Toney Resigns As Deputy City Manager, Hours After Council Installs New Interim City Manager With Impressive Resume
Written by 991KBU on May 13, 2025
If it’s Tuesday … Malibu must have a new city manager. Temporarily, at least.
Joseph Toney resigned from being a deputy city manager this morning … just hours after the city council voted to hire a new person to replace him as the interim city manager.
Technically, the city council Monday appointed Candace Bond, a former United States ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, to be the interim city manager.
The vote total was unintelligible at the city council meeting Monday, as audio system issues garbled the feed inside the building and on the Internet.
The meeting was called off minutes after it began last night.
Then today, the city put out a news release that it Malibu “announces that Acting City Manager Joseph Toney has tendered his resignation, effective May 22, 2025.”
If there ever was a sign of Malibu’s chaotic municipal government … it was last night.
The city council meeting … with a laundry list of huge and time sensitive matters … sounded like this.
SOUND OF GARBLE
City staffers tried hard to resurrect the sound system. But it was of no use. The meeting was cancelled. Rescheduled for a week from Wednesday.
No decision on managers for the rebuild effort.
No decision on that controversial house on Harvester Road.
No midyear budget review.
No decision on spending 3.1 million dollars on security guards for eastern Malibu but not western Malibu.
Everything was delayed 9 days … until a new city council meeting called for Wednesday of next week.
In the middle of the confusion last night … the city council did manage to hire a new interim city manager.
Ambassador Candace Bond will take over as the city’s chief executive officer.
Bond’s introduction was marred by the sound system fiasco.
What we do know about her is that she has lived in Malibu for decades … and reportedly sent her children through Malibu schools.
Prior to her 8 years as Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago … she had served as the CEO and founder of a management consulting firm.
Bond has served for more than two decades on the boards of significant non-profit and community organizations … like California Head Start and the Greater Los Angeles Education Foundation.
She also has served on the Board of the LA County Office of Education, the nation’s largest regional educational agency, and as Co-Chair of the MLK Community Development Corporation, where she led efforts to revitalize the 42-acre medical campus in Watts.
In recognition of her efforts, she was named LA County Woman of the Year by the LA County Women’s Commission.
She is a graduate of Harvard College, and has a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business school.
She will be paid an annual salary of $300,000, and the terms of her temporary contract generally mirror those of the City’s prior City Manager.
But because she is filling in as interim city manager … her contract does not contain a severance provision due to its interim nature.
And she will be overseeing replacement of the city’s sound system … we believe.
As for Toney, the city put out a statement in which he praised the staff of about 100 people who reported to him.
“This decision comes after much deliberation and reflection,” said Mr. Toney. “The staff are some of the most professional and committed I have ever served with,” said the statement distributed by staff.
The city council, he purportedly said, “has an opportunity to shape a new direction for the organization with the next City Manager and can take this opportunity to coalesce around that vision.”
