be a great sign that this Council finally wants a new start after all the corruption scandals. And whatever shock and disbelief we may experience from that coming to pass, we’ll get over it.