Velthoen Says His Image Was Damaged : Port Hueneme: City manager threatens ‘unpleasant’ consequences for councilwoman if she speaks negatively of him.

Veteran Port Hueneme City Manager Richard Velthoen has accused first-term Councilwoman Toni Young of damaging his reputation in comments to other public officials--and threatened to respond with “unpleasant” consequences if she continues to discuss the possibility of his dismissal.

In an Aug. 19 memo to Young and provided to the entire City Council, Velthoen accused Young of discussing with many people--including three Santa Paula officials--the possibility of “getting rid of Dick Velthoen.”

“This is damaging to my reputation,” wrote Velthoen, city manager for 19 years. “It could impair my ability to get another job, should I wish to seek one.”

Young’s comments to other officials could make agencies consider him a “lame duck” and undermine his ability to work on behalf of Port Hueneme, he wrote.

Then he warned: “Stop this now. If you choose to continue this practice, expect some consequences that will be unpleasant. . . . I am not kidding.”

Velthoen, 57, said in an interview Tuesday that he wrote the memo in response to negative comments the 42-year-old Young has been making since she first campaigned for City Council in 1992.

“For the past two years I have had numerous occasions when people told me that she talked to them about getting rid of me,” he said. “I told her I had rights.”

Young, a persistent critic of Velthoen and Port Hueneme’s four veteran council members, said she was surprised and angered by the city manager’s memo and considers it a direct threat to her political career.

She said she has been targeted not only because of her comments to other officials, but because Velthoen and the rest of the council still consider her an outsider.

Velthoen, who can be fired at any time by the council, enjoys strong support from every member but Young.

“Dick resents me because I challenge his authority,” said Young, who ran on a reform platform two years ago. “It aggravates him that I just don’t trust him. . . . This is a direct result of my behavior on the council. I did not become enmeshed in the current system.”

Young acknowledged Wednesday, however, that she did jokingly tell Santa Paula City Manager Arnold Dowdy, Santa Paula Councilwomen Margaret A. Ely and Robin Sullivan at an early-August gathering that the Port Hueneme council might fire Velthoen and hire Dowdy in his place.

“It was, you know, something like, ‘We’re going to get rid of Dick and hire (Dowdy).’ But I was not serious,” Young said. “I have said things in a way that people did not understand what I meant. And I am sorry. I did not mean to hurt Dick. . . . He’s a fine city manager.”

But she acknowledged making cutting comments about him on other occasions during the last two years. And she said she still believes that “anyone who has been a city manager as long as Dick has needs to step down. He has had that job for too long and we need a fresh face. We need change and that’s life.”

Even before she received Velthoen’s memo last week, Young said the city manager called her to complain about her comments to the Santa Paula officials, and she assured him that she would no longer talk about him in public.

“I told him that I was sorry that what I had said caused him any type of pain,” she said. But Velthoen has a different recollection of the conversation. He said she denied any negative comments about him to Dowdy. And he said he never received any assurance from Young that she would stop criticizing him publicly.

As a result, he said he decided to make his point in writing.

After receiving Velthoen’s memo, Young said she considered consulting a lawyer. But she decided to frame the memo instead, and has placed it on her desk at a Port Hueneme real estate office as a reminder “to keep my mouth shut.”

During her brief council tenure, Young has aggressively disagreed with the rest of the council--and the recommendations of Velthoen’s staff--in fighting such high-profile proposals as construction of a recreational vehicle park at Hueneme Beach and levying the “view tax” on beach-area homeowners.

Councilmen Ken Hess, Dorill Wright and James Daniels all praised Velthoen and refused comment on Young in interviews this week. Mayor Orvene Carpenter was out of town and unavailable for comment.

Wright refused to discuss the Velthoen memo, saying it “is a personal matter between the two of them. I don’t want to add any fuel to the fire.”