As a child raised in the suburbs of Washington D.C., City Manager Susan McCarthy grew up surrounded by politics but it wouldn’t be until she was an adult that she would realize how much it had an impact on her.
Decades later, McCarthy oversees more than 1,000 employees within City Hall, manages the day-to-day operations of one of the most dynamic and diverse cities in the world, and handles a $350 million budget.
McCarthy, 58, came to Santa Monica in 1974 after her husband, Kevin, was hired as a researcher for the Rand Corp., a job that he still holds today. Just before moving here, McCarthy was working as a transportation planner for the state of Wisconsin while Kevin was in the doctoral program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. To stay apprised of what was going on in the world, McCarthy cherished her grandmother’s gift of the Washington Post each week.
“I knew about Watergate long before it appeared in the papers in the Midwest,” she said. “I would say that I’ve been a policy buff for a long time.”
Coming to Southern California was the “other side of the world” in McCarthy’s mind. But after walking the streets of Santa Monica in search of an apartment with a map given to her by employees at her hotel — the Travel Lodge on Ocean Avenue — she had found her new home.
A graduate from Mt. Holyoke in New England, McCarthy embarked on her career in city government a year after she moved to Santa Monica. She has been involved Santa Monica’s business off and on for the past 20 years. In college, McCarthy studied economic and urban geography. She was interested in “central place theory,” the circumstances of why, how and where cities develop.
McCarthy’s very first stint in local government was as an administrative analyst at the Big Blue Bus — a job she described as a jack of all trades and the foundation of her career. She was climbing the ladder within City Hall when she left to pursue her master’s degree in communication management at the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California. While studying, she volunteered at the Natural History Museum across the street, working in the public relations department. She came back to City Hall in 1985 and has been there ever since. She’s held positions in the cultural affairs department, worked her way up to the director of human resources department, served as assistant city manager and now, City Hall’s top job — city manager.
There is no typical day for McCarthy, but meeting frequently with department heads and answering to the community’s concerns are part of the norm.
She has just finished drafting the city’s massive budget, which she and her staff have spent the past several weeks slaving over so the City Council can pass a balanced budget in June. McCarthy admits being the city manager in the mid-1990s would have been more fun, since the past few years have meant scaling back in order to close deficits. As a result of the cutbacks, McCarthy believes — as do many city officials — there has been a steady erosion of services offered to the public throughout the city.
She commutes to work with her husband, but often walks home from City Hall and almost always walks to work the day after a City Council meeting — a ritual that helps to restore her mind.
McCarthy and her husband have lived mostly in the North of Wilshire neighborhood, with a short stint in Malibu. The two of them can be seen walking the Santa Monica neighborhood frequently.
Here the Daily Press caught up with McCarthy in her office at City Hall.
Why did you choose an all-women’s college?
“I wanted to be in a different part of the country that I had grown up in. It’s a beautiful campus and it is a small, private school so you didn’t fit into lecture halls with hundreds of people. When I entered college, the women’s movement was really just beginning... it was an interesting time that women could do whatever they wanted.”
Did you know what you wanted to do when went into college?
“Absolutely not. I think the whole value of a liberal arts education is that opens up countless possibilities.”
What was your first job?
“I went back to the Washington D.C. area and I had worked summers for American Express in Washington D.C. downtown. Then I took the federal service entrance examination. At that point, John Kennedy was gone but the whole concept of public service had elevated certainly in the minds of a lot young people. And sad to say, I don’t think that’s the case today. The war on poverty was underway... it was an exciting time.
Where did you meet your husband?
“He was at a men’s school and I was at a women’s school in New England. They used to bus us back and forth. I dated a friend of his and we became friends, which is a good way to begin a relationship. We were married in the spring of 1968 and just celebrated an anniversary.”
After working for several years for City Hall, why did you leave in the ’80s?
“I felt it was time. I never intended to be in human resources, not that it wasn’t rewarding. You learn a great deal about an organization and a lot about human nature. But it wasn’t what I wanted to do as a career and sometimes once you get pigeon holed you need to do something to break the mold so it was time for me to break the mold. You know, it was really neat going back to school... thinking big thoughts.”
