4-Day Workweek Wins Over Skeptics in Thousand Oaks : City Hall: After four months, shorter schedule still creates confusion. But most give it high marks.

Patty Ruiz stormed up to the finance counter of Thousand Oaks’ City Hall one recent afternoon, clutching a roll of greenbacks wound tight with a rubber band.

The absolute, final, no-more-excuses due date for her water bill had just passed--on a Friday. A Friday when City Hall was closed and she could find no one to take her wad of cash.

So Ruiz spent a weekend terrified the city would turn off her water any minute.

“I’m sitting there in a complete panic,” she recounted. “I’m not real pleased with this four-day workweek.”

In reality, Ruiz had no cause to gnash her teeth. The city gives residents an extra few days to settle accounts when bills fall due on a Friday.

As Ventura County prepares to move to a four-day workweek next month, Thousand Oaks’ experience with a similar schedule suggests that the satisfied masses will probably far outnumber the disgruntled few.

But those who do run up against locked doors on Fridays, like Ruiz, will no doubt trumpet their dismay loud and clear.

Four months after all 200 employees in Thousand Oaks’ City Hall switched to a compressed workweek--10 hours a day, Monday through Thursday--many citizens still aren’t used to the schedule.

Like Ruiz, some suffer weekends of anxiety, or anger, when they try to pay bills, get passports or apply for building permits on Fridays.

In general, however, citizens and city employees give the four-day schedule high marks.

“No one works on Friday afternoon anyway and with this new schedule I can come in early and get ahead of the traffic,” said architect Larry Gunn, who submits plans to City Hall about twice a week.

Thousand Oaks’ second temporary City Hall, on Willow Lane, is open 12 hours a day Mondays through Thursdays. Scores of citizens visit the office daily to register for marriage licenses, obtain golf-course passes or take care of other business.

In the first month and a half of the four-day schedule, city staff helped a weekly average of 251 callers and 29 walk-in visitors from 7 to 8 a.m. During the bonus evening hours, between 5 and 7 p.m., the staff tallied 146 calls and 72 counter visits a week, Personnel Director Denese Wilson-Cox said.

“I can get home, make dinner for my family, rush to City Hall and still make it by 7,” said Thousand Oaks resident Della Brackett, who stopped by one evening to apply for a business license.

Enacted to bring the city into compliance with Rule 210, which requires employers to reduce the number of vehicle trips to the workplace each week, the four-day schedule’s success has converted a host of skeptics.

The alternative--offering incentives for employees to car pool--would have cost the city $180,000 a year, transportation manager Roy Myers said. But in the months before the switch to a compressed workweek, voices inside and outside the government argued that spending money would be better policy than closing City Hall on Fridays.

Critics predicted employees would be too tired to work productively during the last two hours of their extended days. They argued that working mothers would have trouble finding baby sitters and taking care of their families. And they said Friday closures undermined the whole point of city government--to serve the public.

They also suggested that while the city might meet the letter of Rule 210 by eliminating vehicle trips to the workplace one day a week, the spirit of the law would remain unfulfilled. Employees would still travel in their cars and contribute to pollution on Fridays--perhaps driving even more than they would have if they parked at City Hall.

So far, however, most of those gloomy predictions have proven wrong.

“At first, I thought I would have to terminate and find something else when we switched to this schedule,” said Michele Ishida, who supervises customer service in the finance department and commutes from Ventura. “But the city has been very flexible and you make do.”

Ventura County’s air quality has also been well-served, pollution experts said.

“For the first few weeks, people are like kids with a new toy--they tend to drive around a lot on their free Fridays,” said Pam Couch, the transportation program administrator for the county’s Air Pollution Control District.

“But soon they start to pool all the errands they would have run after work or during their lunch hour into one efficient, planned journey on their day off--so it ends up reducing total miles traveled,” Couch said.

Even when they do jump into their cars on Fridays, people on four-day workweeks usually refrain from driving during morning rush-hour traffic, 6 to 10 a.m., Couch said. Those are the hours when auto emissions most damage the environment because early-morning pollutants hang in the air all day and percolate into ground-level ozone, otherwise known as smog.

As for productivity, workers in every department say they make good use of the early morning and evening hours, which are generally quieter, to catch up on paperwork and write reports.

“I feel like I’m getting a lot more accomplished,” electrical inspector Dick Byrd said. His health also has improved, he said, as he can now spend three-day weekends in the desert, where the cleaner air helps him battle a chronic lung ailment.

Perhaps the best indication of how people have adjusted to the compressed workweek is the caseload of the Hardship Committee, set up to assist dissatisfied employees. So far, only three employees have petitioned the Hardship Committee for new hours; others have arranged with their supervisors to take shorter lunch breaks so they can leave work in time for night school.

A single mother who lives a half-hour away in Oxnard, Wendy Holder went before the Hardship Committee because she found it impossible to work the full 10 hours. Her son’s day care ran only from 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and charged $1 for every minute she was late in picking him up.

The Hardship Committee allowed her to work nine-hour days, with every other Friday off, until she could find new child care. To comply with the four-day schedule, Holder will have to move to Thousand Oaks--an expensive proposition, since her apartment, day care, and private school for her learning-disabled son will all cost significantly more.

Although she will be shelling out thousands of dollars more a year, Holder, a computer programmer, said she’s willing to adjust to the four-day schedule.

“Jobs are hard to come by,” she explained. “My son and I still try to spend quality time together--there’s just not as much of it now.”

Four months after the switch, Thousand Oaks’ top officials still work most Fridays. City Manager Grant Brimhall said he’s taken only one Friday off since January to attend two of his children’s college graduations.

But most employees take full advantage of their long weekends and many say they can’t imagine returning to a more traditional schedule. The carefree Fridays are just too alluring.

“I used to feel frustrated because I didn’t get enough done over the weekend, so I would come in Monday mornings either aggravated that I hadn’t accomplished everything or tired from running around,” said Elana Keenan, who works in the personnel department. “Now I feel more refreshed.”

Of course a few, like planning technician David Zeman, want it both ways: “I love the three-day weekend. It’s the 7 to 7 part that’s awful.”

Extra City Hall Use

Weekly average of citizen use of Thousand Oaks City Hall during extended hours.

PHONE WALK-IN TIME CALLS VISITORS 7-7:30 a.m. 120 15 7:30-8 a.m. 131 14 5-5:30 p.m. 72 28 5:30-6 p.m. 42 24 6-6:30 p.m. 21 11 6:30-7 p.m. 11 9

Source: Personnel department survey taken first six weeks of compressed schedule