New City Manager Steve Mermell: Navigating the City’s Future

Newly-selected Pasadena City Manager Steve Mermell drove the City for the first six months of this year as Interim City Manager following the departure of Michael Beck, until the City Council decided to officially put him in charge of City Hall last week at the conclusion of a nationwide search.

On two occasions last week, Pasadena Now spoke with Mermell to put together a picture of his plans for his adminstration and the challenges for the city that he sees ahead.

“My agenda is the Council’s agenda,” said the neatly bearded and dapper Mermell, who at 50, has worked for Pasadena since he was 23.

Sitting outside the Neighborhood Church on Orange Grove Avenue last week, where he was a featured speaker in a forum on the new minimum wage ordinance, Mermell was as approachable as your favorite teacher, and just as serious.

“There are a couple of things we need to be focused on, and one of them is the budget,” he said, right off the bat.

But to hear him explain, the budget is more than just one thing. It seems clearly the biggest blip on his municipal radar screen.

“That’s a big issue that’s out there,” he said, in a matter-of-fact manner, belying his years in the City’s Finance Department.

As Mermell said again in a followup interview over the weekend: “I think the City does a good job running its services internally, and we should probably stick to that, but I want to deal with [the looming potential deficit] before it’s a real problem.”

“It looks like things will be ok for Fiscal Year 2017,” Mermell said, “but it looks like when we get to 2018 and beyond, unless something gives, where we’re going to start to have a problem.”

“That’s why I’m suggesting we move in a methodical way, a measured way to identify opportunities. If we don’t do something about it, the sky is not falling today, but the storm is coming and we need to be prepared,” he said.

As Mermell continued to explain, “What it boils down to is actually pretty simple: you can either increase what you’re bringing in, or you can decrease what you’re spending, or you could do some combination thereof — and that’s probably what will happen here.”

According to Mermell, the first step in managing revenue took place last Monday night when the City Council voted to amend the operating agreement with the Pasadena Convention Center to put a cap on the amount of transient occupancy tax that’s transferred to the center every year now.

“Initially, for the next couple years,” it may not result in a lot more money a lot more for the general fund, but it will generate some additional money for the general fund. If existing hotels raise their daily rates and if the new round of planned hotels are built, a sizeable revenue stream can be built, he said.

“So that was sort of the first (thing we did), and then continuing on the revenue side we need to take a look at all of the fees that we have in place.”

This means, as Mermell said, possibly reducing services that the City provides, or charging for services that are currently free.

“Cost of services are based on the notion is that they are supposed to be self-sufficient,” said Mermell.

According to Mermell, “The Council may want to take a different approach to things like recreation programs that the city offers. We charge for those, but in some cases we know that we’re not covering our full cost and we’ve made a policy decision to do that, because there’s a public good in providing low-cost recreation programs for youth in our community to give them a positive experience, so in that case you make conscious decision to subsidize something.”

Along with managing the budget, Mermell also sees a need to mend fences with some city employees, explaining how some of them might be feeling “under-appreciated” lately, which is a gentle way of saying some wage adjustments might be overdue.

“Coming up through the ranks,” he said, “I know how they feel, so I would like to make some adjustments with that.”

Meanwhile, Mermell is also careful to be “mindful” of development, another important issue, as he gazes out at the future.

“We have a lot of development at the moment, and while the City Council, through the General Plan, determines the development pattern, we need to update our various specific plans to be consistent with that. We’re seeing an upswing right now, and some people might be thinking that’s too much.”

“Normally,” he continued,” the economic cycle generally takes care of that, as happened in the 90’s, when development slowed down. Where we will be next year at this time, or in a year and a half, we don’t know, but while it’s here, we need to have ‘smart’ development, so that everyone says ‘This is right, this looks right, this looks like Pasadena,’ while at the same time, we have to be concerned on development’s impact on traffic and parking, for example, as a result of development.”

“But Pasadena has done a very good job of development that fits in the community,” Mermell continued. “It’s not this unbridled growth that you see in other cities. As someone once told me, ‘The City has a lot of process, but we get the City that we want, as a result.’”

In terms of how he sees himself as a manager, and leader, Mermell is nothing if not pragmatic.

“What my general focus is …  on doing our job well. I’m kind of an Operations person, and it’s about continuing to improve our operations. I think the city has been very responsive with things like the 311 citizen service center. That’s another great example of where we’re being more responsive to the community that we serve.”

Mermell continued, “I like to just be better at providing the services that we do provide. I’m typically not the person who is running after some the new latest hot idea. It’s more about focusing on our core competency and doing that well. That tends to be my approach to things.”

The city has weathered its share of natural, economic and legal storms over the past year, but Mermell seems to view that as a natural part of a vibrant, growing city ecosystem.

“Of course, things can be challenging,” he said, “but it’s the variety and it’s the complexity that makes it interesting and I wouldn’t want that to change.”

Waxing philosophical for a moment, Mermell said, “I learn something new every day and I think that is helpful in terms of doing this job because you have to be open-minded. You have to understand so much, and its helpful not to think that you have all the answers, because you don’t.”

And like any good manager, Mermell is effusive with praise for his team, saying, “Luckily for me, we have a lot of really good people here in the city to work with, because it’s a big job managing a city of the size and complexity of this one.”