Alameda Post13%
Meet Alameda’s New City Manager, Gerry Beaudin 5%
By Jean Chen4%
8/5/2026, 7:45:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 16 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Halo Effect, and Overconfidence Bias, with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 11.1% saturation with 205 hits. Analysis detected 583 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,841 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 13% and a BS Rank of 5% (28,750 of 30,209 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 95.20% of the article peer group.
The City of Alameda just appointed Gerry Beaudin as the new City Manager following the departure of Jennifer Ott , who previously held the position.
Beaudin returns to Alameda after serving as Alameda’s Assistant City Manager from 2019 to 2022.
He also briefly served as Interim City Manager for a few weeks in 2022 before becoming City Manager of Pleasanton.
The Alameda Post spoke to Beaudin to ask him about his new role here and to find out more about the job and his background.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
How would you describe your job?
I would say the City Manager is an apolitical manager over all of City government.
My job is really to work with all of the department heads and to take direction from the [City] Council, and then to work with all the department heads to get the Council’s priorities accomplished and make sure that the organization’s day-to-day (operations) are happening as effectively and efficiently as possible.
So that’s really it in a nutshell.
I’m hired by the City Council.
…My boss is the City Council.
When you say that you work with other department heads, what does that mean and in what capacity?
What are examples of departments that you would work with and what kind of tasks?
There are 14 departments.
All but two of the departments report to the City Manager.
The City Attorney and the City Clerk are also appointed by the City Council, and they run their departments.
There’s 12 of them, including the City Manager’s office, and they are all the responsibility of the City Manager— HR; IT; Finance; the Fire Department; the Police Department; Public Works; Planning, Building and Transportation; Rec and Parks; Library; Base Reuse and Economic Development; and Alameda Municipal Power.
Here in Alameda, the City Manager sits as a board member on the Public Utility Board and also is responsible for the department overall.
But we have a great general manager, Tim Haines, who works as Alameda Municipal Power’s General Manager, and he really runs the day-to-day.
Tim and I work together on citywide policy, and how the department comes in and supports the work that we do.
This is where things get interesting for people.
…It’s called the council manager form of government, and it’s different from a strong mayor form of government.
The department heads report directly to and are responsible to the City Manager.
The City Manager hires [them] and those department heads are accountable to the City Manager, including the Police Chief and the Fire Chief and the Public Works Director..
Wow, that’s a lot.
This is really great information.
We appreciate you breaking this down.
So what does a typical day look like for you?
Well, I’m going to be personal, not just technical, because I have the job but I’m also a human being.
I have a family so usually I get up and look at email, which is probably not the healthiest thing to do, but I do get up and look at a screen most mornings and make sure that I understand what’s been going on.
I get my kids to school.
I check in with my executive assistant and usually with the assistant City Manager every morning and make sure we’ve got a plan for the day.
And then I have meetings with City Council members.
Most, if not all, City Council members are willing and able to meet on a regular basis, usually weekly.
And then I’m doing internal and external meetings throughout the day.
We have community relationships, county relationships, state relationships, federal relationships.
So there’s a lot of the what-are-we-doing-together kinds of projects.
And then there’s actually things that are happening in the community, like we’re going to build a community swimming pool .
We want to make sure that every once in a while, I’m touching base with the department head who’s responsible for that pool and staying informed.
And then I try to exercise.
I get my kids to their sports at night, but try to take care of myself too.
Dinner, email, more calendar review for the next day.
And repeat.
Monday through Friday.
That is a full schedule!
Yeah, but it’s a very satisfying and rewarding job because in terms of quality of life and delivering services, we’re trying to always be efficient.
We’re trying to drive positive change on a regular basis, so that we stay current and relevant and hopeful to the community people call home, whether it’s their business or their residence.
Do you live in Alameda?
I live in Oakland.
For about 11 years now.
Photo by Adam Gillitt.
What was the job you held right before you became City Manager of Alameda?
And what kind of things in your background prepared you for this really giant job?
That’s a great question.
I was city manager for the City of Pleasanton before coming to the City of Alameda.
But before that, I was the assistant city manager here in Alameda.
So I’ve been able to move between cities, which has been nice.
I worked in planning and community and economic development for a number of years before making the switch into more generalist city management.
