Page 186 - SAC - DPW - AMB 09 05 19

Chad Lynn

Thursday, September 5, 2019 10:10 AM

Why are you interested in the Director of Public Works position with the City of Sacramento?
Tell me a bit about what you know about the City.

I know that the City of Sacramento tends to - just from my functions - sets a lot of tone for what goes on
in the State. Los Angeles, San Francisco - they push on a bigger legislative function. Sacramento sets
the tone for the rest of the State for how lawmakers see things. I say this from experience. It's a pretty
progressive City - it sets the tone for the rest of the State. I have worked in Northern California in the City
of San Rafael - I actually prefer Nor Cal so this is a quality of life decision for me. It's a great
organization - I know and respect Howard - and I have a tremendous amount of respect for him and what
he's accomplished.

Please describe your most recent position and day-to-day responsibilities.

I am the Assistant Director of Public Works for the City of Beverly Hills - recreation, parking, parkland,
medians, landscape maintenance, facilities from top to bottom, most of the other stuff is internal unless
we use subcontractors - our parking is mainly done inhouse. Real Estate has been a shifting function -
negotiations of leases - although we have transitioned that now. That comes through public works first.
Our fleet services - we have a full-service shop - fueling services - we do all the purchases for fire, PD.
We coordinate with our IT group - purchasing agreement for vehicles. Whether it is small, medium duty,
fire appreciate - and we handle all the cities facilities as well. Facilities handles the transition of power
from grid to emergency systems.

I also serve as the City's EOC - emergency operations - for the City. I am one of the training coaches.

Please describe a project in which you played a major role in creating pathways for
improvement for those in your community.

I think one of the things I think I played a major role may be addressing what you are talking about. We
sat down and talked a lot more about impacts of public works and how that affects their daily lives.
There's an old saying in public works, where, "if nobody notices you you're doing a great job". Recently
we have changed our thinking - we have been doing a lot of noticing the public. Right now we have the
metro coming through and its impacts that we don't control - it makes all the work that we're doing to
create public outreach to go to businesses - to figure out so that we are not only internally, but hitting the
public with things that are out of our control, but creating more outreach so that they can get in touch.

Please describe your experience in evaluating innovation and operational procedure utilized
in a City department and your approach to staying at the forefront of industry.
I tend to get drawn into a lot of groups - we are redoing a lot of administration right now. We have a lot of
restraining documents and we are trying to get people to strip those away so we can be more innovative.
I stay abreast through associations. I like to learn from startups and companies that are innovating. I am
a big believer in finding out why agencies do what they do. But I am not a big fan of, "this is why we do it
that way." Quite frankly, sometimes technology can be hinderance. If you understand why people do it
the way they do it - truthfully, understanding why we were doing what we were doing yesterday.
We're about to implement a whole new order management system - it was challenging because we had
a lot of people ingrained in how we do business - I had to strip away notions about why we did it one