On Tuesday, the Brentwood city council unanimously agreed to hire G. Harold Duffey as its next city manager, but not before scolding the community on their behavior on social media.
Mayor Susannah Meyer made the announcement back on October 15 regarding the hiring of Duffey as a candidate to be the next city manager, however, it was met with public concern and questions on his background and qualifications, to some over the top commentary on social media. The city quickly pivoted in response and announced a press conference to introduce Duffey on October 20.
At the press conference, Meyer stated they had 60+ applicants for the city manager position which resulted in “12 strong candidates” which then turned into a supplemental questionnaire and phone interviews. Of those, 9 candidates were recommended for closed session review which resulted in 6 candidates in the first round of interviews, followed by 3 candidates brought back for a second interview. The council ultimately selected Duffey as the candidate.
With the approval, Duffey is hired with a salary of $289,900. With salary and benefits, his packages is $417,175. This includes:
- Base salary of $304,515 annually
- Annual performance evaluations, as well as an initial six month performance evaluation
- Paid Time Off and Sick Leave in amounts equivalent to those accrued by Department Directors
- Vacation Leave to accrue at a rate of 192 hours per year (16 hours/month)
- Eligibility to participate in the City’s 457 deferred compensation plan
- Provisions governing termination with or without cause
- City Manager Agreement — click here
On Tuesday, Mayor Susannah Meyer, who stated she has been threatened with a recall three times over the past few weeks, provided an overview of the process. She called the job a huge challenge but said they were not a council that simply rubber-stamps items, but instead asks questions, challenges and researches.
“There are times where I wonder why I do it, especially now because frankly some of the things I’ve seen have been incredibly embarrassing,” said Meyer noting the public doesn’t know the full story behind a hiring process. “I hope you can tell not one of us up here is stupid. I am just putting it out there that we are not stupid, we are not blind, people are sending us things we have already seen. In fact, Mr. Duffey shared these things with us before anyone did. He was transparent with us before anyone told us or shared with us or shared anything with us. I am sorry I had to start with that because I am incredibly frustrated… I hope all of you can listen with open ears, watch with open eyes to what you are seeing here is very transparent and justifiable due process.”
Vice Mayor Pa’tanisha Pierson called the mayor “badass” for her commentary while stating no one would ever know how much time went into this hiring process. She then read a prepared statement:
“
Over the past several weeks I have listened carefully to the comments made by some members of the community regarding the hiring of Mr. Herald Duffey as our next city manager. First, I want to affirm that every resident has the right to question the qualifications of anyone seeking the position as important as the city manager. That is what civic engagement looks like. Asking questions, expecting transparency and holding leaders accountable. But with that right also comes responsibility. The responsibility to fact check, to base opinions on accurate information, not just what you read on a blog and consider the whole picture. Not assumptions or stereotypes or rest and fear. As I’ve listened, I heard comments that while framed as concerns about Mr. Duffey’s age, retirement benefits, where he has worked, its revealed something deeper—its revealed bias.
I can say this because I know it when I hear it. As a black woman from Oakland, I’ve spent my life navigating spaces where excellent is questioned simply because it doesn’t fit a certain mode. I know what it feels like to have questions and qualifications scrutinized more harshly and contributions minimized way to quickly, I also recognize a pattern in our city.
This is not the first time members of our community has spoken against highly qualified black professionals and leadership. Similar comments were made when HR director Sukari Beshears was elevated to serve as interim assistant city manager and when parks and recreation director Harith Aleem was hired despite both of them bring more than 45 years of combined government experience, excellence and unwavering records of service and competence.
When excellence continues to be met with skepticism only when it comes in black skin it is not a coincidence, it is a biased. So when I hear coded statements that amount to I don’t want him because he is black I feel a responsibility to call that out. I am going to name it. This kind of thinking does not serve our community, it doesn’t serve us, it actually divides us. And if we are going to act like this, we shouldn’t say we are Better in Brentwood.
Mr. Duffey’s record speaks for itself. He has decades of public service, fiscal leadership and proven experience guiding cities through growth, recovery and change. To suggest the council did not do its due diligence is not only inaccurate, but as a woman who holds three professional degrees, a bachelors in psychology, a masters in organizational development and yes I am a Doctor, it is an insult to the professionalism and integrity of the entire body of each and every person sitting on the city council.”
Pierson closed by thanking those who helped the city through the transition and believed Duffey was the right person for the job.
