City Manager Spencer Kyle introduced Zachary Fleck as the new finance director at the Oct. 10 City Council meeting.

“We’re excited to have him here and start this kind of new era here at City Hall and for the city,” Kyle said.

Fleck takes over the finance role from former City Manager Mark Winstanley, who retired in June.

Fleck serves as day-to-day finance director, overseeing all finance for the city and some of the business office staff, and reports to Kyle.

Fleck, originally from the Longview, Washington area, holds a bachelor’s degree in hotel management from Washington State University.

Fleck served with the U.S. Army National Guard while in school . He was deployed to Iraq from 2006 to 2007, where he served as a team leader for a military police corrections specialist unit.

After military service, he held positions at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center in Kansas City, Missouri and Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada before joining his uncle in Williston, North Dakota as a financial advisor.

“I realized I liked the numbers far more than I ever thought I would,” Fleck said.

He returned to business school to specialize in finance, earning an MBA from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Fleck started in finance with the Denver Department of Safety, and then joined the city’s planning and zoning agency as manager of finance and accounting. Two weeks into the job, COVID hit.

“We had to send everyone home,” Fleck said. “We went from a completely paper process to a completely electronic process in gosh, probably three to six months.”

When he saw the job posting for Seaside’s finance director, he was thrilled for the opportunity.

Raised in Kalama, Washington, along the Columbia River, Fleck grew up coming to Seaside, loving the ocean and the beach volleyball tournament.

His wife will join him in Seaside after the sale of their house in Colorado, he said. Fleck’s parents still live nearby.

Two days into the job, Fleck said he was focused on getting to know people in the community and familiarizing himself with the new systems.

“Oregon’s got a very specific set of finance laws when it comes to budgeting and posting and that type of thing. So I really need to dig in and figure that part out,” he said. “But the hardest part of any new job on behalf of the city is going out and meeting the people, knowing who you need to talk to accomplish.”