Redding City Hall
Republished with permission of Rachel Hatch
Today the City of Redding Council has interviewed candidates for City Manager. This is perhaps the most consequential decision any City Council can make. Here is what I said during public comment at the meeting:
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There’s a key datapoint that I hope the Redding City Council will keep in mind while interviewing candidates for Redding City Manager today: 9 years.
In June, the CA City Management Foundation & Claremont McKenna College released their City Manager survey, and they found that the average tenure of a City Manager in California is approximately 9 years serving as City Manager in one or more cities.
The 2025 study shows a marked increase in the average tenure data from their 2023 study. The study doesn’t analyze why, but I can only imagine that it’s in part because of the kinds of disruptive issues that City Managers have to deal with in California: pandemics, wildfires and more. As we’ve seen here, true servant leaders rise to the moment of these kinds of events, and navigate through, in service of stability.
So the decision before you today is one that will shape the next 9+ years for our City. Therefore, in addition to the key criterion you’ve outlined in the job description (proven expertise, collaborative management & more), a critical characteristic of the next City Manager is that they show strategic foresight.
Foresight to help them anticipate how the future might be different. So how might the next 9 years be different?
- First, the acceleration of artificial intelligence will shape the operating environment for the next City Manager:
- From the future of work in Redding, impacting everything from the mix of human labor and machines that will power the City’s own workforce
- To the way we need to approach economic development & major employers like healthcare organizations
- To land use decisions about where data centers go, and decisions about how water gets used in our wider region
- Second, the increase in polarization will require much of the next City Manager:
- To exhibit new leadership skills like “constructive depolarizing.” This term was coined by Bob Johansen to describe the ability to bring people from divergent cultures and viewpoints toward constructive engagement
- This will only become more difficult in a time when our information streams are polluted by deepfakes (made cheaply and easily, thanks to generative AI)
- Expect flashpoints around privacy and freedom, and even truth
- Third, the rise of extreme heat and other impacts of climate change may disrupt the best laid plans of the current Council and future Councils
- The next City Manager has an opportunity to assertively seek state and federal dollars to support Redding’s climate resilience, leveraging every local dollar to make the biggest impact
- To wisely steward one of our greatest assets, our electric utility, to buffer the community from some of the worst impacts
I hope the Council will keep these drivers of change in mind as you interview candidates today.
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Honestly, I admire the braveness of the candidates who interviewed with the Redding City Council today. No one has a crystal ball to predict the kinds of challenges the City will face and the toll that those challenges will take on them personally and professionally.
Kudos to all of them for stepping into the arena–as each of you have.
Our best hope is to listen for the future-readiness of these candidates during their interviews. How willing are they to face drivers of change like AI, polarization, and climate change with clear eyes; to anticipate how the future might be different, and help nearly 1000 full-time employees and more than 90,000 residents–leverage foresight to build our future-readiness.
The City of Redding needs nothing less.
Here is the job description for Redding City Manager, posted by search firm Peckham & McKenney:
