City Manager Job Description

A City Manager is the professional executive a city council hires to run the government it oversees. The arrangement is called the council-manager form, and it splits the work cleanly: elected officials decide what the city should do, and the manager decides how the organization gets it done. According to the ICMA 2018 Municipal Form of Government Survey, 48.2% of American cities reported using the council-manager form, compared with 38.2% using the mayor-council system.

The manager reports to the council as a body. That detail shapes the whole job. A five- or seven-member council will rarely agree on everything, and the manager has to give every member the same information, the same access and the same candor, regardless of who voted for what. A manager who starts taking direction from one faction risks losing the rest of the dais, and with it the contract.

Running the organization

Much of the job is the organization itself. The manager appoints and supervises department directors: police and fire chiefs, the finance director, public works, parks, planning and community development, human resources and IT. Good managers hire strong directors and hold them to clear service targets rather than running each department from the corner office. The manager also owns the culture: how quickly staff answer residents, how candidly bad news travels upward, and how departments share resources instead of guarding them.

The budget cycle

The budget is the manager's main policy instrument. Each year the manager's office builds a proposed operating budget and a multiyear capital improvement program, balances revenue forecasts against department requests, and presents a recommended plan to council in a series of public workshops. After adoption, the manager controls spending, approves mid-year adjustments within delegated limits and brings larger changes back to council as budget amendments. Bond ratings, reserve policies and pension costs all land on this desk.

Council meetings and the agenda

Every council meeting runs on staff reports, and the manager signs off on them. A good report lays out the issue, the options, the fiscal impact and a professional recommendation, then lets council decide. The manager attends meetings, answers questions from the dais, and follows through on direction afterward. Between meetings, the manager briefs members individually, often one-on-one, without letting those briefings become side deals that a quorum never saw.

Crisis and representation

When a water main fails, a wildfire threatens a neighborhood or a police incident draws protesters to city hall, the manager runs the response through the emergency operations center, coordinates with county and state agencies, and keeps council and the public informed. The manager is also the city's lead negotiator with developers, utilities, labor unions and neighboring governments, and the person residents expect to answer for how the city works.

City managers come up through local government. The typical path starts with a master's degree in public administration or public policy, then an entry job as a management analyst, budget analyst or assistant to the city manager. From there, candidates move into department head or assistant city manager roles before taking a first manager post, often in a smaller city, and then compete for larger ones. Expect the climb to take well over a decade.

California's 2025 city manager survey gives a sense of how seasoned the people in the chair are. Respondents reported an average of 26.2 years of experience in the public sector, and the report found that nearly three quarters have earned advanced academic degrees, many in public policy, public administration or business administration.

Education

• Master of Public Administration (MPA) or Master of Public Policy: the default graduate credential for the field
• MBA or law degree: a workable alternative, especially paired with municipal finance or city attorney experience
• Bachelor's degree in political science, economics, urban planning, finance or a related field as the starting point

Credentials

• ICMA Credentialed Manager (International City/County Management Association): the profession's voluntary credential, tied to experience, education and continuing professional development, plus a commitment to the ICMA Code of Ethics
• State city management associations run their own training academies and peer networks, which matter for job searches within a state

Knowledge that hiring councils test

• Municipal finance: fund accounting, revenue forecasting, debt issuance, reserve policy, pension liabilities and the annual audit
• Public sector labor relations: collective bargaining, grievance procedures and state public employee relations law
• Land use and development: zoning, general plans, master plans, development agreements and impact fees
• Open government law: open meetings rules, public records requests and conflict-of-interest requirements in the manager's state
• Emergency management: the National Incident Management System and the Incident Command System used by FEMA and local responders

Skills that decide who lasts

Technical knowledge gets a candidate shortlisted. Judgment keeps the job. Strong managers read a council accurately, deliver unwelcome news early and plainly, and treat every member the same regardless of politics. They delegate real authority to directors and back them publicly. They speak clearly at a podium during a hostile public hearing and write staff reports a resident can follow. Managers also need a thick skin: they serve at the will of a body whose membership can change at the next election, and a new majority may want a new manager.

There is no separate federal job count or projection for city managers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics groups them with Chief Executives, and its May 2023 estimates counted 16,890 chief executives in local government, excluding schools and hospitals, at an annual mean wage of $156,620. That figure includes county administrators and other local executives, so it is broader than city managers alone.

Openings arise when managers retire, move to larger jurisdictions or leave when a new council majority wants a change, and each departure sets off a recruitment that the council may run itself or through an executive search firm. Assistant city managers and department heads with a record of balanced budgets, settled labor contracts and good council relations are the usual candidates. Willingness to relocate widens the set of jobs a candidate can pursue.

Who is in the profession

Women remain underrepresented in the top seat. The Rose Institute's 2025 California report, citing ICMA data, puts women at 23% of chief administrative officers in the United States and 27% in California as of 2024.

Artificial intelligence

AI adoption in city halls is early and uneven. ICMA surveyed local government officials in April and May 2024 and received 635 responses, mostly from chief and assistant chief administrative officers. Almost half (48%) said AI was a low priority for their government, while less than 6% had made it a high priority. Respondents saw the most potential in resident engagement (55%), such as chatbots for routine questions, and 38% saw significant potential in policy work like budget modeling and analysis.

The barriers are mostly about understanding and trust. The top barrier was a lack of AI awareness and understanding, cited by 77%, and the top concern was AI-generated disinformation or misinformation used to illegitimately influence public policy, cited by 70%. For a manager, that means the near-term AI work is governance: deciding which tools staff may use, how AI-generated drafts are reviewed, how outputs are handled under public records law, and how to explain all of it to council and residents.

Building toward the job

Aspiring managers should get budget experience early, ideally in a central budget office where they see every department's numbers. Rotations through operating departments, a role staffing council meetings, and exposure to labor negotiations round out the resume. A graduate internship or fellowship in a city manager's office gives early-career staff a close view of how agendas, budgets and council relationships actually work. Earning the ICMA credential, staying active in a state management association and taking an assistant manager post in a well-run city are the practical steps that turn an analyst into a finalist.

Dear Riverbend City Council,

Please accept my application for the City Manager position in Riverbend. For the past six years I have served as Assistant City Manager in Oak Hollow, a full-service city of similar size, where I oversee public works, community development, parks and the budget office. Before that I spent eight years in Oak Hollow's finance department, rising from budget analyst to budget manager.

Your recruitment brochure names three priorities: stabilizing the general fund, finishing the downtown streetscape project and rebuilding trust after a difficult year. Those are problems I have worked on directly.

In Oak Hollow, I led the team that closed a structural deficit over two budget cycles without layoffs, by renegotiating a fleet maintenance contract, consolidating two permit counters into one and phasing in a capital reserve policy the council adopted unanimously. I managed our largest street reconstruction project from design through ribbon cutting, holding weekly coordination meetings with the contractor, utilities and affected businesses, and reporting progress to council at every regular meeting.

I believe a manager's first obligation is to the whole council. I give every member the same briefing, I put bad news in writing early, and I make recommendations based on what staff can actually deliver. When our council split on a contentious annexation, members on both sides told me afterward that the staff reports had been fair.

I also care about the people who do the work. I meet with each bargaining unit's leadership quarterly, outside of negotiations, and I have promoted three internal candidates into director roles.

I would welcome the chance to discuss how I can serve Riverbend. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely, Jordan Ellis