County Workers Return to Regular 5-Day Schedule

It was 7:50 a.m. when dozens of county workers began passing through the automatic sliding glass doors at the entrance to the Government Center’s Hall of Administration.

Just another workday.

Except there was one difference, as Mary Beth Peterson pointed out to co-worker Tracy Levasseur.

“It feels weird to be here on Friday,” Peterson said.

“Yes, it does,” Levasseur replied. “It’s going to take some getting used to.”

Indeed, for the last three years, a third of county government’s 7,000-member work force has participated in a compressed four-day workweek in an effort to combat smog.

But the shortened work schedule--which critics long complained had no effect on smog and was inconvenient to the public--was recently scrapped after the federal government eased its air pollution rules.

Last week marked the first time since 1993 that hundreds of county employees were working a full five-day workweek.

Thousand Oaks workers, beginning this week, will also go back to a regular work schedule.

“I don’t like it,” Levasseur said. “I liked having three days off. It was great. With the extra day, I could do my housecleaning, grocery shopping and doctor’s appointments.”

But Levasseur, an employee in the tax collector’s office, said she is in the minority.

“I think most people like the shorter days,” she said.

An informal survey of a dozen employees last week found that most did, in fact, prefer a regular 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. shift Monday through Friday, as opposed to working 10 hours a day four days a week.

“I love it,” said Kathy Miller, who works in the auditor-controller’s office. “Before, I would get home so late that by the time I fixed dinner and watched the news it was time to go to bed. You didn’t have any energy to do anything.”

Representatives of local construction and real estate firms and members of the general public also welcomed the schedule change.

Under the four-day workweek, his company could not get building permits or inspections on Fridays, said Jim Dapra, president of J.F. Dapra General Contractors of Ventura. As a result, jobs took longer to complete, he said.

“It’s a great relief knowing that they are open,” Dapra said. “I’ve been praying for this for a long time. I’m glad to see that common sense has returned.”

Jeff Roundy, a broker with Fred Sands Premiere Real Estate, said the old schedule forced some home buyers to wait until Monday to close escrow on a house.

“People prefer to close on a Friday because they often like to use the weekend to move,” he said.

In addition to the inconvenience, Roundy said, new homeowners would have to pay three days worth of interest on a loan--roughly $44 a day for a $200,000 loan--without being able to move in.

“It’s going to save some people some money,” he said of the county’s new schedule. “But I think the convenience is a bigger aspect.”

The county clerk and recorder’s office--which records property transfers, grant deeds, liens and other legal paperwork--is regularly among the busiest at the Government Center, said Philip Schmit, assistant county recorder.

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To illustrate his point, Schmit recounted the amount of business his office did the first time the county reopened the doors at the Hall of Administration on Fridays. It was the day after the Fourth of July holiday.

“We thought it would be pretty quiet that day,” he said. “But we recorded about 1,000 documents.” He said this is about the same amount of business that the office would do Monday through Thursday under the old schedule.

Schmit said he and most of his staff of 37 employees like the five-day workweek.

“When you get home at 7 p.m., you have no time to do anything,” he said. “You can’t mow the lawn in the dark. You had no life before or after work.”

Jenny Reuther and Scott Van Horn were among those who recently took advantage of the county clerk’s new hours. The two said they work a flexible schedule at GTE Government Systems in Thousand Oaks and have every other Friday off.

So the couple were able to drive into Ventura from the east county Friday and purchase their marriage license without missing any work.

“It’s very convenient,” Reuther said. “It’s especially helpful to people in the county like us who have a [Friday] off.”

Meanwhile, the city of Thousand Oaks will return to a five-day workweek beginning this week, with more than 200 employees working a variety of shifts. The new City Hall hours will be from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

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The Service Employees International Union, which represents Thousand Oaks workers, accepted the shift change under the condition that it be implemented for a six-month trial period first, said Greg Eckman of the city’s Human Resources Office.

If the five-day workweek causes too many headaches for city employees, the issue may be reopened, Eckman said. But right now, the complex scheduling web appears to be working out surprisingly well, he said.

“It’s a combination of satisfying our public service demands and accommodating our employees and their educational and child-care needs,” Eckman said. “So far, so good. But we’ll find out in a few weeks if this is really going to work.”

For Len Visser, owner of Thousand Oaks’ Custom Concrete Masonry, there is no question that the new schedule is going to work just fine. No more will he have to wait until Monday for permits and building inspections.

“It was a pain in the neck,” Visser said of the old schedule. “The reason they did the four-day workweek is because of pollution. But people don’t stay home on their day off. They drive around! That’s why this was a stupid idea. That’s government for you, I guess.”

Times staff writer Miguel Bustillo contributed to this article.