Chico Taxpayers Association

As could be expected, the Enterprise Record has come to Brian Nakamura’s rescue with a good-bye kiss piece in which Nakamura accuses Chico of  beating him up. 

This whole Nakamura affair has been a mud-bath for Chico. No, I won’t blame him, I’ll blame Sorensen and the others who stood behind him while he looted our city for about a million in salary and benefits and another notch higher toward his ultimate goal – retirement on 70 percent of at least $300,000/year. And we 96 percent of the premium on that retirement for the last two years. Suckers! 

The only thing I’ll say personally about Nakamura is he’s smearing our town. He never intended to stay here – he’s made the exact same speech on the way out of city after city. He’s got some kind of persecution complex. 

Hey folks, have you heard the kind of stuff they say about me? Have you been at the grocery store with me when the checker – a man who stood head and shoulders over me and outweighed me by at least 100 pounds – put his hands flat on the counter and told me, as he got ready to check my groceries, that he didn’t like the letters I wrote to the paper. I’ve had one local gadfly stalk my house, sit right at the end of my driveway in his dark colored sedan, staring into my yard. I heard he pulled the same shit on a candidate in this last election. Know what I did – I confronted him about it, and he’s never done it again. Why would anybody put up with that kind of behavior? All you have to do is hold a mirror to these people, shine a flashlight on them, and they scuttle back into the vegetation.

Brian couldn’t confront his stalkers, cause they were all in his imagination. He could not produce one e-mail when asked about the threats, not one name, nothing. He says his “family” is having a hard time dealing with this? His “family” doesn’t even live here. He’s got a step son in Fresno (eeeek!) and his own son is back east. Both grown men, living out on their own. As for his wife – I can’t find proof that they ever bought or rented a house here, it looks like she still lives in Fresno  near her son. It’s only a few hours on the freeway. A former Butte County CAO was able to hold that job concurrently with a job in Fresno for almost a year, driving back and forth until somebody caught him  and he was fired.  Nakamura was absent alot, late for meetings – I’m guessing he was driving back and forth. Hey, my daddy built Hwy 99 – he could drive from Sacramento to Fresno all day in his belly dump, make 20 trips or more.

I’ve raised my family right here. My kids were with us, I think they were about 6 and 10 years old, the night we were gang-jumped by Scott Gruendl’s little flash mob at a city council meeting. I was elbowed in the nose and spat on. My husband was threatened and Laurel Blankasshit tried to take our video camera forcibly out of his hands. But you’ll note, I didn’t cry for my mama and run to another town. 

So, let me say, and you can quote me – Brian, don’t let the screen door hit you on the ass. Rancho Cordova is just the kind of town for you – a shit hole. It’s a military burg, nobody there calls it their hometown, they come from everywhere. Good luck, Creep – I realize, you cockroaches need to move fast, or somebody is likely to step on you. 

Vacating city manager reflects on tenure in Chico

CHICO >> It is with bittersweet fondness Brian Nakamura reflects on his short-lived tenure with the city of Chico.

The recently departed city manager, who left to take the helm of the city of Rancho Cordova, said recently from his new office that his intention had been to stay in Chico long term but the decisions he made because of the job he was hired for did not make that possible. He decided it was in the best interests of the city, the community and his own family that he carry out his career elsewhere.

“You can’t be the new kid who shows up to school and exert a perception that you are a bully and then months later try to convince everyone you are not the bully and you are going to be their friend,” he said. “You end up having a trust issue with everybody.”

After Nakamura was hired in September 2012 — the first city manager from the outside in decades — he tackled the city’s complex financial challenges head-on, including organizational restructuring, two rounds of layoffs and $5.3 million in budget cuts to begin to address multimillion-dollar deficits and a near depletion of cash assets. It was also with his recommendation that the City Council reimbursed its debts, wiping out reserves and plunging the general fund nearly $8 million in deficit.

Up until the day he left, he still heard people say the city’s problems were all manufactured. While controversial, his actions were necessary and he has few regrets, he said.

“When you turn a rock over and you find something unexpected or unanticipated, the easiest thing to do is put the rock back in its place and walk away,” he said. “Hopefully during my tenure there, if we turned over a rock and we found something we didn’t like, we did address it or we did fix it.”

People can always question whether the problems were fixed correctly or with the right approach, but the undeniable fact is issues had to be addressed, Nakamura said. If anything the cuts should have been done more quickly and all at once.

“One of the things that I would criticize myself for is maybe we should have taken a really hard look at making one large decision,” he said. “I think the pain kind of festered and dragged on because we kept trying to incrementally make it a better place, when in reality what we needed to do was the major surgery. People would have still been upset but I think it may have played out better for the organization and the community.”

Despite the struggles of his first year, the difficult decisions he made and way he was as a result treated, when a job opening in Rancho Cordova arose in October, he didn’t apply. Several months later, with the realization he may never be welcomed with open arms in Chico, he said yes when recruiters reached out.

Even now he still wonders if he made the right decision. Nakamura likes Chico, and despite what doubters think, truly hoped it would be a place to work for a decade, retire and perhaps land a spot teaching at Chico State.

“Maybe I should have stuck it, out but the reality is I can’t look back,” he said.

As time grew on, it had become more difficult for him and his family members to hear harsh and constant criticism from the public. He declined to go into detail about some of the negative ways he was treated but said at his one-year anniversary he had faced verbal assaults and vandalism.

The 2013-14 Grand Jury report also noted that once hired, he did not receive support from sitting management, received false or incomplete information, was excluded from meetings and was misrepresented or falsely quoted to subordinate staff.

“These actions were intended to undermine his position, credibility and acceptance by the council, the rank and file employees and the citizens of Chico,” the report states.

Nakamura doesn’t blame anyone for how he was treated.

“There are people that are passionate about their community, there are some that are obsessive and there are some that are fanatical,” he said.

The council’s ongoing support, as well as that from some employees and community members made it difficult to resign.

“After the news hit that I was leaving, I ironically got more calls, letters, emails from people saying, ‘You did a great job. Sorry to hear you are going,'” he said. “I had to ask myself, ‘Where were you when I was getting beat up?'”

Nakamura hopes the city will commit to resolving its financial issues, stay on track and keep the community a priority. He’s supportive of Mark Orme, his former assistant manager in both Chico and Hemet, becoming Chico’s city manager, and said he thinks the existing leadership has the knowledge, skills and desire to continue pushing the city forward.

“Chico is a wonderful place. I wish I could have stayed and my wife wishes we could have stayed, but we realized it wasn’t in the cards,” he said. “We love Chico as a place to visit, a place we will always remember we lived and contributed to the community. I wish the city the best of luck.”

With his move to Rancho Cordova, Nakamura looks forward to being closer to family, with his parents in Lodi, his wife’s mother in Sacramento and a son interviewing for jobs in the capitol city.

But mostly, after years of working in cities that needed restructuring, he’s eager to take charge of an organization that’s structurally and financially sound. He’ll be able to focus on growth and economic development, rather than enforce painful choices.

Nakamura hopes to become integrated into the community in a way he never did in Chico and be able to tout the town’s values, something he should have done more during his 20-month tenure here, he said.

“I hope that part of my leaving will bring back the positiveness that needs to be shared among the community and the focus can get away from the hardships, the hurt,” he said. “The community will continue to grow and move on.”

Contact reporter Ashley Gebb at 896-7768.

Tags: Brian Nakamura Chico Ca, Brian Nakamura Rancho Cordova Ca