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HomeMy WebLinkAbout29-City Attorney CITY OF SAN BERNARDINO - REQUEST FOR COUNCIL ACTION From: James F. Penman, City Attorney e Subject: Establishment of an Additional Deputy City Attorney IV Position within the City Attorney's Office. Dept: City Attorney Date: August 28, 2007 Synopsis of Previous Council action: ~one Recommended Actions: 1. Establish an additional position of Deputy City Attorney IV, Range 3588, $8,336-$ 1 0,132/month in the City Attorney's Office. Fund the position of Deputy City Attorney IV, Range 3588, $8,336-$10,1 321month. Authorize the Human Resources Department to update Resolution No. 6413 to reflect this action. Authorize the Director ofFinance to amend the City Attorney's Office FY2007/08 adopted budget by transferring $121,584.00 from 001-092-5XXX general government unreservedlundesignated fund balance to 00 1-051-5XXX(SalariesIPermlFull- Time). 2. 3. 4. e I- ?~ Signature Contact person: James F. Penman Phone: 5255 Supporting data attached: Staff Reoort Ward: ALL FUNDING REQUIREMENTS: Amount: $121.584.00 Source: (Acct. No.) 001-092-5XXX ( Acct. Descriotion) Finance: Council Notes: 'tjiiJJJ1 Agenda Item No. :J.. ~ e 75.0262 e e e STAFF REPORT Personnel Committee Meeting Date: August 28, 2007 TO: FROM: DATE: Personnel Committee City Attorney's Office August 22, 2007 SUBJECT The establishment of an additional Deputy City Attorney IV position based upon increased planning related workload in the City Attorney's Office. BACKGROUND As a result of increased development within the City, as well as other planning issues, the workload of the City Attorney's Office has increased exponentially, resulting in a strain on the ability to perform at the constant high level required and expected of this office. In addition, at the recent 2007/08 Budget Workshop it was stated that the City expected to hire new planning staff to increase the productiveness of the Planning Department. The City Attorney's Office has already been backed up due to having only one attorney assigned to the Planning Department. For the past four years, the attorney responsible for planning issues within this office has faced increased development/planning matters. As such, the anticipated increase that will occur with the hiring of new planning staff and the current planning and development matters within this office cannot be promptly accomplished without hiring another attorney with experience in planning/development. To do this, the City Attorney's Office is requesting the establishment of an additional Deputy City Attorney IV position. Once funded, the position will be filled by a person with planning/development experience. I e e e FINANCIAL IMPACT To fund an additional Deputy City Attorney IV position, the City Attorney's Office Budget will need to be amended by transferring $121,584.00 from the general government unreservedlundesignated fund. RECOMMENDA nONS I. Establish an additional position of Deputy City Attorney IV, Range 3588, $8,336- $1 0, 132/month in the City Attorney's Office. 2. Fund the position of Deputy City Attorney IV, Range 3588, $8,336- $ 10, 132/month. 3. Authorize the Human Resources Department to update Resolution No. 6413 to reflect this action. 4. Authorize the Director of Finance to amend the City Attorney's Office FY2007/08 adopted budget by transferring $121,584.00 from 001-092-5XXX general government unreservedlundesignated fund balance to 001-051- 5XXX(Salaries/PermlFull- Time). 2 e CITY OF SAN BERNARDINO MAYOR'S OFFICE INTEROFFICE MEMORANDUM ~""., ""';"f,.,n~ -.: ,~, CQUNplt O~FlCE TO: Jim Penman, City Attorney Mayor Pat MOQ Request for an Additional Deputy City Attorney 07 tUG 28 MI 9: 39 FROM: SUBJECT: DATE: August 27, 2007 COPIES: Personnel Committee Members; City Manager Your office has submitted a request for the Personnel Committee to consider the establishment of an additional Deputy City Attorney position in your office. The staff report for this item notes that the need for this additional attorney is due to "having only one attorney assigned to the Planning Department", along with the increased volume of planning and development matters that the City has encountered in recent years. e It is my understanding that your request for an additional attomey, along with a legal secretary, was already approved in March 2005 in response to increased development activity (see attached), At that time, the creation of a new Assistant City Attorney was meant to "create a vacant Deputy City Attorney position which can then be filled by a person with planning/development experience". Since a second attorney for planning was added at that time, I am not certain why a similar request is being made again at this time, and why we do not currently have two (2) attorneys working on planning matters. Please let me know your thoughts on this issue. e .-'"1 -..--. . CITY OF SAN BERNARDINO - REQUEST FOR COUNCIL ACTION e From: JAMES F. PENMAN CITY A ITORNEY Subject: Authorization to Fund the Positions of Assistant City Attorney and Legal Sccn:tary I for the City Attorney's Office. Dept: CITY A ITORNEY Date: March 15,2005 MIce Meeting Date: March 21, 1005 Synopsis of Previous Council Action: ORIGINAL March 14, 2005. Personnel Committee unAn;mously recommended Mayor and Common Council approvaJ of the below-indicated recommended actions. Recommended Motions: e L 2. 3. 4. Fund the position of Legal Secretary 1, Range 3380, $2.954 - S3,591 per month. Fund the position of Assistant City Attorney, Range 4601, S8.894. S10,811 per month. Authorize ~ Human Resources Department to update Resolution No. 6413 to retlect this action. Authorize the Director of Finance to amend the City Attorney's Office FY 2004/05 adopted budget by transferring $40,162 from 001-092-5xxx, general government unrcservedlundcsignated fund balance, to OOI-D51-5XXX (SalariesIPerm!Full-Time). Contact person: James F. p",nmAn Supporting data attached: Staff Reoort FUNDING REQUIREMENTS: Amount: Phone: Ward: FY 2004/05 540.162 5255 All Source: (Acet. No.) OOI-092-SXXX (Acct. Description) Finance: Council Notes: e Agenda Item No. :J. .1 31J.f/~s- SDEi'dlCityAtty[Fund.A.ss:CA.LqSee.n:aJ e e e , - - STAFF REPORT Council Meetial Date: March 21. 2005 TO: FROM: DATE: AGENDA: Mayor and CommoD Council City Attonaey'. Omce March IS, 200s March ZI, ZOOS SUBJECT The funding of the existing Assistant City Attorney position and one Legal Sec:mary I position based upon increased worldoad in the City Attorney's Office. BACKGROUND As a result ofincreued development within the City, as well as other plRnning issues, and tbc priorities of this Administration, the worIdoad of the City Attorney's Office bas increased exponentially, resulting in a strain on the ability to perform at the constant high level required IIId expected of this office. For the past two years. the attorney responsible for Plannin& issues within this office has fiIccd increased dcvclopmcnt/plRnni'1g matters. Additionally, this attorney's worIdoad has drastically increased due to the l'CCCDt floods within the City, the proposed General Plan revision, the Hillwood Agreement and the Mt. Vernon Bridge project. As such, the cunent pl"",,i"l and development matters within this office cannot be promptly accomplished without hiring IDOtbcr attorney with experience in plAnning/development. To do this, the City Attorney's Office is requesting funding for the position of Assistant City Attorney, a classification that currently exists, but which bas not been tltiti-.i for many years. Oocc funded, the position will be filled with an existing Deputy City Attorney. This will create a vacant Deputy City Attorney position which can then be filled by a penon with plAnning/developmcnt experience. The Assistant City Attorney can then, in addition to that position'. regular assignments, assist the Sr. Assistant City Attorneys with certain necessary administrative duties of the office, the performance of which is currently impacted due to the office' s increased worIdoad. Also, funding for a Legal Secretary I is requested to provide staff support for the additional attorney and increased worldoad. The Personnel Committee considered these items at its March 14, 2005 meeting and recommended these items be approved. SDEledlCityAlly[f1llld.AalCA.LqSo:."" J e .