Agenda - Council - 08/26/2008 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

Memo To: Kurt Ulrich, City Administrator From: Amber G. Miller, Community Development Director CC: Givonna Reed Kone, Human Resources Manager Date: 8/21/2008 Re: Request to fill Vacant Associate Planner Position The Community Development Department serves a variety of functions and as such, the staff contained within the department currently fulfills a wide range of roles. I am formally requesting to fill the vacant associate planner position in order that the Department can deliver services consistent with expectations. 1. Is the position essential? Under the typically accepted definition of essential, the planning position would not be considered an essential position. These positions tend to fall under police, fire or public works department and deal directly with public safely. However, planning is an essential service to the day to day operations in our community in that it directly affects the City's financial activities through review of a multitude of permits, conditional uses, variances and other requests from businesses and residences. Any reduction in staff will have a direct impact on services and on the turnaround time for reviews. 2. Is the position critical? Currently the planning side of the Community Development department is staffed as follows: Community Development Director, Assistant Community Development Director/HRA Executive Director (dual role), Associate Planner, Environmental Coordinator, Economic Development Coordinator, and Department Secretary. · Explain how this position is key to achieving the strategic goals identified by the City Council. In reviewing the strategic goals identified by Council, the majority are planning and community development related (see attached). Updating the Comprehensive plan and working with Ramsey3 are both extremely time consuming processes, as both have intensive public participation. Recent changes to the scope of the comprehensive plan to have the community develop land use scenarios utilizing a charrette type process will add additional workload and considerable time to the planning process. The completion of the comprehensive plan is really just a beginning because the implementation of the plan will be an ongoing project. There will need to be several code revisions in order to implement the plan and this position will be critical not only to the comprehensive plan update but also the code revisions. As the processes change to be more inclusive of the public, it also involves more staff time; this position will also be instrumental in assisting with public participation in the process. We are heavily involved in the Town Center project and expect that to continue to take priority as we work on marketing efforts with the EDA and work with LSA to develop an analysis as directed .-114-