Camarillo City Manager Little Leaves a Big Legacy

When Bill Little arrived as city manager in 1988, this city was next to bankrupt.

It had just lost $25 million to bad investments in the biggest financial scandal in Ventura County history. The employee pension fund was empty. The city’s $19-million budget was $4 million in the red. Every dime in city savings was gone.

“It was like a guy just walked in in the middle of the night and took the whole farm,” Little recalled last week. “So we had to get together every morning and figure out how much money was in the bank and what checks we could release.”

Sometimes, Little would call then-Sheriff John Gillespie to ask for a few extra days to pay the monthly bill for police protection.

Now, 11 years later, a maturing Camarillo has grown to 62,500 residents while emerging as a prosperous hub for high-tech business, a regional center for upscale shopping and the home of the county’s first four-year public university.

The treasury is flush with surplus. The city’s credit rating is strong. And it expects to spend $70 million over the next five years on building projects.

So as Little, 63, plans his Oct. 31 retirement, Camarillo’s prosperity speaks to the common good fortune of this city and its top manager. They found each other at just the right time.

“Bad times bring out the best in some people, and it did in Bill,” said veteran Councilwoman Charlotte Craven, who voted to pay top dollar to hire Little away from a larger city 11 years ago. “I don’t know if all his strengths would have shown through if Camarillo hadn’t been in such a tight spot. He might be Little, but he is strong.”

Ordinary in appearance and matter-of-fact in presentation, Little is an unassuming expert on municipal finance. But when he wants to lure a business or store to town, colleagues say he works the phones like a dervish.

And by all accounts, he’s a demanding task-master.

“He doesn’t appear that way, but Bill’s a very aggressive guy,” said city Planning Director Tony Boden. “He’s constantly saying, ‘Where are we on this?’

“This is a guy who pulled us out of a pile, and turned us around and set us on course,” said Boden, the city’s top planner for nearly three decades. “No one could have predicted the condition Camarillo would be in today given where we were a decade ago. That’s his legacy.”

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Born in Duncan, Okla., during the Great Depression, Little learned early the value of a dollar, and of an education.

After graduating from Wichita State University with a master’s degree in public administration in 1960, he made those conservative values his fiscal guideposts while managing six cities in four states over 35 years.

From Ferndale, Mich., to Wauwatosa, Wis., to the Orange County city of Orange, he built a strong reputation. He was named president of the Wisconsin City Management Assn. and regional vice president of the association’s international group.

“I’ve always applied the same principles,” he said. “To be financially prudent, and to make sure you receive value for the money you spend. To treat people fairly, value their work and expect them to carry their load.”

Finally, after four years in bustling Orange County, which he found far too hectic for his Midwestern sensibilities, Little made one final career move to Camarillo when the beleaguered city offered a salary of nearly $100,000.

Even then, he was a tough negotiator, Craven recalls. Little was convinced the city had promised him a car with its offer, and he was ready to walk out if he didn’t get it, she said.

That steadfast determination and eye for detail helped pull Camarillo through its darkest days, said Craven, a three-time mayor.

“I’m convinced Bill Little is the only person who could have gotten us to the position we are [in] today,” she said. “We’re just very lucky to have found him.”

Little was hired the year after a city investment officer, Donald Tarnow, wiped out all municipal reserves by borrowing money to speculate on future interest rates in a highly volatile government bond market. When the rates went down instead of up, the city lost everything it had saved for new parks, schools, streets, the water system and its employee pension fund.

Just how Little and a shellshocked City Council would turn the city around was not exactly clear for a while.

Indeed, it took three years to wipe away the city’s debt and replenish pension and savings accounts, and it was four years before the city could afford any new building project.

The first change was to put control over city investments back in the hands of the City Council. Little devised a system of checks and balances. He also broke down the walls between departments and created a strong integrated city team, Craven said.

“We developed an economic plan,” Boden said. “Bill was very set on carrying out that plan. He wanted to increase the sales tax flow into the city, and he did what was necessary to see that it happened.”

A cornerstone of that plan was to be the first city in the Oxnard Plain to build an upscale outlet mall on the Ventura Freeway. After an aggressive skirmish in the 1990s with Oxnard, which was building its own freeway-fronting discount center, Camarillo won the war. Its 50-store premium outlet project now sits next to a new 16-screen cinema and not far from a new Target shopping center.

The city’s 1% share of local sales tax soared from $2.5 million in 1987 to $6.3 in 1998.

“When Bill has his sights on bringing in a company or helping a shopping center, he is one of the most aggressive people I’ve ever seen,” Craven said. “He just gets on that phone and gets after it.”

Not that Little shows this side in public. He is known instead for dispassionate analysis of complex issues.

Grant Brimhall, former city manager of Thousand Oaks, said Little impressed his colleagues at city manager meetings with his cool, precise approach to thorny issues, and his selflessness. As president of that group, Little helped negotiate settlements with Ventura County to end disputes over redevelopment and an onerous booking fee imposed on cities by the Board of Supervisors, Brimhall said.

“Bill brings a peacefulness to the process,” Brimhall said, “because he’s not a self-aggrandizing person. He really tries to think about the people he serves in a way that’s gentle and insightful and creative.

“It been so exciting to see Camarillo emerge as financially strong,” Brimhall added. “And Bill did that without nastiness or pettiness or seeking any credit for himself.”

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Although Camarillo’s fiscal recovery is Little’s chief local accomplishment, he is also proud of successes that have spun from the revival. On his watch, the city has:

* Tripled its annual budget to $63 million.

* Built a new water treatment plant.

* Constructed a new police station.

* Convinced the county to build a new fire station.

* Built three new interchanges on the Ventura Freeway, with a fourth under design, at a total cost of $14 million.

* Begun to redevelop Ventura Boulevard, the city’s traditional main street, into an old-fashioned thoroughfare with street lamps and new store facades.

* Widened and improved several streets by adding median landscaping.

* Encouraged the placement of a state university on the old Camarillo State Hospital site nearby.

* Emerged as a center of fast-growing, high-tech companies.

“But if I could say only one thing about what I’ve accomplished here,” Little said, “I’d say I’ve brought Camarillo along to the point where it is now a city that is recognized as a very dynamic place, that has taken its place among the other cities in Ventura County. It’s not just a bedroom community, but a town of substance.”

As Little was preparing to leave, the City Council chose his replacement Friday. Jerry Bankston, 53, will take charge Nov. 1. Little said the City Council did not ask his opinion on who should succeed him.

The new manager will receive $11,000 less per year than Little’s $134,000 annual salary. But then, the city is no longer desperate for a fiscal guru, Craven said.

As for Little, he said he and wife Mary have no plans to sell their three-bedroom tract home in east Camarillo. They’ll travel to see their grandchildren in the Midwest. Little will take consulting jobs. Together, they’ll tend their 150-rose garden.

No grand retirement for this understated man.

“When you live in the public spotlight, you learn to be circumspect,” he said. “You can’t go crazy on anything. You’re out there for people to see and to judge. It’s something you learn to live with over time, and it becomes part of you.”