The city of Davis has a new feature on their Community Development Department website, where it gives an update on the status of current projects. In it is a description and update of all current projects. While this may be an interesting tool for the public and those curious about what projects are underway or those curious about a specific project, there are some interesting tidbits to be gleaned from a more critical perspective.
The first astonishing fact is that for the city, we have 14 different planners working on these projects. That is an astonishing number. Think about how few projects and developments that we approve and somehow we need 14 different planners.
We have focused a lot of energy, and rightly so on the total compensation for Firefighters. But when we exclude the salaries of the office assistants and the salaries of the building inspectors, which perform a separate function, suddenly the planning department becomes second behind the fire department in total compensation per employee. In 2008, the average Fire Department employee took home $142,000 in total compensation compared with around $115,000 for planners.
Given the state of the housing market and the voters strong vote against Measure P, maybe it is time to look into whether that $1.6 million in total compensation to 14 planners is the best use of our money. Imagine if we could figure out a way to save half a million just by streamlining the planning department?
But we’re not there just yet, there are a lot of questions that still need to be asked.
First, why does the city have 14 planners working on various projects? This seems to be a crucial question. But to answer it we of course need to know what these various projects listed on the city’s website entail.
Second, are all of these project necessary? Can we account for each of these projects and determine whether we are spending our limited resources in the best way? Many of these projects after all were approved at a different time, when the city was not facing cutbacks in services and looking for ways to save money.
Third, what additional costs to the city are borne through this process? We know that personnel costs are roughly 70% of the total costs, but there are other costs associated with the planning process and some of these costs result in fees and reimbursements back to the city. So we would need to figure out the net impact.
Fourth, how can we cut back on costs? It would be easy to say we cut four of the planners, but perhaps that is not feasible. We need to get a real assessment for how much work they do and how essential that work is to the functioning of the city. In reality, we really need to determine if the work is essential, that needs to be the standard for expending public resources.
It is interesting to note that the city’s current projects lists just over 90 current projects. It includes the status of the project, but what it does not include is the cost of the project. That would be interesting to note. Obviously not all the monies involved are general fund monies. We also have a Redevelopment Agency with separate funding. There are also block grants that are awarded from separate funds as well. But it would be interesting to note how much we are spending from the general fund on this and how many of these projects actually break even from a fiscal standpoint.
Another question, how much money has the consideration of Covell Village again cost us?
The bottom line here is that the reality is that there will not be a large number of projects that will be approved in the coming years. We have already approved several infill projects. The public has voted against the only two peripheral projects and given the housing market, it is reasonable to expect that the voters will probably not approve a new Measure J project within five years and even ten years.
So given the city’s precarious fiscal condition, should we not be looking closer at the costs to the planning department? And isn’t 14 different planners entirely too many given that we are city that does not develop many new projects?
These are all questions that bear scrutiny in the coming months.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
The City of Davis planning department just wastes money. They haven’t contributed anything ever to benefit the Davis residents. This is a function that should be contracted-out. All the EIR work is contracted to consulting firms because the City planning staff is not qualified to do the work.
When I contacted the City staff about federal money for the City, they didn’t find any and referred me to try to find federal funds for working on reservations for indigenous people in the United States. Yet, there is a full time staff person assigned to working on finding grants and other income for the City.
I think that the City planning staff is useless and should be dismissed. Then we could have sufficient funds to pay the fire and police employees. The public safety people have actual skills and job functions that benefit the City residents.
Why not post individual salaries? It’s public information. We’re paying them–don’t we have a right to know how much? If they were state workers, we could go to Sacbee.com and click on a link detailing their salaries (but not their benefits.) Don’t be a wuss! If the Bee can do it for the state, you can do it for the city.
Thank you DPD for looking into this. I have felt this was an area needing scrutiny for a long time. No one wants to see jobs list but on the other hand when the work diminishes ……
It seems the only solution the city staff has is cut services. It would appear there are other avenues to explore but I doubt the city manager will or the CC majority will push.
Again the issue is finding good candidate(s) to run.
….furlough days are the obvious first immediate step while a more in-depth analysis of Planning Department staffing needs is carried out.
I agree with davisite2’s comment, here.
David, do you recall in all of the Tier 1, Tier 2, etc. proposed cuts, were any for letting people go in Community Development?
This is a side point, but a number of workers for the city have told me they think the most waste in labor costs that they see directly is at the department head level. For example, since Parks and Community Services were separated, we have a Director of Parks & General Services and a Community Services Director. Each of those positions comes with an additional Assistant to the Director. The four positions together in total comp in 2009 is about $625,000 (plus other non-comp costs to the city). If Parks and CS were recombined, we could save half of that money. (I should add that I don’t think we ought to fire any of these people. However, I would favor some department consolidation and then through attrition the end of some of these upper-end positions.)
Rich
I know I will be accused of being callous, but why is everyone so protective of city jobs when the private sector lays off employees when the economy gets tight and/or the work load decreases?
It seems to be a double standard to me.
