Salinas City Manager Steve Carrigan fired, for the second time in three years

City Manager Steve Carrigan is out in Salinas.

Salinas City Council voted 6-0 Tuesday to remove Carrigan. Assistant City Manager Jim Pia is taking Carrigan's place. This is the second time the ousted city manager has been dismissed before the end of his term.

Carrigan held the position for close to three years. He applied for the role in September 2020 following former City Manager Ray Corpuz Jr.'s retirement. Nearly 80 other candidates applied, but Carrigan was selected as the best to serve Salinas.

According to the 2020 City Manager application brochure, the role involves building a foundation of community involvement through policy direction and ensuring the community is well informed while providing a high level of transparency, ethics and confidence in local government.

The brochure states that, "The ideal candidate will be an honest, ethical, and dynamic leader with a record of professional accomplishments that demonstrate his/ her ability to effectively lead a large and diverse public organization... to achieve economic growth and improve the quality of life for all city residents."

Carrigan was considered the ideal candidate back then. So, what changed?

Interestingly, history just repeated itself. Before Carrigan came to Salinas, he was Merced's city manager for five years. He was voted in unanimously by city council members in both cities.

In both actions, no official reason was given.

While the Salinas City Council voted in a closed session, community members shared their statements in the public comment period before the privately-held vote. It's unclear how residents knew Carrigan was set to be fired.

One speaker, a Salinas resident who works in education, said "Steve Carrigan has done more for this city in two-and-a-half years than all city managers combined. I feel that you have made a grave mistake in letting him go."

Others disagreed.

One speaker described a situation in which Carrigan came to her house and said he had the power to handle citations. Carrigan reportedly asked her not to worry and that everything would be taken care of. But Carrigan ended up sending then-Assistant City Manager Jim Pia to "take the front for him" and backtracked on his words, she said.

"When it came time for him to admit and to be a man of his word, that he was going to remove all the citations, he said he doesn't remember. He said he never said that... We want someone other than Mr. Carrigan here, and someone who has integrity," she explained.

Her explanation of events was backed by a family member who said, "I want a man that we can trust. The city manager (Carrigan) was lying to us. He lied to our faces. And being in the kind of position he has, he shouldn't be lying... and what he did to us, in our own home... he sent the other manager to deal with his problems."

Christopher Barrera, president of the Salinas League of United Latin American Citizens Council, said he witnessed these events happen. The residents dealing with citations called the council for support and advocacy efforts and he helped take Carrigan over to the house and showed him what had happened, he said.

Carrigan apparently said the fines would be dismissed--while that eventually happened, Carrigan later said he never said any of those words.

Barrera added that he is a member of the Salinas City Measure G Oversight Committee, as is Carrigan, yet Carrigan often did not show up for committee meetings.

"Two-and-a-half years ago, we were thrilled because we got a new city manager that was an improvement over our old city manager," he said. "Don't know what really happened along the way, but we definitely need a new city manager, someone who is going to do things for the community, from the heart."

While the community spoke out, the city has stayed quiet.

"It's a personnel matter," City Attorney Chris Callahan told The Californian. "Nobody can discuss personnel matters, given that one occurred in closed session. So it's not likely that anyone's going to be able to provide any additional information now or in the future on this."

Fired, again

The Merced County Times reports that, in a May 2020 Merced City Council meeting, then-Mayor Mike Murphy "voiced frustration over an assertion that Carrigan was failing to provide the city council, or the public, with information that he was required to provide under the municipal code during a state of emergency."

He was fired shortly after.

There was only a two-month gap between Carrigan's dismissal from the city of Merced in July 2020 and his application to work for the city of Salinas in September. And until just last week, Carrigan was openly considering leaving his current lead role in Salinas to become the city manager of San Bernardino.

Carrigan withdrew his name from consideration for the position and told Salinas city staff in an email on Sept. 28 that Salinas welcomed him openly and he could not see himself working anywhere else, according to KSBW. A report from The San Bernardino Sun on Oct. 2 says that Carrigan was the top candidate in this race and was already offered the San Bernardino City Manager position before turning it down.

San Bernardino is now restarting its city manager search.

This article originally appeared on Salinas Californian: Salinas City Manager Steve Carrigan fired, the 2nd time in 3 years