Moore named Riverside’s temporary city manager

Riverside Fire Chief Michael Moore has been named the city’s interim city manager.

Moore replaces Al Zelinka, who left in earlier this month to become Huntington Beach’s city manager, according to a statement on the city’s website.

LaWayne Hearn, the fire department’s deputy chief of operations, has been named interim fire chief.

Moore, who has been Riverside’s fire chief since 2014, took over as the city’s chief executive  upon Zelinka’s departure. He will remain in that position while the city conducts a nationwide search to find Zelinka’s replacement.

Before that he was a fire division chief with the Orange County Fire Authority, the agency where he began his career in 1982 as a firefighter/paramedic.

During his time as fire chief, Moore persuaded the city council to replace most of the department’s front-line equipment and transferred some older apparatus into reserve status, according to the statement.