The Weekly Newspaper of El Segundo
Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 108, No. 28 - July 11, 2019
Inside
This Issue
4th of July Photos............15
Certified & Licensed
Professionals.....................14
Classifieds............................4
Crossword/Sudoku.............4
Entertainment......................6
Legals............................ 12,13
Obituaries.............................3
Real Estate.....................7-11
School Spotlight..................5
Sports.............................. 5,14
Weekend
Forecast
Getting a Leg Up on the Fourth
Among the many fun activities during last week’s Fourth of July celebration was the three-legged race won by Simone Skarin and Scarlett Freed. See inside for more July 4 photo highlights. Photo: Gregg McMullin
Greg Carpenter Reflects on His
Career as the City Manager
By Brian Simon
Put a wrap on it. After a 31-year career
in the public sector working for municipal
governments including 11 years here, El
Segundo City Manager Greg Carpenter has
officially retired. His last day was June 28
and his successor, Scott Mitnick, took over
the position on July 1. Ready to enjoy his
next chapter with his wife Julie by spending
more time at their second home in Lake
Nascimento near Paso Robles (where he will
be tasked with enough home improvement
projects to almost rival his workload at City
Hall), Carpenter looked back at his career and
confirmed that it went by in a flash.
It all began with a job in the City of
Long Beach’s planning department back
in 1988 and over a decade of rising up the
ranks, followed by a brief stint at the City
of Lawndale from 2001 to 2002. Carpenter
returned to Long Beach to run the planning
department there and figured he would stay
put “forever.” That is until he received an
unexpected call from his home town. It
seemed that the City of El Segundo needed
someone to lead the Planning and Building
Safety Department after the retirement of Gary
Chicots. Though not unhappy where he was,
Carpenter couldn’t help but be intrigued. Not
only were the salary and benefits better, but
the challenges of the job appealed. And then
there was the commute: A three-minute walk
from his house on Standard Street versus a
45-minute snail-paced drive on the 405. That
made the decision a no-brainer.
Carpenter ran Planning and Building
Safety for three-and-a-half years until another
unanticipated event -- the sudden dismissal
of then-City Manager Doug Willmore in
February 2012 -- created an opening that
the El Segundo City Council decided to fill
internally. Carpenter first stepped in on an
interim basis and then signed an initial threeyear
contract to become the city manager
in March 2012. Humbled by the offer, he
wondered if he was up to the task and later
said, “The Council had more faith in me
than I did in myself.”
Indeed, Carpenter’s new leadership position
was something he never previously imagined.
“I had spent my entire career as a city planning
and planning and building director – both
of which I thought were my dream jobs,” he
said. “I was much more comfortable dealing
with codes, customers and construction than
I was dealing with meaty financial, labor
and legal issues. Despite these concerns, the
city is my home and somebody needed to
step forward. It was an honor to be asked
to take the position and I was just going to
need to step way out of my comfort zone
and figure it out.”
As it turned out, the move paid dividends
as Carpenter earned a contract renewal. His
eventual tenure of seven-and-a-half years at
the helm is one of the longer ones in the
town’s history. It may not seem so lengthy at
first glance, but it’s an eternity in the world
of city government. It was long enough that
over the course of that period, Carpenter had
to find a replacement for every single department
head at City Hall. Only one current
Council member (Don Brann, who then
chose not to run in 2012 and completed his
first term the following month) was on the
dais when Carpenter assumed the job. But
besides witnessing the comings and goings
of elected officials and City leaders, he also
oversaw one of the most significant eras of
change in El Segundo. But it wasn’t an easy
start by any stretch. “At the point when I
was hired, the City had not recovered from
the recession,” Carpenter recalled. “Revenues
had cratered and were down 20 percent from
where they had been. Our workforce had
been reduced from 320 to 240 employees
and we had stopped investing in ourselves
in just about every way in order to balance
the annual budget.”
While Carpenter noted that the City did
its best as an organization to prevent the
public from feeling any service reductions,
the impacts inevitably became evident in the
form of equipment breakdowns, leaky roofs
on City buildings, dated technology, and too
few people to handle too many responsibilities.
“Adding to these difficulties, we were
involved in personnel lawsuits, CalPers
struggles, negotiations with Chevron over a
financial agreement, negotiations with TopGolf
over The Lakes, negotiations with LAX over
expansion plans and residential sound insulation…
and with the Wiseburn Unified School
District over the high school and aquatics
center,” Carpenter explained. “Throughout
this time, we had also asked our now smaller
workforce to deal with reductions in pay and
benefits. To their credit, they continued to be
dedicated and professional. I’m personally
very proud of them for this commitment to
service on their part.”
Eventually, the City came out of the
recession and focused a great deal on shoring
up basic needs such as new roofs on all
the City buildings, broken sidewalk repair
that included the complete reconstruction
of Richmond Street, replacement of the
Campus El Segundo turf, replacement of the
entire public safety vehicle fleet, and the remodel
and retrofit of Fire Station 1. “We also
rebuilt our reserves and right-sized and
shaped our workforce to deal with our needs,”
See Greg Carpenter, page 13
Friday
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