=. ---- 1 -. _0- FINANCIAL IMPACT 1. Assistant City Attornev Budgeted Cost for Deputy City Attorney IV Proposed Cost for ABst. City Attorney (Incumbent) FY 2004/05 from 3/22/05 to 6/30105 FY 2004105 from 3/22/05 to 6130105 Salary Benefits Total $ 32,057 5.460 $37,517 Salary Benefits Total $ 35,105 5.728 $40,833 The total annual cost to implement the newly funded Assistant City Attorney position with an existing Deputy City Attorney is approximately S3,316. The additional cost will be absorbed in the existing budget through Personnel savings. 2. LelZal Sectetarv I for FY 2004/05 from April 1, 2005 to June 30, 2005 Salary Benefits Total $ 8, 862 $ 3.413 $12,275 3. Demrtv City Attornev IV for FY 2004/05 from April 1, 2005 to June 30, 2005 Salary Benefits Total $ 23,205 S 4.682 $ 27,887 The total cost for the remainder ofFY 2004/05 to him a Deputy City Attorney IV and Legal Sectetary 1 is approximately $40,162. RECOMMENDATIONS 1. FUIId the position of Assistant City Attorney, Range 4601, $8,894-S10,81 1 per month. 2. Fund the position ofLega! Secretary I, Range 3380, 52,954-53,591 per month. 3. Authorize the Human Resources Department to update Resolution No. 6413 to retlect this action. 4. Authorize the Director of Finance to amend the City Attorney's Office FY 2004/05 adopted budget by transferring $40,162 from 001-092-5XXX general government unreservedlundesignated fund balance to 001-05 l-5XXX (Sa1ariesIPermlFull- rune.) SDEledlCity Ally(FlIIId.AJIlCA.LqSol:.....1 1 e e e Wendy McCammack: This is the Personnel Committee Meeting, August 28,2007, 3 :34 p.m. If everyone would announce themselves for the tape. Tobin Brinker, Council Member. Jim Penman, City Attorney. Linn Livingston, Human Resources. Fred Wilson, City Manager. Stephanie Easland, City Attorney's Office. Jolena Grider, City Attorney's Office. Dennis Baxter, City Council. Jim Morris, Mayor's Office. Anne Alvarado, Human Resources. Jorge Carlos, Council Office. Sylvia Loza, Council Office. Wendy McCammack, City Council. Wendy McCammack: We have one item on today's Personnel Committee Agenda, Establishment of an Additional Deputy City Attorney IV Position within the City Attorney's Office. Urn, I'm assuming Mr. Penman, you're going to present. Jim Penman: Yes, thank you. In 2005 in March, we came to the Personnel Committee, I think on March 14, and went to the Council the next meeting. And at that time we requested that two vacant positions in our office be funded. Those two positions were Assistant City Attorney and a Legal Secretary. They had existed for a number of years. Urn, several years before when the budget had hit a real crunch, the City Attorney's Office, in their usual-in our usual collaborative manner, in setting the example for other City departments, I laid off an attorney and a secretary, because it was obvious that there were going to have to be cutbacks in the City. Ah, those positions remained vacant. We had reached the point at that time where we were getting an, an, a steady increase of planning matters. And as the Council knows, planning has had a big increase in the last three or four years in terms of their activity, and Henry Empeiio was the attorney who was handling that and has handled it for a number of years and he was telling me that he was about, getting close to going under. The Committee recommended, and the Council approved funding those two positions, those two vacant positions that were already established in our office. When those positions were funded, I promoted Stephanie Easland from Deputy City Attorney to Assistant City Attorney and the basis for the need of the position of Assistant City Attorney, as I indicated in the memo dated March 15th, 2005 for the Council meeting on March 21 st, 2005 , that as a result of F:\EASLAND\Personnel Comminee\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd I 4ft1JCt ., --/"( e increased development within the City, as well as other planning issues, and the priorities of this Administration, referring to the Mayor's administration, the workload of the City Attorney's Office has increased exponentially, resulting in a strain on the ability to perform at the constant high level required and expected of this office. For the past two years, the attorney responsible for planning issues within this office has faced increasing development/planning matters. Additionally, this attorney's workload has drastically increased due to the recent floods within the City, the proposed General Plan revision, the Hillwood Agreement and the Mt. Vernon Bridge project. As such, the current planning and development matters within this office cannot be promptly accomplished without hiring another attorney with experience in planning/development. To do this, the City Attorney's Office is requesting funding for the position of Assistant City Attorney, a classification that currently exists, but which has not been utilized for many years. Once funded, the position will be filled with an existing Deputy City Attorney. This will create a vacant Deputy City Attorney position which can then be filled with a person with planning/development experience. The Assistant City Attorney can then, in addition to that position's regular assignments, assist the Sr. Assistant City Attorneys with certain necessary administrative duties of the office, the performance of which is currently impacted due to the office's increased workload. Also, funding for a Legal Secretary I is requested to provide staff support for the additional attorney and increased workload. That position also existed. Um, so we, Ms. Easland was promoted to Assistant City Attorney, we then advertised for a Planning attorney, we located a Planning attorney whom we hired, on June 7th, 2005, she began work. But, in July 2005, and in the interim several months since March, we were getting more impacted with litigation and the Sr. Assistant City Attorney indicated that he wanted to be more involved in trying cases and in doing litigation. So, we transferred him to a Sr. Deputy City Attorney, "Y" rated him, which meant his salary would remain the same, in order for him to focus primarily on litigating cases and the newly hired Deputy City Attorney was moved in the Sr. Assistant City Attorney position. Um, sort of on a trial basis, but was made the Sr. Assistant and instructed that she would continue to do planning and development work along with her litigation functions. That did not work out as expected. Some other personnel issues arose and the person in the Sr. Assistant City Attorney position returned to the Deputy City Attorney position in August 2006 and was again assigned to do planning duties. Ultimately, the person left the office in October 2006 to assume another position within the City. The vacancy created by that e e F:\EASLAND\Personnel Committee\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 2 e person's departure caused this office to recruit for a Sr. Assistant City Attorney because once that person left as Sr. Assistant City Attorney to Deputy City Attorney, we could not fill the Sr. Assistant City Attorney position because we were only allowed so many attorneys. When that person left, we again were still, the main crunch is and always has been litigation. Planning is second, there was one time when Police were second and Planning was third, but its normally Litigation, Planning, Police. Urn, we recruited the person for the Sr. Assistant City Attorney, Diane Roth, to supervise the litigation functions of the City Attorney's Office and since being hired, the current Sr. Assistant City Attorney for Litigation has had to spend much of her time addressing issues left by her predecessor; a good number of things had been left, quite frankly, undone. And, she also had to focus on litigation. So, despite the fact that we hired an attorney in June 2005 and assigned that person to assist with the planning and development workload, the circumstances outlined above, which were a change resulted. Now, what prompted me to bring this forward now, and I will tell you. I discussed this matter with the Mayor earlier this year and told him I needed to hire an additional Deputy City Attorney position to handle planning. He asked me to please wait, in would not mind waiting until the budget time came around, which was just a couple months away, and I said "sure" I had continued to try to work with everyone else and I agreed to that. When it came time for the budget, Fred informed me things did not look real good, that there was not a lot of money, and he felt that it was not a good time to be hiring an additional Deputy City Attorney. Again, I was concerned because Henry is in there keeping his nose barely above water, if you walk in his office, you'll