Manteca’s elected leaders aren’t allowing registered voters that reside in the city limits that work for either the city or Manteca Unified School District to serve on the Parks & Recreation Commission
The decision to do so was made back in August as part of an effort to reduce the number of appointees the MUSD board had on the then five-member commission.
At the same time, the City Council wanted to make the appointment and membership of the recreation commission along with that of the planning commission reflect the city’s switch to area council districts.
There is no such employment restriction on planning commission appointees.
The wording in the adopted update to the Municipal Code Section 2.28.020 outlining city appointment rules governing the recreation commission clearly states “full-time employees of both the city and MUSD may not be appointed to the commission by either agency.”
Section 2.24.020 governing the planning commission appointments makes no such prohibition regarding city or even school district employees serving.
The conflict of interest concern was raised because the city did not want the school board to appoint anyone in the MUSD administration to serve on the commission even though that has been the case for years.
It came after the school district’s appointee Aaron Bowers, who is a city homeowner and longtime Manteca resident, questioned the wisdom of city leadership advancing various recreation facility projects without following a recreation masterplan based on community input.
Bowers is facilities and operations manager for MUSD.
The city did not seek school board input on the change because the recreation commission is a city commission.
The school district has had two members for decades given there are city recreation programs that use district facilities.
Plus there are several community gyms the school district received state funding for such as Golden West that was predicated on joint use with the city.
The conflict of interest in referring to employees would go way beyond those among the 400 plus workers on the city’s regular payroll and the 3,500 plus on MUISD’s of which the majority reside within the city limits.
In the case of the city, recreation has a number of “contracted” employees that run recreation programs.
The prohibition would logically include coaches from the community the district would employee.
Some of the department’s recreation’s non-fulltime staffing — such as adult basketball and softball officials that were paid on a piecemeal basis — also received contributions to a retirement account. That would make them an employee.
The council in banning city workers from the recreation commission as a potential conflict expressed no issue that city workers serving on the planning commission, apparently even planning department employees that may reside in the city.
There is no indication bargaining groups for city employees were ever consulted about the recreation commission membership prohibition that applies to their rank and file.
It may not be a collective bargaining issue, but it did change the condition of their employment by barring them from serving on the recreation commission.
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MUSD ‘forgave’ $900,000
city collected from district
in violation of Measure M
The move to bar school employees that are city residents from serving on the recreation commission comes five years after a major flare-up between the city and MUSD over facility use was quelled.
In doing so, it prompted the school district — in an act of good faith — not to claw back $900,000 the city collected from them for school resource officers over the years after voters stipulated the public safety tax they passed in 2006 would pay for the on-campus officers.
Prior to 2019, the city separated the school resource program that had been intermingled with a quid pro quo agreement that in the past hadn’t been nailed down with specific contractual details so they could continue to bill the district — and collect money — for at one of three school resource officers.
The money that the city collected over the years from the school district for two SRO positions that were mandated to be funded as part of Measure M that authorized the collection of the half cent public safety sales tax was estimated in excess of $900,000.
In the proposed — but eventually not adopted — city budget that year the city indicated they wanted the school district to pay $100,000 for one SRO.
The school district responded that the $100,000 — if that was the amount to be charged for one SRO — wouldn’t cover the wide chasm between the $417,000 worth of school facilities the city used in 2018 for various recreation programs and the value of city facilities the school used based on published rates.
The quid pro quo arrangement was updated and put in place to avoid what was called at the time “double taxation” of city residents.
The concept of a commission with some of its members appointed by the school district emerged in the mid-1960s to facilitate city use of school facilities.
Having school administrators serve as the district’s appointees streamlined efforts, especially in the early days, when staffing was at a minimum in both agencies.
It was designed to fast-track requests as the district representative could help with scheduling school facilities needed for city recreation programs.
It was also when the commission was actually entrusted to actively oversee recreation programs instead of basically rubber stamping program charges.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
