Burbank Keeps Ovrom : Government: After closed-door discussion, council approves a compromise under which city manager’s contract will be reviewed in November. ‘We are going to let bygones be bygones,’ vice mayor says.

Despite indications that he would resign, Burbank City Manager Robert (Bud) Ovrom will hold on to his job as the city’s top administrator until at least November under a compromise reached Sunday night by a majority of the City Council.

Ovrom was a key player in the city’s past decisions to invest $120.7 million in the Media City Center shopping mall, a redevelopment project that has yet to turn a profit for the city and has prompted at least one councilman to call for his ouster.

Ovrom’s contract--which includes an annual base salary of $129,193--will be reviewed by the City Council again in six months, when the five council members will decide to keep him, fire him or force him to resign.

“This commitment is being given to him and being made because we trust that, given the opportunity to work with us, we are going to let bygones be bygones,” said Vice Mayor Susan Spanos, who proposed the compromise. “I have every confidence that Mr. Ovrom will be able to do that. This is a time for healing and moving forward. Let us prove that this can work.”

Ovrom declined to comment Sunday on any aspect of his future with the city.

The council’s 3-2 compromise vote was made public after more than four hours of closed-door negotiations, which followed three hours of debate between Ovrom’s supporters and critics at the Burbank Fire Department’s training center.

In a show of support, city employees and members of Burbank’s business community appeared wearing black ribbons and carrying small signs that read “We love Bud.” They hailed him as being perhaps the best city manager in Burbank history and warned that new businesses would hesitate to locate there if he is forced out of office.

Ovrom’s detractors pointed to his involvement with what they perceived as financial giveaways to developers. They said this year’s elections--which swept two outspoken critics of City Hall into council seats--indicate a desire for change.

“Obviously, people here feel very strongly on both sides of the issue. Bud has been a catalyst for change and that change has gripped the city,” said Burbank Airport Commission member Philip E. Berlin.

Described by one of his staffers as a man who loves to make deals, Ovrom helped shape agreements that ended up losing city money to private developers. Those projects include:

* The Media City Center. The Burbank Redevelopment Agency, with Ovrom as its executive director, invested a total of $120.7 million in start-up costs and potential future revenues to build a major shopping center in Burbank during the recent recession.

Since 1989, the agency has agreed to give the mall’s developer, Alexander Haagen, millions of dollars to ensure that the project would be built. However, it has not yet generated profits for the agency. Faced with the possibility of getting no profits at all in the near future, the agency agreed to give up its right to half of the mall’s net profits in return for $10 million from Haagen over two years.

* Expansion of the Burbank Airport Hilton and construction of an adjacent conference center. In 1988, the agency approved a contract that enabled developer Lew Wolff and his partners to avoid repaying up to $3 million in agency loans.

* The Rancho Dincara housing subdivision. The city lost $2 million from its General Fund when it sold about five acres of land in southeast Burbank to developer Kaufman & Broad for $3 million.

According to Bob Tague, Burbank’s community development director, the city spent $5 million to acquire the land and make street and other improvements in order to satisfy nearby homeowners, who did not want to see a proposed storage facility built there.

Supporters of Ovrom say his deals in the Media City Center and Burbank Airport Hilton projects came at the direction of past councils and emphasized that any dollars given away to developers is money being generated by the projects themselves. Yet some say this money could have been kept by taxpayers.

“The majority of people in Burbank wanted a shopping center” at the time, former mayor Michael Hastings told the council Sunday, in support of Ovrom.

Barbara Briel, a 64-year-old Burbank resident, responded: “No amount of phony baloney is going to hide the fact that we let (Haagen) pay $1,000 a year to rent the land (on which the Media City Center was built) for 90 years.”

Ovrom, 49, became Burbank’s city manager in 1985 and has spent nearly half his life in city government.

Although the previous City Council strongly supported Ovrom, two of his most vocal critics, Bob Kramer and Ted McConkey, won council seats in February and April. Kramer, in particular, has already called for Ovrom to be fired for giving too many concessions to developers.

McConkey and Spanos earlier declined to say whether they want to replace Ovrom, but on Sunday, McConkey voted against the compromise. Mayor Dave Golonski and Councilman Bill Wiggins are strong supporters of Ovrom and want him to stay.

“I’m going to do my very best to work with Mr. Ovrom . . . to see if we can resolve some of the differences we have,” McConkey said. “Even though I’m voting against it, I’m sincere in my wish to do the very best for Burbank.”