City merges three staffs into single new department

Published 10:00 am Saturday, April 28, 2001

“It will be easier for anyone to build in Oak Harbor after mid-May.At least that’s the plan.Oak Harbor Mayor Patty Cohen has been planning for months to reorganize the city’s planning, building and part of the engineering staffs into one department.The plan will likely come together May 8 if the City Council approves a proposed ordinance that would create the new department.It will be called permitting and development services.The move will mean that planning director Tom Burdett and city engineer, Ryan Goodman, will lose their administrative positions, basically be demoted. Steve Powers, a planner who now works under Burdett, will become the director of the new permitting development services department, which means he becomes Burdett’s supervisor.Cohen said the city advertised the job and went through an interviewing process. Both Powers and Burdett applied for the job.City Administrator Ken Nyberg, who started his job the first week of April, said the idea behind the proposal is to make a one-stop permit center where you just go to one place to submit your application. This means a person seeking a building permit no longer has to deal with bringing the application around to different departments.We’re modernizing the permit process, Nyberg said. It’s a good move because it’s a system that is used and has been successful in many other cities.Most of the citizens who’ve complained about the permitting process in the past have been unhappy about the time it takes for applications to be processed, Nyberg said.We want to do a better job of promoting economic development in the city, Cohen said. We need to move our focus from enforcement to customer satisfaction.The new configuration of the departments should increase efficiency, Nyberg said, but it likely won’t mean a cost savings for the taxpayers. Two department head positions will be lost, but two new positions will be created.Under the proposal, there will no longer be a planning or engineering directors. Nyberg said he expects the two staffers who have those positions – Burdett and Goodman – will continue to work for the city. He said he didn’t know if the positions will mean a change in salary for them.The new positions include the director of permitting and development services and a permit coordinator. As director, Powers will manage an entire department dedicated to permitting construction work.The job of the permit coordinator, Nyberg said, will be to make sure a permit goes to all the right people and gets through the process in a timely manner.Cohen said Powers is working with a consultant to finalize the restructuring of the departments and figure out the exact role of each staff member.There’s going to be a lot of cross-training and strong inter-department communication linkages, she said, which is not going on right now.In addition, vacancies in the planning and engineering department will also be filled in the near future.City Attorney Phil Bleyhl said the city engineering department will be split apart. The positions that involve working with building permits – reviewing builders’ plans – become part of the development services department. The positions that involve designing city projects come under the public works department.In addition, Nyberg said he’s looking to restart a nearby department that was abandoned last summer. Cohen fired the one-man human resources department and divvied out his duties to several different employees. But Nyberg said an organization as large as the city – with more than 100 employees – needs a human resources staffer.Despite the departmental consolidation, Nyberg said he expects city staff will do just fine.They impress me as being professional.You can reach staff reporter Jessie Stensland at jstensland@cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/whidbeynewstimes or call 675-6611. “