San Juan welcomes second manager in less than a year
San Juan Bautista – San Juan Bautista’s new City Manager Janice McClintock reported for duty Monday, the second person to assume the title in just under a year.
McClintock, 48, was selected by the City Council from the pool of 28 applicants originally culled when the position was advertised last spring. Though the city ultimately chose Jennifer Coile to fill the position – she was one among three applicants, including McClintock, equally qualified in the eyes of the council – officials picked Coile because she was local, according to Councilman Chuck Geiger.
“I’m very excited to work with Janice,” Geiger said. “She has good skills with budget management, public speaking, personnel management – she’s a real people-person.”
McClintock, who left a position as Special Projects Manager with the City of Fontana, says she initially discovered San Juan almost completely by accident.
“I love gemology, and when I was attending a conference in Monterey I wanted to stop in San Benito County and look for some benitoite,” she said. “I fell in love with San Juan Bautista, and 10 or 11 months ago I saw the add for the city manager position and applied right away. I think this is an adorable city, and I see a lot of potential here.”
Though she originally hails from a farming community in Oklahoma, McClintock has most recently spent her career in southern California, working for Riverside County and the City of Fontana.
“I have an 18-year background in the private sector and have worked for nine years in the public sector,” she said. “So I tend to look at things from a business perspective. If your decisions make good business sense, then what you’re doing is best for the taxpayer.”
And good business sense, says Geiger, is exactly what the city needs at the moment. Currently, a $3.8 million federal grant awarded jointly to the San Benito County Water District and San Juan intended to repair the city’s dilapidated water and sewer system hangs in the balance – depending on whether the two parties can come to an agreement regarding how the project will be managed.
“Ms. McClintock is bringing to the table a strong background in municipal budgeting and financial management, which is really valuable,” Geiger said.
Although only hours into her new position, McClintock says she is in the process of familiarizing herself with the city’s financial issues, particularly those involving the water grant.
“I’ve been reading local newspapers and going over minutes from past City Council meetings to get everything straight,” she said. “I think the best thing I can do is just dig in and get the facts down.”
Among her priorities, says McClintock, are a focus on economic development and transparency in the city’s operations.
“Few people really know how wonderful San Juan really is,” she said. “I want to see if I can help San Juan promote itself. I’d like Third Street full of people Monday through Friday, not just on the weekends, and in January and February as well as the spring and summer.”
Government transparency is not something that San Juan has been widely credited with in recent months. Councilmembers Arturo Medina and Priscilla Hill visited the Seattle-based Economic Development Agency in December, along with consultant Mark Davis – a trip which was not voted on beforehand or disclosed to the public until District Attorney John Sarsfield opened an investigation into the possibility of a Brown Act violation. While a Jan. 7 City Council meeting effectively “cured” any possible violations with a retroactive vote, the sometimes disruptive and angry behavior of attending citizens indicated that they had lost a measure of faith in their city government.
Though McClintock says she will be working with Coile in the future as she acclimates to her new position, Coile did not return calls for comment.
McClintock says she looks forward to starting over in San Juan after working in a large, developing city like Fontana. The town is significantly closer to Golden State University, where she is finishing a master’s degree in public speaking, will allow her to pursue her passion for gemology and jewelry making, and her boyfriend is particularly fond of the town’s proximity to the Laguna Seca racetrack in Monterey County.
“In a lot of ways, San Juan is at the other end of the spectrum from Fontana,” she said. “But San Juan is small and historic in nature, and it reminds me of the type of community I grew up in. I’m really very happy to be here.”
