Unable To Force A Return Value With ExecuteNonQuery???

Hi all!  I've been banging my head on this for way to long and decided it's time to reach out for help.  I'll try to be complete and concise with this, but this will end up being lengthy most likely.

The crux of the issue is that I apparently do not have any control over what is returned from a stored proc via the SqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery method.  I want the procedure to explicitly return 0 if the proc was successful, otherwise it will return the error code generated.  A value of -1 is consistently being returned when SET NOCOUNT ON is in place, and when not, a 1 is returned.  This seems to be ignoring the fact that I have RETURN 0 at the end of the proc.  Perhaps I'm missing something, but if I RETURN 0, I should get 0...here is the procedure:1 ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[epsp_EditCities]
2 @CityId int = null,
3 @City varchar(50),
4 @CreatedBy int,
5 @UpdatedBy int,
6 @ActionType varchar(1) = 'X',
7 @Identity int = 0 OUT,
8 @RowCount int = 0 OUT
9
10 AS
11 DECLARE @ERROR int -- Local @@ERROR
12
13
14 SET NOCOUNT ON
15 BEGIN TRAN
16
17 IF @ActionType = 'I' /* --- INSERT --- */
18 BEGIN
19
20 INSERT INTO [EnrollmentPrograms].[dbo].[Cities]
21 ([City]
22 ,[CreatedBy]
23 ,[UpdatedBy])
24 VALUES
25 (@City
26 ,@CreatedBy
27 ,@UpdatedBy)
28 SET @Identity = SCOPE_IDENTITY()
29
30 END
31
32 IF @ActionType = 'U' /* --- UPDATE --- */
33 BEGIN
34
35 UPDATE [EnrollmentPrograms].[dbo].[Cities]
36 SET [City] = @City
37 ,[UpdatedBy] = @UpdatedBy
38 WHERE CityId = @CityId
39 END
40
41 IF @ActionType = 'D' /* --- DELETE --- */
42 BEGIN
43
44 DELETE FROM [EnrollmentPrograms].[dbo].[Cities]
45 WHERE CityId = @CityId
46 END
47
48
49 -- Error checking (place this after every statement) --
50 SET @ERROR = @@ERROR
51 SET @RowCount = @@ROWCOUNT
52
53 IF @ERROR != 0 GOTO HANDLE_ERROR
54
55 COMMIT TRAN -- No Errors, so go ahead
56
57 RETURN 0
58
59 HANDLE_ERROR:
60 ROLLBACK TRAN
61 RETURN @ERRORAnd a fascinating tidbit is the results from this which shows the return value as 0:1 DECLARE@return_value int,
2 @Identity int--,
3 --@RowCount int
4
5 EXEC@return_value = [dbo].[epsp_EditCities]
6 @CityId = 1,
7 @City = N'Agoura Hills',
8 @CreatedBy = 1,
9 @UpdatedBy = 1,
10 @ActionType = N'U',
11 @Identity = @Identity OUTPUT--,
12 --@RowCount = @RowCount OUTPUT
13
14 SELECT@Identity as N'@Identity'--,
15 --@RowCount as N'@RowCount'
16
17 SELECTReturnValue = @return_value
 

And finally, here is the C# call that always returns -1:

retVal = cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();

Now, I've tried almost all variations and unit tests on the procedure that I could dream up.  Commenting this out and putting this in etc....I still remain unable to fix the return code to 0 and get that result into my retVal var.

Any love?  Much thanks in advance for spending time on my issue!

Cheers!

Wayne