New Council Inherits Finance Problems : Oxnard: Tough times could get even worse in the cash-strapped city. Critics point to past administrations for part of the blame.

Oxnard can’t keep its park restrooms open.

City crews don’t trim trees or sweep streets as often as they used to. Fewer police officers and firefighters are on the job these days than a couple of years ago.

City officials last month surrendered control of its South Oxnard community center to the Boys & Girls Club because the city couldn’t afford to keep it running full time.

Despite booming commercial growth over the past several years, Ventura County’s largest city is in the throes of a lingering financial crunch that has gutted municipal services and threatens to further cripple programs this summer when the City Council adopts its annual budget.

Oxnard’s money problems are partly the result of recession and recent state decisions to withhold fees that used to trickle down to local government.

But critics and council members also said that the city’s troubles are deeply rooted in fiscal mismanagement, bad business deals and the failure of past councils to make tough decisions about saving and spending.

“Everyone outside of Oxnard thinks we’re bumbling idiots and we’re not,” said Councilman Michael Plisky. “But the fact of the matter is we’re still suffering from what has happened in the past, and the day of reckoning is upon us.”

After months of budget presentations by department managers, council members are scheduled to start talking Tuesday about their own ideas for curing the city’s financial ills.

Budget cuts have sliced 120 positions from a work force that stood at 1,100 just three years ago.

City reserves, which totaled $12 million in the early 1980s, dropped to a low of $4 million in 1989 after regularly being raided by previous councils to make up for budget shortfalls. Reserves now stand at $6 million.

For the five-member City Council--three of whom have been elected since November--it will be the first test of often-heard campaign pledges to make Oxnard healthy again by running the city like a business.

“It’s just not acceptable that we don’t . . . have our bathrooms cleaned,” said Councilman Tom Holden, sworn into office last week as the council’s newest member. “Our priority should be to have a healthy business and to provide a service to the residents. Past councils haven’t set those priorities.”

The roots of Oxnard’s money troubles reach back at least a decade, to a three-year period starting in fiscal year 1982-83 when faulty computer equipment prevented the city from balancing its books.

Despite not knowing how much they had to spend, city officials continued to adopt budgets and pour money into new programs.

An audit of the city’s 1984-85 finances revealed a $1.5-million discrepancy between what the treasurer’s office had on the books and what the finance department thought was available to spend.

When Plisky was elected in 1984, he led the fight to fix the financial mess.

Although the incident had no real effect on today’s budget problems, Plisky said it earned Oxnard a reputation as an agency that couldn’t keep track of its money. And it changed the way city officials tackled budget issues.

“City government was totally discredited,” Plisky said. “That plays a big role when you go through the budget process. You end up acting politically instead of from a standpoint of well-educated, financial reasoning.”

Faced with survival economics, city officials embarked on an aggressive campaign to lure tax-generating businesses to Oxnard.

They made it easy and cheap for developers to build, priming the economic pump by rolling back taxes and fees. The city landed an auto mall. And a Price Club. And a Radisson Hotel, complete with the summer training camp for the Los Angeles Raiders.

“We’ve got to be patient,” said Assemblyman Nao Takasugi, who served as a councilman and mayor of Oxnard for 16 years. “I think that once California and the local communities start to pull out of this recession, you will find that Oxnard is in a very enviable position.”

But some critics counter that the city gave away too much to bring the new developments to town.

The city agreed, for example, to return to the auto mall developer a large portion of the sales tax generated by that development. And in what most council members now concede was the city’s worst development deal, the council fashioned a similar agreement to lure the Radisson Hotel.

The developer quickly went bankrupt and the city continues to pick up the $1-million yearly payment on bonds it issued to back the project.

“Oxnard is known as a city that cares nothing about the quality of life but rather seeks to increase the quantity of life to cure budget problems,” said the manager of a nearby government agency, who wanted to remain anonymous to preserve his relationship with the city. “I think past councils have sold the city down the road.”

Steve Chase, a former aide to county Supervisor Susan Lacey and now the city of Ventura’s environmental coordinator, said he applauds Oxnard’s efforts to boost its struggling economy.

“They had a tough choice to make,” Chase said. “They could do nothing and continue with the small-town ethic in terms of the style of business or they could embark on an aggressive style of business that had some risks.

“They felt compelled to do the latter. Yeah, there were some high sides but, boy, there were some low sides too.”

Former Councilwoman Dorothy Maron said she fought against developer giveaways because the city ends up with less money for roads and parks and basic public services.

“It’s OK to want the newest and the best, but you can’t afford to give it away because then you don’t have anything left,” Maron said. “Growth was not supposed to cost us, but it ended up costing us a lot.”

In Maron’s case, she thinks it ended up costing her a council seat.

Because she was on the council when Oxnard began its downward spiral, Maron said she believes voters held her accountable for the city’s money troubles. Maron and council colleague Geraldine Furr were ousted from office in November.

“And all the time I kept wondering, ‘How can a city that has grown so much have less money than it did in the past?’ ” Maron asked.

A lot of Oxnard residents are asking the same question.

Oxnard developer Martin V. Smith, who among other things is responsible for the twin skyscrapers that tower above the Ventura Freeway, attributes the city’s budget misery to simple economics.

“They were spending everything they were taking in and when it stopped coming in, their income just dried up,” Smith said. “I look at the situation now and it worries me.”

The manager of the nearby government agency offered a different theory: “It’s commonly felt that not only doesn’t Oxnard have its act together, it doesn’t know what its act is and doesn’t know how to find out what its act is. It’s a 900-pound gorilla with a pea brain.”

Facing at least a $3-million budget shortfall again this summer, and with many of the city’s new tax-generating developments still in the planning or construction stages, city officials are beginning to explore other ways to deal with the money shortage:

* The president of Oxnard’s Public Safety Management Assn. is urging the adoption of a public-safety tax to bankroll an escalating war against lawbreakers in the county’s most crime-plagued city.

The city’s Police Department is the lowest-staffed in the nation for cities with a population of 100,000 to 250,000.

* The president of one of the city’s five employee unions has suggested dipping into the city’s $6-million reserve fund for employee raises. All of the unions are at an impasse with the city over contract negotiations.

* City Manager Vern Hazen has suggested creating citywide assessment districts to force residents to pay for street lighting and landscape maintenance. Those districts would free general-fund money to be used for other public services.

Absent any of those methods, the City Council will be forced to look to the general fund, where about 75% of the operating budget goes toward salaries and other employee-related expenses.

Over the past couple of years, the council has managed to avoid firing employees while cutting spending and balancing its budgets.

But council members said they are unsure how long layoffs can be avoided.

“Right, wrong or indifferent, we’re saddled with the decisions of the past,” said Councilman Andres Herrera, elected to office in November. “We were elected to make Oxnard healthy again.”