Council appoints new city manager in unanimous vote

SAN JOSE >> After serving as the number two top administrator at San Jose City Hall and leading the city’s response to February’s disastrous floods, Dave Sykes will be the new city manager.

The unanimous vote from the City Council came during a closed-session meeting Tuesday.

“I am honored to lead this amazing organization that I grew up in,” Sykes said. “There are so many exciting things happening in San Jose, and I look forward to continuing my support to the mayor and council and serving this wonderful community.”

Sykes steps into the role after current City Manager Norberto Dueñas announced last month that he will retire after 33 years with the city. Sykes will take over the city manager job Oct 15 after Dueñas leaves City Hall.

The city manager, one of five top officials appointed by the mayor and City Council, serves as the top administrator by managing delivery of services, overseeing city staff and budgets and implementing the City Council’s policies.

Sykes, who also worked for San Jose for nearly three decades, began his career as a part-time engineering trainee in 1987. In an interview Tuesday, Sykes said he’s most proud of projects that benefited residents in a positive way, such as paving one of the city’s last unpaved roads.

Before taking on the administrator role, Sykes worked in the city’s Public Works Department where he played a key role in delivering more than $700 million worth of public improvements.

San Jose did not conduct a national search for its next city manager. Mayor Sam Liccardo said recommending Sykes was a nobrainer — especially after gathering input from city employees in a survey.

“All the feedback I got was pretty clear — both from the public and from employees — that there was a desire for us to stay the course on many of the measures that have been taken to try to restore the workforce and improve employees’ morale,” Liccardo said. “And there was a desire for someone who understood the organization well and could hit the ground running.”

Sykes was born in the United Kingdom and moved to San Jose as a child. He graduated from Gunderson High School and earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in civil engineering from San Jose State. He and his wife, Elizabeth, have two teenage children.

Sykes ran the city’s emergency operations center during February’s devastating Coyote Creek floods, and has taken responsibility for ordering evacuations hours after floodwaters swept through three neighborhoods and forced rescues by boat.

“It’s fair to say that leading in easy times is easy,” Sykes said Tuesday. “Leading in tough times isn’t so easy and leading in a crisis is really not that easy. I’ll leave it to others to judge me. I think we as an organization did a good job of being accountable and getting the job done when it counted.”

Liccardo said the flood illustrated “why Dave is the right guy” for the job because he acted quickly once he realized how serious the flooding was.

“Obviously there’s a lot of second-guessing now in retrospect,” the mayor said, “but after the flooding started in Rock Springs, Dave looked at it and said, ‘All the data is wrong and I’m throwing it out. I’m going to go with my instincts.’ ”

Councilman Tam Nguyen, who represents one of the areas hit hardest by the flood, said Sykes’ role in the decision-making was one of the concerns he raised.

“But I understand that Dave was faced with a situation where we got erroneous information,” Nguyen said. “So I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but I want to continue the conversation about emergency preparedness and disaster drills.”