Commerce : Top Administrator Leaving

Edward Oliva will resign as city administrator to move his family to San Diego and become a deputy director of that city’s Building Inspection Department. This week, he told a surprised City Council that he will resign effective Aug. 29.

Oliva, a 10-year Commerce employee who also grew up in the community, said he and his wife want to raise their three children in an area less urban than Los Angeles County. So when San Diego officials approached him, he said, he became interested.

“It was not an easy decision,” the 41-year-old administrator said, because “I was happy with what I was doing” in Commerce. “We were one big happy family.”

Oliva said the San Diego job will start at a salary slightly lower than the $57,000 he has received over the past two years as Commerce’s chief executive. But it will place him in a larger government with more opportunities. No replacement has yet been named.