Buena Park / Stanton : Manager Will Switch Cities Beginning Nov. 1

Stanton City Manager Kevin O’Rourke will take over as Buena Park’s city manager beginning Nov. 1, Buena Park officials announced Monday.

O’Rourke, Stanton manager since 1982, was one of five finalists from a pool of 110 applicants for the Buena Park job. A graduate of Philadelphia’s LaSalle College with a degree in public administration, he will oversee a city staff of 360 and an annual budget of $26.5 million, City Clerk Alcene Cain said.

As manager of Buena Park, with a population of about 65,000, O’Rourke, 33, will receive $5,666 per month, Cain said.

Planning Director Pat Brown has been filling the job since December, 1984, when former manager Ron Bates left to become assistant city manager of Anaheim.

Stanton Councilman Mike Pace said O’Rourke had been a community affairs coordinator and assistant city manager in Stanton before taking the top post and had turned a sorry financial condition around swiftly.

Of O’Rourke’s leaving the Stanton post, Pace said Monday night: “I feel absolutely terrible about it. He’s done an outstanding job. As far as I’m concerned, he was the perfect man at the perfect time for this city.”

Pace said O’Rourke got community support for the city’s redevelopment efforts by limiting them to commercial and industrial areas, removing residents’ fears of displacement. O’Rourke’s “dramatic coup” came in his move to purchase a county waste-transfer station on Knott Avenue, Pace said. The facility is now leased at a profit and provides about 8% of the city’s revenues, he said.