Why did you come back to City Hall?
“They had just combined recreation, open space management, cultural affairs, the civic auditorium and human services into one department and that’s what I came back for. It was neat to be back, actually. It was very comfortable. One of the things that distinguishes city government is that it’s a lot more transparent than the private sector... I found ultimately that Santa Monica’s local government was more broad minded in some interesting ways. I was pleased to be back.”
The second time you came back to City Hall, were you eyeing the City Manager’s position?
“There were lots of things going on. We were updating the recreation and parks master plan. And this will crack you up, we were going through the whole issue of dog parks and the (community debate) was whether dogs were more important than children. There was no lack of interesting stuff going on but certainly having come from human resources, which gives you that global organizational perspective, there was an attraction to the City Manager position.”
You’ve seen the city go through a lot of changes. What is most interesting to you in the evolution of Santa Monica?
“There is no question that in the mid ’70s, I remember reading an article in LA Magazine that referred to Santa Monica as shabby and things were quiet and kind of run-down. So what’s happened over that period of time has really been that the community has sharpened as a distinctive part of the greater metropolitan area. The identity of Santa Monica, other than having a beach, was a lot like every other city. Over that period of time, both politically and physically, the community had changed. The identity is very different. The development of the Promenade was a factor. The period during which hotel development occurred, which attracted the national and international visitor. The politics of the community became a wider arena. The name recognition of Santa Monica during the time I’ve been involved with the city in one way or another has increased tremendously. I travel a lot and there is no question that Santa Monica is known.”
And you get the distinct pleasure of being in charge of that now. Do you lay awake at night thinking about everything you are in charge of?
“It keeps you up nights sometimes. You keep a notepad beside your bed and a good book in case you can’t fall back asleep.”
You’ve got a huge job. What are your main responsibilities?
“It is the day-to-day operations of the city and the only exception to that really is that I am not in charge of the legal function and elections function. Santa Monica is a full-service city and actually has some non-standard functions like the airport, bus company, the civic auditorium and a pleasure pier. But our basic services that people everywhere rely upon on — on a day-to-day basis —people want their trash removed and they want their water to come out of the faucet when they turn it on, and they want to be safe walking on their streets and they are interested in the basic amenities that city government provides. That is our first job.
“Santa Monica in the time I’ve been here has taken on other functions that exceed what other communities do. We have a tremendous amount of nonprofits and we have relationships with that community. I think that is not entirely a standard elsewhere. The city’s commitment to education and the environment are not a standard elsewhere. When you look at the breadth of the things the city is doing, they all require some degree of attention on a daily basis.
479,“It’s also making government transparent to people, helping them understand, ‘why are they doing this?’ A lot of the job is dealing with people — residents who are happy and unhappy with things who need a chance to talk, or complain, or carry their messages. A lot of it has to do with employees’ concerns and interactions. The preparation of the city budget is part of the city manager’s job. That is a tremendous part of the job.”
Is that your most stressful part of the job, the budget?
“For an intense period of time, it is probably the most stressful. Obviously, there are personnel and resident issues that are weighty as well.”
How do you handle all of those responsibilities?
“You get up every morning and come to the office and do the things that need doing. You try to keep your eyes on the horizon. One of the challenges is that you can get very immersed in the day-to-day operations and you have to keep the operational functions of the city moving at an appropriate level. You have to balance where the organization is going and how you can help the council in their policy work to try and get the community to those places.”
The City Council is your boss, but its members take a significant amount of direction from you. How do you balance that?
“There aren’t a lot of jobs in which you have seven bosses, which is certainly something unique. Any city manager will tell you that if there can be that reliance and level of trust, and the city manager is confident in the council’s commitment to the community, you have a good situation. If the confidence breaks down on either side, it can be more problematic. I can talk about seven bosses, but we don’t run around in seven different directions. I work for the City Council as a body so one of the challenges is communication. A council member can’t pick up the phone and say, ‘I want this, this and this.’ It’s always kind of a balancing act. It takes a great deal of work. It’s a unit that has seven very different personalities but it is as a unit that they make the city’s business go on.”
How political is your job?
“I think city managers have to be politically aware and not politically active. And that goes to the ethics of the profession and the practical realities of the work.”
