A San Bernardino councilman hurled expletives at a colleague this week after a majority of elected officials agreed to vacate their offices on the eighth floor of Vanir Tower to save the cash-strapped city more than $160,000 in the fiscal year beginning July 1.
Following robust discussion Wednesday, June 17, on a handful of proposed lease agreements, Councilman Jim Mulvihill, who opposed the plan to vacate the eighth floor, told Councilman Theodore Sanchez to “Go to hell. F—— a——” after Sanchez offered to help him move.
“This is not a … joke,” Mulvihill continued, using another expletive. “We’ve gone through this before and it’s hell.”
While admitting a councilman “really shouldn’t lose it like that” and apologizing to citizens who were offended by his outburst, Mulvihill said in a phone interview Friday the anger he displayed was an appropriate response to “the provoking and the lack of taking serious” his concerns about moving.
“The last several decades I’ve been the professorial type, the guy doing the lecturing and the research papers,” Mulvihill said. “But down there inside, there’s still that sergeant from Vietnam, and when you rip the scab off, he pops up again.”
Mulvihill, who received the Bronze Star for his service as a radio operator in Vietnam from July 1969 to August 1970, said he would not apologize to Sanchez.
“If we were out in the street,” he said, “I’d say the same words.”
A majority of San Bernardino employees moved into Vanir Tower three years ago after experts concluded the historic City Hall building could suffer significant structural failure in the event of a major earthquake.
Sold as a temporary move at the time, city leaders and staffers still work out of the D Street tower, a few feet from City Hall.
The latest lease agreement expired April 15, prompting renegotiations.
In the past, San Bernardino has rented office space on the first and third floors, as well as the eighth, where the offices for the mayor and City Council are located. Policymakers last month broached removing all office space from the eighth floor to help eliminate a projected $10.3 million budget deficit ahead of fiscal year 2020-21.
Wednesday, Sanchez and council members Sandra Ibarra, Henry Nickel and Bessine Richard favored the arrangement as part of a new one-year lease.
Mulvihill, who said the move would be “just a mess” and create “chaos,” and colleagues Juan Figueroa and Fred Shorett dissented.
“There needs to be some stability here,” Mulvihill, who visits his office daily to take constituents’ calls and meet with staffers, said ahead of the vote Wednesday. “To say we’ll wipe out the eighth floor, for people who don’t use the space, that’s one thing. But for people who do use their space, it will be an absolute mess.”
While moving elected officials down to the third floor will take about a month and carry relocation costs, the move will save money and give staffers 12 months to find city employees a permanent home.
As for their old one, an assessment of the state of City Hall is expected next month.
“We can’t continue to spend taxpayer money year after year for office space and say we’ll figure it out next year,” Nickel said. “We’ve got to figure it out this year. … Let’s get to work. Let’s find a permanent home. It’s getting difficult to explain to residents year after year why we haven’t figured out where City Hall is.”
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June 20, 2020 at 05:41AM
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‘Go to h—,’ San Bernardino councilman tells colleague after vote on moving offices - San Bernardino County Sun
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