EDITORIAL – Since December of 2017, the city of Madera’s Mayor Andy Medellin has been on the hot seat. A hot seat created by two land developers who have had a history of grievances with the city.
These two men tried to have the mayor recalled, but failed. They have had their bully-pawns attack the mayor at nearly every Madera City Council meeting over his personal financial issues for the last year. Now they have convinced the Madera County Grand Jury to publish a report full of accusations but with no real “meat”.
At the last city council meeting, it was disclosed that the Madera County Grand Jury released their report on a year-long investigation into the city of Madera. During the public comment portion of the meeting developer, Khalid Chaudhry of Ripon told Mayor Medellin that the mayor has brought all of this on himself and for the first time in nearly 18 months I sort of agree with him.
In the last 18 months, Medellin has made a few mistakes that have allowed the target on his back to get bigger and bigger. First, those raises the city managing staff received from a UNANIMOUS vote of the entire city council should have never happened. There was no reason our city attorney should have been paid over $290K a year or our city clerk making nearly $180K.
But over the last 18 months, nearly everyone who received those raises has left the city. The first was the former redevelopment director Jim Talbert ($270K) who received the third highest raise of the entire city staff but was never a part of DJ Becker’s Madera Tribune stories. The reason, he is best friends with the other developer attacking the mayor and the architect of the smear campaign against the city and Mayor, Mike Pistoresi of DMP Homes.
Pistoresi didn’t include Talbert in any of the research he spoon fed Becker because Talbert made Pistoresi a lot of money during the city’s redevelopment years. Pistoresi not only developed a large portion of Madera through the redevelopment program, but he also had great input in the city writing a renter’s ordinance which excluded any apartments in the city financed through the Federal Government’s HUD program. Interesting how Pistoresi’s apartment buildings were financed through….wait for it, HUD.
Interesting side note I once suggested to Mike Pistoresi a good catchphrase for his company should have been “DMP Homes. All that’s missing is you.” He didn’t think it was funny but his partner and the “D” in DMP, Dave Berry, laughed his butt off.
Second, I do not have the patience for ‘stupid’ as Mayor Medellin does. I know if I was the constant target of Ron Montoya or Khalid Chaudhry during a city council meeting, well let’s just say it is a good thing the police are there to keep the peace. I don’t know how many times both of these men have gone up to the podium just to talk out of their ass about things they know nothing about. Neither of these men has one clue on how city government runs. Nor has either of these “men” ever put themselves out there to serve the others in this community. They have a great view from the cheap seats.
How Mayor Medellin has been able to keep his composure most of the time is beyond me, but there have been times he didn’t and he fed the big bully beast of the poorly educated and ill-informed. What really happened in the meeting was a controlled burn towards a man that has been bullying the mayor and city staff for months but what was reported in the Madera Tribune was an out-of-control mayor ranting like a madman.
Here is a good lesson for Madera readers. If DJ Becker’s name is on the by-line, understand she has done no independent research on the topic and just repeats what Mike Pistoresi or Chaudhry or basically anyone else has told her. This whole investigation started from salaries listed (some in error) on a self-reporting website. According to the city, she never bothered to look up the contracts on file with the city to find the actual pay rates.
Third, private-citizen Andy Medellin let his personal finances get out of control. It can happen to anyone but it’s really bad when it happens to a sitting mayor. Before the Bully Beasts could have beaten him up with this issue, he should have gotten out in front of it and owned it. I know that is easier said than done but in today’s political climate he should have known that if it’s public record, it is fair game.
It doesn’t really matter that Ron Montoya signs four hundred thousand dollar contracts without reading them, then complains that no one spoon fed him every detail of the agreement line by line. He is a private citizen (for now) and not on the city council, the body that controls the city finances and budget. No one cares if he is an idiot but if he runs for Madera County Board of Supervisors as he has indicated, they will.
Fourth and most important: the city has a lot of distracters over ‘Measure K’, the safety bond passed by the voters in 2016. The bond didn’t require a public oversight committee, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have one. When the bullies started barking, Medellin should have put a motion before the council to create such a committee. That would have ended all the talk of ‘Measure K’ monies being funneled into the general fund. But he didn’t and that has given Montoya and Chaudhry 18 months to spread their message to the misinformed.
You know Mark Twain once said that if you don’t read a newspaper you are ill-informed. If you do read a newspaper, you are misinformed. And that is what has happened with the Madera Tribune for the last two years. DJ Becker has created an entire newspaper of misinformation being fed to Madera readers.
Even her latest article on the Grand Jury’s report on the city is filled with errors. One example is that she says former Madera City manager David Tooley resigned under pressure in 2016. Tooley retired in late 2017. A small little error but it goes to the credibility of the entire article. Sort of like misspelling your source’s name three different ways just on the front page, as Becker did with another city story.
Now we have the Madera County Grand Jury quoting Becker’s articles from the Madera Tribune in their report as fact. Does that make the Grand Jury ill-informed or misinformed?
The Madera County Grand Jury report starts off with a sort of bias headline on the cover page with “Veiled Transparency” but then ends with a big thud of nothingness. Accusations are made of conflict-of-interest and ethics violations but no evidence of anything illegal is presented in the report. Not one city council member, city staff nor Madera citizen’s name is mentioned in the report.
The Grand Jury seemed upset that they didn’t get the files they wanted through a California Public Records Act request but never used their subpoena powers to secure anything from the city. In fact, most of the report is the Grand Jury complaining that they got no respect from the city of Madera. It almost sounds like the report was written by comedian Rodney Dangerfield but from what I understand the investigation was headed up by Madera County Grand Jury member Linda Hatfield.
