Day-care center vs. City Hall: Did this fight get personal?

Why I’m getting into Cathy Sipia’s problems with Tustin City Hall is beyond me, because it looks like the kind of rat’s nest a wise man would step around.

It’s just that, doggone it, the lady runs a day-care center and says she’s dangerously close to going out of business because the city has put her on the rack and is slowly turning the crank. Nobody ever said I’m not a soft touch for a damsel in distress. Plus, her day-care kids are so darn cute.

“They totally hated me,” Sipia says in one snippet of conversation about her ongoing dispute with the city over paying for the relocation of her center.

No, no, no, says a city spokeswoman. It’s not personal; just a difference of opinion, and we’re still working toward a resolution within the dictates of the law.

I can’t vouch for either side. But I think we’d all agree that a city would never admit, “You bet we’re busting her chops. We’ll teach her a lesson she’ll never forget.”

Sipia is convinced the city is doing just that, refusing to approve a pending claim that now sits at $650,000 and that would push the city’s payment, counting what it’s already given her, to more than $760,000.

Since the claim was submitted last September, it’s fair to say the city is balking. In real-world terms, the dispute probably is just a money matter and will get negotiated.

In the meantime, Sipia says she’s been stretched way beyond comfort level.

The problems started when the city bought property in 2005 that Sipia had been leasing near the library on Main Street. Conversations about the sale had begun in 2002, and Sipia concedes she was alerted to the possibility of relocating back then.

However, she says a city official told her that even if the sale went through, the city would pay relocation expenses. At one point, she says, the official mentioned the newly developing site at the former Marine base in Tustin. Sipia says she checked out the site and liked it. However, as months passed and nothing seemed to be happening, Sipia says, the city official told her the site wasn’t available.

The city spokeswoman says she has no indication any city official ever promised Sipia a spot at the former base, which is how Sipia remembers it. “My impression was that the base was my only option,” Sipia says.

Last year, Sipia brought about a dozen parents to a City Council meeting to protest the way the city was handling things. That kind of move usually doesn’t endear a business owner to city officials, a point Sipia now concedes.

Skipping over other points of dispute (a city chronology says its relocation consultant “interviewed” Sipia in April 2004; she says they met for the first time a year later), we eventually get to the current quagmire.

Last year, after turning down four proposed sites offered by the city (including three in neighboring cities), Sipia found her new spot: a Shakey’s pizza parlor on West 1st Street. Buying the property forced her to tap the equity in her home, she says, something she was willing to do because she assumed the city would reimburse her for relocation costs.

Sipia stayed in her spot next to the library until last July, a few months after receiving an eviction notice. She says she was told to ignore the notice, because the city wouldn’t kick her out. Her original relocation bid to the city, which Sipia said was put together by a consultant she hired, was $980,000. That has now come down to the $650,000 figure.

Sipia, who opened the day-care center in 1991 and got favorable press when she installed Web cameras in 1997, says the city’s slowness is putting her in financial peril. She can’t move ahead with renovating the Shakey’s building until she has the capital, she says. She wonders, in her more conspiratorial moments, if the city’s plan is to force her out of business so it won’t have to pay her.

I assure her that no city would do that to a day-care center.

The city insists it is operating in good faith and abiding by laws governing relocation.

I ask David Cosgrove, Sipia’s attorney, if this is a matter of reasonable people differing over price. “There’s been a problem with the city’s responsiveness,” he says. “They’ve made certain preliminary determinations on her claim, but they aren’t happening in time for her to meet the economic problems of her forced relocation.”

I ask if the city is maliciously squeezing his client. “I can’t impute anything sinister to the city,” Cosgrove says. “I think the parties don’t get along. The city and my client somehow rubbed each other the wrong way. I don’t think that has helped with the city’s responsiveness.”

I would be stunned to learn that a city would make something like this personal.

I ask Sipia if she thinks she’s contributed to bad blood between the parties and would have done anything differently. She doesn’t.

I ask if she has done anything to make the city dislike her.

“Well,” she says, “it wasn’t intentional.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.