Bryan Whitemyer delivered a candid and at times deeply personal message Wednesday as the Folsom city manager told a packed room at Bayside Folsom that one of California’s most celebrated communities is entering a critical period that will require discipline, reinvestment and adaptation to preserve the quality of life residents have come to expect.
Speaking during the latest Folsom Focus luncheon hosted by Choose Folsom, Whitemyer mixed humor, budget realities, infrastructure concerns and long-term planning into an expansive address focused on the growing pressures facing a city that continues to rank among the state’s most desirable places to live.
“I view this as my mission,” Whitemyer told the audience. “My job is to protect what makes Folsom exceptional. That means managing city resources efficiently, delivering excellent service and maintaining what generations of residents have built.”
Now just over a year into the role, Whitemyer reflected on how different life feels compared to his first few months in the city, when he admitted he was still learning his surroundings after relocating from Oakdale, where he had spent more than 25 years.
“I remember last year when I came here, I had only been with the city for two or three months,” he said. “I actually struggled to find this location because I was still getting my bearings.”
That uncertainty quickly disappeared as his family settled into the community and embraced the lifestyle Folsom is known for.
“We absolutely made the right choice,” Whitemyer said. “It has been an honor and privilege to be here with the City of Folsom.”
He described coming home many evenings only to find his family already out enjoying the city’s lakes, trails and parks.“I was soon coming home to no one at home because they were enjoying the lakes, they were enjoying the trails, they were enjoying time with friends,” he said.
The city manager drew laughter while describing the family’s lengthy search for a permanent home after initially renting in Folsom.
“I thought I had the entire city of Folsom to choose from,” he said. “But since my wife and sons made friends in one neighborhood, I was informed we had about a 10-block area that we could choose from.”
After nearly a year of searching, the family finally purchased a home earlier this year.“We’re all in,” he said. “We love this place.”
That appreciation for the community became a recurring theme throughout the luncheon as Whitemyer praised earlier generations of city leaders for preserving open space, protecting trails and balancing growth with access to nature.
“The foresight to keep the open space, the trails, to allow access to nature while building really, really nice communities is some of the things that attracts people here,” he said. “And as I found, it makes people not want to leave.”
But while much of the city’s beauty remains visible, Whitemyer warned that another reality is quietly emerging underneath it.
Using one of the speech’s strongest analogies, he compared Folsom to a beloved family home that still looks beautiful from the outside but increasingly requires expensive upkeep behind the scenes.
“Folsom is like a beloved family home that has been lived in and cared for over decades,” he said. “The community remains beautiful, vibrant and highly desirable with parks, neighborhoods, trails and amenities residents deeply value. But many of the systems and infrastructure that support that quality of life are aging at the same time.”
He said the challenge facing city leaders today is not whether Folsom remains strong — it clearly does — but whether the city can sustainably maintain the amenities and services residents expect.
“Like an older home, the character and history are part of what makes Folsom special,” he said. “But preserving it requires ongoing maintenance, reinvestment and care.”
Throughout the presentation, Whitemyer stressed that many of the city’s pressures are largely invisible to residents during their day-to-day lives.
“What residents often do not see are the long-term infrastructure pressures developing behind the scenes as roads, parks, trails, facilities and public safety systems built over the last several decades age at the same time,” he said.
Even his own perspective on the city has changed over the last year.
“My family thinks I have a disease,” he joked. “Because I walk and I can’t see the beauty anymore. I just see the cracks in the sidewalk. I see the crack in the road. I see the park structure that needs repair.”
Despite the seriousness of the issues, Whitemyer stressed repeatedly that his goal was not to create pessimism, but focus.
“The goal was not to create a sense of despair,” he said. “The goal was to create a sense of focus on where do we want to go and what do we want to accomplish.”
That focus, he explained, has already begun reshaping how the city approaches budgeting and long-term planning.
Just one year ago, Folsom faced a $3 million operating deficit. Whitemyer credited city staff, the executive management team and the city council for helping stabilize the budget through difficult decisions and tighter spending controls.
“With a lot of hard work, sacrifice and looking closely at things, we were able to close that deficit,” he said.
The city’s draft budget presented Tuesday night now projects expenditures slightly below revenues, a milestone Whitemyer described as essential if the city hopes to rebuild reserves and prepare for future infrastructure replacement costs.
“A balanced operating budget does not erase long-term capital needs,” he said. “If we spend less than we bring in, then we can take those funds that we did not spend and put them into capital replacement accounts.”
Those future obligations are extensive.
