Hermosa Beach taps South Pasadena head as new city manager
Sergio Gonzalez, City Manager of South Pasadena, has been hired as new City Manager in Hermosa Beach. Courtesy photo
Hermosa Beach has hired a new city manager, selecting the current City Manager of South Pasadena to fill the existing vacancy.
Sergio Gonzalez, who has spent 14 years with South Pasadena, the last five of them as city manager, will take over for interim City Manager John Jalili. Gonzalez, 45, replaces Tom Bakaly, who helmed Hermosa for four years before departing last summer to serve as CEO of the Beach Cities Health District.
Gonzalez was the unanimous choice of the City Council, earning the position out of a field of some 60 candidates. Mayor pro tem Jeff Duclos, who was on the council when the city hired Bakaly, said that choosing among so many accomplished individuals required the city to assess the candidate who was “the best fit for the city.”
“You’ll get a group of qualified individuals. The bigger list becomes a smaller list, and pretty soon it’s a few finalists,” Duclos said. “From a qualification standpoint, you could say they’re all qualified. It comes down to the overriding sense that this is the right person for us, the right person for us at this moment.”
Gonzalez will be joining a city that has much in common with South Pasadena, including size, population and demographic profile. The city governments are also similar: South Pasadena has 146 employees, Hermosa 145.
In a brief phone interview while he was en route to Mexico to build a house with Habitat for Humanity, Gonzalez noted that being near the beach brings a whole new set of opportunities and challenges that inland communities do not face.
“What really appeals to me is that Hermosa Beach is a small town. It’s walkable, and it’s environmentally friendly,” Gonzalez said. “But another area that appealed to me was working in a beach community.”
Gonzalez will have a chance to get involved in coastal issues right off the bat. The Planning Commission recently recommended approval of Hermosa’s Local Coastal Program and General Plan last month; the City Council will start to tackle the issue at an April 20 study session.
Gonzalez did not have the chance to overseen a General Plan in his time at South Pasadena. (The city last updated theirs the year before he joined the staff, and hired a consultant to begin the crafting process three months ago.) His tenure, he said, was focused around infrastructure and improving the city’s responsiveness to resident concerns.
South Pasadena updated its water and sewer systems, and has spent nearly $12 million over the last five years on road improvements. During his tenure, the city implemented a “customer service portal” that catalogued, sorted and tracked each resident request to city staff. He also oversaw the development of a “reverse 911” system to coordinate with residents during emergencies.
Gonzalez’s first official day on the job is May 15, but he is expected to begin immersing himself in Hermosa before that. He will earn a salary of $219,000 per year.
Gonzalez currently lives in the San Gabriel Valley. He said that during discussions with the council they encouraged him to relocate to the area. Gonzalez is married with twin nine-year-old daughters.
“I’m having that conversation with my family right now,” he said.