For Malibu City Manager Jim Thorsen, balancing the needs of five city council members comes naturally.
“I’m one of 10 siblings in my family, so handling five council members is a little easier compared to that,” he said.
As city manager, Thorsen is responsible for carrying out the goals and policies for the city established by the Malibu City Council. He transforms the council’s plans, such as building a park or creating a new plan to improve water quality, from idea to practice by overseeing the implementation of these plans within other city departments.
Thorsen grew up in Montana, but attended high school in Colorado, eventually getting a degree in civil engineering from Colorado State. He came to California in 1988 when he was hired by Simi Valley’s Public Works department. He moved to Agoura Hills in 1997, where he worked as a Public Works director and assistant city manager until he came to Malibu in 2006 as city manager.
“The council sets the policy, sets the direction, identifies the budget, and then my role is to make sure we have our departments fulfill those goals,” he said. “I kind of help oversee everything to make sure we’re on time, we’re on budget and communicate directly with our staff to make sure these things happen.”
In his role, Thorsen oversees 66 full-time employees and five department heads.
“I like to stay in the background. The council was elected by the people and so my role is to make sure that all their needs and their goals are being administered to,” Thorsen said.
Thorsen also facilitates the flow of information between the council and various departments, writes weekly informational memos to keep the council members up to date on the latest issues within the departments, oversees the hiring and replacement of department heads, and maintains the city budget.
But Thorsen does get a break from work every now and then. He lives in Moorpark with his wife, his 19-year-old son and his 16-year-old daughter. He said he likes to play golf on his days off, but devotes most of his free time to family functions and parenting.
“[My son] played hockey, and so we did a lot of hockey events, and then my daughter does dance, so now we do a lot of dance events,” he said, “and a lot of shuffling back and forth, those things we parents do.”
In his seven years as city manager, some of the biggest changes he’s seen are with the budget.
“I remember when I first got here, I would go through the budget and there’s a long list of capital projects that had been budgeted and budgeted and hadn’t been completed,” he said. “Over the last seven years, we completed $50 million worth of capital improvement projects, including three new parks and stormwater treatment facilities and numerous traffic improvements. We were able to accomplish that while not only maintaining our budget, but increasing our budget reserve.”
One of those projects was Legacy Park, which he said was a collaborative effort between the City Council, Public Works department, and other groups and community members. Thorsen’s civil engineering background also proved vital in plans for the park. The park recycles stormwater, an addition he said came out of a “wrinkle” in the project caused by the strong opinions of everyone involved.
“When we get those wrinkles, it’s an opportunity for us to improve the project in some form or fashion, and I think Legacy Park is a perfect example of that,” he said. “I don’t think we would have all the recycling efforts in there that we do.”