.7 Days

Chancellor's windfall; and jurist's downfall; ditching the Planet, and docking the dumpers.

Severance hangover: As this space has reported over the past couple of months, outgoing Peralta Community College Chancellor Ronald Temple — oh, pardon, Dr. Ronald Temple — was not long for his $250,000 post. The nagging question has been when and at what cost the new Temple-hating majority on the board of trustees would send him packing. For a couple of months now, the board has been holding catered behind-closed-doors negotiations with Temple over the terms of his departure. His contract required that he get at least eighteen months’ worth of pay if they canned him. Indeed, Temple will be getting that. But district sources say that’s not all he’ll get — not all that taxpayers will have to pay.

Once again, Temple proved himself a shrewd negotiator with the board, whichoriginally awarded him a lucrative multiyear rollover contract three and a half years ago. Temple will be paid approximately $350,000 spread out over the next eighteen months and then officially “retire” — in fact, he’ll stay on the books as a “consultant” to the board during that time. It’s highly unlikely that the new board majority would want to consult Temple on anything, so what gives? By technically keeping Temple around for another year and a half, he’ll meet the minimum five-year employment requirement to be eligible for a state teacher’s pension, district finance chief Tom Smith confirms. Moreover, Smith says that under the chancellor’s severance agreement, the district will pay health benefits for the 61-year-old Temple and his wife for the rest of their lives (up to $1,124 a month for medical and dental).

7 Days can only hope the board of trustees negotiates a better deal with the next chancellor it hires. It is troubling, though, that a leading candidate to replace Temple as interim chancellor is a guy Temple brought in himself upon the recommendation of CampusWorks, the consulting firm founded by an ex-con and Temple associate. He is Charles Taylor, who came to Peralta last May to serve as the interim vice chancellor for administration and finance. And in typical free-spending Peralta fashion, the district paid $18,000 back then for its new interim vice chancellor to permanently move to the Bay Area from Washington. — Will Harper

Judge Dread goes down: Last week, the state Commission on Judicial Performance bounced Contra Costa Superior Judge Bruce Van Voorhis from his bench, making him the first black-robe to lose his job for a “demeanor problem” (See “Judge Dread Takes the Stand,” Cityside, November 13, 2002). Van Voorhis, known for his scolding attacks on newbie district attorneys, “displayed a pattern of misconduct,” commissioners wrote, which amounted to “a loss of judicial temperament, abuse of authority, and embroilment.”

The mood in the county district attorney’s office following the ruling was downright ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead. The office had long held that Van Voorhis made marks out of its young prosecutors, particularly female ones. Back in December, in a separate ruling, a Monterey County judge ruled that Van Voorhis was indeed biased against the CoCo County DA’s office, and forbade him from hearing criminal cases. As a result, Van Voorhis was stuck in a Concord traffic court, ruling on less-than-pressing matters. “Thank God it finally happened,” cooed senior deputy DA Doug Pipes, who led the investigation that resulted in the Monterey ruling.

Jim Murphy, Van Voorhis’ attorney, said he’d appeal the commission’s ruling to the California Supreme Court. Murphy, along with Van Voorhis supporters — including a half-dozen defense attorneys — argued the embattled judge was notably stern but never unfair. Murphy wants the state court to establish a “bright line” so a judge knows what remarks are now suitable for dismissal. “So he’s perceived as a jerk,” Murphy told the legal newspaper The Recorder. “Is he subject to removal because he’s perceived as a jerk?”

Apparently so. — Justin Berton

Judith is from Mars, Becky is from Venus: Everyone in Berkeley has been waiting for the new Daily Planet‘s inaugural issue to hit the stands. And waiting. And waiting. In fact, powers that be at the Daily Planet (or simply Planet, since the paper is expected to come out only twice a week) have postponed their debut until April or perhaps longer. What could account for the holdup? It might have something to do with the fact that new Planet editor Judith Scherr recently quit after exactly one week on the job.

Scherr, of course, spent more than a year editing the old Daily Planet, and while some folks, such as moderate Councilwoman Polly Armstrong, thought little of Scherr’s politics, her reign was characterized by a studied judiciousness in the midst of a very partisan city. Becky O’Malley, the paper’s new publisher and owner, is hardly known for her ambivalent temperament and has often expressed her desire to see more pepper in the paper’s opinion pages. Could Scherr have gotten queasy over the new, crusading style? Pressed for comment, Scherr displayed the same discretion that typified her editorial style: “I would like to be clear that it doesn’t mean that what she’s gonna do is bad or negative,” she says. “It’s just going to possibly be written not by experienced journalists. There will be a little more homegrown feel to it. And it’s going to reflect who Becky is. That’s not bad, just different.”

