The Gilroy City Council will vote on hiring Gabriel Gonzalez as the new city administrator on Monday, giving him a salary of $210,000 a year and a car allowance of $4,200 a year.
Gonzalez, 46, a CSU-Fresno graduate and Santa Cruz native, has had five jobs in the past six years. He was the city manager of Rohnert Park from 2010-2013, then moved to Kansas to be near his daughter and worked as city manager for the town of Augusta for five months. Back in California, he was the interim finance director for the city of El Monte for five months before moving up to assistant city manager there, where he remained for a year.
Since July he’s been a management consultant for Management Partners, a national consulting firm.
Earlier in his career he worked for six years as the city manager of Mendota and for three years as a manager of the Clinica Sierra Vista, a Central Valley healthcare provider for low-income and rural workers. He was finance director for the city of Arvin for six years, starting in 1995, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Gonzalez was acclaimed for his work in Rohnert Park, reducing the city’s debt from $9 million to $2.2 million, according to a report in the Community Voice newspaper. He was said to have cut costs and created a 10-year plan to manage the budget.
“One of his favorite mottos is ‘if the money’s not in our bank, we don’t spend it.’” the paper reported him saying.
Rohnert Park City Councilman Jake Mackenzie lauded Gonzalez for helping turn the city around when it was on the verge of bankruptcy. “He has done yeoman’s work; he has guided us through some very real fiscal crises and set us on a good direction for the future,” Mackenzie told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat on the manager’s departure in 2013.
The city’s then mayor Pam Stafford also praised him in that newspaper. “He came in at a time when we knew that what we needed to do is get financial stability, and we’re well on our way to that,” she said. “He did a great job.”
Former Morgan Hill city manager Ed Tewes, has served Gilroy on an interim basis since September 2015. The city manager before that, Tom Haglund, left after seven years to
take a job as general manager of the Tuolumne Utilities District in Sonora, where he has a second home.
Gonzalez was picked by a council subcommittee that included Mayor Perry Woodward and councilmembers Terri Aulman and Daniel Harney. The city had been looking since September and pared 29 applicants down to six, who participated in extensive interviews.
Gonzalez has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from National University and a Masters of Public Administration from CSU-Fresno.
