Oxnard May Shut Down City Hall on Fridays : Smog: The council will discuss a four-day week to cut workers’ commute trips. A proposal must be filed with the county by Aug. 1.

Oxnard’s City Council is considering a plan to close City Hall on Fridays and offer incentives for city employees to bike or car-pool to work in order to meet a county mandate to reduce traffic-related smog.

Oxnard is the second city in the county to propose a Friday shutdown of city offices. The Thousand Oaks City Council approved a similar plan in April--an approach that received the county’s approval this week.

Oxnard’s City Council will discuss the plan Tuesday. The city has until Aug. 1 to submit a traffic-reduction plan to county air pollution control officials.

To meet county standards, large employers, including government agencies, must reduce the number of cars coming to work each morning to roughly three vehicles for every four people. The specific target is 1.35 people for each vehicle that makes a morning commute to the job site.

Corporations and agencies employing more than 100 workers must submit traffic-reduction plans and make a good-faith effort to meet the program’s goals or face up to $25,000 a day in fines from the county.

The same air pollution rules--which were adopted last year to help the county meet state and federal air quality standards--will be extended to employers of 50 or more workers in 1992.

By moving to a four-day workweek, Oxnard officials hope to reduce by about one-fifth the number of employee commute trips.

City union representatives have given the plan preliminary approval, but they remain concerned about the availability of after-hours child care and the employees’ ability to endure 10-hour days on a regular basis.

Under the plan, employees would either work 10-hour shifts four days a week and take Friday off, or work nine-hour shifts and take a Friday off every two weeks.

A third alternative being considered is a four-day, 36-hour week, with employees giving up some holiday time and benefits to make up the remaining four hours.

The plan will be refined over the next few months and should be ready for implementation by the start of next year, said Lino Corona, the city’s assistant personnel director, who heads the traffic-reduction program.

Corona said the city recently surveyed its 1,200 employees and determined that about 700 fall under the new county traffic-reduction rules because they make a morning commute between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. and report to work at an office within a one-mile radius of City Hall.

However, he said the plan will cover all city workers.

Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley are the only other cities that have submitted trip reduction plans to the county. But unlike Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley will not close City Hall on Fridays, opting instead to rely on financial incentives to persuade workers to form car pools or use alternative means of transportation.

“We felt that more could be accomplished through incentives than disincentives,” said Connie Henesbaird, Simi Valley’s support services administrator.

Ventura has yet to present a plan to its City Council, but a year ago it started employee incentives to encourage alternatives to driving alone to work.

The city gives preferential treatment to car pools in city parking lots and has installed showers to encourage biking and jogging to work. Those who share rides or avoid cars altogether also qualify for a $250 drawing held every two weeks.

The cities of Camarillo, Fillmore, Moorpark, Ojai, Port Hueneme and Santa Paula have too few employees to be included in the first round of targeted employers.

Under Oxnard’s proposed plan, city officials will hold biweekly drawings awarding between $100 and $250 to qualified participants, depending on how many times per week the winner avoids driving solo to work.

The plan also calls for installing more showers and bike lockers and giving priority parking spaces to vehicles used in car pools. The city would also enter into a contract with a child-care referral service to help employees on nine- or 10-hour workdays find child-care providers that offer extended hours.

In addition to helping the city meet the county’s requirements, the four-day, 10-hour work shifts would also allow city offices to be open for longer hours, making it more convenient for some residents to conduct city business, Corona said.

“The city is very interested in providing better services,” Corona said. “We can do that by closing Fridays and being open later the rest of the week.”

Oxnard City Hall currently remains open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. With the extended work schedule it could remain open to 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. with one day’s hours extended until 8 p.m., Corona said.

Under the plan, a small group of city employees--code enforcement inspectors, for example--would remain on five-day, 40-hour weeks, Corona said.

But by closing City Hall to the public on Fridays, employees who are at work that day will have an opportunity to work uninterrupted, Corona said.

Moreover, Corona said, compressing employees’ workweeks is the cheapest way for cash-strapped Oxnard to reduce traffic pollution.

The traffic-reduction approach to be considered by the City Council Tuesday is estimated to cost $32,000, officials said. But that cost would increase significantly if the city were to rely solely on financial incentives for employees.

Simi Valley’s $60,200 plan, for example, is almost twice as costly as Oxnard’s, Simi Valley officials acknowledged.

“All in all, this is the best we can do since we don’t have a lot of money for incentives,” said David Hartsuck, president of the Oxnard chapter of the Public Employee’s Assn. of Ventura County.

“We’re not thrilled about the 10-hour day and we have a lot of concerns about child care,” said Hartsuck, who serves on the committee that drew up the plan. “But we don’t have a lot of alternatives. This plan is a step in the right direction and we’ll have to see how it goes.”