Irvine Water District General Manager Resigns

Ronald Young, for the past 11 years general manager of the Irvine Ranch Water District, announced Thursday that he is resigning his $140,000-a-year position.

Young and two members of the board of directors said the resignation had no connection to the arrests last month of four men, including a district employee, in the theft of $2.2 million from the district.

The resignation will become effective Sept. 28.

Board President Daryl Miller said the district wanted Young to continue in his job. “It was Ron’s choice to resign,” he said. “We hate to see him go.”

The 55-year-old general manager said he hopes to work as a consultant for local governments and spend more time with his family.

Neither Young nor Miller would say how much the general manager will receive as severance compensation.

Young joined the district in 1979 as the director of engineering and planning after working as a consulting engineer in Pasadena and Colorado.

The district has had discussions with former general manager Art Bruington about returning temporarily until a permanent successor is found, according to a board member who spoke on condition of anonymity.

During Young’s tenure, the district has been recognized statewide as a leader in water conservation. Its loss of water from leaks is a tenth of that in other districts, which Irvine Ranch attributed to its aggressive maintenance program.

Young said his greatest accomplishment was building a quality staff that has helped the district save millions of dollars.

Financially, Irvine Ranch has become the Perrier of water districts, from its $12.9-million office complex off the San Diego Freeway to the $43 million it spent for luxury apartment complexes in Anaheim Hills and Aliso Viejo as the only water district in the state allowed to invest in residential real estate.

The district was so flush with cash that, although it lost $70 million when the county investment pools collapsed in December 1994, it still had enough money to provide loans to three school districts hurt in the bankruptcy. While it has put away a reserve fund of $100 million, its water rates are among the lowest in the county.

In 1995, however, Assemblyman Curt Pringle called the district a prime example of an obscure bureaucracy that hoards millions of dollars in unneeded reserves. Others, though, argued that the money was needed to fund water system construction.

The district lost some of its fizz with the arrests of three water management consultants and the head of the district’s water conservation program. Authorities allege that the consultants submitted phony bills for rebates on water conservation equipment for customers and that the district’s Wayne Smith approved them.

Several auditors and managers of government agencies in Orange County criticized the district for having lax financial controls. Since discovering the theft, the district has revised its financial systems.

In an interview Thursday, Young defended the district’s controls and said those experts had limited knowledge of what happened. He called the theft “a long-planned-out, complex scheme.”