Big Changes at Tiny Port of Hueneme : Ships: A quiet revolution in leadership in the Oxnard Harbor District has increased awareness of the maritime facility.

The tiny harbor that serves as the seaport for Ventura County can only accommodate five large ships at any time, and on most days there are only one or two unloading cargo.

Tucked into a little nook surrounded by the Seabees’ Naval Construction Battalion Center, the Port of Hueneme has always been an almost invisible force in the county’s economy.

But a quiet revolution in the leadership of the port has begun to increase its visibility and change the way people view it.

Within the past two years, a new majority has taken over the five-member panel that sets policy for the Oxnard Harbor District, replacing what some critics viewed as an “old boys network” that ran it for more than a decade.

The old guard had already launched an aggressive policy of chasing after increased maritime business around the world. But the port’s new leaders have escalated that effort, spending more money than ever before in the effort.

Already a force that generates up to 2,000 jobs and contributes an estimated $273 million annually to the county in payroll and goods, the Port of Hueneme is pushing harder than ever for more growth.

The port in the past two years has gained official designation as a U.S. port of entry and secured new shipping contracts worth $2 million annually that will increase the number of vessels calling each year from 250 to 400.

But with the success has come a residue of bitterness. As new leaders have taken power, critics have increasingly portrayed the Oxnard Harbor District’s old majority as a group that too often tried to run roughshod over anyone who opposed its will.

Bob Jennings, who was the senior member of the district board when he stepped down in April, is one member of the old guard who thinks the accusations are grossly unfair.

“There is absolutely nothing to the charge of an old boys’ network,” he said. “I have been an independent all of the time I was on the board. And so was everyone else.

“The district has been very successful and there is some jealousy about that,” Jennings added. “There are a handful of officials out there who are jealous that this is one of the most successful governments in Ventura County.”

Many officials in the cities of Oxnard and Port Hueneme, however, contend there has been an important change in the way the new port leadership conducts itself.

“I think there has been a fundamental change,” said Dick Velthoen, Port Hueneme’s city manager, who has clashed with the Oxnard Harbor District on several occasions in the past 15 years.

“We can work through problems and issues better than we could before. There is some entrenchment that has gone away.”

The new majority on the Oxnard Harbor District seems to realize that any future success for the port is tied to good relations with the cities around it, added Tom Figg, Port Hueneme’s director of community development.

“Today they seem to be more receptive to working with the city and others,” Figg said. “They are open to new ideas.”

The Phantom Port

The running joke among the people who run the Port of Hueneme is that most residents of Ventura County don’t even know it exists.

Landlocked on three sides by the huge Seabee base in Port Hueneme, the little harbor is virtually hidden at the west end of Hueneme Road in the residential areas of the Port Hueneme waterfront.

Unlike such giant West Coast ports as Los Angeles and Long Beach, the Port of Hueneme has done almost nothing to cash in on its status as a working seaport by trying to lure tourists to the area.

There are no quaint waterfront restaurants at the port. No curio shops. No boat rides for children. Instead, a security guard keeps wanderers from approaching the dozen or so commercial fishing boats and the cargo ships that tie up at the port’s two wharves.

For years, almost in keeping with the invisibility of the port itself, the Oxnard Harbor District board had the reputation for being one of the most closed public groups in Ventura County.

Until two years ago, the Oxnard Harbor District was dominated by a group of port commissioners who had long friendships and ties to the Oxnard Union High School District.

Two of those longtime members, school teachers Stanley J. Daily and Ray Fletcher, still serve on the Oxnard Harbor District, and Fletcher is the president. But two other members of the old majority, Jennings and Steve Stocks, have been replaced.

Jennings was the only member of that group who was initially elected to a port commissioner’s job. Fletcher, Daily and Stocks were all appointed.

But all dismiss the accusations of critics that they owed their port commission jobs to past friendships.

“I was appointed on my ability,” said Fletcher, who retired as a Navy lieutenant in 1974. “I did have a naval career and I had a good knowledge of ships.”

Daily, a teacher at Hueneme High School and also the mayor of Camarillo, said it was only a coincidence that he was appointed to a group that included Jennings, a former colleague at Hueneme High.

“Anyone has a chance to run and anyone has a chance to get elected,” he said.

Nevertheless, the Oxnard Harbor District remained largely in the hands of local school officials until a shift that started two years ago. That was when Raymond E. Fosse, a ship’s captain, won election to the Oxnard Harbor District, unseating Stocks. It was the first time in memory that an appointed incumbent had been voted out of office.

Stocks had been appointed to the Oxnard Harbor District just eight months before the election when another commissioner with ties to the Oxnard schools, Cecil Schnelle, stepped down.

