Page 152 - CSD - PUD 02 28 19

John Stufflebean

Tuesday, February 19, 2019
10:01 AM
1. What drives you to seek this position? Tell me a bit about what you know about the City and the
fit you see with your interests.
It's a very similar position that I had with San Jose and Sunnyvale. IT's a good fit for a position that
I know that I enjoy doing. I want to contribute to my community. I moved to San Diego over a year
ago, and I look at this as an opportunity to bring my skills and my experience to help my City, so
that is a big driver for me. The water situation is one of the most important issues in San Diego, so
I would be able to help that way. So it's really an ideal fit. What I know about the City is quite a bit.
I was originally from Tucson and I came to San Diego a lot. My son lives here. We had a condo
here for about five years, so I spent a lot of time in San Diego. I was always very up on and
researching what was happening in San Diego. I think I'm quite familiar. I'm familiar with big
organizations. I'm familiar with how organizations work. As I said, my background is in
engineering, and have had a successful career.

Left Sunnyvale, his wife works for Adobe Systems. Adobe offered her the opportunity to work in
Australia for a year. We gave that a lot of thought, and was eligible to retire under CalPERS. We
went to Australia and we spent an amazing year there. I golfed for about two weeks and then felt
like I had to work, I started looking around. I worked for a non-profit and a City. Worked with the
people of Australia, it was an opportunity we couldn't pass up.

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

We came back and I was looking around. Management Partners contacted me. We are entirely
seasoned government employees. Our mission is to work with other local governments and help
them make management decisions. Usually it's in response to some problem that they have. We
partner with them, I've worked on about a dozen projects now. I've really enjoyed it. This job is
the top of the list in terms of my interest. Work full-time, make an impact. This is kind of my
dream job, I guess. That's what's driving me.
With Sunnyvale I had really accomplished what I wanted to accomplish there. Sunnyvale had a lot
of needs. I put together the master plan, so we really kind of set them in the right direction. I had
really over the six years solved the problems in Sunnyvale. That's another reason that I felt
comfortable leaving.

Sunnyvale and San Jose were very similar. San Jose is a bigger city. It's interesting how similar the
jobs were. The same kinds of issues. In both cities it was the water and wastewater, stormwater,
water shed management. It was a little broader than the City of San Diego, but San Diego is bigger.
My day to day was directorship, guiding the orgaization, determining the strategic initiatives,
making sure that we were on track with the operational and capital needs, in both cities we
developed major master plans and implemented the master plans, working with consultants on
the infrastructure side. Working with my team, 14 people from my San Jose team followed me to
Sunnyvale. It was always a competitive process. They applied and they were the top
recommendations. They really enjoyed working with me, and I really enjoyed working with them.
My job really was leading a high performing team of professionals.