The Catalyst
The Catalyst
Embedded Files
"The Catalyst" is an introdtion to the experience written in short story form. There is another that can be read by just viewing civil demands and Cease and Desists. With time, read both. Learn about county governance and many other issues here too.
Part 1 - Monterey County Case Study - Supervisor Glenn Church (abridged version)
Part 1 - Monterey County Case Study - Supervisor Glenn Church (abridged version)
In 2022 , Glenn Church ran for Monterey County District 2 Supervisor. Winning made him 1 of 5 county supervisors on a joint Board that manages the County, as has been county governance structure seemingly since 1850's in CA (no update since then?).
The presentation made by he, his campaign website , and only one media candidacty announcement from a small, local, newspaper in an adjacent county was fairly straight forward --> "60ish year old Small Business Man (life long Christmas Tree farmer) and son of a prior Supervisor from the 1960's-70's felt it was time to enter public service -- and he was ready to do it with the loving support of his wife, Kathryn Mckenzie, long time writer and journalist." (without the muckrack profile there to see who she was contributiong for OR her big website she took offline for some reason around 2015 that had to be found with the way-back machine after that fact.
When Church's dad was in public service it seems it may have paid a few 100 $'s a month and been more about contacts and power than a paycheck, and he had influence over a tiny county Budget compared to the current $1.8 BILLION county budget now.
The fact that Church was shooting for a $180,000 a year benefit package with two $100,000+ packages for two policy analysts with almost no post college work experience, and a $130,000 package for a Chief of Staff that also had no relevant prior experience was not known to most of us. Because it's a public job it could have been, but no reporting on it let it slip by. That's some SERIOUS chump change, and it may be a bit hard for people from the East Coast to grasp.
How can winning a county election that makes you 1 of 5 supervisors on a county board with direct oversight for unincorporated areas only -- but apparent responibility for 4000 employees (is that a lot for a county?) -- garner over $500,000 in combined salary and benefits for just 1 of 5 offices -- PLUS power, contacts and influence over $1.8 BILLION budget ?
When was the last time you met a "small business person", "liberal arts major", or "an attorney" with no business background who would actually be prepared and capable of handling that level of responsibility?
From Spring 2023 through December 2025 I had 4 bad experiences via email wth Glenn Church, his Chief of Staff Marilyn Vierra (ex School Teadher) and one of his policy AnLysts, Vanessa Acevedo. There was something wrong with them. they couldn't answer simple questions in writing without confusing things , feigning ignorance, gas lighting, or simply ignoring content completely. We are not talking a little wrong here. the Interections will be viewed by most as "obscene". I was on notice after the first one. I was very concerned by the secone one and by the time the third one happend i was in tracking mode. Something was very wrong. These three people had no business being "public servants". They weren't interested in doing anything a public servant should have wanetd to do.
In December 2025 I sent Church a Civil Demand. The majority of it was simply asking him to admit he wrote his own emails, he had control if his own email account an there were policies and procedures in place to retain emails and dialogue (with me and others). The reason was to make the emails actionable in a court of law and to setup a request for emails that I suspected may have shown they were NOT keeping emails or correspondancde in a way most would have expected. Church refused to answer the demand.
What kind of County Supervisor refused to admit he wrote his own emails , actually has control of his email account and has policies in place to retain constiuent information?
To be clear, the topics I had asked him about have a LOT more relevance than just pot holes or trees in the road, so I had a vested interes in this far beyod trivial stuff, but we'll get to that later.
When trying to do research into Church more, to figure out who and his Chief of Staff really were -- and what his real background was, using Grok/AI as a virgin user, it was Grok who suggested we check out his SEI 700 forms -- and i had NO CLUE what he was talking about.
How can 440,000 people in the Monterey County public domain not have known about SEI 700 forms?
Where was the local media? Who wrote the Text Books? Who are the Teachers?
The follow is a very abridge report on an SEI 700 Audit for Glenn Church.
In 2017 Church filed an assuming office and departing office SEI 700 form in incomplete and dishonest manners when trying to do a stint as an "alternate director" on a County Water Board
Per his own words in a video found just a week or so ago, that stint didn't go well -- but not only did it not go well -- his engagement with his own SEI 700 form was SO BAD, the head of Salinas Public Works at that time, Gary Peterson, decided HE not CHURCH, needed to fill in a portion of Church's legally binding Verification Block, with feigned ignorance as to what address was required!!
If there was an "SEI 700 Smash-Up Derby Contest" seeking 1 page entries for an award, this is still the singular page this entity would submit, after having reviewed hundreds of pages.