see the stacks of files on his desk where you can't always see him. So I said "fine" I waited. Then to my surprise we had that workshop where the Council, in your wisdom, decided that you were going to fill two vacant Planning positions in the Planning Department and an Engineer position, and EDA was going to budget money to hire, I believe it was two additional Planners, who would be loaned to the Planning Department. Henry almost collapsed at that particular meeting because we were aware that if we just filled one, or even, well certainly two, maybe even one planning position and we are so much on the margin now that the work is not getting put out as quickly as it used to in old days when things were a lot slower. Ifit's a priority for the Council to get the planning stuff out and it's such a priority that we're prepared to fill three vacant positions and bring two more from EDA, I can tell you, we cannot handle that workload in our office, the planning work-we just can't. So, we are here saying we need an additional Deputy City Attorney. Mr. Wilson tells me e e F:\EASLAND\Personnel Committee\PersonnelCommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 3 e today that um--urn the projected revenues are down and based on that he thinks that the, and some other information, that the planning workload may drop. If that's the case, fine, I mean, in terms of what we can and cannot handle; we're still overworked. Mr. Empeiio's still overworked now; still can't handle the present work, but we're prepared to continue struggling through, but if you are going to be bringing in these additional people, or if the planning work, it doesn't even have to increase, if it even just stays the same, we are already behind in the legal work. It's a lot of work on everyone of these projects, I mean a lot of meetings, a lot of research, there's a lot of work that has to be done and there's a lot of planning activities going on in this City for several years now. So that's where we are. And basically what I told Fred earlier today, I said look if you guys don't want to fill the position, that's fine and if the Mayor doesn't want to fill it, he didn't say that in his memo, he just asked for an explanation which I've given him, that's fine too, but I do want to present it to the Committee and I want to present it to the Council so it's on record and everybody is aware of this problem because a lot of times we think, you know, we think like putting more cops on the street will help a lot, but we don't often think, but then you have to hire more secretaries to do the reports because you have to keep the reports up, you have to buy equipment and so forth. The same is true here in City Hall and if you take one of the three top functions of our office, Litigation, Planning, Police and you do anything to significantly increase the activity or the productivity of that department, it's going to impact our office. And I can just tell you that four Planners and an Engineer, I mean even two Planners right now, would definitely require another Deputy City Attorney. So that's where they are. So I would like to take this to the Council, I would like to make that explanation. If at that time, the feeling is that the greater good of the City is we shouldn't do this now, we shouldn't because maybe the planning is going to drop, I'll take a deep breath and say okay I'll go along with you, but I do want to get it on the record because I don't want a year and a half, two years from now, urn, when I'm sitting in my office and start getting phone calls, hey Penman, you know, my project's being held up, I've got, you know planning, say 10 to 15 projects being held up. I mean I want to be able to show hey I attempted to address this problem several times in the year 2000 and each time I collaborated, first with the Mayor's request, then the City Manager, and if it's your wish that we have to hold off then so be it. But that's where we are. So that's why I'm bringing it forward at this time, and I'm not going to hold my breath or beat drums or do something horrible if you don't approve it, but I just want to get on the record that we are at the breaking point of being able to handle the e e F:\EASLAND\Personnc:1 Commince\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 4 e e e Wendy McCammack: Dennis Baxter: Fred Wilson: Dennis Baxter: Fred Wilson: Wendy McCammack: Fred Wilson: Dennis Baxter: Fred Wilson: Wendy McCammack: Jim Penman: planning department's work. And this is why and how this whole thing developed. Thank you for the time. Mr. Baxter. I had a question Fred, in terms of revenues, because clearly from budget time which was only weeks ago 'til now, we have some new projections, is that correct, in terms of revenues? Well, not completely. What I have are some numbers from our Finance Director on sales tax only and just for the record, she's going through reconciliation this week so I don't have everything yet. But, what I have thus far on the sales tax side of the fence for the '06-'07 fiscal year, the sales tax came in about $1. I million less than what was projected in the budget and for the '07-'08 projection, she's talked with our sales tax consultant and the updated numbers we're looking at about $1.8 million over and above what we put in the budget. Lower? Yeah, so all together, it's about a hit of$3 million less than what we had assumed. Yeah, but the $1.1 is moot at this point, because the budget-- No, her budget assumed the figure of say $35 million from year end, now it's $33.9 or something like that. I don't know what those numbers are. In other words, Barbara assumed a year end number and now it's lower than what she assumed. Do we have anybody from Planning here? No. We, we in a separate meeting we had a workshop so to speak, with Planning and through the Mayor's Organizational Review Committee, we had an in depth conversation about Planning. And, the short, not the long, but the short of it is that if they didn't get help, lots of projects would not only be delayed, but in some cases they would walk away from them, which just meant- You mean developers? F:\EASLAND\Personnel Committee\PersonneIComrnMtg.8.28.07.wpd 5 e e e Wendy McCammack: Fred Wilson: Dennis Baxter: Fred Wilson: Dennis Baxter: Jim Pemnan: Dennis Baxter: Fred Wilson: Dennis Baxter: Fred Wilson: Wendy McCammack: which meant money out of the City's bottom line and the short of it was that Valerie would come to the City Manager with some plans and then that would come before for all of us. So they are inundated and without additional staff, which they explained to us during the EDA budget workshop, not only EDA projects, but City projects would be long time delayed. To just add a short version too, one thing that we talked about was creating an Assistant Director position that would help Valerie focus on the engineering side which clearly appeared to be the major problem child so we had that recruitment under way, we also talked about automating some of the internal processes to address the issue of lost plans and timeliness issues, so those things are in the works. And the third piece of it is that we're trying to recruit now, for I think for four mid-level paraprofessional planning and engineering positions, thus far, we've had no luck at all so we're going to try again using outside recruiting firms that would really push the envelope. So we are essentially doing what Ms. McCammack said and its taking a little bit longer than we thought and we will have a report for Council when we have everything wrapped up. Is development ramping, this is a question for anybody, is development ramping up, slowing down, staying the same? The housing market, as you know, is flat. Sure, Can we call and get Valerie down here? Absolutely. I mean there's still, I mean in terms of major projects she can speak to more than I can, but a lot of things are on hold now like the Carousel Mall, Right. There are some projects, Hillwood is going through the process right now. There's a lot of, there's still a lot-- F:\EASLAND\Personnel Comminee\PcrsonneICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 6 e e e Fred Wilson: There's lots of things going on, I don't mean to imply things have stalled, but the big stuff is really- Wendy McCammack: Well, I can tell you they haven't stalled because I just had a commercial property owner wanting to put about $4 million into a piece of property in Seventh Ward. And after two years and four different planners and the cost jumping from $4 