The Ceres City Council decided Monday that it will not replace Ann Montgomery as administrative secretary in city planning but will create a new position – that of planning technician.
The Community Development Department (Planning Department) is at its lowest staffing level in decades. Lea Simvoulakis resigned as the director, Senior Planner Teddy Hernandez has resigned and Montgomery retired as of Sept. 12. The shortage of staff is causing “significant challenges in meeting the growing demands of the community, largely due to an influx of planning and development requests,” said City Manager Doug Dunford.
The city has dealt with the losses of Simvoulakis and Hernandez by turning to contract planner Kelsey George through Gouveia Engineering and also has hired Simvoulakis as a consultant to finish out projects she was working on before she left for NorthStar Engineering Group of Modesto.
Dunford said Montgomery’s departure “has further strained internal resources. The remaining team members are now facing difficulty balancing day-to-day operations alongside the increasing volume of community requests.” He said added a full-time Planning Technician is a “necessary and strategic response to restore operational capacity and improve service delivery.”
The new full-time employee ideally would have a foundational understanding of planning, building, and development to act as a front-line resource to assist community members with questions and help guide them through the development process and ensure timely responses to their questions.
Because Montgomery’s position is being eliminated and replaced with a new position that draws the same salary, there will be no increases to the city’s expenses, said Dunford.
The salary range for the Planning Technician position is $53,310 to $64,792 annually.
Julian Aguirre, the city’s Economic Development manager, said there is a backlog in services due to short staff.
“Right now, it’s very difficult,” said Aguirre. “People are coming in. They’re waiting a week or two weeks to get a response. Just to let you know, we have 85 emails right now, sitting in a queue that myself and the consultant are trying to go through, and so this individual will be beneficial. And with that person, that would be cross-trained to help out at the counter the phones, preparing documents and stuff that we need.
Montgomery’s position will remain vacant until the city will be in a position to fill it.
City Human Resources Director Delilah Vasquez said another administrative secretary can take minutes at Planning Commission meetings and prepare agendas.
When it came time to vote to leave the administrative secretary position open and unfunded and add the planning technician position, Vice Mayor Daniel Martinez cast the lone no vote.
In other action, the council approved a $35,000 for planning services with Gouveia Engineering to keep George on staff.
Contract planners will be a necessity until the city can find a new planning director. Dunford said that Riverbank spent two years looking for a planner and found three candidates outside of California.
