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Is Leadership Scarce In Ventura? The Censure Farce Suggests Yes

The Move To Censure Turns To Tragedy

VREG has been silent for six months. City Hall decisions have been hard to reconcile and easy to criticize, so we have held off joining in on the fray. It is difficult not to write about what has been happening with our City government, but as we explain below it has all the makings of a modern Shakespearean tragedy.

New City Council

In December 2022, voters elected three new City Council Members, Jim Duran, Liz Campos and Bill McReynolds. We will reserve the temptation to comment on their talents or lack thereof. Still with these three joining the other four (voters elected Jeannette Sanchez-Palacios after she was appointed to fill a prior vacancy, Joe Schroder, Mike Johnson and Doug Halter), the longest tenure of any of them is just over two years.

The historical knowledge of this group is limited to their personal experience, with little regard for past governmental actions. Some declare a ‘lifelong’ familiarity with ‘all things Ventura,’ but overseeing city politics from an elected city council perspective is far different from being a citizen. The most significant gap is understanding the difference between being in a ‘board of director role,’ as an elected council member, versus being a ‘department head, manager or even a CEO of a company.’ The first lesson they need to learn and accept is that the city council only hires two people for advice on the everyday management of our city, the City Manager and the City Attorney.

As City Councilmembers, they are not HR directors and do not micro-manage staff, city departments or budgets. The role of a council member is to set policy, direct procedures and, in some cases, make laws when necessary.

Councilmembers Unclear On Roles

The greatest surprise is that the staff does not work for the City Council. Councilmembers must understand that the staff answers to their supervisors and, as is human nature, will not jeopardize their position, supervisor or job if it is avoidable. And, to make matters worse, the staff may have budgets and goals contradictory to the public and the elected officials.

The staff can access details and information the City Council needs to make decisions or set policies. Yet, the staff is not the only source of information available to the City Council. Our elected officials must be truthful and ask tough questions about budgets, expenses, staffing, project deadlines, and other options before making decisions. No staff member has ever told the Council, ’We can cut our budget and staff and provide better efficiency with less.’ Again, the role of a Councilmember is to set policy, direct procedures and, in some cases, make laws. The Council cannot do that properly without being provided with all the options unbiasedly.

This concept of questioning or challenging staff information has led to dysfunction at City Hall for the last six months.

By observation, the City of Ventura is a wasteland regarding leadership. Recent Councilmembers have needed to be more experienced in their leadership roles. There has not been a permanent City Manager for over six months. During that time, several department heads were placed on leave or terminated. Most recently, there has also been an attempt to censure an elected Councilmember. All this while the new Mayor says that the city is in great shape with a ‘deep bench’ of staff, and another Councilmember says this is the best group of Councilmembers ever.

To Censure or Admonish Another Council Member?

Censure was the question before the City Council during a 5-hour special meeting. Notably, the City Attorney, who makes a living defining words, told the Ventura County Star there was no real difference between these two actions.

We beg to differ and refer to Mr. Webster. To admonish is ‘to warn or reprimand someone firmly’ while censure is ‘to express severe disapproval, typically in a formal statement.’  Without taking sides in this debate, it finally came down to a Council member using the wrong ‘tone’ with a staff member in an effort to obtain the information he wanted to do his job as an elected official for the benefit of the community.

When we asked some individual Council Members about the outcome of the meeting, one expressed that they wanted to take away the specific committee assignments for which the accused Councilmember received a ‘meeting stipend.’ This reply sounds purely punitive and more like retribution. The investigation may have been an indictment of something wrong, but it was never a legal judgment and certainly not conclusive of any wrongdoing. Judging their peers is not the role of a Councilmember. All seven need training in what their roles are.

