Lawsuits, firings and 6 police chiefs over past decade. ‘Not my fault,’ Parlier mayor says
Twenty miles south of Fresno, a small agricultural city has earned a reputation across the Central Valley for instability and dysfunction.
City Council meetings often devolve into tense arguments among warring factions of council members, the mayor and residents.
The majority Latino farming town has made local headlines for its high-profile firings, lawsuits and a city hall embezzlement investigation scandal.
The city of 14,500 has cycled through six police chiefs and six city managers in the past decade. One former city manager was convicted by the U.S. Department of Justice this summer of perpetrating a multi-year pension fraud scheme.
Some residents and political opponents of the mayor fear the pile-up of lawsuits threatens to bankrupt the cash-strapped city — especially because the city hasn’t had liability insurance coverage for the past few years and any payout from the lawsuits would likely come from the general fund.
Like many small central San Joaquin Valley communities, Parlier struggles with systemic challenges, from a limited operational budget and high rates of poverty to an economy predominantly driven by agriculture and low voter turnout in mayoral and council elections.
Critics of the city’s longtime mayor and some councilmembers blame leadership for creating an unstable political environment that has unnerved many residents and drawn negative attention to an otherwise quiet town.
“A lot of the times when we think of cities and we think of corruption, or we think of big budget challenges, we always think of Chicago, New York,” said Naomi Bick, a public policy and local government expert at Fresno State. “But, actually, small cities have as many challenges, and sometimes worse challenges, with corruption and issues related to that.”
Current and former Parlier leaders say this categorization is unfair. Mayor Alma Beltran, who took office in 2014 and has been a main target of criticism, believes the high turnover in the police department is a result of people using Parlier as a launching pad for their next job. In an interview with The Fresno Bee, she questioned whether she’d be facing the perceived heightened scrutiny if she weren’t the town’s first female mayor.
The negative attention has overshadowed Parlier’s recent successes, Beltran said, such as expanded city services and retail growth.
“For me it’s important for us to move forward and get things done. I want our community to thrive,” Beltran said.
But some residents say they’re tired of the disorderly and tense council meetings and political instability. They want the city to focus on quality of life issues, such as trash pickup and water.
“When you have instability in city governance, it has ripple effects,” said Drew Bessinger, who served as interim police chief in 2015.
Years of growth, years of volatility
During Beltran’s mayoral tenure, the city’s commercial market has expanded with new businesses such as Taco Bell, Dollar General, the town’s first Starbucks and a budding cannabis industry that’s adding $500,000 annually to city coffers.
There’s also a newly renovated 24-hour fire station and a $2.5 million police department renovation project, thanks to state funding that Beltran said she worked with state Sen. Melissa Hurtado to secure. The new Fig Tree Park opened in November – the name a nod to what was once the world’s largest fig tree located in town. The city is also working on a retail development strategy, she said.
“It looks pretty good for Parlier,” Beltran said. She gave credit to previous councils for laying the groundwork for this growth.
In recent years, though, the constant turnover of key staff positions has attracted the attention of the Fresno County Grand Jury. A 2020 report titled “Who Is Running Parlier?” raised questions about city governance (The city didn’t respond to the report’s findings). The report said the city hadn’t had a qualified finance director since 2018. As of December, the city’s website listed the finance director position as vacant.
The Parlier City Council fired its city manager, Sonia Hall, in April and its city attorney, Neal Constanzo, in August. The council has yet to make full-time hires for those high-profile positions.
For now, Parlier Police Chief David Cerda also serves as acting city manager while the city searches for a full-time hire. The city has also since hired an interim city attorney, Meggin Boranian.
Last month, Hall filed a lawsuit against the city of Parlier, alleging the city and council retaliated against her for “refusal to engage in illegal activity.” Hall alleges the council violated the Brown Act when they demanded that she terminate the city attorney. Beltran blames councilmembers’ misunderstanding of their roles for the lawsuit.
In September, former Parlier Police Chief Jose Garza, a 36-year veteran of the Fresno Police Department who served as chief from 2017 to 2021, won a lawsuit alleging city leaders retaliated against him for investigating a “politically connected” city staffer after thousands of dollars went missing from the department. Beltran said the city will be appealing.
Several sources, including former interim police chiefs, citizen watchdogs and political opponents, told The Bee that Beltran leads with a “strong arm” and that she and the council tend to interfere with the work of city administration.
