A Santa Barbara City College trustee may get censured at Thursday’s meeting for frequently missing board meetings and violating the board’s rules on ethics and conduct.
Veronica Gallardo has been on the college’s Board of Trustees since December 2012, and her current term ends in 2024.
She’s accused of being rude and disrespectful to interim superintendent/president Kindred Murillo, in emails and board meetings; missing 19 of 63 meetings in the past two years; interfering in staff decisions and college operations; and violating other code of conduct and ethics rules.
Board President Jonathan Abboud said three board presidents, including himself, have tried over two and a half years to resolve the issues with Gallardo’s behavior, which include “stepping over the line of a trustee’s job,” in his words.
“I made her aware of those things, I did not see a change in behavior,” Abboud said at the July 6 Board of Trustees meeting.
Since early May, Gallardo missed meetings where trustees interviewed SBCC superintendent/president candidates, approved employee contracts, and held a closed session about appointing the new superintendent.
She didn’t attend the July 6 meeting where her peers discussed forming an ad hoc committee to examine her alleged Code of Ethics/Standard of Conduct violations.
The other six trustees voted unanimously to form the committee with Abboud, Marsha Croninger and Robert Miller.
That committee is recommending that the board censure Gallardo at Thursday’s meeting, and restrict her from board leadership roles, committee membership, and conference travel for the next year.
The censure resolution also tells Gallardo to publicly apologize to Murillo for her disrespectful behavior and to the board for violating its policies.
Abboud said the board president is responsible for implementing ethics policy, and he has tried in vain to meet with Gallardo to discuss the concerns. He reached out to Gallardo by email one last time on June 26, he said.
“The only response I got is she disagreed with my statement,” he said. “There’s no way I can resolve these issues if a person refuses to meet with me.”
Abboud added that Gallardo has served as board president in the past and “had to enforce (the policy) on me,” so she knows how it works.
“I tried to do everything the board president is empowered to do on their own,” he said.
Other trustees said forming the committee was unfortunate but necessary since Gallardo would not meet with Abboud. The move is not personal or ideological, several of them said.
“For me, the most troubling part has been the tardiness and the absences from some really critical board meetings and conversations,” said Trustee Ellen Stoddard, who joined the board in December.
“We can’t perpetuate unhealthy behaviors,” Trustee Charlotte A. Gullap-Moore said.
Thursday’s meeting starts at 4 p.m. It will be held in room A211 of the MacDougall Administration Center on the SBCC campus at 721 Cliff Drive in Santa Barbara.
It’s also available to view by Zoom or the SBCC Board of Trustees YouTube page.
The censure resolution is near the end of the agenda, after closed session and several action items including a discussion of a general obligation bond for the November 2024 election.
Gallardo held a press conference Tuesday afternoon and claimed the censure “is an attack on free speech.”
She said, “This is politically motivated and coincidentally orchestrated as the 2024 election season begins. These wicked actions will not influence my decision to seek political office in 2024.”
She missed some meetings because of “time management” with work and family, some for jury duty, and some special meetings because they “just sprung up” and she already had plans, she said.
Gallardo said she hasn’t been notified to tell her this action was being taken. She did not attend the July 6 meeting when the rest of the board voted to create the ad hoc committee, which was on the agenda ahead of time. She said she watched the video of the meeting.
“I look forward to a collegial conversation with my colleagues to hear their claim and that supporting evidence and to model what civic discourse looks like,” Gallardo said.
Censure Resolution Details Allegations
Specific examples of inappropriate behavior are outlined in the resolution, and have emails and other documentation attached as evidence.
Murillo said last year, Gallardo told her to fire or “take care of” four union-represented SBCC employees who spoke at a Carpinteria Unified School District meeting regarding her own employment there.
Gallardo resigned as principal of Aliso Elementary School in March 2022 after parent and staff complaints about her behavior, the Coastal View News reported.
Murillo said she consulted attorneys, and they determined the employees had exercised free speech, and were not commenting as representatives of SBCC.
The censure resolution includes emails from past board presidents Peter Haslund and Kate Parker telling Gallardo her communications with Murillo are inappropriate and violate board policies.
After an instance of Gallardo asking a staff member to do something at her request, Murillo and Haslund said that was overstepping trustee boundaries.
Gallardo denied being a micromanager and addressed Murillo in an October 2021 email: “You are new, will be gone soon, and do not know my values or character. Get to know me please, before you jump to assumptions and passive aggressive behavior.”
In response, Haslund wrote: “Though you and I may disagree on policy from time to time, I have a great deal of respect for both your perspective and your courage in putting forth that perspective, but none of us can be allowed to interfere in the business of the college. We have hired the CEO. That’s our job.”
In September 2022, Parker wrote: “Wow, this chain is upsetting,” in response to email correspondence between Gallardo and Murillo.
“You’re crossing the line by making demands of Kindred as an individual board member, by stepping into administrative responsibilities, and by repeatedly emailing her on the same issue when you’ve already received a response.”
Parker wrote that she had seen the “unfortunate conduct” multiple times already that year and reminded Gallardo of the code of ethics and conduct, which requires board members to work collegially with each other and the superintendent/president.
Gallardo responded that, “The board has been attempting to bring up BP 2715. It’s a biased attempt because my policy recommendations don’t fall in line with the board’s narrative.”
She is also accused of violating board policy that “specifies that the board acts as a collective entity and once the board reaches a decision, all board members respect and support that decision.”
She opposed SBCC’s board-approved COVID-19 vaccine and masking rules, and continually brought the issue up during meetings where it was not relevant to the agenda items, the censure alleges.
Murillo filed a complaint about Gallardo last month, then withdrew it, regarding her “demeaning” behavior.
“While I do not appreciate her behaviors and often find them offensive, I do not believe that filing a complaint will make things any better,” she wrote in an email to Abboud and board vice president Anna Everett.
Murillo said she would rather use her energy to help transition the new superintendent/president Erika Endrijonas, who starts in August.
In her earlier email filing a complaint, she wrote: “I would quietly go away in September except for I believe if I don’t speak up that I am teaching people to just put up with a bully, and that is not who I am as a leader.
“And I am just reinforcing her bad behavior which I do not wish on the incoming leader. I have excused her since I came because for a long time I felt she was taking out her anger on the board for getting rid of (Utpal) Goswami on me, and I felt sorry for her because of the situation in Carpinteria.”
Murillo has been interim superintendent/president since mid-2021, when Goswami resigned.
Endrijonas will be the seventh leader Santa Barbara City College has had in the last 10 years, including interim superintendent/presidents.
Noozhawk staff writer Rebecca Caraway contributed reporting to this story.