WALNUT : City Manager Retires, Prompts Uproar Over Ethnic Tensions

When Walnut City Manager Linda Holmes announced plans for early retirement two weeks ago, she didn’t begin with a peaceful transition into her golden years.

Holmes went out with a roar, accusing a council member of fighting her efforts to promote ethnic and cultural diversity in the city. Her statements brought to the surface the issue of ethnic tensions in the rapidly changing community, an issue that had taken a low profile in the city for the past two years.

Holmes said that last summer City Councilwoman June Wentworth ordered her to show respect for a private citizen who founded the Walnut Anglo Americans Club, forbade her to talk to former mayors or council members and limited many of her administrative powers. Holmes, 50, had been city manager for 10 years.

The dispute with Wentworth, Holmes said, was indicative of tensions between Walnut’s growing Asian and Latino communities and what she called the city’s “old guard,”--mainly white, long-term residents who, Holmes said, resent the cultural and political changes in the city.

“I have been highly supportive of minorities in our city government and I have been highly criticized for my involvement with bringing more minorities into city government,” Holmes said.

Wentworth said she could not discuss personnel issues, but that Holmes was misrepresenting what Wentworth had said.

A middle-class, quickly growing suburb, Walnut had a population of 29,000 in 1990, with Asians accounting for 37% of the population and Latinos comprising 23%--an increase of 133% in the two minority populations since 1980, Holmes said.

She said her problems started in summer, 1994, when city staff members complained that Nadine Brown, founder of the Walnut Anglo American Club, would make racist comments to them when she came into their offices to do city business.

Holmes said that she talked to Brown about the problem and that Brown then refused to talk to her anymore.

Later that summer, Holmes said, Wentworth met with her privately to discuss her goals for the city manager. Those goals, Holmes said, included improving her relationship with Brown.

Brown formed the Walnut Anglo Americans Club two years ago in response to a growing number of ethnic organizations in the city. At the time, the city had formed a multiethnic task force, and Brown reportedly expressed concerns that unless she formed a group, she and like-minded people would not have a voice in the task force.

“I don’t want to join the Chinese American Assn.,” Brown was quoted as saying in an article in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune in December, 1993. “I have nothing in common with them or with the African Americans or Hispanics. Why can’t I have a group that I feel comfortable with?”

The news of Brown’s organization prompted a spate of criticism from community members who feared the group would promote racism, rather than Anglo cultural pride. But residents say now that Brown never held a public meeting and never released a list of the club’s members. The controversy had passed into Walnut history until Holmes’ resignation revived it. Brown refused to be interviewed by The Times.

Holmes said that she told former council member Drexel L. Smith about her conversation with Wentworth, and that when Wentworth found out about that conversation, she told Holmes not to speak with any former city officials. In her resignation speech, Holmes declared this to be an unconstitutional abridgment of her right to free speech.

Furthermore, she said, Wentworth acted to remove the city manager from the citizen complaint process and to amend personnel rules to remove the city manager’s firing and disciplining authority.

Wentworth said, however, that she merely asked Holmes to be fair to all members of the community, including Brown. She would not comment on whether Holmes had acted unfairly in the past. She denied prohibiting Holmes from speaking with former council members.

“I would never forbid anybody to speak to anybody,” Wentworth said.

She added that she believed Holmes is exaggerating the ethnic tensions between Walnut’s “old guard” and its minority population.

“No, I have some very, very good Asian friends who want to be part of the old guard, and they are becoming part of the old guard,” she said.

Council member William Choctaw, an African American who is the only minority on the council, said that although he does see some ethnic tension in the community, he does not consider Wentworth a foe of diversity.