Reorganization of city departments will improve neighborhoods

The Golden Hill Association has, under multiple administrations, worked to build and maintain a cooperative relationship with mayors and department heads to resolve issues our residents have told us concern them. While the city responses to our concerns have mostly been positive, we still feel progress has been slower than we’d like. We are in support of Mayor Harry Rilling’s reorganization of city departments, as we feel it will help us improve our neighborhood.

Here are some reasons why:

The plan moves our Neighborhood Improvement Coordinator (and funds) from Redevelopment to Code Enforcement, as well as adding a part-time blight officer. This gives us a Neighborhood Improvement Team with shared resources and information, making our clean-up initiatives and blight enforcement more effective.

Planning & Zoning, Code Enforcement, Business Development/Tourism, and Transportation, Traffic and Parking will all report to the new Chief of Community and Economic Development. We believe the efficiencies to be gained, especially with Planning & Zoning and Code Enforcement being under the same chief, will be significant.

In our discussions, we did note a possible missed opportunity: The Health Department, Fire Marshall and Planning & Zoning are still separate under this proposal. We have found numerous instances where citizen and property safety would be improved with better coordination between these departments.

We commend the mayor and his team for a plan that we believe will improve communication between departments, be more responsive to citizens’ concerns, and create efficiencies that over time can become quite significant. Jim Clark, president Steven Klocke, vice president Golden Hill Association