After a nationwide search, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors announced the appointment of Glenn Russell as the county’s new director of Planning and Development.
For the past year, Russell served as program manager for the Project Planning Division of San Diego County’s Department of Planning and Land Use. He also held various management positions within the department, including chief of Regulatory Planning and interim deputy director.
Russell said his knowledge of planning law and experience balancing housing and development needs with preserving the natural environment make his new job the next logical step in his career.
“It’s very exciting,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it. It’s really a great opportunity for me.”
Russell replaces interim department director Dianne Black and will start work in September with an annual salary of $160,000, according to county spokesman William Boyer.
The hiring process included a series of three interviews with panels consisting of community leaders, environmental advocates, and local government experts.
As director, Russell will focus on improving the department’s customer service and making communities more transportation friendly, he said. He added that the issue of global warming is likely to define his tenure.
“If you look at what’s going on with the state right now, there are new regulations that are being promulgated that will translate into requirements at the local level for transportation projects, zoning law, housing proposals, and building permits—and that’s going to be a tremendous challenge,” Russell said. “There’s going to have to be a lot of cooperation with the air pollution control district, the planning department, and the utilities.”
Russell holds a doctorate degree in archaeology and a master’s degree in anthropology from UCLA. He was the curator of archaeology at the school’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History from 1995 to 1998.
According to Russell, his background working as an anthropologist in the Southwest United States and in South America has served him well in his career as a planner.
“I did a lot of negotiating with a lot of different communities, and I think my work doing that transfers very well into the kind of interaction and communication that I have to be doing with the various communities of Santa Barbara,” he explained.
This article appears in Jul 16-23, 2009.