By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
City council members on Tuesday heard a proposal for revisions to the city’s organizational chart.
Interim City Manager Manuel Chavez presented the proposed changes to the council during a special work session that also included a first look at the city’s general fund budget for the coming year.
Chavez told the council, “I did want to make a quick introduction and presentation on the organizational chart that I’m recommending for the Fiscal Year 2024-2025. This will go hand-in-hand with the proposed budget.
“During my time as interim (city manager), I’ve had time to review the needs of the operation and with the most current and recent issues we’re handling within the planning and zoning department, I felt that this particular recommendation. . . is my request for help within the organization,” the interim city manager said.
Chavez said his primary objective in reviewing the organizational chart – which lays what city administrators are responsible for each city department – was to make sure “no one department has more than what they can handle.”
“For that particular reason, I did want to make a recommendation for deleting a department and adding another one. The deleted department would be the planning and zoning department, and we would add an operations and compliance department. With that, as mentioned, we want to make sure, as we currently have issues that we want to address at planning and zoning, that everything and everyone is on top of what needs to get done in that particular department,” Chavez said.
Chavez also said he is recommending moving the city’s animal services division under the police department and returning the city’s emergency operations center to the purview of the fire department.
“The first is a recommendation based on looking at other cities similar to our size, and most animal services (in those cities) fall under the police department. With the emergency operations center, we had it there (under the fire department before), and we had moved it out a few years back, and now I’m recommending that it goes back under the fire department,” Chavez said.
The organizational chart recommended by Chavez would also establish a new operations and compliance department.
“I want to recommend that in this department we have parks and recreation, facilities maintenance, civic facility events, the San Felipe Golf Course, development services, planning and zoning, neighborhood services and any other special projects management that needs to be under this particular department,” Chavez said.
Chavez said he is also recommending to move the city’s GIS (geographical information services) division, currently under the planning and zoning department, under the public works department.
“It previously reported to that department (public works), but it had changed last year, and now it goes back under public works. When you look at GIS, the majority of the work does fall under public works, so it would make more sense to be supervised by public works,” he said.
“Again, as I mentioned, this particular recommendation is based off our budget that we’ll be presenting, but this is what I feel we need currently to be able to continue to operate, and as I mentioned, we do have some areas where we need more constant supervision, and I believe this will get us where we need to be.
“I do acknowledge that once we have a city manager that comes in, they could re-evaluate (the organizational chart), but at the moment I feel that this is where we need to be at so that we can move forward with the upcoming fiscal year,” Chavez said.
Council members then asked a number of questions and made comments about Chavez’s proposals.
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