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QuickTake:
The three people being considered to run the day-to-day operations of Eugene’s government include the current city managers of Beaverton and Lake Oswego, and Eugene's own current interim city manager.
The city of Eugene named its finalists for the city manager position on Tuesday, Jan. 6.
The three candidates are Jenny Haruyama, Beaverton city manager; Martha Bennett, Lake Oswego city manager; and Matt Rodrigues, Eugene’s interim city manager and former assistant city manager.
Eugene’s city manager runs the day-to-day operations of city government, managing more than 1,500 employees and a $1.9 billion two-year budget under policy direction from the City Council, which is responsible for hiring the city manager.
Sarah Medary, who held the job for six years, retired last month. About 50 people applied to replace her as part of a national search led by recruitment firm Bob Murray & Associates.
Each of the three finalists will participate in final in-person interviews Jan. 12-14. The public can observe one round of interviews, conducted in the council chambers on Jan. 13 from 1 to 5 p.m. All other interviews during the process are private.
The council is expected to announce its decision Jan. 14.
“The City Manager is a very important position,” Council President Greg Evans said in a release. “They are crucial to implementing Council policy and understanding the community’s needs. We attracted a strong pool of candidates and next week we’ll have the opportunity to meet with these three experienced administrators.”
The salary range for Eugene city manager is $238,077 to $319,218. Medary’s annual salary in 2024 was $293,217.
Here are the basics about each candidate:
Jenny Haruyama
Current job: City manager of Beaverton, Oregon
Length of tenure: Four years
Previous roles: Before moving to Oregon, Haruyama held leadership roles in at least four small-to-mid-sized cities in California. She spent two years as city manager in Tracy (population approximately 100,136) and three years leading Scotts Valley (population 12,000). She also worked as assistant city manager for Livermore and assistant budget/finance director for Los Gatos.
Leading the city of Beaverton, Haruyama oversaw 632 full-time city hall employees including a dozen reporting directly to her, and a $500 million total budget. The Portland suburb has about 100,000 residents, compared with Eugene’s 178,000.
Beaverton is in Washington County, which has the highest median household income in the state at $104,434, compared with Lane County’s $69,311, Eugene’s $63,836 and Oregon’s $80,426.
Beaverton had a $10.7 million budget shortfall in the 2025-26 fiscal year, similar to Eugene’s $11.5 million gap. Under Haruyama’s leadership, the city bridged the gap largely by cutting staff, though most eliminated positions were already vacant.
According to her LinkedIn, Haruyama facilitated the planning and building of over 400 affordable housing units and worked to remodel Washington County’s first year-round shelter using federal and state funding.
Haruyama also led Beaverton through its four-year, voter-backed reorganization from a mayor-council to council-manager form of government. The council previously “felt they didn’t have a voice in many things,” she told Community Playmaker in 2024.
Beaverton’s council chose Haruyama for city manager in part because the city needed what the mayor described in 2021 as a “change manager,” or someone with experience with transitions and governance issues.
Haruyama received a yearly salary of $272,110 for her role as Beaverton city manager in 2024.
She has a bachelor’s degree in business from San Jose State University and a master’s degree in public administration from California State University, East Bay. Haruyama has a husband and five children.
Martha Bennett
Current job: City manager of Lake Oswego, Oregon
Length of tenure: Six years
Previous roles: Bennett served for seven years as chief operating officer of Metro, the regional government for greater Portland, and ran the Columbia River Gorge Commission, a bistate regional agency, for nearly five years. She has also held leadership roles in at least three small Oregon cities: city administrator of Ashland (population 21,000); assistant city manager of Milwaukie (21,000); and assistant to the city manager in Albany (58,000).
As Lake Oswego city manager, Bennett oversaw nine departments, about 400 full-time employees and a $225 million budget, which has been notably stable in recent years compared to other Oregon cities. Lake Oswego has about 40,000 residents.
The city falls primarily within Clackamas County, which has the second-highest median household income in the state at $100,360, compared to Lane County’s $69,311, Eugene’s $63,836 and Oregon’s $80,426.
She oversaw the second half of a 13-year legal battle over public access to Oswego Lake. Despite a March court ruling requiring the city to allow the public to use the privately owned lake, Bennett closed the lake’s one public entry point for the Fourth of July weekend — a decision she explained publicly and the city later walked back.
The Lake Oswego Review wrote in 2019 that Bennett “calls it like she sees it,” and has done so at almost every level of government. The newspaper went on to describe her as someone who “enjoys the hard work it takes to make the wheels of government bureaucracy move.”
Bennett’s 2025 salary was $213,114.
She received a bachelor’s degree in history and political science from Willamette University and a master’s degree in public policy from University of California, Berkeley. Bennett has a husband and two children.
Matt Rodrigues
Current job: Interim city manager for Eugene
Length of tenure: Less than a month
Previous roles: Before being named interim city manager, Rodrigues served as Eugene’s assistant city manager for two years, led the Public Works department for nearly five, and held various city engineering roles for more than a decade. Rodrigues previously worked as a civil engineer for a county in California, and before that, in the private sector.
In his interim role, Rodrigues holds all the powers of Eugene’s city manager except for the ability to appoint or dismiss a department head, which he can only do with council approval.
Rodrigues worked closely with Medary. He told Lookout in a December interview that he helped organize the incident command structure for Eugene’s COVID-19 Emergency Operation Center. He and co-assistant city manager Kristie Hammitt spearheaded Eugene’s Safe Sleep effort, providing sites for people experiencing homelessness to camp in vehicles and tents.
The city of Eugene’s website describes Rodrigues as a “lifelong learner” with passions for systems thinking, strategic planning and advancing sustainable practices in local government.
“[The city manager] is there to carry out the will of the council,” Rodrigues told Lookout in December. “That is ultimately your job, while making sure you’re holding the values of the city and the well-being of your employees and community members.”
As assistant city manager, he received an annual salary between $210,891 and $252,241 in 2025.
Rodrigues earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Santa Clara University.
