New South Gate City Manager to Tackle Budget and Infrastructure Problems

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The South Gate City Council unanimously hired Michael Flad, former city manager of Burbank, to serve as South Gate’s very own chief executive starting in early December.

Flad will have a lot of responsibilities as city manager, and is already thinking about what issues he will focus on at the very start.

“Tackling budget problems is number one,” said Flad in an interview with Patch shortly after his appointment. “I will be putting together a 5 year budget strategy on how we are we going to get out of this financial mess.”

This past summer, South Gate approved its 2012-2013 fiscal budget plan with a deficit. The infrastructure issues that many municipalities have been inefficient in addressing has a lot to do with bad budgets.

“South Gate like every other city in California has a huge infrastructure deficit,” said Flad. “[The city is] spending more on maintenance than [it] should because [it has] not been investing enough and could not financially.”

Among the other important topics that Flad mentioned was the convincing of outside businesses to come and open shop in South Gate.

“Job creation has to be a main priority,” concluded Flad. 

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