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Youth: many of the services are geared to youth; operates a youth opportunity center where they
have gang intervention programs, there are 4 outreach workers and a lead who go to schools and
identify youth from 12­21 who are at risk and provide wrap around services, youth center provides
mentoring, job skills, training, activities to improve writing, speaking, performing; provide any other
services they may need; teen camp; constructing a second youth center; City of Riverside is the City of
Arts and Innovation, at one of the youth centers, focused on art; second youth center will focus on
technology and job skills training, coding, access to a studio; youth sports on the rec side; fields and
facilities for youth sports leagues; young men's youth conference annually 100­200 under­served
attendees and follow up services; makes and effort to connect with the kids at the youth center, talks
to them; example of one young man who was living a gang lifestyle, mentored him, was eventually
hired by Parks and is now a leader and in college.
Parks: is currently interim park superintendent, maintain all the developed and undeveloped land
3,000 acres; facilities, 3 senior centers, child­care center, and several community centers; reviews
performance measures including work orders; we are all responsible for maintaining facilities; 8 parks
are maintained by in house staff, HVAC specialists; also contract out some of the work; have struck a
good balance. He is a hands on leader.
Community Engagement: attends council and commission meetings; goes to all the advisory meetings;
updating the master plan this year, and doing a lot more engagement work, attends the meetings with
the consultant to hear what the interests are; pursuing prop 68 grants, attended a design session with
the community recently, feels he is immersed in this element.
5. Tell me about the riskiest or most difficult management decision you have made in recent years.
What was your thought process that led you to move forward? Would you do anything differently
today?
As a governmental entity, we tend to be conservative by nature; few risky decisions are made alone,
we go through a vetting process. Currently going through a challenge; there is a parent naval orange
tree that is over 100 years old and is considered a historical landmark, there is a citrus pest that is a
threat to the tree, it is very near and dear to the community; have to build a structure over the tree to
protect it; recommendation is to best protect the tree; tries to mitigate the risk by getting as much
information and expertise and then presents the information to Council and provides the risk factors
so they can make an informed decision. Also removing other citrus trees around the parent navel
tree, one of the others is a parent grapefruit, community has concerns as all the trees are very dear to
them. Another example, received grant funding for transit; felt the project was being rushed and they
weren't doing due diligence; modern online system but was concerned that seniors were not ready;
decided not to go forward with the project and returned the funding because the project was rushed
and not well received; got the buy­in from the Director as it was the right thing to do. He is so attuned
to risk because he receives all the claims filed against the City; he pays attention when there is a
playground structure that has a broken slide, he red tags it to protect the city from risk. Don't do
things just by gut, does his homework, but avoid analysis paralysis, take action.
6. Please describe your experience in coordinating, tracking and reporting out on the implementation
of organizational goals, objectives, policies and procedures.
What you measure is what you do; regular check ins, first set clear goals and expectations, pre­
planning meetings, measure the milestones and ensure they are being met; regular executive
management meetings and everyone reports out; communication is vital. Measures customer service,
which is a big deal; every event has customer service cards, also count how many they are getting back
to ensure it is a good representative sample; creates a culture that feedback is expected; also get
feedback from after school programs and review them on a quarterly basis. They have a "happy or
not" station at the facilities, they can hit the "happy" or "not happy" button, he shares the metrics
with staff to continue the focus.
7. Please describe a project in which you played a major role in creating pathways for improvement for
those in your community.
When first became deputy; a Council member wanted to increase arts programing in his area; schools
had cut budgets and there wasn't as much art programming. Director assigned him as the lead to use
existing resources to market an arts program; created Riverside School of the Arts program; worked
with the community and ended up creating this separate non­profit; purchased instruments, and
created the programming, redirected resources and obtained the community support by getting
sponsorship, program has been implemented for several years, received a Harmony affiliation. Kaiser
identified the area as having a high level of obesity; he liaised with Kaiser to obtain the grant and
became a lead department in implementing programming; got agreement from advisory groups to
implement healthy choices in vending machines, it was difficult because the advisory groups benefited
from the vending machine sales, took some community engagement and effort to pilot the program,
revenues initially went down but everyone is on board with the message; had a logo and banner,
youth have made murals that are on grocery stores about healthy community.
8. Please describe your experience in evaluating technology and operational procedure utilized in a
City department and your approach to implementing change, if needed.
When he first started used RecWare for registration, received notification from the vendor that the
version they had was not going to be supported; got involved in learning about the tools out there so
that he could find a replacement, worked with IT to research creating their own registration system
since the price tag is so high, decided that was too risky; purchased software instead and uses
ActiveNet; went through the whole conversion process, trained staff. Wanted to be sure that
customer service was not going to suffer, worked very closely with all the teams, including finance, to
implement successfully. several years into the new system now and has expanded the use. The
electronic system for transit is now going forward (the one he had to give the grant back on), they are
now ready to move forward. Right tools for the right job, and at the right timing. Pushing to
implement a work order management system for parks maintenance currently in order to gain better
reporting.
9. Please describe the roles in which you have had a relationship elected officials, and what your role
was in those examples. Can you provide an example of when you have had to research a regulatory
item and present your findings to the Council, Board, or Mayor?
Very respectful of the role of the elected officials who are the policy decision makers. Comes prepared
with all the information; gets emails with constituent questions from Council regularly, has a good
relationship with all the members, the Mayor; does not get ahead of his Director or the CM, but is
sought out.
Communication, Collaboration, and Personnel Management
10. This position will interact with managers throughout the City as well as partner organizations and
individuals in the community. How do you evaluate whether your department is providing a good
level of customer service? What do you feel are some of the challenges to achieving a high level of
customer service?
Answered in question 6, did not ask the question again.
Closing
11. Is there anything else you would like to add?