MEMORANDUM 07-111

TO: Mayor Homaday / Homer City Council

FROM: Walt Wrede

DATE: July 15, 2007

SUBJECT: Elevation of Planning, Clerks Office, Library to Department Status

At a recent meeting, I informed the Council that it was my intent to ask it to elevate the Planning, City Clerk, and Library functions to Department status. These functions are presently City Divisions within the Department of Administration. This made a great deal of sense in the 1970's and 1980's when these offices were relatively small and their workload, duties, and responsibilities were less than today. However, as you know, these functions have expanded greatly in the last decade as the City has grown along with the expectations of its residents.

All three offices have grown greatly in terms of personnel, workload, and responsibility. As a practical matter, these offices already function and operate as though they were departments and are in-fact treated as such from an organizational perspective. The only difference between these offices and the ones that are already designated as departments is that the staff are paid less and in some ways treated with less respect. They have a somewhat lower status in terms of public perception, the organizational chart and compensation.

Elevating these divisions to department status will serve to compensate dedicated City employees at a level commensurate with their responsibilities and more consistent with their peers in other departments. It will also improve morale and help the City be more competitive in terms of attracting and retaining highly qualified employees. The

estimated cost associated with taking this step for fiscal year 2007 is $30,000 (if retroactive and applicable for the entire year; less if it becomes effective in August or September).

My original intention was to bring the Council an ordinance that simply amended HCC 1.40.030 to add Planning Department, Library Department, and City Clerk Department to the list of authorized departments. Upon further review, I discovered that Chapter 1.40 needs more work than that and concluded that we should take this opportunity to clean it up and fix existing problems and new ones that would be created by this action. For example, we would need to add new sections that describe the responsibilities of each department (like already exists for other designated departments) and go through the entire code and remove references to officials such as the Librarian and City Planner. Also, there is no longer a Department of Public Safety. Both Police and Fire are now stand alone departments.

So, I decided that it was best to take the time to offer more comprehensive amendments to Chapter 1.40 before asking you to consider an ordinance. I hope to have that ready soon.

RECOMMENDATION: Give preliminary and conceptual approval to the elevation of Planning, City Clerk, and Library to Department Status and authorize the Manager to bring back an ordinance that accomplishes this objective.