The new Irvine City Budget will be a topic of the next meeting of the Irvine City Council and that budget still has a significant raise for the Assistant City Manager Mariana Marysheva — at more than $20K or 9% — while the rest of city staff gets basically nothing. Note to the city council — this raise is completely unacceptable — even if it was reduced from a more than $50K raise.
This effort to reward loyalists is par for the course for Irvine City Manager John Russo who brought Marysheva and others to Irvine from his team in Riverside where he was the city manager. Russo got an amazing severance after being fired (and it included a $675,000 mortgage at a half percent interest all paid for by Riverside taxpayers).
However, our sources in Riverside say that severance and how it came about may not have been on the up and up and is the subject of two lawsuits.
Copies of both are below and our Riverside friends are warning the City of Irvine to be mindful of the tactics Russo might try to pull on our city.
Here’s the first one. RussoLawsuit1
And here’s the second one.RussoLawsuit2Class Action Complaint_04-06-18
Wonky but have a happy time reading.