Dear Readers

I have complained about fraud perpetrated by Messrs. Danielson and Dobbie.

See below:

Dear Mr. Guerra:

Please accept this e-mail as a formal criminal complaint against Interim City Manager John Danielson and Mayor Jim Dobbie for fraud.

I hereby allege that Mr. Danielson has been guilty of misappropriating public funds and for authorizing the misappropriation of public funds in his capacity as Interim City Manager. I hereby allege that the following facts and circumstances support my allegation of criminal conduct on the part of Mr. Danielson and Mr. Dobbie:

Mr. Danielson authorized the expenditure of $7,000 in public funds for the retention of Mr. Pete Peterson to conduct an internal affairs investigation without the necessary legal authority. Mr. Danielson did so only after such services had been provided (and quite possibly paid for). Mr. Danielson approved this purchase requisition without obtaining or requiring three written quotations as is required by the Town's purchasing ordinance. Furthermore, Mr. Danielson failed to make the necessary findings that would have exempted the retention of Mr. Peterson without the necessary three written quotes.

Mr. Danielson, with the express approval of Mayor Jim Dobbie appear to have defrauded the Town of Atherton taxpayers. Specifically Mr. Dobbie has authorized payment in the amount of $15,000 per month to Mr. Danielson during the past six months despite the fact that Mr. Danielson has not kept track of the hours he has expended while in the Town of Atherton's employment. Mr. Danielson's failure to keep a record of his hours is in direct violation of his obligation to notify the Town that he is approaching or has exceeded 960 hours any six month period of employment with the Town of Atherton.

Mr. Dobbie has failed to ensure that Mr. Danielson has fulfilled his contractual obligation to the Town of Atherton prior to authorizing the remittance of funds to Mr. Danielson for work purportedly performed by Mr. Danielson. Specifically I allege that Mr. Danielson has failed to coordinate and oversee the Town's efforts to recruit a new Town Manager.

Mr. Danielson is guilty of a conflict of interest by concealing the amount of time expended in the Town's employ so that he can prolong his duration of employment with the Town of Atherton from six months in duration to at least 12 months in duration. As is indicated in Mr. Danielson's contract he may not work more than 960 hours in any given fiscal year and he must notify the Town Council when his hours reach 860.

Mr. Danielson and Mr.Dobbie are guilty of violating the Brown Act by secretly agreeing to dispense with the Building Department and the Public Works Department and by engaging in serial discussions with other members of the City Council to elicit support for such a move without either discussing the matter in open session or properly noticing the discussion of said items for closed session discussion.

Mr. Danielson, with the express approval of Jim Dobbie, has violated the Town's purchasing ordinance by excluding from consideration the current town of Atherton employees collectively or individually either as Town employees or as potential contractors for performing public works and building department services. Instead Mr. Danielson notified these individuals that they would be laid off, apparently without any evidence that such a move would save the Town money.

Mr. Danielson and Mr. Dobbie, have, under color of authority and through deciept, denied Town of Atherton employees their liberty interest in public employment. Specifically Mr. Danielson and Mr. Dobbie have engaged in retaliation (through massive layoffs disguised as outsourcing those "problem employees" who have been critical of or who have drawn attention to misconduct in the Atherton Police Department). Mr. Danielson and Mr. Dobbie have also engaged in de facto age discrimination through the decision to outsource jobs held by long-standing Atherton employees, many of which who are approaching retirement age.

I would ask that you acknowledge receipt of this criminal complaint. If I do not receive an acknowledgment of this e-mail. I am prepared to initiate a citizen's arrest of Mr. Dobbie and Mr. Danielson at the next regularly scheduled City Council meeting.

Thank you very much

John P. Johns, CPA

That former Finance Director is like a Canadian Mountie. He always gets his man

What rings hollow for me in this boastful series of speculative accusations is the motivation.

Johns had had it in for Atherton and its succession of Council Members and City Managers since the day he was escorted out the door.

One has to ask what's different about this round? Nothing.

Is he the white knight riding in to save the Town? I think not. He's more like the angel of darkness seeking relevance.

It all makes for excellent drama. But, it's going nowhere.

The problem with Atherton is that of its chickens coming home to roost.

Johns built up the Town's reserves. They have since been squandered.

Johns' former colleagues in Building and Public Works stood by in shock, fear and denial. They now suffer a similar fate.

The irony here is that Danielson has indeed created a hostile work environment of sorts for his employees. Those who have served the Town faithfully have, in economic terms become the victims of a rape.

Will Danielson be suspended for his improper conduct? Of course not, the last time the Town played the hostile work environment card, it lost badly.

So it looks as though the Town is stuck with Danielson for now. That's just too bad. He's got a huge ego [portion deleted].

O'Really, a cop, doesn't want Johns to make citizen's arrests.

But there's nothing he can do about it.

The Atherton police department has had a very troubled recent history of falsely arresting its own employees and residents, getting spanked by judges for it, but failing to act on numerous complaints of elder abuse/attempted murder due to collusion with the perp. That took the heroic intervention of their nemesis, Kathy McKeithen, and instead of pinning a medal on her, they tried to arrest her too, but even Wagstaffe had enough of the hijinks by then and told them to stand down.

Mr. Johns, you are a true American hero in the proudest sense of this term. I'm not talking about your honorable service in the Marines either (none of the "he-man" cops have that distinction by the way). You're standing up for others who let you down and sat in their hands when the cops retaliated against you. That's a hero.

With his most recent blunder, Danielson has become too hot to handle. He's made Jerry Gruber look like prince charming.

As our illustrious City Council is known to do, it will follow the prevailing winds and dump Danielson without a second thought.

Goodbye Johnny. We hardly knew you.

Town Square is supposed to be a thoughtful gathering place for sharing community information and opinion. Increasingly it is becoming a gossip column with an almost total absence of information. And a majority of the postings are now by anonymous posters using different names for each topic so that is no possibility of determining source credibility as has been done so well by long time anonymous posters like POGO and Menlo Voter. As a consequence this thoughtful gathering place has been greatly diminished.

This is a typical Peter Carpenter post. He doesn't like what is being said so he gripes about anonymity and plays the credibility card.

[Portion removed] he shouldn't begrudge the free expression of ideas that has made this forum a valuable communications vehicle for this community.

"begrudge the free expression of ideas"

An idea usually refers to a person's thought or a developed concept.

There are not a lots of developed concepts in this Forum these days.

Crossfire...Let's hope history does not repeat itself on this latest go round by Mr. Johns and that your hero has the courage to show up this time and face the people he accuses rather than sending in a third party. Citizen arrests tend to backfire when public servants are in the process of executing their duties. I'd go with printing the "Free Johns" mugs and T-shirts although I don't think they'll be big sellers.