City’s Planning Department Cut By Nearly a Third

Seems like it would make sense that if they are not getting the same level of applications that they need less staffing. Not sure that is really bleak(unless you’re one that’s laid off).

Remember those words when the economy improves and construction picks up again; the staff they have to let go of now won’t be around to re-hire so they’ll have to spend time getting new staff trained and wait times for permits will be considered “unacceptably long”, all because they couldn’t hang onto the staff they’ve already spent time & money training. I hope you want a permit in a couple of years – enjoy the wait.

I’ve only dealt with planning staff in other cities, but if Seattle’s is similar, it wouldn’t hurt to get someone new in some of the positions. Benefits in city jobs are generally very good and this attracts lots of good workers, but it also keeps workers that are a good fit for the job sticking around cause they can’t find anything better.

We still have a ton of work on small projects. It’s just that staff time reviewing permits was in a sense subsidized by the value of bigger projects.

We still need the adequate staff to do all the work; we just don’t have the money coming in to pay for the staffing that is needed.

Another problem is that this stuff is cyclical so we lay a bunch of people off who we spent money on training and who have built up expertise. They will get laid off and in a few years when the cycle is more ‘normal’ DPD will have to go back and hire again, and train new people. It’s inefficient.

Across the department furloughs (except for lower paid employees) could be a great solution to keeping that expertise around. For every day that DPD furloughs we keep a position for a full year.

Been there, done that not sure it’s possible for permit wait times to get any longer. It currently takes nearly a year to get a permit for a project. Which in my experience is by far longer than any other city.

Here’s an idea: index the number of positions to the number of architects in the city. They have to be a leading indicator for how busy the DPD will be by at least several months.

I think the City and Diane S. has done a yoeman’s job keeping staff on when the workload and more importantly the revenue did not support it. now the economy has not made a faster recovery and people must go. It is a terrible thing but reasonable. Skills will be lost and hopefully someone else [another local government or private firm] will benefit. not an easy time but really there is an Ordinance allowing DPD to hire in the good times and layoff in the bad.

The real story here is how the union representing DPD employees is really dropping the ball in terms of protecting its employees. Most DPD employees are now wondering what the hell all of their dues go toward…

Erica, a tip to do some digging?

Except that we are unlikely to have another real estate bubble anytime soon. We won’t need 2006 level staffing for some time to come.

Planning?

People planned this mess?

Ah, you should have been around in the days when Major Projects were backlogged 30 months. You’d have danced in the streets to get your permit in 1 year…

Workers at DPD volunteered to take unpaid furloughs to save jobs. Saving jobs is better for taxpayers because it will save money by avoiding training costs when the economy recovers. Local 17 jerked around DPD workers and then eventually rejected the furlough proposal against workers’ wishes. Local 17 is a crappy union. This is the latest installment in the union’s lack of performance on behalf of members.

Diane and her staff at DPD are the smartest, most professional and most thoughtful of all City departments. There will be a huge experience hole when development starts back in five years. If only we could eliminate positions at some of the poorer run departments like Department of Neighborhoods and Office of Economic Development.

Plus if it does get busy again, they can purposely work slow to get paid the overtime.

Sir:

My name is Bob Laird and I am the Operations Director at DPD. I was informed about your post and thought I should contact you. If you are willing, please provide me with your project number and I would be happy to look inot your situation to see what caused the delay in getting your permit issued. I can be contacted at bob.laird@seattle .gov.

Thank you.

So has anyone thought about trimming the management, instead of the staff? The common thread in a lot of these comments is that trained people are being let go. What this implies, and what is happening there, is that management has successfully circled the wagons to keep their jobs.

While I agree that other departments could do with improvement (dare we zero in on the management-heavy utilities?), this kind of exaggeration and hyperbole {“…smartest, most professional…of all City departments”} is not helpful.

In my view, the City’s budget situation calls for accuracy and truthfulness. Fine to have an opinion, but please qualify it as that, OK?

Good point but the elected officials generally ignore the utilities because of the rate based revenue generaiton. Not really approriate but a fact. Any changes to the utilities results in rate payer savings theoritically.

the City has great professional staff of rthe most part. However, there are some who are not. the “some” are mixed in management Mgr1 to Exec 4. You can not cherry pick the managers it is all a big trickle down based on seniority. So right now except for DPD not much is happening. Where is the leadership? Union leadership, City leadership? Seems like they want to get as far away from this as possible.

I don’t think it is hyperbole. I work with many departments on an ongoing basis. I would prefer to work with DPD staff over all others any day. They actually work too much – more than their required hours – to get their work done and done well. I often wait weeks for responses from other departments and encounter many people with an, “It is not my job.” attitude. Infighting and wacky politics is also pervasive in many departments.

I have obtained permits and entitlements in most every jurisdiction in Western Washington and can say that DPD is by far the best and most responsive planning department around. Like any large organization governed by thousands of pages of codes and rules there will be issues. I can say that DPD staff and managers, in my experience were always willing to work to find a solution. I am sad to see so many great people that have been trained leaving the department. Real Estate is cyclical and the cycle will return. People are still getting married, having kids and moving to Seattle for jobs. Things will be built and will need permits.

It’s the “larger” union that is WEAK. Local 17 – which covers ALL City employees – REFUSED to support the DPD planners’ wish to continue furloughs through 2011. The broader union could have supported this but left the DPD segment of the union out to dry, despite all of the economic indicators which show a slow recovery (and that other departments could be affected later). Instead the union leaders choose to focus on small petty complaints of a few individuals within the union, which is ultimately not what a union is best for (sharing both burdens AND prosperity).

First, managers are also being laid off.

Second, managers ARE staff! In many cases they have actually held various positions and have excelled into the manager position. You can bet that they will be there doing the hard work filling in the gaps wherever needed.

Third, it’s not like managers in the public sector make outrageous salaries especially when you consider they can’t make overtime or collect comp time hours. Whether they put in 40 hours or 60 hours a week they get paid the same. If you trued up there salaries with how much they actually work I think you’d find the differential between employee hourly wages is not very much.

If the DPD Director ever calculated her actual salary by how many hours she puts in she’d probably find that she is way underpaid. And last year she took a voluntary pay cut. My point is stop hatin’ on the managers. They work really hard and in most cases came from the rank and file.

At the City of Seattle managers typically receive a week of merit leave and a week to two weeks of executive leave – essentially, extra vacation, during which leave is accrued and full benefits are in effect. For someone who’s been with the City for 10 years, this is on top of 16 days of vacation plus 4 personal days. Managers also do not have to clock off during the day unless their absence exceeds four hours, and often this benefit functions as an unofficial comp-time system so that someone who works late one evening can take off after lunch the next day. This would all need to be taken into account in any truing-up of salaries.

Executive leave and merit leave are the same thing, not two different things. And it’s not automatic. It’s given to managers based on merit. People can get anywhere from 1-5 days merit leave days. You’re suggesting every manager gets 3 weeks of paid time off and that is not true. At the very most a manager could potentially get about an extra week.

All city employees, managers or not, get increases in vacation time as years of service on the job increases.

Bob Laird yeah right .. he is going to post something here.

I work with Bob and can tell from the typos–it was him. And yes, he is the kind of guy who would absolutely post here. He is balanced, thoughtful and cares about what he does.