At the November Meet and Greet, City Manager Lori Ann Farrell Harrison presented Deputy City Clerk David Nguyen with the City Manager Leadership Award.

“I am happy to present David with this much-deserved award,” Farrell Harrison said. “He is much appreciated as a behind the scenes employee who quietly does his work, processing approximately 1,000 public records request a year. He is always assisting other departments when needed and is dedicated to his job. We are grateful to have him on the Costa Mesa team.”

Nguyen handles the large number of public record requests the city receives and certifying compliance with the Public Records Act.  While he works diligently behind the scenes, he is very instrumental in ensuring Costa Mesa is at the forefront of transparency by providing documentation to the public.

During COVID, he assisted building and planning and completed requests for 215 building permits and plans. He also assists code enforcement by providing documentation to the officers for their cases.  He has uploaded approximately 6,100 pages of historical plans into Laserfiche for Code Enforcement to access in support of their cases.

Nguyen is the lead on providing responses to subpoenas and litigation. He has reviewed approximately 4,000 emails in response to subpoenas and litigation requests. He has assisted Costa Mesa attorneys by providing documents in support of our cases.

Nguyen was born and raised in Costa Mesa, attended Costa Mesa High School.  His father worked for the City for 20 years in the print shop. Nguyen got his first job in the City in 2004 in the Parks and Recreation Department.  For 12 years he did just about everything including youth sports, after school programs, and Camp Costa Mesa. In 2016 he came over to City Hall as a concierge. Since then he has continued to advance first as an Administrative Secretary, and now Deputy City Clerk.