City Manager

o7Here are some items the council will consider Tuesday. f7 CABLE TRANSFER The council will decide whether to allow a transfer of a cable TV franchise license from Adelphia, which has filed for bankruptcy, to Time Warner. Cable customers in the city get service from either Adelphia or Comcast. If the license transfer is approved, former Adelphia customers will be served by Time Warner, but the rates they are charged won't change. WHAT TO EXPECT The council is likely to allow the transfer.

After half a year of searching, Huntington Beach has found a new permanent city administrator, officials announced Wednesday. The new person to head Huntington Beach’s numerous departments will be Fred Wilson, 49, now city manager of San Bernardino. Wilson has held that job for 12 years, following nine years of subordinate jobs in the same office. Following a City Council vote on his contract Monday, he is scheduled to start in Huntington Beach Sept. 22. “It is an honor to be appointed as the new city administrator for the city of Huntington Beach,” Wilson said in a statement.

Fountain Valley and Huntington Beach may soon share a fire chief. Huntington Beach City Manager Fred Wilson said he's had preliminary discussions with his counterpart in Fountain Valley about giving Huntington's fire chief, Patrick McIntosh, the task of managing both departments. Fountain Valley Fire Chief Bill Walker left recently to serve in Alhambra. Former Laguna Beach Fire Chief Mike Macey replaced Walker in the interim. "It will be a challenge for our fire chief to manage both organizations," Wilson said.

As Huntington Beach’s top government manager for more than three years is looking at new job opportunities, City Council members gave her high marks for her performance. But most saw the choice to stay or go as in her hands, not theirs. City Administrator Penny Culbreth-Graft is one of three finalists to be city manager in Colorado Springs. The city administrator said she hadn’t been actively looking for the job, but stumbled across the opportunity on a trip this year and applied the very last day allowed.

Huntington Beach’s top pick for city administrator, still working as city manager in San Bernardino, faced accusations online and in print this week about his behavior in the wake of a scandal in the Inland Empire city. But San Bernardino officials of several factions called the city’s top hired official Fred Wilson an honest man who had misspoken, calling claims against him scurrilous. “It doesn’t amount to a hill of beans,” San Bernardino mayor Pat Morris said.

Huntington Beach City Council members voted unanimously to hire the city manager of San Bernardino as their new city administrator. Without discussing the matter at their meeting, council members voted 7-0 Tuesday to hire Fred Wilson, 49, as the city’s top administrative official. He will replace Interim City Administrator Paul Emery on Sept. 22. Huntington Beach’s pick for city administrator, still working in San Bernardino, faced accusations online and in print last week about his behavior in the wake of a scandal in the Inland Empire city.

It is beautiful, scenic and quirky. Surf City is a great place to live and, with all that there is going on, a great place for a journalist. That means it's probably a tough place to be a city administrator. So congratulations to the city's very first female administrator, Penny Culbreth-Graft, and welcome aboard. Culbreth-Graft brings to Surf City a breadth of experience that includes the sort of thing one might expect -- most recently a stint as the assistant city manager of Riverside, where she dealt with the various departments as she will here.

Fountain Valley's slogan is "A Nice Place to Live," and Cheryl Brothers agrees. After living here for 37 years, though, she can tell when it's in need of improvement. She sees shopping centers needing upgrades and suffering vacancies. She thinks the city needs to work on embracing its multicultural population, be being more inclusive, reach out and make sure different groups are welcomed. Brothers, who served two terms on the Fountain Valley City Council from 2002 to 2010 and as mayor in 2006, is running again after a reelection loss two years ago. She said she was disappointed by losing but has been encouraged to run again by many people, including John Moorlach, chair of the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

In an effort to further its transparency, Huntington Beach has created an easy-to-read list of top city officials' salaries online, including benefits and two forgivable loans given to the city administrator and city manager for housing costs to move to Huntington Beach. Huntington Beach has long posted city officials' base salaries online, but after a Los Angeles Times investigation revealed top city officials in Bell were making exorbitant salaries, nearly $800,000 a year for the city manager , Surf City, along with others, has made the information easier to access than ever, said Laurie Payne, city spokeswoman.