Marcie Edwards at press conference announcing Eric Garcetti’s appointment of her as the new Director of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
One of the best things that can be said about Anaheim City Manager Marcie Edwards is that she did not want to be City Manager of Anaheim.
She was appointed Interim City Manager last May, after Bob Wingenroth’s Surprise (that’s the Arizona city for which he left) departure. Then, as Adam Elmahrek reported last July in the Voice of OC, she accepted the permanent position:
The Anaheim City Council in a unanimous vote Tuesday night appointed interim City Manager Marcie Edwards permanently to the job, a move that counters statements Edwards made in May that she wasn’t interested in the position.
The appointment came after former City Manager Bob Wingenroth left for a position in Surprise, Ariz., just before the Anaheim council considered a controversial $158-million room tax subsidy that he had opposed last year. Wingenroth’s departure — which he said was made to be close to his extended family — befuddled many, because he had recently purchased a home in the city.
Edwards, who was first appointed interim city manager in May, was muted in her reaction to the announcement of the permanent appointment, which came at the end of a council meeting that went well past 10 p.m.
“The last 60 days I felt like I could make a difference,” Edwards said about changing her mind and pursuing the top spot. “I don’t know what else to say.”
Word around town was that some arm-twisting was involved. This afternoon, we learned that she’s getting a great and prestigious new job: a high profile gig leading the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
Edwards previously ran the Anaheim Public Utilities for 13 years, according to the release, as well as spending 24 years at the DWP, where she worked as an assistant general manager in marketing and customer service. She started with DWP when she was 19 as a clerk typist before working her way through the ranks and into management.
Edwards comes into a DWP that’s faced controversy since September of last year. Two nonprofit trusts set up by the city and the DWP’s labor union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, received $40 million of public money for training and safety without a full accounting of how it was being spent, according to the Los Angeles Times. Nichols, who leaves the agency Friday, denies that his departure has anything to do with that controversy.
For someone with her background — a career at DWP and then more than a dozen years in a position running Anaheim’s utilities, to which she recently saw her chosen successor appointed — running a high profile and important organization like DWP must be a dream job. Of course, it also may be a dream job because it gets her out of Anaheim, which, in addition to Wingenroth, has in the past year driven off its previous City Attorney Cristina Talley and Police Chief Paul Welter as well.
I’ve been a nominal antagonist to Edwards during her tenure, because her job has been to protect the City’s interests as she saw them — or, rather, as the Council Majority saw them. When she swooped in and said that she’d already pushed for a properly qualified appraisal of the City’s property in the Ground Lease Giveaway around Angels Stadium, she showed her strength and good judgment. She has also had a reputation for fairness and competence, and I imagine that the position she now prepares to leave has not been the most comfortable one for someone with such an orientation.
I think that Anaheim will miss her — I’m afraid that it’s going to miss her terribly, depending on her replacement — but LADWP needs someone who knows how to deal with crisis. Anaheim has certainly prepared her for that. Good luck to her — and, more pointedly, good luck to Anaheim in replacing her.
What can I say? I’m a modal writer.
As much as I wish Ms. Edwards well on the path ahead of her, I recoil with discomfort at what remains behind, not in any blame for her short tenure, but because short tenure is becoming commonplace in Anaheim. In businesses of any size, from JC Penney, to the corner tire shop, high turnover is usually a glaring red flag, whether it’s management, or line employees, and usually a symptom of deeper problems.
What is wrong with our political environment, or our selection process, that OUR City lately has had the management stability of a fast food outlet, instead of the world-class destination resort city our PR flyers proclaim us to be? Being a tourist destination, having 3 freeways and a Baseball team are BENEFITS of being a world-class city, NOT a receipe. Detroit has freeways, a baseball team, and tourism ( if sadly, more for its post-industrial decay than its Art Museum !).
Is it perhaps time for an intervention, to get some QUALIFIED analysis and diagnosis of what Anaheim needs to improve, and how to do that, and WHY, not just a grab for the NEXT candidate in line or the handy, ‘shiny object’ outsourced solution of the moment, and cross our fingers?
Granted, we don’t have many easy examples at the County State, or Federal level to emulate, but there ARE American Cities that are patiently, with effort, finding paths to improvement. Can we learn from them? Can Anaheim return to governing with planning and foresight instead of by lawsuit outcome negotiation?
Anaheim needs to restore confidence, along with competence in City Hall, and return study and analysis to its rightful place IN FRONT OF choosing a solution.
The responsibility and consequences stay HERE in the City, after the out-sourced consultants are paid and gone. I long ago by chance visited the “back of house” of a famous local business,and noticed a sign “Our mission is to be the destination of Choice, the Employer of Choice, and the Investment of Choice” Should the City pursue similar goals, to retain qualified, long term staff, and AVOID becoming just a pension – spiking turnstile on the road to elsewhere?
Bravo, BB!