Plenty of Blame to Go Around

We do not need the details of the HR complaint to comment on the actions of the Councilmembers. We know that the Mayor, City Attorney and City Manager (interim) were present and either did not witness or did not see fit to deal with the purported infraction when it occurred. Even the current City Councilmembers, in a very diplomatic way, did not see fit to question, deflect or detour the questionable ‘exchange.’ The Council and staff focused on the complaint and Mr. Johnson, but somehow there was no further discussion about the fact that eight other members on the dais were present when the ‘offense’ allegedly occurred. Instead, this becomes a 5-hour discussion that looks more like a ‘gang attack’ on one council member. We make no excuses for what may or may not have occurred. Yet, if something did happen, everyone present needs to share in the guilt.

Making the situation even more absurd was the City Attorney’s unilateral decision to hire an outside law firm for $75,000 to investigate the impropriety of one of his bosses.

Waiting for the Next Shoe to Drop

During the 5-hour discussion about censoring or admonishing Council Member Johnson, some members stood on three moral high ground standards:

  • ‘Zero tolerance’ for bullying.
  • Elected officials should hold themselves to a ‘higher standard’ of conduct than the ordinary citizen.
  • Even the ‘perception’ of disrespecting a staff member was severe enough to take action.

At this point, Councilmember, Liz Campos, stated publicly that her fellow Councilmembers disrespected and belittled her (2:25:08 to 2:28:28) in a closed session, with both the interim City Manager and City Attorney present.

Surprisingly, nobody commented on this statement. When will this investigation begin? Will the City Attorney contract another outside law firm to investigate Ms. Campos’ claims, and what will that cost the citizens?

And, given the three moral high ground standards set forth earlier in the meeting, there should have been four resignations from the four Councilmembers claiming that higher ground. Yet, there weren’t. If those four Councilmembers are to be true to their beliefs and to not be hypocritical, we expect four resignations when the investigation begins.

Editors Comments

We, as citizens, should be disappointed and embarrassed. The Shakespearean quote above is apropos.  It means goodness is bad, and badness is good.

Councilmembers and staff need to stop patting each other on the back for doing a good job when it is their job to perform their work and fulfill their assignments and quietly accept that a Councilmember might be verbally critical if they do not do their job.

What should the citizens of Ventura be entitled to expect? Hire a City Manager to manage our affairs and help the Council through decision-making. As for the City Attorney, he will always warn that the city can be ‘sued,’ but the possibility of a lawsuit cannot be the overriding reason for the Council to vote a certain way. The City Attorney’s job is to “advise” and help on legal matters.  A City Manager’s job is to help the council stay focused on their roles and priorities.

City Council’s priorities are budgets and safety. It is not to accept all staff reports and recommendations at face value. City Council’s job is to question, challenge and determine the best use of the citizens’ money.  It is not to be the cheerleader to all staff members or to accept every report and recommendation staff presents. The City Council is the last safeguard to protect the citizens against wasteful spending. Nobody recalls a time when the staff has reduced their budget or lowered their personnel count. While asking questions, one person’s inquiry may appear to be another person’s assertiveness or aggression. Answering Council’s questions is a large part of the staff’s job.

While other communities are trying to address housing, traffic, economic issues and crime, Ventura is squabbling and spending time pointing fingers and punishing each other.

You don’t like our tone? Is the message too harsh? Too bad. Get over it.

Tell The City Council To Focus On Their Job

Below you’ll find the photos of our current City Council. Click on any Councilmember’s photo and you’re email program will ready to write directly to that Councilmember.

Let them know what you’re thinking. Tell them what they’re doing right and what they could improve upon. No matter what you write, however, share your opinion. Participating in government makes things better because our city government is working for all of us.

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How to hire better for the most influential job in Ventura

How To Make Better Hiring Decisions For The Most Influential Job In Ventura

Here we go again. Ventura is hiring its fifth City Manager since 2000.

The City Manager is the most influential job in Ventura’s city government. He controls millions of dollars and impacts Ventura for years to come. Unfortunately, he does this with little oversight from a part-time City Council.

Neither the City Manager nor the City Council has shown an ability to run the city in a fiscally responsible way. As a result, the Finance Department has provided the City Council with a projection that the City of Ventura will lose money over the next five years.