O’Malley sang Scherr’s praises and insists that the divorce was amicable. “She only stayed around for a week till she got an idea of what we were doing, and she decided that it wasn’t for her,” she says. “I have a lot of respect for Judith. She’s a personal friend; she stayed at my house for a month last year. I hope she writes for the paper.” As for Scherr’s replacement, O’Malley says that no fewer than 317 people have applied for editorial gigs, and sifting through the résumés will take some time. Meanwhile, former Express and San Francisco Chronicle contributor Susan Parker has signed up as a columnist, and old Daily Planet reporter David Scharfenberg has re-upped for another stab at covering City Hall. But Planet watchers who speculated that O’Malley will turn the paper into her own personal rant factory can’t help but raise their eyebrows at Scherr’s departure. — Chris Thompson

Hold it right there, litterer! Oaklanders still reeling from soaring murder rates, school budget fiascos, and Super Bowl riots may be relieved to know that city officials, on one front at least, are making headway in the fight to clean up their town. Literally. For the past year, a litter enforcement unit has patrolled the refuse-strewn landscape, hoping to halt illegal dumping that trashes city streets. “The problem is that folks just don’t want to go to the dump,” says Niccolo De Luca, spokesman for Oakland’s public works agency, which oversees the new unit. “It’s more convenient to drive down four blocks and just throw it out the back of your truck.”

From the start, City Manager Robert Bobb has fancied himself an anti-blight crusader and has made a show of cracking down on, among other things, residential junkyards and solicitation of drugs and prostitutes. Lately, the focus has been trash: At a cost of $800,000 per year for a supervisor, eight investigators, trucks, and equipment, the LEOs, or litter enforcement officers, began taking the trash out of Oakland in January 2002. In their first year, the trash-trackers issued hundreds of citations: 858 for illegal dumping and 136 for blocking sidewalks with debris. They also towed 1,137 abandoned vehicles. The effort is already making a difference, De Luca says, especially in West Oakland.

During a routine sting operation last month, the LEOs, with the help of police, caught two men illegally dumping three tons of garbage — including a nightstand, an entertainment unit, and cardboard boxes filled with debris — in an empty North Oakland lot. Accused dumpers Leslie Larkins of Alameda and Lance Milligan of Richmond arrived in a van between 10:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. and began unloading their trash, city officials say. Called in by the LEOs, Oakland police impounded the men’s car for expired tags and charged them with illegal dumping, which can bring fines of as much as $1,500.

Rubbish appearing on the streets includes everything from household garbage to furniture, construction waste, engine parts, and stolen vehicles. In some instances, unwitting homeowners pay a hauler to bring their extra trash to the dump — that’s actually illegal, since Oakland law allows only Waste Management to accept money for handling trash — and some of the illicit haulers maximize profits by dumping their loads elsewhere. The most common spots include vacant lots, industrial areas during off-hours, and dead-end streets with no lights. The litter unit has worked to make these spots less attractive by adding cameras, putting up physical barriers, and improving lighting. “Sometimes [the dumping] is so brazen it’s in the middle of the day,” De Luca says. “It’s just so offensive.”

Despite the program’s initial success, litter unit supervisor Arthur Watson says the city also needs to consider people’s reasons for dumping, besides laziness. “The biggest problem is that Waste Management has a monopoly on things so the fees are just really out of control,” he says. “When you go to the dump and they’re charging you 27, 30 bucks to dump one appliance, a lot of people think that’s outrageous and don’t want to pay those kind of fees.” But with the LEOs on patrol, and base fines ranging from $750 to $1,500 depending on the number of prior incidents, plus additional fees to cover city costs, De Luca argues that it’s a lot cheaper to simply head for the dump. — Helene Blatter

Curb your voter; wag the dog: Contra Costa ballot boxes haven’t turned up in the bay, but its elections department nonetheless hasn’t exactly inspired confidence in recent times. A couple of years ago, Lafayette resident Donald Miller registered Barnabas R. Miller, his poodle, to vote. The human Miller wanted to show that the elections department had gone to the dogs. Barnabas never did cast a vote, although the mutt did receive a jury summons. The district attorney, however, didn’t find Miller’s stupid pet trick amusing, and charged him with misdemeanor voter registration fraud last year. Still, he made his point.

So when the feisty Martinez community newspaper, the News-Gazette, recently discovered that the district attorney was investigating the elections department, insiders immediately barked “voter fraud.” After doing some more digging, though, the News-Gazette has ruled it out. Instead, muckraking editor John Foley says the investigation is focusing on overtime abuse and misappropriation of election day meal tickets for county workers. The longtime supervisor of the election office warehouse has reportedly been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. Speaking of which, Deputy District Attorney Jim Sepulveda (who prosecuted Miller) tells 7 Days he expects to wrap up his inquiry this week. Sepulveda wouldn’t say much else, except that the matter had originally been referred to him by the election department. According to the News-Gazette, the DA is poised to charge the warehouse supervisor with a misdemeanor and fine him $6,000, which would buy a lot of dog chow for all those canine poll workers. — Will Harper

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