And I did a lot of professional development, continuing education, and projects outside of my wheelhouse as a community development director during those years to prepare as much as possible for the job.
There is really no preparing for the city manager job until you’re in the city manager’s chair and things start to happen.
But I think you can do a lot of foundational things around working with budgets, working with people, successfully completing projects, and building relationships.
I find that city managers come from all different kinds of backgrounds, but community development was really a helpful way for me to make the transition.
It seems like a lot of city managers in the East Bay tend to play musical chairs among the cities.
Why do you think that is?
[Editor’s note: Jennifer Ott, the former Alameda City Manager, is now the city manager of Hayward, where she was previously the assistant city manager.]
It is not just the East Bay.
The job of city manager is really rewarding, but is also very challenging.
And I think the reality of shifting political environments and difficult community issues (requires) you to be able to navigate in that environment and it can be very complicated.
For me, coming to Alameda, the goal is to not tell people that I’m going to be here for a long time.
Ultimately, I’m accountable to the City Council, and they appoint me, but my goal is that, through my actions, people see that I’m interested in investing in the near, medium, and long term for the city.
What do you think are some challenges that you will face here in Alameda?
What are some goals that you would like to accomplish while here?
We have an opportunity for a citywide strategic plan, which will help me work with the City Council to identify their priorities and then operationalize them.
So we’ll start to plan for that this fall.
And as our new Council makeup, whatever that is, gets seated in December, we’ll be able to start that work.
It is really important for me to get clarity from the Council about what they want their priorities to be, which we will then work on.
Fiscal sustainability underlies it all, and so it is a big priority for me.
We are currently operating in a structural deficit environment for our general fund.
So that’s a challenge.
What do you mean by structural deficit?
We’re spending more than we’re bringing in, and we’re using one-time money or other budget solutions that aren’t necessarily long-term solutions to manage through this current budget year.
That is not unusual, but it’s something that does have to be addressed so that it doesn’t become a snowball on you.
That piece is really important.
I would say that infrastructure improvements, climate change, climate adaptation projects, and those kinds of things are the fun things.
Alameda Point, and having redevelopment really get momentum.
There’s a lot of really positive things happening, but just keeping that and growing that is a real opportunity.
And I’ll just say that the systems and the people are as important for me in all of this as the projects.
The people I work with are going to be the people who deliver and make these outcomes real.
When I think about the new aquatic center… there’s going to be so many people on the City’s staff that touch that project, and supervise that project, and watch that project get built, and then operate that project.
That’s huge.
It’s a really nice thing to bring into the community.
And to be able to support that is really a unique opportunity.
Cities don’t build pools every day.
There’s a few of them in the East Bay right now, but it’s somewhat unique.
All of these projects sound really exciting, but what if somehow people are elected to City Council who just have really wacky ideas.
What happens if they want to implement things that you don’t necessarily agree with?
We do our best work to develop recommendations and lay out the rationale for those, and we’ll often have alternatives that we think could also be viable, but maybe aren’t the number one choice.
And that is the job of the professional manager.
It is to take the direction from the City Council, put forward your best professional recommendation and advice, and if that’s what carries, that’s what we do.
And if it goes in a different direction, then that’s also what we do.
It’s what makes the job sort of complicated and interesting.
But also, there’s a code of ethics, and there’s clear responsibilities around what the council manager form of government looks like.
It does sometimes involve doing things, executing on decisions and direction that you might not have advocated for or recommended, but that ultimately, the elected officials would like to proceed with.
What made you want to come back to Alameda?
What was exciting to you about Alameda?
The community is really fantastic.
Alameda has a really engaged community who, I think, are proactively addressing the challenges that are facing a lot of cities in the East Bay, whether it’s climate change and adaptation, infrastructure needs, financial challenges—these things are getting identified and the city has taken a really proactive approach to address them.
I appreciate that a lot.
There’s a kind spirit about the organization and the community that make it a really attractive place to build the relationships and the community that I want to be in.
Jean Chen is a contributing writer for the Alameda Post .
Contact her via jean@alamedpost.com .
Her writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Jean-Chen .
The post Meet Alameda’s New City Manager, Gerry Beaudin appeared first on Alameda Post .
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31%flagged-word coverageGerry Beaudin
1,439 attributed words98% of attributed speech12% writer coverage
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