Santa Rosa city manager reshuffles three divisions at City Hall

Santa Rosa city manager Sean McGlynn continues to shake things up at City Hall, recently announcing his latest effort to restructure city government by reshuffling teams overseeing economic development, code enforcement and parking.

McGlynn indicated the changes are driven by a need to be more responsive on a number of fronts, including housing, homelessness, economic development and community engagement.

The city’s three-person economic development team is moving out of the Housing and Economic Development Department and into the Community Development Department, where planning and permitting are handled.

Economic development wasn’t really a great fit for a department that is focused increasingly on housing and homelessness issues, explained Deputy City Manager Gloria Hurtado.

She suggested the “misalignment” stretched back to the recession, when several departments were consolidated “without really a strategic plan at all.” The subsequent statewide demise of redevelopment agencies caused further staff reductions in the department.

City officials said the new arrangement would benefit from the natural synergy between the work of economic development and planning.

Economic development staffers already work closely with businesses considering locating or expanding here, and that often involves helping them navigate the permit process, Economic Development Manager Danielle O’Leary said.

“Our planning and economic development teams benefit greatly when we bring our different perspectives together to plan for our city’s future,” O’Leary said. The department will now be known as the Planning and Economic Development Department and will be under the interim leadership of David Guhin, director of the city’s Water Department.

Guhin was brought in earlier this year to replace Chuck Regalia, former Community Development director, to revamp the department to make it more customer-friendly. That process is ongoing. Regalia is now an assistant city manager.

The second significant move involves shifting the five-person code enforcement team out of Community Development, where it reported to the city’s chief building official, and into the new Housing & Community Services Department.

Whereas planners and economic development staff tend to focus on new developments or businesses, code enforcement largely deals with complaints from residents about quality-of-life issues in neighborhoods, Hurtado said.

“They were kind of lost in Community Development,” she said.

It makes more sense to have code enforcement officers working in a department focused on housing and homelessness, Hurtado said. The code enforcement officers already work closely with the city’s Neighborhood Revitalization Program, which is run out of the housing department and aims to improve living conditions in lower-income neighborhoods, Hurtado said.

The third change is that the 35-employee parking division will moved into Finance Department, reporting to Deborah Lauchner, the city’s chief financial officer. That could signal greater willingness to tap the city’s $12 million parking reserves for new uses.

In a release, Lauchner vowed to offer “a creative approach to how we manage these assets for the benefit of all.”

The final change is that the city’s gang prevention manager position, now vacant, will report to the new community engagement director, Jaime Peñaherrera.

The city has struggled to retain a leader in what is now called the Santa Rosa Violence Prevention Partnership. It’s had five leaders in 10 years, the most recent one, Khaalid Muttaqi, departing earlier this month to take a similar position in Sacramento.

It makes sense to have that position report to Peñaherrera because the gang prevention program is “part of the community engagement toolkit,” Hurtado said.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com.