HMB City Council Outsources Its Planning Department

On Tuesday, June 18, 2013, the HMB City Council voted to outsource its Planning Department, releasing 3 more employees that between them have well over 30 years with HMB. 

I attended the meeting and provided the Council with my thoughts (again) in the form of a presentation. Below, is the presentation I provided:

Good evening;

I am here this evening to share some of my thoughts on HMB - its past, present and future.

In 2005, we saw an entire town work feverishly to replace what we felt was an oppressive Council majority that was taking our town down a rat hole, and doing a pretty good job of it, too. That campaign actually started in 2004 and built momentum right through to the election. Residents from all corners of town stepped up and gave what they could to change the Council’s no growth majority. It was a bitter battle, and we succeeded. But did we get what we thought we were getting? Were the campaign promises from that election fulfilled? 

Campaign promises from 2005 included an LCP Update, and LUP Update, a General Plan Update, in-house counsel and more. To date, none of this has been charged, let alone done. 

Since then, we have been witness to what I view as the dismemberment of HMB.  Employee by employee, department by department, we have seen our City change. We seemingly go from disaster to disaster. We now have unprecedented debt. We have had 4 different City Managers since that 2005 election. We have released almost all City staff, replacing them with strangers from outsourced over the hill consultants, while at the same time increased administrative personnel. With this evening’s vote to outsource our Planning Department, you will have completed the move from a known City staff to a “Contract City”, where just about every function performed is done by folks we don’t know. Continuity and relationships are now a thing of the past.

It seems to some that our elected don’t listen to those that elected them. It seems to some that our elected only listens to people they pay to hear. We have hired consultant after consultant, outsourced department after department and this evening’s vote will be the culmination of that effort by you, our elected. Even our own Planning Commissioners were not asked for input on this matter, despite their offers. 

With this vote tonight, we will have outsourced our most intimate department and we will lose three more long standing employees, with a vast knowledge of HMB, who, through no fault of their own, have become the latest victims of a management void that has plagued us for some time. 

We have had four Planning Directors since 2005. The job of a department head is to optimize that department; to lobby for the tools needed to make that department run as efficiently as possible. The City Manager is responsible for insuring department heads do their job. The City Council is responsible for making sure the City Manager does their job, yet here we are. That’s eight years of running the Planning Department into the ground with no accountability. By outsourcing it, you are admitting the lack of leadership and pushing that job to someone else, someone we don’t know and someone that doesn’t know us, nor our history. It’s like going from Cheers, where everyone knows your name, to NY City.

It saddens me to see what HMB has morphed into. We have gone from a small town full of character and knowledgable staff to a building full of strangers and administrators.   Knowledge, continuity and relationships that we now have will be gone and replaced with people that don’t know our town, our history and our guidelines for planning, resulting in more continued projects, appealed projects and redundancy of effort. Land use has proven to be our Achilles Heal. Replacing knowledgable staff with a constant rotation of unknowns will only make things worse, costing us in efficiency, money and other resources.

I think this action is another big mistake in multiple ways that will cost us dearly. We’ve already seen glimpses with the contract planners we’ve used. Big mistake.

I took no pleasure in providing this presentation, but felt it necessary. I would be happy to answer any questions, either about the meeting, the presentation or the issue.