Ventura Names Yolo Official as Manager : Government: The Northern California administrator will return to her native county to take the city’s top executive spot.

A Santa Paula native who rose through the ranks to become a top county administrator in Northern California will take charge in January as Ventura’s next city manager, the City Council announced Monday.

Donna Landeros, 46, will be the first female permanent city manager in the county and will earn an annual salary of $105,000 when she moves from her Yolo County post to begin her job here on Jan. 17.

“I think Ventura citizens are very lucky,” said Councilman Jim Monahan. “We’re going to get a very hard-working, dedicated city manager.”

Assuming the council is pleased with her work, Landeros is scheduled for merit raises in the next two years of her three-year contract, to $112,000 the second year and $121,000 the third year, city officials said. She will also receive a benefits package that totaled about $24,000 a year under previous city manager John Baker, Mayor Tom Buford said.

Already, some council members are quibbling over her salary. Baker, who left in July to start his own consulting firm, made $108,000 a year. Councilman Gary Tuttle questioned paying Landeros such a high wage when she has less experience than Baker.

“I think the salary is too high, especially for someone who has no city manager” experience, he said.

But Monahan, who railed in last year’s campaign about what he considered to be Baker’s high paychecks, said he has realized the city could not get a good manager at a lower price.

“It would have been hard to find somebody qualified for less,” he said, adding with a laugh that “it tells me I’ve chosen the wrong career line.”

Landeros is the third of five children of Eleanor Crouch, a former Santa Paula mayor, and Bill Crouch, a structural engineer. She said she is pleasantly surprised to find herself moving, if not to her hometown, at least nearby.

“It’s going to be fun,” she said. “I really had not seriously considered the possibility of working that close to home. It’s kind of a fluke and a bonus for us.”

For at least the first six months, she said she plans to commute on weekends between Ventura and her family’s home in Woodland, the Yolo County seat, where her son attends eighth grade and her husband supervises a migrant education program.

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Her husband and son will move to Ventura this summer, she said.

Landeros’ last day in Yolo County is scheduled to be Jan. 13, and she will begin work in Ventura four days later.

Yolo, a largely agricultural county just west of Sacramento, is home to UC Davis and has 150,000 residents. The county government employs 1,400 full-time workers, compared to about 600 for Ventura.

Landeros will receive a hefty raise when she starts her Ventura job. She now makes $86,292 a year, plus $8,950 in benefits.

Landeros comes to Ventura with rave reviews from Yolo County, where county supervisors and private citizens alike praise her ability to finesse negotiations and make scarce resources stretch through careful money management.

Ventura council members said they look forward to putting those qualities to use locally. Tuttle said he also likes Landeros because she is tough and will not allow herself to be pushed around by council members trying to impose their will on city employees.

“She’ll be able to stand up to our council members who operate on their own agendas,” he said. “I think some of them thought that since she has no experience (at city government), that they can control her. I think they’ll be real surprised.”

Landeros’ parents say that, indeed, their daughter has always had a mind of her own.

“She’s not reticent at all about expressing her views,” said her father. “She gets that from her mother.

“If they see a problem they think has to be solved, they won’t quit until they find an answer for it,” he said. “ ‘Determined’ is an excellent word for her.”

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Eleanor Crouch agreed, adding that her daughter has also always been methodical about reaching her goals.

“She was very well organized, even as a little kid,” her mother said. “She’d start making Christmas presents in the summertime.”

Landeros graduated in 1966 from Santa Paula High School, where she competed as a member of the swim team. She also traveled to Spain as an exchange student the summer after her junior year, raising most of the money herself through odd jobs around town, her mother said.

After graduating, she started college at Cal State Chico, then left after a year and a half to move to Santiago, Chile, where she studied as an exchange student for a year. Landeros was graduated from UCLA in 1970, finishing on time despite attending three different universities in four years.

Since then, she has worked for Los Angeles County and Butte County before taking her current job in 1989. She also earned a master’s degree in public administration from Cal State Los Angeles in 1977.