John V. Guthrie

Having entered municipal finance at a senior level the year after Proposition 13 passed, John is no stranger to reduction management and to the challenges that local agencies face, and has proven himself as an adept problem solver.

After graduating with honors, John began his professional career working as a staff auditor and was subsequently promoted to senior and supervising auditor positions with both a large national and large regional CPA firm. As a CPA, his six years in public accounting included extensive government auditing and consulting work.

John left public accounting to become the District Controller for the Peralta Community College District and was subsequently promoted to Director of Fiscal Services where he directed general accounting, budgeting, payroll and student census. While at the district, he worked on two systems conversions and a budget and expenditure reporting system for all Colleges to use with a district-wide rollup feature.

In 1979, after the passage of Proposition 13, John began his municipal career at the age of 33, becoming the youngest finance director of a major California city, the City of Oakland, where he remained for 4 years. John subsequently became the Director of Fiscal Services for the City and County of San Francisco (for nearly 10 years), Finance Director for the City of San Jose (8 ½ years), and for the last 10 years has been the CFO of the County of Santa Clara. At all agencies, John has been responsible for all aspects of financial operations and debt administration (having worked on over 83 debt issues) and directed treasury operations. All agencies have received awards for financial reporting for every year John was director. In addition, while at Oakland, John directed the data processing department and served as CFO for the redevelopment agency. Additional duties involved revenue collections and a mandatory garbage program.

At San Francisco, John also directed all city-wide financial systems development and coordinated an extensive debt program. Accomplishments included: three successful major system implementation projects; the immediate restoration of timely financial reporting after a much publicized botched system conversion prior to his arrival that nearly cost the city its bond rating; and the development of a fund balance projection system.

At San Jose, John was responsible for the successful creation of a billing/customer service system for the Recycle Plus Program, the successful conversions to a PeopleSoft HR-Payroll system and a collection management system. Also while at San Jose, John completed course requirements and received an MBA in Information Systems.

At Santa Clara County, John served as both an agency head for an agency of 4 departments and 330 employees, and as a Deputy County Executive. Accomplishments at Santa Clara include: a flawless county-wide conversion to a first tier ERP system (SAP); the successful reconstruction and resolution for previous misallocations of property taxes to all local agencies prior to his arrival; and for the conversion to a decentralized financial control model. Among John’s proudest accomplishments was the gradual but dramatic change in the organizational culture of the finance agency. This included Vision Teams, a Mentoring Program, a Toastmasters Program and, most recently, the development of in-house Emotional Intelligence and Ethics Classes for all agency employees which John personally taught.