Talk about close calls — barely avoiding a collision of two stunning, almost intersecting, events.
Hours after a somber Mark Scott officially announced his resignation on Monday night as City Manager of Culver City, 200 miles north, a smiling Mark Scott was introduced yesterday as the new City Manager of Fresno, his hometown.
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Mark Scott, left, yesterday, with Interim City Manager Bruce Rudd, who will remain on as Assistant City Manager
Once an amazing series of unexpected events were clicked into motion, they streaked with mercurial speed through the lives of Mr. Scott and Culver City the last few days:
Friday: He emails the five members of the City Council of his surprise intention to leave Culver City in the ninth month of a three-year contract valued at about $300,000. His reason: To return to his native Central Valley to be nearer his ailing parents.
Sunday: He declines to comment.
Monday: Before word leaks more widely, he summons his top tier of staffers at City Hall for a 40-minute meeting. Laying out his family reasons for resigning, he apologizes for the abruptness of his decision but pledges to remain on the job as long as needed, likely through the budgetary process in May, he says.
Later Monday: He reveals that he has a new position, and probably can identify it the next day. He says he and his wife, Carol, who has been living in South Carolina, mutually decided about Jan. 29 to accept the Fresno hometown job offer even though it involves a significant paycut. One week later, Mr. Scott, by emails to the Council, breaks his silence
Still later Monday: After a colorful few minutes in Closed Session with the City Council, Mr. Scott stands in Council Chambers. He makes a brief formal public announcement. In a telling response, four of the five Council members stare back at him stone-faced, as if they have been struck dumb. Mayor Andy Weissman is designated to make a sparse, minimal reply that does not register on the Richter Scale or even the bathroom scales.
Leaving a community of 40,000, Mr. Scott now shifts to a city 10 times larger, 427,000 at the 2000 census.
According to the lead story in this morning’s Fresno Bee, Mr. Scott has accepted a 15 percent pay cut from his base salary of $224,000 in Culver City. His Fresno agreement calls for $189,000 a year. Of at least equal significance, Mr. Scott will not be the CEO of City Hall in Fresno, as he is/was in Culver. He will be a clear-cut No. 2 to the Mayor, who is in charge.
Mr. Scott said this morning that his first official day in Fresno will be Thursday, April 15, two days after Culver City’s City Council election for two available seats.
Meanwhile, here is the Fresno Bee’s account of what happened yesterday:
Mayor Ashley Swearengin on Tuesday named a Fresno native and veteran city manager as her choice to lead the city through some of the toughest challenges in its history.
Mark Scott, 60, currently city manager of Culver City in Southern California, will take over on April 15. He replaces city manager Andy Souza, who resigned to pursue other interests.
Scott's appointment comes more than a year after Swearengin took office.
Swearengin said during her 2008 campaign that she would conduct a wide job search to select her own city manager, although she said she would encourage Souza to apply. Souza did but later withdrew his application.
Under Fresno's strong-mayor government, the city manager is hired and fired by the mayor, and is charged with implementing the mayor's vision.
On Tuesday, as she announced Scott as her choice, Swearengin said a mutual friend introduced them in 2007, saying Scott would make an excellent city manager if she was elected mayor.
Swearengin said she reviewed more than 60 city manager applications, but Scott's name was not among them. She said she asked Scott seven times to apply but he repeatedly declined.
“The eighth time is the charm,” Swearengin said.
This was not the first time Fresno had courted Scott.
Scott was Beverly Hills' city manager in 2001 when The Bee reported that he was one of four finalists for the Fresno job that went to Dan Hobbs. Scott said Tuesday that he was not a candidate, but was only helping then-Mayor Alan Autry select the right person.
Scott will take over daily operations of a city with severe budget problems, strong unions experienced at protecting their turf and a City Council that already has said it will assert its independence when spring budget hearings roll around.
But that harsh reality was in the background at the start of Tuesday's half-hour news conference at City Hall as Swearengin and Scott expressed satisfaction with their new partnership.
