Hermosa’s Manager to Leave for Upland Post : Government: His support from the City Council had seriously eroded. The governing body in his new city split over hiring him.

Hermosa Beach City Manager Kevin B. Northcraft, whose relationship with City Council members has become increasingly strained in recent months, has announced that he will resign next month to take a similar post in Upland in San Bernardino County.

Northcraft, who will begin the new city manager’s job Oct. 7, had received a critical performance evaluation from the Hermosa Beach council earlier this year. His support had eroded to the point where only one of the five members, Councilman Chuck Sheldon, supported him.

Northcraft acknowledged in an interview Friday that satisfying the council has not been easy, but said he is leaving simply for the career advancement of running a substantially larger municipality. Northcraft said he made definite improvements in Hermosa Beach during his three years in office and will look back fondly on his tenure.

“There have been changes of philosophy (on the council),” he said. “The council has been very demanding, and I think we’ve been able to respond.”

Northcraft’s critics called his departure an opportunity for both Northcraft and the city.

“Upland has offered him a better lot in life, and I’m sure Hermosa Beach will have just as much of an improvement,” Councilman Roger Creighton said. “. . . I believe the majority of the council was ready for him to move.”

Selecting Northcraft’s replacement will be delayed until after November, when 11 candidates face election for the two seats being vacated by Creighton and Sheldon.

Northcraft was selected from roughly 75 applicants for the $101,000-a-year post in Upland. He makes $82,000 a year in Hermosa Beach.

Northcraft’s critics said he sometimes ignored council direction, but Sheldon said the other four council members are too hard on Northcraft. He credited Northcraft with improving the budget process in Hermosa Beach, instilling frugality on the staff during tough economic times and responding personally to citizen complaints and inquiries.

“I think Kevin will be sorely missed in Hermosa,” Sheldon said. “He’s a very levelheaded, rather unassuming professional manager who has had a very difficult council to deal with. . . .

“The problem was never Kevin’s inability to follow the council’s direction but that the council never had a direction. Their incredible naivete about the council-manager form of government placed pressure on Kevin to satisfy whims of council members that changed almost daily.”

Northcraft will be moving to a much larger city--Upland’s population of 63,300 is three times that of Hermosa Beach--but he may not escape tumult on the council.

The Upland City Council split 3 to 2 in selecting Northcraft for the job Thursday night, a welcome that Northcraft called “not ideal.”

The two dissenting council members said their “no” votes were unrelated to Northcraft’s qualifications. They said the job should have gone to Upland’s assistant city manager, Mike Matlock, a longtime city employee who was one of the three finalists.

Matlock has been acting city manager since January, when Ray Silver left the city manager’s job to become assistant city manager in Huntington Beach.

“The three finalists were all equal with their qualifications, and I wanted to go with the in-house person who has been with the city for 17 years and has been acting city manager for seven months,” Upland Councilman Coy Estes said.

Upland Councilman Tom McGilloway added, “No matter how well Mr. Northcraft does, we’ll be asking ourselves, ‘Could Mike Matlock have done it better?’ ”

Before going to Hermosa Beach in 1988, Northcraft had been city manager in Suisun City in Northern California and assistant city manager in El Segundo. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Missouri and a master’s degree in public administration from USC.