Key meeting minutes missing

Terry Vierra, a former director of the San Lorenzo Water District, revealed this month that the district’s general manager, Brian Lee, told him the district’s water board “had determined I acted outside the scope of my duties as a board member” in connection with a 2010 real estate purchase.
Vierra wrote that this is why the board voted on April 3 “to discontinue defending this case on my behalf.” He made the statements in a declaration filed in Santa Cruz County Superior Court on June 2.
Vierra’s revelation, submitted under penalty of perjury, is at odds with the public reason stated on April 3 by water board President Gene Ratcliffe.
Vierra said in the signed court document that he spoke with Lee on April 3, when Lee informed him that his legal bills – and other court judgments – would no longer be paid by the district. Vierra did not say whether he met with Lee, or spoke with him on the telephone. He also did not indicate what time he spoke with Lee.
Lee confirmed this week that he had called Vierra at the direction of the water board, after the April 3 unanimous vote.
After a 55-minute closed session that evening of April 3, Ratcliffe said in a public statement that once a judge ruled, in December, that Vierra had violated state conflict-of-interest laws, and reaffirmed that decision in March denying a request for a new trial, “the district’s obligation is complete.”
After spending approximately $100,000 on the unsuccessful appeal of a $9,347 judgment against its former director, plus another approximately $50,000 seeking a new trial, the district board pulled the plug in the face of growing public complaints.
The obligation to which Ratcliffe referred, according to the board president, was a written request from Vierra that the board pay for his legal defense. She has refused to discuss the date or the details contents of the letter and to release the letter from Vierra to the board, claiming it would violate “attorney-client privilege.”
In an email to the Press Banner in April, Ratcliffe said, “I can tell you with 100 percent clarity, the letter is very straight-forward with regard to the request for the district to support Mr. Vierra’s defense and contains no other statements, questions or opinions.”
The minutes from that April 3 water board meeting are missing from the district’s website and not available.
A Press Banner request for the minutes of the meeting held nearly three months ago yielded a response this week from its public relations spokesperson, Jennifer Murray, that “the minutes for the 4/3 meeting have not yet been prepared, approved by the board and posted to the website.”
In a follow-up email, Murray said, “The minutes are anticipated to be done for the July 20 board meeting and the language of the motion would be included in those.”
Throughout the board’s staunch, aggressive defense of Vierra’s actions, and in Ratcliffe’s statement ending legal support, the district never said Vierra acted improperly or “outside the scope of his duties.”
In fact, it based its support for him on the basis that he was an employee who acted at the direction of the board.