Local Government Specialist
Mr. Palmer served the City of Folsom, California, for 23 years as Assistant Finance Director/Information Technology, Director of Administrative Services, Assistant City Manager, and City Manager, retiring in 2018 after seven years as the City’s chief executive. Mr. Palmer served Folsom during a time of significant growth, contributing to and completing two annexations that increased the City’s size by more than 3,500 acres and 11,000 housing units. Using alternative service delivery, contracting, efficiency measures, and public/private partnerships, Mr. Palmer successfully led Folsom, a full-service city, through the Great Recession, guiding the City Council and the community through a strategic restructuring of City operations that not only retained the City’s high-quality services and infrastructure but also improved balance sheets in the general, internal service, retiree health, solid waste, wastewater, and water funds. During this same period, Mr. Palmer aided several community organizations through their own restructuring, increasing their self-reliance and reducing their requirements for public funding. Mr. Palmer’s work in economic development, in collaboration with the Folsom Chamber of Commerce, led to the location and expansion of several high-technology employers to Folsom, for which he was awarded the Folsom Chamber of Commerce’s Chairman’s Award in 2014. Mr. Palmer was also appointed to the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System Advisory Committee by the California Attorney General.
Mr. Palmer is an International City/County Management Association Retired Credentialed Manager, having earned and held this designation since 2011. Mr. Palmer earned a master’s degree in Public Administration from Golden Gate University, a bachelor of arts degree in Organizational Leadership from Chapman University, and a certificate of achievement in municipal leadership from the University of Southern California School of Policy, Planning, and Development. Before his service to the citizens of Folsom, Mr. Palmer served as an information technology professional in both the public and private sector, and he worked on a number of large-scale IT implementations in the banking, corporate, general government, and public safety sectors.
“[Stu Gary’s] knowledge, expertise, and demeanor were invaluable in our efforts to ferret out a fair agreement with the City. I could go on and on about Stu, but you already know all of the superlatives.”
AAE, General Manager Monterey Regional Airport
“Thank you so much for all you have done. And it’s so comprehensive, I know it’s going to take a while for us to digest it all, but I think you’ve come up with some really good recommendations.”
Pro Tempore City of Vista, CA
“I am really, really impressed. I am impressed at the exhaustiveness of your study, impressed at the honesty and candor with which you expressed your findings; I am very impressed at the constructive tone of it, and that you came in under budget as well. So, thank you very much. I think that this document is going to be a cornerstone for us really moving forward for the next five, ten, twenty [years], half a century.”
Salt Lake City Council Meeting
“I am very much appreciative of Citygate’s comprehensive view of all the issues. And you have been very candid and very forthright in the problem areas that you have identified and we appreciate that. Quite often sometimes people choose to gloss over those issues and therefore we never can get a real good handle on the problem to resolve it. And I very much appreciate your insight and your intuitive natures that you have all experienced in your government services and trying to identify where our problem areas are so we can identify for the public. I very much appreciate the idea and the comments that you made that we are talking about the citizens who come to the planning Department as customers. And so you’ve done a great service for us and we are certainly appreciative of all your efforts.”
Commissioner Jackson County
“I think this is one of the most comprehensive reports and I think probably one of the best presented reports I’ve seen in my years in government service. I want to start off by commending you for that and acknowledge that the work that you were able to do with cooperation from all of the different firefighting agencies in this region was second-to-none.”
Supervisor First District San Diego County
“I was absolutely thrilled with the report because it was very comprehensive, very detailed. I call it the ‘time-in-motion study’ almost and some of the aspects [are] ‘how does your paper flow? How can you make your processes better? . . . As a government agency, how can we provide better service to the constituents?’ And to us we think that this study identifies those things down to all of the small paper processes and flows.”
Retired City Manager City of Vista, CA