Daniel Creighton appointed Long Beach city manager

The Long Beach City Council, with a new Republican majority, appointed a new city manager in a party-line vote Tuesday night.

The council chose Daniel Creighton, 53, who had served as a vice president in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s construction and development agency for seven and a half years. Creighton resigned from the MTA effective Jan. 2, the authority confirmed. He said he previously worked for the Federal Transit Administration, an agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation, where he was involved in rebuilding the World Trade Center site.

Creighton has served on Long Beach's zoning board and ran an unsuccessful campaign for city council in 2021 on the Republican ticket. He has a civil engineering and public policy degree from Carnegie Mellon University and a master's of business administration from Baruch College, Newsday previously reported. 

Creighton replaces Ronald Walsh, who had served as acting city manager for one year while also serving as the city’s police commissioner. Walsh will continue for now as police commissioner, City Council president Brendan Finn said in an interview Wednesday. Creighton is the sixth city manager appointed since 2017. He will be paid an annual salary of $220,000.

In a Newsday interview Wednesday, Creighton said his experience managing large capital projects at the MTA had a lot of similarities to the work he will now do for Long Beach. 

"We didn't have police and fire reporting to my group over there but we did have unions, we did have contracts ... and billions of dollars worth of finance that we have to account for on a daily basis, staffing that we have to account for on a daily basis," Creighton said.

Long Beach's city managers serve at the pleasure of the city council. Creighton said he expects to serve at least two years. 

"I'll be here in two years when this team continues to win again and if another team comes in, I'm sure I'm going to do a good enough job that they'll want to keep me on board as well," Creighton said. 

 Republicans swept the 2023 city council race, defeating three Democrats. On Monday, Republicans Finn, Christopher Fiumara and Michael Reinhart were sworn in to the five-member body. Later that day, Finn, the top vote-getter, was chosen to be the council’s new president and Fiumara its vice president.

On Tuesday, Creighton was appointed by a 3-0 vote. Democratic Councilman Roy Lester abstained and fellow Democrat John Bendo was absent.

Before the vote, Lester criticized the selection process. 

"Unfortunately, I have not been given the opportunity to interview him for this position or...seen his resume," Lester said. He added that although the town had received nearly two dozen resumes, none of the candidates was interviewed. "The procedure seems to be indicative of a purely partisan decision making process," Lester said, calling Creighton's appointment a "reward" for his work on the 2023 election campaign for the new Republican leadership.

Finn said Wednesday Creighton had consulted with the Republican campaign as an unpaid volunteer and said he was surprised by Lester's comments. 

"Anything that he wanted he could have had," Finn said. "I just didn't have the time to put together a meeting. ... It was the holiday period and we just ran out of time."