Meet Candidate #8 for Palm Bay City Manager: Sonia A. Alves-Viveiros Focuses on Restructuring, Fiscal Accountability, and Community Trust

Palm Bay, FL – With more than a decade of experience in municipal administration, Sonia A. Alves-Viveiros, MPA, is one of eight finalists vying for the role of Palm Bay’s next City Manager. She was a top choice for Deputy Mayor Jaffe during the City Council’s March 20 meeting. Alves-Viveiros currently serves as City Manager/Business Administrator for Edison, New Jersey, a township of over 100,000 residents and more than 1,000 municipal employees.

Throughout her career, Alves-Viveiros has been known for her strategic focus on reorganization, budget responsibility, and labor relations. In Edison, she oversees daily operations, department restructuring, and more than ten union contracts, while supervising core services including police, water and sewer, stormwater drainage, recreation, and planning. She has directly managed $120 million in capital improvement projects and is credited with creating new efficiencies that reduced costs while expanding services to taxpayers.

Before joining Edison, she served as City Manager for Englewood, NJ and Maplewood, NJ, where she was instrumental in departmental modernization and human resources reforms. In both roles, she built cross-functional teams, reformed procurement practices, and worked closely with elected officials to guide budgeting and long-term planning.

Alves-Viveiros is also a Certified Qualified Government Procurement Agent (QPA) and a fluent Spanish and Portuguese speaker. She is a board treasurer of the New Jersey Municipal Managers Association, a member of ICMA, and a professor at Rutgers University, where she teaches courses on government procurement.

In her letter to Palm Bay officials, she wrote:

“A goal of mine is to engage the community with honesty, integrity and dedication. Dealing with diverse communities is something I have deep connections with. Without that group of diverse members, our communities would not be what they are.”

She emphasized her commitment to succession planning, intergovernmental shared services, 

This concludes Palm Bay Live’s “Meet the Candidates” series ahead of the March 29 public interviews. We’ll continue our coverage as the City Council prepares to make its final decision by April 17.