City Expects to Name New Manager

A 1 1/2-year search for the next Santa Paula city manager is expected to end Monday when Peter Cosentini, top administrator in the Napa Valley community of Calistoga, is named to the post.

“That’s dependent upon a completion of reference checks, which I am now winding up,” Murray Warden, Santa Paula’s interim city manager, said Tuesday. “Our City Council has made it quite clear they’re interested in the man, but they are not going to make a final decision until the reference checks are completed.”

Cosentini, 47, expects to attend Monday’s council meeting to formally accept the $97,000-a-year post, but declined further comment.

“I want to follow protocol and wait until the City Council of Santa Paula makes an official announcement,” he said.

Cosentini, who is expected to start work in February, would receive an annual pay raise of about $25,000 to come to the city of 26,700 after two years in Calistoga, which has a population of about 4,700.

The choice of Cosentini would end a long search by Santa Paula officials for a permanent successor to Arnold Dowdy, who resigned in June 1996 to take a job with the county. Since then, two interim managers have occupied the post, while at least four other candidates have rejected the job for one reason or another.

The agricultural community is one of the county’s poorest cities, and Cosentini--if appointed--is likely to encounter a Police Department in disarray because of a rift between officers and their chief.

Cosentini graduated from high school in Lodi and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in public administration from Cal State Chico. Cosentini was assistant city manager in the Santa Barbara County city of Lompoc from 1984 until 1988 and was also assistant city manager in Oceanside. Before moving to Calistoga, he spent four years as city manager of Galt in Sacramento County.