to $5 million, he gave up. And, he only gave up six months ago. So, if things are flat, um, then you better tell Planning that. Because. . . Fred Wilson: They're busy, they're busy, there's a lot going on; the housing market, of course, is stalled and sure there's other pending improvement things that Valerie can speak to more than I can about, there's no question about it. Tobin Brinker: A couple of things, you know, I made a lot of public comments about the need to ramp up our, ah, ah, Planning Department and ah--you know we went through the City Audit and I suggested that our first priority was getting that in place and getting those recommendations in place and I talked about sort of what I thought were funding issues, the fact that we would have to hire these people which meant you'd have to make some of the fixes to the Human Resources Department and that we also have to look at our Civil Service Commission and to get some of those fixes from the Audit. But, I didn't look at the backend of it, which was obviously those other services that are provided through the City Attorney's Office. I don't know that I have enough information at this point to say we should send this forward and I just want to share that. I think that we need to hear from Valerie; I need to have a better sense of what's happening there, what will happen if those positions are hired, but I'm also very concerned about the fiscal responsibility side. You know, Mr. Penman, you raised very strongly, raised the issue at our budget seminar about the fact that you couldn't endorse this budget because we couldn't haven deficit spending. Chairperson McCarnmack: Deficit spending. Tobin Brinker: I worry about us putting ourselves in that situation, by saying yeah, let's go ahead and hire this position, that's an ongoing thing, unless you're only going to hire for a year, you know, and without at the same time identifying cuts, to say well okay this is what $120,000 position, so now we have to find $120,000 worth of cuts. And uh, uh, I'm not sure how to balance all that out; I don't think I have enough information at this point. I maybe would like a report that addresses F:\EASLAND\Personnel Committee\PersonnelCommMtg.8.28.07 .wpd 7 e e e Wendy McCammack: Inaudible: Wendy McCammack: where we would cut, to fund this how this whole thing fits together in a puzzle. Because, I'm, there's a lot of other pieces that need to be considered. Well, I can tell you that my concern at this point is if we lose a couple more $4 million projects that attorney could have been paid for three times over. So, I think if we don't make a decision today, some other projects are going to drop off the table because it's costing more and more for people to do the work the longer that they wait. Inaudible. Let me finish; that's first up, but second of all, you suggested something else which I thought was pretty intuitive, if, I'm wondering if we can't approve the position, urn, let Mr. Penman do the recruitment for it and only do that if we know, for instance, that there's a potential attrition going to happen in your office. Urn, only because if the planning all gets caught up, and I can see the thinking, if the planning all gets caught up say a year from now and then we have an attorney that's there to do planning, but now it's all caught up. Now let's hope that doesn't happen, let's hope development just keeps going and going and going. But in case that it does, I think the Council might need some confidence that that position won't have to be cut eventually, and that's why I'm asking about the potential attrition. But, I can also say that if we're going to cut that, we better be cutting positions that aren't creating revenue. Urn, if we're going to talk about not funding positions that do create revenue, then we're shooting our own selves in the feet and I'm not going to stand for that, not in any way, shape or form. Urn but, I'm wondering, I'm just scared to death to get another phone call to say you know, we tried, we tried, we tried, we couldn't get it through. I mean Imet with this guy up there two or three times trying to solve the problem and you know, two years later he said I'm sorry Ijust can't do it any more and I don't have the million extra dollars that it's going to cost me to do the project so he scaled it way back. He's still going to open the doors, but it's scaled back to a million dollar project instead ofa $4 million project which would have been property tax. It's not even in a redevelopment area. It would have been all straight, you know, our percentage to the general fund. So, that's what I'm worried about. Mr. Penman you have a comment. F:\EASLAND\Personnel Comminee\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07 .wpd 8 e e e Jim Penman: Wendy McCammack: Jim Penman: Yeah, just a couple things. I'm very extra sympathetic to what Mr. Brinker's saying because it's a concern of mine too. Among many things being a factor is the agenda, getting the agenda to you guys on time. Henry Empefio is so backed up and he gets probably the majority of the agenda items, more than any other attorney in our office, and they generally come in late; they never come in under the required time. But, our position has always been, at least as long as I've been here, that you get it to us before the Council meeting, even that Friday morning, we'll try to get it out if we possibly can and we usually do, but not always. With the exception of a vacation Henry took about 4 or 5 weeks ago, is that what it was? He worked every Friday, you know we're off every other Friday, this 9/80 plan we have in the City, Henry worked every Friday for months and he's worked every single Friday since he's been back from vacation and he is there many, many nights until well after everybody else has left--um--well he and Donn, Donn Dimichele who also works, Donn works 'til 9 or 10 at night, every night, but in any event that happening, I'm a--in response to what would happen, I can only say this, when we truly hit a budget crisis several years ago, I did not hesitate to layoff an attorney and a secretary because it was obvious to me that the entire City was impacted and it had to be done. That is the last thing you want to do, in a busy department, lay people off, but it's one of the tough decisions that sometimes you have to make and my feeling was elected officials have to set the example and I did by being the first department to do layoffs and that's what happened and we didn't just cut, you know, a part-time investigator and a clerical person, we cut a full-time attorney and a legal secretary. By the way that was also helpful in saving two police officer positions. And that's how the money--it ended up they took the money and yes they did, they funded--they kept two cop positions that we otherwise would have lost. I don't know the answer to this, the answer to Mr. Brinker's question, and I share his concern, and I, and I, and it obviously is a concern for me to hire a planner, a planning attorney and in a year let them go, but I have delayed, with the exception in trying to fill it in 2005 and having a circumstantial train run away, I've delayed longer than I should have, trying to be cooperative and collaborative with the Mayor's office, with the City Manager, and I just don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. Henry is, is just inundated, he needs help, he's told me that and you go in his office, the stacks are literally like that of cases that he is working on; he is the trouble shooter when somebody' s project gets snagged, if Council F:\EASLAND\PersonneJ Committee\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 9 e e e Wendy McCammack: Dennis Baxter: Valerie Ross: Members call us, you know, call me, they call Henry; developers, you know, will contact him because--Valerie will contact him, he's the one person--he and Valerie somehow has worked magic in this City for I don't know how many years now. But, I, now that Valerie's here, I would just defer to her because she would know better than I whether I, whether the work is going to continue at a level I'm gonna need another Planning attorney or whether Henry's going to be able to handle it. Valerie, Mr. Baxter's question was basically to understand planning's position in terms of getting the work through your end with obviously the need to help, the City Attorney's Office helping you get it through and we, his question is how can we get all these people on board and if we get all these people on board