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San Bernardino hires Mark Scott as interim city manager for a year

On Monday night, the San Bernardino City Council approved a resolution to bring Mark Scott on as an interim city manager of the beleaguered city, the site of a recent terror attack, for a year, beginning Feb. 8.

On Monday night, the San Bernardino City Council approved a resolution to bring Mark Scott on as an interim city manager of the beleaguered city, the site of a recent terror attack, for a year, beginning Feb. 8.

(Raul Roa / Staff Photographer)
By Chad Garland
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Burbank City Manager Mark Scott has decided to push back his retirement a year from the Feb. 5 date announced earlier this month. However, he won’t be staying in Burbank.

On Monday night, the San Bernardino City Council approved a resolution to bring Scott on as an interim city manager of the beleaguered city, the site of a recent terror attack, for a year, beginning Feb. 8.

San Bernardino’s City Manager Allen Parker is set to retire at the end of this year and from New Year’s Day until Scott’s first day, Police Chief Jarrod Burguan will fill the top unelected spot in the city, which filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in 2012.

Scott’s annual salary will be $248,000, Senior Deputy City Atty. Jolena Grider said on Monday. That’s roughly $40,000 less than he made last year in Burbank, according to the public compensation database Transparent California.

He will also receive up to $1,500 per month in rental assistance to rent an apartment within the limits of San Bernardino.

Scott said via email Tuesday that he first contacted San Bernardino a few days before the Dec. 2 shootings, but had been following the city’s situation for a few years because of his experience as Fresno’s city manager for three years, where he had worked to address that city’s fiscal challenges before coming to Burbank.

In an email to the Burbank City Council in advance of the San Bernardino officials’ unanimous confirmation of his one-year contract, Scott said that he “probably won’t file for retirement for at least another year” if confirmed.

“This is good professional mission for me at this point in my life,” he said, adding that the city has “a massive workload involved in resolving their financial and organizational problems.”

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Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com

Twitter: @chadgarland

Chad Garland

Chad Garland covered the city of Burbank and Bob Hope Airport for the Burbank Leader until 2016. Previously, he has covered Arizona’s congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., for Cronkite News Service and Oregon’s Legislature for the Associated Press. His work investigating questionable veterans’ charities as part of the award-winning News21 national investigative project “Back Home” earned a “Best in Business” award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in 2013. Before becoming a reporter, he spent more than a decade in various assignments related to national defense. An Illinois native, his first California address was at Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego. He has degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Arizona State University, as well as a diploma from the Army’s Defense Language Institute in Monterey, where he learned to speak Russian.

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