AGENDA DATE: 2/6/2019
TITLE:
Title
Community Development Work Program, 2019-2022
BODY
SUBJECT/PROPOSAL/REQUEST: Assure alignment between the Board’s interest and the Community Development Department (CDD) work program
ITEM TYPE: Regular Information Item
STAFF CONTACT(S): Richardson, Walker, Graham
PRESENTER (S): Mark Graham
LEGAL REVIEW: Not Required
REVIEWED BY: Jeffrey B. Richardson
BACKGROUND: The purpose of this work session is to consider the Board’s interests, as expressed by established priorities and newer initiatives, and assure that CDD is responsive to the Board. The Board’s Strategic Plan Priorities and previously established work program initiatives have provided good direction, but staff recognizes there remains an interest in a number of other initiatives that are not yet part of CDD’s work program.
The ongoing challenge is to assure staff remains focused on completing established priorities, while being responsive to emerging interests of the Board.
STRATEGIC PLAN: Quality Government Operations: Ensure County government’s ability to provide high quality service that achieves community priorities
DISCUSSION: Staff is not recommending a solution at this meeting. Instead, we hope to engage the Board in a dialogue to assure we are being responsive to emerging interests without sacrificing established expectations. The visionary aspects of the Board’s interests excites staff, but there is an ongoing essential need to prioritize these opportunities without sacrificing established expectations, such as maintaining the quality of work and public engagement.
First, Attachment A provides a summary of previously identified interests of the Planning Commission and Board. Staff prioritized this list into three groups: committed projects where CDD is the lead, committed projects where CDD provides support to other departments, and finally, a list of potential projects that have yet to be prioritized due to resource constraints. During the work session, staff will review the current workload and resource capacity as applied to this listing. With this information, staff believes that if development activity continues at the 2018 level, the committed projects shown in Attachment A fully allocates staff resources for the remainder of 2019 and the first half of 2020.
Attachment B provides this same information in a simplified version of a Gannt chart, showing the anticipated timelines and intensity of effort. In staff’s opinion, adding additional initiatives through mid 2020 will simply increase the timelines for completion as resources are spread thinner or require triage where other priorities are set aside.
Second, staff notes that management capacity continues to be the limiting factor for the size of the work program. While additional staff has been added in recent years, the increase has been directed toward new initiatives (e.g. Southwood, CAC support) and turnover has resulted in more management time spent on training and quality control. The good news is that CDD’s turnover rate has slowed, allowing staff to begin diverting some management capacity away from training and quality control. That may prove difficult to maintain as a number of retirements are anticipated over the next 2-3 years.
Finally, starting in mid-2020, staff requests the Board consider the option of directing resources towards a comprehensive examination of development review, in keeping with the objective of Project ENABLE, the Economic Development Strategic Plan. The intent would not be to simply consider the development review process, but instead focus on the extent and complexity of development requirements. Having completed two major and numerous minor examinations of development review process over the last 15 years, staff believes there is not likely to be much improvement by simply looking at process. Instead, any significant improvement will require an in-depth consideration of the complexity of those regulations and where the County might be willing to provide less oversight. Bluntly put, the focus needs to be more on what we regulate than how we regulate it. This task would not be easy but it provides the possibility of better accomplishing the County’s Economic Development strategies while increasing CDD capacity for work program priorities.
BUDGET IMPACT: No changes to the budget are proposed at this time, though additional resources have been requested for FY19-20, which, if approved, will ultimately improve overall capacity in the department and help address resource needs in key areas.
RECOMMENDATION:
Recommendation
This matter is being presented for discussion. Staff requests that the Board consider the initiatives described and, following a short presentation, share its perspective on how staff can best assure the Board’s interests have been maximized in CDD’s work program.
ATTACHMENTS:
Attachment A: Community Development Work Program, committed priorities and potential projects Attachment B: Community Development Work Program, schedule for committed priorities