Prime Time Off Is Cities’ Holiday Gift to Employees

Employees in at least three Orange County cities are getting a treat many workaholic Americans don’t experience anymore--a genuine Christmas vacation.

Irvine and Garden Grove city halls will be closed more than a week beginning today. Mission Viejo’s will be closed from Monday through Jan. 1.

Workers will receive full pay and are feeling positively merry.

“I’m going to use the time to paint one of my award-winning watercolors,” said Irvine senior planner Jennifer Winn.

“I’m going to Denver to see my family,” said Garden Grove spokeswoman Kathy Moore.

Some residents and others who do end-of-the-year business with the cities are a little less joyful, though.

“I need to get an extra bedroom on my house--I’ve got a baby in here,” said Sherri Plooster, who is more than seven months pregnant with her fourth child. She was rushing into Irvine City Hall on Thursday to submit revised blueprints, the last day planners and inspectors told her they would be available until after New Year’s Day.

“Now I’ve got to wait at least two weeks to have the guy check my plans, and before my contractor can begin demolition,” she said, lugging the heavy papers under one arm while tugging her 2-year-old son Logan along with the other. “It’s one more frustration. I personally don’t think this is a good idea.”

She said her husband, a senior vice president at a mortgage firm, gets one day off--Christmas. The end of the year is one of his busiest times, with people eager to complete purchases, refinance for tax purposes or just get into new homes.

Mission Viejo has taken what it calls a “winter closure” through Christmas and New Year’s Day for four years, said City Manager Dan Joseph. He thinks most residents have grown used to it.

This year, by a quirk of the calendar, there was a little something extra for vacationing employees in all three cities.

In Mission Viejo, with Christmas Eve falling on a Monday, the City Council elected to make that a day off too, rather than have the offices open for one day, then closed again.

In Irvine and Garden Grove, employee associations negotiated the Christmas break in their contracts. They already have every other Friday off because of staggered work schedules, and the Friday just happened to fall today.

Garden Grove has closed during the holidays for eight years, but Irvine just began giving Christmas off in the July 2000 two-year contract. Employees there will be required to work Dec. 31; Garden Grove employees get that day off, for a vacation spanning almost two weeks.

Rick Paikoff, director of administrative services in Irvine, said managers considered it a nice incentive that actually saved money, because it was granted in lieu of a larger pay raise.

He also said that despite some last-minute, year-end needs, it typically is a slower time for city business.

Rod, an architect who declined to give his last name, said his firm had adjusted to the closures, and promised “I’m not jealous” that city employees will be taking a break while he has to work.

“More power to them if they can get it,” he said, especially in a climate when many businesses have grown “leaner and meaner,” and are making the employees they keep work longer hours.

In all three cities, police service, animal shelters and some recreational and community facilities will stay open.

Irvine planner Winn says more American cities should follow Mexico, where two weeks’ break is the norm. But she acknowledges that “we’re very lucky.”

“I like the way they do it in Europe. They get a month off,” said Irvine city secretary Sheila Goodheard.