Are your politics ever in conflict with the job?
“I’ve never felt compromised in the job. Not just in Santa Monica, but in the city management profession, we actually give up some of our rights to political expression in the service of the job we are doing.”
What’s your favorite part of the job?
“My favorite part of the job is also the most taxing part of the job, which is the interactions of the staff both with community members and employees... People are infinitely interesting, infinitely different from each other. All those interactions are fascinating.”
What would you like to do more of in your job that you don’t currently?
“I wouldn’t mind being in the community a little bit more. One thing about Santa Monica is that I bump into people — you have those informal interactions. Every once in a while at the supermarket, somebody will look at me over the produce counter and I can tell they are trying to decide whether they’ve seen me on City T.V. or something weird like that. But one of the neat things about living in a community this size is I think people feel more immediately connected to their government.”
What do you like to do in your off time?
“I am a voracious reader. If I was smart I would use my library card more than my Barnes & Noble card. My husband and I like to travel. We don’t get away as much as we’d like. I have a great family, both on Kevin’s side and mine, all of whom are on the East Coast so part of what we do is see our nieces and nephews and keep our family close.”
What about your parents, were they political?
“They were pretty terrific parents. One of the neat things about them was that they gave all of us the sense that we could be anything we put our minds to and they were supportive of the different things we were interested in.
“We’ve always been good voters. One of the things about being a city manager is that I am most comfortable with people thinking that regardless of the way I vote, I am thinking about all of their municipal concerns.”
Where’s your favorite place in Santa Monica?
“I walk in the mornings wherever I am in the world. I can tell you absolutely that Palisades Park is a world-class amenity. I like the beach, but walking in Palisades Park in the morning connects me to Santa Monica in a very fundamental way.”
Why?
“It’s how old it is. If you walk along, there are some interesting buildings — not all of them have been knocked down during the 1950s. It’s the fascinating geology of those bluffs and thinking about the days when there was a railroad and bathhouse right there beneath you and looking out across the Pacific. If you are out early and it’s still dark enough and seeing the Ferris wheel lit up and thinking about the amusement park that was there many years ago. It’s a great community and a fabulous natural setting.”
If you could change one thing about Santa Monica what would it be?
“As both a resident and a city manager, I wish we were closer to finding solutions to the homeless problem and that certainly has been an extraordinary challenge. I know it affects the people on the street who are unhoused and it affects our housed residents on a daily basis. It’s a great disappointment that we haven’t been able with our resources to resolve it. It is most assuredly not something Santa Monica can resolve itself and I’m glad the mayor is involved in the regional effort. We are always thinking about what can be done.”
Where will you retire?
“I haven’t thought about it. It’s hard to imagine something more pleasant than this. When I visit the Washington D.C. area when it is not the dead of summer or the dead of winter, I often think it would be nice to be back on the East Coast. But I would like to host a dinner party with five of the most interesting people in Santa Monica, people you could never get in the same room again.”
Who would you invite?
“I don’t know. But now that I’ve thought about it, I’ll start thinking about that list.”
Where do you see yourself in five years?
“I think in five years, I will be retired. I would hope to have an opportunity to enjoy life. I’ve seen too many people hang on without time to do some of things they’ve postponed for a long time.”
BOX:
Susan McCarthy became the city manager in 1999, after serving more than a decade in various departments within City Hall.
Salary: $219,534, includes salary and benefits.
Education: A product of public school. Bachelor’s degree from Mt. Holyoke and a master’s degree from USC.
Family: Married to Kevin for 36 years. No children.
She has three nieces on her side of the family, all of whom started college last fall. One of them is enrolled in Occidental College, in Los Angeles, which McCarthy feels fortunate to have her close. McCarthy has two sisters — one is a professor at Brown University in Rhode Island and another who works in the financial sector in Manhattan. Her brother works in real estate in Virginia. Her parents, Marjorie and Charles Edwards, both in their ‘80s, live outside of Washington D.C. While McCarthy was growing up, her father was an engineer, working for the federal government and was a pilot during WWII. Her mother was a stay-at-home mom.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 10, 2004. Read the original PDF.