New Santee City Manager Wendy Kaserman has no time to nap

By Mike Allen

December 21, 2025 (Santee) -- Santee’s new city manager says she’s still getting up to speed in her new position, but there’s one item that puzzles her: her new office comes with a couch.

“I never had an office with a couch or worked somewhere where the city manager had an office with a couch,” says a laughing Wendy Kaserman, who took over the city’s top job in October. Not one to take a quick nap while on the clock, Kaserman exudes high energy, but an easygoing manner that is the farthest thing from micromanaging.

“I’m pretty approachable, open door, very empathetic. I don’t like to micromanage people. I want to give my directors the opportunity to make decisions and feel like I’m not watching over their every move,” she said about her managing style.

It’s a strategy that has paid off well in her past positions that span about two decades in city government. Kaserman, 50, most recently served as the Assistant Manager at the city of Poway so she was a bit familiar with Santee and how it functions.

She began her career as an intern for the city of Casa Grande, Arizona after getting her bachelor’s degree in political science from Arizona State University. It was at that city between Phoenix and Tucson that Kaserman said her experiences doing a variety of different jobs crystalized her decision to make public administration her career.

It was there that Kaserman said she made it a long-term goal to one day become a city manager when the right opportunity presented itself.

After stints at the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, a quasi-governmental body that’s similar to the San Diego Association of Governments or SANDAG, and at the Phoenix suburb of Queen Creek, she and her family decided to return to California.

She got a job as the assistant to the city manager for the city of San Marcos, stayed there for three years before taking a similar position at Poway in 2016.

All of the cities Kaserman has worked at have common traits, she said. They’re generally smaller suburbs that grew quickly over a short time, causing stress on the existing infrastructure. Likewise, the folks who shape policy, elected city councils, also are similar in that they tend to be business-friendly and expect staffs to “make the best use of limited resources,” or make do with less money, she said.

Poway, with about 50,000 residents, has a bit larger general fund budget of about $73 million and about 240 full time equivalent workers compared to Santee’s budget of $66 million and 120 FTEs for a city of 60,000. Both cities face the pressures from longtime residents and newcomers, who usually have different expectations about the way a city is run, she said.

Along with the increased responsibility of overseeing the entire city government, Kaserman is getting a hefty raise with an annual salary of $290,000, about $21,000 more than the last salary of former City Manager Marlene Best. Best resigned suddenly in April after nine years, providing no reason or comment for her departure.

Kaserman grew up both in Vista and San Marcos, at times riding the Morgan horses her mom raised on their 10-acre homestead. She still lives in San Marcos, just seven miles from her parents’ house.

She met her husband, Gene, on a blind double date. When the guy who was supposed to be her date didn’t show her, friend’s boyfriend found another Marine Corps member to stand in. They obviously clicked as they were married about a year later. The couple celebrated their 30th anniversary in February.

Kaserman likes to travel. She went to Kauai in August and is taking a 10-day trip to Rome during the holidays. She also loves going to Disneyland and California Adventure parks with her daughter, Abby, who is 16.

As a way of getting a better handle on her new city Kaserman has been going on guided tours by council representatives of each of the four districts and the mayor who represents the entire city.

Two key issues that jump out from her brief time on the job (she’s gone on three tours) are infrastructure needs and improving response times on ambulance calls, she said. To that end, the Council will be considering a temporary fire station in the north part of the city in January.

Over the last few years Santee has improved the quality of some of its streets and roads, but there’s still a lot of work to do, she said.

Kaserman is fully aware of the risks of working as an “at will employee” and the history of past Santee’s top managers. That isn’t going to prevent her from giving her very best in trying to make the city a better place to live and help achieve the goals set by the elected five-member Council, she said.

To that end, she says she’ll be getting out of her office to meet not only managers but the front-line staffers. Santee, she said, has a great staff and many have been on their jobs a long time.

“Having a staff that’s committed to serving the community, I think that comes across from the work they do and the compliments that we hear,” she said.

So no, Kaserman won’t be taking any mid-day siestas on that couch.