Oceanside Names Carlsbad Politician as City Manager

John Mamaux, a controversial administrator and politician who was defeated for reelection to the Carlsbad City Council in November, was hired Wednesday as city manager of Oceanside, a city in political and economic turmoil.

The Oceanside council voted, 3 to 2, for Mamaux amid protests that his selection for the $107,000-a-year job had been engineered behind the scenes and that interim City Manager Jim Turner, a 29-year city employee, was being pushed aside.

“I am disturbed at the way this came about,” Mayor Larry Bagley said. “In fact, I heard on Monday this was a done deal.”

Mamaux, 58, the former city manager of both Del Mar and Carlsbad, had recently telephoned Oceanside council members to tell them he wanted to become city manager.

The surprise hiring came about although the council had not publicly stated that a replacement for Turner was being sought or that there was a favored applicant for the position.

What especially won Mamaux majority backing, as Oceanside struggles with a threatened budget deficit and an economic slump, is his reputation for bringing revenue-rich business to neighboring Carlsbad. Oceanside had looked on with envy and discomfort in the ‘60s and ‘70s when Mamaux played a key role in attracting Car Country and Plaza Camino Real to Carlsbad.

“He has a proven track record of credibility” with commercial and industrial developers, Oceanside Councilwoman Nancy York said.

Mamaux takes the city’s top administrative job amid layoffs and program cutbacks to avert a $5.8-million deficit.

City funds have declined because the recession has reduced housing construction, and the deployment of 20,000 to 30,000 Camp Pendleton Marines to the Middle East has slashed local sales tax revenue.

On the political front, the council is bitterly divided as a new slow-growth majority has taken control and many city workers--including some department heads--are worried that they will be ousted under the new regime.

“I’ve heard a lot of employees have their resumes out,” Mamaux said. “I’ll do my best to get them back.”

Although Mamaux is respected for his experience and rapport with the private sector, his career has been marred.

In 1967, he was fired as Carlsbad’s city manager, after serving three years, for his involvement in a bar fight. He acknowledged he had a drinking problem, which he said he has solved. Twenty years later, he declined an overture to take back his old job.

As a one-term Carlsbad councilman, he voted for a scaled-down community growth plan, but angered slow-growth advocates by hiring on as president of Centre Mortgage Co., owned by a development company.

Some of Mamaux’s council votes led to conflict-of-interest allegations being filed with the state Fair Political Practices Commission, which is still reviewing the matter. The commission did advise Mamaux last year that he should disqualify himself from voting on a $109-million tax district that would help his employer develop property in Carlsbad.

However, the commission didn’t indicate whether Mamaux acted properly during an earlier council vote ordering the city staff to prepare documents to form the tax district.

He has denied any conflict of interest and claimed the allegations were nothing more than political harassment.

The publicity over the charges didn’t help him in November, when his bid for a second term was defeated by voters. He blamed his loss on an anti-incumbent mood and claimed his enemies waged a telephone campaign to tell voters he was “under investigation.”

His arrival in Oceanside on Wednesday was somewhat awkward.

After a closed-door executive session, the council emerged and Councilman Don Rodee introduced a motion to hire Mamaux.

“Oh, my God,” gasped a woman in the audience.

After the council voted, Mamaux started to enter the council chamber, looked around and sensed the timing wasn’t right, and disappeared for a while as the council uneasily discussed why interim City Manager Turner didn’t get the job.

Turner, who resumes his former post as deputy city manager, was placed in the top job last summer, when City Manager Ron Bradley resigned.

City Councilwoman Melba Bishop, who leads the slow-growth majority, praised Turner but said he “has not had enough time to prove himself as a city manager.”

“Unfortunately,” she added, “Oceanside is in a position where we don’t have time.”

Bishop said she is satisfied that Mamaux will support the council’s slow-growth policies.

During the discussion on selecting a new manager, York said a national search would have been an expensive way to find out that job seekers might not be eager to tackle Oceanside’s problems.

“I’m afraid very few candidates would be willing to come to Oceanside under these conditions,” York said. “Mr. Mamaux, on the other hand, sees this as a challenge.”

Councilman Sam Williamson agreed that Mamaux is qualified, but said he feels that council members York and Ron Rodee, who have only been in office a month, haven’t served long enough to fairly evaluate Turner’s performance.

“I feel we should have given him more of an opportunity to do the job,” said Williamson, adding that “the way we went about it was entirely wrong.”

Turner, who recently guided the city through painful budget cuts, was publicly graceful about the change of command, saying Mamaux “has got a lot of experience, and I can learn a lot from him.”