Carson Council Struggles to Fill Gaps at City Hall

In the two months since the Carson City Council decided it would replace City Administrator Jack Smith, the city has done little to recruit his successor.

And by the end of this week, there will be a bigger problem in city management: Three municipal departments will have no directors.

Personnel Director Don Rae and Public Works Director Ben Minamide announced their resignations last week. Rae left immediately, and Minamide’s resignation takes effect Thursday. Parks and Recreation Director Howard Homan retired under pressure in November and has not been replaced.

The City Council is expected to confront the vacancy issue Tuesday. Council members say the day-to-day management of the city is unaffected but concede that it will be difficult to quickly fill four of the city’s eight top administrative positions.

Some worry that the city, with its reputation for divisiveness and council meddling in departments’ daily operations, will be unable to attract high-caliber replacements.

“We’re not considered a pleasant place to work,” said Councilman Michael I. Mitoma, adding that officials in other municipalities are well aware of Carson’s political infighting.

The city has been plagued by high turnover of top officials. The last five years have seen three city administrators and numerous new department heads. When Smith was hired two years ago, he had to rebuild an administration that had only three department heads.

Smith announced that he would resign after the council in December balked at renewing his contract on other than a month-to-month basis. Smith gave notice during the first week of January, offering to stay through the end of February so the city would have time to find a replacement.

Instead, the council tapped Public Safety Director Larry Olson to double as acting city administrator, and he took over last Tuesday.

Council members acknowledge that when they did not renew Smith’s two-year contract in December, their intent was to replace him. However, the council has yet to solicit resumes, schedule interviews or decide whether to recruit from inside or outside the city. In addition, council members are reluctant to have Olson hire permanent department heads, preferring that the city first hire a permanent city administrator.

Olson said he has assumed some of the personnel director’s duties on an acting basis and that F. (Tudo) Iglesias, a superintendent in the Maintenance Department, has been named acting director of the Parks and Recreation Department.

Council members and other top city officials say Carson’s services and programs are running well. But as recently as last week, the council discovered that 10 people who were laid off in November are still working and still getting paid.

“The city needs direction right now,” Mitoma said. “There’s just no damn leadership.”

Before the most recent resignations, five of the city’s seven top managers had been hired by Smith. Patrick Brown, the city’s community development director, is now the most senior department head, having been in his job about five years.

Councilwoman Juanita McDonald said the lack of continuity “does not put a good taste in our mouth. . . . You have got to look to the leaders for where the problems are, even if it is the council.”

Perhaps the biggest problem the city faces in its recruiting effort is the council’s reputation for not letting administrators do their jobs.

A 1987 management consultant’s report said that council members regularly bypassed the chain of command in requesting information. Department heads interpreted the practice as a lack of confidence in how they ran the city. Under the council-manager form of government, the council’s role is to set policy, with the city manager and his or her staff carrying it out.

In interviews this week, council members and others acknowledged that the council still meddles in departmental operations rather than confining itself to policy making.

Former Personnel Director Rae said working in Carson was “an impossible situation.”

“It was difficult to accomplish positive objectives,” Rae said. “It was difficult to know what the goals were that we were attempting to meet. There are a lot of good people there who could do a lot of good things if they were allowed to do so.”

However, the council is making some attempts at reform.

Mayor Vera Robles DeWitt said council members, in an effort to provide administrators some autonomy, pledged in a closed session last week to “keep our fingers out of day-to-day operations.”

Privately, however, council members concede that it will be difficult.

Said one former department director: “They act on their own information rather than what senior staff is telling them. It just makes it so uncomfortable to work there. . . . There is constant staff bashing.”

Whether Carson’s problems--such as the inability to adopt a balanced budget in a timely manner--are a result of poor council direction or poor administrative preparation is subject to debate, some officials said.

Mitoma said Smith’s administration was characterized by poor communication and incomplete staff reports.

Several council members said the city needs a strong city administrator able to fend off council incursions and pressure from residents, many of whom lash out at city officials at council meetings.