Center faces lawsuit

A heated contract dispute between the Cesar Chavez Student Center and Yerba Buena Taqueria resulted in a lawsuit charging racism, conspiracy to defraud and bad faith.

Filed in the California Superior Court in early March, the lawsuit followed a decision by the student center not to renew Yerba Buena's vending contract, which began in 1990.

The contract made Yerba Buena the "exclusive" manager of a Mexican-style food service in return for a rent of $70,000 and 14 percent of gross sales above $700,000.

The suit alleges that the student center violated numerous terms of the contract, including unfair bidding practices, failure to comply with health codes and permitting other vendors to sell items which directly competed with Yerba Buena's own product line.

Guy Dalpe, the managing director of the center, has read the lawsuit and is familiar with Yerba Buena's complaint, but would not directly comment on the pending action.

The student center has contracts with various vendors to provide food service to students throughout the academic year. The contracts of the two other vendors, the Upper-division Pub and the Underground Cafe, were also not renewed.

Kavoos Ghandi, proprietor of Gourmet Fantastico, which ran the pub and cafe, and currently the manager of the Faculty Club, also declined to comment on the lawsuit.

According to the suit, the student center repeatedly ignored the taqueria's concerns over leaky roofs, infestation problems (bird droppings) and hot water shortages, which lead to a loss of business and financial hardship.

Issac Mejia, Yerba Buena's owner, feels his complaints may have played a role in the center's refusal to renew his contract, said his attorney, Clarke Leslie.

"We have no idea why the student center has acted aggressively against my client," he said. "There are two classes of vendors, those in favor with the student center and those who are out of the enchanted circle. The people who are out get treated unfairly," Leslie added.

In one instance, Leslie claims his client was forced to pay insurance on 10,000 feet of space, much of which was not being used by the taqueria. "There are a lot of things like this that constitute our claim," Leslie said.

Leslie would not elaborate on the charges of racism, except to say that some racial groups were receiving preferential treatment over others. "If you take a look at who's getting favorable treatment, you'll see a racial bias," he said.

While he would not answer any of the charges in the lawsuit, Dalpe, who also sits on the vending services committee for the Student Center Governing Board, indicated that the bidding process was fair.

According to Dalpe, the three vending spaces became available once the pub, cafe and taqueria's contracts expired.

"We prepared requests for proposal (RFPs) for a total of five groups interested in the taqueria," Dalpe said, "of which three were finalists." Dalpe said each finalist was judged on 13 criteria, including financial stability, planned rental space improvements, price of food and the quality of the product.

Leslie said the bidding process to obtain a vending contract was unfair to his client, "because they treat people differently in the process of fairness." But Marco Ballesteros, the manager of the new taqueria disagrees.

Ballesteros and his mother, Carmelita, are partners in the taqueria, having successfully run Carmelita's, just outside the center, for the past seven years.

"We submitted an RFP which explained our product, food cost and why we would be the right choice," he said.

Ballesteros said that three finalists (including Mejia) were asked to provide a sample of their product. "I think we were chosen because I want to bring something different to the students," said Carmelita Ballesteros. "My idea was to make Latin-American food a choice, not just Mexican."

While they were friendly with Mejia, the Ballesteros cannot understand why he would bring a lawsuit against the student center. Since taking over the operation, they have had no problems with the center.

The suit also expressed concerns about management's response to repairing a number of items such as lack of hot water.

Dalpe said his engineers are realistic about responding to repair requests.

"Response time depends on the particular request," Dalpe said. "We have a process whereby vendors submit a work order. It depends on the concern and whether proper channels are approached," Dalpe added.

Dalpe said response time would be immediate if electricity were to be interrupted, but in the case of a few tiles missing, the order might involve a few days' response.

Mejia's suit also charges that the removal of asbestos insulation in the student center led to a loss of business for Yerba Buena.

"We've barely started," said Marco Ballesteros, "but I don't have any problems. They (the center) are good about taking care of the small problems we have."

"Maybe Issac (Mejia) had problems with (the student center), but nobody has talked to us about the lawsuit," Ballesteros concluded.

[ Golden Gater Online September 14, 1995 ]

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