Beltran is aware of the city’s reputation and the criticisms against her.
The negative attention makes the whole entire community look bad, which isn’t fair to residents, she said. But Beltran acknowledged the turbulent council meetings don’t help, either.
“I’ve had debates with my last council, but we never got into it the way it is now,” she said. “It seems like I’m always having to defend myself.”
Former Parlier councilmember Trinidad Pimentel criticized the current council for its lack of professionalism.
“The only problem with Parlier is they throw their laundry in the middle of Manning Avenue,” Pimentel said, referring to one of the main roads that cuts through town. “Parlier has been dysfunctional not because of the community, but its leadership.”
High profile lawsuit from ex-police chief
When Garza took the helm as Parlier’s police chief in 2017, he hoped to make Parlier the “safest little city in the Central Valley.”
Before he joined the department, the city had earned a reputation as being a “revolving door” for its chiefs, Garza said in his lawsuit. Between 2015 and 2017, a series of interim chiefs rotated through the department, which struggled with a majority of its sergeants on administrative leave, political interference from city hall, low morale and budget concerns, former interim chiefs told The Bee.
“Everything was going very smoothly until this (embezzlement) investigation occurred,” Garza said.
In September 2020, Garza launched an embezzlement investigation after about $20,000 went missing from an “already cash-strapped City of Parlier,” according to his lawsuit. The staffer at the heart of the investigation was Rosalia Solis, a records supervisor in the police department and a longtime city staffer who was “politically connected,” according to the lawsuit.
Rather than allow Garza to complete the law enforcement inquiry into the missing money, the lawsuit alleged Hall and Beltran killed the investigation. Garza said he was fired for complaining about the misuse of funds and for “his resistance to political pressure to engage in a cover-up.”
Fresno County District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp said in October 2021 that there had been “insufficient evidence” to press charges against Solis, in part due to the “antiquated record keeping methods” and “organizational shortcomings that put taxpayer money at risk.”
The city has re-hired Constanzo, its former city attorney, to appeal the court’s September decision in favor of Garza. Constanzo is also representing the city in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by another former city employee Juan Torres, a former animal control officer and records clerk, who alleged he was “a scapegoat for Rosalia Solis’ embezzlement” and blamed for the missing funds. The case is going to jury trial on Jan. 21, 2025.
Beltran disputes that Garza was terminated. When his contract expired, the city didn’t have the funds to renew Garza’s contract, she said (since then a renewed parcel tax has stabilized the department’s funding).
As for the alleged embezzlement, she said, Garza should have put more checks and balances in the department.
“That’s not my fault or my responsibility,” Beltran said. “But for some reason, it always comes back to me, like I’m the one that’s supposed to make sure that everybody’s doing their job. That is a city manager’s job.”
What do Parlier residents want?
Some residents think the city needs an overhaul.
Benjamin Tamez, who heads the newly formed Parlier Taxpayer Association watchdog group, wants the Fresno County District Attorney’s Public Integrity Unit to investigate Parlier. He also thinks someone should have been criminally charged for the missing funds; he is calling on the city to complete the embezzlement investigation that Garza launched.
“We’re going to have to pay for (the $1 million lawsuit) somewhere from the general fund, and we are already an impoverished community with very limited resources, so it’s just killing us financially and economically,” he said of the city’s $6 million general fund annual budget.
Norma Sandoval has lived in Parlier for 27 years. She doesn’t like the gossip she hears around town. She cares about practical issues, such as water affordability, illegal dumping and trash pickup. Sandoval used to watch city council meetings, but she stopped because the meetings have evolved into “chaos.”
“It’s like nobody agrees with her (Beltran, the mayor),” Sandoval said of the council. “They don’t want to let her vote.”
Parlier residents like Crescenciano Garcia don’t really get involved in local civic life. Garcia said he’s never voted in a local election because he thinks city elected officials are only looking out for themselves. Beltran won her 2022 reelection with 561 of 1,635 votes.
“A bunch of vendidos (sellouts),” Garcia said of Parlier’s elected officials while he watered his yard on a late Friday morning in December. “They don’t do nothing around here. So what’s the use?”
Jose Flores, former interim police chief from December 2015 to December 2016, said the lack of voter engagement is part of Parlier’s problem.
“You want to blame the political leaders, but you also have to blame the electorate. They’re not paying attention either,” he said. “Or they like what they have.”
This story was originally published December 28, 2024 at 5:30 AM.
