LAKEPORT >> The Lake County Board of Supervisors essentially decided to maintain the status quo. But the same old organization chart had to wait for some heated discussion.
At issue was joining water resources, public works and public services departments. Ultimately the supervisors voted to keep the first two as a combined body while the last remains separate.
In a cost and general fund analysis, County Administrative Officer Matt Perry recommended that the departments of public works, public services and water resources be combined to save money and to streamline logistics of all three.
There were other options as well, like separating all three. According to Perry’s presentation, this move would create an approximately $130,000 deficit in the general or geothermal fund due to added staffing and other administrative costs.
This discussion — continued from February’s Mid-Year Budget Review — comes at a time when the county’s finances and resources are stretched thin by the Valley Fire and state budget woes.
To make matters worse, the county has had difficulty recruiting for key department positions. The issue will be made more troubling when Interim Public Services Director Kim Clymire steps down from his role on Thursday.
“To me, it comes to an allocation of resources,” Perry said. “We have a difficult time attracting capable talent from outside the county.”
However, a handful of supervisors had problems with the recommendation, especially District 2 Supervisor Jeff Smith.
He was concerned that public services, which handles parks, museums, and waste management, would become diluted if amalgamated with a large department such as public works.
“That’s my biggest fear,” Smith said. “Public services has operated in such a positive way and we are throwing a wrench it.”
Clymire was also adamant about keeping his department autonomous and argued that “nothing happened,” when public works oversaw local trails in the mid-2000s because of the latter’s workload. According to Clymire, the Konocti Regional Trails program gained momentum after that responsibility changed in 2007.
The long-time director said he plans to recommend Interim Deputy Director Kati Galvani for the interim director to the BOS at their next meeting on March 15.
In the meantime, the board directed staff to immediately begin recruitment for a permanent director — a task Perry and staff thought would be difficult to accomplish, thus the department would be “left hanging.”
Assistant Public Works Director Lars Ewing also disagreed with Smith’s “diluted” argument as would have three people running each department: the assistant director deputy director, and the permanent director.
“Separating those seems to be inefficient,” Ewing said, speaking of water resources and public works.
His name was brought up multiple times during the debate as the board assumed he wanted to be Public Services Director but he said he applied for the job because he wanted to combine public works and services together.
According to county documents, Public Works Director Scott DeLeon and Ewing would head the super-department if all three were merged.
“It’s been characterized that public works is doing a takeover, but I want to clarify that’s not the case,” DeLeon said, noting that he only offered an alternative management structure to be more logistically efficient.
Either way, he offered his support for the BOS’ decision.
“I serve at the pleasure of this board,” he said.
The merger also had an opponent in District 3 Supervisor Jim Steele, who recently has been pushing to separate water resources and hire a permanent director with a lake science background in lieu of DeLeon’s part-time allocation to the job.
In a memo responding to the merger recommendation, Steele holds a master’s degree in biology. He wrote that the work done by the current Department of Water Resources hasn’t been sufficient.
“I believe no improvement to lake program development, data analysis (as mentioned at the RMC meeting) or lake management decisions have been achieved,” he said. “It’s my view, continuing this situation under the suggested organizational chart will not overall improve Clear Lake management.”
Despite stressing the need to understand Clear Lake’s issues and claiming that an experienced director would save money by way of less staff, his ideas fell short as Perry’s analysis showed that separating water resources would also create a more than $100,000 deficit in all possible scenarios.
At the end of the lengthy discussion, Smith’s arguments ended up achieving a consensus from the board and the public.
“I’m more concerned with the delivery of services than the dollars,” a citizen commented. “As a taxpayer, public services have been the easiest to deal with and the most responsive.”
His motion was passed unanimously 5-0.
When asked why he voted for it, Steele said that the board a different direction than his proposal and didn’t want to be against keeping Public Services apart from Public Works.
“There was no reason to be against that,” he added.
