Council Tightens Rein on Lawndale Workers

Adopting a management style that some say has soured the working atmosphere in City Hall, the three members who control the Lawndale City Council are keeping a tight rein on city employees.

At the last Lawndale City Council meeting:

* Councilman Harold E. Hofmann demanded the council be notified whenever city employees plan to be away from City Hall. “If people are not going to be on the job, we want to know about it,” he said.

* Councilman Dan McKenzie got the council to reconsider its approval of one of the new city manager’s most important recommendations: that the city reorganize the Public Works Department and hire a combined public works director/city engineer. Angered because the staff advertised the salary for the new department head as “$60,000” rather than “up to $60,000,” McKenzie said: “Let’s bring it back and start all over again.”

* And Councilman Larry Rudolph, the third member of the triumvirate that prevails in the frequent 3-2 decisions of the council, has put the city manager’s job performance on the agenda for Thursday’s meeting, the second such closed-door session in a month.

Are these examples of the council running a taut ship? Or do they reflect council distrust that demoralizes the staff and undermines the city manager? The answer depends upon whom you ask, but one thing is clear: Lawndale City Hall is in turmoil.

City Manager Daniel P. Joseph’s job may be on the line after only 5 months with the city. There has been considerable turnover of city staff this year, the most recent when two department heads took jobs elsewhere. And many city workers, who agreed to be interviewed only on the condition they not be quoted by name, said they would have to agree with one employee: “Morale at City Hall is at an all-time low.”

Thursday’s executive session is a sign that Councilmen Rudolph, Hofmann and McKenzie may be ready to fire Joseph, who took over the $62,424-a-year city manager’s job June 6. He replaced Paul J. Philips, who resigned in December after a series of closed-door sessions with the council.

The three councilmen’s differences with Joseph have been evident at council meetings in recent months. None would talk publicly on whether they plan to fire him Thursday night.

In interviews, they complained that Joseph took it on himself to give the new planning director, Jim Arnold, a blistering job appraisal while a council majority approved of Arnold’s performance. They said Joseph sometimes does not respond to council direction and that he comes to work late.

“I’ve never gotten one bit of direction from the council as a whole,” Joseph responded. The council majority is more likely to attack staff proposals than set policies for the staff to follow, he said.

Others said the council majority is most likely to attack a program if it is supported by Mayor Sarann Kruse and Councilwoman Carol Norman, who are often overruled by the three councilmen. The council has become so polarized that the substance of issues becomes secondary to council politics, critics said.

Joseph’s problem, the critics said, may be that the majority sees him as an ally of Kruse and Norman, who have supported his recommendations on a number of matters, including budget priorities and the public works reorganization.

Hofmann, Rudolph and McKenzie contend that their vigilance is necessary because in the past two years, staff errors and wrongdoing have resulted in upheavals in the finance, planning and public works departments:

* In 1987, the city lost $1.68 million in speculative securities investments approved by the former city treasurer, Ray Wood, who was fired.

* During Planning Director Nancy L. Owens’ tenure, 1985-87, the Planning Department issued numerous building permits for structures that did not meet city codes. The actions caused widespread confusion this year as builders sought final approvals, and generated at least one lawsuit against the city. Owens resigned in a dispute with the council and filed a sex discrimination claim with the state Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That case is pending.

* In August, a maintenance supervisor was fired and a worker resigned after it was learned they used city charge accounts to buy material for private remodeling projects. The district attorney is investigating possible criminal violations.

Council members involve themselves in matters great and small, from hiring or firing the city manager down to locating a stop sign or questioning the staff on small expenditures such as buying painters’ work shorts for city workers.

In an interview, Hofmann said he thinks such supervision is needed to help prevent problems such as those that have occurred in the investment, planning and maintenance departments. It also helps keep employees from getting “lackadaisical,” he said.

Council supervision “helps people sharpen their pencils a little and put more effort into their jobs,” he said. “I don’t think you have to cater to these people.”