Despite a history of previous appointments of new port commissioners with Oxnard school ties, the appointment of Stocks touched off strong criticism because several other candidates had more actual experience in port business, one port employee recalled. Fosse was one of those.

“Nobody could see the merit of it,” said the employee of the appointment of Stocks, a former Oxnard Union High administrator who is now a trustee in the Oxnard Union High School District.

After running an aggressive campaign that included backing from port labor unions, Fosse unseated Stocks in November, 1990. Many view his success as a turning point for the board.

“It showed that the cronyism that seemed to exist before was starting to break up,” said Bill Hill, a part-time longshoreman who is hoping to continue the shift as a candidate for one of two seats on the Oxnard Harbor District in November’s election.

The election of Fosse, however, was merely the first step for critics of the old district leadership. Fosse joined Edward J. Millan, the district’s former executive director who was elected in November, 1986, as a commissioner not perceived to be part of the Oxnard school group.

But it wasn’t until this May that the new leadership could claim a majority of the five-member body. That came when Robert E. Turner, a Port Hueneme dentist with no apparent ties to any sitting commissioners, was appointed to the board.

Jess Herrera, an official with the longshoremen’s union, is one who is happy with the changing leadership of the port. He says he hopes to see the new direction accelerate in 1994, when voters will be asked to choose two new commissioners from Oxnard and Port Hueneme under redrawn district boundary lines.

“It is important to have people who live near the port or who have been a part of the harbor district for years because they know the concerns,” said Herrera, who has worked the docks at the Port of Hueneme since 1966.

Job Perks

The junket to Europe four months ago was like no other trip ever taken by the officials who govern Ventura County’s ambitious harbor.

Four commissioners and two other officials of the Oxnard Harbor District, which governs the Port of Hueneme, set off on a 10-day trade mission that took them to Sweden, Germany and England.

Along the way, they met with the heads of major luxury automobile manufacturers and promoted goodwill by establishing a sister-port relationship with a town in Sweden.

They also spent $43,629. That was the most money they had ever spent on travel, and three times more than the entire County Board of Supervisors spent in the last year.

It was the first international trade mission taken by the Oxnard Harbor District in its 55-year history, according to port Executive Director Anthony Taormina, who has spearheaded most of the growth initiatives of the harbor since taking office seven years ago.

And not only did it symbolize the new aggressiveness of the port, he said, it generated some instant payoffs.

During the trip, for instance, port commissioners stopped in at Lauritzen Lines in Copenhagen for an unscheduled visit, Taormina said.

“Within two weeks, we had their first vessel,” he said. “We’ve had four more vessels during the citrus season since then.”

Taormina and the port’s commissioners all agree it is necessary to spend money on port relations to attract new shippers to the West Coast’s only deep-water port between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

And, at a time when other governments have slashed travel budgets to save money, the Oxnard Harbor District is spending more money than ever on trips to promote the port.

In the past three years, commissioners have traveled to port-related conferences in such places as Vancouver, Seattle and the Bahamas. Port commissioners also regularly travel to Washington to lobby legislators to fund projects, such as dredging, that will benefit the harbor.

The port commissioners spent $34,314 on travel for the year ending June 30, 1990, about $10,000 less than the County Board of Supervisors for the same period. The following year, the commissioners spent $25,847 on travel. And this fiscal year, travel expenses spiraled to $83,718.

More than half of that was spent on the trade mission to Europe taken by commissioners Daily, Jennings, Millan and Fosse along with Taormina and the port’s assistant executive director, William Buenger. (Jennings retired shortly after the trip.)

Despite the Oxnard Harbor District’s generous perks, no one has ever complained, said John Bressy, who runs a stevedoring company at the port.

“In the eye of the public, it’s a well-run, well-managed public entity,” said Bressy, who is also president of the Port Hueneme Chamber of Commerce. “The amount they may skim for perks is minimal in comparison to the profits they reap for the district.”

Several port commissioners said they have been successful in expanding the size of the port and increasing shipping contracts because of their regular visits with lawmakers in Washington.

Its power base there was demonstrated in 1985, when Congress passed a bill allowing the Oxnard Harbor District to buy 19 acres of port property owned by the Navy. Local Navy officials vehemently opposed the sale, but the commissioners were successful because the bill had support by then-Congresswoman Bobbi Fiedler, Millan said.

“I think it surprised some officials in the Navy and Port Hueneme how successful they were,” said Figg, Port Hueneme’s planning director.

Shortly after that acquisition, which expanded port acreage to 70 acres and added a crucial second wharf, the port began a $26-million expansion designed to double its business by 1990 and triple it by 2010.