“Brentwood deserves leadership that reflects both competence and compassion. I believe that Mr. Duffey brings both. His hiring is not just about filling a position, it is affirming who we are as a city. Forward looking, fair minded and unafraid to lead with integrity,” said Pierson. “As your vice mayor, I believe that when we stand for what is right, even when it is uncomfortable for some of us, we move our community closer to justice, equity, unity and true progress.”
Councilmember Tony Oerlemans thanked staff for filling positions outside their normal jobs.
“I appreciate the citizens of Brentwood that reached out to us. Now some of the questions were a little offensive. Some of the questions, were I felt were challenging to us as individuals and maybe not trusting that we had the best interest of the City of Brentwood. But if you didn’t bring the concerns to us, you wouldn’t know we already had a company that is going to do all of those backgrounds for us and research all of that for us and Mr. Duffey brought it up to us and let us know it existed so we had the opportunity to look into it,” explained Oerlemans.
Oerlemans stated he spent years interviewing police officers and that he was amazed by the interview of Duffey calling his “leadership experience” will help the city of Brentwood grow and develop and become a much better place.
“I appreciate that you were very upfront and made this process a whole lot easier for all of us,” said Oerlemans.
Councilmember Jovita Mendoza also thanked staff for their efforts and stretching skill sets while sharing her appreciation that Duffey stuck with the City of Brentwood during the process which was longer than usual.
“I felt great about the decision and we went through our due diligence to make sure that our residence would be okay with the decision,” said Mendoza. “It is weird to me that the connotation that people bring up when someone says they are from Oakland. I don’t understand it and its embarrassing that I heard that in Brentwood because there is a lot of us out here from San Leandro, Oakland, Hayward, and we didn’t invite ourselves, someone approved the homes that brought us out here. If you didn’t want us out here you probably shouldn’t have allowed your city council to approve homes, which is what people are doing now.”
She appreciated Duffey and hoped the community would give him a fair shot noting she knows the city has to grow but it was important not to forget the heritage of the community.
“I appreciate everyone who has come and spoke, but I do not like all the comments that we see on the blogs, it’s pretty disgusting. People who run blogs can make choices to hide comments and delete comments. I wish that there was a higher calling for these people to actually say you know what that sounds really racist, let me delete it because someday we are all going to be gone and we are going to be going to the pearly gates and we will be judged by the way we treated others. That is all I gotta say about that,” said Mendoza.
Councilmember Faye Maloney also thanked the staff for their efforts during the process. She called it the most intricate hiring process she had ever been a part of and she works for city government.
“The collaboration and different people involved, it really took a lot of effort and a lot of time and energy from every single one of us here to come to this decision,” stated Maloney. “When we saw Harold, when I saw your interview, I was totally impressed. You were a leader, you were a mentor, you knew how to coach and have a succession plan ready. The way you looked at every job you had, you were put in roles where succession planning was a high priority and didn’t want to hold all the cards to yourself and that is something I really enjoyed learning to get to know you more. Learning you are not the kind of person to keep everything to yourself, you want everybody working for you to be better than you. That so something that really made me admire you where I even thought I want to be mentored by him. You were amazing.”
She continued and wanted to apologize on behalf of the community.
“I do have to apologize for our community,” said Maloney. “Some peoples comments were very derogatory in nature and I am sorry you have to go through that and experience that. To those folks, I hope you do give him a chance. Some of those commentaries I have to condemn completely, they are disgusting, I am appalled by them. I welcome challenges, I welcome questions, I welcome transparency, that is our job. I will echo we are not rubber stampers and will not say yes to everything, we question everything. The one thing I will say about this process was we were able to turn over every rock in front of us and a lot of it was brought forth by you. I am fully trusting my decision.”
Mayor Susannah Meyer
Meanwhile, Brentwood Mayor Susannah Meyer challenged the room by asking how many in the room was born in Brentwood – the result was 1 person.
“For those who are not born here, it means you moved here most likely because you liked the lifestyle, the quality of life, the community, the farming, there was something about Brentwood that attracted you. I did the same thing. 16-years ago I moved from Pleasanton,” explained Meyer noting she choses to live in Brentwood because she loves the city and the community. “I have no desire to change Brentwood into anything other than Brentwood. That doesn’t mean we don’t make some changes to make our quality of life better.”
She spoke briefly about the community and how the jobs-housing balance is off saying the council has fought hard against the state housing laws.
“The idea that we bring in people from the outside because we want to turn Brentwood into another city, nobody up here, nobody on staff was born here. We are clearly not trying to do that,” stated Meyer. “We go back to somehow Oakland being a trigger word for people which I find offensive.”
Meyer continued, noting they held a press conference and meet and greet in response to the negativity out in the community. An attempt to allow people a chance to get to know Mr. Duffey and what he was about.