Swearengin said she is confident Scott “will take Fresno, our beloved city, to the next level.”
Scott, whose parents still live in Fresno, has been city manager in cities as diverse as Beverly Hills and Spartanburg, S.C. He said he was thrilled to come home.
“To me, Fresno has always been the frame of reference, it has always been north on the compass, it has always been my inspiration,” Scott said.
Scott gave no hint at his solutions for Fresno's problems, but said city government and the expectations of its constituents must change with the times.
“I'm looking forward to having spirited arguments and debates with people,” Scott said. “If you don't go through that, you don't make progress.”
Scott spent less than a year in Culver City, where he oversees 720 employees and a city budget of $140 million. Fresno, even after recent layoffs and a steep decline in revenues, has about 3,700 employees and an annual budget of about $1 billion.
Fresno, Scott said, “is the last stop for me.”
Scott will make $189,000 annually. Souza's salary was $182,700.
Scott said his wife, Carol, is living in South Carolina while finishing fundraising for a children's museum she started in Greenville. He said she will join him in Fresno.
Here is the way the City of Fresno reported the Scott hiring on its website:
Mayor Ashley Swearengin today announced the appointment of Mark Scott, a Fresno native with 34 years of experience in public administration, as the City of Fresno’s new city manager.
Scott, 60, who has been a city manager in three cities over the past 20 years, is currently the city manager in Culver City. He will begin his duties in Fresno in mid-April. Assistant City Manager Bruce Rudd will continue to serve as interim city manager until Scott is in position.
“I am pleased to welcome Mark back to Fresno,” Mayor Swearengin said. “He is the ideal person to assume the City Manager’s position – his more than 30 years of experience in public administration has seasoned him and prepared him to step in and perform at a high level. Most importantly, he’s passionate about seeing his hometown succeed.”
“City Managers rarely get a chance to return to their hometowns,” Scott said. “I feel very fortunate to be coming back to the place of my original inspiration to join Mayor Swearengin's team. The best part of Fresno is Fresnans. I’m glad to be home.”
Scott’s experience as a city manager includes stints at Culver City and Beverly Hills, both in California, and Spartanburg, South Carolina.
At Culver City, Scott is the city’s first manager since its transition to the Council-Manager form of government. He is responsible for 720 employees with a budget of more than $160 million. He also serves as the City’s acting chief financial officer, as well as the executive director of one of the state’s more active redevelopment agencies.
Before Culver City, Scott served as city manager of Spartanburg, South Carolina, from November 2003 to May 2009. In that position, he helped to develop the award-winning HUB-BUB.com “creative community” program and was responsible for the day-to-day operation of a municipal government of 500 staff and a $49 million budget.
Scott also served as city manager of Beverly Hills from April 1990 to November 2003, the longest tenure of a city manager in Beverly Hills history. At Beverly Hills, Scott was responsible for the operation of a municipal government staff of 1,100 and a $250 million budget. Before becoming city manager, Scott was director of environmental services (community development) and executive assistant to the city manager in Beverly Hills.
In addition, Scott served as assistant to the City Manager of Clovis from 1972-78.
Scott is an International City Management Association certified city manager and a founding member of the City County Communications & Marketing Association, an organization for local governments that are innovating new and better ways of communicating with their citizens.
He has been active in various community and civic activities such as coaching youth sports; mentoring in the Los Angeles Unified School District MISTER program in south-central Los Angeles for five years; hosting NAACP ACT-SO (Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics) competitions in two cities; working on Weed & Seed neighborhood programs; and participating in Project Redwood, a social entrepreneurship program initiated by the Stanford Business School Class of 1980.
Scott also taught an “Entrepreneurial Government” course in the Clemson University Master of Public Administration program.
Scott attended Fresno Unified School District schools and graduated from Fresno High School. He also has a master of business administration degree from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in public administration from California State University, Fresno. He and Carol, his wife of 36 years, have two children.
Scott’s parents, Gordon and Carol Scott, live in Fresno.
