Palm Desert – a city chock full of unaffordable home prices for the middle class and the most boring shopping district in America – has hired a new City Manager. Lauri Aylaian takes over the job after serving as the economic development director for the city of Palm Springs – a city perhaps best known for handing out ridiculous sums of cash to businesses doomed to fail and getting raided by the FBI.
“Palm Desert has crafted an exciting new vision for the future and has an exceptional staff that embraces the vision and is anxious to implement,” Aylaian said in a written statement (via Desert Sun). “I’m honored to be chosen to play a key role in building this future.”
Aylaian takes over for John Wohlmuth who was paid nearly $300,000 to walk away from the job after city employees say he forced them to look at naked pictures of a male coworker. The city says the search for a replacement, hired from the city that is 3 towns over, was “rigorous and extensive”
Back in January, Aylaian, who began working for the city after it dispersed the grant to Hacienda, defended the city of Palm Springs for giving nearly $250,000 in grant money to the a bar / restaurant/ pool thing that no one went to – a sum that a judge recently ruled the owners of the establishment will not have to give back.
“It probably was a good decision to assist that business, because that building had sat vacant for a number of years, and it really was in a key part of town, where we were starting to see other vacancies around it,” Aylaian said.
Sure it was.
