Week 4: Navigating the Paper Trail

This week concludes my first entire week without Elizabeth, the former City Planner, to supervise and instruct me in reviewing site plans. She recently accepted a management level position with the City of Bellflower, and I applaud her career advancement, even if it means I no longer benefit from her leadership at Palos Verdes. In her stead, the City has hired two consultants from a planning firm known as Michael Baker, who will work together (and with me) to fill the enormous shoes Elizabeth left behind until a new permanent planner can be hired. Her absence has generated some confusion between us three over the past week, and I’m hoping that tomorrow we will start fresh and have a better sense of where exactly we stand on the massive paper trail that is recycled on a monthly basis.

Since I arrived in Palos Verdes, I received most of my assignments by speaking to Elizabeth about what needed to be accomplished that day in terms of the bigger picture—preparing for the monthly Planning Commission meeting. To briefly summarize, each month the Planning Commission meets and reviews applications for construction projects and improvements to homes that are considered large enough to merit their review. There is a timeline which must be followed in the weeks leading up to the meeting, which usually involves contacting applicants to gather additional materials, allowing them time to correct their submissions, and finally photographing the site firsthand. We keep track of each application’s status in a spreadsheet which is shared by the whole department. When I first arrived, Elizabeth already had all the applications entered into the spreadsheet and would update them daily when their status changed. She would also provide me the relevant file and application paperwork for that address when giving me assignments. Basically, we’d slipped into a routine that was never explicitly discussed, but it placed Elizabeth clearly in the role of leader and procurer of paperwork.

When I came into the office on Monday, Jeffrey Graham (one of the temporary consultants) was at Elizabeth’s desk. Although Jeffrey isn’t more than a year or two older than I am, and also very green in planning, I decided it would be most appropriate for me to defer to his judgment, experience, and direction because he was the chosen professional and was being paid by the City for his work. (Aside—Jeffrey is really cool and I’m glad to be his coworker!). I greeted Jeffrey and asked him if he had any applications that I could work on. He appeared confused as to where we would find new applications and the associated paperwork, and I realized I didn’t know where the paper trail started either. This was, more or less, the common theme of the week—learning to navigate the City’s paper trail. I’m still not completely clear on the processing, but I have a better idea now thanks to Donna, who works in the permit issuing department and is the person I learned is responsible for creating application files for each address. I also became more familiar with the layout of the filing cabinets and how to look up addresses.

This was probably my most frustrating week at the City because I got the sense that not enough was done to bridge the gap left by Elizabeth’s absence. Ken Rukavina, who was Elizabeth’s supervisor and who is now my direct supervisor, did not seem as involved in the planning process as I’d expected him to be. He is the Director of Planning and Public Works, and the latter half of his title seems to be more consuming than the former. I suspect this is because Elizabeth’s attentiveness as a Planner meant that Ken has simply just adjusted to being more hands-off with planning matters. I hope that this week we can all sit down and get on the same page about workflow and deadlines—one of my biggest concerns right now is that Jeffrey and I will miss key due dates for each application simply because we don’t understand the paper trail fully yet. Another challenge for our teamwork and leadership skills will be getting a unified front together for the August Planning Commission meeting, which was specially scheduled for two controversial projects to be heard. As one of these projects has been drawn out for two whole years and this will be the final hearing, it is very important that as staff, we stay organized and on schedule. It would be a very, very bad thing if the City were accused of mishandling the meeting due to staff members not gathering and presenting the materials on the mandated schedule. Most importantly, we need to keep Ken involved in our work so that once the City hires a full time Planner, he can prepare that person for the task.