Four previous holders of the most influential job in Ventura.

For the fifth time since 2000, Ventura is hiring a new City Manager.

Poor Choices Lead To Financial Disaster

The City Council does a poor job of overseeing the City Manager. Former City Manager Rick Cole played financial games with the budget. He moved $7.5 million from the Public Liability Fund, Workers’ Compensation Fund, and Information Technology Fund to other areas in the budget. These moves made it appear as if the city’s budget was balanced. Unfortunately, the Council didn’t catch the manipulation or was unwilling to investigate further.

Former City Manager Donna Landeros reallocated $9 million earmarked for the proposed Convention Center to various city programs. Unfortunately, no one can determine what happened to the money.

Former City Manager Mark Watkins acted as the chief cheerleader on Measure O. He touted the money was for city services. Yet, oversight for Measure O has disappeared as the citizens’ committee has several vacancies. Measure O money will ultimately go toward employees’ pensions, not city services.

Moreover, the City Council’s decision to hire Mr. Watkins cost the Ventura taxpayer’s money. When Mr. Watkins took the most influential job in Ventura, the Council chose to increase his salary and bonus to $242,059. That was a $52,718 increase over his predecessor, Mr. Cole. Former Councilmember Christy Weir claimed hiring Mr. Watkins would save the city more money than the rise in his salary. Unfortunately, the figures don’t bear that out over the four years he served in the role. And now, Mr. Watkins receives his retirement pension based on his highest salary of $242,059.

The City Council put Mr. McIntyre on paid administrative leave. At the same time, Ventura hired an independent auditing firm to review city credit card usage from the city’s executive team and other spending. On December 12, 2022, Mr. McIntyre resigned before the audit results became public. The City Council accepted his resignation and paid him $150,000 severance pay.

There Will Be Pressure To Hire Fast

There will be pressure to hire the most influential job in Ventura quickly

The Council will feel internal and external pressure to act quickly. They’ll want to fill the vacant position immediately to provide leadership at City Hall. In addition, citizens will demand someone to manage the Thomas Fire and COVID-19 recoveries. The search firm Ventura hired to help find someone for the position will add to the pressure, too. Ventura pays the search firm when the new City Manager accepts the job. Typically, the fee is three months of the City Manager’s starting salary. In this case, it’s $76,177.

A hasty decision now could lead to adverse consequences in the future. Therefore, the Council should be deliberate, bold and thoughtful when hiring. Likewise, they should think creatively and progressively as they make their selection.

Balancing these goals will take work, and the Council must resist succumbing to the pressure.

Qualities Ventura Needs In A City Manager

The challenges facing Ventura’s new City Manager have never been more significant. The city is recovering from back-to-back adversities and requires steady leadership. Here are some attributes that the City Council should demand of the new City Manager.

Fiscal Responsibility

The new City Manager will inherit a budget with declining revenue and the possibility of a recession in the general economy. Therefore, the new City Manager must thoroughly understand the city’s budget and financial figures. In addition, they must include an understanding of fiscal policies, procedures and controls. For example, Ventura is spending over $100,000 on auditors to investigate city credit card usage by City employees and executive spending. Taxpayers wouldn’t have to pay this if the city accounting staff and the current assistants and deputies in the City Manager’s office had done their job and had implemented proper controls at City Hall.

Accountability

Residents expect the most influential job in Ventura to be accountable. President Truman said, “The buck stops here.” In Ventura, the “buck stops” at the City Manager’s desk, which applies to all the City Manager’s subordinates. The top person is accountable for results, even if the underlings underperform.

Communication

The City Manager must be able to communicate with various groups. For example, they must be able to collaborate with city staff, labor unions, the City Council, the media and the community. Also, the City Manager needs to articulate the city’s plan to move ahead following the Thomas Fire and COVID-19. They must also communicate changes in department policy and practices.

