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Cambria’s general manager terminated

April 30, 2011

Tammy Rudock

In the aftermath of the controversial firing of Cambria’s fire chief, the board terminated General Manager Tammy Rudock’s employment on Friday. [KSBY]

On Thursday, almost 300 people arrived at a Cambria Community Services District Board meeting to show support for the rehiring of former Fire Chief Mark Miller and the firing of Rudock. She refused to say why she fired the chief claiming it was a confidential issue.

Richard Stacy, a longtime CSD employee, told KSBY Miller was fired after he refused to take responsibility for a mistake management made telling lot owners about weed abatement.

Several critics complained that Rudock’s management style was one of intimidation.

In the closed session meeting on Friday, the board selected district Utilities Manager Jerry Gruber to serve as interim general manager.

Rudock’s salary – with pay and benefits at more than $231,000 per year –  has also been an issue with some of her critics.


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Really

“Rudock’s salary – with pay and benefits at more than $231,000 per year ”

Thats a hell of a lot of money to be paying for a city manager the size of Cambria, really.

Government is about the money and not the campaign vows or lies of being a public servant


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A curious Cambrian might be interested in finding out what else Rudock did for pay, outside of her income from the CCSD, and what she has in common with the #2 highest paid CSD general manager in SLOC.


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Had a house in Cambria inwhich I was 30 days late on a water bill. Her punishment for that crime was was the practice of sending TWO people to your house to hand deliver the bill with $50 dollar fee for the delivery, this practice in a upper middle class retirement type of a community?!! With my fees totaling MORE than the water portion of the bill I wrote a check for the water only while protesting the fee amount, then learned they applied any payment to any fees FIRST!?!!

I refused still and they handed the matter to a recovery co.

She was chased outa Colinga before Cambria.

An extremel bitter woman with power. Bad mix.

The fogies in Cambria were real “villiagers with torches” this time, I was proud of ’em.


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justme – realize that fees have been the new taxation for years. Fees & Regulations are how most governments do what they want while circumventing the public.


Didn’t we (Californians) just pass Proposition 26 to make fees (aka taxes) super-majority (66%)? I guess it was only for the state-level stuff. Maybe we can have a similar county-level law passed…


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Her contract was up in a year anyway. So now she does not have to work that year BUT STILL GETS PAID FOR IT? WHAT A SCAM.


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If the GM is really out of control, like Rudock is, the organization will usually just take the $$$loss. “Stalin-esque” is what I think describes her best.


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Most administrators, public and private, get those sweet deals. In fact, I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts (with donuts being the more valuable currency today) that folks in the public sector justify their “golden parachutes” because people in the private sector get them.


I often hear “well, my counter-part in the private sector makes more!” – completely failing to realize that one industry is performance-oriented, the other is definitely NOT.


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I for one cannot begin to comprehend her comment about “do you not want to turn on your water and not get sick” So tell us Rudock, what certification do you have to operate a treatment plant and when was the last time your did a repair on a broken water or sewer main? Been called out at 2:00am on a rainy night lately to sacrifice yourself? This is a disease where these high paid self serving individuals justify a position for themselves while screwing the ones doing the actual hands on work. A perfect example of how one man, Miller, was doing his job as ethically and competently as he could and a shit of a so called manager fired him to cover her own incompetence and lies, thankfully the intelligent people of Cambria stood up and spoke out and hopefully there will be more to come elsewhere. Theres far to much of this in this county and its pitiful, just pick a city or CSD and dig in.


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R0y, with all due respect, I would like to point out that there are many wallstreet CEOs and CFOs who nearly sent our country down the toilet with their scam practices, and then received million dollar bonuses at the end of the year.


In theory, the wallstreet leaders are controlled by government regulation. Just like, in theory, general managers (contracted positions) are controlled by the Board of Directors.


The problem is, in practice, wallstreet was deregulated decades ago, and CSD policy keeps the board largely in the dark about what the gm does to staff.


Usually, the counterpart in the private sector makes more. Part of that is offset by the benefit packages received by government staff.


So, the similarity between the private sector upper echelon of executive positions and the CSD upper echelon of executive positions, is the policies and regulations for both give executive staff a tremendous amount of unilateral power to do what they want with the organization’s employees and the funds of the organization, and keep the board ignorant of what executive staff does.


Another similarity between the executives of wallstreet and other small local government organizations (such as CSDs) may be that the executives who are at the top of the salary or contract range are the ones who are the most aggressive in taking advantage of the lack of oversight or backbone of the board.


