Emeryville City Manager Paul Buddenhagen is returning to the City of Berkeley as first reported by The Berkeley Scanner.
Buddenhagen recently informed Emeryville City Council and staff that he is “in an employment process with the City of Berkeley” that they have added to their June 4 meeting.
Buddenhagen will step into the role as Berkeley’s City Manager replacing Dee Williams-Ridley who announced her resignation earlier this month.
Buddenhagen took the job with Emeryville less than two years ago replacing another former Berkeley administrator Christine Daniel.
Buddenhagen has more than 25 years of professional management experience in city and county government. Before coming to Emeryville, he worked as Berkeley’s Deputy City Manager for five years and for two years before that as their Director of Health, Housing and Community Services.
Prior to working with Berkeley, he worked for eighteen years with the Contra Costa County Employment and Human Services Department.
Buddenhagen has local credentials as a longtime Oakland resident with a graduate degree in Social Work from UC Berkeley.
Berkeley will pay Buddenhagen an annual salary of about $402,000, a nice pay bump from the $282,000 he was making in Emeryville.
Buddenhagen has indicated he plans to stay with the City of Emeryville until September. If the City of Berkeley approves his hiring, he will officially assume his new role on September 16.
Emeryville is expected to face a budget shortfall this cycle and will need an experienced administrator to help them navigate this. The city will likely fill the roll with an interim while they conduct a search with Emeryville’s current Assistant City Manager Pedro Jimenez a likely candidate.
Feature Image: Paul Buddenhagen’s LinkedIn profile.
He is leaving because of the mess left behind regarding the city not participating in Social Security. IRS has sued Emeryville and demanding back taxes going as far back as 2001. The city has already forked over 2+ million dollars and now is in the red as a result.