Navy Base Manager Is Promoted

POINT MUGU — The Pentagon has promoted a Point Mugu department manager to the highest echelon of the federal civil service, a decision viewed as a strong signal of support for the Navy base south of Oxnard.

Steve Mendonca, 47, was appointed to the Senior Executive Service last month in a rare civilian field promotion. The Oxnard resident heads the department at Point Mugu that supplies aircraft and other targets that are chased and shot down during missile testing.

“Steve is a terrific manager and a good people-person and very, very smart,” said Capt. Roger Hull, vice commander of Point Mugu. “He’s a guy to watch.”

Mendonca, a UCLA-trained engineer with a 25-year career with the Navy, said he was delighted to get word of the promotion that had been in the works for months.

“The military is very sensitive to rank,” he said. “It puts me in a category where I can influence more things,” particularly in Washington and at other military bases.

Moreover, Mendonca said such promotions rarely happen outside of military headquarters. Defense Department officials, he said, would not be conferring one at Point Mugu “if they did not take Point Mugu very seriously. I personally think there is a real signal there.”

Earlier this year, Mendonca was in charge of coordinating the base’s official response to base-closure threats. He repeatedly led teams of 100 or more employees working around the clock to answer questions posed by Pentagon leaders and the nation’s base-closing commission.

Commissioners briefly considered shutting down the base, but then rejected the notion, saying they had “goofed” by even entertaining the idea.

With Mendonca’s promotion, Point Mugu and its 3,500 civilian employees now have three members of the Senior Executive Service--the highest civilian rank without a presidential appointment. The other two are Gerald Wrout, head of test and evaluation, and Ronald Smiley, head of systems engineering.