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Right or Left, we’re all going to be Tea Party people soon. More people are waking up to fiscal responsibility and accountability – main driving forces behind most tea party movements, from what I am reading.


Politics can (and will) always be debated. Right now, everyone who has any sense of cents needs to be shown what is going on, what has been going on, and start figuring out how to fix many of these financial problems – at the local levels, then move upwards to County and State.


How many of these stories are we going to read? Right here. In our back yards? Please attend board meetings. Please know who it is you vote for (board members, mayor, etc) as they are the ones sleeping at the wheel.


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That’s the key, know who it is you vote for. Absolutely, start in your own back yard and make local politicans responsible to the citizens for those who they hire on behalf of the public they serve. It’s a travesty that public employees are raping the taxpayers after they have been fired from the service they were hired to perform, that has to end. If we don’t start at our local level, it will never go any further.


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Curious wanting to know if Mark Miller was offered a severance package.


And Cambria Community Services District Board PLEASE don’t follow the unwritten employment criteria as the rest of SLO county by hiring someone from another county or state with a troubled past and pay them even more taxpayer money!


Either way I want to profusely applaud the board for listening to the residents of Cambria and finally extracting an arrogant, overpaid, under qualified and poorly performing fat cat bureaucrat leeching off our hard earned tax dollars.


These courageous actions need to be repeated in several other very similar circumstances in SLO county!


FIRE AT WILL!


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Way to go citizens of Cambria, you canned your fat cat GM (or is it fat cougar?) She’s off to the next community with the balance of her contract through 2012. Good work if you can get it.


Perhaps a better course of action would to be to use your organizational skills to have made her life a living hell. Make her quit. With all the retired talent in Cambria there must be a public labor relations attorney in the community to advise. If you need assistance with organizing your community gadflys, you can probably pull from the gadfly pool in Los Osos, theyre about to be cut adrift without a cause.


Meanwhile this skank is off to another community to repeat the process. Of course she isn’t in a big hurry because she walked off with a year and a half”s worth of salary and benefits. YOUR MONEY.


Next time (and there will be a next time because there always is) set the GM position up so that is truely “at will”. No contract. Don’t fall for the “We need a multi year contract w/big salary to attract the best. NO YOU DON’T. You have a wonderful community in the best spot in SLO county, with the exception of Santa Margarita of course. Mr. Gruber sounds like a good man. But I’m guessing everyone was enamored of Rudock when she was hired.


Best wishes from an admirer.


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Pay attention Atascadero ….


The people of Cambria stood up and did what was necessary.


Why doesn’t Atascadero have some courage and show Wade McKinney the door along with his sidekicks and the Council. They are bleeding this town to death!!!


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Nipomo needs to pay attention, too. It’s already too late for one employee.


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A-town’s long-time council members won’t oust McKinney because he has too much dirt on them. They’d need to approve some $$ costly $$ confidentiality settlement w/him to keep his mouth shut and there’s no money to do that right now. If McKinney goes–which he should–he’s not going to go quietly and O’Malley, Clay and other former council members know that. It could get really ugly…


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I also read in the Tribune that she will supposedly get some 11 months pay as her severance pay, adjusted from her base pay, which would seem to work out at around $153,000. Crap. How do we get this kind of “stuff” pulled over on us? Damn.


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Yeah, what nitwits write or allow these sorts of contracts? I think the board in Cambria (and the CC in SLO) has a lot to answer for in these ridiculous contracts they hand out.


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Its these crooks that make these rules “Self Serving” policies, rules, and laws for themselves, it makes you really think they are truely in bed together.

When I was younger I use to think they were affluent and did not care about the money and only cared about their society and country (I was so navie when I was younger – now that I am older they say I am too negative towards these respectable government officials).

The writings on the wall but covered with BS mud sticking on the wall preventing people from clearly seeing through the BS speeches.


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Wait a minute, wait a minute…


(a) “rehiring of former Fire Chief Jerry Gruber and the firing of Rudock.”


(b)”the board selected district Utilities Manager Jerry Gruber to serve as interim general manager.”


Not only did they rehire the Fire Chief but unless there are two Jerry Gruber’s, they gave him her job!! LMAO –


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Mark Miller was the Fire Chief, Jerry Gruber was Utilities Manager. I believe the article needs to be corrected.


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Saw her interview on KSBY where she justified her pay, or tired to. Hope this gave her the attitude adjustment she needed.


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No, it won’t.


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