In April of this year, Los Cerritos Community News was the first to report that Whittier Union High School District Trustee Gary Mendez was holding incompatible public offices — a conflict this newspaper had already detailed in 2024, after Mendez won his Central Basin Municipal Water District seat. At that time, LCCN warned that Government Code Section 1099 barred him from serving simultaneously on the WUHSD Board and the Central Basin Board due to the obvious clash of duties between a school district and a water agency that supplies its vendors.
Those warnings were validated months later. On January 10, 2025, the Los Angeles County Office of Education’s General Counsel issued a legal memo to WUHSD President Dr. Russell Castañeda Calleros and Superintendent Monica Oviedo concluding exactly what LCCN had argued: the two offices were incompatible. The memo cited overlapping boundaries, competing duties, water-rate impacts on the district, and decades of Attorney General decisions holding that a school board trustee and a water district director could not legally serve at the same time.
Whittier’s January memo remained undisclosed to the public for months — until LCCN obtained the document and published it on April 29, confirming that state authorities agreed with LCCN’s 2024 analysis. According to sources at both agencies, Mendez had begun fighting the determination immediately after it was issued, assisted by his allies on the Central Basin Board.
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Brian Hews is the publisher of the Los Cerritos News