Transparency

Transparency begins with knowing how the City Manager is performing. The city should use Standards of Performance (SOPs) to measure achievement. Currently, the City Manager doesn’t have SOPs listed on its website. The Council should prepare SOPs, and the city should post them for the public to review. What’s more, the City Manager’s accomplishments should be in the public record. Citizens deserve a yardstick to measure if the city meets the City Council’s directives.

Results Driven

The new City Manager should be goal oriented and a self-starter. Once the City Manager understands the Council’s direction, this individual cannot wait for an elected, part-time City Council to implement action.   The new person must be able to meet deadlines to produce measurable results on the projects the city commits to completing.  The new Council intends well, but they are part-time. They do not have the ability or tools to implement their policy decisions and then follow up to ensure others successfully implement them. Only the City Manager and his lieutenants can do that.

Delegation

Delegating responsibility will be crucial to the new City Manager. Yet, delegation doesn’t mean surrendering responsibility. On the contrary, the new City Manager must regularly inspect the assigned projects for results and, if necessary, take action for missed goals.

What The City Council Must Avoid When Hiring A City Manager

Equally crucial to the qualities to look for in a new City Manager are the things the City Council must avoid when hiring that person.

Requiring Former Public Service

Nothing limits the candidate pool like requiring previous public service at the city, county or municipal level. Past City Managers had a bureaucratic background. Locking in on prior public service leads to a “status quo” in city government. Little new or original thinking will come from other public servants. If the city wants to change and improve, finding a person with a business management background would be more beneficial in the long run.

Negotiated Automatic Raises

One salary negotiating tool for a prospective City Manager is to ask for—and usually receive—a salary increase after a specified period. Mr. McIntyre negotiated such a deal, and the increase was unwarranted. Base all increases on meeting or exceeding predetermined measurable results. Tenure should not be a criterion.

Long-Term Severance Packages

Mr. McIntyre also negotiated a $300,000 severance package over twelve months if the City Council terminated him without cause. The severance was too much and will last for too long. Any negotiated severance packages should be at most six months.

Residency Requirements

Requiring a candidate to live in or close to Ventura limits opportunities. Local applicants may only be able to offer new ideas if they know a little history of what came before. It limits the ability to break from entrenched solutions and historical changes. Making needed changes requires fresh thinking that a local person may not have.

Unsuitable Compensation

Each successive City Manager has received higher salaries and benefits. Higher compensation hasn’t produced better outcomes from the City Manager, though.

The City Council should be critical when determining the salary for the new manager. The current compensation for Ventura’s City Manager may be too high. For example, outgoing City Manager McIntyre received $304,707 to manage a General Fund of $126 million and 600 employees. By contrast, Mike Pettit, Ventura County Assistant County Executive Officer, receives $322,355 to administer a $2.7 billion General Fund and 10,000 employees.

Only an extraordinary candidate with a proven track record would warrant a higher salary. Yet, while compensation expenses are an essential concern, now is not a time to “pinch pennies” for the right hire.

Editors’ Comments

Hiring the next City Manager is paramount. The City Manager is the most influential job in Ventura’s city government. The new manager will be responsible for healing Ventura from back-to-back adversities. Hiring the right candidate will affect Ventura for years to come. There can be no higher priority for the incoming City Council.

The Council should be slow, bold and thoughtful when hiring. They should select a replacement creatively by thinking outside the box. What they do now echoes in eternity.

Tell The City Council Not To Act In Haste When Hiring A City Manager

Below you’ll find the photos of our current City Council. Click on any Councilmember’s photo and you’re email program will ready to write directly to that Councilmember.

Let them know what you’re thinking. Tell them what they’re doing right and what they could improve upon. No matter what you write, however, share your opinion. Participating in government makes things better because our city government is working for all of us.

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Why Breaking Up Committees And Commissions Is Important

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

—Lao Tzu

For the most part, nobody noticed the change. Ventura voters paid little attention to the City Council’s revamped process for committees and commissions. That’s too bad because the new process is the first step towards improving the city.

