News Blog
More Leadership Changes in Monterey with Finance Director Departure
March 14, 2013
After weathering the biggest challenge of his 17-year career—the Great Recession—Monterey Finance Director Don Rhoads is leaving for a job in Beverly Hills.
Over the course of the three darkest years of the recession, Rhoads guided the trimming of $12 million from the city's general fund budget to its current size of $60 million.
"It was pretty much an unprecedented downturn," Rhoads says. "We tried to walk through it in an orderly way, a humane way; we didn’t have very many layoffs."
He says he's leaving a rosy budget scenario, with five-year projections showing a slight upturn in revenues.
Rhoads' successor will guide several major projects that have already been approved. The city is preparing to undertake a major $16 million upgrade to the sewer system, and developing a financing mechanism for a $32 million remodel of the conference center.
Rhoads' departure in April comes just a few months before City Manager Fred Meurer is scheduled to retire, and less than a year after former Assistant City Manager Fred Cohn retired.
Rhoads says seeing two people depart who he'd long worked for helped him shift gears and plan to leave Monterey for a job as CFO of the Administrative Services Department in Beverly Hills.
"The leadership at the city manager’s office has been top notch," he says. "That’s part of the reason I was here for as long as I’d been."
The city hasn't yet decided whether to hire an interim replacement. Meanwhile, a recruitment process for a new city manager is underway, ledby the Sacramento-based headhunting firm CPS HR.
Comments
Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.
Sign in to comment
Or login with:
OpenID