Friday July 10, 2009 San Bernrdino County Sentinel

Berry Evaluation Set for Next Week

GRAND TERRACE–All systems are go for the Grand Terrace City Council to carry out on July 14 its overdue and now heavily anticipated evaluation of acting city manager Steve Berry’s job performance.

Such an evaluation had been scheduled for June but was not done.

Since February, Ber­ry’s continuing tenure with the city has been an issue of intense interest among Grand Terrace residents.

Hired as assistant city manager in 2001 by then-city man­ager Tom Schwab, Berry stepped into the role of acting city manager 13 months ago after Schwab was felled by a subdural hematoma. Following Schwab’s recovery last winter, Schwab and many of the city’s residents im­portuned the council to reinstate Schwab as city manager. By this spring, the once friendly rela­tionship between the two men had declined into a bitter rivalry, with the majority of the city coun­cil opting to keep Berry at the city’s helm and to force Schwab, 51, into re­tirement.

A series of press expo­sés pertaining to Berry ensued while the battle between him and his one-time mentor rage, including reports about Berry’s efforts to lay off city staff while seeking a raise for himself, his work for a developer in Loma Linda while he was employed as Grand Terrace assistant city manager and revelations about a sheriff’s depart­ment investigation into an embezzlement Berry allegedly perpetrated in 2002.

While Berry ap­peared to overcome the challenge by Schwab to dislodge him as acting city manager, the contre­temps had the effect of inducing the city council to undertake to carry out a statewide city manager candidate recruitment that will result in a se­lection process to be fi­nalized in September or October. Berry is among those applying for the city manager’s post.

In the shuffle, the city council did not complete the evaluation of Berry’s performance that was scheduled for last month.

Now, in the face of the press exposés, that eval­uation has taken on new significance.

Two weeks ago, coun­cilman Walt Stanckiewitz called for a specially scheduled meeting to carry out that evaluation, but councilwoman Lee Ann Garcia was vaca­tioning and unavailable to participate, necessitat­ing that the evaluation session be put off.

It now appears that all members of the council will be in town for the July 14 council meeting, at which a closed session item pertaining to Ber­ry’s evaluation is sched­uled.

There has been indi­cation that no action with regard to Berry or his sta­tus will be taken on July 14, meaning he will re­main as acting city man­ager at least until the now open recruitment effort is resolved by interviews of the candidates who have applied for consid­eration as city manager to be ultimately followed by a selection of a final­ist. Nevertheless, the out­come of next Tuesday’s evaluation could presage the council’s eventual decision with regard to who will be chosen to as­sume the permanent city manager’s role.

In the face of the ini­tial wave of exposés, Berry’s favored status with a majority of the city council did not seem to be impacted. But more recently, on June 30, the San Bernardino Sun, the most widely read newspaper in the county, published an article de­tailing Berry’s alleged involvement in the 2002 embezzlement. The fol­lowing day the Sun fol­lowed that article with an editorial declaring Berry unfit to hold the post of city manager. The Sun’s coverage was followed last and this week by articles and opinion pieces in the Grand Ter­race City News that took him to task over his al­leged indiscretions. The City News’s articles and editorial thrusts were significant in that hereto­fore that hometown pa­per had been very favor­able to Berry in its news coverage.

Given the city coun­cil’s aversion to negative publicity with regard to the city and operations at

City Hall, patience with Berry may be wearing thin.

Berry was not avail­able at City Hall mid­week for comment. Sources said, however, that he may attempt to marshal several backers, including city vendors, and those with a finan­cial stake to speak on his behalf on July 14, before the city council’s closed session to evaluate his performance.