Edmonds Finance Director Shawn Hunstock surprises city, announces resignation
Shawn Hunstock
The City of Edmonds announced Monday that Mayor Dave Earling has accepted the resignation of Finance Director Shawn Hunstock, who cited a desire for better life-work balance and more time with his middle school-aged daughter.
“This comes as a bit of a surprise as we have just completed a very effective budget conversation with the City Council, adopting a 2013 budget without too much fanfare,” Earling said.
According to the city’s press release, Hunstock lives a one-and-a-half-hour drive from his daughter, and “has opted to choose family first, and will be leaving the City to move closer,” effective Feb. 20. Hunstock is relatively new to Edmonds, beginning work as the City’s Finance Director in October 2011.
Earling noted some of Hunstock’s key accomplishments, including his help in facilitating the adoption of a balanced 2013 budget; implementing significant changes to the City’s financial statements, including reporting and drafting new City reserve policies; and overseeing an audit from the State Auditor’s Office that resulted in no findings or major recommendations.
“It has been a pleasure to serve the residents of Edmonds, the Mayor and the City Council the last year and a half,” Hunstock said. “We have accomplished a lot during that time and I am certain the Mayor and Council will continue the hard work we’ve started in addressing the City’s long-term financial challenges. The City is on strong financial ground now, and I encourage the Council and Mayor to continue working on the Budgeting by Priorities process to insure City resources are allocated in a manner consistent with the expressed priorities of the community as outlined in the City’s Strategic Action Plan.”
Earling said he intends to hire an interim finance director until the city can complete an executive recruitment process for a permanent replacement.
Shawn is a gigantic loss for our city!!
Shawn,
Your skills in budgeting, responsiveness to questions, overall helpful approach to solving problems and sense of humor will be missed. I wish you much success and happiness!!
Thanks Stephen. It was a very difficult decision to make. I originally thought my daughter would come to this area, but unfortunately that didn’t work out. I love the community here, and love working for the Mayor and Council. We have an outstanding management team here at the City, and I’m sure the Mayor and Directors will continue the hard work and accomplishments we’ve made over the last year and a half that I’ve been at the City. And of course none of those accomplishments would have been possible without the support of the City Council. It has been my honor to serve the citizens of Edmonds, the Mayor and the City Council during my brief tenure here at the City.
Shawn, as a citizen I want to thank you for listening and working effectively and efficiently with the Finance Committee. Your experience and policy examples helped us make transparent and citizen friendly reports. Your patience and kindness to citizens during municipality explanations is something this City has not seen in a long while. You were/are a wonderful trustworthy person and your contributions were exlemplerary.
As a Council Member – thank you for your respect and professionalism. It has been a pleasure working side by side with you. As evident by this last year, you are a selfless individual and I know many have learned from you.
Gabby is a smart and lucky daughter, but you are also a lucky dad too. She is wiser than her age. You are both diamonds in the rough and I wish you the best! Happy Trails!
Thanks Diane! I appreciate your kind words, and the support you and the rest of Council have given me.
Thank you too Ron. I’ve appreciated your perspective, opinion and historical knowledge of the City during my time here.
Shawn has done a wonderful job for the city to help restore civil discussions about our finances. I have worked with him on a number of projects and he has always been very helpful to help gather complicated information in order to help solve problems.
He has urged the city to move forward as quickly as possible with Budgeting By Priorities. With his indepth knowledge of our finances and our future challanges his insite could be VERY valuable for helping us sort out our priorities. I would urge the city to create a citizen and council team to do and “EXIT” interview with Shawn. Gathering information that he knows and his advice of financial issues would go a long way to building some firm information as we head into BBP. This method would go a long way to providing the citizens with a clean understanding our our budget issues and the financial issues for the future.
We do not have a sustainable budget going forward and we need to get that sorted out from a public viewpoint as quickly as possible.
I know Shawn and his caring concerns to be a bigger part of his daughters life and nothing, yes nothing is more important. Thank you Shawn for all your good work and your friendship. Leave some bread crumb trails so we can find out all that you know about our budget and future challanges.
It was rare day when we found a person who not only put the numbers together,
but had the forsight, creativity and vision to remake our financial system.
We are so much better off today. Thanks Shawn and good luck.
Oh, if you ever need a reference print this entire page
Those of us who are participating in the consideration of a Metropolitan Park District were very fortunate and pleased to have Shawn’s input and advise during the discussions. He will be sorely missed . Hopefully, it’s not too late for us to yet benefit by his participation.