A planning consultant suggests increasing city planners’ salaries to combat problem of high turnover in staff.
By Jonathan Friedman/Assistant Editor
Private Planning Consultant Norm Haynie introduced two propositions that sparked conversation among the planning commissioners at Monday’s meeting. One was to increase permit fees as a way to increase salaries and allow for the hiring of more planning staff. This would help combat the problem of planners who leave the city after only a couple of years or sometimes even less time. This has been a problem that has plagued Malibu since its inception.
Haynie also suggested that a committee be created of people with great knowledge of the municipal code who could analyze project proposals in the beginning stages, so a person would know whether their project was plausible.
“I would like to see people get a feeling of what they can do and can’t do before they start spending a lot of money on environmental impact reports, biology reports… all of these things are extremely expensive.”
Several commissioners said they liked that idea. Only the City Council has the power to create a committee.
Haynie’s idea to bring more money to the city for planners’ salaries raises an issue that has always been a problem with Malibu. The city is on its eighth planning director/manager in 13 years and the exodus of senior and associate planners has become a regular event, as they go to other cities and into the private sector. With city staffers usually keeping the policy of not commenting on issues like that, there is no definite answer on why the city is unable to keep its planners. But many have suggested it is due to the heavy and stressful workload, which has increased because of planning staff shortages.
“We are having trouble hanging on to our planners,” Haynie said. “I think the city needs to acknowledge this and do what’s necessary before we lose all our good planners. If you get people to stay on longer, you won’t have planners needing to go back and spend 20 minutes to look up an issue.”
This problem will likely become greater as the planning workload will greatly increase once the city begins issuing coastal development permits. The City Council may adopt an ordinance on Monday, that would go into effect 30 days later, which would allow the city to issue coastal permits. There are currently 111 projects that have received all the necessary permits except for coastal permits.