Mr. Schimmel, whose budget will be locked in for two years after his departure, is one of four members of a state advisory board that will monitor financial decisions made in Pontiac until the transition is complete.

“I just want to make sure my policies don’t go down the drain,” he said, adding that the handoff would take at least a couple of years. State officials will determine when the transition is over.

Though far smaller than Detroit, just 20 miles to the southeast, Pontiac followed a similar descent into fiscal disarray. Home of General Motors’ namesake brand, the city and its treasury were crippled by the downturn of the auto industry. It has lost more than one-quarter of its taxpayers over the past four decades; its population today is roughly 60,000.

Residents have mixed reactions to the managers. Some deride an early decision to sell the Silverdome football stadium, where the Detroit Lions used to play, for about $20 million less than what it had once been valued. But many say the police force, now run by the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department, has improved drastically under the new leadership. Signs of new business investments downtown are attributed to renewed confidence in the city’s fiscal health.

Most of the privatization deals in Pontiac were brokered by Mr. Schimmel, 76, who was appointed in September 2011 to be the city’s third and final emergency manager. Years earlier, he had balanced the books in two other Michigan cities — Ecorse in 1986 and Hamtramck in 2000 — but both places were eventually placed back under state control after financial problems resurfaced. Ecorse started its most recent transition to local control in April.

“Nobody was thinking about after,” Mr. Schimmel said, blaming elected leaders in those cities for going “back to their old ways” of spending when he left. Now, with lawsuits pending against some of his decisions in Pontiac, Mr. Schimmel said he was determined to ensure that did not happen again.