Closure of Offices Angers Residents : County: The new four-day workweek prevents dozens from transacting business at administration building.

Kittie Udd was nearly frantic Friday when she encountered locked doors at the county administration building in Ventura, the first day county offices were closed under a new four-day work schedule.

With a father critically ill, she needed to record his Ventura County real estate so it could be placed in a trust and not go through probate court after he dies.

“I can’t believe this,” said Udd, a Santa Barbara resident. “This could mean thousands of dollars to me.”

Lupe Ortiz of Oxnard also came to the administration building for an emergency. She wanted to get a birth certificate so her sister could obtain a passport and travel to their mother’s sickbed in Mexico.

For Ortiz, the locked doors were more than a slight inconvenience, since she herself will be heading for Mexico by the time the county is open for business on Monday.

“It’s a big surprise,” she said. “I need the birth certificate.”

Dozens of people were surprised, then angered, Friday as the county implemented its four-day workweek. Overseas travel was postponed, driver’s licenses couldn’t be obtained, property went unrecorded, business names weren’t registered and taxes weren’t paid as a result.

Meanwhile, just a few yards away at the county courthouse, what was supposed to be a day of business as usual got interrupted for three hours when toxic fumes that leaked into the building’s ventilation system forced the evacuation of hundreds of people.

Nine people were transported to area hospitals after complaining of headaches and nausea, Sheriff’s Lt. Haskell Chandler said. Another 10 people received first aid at the site and were released.

The irony of the evacuation happening on the first Friday that the adjacent administration building closed was not lost on some court officials.

“You realize that all those people who are phoning the courthouse (during the evacuation period) are going to think that the courts are closed on Fridays, too,” Municipal Court Judge Barry B. Klopfer said.

Earlier this year, county supervisors narrowly approved the four-day work schedule for county departments in an effort to save money. Officials initially expected to save $1 million a year by making the change, but recent projections show the savings at just $125,000.

As the administration building closed its doors for the first time, county employees who showed up were ushered in while a security guard turned away members of the public who came to conduct county business.

One woman, confused about why the doors wouldn’t open for her, began jumping up and down in front of the automatic door, thinking that perhaps a little more pressure on the door mat would help her gain entry.

The schedule “is not working at all,” said Supervisor John Flynn of Oxnard, who appeared briefly outside the administration building.

“We should have never done this,” said Flynn, who voted against the four-day, 10-hours-a-day workweek. “It’s anti-people.”

That sentiment was shared by Linda Scaramella of Ventura, who was at the county center to help her daughter obtain a birth certificate so she could receive a passport in time for a planned European vacation.

“It’s really inconvenient,” said Scaramella, who was turned away at the door as she watched a handful of county employees allowed entrance to the building. “I guess people don’t count, just county employees.”

Scaramella’s daughter, Gina, said passport applications are accepted only on Fridays, so her inability to get a birth certificate means she has to wait a week to start the passport proceedings.

“Hopefully July 10th I’ll be leaving,” she said. “Maybe not now.”

Many people who came to the building said they knew a four-day week was under consideration, but they did not know it had been approved. Several of those turned away had taken time off work to go to the government center.

“This is really frustrating,” said Cindy Hanson of Hollywood Beach, who wanted to get her son’s birth certificate so he could apply for a driver’s license. “What could we do about this?”

The tension at the government center was heightened when the courthouse was evacuated at approximately 11 a.m. after a private contractor applied a waterproofing coat to the floor of the mechanical room and the fumes got into the ventilation system.

Employees and members of the public were allowed back into the building at approximately 2 p.m., but city firefighters were called back to the scene when workers in the district attorney’s office continued to complain of illness.