LOS ALAMITOS : City Leaders Take Departures in Stride
Mayor Robert P. Wahlstrom says he’s beginning to think it’s him. Both times that he has been elected mayor of Los Alamitos, the city manager has left.
In 1989 it was Mike Graziano, who retired. Now it’s Robert C. Dunek, a popular city manager who has been hired away by Lake Forest. “I am beginning to get a complex,” said Wahlstrom, who also lost City Clerk Donna Velin to Orange last month and secretary Pat Maxwell to retirement this month.
But seriously, Wahlstrom said, he and other officials see those departures for greener pastures as evidence of their sound judgment.
“We have a good history of selecting highly qualified people,” Councilman Ronald Bates said Friday. As with many small cities, he said, Los Alamitos has a hard time keeping them, but officials take that in stride.
“I would rather have the best person for five or six years and risk losing them,” Bates said, than not have them at all.
Like Wahlstrom, he is gracious about losing Dunek to Lake Forest.
“It’s a great opportunity for him,” Bates said. “Of course, we are disappointed because he had done such a fine job for us, but we are also very glad for him.”
Dunek will begin his new job in mid-January.
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