Sean Scully Lincoln City Manager

Lincoln's new City Manager Sean Scully completed his first week on the job and described it as "exhilarating" and a "whirlwind." "My job is to get up to speed as quickly as possible," said Scully. The city manager is responsible for carrying out city policies and programs as directed by City Council. All city services are under the city manager's direction. Scully last served as city manager in Riverbank, which is in Stanislaus County. Scully also worked for the city of Gustine for seven years, including two years as city manager, and for three years in planning and economic development capacities for the city of Turlock. Scully has a bachelor's degree from California State University at Monterey Bay and a master's degree in public administration from California State University at Stanislaus. Scully grew up in Sacramento County's Fair Oaks and has family members still there. Scully said he would visit his godmother and other family friends in Lincoln during his childhood. Scully was interested in the Lincoln city manager position because he has "always loved Lincoln for its size and hometown feel" and "it would be the perfect place" to raise his two young sons. What are Lincoln's strengths? "Although it (Lincoln) has become a larger community that has grown so fast, it still feels like a small town," Scully said. "The council and the community seem to really want to retain that feeling of a small town, while having the modern conveniences of a larger community with really great services from the city." Scully's work experience includes working with smaller communities including Turlock, Gustine, and Riverbank. "I am not the kind of city manager that just sits in an office and delegates all day," Scully said. "I like to be out and about, and making sure that things are going the way they should be. And where departments need help, I want to be there to help them." Downtown Lincoln is a huge "asset" to the city, Scully said. "From my perspective, Lincoln has done a fantastic job over a long period of time in fostering quality development projects that add value to the city," Scully said. "This is a hard thing to do because development patterns are ongoing over a very long period of time. Moving forward, our focus in terms of governmental services should be to think of more efficient and cost-effective ways to provide services, which in the end provide more value to the average resident." What are some challenges that Scully sees for Lincoln? Scully said the rapid growth of new home developments could be doing more harm than good for Lincoln. "One of the interesting things about the city is that there are housing developments happening in virtually every segment of the community. A large portion of it is happening toward our north boundaries but we also have projects on the west, south and east sides as well," Scully said. "When you go from a small organization and you grow at a rapid pace, your organization struggles to scale appropriately to provide the level of service you should be at," Scully said. "We (Lincoln) are certainly struggling with that." Scully acknowledged another challenge being the extreme lack of staffing with city positions. His main short-term priority is to fill the city vacancies that are missing: finance director, community development director, city engineer and public works director, and an economic development director. "One of the goals is that we are staffing and investing appropriately in our organization, so that citizens can get the best possible services," Scully said. Scully sees this being a "solvable" problem, especially in regard to the shortage in staffing in Lincoln's fire and police departments. Scully said that increasing the public-safety staffing level is a top priority. "Both police and fire need to be brought up to a level where there's appropriate staffing at all level positions," Scully said. "My job is to make sure that that's a priority moving forward and that it's being handled in a responsible way so that we can afford (to staff) in the future. It doesn't do us any good to staff 100 percent in a short amount of time and not be able to afford it in two years." Scully's main long-term priority is to put Lincoln "in a position where it's super secure financially, and because of that, it can offer the best services." Scully wants to be "as accessible as possible" to the public. He encourages any community member with questions or concerns to visit him in his office at Lincoln City Hall, 600 6th St.,email sean.scully@lincolnca.gov or call 916-434-2490.