TUD board to evaluate top exec’s performance, again
The Tuolumne Utilities District Board of Directors will hold a special meeting Thursday to evaluate the performance of TUD General Manager Ed Pattison, after a controversial proposal to extend his contract, double his potential severance package and give him a raise failed to pass at a meeting last week due to lack of support.
The evaluation is the only item listed on the meeting agenda that was posted on the district’s website earlier this week and will be discussed by the board out of public view in closed session, as is typical for most personnel matters.
Some people who were opposed to the proposed changes to Pattison’s contract have already raised concerns about it being another attempt to approve them away from public scrutiny, though California law specifically prohibits boards of public agencies like TUD from holding a special meeting regarding salaries or fringe benefits paid to an agency’s executive.
Outgoing TUD Board President Bob Rucker said the meeting will only be about evaluating Pattison’s performance and not about his compensation.
“This special meeting is strictly a performance evaluation,” he said. “There’s not going to be any compensation discussed.”
The special meeting on Thursday could also be the final one for Rucker and TUD Director Ron Kopf because a regular meeting originally scheduled for Tuesday was cancelled by a 5-0 vote of the board due to the Thanksgiving holiday next Thursday.
Kopf lost his bid in the Nov. 3 election for a third term on the board to returning TUD Director Barbara Balen and newcomers David Boatright and Lisa Murphy, while Rucker chose not to seek reelection.
A performance evaluation for Pattison was already conducted in closed sessions at two board meetings in October before Rucker proposed the amendment to his contract, though the results are not subject to public disclosure.
Rucker said the upcoming performance evaluation was different than the previous one and a continuation of a closed session at the board’s meeting on Nov. 10.
However, the only item on the agenda for a closed session at the previous meeting was property negotiations with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. as part of an ongoing effort to acquire the utility’s water rights and infrastructure on the South Fork Stanislaus River.
“We started the other night and everybody was just exhausted when the meeting was over,” Rucker said. “I’ve never been so tired in my life.”
The special meeting has also caught the attention of the labor union that represents most TUD employes, which sent a letter to the board prior to the Nov. 10 meeting alleging violations of the state’s open-meetings law and requesting all emails and texts between Rucker and anyone else at TUD about the proposed changes to Pattison’s contract.
Rucker said one of Pattison’s accomplishments at the Nov. 10 meeting that warranted the additional perks was improving employee morale through recent negotiations over a new three-year labor contract, which was ultimately approved by both sides following an impasse for the first time in the district’s history that required state mediators to step in.
Among the previously proposed changes to Pattison’s contract was a twoyear extension through 2025 as opposed to 2023, doubling his potential severance pay from six months to a full year if the board prematurely terminates the contract, and a 1.5 to 2 percent raise in 2021 and 2022 that was provided to all TUD employees through the recent labor negotiations.
TUD Director Ron Ringen, who has publicly feuded with Rucker at meetings this year, said it was his understanding that Pattison’s performance evaluation was completed by the board during a closed session at a meeting on Oct. 27.
“As far as I’m concerned, the way we left it after the closed session, the evaluation is what the evaluation is,” he said. “When we left that room, there was no doubt where Pattison stood in the evaluation.”