Apathy Replaces Outrage as City Starts Process to Replace Resigned Public Health Director

Public outrage over former Public Health Director Eric Walsh’s anti-gay remarks which led to his resignation and condemnation of City Manager Michael Beck’s hiring practices have dimmed as almost no community members showed up this week at public meetings to discuss hiring Walsh’s replacement.

Only two residents attended Tuesday night’s meeting (which saw City Manager Michael Beck, hiring Consultant Bob, and at least four other city officials), six residents came to Wednesday’s City Hall mid-day presentation and not one attended the Jackie Robinson Community Center event that evening.

At the first meeting, City Manager Michael Beck said the Public Health Director’s job duties this time will be different than when Walsh took the position.

“We have Dr. Go, who is the public health officer, and then we’ll be looking for a medical administrator or Department of Health Administrator who will be the department head,” Beck said.

“We recognize that we need both the medical side – the clinical side of the organization – as well as some very strong management skills that unfortunately we’re lacking because of the fact that one person just can’t do it all,” he said.

Walsh was first put on paid administrative leave in late April, 2014 after the discovery on some online videos (such as Youtube) where Walsh’s religious sermons had discriminatory views on Muslims (where he described the prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam as a Satanist), homosexuals and others.

Walsh’s sermons given to Seventh-day Adventist congregations, including one on North Lake Avenue in Altadena, where he was is an associate pastor. Specifically, the sermons surfaced after Walsh was chosen to be the commencement speaker for Pasadena City College last year.

Most of the recordings were made prior to his appointment as Public Health Director in 2010. He took the helm of the department after a series of non-public meetings, which resulted in his appointment.

Walsh’s successor is expected to be vetted and undergo a thorough examination before appointment.

“[Our consultant] will interview a number of individuals and screen them down, and may be bring us about 15 candidates, sit down and we’ll go through them and then thin it up to maybe about six, seven candidates, bring those six or seven candidates into what’s called the screening process,” said Beck, adding that two different screening committees will then interview those six candidates individually.

“And those screening committees are provided the same data that we’re collecting right now,” the city manager said. ” So they get the summary and they’ll see what the attributes are that the community and the department feel this position needs to fulfill.”

The final choice won’t be the “rock star” visionary that Walsh once was, Beck said.

“(When) we hired Dr. Walsh, I really felt that the department needed a rock star kind of personality who could really demonstrate what the health department could be mean to the City of Pasadena and really create confidence within the staff and the department,” he said.

But times have changed, according to the city manager.

`We’re in a very different situation now,” he said. “We don’t need to prove and remind the public about the fact we have a public health department. We now need to get into a more business environment. We have a business. We need to operate it similar to a business.

“We’re providing a public service and we don’t want to forget that,” Beck said. “But at the end of the day, it (the public health department) has to be managed like a business in a competitive environment.”