City manager promotes three leaders to permanent positions

Executives had been serving under temporary position statuses.

Three city executives who had “acting” or “interim” in front of their titles will now have those descriptors removed.

Austin City Manager Marc Ott said in a memo this week that he had appointed interim City Attorney Anne Morgan, interim Development Services Director Rodney Gonzales and acting Watershed Protection Director Joe Pantalion to their posts permanently. All three will receive pay raises.

Gonzales, who was previously in the city’s Economic Development Department, is heading a new department that was formed after a consultant’s report criticized the former Planning and Development Review Department as mismanaged and inefficient.

The new Development Services Department oversees some of the key functions for approving new development, such as the city permit center and plan reviews.

Gonzales will be paid $183,019.20, up from $151,278.

Pantalion succeeds former Watershed Protection Director Victoria Li, who told her boss she intended to retire in an August email that also said she was “grateful” to have worked with “so many dedicated co-workers and City leaders.”

Pantalion, who will make $189,529.60, up from $173,534.40, is at the helm of the department that is perhaps best known by the public for its flood mitigation efforts, including its role in floodplain buyouts and the $155 million Waller Creek Tunnel project, which had to be partly demolished after the city said it discovered a major design flaw.

Morgan succeeds former City Attorney Karen Kennard, who resigned in June after Ott wanted to reassign her to a lobbyist position as the city’s government relations officer.

Morgan, who will make $199,742, up from $173,555.20, will lead a law department that represents the city when it’s sued or when the city itself files a lawsuit, such as the recently dismissed lawsuit seeking, in part, the reappraisal of commercial properties in Travis County.