{"id":280,"date":"2012-05-31T13:38:04","date_gmt":"2012-05-31T20:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/?p=280"},"modified":"2013-03-12T13:38:43","modified_gmt":"2013-03-12T20:38:43","slug":"morales-to-leave-city-of-yakima-near-the-end-of-june","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/morales-to-leave-city-of-yakima-near-the-end-of-june\/","title":{"rendered":"Morales to Leave City of Yakima Near the End of June"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contact:<\/strong> Interim City Manager Micheal Morales \u2013 509-575-6040 \u2013 mmorales@ci.yakima.wa.us<\/a>
\nCommunity Relations Manager Randy Beehler \u2013 509-901-1142 \u2013 rbeehler@ci.yakima.wa.us<\/a><\/p>\n

Michael Morales, who has worked for the City of Yakima in various capacities over the past 15 years, including as interim city manager since January of this year, has submitted his resignation to the City Council effective Friday, June 29th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Morales has not applied for nor accepted another job.\u00a0 He plans to take a few months off before pursuing other employment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m at a point in my career where I feel like I need to take some time to assess what my next step should be,\u201d said Morales.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve grown a lot and gained invaluable experience during my time at the City of Yakima.\u00a0 Serving as assistant city manager and interim city manager over the last year-and-a-half has been especially beneficial to me because I\u2019ve gotten to test my leadership skills under challenging circumstances,\u201d said Morales.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to whatever the future holds for me and my family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morales, who was born and raised in Grandview, joined the City in 1997 as a grants writer.\u00a0 In 2004, he became an economic development and community affairs specialist and was assigned new intergovernmental and legislative duties.\u00a0\u00a0 Then, in 2006, Morales became the deputy community and economic development director with a range of responsibilities including overseeing the Engineering Division and the Office of Neighborhood Development.\u00a0 In April 2010, he became the City\u2019s community and economic development director.<\/p>\n

In early 2011 while former city manager Dick Zais was recovering from a serious illness, Morales served as acting city manager for nearly two months.\u00a0 When Zais returned to work in late February, he appointed Morales as acting assistant city manager.\u00a0 In June 2011, Zais removed the \u201cacting\u201d tag from Morales\u2019 title.\u00a0 Then, after Zais retired in July 2011, Morales served as interim city manager until Don Cooper assumed the role of city manager in September of that year.\u00a0 When Cooper resigned from his position in late December 2011, the City Council named Morales interim city manager while it conducted a search for Cooper\u2019s replacement that resulted in the hiring of Tony O\u2019Rourke, whose first official day on the job will be July 2nd<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Before coming to Yakima, Morales worked in South Texas for the Rio Grande Valley Empowerment Zone and was responsible for strategic planning, policy development, and implementation of a $40 million federal economic development initiative; one of only three in the nation.\u00a0 Prior to that, he was an economic development specialist for the Lower Rio Grande Valley Development Council.\u00a0 Morales began his professional career as a staff member with the Washington State Migrant Council.<\/p>\n

Morales graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1993, and has done extensive coursework through the UW\u2019s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, including the Cascade Management Series (2000-02) and the Executive MPA program (2003-05).<\/p>\n

Morales to Leave City of Yakima Near the End of June (pdf)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contact: Interim City Manager Micheal Morales \u2013 509-575-6040 \u2013 mmorales@ci.yakima.wa.us Community Relations Manager Randy Beehler \u2013 509-901-1142 \u2013 rbeehler@ci.yakima.wa.us Michael Morales, who has worked for the City of Yakima in various capacities over the past 15 years, including as interim city manager since January of this year, has submitted his resignation to the City Council<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282,"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yakimawa.gov\/media\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}