that you can give them permission for, once they come on board, are you going to need another planning attorney. To further elaborate on my question, where are we at planning now in terms of development, is it, we know the real estate market's flat right now, is that being reflected in your department? Let me make a cJarification--Development Services, because Henry spends as much time in Public Works as he does in Planning and occasionally some time in Building, but Building is pretty straight forward unless somebody slips and falls or whatever and they request records. Most of our items that go to Council on the Public Works side are accompanied by a Resolution, an Agreement or something which requires legal review. On the Planning side, yes things have slowed down; we have virtually no residential, no new residential going through, we have still the big box warehouse industrial buildings and little Mom and Pop commercial, so it has slowed and on the Planning side, we're able to process things a little bit quicker. In this day and age, there's no such thing as a slam-dunk project, every project just about requires environmental review and some of them, I need Henry's assistance in determining, how do I say this? Urn, what we need to do to get through the process. Building is pretty much up to speed. Public Works is catching up, but that's on the development side, still a lot of minor applications coming in, but it has definitely slowed and I think the residential is going to stay down for a bit and I think the commercial will follow, but industrial seems to be doing it's own thing. F:\EASLAND\Personnel Committee\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 10 e e e Jim Penman: Valerie Ross: Jim Penman: Valerie Ross: Jim Penman: Dennis Baxter: Jim Penman: Valerie Ross: Wendy McCammack: Valerie Ross: Wendy McCammack: Valerie Ross: Do you think Henry will be able to handle the work then that we've got coming? After he catches up. Once, if and when he catches up? Well, I think that's a big if, and I look around, Henry's not here. Probably should have brought him too. Straight from the horse's mouth. I can tell you what Henry will tell you because he tells me, but we can bring him down if you want, I'm sorry Valerie. The Friday before the last Council meeting, we had an item on there continued 'til next Tuesday. Henry came down Friday morning on his Friday off; it was an agreement for services with those outside Building Plan Check firms, two of them we used before and we're bringing in a new one, but we had to go through the process and then renew or update the agreements. He came down Friday morning which was Joe's Friday off, because he was not able to get to them. Fortunately for us, Joe had done this ahead of time so the two-week delay did not impact us and put us in a bind so we've got everything cleared and we go to Council on Tuesday and therefore we're not behind and we're not paying the consultant. That's one example. Now what happens when Engineering starts to get caught up? Engineering is starting to get caught up on the land development side. Ifwe can get caught up then we can focus more attention on the CIP side and on the CIP side all the projects have to go to Council to award a contract or whatever it is and each of those requires a Resolution and even though the Agreements are fairly standard, they all require legal review. So in other words once the bottleneck gets through on planning side and then it gets caught up, so to speak, on the engineering side then there'll be a new set of water trickling down the river in terms of CIP? Yes. F:\EASLAND\Pcrsonnel Comminee\PersonneICommMtg.g.28.07wpd 11 e e e Wendy McCammack: Valerie Ross: Wendy McCammack: Valerie Ross: Wendy McCammack: Valerie Ross: Wendy McCammack: Valerie Ross: Wendy McCammack: Jim Penman: Okay. How long do you see all this taking to catch up? A year? It's hard to say, it's based on the market and when developers feel comfortable going forward. I mean, with what's in house right now? Less than a year. Including the CIP? I was thinking on land development. Okay. No. The CIP is ongoing--can I tell them what my item is, can I? I have an item going to Council on Tuesday and I'm requesting to bring in a consulting engineering fIrm to help us out. With Mark's departure, that leaves a big void, and Robert Eisenbeisz is going to step up in the interim and he's a good guy, don't get me wrong. Robert has experience in most everything, land development, capital projects and traffic related. He's been focusing a lot of his time on traffIc related. He's now doing a lot of the SANBAG meetings, the CalTrans Meetings to make sure we know what's going on to make sure we don't miss our fair share of any funding. Lyn is still working on the land development; that leaves no engineer looking at the capital projects, so I'm asking for assistance there and that's so we don't get further behind on capital projects than we currently are. So, we hope to keep moving them along, and if we can keep moving them along, I can keep Henry busy. Mr. Penman. The other thing I'll mention, that doesn't get mentioned about Henry much, Henry's also the Water Department's attorney and the City has an agreement with the Water Department whereby we provide a full- time attorney and, I think it's 50% of his time and I think his secretary 50 % of his time, and the City gets reimbursed for that with money. When Henry gets here, I'll, we can question him on that and make sure that I have those facts correct. But, it isn't that he only has Planning and Engineering and the Building type issues, he also has the entire Water Department and their issues. He attends the Water Board meetings, he's the attorney for them. There is, there are constant legal issues with the Water Department. Water Department F:\EASLAND\Personnel Committce\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 12 e e e Wendy McCammack: Jim Penman: Wendy McCammack: Jim Penman: Wendy McCammack: Jim Penman: Wendy McCammack: Jim Penman: has their own budget and they supplement Henry by hiring outside attorneys who are experts in water law, usually in tough litigation issues that we don't really get into water litigation, you need experts on that. But, Henry does do a great deal of work for the Water Department which cuts into the amount oftime that he has for the, for Planning, and unfortunately Water Department probably doesn't give us quite as much as the contract calls for and since it doesn't give us quite as much as the contract calls for, Henry has a little more time for Planning and Engineering and the other matters. Not that Water Department would not like to have more of his time, and that's--the other issue is that we do get money into the general fund to pay for Henry's time. Henry, we're talking about- Let me ask one other question before you go to Henry, doesn't Henry also handle the Water JPA meetings? Yes, he also attends Water JPA meetings. He's not the attorney for the Water JPA, but he's there for the City and because we--for example the litigation that's going on right now with the Water, Henry is very deeply involved in that and keeps getting drawn into these things because the City gets drawn into them. And he's also the Planning Commission attorney. And he also attends the Planning Commission meetings and a- Okay, thanks. Henry, we're talking about the possibility of hiring another Deputy City Attorney assigned to Planning and we're talking to Valerie and she's indicated that housing has slowed down and she's hopeful that in less than a year, we'll get caught up on the engineering side and we can focus on the CIP side. Maybe you can explain your workload and where you're at, and--I know you and Valerie talk all the time and you guys have a better idea than anybody else in the City of what's going on. I mean, do we need another position now, or is it looking like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and--I, I don't know. There is no wrong answer, by the way. Yeah, there's no wrong answer, we're just, you know, this is kick- back time. F:\EASLAND\Personnc:l Comminee\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 13 e e e Valerie Ross: Henry Empefio: Wendy McCammack: Jim Penman: Henry Empefio: Jim Penman: Henry Empefio: Wendy McCammack: The right answer would be that they're waiting to submit their applications for some of the good projects we want. I think a good indication is just in the last couple of days where Valerie and I have talked about a lot of