Ventura Manager Uses an Activist Approach in Running the City

VENTURA — It has been two years since City Manager Donna Landeros swept into town in the wake of a winter storm that displaced more than 100 homeless people from the Ventura River bottom--two years of controversy and change for the city.

There was the furor over Centerplex, the project that would have brought a minor league baseball team to the city. There were the struggles to revitalize the city’s downtown area and to salvage the city’s cash-strapped libraries. And there was the running legal war over expanding the Buenaventura Mall.

And in the middle of all those struggles, there was a major change in city government, a shift of power over the way the city is run.

A self-proclaimed activist, Landeros has negotiated the city in and out of tough positions, streamlined and clarified the city’s internal administrative structure and bureaucratic procedures and surrounded herself with a new team of city department heads.

Almost without exception, council members praise Landeros.

“She has the ability to cut through the crud, to get to the meat of the issue,” said Councilman Jim Friedman. “I have only accolades for her.”

But some council members also note that since the arrival of Landeros, the balance of power at Ventura City Hall has shifted away from the City Council to Landeros and the city’s professional bureaucrats.

Councilman Jim Monahan, who has served six terms working with three different city managers, is one of Landeros’ greatest fans. But he did not mince words when he said: “What power does a council member have now? We can’t even make recommendations.”

Only half joking, he added, “These days, I think citizens really have an advantage over council members.”

Such comments are not limited to one side of the political dais. Councilman Gary Tuttle, who has rarely seen eye to eye with Monahan in his two terms, also says that under Landeros, he has spent less time on his job as a council member than in the past.

“I don’t know how the rest of the council feels,” Tuttle said recently. “But I am totally out of touch.”

Friedman, who was elected in 1995 and has only worked with Landeros, said simply: “Things really revolve around her.”

Councilman Steve Bennett, one of the council’s most outspoken members, declined to comment on Landeros’ performance, saying the council is in the midst of a performance review of her.

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Entrusted with the task of running the city’s day-to-day operations, city managers and council members often share a relationship marked by uneasy tension.

“Part of the city manager’s orientation is to stay in the background more,” Landeros said. “Politicians are elected as figureheads, as the focal point and policy makers. We are implementers and doers. They are directing us.”

But Landeros, who came to Ventura after five years as the chief administrative officer of Yolo County, is known for her determination and enterprising approach to problems, say former and current colleagues. In measured tones, the soft-spoken, 48-year-old Santa Paula native said there is a range of city manager styles. Some managers look at the role in a very traditional way, taking a narrow view of city service responsibilities; others are more innovative.

“I think the newer style is someone more activist, with a larger view of the community,” she said. “It is someone with more initiative, looking at more than what is traditionally defined as the city.”

She says she is definitely on the more activist end of the scale--taking people such as James C. Hankla, the feisty city manager of Long Beach, as a role model.

“The council knew that when they hired me,” she said. “It was clearly part of my view of the world. It was a situation of ‘If you want this view, you can hire me. If it’s not the right fit, please don’t.’ ”

Aggressive Implementation

Landeros cites the unusual partnership between City Hall and the Ventura Unified School District on the schools master plan and her focus on economic development as examples of her less traditional, more activist vision.

Indeed, once Landeros is given the green light, council members say, she rushes to carry out policy--aggressively.

“If the council says it wants to do something, she gets it done,” said former Councilman Tom Buford, who cast the swing vote to bring Landeros to Ventura. “She’s tough and fair-minded and knows how to run a tight ship.”

Take libraries. Once library consultant Beverley Simmons published a report recommending that Ventura withdraw from the county library system, Landeros snapped into action. After distilling Simmons’ lengthy report into a two-page document, Landeros was appointed by the council to negotiate independently with the county.

Discussions continue, but her handling of the situation has drawn the attention of officials outside Ventura County.

She was a panelist at the Public Library Directors’ Forum in San Diego on April 23 for a discussion on reorganization of California public libraries and the issues facing her as a city manager considering withdrawal from a county library system.

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So far, the City Council has been so pleased with Landeros’ work that it extended her original three-year contract indefinitely, said Linda Kegerreis, director of human resources. She will make $112,000 this year.

Originally from Santa Paula, Landeros is the third of five children of Eleanor Crouch, a former mayor of Santa Paula, and Bill Crouch.

Today she runs Ventura’s historic City Hall--a building her father, a structural engineer, had recommended either evacuating or retrofitting around the time of its conversion from the county’s former courthouse to use by the city. Privately, he probably thought it would be cheaper to tear it down, Landeros said.

“My dad was the pragmatic engineer who would have buildings torn down,” she said. “My mother was on the county museum board and [was concerned with] historic preservation--trying to save buildings.”

Sitting next to her immaculate desk, a neatly prepared outline of her talking points before her, Landeros explains that she received her no-nonsense, practical streak from her father.

But she has some of the preservationist in her, too. Three photos of the unusual monk gargoyles that adorn the facade of City Hall hang on her office wall, and she speaks animatedly of trying to draw more tourists up the hill to explore City Hall. After graduating from UCLA in 1970, Landeros worked for Los Angeles County, Butte County and Yolo County before arriving in Ventura to take her current job Jan. 17, 1995.

Landeros said her experience as Yolo County administrator has helped her tremendously in terms of managing the city during an era of fiscal cutbacks.

“The change in city managers occurred at the time of fiscal cutbacks. Counties hit that wall 10 years ago,” she said. She has worked hard to implement tight fiscal controls within city departments--so that the council can better understand what it costs to do things, and how Ventura compares with other cities.

Drawing on County Experience

She says her experience as a county administrator was often like riding a horse without a bridle, while running a city is more like conducting an orchestra.

