Fired Official Assails City Manager in Letter to Council

In an angry letter to the City Council, Oxnard’s former downtown manager has accused the city manager of being a power-monger whose management style has intimidated city staff members and kept workers from voicing any disagreements.

Peter Apanel, who was fired last week by city officials, said in the letter that City Manager Tom Frutchey is “domineering and condescending to the point of rudeness.” Apanel also charged that he was fired for voicing criticisms of some city officials.

Frutchey had no comment Wednesday concerning Apanel’s letter. But Frutchey acknowledged the city’s failure to make significant progress in revitalizing the downtown area.

“We have to perform and we recognize that,” Frutchey said. “It’s going to take changes and we are going to make those changes.”

Since his firing, Apanel has mounted a counterattack against Richard Maggio, community development director, and Alex Herrera, the city’s point-man on downtown revitalization, accusing them of failing to do their jobs.

“They hired me to trouble shoot,” Apanel said in an interview on Wednesday. “The problem is that I started pointing out problems with the city staff and that obviously led to my firing. Consultants are completely vulnerable to any political retaliation if they say things that the city doesn’t want to hear.”

Apanel said that city officials never followed through on three specific proposals that he made as a consultant:

* His views that a parking garage would be needed if a proposed multiplex theater is built in the downtown area.

* An effort to have the Ventura County Museum of History and Art expand its Ventura site into additional space in the vacant Oxnard Press-Courier building.

* An attempt to create an area of small shops and restaurants in the downtown Oxnard area at 7th and A streets.

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Apanel was hired last year to recruit new businesses to the downtown area, discuss revitalization ideas with local merchants, and in general serve as a liaison between the business community and the city.

But Apanel clashed within months with city officials over available parking for a downtown 14-screen multiplex theater. Apanel says he thought there was an obvious need for a parking structure, which would raise the cost of construction significantly for the city. When he mentioned this need to city staff members, he said, he received the cold shoulder.

In an informal count, Apanel said, there are only about 1,000 spaces available in the downtown area, with many already used by local businesses. A theater would significantly increase the need for additional parking.

Apanel said the problem came to light in August, when a carnival occupied the proposed multiplex site for five days, eliminating 150 spaces. The downtown area instantly had a parking problem, Apanel said.

“It was an eye-opener,” Apanel said. “Everyone, including myself, had assumed we had enough parking.”

In contrast, Apanel said, the city of Ventura recognized the need for a parking structure when it recently signed a lease with a theater chain for a 10-screen movie theater in downtown Ventura. The Ventura parking structure will have at least 500 spaces.

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But Apanel’s view was disputed by Maggio, Herrera and Rex Swanson, developer of the proposed Oxnard theater complex. They said there is plenty of parking in downtown Oxnard to accommodate a movie theater.

Herrera said he estimates there are about 2,400 parking spaces within a five-minute walk to the proposed site on A street.

“We believe the theater use, primarily a nighttime use, will not conflict with the daytime use of parking in downtown,” Herrera said. “We have sufficient surface parking lots to meet the needs.”

In addition to the parking issue, Apanel said his plans to bring the Ventura County Museum of History and Art to the vacated Press Courier building in downtown Oxnard were stymied by a lack of city leadership.

In early spring, Apanel said he discussed the idea to use the vacated building as a library, museum exhibit room and storage facility with museum director Ed Robings.

The asking price in March for the building was $1.9 million. Robings was interested enough to discuss ways of financing the purchase, according to Apanel.

Robings said he was interested in the plan to expand to Oxnard, but lacked the funds to buy the building.

In an internal memo to Frutchey, Apanel said Maggio failed to follow through on negotiations among the museum, realty company and the city.

“I see it as being inexplicable that our team, and Maggio in particular, who is regularly involved in recruiting businesses did nothing to support me,” Apanel stated in the memo.

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Maggio did not return phone calls. Robings said he does not hold the city responsible for the deal not going through.

In addition to the museum, Apanel said plans to rehabilitate and bring in new tenants to a rundown building at 7th and A streets fell through the cracks of city bureaucracy.

Apanel’s idea was to create a “business incubator” where stores such as antique shops, a bookstore, an ice cream parlor and a restaurant could be clustered to attract browsers who could stroll from shop to shop in one place.

But the project was never completed because of a lack of follow-though by the city, Apanel said.

As the city was discussing plans with a possible tenant--Ventura’s Cafe Voltaire--city staff members began facade renovations on the building without telling Voltaire’s owners, both Apanel and city officials said.

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Voltaire’s owner, Todd Winokur, said the nearly $80,000 in improvements caught him by surprise and was a waste of money because the city’s new facade was not what he would have wanted.

“We didn’t understand why they were doing that,” Winokur said. “Our proposal is different. They are putting their own facade on the whole building. If we were going to be negotiating, why was the city spending money on something that we are not interested in having?”

In his memo to Frutchey, Apanel stated that Alex Herrera, who is in charge of the project, said the renovations were being made to “make the council look good.”

Herrera denies saying that.

“We couldn’t necessarily hold up the project just because a possible tenant was looking into providing us a proposal,” Herrera said.

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Regardless of the reasons, Apanel said Wednesday that the community needs to take action to revitalize the downtown region.

“If people don’t voice their opinion, anger and their needs, the people at City Hall will let the dust settle and then go on with business as usual,” Apanel said.

“Other people now need to step forward to bring about some change here.”