Mayor Faults Retreats Held for Oxnard Staff, Leaders : Government: The meetings are open, but Manuel Lopez says the council’s ‘real discussions’ take place after the public is gone.

Oxnard leaders and city staff completed a two-day retreat Saturday, a meeting they described as a “goal-setting session” where abstract government concepts were debated in free-wheeling fashion.

But Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez, a 17-year council veteran who has attended numerous retreats, criticized the events, saying the City Council uses such opportunities to make major decisions out of view of the public.

“When we’ve had the retreats, we do a lot of discussions,” Lopez said. “The public and the press get bored, and when they leave, the real discussions take place.”

He said several recent Oxnard City Council actions--including the dismantling of the city’s Planning Commission--originally reached consensus at retreats.

“I think they equate what they discuss with approval,” Lopez said. “And I think that’s wrong.”

The weekend retreat at the city’s River Ridge Golf Course Clubhouse began Friday afternoon and was adjourned Saturday morning after just eight hours because Councilman Andres Herrera was ill and could not attend. The retreat will continue on April 18.

Nevertheless, the brief meeting is expected to cost Oxnard taxpayers about $11,000, said City Clerk Daniel Martinez, who coordinated the retreat.

Most of the money will go to facilitator David G. Jones, a guru of government team-building who has conducted about 500 retreats with various city councils. Jones has mediated every Oxnard retreat since 1985.

The meeting was not televised, and was not publicized to residents or the media until last Thursday--a day before it began. Only three members of the public were in attendance, including a former Oxnard mayor-turned-government-watchdog and a city fire department employee.

Ironically, the most common goal expressed by council members at the retreat was to involve residents in Oxnard’s government decisions.

City Atty. Gary Gillig said that city leaders had had the retreat on their calendars for weeks, and that no attempt was made to keep the public away.

“There was truly no desire not to have this publicized,” Gillig said. “The things we’re talking about here are items that are of public interest, and it would be good for the public to attend.”

Martinez said that a retreat qualifies as a special meeting and that Oxnard met the legal requirement under state open-meeting laws to notify the public 24 hours in advance.

City Manager Tom Frutchey also said Oxnard residents are welcome at the city’s retreats. But he added that the lack of public scrutiny and the informality of the sessions help council members to loosen up and discuss issues more openly.

“It’s so difficult to do when they are up there in the dais and they have the cameras on them,” Frutchey said. “This is a more relaxing atmosphere for everyone, and a lot of things get done.

“Out of a meeting like this, you can really establish a working agenda for staff to bring back to council. But I don’t think that the public should worry that the decisions have already been made.”

Jones, the facilitator, met individually with each council member, Frutchey and Gillig in the weeks before the retreat. During those meetings, he discussed with officials goals they had for the city.

Posted at the retreat were some of the goals. Among them were:

* Councilman Tom Holden--to discuss new uses for the old Oxnard High School site, possibilities for Ormond Beach, ways to make the city safer and better-looking, strategies for attracting business to Oxnard and a citywide approach to youth services, and to re-examine the city’s general plan.

* Lopez--to explore ways to use technology to involve the public in city government.

* Councilman Dean Maulhardt--to improve the city’s code enforcement standards to make the city more attractive, examine ways to reward employees for good work, discuss plans for downtown Oxnard and look at ways to improve the Ventura Freeway/Rose Avenue connector.

* Councilman Bedford Pinkard--to examine the city’s conflict of interest standards, discuss the city’s youth commission and establish ground rules for working with the media.

Because the meeting adjourned sooner than planned, council members postponed discussion of each other’s goals until April 18.

“We didn’t get very far in discussions,” Maulhardt said. “When you have a retreat for five councilmen, and only four are able to show up, it doesn’t make any sense to proceed.”