PORT ANGELES — After protests from 11 speakers and two of its own members, the City Council agreed Tuesday night to delay consideration of a controversial City Hall reorganization plan contained in the 2005 city budget
The public hearing on the 2005 city budget was continued until the council’s Dec. 7 meeting.
A motion by City Councilwoman Lauren Erickson to strike the reorganization plan from the budget also was tabled until the Dec. 7 meeting.
“I highly object to this reorganization,” Erickson said.
“It is fundamentally wrong to put the person responsible for economic development in charge of the person responsible for mitigating that development.
“It is a really bad move; you just don’t do it.”
The proposed reorganization:
* Parks and Recreation Director Marc Connelly would become parks manager, one of four people reporting to Glenn Cutler, director of public works and utilities.
The other three are engineering services manager Gary Kenworthy; power resources manager Scott McLain; and operations manager Mike Puntenney, who would take over parks maintenance.
The recreational manager position, which has been vacant since April, would be eliminated.
* The economic development director position, now held by the retiring Tim Smith and part of the city manager’s department, would be renamed community and economic development director in its own department.
Brad Collins, currently the community development director, would become the planning manager, reporting to the community and economic development director.
Merging departments
At Tuesday evening’s meeting, City Councilman Gary Braun said he couldn’t see how the 95-employee public works department could efficiently absorb the 40-employee parks and recreation department given the major coming public works projects, including new Eighth Street bridges and storm drain projects.
He would prefer the two departments remain separate, Braun said.
The reorganization plan already had drawn objections from the Planning Commission, both for its impact on parks and recreation, community development and economic development, and for not being submitted to the Planning Commission or the public prior to inclusion in the 2005 budget.