different things recently that are pending that I've been working on or that she's asked me to work on where I've had to respond right away to issues and with all the other workload items that I have, I've set a lot of that aside in order to respond immediately to a lot of the questions that she's raised, which I don't mind doing, and then a lot of the issues are needing a really quick response. Just like the other day where we had a person out on David Way that's been violating stop work notices and constructing in his single family home illegally and Valerie's consulted with me on what action to take, further enforcement action to take and I advised her about the Municipal Code criminal violation and our investigators, right away that same day, went with her inspector up to cite the person with a misdemeanor cite and so there's a lot of applications where we've got issues that need to be responded to, you know, immediately. But, in terms of my workload, I'd say that I spend at least probably 3/4 of my time on Development Services, where I should be spending 1-1/2 times my time or more on that, and it's not just Planning, but it's Building and it's also Public Works, all divisions of Development Services and that's inclusive of the meetings, Planning Commission, the Board of Building Commissioners and any other bodies that I attend, but also the Council meeting agenda items, the contracts, the resolutions, ordinances, appeals of Planning Commission decisions so there's a variety of work that I do. And so I guess you forgot to mention when there's flood control issues or when there's new schools being built, which I guess impacts--we could just keep adding to this list, I'm assuming. How much time are you supposed to give the Water Department? It's supposed to be by contract, half of my time. How much is--and we get reimbursed for half your time? Yes, but I can't devote half of my time because of all the other assignments. The City's General Fund gets reimbursed? F:\EASLAND\Personnel Committee\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 14 e e e Jim Penman: Wendy McCammack: Jim Penman: Wendy McCammack: Dennis Baxter: Wendy McCammack: Tobin Brinker: Wendy McCammack: Tobin Brinker: Right. Okay. When I say we, I mean the General Fund, I don't mean my office. We don't see the money. Thank you for the correction. You would have the Director upset that the money didn't go right back into their budget, so I just wanted to clarity that. Dennis. To the Chair. Well, of course, my concern is the fmancial situation, with lower revenues coming in I think that's really the bottom line we need to look at. I too, as a third of this body, need more information and to use an analogy of a colleague of mine I don't feel like I need to buy this car today. And, but, you know what, where the shoe fits, wear it, and that's just how I feel. I don't think this is a crisis emergency that this can't be continued while I get more information and other Council, other members of this body get more information and to be able to look at this at the next session with a more judicious eye. Well--go ahead. I was going to sort of agree in that if we were to continue it and ask staff to come back to us with some ideas about how to sort of pay for the position and I just wrote down a few ideas, you know either cutting positions, you mentioned your investigators, I don't know if you, you know how many positions that you have that if you felt like maybe workload has shifted or whatever, we could cut people or not, I don't know, just looking out there. I know that the other positions that we did with the EDA where we are hiring people on the EDA side and then we're sharing them--I don't know if you can do that with Attorneys or not, but just a thought. No, we took that away from them, remember? No, no, yeah, but I don't know what the possibilities are, I'mjust saying as a way to share the financial burden of it to make it more feasible or to outsource it to outside firms and so that way you're not locked into a long term--we've gona hire someone and pay benefits and all that, you know, it's on a case-by-case basis or whatever you want to do, I don't know, but to come back to us at our next meeting with some suggestions about how to pay for this position. I agree that we probably need to do this, that we shouldn't be turning away, you F:\EASLAND\Personnel Committce\PersonncICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 15 e Wendy McCammack: e e know, things that are going to generate taxes for the City and you know it's definitely a piece of the puzzle in terms of getting projects through quickly. You know, the biggest complaint I hear from developers is everything just goes so slow and I know that that's one piece of what slows us down is when you've got a thousand things to do and there's just one of you, it takes longer, you know. The same could be said for all the people in your department, you know, who are, you know we've got all those empty positions and things take longer. I just want to make sure that staff should come back to us with some idea of how to make this financially doable. What we would have to do, what cuts we would have to make, what we'd have to shift to make it happen. I'm going to make two other comments. My question that I was going to ask after everybody was done asking their questions is the same as Tobin, how else will the work get done, or won't it get done and if there's a cost to outsourcing it, you know, is the cost comparable from everything we've heard up to this point in closed session in terms of hourly rates. It would seem like it's double the cost of an outsourced attorney as compared to in house, in terms of hourly rates, but my bigger concern and we're talking about catching up on the development side, hopefully, and I hope we never catch up because if we never catch up, that means projects are still coming and coming and coming. The bigger concern is that when we hired this Deputy Director of Code Enforcement, that was with the knowledge and the understanding and the agreement that Code Compliance and enforcement would be ramped up and if it has been, then I can only see that the City Attorney's Office handling the additional code enforcement issues just getting greater and greater, and at least, I hope they do because if not then we're going backwards instead of forwards. And, with the apartment complex issues coming forward the way they have been in terms of noncompliance, that creates more issues for the City Attorney's Office and with the eventual, as, I'm not on the Committee, but eventual discussion that you all have had in terms of single family residential--single family housing inspection issues then again will incorporate more of the City Attorney's Office's help so, over here we're talking about catching up, but over here, I'm hoping that we're going to talk about ramping up because then we're starting to do things that the public has been asking us to do for a long time, which is help to maintain their property values. And unless we're ramping up the code enforcement issues and the compliance issues, we're not helping people maintain their property values, so I have some big issues with all that as well, but in terms of solving the problem, I'm not, I'm not ready to, let's put it this way, I F:\EASLAND\Personnel Comminee\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 16 e see that the car's on sale and I'm ready to buy it today. And I see us able to save a couple thousand dollars today and I see us being able to save a couple thousand dollars in terms of a car which relate to millions of dollars in terms of planning revenues, in terms of property tax revenues, and if any of these are sales tax revenue generating commercial projects which the one that just dropped off the table was, we're also talking about a loss of sales tax. So, we're talking a triple whammy if we don't ramp up something and I'm not saying that Valerie hasn't done everything in her power to solve the problem based on, by the way, your hint at the Council meeting, very subtle hint that it was, that we delve further into the subject of planning which we did immediately that following week based on your suggestion and others, but you helped push that over the edge, but also that Henry isn't doing everything in his power to get the problem solved and I know that he is. So, ah--go ahead Mr. Penman, I have one other thing to say, but go ahead. Jim Penman: Well, just responding to a couple of the things. What