Ventura City Manager Baker to Resign July 1 : Government: In a surprise announcement, he says he will step down after 13 years for a private consulting job.

Veteran Ventura City Manager John Baker announced his resignation Monday evening, soon after notifying the City Council of his surprise decision to step down after 13 years and move into a private consulting practice.

The resignation is effective July 1.

“I made the decision after months of deliberating and agonizing,” Baker said at the evening council meeting. “It is a time in my life when my wife and children are less dependent on me, and I can make that kind of a move.”

Baker, 50, distributed a resignation letter to the council in a closed session shortly before the meeting.

He thanked council members, past and present, “for the support, guidance and friendship that has been there for the last 13 years.”

In an interview, Baker said he would do “trouble-shooting and consulting” with an old friend he once worked with in Oakland. “I’m going to solve everybody’s problems,” he quipped.

Baker said he’s been thinking of leaving city government off and on for six years.

Mayor Tom Buford publicly thanked Baker for his service to the city. The mayor said in an interview that he did not think that divisiveness on the council in recent years contributed to Baker’s decision.

“I don’t think that having a council that’s still trying to find its way would be a problem for someone with John’s experience,” the mayor said. “That’s part of his job, to deal with a contentious council. I’m sure he’s had to deal with worse than us.”

Baker’s wife, Catherine, said her husband had been seriously considering a career change for six months.

“He was feeling that he had been in Ventura for quite a while and the change would be good,” she said.

The loss of Baker--known for his tight fiscal management and ramrod straight demeanor--will be a blow to the city, several former council members said.

“I feel very sorry for the city,” said former Councilman John McWherter, who helped hire him in 1981. “They are going to lose one of the best managers that the city ever had.”

McWherter said Baker, a retired Navy officer, has a mind “like a computer” that helped pull the city through difficult financial times. He also made sure that the city staff followed though on City Council direction, McWherter said.

Former Councilman Todd Collart, who worked with Baker from 1989 to 1993, said Baker was a master in dealing with “shrinking city budgets and conflicting demands from the public, Sacramento and Washington. He didn’t enter office at an ideal time. That was a tough period and he did very well by the city.”

Collart said Baker’s decision to leave was probably prompted in part by increased tensions on the City Council, which has been sharply divided on growth issues for 2 1/2 years.

“As the council makeup changed, and there were greater differences of opinion, his job became more of a challenge,” Collart said. “He had to respect what the council told him to do. And if you have seven people telling you the same thing, that’s different than if you have four telling you one thing and three telling you another.

“Then it’s much more difficult to do a professional job of managing the city,” Collart said. “It certainly had an effect. It wears you down. But I doubt if that was the deciding factor for him. He was a real professional and a tough, energetic person.”

Former Mayor Richard Francis, who worked with Baker from 1987 to 1991, lauded him not only for his budget expertise but also for developing a coherent rationing plan during the six-year drought.

And Baker “worked well with a variety of difficult personalities,” Francis said. “A lot of (elected) officials tend to be egotistical.”

As a Navy officer, Baker served on the carrier Midway at the height of the Vietnam War.

After returning from Vietnam in 1972, he worked his way up the ranks of Oakland’s civil In an interview two weeks ago, Baker told The Times that he questioned why after so many years he was still working as city manager.

He said he has always worked in the public sector and had not really questioned his role.

His father was the mayor of a small town in Idaho, and he thought that was part of the reason he went into public service and stayed so long.

He said that when he got out of the Navy, he tried to find other jobs in the private sector, but employers said his military service and his degrees qualified him more for government work.