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City Manager Sheryl Sculley

biography

Sheryl Sculley

City Manager

Sheryl Sculley began serving as City Manager of San Antonio, Texas in November 2005, with more than 30 years of public management experience. As City Manager, Sculley is the Chief Executive Officer of the municipal corporation of 11,400 employees, an annual operating and capital budget of $2.2 billion, and a city population of 1.3 million residents. San Antonio is the nation’s seventh largest city. 

Appointed by the Mayor and City Council, Sculley was recruited in 2005 to transform the city administration and improve the city’s public infrastructure. During her six year tenure, she has appointed executive leadership, reorganized city departments, streamlined City business systems, vastly improved customer service and elevated the professionalism of City management. 

In 2006, Sculley proposed the largest capital bond program in city history. It was overwhelming approved by city voters in 2007. The $550 million program which focuses on street, drainage, and park improvements is on schedule and within budget. After successfully completing the 2007 bond projects, Sculley recommended in 2012 a $596 million infrastructure bond program, also approved by the voters of San Antonio.

Sculley has successfully managed a balanced City budget while lowering city property taxes, increasing financial reserves, substantially reducing waste, while at the same time increasing police, fire and emergency medical services to the public. Under her financial leadership, in October 2008 the City’s general obligation bond rating was upgraded by Standard and Poor’s Rating Service to AAA, a first for the City of San Antonio. In the Spring of 2010 and Summer of 2011, the City’s AAA general obligation bond rating was reaffirmed by all three major rating agencies. Of the ten largest cities in the United States, San Antonio is the only one to have three “AAA” ratings. 

Prior to joining the City of San Antonio, Sculley served as Assistant City Manager of the City of Phoenix for 16 years. In the number two administrative position in that city of 1.6 million residents, Sculley was responsible for the day to day operations of city government and earned the reputation as a results-focused “go-to” manager. 

While in Phoenix, Sculley’s accomplishments included numerous economic development projects and the development of more than two million square feet of city owned office space, museums, theatres, a convention hotel, a bioscience laboratory, a convention center and a downtown university campus. These complicated public projects included everything from land assemblage, architectural plans, financing, and construction management to multi-layered public approvals. Two of her more difficult assignments, and notable successes, included recruiting the Translational Genomics Research Institute to Arizona and convincing the Arizona Legislature to invest $300 million in the downtown Phoenix Convention Center. 

Previous to her Phoenix experience, Sculley was City Manager of Kalamazoo, Michigan, working for that municipal corporation for 15 years. As City Manager, she successfully implemented the consolidation of police and fire services cutting the number of positions in half while tripling public safety service coverage. In one of the toughest labor relations environments in the country, Sculley successfully developed and maintained a constructive labor-management relationship with the city’s unions. 
 
Throughout her career, Sculley has actively participated on non-profit boards of directors as a community volunteer and City management professional. She has served on the San Antonio United Way Board of Directors since 2007 and was also a member of the United Way boards and charitable campaigns in Phoenix and Kalamazoo. She served on the Greater Phoenix Economic Council Board of Directors and Executive Committee for 10 years and is a Life Trustee of the Heard Museum of Native American Art. Sculley has led fundraising efforts for the education of single mothers, victims of domestic violence, and research for the cure of autism. 

Sculley served on the International City Management Association (ICMA) Board of Directors from 2002-2005 and was president of the Arizona and Michigan City Management Associations. In 2009, ICMA, a 7,000 member professional organization, recognized Sculley with the Career Excellence in City Management Award. Sculley is a Fellow in the National Academy of Public Administration. 

Sculley has been an adjunct professor with the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin. She has taught graduate classes in urban studies and has mentored the next generation public sector leaders.

Education

Sculley earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Ball State University and Master of Public Administration degree from Western Michigan University. Sculley also completed the Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Personal

Sculley is married to Michael Sculley and has two adult children, a daughter who graduated from the University of Texas in Austin and a son who graduated from California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, California. Sculley is an avid runner having completed nine marathons including the Boston Marathons in 2000 and 2001.