SEAL BEACH : San Marino Manager Hired for City Post

After a three-month search for a new city manager, City Council members have turned inland for the beach city’s top job, hiring San Marino City Manager Keith Till. The Seal Beach City Council approved the choice Monday night.

Till, 42, has helped guide San Marino through difficult economic times during his five years as city manager, according to Seal Beach Councilman George Brown.

“He inherited a lot of problems when he came into San Marino,” Brown said. “He helped straighten out finances for the city.”

Till is credited with developing San Marino’s first five-year capital improvement program and earning the city’s first financial reporting award from the national Government Finance Officers Assn.

Mayor Marilyn Bruce Hastings said Till will earn approximately the same salary as previous City Manager Jerry L. Bankston, who left his $85,000-a-year job in June to become city manager of La Habra. Till currently earns about $85,000 a year in San Marino.

He has a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Chicago and worked in Lancaster as an administrative assistant for three years before going to San Marino in 1987 as an administrative services officer.

Till and his wife, Cathy, a certified public accountant, have three grade school-age children.

He will be leaving a city of 13,000 residents that guards its small-town character much like the city of Seal Beach, which has a population of 25,000. In June, 1992, a group of San Marino residents vigorously opposed plans to increase the number of beer and wine permits issued. In Seal Beach, downtown-area residents have aggressively opposed expanding the number of businesses allowed to sell alcohol.

“He’s on the same wavelength,” Hastings said. “We feel he’s going to fit into the community just beautifully.”