If you do a blog search you find these documents and a time line have already been posted.
Citizens have long complained that the Schwab House Deal was improper and not accounted for properly. In addition to the shifting of funds from RDA to the City's General Fund, we must recall that Mr. Schwab was given a "housing allowance" each month of service that was to off set the cost of the house. Did those payments continue even after he "Paid the Loan" and got a second on the property?.
Did he pay income taxes on those city paid house payments? He was not really required to live in Grand Terrace, he could have lived in Colton, Loma Linda, or found a typical separated from wife, kicked out of the house apartment like every other man who finds himself in that situation. No, this reality was beneath Tom Schwab, so he maneuvered a house, and house payments out of the City Council Members. Of course non of the paperwork was done right or in a timely way as he had already decided what house he wanted and had moved in prior to having the escrow close.
Schwab House Search will provide the prior posts. It is about time at least a part of what was wrong with that transaction has been noted for the OFFICIAL RECORD..
Retroactive accounting cuts Grand Terrace debt
GRAND TERRACE - A month-long review of more than a decade of decisions has chipped more than $1million off what was once a $4.6million debt.
The city owes the money to its Redevelopment Agency, a city-controlled body that former City Manager Tom Schwab often borrowed from to balance the city's general fund, officials said.
After resigning for medical reasons in 2009, Schwab told the City Council he intended to dissolve the Redevelopment Agency without paying back the debt, a plan that current officials say would not work.
Instead, City Manager Betsy Adams and her staff have been poring over documents to find projects paid for out of the General Fund that could have qualified for redevelopment funding.
If the agency had initially paid for the city's $819,235 road project, the city would not have needed to use General Fund money and then borrow from the redevelopment fund to cover other General Fund expenses.
So, after running the idea by the city's auditor, attorney and the California Redevelopment Association, the City Council voted to use redevelopment money retroactively for the project and lower its debt.
The accounting move has shrunk the debt to about $3.5million, when combined with Tuesday's repayment of a loan in the other direction - $267,622 left over from 2003, when the Redevelopment Agency borrowed from the city and only partially repaid it.
Minimal documentation from the time makes it unclear why the agency borrowed city money, reversing Grand Terrace's usual trend, or why the loan was not repaid.
"They started paying it off, so it's clear they intended to," Adams said. "It's not clear whether, perhaps, they lost track of it."
Adams said her search leaves her confident there are no other loans that haven't been paid off. But there may be other opportunities to inch down the debt.
"We're still working through that, and there's probably at least one more item to do," Adams said.
She estimated it would knock an additional $100,000 off the total.
The 2003 loan paid for a house so Schwab could move to the city. Several residents filed a complaint with the District Attorney's Office over the loan, which Schwab repaid, but the case was dismissed.
"It looks like there was something wrong there," Mayor Walt Stanckiewitz said. "But it gets us closer to paying off the debt."
ryan.hagen@inlandnewspapers.com, 909-386-3916
THE NEXT STEP SHOULD BE TO HAVE THE STATE OR FEDERAL ATTORNEY GENERAL INVESTIGATE THE SCHWAB HOUSE TRANSACTION AND NEGOTIATION IN FULL FOR CRIMES INCLUDING CORRUPTION AND FRAUD AND COLLUSION TO COMMIT FRAUD.
WHO WAS DEFRAUDED? Well the bond buyers who thought they bought bonds that were for actual RDA activities, not the enrichment of Tom Schwab, the taxpayer who has to pay back the bonds, the person or family who should have had that house under the RDA Policy for Low and Moderate Income Housing, the taxpayers who then made "payments" for housing allowance to Tom Schwab under the misrepresentation that he had to "Move" or "Live" in Grand Terrace in order to be the City Manager, these people and agencies have all been subjected to harm by Tom Schwab and the former City Council Members, City Staff, and City Attorney who participated in his corruption by allowing the transaction, and for not responding to Citizens who objected at the time.
(Note Betsy Adams is not required to live in Grand Terrace. Steve Berry was not required to live in Grand Terrace).
Oh and one more thing. Schwab did not resign due to medical reasons. He resigned because the City Council finally was too embarrassed to have either Tom Schwab or Steve Berry as the City Manager and they decided to look for an outside hire. This was after Tom Schwab admitted to halting and covering up an embezzlement investigation regarding Steve Berry, and that Steve Berry had worked for political activities in Loma Linda without authorization from his employer. Bea Cortes, Steve Berry and Tom Schwab were all involved in the excessive charges filed against former Council Member Jim Miller.
Schwab left saying he got paid to keep his mouth shut. Taxpayers would like to know what else is hiding under the rugs of city hall.
