Oxnard City Manager Faces Fire Over Innovations

OXNARD —  Along the corridors of City Hall, dozens of sardonic Dilbert cartoons hang on the walls, subtly signaling a culture of discomfort.

Since 1994, the city of Oxnard has experimented with a new system that replaced departments with “programs” and department heads with “team leaders.”

When first implemented, it was hailed as a system that provided more services to the public more efficiently.

But three years later, the innovative system and the man who implemented it, City Manager Tom Frutchey, are under fire by the public, members of the council and city employees themselves.

Criticism of the system, coupled with a lawsuit filed against Frutchey and the city by former employees who say they were unjustly fired, and complaints by current and former city employees that Frutchey’s management style creates a culture of fear, have put the city manager in the hot seat.

Tonight, the City Council is scheduled to discuss Frutchey’s contract, which expired in October. According to several council members, the chances of it being renewed are 50-50.

“One barometer that measures people’s feelings about the restructuring process is the number of Dilbert cartoons that are pasted on city walls,” said one employee, who did not want his name to be used. “Those numbers are directly proportional to the way we are feeling. Two years ago you never saw them; now you see them everywhere.”

Mayor Manuel Lopez and newly elected Councilman John Zaragoza have stated their displeasure with the “program-based” system, saying it creates a vacuum in accountability. Lopez has also criticized the way some city decisions have been made, such as the signing of a preliminary agreement with a minor league baseball team without informing the mayor.

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But Frutchey is backed by Councilmen Tom Holden and Dean Maulhardt, who say he streamlined Oxnard’s bureaucracy and helped make the city more business-friendly. Frutchey’s supporters say he is the victim of a political witch hunt that makes him the scapegoat for unpopular City Council mandates.

“Tom has carried out council’s direction and policy over the last four years,” Holden said. “This is not about Tom. This issue is about the City Council taking responsibility for the direction it gives.”

The trump card in the council’s decision will be Councilman Bedford Pinkard, who has not stated a position strongly in favor or opposed to the city manager. “I have heard things from people in the city that say, ‘How much more can we take?’ ” said Pinkard, a former city employee himself. “Are we overtaxing some people? How will this affect morale? . . . I don’t know until I have an opportunity to review it.”

Frutchey worked for the Bay Area city of Campbell before becoming Oxnard’s assistant city manager in March 1992.

The council promoted Frutchey at a salary of $104,500 in October 1993. He came at a time of cutbacks and a deep revenue shortfall.

At the direction of the council, Frutchey began to streamline the city’s bureaucracy through attrition and layoffs. By 1994, city departments went from 16 to nine. Today, the city employee staff has been cut 30%.

But there have been some highly publicized firings, like that of 20-year employee Benjamen Wong, who was dismissed in August 1995. Wong had stated publicly that an overtaxed sewage pipe in northeast Oxnard could unleash thousands of gallons of raw sewage.

His firing raised questions among some council members and brought dozens of picketers to council meetings.

In addition, Frutchey recently tried to recruit what he said were more business-savvy applicants to replace Jack Lavin, the longtime general manager of the Performing Arts Center. Lopez intervened, and Lavin’s position does not seem to be immediately threatened.

“His tactic is of fear management,” said Wong, whose lawsuit alleging civil rights violations is scheduled to begin in federal court in May. “If anyone disagrees with him, he would consider that person not a team player, who would be taken out of their position.”

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Frutchey said he was only fulfilling council directives to cut middle management positions. But critics say downsizing is not the problem.

“I believe that we should downsize and streamline the operation,” said Zaragoza, a former head of the city’s Solid Waste Division. “There is really no clear line of authority and that is one of the things that concerns me.”

But Frutchey maintains that a top-heavy hierarchy does not necessarily bring better results.

“When you have a boss, you ultimately think of that person as being accountable; everything gets kicked upstairs,” Frutchey said. “There is an old saying, ‘If you’re facing your boss, you’ve got your rear end facing the customer.’ ”

Yet many former and current city employees say that even though there are no supervisors, there is a hierarchy that has left Frutchey as the most powerful--and intimidating--man in the city.

“All the roads lead to the city manager’s office,” said one current employee, who also did not wish to be identified. “In terms of the atmosphere here, people don’t know who they can talk to or who they cannot talk to. The level of stress is extremely high in the city.”

Zaragoza, Pinkard and Lopez say they have received calls from employees who fear for their jobs.

“We hear two versions,” said Lopez. “The official version is that everybody is happy, and the unofficial version is that everybody is in fear. Unless they follow the party line, they are out.”

There is also a concern that the transformation process has made Oxnard the odd-man-out among other cities, making it difficult to recruit new employees.

“The people who are still there are going to find themselves more out of touch with the way things are being done in other cities, and it may be harder to attract people to such a nontraditional environment,” said former Finance Director Sandra Schmidt, who now works for the city of Burbank.

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Frutchey concedes that luring people into an organization that does not offer promotion possibilities is tough. Nonetheless, he has been able to bring in at least half a dozen new people from other cities in the past year.

Despite the criticism, Frutchey hopes his job performance will be viewed as a progressive way to improve the once-impenetrable and wasteful bureaucracy of local government.

“I think letting him go would be one of the stupidest things they could do,” said Kevin Bernzott, former president of the Greater Oxnard Chamber of Commerce. “Before Tom got here, city employees liked to get in a groove. Well, a groove is a rut and a rut becomes a grave. Tom is very much an agent for change and change is a good thing.”

But others say the risk is too great.

“The thing that disgusts me is not that they made the decision but how they made the decision,” said laid-off employee Matt Lombardi. “It was like we were used toilet paper or something. I had put in 12 years with the city. I do think that was Tom Frutchey’s doing. He doesn’t give a damn about individuals.”