ANALYSIS : Fuentes Weathers the Storm : Government: The new city manager will take over in the wake of fiscal and personnel crises. But he has overcome such hurdles before.

In Julio Fuentes’ current job as Pomona city administrator, even his supporters didn’t expect him to last a year.

He will have been there for almost three when he leaves to become Alhambra city manager in August.

In his new job, Fuentes will face weakened employee morale in the wake of a series of layoffs and demotions in Alhambra.

But officials in both cities say Fuentes, 35, can handle fiscal crises as well as political turmoil in Alhambra, a city of 82,106, with 489 city employees. He succeeds Kevin J. Murphy, who left in March to become city manager of Newport Beach.

Fuentes accepted the Alhambra job last week, after the five-member City Council voted unanimously to hire him. He will receive an annual salary of $110,000; Pomona pays him $97,000.

Pomona officials say Fuentes was a calming influence in an often-turbulent City Hall and worked well on redevelopment issues and with an ethnically diverse population of 131,723.

“He brought order out of chaos,” Pomona Councilwoman Paula Lantz said. “He took an extremely volatile situation and turned it around.”

“He has a canny sense of how to deal with people,” Alhambra Mayor Talmage Burke said. “He’s a very indefatigable character.”

That tenacity, officials said, will be sorely needed as Alhambra and cities throughout California face drastic losses in state revenue. The council--which already cut $1.9 million from its $78.8-million budget for 1991-92--may have to slash salaries and adopt an employee furlough program, acting City Manager Terry James said.

Although further cuts will probably be made before Fuentes takes over in August, the new city manager will have the tough job of heading a work force still bitter about budgetary matters.

Murphy, seen as popular and effective during most of his 10 years in Alhambra, had come under heat after receiving a 15% raise last year, four months before recommending a round of layoffs and demotions.

Fuentes “is coming into a hornet’s nest,” said John Eimans, president of the 156-member Alhambra Employees Assn. “Employees are very upset.”

Fuentes holds a master’s degree in public administration from USC and was Azusa’s city administrator before taking the Pomona job in 1989. When he arrived in Pomona, he faced major problems; the City Council had fired his predecessor and the police chief and was planning to issue a $34-million bond issue without projected revenue to pay for it.

Fuentes reduced the bond issue to $17 million and took a team to New York to persuade bond raters to upgrade the bonds, saving the city substantial financing costs. The bond issue has paid for street paving and other infrastructure improvements.

After only a few months on the job, Fuentes became a target of repeated criticism from former Councilman C. L. (Clay) Bryant. Some officials, including Mayor Donna Smith, had predicted that Fuentes would be fired, but he rode out the storm. Bryant was recalled by voters, and political conflicts waned.

Last year, the Los Angeles County Grand Jury issued a report that accused Pomona of sloppy management, inadequate staffing and failure to resolve major financial problems. Although Fuentes inherited most of the problems that were cited, he was angered by the attention given to the report and has taken steps to correct many of the problems.

Fuentes solved Pomona’s most pressing financial problems last year by encouraging the council to increase fees for services, to stop reducing the city utility tax and to cut 16 of the city’s 845 jobs. Those actions--netting about $4 million--enabled Fuentes to present the council with a $155-million balanced budget for 1992-93 that maintains existing services.

Although Pomona has gained two new hotels during Fuentes’ tenure, he has been unable to achieve Pomona’s long-sought goal of building a regional shopping mall at the Pomona Freeway and Corona Expressway. The project has been stalled by the recession and the discovery that the site is contaminated with hazardous wastes.

Fuentes beat out two other finalists for the Alhambra job. Seventy-four people applied for the position and eight were interviewed by the council, including James, said John Shannon, president of a Sacramento executive search firm hired by Alhambra. The city paid Shannon $14,500 to conduct the search, which took four months.

James, 46, called himself a long shot for the appointment. He was the only city employee to apply and will resume his position as assistant city manager for public works after Fuentes arrives.