School chief also received preferred treatment

Theresa Moreau

HUNTINGTON BEACH -- Huntington Beach City School District Supt. Duane

Dishno landed on the VIP list for a St. Augustine home just weeks after

finishing negotiations with the developer over building a controversial

elementary school.

Dishno said he signed up for one of the half-million-dollar homes and

soon learned he moved ahead of about 300 others for the March home sales.

“We were told yes, we were on the VIP list,” Dishno said, sitting in

his office at district headquarters. “At some point, I heard Dave

[Garofalo] was on this list.”

Dishno had only weeks before finished negotiations with Holly Seacliff

developer PLC Land Co. to build a state-of-the-art school in the area.

After hearing that Dishno was placed on the preferred list of home

buyers, school board member Shirley Carey said she never noticed the

superintendent showing favoritism to the developer, or vice versa.

“I’ve never had any sense that there was any preferred treatment,”

Carey said. “I’ve never sensed that, and I was close to those

transactions all the way through.

“Nobody was good to us in the long run. We never got any special

treatment. And [Dishno’s] not in the position to make any decisions as

Mr. Garofalo is. He’s making no votes at all, so all of the decisions

were board decisions.”

Since 1992, a year after Dishno was hired as superintendent, the

district had been counting on the new school to house the students that

the new home developments would bring.

At the time, the developer, which was then Chevron, signed an

agreement to pay fees to the district to cover the cost of building the

Seacliff school. However that plan hit the skids in 1996, after PLC

bought the land and the number of homes to be built spiraled downward

from 4,200 to 2,400. Fewer homes meant less money to build the school,

and for a time school officials and parents were concerned the students

would be attending classes in trailers.

Talks between the district and PLC continued until a contract was

agreed upon in December 1997. The St. Augustine homes went on sale in

March.

Dishno said the deal on the school was struck with PLC weeks before he

called the developer and asked spokesman Bill Holman if there was

something in the tract that an educator could afford. So Dishno said he

didn’t perceive a conflict of interest.

Dishno said Holman told him there would be a one-story,

1,783-square-foot house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms selling for

$329,900 on Poppy Hill Circle, just a few houses down from a home that

Garofalo would buy.

And when Dishno found out he was on a VIP list for preferred buyers,

he thought it was because the developers were trying to be nice.

“I thought it was because they liked me,” Dishno said. “It was sort of

flattering.”

Board president Catherine McCough said she doesn’t believe Dishno

would have asked for preferential treatment on the home purchase.

“Duane isn’t the type to request to be put on anything like [a VIP

list],” McCough said. “Duane had been looking for a long time in

Huntington. He was unhappy in Irvine.

“PLC was the developer of that entire area. He couldn’t have gone to

someone else. He was looking to buy in that area for a long time.”

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For more details on the St. Augustine home purchases, see the Los

Angeles Times.