Thank You San Bruno CA City Manager Connie Jackson

Article Source: Former San Bruno Mayor Jim Ruane and Robert Riechel

Tuesday's July 24 2018 San Bruno City Council meeting was the last for retiring City Manager Connie Jackson. This meeting turned out to be one of the longest, as it lasted until approximately 11:00 p.m., but not because of Connie.

Current Mayor Rico E. Medina opened the meeting under announcements by reading a communication from former San Bruno Mayor Larry Franzella, who recapped some of his remembrances of his years as Mayor working with City Manager Jackson.

Then Mayor Medina acknowledged the City's most recent past Mayor, Mayor Jim Ruane who addressed Connie and those in attendance and those viewing on San Bruno Cable Channel 1:

"Good evening and thank you for allowing me to speak early on this agenda….I am Jim Ruane, the former very proud Mayor of the Wonderful City of San Bruno..

I wanted to take this opportunity to recognize and congratulate our outgoing City Manager, Connie Jackson on her retirement and on the occasion of her last City Council meeting.

I first met Connie a little over fourteen years ago when we interviewed to hire a new City Manager. The recruitment and hiring of a City Manager is a weighty undertaking. Looking for someone who has the personality, experience and intelligence to run a city the size of San Bruno is no easy task. Connie stepped right in and has thoughtfully guided us in the right direction all of that time since.

Her thoughtful approach to many important issues ranging from employee negotiations to development to some very knowledgeable advice on numerous other issues have proven to be a deciding factor in San Bruno’s respect in this county and the solid foundation which we now enjoy. Through her guidance we were able to sustain through a terrible recessional crisis without the loss of employees. This is what management is all about…the partnership of policy makers and those who duties are to carry out those policies.

The on September 9th 2010 our world changed forever. Not only was Connie managing this city but was thrown into an entirely new, unexpected and very challenging endeavor. Some things you might not have known…

We made a number of trips to Washington DC … I made four and I know Connie made at least two more, to address a US Senate subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure and attend the NTSB hearings…we made a trip to Sacramento to address a joint Senate and Assembly committee, bringing them up to date on our experience and progress. We traveled to New Orleans to address the Pipeline Safety Trust convention…we traveled to Denver to address the National Association of Registered Utility Commissioners…we traveled to New York City to address Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and 60 Minutes and we traveled to Philadelphia where we addressed the first gathering of the US Conference of Mayors Council on Pipeline Safety. In addition, we had meetings with editorial staff from papers including the Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News and the Sacramento Bee along with press conferences and attendance at the State Public Utilities Commission meetings too numerous to mention. All of this led to successful outcomes in our efforts to rebuild and succeed in our efforts to receive restitution. I have always said that something good has to come out of the tragedy we all experienced and Connie was and is an integral part of that goodness.

I tell you all of this because during all of this time Connie was still managing, with the help of her competent staff, the daily operation of our City of San Bruno. Looking back we made an exceptional choice and I made a lifelong friend.

Connie – Thank You

/s/ Former San Bruno Mayor Jim Ruane

After a very long meeting, the Council members and Mayor assisted in closing the meeting by sharing their good wishes for Connie and a few of their memorial moments.

The New City Manager, Mr. Jovan D. Grogan will take over Monday July 30 2018. He has BIG shoes to fill.

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Robert Riechel

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Photo Credit: San Bruno CA Patch Archives

Source Credit: Former San Bruno Mayor Jim Ruane & San Bruno Patch Contributor Robert Riechel

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