Hayward City Manager Kelly McAdoo to leave after eight-year run as city’s chief executive

HAYWARD, Calif., Feb. 13, 2024—Hayward City Manager Kelly McAdoo is leaving her post after 13 years of service to the City of Hayward and eight years as its chief executive officer, the City of Hayward announced today.

McAdoo, who joined Hayward as Assistant City Manager in 2010 and was promoted to City Manager in 2016, is leaving to join Santa Barbara as the coastal city’s next chief executive in the position of City Administrator.

The Hayward City Council intends to appoint an interim City Manager to take the reins while a search is conducted for a permanent successor to McAdoo.  Her last day on the job with Hayward will be May 3.  She will assume her new position with the City of Santa Barbara in late May.

“Kelly McAdoo’s contributions to the Hayward community have been extraordinary,” Mayor Mark Salinas said. “As City Manager, she has skillfully guided our municipal organization, creatively worked with mayors and councilmembers to shape and then deliver on policy and projects that will have lasting impact and has assembled an executive leadership team ready to step up and continue the progress.”

The Mayor added the Council is working collaboratively on a transition plan and he is confident in their ability to chart the next chapter of administrative leadership for the City of Hayward.   

McAdoo’s tenure as Hayward City Manager has coincided with an era of political change, responsiveness to emerging community needs, of fiscal stability, the repurposing of public land for housing production, leadership on climate protection, commitment to investing in essential infrastructure, and renewal of community serving facilities.

She worked with the Hayward City Council to strengthen tenant protections to slow displacement of economically vulnerable tenants, to adopt a Sanctuary City policy to provide assurances to immigrant community members, declare a homelessness emergency and then craft a strategic plan to meet the challenges created by the emergency.

Among the City’s responses to homelessness have been the Hayward Navigation Center, which opened in 2018 and is successfully transitioning people from the streets to permanent housing, and a new residential community of 125 micro apartments that opened in 2023, called Depot Community Apartments, that is providing homes with wrap around supportive services to people who were formally homeless and who are living on low and extremely low incomes.

On the fiscal front, improved financial forecasting is allowing councilmembers to test the impact of spending and revenue decisions for years to come, while a practice of annually setting aside revenue to pay down unfunded retiree benefit liabilities is freeing up funding to sustain and enhance core services.

Under McAdoo, the City negotiated agreements with the California Department of Transportation (CALTRANS) to repurpose land once held for a State Route 238 bypass freeway and open it up for development of hundreds of units of market-rate and affordable for-sale and rental housing.

Since 2016, the City has also extended its municipal leadership on environmental and climate protection. Among the initiatives: Solar energy generation was expanded to power City operations; local PG&E ratepayers were moved onto 100 percent renewable sources of electricity; and large-scale filtration devices—purchased with grant funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—are being installed into the City’s sewer system to sift trash from stormwater before it flows into San Francisco Bay.

Meanwhile, the City delivered a series of infrastructure and facility improvements and additions paid for through a half-cent sales tax approved by Hayward voters with the passage of Measure C in June 2014.  

Through Measure C, City fire stations received seismic retrofits, energy enhancements and Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility upgrades. Hayward built a new Downtown Hayward Public Library and created a new Heritage Plaza across the street.  It carried out its most extensive ever annual roadway repair and re-paving project. And, most recently, the City opened a new regional Fire Training Center and Fire Station #6, a product of an innovative partnership with the Chabot-Las Positas Community College District.

Following these prior successes, work is now underway on a potential extension of the Measure C half-cent sales beyond its 2034 sunset date to meet remaining and future facility needs, including a public safety center to house police operations and a new 911 emergency call center, among others.

When the COVID-19 pandemic reached the Bay Area in early 2020, McAdoo’s administration set the standard for a municipal response. Personnel pivoted and resources were redirected to establish testing centers and later vaccination sites, to distribute food to families and masks to essential workers, and to create grant programs to sustain local businesses, which have been a model for other communities.

Internally, the City organization is adapting to post-pandemic staffing and service-delivery expectations.  Last month, McAdoo swore-in a new Chief of Police, Bryan Matthews.  A recently completed Employee Engagement Survey will provide guidance on improving the Hayward city government as a workplace.

In announcing her resignation to City employees earlier this week, McAdoo thanked colleagues and credited them for the creativity, innovation, and commitment to service that has been a hallmark of Hayward municipal government the past eight years.

"It has been an honor and a privilege to serve the Hayward community for the past 13 years, and Hayward has also been my home during much of this time and my daughter spent her childhood here,” McAdoo said. “This city will always have a piece of my heart, and I am so proud of the work our City organization does in support of this community and of the strong organization we have built that will continue this commitment to excellent public service long after my departure.”