By Vernon Robison

Moapa Valley Progress

Moapa Valley Water District (MVWD) General Manager, Brad Huza stepped down from his post earlier this month, accepting a retirement package offered by the MVWD Board of Directors. The retirement package, essentially an invitation from the board for Huza to step down, was offered in a Special Call Meeting held on Wednesday, April 6.

Most of the meeting was conducted behind closed doors. But the Board emerged from closed door session for a few minutes at the end of the meeting to pass a motion approving the retirement offer. No reasons were given in the open portion of the meeting for the action.

“In the end we just reached an agreement for him (Huza) to accept retirement,” said MVWD Board Chairman Ken Staton in an interview with the Progress last week.

Staton said that Huza is currently being allowed to use up all of his sick leave and vacation days which have been accumulated. At the end of that time, he will receive his retirement package, Staton said.

Staton could give few details concerning the reason for the early retirement.

“There were differences existing on both sides,” Staton said. “The ideas that the General Manager had about the direction of the district, and the ideas that the Board had, were in very different directions. I can’t go into it any more than that.”

The MVWD General Manager is an appointed position that serves at the will of the MVWD Board.

Huza has served as MVWD General Manager since 2006. At that time he had just come from a 16 year post as the Environmental Services Director for the city of Prescott, Arizona.

After coming to MVWD, Huza helped to finalize key water agreements beween SNWA, Muddy Valley Irrigation Company, Moapa Paiutes, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the L.D.S. Church, in securing water resources.

“Brad was a good manager,” said former MVWD Board member Guy Doty in an interview last week. “He had the full confidence of the previous board.”

Doty said that he had been surprised to learn of the current board decision last week. He regretted that the news had come too late to provide any meaningful public input on the matter.

Doty was not able to be present at a regular MVWD Board meeting held on Thursday, April 14 but he sent a letter to the Board and asked that it be read as public comment at the meeting.

“While I don’t know all the details of his resignation, I find it difficult to believe that after just four months of service from a new Board of Directors that there has been such an abrupt falling out of confidence and support for Mr. Huza,” Doty’s letter stated. “The level of his treatment by the Board seems extreme and with little regard to his actual guilt or innocence.”

Huza did not attend Thursday’s Board meeting and was unavailable last week for comment on the matter.