“I’ve been trying to stay off social media,” stated Meyer. “Since this whole thing went down, I’ve been threatened with a recall three times. One of them is from a gentleman who has called and left increasingly aggressive, angry and frustrating messages saying he will do everything in his power to recall me. You have the right to say that, but I am not going to call you back. I am sorry, I don’t make enough to sit and listen and be abused like that. And yelled at, screamed at, because you have a biased against Oakland. I am just not going to listen to it.
Meyer admits she has tried to be responsive to emails but in this case, she has not found a way to respond to some of the emails she has received—she reminded the public she is mayor, but it does take a majority council vote to move things forward.
“I’ve not been good about responding to emails on this because quite frankly I’ve been really, frankly, disheartened by it, by the response I’m seeing, by the accusations I am seeing, the aggression, the anger, and its not the city I love. I am not seeing that right now,” explained Meyer. “I am going to get back into the swing of responding to people and I hope that people watch this meeting and I hope our local media and online media write about this and quote some of what we have been saying because we can be better, we should be better. We talk about being a city that is warm and welcoming and community driven and inclusionary and we are not being that right now. I really hope we can be better and we can give Mr. Duffey a chance and I think you will all be pleasantly surprised if you just spend some time talking to him.”
Meyer again acknowledged everyone’s right to speak.
“I am going to remind everyone you have the right to speak but I hope when you speak, when you speak here, its obviously its different when you speak online because the people who said the horrible things online, the worst things online, they are not here. They didn’t even call in on zoom. They sent emails that were nasty or made comments on Nextdoor or Facebook that were really nasty and they thought they were done and thought they were going to intimidate us into making a decision we didn’t want to make. I am sorry if I am losing a lot of friends and fans right now but it does not bother me because I feel like we need to stand up and do the right thing. I feel like the council, the way they all expressed themselves they are doing the right thing and hopefully people are listening.”
The council then voted 5-0 in support to hire Duffey as the next city manager for the city of Brentwood.
When invited to speak, Duffey urged everyone to move forward in the process and work together to highlight Brentwood.
“What I am really excited about, this isn’t a job, its part of my career and that is what we want to make sure employees have here in Brentwood. We don’t want employees to have a job, we want them to have a career where we can grow,” said Duffey. “I would say this to the residents. I am so proud of how professional your elected officials are in this process. I’ve made it my career to make sure that when I work for an organization that there is no surprises for the elected officials, I am very transparent.”
He called “integrity” the most important thing.
“If I lose the trust of the council, I’ve lost the council. What very important is this, it is hard to understand this but the real role of a city manager is not to have to go through with what exactly I just went through. Our role is as a manager to tee things up, get things ready to go. Pull your visions and plans out, align resources and get things done. When you see a city manager that continues talking, talking, and talking, there is something wrong in the organization. Our role is to manage the group, surround ourselves with technical experts, have them do presentation, give the council the best information possible so they can make an informed decision. That is our role, that is our goal and I am committed to that. I am excited to take projects, wrap them up based on the vision of the council that represents the citizens, that is our goal. Staff doesn’t care who the mayor is, who the councilmembers are, but they respect the people sitting in those seats. And our obligation and responsibility that when you enter this arena that you have all the information that you need in order to make an informed decision and we will stand behind that 100%. We start off in a process, in the course of my career, I’ve had great projects, the best projects available and the council changes it, tweaks it, I say to my staff, okay the train is leaving, get on the train and lets make sure we get this done,” shared Duffey. “I love what I do, and I have loved doing it for more than 30-years. I am so excited for November 3. Thank you very much.”
Previous
- Oct 20 – Brentwood to Host Meet and Greet With Finalist for City Manager Job
- Oct 15 – Brentwood to Consider G. Harold Duffey as Next City Manager
- April 23, 2025 – Brentwood Names Darin Gale as Interim City Manager, Sukari Beshears as Assistant City Manager
- March 27, 2025 – Tim Ogden Resigns as Brentwood City Manager, Accepts New Gig
- Jan 2020 – Brentwood City Council Defends Hiring of Tim Ogden Before 5-0 Vote
- Jan 2020 – Tim Ogden Named Brentwood City Manager: The City of Brentwood City Council, after an exhaustive national recruitment conducted by Peckham & McKenney Inc., have selected Tim Ogden as their next city manager, and will consider approval of an employment agreement with him on the January 28 City Council agenda. During the transition since the retirement of city manager Gustavo “Gus” Vina in December 2019, the city has gratefully been managed by assistant city manager Terrence Grindall and appreciate his efforts.
