LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday took a step toward hiring a new Community Development director by reestablishing the job in a separate budget category.
The board voted unanimously to approve a resolution to establish position allocations for the planning budget unit, which once again will include the Community Development director classification.
County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson said that in February 2020 the board combined the Community Development Department with the departments of Public Works and Water Resources.
The board in February of last year appointed Scott De Leon director of Community Development. At that point, Public Works and Water Resources already were under his direction; those two departments had been reconsolidated in August 2019.
As a result, in the next fiscal year budget cycle, the Community Development director budget classification was eliminated from the planning budget unit, Huchingson said.
Huchingson noted the proposed change would mean that the county would return to the longtime model of having a director focused 100-percent of the time on Community Development, which is vital to the economy and deals with a high volume of complex work.
“Community Development is very vital to our economic well-being,” said Board Chair Bruno Sabatier, adding it’s one of the most difficult departments to manage.
He said he believed that the action will help ensure that the department has the greatest level of support.
Sabatier said he appreciated the work that De Leon has done and that he hoped the board was correct that the change will create the better solution they’re looking for.
There were no comments by other board members during the discussion and only one member of the public, Bart Levenson of Kelseyville, spoke.
Levenson queried the board on how many planners the county needs to handle the planning department’s large workload.
Sabatier said it was a good question but there isn’t an easy answer to it.
Levenson followed up by asking if the county would consider pausing large development projects until a new director is in place and they can determine how many staff they need.
Sabatier replied that he wanted as seamless a transition as possible in order to have the least impact on applicants and that he didn’t support pausing projects.
Supervisor Moke Simon moved to approve the resolution, which passed with a board vote of 5-0.
This is the latest in changes to the department’s staffing.
Last month, in the run-up to the board’s action, it was reported that Toccarra Thomas, De Leon’s deputy Community Development director, had submitted her resignation letter, effective May 19. She joined the department in April 2020.
Also in April, the board held two closed session evaluations of De Leon in his role as director of Public Works, Water Resources and Community Development.
Sabatier told Lake County News earlier this week that the county intended to begin recruiting immediately for a new Community Development director.
The resolution to reallocate the Community Development director job as a separate position did not include a pay rate.
So far, the job has not been posted on the county’s Human Resources Department webpage, but a job description posted on the county website lists the annual pay range as $102,668.80 to $124,779.20.
When De Leon was Public Works director, he said his annual salary was $120,600. He received a 25-percent increase, bringing him to more than $150,000 annually when he was assigned Water Resources permanently in 2019.
When the board passed pay raises for county employees last year, the Public Works director job classification received a nearly 43-percent increase, the largest of any employee, due to the combined responsibility of De Leon leading three county departments.
At the time of the pay raises, the county would not give specifics about how much De Leon was being paid, but gave a pay range for the combined Water Resources, Public Works and Community Development director job as $127,449.60 annually for the first step to a fifth-step salary of $154,924.80.
Officials did not indicate on Tuesday if the board will have to take additional action to update its resolution from last fall establishing salaries and benefits for management employees in order to restructure De Leon’s position and pay once Community Development is handed off.
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