will happen if we don't get any increase in the work and we stay the way we are now, it will continue the way we are now. There will not be any increase in productivity, but as long as Henry doesn't drop dead one day, which we all hope doesn't happen, or anything like that, it will continue to, I mean it'll continue, it'll continue on that same pace. If you do increase Planning staff, even just to try to do the catchup work, it will not get caught up; it will bottleneck in the City Attorney's Office because there--I cannot get any more work out of Henry and I have noone else to assign. When the auditors did their review, they said that we either needed to adjust workloads to assign another attorney to do Planning or we needed to hire an outside attorney. The litigation is such we cannot adjust anybody else. In the last several years, in addition to the Planning increase, there's been tremendous increase in crime and a tremendous increase in the last 18-19 months in the productivity of the Police Department. Citations are up a thousand fold, I mean they're, they're--going back to the last year ofChiefZimmon to the first year ofChiefBilldt, it is--and those people are inundated. I have two full-time Deputy--two full-time investigator positions. One is held by a full-time person, the other is held by two part-time people. Code had requested additional investigators be hired because they could not get the backup to protect their Code Officers and they came to us several years ago, Fred and I talked about it, Fred and Linn talked about it and I don't know where you came up with the money, but we hired three or four part- time people who to do the Code stuff; they ride with Code, one rides with them, I think, every day, one is with them on the weekends and e e F:\EASLAND\Personnel Committee\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07. wpd 17 e e e Wendy McCammack: Stephanie Easland: Jolena Grider: Jim Penman: as Glenn Baude explained to me, they've sometimes had to, prior, had to wait for an hour or more for police backup and they were, they were having to stand off and not do certain places because, you know, there's a danger in this City. With the retired cops there as a City Attorney Investigator, City Attorney badge, the gun, it makes a difference and it makes a difference how the people handle it. In the meantime, we're getting pulled off constantly to do investigations for other City departments and we do the personnel investigations; we always have several going on at any time, we've got a real big one going on now. There's not going to be--there's no--there's no muscle or fat to cut in the City Attorney's Office; staff might come back with some other areas in the City, I don't know. All I know is that if the goal in providing additional staff to Planning is to speed up the process, it will not speed up--it will speed up everything to the point of our office and there it's going to stop because there's nobody left to assign. The litigation continues to be complex; we've tried to cut down on cases we farm out by handling more in house because it is many times cheaper to use an in house attorney, even with their benefits, compared to the outside counsel. The outside counsel now we're paying, what's the minimum we're paying, about $150? $150 an hour. Is it $150 or $120? I think it went up to $150. $150 an hour. And I think the highest paid City Attorney is around $80 an hour, something like that, with benefits. And one in house attorney can handle a number of cases, where as each case that gets farmed out, gets farmed out--that whole case is farmed out and they work on that one case and whatever time they put into, they bill the hourly rate, and it's far more than what we pay for a Deputy City Attorney, even with benefits and all that. So that's kinda where we are; I'm here today talking about Planning because this is a culmination of our office responding to the Council meeting when everybody said we're going to be increasing Planning and I've held off as long as I can; I've at least got to come forward with it now and say here's the problem guys so when disaster strikes as it mayor may not, depending on what happens in Planning, at least people will know that we're looking ahead and saw that problem coming and I think Mr. Brinker's idea is reasonable that we need to find, where can we get the money. I also hear Ms. McCammack though. I'm aware of projects that people have just walked away from and anyone or F:\EASLAND\Personnel Committee\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 18 I , e e e Wendy McCammack: Dennis Baxter: Inaudible: Dennis Baxter: Wendy McCammack: Dennis Baxter: Wendy McCammack: Dennis Baxter: Wendy McCammack: Dennis Baxter: Wendy McCammack: Jim Penman: Dennis Baxter: Wendy McCammack: two of those would have funded a Deputy City Planning Attorney IV for probably more than a year. I'm not saying that our office was responsible for any of them walking away, but I know through Henry and Valerie what goes on in Planning, and I know that--and we all know from--because we hear from people on the street, the planners, the builders who are always complaining that things are bad. Why don't we just pray the math works out to be $58 bucks an hour for you Henry. Cheap. When is our next Personnel meeting? What date is that--September? The 12th. Well your points Madam Chairwoman were very, very valuable and I agree with a lot of what I'm hearing here in terms of the necessity to do something and weighing everything. Once again, I really need more information, and I would like-- What do you need? like to continue this. What do you need for that--when he comes back we can have what you need. I think Mr. Brinker's suggestion that staff come back with some ideas is very valid. Which staff? City Administrator and Planning and, you know, any ofthe--all the bodies assembled here who can come up with ideas in terms of saving money. You better make it clearer as to what you need. There is no money to be saved in our office; we--ifwithout more staff we'll be costing the City money. I'm hearing that. So what do you need? F:\EASLAND\Personnel Committee\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 19 e e e Jim Penman: Tobin Brinker: Dennis Baxter: Fred Wilson: Dennis Baxter: Fred Wilson: Wendy McCammack: Fred Wilson: Jim Penman: Fred Wilson: Jim Penman: Wendy McCammack: Jim Penman: Fred Wilson: So we defer to the City Manager, whoever else in the City can come up with something. ) think that a discussion with Barbara Pachon, right, she needs to be a part of that too, I mean I need to have a better sense of where the money's going to come from. I do too. Well, ) think that's a good suggestion. Right now we're in the process of doing the year-end reconciliation and Barbara said that she won't have it done probably until, probably mid-October. That's the only issue. )fyou want an accurate picture of where we stand, you know, for the year ending '06-'07 and the first quarter, that's reality. Two weeks from now we'll have nothing in the way of financial information than what I've said here, so I'm not exactly sure, you know, what needs to be brought back in two weeks in terms of! guess how to fund the Attorney; that's still not clear to me. So basically this would be continued 'til October. Well that- Well, it depends on what you need. Yeah, it depends on what you're looking for. If you want the City's [mancial picture, it will be that late; if you want something else, we can provide that sooner. Can you come back with some suggestions on how they might be able to fund the position? No, that's it; ) mean I don't have any--) don't know where) would fund it from. Well, I don't know either, but I know that in the past whenever the Council decides that they want to fund the position, We find the money. You've always found the money. So, I mean, I'm just saying that- Yeah. F~\EASLAND\Personnel Comminee\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 20 e e e Jim Penman: Fred Wilson: Dennis Baxter: Tobin Brinker: Wendy McCammack: Tobin Brinker: Fred Wilson: Valerie Ross: Fred Wilson: Valerie Ross: Fred Wilson: Wendy McCammack: Fred Wilson: Wendy McCammack: But, if you're telling them that you're not going to look for it because that isn't, I mean I don't know what you're saying, so I, I leave it between you guys and the- Well, I just wantto make sure it's clear what you want me to look for. I mean, you want the City's financial picture, or do you want to find a way to fund it, or a way to