The Stamp is illegible
There likely should be 2 or 3 stamps and there is seemingly only one.
If it's the same as on the assuming office form, it's not the agency stamp or county clerk stamp, as would have been expected. It's Clerk of Board Stamp which seemingly should have been 2 of 2 or 2 of 3, not solo.
Church seems to have opted out of the page count for the form ( it appears Gary P. entered that for him -- and that makes sense because other forms from Church were absent that too (improperly)
Church seems to have opted out of all relevant verification block info contrary to document requirements
"Not Church" , (Gary P), decided to provide his own email address for church while writing in - "no agency address known at this time" -- instead of Church's last known mailing address -- which would have been proper given the intent is to be able to followup with the filer in event of questions, right?.
Who were the clerks that were supposed to do quality control on documents and stamps? Clerks are the "Guardians of Transparency". why were they absent?
If ever there was an example of how NOT to complete a legally binding document the public was supposed to use to oversee conflicts of interets and management of public servants, this has to be in contention for the blue ribbon.
HOWEVER, that's not even an appetizer. A potato chip or two at best,compared to the rest.
In 2022, Church may or may not have filed an SEI 700 form with his Candidacy Application and the Elections Office as is required. The current head of that department isn't sure how the forms were and are supposed to be handled. He initially stated they were to be filed with the County Clerk -- with no indication of how his office would know if they were filed. Most would have expected them filed with him, stamped and then forwarded to the County Clerk for public posting, but he couldn't verify any of that. And they've been managing all these counties with 5 supervisors and an election since the 1850's?
That's beyond bad. But it gets worse.
In 2023 Church filed his assuming office document. 10 pages, with schedule C noted. But the "Clerk of Monterey County" accpeted 9 pages with no schedule C and the document was filled with required but blank fields. Taht was not sent to the FPPC.
About 3 weeks later an amended document was filed. No page count. The page count is the first most critical thing a clerk needs to check prior to stamping a document. That's how they know they have all pages and how any future person does too? This is bizarre.
In addition, list of board positions, contrary to his first filing and a lot of other issues, some of which were evident with a routine scan for completeness. \
Both of these were then sent to the FPPC where they were stamped and accepted. Documents with no page count get no acceptance? What are they doing?
So, as of now we have an agency clerk for SVBGSA, the Clerk for Board of Supervisors, the Clerk for Monterey County,
and the Clark for the FPPC all on procedural issues as well as Church for procedure and fact (facts not detailed above. they are doozy).
All done, right? Wrong. it gets FAR WORSE.
On 3/7/2024, Church e-files his SEI 700 form with the county.
On 3/22/2024, Church files an entirely DIFFERENT version of his SEI 700 form with the state (FPPC).
From a "process engineering" standpoint, that process should NOT have been available to anyone. Who's overseeing this mess?
From a "factual filing perspective" what was Church thinking? Did someone tell him the State form was not visible to the public?
Did they catch his fraud and not do anything? Did it go unnoticed? Which is worse?
The county form had vague and incomplete data related to 5 real properties (that were not listed the year prior). It should never have been accepted. With e-filing it's as if they are stamping with a submitted date not an accepted date and no review for completeness is happening. The properties were listed by APN to the state. The county learned abotu 15 local boards he was on. the state got NONE of that. just one multi-county board. It's obvious what he does and does not want each to know without the other knowing.
On 3/2/2025, at 8:37 AM Church e-filed with the state (FPPC).
On 3/2/2025, at 9:22 AM Church e-filed with the county. DIFFERENT DATA again.
Generally the same content as year prior to each separately -- but a LOT more multi-county boards disclosed to the state than the year prior and none of those disclosed to the county (6 vs 1 the year prior) and again none of the county board exposed to the state -- and the vague real estate to the county was clarified or the state (like before).
This is ILLEGAL and the oversight is ILLEGAL.
These are sytems built for fraud that are being defrauded.
So what was he hiding?
For starters, he was hiding a cluster of 7 LLCs with $12M+ in commercial real estate and direct partnerships with Commercial Real estate Brokers in those LLC's. There is a concern now that some of the property may be benefitting from land, water, sanitation, levy or other legislation he's been enegaged in for 3 years. APN's were obtained from his state filings. LLC's were obtained from those. They were investigated with "opencorporates.com" (account required but free)
There are a lot of other concerns too (detailed elsewhere)
Part 2 - Monterey County Clerk - Case Study (abridged version)
Part 2 - Monterey County Clerk - Case Study (abridged version)
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