The following article was acquired from the Monterey Herald website and was written by Jim Johnson.
Study: County RMA should split into two departments
A new study by consultant Citygate has recommended the agency that handles land use and a range of other functions be disbanded and reorganized into two separate departments to improve efficiency and its flagging relationship with the community.
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Citygate’s 208-page report notes the agency’s “decades-long struggle” with customer service and stakeholder satisfaction and the long-running issues of “employee turnover, difficulty in filling key vacant positions, inadequate staff training, insufficient coordination of workflows, and work backlogs” dating back as far as 2005.
The report found the agency had become both “overly broad” with too many “disassociated functions,” as well as “overly tall” with too much management that has hampered accountability.
Noting the staff reductions dating back more than a decade that has left the agency with 20% less workforce, and a shortage of funding likely to get worse under the COVID-19 pandemic, the report nonetheless focuses instead on a series of 76 organizational recommendations and emphasizes the need for reorganization as the key to the goals of “establishing trust, calibrating the workforce with the workload, managing performance, and realigning the organization.”
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The report and its recommendations are set for Board of Supervisors consideration on Tuesday, but it has already won the support of a review team of administrators including RMA director Carl Holm, Assistant CAO Nick Chiulos, County Counsel, and Human Resources, who expressed unanimous support.
Citygate recommends the county board direct CAO Charles McKee to report back in two months on actions taken to implement the recommended organizational changes and direct the consultant to return in six months to review the progress made.