pay for it through fees, or- I think it's importantto see where we really are in terms of these sales tax revenues, if it's sliding onward slide and by October if it's still sliding I think that's going to be all telling. You mentioned something, pay through, pay for it through fees, I mean one of the discussions I know we've had is adjusting some of our fee structures to more accurately reflect the work that we do. I mean, maybe that's, maybe that's the discussion we should be having. That's underway. To say that this is how it will be paid for because we're going to adjust the fees to do that. I don't know, but I need to have a clearer idea of how we're gonna pay for this. I feel really uncomfortable saying yeah let's move forward on this, when we know, as we've all said that revenues are declining and we're on a really tight budget cycle. I don't think that's the smart thing to do. Well, the other option, like we talked about is you know we're doing a cost allocation plan first then we're looking at raising planning-Is it the building fees, Valerie? Building. And what's the other one, engineering fees? Some of the engineering. So that's probably the best way to pay for this kind of- And where are we at on that study? Well, we gotta do a cost allocation plan first which will take two months. But, where are we on that? We've been talking about that for two F :\EASLAND\Personnel Comminee\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07. wpd 21 e e e Fred Wilson: Tobin Brinker: Fred Wilson: Wendy McCammack: Fred Wilson: Wendy McCammack: Fred Wilson: Dennis Baxter: Fred Wilson: Wendy McCammack: Fred Wilson: Jim Penman: Dennis Baxter: Jim Penman: months. Where the contract starting out. It's a private firm that's doing that? Yeah. It'll be a two-month process, then we've gotta do the fee calculation. When did we award the contract? Probably a month ago or something. And they're just starting now? Yeah, it was in Finance and it's taken a while to get it scheduled. Is that an October deadline then? Well, that's phase one to wrap it up and then phase two is the actual fee study, so then it probably- Then phase three is the Council passing it. Yeah, that's probably the first of the year realistically, that means you're talking four months out, but that's probably one way, a logical way to address the issue we are talking about today. It doesn't get what the City Attorney needs, which is someone right away, but at least we have a strategy for how to get there. And right away for us, I mean if we got approval on Monday, which I know we won't, probably won't even go there Monday, I mean we'd still be looking probably at six weeks to three months before we actually had the position filled. That's about how long it normally takes, depends whether you get lucky or what not in terms of your applicants. But, I can tell you if the workload picks up, does anything but slow down soon, it's going to break and that's where it's going to break at and you are going to have more of a backlog in Planning than you have now. Do you have somebody in mind, I mean are there applicants? No, I do not, we just, we just, we were just, don't have anybody in mind; we'll just advertise and see what's available. I wish I did, I wish I could find somebody who would even do it part-time; I'd go F:\EASLAND\PersonneJ Committee\PersonneICommMtg. 8.28.07. wpd 22 e e e Tobin Brinker: Jim Penman: Wendy McCammack: Stephanie Easland: Jim Penman: Stephanie Easland: Jim Penman: Wendy McCammack: Jim Penman: Wendy McCammack: Jim Penman: to the City Manager and say let's do one of those magical less than $25,000 contracts and bring them on today. I don't. You know, one of the things, 1--1, and I'm just trying to think back here with the City Audit, some of the other Cities use a lot more paralegals than we do. Is there something where we could offload some of the work to a paralegal, and that would free up more? No, we tried that before and ithas not--it hasn't--in fact Stephanie is our one paralegal success. She worked in our office several years as a paralegal while going to law school at night and then she became an attorney and was hired. The other paralegals we had were pretty much disasters. Except for one. Except for Bonnie. Except for Bonnie, and Bonnie--and if you want to know where the real problem happened to the City Attorney's Office, when we lost Bonnie Greenleaf who was our long-range artillery litigation who wrote the Motions for Summary Judgment and won, she retired. When we lost her, we hired a Deputy City I to replace her. I mean she was a lawyer without a law degn:e. She knew more than most lawyers did. And, thank you. I could not forget Bonnie. We've had noone like Bonnie or Stephanie even before or since then and we've looked and most of the paralegals that we've run into have been higWy experienced legal secretaries is what they've really been and itjust--it--the--and in Planning especially, the work is such that we- HigWy technical. It's higWy technical and you need people who really know what --who really know the law--they're- EIR's, all the environmental stuff. Maybe we could borrow Jim from the Mayor's office; he's got Planning experience, I'd be glad to give him some-- Smiled on that one. a couple assignments and take some work off of Henry. F:\EASLAND\Personnel Committee\PersonncICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 23 e e e Jim Morris: Wendy McCammack: Jim Morris: Wendy McCammack: Fred Wilson: Wendy McCammack: Fred Wilson: Wendy McCammack: Fred Wilson: Wendy McCammack: Fred Wilson: Jim Penman: I could use the check. A real one, contribute to your social security, right Jim? Get some retirement. And something. You know the other big project that we have left off the table and it's the big white elephant in the room is the Base and, you know, that's--that in and of itself was what's in the hopper for that is huge. So, I'm gorma take the Chair's prerogative here and we've done this before because either we can't come to an agreement or we can't get a motion and a second, but I think the full Council needs to hear the issues with Planning because there have been colleagues of mine that have been yanking for years about planning issues and they need to hear this whole conversation, so I'm gorma take the prerogative and ask it to go to Council without a recommendation, no motion, no second, and- Just a referral. Exactly. And, if the full body wants to refer it back to Persormel or refer it to Ways and Means, ifthat's the need--and with a date certain based on October or based on whatever, then that's again their prerogative, but you know there's just been too much conversation about the bottleneck in Planning, I think they need to hear the whole story. So refer to full Council for Monday with no recommendation? With no recommendation. Just show discussed by Committee, but no action taken. Right, and I would really like to have in that Staff Report some of the comments that the three of us have made, even if it' s just excerpts of what Mr. Baxter's concerned about, what Mr. Brinker's concerned about and what I'm concerned about. We can get that from the minutes of the tape or something. Do you want the copy of the minutes maybe? Is that what- Well, at this point I'll be happy just to be able to lay it out there and let people know and then the policy makers and the people who vote the funding can decide how to deal with the problem. I feel--I will F;\EASLMTD\Personnel Committee\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 24 e e e Wendy McCammack: Jim Penman: Wendy McCammack: feel I've accomplished my duty by informing the Committee and informing the Council then 1'11- See, Mr. Brinker's and Mr. Baxter's concern is with this one issue, but we know that there's two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and maybe 30 or 40 more issues that will all impact the budget and I really do think we need to have a conversation about all of it and it all will be coming; we know it's coming; Fred and I have talked about this a hundred times; it's coming and we are going to have to make some decisions and we are gonna need to make a decision not in a vacuum, you're absolutely right, so. I'm very sympathetic, by the way, to the concerns you've all raised and I agree with you as an Administrator, you don't create a position until you can fund it, I understand that. Okay, is there any Closed Session discussions? No, this meeting is adjourned. F:\EASLAND\Personnel Committee\PersonneICommMtg.8.28.07.wpd 2S