Carson City Administrator Resigns

In a surprise move, Carson City Administrator Dick Gunnarson, who got a one-year contract extension only last month, resigned Wednesday from his $84,000-a-year job, citing “personal and family needs.”

Gunnarson, 62, will leave June 30.

Coming so soon after his contract extension and one month after a four-member City Council majority appeared to have consolidated its hold on city government for the next two years, Gunnarson’s resignation was another in a lengthy series of unexpected shocks at Carson City Hall.

“It is getting to where I shake my head,” said Councilman Michael Mitoma, who had expressed hopes after his reelection in April that Carson politics finally would calm down. “I cannot believe this place.”

In the last two years, Carson has seen three bitterly contested council elections, the indictment and conviction of former Councilman Walter J. Egan on corruption charges, the ouster of former City Administrator John Dangleis, the appointment of Gunnarson and his team of department heads, a realignment of departmental responsibilities, a protracted libel lawsuit involving three council members and two council candidates, the April 26 death of Councilman Tom Mills and the council’s decision to appoint John Anderson to the vacancy rather than hold a special election.

Informed by a reporter of Gunnarson’s pending departure, Councilwoman Sylvia Muise and Carson Treasurer Mary Custer called it a surprise. Public Information Manager Eva Gatling said: “It was out of the blue.”

Mitoma, who informed The Times of the resignation, said, “I am saddened that he is leaving. We got a lot accomplished, but we still have a lot to be done. He is leaving at kind of an inopportune time for the city.”

Muise, who voted against Gunnarson when he was appointed city administrator in May, 1987, said his abrupt departure was unprofessional.

“A month ago he wanted to renew the contract,” she said. “Now he is telling us he wants to retire. That does not sound like a professional way of handling things.”

She rated his performance as city administrator as a 4 on a scale of 10.

Gunnarson left City Hall on Wednesday without acknowledging repeated requests for an interview that his secretary said she had placed on his desk.

It fell to Deputy City Administrator Bill McKown, who was appointed by Gunnarson, to provide explanations.

McKown, who said he might apply for the city administrator post if encouraged by council members, said Gunnarson told him that he wanted to retire to travel with his wife, adding that his father-in-law had died about three months ago after a lengthy illness and that his son had recently married.

“They got the empty-nest fever, probably,” McKown said. “He just came to the conclusion (that) he can retire financially at this point. He and his wife want to do some other things and he just wants to call it quits. It had nothing to do with working here.”

Yet Mitoma said that Gunnarson told him the job of city administrator “has a lot of stress.”

Gunnarson’s career with the city has involved stress from the beginning.

He was the second employee hired after the city incorporated in 1968 and went to work as the city’s planning director at a time when Carson’s several dozen active and former landfills and 88 auto junkyards gave the city the unwanted sobriquet: “Garbage Can of Los Angeles County.”

Cleaning up the city was a major priority, and Gunnarson helped formulate the city’s first General Plan.

In 1981, when the council forced Carson’s first city administrator, Frederick Bien, to retire for reasons that remain unclear, Gunnarson took over as acting city administrator, a post that he held for eight months until Ray Meador took over.

He did not stay long with Meador in charge.

Gunnarson testified at the Egan trial that he was forced out in 1983 as a result of his opposition to plans of W. Patrick Moriarty, who was convicted on political corruption charges, to build a mobile home park on top of a former landfill.

Dangleis was ousted as city administrator in April, 1986, after allegations that he had steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in city insurance business to a friend and business associate, a charge that he denied. A three-member council majority, consisting of Mayor Kay Calas, Vera Robles DeWitt and Mitoma, voted to install Gunnarson as city administrator, giving him a one-year contract.

At the meeting where his appointment was approved, Muise and her council ally Mills walked out, protesting that no search was conducted.

Muise said on Wednesday she also objected to the hiring because it would qualify Gunnarson for a big increase in his retirement pay, which is based in part on the pay in the final year of a government official’s service. Gunnarson’s retirement pay could not be determined Wednesday.

During his year in office, Gunnarson appointed a deputy city administrator and department heads for personnel, community development and community safety.

He oversaw a protracted budget process, whose delay he blamed on department heads trying to pad their budgets. He also shepherded a reorganization of departmental responsibilities that cut back on the once wide-ranging authority of City Parks and Recreation Director Howard Homan.

Muise remained a critic of Gunnarson, voting against the renewal of his contract and alleging that he was not sensitive to affirmative action issues and sexual harassment in the workplace.

Prior to the April elections, in which the three council members who appointed him were running for reelection, Gunnarson said he was “dead meat” if a candidate backed by Muise won.

But his fortunes appeared to be assured when all three were returned to office April 12.

On May 3, Mitoma, DeWitt and Calas voted to appoint John Anderson to fill the vacancy created by the death of Tom Mills and Anderson joined the three in voting to extend Gunnarson’s contract May 9.