After 17 years of employment with Silicon Valley Clean Water formally known as (South Bayside System Authority) I have witnessed years of corruption, fraud, mismanagement of public funds, and a disservice to the public we service .
SVCW is a sub regional Wastewater Treatment Plant in California that services the cities or San Carlos, Belmont, Redwood City and West bay Sanitation District.
They called it a privately owned Wastewater Treatment Plant. It was obvious that it was owned by its employees towards the end of my career. Even though it was funded by the tax payers, State and Federal funding.
I started my career there in October 2005. After about three years into my employment there, it seemed to me that about 80% of our staff seemed to be living a luxurious lifestyle above what our salaries regular income would have provided.
Around 2006-2007 they hired Dan Childs as our General Manager, below him was 4 department Manager, His job was advertised to pay between $180,000-$205000 annually He negotiated a salary of $250,000 at the time And a house that he was gifted 38% ownership.
He bought in his own team of Managers. Teresa Herrera, Andy Baker, Monte Hommito , Donna Allen, and Venessa Ventura (plant Psychologist) and paid them close to what he was being paid.Dan Childs and most of his managers came from Veolia Water. The four old department manager titles were then called Directors keeping their same salaries and raising our current Directors salaries to match that of our old Manager
At this time it started to be clear that Dan Childs was brought in to Extort as much money as possible during construction of our plant.
One the first contractors hired was Falk Construction, they won the bid to build our Administration building for about 2 million dollars. At some point we ended up paying them 2 million dollars to leave and not sue us. Very little was done by Falk Construction on the administration building. Another contractor was hired to build it instead.
Another company (Bioforce) funded by a top General Electric executive from Italy convinced Dan to build and try new technology on the plant property to dry our solids. Weeks later Dan was gifted a luxury Maserati delivered to the plant.
At some point SVCW decided to purchase 6 new solids heater’s from Bioforce with unproven technology and we only received 3. They spent millions of dollars for equipment that they never used.
The house that was bought by our commission for Dan Child was a two story house with laundry room on both levels with multiple families living there. The Utilities like PG&E was also paid through our agency. The couple living there was waiting for some kind of heart donor so the SVCW paid for and Industrial Generators for the house so they wouldn’t lose power they resided on the lower level of the house while Dan Childs family lived in the top part of the house.
Dan also brought in many of his friends as Consultants at a very high rate of income. At one point he asked Gentec Consultants to raise his fee to be more in line with his family and friends. Gentec had been working there prior to myself or Dan.
Dan was a member of the Mormon Church and at some point there were over 15 employees hired from his church alone. Not including his close friend Chuck Fenton, Kip Ekersly ect.
This place was run like a Fortune 500 company not a Government entity.
The name change from SBSA to SVCW was to attract investors purchasing bonds as well as Federal funding for some projects.
They also had primary contractors they used, instead of going out to bid for many years on jobs that should have went out for bid. Power Engineering, Covello Construction etc…
Covello construction was ran by Mr. Covello as well as Bill Tanner around 2016.SVCW fired Covello Construction and it was sold and Bill Tanner started Tanner Pacific with Mr Covello as a employee.
It was later bought to my attention that Bill Tanner was in relationship with our Assistant Manager Teresa Herrera and the current manager replacing Dan Childs.
SVCW went from a very structured agency to complete chaos during construction to keep focus off the construction. And went back to a structured setting after construction. The amount of money wasted through construction was unbelievable. Everything required a change order.
Construction for our Plant lift station was awarded to Shea-Pearson a joint venture that was awarded as the lowest bid. However when agencies went from having to take low build to a (As build) SVCW teamed up their primary contractor (Power Engineer) with Shea-Pearson and a bid of Thirty Million Dollars over the other companies bid was excepted for the first phase of our construction of our Pump Stations.
I was involved with many of the meetings for design and construction of the Pump Stations and it was obvious that they would be awarded the contracts. Everything I heard, It was obvious that the other bids had no chance of being accepted.
I believe this will be bigger than the City of Bell Ca corruption case.
We spent millions of taxpayer money on a number of different software programs that seemed to be unnecessary.And still needed to pay ADP to do our biweekly payroll. My belief was they were running different sets of Accounting software during construction.
Pryor to ADP our payroll was processed through the city of Redwood City. We were told SVCW would process our payroll in-house So we hired two employees from Redwood City Accounting department Colon and Sabrina to do payroll in house since they had experience with our payroll.That never happened which lead me to believe that they were running different sets of books.
I have since retired from this organization as most employees have that started before me. Now it’s ran by all their children. They would create jobs for children and family members that were unnecessary never giving the public a chance to apply for these high paying positions.
The contracts negotiated with the employee union were always great because Management would get the same benefits as the union members and their family and friends would enrich themselves as the years went by. With matching funds for their retirement with our 457 retirement accounts
Even though I was 100% sure on everything that was going on I wanted no self doubt, so on January 15 2023. I went into Monte Hommito office (our Chief operation Manager)and made this comment to him. I said that I know what place is, nothing more than a group friend enriching themselves with Government funds, so what’s my Status going to look like. He immediately said, go see Teresa Herrera tomorrow and she will tell you what that will look like.
I never intended to join them I just want to be 1000% clear that I knew what was going on. On two separate occasions Teresa, tried to engage me into coming aboard and be part of this corruption.
I knew that this was a disservice to the ratepayer that funded our plant, and soon after I retired, not wanting to be a part of this corruption.
I was also involved with union negotiations and during one of our meetings Teresa Herrera made it perfectly clear that the Commission gives them everything they want, leading us to believe that the Commission was just as involved as our management staff.
With construction costs of over $900 million, the work done does not match that amount of money.
I believe that Jennifer Flick their Human Resource director would admit to everything I said, If questioned.
WITH MY LEFT HAND ON A BIBLE,AND MY RIGHT HAND LIFTED
I Francisco Guzman swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, So help me God.
Please feel free to contact me for any further details that may be needed
Regards
Francisco Guzman
510-513-9258