Hatfield has sat in the Madera City Council meetings between the Tribune’s Becker and former Madera Police Chief Michael Kime’s friend Vicki Sloan (refer to Ms. Sloan’s’ letter to BVN in previous articles). When I asked DJ Becker about a possible video of them sitting together the Madera Tribune’s star journalist said, “Oh crap! Hmmm. Now, which one is Hatfield? I am not sure I know her but lots of people sit in the front row.”
One of the problems with claiming the city council is less than transparent is that not only is every agenda for the last five years (including the same report packets each council member receive-minus, of course, closed session items) are available for download from the city’s website, every city council meeting since May 17, 2017, has been live-streamed on YouTube for the world to see. For more than two years there have been cameras pointed at the council, the public podium, and the audience. Smile DJ!
You can even subscribe to the agenda list, meaning the city will email you the new meeting agendas when they are posted, free of charge. How is that not transparent?
There is one part of the Grand Jury’s report that is one hundred percent correct. The vast majority of the electorate has no clue how the city government works. It seems apparent that a large percentage of the citizens cannot understand the simple structure of a council agenda, let alone how to submit items to the city to add them to the council’s agenda.
Is this the fault of the Madera City Council? The school district? The electorate themselves?
There are three forms of city government just within 15 miles to the North and South of Madera. The Madera City Council and the Fresno City Council do not operate within the same political structure. Fresno operates under a ‘Strong Mayor’ system, whereas Madera operates under a ‘Strong Manager’ system with an elected at-large mayor. Just like there are differences between the Madera City Council and the Chowchilla City Council, who also operates under a ‘Strong Manager’ system but rotates their mayor from the members of the city council once a year. Three different forms of city government within 35 miles and the Madera County Grand Jury think it’s the city’s responsibility to educate the citizens?
Well, guess what? The city feels the same way and that is why they have offered the Madera Citizen’s Academy to teach people about our local government. The classes are offered in both English and Spanish. These classes are being used to teach folks about every aspect of Madera City Government. They were so popular the Madera Police Department created their own Citizen’s Academy to teach people about law enforcement in the city of Madera and how it works. But there is no mention of this in the Grand Jury Report.
The Grand Jury accuses the city of Madera of trying to intimate speakers during public comment by requiring anyone wishing to address the city council to state their name and address, just like every other municipality or school board in the valley. Maybe the Madera County Grand Jury should look at their own Madera County Board of Supervisors who not only require public speakers to give their name and address but also require speakers to sign-in prior to being allowed to approach the podium.
It seems the sins of the county go unchecked but then again Pistoresi and Chaudhry don’t have any interests in the county. And the Madera Tribune doesn’t count on a majority of their legal advertising coming from the city. It’s the county and their legal ads that keep the twice-a-week fish wrapper in business. Heck, the Grand Jury didn’t even use the Tribune to distribute their final report as they have for as long as I’ve known there was a Grand Jury in Madera.
Below is a list of stories Big Valley News has published regarding these issues over the last 18 months. What we have come to realize is ‘yes’, there were mistakes made by our current and former mayors and city councils. But no one individual person is alone in making those errors. When a city council votes 7-0 to pass a resolution or grant a raise, how can you come back years later and blame one person?
In full disclosure I have to say that over the last 22 years that I have been a journalist, Andy Medellin and myself have argued with each other and for the majority of that time it would be fair to say we also did not care for each other. I have never received a Christmas card from our mayor.
That is probably because I have written multiple stories when his brother had a few run-ins with the law and when his mother ran against John Silva for Madera County Board of Supervisors, I supported Silva. Also, there was a time I would be seen as being a little more reckless with the news. Not to the line that DJ Becker has crossed but there are stories I wish I could take back 20 years later. Now in my mid-50’s I realize not everything needs to be for public consumption.
But the man I see today sitting in the mayor’s chair is not the man he once was. I have never seen anyone care more about Madera and it’s people than I have when I watch Andy Medellin interact with Madera’s citizens. Whether it is at a ‘Neighborhood Watch’ meeting on the westside or the eastside, Andy is a natural listening to the people. You can tell he cares and he hears their concerns.
That group of kids that started Madera Votes group at one meeting jumped all over Mayor Medellin for those high raises to city management but the very next month they presented him with an award for standing up against our President in support for the DACA kids in the city of Madera. This man cares more about Madera than Mike Pistoresi ever will. All Mike cares about is the poorly educated and ill-informed so he can use them to spread his special kind of ‘alternative-facts’ to build more houses or apartment buildings.
Andy lives in Madera and his kids have gone to Madera Schools. Chaudhry screams about the problems in Madera but he lives in Ripon over a hundred miles away. He owns some of the most rundown commercial buildings in the city and while I have no proof, I’ll bet he has a pretty thick file in the code enforcement office that Jim Talbert never acted on.
And Ron Montoya… What can be said about a special kind of stupid that doesn’t read his escrow papers for a $400k house before signing the contracts and then runs around town blaming everyone but himself? In the south, they would just shake their heads and say “Bless His Heart.”
Don’t be like Ron Montoya. Take the time to read the entire Grand Jury Report. It’s a quick bathroom read. See what is really in the report and more importantly what is not in the report. It reads like a DJ Becker Tribune article, a lot of innuendo and speculation, but no evidence or due diligence. It’s all cheese with NO MEAT!
Andy Medellin photo courtesy of the City of Madera
Khalid Chaudhry photo courtesy of the State of California
Mike Pistoresi photo courtesy of Facebook
Ron Montoya photo courtesy of Madera Tribune
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