Voters elected a new City Council in 2018 seeking bold changes in the way Ventura operates. The Council designed initiatives to save city staff time and money. Because of the revamped process, Ventura will become more business-friendly. Moreover, the new procedures will make it easier for residents to improve their homes.

Unlike in the past, the Council recognizes that the development process is cumbersome. There are too many planning and review layers to navigate and not enough certainty. Mayor Matt LaVere called the system sick and in bad need of surgery. The Council is breaking down decades of ineffective planning, permit processing and internal red tape.

Proposed Changes To Committees And Commissions

The Council has proposed some significant changes. They include:

  • Streamlining, improving and simplifying the current design review process.
  • Disbanding the Historical Preservation Committee. Replacing it with staff review and, where needed, outside consultants.
  • Allowing each council member to appoint her or his own Planning Commission member. The commissioner’s term would run concurrently with that of the elected official.
  • Merging the Cultural Affairs, Library Advisory and Public Arts commissions. Three members of each commission stay on to form a nine-member board.

The Most Notable Change

The most significant change is the appointment of Planning Commissioners.

In the past, the City Council Appointments Committee interviewed Planning Commissioners. The Appointments Committee comprised of three Councilmembers. If approved, the committee recommended the prospect to the full City Council. When approved, each appointee was sworn in to serve for four to eight years, or longer.

Under the proposed changes, each City Councilmember will appoint a Planning Commission member. Commissioner terms would run concurrently with that of the elected official. The appointing Councilmember may replace them at any time during their tenure.

Increased Accountability For Committees And Commissions

Every Planning Commissioner would be accountable to the Councilmember who appointed him or her.

Currently, the commissioners are unelected and unanswerable layers in the process. Some viewed their role as gatekeepers or an all-important citizens’ overseers. Rarely, if ever, was an appointed commissioner removed by the City Council. Entrenched commissioners support their boards but do not answer to anyone and suffer no consequence if their agenda is different from that of the City Council.

Under the new structure, each commissioner would be responsible to an individual City Councilmember whom we elected. It is less likely they will obstruct progress.

Increased Efficiency

The proposed system eliminates duplicated efforts. It also saves the city staff time in unproductive meetings.

City staff will assume the responsibility of the Historical Preservation Committee. Combining the Cultural Affairs, Library Advisory and Public Arts Commissions reduces three meetings down to one.

City staff spends time preparing, attending and summarizing the findings for these meetings. They will no longer need to do so under the proposed changes.

Cost Neutral

The new system offers less duplicated effort, fewer meetings and allows the staff to do more work. City staff will spend less time in meetings. They will save the time they’d otherwise spend preparing for, attending and summarizing the meetings.

It costs the city more to have staff acting as the Historical Preservation Committee. The increase in personnel cost is offset by the cost savings from eliminated meetings, in any case.

Feeble Objections

The proposed changes don’t please everyone. The immediate resistance came from some existing committee members and commissioners. There are two main objections.  Some complained about the process. Others believe there will be less transparency and citizen involvement.

Those annoyed by the process claim the city should have notified members in advance about the change. They assert that the staff did not inform the commissions or seek input until after the fact.

Committee members and commissioners serve at the pleasure of the City Council. It’s unimportant if the Council or city staff notified them in advance of proposing any changes.

Others feel the new process will reduce the number of voices participating. The criticism is unfounded. All the committee and commission meetings are open to the public. Any interested citizen can attend and take part. That includes all ex-committee or ex-commission members.

Editors’ Comments

The City Council acknowledged Ventura could improve. They’re taking steps to change that; starting first with the committees and commissions. No one knows what impact these changes will have. What we do know is that doing the same thing and expecting different results will not work.

Supporting these recommendations may move Ventura forward. We applaud the Council’s effort to infuse more responsibility into city government. The new initiatives will improve transparency.

WRITE THE CITY COUNCIL TO SHARE YOUR OPINION ON THE CHANGES TO COMMITTEES AND COMMISSIONS

Below you’ll find the photos of our current City Council. Click on any Councilmember’s photo and you’ll open your email program ready to write directly to that Councilmember.

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