The newly appointed city manager isn’t wasting any time establishing his priorities. In the first agenda of his administration, there are five consent calendar items and two public hearing items. One of the public hearing items is to restructure the Human Resources Division and make it a separate city department.
In the process, the city manager will be asking the council to approve a new assistant city manager to direct this new department at a starting salary of $128,000 per year plus benefits following a council request from Councilman Victor Vega on Dec. 7. I haven’t seen a council member’s request answered this quickly in years.
Councilwoman Gilda Cordova pointed out that, after reviewing a recording of the Dec. 7 council meeting, at no time did Councilman Vega request that the Human Resources Department be reorganized. Even though this item was returned in six weeks, she also pointed out that Councilman Dirk Starbuck’s request for a report on the enterprise funds several months ago still hasn’t been provided, and her request for a review of the Lompoc municipal code is more than a year old and still no report has been provided.
With all the very important items awaiting council action, it seems odd that the highest priority on the new city manager’s list would be to add an executive level position to the organization chart. The future agenda list for February meetings is sparse: Only a redistricting decision—one that has already been completed by almost every other agency in the county—and some very minor administrative matters are on the list published on the city website.
But on to the issue at hand. The city manager explains the need to restructure Human Resources like this: “Originally, the goal for cost savings for the Human Resources Division was to use outside attorney consulting services to resolve labor disputes. However, over time, that morphed into a hybrid system, with current Human Resources staff resolving the majority of grievances and labor negotiations, while using consulting services only when necessary. This has resulted in a large cost savings by utilizing existing staff and has increased morale as issues are resolved quickly and efficiently.”
So, he admits that the current way of doing business saves money and is working just fine, but he wants to add an executive position anyway. If this justification confuses you, I am not surprised; that’s how government works—there is never too much.
To fund this new position, the staff report explains that the previous city manager didn’t spend all the allotted funds for “city administration.”
If they have that kind of general fund money lying around, why doesn’t the council fund the fire inspector position that fire chiefs have been requesting for the last decade? This would have far more value to the community at large than a new executive position at City Hall to manage a department that’s already functioning efficiently.
In addition to the delinquent items Councilwoman Cordova pointed out, there are many other issues that should be discussed.
One would be for the council to prioritize the capital improvement plan; that way as future budgets are approved or grants received, the city could fund projects starting at the top until they run out of cash. But the capital improvement plan hasn’t been a living document; it’s only a random wish list of projects, some critical and others just wishes based on staff input and council requests, that is rarely used to allocate funds as part of a well thought out plan.
Then there are communication issues between the staff and the council. This is because rambling staff reports frequently lack essential information for decision-makers. The City Council is made up of elected officials from the community who arrive unfamiliar with “staff speak”; the staff reports are written in government phraseology, which might make all the sense in the world to those who prepared the report and the city manager but can be confusing to council members and the public.
A perfect example is the staff report used to justify the proposed assistant city manager position. In it the city manager admitted that the current way Human Resources is managed is working well, so why would they want to change it? That explanation was lacking.
The new city manager should confront this issue head-on with internal working groups made up of his senior managers or enlist the aid of a consultant to resolve this issue. He may have trouble with this since some of the reports he has provided in the past decade were the subject of intense scrutiny by council members because his message was convoluted.
A report on the progress of trying to “clean up” the homeless issue throughout the city should merit a higher priority. The homeless still roam around town, some causing disturbances in local business, others suffering from mental illness, and cluttering the landscape with their trash. So far efforts to deal with this situation have not resolved the problem. The council appointed an ad hoc committee consisting of two council members, and a status report is needed.
Another important matter is how to fund the Police Department dispatch center; previously the Fire Department “contributed” a major portion of their budget to fund handling 10 percent of the calls for service, however the council approved a plan to use a regional dispatch center operated by Santa Barbara County to improve fire and medical services response times. This leaves the Police Department with a need to staff its dispatch function with the same number of people but with less funds.
There are many issues in this city that need the attention of the City Council; adding a new executive to address a problem that doesn’t exist isn’t one of them. And the new city manager should reevaluate his priorities and address long-standing council requests that seem to have fallen into a crevasse in City Hall.
Ron Fink writes to the Sun from Lompoc. Send a letter for publication to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 27 – Feb 3, 2022.