Del Mar’s City Manager Resigns : Nelson Blames Squabbles With Council for His Frustration

City Manager Bob Nelson, at odds with the Del Mar City Council and the community, has resigned from the job he has held since 1978.

The 46-year-old official has shown frustration in recent months over the council’s demands for increased services at the same time that budget reductions are being sought. Nelson, husband of Oceanside City Manager Suzanne Foucault, admitted Tuesday that he felt that “the six of us--the City Council members and I--were no longer a team.”

Nelson, who was hired in 1978 by a Del Mar council considered much more liberal than the current five members, has served for double the usual tenure of a city manager, which is three to four years. He has agreed to stay until March 1, when an interim manager is expected to take over.

Council members were mum on the reasons for the resignation, which occurred during a late-night council executive session Monday. Nelson would say only that “it was no one incident which brought this on.”

However, one council member speculated that Nelson incurred the wrath of two other council members when he approved an emergency permit for erection of a seawall on public beach property without taking the issue before the full council for review.

Nelson said he had authority to issue the permit to Ferdinand Fletcher for a rock seawall extending nearly 30 feet onto the public beach under emergency legislation passed several years ago.

One city source said that the incident prompted one irate council member to place the closed-door session on Monday’s council agenda and to demand that Nelson resign.

Mayor Arlene Carsten said she would not discuss the reasons for Nelson’s quitting but confirmed that the council unanimously accepted his resignation “with deep regret.” She also said that the action was “not expected” but “was not particularly surprising.”

Nelson was away from Del Mar last week attending the International City Managers Assn. convention in Philadelphia. He said he had no idea which City Council member placed the executive session on personnel matters on the Monday council agenda.

Mayor Carsten and Vice Mayor Lew Hopkins declined to say how the personnel issue came up. Both cited privacy sections of the state law relating to personnel matters.

When asked Tuesday why he had submitted his resignation, Nelson replied, “It was not one single incident but an accumulation of tasks that were not in the best interests of the community.”

He said that the Del Mar community has been changing from a town that welcomed innovative approaches to one that was “in love with politics . . . more interested in the way things were done than in what was being done.”

The City Council members who hired Nelson--Nancy Hoover, Richard Rypinski, Al Tarkington, Richard Roe and Hervey Sweetwood--all have been succeeded by more conservative council members. The entire managerial staff also has changed through retirements and resignations since Nelson took the helm.

Nelson said the current staff was “very able” but “needed experience” in dealing with the administrative pressures of a small city. He said the nine department heads, including three contract companies, are “underpaid in terms of their California counterparts” and reaching a workload where “something must be dropped before new projects are taken on.”

Both council members and Nelson admitted that there has been friction growing for more than a year over responsibility for administrative matters and over what policy decisions were in effect.

Bill Healey, former Del Mar planning director who left for a county management post in the Department of Planning and Land Use, said he left his Del Mar post “when the job ceased to be interesting, when it was no longer fun.” He cited the current council’s “wish list,” which he said was unreasonable for a city of 5,000 people with a small municipal staff.

Recent pressures for budget cutbacks by council members, combined with simultaneous demands for additional services, made the job of a city manager “unmanageable,” Healey commented.

Nelson said he would seek a position in the San Diego County area--”perhaps in some other field than city management”--because of his wife’s position as Oceanside city manager and because of adoption proceedings for their infant daughter, Annie.

Foucault could not be reached for comment about the possibility that the family will have to move to Oceanside because of her employment. Oceanside councilmen waived the city residence requirement because it conflicted with a similar requirement for Nelson in Del Mar.

The Del Mar City Council granted Nelson a loan so that he would be able to purchase a home in that city. He said Tuesday that the debt, with accumulated interest, amounts to about $70,000 today and its repayment “will be a matter of negotiation between me and the city.”

His salary of $48,500 places Nelson in the upper fourth of the pay scale for managers of California cities. He said that efforts by surrounding unincorporated communities of Solana Beach, Rancho Santa Fe and the San Dieguito towns of Encinitas, Cardiff, Leucadia and Olivenhain to become cities will come too late to offer employment for him when he leaves Del Mar in March.