Since then, it has signed several new contracts expected to sustain port revenues for at least two decades. An agreement to lease 6.3 acres of port land for the Marine Spill Response Center brings in $1 million annually, and contracts with two major shippers, Wallenius Lines and Cool Carriers, guarantee another $2 million annually for the next 20 years.

The remainder of the port’s $4.5-million annual income comes from Del Monte Tropical Fruits and Mazda Motors, offshore oil transportation and commercial fishing.

Port commissioners said their immediate goals are to continue expanding the port’s acreage, possibly by buying more Navy land, and to increase the district’s share of the international shipping market.

At the same time, several said, they are committed to making changes only with the blessing of neighboring communities affected, such as the Seabee base and the cities of Port Hueneme and Oxnard.

“We recognize that the port has beneficial as well as adverse impacts to the community,” Millan said. “You have to balance them.”

Obstacles to Growth

Although the Port of Hueneme wants to get bigger, there are formidable obstacles to any spectacular growth in the future.

A longstanding goal of the Oxnard Harbor District has been to expand the district’s wharf-side capacity. But the port is hindered in its ability to grow because the district owns and operates only 70 acres of the Port of Hueneme complex, about 40% of the total area.

The other 60% of the waterfront area is owned by the Navy.

Although the Oxnard Harbor District successfully persuaded federal lawmakers in the mid-1980s to pass legislation allowing it to buy 19 acres of port property from the Navy, officials at the base did not give it up without a fight, Commissioner Fletcher said.

The idea of snatching up even more of the Navy’s dockside land is a tantalizing, but unlikely, scenario, Fletcher said.

“The Seabee base is not a possibility because it is of strategic importance to the defense of this country,” he said. “I don’t think (another expansion) is in the cards.”

Even if the Defense Department closed the base, the city of Port Hueneme has first claim to the property, Fletcher said. The Oxnard Harbor District would have to battle with the city for property rights, something it would be reluctant to do, he said.

As the port’s leadership keeps one eye on the Seabee base that blocks the port from any major expansion, those who earn their livings at the port are watching for further changes in the Oxnard Harbor District board.

In this November’s race, the seats of one of the old-timers and one of the newcomers are up for grabs. Fletcher faces reelection and Turner, the newest appointee, must run for office for the first time.

In addition to Hill, candidates for the two Oxnard Harbor District positions are Jess Ramirez, a board member of the longshoremen’s union; Bill Bradley, a retired business executive, and Dana Weber-Young, former president of the Ventura County Economic Development Assn., who is seeking to become the first woman ever elected to the Oxnard Harbor District.

The job itself carries many benefits.

Each port commissioner is paid $600 a month to meet twice a month for 90-minute meetings. Most city council and school board members, in contrast, make a maximum of $400 a month even though they are much more likely than port commissioners to spend long hours in meetings and face residents angry over tax increases, fee hikes and other issues.

Oxnard Harbor District board members also are eligible for medical, dental, vision and life insurance paid by the district. The district contributes up to $424 a month for medical insurance alone.

On top of that, there are increasing travel opportunities at a time when most governments are cutting back on their travel budgets.

But the main job of the port commissioners has changed little over the years--setting the policies for port expansion in the tough, competitive market of international shipping.

Ex-Commissioner Jennings dismisses the idea that any new set of port commissioners will ever take any radically different course in pursuing future growth.

He also refuted the notion that the port’s recent prosperity is the result of the addition of outsiders to the Oxnard Harbor District’s hierarchy.

“That success didn’t come in just the last few years,” Jennings said. “We worked hard and persevered. It’s been a gradual success over the years.”

Port of Hueneme Cargo

Fruit: 44.3%

Vehicles: 21.4%

Offshore oil: 12.0%

Wood pulp: 9.0%

Fuel: 8.0%

Fish: 4.0%

Livestock: 0.9%

Other: 0.4%

Source: Oxnard Harbor District

Harbor District Board

STANLEY J. DAILY Age: 57 Residence: Camarillo Occupation: High school teacher Years on board: 15; appointed in 1977 and reelected *

RAY A. FLETCHER Age: 77 Residence: Oxnard Occupation: Retired Navy lieutenant and part-time teacher Years on board: 18; appointed in 1974 and reelected *

RAYMOND E. FOSSE Age: 54 Residence: Oxnard Occupation: Ship’s pilot Years on board: Two; elected in November, 1990 *

EDWARD J. MILLAN Age: 61 Residence: Camarillo Occupation: Retired, former executive director of the Oxnard Harbor District Years on board: Six; elected in November, 1986 *

ROBERT E. TURNER Age: 61 Residence: Port Hueneme Occupation: Dentist Years on board: Three months; appointed in May