“As an administrator, you really don’t have very much authority, so you learn how to get things done without a lot of authority, without a lot of resources,” she said.

That experience has given her a leg up--now that she does have some authority.

“She’s very astute,” said Councilman Ray Di Guilio. “We’ve seen that through some tough negotiations. I think she analyzes the political climate very well, and the financial climate. She knows what, say, the downtown merchants or the City Council wants. She reads that very well and then provides general guidance to encourage the council to move in that direction and is not afraid.”

He cites Centerplex as an example.

When the council stumbled, Landeros stepped in and negotiated the city back onto a safe course.

For months, an ad hoc negotiating committee made up of Tuttle, Friedman and Di Guilio struggled to strike a deal with developer John Hofer to build a minor league baseball stadium on a celery field south of the Ventura Freeway near the auto mall.

During that time, Hofer refused to budge on many conditions. After reaching an impasse, the council turned to Landeros to act as point person for all further negotiations.

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Within weeks, she had negotiated a clear set of terms for the city: She negotiated the price down from more than $16 million to $10.5 million, convinced Hofer to pay the approximately $75,000 to take the issue to the voters and separated street improvements from the larger project--an issue that had complicated earlier negotiations.

In January, after a city staff report raising major environmental questions about the project, Hofer quietly withdrew his offer.

Landeros says the biggest change at City Hall under her direction is the city’s focus on economic development. She hired David Kleitsch as the city’s first full-time economic development advisor and has pushed expansion of Buenaventura Mall as a major revenue source for the city.

“We need to enhance our sales tax generators because the status quo in business just isn’t good enough,” she said. “It’s like a car--it will deteriorate if you don’t keep it up.”

Her efforts are paying off. After winning two lawsuits against Oxnard this year, the city is poised to begin a $100-million mall expansion, and the 1997-98 budget proposal reports that the city should receive $300,000 in new revenues from a new dealership moving into the auto mall.

When carrying out policy, Landeros stresses that she has concentrated on openness in city government.

“There is a philosophy with Donna and her department heads that we are as revealing as possible to the City Council,” said Marilyn Leuck, director of management resources, who helped put together the 1997-98 city budget. “We do not play games or keep secrets. The intent of the reports is to be as helpful for them as possible.”

Focusing the Council

Landeros says she has also worked to get the council’s leadership more directed toward policy issues. Part of that means getting members to stop trying to micro-manage City Hall.

“In the past, council members have gotten very caught up in the day-to-day antics of City Hall,” she said. “When the council’s attention is focused on the day-to-day management of City Hall, that means there is a leadership vacuum . . . and a policy vacuum which needs to be filled.”

The process leading to policy decisions has also become more open since the council abolished the standing committee system a little more than a year ago, Landeros said.

Started a decade ago, the system began as a way for smaller groups of three council members to hash out more complicated issues with city staff members before bringing final recommendations to the full council. But over time, the number of committees proliferated--growing from two to six or seven.

Although the committee process kept council members well-informed about the issues debated in their particular committee, critics argued that the standing committees created a system of back-room deal making, placed an undue workload on staff members and allowed powerful council members to ram minority policies down the majority’s throat.

But some council members, including Monahan and Tuttle, say the new system may have a cost: less-informed council members.

“The committees did make the council take twice as much time,” said Tuttle, who added that he used to spend 30 to 40 hours a week on council work but now only spends 10 to 20 hours. “But it served the purpose of keeping the council aware of things, especially at the cutting edge. Now I am definitely not at the cutting edge.”

Getting rid of the committees may also have indirectly helped consolidate more power in bureaucratic hands, some council members say.

Former Mayor Greg Carson, who many council members privately say worked the committee system to his political advantage, admits that council members often used committees as power tools, controlling staff members without the consent of the majority of the council.

But he also saw benefits--such as more council involvement in basic policy formation.

“Now the staff is formulating recommendations rather than the council,” he said. “When you bring everything to council without working all the kinks out, it gives much more power to staff.”

That may be particularly true for a council as fragmented as this one.

One former council member says that in the wake of the Centerplex fiasco last fall, the current council is scared to death of making a mistake--or saying something that is going to create a lot of opposition.

“There are no natural alliances on the council--at least I can’t fathom any,” he said. “It is seven times one . . . naturally they end up giving more authority to staff.”

Landeros has attempted to satisfy a divided council, whose members often have competing interests, by focusing on clarity of procedure.

“When you have limited resources--meaning not enough money to make everyone happy, and a group of diverse opinions, mistrust grows proportionate to the lack of clarity,” Landeros said. “So in the case of a council divided by growth and no growth, people suspect the worst. Establishing predictability, a level playing field, is important.”

Her efforts range from attempts to make the annual city budget an accessible document to establishing clear rules about how much city staff time council members can use to encouraging council members to come up with a set of meeting protocols to control unruly debate.

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As much information as possible is given out in written form, as comprehensive staff reports, she says. Study sessions on complicated issues such as redevelopment and the budget are held during council meetings, when all seven members are present. When individual council members ask questions, written responses are returned to all seven members.

Most council members say they respect Landeros’ efforts at fairness.

“The past process was a little more subjective,” Di Guilio said. “Donna is a very structured person. She likes predictability and wants to know what the rules of the game are, rather than wondering, ‘Did I step on some politicians’ toes?’ ”

And council members agree that a key to a well-run city is the city manager.

“Her job is to run the city business,” said Mayor Jack Tingstrom. “The council’s job is policy and direction. That is what we have done. I feel very, very good about this year and a half.”

Former council member Richard Francis is more blunt.

“If you have good staff, which the city does, it makes the council members look a whole lot smarter,” he said. “If you have smart council members, too, that’s icing on the cake.”