by Mark McDermott
City Manager Bruce Moe, who has served the City of Manhattan Beach for 35 years, has announced his retirement.
Moe, who was appointed as city manager six years ago and served as the City’s finance director before that, made the surprise announcement at the very end of Tuesday night’s City Council meeting.
“l have been incredibly blessed to serve Manhattan Beach for many years and am beyond grateful for the opportunities I have had with the city,” Moe said. “It has been my honor to work with so many wonderful people who care a great deal about Manhattan Beach.”
Mayor Joe Franklin said that Moe will be missed.
“The retirement of Bruce Moe marks the end of an era for our city,” said Mayor Joe Franklin. “For more than three decades, his calm and strong leadership has made him a true asset to our City. The City Council and our entire Manhattan Beach community extend our deepest gratitude to Bruce for his decades of excellent public service. He is the embodiment of the values of service and dedication which have left an indelible mark on our City’s landscape. We are so grateful to him for investing his time, career, and heart in Manhattan Beach.”
Moe has for decades been one of the most lauded City employees, particularly for his instrumental role as the finance director in economically steering Manhattan Beach and achieved the vaunted AAA bond rating. But his was an unlikely municipal career. He had intended on becoming a photographer when he attend Cal State Los Angeles, but in the course of an omnivorous decade as a student – one who also worked full time through college – Moe studied psychology, criminal justice, and journalism before obtaining a degree in marketing and business administration. He worked nine years in the private sector before spotting a job vacancy in the City of Manhattan Beach’s finance department in 1989. He applied for it, if not quite on a whim, without much expectation, and was surprised when he excelled in the written tests and beat out nearly 50 other candidates. He worked nine years as a purchasing agent and than was unexpectedly vaulted upward, to become finance director. He served almost 20 years in that capacity until the Council once again made him the surprise appointment as City Manager in 2018.
Moe, in an interview at that time, said he grown up admiring public service.
“I remember when I was a kid, my dad once told me at the dinner table that being a public servant was one of the most honorable things you could do,” Moe said. “He had been a police officer in Beverly Hills six or seven years, and then he went to work in hospital public administration. He always said that to me. Of course, being a snot-nosed kid, I never listened. But it’s something I remembered later in life.”
As City Manager, Moe helped guide Manhattan Beach through the pandemic, oversaw the rebuilding Fire Station #2 and completion of one of the largest projects in City history, the replacement of Peck Reservoir. He likewise oversaw the ongoing fiscal robustness of the City, which among other things enabled the hiring of ten new police employees. Things were more turbulent in at least one area, the fire department, due to both an wildly unpopular fire chief appointed early in Moe’s tenure and tough labor negotiations that resulted in the imposition of a labor contract last year.
Moe intends to stay on the job until the Council is able to find his successor.
“I love this community, and I just love coming to work every day asking myself, ‘How can I make this a better place today?’ That’s why we are here,” Moe said in 2018, likening his colleagues at City Hall to a village-within-a-village. “Coming to work isn’t really coming to work if you are seeing people you consider family, you enjoy spending time with and working collaboratively with. The fact you can combine that with accomplishing what we do, serving the community, makes it the best way to spend my days and hours and whatever is left.”
“I’ve never charted a course. I think I’ve just been a guy lucky to be in the right place at the right time, over and over again in my career.” ER