While acknowledging that there is always room for improvement, Kruse and Norman generally defend the staff and say that Hofmann, Rudolph and McKenzie are so suspicious and meddlesome that they call into question the integrity of good workers along with bad. They note that those responsible for the past year’s crises are no longer employed by the city.

In an interview, Kruse said that the city faces “a moral and ethical crisis” in which the majority on the council resorts to “inquisition-style” grilling of staff members at council meetings rather than first airing concerns one-to-one. She said the councilmen’s frequent challenges of Joseph amount to “crucifying the man” in public.

Hofmann defended his attention to detail and his reputation as a council watchdog. The fact that he won the most votes in last April’s election shows that his constituents approve of his work on the council, he said.

Friday ‘Holidays’

Hofmann said he asked that the council be notified about staff absences because often he and others have been unable to reach staff members after repeated attempts. “On Fridays they have a holiday--Friday afternoons, especially,” he said.

Rudolph noted that City Hall is supposed to be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., but Joseph usually comes to work at 8:30 a.m. or 8:45 a.m.

“When I worked, you had better be there on time or they would have somebody else in to replace you,” said McKenzie.

Joseph said that some of his work days do not end until midnight or later when the council sessions end.

Asked if there is not some “goofing off,” at City Hall, he said, “There is no question things need to be tightened up.” He said he has begun stricter monitoring of employees, but noted that professional managers are not usually expected to punch a time clock. “If they want a clock I’d be happy to purchase a clock,” he said. “If that’s my greatest fault--coming in at 8:30--I’ll take it.”

The departure in the last 3 months of two longtime employees also is viewed by some as a sign that morale at City Hall is “at rock bottom,” said a top city official.

Paula Burrier, director of housing and community development, last week left Lawndale after 7 1/2 years for a job with the Los Angeles County Community Development Commission. Recreation Director Brady Cherry, who had worked for the city since 1974 and full time for 10 years, went to work in August for the city of Point Hueneme as director of recreation and community services.

Career Advancement

Both said they left to broaden their municipal service experience and advance their careers.

But City Clerk Neil K. Roth, an elected official whose job does not depend on staying in the good graces of the City Council, said: “Brady and Paula left for a lot reasons, including bettering themselves in their new jobs. But they would not have been looking around and seeking other jobs” had the City Council been more supportive.

“It is quite demoralizing from the staff standpoint,” Roth said. “There is an attitude of distrust, a lack of faith, a lack of confidence that shows an insecurity on the council’s part,” he said. Members of the council majority have become “pseudo-experts” who repeatedly second-guess the professional staff, he said.

Kruse said that the three councilmen have no formal training in public administration, yet they involve themselves in routine matters that she said would be better handled by the city manager. Hofmann is a sewer contractor; McKenzie, a retired pipe fitter; and Rudolph, a production scheduler for a manufacturer of air-conditioning filters.

“The three of them have not demonstrated any admirable management skills, yet they seem to want to run the day-to-day operations at City Hall,” Kruse said. Instead, the council should concentrate on setting policy and enacting legislation, she said.

Rudolph and McKenzie said they feel it is their duty as council members to closely monitor City Hall operations and the spending of public funds. Differences about how closely the council members should manage city business “divide the council,” said Rudolph. He resents it, he said, when “those two people (Kruse and Norman) tell us it’s none of our business.”

The crises that have hit Lawndale “have caused the council to scrutinize everything the staff does, and maybe that’s even deserved sometimes,” said Joseph. But because the scrutiny is so intense, he said, it has hurt staff morale. “Everybody feels they have to keep looking over their shoulder,” he said.

Kruse and others said they fear that the council’s heavy-handed management style may impair Lawndale’s ability to attract qualified job candidates.

The word is getting around among municipal employees that Lawndale is a treacherous place to work, said present and past city employees.

Joseph said he is now recruiting for 10 job openings in Lawndale, but the unstable political climate may make potential applicants wary. Workers in municipal governments “talk to their peers and find out what’s going on,” he said. “I think there will be a reluctance to apply for positions here.”