Whatcom County Council discuss loss of Planners
A loss of eight planning staff members, many crucial to the county’s long-range planning efforts, became significant enough for a full public discussion of the issue by Whatcom County Council members Tuesday night.With a 2½-year backlog of county planning initiatives, Council members Carl Weimer and Barbara Brenner asked that a full council committee address the loss of planners and what can be done to move policies forward.
Council members decided to send Weimer and Brenner to speak with Whatcom County Executive Pete Kremen’s administration about the issues and to outline what has to get done immediately and what timeline might be involved.
“The matter is really serious,” said Councilwoman Laurie Caskey-Schreiber, who said that the council was elected to help develop plans to deal with the county’s exploding growth. “If that right is not given to us, or allowed to us, we can’t represent the people that we are elected to represent.”
Eight planning department staff members have quit in the first half of 2007, including Planning and Development Services Director Hal Hart and his assistant, Dennis Rhodes. Hart now works for the city of Woodinville, and Rhodes took over as Ferndale planning and building director.
Councilman Sam Crawford balked at the idea that the county’s planning staff or the executive branch was not getting things done. “I feel like I’m in a different county than you guys,” he said.
Crawford said the council has no right to direct planning staff when Brenner suggested that perhaps some department staff should be moved under the council to develop policies in a timely manner.
The loss of planning staff concerns Whatcom County Planning Commission Chairman Ken Mann as well.
“My opinion as to why (planning staff members are) leaving is that the administration has not made planning and the planning department a priority in the last few years,” Mann said. “Losing all of these senior planners — it’s an incredible brain drain and we are going to pay for it as a county.”
A call to Kremen seeking comment about the issue early Tuesday morning was returned by his deputy, Dewey Desler.
Desler said that the planning department has seen immense growth, with an increase in staff of about 50 percent in the last three years, and its budget has nearly doubled since 2004.
“There is no other department, with the exception of the jail, that has really experienced that kind of growth and capacity,” Desler said.
Mann, however, said that the issue isn’t how many people are being hired in the department, but where they’re being told to focus. Many of the hires are focusing on the permitting department rather than long-range planning, which is crucial to the growth of the county, he said.
“The administration may not realize that,” Mann said. “(They) may just consider it one big room full of people that are interchangeable parts. But that’s just not true.”
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