OAKRIDGE — The Cascade Range timber town of Oakridge has been plunged into a financial pit by spending that took little account of how much the town had in the bank and books in such poor shape the city was budgeting in the dark, a newspaper investigation has concluded.

In stories this week, the Eugene Register-Guard laid responsibility for a shortfall amounting to half a year’s property tax revenue on City Administrator Gordon Zimmerman, and he acknowledges much of it.

A third of the city’s workers have lost their jobs — a dozen people. The city’s finances are expected to be troubled for years.

Zimmerman has promised to resign once the mess is cleaned up, but angry residents want him out sooner. They’ve organized a recall drive against city officials who back him.

“I’m responsible,” Zimmerman said during a two-hour interview with the paper. “I get to pay the price.”

He acknowledged what critics told the paper was the key to figuring out how the city could have come up so short: The town’s books were in chaos, and the city ledgers didn’t match bank balances.

“We should have known last year,” Zimmerman said. He said the finance director was new, but he should have known.

“I should have picked up on it…. Not only do I need to look at the amount transferred from one to another, but the amount remaining in that fund,” he said. “I didn’t check. Frankly, I missed the clue.”

Many in the town have demanded to know where the money went.

Oakridge is a town of 3,205, and one of the poorest small towns in Oregon.

The median household income is $27,000, half the national figure. Twenty-eight percent of the residents live below the poverty line. One in five is 65 years old or older. A quarter of the town’s housing units are singlewide trailers, divided among six mobile home parks. The unemployment rate is in the double digits.

Among the problems the Register-Guard found in the city’s finances: a software conversion that didn’t work, turnover in personnel — five finance directors in seven years — and handwritten records that auditors found too confusing to work with.

The result, the paper said, was that Oakridge blew through $1.2 million in cash reserves over a two-year period.

The paper said it found examples of small-ticket spending that raised eyebrows: a $700 baby grand piano in February for an activity center, for example, and the City Council’s decision to give Zimmerman and other department heads free utilities in place of raises.

A bigger ticket item was the City Council’s decision to construct a public works building for $500,000. A deal to sell the old building fell through, so the city is stuck with two public works buildings, and the debt service of $40,000 a year until 2034.

Zimmerman came to Oakridge about eight years ago from a similar job in Baker City. The paper said it found he had been asked to resign there after an ambitious spending agenda hit a wall with the City Council in the Eastern Oregon city. His plans included buying an airplane to start a “sky taxi” service to solve one of the city’s impediments to growth — no air service.

“We said ‘Gordon, no, we aren’t going to buy an airplane,’” said Chuck Hofman, a member of the Baker City Council at the time.”

In Oakridge, leaders said the town has been damaged but isn’t giving up.

“This is a good town full of good people that has been shamed and disgraced,” council member Dan Barclay said. “And it happened on our watch, no matter what the outcome is.”