Fair point, SODA. My own view in general is that it is more equitable to spread the pain around than to lay it all on a few people. If everyone in a group has a furlough (until the demand for their work picks up), then no one individual has to lose everything. (This was my same stance on the teacher cuts — better to keep all the teachers at a small pay cut than keep most of the teachers at the same salary and fire the rest.)
The problem with not being serious about the changes we need to make now is that in a few short years we will have no choice but to fire a lot of people to cover our expenses (for retiree medical). I recall Don Saylor last week talking about why he didn’t want a greater reduction in the cafeteria cash-out provision in the fire contract, because “people have mortgages to pay.” Yet what about the City of Davis employees who won’t lose just a benefit, but will lose 100% of their income when they are laid off? Those people have rent or mortgages to pay, too.
The problem I see with furloughs is that ithey are temporary, more like a bandaid. structural issues and inequities are avoided and when the crisis ends it is business as usual. Agree?
Yes, furloughs are a band-aid. In this instance, they only deal with the immediate problem that we have (perhaps) too many people in the development department at a time when we have very little development taking place. Yet presumably at some point down the road we will either have more projects which need staff time or through attrition the staff will naturally shrink down to the number we need full-time.
However, just because you address a short-run problem (caused at least in part by the current economic crisis) does not mean that you cannot also try to resolve the long-run issues. Our long-term problem is not having too many planners. It is cost of the wages and benefits and retirement packages being greater than the revenues we have to cover them. That can be solved by 1) driving harder bargains with employee labor contracts; 2) perhaps reducing the number of employees, including top-level staff, that we don’t need in the long-run; and 3) trying to increase revenues.
Are City planners required to write up reports detailing what they have accomplished in the past year (probably fiscal year)? If not they should be. It would be intreesting to see what we get for over a million dollars. I am sure Davis could do well with half the staf it currently has. What is the average planning staff size for a City like Davis–our staff seems very top heavy.
T0 the expression,” If you want something done, get someone who is busy to do it”, I would add,” something done WELL!”. It seems like the less real work that the Planning Department has to do, the more SNAFUS we have seen coming out of their department.
I’m confused . . .
Wasn’t the reason given for not moving forward with the Senior Housing Committee that “there wasn’t enough available Staff resources to support the Council’s directive.” This has all the appearances of a Yul Brynner moment.
Given what has been posted on the blog and in the Davis Enterprise over the last few weeks and long term, the obvious problem is the Director of the Community Development Department, Katherine Hess.
Hess is being paid $166,000 (including salary, health benefits and retirement costs) to essential work against the citizens of Davis who are paying her VERY HIGH salary!!!
The long list posted of issues posted recently that Hess has not resolved or screwed up is astonishing. In addition Hess consistently advocates for the wishes of the developers and not for the citizens. I am blown away by her incompetence and especially by her counter-logic MEGA-salary. If she were just incompetent, that would be one issue, but the reality is that she is incompetent AND works against the citizens and taxpayers of Davis!
Given the list posted on the Vanguard of just some of Hess’ screw-ups recently I am shocked that we are paying a MEGA-salary for a MEGA-screw-up City Director of Community Development. I agree with the following ending comment from this posting on the Vanguard article pointing out Hess’ responsibility for the 37 cellular towers being placed all over town without notifying the public and often on private property.
“We clearly need new Planning Department leadership with a Director of Community Development who is will to work with the citizens and in their best interests rather than the developers and special interests. It is time to fire Hess before she does any more damage to our community.”
How and why has all of this been tolerated so long? Davis’ planning and the management of our community planning will continue to deteriorate as long as we have Hess who is incompetent and clearly has a lack of integrity. Davis’ “condition” in terms of planning and fiscally can not improve until we get new and competent Director of our Planning Department. Hess clearly has infuriated many neighborhoods in her arrogant disregard of their concerns of many recent planning issues. The most recent is the cell tower debacle For Hess to allow 37 cellular towers to go where ever they want in Davis including 41 foot tall towers on private property is inexcusable.
We need to fight for new planning leadership with integrity and someone who will support our community values and our wishes to protect the future of Davis. The starting point for protecting Davis future, is firing Catherine Hess.
Bob Wolcott and Danielle Foster are so good they are equal to two people.
Not all of the people on the list are planners. There are 92 projects on the list and, in just looking at the spreadsheet you posted along with checking the City of Davis website for job titles of the people listed, these are handled by the Community Development Director with her staff of 2 principal planners, 4 planners, 1 assistant planner and a planning technician.
In addition, there are other city staff who assist where needed – a city engineer, an administrative analyst, the Housing and Community Services Superintendent, the Economic Development coordinator, and even the Assistant City Manager.
I believe that the staff have experienced furloughs, a freeze on hiring, loss of funds to hire interns, etc., so the workload has increased for all community development employees.
I believe that you were lazy in doing your research for this story and, frankly, irresponsible. Shame on those who accepted David’s analysis without question and jumped on board in condemning the city’s staff.
The City’s staff is wasting the City’s taxpayers money. Shame on you for wasting our money doing nothing for the residents.