From mayor to city manager. That’s the route Larry Bowden has decided on, as the former councilman and mayor is now the city’s acting top executive.
His hometown paper says Bowden is perhaps better known for his work guiding Twentynine Palms High School athletes as head coach of the Wildcat varsity boys basketball team.
Bowden’s situation is temporary, he says. “Speaking about his new job this week, agreed that he will mainly be in place to keep things running smoothly until a permanent city manager can be found in early 2015.”
“I am not trying to change things,” he told The Desert Trail. “I am just there to make the day-to-day decisions. I will represent the city council and their policies.“The staff knows who I am. I have the support of the staff. I just had a few of them say I should do it.”
Could this actually become a trend? We’ve seen something similar in Sacramento –- a sort of reverse engineering of the hierarchy of political office. The advent of legislative term limits and other provisions of Proposition 140 made local office more appealing than the Legislature for many elected officials.
In places like Los Angeles, in particular, the legislature became a stepping stone for the city council instead of the other way around. Council gigs paid more, came with perks like private drivers and faced longer or sometimes no term limits, depending on the city.
They also had something else Legislative jobs no longer have – pensions.