The Ubiquitous They: Charlie Knox

Who are you and what is your role in the community? I am Public Works (PW) and Community Development Director. They used to be two different departments, which is traditional. I was the Community Development director from 2006 to 2009. That year the Public works director retired and as a efficiency and cost savings measure, the city decided to combine the two departments.

How did you adjust to taking on two jobs? It was a welcome challenge for me. One of the issues we face in community development planning is, we lay the groundwork for things to happen, then other people do them.

What does your department do? Ultimately our service to the city is to make sure toilets flush, the water is clean and the streets get paved, but we also have a mission of fiscal responsibility. There are so many things going on so it's nice to have everyone on the same team.

Has the merge been successful? In the two years since the departments have joined, we've built the Rose Drive pedestrian over-crossing, done a lot of sidewalk repair and street repair and the solar project is about to break ground. It's been a fun way for me to see things being built as well as plan for them to happen. I think it's worked pretty well. Even with less staff and less budget, we are still providing good public service. The other challenge is our staff has dropped from about 75 to about 65 employees and the service demands have gone up.

What's the advantage of merging the departments? PW directors and Community Development directors are known to have different views. PW directors are traditionally engineers who say “a street has to be this wide”. The planners are more about how things look, so it's an interesting merging of cultures. It's convenient to have everyone under the same roof where the engineers, planners, building officials and maintenance crews are all working on the same program.

There are still divisions of ideology and culture. For example the focus of utilities is to provide service. We have issues like whether or not to increase the size of the sewer mains. There are varying opinions about how and when to do it. From the directors level, it's nice to get all those folks in the same room and get them unified on how we are going to approach problem solving.

What’s the biggest challenge? Planning for infrastructure, specifically streets. Our streets are decaying. As the state struggles to adopt it's budget, they are just leaving cities with the minimum necessary for streets. It takes a little over a million dollars a year in street repair to stay at the level we are at. We're at a 62 out of 100, which rates as fair. To get to good city-wide condition of 70 by 2016, it will take $2.5 million a year. We have 1.4 million for next year but only about $700k for the following year so we are scrambling for additional funding.

How do you track the streets conditions? We have a new study this year that rates the pavement condition of all streets, which range widely. The index is a guide. There is solid evidence saying, if you catch places that are not in that bad of shape, you spend less over the long term to keep them in decent shape. Our effort has been a combination of business streets in the industrial park and residential streets.

Is Benicia still growing? No, it's staying static. We don't have land for residential development. Any future growth will be in the industrial park with additional businesses, businesses expanding and changes in infrastructure as business transitions to new types of industry.

How did you get into this kind of work? Initially I wanted to be a science reporter. I studied astronomy, geology and English in college and went to grad school in a program called masters of communications in Washington. My dad was the planner in Palo Alto. In the mid-80's between college and grad school, I worked on the Petaluma general plan, which became known as one of the first that thought about growth management. I was in my mid-twenties and wanted to spend a winter in the Rockies skiing. I was hired in Telluride and worked my way up to become the planning director. After skiing for ten years and getting married it was time to move back to sea level so we moved back to California.

Why do we need city planning? People and their settlement patterns, their desires for good schools, shopping and short commutes, it all leads to the need for planning. Planning is a really a socialist function in a capitalist society. People don't really think about planning but they want all the things. It's like having the things money buys, versus actually having to make the money. We actually to need planning to make things happen.

What's your strategy for Benicia? Benicia is a unique place. I try to follow the council and city manager's direction to do things that will make Benicia better, things like changes for pedestrian access and safety around the park. If a person in my position just sits back and becomes a bureaucrat and doesn't do much, you get a lot less criticism, but that’s not my perspective.

How do you deal with criticism? A lot of criticism really isn't well informed, but people are entitled to their opinion. My response is, I've spent a long time working to help places including Benicia and my work has been successful. There is a value to education, training and experience. I think we really have a good team in Benicia. We keep going because we love the place and think we are doing good things here.