City Manager Brown caps 35-year career

Petaluma’s retiring city manager plans to stay in the community he helped shape.|

John Brown is ready for some time away from city government after 10 years and eight months leading Petaluma as city manager. At the end of the work day today, Nov. 29, he will turn in his security badge, walk out of City Hall, and become just another resident of Petaluma.

Brown, 60, reflected on his accomplishments since his hiring in Petaluma in 2008, the height of the financial crisis that crippled many cities across the country. He saw the city’s reserves plummet from $8.5 million to a low of $5,000 in 2011. Brown’s austerity measures brought the city back from the brink, increasing the reserve fund, which is forecast at $8.7 million for fiscal year 2019.

“I’m leaving the city in a lot better financial shape than I found it,” Brown said in an interview during his last week in office. “I was pleased to be able to get through the recession. It was extremely painful.”

Brown said he is proud of the staff he has hired to lead the various city departments, leaving in place several young department heads who can carry on the work he started for many years.

“I hope my legacy is that I created a more responsive group of people,” he said. “I’d like to think I’m leaving behind something of value in terms of a team.”

As city manager, Brown had a hand in nearly every aspect of local government. He hired Ingrid Alverde as economic development manager and worked with her on a plan to attract high paying jobs to the city. Under Brown’s leadership, the city built two large shopping centers and revitalized core downtown businesses, while increasing sales tax revenue.

He privatized several city functions, including planning, animal services and custodial functions, to contain costs and improve customer service, and he oversaw the completion of Petaluma’s $127 million Ellis Creek Wastewater Treatment facility, the largest public works project in the city’s history.

Brown’s retirement caps a 35-year career in public service. A graduate of University of California, Santa Barbara and Cal State Northridge, where he earned a master’s in public administration, he spent his career in city and county government, coming to Petaluma from Woodburn, Oregon, where he was city manager.

Hired in April 2008, it was his third time applying for the top job in Petaluma, a city in which he had always wanted to live.

While accomplishing many of his goals in Petaluma, Brown said he would have liked to have paved more city streets, which continue to rank among the bottom of Bay Area pavement quality surveys. He also lamented not being able to pass a sales tax measure to increase the city budget. Voters rejected a 2014 sales tax measure, and subsequent attempts at a sales tax increase never made the ballot.

“It’s tragic that we weren’t able to pass that tax,” he said. “It would have changed the game. It’s one of my biggest disappointments.”

A soft spoken city leader, Brown had a straight forward, drama-free managerial style. He was more comfortable in the jeans and sweatshirts he wore to the office than the suits he was obligated to don for council meetings.

Not one to grandstand or take credit, he smiled as officials offered praise at his last city council meeting last week. Mayor David Glass read a proclamation honoring Brown’s 10 years of service to the city.

“Mr. Brown has capably managed the city’s financial resources, producing and managing budgets, successfully guiding the city through a recession, ultimately improving the city’s credit rating and creating a healthy reserve fund,” he said.

Congressman Jared Huffman entered into the congressional record a statement praising Brown’s service. Supervisor David Rabbitt, a former Petaluma councilman, said that Brown has a passion for public service.

“I think that public sector work, your administrative work, it really gets into your blood,” he told Brown. “You can really see that developing a passion for wanting to be in that line of work, for wanting to better people’s lives, for wanting to run an organization as efficiently as possible ... you’ve handled it with grace and elegance.”

Assistant City Manager Scott Brodhun will fill the city manager role while a permanent replacement is hired. The city council and department heads are expected to interview candidates from a short list in December with a plan of making an offer to a candidate at the beginning of next year.

Brown said he is available to offer advice to his successor, but he does not plan on staying active in local government, at least initially.

“I need a lot of time to detox and decompress,” he said. “It’s been a tough go.”

Married for 35 years, he has four adult children and six grandchildren. He said he is looking forward to spending time in his garden, getting daily exercise and doing some non-fiction writing. An avid outdoorsman, he wants to spend time in Europe hiking the parts of the Camino de Santiago trail that he hasn’t already done.

While he is not considering running for public office, he is pursuing a posting with the United Nations, working on human rights or food security. After 35 years of serving others, it may be hard to quit, he said.

“I got into this business because I wanted to feel like I was doing good for people,” he said. “I still want to feel like I’m really doing good.”

(Contact Matt Brown at matt.brown@arguscourier.com.)

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