Whitemyer noted that more than 40 city parks are now over 30 years old, while roads, trails and public facilities across nearly every part of the city continue aging simultaneously.
At one point, he described Folsom’s roadway system as perhaps the city’s most expensive public asset.
“If you look at a map of Folsom and hit street view, it basically all turns blue,” he said. “It appears to me it’s the most expensive asset we have.”
He then walked the audience through an extensive list of roadway preservation projects already underway or planned throughout the city, including work near Plaza Drive and WinCo, Park Shore Drive, Coolidge Drive and several Empire Ranch neighborhoods.
Whitemyer spoke at length about preventative maintenance and praised city street crews for aggressively focusing on crack sealing before roads deteriorate to the point of requiring far more expensive reconstruction.
“We’ve instructed them, every day that it’s sunny, we want you out in the field crack sealing our roads,” he said. “Because it’s the lowest-cost maintenance for our streets.”
The city manager acknowledged the increase in roadwork may frustrate some residents, but argued the alternative is allowing infrastructure to fall even further behind.
“It would please me someday if someone came up to me and said, ‘I’m frustrated, there’s too much road construction in town,’” he said to laughter from the audience. “Because that means we’re making progress.”
Roads were only part of the broader infrastructure discussion.
Whitemyer highlighted more than $1 million allocated for the Folsom Library roof and HVAC replacement, nearly $1 million proposed for trail maintenance and ongoing investments into aging parks and city facilities.
He also praised the rebuilding of Castle Park, calling it one of the strongest examples of community pride and volunteerism he has witnessed since arriving in Folsom.
“If you’ve driven by there recently, it’s taking shape and it’s going to be something spectacular for generations to come,” he said.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the rebuilt Castle Park is scheduled for June 30, he added.
Public safety infrastructure also emerged as a major focus of the luncheon.
Whitemyer addressed the browned-out fire engine currently out of service because of budget limitations, acknowledging the issue has generated concern throughout the community.
“It’s not something we’re happy about,” he said. “But we’re desperately looking at ways to get that fire engine back into service.”
He pointed to ongoing negotiations involving a single-role paramedic program that could eventually reduce costs and help restore staffing for the engine. “That’s something that’s really important to me,” he said. “And I know it’s important to the community.”
The city manager also described increasing concerns involving aging public facilities, specifically referencing recent water intrusion problems at Fire Station 36 and City Hall.
“For the safety of our employees, we had to close the station so we could remediate the water damage,” he said.
City Hall itself has experienced similar issues.
“We recently had to rip out walls because we have moisture intrusion,” Whitemyer said.
Those incidents, he explained, reinforced the importance of preventative maintenance before buildings deteriorate further.
To better protect those facilities, the proposed budget now includes proactive maintenance funding for older fire stations and City Hall.
“This isn’t for aesthetics,” he said. “It’s mainly just from a practical standpoint of how do we protect an aging building from the elements.”
Meanwhile, police infrastructure is also becoming increasingly expensive to maintain.
“How much is a radio?” Whitemyer asked rhetorically. “A lot.”
Replacing the city’s aging police radio system is projected to cost nearly $2 million, though Folsom is currently pursuing grant funding assistance. The city’s dispatch center also requires modernization as equipment continues aging.
“Our dispatch center is getting older,” he said. “Their equipment is getting older and we need to upgrade that vital location.”
Whitemyer said the city is increasingly exploring regional partnerships as a way to lower long-term costs and improve efficiency, including recent discussions with Sacramento Fire involving fleet maintenance and training collaboration.
“We need to actually look outside ourselves,” he said. “How do we partner with individual partners to lower costs while at the same time lowering their costs?”
As the presentation shifted toward the future, Whitemyer used the rise and fall of BlackBerry phones as an analogy for why cities cannot afford to become complacent.
“Do you remember BlackBerry?” he asked the audience. “I thought that was the greatest thing ever.”
But technology evolved, consumer expectations changed and BlackBerry failed to adapt — a lesson he said also applies to cities trying to maintain long-term success.
“Let’s not be Blackberry,” Whitemyer said to laughter from the audience. “We want to adapt. We want to be able to respond to the needs of the community.”
Later in the luncheon, he returned again to the importance of collaboration and leadership, praising the city council for maintaining professionalism even during disagreements.
“One of the things I like most about our city council is even when they disagree, they treat each other with respect,” he said.
As the presentation concluded, Whitemyer returned to the message that echoed throughout the afternoon — stewardship.
“Folsom has built something special,” he said. “And I know that Folsom is worth saving. Worth maintaining. Worth protecting for future generations.”
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