Jerry Miller, a venerable city official of 30 years who oversaw Long Beach’s response to financial turmoil, Naval exodus and expansion of its port and the 710 Freeway, died on Saturday at his home in East Long Beach. He was 75.
“The City of Long Beach mourns the passing of former City Manager Jerry Miller over the weekend,” Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson wrote in a social media post on Tuesday. “His more than 30 years with the City of Long Beach had a lasting impact that will be remembered for many years to come. I offer my sincere condolences to Mrs. Gail Miller, the Miller family, and friends.”
Details weren’t immediately available on what caused Miller’s death, which his friends and former colleagues confirmed to the Post.
Born in 1949, Miller moved with his family to Long Beach from San Pedro in 1961. He served in the Army during the Vietnam War and graduated from Cal State Long Beach with degrees in community-clinical psychology and philosophy.
His tenure spanned four mayors and was, for the most part, split between the city’s Economic Development Bureau and the city manager’s office. He was first hired as a trainee to the city’s Economic Development Bureau’s job training program in 1978. In 1987, he became an officer, and then the bureau’s manager a year later. In June 1998, he was tapped for a deputy city manager role. Miller would serve as Deputy, Assistant and Acting City Manager before taking the top role officially in 2002.
Pat West, who would eventually succeed Miller as city manager in 2007, said it was Miller’s role in the Bureau where he earned acclaim as “pointman” in handling the transition of the city’s shuttering Naval station — closed under the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act — into an expanding Port of Long Beach.
“What attracted me to leave Paramount to come to Long Beach was the opportunity to work for Jerry, while he was city manager,” West said.
Miller was sworn into the city’s top non-elected post in 2003 after emerging from a field of 31 candidates across 11 states. And the best part: Miller never technically applied for the job.
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At 53-years-old, he already had 25 years of experience and little intention of ‘running the show.’ His predecessor, according to archived reports from the Long Beach Press-Telegram, had been unanimously fired and the city was left headless, staring down a $90 million budget deficit — the largest in Long Beach history.
“That’s not the kind of thing you dream about,” Miller said of the situation, days before accepting the full-time job.
But Miller agreed to enter the candidate pool and participated in the final round of interviews by the mayor and council.
His appointment came in May 2003. According to then-City Mayor Beverly O’Neil, of all 31 candidates who applied for the post, the council felt that Miller understood the city’s challenges, and its potential, better than anyone.
“Long Beach is so fortunate to have on our own staff someone with outstanding qualifications, top administrative skills and extensive knowledge of our community to be the next city manager,” O’Neill said upon Miller’s hiring in 2003. “For the last seven months, we have had the opportunity to witness Mr. Miller’s outstanding capabilities as the city was — and continues to be — faced with some extremely complex challenges.”
It’s hard to be popular as city manager: they are generally the smartest one in the room but also understated by design, forced to curb their opinions and become the defacto punching bag for the public and locally elected.
In an era beset by financial tumult, Miller — deliberate, scholarly, mild to the point of shyness — struck a responsive chord with those who worked around him.
“He never yelled, I never saw him get upset, he just handled himself in a very professional, quiet way,” said Randy Gordon, a former president of the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce.
Jim Hankla, a former city manager who hired Miller to his office in 1998, said Miller was a “remarkable man,” and that he “never met anyone” who didn’t like him.
“Without Jerry Miller, we probably wouldn’t have the Port of Long Beach today,” Hankla said. “At Least not looking like it does. We were able to parlay the Naval base leaving, which was a huge problem, into the new Port of Long Beach, which is a huge benefit.”
Amid difficult negotiations with the Long Beach Police Officers Association, former president Steve James refused to call Miller anything but “sir” or “Mr. Miller,” Gordon said. “I think even the unions that he had tough times negotiating with had a lot of respect for him, even when they disagreed.”
“He was just that kind of guy, that you could disagree with, but you had to respect him,” Gordon said. “It was hard not to respect him.”
From the window of his 13th-floor office, Miller spent his four years in the role as overseer of the progress of some of Downtown’s largest developments, from The Pike at Rainbow Harbor complex and Camden’s Park at Harbour View residential project to the six-block Promenade thoroughfare Downtown. Over the years, the city’s airport grew and crime plummeted. The 710 Freeway expanded, the shipyard dissolved, and the once-military town turned into a tourist destination, driven by aggressive shoreline development, rising retail sales and plummeting crime rates.
Miller retired from the post in July 2007. He opened a local consulting firm and became involved in civic leadership beyond the ken of local government, including the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, Port of Los Angeles High School and chair of Rancho Los Alamitos.
In the latter role, he organized the Cottonwood Awards Luncheon, a signature event for Rancho Los Alamitos that in 2023 honored Miller for his life’s work.
News of his death this week shocked leadership citywide. “It’s like a hole that stays in your stomach that doesn’t go away,” Gordon said.
“He is probably, in my opinion, one of the greatest community leaders that this city’s ever had,” Gordon added.
In an internal email to staff, Modica wrote of Miller as someone who “looked for common sense solutions, and took pride in excellent customer service and amazing City services to residents.”
“Jerry was fiercely loyal to those he worked with, being a mentor to so many and encouraging them to be the best versions of themselves, all while always eschewing the limelight and passing compliments off to others,” Modica wrote.
Carl Kemp, a friend and mentee of Miller, said the news left him stunned.
“Jerry was one of the most important people I’ve ever known,” he wrote.
While it is ultimately up to Miller’s family, Gordon was certain that any celebration of life would be the largest Long Beach has seen in years, since former California Governor George Deukmejian died in 2018.
“If the family wants that, we’re going to have a lot of people there,” Gordon said. “He was truly beloved.”