Richard Spitler thinks his honeymoon as Calistoga’s city managermight be just about over.
Fortunately, he said, it appears to be ending less with a bang thanwith a slow fade into familiarity.
“Honeymoon’s over, and usually for a city manager that is [when]you make your big mistake,” he said in an extensive interview withThe Weekly Calistogan this month to mark the end of his first yearon the job. “I don’t think for me it’s going to be thatdramatic.
“In a sense, I don’t have any excuses anymore of being new,” hesaid. “I’ve gotten a lot of things done, but I am just gettingwarmed up, in a sense.”
“He’s a keeper for another year,” Mayor Jack Gingles joked.
But Spitler’s first year has been far from smooth. Mostimportantly, the city has been rocked by a deep fiscal crisis, theoutlines of which were only beginning to become clear when Spitleragreed to take the job, vacated by the retirement of longtimemanager Jim McCann in the fall of 2010.
“I knew there were problems,” Spitler said. “I didn’t realize untilI got in here, ‘Oh, my gosh, it was much worse than I imagined.’ …My whole year has been getting a handle on expenses and trying tocut costs wherever I can. It sounds like an easy thing to do, butit’s not.”
The city had already left nine positions vacant when Spitler tookover, and he has since laid off four employees and held open thevacant city clerk position, taking on some of those dutieshimself.
He also shepherded through the City Council a series of tight newcontracts with the three labor associations, slicing benefits andpay and setting up a less generous retirement system for employeeshired in the future.
Still, with all the cuts, the city remains perilously close to thefinancial edge. Spitler has warned council members and the publicthat reserves are so low, there is little room to deal with anemergency, such as a natural disaster or a major failure in theaging water and sewer system.
There is “a lot more work to get our finances under control, a lotmore work, and it’s tenuous still,” he said. “It just seems likeevery time I get things under control, a decision that was madeyears ago surfaces, or something unexpected happens and it’s not astable time.”
At the same time, Spitler has had to deal with a series of unusualevents, including a pair of ongoing lawsuits by a San Diego manconcerning the management of the Kimball Dam and the funding for anew water storage tank on Mount Washington. Those suits have notonly cost the city at least $900,000 in legal fees, but they haveeaten up staff time, as the county grand jury has taken an interestin the cases and is investigating operations at the Public WorksDepartment.
The tense negotiations with the labor association that representspolice officers and dispatchers, meanwhile, erupted into animprobable crisis in the fall when the association declared aneconomic boycott of Calistoga businesses, asking law enforcementofficers statewide to avoid visiting or doing business in thecity.
That month-long boycott generated considerable public anger anddamaged the trust between the department and the public. It alsosoured relations between the officers and the City Council,particularly after two officers arrested an employee of theCalistoga Inn, owned by Vice Mayor Michael Dunsford, for an allegedprobation violation. They walked the arrested employee through thedining room in front of customers.
That event partially motivated a series of closed-door meetings bycouncil members about the police department, the details andconsequences of which have yet to become clear.
Spitler said the various crises have highlighted a central featureof being city manager: There is always an emergency of some sortbrewing in the city, and the city manager ultimately has to dealwith all of them.
“It’s like an hourglass and you’re right in the middle: Either thesand’s coming down or they’re ready to flip it over and have thesand go the other way,” he said. “But it’s coming through me. Soeveryone’s crisis, one way or the other, comes through me.”
Still, Spitler said, he’s not complaining.
“My wife says she’s never seen me so excited about a job, sostimulated,” he said. “It keeps me going.”
“I like the job and I like being city manager,” he said. “What Ireally like is it’s my home, my town, so it’s more meaningful tome. I’m just not a hired gun.”
Spitler, 59, and his wife have lived in Calistoga for 24 years andraised their children here. Spitler worked for a time in the cityPlanning Department, but even after he left to work as the chiefplanner in Healdsburg, they remained Calistoga residents.
“I really tried to stay out of the politics … but now I live andbreathe it; it’s a 24/7 job. I’m never off the clock,” he said.“You’ve just got to embrace it. It goes with the job.”
And despite the turmoil and financial trouble, Spitler remainsoptimistic about the future.
“Calistoga has had rough patches before,” he said. “When I was herein the late ’80s it was a financial disaster, and somehow they gotthrough that. We’ll get through this.”
